Her eyes snapped open.
She looked around hastily, in confusion. The details of her bedroom fell into place around her. Her life, of reality, came flooding back.
Placing her hand on her forehead, she felt the beads of sweat on her brow.
That's right; just a dream.
She sat up, pushing aside the blankets, and looked at the wall clock. For once, she hadn't awoken late, but instead far too early.
A thought occurred to her.
After glancing around, she unbuttoned the top two buttons of her pajama shirt, looking down.
She searched carefully.
Nothing there.
Well, that doesn't prove anything—no, wait—
She shifted positions slightly.
Yes, there it was, mostly obscured. A long-faded scar, barely noticeable. In fact she never had noticed it, not until she knew where to look.
She shivered, chilled.
So not just a dream.
She found the idea of going back to sleep there suddenly intolerable.
She looked over, at the curtain blocking the light, and stood up.
Soon, she was standing next to a different bed.
For a quiet moment, she watched Kana sleeping peacefully. In the background, the clock ticked.
Perhaps peaceful wasn't the right term, given the disarray into which Kana had pummeled her bedsheets, but she was definitely enjoying her sleep.
Kana shifted when she felt someone suddenly start clinging to her back, arm around her chest.
"…what are you doing?" she mumbled sleepily. "That's not—"
Her eyes snapped open, her consciousness finally breaking the surface.
"Chiaki?" she asked, turning her head to look behind her. "Is something wrong?"
Chiaki did not acknowledge her, but Kana could feel through her arms that she was shuddering.
After a long moment, Chiaki relaxed, the sounds of her breaths stabilizing.
Kana thought about it.
Let her sleep.
Kana turned back, and tried to sleep.
"What bothers me is that I'm not sure if Chiaki knows or not," Makoto said, standing among the rows of desks.
It was the last day of the school year, and the students were understandably restless and inattentive. Their teacher this period had outright given up, giving them a period of study hall while she sat at her desk reading a magazine. For this day, standards could be relaxed.
"Of course she doesn't know," Touma said, seated on her desk, continuing the conversation in low tones. "You did a pretty good job of hiding it. You even surprised Yoshino."
Makoto shook his head, standing over her, watching as she frowned and tugged at her pant leg, straightening it.
"I guess you weren't there," he said, struggling to explain, trying to keep his voice down. "Several times, I've been absolutely certain she knows who Mako-chan is, and I was ready to tell her to stop messing with me. But always, immediately afterward, she does something that makes it impossible for me to think she knows. It's terribly confusing."
He shook his head at himself, realizing he had failed to be very coherent.
"Well, you see?" Touma responded. "She doesn't know. There's no need to be paranoid."
"But you don't understand!" Makoto exclaimed, briefly a bit too loud. "It doesn't make any sense! And if she does know, than it makes no sense for me to keep hiding it!"
Touma looked at him with a quizzical expression.
"Could you give an example?" Touma asked, after a moment. "How is it confusing?"
"It's just…sometimes she talks to me as Mako-chan, or talks about her, in such a way that she must be talking about me. Kana and I even talk about it in front of her sometimes, and she doesn't seem confused by what we're saying. Yet the next thing I know, she's telling Uchida about what a nice girl Mako-chan is, and what an idiot Makoto is, and she behaves towards…us…in totally different ways! It's…hard to explain."
"Uh-huh," Touma said, crossing her arms skeptically. "I still think you're being paranoid. But either way, I think you agree that the safest route for now is to say nothing."
Makoto turned his head to look behind him at Chiaki—or rather Chiaki's seat, since she seemed to have gone to the bathroom.
"Yes," he agreed, looking down. "But I can't hide it forever. Nor do I want to."
"Only for now, okay? We don't want to risk destabilizing her further—"
"What are you two talking about?" Chiaki asked, appearing at Makoto's side.
Touma's desk creaked as she suppressed a surprised jump.
"Makoto's mother," she said, improvising herself straight into a trap. "She…disapproves…of things."
Makoto looked at her with an expression that clearly conveyed his thoughts, namely: Damn it, Touma! What kind of explanation was that?
It was no longer safe for Chiaki to talk to his mother, as Touma well knew, since he had gone out of his way to mention it to her.
"Of what?" Chiaki asked.
"She has—I mean, Makoto has been forced to admit to her what's been going on. So now she thinks that you're…his girlfriend," Touma said, recovering. For Mako-chan cover story reasons, Makoto had never admitted being grounded to anyone but Touma, much less told anyone else what he had told his mother. She was using a different truth to direct her away from the important truth.
Chiaki's eyes widened slightly.
Makoto's expression now said: Stop talking, Touma!
"Is this true?" Chiaki asked, turned slightly to face Makoto.
"Yes," he said, marshalling all his previous experience in bald-faced lying "she was starting to ask uncomfortable questions, so I had to say something. And it was way too complicated to explain everything, but you know how it is, once you say you're trying to get this girl, your parents just go ahead and assume whatever they want."
He chuckled nervously, feeling the pressure of her gaze.
"She's starting to wonder why she's never seen you," Makoto said, picking up the previous thread and doing his best to run with it. "She thinks I must be trying to hide something about you. So we're trying to think of ways to stop her questions."
Makoto spotted Touma with her face in the palm of her hand, a gesture of incredulous despair. He didn't understand—
"I don't see why we couldn't just visit," Chiaki said, tilting her head. "Specifically, me. That'd be the quickest way to resolve things, right? We wouldn't have to tell her anything else. I don't mind if she thinks the wrong thing."
Oh, that's why, Makoto thought, realizing that in his and Touma's intricate dance of deception, she had missed a step, but he had just slipped and fell.
"Are you sure you want to do that?" Touma asked, attempting to salvage the situation. "It would be tremendously awkward."
She actually suggested it! Touma thought. And here I was thinking she hated awkward social situations…
Chiaki grimaced.
"And meeting your brothers wasn't? I'll live. If it saves him some trouble, it's worth it."
Touma and Makoto shared a look. They knew that deep under her outer shell, Chiaki did care enough to help, but she was rarely so transparent about it.
They also hoped the other would have some good reason to dissuade the trip. Neither did.
"I guess we could…"Makoto said, trying a delaying strategy. "I mean, we can eventually…"
"Tomorrow, maybe," Chiaki said. "It's the weekend, and there's no reason to wait."
Makoto cringed internally.
"Should I go?" Touma asked, switching the focus to practical matters. She was surrendering.
"Of course," Chiaki said. "I'd prefer to have you there, even if it would be kind of strange."
Chiaki waited to see if they would say anything. The other two stayed silent, trying to think up ways to prevent Makoto's mother from telling her anything.
After a suitable pause, Chiaki was satisfied that it was time to change topics.
"I would have suggested today, actually," she said. "But I have a different idea for that. Today's the last day of school! Are we just going to go home? We should celebrate. Get Yoshino and Uchida, go shopping, eat some ice cream. Something like that."
That triggered a warning sensor in Touma's head. She rarely suggested going on trips, preferring to simply agree with whatever ideas other people had. In the unlikely event she desperately wanted to go somewhere, she would start blatantly hinting at it until someone was kind enough to say the necessary words. That's how it had always worked in the past, anyway.
Touma realized that her eyes were just a little swollen. Maybe she hadn't slept well?
"Sure, that sounds like a good idea!" Makoto agreed.
"Yeah, we should," Touma said, dismissing her apprehensions for now.
Chiaki looked strangely relieved.
There was a lull in the conversation.
"So, uh," Chiaki began, shifting nervously, not walking back as would ordinarily be expected. "How's the soccer going for you, Touma?"
She's trying to drive a conversation, Makoto realized. How strange. She usually takes these study periods pretty seriously. Why is she here talking with us? And she never makes small talk.
It wasn't her style. Her personality seemed off, lacking her usual pugnaciousness and reserve. It could only be described as suddenly more…normal.
"Well, the season's over," Touma said, responding despite her surprise. "We're not going to do much until after the summer. We're just expected to stay in shape. Personally, I spend a lot of time playing with the boys in my neighborhood. They're not that good, though."
"What about you, Makoto?" Chiaki asked, turning. "You get that cavity fixed?"
They spent the rest of the period chatting.
"Hey Makoto! We finally found you!" a voice behind him said.
He shook himself out of his trance. He had been with rest of his class at the end-of-the-year ceremony, but had left immediately at the end to grab his forgotten jacket back from their classroom. Chiaki and the others had said they would be waiting here, but there had been no sign of them.
He had been zoning out, leaning on the gym wall, thinking about…
"What is it?" he asked, turning to face his male friends, that group he had become oddly detached from over the past two weeks.
"To celebrate becoming second-years, we're going to go watch a movie, and we're going to the arcade afterward."
He gestured at the other three behind him.
"We talked some girls into going with us, but they want to watch that new Alice movie," he said, making an expression of distaste and then shrugging. "But hey, it's worth it right? You should know. You can even bring that girl you're seeing with us."
Like everyone else, they had gone ahead and made the most reasonable assumption, especially after he had refused to reveal any juicy details to them earlier.
Makoto grimaced.
"I'm sorry guys," he said, rubbing the back of his head. "I know I haven't been around much, but…we have other plans. I'll make it up to you someday."
"Of course," his friend said somberly, rubbing his hands and nodding somberly, making exactly the assumption Makoto had intended him to make. "Have fun."
They looked like they had expected this answer.
They turned and walked away.
"Just who is it anyway?" one of them asked, not bothering to wait until they were out of earshot. "That's what I want to know."
"They do a good job of hiding it, but I hear it's hime," another said, catching onto and cooperating with the plan. "Last thing I'd ever expect, but there it is. Though she's a bit flat."
"That's all you ever think about, you pervert," the first one responded, pointing accusingly with his finger. "And I don't believe it. My money is on the soccer girl. The one he's friends with and stuff? It makes sense. It seems like he'd like girls like that And remember White Day?"
I hope this conversation is over, Makoto thought during the brief pause afterward, looking off into the distance and leaning again onto the gym wall. He was trying to look as bored as possible, and doing his best to ignore their intentional tweaking of him.
"Besides," the first one amended, "with that kind of thing, it's not about what they're like now, but how they develop in the future."
"Think about it though," the other argued, brushing away the side topic while making a literal brushing motion with his hand. "Have you ever talked to hime? She's got just as much of that spunk."
"You guys are both wrong," a third one interjected, sticking his head in. "It's that rich girl! The other day, I heard her—"
"You're just saying that because you've got a crush," said the first one. "We all know it. You're just sad she turned you down. You still have a chance, you know."
"Shut up!" the third one retorted ineffectually. "If I had a crush, then why..."
Finally, they turned the corner of one of the buildings and their deliberately loud conversation could no longer be heard. The few other students in the area, fortunately, seemed unfamiliar with both who he was and what they had been talking about.
Makoto switched postures, placing his forehead firmly in his hand, not sure whether to laugh hysterically or chase after them and berate them for being perverted towards his friends. Also, that Chiaki hated that nickname.
After a moment, he relaxed, sighing.
I really am being unfair to them. It's not like they ever hide anything from me.
But it was of course impossible to tell them anything.
And…
His face twisted into a crooked smile.
I probably won't be seeing them that much in the future. I never really liked the arcade anyway.
"Sorry we're late!" Uchida chimed, appearing around the same corner his friends had departed by. The others were right next to her. "You guys' teacher kept trying to talk to us for some reason, but we dodged him. And then—"
"It's no problem," he interrupted, walking up and smiling. "Let's go."
"There's this store having a new school year sale," Chiaki said, again more active than usual, "so I think we should go there."
"Right," Touma said. "And then the arcade."
"Yes, yes, we get it already," Uchida said, waving an annoyed hand. "You want to go. We'll go."
Makoto just nodded agreeably, well cognizant of the irony involved in doing so.
It was Touma's opinion that she had no need for more clothes, not after her last trip shopping. She now had two complete sets of clothing waiting to be worn, and her wallet, while not empty, was lighter than she wished. She had a purse too, now, but she figured she might as well stay consistent with the rest of her clothing.
Thus, she excused herself at the door of the clothing store, saying she would be in the video game store two stores down. She watched Makoto struggle briefly to decide, before finally deciding to maintain appearances and follow her.
"Why don't you just go with them?" she asked. "You could pretend like they dragged you there."
"Yeah," he said, frowning. "But I wouldn't be able to resist making comments, and that might look weird."
"It's never worried you before," Touma commented, as they walked through the sliding doors of the game store. She kept walking, not needing to look to get her bearings around the surprisingly large store—it dealt in old games too, after all.
"Yeah, but I've never gone shopping with her before," he pointed out.
She thought about that. It was true.
"I guess keeping secrets is hard," she said, glancing at him.
He laughed once, drily.
Touma scanned the aisles while he thought about what to say.
"You were right," he said. "It's not really worth it. You have no idea how paranoid I've gotten."
She stopped in front of a display. He stopped a moment later
"What are we here for, anyway?" he asked.
"Nothing in particular," she said, picking up a copy of a game on sale. "There's nothing coming out that I want, and I don't have anything in mind. Just killing time."
She flipped it over and read the back. Makoto leaned over to read the title.
"You're interested?" he asked, noting her thoughtful expression.
"Well, we do have all the previous games, but from what I've heard, this one is boring and linear."
She thought about the hole in her finances.
The game went back onto the display shelf, only to be immediately grabbed by the hand of someone next to her.
She looked up at one of the few people she knew who was significantly taller than her.
"Natsuki?" she said. "This is a surprise. And here I thought you weren't ever going to leave your room again after finally getting into that beta. You could at least let me have a crack at it!"
"Very funny," he said impassively, placing the game in the basket he was carrying. "You'll get your chance. You weren't playing when the first game came out. You wouldn't understand. And for your information, Hosaka here—"he pointed at the silent man standing behind him—"let me take the day off, since my graduation ceremony is approaching and my class has to prepare and such."
"At the game store? And what, you've taken three days off now this week?"
"We finished early!" Natsuki said.
"Family emergencies take precedence," Hosaka said in his customary deep voice, walking forward next to Natsuki. "And I insisted he attend. He made up for it all by working for free yesterday."
"I see," Touma said, taciturn, trying to place his face. Where had she seen him before?
"I take it you're the sister he keeps talking about," he said, tilting his head slightly. "Love really is an interesting thing."
She boggled at the comment.
"Yes," she responded finally, unsure what else to say. She glanced at Natsuki, who was also looking at Hosaka. She couldn't quite read the look on his face.
"What are you—" she began again, looking back, but Hosaka had already turned away to inspect one of the shelves, apparently not focused on the conversation.
She didn't push it.
I remember him now! She realized suddenly, experiencing a breakthrough. That weirdo chef guy who went all catatonic on us. Natsuki's "best friend". And what the hell was he talking about? Did Natsuki say something?
She still couldn't shake the feeling that he was familiar somehow, for some other reason.
For his part, Makoto was also squinting at his face, as if trying to remember something.
"Since you're here." Natsuki said, clearing his throat. "My graduation is this Sunday. You're attending?"
"Of course?" Touma responded questioningly, wondering why Natsuki was bringing this up.
"So I was thinking," Natsuki continued, looking off into a corner, "that it would be nice if you maybe brought some of your friends, or even their sisters…"
Touma, briefly puzzled by his change of formal register, finally picked up what he was hinting at.
"Damn it, Natsuki," she said, making sure he could see her suppress a snicker. "I'll invite her, okay? Don't worry."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Natsuki responded seemingly blandly, but refusing to make eye contact.
"Got to have more guts than that," Hosaka commented absently, reading a flier he had found somewhere.
"Like you're one to talk," Natsuki shot back, forgetting to feign ignorance.
Sadly, they had no idea they were indirectly referring to the same person.
Touma turned to leave.
"So she's not with you?" Natsuki asked, the somewhat abrasive tone of his voice making it clear that he meant someone different now.
"No, she isn't," Touma said, turning back. "She's two stores down. What's it to you?"
Natsuki held up his hands to indicate his harmlessness.
"I was just—"
"Actually, I'm right here," Chiaki's voice corrected from behind Touma.
She turned to see Chiaki turn into their aisle.
"I'm interested in video games too," she said. "So I thought I should…join you."
Walking up, she lodged herself in front of Touma, partially shielding her from Natsuki. Chiaki and Natsuki glared at each other for a long moment.
"Don't be rude, Natsuki," Hosaka said, turning to grab him and once again looking again in their general direction. "Say some—"
He froze midsentence.
Chiaki glanced up—and also froze.
They raised fingers at each other.
"Y—You're—" Hosaka began.
"Curry fairy!" Chiaki said, only slightly later.
The others glanced back and forth between the two of them.
"Is something—" Touma started to ask.
"Remember that guy we met in the forest?" Chiaki said, not shifting her position one iota, not even moving her head. "The one who led us back, and was taking his shirt off for no reason?"
"That was—" Touma began, eyes wide, turning to look again.
"You mean the guy who—" Makoto began.
He choked off his own words.
Damn it! Mako-chan went on that trip, not Makoto!
Chiaki didn't catch the anomaly.
Natsuki looked sidelong at Hosaka.
"What are they talking about, Hosaka? That shirt thing definitely sounds like you, but…"
Minami Haruka's sister and Natsuki's sister! Hosaka thought. I could connect the dots. It's just like Hayami says! I've got to get the knights before I can get the queen. And then—
His mind began to spin the fantasy.
The Minami household, sometime in the future.
"This is my brother's friend," Natsuki's sister was saying. "He's the really nice guy I've been telling you about."
"Really?" Haruka asked, looking at him and smiling. "How interesting!"
"Actually, I'm here to…" he began.
He pulled out a giant bouquet of roses from behind his back. She took it with delight.
"See, what did I tell you?" Natsuki's sister said.
Natsuki slapped him, hard, forcing him awake.
"Damn it, Hosaka. Not now!"
He glanced down. His top shirt button was already undone.
"Come on, Touma," Chiaki said, stepping backwards. "Let's get out of here."
Touma nodded as they began to back away, at first slowly, but then at a near-run.
It figures that Natsuki would have a friend like this, Touma thought.
"Wait!" Hosaka said, arm outstretched. "I need to talk to you!"
But they were already gone.
"What the hell, Hosaka?" Natsuki asked, angry, turning towards him. "And what do you want with them?"
"No, nevermind," Hosaka said. "I wasn't thinking straight."
It's not good enough, he thought. The plan has to be perfect! This one is too risky, and seems too…backhanded…
"Damn it, Hosaka," Natsuki said, rubbing his forehead in frustration at his partially-crazy friend. "You've got to stop doing that."
Hosaka felt like he had missed some sort of important clue.
By the time they reunited with Yoshino and Uchida, they had shaken off the effects of their strange encounter.
Walking down the sidewalk, Makoto thought about how he well he was starting to blend with this particular group of friends, and did his best not to react to the clothing items and accessories on display in various store windows.
As they approached the arcade, he suddenly realized that Touma was missing.
He turned sharply and prepared to yell her name, overreacting, but found her immediately.
Touma had stopped suddenly to look into the window of one of the shops, pressing her face into window glass to get a better look.
They backtracked to see what she was looking at.
"I didn't know you were interested in trinkets like that," Uchida commented, referring to the set of necklaces she was apparently looking at. She had also pressed her face into the glass. Whoever cleaned the windows would not be happy with them.
"I was just thinking it was a cool design," Touma said, standing back up, suddenly in a hurry.
"Come on, let's go," she urged.
The moment they walked into the dimly-lit arcade, Touma began pushing them in the direction of one of the machines.
"You see this game?" she said, patting the ancient-looking machine on the side. "It's old, and I haven't played this game in years, but Natsuki wasted his childhood playing this thing, especially after they ported it to one of the consoles. He showed me too. Newer isn't necessarily better."
"A fighting game, huh?" Chiaki said, leaning forward and peering at it intently. "Looks familiar."
"You've played it?" Touma asked, mildly surprised.
"Why wouldn't I have?" Chiaki responded, standing back up, insulted. "You know I like fighting games, and Kana used to be really into having every game possible."
"A match then?" Touma said, looking at her with one eye, smiling expectantly.
"Of course," Chiaki said, equally expectant-looking. "Loser coughs up the money for the game."
The other three knew this wasn't their conversation, and watched politely as the pixilated characters grunted and yelled their way around the screen. It wasn't long before Chiaki won round three by the narrowest of margins.
"I have no idea how Chiaki is this good," Yoshino whispered to Uchida and Makoto after Chiaki had exclaimed in celebration.
"Rematch!" Touma demanded manically, holding up a 50-yen piece.
"You sure you have the money for this?" Chiaki taunted, flipping her hair with her off-hand.
They watched another round, this time witnessing Chiaki lose round three to an extended combo.
"I'm not going to let this go!" Chiaki said, holding up her own 50-yen piece. Her expression was also feverishly manic, now.
Perhaps I should start playing these games more… Makoto mused.
By the third rematch, the rest of them started to feel vaguely restless.
"Do you mind if we go somewhere else?" Yoshino asked, midway through the second round.
"No," Touma said, barely managing to process what had been said.
"Not at all," Chiaki said, automatically agreeing with Touma without having even heard what had been asked.
It didn't take them long to find something to do, not after Uchida bolted straight for the first claw crane machine they saw.
She pressed her face into the glass, staring at the prizes on the other side, before backing off a step and reading the front of the machine. She then gasped.
"So that's what that's for!" she exclaimed.
"What is what for?" Makoto asked, walking up and observing the stuffed animals inside the machine.
"The metal balls! Apparently if you manage to grab one, you can ask at the counter for a giant version of anything you want!"
"It looks pretty impossible," Makoto commented, reading the sign and wearing an appropriately skeptical expression. "It's probably not worth trying."
"I'm going for it," Uchida said, pulling out her coin purse and completely ignoring him. She wore a stubborn expression.
"What do you want?" Yoshino asked, already knowing the answer. "Another horse?"
"Yup!" Uchida exclaimed, dropping a coin into the slot.
"You already have at least three of those. I'm just saying," Yoshino pointed out.
"You can never have too many," Uchida argued absent-mindedly, frowning in concentration, joystick in hand.
She exhaled in frustration as the claw slipped off of one of the metal spheres.
"See what you made me do!" she complained.
They watched as she failed, over and over, getting more and more frustrated, the repeated thud of falling iron becoming almost monotonous.
Just as Makoto was getting seriously worried that Uchida might explode, Yoshino stepped forward and grabbed Uchida's hand, rather forcefully.
"Let me try it, okay?" she said, smiling sweetly, voice as soothing as she could make it.
Uchida looked at her, took a deep breath, and closing her eyes, stepped back.
Yoshino deftly maneuvered the joystick, pushed the button, and picked up the metal ball, dropping it down the chute in one try.
Makoto just stared, stunned, as she reached into the slot and pulled out the heavy looking piece of iron.
"That—that's amazing," he managed to stammer, partly to pick his jaw back up from the floor.
"Nah, I got lucky," Yoshino, handing the sphere to an awe-struck Uchida. "And she sort of set it up by shifting the stuff around it."
"That was amazing!" Uchida exclaimed gleefully, wrapping her arms around Yoshino's chest in a firm embrace. "You're amazing! Have I ever told you that?"
"Yes," Yoshino said, voice strained. "Now let me go so we can collect your horse. You're suffocating me."
Uchida's displayed an irrepressible thousand-watt grin as they walked away from the counter, carrying the bulky stuffed animal in her arms.
"Aren't you at all bothered by the fact that that thing cost you 1500 yen?" Makoto asked, after he realized just how long they had been there.
"Nope!" she responded, shaking her head, pigtails swinging.
He thought for a moment, hesitating.
"Just where do you get all of this money to burn?" he asked, finally.
"What a rude question!" Uchida instantly protested, turning away, looking faux-peeved.
She went right back to grinning and chuckling to herself. He wondered…
"We should go see if they're done yet," Yoshino said. "It's getting kind of late."
Turning in the proper direction with an instinctive sense of direction, Yoshino took only one step forward before stopping.
"Is something wrong?" Makoto asked, stopping just short of running into her back.
"Those guys over there," Yoshino said, pointing. "The ones trying to wave at you. Your friends, right? You should probably say something to them."
Makoto looked where she was pointing and yes, there they were.
Goddamn it. Same arcade?
He waved back, sheepishly.
"Let's just keep walking," he told Yoshino. "Trust me, it's what they expect."
"Why?" she asked, looking at him, then at his friends, genuinely puzzled.
"Just keep walking," he insisted, leading the way, managing just in time to stop himself from grabbing her arm and pulling her along.
Chiaki and Touma weren't done, of course. The three of them stood behind them, waiting politely until they finished yet another game.
"So what's the score?" Yoshino asked, sidling up to Touma after she won the game.
"We're tied now," Touma said. "Just let us have one more game to decide this!"
"It's almost dinnertime," Makoto said, showing up on the other side of the machine, next to an equally adamant-looking Chiaki. "Maybe you guys should calm down."
"How can I possibly calm down?" Chiaki yelled.
Even Touma looked startled by that.
After a long awkward moment, Chiaki released the joystick, relaxing, hair settling down her back.
"I—I guess we are getting a little carried away," she said, embarrassed. "Let's go."
Touma looked down, suddenly looking ashamed.
"Yeah, let's go," she said.
They turned away from the machine.
"Look what Yoshino won me!" Uchida said, partly to defuse the atmosphere, and partly because she really wanted to show them the newest item in her collection.
"Another one?" Touma asked automatically, her expression completely neutral.
Nonetheless, Uchida caught the conveyed disapproval, and made an aggrieved expression. Yoshino shrugged good-naturedly.
"Nothing wrong with more of these," Yoshino said, smiling.
As they strode out into the gathering twilight, Touma edged in Makoto's direction, finally looking at him with one eye to catch his attention. He dropped his pace, allowing them to lag behind the other three, just enough for privacy.
"I've never seen her get that into it," Touma said, just barely loud enough for him to hear. "I don't think it's normal. I should have stopped."
She let a bit of sadness show in her eyes.
They caught back up.
They had long ago phoned home on Yoshino's cell phone to excuse themselves from dinner. Eschewing formality, they opted to visit a cheap ramen shop before buying ice cream from a convenience store. It really wasn't that hot, but who cared?
Finally, on Uchida's insistence, they walked to the local park to grab takoyaki from one of the street vendors, instead of from one of the shops. It turned out that the vendor was a friend of Uchida's parents who regularly gave her extra food. To her credit, she at least acted out the proper ritualistic refusal and apologetic acceptance.
Once they were out of visual range, however, her true feelings shone through as she tore through her set of food with a vengeance.
"At least pretend to show some compunction," Touma criticized, stabbing at one of her own octopus balls with her toothpick.
They had crowded themselves onto one of the benches. All in all, it was pretty picturesque, Touma thought. Sitting under one of the still-blooming sakura trees, on a bench on the cobblestone path, only a few other people still around…
"You mean show some restraint!" Yoshino added, turning towards Uchida. "You sure it's safe? Didn't you tell me you gained five pounds recently?"
She grabbed the skin of Uchida's arm, as if testing for fat.
Uchida pulled her arm away, holding on tightly to her tray of takoyaki.
"Stop trying to put me on a diet! And don't just tell everyone! I'm still growing and stuff…"
She speared an octopus ball and stuck it in her mouth, in a gesture of defiance.
Yoshino and Uchida were the first to leave, excusing themselves and leaving as a unit.
They waved goodbye to them, watching them walk off into the night. They really had stayed out too long.
"Sometimes I wonder about them," Touma commented when they disappeared from view, saying as much as she dared.
"They're really close," Chiaki commented. "I mean, really close."
"Yes," Makoto said, simply, keeping his thoughts to himself.
They left it at that.
After a couple of minutes sitting under the streetlight, Touma got up and stretched.
"It's probably time we all went home too," she said.
"Yeah, I guess," Makoto agreed, getting up.
"It must be chilly in that skirt," he said to Chiaki, speaking from personal experience. "I sort of want to use this jacket on myself, but…"
He stopped, his hand still out in the act of offering his jacket. Her body language disturbed him. She seemed…so tired all of a sudden, as if she had suddenly collapsed.
She pushed his hand aside.
"It's okay," she said, getting up shakily.
"I should go home," she said, shoulders slumped.
She walked away, slowly, as they watched.
The realization crept up to him.
I can't let her go home. I have to say something.
Next to him, Touma sucked in a breath, loudly.
"Or actually, it's a beautiful night," she said, her voice strained and rushed. "We could stick around, lie on the grass and watch the stars or something like that. Don't you agree, Makoto?"
"Yes!" he concurred immediately. "The park doesn't close or anything, and this is a pretty safe neighborhood, so we can stay as long as we want."
Chiaki stopped. They held their breaths.
After a long moment, she turned her head and looked back. For just a moment, her eyes looked so fragile—
"That'd be nice," she said, voice airy.
As intended, they found an empty patch of grass, perched on the slightest of inclines.
To be honest, there wasn't much to see in the sky. The light of the city obscured everything. But some stars shone through nonetheless.
They lay and stared, minds elsewhere.
"Do you know how to find the pole star?" Chiaki asked quietly.
They looked at her, one turning left, the other right.
"Not really," Makoto conceded.
"You find this bear constellation, right?" Touma said. "Except I have no idea what that looks like…"
Chiaki smiled slightly and pointed upward.
"It's that one. I could find it in my sleep."
They looked, staying silent.
"Polaris," Chiaki began, inhaling slightly and assuming a didactic tone, "is assumed by most people to be a single star, but it is not. If we had a telescope with us, we could easily see two stars, Polaris A and B, orbiting each other. This was noticed very early."
They nodded, still looking up, wondering why she was suddenly lecturing them about astronomy.
"But Polaris is not a binary star system," she said. "It was eventually suspected, based on careful study, that one of the stars has a small companion star. This was eventually confirmed, and the third star was named Polaris Ab. Polaris is a ternary star system."
She dropped her arm, and was silent.
Makoto turned to look at her face, trying to peer through the darkness—and saw a single tear trickling its way out of her eye.
He immediately sat up.
"Chiaki! What's wrong?"
After a moment of silence, she, too, sat up, slowly.
They watched her uncertainly as she brought her legs up and hugged her knees, staring forward into the middle distance. She started breathing heavily.
"I'm fine. There's nothing wrong."
"It's not nothing!" Makoto said instantly, having anticipated this response. "Don't say that! This isn't nothing!"
"Say something for once, Chiaki!" Touma said. "It's obvious you're unhappy! Why won't you say anything?"
"It's nothing!" she insisted, shaking her head, clenching her teeth, gripping her legs more tightly. "There's. Nothing. Wrong."
She clasped her hands to her head, as if she had a massive headache. Did they dare push this farther?
Makoto swallowed.
"Bullshit," Touma said.
"Do you know how much it hurts us to see you like this?" Makoto said, simultaneously. "Please! Let us do something! Anything!"
"It's nothing!" she insisted, voice tearing. "It's nothing! There's never been anything wrong! Not a thing! That was the worst part!"
They stared, briefly stymied, as the tears started to flow.
"It's always been me," she said. "I tried to be strong, like you two, but I couldn't do it. Even though it was so, so stupid! Do you want to know what it was? What it is?"
She looked around her rapidly, as if demanding an answer. They could only nod lamely.
"I don't know why," she said, tearing at the grass with her hand. "I don't know why! I can't stand being left alone. I can't stand it! Every time you ignore me, every time you leave, it hurts. I'm always afraid. I've always been afraid."
She hid her face in between her legs.
"Look at that," she said bitterly. "I can't even explain it properly."
She sobbed quietly.
"Afraid of what, Chiaki?" Touma asked, gently.
Chiaki breathed deeply, several times, stabilizing herself.
"I've always been afraid," she said, shakily, "that one day I'll wake up and they'll be no one there. Not Kana, not Haruka, not you two, not anyone."
The briefest of pauses.
"It's stupid, I know," she said. "That gets me too. It makes no sense! I've tried everything I can think of to ignore it, pretend I don't feel it, but it still burns. Every hint of dislike, every sign of being ignored, and it comes back."
She finally lifted her face up again, tears barely dry. She clenched her fist to her chest.
"It hurts. I hide it, but it hurts so goddamn much. It's like the whole world is abandoning me. I'm so goddamn lonely."
They looked at her, speechless.
"You probably think I'm crazy," she said.
She didn't let them say anything.
"I used to have an answer," she said, miserable. "Do you know that? When I was a kid, I invented a friend, an imaginary friend, who was always there. And it felt pretty good."
She looked down.
"I know what you're thinking," she said. "All sorts of kids have imaginary friends. It's perfectly normal. But it wasn't. I became obsessed. I stopped talking to anyone else. We—or rather, I, would just go off, out among the farms and trees, for hours and hours. It was…so real…"
Her voice trailed off, as she remembered.
"But of course, that couldn't last. It didn't matter how good a friend she was, how much we talked about stars or how much we rode our bikes together, I always knew in my heart she wasn't real. And there's so much you can obsess about something like that before others start to notice."
She looked into the middle distance.
"Kana, of course, was the first to see it. The first to notice me talking to walls, the first one to suspect all those games I played by myself really weren't by myself. I tried hiding it, I tried only talking when no one was around, but it was useless. It ended, not surprisingly."
She smiled a disturbing, crooked smiling.
"I'd show you the scar, but it's in a rather inappropriate place. One night, my 'friend' suggested we climb one of the trees in the area so we could see the stars from a different angle. No big deal, we climbed trees all the time, except this time Kana followed us. She yelled at me to come down. She thought I was seriously sick, you see. Not a bad assumption at all. I yelled back that I was never coming down. She started trying to climb up after me."
They listened, eyes wide, ensnared by the insane story she was telling.
"Kana is actually pretty smart," Chiaki said. "It took me a long time a realize that. But that once, she really was the baka-yaro I always call her. What was she going to do? Wrestle with me up there? I tried to move, and of course I slipped, and of course I fell, straight into my bicycle. You can almost see it coming."
The night air chilled her.
She looked up at the trees around them, letting the memory replay itself in her mind, the same way it had in her dream that morning.
She propped herself up on her arms—or tried to, but her left arm gave way, immensely painfully. She gasped—and her chest erupted in unbearable pain.
Somehow she stayed conscious enough to look down, and see where the sharp edge of the gear assembly of her bicycle had tore into her chest, and to also see the blood staining the ground underneath.
Kana's voice above her, as the world faded.
"Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shi—"
"It wasn't that bad," she narrated, contradicting her own remembrance. "I was hospitalized, of course, but it was just a broken arm and a superficial gash to my chest. Probably also a concussion."
She stopped, having briefly lost the will to keep talking.
"Is that what your dreams were about?" Touma asked, finally thinking of something to say. "Why the hell didn't you tell us? Why do you—"
"And have you think I'm insane?" Chiaki demanded. "And no, it's not even that! I didn't know. I couldn't recall."
"What?" Touma asked after a moment, confused.
"The first thing I did after I woke back up in the hospital was to pretend I didn't remember a thing of what happened, or why," Chiaki said. "I pretended I had no idea what Kana was talking about. I'm pretty good at hiding things. Eventually they believed me. Eventually…I believed myself."
"I had bad dreams for months, all the way until after we moved, but eventually I convinced myself everything I remembered was just a bad dream. I was just barely young enough to pull that off. It helped when Kana and Haruka started pretending nothing had ever happened."
"One of the reasons we had for moving here was to leave everything behind," she concluded. "That's what I did. I erased an entire year of my life and replaced it with the few happy memories I had left. I left everything behind, just as my sisters intended. Except the reason for it all."
"But if you forgot—" Makoto began.
"Then why remember now, right?" Chiaki asked, smiling a sickly smile. "Let me finish first."
"There was another game I played, up until recently. And by then I was far too old to have any excuses. I pretended I had a different kind of family. I imagined that Haruka was the mother, Fujioka was the father, and Kana was one of my sisters. But still, that didn't satisfy me. I needed someone else. You were perfect, Touma."
"Me?" Touma asked automatically.
"Yes," Chiaki said. "I made you my little brother, remember? And I made Mako-chan another one of my sisters."
Makoto stiffened at the mention of his alter-ego.
"I didn't realize it at the time," she continued, still talking to Touma, "but you had one essential quality which made me latch onto you. You resemble the imaginary friend I had. I've always wondered why I liked you so much the moment I saw you. Now I know."
Touma stiffened.
"To think it was a reason like that…" she said.
Chiaki sighed.
"I—"
She stopped and her expression settled in one of profound guilt.
"I've been incredibly selfish," she said. "I gave no thought to anything but trying to make myself happy."
"I wanted your attention. I cultivated it. I led you both on. I let you chase me, I tempted you, and I pretended not to notice Makoto trying to sneak into the house. And I lied to myself the whole time, telling myself it was because I hated idiots, or I was trying something or whatever excuse I could come up with to hide what I was doing. And it still wasn't enough."
"When you two finally confessed, as I knew was inevitable, it tore me apart," she said. "I couldn't choose. I just couldn't. If both of you hadn't been enough before, how could one be enough now? So I dithered."
They waited for her to continue, but she stayed silent.
She surprised them by standing up, walking to the edge of the minor ridge and looking at the pond beneath.
"I love you two," she said. "I knew that the moment you confessed. But I didn't dare disturb the balance, because of my own problems. Because I'm not sure if I'm insane, and I didn't want to fall apart. Everything I did was for me. Not for you. Me. I tore your lives apart. I deserve what I get."
Makoto and Touma, by now standing behind her, shared a distressed look.
"You're not insane—" Touma said.
"The funny part is," Chiaki said. "I think it was starting to work. During that one week where nothing happened, I was starting to feel better. I was starting to feel secure. For the first time I could remember, the loneliness was receding. I think that's why the dreams came back. Why I remembered again."
She grabbed a strand of her hand and twisted them in between her fingers, over and over.
"But I still had to choose. And then, there's…"
She bent down, picked up a pebble, and hurled it across the pond with an absurd amount of force, revealing the emotion that she would not let enter her voice. Again, she started breathing heavily.
"I think I knew," Chiaki said, still not looking at them. "Even before Yoshino reminded me. You've realized too, haven't you? You two are in love, and it's so much more pure, so much less stained than anything I have. All I've been doing is standing in the way. I know that. I only wanted one more day."
She sucked in a breath.
"That day is over. Enough of this. I can't continue acting like this, not now that I know what kind of monster I am. Enough selfishness. Leave me. You have my blessing. I will survive. Despite the pain."
"Forget about me," she said quietly.
The moment stretched into infinity.
Touma and Makoto shared one more look. They looked in each other's eyes, and the decision in all four was crystal-clear.
"We refuse," Touma said.
"We love you," Makoto said. "Didn't we tell you that?"
Chiaki turned her head, and they could finally see the depths of her eyes.
"It's not worth it," she said, confused. "I'm not worth it. Don't you understand?"
"If you were being selfish, why did you show up that time with Fujioka?" Touma asked. "Why come for me when I was at Yoshino's?"
"Love is not about purity or pure motives," Touma continued. "It's about being there no matter the situation, no matter the cost, no matter why. You're willing to sacrifice everything, both of us, because you think we'll be happier without you. It doesn't matter if you're wrong; you were willing to do that. And if you can do that, than how could we let you do that?"
"You're not insane," Makoto said, grabbing her shoulder. "And you're not weak. We are not 'stable' because we stand alone. We're stable because we confide in each other. I rely on Touma, and you. Touma relies on me, Fujioka, you, Haruka, Kana, her brothers, Uchida and Yoshino. Neither of us has spent our entire lives burying everything. You don't want to be left alone; then just let it out. The two of us will carry you through. Let someone else support you."
He looked into Chiaki's eyes, those eternally sleepy eyes, and so did Touma. Those eyes finally broke.
They watched her cry the tears of a lifetime.
"Give it up, Touma," Makoto said. "They're clearly not open."
"This is a travesty!" she protested, pulling fruitlessly at the shop door. "The sign here clearly indicates they are open until nine-thirty!"
"It's ten, Touma," he said, surprised by her intensity. "We can come back tomorrow."
"How do you even know that?" she asked.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a watch, shrugging.
At his side, unnoticed, Chiaki stared intently at it for a moment.
"Why do you keep a watch if you're just going to put it in your pocket, idiot?" Chiaki asked finally.
They looked at her. It was the first thing she had said after they had finally left the park. Normality?
"Glad to see you're back," Touma said, looking over at the worried-looking Makoto.
Among other things, Makoto was still chewing over her use of the "baka" phrase, which, now that he thought about it, he had never before heard without the accompanying "yaro".
"It's good to be back," she said.
The accompanying smile warmed their hearts.
"Also, I'm cold," she said. "Could I take you up on that jacket offer?"
"Ah, yes," Makoto said, hastily shedding said object of clothing. "You're the only one here in a skirt, after all."
"Oh well," Touma sighed, looking up at the storefront. "I guess we'll just come back tomorrow. I wonder if there's any food places open at a time like this."
"You're hungry?" Makoto asked.
"It's not as if ice cream, ramen, and takoyaki form a substantial meal."
The door behind her suddenly opened.
"What do you kids want?" the old man who appeared in the doorway asked. "Can't you see we're closed?"
"That's right, Touma," Makoto agreed, looking at her sidelong. "Can you tell us now why you wanted so badly to be here?"
"Those necklaces in your shop window," Touma said, ignoring Makoto. "How much are they?"
The man looked at her as if she were crazy.
"You practically break down my door for this?" he asked.
She just looked back at him.
"Well, customers are customers I guess," he conceded. "It's not like they're valuable or anything, so 2000 yen."
"We want three," Touma said.
They just looked at her.
"What?" she asked.
"I'm not sure if you've realized," Makoto said reprovingly, "but we just spent the entire day burning money at the arcade and buying food and stuff. Do we have that much money?"
"I told you before, Touma," Chiaki said. "Natsuki dumps money on you like there's no tomorrow. Try to remember that. And aren't you the one who's always being stingy?"
Touma looked nonplussed.
"Er, well, how much do we have?" she asked.
They huddled in a circle to count.
"6400." Touma said, ignoring the various low denomination coins they held. "It's enough!"
"That's no good, Touma," Chiaki said. "We still have to take the bus home. We are going home, right? We won't have enough for that if we buy these."
Left unspoken was the obvious question: Why did Touma want to buy necklaces, anyway?
The man looked them over.
"Eh," he said, shrugging. "You can have the whole lot for 4500."
"Really?" Touma asked, looking as if she would hug the man.
"I was young too, once," he said, smiling. "Now let me go get them."
A while later, he returned with the objects in tow, handing them to an obviously happy Touma.
"Thank you so much!" she said.
"I was overcharging you anyway," he said.
They looked at him as if he had just informed them for the first time that Santa wasn't real.
"For pounding down my door after closing hours!" he explained, incredulously.
The moment he closed the door behind him, Chiaki turned on Touma.
"Now explain to me why we just spent most of our money on these trinkets, Touma!"
Touma looked faintly embarrassed.
"Well," she said. "I was thinking back to what you were saying, about the North Pole and stuff…"
She grabbed one of the necklaces in her other hand, letting it hang out.
"And I was thinking," she continued, color creeping up her cheeks, "that we should get something to wear, but it's not like we're going to get something actually modeled after the Polaris star system. Then I remembered that I saw these earlier."
She thrust the other two out in her unfurled hand, blushing strongly.
"They're three-pointed stars, so you know, the symbolism all works out. I would have preferred it be symmetrical like uh—a triangle, no, not a triangle…"
By this point, the other two were clearly working hard to suppress a laugh both at Touma's level of discomfort and at her seriously earnest expression.
"Like the Mercedes logo," Makoto said.
"Yes! Like the Mercedes logo! But I think these look better anyway, since the way they point down is kind of nice. They're not really stars, though…anyway, the point is, we could all wear them, to, you know, symbolize our, uh, friendship and stuff!"
Her tongue tripped over the word friendship.
They stared at each other.
It was Chiaki who burst out laughing first, followed almost immediately by Makoto. It was just too much. It was not that it was really that funny. They just needed to laugh at something.
"Stop laughing!" Touma demanded. "I thought you understood! I thought we were—"
She stopped, realizing what she was about to say.
A moment later, she started laughing too. She needed it just as much.
Finally, excruciatingly, they managed to sober up.
"Chiaki," Touma said, having wiped her face with her sleeve. "I was also thinking that, I hope you can finally get over that thing of yours. This can be a first step for that. Just a little trinket, to remind you that we're here. Something like that. We can get it in real jade later, when we have more money."
Chiaki took one, gingerly, and held it up to her neck.
"Nah," she said, after a moment. "I'd rather keep this one."
She gripped it in her fist.
"Thank you. I'll treasure it."
They stayed silent for a moment.
Finally, Makoto reached forward to grab the last one, and they put them on.
"I might have to get a new strap for this," Touma said, tugging at it.
"I wonder if people at school will notice," Makoto said.
"So what if they do?" Chiaki said.
After a moment of silence, Makoto started laughing, quietly.
"What is it?" Touma asked.
"Nothing," he said, covering his mouth. "Let's go home."
She looked at him strangely.
They started to walk off.
It was only a short while later, as they approached the relevant bus stop, that Touma began to feel a strange, yet familiar, sensation of absence. This time it took her only moments to place its source.
She did an instant about-face, remembering well what had happened last time. Chiaki, catching the motion out of the corner of her eye, stopped walking and began to turn.
Fortunately, Makoto hadn't gotten lost or kidnapped. Instead, he had simply stopped unaccountably, half a block back.
Touma sucked in a breath and ran, covering the distance between them in lunging steps.
"What's wrong?" she asked, bending over slightly to look at his face.
"Touma," he said, face painted with a grim determination. "I don't think I should leave it like this. She can't make this kind of decision without knowing the truth."
Touma took a second to understand the sentence.
"You can't!" Touma insisted, shaking her head. "Not so soon—"
He looked up, silencing her with a look.
"I think she'll be fine," he said, letting her read his face. "Better now than later."
"I hope you're right," she said, finally.
"Again, you talk about me behind my back," the girl in question said, having completed the walk back. "I thought I knew everything already, so I never called you on it. But apparently not."
Touma straightened out, watching her.
"I can do this instead, if you want," Touma said, turning to look at Makoto.
"You know I couldn't accept that," he said.
"Out with it!" Chiaki demanded.
"I—" he began.
He swallowed, as Chiaki crossed his arms.
"I don't have the clothes," he said, to no one in particular. "But I can do plenty without them. It's much easier to demonstrate than to explain."
That was something he had realized after the incident with Yoshino.
He looked around, but, fortunately, the street was deserted.
Makoto dug the watch out of his pocket and put it on with almost a strange calm. Touma realized that it was one that Mako-chan commonly wore, and that it had been a mistake on his part to pull it out earlier.
From another pocket he retrieved a colorful bead bracelet and placed it on his other arm.
From a back pocket, a comb, with which he calmly smoothed and rearranged his hair.
Why does he even have this stuff with him? Touma resisted asking.
From the same pocket, a single hairclip, purple this time.
Chiaki's initial raised eyebrow expression had slowly morphed into one of utter incredulity.
"Do you see?" he asked, his timid voice belying his seeming calm. "Makoto has always been right next to you. And so has Mako-chan."
She took a single step backward, reeling from pure shock, her face a study in horror.
"Chiaki—" Touma began, extending her arm, ready to dash forward, just in case.
"It makes sense," Chiaki said, head in her hand. "It makes so much sense. Why didn't I realize?"
They watched as she stood still for a second.
"Why?" she demanded, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Why the HELL would you do something like this?"
Her voice resounded off the buildings, and a man across the street looked up in surprise, but now wasn't the time to be worrying about that.
"I—I needed to sneak in," he stammered. "And Ka—Kana suggested—"
Why even bring her up? He thought reprovingly, biting his tongue.
"Of course it was Kana," she said, turning away and balling her hand into a fist. "And of course that was why. Like I said, it all makes sense."
Again, she was silent, doing her best to think.
"Do you like it, then?" she asked, voice dangerous. "Did you enjoy the deception?"
He watched the flow of hair on her back.
"I—well, not the deception, per se, but the rest, I—"
"Of course you did," she said, turning back around. "I wouldn't expect anything less."
He looked in wonderment at her face, which had seemingly abolished all traces of dismay.
"You're—you're not—" he began.
"I was worried when Mako-chan stopped coming," she said. "I've always liked her—as a person. In retrospect, the evidence was everywhere. This…this wouldn't be so bad."
"I sensed the same thing about you Kana did," she continued, smiling in lieu of a suppressed chuckle, "though I doubt I would have ever talked you into doing something like this. I have weird tastes. Think about it; none of this makes sense otherwise. I mean, look at the three of us!"
It was Touma who first responded.
"I'm glad," she said, face satisfied, eyes closed. "We thought it would be much worse than this. I guess it was for the best. You two…"
They looked at her, but she all she said was:
"No, nevermind," she said, smiling slightly. "Later."
Makoto tilted his head slightly to look around Chiaki.
"Isn't that the bus stopping there?" he asked, unsure about the wisdom of changing topics.
Touma snapped open her eyes and peered.
"It is!" she said, instantly breaking into a sprint towards the bus stop. "Hey! HEY!"
They missed it.
I don't even want to know what time it is now.
She took a deep breath
She opened the door and walked in briskly, already starting the process of taking off her shoes.
"Chiaki!" Haruka said, walking into the hallway from where she had obviously been waiting, crossing her arms. "Where the hell were you? Have you any idea what time it is? What were you guys doing?"
Chiaki looked down at her feet.
"I was—"
She thought about what to say.
"I was having fun," she said, looking up at Haruka. "Aren't I old enough to stay out now? It's Friday, after all, and I don't even have school next week."
Haruka's eyebrow twitched.
"Fun, eh? Well, you're right: it's Friday. Just give me advance warning next time! It doesn't help talking to on the phone Yoshino when she isn't with you and doesn't know where you are!"
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, looking to her side.
Haruka held a stern expression, hiding her thoughts.
"I remember," Chiaki had said, that morning, out of the blue sky, about to walk out the door for school. "I remember everything."
Haruka had stared at her, apprehensive. There was no reason to suppose she meant anything unusual by that, but her expression, and the tone of her voice…
"Remember what?" Haruka had asked, smiling brittlely. Next to her, Kana had frozen halfway in the act of putting on her shoes.
"I'll settle it today," Chiaki had said, looking down. "You won't have to worry anymore."
Her forlorn expression had stayed with Haruka the whole day.
Should I ask?
Haruka looked at her carefully.
That's Makoto's jacket, she thought. And her eyes are red…
Haruka suppressed a wave of emotion.
She unfurled her arms, softening her expression.
"You are old enough now, yes. But, Chiaki, I'm worried—"
"How'd it go, Chiaki?" Kana asked, sticking her head around the corner of the living room into the hallway.
"I don't know—" she automatically began.
—what you're talking about, she almost finished.
No, she thought.
She took another deep breath.
"It went well," she said, smiling slightly. "There are no more decisions to make. We have…decided that there need not be any decisions."
She dodged their looks, unable to hide the blush that automatically covered her face. She gripped her necklace in one hand.
"What the heck does that mean?" Kana asked. "And what's with the necklace?"
"It's symbolic!" she explained, moving forward and pushing Kana out of the way.
"Symbolic for what?" Kana asked.
"After I take a shower!" Chiaki said, fleeing to her room. "I'm—"
—not used to being open about things.
"Ah, shut up already, nee-chan!" she said instead.
Haruka and Kana were left blinking in her wake.
"Did she just call me what I think she did?" Kana asked disbelievingly, pointing in the direction she had left in with her thumb.
"She's acting strange," Haruka commented.
"But she seemed happy," Kana said.
Haruka felt a twinge of…sadness, perhaps?
Maybe… she thought.
"That's good," Haruka said, a little more subdued than she should have been.
Kana looked at her, then away again.
"I hope she's happy," Kana said, just as Chiaki strode out into the hallway, wearing a towel, carrying her pajamas. She glanced in their direction, then went into the bathroom.
"Tomorrow…" Haruka began. Kana looked at her expectantly.
"Tomorrow we're getting her a cell phone," Haruka said. "We need to keep tabs on her."
They waited politely as Chiaki sat down slowly at the table, pajamas wrinkling, their eyes watching her. True to convention, tea was waiting on the table.
She had taken the time in the shower to think about what to say. She had concluded there was really only one way. They looked at her expectantly. It was up to her to begin.
"I—" she began, her voice instantly failing her. False start. She shifted her head so that her hair fell over her eyes, so she wouldn't have to look.
"There's no better way to explain it other than to say it as straightforwardly as possible," she began again, doing her best not to let her voice waver, diving straight into it. "It turns out while I was making my decision, Touma and Makoto discovered they had feelings for each other, in addition to what they had for me. I—I told them I was okay with that, but they refused to leave me. We've decided to just stay as we are, as a…group of three. I—I don't know what this is now, but it seems fine, for now. We can continue like this. I think I want it to continue like this. I—"
She could feel the unavoidable blush, she had to fight the embarrassment—
"I haven't been this happy in a long, long time. I hope you understand. It's a bit unusual, but for now, we, we're okay with…"
She dared a look up, and saw their faces transition from attentiveness to slack-jawed amazement as they processed the words.
She looked away.
While Kana got over her surprise and chewed it over, Haruka's initially thunderstruck expression shifted into a strange, distant look.
The clock ticked quietly in the background.
"You sure about this?" Kana asked, when it became clear that Haruka wasn't going to say anything. "You sure about them? I definitely wasn't thinking along those lines, but it makes sense. I feel like I lost somehow…"
Chiaki's hand, on the table, twitched with the urge to reach for the necklace. She ignored it.
Next to it her tea sat, untouched.
"Why wouldn't I be sure?" she tried to say as levelly as possible, eyes looking down at the kotatsu. "There's no uncertainty. I know it to be true. But it's as I say. This—they won't leave me. Not immediately. I'm sure of it. I'm not sure which side is most important."
Kana tilted her head, leaning way forward over the low table so she could look directly into Chiaki's face. Her unbound hair settled on the table, barely missing falling into her tea.
"It's unusual, to say the least," she said after a moment. "You sure it's possible to do something like this without jealousy and such?"
Leave it to Kana to focus immediately on that aspect of it, Chiaki thought.
"Maybe it's not," Chiaki said, working through the logic in her mind even as she spoke. "But I think the worst that can happen is one of us discovers that he or she doesn't fit and then…things would be more normal, I guess."
"Would you be okay if it were you that didn't fit?" Haruka asked, quietly, finally.
Chiaki looked up in surprise—and saw Haruka looking back.
"Well?" Haruka insisted.
Chiaki looked down again, hiding from her eyes, clutching her hands together to control their movement. She breathed in, deeply.
"I…I think I would. Things have changed. I have a lot of support."
Again, the quiet ticking of the clock drummed itself into her mind.
"I'm glad," Haruka said.
Again, they looked at her in surprised.
"You've grown up, just a little," she said, eyes hooded, holding her cup in both hands. "This isn't ideal; not at all. But what else could I expect, when I was the only one available to raise you? I haven't done a great job, but at least you're making your own decisions. At least it probably wouldn't destroy you. I wouldn't have to save you. Maybe that's enough."
They stared at her.
"Haruka," Kana began, swallowing. "Don't say that. This—"
"This is a bit too much," Haruka said, pausing for effect. "In my opinion. I don't see how this could possibly work. But I won't interfere. My interference could only make things worse. I'll trust your judgment and…maturity. Perhaps it's time for that."
Chiaki glanced at Kana, who then looked back. After a moment, Kana shook her head.
She began to open her mouth to say something—but Haruka was already getting up.
"We should sleep," she said, simply, pausing at the door.
For a moment, they stared at the empty doorway.
Eventually, Kana cleared her throat. Chiaki looked at her.
"So," Kana said, seemingly serious. "What do you three have planned anyway? Just going to be really close friends?"
Chiaki inspected her fingernails.
"Something like that," she said, trying to be casual.
"Hmm," Kana said, mouth forming the beginning traces of a smile. "I wouldn't know about that."
Chiaki glanced at her out of one eye.
"Well, not quite that," she said. "But how else could I put it? That's the only way to describe it."
"True enough," Kana said. "I guess we'll see. You three are so strange."
Kana interlaced her fingers in front of her, then said, body language deliberately awkward:
"There's also, you know…"
Her voice trailed off as she waited for Chiaki to catch the significance of her not finishing the sentence. She didn't.
Kana couldn't suppress a smirk. She leaned back, stretching.
"Man, I wonder how many boys would literally kill to be in Makoto's position, despite the costs," she commented. "You do know about the costs?"
Chiaki watched her, still not sure what she was talking about, but she had an idea about the second part…
"You knew about Mako-chan the whole time, you bastard," she accused.
Kana sat back up.
"Of course I did," she said. "And I figured you might, too, now."
She dismissed whatever Chiaki was about to say with a vigorous wave of her hand.
"Let's not talk about that right now," she said. "Haruka wasn't referring to this when she was talking about judgment, but judgment is indeed important, whatever those hypothetical murderous boys may think. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"
Chiaki looked back at her, with a face now aggravated by what she saw as Kana's deliberate obfuscation.
"No," she said, emphasizing the word. "I have no idea what you're talking about. And I don't think I care, you damn baka-yaro!"
Kana looked back at Chiaki's angry face and couldn't choke a laugh that came bubbling out of her windpipe.
She covered her mouth a second too late.
"You're just like Fujioka," she said, standing up with a reckless smile. "Touma is going to have a devil of a time trying to deal with you guys. But maybe she likes it that way."
Just as Chiaki was about to snap back at her, getting up, perhaps in preparation for violence, Kana patted her on the head, patronizingly, pushing down the conspicuous mound of hair at the top.
"Don't ever change, okay?" Kana said. "Not about this."
She walked into the doorway, flashed Chiaki a "V for victory" sign with her fingers, and strode off, finally starting to laugh hysterically.
Chiaki sat in her wake, stymied.
What the heck?
Chiaki stared at the ceiling of her bedroom.
I wonder if it was really the right decision, telling them.
She thought about it.
Haruka will come around to it, some day.
It went better than I thought it would, she thought.
She looked at the necklace that lay on her bedside counter, with its three points, like an arrow pointing up, or an inverted sunset.
This…is enough.
She slept.
Author's note: And there it is. It's not quite finished yet—there's still an epilogue and an omake I've been waiting forever to write—but most of the mainline plotlines have been resolved, with the epilogue taking care of one or two more.
If you've been reading carefully, there's one glaring plotline I left unresolved. Frankly, it's because I decided it deserved a lot more than subplot treatment.
My original plan was that I would resolve somewhere in the last few chapters, but the more I thought about it, the less it looked like there would be space among all the other stuff going on, and the less plausible it seemed. The stuff already going on was already consuming all the focus and energy of the characters involved; it is unlikely they would bring up something else on top of that. I always intended this string of chapters to be just a little like a train wreck—but not that much of one.
Besides, Hosaka really doesn't show up as much as I would like, and certainly isn't going down without a fight.
…it's really more like a nexus of several subplots.
The upshot here is I've been convinced to work on a third long story. It won't come immediately; there's other stuff that comes first, and I also want to go back and revise everything that leads up to this. Fix plotholes, expand on events, fix typos, and so forth. In particular, my prequel story Advice is starting to feel in need of work, now that I have a better feel for all the characters involved and a lot more experience doing this.
So from here is:
*Epilogue Ch. 13
*Omake Ch. 14 (Really should be its own one-shot, but I like the idea of having omakes)
*Another alternate history one-shot.
*Uchida/Yoshino story?
*Alternate revising previous chapters/writing a third story.
The fourth item was the planned omake for the next story which I'm really starting to feel should be its own story. Among other things, it doesn't feel like a one-chapter.
Finally, I should acknowledge half-note for proofreading some of these chapters and, perhaps just as importantly, acting as a sounding board for massive airdrops of ideas/explanatory exposition. Consider this indirect apology for how huge those messages were…