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Rem doesn’t understand why Higuchi keeps a stack of fashion magazines when he doesn’t even read them, but she doesn’t waste time wondering about it: she isn’t the type to wonder about anything, or at least she wasn’t until she whirlwind-collided into Misa’s life and almost ruined it all, and anyway there is nothing in Higuchi to question — the filth he embodies is plain and self-serving and meaningless — so instead she leafs through the latest issue of Eighteen to find Misa for the third time in as many days, the bright innocence of her eyes missing that crimson sparkle, the vicious edges of her smile sanded off to just enough sweetness for the glossy paper to confine her within two dimensions as it blares: Misa-Misa to Star in Director Nishinaka’s New Movie!
Higuchi doesn’t watch movies and so Rem will not be able to, but it’s alright — the magazine in her grasp is enough, only looking, only wondering, only resisting the urge to trace a claw along the curve of that smile: are you happy out there, Misa? Are you?