Title: Until the stories grow old

Characters: Akihito, Mirai, Mitsuki

Words: 2058

She stood in the midst of the cafeteria, hands closed around a tray containing nothing but a bowl of plain udon. A look of disappointment colored her face, mixed with impending hunger and the frustration that she was officially completely out of money.

He came up behind her, placed a gentle hand on her shoulder, and she jumped just a little. Startled, perhaps, that there was someone around to see her plight. Before she could react, he placed a plastic-wrapped package on her tray. She looked down at the onigiri in slight disbelief.

"Senpai?"

"For you."

She turned her head, cheeks coloring until they nearly matched her short hair. "I-I don't need it."

As she tried to hand it back to him, her tray nearly slipped from her fingers—he had to reach over to catch it. "I'll hold it," he reassured her, setting it down at a nearby table and pulling up two chairs.

"You can have it back," she murmured as she sat down, still embarrassed by the gift he'd placed on her tray.

"Not a chance."

Mirai Kuriyama scowled at the same moment her stomach growled, and her small hands flew to her midsection. "I'm fine," she stammered, but he pushed the tray in front of her, setting off her stomach again. Under the watchful gaze of Akihito Kanbara, she dug in at once.

"Senpai," she asked as she started on the onigiri. "Has this…happened before? You look so nostalgic…"

He felt a little jolt of surprise at her words; had she noticed the look on his face? He recalled a little over a year ago, at his attempts to make her join the Literary Club because she'd had nowhere else to go. He recalled her flustered face, asking him if he could hold her tray, then her efforts to return the onigiri he'd treated her with back to him. But it had been different back then. She'd walked away from him, trying to isolate herself from him and all the others, not knowing what she would experience when she became closer to them.

Without really noticing it, he found himself telling her what had happened that spring day, and as he did, he found that he was searching her amber eyes for any hints of recognition, any special shine that might indicate she knew what he was talking about. When he finished, she merely looked slightly bemused, maybe thinking that that sounded like something she might have been capable of.

"Are your memories still…?"

Her face downcast, she nodded. Watching him, she could see the disappointment in his eyes, mirroring the emotions she was feeling. She knew that they'd been through so much together, and yet, whenever she tried to ask, everyone was so vague about it. It was as though they were trying to avoid talking about someone who had died. She supposed the Mirai Kuriyama from back then was dead, in a way, and everyone was still sensitive about it. She couldn't blame them for it.

On that note, she finished her lunch in silence, her mind caught up in everything she had once held and now lost, as though swept away by a current that sought only happiness.

After school, she and Akihito reached the door to the Literary Club at the same time. Their hands both reached for the knob, brushing one another, and he caught her fingers in his. With his free hand, he opened the door. "Sorry to make you feel so bad earlier," he said softly.

She shook her strawberry-colored head emphatically. "It's not your fault. We should go; Mitsuki-senpai's waiting."

They took their seats at the table in the center of the room, and he recalled that this was where she had been sitting on the day she'd decided to join. That had been a year ago, but nothing seemed to have changed. Even Mitsuki sat in her usual chair across from Mirai, perusing an old copy of Shibahime with an expression of distaste on her face.

"How did we even manage to finish this?" Mitsuki sighed, sweeping the magazine to the side as though it were personally insulting her. "I know that someone over there didn't even try to work on it."

That was right; the copy the dark-haired girl was currently turning up her nose at was their commemorative issue from last year. It hadn't been of too much importance to him at the time, but perhaps it had meant something to Mitsuki after all. Akihito remarked on just this, and Mitsuki shot back, "Well, I'm the club president. I have to keep this club from falling apart, don't I?"

Mirai shot up from out of her seat as well. "A-and as the vice president, I'll also try hard too!"

Mitsuki looked amused at her underclassman's energy. "Learn something from last year's vice president; he had absolutely no initiative whatsoever."

"Excuse me for that," grumbled Akihito, taking his seat at the table.

"Speaking of which, what are we doing to do for our next issue?" Mirai inquired, picking up the discarded copy and skimming through it. Akihito could remember her from last year, flipping through a different issue of Shibahime with just as much intensity on her first day at the club.

"More of our previous works again? Well, I'm sure we can leave that to Mitsuki…" Akihito trailed off when he saw the murderous expression in her red eyes.

She sniffed, "Don't just put everything on me again. Just how ungrateful are you? You're a member of this club, too, so contribute." She sounded like a princess giving orders from on high, as she usually did, so he was used to it.

"I'll try my best!" chipped in Mirai, putting down the issue she had been reading.

"You don't have to worry about it, Kuriyama-san. It was mostly directed at that ungrateful pervert over there."

Mirai now had a brilliant look in her amber eyes, one that reflected her extreme determination. "I'd like to contribute something for the next issue, Mitsuki-senpai! Leave it to me!" She pulled out a notebook and pen from her bag and immediately began scribbling something down. It seemed as though her melancholy from earlier was fading away, and Akihito smiled in relief at the sight of her excited face. Not too long ago, it had seemed as though her grief would overpower her.

He felt something poking his cheek; glancing over, he saw Mitsuki leaning over and pressing a pen into his face. "What do you want from me now," he sighed, pushing the pen away.

"Just look at how hard our vice president is working. You ought to feel some shame for how lazy and deplorable you are in comparison."

He ignored her choice of words, replying, "Well, what do you want me to do about it? Are you asking me to contribute something too?"

"Think about it. That's all."

Mitsuki's crimson gaze fell on Mirai, at her determination to get whatever was on her mind down on paper. She, too, had noticed the change that had come about her underclassman. Once, she had been lonely, just as Mitsuki herself felt she had been. A memory from a year ago tugged at her mind, and she could almost see the light from those distant fireworks in front of her. She could still remember what she'd said to Mirai on that day…Perhaps, instead of finding someone else's work to submit to the magazine, she could submit her own writing…Perhaps it would be in the form of an old conversation from last year.

Back at his own home, Akihito sat at his desk, mulling over his conversation from earlier. Sure, he was thinking about it, but what would he even have to write about that would possibly be worthy enough to be read by others?

Okay, that sounded exactly what Mitsuki would say to me if I asked, he thought, shaking his blond head. His attention landed on a photo he'd put up on his wall, something Mirai had given him. They'd taken it only weeks ago: Ai, Mitsuki, Mirai, himself, Hiroomi, and Sakura lined up together in the clubroom. It had been fun to take it with everyone, a happy memory that he'd end up looking back on some years from now with nostalgia.

A happy memory…he thought, and his mind skipped back to the cafeteria, to the story he'd told her about giving her onigiri. She hadn't remembered, and probably would never have, if he hadn't told her…

The pencil was in his hand before he knew it, and he had jotted down the words in the time it took him to recall the memory of that day. He stared down at them for a moment before he continued. It was as if his hand had been waiting all along to put his recollections onto paper, and the words spilled over a single page and onto another and another. By the time he had finished, it had become dark outside. He collected all the pages of writing and placed them inside his schoolbag. It was almost as though he was still writing; if anyone asked what its opening lines were, he could recount them by heart.

Suicide. According to the dictionary, it is defined as, "The act of taking one's own life." I suspect I'll go through life without ever attempting to commit suicide.

The next day after school, Mitsuki looked up from those very same pages. "You wrote this?"

"Yeah, so?"

She blinked, her dark eyelashes brushing her cheekbones. "It's just that…" And she presented him with her own play at a manuscript.

He scanned the first page and realized how familiar the characters in her narrative sounded. His eyes fell on a single line of dialogue: It's because everyone is alone. And he could remember that festival, the color of the lanterns that Mitsuki had described as chartreuse, the way he had stood next to Mirai to watch the fireworks.

The memories filled his head, almost to the verge of rendering him completely silent. He could recall that day now, just as brilliantly as he could recall the day he'd put forth in his own piece. All he could ask was, "You changed her name too, right?"

"Of course I did. But it's surprising that we both chose to make stories out of our memories of Kuriyama-san."

Akihito glanced up at Mirai, who was in nearly the same position as yesterday, but this time frowning down at the same piece of paper as before. She must have been editing whatever she'd been working on. "Probably not that surprising," he reasoned. "Because she's lost her memories, and we're the only ones who can tell her about them anymore."

He looked down at Mitsuki at the same time she looked up at him. "That's not a bad idea," murmured Mitsuki, practically reading his mind. "And at the end of it, we'd have a complete story of everything that happened before she-"

"So you're saying…?"

"We can submit the ones we have for the next issue. And if we keep writing more of our memories down, we can keep submitting them as original stories."

His gaze fell on Mirai once again. "And then we can tell her everything. Everything she's forgotten, everything we remember about her. We can present the whole thing to her." He thought of her scrapbook, the way she took and collected each photograph of her new life like it was a precious jewel. Mirai was recording the present so that she wouldn't lose it. And now, he wanted to record the past so that she wouldn't ever let go of it again.

"What will the title of our collection be, then?"

He pondered it a moment, realizing that this was what it was becoming now. A collection. It was going to be bigger than just his and Mitsuki's memories; that time had been a part of all of them, and now everyone would recount it for her sake. And the title would have to show what they had all gone through, what they had struggled for with her.

"It'll be called…" He stopped, wondering if it would sound silly to Mitsuki, the girl who rejected everything, but not this. He wondered if it would help Mirai recall anything from back then.

"Kyoukai no Kanata."