Archive of Our Own

There’s certain questions you don’t ask, Iroha has learned. 

There’s a lot of different reasons why you don’t ask them, but the fact remains that most of the time you just don’t have to ask them. If she were in a less charitable mood, she might call them stupid questions. If she were talking to Kaguya, she’d definitely call them stupid questions. 

“Are you in love with her?” Mami asks, and the sheer breadth of her daring makes Iroha press the electric diode in her hand against the mechanical facsimile in front of her, hard.

“Are you crazy?” Iroha asks Mami, uncaring of the way she jolts and squirms at the phantom feeling being beamed into her head. She dutifully logs all the information the fishbowl sensor over Mami’s head is collecting. “What in the world could possess you to even ask that?”

“I mean, it’s just!” Mami waves her hands in the air, gesticulating vaguely and lazily at precisely nothing. “I dunno? The vibes?”

“I changed all my plans for her,” Iroha deadpans, checking the sensor to make sure nothing had come loose as a result of Mami’s sudden jolt—hah—and subsequent restlessness. “I reconnected with my estranged mother for her. I picked composing back up for her. I am experimenting on you for the sole purpose of making a body for her.” 

You could hear a pin drop in the ensuing quiet. The only sounds in the room are the roar of an AC unit and the occasional beep from the myriad machines scattered across the room. Mami wilts, shifting against plush faux-leather. Iroha wonders if she’s making one of those faces her mother used to make, all stern eyes and flat lips and furrowed brows.

“…So you d-”

“Of course I love her.”

Mami lets out a breath, sagging back into her seat. “Oh God, okay, that’s a relief. Roka and I were pretty sure you did, but we were afraid you were just gonna like…”

“Oh, God no, don’t be silly,” Iroha scoffs, quickly jotting down some final notes before picking the diode back up. An arc of electricity dances between the prongs at the tip. “I’d never actually tell her.”

“What.”

Iroha stops. Looks up. Sees Mami staring at her, totally askance. 

“I mean, that’s what you were going to say, right?” Iroha cants her head to the side, frowning. Her attention shifts back towards the mechanical hand in front of her. “You were afraid I’d told her and, like, made things awkward?”

The diode in Iroha’s hand sparks against the metal facsimile again. It is only because of the live readings she’s getting from the neuroreceptors on Mami’s head that she can tell the sensation transferred through at all, though, because Mami has gone entirely still. The stony look on her face matches the rigid set of her shoulders. It’s a rare look for her.

“Are you going to tell her?”

Iroha almost laughs. The years it will take to build this body stretch ahead in front of her, teasing and taunting and terribly cruel. The list of innovations she will have to invent from scratch unfurl like a lord’s decree in her mind’s eye, rolling on and on past the horizon.

She’s earned nothing yet. It’ll take much longer before she has. 

“Of course not,” she says, not a shred of doubt in her voice, before her eyes settle back on her work.

There’s certain questions you don’t ask, Iroha has learned. And most of the time, it’s because the answer is so obvious that it’s not even worth it to ask.

Sparks dance in the air. Mami can do naught but scream.

“Did I ever what?”

Akira looks at Iroha like she’s stupid. His face is much kinder in real life than in Tsukuyomi—features slimmer and sharper, eyes not nearly so intense, she’d almost call him delicate-looking—but he still manages to pack a surprising amount of deadpan older-brother derision in his gaze. It makes Iroha bristle, and she only barely resists the urge to bare her non-existent canines at him.

“Did you ever sleep with her?” he repeats, enunciating every word with the kind of unending patience usually reserved for toddlers. He kicks a foot against the floor, launching his chair into a slow, lazy spin. His lips curl into a teasing half-smile. “You two did live together for a while. It wouldn’t exactly be surprising.”

Iroha sighs, turning her back on him and returning to her soldering work on a prototype chassis. Work, work, there’s so much work to be done. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. We did, though she didn’t really give me much of a choice, to be honest.”

There’s a moment where nothing happens. Where all the air in the room feels like it cools, all of a sudden. Her brother stops spinning, the rickety office chair squeaking under his weight. “…She huh?”

“Is it really that surprising?” Iroha frowns, then lowers the welding helmet over her face. He sounds so… severe. “You’ve met her. She’s got a forceful personality.” 

“But she also seemed…” Akira seems to flounder for a second. Iroha wishes Mami were here to see it. A blinding flash of light goes off, and she barely hears him over the sound of sizzling metal. “She seemed… more considerate than that?”

Iroha barks out a laugh, carefully putting her soldering equipment to the side and sliding the mask off her face. “Oh, absolutely not!” The weld looks good enough, she decides. It’s still just a prototype, after all. “That girl always did whatever she wanted. It was such a hassle at first.”

“I’m surprised you’re this relaxed about it,” Akira says, a frown furrowing the otherwise smooth skin of his incredibly well-moisturized face. Seriously, what product does he use…? “It’s not the kind of thing I’d expect you to be so… forthcoming about.”

“I mean, it’s a little embarrassing.” Iroha leans back in her seat. Heat crawls up her neck and settles right under her collar. Her previous line of thought involving pretty faces sends the image of Yachiyo’s smile careening through her mind, followed closely by Kaguya’s. “But I enjoyed it, to be honest. More than I thought I would, at least.”

Akira’s frown deepens. His eyes flicker in that way she recognizes from what feels like a lifetime ago. She thinks of dark rooms and too-bright monitors and the unceasing clicking and clacking of an old keyboard. He looks at Iroha like he’s decoding a puzzle. Solving a mystery. “Enjoyed it?”

Iroha’s eyes drift off to some random corner of the room. There’s an expensive tool bench there, desperately in need of organization after she’d totally ruined her old system a month back. “I like cuddling okay? Bite me,” she murmurs, defiant and demure in equal measure. The heat trapped under her collar radiates up to her ears. “She’d just get under the blankets in my futon and snuggle up and it was kinda like having a big warm teddy bear. It was nice.”

There is a pause. Iroha’s eyes stay on her tools. She decides she’ll organize them tomorrow.

Akira barks out the loudest laugh she’s ever heard come out of him. 

“What the hell, dude!” Iroha yells, face flushed and fingers tingling with an electric mix of nerves and unspent energy. She rolls up a nearby magazine, stands up, and smacks him on the shoulder with it. “You asked! You wanted this information and I provided it and now you’re laughing?!”

Akira just laughs harder, so Iroha just smacks him harder, even when he starts hunching his shoulders up in a half-hearted defense. It’s a sound she hasn’t heard in a long while, she realizes halfway through a swing. She can’t tell if she missed it or not.

“Never change,” he says later, once they’ve both calmed down. His voice is disgustingly fond. “I mean it, sister dearest. I sincerely hope you stay just like this for a good, long while.”

Iroha huffs, indignant. “I have no clue what you mean, but thank you, I guess? I probably will. Not a lot of time for me to change when there’s so much else I have to change about…” she waves her hand in the air, gesturing at nothing. “The world, I guess.”

“That seems a little self-important, no?” Akira asks, not unkindly. His face alights with a small, soft smile. “You’re not revolutionizing every branch of science. Just a few of them.”

Iroha leans forward, looming over the sleek metal of the humanoid skeleton laid out on the table. The soldering iron goes back in her hand, and the welding helmet goes back down over her face, and the smile pulling at her lips is clear as glass in her voice.

“I’m helping Kaguya. What could be more important?”

“Do you think they suspect anything?”

Iroha hems and haws a little, shifting to the side and giving Yachiyo space to sidle up beside her. They stare out over an ocean of lights. “I don’t think so,” Iroha settles on after a pause. “You did streams in real life, back then. Posted videos of yourself and everything. Kaguya, as an existence, is pretty far removed from Yachiyo, even if we did have our concert together.”

“True enough,” Yachiyo hums, burrowing under Iroha’s arm. Iroha slots her hand, feather-light, against the curve of her waist. “It certainly helps that you made a name for yourself as IroP. No one was surprised to hear I hired you.”

Iroha laughs, awkward and stilted. “I made a name for myself, you say?”

“I’m serious!” Yachiyo pokes a finger into Iroha’s side. “People were talking about how happy they were that your talents wouldn’t disappear into the ether along with Kaguya!”

“They don’t even realize they’re just getting the same Kaguya-slash-IroP productions as always.”

“It’s more fun that way though, no?”

“The dramatic irony is fun,” Iroha concedes. “Not like we could really explain the truth anyways. Not like the truth would be believable.”

“Moon people can be a lot to wrap your head around when you’re not so tired that you’d go along with anything.” Yachiyo’s smile is sly. Teasing. “One of the many ways I was very lucky to have been found by you.”

“I hope you know I wasn’t even thinking about that,” Iroha grumbles, rolling her eyes at the jab. “It’s mostly your voice, actually. Way too different from Kaguya’s.”

Yachiyo flutters her eyelashes, fat crocodile tears pooling in her eyes. She whimpers, in the most pathetic voice Iroha has ever heard, “You don’t like it?”

“Wha–I never said that!” Iroha sputters, and Yachiyo laughs, full-bellied and suffused with warmth. “I love your voice!”

Yachiyo’s laughter continues for a bit after that. Her head comes to rest lightly on the padded curve of Iroha’s shoulder. They stay like that for a while. A fractalling pattern of lights comes together overhead to form something that looks like a blocky whale. Tsukuyomi’s main hub buzzes with excitement. From this far away, the million voices of the city blend together into a pleasant, droning hum. The sound slots nicely into the quiet space between them.

“We’re finally at the point where we can worry about aesthetics,” Iroha says after a while. Breaking the silence feels criminal, but important. “We still don’t have all the details of your synthetic skin worked out, and some of the subtleties of touch are tricky to pin down, but your looks have finally… come into view as a topic of discussion, I guess. It’s still all the way over on the horizon, so it’s not exactly close, but… visible nonetheless.”

“You’re cute when you fumble your words,” Yachiyo whispers past a giggle.

“Shut up,” Iroha grumbles, but there’s no heat behind it. “Point is, what do you want to look like? What do you want to sound like?”

Silence again. The lights overhead shift in roiling waves, remaking themselves once more. The whale in the sky stretches and thins until it is a leviathan of a stingray, lazily drifting across the starry night like it owns it. Rules it. 

“Personhood is a strange thing for me to ponder,” Yachiyo starts, quiet but sure. “Yachiyo stopped feeling like a persona a long time ago, to be perfectly honest. Instead, there is simply me, and I am Yachiyo, and I am Kaguya.”

Iroha nods, but remains quiet. She presses the back of her hand against Yachiyo’s in quiet support, and is flashed a shy little smile as thanks. “I’ve some experience with the concept of… existing as multiple things at once. I do it every day, splitting my consciousness across a thousand versions of myself. But at the end of the day, every single one of them is an extension of the same identity. I have never had to question if I wish to live as two different people instead of a million versions of one.” Yachiyo’s fingers twitch against Iroha’s. “You’ve changed that.”

“You’re welcome,” Iroha says smugly. More seriously, she adds, “I’m sorry.”

Yachiyo shakes her head. Her hair flows in shimmering waves of silver at the movement. “Don’t be. I consider it a privilege.” She thrusts a fist out, voice full of mirth, and strikes a valiant pose. “Yaccho-chan, poised at the bleeding edge of technological advancement!”

“Dummy,” Iroha says, flicking Yachiyo’s forehead and earning herself an indignant whine. “I’m happy that I get to inspire such interesting thoughts in you, and I’m excited to discuss these things with you more, but I still need to hear what you want.”

Yachiyo pouts, leaning more heavily into Iroha’s side. “You don’t have to be so mean about it.”

“You wouldn’t want it any other way.”

“I would not, that is true.”

The stingray bleeds rainbows over Tsukuyomi, consuming itself in a spectacle of color. A cheer kicks up from the town square, just barely audible from this far away. Yachiyo thinks, and Iroha waits. She’d made a whole show out of wanting an answer, but she’d wait however long it took. She’d spare forever for her. 

The night passes them by.

“I think…”

A pause. A breath. A choice.

“I think I’d like it, if I could be Kaguya again.”

“I’m surprised you’re not further along.”

Iroha grits her teeth, turning slowly to look at her mother. She’s not even being mean, Iroha knows. There’s no tightness in her jaw, no steel in her voice. Her eyes are bright and, of all things, curious. 

Iroha decides she’s still angry despite that.

“I’m sorry that it’s taken me so long to develop the most advanced android body ever built,” Iroha forces out through gritted teeth. Narrowing her eyes, sarcasm dripping from her voice, she adds, “I know it’s only a couple steps above what I’d be learning if I’d gone into law.”

Her mother rolls her eyes. “Oh, calm down. I’m not saying you should be done or anything; I just didn’t expect you to linger on touch for so long. Or the voice, come to think of it.”

“She’s gonna be an entertainer again, Mom.” Iroha sighs harshly, turning to face the gored mess of the incredibly expensive speaker she’d disassembled on her desk. “She’ll be speaking and singing into microphones—good microphones, the ones that pick up every little thing—so she needs to sound completely natural.”

“Fair enough,” her mother says with an easy shrug. Her eyes sharpen, zeroing in on Iroha like a hawk’s. “And touch?”

Iroha sags back in her seat, distracting herself by spinning a screwdriver between her fingers. She tries to will the rapid drum of her heart into something normal and not quite so embarrassing.  “I think it is perfectly normal to want her to be able to… to feel things like a normal person, and to be felt like a normal person,” she murmurs, gaze firmly locked anywhere but her mother. Lamely, she finishes, “And that’s hard to do.”

“What does that mean, though?” Her mother tries to lean into Iroha’s field of view, and so she decides to very maturely avert it somewhere else. “What does that imply?”

Iroha groans, screwing her eyes shut. The fluorescent lights overhead turn the back of her eyelids into a blotchy, monochrome mess. “It means a lot of things, Mom. It means being able to sense the amount of pressure something is exerting when it presses against your skin, and it means being able to feel if something is sharp even if it’s not gonna cut through the synthetic skin, and it means being able to feel texture and consistency, and it means being able to feel—” Iroha clamps her mouth shut. Opens it again, haltingly, and says, “To feel… temperatures.”

Neither of them speak. The room goes quiet, save for the ticking of the dingy wall clock poised over Iroha’s desk. Nothing has ever outright exploded in the lab, but Iroha starts silently praying for it. The mechanical arm, maybe. She never uses that one anymore nowadays, and it’s relatively easy to replace, though still far too expensive to be considered reasonable. Though the more she thinks about it, she realizes it doesn’t really have any explosive components to speak of. The point, though, is that she wants out of this conversation.

Her mother sighs, long and slow and painfully drawn-out. “Temperatures.”

Iroha sags further into her seat. A rush of heat colors her cheeks, despite all her best efforts. 

“Temperatures,” her mother repeats.

“Temperatures,” Iroha answers. 

Tick, tock. 

Ten seconds pass, and they are the longest ten seconds of Iroha’s life. It feels like her blood is bubbling and fizzing beneath her skin, and she’s being shaken until she pops. She scrambles for a compromise. 

“I want her to be comfortable, okay!” she forces out, throwing her hands in the air. “I want her to–to be able to feel warmth if it is given to her and to give others warmth if she were–were to want to, or be asked to. No one likes a cold handshake, and she’ll be giving a lot of them once she’s back.”

“I’m amazed you think I buy that handshake excuse.”

“She likes cuddling, okay?! We’ve–we’ve been over this already! You and Akira have both made sure I never forget about that!”

“I mean, can you blame me?” her mother says through a laugh. Her eyes sparkle with mischief. “Never in a million years would I have expected a child of mine to waste years because she wants to cuddle.”

“It’s not just for my sake–”

“As in, it's still partially for your own sake–”

Iroha pops. 

“Kaguya hasn’t been warm for eight thousand years!” she screams, rising from her seat so quickly that she sends it rolling off deeper into the lab. She hears it clatter noisily against something, probably a metal trash can, but pays it no mind. “Kaguya has spent eight thousand years alone, and lonely, and cold, and she told me years ago how even back on the moon nothing had taste or temperature, and–and that’s cruel!”

Iroha rubs the heel of her hand along her cheek, clearing away a tear and scowling at it. She hadn’t even noticed she’d started crying. “I don’t want to just–to make her another prison. I don’t want her to wake up and–and for her to try and hug me and it’s just the barest essentials of feeling that make it through to her! I don’t just want her to know how hard I’m hugging her, or how hard she’s hugging me, or if I ironed my coat that day, or if the pen in my pocket is sharp! I want her to feel warm!” Iroha’s breath leaves her in a giant, stuttering rush. Tears flow from her eyes. Her nose feels stuffy and gross. The enormity of everything she feels rips through her like a storm. “I want her to be warm. She deserves to be warm, Mom.”

Iroha storms away, not even bothering to look at her mother’s reaction. She tells herself, through all the tears and labored breaths, that it’s not because she’s scared of it. That it’s just because sometimes, the answer to something is so obvious that there’s no point in asking. No point in looking. 

She delves deeper into the lab, searching for her castaway office chair, and finds it next to a tipped-over bin of discarded electronics. Iroha sighs and gingerly starts picking everything back into the bin, careful not to nick herself on any sharp corners or twisted metal.

Regret crashes over her like a wave. She berates herself, in the privacy of her own mind, for the fact that she has probably ruined the tattered scraps of her and her mother’s barely-salvaged relationship over what might have been nothing more than a joke. She wonders why that thought hurts as much as it does. She’s supposed to be an adult now, is she not? She’s supposed to be beyond mommy’s love and praise. She’s supposed to be beyond caring. 

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock. 

Her mother’s hands slide into view, dustpan in hand. 

They don’t share any words. The office fills with the sounds of their impromptu cleanup operation. The twinkling of metal and glass. The breezy sound of a broom sliding across smooth floors. The white noise hum of fluorescent lights. The rhythmic ticking of the clock. The shuddering breaths escaping from Iroha’s lungs as she works through the dregs of her… of her emotion. Of her desires. 

There’s a million other tiny sounds in the room, but they don’t share any words.

Iroha’s eyes linger on her mother’s hands, for some reason. She traces the raised path of a thick vein along the back of her hand. She eyes the knobby-knuckled grip she keeps around the dustpan. Notes the slimness of her fingers. The cracks along the edges of her fingernails. The puckered scars of a lifetime’s worth of silly, innocuous scratches. The gleaming band of silver she wears on her ring finger, always. 

Her mother’s hands look old. 

Iroha looks up. 

‘Do you love your mother?’

She has crows feet. Her cheeks are a little more sunken in than she remembers them. There’s laugh lines at the edges of her mouth. A handful of gray hairs peek through the deep blue of her hair. Her eyes are clear, and wide, and sad. Just like always.

Her mother is getting old.

“I’m sorry,” Iroha says, quiet and just a little pained. “That wasn’t fair to… It wasn’t fair of me to blow up at you like that.”

“It’s fine,” her mother says, resigned, before dumping all the trash Iroha had lumped onto the dustpan back into the bin. “I probably deserved it.”

“Maybe you did,” Iroha says, firm and stubborn and a little defiant. “But maybe you also deserve better.”

Her mother’s smile is sour, crooked, bitter. “I have a feeling you’re not just talking about me anymore.”

“Just because I also deserved better as a kid and we’re both aware of it doesn’t stop me from thinking you didn’t deserve to get yelled at now,” Iroha shoots back, imbuing her tone with a sense of finality that she’d learned from the very woman in front of her. “The whole point of a parental figure is to teach us what not to do, yeah?”

“Oh, of course. Nothing else.”

“I’m glad we agree!”

A pause. A small, fleeting moment where the two of them are light as air. Where twenty years of context disappear, and it’s just a mother and daughter who have hurt and have loved and have come together at the end of all their hurting and loving to… to hurt and love some more. The thought runs away from Iroha, spiraling and tumbling into recursive masses of half-thought.

The moment eventually gives way, crumbling down around them with all the fanfare of a spider’s thread snapping. The floor is clean, and the chair is back at Iroha’s desk, and the problem at hand continues to be at hand. Iroha sits back down across from her mother, throws her head back, and thinks. 

“Maybe I’ll just give her a way to generate heat and leave it at her discretion if she wants to control it.” Iroha sighs, closing her eyes. “It’s an imperfect solution, because it means her body temperature wouldn’t be able to change involuntarily in response to physical or emotional stimuli, but it gives her the option to emulate involuntary responses voluntarily.”

“Would she ever actually do that?” her mother asks, seeming, again, genuinely curious. “She might just try to hide her reactions from you, after all.”

Iroha smiles, smug and sure and full of a startling amount of affection. “She couldn’t get anything past me if she wanted. Just means I get to call her out on it if she ever tries.”

Her mother laughs. It’s a nice sound.

It’s a perfectly normal day, right up until Roka kicks open the door to her lab. 

“Iroha!” she yells, clearly incensed. By what, Iroha has zero clue, but she has a feeling she’s about to find out. Yachiyo lets out a theatrical little gasp from the tablet on her desk. “I’m going to say things you don’t want said out loud in three seconds, so you better either shut up or hang up right. This. Instant!”

“What?”

“One!”

“Roka, what are you talking ab-”

“Two!”

“Also is my door oka-”

“Three! Yachiyo, Iroha is in–”

Iroha hangs up.

“–love with you and being an idiot about it!” Roka’s eyes are filled with fire and brimstone. Hunched over her tablet after hastily hanging up her call with Yachiyo, Iroha hears the way she marches forward, loud and steady, a war machine. Evidently, Mami had finally snitched. “An absolute idiot. The worst idiot of them all. And I know myself!”

Iroha’s lips twitch, but she makes sure to keep them pressed into a straight line. “That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?”

“You’re doing the exact same thing I did, but you managed to make it even worse!”

“That’s–” Iroha pauses. “I mean…”

“I never confessed to you because I literally saw you falling in love with someone else right in front of me with my own two eyes,” Roka hisses out between her teeth. She has, at this point, thoroughly invaded Iroha’s personal space, towering over her in a disturbingly effective attempt at intimidation. “And even then, I still told you about it later because keeping your feelings bottled up is bad for you!”

“I can tell you’ve done away with that particular habit,” Iroha pouts and whispers under her breath, even though she knows she shouldn’t.

If Roka hears her, she doesn’t bother showing it. She digs an accusatory finger into Iroha’s chest. “At least in your case, you both actually know how you feel about each other! You know she loves you too!”

“I don’t–”

“You do.”

“I don’t think it’s that simple-”

“It is.”

“It’s not-”

“It i-”

Iroha glares up at Roka. “It’s not worth it!”

Roka stops. She’s still angry, of that there is no doubt, but she’s not rampaging anymore. Her eyes narrow, and Iroha can almost see the way the bonfire blaze of her fury rearranges itself around her. The way it narrows down into something keener. Voice strained, she asks, “Why?”

Iroha sighs. She pushes her chair back, trying to put some space between them, but Roka just steps forward again. She tries to look away, but Roka just leans into her line of sight, then walks around her when Iroha turns more aggressively, then just grabs the office chair and holds it still when Iroha tries to use it to spin in the other direction. Every additional second of prolonged eye contact feels like it peels away her skin, shaving her down to bare essentials. It reminds her a little of the lathe in the shop next door.

“Because nothing would come of it,” Iroha says at length. “Not yet, at least.”

“Because she doesn’t have a body yet?”

“That’s… that’s one part of it, at least.”

Roka tilts her head to the side, and even though she has deer antlers in Tsukuyomi the motion feels… canine. Her lips curl into a cheshire-cat smile. “Do you really want to fuck her that bad that you won’t confess until you can?”

Iroha’s face feels like it goes up in flames. “God, Roka! No, geez, of course that’s not–I don’t even–I wasn’t even thinking about that!”

“I know for a fact you’ve been working on her body’s breasts recently, you saying that doesn’t affect you in any way?”

“No!” Iroha screams, agonized. “It’s like… It’s different! It’s not her, y’know?”

“Oh, but you will be interested in them once she’s actually in the body?”

“It’s not worth it,” Iroha pivots harshly, voice stiff. “Because I haven’t earned it yet.”

Roka seems to choke on her short-lived smugness. Her lips press into a grim line. She takes a deep, deep breath in through her nose. Her shoulders shudder with the effort of keeping it held, then sag, ever so slowly, when she lets it out through her mouth. 

She repeats this process once. In, then out.

Twice. In, then out.

Three times. In, in, painfully deep in. Slowly, slowly, achingly slow out.

In a voice that feels as brittle as it does sharp, she says, “Explain.”

Iroha… tries to figure out how to explain. “Yachiyo has… been through a lot,” she says, every word feeling unrehearsed and heavy and weird. “Eight thousand years of loneliness. Eight thousand years of–of perseverance. Of hope. Of loss. It’s so much, Roka. I had FUSHI basically beam it all into my head, but it’s not–it’s different. It’s information, for me. It’s almost like memories, in that I can recall them, but… I recall them in first person, but I don’t remember them. I didn’t live eight thousand years in my head. I just… experienced eight thousand years of information, roughly chronologically.”

Iroha leans back, and this time Roka lets her. She laces her fingers together in her lap, dragging her thumb over the dry skin of her knuckles. “Yachiyo has gone through so much. Kaguya has gone through so much. She’s still going through it, every single day. And I–I try to keep healthy schedules, because it’s better in the long run, but it feels like I spend every second trying to pack a minute’s worth of progress into it, because it’s up to me to fix this. And–” Iroha breathes in. Breathes out. “And I haven’t yet.”

Roka sighs, shifting her weight from one foot to another.  “I don’t–” she stops, crossing her arms. All that complicated emotion that had been radiating off of her shifts into a heavy cloak of discomfort. “You don’t have to earn the right to tell her you love her. I know earning things has been, like, a thing for you throughout your life, and you feel like you don’t really deserve things unless you’ve suffered for them, but that’s not true.”

“I… know. It took a while to realize, but I do know that.”

“Sounds like a recent development.”

Iroha smiles, just a little sad. “It is.”

Roka smiles back, but doesn’t say anything else. She just waits, patient and caring and… and loving, in a way that Iroha is not sure she will ever get used to. In a way she’s not sure if she should feel guilty about. Roka waits.

“I’d… I’d like to think that my feelings are a gift,” Iroha finally says, twisting and squeezing her fingers together. “I think I know her well enough to know that she’d consider them a gift.”

“But?”

“But… I think this would just… be a gift best-received with a body,” she finishes lamely. “I think it’d… fit better. It’d make sense. I would give her the best gift I can give her, and that would feel like it… like it makes me worthy of offering the other one too.”

Roka groans, squatting down into a visibly exhausted heap. “You don’t have to earn the right to make her happy,” she murmurs tiredly. Resigned, almost. “And I think you’re mixing up which gift she’d like more.”

Iroha shrugs. “I might be. But if I don’t do it this way, I’ll always feel like I should have.”

“Of course you would,” Roka scoffs, but there’s no real heat behind it. “You’re too good for this world.”

“I think the world has given me far more than I’ve given back, to be fair.”

“Oh, don’t start bragging about her now.” Roka glares weakly at Iroha. “If you do, you have to go confess to her. Them’s the rules, sorry.”

Iroha rolls her eyes, and a weight feels like it lifts from her chest. “I wasn’t talking about her, dummy.”

“Oh, then keep going by all means. Brag about me all you want, actually. I’ll take the ego boost.”

Iroha just laughs.

“Alright, shoo,” Roka says, waving Iroha away like she’s a stray. “Back to your totally-not-girlfriend and whatever it is you two get up to on your calls.”

“It’s basically just a glorified Japanese History lesson. But also, you’re in my lab.”

“I hate it when you’re right.”

“You must hate often, then.”

Roka blows Iroha a raspberry, picking herself up and dusting herself off. “Dummy. I’m gonna go bother Mami now.”

“Tell her I said hi!” Iroha calls after Roka as she sweeps out of the room, escaping just as quickly as had invaded. Roka flashes a thumbs up, then waves behind her back. The door clicks closed behind her. 

Silence. The room always feels so empty, whenever one of them leaves. She should tell them that more often.

Iroha takes a deep breath. Holds it for a bit, then lets it out. 

She’s close. She’s so close. She steels herself, a knight donning her armor before the war, then calls Yachiyo again. 

“Okay!” she says quickly, before Yachiyo can even inquire as to what happened. “The Takarazuka Revue. You’re saying you set that up, too?”

Yachiyo smiles, eyes crinkling knowingly, but doesn’t push it.

They talk.

It’s another perfectly normal day.

“She’s so dumb and perfect and stupid and I hate her and she says ‘hi’ by the way.”

“My place in ten?”

“You still have my Häagen-Dazs?”

“A whole tub just for you, girl.”

“I love you.”

“I’m taken, sorry.”

“Story of my goddamn life!”

Iroha’s head falls onto Yachiyo’s lap, and it feels like the world slips away from her.

The sigh she lets out feels like it lasts a lifetime. The tension drains from her tired body, limbs going slack and eyes drifting closed. Yachiyo’s fingers card through Iroha’s hair, fingernails scratching lightly against her scalp. She wonders if anything could ever feel better.

“You’ve been doing so much better about overworking,” Yachiyo says through a giggle. “I didn’t think I’d ever have to take care of you like this again.”

“We’re so close,” Iroha whines in lieu of a real response. “It’s been nine years but we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m just…”

“Antsy?”

Iroha shakes her head. Yachiyo’s robes are soft against her cheeks. “Excited, more like. Kind of like when I finish up a song.”

“That doesn’t mean you can start neglecting sleep, you crazy, wonderful woman.” Yachiyo tugs at one of Iroha’s cheeks lightly. Iroha opens her eyes and smiles up at Yachiyo in response. Some combination of exhaustion and the strain of nine years’ worth of restraint push words out of her mouth before she can even think about swallowing them down.

“Not even if it’s for you?”

Yachiyo’s eyes melt, gooey and gross and so horribly soft. “No, not even if it’s for me.”

Iroha pouts a little, but doesn’t protest any further. Truthfully, she knows Yachiyo is right. Getting proper sleep is almost as important for the project as everything she actually does while she’s awake. All-nighters are supposed to be a thing of Iroha’s crazier, more desperate past. Still, she’s so excited. Just a little more. The end is at reach just barely exceeding grasp. Iroha’s hand drifts up, light dancing around her splayed fingers. She wants to hold it in her palm. 

Her hand settles on Yachiyo’s cheek. 

Yachiyo leans into the touch, eyes fluttering closed. She can’t feel warm, Iroha knows, but she still wants to make sure Yachiyo will never feel… abandoned. Alone. Whatever word makes “untouched” not sound quite so awkward. She wants Yachiyo to know that Iroha wants her to be warm. She swipes a thumb across the pale skin of Yachiyo’s cheek, the digital sensation burned into her mind. 

“Hey, Yachiyo?”

“Hm?”

“Do you want to rest on my lap for a bit?”

Yachiyo is rarely left speechless nowadays. Iroha gets it, even if it’s a little disappointing. She’s lived so much. Seen so much. She’s seen war and she’s seen peace and she’s seen love and she’s seen hate and she’s seen everything throughout and in between. She’s eight thousand years old, and wiser for it. 

It just makes moments like these feel sweeter. Makes them feel like victories, in a way. 

“Are you–” Yachiyo stops herself, hand going stock still where it nestles in Iroha’s hair. “Don’t you need this a lot more than I do?”

Iroha smiles, sitting up and shuffling over to Yachiyo’s side. She gathers her legs up under herself, smoothes out the wrinkles in her clothes, and gives her thighs a pat. “I didn’t ask if you needed it. I asked if you wanted it.”

Yachiyo’s throat bobs. Her gaze shifts between Iroha’s eyes and lap, lap then eyes, outside, lap, outside, eyes, lap, outside again. She makes jerky movements that seem to hint at starting to lay down, but then aborts them halfway through. The whole display is a little adorable. 

Iroha cups her hand around the back of Yachiyo’s head, leading her down. Slowly, slowly, it comes to rest against Iroha’s legs, and then she goes utterly still. Iroha’s chest fills with warmth. She slips her fingers between the silvery locks of Yachiyo’s hair. She pulls at the done-up parts, watching as it all comes tumbling down in a wave of moonlight and alabaster. She undoes the image of Yachiyo, strand by strand, until all that’s left is a girl. Until all that light that had flooded between her fingers now feels like it’s resting in the palm of her hand. 

Yachiyo cries.

It’s a subtle thing. If it were anyone other than Iroha, they might not have noticed at all. But it’s Iroha, so of course she does. She spies the tension across the line of her back. She feels the shuddering rumble of her uneven breaths. She sees that adorable way her ears turn bright, shining red whenever she’s crying, or embarrassed, or both. The image of Yachiyo comes undone, and all that’s left is a girl, and Iroha loves her. 

They stay like that for a while.

Iroha finds herself infinitely grateful for the fact that her legs don’t get tired, here in Tsukuyomi. It wouldn’t matter if they did, of course, because she’d never deny Yachiyo the comfort, but it’s still a nice benefit. But eventually, what might have been ten minutes or half an hour or an hour later, Yachiyo is calm again. Her shoulders sag with relief. Her breaths are even and slow. She turns, from her side to face up, and looks up at Iroha with a smile on her face. Her eyes are a little puffy. She looks grateful. She looks beautiful. Iroha feels like she’s going crazy.

“Are you gonna tell me what’s going on now?” she asks Yachiyo. Her voice is gentle, but brokers no argument. 

“I thought I was doing a pretty good job of hiding it.”

“You could never fool me.” Iroha’s thumb brushes a stray tear away. “Not again, at least.”

Yachiyo laughs. It’s a little wet, and a little choked up, but it’s still happy. She takes a moment to collect herself. Iroha allows her it.

“I was going to get rid of Yachiyo,” she confesses. The declaration feels like it should be far, far heavier. It feels like it’s supposed to make Iroha angry, or sad, or confused, but it simply… doesn’t. 

It just makes sense. 

“I started training FUSHI to take over, actually. He kicked up a big fuss over it, poor guy, but he couldn’t say no in the end. I had him start piloting Yachiyos across Tsukuyomi, little by little. Had him stream in my place a couple times.” Yachiyo closes her eyes and scoffs. “The little rascal was way too good at it. He knows me too well.”

“Eh, he’s been with you for a little while. I think it tracks.”

Yachiyo giggles. The sound reminds Iroha of bubbling springwater. “That he has.”

There’s another moment of easy quiet. Iroha shifts around a bit, turning her body so that Yachiyo is laying back against her instead of on her side. It’s a little strange, looking down at her basically upside down, but it’s a little more comfortable for Yachiyo. She thinks it is, at least. 

Gently, as if coaxing a nervous animal, Iroha asks, “Why did you want to do it?”

Yachiyo sighs, throwing an arm over her eyes. The oversized sleeve makes it so it’s more like she’s hiding her entire face. “I got… jealous, I guess.”

“Jealous?”

“Of… of myself? My future self. Of Kaguya.” Her voice is tinged with equal parts shame and sureness. “I imagined a future where Kaguya got to live with you, out there in the real world, and Yachiyo just… didn’t. She was just in here, like always. A little less alone, and a little less lonely, but still… trapped.”

Iroha finds the hand amidst the mess of sleeve over Yachiyo’s face, twining their fingers together. “What made you decide not to?”

“You did.” Yachiyo squeezes Iroha’s hand. Her nails dig into her skin, just a bit. “Just by existing.”

“I can’t be that great.”

“You are,” Yachiyo breathes, a little stern and a little awed. “You are, and that gave me–gives me, still, hope. Hope that there exists something for me beyond what I can imagine, tucked away in that pretty head of yours.”

“Charmer,” Iroha whispers, moving the mass of fabric over Yachiyo’s face aside. She is smiling, wide and bright. They both are.

“I’m sorry,” Yachiyo says, totally unapologetic. “For always heaping my burdens onto you.”

Iroha shakes her head, leaning down and pressing their foreheads together. “Thank you. Thank you for always trusting me with them.”

If they were a little weaker, maybe the moment could be a little more. Or maybe if they were stronger, too. But they simply are who they are, and for now this is enough. The half-touch of digital skin on digital skin. The feeling of Yachiyo’s arms snaking around the back of Iroha’s neck, craving touch but nothing more.  They hold each other, gentle and sweet and a little tired. A little excited. A little nervous. A little antsy. A little bit of everything flows between them, and they let it.

“I have a couple of ideas,” Iroha blurts out, shoving her traitorous heart to the side. “I don’t have the money to make a second body, but I think I can find a way to keep you around more often, and with more features than Tsukuyomi allows.”

Yachiyo hums contentedly, but inquires no further. Instead, she rolls over in Iroha’s lap, and closes her eyes.

“I look forward to seeing what you’ll come up with.” She yawns, and it is so horribly fake that neither of them believe it. “But for now, it’s time to sleep.”

Iroha laughs, squeezing Yachiyo’s hand. She’d never let go, after all. Iroha will make sure she never has to.

“Goodnight, Yachiyo. See you tomorrow.”

Iroha is going to throw up. 

The office lobby is filled with idle chatter. Akira, Noi, and Rai are all tucked away in a corner, huddled around a phone. They have a tournament coming up, and they’ll have to play against the winner of this match. They are nothing if not diligent, and she never expected them to skip watching the match for this in the first place. Iroha notes the arm her brother has snaked around Noi’s waist, careless and casual, and smirks a little. A streak of pale light lances from the fluorescent overhead bulbs, sending another wave of nausea shooting down her gut and replacing her smirk with a pained grimace. 

Roka and Mami are there. There’s no way they wouldn’t be. They each cradle one of Mami’s kids in their arms. They’re adorable little things, Iroha is unafraid to admit. Twins, chubby and rowdy and spoiled absolutely rotten. A part of her is sad that their father couldn’t show up for this. A much bigger part of her sees the way Roka and Mami’s eyes light up near each other, and prays that he never does. 

Iroha is going to throw up. 

“You look like you’re going to throw up,” her mother says from right behind her. It is entirely unhelpful, even as it is also entirely true. 

Iroha presses her thumb against the spot between her brows, seeking whatever faint relief it might provide. “I definitely feel like it.”

Her mother’s hand—thin and bony, but not quite so dry as before, she’s been moisturizing more often—clamps down firmly over Iroha’s shoulder. It’s not exactly comforting, but it is grounding. Iroha appreciates the sentiment more than she’s really willing to show. 

She claps her hands, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. “Okay! This is everyone, so are we all ready to go in and get started?”

A chorus of affirmations rings out. Mami raises her hand—she’d passed Roka the baby in her arms so she now held both of them, and wasn’t that a funny sight—and hops around a little, dutifully playing the part of a too-curious student at the front of the class. “Mami?” Iroha asks, smiling and pointing at her with a raised eyebrow. 

“So, I’m not gonna complain about getting the gang together, but why did we even have to wait in the first place?” she cants her head to the side, doe-eyed. “I assume we don’t have to, like, wait to go into your office or something?”

“We don’t,” Iroha replies, the tension in her shoulders loosening just the slightest bit. “But Yachiyo wasn’t awake yet, so we were waiting for her to be up before going in.”

Rai pipes up this time, monotone voice tinged with confusion. “She sleeps?”

Iroha nods. “The longest she can stay awake is 52 hours, but then she has to sleep.”

Akira raises his hand next, and Iroha rolls her eyes. She points at him anyway. Clearly just as amused as she is, he says, “Yachiyo? Not Kaguya?”

“Oh, I was wondering about that too,” Roka pipes up. Mami is taking a picture of her with the kids, giggling under her breath. “I know you made Kaguya’s old body, but you’ve been calling her Yachiyo this whole time.”

“Yachiyo and Kaguya are… going to be different people, essentially,” Iroha says, wondering how best to summarize the hours spent going back and forth with Yachiyo about how things would work from now on. “It might be more accurate to say that Yachiyo and Kaguya are two separate identities that have been used by the same person, and all we’re doing is making a body for Kaguya’s identity specifically. Yachiyo will continue to be Yachiyo, even after we put a version of her into the new body, and even after that version of her starts identifying itself and… and living as Kaguya.”

“Not complicated at all,” her mother whispers, sounding slightly breathless. Iroha snorts, but is interrupted by Noi.

“That sounds a little unfair to Yachiyo, no?” His eyes glint, a hunter with prey caught in its half-lidded, lazy gaze. Iroha likes him a little more because of it.

“It is,” she confirms, with a smile that is all teeth and tempered determination. “But I’m already working towards making things a little less unfair.”

“Are you gonna be gay the moment she’s up and about or do we get to actually stick around for a bit?”

“Shut up, Roka.”

“No, I’m serious, we’ll give you privacy.”

Akira, sly and most definitely amused, “We will.”

Her mother, holding back tears, “Oh, my daughter is finally getting her first kiss.”

Mami, dreamy and starstruck, “It’ll be like Sleeping Beauty…”

Iroha’s eyebrows twitch. Heat crawls up her neck, lingering right under her collar. “You all get two minutes, and then I’m kicking you out of my lab. We’re gonna have to calibrate the body after she’s in it, and I don’t want anyone else distracting her.”

“Nice euphemism,” Noi says in English. Iroha ignores it, digging her phone out of her pocket when she feels it vibrating. 

Yachiyo sent her a message. A simple thumbs up.

It’s time.

Right, Iroha forgot. She is going to throw up. 

“It’s time,” she says instead, forcing the bile in her throat down.

Everyone stands up, eyes bright and steps light. Iroha leads the group, but there’s really no need to. Everyone has been here a thousand times. Offered a thousand different helping hands across a thousand different obstacles. Iroha is a very lucky woman, she realizes for not the first time, family and friends flanking her like guards. She feels herself a fragile thing held atop sturdy oaks. She wonders when she stopped being afraid of feeling more fragile than oak. 

The lab is cleaner than it’s been in ages. She’d reorganized the toolbox, finally. She’d swept up any stray debris left over from all her tinkering. She’d moved everything against the walls, a dozen machines and sensors and workbenches shoved aside to make room for the sturdy operating table in the center of the room. She’d thrown out all her empty energy drink and coffee cans. She’d disinfected absolutely everything, half out of manic obsession and half out of a genuine desire to make sure the babies didn’t catch anything on the odd occasion Mami brought them around. 

Everything was spotless. Everything was perfect. Everything was ready.

Iroha is going to throw up. 

Kaguya’s body is on the table. It looks like she’s sleeping.

Roka and Mami, who had actually seen Kaguya in person before, let out twin gasps of excitement. Everyone else just stares on with a more neutral admiration, whistling or murmuring. She doesn’t expect anyone here to truly understand what this means to her. To understand all the grueling details that make this one of the most advanced pieces of machinery in the world. But she appreciates the small bit of ego stroking she gets out of seeing how nakedly impressed everyone seems with the end result. 

“Yachiyo,” Iroha calls out quietly. “They’re ready for you.”

The tablet by the center table lights up, and Yachiyo is already there. Her smile is wide, and her eyes are sparkling with anticipation. It’s the happiest she’s looked in ages. “Hiya everyone!” she says, a sparkling note of joy coloring her slightly-sleepy voice. “I’m glad everyone managed to make it!”

Iroha’s mother surprises her by being the first to speak up. “We’re all very happy to be here,” she says, tone even and… fond. Motherly, even. Yachiyo giggles as everyone echoes their own version of the same sentiment. Even the babies start babbling excitedly. 

Iroha is going to throw up. 

“Whenever you’re ready, just make the jump.” She walks up to the tablet, lowering her voice a little. Everyone can still hear her, but it feels better, to address just Yachiyo. “I’m letting everyone else say hi before I kick them out for calibration. I hope you don’t mind a bit of swarming.”

“I could never,” Yachiyo says with a giggle. “Let all my adoring fans get a turn.”

Iroha is going to throw up.

She smiles, and Yachiyo smiles back.

“See you later,” Iroha whispers.

Yachiyo’s eyes film over with tears. She bows, and the tablet turns off. 

Iroha backs up until her legs hit one of the desks at the corner of the room. Everyone goes deathly still. The only sound in the room is the occasional coo from the kids. 

“It’ll take her a second to get set up in her head,” Iroha explains quietly, shooting everyone a soothing smile. “Some of the more delicate sensors are gonna stay off for a bit, but sight and sound should be up and running quick.”

Her mother shoots her a look. Iroha chooses to ignore it, and instead focuses on the fact that she is going to throw up. 

Something in the air changes. 

Maybe there was a sound, or maybe some part of Kaguya’s body twitched, or maybe any other of a million different things happened. The reason doesn’t matter. What matters is that everyone finds themselves staring with bated breath. 

A foot twitches. Then a leg. Then an arm. One hand’s fingers flex into a fist, and the other’s splay out wide. Slowly, every movement seeming heavier than the actual weight of her body, Kaguya sits up.

Iroha is going to throw up. 

Long eyelashes and pink lips and pale skin and hair like the midday sun and slim fingers and ruby red eyes and they are alive. Every inch of Kaguya looks like it thrums with an energy totally separate from the electricity coursing through her veins. Iroha has seen every square inch of her laid out over that table, and she doesn’t think she recognizes any of it, at the moment. She prefers this look more, though. She starts a timer on her watch. 

“Good morning!” Kaguya beams, and it’s like dawn breaks over them all.

Mami rushes forward, and Roka hastily places two confused babies in Iroha’s mother’s arms, and suddenly Kaguya is engulfed in a hug and covered in tears. Black OnyX is much more subdued, but they end up crowding around Kaguya with smiles on their faces. Excited chatter and lively banter is exchanged, and Iroha finds that she cannot process any of it because she is going to throw up. 

She eyes Kaguya’s body in motion with a sort of breathless awe. There’s no jerkiness to her motions, surprisingly enough. In the few tests they did, back when it was just the skeleton without any of the looks, it always took a second for Kaguya to really start moving normally again. She would stutter and stop every now and then, limbs reportedly feeling awkward or heavy. Iroha is glad to see that not be the case anymore. She’ll have to inquire, later, if it's more because of the improvements made to her body or to her artificial nervous system. 

Her voice sounds perfect. There’s no scratchiness, nor is there any of that hollow, tinny quality that you hear in audio when it comes through a speaker. It’s a little different than Iroha remembers it, but she thinks that has more to do with Kaguya’s tone—a little gentler now, kind of like Yachiyo’s—than with the technology at work. Or maybe her memory isn’t as good as she thinks it is. 

Her hair is glossy and smooth. The lights overhead are harsh, and hardly flattering, but it seems to shine, just a bit. It flows down Kaguya’s shoulders in lemon-yellow waves, curling at the tips. Iroha wants to run her fingers through it. 

Her eyes are big and red and they’re staring right at her. Iroha is going to throw up. 

Iroha’s watch beeps. 

No one really registers it at first. Everyone is painfully excited, and Kaguya just seems to feed off the infectious energy. She’s cooing at the babies, which had been placed on her lap and had promptly started climbing all over her, when Akira notices. 

He calls across the room, soft and maybe just a little choked up, “Time’s up?”

It takes Iroha a moment to realize she is the one being addressed. It takes her another to look down and notice, with a jolt, that her watch has been beeping for about a minute already. She shoves all her evil, fragile emotions down, just for now.

“Okay!” she claps her hands together, drawing everyone’s attention. She is reminded a little of those videos of a herd of deer all turning their heads at the same time. “I know we’re all excited, but it’s calibration time! Everyone out!”

A wall of pitiful whines assaults Iroha’s ears, but she notes with some satisfaction that no one is actually bothering to try and disobey. Babies are deposited back in the proper arms, and purses are collected from wherever they’d been set down or hung up, and Rai shamelessly unmutes the tournament game, which he’d never even paused, just in time for the announcer to name the winner of the set. Everyone files out, giving Kaguya enthusiastic goodbyes and Iroha much more subdued ones.

Everyone looks at Iroha a little weird, before they step out. Like they’re wishing her luck, maybe. Akira, Roka, and her mother all smile knowingly at her before they leave. She hates them with every fiber of her being, but she hugs them goodbye regardless. 

The door clicks closed behind them. 

Iroha is going to throw up. 

She pulls a pen and notepad from somewhere nearby—or maybe she’d already had it in her hand, she’s really not too sure—and walks over to Kaguya. She’s swinging her legs over the lip of the table, giddy to the extreme. Their eyes meet, then melt. 

“Everything feel okay?” Iroha asks, quiet, intimate.

Kaguya nods, an easy smile on her face, “Mhm.”

“Perfect.” Iroha walks a few paces back, and sets the notepad down. She swallows down the lump in her throat. “Walk towards me?”

Kaguya hops down from her perch, landing with a quiet thump. The sound of her bare synthetic skin against the tiles is quiet, and subtle, and achingly normal. She stretches her legs out a bit, then takes a couple easy steps forward. She’s standing right in front of Iroha now. 

Iroha is going to throw up. 

“Is touch finally up?” she asks, and Kaguya nods.

Iroha opens her arms wide. A silent invitation. 

She expects Kaguya to dash into the hug. She expects to have to nurse a bruised rib from the fall she’ll surely experience as a result of it. She expects to have to deliver her first of many admonishments in ten years. 

Kaguya slots against Iroha’s chest with nary a whisper, and stays there. 

Her arms are strong, and firm, and they’re wrapped tight around Iroha’s waist. Everything else about her strikes Iroha as painfully soft. She closes her arms around Kaguya, dragging a hand through the long tresses of her hair. She’s warm to the touch, and it’s the best thing Iroha has felt in ten long years. 

“You’re warm,” Kaguya says, voice shaky and wet. “You’re so warm.”

“I have a couple of heating pads tucked in my lab coat, if you want a few of them,” Iroha whispers against the crown of Kaguya’s head.

“I think I prefer this.”

“I thought you would.”

Quietly, Kaguya laughs. She murmurs, right against the bare skin of Iroha’s collarbone, “Your heart’s beating so fast.”

“And you’re running far hotter than your baseline,” Iroha shoots back, just the slightest bit embarrassed. 

“Can you blame me? All the fancy cooling systems you installed are kicking into overdrive. I have a supercomputer for a brain, and every bit of it is busy thinking about how much I love you.”

Iroha is not going to throw up. She's going to cry.

“That’s funny,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “My heart’s beating so fast because every inch of me is busy thinking about how much I love you.”

Kaguya rests her chin on Iroha’s chest, looking up at her with breathless affection. “Well, aren’t we lucky?”

“The luckiest in the world, I think.”

Their hands find each other, magnetic. Their fingers meet, and link, and kiss. A handshake just for them, but Iroha wants more. She wants more things for just the two of them to share. Her hands cup Kaguya’s cheeks. Kaguya’s arms move up to wrap around the back of Iroha’s neck. 

There’s certain questions you don’t have to ask. The answer is obvious, after all. 

Their first kiss is salty.

Neither of them really mind. There’ll be plenty more to come.

Iroha wonders if the world has always been this bright.

Logically, she knows it probably has. She knows what she’s feeling is mostly a combination of euphoria and mirthful delusion brought on by her new relationship. She knows the sun has probably always looked like that, shining through the window of their apartment, and that the sky has always been this particular shade of aquamarine blue, and that the wind has always felt this pleasant, tangling in her hair. 

Logically, she knows all of this. It doesn’t stop her from wondering. 

Kaguya shambles onto the balcony with absolutely zero elegance. She’s wearing a fluffy set of pink pajamas, and her eyes are still scrunched shut, and there’s a smattering of flyaway hairs jutting from the top of her head. Iroha smoothes them down, then presses a kiss against the top of her head. 

“Good morning,” Iroha says past a laugh. “You look well-rested.”

“Meanie,” Kaguya shoots back. “The stream went on way longer than I expected.”

“It’s to be expected.” Iroha nudges her shoulder against Kaguya’s. “A whole lot of people just got their idol back after ten years.”

Kaguya groans, draping herself bonelessly over the balcony railing. “There were still so few people compared to before! I think I was pretty big when I left Tsukuyomi, no…?”

“If anyone was ever going to stand on the same level as Yachiyo, it would’ve been you back then.” Iroha drags a comforting hand along Kaguya’s back. “But it’s been a while. There’s a bunch of new people you have to win over now.”

“Everything would be easier if everyone was like you.”

Iroha raises an eyebrow at that. “Like me?”

Kaguya looks up, an impish grin on her face. “Still obsessed with me.”

Iroha rolls her eyes, pulls Kaguya in by the collar, and plants a kiss on her lips. Kaguya hums contentedly at first, but then grimaces when Iroha pulls away. “Eugh!” she sputters. “Coffee taste!”

“That’s what you get for trying to be cheeky first thing in the morning.”

“So being cheeky in the morning is punishable by bad breath kisses, but being cheeky at night gets you on top of–”

“I’m gonna go brush my teeth! Don’t fall off!”

Kaguya laughs. It’s a beautiful sound. 

The last few weeks have flown by in a pleasant haze that neither of them have been keen to break out of. There’s been some work done, of course, now that Kaguya is actually in her body—the odd kink has to be worked out here or there, or something has to be adjusted as a matter of comfort, and they have to make sure to test Kaguya’s fine motor skills before she’s allowed anywhere near the kitchen again—but most of their time is spent on far simpler things. 

Iroha makes Kaguya pancakes again. Kaguya starts taking care of a pair of crabs again. Iroha makes songs for Kaguya. Kaguya starts streaming again. They go to the beach with Roka and Mami again. They have dinner with Iroha’s family. They lounge around with Yachiyo in Tsukuyomi. They sleep together. They kiss. They share warmth.

Everything is so warm, all of a sudden.

She’s not sure how she never realized how cold her apartment was before. She’d sit down in the living room, and turn the TV on, and a shiver would race down her back. She’d slip into bed and find her blanket a woefully thin barrier against the chillier nights. She’d wake up and cradle too-hot coffee cups in her hands until the feeling would seep back into her fingers. And it all felt normal, too. Like that was the way things were supposed to be. 

Overturning Iroha’s status quo is something of a hobby of Kaguya’s. It hardly surprises either of them anymore. 

Thin arms wind around Iroha’s waist while she’s brushing her teeth. A comforting weight settles against her back. She looks in the mirror, and sees Kaguya staring at her with this waxy, half-lidded look. She smiles, and Iroha smiles back around her toothbrush. She reaches for the special mouthwash they’d developed for Kaguya, perched on a corner of the sink. Kaguya opens her mouth wide, and Iroha rolls her eyes as she pours a bit of the mouthwash into it. She chokes a bit, but starts dutifully swishing it around. Her cheeks bulge out like a chipmunk’s. It’s cute. 

Iroha spits out a foamy glob of toothpaste, then gets to rinsing out her mouth. Kaguya leans forward, rests her head on Iroha’s shoulder, and spits the mouthwash out onto the sink. Iroha grimaces and smacks her lightly.

“Don’t spit it from that high,” she grumbles, checking her clothes. “You could miss and get it all over me. Or it’ll just splash back onto me.”

Kaguya beams, radiating an innocence that Iroha is sure she doesn’t possess. “My aim’s too good for that! You’ll be fiiiine.”

“Don’t say that like you plan on doing it all the time!”

“Aw, but what if I miss you too much?” Kaguya’s arms tighten around Iroha’s waist. “I’ve waited long enough, I think I’ve earned my right to invade your space.”

Iroha sighs, feigning irritation that both of them know she doesn’t really feel. She leans back into the embrace, tilts Kaguya’s chin up, and presses a minty kiss against her lips. Then another. And another. 

They pull away from each other, twin blushes adorning their faces. Kaguya’s voice is a little shaky, and her smile wobbles. “Much better than coffee kisses,” she says.

Iroha laughs, presses another kiss against Kaguya’s cheek, and makes her way out of the bathroom and towards the kitchen. 

They’ve decided to alternate who cooks every day. Kaguya is still the better cook, because of course she is, but Iroha had admitted—during what she now recognizes as a lapse in judgement—that she wanted to pamper Kaguya a little bit. Just a bit. And maybe she wanted to show off how much her own cooking had improved over the last ten years.

About ten minutes, some tears, and a handful of kisses later, Kaguya had enthusiastically agreed. 

There’s a lot of kissing going on in their apartment, Iroha muses. Kaguya being repressed only makes sense, given how long it’s been for her. Iroha herself, though, had definitely not expected to follow along with the overly-affectionate flow of things that has steadily developed between the two of them. Still, she’d rather die than admit to anyone that she was repressed. Especially not her brother.

“What are you feeling like today?” she calls out, taking stock of everything in the fridge. 

From their room, faintly, “Oh! American-style breakfast please!”

Iroha frowns, but pulls out some eggs, a pack of bacon, and some sausages. “Since when do you like American breakfasts?”

“Mr. CIA Man told me about them, back when he helped me steal my ship back!” Kaguya leaps into view, doing a spin to show off the clothes she’s wearing. A simple sweater and some sweatpants. Neither of them actually belong to her. “I’ve been curious ever since.”

“I mean, you’ve had every piece of the traditional American breakfast by itself,” Iroha argues, a smile on her face. Kaguya looks cute in her clothes. “This will just be your first time having it all together. I don’t think it’ll be that revolutionary.”

Kaguya sticks her nose up in the air and smiles, proud as a peacock. “Non, non, my beloved Iroha! You’ve forgotten a crucial piece of the puzzle!”

Iroha rolls her eyes. “Is it that I’ll be m–”

“It’s that you’ll be making it! With lots of love!” Kaguya winks, locking her fingers under her chin and fluttering her lashes. “And also, I’ll be eating it with you!”

“Who said I’d make it with love?”

Kaguya smiles, running forward and hanging herself off of Iroha. “You won’t?”

“Oh fine.” Iroha laughs, pushing Kaguya off of her. “I guess I can make it with love.”

God, they’re so gross. Eggs go in a pan, bacon and sausages go on a griddle. The air fills with smoke, small talk, and the sound of sizzling grease. The Iroha of ten years ago would be mortified. The current Iroha is a little mortified. Is this why everyone made fun of her for so long? Was she always this bad? She takes her frustrations out on the eggs while Kaguya rants about the visual novel she played on stream last night. 

It’s just… who could really blame her? Kaguya is–is just adorable. She’s got this girly charm to her, and she’s surprisingly mature about things, and she’s a great cook, and easy to talk to, and–and she’s also so dedicated, has been so dedicated for so long, to Iroha of all people, that she can’t help but find it attractive. It’s so unfair. 

“Ugh,” she mutters under her breath, unintentionally interrupting Kaguya’s spiel. “I love you.”

Silence. Other than the sizzling, at least, silence. Iroha gathers a serving of scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage onto a plate, then plops it down in front of Kaguya.

Kaguya, who is just the slightest bit red. Kaguya, who is staring at Iroha with a look so lovestruck that it feels like a knife has been driven into her chest.

“What?” she snaps, walking back into the kitchen to get her own breakfast.

Kaguya’s voice is this infuriating blend of dopey and teasing. “You barely ever say it,” she coos, and Iroha can feel that stupid, beautiful ruby-red gaze on her back. “It just makes me happy to hear it.”

“Not like you didn’t already know,” Iroha grumbles, taking a seat next to Kaguya. These countertops used to feel way too high, back when she was 17. The tips of her toes brush against the cold floor, and it sends a jolt up her leg. “I have enough self-awareness to know I wasn’t very subtle. Especially not after realizing you were Yachiyo.”

“And yet you never said it!” Kaguya cackles, kicking her legs a little. She stuffs her face full of bacon before speaking again. “Why did you wait so long?”

“Didn’t feel like I deserved it at first.” Iroha shoves some scrambled eggs in her mouth. They’re fluffy, and just a little creamy. She did well. “Took a while to work through that, and then it was because I thought I shouldn’t tell you until we were done with your body.”

“And then that took a couple years longer than we expected…”

“And then it was mostly just inertia,” Iroha finishes with a shrug. “I’d spent ten years hiding what I felt. Or at least not saying it out loud. It felt easier, at that point, than actually putting it out in the open. At least until we got you up and about.”

“Ah, my Iroha is so cruel,” Kaguya says, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead and leaning back, all tragic and theatrical. Her hair goes flying, catching the light coming in through the window. It makes her golden blonde hair look a little lighter. A wheat field instead of a sunbeam. “I waited so long to see her again, and she forced me to wait even longer to hear that she loved me all along!”

Iroha taps her chopsticks against the now-empty plate in front of her. “You don’t actually feel too bad about that, do you?” Her eyes dart around, stormy, skittish. “I know it was objectively pretty selfish, but…”

“But nothing.” Kaguya’s tone brokers no argument. She leans forward and presses a kiss against Iroha’s cheek, a gentle smile on her face. “You did what you thought was right because you didn’t want to have any regrets about how you went about it. At the end of the day, you still love me and I still love you. That’s the important part, no?”

Iroha puffs a breath out, resigned and more than a little relieved. “I suppose it is.”

Kaguya claps her hands together, effectively putting an end to the conversation. “Now then! Your plate, madame.”

“How considerate,” Iroha says, rolling her eyes. “I’ll go get changed now. Are you gonna head out like that?”

“It’s comfy and presentable enough,” Kaguya replies from her spot in front of the kitchen sink. She slips on a pair of thick, disgustingly garish plastic pink gloves and gets to rinsing their plates. “And you like it when I wear your clothes.”

“Oh screw off.”

“That’s not a denial!”

It isn’t. Iroha decides if she just walks away it won’t count as a defeat though, so she does exactly that. She heads into their room, shakes her head at the small mess of clothes Kaguya had left behind while digging around for some of Iroha’s to wear, and picks something out for herself. Nothing extravagant, since they’re just heading over to the lab, but still far more actually presentable than a sweater and sweatpants, in her humble opinion. 

She takes one more look at the room before she heads out. A month ago, it was barren. Sterile. Clean, and organized, sure, but… that’s it. But now there’s a little water tank on top of the dresser, and some of Kaguya’s old trinkets have been unboxed and re-displayed, and there’s a bit of a mess everywhere. Now the bedsheets are all crumpled up in the middle of the bed instead of one side staying tucked in, entirely pristine, for years on end. It feels a little more like a room now. Like a place made for the two of them. 

That feels important. It feels right.

“Ready?”

Iroha looks beside her. Kaguya is smiling. Her hands are a little cold, and there’s a wet spot on the hem of her shirt from washing the dishes that will probably dry out by the time they leave. Her hand finds Iroha’s, and when their fingers twine together it feels so damnably soft. Soft like Kaguya’s eyes, staring at her in a way that she might have been used to from Yachiyo, but that she’s not sure she’ll ever get used to seeing from Kaguya as well. Soft like despite the fact that she’s Princess Kaguya, it’s Iroha who hangs the moon and the stars in the sky.

“Ready,” Iroha says.

They set out.

Kaguya had been ecstatic to ride in Iroha’s car when they first got her out of the lab. 

‘I wanna ride in the back like a princess with her dashing chauffeur!’ she had said, eyes twinkling with excitement, and Iroha had reluctantly acquiesced. Of course, halfway through the drive Kaguya made the choice to forgo her princess fantasy entirely, and instead decided to clamber up to the front passenger seat. While they were still on the road. It was a disaster. When Iroha asked what in the world possessed her to do that, she just said she preferred to be able to look at Iroha while she drove, and so Iroha was forced to admit a crushing defeat in the face of such pure intentions. The rest of the drive was spent trying to ignore Kaguya as she looked on at her with a dopey grin on her face.

Not much has changed since that first drive.

Kaguya has, thankfully, ditched her princessly aspirations. She settles easily into the passenger seat, clicks on her seatbelt, and spends her time contentedly staring at Iroha while she drives. She doesn’t really know what’s so interesting about her face that Kaguya can keep it up for so long, but she tries to just enjoy the feeling of being… precious enough for it, she supposes. To Kaguya, at least. Although she she could also just–

“Why do you like staring at my face so much?” Iroha blurts out. The plush leather of the steering wheel groans a little as she tightens her grip on it.

Kaguya blinks. “You’re cute,” she answers. There’s a strange lilt to her tone. She recognizes it from somewhere, but she’s not sure where.

“Thanks,” Iroha murmurs, rolling her eyes. The sun glares off the polished surface of a sports car as it rumbles past them. She winces a little. “But seriously, why?”

From the corner of her eye, she sees Kagura frowning. It’s not any kind of annoyed or frustrated, but just… confused. Genuinely and deeply. “I am serious.”

There’s a red light ahead of them. Iroha eases her foot down onto the brake pedal. The car slows to a crawl, then stops. The two of them jolt a little in their seats. “Oh.” Iroha doesn’t know where to look. She just decides to look at the red light, waiting for it to turn green. Her neck itches. “I didn’t… expect that.”

“Did you…?” Kaguya’s mouth flaps uselessly for a second. The disbelief in her voice is so extreme it feels like it slaps Iroha across the face. “Do you think you’re not pretty enough to just. Be stared at because of it?”

Oh, God. Iroha knows where she’s heard this tone before. She turns her head to the side. 

“Iroha…”

“I mean, I just–”

“Did you think I called you beautiful last night for no reason?”

“It was our first time! The whole heat of the moment thing and everything–!”

“I told you I fell in love with you at first sight because your face is beautiful!”

“I was busy processing a whole bunch of other things!”

“I’ve told you countless times throughout the last ten years that you’ve gotten even more beautiful!”

“I thought you were just teasing me!”

A horn blares, loud and tinny and sharp. Iroha slams her foot down on the gas, only actually looking up to confirm that the light is actually green—it is, thankfully—after she’s already nearly sped past it. 

Silence reigns supreme. Iroha’s cheeks burn. Kaguya is very obviously trying not to laugh. Iroha’s eyes flick over to her, then back to the road, then back over to Kaguya. Her cheeks are puffed out, and her face is a little red. 

Their eyes meet. 

Kaguya howls with laughter. It is loud, and keening, and totally devoid of any Yachiyoistic grace. 

Iroha owes Mami an apology. She has decided that there is no such thing as a question with an obvious answer anymore. They’re a thing of the past. Good riddance. 

“I love you so much,” Kaguya wheezes, leaning her head across the middle console until it’s resting against the crook of Iroha’s neck. Her shoulders are still shaking with mirth.

Iroha pouts. “Shut up,” she grumbles. Under her breath, she adds, “I love you too.”

The city whizzes past them. 

Iroha exits the car feeling uncomfortably warm and mentally exhausted. Kaguya spares her fragile mental state no consideration, clinging to her arm and linking their hands together as they walk into Iroha’s office. The air conditioning hits them like a wall, and both of them sigh with relief. Iroha sets about turning all the lights on before they head into the lab, and Kaguya hops onto the table in the center without saying a word. 

“Ah, right,” Iroha calls back from where she’s digging through a box of all her old notes. “We’re not doing repairs today, so you don’t have to get on the table.”

“Oh?” Kaguya tilts her head to the side, obviously curious. She stays on the table anyway, idly kicking her feet. “What’d you wanna do today then?”

Iroha grins, holding up a pair of notebooks. Computer vision systems and Top-secret project. Are written across the covers in bold marker. 

“Isn’t it about time we gave our friend a happier ending too?”

“I am going to throw up.”

Kaguya lets out an unamused huff. “You’re such a drama queen. Was it this bad on the day we put me in my body?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Iroha throws her head back, eyes closed, and thinks back to that coiled mass of nausea that had pooled in her gut back then. She compares it against the lead weight currently settling in her stomach, and decides that maybe this time isn’t so bad. “My mom even picked up on it before we went into the lab.”

“Woah, that bad?”

“I know, right? She didn’t even beat around the bush about it too. Just straight up told me I looked like I was about to throw up. It did help, though. Kept me from staying in my own head for too long.”

“Mom is a sharp one,” Kaguya says, something like awe in her voice. “What a powerful woman.”

“Don’t–” Iroha stops herself, blushing a little. She clears her throat. “She’s not your mom.”

Kaguya swings their clasped-together hands back and forth in wide arcs. “But saying ‘mother-in-law’ is so–”

“She’s not your mother-in-law either! That law hasn’t passed yet anyways!”

The smile that draws from Kaguya is unnervingly sly. “So it’s just because the law hasn’t passed yet? Couple this with what you said last time I tried getting you to marry me, a girl might think you actually want to do it.”

“I could do far worse,” Iroha concedes, shrugging her shoulders in an attempt to appear more calm and collected about the idea than she feels. Her voice barely shakes as she says it. She slots the key for the apartment into place, turning the lock with a heavy click. “Though it’d be a bit unfair of me to marry you outright, all things considered.”

The inside of the apartment is dark, but that’s hardly out of the norm. Iroha doesn’t even bother turning the lights on, instead just slipping her shoes off and lining them up neatly by the entrance. Kaguya does the same, except hers are… not so neatly arranged. Iroha knows she’s totally capable of maintaining proper decorum, but she just chooses to ignore it. Maybe it’s cathartic, for her. Even though she’d had Iroha to confide in over the last ten years, she’d been keeping the particularly prim and proper facade of Runami Yachiyo for far longer. Iroha supposes she has earned the freedom to be a little unruly. She just hopes she’ll have it in her to put her foot down when it matters.

(She won’t, she knows. She’s far too weak to Kaguya. But she can pretend.)

Iroha remembers when the room used to be nothing more than a mess of tangled cables and precariously balanced piles of machinery. She remembers, painfully and vividly, the dozen bruises she’d acquired by smacking her shins into a dozen different things strewn across the floor. It wasn’t until a few years ago that Iroha had taken the time to actually tidy the whole place up in a burst of mania-fueled productivity. Metal racks line the walls, each and every one of them home to at least a dozen different devices with a dozen different purposes. All the cables have been bundled up and routed through covers. Yachiyo’s tank remains almost exactly the same, just a little more cared-for. No more smudges and foggy glass. The tenth sea slug Iroha has had to take care of in as many years is lounging around lazily inside the second tank, off to the side of the room.

All the reminiscing almost makes her forget why she’s here. Almost. Iroha is goi–

“She’s gonna love it,” Kaguya whispers, nuzzling up against Iroha’s side. “I would know, wouldn’t I?”

“Ugh,” Iroha groans, resting her head against the top of Kaguya’s. The light from the tank spills in splotchy waves across the floor. “I know. I know you’re right, but it… it doesn’t make it any easier not to worry.”

Kaguya sits down, dragging over a futon and spreading it out on the floor. She pulls Iroha down onto it, keeping a firm grip on her hand all throughout. “There’s really only one way to know for sure, isn’t there?”

Iroha lets her head get nudged down onto Kaguya’s lap. There’s something nostalgic about it, though she’s not sure when something stops being simple memory and starts bleeding into nostalgia. The last ten years feel so far away from her, now that she’s made it this far. It’s a little sad. It’s a little nice. It’s a little bit of a lot of things, always toeing the line between unbelievable and uncertain and unimaginably bright, and warm, and full of love. 

The last ten years feel so far away from her, but she’s not sure if she could ever forget how much she’s loved, throughout it all. The feeling burns in her chest, incessant and unforgettable. Unwilling to be forgettable. 

Iroha takes a deep breath. 

She closes her eyes, and makes her way to Yachiyo.

It’s always a little strange, waking up in her old apartment. 

It’s a bit of a disquieting thought, that she has lived at her current apartment longer than she ever did in this one. Iroha is not entirely sure why it is disquieting, but it just… is. Still, just because it is strange does not make it unwelcome. Something about the place is soothing. Something in her feels like it settles, surrounded by the four walls of her dingy old place. Something about it makes it feel like home. Like this is where her life really started.

It’s an extreme thought, she admits. And it’s not really what she feels, if she really bothers to try and unpack the tangled mess of her emotions. But it just… feels like what she feels. She wonders how much of it has to do with Kaguya. She wonders how much of it has to do with Yachiyo.

Yachiyo.

She’s still asleep. It makes sense; they’d planned for Iroha to go in right before she was actually due to wake up again. Iroha hadn’t wanted to make a whole Deal out of the occasion, but Kaguya had insisted, had said that Yachiyo deserved the novelty of a surprise, and Iroha had found herself agreeing. Though to be fair, there’s very little Iroha would say Yachiyo doesn’t deserve.

Iroha sits down next to the futon, and stares. 

She always looks so different, when she’s asleep. Everyone does, she supposes, but even here Yachiyo feels like an outlier. Exhaustion hangs off of her different than it does other people. Usually it’s more like a coat. Like a burden. It settles itself across bowed shoulders and slumped backs and lolling heads. It saps people. It seeps into their bones, rots them from within, topples them to the ground. She’s seen it in the mirror a thousand times, and it’s never pretty. 

Yachiyo feels… it feels like her exhaustion props her up. Like it fills the hollow spots in her joints and clamps her spine into a rigid line. It pulls, where there is usually a push. And when she sleeps, it’s like all that empty space opens back up, and all she is is a girl again. Just a girl, with eyelashes that flutter while she dreams. Just a girl who drools a little in her sleep, swaddled in the embrace of a shirt that Iroha hasn’t really considered her own for ten years now. 

Just a girl who deserves more. 

Iroha’s fingers dance along the edge of Yachiyo’s bangs, brushing them aside. “Yachiyo,” she whispers. “It’s time to get up.”

No response. Iroha smiles. A heavy sleeper, this one always is. 

“Yachiyo,” she whispers again, a little louder this time. She leans closer, nudging an errant strand of silver hair back behind Yachiyo’s ear. “It’s time to get up, Yachiyo.”

“Mrgh.”

Iroha laughs, though she does her best to keep it quiet. “C’mon, I have a surprise for you.”

“But ’m sleepy,” she whines, curling in on herself. Iroha spots the smile pulling at her lips. “Yaccho needs beauty sleep.”

“You’re plenty beautiful without it,” Iroha says. She decides to take a gamble. She leans down, slowly, and presses her lips against Yachiyo’s forehead in a feathery kiss. “I want to talk to you about something.”

Yachiyo sighs contentedly, flipping onto her back. Her eyes flutter open and come to rest on Iroha’s. She smiles, soft and sleepy. She doesn’t seem to have noticed. Her gamble paid off. 

“It’s not like you to be so pushy,” Yachiyo says after a bit. “Though I guess your family would probably disagree with me.”

Iroha smiles, tilting her head to the side. Her chest feels warm. “I play favorites, sometimes.”

“That you do.”

They stare at each other. An old, familiar feeling strings itself between them. A tension, a pull, a force beyond either of them. A gravity. Iroha pulls back, barely. The event horizon can wait just a little longer. She’ll be a willing enough victim soon enough. She makes her way over to the coffee table and sits down at her usual spot, beckoning Yachiyo forward. She complies, taking her own spot across from Iroha. 

There’s a moment, Iroha can tell, where Yachiyo realizes something is different. Something about Iroha, and something about herself, and something about the four dingy walls of their apartment. She snaps to, alert, and furrows her brow. Iroha watches, but says nothing yet. The void beyond the windows of the apartment flickers, but nothing more. 

“We’re–” Yachiyo stops herself before her voice can break any more. She clears her throat. “We’re not in Tsukuyomi.”

Iroha nods. “We’re not.”

“Where…?”

Iroha leans back, staring up at the ceiling. She scratches a nail against the rough surface of the tatami mat beneath her. “This is… something piggybacking off of Tsukuyomi, I guess you could say.”

“A different instance,” Yachiyo breathes. “A space within the virtual world, but outside of Tsukuyomi.”

Iroha snaps her fingers, a grin stretching across her face. “Exactly. You probably felt that you still had admin privileges, but nothing about the instance really changed when you tried to do something, yeah?”

“…Yes,” Yachiyo says at length. She sounds a little dumbfounded. “How…?”

“Kaguya,” Iroha answers simply. Understanding blooms in Yachiyo’s eyes. “She’s the only person that knows Tsukuyomi as well as you do. Well enough to do something like this.”

“I’d never even thought of it.” 

“We were banking on that.”

Yachiyo stops in her tracks. A million questions shine in her eyes. “Why?” is the only one that makes it out through her mouth.

Iroha stands up, taking the paltry two steps necessary to place her in the kitchen. She pulls a carton of pancake mix from the pantry, and some milk from the fridge. “I first got the idea from FUSHI.”

She pours some of the pancake mix into a cup, followed by some milk. “Back when he first took me here, I thought it was a little strange how he was actually visible to me in the real world.” A pan goes on top of the stove. She turns the heat on, fetches some butter, and then starts mixing the pancake batter. “Your memories helped with that particular part of the problem. Even though you’re stuck on your ship, you can still interact with the world on your end, since you’re basically made out of… information, I guess?”

“I don’t really get it either,” Yachiyo supplies, still a little stunned. “But that’s about right.”

“Point is,” Iroha continues, throwing some of the butter on the pan and spreading it evenly across the surface. “The world for you is kind of like… a one-way mirror. We can see you if you do what FUSHI did, with the smart contacts, but that’s about it. And to be fair, this is something we already knew. We worked through all this extensively. The solution we reached ended up being a mechanical body that can bridge the gap between an… unorthodox information-existence and regular existence. That’s Kaguya.”

She stops whisking once the mix reaches her desired consistency. She waits a little longer for the butter in the pan to melt, and smiles at Yachiyo. “And then there’s you.”

Yachiyo’s eyes are blown wide. They have been for a bit now, actually. Since she put the butter in the pan. 

“I always thought it was unfair,” Iroha says, pouring a thin sheet of pancake batter into the pan. She grabs a spatula from the drying rack, and waits. “There wasn’t enough money to make a second body. The university was already bankrolling my ridiculous project, and I still had to beg my brother for money near the end. But I couldn’t just… I couldn’t leave you. Not when you’d put your faith, and your hope, and your trust in me.”

Iroha prods at the edges of the pancake, making sure they’re firm before she flips it. It’s nice and golden brown. “So, since I obviously wasn’t just going to give up, I had to think of a solution that didn’t involve a body. Something that could work for you here, in the virtual world.” She pulls out a plate from the cupboards, and places the pancake down on it. Another, blobbier mess of batter goes into the pan. “The problem was that any solution I could think of involved… basically overhauling the way Tsukuyomi as a whole worked.”

Yachiyo’s still not saying anything. She’s staring between Iroha and the pan and the plate next to her. A thin film of tears is building at the corners of her eyes. Iroha smiles, a little sad, and holds up a finger. As if to say, ‘just a little longer.’ Yachiyo’s throat bobs. Regardless, she nods.

“Tsukuyomi’s sensory simulation systems are constrained by the fact that they have to work for humans too. Reworking them from scratch so that our proposed solution would actually work just wasn’t feasible in a timeframe I felt comfortable with.” Another flip. This one’s a little burnt at the edges, and a bit misshapen, but otherwise fine. “So I asked Kaguya for help with an alternative that would give us more freedom, and this is what she came up with. The fact that it’s technically part of Tsukuyomi means we didn’t even have to reverse-engineer an entirely new pair of smart contacts to access it too, which saved us a lot of time.”

Another pancake done. She sets it down on top of the first, and pours the last of the batter in the pan, giving the cup a shake to make sure she gets every last drop out. “The real kicker though is actually in how we got sensations to work in here. Kaguya was, once again, extremely valuable here. In particular, her body.” Iroha pauses. “That sounded a little wrong.”

“It did.” Yachiyo laughs wetly, propping her chin on her hands and just… staring at Iroha. “You’re such a superficial girl, Iroha.”

Iroha rolls her eyes. She forges onward. “Her body was important because she’s essentially become a giant repository of sensory data. Or I guess… sensory-data-turned-regular-data. Bottom line, anything Kaguya’s body has felt or will feel is suddenly fair game. It’s… decodable and reproducible, at least in here.” 

Another flip. Another golden brown beauty. “The only thing left at that point was figuring out how you could access the library of data. So we waited until we knew you’d have a forced shutdown—you really need to stop using all 52 hours, by the way—and copied it over to your ship, which itself is kind of like your own supercomputer brain.” Iroha grabs the pan, giving it a flick and flipping the pancake onto the plate, right at the top of the stack. She refuses to acknowledge how much practice it took to learn how to do that. “Your visual ‘input’ is then cross-referenced against the list of things in the repository, and the relevant data is used to simulate the sensation.”

Iroha grabs some syrup, pinches a fork against the plate, and places everything down in front of Yachiyo. She sits down across the table again, and realizes that they’re both crying, now. That they’re both smiling too. 

“You’re amazing, Yachiyo. The only feasible solution is the one that could only work for you. How’s that for defying the course of fate, huh?”

A flurry of movement. The flutter of fabric. A muted thump, and a tangle of limbs. 

Their lips find each other easily, amidst it all.

Kissing Yachiyo is a little different from kissing Kaguya. It feels like an obvious thought, but it still sends a pleasant thrill running down her back when she notices it. Yachiyo is a little bolder. Hungrier. She cups Iroha’s face and kisses like she’s trying to breathe her in. Like she’s trying to drink her down. It’s a little intoxicating—and seeing as how Iroha needs to breathe and Yachiyo doesn’t, it’s a little dangerous too.

She’s lightheaded by the time they pull away from each other. She notes the phantom feeling of a finger being poked into her side and wonders what kind of expression she’s making, out in the real world, for Kaguya to be annoyed by it. She tries to straighten her face out, and hopes the effort carries over to real life. 

“You’re so silly,” Yachiyo murmurs. Her hands are still cupping Iroha’s face, thumbs trailing across her cheeks. “You wanted to waste my first sensations in eight thousand years on pancakes?”

“Well for one, I did technically wake you up with a kiss. It was just on your forehead, and I was explicitly hoping you wouldn’t realize it felt different than usual.” Iroha clears her throat, cheeks burning. “And I mean… you really like pancakes so I thought… you’d appreciate it I guess?”

Yachiyo peppers kisses along the curve of Iroha’s brow, along the bridge of her nose, along the jut of her cheekbones. She brings their lips together again, once, twice, three times. Iroha doesn’t have a supercomputer in her head, but her brain does a good enough job of making her feel like every touch of plush lips against her skin is brilliant, and burning, and bright. “Silly girl,” Yachiyo says, heart-rendingly soft. There are lights dancing in the dusky blue of her eyes. “The one thing I’ve wanted more than anything, for eight thousand years, has always been you. Always, always you.”

The words lance through Iroha’s chest, beautiful and deadly and so horribly, terribly unfair. 

“I’m sorry for taking so long,” she whispers, all raw and choked up again. Kaguya’s thumb brushes across her cheek in real life, and Yachiyo’s mirrors it. “Thank you for waiting for me.”

“Always,” they say. “However long, always for you.”

The world begins anew.

“How do you feel…” Iroha’s eyes shine. “About trying to e-mail the moon?”

Mt. Fuji is cold.

It makes sense, of course. It’d been a chilly evening when they’d started the climb, and an even chillier night as they’d gotten further through it, but also they’re climbing Mt. Fuji. Of course it’s going to be cold, they’re about three-and-a-half thousand meters above sea level at the moment. Just because it makes sense doesn’t mean Iroha doesn’t reserve the right to complain about it, though. She hefts the pack on her back a little higher, breath misting in front of her, and just focuses on putting one foot in front of the other.

At least it’d been a calm climb, all things considered. They’d decided on taking the Gotemba Trail, since it’d almost certainly be the least crowded and they’d rather not have to explain why they’re carrying shovels to the top of Mt. Fuji to a bunch of strangers. Granted, they have technically been authorized to do so, but it’s just… uncomfortable. And strange. And not worth the shorter trip. Especially if there’s any tourists. Or old people. Or old tourists. It’s a rather callous sentiment, and she blames Kaguya’s influence for having felt it. 

The downside, of course, is that the Gotemba Trail is long—eight hours and counting of climbing later, they still haven't made it to the summit. Iroha curses her feeble body. Ten years spent single-mindedly building one for Kaguya had evidently done a number on hers. The undersides of her feet burn uncomfortably, and her knees creak a little, and all the cold air in her lungs cuts, clear and sharp. She shakes her head. One foot in front of the other. Just put one foot in front of the other.

It’s quiet. 

It hadn’t been, earlier on in the hike. Kaguya had made it a point to complain, loudly and frequently, about the fact that Yachiyo was getting off easy, not actually having to physically make the climb. Iroha had fired back by pointing out that neither of them even have the capacity to get tired from the climb. This led into an argument over the potential merits of manually simulating the exhaustion from the hike—none, in Kaguya’s opinion. Catharsis, in Iroha’s. Then they’d had a much more embarrassing conversation about certain side effects of their limitless stamina, and everything that had already been done and was yet to be done with it. The full-body blush that had ripped through Iroha was the warmest she’d been all evening.

They talked about Tsukuyomi. About their progress towards rehauling its sensory systems, and about the changes they were making to KASSEN’s ruleset, and about Black OnyX’s continued dominance at the top of the competitive scene. They talked about Akira and Noi, and how fans were finally starting to get wise to what was going on between them. They talked about concert plans, both ingame and out. They talked about tomorrow’s lunch. 

They talked. About nothing, about everything, they talked.

It was nice. 

Still, Iroha’s limits had made themselves apparent pretty quickly. She’d been wasting far too much breath talking, and didn’t have nearly enough left over for hiking. Kaguya and Yachiyo had both insisted on a break when they noticed, and Iroha found herself more than unwilling to protest. They found a nice rock to perch on and Kaguya wrapped herself around Iroha, heaters at full blast. It was bliss. Short-lived bliss, lest they risk Iroha falling asleep right then and there, but bliss nonetheless. A hastily-downed water bottle, more heating packs shoved under her clothes, and suddenly they were off again. 

The quiet was nice too. 

Iroha doesn’t mind talking to Kaguya and Yachiyo—really, she quite loves it—but silence has an allure all to itself. It makes the drab grays of the mountain feel like they deepen and darken into inky, night-sky black. It makes the snowy peaks feel like they shine, sunlight glinting off the snow and shining back over the mountain like a lighthouse vigil. It makes the dried patches of grass feel like watercolor blobs of greens and oranges, mixing together in a way that feels more autumnal than anything. It makes the sunset look like Kaguya’s eyes. It makes the night look like Yachiyo’s.

It’s almost sunrise now. 

They still can’t actually see the sun, but the sky is starting to lighten up at the edges, just a bit. The stars start fading out of view, and the world starts saturating itself in color once again. Iroha can actually see her shoes now, one going in front of the other, over and over again. They’re caked in dirt and dust, but they’re holding strong. She’s glad she invested in some good ones. She can actually see Kaguya as well. Can see her as more than just a shadowy outline, marching ahead in front of her. Can see the crown of her head start shining in its usual golden hues again. 

Iroha feels the telltale warmth behind her eyes of her smart contacts turning on. Yachiyo flutters into view, drifting through the air alongside them. She stands in stark contrast the the world around her, all flowing-mercury hair and silver sleeves jostled by invisible currents. Iroha is reminded, suddenly, of a picture she’d seen a while back of a silvery butterfly koi fish. A giggle springs from between her lips, bubbly despite her exhaustion. Yachiyo is a little like those glowing fish always flying around in Tsukuyomi, and that’s funnier than she thought it’d be. 

“What are you laughing about?” Yachiyo whispers sweetly, draping her non-existent weight around Iroha’s shoulders. There’s a smile on her lips, and there’s love in her eyes, and it makes her look beautiful. More than she usually is, at least.

Iroha places a hand over the outline of Yachiyo’s wrist, knowing the sensation will still go through even if Iroha herself can’t feel it. “Nothing much. You just reminded me of Tsukuyomi a little bit, flying around in the air like that.”

“Ooh, like the flying fish?” Kaguya calls from up ahead, mischief twinkling in her eyes when she turns back to look at them. “I totally get what you mean.”

“I never said that,” Iroha sputters out, hunching her shoulders defensively. Kaguya drops back, falling into step with Iroha, and grabs her hand. Their bulky gloves don’t make it the nicest feeling, but she appreciates it nonetheless. “It’s true, but I never said it.”

“Ah, to think the loves of Yaccho’s life would be so cruel…” Yachiyo dabs an oversized sleeve along the corner of her eye, sniffling and whining. “What could I have done to deserve this…?”

“You flirt with her in public way too often!” Kaguya’s grip tightens. She draws herself closer to Iroha, and they stumble for a second before they find their balance again, steps in sync. “It distracts her from me trying to flirt with her!”

Yachiyo hums, a finger at her chin as she thinks. “Oh!” she says after a second. She then proceeds to untangle herself from Iroha, wrapping her presence around her and Kaguya both. “Maybe I just have to flirt with both of you at once?”

Kaguya rolls her eyes, but the smile on her face is impossible to hide. Iroha laughs, a little breathless from the exertion, and says, “Wouldn’t that just make you a worse offender?”

“Worse, yes, but also more equal!” Yachiyo shoots back, eyes a pair of giddy crescent moons. “I can’t neglect my wonderful junior, even if it is in favor of our wonderful girlfriend!”

“Junior?” Kaguya questions, incredulous. “We’re technically the same!”

“And yet,” Iroha murmurs in a sing-song. “You do still admire her, don’t you?”

“Ugh.”

“Wait, she does?”

“Ugh!”

“She does!” Iroha confirms with a smile. Her breath comes in short pants, but she does her best to power through it. “She’s always talking about how you’re so much braver than her, for choosing to stick around even without a body.”

Yachiyo gasps, eyes twinkling, and throws herself exclusively around Kaguya’s neck this time, nuzzling their cheeks together. Kaguya whines, lightly body-checking Iroha. “Stop spilling my secrets!”

Iroha shrugs. “Stop having adorable secrets.”

They laugh. The sky continues to brighten.

Time feels finicky and uncertain. One foot in front of the other, over and over and over again. Iroha can’t quite say how long it’s been, by the time the cherry-red wood of a torii gate is peeking over the rocks. She just knows that the sky is fringed in gold, and Kaguya is gasping, and then jumping, and then cheering, and running, and so horribly happy. Iroha calls out, a halfhearted plea to slow down falling from her lips, but she is mostly just concerned with staring. Staring at the sun at the summit, and at the moon, just barely still there, floating above it. Staring at Kaguya and Yachiyo bathed in the rays of a mountaintop sunrise. 

Her chest clenches. She falls in love again, just a bit. 

They get to digging.

Iroha’s muscles burn, and her shoulders feel stiff and heavy, but she doesn’t waste any time or breath on complaining. She shovels dirt into a mound behind her, and Kaguya does the same. Her mind wanders, the tedium of repetitive action leaving her stuck in her own head.

‘You first showed up here in one of those bamboo shoot ships, right? The shooting star?’

She thinks about music, strangely enough. Not about specific songs, or any of her in-progress compositions, but more… the concept of music. How it brings people together. How it brought all three of them together, across far too much time and space. She wonders if her father is proud, wherever he is, of everything she has done with the gift he has given her.

‘That means that somehow, a ship with proper power is capable of granting you a human body, just like when you first came here. Or at least, human-like, right?’

She thinks about her family. About her mother, with her sunken cheeks and her bony hands and her recently-not-so-sad eyes. She thinks about her brother, with his gentle gaze and his booming laugh and the horrible, infuriating way he always seems to get under her skin. 

‘We can’t use Yachiyo’s ship, since it was damaged when she landed… but what if we had one in pristine condition? What if we had access to the full breadth of the ship’s technology?’

She thinks about Roka, Mami, and the twins. They’ve started getting chubby, the little rascals. Mami and Roka had called Iroha easy, way back when, but she’s seen the way they buckle for those kids. It’s a disaster waiting to happen, and Iroha will be reserving front row seats to the show. 

‘What if we could make you both human again? For good?’

Iroha thinks about herself. About the girl she used to be, and the woman she has become, and the future stretching ahead of her. The list of memories she has yet to make unfurls in front of her, a lordly decree stretching into the horizon. 

Her shovel hits something solid, a clang echoing across the summit. 

She thinks about Kaguya and Yachiyo, and wonders how many more happy endings they’ll all pen together.

She can’t wait to find out.