A/N: Hey, welcome back to Heartbreak Cure! Listen, my physical and mental health have been shot to hell for four months, so I don't think I'll be on a weekly updating schedule right now. But today is the eighth anniversary of the Angel Beats episode "My Song," and as I promised an update in April, I figured today would be a good day for this chapter.
I actually kinda just finished Chapter 31, but I never update chapters unless I have at least a few lines for the preview part, so... we'll be taking this slowly. In the meantime, thoughts and prayers would be appreciated. I've got some wild health anxiety, headaches, light-headedness, what feels like esophageal pain, and breathing discomfort... and my gastro appointment isn't until May. :) :) :)
But thanks so much for the reviews on Chapter 28! Sorry I left you all hanging for so long. Sorry it might be even longer! Wishing you all the best, and hope you enjoy.
[Chapter 29]: Songful Scheme
Unsurprisingly, it was Otonashi who texted him on Saturday about the day's Battlefront meeting.
According to his message, they were going to Kyuuya again. Whatever happened to Yuri's claim that Mizuzaka was the besting meeting point on the map? Otonashi insisted that it was convenient for Shiina, and for Yui who had wanted to visit her mom and do business with Yukine (re: devil tail), but he knew better. Yuri didn't want to see him.
Well, too bad for her. He had to come and reclaim his role as God.
He was well on his way when Otonashi sent him another text. They'd picked up the charm from Yukine, and Yui bought him some time by begging her for information on tail enchantments. Then, after Yukine placated her with a book or two that could help, Yui enacted the Locus Felicis at Shiina's house. Now they were going to a small casual restaurant Yui insisted Kyuuya was famous for.
Was it just his imagination, or did this spell simply make people hungry?
His jaw set and cap straightened, Ayato squared his shoulders and made his grand entrance through the front doors. With the directions Otonashi provided, he rounded a corner and headed straight towards their half-booth table. Yuri looked up before Otonashi did, and her eyes widened in disbelief.
He couldn't blame her; he must've looked quite a sight. With the black cap that he'd bought this week and the casual but commanding black jacket to match, he felt like a new man. Rather, more like his old Afterlife self now truly incarnated as a new man.
She was glaring now, at the top of his head, and the realization brought an unstoppable smirk to his face. That's right. Insult to injury, Nakamura.
He had the upper hand now. Even without her memories, he was sure part of her could sense it. This was him as he always should have been – the Afterlife Naoi. The one that didn't love her.
As he approached the table, she composed herself and flashed him a saccharine smile. "Well, if it isn't the breaker of hearts, the God of the Afterlife himself, putting the ex in extraordinaire."
He returned it with a sneer and a slight lift of his brow. "And if it isn't the strong, brave, fearless leader of the Battlefront, the woman who couldn't even survive being dumped."
"Don't start with that, you two!" Otonashi scolded. He had glanced up at this point, and by the look on his face he was beginning to regret encouraging Ayato's presence.
Nonetheless, Ayato took a seat in the one empty chair across from him. It was, as fate would have it, next to the giant talking roll of toilet paper, but it would be ungodlike and too submissive a move to drag an extra chair over from the table next to them. He chose to suck it up and assert his dominance.
"Why is he here?" Yuri demanded.
Sitting next to her, Kanade gently touched her arm. Her stare was much firmer. "He was invited."
"Besides, if we ran into Sekine, Irie, or Hisako and couldn't give them their memories back, I would never forgive myself!" Yui added dramatically.
"But do we even really need him?" Yuri pressed, and Ayato glared at her. "What if we just played 'My Song' for them? Like the versions Hinata and Yui have on their phones."
For some reason, this made Otonashi, Hinata, Yui, and Kanade exchange bizarrely competitive glances. As if the suggestion had set off a crackle of tension between them. Ayato could almost hear the sirens going off.
"Oh boy. Here we go," Hinata grumbled.
"What is it?" Ayato asked before he could stop himself. Damn it! He was supposed to be ignoring him.
Luckily, Otonashi acknowledged him instead.
"We had a pretty huge debate a couple of months ago, about exactly what Yuri just said." He chuckled, scratching at his hair nervously. "We wanted to get the Battlefront back together, but we figured not everyone saw the concert. Then everyone had different ideas on how to still retrieve people's memories."
"And hey, I thought the same thing as you, Yurippe!" Hinata said. "I thought maybe we could use 'My Song' in MP3 form—"
"—which is totally stupid!" Yui interrupted. Sitting across from Yuri, she flinched in sudden realization. "No offense, Commander!"
"What about 'no offense, husband'?" Hinata muttered.
"It's just way too impersonal!" Yui slammed her fist on the table, earning her a disgruntled look from Shiina that she also ignored. "I know Girls Dead Monster better than any of you, and I know you need the live performance to get the full effect! There's nothing more magical than that!"
"I still agree with Yui there," Otonashi said, with an apologetic look towards Hinata. "Like I said back then, there are probably scientific reasons why live concerts are more powerful than a song that's been bought and downloaded. Yeah, music sounds magical playing through your headphones, but you're not hearing it in the moment. You're not experiencing it with Iwasawa."
Yui nodded emphatically. "Thank you, Otonashi!"
"Makes sense," said Fujimaki, who was sitting on the booth side to the right of Yuri. He'd been leaning against the wall, eyes closed in thought. "When you're listening to something through your headphones, you're not getting the added signals you get when you're seeing or feeling Iwasawa sing. Concerts are more of an emotional experience than iPods."
"Okay, okay, smart ones!" Hinata frantically waved their points away like smoke in his face. "Like I said, it takes longer to find Iwasawa and arrange a performance than it does to run around shoving phones and music players at people who think we're strangers."
This conversation ran rather long for Ayato's tastes, so he got up from the table with a roll of his eyes and went to order his food. It wasn't a disastrously long line, being a restaurant in a relatively small town, but it was long enough that it surprised him when he got back and the dolts were still yammering away. He doubted they even noticed he wasn't there to listen.
"And I suggested humming," Kanade recalled as he sat down, validating his suspicions. "But Yuzuru is sure that Iwasawa has to be the one to sing it. Because it's hers."
Yui examined her nails closely. "Hinakins kept arguing for the MP3 method, but mostly the theory we agreed on was mine. If we're going to use the song, it probably only works with live performances."
"I saw it on TV," Yuri argued.
Ayato gave her a scornful look. "Live TV."
Miffed, she curled her lip at him. "Then show people a YouTube video of the live performance!"
He shook his head, feigning mournfulness. "The moment's gone, Nakamura."
"Just like my feelings for you."
"I'm told that took a lot longer," he said coolly, which earned him another glare.
The others were watching them, unsteady expressions on their faces like they were unsure if they should be concerned or entertained by the ex-couple's back-and-forth. Yuri reddened, suddenly all too aware of the extra attention, and cleared her throat.
"I just think we should try the YouTube video," she said crisply.
Everyone else sighed at their leader's stubbornness (apparently he had missed quite a debate) but Hinata appreciatively high-fived her across the table. Ayato rolled his eyes at both of them.
Of course, Yui didn't look too aggrieved at the prospect of playing her favorite song. She dug out her phone and loaded up an Iwasawa concert video of decent sound quality, then cranked up the volume so the table could hear.
"Alright, Yurippe," she said as she pressed play and allowed Iwasawa to break into a melodious hum. "Think of the real thing. Now listen to this and tell me if this could even possibly draw up the exact same powerful feelings of true existential poignancy."
"Now wait just a minute!" In a moment's impulse, Ayato reached out and touched Yuri's hand. He said softly, in the most sympathetic tone he could muster, "Nakamura, are you sure you can handle this? I know how emotional you can get after you hear it."
Yuri yanked her hand away as if he'd burned her. "I thought you said I was a hollow shell!"
"Somehow you manage to be both—"
"This is so stupid," said Shiina, who had been watching Yui repeatedly pause and unpause the concert video.
"Seriously!" Yui said with unbridled impatience, gesturing grandly to the woman next to her as if she'd made a profound point. "Are you two going to let me play this or what?"
Yuri glanced at her in mild annoyance, then settled back in her seat and nodded lazily for her to go on.
Satisfied, Yui tapped "play" one more time:
"Iradachi o doko ni butsukeru ka sagashiteru aida ni owaru hi…"
Ayato gave in and leaned back in his seat as well, but his eyes fixed on Yuri. Personally, he didn't know why Yui was so insistent to play this song where there seemed to be no point other than proving Yuri and Hinata wrong, but… alright, that was a fairly good reason.
Yui was also an opportunist, he supposed. Any chance to blare Girls Dead Monster.
Sure enough, upon inquisitive glance, Yui was leaning against Hinata's shoulder, eyes closed with her hands pressed to her heart. Presently Ayato wondered if Hinata ever considered using this song as a lullaby for Yui – it was the most calm he'd ever seen the woman. Like she was feeling the effects of a musical tranquilizer.
Hinata side-eyed him suspiciously, so he averted his gaze back to Yuri, who was – decidedly unaffected.
She was quietly listening, yes, but her reaction was nothing like the one in the car. She had her attention fixed solely on the phone in the middle of the table. Her lips were pursed in a firm line, and her jaw was set… A poker face to be reckoned with.
Yui had a point. He may not have seen Yuri's entire reaction to the concert itself, but it was most assuredly never as stone cold as this. Her only giveaway was a telltale shaky swallow that moved the muscles of her throat.
Not that he'd been spellbound by her neck at all – that part of his dream wasn't affecting him… Ridiculous. He shook those thoughts away and frowned pensively at her stoic cross-armed stance.
Look at her, trying to prove something to him. That woman…
Iwasawa hummed to a stop, and the song ended. There was a brief silence in the video before the audience burst into screaming cheers of reverence and awe. Then the camera trembled and the recording cut off.
Otonashi lifted his eyebrows, asking the group a silent question. Well?
But the only people who really needed to answer that were Yuri and Hinata. Stubbornly, Yuri said nothing and buried herself in deep thought. Hinata just shrugged.
"That proves nothing," he said gruffly. "We need—"
"Hey, that song sounds pretty good!" said a jolly voice nearby. "Where have I heard it before?"
Eight heads whipped around in magnificent unison. An unmistakable heavyset man was sitting at the table next to them slurping amiably away at a bowl of noodles. Hinata and Otonashi let out choked yells, the former's jaw slack and gaping like a fish.
When the hell—?
"Sorry to interrupt," Matsushita the Fifth said with an unwavering smile.
Yui wailed in despair and face-planted onto the table. Without tearing their eyes away, Hinata and Shiina both went to pat her comfortingly on the back; their hands brushed but they didn't recoil.
"H-how much of it did you hear?" Otonashi asked once he'd regained most of his composure. "The song, I mean."
"Only the last of it. I just sat down less than a minute ago."
Hinata and Yuri exchanged glances as if quietly deliberating something, then Yuri gave him a conspiratorial nod. Returning it, Hinata leaned over and turned to Matsushita the Fifth with a cheerful grin.
"Hey man, don't take this the wrong way," he said as casually as he could, "but I'll pay for your next bowl of beef udon if you sit over here with us and watch this video."
"Sure thing!" Matsushita replied. "But how did you know I like beef udon?"
"All in good time, my friend," was his response.
Matsushita the Fifth dragged a chair over to their side, innocently happy to join the party of a group of strangers and listen to some music. Ayato had heard back in the Battlefront days that the guy would do any favor for some food, but still, his level of trust was astounding.
His sudden presence was quite useful if it would finally quell this godforsaken argument. No more headache-inducing talk of YouTube videos instead of hypnotism. The man's timing had been impeccable—
Ah. Right place at the right time. Locus Felicis strikes again.
Yui, who had sluggishly pulled herself up from the table at the thought of listening to Iwasawa once more, benevolently hit "replay" on the video for their new guest. She passed the device over to Otonashi, who handed it to Matsushita the Fifth.
Matsushita didn't appear to care that he was the center of a bunch of strangers' scrutiny at the moment. A winsome smile on his face, he seemed perfectly content and invested in Iwasawa's siren song. His eyes searched the screen as closely as the others searched his face, waiting for a sign. A flicker of recognition.
Anything.
Yuri began to grow antsy at the halfway mark. By the time Iwasawa strummed her final chords, she was practically boring holes in Matsushita's head.
"So?" she asked, thinly veiling impatience when he finally looked up from the screen. "What do you think? Recognize anything?"
He scratched his head thoughtfully. "She kind of looks familiar."
With a triumphant laugh, Otonashi and Yui reached over the table and slapped high-fives. The latter childishly stuck her tongue out at her husband, who held up his hands in humble defeat.
Yui visibly deflated.
"But—" she started, then frowned.
Ayato smiled at her.
"Well, Nakamura, it seems you do need me after all," he said, relishing in his victory. The annoyed glower he earned in return warmed his bones with delicious satisfaction.
Then, smoothly, he turned to their new recruit. His eyes glowed with anticipation; Matsushita the Fifth always did seem the amenable sort.
"Perhaps you'd like some help jogging your memory."
Ayato had never in all his memories seen Matsushita with wider eyes.
The hypnotism had gone off without a hitch, and perhaps he had even shown off a little bit for Yuri. Made a damn good show of it that as long as the Operation Battlefront Reunion was a-go, he was the only key to her friends' memories with a decent success rate. The only one available to her for now, and she would do well to remember that.
He had many roles in their ridiculous little group – friend, God, brains – but this was the one that she was forced to accept.
After the fuss of memories and "what are you doing here" and so forth, Matsushita the Fifth explained what brought him here to Kyuuya today. He'd gone on a trip to visit his cousin Hinako a couple towns over, and was now heading back. Then his stomach had started to rumble while passing through Kyuuya, and as a foodie, he'd decided this was the perfect opportunity to try Kyuuya's own "must-eat" spot.
"Best beef udon I've had in ages," he said grandly.
Yui puffed up with pride, and looked at the others smugly. "What'd I tell you?"
While Hinata took the hint and got up to fetch the beef udon he'd promised him, Yuri and Otonashi explained the workings behind this not-so-coincidental meeting and the reunion operation. The concept of magic powder looked like it was a little much for him, but considering he must still be reeling from an onslaught of memories, Ayato had to say he was taking all of this rather well.
"Boy am I glad to see you guys!" Matsushita said after they were done catching him up. He flashed Yui a jovial smile and added teasingly, "But Yui, you sure didn't look thrilled to see me."
Yui flushed, looking sheepish and guilty.
"It's because she thought you'd be Girls Dead Monster," Hinata said as he returned, setting a bowl of udon in front of their new recruit. Sitting down, he looked to Yuri expectantly. "Did you guys already tell him about the charm?"
"Yui enacted it today in the hopes that she'd be fated to run into Iwasawa," Ayato said, interrupting before Yuri could confirm. "And because she wants to put me out of a job."
"Don't we all," Yuri muttered under her breath, while Yui sent him a wounded look down the row.
"Stop being such a buzzkill!" she snapped. "Do you really think your silly mind trick is the only thing that makes you worthwhile? Do you still think that lowly of yourself? You're supposed to be the God guy! Get it together!"
Ayato shut his mouth. Where the hell had that outburst been hiding in such a tiny woman? As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. Such feelings of inferiority were extremely unbecoming of a God.
Next to him, Hinata stared in awe at his wife and broke into a slow reverent clap.
"That is exactly why I married you," he said lovingly.
Yui blinked in acknowledgment, faintly covering up an affectionate smile. "Thank you. Now will you guys please let me explain my reasoning?"
There were a few mildly confused glances exchanged, then Yuri waved a hand. "Go ahead."
So Yui revealed to them her master plan.
"As some of you know," she began, looking specifically at Otonashi, Kanade, and Hinata, "I've been rooting for finding Girls Dead Monster first since the beginning. Sure, some of it was my loyalty to the band, but I thought it'd be smart to fetch Iwasawa since that could guarantee a way to bring back memories. But these guys didn't believe in my GlDeMo radar—"
"How's that going for you, by the way?" Fujimaki said with a smirk.
Yui glowered back at him.
"I briefly changed courses," she sniffed, gesturing to Shiina, "and I don't regret it."
Hinata made a sound of fond approval, which made Ayato look at him oddly. Honestly, couldn't either of them be subtle about it? How could they not catch on to each other when they were like this?
He shook his head in disbelief. Either he didn't get it, or Hinata was too stupid to. He decided the latter was more realistic.
"So we were having that argument about YouTube videos over concerts," Yui continued, "the whole 'convenient versus impersonal' thing. And Kanade broke it up saying that she knew of a tactic they could try instead. Something personal, convenient, and reliable. Something that's worked before."
"Hypnotism," said Fujimaki, as it dawned on him.
Yui snapped her fingers. "Exactly!"
Ayato glanced in Kanade's direction as she was innocently nibbling away at her eggs. It was her idea to look for him? Of course… they had mentioned that she was the one who thought of surprising Yuri the same way they did in the Guild and the infirmary. He didn't know why this shocked him. Obviously she would think of his usefulness. He was God, after all.
"And anyways, while I wanted to do the smart thing and go find Iwasawa first, these guys wanted to do their little graduation group reunion," Yui gestured to the three of them, "and take the small chance that Naoi had his memories and his hypnotism. So the GlDeMo thing split us up pretty early."
"We know all this," said Otonashi, while Ayato preened smugly. "What's the point, Yui?"
"The point is, the GlDeMo thing was never meant to split us up!" Yui said impassionedly. She quieted then, fiddling with her chain bracelets on top of the table. Shyly, she went on, "I wanted to find Iwasawa first, because then she could prepare this big performance the way we used to with Operation Tornado. Then when we found people, we could get them to come see it. She'd play 'My Song' and they'd all be there together to remember everything. It could be like a grand finale."
A thoughtful silence blanketed the table as the group considered her words.
"Like a celebration?" Kanade asked softly.
Yui beamed, perking up hopefully at the lilt of significant interest in her friend's voice.
"That's right!" she said, stars in her eyes. "A great big Battlefront celebration! A grand concert, with a party too!"
She was met with murmurs of interest all around the table. Otonashi and Kanade exchanged a glance, probably one of those telepathic conversations that married couples often had.
"I think that would be really fun," said Otonashi. With a moony smile, he admitted to Kanade, "I would have liked seeing the concert alongside you."
"Hypothetically, a GlDeMo concert like that as a Battlefront celebration would be ideal," Yuri said, in her musing leader tone. "If we can pull it off, it would be more efficient and way more fun than hypnotizing them all one by one."
"But it'll only happen if we find Iwasawa sooner rather than later," said Fujimaki, stroking his chin.
"Exactly!" Yui chirped, setting aside her soda straw. "And THAT is why I call dibs on the rest of the charm enactments!"
From the corner of the table near the booth's wall, Shiina frowned broodingly into her lap.
"What are the odds, though?" she asked. "Of the rest of the Battlefront having seen the first concert or not. Before we get too excited about this."
"Says the technophobe who didn't even get a cell phone until Yui talked you into it," Hinata jeered. "Come on, Shiinacchi, you were an amnesiac yourself. Don't be such a downer."
"She's right, though," Matsushita the Fifth looked around the group. "How many of you saw the concert?"
Everyone but Matsushita and Shiina raised their hands. Yui sweated nervously.
"That doesn't mean…" she said, and trailed off.
"It doesn't," Ayato agreed. "Like Shiina mentioned, we need to consider the odds."
Yui peered at him curiously, silently asking the same question he had of himself at that moment. Why was he defending her on this? Maybe because as their hypnotist, it affected him too, and yet he also felt a fleeting twinge of mercy for the pitiful pink menace.
"Yui went to the concert because her love for Iwasawa followed her into this life." He gestured then to Hinata next to him. "Obviously she would want to take Hinata with her since he was her boyfriend at the time. And besides that, the concert was in Shibuya. You couldn't miss an opportunity like that, because you live there."
He nodded towards Otonashi and Kanade.
"It's the same for them. It was a local performance, so it's not unusual that Kanade went to it due to her love of music," he added, "or even that it appeared on a Shibuya TV station at Otonashi's hospital."
"Because music heals the soul," Kanade said dreamily, earning her a fond look from Yui.
Matsushita the Fifth, who was counting on his fingers as Ayato explained, urged him to go on. "That's four out of seven. What about you?"
Ayato frowned.
"Yuri's friend from work told her about it," he said, and thought back a few months. "She turned down the invitation to go. But then she accidentally sat on the remote and changed the channel while we were—"
He choked down the rest of that sentence in mortification, struggling to look for a good save.
Apparently he wasn't subtle about it, because Yuri's eyes widened and a fierce shade of scarlet skittered across her cheeks. Such a girlish reaction. He would tease her for it if he weren't so embarrassed himself. But the clash of a red blush against her green eyes had a lingering tendency to distract him.
"While you were what?" Matsushita the Fifth asked innocently.
"Never mind it," said Hinata, sounding extremely depressed. "I'm sure we don't want to know."
Yuri cleared her throat and continued for him, thankfully.
"Anyways, Ryou had the invitation because her friend Nagisa used to work in the same restaurant as Iwasawa," she said. "So I – or, we – only watched the concert because I knew about it, and I only knew about it because one of my coworkers had a connection."
"Plus my hometown, Nerima? It's not that far from Shibuya," Fujimaki added. "Like Kanade said, music heals the soul. So when I was acting out as a kid, my sister Satone would take me to concerts to release pent up energy. Kind of became a tradition that stuck. None of her idiot boyfriends allowed, just me and her. Makes sense that we'd show up to Iwasawa's one day."
"That's seven out of seven," Hinata considered. "So then, what are the odds of coincidences like that happening to the rest?"
Yuri sighed tiredly, taking a sip of coffee. "I guess we'll just have to wait and find out, won't we?"
"Pretty small," Ayato corrected under his breath.
The undermining comment made her snap. "Well you just seem to have all the answers, don't you—"
"You dare question God?!"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Matsushita the Fifth waved his arms wildly like a referee. "Yurippe, I wasn't going to ask, but what is going on between the two of you?"
Ayato opened his mouth to offer a snide explanation, but Yuri looked at him coldly.
"Let me offer you a synopsis before Smartass cuts in," she said. "I used to be married to him. He broke my heart. Then I took a forgetting potion because apparently he hurt me badly enough that I didn't want to remember him. I still don't, so now he's mad because I've dented his pride."
"Oh, how objective," said Ayato, rolling his eyes.
Kanade shook her head. "It must be so tiresome telling every new member about your situation," she said, and shared another lingering glance with her husband.
Although he had accepted the Battlefront's connections with magic enough to deal with the forgetting potion aspect with ease, Matsushita the Fifth looked concerned and even ruffled by the explanation. "But that's not like Yurippe at all…"
He looked to Otonashi for help, then sized Ayato up with raised eyebrows. Ayato stared sternly back at him through a sip of tea. He had nothing against Matsushita – the man had once restrained Noda from attacking him back in the Afterlife – but would not tolerate misplaced judgment.
"I think you'll find that it's just like her," he said coolly, putting down his mug. "She runs from her pain all the time and still finds a way to lose herself in it."
A look of outrage flashed across her face. "Name one other time I've ever run from my pain!"
Ah, he was hoping she'd say that. Smugly, he leaned in and hissed his answer:
"Chitose Hisakawa."
Her reaction was precisely what he had wanted – a ghost of panic and fifty other jumbled emotions behind her eyes, her skin briefly going white as a sheet before burning with indignation as she forced herself to push more than just shaken sounds out of her trembling mouth.
He struck a nerve. He struck just the right nerve.
"Wh-What the hell do you know about it?" she fired back, the muscles in her jaw tensing.
"I just have all the answers," he sneered.
In the midst of their quarreling it had slipped their minds that they weren't suddenly the only ones in the restaurant. Their friends were staring at them, at Yuri in particular, with puzzled expressions.
"Who's Chitose Hisakawa?" Otonashi asked, Kanade furrowing her eyebrows thoughtfully beside him.
"Yuri's former best friend in this life," Ayato answered confidently, savoring every word on his tongue. "The one she had before me, of course."
Fujimaki frowned. "What about her?"
"Yuri was at her birthday party the night she lost her family," he said matter-of-factly. "She was supposed to be visiting her grandparents with her little siblings. Instead, the four of them decided to drive to dinner so the night would still be special without her. But they never made it to the restaurant."
He narrowed his eyes, letting a venomous sneer touch his lips.
"The guilt was too much for her. She dumped Hisakawa as a friend and blamed the both of them ever since."
"I FORGAVE HER!" Yuri snarled at him resentfully.
"With my encouragement," Ayato considered, "but sometimes I wonder…"
She snarled again, gripping her drink with shaking hands. Outrage had colored her a very interesting puce and her screaming eyes dared him to know one more thing about her, one more goddamn thing.
Yuri could claim to be over her issues with Chitose all she wanted. The fact of the matter was, she only got around to forgiving her at their high school graduation when she knew the girl would be going off to a faraway university and they wouldn't see each other again. To this day she flinched at the mention of gymnastics. Ayato had understood and not pressed the matter while they were together – but now, it just seemed like such a perfect button to push.
Funny how Yuri could be so close to someone, care so deeply about them, and then just drop everything to run and hide at the first sign of grief.
He took his eyes off of her long enough to catch a look on Otonashi's face that wiped the smirk off of his.
"I think that's Yuri's story to tell, not yours," Otonashi said sternly. "Get off the subject."
Ayato huffed, but the man's solemn disapproval had shaken his resolve. He held his ground for a moment, sneaking one last glance at his fuming ex-wife, then brought his gaze down to his half-empty bowl straight away.
The table's tension dissolved after a minute as the group finished their meals. Many thanks were due to Kanade who engaged Matsushita the Fifth in a conversation about his cousin Hinako's garden. Otonashi looked far more relaxed as he listened to Kanade talk zealously about their garden back home, and even chimed in a few times with his own fertilizing tips.
On the other end of the booth, Fujimaki tried to use stories of Satone to get Yuri taking about her sister and brother, and winced when his attempts fell flat. Ayato might've sworn the man shot him a dirty look after that, but he elected to ignore it.
After what she had said regarding his father last week, he refused to believe that he'd gone too far.
A/N: Glad to at least kinda be back! Let me know what you thought.
Preview:
"You're a moron!"
"What exactly do you have for me?"
"I'll only help you if you admit it."
"I am NOT in love!"
"You have terrifying taste in women."
"We covered that."
"Consider it a peace offering."
[Chapter 30]: Know Thine Enemy.
