(Even if we awake in the middle of our dream,

We've hunted for the faint echoes underneath this starry sky.)

Aoko gazed at her phone laying still on her bed-side table. It took a while before she reached for it, scrolling down her contact list. Her thumb hovered above the call button before she clicked the message icon.

—Meet me.

Kaito's reply came an hour later.

—Okay.

For a second their roles were reversed, and Aoko felt a little sickened.

There was a flask of juice on her table. Aoko poured the powdered remnants from a sleeping pill that she had crushed beforehand, so Kaito wouldn't notice as meticulous and cautious as he was. She waited, thinking, and rethinking, until the door opened, and a familiar pair of footsteps neared her, silent and fleeting. She knew even without checking that it was Kaito's, and Aoko was sure she wouldn't even have noticed him coming inside hadn't she paid such attention to him.

Aoko looked up and found him, looking at her, with eyes as clear as the sky, and wide as the sea, openly and trusting, even though from the sharp edge of his smile, she knew he knew what was coming.

Aoko could only let out a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes as she motioned for him to sit down at the seat near her bedside, the seat he had sat for countless hours on end, staying beside her, staying with her, just like he had promised on a night long ago. (A promise he had always stupidly kept even though everything else had been a lie).

She watched him sit down, just as she expected; he was complying with her demands. (And she wondered for how long, was he planning to keep the charade going?)

"I thought you never wanted to see me again," Kaito said, levelling her a stare, gazing around for a clue whether she was recording again, but she had gotten better at hiding her device.

"I changed my mind," she explained, even though it didn't explain anything at all, and without another word she reached for the flask, pouring two cups, one for him and one for herself, filling each with his favourite fruit juice she had specifically asked Bāya to get, since she knew that Kaito preferred juices and hot beverages over water.

"You know how it goes. The winner gets to decide what happens."

She passed him one of the cups. They had done it before, plenty times. Chugging down their drinks in record time to decide who would get to watch their favourite TV show first (in her case) or get to eat the last cookie (in Kaito's case).

Wordlessly, Kaito stared at the cup she held without taking it. Aoko realised he was doing it again; resolutely choosing neither option. Standing still and refusing to walk in any direction, rather sinking quietly, deeper into this mess. Aoko knew she needed a bait—a good bait that forced him to struggle—that forced him to come out of the pit he dug himself in; and so, she said: "And if you win, I'll forgive you."

That rose him out of his stupor. Kaito gave her a rueful smile. "I don't think forgiveness can be earned that easily."

It cannot.

Aoko didn't need to say it out loud for him to know that, and yet she still nodded her head, giving him an ultimatum Aoko knew Kaito couldn't take even if his life depended – although Aoko still didn't know why that was. But she knew that whatever Kaito had taken upon himself was something he was ready to give his life for (—something so serious, he still wouldn't share with her…)

"As long as you tell me the truth, I'm willing to overlook just about anything."

Impossible.

She didn't need to hear him say it to know that was what he thought, and yet without another word, Kaito took the cup.

He cracked a smile, tinier than the one before. "At this point, I'm willing to do anything as long as it means you're going to forgive me."

Even without him telling her, Aoko had already known that. She watched Kaito raised the cup to his lips. His eyes glinted with something she didn't entirely recognize as the corner of his lips rose, as though it carried a small hope that he wanted to see soaring through the sky even with its battered wings flapping meekly against the air current.

.

.

.

Kaito drank from the cup.

From his peripheral vision, Kaito saw the tiny muscles from her throat hadn't shifted even as the cup was raised to her lips, and he wondered whether it even count as betrayal when it was Aoko betraying him – the one he had been unintentionally betraying all this time?

Aoko was gazing at him silently, and in response he closed his eyes, knowing that if it was Aoko then the guilt would catch up with her soon. Any time now her resolve would crumble. Second guessing and blaming herself for not coming up with anything better…

To spare her, Kaito downed the beverage in one go, wondering whether King Claudius in Hamlet had felt exactly like this when he drunk from the poisoned goblet, completely undone with the taste of ruin and loss at the back of his throat.

But Kaito hadn't expected anything else.

After all he had been honest when he told her that he was willing to do anything, if it meant Aoko would be a bit more convinced that he was – that he has always been Kaito.

(Chasing our future under shadows of countless constellations.

We have searched for the same light, following sleepless nights.)