She's running. To where, she doesn't know. She doesn't care. She's falling apart, letting her emotions release themselves without a care. It doesn't matter. Not anymore. Eri was finally through with her. Finally fed up with her lack of ability to come up with good designs.
"You're not meant to be a designer."
She's not good enough. Not enough for perfect, beautiful, smart, amazing Eri, who also always been better at everything. She's Shiki Misaki. Not Eri. Not smart, not good at making friends, not good at being extroverted, like Eri is. She can't come up with good clothing designs like Eri can. What's the point of bringing clothes to life if they can't make people happy like Eri's designs can?
It's dark, raining, cold, and the concrete is slick under her pink slip-on shoes. Her glasses threaten to fly off her face as her short brown hair moves wildly at the pace she's going. She's going down the long concrete staircase she can never balance well on. Unlike Eri who could skip up them in her boots.
Her foot slips on the second step, and she falls hard, tumbling down the steps. Her head slams against the steps. She loses count of how many. She's gone before she reaches the bottom.
She opens her eyes, the sun bearing down into them harshly. She throws a hand up to block it from her face and sits up, the pain in her head left an echoing memory. She's in the Scramble Crossing now. That's weird. How'd she get here? And hey- she had definitely not been wearing these clothes before. Did someone change her clothes and dump her here? Why? That's super creepers of someone to do.
Mr. Mew is on the ground nearby. She leans over to pick him, but stops when her hair brushes against her arm. She almost jolts at the sensation. A very slight and gentle brush against her, like a bug of some kind is crawling up her arm. It's unfamiliar. She peeks at her hair, shock building up.
It's pink. And long. Just like Eri. She scrambles for her phone and opens her camera app. She looks at herself through the camera. Her glasses are gone. Her eyes are a different color. Her face- no her body is completely different.
She isn't Shiki anymore. She's Eri.
The fact elates her. She's not Shiki anymore. She's Eri. She's smart, beautiful, Eri. No longer quiet, timid, Shiki.
She looks down at her clothes. Shiki never would have worn these. Eri would. And she is Eri, so she can wear these.
She is not Shiki. So, naturally, she is not quiet, or reserved, or following a path set before her in life. She is Eri. She is loud, bold, ready to take on the world and all the challenges it throws her way.
She is strong. She is bubbly, and cute, and friendly. She is loved by everyone. She can talk to anyone she wishes.
She is Eri. And Eri is smart and focused. So she can figure out where she is, too. Because Eri can do anything.
A tiny voice talks to her. Tells her that she doesn't want to be Eri. This isn't what she wants. She is Shiki. The voice is her own.
There's no more time to look around, because a man in a red jacket and a camo patterned bag is approaching her. Shiki would've found that tacky to all hell-
Wait, what? She freezes at the thought. She is Shiki. There's a strange clarity in that statement, the moment making it all too clear.
She erases the thought from her mind. She has to focus now. She pulls out her phone quickly, and takes a quick glance at the wallpaper before social obligations with whoever was about to reach her forces her to put it away again.
Brown hair, glasses, conseritive clothes. That's who she is. She isn't Eri.
This is everything she's always wanted, but maybe, just maybe, this isn't what she wanted at all.