Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A girl, illuminated by the street light, stood across the street from An’s home. She’d appeared there for several nights in a row, only visible when An woke up in the middle of the night crying out for someone who could no longer hear her. From what An could see of her, she had long blond hair tied into tight ponytails and the look of someone who had seen more than she should have at her age. Maybe she’d been kicked out of her home. Every time An called out to her, she’d disappear. A part of her wanted to dismiss the girl as a ghost, but there was a quality to her that was unmistakably alive. She’d sang once, twice, five times for An, knowing no one else could hear, and the melodies had been unlike anything An had ever heard.   

Tonight, the girl held a rose in her hands. She glanced up at An’s window. They made eye contact, if that was possible from several feet away. An took a risk, raising her blinds the rest of the way and opening the window itself. She stepped out onto the roof, taking in the night’s chill air.   

The girl smiled. An wished she knew her name. Then, she threw the rose up to An and blew her a kiss. She bowed and took a step back. She looked almost angelic in the stark lamplight. An saw the way it painted her features and the desire to kiss her became so overpowering she wondered why she didn’t say anything.  

Then she started to sing again. This time, An recognized the song – it was one her father used to play on long journeys when she was little visiting family. There Will Be Love There. Ai no Aru Basho. A melody she knew well.  

An found herself singing the words along with her midnight companion. She hadn’t sung since Nagi died, swore to herself that she wouldn’t dare disrespect her aunt’s memory by singing with less proficiency. Now, this girl had found a way to show her the beauty of song again, and An wanted to cry. Had her voice always been so shaky?  

They finished the song as one voice. An wished her friend would stay longer – they were friends, right? They couldn’t be anything less; their bond was unusual, but they had formed a connection, whether she liked it or not. The girl on the street had the most beautiful smile on her face. An wanted to ensure she knew how much her visits were appreciated, but the lamplight flickered, and footsteps echoed off into the distance. She was gone again. 

An retreated inside. She tiptoed downstairs to the kitchen, then filled a glass with water. She took it back upstairs, then set it on her bedside table and placed the rose in it.  

She dreamed of a girl underneath a lamplight, inviting her to dance, spinning her around in circles, kissing her at the end of the night, promising to return the next day with a guitar and her finest clothes.  

The way in which they’d first met had been rather strange as first meetings went. An had been unable to fall asleep after waking up from a nightmare, so she’d gone to her roof to look at the stars and calm her racing mind down. That had been when she’d seen the girl, looking perfect in her school uniform. Faintly, An had registered her as going to the private girls’ school across town, and on the very rare occasions where this became the subject of her mind, she wondered what someone who could be going to a fancy dinner would be doing in this suburb of town. 

The girl had stood there, looking at the sky, and An had looked at her. She had wondered what would make someone feel the need to leave the house so late at night when they could get a decent view of the sky from their backyard or roof, but she’d never said a word to the girl out of fear she’d leave. She’d always leave, no matter what happened. Once, An had sat on the roof and maintained eye contact with her for at least two hours. It had felt like she was being invited to look into the soul of someone she barely knew; those warm brown eyes contained dark depths. An had lost the part of her that wanted to ask what had happened to the girl when Nagi had died, and thus she’d never found the courage to say a word. 

They met up at least once a week; sometimes every night. An wanted to fall from her high perch and kiss the girl on her absolutely adorable cheeks all the time, so much so that if it wasn’t Nagi’s ghost keeping her up at night, it was her late-night friend and the undeniable crush she had on her.  

However, even though seeing the girl made An’s heart flutter, it also made her mind relax in ways she couldn’t explain. Somehow, knowing that someone else was also unable to sleep and understood the pain of life the way An did made her feel a sense of community with the girl.  

When she woke up, the birds were chirping their song, harmonies blending to create a cacophony of joy. An wished she had their passion; the talent was there, but her desire to sing had disappeared again after making its reappearance the night before. She could hear her mother’s footsteps on the stairs, probably here to wake her up and remind her she still had to go to school.  

“An, good morning,” her father said. 

She buried her face in her pillow. While she couldn’t blame him for Nagi’s death – only the cancer could be blamed for that – he was one person she still struggled to trust, even though they’d had plenty of time to talk about it and heal. It was probably the occasional ‘why don’t you get back into singing?’ comment that made her so reluctant to open up to him.  

“Kiddo, I know you’re awake.”  

An sat up. Of course he did. Her dad was a great parent – great person , and she was such an idiot for not trusting him- 

No. Stop.  

No, that wasn’t right. She was allowed to need her space, she was- 

I should be able to trust my own father. What the hell is wrong with me?   

No.  

An glanced at the rose. She felt so damn lost. Her mind was split in two, one part arguing that her feelings were valid and the other telling her to suck it up and deal with it.  

She brushed a finger against its petals. It felt surprisingly soft to the touch. When she picked it up, it carried the scent of peach buns.  

Strange. 

An set it back in its glass. The voices in her mind quieted down. She took a deep breath. “Morning,” she said.  

“You went quiet for a while there. You good, kid?”  

Vulnerability was another thing An had lost when Nagi died. If she was going to be vulnerable, she’d do so at night, when the only person awake to care was as lost as she was. Everyone around her knew what they loved and what they were going to do in the future, and yet, An and her friend were adrift in a sea of possibilities, running into each other every time the stars shone in the sky. She was willing to try being honest for once, though. “Not really.” 

“Something happen?” Her dad sounded concerned. “I know you’re mad at me, but can I come in?” 

An’s mind screamed at her to yell at him, to tell him to screw off because he didn’t know what she’d been through, didn’t know that she cried herself to sleep every night because she’d never known how to grieve – had never been taught how to grieve. Maybe Nagi had been right to want to hide her diagnosis from An. Her death made it too painful to live. She bit down on her lip until she tasted blood to stop the thoughts from spilling out, and finally, she managed to say, “Yeah.” Her voice sounded hollow. Her lip was bleeding and this was all her fault, if she’d only been able to cope with it, if she’d only be able to make her peace- 

Her father’s arms wrapped around her, and for once, An let herself cry into his shoulder like she had when she was a child. She didn’t even have the strength to scold herself for wishing her source of comfort was her nighttime friend and not her father.  

“I’m here if you want to talk,” he said. 

An nodded. The last time she’d cried like this had been when Nagi died. Her father had been there for her then; she wished she knew how to trust him properly now. “I keep having nightmares about- about-” 

“Nagi.” 

“Yeah. And I- I know I can ask for help. I just- I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I can’t let myself trust anyone anymore and I want to. I know you and Mom care about me, but I tell myself I can’t let myself be honest with you because I’m scared you’ll turn me away.” An wanted to scream. The desire to find a knife was staggering. Thoughts of her own blood pouring out from her arm invaded her headspace and poisoned her soul. She wanted to run away. 

“I’m sorry that’s happened,” her father said.  

Wait. What? 

“If you need to take the day off, I get it. It’s been a while since we’ve had a conversation, and school is probably the last place you want to be.”  

“That’s okay?” 

“There’s a lot going on, kiddo. Missing a day of school will probably be better for you than going.” He paused. “Did you sleep?” 

“At two-thirty in the morning,” An said. “I had a nightmare around one, I think, and I was up until then.” 

“By any chance, were you singing? I was up at two-ten and I heard voices.”  

“Yes.” There was no point hiding it. An would keep her friend a secret if she could, but lying to her father might make him more worried about her, especially considering how much he’d already agreed to. “I wanted to sing.” 

“May I ask why?”  

“There was someone singing in the street. I don’t know who, but they had a very nice voice and I felt compelled to listen to them.” An couldn’t explain her connection to the girl no matter how much she tried. It was everything to her and it was founded on nothing but a desire she couldn’t explain. “If they come by again, I’d like to get to know them. They had an amazing voice.” 

“Oh, you’re in love,” her father said.  

An didn’t argue with that. Anyone, even Mizuki, who rarely came to school, could tell she had a crush on someone . Mizuki was the only one who knew about the girl, the only one who knew how much An needed her in her life.  

She would never tell her father she depended on someone whose name she didn’t know to sleep. She’d never say a word about how much she wanted that someone to come in her room. They could curl up on her bed together, and talk about the sky or their pasts or nothing at all, and An would be happy as long as she was around the girl of her dreams.  

Her father left the room a few minutes later, telling her he’d make breakfast. An glanced at the rose. It was still there, beautiful as ever, a picturesque reminder of the girl who’d given it to her, the girl who’d stolen An’s heart despite the fortifications she’d put up in front of it.  

God, she was down bad. An forced herself to get up from her bed. She unplugged her phone from the wall.  

You have 1 new message  

From Mizuki, Harbinger of Chaos:  

Aww.... I’m alone today.  

An rolled her eyes and sent Mizuki a very quick My dad’s letting me stay home, got a problem?  

Mizuki sent her a (sarcastic) middle finger in return.  

She hadn’t stayed home in years. An wondered if she’d be allowed to slack off or sit on the roof all day. It was a rest day, right? She was supposed to take care of herself, not that she knew what that entailed. Self-care was a foreign concept to those who had ghosts haunting them as if to tell them they would never be as great as those who had walked their path before them. An had been following in Nagi’s footsteps, but her steps had vanished, and the trail she was on was darker than ever, so she was running back to the parking lot, trying her best to find a new path to follow, but a fellow traveler had stopped her in her tracks, and she could no longer avoid the uncomfortable truth: she wanted to sing.  

An somehow found the strength to walk downstairs and sit across from her father at the breakfast table. She didn’t talk to him.  

“I’ve got to get the cafe set up,” he said after fifteen minutes of silence. 

An nodded. She waited until she was alone to let the thoughts back into her mind. Her father would be incredibly worried about her if he learned the kinds of things she let invade her headspace at all hours of the day.  

Look at you, taking advantage of your father’s kindness to stay home from the place you belong. You’re hiding from Mizuki – isn’t their fear of school a hundredfold worse than yours? They’re brave, going to class today. You’re a coward.   

An felt her nails dig into the skin on her right arm. She looked down at it after the thoughts subsided and saw deep grooves. Those would heal in time. At least she hadn’t drawn blood this time.  

The question of what she was going to do that day had never entered her mind. She was supposed to be at school. She was supposed to be normal.  

Normal had left her three years ago. Normal had flown up to the sky with Nagi. It wouldn’t come back. The new normal, as therapists the world over called it, was something An couldn’t find. She clung to Nagi like she had as a child when she’d ran away from home and Nagi had found her.  

An felt like she was that six year old again, curled up in a ball in a corner of a dodgy construction site, waiting for her aunt to find her and tell her how much everyone missed her.  

Except this time, Nagi couldn’t look for her, couldn’t pat An’s hand as she told her a story from when she’d been a teenager. Nagi couldn’t guide her back to her parents. The picture of RADder at the beach with a seven-year-old An hung on the wall across from her.  

An wanted to throw the frame in the trash. Instead she put her dishes in the sink and sprinted up to the roof. 

She threw the door open and screamed into the wind. The ghost of Nagi stood behind her, consoling her, and An ignored her. Nagi couldn’t reach her anymore, no matter what illusions An’s mind dreamed up.  

Every regret she had, everything she wanted to tell Nagi but had never had the chance to, every thought that plagued her from when she awoke to when she slept, all of it, she threw at the sky. The clouds did not care; they could not hear.  

An felt tears spring from her eyes and a weight lift off her chest. She lowered herself to the ground and curled into a ball.  

Why can’t I just let her go?  

Chapter Text

Kohane sprinted through the darkness. Her grandmother woke up at five-thirty in the morning every morning, and even though she’d left the balcony girl’s presence at two-fifteen, it wasn’t like her house was down the block. On a good night, it took her two hours to get from point A to point B.  

Tonight was not a good night. 

Her lungs rebelled, and she had to stop to breathe. Kohane cursed her father for having given her his asthma before she remembered the inhaler in her pocket.  

Her grandmother told her it would get better. Kohane didn’t trust her, especially since her father’s asthma had lessened before he was fifteen, and hers had only gotten worse. 

Fuck . 

There was someone walking towards her. A cop, if the uniform was anything to go by. He looked concerned for her, but being out this late made Kohane a delinquent by anyone’s rules, and she’d get scolded (if gently) for not focusing on her health. 

“Young lady, are you all right?” 

“It’ll pass.” She waved him off.  

“It’s not safe to be out this late. Do your parents know-” 

“My parents are dead ,” Kohane hissed. “And I don’t need anyone’s help.” 

The cop flinched. “I’ll leave you, then.”  

She went the opposite direction he did. The detour would add at least ten minutes to her trip, more if her goddamned lungs kept malfunctioning. Kohane knew the streets of Shibuya better than she would ever admit. Years of sneaking out of the house and getting herself into the worst possible situations had given her a map of the city and several lessons about how life worked. No one looked out for you if you didn’t have parents. No one cared . 

The wind bit her cheeks and tore off her hat. Kohane spun around to get it back.  

She stuffed it in her pocket and took off again. No one could know she was out this late, least of all her grandmother. The girl who she sang to sleep some nights was the only one Kohane could trust despite not knowing her name.  

It was five-ten when Kohane arrived at her grandmother’s house. The outdoor key for the house had been moved to a secure lock box after Kohane left it in the bushes instead of under the mat when she’d left the house a week ago. Recently, she’d been jumping the fence into the tiny backyard and coming in that way, but her grandmother had had someone over to add barbed wire to it after Kohane trampled a rose bush after she’d chosen the wrong spot to climb over.  

Grandmother probably thought there was someone targeting the house. That would be a reasonable conclusion in any other situation.  

Kohane frowned. She’d gotten out of the house via her bedroom window, like she always did. It was three stories off the ground. Getting back in would be much harder than going out.   

She took the concrete steps up one at a time, watching for any sign of movement in the house. Then came the next obstacle: getting onto the balcony. 

Kohane scrambled onto the railing on the second story. She walked along it until she reached the wastewater pipe. 

Now came the difficult part. Kohane grabbed the pipe in her right hand, then raised her left to grab the corner of the second floor overhang.  

She jumped. Her left hand grabbed the overhang, and she brought her feet up to the wall for some purchase.  

Walking up the wall was much harder than jumping off a balcony. At least she didn’t have far to go. Kohane stepped onto the overhang, hoping it supported her weight for the five seconds she needed. She grabbed the railing on the balcony and pushed herself up, then slung her right leg over it. The left soon followed. 

Kohane watched the sun rise over the neighbourhood. She checked her phone.  

Five twenty five.  

She figured it wouldn’t hurt to stay outside. She could make up some story about having naturally woken up much earlier than normal if she needed to.    

Kohane yawned. She hadn’t pulled an all-nighter in ages. Normally, the balcony girl woke up from a nightmare much earlier than two in the morning, and that gave her the time to get back home before anyone worried about her.  

“Kohane, are you awake?” Her grandmother’s voice called from the other side of her bedroom door. “You have a test today.” 

Oh. Right. Math class. Kohane was probably going to fail it; she hadn’t studied math in weeks, and she kept finding new and innovative ways to skip class without her teachers marking her as absent. She hadn’t properly attended a full day of classes for a month.   

Kohane opened the balcony door. “Yeah.” 

Her grandmother’s steps echoed down the stairs. Kohane untied her sneakers and placed them in her bag before stepping into her room.  

The sailor uniform hung in her closet. It taunted her, daring her to put it on. She knew she had to wear it if she were to deflect suspicion; her grandmother did not like her missing school, even when she was sick. Kohane had been sent to school once with a head cold so bad she’d been told by a stranger to sit on the train, and when she’d gotten to school, a senpai whose name she didn’t remember had noticed her condition and taken her to the nurse’s office, saying she would’ve helped, but she wasn’t allowed. 

Asahina, she thought it was.  

Kohane reluctantly dressed for school. The hoodie she liked wearing around the house was placed in her laundry basket along with the pants she wished she was allowed to wear at school.  

She glanced at herself in the mirror. No one would see Azusawa Kohane when they looked at her. They would see a Miyamasuzaka Girls’ student, another student destined to do well on her entrance exams, but they wouldn’t see the real Kohane.  

The real her was the lesbian her, the one who snuck out at night to sing to a girl she barely knew. The real Kohane would be at a co-ed public school where the teachers were a little more accepting of non-straight students. Despite the fact that everyone Kohane knew at Miya Girls was a lesbian or bi, ninety percent of the staff didn’t approve of them being gay. 

She decided it was time to bite the bullet and go downstairs for breakfast. Kohane took a deep breath and forced a smile on her face. It was time to be a normal girl. 

“Good morning, Grandma,” she said once she sat down at the table.  

“Have you studied for your test today?” 

“Yes. I believe I am sufficiently prepared.” Kohane felt so wrong lying like this, but if it was what made others happy, to believe that she was a perfect student who was always in control of herself and who needed no help figuring her life out, was it really that bad? 

“Excellent. I expect to see good results from you.” Her grandmother frowned. “I do wish your father could’ve been here to see your academic achievements. You’ll have the pick of universities when you take the entrance exams.” 

Kohane nodded. Her breakfast seemed less appetizing now. She’d never been one to push herself too far in regards to school – she put in the work, of course – but she wasn’t about to neglect her other responsibilities and physical or emotional needs in favour of getting into the top universities in the country. She felt like she’d work herself to death if she did. While she loved her grandmother, the pressure she received made her feel awful . 

She made it through the rest of breakfast without her grandmother getting concerned. The feeling of wrongness never went away.  

Absentmindedly, Kohane wondered if that sensation came from the fact that her grandmother frequently proclaimed that her grandchildren were all heterosexual, or they weren’t her grandchildren.  

By that logic, she should be out on the street. She didn’t belong here. Grandmother had already inadvertantly disowned her; why should she lie any longer? 

The question nagged at her even when she left the house and she didn’t have to pretend. The two hours of transit Kohane took to get to school could be arduous, especially when she was tired. Thankfully, the station wasn’t far.  

Hanging onto a metal bar for support, Kohane watched the city go by. A part of her wished she could run to school and let her cares float away with the wind in her hair. She wanted to forget about everything for once.  

Miya Girls was a decent walk from the station. There were a few convenience stores along the way, so Kohane stopped at one to grab a strong coffee. She wasn’t getting through the day without at least a little caffeine.  

 
“Kohane-chan!” Minori’s voice echoed through the courtyard. “Good morning!” 

“Morning, Minori-chan.” Kohane tossed the empty cup in a trash can. “Where’s Shiho-chan?” 

“She said she’d be late,” Minori said, taking Kohane’s free hand and pulling her towards the school. “Can I read over your notes before class? I forgot to study after Haruka-chan and I went to Phoenix Wonderland and she bought me a souvenir.” She sounded much more excited now. “A souvenir! Haruka-chan bought me a plushie. I’ll treasure it forever.” Lovesick. 

“Invite me to your wedding,” Kohane deadpanned. She wasn’t any better than Minori was in the hopeless-crush-on-the-best-person-ever department, though. The girl on the balcony could be Kohane’s only need in life and she wouldn’t mind. She was just so damn pretty , and her voice was incredibly powerful. Kohane hadn’t been singing for very long, but she’d happily continue to do so if it meant her late-night friend would enjoy her company.  

“We’re not like that!” Minori protested.  

Kohane raised an eyebrow. 

“... I would like to be.” 

“Of course.” Kohane pushed open the door to the first-years' locker room. “Don’t mention it.” 

Minori was good at cramming, apparently, because she only needed to read Kohane’s notes for ten minutes before she’d remembered enough to do well on the test. She did, however, say that Kohane should have someone else look over her notes once in a while. Maybe that girl on the balcony would be nice enough to...  

No. Kohane couldn’t bother her for such a trivial thing.  

“You’re worse than Minori,” Shiho muttered as she passed Kohane’s desk.  

“You’re no better.” 

Shiho rolled her eyes. “At least I can talk normally to Ichika. What did you say you were doing instead of sleeping every night last week?” 

Kohane would’ve thrown a pencil or pen at her if their math teacher hadn’t walked in at that exact moment.  

Shiho smirked at her (the jerk), and Minori gave her a smile. At least one person was on her side, though Minori was probably thinking about Haruka and not the math test now.  

Kohane’s suspicions were soon confirmed when Minori tilted her head towards the ceiling and adopted the same facial expression she made when she sat next to Haruka at lunch. While Kohane didn’t think it was possible for eyes to literally form hearts, Minori seemed to be proving her wrong; how else would she manage to get such a perfectly lovestruck expression on her face? 

The teacher passed out their tests, taking Kohane’s notebook off her desk because it carried “potential for cheating”. She didn’t fight this; she’d fail whether or not she had her notes. Maybe skipping class hadn’t been such a good idea after all. 

That wasn’t going to stop her from doing it; higher level mathematics meant nothing when you wouldn’t use it.  

Once the test was over, Kohane did her best to avoid the stares and awkward questions from her teacher and classmates after he’d given it a cursory glance and frowned before moving on to the next student’s desk.  

Yup. She’d definitely failed the test. That was going to be such a fun conversation with her grandmother later this week.  

Walking with Minori and Shiho over to the rooftop to watch More More Jump! practice over lunch was a relatively normal experience, but today, Kohane felt a vague sensation of discomfort, as if some butterfly across the Pacific had flapped its wings and now she was going to pay the price for something.  

Had her grandmother realized that she was sneaking out? That couldn’t’ve happened; she was all too careful for that, but she had been walking in mud for a few seconds running through a park last night and it might not have dried and- 

There might be mud on the outer wall of her house leading to her room. Fuck . 

She might’ve been found out. And what then? Would her grandmother kick her out? She had nowhere else to go – her midnight friend’s place didn’t count because they barely knew each other. In an emergency, maybe, but wasn’t that a little too much trust? The girl she’d happily sing to every night for the rest of her life might not have the space for an extra person in her house.  

She might also get grounded, which was unequivocally worse. If there was one thing Kohane did not enjoy the thought of, it was the inability to leave her own house if she so desired.   

“Azusawa-san, you’ve been called to the office,” she heard someone say. “It’s urgent.” 

Kohane told Shiho not to wait for her and felt the sinking pit in her stomach get lower. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t- 

“Do you remember what we promised about secrets, Kohane?” Her grandmother sat alone in the principal’s office. “After your father’s death?” 

“We don’t keep secrets,” she whispered. 

“Then, I’m sure you can explain why there’s mud on the wall leading up to your room.” It wasn’t a request. “I’ve made my own conclusion, but I’d love to hear it from you.” 

She knows. She’ll find out about the girl and then I’ll have to stop sneaking out and then-  

Kohane took a breath. “I’m sorry I snuck out. I... I don’t have a reason why I did it.” 

“I certainly hope this doesn’t happen again,” her grandmother said. “I’m afraid for your safety, Kohane. You know what kind of people are out this late at night...” 

Kohane nodded. “I promise it won’t.” 

Her math teacher handed her back her mark at the end of the day with an expression that suggested she’d failed or been close to it.  

65%. Please see me tomorrow if you’re struggling with the material. I believe no one wants you to be doing poorly.  

Kohane was getting grounded anyway. A sixty-five wasn’t nearly as high as her grandmother would’ve preferred. It would lower her mark by a little bit, but even that was too far. For her to get into the top universities – and she didn’t even know what she was going to do at university – any slips in her grades weren’t going to be tolerated.  

Sneaking out was just the cherry on top.  

“Surely you know that sixty-five is absolutely abhorrent,” her grandmother said. “Hadn’t we promised to keep your grades up, even if that meant asking for help? It is not failure to accept that you do not know everything.” 

Kohane nodded. “I understand. I... haven’t been paying attention in class because I find it boring.” Not to mention that I’m almost never there.  

“You have to try, then,” her grandmother said. “Whether or not it is interesting should not matter. You have to do well on your entrance exams, and a sixty-five on a test indicates you’re not working as hard as you will need to.” 

Kohane wanted to point out that entrance exams were years away. Instead she nodded. “I will do better.” 

“I’ll make sure you do. You’re grounded for a week – think of it as time to study. No sneaking out – we’ll get someone to monitor the balcony for disturbances for a little while.” 

The walls were closing in. The fear rose. Kohane felt like screaming. This couldn’t be happening. She needed an escape. She needed- 

“Thank you.” 

Chapter Text

Something had happened to Streetlight Girl. An didn’t want to tell her father about it, mostly because he’d probably want to contact the authorities about it. This was a strictly between-friends matter (were they friends?), and maybe Streetlight Girl had just gone on vacation. She didn’t have to tell An anything if she didn’t think it was necessary.  

It was still worrying, though. For one, An couldn’t sleep anymore. She’d tried everything to get herself to just rest for once, and yet nothing worked. A little voice in her mind whispered, But what if you sang?  

She didn’t allow herself to do that anymore. Even though music had been the most important part of her life – it brought her to Nagi-san and Vivid Street, after all – now, it was a curse on her family, her friends, everything she had ever cared about. Singing only brought people pain. Why would she put herself through Hell if she never lived up to Nagi’s memory?  

“Shiraishi-san, mind telling us what’s so fascinating about the floor?”  

An snapped out of her thoughts. “Nothing, Takahashi-sensei.”  

“Then may I ask why you’ve been staring at it for so long?”  

“I was thinking about personal issues,” she muttered.  

Mizuki gave her a pointed You okay? look.  

An shook her head. Mizuki frowned. The lesson continued, and An did her best to focus even though she had no idea how they’d gotten from a presentation about the most important English verbs to how some adjectives were actually adverbs because they modified adjectives.  

Her notes were a mess of hastily scribbled definitions and vocabulary words. None of it would make sense when she tried to study later. Her lack of sleep wasn’t helping, either.  

Takahashi-sensei continued speaking about the importance of differentiating adjectives from adverbs, and An began tuning his words out. She made a note to look it up later – and maybe get someone who understood it to explain it to her – before staring just to the left of the whiteboard to let herself take a short break. She’d refocus when her next class started.  

“An, are you coming to the roof for lunch?” Mizuki’s voice sounded far away. “Can you hear me?” She sounded concerned.  

What’s going on?  

An blinked a few times. Mizuki came into focus, looking like she was torn between calling the school nurse and dragging An to the rooftop and waking her up there.  

“Mizuki?”  

“You spaced out,” Mizuki said.  

“Let’s go.” An stood up, ignored the wave of dizziness that passed over her, and grinned. “I’ve got a story to tell you like you asked.”  

They sat side by side on the rooftop. Mizuki still seemed a little concerned, but An didn’t want her to worry. Mizuki had her own issues to deal with, and while An was all too happy to help her with the bullies at school, adding more worries to her plate wasn’t something An wanted to do. In that way, she was a little like Nagi, she supposed. Unwilling to burden other people with the inner workings of their mind, wanting them to be happy even if it meant lying to them. A part of An wished she hadn’t been in the hospital when Nagi died. Wished she hadn’t known about Nagi’s cancer, wished she could believe Nagi was in America.  

But she’d found out about it anyway. Eavesdropped on one too many conversations and snuck into  the hospital.  

She hated thinking about it.  Hated the memory of Nagi-san’s scared face when she’d realized that An knew . The apologetic smile on her face when An had asked why she’d chosen to hide.  

Mizuki tapped An on the shoulder. “Hey.”  

“Sorry.” An knew that didn’t fix it. Nothing would – but then again, she was trying.  

“Tell me about your girlfriend,” Mizuki said, catlike grin on their face.  

“She’s not my girlfriend,” An protested. “She’s a really good singer – better than you, I’d say, and even though I’ve never talked to her, I can just tell we’d be great partners.”  

“Invite me to your wedding.”  

“She’s always standing under the streetlight across from my window, and I’ve seen how cute she looks a few times and you wouldn’t believe how absolutely amazing she is. I think she’s like me in a way. She seems sort of lost.” An glanced up at the sky. “We’d get along. I wish I knew her name.”  

“You don’t even know her name ?”  

“I haven’t had the chance to ask!” she protested.  

“You’ve only been seeing her for what, a month ?” Mizuki asked.  

“It’s three months, actually.” An stared off into the distance. “I miss her.”  

“She’ll be back soon,” Mizuki said. “Knowing you, she’ll probably be happy to be back.”  

“ Stop.”  

“I’ll stop when you stop being such a hopeless romantic.”  

“Race you to see which of us gets a girlfriend first,” An muttered.  

“Oh, you’re on .” Mizuki grinned.  

“You can’t be serious. You’re actually going to ask Ena-san out?”  

“Why not?” Mizuki brought out her phone. “It’ll get you to do something productive for a change.”  

“Do not .”  

“Hey, Ena,” Mizuki began, “one of my friends is a totally hopeless romantic and I’ve been thinking about getting one over her for a while. So, could you go out on a date with me pretty please and I’ll buy you the cheesecake you’ve been interested in for a while...” She hit send. “See?”  

If it hadn’t been for the fact that she was a hall monitor and had to demonstrate good behaviour for other students, An would’ve gently punched Mizuki in the shoulder. Or the cheek. It didn’t matter. “You’re so mean,” she protested.  

“I’m helping you,” Mizuki muttered. “But if you want me to leave you alone...”  

“No. Help me come up with a plan to figure out what’s happened to her because I haven’t seen her in a week.”  

“I haven’t seen Ena in a week either.”  

“You talk to Ena-san every day!”  

“But I don’t see her every day,” Mizuki said, dramatically flopping sideways onto her backpack. “How will I survive? My best friend doesn’t like me~”  

“I never said that!”  

Mizuki turned her head towards the skyline. “I know.”  

“If this is about the current situation...”  

“Relax. I’ve got this. You don’t need to worry about-”  

The door to the rooftop opened. Mizuki bolted up.  

“Shiraishi-san, hanging out with him ? Akiyama? Really? I thought you were a model student.” An couldn’t remember the name of the complete jerk standing in front of her, but did that really matter?  

“As a hall monitor it is my job to ensure bullying and harassment does not occur in the school community,” she said. “Discussion with Mizuki has revealed that calling her a boy would be considered harassment if done maliciously, and I know your intent is not good-natured.” The words felt so foreign in her mouth. She definitely wasn’t going to stay on as a hall monitor next year. “So, politely screw off at your earliest convenience.” That was more like it.  

“I’m discriminating against someone because I’m telling the truth about them?”  

“Don’t care. Mizuki’s not a boy no matter what the hell you’ve told yourself about her, and I can report you for harassment whenever I like.”  

“Okay, okay, fine.”  

The jerk left the rooftop. Mizuki’s shoulders relaxed considerably. “You didn’t have to,” she said. “I’m used to it by now. Just... let them say whatever they want to say, and I’ll pick up the pieces later.”  

“Nope. You’re not going through that if I have anything to say about it.” An felt herself relax slightly. “I’m your friend. Isn’t that my whole job?”  

“They’re going to start coming after you,” Mizuki explained, hugging herself. “I don’t want you in the crossfire. Who knows what they’ll do to you?”  

“I don’t care.” An threw up finger guns. “I have other things I can worry about.”  

Mizuki went quiet all of a sudden. An wondered what she was trying to stop herself from doing. “Need a hug?”  

“Yes please.”  

An threw her arms around Mizuki’s shoulders. “Love you.”  

“Yeah, love you too, best friend of mine.”  

There was a few moments of silence. An wasn’t one for physical affection after Nagi-san had...  

Well. It was nice to hug people again.  

“You’re going to be the clingiest girlfriend to mystery girl once the two of you get together, I swear.” Mizuki was grinning from ear to ear. “I hope she likes hugs.”  

“So, Dad, this is Mizuki, my school friend,” An began. “She’s said she’s going to help me with a... project.”  

“Looking for your girl?” he asked. “Go for it. I assume she knows I run the cafe?”  

“Yup!” Mizuki seemed relaxed. An hoped that meant she was okay now. It was always a gamble, Mizuki would say, whenever she went over to a friend’s house, because sometimes their parents would know Mizuki was the “weird kid” who wasn’t “playing by their strange and unnecessary gender rules” and sometimes their parents were understanding of the fact that Mizuki was trans and that they were completely valid.  

An dragged Mizuki away from the snack cupboard after encountering a little resistance and then took her up to the roof. “It’s the best place for thinking,” she admitted.  

Mizuki nodded. “Brings back memories.”  

An wasn’t going to push her to talk about that. “Um. So.”  

“I’ve already started brainstorming,” Mizuki said, taking a seat on one of the lounge chairs. Why someone had thought it was a good idea to put them on the roof, An didn’t know. “I’ve created the best plan. It even has a catchy title: ‘The Best and Most Fastest Way To Ensure Your Friend Whose Phone Number You Don’t Know Is Okay.”  

An was going to punch her. “Why.”  

“Because it’s descriptive,” Mizuki said. “Hasn’t your language teacher told you about the merits of having descriptive titles?”  

“Yeah, but not like that!”  

“What’s wrong with it?”  

“You’re making fun of me,” An complained.  

“It’s a good skill,” Mizuki muttered.  

“Ena-san must love you.”  

“So! Step one is to wait a little. See if they’ve just gone on vacation,” Mizuki said. “If they’re back soon, there’s no need to worry.”  

“What’s step two ?”  

“Go to their school if you know where it is and stand at the gate menacingly and go around asking everyone if they sneak out of their house at night.”  

“.... why do I even ask ?”  

“Because you love me.”  

“I do not.”  

“Keep telling yourself that.” Mizuki was back to her grinning. “So, do you know where mystery girl goes to school?”  

“I think she goes to Miya Girls.”  

Mizuki sighed. “Nothing else?”  

“No.”  

“Aww. I was hoping you at least had a picture...”  

“ What ?”  

Some of Mizuki’s other suggestions included:  

1. Summon the person with the power of lesbianism (what?) 

1. Ask everyone at Miya Girls if they’d seen her 

1. Put out an ad on Craigslist (that was shot down immediately) 

“Oh, hey, how’s that math assignment going?” Mizuki asked after her presentation on how gaydar was indeed a form of tracking people. “It’s due tomorrow.”  

“Which math assignment?”  

“Our final trig assignment,” she said, taking it out of her bag. “I got it done yesterday if you need any-”  

“ We had an assignment in math class ?”  

“Wow, you really are down bad. I haven’t seen you that zoned out ever.”  

An crossed her arms over her chest. Acting like a child wasn’t going to get her anywhere, but Mizuki would (hopefully) understand. “Math is a difficult subject!”  

“I don’t even go to class and I know when we have assignments,” Mizuki pointed out. Calmly.  

“Fine. Can you.. Help me with it?” Accepting defeat, An’s mind whispered. Would Nagi-san do such a thing ?  

Okay, that was just ridiculous. Nagi had hated school as much as An had, and she had always said that parabolas and such things were not as important as doing what you loved.  

... but they were still important, she’d say once she’d seen the excited look in An’s eyes as she prepared an argument for why she didn’t need to go to math class. “Mathematics will teach you not to give up,” Nagi would say when An would begin to pout about that, “and that’s a skill you’ll need when you’re singing on the streets, trying to make a name for yourself.”  

Mizuki took her notes out of her bag. “Absolutely. So! We have to apply the trig ratios to this diagram full of triangles to find the indicated side lengths.”  

An stared at her own assignment dejectedly. “Where are you supposed to start ?” The image was a spiderweb of intersecting lines and none of them made right-angle triangles. Crap . The formulas for those were a lot easier.  

“With the easy ones,” Mizuki said. “There’s a bunch here-” she pointed to the top left corner- “that are super fun like what we did in class.” She quirked an eyebrow when An’s shoulders sunk a little. “Math is fun!”  

“You enjoy something about school?”  

“Mathematics is one of the highest arts.” Mizuki sat up straighter and stuck her nose in the air. “It is useful in every aspect of your everyday life – how else would I be able to know that your rooftop is approximately very big?”  

“That’s not a number.” An glanced down at her sheet. “Wait, can’t I just use the angle theorem of something to get most of-”  

 “Yeah,” Mizuki said. “Why, did you not know you could do that?”  

“ I can do that ?”  

“That’s the point of the assignment!”  

An stared at the paper again. “I wish there were right triangles.”  

“What, so you could use a different theory to avoid using trig ratios?”  

“ Please be quiet.”  

“And I thought you were going to be nice to me after what happened today!” Mizuki looked so taken aback that An had to laugh at her. It was almost as if she was in middle school again and Nagi-san and Taiga-san and her father were arguing about the most stupid of things – usually her father was the mediator in such arguments – and Nagi-san would pretend to be offended in the utmost whenever someone said something meant to insult her even though they would all call each other names as a form of affection all the time.  

An shrugged. “We’re friends,” she muttered.  

“I know that,” Mizuki said. “You... you’re not okay.”  

“Wow, how can you tell ?” An had no right to be angry, did she? Mizuki was concerned. There was no reason to get mad at her in such a way. She was only trying to help.  

“Because, contrary to popular opinion, I am also not okay,” Mizuki answered. “And I have a radar for more than just other gay people.”  

Mizuki will listen to you , she told herself. Don’t- you can trust her.  

You trusted Nagi-san, the voice in her head spat back. What happened when you trusted her?  

Mizuki is not Nagi-san.  

“It’s complicated” was the only thing An could think to say.  

“I’m the queen of complicated,” Mizuki said, twirling a loose strand of hair around her pencil. “Seriously, what’s going on?”  

“Did I tell you why I quit singing?” This wasn’t going to be a fun conversation.  

“No. Spill.” Mizuki sat up straight.  

“I, um.” The tears were going to spill over if she continued speaking. If she didn’t, she’d probably still cry now that she was thinking about it, and that would be even more concerning to Mizuki. “It’s... my aunt. She- she was the best singer in the whole town, and she... she didn’t want me to know, but she had cancer. It- it was terminal. I... she put on this big event, the best one I’ve ever seen. And a few weeks later I was holding her hand as she drew her final breath because after the event- my dad was telling my mom about it, and I had snuck out of my room to get a glass of water and- they were saying she was going to die.”  

Mizuki was looking at her with utmost concern. An felt water on her face and realized she was crying. “Hey. Do you need a hug?”  

An nodded. Mizuki moved closer to her and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m sorry that happened,” she whispered.  

“I feel like- if I sing and I’m not as good as her – am I disrespecting her memory? Am I throwing shade on everything she worked for?”  

“Of course not.” Mizuki ran a hand through An’s hair. “She’d be proud of you for trying.”  

An did not need comfort. She did not need to be helped.  

Or at least that was what she had told herself. Maybe, she did need comfort, from a friend and from her parents. Maybe grieving was easier if it was shared with others – maybe the correct statement was “the more the merrier,” not “misery loves company”.  

Maybe it was okay to let Mizuki comfort her for a minute.  

She’d be able to find Streetlight Girl much more efficiently when she wasn’t undergoing a mental breakdown, after all.  

Chapter Text

They said that routines were difficult to break, and for that reason, you should not develop routines that would be detrimental to you in any way. Kohane wasn’t one to listen to the advice of total strangers, and then she had gone and began visiting a girl she didn’t even know and maybe fallen in love and now she couldn’t go, and it felt like her heart was breaking. Maybe- just maybe- those strangers had been right. Maybe some routines would bring you nothing but pain.  

Kohane had no reason to believe the balcony girl would go looking for her. She had no reason to believe the girl would even remember her, and in some way, she thought that was better than if she did remember. Worrying someone who clearly had enough on their plate, if her nightmares were any indication, wasn’t something Kohane had intended to do. If she had somehow hurt the balcony girl...  

God, what did that make her? 

Kohane was supposed to be helpful to others. She was supposed to be a good student and not get in people’s way. Her grandmother hadn’t said getting in the way of others was why her parents had died, but the implication had been there. The car crash – could it have been prevented? Kohane didn’t know. Grandmother seemed to think it was incredibly important to ponder that question, to look at maps of the surrounding area of the incident and wonder how it could have turned out differently.  

She was grieving, in her own way. Kohane could respect that- in a way. In her opinion, however, grief was not a useful emotion. When it plagued her – because it always did, once a week like clockwork – she would turn to less than constructive outputs for it, usually street fights or running away or screaming. Had she been older when the accident happened, she would have turned to self-medication, she thought. Some days she wondered if the illegal routes to such things were worth it if they could take away the pain and the anger and the fear.  

Kohane paced back and forth through her room. She’d tried to pay off the guy across the street to stop him from adding a motion sensor to her balcony, but he’d said it was for her safety because jumping off the balcony could result in an injury, never mind that she’d done it dozens of times with nary a scratch.  

She felt like her father’s pet snake in his cage. Count Pearl was the only thing she’d been allowed to take with her when her grandmother took her in, and the snake was the only real support Kohane had when she was at ‘home’. Right now, he was shedding his skin again. Her grandmother called the process disgusting, but Kohane found it fascinating. It could be used in metaphors, for one, and it was just so cool to see that kind of natural process unfold. Kohane sometimes wished she could shed her own skin in the literal sense, free it of the scars and be reborn in some twisted sense.  

Would it hurt to shed her skin? 

In a sense, she did shed it, just not all at once like Count Pearl did, but would it hurt to be a snake in that way? To just... lose everything at once instead of a little, little bit every day? 

Kohane wasn’t going to tap on the glass and disturb him. Instead, she pulled her desk chair out of its usual place and watched Count Pearl slither around from her very awkward perch on the chair. When she wasn’t at school or with her grandmother, Kohane wasn’t one for observing decorum on how one should sit in chairs or on couches. It seemed unnecessary, and besides, what was the harm in doing things a little differently? 

“What do you think about this?” she asked the snake.  

Count Pearl only stared at her in response.  

“You’ve never been much of a talker,” Kohane muttered. Of course, Count Pearl wasn’t going to have the solution to her problem – he probably wouldn’t be able to figure one out, because he was a snake – but he did seem to know when she was upset about something. Snakes weren’t psychics, her grandmother would say, and if she was struggling, she should, you know, talk to someone , but Kohane wasn’t going to talk about her mental problems with her grandmother if she could avoid that. After all, if she told her grandmother why she snuck out – why she kept going back to the same street night after night – she knew what was going to happen. 

That hell... Kohane had heard stories of what they did to people to make them straight . What might await her if she said a word about the balcony girl to her grandmother – it was horrifying to even think about.  

If- if somehow her grandmother learned she was gay...  

She’d never be able to recover from what they’d do to her.  

Kohane pulled her knees to her chest. She wanted to leave this house for good so badly. She wanted someone to get her out now because she did have a breaking point and if her grandmother found out, she’d hit that point sooner than anyone would’ve thought. She couldn’t just leave – none of her friends would be able to take her in and she needed her high school diploma if she wanted to get a job that would pay rent.  

She felt like the walls were closing in on her, whispering threats of the worst kind in her ears, and she had no escape to keep them out of her mind. She had no mile to run or balcony to leap from. There was no choice but to stay in the prison of her mind and think about what could happen, about what would happen if she somehow managed to accidentally and subtly tell her grandmother even a fraction of the truth of the matter.  

Kohane glanced at the clock. It was ten-thirty at night. Grandmother had gone to bed.  

She supposed she’d better do the same if she was going to be able to focus at school tomorrow.  

She’d found herself falling into a sort of melancholy, a feeling that this was just the way it was meant to be, and her and the balcony girl were never meant to be together in the way she’d wanted it. Minori knew something was up, because she always did, and she’d dragged Kohane to the aquarium and the park and the mall to try to cheer her up. It hadn’t worked only because Kohane wasn’t sure if she’d wanted to be cheered up. 

After all, was there a point to happiness when it would be crushed the instant she’d walk into the house her grandmother insisted she call a home?  

Even going to school was no escape. The gates were shut during the day, after all, and Kohane wasn’t about to jump a ten-foot wall just to get out of classes for a few hours. Could she have simply not gone to school? Yes, but then her grandmother would’ve found out about it, and she wouldn’t hear the end of it.  

The window was slightly open at the start of the day to let some fresh air in. Kohane was staring at the courtyard below, only half paying attention to what her teacher was saying. Her notes were disorganized and incoherent, and she’d have to rewrite them later if she was ever going to understand the material. Her English teacher was in the middle of a sentence structure lesson, talking about the placement of the verbs in English writing, and she wondered why on Earth it had to be that complicated.  

The verb usually goes directly after the object, unlike what you’re used to, was the only real piece of information Kohane would remember from the lesson. The fact that English was already a complicated language without all the weird exceptions and spelling rules wasn’t helping much. Kohane wasn’t going to need to know all that much English anyway, because she probably wasn’t going to leave Japan anytime soon if Grandmother had anything to say about it.  

The rest of her classes were monotone. The world seemed much less colourful when you had nothing to look forward to, not even the promise of five minutes to yourself. Kohane had no intention of getting herself in even more trouble, so she participated just enough to avoid getting called out for laziness or distraction.  

When it seemed like the day was never going to end and she was going to be trapped in a loop of lessons forever, the end-of-day bell rang and Kohane began cleaning the classroom with Minori and Shiho, who were having some discussion about rabbits. Shiho was attempting to pretend she wasn’t interested, but after the third Aren’t they so cute ? from Minori, she decided it wasn’t worth fighting about and began enthusiastically describing the characteristics of some rarer species of rabbit Kohane had never heard of.  

“What does your snake eat?” Minori asked all of a sudden.  

“Rats, mostly,” Kohane said. “Why?” 

Shiho looked a little disturbed. “It doesn’t eat rabbits?” 

“Count Pearl doesn’t like the taste,” Kohane explained.  

“It’s not like I’m worried ,” she said.  

“Your face says otherwise.” 

“I- shut up.” 

“Don’t be mean to Kohane-chan,” Minori said.  

“Without you two teasing me all the time, I’d be nicer to you,” Shiho muttered.  

“You still love us!” 

“I- okay, we’re not going to keep talking about that.” 

“Aww!” 

Kohane smiled. Okay, maybe there was one good thing about school – even if Shiho wasn’t that much of a fan of being teased for others’ amusement. Her friends did sort of make life worth living sometimes, even if they were definitely not the most normal people in the world. Kohane wasn’t a normal person, either, though, so who was she to judge? 

The three of them walked out of the school gate together, holding hands at Minori’s request. She was on another tangent about how nice it would be to hang out at her house with Haruka, and even mentioned something about making cookies or watching a nature documentary with her. It sounded very domestic by most standards. 

Kohane first saw the pink-haired menace walking around just outside the gate, rapidly texting people on their phone and muttering that’s not right about every five minutes. They went to Kamiyama, which wasn’t too far from Miya Girls, but why on Earth were they here? They looked nothing like the balcony girl, and she was the only person Kohane knew who would willingly go looking for her. Maybe they knew the balcony girl? 

No. That was.... Kohane couldn’t let herself think that. To allow herself to be saved – she couldn’t. It would be to admit that she needed help, and her grandmother would die of shame before letting her run away from home towards the arms of someone who loved her in a sense that was forbidden.  

“Oh, are you the cute singer?” they asked. “An, is this her?” 

Kohane wanted to bolt. At least she knew what the girl’s name was, but was it worth it? Shiho was looking at her like something was very, very wrong, and Minori was looking at her like she needed to go profess her love for An or something. “I’m... not sure what you mean,” she said, looking at An over their shoulder. “You- you must be mistaken.” 

Shiho half dragged her towards the park so she could explain what was going on, Minori trailing behind as she adopted a pouting expression on her face. “Kohane-chan, that was your chance!” 

“I’ll get another one,” she muttered. It felt like all the blood in her body had rushed to her head. Everything was spinning. Minori had two heads and Shiho had four hands. Kohane looked down at herself and saw blood on her hands. It couldn’t be real. There was no feeling in her hands she associated with exsanguination, so she was- everything had to be fine.  

“Kohane-chan, you’re bleeding!” Minori called. “Are you okay?” 

“What did you trip over?” Shiho asked. “There’s nothing on the sidewalk...” 

Kohane blinked.  

Oh. 

Oh . 

She’d tripped over her own two feet, most likely, and now she was all fours on the ground. She was bleeding – her knees had made contact with a rough patch of the sidewalk, and they now had skin-deep gashes that went all the way down to her ankles. There was really no way to hide that when she’d get back to her grandmother’s place. 

I’m not getting out of this.  

“Does either of you have a bandage?” 

“You’re going to need more than a bandage, the way you’re hurt,” Shiho grumbled. “Look where you’re walking.” 

“I was .” 

“Mind telling us what that was about?” 

“I just... I don’t know. I... I’m afraid of what might happen if I-” Kohane cut herself off. “ Oba-chan isn’t very open-minded about such things.” 

Shiho and Minori shared a glance, then immediately one of them ran towards the convenience store to buy something . 

Kohane didn’t know which one of them left, because the last thing she saw before the darkness enwrapped her in its arms was An’s face, so worried about whether she was alright.  

I never was, she whispered to herself as her eyes shut and the world became a nightmare come to life. 

Kohane first noticed the warmth of the sun. Then she witnessed Minori and Shiho asking An and the pink-haired person who they were and what they wanted with Kohane.  

“Leave her alone,” Shiho hissed. “You don’t get it. Neither of you do.” 

“I know her,” An protested. “Mizuki?” 

That voice...  

“An-chan?”  

“ Kohane?” Shiho sounded insanely panicked. “You passed out. Stay there – can you just cooperate ? I need you to stay still for a second. Just- you'll thank me later,” she muttered.  

“Okay. I... what. Why am I... why am I on the bench?” 

“Because your girlfriend apparently has muscles.” Shiho’s face went tomato red. “It’s kind of hot. You should probably try not to gape.” 

So... An worked out. 

Yeah. 

It was doing things to Kohane’s brain. She didn’t know which damned hormones oversaw identifying what was attractive, but god were they ever firing a lot faster than they needed to. Apparently her type was strong women who could easily pick her up and throw her across the park. 

Shiho was smirking , the louse. Minori also seemed to know what exactly had taken Kohane’s train of thought and yanked it a hundred feet off the rails, but she was hopefully going to be more sympathetic about- 

“Kohane-chan, I do that when Haruka-chan shows off her muscles, too!” 

... well, at least she was being true to herself.  

“Are you okay?” An asked, walking up to Kohane and crouching down so she was at eye level- 

“I’m fine,” she breathed. I really want to kiss you right now. Can I do that?  

“What. Did. You. Just. Say.” Shiho must have been fighting every instinct to yell at Kohane. “Oh my god. You asked to kiss someone right after you fainted. Are you being serious ?” 

“I said that out loud ?” 

“Yes?!” 

Then, An kissed her on the nose, and Kohane might’ve fainted again, because the state of existence she then entered could only be described as heaven . What would it feel like if An kissed her on the lips ? What level of sheer euphoria would that bring? She absolutely wanted to find out. It felt like she was burning up, consumed by some beautifully painful fire starting at the lipstick stain on her cheek and slowly making its way down her body.  

The fire was addictive and she wondered if she’d ever want it to disappear.  

“Can you come see me tonight?” An whispered. “Just... I want to sing with you.” 

Under any other circumstances – if it had been anyone else – Kohane would have said no. “Um. I’ll do my best.” 

And then she smiled and Kohane was drowning in an ocean of chapped lipstick and bright smiles that for once seemed to reach her eyes.  

Fuck what Grandmother says. I have to go meet her.  

That was how Kohane ended up climbing out of the second-story bathroom window and clinging to the side of the house like it was a lifeline. She barely managed to jump down from the overhang before her grandmother woke up from the noise. That... God. No. No. No. She couldn’t- she should go back- the sensor might have been tripped- no, no, no, that couldn’t have- 

“Who’s there? You mustn’t be breaking into others’ houses ,” her grandmother called.  

Kohane did the only thing she could think of to do: she sprinted away from the house. Let the ground carry her where she needed to go, allowing her feet to guide her towards An’s apartment when her mind could not.  

Her grandmother was either calling the cops or checking her bedroom. Kohane would have to go back, bite the bullet and confess her sins to a God she had never believed in, and then it would happen. She would be sent there . The thought scared her half to death but wouldn’t that come in time? Grandmother had always known she wasn’t a normal person. Kohane would have no choice.  

The trains stopped in half an hour. Kohane would be able to make it most of the way to An’s place if she got on the very next one and got off a kilometre from the apartment. She didn’t feel like running as far today. 

She checked her pockets. Phone, yes. Medication... 

Where the hell was it?  

She’d just gotten a refill on the prescription. It was the only way she could breathe half the time, and while she’d had it last time and it had always been helpful , somehow she’d completely overlooked it. The next few hours were going to be awful.  

Thankfully, her rail pass hadn’t expired yet. Kohane barely remembered how she’d gotten to the station nor how she’d gotten onto the train, but when she blinked her eyes and her lungs remembered what oxygen was, she saw some very alarmed people staring at her. One of them looked nothing like her dad but gave her the same vibes , as Saki-chan would say. He must have been on his way home after work. Glasses and umbrella anxiously turned over and over in his hands... Dad had been just like that. He’d always been odd , by Mom’s standards, and a little unorthodox, too. Kohane missed him. He was down-to-earth and funny , at least what she remembered of him was.  

“Are you alright?” the stranger asked. “You’re crying.” 

Was she? Kohane raised a hand to her face to dry it off. “I’m alright.” 

He did not believe her. The rest of the people in the train car got off, and then it was Kohane and some older guy she didn’t know. “Are you sure ?” The umbrella clattered to the floor. “My apologies.” 

“I- um. It’s... sorry. You remind me of my father,” she muttered, staring at the skyline, which had somehow become very enchanting in the past ten seconds.  

“Your father?” 

“Yes. He... departed this life when I was eight.” Strangers did not need sob stories. Kohane mentally scolded herself for it.  

“Strange,” he finally said. “I am not the father I should be to my daughter.” 

“Your daughter?” Wandering around during the night brought you a variety of people, it seemed.  

“She’s in second year of senior high,” he said. “I don’t see her very often. I should make the effort, but my wife says she’s fine without me, and I find that hard to believe.” 

“Why?” 

“Because my daughter has-” he stopped. “I must be bothering you.” 

“I have a long way to go. You’re not bothering me.” 

“My daughter... has always had a free spirit, I think, and her mother’s attempts to rein it in have been too successful. If it is her wish to become a doctor, than so be it, but there is evidence-” he gestured at the grab handles- “that she doesn’t , and I don’t spend enough time around her to know if I’m reacting too strongly.” 

Kohane turned towards him. “I wish I was your daughter.” 

“Why? You’d never see me.” He pushed his bangs out of his face. “I’m not a good father to her.” 

“You care about her well-being even if you can’t be there.” 

“Does your... mother not?” 

Kohane bit her lip. “My mother is also no longer here.” 

“My apologies. Your... guardian?” 

“She only wants me to be the child my father never was.” Kohane laughed, and the sound of it startled her. Since when had she become so cynical? 

“Well, as you’re someone who knows what a good father should do... can you offer me any tips?” He seemed genuine. What did Kohane have to lose? 

“Um,” she eloquently began. “You have to listen to her. If she says something is wrong, she’s probably right. Support her in her dreams and be there for her if and when she gets hurt.” Kohane rarely ever saw the stars, but the lights blinking out from apartments mimicked them well enough. The sight was beautiful – would it be better if there were no buildings at all? 

“I suppose I’d have to be involved in her life for any of that to be applicable.” 

“Yes. You would.” 

“Tell me, young lady, do you miss your father?” 

“All the time.” When she was younger, Kohane had woken up screaming, remembering The Accident. How unfair it had been that she’d walked away from it with nary a scrape on her body and yet her parents had died. Her mother, on impact. Her father, from his injuries a week later. He’d never woken up from the coma he’d fallen into, though the doctors had done their best.  

She’d been the one holding his hand as he’d been pronounced brain dead. Her grandmother had gone to some neighbourhood meeting, as if that was more important, leaving an eight-year-old alone in a hospital room with her thoughts and her dying father.  

“You’re crying again,” he noted.  

“It’s... not a pleasant story.” 

“What happened?” 

“There was a crash. I... I was fine. My mom and dad...” She needed say nothing more. “I miss them. Every day. If there’s one thing you should try to do – it's show your daughter you love her while you’re still alive.”  

“Because I don’t know how much time I have left on this spiralling plane of existence.” 

Kohane walked the kilometre to An’s house. She let herself look at everything, see late-night music performances and watch a group of college students with alcohol in hand, daring each other to do progressively stupider things as their intoxication levels rose. 

Nightlife was something she was supposed to avoid, but the city was so perfectly catastrophic in the hours it should not have been awake for. Was the man with an open beer on a bicycle going to be fined or given a jail sentence later? Theoretically, yes.  

She was a part of the vibrant scene, too. One man who she assumed knew An’s father, because he had really weird facial hair and an epic singing voice, had recently been taking it upon himself to ensure Kohane wasn’t kidnapped or something on her way to... serenade a situational friend of hers so her insomnia wasn’t as bad. The guy seemed like he was hiding something. 

Oh, well. He didn’t look like he was a member of the Yakuza, and while Shiho would be appalled that the bar was that low, Kohane had given up on having standards.  

“Shrimp,” the guy said. What was it with random older men and finding Kohane a worthy conversation partner? She sort of just wanted to be left alone. “My niece’s been asking around for you, I hear.” 

“I got grounded. What’s it to you?” 

“Kid, I’m not the person you should be talking to. I’m too broken to mentor people anymore. Ken’s a bastard sometimes, but he’s damn well right about that.” 

“Who’s Ken ?” 

“Your girl’s dad. You’ll meet him pretty soon, I’d hope.” The guy shrugged. “You remind me of someone I used to know.” 

“Someone you...” 

“She’s long gone. That Nagi... could never keep a secret, and look where it got her.” 

“You wish it was you.” Kohane knew nothing about the man, but she did know what it was to lose someone. “She died, didn’t she?” 

“Yeah. The stupid illness that got her – why couldn’t it have been me?” 

Kohane was convinced he was drunk tonight. She politely told the guy she could find her own way with minimal swearing and darted through a crowd of people to avoid him.  

It felt good to run even if she’d have to stop because her lungs would fight her in maybe five minutes.  

The streetlight had never seemed so inviting as it did now. Kohane placed a hand against it to allow herself some time to breathe and discovered she’d never realized just how bad the asthma was. She felt like she was going to suffocate. 

A few minutes of coughing, and then she felt much better.  

“You okay?” An called.  

“I’m fine,” Kohane croaked.  

“You don’t sound fine,” she teased. 

“Asthma.” 

“Oh.” 

Kohane looked up at the balcony, which was probably a mistake her respiratory system would punish her for later, but the sight was worth it. An stood there, a silhouette illuminated by the soft light of some side table lamp, outfit fluttering in the wind. She was positively magnetic.  

“Can we sing again?” 

Kohane didn’t know what to say to that. On one hand, yes , she’d love to, but her stupid throat felt like she’d just eaten sand. “Give me a sec.” 

“Anything for you,” An mumbled, and Kohane was sure she wasn’t meant to hear that, but nevertheless, it made her blush.  

One minute of deep breaths and mental gay panic later, she felt like she could stand on her own. “What can you sing?” 

“Not much.” An sounded upset with herself. “I gave up a few years ago.” 

Does that have anything to do with this mysterious and deceased Nagi person? “What about Miku songs?” 

“I know a few.” 

Kohane had some suggestions, but a brilliant idea occurred to her. “Have you heard of Rumor? Police Picadilly?” Please don’t point out that it’s a love song.  

“Yes.” 

“Do you know the lyrics?”  

An hesitated. “Most of them.” 

“I’ll help you with the rest.” 

The melody ran through her head as the words escaped from her lips. An’s voice was shaky and it sounded as if she was crying – out of joy or out of despair? Kohane didn’t know, but she could support her through it if she needed that help. To uplift the voices of others wasn’t something you were taught in school; it was learned through trial and error and getting pushed to the ground no matter how hard you worked.  

Kohane sang like it was her last day on Earth, sang like it was the only thing she knew how to do, and let everything she had ever felt fall off her shoulders. The phoenix was immolated in a fire and reborn from the ashes; while Kohane did not live for hundreds of years, there was something to be said for metaphors and finding peace while you were adrift in a storm of possibilities.  

The girl on the balcony across the street was keeping up, harmonies drifting into the atmosphere the same way smoke did when fires were put out.  

It was beautiful . It was messy. It was chaotic and Kohane loved it.  

What would it be like to sing with An every day? 

She hoped she had the chance to figure that out.  

Chapter Text

The sheer delight of seeing Kohane out under the lamplight eclipsed the memory of what had happened earlier in the day. She also had some newly acquired bruise that, in some twisted way, matched the lines of bandages trailing down her legs from her major scrape earlier, but she was still ridiculously pretty despite the whole situation.  

Although... they’d sort-of kissed now, so maybe it made sense that An was even more hopelessly in love with her than earlier. Not that Kohane’s lips had touched hers, and not that she wanted that to happen (Mizuki was calling her out for lying in the back of her mind), but she’d kissed her. On the nose, and the cute hamster-like face she’d made-  

It was enough to distract An from the reality of the situation; it turned out that her brain became a puddle of gayness after seeing a pretty girl smile. And Kohane had such a nice voice , especially when she sang-  

Kohane... made her want to sing again. Made her want to forsake Nagi’s memory for the sake of her own personal desire, and made her want to act like the teenager she was again, running through the streets without a care in the world like she had when she was a child. To perfect her craft and to put on an event that would show even the heavens just how good she could be. Was that what Nagi wanted from her? She didn’t think so.  

But surely, if there was an afterlife, those present in it wouldn’t hear what happened in the mortal world. So... was it really that bad to sing one song with Kohane every once in a while? They weren’t putting on an event or anything, nor were they practicing until they could barely speak. An singing with Kohane wasn’t going to attract the attention of any gods present in the heavens. Was it harming Nagi? Could it?  

The thought of that was horrifying and it made her reel. For what kind of a niece was she if she disrespected her aunt’s memory?  

Kohane began with the first line of a song An vaguely recognized as being about love, and An joined her on the second. Her voice, which she so rarely used for this purpose, was shaky at first. After about thirty seconds, they had reached the first chorus and everything felt right . The world was less dark, Nagi was less angry, and An had never seen so many lights in the city at once. She made up some dance routine that must have looked ridiculous, grabbed her hairbrush in lieu of a microphone, acted like a kid at a sleepover trying karaoke for the first time.  

The smile that traitorously made its way onto her face betrayed her true intentions to the world. She loved music and everything that came with it; the pain and the fear she could handle. This was what she was meant to do; this was why she’d never been able to find herself another job she enjoyed. Kohane’s voice was like an angel’s; somehow, she’d never been at a live house before.  

There was a crowd – mostly composed of uncles and aunties An had spent so much time with as a child – gathering just outside her front door. Kohane took one step past what An had known she could do and she had to match it, to prove herself as a worthy member of the community, as someone who could sing and who would push the limits until she broke through the impermeable wall that was RAD WEEKEND.  

They watched as An sang until her throat dried up. Kohane moved from one song to the next like she was swimming through a sea of notes that only she could navigate. An followed her, sometimes the harmony to her melody and sometimes the melody to her harmony. The two spiralled through the depths together, painting the night in colour.  

Kohane had had more practice; she could sing for longer without needing to breathe and her voice carried much, much better through the sky than An’s did. Still, An followed her lead, trying to keep up.  

She hadn’t sang like this in so long . One song had been all that was needed to plant joy in her mind, to remind her of what she could let herself love.  

Her parents were standing in the door to her room, that she had heard, but for once, she didn’t mind. She felt like she was flying, one hand outstretched towards Kohane and her mind completely lost to the moment. Did she want to stop this? How on Earth had she been so harsh as to believe that this was not in some way worth it?  

Nagi-san, I’m sorry.  

She would not do this again. Was it, therefore, her right to enjoy it for as long as possible?  

The next song Kohane chose was drop pop candy – there seemed to be a theme here, one she could tease her about later – and this time, An took the lead. She knew the lyrics well enough, and was it a partnership if it wasn’t equal?  

She had no recollection of how long they spent there, letting everyone disappear into the air to focus on the words they meant to say. Piercing the silence with notes they had barely practiced, showing the world what they could do if only it wasn’t so cruel to them both. An did not remember the setlist. It was so improvised, she thought it was better to forget.  

Finally, Kohane seemed to have ran out of breath, and An paused to give her a break, when the entire crowd burst out in applause.  

“You’re singing again,” her father remarked.  

An didn’t respond. Her throat felt like it was on fire – in the way it would after a long day of practicing with Nagi and the others. It was good and even as she shook, she found herself overcome with the kind of happiness she hadn’t known since Nagi had died.  

Take that, world.  

Kohane blew a kiss at her (was she trying to make An spontaneously combust from cuteness overload?) and then darted through the crowd, mouthing I can’t stay back at her. An understood; whoever she lived with, they probably weren’t going to be happy with her being out late at night. Did she live alone? That couldn’t be; they were the same age.  

Her father put a hand on her shoulder, and she didn’t shrug it off. “An-chan, who’s the girl?” someone in the crowd asked – the lady who worked at the record store?  

“An,” her mother whispered, “we’d like to know that, too, if you’re okay with it.”  

How could she describe Kohane? A rebel, sure. But there was a lot more to her than that. Injured, currently, but she carried some secret sorrow An did not yet understand. Was she singing to fight it? And if so, how did she come up with that as a plan? She went to Miya Girls’ but didn’t act like it and seemed to tend to flirt with danger and come out unscathed – except for when she didn’t. She was incredibly good at running and seemed to express herself with song better than with actual words. She had two friends who seemed to be almost polar opposites of each other.  

“Her name is Kohane,” she breathed, “and we’re partners.”  

The sheer impact of that statement could not be understated. At least one person in the crowd managed to hear her, and the words spread from person to person like a plague. An wasn’t an active participant on the street anymore; the idea that she was searching for a partner in the first place would have been news to most people.  

An-chan? A partner?  

She hadn’t asked Kohane what her idea on that was, but hopefully the next time they met, they could have a proper conversation about it. She didn’t want to push Kohane to be her partner if she didn’t want to be, but the hopeful part of her that she’d been unable to quash after Nagi’s death said it really, really wished she would agree.  

She buried that sentiment deep within her, only to arise when she next sang, which would potentially be never. Now, though, the town thought she was going to return to her old love of music and her passion for the city and the people who lived in it, and so she would have to satisfy their curiosity by singing with Kohane at least once. If they coincidentally happened to fall apart right after that, then she would not have to sing any more and maybe then she could put Nagi’s memory to rest. I will not disrespect you .  

“The little lady?” her father asked. “She’s a great person to team up with.”  

Oh, shit.  

“When did you meet her?” someone called.  

“Are you going to make an official debut?”  

“You sounded so good together!”  

“Is our An-chan back?”  

I wish I was , she thought bitterly. I really wish I was.  

The next morning was so normal and uneventful An wondered, for one blissful second, if the events of last night had somewhat been a dream, if she’d fallen asleep after the first song and Kohane had left without being noticed.  

Then her father sat down at the table and that illusion was shattered. “So, when does the little lady get her introduction?”  

That seemed to be his favourite term of address for Kohane. It didn’t bother An insofar as she was concerned. (A part of her wished he’d say ‘ your little lady’, but that was more out of jealousy than anything, so she shut it down.) “I don’t know,” she muttered. Really she had to talk to Kohane about that first before anything concerning her street debut could take place. It was unfair of An to push that kind of thing on her.  

“An,” her father said, “does she know she’s your partner?”  

“She will!”  

One could not have overstated the sheer recognition and frustration her father now showed. “You’re saying you didn’t ask her?”  

“We’re close,” An argued. “I... I’ll talk to her and sort it out.”  

“Good,” her father said. “I think she’ll agree. She’s a great kid, and she seems like she needs a friend like you.”  

How he could read people he didn’t know like an open book had always been a mystery to An. She was better at such things when she knew the person she was speaking to. Unless Kohane had been to the cafe when An wasn’t on shift...  

She banished that thought from her mind. Nothing bad could have come of it.  

She needs a friend like you . Was that really what he thought? An was broken to the music community. Her dream had been shattered by an illness that had not entered her body and stomped on by the grave that should never have needed to be dug. She went when it was appropriate to say hello to Nagi and to make the place to her liking, left her flowers and laid her worst thoughts to rest. Apologized, sometimes, and swore she would not be a disgrace to her memory. Wished medicine had advanced to the point where such things could be eradicated and confessed that she was selfish for not singing. Nagi’s dream had been to see An surpass her, to carry her passion to the world stage or further and to shine like the sun, never to die in a billion years. To avoid that because she was afraid of disappointing Nagi...  

That was the most inconsiderate thing An could do to her.  

The dishes clattered into the sink. They did not break, but the noise startled both her parents, who turned to her. She looked down at her hands. They were shaking.  

God, why did this have to happen to her? To Nagi? Why couldn’t she just shake off her grief already-  

“An, kiddo, what’s going on?” Her father. Right there, hand on her shoulder. Ready to comfort her if need be. Always looking out for her, even though he’d been shit at that when she was younger and had she ever recovered from that? “Did something happen last night?”   

Glass broke easily. She could pick up the drinking vessel and drop it again on accident , trying to put it into the dishwasher, and then inadvertently bring it up against her arm, and then she’d be bleeding and- “I... no.”  

“Is there something you haven’t told us about?”  

“Dad, why do you think I don’t sing anymore?” The words felt foreign; cruel, it was, to drop such a bomb at seven-ten in the morning.  

“You needed a break from it,” he guessed.  

“It’s because of Nagi-san.” An’s hands would not stay still . There was a big steak knife three feet from her. Would she grab it? What would her parents think? “After she died – I'm not as good as she was. She was supposed to be here and we’d walk through this together ! How am I supposed to surpass her dream when she can’t tell me how the hell she made it there in the first place? What if I can’t ?”  

Those words – they would know she was broken in ways the dishes in the sink weren’t. The cheese grater – did it work on skin? Would she be able to better convey her mental state if she just picked it up? Her arm could be covered in bandages and by her jacket anyway; she did not have to take it off for gym class as long as she wore her uniform shirt underneath.  

Grater in hand, pajama shirt only covering her shoulder, she did not know why she was doing it, but she brought it down against her skin-  

“An. Give me that right now .” Her mother was almost never one for fury or hastily spoken words. “You’re not using that.”  

Her right hand, holding the grater, regretfully passed it over to her mother, the skin on her left arm thanking her for the transgression against her need to cause harm. Her left hand, now acting as if pulled by a puppeteer, the strings sewn to her marionette body by some God and causing her mind to sketch images that were purely delusions, dug its nails, freshly painted by Mizuki just a scant fourteen hours previously, into her right arm, blood trickling out of some vein she hoped was superficial.  

Her parents put away the grater, words passing between them sounding like a blur. The only thing that was real was the pain and how she felt about Nagi’s death. Were they speaking to her? An conjured images of shadowy figures in her mind; they were projected onto her surroundings and she wondered if this was the consequence for singing. Her fears had been proven to be true, yes? Arms wrapped around her and she fell through a sea of endless twilight.  

Nagi-san... Is this all my fault?  

The sterile white ceiling wasn’t the most inviting object to see upon waking up, but An supposed it could be worse. She could be at school right now, after all.  

Kohane’s face intruded on her line of sight. “An-chan?” Now, that was a balm to everything she’d experienced in the last... hour? A pretty girl checking on her. Holding her hand, if the slightly-smaller hand currently clutched in hers was any indication. It was really cute. “Are you okay?”  

An looked up at her, blinking out something from her eyes. “What happened ?”  

“Your parents picked me up from school. Something about an episode,” she whispered.  

“I- don’t know what I did.” An glanced away from her and towards the doorway, where her dad was standing. Probably her mother had gone to work already. “Was there a grater?”  

“Yes,” her father said. “Do you remember anything about it?”  

This felt like a police investigation. She’d just woken up and seen an angel’s face and now she had to answer questions? Life just wasn’t fair. And Kohane looked so cute in her glasses... “There were these really creepy shadows that kind of appeared after I let Mom have the grater.”  

Kohane wouldn’t look her in the eyes after that. It was as if she’d remembered something she would have much rather forgotten about. That same sorrow An had seen in her before... what had caused it? Could she take the weight of it off Kohane’s shoulders for her?  

That would be almost impossible, yes? She was dealing with her own issues – to save Kohane from her own mind while fighting against her own... Who was truly capable of doing such a thing? One’s own issues would catch up before the ultimate goal could be achieved. An would still try , because she’d concluded without Mizuki’s help that she was in love with this girl and hated to see the frown on her face. Yes, it was impossible to have happiness without first having negative emotions; a balance was needed, or else how would one know one was happy?  

“Creepy shadows?” Kohane’s voice sounded so small , so unlike the girl who darted through crowds and sang her heart out with someone she barely knew. It was cute, in the way that hamsters were cute, but it was also a little worrying. “What did they look like?”  

“They were... almost like a person. Hands. Sort of.”  

Kohane traced the lines of An’s palm to reassure herself. “That happened to me a few years after my parents died,” she explained. “One of my friends said it was their ghosts.”  

New information. Great. So Kohane was struggling... because her parents were dead. Who did she live with then? This was becoming even more of a mystery than it needed to be. And if it had happened a few years after their deaths-  

Nagi-san.  

When An journeyed to the next world (preferably at the age of ninety), she would be having words with her aunt about this experience. The paranormal was not something they covered in school; ghosts were not something anyone was supposed to believe in.  

This was frustrating. “So it’s Nagi-san's fault.”  

Her father tensed. Kohane nodded. “Not in those terms,” she whispered. Voice so quiet An barely heard her. “It’s a side effect, my friend said.”  

“Of being haunted?”  

“Of being unable to let go of ghosts. That’s how they form,” Kohane said, slightly more chipper now. Was she that interested in this topic? It would otherwise be a little creepy when speaking about such dark things.  

... maybe An would have to rethink the cute hamster thing. “Oh.” Something occurred to her. “How did you get it to stop?”  

“I...” Kohane looked up at the ceiling and back at An. “I had to... let them go. I still miss them but I do what I can in their memory and stuff.”  

“You... can move on?”  

“Some days I wish I didn’t.”  

An didn’t know how long they spent there, in relative silence, while her father stood awkwardly in a corner of the room. She let everything Kohane had said wash over her. Do what you can in their memory. Nagi-san... wanted her to sing.  

Right?  

“Kohane,” she said.  

“Yes?”  

“Do you... want to be my partner?” Upon Kohane’s very shocked and flustered expression, she added, “Singing partner!” (OK. Yes, Kohane had been the one to ask to be kissed recently, but maybe she thought of that as a friends thing?)  

“Oh.” Kohane’s shoulders relaxed. “That would be... amazing, An-chan, but are you sure I’m the person you want for that?”  

“Of course!” An wasn’t sure if the doctors would be all that happy with her getting up so suddenly (everything went blurry like she’d been spinning too long for a second) but this was important. Kohane had the best voice. She wanted to partner with An. It was perfect. “You’re awesome .” The sheer power of her singing skills could not be properly represented with this statement, but An had to try.  

“Okay. I’ll do my best.”  

It was the second time in as many weeks that An had skipped school for one reason or another. Kohane had to leave because her grandmother didn’t know she was at the hospital, and her teachers had only agreed to a half day of absences anyway. The goodbye was as expected; An did not want her to leave and Kohane had to go anyway.  

They left the hospital shortly after that; there were no concerns about An’s health, the nurse said. A side effect of mental struggle. Her father did not say anything of it as they got back in the car that An did not remember entering and drove home.  

She felt stuck. Stuck in her own mind, trapped by an inability to move on.  The city flew past her; Nagi had loved it so dearly and even though she was gone, she had wanted An to carry on.  

It would be hard – so very difficult – to get out of the cycle of self-loathing and fear. But when An returned to the rooftop on account of needing some fresh air, she did not simply take a minute to breathe.  

Shoujo Rei . Not a happy song, not one a so-called “free from worry” person would sing. Still, Haruka had sang it with her idol group An had once had the opportunity to see perform, and she knew the words.  

It repeats again, a flashback, the buzzing cicadas...  

Chapter Text

Kohane hadn’t intended to skip school. She had, however, no desire to leave a friend behind, and An definitely needed someone to talk to at the moment that her father had sent out that call from her phone. In a way, she wished she’d stayed. Maybe – maybe An would hear her out and offer her a place to stay. Maybe she’d understand that fundamental desire to run far away from everyone and everything.  

Dissection was the main component of the study of biology that Kohane hated for reasons Shiho thought were disturbing. It felt very wrong to take apart a mouse and then not feed it to Count Pearl. Labeling internal organs and such wasn’t inherently disgusting or weird to her. Minori, on the other hand, seemed to be upset that a mouse had been killed for this experiment, and Shiho was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Neither of them were on good terms with Count Pearl, so this made sense.  

“You’d make an excellent surgeon, Azusawa-san,” her teacher said. “Have you considered a career in medicine?”  

“I was thinking about becoming a professional photographer,” she responded. Photography was the closest thing to a career she found herself enjoying. It wasn’t a job her grandmother approved of, as it was a form of self-employment and a very commission-based one at that.  

“That must be where your steadiness of hand comes from.” The teacher walked over to observe Minori’s work.  

Kohane finished about ten minutes before the rest of the class. She was not supposed to help anyone because this was an evaluation, strictly speaking. The only time she had been allowed to speak, outside of when the teacher had spoken to her, had been when she’d needed to ask someone else for a scalpel because she didn’t have one.  

She sat outside in the hallway, on a bench someone had left their pencil case on. In that moment, she was almost thankful she was not allowed her phone during instructional time. Really she wasn’t allowed to use it when she was at school without permission, but the teachers who supervised the study rooms at lunch didn’t mind it all that much, and there was ample space in the courtyard for such things to go unseen by the few staff members who did enforce the rule.  

It was buzzing in her pocket. She had it on mute except for calls; she knew who would be calling her now. She didn’t want to pick up; she knew what would happen if she did. An wouldn’t call; she understood that Kohane was at school and needed to focus. The only possible answer was that it was her grandmother on the other end of the line.  

“Azusawa-san,” her history teacher said, “you may answer the call. It’s not going to go away by the looks of things.”  

Don’t glare at him. He’s only doing his job. Kohane hit the accept button on the screen.  

“Hello,” she said. Maybe if I just speak calmly and respectfully, nothing bad will happen.  

“Were you absent from school for undisclosed reasons this morning?” her grandmother asked. The fury in her voice was not as well masked as it usually was, and that scared her.  

“One of my friends was in need of assistance and her father contacted me. My teachers agreed that it was serious enough to warrant a half day. They have given me the work I missed.”  

“Do not miss another day for such unimportant causes. I understand your friends are important to you, but to forsake your education...”  

There was such a long pause that Kohane wondered if her grandmother had just hung up. Someone was walking down the hallway. Everything seemed blurry; she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Her heart seemed as if it was going to burst out of her chest and leave her dead on this damn bench. What happened if her grandmother realized who she’d left school for? What happened if she failed? What if-  

“Azusawa-san,” the person said. Tone warm. Inviting, almost. Emu-chan would say it was creepy, that she wasn’t truly happy, but Kohane understood that way of thinking and acting. She did her best to appease her grandmother even if she’d rather run across train tracks than listen.  

Kohane looked up at her. “Yes?”  

“Are you quite alright?”  

Just in case her grandmother was still listening, Kohane shook her head and replied, “I’m well, but thank you for your concern, Asahina-senpai.”  

“If you need any assistance with studying, I’m staying after school,” she whispered. Barely loud enough to be heard. Whatever mask she wore – Kohane knew how to wear it too – slipped off for an instant. Her smile dropped and the light in her eyes disappeared before it fell back into place, all false niceness and PhD dreams.  

“I’ll be sure to remember,” Kohane responded.  

Asahina walked off towards a group of students in her year.  

“That was an illuminating conversation you’ve just had,” her grandmother said over the phone. “Tell me, who is this Asahina?”  

“She’s a second year. She dreams of becoming a doctor,” Kohane muttered. She highly suspected that was a part of the facade, as well.  

“It would be beneficial to you to spend time with people who have goals they will actually be able to achieve. Spend some time after school on mathematics with her. I am under the impression you need the help.”  

Kohane was capable of revising for that on her own, but she put up no objection. “I will. Thank you for the suggestion.”  

“Don’t think you’re hanging up without explaining why I heard someone climbing out the window last night.”  

The words pierced her heart and dealt a fatal blow to her mind. Kohane vaguely remembered Asahina turning around to check on her, and she knew her head had made contact with the metal of the windowsill behind her, but what else was real? She was done for . Her grandmother knew she’d been out to see An again – knew she’d disobeyed a direct rule. Grounded for a week and she couldn’t even hold herself to uphold such a promise. “It won’t happen again,” she breathed. I promise. I promise. I promise. I can never-  

“I will make sure it does not. We will discuss this when you return from school.” The click resonated through her skull. This was the end.  

“Azusawa-san,” Asahina said, taking Kohane’s hands in hers, “I understand whatever’s just happened is not ideal for you. I’ve sent someone to get your friends, but for now, I need you to take a deep breath.”  

That felt very impossible. Kohane shook her head.  

“Okay.” Asahina paused. “Breathe in for three.”  

Kohane did.  

“Hold for five.”  

Footsteps echoed down the corridor. Kohane made herself forget about them.  

“Breathe out for seven.”  

“Kohane-chan!” Minori’s voice.  

“In for three.”  

“Kohane, you okay?” Shiho.  

“Hold for five.”  

She realized she’d been shaking this whole time.  

“Out for seven.”  

She wanted to cry. She didn’t want it. If they made her go there-  

“In for three.” Asahina was getting bored of this, she thought, but still she was here. Helping even though she had class to get to. “Hold for five.”  

One of the second-years' teachers came out into the hall. “Asahina-san, is this more important than our history quiz?”  

“Yes. Azusawa-san, out for seven.”  

Her mind was still storming with fear. The eye of the hurricane stood in front of her, clutching her hands with all the gentleness in the world. “You’re doing well. Breathe in for three.”  

Minori’s hand on her shoulder.  

“Hold for five.”  

“Asahina-senpai, is she okay?” Shiho’s voice.  

“Out for seven.”  

Kohane felt her hands slow their rapid movement.  

“Breathe in for three. Hanasato-san, if you haven’t already, would you go and tell your teacher the three of you have a legitimate reason not to be in class?”  

“Yes!” Minori saluted, then took off down the hallway.  

“Hold for five.”  

Shiho gripped Kohane’s shoulder like it was the only thing preventing her from floating off the surface of the Earth.  

“Out for seven.” Asahina looked at her. “How do you feel?”  

Kohane bit her lip. “A little better.”  

“Are you able to go to class? Be honest,” she said.  

“I... don’t feel like it would be safe.”  

A nod. “Hanasato-san, please inform your instructor Azusawa-san may be gone for longer. The two of you should return to class,” she explained. “I understand you want to help, but at this point it may be best if you came back after this period is over.”  

Shiho and Minori left, and then Kohane was left alone with Asahina, who led her up towards the rooftop to get some air. “It’ll do you some good,” she said, and the concern on her face felt real . This wasn’t something she was doing to save her reputation as a friendly person. She was doing this because she wanted to help Kohane, no thought to what it might mean for her.  

She’d make an excellent social worker. Or a nurse, if she wanted to enter the medical field. The door to the roof opened and Kohane stepped out into the sunlight. She lowered herself down against the wall. “Thank you,” she whispered.  

“You don’t have to.” Asahina smiled at her. “Now, how do you feel?”  

“Like shit.”  

A (hopefully genuine) laugh. “Yeah, I thought so.” She tucked a stray lock of Kohane’s hair back behind her ear. “Do you want to talk about whatever happened?”  

This was why Kohane sometimes, in the darkest of nights, wished she had an older sister. The thought had not visited her recently, but as a child, after The Accident, she’d wanted for someone closer to her in age to rely on. Someone who cared for her. “It’s a long story.”  

“I have quite a lot of time, seeing as neither of us are currently in class.”  

“I-” Kohane sighed.  

“If you need more time, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you can’t.” Asahina seemed lost in thought. “I get it.”  

Oh.  

“I live with my grandmother,” she breathed. “She... can be strict at times, and she’s not very subtle about her dislike for... non-straight people. I happen to be not straight. You can see how this causes problems.”  

“Yes.”  

“She called me to say that I should not have gone to check up on my friend who went to the hospital after she blacked out this morning and that she had found out that I snuck out last night to see that friend. I’m scared.”  

This seemed to trigger something in Asahina. “Scared of...”  

“She says there’s a way to fix me and I think she suspects I’m gay.”  

“I would say my house is open in case you need to run, but...” she trailed off, ironic smile on her face. “My life isn’t quite perfect.”  

They spent the rest of the class period up there in relative silence. It felt very awkward to just sit there, but Asahina seemed to be fine with it, and Kohane could appreciate the quiet. At some point she asked for a hug and got it. Kohane was not one to comment on how people smelled, but it seemed as if Asahina used some kind of floral soap, which was nice.  

It wasn’t quite like having an older sister, but it was close enough. Kohane’s hands had long stopped shaking by the time they stood up to attend their next classes. Asahina gave her a crooked smile before opening the door down to the real world and gesturing at her to go through.  

The quiet of the stairwell felt like a dark shawl wrapping around her shoulders and tugging her towards her language class. Asahina dropped her off at her classroom, and Kohane in some way wondered if she would have rather spent the rest of the day on the roof, letting the sun’s rays warm her skin in ways sitting in a classroom could not.  

“This may sound strange,” she said, “but if you ever need any sort of shoulder to rely on, I am here for you.”  

“Thank you very much.”  

“You don’t have to thank me. I... my friends think I should spend more time being honest with people.” This last was said so quietly Kohane wondered if she had hallucinated it. Asahina walked off down the hallway.  

Kohane stood there just in front of the door for half a minute before turning around to go sit over by Minori. Nothing in that last sentence felt like it belonged to the image of the school idol image Asahina seemed to enjoy. I should spend more time being honest with people . What did that mean ? Was her entire personality a lie, not just her smile?  

Either way, she seemed to be fine slipping Kohane hints about it, so clearly she either needed to talk to someone other than her friends (who probably didn’t go to Miya Girls) or she was just done keeping up with her image.  

In the second-years' section of the building, Asahina Mafuyu berated herself for having confided in someone who genuinely thought she was perfect that she was indeed flawed. Her humanity had been stripped from her the instant she donned the mask; perfect daughters did not cry, after all, and she was her mother’s child. Was she not therefore being human by her honesty? Or was her simple desire to be known for who she truly was inherently wrong?  

She was not looking forward to having to study with the person she had informed about her true self. If that was what Azusawa-san had learned in the time Mafuyu had spent trying to help her. Mafuyu forced herself to pretend to care about functions. A lack of participation in math class would be something her mother would not be pleased with.  

“Kohane-chan,” Minori asked once they were allowed to begin working on their group project, “are you feeling better?”  

“Yes.” Her voice was quiet.  

Minori smiled at her. Shiho pulled up a chair and set her own copy of the assignment down. “I get you’re fine now, so can we please start with this thing?”  

Kohane and Minori glanced at each other – this was classic Shiho – before nodding.  

“You two can stop being so synchronized. It’s a little creepy,” she muttered.  

“Nope!” they chorused.  

“Oh my god.”  

Kohane felt much better now. It was always fun to tease Shiho, especially when she tag-teamed it with Minori, who was always looking for ways to cheer people up and make sure they had hope that tomorrow was going to be a better day. Even though Kohane didn’t believe in that herself – she had gone through too much to think tomorrow would be any better than today – she respected Minori’s commitment to the idea and would gladly help if that meant spending time with her friends.  

Despite Shiho’s annoyance and her insistence that she would absolutely uninvite them from her birthday celebrations (she wouldn’t, because “Shizuku needs you two to plan it with her”), Kohane and Minori kept up a very subtle barrage of banter with her as they wrote the first draft of a group essay.  

Kohane didn’t have the heart to tell them she’d probably be unable to be even a little happy around them if her grandmother signed her up for the “therapy” and forced her to go – which she would, because she genuinely believed Kohane was wrong for something she could not change about herself, that she was fundamentally broken and needed to be fixed.  

It would be like going through Hell on earth, and Kohane did not want to let her friends see her suffer so.  

“Azusawa-san,” Asahina said, “I heard you’ve decided to remain at school and that you wanted assistance. After this afternoon’s incident, I’ve elected to help you only if you want to study. It is perfectly acceptable to go home if you’re not feeling well.”  

Kohane sat down across from her. “I believe you understand as much as I do that I cannot go home no matter how much I want to,” she whispered as Shiho waved her goodbye.  

“You’re perceptive,” she muttered. “Would it be of benefit to you to hear a story?”  

“As long as telling it would not be of harm to you,” Kohane responded. She set her math notebook on the desk and began revising her notes. She wasn’t awful at the subject; she simply had no passion for it nor the talent to enter a more challenging course so she had let herself ignore it.  

Asahina took a deep breath, following that same pattern she’d walked Kohane through earlier in the day. “There was once a little girl,” she began. “A little girl who loved her mother very much. She loved a great many things – reading, rabbits, going to the aquarium – but above all, she loved her mother and wanted to make her happy. It was not enough for her to enjoy her own life; she had to please her parents. Make her father proud of her when he was unoccupied enough to come home from work and see what she had done without him.  

“The little girl was happy, she thought, being a credit to her mother’s name, embodying the role of the perfect daughter. Once she began her foray into higher academic levels, however, her once-joyous existence became fraught with worry. She had previously treated being a good child as a game. Now if she was not perfect, her mother would approach her to ask her if she needed more time at cram school or if she needed a note to the school to exempt her from extracurriculars so she could focus on her studies.” Asahina paused, her hands shaking. “The little girl did not realize it at first why her home was so cold. She did not notice it when her sense of taste slowly slipped away, adding more salt and pepper to her meals, believing she had simply become accustomed to spice.  

“The little girl lost all sense of emotion when she began her first year of senior high school. She had never felt so disoriented in her entire life. Her mother had said she was to become a doctor; she would much prefer a different occupation. Desperate, the little girl turned to the Internet in search of someone who could heal the wounds she had been inflicting on herself with the help of her mother from the day she was born.”  

Kohane was almost done her worksheet now. Still the story had not ended, and so she listened.  

“The girl found someone she could trust. A stranger who could be anyone. This stranger... made music, and they were very kind. The girl liked spending time with them, or at least she felt warmer than when she spoke with her mother. Still her emotionless state caused her grief. The thought of taking her own life had been on her mind for a time, and it was after years of searching that she decided she would simply give up. Retreat away from her friends and society, drink no water, swallow the pills and let that forbidden endless sleep enwrap her in its arms. How she longed for it. Her friends, kind as they come, stopped her. Told her she had a life worth living, that her pain was real and that she could be helped. They... they loved her, understood her in ways her mother could not.”  

The tears flowed from Asahina’s eyes. “Her friends saved her life. She owes them the greatest debt, and they care for her oh so dearly. The little girl, imprisoned in a body too big for her to understand, has found her home once again. This time, she does not live in it.” The expression on her face had gone from the smile Emu-chan found distressing to one of overwhelm. She looked up at the sky in the way one did when they asked God for a favour that would not come. “In case you don’t know, I’m the little girl.”  

Not knowing what else to do, Kohane stood up from her desk and wrapped her arms around Asahina. “I’m sorry.”  

“It’s not your fault.”  

She walked home without meeting anyone she would have liked to spend time with. Mafuyu – for that was what she would prefer Kohane call her, as it reminded her she was a person in charge of her own future and not a puppet tied to her family name – had shared her Nightcord information with Kohane after an apology for breaking down and then gone the opposite direction when Kohane had bid her farewell.  

An was at home, hopefully resting and recuperating from whatever incident she’d had that morning. She didn’t skip her final class to meet Kohane at the gate, and in some way Kohane wished she would. Knowing someone cared for you so much as to go out into the largest city on the planet to look for you just to see that you were OK – well, that kindness was something she had never experienced.  

Kohane feared the conversation she would have with her grandmother when she got home. As she boarded the train line that would take her so very close to her current place of residence, she wondered what it would have taken to get on a train going the other way. To throw caution to the wind and make her own way in life. She had no resources; she had almost no money and she did not even have a high school degree. That course of action could never end well.  

Her phone buzzed.  

Yuki: I want to say thank you for listening to me today.  

Yuki: It’s not often you meet someone who’s willing to hear you out about this stuff.  

That was interesting.  

Hamster: It’s okay! I understand.  

Yuki: You... understand?  

Hamster: yeah. I’m similar.  

The doors opened, and Kohane stepped out of the train and into the station. The air below ground seemed cooler than that above ground; in a way, that was a blessing. Somehow she found reasons to continue her march towards a house that would soon become another reminder of why parts of society thought people like her were flawed – she was in love with a girl. Had close relationships with others, was honest to them, kept up with the courses she cared about when she needed to. Why were those parts of her demonic, monstrous, and undesirable, she wondered?  

She’d find out very soon.  

“I trust this man,” her grandmother was saying. Kohane sat on the couch across from her, back straight, shoulders back, legs uncrossed. It was the proper way to sit, and while Kohane didn’t care for decorum, that was the rule of the land in the house, and so she followed along. “He has an impeccable track record of curing both genders of people of their homosexual tendencies. You’d do well to listen to what he has to say.”  

“And what if he can’t help me with it?” Kohane knew the question was futile. She knew she’d hate herself if she was sent to see this miracle worker , as her grandmother called him; she knew she’d want to die. The trauma, every scientific study that had ever been done on this topic said, had been known to result in diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder. The suicide rate was insanely high when compared to the general population in individuals forced to go through such torture.  

Her grandmother spoke of it like it was the greatest psychiatric procedure anyone had ever invented. “He’ll find a way. He always does.”  

The man in question was American. He’d fled the country when it had been discovered he’d been running these torture therapy sessions, and for some reason he’d come here. Kohane had read the news stories; she was scared out of her mind of what he would do to her. The victims... what they had said...  

She nodded, unable to speak, and walked up to her room, legs shaking. She shut the door and locked it. A message sent quickly to An informing her that she was likely to need help sometime soon and another to Mafuyu asking how she dealt with the pain when her mother told her something she knew would hurt.  

Kohane felt everything slowly collapsing on her as she packed every bag she owned with her clothes and study materials and camera and everything she would ever need if she were to run away. Count Pearl couldn’t be stuffed into a sack; she would have to find someone who would help her move his cage if she wanted to ensure he’d remain alive. Her grandmother had never liked the snake, and she’d said she’d much rather not have such a vile creature in her house, so Kohane had guarded him with her own life. Count Pearl was her friend.  

Once everything was stuffed away, the bags piled under her bed, she took her phone out to the balcony. The motion sensor had been deactivated because the last night of her curfew had been yesterday.  

Kohane was not one for cliches. Still, she cried looking up at the sky and screamed into the wind. Anguish was such a pointless emotion, her grandmother said.  

Yuki: I make music. Talk to my friends. Ask for help.  

An: Oh my God. Are you OK? Do we need to come get you now?  

She couldn’t see the screen properly.  

Kohane: An-chan, I’ll tell you when I need you.  

An: My door’s always open.  

Then she went downstairs for supper, and that was when everything started to get much worse.  

Chapter Text

Maybe An was overreacting. Maybe she didn’t need to be worried. Okay, so Kohane had sent her a message that basically said that she was very close to being in crisis and was going to need a place to stay because her grandmother would either kick her out or send her to be assaulted under the guise of helping her overcome something she could not change about herself. This was, weirdly enough, one of Mizuki’s worst fears, but she had her parents on her side. They knew she was a girl no matter what the doctors and the world said about her. They would never willingly send her to a place where she would be hurt so that she would present as male; she had to go to school, and that was hard enough. It was too bad that was government-mandated.   

However, the fact that Kohane had even sent her a message about her situation seemed to indicate that An should be very, very worried. There was also a distinct lack of proper grammar in the text, and while An herself didn’t follow those rules, in the few messages she’d gotten from Kohane asking her if she was OK after she’d gone home from the hospital, she seemed to have written everything like it was going to be graded.  

Her dad had made one of her favourite dishes for supper, and even as she ate with her family and made idle conversation about work and school and missed classes, her mind strayed to Kohane. Would she be able to sleep tonight? Would she refrain from sneaking out because of her fear? An wouldn’t blame her if that was the case.   

She sang one of Nagi-san's favourite songs as she washed the dishes, trying to keep her mind off of Kohane for one minute. She would figure out to do once she finished her chores; her father was running the bar tonight and her mother had marking to do, so it was up to her to put the leftovers in the fridge and ensure the freezer closed when she left the kitchen. The darned appliance had been acting up over the past few weeks, the bastard, and An had grown used to putting a brick in front of it in order to keep the ice cream her father had bought for her cold.   

After that was done, she made her way up to her room with one of the guest futons from the closet just in case Kohane did show up and needed a place to stay. The hall closet by the bathroom contained blankets and the like, so she raided it.   

She had no idea what Kohane’s favourite food was, so there was one thing she could not prepare for, but other things – like a toothbrush, soap, a hairbrush, and the like – were available. An outsider looking in would have thought that she was doomsday prepping, and maybe that was close to the truth.   

Cooking wasn’t an option because she’d just eaten and her parents would have questions. An wasn’t against them knowing Kohane needed to stay over, but it could remain on the down-low until something bad happened. The clock on the wall ticked along to the beat, reminding her that time was limited and that situations could devolve at any point. She paced through the living room, wondering if she should watch something to keep herself occupied so no one would worry.  

Kohane: I’m running.  

Oh fuck . An would’ve sworn loudly if her mother hadn’t been reorganizing something in the living room at that exact moment. The message felt like a starting gun at a racetrack. She had to at least pretend everything was OK, but the second her mom wasn’t in view, she began sprinting. Grabbing anything and everything she’d forgotten (did Kohane like plushies?) that could be of some use. Most people did not plan to host their friends for an unknown length of time, but An would do everything in her power to ensure Kohane didn’t have to go back there ever again.   

Arriving in her room with plushies, her clean laundry, snacks, and a glass of water (because you never knew if someone needed it), An nearly tripped over the threshold. She placed the glass of water on her nightstand along with the snacks.  

The plushies were unceremoniously tossed onto her bed; it was difficult, after all, to set up a futon while carrying about ten of them.   

The futon itself didn’t take too long to set up; seconds counted in this race against time because she did not know where Kohane lived or how fast she could run. Surely in times of great distress people were capable of great feats, but no one had ever done forty kilometres an hour.   

After the plushies were carefully arranged on the bed, An stopped herself from sprinting to the door and pacing in the hall until she heard the doorbell. Instead she took her time, one step after another, reassuring herself that she could handle everything that came her way. Past incidents involving construction sites and her more recent avoidance of music would say otherwise, but this was for Kohane, not for herself, and so she was more comfortable with the thought of going to extreme measures.   

She sat on the couch, turned on the TV, and played Animal Crossing – Mizuki swore up and down that it was the best time-consuming activity when you were anxious. They’d almost gotten 100% completion of the game, and given how much stuff there was, seemed to imply they were anxious a lot of the time. An didn’t play it much, preferring to spend her time gardening or watching music videos (singing was the only thing she’d explicitly banned herself from doing), but she did find that it could be calming.   

About ninety minutes later, the doorbell rang. An immediately hit the pause button and threw the controller as gently as she could to the other side of the couch. She did not care that her mother could see this. She was much more concerned with Kohane’s safety, seeing as it was raining now and catching a cold was not a fun experience.   

An opened the door to see a shivering Kohane who was positively soaked. Her backpack hung off one of her shoulders; thankfully, it was zipped up and its contents would later turn out to be dry. She looked like she’d been crying for a long time; her eyes were red. “An-chan,” she mumbled.   

An pulled Kohane into her arms, out of the rain and safe. She closed the door, and that was when she realized Kohane couldn’t stand on her own. She’d pushed herself past every barrier to get here as fast as she possibly could, and in doing that, she’d exhausted herself. An had no experience in carrying people, but she did her best to get Kohane to the bathroom where she could change into warm clothes. As she did so, she felt hands grabbing onto her hoodie like it was a lifeline. She kissed the top of Kohane’s head. Seeing that they still had a long way to go and dragging her wasn’t working, An scooped her up like a young child in the way people said you did once you were married.   

She was going to kill whoever had made Kohane feel like she needed to resort to running away. Whoever had made her cry so deserved an eternity in prison or Hell, whichever would take longer. An swore to herself then and there that she would do anything to prevent Kohane from being hurt again, even if that meant singing on a stage with her and seeing her shine in ways she’d thought only Nagi could.   

An set Kohane down on the floor of the bathroom. “I’ll be back with pajamas,” she said.   

“Stay,” Kohane protested. She looked up at An as if trying to decide whether or not she could be trusted. I don’t want to be alone , she seemed to want to say.   

“It’ll take me thirty seconds,” she offered. “I’ll be right back.”  

“Okay.”  

If there was a world record for running 20 feet in one direction, stopping for 5 seconds, and running back the same way, An would have claimed the title for herself in the moment. Unfortunately, there was not, and so her incredible accomplishment of speed was never recorded in any book. She didn’t much care to win it, however, because this was objectively more important.   

“Sorry,” she said, closing the door to the bathroom as she brought back the pajamas. “Do you need me to leave while you change?” It was best to be sure.  

Kohane bit her lip, so hard it looked like it would scar. An wanted to reach out and stop her. Instead she let her have the time she needed to think through her words. She’d never seen Kohane at a loss for words this badly before, and it scared her. “I... I don’t know if I can do that on my own.”   

“Because you’re shaking?”   

A sniffle. Then: “Yes.”  

“Do you need me to help you?”  

“Are you... okay with that?” Kohane pulled her knees to her chest. “I don’t want to be a burden-”  

“You are not a burden.” Another reason An was seriously considering a murder. “If that’s what you need, I’ll do my best to make sure that happens.”  

Kohane blushed. “Okay.”  

Admittedly, if taken out of context, this conversation would probably implicate they were doing certain things they were legally allowed to do but which carried a lot of negative assumptions about the kind of people they were. Of course, this was a purely platonic interaction with absolutely no underlying feelings for each other, or at least that was what An was telling herself as she helped her guest out of her soaked school uniform and into a pair of fuzzy pajamas a size too big. An took the uniform to the washing machine and ran it through the cycle she thought was least likely to cause it to shrink. When she returned to the bathroom, Kohane wasn’t there. An’s first thought was that instead of panicking, she should check her room first to see if Kohane had made her way over there, and then the living room and dining room.   

An most certainly did not aggressively hug Kohane the instant she found her sitting on the futon in her room.   

“An-chan, I didn’t know if this was the right place to go,” she explained. “You’re... kind of crushing me. It’s sort of nice.” Kohane rested her head on An’s shoulder. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to stay here?”  

“Of course,” she said. “Always. I’m always here for you.” An ran a hand through Kohane’s hair. “Can I take out your elastics?”  

“Okay.”  

Kohane’s hair freed of its split, An began detangling it with her hands as gently as she could. “Hey, how are you feeling?”   

“I don’t want to go back.”   

“Then you won’t.”   

Kohane shook her head. “It’s not- she- I can’t-” She pulled back from the hug. “It’s too hard to explain.”  

“Then you don’t have to explain until you’re ready.” An gave her a smile. “Hey. It’s okay. I get it.”   

“You do?”  

“I don’t like talking about hard stuff either.” I don’t like talking about Nagi. “If you need time, you can have it.”  

“Thank you.”  

There was silence for a few moments. Neither of them dared disrupt the temporary peace; they loved music but understood the quiet was also part of life. An continued to detangle Kohane’s hair with her hand. Mizuki would call it a domestic scene, something couples did after a long day.   

An kissed Kohane’s forehead (this had become her favourite way of expressing affection) and glanced at her outfit. “Where’d you get the hoodie?”  

“Your closet. If you want it back I can-”  

“No, it’s okay. Keep it. Forever if you want- it looks really cute on you,” An admitted. Mizuki had forever teased her that her type was people who looked cute wearing clothes too big for them after she’d seen a picture of Haruka and An at a sleepover together in middle school, Haruka’s penguin pajamas hanging loosely off her shoulders and An’s facial expression when greeted with this image.   

“You think I look good in it?”  

“You would look good in anything,” An responded.   

“No,” Kohane said. “I wouldn’t.”  

“Yes you would. You’re the cutest partner ever .”   

Her level of cuteness promptly doubled itself because Kohane’s response to this statement of fact was simply an “Eep.” Mizuki was going to tease her endlessly for this, she knew, but she didn’t care because this was for Kohane.   

“An,” her mother called from outside the door, “may I come in? I have peach buns,” she said as if that would change anyone’s view on the situation.   

This had an effect on Kohane, though, who immediately nodded agreement. “I like peach buns,” she told An like this was the most important thing in the world. It was a little strange that her mother had them, seeing as they were reserved for special occasions, but did that really matter?  

“Sure,” An responded.  

The door opened. As promised, her mother had peach buns, which Kohane gladly took when offered, taking the box and opening it to reveal six. Three and three was the intended split, but if Kohane liked them that much, An would just get herself a bowl of ice cream from the freezer as a substitute.   

“So,” An’s mother said, “dare I ask why you have a friend over unannounced? I’m not mad,” she added, “just curious.”   

Kohane tensed. She set the box down, having decided not to touch it for some reason An couldn’t fathom. “I don’t...” She looked over at An.   

“She needs a place to stay while she... figures some things out,” An said, wrapping an arm around Kohane. “It’s not safe for her to go back to her house.” This statement seemed to put An’s mother on high alert.  

“It’s not safe ?”   

“She doesn’t like talking about it.”   

“Well, then, we’ll just have to give her time. I assume you’ll be the one responsible for telling your dad about this?”  

“Do I have to?”   

“You’re the one who understands what’s going on,” her mother explained. “Now, if either of you needs anything, I’ll be in the living room.” She turned to Kohane. “Ah. I’ve forgotten your name,” she said.   

“Kohane.” An noted how she omitted her family name.   

“Nice to meet you, Kohane. I’ve heard a lot of things about you from my daughter. All of them good.”  

“You didn’t have to tell her that!” An protested.  

“It seemed like she was important to you. It may be beneficial to express that,” her mother said.   

“ Mom.”  

“Alright, I’ll stop,” she said, grin on her face. “Oh, your father said he got an email from the school about a badly done trigonometry assignment?”  

“Mizuki, you liar .” An was going to have her ponytail for this.   

“Who’s Mizuki?”  

“The pink haired menace who told me I could use the easy triangle theorem shit on my unit assignment.”   

“Please don’t swear,” her mother cautioned.   

“She ruined my grade!”   

“Sweetie, don’t take this the wrong way, but your math grades aren’t going to suffer too much if you fail this assignment.”  

Kohane promptly started laughing, which made everything slightly better but also worse at the same time. An buried her face in the mattress. “I hate you all.”  

“An-chan!” Even though she was laughing, Kohane somehow managed to come across as offended. “Are your grades bad?”  

“I wouldn’t call them bad ...”  

“An, not to discourage you from studying, sweetie, but you only passed math last year with a fifty percent.”  

Kohane looked flabbergasted upon hearing this information. “An-chan, if I’m staying at your house, you’re going to study math.”  

“Please spare me from the horrors,” she responded. “Kohane....”  

“Math is still important to learn even if you don’t like it,” she reasoned. “It’s helpful.”  

“I’m being attacked.” In the back of her mind, she could hear Nagi-san arguing why she didn’t need to pursue a college education because she was both too old and too intelligent to need one. Saying the same words when Taiga oji-san and An’s father told her she should really go to higher education even though Taiga had dropped out of high school and had no right to tell Nagi what path she should take. An remembered taking Nagi’s side because she had already disliked the academic side of school at seven and agreed that avoiding it was completely rational and helpful. “Can I get Mizuki to back me up?”  

“Mizuki-san skips frequently,” An’s mother pointed out.  

“She gets it!”  

“They skip because they fear going to school.”  

“Mizuki-san fears school?” Kohane, who’d only met Mizuki once before this, seemed to find this a little strange. “What would they have to fear?”  

Oh. God. An did not want to out her friend unless she absolutely had to, so she decided to give a very vague, “Mizuki is bullied at school.”  

“That’s odd. They seem like a decent person,” Kohane muttered. “A little chaotic, but not mean.”  

“I’m not allowed to tell you anything else.” An sat up. “Can we stop talking about my grades now?” Her mind brought up Nagi more often than she’d like. A new topic of discussion to avoid if she wanted to remain calm.  

“Okay,” Kohane chirped. “Ah- Shiraishi-san, are you okay with me staying here?”  

“It’s no problem. You can stay as long as you like,” she said. “And- you can call me Yuka. I teach little kids for a living; I get called by my last name all day.”  

“Ah. Thank you very much, Yuka-san.”  

A few hours later, after the peach buns were finished and An had washed out her ice cream bowl (it was wrong to take away Kohane’s favourite snacks from her), they were curled up on the couch watching some old movie about a man planting bombs on a Shinkansen. Kohane’s head tucked into the crook of An’s neck, arms wrapped around her. A blanket lay over them, more for comfort than warmth.  

An wasn’t paying nearly as much attention to the movie as Kohane was; she was much more aware of the way Kohane seemed to be clinging to her like she’d die if she didn’t. Clearly something had happened to her in the time between her sending An the I may need help message and her showing up at the house.  

“Hey, Kohane?”  

“An-chan?”  

“Did something happen after you got home today?”  

Kohane tensed. “It- yes.”  

“Do you... want to talk about it?”  

“It’s hard. But I think it would be good to tell someone.” Kohane kept looking at the TV screen. “Do you... know what conversion therapy is?”  

An was going to commit a murder.  

“My grandmother... she, I think, figured out that I’m gay, and she’s... old fashioned, so she said- she's been telling me that she’s found someone to ‘fix’ me.” Kohane closed her eyes, probably to keep tears from spilling over. “Today was the first time he came to my house. And- you can guess how that went.”  

An was going to commit two murders.  

“You saw the scratches,” she added. “It wasn’t- it didn’t go as far as people have said it can, but I don’t- I can’t let that happen to me. It would break me.” Her voice sounded so quiet now, the movie so much louder than her.  

“I’m going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” An promised. And unlike her promise to carry Nagi’s dream onward, this one she would keep as if it was her own life that depended on it.  

Chapter Text

Kohane couldn’t sleep. She was trying , honestly, but the breeze coming through the window was gentle on her face, so unlike the wind at home, and the futon just wasn’t her bed. An had offered to sleep on it, but she’d gone to such lengths to make it comfortable that Kohane had taken it because  it was the right thing to do. Making An sleep on it when her bed was right there ...  

That didn’t make it any easier to sleep.  

At least it was a Friday and she didn’t have to go to school the next day. She could catch up on her rest on the couch or on the roof, and she’d feel just peachy. No need to worry anyone at all.  

An’s room was pretty. It was very her: chaotic, a little disorganized, but the important stuff, that which she cared about, was where it needed. There were records and posters hung up on the walls, the moonlight casting its spell on them and showering them in beauty. It felt like home in the way Kohane’s grandmother’s house never did. Lying in it felt peaceful; Kohane sort of wished she never had to leave.  

The peace was promptly broken when An sat upright, hands scrambling around, reaching for something. “Nagi-san?” she sniffled. Tears dotted her face like diamonds on a ring. “Why did you leave me?”  

Oh.  

“How could you?”  

Kohane had to do something. Anything, for An to feel better.  

“It’s not fair.”  

Her tried-and-true method of singing to calm An down probably would work again. And since Minori had been speaking so excitedly about getting to sing Mawaru Sora Usagi with Shizuku, it was the only song she could remember now, at whatever strange hour of the night it was.  

“ Mata tsuki ga noboru, kyou ga owaridasu...”    

An turned her head towards Kohane, expression curious and terrified at the same time. “What... song is that?”  

Kohane kept singing. I’ll tell you later. The words were a balm; soothing and caring and An could tell she was trying. She didn’t know the melody; Kohane sang as loudly as she dared, a private concert for the girl who had done so much for her.  

When the song was done, she crawled into An’s bed and lay next to her, running her hands through An’s hair and reassuring her everything was going to be all right even though she herself did not know if she believed it. “Hey. I’m here.” Did that make it better?  

“I just don’t want her to be gone. And I know it’s been years since it happened but- I – she should’ve been here. To meet you,” An explained. “I miss her so much.”  

Kohane pulled her close. “Nagi-san?”  

“My aunt.” She was bawling, but somehow she managed to speak. Kohane didn’t want to push her, but if she felt that now was the time to convey this information. “She had pancreatic cancer. Her final wish... was to put on an event. Called RAD WEEKEND. I went, and I didn’t know . A week after... I followed my dad when he went to the hospital to check on her, and I thought nothing was wrong.  

“I hid in one of the corridors. He didn’t see me. Then I snuck into her room, and the look on her face when she realized I knew – it was like her entire world had ended.” An’s hands tightened into fists around the sweater Kohane was wearing. “She told me everything, because what else could she do? She was in the hospital and she had no way to escape. I- I felt like my world was ending, too, because she was always there for me even when my dad wasn’t and she- she was my aunt. She could’ve adopted me and I would’ve been okay with that. I loved her so much, and she wanted to lie to me to protect me from the truth.  

“Every day, I wish I hadn’t followed him. Maybe, then, I’d be happy when I sang instead of treating music itself as a reminder of who she was and who I can never be. I- I could think she was singing in the U.S. or something and I’d be happy . I’d be singing. I’ve never wanted to do anything else with my life. And I took that away from myself when Nagi-san died because I didn’t believe I could ever be nearly as good as she is. No matter what I do, I can’t blame her for any of it. She was too important for that.  

“The funeral was the hardest event of my life.”  

Kohane buried her face in An’s shoulder. Let her cry, and let her know everything she felt was valid. Everything she said was true. Kohane had told herself she would not cry; but she so quickly broke that promise when An muttered, “I want her back. For one minute. I want her to give me a hug or pat me on the head like she would do when I was a kid and tell me I can do this. But I know that’s impossible.”  

That’s the part that hurts the most.  

Kohane did not remember falling asleep.  

Kohane woke up, curled up next to An, her head still gently resting against An’s. She was the only one awake; her newly-ordained singing partner was still asleep, although soon that would not be the case. The sun was just rising in the sky, and as it did, it adorned the room in gold. The moment felt oddly domestic, and for a second, Kohane let herself imagine a future. Waking up every morning like this, curled up in her girlfriend’s arms-  

Wait. Girlfriend ? Where had that come from? They were just friends. Kohane had definitely not asked An to kiss her a few days ago. Nope. Absolutely-  

“You’re pretty,” An said. Kohane turned towards her to either refute that claim or kiss her (both were fine).  

An beat her to it, though, pressing a kiss to Kohane’s cheek, so close to her lips yet so far. “Good morning,” she whispered.  

The only words Kohane could think of to describe her current state of mind were starstruck and lovesick . She knew her face was bright red; who wouldn’t be? “G-good morning, An-chan.” She wanted to lean in. Wanted to kiss her.  

They were so close.  

"An," her father called, "we have pancakes for breakfast if you two are hungry."  

Kohane was not an angry person. She did not curse, she would not scream.  

But she was frustrated with An's father for having inadvertently ruined the moment. If she was quicker to action, maybe she'd be kissing An right now instead of making her way over to the dining room, hand in hand with her, and maybe she'd be smiling brighter because of it. Unfortunately, that had not happened, and so she was mad at herself.  

The pancakes were good. Kohane had never known exactly how to make small talk at meals, but An didn't seem to want to hold a conversation when her parents were already chatting about work and train schedules, so that was really not a problem.  

Kohane had never spent an entire weekend at a friend's house before, and it did seem strange to not go home on Sunday night because she had school the next day, but she would admit it had quite possibly been the best weekend of her life. She'd binge-watched movies with An in the living room, participated in family board game night (and lost every single game), sang on the roof with an audience of one, and walked around Vivid Street to get a better sense of her new neighbourhood. Yes, it had been chaotic, but she'd loved it, and she wouldn't change it for the world.  

Monday morning, she woke up feeling somewhat sad. School was going to be interesting, to say the least; her grandmother was friends with some of the teachers and she might've reached out recently to see if they'd keep an eye on Kohane to make sure she wasn't in a relationship with another girl her age, which... well, she didn't know what exactly she was to An, but they were trying to be singing partners and Kohane was in love with her.  

Her uniform had been dried and ironed. She wished she didn't have to put it on; at least then she would be free of everyone's expectations. It felt so wrong against her skin.  

An, on the other hand, looked absolutely stunning in her school uniform. She'd swapped out her bow for a tie with a friend who'd been given one by mistake and who detested wearing ties, she said. The tie... made the outfit look complete. Kohane sort of wished Miya Girls offered one; Shiho would jump at the chance to wear anything that made her look more masculine, and besides, Saki had mentioned she had a thing for masculine women. (It was no secret to Kohane and Minori that Shiho and Saki had something they needed to sort out, and maybe Ichika and Honami needed to sort it out with them- wait, were they watching a polycule develop right in front of them?)  

Kohane did not think about how good An looked in her uniform as she made her way down Vivid Street towards the train station. Kamiyama High School wasn't far from An's house, so Kohane walked with her a fairly short distance until An pointed out the best route to the station and ran off towards Mizuki, whose pink hair was done in two ponytails today. Kohane waved at her before turning down the street.  

She had to refill her fare card balance before she even got on the train, which was a little annoying, but there weren't too many people on the train (strange for this time of morning). Kohane kept a lookout for unwelcome conversationalists – her grandma, the man , the used car salesman, the group of all-boys' school students who seemed like they'd spent the morning asking girls for their numbers – and avoided them. She'd grown a little too good at escaping through crowds as of late, it seemed.  

She somehow ended up on the same train as Minori when she changed lines. The first sign of this was a very enthusiastic, "Kohane-chan, over here!" from one car down. Minori usually was one to follow the rules concerning public transport, but a little joy was fine now and then, Kohane reasoned as she ducked through the confused looks of so many strangers and stood next to one of the only people she could trust.  

"Minori-chan, you take this train?"  

"The line I usually ride is running less this morning because of maintenance," she explained. "Haruka-chan said I should take this one because it's fast."  

Kohane remembered the news headline about someone bringing a bunch of stuffed penguins onto the train line they were currently on and wondered if there had been more than one reason why Haruka had thought this line would work for Minori. "Did you study for our quiz today?"  

Minori promptly made her panicked expression. "We had a quiz ?" she whisper-yelled. They couldn't get away with screaming, no matter why, on the train. Not even an idol-induced stupor could justify raised voices. "Kohane-chan, can I borrow your notes?"  

"I think you'll have to read them in the courtyard," Kohane muttered. "We're almost there." At least, Google Maps seemed to think so. Kohane normally never took this train; it was on the wrong side of the city from her house.  

"You live in Shibuya?" Minori asked as they stepped out of the car and onto the platform. She headed off towards a sign pointing towards the exit, and Kohane scolded herself for not knowing where she'd put the damned inhaler over the weekend. It wasn't in her pockets.  

"Minori-chan," she called. Minori stopped and waited for her to catch up. "Ah- I... was at a friend's house this weekend." A fraction of the truth, but was she lying? Kohane thought she saw a high purple ponytail in front of them and questioned if Mafuyu also took this train line to school, but then it disappeared into a crowd and she wondered if it had even been real.  

"The whole weekend?" She sounded almost jealous. "Shiho-chan didn't have anyone over on the-"  

"She goes to a different school." Kohane knew cutting people off was rude. Minori speculating about where she was, however, was insanely awkward, and so she needed to shut it down. "You met her when I... um, scratched up my legs." There were still patches of broken skin on her knees. An had been playing first aider or something the whole weekend, making sure Kohane didn't reopen the wounds, applying some sort of salve and changing her bandages every day. It was quite nice to have someone else rip them off for once. Kohane was not a fan of treating herself, even when it came to scratches. Looking at herself and seeing that she was not okay – well, it went against her grandmother's image of her and that was unacceptable-  

"Oh, the girl with muscles?" Minori grinned, and Kohane knew what that was about. "Did you kiss-"  

"Nope." Kohane began speedwalking towards the exit. "I did not."  

"Aww!" Minori sounded incredibly disappointed for someone who was at risk of spontaneous combustion if she even thought about Haruka kissing her. "I wanted you to be the first one of our friend group to end up in a relationship..."  

An unpleasant thought occurred to her. "Did you bet on me and her with Shiho-chan?" Minori wouldn't look her in the eyes, which confirmed everything Kohane needed to know. "Oh my god, you actually did."  

"We wanted you to be happy," Minori explained. She smiled.  

Kohane couldn't argue with that logic. She changed the subject and they continued walking towards Miya Girls. Minori did not notice the way Kohane regularly checked the area around them for people she wasn't interested in holding a conversation with, and maybe that was for the best. Minori knew Kohane was gay; she did not need to know about the conversion therapy incident. She would be OK with the idea of Kohane staying at a friend's house because she was not one to push for the reason why, and for that, Kohane was very grateful to her.  

School was not particularly notable that day. Kohane said hello to Mafuyu and surprised everyone in a fifty-metre radius by calling her by her first name, and she could tell Mafuyu's mask was up but said nothing, for to do so would to be to compromise everything she had built to ensure no one worried about her.  

Minori did well on the quiz, not that Kohane thought she'd fail (she had some unique skill to do well after a brief session of rereading the notes). Kohane herself did better than she was anticipating; her final grade was an eighty-five. Not honour student levels of perfection, but better than the sixty-something she'd gotten on her last test.  

She ate lunch with Mafuyu and a group of second-year students whose names she did not know. They sat in the courtyard a scant distance away from Minori and Haruka, who seemed to be having a discussion about after-school activities that kept getting interrupted by Minori having a gay panic moment, and Shiho and her band, who seemed to be having a very lively discussion about practice and a Pegasus.  

"Azusawa-san," one of the second-year students said, "how has your introduction to high school been?"  

"It's been quite nice," she responded. "Thank you very much for allowing me to sit with you."  

"Oh, it's no problem. Asahina-san seems to like you enough." She laughed. "She lets you use her first name, after all."  

What did that mean? Did they seriously think Mafuyu... was in a relationship with her? Besides the fact that Kohane already had a complicated enough situationship with An, she wasn't attracted to Mafuyu in any more than a platonic way. In another (much weirder) universe, maybe , but she lived in this universe where she was not interested in a romantic relationship with Mafuyu.  

There was also something about the way Mafuyu acted when they weren't with their classmates that made Kohane ever so slightly more likely to think of them as not a girl. While she hadn't been sure about Mizuki-san because she was chaotic, Mafuyu simply read as trying to be masculine while also not being able to , and that was... telling.  

Kohane made a mental note to look up how to have a discussion with someone about their gender identity when she got home.  

Wait, where was "home" today? Was she going back to her grandmother's house at risk of harm, or was she getting back on that train to An's house and staying there? They hadn't discussed that in the morning and Kohane wasn't supposed to have her phone out, so it wasn't as if An would be able to contact her.  

Oh no.  

She hoped An's parents wouldn't mind if she stayed another week or ten. Kohane did not want to go back to the hell her grandmother said would fix her, even if it meant cutting off her family. An's extended family was hopefully a lot nicer than Kohane's; otherwise, she didn't know what she'd do.  

Her eternal torment, soon to be avoided and thrown away entirely thanks to the grace of an angel completely unlike the ones her grandmother believed in, had returned to haunt her by the end of the school day. She chatted about schoolwork and art exhibits with Mafuyu and asked Minori how her idol work was going as she walked hand in hand with Shiho and... Saki out of the gate, Honami warning Saki not to run too fast as they skipped towards the bustling city life. Ichika was following their little group, laughing, and Emu had already reached the gate.  

Kohane had never been so connected to such a large group of people before. Minori taking her in as a friend, adopting her, as An would say, had ended up with her knowing all of these people. She felt she was worthy of interacting with them even though she had never met them before high school. Everyone cared about her, listened to her when she had a problem and did not judge her for who she was. The second-years found this display of friendship a little strange, and Kohane could not blame them. She was having too much fun to care, however.  

"Kohane. What have I told you about spending time with tomboys?" Her grandmother gestured in a rude way at Shiho. "She's corrupting you into a homosexual."  

"How the hell would I corrupt her when I can't even tell if I'm gay or bi?" Shiho ruffled Saki's hair. "Anyway, Kohane's our friend, and nothing anyone could ever say will change how much we think she's an awesome person." She threw an arm around Kohane, strengthening the skipping chain. Saki did the same.  

"You're introducing her to the lifestyle. It's only natural for men and women to fall in love."  

Saki, who Kohane was 90% sure hated conflict, promptly adopted a very concentrated expression. "Girls can date girls. And if you'd kick her out just because she's gay, I have a bunk bed in my room for her to stay in!"  

"Well. If you'll not listen to sanity..." A pause. "Your room. This Saturday, I have a meeting with the neighbourhood council. You have two hours to get in and get out, or else everything is going in the trash. Including that damned snake of yours." A glance at Saki. "And you. I had better not see her in a relationship with another girl. No matter what your deluded fantasies of inclusion seem to want."  

Saki wrapped her second arm around Kohane as her grandmother stormed off in a huff. "Kohane-chan, is there somewhere you can go, or do you need to stay-"  

"I have someone," she whispered. "Thank you."  

She stayed with the group for another thirty minutes, all of them sitting on the four benches outside the main gate, until An's father came and picked her up. Honami offered her apple pie and Mafuyu stayed even though she had cram school. Said her mother would understand if it was just this once, but Kohane could tell she knew she'd be in trouble for this. Knew her frail self-confidence would once again be destroyed because she dared to help someone in need. She sat directly across from Kohane, and at some point she began singing a song.  

Emu said it was one of the original songs written by an underground music circle who met only at one in the morning. No one questioned how Mafuyu knew the song or why she could sing it so well. They all understood that the fallout of what had happened was more important than someone's knowledge of a haunting melody that seemed to tie them together like threads caught in the wind.  

Kohane entered numbers into her contacts list as Minori explained the situation to An's father and Honami gave her the address she housekept at in case she wanted to spend some time for herself. Mafuyu seemed a little jealous at this, but Kohane could ask her about that later. She did wonder if the person in question was Mafuyu's partner.  

The car rolled towards the main roads, and Kohane waved goodbye to the people who made her school life worth living. Thanked An's father for driving her.  

An saw her facial expression and pulled her into a hug.  

Finally, Kohane let herself cry, on the couch in a living room she'd only recently been introduced to.  

Was this what family was?  

Chapter Text

Shiraishi An was a very level headed individual who would never resort to violence in any situation, no matter how much she wanted to. She understood that constructive conversation was essential to resolving issues, and she was not one to become overly agitated on someone else's behalf. She did not wish ill upon other people, and she did not curse their names.  

All of this was true before she learned about Kohane's grandmother. Whether or not it would remain true was currently unknown. Yes, it was illegal for her to own a firearm, but kitchen knives worked just as well, didn't they? Certain cosplay props would also work. Maybe Mizuki had-  

"An-chan, is family... supposed to hurt you?"  

Nope. Nope. An was going to commit a murder with her own bare hands and maybe something from the science lab. "Never."  

"Then why- why would she...?"  

An had been under the impression that Kohane was at odds with her grandmother, that she knew she was being hurt and could rationalize that she couldn't fix it. But now...  

Had some part of her – that little girl left all alone holding her father's hand as he died – wanted to believe someone cared about her? An... in a way, she knew what it was to need that validation, that love, from the person who was supposedly responsible for her well-being.  After Nagi-san had died – now's not the time for that – she'd wanted answers. Wanted her parents to sit with her on the roof or take her to the cemetery once a month and to grieve, but they'd been able to move on, to make  their peace, and she was still that middle school girl witnessing her aunt's final moments, unable to move out of fear she would die faster if there was no one there with her.  

An knew that pain too well.  

"I don't know," she whispered. "But... if you need to stay here forever, that's okay."  

Her mother, who'd just gotten back from work, heard this statement and promptly turned back towards the entryway. It would later turn out that this was because she intended to buy some of Kohane's favourite snacks, and for that, An was very grateful, but at the time it made very little sense.  

"Do you think I could transfer to- to your school?"  

An frowned. "You could. But- I think all your friends would want to follow. Dad said something about you being surrounded by a group of like ten people when he came and picked you up?"  

"Some of them wouldn't be able to."  

"Some of them wouldn't be able to transfer out of a private school? Is everyone there super rich or something?"  

"Mafuyu's parents wouldn't let her leave."  

"Dad, how many people can we have as permanent guests?"  

There was a very long pause.  

"An," he said, entering the living room, "how many are you thinking?"  

"One more?"  

"Is there any way you could be convinced to not include another person?"  

"No." An did not know anything about Asahina Mafuyu, other than that she was living somewhere that was slowly tearing her apart from her heart to her skin. Kohane had been the same, except now she had been kicked out and An had to take her in because how could she not ? There was nowhere else for her to go. "She might not want to come, though."  

"I'll get the guest bedroom ready just in case." He turned tail and walked out of the room. "Are the two of you comfortable sharing a room for the foreseeable future?"  

Kohane and An responded with a thumbs-up.  

"I think you have to fill out a transfer form," An said.  

"For what?"  

"Changing schools." She took out her phone and began research. "How do you feel about plaid?"  

"Not a fan."  

About thirty minutes, one box of peach buns, and a flurry of discussion later, An had found the easiest path to getting Kohane to transfer schools, which involved as little paperwork as possible and as little money as possible. Her uniforms would cost her something, but that was the only thing she needed to pay for and that was inevitable, so they'd accepted it and moved on. An's parents could sign as her replacement legal guardian even though they were not adopting her and thus shouldn't be able to do so.  

The next step in her grand plan to help Kohane's friend Mafuyu (or was it Yuki?) was to have a very long and potentially difficult conversation with her about the benefits and drawbacks of running away. Kohane had already prepared a very detailed list about the good things, and some of the bad things, but there were other considerations. How close was Mafuyu with her parents? Was she on some sort of medication she'd need to bring with her? Were there ways for her parents to de-register her from Kamiyama? Kohane's grandmother had disowned her, so she was essentially free to do as she wished with regards to her education. Mafuyu's parents, however, did have some say in what she did and how she spent her time.  

That in itself could be problematic. Maybe there was a way they could keep her at Miya Girls and have her live in the same place as Kohane and An. Her mother cared about her education, right? Surely she'd agree that Mafuyu could still attend Miya if it was viewed as having a better quality of education than Kamiyama.  

An frowned. Kohane had been trying to contact Mafuyu through Nightcord, but it seemed as if she was only ever online from the hours of half past midnight to three a.m., which made approximately zero sense. "I thought you said she was an honour student?"  

"Their friends make music at irregular hours," Kohane explained.  

The change in the manner in which Kohane spoke about Mafuyu was... interesting. An had Mizuki as a friend, though, so she understood that this was probably linked to some sort of gender thing. "How do they get enough sleep?"  

"I think they substitute sleep with coffee. I've seen them getting a cup from the convenience store right outside the school gate a few times." Kohane set her phone down. "I don't think they'll respond for a bit."  

"Want to get a start on that paperwork, then?"  

"Only if I get more peach buns."  

"You're going to make my mom go bankrupt." An sent a very quick message. "But, if you're certain you need them to be functional..."  

Kohane nodded like a mischievous hamster who'd just stolen an entire container of strawberries. "They help me focus, An-chan." Yup. She was playing the cute creature game again, and An was powerless against it.  Kohane was just so adorable – the best partner she could've asked for – and An was helping her. Spending money counted! "I'll pay you back when I have control of my bank account."  

"You don't have to..."  

"It's the least I can do to say thank you." Kohane stared at the paperwork they had to fill out like it had personally insulted her. "Let's do this."  

The first form: an explanation as to why she was leaving Miya Girls, with a section for "student sponsor" signature to indicate the transfer to another school would be beneficial – one signature from An and another from a "reliable student", who would probably be Mafuyu if Kohane could get her to sign the thing. It had a minimum length requirement; Kohane had to give a detailed list of why she was leaving, since "financial burden" wasn't applicable in her situation. (If that box had been selected, the rest of the form was optional.)  

An helped with moral support and snack provision. She also gave tips on wording when Kohane fell short; she wasn't the greatest at using her words, preferring to sing in order to let her emotions out, her coping mechanism she had denied herself because its very existence betrayed Nagi's final moments. Still, she knew how Nagi had used language to weave stories when An was upset, remembered how she could talk people down from a fistfight by encouraging them to sing instead of swing.  

Kohane finished the first form in an hour. The second – an application to join Kamiyama mid-term – was much simpler, and asked only a few questions: What school do you currently attend? What are your reasons for switching (select up to three)? Please provide parental or guardian consent. If none can be provided, responsible adults or older students may sign on your behalf.  

An's parents signed the form. Then there was another, oddly titled "In the event of parental or guardian disownment," which was the hardest. It was ten pages in length and was mostly writing. Actually, it was 10 percent multiple choice and 90 percent long answer questions. It was the scariest final exam An had ever seen and she wasn't even taking any class that would require her to fill it out. It had to be submitted to both schools as proof of Kohane's need to transfer, or at least that was what the websites An had looked at said: if an individual needed to change schools without parental consent, this form would enable them to do so and actively encouraged the schools to facilitate the transfer.  

Somewhere, while they were trapped in the depths of bureaucracy and paperwork, An found a reason to sing. Not for herself. Not for Nagi, like she'd promised, but for Kohane. To see her smile and to make her feel like she belonged somewhere. Because the sheer amount of things they had to do now to make sure Kohane would be safe was all worth it in the end; An would be able to see her live without fear of her grandmother trying to take her back even though she'd said she'd stop.  

She wrapped an arm around Kohane as she wrote out the final details on the last page. They'd been sitting together for two hours working on the same form and still not everything was perfect. It didn't need to be – this was, after all, a difficult experience – but Kohane still wanted it to be as perfect as could be and so there had been times where An had had to write sections out for her because her hands shook too much recalling the details; she put in a personal note about it. Assistance provided in writing; friend had difficulty keeping hands still.  

For once, An did not immediately think about Nagi when she had to help Kohane with something she felt she was supposed to be able to do by herself. Her mind went there eventually – to a hospital room where her worst fears had all come together to torment her in a weeklong fight to spend as much time as possible with her aunt who left the world soon after – but she did not think about it at first. She simply thought of it as a friendly gesture towards someone whose relationship with her was very complicated. Kohane had asked her for a kiss. Kohane had looked at her triceps and blushed. Kohane had smiled at her when she told an unfunny joke and had sung her to sleep last night when she woke up because of The Nightmare. The one that visited her every night because she dwelled on The Week that had turned out to carry an unspeakable pain.  

An could spend the rest of her life singing and never be good enough to deserve this girl as her partner. Kohane hummed some song that vaguely sounded like it was from some big-name American artist as she worked. An wasn't sure why until she sang the final line. You're the loss of my life . Surely, seeing as An was right here, that was directed at her parents.  

Loss of-  

Oh. Oh. That was what that reminded her of. She made no mention of it – let the image of Nagi in her mind drift away like an unattended floating donut on a river – and immersed herself in the moment. She sang a duet with Kohane, all soft and gentle and nothing like the songs she usually sung. An didn't even know what they were singing, but it was sweet. Kohane did not tell her, and that was fine. She had always been comfortable with a little chaos.  

After the form was done, An set it in a pile with the others and put a sticky note on it with the words To be photocopied on it. She went back to the couch. "'Hane, what do you want to do?"  

Kohane bit her lip. "Can we sing?"  

An wasn't going to say no to the cutest and most amazing partner in the world. She hopped up from the couch and dragged Kohane down to the cafe. The stage part had been closed; bar hours did not always include access to it and An was very grateful to her father for putting up the divider tonight. It was too late to need any microphones; they could sing without background music, too, so that was no problem. "What do you want to sing?"  

Apparently she hadn't gotten that far in the planning stage. "I... don't know."  

"Okay," An said. She'd done the same thing as a kid: asked Nagi or Taiga or her father to sing with her, not knowing what she wanted to sing but knowing she had to. "Can I pick something?"  

"Sure." Kohane seemed apprehensive of the idea.  

What songs would they both know? An had sung with her before but only when she was the one in charge of the playlist. She didn't know what Kohane was familiar with. I hope you're a quick learner . She chose some song Mizuki had raved about – and sung with someone whose little brother was apparently not a fan of the nickname Mizuki had chosen for him. Why An remembered that of all things, she didn't know, but "Venom" was a great song and she knew it by heart.  

Kohane seemed confused when An introduced the song; she read the lyrics for a good ten minutes while An waltzed around the stage like actors did in old movies. It had been a long time since she'd watched anything from before the 1970s, but somehow she still remembered the steps to a two-person dance she'd made Haruka learn. There was just enough space on the stage to dance it, but An did not know any songs that would fit its rhythm except for the original piece. "Kohane," she called, "would you... want to dance with me?"  

"I'm not very good," she muttered. "I'll step on your feet."  

"I don't care."  

Kohane hopped up from her spot, placed her phone on the table pushed up against the wall, and turned to An. "What kind of dance?"  

"It's an old dance," An said, and Kohane seemed to deflate. "It's fun, though, and it's not one your grandmother would have made you learn if that's what you're worried about-"  

Kohane smiled. "Okay."  

An was not usually one to praise the creative genius of Rodgers and Hammerstein, but as they had written the music for the dance she was now about to teach Kohane, she had to give them a little credit. The song began, and even though An had never been to Europe and did not intend to, she started acting like a nobleman from a rich family. She went through the steps with Kohane, one by one, then practiced them; they spent at least half an hour on the basics before Kohane declared herself prepared to dance the full two minutes.  

There was a mild amount of stepping on toes and apologies, but An did not mind, because as she spun and clapped across the stage, she saw the smile on Kohane's face continue to grow. Saw her laugh and catch herself when she almost fell. Led her through the motions of a routine she herself did not remember. They reached the end of the dance long before An wanted to.  

"Can we do that again?" Kohane asked.  

So they did. This time, it worked much better and they added a bit of flair to their movements. An had never seen Kohane twirl before – not that dance was the most important part of their music – but she found herself mesmerized by how pretty she was, even when she was wearing one of An's old dresses from her middle school days that was a little torn on the sleeves. It was a deep purple; it complimented her eyes and made her look like a lady. The shoes she was wearing – her sneakers, of all things – added to her outfit.  

She was the most beautiful person An had ever seen.  

"My lady," An said as they finished the second dance, "would you care to join me again?"  

"Why, of course," she responded. "This time, dare we switch roles?"  

How on Earth was she falling into character so easily? An grinned. "If it pleases you," she answered. "Are you confident tonight?"  

"Quite. Perchance the presence of a gentleman has made me daring." They both laughed at that. "Although if you do not trust my abilities..."  

"I trust your abilities, darling; I simply doubt my own."  

"I am certain you'll do well." Kohane took An's hands in her own. "Trust me."  

"I shall." An took a deep breath. "Dare I ask the lady for a kiss?"  

Kohane kissed her on the cheek – not what she had meant, but she'd take it – and stepped back, her face all red like a tomato. Normally An would think anything that could be linked back to tomatoes was suspect, but Kohane was not someone she would ever hate or doubt, and so she let herself fall into the moment. Danced the part Kohane had for the past few tries and found herself enjoying it. The expression "dance the night away" had never seemed so truthful as it did now.  

Strangely enough, the divider had a window built in, and a small crowd had gathered to watch from the bar, including An's father, who had a knowing smile on his face. Kohane either did not see or did not mind, because she continued on as if nothing had gone wrong. An let herself be consumed by the moment. Forgot about the people, forgot about the world, and focused on the girl in front of her, who was concentrated on the next steps.  

The song changed, and although it was no longer good for waltzing, they continued their dance, weaving their arms together and letting each other go. An knew the movie soundtrack very well; she sang along with the actors as Kohane led her through the next steps. It felt like they were the only humans alive on the planet.  

This – this was all that mattered. An was here with Kohane, dancing with her to some silly song about goodbyes, and they were together. Happy.  

It was such a foreign concept to her – this idea that she could forget about everything she had ever failed at and done – but it called to her. This could be her life if she wished it to be; she could spend her days with this amazing girl until she died, singing and dancing and dreaming of a better world where she was not scared to use her voice.  

Kohane stepped back from her. "My fine gentleman," she said, and An remembered they were still supposed to be in character, "do not doubt your abilities. You are a fine dancer, and an exquisite singer. I would adore the chance to sing with you."  

The statement was cheesy, but it was all the motivation An needed. "Shall we?"  

She hit play on the instrumental for Venom.  

A few hours after An had realized she could indeed be happy when singing, she was buckling herself into the backseat of her parents' car, Kohane right next to her, to start a two-and-a-half hour car ride to Shizuoka. There was a good chance it would take much longer than that if they ran into traffic, but An had brought travel games and Kohane would want to sing anyway, so she wouldn't get bored. She had left her homework at home because she was supposed to focus on spending time with her family at her family reunion, but she wouldn't've wanted to do it even if she had brought it. Schoolwork was only so interesting, and even then, it had to be for music class for An to enjoy it. Besides, who would want to do work when there was a very pretty girl sitting right next to them who was their singing partner?  

"An-chan." Kohane was fiddling with the window shade. "Were you wanting to sing to pass the time?"  

"I'll sing if you want to."  

The expression on her face suddenly turned serious. "An-chan, don't force yourself to do things just because I want to do them. You said you wouldn't go in the haunted house with me when we went to Phoenix Wonderland last week, and I respect that."  

An had not gone in the haunted house because she had heard there were ghosts, and even though some ghosts were friendly (ish), she would avoid meeting with any of them if possible. Kohane had gone in and said it had been a lot of fun, which did not make any sense. "I just... I don't like singing without you."  

Her father raised an eyebrow at that statement.  

"You're sure," Kohane said.  

"Yeah. I... I just... Dad, can you explain-"  

"An, you can explain your brain much better than I can."  

Great. So the one person who could help her out with this had left her to climb a mountain by herself. "I feel like I'm not respecting my aunt when I sing. Especially when I do it alone, because she had this amazing voice and I- I'm nothing like her. When I sing with you- I'm happy. I feel like... maybe she could be proud of me, when I sing with you."  

Kohane wrapped an arm around her. "I get it."  

An sort of doubted that, but Kohane listened to her and sung to her when she did not trust her own parents to comfort her, so surely she did understand. "Okay."  

They sung along to the radio for the rest of the drive when they both recognized the song. An had a feeling Kohane would want to unpack her statement about needing to sing with someone else for her to feel like she wasn't disrespectful. Thankfully she hadn't brought it up, though, so An felt comfortable not pushing the issue. After all, there was no point in crying before you got to the family reunion because everyone would be crowding you to make you feel better if you looked even slightly sad.  

Out of all the things she could've possibly looked forward to, Kohane's reaction to An's family was not on the list. She knew from an earlier remark that Kohane didn't exactly have the... best relationship with her own, to put it lightly, but her sheer enthusiasm about everything from the way An's younger cousins were attempting to climb some tree to how one of her aunts gave everyone hugs and even asked An if she'd found a girlfriend yet (Kohane had gone bright red at that one because they hadn't had that discussion yet).  

Everyone in An's family loved Kohane, mostly because she was sweet, had some very intense interests in things An would never have touched because she found them scary (the picture of a two-headed snake terrified her so much that everyone laughed at her), got good grades, and enthusiastically talked to everyone whenever they invited her into their little bubbles. She even climbed a tree , for God's sake, while everyone clapped around the base of it and An's cousins mourned the fact that someone who wasn't guaranteed to marry into the family (but they were betting on it) had managed to do such a thing so well.  

"So," An's grandfather said after Kohane had gotten down from the tree, "when's the wedding?"  

"I don't know if there's going to be a wedding," An responded. "She's really nice, but I don't want to pressure her to-"  

"You're not dating?" her grandmother chimed in. "That's a bit of a shame. She'd make a lovely addition to the family."  

"Please don't," An muttered. "I just- she's been through some stuff."  

"Then you'll just have to help her through it. You're quite good at that, even if you don't think of yourself as such a person." Her grandmother placed a hand on her shoulder. "I know why you don't want that kind of commitment, child. You're afraid of loss."  

"I can't go through that again." An wouldn't meet her eyes. "You know I can't."  

"It's a part of life. Whether or not you can go through it is not a consideration the gods make when handing it to you. You simply must learn to grieve your losses and to move on while still honouring the memory of those who are no longer with us. And that, dare I say, is the hardest part." She glanced over at Kohane, who'd been pulled into some sort of game with the younger children. "Your girl, is there a reason she hasn't spoken about her parents? Often it's proper to speak about them when meeting others to assure them that you don't live alone."  

"Her parents- I don't know the details, but I know they died when she was seven or eight. Her grandmother raised her, but she's awfully strict and... well, she's been staying at ours since Friday. We have to clean her room out, including her snake, this Saturday."  

"She's been disowned?"  

An bit her lip. "I guess you could say so. She... I thought it would be nice for her to come here because she needs some time to relax and find out what family can be like."  

"Excellent. Now, I hear your teachers are unimpressed with your performance?"  

"I'm lovesick. I can't help it," An said, gesturing to the sky. "The gods must've blessed me with a pretty girl but also cursed me with a major crush on her. And she's kissed me, not on the lips, but-" She paused. "What?"  

"Oh, nothing. Your father was the same way when he met Yuka-san."  

Kohane spontaneously appeared right next to An, and that killed that conversation. She pulled out her camera and showed An the digital pictures; her second camera, the one she'd bought herself, was self-printing, and several of the proofs were drying in the sun, attached to some string by clothespins and strung up between the trees. Was that why she'd climbed them? "An-chan, I haven't gotten one of you yet," she said.  

An looked over her options. She could pose normally for the photo, or she could do something that would fluster Kohane and maybe get her a gentle slap on the arm as "revenge". She chose the latter option, and as Kohane led her towards an area of the park that had better lighting, she tied her sweater around her waist so her shirt, which did show off her muscles (lifting boxes at every store in town did have its advantages), was unobstructed. As Kohane messed with her camera settings and asked An to move slightly so the picture turned out well, she seemed to notice something.  

"An-chan, isn't it a bit cold without- Oh." She peeked out from behind the camera. "Is that on purpose?"  

An nodded. "I thought you wanted me to look my best."  

"I hope you know I can't focus." Kohane was openly staring now. "How do you even get those?"  

"I lift boxes for a living." The bench she was sitting on was quite pretty. She leaned forward, elbow on knee, and waited.  

"An-chan, please stop being pretty. It's wrecking my brain." She picked up the digital camera. An smiled and waited until she tucked it into its case to blink. Her eyes stung. A couple of Polaroids later, they were walking back to the main group and Kohane still wasn't over the muscle thing. Mission successful.  

Chapter Text

Kohane felt more nervous than she had in weeks. Today- today was moving day, if it could be called that. She was up in the front seat of Ken-san's car, providing directions across the city. They'd rented a moving van that Yuka-san was driving, An sitting in the front, and while Kohane hoped they wouldn't need all the space, she would need to remove a lot of things from her room. Her grandmother had sent her a text informing her that her window was from eight in the morning to ten because it was seniors' discount at the grocery store and one of her friends had invited her to a traditional tea ceremony afterwards.   

The van was just large enough to fit Count Pearl's tank. How they were getting that down the stairs and into the van, Kohane wasn't sure, but she did know that the rest of it would be easy. Her clothes, old school materials, and her plushies had been packed already; the posters on her walls and the little decorations she'd kept from her childhood had not, but they could make short work of those.   

Ken-san stopped the car in the driveway just as Kohane's grandmother had left the house. Kohane jumped out. She was going to have to use an alternate method of getting in; her grandmother had likely changed the location of the emergency key.   

Thankfully, she was able to get a good grip on the fence after she'd gone up the first flight of stairs before the locked door. She threw one leg over it, then the other, and slipped out of sight. Her back door was thankfully open. Kohane opened it and tiptoed through the house so to not disturb anything. She forgot to take off her shoes but decided it was not worth it; she could have one final act of rebellion, anyway, and the dirt tracks were a brilliant example.   

She opened the front door to An and her parents, who looked prepared to run a marathon. "Sorry we don't have time for the grand tour," she whispered as she led them up the stairs. "Not much to see anyway."   

Her room hadn't been cleaned out yet (thank God). She pulled out the bags from underneath her bed. An set up a box to put her books in, and Ken-san went downstairs to open all the doors so it would be easier to get Count Pearl out. Kohane stayed in her room with An, filling boxes and piling bags near the door so Yuka-san, who was the designated runner, could carry them down. An's father had said he'd watch the snake since there was a decent chance Count Pearl would not enjoy being moved.   

Kohane tore posters off her walls and rolled them up. She took down a string of fairy lights, which An promptly declared to be perfect for their room – apparently An's room was now An and Kohane's room – and unplugged her desk lamp from the wall. She folded up her blankets and sheets and stuffed them into a box. Some of her father's photographs hung on the wall – albums, too, some of the last things she had to remember him by – and she took them down to ensure she would keep them close to her heart. Her speakers, her organizers, her second lamp, her folding desk, all of it went to her door to be ushered downstairs. The plants on her desk went, too, except those were handled with great care. She took her calendar off the wall and informed An they would be putting it up as soon as they got back.   

In some strange way, this was almost like moving away to college, a sort of preparation for a dorm room. Kohane was planning to go to a university in Tokyo to avoid having to pack her belongings up in order to attend school, but for many others, this was a rite of passage. In English, it was called "flying the nest", which was oddly poetic. She was sharing a room with An, but she was also sharing a bed with her. Not something universities made their students do.   

Kohane stepped out of her room and looked back at it for the last time. It was bare now; only her bed remained. The walls were spotless and her closet was barren for the first time in eight years. Her windows still had their curtains, but An had blinds on her windows, so Kohane didn't need them per se.   

Her vision felt blurry, but she was still wearing her glasses, so why was-  

An wrapped her in a hug. "Hey, you okay?"  

Funny. She was crying. Maybe a part of her missed this place because her grandmother was her only living link to her father and she wanted someone who had known him. She wasn't one to talk to his friends – her uncles and aunties – although some of them had kept in touch, babysat her a few times when she was younger and held a party for her when she graduated middle school last year. She missed them. Missed her grandmother when she was younger, who was nice most of the time even if she was a little strict. "An-chan, I... I miss my mom and dad." She buried her face in An's shoulder. It was nice there. "I just- I-"  

"Hey. I... yeah, I don't know what that's like, but if you need to talk about it, I'll listen." An kissed the top of Kohane's head. "But it's nine-fifty. We've got to go."   

Even though she insisted she was too old for such things, she let An walk her down the stairs like she was a child; let her check to make sure nothing had been left behind and let her brush out Kohane's hair with the brush she kept in her parents' car before they drove away. They spent the car ride on call with each other because An thought it would be better if Kohane had emotional support from someone her age. Or she'd just wanted to call Kohane for the sake of it; she wasn't sure.   

The drive through the city was faster this time. There was much less traffic at ten in the morning compared to when most people went to work. It didn't matter that most people took the train; there were still drivers no matter where you went. Kohane was slightly grateful for it, though, because it meant the inherent awkwardness of sitting next to your maybe-girlfriend's dad was cut down by a significant margin. Maybe the fact that Ken-san also let Kohane live at his home also made it less awkward, but Kohane wasn't sure she'd ever be completely comfortable when left alone with an adult man. In a few years when she was older, sure, but now...  

"Hey," An's voice called in her earbuds, "you okay? You've been kind of quiet for the past few minutes, not that that's a problem, but-"  

Kohane sent her a text explaining the situation.   

"Oh, shit ," An muttered, followed by, "Sorry, Mom, but this is important! Um, Kohane, I didn't... probably should have asked you first, yeah? Okay. If you want to switch cars-"  

"It's stupid," she whispered, quiet enough that Ken-san might not hear. "I'll be fine. I know that. I just- I need to get over it."  

"Fuck that. There is no way I'm letting you think that." An took a deep breath. "Kohane, if that's bad for you, it's not your fault. I'll tell Dad to pull over." She hung up.  

Kohane grasped the door handle so hard she thought it might break in her hand. It was so stupid to feel this way about an objectively safe adult. About someone who was there for her and who had offered her a place to stay, but that man who had hurt her looked sort of like him now that she thought about it (now that she'd had the time to recover from being kicked out), and it- she knew she could not be hurt again. She knew she could not suffer it again; she knew it could have been worse and yet she was still so scared.  

The car slowed to a halt. An sprinted from the van over to the car, flung open the door before Kohane had a chance to react. She walked Kohane over to the van, hugged her for a long moment, and then pulled away. "Any time you need anything, I'm here," she said. Kohane did not want her to leave – she was warm and her very presence was grounding – but alas, she had to. An bade her goodbye and kissed her on the nose.  

She sat down in the van's second seat. Yuka-san sat there, a concerned look on her face. Kohane looked back at Count Pearl, who was asleep for the moment. "May I ask why you've needed to switch cars?" Yuka-san asked.   

"It's... it's stupid. Trivial."  

"Clearly, if it was trivial, you wouldn't have needed to switch."   

Kohane sighed. "Before I ran to your home, my grandmother had contacted some... American guy who swore he could 'fix' me. He- his whole idea of that was to take off my shirt and scratch me. And I'm scared. Of that kind of thing happening, and Ken-san- I know, I know he's a good person and okay to be around but I just- I'm scared." She was crying again. She felt weak; who on Earth could want to take her in? Except for An, of course; An loved her more than she had thought possible. Still, her parents had shown Kohane incredible kindness though they didn't need to. Kohane- she should trust them. Should listen to them like they were her own parents.   

"I'm sorry."   

What? "Are you sure... you're not mad?"  

"I work with kids a lot younger than you. They do the weirdest things every day – I have one who thinks they have to put their right shoe on first and if they don't, they tell me they've cursed themself for the rest of the week. If I got mad at that, I'd be out of a job. And you , you've done nothing wrong. If anything, you need more support."  

"Thank you?"  

"You don't have to thank me. Go ahead and call An if you'd like to keep talking to her." Yuka-san grinned. "I know she becomes a bit of a lovesick idiot whenever you're not there."  

"That's not..." Kohane blushed. She did end up calling An, but that was only because she wanted to talk to her and definitely not because she'd just received confirmation that An liked her back at all. That did not play a factor in that decision. Nope.   

She closed her eyes during the rest of the drive back to An's home and pictured herself spending time with Count Pearl like she used to do when she was younger and had time to spare. She did not notice they had arrived until Yuka-san tapped her on the shoulder. "Have a good nap?" she asked.  

"I wasn't asleep," Kohane muttered. "But it was nice."  

The first problem they encountered should have been glaringly obvious from the start: Where on Earth were they going to put Count Pearl? Sure, his tank didn't need to be kept up on a table or anything – it was about four feet tall, after all – but they still needed a space for it. An did not want the snake in her room (for good reason), but Kohane was wary about putting him anywhere else. He was literally her only long-term friend, who she'd known since she was in kindergarten, and according to her research, she'd be able to keep the snake in her life for a few more decades. The record lifespan of a ball python was, after all, forty-eight years in captivity. If Kohane could beat that with Count Pearl, she'd be happy.   

She was assigned to stay and keep the snake entertained while An went inside and got the measuring tape. By the time she'd noted everything down and gone to find a good space for Count Pearl while her parents moved the boxes and bags out of the back of the car, a crowd had gathered to alternately help with the moving effort or ask questions about Count Pearl: Why is there a snake? Is that dangerous? Will it eat my pet cat if it escapes? Will it escape?  

Kohane had never seen such a high level of interest in snakes from anyone before; most of her classmates thought they were cursed. "Count Pearl is my pet. He's actually quite docile. No, he doesn't eat cats, only dead mice. He won't escape." She ran through a mental checklist of things in the tank. Most of it was there – the heat lamps and such had been a major priority – but for some reason, the mice were not.   

Well. She did have to feed Count Pearl tomorrow – after all, he only ate once every month – but it was fairly easy to buy frozen mice at the pet store. She'd probably left the mice in the freezer, and her grandmother would either throw them out or call her about the "dead monstrosity" that needed to be removed. Surprisingly, dead mice in the freezer tended to turn people off of owning snakes.   

The reason why ball pythons got their name was because they had an adorable habit of curling up into a ball. Kohane wasn't sure whether or not this was a defense mechanism or simply a fun activity, but God was it ever cute when Count Pearl did it.   

"Kohane!" An yelled from the front door. "Does the snake need sunlight?"  

"I have a heat lamp for him, so not really, but he likes it better."  

"How do you even- never mind. We have space in the living room near a big window. Does that work for-"  

"Yes."  

An's parents took the cage on their next trip into the house. Some of the people An was familiar with had been taking Kohane's things over to An's room, and now they were all hanging around the living room, watching Count Pearl, seeing why Kohane had brought a snake into someone's house to stay. She knew he was going to need time to adjust to a louder environment and had asked An to not invite too many people over because it would cause Count Pearl stress (she'd seemed a little confused with that as a concept, but had given it the okay). She sincerely hoped he didn't mind the move too much.   

Then she went upstairs to An's room and realized just how much stuff she needed to unpack. This was going to be a very, very long day.   

Kohane had spent approximately five hours making space in closets, arranging stuffed animals, setting up organizers, overcrowding An's room, looking for tape, searching for batteries, being unable to find batteries, running up and down stairs, stealing snacks, and agonizing over her packing habits before she felt accomplished. An's room was half Kohane's now, and it looked the part. The walls were almost completely covered with posters and pictures; some of RAD WEEKEND, others of  Wonderlands x Showtime and one of ball pythons.  

She flopped backwards onto An's bed and looked up at the ceiling – the only space that had remained untouched. Small glow-in-the-dark stars had been placed there several years ago. The way An spoke about them seemed to indicate it had been Nagi who'd put them up with her. Kohane wondered what that had been like. She'd put up all her posters on her own.  

"An-chan," she called as she heard the door open, "can we go shopping for dead mice?"  

The next sound was oddly similar to that of a drink being spat out, followed by a coughing fit. "Kohane, what ?"   

"Count Pearl needs to eat, and I forgot to bring his food with me."  

There was a moment of unpleasant silence while An processed what Kohane had said. "Your snake... eats dead mice."  

"Dead frozen mice."  

"Kohane, that makes it worse." An looked like she was about to throw up. "Is that why you said it would be a bad idea for it to live in my room?"  

"Count Pearl likes the sunlight," Kohane explained. "Also I didn't want you to see me thawing mice if you didn't want to."  

"Can you go on that trip with my mom? I... don't want to see dead mice."   

Kohane hopped up from the bed. "Sure!"  

An looked incredibly relieved.   

"Yuka-san, are you sure it's okay for me to keep dead mice in your freezer?" Kohane set the (sealed) bag of frozen mice down on the ground. "An keeps her ice cream in here. I think this might creep her out a bit."  

"She'll get used to it eventually," she responded. "After all, she got used to not being able to use the fire escape to get up to the roof when they installed alarms to prevent people from using it whenever they wanted so there would be no freaking out. Kids would run up and down the stairs when there wasn't a fire, and even some of the adults would – An's aunt, I'm sure she's told you, liked running up and down those stairs and scared the hell out of people." A pause. "Don't you need to feed the snake now?"  

"No. Count Pearl likes it better when he eats at night." Kohane shut the freezer door. Now, to hope that An would not decide to get ice cream right now.  

She spent the rest of the day waiting for An to discover the mice – not because she thought that would be beneficial but because she hoped An didn't freak out too much when she realized just what Count Pearl ate. The mice in the bag usually didn't look dead, which was arguably the stranger bit. They were – no creature could survive that amount of freezing – but they looked asleep most of the time. Kohane had never found it odd because she'd been taught how to feed the snake at the age of four, when her father had decided that they needed a family pet. The inherent strangeness of buying frozen mice and then placing them in a snake cage was just routine.  

In some ways, Count Pearl was a low-maintenance pet. He did not need to be walked, nor did he require pets or cuddles. But his cage did need a lot of maintenance, and that could be quite time-consuming. Kohane had to check the thermometers in it regularly to make sure he wouldn't overheat or get hypothermia; even though snakes were cold-blooded, too much sun was not good for them.  

At about nine, the sun had set. Kohane went back to the freezer to get Count Pearl his supper. Coincidentally, An was opening it at the same time to get ice cream. Kohane braced herself for the probable reaction.  

"Wait, these have to be frozen all the time ?" An, holding her container of rum raisin ice cream, jumped back from the freezer like it had given her an electric shock. "Kohane, what on-"  

Oh, well. Maybe she could tease An about it. "An-chan, do you mind passing me the bag of mice?"  

"The snake needs to eat." An swallowed. "Yup. Okay. I definitely don't think this is weird at all." She grabbed the bag of frozen mice and handed it to Kohane. "On second thought, not hungry." The ice cream went back in the fridge.  

Kohane had a pair of gloves she used specifically for this purpose. She put them on, and as An scampered off to get away from the dead mice, she wondered if the reason why An wasn't a fan of the mice was because they were just... there. Destined to be fed to a hungry snake.  

She walked over to Count Pearl's tank with the bag and opened the small trap door. She'd done the math on how much he needed to eat every time she fed him and put two mice in the tank. That would tide him over until next month; he only ate about once every six weeks. As low-maintenance as they came.  

Then, after she closed and locked the trap door (you could never be too careful), she put the bag of mice back in the freezer and hurried back to the cage.  

Count Pearl was, for some reason, uncomfortable eating unless he was being watched. Maybe it was because four-year-old Kohane had found watching her snake while he ate absolutely fascinating – after all, he had no teeth, and she had to chew everything she are – and he'd just gotten used to it over time. Or maybe her snake was the most insufferable kind of opera singer. God knew what went through the minds of reptiles.  

"Is it safe to come in?" An asked from the kitchen. "Or is it still eating the... ew."  

"He's just finishing dinner," Kohane said. "Give me a few minutes."  

"How can you be so happy about that?" Then, a few seconds later, as Kohane was beginning to think of a response, "Never mind. It makes you happy," she reasoned. "And it's... a little cute."  

Kohane beamed.  

An shrugged. "I just don't want to touch it."  

By Sunday night, Count Pearl seemed to have settled into the house and wasn't stressed. Kohane was the only one who could read his behaviour, but she'd spent a good chunk of the weekend checking up on him instead of studying or preparing for her transfer on Monday, and she figured that once he was alright, she could figure out what she was going to do at school. It was going to be odd, not spending every lunch hour she got with Shiho and Minori.  

"Good night," she whispered. Then she hurried up to An's room. Recently, they'd put up a divider so they would be able to change in the same room without any awkward moments; sure, Kohane was in love with An, but that kind of thing felt too far now. She ducked behind it.  

She'd kept wearing An's clothing to bed because she liked it, and besides, it was more comfortable than her own pajamas were. Unfortunately they couldn't do a two-way switch; Kohane was too small for that. She did wonder if An would like wearing her clothes, though.  

Kohane woke up in the morning to the sun peeking through the blinds. She had to get An's help to understand how her uniform was supposed to work – she had the bow, An had the tie; they were quite the mismatched pair. Kohane had the same blazer as An did; apparently cardigans were allowed, but she wasn't sure which one she'd wear, and it was a warmer day anyway. June was one of the summer months, and it was nearing its end; summer break started at the end of July this year, and Kohane was looking forward to the beach.  

She looked at herself in the mirror before she went downstairs for breakfast. "An-chan?"  

"Yes?"  

"How do I look?"  

An took a deep breath. "I want to kiss you so bad right now."  

"That's not what I asked," Kohane said.  

"Fine. You look perfect." An was flustered.  

Kohane kissed her on the cheek before going downstairs, leaving a very confused An behind her. Her grandmother had said it wasn't proper to tease, but God help her because it was always so funny to see how An reacted to that kind of thing. Revenge for her stunt with her sweater at the family reunion, if it could be called that.  

They ate breakfast together – this morning, in celebration of Kohane moving schools, it was waffles – and An did not mention the kiss until they left the house and gotten a little further away from the street.  

"I didn't know you liked to take the initiative." She elbowed Kohane like this was some old joke between them.  

"Well, you did ask for a kiss." Kohane grinned. "You didn't say it had to be on your lips or anything. And I... did want to kiss you."  

"So that means you're in love with me," An breathed. "Oh my god. You're- I've been taking myself in circles trying to figure out..." she trailed off. "Are you?"  

"I- um." Kohane took An's hand. "I... I love you."  

And An, who always seemed to be slightly sad, like there was something at the back of her mind that she could not forget, smiled from ear to ear like she had no cares in the world. "I love you too."  

Chapter Text

Shiraishi An had never, in her fifteen years of existence, ever kissed a girl on the lips before. In her dreams, of course she had, but now...  

She couldn't stop herself from moving closer to Kohane. From wrapping one arm around her back and her other hand reaching to run through Kohane's hair. An did not want to resist that, either; quite frankly, Kohane was... enticing. She could spend the rest of her life looking at her and how pretty she was. An could talk to her for days, could talk about her for days, wanted her to be happy and wanted to hear her sing. Even the snake was welcome now – Count Pearl was still a little spooky, but he was Kohane's friend and An would learn to like him.  

An leaned closer. Gave Kohane the option to push her back if she didn't want this, if An had read her wrong and messed everything up. She did not want to mess up Kohane's first day at Kamiyama, even if she really, really, really wanted to kiss her right now.  

Kohane beat her to the punch, closing the distance between them. Their lips met, and An felt like she was drowning in strawberries – Kohane's toothpaste was flavoured that way, something she'd sort of expected – and she never wanted to resurface. She wanted to stop time and stay in this moment forever. This was picture-perfect; the only thing that could have made it more beautiful would be if the cherry trees were in bloom.  

Yet, like all good things, the moment had to end. Kohane pulled away, her face all red. "An-chan, you..." She smiled. "I like kissing you."  

An was going to die because of her. Spontaneously combust because Kohane was too precious for this world and somehow she'd fallen in love with An and she'd done the same in return and... An was the luckiest person on Earth, she realized. How else would she have gotten the opportunity to be loved by someone this amazing? Surely some red string of fate had tied them together, written their fate in the stars like in all those cheesy anime Mizuki claimed she'd never watched. And being lovesick for Kohane – it was the best possible case of such a thing anyone had ever experienced.  

"I like kissing you, too," An responded.  

"Can I kiss you again?" Shy Kohane, who An only got to see when she was interacting with random people out on the street, was back and cuter than ever.  

This time, An beat her to it, because if there was one thing she didn't like losing to anyone in, it was being a complete dork. (Akito's words. She'd call this being in love .) And if being kissed by Kohane was the equivalent of reaching nirvana, then kissing her was somehow better than that. An could stay here forever, hidden in the shade of a tree, five minutes away from her school, with Kohane, kissing her and realizing just how down bad she was and-  

"Hey, An, I didn't know you knew how to do that," Mizuki called from across the street. "Poor little me, being made to watch my best friend spend time with her girlfriend while I can't even see Ena until this weekend-"  

Seeing as she'd been so rudely interrupted anyway , An pulled away from Kohane for a brief second. "Mizuki, you text Ena during class so much our math teacher makes you hand your phone in at the start of the period. I think you're fine."  

They promptly began pouting. "But An, you get to spend all day with Kohane!"  

"You stay up until four in the morning speaking to Ena."  

Kohane, who'd been watching this exchange weirdly attentively, tapped An on the shoulder. "Can you kiss me again?"  

Mizuki rolled their eyes from across the street. "Have fun focusing in class," she called. "See you!"  

An waved at her, then turned around to kiss Kohane again. She wasn't going to deny the cutest girl in the world anything, especially not when she'd been deprived of this for a good two minutes and she sort of missed it.  

Mizuki was right. Focusing in class was going to be a nightmare .  

It was only a five minute walk to the school from where they were currently, but it seemed to stretch on for hours because they were together and that was amazing. Kohane would point out things on their walk and they were holding hands and An would have died happily right now because this was everything she had ever wanted.  

When they did get to Kamiyama High – not that An necessarily wanted to be there – she led Kohane to the principal's office to introduce her to the man. Along the way, she pointed out where her classroom was. Where their classroom was, if all went well. They'd changed out their shoes at the front of the school and while An's backup pair was a little too big for Kohane, they fit well enough that she wasn't struggling with them. It was cute, the way she seemed so fascinated by different things and found it odd the first time she saw a guy and remembered this was a co-ed school.  

An knocked on the principal's door and hoped she would get a response. Sometimes, he was there, and sometimes, he wasn't; it depended on the day and whether or not Kamishiro and Tenma were up to something again. Usually it was her responsibility to call them out on that, but she was responsible for introducing Kohane to her school today and there were days where the stuff they'd pull was just so bad An was not supposed to attempt to stop them out of fear of her getting hurt. Normally that was rare and motivated by either one of them having some kind of serious issue in their personal life – one time, the reason for such a serious thing had been that Tenma was worried about his little sister and Kamishiro had decided to pull a ludicrous stunt to cheer him up while Kusanagi-san, one of his sane friends, told An about it.  

Thankfully, today he was there, and he greeted Kohane with the sort of kindness An did not think she was accustomed to receiving from adults. Invited her to sit and speak with him, and it was presumably for the same reason that she had asked to switch vehicles with An that one time that she insisted rather firmly that she was not going to hold a conversation with anyone alone.  

So of course An sat with her and held her hand underneath the table until the principal noticed and told them they didn't have to hide that. It was okay to be public about your relationship, he said, and the school would love to let her show off her true colours. An did not miss the squeeze to her hand and the brightness in Kohane's eyes when that was said. She zoned out midway through the meeting because she knew 90 percent of the information already and thought about singing with Kohane. About practicing with her and maybe , just maybe , going out on the street to show the world their resolve and everything they had done to make it known that Shiraishi An and Azusawa Kohane were in no way going to back down from the sheer challenge of surpassing RAD WEEKEND.  

It sort of terrified her, knowing she wanted to go beyond Nagi-san's dream despite not having sung properly since she'd died. At the same time it excited her, the prospect of doing this with Kohane , and that was all she needed so she let herself think about it. Standing on any stage with her partner as the people who had prepared to lie to An about something no apology could fix watched them do what Nagi had been unable to do. Watched their princess climb down from the tower of her own making with the help of a very unlikely temporary hero who had issues, too, but that did not seem to stop her from being the most perfect person on earth.  

An and Kohane were dismissed from the meeting once the principal had made sure Kohane understood everything important; she had been assigned to An's class, which made her happy, but now they were going to be a little late for first period because that conversation had taken forever .  

"Shiraishi-san." Her Japanese teacher looked over from the chalkboard. "You're not one to be late to class. Dare I ask why..." she trailed off. "Oh, is this the new student?"  

"Azusawa Kohane. It's good to meet you."  

"The only seat we have left is in the back right next to Shiraishi-san." She gestured towards the two empty desks. Mizuki, who also sat at the back despite that making it easier for her to text Ena whenever, waved at An with a really irritating grin on their face.  

"You're already a distraction," An muttered as she sat down next to Mizuki. (Kohane got the window seat). "Do not make it worse."  

"I'm not the one making it worse." Mizuki twirled their hair around their pencil. "Oh, and just so you know, we have a quiz this Thursday."  

An glared at them, then very deliberately rested her head on her desk like she was sleeping. She was planning on paying attention only if someone called her out on it; normally, her teachers let her sleep if she looked tired enough. (She had gotten enough sleep the night before, but a little nap never hurt.)  

"An-chan," Kohane whispered, "I know you slept well last night."  

"Maybe I'm tired from the walk."  

Kohane did not believe that for a second. She passed An a sheet of paper. On it was her first page of – she'd started taking notes already ? How- why was she this focused? They'd just gotten- "Copy those over to your notebook," she whispered. "I'll pass you the rest of mine later when you're done with that."  

Oh. So she was a diligent student. An was going to have to get used to that; she normally wasn't picked on that much by Mizuki, whose motto seemed to be "it's not my fault if my friends fail their classes" when it came to academics. In some ways it was weird that they were here today, but An supposed there was a minimum number of days you were required to attend classes without being asked to attend supplementary lessons or repeat a grade. Surely Mizuki only came to school just often enough that they wouldn't have to be here longer than necessary; their grades were stellar compared to An's. If Mizuki was in supplementary lessons, it was because they'd missed too many classes.  

The day went on so normally An realized she was getting a little too used to this. Having Kohane in her class was a dream for multiple reasons, including that she could get her notes from her without getting teased relentlessly for daydreaming.  

Gym went as well as she could have expected, and lunch was fine – Kohane and Mizuki seemed to be comfortable chatting with each other as An was revising Kohane's notes because she'd gotten distracted by birds chirping outside during class – but there still seemed to be a bit of a melancholy air hanging around Kohane's head.  

Probably she missed her friends, which wasn't something An would be able to fix, but then she received a very strange e-mail:  

Disciplinary Commitee and Student Council,  

There has been a recent increase in the number of Miyamasuzaka Girls students attempting to transfer schools. While this would not normally be a cause for concern, we believe this may be an attempt on their behalf to remain close to their friends, which could cause some lack of discipline in the halls. It still remains your responsibility to educate and explain our new students on the rules in this school; however, there is reason to believe they will be cooperative with you.  

Okay. People (probably Shiho and Minori) had chosen to move schools to be closer to Kohane, which had snowballed into like six people total trying to transfer. The other names, from what An could see, were Hoshino Ichika, Tenma Saki, Mochizuki Honami, and... Asahina Mafuyu, transferring without parental consent but with a very dubious signature on her form that looked like it was Mizuki pretending to be one of their parents.  

An closed her eyes and pictured a stage where she felt completely free of all expectations. Then she gave Kohane back her notes, took a deep breath, and asked, "What's Asahina-san's contact information just in case their decision to transfer schools is not well received?"  

Mizuki had a very strange reaction to that information; she pulled out her phone and sent a very frantic message to someone before saying, "How do you know Mafuyu?"  

(Why was Mizuki on a first name basis with her?) "Kohane knows her from school," she explained. "Also, I wasn't asking you."  

Kohane handed An a piece of paper with a Nightcord username on it, which Mizuki also recognized; An promptly sent a friend request to the user and sent Mizuki a message saying they needed to have a talk about this because clearly something was going on. She responded with a go-away sticker; An promised them 30 dollars for shopping and they sent a thumbs-up.  

Next potential issue: How on Earth was An going to convince someone who was older than her that their living situation was Bad for their mental health? After all, the few things she knew about Yuki from Mizuki were that they were generally very quiet and blunt, they wrote lyrics, and even though they hated to admit it and seemed petrified at the thought, their mother was not helping them get through anything. Kohane had been able to reach out to them, but they'd had a hard time finding a good time to speak with her and besides, it was nearly impossible for them to explain everything. To say how much they loved their mother – because they did – but at the same time knew it would do them no good to continue on as they were.  

Well, the hardest journeys started with a single step. An made a detailed list of things to potentially text Asahina-san about, including their interests outside of school – did they like any music? - and Kohane shook her head when she realized that An would happily put in a lot of effort to help out a friend but would not put in that same effort at school unless she was in gym class.  

And in some ways – in many ways – An found herself looking forward to having another roommate, albeit one who would probably find it odd to fit in at first and who would wonder what she was supposed to do because she no longer had to meet certain expectations.  

Yuki: I... don't know what to say to that, Shiraishi-san. I do accept the offer, but- if I am transferring, I hope my mother will understand. Not that I know that she will, but it's... complicated.  

hamsterlover: I understand complicated.  

Yuki: Will someone be able to be there with me when I attempt to tell my mother about this? About me-  

Wait. She'd sent the message as is? Cut off?  

Yuki: My apologies. My mother wished to have a word with me, and I panicked, as I often do. I am not supposed to have Nightcord. I meant to say that I may require support when I attempt to tell her that I am not a girl and therefore should not attend a girls' school.  

hamsterlover: how'd you figure that out?  

Yuki: Ask Amia. They've been a great help.  

Of course Mizuki had been the one to help Asahina with the gender thing.  

hamsterlover: yeah. might be me, might be Kohane. Depends; she's more of a studious person than I am so...  

Yuki: If Kohane is available, that would be greatly appreciated.  

hamsterlover: I'll ask her.  

"Hey, Kohane, want to go over to Asahina-san's house and sit with her when they tell their mom that they're non-binary?"  

Kohane peeked up from her notes; she'd been revising them for a good hour now. An admired her study ethic. "Of course! What time?"  

"They said, um, nine on Thursday?" An moved a little closer. "Are you- is that okay with you?"  

"Yeah. They'd do it for me," Kohane responded, then kissed An on the lips and she was in heaven again because- "Can you hang around nearby as backup?"  

"I'd do anything for you."  

"Even look over your chemistry notes?"  

"Anything but that."  

Chapter Text

This was really stupid. Like, really, really stupid, and Kohane shouldn't even be worried about it because An loved her no matter what and it didn't matter that they were in a romantic relationship now; they'd shared the bed even when they weren't dating and it wasn't like the implications around it were going to change because they were dating now.  

Right?  

Kohane took a very deep breath and stared at the door. She hadn't even sat down on the bed because it just felt so damn weird now even though it ought to be fine and maybe she was overthinking this and- 

"I'm back- wait, Kohane, are you okay?" An's expression went from joyous to concerned in 0.3 seconds flat. She hung her sweater off one of the hooks. Her shirt was showing off her muscles again and Kohane instinctively blushed at the sight of that because... well, it was attractive. And she'd been told that admiring that sort of thing wasn't shameful or anything. Or An just really liked knowing that someone's attention was on her, because she'd do the dumbest things to fluster Kohane even more. Especially flexing her arms. She did that a lot.  

"It's stupid." 

"Nothing's stupid." An wrapped an arm around her.  

Okay. Okay, Kohane could do this. "I- um. You know how there's a whole thing about sharing a bed when you're dating and I know that's not what's going on but I keep thinking about it and it's kind of stressful?" 

"We've been dating for like two days, but yes, I know." An wasn't teasing her about this, which was good. "If you don't want to share-" 

"It's not that. It's just- aren't your parents going to, um, be suspicious of-"  

"Of course not. They like you," she added. "My dad made some joke about us getting married this morning. They don't think you're planning on doing anything wrong." 

Kohane took a deep breath. In for three. Hold for five. Out for seven. Just like she'd been taught. "Okay. I trust you." 

An smiled at her, all joy and pride, and Kohane wondered if love was simpler than her grandmother made it sound. If love took work (but everything did), yet was sincerely an expression of compassion for someone that extended so far as to form not only a connection but a romantic one at that. Was being loved something that happened out of thin air because someone genuinely cared about you, not an expected part of the social contract that sought to keep women and men in different roles because a cruel God had made it so?  

She sat on the bed and flopped backwards to look up at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars shone in the relative darkness now that An had switched the lights off, forming nonexistent constellations that seemed to have been designed in patterns of an architect's own choosing and not by the chaos of outer space. One pattern etched a microphone into the cosmos; another, a sunflower; a third, a tomato encased by a "prohibited" symbol. It seemed that An had not been the only one to detest the food so much. Kohane stretched out a hand to touch them like she would do as a child, like she would do with her father, pointing out everything from Serpens to Orion to Cassiopeia over to Ursa Major and up to the North Star. He had always had an interest in the constellations and the stories of ancient Greece and Rome that aimed to explain them, and Kohane loved looking at the sky, so she hadn't minded the bedtime stories. She'd been so young then, not old enough to understand that the stars carried much more meaning than they did in myths. Her father had told her every story about the great expanse that there was time for. Everything, from every country that had one. 

She wondered what a microphone constellation would be called. Latin had no words for it, she thought, as it had died long before such things could be invented, but would someone put a spin on the old tongue and create something for it? 

"You okay?" An lay beside her now. "You seem... lost in thought." 

Kohane brought her hand down so she could entwine it with An's. "I miss stargazing," she admitted. "I've learned so much about the stars and yet..." 

"You've never been able to share it with anyone?" 

"Yeah. It's such a... futile interest, my grandmother would say. No point in looking at the sky when your life is here on the ground." Kohane heard herself laugh, but it was so harsh she knew An could tell she wasn't comfortable with the sentiment.  

"I think... I like it, too, because maybe-" An gestured towards the ceiling, to the microphone and the anti-tomato imagery, "maybe Nagi-san is looking down from up there. Maybe she's cheering me on even if I'm not exactly doing anything she'd want me to do." 

Fascinating, in an odd way. "What would she want you to do?" 

"Keep singing. And I- I haven't, because I feel as if I'm disrespecting her last wishes. Or- I'll harm her memory if I sing in her name, you know?" 

"Sort of." Kohane turned her head to look at An, her hair spreading around her like a black hole she could not wait to run her hands through. She was so effortlessly pretty sometimes, Kohane wondered if she was just naturally that beautiful or if she'd been pulling stunts to make it even harder to look away from her. "Can we... go up on the roof? Your dad said you had one and it's a bit late but I want to see if- if we can see even one star from here. We're in the city, so there's all that light pollution, but I'd still like to try." 

"Of course." 

And then they were tiptoeing up the fire escape stairs because they ought to have been in bed and there would be trouble if they were found out at this time of night. Most of the stars had, as predicted, been washed from the sky by the horrors of modern civilization, namely streetlamps and cars, but there were still a few natural sources of light: the Moon, which was nearly full, and some tiny, tiny stars, shining despite all the pressure to disappear into the night. Kohane found Sirius – the brightest star, she'd been told, all alone because despite its brightness, its friends were not as powerful and had been drowned out by the noise of the city.  

She told An it would be best if they used the lounge chairs because stargazing did tend to come with an occupational hazard of neck pain from looking up for too damn long.  

"So," An whispered, "how about some of those stories?" 

Kohane was not the best storyteller, nor was she one to make up tall tales on the spot. Still, she pointed out Ursa Major, or as her father said she was to call it, hokuto. There was an excellent chance An already knew the first thing she was going to say – that these stars belonged to a god – but she did not protest. Then, the next story about the same section of the sky: the Greek myth. "Others say that the bear was not originally a bear. Her name was Callisto, and she was a huntress devoted to the goddess Artemis, but after the father of Artemis involved himself with her, she was turned into a bear because Artemis had a very strict rule in place for her huntresses: they must never marry or have children. The son of Callisto did not know his mother was a bear. They say that one day, he was out on a hunt and almost speared his own mother, but in order to keep them both free from tragedy, Zeus turned them into stars. Callisto, the bear, and Arcas, the herdsman."  

"What about the 'w' in the sky?" An asked, pointing to Cassiopeia.  

This one was quite a lot different. "One tradition states that when viewed together, these stars form a great chariot. When viewed separately, those three-" she gestured to one part of the constellation- "form the Bridge of the Kings."  

"What about the Greeks?" 

"The Greeks believed that a queen named Cassiopeia was placed in the sky as punishment for being too vain. She boasted that she was more beautiful than all the servants of the sea god, and the first act of retaliation he took was to tie her daughter to a rock to feed a sea monster. She survived, and lives in the sky, too, but as a memorial instead of eternal torment." 

"Did they have some fascination with gods doing whatever they wanted, or..." 

Kohane laughed. "I... I'm not sure." 

An was quiet for a long time. The silence felt so natural and Kohane found herself relaxing in it. Yes, there were people talking in the streets below and cars rolling away against the ground. Still, the peace on the roof held, and the only sound that mattered was that of her breath.  

"Are there places where this is easier to see?" An asked. "I've gone camping and it's better there, but you can't truly see everything unless you're up until three in the morning." 

"Maybe we could go to a dark sky preserve some day and I'll be able to tell you everything." 

"That's... that would be amazing , Kohane." 

One hour later, they ought to have been asleep, but they were sneaking back down the fire escape, slipping into An's room with the stealth of tigers. Kohane had never known it to be so much fun. She had only known the fear of getting caught and the relief of the pillow against the back of her neck when her grandmother suspected nothing, but now, as she opened the door to An's room, trying to fight back a fit of laughter as she tumbled onto the bed, the love of her life – well, maybe that was a little dramatic – soon following, she found that when there wouldn't be any big punishment for staying up that little bit later, she could laugh her heart out at the hours of the night that were usually reserved for rest or running, in her case.  

An wrapped an arm around her, shielding her from the daylight which would not appear for several hours. Kissed her goodnight (on the lips , God, was that ever going to get old?) and ran one hand through Kohane's hair to lull her into a slumber.  

She had just about drifted off from the dock to the river of dreams when she heard the words, "Mahal kita higit sa lahat," whispered close to her ear. Surely she was not meant to understand them.  

Whatever they meant, it was decidedly sweet. 

The next couple of days went well, and though speaking with Mafuyu's mother – who was, by some accounts (Mizuki), not someone who prioritized her child's thoughts and desires in the slightest – was a daunting endeavour, Kohane felt safe in it because she had An there to help her – to help both her and Mafuyu – if something truly went wrong. The words, so softly spoken, from Monday night still ate away at her. She knew they meant something kind, and were probably a compliment, but she did not even know what language they were in neither why An could speak it. Was she struggling in English because she already had two languages on her plate?  

Kohane was attempting to learn a third language, too, but it seemed as if An was comfortable with hers, so maybe it wasn't something she was learning for the first time. Maybe she'd known how to speak it ever since she was little. If so... would she mind teaching Kohane a few words?  

French was a difficult language, this Kohane knew, if only because she had attempted to say one sentence in the past tense and then realized that she needed to be clear on which past tense she was using and whether or not the verb belonged to the long, long list of exceptions that didn't follow the rules that had been previously been implied to be very concrete. Still, it was pretty when you sang it, and she was getting rather good at singing in French when she was not cursing it for having differently gendered adjectives for its nouns.  

She wanted to sing to An in French even if she was horrid at it because she had been listening to some of the songs and they were just... 

Amazing.  

Her hand was ever so slightly smaller than An's but that was okay because they still held hands when walking to and from school. And while there were people who gave them odd looks, An told her to ignore them all because they just didn't understand. They didn't know that partners shared a complex relationship and that was fine, she said, as long as Kohane didn't find it too overwhelming.  

Sitting on the roof, doing their homework, Kohane wondered if this was a good time to bring the language thing up. "You said something Monday night that I didn't get," she said, looking over at An's notes, which were full of doodles unrelated to social studies.  

Orange eyes met hers. "Oh. It, um, it's nothing much." 

Now she was invested. "Really?" 

"I'll tell you when half the neighbourhood can't hear me," An muttered.  

"In that case, can I sing?" Kohane sort of wanted to do something. She'd finished her homework – except for the bits due two weeks from now – and even though An was working on it at her own pace and needed to finish it or else she'd be in major trouble, Kohane would do anything to escape the boredom she now faced.  

There were people looking at them for reasons unrelated to them being in a romantic relationship. And in some way, this was because the people of Vivid Street knew one thing about Shiraishi An: she did not sing any more. She had not sung since Nagi had died and would likely never do so again.  

"Go for it." An was smiling at her. "I know you'll do well." 

Kohane stood in the midst of a crowd scrambling to hear the voice of someone that had been praised by the daughter of a great musician and let herself feel their energy. See their passion and realize why they were so interested.  

Maybe the French would have to wait, she reasoned, pivoting to Odo instead of a ballad by Francis Cabrel. She had no choreography for it, but An had said that it was common to dance when you sang – especially in live houses – so she made something up on the spot. It was bad, but it followed the beat very roughly and somewhat fit with the lyrics. She'd have to fine-tune it later. 

The crowd seemed to like her and she heard someone say the name . "Reminds me of Nagi when she was just a crybaby," the man who ran one of the clothing stores on the street told one of his friends. Kohane did not know any of RADder's songs, although she had learned of them, but she could raise hell like she had been told they did.  

Echo was up next and with it, the power of every emotion Kohane hid deep within herself. She had no microphone, nowhere to put her hands, and her motions were awkward, but everyone seemed to understand her meaning. Her feelings.  

Rettou Joutou. Children Record. Teikoku Shoujo (that one was very directed at An). Koi wa Sensou. Shunran. All of it, given to the people on the roof. And maybe to the ones in the streets if the cheers from below were any indication. Someone gave her a microphone in between Children Record and Teikoku Shoujo and she let it bring her voice to new heights. Sing from the heart. Don't use the falsetto. Keep going. Not things she had been taught; rather, things she made herself do.  

An looked so proud of her now. Smiling brighter than the sun.  

Kohane reached out a hand to her. 

Amidst the cheers and the encouragement and the curiosity, she stood up from her chair, accepted a mic from one of the onlookers, and took it. "Do you know what you want to sing?" 

"Hadn't thought that far ahead." Kohane glanced at the crowd. "Any favourites?" 

"Everyone!" Suddenly, there was silence followed by an outburst of murmurs. "Hi! Next up is... drop pop candy." 

Of course she chose the one song Kohane had previously sung from their midnight performance. That they both knew by heart. That meant so much to them and yet nothing at all when they were simply existing because Shiraishi An and Azusawa Kohane were not singers on Vivid Street and they had never been.  

The words were short and harsh at first. Kohane glanced at An. Gave her a smile and a wink before launching into her own part. When they met up for the chorus, everything went much smoother. Whatever mental burden that was holding her back had let her escape for a time and now she was truly powerful. Dancing, yes, but doing so in a way that would please the crowd and follow the beat. She twirled Kohane around like they were ballroom dancing and high-fived some six-year-old in the crowd.  

Socially, she would do so much better than Kohane, who'd only just gotten used to the concept of saying hello to everyone you passed by on your way to do literally anything.  

The song ended, and the grin on An's face was worth more than gold. She was tired, Kohane more so, but she segued into the next song like it was nothing. Hana Obore, flowers in the wind. They had not practiced, but somehow it felt right . As normal as breathing.  

Then, there was five seconds of silence, and the crowd erupted in cheers. Hands reached out to shake theirs, to hug them; voices called to them, asking if this was going to become a normal thing, thanking Kohane for bringing An back to the town. Back to music. 

She accepted their thanks but questioned if it had been only her efforts that had made An get back into the swing of the music scene. After all, she had such a passion for it, such a talent for it, that it could not have been Kohane's actions alone that made her yearn for it so much. Possibly her love for it was the catalyst for this; perhaps a desire to make Nagi proud of her once more. Kohane would not pester her on it.  

Thursday arrived faster than she would have liked it to. While she had rehearsed her talking points with Yuka-san, who had seen her fair share of sketchy parents and had to refrain from saying things, there was no telling how Mafuyu's mother would act when there wasn't another adult in the room. Mafuyu had said to prepare for a cold feeling when she arrived in the house, which had seemed odd, although comic book style movie villains were also described as being cold, so maybe Mafuyu's mother just had that sort of personality.  

One new message from Yuki: Are you 1000 percent sure you're able to make it ? 

They were always a little concerned when it came to planning. Kohane checked her club schedule – thankfully, Kamiyama also had an animal care committee, so she'd been able to transfer right into it – and saw she had no meeting tonight. Yes.  

Yuki: Thank you.  

hamster: no problem! What's the address?  

That information got written down in Kohane's notes app once she got it. She was more off in her own thoughts when she walked home with An and she felt bad about it, but what could she do? Everything would be settled tonight.  

Mafuyu's house was different. Not in the sense that it was unpleasant to be in; rather, it was large. The interior felt like a family home but there was a lot of it – more rooms than any house Kohane had ever lived in, and it was close enough to a major area. She was blown away by how tidy it was. Almost as if someone had done intense work to prepare it, except Mafuyu had made sure they did not tell their mother about having any friends over because Kohane's recent trajectory – moving to a school with a lesser reputation, running away from home to live with her girlfriend, and singing on the streets – was not one their mother would want them to follow.  

Kohane felt out of place as Mafuyu led her through the house, showing her the living room, office, game room, bedrooms, kitchen, and restrooms, not that there was going to be any need of most of those things. They pointed out awards they had won and pictures of their middle school graduation. Everything seemed to be dedicated to showcasing their achievements. Kohane saw no pictures where Mafuyu was enjoying themself or laughing, only a perfect smile that hid any sort of rebellious thought. That same smile plastered on their face now even as their eyes did not convey the same emotion.  

An had suggested they binge-watch movies on Tuesday night and while her father had limited them to one movie, Kohane was now seeing striking similarities between the plot of said movie and Mafuyu's life. Everything was too good, too fixed in place.  

"You've brought a friend over?" Mafuyu's mother seemed apprehensive.  

"Azusawa Kohane."  

"Azusawa-san, what are your aspirations for university?" Such a simple question and yet- if she answered wrong, she could tell Mafuyu would be in trouble. 

"Ah. Recently I've been getting quite good in the sciences, so I was considering becoming a surgeon or a physicist." Was this bitterness on her tongue normal to Mafuyu? Did she feel this every day when speaking with her mother? If so, Kohane wondered how anyone could withstand that for longer than a week.  

"Your friend is quite smart. I'm glad you're finally surrounding yourself with the right people," Mafuyu's mother commented, and out of the corner of her eye, Kohane saw Mafuyu's hands tighten into fists and relax again. "May I ask why you've decided only now to introduce me?" 

"We've only started talking to each other recently," Mafuyu explained. "And I... mom, you said I could always talk to you about things on my mind if there was something big?" 

"Shall we have dinner first? I assume Azusawa-san would prefer to eat before watching that sort of thing." 

Then both of them were looking at Kohane. "Ah, if you're not bothered by it..." 

"It's not a bother! Mafuyu, would you mind setting the table?"  

As she stood in the corner of the dining room, hovering because Mafuyu had told her that it would be best if she did not help – her being a guest and all – she wondered if they were not the only one who wore a mask in this household. If their mother was also playing her own games, maintaining her own facade. Kohane knew her grandmother did the same; she liked it when her world was perfect even though her granddaughter was imperfect and adored the feeling of it.  

Supper was absolutely delicious. Mafuyu, who could not taste a speck of it, smiled and complimented their mother's work although they were unaware of how good it was. Kohane had never had anything quite like it – An's cooking, in her very unbiased opinion, was still better. The meal's textures complimented each other so well it was uncanny.  

"How did you like the meal?" Mafuyu's mother asked.  

"It was amazing." Kohane had no other way to describe it. "Thank you very much." 

(Out of their mother's range of vision, Mafuyu made several gestures that indicated Kohane was not to fall into the trap of kindness set out for her. Or they wanted her to know that mathematics was best studied with someone named K.) 

Ten minutes later, Mafuyu had finished washing the dishes and they were sitting right next to Kohane on the sofa, their mother looking at them like she feared what Mafuyu might say. Scared that her only child would disobey her rules or reveal that they were not a girl or did not want to become a doctor.  

"Mom," Mafuyu said, breaking whatever chilled silence had haunted the room, its spectre of winter dimmed ever so slightly. "I... I don't think I'm a girl." 

"What?" 

"I- I don't... like being a girl. I don't want to be a boy, either, but- I just- thought you should know." 

"Maybe we should not speak of this around your friend." The frown on her face. The sheer disappointment Kohane could feel radiating off her.  

Was now a good time to put her thoughts into the mix? She would not know if it had not been. "With all respect, I'm here because they needed the courage to speak to you about this." A spark, so long buried with her father, ignited in her heart. It could not be washed away by even the mightiest of floods. "Mafuyu is a close friend of mine who's always listened when I needed someone to speak to. Them not being a girl or a boy doesn't make them any less of a person - or a friend." 

"I... how do you- do not insinuate you understand my daughter any more than I do." 

The flinch from Mafuyu. The way she instinctively reached for Kohane's hand, for some kind of grounding mechanism. "It's not wrong to say if it's the truth." 

"I suppose your parents don't have as close of a relationship as they should with you?" 

"With all due respect, Asahina-san, my parents are dead." 

"My sincerest apologies." Her tone of voice did not sound all that sorry. "I simply mean to imply that your behaviour is out of place with that of someone who cares about their academics and the way they are viewed by others." 

"Well, I'm not sure how much I care about my academics, and I've been disowned by my grandmother, so there's not much to give a shit about in that area." 

"Watch your language," Mafuyu whispered. Not to scold; to advise.  

"My daughter does not need someone to lead her into an investigation of her own mind that will distract her from her studies." 

"Mafuyu, I thought you were an only child?" Kohane asked.  

"I am." 

Kohane turned towards their mother. "Then how do you have a daughter?" 

"Are you the one who introduced her to this?" 

"They realized this by themself." Maybe An's friend Mizuki had helped, but mostly it had been Mafuyu who'd thought it through.  

"I highly doubt that." Oh. God. Kohane realized then and there how truly angry Mafuyu's mother was. She sent a very quick text to An: ready. "My daughter would not have changed her gender to anything without outside influence." 

"Mom, I didn't ask anyone if this- if this was real or if it was even okay. I just wanted- I wanted you to know." 

"Whoever told you that it was real was lying to you. We'll have to talk about this later, while your friend isn't here."  

"Can we talk about it now?" 

"Not with her ." 

And Mafuyu, who had been fighting so hard for an honest conversation, stood up, took Kohane's hand, and walked out the door as if it was nothing.  

The steps down to street level had never seemed so freeing and yet so devastating at the same time. Kohane waved to An as she checked on Mafuyu to make sure they were okay.  

"Are we going home?" they asked. "Shiraishi-san, what did I do wrong?" 

An put a hand on Mafuyu's shoulder. "Nothing." 

In the back seat of the car on the way back, Kohane sat with Mafuyu as they tried to get a message out to Kanade, whoever that was. Listened to them talk about random things and lyric writing and never told them they were wrong. Let them exist without pressure for once. Surely they were all too used to it by now.  

An showed Mafuyu the guest room and gave them a very big hug. Told them that they didn't need to put up a facade here because everyone was better off when they were completely honest with others, and if they felt comfortable, they were welcome to take a break from it. Her smile was a little sad when she said it, but she was improving.  

Kohane fell asleep in An's arms that night feeling safe. Like the world could do its best to harm her, and it would never, ever be able to truly get at her heart.  

Chapter Text

Was going on a date a rite of passage? An wasn't sure it was something you had to do to grow out of the teenage phase, but she was looking forward to going out with Kohane. The cafe they were going to was a little cutesy for her tastes, but Kohane's friend Minori had said it was absolutely amazing. (Kohane had said to take this with a grain of salt because Haruka had gone with Minori, and that tended to be an indicator Minori's judgement was flawed.)  

Either way, there was only one glaring flaw in her plan: she hadn't exactly told Kohane this was a date. She'd asked if she'd like to hang out and then gotten wrapped in a conversation about how to properly feed Count Pearl. Not that An didn't love hearing Kohane talk about the things she was ever so passionate about, especially when her eyes lit up like the stars in the sky and she'd go off on a million tangents discussing various different species of snakes – An hadn't known the difference between an anaconda and a ball python before she'd met Kohane, and while that wasn't information she was going to use any time soon, it was still good to know. Hopefully.  

An stared at the neatly sorted piles of clothes on her bed. She knew that Kohane didn't care what she wore, but she still wanted to look nice. Maybe if she found something that showed off her arms – Kohane had seemed to like looking at them when they were at the family reunion – then she might get a laugh or a flustered "Why do you have to be so- never mind."  

In the end, she settled for a tank top and shorts. The weather had gotten a little warmer since they'd gone to the reunion, but that meant- 

May was always one of the hardest months of the year. It was only the first day of the month, but the anniversary of the worst day of An's life was tomorrow . The thought of May 2nd hung over her like a dark cloud that only struck her with lighting when she was at her weakest. She resolved to shoulder the weight for today and only today – she was going on a date . She ought to be happy, and if she cried tomorrow, no one would be all that surprised, but today was a day for kissing pretty girls and taking them places they'd never been. Unfortunately, that wasn't an everyday thing – she would kill for the chance to spend her life going places with Kohane.  

Focus . An opened the door to her room and walked out. She could do this. Get through the day without any sort of mental breakdown whatsoever. It shouldn't be too difficult, right? 

Kohane was sitting on the couch, watching some sort of nature documentary on TV. Or it was a rerun of one of Haruka's TV segments back from when she was with ASRUN – that might explain the sheer excitement in the narrator's voice when discussing the natural habits of penguins.  

Her parents had always scolded her for doing it, but neither of them were within eyesight, so surely it wouldn't hurt if she jumped the couch, would it? An was more reckless when there was something she needed to not think about.  

Three. Two. One. Her hands found the cushions on the back, and though she rarely participated in anything other than the running races at school during track and field, somehow she cleared the top of the sofa with the same grace as Mizuki did at high jump – which admittedly wasn't much. Kohane seemed completely unfazed by this. Did people frequently do stupid things in her world? 

"Hi, An-chan."  

"Hi, Kohane." 

A few seconds of silence passed before- "You're wearing that outfit on purpose." 

An grinned. It was working. "I am?" 

Kohane buried her face in her hands. "It looks really good." 

"It does?" 

"Yes. Um, if it's not too much to ask, could you maybe lift a little less?" 

In response, An scooped her up like her parents would do when she was a young child. "Less or more?" 

Kohane's smile was so cute then that it caused world peace – at least for a few seconds. Then An realized she was carrying her girlfriend of two weeks in the same way that people did with their partners when they were married.  

Oh.  

Okay, then. Kohane wasn't against it and neither was she, so surely this was okay. 

"An-chan, can you set me down?" she asked once they got to the entranceway. 

The only thing An could think about while she helped Kohane get back on her feet was the sheer importance of not dropping her on the floor. She paid no mind to her own surroundings, which would explain why she accidentally knocked the umbrella stand down and nearly broke several of the frames on the walls.  

Kohane pointed behind her when she heard the crash, and An spun around to see her very tired and frustrated father picking up a five-foot pole with slightly damaged umbrellas hanging off it. "Sorry?" 

"It's fine," he said, grabbing another umbrella off the ground.  

An felt very awkward walking out of the house with Kohane holding her hand while her father dealt with her mistakes, but in some ways he'd been doing that for ages. The first few months after Nagi's death, there had been so many times where he'd gone out of his way to make sure she had the kind of support she wanted, and when she'd lashed out at him or at her mother, he would leave her alone until she was ready to talk about it, and if she never was, he understood.  

There were so many things she needed to be grateful for but never properly thanked anyone about and on the rare days she thought of them, she felt awful that she had never said what was most important when it was crucial.  

Today, the sun was out and Kohane had the most adorable bucket hat on. An always found her sense of style to be cute, especially now that she was taking clothes from An's closet. She'd borrowed an old t-shirt of An's that had RADder's name across the front and paired that with her own jeans and sneakers, and somehow she fit in on the street more than An did.  

As they made their way down Vivid Street, Kohane waved to the owner of one of the live houses and An pretended she was definitely not feeling a little awkward and self-conscious because her girlfriend knew the people on the street better than she did. Only now did she learn that the man who worked at the record store had gotten married and that the big sister she'd known since she was little now had a girlfriend on top of having gotten her dream job at a preschool. 

Nagi would've known all this. She was always the social butterfly; An's parents often said she got her extrovert tendencies from her, and yet now that she was gone, she was much less of a talker than she used to be.  

An shook her head and forced herself to focus.  

Kohane led her towards the CD shop to pick up a new Miku album by some producer An had never heard of. The track list seemed interesting enough, though, so she planned to listen to it and add some of its songs to their performance repertoire. If they were ever going to do another show. Despite her mental block surrounding all of it, An still felt that passion to be on stage, that desire to let the world know just how great she could be. 

 
"Where were we going to go?" Kohane asked, shopping bag in one hand and An's hand in the other. Her hair looked so beautiful bathed in sunlight. An could look at her forever.  

"I found a cat cafe I think you might like," she said. "And then if there's anywhere else you want to go, we'll go there."  

"Could we walk in one of the parks?" 

"Of course." 

Kohane smiled at her and An felt like she must have died and gone to heaven because God was she ever so kind and sweet and- 

"An-chan, are you okay? Your face is all red..." 

"Yup!" She straightened up as if she'd gotten a shock. "I'm, just, um, admiring how pretty you look." 

Apparently they were taking turns blushing, because Kohane's face promptly mirrored the shade of red on An's. "An-chan, that's... I don't look that good, do I?" 

"Kohane, I wouldn't be surprised if you were getting married in that outfit." 

That got the attention of a bunch of passers-by on the street, who took one look at An and concluded that she was most definitely very gay. "An-chan, if I were getting married, I wouldn't be wearing this." 

"I'd marry you while you were wearing that if you wanted to marry me." 

"Maybe when we're older?" Kohane suggested. "Not that I don't want to, but we're not old enough." 

Oh. That was... 

An wasn't expecting that. Yes, she was a teenager in love with a girl who was quite possibly the loveliest person to ever grace this Earth, but Kohane wanting to marry her- 

The thought of it made her giddy. Really, she shouldn't worry too much about that part of her future because her relationship status was liable to change in the next few years, but the idea of being with the person she loved most in the world for the rest of her life was exciting.  

Thankfully, the cat cafe was only a short walk away, and ten minutes later, An found herself with a calico on her lap and a glass of some sort of fruit drink in her hands. She'd ordered it without reading the description, and the server hadn't asked her for ID, so it probably wasn't alcoholic.  

It did not taste like tomatoes, so that was a good sign. An glanced at the cat on her lap, which seemed to have attached themself to her like a sort of long-tailed koala bear. They refused to move no matter what she did. Much unlike Vivi, who was content to be pet for a good five minutes and then go bug someone else, this cat had been sitting there the entire time she'd been in the chair and really did not want to leave.   

Kohane thought this was adorable, and had shown that by taking about five hundred pictures of An and the cat. She seemed more focused on them than anything, trying to figure out what their name was and if they liked certain kinds of food. It was sort of cute, the concentrated expression on her face though she had a glass of some ridiculously bright pink thing in her hands. She looked like a very confused hamster working on a math problem.  

"An-chan," she said, "mind checking the list of cats on the menu? I can't remember which one this is..." 

"It says their name is Eggo." 

"Like the American waffle brand?" Kohane asked.  

"Should I have a word with the person in charge of naming cats?" An suggested. "I can probably talk some sense into-" 

"That's an excellent name." Apparently such a thing was not going to be needed. "An-chan, would you get a cat?" 

"With Count Pearl in the house, maybe not." 

Hamsters could pout, too. "He'll stay in his enclosure unless I take him out! Besides, he's small enough he doesn't like eating anything bigger than a mouse. If you got a cat that was bigger than a mouse-" 

"My mom's also allergic to cats," An explained. "So..." 

"Oh."  

"Sorry." 

"It's okay!" Kohane promptly picked up one of the cats from off the floor. "We'll just have to make this a good memory."  

"That one's Mouse." 

"They named a cat Mouse?"  

"Sounds weird, doesn't it?" 

"If you think about it too much..." 

An kept a brave face when presented with the bill. She had enough money to cover it, of course, but refills weren't cheap and neither was the cupcake Kohane had wanted. Once Kohane saw how much the final cost was, she offered to split it, but An insisted because that was that. This was a treat. They weren't going to do this every day, even if the cats were cute and they reminded An of Vivi except much more used to humans constantly petting them. It would get old quickly, and besides, An wasn't sure how much residual cat hair in the air her mom could take. If they spent three hours a day with cats, wouldn't that make the air quality worse at home? 

Kohane wanted to stop by the mall to check out a deal at the pet store (hopefully there were no snakes there because Count Pearl was bad enough) and so An found herself in an area filled with snake tanks and hamster wheels along with the largest variety of dog toys she'd ever seen. While Kohane inspected some sort of fake plant, An wandered over to the cat treats and picked up a few things for Vivi. She'd hand them over the next time she saw the fuzzy menace.  

It turned out that the plant wasn't agreeable for Count Pearl, so they ended up getting some sort of heat lamp for him instead along with a lot of batteries. Like, doomsday-prepper amounts of batteries. Maybe that was in case of a weeklong power outage? Still, it seemed a little extreme. Anything for the ball python, An guessed.  

She convinced Kohane to spend a few minutes browsing one of the clothing stores, where she picked up a hoodie for herself (that would quickly get stolen by none other than Kohane) and a set of elastics that Mizuki would probably convert into much cuter accessories than they currently were. They'd love the chance to get their hands on these, they'd said last week, and they'd even pay her back for them. (Knowing Mizuki's spending habits, that would not happen.) 

An wandered over to the food court while Kohane messed around with one of the vending machines just off to the side of it, attempting to get it to give her a drink she wanted. After a few minutes of this, the machine gave up.  

"Isn't that mildly illegal-" 

"Nope! It was acting up, and I didn't want to lose any money," Kohane explained, setting some sort of cold beverage in front of An. "It did give me two of them, though, so I'm a little worried..." 

"You're sure you don't want this?" 

"Not really. I wouldn't finish it before it got too warm."  

An took the proffered drink. It turned out to be the sweetest thing you could possibly put in a can. The sort of thing Taiga hated seeing Nagi drink because it was basically liquid sugar. Her father would then inform her that she wasn't to have any drink Nagi offered her if it was one of those super sugary drinks, but An had always taken after Nagi and had thus ignored that advice to get her hands on this sort of thing. "Thank you." 

"No problem!" Kohane sat down next to her. "I was worried it might not be your kind of thing..." 

"Don't worry. It's been a while since I had something like this." 

"Really? I would've thought otherwise..." 

"Nah. My parents aren't fans of this sort of thing."  

Kohane raised an eyebrow.  

"My aunt. Um, before she passed away. She'd buy these all the time and give them to me. Probably a bad idea to give a twelve-year-old liquid sugar, but..." An trailed off, glancing up at the ceiling. "She would've loved you." 

A moment of silence. Kohane held her open can in her hands, stared at the lid intently. "I'm not as sure about that. I mean... I've heard she was one of the best people on the street. Always looking out for people. Charismatic, and kind, and I'm just... me. A newcomer girl who showed up and started dating you." 

An wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "You're more than that to me ."  

Kohane smiled at her with stars in her eyes. "Thank you, An-chan." 

They spent a good fifteen minutes there, talking about simpler things and snakes. Then, this otherwise perfect day was completely ruined by the presence of someone An did not want Kohane to have to interact with unless the situation was so dire that it was necessary. 

"Ah, falling into the trap of social degeneracy, I see," Kohane's grandmother said.  

An's arm around Kohane's shoulders tightened. "Don't you dare try anything." 

"Oh, poor child. Was it not your fault my granddaughter fell into your arms? And now she sits here, imprisoned in the arms of sin. You cannot defend yourself against the truth." 

"Except that whole thing about us being gay equating to sin is complete and utter bullshit, and I can't stand it whenever anyone says that sort of thing." 

"Is your family not ashamed of you?" 

"My family is the reason Kohane's not out on the street right now." An took a deep breath. Calm. Deep breaths. Ice cream . 

"God will curse them all." The fury in her eyes – the way she seemed to act as if her way was the only way – it made An sick.  

"I don't believe in God. And my family's already cursed, so if they did exist, nothing they could do would ever overpower the pain I've seen." 

"Suffering may lead you to heaven. This will not." 

"Suffering killed my belief in any of that shit. Why won't you just let Kohane be happy ?" 

The crowd around them went completely silent. Someone's pen dropped out from their hands and clattered across the floor. Another person picked it up and handed it back to them, and the world hit the space bar and everything kept moving.  

"This lifestyle will not make her happy." 

"Really? I've seen her smiling a lot more than she used to since she moved in. Even more so once we started dating." 

"True happiness is not found on this earth. With these... mortal pleasures." 

An stood up, Kohane's hand in hers. "Let's go." 

Kohane nodded. She seemed so close to tears; An wanted to hold her close and never let her go if it meant she would never cry again.  

They walked out of the mall, and only when they were on the train did Kohane let herself break down even just a little bit. They sat down on the seats, and Kohane buried her face in An's shoulder, clinging to her like a lifeline. Some of the mall patrons were on the same train and gave them sympathetic glances; others who did not know the context frowned upon such a public display of emotions.  

When they got back to An's house, she let Kohane cry for a long time. Sat on the couch with her and listened to her every word. Sang her some of the gentler songs she knew and got her a snack from the kitchen. Surely she was tired by now, and An hated seeing Kohane in the sort of state she was in. I love you so much. She wasn't saying it out loud because Kohane needed a minute of space, needed to breathe.  

Her parents seemed to immediately know what was going on when they got home, and they sat around Kohane, too, waiting until she felt better to move a muscle. At some point her father went and made dinner. 

An knew what it was to feel like you had disappointed your family members. Knew the pain of being other around people who supposedly understood.  

That night, before she went to sleep, she reminded Kohane of one thing: 

"I'll always be here for you. I promise." 

Chapter Text

To Azusawa Kohane, May 2nd was just another day on the calendar; there was nothing too special about it, and there quite frankly never had been, except for the time she'd gone on a field trip to a reptile habitat with her classmates in elementary school and had more fun than the rest of her class combined.

This year, however, the day meant something – not to her, but to An – and this was why she was on the couch braiding An's hair and whispering gentle words into her ears. Later today – after the morning gloom had faded away – they were going to visit the cemetery (and they would go again during Obon) and then Kohane was planning to take her to a field of sunflowers outside the city in the afternoon, where she hoped to convince An to smile enough to take a few pictures of her – most of which wouldn't be of the quality she hoped to achieve, but if it took An's mind off everything for just a few minutes, it would be worthwhile.

There was some TV program playing in the background; they'd tried to watch a program Haruka had appeared on with her new idol group, but it had been rescheduled, and now there was some other thing on screen about a different group of idols going to a zoo to meet otters, snakes, and an aquatic salamander-type thing called an axolotl. Kohane found herself invested in the last two thirds of the show, in which the axolotl and the snakes were discussed. Otters were cute, sure, but nothing could compare to snakes and weird-looking salamanders.

"Kohane," An muttered, "do you want one of those as a pet?"

"They're critically endangered." Kohane sighed. "It might be better to leave them alone." She finished the first of two braids and tied it off. "They are cute, though."

"Would Count Pearl eat one?"

"Count Pearl doesn't like water any deeper than an inch. And axolotls live in water. I don't think he'd enjoy the taste, either."

An shuddered at that. "The taste would put him off of it? Not the fact that it's an axolotl?"

"Yup!"

"How often does he eat?"

"Oh, about every six weeks or so. Snakes don't get very many successful kills in the wild," Kohane explained. "It's best for him not to eat much; he doesn't have the largest enclosure..."

"Really?"

"Yes. Most snakes average less than twelve meals a year. Factoring in predators and environmental dangers, and their lifespan is drastically shorter in the wild than it is in captivity." Kohane tied off the first braid with an elastic.

An considered this for a second. "So that's why you weren't worried about how much he was eating for the week he was alone at your grandmother's."

"He gets upset if he doesn't eat every six weeks, so I wasn't too concerned."

The four minutes it took Kohane to properly braid the second half of An's hair were silent except for the TV, on low volume now, showing ads for a bunch of things, some of which had Miku as a mascot. Yesterday, when they'd been watching some movie on the cable network – for some reason, An's parents had streaming and cable – Mafuyu had commented on how Miku seemed to have much less hair than 'normal' in one of the ads. And while it was true that Miku's designs had recently been veering towards her hair being a little thinner, Kohane still wondered what exactly Mafuyu thought was Miku's normal amount of hair. Did she only watch Vocaloid MVs that used the old design?

"I'm done," she announced.

An did her best to give Kohane a smile. "Thank you."

"It was no problem. You look really nice with your hair like that." It was unfair how stupidly pretty she was.

Was that thought going to become a daily or even weekly occurrence? If so, Kohane wondered if she'd just have to accept that An was always going to look good no matter what and set the thought off to the side.

They spent the next two hours doing nothing but speaking of everything. Kohane was grateful An's parents had let her stay home with An as emotional support because she felt she'd be too concerned over the state of An's well-being if she had gone to school knowing this was one of the hardest days of the year for her. Another would be coming up next week, but An had been saying she'd be able to handle it.

(Kohane sort of doubted that, but if she was that confident about it...)

An made lunch, and that was the first time Kohane had ever had her cooking, so at first she was a little apprehensive because after having had something Minori had accidentally burned because she forgot it was in the oven, she was accustomed to being on her guard when someone her own age offered to cook for her. Then she tried the food and realized that maybe An's part-time job helping her dad in his cafe (but never as wait staff, she'd said) had given her a massive advantage in the food prep area.

"Why are you this good at cooking?"

An looked up from her own plate. "I am?"

"This is really good. How'd you learn?"

Everything went quiet and Kohane wondered if she'd overstepped. Finally, An said, "I started after... you know what happened. There was a lot of time I had to myself, so I learned to cook."

"I'm... sorry?"

"It's okay. At least someone appreciates my hard work," she muttered. "Everyone at the cafe seems to think it's my dad's work, and he doesn't always think it's worth correcting them over."

"Well, I like your food." Kohane glanced out at the window. "Are you feeling up to going out today? It wouldn't be too far."

"Where were you thinking of going?" An grabbed Kohane's now-empty plate.

"A sunflower field."

She paused before setting both plates down in the sink. "I... I can try. But I might not be one for smiling when we're there."

"That's okay." Kohane took An's free hand in her own. "I was going to bring my camera if that's okay with you."

"Should I wear a tank top, then?"

"If you want to see me get flustered over you looking good that much..."

Half an hour later, An was wearing the dang tank top, though it was under a sweater because at this time of day, the trains weren't very packed with people and they could be quite cold. The sunflower field thankfully wasn't too far away; they only had to take one local train line, walk a few hundred metres, and then take the Sagami Line up to the town before walking another half hour – overall not the worst trip possible.

An was holding both of Kohane's hands in hers, though this was less of a romantic gesture than it was a way of stabilizing herself in her mental storm. Still, there were odd looks from some of the older people on the train, and not for the first time, it felt as if they were being subjected to a level of scrutiny not given to other high school students spending time with their partners instead of being in class. Kohane could hear her whispering little things for the first ten minutes they were on the train. Then, as they got further and further away, and when they changed trains for the longer ride, her grip on Kohane's hands loosened and her monologuing slowed to a halt.

When they finally reached the fields, An seemed almost calm. All the nervous energy and guilt and grief and everything Kohane had seen from her when they'd been back at her house had almost vanished. She was letting herself exist for a minute, and while she did need time to ruminate, it was nice to see her almost happy like this.

Admission was inexpensive and Kohane was able to cover it with some of the money she'd saved up from New Years' past. As they walked through relatively empty fields full of blooming flowers, their pace slowed gently until they were almost not moving at all, as if time was slowing down.

Kohane took a deep breath in and out. Let herself be immersed in her surroundings and let her mind float away on the breeze.

She got a very nice picture of An smiling like there was nothing else in the world she'd rather be doing and another of her looking at the flowers pensively. One of her best pictures of a plant also came from this field; it was of a sunflower just beginning to spread its petals, an insect climbing over its centre.

An took the camera from her when they were far enough away from other people and took a picture of her and it came out a little blurry but she was happy with it, and that was really all that mattered, wasn't it? Kohane didn't regret using some of her film to get a picture of An kissing her despite the image coming out messy. And she definitely didn't regret the six pictures of An with her sweater tied around her waist. Sometimes Minori's teasing about her being just as bad with pretty girls as Minori herself was ended up being one hundred percent right.

"Kohane, do you believe in ghosts?" An asked as they neared the end of the path. She was looking at the clouds in the sky as if they were revealing a message to her that only she was able to interpret.

"Not anymore. I think- I used to say I'd seen one," she said. "But... it hasn't been to visit in years. I think my mom might've gotten a bit tired of me sneaking out at night."

"When did you start?"

"Three years ago. I only found my way over to your area about six months ago. I used to stick to the alleyways in a calmer part of town."

"Sometimes I think Nagi follows me around. Not- not in a metaphorical sense. Like- like she's a ghost, and she likes to sneak behind me and see what I'm doing. And that scares me, because if she can do that, then she'll know I'm not trying to- to follow her last wishes, and I promised her I would. She- she'd hate to see me like this, wouldn't she? All she ever wanted was for me to sing. And I can't even do that."

"An-chan, maybe she didn't want you to get hurt or be upset. And singing- when I hear you sing, you sound like you want to be up on stage like it's the greatest thing in the world. You want to be as good as she was if not better. And I think- I don't know, because I didn't meet her, but I think she wanted you to be happy."

"I miss her so much."

"I get it." Kohane hugged An. "I think she would've loved to see you sing like you did on the roof. And you don't have to try to live your life the way other people want you to, but you looked happy when you sang there."

A sniffle. "I want her to be proud of me. Of what I can do. And she- I can't sing with her anymore. How... how is she going to let me know I'm doing well if she can't tell me? If- if all I'm doing is singing into the void, am I ever going to know she trusts me to carry her dream forward?"

"I don't know. But I do know that if you tell her what you've been doing, how you've been moving on, even if you don't get a response, she'll be proud of you." Kohane pulled back a little from their hug, just enough to wipe a tear from An's eyes. "I promise."

"You really think so?"

"She was your aunt, right? I think she would."

A breath. One quiet moment of internal conflict. A petal loosening itself from one of the flowers and landing on An's shoulder for a brief minute before losing itself in the breeze, never to be seen again. Kohane tucked a loose strand of An's hair back behind her ears.

"Thank you," she whispered. "For being here."

"Always." Kohane smiled at her. Kissed her on the cheek and gestured towards the exit. "Would you like to go or stay a little longer?"

"Mizuki's going to be so mad I got to miss home ec. They said it was easier when I'm there." An sighed. "Yeah. I think I'm ready to go."

They walked back down the path together, the flowers spying on their every move, but that was alright, because now everything felt a little lighter, a little more bearable, and An seemed happier than she had been when they'd left on this short excursion. The train station was a little far, but the walk felt short when Kohane could look over at An and see her with a smile on her face.

Somehow, it was already four o’clock in the evening when they got to the train station. It was quite a lot busier then, all sorts of people coming and going though the area they were in was small. Kohane never let go of An’s hand the whole time they waited for their train.

They got home around five-forty. An’s father made dinner (the only special request made was for no tomatoes to be present) and they ate it like everything was normal.

Then came the harder part. An took a deep breath, then led Kohane out of the house and down a bunch of alleyways to the cemetery. There they took care of Nagi’s grave in the way that they needed and laid a new bouquet to rest after watering the flowers already in the ground. Sunflowers and tulips and roses made for a beautiful ensemble if Kohane did say so herself. She was about to step back, to give An the space she needed, but: “Stay. I want to introduce you to Nagi-san.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely.” An focused her attention on not crying. “Nagi-san, I know I haven’t done what you wanted me to. I know I’m not who I said I was going to be. But if I still think this way tomorrow, next week, next year, I’m going to start trying again. I found my partner. This is Kohane. She’s the best partner I could ever have and she’s the reason I’m getting back into music. I… wish you could’ve met her. You’d like her a lot.

“And… if I can get my confidence back, I’ll surpass your dream. I’ll climb to the top of the world with Kohane at my side. I promise you I’m not giving up this time.”

The fire in her eyes was so strong, so beautiful, Kohane believed it could never be extinguished except of its own volition and maybe some very tragic extenuating circumstances.

In some ways it scared her. But the part of her that craved adventure, that wanted to escape her current situation and see what it was like on the other side of fear, found it exhilarating.

If An wanted to be on top of the world, Kohane would happily follow her there.

Chapter Text

They were the Vivids now. An had suggested the name on a whim – at least it sounded cool, even if Kohane had laughed a bit when it got brought up. Maybe not as original or unique as the name her dad had come up with for his group, but they'd had a concept in mind when they came up with their name. An wanted something that belonged to her and Kohane and no one else because the world had slowly stripped away everything that was truly personal to her before it decided she'd suffered enough and brought Kohane into her life.   

To her, it represented everything she wanted to be: alive and full of colour again, much like the street still was though she closed her blinds on it every day because looking at it was painful. When she was holding Kohane's hand, it hurt a little less, and she was crying herself to sleep less now, but that had only happened because she had someone right there with her, one arm wrapped protectively around Kohane to keep her close. She was the good luck charm that drove out all of An's nightmares and tried to protect the few memories of Nagi that weren't tainted by the cemetery and good weather but those were slipping from the cracks in her skin even as Kohane picked them up and put them back in her hands.   

Maybe she should look into talk therapy like her mom had suggested. Find an anonymous person who would be willing to listen to her stupid inability to just move on with her life now that it had been three years since Nagi had died and-  

Was moving on a form of letting go?  

She needed to be able to smile without lying to herself again, to be able to feel happiness on her own.   

But if she did that- would Nagi be mad with her? Or if her happiness was in music, would her ghost give An a pat on the head and tell her how proud she was of her brave student who'd done her best?  

There was no way to know.  

"Shiraishi-san, are you aware of the historical context behind this novel?" her teacher asked, looking very pointedly at her unopened copy. "Or did you fail to complete the notes assigned for homework the day you were absent?"  

No, Kohane had made her do that out of concern for her academic well-being. An was just too lost in her thoughts to make any sense of what she was reading right now. "There was a war," she mumbled.   

"Excellent." The amount of sarcasm in the teacher's tone could not be overstated. "Which one?"  

She had to think about it for a second. People are staring. Get it together. "... the Genpei War?"  

"You're approximately seven hundred years behind schedule. Please ask your history teacher about revisiting the Meiji Period at your earliest convenience."  

Someone laughed.   

An had never been good at history anyway, but as the teacher moved to ask Kohane a question, Mizuki grabbed her notebook, scribbled something on it, and passed it back to her. Seriously, are you okay?  

Not really.  

They frowned. Is there... something you need to talk about?  

No. I'll- I'm fine. I just need a minute.  

You've had like thirty. Are you sure?  

Promise to hug me at lunch?  

Bad day?  

Just memories. Overthinking. Not like I know how to fix it or anything . She felt powerless against her own mind on her worst days. This wasn't quite up there with the worst of the worst, but today- today was normal. There was nothing special about it at all; no tragic reminders or depressing memories come back to haunt her for any reason. She'd gotten past the whole "high school construction site" incident because asking to transfer schools because of one bad thing she'd done as a six year old wouldn't even be considered by the faculty before they'd tell her that she should instead seek counseling.   

And there she was at the start again: should she just go to therapy?  

An wanted to bury her face in her arms and never look up until the bell rang. Instead, she forced herself to try to follow what was going on, though she'd lost track of it all long ago.   

Nothing changed in her mental state until she got home. Until the stares and the whispers perpetrated by so many dimmed so much it was as if they had never existed and never would. Incidentally, when she got home, Asahina Mafuyu had a question.   

"Is your home haunted by any chance?" they asked as An was trying to get a drink from her glass of water. Fifteen seconds of choking later, they received a response.   

"I... don't know."  

"Well, there's a ghost in my room," Mafuyu said as if this was self-evident. "They're a very kind individual, though they can't speak. We've been communicating through a hastily-created sign language. As such, information on who they are is scant."  

Translation: I talk to a ghost using furious gesturing. "Can I meet them?"  

"I think you already know them. I told them about your plans to get back into music, and they smiled like this was the greatest accomplishment of their entire life."  

" Nagi-san?"  

"I told you I don't know anything about them." Not their name, not why they chose our house . "But they read some letter on the kamidana that was quite dusty, and though I didn't think ghosts could cry, given their translucent and holographic state, but this one seemed to be quite moved by the words in the envelope. In case you are wondering, I did not read what was in it because it seemed personal."  

"It's her. It has to be."  

Mafuyu did not seem too convinced by this but led An to their room anyway. They made no idle conversation as they opened the door.  

An stepped through.   

Then her mind's train of thought stopped so quickly it felt as if she'd been hit by a sack of bricks. Nagi was there, though she wasn't there , not alive but standing there in the way that someone who was could. She waved to An. No words came from her mouth.  

Is this my fault ?  

A nod.  

Can you hear what I'm thinking?  

The ghost, because she was a ghost and this wasn't some cruel joke everyone had been playing on her for three whole years, stepped closer with an apologetic smile on her face.   

Everything?  

Yes, came a response. Only in her head. The ghost's lips moved but no sound came out and Mafuyu didn't know what had been said.   

You... you know what I think about myself. About you.  

If I may be selfish, it makes me sad that you've stopped singing.  

I couldn't. Not- not after you...  

The tears rolling down her face could have been from sadness or a twisted joy; she was not sure. Kohane's hand had found its way onto her shoulder. An entangled her fingers with Kohane's so she could remember she was present.   

This is your partner?  

She's the best.   

I can tell. The smirk on the ghost's face was so funny. You're taking good care of her, I assume?  

She'd do the same for me.  

The quiet type, I see.  

And studious. That part sort of sucks.  

Come on, I'm sure studying isn't that bad.  

Not when I have my cute partner by my side!  

It all felt so natural. So... normal. Even though Nagi’s voice was all in her head and this could very well be a hallucination for all she knew. Kohane’s hand could be there because she didn’t think An was making any sense, crying just looking at the air. At the kamidana, too, but that somewhat made sense for her. Was she sharing some sort of unreal experience with Mafuyu, who was always a little quiet and in their own mind?  

“I can see her,” Kohane whispered, which made An feel a lot more sane.  

Or maybe we’re all idiots believing in something that doesn’t exist.  

She got no response to that thought, which seemed to indicate that ghosts’ ability to read minds could be limited if what she was thinking was very irrelevant to the conversation.  

Not two hours later, after a quick supper and twenty minutes of lying on the couch questioning reality, the meaning of life, and whether or not her outfit looked decent, An was standing on a street corner so familiar to her, she might as well have gone back in time. Kohane next to her, eager smile on her face, seemed to be so much more excited for this.  

It was the joyous butterflies for her. An would’ve been able to relate three and a half years ago, when she did this every day unless she was at home sick with the flu. Not even a cold had been able to stop her from practicing, though her parents would happily try to convince her that it would be better if she rested her voice.  

An wanted to sing until her throat was hoarse and she was warm enough to light a fire in her own heart. She wanted to forget about everyone she’d ever known, past and present, and dance like her life depended on it.  

Kohane began their first song. And this wasn’t the first time they’d sung in front of a crowd; but it was in some ways their public debut. The sun was setting in the sky above them, painting Kohane’s face in orange and gold, and if An was the sort to take a thousand pictures at inopportune moments, she’d take one now. Of Kohane and the microphone in her hand, a duo so perfect it made her heart stop. Kohane’s voice was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard – not quite as powerful as Nagi’s, but close enough it was making her have second thoughts. Did she deserve this?  

It’s irrelevant whether or not you deserve it, Kohane had told her once, on their walk back from school. Do you want it?  

The first time Shiraishi An learned how to let go of everything holding her back occurred on a Wednesday night. A film producer would have chosen a much more suitable location and time – maybe midnight, on the top of a roof, just her alone with the stars – but she was no movie maker and she had a passion greater than that of her child self. Fueled by regret and despair, but it had come back to assist her in her selfish goal of proving herself worthy to a person dead for three years. All that she had to worry about, all the burdens she carried in her schoolbag that no one could see, fell away from her mind and her shoulders as she launched into the chorus, trusting that Kohane would keep up with her. Letting herself rely on her partner so they could realize the true potential of their music together.  

When the crowd applauded for them, An felt the sort of power she had when she’d witness Nagi’s singing. It wasn’t nearly as intense, but it called to her, its addictive qualities fitting right in with her self-doubt and fear. She let it overcome her as they moved through their set list, allowing it to dictate when she took risks. When she pushed herself to master techniques she’d struggled that little bit with during practice. Someone would be around to the cafe later to give her some pointers and she’d have to listen because that was what her father and Nagi and Taiga and all those people had done. That was how you got good , and she wanted to stand on top of the world. Higher than Nagi had ever climbed.  

The thought didn’t scare her. No longer did she fear disappointing anyone; for who would there be to disappoint if she did that?  

She could show them all, she realized. Show them what she was truly capable of with Kohane by her side, and then they wouldn’t pity her for having lost her aunt. And when there were people who wanted to surpass everything she’d done, An would have the rivals she needed. She couldn’t stop this. Not now; maybe not ever.  

Why’d she told herself she had to?  

The crowd had the sort of energy she was used to. The sort of fire she’d always been greeted with as she got older.  

Kohane did the little intro speech they’d planned. An stood and looked out at the gathering of people as she did, picking out faces and linking them to names. Places. There were so many people she knew; who’d known her since she was the little brat who clung to Nagi or her father whenever they were around. Who wasn’t afraid of anything unless you told her a ghost story or told her there was a snake in her house.  

She thought she saw the ghost of Nagi in the crowd. She was still riding the high she’d gotten from their performance, but it was fading now. She forced herself to look away before her mind conjured up more infernal fantasies involving scissors or knives or the cheese grater, lest it remind her too strongly that she was not worthy of this.  

After the second of May three years ago, An had been told that grief was a process. That all forms of mental illness and mental struggle usually came with relapses – or times where you were convinced you’d gotten everything under control when it decided that it was time to begin tormenting your mind again. But if she could experience a very, very momentary moment of clarity before falling back towards her compulsion to punish herself for what she had done and what she had not done, had she ever truly gotten ‘better’ in the first place?  

Would her mind be kinder or harsher to her if she allowed her family and friends in on the secret of what it commanded her to do in her pursuit of perfection?  

Then people were coming up to them to give them advice, and Kohane was writing it down, and An let herself be swept up by their words, their hands, their counsel. Took the gentle reminders that she still had a very, very long way to go, and that her path would be fraught and marked with the souls of those gone before.  That she would be haunted, but the experience would teach her more than she’d learn in school.  

Here she would live her dreams. Here she would fall and get up again because criticism was a part of the lifestyle and you had to accept and apply it if you ever wanted to break through the walls in your head. If you wanted to get as good as Nagi, you had to make sacrifices. An would go through all of it with a smile or an attempt at one because that was what she was meant to do.  

Your upper range is a bit shaky. Remember the old tricks to fix it?  

The rap section on this one song – the words aren’t quite right. You should go over them a few more times to make sure you’re getting them all right if you’re going for correctness.  

Their words weren’t as calming as they used to be. Instead her mind took them and interpreted them as threats to her mental well-being; made them into threats instead of future compliments made from a place of genuine care. These people wanted to see An improve; that much she knew by heart. Yet there was a part of her that refused to accept that.  

She thanked everyone for their words anyway. She would be taking them into consideration the next time they had practice.  

They discussed their set list that night; added some songs and removed others, adding notes about each song they’d sung and what needed to be fixed in it, if anything. Kohane had color-coded the notes so it could be distinguished whether a specific tip applied to one or both of them, and she’d even made a legend so there was a quick point of reference for those colors. Her attention to detail was impressive, especially considering most of the people An knew were incredibly bad at working out every detail of a plan before deciding to act on it, including herself.  

It was this same trait that made her very attuned to the emotional changes in those around her. Mafuyu might share it, too, based on the way that both of them had been looking at An like they were waiting for her to admit that she was in fact not doing all that well. Kohane was a little more blunt about it, though; Mafuyu was studying something at the same time, but they’d occasionally look up with a very knowing look on their face.  

An was trying to listen to some of Kohane’s suggestions, which was normally something she could do easily. That was probably why two people had caught on to the fact that her heart wasn’t in it.  

“An-chan?” There was so much concern in those few syllables, An wondered just how distracted Kohane was by an ongoing problem that she was being far too helpful in solving. Was Kohane just the sort of person who had been blessed as a living angel, a being made of pure sweetness? There were no faults An could find in anything she did. Not an ounce of ill will around her, only someone who loved so much even when it hurt and feared things that An wouldn’t find particularly scary but could tell ghost stories and owned a pet snake .  

(Maybe An had too much love for her. But that couldn’t be; Kohane was just such a kind person and there was no way anyone could ever spoil her too much.)  

“Kohane?”  

“Are you feeling alright?” She really did look like a hamster. A determined hamster.  

“You’ll know if I’m lying, right?” Best to get that out of the way first.  

“Yup.”  

There was no winning this game, was there? At some point, Kohane would get her to admit that she needed to go to therapy, but if she could only convince her to go with her, then it would all be worth it. “Worse than I felt when we were singing.”  

She really hoped ghosts didn’t have insanely good hearing, because she didn’t want Nagi to hear the words she was going to say. If she could hear. Mafuyu hadn’t specified if they’d told Nagi about the sorts of things An had been occupying her mind with by lip reading or writing.  

“Do you want to talk about it?” Since when had Kohane taken a course in therapy? Either way, An did want to, mostly because Kohane and Mafuyu weren’t going to judge her or tell her parents.  

“A little.”  

Kohane wrapped an arm around her and set the notebook she was holding down, a bookmark keeping track of her page. “Whenever you’re ready.”  

“I feel... mad at myself for wanting to sing. Because I know I’m not as good as I could be. And I don’t want to disappoint...”  

“You don’t disappoint her,” Mafuyu said, scribbling something down on their... science homework? The honours program at Kamiyama had been giving them additional work as of late because they were an excellent student, and their teachers believed they could handle it. According to Mafuyu, their dropping out of cram school had eased their workload quite a bit, and it wasn’t difficult to complete two extra worksheets a week, but their tone had indicated they’d much rather be writing song lyrics than doing work. “She was very adamant about that.” Upon seeing the expression on An’s face, which could only be described as pure confusion, they added, “We were spelling out words based on their hiragana spellings by pointing at a character chart. The conversation took about an hour.”  

“She told you I’m not a disappointment?”  

Mafuyu sighed. “Yes, Shiraishi-san. She told me that you would think so, and that you are not to blame for what has happened. In fact, she believes the responsibility lies with her, but it would be counterproductive to find yourself at fault for the emotional state of another in this circumstance.” They went back to their work, as focused as they’d been a minute ago. They had one earbud in, which was probably why they weren’t struggling too much.  

“Oh.”  

Kohane’s free hand took one of hers. “Is that a good thing to you?”  

Nagi... wasn’t mad at her for giving up. Was proud of her for picking the pieces of her life up now even though the shards pierced her hands and her heart bled when she did so. The process was slow and agonizing at times, but she was taking shaky steps towards her own destiny.  

“I guess it is.”  

(The smile on Kohane’s face was so precious, An wished she had a camera to preserve it forever.)  

“I’m happy for you, then,” she said. “Do you need a little more time?”  

“I think we’ve done a little too much discussion for today.”  

Kohane suddenly put on her Dedicated Student face. “We’ll have to pick up where we left off tomorrow, then,” she said, and An got the feeling that she wasn’t getting out of two hours of serious discussion tomorrow.  

“Fine,” she muttered. “But... I really do want to pursue music with you. If- if you want me, of course.”  

“I’m not sure if there’s a universe where that doesn’t happen,” Kohane answered, and An felt like there was nothing else to do but kiss her in response.  

Neither of them noticed Mafuyu taking out their cell phone at exactly the right moment and sending a picture to a contact listed as Amia .