I'm not even sure how I managed to finish this by today, since halfway through the week I got distracted by an idea for a fanfic for a chorus battle entry and basically spent two days straight on it (and I have it to a point where that'll probably be put up on Sunday, especially since it's just a one-shot). But yeah, here is the chapter, and it is another somewhat fluff-filled one. I'm still deciding on the specific order of events, but there will be some fluff in the next chapter too for sure.

Also, I really hate coming up with chapter titles. I have ranted about this before and I know I will again, but I hate it. It can sometimes be really difficult to think up a suitable title for a chapter or even a story. But enough of that for now. On with the chapter!

Wakana

I wasn't entirely sure how long I'd been downstairs working on my new piece when Akira came down, but as I blinked and gave myself a moment to shift from thinking in music to thinking in words, I realised it had probably been a while.

"You've found something to do?" Akira asked simply as he sat down at the kitchen table, taking a seat opposite to me. I nodded.

"Yeah. I've had bits and pieces of melody whirling around in my head, so I brought something to write them on." I explained, turning the notebook around to show him. Akira nodded.

"Looks like you managed to do a lot already." He couldn't quite hide his surprise, and I chuckled a little.

"Yeah…I'm starting to think that this isn't one piece in particular, but a few. Perhaps they'll form one particular collection. We shall see. This is still…well, at this stage, this is essentially rambling."

"Well, either way, I look forward to hearing whatever you come up with."

"Thanks, Kazama-Chan." I replied, simply.

After that, for a few moments, we didn't say anything to each other. Akira got up and poured himself a glass of milk before returning to his seat, while I kept writing, stopping every so often and going back to a bar or any other cluster of notes I was starting to realise didn't quite fit in with everything else. The more I was putting the ideas to paper, the more they seemed to solidify and become real in my mind, making it easier to see the things that would work and that wouldn't. Though sometimes, it was hard to tell. Daisuke was always good at this though, at going over my pieces and working out how they'd sound played, even before they reached an orchestra or a performer. I could trust him to help me tweak a piece so that it was the best it could possibly be.

These days, I didn't have that. I had more than enough musical contacts-old friends from the places I'd learnt to play, my orchestra, even my parents and extended family. And I did turn to them for help from time to time, and they were able and willing to help. But it wasn't the same. It would never be the same.

Thinking about that, I had to put my pencil down a moment, and that was when I noticed Akira seemed to be particularly deep in thought about something.

"What's wrong, Kazama-Chan?"

"Huh? Oh, no, nothing in particular…" Akira blinked at me as he trailed off, and then sighed.

"I was thinking about Nanto-san. Or rather, about Rei Yamagawara."

"Yeah?" I couldn't glean what, exactly, about the situation he was wondering about just by looking at him. There was a lot about it though. Not least how sad it all was. If Hokuto hadn't had the habit of using her observation journals as diaries every so often, then perhaps she would have never known, and she would have gone through life with one less weight on her shoulders. On the other hand, that was a horrible thing to consider. If I'd had the memory of a loved one wiped from me, I knew I would have clung on to any evidence that it had ever happened in the first place.

And what if you're the forgotten loved one? Like Shin'ya. If Kanekatsu had survived, what would their relationship have been like, with the uneven spread of things that connected them? To know that so many of the precious times they had spent together were just gone from the mind of that person, and that you could do nothing about it, nothing at all. That would be horrible. But what's worse is when they're completely gone. At least with both parties alive, there was a chance to rebuild things, the sort of chance that Rei was getting with Hokuto.

"I was thinking about how she was from Hope Valley High."

Akira's answer took me by complete surprise, and I just blinked at him.

"Do you mean…if she had any involvement with Enoshima?" I asked hesitantly. Akira nodded slowly.

"More or less. Not one of the ones who were responsible for any of the murders or the bombings, or even any of the assaults that weren't fatal but were still severe. If she had, then she wouldn't be walking free now. But perhaps she was involved in a more low level way, the riots or even just pledging herself to be a member of the Remnants and just carrying the badge and running errands."Akira explained.

"Ah." I wasn't sure what to say.

"It's entirely possible that she was. Not a certainty, but possible. After all, there were a large number of them who were involved in one way or another, right from the Wishing Tree incident."

I nodded. I remembered the name of the boy from the news. Ikuo Murata, 18 at the time. He wasn't the only one responsible, of course-about five other culprits had been apprehended and arrested. But he stood out, because of the school he attended. But…

"There were Hope Valley victims, too." I murmured. Kiku Inoue, that was the first name any one would think of. In a way, she'd become a poster child for the consequences of the horrors the Remnants had wreaked in Towa (and a little beyond). Well, before the Killing Game had happened, in any case. Then the poster children had been us. But Kiku Inoue hadn't been the only victim who'd been a Hope Valley student. There had been others, spread over the year of attacks. But I didn't remember any of their names.

"Yes. Yes, I know." Akira sighed. He put his glass down and rubbed his head. "I know. And I guess it goes without saying that most of them were just ordinary teenagers, trying to live their lives the best they could, until it all happened."

"Exactly. But either way, Ho-Chi will be able to handle herself. I'm sure she'll be fine. She might have even have thought about this herself. "

"Yeah. Yeah, I know. But I can't really help wondering it, even now."

Akira nodded at that, and sighed, picking his glass up and taking another couple of sips. He didn't say anything for a moment, but I suspected he was thinking a little of the Future Foundation, of what he'd learnt and understood about what had happened to us while he'd been working there. It wasn't really any surprise that his concerns would be of this variety.

"I do want it to go well for her though." Akira concluded eventually. I nodded at that. It went without saying.

We returned to silence-Akira concentrating on his drink, me going back to the music. I'd written music in Hope's Peak, released a few pieces over that time span, and I had apparently been in the process of composing another when everything else had happened. The sheet music of what had presumably been my first draft of that last piece had been sent to me a few months after I'd gone home, along with whatever personal effects of mine had been salvaged from the destroyed building. It was ripped, and had footprints on it, as though it had been trampled on, though someone had taken the effort to straighten out the paper and flatten out some of the creases and try to fix the sheets in whatever way they could. But what was the most significant was the writing all over it. Daisuke's feedback. I've never been able to bring myself to really look at it, to try and work on it and turn it into a published piece, but I still have it, tucked away safe in my flat. In a way, it felt like a last gift from Daisuke, so I couldn't let it go.

Maybe one day, I'll look at it again.

I heard footsteps, and I looked up to see that Tyson had come downstairs, rubbing his eyes slightly before he stopped and stared at us.

"You okay?" Akira asked, getting up and knocking back the last of his milk. Tyson nodded and sighed.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just…another nightmare."

"Do you want to talk about it?" I asked. Tyson shook his head.

"No, it's fine. I'll be fine. It's not anything particularly different to the usual nightmares. "Tyson replied, downplaying it as he tended to.

"Ah, okay." If he wanted to say more, I knew he would, so I gestured at one of the empty seats. "Here, sit down."

"Do you want anything to drink?" Akira asked Tyson, holding up his glass as if to demonstrate. Tyson considered this a moment, and then nodded.

"Just water, please. "

"Sure. Wakana-san, you want anything?"

"No, no, it's fine."

Tyson sat down next to me, and looked curiously at my sheet music as Akira washed out his own glass, then got another and filled both of them with water before bringing them back to the table, and carefully pushing one over to Tyson.

"Thank you." Tyson took his water and started to sip at it, as did Akira, I went back to the music, and we fell back into the comfortable silence.

…

Chieko

We stopped outside my room, and for a moment just stared at each other. Everyone else had disappeared into their own rooms, to sleep for however many hours it was until the day began. Not that many, I knew.

"Well, good-" I paused. Was it good night, or good morning? And it was hardly good, was it? Considering we'd just come back from another murder trial. Another one.

"I know what ya mean." Koutarou said after a long pause. "It's fine, Moyashi."

I pulled a face at that, but didn't quite have the heart to protest it. I just offered up a watery smile and went to open my door. Just as I was about to step in, I turned and looked at Koutarou, who was still standing there, watching me.

"What are you thinking of?" I asked, instantly. Koutarou blinked, and looked at me.

"What if it had been you?" he said after a moment.

For a moment, my breath caught in my throat as I thought of it. Alright, I wasn't as interested in the library as Kanekatsu was or Yashiro had been, but still, I'd grabbed a few books from there since it'd been opened to us. And if Oshiro had been rattled enough to make a mistake with someone who was three inches shorter and with hair that was a completely different colour and worn differently, then he could have easily made the same mistake with someone who was a little closer to Kanekatsu's height, and who at least had black hair. Like me.

But you're still here, I reminded myself. So I released the breath and managed to flash another smile at him.

"You know what, I don't think we're going to get any sleep now anyway. It'll be breakfast time soon after all. Why don't we just hang out until then?"

Koutarou sized me up for a moment, and then nodded.

"Makes sense to me."

For some reason, the memory stopped at that point, and I woke up. Not that it made much of a difference. I knew how it played out, I'd thought of it over and over and over and over. Yet I felt somewhat disgruntled by it, even though I wasn't even sure if I particularly wanted to go back to dreaming. I'd woken up calmly, I wasn't sure if the same would happen if I slipped back into sleep and kept remembering. Still, I turned over in the bed, and that's when I noticed that Wakana wasn't in bed.

Huh, is it morning already? Opening my eyes again, just a fraction, I noticed it was bright, and the curtains had been pulled already. Well, okay. Most likely Wakana had gone down to do breakfast-I'd noticed that she and Akira had more or less already developed a habit of doing the breakfast together. To me, it seemed the type that could become a tradition. If we do anything else like this, in any case. But I didn't really hear anyone else moving around, so I decided to stay put for a while, and closed my eyes again. It was fine, after all. I'll be fine, I'll be fine. I had to be fine. I didn't want to slip backwards, not least because it would alarm the others, and Shizuka. At least where the others were concerned, they'd have some idea where it was coming from, but Shizuka….I could not do that to her. I would not, no matter how hard it was. I will not.

"Mummy?"

As if I summoned her just by thinking of her, Shizuka was there. I rolled over, so that I was at least facing her, then quietly pulled myself together before opening my eyes.

"You're awake already?" Though it did just look like she'd just got up, considering her hair was uncombed and she was still in her pyjamas. That's a relief. At least I've not let time slip away. There had once been a time where I'd be just lying in bed and thinking, so deep in my mind that a good hour or two could slip away from me.

"Well, it is morning now." Shizuka said, starting at me as if it was obvious. I managed to smile at that.

"Yes, it is. Is the bathroom free? You go first, I'll go after you."

Shizuka frowned at me.

"You're not going to go back to sleep, are you?"

"No, no, of course not." Ah, make an effort, Chieko. I sat up, trying my best not to ask her why she was sceptical, if she was worried about anything.

"See, it's fine. " I said, making the effort to smile. Shizuka nodded earnestly at me.

"Good. You'd miss breakfast if you slept."

"And I wouldn't want to do that." I responded, my smile growing wider as I realised it was true. "You go ahead, Shizuka."

"Okay, Mummy."

Satisfied now, Shizuka went, and I gave myself just another brief moment before getting off the bed and finding my pyjama trousers to put on. It is fine. I am fine.

…

After breakfast, we more or less ended up doing splitting off into little groups to do our own things, though that wasn't really very much at all. Akira was sitting and chatting with Tyson at the table, while Noriko and Masashi were upstairs somewhere, playing games on Akira's laptop-every so often, we could hear one of them protest when the other won, which was hilarious. Shizuka went to play in the garden, and I sat in the living room with Wakana and Hokuto, all of us chatting while Hokuto mindlessly flipped through the channels to see what Saturday morning TV had to offer us, though we weren't so much watching as we were lazily critiquing the different programmes.

"Oh, this looks interesting." Hokuto said, pausing at one of the channels.

"What is it?" Wakana asked.

"No idea, it looks like a drama or something." Hokuto said.

"Are we going to watch it?" I asked.

"Might as well. Everything else has just been adverts so far."

We had technically also spent a few moments watching some sort of nature documentary focusing on monkeys, and a couple of seconds on a game show, but Hokuto was more or less right apart from that, so I shrugged. Hokuto grinned and put the remote down, and we spent a few moments trying to figure out what was going on.

"Huh. Is university like that for you, Chieko-Chan?" Wakana asked.

"Nope," I shook my head. "Not even close. There's no way in hell you'd get away with doing that little, not if you want an actual degree at the end of it."

"Ah, surely there's some fun and games in it all?" Hokuto pouted.

I considered that, thinking of Takizawa and Miyano, and how we'd seemed to get along almost instantly after meeting on the first day. Not close friends, not close in the same way Wakana and Hokuto were now, or even in the way Koutarou had been (before things got complicated, in any case), but still, good friends. Friends I was bonded to by things decidedly more mundane, something I was grateful for.

"Sure there is." I replied.

"Well, that's good then, isn't it. Oooh, what's happening-huh, who's that guy meant to be?"

We stared at the young man who'd appeared on the screen and joined the group of university students, watched the girls' reaction to him.

"She likes him-no, no they're dating-and he's friends with that one, I think. " I guessed after a while.

"Looks like he's friendly with all of them, though." Wakana objected.

"Well, yeah, I suppose…." I frowned.

"He's friendly with them, but not friends with them all." Hokuto burst out after a moment. "Chieko-Chan's right. He's specifically friends with that one, and dating the other one, and he's friendly with the rest because they are the friends of those two girls."

Wakana and I just stared at Hokuto for a moment, and then I shrugged and we laughed a little, before continuing to watch. The party scene continued on for a little while, nothing particular that we could notice happening, but something seemed to happen to make one of the girls-the girlfriend-get mad and decide to storm out of the party. She was noticed by the other girl, the friend, who promptly rushed after her.

"Okay, did you see what happened?" I asked. "To cause that, I mean."

I pointed at the screen where the two girls were now having a heated conversation, apparently about the boy. Hokuto shrugged.

"Dunno. Not very good at building suspense, are they?"

"….this is the middle of a series though, isn't it?" Wakana pointed out.

"Probably. Do we even know what drama this is?"

"No idea. Want to check?"

"Not particularly…"

"Yeah, well that's what you say, isn't it?" the girlfriend character on screen cried out, making us all stare at it again. "But boys and girls can never just be friends, so stay away from him."

"….she cannot be serious." Wakana shook her head at that after a moment, sighing heavily.

"Apparently, she is." I was just as disappointed, watching the argument scene finish and switch to the friend character in what was quite obviously her bedroom, staring moonily at her phone but not apparently doing anything else, until all of a sudden a text came through. The camera focused on the phone, showing us that it came from a contact that the girl had listed as 'Acchan' asking her if they could meet. The girl seemed to brighten up and instantly tapped out a reply, suggesting what I assumed was the name of a park, and when Acchan replied that that was fine, she was practically leaping back out of bed and getting ready to go back out. How sleep-deprived are these people going to be tomorrow? I thought in some irritation.

The scene cut again to a park, and it turned out Acchan was the boy. The girl seemed to light up as she ran towards him, and she started apologising, presumably for the girlfriend's bad mood, and he tried to reassure her that it wasn't her fault, and they started to talk about random things, which I somehow suspected weren't what they'd actually met up for, a suspicion only increased when for some reason the scene was overlaid with flashbacks from what I assumed were either earlier episodes, or just scenes from the characters' shared past.

"They are totally, 100% gearing up for a love confession here." Hokuto declared with a grin. "They've probably been building up to it for episodes."

"Really now, it looked like they tried to cram it all into one episode." I snarked.

"It does rather, doesn't it?" Wakana agreed. "Let's see what happens next though…."

Sure enough, what Hokuto had predicted came true…and then some, but thankfully straight after that it cut out to a commercial break, and we all slumped.

"That's really….ugh, that's really, really disappointing, that is." Wakana said after a moment.

"I think it's a common trope though, the whole men-and-women-will-never-be-friends thing. Adds tension or whatever." Hokuto said. I simply shrugged, not really considering myself equipped to comment on how common or uncommon a particular trope was.

"It really, really doesn't." Wakana disagreed. "It's stupid."

"Well…." Hokuto shrugged, picking up the remote and starting to channel-surf again. "It was stupid, how they did it there in any case. But it does happen, sometimes, doesn't it…"

"Well, sure, but that doesn't mean that's always going to happen, is it?" I pointed out.

"Exactly." Wakana said heatedly.

"Hey, whatcha all debating about?" Noriko poked her head around the door and then came to join us, Masashi following behind.

"Trashy Saturday morning drama plot twists and their tropes." Hokuto responded immediately. "Weren't you guys playing computer games?"

"We got bored." Masashi replied as he flung himself into an armchair. "So, what's the offending trope?"

"The idea that men and women can't possibly just be friends, that there has to be some sort of romantic thing going on…or at least that one of them is secretly harbouring feelings…or whatever. " Hokuto grinned and pulled a face.

"It's a pointlessly narrow-minded trope." Wakana said.

"I also think it is. But also, the drama was particularly awful in executing it, far as we could tell." I added.

"Oh? What show was it?" Noriko asked.

"No idea." I said. "We've literally just been channel surfing."

This, for some reason, made Masashi crack up.

"Huh. Well, I can kinda get why you're mad about it, Abe-tan." Masashi said.

"I'm not so much mad as…..huh, I don't know." Wakana shrugged.

"Meh, I kind of get it, it's fine." Noriko grinned ruefully.

"You don't look particularly surprised, Kita-kun, Do you know something we don't?" Noriko turned to Masashi suddenly, pulling a face at him. I just stared, and looked over at Wakana, who squeezed my hand reassuringly, and smiled. I knew what the smile was telling me, that the hard part of telling was done now, and that it was fine. But I could not quite return the smile, and so I found myself looking back at the others.

"Of course not!" Masashi spluttered. "It was just a hunch…."

"What, are you a detective now or something?" Noriko teased.

"Are you flip-fucking stupid? Hell no. Just, in hindsight…well, how the fuck do I put this without sounding like a right arsehole?" Masashi sighed, looking over at me. I sighed and shrugged slightly to indicate he should go on anyway. I supposed that they were entitled to their questions, after all. I just couldn't guarantee any answers.

"Okay, so looking back now and comparing how Ueda-tan and Akamine-tan were to say, how Abe-tan and Ueno-tan were with each other, if they were like, characters in a movie or something and you had to ask me which two would probably end up getting together at some point, I would 100% pick Akamine-tan and Ueda-tan. Easily. No fucking two ways about it. I don't think I noticed anything before, It's just….a something I can kind of see thinking about it now. "

Masashi sat back at that and let out a breath. I opened my mouth to say something, but I shut it again, not sure what I would even say. That it wasn't quite like that, that I wasn't sure what it was even like? Could I even say that? But then, unexpectedly, Tyson cleared his throat.

"Excuse me for my impertinence, but as much as this is….erm, surprising news for all of us, aren't we forgetting something important?"

"Important?" Hokuto and Noriko echoed in confusion. I just stared, and Tyson nodded.

"Yep." Then, to my surprise, Tyson looked me directly in the eye, and smiled, inclining his head slightly in a respectful way before speaking again.

"Congratulations, Ma'am."

I sighed and stretched.

"Yeah, I get it too. Well, sort of." I pulled a face. "Unfortunately I'm probably a walking example of the trope, all things considering, so I'm not sure how valid my verdict is, but oh well."

The others just stared at me for a moment, saying nothing. The only noise in the room was the sounds of the toothpaste advert currently on the TV. Then, Noriko covered her mouth to push back a giggle, and Hokuto openly sniggered. After a moment, Wakana and Masashi also chuckled, that's when I realised what I'd done. I'd made a joke. About Koutarou, about what had happened between us. A joke. Not a particularly funny or well-executed joke, but all the same, it was still a joke.

And once I realised that, I couldn't help but laugh as well.

The trope discussion is a result of me reading a crime novel where the male and female leads (both detectives, partnered with each other) were friends, but the friendship was being put under strain under the pressures of their latest case, which linked to the male detective's childhood. There were plenty of more interesting and intriguing plot points in the book to carry it along perfectly , including enough to actually show the development and the deterioration of the friendship and then the author had to throw in some sexual tension between them for no discernible reason.
A friends-to-lovers trope in itself isn't something I have an issue to it, in fact, there's something about the progression that makes sense in as far as getting to know someone goes. And I am also aware that some male/female friendships will have that undertone to them, and that it can change the dynamics of said friendship a lot. And I am fine with that- I mean Chieko and Koutarou sort of fall into this sort of category, for crying out loud. It's just when it comes under the assumption that all male-female relationships (that aren't familial ones) include sexual/romantic undertones (or will inevitably become that sort of relationship) that I get annoyed. And I got annoyed by this crime novel because it sort of made this assumption, even though in all other aspects it was actually a really good novel.
Then I was reading some articles about the concept of friendzoning and whether it's harmful or not, while at the same time trying to figure out what this next TV-watching conversation should be about. And somehow I ended up putting all these things together (I have no idea how either), and thus the above scene happened.
Plus I feel like it's an important thing, that Chieko is getting to a place where she can make a sort-of joke about some aspect of her circumstances. It's not like the magical turning point where everything is instantly okay because this one little thing happened, it's...well, one of many turning points, that point her in the direction of the day she'll at least be at peace with her own sadness about things.

So...yeah, I'll leave the ranting and rambling there for now and, as always, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.