"What's wrong, Touka-chan?"
Touka snaps out of her distracted state. Her friend's voice is heightened with hints of nervousness. Touka struggles to come up with an excuse—any plausible excuse—to Yoriko, who now stares at her. The food in their bento boxes are left untouched. Touka attempts to make a cheerful gesture by donning a smile, and makes some hand motions as if she means to say that there is absolutely nothing wrong with her. Yet she knows that Yoriko knows that she is lying—they have been friends for more than a year, after all. Touka is a good liar, when she conceals her secret identity and isn't affected by her emotions. Usually.
But today seems different. The emotions are still raw. Touka feels... sad. She doesn't know how exactly to process this sadness in a way that's healthy, and certainly in a way that does not expose her true identity. So she doesn't say anything, save for a well prepared excuse: "Oh, it's nothing. I just didn't get much sleep last night." It is a truth, a sort of automatic truth that Touka has grown accustomed to repeating at school.
"Yeah right," says Yoriko, whose eyes dart upwards for a moment. She returns to staring her in the eye. Touka adjusts her high school uniform rather uneasily. "You don't think I haven't noticed? It's true you're always sleepy at school, but today... you seem more off than before."
'Has Yoriko found out?' Touka thinks to herself, as she has done more than a hundred times before. She has been walking a thin tightrope for years, and while she should be used to this sort of situation, it nevertheless leaves her in an internal panic. She has really grown fond of her only (fully) human friend Yoriko, and she would hate to lose her—or worse, be found out and sentenced to death by the likes of the damned Doves. The panic arrives in a flash and then it disappears. Touka awaits her friend's next words and actions. She doesn't say anything; she's not in the mood for some half-assed explanation.
"Is there someone on your mind?"
"Hah?" Touka is taken aback. "Yoriko—"
"Oh please. University exams are coming up. You've been studying vigorously (and I should do the same), but sometimes you..." Yoriko takes a breath. "You look sad. Unfocused. ... You have someone you like, right?"
"Um, well yeah but—" Touka involuntarily admits before she stops herself from venturing into dangerous territory.
Yoriko grabs Touka's hands and keeps them in a firm grip. "Wha—" Touka exclaims in muffled protest but Yoriko cuts her off with a pleading look.
"Touka, you don't have to lie. I can see it in your eyes. Besides..." Her eyes hover over the tiny object on Touka's desk. Touka follows her glance and, with a jolt, recognises it. It's a miniature rabbit doll with a loose string attached to a cell phone. Hers. "That guy with the eyepatch... Eyepatch-kun gave it to me to give to you. If I remember correctly, it was on your birthday."
One look is all it takes for her to confirm her suspicions.
"I knew it! That guy, I think he was at your apartment too when I came the other day—you like him, don't you?" Yoriko stares at the flustered Touka, her question clearly answered. "I know it, I can see it in your eyes. Well..." She removes her hands from Touka's and frowns, her eyes averted momentarily. "Forgive me for the intrusion, but... did you guys break up?"
In a second, Touka Kirishima flashbacks to their last moments. Their first meeting in a long while in the most unfavorable circumstances on the rooftop, amid the noise of gunshots and murderous intent. How lightly she was held, how she could feel his kindhearted presence even when everything else about him had changed, how rough his hands caressed her legs and skin and her in her entirety. The way he spoke, loudly proclaimed "I won't," and the harsh treatment he dealt to her troublesome brother. The gentle kindness he treated her with, his hair now whitened and fingernails stained black—what had they done to him?—and his frightening display of enormous strength not like the timid human-loving boy she'd often scold at the Anteiku.
And then his last words, his damned last words, even when she'd wanted to join his team after the conclusion of the raid, even when he'd promised never, to never—
"No!"
The sharp cry escapes Touka's mouth before she can suppress it. Yoriko drops her hands; her frown grows larger. Touka bites her lips. She struggles to hold back her emotions from spilling all over her normally stoic figure—all too raw. It hurts her pride and self-assured independence to admit it, but nothing is more painful than the futile feeling of loss and abandonment—the bleak rejection of her self, once accepted and then discarded like unwanted trash. Her brother Ayato had already done her a number in, and now this. When would it stop? Yoriko would understand it, wouldn't she? It seems like a common human sentiment.
'Ha, a human helping me?' thinks Touka. The idea seems laughable, quite absurd. And yet... This is Yoriko. She could be trusted, at least to that extent.
"I mean," Touka hastily recovers, "it's not like we were even a couple in the beginning. He's just not here anymore so..." Something in her throat stops her from finishing her train of thought.
Suddenly she feels an embrace around her shaking body. So warm. Comfortable. And so gentle. Almost like K—
"I get it," Touka hears her friend whispering in her ear, "You don't have to say anything more. I've heard all I need to hear, and—" Their embrace slowly unravels, and Touka notices Yoriko's look of determination on her face. "You're not alone. I know exactly what'll cheer you up."
"Whatever do you mean?" Touka mumbles glumly.
Yoriko peels off the cover of her bento box and instantly the rotten stench perpetuates the air. But Touka doesn't pay attention to the smell. She looks in light confusion at her smiling high school classmate and friend.
"This."
For the first time in forever, Kirishima Touka breaks out in a smile, comforted.