Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mafuyu woke up one morning with a piece of paper lying flat on her face.
It hadn't been there when she'd gone to sleep.

The sheet was stiff and smooth to the touch, like printer paper, and it read:

...

...was this some kind of prank?

She set the paper aside, and opened her phone.
She'd gotten a ping on Nightcord overnight:

...Perhaps it wasn't a prank, then.
But then, what could it be...?

She skipped over the rest of Kanade and Ena's messages for now, and sent a message of her own.

When Mafuyu stepped out of her room to go eat breakfast, she found her parents talking in hushed tones.
Both of them held eerily familiar sheets of paper in their hands.

The television was also on.

"—It is already clear that although the language printed on each paper is tailored to its recipient, the messages all say the same thing—"

"—widespread disruption in cities throughout the world in the face of this unprecedented event. Mass panic has been reported in—"

"—for those of you joining us this morning, astronomical observatories around the world have just confirmed the gradual disappearance of stars from the night sky—"

"—The Japanese government would like to remind citizens that the rule of law remains in effect, and will always remain in effect. Criminals will be punished to the fullest extent—"

"—but how do you explain millions—no, billions—of papers appearing out of thin air around the world? How else do you explain the stars vanishing? I'm telling you, this really is the end—"

"You really shouldn't listen to the news, dear," her mother said. "It's not healthy for you. Turn it off, and get ready for school."

Mafuyu, of course, did as she was told.

Still, things were mostly okay the first day.

School administration tried insisting that students should refrain from discussing it in class, calling it 'disruptive fearmongering'—but of course, that was a lost cause from the start, especially since the teachers all talked about it amongst themselves, as well.

Despite that, though, the attitude Mafuyu got from most people was one of incredulous disbelief—the suspicion that this was all just some monumentally stupid prank, or perhaps a collective hallucination... nevermind the evidence to the contrary.

As for what Mafuyu herself thought... well, that didn't really matter, did it?
No one ever needed her opinion—and even when they asked, they ignored it.

That didn't stop her from keeping an eye on things, though, checking the headlines and latest developments online in-between doing her homework; nor did it stop her from looking out her window later that night, and noting how the night sky seemed just a bit emptier than usual, even in spite of Tokyo's usual light pollution.

And of course, none of this stopped Mafuyu from hopping into voice chat at 25:00, as usual.

...though there wasn't much chat going on.
Nor were there even voices, really.

Ena wasn't in the call at all, having sent a message hours earlier about how she "really needed to focus on her work".
At some point, Mizuki tried asking her an incidental question—something about how the MV and the thumbnail went together for their next song—only to for Ena to immediately shoot back with "shut the fuck up and stop fucking pinging me", before going on do-not-disturb for the rest of the night.

Kanade, at least, had joined the call... though she spent the entire time muted, with only a few messages in text chat to indicate that she was actually there and listening. She was also the first to leave at around 25:30, having posted a short demo of her latest composition in chat before unceremoniously disconnecting from voice.

(The file Kanade uploaded was also actually the wrong one at first—though she eventually uploaded the right file four hours later.)

That left just Mizuki and Mafuyu—and as it turned out, a conversation between one and one-quarter of a person wasn't nearly enough to fill the silence, no matter how much Mizuki forced herself to talk.

People began to wake up the second day.

The stars kept continuously disappearing; handfuls of them winked out every hour or so, with observatories around the world collaborating to track the extinction of light in exacting detail.

The crowds walking to school were noticeably thinner today.
The number of police on the streets, meanwhile, had grown.

On her way to class, Mafuyu checked the news—something she'd avoided doing at home this morning due to her mother's growing insistence that nothing was out of the ordinary, and that she keep going to class "no matter what nonsense anyone might try to push onto you, dear."

She could hear some other students next to her, talking amongst themselves as they all walked to school.

"—wait, Neptune? Like, the planet?"
"Yeah, the planet! No one can see it anymore, apparently—like, the whole planet just went poof overnight!"
"Really? Then what the hell are we doing here? Let's just skip—"

And then the news loaded:

She also checked N25's shared drive on the way to class.

...

The untitled song was missing.
She couldn't find any of the Virtual Singers either, for that matter—they'd been missing ever since yesterday.

For that matter, over half of her class was missing today... as were several teachers.
Still, lessons went on, even in spite of all the scared looks and anxious whispers—

—up until an entire club snuck up to the roof during lunch and jumped in unison, sheets of paper fluttering away in the wind as they fell.

Everyone was dismissed, after that.

As Mafuyu walked through the school's front gates with everyone else, she turned right, going down the street towards her house...

...but then she stopped after a few steps.

She reached into her schoolbag, and pulled out The Message—she'd started capitalizing it in her head at some point—from where she'd hidden it, tucked away in the middle of her notes.

She stared at it, and the bolded text on the page stared back up at her.

"06:33 on August 14."
A bit less than three days from now.

She looked up from the paper, and down the street, towards the path to her house—

—and then turned around, spinning on her heel as she walked up the street instead, towards Kanade's home.

Chapter Text

Mafuyu knocked on the front door for politeness's sake—but she also knew that Kanade probably wouldn't hear it.

Instead...

Minutes ticked by in silence.

...

The door opened another minute or two later.

Kanade looked up at Mafuyu, her eyes obscured slightly by stray strands of silver-blue that had fallen in front of her face. Despite that, though, she made no move to brush her hair aside; instead, she simply bowed her head and let out a small sigh.

"I-I'm sorry for making you wait," she mumbled, staring down at her feet. "I wasn't expecting you to show up in the middle of the day."

Mafuyu shook her head.
"It's okay," she said. "I wasn't waiting very long."

They stood there for a few more moments, before Kanade quietly stepped aside to let Mafuyu in. She moved listlessly and slowly, and seemed to be drawn in on herself, as if she were cold.

Mafuyu stepped inside, took off her shoes... and then the two of them simply stared at each other in silence.

Mafuyu had made it this far, but...
What do I do now? she wondered.

They stood there in silence for another minute, before Mafuyu's eyes wandered over to the kitchen.

"...I'll go make some tea for us," she said quietly.

The tea was as tasteless as ever for Mafuyu, of course.
That, however, did not stop her from noticing the way Kanade subtly winced when she took a sip from her own cup.

"Is something wrong?" Mafuyu asked.

Kanade stiffened and glanced away, averting her eyes away from Mafuyu.

"N-No, not really," Kanade stammered. "It's just... um, a bit hot. I-I should have let it cool a bit more..."

Mafuyu rested a finger against her own cup for a second, feeling its temperature.
It was warm, but not overly so.

"Don't lie, Kanade," she sighed. "You're not Mizuki. I know this isn't too hot for you. What's wrong?"

Kanade seemed to shrink even more, slumping over slightly in defeat.

"...It's kind of bitter," she admitted, her mouth drawn into a straight, flat, miserable line. "I-It's fine, though. Really!"

Ah. So that's what it was.

"I see," Mafuyu said quietly.
Then, after a moment, she added, "I must've let it steep for too long."

Mafuyu thought back to when she'd been brewing it.
Had she not been paying attention to the time...?

"I must've been distracted," Mafuyu said, shaking her head. "I apologize."

Kanade immediately latched onto Mafuyu's words, quietly pushing her tea aside—as if Mafuyu couldn't notice.
"Distracted?" she asked. "Distracted by what?"

Hm, how to put this...?

She needn't have wondered, though: Kanade immediately noticed how Mafuyu's eyes glanced towards the folded white sheet of paper, sticking up out of her bag.

"...oh," Kanade mumbled. "That."

Another silence.

"...I'm here because my school closed down," Mafuyu said. "One of our clubs jumped from the rooftop during lunch."

Kanade flinched at that, though Mafuyu kept going, regardless.
"I think it might have been the theatre club," she added as an afterthought.

"A whole club just...?" Kanade mumbled to herself in disbelief.

And then her head shot up with a stricken look, panic filling her eyes.
Her palms hit the table sharply as she half-rose to standing.

"W-Wait, Mafuyu," Kanade stammered. "W-Were you also thinking of...?"

Mafuyu glanced to the side for a second, wondering about that.

"...No, not really," Mafuyu concluded, and Kanade breathed out a quiet sigh of relief as she sat back down.

Mafuyu continued to think aloud.
"I don't see the point of doing so anymore. Not when, in three days—"

"—Do you really think it's going to happen?" Kanade interrupted.

Her head sagged, hiding her eyes behind a veil of blueish-silver strand.
"D-Do you really think that...?"

...Did Mafuyu believe it, really?

To tell the truth, the message still sounded like science fiction, to her... but nothing else could explain the things she'd seen disappear with her own eyes.

"Did you notice that the untitled song isn't in our shared files anymore?" Mafuyu said eventually, by way of explanation.

"The Sekai, Miku, the others... they're all gone, already. And it's obvious that the stars really are disappearing, too."

Then she added, in a quieter voice:
"But... at the same time, all of my problems are going to disappear in three days, too."

Mafuyu looked out the window next to her, at the bright afternoon outside.
As she blinked in the sunlight, she let out a long breath she hadn't realized she was holding in, and felt her shoulders relax.

"I don't have to worry anymore...
"It's like my wishes were granted," Mafuyu realized.

Kanade's head whipped up sharply towards Mafuyu at that—and Mafuyu finally noticed the tears starting to fill her eyes.

"Your wishes...?" Kanade said, fixing Mafuyu with a look that the purple-haired girl couldn't identify.
Her eyes were wide with shock and worry and fear—

"Your wishes? What about mine?!"

—and anger, Mafuyu realized, noting the deep, furrowed frown lining her friend's face.
Kanade began to tremble, her eyes narrowed and fists clenched.

"Are you really saying that, even after everything... I never actually saved you? That it took the whole world ending to help you...?"

Kanade's chair scraped loudly against the floor as she stood up sharply and leaned on the table, her palms flat on the tabletop and arms rigid—save for a slight quivering as fury coursed through her frame.

"Was it all meaningless, then?" she spat. "Everything I—everything we did, all that time together—you don't care about it?!"

And then she collapsed back down onto her chair, curling up into a ball with her knees pressed against her chest.
"I-Is that it? It's just... nothing, now...?" she sobbed.

Mafuyu froze up, her mind spinning as she tried to figure out what she was even supposed to do in a situation like this—

"I-I'm so stupid... all this time, I wanted to disappear," Kanade said. "I thought I wouldn't have to worry anymore, if I just went away."

"But now that it's actually happening..."

Her voice shattered, becoming little more than a quiet whisper, broken up by the hitching of her breath as she cried.

"...Now that it's actually happening, I-I'm terrified," Kanade admitted.
"I-I don't want to die! Not now, not when there's still so many things I have left to do—"

Mafuyu pulled Kanade into an embrace, cutting off her words.

"I'm sorry," Mafuyu said. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean it like that. I really didn't. Please, believe me."

Kanade went utterly still—barely even breathing.

"The time I spent with you was everything to me," Mafuyu continued. "You were the only reason I kept going... so please, don't think I don't care."

Mafuyu's shirt began to grow damp with tears as she pulled Kanade close.
"And, whatever it is you want to do..." Mafuyu said. "Whatever it is, I'll help you do it. I promise."

Mafuyu sighed.
"I... I don't want you to die with regrets, Kanade."

Kanade... didn't say anything, to that.
Instead, she pulled back, so she was face-to-face with Mafuyu.

She looked into Mafuyu's eyes for a second... then a small determined frown flickered across her face, and Mafuyu had a tenth of a second to notice that Kanade was getting closer again—

And then Kanade's lips made contact with Mafuyu's in a sudden, desperate kiss.

The silver-haired girl pressed herself firmly against Mafuyu with surprising strength, as if she were straining to be as close to her as possible; the purple-haired girl, meanwhile, froze up for a heartbeat... but as the shock slowly subsided, the tension in her body began to fade—

—before Kanade suddenly pulled back, with a guilty and terrified look across her face.
"I-I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I'm sorry for forcing myself on you like that! I'm sorry for not asking, I-I didn't mean to take advantage of you or anything—"

She pushed her way out of Mafuyu's embrace, stumbling backwards and babbling frantically.
"—I was scared and desperate and please don't hate me... but I had to let you know how I feel!"

Kanade shrank in on herself again, pulling her arms close to her chest protectively.
"Because I love you, Mafuyu! I-I know you probably don't love me back, a-and I'm sorry, and I'll—mmph!"

Mafuyu cut Kanade off with a kiss of her own.

"Don't apologize, Kanade," Mafuyu said a moment later as they separated.

"You don't need to apologize... because I love you, too, Kanade."

Kanade stared at her for a moment, and let out a long, shuddering breath—
before collapsing forward, burying herself in Mafuyu's shirt and sobbing.

Kanade's sobs gradually softened, first into quiet sniffling, and then into the rhythmic breathing of sleep. As Kanade drifted off to sleep, Mafuyu carefully carried her over to the couch, resting the other girl's head in her lap.

As Kanade slept, Mafuyu's eyes alternated between glancing out the window at the afternoon outside, and staring down at The Message in her hand.

There were three days left until the end of the world.

Her future, her parents, the cold and suffocating house she'd walked away from, earlier today... none of it meant anything, anymore.
None of it mattered—and therefore none of it held any power over her anymore.

Mafuyu was free from it all.
Completely, utterly free.

A light, airy sensation began to overtake her as it truly sank in, and it felt almost like she was floating—

...

...what now?

—and then that weightless, floating feeling suddenly became vertigo, as she realized there was nothing left beneath her feet anymore; now she was drifting away into the void, helpless and directionless.

Mafuyu froze up, staring blankly down at The Message as that singular thought echoed through her mind:
What do I do now?

...

How stupid.
All the freedom in the world... and I don't even know what to do with it.

How could I have forgotten?
I still don't know anything about myself.

I'm still just...
Empty.

As Mafuyu's mind spun in place, grasping blindly for something to grab onto, some handhold to guide her—

—Kanade shifted slightly in her lap, mumbling something in her sleep that Mafuyu couldn't make out.

The other girl had been sleeping for over an hour now, and although she was still somewhat tense, she also slept deeply. It was becoming clear to Mafuyu that Kanade had been on the brink of exhaustion earlier—and now fatigue had finally caught up to the silver-haired girl.

Has she been losing sleep because of all of this? Mafuyu realized.
How did I not notice...?

A familiar heavy sensation pooled inside of her—guilt.

Have I really only been thinking about myself, this whole time?

"I'm sorry, Kanade," Mafuyu whispered. "I'm so sorry... please, forgive me."

Why would a person as warm as Kanade love someone as empty and selfish as me...?

Mafuyu ran her fingers through Kanade's hair, absent-mindedly playing with the strands as she thought back, to...

...to that kiss.

She unconsciously pressed a finger lightly against her lips as she recalled it.
It'd felt tender and loving—and yet Mafuyu could also feel the terror and naked desperation behind it, with Kanade squeezing herself against Mafuyu's lips as if she were already silently saying her goodbyes.

Did she really think I wouldn't love her back?
Why...?

As Mafuyu ruminated over this, she wondered if she really was worthy of Kanade's feelings.
Doubt entered her mind, and with it followed a thought:

I need to make things up to Kanade.

"I don't want you to die with regrets, Kanade," Mafuyu said, echoing her words from earlier.

"No... I won't let you die with regrets."

Kanade began to stir at the sound of Mafuyu's voice, her light blue eyes slowly opening again to look up at Mafuyu.

"Mm...? Mafuyu?" Kanade mumbled, her eyes squinting in confusion. "What happened?"

"You've been asleep," Mafuyu replied, still running her fingers through Kanade's hair in what she hoped was a comforting way. "You fell asleep after..."

She paused as she realized she didn't have the words to describe everything that had just happened.

"...after everything," she said, leaving it at that.

"Everything...?" Kanade repeated, as she continued blinking the sleep out of her eyes...

And then her eyes widened in panic.
"W-Wait, that... that wasn't a dream?" Kanade asked.

Mafuyu shook her head.
"Kissing me? No, that wasn't a dream."

Kanade froze mid-breath, her body becoming rigid and stiff for a second.
"I... I really did that...?" Kanade whispered—

—before she suddenly tried to sit up, her body catapulting itself forward with unexpected speed.

Mafuyu caught her before she could get too far, though.
As she gently pushed Kanade back down to lying on her lap, the silver-haired girl blinked uncomprehendingly back up at her.

"Wait, Mafuyu—!" Kanade said. "I-I'm so, so sorry about—"

"Kanade..." Mafuyu interrupted. "The part where I said I love you also wasn't a dream."

It took a second for Kanade to process that... and when she did, she rolled over onto her side, facing away from Mafuyu.

"But why...?" Kanade said, anxiously drawing her arms close to her chest.
"I don't understand... What is there to love about me? I'm just a barely functioning hikikomori who hurt the only family she had left."

Kanade hadn't quite started sniffling again yet... but Mafuyu could tell by the wavering in her voice that she was on the verge of doing so.

"I'm a failure who can barely ever bring herself to leave the house, or do anything besides make music. I can't even take care of myself," she said.
"I already knew I didn't have a future, even before we all learned the world was ending..."

Kanade began to tremble, curling up again with her knees to her chest.
"The only thing I was ever good for was making music—and even that turned out to be meaningless!

"My music couldn't save you, or anyone. I can't make anyone happy," Kanade mumbled hollowly.
"I'm just... empty—"

"Don't say that about yourself!"

Kanade froze, and turned to look back up at Mafuyu in shock as the purple-haired girl shouted.

"Please..." Mafuyu said. "Please, don't say that!"

She felt something wet run down her face.
When had she started crying...?

"You care, Kanade," she said. "You care about everyone so much, even when it hurts you!"

"Y-You even care about someone as selfish as me," she sobbed. "Even when I don't deserve it."

Kanade might've been staring at Mafuyu, or she might've had her gaze averted—Mafuyu couldn't tell either way, through her tears.
"Why do you think you have to apologize for loving me, when I should be the one apologizing to you?

"You've always tried so hard to help me... even though I've never done anything for you. I didn't even notice how you've been suffering for the past day!

"Please don't say you're empty, Kanade. Someone who cares as much as you do can't be empty."

...

Even as Mafuyu cried, though, a warm hand reached up to gently touch her face, trying to wipe her tears away as they fell.

And then, after all those shed tears... the two of them found themselves back at square one, again.

"So... is there anything you wanted to do, Kanade?" Mafuyu asked as she brought out another freshly-brewed pot of tea.

Kanade looked down, thinking quietly to herself... though, as Mafuyu poured tea for both of them, she could see an increasingly stricken look appear across the silver-haired girl's face.

"...You don't know, do you?" Mafuyu said eventually.

Kanade shook her head.
"No, I don't," she admitted. "I know I wanted to spend time with you, but now... I can't come up with anything specific."

She played with her hair nervously, twirling a few strands over and over around her fingers.

"I don't really go anywhere on my own, other than the hospital and music stores, so..."

Then she sighed, slumping forward slightly in defeat.
"I think I was hoping to discover new places with you," she said. "But that won't work if neither of us have any ideas to begin with, will it..."

And that's when someone banged very, very loudly on Kanade's front door.

"Oooooooiii!" Ena's voice called from outside. "K! Yuki!"
"I know you're in here! Open the door!"

Mafuyu was right behind Kanade as the latter girl went to open the door—only to be met by an upset-looking Ena and a rather amused Mizuki on the other side.

"Seriously, you two, what gives?!" Ena said, glaring at Kanade and Mafuyu. "We've been pinging both of you for the past fifteen minutes!"

"Oh, um," Kanade mumbled. "I left my phone by my computer... I must not have heard. Sorry."

Mafuyu, meanwhile, pulled out her own phone... and got nothing but a blank black screen.
"I forgot to charge my phone," she said, holding up her dead silicon brick as proof.

"Oh, so you two actually have alibis," Mizuki said with a catlike grin, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her cheek. "I thought you were just ignoring us so you could have alone time to yourselves~"

Mafuyu's face remained impassive and flat as ever.
Kanade, however, was not quite as stoic, and Mizuki's grin widened as the silver-haired girl glanced away reflexively.

"Actually, what were you two doing?" Ena asked.

"Um... We were..." Kanade said, playing with her hair again as she continued to stare down at her feet.

"—we were just having tea," Mafuyu cut in smoothly. "That's all."

Mizuki's shit-eating grin widened even further.
Ena, meanwhile, just gave the two of them a flat look.

"Tea," she said. "That's it?"

Her flat look deepened further, into an unimpressed, blank stare.
"Despite everything that's happening right now... you've just been here having tea."

"U-Um... y-yes?" Kanade stammered.

"For the past hour and a half?" Ena asked, eyebrow raised.

"Yes," Mafuyu confirmed with a nod.

Ena continued to just stare for a few more moments, glancing between Kanade and Mafuyu.
"...Okay, sure," she said eventually, sighing. "Let's go with that, then. Tea."

"Anyways!" Mizuki said. "Ena and I were wondering if you two wanted to go someplace with us!"

Kanade's face brightened at that... and Mafuyu relaxed a bit, in turn.

"Of course," Kanade said. "Where did you want to go?"

"There's a cafe not too far away that's pulling out all the stops now, because of... well, just because," Mizuki said, freezing for an instant near the end like a song skipping a beat.

"They're opening up their whole menu!" Ena added. "Drinks they've never tried before, dishes that are too difficult to serve normally... even out-of-season items, if they still have the supplies!"

"That sounds wonderful," Kanade said, before glancing up at Mafuyu, who nodded in silent agreement.

"Great!" Mizuki cheered. "It'll be a double date, then~!"

...
Needless to say, that drew a reaction from everyone.

"—E-Ehhh?!"
"S-Shut up, Mizuki—!"
"...!"

Kanade's face turned scarlet as she hid behind her long hair; Ena, meanwhile, instantly turned to whack Mizuki with a chop over the head—though she was also blushing furiously.

Even Mafuyu had gone a bit stiff, though for a slightly different reason.
I'm going on a date with Kanade... she realized.

The thought made her feel... warm.

The four of them sat at a booth in the cafe, next to a window, with Mafuyu and Kanade on one side of the table and Ena and Mizuki on the other. To everyone's surprise, although the place wasn't deserted, there also wasn't much of a rush, with just enough other people around to provide a low murmuring in the background of their hearing.

"Wait," Ena said as she flipped through the cafe's new menu. "Where are all the prices?"

"There are none," the waitress said as she stood by to take their orders. "We're not charging anything, anymore."

"O-Oh... really?" Mizuki asked.

"Mhm. All we ask is that you be considerate of other customers," the waitress confirmed.

She sighed—but smiled, nonetheless.
"That said, don't be afraid to go wild. We're actually trying to go through all of our remaining ingredients and supplies today, so we can close down for good and spend the last two days with our families."

"That's... very kind," Mafuyu said.

The cafe's owner chuckled as she picked up plates from the next table over, with a neatly folded sheet of paper sticking out of her pocket.
"You know what the message said, right? 'Leave all personal belongings behind'... I think there's something worth noting, there."

"The message, huh..." Ena said with a finger raised thoughtfully to her chin, brow furrowed. "I hadn't really looked at it too closely, but..."

Next to her, Mizuki remained silent, already deep into looking through the menu—steadfastly pouring all her focus into figuring out her order, with her eyes glued to the pages in front of her.

Meanwhile, Kanade fumbled through said new, much-expanded menu—which was really nothing more than a pile of hastily stapled-together sheets—with wide eyes and a bewildered look on her face.

"So many choices..." she mumbled. "It's a bit hard to take in. I'm not even sure where to begin..."

Mafuyu, meanwhile, steadily flipped through the pages, scanning each menu item methodically, taking in ingredients and descriptions one-by-one. In a way, it was a lot like reading a textbook in class, for her, and she approached it with the same diligence and care.

And then Mafuyu glanced over at Kanade, sitting beside her.
"...I'll just have whatever you do," she said.

"I can come back later if you'd like," the waitress offered. "Please, take all the time you need to decide."

"That's probably for the best..." Mizuki said with a slightly sheepish grin.

"Wave me over when you're ready," the waitress nodded, before walking off to another table.

"To be honest, I expected this from Mafuyu," Ena sighed, "but I didn't think you'd be this stuck for choice too, Kanade."

"Well, I..." Kanade said, frowning. "I can't actually remember the last time I ordered dessert for myself. Or really, um, anything that wasn't just noodles..."

"There has to be something you remember though, right?" Mizuki asked. "Like, even if it's from all the way back when you were a kid."

Kanade closed her eyes, sinking deep into thought.
Then she opened them again, twirling a lock of silver hair around her finger as she looked down at the menu.

"...Pudding," she said finally. "My mom... used to make pudding for my birthday. It was one of my favorites, as a kid."

"Okay, what kind of pudding did she make?" Ena asked. "Do you remember?"

Kanade shook her head.
"No. It was a long time ago, and I never got to ask Mom before she..."

Her voice trailed off into an awkward silence.

"O-Oh. I... um, I'm sorry..." Ena said with a stricken expression.

"I-It's okay!" Kanade replied, shaking her head again frantically. "I didn't mean to bring the mood down!"

"Well, we know you like pudding, at least," Mizuki sighed. "It's a start..."

Then she thought for a second, and started quickly flipping through the menu, skimming through the entries.
"Actually, what if we just tried a bit of everything? There's lots of different kinds of pudding here—maybe one of them will help you remember."

"I guess it might work, but..." Kanade said, before pulling her hair up to her face—as if she were trying to hide behind it.

"...but I don't want to make this all about me," she sighed. "I-It's fine, really! I'll just try harder to remember."

And then Kanade sat up stiffly, as if realizing something, and looked up at Mafuyu with a frown.
"And, wait, if we're going to do something like that, then I think we should focus on finding out what you like, instead," Kanade said.

Mafuyu shook her head.
"No, it's better if you do it," she replied. "I wouldn't be able to taste anything, anyways. There's no point."

Ena tilted her head at that.
"You know, I've always wondered: how does that work?" she asked.

"Like, do you not taste anything whatsoever?" she clarified. "Or is it all just dulled?"

Mafuyu was silent for a few long moments as she thought back...
"I suppose I can taste just enough to know if something is sweet, or sour, or... well, you get the point. Nothing more detailed than that, though."

"For instance, I can just barely tell if milk has expired," Mafuyu sighed. "But sour milk tastes the same as lemons and vinegar."

"What if we made a flavor really, really strong?" Mizuki wondered. "Like... if we took a dessert and loaded it with waaaaaaay too much chocolate, or vanilla, or something... would you notice the difference between the flavors then?"

"I've never tried," Mafuyu answered. "My parents wouldn't appreciate me using up all of the ingredients in our kitchen for something frivolous like that."

"But it's not frivolous, though!" Kanade said. "Don't you want to be able to taste things?"

"...well, yes...?" Mafuyu said after a moment's thought.

"Why don't we try it, then?" Ena suggested. "This cafe's trying to burn through all of their ingredients anyways—I'm sure they won't mind. And besides, the worst they can do is say no."

"If you're sure..." Mafuyu said with just a hint of uncertainty.

"I think it'll be good for you," Kanade said, smiling. "And I guess I'll just have some tea—"

"—oh, no, you won't," Ena said, interrupting her. "Don't think you're getting out of this either, Kanade."

"That's right!" Mizuki nodded cheerily. "You're both going to discover something new about yourselves today, whether you like it or not~!"

Mizuki and Ena huddled close together, chattering among themselves as they put together a plan...

And that's how Kanade and Mafuyu found themselves faced with a bunch of tiny cups of pudding.
Each individual serving was fairly small—but together, they all but covered their half of the table.

The proprietress grinned as all four of them stared at the collection of desserts.
"It's been a long, long while since I'd last made some of those recipes," she said. "And you made some pretty unusual requests too, to say the least."

And then she chuckled.
"But honestly? Going back in the past like that, trying out all those old recipes... it was fun. One last hurrah."

"Anyways, I'll leave you all to it," she said as she walked away. "Enjoy!"

Kanade and Mafuyu stared long and hard at the cups in front of them.

"...where do we start?" Kanade asked.

Ena took a sip from her drink—some spiced drink from last autumn that she'd liked—and frowned, as she looked closely at the wide variety of pudding on the table.

"I think the brightly colored cups are the really strong ones," Ena said. "You should probably try those first, Mafuyu."

"Aside from that... just pick one and go from there!" Mizuki suggested.

"Okay..." Mafuyu said, picking out a nearby cup at random, one filled with a bright, light green pudding.
She took a bite—

—and was struck by an oddly refreshing sensation that filled her mouth, like a chilly but pleasant breeze.

Ena smiled.
"Well, judging by the look on your face, you must've noticed something."

"It tastes... cold?" Mafuyu said after swallowing, still feeling the chill sensation in her mouth. "It's... not unpleasant."
"The pudding itself isn't cold, though..." she added, feeling the cup with a finger to confirm its temperature.

"I suppose that must be mint, then?" Kanade said, eying the green coloration.

"...Can I try it?" she then asked, and Mafuyu, of course, obligingly passed the cup over so she could try a bit of it...

"Wait, Kanade—!" Mizuki shouted, her eyes wide, but it was already too late.

Kanade had only tried a small spoonful of the pudding—but even so, as it passed her lips, her face immediately scrunched up and her eyes screwed shut. And then she started coughing violently.

"Kanade?!" Mafuyu said, her eyes wide with panic.

After a few seconds of coughing, though, Kanade managed to swallow the small sample of pudding, shuddering as it went down her throat.

"I-It tastes like toothpaste and mouthwash," she grimaced. "It burns like mouthwash, too..."

She immediately handed Mafuyu back the pudding.

"You like it though, right...?" Kanade asked.

Mafuyu looked down at the bright green dessert with newfound concern... but didn't set it aside.
"Maybe...? I might need to try again," she said.

Mafuyu tried another small bite. This time, though, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on the taste; she thought long and hard about it, trying to come up with something to describe what she felt on her tongue, something distinctive, even as the sensation quickly began to fade—

And then Mafuyu realized: no, this pudding did not, in fact, taste like mouthwash to her.
Mouthwash only had that burning, chilling sensation to it—but this pudding had something else to it, too... something she couldn't quite grasp yet.

Mafuyu opened her eyes and looked back at Kanade.
"This isn't mouthwash," she said finally. "There's something different about it. But I don't know what."

Mizuki's eyes positively gleamed.
"Aha!" she sang. "So you can taste a difference if a flavor's strong enough! My idea worked!"

Mafuyu nodded, her eyes widened just a bit.
"I didn't think I would actually feel anything," she muttered. "But it's... interesting. Maybe."

Ena giggled—before turning sharply to Kanade with a determined, enthusiastic grin.
"Alright, Kanade," she said. "You're up next."

"Okay, then..." Kanade said, her eyes scanning the table for something that wasn't dangerously brightly colored.

She eventually settled on a pudding that was just a plain, slightly off-white. She tried a tiny morsel to start, mindful of what had just happened with the mint... and much to her relief, all she tasted was vanilla; mild, comfortable, plain old vanilla.

It was okay, she supposed.

"This is vanilla," Kanade said, holding up the cup to indicate it. "Regular vanilla."

"...And?" Ena asked, her eyebrow raised.

Kanade tilted her head slightly.
"And... that's it?" she replied. "I'm not sure what else there is to say about it."

"It doesn't remind you of anything?" Mizuki asked. "Must be the wrong flavor, then..."

"It's a nice flavor," Kanade said apologetically. "But, no, it doesn't remind me of anything."

"May I try?" Mafuyu asked, turning to glance at the cup in Kanade's hands.

"Of course," Kanade replied.

With a swift motion, Kanade scooped out another small portion of vanilla pudding with her spoon, and raised it up to Mafuyu's lips. The other girl... blinked, for some reason Kanade couldn't quite discern, and looked down at the spoon for a moment—before accepting the offered pudding, regardless.

Mafuyu closed her eyes as she thought about the taste again... before shaking her head.
"...I barely taste anything from this," she said. "It's just sweet."

"That's okay," Kanade replied. "It must not be a strong enough flavor for you to notice, yet—"

"I knew it!"

Ena had suddenly risen to standing, leaning over the tabletop with a wide, knowing grin on her face.
"Something did change between you two!" she chirped.

And that's when Kanade realized what she'd just done, and her face flushed scarlet.
"W-Wait—!" she tried to say.

"I didn't think you'd be that bold, Kanade," Mizuki smirked, leaning back with her arms crossed. "Right in front of us, too."

And then she leaned forward alongside Ena, looking towards Kanade and Mafuyu with a manic twinkle in her eye.
"Sooooo... 'Just tea,' hmmm?" she teased. "What really happened? C'mon, tell us, tell us~"

Fortunately for the mood, Mizuki had a keen sense for when not to pry too deeply.

Kanade and Mafuyu, meanwhile, were quick to leave out the more... depressing... details of what had transpired earlier today (which turned out to be most of them); that still left just enough for Ena and Mizuki's imaginations to latch onto, though.

"Oho, so Kanade was the one to make the first move... interesting~" Mizuki said.

Then she turned to smirk at Ena.
"Looks like I win, Ena!" she crowed.

Ena just sighed with faux exasperation as she pulled out a thousand-yen note, handing it over to Mizuki.

"...You really made a bet about us?" Mafuyu deadpanned.

"Yeah," Ena admitted. "To be clear, it was Mizuki's idea. But, uh... I always thought Kanade would wait for you to figure things out for yourself and make the first move."

"I had more faith, though!" Mizuki said. "Our Kanade can be very determined once she's set her mind on something, after all~"

Kanade sighed.
"I... realized I really needed to tell Mafuyu how I felt," she said.

She glanced away, as her fingers traced the outline of the folded-up piece of paper she kept in her jacket pocket.
"I had to tell her, before... well. You know."

...
They all fell quiet at that, the rhythm of their conversation cutting to a few measures of silence—

—before Mizuki picked right back up, as if she hadn't skipped a few beats.
"So, anyways," the pinkette said just a bit too loudly for comfort, "How far have you two gotten? What have you done so far?"

Kanade stared down at an (as-of-yet) untouched cup of pudding on the table.
"Um. All we've done so far is kiss once..." she mumbled, running her fingers through her hair.

Mafuyu shook her head, causing Kanade to look up to her in confusion.
"No, that's not all," she said. "Aren't we on a date right now?"

"I suppose so..." Kanade replied, thinking.

Then she blinked.
"Wait," she said, frowning at Mizuki and Ena.

"Does that mean this really is a double date...?" Kanade asked, recalling Mizuki's teasing from earlier today.

Ena nearly choked on her drink.

"N-No!" she shouted, hacking up some of her spiced coffee. "O-Oh my god, it burns..."

Ena scowled at Mafuyu and Kanade as she recovered.

"But! Still! No, this is not a double date!" she insisted.

"So you two are just third-wheeling, then?" Mafuyu asked flatly.

Ena violently coughed yet again, her fist clattering loudly on the table as she leaned on it for support.
"Also no! I mean, we're... we're—"

She turned to Mizuki and glared, clenching her fists tightly as she did her best to loom over the pinkette. Unfortunately for Ena, Mizuki had a couple of centimeters of height on her—so all this did was make it look like Ena was trying to lean in close.

"Why did you even have to say that, anyways?!" Ena shouted at Mizuki.

"Um. Because I thought it'd be funny?" Mizuki offered, leaning back a bit to get away from Ena.

Actually, to Mafuyu's eyes, Mizuki also seemed to be sweating a tiny bit, now... strange.
She could've just been seeing things, though.

"Yeah, but now they have the wrong idea about us!" Ena retorted.

"Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." Mizuki sighed, holding her hands up in fake surrender. "Jeez, how scary~"

Kanade looked down, apparently lost in thought, and shuffled sideways a few centimeters to be closer to Mafuyu.
"...I think you two would be cute together, though," she muttered, though Mizuki and Ena didn't show any sign of hearing her words.

Mafuyu sighed internally, as she watched the two of them banter across from her.
Then she suddenly cleared her throat, drawing their attention.

"I don't know if you two actually have feelings for each other..." Mafuyu said. "But if you do, you need to tell each other soon."

"...after all, we have less than three days left," she reminded them.

...

Utter silence.

...

Beneath the table, Mafuyu wordlessly took hold of Kanade's hand.

The composer gripped her hand tightly in return... but otherwise remained silent, continually running her free hand through her hair over and over again as she stared down into her lap.

As the seconds continued to tick on, meanwhile, Ena ever so slowly drew away from Mizuki, sliding over to the far side of their table booth centimeter by centimeter. Then she simply stared out the window quietly, leaning against the windowsill with her arms pulled closely to her chest, and her face hidden from Kanade and Mafuyu's view.

Mizuki also refused to meet anyone's eyes, instead staring out at the rest of the patrons in the cafe—directly opposite from Ena—with a completely blank, unreadable expression on her face. She remained utterly stiff and still, her body locked in place like a glass figurine.

After a few moments, Kanade looked up, glancing between Mizuki and Ena worriedly... but she still didn't say anything, instead eventually turning to her pudding in silence. Meanwhile, as Kanade moved, Mafuyu did as well, returning to her taste experimentation.

No sense in letting everything they'd ordered go to waste, after all.

It took Mafuyu and Kanade a while to get through all the different flavors of pudding... but, much to Mafuyu's pleasant surprise, she actually did regain a bit of her sense of taste by the end of it all. She even noticed, towards the end, that there was one particular flavor she kept coming back to try—caramel, with its fascinating combination of sweetness and saltiness.

...does that mean I like it? Mafuyu wondered.

Kanade, meanwhile, also eventually hit upon something close to the flavor from her memories—which turned out to be some kind of flan. Mafuyu could immediately tell when they'd finally hit the mark, by the way Kanade's eyes widened for an instant, before fluttering shut in reminiscence.

And then Kanade began to tear up.

"Mom..." she whispered to herself. "Dad..."

Despite her tears, though, Kanade was smiling, ever so slightly—and kept smiling as Mafuyu gently reached out to wipe the tears from her eyes.

After her tears dried, Kanade offered a spoonful for Mafuyu to taste, and the purple-haired girl's eyes widened as she actually, genuinely managed to take in the flavors: sweet but also rich, and with that caramel taste she'd found so fascinating.

Kanade's smile brightened considerably as she watched Mafuyu enjoy the dessert—and then she turned into a quietly blushing mess when Mafuyu passed the flavor right back to her, in the form of a kiss.

Still, as the four of them left the cafe, Ena and Mizuki immediately took up opposite positions on either side of Mafuyu and Kanade.

The totally-not-a-couple also weren't talking to anyone yet—least of all each other—so the job of figuring out where to go next fell to the actual, now-official couple... unfortunately for them.

Kanade sighed as the four of them walked aimlessly down the street.
"I'd suggest going home, but... it'd be a shame to waste the day, wouldn't it?"

Mafuyu glanced over at Ena, still walking silently beside her... though, it looked like at some point she'd pulled out her copy of The Message, and was now staring down at it, apparently lost in thought.

They kept walking for a while... until Ena suddenly stopped in front of a store.

The store was a small and out-of-the-way place, with a erratically flickering sign above that read "Shimamoto Art and Craft Supplies". The storefront windows had been boarded up with numerous pieces of plywood that had been haphazardly nailed together, all of them heavily spattered with long-dried yet vivid and colorful paint. Despite that, though, a glowing neon "OPEN" sign hung above the front entrance, with the door kept propped open by a heavy cinderblock.

Ena took a few glances into the shop from outside, leaning this way and that to get a better look through the doorway.

Then she looked down, staring at The Message she clutched in her hands. As Mafuyu walked closer, she could hear the printed paper crinkle in Ena's grip—

—before she stormed into the store with a loud huff, the paper held tightly in her clenched fist.

Mafuyu, Kanade, and Mizuki, meanwhile, followed silently behind her.

Mafuyu hadn't noticed it from outside, but the minute the purple-haired girl stepped through the doorway, she instantly recoiled from the sheer smell permeating the inside. The sickeningly sweet odor of solvents and the irritating stench of cigarette smoke clashed with whiffs of whiskey, sake, vodka, beer, and god knows what else, filling the air with an overwhelming scent that Mafuyu hoped wouldn't stick to her clothes.

Kanade gagged as she stepped inside, face contorting in disgust and her hand flying to pinch the bridge of her nose, between her eyes.

"My head hurts... I-I'm going to wait outside," she mumbled, before quickly fleeing back out the front door.

Mafuyu almost went to join her—but stopped as, out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Ena looking around the store, seemingly in a rush.

"Hello?" Ena called out. "Are you open?"

Mizuki was the last one to join them inside. She also cringed as the store's nauseating stench hit her, her eyes screwing shut for a second as she reflexively brought a hand up to pinch her nose shut. Nonetheless, she remained inside, opening her eyes again after a few moments to glance at Mafuyu.

The two of them exchanged a look, before they both went to join Ena.

The store seemed to be deserted, to no surprise, and the interior had clearly seen better days.

The metal shelves were almost all full—nearly overflowing with stock, even—and as Mafuyu glanced down the aisles she could see a dizzying variety of paints, brushes, papers, pencils, palettes, canvases, easels, and more on offer. The sole exception was one particular shelf that had seemingly tipped over and now remained leaning against the side wall, surrounded by a flurry of scattered canvas sheets and loose paintbrushes.

Fallen merchandise lay scattered here and there around other parts of the store, too, with overturned cans of paint covering the white tile floor with large splashes of color, as if the store itself were some enormous canvas. As Mafuyu stepped over one such spill, she could see that the paint actually wasn't quite dry yet—and when she realized that, she began to notice that some of the paint splashes were actually footprints, tracks rendered in greens and blues.

With the front windows boarded up, the only sources of illumination were a small handful of bare, worn bulbs that dangled from the ceiling, giving off just barely enough pale white light to see by—save for a flickering that intermittently dropped the world into chiaroscuro, nearly burnt-out bulbs casting as much shadow as they did light.

As Mafuyu and Mizuki followed Ena deeper into the store, they began to notice the omnipresent stench start to become even stronger; and yet the brunette remained undeterred as she stalked ahead, towards the back of the store.

"Hellooo?" Ena called out again, louder this time, as she continued to venture further.

The source of the store's distinctive odor became immediately obvious when Mafuyu caught sight of the back of the store—and specifically the store counter standing there. The countertop was packed with numerous bottles of beer, spirits, and wine, giving off the impression that Mafuyu had walked into a liquor store rather than an art store... save for one side of the counter, which was clear of alcohol, and instead crammed full of half-empty cans of paint and solvent.

Ena paused briefly as she took in the state of the shop counter—but kept going, with only a slight grumble and a huff to indicate her disgust.

"Is anyone here?" the brunette called out yet again.

An easel with a canvas stood behind the counter, though at first glance there seemed to be no sign of the shopkeep—

"Ergh... god damn..." a man's voice groaned from behind and slightly below the counter.

When Mafuyu looked over the counter, she saw that the voice's owner was a man who wore a thoroughly paint-splattered apron, along with a pinned nametag at chest level that clearly identified him as "SHIMAMOTO". The man lay sprawled on the floor behind the counter, covered in cans of beer and a few unlit cigarettes that spilled out from an open pack, tucked into the front pocket of his apron.

The loud clatter of aluminum cans and glass bottles scattering across the floor filled the store as the man stood up, and as he picked himself up, he leaned heavily against the counter, coughing loudly.

Then he looked up to identify the source of the disturbance—and fixed Ena with a sharp, icy glare.
His voice came out low and gravelly as he growled through gritted teeth.

"What. The fuck. Do you want."

Ena was taken aback for a second by the older man's appearance and irritation—before she rallied, addressing the shopkeep with a straight back, clenched fists, and a firm(ly pissed-off) voice.

"What does it fucking look like I'm here for?" she shot back. "Look, is this store open or not?!"

The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.

Then the shopkeep sighed, taking out a cigarette from his apron pocket and lighting it.
"Sure, fuckin'... whatever," he muttered. "I'm open."

Then he took a long drag, prompting Ena to wave the smoke away in disgust as the man exhaled—fortunately not directly at her.

"...Can't be assed to ring you up though," the man said. "So... fuck it. Take whatever you want for free. I don't give a shit."

He took another long drag.
"Not like it fuckin' matters anymore, right..." he mumbled.

"That's all I needed to know," Ena replied, before storming off to start picking things off the shelves.

...

...lots and lots of things.

Ena went down the various aisles carefully, making sure to inspect every centimeter of shelf space as she walked... and yet, she also seemed to pick items almost without any real thought; as items passed through her sight, she'd pick them up and inspect them for little more than a split second—before either dumping them into a tote bag she'd procured, or otherwise toss them back on the shelf as she moved on to the next item. Every now and then, she would double back, picking up an item she'd haphazardly left on the shelf before dropping it into her bag.

Then, whenever her bag grew full—which happened frequently—she would return to a spot near the front of the store, and dump everything onto a pile on the floor, taking only just enough care in the process to ensure her acquisitions remained undamaged.

Mafuyu and Mizuki glanced at each other as they watched Ena's pile of supplies grow and grow and grow, first from shin height, then to knee height, then to chest height...

"Ena. Even the four of us together could not possibly carry all of these items," Mafuyu said, internally wondering why she needed to point out the obvious.

Ena paused for a moment to glare at her.
"Of course I know that," she said. "I'll just make several trips."

Then she returned to the shelves with a huff.

Mizuki blanched.
"Ena, please, it's thirty minutes from here to your place! Are you really going to carry all of this back?!"

She began to fret as she looked over the ever-growing pile of stuff, and all of the seemingly-redundant and duplicate items Ena had picked out.

"Do you really need all of this?" she asked. "C'mon, don't you think this is overkill—"

Mizuki's words were cut off by the loud, sharp banging of metal against metal as Ena slammed a full can of paint down on the shelf in front of her.

Then the artist whirled around and stalked up to Mizuki, bringing herself right up to the pinkette's face and looming over her.

"I don't give a shit what you think, Mizuki," Ena hissed, her tone low and heated.

Mizuki froze in terror, struck dumb by the sheer venom in Ena's voice.

"Because I know you, Mizuki," Ena spat, jabbing a finger sharply into Mizuki's collarbone for emphasis, sending the taller girl stumbling back a step.

"E-Ena, I—" Mizuki stammered.

Slap!

Mizuki recoiled, her hand reflexively flying up to the new sharp scarlet handprint on her cheek.

"No!" Ena shouted. "I know you don't give a damn about anything! I know you'd much rather just run away and pretend the world isn't going to end!"

Ena lowered her voice again as Mizuki stumbled back another step. The brunette's whole body vibrated with a barely-contained and dangerous energy—though, as Mafuyu watched, she could also see the tears beginning to well up in Ena's eyes.

"But unlike you, Mizuki, I have things I want to do before I die," she growled. "And I'm doing them, with or without your help."

"So if you're not going to help me... then shut the fuck up, and stay out of my way."

And then she walked away and returned to her work of collecting supplies, leaving Mizuki frozen in place where she stood.

...

As Ena busied herself with collecting everything she needed for her work, she forced herself not to look back towards the sounds of footsteps running out the door behind her.

The shopkeep—who had been leaning against the wall behind the counter, watching all of this play out—let out a quiet, smoke-filled sigh, before walking around to the stockroom in the back.

He returned a few minutes later, carrying a folding trolley and a roll of duct tape.

"Hey, kid," he called out as he walked up to Ena. "I have no fuckin' clue what you're expecting to do with all this shit, but..."

Ena turned around angrily—but before she could say anything, the shopkeep shoved both the trolley and the tape into her hands.

"If you're really that dead-set on takin' it all, then you might as well take this with you, too," the shopkeep said. "I sure as hell don't need it anymore."

Ena mentally stumbled, unexpectedly finding her anger put on hold by the man's generosity.

"Um. Thank you?" she said.

The man just grunted—before giving her an odd look, seemingly studying her for a few moments.
"Don't mention it. Though, tell me: you must be Shinei's kid, huh? Shinonome, I mean."

Ena blinked a bit in surprise, before nodding hesitantly.
"Yes, that's my father—Shinei Shinonome," she confirmed.

"Fuckin' knew it..." the shopkeep muttered. "I was wonderin' why the hair and the damned stubborn temper seemed familiar."

"Wait, you know my father?" Ena asked, her eyes wide. "I mean... personally?"

The shopkeeper—Shimamoto—sighed.
"Yeah, you could say we're close. We go way back, and he always comes by here when he needs shit for his art. But I imagine Shinei doesn't like to talk about me a whole lot."

Ena shook her head, frowning.
"No, I don't think he's ever mentioned you before... why is that?"

The shopkeep raised an eyebrow.
"Aside from the fact that I'm a deadbeat artist runnin' a shop that was barely stayin' afloat even before the world decided to end?"

Then Shimamoto took a long, long drag of his cigarette, shutting his eyes as he took in the nicotine.
He stared up at the ceiling as he exhaled, letting out a winding upward trail of smoke, like a chimney.

"Well... where do I fuckin' begin...?" he muttered.

He kept his gaze fixed upwards as he thought back.

"See, the two of us were part of... basically a creative circle, I guess, back in college," he began. "There were Shinei and I, both painters. Aki, an up-and-coming writer. Ayumi, a buddin' filmmaker. And her brother Satoshi, a piano prodigy."

"So what, you were friends in college?" Ena asked, her face flat. "That's it? Though, I don't think I recognize any of those names except for my father's..."

"Look, just lemme talk, alright?" the shopkeep snapped. "There's a reason why Shinei doesn't talk about us much anymore."

"Anyways... well. I say we were a 'creative circle'..." Shimamoto sighed again. "Really, though, the truth is more like we were all too bugfuck insane and had too many cripplin' character flaws and carried around too much unresolved emotional baggage to hang out with anyone else."

Then he chuckled—a sound that seemed utterly strange coming from a man like him, like watching a duck barking.

"See, the five of us couldn't hang with anyone else, so we hung together, instead—me, Shinei, Ayumi, Aki, and Satoshi. We all got really close to each other, too, keepin' each other company—and more importantly, keepin' each other sane.

"We were all pretty young, dumb, and idealistic back then, too... all five of us, fulla big ideas about how we'd go out and change the world, save people with our art and our words and our music, that sorta shit. Especially Aki—she was obsessed with inspirin' people with her poetry; and she used to be damned good at it, too."

This sounds familiar... Mafuyu thought to herself, and she squirmed as an uncomfortable chilling sensation settled within her gut.

She gave Ena a sidelong glance, and found Ena glancing back at her; the brunette was also already drawing parallels in her head.

"...So what happened?" Ena then asked, suddenly sounding quite nervous. "If you were that close, then why haven't I heard anything about you all, or met any of you...?"

Shimamoto paused for a long moment, still staring up, as if trying to see the sky beyond the ceiling.
"I'm not gonna tell you the full details—you don't wanna know, and I ain't nearly hammered enough to tell you all of it yet, not by a long shot—but long story short?"

He took a breath—not a drag of smoke this time, but just a regular breath, as if to steady himself.

"Things got real bad. And, I mean, we were artists, and you know how it goes for people like us; things gettin' bad wasn't new for us at all."

Then he took one last drag of his cigarette, before tossing the now burnt-through stub to the floor beside him, and running a hand through his hair.

"This time, though... Ayumi decided to jump in front of a Chūō line train—and then Shinei and I had to hold Aki back from followin' her off the platform."

Then Shimamoto shook his head.
"And two days after that, Satoshi took a trip to Aokigahara like he'd always wanted—and we never saw him again."

Then he closed his eyes again, taking a deep, deep breath—inhale, hold, exhale, hold.
"...I still wonder, sometimes, how things would've turned out if Shinei and I had grabbed Ayumi instead of Aki, that first day. Probably not any better, in the end, but..."

(Another chill ran down Mafuyu's back at those words, but this time she couldn't quite figure out why.)

Then the shopkeeper shook his head to clear his thoughts, and held up three fingers.
"Anyways, by the time the week was out, the ones left were just me—the depressed alcoholic with a dead-end job..." he said, lowering one finger.

Two fingers.
"Aki, who completely gave up on her dreams of becoming a famous poet and instead became a stay-at-home housewife..."

Shimamoto sighed, counting off the last finger.
"...and then Shinei, the only one of us who managed to make somethin' of themselves as a creator after we all graduated."

Then Shimamoto finally glanced back at Ena, with a raised eyebrow.
"Speakin' of—I'm guessin' your old man's already given you a whole spiel about how much it sucks to be an artist, and about the struggle, and about talent, and all that shit?"

"Y-Yes," Ena swallowed thickly. Mafuyu took a small step to the side, closer to Ena... but she wasn't sure if the artist noticed.

"Figures," the shopkeep said, shaking his head. "Shinei wouldn't shut the fuck up about how he wanted to keep his kids far away from art, after what happened to Ayumi and Satoshi. And after what happened to me, for that matter, what with all the cigs and the booze..."

"And honestly? If you'd met me when you were younger? I think I'd have given you pretty similar advice," Shimamoto continued.

And then he stared right at Ena, his eyes boring straight into her.

"But I'd have put it straight, though," Shimamoto said.
"See... I'd have just told you to stay the hell away from art, and instead go do somethin' that's less likely to make you wanna fuckin' kill yourself."

Then he closed his eyes for a second, and Mafuyu could hear Ena let out a breath she'd been holding.

"Do somethin' like, say... business," Shimamoto continued, gesturing to the shop around them.

"Or, hell, do what Aki's parents kept tellin' her she should've done with her life: become a doctor and actually help people.

"Just... do anything but art," Shimamoto finished. "Art kills you."

Then he pulled out another cigarette—but instead of lighting it, he simply twirled it around in his fingers, his gaze flicking back to Ena again.

"But, well, you're here now, and you're grabbin' art supplies, so clearly you wouldn't have taken our advice anyways," he sighed.

Then he suddenly leaned forward, fixing Ena with another long, hard look.
"So, in light of that, kid, I'm gonna give you a different piece of advice."

"See... y'know those friends of yours? The ones you know are always gonna be strong enough to hang in there, even if things get real bad? The ones you just know are gonna be totally fine in the end, no matter how badly you blow up at them?"

Shimamoto's look grew sharper, deepening into an outright glare.
"Y'know, friends like that young lady with the pink hair, who willingly followed you into my stinkin' hellhole of a shop—and who just ran out in tears after you slapped her and then verbally ripped her a new one, all for the simple crime of worryin' about you?"

Ena... couldn't meet the shopkeep's eyes, and instead stared down at her feet.

"Sometimes, all it takes is one bad day, or one wrong move—and then they're gone from your life forever," Shimamoto said.

"Take care of your friends, alright?"

Then he pushed the almost forgotten easel beside him with his foot, turning it so that the two girls could see the painting there—

—except there was no painting.
Instead, Shimamoto had stuck his copy of The Message to the middle of the blank canvas, using a paintbrush that had been roughly jammed through both the printed paper and the fabric beneath as a makeshift pin.

"And look, Shinonome: the world's comin' to a fuckin' end. The last things you need right now are even more damned regrets to add to the pile."

That's when a voice rang from outside—a very familiar one.
"Kenji!" Ena's father called out, his voice quickly drawing closer.

"Speak of the devil," the shopkeep muttered, as he stopped playing with the cigarette in his hand and finally lit it.

Ena's father coughed as he stepped through the threshold into the shop.
"I'm here for—eugh, good god, this stench!"

"Kenji!" Shinei Shinonome roared. "What the hell has—"

And then he finally approached the counter and caught sight of Ena—and his voice died in his throat.
"Gotten... into... you...?"

Everyone froze as father and daughter ran into each other, amidst a haze of booze and smoke and solvent fumes.

...

...everyone except the shopkeep, of course.

"Yo," Kenji Shimamoto said from behind the counter, taking a short drag from his cigarette. The corners of his mouth curled up into the barest approximation of a smile.

"It's good to see ya, Shinei. Sorry 'bout the mess."

"I am deeply sorry that you both had to see Shimamoto in that state," Ena's father said as he drove home, together with Ena, Mafuyu, and the art supplies they'd all come to collect.

Up in the front passenger seat, Ena simply stared out the window silently, watching the streets roll by. Her father glanced sidelong at her, and in the rear-view mirror Mafuyu could see the briefest hint of worry cross his face—before his eyes flicked back to the road ahead.

...

"...Kenji actually quit both smoking and drinking years ago, and he'd stayed clean up until now," Shinei said, after a while. "But I suppose he must've fallen back into those habits, after the message."

And then Shinei sighed.
"It... greatly pains me to see him that way again. I will go back to check on him later, after I've dropped you two off."

Ena still didn't show any signs of responding—or any signs of motion, for that matter, aside from the way she nervously clutched her phone to her chest.

Mafuyu, meanwhile, found herself thinking back to the story Shimamoto had told them—the story that had hit just a bit too close to home, for her.

Could that have been us?

"...Mr. Shinonome?" Mafuyu found herself asking suddenly. "What was Mr. Shimamoto like, before..."

Shinei looked into the rear-view mirror, at Mafuyu.

"Well... I suppose, if you're asking that, then Kenji must've told you about our circle," he said quietly, to which Mafuyu nodded in confirmation.

Shinei remained quiet for a few moments as he gathered up his recollections.

"...Kenji was lively and talkative," he began. "And in fact, he still is—in his own way, at least. He also had a dramatic streak; sometimes I wonder if perhaps his calling was to be an actor, rather than a painter.

"More than that, however... I believe Kenji was the one who valued our friendship most," Shinei continued. "He was always the one who pushed for the five of us to spend more time together, and the one who tried to keep us together."

Then he paused.
"But he changed, after Ayumi and Satoshi passed, and as he fell into his addictions. He became bitter and angrier, as I'm sure you've seen."

But then Shinei added: "...though, I do not think Kenji has entirely lost his caring nature, even if it might be hard to see."

Ena left the car practically the instant it parked outside of the Shinonome household, all but running inside and vanishing before anyone could stop her.

Behind her, as Ena's father walked into the house alongside Mafuyu, the two of them met the confused faces of Akito, as well as Ena and Akito's mother.

"Eugh, god, what was that smell?" Akito said, pinching his nose. "Please tell me Ena isn't a smoker now."

"No, it isn't that," Ena's father said, shaking his head before turning to his wife.

"Ena happened to find Kenji's store," he said.

"I thought that might've been it," Ena's mother replied with a sigh. "And if Kenji's store smells like that again... I suppose that must mean you'll be going back to check on him?"

"Indeed," Shinei nodded, before turning to leave again—though he suddenly stopped at the door, and turned to address Mafuyu.

"Ah, but first... Ms. Asahina, may I have a moment of your time, please?" he asked. "Outside."

"Ms. Asahina..." Ena's father began, as they stood outside the Shinonome home.

"Kenji shared with me a few details about what happened between Ena and your pink-haired friend—Ms. Mizuki, I believe—back at the art supply store."

And then, much to Mafuyu's surprise, Ena's father bowed deeply to her, with his palms pressed together in supplication.

"It deeply shames me to say this, but: I do not know how to help my daughter," he said. "Anything I could do to help now would only serve to hurt her further."

"So, please... I ask of you to do everything you can, to help my daughter mend her relationship with that girl," Shinei asked. "Please, keep her from making the same mistakes I did!"

Then he took a long, deep breath.

"But, more than that... please, I beg of you, from the bottom of my heart: do not let Ena walk the same paths the five of us did."

Chapter Text

It's a nice autumn evening in the early 2000s.

Aki Amano sits at the counter of a dingy, cramped ramen bar somewhere amidst the winding streets of Tokyo, drinking room-temperature sake. The world outside is crisp and cool, painted orange-white by the light of the setting sun and grey-black by growing shadows—but in here, past the thin fabric draped across the bar's entrance, the world is all warm, incandescent yellow, the air laden with hot steam from the kitchen just behind the bar, and thick with the rich scents of soup and the sharp smell of sake.

As Aki sits and sips at her drink, she stares down at the paper in her hands: feedback and critiques on a poetry assignment from one of her professors.

Good use of imagery and wordplay. However, this piece lacks cohesion and development; you introduce several different ideas, but none of them go anywhere. Consider adopting a tighter focus for future writing assignments.

"Well, maybe if you'd given us more time...!" Aki mutters to herself, her voice low and vitriolic.

She's snapped out of her thoughts by someone jostling her a bit as they sit down in the next seat over: a young woman about her age—early 20s—with long silvery hair pulled into a ponytail, dressed in a short-sleeved blue shirt and long pants stained grass-green and dirt-brown all over.

"Oh, shoot, sorry!" the silver-haired girl says with an apologetic smile. "Never enough space to move around in here, I swear!"

"I-It's okay!" Aki replies, pulling her paper close to her chest, as if it might shield her from the other girl.

After the obligatory apologies are out of the way, the woman turns to the bar to place her order, and Aki thinks that's the end of it—

—only for the woman to actually keep talking to her, much to Aki's surprise.

"So, do you also go to the University of the Arts?" the other girl asks, leaning casually with her elbow propped up on the counter, cheek resting lightly against her hand as she looks at Aki. Her smile is bright, and beneath her messy silver bangs, Aki meets sharp, dark blue eyes—the color of the abyssal ocean.

"Um. Yes... how did you know?" Aki asks, averting her eyes as the other girl leans a bit closer.

"I mean, it's on your shirt," the other girl says, and she gives off a light laugh when Aki glances down to check. The sound is short, sharp, and melodic—closer to humming than laughter—and Aki doesn't think it's meant to be mocking (...probably).

"Anyways, my name's Ayumi!" the silver-haired girl chirps. "Ayumi Okazaki. I'm a first-year film major, also at the University of the Arts."

"A-Aki Amano..." Aki replies. She subconsciously takes some of her long violet hair up from where it's draped over her shoulder, and pulls it up across her face; she ducks her head fractionally, and as she hides behind her own hair, she looks up at Ayumi.

"...I, um. I study poetry," Aki mumbles, and clutches the paper she holds in her other hand closer to her chest. "Oh, and... um, I'm also a first year."

"Ooo, poetry? Is that what that is?" Ayumi asks, pointing to the paper in Aki's hands. She lifts her head up off the counter and leans forward closer to Aki, seemingly very interested... or, alternatively, putting on a very good act—Aki couldn't tell.
"Can I read it?"

"N-No, you probably shouldn't," Aki shakes her head. The sheet crinkles as she presses it against her chest defensively, her fingernails digging into the paper. "It's not very good, honestly... I couldn't get my thoughts together while writing."

"C'mon, I'm sure it's not that bad!" Ayumi insists, with a broad and cute smile on her face. And then she raises her hands up towards Aki, reaching forward with her fingers wiggling, like a cartoon burglar about to snatch a jewel. Aki leans back and away as Ayumi reaches for the paper, but the poet also finds herself releasing a held breath—it's kind of hard to take the silver-haired girl seriously when she acts like this.

"Pleeeeeease? Just a peek?" Ayumi asks again.

Aki glances down at the sheet in her hands, at her own words and at the feedback her professor added to the side... and sighs.

"O-Okay, fine..." she says as she surrenders the paper to Ayumi.

"Hehe, thank you, thank you!" the silver-haired filmmaker hums as she takes Aki's poem. She's silent for a few moments as her eyes scan over the paper from top to bottom—and then they flick up again before working their way back down again as Ayumi reads the poem for a second time. Then her eyes glance to the side, probably to read the professor's feedback.

"It's a very beautiful poem!" Ayumi says finally, as she hands the paper back to Aki. "You really have a way with descriptions—it's like you're painting with words!"

Aki shrinks in on herself again, casting her eyes down to the floor.
"...don't lie," she grumbles. "I know it's not good at all. I-I could've done a lot better."

Ayumi looks at her for a few seconds in silence... before sighing and crossing her arms.
"...Alright, fine. Do you want me to be honest?"

Aki looks up at her with a frown and the best frustrated look the poet can muster—though, honestly, she got the impression that she looked like a grumpy cat, more than anything else.

"Yes," Aki says. "Be honest, please."

"You sure?" Ayumi says, leaning back with her eyebrow raised. "Like, really really sure?"

"Yes, damnit!" Aki replies, her voice coming out sharper and louder than she'd expected. Her fist, meanwhile, suddenly comes down onto the bar counter with a sharp bang; the sake cup next to her clatters and wobbles a bit, some of the liquid inside spilling up and over the lip.

Aki lets out a sigh and lowers her head, gaze dropping back down and to the side in shame.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." she mumbles.

"Nah, nah, it's okay!" Ayumi says, waving her hands hastily. Her smile remains bright and her tone friendly—though that doesn't keep Aki from wondering if the silver-haired girl now silently thinks of her as a nuisance.

"I get it, I get it, don't worry," Ayumi continues with a sheepish chuckle. "I just wanted to make sure—I mean, you know how it is with some people, right? Can't take criticism for shit."

Aki nods reluctantly. She knows the type, of course—she's met many of them over the years, writing in high school and now here in university. Fortunately, Aki has a good tolerance for criticism... or at least, so she hopes.

"I don't think I'm one of those writers," Aki says, meeting Ayumi's eyes. "I can take it."

"Okay," Ayumi says, and raises a finger—before suddenly freezing in place, lost in thought for a few seconds. Then she takes a breath.

"...Basically, uh, I can see what your professor meant in the feedback," she begins. "I wasn't lying when I said your writing is beautiful—I really, really love the way you describe everything, honest!"

And then she wavers, hmmmm-ing a bit and tilting her head from side to side as she tries to articulate her thoughts—as if she were physically swirling the ideas around inside her brain.

"But, it feels like I don't really know what you're talking about?" Ayumi says. "Like if I made a film that cut between a bunch of different scenes without any sort of connection."

Then she shrugs.
"Or, I dunno, maybe it's all just going over my head. I'm not normally the literary type, you know?"

Aki shakes her head, eyes drooping down until her gaze rests firmly upon her feet. She leans to the side, propping her head up against the bar counter and crossing her legs.

"No, no, you and my professor are right," she sighs. "I told you already, I couldn't get my thoughts together while writing this."

Beside Ayumi, a chef comes up and slides over the sake she'd ordered, and the silver-haired girl immediately pours some out for herself, taking her sake cup in hand.

"Was it, like, writer's block, or something?" Ayumi asks, her head tilted quizzically to the side as she sips at her drink.

"I don't think so?" Aki replies, taking a sip of her own sake. She frowns as she looks down at her writing, thinking back.

"I had plenty of ideas, as you can tell. I was just... lost, I think," she mutters. "I didn't know which ones to write about."

Ayumi hums as she considers Aki's words, sipping at her sake as she looks up at the ceiling and thinks for a while.

As she does, Aki has an opportunity to consider the girl across from her; this bright, silver-haired girl who decided to chat up some weird poet at a bar, seemingly on a whim. Despite that, though... Aki realizes with a start that she's actually more comfortable and relaxed than she's ever been in a long time—and it's not just because of the sake.

This was new to Aki, to say the least—new, but most certainly welcome.

Suddenly Ayumi comes to some kind of realization.
"Aha," she says, with a raised finger.

Then the silver-haired girl levels her finger at Aki, with a contemplative frown and her other hand on her hip.
"So, Aki... why did you write this?"

Aki just blinks. What kind of question was that?
"...Because I had to for class?" she replies.

"Nonono," Ayumi says with a swift shake of her head. "I mean... why this specifically? I mean..."

The silver-haired girl frowns, and makes a bunch of vague gestures in the air with her hands as she tries to put her own thoughts together. Aki can't help but think it looks a bit silly, but it's also endearing—and it makes it hard for the poet to be on her guard. For that matter, Aki can't help but notice the way Ayumi moves: all the little motions that punctuate the silver-haired girl's words, the way her head tilts and her hands wave when she speaks, the way she seemingly wears her heart on her sleeve—

And then Aki can't help but look down with a blush, when she realizes she's staring.

"—Hey, Aki? Is something wrong?" Ayumi asks.

Aki shakes her head frantically, hoping to god that the other girl didn't notice the way she was staring.
"N-No, not at all. Sorry, what did you want to ask?"

Ayumi looks a bit concerned for a moment, but shakes her head—before raising her finger.
"I was gonna ask: you picked these specific ideas to write about, right? So, like... why? Why not something else?"

Her hands make little circular motions in front of her as she talks, and her head and eyes both tilt upwards towards the ceiling a bit as she tries to put words together. "Like... okay. So when I do something for a film assignment, there's always something I care about that's involved," she says. "Like... there's a reason I went out of my way to film whatever it is, right? Otherwise I'd have just picked something else."

Then Ayumi tilts her head questioningly—another little motion that Aki's becoming familiar with.
"So do you have anything like that? You know, a reason for writing?"

Aki thinks... and thinks, and thinks... and then frowns deeply.
"...No, actually. I can't really think of any deeper reasoning. I guess I just... picked out whatever ideas seemed prettiest at the time...?"

Ayumi slaps her fist down into her palm with a triumphant smile.
"Aha! That's probably why you feel a bit lost!"

Aki leans over onto the bar countertop as she mulls Ayumi's words over, taking another sip of sake. She supposes the other girl isn't wrong, but... hmm. She frowns.

"Well, okay, but... what am I supposed to do about it?" Aki says eventually. "How am I supposed to find a reason like that?"

Ayumi just shrugs.
"Beats me. You're the writer," she says—but then winks before Aki can reply.

"But, hey," Ayumi adds. "I'm sure you'll find it eventually!"

The conversation turns to more inane topics after that: annoying professors and assignments, the state of the campus dorms (Aki desperately needed to find an apartment of her own), Ayumi's own film assignments... and as evening turns to night, Aki can't help but get swept along by Ayumi's enthusiasm—until eventually, she realizes she's talked more to this girl tonight than she has to anyone else in months.

And then someone announces that the bar's about to close in 15 minutes, and Aki realizes she can't bear to part with Ayumi.

"Ah, damn," Ayumi says. "I guess I'd better get going. I need to get home so I can wake up for class tomorrow—"

"—Wait!" Aki stammers, before realizing that she doesn't actually know what to do here. She wasn't exactly a social butterfly—what did she know about how to make friends? Could she just... ask to be Ayumi's friend? No, that's not how it works, right, she's not a third grader—

"Um, Aki?" Ayumi asks, head tilted again. "What is it?"

Oh god, oh god. What does she do here.
She knows she wants to talk to Ayumi more. And wait, that's what her phone's for, right? Wait, fuck, that means she needs to ask this girl for her number... how was Aki supposed to do that? Isn't there, like, complicated social maneuvering you need to do before you can ask for someone's digits—

"Akiii?" Ayumi asks again, waving a hand in front of the frozen poet's face. "Earth to Aki?"

...Fuck it.
With a burst of desperate, frantic energy, Aki takes her remaining sake—and downs it all in a single swift motion.

Ayumi just stares in confusion as she watches Aki chug the liquor.
"Aki? Are you okay?"

And then Aki finishes off the sake, and stares up at the ceiling for a few moments, both to catch her breath and to try and banish her nerves.

Then she whips out her phone and steps up to Ayumi, staring down at her feet.
"U-Um. Ayumi... Could I have your number?"

Ayumi looks at her for a brief, heart-pounding moment—
—and then she giggles.

"Of course, Aki! Here, lemme put it in for you..."

And that's how Aki Amano met the only person she ever loved.

Later that week, while writing another assignment, Aki realizes she can't stop thinking about Ayumi—and decides to just write about her, because it wasn't like she could do much else.

Much to her surprise, it works out very well.

Excellent improvement! This work has a much tighter focus, and flows much more coherently and clearly compared to your work earlier this week. You've retained your previous strengths as well, with excellent descriptive language—though if you want to continue developing that strength, you should take care to not go too overboard with the descriptions. Sometimes less is more.

And then, a week or two later, Ayumi opens up Aki's world even further by inviting her to an izakaya after class one day, where she meets three new faces at the table.

"So, Aki, I've already told you about my brother Satoshi, right?" Ayumi says, pointing to a man on the opposite side of the table, with short hair in a now-familiar shade of silver. "Well, this is him!"

The man in question doesn't actually say anything, but does at least nod to Aki in acknowledgement and greeting.

Then Ayumi turns to the next person at the table: a man with brown hair and pale red eyes, wearing a loose-fitting brown jacket stained with something colorful—paint, it seemed.
"And this is Shinei, a mutual friend of ours..." Ayumi says.

Shinei stares at Aki for a few moments with narrowed eyes, as if sizing her up, and Aki can't help but squirm under his scrutiny. But he does crack a small smile eventually.

"I'm Shinei Shinonome. Nice to meet you," he says.

Finally, Ayumi gestures with her thumb at the last person at the table: a guy with messy black hair pulled into a ponytail, leaning back casually in his seat with one elbow resting on the seat next to him—Shinei's.
"And this is Kenji, a friend of Shinei's," Ayumi finishes.

Kenji gives Aki a short wave and a grin.
"Kenji Shimamoto," he says. "Good to meet'cha."

Aki then steps forward, bowing to the three of them in introduction.
"I-I'm Aki Amano," she says. "I... um, I study poetry. Please treat me well."

Kenji waves her off.
"C'mon, no need to be so stiff. We don't bite—'cept for Shinei, that is," he says, nodding to the side towards his friend.

"Watch it, Kenji," Shinei growls, giving the black-haired man a sharp elbow jab in the side.

"And that's exactly what I mean!" Kenji beams.

And then Kenji leans forward and takes a moment to briefly look over Aki, tilting his head this way and that to get a view of the poet from different angles. Before Aki can start squirming under the scrutiny again, however, he leans back, and glances at Ayumi.

"So... wait, is this the chick you picked up at that bar, Ayumi?" Kenji says, suddenly grinning like a madman. "That cute poet you won't shut up about?"

Aki instantly turns scarlet at that revelation, staring down at her feet as her whole body locks up.

Satoshi just sighs and stares up at the ceiling, as if silently praying for salvation.
Shinei, meanwhile, groans and leans forward onto the table in frustration, running a hand through his hair.

"God damnit, Kenji..." Shinei says.

"Hey, look—it had to be said, alright?" Kenji chuckles. "She was gonna find out anyways at some point. I'm just speedin' the process up."

Ayumi, meanwhile, chuckles nervously, her eyes wide and hands waving frantically in front of her.
"I mean, yes, this is the girl I was talking about—but I don't talk about her that much, do I?"

Ayumi glances at Satoshi and Shinei for confirmation... confirmation which doesn't seem to be forthcoming.
"I... cannot deny what Kenji is saying," Satoshi says eventually, shaking his head. "You do talk about her a lot, Ayumi."

Ayumi shoots her brother a brief look of betrayal and confusion, before turning back to Aki.
"A-As you can probably tell, Aki... Kenji's a bit of a jokester," Ayumi says with a sheepish grin. "You, uh, shouldn't always believe what he says."

"Hey, I take offense to those allegations," the man in question says in mock indignation, with one hand on his hip. "I speak nothin' but truth!"

And then Kenji grins again, gesturing to the empty seats on the other side of the table.
"Anyways, here's another truth: we've been waitin' for you two to show up for a while now. C'mon, sit down so we can order!"

Another day, another bar, same five students.

"So what's got you so depressed this time, Aki?" Kenji asks, eying the letter in the poet's hands as he takes a sip of his beer.

"My parents. They..." Aki sighs. "They do not approve of me studying poetry. They keep insisting I go to med school instead."

The poet glances back down at the letter in her hands. 'Insisting' is putting it lightly—really, the letter consists of her parents berating her for pursuing a 'meaningless' path in the arts, instead of something useful like medicine. Along with it come insinuations that she'll never amount to anything, and assertions that she's wasting both her time and her life at the University of the Arts.

Aki does her best to ignore them—but still, this letter is one out of many she's received since she's gotten here. It's really getting under her skin.

Kenji nods, taking Aki's words in—before looking to Ayumi next. The filmmaker is staring down into her drink, seemingly lost in thought.
"Okay, and what about you?" he asks.

Ayumi doesn't reply—at least, not until Aki gives her a gentle nudge in the shoulder, rousing her from her thoughts.
"Oh, sorry—what were you asking?"

"What's got you down?" Kenji repeats. "Everything goin' okay?"

"I'm fine, mostly, just..." Ayumi mumbles. "Feeling a bit lost, I think."

"What do you mean?" Aki asks, concern etched across her face. "Lost...?"

"Maybe lost is a bad way to put it," Ayumi says, before taking a long sip of her drink. "It's more like... I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, whenever I get behind the camera. Do I really have what it takes to be a filmmaker...?"

"Your work has turned out excellent so far," Satoshi replies. "It's just impostor syndrome, Ayumi, don't let it get to you."

"Easy for you to say," Ayumi mutters. "You've always been the talented one. How's the piano going?"

"It is going... adequately, I suppose," Satoshi says, though his demeanor betrays a certain tiredness, with bags under his eyes and a slump in his posture.

Kenji sighs, and it's obvious the black-haired painter doesn't believe Satoshi at all. But he doesn't pry further just yet, and instead looks to Shinei.

"...Aaaaand I'm guessin' you're still havin' issues with Professor Osaki, Shinei?" he asks, to which the other painter nods.

"What the hell does he mean, I need to express my artistic intent more clearly?! How the fuck am I supposed to do that?" Shinei complains, before chugging his drink. Kenji just drapes an arm over his shoulder in solidarity.

Two days later, on a Friday afternoon, Kenji knocks on Aki's door—and when she opens it she finds Ayumi, Satoshi, and Shinei all standing behind him sporting very confused looks.

"Oh, um. Why are all of you here?" Aki asks, prompting everyone to look at Kenji.

"I've decided to go on a day-trip today!" Kenji replies cheerfully. "And you're all comin' with me!"

"Eh?"
"Wait, what?!"
"Oh, for fuck's sake, Kenji..."
"...really?"

Said day-trip winds up being a picnic out by an oceanside cliff; the view of the sunset over the ocean is gorgeous, and Aki feels like she could spend hours here, just staring out over the water alongside Ayumi.

Satoshi's voice floats over to Aki from Kenji's car, parked somewhere behind her and Ayumi.
"...Fine," the taciturn pianist sighs. "I will admit: this did help clear my mind."

"Hah!" Kenji replies. "Looks like I did my job right, then."

"Your 'job'?" Shinei says, and Aki can hear the raised eyebrow in his voice. "The hell's that supposed to mean?"

Likewise, Aki can feel the smugness radiating off of Kenji from meters away.
"Look, all I'm sayin' is: someone's gotta keep you four from goin' off the deep end..."

Aki tunes the boys' conversation out as Ayumi leans on her a bit, the filmmaker's head resting on her shoulder.

"I have to agree with Satoshi, honestly," Ayumi says. "I wasn't expecting much when Kenji dragged us all the way out here... but this is amazing."

"I wish I had a camera or something," she adds. "To remember this. Or better yet, to share it with the world."

Then she leans just a bit more into Aki, nestling her head in the crook of the poet's neck, and it's all Aki can do to not melt into a puddle then and there. Instead, she pulls out a small notebook and pen.

"I don't have a camera," she says quietly. "But I do have this."

She flips to an empty page and clicks her pen, before going back to watching the sunset.

"I... keep thinking, about everything my parents send in their letters," Aki admits. "A-About how poetry is 'meaningless', and how I could help people more if I pursued something else."

She sighs.
"But, now that you mention it... I wonder. If I can capture these moments in words, and remind people that happiness like this exists... if I can—I dunno—inspire people by showing them that life can be beautiful, or something... wouldn't that be meaningful?"

Ayumi giggles—with that soft, melodic almost-humming sound again, that Aki can never get enough of and that she doesn't hear nearly often enough—and rests her hand atop Aki's. Ayumi's hand is warm, and the soft touch makes Aki wonder if the other girl can feel the pounding of her pulse.

"You really sound like a poet when you say things like that, Aki," Ayumi says. "And before you say anything: I mean that you sound like a true poet, now, and not just a poetry student, you know? It's like... hmm..."

Ayumi drums the fingers of her hand a bit as she thinks things over, and each light tap of her fingertips atop Aki's hand sends shivers down the poet's spine.

"It's like you were truly meant to do this," she says eventually. "You're so sure of yourself, now."

Suddenly Aki feels a soft, warm, electrifying sensation on her cheek—and when she realizes what it is, her whole world freezes.

"I like this new, confident you," Ayumi says as she pulls back from the kiss, to nestle back into the crook of Aki's neck. "It's cute."

Then she hums contentedly, and all is right with the world.
"And I think it'll be wonderful if—no, when you do manage to write poetry like that... Beautiful words that can inspire the world."

That's all it takes to send Aki into an absolute writing frenzy.

Those words and that idea—the idea that she can inspire someone with a poem—becomes her purpose, her reason to write. She seeks out inspiration everywhere, trying to find the beauty of the world around her so she can reflect it in words—together with Ayumi, of course.

It's a bit like Ayumi's unlocked something within Aki's writing—as if the silver-haired girl were Aki's own personal muse, the perfect fertilizer for the poet's blossoming talent. Aki flies through all her writing classes, and her poetry wins praise and acclaim from every one of her professors and mentors... and, eventually, a growing number of awards, too, when she starts submitting her work to contests. They call her a prodigy, a genius—and, in some cases, even "the next big thing."

Aki writes day and night—especially night. In fact, she finds night to be her ideal writing time: somewhere between one or two in the morning, is the time is when her imagination fully kicks into overdrive and the words start to flow like water.

Ayumi laughs when Aki mentions this to her.
"Maybe you're just dreaming on paper, when you write at night," she says.

Aki ends up titling her next work "Dreaming On Paper"—and it ends up garnering the most acclaim she's ever received so far from critics and faculty alike.

Ayumi, meanwhile, does... okay.
Just okay.

She passes her classes comfortably in most cases, though several subjects end up being dicey for her. She's not bad at the art of filmmaking, by any means—but she's also certainly nowhere near great either. When she compares herself to her classmates, she starts to notice that her professors don't actually have too much to say about her in general: she makes no glaring errors that need to be pointed out, but neither does she have any strengths worthy of praise.

She's mediocre.
No one will notice her, or her work.

And as the courses and semesters roll by and she gets further in her degree, doubts begin to come up, first from her professors:
"Your work is... well, certainly not bad, but..."
"Are you sure you should be continuing to pursue this path?"
"Maybe your talents lie elsewhere."
"Have you, perhaps, considered another field?"

And then they start to infect her own mind:
"Maybe they're right."
"Maybe I'm just not talented."
"Is this really what I should be doing?"
"Maybe I really should've gone into something different..."

And then the most damning one starts to pop into her head:
"Do I even want to do this anymore?"

Slowly, bit by bit, these doubts start to suck the life and joy out of her world. She begins to dread going to class, cramming knowledge into her head, even though it's all worthless due to her lack of talent.

Every shrug from her professors, every truncated and clipped feedback comment cements the ideas further: she can't do this, she shouldn't do this, why does she persist?

Unfortunately for Ayumi, by the time this really takes hold, she's already nearly three years into her degree—as far as she's concerned, she's in too deep to quit now.

Things get worse whenever Ayumi inevitably compares herself to her friends.

Satoshi, Shinei, Kenji, Aki—all of them are so much better at their fields, than Ayumi is in hers. Each of them, to Ayumi, seems like some gifted super-genius, touched by a spark that she simply doesn't have. And she's happy for them! She loves seeing them succeed...

...but that doesn't stop envy from creeping in, along with the self-hatred that follows.

It's especially bad with Aki. The violet-haired poet is brilliant; and although that brilliance is one of many, many reasons why Ayumi loves her so much—it's also a brilliance that Ayumi knows, deep down, that she herself will never have. Every now and then she finds herself wishing she could be like Aki, bright and seemingly effortlessly creative—and every time she thinks that, she hates herself just a bit more, her love turning the knife of jealousy back on Ayumi's own heart.

It gets even worse when Aki notices Ayumi's growing depression.

Aki tries to write poems for her, of course. She tries so, so hard to inspire Ayumi, penning countless pieces, trying to capture every memory they make together in an effort to try to lift her love's spirits.

It even works, at first.

But every beautifully-crafted poem and every well-chosen word fuels Ayumi's envy and self-hatred just a bit more; everything Aki does for Ayumi reminds the silver-haired girl of her own lack of talent. But at the same time, Ayumi can't just ask Aki to stop: it'd be like asking a fish not to swim, or a doctor not to heal. Writing is Aki's soul—what right did Ayumi have to ask the love of her life to stop being herself?

So, she keeps letting Aki write for her, and puts on a smile as she reads everything her girlfriend composes, and does her best to hide the way she withers away with every word and every poem.

It's another nice autumn day in the early 2000s. All five of them are well on their way to entering their third year of university.

They're all waiting at a train station platform, on their way to class—minus Satoshi, who commuted a bit earlier in order to get some extra time practicing on campus.

Ayumi is in the middle of reading Aki's latest poem—yet another one written specifically for her—when something inside of her finally gives way.

Maybe it was the vanishingly little sleep she'd gotten the previous night (an unfortunately common occurrence for her, these days). Maybe it was some minor detail about Aki's writing. Maybe it was because she'd spent a little bit extra time that morning ruminating in a depressive spiral. Or maybe it was just time wearing her down, finally. She's not sure why, and frankly the reasons aren't important.

Ayumi hands Aki the poem back, with a bright, blinding smile on her face.

"I love it, Aki! Your work is always so brilliant," she chirps, punctuating her words with a deep kiss that sends the violet-haired girl stammering and blushing.

And then Ayumi cuts through Aki's cute, embarrassed noises with a question.

"But, um, Aki... do you want me to be honest?" Ayumi asks.

Aki startles at that, eyes scanning over the poem frantically to try and see if there was a problem with her writing.
"E-Eh? O-Of course, Ayumi," she replies, confused. "Be honest, please."

("Ayumi?" Kenji asks from where he's standing at the back of the platform, behind Aki. There's a faint suspicion in his tone, and his eyes are narrowed—but he remains still.)

Ayumi sighs, turning away from Aki so she doesn't have to look at her girlfriend's face.
"You sure?" she asks again. "Like... really, really sure?"

"Yes, damnit!" Aki cries. "I-I'm sorry, Ayumi, but... you know you can always be honest with me, right? P-Please, don't lie to me."

("Ayumi? Is everything okay?" Shinei asks as he and Kenji start to walk towards Aki and Ayumi. The question goes unheard, however.)

"I just wanted to make sure, because..." Ayumi begins.

Ayumi freezes in place as she wonders how the hell she got into this situation in the first place: having to tell her girlfriend that she's dead inside, that she can't see a way out, that she wishes she could have even a fraction of Aki's talent, that she hates herself for being envious of someone she loves so much, that Aki's overflowing, continuous love just makes Ayumi hate herself more and more and more—

"...because I can't take this anymore!" Ayumi shouts. Tears begin to run down her face, dripping onto the concrete station platform. She doesn't dare to turn around—she doesn't want Aki to see her, not like this, and frankly she herself doesn't have the strength of heart to see Aki right now either.

"You're a gifted, brilliant, talented poet, Aki, and I love, love, love that part of you...

"But I hate it, too, b-because every time I read one of your poems, I wish I could've been born with even just a bit of your creativity and talent!"

It's getting hard for Ayumi to talk, now, through her tears and her sniffling.
"I hate it, and I hate being jealous of you, and I hate myself for being this way, for being such an awful fucking person—"

"A-Ayumi?!" Aki says, feet frozen in place, mind whirling as she tries to process the shock.

"God, I'm sorry—I'm sorry you had to get stuck with a girlfriend like me, Aki," Ayumi sobs. "I-I think it might've been better if we'd never met."

"Ayumi, what the fuck?!" Kenji says, as he and Shinei walk up to the two of them—

—And then Ayumi stiffens, her posture straightening as a strange and horrible resolve fills her spine.
"I... I love you, Aki. I'm sorry."

There's a distant rumbling growing closer, subtle vibrations traveling through the concrete platform that Ayumi can feel even now.

"...Goodbye."

And then Ayumi takes off running towards the tracks—

Aki's running and screaming, desperately trying to catch up.
"Ayumi? AYUMI?!"

—but Ayumi reaches the platform's edge before Aki can reach her, and the silver-haired girl throws herself off the concrete with all the force her legs can muster. She hangs in the air for just a moment, and for that brief second, Aki almost thinks she can reach her, just barely—

"AYUMI—!"

—but then Kenji and Shinei are suddenly at Aki's side, pulling her back from the edge, away from her love—

"N-No! NO! Let go of me, damnit—!"

—and then Ayumi vanishes in a flash of white and grey as the train passes.

The bottom falls out of Aki's world, and she sinks to her knees before the edge of the platform, sobbing.

"A-Ayu... mi..."

Aki's will to write dies alongside Ayumi.

Creativity, poetry—really, the thought of putting pen to paper and writing anything beyond her name and simple notes—feels abhorrent to her, now.

After all, that's what killed Ayumi: Aki's poetry. Her 'gift'. Her 'talent'.
Aki herself might as well have pushed Ayumi off the platform, that day.

It was her fault. It was all her fault.

The world becomes hazy and indistinct for a while, days and nights eliding into each other in the midst of Aki's grief.

At some point after that day at the station—a week, maybe two, Aki isn't sure and it's not like it matters—Kenji drags both Aki and Shinei to an izakaya. Just like old times... save for the two empty seats.

The empty seat next to Aki feels like a stain upon the world—an aberrant spot in a picture, fundamentally wrong in a way that makes her avert her eyes. So, she keeps her gaze fixed elsewhere: at the ceiling, across the table, or just down to the tabletop. That doesn't stop her from sometimes seeing something in the seat next to her out of the corner of her eye, though—her brain imagining movement where it expects to see movement, filling in the gap by her side with an illusion.

The empty seat next to Shinei, though, is new.

"Where is Satoshi...?" Aki asks, eyes flickering back and forth between her lap and the empty seat on the other side of the table.

Shinei narrows his eyes.
"What, you didn't fucking know?" he spits. "Of course you wouldn't, you're too fucking busy being a self-absorbed—"

Kenji brings his hand down on Shinei's shoulder, and gives him a glance.
"Shinei," he says.

Shinei's pale red eyes cut sharply into Kenji, and he growls like a cornered animal, muscles coiled and tense as if about to strike—

—but Kenji's face remains level and steely, and his grip firm. Eventually, the brown-haired painter stands down with a huff, relaxing fractionally and turning his head to avoid looking at either Kenji or Aki. Kenji keeps his eyes on Shinei for a second longer, before he lets out a tired breath, his shoulders and head both slumping down as he turns to Aki.

"Satoshi's... gone," Kenji says, his eyes turned down to the tabletop. "I went to go check on him a few days after... well, everythin'. All I found was a note sayin' he was going to Aokigahara."

The news washes over Aki—and she doesn't feel a reaction at all. The logical side of her knows that, in any other situation, she'd be devastated by the news... but the human side of her is just numb. Tired. It's just another disaster piled on top of the end of the world.

Or maybe Aki's emotions were just another thing Ayumi took with her when she died.

"I... I see," Aki says, taking a sip of her sake.

"That's it?" Shinei shouts. "One of my best friends just fucking killed himself, and that's all you have to fucking say?! You see?"

"Shinei, stop—" Kenji tries to say, only for Aki to interrupt him.

"Well, I'm sorry for being stuck on how the woman I loved died in front of me, you damn—"

Kenji rises to standing, trying to reach for both of them to stop the shouting match, to no avail.

"Ayumi? Fuck Ayumi!" Shinei says. "You heard what she said at the station: she was just a talentless hack who couldn't handle the pressure!"

"Holy shit, Shinei, stop! Just shut the fuck up!" Kenji shouts, grabbing Shinei's shoulders to try and restrain him—

—but the other man thrashes out of his grip, shooting up to standing as well and banging his fist down on the table. "Ayumi was always gonna crack! That's how the world of art works: you either have talent or you fucking die! There wasn't anything we could do to save her!"

And then he leans over the table, screaming at Aki.
"But Satoshi had talent! I know he did, he's always had it ever since we were kids! He could've taken the pressure, could've been great, if Ayumi hadn't dragged him to hell with her—"

The chair behind Aki goes clattering to the floor as she, too, pushes herself to standing, her fists clenched and her eyes filled with tears as she also leans over the table, getting into Shinei's face.

"Talent? Who the fuck cares about talent?" Aki snaps. "Do you expect me to care about someone who practically never fucking spoke to me anyways? Satoshi never gave a damn about anyone except you—but Ayumi did! She cared so fucking much about all of us, and we didn't even think to care about her!"

"Fuckin' stop, you two, god damn it! Just fuckin' stop—" Kenji yells, only for his voice to get lost in the middle of Aki and Shinei's screaming match. The other patrons are staring at the three of them now, and, behind the bar, two chefs quietly point to the trio, muttering between themselves.

"So don't you dare try to pin this all on Ayumi, Shinei!" Aki shouts. "It's not her fault she wanted to fucking kill herself, it's ours! We were the ones who did this to her!"

She cuts a glare at both Shinei and Kenji—and jabs her finger sharply into Shinei's chest, for good measure. The man stumbles back a half-step, but firmly remains at the table, baring his teeth and tensing up as he half-raises his fist.

"None of us cared about Ayumi or Satoshi!" Aki says. "We could have done something, but none of us cared enough to see that they were hurting—none of us fucking did anything!"

"We all knew we had issues, every single one of us!" Shinei shouts back. "That's half the reason we stuck together! But Ayumi didn't tell any of us that it was this bad, not even you! What the fuck were we supposed to do that you couldn't?!"

"Maybe you could've started by actually fucking listening to Ayumi at the train station!" Aki retaliates. "But no, you just fucking stood there and listened to her monologue about how she hated herself!"

And that's when Aki flings her half-full sake cup at Shinei's face.

The ceramic cup hits Shinei's face with a dull thump, before it hits the floor and shatters with a crash. The alcohol inside, meanwhile, splashes all over his face and hair, and the man snarls as he wipes the sake off his face, before surging forward with his fist raised and ready to strike—

—only for Kenji to grab him by the arms from behind, wresting Shinei back from the table in a desperate attempt to keep the situation from descending into more violence.

"You should've saved Ayumi, not me!" Aki screams.

Then she storms out of the izakaya and runs off into the night, half-blinded by her tears.

One day, Aki gets a letter from her parents.

It's a letter like any other from them—only now, Aki understands it.

Her parents were right: her poetry, her path... it was meaningless.
It was all meaningless in the end.
She couldn't help anyone with her writing—instead, she only hurt the ones she loved.

She should have listened.
She should have listened.

If she'd done what her parents had asked of her all along... maybe Ayumi would have lived.

And so she comes crawling back to them, broken and hollow.

Of course, even her parents can recognize she's in no mental state to go into something as intensive as medicine.

So, instead, they find a nice guy to marry her off to.

The process takes a while, of course—especially since Aki has to relearn how to at least superficially resemble a functioning human being again—but eventually a suitable candidate is found. He's a genuinely nice, kind person, and to Aki's surprise she thinks the man actually loves her; she can't fathom why, but it's clear that the matchmaking worked in at least that one way. And, well... with enough practice and strong enough antidepressants, it's easy enough for her to pretend and delude herself into thinking she loves him back.

Pretending, in general, is pretty easy for her now. Perhaps it's because of how thoroughly Ayumi's death broke her: Aki's empty, now, with no pesky truth to get in the way of the lies she paints on her face.

Pretending is what gets her down the aisle on the day she's married, with a painted plaster smile hidden beneath her bridal veil.

And, at the altar, when she says "I do"—

Aki Amano fades away for good, and Aki Asahina takes her place.

And then... somehow, impossibly, light enters her life again: a beautiful baby girl.
Aki names her "Mafuyu"—winter, following after autumn.

And... as Aki holds newborn Mafuyu in her arms, she makes a vow to herself:

I will not allow my daughter to walk the same path I did.

She couldn't save Ayumi.
But... if she could save just this one, tiny life she now held in her arms... maybe that would be enough to redeem her.

Chapter Text

Now it was August 11, 202X, and Mafuyu Asahina found herself staring as she watched Ena Shinonome work on her art.

The brunette's room was now a veritable warzone, strewn all about with scattered pencils and brushes, spilled paint, and not just one but several pieces of unfinished artwork in various stages of completion. She'd ensconced herself within a small enclave of easels and her computer table, all set up in the center of the room; canvases of various sizes surrounded her, and the table beside her was jam-packed with some of the art supplies she'd appropriated—along with her computer and drawing tablet, of course.

There, sitting on a little stool nestled within her little shell of art, Ena worked at a frenetic, almost desperate pace. She stared at one canvas for a few minutes, applying brushstrokes of one color here and there, then frowned and stared for a few seconds, before changing her mind and painting over it with a second, slightly different shade... and then she changed her mind yet again, looking down at her palette as if stuck for choice—

—before Ena set both palette and brush aside with a huff, and turned around to work on a different canvas, this one still just a sketch. Out came a pencil as her eyes flickered back and forth and up and down, continually scanning the canvas, leaning her body from side to side and tilting her head as if trying to see the work from every angle at once. Then she drew a few hasty lines—and then growled, low and angry, as she painted over them with white—and then put a few more lines down with flicks of her wrist—and then painted over those—

"aaaaAAAAAAAAAA!"

—before dropping her pencil and screaming in frustration, pulling at her hair as small tears welled up in her eyes. As her scream died down, Ena squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, wiping some of the tears off her face. Then she turned to her computer and picked up her drawing tablet, switching to one of many open tabs in her art studio application as she set to work on yet another piece.

Mafuyu, meanwhile, watched all this in silence from her seat on Ena's bed, off to one side of the room. It was now somewhere around half-past nine at night, and Ena had been working like this for well over two hours now—ever since she and Mafuyu had returned from the store—with the artist having seemingly made little actual progress on anything in that time.

Mafuyu's phone buzzed quietly in her pocket: a new DM from Kanade.

Mafuyu looked up at Ena, still working away—then glanced towards what would've been her dinner, sitting off to one side of the table, now long cold and still covered in saran wrap.

"No, no, no, this isn't right..." Ena fumed. "Why can't I get it to look right...?!"

Mafuyu sighed, keeping her breath quiet so Ena wouldn't hear.

Mafuyu set down her phone, and got up off of Ena's bed. She worked her way around the room, careful not to step on any of the fallen paint bottles or brushes or palettes on the floor, towards the current piece that Ena was working on. Then she squeezed between the easels Ena had surrounded herself with and stepped in front of her, clapping her hands down suddenly on both of the artist's shoulders.

"Ena," Mafuyu said. "Please, stop."

Ena looked up to her sharply, and tried to rise to standing, trying to shake Mafuyu off, with her body tensed, teeth bared, and fists clenched. "No! L-Let go of me, damnit! I—I have to—" she shouted.

—but Mafuyu's face remained as flat and level as ever as she stared down, and her grip remained firmly on Ena's shoulders. "You won't accomplish anything working like this, Ena. You know that."

The artist glared up at Mafuyu for a few long moments, still squirming... before tears began to prick at the corners of her eyes in defeat; her head slumped down and her arms fell to her sides, the paintbrush and palette in her hands falling to the carpet with a soft clatter. Ena's squirming turned to trembling as she looked down towards her lap; and yet, Mafuyu could feel Ena's shoulders remain tense.

"T-That's easy for you to say—you and Kanade both!" Ena retorted, though her sniffling dulled the sharpness of her tone. "Both of you can just throw yourselves into making things, without a care in the world, and come up with amazing work—but when I try to do it, I... I can't..."

Her sniffling grew louder as her tears began to drip down onto her lap.

"I can't do anything...!" she cried.

Mafuyu eased up on her grip slightly—but didn't let go fully, and instead took hold of Ena's hands, holding her friend now in support rather than restraint. Behind her, Mafuyu could hear the door to Ena's bedroom open, and Akito poked his head in angrily, a complaint about Ena's shouting clearly on his lips... only for the younger brother to beat a hasty retreat as he caught sight of his sister crying—not to mention Mafuyu's chilling death glare. The door clicked shut quietly again, with Ena none the wiser.

"I just wanted a chance!" Ena said. "I knew it'd be hard, but—but I always thought I'd be able to become a better artist! I know I could've! I..."

The brunette began to fold in on herself, as if lacking the will to keep herself upright; before she could fully collapse, though, Mafuyu caught her, pulling Ena up to standing where she could lean forward on Mafuyu. Ena immediately latched onto Mafuyu, wrapping her arms around the purple-haired girl and crying into her chest.

"I just needed more time...! Why does this have to happen now?" Ena sobbed, her tears staining the front of Mafuyu's shirt. "I... I don't want to die yet!"

She sniffled again, and Mafuyu patted the back of Ena's head in an attempt to comfort her. "I'm such a moron," Ena said. "I—I thought if, maybe, I put all of my effort and focus into art tonight, I could finally make something that people would like... a-and maybe I could've been happy with that, at least."

Ena's knees gave way, and Mafuyu carefully lowered the brunette down to kneeling as she collapsed, still sobbing into Mafuyu's chest. "But I can't even do that—a-and because of it, I yelled at Mizuki, and then I hurt her! I-I didn't mean to... I didn't want to hurt Mizuki, I just—I thought she didn't care, and I was angry, and desperate, and..."

"I understand," Mafuyu said, now acutely aware that she didn't know how to make her honest voice sound genuinely comforting as opposed to completely flat; she was certain that Kanade would do a better job here than Mafuyu herself ever could. Nonetheless...

"I understand, and I think Mizuki does, too," Mafuyu added. "We all know how you can be."

Ena flinched at Mafuyu's words, drawing in on herself and pulling away slightly as she tensed up again. "Yeah, we all know how I can be a vindictive bitch," she muttered bitterly, sniffling. "Like that makes it any better."

Mafuyu sighed. "That's not what I meant," she replied. "I meant that we all know you still care, even if you lash out." Ena didn't say anything to that, though Mafuyu could tell the other girl remained tense—so, Mafuyu tried punctuating her words by pulling Ena into a closer embrace of her own accord. Even after that, though, Ena still remained silent.

"...You know you need to apologize to Mizuki, right?" Mafuyu asked. "There's still time."

Ena sighed—a long, shuddering exhalation, as her entire body trembled. "I-I know... but how? She probably doesn't even want to see me anymore."

"We don't know that yet," Mafuyu countered. "Mizuki... hasn't said anything to anyone yet, since she ran out of the store."

Ena began to sniffle again.

"...she's staying at Kanade's house right now," Mafuyu said. "We'll go there tomorrow."

Then she glanced over at the cold food sitting on Ena's desk. "For now, though, you need to eat," Mafuyu added. "And you also need to take a bath. You still smell of smoke and alcohol from the art store."

Meanwhile, at Kanade's house... Mizuki continued to sit in silence, curled up on Kanade's couch, endlessly ruminating—her mind continually spiraling downwards, chasing leaps of logic and threads of confusion. She could practically still feel the sting of Ena's hand on her cheek.

All I was trying to do was help...
...but maybe Ena was right.
I'm just running away again.
I don't want to think about this.
I can't face it.
Everyone else is trying to make the most of their time.
Why can't I do anything except run?
I'm just a coward.
I hate this. I hate myself.
I can't do this. I can't, I can't—

Mizuki felt someone lean on her side—Kanade. The other girl sat next to her, also curled up with her legs against her chest, playing with a lock of hair draped over her knees; she rested her head against Mizuki's shoulder as she leaned in, and the pinkette froze, her breath catching in her throat.

"...I'm scared too, you know," Kanade mumbled. "I'm terrified of... everything. I don't want to die."

The silver-haired girl shivered ever-so-slightly, forcing herself to take a slow, shaky breath. Mizuki, meanwhile, remained stock-still, both in body and in mind—broken out of her thoughts, and instead just listening.

"I never got to save Mafuyu..." Kanade continued. "Or, um... confess to her, like I wanted. I knew it would take time to help her, but I thought we had plenty of it." Another long, trembling sigh, another minute shiver. "And I was also scared that she'd reject me."

"Mafuyu is... Mafuyu," Kanade elaborated. "She's so amazing, and kind, and smart, and beautiful, and... and I'm just me. Just Kanade."

Kanade leaned into Mizuki more—and Mizuki shifted just a bit in response, seeking support herself.

"But... the thought of leaving behind even more regrets scares me even more," Kanade said, staring down at her own silver hair, held gently between two of her fingers. "I just want Mafuyu to know I love her," she whispered. "I want her to be happy, in the end."

Kanade drew in on herself more, hugging her knees tightly against her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs and squeezing herself together into a tight ball. "And... I really want to be with her," she said, voice wavering. "I want to hold her, and kiss her, and go on dates with her, a-and hear her say she loves me, and..."

Mizuki felt a tiny bit of moisture drip down onto her shoulder. "...and I just wish I had more time to do everything," Kanade said, her voice quivering even more as a handful of tears ran down her face. "I-It feels unfair! I wish I could've done this sooner, instead of waiting until the last moment..."

Then Kanade took yet another deep breath, and another—and her voice became just a bit steadier, just a bit firmer, even as she sniffled. "But I still did it, at least," she sighed. "Even if I wish we had more time, even if we just have two days left... I can at least be happy with that. I don't have to worry about that regret, anymore."

Kanade turned her head a bit, to finally look at Mizuki. The pinkette didn't turn to look at her, instead continuing to stare hollowly at the floor—still processing things. "So... what do you want, Mizuki?" Kanade asked. "I know it's scary to think about, but... it'll feel even worse if you don't do anything about it."

And then Kanade fell silent, resting her head more on Mizuki's shoulder, waiting patiently for a response.

What do I want...?

An image instantly popped into Mizuki's imagination: an image of a certain brunette artist, with beautiful brown and pink eyes, giving her a sharp yet adorable glare as she sits next to Mizuki at a cafe. An imagined scene of that same girl holding Mizuki's hand, as they walk down the street on a nice day—as the two of them pick out clothes and cosmetics and have fun.

A what-if of that same girl listening patiently as the two of them stand on the rooftop of their school, while Mizuki tells her everything. Ena melting into Mizuki's embrace, getting up on the tips of her toes as she presses her lips softly against Mizuki's—

—a memory of that same girl screaming at her in genuine anger, as the two of them stand in the middle of a run-down art store.

Mizuki lowered her head, sobbing quietly into her knees. "...I want Ena," she mumbled. "But she hates me now, doesn't she? And she has her own dreams. I don't want to take that from her."

"I... I think Ena feels as miserable as you do right now," Kanade replied after a second. "Mafuyu said she hasn't spoken to anyone ever since they left the store." Kanade paused to collect her thoughts, sighing. "And I think she actually does want you, too, Mizuki. Even if she's... well, Ena. You know what I mean, right...?"

Mizuki didn't say anything to that, and after a few moments, Kanade continued. "You should talk to her. If nothing else... at least let her apologize to you."

"Tomorrow, though," she added. "I think you should rest, for now... it's been a long day."

About an hour later, Mafuyu felt her phone vibrate as Kanade called her. She quietly stepped out of Ena's bedroom, careful not to disturb the brunette as she tried to sleep. She leaned against the wall outside, standing a bit further down the hall from Ena's room.

"Kanade," she greeted. "...how is Mizuki doing?"

"She finally spoke to me a bit," Kanade sighed. She sounded exhausted, her voice quiet and subdued. "But... I'm still really worried about her. She's sleeping now, I think."

Mafuyu hmm-ed in acknowledgement. "I convinced Ena to eat and clean herself up. She's also asleep now. She and Mizuki must've both been exhausted."

"I think we all are, after all of that," Kanade replied. "But, um... how are you doing, though? Are you okay?"

Mafuyu took a moment to consider that. "I... could use some rest as well. I think." She stretched a bit, stifling a yawn. "...and I wish I could see you right now."

"O-Oh," Kanade mumbled. Mafuyu could imagine her blushing right now, glancing down and playing with her hair like she tended to when she was flustered. The image was... cute. Very cute. Mafuyu found herself smiling in spite of everything that had just happened, the corners of her mouth feeling a bit strange as they curled up ever so slightly.

"I miss you too, Mafuyu..." Kanade said. "Even if it's only been a few hours since we last saw each other. Isn't it funny how that works?"

"...It is," Mafuyu agreed. A part of her started to wonder: would things have been like this if they'd confessed earlier—if she'd spoken up to Kanade sooner? Could Mafuyu have had more moments like this... more quiet late-night conversations, more times where she could see and imagine Kanade getting cutely flustered?

It... hurt her to think about that possibility; the what-ifs suddenly weighed on her heart.

"Mafuyu?" Kanade asked. "Is something wrong? You got quiet all of a sudden."

"I love you, Kanade," Mafuyu said suddenly. "And... I think I regret not telling you that sooner."

Kanade fell silent at that. Faintly, Mafuyu could hear the sounds of Kanade sniffling, taking slow, wavering breaths as she tried to compose herself. "...I also wish I'd confessed earlier," Kanade said after a few moments. "I love you so much, Mafuyu, and..."

"And, um... I wish I could hug you," Kanade mumbled, her voice hitching every now and again. "I mean, I don't want to leave Mizuki here, and I know you can't leave Ena on her own either, but... I still really wish I could be there with you." Kanade's voice was quiet—little more than a whisper, only just barely loud enough to be picked up by her phone.

"I—I don't want to be alone right now..." she said.

"At least we can talk to each other," Mafuyu sighed. "You're not alone, Kanade."

"I know, but... it's not the same," Kanade replied. "I... I just really miss you having you here with me..."

The door next to Mafuyu opened slightly, and Akito poked his head out. His eyes immediately flicked to the phone pressed to Mafuyu's ear—before he silently placed something on the floor: a printed flyer. He quietly slid it over to Mafuyu, before ducking back into his room.

"Hmm?" Mafuyu said to Kanade over the phone. "Akito just gave me a flyer for... an arts festival?"

The flyer was printed out in simple, rough black-and-white, and was clearly a draft—and yet she could already see a dizzying list of names and venues coming together for this festival: the 'LAST BLAST Creative Festival', to be held on and around Vivid Street.

"An art festival—?" Kanade echoed, before suddenly going quiet. Mafuyu could hear Kanade's phone shifting a bit as the other girl turned to look at something. "Oh, I just got a message on Nightcord... someone wants to invite N25 to an event called LAST BLAST, tomorrow. Is that what you mean?"

"Mhm," Mafuyu confirmed. "That's the one. What do you think, Kanade? Should—"

"I want to go!"

Kanade hadn't even waited for Mafuyu to finish. Her voice was low and hard, with an intensity Mafuyu had never heard before from her normally soft-spoken friend. "I-I'm sorry for interrupting you, but... I want the world to hear our songs one last time. Please."

"It's okay. But it'll depend on whether Mizuki and Ena can make up, you know," Mafuyu said.

"I know," Kanade sighed. "But... I think the two of us will be able to save them. And we can't let this last show slip past us."

"I agree," Mafuyu nodded, though she knew Kanade couldn't see. "I'll tell Akito that—"

"—that Nightcord at 25:00 will be joining?" Akito cut in, leaning against the now-open doorway to his room. "Sorry for listening in, but we're 'bout to start sending out the flyers all over the city. I can list you all on the flyer if you want, but you'll have to make the call now."

Mafuyu suppressed an unexpected urge to glare at the orange-haired boy for eavesdropping, and instead nodded to him in acknowledgement. "Yes, we will be going," she confirmed. "When should we have our music ready?"

"Honestly, we're winging a whole lotta this," Akito replied, running a hand through his hair, "but the rough plan we're going with is to have all of the really big music performances and shows start in the evening, and then go all through the night—probably starting from 18:00 or thereabouts. Most of the schedule's still in the air, of course, because of how many different groups we're roping into this... but we'll definitely have a time for you tomorrow morning, though."

"Oh, but just so you know," Akito added, "we're gonna have visual arts and film showcases opening up earlier, at around 12:00, so if you have any videos, or..." he trailed off briefly, glancing down the hall at Ena's door. "...or art that you all want to submit, you'll need to have it ready sooner."

"I'll make sure to tell Ena in the morning," Mafuyu said.

"Great," Akito said. "Seeya tomorrow evening, then." Then he popped back into his room for good, his door shutting behind him with a click.

"Such short notice, though," Mafuyu muttered to Kanade, back over the phone. "Are we going to have time to finish our next song?"

"I think we'll have time..." Kanade said uncertainly. "But I'll definitely need your help. And we'll have to work through the night."

Mafuyu sighed. "I'll go borrow Ena's computer for the night, then..."

Ena woke up around sunrise on the morning of the 12th—which confused her for a second, until she remembered how she'd all but passed out in bed early last night due to emotional exhaustion. She looked to the alarm clock by her bed, and saw 05:57 blinking back at her in sharp, segmented numerals. Waaaaaay too early...

Past the easels that still stood scattered throughout her room, she spied Mafuyu slumped over at Ena's computer desk, apparently fast asleep. The purple-haired girl had apparently commandeered Ena's computer and headset at some point while she was asleep, and had been in a voice call with Kanade overnight—and in fact, both of them were still connected to their server's voice channel.

"Not you too," Ena muttered under her breath. "It's bad enough when Kanade overworks herself..."

Ena gently prised the headset off of Mafuyu, taking great care not to wake her friend; Mafuyu shifted slightly, but didn't wake, her head resting on the wooden tabletop. Meanwhile, Ena slipped on the headset for herself, expecting to hear the sounds of Kanade tapping and clicking away as she worked... only to be met with nothing but more soft, rhythmic breathing coming from the other girl's sensitive mic.

They seriously fell asleep together in voice chat? Ena silently wondered, marveling at how adorable and couple-y these two were already, despite having only been together officially for... what, half a day?

Ena put the headset down beside Mafuyu, and turned to tip-toe out of her room to go get breakfast downstairs.

As Ena grabbed breakfast—cereal, to be specific—she spotted a flyer that had been left on the kitchen table. This one was printed in bright, eye-catching colors, with a glossy finish that indicated it had been professionally printed.

So this must be why Mafuyu and Kanade were working so late last night, Ena thought. They must've been rushing to finish the song we were working on.

Then a realization hit her.

...but we still don't have finished art or an MV for it, yet.
And I still don't have anything of my own that's good enough to show off...

As that knowledge settled in her gut, she glanced further down the page, where two notes had been left with the flyer, with messages written in pen.

The first was a short sticky note written in Akito's scrawl:

Ena's face flushed scarlet at the thought Akito planted in her mind—the thought of making out with Mizuki.

(...Well, okay, maybe it wasn't a new thought for Ena, necessarily. She might have thought about it before, sometimes... or, okay, maybe a lot of times. Not that she'd ever admit it to anyone.)

Her face stayed red for at least half a minute—and the thought remained for even longer.

Though, the longer Ena thought about it, the more she could feel guilt start to taint the image in her head; her stomach started to twist and turn in a sinking, uncomfortable way, and she sighed quietly to herself. She really did need to apologize to Mizuki, didn't she...

Shaking the thought out of her head for now, she glanced down at the second message; this one was written in her father's crisp handwriting, on a folded piece of notebook paper:

After Ena finished taking in the fact that what the fuck, her dad knew Mafuyu's mom this whole time?, she... breathed a small sigh of relief, actually. A part of Ena was ashamed to admit it, but the thought of Mafuyu's mother trying to track her daughter down hadn't occurred to her yet. At least now they didn't have to worry about it—and hopefully Mafuyu would be able to relax.

Though, Ena couldn't help but wonder what that meeting looked like. Her brusque, insensitive clod of a father, a chainsmoking alcoholic, and Mafuyu's mother... Ena's mind boggled at the thought. At least all of those aggravating people were concentrated in one spot, well away from her.

Anyways, she flipped over the flyer, and found a map of festival locations printed on the back. Two of them were circled in the same red pen that her father had written in: the aforementioned poetry venue, as well as a building next door slated for art showcases, both of which were located towards the outer edge of the festival as a whole. Those were probably the places Mafuyu needed to avoid, then.

Ena watched the sunrise as she ate breakfast: a sky of pink and yellow and blue creeping up over the roof of the houses across the street from her. The house was silent; her parents were most likely asleep, still, as was Akito—assuming her brother wasn't already busy with preparations for the festival. And for all the times Ena had stayed up until this time in the morning... she couldn't remember ever having taken the time to watch the sunrise like this.

Ena took a moment to close her eyes, and just breathe, deep and slow. As she exhaled, letting her breath go, nice and smooth... a tension in her shoulders that she hadn't known was there left along with it. This was really nice, she had to admit; a moment of serenity, after the absolute clusterfuck that was yesterday.

...

But... I wish Mizuki were here with me.

That sinking, twisting feeling in her stomach returned. She glanced at the front door, then back up towards her room upstairs.

I hope Mafuyu wakes up soon...

Ena wondered, though... what was she even going to say when she apologized to Mizuki? What could she even say? A simple "I'm sorry" couldn't possibly be enough, not for Mizuki, not with how badly Ena had hurt her... maybe she should get Mizuki an apology gift? A cheesecake, or something... no, that felt too trite, Mizuki deserved better than that...

Ena wondered: could she even make up for it? Mizuki really would be right to hate her, honestly. She deserved better than some petty, vindictive bitch—

A sound interrupted Ena's thoughts: footsteps coming down the stairs, and someone yawning.

"Oh, Ena..." Mafuyu mumbled sleepily. "I wasn't expecting you to be up this early..."

"Yeah, well, neither was I," Ena replied, frowning. "And I wasn't expecting you to be up early, either. You stayed up late working with Kanade, didn't you?"

Mafuyu nodded. "Yes... we were working together to finish our last song, and prepare for the festival." Then she glanced around Ena's kitchen, eying the box of cereal that Ena had left out on the counter. "May I...?"

"Eh? Oh, sure, go ahead," Ena said. Her mind began to wander a bit as Mafuyu poured out some cereal for herself. This next song really is going to be our last, isn't it...?

Her friend must've noticed the downcast expression on her face, because she spoke up suddenly as she sat down across from Ena. "Are you okay, Ena?" she asked, her voice quiet and flat as usual. But she at least seemed to be trying to look concerned, her head tilted slightly and her eyes not quite as piercing as normal.

"...our last song, huh?" Ena echoed, in lieu of a proper answer. "I didn't want to consider it before, but... it's true, isn't it?"

Mafuyu sighed and closed her eyes—but didn't hesitate to reply. "Yes. This is going to be our last song, and our last chance to show our music to the world." She pulled out her phone and set it on the table, glancing through Nightcord briefly.

"Kanade really, really wants to have the song played at the festival," Mafuyu said, with an oddly hard, determined edge to her tone. "We're both counting on you and Mizuki to make up quickly, so we can be ready in time."

"No pressure, huh?" Ena muttered, a tinge of bitterness seeping into her own voice. She stared down into her cereal, slumping slightly. "What if we can't, though? What if Mizuki doesn't want to forgive me? I mean, she'd be right to not want to see me anymore..."

Mafuyu glanced down at her phone again, thinking things over with a barely audible hmm. Then she took a deep breath. "...Kanade believes in the two of you," she answered. "And I do, too. Trust us."

Ena was about to retort, but Mafuyu didn't give her a chance as she continued. "Kanade said she'll message me when Mizuki is ready. We'll go over to them then." Her tone was still soft and level on the surface—but there was a firmness beneath indicating that this was not something Ena could refuse.

Not that Ena was planning on refusing, either way. She nodded in acknowledgement, taking a breath to steady herself.

"...Okay."

Silence reigned for a while after that, the two of them eating breakfast quietly, before Ena glanced at the flyer and notes left on the table.

"Oh, Mafuyu," Ena said, gesturing to the folded-up notebook paper resting atop the flyer. "My dad left a note for me this morning, but, uh... you should probably read it, too."

Mafuyu took the note and looked it over, her eyebrows raised slightly in curiosity... before her eyes widened in clear surprise. "Mom...?" she whispered.

"I know, right?" Ena said. "I almost couldn't believe they all knew each other at first, either. But, thinking back... I think my dad might've recognized you, even if he didn't say anything about it."

Mafuyu shook her head. "He knew to call me 'Ms. Asahina', even though I never introduced myself to him. You... weren't there for that, though."

Ena shrugged. "Oh. ...Well, at least we don't have to worry about your mom ruining things for you anymore, right?"

A pained, guilty expression flickered across Mafuyu's face—before she nodded and sighed, long and shakily. "I—I suppose so. But I... I feel bad, though. I don't want to hurt her..."

Ena reached across the table and took Mafuyu's hand, giving it a firm squeeze. "It's for the best, Mafuyu. Really," she said. "You deserve to be able to live your own life. Especially now." Mafuyu's forlorn expression remained etched across her face, nonetheless, and she averted her eyes, staring down and to the side slightly.

"I mean, I think I understand why you're hung up," Ena sighed, "I know she's your mom. But she did hurt you. A lot. And... it's better for you to stay away."

Mafuyu nodded minutely at that, but still didn't look up or say anything. Ena walked around the table to sit beside Mafuyu, still holding her hand in support.

"And, for what it's worth, if you really still feel bad for her for some reason..." Ena said, "Just remember that she has her own friends. Somehow."

Ena did her best to smile reassuringly, even if Mafuyu still wouldn't look up. "You'll be fine on your own, Mafuyu. You don't need to worry about your mom, anymore.

"It's okay to live your own life."

And then Mafuyu's phone buzzed. Ena had a feeling she already knew what it was... and a glance at her friend's phone confirmed it: a DM from Kanade to Mafuyu.

Just two words: "mizuki's ready".

"...T-Time to go, huh?" Ena said, her voice hitching in spite of herself, her stomach twisting yet again. Mafuyu simply nodded wordlessly.

The two of them got up together and left, walking down the street towards Kanade's house.

The two of them reached Kanade's home about half an hour later, and as Ena walked down the final stretch of road leading to her friend's house, she had the distinct feeling of being a condemned prisoner walking to her execution. The jittery, tangled feeling in her gut intensified with each step, and Mafuyu had to pull her along gently as her feet began to hesitate.

Ugh, come on Ena, she mentally chided herself. You need to do this. Just go already.

That didn't stop Ena from shrinking in on herself and shaking as she approached Kanade's front door. Mafuyu knocked for her, and Ena's mind spun as she waited for Kanade to answer, seconds dragging on into agonizing eternity.

Then Kanade opened the door. She looked over Ena's sorry state for a few moments, saying something that Ena couldn't hear over the sound of her own heartbeat. Then she stepped aside, towards Mafuyu—

—and the world stopped as Ena met Mizuki's eyes.

The other girl stood in the middle of Kanade's living room, her eyes wide with apprehension and her arms drawn tight across her chest, completely motionless... save for her trembling. Sound faded into a tinny, buzzing blur as Ena stared, her eyes fixed on Mizuki from the other side of the vast gulf separating them—the space of a few meters, an impossibly long stretch from door to living room.

Ena couldn't feel her legs. It was like they were trapped in ice: a chilling, tingling cold creeping up her body, rooting her in place, the frozen earth rising up to swallow her whole. She knew she had to move, but... but the distance was too far for her. She'd never be able to cross it, not like this, not someone like herself—

Someone murmured a secret in her ear. Kanade.
"She loves you, you know. Even after everything."

Ena didn't dare turn her head, didn't dare take her eyes off of Mizuki—but her vision began to blur, faint tears welling up in her eyes. Even as the world around her became smudged and hazy, Mizuki still seemed clear, a fixed point in her sight.

I...
I'm sorry Mizuki. I'm so, so sorry.
Why?
Why do you love someone like me?

The ice was beginning to creep past her waist, now—but a pair of hands silently nudged her from behind, pushing her forwards a few centimeters. Mafuyu.

It would be so easy for Ena to stay here, frozen in place until the world's end.
It would be so easy to turn around and run.
But...

But I want to see her.
I want to be with her.
I want to apologize to her.

Ena poured all her strength into lifting her leg; it felt like she was lifting a lead weight, a ball-and-chain strapped to her ankle. But slowly, ever so slowly... her foot lifted off the ground and moved forward, aided by the momentum from that small push. And as she took that first step, some of the ice broke, freezing cold cracking and falling away from her body.

It almost hurt, the short movement sending sharp chilling pain stabbing through her legs. But she took another heavy, painful step forward, and a bit more of the ice broke away.

Another slow step, more ice shattering.

Another step, and suddenly Ena was free.
Free to move, to walk—

—and then she was running, running towards Mizuki—

And in an instant, that gulf of meters shrank to just centimeters, as Ena fell to her knees in front of Mizuki, her head bowed towards the floor. Words left Ena's mouth in an unfiltered torrent, desperate and jumbled.

"I'm sorry, Mizuki, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry! I'm sorry for hurting you, I'm sorry for being so stubborn, I'm sorry for being such a moron, I'm sorry for screaming at you and hitting you and for being such an awful person—"

A pair of arms wrapped around her, warm and comforting, melting the last of the ice.
Mizuki.

"I-It's okay, Ena," Mizuki said. "It's okay, because I know you're still a good person... even if you make mistakes.

"I forgive you, because I love you, Ena."

...Ena couldn't stop her tears anymore.

But then Mizuki lifted Ena's chin up with a hand, and Ena found herself blinking, staring up into the other girl's pale pink eyes. The space remaining between them began to shrink further, from centimeters to milimeters—

—until the space finally became nothing, and Ena felt a pair of lips press against her own.

Ena finally felt herself relax in Mizuki's arms—and as the tension left her body, Mizuki relaxed as well, the two of them floating together in the moment, alone in the world save for each other.

When they finally separated, Ena could see that Mizuki was smiling.

Chapter Text

Around 10 or so minutes later, all four of them were seated around the coffee table in the center of Kanade's living room.

Mizuki lay curled up on one of the room's white sofas, the soles of her feet brushing against the side of an armrest and her head in Ena's lap; she hummed contentedly as Ena ran fingers through her pink locks, like a cat getting scritches. Kanade and Mafuyu, meanwhile, sat together on the sofa opposite them, sipping from identical cups of steaming tea; Kanade leaned against Mafuyu's side, resting her head on Mafuyu's shoulder, with her eyes shut contentedly and one of the widest smiles they'd ever seen spread across her face.

The living room lights were on, though their fluorescent light was drowned out by the morning sun now shining in fully through the windows. A teapot sat on the table between the four of them, along with a pair of unused cups, a few copies of the festival flyer, and Kanade's phone; the latter was opened to a music player app, though it was silent now, having just finished playing a demo for N25's next and last song.

Kanade took another sip of her tea, and opened her eyes to look at Mizuki and Ena. "So, uhm... do you think you two could finish the art and MV for this song in time for the festival?" Kanade asked. Then she averted her eyes a bit from Ena, specifically, glancing down towards the flyers and the listed opening time for the festival. "Though I suppose you... probably want to focus on your own art first, Ena?" she added, hoping she didn't sound too accusatory or pleading. "I understand why, it's just..."

Ena frowned and looked down with a conflicted look on her face, her hand slowing slightly as her fingers went on autopilot (much to Mizuki's dismay). Her head tilted back and forth ever so slightly as she considered things... and then she sighed. "Well, I have a bunch of half-finished work in my room," she began, her words and voice slowed by hesitation. "I think I could finish at least one of them pretty quickly, if I put all of my focus into it, and still have enough time to finish the art for our song."

Then she glanced down at Mizuki in her lap. "Really, I'm more worried about you, Mizuki—are you going to have enough time to finish the MV?"

Mizuki just smiled. "Naaaah, you don't have to worry at all, Enanan~" she said with a wave of her hand. "You already finished most of the key art, remember? And I already have a third of the video done. All I have to do is fill in the rest!"

Ena huffed, looking up at the ceiling in exasperation. "Yeah. Sure. Just 'fill in the rest' of a nearly three-minute long animation," she muttered. "How much time do we even have, anyways?"

Kanade tapped her phone to check the time. "It's 07:46 right now, and our show is scheduled for 20:15. But I think we also should have everything ready at least an hour in advance."

"But we also want to see the festival for ourselves, do we not?" Mafuyu asked. "So everything needs to be done before we go. Unless you plan on finishing things at the festival?"

Mizuki stuck out her tongue in distaste. "Blech. I don't wanna have to do that. I mean, I guess I'll do it if things get really desperate, but festivals are for having fun, right? Not doing work!"

Ena, on the other hand, picked up one of the flyers and looked at the scheduled program listed on the back. The reverse side of the flyer was crammed full of information—including a map, a venue list, and an event schedule, among other things—and Ena had to squint and bring the flyer close to her face, in order to read the teeny tiny text.

She skimmed over the event list for a few seconds before glancing up at the ceiling, her head tilted again in consideration. "There's a lot of creative workshops listed on the schedule here," she pointed out. "Including ones for animation and video-making. It might be fun to work with other people there."

"Fiiine, maybe," Mizuki replied with a sweeping, exaggerated roll of her eyes. "But, remember: time I spend working on the MV there is time I'm not spending on a date with you~!"

Ena's face flushed crimson. "W-Well, um... o-okay, m-maybe that's a good point..." she stammered. "Ahh, damnit, Mizuki...!"

Mizuki laughed, reaching up to brush her fingers lightly against Ena's cheek. "What's got you so embarrassed, Ena? C'mon, I literally just kissed you in front of Kanade and Mafuyu a few minutes ago!" A wide grin stretched across her face, toothy and radiant. "It was, like, a big dramatic moment and everything, too~♪"

And then Mizuki lifted herself up off of Ena's lap for a moment to plant a kiss on her lips—before dropping her head back down onto Ena's lap, giggling at the flustered and surprised expression now frozen across her girlfriend's face. Kanade could practically hear steam shooting out from Ena's ears like a boiling kettle as she sputtered helplessly, half-choking on syllables. "Mm—Mi—Mizu... ugh, r-really?!"

Then Ena threw her head back in embarrassment to look skyward, both of her hands flying up to cover her face. "Ahhhh...!"

"Hehe, such a tsundere~♪" Mizuki hummed in delight. "I'm gonna keep doing that until you get used to it, y'know? 'Cause Enanan's at her cutest when she's flustered!"

And now Ena really did sound like a boiling kettle, her embarrassment growing into a high-pitched whine. Mizuki's renewed enthusiasm was infectious, and Kanade giggled—a soft and musical sound—as she watched Ena and Mizuki go back and forth.

Kanade rested just a bit more snugly against Mafuyu's shoulder, nestling her head in the crook of her lyricist's neck, and took her hand, fingers interlaced. Mafuyu stiffened at the contact, now acutely hyperaware of just how close Kanade was to her, and how much she herself craved Kanade's warmth. It was all Mafuyu could do, to not melt into a puddle then and there.

Instead, she took a deep breath to try and calm her staccato heartbeat. "Is there anything you want to do in the meantime, Kanade?" she asked. "While Mizuki and Ena are working on their parts, I mean."

Kanade brought a hand up to her chin as she considered it with a 'hmm' that set Mafuyu's senses tingling, the soft vibrations of Kanade's voice resonating through her body. "Well... there is one thing," she sighed, lowering her voice. "I... want to visit the hospital."

Mafuyu gave Kanade's hand a comforting squeeze. "Your dad still hasn't recovered, has he?"

Kanade shook her head minutely—a motion Mafuyu felt more than saw, since Kanade's head was still resting against her shoulder and neck.

"No..." Kanade said. "The doctors said he was making good progress with recovering his memories, but he still didn't recognize me, the last time I visited."

Kanade's breathing hitched slightly, but her voice remained level; Mizuki and Ena, meanwhile, were still bantering with each other on the opposite side of the table, evidently unaware of Mafuyu and Kanade's own conversation. "I'd like to visit him one last time," Kanade whispered.

"Of course," Mafuyu replied. "I'll go with you."

Kanade was silent for a moment, her head shifting slightly...

—and then Mafuyu felt a warm and electrifying sensation on her cheek. Her world froze as she realized what it was.

"Thank you, Mafuyu," Kanade whispered as she pulled back from the kiss. "Truly."

Fortunately for everyone, the Tokyo subways were still operational, with a cadre of dedicated (and mostly single) conductors and metro staff working to keep the trains running until the end. It was the same with electricity, water, the internet, and all the other utilities of modern life... it'd surprised Mafuyu, actually, how everything was still holding together, even with less than 48 hours left on the clock. Maybe things would start to crumble, at the very end—but that was a concern for later.

As they left the subway, Mafuyu and Kanade passed a pair of people wheeling an advertisement for LAST BLAST into a prominent place against a wall. The ad was a hastily put together thing—a banner duct-taped to a wheeled whiteboard of the kind Mafuyu saw at school, with a small plastic holder bolted on containing flyers for people to take—but it nonetheless seemed to do its job. Already Mafuyu and Kanade could see people gathering around it curiously, grabbing flyers as they passed by; and as they walked to the exit, the two of them saw other people taping flyers and smaller advertisements for the festival to the wall in other places.

"Everyone's going all out with this festival," Mafuyu murmured. "So many people working to put things together..."

Kanade nodded, looking up to Mafuyu with a smile. "Yeah... which means we need to do our best with this last show. But I know we can do it."

Mafuyu didn't say anything to that, but gave Kanade's hand a squeeze, prompting her to hum happily. Mafuyu found herself smiling again—it was coming more and more easily to her, now, over the past day and a half, or so.

The two of them left the station, walking up the stairs into the warm morning sunlight. The streets weren't quite as busy as usual, but there were still plenty of people walking about: rush hour wasn't nearly as heavy anymore—not with most people skipping non-essential jobs now—but Tokyo was still one of the densely-populated cities in the world.

The hospital was only a short walk away from the station. As Kanade and Mafuyu passed through the glass front doors, the receptionist at the front desk looked up and nodded to them, smiling. "Ah, welcome back, Kanade," she said. "Feel free to go up. Just make sure to check in at the nurses' station, as usual."

Kanade returned the nod. "Thank you." Then she and Mafuyu stepped into the elevator.

The two of them exited onto a floor of the hospital that was surprisingly quiet, with more and more families bringing long-term care patients back to their homes for the final days. Still, there were always those who would have to stay here—and there were still people here to take care of them.

The nurse at the station for this floor looked up as she heard Kanade and Mafuyu approach. "Oh, Kanade. Hello," she said. "I'm afraid you came at a bad time..."

She looked down, glancing at unseen papers on the desk in front of her. "Your father chose to leave the hospital yesterday afternoon, and hasn't returned since then."

"E-Eh?" Kanade stammered, with a stricken look. "Dad... left? Without even telling me?"

The nurse nodded in confirmation. "Yes. He hasn't recovered his memories, so he hasn't quite been formally discharged yet, but you see..."

The previous day...

Hikaru Yoisaki woke up on August the 11th with a splitting headache, though he wasn't sure why. His body felt sluggish, as if waking up from a long, long sleep.

Did I oversleep...? What time is it?
What was I doing last night?

The last thing he remembered was... was...

I was working on that composition for Iguchi, right? The one due next month, on November 25... or, no, that doesn't seem right...

Then he opened his eyes to a ceiling both familiar and unfamiliar.

Ah, right... I'm in the hospital.

A quick glance out the window told him it was sometime in the morning, and another glance up at the wall clock opposite his bed confirmed it: it was just past 08:00. He sighed and sat up, yawning as his brain continued to wake from slumber. He shook his head a bit, as if the motion would cause his memories to settle into order—but, of course, nothing happened.

He groaned as he put his thoughts together.

It still felt strange, wrapping his brain around the two separate pasts he now had: the familiar past, which he logically knew was now almost eighteen years distant, but still felt like it had happened mere days ago; and this new, unfamiliar 'past' he now had after awakening, covering the past month or two he'd spent in the hospital thus far. Trying to reconcile the two felt like trying to splice together two frayed ropes of different thicknesses and materials, and the conundrum had bothered him to no end.

"...though, I suppose it doesn't matter anymore," he chuckled bitterly to himself.

He'd heard the news from his doctors almost immediately after The Message: there was no chance he'd recover his memories before the end. He took the news gracefully, all things considered—it was hard for him to feel pain at the loss, when he didn't even know what it was he'd lost.

And technically, aside from his memories, there was little else keeping him from being discharged—he was alert and oriented, and had full command of his faculties, save for lingering minor short-term memory loss—but the hospital was nonetheless kind enough to allow him to continue his stay until the end... which was good, because he wasn't even sure if he had a home anymore, or anyone to come back to after all these years he'd spent unconscious in the hospital.

That thought sent a pang of pain through him. Losing his memory was one thing, but...

Aika, my love...

That was one of the first things he'd learned after awakening in the hospital, and it'd shaken him to his core: his wife had died at some point, during the years he no longer remembered—in the gap between the two timelines that constituted his life. He'd despaired at first... but with the help of counselors from the hospital, acceptance had come to him eventually: faint memories of his grief and the years he'd spent processing the loss returned—and with it came the resolve to move on, emerging from the hazy mist of those missing years. It was a small blessing, but a vital one that had kept him going in the hospital.

He sighed, before taking a few deep breaths to steady himself. He let the pain pass through him—allowing himself to grieve freely for a moment—before the sting dulled, as it always did, and eventually receded back into his core.

As the pain subsided, he looked to a table on one side of the room. A now-old laptop sat on one side of the table, along with his wallet, a pair of worn studio headphones, and several sheets of partially-filled composition paper—all supposedly part of his personal effects, though he didn't remember buying any of it. He also had some pens and a currently empty coffee mug, both generously donated by the hospital staff; his doctor had chuckled, the first time he saw the mug sitting used on the table. It was a promising sign of improvement, he'd said, that Hikaru was starting to return to regular daily life—even within the confines of his hospital room.

A new phone also sat next to the laptop: a sleek, thin brick of glass and plastic, and a far cry from the Nokia he remembered owning eighteen years ago. He'd bought this new phone for himself less than a week ago, at the insistence of the hospital staff—apparently having one of these 'smartphones' was vital, these days—and after a short back and forth with his cell service provider, he'd gotten his old number back and transferred to this new device. Aside from that, however, the phone was still all but factory-new, with no contacts or personal information save for the number and address of the hospital... though he had figured out how to listen to music on it, at least.

Hikaru couldn't ever see himself getting used to that strange new thing that claimed to be a phone, a reminder of how he'd suddenly leaped forward into the future. At least it still had a headphone jack; from his conversations with some of the nurses, many phones these days didn't even have that much. It was mind-boggling to him—how else would you connect a pair of headphones or earbuds to a device? Did people just not listen to music on the go, these days...?

Hikaru shook his head. Better to not stress about that for now, and instead look to more important things.

He turned to the other side of the table. Unlike the first half of the table, which was a bit cluttered with his things and already accumulating coffee rings on its plastic top surface, this other end of the table was completely clear and clean, save for two things: a single flowering white carnation, growing in a pot, and a framed picture of his wife, taken on their wedding day.

Hikaru got up out of his hospital bed and stretched a bit, before walking over to the table to begin a short daily routine. From a drawer, he took out a small cloth, and wiped off the picture, taking care to ensure his wife's image was clean and free of dust or smudges. Next, he took a small glass cup and filled it with water from a nearby sink, before sprinkling it gently upon the soil around the growing carnation.

Then he stood before the picture of his wife, put his hands together, and bowed his head, closing his eyes.

I'll be with you soon, Aika.

But before then...
I'll do my best to live for you.

And to our daughter, wherever you may be now...
I pray that you are happy, and living out these last days to the fullest.

Hikaru opened his eyes again, his daily ritual now complete, and took a seat in front of his computer.

He may not have had to work for a living anymore, at the world's end... but he was still a musician at his core. He could think of nothing better than to fill his last days with music.

It was what Aika would have wanted for him, he knew.

Hikaru had spent almost the entirety of the previous day simply going back through his own forgotten work—the songs he'd made during the years that were now missing from his mind. Admittedly, however, at some point he'd simply begun skimming through his body of work: looking back, he could clearly tell that he'd been stagnating over the course of those years, his music all starting to sound almost the same.

There was an exception, though: for some reason, his last few songs from that missing time all sounded drastically different from anything that had come before. He'd racked his brain for a while, trying to remember why... but, of course, no answers came to him. Still, he had to admit—he quite liked this new sound, and he'd smiled when he first heard it.

After a few rounds of listening, he'd used those last few songs as a jumping off point to resume composing music of his own, there in his hospital room. He was able to shake off the rust easily, much to his delight, creativity coming back to him astonishingly swiftly. He'd put together a few short pieces quickly, and it had almost felt like when he'd first awoken in the hospital: long-dormant parts of him returning to life.

That was yesterday. Today, he began by going through his unfinished work: scattered files left on his laptop's hard drive, dusty sheets of paper from his effects, long-untouched demos, and more.

One work in progress, in particular, stood out to him: a song simply titled "Rainshower". He'd apparently been working on it up until the day he'd landed in the hospital, all those years ago. Right now, all that existed of it was a single, short demo segment, and a not even half-finished score file on his computer. Nonetheless... something about it compelled him; it was practically screaming to be finished, a thread connecting his past and his present.

But, try as he might, ideas for that composition weren't quite coming to him. He needed inspiration—new experiences to work with.

So, with that thought in mind, Hikaru Yoisaki walked out of the hospital with his work headphones around his neck, and went to go see what had changed in Tokyo since he last remembered.

Much later that day, halfway across the city...

Three friends(?) sat together at a round table in a crowded izakaya. It was late evening now, with the sun having just about set, leaving the world outside blanketed in near-darkness. In here, though—past the red lanterns hung outside, and past the traditional fabric draped across the front entrance—the world was all bright fluorescent white, electric suns rising on a night just getting started. The sounds of chattering diners and clinking cups filled the room, along with the aromas of sizzling meat and freely-flowing alcohol. The air was warm and humid, both from the Japanese summer outside and from the busy kitchen inside.

It was just like old times... though, Kenji hoped this wouldn't end in screaming like last time.
At least the food and drinks were free, this time around.

"Okay, so... not that I mind meetin' up with an old friend again, Aki," Kenji said, downing his first shot of sake for the night. "...but what exactly were you expectin' to accomplish by showin' up at my storefront as a sobbin', frettin' wreck?"

Aki wasn't crying anymore, at least, though she still hadn't touched anything the three of them had ordered. "I'm looking for my daughter Mafuyu," she replied. "S-She just vanished without telling me, a-and I don't know where she could've gone! I've been looking all over, going to every single place I could think of—but I still can't find her!"

Aki sighed, long and wearily... before finally downing her first shot of sake as well. "I-I'm at my wit's end. I don't know what I'll do if I can't find her..."

And then she poured out another shot for herself—which vanished alarmingly quickly. "Mafuyu's normally such a good girl! But now she's not answering any of my calls or texts! I-It's like she's avoiding me!"

"A-Anyways... I know we didn't part on the best of terms," Aki admitted. "B-But I don't know who else I can turn to. Could you help me find Mafuyu?"

Kenji and Shinei glanced at each other for a split second, an unspoken agreement passing between them. Then they turned back to Aki.

"But what would you even have us do, Aki?" Shinei asked. "After all... we, er, hardly know anything about this daughter of yours."

"Hell," Kenji added with a shrug. "I didn't even know you had a kid up until now, Aki. When did that happen? What does she look like?"

"Mafuyu's seventeen years old," Aki said. "With hair and eyes the same shade as mine. Though she usually wears her hair in a ponytail."

"Wait, seventeen?" Kenji replied, his eyebrow raised. "With the way you're freakin' out, you're actin' more like you lost a seven year old, not a seventeen year old."

Shinei nodded. "Kenji has a point—surely Mafuyu is more than old enough to take care of herself by now? I have a son and daughter around the same age; my wife and I have both agreed to give them the freedom to spend these last few days as they see fit. I do not think you need to fear so much, Aki."

Aki stared down into her empty sake glass. "But... she didn't tell me anything...! She just ran off! She's always been such a good girl... surely she would've at least told me something!"

"A 'good girl', huh...?" Kenji echoed slowly, frowning minutely. He glanced at Shinei—who was also frowning. "Okay, wait," Kenji said. "Tell us a bit more about Mafuyu? Like... I dunno. What does she like to do? Could give us a hint about where she might'a gone."

"...well. I suppose there is one thing," Aki said hesitantly. "As much as I tell her not to, she has been getting especially distracted by music, of all things, over the past few months. You see..."

It took Aki a full ten minutes to finish describing her and Mafuyu's situation... and Kenji had gone through about the same number of shots of sake in that time. Meanwhile, Shinei wasn't nearly as much of a drinker—but even he had downed his fair share of alcohol while listening to Aki speak.

Shinei took a deep breath as he looked up to the ceiling, silently praying for salvation; next to him, Kenji leaned forward onto the table and groaned, running his hand through his hair. The two of them stayed like this for a long moment, wondering just what the hell they were going to say next.

"Do you two have something to say?" Aki snapped. "If so, just say it already!"

Kenji sighed, and downed yet another shot of sake. "Look, Aki... I'm gonna be real fuckin' honest," he began, eying Aki warily. "From where I'm sittin', all I can see is a kid with a mom who's tryin' to push her down a path she doesn't wanna take. An' now she's finally run off to do her own thing. Doesn't this sound familiar to you at all?"

Aki huffed, and made to stand. "...that's all you have to say? Ugh, I don't even know why I bothered with you two in the first place—"

"Damnit, Aki!" Kenji cursed. "Listen: if Mafuyu's anything like how you were in college, then you're never gonna fuckin' find her. I know you know that."

Aki glared at Kenji... but stopped, nonetheless, frozen halfway out of her seat. "Y-You don't know that—!"

"Aki," Shinei cut in sharply. "You are talking to the last two people left on the planet—aside from yourself—who know best how you ran from your parents back then. Mafuyu is not coming back."

"So just... sit down," Kenji said as Aki sank back down into her seat, "have another drink... and let's work through this, 'aight? This is an intervention, now. You need to let go, Aki."

"But I can't!" Aki said. "I-I have to protect Mafuyu! I... I can't let her..."

"Can't let her... what?" Shinei prompted. Aki didn't need to look up to know his eyebrow was raised—but she did anyways, looking up at Shinei and Kenji desperately.

"I—I can't let her become me!" Aki Asahina wailed, suddenly bursting into tears in the middle of the izakaya.

Kenji just stared at her for a long moment, feeling the weight of time seeping into his bones—the long, long years since that tepid autumn day, at the station.

"...This is about Ayumi, ain't it?" he surmised, glancing briefly at the large bottles of alcohol in the center of their table.

Aki just nodded miserably.

"Fuckin' called it," Kenji muttered. Then he flagged down one of the serving staff. "Yeah, uh... could'ja bring us a few more bottles? Yeah, yeah, sure, beer, sake, whiskey... a bit of everything, honestly. We're gonna be here for a while."

Two hours of impromptu therapy and over a half-dozen empty bottles later...

"Christ on a bike," Kenji muttered, taking a swig directly from a bottle of sake he'd comandeered all for himself. "We shoulda done this sooner."

"...but even if I do let Mafuyu go," Aki mumbled, swaying just a bit in her seat. "What do I do now...?"

Kenji made to say something, but paused... and then sighed, staring hollowly down into his own half-empty glass.

"Fuckin'... beats me, honestly," he muttered. "I never figured out what to do with myself, either, after everythin'... well, 'cept for pissin' my life away with booze and cigs."

That's when Shinei cleared his throat loudly to get their attention—and placed a printed flyer down in the center of the table.

"What's this?" Aki asked. "LAST BLAST Creative Festival...?"

"Indeed," Shinei nodded. "One last art festival for the entirety of Tokyo. My son's helping to organize it. I was thinking... perhaps we could make something to showcase there. For old times' sake.

"...and if not for old times' sake," Shinei added, pouring out more sake for himself. "Then in memory of Ayumi and Satoshi. We'll keep their memory alive at the world's end."

Aki and Kenji glanced at each other. After a moment, Kenji turned to glance back down into his drink—but he didn't reject the idea just yet. "I can't say no to that," he admitted.

Aki, meanwhile, stared down into her lap, faint tears beginning to well once more in her eyes. "But... I can't write anymore," she whispered, playing with her long violet hair. "Not after Ayumi. Not after my poems killed her."

Shinei drummed his fingers on the table, thinking back to that day at the station, almost two decades ago. It came back to him immediately, words etched into his brain; they'd haunted him for years... but now wasn't the time for that.

"...You heard what Ayumi said at the station. We all did," Shinei began.

Aki flinched, crossing her arms across her chest defensively. "You think I don't remember...? The way she said she hated my poetry, and that it would have been better if we'd never met?"

Shinei shook his head, taking a sip of his alcohol. "That wasn't all she said. It wasn't even the first thing she said." He closed his eyes briefly in remembrance, before opening them again to fix Aki with a hard look.

"You remember as well as I do: the first thing Ayumi said... was that she loved that part of you, Aki—your poetry."

Kenji looked up from his glass as well, nodding slowly. "Yeah... y'know, I remember now: didn't Ayumi always say you were meant to do poetry, Aki?"

Aki froze. Ayumi's voice began to emerge from her memory—spoken words she couldn't deny. Rewinding two decades: a sunset, beautiful orange light over the ocean... her first kiss from Ayumi, warm electric tingling on her cheek. A contented hum, and soft words, almost a whisper in Aki's ear.

"And I think it'll be wonderful if—no, when you do manage to write poetry like that..."

"...beautiful words that can inspire the world," Aki said to herself, the words escaping from her memory, tumbling past her lips.

"Indeed... Ayumi always loved saying that," Shinei nodded, a brief pained expression flickering across his face; his own grief over the Okazaki siblings, dulled with time, but still there—still deep. But now wasn't the time for that.

"Ayumi might have been jealous of you, Aki..." Shinei said. "But I think it would've hurt her even more, to see you like this: having given up on writing—on your path. And... having hurt your own daughter, the same way your parents did to you."

The three of them fell silent at that, sound itself seeming to fade away in the moment, as they all remembered the ghosts that haunted them. Slowly, Aki reached for her bag, and searched through it, looking for something very important. Something she'd never quite been able to get rid of, and instead buried deep down.

She found it eventually, at the very bottom: a small notebook, now worn with time. She could almost imagine the smell of the sea breeze clinging to it.

And then, finally... Aki Amano began to cry.

"What have I done...?"

After a moment, Kenji draped an arm over her shoulder in sympathy—and Shinei did the same as well, a heartbeat later.

...

Eventually, slowly, Aki's tears began to subside, leaving the three of them in silence.

"...so, Shinei," Kenji said as they all grew quiet once more. "You were talkin' earlier about that festival, right? How the three of us should make somethin' for it."

He took another sip of sake. This stuff was good, he had to admit: the bar staff must've been saving the best for last. Still, he shook his head. "But, uh... what are we even gonna do?" he asked. "I ain't exactly overflowin' with inspiration at the moment."

Aki glanced up briefly, only half paying attention to Shinei and Kenji's converation. Most of her focus lay with the open notebook before her, and the words she was slowly scribbling on a new page.

Shinei sighed, and shrugged. "That is also something I'm struggling to figure—"

His words were interrupted by a burst of very loud music from the next table over. The person sitting there—a lone middle-aged man, around Shinei's own age, with hair that seemed naturally silver rather than being grey with age—scrambled to scoop his phone up from where he'd dropped it on the floor, and then struggled to re-connect the wired headphones that had come unplugged from the jack in his phone. He was clearly a few drinks in, however, and his phone continued to blare music loudly as he fumbled with his headphone cord.

"Ah, god—" the man said afterwards. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to disturb you all—"

"Hey, no sweat," Kenji waved him off. "The music was pretty damn good, actually. Who made it?"

"...Me, actually," the man replied. "I'm a professional composer... or at least I was, years and years ago."

He sighed, staring down at the music player on his phone. "This song isn't finished. I've been trying to find inspiration to finish it, but... well, I haven't exactly been successful, yet."

Shinei nodded in sympathy. "My condolences. I suppose you must also be working on it for the festival, then?"

The composer looked at Shinei in confusion. "Festival?"

Kenji grabbed the flyer on the table and handed it to the composer. "Yeah, big creative festival happenin' tomorrow. Whole buncha people attendin'."

The composer looked over the flyer for a moment, before handing it back. "I suppose I could try... but even if I finish it, I doubt it would be worth submitting," he replied, shaking his head. "From what I understand, most musicians these days prepare visual animations or movies to go with their original compositions—and unfortunately, I have no talent with visual art."

Shinei, Aki, and Kenji all glanced at each other, before turning back to the composer.

"That's certainly a coincidence," Shinei said slowly, considering matters.

He pointed to himself. "My name is Shinei," he said, before pointing to Kenji and Aki. "Kenji and I are both artists—painters, to be exact, though we have some familiarity with animation and... film, from our time in university. Our friend Aki here, on the other hand, is a poet."

"I believe we could help you with the visuals," the brown-haired painter said, before glancing towards his two friends.

Kenji shrugged, thinking things over for a second. "I mean... sure. Between the four of us, I bet we could make somethin' worth submittin'. Hell, maybe we could even help you with your composin'."

Aki, meanwhile, looked away—but didn't object. "I... have nothing else, so..." she mumbled, trembling ever so slightly. "...okay. I am... willing to help."

The composer looked dubiously at the three of them... but eventually nodded. "I see no reason to refuse your help."

Kenji blinked in surprise. Then a small grin slowly began to appear on his face. "Great," he said, pulling over a nearby extra chair for their table. "We're really doin' this, I guess... what's your name, anyhow?"

The silver-haired composer smiled. "My name is Hikaru. Hikaru Yoisaki."

"Pleased to meet you, Yoisaki," Shinei nodded, looking the man over appraisingly. Beside him, Kenji flagged down another member of the serving staff, ordering yet more food and drink for the table. Then he poured a round for everyone—himself, Shinei, Aki, and now Hikaru.

To everyone's surprise, it was Aki who spoke up next, giving the man a strange and curious look. "Yoisaki... that name sounds familiar, but..." she murmured. For some reason, the name brought Mafuyu's voice to Aki's mind—a memory of words heard faintly through thin floors in the middle of the night, as Aki lay awake in her own bed, unable to sleep. She thought she'd been dreaming then, but... perhaps she hadn't?

"...You wouldn't happen to have a daughter, would you?" Aki asked, frowning. Mafuyu's voice was there in her memory again, saying another name... more words heard faintly from upstairs during another sleepless night. A name that began with 'Ka', but Aki didn't know the rest.

Hikaru paused, and sighed. "No. Or, at least... not anymore," he said, and Shinei and Aki both instantly winced in sympathy—to which Hikaru shook his head.

"Ah, it's not quite what you think it is," Hikaru said quickly, waving his hands. "I have reason to believe I have a daughter who is alive and well, somewhere, but... I don't know where she is anymore, or anything about her—not even her name. It's a long story."

Kenji shrugged. "If it helps, we've all got long stories, here. Sounds like you're willin' to talk about yours, though," he said. He flashed Hikaru a sympathetic grin. "Care to share? I'm curious to know who we're workin' with."

Hikaru nodded... and returned the grin, to his own slight surprise, before reaching for his poured drink. He looked to the ceiling, mulling things over in his head.

"Very well, then. To start... from what I've been told, I managed to overwork myself into developing amnesia, several years back. But, you see, the amnesia itself covers a much longer time—so the last things I remember are from nearly eighteen years ago..."

Hikaru woke up the next morning with another splitting headache—but he at least knew why, this time. Even if he regretted it slightly.

He opened his eyes to find himself lying on a paint-splattered floor. The soft morning sun shone down on him through window blinds—

And he immediately closed his eyes again, his sight burned by the light.

...scratch that, he had so many regrets right now.

"God... how much did I have to drink last night...?" he groaned. Where was he, anyways? Some kind of art studio...?

Aki's voice answered him from across the room. "Too loud... shut up, please..."

Hikaru had to agree with that idea, honestly. Shutting up and letting things be quiet again suited him just fine.

This certainly wasn't his house, he knew. It was a new friend's place—Shinei's. Hikaru remembered all four of them stumbling drunkenly to the painter's home, sometime in the late night. They'd all holed up in his studio, working on... something... all the way through the night, and into the morning. But what?

That's when Shinei—who had somehow gotten up earlier than all of them, and was now stumbling around in a hungover daze for some godforsaken reason—tripped over Hikaru, and fell to the ground with a clatter. Hikaru's eyes flew open, now forced to wakefulness.

"Ugh—god, damnit, fuck, what the fuck did I just trip on—!" Shinei cursed. A pen rolled away from his hand as he grumbled there on the floor.

"Shineiiiiii," Kenji whined from his own place, face-down at a desk, in front of a computer and graphics tablet. "Shut the fuck up..."

With a titanic effort, Hikaru pulled himself to sitting against the nearby wall. His laptop was next to him, still on—the time, according to his computer's clock was 06... something; he was still too hungover to bother reading the minutes. An old, battered synthesizer sat next to him, one of the first he'd ever used—and one he remembered leaving in a storage unit, years before he'd lost his memories. More importantly, however, his laptop had a music composition application open, showing a finished song: Rainshower.

Hikaru's eyes widened as he saw his work completed at last.

What the hell did we even do last night...?

And now back in the present, at the hospital...

"I'm sorry, but... aside from his missing memories, your father demonstrated full and clear command of his mental faculties," the nurse explained to Kanade. "And he chose to leave of his own free will, under his own power. He is, of course, welcome to return here if he chooses—but if he doesn't, then I'm afraid we can't help you, ma'am."

Kanade looked more than a bit distraught at the news. "So... that's it? Dad is just... gone? Without even saying anything to me...?"

"I'm afraid so," the nurse replied.

Mafuyu wrapped her arms around Kanade, in an attempt to comfort her. "Do you still have his cell phone number saved?" she asked. "Perhaps you can call him."

Kanade nodded, pulling out her phone and sliding through her contacts. "I can try, but..."

Back on the first floor of the Shinonome household, Hikaru groaned as his phone began to make an ear-splitting racket, the noise sending his hangover pounding through his skull.

Shinei, Kenji, and Aki all glared at him—and Hikaru, in turn, glared down at his phone. The number was unfamiliar; probably someone from his past that he no longer knew. Or a telemarketer: he wouldn't be surprised if they still existed, even at the end of the world.

He grumbled as he put his phone on silent and set it aside, letting the call go unanswered. Silence reigned for a moment—before being broken again by muffled sounds from the floor above them: footsteps, things being moved around, voices.

Kenji took a deep breath and sighed after a moment, stretching the sleep out of his system. "...Welp. Now that we're all awake, for better or worse..." he muttered. "I guess we oughta see what we managed to accomplish, last night."

Kanade tried calling once, twice, three times more... no answer. She also sent a text, and spent a few moments in hopeful silence waiting for a reply... but nothing came, her message remaining unread. Eventually she gave up, shaking her head.

"I'm terribly sorry, Kanade," the nurse said. "I really wish I could do more to help. But I really have nothing more to offer you—I have to respect your father's rights as a patient, too."

"I-It's okay," Kanade mumbled. "Thank you, anyways..."

Then they turned to leave, Mafuyu leading a despondent Kanade out of the hospital.

Hikaru looked up to the ceiling as noises continued to drift down from above. When he listened carefully, he could make out two young female voices speaking faintly, drifting in and out as they moved about upstairs.

"...careful with the computer...! Yeah, that too... yes, I promise I really do need it... should stop by your place, too..."
"...are you going to be okay...? ...yeah, don't worry... think we have plenty of time still..."
"...alright, down we go... careful... ah! Damnit, M-Mizuki, don't do that while I'm carrying something down the stairs...!"

"That would be my daughter, Ena... and her friend Mizuki, I believe," Shinei explained before any of them could ask.

"The two from the store yesterday?" Kenji asked, eyebrow raised. "I s'pose they musta made up, then, if we're hearing them together."

"I can only hope so," Shinei nodded.

"You're not going to help your daughter?" Aki asked, frowning as she listened to the thump thump thump of heavy footsteps going down the stairs.

Shinei thought for a moment, before shaking his head. "No, that is probably unnecessary. I believe her friend has everything covered."

Then he brought his attention back to the computer in front of him, and the work-in-progress animation the four of them were in the middle of putting together: music, art, and even poetry on the screen, coming together as one.

"In any case, it's time for us to get back to work," Shinei said, mentally reviewing what remained to be done. "We only have a few hours, after all."

Meanwhile, Ena shot a glare at Mizuki, as the two of them left the Shinonome house and began to walk down the street outside. As Ena walked, she pushed along the trolley from the art shop yesterday—now carrying her computer, one of her work-in-progress pieces, and a selection of art supplies that she insisted she needed in order to be able to work.

"Did you really have to do that while we were on the stairs?!" Ena asked. "What if we fell?!"

"C'mon, Enanan, we were only a few steps from the bottom—"

"—yeah, but did you fucking forget about everything we were carrying? I would've been squished!"

"What's there to squish? You're already pretty flat after all~♪"

Ena screamed skyward in exasperation, much to Mizuki's continued amusement; she planted another kiss on Ena's cheek as her girlfriend kept grumbling. "That's okay, though," she said to Ena. "You're still perfectly cute as you are!"

Ena just glared at her own feet as she fumed to herself, her face bright red and flush with warmth. "Damnit, Mizuki... seriously, how did I fall in love with a dumbass like you?"

After a brief trip by Mizuki's place to pick up some of her own things, the two of them made their way back to Kanade's house. Mizuki opened the door using the spare key Kanade had given her, and Ena rolled their cart of stuff in after her. It looked like their other two friends weren't back yet from wherever they'd gone, with the lights out and the house silent.

"Phew," Ena said as she parked the cart in the middle of Kanade's living room. Then she looked appraisingly over both their stuff and the space around them, already mentally mapping out where everything would go. Her easels could go there, and her supplies could go over there, and then she could borrow one of Kanade's tables and set up her and Mizuki's computers there... yeah, that could work...

"Alright, time to get cracking," Ena said, as a plan solidified in her mind. "We've only got a few hours, after all."

At the same time, as Kanade and Mafuyu walked down the street from the hospital, the two of them found themselves once more at a loose end. Kanade kept looking at her phone every now and then, as if silently debating whether or not to try and call or text her dad again—but every time she drew close to opening her contacts, she froze, before putting her phone away again for another minute or two. Mafuyu watched her the whole time, casting frequent glances at Kanade as they walked.

Eventually Mafuyu pulled Kanade aside, into a small green space a few blocks down: a small grassy spot filled with trees, with a thick leafy canopy overhead providing cover from the August sun. The two of them sat down together on a bench in the shade, and took a moment to catch their breath, watching people go by around them as cicadas chirped loudly in the trees.

"...do you want to talk about it, Kanade?" Mafuyu asked quietly.

Kanade continued to stare down at her phone, her lips drawn into a thin, worried line. She sighed. "I'm really, really worried about Dad," she said. "I didn't think he would just leave the hospital like that... what about his memories? What about his health?"

A tear dripped down onto her phone. "What about me...?" Kanade whispered. "I-I know I'm being selfish, but... does he not care about remembering me, anymore?"

Mafuyu looked at her for a long moment... and then closed her eyes as she continued to think. "...Yes, I believe that is the case," she said eventually. Kanade flinched as if struck, her head whipping up to look at Mafuyu with hurt written across her face.

Before Kanade could say anything, though, Mafuyu shook her head. "You misunderstand. I think he does not have time to care, anymore. It's unlikely that he will recover his memories before the end."

Kanade let out a breath she'd been holding, some of the hurt fading from her expression. But she still averted her eyes from Mafuyu. "I-I guess that's true, but... but...! He shouldn't have just left, right? Is he really going to be okay like that?"

Mafuyu took Kanade's hand in a firm grip, their fingers interlaced. "The nurse said your dad is of sound mind and body. I think he will be okay."

Then Mafuyu took Kanade's other hand as well. Kanade turned to look up, meeting her eyes again. "More importantly..." she said, trying her best to keep her voice sympathetic, but firm. "You need to let go, Kanade. Please. Your dad can make his own decisions."

"But I can't just let go!" Kanade said. "I did this to him! I have to help him...!"

"You already did, Kanade," Mafuyu pointed out. "You've been visiting him regularly all these years, correct? Even when he was unconscious."

Kanade nodded hesitantly. "Y-Yes, but—but there has to be something else I can do!"

"No, Kanade," Mafuyu insisted. "You did the best you could. There isn't anything more you can do to help him. You need to let go."

Kanade opened her mouth again as if to object... before falling silent again, staring down at her feet.

Mafuyu stayed silent for a long moment, before she let out a long, tired sigh. "But... I understand why you're worried, though," she added quietly. "He's still your dad, even if he doesn't remember it. I also still worry about..." Mafuyu trailed off, leaving the sentence hanging in the air between them.

Kanade looked confused for a moment—before coming to a realization. She looked up to Mafuyu. "...you still worry about your mom?" she asked, frowning. "But she hurt—"

"I know," Mafuyu cut her off, with her eyes shut, her hands gripping Kanade's tightly, and her voice now intense for some reason. "I know, and you're not the first person to say that, but... but she's still my mom! E-Even after everything she did... I don't want to hurt her."

"I don't... want to be selfish," Mafuyu said, opening her eyes. "She still cared for me, and raised me, and... and I think she still loved me. Or at least, I want to think that..."

Kanade kept frowning, kept looking up to meet Mafuyu's gaze. "But still! She hurt you, Mafuyu. You should live for yourself—"

"And that's what I'm trying to say to you!" Mafuyu shouted. A distant part of her wondered why her voice sounded heated, again—loaded with a mix of... anger? Indignation? Hurt? Whatever feelings they were, they made Kanade flinch, which in turn made Mafuyu's heart sink. But still the feelings didn't fade, continuing to sit in her gut like burning coals.

"Y-You're acting like her, now!" Mafuyu continued, trying desperately to rein her voice in, and failing. Her fingernails dug deep into Kanade's skin. "You're trying to 'help' me, without actually listening to me!"

More names for these feelings came to Mafuyu's mind: frustration, guilt, resentment, self-hatred. "I-It's always like this," she said, her vision blurring slightly with tears. "Everyone around me keeps trying to help. But I've never been able to help anyone in return. I've never been able to do anything for myself."

Kanade couldn't bring herself to meet Mafuyu's eyes anymore after that, her gaze dropping down to her hands. She shrank away centimeter by centimeter, letting go of Mafuyu to instead draw her arms close to her own body defensively.

"I..." Kanade mumbled, staring down at the red welts Mafuyu had left on her skin. "I didn't mean to..."

"I—I know," Mafuyu said, recoiling slightly as she saw the way she'd accidentally hurt Kanade just now. But those feelings continued to burn a hole within Mafuyu; she had to say this, for better or worse. "I know, and I'm sorry...!"

"I love how caring you are, Kanade," she said. "But... I want to help you, too. Please, let me do that!

"Please, listen to me!"

"But, I..." Kanade tried to object. "I'm not worth helping...!"

Another strong flash of irritation surged through Mafuyu at that—how could Kanade still not understand why Mafuyu loved her?—and she wondered if this was how Ena felt, sometimes. Though, speaking of Ena... Mafuyu finally realized she needed to slow down. She couldn't afford to continue making the same mistakes her friend had yesterday.

She stopped, took a deep breath—

—and then kissed Kanade before the other girl could continue to denigrate herself, and before Mafuyu's own frustration and anger could bubble up again inside. Kanade's eyes widened in surprise as Mafuyu met her lips, her body freezing up and her spiraling mind coming to a crash-stop; she remained silent even after Mafuyu broke away from the kiss, her brain still in the process of rebooting.

"I think you're worth it, Kanade," Mafuyu said. "I want you to live for yourself, too. And I want to help you, regardless of what you might think about yourself.

"And if you really want me to live for myself... then you will just have to accept that."

Chapter Text

"I think you're worth it, Kanade. I want you to live for yourself, too. And I want to help you, regardless of what you might think about yourself.
"And if you really want me to live for myself... then you will just have to accept that."

Kanade stood motionless, with her head bowed, and as she stared down to her shoes, her long bangs fell in front of her face, casting her eyes in shadow. An awful uncertainty began to take root in her brain, together with a dropping sensation in her stomach, as if the surface of the earth were falling away beneath her feet.

Living for herself... what did that even mean, in Kanade's case?
What else could she even do outside of helping others?

Who was she, beyond that one singular focus she'd held for so long?

Kanade didn't even feel like crying anymore. Now, she was just... blank. Unsure.

Empty.

Mafuyu shuffled forward to stand directly face-to-face with Kanade, slowly dipping her head forward so that her forehead rested gently against Kanade's. At the same time, she took hold of Kanade's hands with both of her own, fingers clasped together as if in silent prayer.

"Even if I tried living for myself... what would I do?" Kanade mumbled, still looking down and away. "Helping others by composing music is all I've thought about for years. I don't know what I want to do outside of that."

"What you want to do..." Mafuyu echoed thoughtfully. This was starting to sound very familiar to her, wasn't it...?

"I suppose... that makes two of us, then," she said.

Kanade finally looked up at that, head tilted in clear confusion. "What do you mean by that?"

"Is that not what you've been helping me learn, this whole time?" Mafuyu asked back. "Who I am, and what I want."

She paused, taking the time to ensure her words were the exact ones she wanted to say. "You've been helping me learn what I want to do," she repeated. "And now... you need to learn something similar for yourself."

Logically, Mafuyu knew that this should make her feel sad—she knew full well how painful it was to carry this kind of emptiness within—but, oddly enough, she didn't quite feel as sad as she'd expected. For some reason, she instead felt closer to Kanade, now, even more intimately connected.

"We are alike, in that sense," Mafuyu said. "I find that... comforting, strangely. I understand you more deeply, now..." she added, this time more to herself than to Kanade; her voice trailed off as she pondered over what she was feeling inside.

They shared something new—a common thread.

"I understand you, Kanade," Mafuyu said quietly to herself. "And... I want to help you."

A familiar tug pulled at the corners of her mouth, though the sensation still took her a second to place: she was smiling again, genuinely and unforced.

But... why was she smiling now, of all times? Right now, Kanade didn't feel very warm. Instead, she felt subdued and cold, like the sun obscured by an overcast sky—but without that warmth, what reason did Mafuyu have to smile?

Kanade looked up at her, her eyes widening slowly as she caught Mafuyu's expression. "Mafuyu...?"

...though, now that she thought about it, Mafuyu actually could still feel a sort of warmth inside—one that felt slightly different.

This particular warmth seemed to be emanating from somewhere within herself, for some reason.
How curious.

"I want to help you, Kanade," Mafuyu repeated, louder this time. "In the same way you helped me."

Kanade stayed silent for a minute or two, still staring up at the small, soft smile on Mafuyu's lips—

—then she wrapped Mafuyu in a hug tight enough to squeeze the breath out of her lungs.

"I... I think I understand," Kanade mumbled into Mafuyu's midsection. Her eyes fluttered shut as she sighed, as if letting out a long-held breath. "I'm sorry for worrying you so much, Mafuyu. And for not listening to you sooner. And, um, for being kind of a hypocrite, earlier."

Mafuyu kissed her on the forehead. "I forgive you, Kanade. I know you didn't mean to do any of those things. And... I'm sorry for hurting you, too. With my fingers."

"It's okay," Kanade said, giving Mafuyu a soft squeeze with her arms. "The pain faded quickly."

And then Kanade started laughing quietly, for some reason—and as she laughed, Mafuyu found herself unexpectedly joining in, the coiled tension in her neck and shoulders unwinding, exiting her body in the form of giggling. She felt... light, now, weightless and floaty—but at the same time, Kanade anchored her, keeping her from feeling like she was drifting away helplessly.

"I love you, Kanade."

A familiar warmth pressed itself against Mafuyu, making itself home within her core.

"I love you too, Mafuyu."

Eventually, they grew quiet once more, still wrapped in a tight embrace as they stood in the middle of the small urban green space they'd found.

...

"...so, um," Kanade said after a moment. "I know neither of us know what we really want to do, but... it also feels like it'd be a waste to just go home right now."

Kanade's shoulders slumped as she looked around at the buildings in their vicinity. "But at the same time... I'm guessing you don't have any ideas for what we should do next, Mafuyu?" she asked.

Mafuyu considered this for a moment, looking around... and came up blank. It seemed like the two of them were on a commercial street, lined with stores and other such places to visit—but, naturally, she didn't have any particular destinations in mind or hold any strong opinions, and neither did Kanade, she now knew.

And now that Mafuyu thought about it... this, too, was starting to feel unfortunately familiar.

"No, I don't have any ideas... and if you're asking, I suppose that means you also don't know what to do next?" she replied, to which Kanade just nodded wordlessly.

"...We're pretty bad at this, aren't we?" Kanade asked, sighing in defeat. "I guess this is why Mizuki and Ena are usually the ones to find places for all of us to visit..."

Kanade tilted her head a bit, thinking. "Though... I wonder how they come up with those ideas?" she said to herself.

"Do you think we can simply... walk into a building, to see what's inside?" Mafuyu ventured, turning her head to look across the street.

The building across from them looked mostly dark inside, and had no signs out front to indicate what kind of establishment was inside—but nonetheless the place seemed to be occupied, with open doors, a large glowing neon "OPEN" sign out front, and flickering lights coming from within. Mafuyu could even see the silhouettes of people milling around inside, walking between those flickering lights... but she couldn't tell what they were doing, from here.

Kanade turned to follow Mafuyu's gaze, her brow dipping almost imperceptibly into a tiny frown. "Can we?" she wondered, cutting her eyes to the side as she thought about it.

"It is... an option, I think," Mafuyu said. "It seems like the kind of impulsive decision Mizuki would make."

"Yeah... Mizuki would do something like that, wouldn't she?" she then muttered dubiously, playing with her hair again. "But, um... I'm not sure if that means it's a good idea, though."

The two of them fell quiet again and looked at each other. Seconds passed by in silence as both of them waited-slash-hoped for the other to put forth a nonexistent opinion—or better yet, an alternative. Unfortunately, though, neither of them had any better ideas, and so they fell into a mute staring contest, completely deadlocked.

...

Kanade was the one to break the stalemate eventually—by wiping a bead of sweat off her forehead and sighing.

"Why don't we just go in?" she asked. "It's getting hot out here... I don't want to be in the sun for much longer."

A cool, refreshing AC breeze washed over Kanade and Mafuyu as they ducked into the building, which seemed to be a small arcade. The place was just a single floor, a tiny space crammed full of screens and sound, with just barely enough room to squeeze yourself between the aisles of game cabinets. The arcade was dimly lit—much to the relief of Kanade's eyes—with most illumination coming from what sunlight came in through the front windows, and from the flashing lights and bright displays of the games themselves.

The place was also mostly deserted, with just a handful of people scattered here and there at some of the games; a man lounging behind the front counter looked up from his phone briefly as Mafuyu and Kanade walked in, eying them to make sure they wouldn't cause obvious trouble, before turning back down to his phone.

Even at first glance, it was obvious that there were a wide variety of games on offer: racing games, shoot-em-ups, cabinet shooters, crane machines... all of them mostly unfamiliar to Kanade and Mafuyu. Neither of them made any moves as they looked around the arcade.

"Do you want to play anything?" Kanade asked with a sidelong glance at Mafuyu, who shook her head.

"Perhaps we should just walk around, first?" Mafuyu suggested. "Unless there's anything you want to play."

Kanade shook her head as well, the motion almost a mirror-match for Mafuyu's own. "I, uhm... I'm not very good with video games. I get too distracted by the music to actually play." Still, the two of them began to walk slowly between the cabinets, looking at the games as they passed by.

As they passed by one particular cabinet, though, Kanade's ears picked up a familiar melody coming from the machine. "Is that... Lagtrain?" she wondered, turning to the game in question.

True enough, Kanade's eyes quickly caught sight of the song's black-and-white cover art showing prominently on the game screen. She watched for a few seconds as a brief clip of the song played, before transitioning into a different song, shuffling through a list of song previews.

"Hmm... CHUNITHM?" Kanade said, reading out the sharp stylized lettering on the cabinet, above the screen. "I don't think I've ever played this before."

Still, Kanade was curious enough to tap the game's controller: a smooth, illuminated plastic surface separated into small rectangular segments, almost like a touchscreen piano. The segments of the 'slider'—as the game apparently called it—lit up in colors as she ran her fingers over them, and at her touch the game seemed to wake from slumber, quickly taking her into a start screen, and from there a tutorial.

"Tap the notes to the rhythm...?" Kanade mumbled as she played through the tutorial. "Sounds interesting..."

In the end, the two of them spent a lot longer in the arcade than either of them expected, immersed in the rhythm game—but they nonetheless left eventually.

As they stepped outside, though, Kanade and Mafuyu spent another minute or two staring at each other, wondering what to do next... before a strange and somewhat illogical idea popped into Mafuyu's mind.

"What if we just keep walking down the street in a straight line...?" she suggested, unsure if her idea made any sense. "I'm sure we'll find something eventually."

Kanade hesitated for a few moments, unsure about the idea of wandering aimlessly in broad daylight like this—but nonetheless also still firmly opposed to the idea of just going straight home.

They still had some time left... it'd be a shame to waste it, right? Especially with less than two days left on the clock.

Eventually, Kanade nodded briefly, jerkily. "Um... that sounds okay," she mumbled.

Hopefully, they'd find something fun again...

After a few blocks of walking, they stumbled across a music store that they'd never visited before named "MelonMusic", tucked away amidst a row of other stores lining a narrow side street.

The store itself was lit up inside, with one door held open with a chair and faint traces of music coming from within—but it was also completely devoid of people, with two pieces of paper taped to the front entrance: one with "Staff now gone, all items free —Mgmt." written on the front in thick red marker, and the other being someone's copy of The Message, with "leave all personal belongings behind" circled in the same red ink.

Kanade and Mafuyu glanced at the signs, then at each other, before walking inside, grabbing a basket as they passed through the doors.

This particular store was somewhat smaller than the music shop they normally frequented; the two of them had to carefully watch their step in order to not knock anything over, as they walked single-file between displays and shelves crammed full of merchandise.

CD jewel cases lay stacked in neat rectangular towers all around them, their plastic shrink-wrapping glistening in the bright lighting overhead. Every now and then the stacks were broken up by a vinyl release, or rarely other circle merchandise: small stacks of wall scrolls, posters folded neatly into plastic jackets, and even a few artbooks—all done by artists associated with music circles, of course. Small monitors and speakers attached to the shelving units at intervals played demos and samples of some of the music on offer.

Unsurprisingly, the front of the store was devoted to trending and popular releases; as Kanade scanned them with her eyes, she quickly noted the names of numerous familiar music artists—many of them known for working with the Virtual Singers—and just as quickly noted that she already owned most of the music on display there.

Just past the trending music, however, was a section of the store set aside for new releases from the most recent Comiket—C10X, coincidentally (and perhaps fortunately) held just last week, in the first week of August—along with a handful of releases from the most recent Reitaisai, held a few months prior in May. Here, the artists began to grow less familiar, the big names giving way to newer, smaller circles and more niche musicians.

And past that, in the rear of the store, was a giant library of music: shelves full of CDs reaching almost to the ceiling, all earmarked for "Doujin Music" by signs hanging above.

The sign was unnecessary, though, since the entirety of the store seemed to be dedicated to doujin music circles anyways—complete with distinct sections for different categories, with large swathes of shelf space marked out for VIRTUAL SINGER, Touhou Project, and Kantai Collection music among others—together with an equally-extensive collection of original music.

At one point, Kanade did a double-take when she saw a familiar name pop out amidst the Comiket releases: Leo/need, apparently, had released a pair of singles there. Evidently they'd also gained some traction at the event—she could see that several copies of their discs were missing from the shelves here, picked up by previous visitors.

"Maybe we should've sold something at Comiket, too...?" Kanade wondered aloud to Mafuyu, as she held up one of the Leo/need singles.

Mafuyu tilted her head for a moment, thinking. "I don't think I could've come up with an excuse to spend all day helping with a circle booth," she said eventually. "And we would also have had to drag you out of your house."

"T-That's true, but..." Kanade mumbled, her voice sinking and face turning downcast. "I still can't help but wish that we'd done something. Our music would have reached more people that way, right?"

"But it wouldn't have mattered, since the world would've simply ended a week later," Mafuyu nearly said, as bluntly as ever... but she held her tongue. Instead, she wrapped her arms around Kanade and pulled her into an embrace, causing the shorter silver-haired girl to squeak in surprise.

"Eh?!" Kanade yelped, face burning red. "Mafuyu?"

Mafuyu took a breath, preparing to speak—then paused, mentally stumbling as she realized she didn't know how exactly to articulate this feeling she had. Now that she thought about it further, she really meant to say more than just "it doesn't matter"—but exactly what she wanted to say, beyond that, eluded her for the moment.

"Um... Mafuyu?" Kanade repeated, tilting her head back to look at Mafuyu hugging her tightly from behind.

After a few seconds, Mafuyu again took a breath, winding up for a second try at voicing her thoughts. "There's no point in dwelling on what-ifs," she settled on saying.

Kanade looked down, at that, and though Mafuyu couldn't see her face, she could feel Kanade's shoulders slump—before she nodded, nevertheless. "You're right," Kanade sighed. "I know there's nothing we can do about it, now..."

She dropped the CD case into the basket, alongside a copy of the other Leo/need single on display, and turned to keep walking down the aisle—

—only to stop as Mafuyu refused to move along with her.

Kanade squirmed slightly, trying a few more times to walk forward... but Mafuyu's arms remained wrapped securely around her midsection, like a vise clamping her snugly into place against Mafuyu's body. For that matter, it seemed like the more Kanade tried to move, the tighter Mafuyu's hold became, if anything.

"Um, Mafuyu?" Kanade said, tilting her head up and back again to look at Mafuyu. "I—I can't move. You, um..."

Mafuyu looked back down at Kanade, contemplating the matter silently for a few beats. Then she shook her head.

"On second thought... I don't want us to move on quite yet," she intoned, voice quiet yet unyielding. "I... want to stay like this, for a bit longer."

Kanade sighed—but relaxed, the corners of her mouth tugging upwards into a smile as Mafuyu rested her chin atop Kanade's head.

"Well... okay," Kanade said. "We have plenty of time left before we need to head back for Ena and Mizuki, right?"

Meanwhile, back at Kanade's house, with Ena and Mizuki...

Ena laid her head down on the table, next to her palette and brush, and tried very, very hard not to scream. Instead, she let out a sort of strangled half-groan, half-growl—harsh, heavy frustration forcing its way out of her throat.

"I don't know what I'm doing...!"

Next to her, Mizuki turned in her seat and shuffled over beside her, wrapping her arms around Ena in consolation. Ena felt Mizuki's head atop her back and shoulders, cheek resting lightly atop the base of her neck. "What's wrong?" Mizuki asked.

Ena sighed. "I'm just... stuck," she muttered.

"Artist's block?" Mizuki asked.

Ena nodded, still laying on her desk, another low whine escaping her throat. She turned her head just a bit to glance sidelong at the piece she'd been trying to complete thus far; from where she was sitting, it just seemed like a bunch of haphazard splashes of paint atop a shabby drawing, like those paint-by-numbers books she used to play with as a kid, unworkable and more damningly dull.

Despite that, though, she had no idea what was actually wrong with it: was her composition off? The colors and the shading, or the lighting? Or, hell, maybe she should add more details to the scene, more things in the picture... but what? What more could she add...?

What could she even do with it anymore?

With another defeated sigh, she turned her head back again, staring down at the wooden desk with her forehead resting on her arm, and began to ramble to nobody in particular. "I know it's unfinished, but I also don't know how to finish it, if that makes any sense? I mean, I know I can just keep putting paint on, but that doesn't feel like it's enough. Or, I guess... I just don't know where I'm going with it."

A few seconds later, another thought came to Ena. "...or, actually, it just... doesn't feel right," she mumbled. "It's not the kind of picture I want as the last thing I ever paint. It... it doesn't feel like me, I guess...?"

Mizuki didn't say anything to that, and instead started to hum with her head still resting on Ena, sending a low, soothing vibration down Ena's neck and along her back. Ena had the faint impression of a purring cat curled up atop her—and then an image popped into her brain, of Mizuki with twitchy, pointy cat ears and that goofy fucking grin of hers plastered across her face, and Ena couldn't help but giggle a bit.

"Ena?" Mizuki asked when she heard Ena laugh.

"It's nothing," Ena replied, still giggling—that was an image she'd have to keep in mind for later. As she laughed, her shoulders relaxed, and a slight smile formed on her face. "Just thought of something kinda silly."

"Hmmmm~?" Mizuki hummed back to her, sending more vibrations down Ena's spine that only reinforced the image of neko-Mizuki in her head. "Silly? I didn't even know you could do silly, Ena. You always take things so seriously, after all~"

"Hey," Ena growled. She couldn't see Mizuki's face right now, but she could practically hear the infuriatingly smug smile in the other girl's voice. "I can totally be fun and silly! You're making me sound like some... uptight... tryhard..."

...

...Okay, maybe she couldn't deny it, after all—so, instead, her voice just trailed off into impotent irritation and frustrated grumbling. Her grumbling only got louder when she felt Mizuki plant a light kiss on the back of her neck, before tilting her head back to resting on its side like before.

"You totally are, Enanan, and it's adorable," Mizuki replied, with that lilt in her voice again that always got Ena to huff in exasperation—and huff she did, a quiet "hmph" leaving her throat. Mizuki just hugged her tighter in response, and went back to that wordless, soothing humming from before.

Ena immediately felt herself start to relax again. Damnit, how was Mizuki so good at this...?

The two of them stayed together for a few minutes, the tension slowly seeping out from Ena's body, before Mizuki asked, "...do you feel better now?"

Ena let out a deep breath—for once not out of exasperation or frustration, but rather more of a fond sigh. "...Yeah," she admitted. "I think I feel a lot better. Thanks."

"Anyways, could you get off of me? I need to get back to work."

After she got up, Ena stared at the other canvas she'd brought with her. It was the one she'd been working on two days ago, up until the moment The Message arrived, and she hadn't touched it since. Most of what she could see on the canvas was still black-and-white: rough pencil sketch marks that she'd been in the process of filling in.

The sole section she'd painted so far was the painting's subject, in the center: Ena herself, as it were, rising up from the surface of a pool of water within a sunlit forest grove, like the Lady of the Lake from myth and legend, or that one fable with the river and the gold and silver axes.

In the background, she'd drawn tall trees rising all around the forest spring beneath her feet, and though Ena hadn't added color there yet, she imagined that the whole scene was lit by a clear afternoon sky shining through a break in the forest leaves. Meanwhile, she'd sketched herself in a long, flowing dress that pooled at her feet, melding into the water's surface, and just above her brow, she'd drawn a wreath of flowers for herself to wear.

The sketch alone had taken Ena days, obsessed as she was with getting all the fine details right: the way the dress's fabric flowed (she imagined it was something like silk), the expression on her face (she figured it'd be some kind of "solemn and mysterious" expression, but she didn't know what that was actually supposed to look like, and taking selfies with her eyes closed in contemplation proved to be surprisingly difficult), and even the exact flowers atop her head (15 minutes looking through references for hanakotoba, 30 minutes deciding which flowers she thought best described herself—and then an hour looking up pictures of amaryllises, azaleas, hibiscuses, violets, and camellias, amongst others).

Still, she'd at least been able to start painting eventually, starting from the center and working outwards, painting herself in first. She'd agonized over the color of her hair and eyes, looking through dozens of photos of herself taken under all sorts of lighting conditions—before staring at herself in the mirror for over an hour, testing paint on pieces of paper held up to her reflection. She'd similarly taken great pains with the dress: the idea she had in mind was to make it seafoam green, but she also needed to have it fade into the blue waters—which meant she needed to pick out the exact blue for the water at the same time as the dress, and then figure out all the intermediate shades for where the dress met the water...

And then Ena's copy of The Message had materialized in mid-air, right in front of her face, and immediately gotten stuck fast to the paint she'd been laying down—right in the center of her canvas—as she stared in confusion.

The Message covered up everything: face, wreath, body, dress, and all, leaving nothing but laser-printed toner and pure white paper where paint once was. Ena had almost, almost ripped the paper off, then and there—but stopped when she realized that, in all likelihood, she'd just end up damaging the canvas in the process. So instead, she'd carefully set the now-ruined painting aside in the corner of her room, laid on her bed with her face buried in her pillow, and tried her best not to cry too loudly.

All that effort—all her work and self-doubt and creative pain—ruined by a single sheet of paper. There was a metaphor in there somewhere, she was sure, but quite frankly she hadn't even wanted to so much as think of the canvas, after that.

But now, though, two days later... Ena wondered if maybe she could salvage something from this situation. Maybe she could cut the paper free, or scrape it off of the paint...? She'd brought along a small, sharp x-acto knife in her supplies for this exact purpose. It'd be hard, though, considering just how stuck the paper was to the paint; there'd be no saving some sections, she was sure.

But.
But, but, but... there was still that metaphor in there somewhere, wasn't there?
Maybe she could work with that—work with The Message. Use it as part of the medium.

As Ena thought things over, she brushed her fingers lightly over the paper, feeling the way the texture changed where the paper adhered to the paint, versus the places where there was no paint for the paper to stick to. Ideas started to pop into her head: form and expression and color overlaying themselves atop the image of the canvas in her mind's eye. And then she pulled out her pencil, and started to sketch lines on the paper—planning which areas of the picture would be printed paper and which would be painted canvas, measuring out the cuts she would make with her knife...

Ena finished her painting just in time for the festival.

The setting and subject remained the same: a verdant forest grove and spring, with Ena standing atop the water's surface. Her clothing remained largely the same as well: dress and flower wreath, though now with the addition of some accessories Mizuki had suggested to help bolster the whole "spirit of the lake" theme she was going for.

The forest background and the lake, too, remained as she'd originally envisioned them: deep brown tree trunks and a verdant green leafy canopy, lighter green grass and flowers in all colors past the upper edges of the clear light blue waters, yellow-white sunbeams shining down from above. Ena had done her best to be as detailed as possible here, even in spite of her limited time, with countless different shades rendering the mottled textures of bark and leaves, careful strokes creating the appearance of untamed blades of grass, and fine brushwork breaking up the green and brown with lovingly formed flowers in all sorts of reds and violets and indigos and pinks—nature and a beautiful world, rendered in a myriad of colors.

The similarities ended, though, at the lower third of the canvas. Here, the lake waters in the background abruptly crumbled away into Ena's copy of The Message: after carefully cutting and peeling away the paper from the other parts of the painting, she'd cut it into strips and re-glued it all along this part of the canvas, leaving nothing but an aberrant void of glossy white printer paper and stark black toner that ate away at the nature scene above it—a vibrant world fading into sudden unreality.

Ena herself stood just above the repurposed Message, her feet resting on the boundary line between paint and paper, with her arms relaxed at her sides and her head tilted back—looking up to the sky with open eyes and a small smile, even as the world melted away beneath her.

This second time around, Ena opted to leave her own portrait completely unpainted. She'd drawn herself with detailed line art, of course, her face and body now rendered in crisp, sharp strokes instead of rough pencil marks, but no more than that; the painted colors of the background abruptly flaked away beginning in a thin band around Ena's figure, leaving the girl herself incomplete—nothing more than thin lines drawn on a rough splotch of beige canvas.

The sole exception was portrait-Ena's dress, which was now formed from the parts of The Message that couldn't be removed: cut paper left stuck to the canvas in the shape of flowing fabric, with only a few light pencil marks added to create the appearance of depth and texture. The new dress flowed seamlessly into the rest of The Message below Ena, the fabric melding into a pool of paper rather than water.

And finally, in a thin strip all along the very bottom edge of the canvas, the stark white of The Message itself faded into deep blue: a uniform mazarine nothingness at the end.

As Ena looked at her work and waited impatiently for the last layers of paint to dry—with a little help from Kanade's hairdryer—a title came to her mind.

"Interruption."

And then—not five seconds after Ena finished writing that title on an index card taped to the side of the canvas—Mizuki interrupted her train of thought by sidling up to her and kissing her again, when she least expected it.

This time, though, Ena managed to react fast enough to wrap her arms around Mizuki and pull her closer, the two of them stumbling backwards until Ena's back met a wall...

Mafuyu and Kanade returned not long after that.

"I hope those two managed to finish everything in time," Kanade said, walking down the street leading to her home. Mafuyu walked close beside her, both hands carrying bags full of CDs and other things from the music store.

"Have faith in them," Mafuyu replied as they reached the front door to Kanade's house. "They work together well."

"That's true," Kanade conceded, fishing out a key from her pocket and unlocking the door. "But I'm still worried for them. They have a lot to do, and so little time..."

Kanade opened the door.

Directly in front of her and Mafuyu, about a meter away from the entrance, Mizuki and Ena were locked together in a passionate tangle of limbs, with Ena's back flat against the wall and Mizuki's body pressed tightly against her own. With one hand Ena grabbed a fistful of Mizuki's pink hair, while the fingernails of her other hand dug into the back of Mizuki's shirt. Mizuki, meanwhile, had dipped her head down close to Ena's neck and collarbone, where her shirt lay ever-so-slightly open, exposing the skin beneath to Mizuki's lips.

As they heard the door open, though, Ena and Mizuki's heads snapped towards the entrance, and the two of them looked to Kanade and Mafuyu with wide eyes and flushed faces—

Kanade closed the door.

...

The seconds ticked onwards in near-dead silence as Kanade and Mafuyu stared blankly ahead at the door, the quiet broken up only by the muffled sounds of frantic footsteps and shuffling coming from inside.

"Perhaps we should've expected this," Mafuyu said eventually, lowering her voice so that it didn't carry into the house. "...and at least they still had all of their clothes on."

Kanade didn't respond—in fact, she didn't seem to be moving at all, instead just staring at the front door to her own house, her mind completely frozen. Mafuyu could practically see little loading spinner icons in Kanade's eyes as her brain continued processing the situation they'd walked in on.

"Two of Ena's top buttons were undone," Kanade mumbled hollowly after a while. "And I'm pretty sure Mizuki was about to unbutton the rest."

Mafuyu chose to push that fact out of her mind. "It still could have been worse," she sighed. "Much worse."

...

"...We'll need to find a room for those two later tonight, don't we?" Kanade said after another silence. "I assume they'll be staying here... but I'm also not sure how thin the walls are..."

"You have extra headphones, right?" Mafuyu asked, her mind tensing up at the prospect of having nothing but thin wood and plaster standing between her and the other couple for an entire night. It was... an unpleasant thought, Mafuyu had to admit.

Kanade nodded. "I need to check... but I think I do have spare noise-cancelling headphones in my room. They're old, but they should still work."

Mafuyu sighed, letting out the breath she'd been holding with a strangely light and relaxing feeling—relief, she realized. "...I'm glad."

...

The door opened a few minutes later to reveal Ena and Mizuki again, now stiffly standing side by side and pointedly refusing to meet Kanade and Mafuyu's eyes. As Mafuyu's gaze swept over the couple on the other side of the door, her eyes caught on faint splashes of discoloration on Ena's neck: splotches that didn't quite match her natural skin tone. And now that Mafuyu saw that, she couldn't help but notice the way both of their clothes were still markedly rumpled, hair slightly mussed—

"W-What are you two staring at?!" Ena spat-slash-stammered. "I-If you have something to say, then say it already!"

Mafuyu closed her eyes to stop them from wandering, and took a slow, deep breath. "Are you two ready?"

"Um..." Mizuki replied, a sheepish grin plastered across her face. "Well, E-Ena finished up her artwork just now, so..."

"Phew, I'm glad. I was a bit worried..." Kanade smiled. "Though, um. What about you, Mizuki?"

The grin on Mizuki's face didn't fade in the slightest... though a bead of sweat appeared on one side of her face. "...I'm mostly done!" she said. "The only thing I have left is the very last part of the animation..."

Kanade sighed, her smile fading again. "Mizuki, please..."

"It's okay," Ena replied. "Now that I'm done, I can help her finish things up."

"But don't we need to get your painting to the festival?" Mizuki said, tilting her head. "We have to leave now in order to get there in time for the festival's opening."

"I know," Ena said, placing her hands on her hips with a huff. "I meant I'll help you finish things at the festival. Y'know, like I said earlier this morning."

Mizuki groaned. "Fiiiine. But I still wanted to spend that time with you, though, not working..."

"I don't think it'll be as bad as you think, Mizuki. It'll be fun!" Ena said. She squeezed Mizuki's hand lightly, and leaned in to give her a quick peck on the cheek. "And besides, it's not like I'm just going to ditch you while you're working on the animation. We'll have plenty of time to spend together—"

"Um, you two..." Kanade said, interrupting them. She stared down at her feet, playing with her hair and shifting her weight from side-to-side. "Please try not to get... uh, distracted, again, while we're there," she mumbled.

Mafuyu, meanwhile, just gave the couple a flat, unblinking stare. "Remember that it's a public venue," she intoned. "One open to all ages. We can't help you if you're arrested for public indecency."

Mizuki and Ena both instantly began to sputter at that, both of their faces burning scarlet. "W-What kind of people do you take us for?!" Ena shouted. "C'mon, it's not like we're gonna rip each others' clothes off at any moment!"

Mafuyu just continued to stare at the two of them blankly—and was soon joined by Kanade, slowly turning her head upwards to also shoot a flat look towards them.

"That's not what we saw earlier," Kanade said quietly.

Ena's hands flew up to cover her face in embarrassment as she let out a high-pitched whine. "T-That's not..." she stammered. "We wouldn't..."

Then Ena turned to Mizuki, spinning on her heel; at the same time, her hand flew up to pinch one of Mizuki's ears, tugging at it sharply. "W-What you saw earlier was this idiot's fault!" she retorted. "She started it!"

"H-Hey!" Mizuki said, cringing in slight pain as Ena pulled at her earlobe. "I was just going to kiss you once! You were the one who wouldn't let go of me afterwards!"

"Okay, but who was the one who started unbuttoning my shirt?!"

"That was your idea! You literally pulled my hand up there!"

Kanade cleared her throat to stop their bickering, though it came out as more of a quiet cough. "W-We get it, you two..." she sighed.

"Yes, we understand you two have large amounts of built-up sexual tension," Mafuyu said, causing Ena, Mizuki, and Kanade to all freeze up, scandalized. "Just remember time and place."

Then Mafuyu sighed and shook her head. "We need to go. The festival will start soon."

Ena and Mizuki still weren't moving, though, so after a moment Mafuyu simply walked past them to enter the house, twisting her body to the side to slip past the couple opposite her. She tugged Kanade along as she stepped inside.

"...did you really have to put it like that, Mafuyu...?" Kanade mumbled as Mafuyu pulled her into the house.

"Was I incorrect in my assessment?" Mafuyu asked, dropping the bags she was carrying from the music store in an empty space by the table.

Kanade blushed, turning her head to glance briefly at the couple behind her, still frozen in embarrassment. "Well... no," she admitted.

"I rest my case," Mafuyu replied, before lowering her voice so Ena and Mizuki wouldn't hear. "Though, I think their affection for each other is... endearing, in a way," she said, feeling that familiar tugging sensation again at the corners of her mouth. "I'm glad they're finally together."

Kanade looked up at Mafuyu... and stared wordlessly for a few moments. Then she smiled, just before Mafuyu could grow concerned. "I'm glad, too," she giggled. "They're very cute, aren't they?"

"Also... you're smiling again," Kanade added. She took hold of one of Mafuyu's arms, interlacing their fingers and leaning into Mafuyu's side. "You've been smiling a lot, actually. It's nice."

It didn't take long at all for them to gather everything they needed: Ena's finished artwork, plus Mizuki and Kanade's laptops—the latter two tucked away in laptop bags for each.

The subway ride to the festival was likewise short... and also incredibly crowded; it immediately became obvious to all four of them just how big the festival had become by now, purely by the sheer number of people filling the subways going to it.

The four of them had to cram themselves into their train car in order to fit, packed shoulder-to-shoulder and also shoulder-to-art: many of the other passengers aboard the metro carried art pieces of their own, from painted canvases like Ena's, to corkboards full of pinned photos, to film reels. One man standing right behind Kanade and Mafuyu even carried a small marble sculpture, cradling it against his chest with both arms as if he were holding an infant.

Their stop was likewise jam-packed full of people, with nearly the entire train getting off alongside them—a sea of people all converging on the same destination. Ena clutched her canvas protectively, careful not to let anyone touch it by accident as she carefully weaved through the crowds.

As the four of them kept moving through the walkways leading up and out from the station, pushed along by the flow of people surrounding them, they began to hear the hubbub of the festival growing louder and louder: chattering crowds, live music, cheering—

And then they reached the exit at the top of the stairs, spilling out onto Vivid Street proper, and the four of them stopped as they looked around.

Vivid Street was a hive of activity now, with artists rushing to prepare their exhibits and performers of all stripes hurrying to their venues. Kanade had to step aside as the man with the sculpture from earlier moved past her, mumbling apologies as he joined a small procession of other sculptors carrying their works to one of the festival's many galleries.

Numerous musicians, too, had already set up all along the streets: to the immediate left of the subway station exit, a woman played jazz on a brass saxophone that gleamed in the noonday sun—directly across from a pair of rappers set up to the right of the exit, the two of them spitting bars to a bass-filled hip-hop beat played from a boombox between them. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, across from the station exit, a komusō—a monk clad in white robes, face concealed behind a woven straw basket worn over their head—played traditional songs on a bamboo flute to an appreciative audience.

And in-between all of this, ever-growing crowds of attendees filled the streets, charging the atmosphere with an excited buzz and an energetic pulse.

"There's so many people already..." Kanade mumbled, her eyes wide as she took in the view.

"This is just the start," Mafuyu said, her eyes also widening as she looked around. "I assume more visitors will be coming throughout the day as the festival picks up."

"Good thing we got here early, then," Ena said, holding up a hand to shade her eyes from the noon sun.

Mizuki hummed, swiveling her head to sweep her eyes across the crowds. Then she turned to the other three and grinned, fishing out a festival flyer and map from her laptop bag. "So, what are we all standing around here for?" she asked.

"C'mon, we're burning daylight! Let's go see what Lil' Bro and his friends cooked up for everyone with this festival~!"