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It was no longer yesterday, but the next day. In her 2nd year of middle school, with her DSC card hidden under her student card. The braid long-made sits matted over her shoulder, and she adjusts the old ribbon like the rest of her clothes.
Her dorm room, the one in the high school dormitory next to ◯◯◯, remained just as cold as the outside—as she went towards the school building. Because today was the 2nd day of the 2nd week of the 2nd year of middle school. Which meant she had class today, like yesterday.
It was easy, like the other days, when she went to her mailbox to find no letters. It was easy, like yesterday, to open the door to the room of her assigned homeroom.
The silence that echoed as she entered was when she began to miss her.
A feeling that was slow to wretch; with turned heads, and gossip that lulled. Twisting; conniving; haunting. Of voices all too familiar—melting together to form hers in overlapped whispers that hemmed her waterline.
A hand, then, brushes through her hair, and her heart jumps— as if she could turn around and see-
She excused herself.
Daily life, her new daily life, burned its nails into her with an awful restlessness. Noises from scattered walks, of classmates and teachers that walked all over her mind like any other day as if it were all just…
As if all that Yui’s life was just…nothing at all.
Kyoko stares into the mirror, and swollen eyes stare back.
She wipes a finger underneath, and feels the slope of a plush rise and fall as she does so. She does not feel the wells of fresh tears that dripped, nor the scratch of eyelids made raw. And for a moment her curiosity spurs—what would Onēsama do, if she saw her now?
She would…press her palm onto her forehead—it burns. Not of fever, but of something foreign. She does it again, and again, before begrudgingly taking off her glove.
Again, it is foreign. And she’s frustrated. Because Yui-onēsama isn’t here anymore to tell her what to do next. To tell her how to move on to the next day and leave behind the rest. To leave her behind, as if a part of her also didn’t die with her too that very day.
And what would Yui-onēsama do—if she watched her commit suicide—to kill the rest of it?
…Slap her, probably.
“This is stupid.”
‘An ugly thought,’ Yui might tell her. ‘That came from your uncombed hair.’
“Brush it, Kirigiri-chan.”
She turns around in a fright, and falls into the sink.
A girl is standing in front of the entryway, with a comb in hand. Someone from her class, she concludes—someone she’s never spoken to. Her face was slow to relax, with an immediate rush to Kyoko’s side to lift her back up.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“I suspected as much.” An awkward laugh, and lifts the hair-comb. “May I?”
She lets her.