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「It’s possible the real Antares stopped existing a long time ago. 」
The thought drifts through Nene’s mind like a half-remembered dream, lonely and strange in her subconscious. She doesn’t know why it surfaces now, or why it makes her chest tighten, but she barely has time to examine it before—
“Watch out!”
Nene yelps. The soccer ball just barely skims her cheek, flying past her to be caught by a wire fence some feet away. She watches it bounce on the ground as gravity takes hold, landing on the grass with a dull tonk. Nene whips around to find the culprit—Amane, walking up with a sheepish smile. He’s squinting through the sunlight, his hair sticking out in wild directions. There’s a faint dirt smear on his cheekbone from where he slid to steal a ball from someone else.
“Are you okay, Yashiro-san?”
Nene pouts. A thin finger grazes the one-yen sized mark on her cheek as she thinks of a suitable response. “I’m fine. But you should really be careful with that kick of yours, Amane-kun.”
“En. I will, I’m sorry, Yashiro-san,” Amane says. Where Nene’s finger lies on her injury, his hand snakes to cup it. Hesitantly, skin meets skin. Nene tilts her head without thinking, letting him cradle her like something fragile. She feels the rough pad of his finger trace the raised mark his kick left behind. It stings a bit, she thinks, but pushes the thought down right away.
His face twists. “I’ll accompany you to the nurse,” he murmurs. Then, quieter: “Of course, only if you want me to...”
Amane rambles under his breath, reeling his hand away.
It doesn’t even hurt, Nene thinks. Or. Well. It did hurt, but it wasn’t as if her face was caved in by the ball—just a scrape, nothing more, nothing less. Yet seeing him this way has Nene wanting to chuck herself head-first into a black hole.
“Okay,” Nene says softly. “Let’s go.” Still, her eyes flick between the ball and Amane.
He gives her a small, toothy smile and attempts to lead the way. They only take a few steps before the coach calls for, “Yugi-san!”
Amane stiffens. His shoulders rise, then fall. He turns to Nene with an apologetic dip of his head, disappointment flashing across his face like a shadow.
For a moment he looks deflated when he jogs back to the guys, but as soon as he’s there his friends swarm him—ruffling his hair, nudging his ribs, no doubt teasing him about his kick from minutes before. He pushes their arms away from his hair, laughing along. Nene’s eyes gravitate to the scene, drinking all the colors reflecting off of them, memorizing their lines and angles and shadows. Warmth creeps up her neck.
It’s Aoi.
Ao-chan’s giggle is hot behind Nene. “Silly little lovebirds,” she says, a pleasant smile on her face. “And you say you don’t like him.”
Nene gasps. “I don’t like—!” She clamps her mouth shut when a few soccer players glance over, suddenly aware of how loud she was talking. Her voice drops down to a whisper, “I don’t like Amane-kun like that. We just... talk since he sits behind me.”
“Mm.”
“Yugi, Yashiro. We’re organized alphabetically.”
“So being invited to the movies was––as friends?”
Nene is quick to sputter and cover her reddening ears. Her bottom lip quivers, a shaking leaf compared to Ao-chan’s still expression. Normally, Nene is able to take Aoi’s teasing. They’ve known each other for years, what are best friends for otherwise? Aoi’s expression is serene and effortlessly kind, meanwhile she can barely restrain herself—that girl’s deep violet, deep water eyes that made her feel like a shallow puddle trembling under the sun.
She fails to defend herself, whining in a pitiful tone. “Ao-chan, please...”
Nene doesn’t like Amane. She’s not sure who she likes. The older Minamoto brother is cute, but not only is he taken by nearly every person in both Kamome and in town, he’s always chasing after his vice president. Then there’s the younger Minamoto brother, and he’s attached to Mitsuba to the hip. (Do these things run in the family?) Yamabuki-san, Fuji-kun, Nakahara-senpai––
No. Definitely not that guy. He insulted her ankles.
“Okay, okay. I’ll stop with you and Amane-san,” Aoi says. She reaches a delicate hand to brush through Nene’s curls. She coos, “Look, you’re all flustered. Your hair’s tangled.”
Nene slumps, letting Aoi fuss with her. She peers over to see the soccer team organizing themselves for another practice game. This time, Amane is on the sidelines. He discreetly tries to clutch at his chest. He pants, chest slowing down once he catches his breath.
“Even from far away, he’s quite handsome,” Aoi muses.
“Ao-chan!” Nene squeaks. She chews on the inside of her lip, grumbling a complaint under her breath. Aoi laughs lightly, intertwining strands of Nene’s teal ends together.
Still, Nene sneaks more and more glances at Amane through her lashes. His hair sticks to his forehead, sweat glittering across his jaw. His cheeks are flushed and it takes just enough restraint for Nene to not run and cool him down. He pulls out his water bottle, using his teeth to pull open the tab. His snaggletooth makes an appearance, canines dull in comparison to his brother’s. Nene tries to refocus on the gentle pulling from Aoi’s braiding, but she keeps coming back to watch him.
Her heart unsettles when Amane meets her gaze. His golden eyes scrutinize her, putting a stop to her breath. She wants to freeze this moment and hold it in her hands. She wants to know what he’s feeling, what he’s thinking, but he’s suddenly too far away to clearly see what expression he’s making.
In any case, she smiles. And maybe he smiles back. She hopes he does.
꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹
The nurse fusses with Nene’s cheek, gently scolding her for waiting so long to have her injury seen as she dabs ointment over it, but Nene barely feels it. Her mind keeps floating back to the field, to Amane’s hand on her cheek, to his face twisted with guilt.
She shouldn’t let herself get used to moments like that. Perhaps, in a sick, cruel way, she shouldn’t have let herself want them in the first place. It only leaves her with more hurt.
When the nurse finally dismisses her, Nene drags her feet back to the classroom. Her fingers trace the cool wall tiles as she counts her steps. She makes a mental note of her heartrate and the blood rushing through her veins and how her eyes constantly adjust to the shifting light streaming from the window. She tries to memorize the feeling of being alive, the days she has left burned deeply in the back of her mind.
The classroom is quiet when she slides the door open, dust motes floating lazily in the air, suspended like tiny planets.
There’s a gift waiting for Nene when she comes back from the nurse’s office.
He’s also there, waiting.
He rests his chin on his palm, pretending that he didn’t notice Nene come in. His foot twitches underneath the desk, miming the actions of the last soccer game. For a moment, Nene pretends she doesn’t see him either. She zeroes in on a small metal bento box placed on her desk and picks it up. Opening it, neat cuts of apples and broccoli are arranged in an alternating pattern. Amane perks up at the sound of the box being shut.
“Yashiro—”
“Amane-kun—”
Their eyes meet, caught on the lines of each other’s sentences. His cheeks are still red, Nene notes. He presses his lips into a shy line. “Yashiro goes first,” he says, voice soft.
Nene holds the box closer to her chest. “Did you... make this for me?”
Amane shakes his head. “I made it for Black Canyon.”
She blinks. “My hamster?”
“You mention him a lot around Aoi-san,” he says, words tumbling out of him faster and faster. “How he escapes from his cage all the time. He’s a dwarf hamster, right?” Any introversion Amane held slowly strips away. He looks at her so intently Nene feels like her soul is being examined. “I went to the library yesterday,” he continues, his voice picking up speed, as though he’s running out of time to speak. “Went together with my brother, even though he hated it. Anyway, I learned about hamster diets. My mom helped me cut the apples. She says I’m not allowed near knives.”
Amane finishes in a rush, breathless.
Nene stares at him, overwhelmed by the tenderness of it all. By the fact he thought of her—well after school, of her silly little hamster—and went through a painstaking effort for her.
“He’ll really like this,” she says. “I think Black Canyon is tired from eating seeds all the time.”
“Maybe that’s why he runs away so often.”
Nene laughs. “I once found him chewing on my charger cable!”
Amane laughs too, and the tense airs he’s put up around finally dissipates. His body relaxes against the chair he’s sitting on and he doesn’t bother covering his mouth, bright teeth exposed. There’s a small red mark on his chin from resting it on his palm for so long, a deep contrast to his uneven tan. Nene finds herself laughing eventually, remembering all the places she’s found Black Canyon where he didn’t belong. Nene feels the bandaid pull at her skin from smiling. He’s got a bit of an ugly smile, she thinks. His bottom lip splits and there’s just a tiny bubble of spit starting at a corner.
Something tugs at the back of her mind. She hasn’t seen this smile of his before. Amane was always very polite with her, playing this mental game of chess to see who’ll make the first move. Maybe he’s played around with her, teased her like Ao-chan, taught her things she wouldn’t have thought to learn. But...
“He” could never be this comfortable with her, could he?
「We can see it, but it’s dead. Now that I think about it... 」
A pang of sadness drags her back to the present; the Amane in front of her is just a carefully crafted boy out of an upright grave. If she pinched herself right now, she’d definitely feel it. This is just a dream, Nene’s mind helpfully supplies. It’s time to wake up.
But there’s a small wheeze at the back of his throat when he laughs.
It’s so, so ugly. So wonderful. Nene wants to hear it all the time.
꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹
The rest of the school day drifts by in a soft, unfocused haze.
Nene hears the last period teacher talk about his weekend plans, but only distantly, as though listening through a thick glass pane. Her classmates laugh, pass notes, complain about homework. Chairs and desks scrape, chalk squeaks, and several girls and boys have already listed which students were responsible for what cleaning tasks. Life moves forward with the careless confidence of people who believe their tomorrows are guaranteed.
She envies them.
She sits at her desk, the metal bento box tucked safely inside her bag, and traces the Band-Aid on her cheek. She presses lightly, as if she can coax the memory to stay—the warmth of his palm, the rough pad of his thumb, the way she leaned in without thinking of the world around them.
And beneath that memory, another rises: his laugh. That ugly, wonderful wheeze she’s never heard before, how his whole face had opened up, unguarded and alive. She keeps replaying, terrified she’ll forget the sound once she wakes.
Every few minutes, she glances back.
Amane sits behind her, chin propped on his hand again, pretending to take notes. His handwriting is messier than usual, like his mind is somewhere else entirely. Sometimes, through the window’s reflection, she catches him staring at the back of her head. Sometimes he catches her doing the same.
Each time, they look away too quickly.
Each time, her heart aches a little more.
Because she knows that Amane is a miracle stitched together from a future that wasn’t meant to happen. A boy she was never meant to meet like this. She thinks of the dreamt afternoons they watched all sorts of movies together, eating candy until they were sick, laughing at one another when they failed at a rigged gacha machine on the street.
She knows she’s running out of time with him.
When the final bell rings, the sound sounds like glass shattering. Nene mindlessly stands up, moving to wipe off the chalkboard as the cleaning task asks her to do, glimpsing at Amane’s figure organizing the chairs with two other boys. She hurries through her task, bumping hips with Ao-chan who looks at her with a simple smile, taking the damp cloth away from Nene.
Nene fights a small frown, but packs her things with care anyway. She waits until most of the class has finished cleaning before leaving.
Amane lingers too.
He hovers by the door, fiddling with the straps of his bag. His eyes flick toward her, then away, then back again. He looks like he wants to say something—something important—but the words keep catching on his tongue. Nene steps into the hallway, passing by him. The sunlight slants through the windows, warm and golden. She pauses, letting the warmth soak into her skin.
How many more sunsets would she get to feel like this, alive or dreaming?
“Yashiro.”
Amane’s voice is quiet behind her.
She turns.
He stands just a few steps away, framed by fading light. His hair glows at the edges, turning him into something unreal. His lips pantomime the words several times before he finally asks, “Can I... walk you home?”
Nene’s breath catches. It’s such a silly, simple question. But it feels too big for her to carry anyway.
She shouldn’t say yes, but she does. In every dream, she does.
“Okay,” she whispers.
They walk side by side through the courtyard. Students scatter around them, laughing, shouting, pushing. Amane keeps his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders slightly hunched, as if he’s trying to make himself smaller. Nene watches how the sunlight hits his cheekbones, the way his shadow stretches long beside hers. He kicks at a pebble, missing it twice before finally nudging it forward.
“Your cheek...” he says suddenly. “Does it still hurt?”
“No,” Nene says. “Not anymore.”
He nods, relieved. Then, after a moment: “I’m glad.”
They walk a little further. The wind rustles the trees and a bird chirps overhead.
Nene swallows. “Ama...”
“Mm?”
“Thank you. For the gift. For... everything, actually.”
He blushes. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing,” she says quietly.
He looks at her then and something in his expression softens, like he’s seeing her back at the field, injured because of him. As if he’s replaying his own memories buried deep too, imprinting the feeling of his hand on her cheek, the moment she leaned into him without hesitation. Nene’s chest tightens and she feels it again—that impossible ache. “He” who never smiled at her like this back in the bathroom, masking all of his frustrating secrets with a chirpy tune.
This “Amane,” walking beside her in the fading sunlight, who had his mom cut the apples for her hamster, the one whose laugh cracked and bubbled—is a version she loses the moment she wakes up. She tries to breathe past the tightness in her throat.
He shifts his weight, glancing down at his shoes. His fingers twitch at his sides, like he’s fighting the urge to reach for her. Desperation screams at Nene to hold him first, but she doesn't move.
“Yashiro.”
Her name lands like a stone dropped into still water.
He takes a small step closer, the space between them shrinking until she can the see the poorly cleaned smudge of dirt on his cheek, the uneven tan on his neck, the way his lashes tremble when he blinks.
“I...”
He swallows, and tries again. “I wanted to tell you—”
It’s right there, perched on the edge of his tongue, fragile and trembling like a baby bird. A cool breeze slips between them, brushing the back of her neck in warning. Goosebumps rise along her arms. The sunlight dims further, clouds drifting over the horizon, and the warmth of the moment thins.
Nene forces a smile. “My parents will get worried if I stay out for too long.”
He hesitates, the words he almost said still hovering between them. “Will I... see you tomorrow?”
She wants to crash into him, hold him tight, feel his warm, rough hands against her cheeks until the moon hangs high into the sky. She wants to promise him, yes, I will always see you. No matter where you stay I will come running to you. All you have to do is call my name again—say it again, again, again, until your throat hurts. She wants to smile at him with her eyes closed and know he’s smiling right back.
So she says, “I hope so.”
And Nene steps back before he can see the tears gathering in her eyes.
He stays where he is, standing at the fork in their path, watching her go. His silhouette is framed by the dying light, the breeze tugging gently at his shirt. She forces herself to not turn around, because she knows once she does, it's all over. If she does, she might run back to him, cling to him, beg him to say something—anything—that make this dream last. Her mind loops back to that sound; the cracked bubble of joy that had escaped out of his mouth. It echoes in her ears louder than the summer cicadas, louder than her heartbeat, louder than anything she's ever known. Nene touches the Band-Aid on her cheek again, as if touching it might conjure the memory back to life.
She wants to hear it tomorrow, and every day after that. She wants to hear it until she knows every tiny hitch, every wheezy breathe, every crack of his voice.
「...It kinda sounds like a ghost, huh? 」
The sun sinks lower, painting the sky in muted pinks and bruised purples.
Nene turns anyway.
“Good night, Hanako-kun.”