A/N: I am in an amazing mood. I just finished writing up my Nutrition notes, and then I got an email from the data recovery place saying they've recovered 99.99% of the sectors on my hard drive. Must be the magic of 11/11 (plus they're just that good a company). Also, tomorrow marks the last day of my Marketing course, so I'll have one less school thing to deal with. More HC-writing time? Maybe so! I swear, one of these years I'll participate in NaNoWriMo.
Enjoy!
[Chapter 20]: Morning in Mizuzaka
The TV was off and the downstairs was empty when Yuri woke up. It didn't stay quiet for long. As she sat up and stretched her arms out with some contented noises – that was a pretty damn good sleep for a couch, better than she remembered – she heard footsteps on the stairs. Hopefully, she glanced toward the source; maybe it was Naoi or somebody coming down to make breakfast.
"Morning, Yurippe," said Hinata, yawning as he crossed the TV room into the kitchen. He peeked out through the pass-through curiously. "You got the couch? Where'd Naoi sleep?"
She blinked a few times, looking around the room. "Dunno. I don't think he's even down here."
"Well, he wasn't upstairs." Hinata started snooping through the pantry. "Go check the foyer for his shoes or something."
"Don't make me do things early," Yuri whined.
"Seriously, what if he left?" She frowned at him blearily. "C'mon, I'll make you food."
That launched her off the couch. She padded down the hallway and stared down at the pile of shoes by the door. Then she remembered she didn't know his shoes or even look at his feet. Ugh, Hinata didn't think this one through – but she still wanted food. Sighing, she crouched down and counted the pairs of guy shoes. Only two.
Where would he have gone? Was it an emergency?
Frowning, she got to her feet. She was about to yell over her shoulder to Hinata, but the front door creaked open right then and there to reveal Naoi himself.
"Aaah!"
"Shit!" She threw a hand over her heart. "Don't do that!"
"Do what? Enter my own house?!" Naoi said, wide-eyed and jabbing a finger at her. "Don't do that!"
She ignored him and his accusatory pointing. "Where the hell were you?"
"I went to the store."
"For wh—" Yuri inspected his bag; she would know that logo anywhere. Curious, she glanced back up at him. "Key coffee?"
"By popular demand." Naoi ran a free hand through his dark hair, looking modest behind the whole "cool and aloof" guise he thought he was pulling off.
Popular demand… She wanted to laugh, but she wouldn't do it right in his face. Only two out of the seven friends here drank it regularly. If she didn't know better, she'd think he was stocking up on it for her. Problem was, she didn't really know whether or not she knew better.
Those thoughts were too much of a pain, so she waved him past and followed him into the kitchen. She'd rather think about happy things, like good coffee.
In the doorway, Naoi crossed his arms indignantly at the sight of Hinata making breakfast. "What are you doing in my kitchen?"
"You were gone!" Hinata said solemnly. "We thought you were never coming back!"
While Yuri laughed uproariously (okay, so she was a little slaphappy), Naoi made a considering noise.
"You wish, idiot," he said, and fished out the coffeemaker.
Yuri loved Sunday mornings.
The bookstore was a hit with Yui, who was disappointed with the lack of charm books but ultimately found other eccentric things that caught her interest.
"Her mom used to read to her," Hinata explained, watching his wife fondly as she scampered through the aisles. "In both lives. She loved TV when she was paralyzed but she liked her mom's voice more. Kind of leaked into this life too."
Shiina idly suggested that if she wanted more spell books, Yukine had a whole library she could borrow, and Yui briefly gave her a dour look before lighting up again when she spotted the book version of the movie they watched last night. Ayato wondered if one of Yukine's books could give life to a toy devil tail, because if Yui had one again it would be swishing back and forth with delight.
With Kanade and Otonashi engrossed in the tragedy section, all in all the bookstore trip seemed to be a success.
Except for, of course, in the case of Yuri's memories.
At least she found some books that she liked in the spiritual section where Ayato found her. She picked up book after book on various viewpoints of the afterlife, from a relatively unfamiliar purgatory perspective to a novella-sized book on the "Underworld."
"It comes pretty close," Yuri said thoughtfully, scanning the author page for details. "Says that people can only move on after they've dealt with their unfinished business. But then there's a 'better place' and a 'worse place,' and I have my doubts about a god being down there in the afterlife, but I know the one in ours wasn't Hades."
Ayato smiled. "Of course it wasn't."
Yuri glanced at him out of the corner of her vision, vaguely amused.
"You know," she said, shifting the books in her arms, "if you really were God back then… I had a chance to supplant you."
"What do you mean?" He furrowed his eyebrows, confounded at the idea.
God wasn't someone she could replace. In the Afterlife, it was a role he easily stepped into, with the help of the hypnotic powers he gained. Besides, she couldn't replace someone she didn't know. But he was curious, since he'd always been the supplanter rather than the supplanted.
"Down in the computer room," Yuri continued, "there was a massive system. Angel Player software, the shadow program... all created by some human programmer. But he turned himself into an NPC and left it down there."
"And you had access to it," Ayato said, understanding. All that power, up for grabs. He knew what the shadow program could do. Yes, she absolutely could have given his God status a run for its money.
"I did." She had a faraway look in her eyes now, and was playing restlessly with the plastic corner of the book. "Not even his AI stood in my way. I could've been invincible. I could've turned it into an eternal paradise and stayed there forever."
"What did you do?" he asked, leaning against the shelf.
She grinned. "I blew the place to high hell."
He felt himself grinning back at her. Of course she did; that was why they found her later curled up on the floor in the middle of sputtering, smoking debris. It had explained why all the shadows they'd been fighting had disintegrated into computer data. He'd found himself just as concerned as the other three when she didn't emerge, and followed right behind Kanade when she led them down the path where Yuri had gone. The four of them had been less surprised to see sheer destruction than they were to see Yuri still lying there in the middle of it.
And now he knew it was because she'd faced temptation and defeated it. Yet she'd still stayed behind.
"I'm not sure I would've been strong enough," Ayato admitted. "To turn it down like that."
She shrugged, a rare moment of bashful modesty. "I just… realized power wasn't what I was really fighting for."
He looked at her thoughtfully. "What were you fighting for, then?"
Yuri stared back at him, then bit her lip. Ayato consciously tried not to lean in this time. He still couldn't stop his gaze from dropping to her mouth.
"There you guys are!"
They both jolted at their friend's voice, Yuri snapping her book closed like she was a teenager who'd been looking at something dirty. Otonashi appeared at the end of the aisle with a bagful of books on his arm.
"Are you two almost ready to go?" he asked cheerfully. "Kanade's getting antsy."
"There's a bathroom in the store," Ayato said, masking most of his irritation since Otonashi didn't deserve to be on the end of it.
Otonashi laughed. "It's not that this time." His focus switched to Yuri, who was grabbing some of her preferred afterlife books off the shelves. "Any luck, Yuri? Anything seem familiar?"
"This place does," said Yuri, balancing the books in her arms. She tilted her head towards Ayato. "He doesn't."
Ayato grunted, standing next to Otonashi as they both watched her go up to the front to pay. Really, he didn't expect anything more from a bookstore they'd frequented, but life sucked.
Otonashi kindly touched his shoulder, and he softened a bit. Still, even with relaxed muscles… life sucked.
They had to make a stop back at the house to drop off most of their books – the initial goal was only to browse and see if Yuri got sentimental, only apparently his friends were bigger nerds than they let on – but it was fortuitous, because the park was in the opposite direction anyway.
As the group tagged along on one of the trails through the park, one heading away from the bridge, Ayato had to admit it was a good day for this kind of outing. The cherry blossom trees were in full bloom, and though it had supposedly rained a little overnight and sprinkled again while they were in the bookstore, the sun had come back to warm up the afternoon.
The others seemed to be having fun. Yui jumped and tried to hit every low-lying branch they passed by, occasionally pulling Shiina's attention away from the multitudes of dogs she'd spot playing in the fields or trotting alongside their owners on leashes. Dogs were cute, but it was quite a sight watching a small pink jumping jellybean like Yui try to assert her height among the trees.
As for Otonashi and Hinata, they were flanking Yuri like a golden trio and chattering to her about stuff in the park. Once in a while the guys would scout hopefully for a good spot to play baseball. Ayato knew of a good place but decided not to tell them, purely out of spite that they were hogging Yuri's attention. He didn't think Otonashi cared as much as Hinata anyway. As they passed some food carts, Hinata grinned and leaned over to say something to Yuri. She snarled and hit his shoulder, yelling, "I hate nattō!"
Of course she hated nattō. Didn't Hinata know anything?
Hinata pretended to look surprised. "I thought your taste buds had changed. Naoi said he used to make it for you every night!"
Ayato, who had moved closer to eavesdrop, snarled at him severely and hit his other shoulder. "I did not!"
Otonashi and Hinata laughed happily. Even Yuri giggled, but she threw Ayato an apologetic grin that cheered him up a bit. Of course he knew Yuri better than to think she'd buy into Hinata's dumb jokes.
Kanade, ever the eager one, sometimes trailed ahead, humming and hopping with a skip in her step, but they'd inevitably catch up to her because she'd stop to admire some sort of flower or plant life. She was particularly pleased when Yui took one of the yellow flowers she'd picked and fastened it into her hair. Otonashi had gone moony over her for five straight minutes because of it.
"Naoi, I meant to ask, but why are we going this way?" Yuri asked. He looked over at her curiously, and she shrugged and jabbed a thumb behind them. "It feels like I used to go the other direction. Farther upstream of the river."
He frowned. The bridge was still up in the air for him. It made him feel uneasy and think of his mother.
"I just have a good feeling about this particular trail," he said. It wasn't a lie, anyway. Almost instinctively, his eyes fell on a familiar looking stone border bench up ahead, a perfect sitting spot underneath the shade of a tree lying just where the trail started to make a sharp curve. He recognized it as the place where they'd most often had picnics, and where he'd once dramatically "confessed" to Yuri only to suddenly notice her ring finger and feign jealousy about her hypothetical husband.
I bet he's a god among men, he'd complained. Ayato bit back a laugh at the flashback, shaking his head.
His laugh fizzled out completely when he saw the look of curiosity and recognition in Yuri's eyes. She was staring in the exact same direction, right where he used to be looking.
Was it – did she—?
He was about to open his mouth and ask her, but then he heard cheerful laughter up a little farther ahead on the trail that brought his attention forward again. Two girls were rounding the bend arm-in-arm.
"I guess you were right about that good feeling," Yuri said lightly. She trotted merrily ahead to meet up with them. "Hey, Ryou! Yukine!"
They greeted her eagerly, waving back, and took no time meeting her in the middle. The rest of the group didn't take too long to catch up with her.
"Hi, everyone!" said Ryou, looking much more like her old self. She smiled warmly at Yuri and Ayato's friends. "I love your hair, Kanade. Did Yuri do it for you?"
Kanade hummed her confirmation, playing with a lock of hair that Ayato just noticed was curly. "Yuri braided it. Yui added the flower."
Yui preened at the acknowledgement. Meanwhile, even he had to admit the combination of yellow flowers and white curls looked nice. Very angelic. She almost had a glow to her face, but maybe that was just Otonashi's moonstruck expression reflecting off of her.
"I used to braid my sisters' hair all the time," Yuri said modestly. "It's great to have someone else to work on again."
"Sorry I don't have enough hair to work with," said Ryou, brushing a lock behind her ear shyly. "I thought about growing it out over the winter, but the new hairstylist at the beauty parlor has such a way with scissors."
"It's just good to see you again," Yuri assured her with an easy smile. "We didn't get to catch up that much yesterday. Speaking of which, I'm surprised you're here and not on a date with Sunohara."
"Not when I have a guest!" Ryou sounded scandalized by the very thought. Yukine and Yuri exchanged knowing grins and headshakes. Oblivious, their mutual friend continued, "Youhei and I met for coffee last night and discussed things. We'll have dinner together on Tuesday. But I didn't want to leave Yukine alone by herself for too long when I basically dragged her all the way over here."
Yukine chuckled. "I would've been fine, Ryou. You're a sweet hostess."
"When I stayed with her, she fawned all over me for some reason," said Yuri, smirking. "You've got to literally push her out the door."
Ryou frowned. "…She did."
Yuri and Yukine laughed some more.
Slightly offended, Ryou crossed her arms at them. "Well, enough about Youhei," she said crisply. Then her expression switched to curiosity as she acknowledged the others. "Yukine told me you guys want to use Locus Felicis to find some long lost friends, right?"
"That's what we're hoping," said Otonashi.
Ryou looked thoughtful. "It's just strange that Yuri and Naoi ever mentioned very many old friends before. None by your names, anyway."
"Well, you never mentioned Naoi before," Yuri countered.
Ryou squeaked theatrically, her lip sticking out in a guilty pout. "That's different! I didn't want to confuse you!"
Shiina made a small pensive sound. "Our explanations would confuse you too."
Ryou and Yukine exchanged glances as if having a silent conversation, then, still in the same uncanny unison, decisively stared everyone down.
"We would like to know," said Yukine, staring at Shiina in particular, "how you all mysteriously happen to know each other. It would answer a lot of questions, old and new."
Frowning guiltily, the ninja hid behind Hinata and Yui.
This time, the Battlefront group were the ones in a telepathic discussion. Ayato could see it on their faces that they were inwardly asking themselves the same thing.
Should they tell them? Would Ryou and Yukine believe them?
The moment he asked himself this, it felt like a ridiculous question with an obvious answer. Would Ryou and Yukine believe that the people standing before them had a fantastical supernatural bond tying their souls together after meeting each other and fighting powerful enemies alongside each other in a world where they were dead? And would those girls even consider helping them after hearing that story?
He, Yuri, Otonashi, Kanade, and Hinata nodded at each other. Then Yuri took a hesitant step forward.
"Alright then," she said, lowering her voice. "What do you know of the afterlife?"
Preview:
"Maybe I haven't felt like taking a lot of walks lately."
"I got a message from her this morning."
"Why don't we document our progress?"
"You don't ride home with an ex!"
"I have to talk to Yuzuru about something in private too."
"I want to know I can trust you."
"I will never do anything like that again."
[Chapter 21]: Mizuzaka, Continued.
