Written for the Beyond the Camera's Lens Christmas Exchange.
"What about some new clothes?" Miu says, eyeing the window of a boutique where mannequins pose amidst an artful litter of scarves, necklaces and shoes.
Yuuri shakes her head. "Hisoka is so picky about what she wears, I'm not sure I could find something to her taste."
Miu sighs. "Do you mind if I get some new clothes?"
"We're supposed to be finding a birthday present for Hisoka."
"When you asked me to come I thought you already had something in mind," Miu says. "What does she like?"
"Coffee, antiques, gardening, getting to know people..."
"Take her to a host club. She'll get to know people there."
Yuuri ignores that comment to peer at a display of potted plants outside a flower shop. "These are hard to look after, aren't they?" she says, looking doubtfully at a white orchid. "She's so busy with other things..."
"It's a plant. How much work can it be?"
Yuuri considers the orchid a moment longer and then walks on. Before long they are nearing the end of the shops, and Yuuri sits on a low wall by the bridge, disheartened. Miu stands a short way off, glaring at a group of passing housewives until they are out of sight.
"Is this really so important to you?" she asks.
"Yes." Yuuri knows that finding the perfect present won't come close to thanking Hisoka for everything she's done, but that's no reason not to try. "It's important."
Miu nods as if she's come to a decision. "That bracelet you're wearing, that's hers, right?"
Yuuri looks down at it, startled. For a moment she has no idea what Miu is talking about, then she remembers. "The daisy charm used to be Hisoka's. She gave it to me a long time ago. She said it came from a bracelet she lost when she was still in high school..." She trails off. "But there's no way we can find it after so long."
"Hand it over."
Miu's outstretched hand and determined expression invite no dissent, so Yuuri slips off the charm bracelet without protest and drops it into Miu's palm. For a second all the world's edges blur, and there's a ringing in her ears – it's different, watching from the outside as someone else slips closer to the hidden world – then Miu sets off down the street at a brisk pace, and Yuuri has to hurry to catch up.
They walk back down the high street, past the antiques shop, out into a suburban wilderness where houses are interspersed with storage sheds, allotment gardens, and thickets of trees and bushes. The iron gates of the high school are locked up for summer when they arrive, but before Yuuri can even ask what Miu intends to do now, Miu is slipping through a gap under the fence, so well hidden by ivy that Yuuri wouldn't have noticed it.
"Come on," Miu's voice calls from behind the curtain of vines. Yuuri glances over her shoulder to make sure no one's watching, then follows.
"We're not going to get in trouble," Miu says, in answer to Yuuri's unspoken thoughts. "Haven't you ever sneaked into a school after hours?"
Yuuri is bewildered by the idea that anyone would want to, but from the way Miu rolls her eyes and lets out a scornful sigh, she knows better than to say as much.
"This way, it's over here." Instead of approaching the school building, Miu circles around inside the fence, over tarmac and the grassy running track, past the covered swimming pool and its cluster of outbuildings, to the place where the fields back onto the woods.
"What's over here?" Yuuri enquires.
Miu offers her the bracelet back. "You find out."
When Yuuri takes it, paying special attention to the daisy charm, she does feel the trace of Hisoka's spiritual signature, buried underneath the layered, neutral months of her own wear. It's so faint that if she didn't know to look for it, she's certain she would never have noticed. Closing her eyes, she follows that tiny flicker of memory to its source.
She sees two girls, crossing the playing field. One is a much younger Hisoka, almost as tall at fifteen as she will be at twenty-three, with her hair past her waist. She walks arm-in-arm with another girl, tiny by comparison. It makes Yuuri smile to see the way Hisoka leans protectively over her.
The smaller girl stops, shading her eyes. They are looking in the direction of Mount Hikami. Yuuri sees the girl's lips move – she should be too far away to see that, but things are different in this world between worlds. The smaller girl starts walking again, only this time she has to pull Hisoka along. Yuuri hears her say, "You don't want me to do it alone, do you?"
The scene shimmers and ripples, like a reflection in water. Now the field is grey and swept with rain, and Hisoka crosses it by herself, keeping her eyes on the ground. She won't look at the mountain any more. She never dares.
From the shadows between the trees, a voice calls to her. She lifts her head, the beginnings of a smile forming, her eyes lighting with a wild hope. She runs forward towards the girl in the forest, but before she gets there, something makes her hesitate. Still, she holds out her hand. The girl reaches out too, between the bars of the fence. She hooks two fingers through Hisoka's bracelet, an old familiar gesture between the two, and uses it to tug her forward, step by step. Hisoka is almost in the shadow of the trees when she suddenly pulls back, so hard she nearly loses her balance. The chain on the bracelet snaps. The girl in the forest has vanished. Hisoka, sweeping her hair out of her eyes with a frantic energy, looks about her for the girl, for the bracelet. She picks something up out of the mud, but it's only one charm that flew free when the chain broke. The rest, when it fell, fell into the shadows where the lost girl was standing, and this younger version of Hisoka doesn't know how to get it back.
Yuuri bends to the glint of silver in the grass. It looks like new, untarnished, when she pulls it back into the world. At first the metal is very cold, but it quickly warms as she holds it, and the charms click and jangle together with a pleasant sound.
She turns back to Miu, uncertain. "This?"
"I don't see anything else, do you?"
Yuuri still hesitates. "That was... it might be a bad memory. I don't want to remind her of something sad."
Miu shrugs slightly. "Don't give it to her, then. But she kept that charm all these years, and if I found something my mother gave me, that I thought I'd lost..."
Yuuri thinks of the things she had to give up after her parents died and their house was sold, and of the few things she managed to keep, and what they mean to her now, even just shut in a drawer. "You're right," she says. "Thank you for helping me find this."
Characteristically, Miu does nothing to acknowledge the thanks, only looks out over the deserted field. Yuuri is surprised to realise it's almost sunset. They start back to the hole in the fence, Yuuri rolling the bracelet between her fingers from time to time. Silver slides against silver, and tiny sparkles of stirred-up memory scatter like light thrown through a prism. It's not enough to feel like prying, but enough to make Yuuri feel she understands Hisoka better, and loves her all the more for that.
Back on the street, Miu stops abruptly, frowning.
"What?" Yuuri asks.
"If you're going to give her back the bracelet I found, do I still have to think of something to get her myself?"