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Daisy never had enough time on her lunch breaks, but that day she knew she wouldn't even have time to sit and eat. She ate in her car, wolfing down her sandwiches without properly chewing (Sasara would frown), driving one-handed (Ryuto would lift his eyebrows), and skating through more than one intersection when the light had just flashed red (Shota would lecture). But all of her friends, she was sure, would suspend their criticisms and understand why she had to maximize her time once she parallel-parked at the curb of the clinic they all knew so well.

After waking from Astral Syndrome, these nine who had worked so closely together found they were actually scattered all over the country. And a year later even more so, Ryuto now studying in Germany, Kobato spending two months in South Korea with family, and Kiriko in England, enforcing distance between herself and her handlers, still trying to figure out what her next step should be.

One of Daisy's first moves after waking, once she was done with physical therapy and free and clear, was to move from the small apartment where she'd been hiding – flee from it, if she was being honest, and for reasons she still hadn't shared with her friends but which had landed her in Redo in the first place – and come north to this city. Her initial thought had been to be closer to Gin, with whom she'd claustrophobically roomed for nearly a month before she'd found her feet, but the move had also brought her closer to Sasara and Shota. Even if in reality Sasara was an eighty-seven-year-old granny who needed help getting her walker over the shortest curb, and the last thing Daisy would ever want was for Shota to make good on his promise to defend her life, she illogically felt just a little safer being just a little closer to her senpai. And by now, she was settled enough to offer to host Iori once her kohai was finally able to break away from her parents and check out the local colleges.

As far flung as they'd all become, they'd all been to this clinic, no matter how they'd had to contort their schedules to make it there. Daisy paused only long enough to check herself in her rearview mirror, then plunged out of the car, taking the necessary deep preparatory breath as she went in.

The nurse at the front desk looked like she was just settling down for her shift. “Ms Kita, it's so nice to see you again.” After she finished printing off Daisy's temporary ID, she told her to go on through. “Same room, you know the way.”

Daisy speed-walked unescorted through the corridors – wide but unwindowed, their cheery pink walls unable to entirely counteract the harsh florescence of the overhead lights. She'd been here six other times, sometimes with other members of the Go-Home Club, sometimes alone. They'd never been able to all come together – there just wasn't any graceful way to explain to Ryuto's and Iori's parents why a passel of twentysomethings, one thirtysomething, and an eightysomething wanted to spend time with their children and take them to this out of the way longterm care facility.

As she passed under the glaring lights, her low heels clicking on the hard floor, Daisy wished some of the others were with her but was also glad they weren't. On one hand, it was easier to bear the grief when the others were there – Sasara's forgiving warmth; Kiriko's refusal to sugarcoat and put on a cheerful front; Kobato's willingness to launch out with the anger that Daisy didn't often let herself express, but wanted to hear expressed; Shota's gentle solicitude for whatever she felt at any given moment; Gin's common sense and sympathy, present but never smothering.

On the other hand – Daisy still kept secrets, secrets her friends had told her but never confessed to each other. And whenever she came to this clinic, she always felt certain secrets rise to the surface, and it was hard to deal with her grief while at the same time keeping those secrets from the friends who also loved Marie.

There was the door, the name – Marie Mizuguchi – not Marie Amabuki. Daisy took one more deep breath, then let herself in.

She hadn't thought to check to see if anyone else was already there. Marie lay there on her bed as always, breathing on her own but hooked up to so many machines, her eyes closed, her entire body inert – paralyzed, her soul locked away in the coma that had lasted now for more than six years.

A stranger was bending over her. Daisy wasn't familiar with all of the nurses and orderlies here, but the woman wasn't in scrubs. She was tall and spare, her narrow trousers and blouse – both black – sketching her figure in long flat lines that, to Daisy's eyes, were both sexy and forbidding of others' notice. She looked to be in her thirties, the dark purple-red lipstick she wore sharpening her unremarkable features into a kind of severe beauty. Her hair fell over her shoulder in a light brown sheet as she worked – combing Marie's hair? Her eyes, when she lifted them to Daisy, were light, almost like pewter.

“Sorry,” Daisy said automatically. “Are you – ?” Visiting? Working? Marie didn't have any family, at least not that visited her as far as Daisy knew. She half-turned, about to clear out, but time was still running out too fast on her break and she'd promised to visit Marie today, damn it.

“You can come in.” The woman's voice wasn't warm and couldn't even be said to be welcoming, but it wasn't unpleasant. Glad to have the decision out of her hands, Daisy stepped in and closed the door behind her, walking quietly over to Marie's bedside.

After awakening, after meeting for the first time, the club had realized that they'd all idealized their appearances in Redo to some degree – unconsciously in some cases, very deliberately in others. Even so, Daisy'd had no difficulty recognizing each, no matter how different Sasara, Kobato, Gin – even Ryuto, surprisingly, the little genius was more vain than he'd wanted to admit – had looked. Her friends had still looked out from their eyes, revealed themselves in their smiles and grimaces, the sets of their shoulders, the way they'd sat and closed the physical distance, the pitch of their laughs.

Perhaps it was because this Marie never moved, never sat, never laughed – never opened her eyes – but she was now unfamiliar to Daisy in a way none of the others could be.

Marie had been soft, ladylike – beautiful, but in a considerate, unobtrusive way – when Daisy'd met her. In reality, Daisy could see the same shape in her eyes, the full mouth, her delicate chin. But her skin looked dull from her long coma. Her nose was different, its low bridge crooked, clearly from an old break. Kiriko had been the first to remark on it, saying it must have happened in Marie's fall, and with the rest of her body to focus on, the doctors hadn't set it properly. But Shota had speculated it looked like a hit from a fist, coming from the side. Then quickly corrected himself, agreeing it had probably happened in the fall.

Daisy hadn't said anything. She still kept secrets for Marie. But Marie had kept secrets from herself, and Daisy didn't want to guess what all of them might have been.

The worst thing about Marie's appearance, the thing that cut at Daisy's heart every time she saw it, was the frown she wore. She wasn't responsive. She wasn't even awake. Who knew if she spent these years dreaming, and of what. But she always looked like she was in pain, so different from the girl Daisy had last seen in Redo, who had been so determined to have hope for her life in the real world.

“Marie's my friend,” Daisy said, still feeling automatic about it, just with this need to fill the quiet.

The woman gave a little nod. Marie's hair was damp and the woman was combing it smoothly away from her face, a towel spread out on the pillow. In a moment, she withdrew a small pair of scissors from her pocket and began trimming Marie's ends.

Oh. Made sense. “Do you give all the patients haircuts?” Making conversation.

“Just Marie,” the woman said.

Maybe it was rude, but surprise overrode tact. “Are you family?”

“Another friend.”

“From before the accident?”

The woman took a moment to comb a lock of hair smooth. She wore a simple wedding set on her left hand, a small amethyst twinkling. “For years now.” And then she looked up, running her eyes up and down Daisy. Daisy met her gaze, aware of a new energy in the stranger, but unsure what it meant.

“Astral Syndrome?” the woman asked.

Daisy smiled. “How can you tell?” The woman also smiled slightly. “You too?”

“I was out for almost a year,” the woman said.

“I was just a few months.” It felt like longer when she thought back to her time in Redo. Had she seen this woman somewhere in Regret's artificial city?

“I was part of the first wave, back in 2015.” So no, she would have been towards the tail end of the Mobius years. She made a few more cuts. “I'm Kazue.”

“Daisy.”

Kazue lifted an eyebrow at the foreign name but didn't seem put off. For a minute, she just worked on Marie's hair, combing and trimming, and, almost in a trance, Daisy watched.

Until Kazue startled her. “So. You know Marie.”

Mobius, Daisy thought, the nerves rising along her neck. “You know – ” She dropped her voice almost to a whisper. “You know... her?”

Kazue's dark lips tightened as she appeared to focus on her work. “I know Wicked.”

For weeks, Daisy had kept the secrets of her closest friends from her closest friends. Had told no one about Sasara's age, Iori's sister, Gin's identity, Shota's bloodied hands. After waking, all the members of the club had learned of them on their own.

But Marie – to this day only Daisy knew her secrets. She knew so little about Wicked herself, and the alarm in χ's voice when Wicked's name was spoken had convinced her she had no place telling the others. Even as Sasara prayed and Ryuto studied and they all hoped for the day she'd wake up – with no warning of who might wake up.

“I don't really know Marie,” Kazue said.

“You know she was a – ”

“A Musician.” Kazue flicked a look at her. Daisy narrowed her eyes, studying her. And realized she was being studied back.

“If you can remember meeting Marie,” Kazue said, “you've gone through Catharsis.”

“You're one of them – the first Go-Home Club?”

“First?”

“We, uh – we stole the name.” Daisy shrugged, gave a little grin. “χ said we could.”

“Hm.” It was a short syllable, but it sounded like the start of a laugh. Kazue went back to trimming, running Marie's soft hair through her first two fingers. “And you were the president, weren't you?”

“How can you tell that?”

“Takes one to know one?”

“Oh damn!”

“Yeah. Guess so.” Kazue gave a quick shake of her head. “It's not just that. It's the way you look at Marie, like you feel responsible for her.”

Daisy's gaze alternated between Kazue's face and her hands. “You're very kind.”

Kazue flashed her an unguarded and completely doubtful look.

“To do this for your enemy. A Musician.”

Kazue looked back down to what she was doing. “I was one too.”

“But – ! I don't understand – ?”

“You never tried it?”

“Joining the – ?”

“Well, if a Musician hadn't given me the opportunity, it wouldn't have occurred to me. I guess I can't fault you that.”

“How the hell were they okay with that? The club and the – Musicians?”

Kazue hadn't looked up again. “They didn't know. I lied to both of them.” Her scissors made soft slicing clicks. “Even after we came back to reality, they didn't know for months.”

Daisy watched her. It was benign, but it exerted its own pressure where words might have never worked.

“I didn't quite trust either side with the truth.” Kazue gave another little shake of her head. “Going through Mobius solved some of my problems – some of the reasons I ended up there. It didn't solve all of them, not immediately.”

“That's true,” Daisy allowed. It had taken months before Gin had started using his name socially in the real world, but never at work. Kobato had gotten his first job but was struggling to hold it. Iori still resented her parents. None of their problems had evaporated, and almost a year later, Daisy still hadn't told any of them the truth of her problems. Had she worked through them? Enough. Enough to escape Redo. But escaping Redo wasn't the same as fixing everything.

“So... you knew Marie as a Musician,” Daisy said just as Kazue asked, “What's she like?”

They exchanged a look, each waiting for the other to go on, then Kazue said, “When she's not crazy?”

All right, Daisy decided. She'd start. “Marie's...” Different memories suggested themselves, Marie offering her sandwiches – the only food she could reliably make – covering songs on her keyboard, crouching down to pet a dog they passed in the street. “She's kind. Reliable. Responsible, but not rigid about it. She – ” A bubble of emotion rose in Daisy's throat. It came out as a shaky laugh. “I actually always thought she was kind of boring.”

Kazue looked up in surprise again.

“I like her,” Daisy said quickly. “Don't get me wrong. She's a sweetheart. But kind of... boring, especially compared to the others.”

Kazue moved to working on Marie's bangs, finger combing them smooth, then picking up the ends. “Yeah. I thought so too.”

That struck an odd note, but Daisy had agreed to talk first, so she kept talking. “I remember at the start, she was always really friendly, but it's not like we were actually friends. Then I did her this stupid little favor one time, and she became really focused on finding a way to repay me – her word, not mine. I thought it was kind of weird, but it was really important to her. So I just said, we could be friends, how about that?”

Daisy grinned at herself. “It was pretty awkward, but I don't think she noticed. She told me her... formality had made it hard for her to make close friends. She's a really, really good friend. I spent so much time at her house, doing homework and sleeping over. Meeting her folks. She's adopted. At least, the version of her there was, and they were this really warm family, so it was easy to – ”

Daisy broke her words off with the sudden alarm that she'd said too much.

She didn't know if any of her friends had caught on during their time in Redo. Gin and Shota were both extremely perceptive, but were also both extremely unwilling to confront people about it. Sasara had a harder time reading others' emotions, but nonetheless had an instinct for knowing when her loved ones most needed comfort. And as for Iori, once Daisy had realized how much of her day to day life was a lie, how little idealism or hope she had to buffer her outlook with, she'd come to suspect that Iori would sniff out a lie like blood in the water.

The day Daisy first understood the truth of Redo, she'd gone home to her digital parents, her digital older brother, seen how warmly they welcomed her, how naturally they fell into their old routines and inside jokes. How they only knew her seventeen-year-old self and had no idea of the fractures in reality that had splintered the family and sent her fleeing from them all. And she'd run upstairs to her stupid digital bathroom and almost thrown up her digital lunch.

There was no point talking to her fake family about it. Or, if there might have been, she still hadn't considered it. Following that, Daisy had minimized her time at home. What's your family like? she'd texted her friends. Can I come over to visit? Hey, hey, what if we moved in together?

Everyone had answered the first question easily enough. (Except Iori, though Daisy hadn't known so at the time.) As for the last question, everyone (except the morally appalled Shota) had classed it as a joke and said yes, definitely, let's shack up, be my maid, we'll stay up all night watching movies together. Kobato had almost had a heart attack, but even he'd joined in on the fun.

And when it came to the middle question, their answers came quickly, easily – of course she was welcome, sure, why not, please come! Again Shota had refused, claiming it would breed unflattering rumors. And Iori – Iori had refused every time, in a way that Daisy never resented, but left her increasingly troubled.

So for the three months during which the second Go-Home Club operated, Daisy probably spent only fifteen afternoons at home, sometimes sleeping over at Kiriko's or Marie's or Sasara's, otherwise returning home late enough for her family to be in bed. Her family didn't object, didn't try to corral her. As she disengaged from them, Redo grew less concerned with maintaining the illusion that her family was real. Towards the end, when she did see them in the early mornings before school, they were often sitting blankly at the table, empty plates in front of them. If she spoke, they'd activate, food appearing on their plates, their hands going through the motions of lifting chopsticks, their mouths opening to travel down a conversational flowchart that now always covered the same material.

Her friends' families were no more real than hers, but they were better maintained and still interacted convincingly. And even knowing they were fake and they weren't hers, it was still comforting being around them, being around her friends in a safe home setting. Especially when her friends didn't know her own, so she was never called to account to explain anything.

Now in the real world, without the fate of Redo to distract them, her friends were catching on. Daisy had caught Gin giving her concerned looks when he thought she wouldn't notice, Shota stiffening and redirecting conversations away from their families. On her calls, Kiriko talked about missing her mom but never asked about Daisy's family, not even where they lived or if she had any siblings. Ryuto had once remarked, in an unconvincingly rehearsed way, on “the inevitable shortcomings of our parents”, attempting to comfort her by throwing his parents under the bus alongside hers. The last time she'd seen him, Kobato had clumsily told her that if she ever “needed anything”, she could come room with him, and he really wasn't trying to come onto her or anything, it was just that sometimes things sucked, and he was worried about her, that's all, okay, defending himself from ulterior motives Daisy hadn't even accused him of.

Only Sasara, with the unselfconscious implacability of eighty seven, had reached over and held her hand, looking deeply into her eyes. “Is everything all right with you and your parents, Daisy-chan? Do you ever talk to them?”

“No,” Daisy had said.

Sasara had waited for her to explain it. Daisy had just shaken her head – once – and again – and forced the conversation into a new direction.

In Redo, Marie had never asked about her family, the Amabukis growing so used to Daisy they sometimes joked she'd been away too long – they'd made an extra omelette just for her last night for dinner, where had she been? Her early relationship with Marie had been completely uncomplicated. Boring, but so comfy.

Now Daisy talked quickly, trying to cover the lapse. “Marie was always happiest when she was doing stuff for other people. I actually – I actually sometimes wondered if she didn't know what to do with herself. I mean, she had hobbies, she liked music and romance novels – ”

“Romance novels, really?”

“Well, I wasn't supposed to say that.”

“How idealistic.” There was a teasing note in Kazue's voice, but it was still a little sharp.

“It was sort of like she didn't know what to do – for – herself. Like, she was figuring things out.” Daisy's words sped up a little as for the first time she realized something. “She was so pleasant, but it always felt there was something performative about it. Not like manipulative performative, but like she was keeping to a script. A – a character type.”

“A goody-two-shoes.”

“That makes it sound like she was trying to trick us.”

“You sure she wasn't?”

Daisy was about to say that Kazue could shut up, coming after Marie like this – but then, Kazue did know her too. Still annoyed, Daisy made herself go more moderately. “She always seemed sincere. The disconnect, it wasn't that she was trying to hide herself. It was like she was somehow figuring out how to be herself. So she was kind of boring because she was hitting those marks.” Maybe, with more time, she would have moved past that.

“So,” Kazue said, “she had no idea about the truth?”

“Oh – no.” Daisy shook herself. “She did. She had dreams. She said she would – wake up laughing from them.”

“Sounds about right.”

“She didn't like it,” Daisy's voice rose as she tried to defend Marie. Are you afraid of me? Marie had asked her, once she'd realized the truth. She'd stopped inviting Daisy over. She'd looked at herself differently, and nothing Daisy or χ could say could change it. The truth was, Daisy had been afraid. She had no experience with a buried personality like Wicked. All she'd been able to say was that Marie had to accept the truth, no matter what it was.

“Wicked's music,” Kazue said, “it came from before Mobius. She was already writing that music. μ didn't turn her into Wicked.”

Maybe that's who she was then, but she's Marie now. It would've been nice to say it, but Daisy'd never had the heart for saying the easy lie, no matter how bold and impressive it would sound. “You said Wicked was boring?”

“Yeah. Sociopaths are.”

“There's no way she's a sociopath – ”

“She liked to torture people,” Kazue said, eyes on her work, her moving fingers. “Liked to drag me along. I think having an audience made her feel more daring. She wanted to shock me. She'd corner students and make them fight each other. She tried to kill a pair of them.”

“Why didn't you imprison her or something?”

Kazue snorted. “Good way to blow my cover.”

“You went along with it?”

“That monster wanted me to react. She wanted to read me – and control me. She used to talk about how she was always reading people, figuring out how she needed to act to manipulate them. She didn't know how to relate to people in any other way. So I wouldn't give her that.” Kazue curled her upper lip in a slight grimace. “What, you think I fooled her into thinking I liked it too? You think she saw me having tea with Sweet-P and talking Doll down from a panic attack, then turned around and got off on watching teenagers slap each other?”

“Why did you even go along with her?”

“Great question.”

Daisy waited for more, watching Kazue work as her face didn't change. Then Daisy gave in and kept talking. “I don't see how you could call any of that boring.”

“Once you've seen a sociopath act out, it just feels like more of the same.” Kazue paused as she used her fingertips to lightly brush flecks of hair away from Marie's closed eyes. “She wanted to get close to me. She tried by destroying other people's friendships. It was pretty sad.”

Daisy didn't speak, thinking of how Marie had been liked by everyone at school, but without any close friends. Until she'd found the Go-Home Club.

“Like you said,” Kazue said, “she always seemed to be performing.” She picked up a length of hair to neaten its edge. “I don't think I ever gave her the reaction she wanted. And it's not like I could have made her stop by appealing to her higher nature.”

“She has one.”

“Yeah. I'm sure Wicked does too. But she always said she wanted to throw up on anyone who had any sort of ideals, innocence... The truth is, I think she was the most childlike of anyone in Mobius.” She stopped in her cutting, looking into Marie's face. “What do you think, Wicked? Does knowing that make you even angrier, you monster?”

“Ryuto doesn't think she can hear us.”

“I don't know who Ryuto is, but I'm sure she can.”

Alarm buzzed in Daisy's stomach, and she reassured herself that Ryuto must be right. Probably. “I don't – I don't believe Wicked is all she is. Marie had to come from somewhere. μ didn't just make her up out of wishful thinking.”

Marie had told her that, in saving her, she'd truly saved Wicked.

“When we – ” Just then, Daisy didn't have the wherewithal to go into the construction of Redo and Marie's role within it. “Listen, we had a chance to escape back to the real world, but we'd have to kill Marie to do it, and you know what? She wanted us to do it. She cared about us that much. She told us to do it.”

There was a low tremor in Daisy's voice. She could feel her chin shaking. Kazue looked up with those light eyes, giving her her full attention.

“I picked up my knife,” Daisy said, “and I went over to her and I was going to do it.”

Something sudden – anger – flashed in Kazue's eyes. She straightened, glaring down at Daisy, paler, sharper than before.

“I'm sorry,” Daisy said, having no clear idea why she was apologizing to Kazue.

“You were going to kill her?” Kazue demanded, voice snapping. “You call yourself her friend, and you – ” She closed her mouth, jaw tight. It made her face look thinner, harder – again, showing that severe beauty that had first struck Daisy. Only now, there was rage.

Daisy drew herself up. She was shorter than Kazue, but she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and she saw Kazue run her eyes down her, considering, evaluating. “I looked into Marie's eyes and I couldn't kill her. I could see how good she was. Is. How – how real she is.”

Kazue's eyes were cold, encompassing. What had it been like, Daisy wondered, to be led by her – whether you wanted to go home or remain in Mobius? Just then, it was impossible to believe she'd brought her friends any strength or comfort.

But Daisy could unavoidably see how Kazue had cut to the heart of all of their fears.

“No,” Daisy amended, forced to admit the truth. “I could have still killed her. I didn't. I wouldn't.”

“Your eyes are so warm.”

It wasn't what Daisy had expected to hear. Neither Kazue's voice nor look changed, but she turned away, bent and went back to her work. And when she spoke next, her voice wasn't kinder, but it was businesslike – easier. “I can see why your team followed you, even after you made that choice.”

“How did you know they did – ?”

“I just said it. Your eyes.”

Daisy turned that over. During their time in Redo, some of her friends had told her they believed in her – she was like another child to Sasara, Ryuto deigned to let her be his big sis, Shota was grateful to have her share his burden. In her weaker, lonelier moments, she'd sometimes texted them, asking what it was they liked about her. They'd all had answers. She'd believed they were sincere. But the truth was, her needy pleas had often backfired, at least when it came to reassuring her. Sometimes hearing a literal reason why she was likable made it harder to believe. With a literal answer, it was easier to argue that her friends were mistaken.

Daisy didn't see how she could argue with this perfect stranger that her eyes weren't warm.

“Wicked was right about something.” Kazue finger-brushed one final length of hair, then laid it back down on the pillow. “She would make her victims admit all their greatest weaknesses. Sort of what I did, with my friends. And you too, I'd guess. We wanted them to see the truth and grow. She wanted them to break even more.”

Kazue straightened, wiping her scissors on a tissue from the bedside table. Her face was still very cool. “None of my friends – Go-Home Club, Musicians – ever really pressed me to understand why I'd come to Mobius. They didn't make me face it. Maybe they felt I had to come to it on my own. Sometimes I worried they thought so highly of me they thought I didn't need to address my problems at all.” She looked over at Daisy. “Did you feel that?”

Daisy grimaced. Saying so felt a bit like betraying her friends.

“It's hard,” Kazue said, and her voice lightened a little again, grew just a touch sympathetic. “Having people rely on you like that. You can't let them down. So you can't – quite let them in. Not while they still need you. It was only after we were all safe out here that I could begin to tell them anything.” She glanced down – Daisy couldn't be sure, but she thought the glance was at her wedding set.

“But Wicked,” Kazue said, “she wanted to break me. I got to break everyone else. But she wanted to crash right into the center of who I was and find what was hurting me.” She smirked. “She would've just gone on to break me even more. But at least she realized someone had to get to the heart of me.”

Marie hadn't tried that with Daisy. Daisy was about to say it – how Marie had been so easy to get along with, so unchallenging and so nice – though Marie had rejected the label of “nice”. But right as she was about to speak, she realized it wasn't true. Marie had challenged her more than any of her other friends had.

Marie had asked Daisy to kill her.

Marie had cut right to the core of her, made her face how heartless she could really be. And once Daisy had seen that, she'd been able to choose another way. To see there could still be hope even when all logic said there couldn't possibly be.

A gift she never could have had but for Marie.

“Do you think she'll wake up as Wicked?”

Daisy gave a start. “You're asking me?”

Kazue watched her, her eyes no longer quite so hard. “We each saw one side of her. Tell me what you think.”

“Whether or not Marie ever existed in this world, I know – I know our friendship was real.” Daisy looked down into Marie's still face, distorted both by her damaged nose and the look of pain she always wore. “She told me she'd accept both parts of herself. We might... we might get both of them.”

“That'll be a riot,” Kazue deadpanned. “Out of curiosity – what did her Catharsis look like?”

Daisy raised her eyebrows. She couldn't help speaking from experience. “Did you spend a lot of time looking at them and trying to figure your friends out?”

“Yep.”

“She had cute little angel wings. Oh – and two guns.”

Kazue actually smiled, turning the smile down to Marie. “Dual pistols, huh? Wonder where you got that idea?” Then her watch beeped. She flicked her wrist over while Daisy looked at the wall clock.

“Damn it!” was really all she could say to that.

Kazue reached down and touched Marie's shoulder. “Later.” With the barest nod to Daisy, she turned and swept out of the room, her hair lifting behind her.

Daisy lingered a bit longer, though she really didn't have the time. She never talked to Marie during her visits. Ryuto had said it was pointless. But even so –

She leaned down and squeezed Marie's limp hand. “I'm sorry I said you're boring, though you really were. You can shout at me when you wake up.” She hesitated, remembering that Marie had believed her own friendships might somehow be communicated to Wicked as she lay comatose in the real world. She thought back to that brief, puzzling moment on the school roof when she'd distinctly heard Marie thank her for her friendship – but Marie had assured her that she hadn't spoken.

“Shout all you want, whoever you are.”

When she came outside, Kazue was standing on the curb, probably waiting for a car. She glanced over at Daisy and, on the prosaic sidewalk, outside of the walls of that small room, seemed more nondescript again.

“It was nice to meet you,” Daisy said.

“Was it?”

Daisy half-smiled. “Some of the time?”

“Listen,” Kazue said, folding her arms a bit too tightly. “I know what it's like, coming back to reality and still being the leader. They're all still looking to you, aren't they? They're still scared and struggling. They're picking themselves up each day because of things you told them when you were all inside. They're thinking about how you broke them – don't grimace, that's what you did. There's no doubt one or two of them think they're in love with you. Maybe they are. They're moving forward, but it's endless and it's hard. They still need you to be the strongest one in the room.”

Daisy didn't speak.

“We both know,” Kazue said, “we aren't.”

Daisy let out a breath. “I can't – ” I can't go to them with my problems. I can't let them know I'm struggling so hard too.

“It's not going to always be like this,” Kazue said, her voice dropping – softening, actually. She reached into her pocket, then stretched out her hand, a glossy black card between her fingers. “Until you feel like you can talk to them, you can talk to me.”

Daisy took the card. On the front was the name of a salon downtown, Kazue's full name and business number on the other side. “Are you sure?”

Kazue lifted a shoulder.

“Thanks.”

She turned away. “Don't worry about it.”

Daisy hurried on to her car, sliding in the front seat, briefly checking the road and pulling out of her spot without buckling in. (Sasara would brush her hair back from her face and remind her she was much too loved to be so careless with her safety; Shota would cross his arms sternly and suggest a remedial driving course; even Gin would ask if she please could not?) As she fumbled one-handed for her seat belt, she glanced back at the curb where Kazue still waited. She wasn't looking over, and Daisy only saw her briefly. But a cold chill plunged through her stomach as – just for a moment – she thought the woman's face wore a naked black skull, gazing sightlessly over the street.

Daisy pulled into traffic, being much more careful about it, waiting for her bloodstream to slow down.

Well, okay, she told herself.

Skull or not, she still needed someone to talk to.