After the celebration had died down and the sun had set, Miyuki came up to Minami to talk. Being a little older, she was better able to come to terms with what had happened and could tell that her friend had been through a fair bit over the last 24 hours.
"Is everything okay?" asked Miyuki in a tender, almost maternal voice. Particularly since she started wearing glasses a few years ago as her eyesight tragically degraded, she always had the look of someone who at once older than she really was and would probably never look a day over 50 even in her twilight years; her mother certainly seemed to be in no rush to age, in flesh or spirit.
Minami thought long and hard about the question, because she didn't really know herself. Her father had escaped the south tower before it was attacked, and it didn't sound like he had inhaled much smoke or been hit with debris. But she couldn't escape this nagging feeling that something was wrong with him. A number of people had been injured, but maybe some would live. Doctors are smart people and a city as big as New York has plenty of beds for all the injured people. Some of them might get better, right? And while she was still extremely hurt by what her classmate said to her, it was clear that her mother didn't believe a word of it, and she had never known her mother to lie, even when the truth hurt and a white lie would likely go unnoticed.
Ultimately, she simply said "I don't know."
Miyuki took her hand and told her that was okay. It was a scary and uncertain time, no-one knew exactly what was going on yet. She had her own uncertainties - whether or not international travel would be safe again anytime soon, if war was coming, if this might kick Japan's economy back into the reeds while it was still recovering from a major recession.
She asked Minami to just talk her through what she had been thinking and feeling since this started, so they could work through it together. Miyuki was shocked and disappointed to hear what happened in class and firmly reassured Minami that no-one is "cursed" to bring misfortune and suffering to others. She was very much of the view that events in the world can only come about through the actions of man or by natural coincidence, not as punishment by greater powers, and that such things cannot be foretold by seers or horoscopes. Minami was soothed by her friend's impeccable reasoning skills and confidence in empirical methodology.
Harder to help the short-haired young girl with was her lasting concerns about her father. Miyuki wasn't entirely sure what had happened at the office, but she did have a suspicion that perhaps not everyone there made it out in time. She could only offer Minami emotional support whenever she needed it and her sincerest hopes that everything would be okay for her family.
Still, being able to talk freely with someone who cared a lot about her, and was more directly relatable than a parental figure, helped Minami considerably in this situation. About that time, they said their goodbyes and Miyuki returned across the street with her mother to get ready for bed. Minami carried out her own nightly routine before going to speak with her mother.