"Kanbara-san, please, let me pay for the bill."
There are so many things that are wrong, he thinks. Firstly, she should be calling him "Senpai". She never did much care for using his name at all, except when talking to others about him. Maybe it has been her way of distancing herself from him at first, when he was still just a job to her, before it had become habit and her voice curled around the moniker cutely each time she said it.
Secondly, the Kuriyama-san he knew would have never insisted on footing the bill. She had been the type to stare him down until he reluctantly pulled the cash from his wallet to pay for the both of them, complaining the entire time about how much of a moocher she was. He remembers being so irritated with her sometimes, and now he thinks its ironic that he misses it. Misses her, even though she's right in front of him.
Thirdly, she'd never spoken to him in a voice so careful or unsure. If there was one thing she had always been with him, it was assertive. Now, she is wary with a hint of perkiness he'd never seen in Kuriyama-san before. She is looking at him with eyes like the sun, worrying her lip slightly between her teeth as if she's anxious for his answer. As off-kilter as this whole situation is, she sits there before him, as stunning as ever in her red glasses. It's bittersweet.
"It's alright," he tells her, reaching into his book bag for his wallet. "I got it."
She shakes her head. "Please, Kanbara-san. You've already done so much for me. This is the least I can do." That's that. She slaps her own cash down on the table before he can debate the matter and he relaxes in his chair, out of sorts, confused on what to say or how to act. He'd already made up his mind to keep the past away from her clean palette of memories, but then what did he talk about now with a girl who remembered nothing?
"You don't have to pay me back for anything, Kuriyama-san," he says after a pause, his voice tight like a wire. He tries to keep that away from her - the sorrow, the wistfulness that plagues him. After all, she's alive and healthy and its better to have her here with no memories of him at all than have her completely trapped away in a place where no one could ever reach her.
She shrugs and uses her fork to push around a scrap of leftovers on her plate, staring hard at the table top. "I just. . . ."
He sighs and forces himself to look happier. It's not so hard - he thinks any version of Mirai Kuriyama will make him happy, even if the situation is all kinds of screwed up. "Jeez, you're not blaming yourself again, are you? It's not your fault."
She stills and he watches as she slowly lifts her gaze to meet his. "I. . .I know. It doesn't change the fact I feel bad about it, though."
This is the worst part - her blaming herself for the loss of her own memories. "Please, don't," he nearly begs.
Her face flushes red. "But you were. . . you were important to me, right?"
He cringes at her wording. Were. As if he's not anymore. "We were good friends," he says slowly, testing the words on his own tongue as he tries out a smile.
Kuriyama-san drops her fork and fiddles with her glasses, looking frustrated. He witnesses her cheeks darken in color, matching her glasses almost perfectly, her shoulders scrunching up to her ears in response to whatever embarrassing thing is running through her mind. "Y-You said you l-l-loved me. On the r-roof of the school."
"Mm," he replies, feeling his face become warm. There's no way to talk himself around that one. It had been the first thing out of his mouth when he saw her again. The last time she disappeared, she'd gone in a cloud of shimmering pieces, insisting while she vanished that she loved him, that she was happy she'd met him. The only things he'd been able to say had been desperate pleas for her to stay, and so, when he saw her again on the roof, he wanted her to know instantly that he returned all of her feelings tenfold.
In hindsight, it was a clumsy move.
Their waiter comes to take the bill before she can say anything else. They exchange pleasantries with the teenager and then slip into their coats. Akihito smiles a bit as she zips up and bundles her scarf around her face. She looks the same, he thinks. Exactly the same. Every freckle, every hair, every eyelash in every place he remembered. His heart falters as she turns her gaze to him with an uneasy smile.
"Shall we go then?"
The wind is blowing, so he walks closer to her than he probably should. He's known her for nearly a year now, but she has only relearned him in a week, the youmu part of him hidden away where she will never know of it again. He thinks she's uncomfortable with his proximity, but as they pass the park on the way back to her shared apartment with Sakura, she stops and stares at the bench against the mosaic wall.
Its still too soon for cherry blossoms - the barren trees bend in the gusts, dancing unevenly against the twilight sky. His arm almost brushes against her as he pauses beside her, waiting, content to just let her be with whatever it going through her mind. As hard as things have been on him with her unexpected return, he can't imagine how much more confused and frustrated she must be. He'll be patient with her, painstakingly so.
After all, this is about her shot at happiness. It is all about her. It will always be about her.
"Did I love you, too?" she asks suddenly, her voice strangely detached.
He's soft when he replies. He doesn't want to scare her. He doesn't want his voice to break. "Yeah. You did."
Her shoulders tremble a bit and his heart clenches. "I'm sorry," she whispers, fragile as glass.
The wind tears at her hair and he knows with desperate clarity that he shouldn't be seeking physical contact with her but it's a reflex and he's still so madly in love with her. This pain she carries is wrong, all wrong. She should be happy. He'll do anything to make her happy.
His hand reaches down for hers. "Don't apologize," he pleads. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I shouldn't have told you."
She surprises him by clutching at his fingers and turning to look at him, eyes wide with alarm. "No! I'm glad you did! It's. . .It's not fair," she mumbles, the wind almost stealing her words from him as her voice tapers off. "I want to remember you, Kanbara-san." Her lower lip trembles, her eyes becoming glassy with unshed tears. "Doesn't it hurt for you to be around me? How can you even stand to look at me?"
"Jeez, what kind of talk is that? Don't be such a dummy - you are my friend, Kuriyama-san." His heart is breaking, fracturing like the half-assed smile on his face. "And I like to look at you. No one looks as good in glasses as you do."
She blinks the tears away as her face turns red and she yanks her hand away from his. "Th-thanks."
She almost sounds sarcastic. If he closes his eyes, he can practically hear the "how unpleasant!" tumble from her mouth.
"It's cold," he says after a moment. "We should get going."
Kuriyama-san nods, straightening her glasses as she tucks her nose into her scarf. "Yeah."
They say goodbye at the train station after making plans to meet there on the way to school in the morning. She looks like there's something else she wants to say, but doesn't. Akihito thumbs aimlessly through his phone on the train ride home, indulging his masochism when he opens up a text message Kuriyama-san had sent to him back during the Calm. Just before this whole mess was set into motion. He's read it too many times by now to tear up at her words, but they calm him. He can feel his heart mending slightly, smiling even when he lingers on the last line of her text. "I don't feel unpleasant."
That's his goal. To make her life as unpleasant as possible. In time, these wounds will heal and being around her will no longer be bittersweet but entirely saturated with undiluted joy as it had been in the past. They can't go back, but they can go forward and that's all that matters.
She doesn't have to fall in love with him again, he thinks. In fact, it's probably better that she doesn't. He's half-youmu, after all, and she can do better. But he does hope that soon being with her will be easy as breathing and she won't hold back anymore. He won't believe that someday all her memories will return magically, but he wishes fiercely, in this moment, that pieces of her will come back to him.
Before he pockets his phone, he sends Kuriyama-san a text. Thanks for dinner. I hope you'll treat me next time too.
When he gets her response two hours later, he nearly cries.
How unpleasant.