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Shiori heard the front door open, then stop.
From where she stood by the keyboard, one hand resting on a stack of loose sheet music, she looked up without really thinking about it. The rehearsal room had gone into that familiar end-of-night half-state: amps off but still warm, cables coiled in lazy black loops over the floor, the cheap standing lamp by Cecilia’s mixer throwing a honey-colored patch over the corner they all called the tech graveyard. One of Amelia’s labels had peeled halfway off a power strip. Gigi had left an empty can on the windowsill. Somebody had tracked in rainwater earlier, and the concrete by the entrance still held a dark crescent of drying footprints.
Mumei was standing in the doorway with one hand on the frame and the other halfway into her sweatshirt pocket, frowning at nothing.
It took Shiori less than a second.
She didn’t even need to look at Elizabeth. She knew Elizabeth would have clocked it too.
Mumei had been making absent little humming noises while packing up for the last ten minutes. She had left her phone on top of an amp seven times in the last month. Once she had gone all the way to the stairwell before coming back for a lyric notebook she had been carrying under her own arm. Last week she had spent five full minutes accusing the universe of stealing her in-ear monitors before Cecilia found them clipped to the collar of her own sweatshirt.
Without looking up from behind the drum kit, Elizabeth said, “Three.”
Shiori, already smiling despite herself, said, “Two.”
Mumei turned, eyes narrowing with wounded betrayal. “You guys suck.”
“One,” Elizabeth finished, one stick balanced loosely between two fingers, her other hand resting over the snare to mute the faint sympathetic buzz that had started when Mumei slammed her bag onto the floor.
Mumei groaned and stomped back into the room in heavy boots, muttering something that was probably obscene by Mumei standards and therefore mostly creative rather than genuinely offensive. Her messy hair was slipping out of whatever loose attempt at tying it back she’d made before rehearsal. The collar of her oversized sweatshirt had slowly been slipping off of one shoulder. She patted the top of the amp, found her phone exactly where she had left it, and pointed at them with it.
“I hate both of you.”
“That’s unlikely,” Shiori said. “You’re way too attached to us.”
“You know me too well. It’s creepy.”
Elizabeth spun one drumstick once between her fingers, easy and thoughtless. “You say that like this isn’t entirely your fault.”
Mumei shoved her phone into her pocket. “I’m an artist. My belongings are as free as my mind.”
“They certainly are,” Shiori said.
That got a laugh out of her, frayed around the edges with fatigue. Then, because she was Mumei, because she noticed more than people gave her credit for when it mattered, she looked between them.
It was slight. Her eyes flicked once to Shiori, once to Elizabeth, then lingered somewhere in the middle as if she could feel the shape of something unsaid sitting in the room with them.
The awkwardness on her face was small, but obvious if you knew her. And Shiori did.
Of course she did. They all knew each other like that. Years of late nights, shared gigs, messy green rooms, eaten-too-fast dinners on venue floors, inside jokes worn soft with use. Mumei covered discomfort with noise most of the time. When she didn’t know what to say, she either said five things or none. Right now she was hovering between both.
She knew something was wrong.
Not the details. Shiori doubted they had told anyone enough for that. But the band had eyes. Cecilia’s deadpan had gone a little too precise lately. Amelia had gotten more cheerfully practical in that way she did when she was trying not to pry. Gigi had kept almost saying something and then, miraculously, not.
Nobody had asked.
Nobody would, unless it started hurting the band.
That was the thing about playing with people this long. They knew when to leave a wound alone.
Mumei hitched her bag higher onto her shoulder. “Okay,” she said, too brightly. “I’m actually leaving now.”
“Bold statement,” Shiori said.
Mumei pointed at her again. “You hush.”
“Get home safe,” Elizabeth said, warmth slipping into her voice the way it always did with the others. It was automatic with her. That softness. That quiet instinct to gather people in with her hands full and her shoulders already carrying too much.
Shiori added, “And please charge your phone before you start sending me cryptic messages from five percent battery like a Victorian ghost.”
“I’m not cryptic.”
Shiori looked at her.
Mumei considered that. “Okay. Fine.”
Then her gaze flicked between them one more time. A little awkward. A little worried. “Don’t, like…”
She trailed off.
“Kill each other?” Shiori offered.
Mumei made a face. “That, yeah.”
“We weren’t planning to,” Elizabeth said.
“It would be very inconvenient for scheduling,” Shiori said.
That made Mumei laugh again, small and reluctant but real. “Cool. Great. Love this deeply normal energy.”
Then she left.
This time the door shut behind her with a metal click and did not open again.
The silence that followed was immediate and dense.
Not empty. The place held onto sound even after it was gone. The memory of cymbals still seemed to hover in the rafters. A violin phrase Cecilia had been tinkering with earlier felt as if it had soaked into the walls. Mumei’s voice, all rough feeling and bright ache, still lived somewhere in the air between the mic stands. There was always a little aftermath to bare//bøne rehearsals. Noise clung here. So did history.
And now that Mumei was gone, so did the fact that there was nothing left to joke around.
Shiori let the smile leave her face. Across the room, Elizabeth set the drumstick down over the snare and rose from behind the kit.
She moved like she always did after rehearsal – steady, practical, grounded in her own body in a way Shiori had once found comforting and now found almost difficult to look at for too long. Strong shoulders under a sleeveless shirt, long red hair pulled back high and already half-falling out, one stubborn strand refusing to behave near her forehead. There was a controlled economy to the way she moved offstage and around equipment, every motion purposeful, familiar. She looked like she belonged in rooms like this. Like she could carry the whole place if necessary.
That had been part of the problem too.
Elizabeth started cleaning immediately.
Of course she did.
She bent to unplug a cable. Adjusted the angle of a cymbal stand by a fraction. Gathered up spare sticks into their pouch with more care than the moment actually required. There was something almost ritualistic about it.
A person less familiar with her would have read it as diligence. Shiori knew it for what it was.
Elizabeth, given emotion with nowhere to go, defaulted to usefulness.
Shiori straightened a stack of papers that were already straight.
Her rings tapped softly against the keyboard stand. One, two. A nervous habit so small most people never noticed it. Elizabeth always had.
“So,” Shiori said.
Elizabeth glanced at her, one shoulder hitching in something that was nearly a laugh. “Strong opening.”
“I worked on it.”
“Can tell.”
There was a dry ease in it for just a second, familiar enough to hurt a little.
Shiori hated that she could still hear when Elizabeth laughed for real and when she made one because she felt she should. Hated, too, that she knew Elizabeth would be able to tell the same thing about her silence.
Elizabeth crouched to gather a cable, then stood again. “Mumei knows something’s up.”
“Yes.”
“So do the others.”
“Yes.”
“Cecilia definitely does.”
“Gigi knew before we did,” Shiori said.
Elizabeth huffed under her breath. “Probably.”
“Cecilia knows enough to become weirdly considerate, which is how you know it’s serious.”
That got a sharper laugh out of Elizabeth. Short, surprised, unguarded enough that it made something tighten in Shiori’s chest. Elizabeth shook her head a little, mouth curving before the expression faded under the weight of where they were and why.
“Sorry,” Elizabeth said.
Shiori frowned. “For what?”
“For laughing.”
That almost made Shiori smile again. “I’m not sure that’s a crime.”
“No, I just…” Elizabeth exhaled and rubbed the back of her neck. “This is awkward.”
There was something about the plainness of that that made Shiori answer just as plainly.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.”
Elizabeth nodded, once.
A lot of what had gone wrong between them had lived in the space between plain truths and the things both of them kept polishing before they said them aloud. Shiori had spent too long making her feelings presentable. Elizabeth had spent too long making hers easy to carry.
Shiori watched Elizabeth set the cable down and immediately reach for another task.
“Do you want me to go first,” she asked, “or are you planning to reorganize the room until sunrise?”
Elizabeth’s mouth twitched. “Can’t it be both?”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Elizabeth looked down at the cable in her hands instead of at her. “We should probably talk.”
“Yes.”
“Because of the band.”
“That’s one reason.”
Elizabeth winced a little. Tiny thing. Barely there. Still visible.
Shiori regretted the sharpness of it at once, even if she didn’t regret saying it. That had always been the problem with them.
She folded her arms, then unfolded them again. “I don’t want us turning into one of those situations everyone else has to tiptoe around because we’re pretending not to notice something.”
“No,” Elizabeth said quickly. “I don’t want that either.”
Shiori believed her. Elizabeth never wanted to be a burden. Sometimes to the point of dishonesty.
The thought came and sat heavily.
Elizabeth rested one hand on the back of a folding chair. Her fingers were callused in places Shiori knew by memory – drumming, lifting, moving gear, all the small physical labors she took on without complaint. “I don’t want us to do the thing where we act like this was just bad timing.”
Shiori went still.
There it was. The real beginning.
“Okay,” she said.
“It wasn’t just bad timing,” Elizabeth said.
“No.”
“I know that’s what people say when they want to be kind. Or mature.” Her mouth tightened a little. “But it feels too easy.”
Shiori watched her for a moment. Elizabeth was looking at the chair instead of at her, shoulders squared in that particular way she did when she was bracing herself to say something difficult as gently as possible.
“You think I’ve been making it sound too easy,” Shiori said.
Elizabeth hesitated. That hesitation said yes even before she spoke.
“I think,” she said slowly, “you sound like you already made sense of it.”
Shiori leaned one hip against the keyboard stand. “And that bothers you.”
“A little.” Elizabeth let out a breath. “Maybe more than a little.”
Shiori waited.
Elizabeth swallowed. “When you talk about it, you sound… neat. Like you packed it all away already. And maybe that’s not fair, maybe you’re just better at saying things when you’ve thought them through, but–” She stopped, visibly irritated with herself. “It makes me feel like I’m late.”
That was not what Shiori had expected.
It landed hard anyway.
Late. As if she had moved on without her. As if she had arrived at some cleaner version of the truth and left Elizabeth behind.
“That isn’t what I meant to do,” Shiori said.
“I know.”
The answer came too fast.
There it was again. That instinctive cushioning. That immediate urge to protect the other person from the full shape of what came next.
Something in Shiori tightened.
“You say that a lot,” she said before she could stop herself.
Elizabeth looked up. “I know.”
“No,” Shiori said, quieter now, trying to keep her voice even. “I think you say it when you want to soften the landing.”
Elizabeth stared at her.
That one hurt. Shiori saw it hurt. A flash of defensiveness, then the quicker hurt underneath, the kind Elizabeth always tried to fold back into herself before anyone could be inconvenienced by it.
Shiori looked away for half a second, annoyed with herself. “I’m not trying to be cruel.”
“I know,” Elizabeth said again, softer this time.
Shiori shut her eyes briefly. “That one was my fault. Sorry.”
Elizabeth’s hand slid off the chair back, then returned to it. “No, it’s okay. It’s…” She breathed out through her nose. “It’s kind of true.”
Shiori did not say anything.
Elizabeth lifted her gaze, and there was more steadiness in it now. Something set. It pulled at Shiori’s memory with painful familiarity – Elizabeth behind the drums when a song got difficult, jaw firm, attention narrowing, body settling into the thing that had to be done.
“I think I made it too easy for you not to know what I actually wanted,” Elizabeth said.
Shiori blinked.
Elizabeth kept going before the silence could swallow her. “Not because you didn’t care. Because I kept saying yes when I meant maybe, or maybe when I meant no, or I’m fine when I wasn’t.” She gave one brief, self-conscious laugh without any humor in it. “And then I’d get upset that you believed me.”
Shiori looked at her.
This was what had always undone her about Elizabeth. When she did manage to say the thing underneath the thing, it was never small. It was always devastatingly direct in retrospect, because she only ever dug that deep when she could not avoid it anymore.
“No,” Shiori said softly. “That wasn’t fair.”
“I know.”
“You’re doing it again.”
Elizabeth’s mouth opened, then closed.
For one second Shiori thought she had pushed too hard. Then Elizabeth gave a helpless little breath that might have been a laugh if it had not sounded so tired.
“Habit,” she said.
“Yeah,” Shiori replied. “That’s kind of the point.”
Elizabeth nodded, slow and unhappy.
Shiori watched the line of her shoulders shift. Some of the performance of steadiness came off her by degrees when she was tired enough, or honest enough.
She looked older like this. Not in years. In weight.
“I think,” Elizabeth said, eyes dropping to the floor between them, “I got so used to trying not to take up space that after a while I didn’t really know how to say what I wanted without feeling guilty for it.”
Shiori’s fingers tightened once around the edge of the stand.
Elizabeth continued, voice low and level. “And I know that’s my fault. That’s not something you did to me. But I think I put you in a bad position with it. Because if I chose the easy road all the time, then you were always the one who had to make the hard choices.”
That one sat between them with awful accuracy.
Shiori could have denied it. Could have said no, that wasn’t how it was, that Elizabeth had been open in her own way, that relationships were complicated and mutual and no one was solely responsible for anything. All of which would have been true enough to hide inside.
She was tired of it.
“I think I stopped trusting your agreeableness,” she said instead.
Elizabeth looked up sharply.
Shiori held her gaze. “Not because I thought you were lying to me. Not like that. But because it started to feel like you were smoothing yourself out before I ever got the chance to respond to the real you.”
Elizabeth’s jaw tensed.
Shiori knew exactly what she could say that would cut. You wanted me to be the bad guy so you never had to risk disappointing me. You let me make decisions and then resented me for making them. You called it peace when really it was avoidance.
She could have said all of it.
Elizabeth, too, Shiori knew, could have struck back just as cleanly. You made every feeling sound like a thesis defense. You were so afraid of being needy that you made care feel like guesswork. You kept calling yourself honest when half the time you were just unreadable.
Yet, neither of them did.
Elizabeth looked away first, to the side wall where one of Mumei’s old doodles still clung to a cork board with a broken thumbtack. It was a cartoon drum set with googly eyes. Mumei had drawn it after a show months ago. Elizabeth had insisted on keeping it.
Quietly, Elizabeth said, “I did give you real things.”
Shiori’s expression softened before she could stop it. “I know you did.”
“I know you know,” Elizabeth said, a little hoarse now. “I just need to say it.”
Shiori hummed.
The amp in the corner let out the faintest electrical hum. Outside, rain ticked once or twice against the narrow basement window and then seemed to think better of it.
“I think I kept trying to be easy to love,” Elizabeth said.
That one reached all the way through Shiori and settled somewhere tender.
Not because it was dramatic. Because it wasn’t. Because it was such an Elizabeth way to describe a wound – quietly, as if she were apologizing for the inconvenience of having one.
“That’s not what I wanted from you,” Shiori said, and heard immediately how inadequate it sounded.
Elizabeth’s mouth pulled to one side. “I know that in theory.”
Theory.
Shiori nearly smiled.
Elizabeth rubbed her thumb along the chair’s metal back. “But I think I thought if I could just be steady enough, helpful enough, not too much…” She gave a tiny shrug. “Then I wouldn’t be hard to keep.”
Something in Shiori’s chest tightened painfully.
For one ugly, fleeting second she felt the urge to say something defensive. I did keep you. I tried. I loved you as well as I knew how.
But that, too, would have been another way of making Elizabeth comfort her for the hurt she had just admitted.
So Shiori stayed still and took it.
“I should have noticed that sooner,” she said.
Elizabeth looked at her, startled. “Maybe.”
“No.” Shiori’s voice sharpened with conviction. “I mean it. I thought I was respecting your boundaries. Giving you room. Not pressuring you.” Her rings clicked lightly as she folded and unfolded her hands. “And some of that was true. But a lot of it was me hiding behind distance. It makes you look thoughtful instead of scared.”
Elizabeth’s brow furrowed.
Shiori could feel the words organizing themselves, painful and exact, the way they always did when she had waited too long to say something honest.
“I’m good at being direct about things I can phrase neatly,” she said. “Needs. Schedules. Arrangements. Feelings, if I’ve already worked them into something logical.” She huffed a humorless breath. “That is not the same thing as being easy to know.”
Elizabeth watched her with the focused stillness she always had when listening hard. It made Shiori think absurdly of all the times Elizabeth had watched her from behind the drum kit, keeping time, tracking the movement of a song through her whole body. Steady heartbeat of the band, Amelia called her once. It had embarrassed Elizabeth so badly she had nearly tripped over a monitor cable.
“You were hard to read,” Elizabeth said.
“I know.”
“And after a while I didn’t know when you actually wanted space and when you wanted me to stay and just… be quieter. I started feeling stupid for asking.”
Shiori looked down.
There it was, laid out plain. One of the wounds she had caused without ever intending to.
“You were never stupid for not knowing,” she said.
Elizabeth gave a small, tired smile. “That’s not really the issue.”
“I know.”
It was her turn to hear the word differently.
Shiori rubbed at one of her rings, feeling the cool metal catch against her skin. A tiny grounding habit. Something to do with her hands now that she could not put them where instinct still wanted to.
“I think I liked loving you in ways that didn’t require me to be easy to understand,” she said at last.
Elizabeth went still.
Shiori met her eyes. “That sounds worse when I say it out loud.”
Elizabeth nodded once. Slowly. “I think I liked taking care of you because it gave me instructions.”
That made Shiori blink.
Elizabeth’s ears went a little red near the tips. Embarrassment, maybe, at being that exposed. Still she held her ground.
“If I was useful,” she said, “I didn’t have to wonder if I was doing the right thing. I could just do it.”
And there they were, suddenly and painfully clear to one another.
Shiori, hiding her feelings in careful harmonies because plain words felt too exposed.
Elizabeth, keeping the beat for everyone else even when she was falling apart herself.
It might have been funny if it had not hurt so much.
“That’s kind of awful,” Shiori murmured.
Elizabeth let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “A little.”
“A lot.”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said. “Okay. A lot.”
They were quiet for a moment.
Shiori looked around the room because looking directly at Elizabeth for too long in moments like this still felt dangerous. The keyboard’s chipped corner where it had taken a hit during load-in two years ago. Cecilia’s violin case resting with surgical neatness against the mixer table. A lyric sheet in Mumei’s messy handwriting half-sticking out of a folder. The old bass amp Calli used.
Shiori said quietly, “I don’t think we broke up because we didn’t care.”
Elizabeth answered just as quickly. “No.”
“I think we cared in ways that let us avoid certain things for too long.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“I could always tell when you were upset,” Shiori said.
Elizabeth snorted. “Could you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s humiliating.”
“You got more considerate.”
Elizabeth stared. “What does that mean?”
“It means when you’re angry, you become hauntingly polite. You start thanking people too much. You offer to carry things you are clearly upset about carrying.”
Elizabeth made a strangled sound of disbelief.
“It’s unsettling,” Shiori said. “Like being gently haunted by an Irish Setter.”
That startled a laugh out of Elizabeth – fuller this time, bright enough to bounce off the low ceiling before it thinned again into something quieter and more fragile. She shook her head, one hand over her mouth.
“There you are,” Shiori said before she could stop herself.
The words landed. Both of them heard it.
Elizabeth’s expression changed. Softened and ached at the same time. “I miss talking to you normally.”
Shiori’s throat tightened.
“I know,” she said.
“I’m not saying–” Elizabeth broke off, exhaling. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
And she did. Not missing the relationship, exactly. Missing the easy architecture of being known without every gesture needing to be measured for fallout.
Shiori looked at her hands. “I miss not thinking about where my hands are.”
Elizabeth went very still.
There was nothing to say to that except the truth of it.
The countless old reflexes that still lived in both of them. Fixing a collar. Brushing hair from a face. A hand to the back in a crowded venue. Brief, thoughtless touches that used to mean comfort and now meant too many things at once.
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said.
Silence pressed around them again, but this time it felt less like a standoff and more like a room they were standing in together.
Shiori drew a slow breath. “I think we could be better as friends.”
Elizabeth looked at her sharply.
“Not magically,” Shiori added. “I just…” She searched for the shape of it. “I think friendship might force us to face the things that dating let us avoid.”
Elizabeth frowned slightly. “Like what.”
“Like you actually saying what you want instead of trying to preemptively make it easy for everyone.”
Elizabeth winced. “Fair.”
“And me being warmer on purpose instead of assuming implication counts because it feels meaningful to me.”
That got a little huff of amusement from Elizabeth. “Also fair.”
Shiori pushed on. “I don’t think we’ll just drift into being okay because we want to. I think we’ll have to do it deliberately.”
Something in Elizabeth’s posture eased. Only slightly, but Shiori saw it.
“Okay,” Elizabeth said. “What does deliberately look like.”
Shiori glanced up toward the ceiling as if the answer might be written there among the pipes and bad insulation. “If something is weird, we say it’s weird.”
“Radical.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“If you need time before answering something, you take it.”
Elizabeth nodded.
“If I need space, I say so instead of turning into an emotionally unavailable Victorian man.”
That got another laugh. Softer. Warmer.
“And,” Shiori added, “we don’t use the band as an excuse not to deal with things.”
Elizabeth looked around the room then, following the line of cables, mic stands, the black scuffs on the floor from years of gear. Her gaze lingered on the drum kit, then on Shiori, and there was something naked in the look she gave her for just a second.
“I don’t want to lose this,” she said.
Shiori knew she did not just mean the room.
“You won’t.” she said decisly.
Elizabeth’s shoulders dropped a fraction. “Okay.”
The word hung there, small and earnest.
Shiori slung her bag over one shoulder. “You’re still walking home?”
“Yeah.”
“Through the route with the broken streetlight and the guy who keeps shouting at traffic?”
Elizabeth gave her a look. “He mostly minds his business.”
“Comforting.”
Elizabeth’s mouth twitched. “I’ve survived this long.”
“Yes,” Shiori said dryly. “By being built like a rescue dog with a gym membership.”
That got a startled laugh out of Elizabeth. “What does that even mean?”
“It means people probably see you coming and assume you’ll either help them move a couch or knock them unconscious.”
“That is not a real concern.”
“It absolutely is. You invented it.”
Elizabeth shook her head, but her face had softened. “You’re impossible.”
“You dated me. That seems like a you problem.”
There was the old rhythm again. Sharper now, but not cruel. Something they could maybe still salvage, piece by piece.
Shiori stepped away from the keyboard stand. “I’ll walk with you.”
Elizabeth blinked. “You don’t have to.”
“I know.” Shiori adjusted the strap on her shoulder. “I want to.”
That landed between them with a kind of careful finality. Plain. Unhidden.
Elizabeth looked at her for a second and then nodded. “Okay.”
She bent to grab her backpack from beside the drum riser, then paused by a loose cable near the monitor.
Shiori followed the glance. “Leave it.”
Elizabeth looked up.
“The room will survive until tomorrow,” Shiori said. “You don’t have to earn leaving.”
For a moment Elizabeth just stood there, one hand on the strap of her bag.
Then her mouth curved faintly. “That felt targeted.”
“It was.”
“Mean.”
“I know.”
Elizabeth snorted and straightened.
They gathered the last of their things, moving around each other with care, relearning distance by instinct and correction. Elizabeth reached for the door at the same time Shiori adjusted her bag, and their hands nearly brushed. Both felt it. Neither commented.
At the light switch, Elizabeth hesitated.
The room behind them was dim now, all their history reduced to outlines. Shiori looked at Elizabeth in profile – the broad line of her shoulders, the gentle mouth set in thought, the stubborn strand of red hair that had escaped completely now and curled near her temple.
“This is stupid,” Elizabeth said softly.
Shiori raised an eyebrow. “Very specific.”
“I just…” Elizabeth rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t really know how to end this part.”
And there it was. The rawness of it. Not melodrama. Just uncertainty, simple and difficult.
Shiori’s first instinct was a joke. The second was honesty.
“Neither do I,” she said.
Then, after the tiniest visible pause, Shiori stepped forward.
Only a little. Just enough to make the question clear.
Elizabeth felt herself go still in surprise. Then something in her chest loosened, tender and sore all at once.
She stepped in too.
The hug was shy.
That was the only word for it. Brief, careful, a little awkward in its own familiarity. Not the easy unconscious kind they would have shared months ago. Just two people who knew each other’s bodies too well trying to use that knowledge gently.
Elizabeth was warm. Solid. Her arms came around Shiori with obvious restraint, as if she were terrified of overstepping and had chosen, consciously, to let the hug be exactly what was offered and no more. Shiori felt the discipline in that and, unexpectedly, the kindness.
She rested her forehead for the briefest second near Elizabeth’s shoulder and then pulled back before the moment could turn into something else.
They separated a touch too quickly.
Both of them looked faintly embarrassed.
“Well,” Shiori said.
Elizabeth huffed a little laugh. “Strong closer.”
“I’m consistent.”
Elizabeth reached back and shut off the lights.
The rehearsal room dropped behind them into darkness. They stepped into the hallway, and Elizabeth locked up while Shiori waited beside her, close enough to hear the soft jingle of the keys in her hand and the steadier sound of her breathing.
When Elizabeth turned, Shiori started down the stairs with her.
Their shoulders almost brushed on the first landing.
Not quite.
At the bottom, with the night waiting on the other side of the door and the city damp and half-lit beyond it, Shiori glanced over and said, lightly enough to count as a tease, “Try not to make this weirdly formal, okay? I’m walking you home, not doing you a favor you have to pay back.”
Elizabeth gave her a tired look, but there was a small smile there. “I wasn’t going to.”
“You were absolutely going to.”
Elizabeth let out a quiet laugh and pushed the door open. “You’re annoying.”
“I know,” Shiori said, falling into step beside her. Then, a little softer, “We’ll get there. Just not instantly.”
“Yeah,” Elizabeth said. “I know.”