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It takes Shiki at least a good minute, staring down at the numbers on her phone and biting her lip, to work up enough courage to press the green button in the lower left corner. Her thumb hovers above the screen for a moment before decidedly pressing call.
She waits.
The silence is unnerving, each ring of the phone like a blow to her already dwindling self-esteem. Vaguely, she wonders what she should say when he picks up—if he picks up. I wish we didn't go to different schools. I wish we could see each other more often.
I miss you.
She’s just about to chicken out and hang up (again) when he finally picks up.
“Hello?” says the voice on the other side. In a shaky exhale, Shiki lets out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Her fingers tighten on the phone.
Around her, the world keeps moving. People passing her on the sidewalk, looking at their phones and chatting with one another, all going their separate ways. Cars whizzing past on the highway. The gentle autumn breeze on her face, bringing golden brown leaves tumbling down the street. The scent of freshly baked muffins from a nearby coffee shop. She’s standing at a bus stop waiting for the evening bus home, clutching her purse in one hand and her phone in the other, feeling so tiny and insignificant in such an endless world.
And yet, she’s never been so glad to be alive.
“Neku,” she says into the phone. "I have so much to tell you."
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Two weeks into the school year, Shiki decides to completely remodel her room. Coming back to her house after being in the Underground for a week is a shock; for a moment, it's like she was never gone. Her room is as neat and tidy as it was when she last saw it, with cream walls and plain wooden furniture and soft, muted colors like dull green and gray. She can’t stand it anymore.
She buys gallons of brightly colored paint, strawberry pink and the color of sea glass, and opens the curtains to let more light into the stuffy atmosphere of the place. Despite her parents’ shocked pleas, she insists on painting her walls herself. She moves all her old furniture into the guest room and cleans out her closet, donating all her old clothes to the local charity shop. She buys boldly patterned throw pillows and sheets, displaying the cute anime merchandise and Pokemon stuffed animals she'd collected as a kid around the room. The traditional Japanese doll set her grandmother gave her when she was younger stands on one of the shelves.
The only things that stay the same are the scrapbooks and fashion magazines organized in alphabetical order on the bookshelf, and the cherry blossom bonsai growing on the windowsill. Like always, her desk is cluttered with half-finished sketches of outfit designs and sewing materials and fabrics of every texture and color imaginable.
Otherwise, her room is completely unrecognizable. It looks nothing like her old room, but it's not Eri's either.
It's childish, but undeniably her .
Shiki steps back and surveys her work, and decides she likes it.
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The next time she sees Neku in person is almost a month later, when they meet at a café downtown near Shibuya Crossing. For the first few minutes they sit there in a comfortable companionship, Neku declining to order anything and instead watching Shiki devour her chocolate cake (she’s always had something of a sweet tooth). Even though she was the one who suggested they meet here, she begins to feel self-conscious under his watchful gaze.
She's always been afraid of silence. It makes her nervous, little ghostly reminders of everything she's worked so hard to escape.
“Let’s talk,” she says.
“Okay,” says Neku, surprisingly unhesitatingly. “What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know,” Shiki admits. He snorts, albeit good-naturedly. “Anything.”
“What was the point of coming here, then?"
Shiki searches his expression carefully, but finds none of the irritation she did when they were first getting to know each other. Instead, he's watching her with a faint look of amusement, leaning back in his chair lazily and crossing his arms. The relief that floods her is immediate and startling.
“It's called hanging out, Neku,” she says. “Just spending time with friends, enjoying their presence.” She can’t help but laugh at his bewildered expression. It must be as foreign a concept to him as it is to her, if she's honest with herself.
Neku shifts in his seat. She notices he's not wearing his headphones anymore.
“This is hard,” he says.
“What, being social? Talking to people?” Shiki tries to cover her smile with her hand.
“Something like that,” he mumbles. "Stop laughing at me."
"I'm not." She makes the straightest face she can muster. He rolls his eyes at her.
They sit in silence for a while, but somehow it feels easier than before. Neku watches her cut into her cake, and she's just about to ask him why he didn't order anything when he suddenly says, "Hey."
"Yeah?"
"I just noticed. You're not wearing your glasses.”
“Oh, I got contacts." Honestly, if he hadn't brought the subject up, she wouldn't even have remembered. She feels strangely flattered that he noticed. Then again, he's more perceptive than he seems, probably because he's more used to observing people than talking.
How do I look? It's the natural question, something anyone would ask, Shiki tells herself. Still, it burns in her mind and hangs heavy in the air between them until she works up enough courage to say it aloud.
"Um, you look...nice."
The answer seems to surprise him as much as it does her. Neku averts his eyes for a moment, suddenly refusing to look at her. She can't stop the stupid smile that plasters all over her face in response.
"Thanks," she whispers to no one in particular, putting her fork down and just gazing at her cake like an idiot.
“You still have your pig?” Neku asks abruptly, probably to save himself from any further embarrassment. Shiki bites her lip to keep from giggling aloud, a habit when she's flustered, and follows his gaze to where Mr. Mew is tucked into the corner of her purse.
“He’s a cat ,” she says in indignation, and he makes an exasperated noise. Then, after a second, they simultaneously burst out laughing, and everything feels the same again.
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Gradually, she begins re-opening up to Eri. After a while they're going shopping together and talking and laughing like nothing's changed, the weeks melting together as if in a dream, but somehow it feels different. Eri notices, too.
“You seem kind of different lately,” Eri remarks one day, as they’re sitting in the middle of her living room discussing various outfit designs. The couches are pushed aside to make room for their sewing materials and sketches, which are scattered across the carpet haphazardly. Shiki knows every nook and cranny of this house, from the moment she walks into the bright, spacious entryway with its whitewashed walls and big skylight and potted bamboo shoots growing by the front door to the modern stone-stepped, sunbathed garden in the backyard. She feels an aching nostalgia just being in Eri's house again, remembering years of middle school hangouts and sleepovers.
“What do you mean?” says Shiki. “Like different in a bad way?”
“No! Of course not. I mean different in a good way.”
Eri pauses, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. Shiki watches her go through the action and then it hits her why it feels so familiar: she used to do it, too, back in the Underground when she was in Eri's body. It’s weird to think about, so she tries not to.
“It’s almost like you’re more…I don’t know, sure of yourself?” says Eri. “I mean, you used to be too afraid to show your creations to anyone, but now you’ve even started your own blog and everything. You’re even hanging out with friends more.”
Shiki winces a little at the slight insult that came with the last comment. Still, Eri’s compliments make her feel warm inside. Her throat feels too tight to speak, so she just nods in fear of her voice breaking.
“I’m just so glad you’re back,” Eri says, interrupting the thick miasma of emotions swirling through Shiki's mind. “We were all worried sick when you went missing, and everyone kept saying you were dead! I had no idea what to believe.”
“I’m glad to be back,” says Shiki, truthfully.
She feels Eri’s eyes on her, asking a silent question. What really happened to you that week?
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Shiki says, getting to her feet. “I have something to show you. I started working on the dress you showed me last week.” She's suddenly eternally grateful she’d left it in the kitchen with the rest of her stuff.
Eri looks at her a bit longer, and Shiki feels herself choke up. Even if she has changed, like Eri said, she still doesn’t feel ready to tell Eri the truth. She doesn’t know if she ever will.
"Sure," Eri says with a shrug.
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Neku’s room is everything she expected it to be, and at the same time full of surprises. Band posters and brightly colored electric guitars line the walls, with large speakers at each corner of the room. His computer is left open to some kind of music recording software. Shiki tries to ignore the nagging feeling she gets when her gaze passes over Neku’s unmade bed, his clothes strewn over the sheets, and the video game controllers lying around on the floor.
“You should really clean your room.” She can't help wrinkling her nose as she follows him into the room.
“Yes, mother,” says Neku with a roll of his eyes, and she knows her words have gone to deaf ears. With a sigh, she picks up a pair of shorts lying on the carpet and drapes it over his desk chair.
“How can you even find anything in this mess?”
“I can find stuff just fine.” Neku shoves his hands in his pockets and looks at her sideways. She tries to suppress a giggle.
Neku perches himself on the edge of his bed, but he still looks self-conscious, his eyes darting around uneasily. It suddenly occurs to Shiki that she’s probably the first person in the world other than his family to see his room.
To distract herself from the weight of the feeling, she says, “I didn’t know you were into music.”
“Why else do you think I wear headphones all the time?” says Neku. Shiki huffs and crosses her arms.
“Anyone can wear headphones. I didn’t know you were interested in, like, music composition. That’s pretty impressive.”
“Not really.” Neku shrugs, but she thinks he’s just being humble.
“Hey, can you show me what you’ve been working on?” says Shiki. Not only because she wants to encourage him to open up to her, but also because she’s genuinely curious. Taking a tour of his room feels almost like being inside his mind, and even though it makes her nervous, she can't deny the thrill of excitement that flares up inside her.
Besides, it’s not like he hasn’t done the same for her. He’s listened, with a surprising amount of patience, to all her rants about annoying classmates and her endless gushing about clothes and the latest trends. It’s only fair.
Neku meets her eyes cautiously, almost shyly. “Sure, I guess. It’s nothing amazing, but…” He shrugs. “I’m working on it. Not where I want to be, though.”
Oh.
Of course. How has she never realized it before? He's trying to find his place in the world, just as she is.
“Me neither.”
He’s smiling as he reaches over to press the play button on his computer and the rich melodies of another world, a wonderful one, come alive to just the two of them.