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In the dark, above Ken’s head, the stars shine faintly.
He lies on his back in bed and stares up at them, eyes roving across the ceiling. It’s what he’s done every night since Dad bought them for his seventh birthday. After ten years, the stickers still glow.
He knows it’s childish to keep them up after all this time. Other boys his age decorate their rooms with posters of their favorite sports teams. But Ken’s never been like the other kids at school. He’s always been a weirdo. A freak. Staring up at the stars, just like he is right now, and wishing so hard for a different reality that he feels almost sick with longing.
The stars blur into little green smudges. Ken blinks, hard, and hot tears leak from the corners of his eyes.
She’d looked at him like he was a stranger.
Not just the kind you pass on the street and hardly even notice. The kind that puts you on your guard. The kind that makes you suspicious. The kind you have to be afraid of, because they might hurt you.
It triggered some kind of survival instinct in him, seeing her look at him like that. At first, he’d frozen up. Then he’d spoken cautiously. But soon he’d found himself practically shouting at her, desperate to make her understand. And then—
“Why would I give a crap about some random otaku I don’t even know?”
Ken squeezes his eyes shut, snuffing out the stars in his vision. Even now, hours later, just remembering it makes everything inside him recoil. Like when he was nine and his teacher yelled at him in front of the whole class. Or when Hase called him a creep and said he’d be better off dead.
It turns out, it doesn’t matter if his body’s gotten stronger, or if his hair has grown out, or if his classmates think he’s cooler now. He’s still that same kid with the bowl cut and the stack of occult magazines, hiding behind their pages so no one can see him cry.
Pitiful.
Ken pushes his glasses up on his head, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. His tears burn against his skin.
Back in those days, before he met her, he retreated so far into the occult that he was less of a person and more of a compulsive jumble of knowledge and theories. He spent all his free time collecting facts about the paranormal—sifting through decades worth of UAP reports and cryptid sightings, saving scraps from newspapers and magazines, cataloguing it all to distinguish hoaxes from the real thing. He was obsessed with evidence, with discovery, with unseen reality. He convinced himself that he didn’t believe in aliens—he was simply accepting the proof of them.
It was a comforting thought, somehow. (One of the few comforts he had.) That he wasn’t stupid or crazy like the others said—no, he was the smart one. He was the one who saw things as they are. He developed a strange sense of superiority over his peers, even as they relentlessly picked on him. Some of his bullies believed in the rumors that one of the anatomy models on the fourth floor was possessed. How absurd, he’d thought. How embarrassingly moronic. They ridiculed him for his interest in what they deemed impossible, and yet they wasted their time on superstition, ruled by fear of a simple ghost story. Ken wasn’t like them. He wasn’t an idiot.
Still, being right didn’t save him from being lonely.
The occult was a nice distraction, most of the time, and he tried his best to let it consume him so there wouldn’t be room for anything else. But loneliness, he discovered, is like the far reaches of space he was constantly looking to. A cold, empty void, endlessly expanding. Some days Ken felt like it was going to swallow him whole. A black hole gaping in his hollow chest. For all his knowledge, all his certainty, all his desperate arrogance, he would’ve given it up in an instant if there’d been someone—anyone—who wanted to be his friend.
But there was no one. Year after year, class after class, and no one showed him a scrap of kindness. He told himself he didn’t need it. The aliens, when they finally found him, would see a kindred spirit in him. They’d be his first friends. He even convinced himself, for a time, that he was an alien, and his real family would be coming back to get him soon. Once, he waited on the roof of Nagi Hospital for an entire day. And at the end of it (hungry, tired, arms aching from holding up his radio, neck strained from peering at the sky) he decided they must have had some trouble with their spaceship. That was all.
Because as much as he insisted that belief had nothing to do with it, he knew, deep down, that it was belief. A belief so fierce that he willed it into fact then shaped his whole reality around it. It was the only thing that kept him going, some days.
Until, suddenly, she was there.
Like a meteor, impossibly bright, blazing before his eyes, burning up his sky—and gone just as he blinked.
He’d sat there for a moment, dazed. Had she … defended him? No one had ever done that before. No one had ever willingly entered his space. She’d even flipped through his magazine—just for a second, but maybe it was enough.
He ran.
It was his chance, maybe his only chance, to finally have some who understood. He babbled insanely at her, practically screaming in his desperation—and when she screamed back, shutting him down, brash and brutal, cold disappointment leached through his whole body. She was just like the others.
But no … wait … she was actually apologizing—and then … ghosts? He had to laugh. Maybe she wasn’t cruel like the others, but she was just as stupid. If she was going to mock the reality he’d centered himself on, he’d mock her right back. He’d take her crazy bet. He’d stand up for the truth that only he knew—and prove it to her, if he could.
And then, after everything—after the curse and the clones and the cosmos that she’d held inside her hands—she became the fact he believed in; the truth he bent his world around. He’d witnessed her shatter the world like a mirror in her wake, radiating power and beauty beyond anything he’d encountered in his extensive study of the universe. She was a universe all on her own, more alien than the creatures that attacked them—and yet she was so deeply human. Bloodied and bruised just like him. Angry. Scared. Stubborn. Good.
He didn’t even feel the triumph of his proof that he’d been right all along—in an instant, that didn’t matter. His orbit shifted, and she was his new center. He molded himself around her impossible duality (godlike but grounded; rough but gentle; fierce but kind). The focal point of his new reality was the simple infinity of Momo Ayase, and the plain fact that somehow, miraculously, she cared about him.
It was a fact. He was sure of that. She’d left behind clues—evidence he could collect and stow away just like he did with those magazine scraps. The way she freely spilled into his space and pulled him close in hers. The way she insisted on friendship, even when he’d tried to let her out of it. The way she saved him time and again. The way she watched him fail over and over and still never gave up on him. The way she listened to him ramble, asking questions, never bored. Every heart-stopping smile, every lingering touch, every eager call of the name she had given him—all fragments of the glorious, illogical truth that he meant something to her.
Not anymore. Now the truth has been ripped from his fists, and he’s just a stranger with empty hands. An astronaut loose in space, floating among the darkened stars, rib cage busted open to pour out endlessly into the black.
The grief of it sits thickly in his throat. He can hardly breathe. He keeps his eyes fixed on the stars above him, as if they could be his new center, if he stared at them long enough.
His gaze snags on a gap where one of the stickers had fallen off, years ago. Even in the dark, he can still make out the residue left behind by the worn adhesive. The outline of a fallen star. The ghost of a light gone dark.
Her new eyes, cold and hard.
“I better never see you again.”
A sob escapes his throat, and he turns onto his side, curling into himself. He feels just like he used to after an all out, before he’d learned to manage Turbo Granny’s powers. Used up and useless, made of nothing but agony and aching. Like the rivers of his veins have all dried up. Like his bones are splintering into dust. Like his chest has caved in, and his whole body’s about to burst like a dying star.
Clack.
Ken bolts upright, glasses askew, and stares at the window. Moonlight streams through a gap in the curtains, painting a pale stripe on the floor.
“Okaruuun!” a muffled voice calls.
He scrambles to the window and wrenches it open, peering down below at a head of reddish hair. “Jiji?”
“Oh, good! This is your place!” Jiji grins up at him, flashing double peace signs.
Ken blinks. “How did you find me? You’ve never been here before.”
“Well, I’d seen you come to this building before, but I wasn’t sure which unit it was. I was gonna knock on random doors till I found ya, but then I spotted that cute li’l UFO on the window.”
“Huh? Oh.” Ken glances at the window cling. Another old gift from Dad, faded and cracked from years in the sun.
“Sooooo, you gonna let me in or what?”
“Oh!” Ken shakes his head slightly. “R-right. Come on around.”
Jiji lets out a whoop and practically cartwheels out of sight.
Ken retreats from the window, heart pounding. Jiji’s here. Okay. He sucks in a breath, roughly wiping the salty streaks from his face, and glances around his room in a panic. There’s no evidence that he’d just been having a pitiful meltdown, right? Just some crumpled bedsheets and—wait. He flips his pillow over to hide the wet patch from his tears. Does he have time to splash some water on his face? Maybe—
Knock, knock. Tappity-tap. (Muffled mouth sounds.) Du-dum click ta-tap knock CLUNK. (More muffled mouth sounds.)
Damn. Jiji’s fast. Also, what the hell is he doing? Beatboxing?
Apparently that’s exactly what he’s doing, because when Ken opens the door, he mimes a mic drop, complete with an explosion sound.
“O-ka-ruuuun! How ya doin’, buddy?”
“Um.” Ken swallows. “I’ve been better.”
“Thought so. That’s why I brought a toooon of candy.” Jiji bounces up and down, making the sweets rattle around inside his backpack. “And I brought my Switch too, so we can totally play Smash Bros if you want!”
Ken stands there stupidly, his brain struggling to keep up with it all. Jiji’s here, with candy and video games, in the middle of this empty, starless stretch of space? How can he be smiling like that? How can he be the same old Jiji when Miss Ayase isn’t Miss Ayase anymore, and Ken isn’t Ken, and the truth that once defined the edges of his whole universe has been erased like it was never there?
“Okarun?” Jiji prompts. “Can I come in?”
Ken startles into motion, mumbling apologies while he steps back to let Jiji in.
“Nice place!” Jiji says, gazing around the apartment. “It’s cozy.”
Cozy is the last word Ken would use to describe it. Dad keeps the place immaculate, so Ken contains his clutter to his bedroom, trying his best to be a ghost in the home they’d shared alone for over a decade. Dad never scolded him when he did leave a mess, but it always makes Ken feel guilty, seeing how Dad had cleaned up after him without a word. His magazines, waiting in a perfect stack by his bedroom door whenever he left them spread across the coffee table. His shoes, lined up neatly next to Dad’s whenever he kicked them off too carelessly. (He’s learned now, though. He hasn’t made those mistakes in years.)
Jiji takes his own shoes off now, placing them beside Ken’s. Dad’s shoes have been absent for nearly a week now.
“You said your dad’s away on business, right?” Jiji asks.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. He’s in Korea.”
“So you’ve been here all by yourself?”
“I—I was staying with Mr. Manjiro at a shrine for a few days. He was training me there until Miss Aya—” Ken swallows. “Until Miss Seiko got back.”
“Niiice!” Jiji grins. “I bet your chi is super strong now!”
Ken’s gaze flickers to the floor. “Not really.”
Jiji sets his backpack on the kitchen table, opening the flap. “Have you eaten?”
“Um …” Ken glances at the clock on the living room wall. It’s past nine. His stomach rumbles, giving him away.
“Knew it. But no sweat. I brought leftovers.” Jiji lifts a glass container from his backpack. “Mr. Manjiro made oyakodon. It’s really good!”
Ken takes the offered container, slightly stunned. “You … brought this for me?”
“Yessiree!”
“Jiji, that’s …” He looks down at the container. “That’s really nice. Thank you.”
“Well, when you turned down Miss Seiko’s invite to stay for dinner, I figured … you probably wouldn’t eat when you got home. Not after …” Jiji trails off with a sigh. “Momo was pretty harsh with you, man. I’m sorry.”
Just hearing her name makes him ache. He turns around, trying to keep his voice even while he busies himself reheating the food. “It was nothing. I’ve heard way worse.”
“Yeah, but … not from her.”
Ken doesn’t answer. He watches his dinner slowly revolve inside the microwave. Behind him, Jiji is uncharacteristically quiet.
“She wasn’t wrong, anyway,” Ken says finally.
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean …” Ken fishes through a drawer for chopsticks, still not looking at Jiji. “Why would she care about … someone like me?”
It’s the same question he’d asked himself so many times in the beginning. But every time he tried to voice it, she’d brushed it aside. As if the answer was obvious. As if her caring about him was a given, somehow.
(Not anymore.)
“Dude,” Jiji says. “You’re not serious.”
The microwave dings. Ken retrieves his dinner.
“Do you, um, want anything?” he asks quickly. “I can make tea. Or—”
“Okarun.” Jiji’s voice sounds unexpectedly hurt. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Ken looks down at the bowl of oyakodon, warm in his hands. The meal his friend had brought him late at night, because he was worried Ken hadn’t eaten. Because while Ken was moping in his room, thinking only of himself, Jiji was thinking of him. Jiji, who’d also lost a friend today. Who loved Miss Ayase just like he did.
And Miss Ayase … how had she felt, alone in her room, while strangers ate a meal without her in her house? When a boy she didn’t know had stood in front of her and insisted they were friends? Arguing about aliens, of all things. He was so stupid. So selfish. She’d been angry about that the first time they met—why would the second time be different?
If he were her, he’d hate him too.
Ken sinks down at the table, still gazing at his bowl.
“Sorry,” he murmurs.
“You know Momo didn’t really mean that, right?” Jiji presses.
Ken pokes at his food. “She sounded like she meant it.”
“She didn’t know what she was saying.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Dude.” Jiji sounds almost exasperated now. “This is Momo we’re talkin’ about.”
Finally, Ken looks up. “But she doesn’t remember!” His voice is too loud. He doesn’t care. “She doesn’t know me anymore! So it just … makes sense.” He pauses, drawing into himself again. “It makes more sense now than it ever did before, honestly.”
It was never logical, the way Miss Ayase cared about him. It didn’t make sense that first day, when she came to his rescue and changed his life. And it didn’t make sense any day after that, when she’d kept choosing him again and again.
But eventually, he just accepted it. Once the fabric of his universe had been reshaped, he didn’t even have a choice. All those lonely years of stubborn belief in aliens almost felt like practice for it. So he could have faith in a truth that was even more impossible. Even more important.
But now, all of that is gone.
He’s dangerously close to crying again. Hastily, he takes a bite, filling his mouth so he can’t say any other stupid, pitiful thing.
“Wh—what does that mean?” Jiji asks. “Like, it didn’t make sense for her to be your friend?”
“Something like that,” he mumbles.
“But—wha—of course it did!”
“Why?”
“Because—you … you’re Okarun.”
He says it like that explains everything. Like Ken’s supposed to know exactly what it means.
Jiji sighs. “Look, man, this isn’t easy for any of us. Least of all for Momo. But we’re gonna get through it, okay? We always do.”
Ken forces himself to swallow another mouthful. “But what does that even mean, to get through it? This isn’t like a battle, where we just have to survive. Everything’s … different, now.”
“I know,” Jiji says patiently. “It’ll be like with Evil Eye. We just have to learn how to make it work. Figure out a new normal.”
Ken’s chest tightens, the black void contracting around his ribs. “You don’t think she’ll remember?”
Jiji’s quiet for a moment. “I hope so. But even if not, we gotta be there for her. She needs us.”
“She said she never wants to see us again.”
“She was upset. She’ll come around.”
“What if she doesn’t?”
“She will.”
“How can you be sure?”
Jiji frowns. “What’s up with you? It … doesn’t seem like you, to give up on Momo like that.”
Ken flinches. He feels like he’s been stung with something small and sharp, biting through the black.
Is that what he’s doing? Has he become so pitifully self-absorbed that he’s betraying Miss Ayase when she needs him most?
“I’m not,” he says firmly. “I’d never give up on her.”
“Okay. Then just … have a little faith. You gotta believe in her.”
Believe in her. The thing he was made (remade; reshaped) to do. Ken lets out a slow breath.
“I do. Sorry, I’m just …” He hangs his head. “I’m being really selfish.”
“No, you’re not,” Jiji says easily. “You’re just hurt. It’s okay to feel hurt, you know. This sucks.”
Ken stares at his barely touched oyakodon, going cold on the table. Isn’t Jiji hurting too? But he’s here, comforting cowardly, self-centered Ken, who crawled away with his tail between his legs after a single five-minute conversation. Who spent all night digging into his wounds instead of figuring out how to help.
Jiji isn’t like that. He’d probably sat next to Miss Ayase on the plane ride home, cracking jokes to make her feel better. And now he was trying to make Ken feel better. What had Ken ever done to deserve that? Sometimes, Jiji’s friendship feels just as impossible as Miss Ayase’s.
“Sorry,” he murmurs again. “I don’t mean to be … like this. It’s just …” He cups his free hand over his glasses. “I’m not like you.”
Jiji tilts his head. “What do you mean?”
“I was never … popular. Or even likeable. I had no friends. Then Miss Ayase came and changed everything. So now that she’s gone, I just …” His voice weakens to barely a whisper. “I feel like I’m gone too. Like I’ve got nothing left at all.”
He dares to look up. Jiji’s watching him, sad and silent.
“She’s not gone,” he says gently. “You’re talkin’ about her like she died.”
Ken hesitates. “It doesn’t … feel like that to you? Even a little?”
“It did, sort of. At first. But I don’t think she’s really any different. I mean, just think about what she’s going through. It’s gotta be scary and confusing as hell.” Jiji huffs out a laugh. “And I mean, isn’t it super Momo to get pissed off when she doesn’t get something? Kinda her default, really.”
Ken tries to smile too, but the corners of his mouth feel too heavy.
Jiji leans forward. “On the plane, she really opened up again. She talked to me like normal. She even laughed. She’s not any different than she used to be. Not really. She just needed a little time.”
“But she already knew you,” Ken points out. “I’m a total stranger.”
“Well, yeah, she doesn’t know you. But you know her. And that counts for something, right? Not like you’re starting from square one.” Jiji smiles brightly. “Trust me. You two will be good friends again in no time! I promise. Pinky swear.”
He shoves his pinky in Ken’s face, wiggling it under his nose until Ken finally surrenders and hooks his own around it.
“The swear is sealed,” Jiji says solemnly.
Despite it all, Ken finally cracks a smile. “You know, you don’t really have any control over that.”
“Don’t underestimate the magic of pinky swears,” Jiji says seriously. “It doesn’t matter who’s doing the swearing. It’s bound to come true.”
“Are you sure you’re not mixing it up with, like, shooting stars? Or birthday candles?”
“Doesn’t matter! The point is that it’s gonna happen.” He points at Ken’s abandoned dinner. “Now eat up! You’ll need the energy for when I kick your ass in Smash. Hehe.”
Ken obediently takes another bite. “You know, you’re not actually that good at Smash.”
Jiji gasps dramatically. “Have you lost your memory too? You must have. Or else you’d never say something so wrong. But it’s okay. I’ll jog your memory.”
“If you say so.”
Ken finally finishes his food, washing it down with a bottle of Ramune produced from Jiji’s seemingly bottomless backpack. Somehow, with his stomach filled, he feels lighter. Like the empty hole inside him has shrunk, just a little, so its gravity can’t pull quite as hard. Or maybe it’s just Jiji, silly and sunny like always, glimmering through the dark.
“All riiiight.” Jiji grins. “Prepare to have your memory epically restored by Princess Peach’s incredible hip check! Ha-cha!”
Ken laughs lightly as he rinses out his bowl. “You really gotta stop spamming B-over. It never works out for you.”
“Nuh-uh! It’s the perfect strategy! Ha-cha!”
Jiji bumps him, making him stumble to the side.
(Ken tries very hard not to think about how Miss Ayase used to do the same thing.)
“Ha! Take that! I told you I’d kick your ass,” Jiji says triumphantly. “Two in a row, bay-beeeee!”
They’re about a dozen rounds in, hunched over the tiny Nintendo Switch screen propped up on Ken’s bookshelf, with candy wrappers scattered over the bed. It’s way past Ken’s bed time—he’ll have to be at the newspaper office in just a couple hours—but he doesn’t care.
“Yeah, after a million tries!” Ken shoots back. “Besides, we tied for most of them.”
“What’s that? I can’t hear you over the sound of my epic victory!” Jiji springs to his feet on Ken’s bed, striking a heroic pose, before plopping back down with a grin. “Hey, want a Caplico? Pretty sure I have a couple of the mini ones in here somewhere … hang on …”
Ken watches him rummage through his backpack. In the background, Link steadily applauds Princess Peach on the screen.
“Hey, um, Jiji?” His hand leaves his controller to adjust his glasses. “Thanks for coming over. I really … needed this.”
“Yeah. I thought you might.”
“It was really nice of you to think of me, when so much was going on. You didn’t have to do that.”
Jiji squints down at the contents of his backpack. “’Course I did. You’re my bud.”
Ken swallows. “You’re way too nice to me.”
Jiji looks up. “Why do you keep sayin’ stuff like that?”
“I just … wish I could be a better friend for you. Like you are for me.”
“Dude, what are you talkin’ about?” Jiji finally abandons his search, dropping his backpack to the floor. “You’re one the best friends I’ve ever had.”
“Really?” Ken asks, surprised. “You’ve got a million friends. Everyone loves you.”
“I mean, yeah, I’ve always had a pretty easy time making friends. But, like, school friends. Weekend buddies. Not Okarun friends.”
Ken frowns. “What does that mean?”
“I mean, like, a ride-or-die friend. You know? Someone you can count on, no matter what.”
Ken’s gaze flickers down. “I don’t think I’m like that.”
“Yes, you are!” Jiji says. “When I was first possessed by Evil Eye, and I didn’t know how to control myself, you stuck by me. I’ll never forget that.”
“Everyone stuck by you. Not just me.”
“Yeah, but you were always reassuring me. Helping me out. And you never got mad at me when I messed up. Except … except that one time … with Momo …”
Something urgent and painful shoots through Ken at the memory. Evil Eye’s hands on Miss Ayase’s throat. The cursed house constricting around them. His own fists, banging on its walls. His chest bursting with the desperate need to put himself between them, to offer up his blood and bones to keep her safe and sound.
“I still think about that, sometimes,” Jiji says quietly. “I felt so awful for what I did. And you were so angry. I’d never seen you like that.”
“I wasn’t mad at you,” Ken says quickly. “I was mad at Evil Eye. For hurting Miss Ayase. For hurting you. I was mad at myself for not being able to stop him.”
“I know. But at the time I was … scared. I thought you didn’t want to be my friend anymore. And that hurt. It hurt as much as knowing that I hurt Momo.”
“Jiji—”
“That one night, when you showed up, yellin’ about how we couldn’t trust Evil Eye …” Jiji closes his eyes. “…my heart was totally breaking. Because I knew, just like everyone else, how dangerous he was. But no one else knew what I knew. What happened to him. Why he deserved another chance. And then … you gave us a way.”
Jiji’s eyes open, locking with Ken’s. Grateful. Sincere. Ken’s chest feels heavy and full.
“You don’t know what that means to me,” Jiji goes on. “That even though you didn’t understand, you went out of your way to find a solution. You worked so hard. You risked your life. You protected him. Just because it was important to me. I just …” Jiji shakes his head, sighing. “You’re a different kind of friend, Okarun. So I wish you’d stop talkin’ like you’re not. I know it, and Momo knew it, and she’ll know it again. And if you don’t believe that, you’ll just have to take my word for it. ’Kay?”
Ken sits there, speechless, his heart feeling too big for his chest. It was only a handful of months ago that he’d had no friends at all. But when Miss Ayase drew him into her orbit, others were there already. Now, in all of his circling, his aimless wandering, he’s never alone anymore. Even when so much else is lost, her gravity remains—and it pulls him next to Jiji, who is, Ken’s certain, one of the kindest people in the entire world. A friend he couldn’t have earned if he tried.
“Takakura.”
Ken jumps with a yelp. A pair of blazing purple eyes bores into his, leaning close to his face.
“I’m going to murder you,” Evil Eye growls.
“What, now?” Ken says, panicked. “It’s not even Tuesday!”
“It’s never Tuesday!” Evil Eye roars. “I want to murder! I want to murder now!”
Frantically, Ken looks around his room for something to defend himself. Not that it would help. Without Turbo Granny’s powers, he’s toast.
“Hang on, hang on,” he tries. “This wasn’t the deal! And where did Jiji go? How did you even—”
Evil Eye grabs him by the collar, glowering. “No more talking. It’s time to murder!”
“Wait!” Ken squeaks. Then Jiji reappears, grinning, and releases his grip.
“Juuust kidding! That was Evil Eye’s idea. I think he wanted to cheer you up.”
Ken lets out a huff, straightening his shirt. “Weird way of cheering someone up.”
“Pfft. Come on! Your face was priceless.”
“Whatever,” Ken grumbles. But then Jiji’s laughing, loud and free, and he can’t help but join in.
“Dude. Classic Evil Eye, right?” Jiji wipes at his eyes, still chuckling.
“Yeah.” Ken grips his glasses. “I feel bad, though. I can’t fight him anymore.”
Jiji nods. “I know. And so does Evil Eye. I explained it to him.”
“And he’s … okay with it?” Ken asks cautiously.
“Nah. He still wants to fight.”
“But—” Ken splutters. “But if I fight him, I’ll die for sure!”
“Don’t worry. I’ve got it worked out.”
“How? If I don’t keep my promise, then he’ll be free from his, and he’ll kill whoever he wants.”
“Then you’ll just have to keep your promise.” Jiji grins and taps on the Switch screen. “He agreed that you could fight him on Smash Bros until you get your powers back.”
Ken blinks. “I’m not getting my powers back.”
“I tried to explain that too, but he doesn’t seem to get it.” Jiji shrugs. “Doesn’t really matter. We’ve got a plan for now. He loves Smash. This’ll keep him entertained for sure.”
“Okay …” Ken says doubtfully.
“You better practice, though, ’cause he’s actually really good. He’s even better than me.”
“Well, that’s not saying much.”
“Hey! I’m the reigning victor here!” Jiji points to the screen, where Link is still applauding Princess Peach. “Let’s go again right now. Mr. Manjiro can be your master for chi training, and I’ll be your master for Smash Bros training.”
“Actually …” Ken glances at the clock on top of his shelf. “I better get a little sleep. I have to be at work by two.”
“Oh, shit! I totally forgot. I’m sorryyy!” Jiji clasps his hands. “I didn’t mean to keep you up! I’ll get going.”
“No, no!” Ken says hastily. “I don’t want you to have to walk all the way home this late. You can just stay here for the night.”
“Really? Sweeeeeet! I’ll let my folks know.” Jiji briefly crushes Ken into a hug, jostling his glasses, and then hops off the bed.
While Jiji’s in the bathroom, Ken hauls in the spare futon they keep in the closet for guests. It takes up most of the space in his tiny room, and he almost trips trying to edge around it to trade places with Jiji and brush his teeth.
When Ken gets back, Jiji’s lying on his back on the futon, moving his arms and legs like he’s making a snow angel. “Thanks, man! This is super comfy.”
“No problem.” Ken switches off the light, and Jiji gasps.
“No way! Glow-in-the-dark stars? That’s so cool.”
“Thanks.” Ken stows his glasses on the shelf. “Good night, Jiji.”
“Night.”
Ken crawls beneath his blankets. Above him, the stars look almost real, hazy edged without his glasses. His thoughts turn automatically back to Miss Ayase. But he doesn’t have the energy for aching anymore, so he rolls onto his side, closing his eyes.
For a while, it’s quiet. Jiji’s breathing slows, and Ken thinks maybe he’s fallen asleep. But then his voice drifts up from the dark.
“Okarun, can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer.”
“Sure.”
A pause. “How do you feel about Momo?”
Ken’s chest goes tight again. It’s strange, how after knowing each other so long, Jiji is more cautious than he was when they first met. Before, he asked, directly, if Ken loved her. Now he’s asking around it, giving him space to avoid the real answer, if he wants to. (Because Jiji already knows. He has to know.)
Ken thinks about just saying it straight, but he can’t bring himself to. So he matches Jiji’s caution, feeling it out.
“She’s … special to me,” he says softly.
It’s the same thing he said then, the first time Jiji asked. But this time, Jiji doesn’t try to one-up him. He doesn’t let it sit, either.
“How?”
Ken rolls onto his back again to stare up at the stars. “She … she saved me. When I had no one. When I was no one.”
“You were always someone.”
“Well, yeah, technically. But it’s like she made me … more of a person, sort of. Like, somebody who gets to feel things, and share things, and just … be. Someone who gets to be a part of something. I didn’t understand any of that before her. She was my first friend. And when I tried to slip away again, she wouldn’t let me. It’s like she … cracked me open. And showed me what the sun looks like.”
(She’s the sun. She’s every single star at once.)
“Is that what you meant?” Jiji asks. “About how, if she’s gone, you feel gone too?”
“Yeah. She—she inspires me to try harder. To be better. Most of what I do, I do because of her. So without her I feel pretty … lost.”
“She’s your reason,” Jiji says simply, and it sounds like he gets it. Like he understands exactly what that means.
“Yes,” Ken whispers. And then, though it’s obvious, he says it anyway: “I love her.”
Jiji doesn’t answer for a long time.
“Me too,” he whispers back.
“I know.”
Another pause. “Did you ever tell her?”
“I … I did.”
“When?”
He can still remember the desperate grip of his fingers around her wrist. Her wide eyes, shining up at him. She was an anchor, keeping him tethered, drawing his heart to his throat and his words from his heart while the rest of him tried to float away.
“Danmara,” he says quietly. “When the class rep was helping us escape from the cursed trunk. I was … I was getting pulled away, but Miss Ayase wasn’t, and I was holding onto her hand, and I just … couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her. So I just … said it.”
Jiji’s voice is soft and steady in the dark. “And what did she say?”
“She, um … she didn’t like how I said it, I think. She told me to tell her again when we got out, but properly. She made me swear.”
“So did you confess again?”
“I tried. But … she didn’t want me to. She told me to wait till she was normal again. And then … well …”
Ken’s eyes burn, blurring the stars again. He swallows down the lump in his throat.
“Maybe she didn’t really want me to say it after all,” he says, voice unsteady. “Maybe that’s why she kept telling me to wait.”
“No. She wanted it. She …” Jiji sighs. “She loved you, Okarun.”
The stars are inside him now, suspended behind his ribs. Ken’s breath crystallizes in his lungs like frost. “You don’t … know that.”
“I do know it,” Jiji says. “I saw how she looked at you. How her face would light up when you walked into the room. How she always … wanted to be in your space. Touching you. Teasing you. Even how she said your name. Y’know, ‘Ooo-ka-ruuun!’ Like it was her favorite word to say.”
All of Ken’s collected evidence, laid out before him—by Jiji, this time. So he hadn’t just been seeing it. It was real. It was fact. He almost feels foolishly happy, but Jiji’s breaths in the dark sit in his chest like icy stones.
“She … did all that for you too,” he offers.
“It wasn’t the same,” Jiji says, and it’s true. They both know it.
“I’m sorry,” Ken whispers, and he means it. They both know it.
When Jiji speaks again, his voice wavers, just a little. “D-don’t be. I love Momo, but … I love you too, Okarun. In different ways, sure. But it’s also the same, in the ways that matter most, right? I really care about both of you. I … want you to be happy.”
“I want that for you too,” Ken says earnestly. “If anyone in the whole world deserves to be happy, Jiji, it’s you. You have the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Thanks,” Jiji says thickly. “But it doesn’t really matter what I want, does it? It only matters what Momo wants. And … she chose you.”
The words drift down on Ken like snow.
“She …” He shakes his head. “Not really.”
“Really.”
Ken’s eyes find the dark patch on his ceiling—the vacant spot of the fallen star—and a fresh ache builds beneath his ribs.
“She might … choose differently, this time,” he says.
A beat of silence. “Maybe.” Then Jiji’s voice goes so soft that Ken almost can’t hear it over the gentle whir of the aircon. “It wouldn’t feel right, though.”
Ken doesn’t know what to say. He squeezes his eyes shut against the hazy stars and aches.
“Jiji,” he says again, “I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t need to be sorry.”
“No, I mean, I’m sorry I’ve been so … self-centered. I was so focused on how much it hurt for me to lose Miss Ayase that I didn’t think about how you lost her too.”
“We haven’t lost her.” Jiji’s voice is firm again. “She’s still here. The same Momo. She’s just … missing some information.”
“A lot of information.”
“Yeah. But information can be restored. We have to keep trying.”
Ken fixes his eyes on the fallen star again. “For her.”
“For her. We can’t give up. ’Cause if she remembers somehow and finds out we did, she’ll be really pissed.”
Ken laughs weakly. “Yeah, she would be. She’d probably conk us on the head for being stupid.”
“Yep. So tomorrow, when we see her again, we have to be her friends. Even if she’s still mad as hell.”
Ken nods. “She deserves to know she’s … not alone.”
“Exactly.” Jiji’s blankets rustle. “And neither are you. You know that, right?”
“I know.” Ken takes in a breath. “Thanks, Jiji.”
“Of course. And Okarun?”
“What?”
“Evil Eye says you’re weak and he’s going to butcher you in Smash Bros.”
Ken snorts. “Tell him to save it for Tuesday.”
“Roger that.” He can hear Jiji’s grin in his voice. “Night, Okarun.”
“Night, Jiji.”
Long after Jiji’s breaths go deep and slow, Ken lies awake, staring up at the stars on his ceiling. He pictures Miss Ayase’s face, cold and harsh, but it doesn’t hurt as much this time. With her, there’s always something underneath the anger—and he can see it now, when he looks back. Confusion. Hurt. Fear. Even grief. Just like his. Like she could feel that she’d lost something, even without remembering what it was.
The ice in Ken’s chest seems to thaw out, the empty void shrinking away inside him. Miss Ayase was always reaching out to him. Even now, he can almost sense her spectral hands squeezing gently around his chest. Feel the ghost of her fingers clasping his. Hear the echo of her voice calling out his name. She had reached and reached and reached, and all he ever had to do was hold on.
But it’s his turn to reach now. And he’ll keep reaching out to her no matter what. Even if she think he’s a liar. Even if she hates him. He’ll reach for her the way she’s always reached for him, since that very first day, until she’s finally ready to accept it. So she’ll never have to be alone.
Ken doesn’t sleep. When it’s time to get up for work, he carefully creeps around Jiji’s futon and slips out the door into the dark. And as he pedals through the streets with his stacks of newspaper, shivering against the cold, he imagines his next meeting with Miss Ayase. Would she walk with him to school today, like she always did? He’d have to give her space, at first. Be extra polite. He was only a stranger, after all. But maybe she’d be willing to listen this time. He’d make sure to look her in the eyes, no matter how hard it was. She hated when he avoided eye contact—she was always getting on him about it. But if he looked her in the eyes, maybe she’d see that he was telling the truth. Maybe she’d see that she could trust him.
By the time Ken gets home from his shift, his late night is taking its toll, and he nearly trips over Jiji before he collapses back into bed. When his alarm goes off a few hours later, Jiji’s already gone. His futon is neatly rolled up, and he’s left a scribbled note on top, complete with poorly drawn approximations of kaomojis. Ken tugs his curtains open to let the light in and then squints down at it, bleary eyed.
Okarun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for letting me stay over! Had to sneak out early to grab a uniform from my place and meet up with the soccer team before school. I’m subbing again later, hooh hooh! ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Hope ya don’t mind that I snagged a couple of protein bars from the kitchen. Playing soccer makes me real hungry (๑ᵔ⤙ᵔ๑)
If Momo comes to school today, I hope things go well on the walk over ദ്ദി(˃ ᵕ ˂ ദ്ദി)
See ya soon! Love ya, man!
—Jiji
P.S. Evil Eye says you’re a weakling and he dreams about how fun it will be to murder you. So, he loves ya too, pretty much ( •̀ω •́ )
Ken heaves the futon back into the closet and gets dressed, fingers clumsy on the buttons of his uniform. Then he sinks onto the edge of his bed, forcing himself to take a few deep breaths.
He already knows what he’s going to say when he sees her. He planned it out during his route. But cold fear still seizes in his chest.
His head tips backwards to look at the stars, pale and lifeless in the morning light. He finds the missing one. Traces its outline with his eyes.
There’s a bottle of glow-in-the-dark paint in his desk, he’s pretty sure, buried somewhere in the bottom drawer. He hasn’t used it in years, since that school project about the Milky Way, but there has to be some left. It has to still work.
Ken kneels beside the drawer, rummaging through a jumble of markers and pencils till he finds the bottle. He squeezes some onto a scrap of folded paper, grabs a crusty paintbrush, and drags his desk chair beneath the site of the fallen star. Carefully, he fills in the outline, building up the layers of paint between the faded lines. Then he hops off the chair and steps back.
It won’t glow just yet, he knows. It will take some time to absorb the light.
But that’s okay. It’ll shine when it’s ready.
Ken shuts the door behind him and steps out to meet the sun.