Chapter Text
The heat clings.
It pressed against the back of my neck, soaked into the fabric of my uniform. The air conditioning in the hallway was a blessing, but I left it behind three flights of stairs ago. Now, there is only the humidity of a Japanese July, heavy with the scent of dust and distant asphalt.
I push the heavy metal door open. The hinges scream, a rusted, high-pitched complaint that cuts through the drowsy afternoon silence.
Light floods in.
For a second, the world dissolves into pure white exposure. I squint, raising a hand to shield my eyes, waiting for my vision to adjust. Slowly, the white recedes, bleeding color back into reality. The grey concrete floor, the rusted chain-link fence, and above it all, that overwhelming, tyrannical blue.
The sky is too wide. It stretches out forever, arrogant and impossible, swallowing the city whole.
I let the door close behind me. It clicks shut with a finality that separates me from the rest of the school. Down there, in the classrooms, the remedial classes are starting. The drone of a teacher’s voice, the scratch of chalk, the suffocating smell of graphite and boredom.
I am not there. I am here.
“Skip.” I whisper the word, tasting the rebellion on my tongue. It tastes like lemon candy and guilt.
Walking to the edge of the roof, I lean against the railing. The metal is hot, burning against my palms, but I don’t pull away. The pain grounds me. It proves I exist. Down below, the students look like ants, moving in predictable patterns. They follow the lines drawn for them—sidewalks, crosswalks, the unspoken rules of society.
I pull my smartphone from my pocket. The screen is a black mirror, reflecting my own face for a split second before I unlock it.
No new notifications.
My thumb hovers over the camera icon. This is a ritual. I fix my hair, adjusting the bangs that frame my face. I tilt my head slightly, finding the angle where the jawline looks sharpest, where the shadows hide the fatigue under my eyes.
Click.
I check the result. The girl on the screen smiles, a practiced, photogenic curve of lips. She looks confident. She looks like an artist, like someone who understands the world.
She is a liar.
I delete the photo.
“The light is bad.” I mutter, blaming the sun. “It’s too harsh. It flattens everything.”
I look up again, trying to see the sky not as a phenomenon of atmosphere, but as a composition. If I were to paint this… how would I do it? Cerulean Blue for the base? No, it’s deeper than that. Cobalt, mixed with a touch of Titanium White near the horizon, fading into something darker, almost violet, at the zenith.
But something bothers me.
I stare at the clouds drifting lazily from the west. They are massive, towering cumulonimbus formations, the kind that promise a summer storm later in the evening. They look majestic.
And yet, they look fake.
I squint harder. The edges of the clouds… they are too sharp. Nature is full of gradients, of soft transitions where mist meets air. But those clouds look cut out. They look like distinct shapes pasted onto a blue canvas.
“Weird.” I breathe out.
“Right? It’s super lazy work.”
The voice comes from nowhere.
I jump, my heart hammering against my ribs. I spin around, clutching my phone like a weapon.
I thought I was alone. I checked the roof. It was empty. I was sure of it.
But there, sitting on top of the electrical housing unit—a concrete block rising from the center of the roof—is a girl.
She shouldn’t be there. The spot is high, hard to climb without a ladder, yet she sits there comfortably, legs swinging back and forth, heels kicking the grey concrete in a rhythmic, silent beat.
She is pink. That is the first impression that hits my brain. Not just her clothes, but her aura. A soft, pastel pink that clashes violently with the rusty industrial tones of the rooftop. Her hair is tied up in a side ponytail with a ribbon that defies gravity, bobbing with her movements. Her uniform is the standard Kamiyama High blazer, but she wears it differently—looser, messier, decorated with accessories that surely violate the school dress code.
I don’t know her name. I’ve seen her in the hallways, maybe? A ghost in the periphery of my vision.
“You…” I start, my voice cracking slightly. I clear my throat, trying to regain the composure of the “cool senior”. “How long have you been there?”
The girl stops kicking her legs. She turns to look at me.
“Since the beginning.” she says. Her voice is light and airy. “Or maybe I just spawned in when you opened the door. Who knows?”
“Spawned…?” I frown. “What are you talking about?”
She ignores my question, pointing a slender finger toward the sky. Towards the clouds I was just analyzing.
“Look at that one.” she says, tracing the outline of a massive cloud bank. “See the aliasing? The jagged edges? It’s pixelated.”
I look. I follow her finger.
For a moment, just a terrifying heartbeat of a moment, I see it.
The cloud isn’t vapor. It isn’t water droplets suspended in air. It is a collection of squares. A jagged, staircase line where the white meets the blue. A graphical error. A glitch in the rendering of the world.
I blink, rubbing my eyes. When I look again, it’s just a cloud. Fluffy. Soft. Normal.
“It’s just a cloud.” I say, though my voice lacks conviction. “It’s the heat haze. It distorts the light.”
“Heh~” The girl giggles. It’s a strange sound, like glass beads falling on a hardwood floor. “You’re a realist, huh? Or maybe you just have the high-resolution texture pack installed in your visual cortex. Lucky you.”
She hops down, walking toward me. She invades my personal space, leaning against the railing next to me. She smells like strawberries and… antiseptic? Something sweet, masking something sterile.
“I’m Mizuki.” she announces, offering no surname. “And you are Shinonome Ena. The artist.”
I stiffen. “You know me?”
“I watch you.” she says, staring out at the city. “You come here to frame the world. You hold up your hands like this.” She mimics the gesture of making a frame with her thumbs and forefingers. “You try to cut the world into a rectangle that makes sense. Does it work?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” I say defensively. I want to leave. This girl makes the air feel thin. Being near her feels like standing next to a high-voltage pylon. The hair on my arms stands up.
“The world is messy.” Mizuki continues, her tone shifting from playful to something strangely bored. “It’s full of noise. Useless data. People talking about things that don’t matter. Tests. Grades. The future. It’s all just background noise, generated procedurally to make you think there’s depth.”
She turns to me, resting her chin on her hand. Her eyes are too clear. They reflect me, but I look distorted in her pupils.
“But the sky…” She sighs. “The sky is the ceiling. Did you know? If you stack enough chairs, you could probably touch it. And if you poke it hard enough, it might tear.”
“You’re weird.” I say. It’s the only defense I have. “Are you ‘Denpa’? Is that it? Are you trying to be mysterious?”
Mizuki laughs again. “Denpa? That’s an old word. Vintage. I like it.” She leans closer, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “But really, Ena. Look at the clouds again. Don’t look with your eyes. Look with your intent. The God who painted this sky… he got lazy today. He used the spray-paint tool and forgot to blend the layers.”
I look. I don’t want to, but I look.
The sky throbs. The blue pulses, like a heartbeat.
“It looks… flat.” I admit, the words slipping out before I can stop them. “Like a backdrop in a play.”
“Exactly!” Mizuki claps her hands. “A backdrop! A matte painting! And behind it? Nothing. Just wires and black void and maybe a few dead pixels.”
She pushes off the railing, spinning around in a circle, her skirt flaring out.
“It’s all fake!” she shouts to the empty rooftop. “The heat! The noise! The exams! It’s all just a cutscene we can’t skip!”
I stare at her. She looks insane. She looks beautiful.
In a world of grey concrete and dull uniforms, she is a splash of vivid, impossible color. She is the only thing on this roof that feels… vibrant.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
Mizuki stops spinning. She looks at me, her expression unreadable. For a second, the playfulness vanishes, replaced by a profound, ancient sadness. It’s a look that doesn’t belong on the face of a high school girl.
“Because you notice the frame.” she says softly. “Most people just watch the movie. You… you see the edges of the screen. You see the brushstrokes. That makes you dangerous, Ena. And it makes you lonely.”
The wind picks up. It howls through the fence, carrying the sound of a distant siren.
My phone buzzes in my hand.
The vibration breaks the spell. I look down. The screen lights up.
From: Akito
Subject: (No Subject)
Message: Mom is asking if you’re coming home for dinner. Don’t ignore her.
Reality crashes back in. Akito. Mom. Dinner. The crushing weight of expectation. The mediocre drawings waiting on my desk. The art school entrance exams looming like a guillotine.
I sigh, my thumb hovering over the reply button. I type out a quick, irritated response. I’ll be there. Stop nagging.
“My brother.” I say, looking up. “He’s such a pain. He thinks just because—”
The sentence dies in my throat.
The roof is empty.
“Mizuki?”
I blink. The white afterimage of the sun burns in my vision, creating dancing spots of color where she used to be.
“She’s fast.” I mutter, rubbing my temples.
I feel a wave of dizziness. The world tilts slightly to the left.
I look up at the sky one last time. The blue is blinding. The massive cumulonimbus clouds drift lazily, their edges soft and blurring into the haze.
“I need water.” I whisper. My throat is parched. “Definitely heatstroke.”
I turn and walk toward the door. My legs feel heavy, like I’m wading through syrup. I push the heavy metal handle. It gives with a groan.
I step into the stairwell. The air is slightly cooler here, smelling of concrete and dust.
As the door clicks shut behind me, cutting off the blinding sun and the screaming cicadas, I let out a long breath.
That girl… Mizuki. She was weird.
But in this heat, everything feels a little weird.
“Just get a drink.” I tell myself, starting down the stairs. “Get a drink, go to class, draw.”
I descend into the shadows of the school, leaving the burning sky behind.