fourth.

Through hellfire and back again. That is what it was.

She went and came back and that is all that matters to anyone.

But, if you stand close enough to feel, the air around him sizzles with something reawakened.

If you stand close enough to smell, her hair is singed and her heart is burnt at the corners. Tender, tender.

She jumps at small noises and dozes off in class. Sometimes she forgets to smile and stares into empty space instead.

(She's fine, she's fine, something in him insists, and so it makes no sense why he's hell-bent on ignoring it)

He often catches Kurosaki watching her too, brows knit with worry. This makes something prickle deep in his stomach, but it gets pushed away when he realizes that Kurosaki is waiting for her to quiver into ash.

And so is he.

(but you couldn't possibly see, you're not-)

"People are beautiful, terrible things," she tells him. Her voice is like wind-chimes on the rooftop.

It's lunchtime and the others have yet to arrive. He wonders how to respond, but she's looking at him as though she can read all the thoughts in his head. Inexplicably, he thinks of the way her mouth spells out his name.

"Each person is capable of the worst and best of humanity," she continues. "We have both bad and good in us, Ishida-kun." Her hand drifts to rest over her heart. "That's why we must learn to accept others."

He is thinking of a silver moon and white sand, and scowls before he can stop himself. She's watching him expectantly. "Some people aren't worthy of acceptance," he mutters, ducking his head. "…Not if they hurt you."

(Not if they take you away and drain the color from your cheeks, twist your mind, cut out your heart, fill you with despair)

She looks thoughtful, calm even. He has the dangerous, irrational urge to seize her shoulders and shake her—see her crumble with confessions in the confines of his arms.

She blinks. "It happens, sometimes. When you want to protect something important. I've hurt people and people have hurt me." He bites back an indignant hiss. She doesn't seem to notice. "Sometimes acceptance is the only thing that lets them know that they're enough, that they're fine. So no matter, even if you're scared, even if you worry…" Her voice dips in volume. "…they should know."

In a flash of clarity, he sees a horned mask and black blade veiled in her irises. Suddenly his head feels light, like nothing makes sense at all.

"But what if they don't?" he manages to ask.

He sees her take the weight of his question on her tongue, tasting it and turning her answer round and round. Then she smiles a pretty smile, something foreign and unfamiliar that makes his heart thud deafeningly in his ears. It's a strained little grin, reminiscent of wilting grass and drooping daisies, but her answer is raindrops—a sun-shower that lingers on his skin long after he leaves.

"Then we try harder, Ishida-kun."

But she's gazing off into the distance with someone else's face in mind (but it had always been someone else's, hadn't it?), and something inside him wants to shatter.

She tries harder.

She tries harder and he pretends not to see, not to hear, not to feel.

But why would he feel, it was only Inoue-san, but when is she ever only one thing, when did she suddenly melt into everything, everywhere, all the time in subtle reminders that only he seems to see, only him, so why can't she see him too-