They have worked together since childhood, as classmates and as coworkers. He is walking her home tonight, after long hours of overtime—it bothers him that she seems so worn, and he suspects she would have stayed all night if he had not told her the lights automatically shut off at ten. It was a lie; the lights stayed on all night, to discourage burglars and the like—although why a thief would break into an office building, he did not know.
The cicadas buzzed loudly, flying in intoxicated loops as they enjoyed the last few days of their lives. This is you, he wanted to say. Seventeen years asleep—you need to start living. But he is Shino, and Shino does not speak. She feels his steady gaze, even as she looks at the cold gray pavement. They reach her door. Raising her head, she meets his eyes, just in time to see his eyes glitter mischievously like cicada wings. Something pricks at her scalp. Combing through her hair, she gasps as her fingers find a beetle. She laughs quietly into her hand—in relief or at his joke, he cannot tell—when she realizes it is only a hairclip.
She wears it to work the next day, and smiles when another girl shrieks that there is a giant bug in her hair.
