Title: It's Starting
Fandom: The World Ends With You
Pairing/Characters: Neku, Shiki
Warning(s): None
Genre: Gen

"Hold still," Shiki says, pushing another pin into the dress. "I'll poke you by accident if you don't stop fidgeting."

Neku grumbled but complied. Shiki reaches into a nearby box and drew out a spool of dark green thread, carefully threading the needle she had been holding in her mouth before drawing it to a seam. "Tell me again why I'm wearing a dress."

"Because my model bailed, so I'm going to walk it at the Junior Design Competition myself, but I can't fit it while it's on me, can I? Not that I'm blaming you for being so skinny. Turn around."

He did, and she tugged the zipper down, helping him out of it. He rubbed his shoulders before grabbing his shorts. The dress was beautiful, all green and gold, but he couldn't help feeling a little sad for some reason. "You're really...serious about this, huh?"

"Serious about-" she arranged the dress on the stand, patting down an imaginary wrinkle. "-Yeah, I guess. After...you know - it made me think about what I wanted to do with my life, and how I was going to...make it up to you."

"Make it up to me?"

"You saved me, Neku. You saved me and Shibuya. I'm not going to let your sacrifice go to waste."

"Or your talent," he said, feeling undeserving of her praise.

Shiki came in second place, her lily-of-the-valley dress losing by half a point to a jumble of plaid-on-argyle. It wasn't Neku's taste but that sort of chaos seemed to be the thing in Shibuya, and she seemed happy (rightfully) to have done so well. The real prize came a week later when, breathless with excitement, she told him that the chief creative officer of D+B called her, wanting to know if she was interested in an internship.

"It's starting," she said, as he sat on her bed and she rummaged through her closet for the perfect thing to wear to the interview. "It's starting, Neku. I'm moving on with my life."

"Hell yeah, you are," Neku said. A spot of cold shaped like a hand on his arm reminded him that he would never move on with his.