Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I really love you...”

Shiro still remembered the day the school walls were destroyed, when the group of friends scattered outside. He remembered the steps he took, the fall that followed, and the words he said.

It was the first time he had actually said those words.

Love. It was something strange, something new. Something he didn't know exactly what it meant other than definitions that were written on screens given to him for testing by teachers.

But if it meant anything, it would be her.

She didn't respond, not verbally, but there was no need.

Shiro turned the loose button in his coat pocket, words were not needed when she demonstrated in her own way that he was just as important.

Mimihime didn't even seem to look where she was going, which left him in charge of gently pulling her closer whenever they made a turn on the busy sidewalks. Three years in the city had accustomed them quite a bit to the local customs and traditions, and that was the main objective of their current adventure.

Snow fell in light flakes over the city, which was lit up with Christmas decorations. The streets were adorned with colorful lights, and the smell of roasting chestnuts and hot chocolate filled the chilly air. Shiro shoved his hands into his coat pockets, feeling the small, loose button roll between his fingers. It was a habit he had developed whenever he thought of her.

Taka and Anzu walked ahead, hand in hand, laughing at something that only made sense to them. The complicity between the two was evident, an exchange of subtle caresses and passionate smiles. In contrast, Mimihime and Shiro walked side by side in comfortable silence.

“So, what’s the plan?” Taka turned, his eyes shining with excitement “Do we split up to buy the presents or do we all go together?”

“If we split up, the surprise will be bigger” Anzu suggested, adjusting the fluffy scarf around her neck. She then gave Shiro and Mimihime a playful look “But what about you two? Do you have anything specific in mind?”

Shiro glanced at Mimihime. She was focused on the snow piled high on the ground, as if the flakes held secrets only she could understand. Anzu’s question hung in the air for a moment before he muttered.

“I… am still deciding”

Mimihime blinked slowly, turning her head towards him “Me too”

Taka laughed “You guys are perfect for each other, seriously”

Shiro looked away, feeling his face warm despite the cold. Luckily for him, the chilly breeze would help to hide any signs of embarrassment. Mimihime merely tilted her head slightly, a subtle indication that she was considering Taka's statement but not committing to an answer.

They then decided that it would be best to split into pairs, but Taka's idea of switching partners was quickly vetoed by Anzu.

“Nothing like that, I want to choose my boyfriend’s gift together with him” she said, holding Taka’s arm firmly “You two can figure it out”

Shiro and Mimihime watched as the two headed in one direction, exchanging smiles and whispers. He sighed lightly.

“Those two are too sweet for their own good” Mimihime said, pulling her gloves up a little higher.

“True” Shiro shook his head, though...he pushed the thought away before it took root.

The walk to the shopping area was silent but comfortable. Mimihime looked at the shop windows with some interest, although she didn't seem to have anything specific in mind. Shiro, on the other hand, struggled to decide what to pick for her. He wanted something meaningful, but he didn't know exactly what.

She had no specific interest, he knew she liked watching him build things, but it wasn't like she was interested in building things herself, he had offered a few times, which she had just kindly declined, saying that the greatest fun and entertainment was watching him. A gift for her, it was something quite enigmatic .

“Did you like something?” she asked, noticing he had stopped.

Shiro blinked in surprise, staring at Mimihime's face. He looked around with some desperation, picking up a notebook and pen that were placed outside the store that were on the side. "What do you think of this?"

Mimihime touched the cover gently, her fingers tracing the fine lines of the stars printed on it “Pretty ” She looked at him, her eyes reflecting the golden lights of the store.

She didn't ask anything else, just walked forward again, Shiro just looked from the notebook to her, sighing as he walked behind her. Shiro adjusted the thick scarf around heis neck, trying to protect himself from the sharp breeze that blew between the buildings decorated with Christmas lights.

Mimihime walked at a calm pace, alternating her attention between the shop windows and the snowflakes that fell sporadically on her clothes. Shiro followed her unhurriedly, still lost in thought about what he should choose for her.

Shiro blinked, turning his attention forward. It was then that he realized, she was no longer beside him.

A slight panic rose in his chest as his eyes scanned the crowd. He spun on his heel, trying to spot the beige coat among the bundled-up people. His heart skipped a beat when he finally spotted her, standing a few feet away. Relief was immediate, but his attention quickly returned to what she was watching.

Mimihime stood before a small decorative arch set up at the entrance to a square, where a group of couples took turns standing under a hanging mistletoe branch. It was an old and traditional custom, standing under the mistletoe meant that people were supposed to exchange a kiss, usually on the cheek or forehead if they were more shy. The couples smiled, some laughing nervously before leaning in for the affectionate gesture. Mimihime watched it all with quiet curiosity, her eyes reflecting the golden glow of the festive lights.

Shiro hesitated. He didn’t know exactly what was going on in her mind, but something about the scene seemed to capture her in a way he rarely saw. She wasn’t the type to show interest in conventional romantic gestures, at least she had never expressed it openly. Yet here she was, absorbing every detail of the tradition.

He took a few hesitant steps until he stopped beside her. Mimihime didn't turn around immediately, but she recognized his presence out of the corner of her eye.

“They seem happy” she commented, her voice low and considered, as if she were cataloging a thought to revisit later.

Shiro nodded, not knowing exactly what to say.

Finally, Mimihime tilted her head slightly towards him, her curious eyes meeting his “Do you think it’s strange?”

He swallowed hard “What?”

“People need a reason to kiss someone”

Shiro blinked, taken aback by the question. He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came out immediately. After all, this was a much more difficult question than it seemed at first glance. The simplicity of the question hid a deeper meaning, something that made him dive into his own thoughts.

Even after seventeen years together, Mimihime was still a great enigma to him. He had grown accustomed to her prolonged silences, to her looks that said more than words ever could, to her small but calculated gestures that meant so much more than any verbal confession.

Shiro never doubted the love he felt for her. He knew it with every fiber of his being.

Shiro wondered if words still mattered. Or if perhaps it was his own insecurity that made him think about it more than he should. He looked at the couples under the mistletoe, exchanging shy kisses and spontaneous caresses. Small gestures of affection that for many were natural.

Mimihime stood there, absorbed in the scene before her, her expression serene, but with a subtle glint of curiosity in her eyes. The golden light reflected softly on her hair. The cold wind made her pull her scarf up a little higher, her white gloved fingers moving with quiet elegance. Shiro felt her heart race, and a sudden wave of heat rose to her face, tinting her cheeks red.

He took a deep breath, gathering his courage before he could rationalize the moment too much. With a hesitant but determined movement, he leaned to the side, his hand shaking as he slowly reached for hers with his own. The young woman just blinked curiously and watched her friend hesitantly hold her hand as if the gesture was extremely offensive. She wanted to laugh, he was an idiot.

“Come on, let’s go buy something today, okay?” She tightened her grip on his hand and pulled him away from the crowd.

~

Shiro remembered the first time he witnessed a real kiss, with Taka and Anzu literally getting married and sealing their marriage right there. After that he realized two things.

The first of all, was that he and Mimihime were not like Taka and Anzu. In no sense, they had even labeled what they were. Taka and Anzu had moved into an apartment just for the two of them, wanting more privacy for things Shiro didn't want to imagine, which left the old apartment just for the two of them.

Shiro held the lamp in his deft fingers, the small object disassembled into its parts meticulously arranged on the table in the living room. The copper wire needed new insulation, and the metal base, slightly crooked, required careful adjustment. He worked in silence, his eyes fixed on the repair , while the soft sound of Mimihime's breathing filled the space behind him.

She was lying face down on the couch, her face resting on her folded arms on a cushion. She was wearing a loose sweatshirt, wide enough to hide part of her hands, and soft cotton pants that bunched slightly at the ankles. Her slightly messy hair fell into her eyes, but she didn't seem to mind. She simply watched Shiro work, her eyes fixed on every movement of his hands.

For a moment, he lost himself in the mechanics of the lamp, in the familiarity of the process. The tools fit perfectly between his fingers, the gestures flowing with the precision of years of practice. But then the silence between them seemed to stretch a little longer than normal, filling the room with an almost palpable weight.

Shiro didn't look away from what he was doing as he asked, his voice calm but filled with sincere curiosity.

“What are we?”

He didn't need to look to know that Mimihime blinked slowly, processing the question. The silence that followed was typical of her , a space of time where he imagined her thoughts spinning in unpredictable directions before finding a landing spot.

“We?” she repeated, her voice soft and unhurried. He heard her shift slightly on the couch, settling herself more comfortably, but she gave no immediate sign that she would answer his question in the way he expected.

Shiro made a small adjustment to the lamp wire, testing the insulation resistance before continuing.

“Yes” he said with a slight sigh “Us”

There was a pause. Then Mimihime rested her chin on the cushion and looked at him with her typical calm but shrewd expression.

“Do you want a definition?” she asked, not intending to provoke, just seeking to understand.

Shiro pressed his lips together slightly before replying.

“I don’t know. I think so” He then hesitated, his hands pausing momentarily over the lamp “We’ve been together for years, but we’ve never talked about it. We’ve never said…” He trailed off, trying to find the right words, but the silence that followed indicated that Mimihime already understood.

“We never label” she concluded, almost as a thought out loud.

Shiro nodded, even though she couldn't see it.

Mimihime watched him again for a while, and he could feel her gaze burning into his back. After a few seconds, she spoke, with a serenity that almost disconcerted him.

“Are you dissatisfied?”

He blinked, surprised. That wasn’t the point. It wasn’t about being satisfied or not. He loved her, and he knew she understood that, but… He wanted to know if that was enough. If the words mattered to her as much as they seemed to him. If not saying “I love you” made any difference.

“No” he replied finally “But sometimes I wonder… if words alone would be enough to express what you feel”

Mimihime didn't answer right away. Instead, she watched him a little longer, her eyes roaming over the details of the scene, the contours of Shiro's back as he worked, the small wrinkles of concentration on his forehead, the way he kept his shoulders slightly tense whenever he spoke of something that made him vulnerable.

Then, almost imperceptibly, she slid off the couch and approached. Her steps were light enough that Shiro only noticed her presence when she sat down next to him, on her heels, her hands hidden in the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

For a moment, she just stared at the lamp in her hands, as if studying something invisible there. Then she reached out one arm and, without warning, rested her head on his shoulder.

Shiro froze briefly, not because it was unusual for her to touch him, but because the moments when she did so always seemed to be laden with a greater meaning.

“If words were enough, you wouldn’t need to ask” she murmured, her eyes fixed on the lamp “But if they were necessary, you wouldn’t have waited years to hear”

Shiro felt his heart stumble in his chest. He didn't know exactly what to say, and maybe he didn't even need to. Because in the end, Mimihime was exactly that: a mystery that he would never fully decipher, but that he would still choose to spend his entire life trying to understand.

She stepped away smoothly, as if her point had been made. Then she pointed to the lamp with a slight nod.

“Is it working?”

Shiro took a deep breath and, without looking away from her, tightened the last screw before turning the switch.

The second thing he realized was that they weren't exactly like anyone else, and that thought was something completely intoxicating in itself.

The light shone bright and clear between them.

Chapter Text

Silence was something natural between the two. There was no need for words when the mere presence of each other was enough. Since their days at the academy, Shiro and Mimihime had shared this tacit understanding, a complicity forged in looks, gestures and the certainty that they didn't need to fill the space with sounds to make themselves understood. They often spent hours together without exchanging more than a few spaced sentences, each immersed in their own thoughts, but always aware that the other was there.

Shiro had learned to appreciate this. In the early years, he had tried to verbalize from time to time how much he valued these moments. He would casually say that he enjoyed the quiet, that her presence made the silence feel comfortable instead of empty. Mimihime, for her part, would just smile slightly. She never responded in kind, never returned similar words, and Shiro had learned not to expect it. Not because she didn’t feel it, but because it simply wasn’t her way.

He accepted that her way of showing affection was different, and in a way, that only made it more precious.

That night, the apartment was plunged into a peaceful twilight, with the faint moonlight streaming through the window and creating soft shadows on the wooden floor.

Shiro stopped at the entrance to the room, his shoulders slightly tense as he stared at Mimihime's silhouette beneath the sheets. The dimness of the room made it difficult to discern her expression, but he knew she was still awake. The shape of her body was still, but her breathing pattern was not that of someone who had already given in to sleep.

He swallowed hard, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, unsure of what to do next. The heat in his face had not yet completely dissipated, a remnant of what he had felt for a few hours now.

She had kicked him out of bed after he was a little too rough.

Not angry, at least he didn't think so, but definitely enough that he didn't dare insist on staying. Now, standing there, he wondered if it was safe to try to go back yet.

Shiro sighed softly, running a hand through his hair before looking down. He was still only dressed in a pair of comfortable sleeping pants. The wooden floor beneath his feet was slightly cold, a subtle reminder that if he decided to sleep on the couch again, his night would not be the most pleasant.

But more than that, he didn't want to sleep away from her.

As much as he respected her space, he knew he had become dependent on Mimihime's presence by his side. Her warmth under the blankets, her slow, rhythmic breathing that filled the silence of the room, the way she would sometimes move toward him during the night, even without realizing it, as if her body knew he was there before her mind even registered it.

He sighed again, deeper this time.

Gathering his courage, he took a hesitant step into the room. The wood creaked softly under his weight, and he held his breath as he saw Mimihime’s ears perk up slightly.

She didn't say anything. She just turned her head slightly to the side, revealing a glimpse of her face. Her loose hair was spread across the pillow, the light brown strands blending in with the dim light of the room. Her eyes were half-closed, but her expression remained neutral.

Shiro hesitated, but then pointed to the mattress, his voice low.

“Can I come back?”

Mimihime stared at him for a long moment, her gaze heavy in the dim light of the room. The dim moonlight reflected subtly in her half-closed eyes, filled with a silent but unmistakable displeasure. She didn't need to say anything, the expression on her face, slightly grumpy, already conveyed her message precisely.

Shiro swallowed. He looked away for a moment, his fingers running through his hair in an uneasy gesture. The tension in the air was palpable, and even though Mimihime wasn't exactly furious, the discomfort that settled between them was enough to make him want to bury himself in the ground.

His eyes dropped to her huddled form beneath the sheets. Her body was partially turned to the side, and even covered, he could see the subtle stiffness in her posture.

Guilt tightened his chest.

“…Is it still sore?” His voice was low, filled with hesitation.

Mimihime's eyes flashed with a trace of irritation before her mouth opened to reply, her tone dry and reproachful.

“What do you think, you idiot?”

Shiro immediately lowered his head, his face burning with embarrassment.

“S-Sorry…”

Mimihime huffed lightly, turning her face away from the pillow, but not actually pushing it away. The exasperation in her voice was genuine, but there was something almost resigned in her tone, as if she knew he was punishing himself enough without needing to add to it.

Shiro stood there, his fists clenched at his sides. He wanted to say something else, but any excuse would sound pathetic, so he decided to accept the scolding in silence.

The weight of silence stretched on for long seconds. Mimihime didn't send him away, but she didn't make any gesture to call him back either.

Still, Shiro stood there, hesitant, waiting. Then, slowly, she moved.

It wasn't an explicit invitation, but the sheets slid slightly as she made a small adjustment to her position, creating a discreet space next to her. Shiro noticed the gesture immediately, and with a final sigh of relief, he walked over to the bed. He lay down carefully, making sure not to bump into her, keeping a respectful distance.

Mimihime’s warmth in front of him was comforting, even though she was still clearly irritated. Shiro took a deep breath, trying to find the right words, but in the end, all that came out was an uncertain mumble.

“I… I’m really sorry.” He kept his gaze fixed on her back. “I didn’t mean to be so rude. It was careless, I swear! I should have paid more attention, but—”

“But you didn't”

The answer came short and sharp, and Shiro had the feeling that if it were possible, she would have thrown a pillow at him. Mimihime shrank even further, pulling the sheets over her shoulders with an irritated movement.

Shiro cringed along.

“…Next time, I promise to be more careful.” His voice came out lower, as if he was afraid of provoking another scathing response.

Mimihime let out a short sigh. Her tone was almost indifferent as she replied, “The next time seems quite far away for you.”

Those words fell on Shiro like a crushing weight. He stood still for a moment, blinking a few times before they finally sunk in. His stomach sank, and he felt a chill run down his spine.

“I-I…” He opened his mouth, but nothing coherent came out immediately. His brain felt like a stuck machine, spinning without being able to find its way.

Then he became desperate.

“No! Please! I-I promise I’ll make it up to you! I swear, I’ll do anything! I can bring you breakfast in bed! Or, or let you pick whatever movie you want on the weekend! Or I can—”

“You already do those things,” Mimihime interrupted, her voice thick with boredom.

Shiro swallowed hard “R-Right… But I can do something else! Like…! Like carry your stuff wherever you want! Or wash all the dishes for a month! Or—” He was drowning. He knew it. But for some reason, his mouth kept spilling words before his brain could catch up with them “I can buy you those sweets you like! Or… Or I can learn how to cook something new! I know I’m terrible at cooking, but I swear this time I won’t let anything burn! And if you want, I can too—” Shiro trailed off, his face burning.

Silence settled in again, heavy and crushing.

Slowly, he brought his hands to his face, hiding the shame that was eating him from the inside out. He wanted to disappear. He wanted the mattress to swallow him whole and take him to a dimension where he didn't have to deal with his own embarrassment.

Mimihime, in turn, just sighed again, but this time in a different way.

"… Idiot"

Shiro felt something warm and hesitant wrap around him. Mimihime's arms, previously withdrawn in a defensive posture, now wrapped around him slowly, almost as if she herself was reluctant to give in to the gesture. Her fingers lightly brushed his back before tightening in a delicate grip, and Shiro blinked a few times in confusion before pulling his hands away from his face.

When he looked forward, he found himself staring at Mimihime's silhouette, now turned toward him. Her face was nestled against the curve of his shoulder and neck, her soft hair brushing against his skin, and the warmth of her breath spread lightly over his collarbone. Shiro felt his heart race immediately, an automatic reaction every time she was less than half a meter away. The air felt thicker all of a sudden, and for a moment, he hesitated, unsure of what to do.

But then, slowly, almost afraid to break the moment, he lifted his arms and wrapped them around Mimihime’s smaller body, gently pulling her closer. His chin found a natural resting place on the top of her head, and he closed his eyes for a moment, just taking in the feeling of having her so close.

"I'm sorry… really," he murmured, his voice muffled by the cramped space between them.

Mimihime didn't respond right away. She just stood there, motionless, her breathing maintaining a slow, even rhythm. Shiro almost thought she was going to ignore him completely, but then he felt a subtle pressure as her fingers pressed lightly against his back.

"You really talk a lot when we're alone, Shiro."

The remark was dry, but there was a hint of resignation in it. He felt a laugh rise in his throat before he could stop it, a low sound full of affection.

"I know..."

Silence settled between them again, but it wasn't uncomfortable. It was the kind of silence they both understood, the kind that didn't need to be filled with words. Shiro felt the weight of the tension slowly dissipate, replaced by the comforting warmth of her presence.

Slowly, his hand moved up to the light brown strands that fell over her back, sliding his fingers through them in a discreet caress. Mimihime didn't protest, just snuggled a little closer against him, as if adjusting to the position.

Time passed indefinitely. Shiro couldn't say how many minutes had passed, only that the world outside that room seemed distant, almost nonexistent. All that mattered at that moment was the feeling of his partner in his arms, the soft sound of her breathing against his skin, the warmth of her small body against his.

And then, unexpectedly, Mimihime's voice was heard again, low and slightly hesitant:

"...I like it when you're here"

The words were spoken so softly that Shiro almost wondered if he had imagined them. His chest tightened, and he blinked a few times, feeling his heart race even faster. He didn't respond right away, needing a moment to process what he had just heard.

Mimihime wasn’t someone who expressed her feelings through words. He knew that better than anyone. So hearing something like that come out of her, even in such a subtle way, caused an unexpected heat to rise to his face.

Swallowing hard, he tightened his hold around her, his hand on her back sliding to settle her more snugly against him. His forehead rested softly against her hair, and on impulse he murmured back, his voice laced with a smile he knew she wouldn’t see but somehow hoped she would feel.

"I like being here too"

Silence reigned once more, but this time there was something different about it. Something softer, more certain.

The night passed without any further words between them. Eventually, Mimihime's breathing slowed down, becoming more even, signaling that she was giving in to sleep. Shiro remained awake for a while longer, just enjoying that moment, feeling the tranquility that settled inside him.

Chapter Text

The days of the academy seemed distant, almost like an ethereal dream. The only thing that kept her immensely tied to the place was Ohma and Tokio. She still wondered how they were both doing, she didn't know if they were still inside the walls or outside them. Part of her envied them if they were.

The biting cold wind made her cringe, her nose already red from the small snowflakes that fell on it. The obviously unsuitable clothing for the cold didn't help, but it was the best they could do in their search.

The abandoned city was shrouded in a dense, almost eerie silence. The only sound that broke the stillness was the rustling of the icy wind, whistling through the deserted streets and making the snowflakes dance before settling on the forgotten rubble. The cloudy sky stretched out like a great gray sheet, making it difficult to distinguish the passage of time. Everything seemed stagnant there, as if the world itself had stopped turning in this place.

Mimihime pulled her arms to her chest, trying her best to preserve the warmth that remained in her body. The thin fabric of her clothes did nothing to protect her from the biting cold, and her numb fingers ached with each gust that passed through the cracks of the abandoned buildings.

Snow piled up along the sidewalks, covering the cracked roads like a white blanket, hiding the scars of a time when this city had been inhabited. Here and there, the wreckage of fallen signs still bore words faded by time, signs of once-bustling stores that were now nothing more than empty skeletons of concrete and rust. An overturned car was buried halfway in the snow, its windows shattered and covered in a thin layer of ice, its existence now reduced to just another ownerless wreck.

Mimihime kicked an old food can that was in the middle of the path, watching it roll a few meters before crashing into a pile of dirty snow. She wrinkled her nose when she saw the lid open, revealing the inside covered in a dark and disgusting mold. Her stomach growled softly, but she ignored it. Hunger was already an old acquaintance of hers, and she wouldn't lose her composure because of it now.

She kept walking, her footsteps sinking softly into the accumulated snow. Each movement made her skin shiver, and her muscles protested against the incessant cold, making the walk even more exhausting. The wind, cruel and merciless, whistled through the alleys and lanes, lifting flakes that clung to her clothes, her hair, her face. Her trail in the snow was quickly erased by the white whirlwind around her.

The young girl sighed, letting a cloud of steam escape from her lips.

Her thoughts turned to Ohma and Tokio. Were they safe? Were they still inside the walls, trapped in that illusion of safety, or had they found a way out, just like she had? Part of Mimihime hoped so, that they had escaped, that they were somewhere better, away from this cold that seemed to devour her very soul. But another part…another part envied the possibility.

Because if they were still within the walls, then at least they wouldn't be freezing to the bone like she was now.

A shiver ran down her spine, not just from the cold, but from the exhaustion that was beginning to seep into her body. Her knees felt weak, and her numb fingers trembled slightly. She knew she had to keep going, that stopping here meant surrendering to the cold, the treacherous sleep that would slowly embrace her until she never opened her eyes again.

Suddenly, her ears picked up a distinct sound in the oppressive silence of the dead city. Glass breaking.

The sound cracked through the air like muffled thunder, short and sharp, but loud enough to make her stop in her tracks. Her ears pricked up instinctively, alert, and her body went rigid, her heart pounding against her chest as if it wanted to escape. She stood still, holding her breath, her eyes scanning the scene around her.

In this lawless, ravaged world, strangers were not safe. Mimihime had seen and lived enough to know that. The mere thought of crossing paths with someone she didn't know sent a shiver of pure instinct through her. Thieves, hunters, looters... nothing she wanted to encounter.

Her gaze swept over the narrow alleys, the broken storefronts, and the decaying buildings covered in snow and rust. She pressed her lips together, her eyes narrowed in concentration, ready to run if necessary.

But then, from a destroyed shop to his right, a familiar figure emerged. Shiro.

The boy walked through the broken glass door with a low grunt, clearly annoyed with himself for the noise he had just made. His white hair was messy, his tousled hair blowing in the wind, and he held a dark scarf in his hands. His worn, patched coat barely seemed to offer protection against the bitter cold, but he didn’t seem to care. As soon as he saw her, his expression softened slightly, although he maintained that always taciturn air.

He sighed, lightly kicking a shard of glass that remained on the floor before approaching.

Mimihime relaxed slightly, letting out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding.

“Find anything?” Her voice was hoarse from the cold, and she rubbed her hands against her arms, trying to generate some warmth.

Shiro shook his head, looking away.

“Not useful at all”

It was a short, straightforward, and frustrating answer, but not unexpected. The chances of finding supplies in this world were slim, and they had already looted so many places that any scrap of food or decent shelter was out of the question.

However, before Mimihime could say anything, Shiro lifted the scarf he was holding and, without even asking, wrapped it around her neck. The fabric, though old and a little rough, was warm. The remaining heat from his body spread across her chilled skin like an unexpected relief. Mimihime blinked in surprise as he finished adjusting the scarf with a firm knot.

“You were shaking” he murmured as he stared into her eyes.

She blinked again, feeling her face slowly heat up beneath the fabric.

“Thank you …” she said softly, pulling the scarf a little tighter against her face, absorbing as much warmth as possible.

Shiro only grunted something inaudible in response and turned his face away. His clumsy way of showing concern was nothing new to her. Still, there was something genuinely comforting about the gesture, something that, for a moment, made Mimihime forget about the biting cold and the insatiable hunger.

She watched him for a few seconds, noting the small signs of fatigue in his expression. The faint shadows under his eyes, the stiffness in his shoulders. He was as exhausted as she was, but he said nothing.

They were in this together after all.

The wind howled around them, whipping snow into the air. Shiro adjusted his hood over his head and looked out at the empty, white horizon.

“Let’s go” he said, taking her hand and gently pulling her along as they continued walking.

Two years.

They had been in the city for two years now since the calamity. Two years of wandering the same snow-covered streets, exploring the same alleys for anything that might still be useful. At first, Shiro had insisted that staying here was safer. They knew the terrain, knew where they could hide, where they had already looked, where it was still worth trying. But even he was beginning to realize the impossibility of that.

Resources were running out.

Even without saying anything, Mimihime could see the way he was watching her. His attentive gaze that discreetly slid over her figure, analyzing how much weight she had lost, how obvious her exhaustion was. Shiro was terrible at expressing emotions, but she knew him well enough to know when he was worried. He didn't want to admit it.

Perhaps because doing so would mean acknowledging that they needed to leave the city. It would mean abandoning what, despite everything, they still considered familiar.

The snow crunched beneath their feet as they walked on, passing yet another looted market, the shelves overturned and covered in dust. Empty boxes were strewn across the floor, crumpled packaging left behind by those who had come before them. Nothing here would be of any use.

Mimihime sighed, squeezing her partner's hand as she tried to ignore the nagging feeling of hunger.

“What do you think we might still find?” She asked, her voice low but filled with an almost hopeful curiosity.

Shiro hesitated for a moment before answering, his eyes roaming around the destroyed interior of the market.

"I don't know"

Mimihime pursed her lips, as if pondering over that for a moment, before casting a sidelong glance at him.

“Maybe rice” she said, gently running her thumb over the back of his hand as she dodged the debris scattered across the floor “I imagine it’s frozen solid by now, but… it’s still better than nothing.”

Shiro gave her a sideways glance, but remained silent.

“Do you know what I would kill for right now?”

“Soup” Shiro replied without hesitation.

Mimihime turned to him with an incredulous look, her eyebrows arching slightly.

“Wait... you can read minds now?”

Shiro simply shook his head and, without saying anything, raised his hand to point to something ahead. At the end of a dead end, almost completely covered by the accumulated snow, a shopping cart stood out among the wreckage. Its metal was rusted, and some of the wheels seemed stuck, but there it sat, untouched. A thin layer of snow covered whatever was inside, making it impossible to see its contents.

Before Mimihime could say anything, Shiro smiled at her, one of those rare smiles that barely rose above the corner of the mouth, and took off towards the cart.

She hesitated for a moment, frowning. Something about it felt… wrong. Abandoned or not, the cart looked like it belonged to someone. Survivors always left clues about their presence, and a cart full of supplies abandoned in a dead-end alley wasn’t the kind of thing you just found lying around.

“Shiro...” She called reluctantly as she slowly approached “Maybe this has an owner”

He didn’t look at her. He was too busy shoveling the snow with his hands, pushing the ice off the objects in the cart. The speed with which he did it showed how hungry he must be.

“What if they come back?” Mimihime insisted, crossing her arms.

This time he paused for a second, his fingers still touching the snow. Then, without looking up, he replied, “I don’t care.”

The coldness in his voice made something tighten inside her.

“What does matter, then?” She whispered, as if challenging that apathy.

This time, Shiro turned to her, his expression softening slightly. His eyes, previously focused on the supplies, were now fixed on her. He held up three cans of food, holding them up like a trophy.

“You” he said simply, with restrained pride.

Mimihime was silent. For a moment, all she could hear was the wind whistling between the buildings and the sound of metal clinking in her hand. Shiro was never one for grand speeches or dramatic displays, but the simplicity of that answer carried more weight than anything else he could have said.

She looked away, feeling her cheeks heat slightly beneath the scarf he had given her moments before. Holding the cans of soup, Shiro stood up and, without warning, took her hand, lightly pressing his cold fingers against hers.

“Let’s go before we get stuck here” he said, pulling her gently.

Mimihime nodded, following beside him as the wind blew even stronger.

~

The apartment was small and run-down, but it was still the best shelter they had. The windows were thankfully intact, which helped keep the biting wind out, but the wooden floor and walls offered no respite from the cold that seemed to seep into everything. Any carelessness and the ice would become a real threat.

Mimihime sneezed softly, curling up even deeper into the thick blanket that wrapped her body. It was the only one they had, and at that moment, it was their shield against the cruel night temperature. Only her eyes and the top of her head were poking out of the makeshift cocoon, her golden locks disheveled and sticky from the heat accumulated within the fabric. She sniffed slightly, feeling her nose congested, and grunted when something noticeably cold touched her forehead.

She tried to pull away, burrowing deeper into the comforting warmth, but the hand lingered for a moment before withdrawing with a resigned sigh. Shiro said nothing, just walked around the small space and crouched down in front of the pot that sat on the old battery-powered electric cooker in the center of the room. The appliance hissed softly as the last of their soup slowly heated up, the faint steam dissipating into the chilly air.

Shiro picked up the makeshift spoon they used to stir the food and gave the thin liquid a gentle swirl, observing the small particles of processed vegetables and the remaining fat floating on the surface.

"How are you?" He asked, not taking his eyes off his soup.

Mimihime let out a muffled noise, a cross between a groan and an exhausted sigh.

" Hmmpf …"

Shiro raised an eyebrow slightly, his gaze flickering to her for a moment. All he saw was a mound of blanket trembling slightly, with half-lidded eyes visible just above the fabric pulled up to her nose.

"Is that an answer?"

She closed her eyes, her breathing coming out a little heavier. “That’s the best answer you’re going to get”

Shiro snorted, turning his attention back to the pan “That means you look terrible”

Mimihime didn't answer right away, just sniffed again and curled up tighter, pulling the blanket up over her head. For a moment, the only thing that could be heard was the hiss of the pot and the distant sound of the wind blowing against the windows. Shiro waited patiently, knowing that she would answer in her own time.

Eventually, a small movement under the blanket indicated that she was trying to adjust herself. Her voice came muffled "I'm not that bad... I'm just a little cold"

Shiro didn’t believe it for a second. Judging by her slightly pale face and reddened nose, she was definitely worse off than she wanted to admit. He pressed his lips into a thin line before grabbing one of the old bowls they had and pouring a small portion of the hot soup into it. With uncharacteristic care, he walked over and crouched down next to the human cocoon that Mimihime had become.

"Sit down" She didn't move. Shiro sighed "Mimihime"

A mumble came from under the blanket "I'm fine like this..."

Shiro kept his eyes fixed on the small, trembling cocoon, his lips pressed into a thin line. She was visibly uncomfortable, her nose congested, her eyebrows slightly furrowed, and her body huddled under the blanket as if she could simply disappear into it. Yet she refused to move, stubborn as ever.

Letting out a long, controlled sigh, he placed the bowl of soup on the small table in the corner of the couch where she was curled up and, without saying anything, sat down beside her. For a moment, he just stared at her, assessing her condition closely. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat trapped within the blanket, but the rest of her face looked pale. Her breathing was ragged, heavy with congestion.

With a careful movement, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her body into his lap.

Mimihime let out a surprised noise, a small " hmph " muffled by the fabric of the blanket, struggling weakly in protest, but without enough energy to truly resist. Shiro ignored any attempt on her part to escape and adjusted her position until she was snug against him, the blanket still almost completely enveloping her.

The fabric slid down a little, revealing her face. Before she could cover herself again, she sneezed once more, rocking lightly against his chest.

“I hate the cold...” She muttered, sniffling afterwards.

“I agree” Shiro replied simply, adjusting the blanket so it covered her better without pulling any of it towards him. He was freezing as well, feeling the cold seeping through his worn clothes and exposed skin, but he didn’t take half of the blanket. Instead, he wrapped it tighter around her, making sure the fabric was snug enough to keep the heat from escaping.

Mimihime mumbled something incomprehensible before relaxing slightly, letting herself sink against him. Her face found his shoulder, and her warm cheek rubbed gently against the worn fabric of his shirt, like a cat seeking warmth. Shiro stood still for a moment, his muscles instinctively tensing, but then he relaxed, allowing her to settle.

The silence between them was comfortable, filled only by the hiss of the slow cooker and the wind blowing outside. Little by little, Shiro felt her breathing even out, and her small, fragile body became a looser weight against his. She still shivered from time to time, and he felt her nose brush against his collarbone as she shifted slightly, trying to absorb more heat.

“Are you going to eat some?” He asked, his voice low so as not to break the comfort of the moment.

She grimaced lazily against his shoulder, her eyes still locked. Shiro could have forced her to sit down and eat, but he knew her way of giving in always involved a bit of stubbornness first. So he waited.

After a few minutes, she sighed, moving slightly. He noticed that her fingers, previously hidden under the blanket, timidly came out, sliding down his side before resting on his chest. Small, cold, but relaxed.

“Give me a minute...” she murmured.

Shiro didn’t respond right away. Instead, he just tightened his arms around her slightly, accepting her silent request for more time there. If she wanted a minute, he would give it to her. If she wanted the whole night, he would allow it too. The cold was brutal, but her presence made it a little more bearable.

Chapter Text

Mimihime sighed in wonder, the cold was still biting, but the overwhelming wind that had previously whistled against their bodies had finally disappeared, leaving only the icy silence of the surrounding forest. Her steps were soft and careful over the thick snow, sinking slightly with each movement. The young woman raised her head, letting her eyes wander to the clear, blue sky, a blue so pure and distant that it seemed untouched by the calamity that ravaged the land.

It was a sight they had not had the privilege of witnessing for a long time.

The branches of the slender trees were covered in a thin layer of ice, and when the sun's rays fell upon them, they refracted the light like tiny crystals trapped in the pale wood. A diaphanous glow ran through the treetops, transforming the scenery into something almost ethereal, as if an untouched fragment of beauty had survived the harsh world they now inhabited. The white snow stretched in all directions, covering the ground like an immaculate blanket, broken only by the footprints the two left behind.

It had been years since they had seen such a forested place.

For a moment, she imagined what this place must have been like before. The green leaves swaying in the warm summer breeze, the smell of damp earth, and the distant melody of birds hidden among the branches.

Shiro walked aside of her, his gray coat contrasting with the white of the surroundings. He held her hand firmly, his fingers wrapped around hers in a careful grip, guiding her safely across the uneven terrain. His gaze was fixed on a point in the distance, where he knew there would be another city.

After days of meticulously studying the map in the main square of the abandoned city, they had decided to head in that direction, trusting in the hope of finding something, anything, that could offer them a slightly less uncertain future.

Mimihime watched Shiro for a moment, analyzing her companion's firm and determined posture. Despite the cold, he remained upright, advancing with constant steps, without hesitation. The steam from his breath dissipated in the cold air, and even without looking back, she knew that he was attentive to her every little movement, ready to act if something happened.

A small smile curved her lips.

Even when he didn't say anything, even when his eyes betrayed no emotion, Shiro still made her feel safe.

Hana ran ahead of them, her light, carefree steps scattering snow everywhere. The girl seemed oblivious to the biting cold, or perhaps she was just so excited that she didn't care about it.

Mimihime shrugged instinctively as some of the ice hit her sleeve, but upon seeing the girl's radiant expression, she merely laughed lightly.

Hana reminded her a lot of Ohma.

The girl's mother walked a little further behind, her watchful gaze following them with the same caution she had shown since the first day they met. She still didn't completely trusted Mimihime, much less Shiro, but that was to be expected. In times like these, trust was a dangerous luxury.

Ako sighed in exasperation and crossed her arms " Hana , be careful not to fall" she warned, her voice thick with forced patience "And don't move too far away!"

"I won't!" the girl snapped, laughing as she spun around in the snow before throwing another handful into the air, letting the glittering flakes fall around her.

Shiro didn't bother to dodge when some snow landed on his shoulder, just giving the girl a brief, impassive look before turning his attention back to the path ahead. Mimihime could tell he was still bothered.

When they had encountered Ako and her daughter a few days ago, Shiro’s first reaction had been to ignore them completely. He had wanted to move on without involvement, without strings attached. But Mimihime had been unable to simply leave them behind. They were exhausted, hungry, and Hana was shivering from the cold even as she tried to hide it.

Mimihime had been firm, or at least as firm as she could be with Shiro. They couldn't abandon them. They didn't need to go together until the end, but at least to a safer place.

It was a silent discussion.

Shiro didn't agree, but he didn't openly oppose it either. He simply accepted her decision with a resigned sigh, never clearly expressing what he thought about it.

Hana stopped running for a moment, watching Shiro with a curious expression, her eyes shining with a mixture of innocence and childlike discernment. Then, she looked away to Mimihime, who was watching her with a light, welcoming smile.

The little girl hesitated for a second, then skipped over to the older girl, her tiny steps sinking softly into the snow. She grabbed the edge of Mimihime’s coat with her gloved hands, tugging lightly before asking,

"Is your husband always this grumpy?"

Shiro momentarily stopped in his tracks, casting a discreet but clearly offended glance at the girl. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he let out an exasperated sigh before looking away, pretending he hadn’t heard.

Mimihime couldn't contain her laughter.

"We're not married" She explained, still laughing, her soft voice full of amusement "But... yes, he's just like that"

Shiro pressed his lips together, remaining silent.

Still laughing, Mimihime turned to her partner, her gentle gaze softening any provocation in her words. Without letting go of his hand, she squeezed his fingers more firmly. Shiro didn't return the squeeze, but he didn't try to let go either.

Hana watched the two of them for a moment, as if pondering something, then simply nodded, falling silent.

Ako , on the other hand, sighed lightly and crossed her arms “He really does look much worse” she muttered, in a tone that wasn’t loud enough to be a direct affront, but also not discreet enough to go unnoticed.

This time, Shiro stopped walking for a brief moment. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, as if he were mentally counting to ten before moving on without deigning anyone with a response.

Hana chuckled softly, covering her mouth with her hands, while Mimihime glanced at Shiro sideways.

With a mischievous glint in her eyes, she let out a small laugh before suddenly grabbing Mimihime’s free hand and pulling her along enthusiastically. “Hey, can you walk with me for a bit instead of the grumpy one?” she asked, her voice full of childish excitement.

Mimihime blinked, surprised by the sudden request. Her first instinct was to look at Shiro, but before she could react, the girl was already pulling her forward, her feet sinking slightly into the snow as she went. Mimihime gave Shiro an apologetic look, a hesitant smile on her face, before accepting the offer without resistance.

The little girl let out an excited squeal and began chattering nonstop, her eyes shining as she poured out a torrent of words about her likes, the things she found interesting, and any other thought that crossed her childish mind.

Shiro, on the other hand, stopped in his tracks, his brows furrowed in a mixture of confusion and displeasure. He just stood there for a moment, watching the two walk away. Slowly, he put his now free hands into his coat pockets, his shoulders stiff and his face visibly grim.

If he could shoot daggers from his eyes, Hana and Ako would probably be impaled by millions.

~

“They were nice,” Mimihime commented as she balanced on a fallen tree trunk, Shiro walking beside her, ready to catch her if she slipped.

“I really wish we hadn’t offered help”

"I know that"

Mimihime jumped lightly off the fallen log, landing with a soft crunch on the soft snow. Adjusting the collar of her coat, she turned to Shiro, who was walking beside her with his usual rigid posture and impassive expression.

The surrounding forest was shrouded in an almost reverent silence, broken only by the muffled sound of footsteps in the snow. Ako and Hana had separated from them a few hours ago, having found a landmark and decided to go their own ways. Mimihime was relieved that they had managed to find their way, but part of her felt a strange emptiness now that she could no longer hear Hana 's incessant chatter . The girl's vibrant energy had filled the silence of the past few days in a peculiarly welcoming way.

Shiro, however, seemed to be in an unusual state of contemplation. His gaze was fixed on the path ahead, but he didn’t seem to be observing anything in particular. His shoulders were tense, and the slight flush on his face betrayed more than just the cold.

Mimihime watched him for a moment before tilting her head slightly to the side, curious.

"What is it?" she asked, her voice soft.

Shiro remained silent for a few seconds. He then lowered his face slightly, pulling his coat tighter to cover part of his skin, which was reddened by the cold – or perhaps by something else. His fingers dug even deeper into the pockets of his coat, as if he was trying to hide inside it.

“Do I really look grumpy to you?” he muttered, not looking at her directly.

Mimihime blinked, surprised by the question. Then, a mischievous smile curved her lips, and she let out a low, almost musical laugh “Yes”

Shiro immediately grimaced, turning his face away “ Hmph ”

Mimihime smiled at Shiro's sullen expression, and without hesitation, she took a small step to the side, lightly brushing her hip against his in a playful gesture. It was a fleeting touch, an almost casual movement, but the impact was immediate.

“But you’re my favorite grump,” she said , her voice thick with sweetness, before simply turning around and continuing to walk, as if she hadn’t just destroyed whatever shred of composure Shiro still had.

Shiro stood still in the same place. His brain simply… froze.

The heat rose up his neck in an uncontrollable wave, dyeing his cheeks, already red from the cold, even more intensely. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but closed it immediately, unable to formulate even a coherent thought. His eyes involuntarily followed each step Mimihime took, her graceful silhouette moving away with the lightness of someone who seemed to carry no weight in their heart.

He looked down, as if the snow might offer some sort of answer to his sudden lack of control over himself.

That girl was dangerous.

Shiro swallowed, feeling a strange tingling in his stomach—something between discomfort and an unsettling warmth that spread treacherously through his chest. He needed to regain as little dignity as possible.

Then, without much thought, he slowly bent down and picked up a handful of snow. His fingers squeezed the soft, cold substance, molding it into a tiny, almost ridiculously small ball. He hesitated for a moment, staring at the small projectile in his hands as if questioning the validity of his own decision.

There was still time to give up.

But then he swallowed hard and, gathering all the courage he had, threw the ball towards Mimihime.

The result was… disappointing.

The snowball had no force at all. Its trajectory was short, almost pathetic, and it simply landed near Mimihime's leg without even actually touching her. The muffled sound of its impact against the snow was barely audible.

Mimihime stopped. Slowly, her ears pricked up in an immediate alert reflex, and she turned her head back, her blue eyes meeting his with a mixed expression of curiosity and amusement.

For a moment that seemed much longer than it actually was, the two stared at each other.

Shiro felt the blood pounding in his ears.

He couldn't look away, but he also didn't know how to react. The slightest possibility that this might be interpreted as some kind of teasing or flirting made his mind short-circuit. The idea of being the one to initiate any kind of interaction that wasn't strictly practical was simply terrifying.

Mimihime blinked, seeming to assess the situation with a mischievous glint in her eyes. The small smile that appeared on her lips was enough to make him want to stick his head in the snow and wait for the cold to freeze him into oblivion.

He held his breath as she finally turned fully to face him head-on. There was something defiant in her posture, a genuine interest, and perhaps even a trace of amusement in her expression.

Shiro, on the other hand, wanted to evaporate. He felt his body tense, his shoulders stiffening and his hands instinctively clenching. His face was hot enough to defy the very cold of the forest, and he could barely control the urge to look anywhere but at that pair of eyes.

Mimihime took a slow step towards him, and every fiber of Shiro's body screamed in warning. He didn't know whether to run away, look away, or just accept his fate as someone who was absolutely terrible at dealing with this kind of situation.

And then, to his complete and utter dismay, Mimihime smiled.

She didn't back away. She stood there, mere inches away, so close that Shiro could see the minute details of her blue eyes, the mischievous glint that danced in their irises as if she already knew exactly what he was thinking. Heat rose again in his face, burning his skin like a fever.

"Did you know you're terrible at flirting?" Her voice was sweet, melodic, almost teasing. There was no judgment in her question, just an innocent joke, but to Shiro, it was as if his heart had simply stopped for a second.

He tried to speak, tried to formulate a response that was even remotely coherent, but all he could manage was an absolutely pathetic stuttering " Y-Yes ..."

Mimihime’s smile widened. Her hand slowly rose, and before Shiro could even process what was happening, he felt her fingers touch his left cheek. The touch was warm, gentle, but to him, it felt like someone had thrown a bucket of lava straight into his face.

His brain has collapsed.

It was always like that.

Even after years spent with Mimihime, even after countless moments like that, he could never react normally. It was as if every display of affection from her disarmed him completely, as if all his control – which was already fragile to begin with – shattered the moment she decided to be a little more direct.

Mimihime tilted her head slightly to the side, observing him like a scientist analyzing a fascinating creature. "And did you know that I love it?"

Shiro closed his eyes tightly, feeling his heart hammer against his ribs in an almost painful manner " Y-Yes …"

It was at that moment that he leaned down, instinctively bracing himself for what seemed inevitable. The warm touch on his cheek, the softness in her voice, the closeness, everything pointed to one outcome. He held his breath, waiting to feel the delicacy of Mimihime's lips against his, his face growing warmer as time seemed to drag on.

But the kiss never came. Instead, the warmth of Mimihime’s hand suddenly disappeared, replaced by the biting chill of the forest’s icy air.

Shiro, still with his eyes closed, felt an absurd confusion growing inside him. Something was wrong. He hesitated for a second before opening one eye very slowly, peering with the caution of someone who didn't want to face the reality of the situation.

And there she was. A few steps away, smiling as if she hadn't just taken years off his life with a simple joke.

The world around Shiro seemed to shrink, reduced to only the figure of Mimihime, who was still staring at him with that sparkling blue gaze, as if she was amused by his absolute lack of defense against her advances. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. The smile on her lips, the mischievous glint in her eyes and the way her head tilted slightly to the side spoke more than any words could.

Mimihime just watched him, as if she wanted to record every detail of Shiro's face at that moment - his confused expression, his cheeks dyed a radiant red, his wide eyes trying to recover from the unexpected blow. For him, that silence was a minefield. His entire body was rigid, his muscles tense as if a single wrong word would make him explode with pure, concentrated shame.

Shiro opened his mouth, ready to say something, anything that wouldn't make him look even more pathetic.

Mimihime took a careless step back and gently bumped her hip against the trunk of a tall, snow-laden tree. The impact, though slight, was enough to shake the branches above them.

And then, like a punishment from the heavens for his boldness, a miniature avalanche came crashing down on Shiro.

The young man didn't even have time to react. One moment, he was standing there, frozen by Mimihime's gaze; the next, he was completely buried by an absurd amount of snow that fell on his head and shoulders, covering him almost completely. The cold, soft weight enveloped him, getting under the hood of his coat and accumulating in his disheveled bangs. He stood there, still, as the snow slowly slid off his shoulders, dripping from his hair and accumulating around his feet.

The silence that followed was absolute.

Shiro blinked, feeling the icy wetness seep into his skin, the thermal shock momentarily rewiring every neural connection in his brain. His entire body felt like it had gone into sleep mode, like a system failing to process too much information at once. Moisture trickled down the collar of his coat, tiny flakes clinging to his eyelashes, and a sudden chill settled on the back of his neck.

Mimihime let out a low, muffled laugh, which soon turned into a crystal clear and absolutely charming laugh. She tried to contain it, but it was impossible. The scene before her eyes was simply too good for her to hold back.

Shiro, completely still, looked at her with an expression that was a mixture of indignation and resignation. His face, already red before, seemed to have reached a new level of coloration, a tone that bordered on the most intense red, not only from the sudden cold, but from the absolute humiliation.

And then, as if that weren’t enough, Mimihime turned lightly and simply began walking forward, or rather, strutting. Her every step was graceful, her movements carrying an almost exaggerated lightness, as if she were delighting in her own mischief. The smile on her lips was sharp, the laughter still dancing in her throat, and her posture radiated a carefree confidence that completely contrasted with Shiro’s inner chaos.

He stood there, watching her walk away as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn't just turned him into a human snowman and stripped away any shred of dignity he had.

Chapter Text

The sound of laughter echoed loudly in the hallways, the rhythmic and chaotic sound of a ball bouncing on hard tiles followed, and soon after hurried footsteps passed through the open door of the science lab, or as Taka called it, the junk and cable room.

Shiro held himself back from sighing or snorting at the annoying and distracting noise. He didn't really mind what others did, as long as they left him out of it. And as hurried footsteps came closer to the door, he knew that no, they wouldn't leave him out of it.

“Shiro! Why don’t you come play with us?” Taka’s ever-cheerful voice made it his job to turn around and recognize who was useless and unnecessary. Better yet, Taka was more receptive to refusals than others.

“No thanks, I need to work on this.” Hands were already moving again, twisting cables and screwing screws into the smooth surface of what had once been a cleaning drone. Thankfully the teachers didn’t mind him asking them to try to fix it instead of just sending it off to the technicians.

Taka sighed in frustration, his cheeks puffing out for a moment before he let the air out in a resigned huff. His eyes drifted to the contraption resting in Shiro’s intent hands, the shell of a cleaning drone, now bristling with colorful wires that snaked like nerve roots around a small circuit board. Taka recognized two or three components he’d seen before, probably scavenged from other dead devices. He didn’t even try to fathom the ultimate purpose of the project—he never did—and with a slight shrug, he turned silently, leaving the lab.

Outside, the soft light of late afternoon bathed most of the school. The voices fell silent for a second as they saw Taka walk out alone. The children were gathered in a makeshift semi-circle , leaning against trees or sitting on the ground, and all eyes fell on him.

Taka just shook his head lightly, his shoulders slumped in defeat that didn't even hurt that much anymore.

Tokio let out a small “ tch ” of disappointment and gave Kuku a friendly pat on the arm , which was already wilting like a plant without water. She let out a long, drawn-out sigh, her eyes still fixed on the lab door, as if Shiro would somehow appear there at the last second.

“I told you not to get your hopes up…” Tokio muttered .

“Sometimes he does,” Anzu replied immediately, crossing her arms stubbornly. Her voice was louder than Tokio ’s , firm, as if she were ready for an argument. “Like . . . Sometimes . . . Occasionally when he doesn’t have a project to do.”

Tokio rolled her eyes, already prepared for the argument “They were exceptions. And he only does that because the teachers practically forces him to.”

“Even so!” Anzu retorted, stepping forward. “He’s not a robot. He just… works differently.”

“A way that excludes everyone,” Kuku said quietly, her face still hidden. “If he only cares about cables and screws, why do we insist?”

The group was silent for a few seconds, before Anzu turned to Mimihime, who was just watching the discussion in silence. The girl looked up and met her eyes in silent question .

“He doesn’t exclude everyone...” The entire group automatically followed Anzu’s gaze, as if drawn by an invisible thread of attention, and their eyes landed on Mimihime.

When she noticed the stares, she blinked in confusion, her eyebrows raising slightly.

“Why is everyone looking at me like that?” she asked gently.

It was Tokio who first snapped her fingers in the air, as if some great revelation had just dawned on her. Her face lit up in an instant.

“Wait a minute…! That’s it!” she exclaimed, half laughing, half amazed. “It’s because you can make Shiro listen. Whenever you’re the one asking, he stops what he’s doing and at least listens. Sometimes he even accepts!”

“Ah?” Mimihime frowned, genuinely surprised. “What are you talking about? It’s not true…”

“Yes, it is!” Kuku lifted her face from her knees, although she still looked discouraged. “Do you remember that day when we wanted help with the toy plane that had broken? We asked a thousand times. You showed up and asked just once and he got up right away.”

“And when we wanted to play with the new students...” Anzu added “He only stayed after the mandatory roll call because he kept staring at you.”

“And the group astronomy presentation...” Tokio pointed out “He didn’t wanted to speak in front of the class at all. You asked him to just stand there, show you the calculations, and that was it, he did. He didn’t complain once.”

Mimihime blinked more frequently now, as if she were trying to mentally rewind each of those scenes. Surprise was visible in her expression, but little by little the astonishment gave way to a thoughtful hesitation. She lowered her eyes for a moment, as if trying to understand the logic of it, and then looked back at her friends, still a little awkward.

“Maybe he just… trusts me more. We talk sometimes, but… it’s not like I have any magical power over him.”

“It’s not magic,” Ohma said with the simplicity and absolute certainty that only a small child can have. “It’s because your voice is calm. He likes to listen to you.”

“Or maybe,” Kuku said , still hugging her knees but with a small, tired smile appearing on her face, “he just needs someone who won’t force his presence. You talk to him as if he’s already included.”

Mimihime didn't answer right away, but her ears twitched slightly. She put a hand to her chin in thought “If I ask now… do you think he would come?”

Everyone’s eyes lit up with renewed hope. Anzu jumped up a little and grabbed Mimihime’s hands, almost as if she were about to beg. Tokio nodded so vigorously that her disheveled hair swayed in all directions. Ohma let out an energetic “Go, Mimi!”

She hesitated for another second. She took a deep breath. Then she brushed a speck of leaf off her shirt and walked calmly toward the lab door. With each step, the group behind her fell silent, attentive, as if they had held the collective breath of the entire world.

Inside the lab, Shiro was still fiddling with his contraption.

Mimihime stopped at the door, leaning lightly against the frame. She didn't knock or call loudly. She just said, in her usual calm voice.

“Shiro… We were going to play dodgeball. I… I think you’d have fun if you came.”

He didn’t answer right away. The silence that followed was almost sacred, like the moment just before the rain began. Then Shiro took a deep breath. Not a sigh. Not a huff. Just a breath. His fingers moved away from the contraption, and he slowly turned around.

His gaze met hers. For a moment, there was nothing more—two eyes meeting, without judgment, without pressure. He didn’t smile. But he didn’t refuse, either.

“I think I can stop for a few minutes...”

Mimihime took a step forward, then another, with the calm care of someone who knows exactly how not to invade someone's space—and yet still get closer. The late afternoon light came in through the open door of the laboratory, gilding the cables, the tools, and even the soft contours of Shiro's face, which seemed less pale under that gentle lighting.

She stopped beside the workbench, a comfortable distance away but close enough for him to feel her presence clearly, almost tactilely. She leaned in slightly, her eyes scanning the tangle of parts and components curiously.

“Just a few minutes really?” she asked with a wry smile, half joking, half probing.

Shiro swallowed. His gaze flickered briefly, settling on a crooked resistor as if he had something very important to say. “Maybe… a few hours,” he muttered, his voice low, as if it were a confession.

Mimihime gave a short, soft laugh that always sounded like a breath of wind through glass bells. She rested her hands on the edge of the workbench and took a closer look at what he was building.

“What are you working on this time?”

Shiro hesitated, but soon allowed himself to answer, the words coming out in his measured rhythm, but without blocks. “It's... a self-recognition system for drones. Like... when they stop understanding their own bodies and hit walls, you know? I'm trying to teach this one to 'feel' its own limits.”

She murmured something in understanding, her eyes focused on the thin connections, the improvised sensors, the faded casing. It was genuine interest, not the kind of idle curiosity that came just to make conversation. It wasn't the first time she'd stopped by just to see what he was working on.

Shiro remembered all the other times vividly. How she would lean back in a chair or just stand there, talking about trivial things—a teacher’s strange behavior, a new song someone had rehearsed in the courtyard, or the fact that the cafeteria food tasted like it had come straight from a food torture lab.

Lately, though… after what had happened in the supply closet, their conversations had changed. Not in terms of topics—they still talked about the same old nonsense, about upcoming tests or rumors about the new students—but there was something different in the air between them.

More silence, sometimes. But a comfortable silence, one that didn't need to be filled with words. More long looks. Soft pauses in sentences, as if each word had more weight now.

Shiro still didn’t know what to make of it. It had been a moment of impulse, of too much raw honesty, a confession whispered between four walls too thin for what was inside his chest. And although Mimihime hadn’t said much at the time—or afterward—she hadn’t pulled away either. She hadn’t avoided him. If anything, she seemed… more present.

“Have you ever thought about setting one of these up for us to use in games?” she asked now, with that smile that made him feel like the ground had lost some of its firmness.

Shiro's eyes widened, then he let out an involuntary, nasal laugh, as if he wasn't ready to admit that he found it funny. "That's... specific."

“Of course. That needs to be accurate” she said, serious for half a second, before laughing again. “But that’s okay. Maybe that’s asking too much of a drone that doesn’t even know where its own body begins.”

There was an intense stillness in that moment. Shiro felt that if he spoke too loudly, the moment would vanish like mist. So he didn't speak. And the silence lasted a little too long.

“Do you want to show me how he recognizes his own limits?” she asked.

Shiro nodded, and as he turned back to the contraption, he realized his fingers were shaking. Mimihime moved close enough to see the sensors up close, and for a brief moment, their shoulders brushed.

Nothing about that gesture was grand. But it was intimate.

Shiro blushed.

It wasn't a subtle blush, the kind that goes unnoticed under the yellow light of a lamp. It was the kind of blush that rose from the neck to the ears, hot, revealing, impossible to hide—and, of course, absolutely uncontrollable.

His gaze immediately fell to the contraption in his hands, as if it suddenly required all of his concentration. The wires he had twisted together so precisely were slightly out of place, and even if they weren’t, he would pretend they were.

“Can you… close the door?” he asked, his voice low, caught somewhere between his throat and his embarrassment.

Mimihime blinked once, surprised by the request, and turned her face to look towards the still half-open door, through which the soft afternoon light filtered an orange rectangle on the floor.

“Close?” she asked, almost as if testing the word in her mouth, searching for the reason for it.

Shiro hesitated, then shrugged lightly, not taking his eyes off the drone. “The sounds outside… are distracting. I can’t focus properly.”

She didn’t comment right away. She just murmured an understanding “ hmm ,” and her soft footsteps echoed lightly on the tiled floor toward the door. The soft click of the doorknob turning and the latch falling into place sounded like closure. As if the outside world had been put on pause.

Now the room was plunged into an artificial calm, lit only by the cold white ceiling lamp.

Mimihime returned with the same calmness as before, crouching down next to him again. The warmth of her presence was palpable, and Shiro forced himself to take a deep breath before continuing.

“Okay. Where did I leave off…” he muttered to himself as his fingers, now a little steadier, went back to working on the components. “So, this is the proximity sensor. I installed it in a different position to test if it can sense its own extremities… like, where it starts and ends. When it moves and senses something getting too close, it should adjust its route…”

As he spoke, the wires connected precisely between his fingers, and he switched on small modules with quick, focused touches. The blue LED light on the circuit blinked in intermittent patterns, reflecting in Mimihime’s watchful eyes.

She didn't interrupt. She just watched. Shiro talked more than usual—maybe because it was easier to talk about the drone than about the things he really felt—but even that effort was lost when, when he looked up to check if she understood, he found her eyes fixed on him.

He froze.

As always happened.

It was the same strange effect, that immediate, undeniable sense of vulnerability. As if he had been caught in the middle of something intimate and secret. Like a deer caught in the middle of the road, frozen in the headlights of a car, unable to run or react. Mimihime’s eyes were not at all threatening—quite the opposite, there was a calm sweetness in them, a quiet patience—but they were steady. She did not look away. And that was what disarmed him.

Shiro felt the heat in his own face rekindle, as if the color from before had never gone away, it was just waiting for an excuse.

Mimihime said nothing. She just tilted her head slightly, a small gesture, but full of meaning. Curiosity. Attention. A silent “you stopped . ”

“Ah…” he tried to say, but his throat failed him. He coughed lightly, hiding it. “I’m sorry. I just…”

“Do you always freeze like this when I look at you?” she asked softly, almost as if talking to herself.

The question made the air around them feel thicker. Shiro tightened his fingers around a small screwdriver he wasn't even using at the moment.

“It’s… not always,” he lied poorly. And then he added, more honestly, “Just… sometimes.”

Mimihime smiled. One of those small, contained smiles that carry more weight than whole words. She didn't laugh at him. She never laughed. It was as if she understood, even without him having to explain anything.

“So… do you want me to stop looking?” she asked, half joking, half serious.

Shiro took a deep breath. For a moment, he fought the urge to say yes . But he already knew what that would mean. The warmth beside him would fade. And the silence would return to just silence—not this comfortable bubble they both seemed to float in.

He shook his head slightly. “No… you can go on. Just… give me a second to get used to it.”

And in that moment, despite the stiffness in his shoulders, the heat in his cheeks, and his racing heart, Shiro realized something strange: he wanted to get used to it. Not to the stares in general. Not to people in general. But to her . To that kind of attention. To that kind of intimacy.

Mimihime just hummed in understanding and adjusted herself to a more comfortable position, sitting cross-legged and still watching him. Shiro took this as his cue to continue and went back to adjusting the drone. A few minutes passed before Mimi gave his foot a small kick with her own. He took this as a call for attention and looked at her.

“Does the request to lock me in your room only apply to your room?”

The question caught him completely off guard, and he almost felt smoke coming out of his ears if that were possible. And he stuttered a few times, not a single coherent word coming out. Mimihime just continued to watch him, her expression extremely serene despite the internal storm she had caused within him.

“Because you kind of have me locked in a room right now.”

Shiro froze.

Inside, the gears in his brain were spinning so fast they felt like they were about to spark. Mimihime's question bounced off the walls of his mind like a pinball, triggering alarms, memories, reflexes, and most of all, shame.

The sentence had been said with that characteristic calmness of hers, almost innocent—almost. But Shiro knew.

His gaze darted to the closed door.

No windows. No teachers. No noise from outside. Just him and her. A small space, artificially lit, the air slightly stagnant. A room.

He swallowed dryly.

Slowly, he turned his gaze to Mimihime, who sat cross-legged and resting her arms on her knees, her chin tilted slightly as if studying his reaction. A scientist analyzing an experiment that was about to explode. And he was the experiment.

Shiro took a deep breath—or tried to. The air felt thick, as if it had to pass through some invisible barrier to reach his lungs.

And that's when the image came.

Brief. Blurry. Not a clear picture, but a blur of color and shape, drawn from the depths of his imagination against his will. What lay beneath Mimihime’s clothes. What her body would be like, the feel of her skin, the curve of her bare shoulders, or the expression on her face if he—

No no.

The word echoed like thunder in his mind. He practically kicked himself internally, the moral shock as sharp as the heat that now seemed to emanate from his own stomach. The blush that had already colored his face rose to his ears, then to his scalp. If he had a thermometer there, it would probably read danger of spontaneous combustion.

His eyes were glued to the floor when he felt the light touch on his hair.

Mimihime, with that unyielding calm, had lifted his bangs a little with two fingers, frowning slightly, her other hand resting on her own knee.

“Shall I call the nurse?” she asked softly, as if speaking to someone with a fever. “You look like you’re going to collapse.”

Shiro's eyes widened and, in a gesture faster than any planned motor command, he grabbed her wrist. Not tightly—he would never be able to hurt her—but firmly enough to say no .

“Don’t call,” he murmured, finally finding the voice that seemed to have been lost in the midst of his inner turmoil. His fingers were slender, and hers were warm. Almost too soft to be real.

Mimihime didn’t pull away. Nor did she react with surprise. She just stared at him. Her eyes were an indeterminate color in the light, and her expression held no mockery or judgment. Just… wait.

He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, his words getting tangled in his throat, and yet… yet, he didn’t want to let go of her wrist. Not yet. It wasn’t a bold gesture, but there was something about it that broke down barriers he never knew were being built.

Mimihime turned her hand slightly inside Shiro's until her fingers naturally intertwined with his. With her other hand, she began to run her thumb over his palm—slowly, as if exploring an unfamiliar texture. The touch was gentle, almost without intention, as if she were simply curious about the warmth of his skin, or the lines that marked that hand that was always busy, always building, always touching things that no one else understood.

For Shiro, however, it was anything but simple. Her every movement resonated within him like a vibrating string. His chest felt strangely warm—not the awkward warmth of before, but something fuller, rounder, lighter, and yet denser. A feeling he couldn't name. But if it had a name, it would be her name. Mimihime .

That was it. There was no other word.

He didn't know exactly when he leaned in. He only realized when he was close. Very close. His face inches from hers. His breathing shallow. The air between them felt static, thick as glass about to crack.

Mimihime looked up slowly. Her hand was still holding his, her thumb still resting on his palm, though now still. She didn’t pull away. Didn’t back away. She just stared at him—the same serenity as always, but with a new layer of uncertainty. As if she wanted to ask, “What are you doing?” but didn’t want to disrupt the moment to get the answer.

And Shiro didn't know either. He had no plan. No structured reasoning. No calculations, no tests, no simulations.

Just momentum.

Just her.

It was brief. Light. No urgency, no skill. Just his lips touching hers like a newfound promise. A shy, insecure gesture, but loaded with everything he couldn't say in words. And everything she seemed to understand without asking.

As soon as the kiss broke, Shiro pulled away out of reflex. Millimeters at first. Then more. Until there was enough space for the air to circulate between them again — and with it, reality.

Mimihime stood motionless. Her eyes were slightly wide, her cheeks tinged red as if someone had turned on a warm light deep inside her. And then, as if connected by invisible strings, they both burst into blushes at the same time.

Shiro jumped back so fast he nearly knocked over his own chair. Mimi put a hand to her face, her eyes wide not in shock but in complete and utter embarrassment. The silence that followed was like a thud—dry, thick, ridiculously loud despite there being no sound at all.

“ S-sorry !” Shiro stammered, his eyes darting from side to side, unsure of where to look. “I… I don’t know what that was. I shouldn’t— I shouldn’t have done that. I—”

Mimihime was still standing there, her hand partially covering her face, but now she was looking at him more clearly.

“You didn’t… do anything wrong,” she said.

Shiro opened his mouth. Then he closed it. Then he opened it again.

“But… you backed away”

"You too."

He blinked. He swallowed. “So... you’re not going to hit me?”

She laughed. Low. Sincere. “Of course not.”

A new silence fell, this time less heavy. Lighter. More tolerable. As if they both knew they had crossed a line—but not a forbidden line. Just a milestone. A turning point. A new beginning, perhaps.

Shiro sat up slowly again, hands fidgeting, eyes on the abandoned drone between them.

“I… I’ve never done this before,” he muttered, not looking at her.

“Me neither,” she replied, a barely noticeable smile across her completely red face.

His breath was still short, his cheeks were still hot, and his fingers didn't know where to place their weight. He didn't know how to act. He didn't know if he should continue to pretend that nothing had happened—or, worse, that he hadn't wanted it to happen.

So, against every instinct for self-preservation, he took the risk.

“I…” he began, his voice hesitant, barely audible. “Can I… do it again?”

He didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until he heard the most subtle, unexpected sound in the world: the faint swish of Mimihime’s ears as they pricked up, stiff as alert antennae. If he hadn’t been so nervous, he would have laughed. But there was nothing funny about it. Not when his heart was beating so fast it was hard to think.

Mimihime, on the other hand, seemed to have been hit by a beam of surprise as intense as he had felt before. Her expression froze for a few seconds—eyes wide, mouth half-open, as if her brain was busy trying to process that question. And for a moment, Shiro thought he had messed up. That he had broken what was between them. That—

“…Yes,” she whispered.

The world stopped.

Shiro swallowed. The sound seemed too loud in the sudden silence. Then, without saying anything, he began to move slowly. Creeping back toward her, as if approaching something too sacred to be touched in a hurry. Mimihime was sitting against the wall, her legs crossed, her hands resting on the floor. Her eyes followed him, filled with something new—anticipation, perhaps. A slight nervousness, but not uncomfortable.

He stopped a few inches from her. No voices outside.

Shiro looked up. He met hers. One, two, three seconds. Then he looked at her lips—and when he looked back up, he found hers waiting. Not anxious. Just… present. And curious.

He leaned forward.

His eyes squeezed shut, as if the gesture was as terrifying as it was necessary.

And then, their lips met.

This time, there was no hesitation in the gesture—but there was still tenderness. And uncertainty. And surprise. A kiss that was longer than the last, but still light, still fragile. The world around them faded away, and the entire universe seemed to squeeze together until it fit into that moment, that silent touch.

For Shiro, it was as if his chest finally had room to expand. As if the constant pressure that lived deep in his belly simply dissolved. Everything in him seemed to be on edge. Her taste was almost imperceptible, but the feeling was not. It was like opening a new book and already knowing the ending by heart. Like feeling, for the first time, that someone was seeing him without looking through it.

For Mimihime, it was like discovering that a part of her, which had been quiet for so long, had finally stretched itself out. There was a heat that rose from her stomach to her throat, a persistent blush that didn’t stop at just her cheeks. She wasn’t used to being touched like this—with reverence and fear at the same time. And the fact that it was Shiro, who had always been so distant and withdrawn, who was there made her feel as if she had gained a trust that no one else had.

When the lips parted, it was reluctantly.

Shiro opened his eyes slowly, as if he had just woken up from a dream. Mimihime was there, inches away, her eyes still closed for a second too long. And when she opened them, they were cloudy, filled with some thick emotion that was hard to translate.

They both looked shaky. Shiro's hands rested next to hers on the floor, and his face was still dangerously close.

Shiro was barely breathing.

There were still inches of distance between them, but every inch felt filled with silent electricity. Mimihime’s face was flushed, her breathing ragged, and yet she didn’t pull away. Her eyes danced between his, as if trying to decipher what would come next—or as if silently begging for it not to end there.

Carefully, almost as if he were handling thin glass, Shiro leaned in again. But this time, it wasn't for the lips.

It went to her cheek.

A light, almost imperceptible kiss, placing his mouth on her warm skin. Mimihime let out a small sound, almost a sigh mixed with a curious question, as if she hadn't expected it — and also didn't know how to react. Shiro didn't pull away immediately. He kept his eyes on her, observing every detail. Every subtle muscle on her face. Every nuance of expression that might indicate a sign to retreat.

But there were none.

Just eyes that followed him, quiet and receptive, and a slight tilt of her face, as if she were surrendering herself to the moment — not out of obligation or impulse, but out of choice.

Then he kissed her again. Still on the cheek, closer to the corner of her eye now. And again, closer to her jaw. Small touches, almost reverent, as if he were mapping every inch of her face, certain that she would never forget it. The scent of her hair, something light like tea flowers, filled his senses in a way that made him dizzy.

Finally, his lips returned to hers—not urgently, but familiarly. As if they were finding a place where they now knew they were welcome.

The kisses were short now. Little kisses exchanged slowly, accompanied by muffled, soft, unhurried laughter. Mimihime, still surprised, took two, three kisses before trying to return it with her own. First hesitantly, then more boldly. Shiro felt himself melt at that, his heart beating too loudly for the silence of the room. His hand reached for hers on the floor, their fingers touching, slowly intertwining.

She laughed softly as she accidentally bumped his chin with her nose. He laughed back, the sound so silly, so utterly defenseless, that if anyone had heard it outside, they would never have associated him with the quiet, analytical boy he always was.

“Are you laughing at me?” she whispered between kisses, her voice light as a feather.

“No,” he replied, still smiling. “ I’m laughing… because of you.”

Mimihime narrowed her eyes with a shy smile , and then kissed him again—on the nose, this time, and then on the corner of his mouth. Shiro closed his eyes, his chest swelling with such absurd happiness that he wondered, honestly, if this was even real. If he wasn't dreaming on the lab floor. Or worse, passed out from emotional stress. Maybe he was dead. Maybe that was what was coming next.

But when she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer, any doubts were dispelled. The gesture was too real to imagine. Her fingers, clasped behind his neck, slowly tracing circles with their tips. There was no hesitation now—only warmth and acceptance, and an almost silent desire to prolong this for as long as the world would allow.

Shiro leaned in closer, his body pressing against hers, his knees almost surrounding hers as their lips met again—deeper, longer. A vulnerability so raw that it made them both tremble, not from fear, but from the delicacy of it all. As if the slightest false move could shatter something invisible.

He lost track of time.

He lost his sense of logic, of space, of engineering, of robotics. At that moment, Shiro only knew two truths: the warmth of her hands on his neck, and the soft taste of her lips that now seemed to belong to another universe. A lighter one. A more beautiful one. One where he could exist… without hiding.

The sound of the doorknob turning was as abrupt as a gunshot in the silence. They both jumped. Shiro nearly hit his head on the wall in front of him, and Mimihime let out a small gasp, retreating with a speed incompatible with the mood from seconds ago.

The door opened slowly, as if it had been pushed by someone hesitantly. And then, in the gap, a group of familiar figures appeared—standing as if they had just been faced with a slow-motion explosion. Tokio was in the lead, still holding the blue rubber ball in her hands, her eyes wide as if she had seen a ghost. Behind her, Taka, Anzu, and Kuku seemed to be stuck in the same frame, all with the same frozen expression: pure shock.

The silence fell with a physical weight, thick as smoke. Shiro's eyes flickered between each face, his mind in absolute panic trying to come up with any excuse, any logical, technical, scientific explanation for what had just happened. But there was none.

Tokio 's ball fell from her hands and bounced on the floor with a sound too comical for the gravity of the scene, echoing through the laboratory like a clumsy laugh of fate.

Shiro wanted to die. Or kill. Maybe both. If there had been a box of loose parts nearby, he would have thrown them all at them. Preferably with ballistic precision.

Mimihime, for her part, said nothing. Her back was still pressed against the wall, her bangs slightly disheveled, her face a shade of red that defied all possible definitions of blushing. She seemed frozen between the urge to disappear and the urge to laugh out of pure nervousness.

It was then that Taka, as always the first to recover, let out a contained laugh, a little awkward, but still with that tone of someone who was already weaving the perfect joke.

“ Ahhh … now it all makes sense,” he said, crossing his arms. “That’s why Shiro never complains when you’re the one asking him for things, Mimi.”

Shiro opened his mouth to protest, but all he could manage was a hoarse noise, absolutely useless.

Taka pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “ Let’s go , gang. The two of them are in… technical negotiations ,” he said, emphasizing with a mischievous smile and raising his eyebrows theatrically.

Before any of the group could regain their speech—or worse, crack any more jokes—he turned on his heel and began shoving the others out like an exhausted guard dog, ignoring their mutterings and snickers. “Go, go, go. I’m serious. They’re making a deal for… I don’t know. It’s none of our business.”

The door closed with a click , returning silence to the space.

For a few seconds, the two simply stared at the wood as if they were waiting for it to open again. As if they had witnessed a train pass through the room. Shiro blinked slowly, still in disbelief. He felt like he could explode from embarrassment at any second. Symbolic smoke seemed to be coming out of his ears, as if he were overheating inside. He ran a hand through his hair roughly, trying to process what had just happened.

“Technical negotiations?” he muttered in disbelief. Mimihime covered her face with her hands for a moment, her body trembling silently. “ I want to fuse it with a three-thousand-volt transformer.”

“At least he chased everyone away,” Mimihime replied, finally lowering her hands, her eyes still watering with pent-up frustration. “It could have been worse.”

“Could they?” Shiro countered, still livid. “They saw it. Everything. The position, the distance… the color of my soul evaporating.” Shiro huffed and ran his hands over his face. “Next time, I’ll install a biometric reader on that door. Or a force field.”

“Do you want a next time?”

He stared at her. The question was light, almost playful, but there was a real subtext to it. A hint of insecurity behind the teasing.

Shiro hesitated for a split second, but then his shoulders slumped and he let out a light laugh—surrendered.

“I want to. Even with the risk of being invaded by organized fan groups.”

Mimihime smiled. And for the first time in a long time, his heart calmed amidst the chaos. Because she was still there. With him. And despite everything—the interruption, the embarrassment, the inevitable jokes that would come afterward—this moment was still theirs.

And that, Shiro thought, no one could take away.

Chapter Text

Mimihime couldn't remember the last time she had been so miserable. They had been through it all: hunger, cold, exhaustion, deep wounds that took weeks or even months to heal.
But nothing… absolutely nothing compared to the mental exhaustion that had plagued her the past week.

She was a wreck. Every muscle ached as if she’d been climbing a mountain carrying boulders on her back—which, in retrospect, might have been easier than dealing with what she felt now. There was a strange weight on her shoulders, something that didn’t come from backpacks. It was a weariness that seemed to sink into her bones, dragging her along with it. Her legs shook at the bottom of each climb , and the mere thought of continuing to walk made her want to lie down in the woods and cry, just for a few hours.

The plan for the pilgrimage was fairly simple: travel from the small village they were in to a nearby city, taking a semi-abandoned trail that shortened the journey by three days. They were already accustomed to this type of travel. It was nothing new—they had already undertaken longer, more dangerous journeys with far fewer resources. So why did everything seem so difficult now? Why did she feel as if she were fighting against her own body and her own mind at the same time?

She didn't know. And that made her even more angry.

Night had fallen like a heavy veil over the forest. The trail they had followed during the day disappeared into the shadows and bushes, and the small makeshift camp they had set up seemed like an island of light and warmth in a sea of darkness and cold.

Shiro knelt in front of the fire. He poked the embers with a twig, trying to keep the fire alive by feeding it small pieces of dry wood. On a small stone base, a battered pot sat, creaking in the heat, with boiling water and some wild vegetables they had managed to gather throughout the day.

On the other side of the fire, sitting with her legs bent and her knees against her chest, Mimihime looked like a shrunken statue, trying to make herself as small as possible to resist the cold that was already beginning to infiltrate the forest. The coat she was wearing was not, by far, enough to protect her from the cold that was now making her skin shiver under her clothes. But she would not ask for Shiro's overcoat.

“ We’ll lie down soon enough and the sleeping bag will solve the problem” she thought, squeezing her knees tighter. They had been sleeping together for years—for safety, warmth, comfort. It was something natural, practical, without connotations—at least, they had never talked about it. Sharing a sleeping bag was an old routine, a habit in the midst of the life they led. But tonight, just the idea of lying next to him made something warm form in the pit of Mimihime’s stomach.

She grumbled impatiently to herself and shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position on the blanket spread over the hard earth. The sound was enough to catch Shiro's attention. He looked up, still holding the half-burnt twig in his hand.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, his voice low.

“ I’m fine” She muttered. An obvious lie.

Shiro watched her for a moment longer, his eyes narrowed slightly, as if he were trying to see through her. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it and said nothing. He turned back to the fire and poked the embers again, this time more gently.

She bit her lip hard, frustrated with everything, including him. Especially him—for being so gentle, so calm, so untouchable . As if nothing affected him. As if he was always in control. As if he wasn’t being swept along by this invisible storm along with her.

Mimihime sighed, more to herself than to him.

“It’s almost ready” Shiro finally announced in a calm and collected tone. She just nodded, slowly and silently. “Aren’t you going to eat it?” he asked, surprised, turning slightly towards her.

"No"

Shiro blinked. Surprise. Confusion. Concern. It all flashed across his face in a second “Are you sure?” he ventured, without changing his tone of voice.

“I do” she replied, her voice low.

And without saying anything else, she stood up with slow movements, her body heavy with exhaustion and something she herself could not name. She crawled to the sleeping bag, throwing herself there as if she were about to be shipwrecked. It was cold and when she pulled part of the blanket over herself, the cold air that escaped from inside the fabric made her skin immediately shiver.

Shiro watched the scene in silence for a few seconds. His eyes went from Mimihime's huddled figure to the still steaming pot on the fire.

Then, with careful gestures, he removed the pot from the fire and placed it on the floor. Perhaps, if they were lucky, they would be able to dry the vegetables in the morning and store them in a clean cloth, wrapping them in their backpack until the next meal.

Shiro approached the sleeping bag. He crouched down beside it and gently pulled the blanket, causing the cold night air to infiltrate the previously warm space. Mimihime curled up tighter, letting out an irritated, goosebumps-like sigh, instinctively pulling the fabric back.

He hurried forward, sliding into the narrow space beside her and covering them both again, pulling the fabric up to their shoulders. The heat from their bodies soon began to fill the stuffy interior of the sleeping bag, and their warm breaths against each other helped to ward off the biting chill of the forest.

~

The sky above was a dull, heavy gray, like a poorly washed painting. The old concrete road creaked beneath their feet with every step, covered in deep cracks where thick roots had emerged over the years. Here and there, patches of asphalt had been completely overgrown with moss and weeds.

Shiro walked ahead, the paper map wide open in his hands, his eyes focused on the faded markings. The morning breeze stirred the paper insistently, and he held on tightly so it wouldn't slip away. His gaze was focused, his brow furrowed.

Behind him, Mimihime walked at a slower pace, the hood of her coat pulled up halfway over her face. Each step sent a dull ache through her body—in her thighs, her hips, her back. But most of all, her stomach hurt. It hurt in a strange way, unlike anything she had ever felt before. A hot, insistent tug that came in waves, as if something were squeezing her from the inside, pulling, squeezing.

She let out a muffled groan, frowning, and tightened her arms around herself. Shiro tried to keep his pace controlled. But still…Suddenly, he stopped. She was so absorbed in her own discomfort that she didn't notice the interruption in time—and ended up bumping lightly into his back.

“Hey” She complained instinctively, putting her hand to her forehead and taking half a step back.

Shiro didn't answer right away. He stood there staring into the distance, just beyond the twisted trees that lined the road. Mimihime followed his gaze and peeked under the boy's arm.

There, in the distance, half hidden by the undergrowth and the shadows of the tallest trees, was a building. A house, strangely preserved. And a wooden sign in front, too far away for her to be able to read what it said.

“What’s that?” she asked, pulling back her hood.

Shiro took a while to answer “I don’t know” His voice was low, cautious “It’s not on the map”

That was enough to leave them both silent. An unmapped place in that region could mean many things.

“ Come on” she said, her voice lower, almost soft “We’ll just take a look, and if it’s weird, we’ll leave. But what if there’s… I don’t know. Blankets. Food. Clean water.”

He looked at her. Shiro sighed. Long. Drawn “If that’s what you want...”

Decision made, Mimihime stepped forward before Shiro could even finish his sigh. She walked past him with a lively step, her eyes fixed on the strange building ahead. Sighing again, as if bracing his body for yet another mistake, he quickened his pace and followed her.

As they got closer, the details of the building became clearer. The dark wood of the structure was remarkably well preserved, with no signs of rot or termites. The windows were glass, a luxury that had long since disappeared in such remote areas.

In front of the house, a simple wooden sign swayed slightly in the wind, hanging by rusty chains from a makeshift post. Black handwritten letters read: "STAY = DAILY."

Mimihime stopped in front of the sign, tilting her head to the side with a curious expression before turning around the small front garden, infested with weeds and raised roots, among which grew wet-looking mushrooms.

Shiro, however, did not follow immediately. He stopped in front of the sign, staring at it for a few seconds. His eyes scanned the surrounding vegetation.

Then he realized, Mimihime was nowhere to be seen “Mimi?” he called, turning on his heel. He ran a few steps, skirting the right side of the house, his eyes scanning every corner with increasing urgency. “Mimihime?”

Without much thought, he approached the front door. It was now open. Not ajar, not creaking ominously—simply wide open, as if inviting anyone to enter.

He swallowed. The interior looked like… an inn. Or something close to it. A small lobby with an oak reception desk, a few high-backed chairs along the wall, and a faded rug in the center.

And there, standing in the hallway that led into the house, was Mimihime. She was looking at him over her shoulder, a mixture of excitement and surprise in her eyes.

“Shiro” She said softly and gestured for him to come closer “Come here”

He approached slowly “What?”

“A woman lives here,” she continued. “She asked if we wanted a room. That this used to be a hotel or something.”

“Does she look safe?”

Mimihime shrugged, her voice still low “I don’t know. But… she doesn’t look dangerous. Just… old”

On the other side of the corridor, there was indeed a figure. A short woman with white hair tied in a bun, wearing clean, dark clothes.

“I still have a room available. Food will be served in the evening. Hot water for bathing.” She walked back and forth, dusting objects or simply moving things around. “It used to be busy here, lots of people stopping to rest and I enjoyed their company. Now if I meet one or two people a month that’s a lot, so it would be a pleasure for me too.”

Mimihime looked at Shiro. “Can we stay?” Mimihime’s question came with restrained excitement. Her eyes shone in the amber light, her shoulders less tense than they had been in days.

Shiro didn't answer right away. His mind was screaming. A whole chorus of no's in different tones. Not because it didn't make sense. Not because it was too suspicious. Not because he knew the tricks of the world well. And most of all, not because he didn't want to. He wanted to take her hand and leave. To drag her back to the trail with him, even if she protested. If he had to, to carry her on his shoulders to the next safe post, or the next clearing in the forest. Anything would be better than trusting this stranger.

But when he turned his face to her, all that certainty crumbled into silence.

Her expression wasn’t just happiness. He hadn’t seen her so relaxed in days. Even with her shoulders hunched and her eyes tired, she looked—for the first time in a long time—hopeful. As if she’d stumbled upon a lost fragment of the ancient world, where people could lie down without fear of dying in their sleep, where the ceiling didn’t threaten to fall in and food wasn’t just crushed leaves and bitter roots.

And she looked at him like that. Like she expected him to say yes. Like she still trusted that he would know what to do.

Shiro took a deep breath “If you want to stay...” His voice came out lower than expected, almost as if he was betraying himself by saying “We can.”

Mimihime didn't wait any longer. A smile—real, simple, and absurdly contagious—appeared on her lips. It wasn't wide, it wasn't theatrical. It was the kind of smile that made something in his chest tighten. And without a word, she turned and followed the lady, her steps light, almost excited. As if she already belonged there.

Shiro stood still. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, then rubbed his entire face with his palms, from chin to forehead.

“Loving someone is...” he muttered to himself, not finishing the sentence. There was no way to end it. That was it. He didn’t know how to end it, it was just extremely confusing.

Shiro took another deep breath and walked behind her.

Love, he realized, put him at an extreme disadvantage.

~

Mimihime let out a long, shaky breath as the hot water touched her skin. The iron tub was deep, with old rust marks beneath the whitish paint, but the water smelled clean. It had a faint scent of eucalyptus or some similar herb, which gently stung her nose and eased the tension in her shoulders. Every muscle in her body seemed to dissolve inside that warm liquid. Her arms felt heavy, her knees stopped hurting, and her eyelids closed almost by reflex. The tips of her ears trembled slightly before relaxing.

She leaned her head back against the edge of the tub and opened her eyes just enough to see what she had expected: Shiro, standing with his back to her. He was staring at the door as if it were going to explode at any second. His hands were clenched at his sides, his shoulders tense, his gaze fixed and impatient.

“You can relax, you know” she said, her voice thick with heat and pleasure, as if she were wrapped in clouds “I don’t think that little old lady is going to kill us”

Shiro let out a grunt that could have meant anything—protest, agreement, or pure discomfort—and turned his head briefly over his shoulder. Just enough to glance in her direction. Just enough to confirm that she was still okay. Alive. Smiling.

And she was. Mimihime was smiling through half-lidded eyes, her face damp and flushed from the steam. It was a lazy smile, delighted, satisfied. Something that cut through the hot air and hit Shiro straight in the chest.

He looked away quickly. But not before she noticed the faint blush creeping up his ears.

“You look cute when you try to be tough” she teased, still smiling, her tone almost musical.

“I’m not cute” he muttered softly, staring at the door again with more intensity than ever, as if trying to silence his own thoughts through the force of focus.

Mimihime gave a low laugh “Okay. Threatening . Very intimidating”

Shiro didn't answer. But his hand, which had been a fist, was now slowly opening and closing at his side. The steam was making the collar of his shirt stick to his neck. He was in an internal dilemma. Whether to stay or not to be there. To be in the same room as her, so vulnerable—and yet so comfortable, so safe. Or to be outside, checking for any kind of threat. Anything that would remind him that the world was still dangerous and that he had a role.

But she wanted him there. And that simple, absolute fact was worth more than the discomfort, the shame, the irrational urge to escape.

“I can keep watch from the hallway if you want” he said, more to the floor than to her.

“Or you can come in if you want” she replied calmly, with a smile on her lips.

She watched the way he held himself steady, as if he was trying hard not to let the world touch her. He might have looked like stone on the outside, but she knew him too well, and his heart was made of something much softer. Shiro took a deep breath, turning slowly. The steam from the bathroom blurred the corners of his vision. His eyes found the sink, where a wooden brush rested next to a ceramic jar. He picked up the brush with a slow movement, almost as if it were an excuse to come closer.

Mimihime didn't say anything. She just watched him with that restrained smile, her eyes calm.

He crouched down beside the tub. Carefully, much more carefully than he would have used with anything, he placed the brush against her wet hair and began to comb through it with a delicacy that surprised even himself. Mimihime let out a muffled murmur of pleasure, closing her eyes again. Her lips parted in a dreamy smile, and she began to hum softly. The brush glided slowly through her drenched, light hair. Shiro paid attention to each knot, as if taking care of her was the only thing that existed at that moment. As if the rest of the world had disappeared with the steam.

“You shouldn’t trust people like that” he said, his voice low and hoarse.

She laughed softly, without opening her eyes “And you shouldn’t be so suspicious”

“I have a point” he insisted, slowly brushing the back of her neck “People are dangerous. They know how to lie. How to deceive. It’s easier to ignore them.”

“Some, yes” she said, now opening her eyes and carefully turning in the tub until she was facing him. Her arms were resting on the edge, her chin resting on them. Her eyes fixed on his, steady, calm. “But not all”

The brush paused for a moment in his hand. His eyes dropped for a second to her bare shoulders, the sheen of her wet skin in the dim light. And his face turned red, ridiculously, undeniably, blazingly red. The kind of blush that even the cold couldn’t have erased. He looked away immediately, his eyes returning to her face with an almost desperate speed, as if it were a crime to see her like that. But she didn’t seem bothered. Quite the opposite. The smile was still there—a little softer now. A little more intimate.

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

Water droplets hung from Mimihime's hair and ran down the ends, dripping gently back into the tub.

Without thinking, Shiro leaned forward a little. Just enough to bridge that tenuous distance. Mimihime didn’t move right away. But when his eyes flickered, as if he himself were in doubt, she rose up a little on her knees, unhurriedly, the water running in glistening rivulets from her arms and shoulders.

Her hands rested on the edge of the tub, and Shiro rested his other hand there as well. The kiss was light, soft, a brush of lips that wasn't urgent. They didn't even have time to savor the entire moment before the door exploded with a loud CLACK .

Shiro jumped as if he'd been shot. He landed on his back with a dull, awkward thud, his elbows hitting the floor, his legs kicking in the air. Mimihime slid back into the tub with a splash , submerged up to her shoulders, her eyes wide and her hair plastered to her face.

The elderly lady who was hosting them entered the bathroom with a pile of towels that completely covered her face. She balanced the towels with trembling arms, as if they were heavier than they seemed, and her voice sounded muffled behind the cotton.

“I brought some clean towels! You can use as many as you want, I left more on the bed too. Oh, and dinner is ready! I made potato soup with herbs and fresh bread! Enjoy it before it gets cold!”

She dropped the pile on the stool in the corner and left the same way she had come: without ceremony, the door closing behind her with a soft creak.

Shiro remained on the floor for a few seconds, lying on his back, staring at the now closed door. His heart was still racing, his face so red it could have been mistaken for a bonfire. He could only think of one thing, amidst the numbness of fright and absolute embarrassment: "I really hate being around other people."

On the other side of the ledge, Mimihime slowly emerged, first her eyes, then her shoulders. Supporting herself on her knees, she observed the possible corpse of her partner.

“Are you okay?” she asked, genuinely concerned.

“No,” he replied, his voice somber, still lying down and covering his eyes with one arm, muttering something incomprehensible, probably a muffled curse to the universe.

“Are you going to stay there forever?” she asked, without a trace of mockery.

“Maybe” Shiro replied, his voice muffled against his arm. 

“But it’s not comfortable” she said, and then slowly stood up.

Shiro heard the sound of water running. Drops dripping rhythmically from his elbows, from the soaked strands of his hair.

It was stronger than him: it peeked through his fingers. Just for a moment.

The warm light from the lamp reflected off her damp skin as she walked naturally to the stool in the corner. Her furry ears were lowered a little as if she were listening to something in the distance. There was a calmness about Mimihime that left him in ruins—as if she didn't exactly belong in this world.

As soon as she covered herself with the towel—white, large, hugging her shoulders and chest—Shiro closed her eyes again.

“You can use the water” she said, not looking at him, just pointing with her chin “It’s still hot”

He didn't answer. He just made a noise of acknowledgement.

Mimihime turned to leave. But as she took her first step out of the bathroom, a sudden pang made her stop. She bent over subtly, one hand instinctively going to her abdomen. Her eyes closed for a moment.

“Oof” she hissed.

“Are you—?” Shiro tried to ask, but his voice died before he could finish the sentence.

“Im okay” she said before he could finish, leaving the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

At the end of the corridor, the elderly woman who was hosting them appeared holding a pot covered in cloth, smelling of potatoes and herbs. She immediately looked at Mimihime, noticing the subtle expression of discomfort on the girl’s face.

“Honey, are you okay?” She asked, approaching slowly.

Mimihime hesitated. She rarely answered questions like that—especially when they involved her own body. But something about the woman’s presence, perhaps the simplicity, the maternal ease, made her not lie.

“My belly has been hurting this week” she said, sincerely “Sometimes… it feels like it’s tearing apart inside”

The old woman laughed softly, a light, intimate laugh as if she heard something familiar “Ah, my flower... that must be your cramps”

Mimihime blinked. Slowly. As if she had heard a word in another language “My what?”

The woman raised her eyebrows, surprised but not judgmental. She simply nodded. “It’s something that happens to all women sooner or later,” she said. “Your body is telling you that it’s growing. Changing on the inside. It’s nothing dangerous, just uncomfortable. I’m going to make you some herbal tea, it’ll help you sleep.”

Mimihime was silent for a moment. Her eyes lowered, reflecting on the implications. As if she were crossing an invisible boundary she hadn’t known existed. Growth. Change. Words that never meant just one thing.

She nodded “Thank you...I uh ...I would appreciate it if you could explain it to me better.”

~

A few minutes later, the bathroom door creaked open. Steam still hung in the air like the mist of a strange dream. Shiro stepped out with careful steps, his damp hair sticking to his forehead and temples, the towel wrapped loosely around his waist—his clothes had been left in the makeshift room, and he had forgotten about it until it was too late.

She took two steps before stopping. Mimihime was coming in the opposite direction, already dressed in a loose blue flannel shirt and sweatpants—probably borrowed from the landlady. Her steps were slow, vague, as if she were returning from some devastated mental territory. She didn’t see Shiro at first. She was looking straight ahead, but she didn’t seem to see anything.

Her eyes, usually fathomless and watchful, were now strangely wide—as if she’d glimpsed some cosmic revelation and wasn’t sure it was good. Her face was rigid, her lips slightly parted. She looked… shocked.

If it had been any other girl, Shiro would have thought the expression bordered on comical—but there was something sincere there, too raw to laugh at. She looked like a soldier fresh from the front, trying to pretend the world still made sense.

Mimihime walked past him without saying a word. She walked to the bedroom door, opened it automatically, and entered. The dim light from the lamp on the nightstand spilled over the double bed covered in flowery sheets. She walked to the center of the bed and simply threw herself on her back, arms open, staring at the ceiling as if she expected answers from there.

Shiro closed the door behind him hesitantly. He stood there for a moment, unsure of what to say.

“Are... are you okay?” he asked, his voice low, cautious.

“Yes,” Mimihime replied immediately, but without moving her head in his direction. It was a “ yes ” that sounded much more like “ I don’t know .”

Shiro hesitated again before walking to the edge of the bed and sitting down. Mimihime slowly turned her head towards him. Something between doubt and pure bewilderment flashed across her eyes.

“Do you know what a period is?” She asked.

He scratched his cheek, disconcerted. “Oh... uh ... I think I've heard that word before, but... no? Like, I think it has to do with girls?”

“The old lady told me that it's something that happens to women. They bleed, from the inside. For days” She paused “And it happens... every month”

Shiro stood completely still.

“She said it’s the body changing. Growing. That it has to do with… babies, but not exactly. And that it’s going to happen to me now. From time to time. For the rest of my life” Mimihime spoke as if reciting a sentence, not an explanation.

The silence between them grew thicker.

Shiro finally looked away to the ground “Ah”

“She gave me chamomile tea” Mimihime continued, as if this were vital information “And a bag of hot salt to put on my belly. She said it helps. But it only soothes. It doesn’t stop.” She took a deep breath. “I asked her why no one told me this before. She said she thought it was strange, but… it was just because I didn’t have anyone to explain it to me” 

Shiro still didn't know what to say. He was aware that he should say something, maybe " it's going to be okay " or " this is natural ", but nothing came out. He looked at her—stretched out on the bed, eyes on the ceiling, still processing the invisible laws that now governed her body.

“What if I change too much?” she asked, not as a medical question but as an intimate, almost philosophical fear.

“You’ll still be you,” Shiro replied finally. And he said it firmly “Even if you change on the outside. You’re still… you.”

Shiro, trying to remain still as if any movement could break that rarefied moment. Mimihime's words echoed inside him, she was talking about something much bigger than a physiological process. It was as if he had just discovered that the house where she had always lived had secret corridors, hidden doors that were only now opening.

And he didn't know what to do with it. Helooked at his hands, which were shaking slightly. Then at her. He opened his mouth, closed it. Tried again.

"...I'm very sorry."

The words came out small, as if they had to pass through a careful filter before becoming sound. Mimihime didn’t react right away, and then, almost a minute later, a new sound filled the room. A laugh. Low, soft, but genuine.

She sat up slowly, her hair slightly disheveled, her eyes half-closed as if she were still half-sleepwalking. She turned toward him, her expression curiously somewhere between amused and exhausted.

“Why are you apologizing?” She asked, tilting her head slightly to the side. “Do you think it’s such a horrible thing?”

Shiro’s eyes widened. He felt his face heat up again. He immediately raised his hands, as if trying to erase the misunderstanding with hurried gestures. “No! I mean— I don’t think it’s horrible, I just… it’s just— you seemed so… I don’t know! And I didn’t know what to say, and it seemed like you were scared, and… and it’s a big deal, isn’t it? Like, really important! And… I thought I should… I don’t know, respect it!”

Mimihime looked at him with a look that mixed affection, irony and tenderness in exact doses. And then, without warning, she picked up one of the pillows and hit it lightly against his arm.

“You think too much” She said, a half-smile on her lips “You don’t have to be so analytical.”

Shiro blinked. Then he slumped his shoulders a little, as if he had received a fair scolding.

“I ’m telling you I’ll be okay,” she continued, her voice lighter now. “My body will hurt, it will complain, it will make noise. But I’ll be okay. Just… just be a little gentler with me during these times ok?”

Shiro finally smiled. One of those small, sideways smiles, as if he didn't want her to notice how much it relieved him.

“That won’t be a problem,” he said softly.

And then he leaned in slowly, with a care that was already his, already part of the way he approached her. And he kissed her on the forehead. Mimihime was still smiling as Shiro slowly walked away. She didn't look away. She just stood there, her eyes locked on his with a calm steadiness.

But then she raised an eyebrow with almost rehearsed slowness, her gaze dropped from Shiro's eye level to his still exposed chest.

“So…” she began, her voice soft but full of ulterior motives, “are you planning on getting dressed at some point tonight or… has being half-naked in front of me become a habit now?”

Shiro's eyes widened and he immediately reached for the towel, instinctively trying to check if it was still in place. His face, however, had already exploded into a shade of red that bordered on crimson.

“I—! It’s not—! I forgot, okay? My clothes are here and I— you were here and then I—” he stumbled over his words like someone trying to run through a field of rocks. “It’s not like I... like... did it on purpose!”

Mimihime crossed her arms, feigning concentration. Her chin was resting on one hand. Her entire expression was a picture of false contemplation.

“ Hmm … so it was an accident, is that it?” She faked a dramatic sigh. “What a shame. I was beginning to think you had suddenly gained confidence.”

Shiro buried his face in his hands “For God’s sake...”

“Not that I’m complaining tho” she added, her voice now lower "Its a nice view"

That made Shiro freeze as if he had been shocked. He stared at her, stunned, and she just held his gaze—her eyes wide, clear, and absurdly serene, as if she had just commented on the weather. There was a glint there, an amusement disguised as innocence, as if she was playing with his reactions just to see him blush more.

“Mimi...” he grumbled, exasperated.

“Shiro...” she replied in the same tone, leaning a little closer. “Your face look's cute like this. You look like you’re going to evaporate.”

He tried to keep his composure. He really did. But some part of him—maybe the part that couldn’t stand pretending that she was always the one taking the lead—reacted differently this time.

“Oh yeah?” he said slowly, his tone changing. “Is that what you want?” His arms wrapped around her as he gently pushed her back, both of them falling onto the bed with a thud muffled by the covers and pillows. She laughed in surprise, and the sound  was pure gold for him, loose, genuine, almost musical.

“You’re crushing me, you idiot!” She exclaimed, her hands flat against his chest even as she laughed loudly.

“Sorry” he said, laughing, “just getting back at you a little”

And before she could escape or retort, Shiro began to cover her with kisses—not on her lips, but on her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, her chin. Quick, almost childish kisses, but full of affection. As if he was trying to drown her every provocation in desperate tenderness.

“Stop, that tickles!” she laughed, trying to turn away, but laughing so hard she couldn’t muster enough strength to actually push him away.

“Not until you surrender!” he teased, his forehead now pressed against hers, his smile wider than at any other time in the past few days.

She stopped moving. Her eyes were still shining with laughter. And then, without warning, she grabbed him by the back of the neck and kissed him on the lips. Not a playful kiss. Not a long, serious kiss either. But something in between: firm, sweet, and full of a stillness that said more than a thousand words.

When they parted, her eyes were more serious, though still soft.

“Consider this a truce” she said.

Shiro nodded, heart pounding but at peace “Truce accepted”

Chapter Text

Mimihime leaned back against what had once looked like a fountain, now covered in mold, mildew, and dust. The hood over her head fell back a little and she adjusted it again. It was old if she had to admit it, but she had always found the bunny ears on it adorable, and she wasn't ready to discard it just yet.

The wind blew hard between the abandoned buildings, carrying with it a smell of rust, soot, and aged spices.

Ahead, the city was bustling.

She didn't know the name of that place. But now, names didn't matter so much. What she saw was a city that survived. Somehow, even after the calamity, even after the world had turned upside down, there was still life there. And not just life, movement. Chaos. Exchanges. 

The tall buildings in the distance still stood like skeletons against the murky sky, their structures corroded by time. Once, she could imagine, those streets would have been bright with neon signs and car headlights, crowded with people hurrying along with cellphones in their hands. Now, though, it was a different kind of light that spilled out—light from makeshift bonfires and torches hanging from rusty wires.

Too many people, talking too loudly, bumping into each other without apologizing. Barefoot children ran between the legs of adults, carrying baskets of dark fruit or pieces of dried fish. Women covered from head to toe shouted prices, pulling customers with firm hands. Men fought for every penny, selling rusty gears, oily but smelly food and dead animals.

She gave a little jump, sitting on the wall of the abandoned and crumbling fountain. Mimihime stretched out her legs and tapped her heels softly against the stone base, her eyes still fixed on the crowd. Her gaze then slid to the right, drawn by the sound of raised voices, thick laughter, and the occasional shattering of glass.

There, squeezed between two crooked buildings, was a facade held up by rusty ironwork and a plastic sign hanging by a thread. The front windows were broken, covered with crooked metal plates, and the interior was teeming with men of all ages.

Inside was Shiro. There were boxes stacked in the corners, a few rolls of fabric, what looked like mechanical parts, improvised weapons... It was hard to tell what exactly this place was. A parts store? A bar? An illegal warehouse? Mimihime didn't know. And honestly, she didn't think Shiro knew either. But he had said it with a firm look.

"Wait outside, okay? It won't take long."

And she had obeyed. She trusted him. It was one of the few things in the world she still trusted.

She snorted, a soft puff of air escaping between her lips, and tugged at the hem of her coat, her fingers curling around it in an automatic gesture. The door to the strange establishment creaked as it was pushed open, letting out a metallic screech that was almost lost in the general noise of the market. Mimihime looked up, and recognized him immediately.

Jumping off the edge with a light push, she walked briskly towards him, and Shiro, seeing her, relaxed his shoulders a little.

“I got what I needed” he said, his voice low as always “We can go now”

Mimihime nodded, walking beside him with light steps “What were you doing in there, anyway?” she asked, lightly tugging on his sleeve with a finger.

Shiro looked in her direction for a second, his eyes softening a little “I pawned some stuff. That electronic equipment from the old shelter… some circuit boards, a couple of batteries. Nothing too valuable, but I managed to get a little money”

“Ah…That makes sense.”

Mimihime continued walking straight ahead, her eyes wandering. A gentle curve opened up to the left, but she didn’t even notice. Her steps continued steadily forward, as if the flow of the crowd was enough to guide her. Shiro noticed though. He paused for a second, brow furrowed, and then reached out and took her hand. His fingers wrapped tightly around hers, and with a light tug, he guided her around the bend.

Mimihime blinked, surprised that she had strayed without realizing it. She looked at the hand that was now holding hers, and then at Shiro's face. He was already looking ahead again, intent on the path, his jaw tense in concentration.

She didn't say anything. She just squeezed his hand back.

She then shifted her gaze to Shiro's face, now partially illuminated by the flickering light of a torch attached to a rusty wooden beam above them. He remained focused, alert to the path ahead as he always was. It wasn't the first time she'd noticed it, but perhaps it was the first time she'd really stopped to think clearly: He had grown up.

The boy she had known years ago, with his wide eyes and hesitant voice, was still there… but there was something else now. Something that no longer fit in that image. His posture was firmer. He still shrank when talking to strangers, still stumbled over his words when he felt insecure, but now there was a kind of solidity about him that she couldn’t describe.

And then, inevitably, she thought of herself.

She had changed too.

So different, and at the same time not.

“Does he see that too?” she thought, looking at their clasped hands “ Does Shiro see me differently?”

Shiro had changed. Mimihime had too. But maybe that was normal.

She let out a soft sigh, and that was when she realized they had stopped walking.

Reality returned with the sharp sound of a door closing behind them, drowning out the hustle and bustle of the street. Mimihime blinked, as if waking from a dream, and looked around.

They were inside an old building. The floor was uneven, made of stained concrete. The walls, once white, were yellowed with age and smelled of mold. The low ceiling made the space cramped, but there was a certain warmth inside, a warm air that contrasted with the cold wind outside.

The place, at first glance, looked like it had once been an apartment, but now it was functioning as a kind of makeshift guesthouse. To the right was a worn wooden counter, behind which a woman was examining crumpled papers and folded bills with the watchful eye of someone counting each coin. It was hard to tell her age. She had dark skin, eyes narrowed with suspicion, and an unlit cigarette stuck in the corner of her mouth.

Shiro slowly let go of Mimihime's hand and approached the counter.

“Do you still have two rooms available?” he asked directly.

The woman slowly looked up, looking Shiro up and down with a neutral, perhaps slightly bored expression. Then, she shifted her gaze to Mimihime.

It was only a second. A brief, almost automatic glance. But Mimihime felt something strange in that instant. It wasn't exactly hostility, or open judgment. But there was something in the way the woman's eyes landed on her, and stayed there for too long, that made her shrug and take an instinctive step back, standing partially behind Shiro. As if his presence served as a barrier against something she couldn't name.

The woman huffed through her nose, pushed one of the sheets away, and turned to a shelf behind her. There was a rusty box filled with keys hanging from colored strings. She searched for a few seconds before reaching out and picking one up.

“There’s only one room” she said dryly, tossing the key on the counter with a clink “It’ll have to do.”

Shiro hesitated for a moment, glancing at Mimihime, that just blinked in confusion.

He took the key and some notes from the inside pocket of his coat—folded and a little crumpled—and handed them to the woman, who counted them one by one. Without saying anything else, she nodded toward the stairs that led to the upper floors and returned to her world of bills and papers.

Shiro simply nodded and turned around, walking towards the stairs with quick steps. Mimihime followed close behind, her hood still partially covering her face. Each step creaked softly under their weight, the hallway above dark, with only a single hanging lamp dimly illuminating the space.

The room was at the end of the hallway. Shiro fitted the key and pushed the door open with his shoulder, entering first, throwing his backpack on what seemed to be the only table in the room.

The room was cramped. The walls were bare, scratched here and there with what looked like old names or dates. A small bathroom was off to the side, with a hollow, peeling wooden door. There was a single bed against the wall, the thin mattress sunk in the center. Beside it were a chair, a crooked table, and a window covered with a piece of plastic sheeting stapled in place of the glass.

Shiro stopped in front of the bed. He stared at it for several seconds, his gaze fixed. His cheeks blushed subtly, almost imperceptible under the yellowish light. He took a deep breath and, without turning his face “You can take a shower first. If you want”

Mimihime nodded lightly, her eyes flicking from his face to the bathroom door . She opened their shared bag and grabbed her towel and pajamas, her steps short and careful until she entered and closed the door with a soft click.

The bathroom was even smaller than the bedroom. A cracked sink, a mirror, a shower with exposed pipes and a plastic curtain hanging from crooked hooks. The smell of rust was strong, mixed with the smell of old soap forgotten in a corner.

She took off her coat, then her blouse, and finally she was completely undressed. She left her clothes neatly folded on the toilet lid and stood in front of the mirror for a moment.

She held the end of her hair, examining it with her fingers. It was almost shoulder length now. She thought briefly that she should cut it soon; it was starting to tangle more often, and maintenance was difficult in this routine of road and dust.

Then she looked down at her own body. And for a moment, she just stood there.

Her body was different. The changes had been slow, gradual, but noticeable. Her curves were more defined. Her skin was marked by faint scars, healed cuts, and old bruises. Her shoulders seemed narrower than she remembered. Her breasts had grown. Not much, but enough that she could no longer ignore the reflection she saw.

Yes, she had changed. The world had changed her.

He took a deep breath and turned around, pulling the curtain aside. He turned on the shower, and a jet of cold water fell hard on her skin, making her muscles contract reflexively. She closed her eyes and let the water wash away the weight of that moment, her confused thoughts, the image of her own reflection still vivid in her mind.

She stood there longer than she should have.

~

The bathroom door creaked open. Mimihime stepped out slowly, her bare feet making little sound on the rough floor. Her hair was still dripping wet, strands sticking to her cheeks and neck. She slowly dried it with the towel, her arms raised awkwardly as she tried not to soak her shirt any further. She weared baggy, old-fashioned shorts, faded with age, and a gray cotton T-shirt that came almost halfway down her thighs.

Shiro looked up from the book in his hands when he heard the door. His face flushed immediately, a bright redness spreading from his cheeks to his ears. Mimihime's cloths wasn't provocative, nor was there anything deliberately flashy about it. But perhaps precisely because of that, the contrast between the everyday and the implicit intimacy, the image moved him in a way he couldn't name.

She saw him choke in his own silence, his eyes trying not to focus too long on any one place.

“I-I’m going… now…” he said, standing up in barely concealed haste. He closed the book and dropped it on the table, crossing the room in hurried steps, almost tripping over his own shoelace. He grabbed his pajamas—a pair of cloth pants and a clean T-shirt—and disappeared into the bathroom, closing the door with a snap too quickly.

Mimihime stood there for a moment, still drying her hair, before sitting on the edge of the bed. The towel now rested on her lap, the damp edges leaving marks on her shirt. She glanced toward the bathroom door, where steam was still escaping through cracks, and then looked down at the floor.

They were growing. That was evident.

And it wasn’t just their bodies, although the physical changes were hard to ignore. There was something about the way they looked at each other now. How they avoided certain silences and hesitated before simple things that they had done without thinking before. When they were twelve, seventeen, they had shared small spaces without discomfort. They had slept next to each other on makeshift mattresses and there was no shame. It was just closeness. Just safety. But now…

Now it was different.

She wondered if this was inevitable. If everyone, growing up, went through this kind of silent estrangement. Of no longer fitting into the same old gestures. She wondered if this would change their relationship—if they were, without realizing it, being pushed toward something more. Something new, unknown. Maybe scary.

Mimihime took a deep breath, trying to gather her thoughts. It was strange. She knew Shiro better than anyone else. She knew the rhythms of his breathing when he slept, the way he frowned when he was thinking, the way he avoided eye contact when he lied. And yet… there were new layers now. Small distances appearing between them, sometimes filled with shame, sometimes with silence. And she didn’t know what to do with it yet.

It wasn't bad, exactly.

Just different.

She stared at the ceiling for a moment, feeling the mattress sink under her weight. The old wood of the frame creaked slightly. Not everyone should be like this, she thought. Taka and Anzu had decided to get married because they liked each other, and even before that, things between them hadn't seemed to change. They had become more affectionate with each other, of course, but they were still friends...

The soft click of the lock turning broke her thoughts.

The bathroom door opened just enough for a face to appear through the crack. His face flushed, he didn't leave the bathroom. He just stuck his face in enough for his voice to come out muffled and hesitant:

“Do you... still have the towel?”

Mimihime looked down at the cloth in her lap. She had been holding it absentmindedly the entire time. She stood up and walked to the door with calm steps. She extended the towel through the crack, without saying anything. On the other side, Shiro's fingers gripped it quickly, almost as if he was afraid someone would see. The door closed again with a timid click.

She returned to bed and laid on her side, her eyes fixed on the wood of the wall. And as she heard the muffled sound of water running again, she thought that perhaps this was exactly what growing up was: finding what was once natural strange, and moving forward anyway.

The bathroom door opened and Shiro walked out slowly, wearing dark fabric pants and a slightly loose gray t-shirt, his damp hair, slightly longer than normal, falling disheveled over his forehead. He seemed to have taken every care in the world to dry himself quickly and cover himself even faster, his face still had a slight reddish tinge that stubbornly refused to go away.

Mimihime blinked at the sight of him, lying on her side on the bed, hugging her own pillow as if it were an extension of herself. Shiro hesitated for a moment on the edge of the bed, as if considering some escape route, but finally sat carefully on the edge, keeping a respectful distance between them.

The mattress creaked in protest under his weight. And then, silence fell.

It was a thick silence, not uncomfortable, but dense.

It was Mimihime who broke it.

“Shiro…” her voice came soft, almost sleepy.

He turned his face slightly, looking at her over his shoulder “Hmm?”

“We’re friends, right?”

Shiro blinked, confused, as if the question had come from a completely unexpected place.

“Well… of course we are” he replied, without much hesitation “Why did you ask that?”

Mimihime turned over onto her back, staring at the ceiling now “I don’t know… I was just thinking. About us. About how things have changed”

Shiro leaned back on the bed, resting his back against the cold wall, his gaze also turned to the ceiling. “Well, they really did change...Growing up does that, doesn't it?”

“Yeah. But…” she slowly turned her face towards him “do you think we’re friends like Taka and Anzu?”

"…I don't think so"

Mimihime raised her eyebrows slightly “No?”

“Not like that” Shiro bit the corner of his mouth, thoughtful. “Taka and Anzu… they were always, like, obvious, you know? From the beginning. Everyone could see it. They looked at each other like that. And they got married and everything”

Mimihime was silent for a moment “Would you marry me?” she asked with the most absurd naturalness in the world.

Shiro froze. The silence that followed was another kind of silence. One that seemed to scream inside his head. His gaze flicked to her, then away, back, away again, as if his eyes didn't know where to land.

“I-I…” he stumbled over his words, his cheeks turning red so fast they looked like they’d been dipped in paint. “What do you mean? I-I mean… why are you asking that out of nowhere!?”

Mimihime shrugged, still looking at him with the same calm “It’s just… you said we’re not like Taka and Anzu. And they’re married. So I thought… maybe if we were, we’d be like them” she paused for a second “Wouldn’t that make sense?”

Shiro covered his face with his hands, almost sinking into them “M-mimi… this isn’t… us… I don’t even know if it’s okay to talk about it like that…”

She propped herself up on her elbow now, looking at him with her head tilted slightly, curious “You don’t want to?”

“I-it’s not that I don’t want to!” he widened his eyes and immediately regretted the sentence “I mean, I don’t know! I…”

Mimihime giggled, and that was a small victory against the awkwardness in the air “You look very red” she said, amused.

“Of course I am! You ask me something like that out of the blue and you still look at me like that!”

"Like what?"

“Like that… with that calm face… as if this were normal!”

“ I don’t think it’s that strange. You’re the closest person I have. I trust you. I like being with you. We protect each other. We sleep together. We’re silent together. We laugh at silly things. We cry when we need to. Isn’t that a kind of love?” She said with disarming serenity.

Shiro slowly lowered his hands. The blush was still there, but there was something else on his face now. Something calmer. A sort of shy tenderness.

“Yeah…I think it is”

Mimihime laid down again, turning her back to him. They remained silent for a while longer.

“But you didn’t answer” she said, her voice muffled by the pillow.

"What?"

“Would you like to marry me someday?”

Shiro let out a nervous sigh, but this time he didn't look away. He stared at her back for a long time.

“I… I think if it were you…” he said finally, in a low tone, almost a whisper “But I still don’t really know what that means”

“Then… we can wait” Mimihime replied, with a lazy yawn “Until you know”

Shiro blinked slowly at her, who already had her eyes closed, hugging the pillow again. Her still damp hair spread out over the torn pillowcase.

He didn't say anything. He just watched her for a few more seconds. Then he slid further to the side, lying on his back, leaving a comfortable distance between them. The mattress creaked again, then fell silent. Her breathing was calm. His, little by little, became so too.

And before falling asleep, Shiro seriously thought that he should have given another answer, now however, he should just prepare a request.

Chapter Text

Life was ironic. Pure, cruel, acidic irony—like vinegar on an open wound. It was almost funny, if you had a twisted enough sense of humor, how fate delighted in playing tricks on you with the things you feared most. Afraid of the ocean? You’d be a fisherman. Panicked by crowds? How about working in a crowded market. Avoiding pain like the devil avoids the cross? Then you’d be forced to face it, naked, exposed, defenseless—every day, for an indefinite period of time.

In Mimihime's case, the hilarious fact of life was that she was made to suffer what seemed like an agonizing, excruciating eternity of unimaginable pain, both physical and mental, every day that passed. It's not like losing a leg would have been any less bad, but, she thought, at least the first time they had enough anesthesia to knock down an elephant and she was completely out for a whole day. Yes, the process of injecting herself via injection was excruciating and she cried like a baby, but she didn't feel the process. Side effects happened, it was part of it, as were the damn phantom pains.

Oh, she hated them. Hated how a limb that wasn't even there seemed to throb and still feel like it was being pierced and cut even when it wasn't. She considered it fate mocking her, reminding her every second, as if the mere sight of it wasn't enough.

And there was Shiro.

Poor, sweet Shiro. With those guilty eyes, carrying a weight neither of them could name, but heavy enough to bend his posture, shake his voice, slow his steps. He avoided her gaze sometimes. Other times, he looked at her as if he wanted to beg her forgiveness with his silence. She knew what he was thinking. She knew he saw himself as an executioner—when in truth, he was just a boy trying to save the only person he loved in a world that wanted to destroy them.

But again, the first time was considered a success. Until months later.

A late defeat, she called it all.

The universe seemed to enjoy her suffering, but it seemed even more inclined to torture her partner. Blood thinners, in those days, were an unattainable treasure. A diamond hidden in a sea of rubble and dust. All he had was coal. And a dream. Or rather, soaked bandages, a plastic bottle of anesthetic rationed to the last drop, and a one-armed man who trembled just being there.

And now, they were there again.

“Hold her steady now” Shiro’s voice was calm. Annoyingly calm. Almost clinical. But she knew—oh, she knew—it was just a front. He was doing it for her. To keep her from panicking. To pretend everything was under control, even though inside he was falling apart.

The man helping them just nodded and held her one remaining left leg tighter, she felt tears already welling up in her eyes. What was his name again? Hosaka or Kosaka… something like that. He seemed like a kind man, with a haggard expression and slumped shoulders, maybe he was already a coat and had a family, she wished she had asked more about him before Shiro asked him to help with this process, as if knowing him better would make it less agonizing. He didn't seem too happy to participate either, she noticed, with his hands shaking and holding her much more gently than necessary, she looked at him with compassion. Oh she definitely didn't want him to witness what was going to happen.

“Close your eyes” Shiro’s voice snapped her out of her train of thought and she took a deep breath. Doing exactly what he said and biting her lip as she felt every muscle in her body tense. Her nostrils burned with the metallic smell of the room, with the smell of cheap medicine and dust wet from the light rain outside.

She whimpered as she felt the hard, sharp surface of the needle against the outstretched, restrained arm that Shiro held. “Easy now…” She resisted against all the urge in the world to scream and pull her arm away, even though it wouldn’t do much good. It was tightly restrained, with a rope so tight near the elbow that it made the area turn almost white with the lack of blood flow. That didn’t stop her from shaking like a newborn lamb, however, when she felt the needle being inserted and the cold liquid spreading through her veins. Local anesthesia was much worse than general anesthesia…

But as quickly as it happened, it was over…the calm before the storm, and the needle was discarded. She allowed herself to release the air she had been holding in a shaky, tearful breath. Shiro simply briefly held her hand and squeezed it, and she squeezed back.

She knew it was just a way to gauge when the member would become flaccid, but part of her liked to think of it as a form of silent comfort.

These moments were the worst, when all she could hear were the breathing of the others around her, the sound of the light rain outside against the glass, the occasional low thunder. It made everything seem peaceful, like her damn fist wasn't going to get cut off in a few minutes.

She didn't even notice when she let go of Shiro's hand, he squeezed it a few more times, staring at her face turned away from him, she was staring fixedly at the faded white curtain, he briefly pricked her with a scalpel on her right index finger. A little scarlet blood ran down her skin covered in purple and black spots, but she didn't seem to notice. He took that as the green light to proceed.

He looked at the man who was staring at him with wide eyes and parted lips, as if his very presence there already made him carry the weight of a crime. Shiro wanted to avoid this. He had tried, in every way. He looked for better ropes, looked for restraint hooks, even considered waiting longer, taking greater risks. But he couldn't. He couldn't postpone the inevitable. The infection was rising — slowly, silently, like a poisonous snake — and if it reached her elbow, there would be nothing left to do. He would have to look for restraints soon and make sure he didn't have to ask for help again, that wasn't something he wanted others to see.

There weren’t enough restraints for both arms and the remaining leg. And he knew—with brutal, terrifying clarity—that she wouldn’t stand still. No one would. No human being in their right mind could stand this in absolute silence.

He took a deep breath. He swallowed. His stomach churned. Sweat trickled down his temples despite the cold. His fingers were clammy, slippery. The scalpel trembled in his hand. But not as much as the heart in his chest.

Then lightly ran the scalpel over her wrist, a straight red line that immediately began dripping crimson rivers onto the floor, a hand's breadth from her elbow and nothing more, he would preserve as much as he could. He glanced at Mimihime, who was still staring at the curtain. Well, maybe things would be calmer than he thought they would be.

The sickening sound of flesh being cut made Mimihime's ears twitch and Kosaka cover his mouth, but that was good, he was already halfway there. Blood was already staining his shoes and forming a large puddle, nothing that a transfusion couldn't solve...

He traded the scalpel for a larger knife. Improvised. It wasn't a surgical instrument. It was a kitchen knife that he had sharpened with a random stone. But he needed to balance precision with time. Quality with urgency.

The sound that came next was the one he hated most in the world.

The sound of flesh being separated from muscle. Of tendons being forced to give way. A wet, grotesque crack, as if someone were splitting a piece of wet wood.

And then the morbid sound that could only be described as a nightmare was heard, a loud and loud crack . And with it came the sound that Shiro hated most on earth as Mimihime arched her back so hard that her spine snapped, her muscles contracting in an uncontrollable spasm. Kosaka staggered from the force of her body thrashing.

“Sorry! Sorry! I’ll try to be quick!” He almost screamed, his voice cracking in his throat as he applied more pressure, trying to finish the cut with shaking hands, blurry eyes, heart pounding. But with more pressure came more pain, with more pain came more screaming.

Mimihime was crying openly now. There was no dignity to maintain. There was no silence that would fit here. It was a raw pain, burning deep into her skull. Her sobs were short, choked, as if she were being denied air.

“Hold on tighter!” Shiro shouted, almost in panic.

Kosaka obeyed, his eyes wide, his mouth half open as if he wanted to say something, maybe ask for forgiveness, maybe vomit. But he said nothing. He just held on. Tighter. As if that was all he could offer.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Forgive me… Please… please…” The words came out as choked sighs, broken in the middle, almost unrecognizable in Shiro’s voice. He repeated each one like a prayer, like a desperate mantra, as if each syllable had the power to turn back time, to make the blood return to her body, to erase the pain from her eyes.

The knife slipped from his bloodstained fingers, and he turned quickly, his movements sluggish, his breath coming in ragged gasps, searching for the makeshift toolbox where he had left the saw. An ordinary shop saw, slightly rusted at the edges. He had filed it and boiled it as best he could, but it was still too grotesque to touch any living thing.

He held her with trembling hands, his eyes burning, his throat completely dry, and turned back to the body in front of him, so small, so fragile, so bloodstained that he barely recognized the person who had once smiled at him beneath the warm spring light. Mimihime was now a pale figure, her eyes wide and dull, staring fixedly at the ceiling as if, if she stared long enough, she could break through it and escape from here, find something beyond the concrete, beyond the pain, beyond existence itself.

“I… I’m almost done… Just a little more…” he murmured, perhaps to her, perhaps to himself.

The saw touched the exposed bone, still wet, still warm. And the sound that echoed in the room ... It was something that should not be heard. A low, insistent, repetitive creaking. With each movement of the saw, tiny splinters flew, and blood spurted again, mixing with the sweat that dripped from Shiro's forehead and the tears that were already falling freely.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Please hold on… I beg you…”

His hands ached from squeezing the saw so tightly. His skin was starting to sag, calluses were forming, his joints were complaining. But he wouldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. And even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to hear anything but that noise—that abominable sound of metal cutting through bone, the mechanical echo of a tragedy waiting to happen.

Mimihime didn't scream anymore.

Her silence was more terrifying than her screams. Her whole body was shaking, but she didn't react to the touch, the cut, or the saw.

Her face was covered in sweat and tears, her pale cheeks were streaked with purple, and the skin on her neck vibrated with the effort of breathing. Her heart was pounding in her chest, so fast it hurt. Each beat felt like a dull stab, reverberating through her body. There was no air left. Only a tremendous void, from which the sound came distantly, muffled, as if she were underwater.

That was it...

Like being submerged.

As if she had slowly sunk into an icy pool, her body heavy, limbs numb, her mind in suspense. The world around her distorted, like a distant echo hitting the edges of her skull.

She no longer heard Shiro's apologies. Nor the sound of the saw. Nor Kosaka's suppressed sobs, who now just watched, with red eyes and trembling lips, no longer having the strength to speak or move. She only heard her own heart.

Shiro felt the bone give way.

A dull, almost hollow thud, and the saw slid down suddenly, cutting off the rest with a final crack. What was left of the forearm fell heavily onto the makeshift tray beside it. The sound was dull, but to him it sounded like a sentence.

“There… it’s over,  over… I promise… it’s over…” He was bandaging the stump with his nearly tattered hands, the bandages turning red as soon as they touched the skin. He pressed hard, trying to staunch the flow. He was shaking more than she was now. His mouth was murmuring things that even he couldn't hear. He repeated, affirmed, pleaded, as if words had the power to mend what was broken “It’s going to be okay… It’s going to be okay… I’m here… I’ll take care of you… Please… please stay with me…”

She blinked slowly.

Her eyelids felt like tons of weight, as if the whole world were resting on them. Every muscle felt numb, distant, as if it belonged to someone else. She let her eyelids fall at last, in a silent surrender, sweet as deep sleep.

In the last image before the darkness, she saw the white curtain.

Maybe it was just a nightmare. A twisted dream.

And when she woke up, she would be back in her school room. With Tokio. With the others. The sun filtering through the window. The smell of books and soap. Shiro on the other side of the room, his face flushed for some stupid reason. Everything was the same. Everything was normal.

She just needed to sleep.

She just had to… wait.

And then, everything goes back to normal.

Normal...

~

It would be an understatement, one of those absurd ones, to say that she was surprised when another limb had to be amputated. The truth is that, after the third time, the surprise ceased to exist. The pain, no. This was an old friend, faithful, constant, ever-present, always reinventing ways of presenting itself. First, it was the leg. Then the arm. And then the other arm. And the rest followed like a house of cards collapsing in slow motion. In a grotesque and twisted way, she was grateful that Shiro had gotten better at it. Since everything was done quickly, each new process did not make the next one any less painful, on the contrary, but at least she had some comfort in knowing that it would be over soon. That is, until the damned spots appeared somewhere else and this one had to be removed too.

When they appeared on her face, she almost begged him not to do it. Not to touch. To let it be. But it was too late. And Shiro cried. He cried as he removed her left eye, with all the care in the world, as if it were a dead flower being plucked from its stem.

And now there she was.

Two arms less. Two legs less. One eye less.

A heart still beating, stubborn, resistant, perhaps stupid.

Phantom pain seemed like child's play compared to the current situation. Haha, she felt like laughing just thinking about how much better she had been. She genuinely didn't know why Shiro was still by her side, well, she did. The thing in the garage wouldn't let her forget either.

“Ahh” She said flatly as she opened her mouth.

Shiro, sitting beside the bed, carefully held a heated metal bowl between his hands, so focused that he seemed to be handling another operation. He blew hard on the spoon, his eyes half closed, and then gently brought the utensil to her lips.

It only took one bite for the world to burn.

She shrank her face and what was left of her body in an instinctive reaction, a shudder that activated pain sensors that should no longer have existed. Heat invaded her mouth like a flame, making the remaining eye water immediately.

“Ow... hot...” she whispered, her voice weak.

“S-sorry! I’m sorry!” Shiro said as he held the bowl in his hands, a soup with potatoes, carrots and rabbit, tighter and blew on it several times in a desperate manner.

She watched his face, his eyes frightened, his shoulders too tense for someone so young. Just as broken as she was, but in a different way. A way that hurt to see.

She laughed, low, hoarse, broken, like everything about her.

The tubes attached to what was left of her right arm tensed, the plastic swaying slightly with the movement. A slight pain pulsed beneath her skin, but she ignored it. Shiro looked at her immediately, startled.

“Did it hurt? I—I can wait, you want it later? maybe it’s too hot, I can… I can do something else...”

“You’re so silly, Shiro” she said, with a tired half-smile.

He stared at her, carefully observing the genuine smile on her face, which made her cheeks blush slightly. And he almost forgot, almost forgot the complete hell they lived in and allowed himself to smile too.

But the universe had other plans, and with a loud sound like thunder, the lights went out. Only complete and immense darkness set in. Mimihime let out a low, frightened scream and Shiro instinctively moved closer to her before registering what had happened.

Seconds later, hurried footsteps were heard and a flashlight appeared in the room.

“Doctor Usami! I think it was a circuit breaker, the generator doesn’t seem to be working.” A man announced in a nervous voice.

Shiro sighed before standing up. “It must be a cable out of place, nothing that can't be fixed.” He looked at her, who was curled up as best she could. He knew how much she hated being alone, even more so in the dark. Taking off the coat he was wearing, he wrapped it around her small body. Mimihime murmured in curiosity and he pressed his lips to her temple only briefly. “I'll be right back. Someone stay with her while we sort it out.”

And then he left with the two men, the flashlight guiding them through the cold, flickering shadows like specters dispersing into the night. Mimihime listened to them walk away until the sound disappeared completely, swallowed by the dense hum of the darkness.

For a brief moment, everything was silent.

She took a deep breath. Shiro’s coat was too big for what was left of her, but it still covered her with a warm familiarity. She rubbed her face against the fabric, inhaling his scent, a mix of machine oil, dry earth, and the bittersweet essence that was only his.

The doorknob turned with a low creak.

She wasn't startled. She already recognized the rhythm of his steps, the slight drag of his left leg, the way his boots always seemed to hesitate before going in. Kosaka.

The soft light of a flashlight flooded the room like a beam of artificial moonlight. The man entered, muttering to himself in a tone that made it clear he didn't care whether she heard him or not.

“This building should have collapsed years ago,” he huffed, crossing his arms as he shone his light on the ceiling, as if he expected it to give in at that moment just to prove his point. “I don’t know what that kid sees here. Rotten, old, damp place...”

Mimihime smiled at the sight of him, small and broken as she was. The flashlight beam grazed her face, leaving half of it in shadow. Even so, her smile shone.

“Hi, Kosaka,” she said, her voice low, almost a whisper. “I think the building suits us, don’t you think? Half crooked, half condemned, and half standing.”

Kosaka rolled his eyes and let out a snicker, more of a sarcastic snort than anything else. “You have a disturbing sense of humor, Hoshio.”

“I learned from the best,” she replied, indicating the void where Shiro had been moments before.

Kosaka approached the bed, pulling out a rusty chair with a metallic squeak and sitting down heavily. He was silent for a few seconds, watching the IV wires, the dim monitors powered by internal batteries, the occasional tinkle of a drip. He looked at her with a weariness in his eyes that seemed to span decades.

“You really trust him, don’t you?” he asked suddenly, his voice lower, but filled with something that wasn’t curiosity.

She didn’t answer right away. She blinked slowly, her remaining eye catching the flashlight’s light for a moment. Then she nodded.

“He takes care of me,” she said simply.

Kosaka exhaled through his nose. “Take care. Yes. Like a gardener who prunes a tree until only the trunk remains.”

“He does what needs to be done” She replied, her tone firmer than she expected it to be.

“Could it be?” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. “Don’t you wonder, not even for a second? Why you’re still alive when anyone else would have asked to die?”

Mimihime looked away. The dark ceiling was easier to look at than his face at the moment. 

“Do you think he’s cruel?” she asked, almost teasingly. “That he wants to see me suffer?”

“No.” Kosaka shook his head. “I don’t think he knows who he is anymore. I think the Usami you knew died a long time ago. And what’s left of him… is just an extension of the guilt.” She blinked slowly, feeling something burn in her throat. “And you? Why do you still let him? Why do you subject yourself to these experiments, these… mutilations? Why, Hoshio?” His tone changed. Deeper. Darker. “Do you think this will save anyone? You two are sinking into a kind of madness that only seems noble when we’re too close to see it clearly.”

She took a while to answer. Her whole body felt heavy, each word required effort. “I don’t know... I just know that we need to keep going...”

“You two damn fools,” Kosaka muttered.

He didn't leave. He remained seated there. The chair creaked slightly as he shifted. He tilted his head, staring at her for long seconds, as if searching for something in her face, permission, perhaps. Or a sign that she couldn't take it anymore.

“Hoshio,” he said suddenly, his tone too calm for the tension now rising in the room. “Have you... ever thought about what it would be like if everything just... ended?”

She frowned slightly, trying to understand the question “What do you mean?”

“If all this suffering... this waiting... if it all just ended. No more pain. No more nothing.”

“You mean... die?” She blinked slowly. A slight shiver ran through what was left of her body.

Kosaka didn’t answer right away. He just stood up “I mean rest. Truly rest.”

He took two slow steps toward the bed. The sound of his shoes on the cracked floor mixed with the subtle beeping of the machines beside her. She tried to raise her voice, but there was something in his expression that stopped her. Something... irremediable.

“You’re scaring me” She whispered.

“I know” he replied with a sigh. “But you don’t have to stay. I won’t let that monster touch you again.”

Before she could ask what he meant by that, Kosaka reached out and grabbed the IV lines coming out of her arm. The gesture was sudden, brutal. The sound of the plastic stretching was muffled by a wet snap, and then a sharp scream tore through the silence—hers.

The needles came out like metal barbs, tearing the fragile flesh, leaving blood to slowly drip onto the sheet, dampening the fabric like ink spread across old paper.

“Why...?” she whimpered, her voice shaky, choked, as if she had lost part of her air.

But he didn't answer.

Kosaka leaned in even further. With a firmness that belied the emotional chaos of that moment, he pushed her back onto the bed. She writhed as much as she could, but it was too little, her body incapable, limited to shudders and sobs. Like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Please... stop... what are you doing...?”

“Shhh,” he murmured, almost affectionately. And he picked up the pillow.

With both hands he lifted it and held it before her face like a judge with a verdict in his hands.

“I have a daughter, you know?” he said, his eyes lost in time. “Almost your age. Or would be, if she were still alive. Sometimes I look at you and... I can only imagine what they would do to her if she were under the care of that lunatic. This isn’t medicine. This is... this is perversion. This is torture.”

“I don’t—!” she tried to protest, but he was already there, kneeling beside the bed, the pillow hovering.

“You don’t have to carry this anymore. Not one more surgery. Not one more night in this damned place. I will set you free, Hoshio. You will rest.”

The pillow sank down on her face, muffling a barely formed scream. She tried to move, tried to struggle, but there were no arms. No legs. Just her still body, twisting slightly beneath the bed, shuddering in silent despair.

Kosaka squeezed tightly. The veins in his arm pulsated.

Tears welled up in her one eye. Her heart raced to its limit. Her throat contracted in sobs that no one could hear. The darkness of the pillow was absolute.

“It will pass,” he said through gritted teeth. “It will pass. I promise.”

"No"

"Please don't"

"Not like this. Not now. Not here"

The thick fabric of the pillow muffled everything—sound, air, time. It was like being trapped underground, alive, hearing only her own heart exploding against her chest, each beat more violent, desperate, as if it were trying to break through her ribs and escape on its own.

“I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”

The repetition hammered inside her, like a dirty, desperate, directionless prayer, as if something, anything, was listening to her.

She wanted to scream. Scream so loud the whole world could hear. Wanted to scream for him. For Shiro. He said he would come back. He promised.

She could feel it, with absurd clarity. The lack of oxygen burned inside her lungs like acid, as if every cell screamed for life, as if her body were trying to pull off the impossible. Her back arched against the bed, her face crushed against the rough cotton. She wanted to move her arms. She wanted to struggle. But there was nothing. Just the empty shell that had once been her body.

Her eye throbbed. Her veins pulsated. Her chest closed, tightened, contracted as if something was crushing her from within.

She thought about him. About his face, his nervous hands holding the soup spoon, his teary eyes trying to smile at her even when everything hurt. She thought about the warmth of his coat still on her. This was home. This was where she still existed. And her heart broke at the thought that this would be the last time she would see him, without being able to say goodbye, without being able to properly say...

“Don’t take this from me. Please. God. Please. Anyone. If anyone’s out there. If anyone’s still listening. I just want… I just want to be with him.”

Kosaka was saying something, but it was just a muffled hum now. Just words lost in an ocean of darkness.

A loud, dry crack.

The darkness has changed. The light.

Even with her face pressed together, even with the pain, she felt its presence, raw, cutting, invading the room like a dirty miracle. The shadows fled. Everything went white inside her eyelids.

And then, the door. A sound of wood snapping. A flash of sound, an impact.

Kosaka let go of the pillow.

She breathed in.
Or tried .

The air tore from her throat and she coughed. She coughed like a wounded animal, her muscles twitching involuntarily as the oxygen rushed back like lava. Mimihime turned to the side.

Each gust came with pain. But it was life. It was still life.

The vision was a blur. Everything was noise and shaking. But between the flashes, she saw.

Shiro.

Her Shiro.

He was on top of Kosaka. His hands—those precious hands that could fix anything—were now striking with raw fury. Each punch came with a wet, grotesque sound. Kosaka didn’t even try to protect himself.

She wanted to say his name. She wanted to reach out her hand. But all she could do was cough and gasp and hiccup between gasps of air.

The room seemed to spin. The pillow lying beside her now looked like a corpse. And she, half-conscious, just watched.

But she was alive.

She was alive.

And there he was.

~

Hoshio opened her eye slowly, blinking several times to focus. Oh, just the usual gray ceiling of the room. The constant beeping of machines, an occasional hissing sound from the left side, Usami had promised to fix that as soon as possible. Speaking of him...

She scanned the room for signs of movement, apparently nothing...

“Helloooo, anyone there?” The soft beep of the small tablet sounded, vibrating a little at the foot of the bed. But with no one to read it.

Well, that called for plan B.

Taking a deep breath, her chest swelling with the act, she held it for a few seconds, then a minute. The soft, rhythmic sound of the machine then became a steady, then frantic beeping as the corners of her vision blurred.

She would have felt bad for the way Usami entered the room like a completely desperate man. Disheveled hair, sweat dripping as if he had run there and a look of pure panic. She exhaled the moment she saw him. But he was already beside her, inspecting her pulse, heart rate, oxygenation...

Only once everything had stabilized again did he cast a calm look towards her.

“Did you hold your breath again just to call me?” There was a hint of annoyance in his voice. But she didn’t mind and just smiled slightly, although she thought it was impossible to tell through the breathing mask.

“ That’s the only way I can get some of your attention, doctor! Good morning!”

Shiro sighed and ran a hand over his face. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took the tablet in his hands as he stared at her, his expression softening immediately.

“Good morning, did you sleep well?”

“ I had a bad dream”

“Oh?”

“ But i can't remember it now, because you’re here. So it’s not scary anymore. Tell me, what did you build today?”

Chapter Text

 The sun's rays reflected off the broken glass on the ground, a warm breeze passed between the buildings, and a few birds sang in the distance. It was a pleasant day, she thought as she looked up at the buildings that stretched so high they seemed to touch the sky, watching as one or two clouds were pushed by the wind and formed distinct shapes.

What were they doing there? She looked to the side, at her partner who was guiding them through the abandoned city. Well, not necessarily abandoned. Destroyed was a more appropriate word, since even though it was falling apart, the city was still full of inhabitants.

Sure there were no cars or big flashing signs, but there were still people. That was something. People shouting at each other, people laughing, people .

Beside her, Shiro walked with his usual watchful rigidity. His eyes scanned everything, the people, the alleys, the ceilings. The kind of attention that only someone who had survived for a long time at the end of the world could learn to maintain. He carried his usual backpack, adjusted with almost military precision, and led the way with the gaze of someone who, even at a young age, had already been a guide through many hells.

Mimihime turned her eyes to the crowd. There were so many people there, dozens, maybe hundreds, and though their faces were dirty, tired, suspicious, it brought a strange kind of hope. Nostalgia, maybe.

“Are we sleeping out again tonight?” she asked, her tone drawn out and almost playful.

“Probably. I don’t think there’s much room here”

He glanced sideways at a couple sitting beneath a broken awning. They eyed him with suspicious curiosity, then glanced at each other, whispering and turning away as if they had seen something too strange to handle.

“Aaah, what a shame” she grumbled, tossing her head to the side exaggeratedly. “I would really appreciate sleeping in a bed again…”

Sleeping outside had its charms, sure—the night sky, the moon, the constellations she named with her own inventions. But the ground was hard. Their sleeping bag had lost any padding it had once had. And honestly, her hips were begging for a mattress. Any mattress. Even one with loose springs and a musty smell.

She glanced at him sideways. Shiro, frowning, biting the corner of his mouth lightly the way he did when he was considering possibilities, seemed oblivious. But Mimihime knew him. She knew exactly where the strings were that she could pull.

"Time to play" she thought.

She squeezed his hand tighter, gently, her small fingers intertwining with his as if they belonged there. And then she leaned against his shoulder, letting her body sag with perfectly calculated drama.

“Shirooo…” She said in a syrupy, drawn-out tone.

He turned his face just a little, suspicious “What now?”

She gave her best hungry puppy dog look—which required slightly raised eyebrows, a slightly quivering lower lip, and big, bright eyes. “What if… we found a little bed and room… just for today? Really cheap, just to rest our backs for a bit… Don’t you want to see what a real shower is like again? Maybe even have a little window with a curtain and a pillow that doesn’t smell like dirt…”

Shiro frowned. “We don’t know if they’ll accept outsiders. And it’s dangerous.”

“But you’re with me, right?” she replied, her voice sweet and full of confidence. “Nothing bad happens when you’re around.”

He glanced at her sideways. It was the kind of sentence that melted any armor. His face flushed subtly. She knew she was winning.

She rose up on her tiptoes and touched the tip of his chin with her index finger teasingly.

“Please... just one bed. One night”

Shiro blushed. Not a light blush like someone who hears a compliment, but a hot red that rose from his neck to the tips of his ears. It was instantaneous, as if his body knew before his mind that he was being defeated. He looked away from her face with the same urgency as someone running away from a very strong sun: an automatic reflex of self-protection. Because he knew, with every cell in his body, that if he looked directly into those eyes, those two clear blue pools, large and absurdly innocent, it would be like aiming at the bottom of a bottomless well, where logic no longer had any power. He would break. Fragile as ceramic.

“Tch…” he muttered, not really knowing for whom. For her? For himself? “I’ll think about it.”

It was the most he could manage, and he already knew he had given too much away in tone. Because thinking, in Mimihime's case, was practically the same as saying yes — only late.

She huffed dramatically, letting her shoulders slump and exhaling through puffed-out cheeks like a balloon about to burst.

“Hmmm…” she said, stopping her tiptoeing and walking back beside him with their hands still clasped together. She acted bored for a second, then dropped the bombshell with the casualness of someone talking about the weather. “I’ll let you take a shower with me if we find one.”

Shiro tripped over his own foot.

He didn’t fall, but he actually stumbled—a small, abrupt lurch that made his body sway for a second, and the backpack on his back creak with the sudden movement. He let out a choking sound, a mixture of surprise and silent indignation.

“W-what?” He turned to face her, his eyes wide and his expression one of pure shock. His voice was cracked, broken with the effort of maintaining his composure.

Mimihime feigned innocence, looking up as if she were commenting on something trivial. “Hey... a shower for two saves water, right?”

He stared at her for a moment, struggling to keep his face neutral, but his defenses were already crumbling. She could feel it. It was like watching a house of cards sway in the wind.

“Y-you’re not serious,” he whispered, more to himself than to her.

“I never joke about things like that,” She replied, a devilish grin growing at the corner of her mouth.

It was pure evil. And she knew it. But she also knew that, among Shiro's many weaknesses, and there were many if she wanted to be honest, this was by far the most obvious and the most predictable. He was a pervert, after all. A discreet, clumsy and shy pervert, but still... pervert. And most importantly: completely in love with her.

Shiro closed his eyes and sighed deeply, as if surrendering to fate.

“Okay. Let’s find a place to stay. But only if it’s safe,” he added, trying to regain some semblance of authority.

“Of course,” she replied, nodding her head with an obedience so exaggerated it bordered on mockery.

~

The scent of freshly brewed tea wafted through the small room, mingling with the woody aroma of antique furniture and the distant sound of children’s laughter. Golden afternoon light streamed in through the slanted windows, casting long shadows on the peeling walls.

Shiro sat on a folded mat, legs crossed, back straight as usual. The warm ceramic cup in his hands. He was trying to relax, which for him meant, at most, not having all his muscles at maximum tension. The owner of the house, a middle-aged man with a gentle smile and tired eyes, was in front of him, also sitting on the floor with a calm naturalness, as if receiving two young strangers was the most common thing in the world.

“Thanks again for letting us spend the night here,” Shiro said with a slight bow of his head, his voice low, restrained, but genuinely grateful.

The man just smiled, eyes half-closed behind a frame of deep wrinkles. His expression was serene, almost paternal.

“It’s no problem at all,” he replied, tilting the cast-iron teapot over Shiro’s cup, filling the tea with the same calmness with which one feeds a fireplace. “We’ve had an extra room since my sister left. It’s empty most of the time. It’s nice to have young people around… Besides, I think the kids are enjoying the visit.”

Shiro looked left. Through the glass door, he could see the backyard of the house. And there was Mimihime, or rather, a blur of fair hair and laughter, completely swallowed up by two small children who seemed to have adopted her as an official toy.

The eldest, a girl of about five with curly hair, was lying on Mimihime's belly, laughing as she continued to tickle her. The youngest, a little boy of about three with an eternally runny nose, was pulling her ears and laughing along with his sister. Whether the act bothered her or not, she didn't seem to show it.

The three of them laughed, laughed loudly.

She rolled around on the floor with them, making silly voices, pretending to be a monster, a victim, anything their little minds could come up with. Her eyes shining with a joy so pure it hurted. It was the kind of scene that seemed to have been ripped from a time that no longer existed.

Shiro stood there for a few seconds, watching in silence. His fingers lightly gripped the ceramic cup. He felt something strange in his chest, something warm, disconcerting, and a little painful. It wasn't envy. It wasn't sadness.

“She has a way with children,” the man commented, following his gaze and smiling. “Since you guys arrived, my children haven’t stopped laughing. It’s good to see them like this. You forget what it’s like to hear that kind of sound.”

Shiro didn't respond immediately. He just continued to stare, his expression softening. Almost a smile, but not quite.

“Yeah... she has a way with everything, really,” he muttered, more to himself than to the other.

A soft laugh echoed from the doorway of the room. It was a female voice, with that slightly husky tone. The man’s wife appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on a flowered kitchen towel, her hair tied back in a messy bun and a flour-stained apron still tied around her waist. She had a friendly face, with lively eyes and a spontaneous smile that came easily despite the tiredness that had gathered beneath her eyelids.

She glanced through the glass door and let out an affectionate chuckle as she saw the scene in the backyard.

“These two are treating this poor girl like she’s a new toy,” She commented, opening the door with a low creak. “Hey! You two! That’s enough for today. Come take a shower, dinner’s almost ready!”

The two children stopped laughing immediately and turned around with the reluctant slowness of someone who had just been torn from paradise. The five-year-old threw herself theatrically on the floor, arms outstretched, mumbling something about “ten more minutes.” The younger boy just hugged Mimihime’s leg, a trickle of drool still running from his nose.

Mimihime smiled while still sitting on the floor “Hey, hey… we’ll play more later”

The children giggled. Conceited, after all. The little girl ran toward her mother with the energy of a sugar bomb, while the little one stumbled behind, still looking back as if Mimihime might disappear if he blinked.

She stood up slowly, brushing the dust and leaves off her pants and light sweater, her hair disheveled from the childish chaos. When she walked back into the house, she found Shiro still sitting and the woman now also in the living room, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the same cloth as before.

“I’m sorry about the mess,” the woman said with an embarrassed smile, adjusting her apron with an automatic tug. “These two get excited when new people show up… especially someone as nice as you.”

Mimihime waved her hand, dismissing the formality as if she were swatting away a mosquito. “No way, they’re fun. You can tell they’re happy. And… well, I guess that’s rarer than it should be these days.” She approached Shiro and sat down next to him, without ceremony, as if the place was already familiar.

The woman laughed “They are really sweet… but look, three small children are such a hassle that you just have to see them.”

“Three?” Mimihime tilted her head in genuine curiosity, her eyes widening slightly. “I only saw two… where’s the third?”

The woman seemed surprised by the question, but her smile didn't waver. It only softened, taking on a tender tone.

“Ah... he’s the youngest. He’s only a month old,” She replied, her voice automatically lower “He’s sleeping now... but if you want to see, I can show you.”

Mimihime almost jumped.

She straightened up instantly, her eyes lighting up as if someone had shined a flashlight inside her. Curiosity wasn’t exactly rare for Mimihime—she was full of questions even when she didn’t ask them out loud—but there was something different about this one. Something almost childlike. Pure fascination.

“I’ve never seen a real baby, so… so young” She murmured, already standing up. There was no hesitation in her movements. She looked like a child being invited to see a newborn puppy.

Shiro watched her with slightly raised eyebrows. Her reaction was unexpected, and at the same time, strangely coherent. Still, he didn't help but glance briefly at the man sitting in front of him, as if looking for some sign of approval or warning.

The man just nodded, serene.

“You can go, of course. Make yourself at home,” he said.

The woman motioned for them to follow her, wiping her hands once more on the already soaked cloth. She walked with careful steps through the narrow hallway of the house, the wooden floor creaking softly under her bare feet. Shiro followed behind Mimihime, watching the way she walked ahead with light, almost reverent steps.

The woman stopped in front of a white door, which had been slightly ajar. She pushed it open with her fingertips, revealing the dim interior.

It was a small, almost claustrophobic room. The windows were covered by a thick, light curtain, and the air smelled faintly of baby soap mixed with warm milk and something vague. There was a dresser with toiletries, diapers neatly stacked, a rocking chair in the corner, and a crib in the center.

The woman approached with the delicacy of someone walking on glass. She leaned over the crib and, with firm but absurdly careful hands, picked something up from inside. A white blanket swallowed up almost the entire volume in her arms, and for a moment, everything seemed like just a mass of fabric.

Until it moved.

Mimihime squinted, frowning to see better, the dim light confusing her perceptions. But then, a sound, a small, trembling noise, almost like the sniffling of a kitten with a cold, was heard. And something moved. A tiny arm escaped from the blanket, followed by an involuntary movement of the head, still too unsteady to stay steady.

And then it clicked. The penny dropped.

That was a baby.

A real baby. So small it seemed unreal. So fragile she was afraid she would breathe too close and accidentally break it.

“He... is tiny” She whispered.

The woman smiled tenderly, her eyes shining with tiredness and affection intertwined.

“They are all this small at first” She replied.

Shiro, standing in the bedroom doorway, didn't move.

She leaned in a little closer, and the baby, as if sensing her presence, opened his eyes. Just for a second. Blurry, unfocused eyes that still didn't understand the world, but looked at her anyway.

The woman cradled the baby for a few more seconds, her expression serene, and then looked at Mimihime with a gentle smile.

“Want to hold him?”

Mimihime's eyes widened in surprise, and her entire body tensed as if she had just been invited to walk a tightrope many meters above the ground.

“Me...?” she pointed to herself, as if she wasn’t sure she was the one being spoken to. “Are you sure... it’s okay?”

The woman just nodded sweetly, already approaching “He’s calm. And you seem to have careful hands. Just hold him like this, look…” she slightly turned the baby’s little body in her arms, supporting his head with her forearm and slowly extending it towards Mimihime “Support his little head well. That’s it. That’s it”

Mimihime held out her arms as if she were handling a sacred object. Her fingers trembled slightly, but she steadied them with effort. When the baby finally rested in her arms, she felt the weight, so light that it almost didn’t seem real, but at the same time, so undeniably present.

She stood still. Just staring.

As if she had just received an alien creature.

The baby made a sleepy sound, and his tiny hand grabbed at nothing in the air. Mimihime looked at him as if trying to decipher an ancient riddle.

“He’s really cute.”

The woman laughed softly, a laugh full of tenderness and weariness.

“They really are. And at this stage… we almost forget how much they cry, they are so cute.”

Mimihime frowned thoughtfully, as if she were putting together a puzzle.

“Where did he come from?”

The woman laughed louder this time, surprised by the sudden, direct question.

“Well… from inside me. I had him”

The silence in the room grew thick as honey. The baby made a soft noise, a croak that cut through the moment but did not dispel the stillness that followed.

She and Shiro, in unison, turned their eyes to the woman. Fascinated. Amazed.

Shiro stepped forward, his eyes wide with an expression somewhere between horror and wonder. Mimihime blinked slowly, as if still processing what she had heard.

“Did you… had him?” he repeated, almost in a whisper.

“Yes, huh,” the woman replied, now with a slightly confused tone. “He grew in here.” She placed one of her hands on her belly, as if reinforcing the explanation with the gesture.

“Did it grow inside you?” Mimihime’s voice was choked, as if each word had to be dragged out of her chest. She looked at the baby in her arms, then at the woman’s belly, then back at the baby, as if trying to make sense of it.

The woman nodded, still smiling, but now with her eyebrows slightly furrowed.

“That’s right. Everyone is born that way, one way or another.”

Mimihime continued to stare as if she had just discovered a new species of animal. Her eyes were wide, and there was something almost reverent in the way she held the baby now, as if he were even more miraculous than before.

“And can you do more?” She asked, her voice low but intensely curious.

The woman hesitated. She looked at Shiro, as if seeking confirmation that this was a joke. But the boy was also pale and motionless, his eyes fixed on her, waiting for her answer as if he depended on her to understand reality.

“I… yes. I can. I mean, in theory, yes.” She seemed unsure how to explain. “Most people can, actually. That’s how babies come into the world.”

“Can anyone do this?” Shiro asked now, his voice strangely empty, but loaded with implications that he himself seemed to still be trying to understand.

The woman, a little unsure of how to conduct the conversation, replied carefully.

“Well… not exactly everyone, but… yes, many can. It depends on…” she hesitated, not knowing how far to go. They were serious. It was obvious. “It has to do with the person’s body. And also with having someone with you… it’s a process that involves two people.”

Mimihime turned her eyes to the baby. There was something like astonishment on her face, but not just that. It was as if her entire understanding of what “life” was had suddenly rearranged.

The woman, still confused but kind, approached slowly.

“You guys… never heard of this?”

Neither of them responded.

The woman hesitated. She looked at the two young people in front of her, clearly not children but not exactly adults either, and realized, with a pang of discomfort, that she was faced with something deeper than simple ignorance. It was absence. A strange kind of emptiness, of a life where not even the basics of the natural world had been explained. And now, with her hair hastily tied up and her apron stained with baby food, she was the bearer of a knowledge that they both seemed to see as a divine revelation.

She smiled, but there was embarrassment in her expression. She ran her free hand over her face, stifling a nervous laugh.

“Ah… sorry, it’s just… I don’t really know how to talk about it,” she admitted, laughing softly and looking away. “It’s a natural, normal thing, I swear… It’s just… I never thought I’d have to explain it to… well…” she looked back at them, and her voice softened, trying to be welcoming. “It’s something that can happen when two people love each other. It’s… when they love each other and are together… they can have a baby.”

Shiro paled. Visibly. The color drained from his face like water being sucked from a cloth. He stood still, as if the ground beneath his feet were about to split open. His head turned toward Mimihime as slowly as a rusty gear.

“We…” his voice trailed off. He swallowed, his eyes wide. “We… could we have one of those?”

The woman's eyes widened for a brief second, clearly not expecting it to be so direct. She laughed, almost choking, and immediately blushed. She partially covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head, in a gesture that tried to both ease the tension and not appear as if she was laughing at them.

“Well… yes,” She said finally, her voice low, almost embarrassed. “In theory, yes. You… could.”

They both froze.

Mimihime turned her head to Shiro as if she was only now seeing him in a different light. He looked away so quickly that he was shaking his body. His ears turned red in an instant, his entire face burning. She, on the other hand, seemed to not know where to look. The baby in her arms remained still, sleeping as if he hadn't just detonated an emotional bomb.

“But… how…?” she asked, stuttering for the first time. Her eyes were lost, and the words came out in a stutter. “How… how would I know if… that would happen? If it were…?”

The woman bit her lip, clearly trying to find the best way to phrase this in terms that wouldn't sound too medical or too intimate. She sighed.

“Well…” She said finally, “For a baby to happen… first, you would have to sleep together.”

The two looked at her as if she had just said that they would need to summon a forgotten deity.

“Sleep?” Shiro repeated, cracking his neck from how tense he was.

“It’s a way of speaking,” the woman quickly explained, waving her hands. “It’s not just sleeping, real sleeping. It’s… it’s touching. Being together, physically. When a couple loves each other, and their bodies meet like this… the woman’s body begins to change. The belly grows slowly. Very slowly, over months. And after nine months… a baby is born.”

The room was so quiet that the rocking chair could be heard swaying gently in the corner, touched by a thin stream of air coming in through the crack in the window. The baby sighed, and Mimihime's eyes fell on him again. She was holding him tightly now, but as if she were holding an ancient relic in her hands.

She was blushing. Not from embarrassment like Shiro, who was now staring at the ground as if begging for spontaneous disappearance, but from… bewilderment. There was a strange glint in her eyes. A twitch in her mouth.

“All this… just because two people… touch each other?”

“Yes,” the woman replied, a little more serious now. “It’s an immense responsibility. It’s… creating a life. Having someone who depends on you for everything. And that changes everything.”

Mimihime nodded slowly. Her eyes never left the baby. Shiro was still in absolute silence, almost paralyzed.

Shiro squinted his eyes, looking like he was about to pass out.

The woman realized she had gone too far. The faces of both of them, one too pale and the other red as a burning ember, made it clear that both of their brains had been fried to the point of collapse.

She took a deep breath, smiled gently, and took the baby from Mimihime's arms.

“That’s good for today, right? I’ve had enough time to think. Let’s go back to the living room, the food must be getting cold.”

Carefully, she placed the baby back in the crib. The little one didn’t stir, deep in a carefree sleep. The woman pulled the white blanket up to his tiny chin and then turned to the two still youngsters.

“Come on. Dinner is still waiting.”

Already in the dining room, the older couple tried to keep the mood light with pleasant comments about food, heat and how the children would probably already be sleeping on the couch. Shiro and Mimihime sat side by side. A thick silence, loaded with too many thoughts.

During the entire meal, the two barely spoke. They chewed slowly, as if their bodies were too busy trying to process what they had discovered. Every now and then, they glanced at each other, and then immediately looked away. When they finished drinking their water, they snapped their fingers without realizing it, or fiddled with their useless cutlery. The woman noticed, out of the corner of her eye, and smiled with restrained tenderness.

After dinner, the two offered to help. Shiro washed the dishes and Mimihime dried them with the dishcloth.

Finally, they said goodbye with a murmured good night, thanked everyone for the meal, and were shown back to the small guest room. The light was turned off, and the door closed with a barely audible click.

The single bed was narrow. Too narrow for two people, and yet they lay side by side, as they had done so many times before. But now...now everything was different.

Shiro laid on his back, staring at the dark ceiling. His heart was pounding. The heat still burned beneath his skin. He felt as if his body was too big, too uncomfortable. The air seemed trapped in his lungs. He thought he was going to die. Literally. That some internal organ was about to collapse. That his heart wouldn't last another minute. That the simple touch of Mimihime's shoulders touching his was... the trigger.

Her hand moved, silently, hesitantly. And intertwined with his.

Shiro almost screamed. He almost jumped out of bed like a startled cat. But he froze. Her fingers were warm and firm, but gentle. It was a simple gesture. Too simple. And yet, to him, it sounded like an apocalyptic alarm. His mind screamed.

“This is it. This is the end. You touched her! She touched you! This is how it begins! You’re going to be a father! A tiny, loud, and sullen human being is going to be born, just like that one! You’re going to have to feed it! It’s going to drool all over you! It’s going to scream all the time! You’re never going to be alone again, because this thing is going to be stuck with us, FOREVER!”

Despair built up like steam in a kettle about to explode.

Mimihime, beside him, seemed calmer, but only on the outside. Inside, she was just as agitated as he was. Holding that tiny creature in her arms had planted a seed in her mind, not a baby, but an idea.

She squeezed Shiro's hand lightly. She wanted to tell him that everything was okay. That nothing was going to happen now. That they were just together, breathing the same air, trying to understand what they were, who they were, and what they could be.

But Shiro… oh, Shiro was caught in a whirlwind of pure panic.

“She squeezed my hand. Does that count as touching? Does it? It does! Of course it counts! Oh my God, what now? What if tomorrow she wakes up with a giant belly? What if it’s already happening?”

He let out a choking noise, which might have been a sob or a choked cry.

“I-is everything okay?” Mimihime whispered, her voice soft.

He turned his head slowly, staring at her as if he saw the fate of humanity in her eyes.

“Do you think… it’s already started?”

Mimihime blinked. Then she understood. And she couldn't help but laugh, muffling it with her hand.

“Shiro… that’s not how it works.”

“Are you sure?” he whispered, more tense than ever. “Because… you touched me. We’re sleeping together. I’m touching you! That’s not… that?”

“If that were the case, this would have happened a long time ago.”

He looked genuinely relieved. But also confused.

“So… how does it work?”

She hesitated, “I… I don’t really know. But… I think it needs to be a different kind of touch.”

Shiro covered his eyes with his arm, as if begging the universe for mercy.

“I will never understand this. Never.”

Mimihime lay on her side, looking at him tenderly.

“Its okay. I guess I won’t either.”

Chapter Text

"Right"

"Left"

The paper map cracked in protest, threatening to tear in half between the two girls who held it with nearly equal strength and equal stubbornness. If Mimihime hadn't had a shred of self-control, a thin thread of rationality amidst the volcano of silent rage that was building inside her, she would surely have pulled the map hard enough to tear it apart right then and there.

“We’re here,” Anzu said, with the patience of someone trying to teach a door algebra, pointing to a tiny red dot in a tangle of green, blue, and yellow lines. “Just take a right here and then go straight. We’ll be there in half an hour.”

“ No , we’re here ,” Mimihime replied, pulling the map closer to her. She pointed to a point significantly higher up. “If we were where you said, it would take us five working days of walking to get there. Five. Days.”

“How do you know? These maps aren’t even updated. Anything could have changed.” Anzu snorted.

“Because I know . And because that ruined building we passed has the same name as the hospital shown here ,” Mimihime said, tapping her finger firmly on the paper. “So no, we’re not where you think we are.”

“Uh… I don’t want to get in the way or anything…” In the front seat, Taka’s timid, hesitant, and visibly tired voice from the cold war that was exploding in the back seat broke the tumult “But should I go to the right or the left?...”

"Right!"

"Left"

“Okay…this isn’t going anywhere.” Taka let out a long sigh, burying his face in his free hand while the other still gripped the steering wheel with a desperate firmness. He sank into the seat as if he wanted to evaporate inside it.

That they had found a working car was a miracle. It hadn't been part of the plan and had just been a great blessed convenience. This was supposed to be just a quiet farewell trip and nothing more, Taka and Anzu would be gone for who knows how long, and it was the last chance they had to enjoy time with their friends.

Finding an abandoned car that didn't look like junk was amazing, Shiro, like a winged guardian angel had managed to fix it, something to do with connectors and combustors, something neither of them really understood, but it didn't matter. Because after just a few hours of searching for fuel that hadn't completely diluted, they were driving a car! A real car! Wheels that turned. Doors that closed (some with a little more effort than others). Windows that slid open with a nice creak. And even a broken radio that only played interdimensional noises. It was perfect.

Taka was the most excited of them all, so he promptly took the wheel. It's not like he knew what he was doing, after a solid 30 minutes of fiddling with the pedals and clutch, they finally started moving!

But, like every good odyssey, the euphoria did not last.

Problem number two, inevitable, cruel, and completely predictable, soon manifested itself: no one had the slightest idea how to get where they wanted to go.

“Why can’t we just go right? If it’s the wrong way we’ll turn around,” Anzu argued as she stared straight at her as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

The smell of mold, dust, and oil was strong inside the vehicle, which is why all the windows were open. The decrepit machine made a hoarse sound the whole time, along with a popping sound every few minutes.

Mimihime took a deep breath. A very deep breath. Normally, she didn’t get upset with Anzu’s occasional stubbornness. But today was different. Today she knew, with an almost cosmic certainty, that she was right. And there was nothing more frustrating than being right in a world where it didn’t matter at all.

“Because we won’t have enough fuel to turn around and we’ll end up stuck in the middle of nowhere without knowing where to go or how to get back.”

“That’s a pessimistic thought.” Anzu frowned and looked back at the map. Mimihime’s ears twitched and a spark of hope that perhaps her friend would listen to reason surfaced. “We’ll go right.” The spark died as soon as it was born. A small indoor burial was held.

Mimihime leaned back in her seat with an audible groan, crossing her arms and staring at the peeling roof of the car as if considering whether it was worth throwing herself out the moving window. Taka, from the driver's seat, gave her a sympathetic look before squeaking into gear and steering the car toward the right turn.

“Don’t be like that, you’ll thank me when we get there on time.” Anzu smiled at her friend, her voice low and soft as she rubbed a hand over the top of her head, ruffling her hair slightly.

She only received a snort in response. Mimihime moved away in one fluid movement, pressing her shoulder against the door and turning her face to the landscape that paraded outside, ruins, brush, traces of roads that had once been important, all tinged with the amber tone of the afternoon.

“When we get stuck in the middle of nowhere,” she muttered without taking her eyes off the horizon, “I’ll say goodbye to you and walk back.”

Taking this as the end of the conversation, Anzu sighed as she returned to her respective seat and folded the paper map.

Honestly? She didn’t understand others sometimes. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she showed that she was just as capable as anyone else there, she felt like her opinion was always the one most easily dismissed. Like she was always on the wrong side of the equation. Like no matter how many arguments she brought, there was always a silence, a hesitation, a kind of polite condescension in the air.

“The world is a very big place ” she thought “It’s hard to feel so small like this” 

Looking at the front passenger seat, she frowned as she gave it a small kick. Because he could have at least tried to support her. Shiro just tilted his head back, as if questioning her completely justifiable behavior. She just gave him an angry look and turned her gaze back to the window.

She really hoped she was wrong about the sinking feeling in her stomach that they were going the wrong way.

~~~

When after about two hours, the car simply slowed down and after Taka cursed, it stopped completely. Mimihime felt like laughing. Laughing, crying, throwing herself off the nearest bridge…

She contented herself with staring at Anzu. For solid, long seconds. One of those looks that carried centuries of passive-aggressive judgment.

Anzu consequently turned red. A red that started at the tips of her ears and spread like fire across her entire face.

“Stop thinking so highly of yourself!”

“ thinking so highly of yourself, right, funny way of saying i was right” Mimihime thought.

The four of them got out of the car, doors creaking and heels itching from the tall, prickly grass.

“Right…we can’t be too far from a major highway, right?” Taka asked as he rubbed his neck and looked around. Trees, trees, and more trees. On the left, a wall of green so dense it seemed impossible to cross. Ahead, a narrow, potholed road overgrown with weeds and silence. Nothing but emptiness. A vacuum of vegetation.

Shiro shrugged and just rummaged through the backseat until he found the same map, opening it on the hood of the car and inspecting everything. “Apparently there is a road tangent to ours a few meters ahead, maybe some cars stopped there that we can extract fuel from.”

“Right! So it’s something easy to fix, right?” No one answered. “We just need to go there, get some fresh gas, put it in this beauty and we’ll be good to go!” No one answered. Although the silence didn’t seem to discourage the young man, who just looked at the map for a few more seconds before grabbing a red gallon from his suitcase. “Usami and I will look for it while you two keep an eye on this junk.”

Anzu quickly stepped forward “What? No way! I’m going with you!”

“We need someone to keep an eye on our car. Our belongings are in there.” Taka looked at her with a fondness that was directed only at her.

“I don’t mind staying,” Mimihime said promptly. Taka watched her for several long minutes, then looked at Shiro. And she could feel her stomach churning. As if he was searching for any reason, one measly nod and her offer would be dismissed as if it had never existed.

Shiro however just watched her before sighing “You and Anzu can go, I'll stay here with her”

Taka shrugged, but didn't object. He turned to Anzu and offered her his arm while holding the empty gallon with the other. The young woman just smiled and accepted it, both of them walking side by side down the road, like a fairy tale where nothing would ever go wrong.

3.4 seconds later Mimihime sighed as she sat on the hood of the car, the metal groaning but supporting her. Bending her legs, she rested her elbows on them as she continued to stare at where the silhouettes of the lovebirds had once been.

“Are you mad at her?” he asked, after a while.

“No,” Mimihime replied without hesitation. “Just tired… I hate it when they do that.”

“Do what?” Shiro asked, turning to face her head on.

“Treating me like I know less or am inferior.” She huffed, crossing her arms in pent-up anger and staring in the direction where Anzu and Taka had disappeared moments before . She expected them to trip over a pebble.

“They don’t do that, they’re just temperamental, that’s all,” he replied as he leaned against the side of the car next to her.

“We’re the same age and everything! Why is it that when she says something he obeys without question?”

Shiro hesitated. He just stared at her in silence for a few seconds. He never got used to seeing her frustrated. And yet, there was something almost charming about the way she got angry—the way she wrinkled her nose, the way her voice dropped a half-tone, the way her ears moved in little involuntary twitches. He wouldn’t say it, even under torture, but he found Mimihime adorable even when she was sulking. Or maybe especially when she was sulking. There was something genuine about her that defied all logic.

“Maybe,” he began slowly, “it has to do with their current situation.”

Mimihime stared at him, her head tilting to the side in hidden curiosity. “Current situation?”

“Yes.” He ran his hand over the back of his neck and looked away, fixing his gaze on the dark outline of the forest ahead. Not because there was anything interesting there, but because continuing to look at her, with that curious and adorably bored face, would only make him more nervous. “They’re getting married. It… seems like the kind of thing couples do, I guess. Trust without doubting.”

“Hmm,” she muttered in understanding before leaning closer to him. And before Shiro could even register what was happening, a small impact occurred on his shoulder. He blinked in surprise as he watched as Mimihime glared at him with evident irritation. “Then why don’t you do it to me?!”

“Huh??” Shiro widened his eyes.

“I would have appreciated your help a few hours ago ! Maybe, just maybe, if you had said something, we wouldn’t be here, stranded in the middle of nowhere.” She spread her arms wide, indicating the vast emptiness around them. A crow cawed in the distance, as if echoing her indignation.

“I-I didn’t think it would be relevant…”

“Of course it would be relevant!” Crossing her arms, she looked away as she felt her chest tighten with something she couldn’t name. “I would support you in an argument, you know?”

Their relationship was something new, yes. New to them, new in a way that they couldn't describe. They weren't married, but they weren't just friends either. With Mimihime, definitions always seemed to slip away, like sand through one's fingers. In Mimihime's case, Shiro had a special place that she simply couldn't name. She wasn't the type of person to create expectations about someone, on the contrary, she was someone extremely adaptable. So she couldn't explain exactly why she was so upset.

“I…” Shiro began, raising his hands in a failed and interrupted attempt to reach her. Oh, he was terrible at comforting, even more terrible at trying to understand feelings. It wasn’t much different with her. It was obvious that she was upset, why hadn’t he said anything during their argument in the car?

As if she could practically feel his discomfort and mental indecision, she turned back to face him, her ears twitching slightly as they always did when she thought of something that bothered her.

“Forget it,” she muttered as she got off the makeshift seat and took a few steps towards the thick forest. Observing the trees with extremely tall canopies and branches that intertwined with each other. Standing on a thin, dry branch, a small white bird stood out. She watched it closely until it hopped further into the forest. Trivial, that was trivial. And yet… Turning to face a still extremely confused Shiro, she pointed at him, “Stay here, I’ll be right back.” Turning back, she started walking again.

“W-what? H-hey!” Shiro rushed over, literally tripping over his own feet as he ran towards her. “What are you going to do there? It’s dangerous.”

Mimihime stopped, turning on her heel in one fluid motion. She stared at him with a mixture of patience and exasperation, as if she already knew exactly what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth.

“I don’t know, I just want to see.” Truthfully, she had no idea why she wanted to go in that direction. “And you.” She poked him in the chest, making him frown. “You have to watch our transportation. If they both come back and only have the wheels, you’ll be the one to blame.”

She almost felt bad for the way his expression fell, his gaze darting between the car now behind them and her, clearly in an internal conflict of duties. His expression fell slightly, his shoulders hunching just a little.

Sighing, Mimihime stepped closer once more, closing the distance between them until she could feel the warmth of his body. She had to tilt her face up, lifting her chin “ when did you get so tall?” she thought.

“Hey, don’t worry. It’s like, uh…” She searched for the right words. Talking about it was never easy. It never had been. It was one of those things that seemed to make sense only to her, until she tried to put it into words . But Kona had once understood and comforted her about it, Shiro wouldn’t be much different she imagined “It’s like you know exactly what wire to pull before you even know which part of something is broken.” He tilted his head, still confused, still worried, but alert “I have this thing, I don’t know what to call it, I just know things sometimes before they happen… and sometimes I have a feeling about doing something.”

“Hm,” he muttered, not fully understanding but nodding anyway.

“Then don’t worry about me, okay?” She smiled as she rested both her hands on his chest. She didn’t know what exactly, but there was something extremely fascinating about how her tiny hands contrasted against the surface they were on,

“I’d rather you stay where I can see you,” he said in his usual monotone, as if it were something extremely common and trivial. He looked at her like that, when it was just the two of them. Her heart skipped a beat and she pulled away while laughing.

“Hoho someone is getting overprotective” She smiled cheekily as she stared at him with raised eyebrows, hands on her hips and a pompous look “What’s next? Proposing to me like those two?”

She knew, even before the sentence was finished, that she had won that little battle.

Shiro froze.

Literally.

His eyes widened, his hands flung wildly into the air, as if he were trying to capture his dignity before it slipped away. His face turned red in a matter of seconds. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly, without making a sound, like a fish that had just been pulled out of the water, struggling to find air.

It was absolutely adorable.

Mimihime couldn't contain her laughter , turning back to the forest and walking between branches and rocks. She half expected to hear footsteps behind her, but was pleased to realize that he had indeed heard her and allowed her to follow her own path, even if she herself didn't know what that path was.

“ Now it’ll just be me and him for a while I guess... ” She thought, her heart clenching. “ Oh...so that’s it .”

That was the reason for the strange feeling since I knew they were leaving, a subtle restlessness that insisted on living under her skin . She had already lost too many friends. She knew that Taka and Anzu were happy, the way they touched each other, how they laughed together even at the smallest things , she didn't really understand this whole marriage thing or why they would want to go far away...but she didn't understand a lot of things, she supposed.

Pushing some bushes out of the way, she sighed as the trees became less prevalent, a clearing perhaps?

She sighed, staring at the grassy ground beneath her feet. More time with Shiro wouldn't be bad, in fact, there was something calming about the idea of being alone with him for a while , but how would she know the others were okay? Who could she sleep with when she had a nightmare other than Anzu? Who would cut her hair?

Clenching her hands into fists, she thought of Tokio, oh how she missed Tokio. She wished she could talk to her . That was all. She wished she could tell her everything: about Anzu, Taka, the nightmares, the strange fear of being left behind, the way Shiro would blush at a silly joke. She always felt better after talking to her friend. But she didn't even know where she was. Or if she was alive.

All train of thought was abruptly cut off when she looked up and widened her still teary eyes, because this was definitely not a clearing. A small house or some kind of warehouse, covered in vines, weeds and falling apart. But that wasn't what caught her attention. It was the huge truck that was parked in front of her.

“ That must be like, 3 cars!” She thought , sadness temporarily pushed to the back of her mind by curiosity surging through her.

Even standing on tiptoe she couldn't reach the window, luckily there was something like a step and she balanced herself while resting her hands on the dust-fogged glass and looking inside. Nothing interesting. But maybe...

She looked back the way she had come, she wondered...

Should he call Shiro? Come back and tell him what he found?

Or…

She could explore on her own. Maybe that was what she needed to do.

She turned back to the small storage room, pushing the door open with some difficulty, which gave way with a snap as thick vines broke. Light coming from some gaps in the cracked ceiling drew thin beams in the air laden with suspended particles.

Mimihime kept her shoulders hunched and her steps careful, dodging pieces of rotten wood and fallen objects—a shovel with no handle, a boot full of dirt, what looked like a crushed birdcage. Everything was covered in dust, as if no one had been there in years. Maybe decades. The place had looked desolate even before the cataclysm.

And then she saw it, a red, though still dusty, highlight between two rusty barrels and the skeleton of a bicycle broken in half.

A gallon of gasoline.

It was covered in a thin crust of dust and small cobwebs. Still, when she reached out and lifted it with effort, she felt its weight. Enough so that her arms trembled slightly. It wasn’t full, of course, but… it was far from empty. Her fingers found the rusty lid and she turned it carefully, the muscles in her hands straining against time and neglect. A dry snap indicated that the seal had given way. Mimihime leaned in, bringing her face closer to the mouthpiece, the familiar, sour smell invading her nose.

She frowned. It was old, but still recognizable. Still burnable, perhaps.

“Shiro would definitely know if this is worth taking or not…” she muttered to herself.

Closing the lid again, she looked back at the truck. In the worst case scenario, if they couldn't find any more gas or if the one she had was bad… that could be a plan B.

She looked around once more, registering the location as if to imprint the position of everything in her mind. With both hands holding the gallon against her chest, she turned around and left the warehouse the same way she entered.

The sky outside seemed a little brighter than before, perhaps it was just the impression after leaving that dark place. The fresh forest air hit her face and she took a deep breath, tasting the earth and new leaves in her mouth.

Carrying the gallon with some effort, she walked back along the same path as before, now marked by her own footprints and the bushes that had been pushed aside. With each step, her arms ached a little more; she wasn't strong, not like Taka. But she squeezed her fingers tighter on the plastic handles.

And as she walked, the gallon lightly tapping against her legs, she thought, surprising even herself, about Shiro's reaction. Worried at first, curious then... And, deep down, maybe even a little proud. She hoped so.

When the edge of the trail finally revealed the car in the distance, she let out a long, satisfied sigh, her heart still tight. She hadn't come all this way in vain. And now she knew why.

Shiro let out a tired sigh as he examined the car's engine with a frown and greasy fingers. He was leaning over the hood, his body half-hidden by the raised dashboard, when a familiar noise caught his attention.

He straightened up too quickly, hitting his head with a dull thud on the hood.

“ Agh—!! ”

A hoarse growl escaped through his teeth as he massaged his forehead with one hand. “What the hell…” he muttered, eyes narrowing as he peered under the hood, still half-dazed.

Mimihime was crossing the space between the trees with determined steps, her face sweaty and flushed, her hair disheveled by branches and leaves, and a heavy gasoline can in her thin arms, which she held with as much strength and dignity as she could muster. The sight was as unexpected as it was impressive. Shiro's eyes widened.

He blinked in astonishment before taking two quick steps towards her. Then two more. And in the blink of an eye, he was running, almost tripping over his own feet in the momentum.

When he reached her, his eyes raked her up and down with urgent intensity, checking to see if she was hurt, if she was limping, if there was any sign of blood or deep scratches. Nothing. Just leaves stuck to her clothes, dust on her elbows, and a satisfied expression on her face. Then he finally noticed what she was carrying.

“You... where did you find this?” he asked, now breathless, pointing at the gallon with a mixture of surprise and genuine curiosity.

Mimihime smiled at him, and just raised her head a little, as if to say "see?"

Shiro, still slightly open-mouthed, carefully took the gallon from her hands. Carrying the container to the car, he quickly fitted it precisely into the nozzle of the improvised tank. The familiar sound of liquid flowing into the reservoir. He didn't even need to smell it to know that it was still good.

When he finished, he wiped his hands on the cloth he carried in his pocket and turned around , and that's when Mimihime noticed.

He was smiling.

Not the usual restrained smile, nor the one that appeared half-intentionally when she said something too silly. It was a small smile, yes, but genuine, and with a rare warmth in her eyes. Pride.

Her chest felt strangely heaving. It hurt and comforted her at the same time. Like a warm blanket on a feverish day.

“You really know what to do every time huh...” he said simply, and in that neutral, almost cold tone, there was something that sounded like a huge compliment.

Before she could say anything, footsteps coming from the trail announced the arrival of Taka and Anzu. The couple appeared sweaty, tired, and mostly empty-handed. Anzu grimaced when she saw them reunited.

“We found nothing but a dead rat and a flat tire,” she said, frustrated.

Mimihime just pointed with her thumb at the now empty gallon beside the car, without wiping the smile from her face. Taka raised his eyebrows, genuinely impressed, while Anzu stared at her with an unreadable expression.

“Did you find it?” he asked.

She nodded once, already sitting on the hood of the car, swinging her legs with the tranquility of someone who had accomplished an important mission. Shiro was next to her, one knee on the bumper, focused on pulling out small burrs stuck in the fabric of her coat, something she hadn't even noticed before, but now realized that they covered part of her arm and collar.

When he found a stubborn tangle near her neck, his fingers hesitated for a second, lightly brushing her skin, and Mimihime's heart gave an unexpected leap, the kind of leap that no one sees but that shakes everything inside.

“Thank you,” she said softly, more for the gesture than anything else.

“I just don’t want you to have this bothering you,” he replied without looking directly at her, but the slight blush on his ears gave away more than he would ever admit.

Taka stretched with his arms above his head, the muscles in his shoulders creaking with tiredness and relief, before turning to the others with a determined expression.

“If we have gas,” he said, looking at the now empty can and then at the car, “then we can get back on the road. Maybe we can still make it before dark.”

Shiro nodded without saying anything, already opening the passenger door and sitting down, as did the rest of the group. Pulling the folded map from the glove compartment, he spread it out on his knees, his hands sliding over the yellowed paper covered in graphite notes.

“If we go back the way to the left,” he began, pointing with his finger, “and cut through this section here, we should be able to avoid the roadblocks Taka saw on the way. With luck, we’ll make it before nightfall.”

Taka leaned over the bench to observe, nodding in agreement, already discussing with him the chances of safety, flooded sections and possible shortcuts. The conversation continued steadily, full of practical terms, names of places Mimihime didn't know well and predictions.

She heard, of course. But not with her ears. It was with her chest. And it was her chest that began to tighten.

Mimihime blinked slowly, feeling the lump in her throat rise like a tide. Her eyes turned, half-intentionally, to Anzu, who was looking at her with a tired little smile, one of those that said “we did it” even without words.

And then, for some reason she herself didn't immediately understand, Mimihime felt like crying.

The world around them seemed to go muffled for a moment, as if someone had doused their heads in warm water. Shiro and Taka's voices continued in the background, like white noise. Maps. Paths. Plans. Goodbyes.

Because that was it, wasn't it? That was a goodbye.

They were leaving.

Anzu was leaving. Taka was leaving. How long would it be before Shiro was leaving?

She had known it all along, but now, it was real. Inescapable. And it hurt. More than she wanted to admit. More than she thought she could bear.

Anzu noticed the strange silence before seeing her friend's face. She turned around with a casual air, but then her entire body gave a small jolt when she saw the tears streaming openly down Mimihime's face, her eyes wide and watery with an unnamed feeling.

“H-Hoshio…?” Her voice came out weak, confused “What is it? What happened?”

Mimihime didn't answer right away. She just shook her head, trying to hold back the sobs that were already threatening to shatter her breath into pieces.

“Hey, hey…” Anzu quickly leaned over, rummaging through her pocket and pulling out a faded cloth handkerchief. “Is everything okay? I-is that still because I insisted on making that right turn? Or—”

“No...” Mimihime finally managed to say, in a shaky whisper, “It’s just... you guys are leaving.”

Anzu froze for a second, her handkerchief suspended in midair, her expression slowly fading.

“Oh...” The rest of the sentence was lost. She didn’t know what to say.

Mimihime sniffed, squeezing her eyes shut tightly, as if she wanted to expel everything inside her at once. “Sorry. It’s selfish, right?”

“No, it’s not,” Anzu replied immediately, her voice firmer now. She took her friend’s hands in hers, squeezing tightly. “It’s not selfish. I’m sad too… much more than I thought I would be.”

Mimihime hesitated for a second, her eyes still teary, she slowly leaned forward and rested her face on Anzu's shoulder, her forehead touching the soft fabric of her friend's worn coat.

“Please don’t go”

Anzu sighed. A long, tired, pained sound. Her fingers moved slowly to her friend's brown hair, beginning to caress it with an almost maternal delicacy, combing the strands with her fingertips.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly, “But we have to go. It’s the right place for us right now… But you’ll be fine.” She pressed her chin lightly onto the top of Mimihime’s head. “You and Usami. You take care of yourselves. And we can come visit. Really.”

Mimihime pulled away just enough to look her friend directly in the eyes. Her face was still wet, and her eyelashes were stuck together with tears. She bit her lip hard, as if she was still trying to hold back a shred of hope.

“Are you really going?” Her voice was so small it sounded fragile, brittle.

Anzu held his gaze for a moment. Then she nodded firmly. “I will. I promise.”

Mimihime nodded, though there was no relief on her face. Only resignation. She hugged her again, tighter this time, her arms wrapped around Anzu's torso as if to keep her there for a few more seconds. Just a few more.

Anzu returned the hug, going back to stroking her hair, his own eyes moist now.

She looked over her friend's shoulder and stared at Shiro, her shoulders hunched slightly. Her gaze was fixed on Mimihime, watching her every move with a dense expression, a mix of deep concern and quiet sympathy.

Anzu stared at him for a long second.

“Take good care of her, okay?” She whispered.

Shiro swallowed hard. And nodded once, firmly, his eyes locked on Anzu's, and then back on Mimihime.

Anzu then closed her eyes for a moment, still stroking her friend's hair. Trying to record the touch, the smell, the muffled sound of Mimihime's tearful breathing against her shoulder. She knew that this farewell would hurt for a long time. She knew that no future visit would erase the absence that would come later. But she also knew that she was leaving her friend in safe hands.

Chapter Text

“I think it’s going to rain today,” Mimihime commented casually, leaning against the window sill. The view outside could not suggest anything less than the opposite, the cloudless scarlet blue sky and the sun at its peak.

“Is that so?” Shiro asked behind her, and she could hear the sound of metal being rested against the table he was standing on. He was assembling what looked like a small hand-cranked generator. The rust was a hindrance, but Shiro was used to making things work that others considered lost.

The room they were in was a capsule of silence in the middle of a ruined city. The walls were peeling and covered in a grayish-yellow hue. Cracks formed invisible maps, crisscrossing ceilings and corners, but there were no leaks there, at least not yet.

There was little furniture in the room, a workbench that was littered with scrap metal, exposed wires, dismantled engines, a row of batteries he had collected over weeks of scavenging, and a bed they both slept in. In the far corner of the room was a large window. 

Mimihime muttered in affirmation, resting her head on her arms.

He walked toward her with his usual silent gait. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt rolled up to his elbows and black pants. His hands were stained with grease, but clean enough to show that he had stopped what he was doing just for her.

He turned his face toward the sky, as if trying to see what she saw.

“You sure?” he asked, eyes squinting in the light.

"I think so."

“If it rains, it will be good for the crops,” 

"I know"

The “plantation,” as Shiro called it, more out of hope than accuracy, was actually a makeshift and stubborn vegetable garden growing on the roof of the building. Repurposed paint buckets, large metal cans, cut-up bottles, and even a few tires had been carefully lined up by him, filled with the scarce soil they had managed to carry from nearby. Some of the seeds came from packets that had miraculously survived the test of time, others were wild, plucked from cracks in the concrete or found in the pockets of old clothes.

Drinking water, in turn, was a constant miracle.

The entire structure consisted of just two plastic tanks, one of which was patched together with resin and tape. Shiro had set up a rudimentary filtration system using charcoal, sand, and thick fabric, but that didn't solve the problem of where the water came from. That was why he monitored the sky more than anyone else. A good rain, even a brief one, could provide days of irrigation and consumption. A heavy rain, the kind that cleaned the air and washed the world, could save the entire month.

So even with the sky clear and the sun setting over the ruined city, Shiro didn't doubt in the slightest when Mimihime said it would rain. She used to have a strange sensitivity to certain things. And after everything they had been through, he had learned that there were truths that didn't come from logic.

Shiro's eyes slowly moved down from Mimihime's face, where the soft sunlight caressed her pale skin, to the point where her body ended, or rather, where it now ended.

Both legs had been amputated just a few weeks before. The infection, something that spread stealthily, hidden for days until it showed signs too glaring to ignore, was advancing too quickly for any other response. The decision had been cruel, extreme, desperate.

Now, where the legs he had seen run and leap over ruins and walk beside him for so many miles had stood, there were only short stumps wrapped in ragged bandages. The bandages were stained dark, still damp in spots, fresh blood from the barely healed stitches. Even with the bandages changed every day, the process was slow. Hard. And painful, physically and emotionally.

He had done what he could with the tools he had: an improvised scalpel, filtered gas station alcohol, sewing thread boiled in old mineral water. And with that, he had extracted something from her that no words could give back.

The place where she leaned had been prepared by him with an almost ritualistic obsession. The loveseat was surrounded by old pillows, folded blankets, cushions rescued from one of the neighboring apartments, and even curtains rolled up to serve as support. Each fold of fabric had a function: to cushion the contact with the bandages, to prevent prolonged pressure on the wounds, to provide some comfort in what should have been unbearable. He cleaned it daily, even when she insisted that it didn’t need it.

Still, Mimihime stood there, whole in what was left of her. Her head resting on her arms, her eyes fixed on the sky with the same tranquility as always. She looked serene. She always did.

Shiro opened his mouth, taking a deep breath. He searched for words that didn't exist , or if they did, he didn't know how to put them together properly. He wanted to ask if she was sleeping well. He wanted to tell her that everything would be okay. But everything got stuck in his throat, because maybe she didn't want to hear any of that.

And before he could say anything, she moved.

She sat up slightly on the loveseat, her expression changing subtly. The emotional haze that had been shrouding her face lifted for a moment, replaced by a sudden focus. Her eyes narrowed, intent. Her body leaned forward, elbows gripping the windowsill.

“There’s someone down there,” she said, her voice low and firm.

“Someone?” he repeated, already bending down to look as well. His hands rested beside hers, and his gaze swept the grounds below the building. From the eighth floor, the view was privileged, even with some of the tall grass swallowing up the old streets and sidewalks. The remains of a roundabout were visible, covered in vines.

“There,” she pointed with her finger.

Shiro followed the invisible line.

A silhouette. Someone, or something, was moving along the edge of the vegetation.

Shiro crossed the room with a clear destination in mind: the bottom drawer of the workbench. There was an old pair of binoculars there, and he carefully picked them up, wiping a layer of dust off with his sleeve before returning to Mimihime.

It took a few seconds for the lens to focus, the rusty mechanism creaking beneath his fingers. But then the image came into focus: there was, indeed, a figure walking down the overgrown street. A man. His jacket was heavy, clearly dirty and worn. He limped, each step uneven, as if his left knee were locked or injured. He carried a canvas backpack on his back, and his left arm swung oddly, as if it were bandaged beneath it.

Shiro slowly lowered the binoculars.

“It’s just a man,” he said as if speaking more to himself than to her. “He appears injured. He won’t pose a threat.”

Mimihime turned her face towards him.

“What do we do?”

“We ignore,” he replied.

“Are you serious?” The eyes narrowed slightly, a subtle sign of disagreement with the action.

“We don’t know who he is. Where he’s from. We can’t just go down and bring a stranger in here. Not now.”

Mimihime didn't respond right away. She just held Shiro's gaze for a long moment, as if she was waiting for him to realize the contradiction in the logic he was trying to use to convince her.

“You also didn’t knew if Kazuo was trustworthy when he showed up asking for help.”

The name hung in the air. It was impossible to deny. Months ago, an unshaven man with sunken eyes and an exhausted expression had knocked on the metal doors of the building. He was hungry, soaked, and his leg was infected. And despite all his misgivings, Mimihime had insisted that they let him in.

Today, Kazuo was part of what was left of their routine. He fixed the pipes, filtered the water when Shiro was too busy, hunted small prey, and gathered dry firewood from the surrounding area. He never asked for anything in return, other than a safe place to sleep and sometimes a little silence. He never made any attempt to betray the trust they had reluctantly received. He was, in Shiro's eyes, someone trustworthy. And that left him with no argument.

Shiro held the binoculars for a second longer before placing them on the counter, his gaze still locked on Mimihime.

“I'll be right back.”

He turned, his footsteps muffled on the floor, crossing the room and through the door into the main hall of the floor.

The space outside was large, a former reception hall that had been transformed into a sort of makeshift warehouse. Dismantled shelves now held boxes of tools, food scraps, fabrics, clothing, and neatly braided electrical cables. A row of reused bottles held filtered water, labeled with colored tape to distinguish between “potable” and “general purpose.”

Kazuo was there, as usual, crouched in front of a wooden box organizing his tools all morning. Seeing Shiro pass by, he looked up with a moderately worried expression.

“Is Mrs. Hoshio okay?”

Shiro stopped in the hallway that led to the emergency stairs. He looked at the older man for a second, then nodded curtly.

“She's fine. We just saw someone down there.”

Kazuo straightened his body, wiping his hands on his pants before stepping closer. “Looking dangerous?”

“A man, alone. He appears injured. He is walking down the street on the east side, where the sidewalk has collapsed.”

“Do you want me to go with you? Just in case.”

Shiro shook his head. “No. If it’s a trap, it’s best not to draw too much attention to it. I’m just going to see what it is.”

He then turned, already starting to walk down the concrete stairs. He still didn't know if this was a good idea. But he knew that, in the end, what guided him wasn't strategy, it was the silent faith he placed in Mimihime's intuition. It always had been.

The sun was still bright when Shiro pushed open the side door of the building and stepped out onto the crumbling street. Heat seeped through the cracked walls, pooling in the twisted asphalt and the thick shadows cast by the crumbling buildings around them.

He squinted against the light, his body alert. The handle of his survival knife tapped discreetly against the side of his leg as he walked through the tall grass, his eyes scanning the horizon.

The soft sound of a branch breaking in the distance made him stop. He quickly turned his face, already mentally pulling up the map of the terrain.

And then he saw him.

The figure that had been a distant silhouette was now clearly visible a few feet away. The man stopped as well, his eyes squinting against the sun. He was sweating, limping visibly, and his dark jacket seemed too heavy for someone moving in this heat. His left sleeve was wrapped with frayed strips of cloth, and his left leg trembled under its own weight.

For a second, the two of them just stared at each other. A moment of frozen surprise, as if they were both waiting for the other to move first.

Then the man raised his right hand in a cautious wave, palm open, fingers spread.

"Hello! I'm Inazaki," he said, his voice hoarse and worn, "Inazaki Robin."

Shiro didn’t answer right away. He was assessing. Watching the way he stood his ground despite his injury; the way he avoided direct eye contact.

"Usami," he finally replied, "Are you hurt?"

Robin made a sound that was somewhere between a dry laugh and a pained gasp. “My knee. Got a bad fall. I think I tore something. And my arm…” He glanced briefly at his left side, where the makeshift bandages were dripping down his jacket, stained an ancient red. “I don’t know if it’s broken or dislocated. It hurts all the way down to the bridge.”

"The bridge?"

“I almost collapsed trying to cross a sewer. Kinda crooked structure. You know how it is.”

Shiro nodded. He knew exactly. The entire eastern zone was full of invisible traps: passages that seemed stable but gave way under weight; false trails; structures that time and neglect were slowly eating away at.

“Can you walk a little further?”

“I can,” Robin replied. “Slowly, but I can.”

“Then come with me,” Shiro said, turning on his heel and leading the way back. “We have a safe place nearby. I can take a look at your arm.”

Robin did not hesitate. His steps were unsteady, but they were steady.

When they arrived in front of the building, Shiro looked over his shoulder, gesturing with his hand for the other to wait. He climbed the first steps and pushed the metal door with his shoulder, looking inside.

Kazuo was already watching them from the shadow of the hallway. He didn't say anything. He just met Shiro's gaze and inclined his head slightly in silent approval.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked, his voice low.

“Found it” Shiro replied, not needing to explain further.

“Does he look bad?”

“More hurt than dangerous.”

Kazuo made a sound of agreement in his throat and turned around, going back to what he was doing.

Shiro went out again, down the steps and signaled for Robin to follow him. The man sighed, but obeyed anyway, no place would be worse than where he had been.

~

“Any pain?” Shiro asked quietly.

He gently brushed away some strands of her hair, revealing her right ear. She had been complaining of a slight numbness that spread across the sides of her head, and Shiro, as always, took it upon himself to check everything with the meticulous patience.

His fingers felt slowly, pressing precisely, his thumb gliding along the base of her skull to her earlobe. With each touch, he waited for a signal, a sharper sigh, a grimace, a slight jerk of her shoulders. But she didn’t respond.

She just shook her head negatively.

Shiro nodded, his gaze still fixed on her contours, and then began to analyze her arms. Even though this was more of a medical examination than anything, he still couldn't help but feel extremely uneasy about the fact that she was completely exposed, skin marked by old bruises and whitish scars as exposed as everything else. With his thumbs, he gently pressed her forearm, then her wrists, and finally her finger joints. Always attentive, always looking for signs that she might not admit out loud.

“And our guest… Inazaki, right?” she said, without looking at him. “Is he okay?”

“Yes. I did the best I could. His leg is now solid, and his arm wasn’t broken, it was just dislocated. He will recover without complications.”

They were both sitting on the bed they shared, Mimihime had her torso slightly leaning forward, her eyes fixed on some unspecified point while her fingers played absentmindedly with the hem of the sheet. Shiro was in front of her, his knees bent, supporting himself with one leg off the mattress.

“Then why haven’t you introduced me to him yet?”

“I...” he began, but stopped.

Mimihime slowly turned her face, her eyes meeting his.

“He’s been here for days,” she continued. “You’ve been treating him, Kazuo’s talked to him… even that dog that wanders around the courtyard has seen him. I’m the only one who hasn’t.”

Shiro looked away. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, then slid his fingers over the mattress, as if searching for a way to justify this without seeming too protective.

“I wanted to wait until … Until I was sure that… that he wasn’t a threat. I just…” he sighed again, frustrated with his own inability to translate what he was feeling. “You’ve been through so much. I didn’t want you to have to deal with another variable now. And… maybe I was scared.”

The silence that followed was not uncomfortable. They both breathed in that familiar rhythm, where words were no longer necessary for a moment. Only their eyes spoke, and theirs said a lot, even when they looked away.

Then Mimihime leaned forward. Before he could react, he felt her fingers gently touch his cheeks, warm, small and holding them with a firm and affectionate gesture, making him look directly at her.

Shiro blinked in surprise, his eyes widening slightly.

Mimihime smiled. Not the small, restrained smile she gave when she was trying to be polite. But a full, wide smile, of someone who was genuinely amused. There was something childish and comforting about it, something that seemed out of place in this world of ruins and rust, and that was why it was so precious.

“You’re being a doting mother again,” she said, her eyes twinkling with lightness.

Shiro felt the heat rise straight from his chest to the back of his neck. The redness on his face spread almost visibly, and he quickly grabbed her hands with his own, gently pulling them away from his face.

“It’s not that...” he muttered, looking away as if the cracked wall had suddenly become the most interesting focus in the world. “I just... I want you to be safe.”

She kept her hands between his, her fingers moving lightly, sliding over the back of his hands, caressing slowly.

“And I am safe. Because of you.”

Shiro looked at her again. The intensity of her gaze disarmed him. The way she said simple things, as if they had no weight at all, and yet it threw his entire world off its axis. He swallowed hard, his blush already becoming impossible to hide.

“You always protect me, Shun. And not just from things outside.”

He cleared his throat, trying to compose himself. His fingers slipped from hers carefully, returning to the task at hand, and perhaps it was the only way he could keep calm, to occupy himself with something practical, something mechanical. He leaned in slightly again, this time running his eyes over her shoulders, then down her chest and arms. The marks he was looking for were not there, not visible at least.

“ There don’t seem to be any more,” he said, his voice sounding more clinical now, colder, as if he was clinging to technique to keep from being swallowed up by his emotions. “Let’s just change the bandages and we can call it a day.”

Mimihime nodded, saying nothing more, letting him do what he needed to do. She knew what he was like. She knew that this meticulous gesture was his way of telling her he loved her. Every cautious touch, every silent examination, every night he woke to check if she was still breathing, it was all love.

Shiro slowly rose from the mattress, the muscles in his right leg creaking slightly from the time he had been in the same position. His bare feet made little sound against the floor as he crossed the room to the makeshift counter, where he retrieved a small bottle of clear antiseptic and the roll of gauze bandages.

Behind him, the soft sound of fabric being pulled indicated that she had covered herself again. Pullying the worn gray sheet up to her shoulders, curling up as if she wanted to sink into the warmth that her body left in the bed. She snuggled there, eyes closed for a moment, her arms beneath the fabric, her breathing finally calmer. As intimate as they were, as much as she trusted him with her eyes closed, there was something comforting about feeling covered again, enveloped, protected from the world.

Shiro approached again, holding the materials carefully, already preparing to slide the blanket just in the lower area and begin the process, when they were interrupted.

Knock, knock.

The knock on the door wasn't particularly loud, but the sound echoed clearly in that quiet room, and before any of them could react, the doorknob turned with a slow creak, and the door swung partially open with a careless push.

“Usami? The hunt was a success, man! Kazuo got a first-time shot at a full-grown deer, can you believe it? And with the traps you set up… it was—” Robin trailed off.

Silence fell heavily on the room like a thick blanket of snow. He had come in speaking with the excitement typical of someone bringing good news, but as soon as his eyes fell on the figure curled up on the bed, her face flushed and her eyes wide as they stared back at him, the words died in his throat. Mimihime was partially hidden under the blanket, but her face was fully visible, as was part of her exposed shoulder.

Robin blinked in surprise, then immediately raised his hands in a universal gesture of apology, his eyes darting elsewhere in the room.

“I’m sorry, I really am, I didn’t know… that you were here,” he said, his voice hurried and embarrassed, “I should have waited outside, of course, my bad. But… it’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Hoshio.”

Shiro remained still for a second, still with the bottle of antiseptic and the roll of gauze between his fingers. For a moment, he considered the absurdity of the situation , the interrupted scene of something so meticulously careful, intimate, safe, now exposed to prying eyes because of a door opened without permission, it seemed like an almost violent invasion.

Still, a small, nagging part of him thought that perhaps it had been a stroke of luck. Mimihime had just questioned him about why she hadn’t been introduced to Robin Inazaki yet. She had wanted to meet him, and now fate seemed to have literally pushed that forward. Maybe this would break the ice. Maybe it would make it easier—

“Get out,” Mimihime said.

Her voice was low, but there was something sharp in that single word. Neither Robin nor Shiro moved immediately. They both blinked, taken aback. Her tone wasn’t shy. It wasn’t embarrassed. It was an order.

“I know, I know, I shouldn’t have barged in like that, sorry. But, geez, I was expecting a warmer welcome…”

It was when Shiro looked at her again that any trace of lightness or relief drained from him.

Mimihime didn't just look surprised. She looked panicked.

Her shoulders were hunched as if she wanted to disappear into her own body. The sheet, previously pulled up to her shoulders, was now held tightly in her white, tense hands, her fingers buried in the fabric. Her hair seemed to stand on end in some strands, as if every fiber of her body was on alert, her pupils contracted to the extreme, locked on Robin as if he were a predator about to pounce. It was a look of absolute terror, and for Shiro, who knew every nuance of her expression, the impact was immediate.

“She said to leave”

Robin froze. The embarrassed smile disappeared in a flash. The tension in the room was palpable now, as if the air had thickened between the cracks in the walls. He raised both hands.

“All right,” he said quickly. “All right. I’m going.” And he took a step back. Then another. Then he closed the door behind him without another word.

The dry click of the lock sounded louder than any words would have.

Shiro let out a slow breath, as if he had been holding it throughout the entire interaction. His eyes returned to Mimihime. She was still in the same position, curled up, the blanket pressed against her chest, her eyes fixed on where Robin had been seconds before. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, as if she had just finished running.

“Hey,” Shiro said softly, “What’s wrong?”

She didn't respond immediately. Her eyes blinked slowly, as if she was returning to the present.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I… I didn’t mean to react like that. But…”

“No need to apologize,” he interrupted immediately. Shiro dropped the materials on the bed and took one of her hands in his, gently loosening her fingers “It was unexpected. You were just startled. That’s all. It’s okay.”

Her eyes filled with a restrained moisture.

“Do you trust him?” she asked, without looking up.

“I trust… enough to leave him stay here. Why?”

Mimihime buried herself deeper into the blanket until it covered almost all of her face except her eyes. Her ears, partially visible between her hair and the blanket, twitched subtly.

Shiro felt her hands tighten around his. He recognized that look. That confused expression, diluted between fear and doubt, as if she was facing something that her senses captured with absolute clarity, but that the world around her could not yet see.

He didn't ask again. He just walked over, leaning in slowly, and pressed a gentle kiss against her temple.

“Tell me. What did you feel?” he murmured, his mouth still close to her skin.

She didn't respond right away, but she shifted subtly. Her body sought his, leaning against his chest, as if his warmth was the only thing that could calm the noises buzzing beneath her skin. Her shoulders were still tense, but slowly, they sagged.

“Do you plan on leaving him here for long?” she asked, her voice muffled by the fabric and Shiro’s chest.

Shiro wrapped his arms around her. 

“If you’re okay with it… yes,” he answered honestly. “He can be useful. He’s good at hunting, he helps Kazuo, and he hasn’t given any reason for suspicion.”

“I want him to go away.”

Shiro blinked, his body stiffening just a little, enough for her to notice, and he then relaxed in a gesture of care. The surprise didn't express itself in words, but it was evident in his expression. He hadn't expected that. Mimihime was too empathetic. Almost naive, at times, in the way she offered space and acceptance even to those who didn't deserve it.

But now…

“When I look at him... I smell death.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.

Shiro held his breath for a moment.

“It’s old, dry, but dense. Like meat that has rotted in silence. Like iron left in the sun for days. Like a cellar where there has been violence. And when he smiles… it doesn’t seem sincere. It seems… rehearsed.”

Shiro didn't try to argue. He didn't say it could be paranoia. He didn't say she was tired, fragile, emotional. He knew what she was. What she carried. He knew that her sensitivity went beyond the five senses that most people knew.

“Do you think he did something?” Shiro asked carefully, his heart starting to pound, a muscle clenching with growing doubt.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But I don’t want to find out the hard way.”

Shiro nodded, very slowly.

Two weeks later, Inazaki Robin volunteered to leave of his own free will.