A/N: Hello, AB section! I missed the 12th anniversary of the first episode, bc honestly, this chapter seemed more suited for the anniversary of the second. If only for the sake of one scene. Or maybe I just like to space things out a bit. I'll probably have to after this chapter, because the next one is still cooking. Anyway, thanks to ZainR for the review!

ZainR: Let me just say, I love your loophole idea. Iwasawa so would, especially considering she's kind of a family friend. And your reaction to Saki's spooky comments! The mischievous darkness she picked up on a while back was in November, though, and Kimito's entirely to blame for Ayame's death, but Rumple has to be out there somewhere, right? And up to something. Also, loved your reaction to the discussion with Ami and Masuda, and the alternate universe thing! I like to keep their names post-reincarnation and this seemed like the most reasonable explanation for it. ^^

Enjoy!


[Chapter 67]: A Graveyard Gathering


The sun reigned glorious over the final days of May, and Ayato was still in Akuma. He and Yuri had agreed that even after the funeral, they still had unfinished business here. And so they stood together, side by side, in the middle of the town's cemetery.

"Ready?" Yuri asked, turning to look at him.

Ayato nodded, gazing out over the vast stretch of headstones. "Ready."

They walked down the path together, passing rows and rows of graves, some simple and others ornate. Some old and moss-covered, others pristine with fresh flowers. Some family names he recognized, others he didn't. One section visibly caught Yuri's eye; as his memory served, her brother and sister were buried in that direction.

"Do you want to go see them?" he asked. It occurred to him that, this being their first time back in Akuma in years, it had been a long time since she'd visited Shion and Ajisai's graves.

She was quiet for a moment. "Later," she answered, resuming her pace. "We'll see Hayato too if you want, but… first things first."

"Right," he confirmed.

They kept going along the path, following the directions the Masudas had given them, until they found the grave they were looking for. More recent than others, erected next to an older one, so that at least in death she would finally have her father at her side. In the place for flowers rested an aging arrangement of hyacinths – Eisuke's favorite. Orange, pink, purple, and periwinkle blue. They framed the headstone delicately, while not stealing any attention away from the name carved into the stone.

The two of them gazed at the headstone for a while, not sure what to say. Even seeing her name as it was preserved on her grave had them at a loss for words.

"Kurimu Aoki," Yuri said softly, reading it out loud at last. She didn't take her eyes off of the engraving.

Ayato puzzled over this with some surprise. Their decision to visit Kurimu's grave after his mother's was a spontaneous one, but he hadn't expected this. "They didn't put her married name either," he murmured.

"I wonder why," said Yuri. "I mean, I know they were only married for a few months, but still…"

"I wanted to leave it as I remembered her," said a voice from behind. They pivoted, startled, to find Hejjiguchi standing there watching them. Once they noticed him, he gave a little shrug. "She had my name for the last six months of her life, and that'll always mean a lot to me, but I knew her as Kurimu Aoki. That's the girl I fell in love with. I didn't feel compelled to change that." He gestured to Ayato. "I noticed you had your mom's grave say Ayame Endo. Different reason, I expect—"

"Don't you have a job?" Ayato blurted out. In all honesty, he didn't mean to disrespect his friend's widower right in front of her grave, but curiosity overtook him.

"I took time off, same as you," Hejjiguchi replied, unfazed. "Nezumi and Shiruba are still in town for the rest of the week, so Chitose thought it'd be cool for all of us to spend some time catching up." He looked over at Yuri specifically, who had tensed at her name. "Yeah, she's here too, by the way. If you're interested, I think you know where to find her."

Her brow furrowed for a moment, then her eyes opened a fraction wider as if stung by an epiphany. She turned to Ayato, looking doubtful, but he gave her an encouraging nod.

"Go," he told her. "Maybe we'll meet you there, but…"

"The two of you need to talk," Yuri agreed, her voice hushed. She glanced down at Kurimu's grave, unsatisfied at not having fully paid her respects, but then nodded goodbye to the two of them and started down the path that would lead her to Shion and Ajisai's graves.

When they were alone, Hejjiguchi hesitated for a second, then stepped up beside him.

"Look, I never got around to properly saying this, but…" He exhaled slowly, shifting on his feet. It had always been hard for him to stay still. "I'm sorry about your mom, Naoi. I mean, the fact that you two got back in touch recently, and everything that went down that night… You must be grieving terribly."

That last part was better said in a formal black suit of mourning, instead of an athletic outfit, but he'd take it. "Better late than never, don't you think?" Ayato said, more listlessly than he'd meant to. "So, thank you for coming. Even if I couldn't do the same." He turned to face Hejjiguchi. "I'm sorry about Kurimu. It was a bigger loss than our group could withstand. If it could break us like that, I can't imagine what it did to you."

He winced, then, and tried to gauge Hejjiguchi's reaction. Likely he wasn't supposed to give away that the Masudas had told him what happened last winter.

But if that part had affected Hejjiguchi in any particular way, he didn't show it. He just looked back to the grave.

"You're surprised that it broke us?" he said, tacking on a feeble chuckle. "To tell you the truth, you not coming to her funeral was kind of a last straw for me. I know I was in a blind spot, I couldn't see past her death, but at the time, I really doubted that your dad was the biggest obstacle for you. You just didn't care enough to come when I refused to make it convenient to you. Kurimu was flexible for our wedding because she really wanted you two to be there, and I didn't argue with her on that. You guys… brought us together."

"But when she died, suddenly that part was unforgivable," Ayato noted.

Hejjiguchi sighed. "I know what I said. That we never should have been together in the first place. Our relationship was circumstantial—"

"Big word," Ayato observed, and Hejjiguchi gave him a look. "Sorry."

Despite himself, Hejjiguchi smiled and shook his head. "Why did I miss that?" he asked himself. "You've always been that way. Because Ami and I bugged you so much, way back at the beginning. That's the whole reason you two paired Kurimu and me, to get us off your back. And it didn't even work. You were stuck with us after that. Yuri's whole master plan to help us keep our secret—"

"No, it was to help you find time to tell Ami the truth," Ayato reminded him, and added with a scoff, "which you failed."

"All the same…" Hejjiguchi shrugged sheepishly. "It was a lot of work just to keep us together."

Ayato gave him a sidelong glance. "But… wasn't it worth it?" he asked quietly, though he wasn't sure why.

A pause as wind fluttered the leaves and shifted the hyacinths in their vase. "Yeah," Hejjiguchi said, just as quietly. "Yeah, it was worth it."

The way he said it, part of Ayato felt soothed, and another felt just as unsettled as the hyacinths.

"Does it really matter if it was circumstantial?" he asked, averting his eyes down the path. "When you brought it up again after her death, I sort of got it but I didn't, because we've had that conversation before. Remember? The whole thing about the bridge, and the person you really care about being the one you can picture standing with you on said bridge? You couldn't picture Ami, but you pictured Kurimu, didn't you?"

Hejjiguchi shuffled awkwardly. "Well, yeah. I did, but…"

"But nothing," Ayato replied. "We weren't the reason you met. We didn't make you befriend one another. You loved her on your own, and it wasn't a mistake, no matter how terribly it ended. If you really thought you could deny what you two shared, you were lying to yourself."

"Yeah, I know," Hejjiguchi admitted, causing Ayato to turn his head in surprise. He rubbed the back of his neck and attempted a half-shrug at the same time. "I know it now, I was just… so mad you weren't coming, when it felt like you were the one who put me in this position. And you getting tangled up in the relationship you caused felt like the only reason you were ever friends with us. So it was like, why should we hold the funeral services outside of the town Kurimu lived her whole life, just for you, when you wouldn't make an effort like that for her? When I wasn't even sure we were ever really your friends?"

Ayato felt taken aback by his words, which twisted and pinched inside his chest before rolling to the bottom of his stomach like a bowling ball down a chute. "But you were—"

"There was always a distance," Hejjiguchi said. "I always sensed in some way that you weren't completely our friend. I figured it stemmed from the beginning and how annoying we were, figured you only dealt with us for Yuri's sake. You were friends with us because Yuri was. In your eyes, there was only Yuri, and everyone else was baggage. Even when I started to doubt that, when I thought even I was growing on you, it still felt like we were placeholders. Not good enough. That's why, when I saw you with that Hinata guy and everyone else, I got pretty mad. You all just seemed so natural together."

Throughout that whole monologue, Ayato felt each word like a bite from guilt eating away at him. Baggage, placeholders, not good enough… In your eyes, there was only Yuri, he'd said, and Ayato wondered if the other members of Battlefront had thought that way about him and Otonashi. If Yuri had felt that way too, and Hinata… But then, at the end, for whatever reason, he started laughing. A weak chuckle at first, then cackling, and shoulder-shaking guffaws. Every few seconds when he thought it was dying down, it started up again, and he couldn't seem to stop.

"Dude, why are you laughing at all that? What could possibly be so funny?" Hejjiguchi said, though he was chuckling too – more of a scoff, but he had always been vulnerable to contagious laughter.

Ayato shook his head, swallowing down another laugh, though it leaked into his tone. "It's because… when I was with them, they would always remind me of you."

Hejjiguchi lifted his eyebrows at him. "Really?" he asked, thawing just a bit.

"I high-fived Hinata recently," Ayato told him. "I never do that. It felt like a betrayal."

"It was, man, how could you? I thought what we had was special…"

"You just finished talking about how you thought it never meant anything," Ayato retorted, rolling his eyes. "Anyway, maybe it was a 'the grass is always greener' kind of thing. I missed them, even if I didn't know it. And then I missed all of you." He heaved a sigh, looking out over the town cemetery. His eyes drifted in the direction of his mother's and brother's headstones. "I should've come to Kurimu's funeral. Who knows, maybe I wouldn't have run into him. But I wanted to leave this life behind me. I wanted to block it all out and never let it touch me again, wanted to avoid those memories and pretend I was only ever the person I am now…" His voice softened, trailed off with the wind and the sway of the tree branches. "I guess I ended up blocking out too much."

Hejjiguchi gave a light scoff. "You're not the only one."


Four years away from Akuma, and Yuri could probably still walk any path to her brother's and sister's graves blindfolded. The late spring air smelled too sweet in a place like this, the sun too pleasantly toasty on her back. When she still lived here, she mostly visited Shion and Ajisai in the winter, when the season most reminded her of the accident. There were spring and summer visits at first, but those became less frequent after a couple of years.

She didn't know why. Her siblings had loved those seasons best. Especially when they were on break from school, and she would play outside with them. Or even take them to the pool with her gymnast friends.

"They would have loved a day like this," said a voice from nearby. Yuri followed it a few more steps until she passed some trees and found the graves, as well as the woman kneeling in front of them. Maybe she'd heard her coming. Without even looking over her shoulder, she stood up into the sun, which gave the top of her hair a coppery shine.

"Yep. Running around the park after school, trying to get us to play ball with them or push them on the swings," Yuri listed off musingly.

Hisakawa raised an eyebrow at her. "Uh, Yuri—"

"Probably begging us to take them to get some ice cream…" Yuri continued, smiling faintly at the thought.

"Yuri," Hisakawa repeated, and when Yuri finally stopped to look at her, she managed a weak but sympathetic grin. "Ajisai would be twenty-one now."

Yuri blanched. "You shut up."

"Shion would've just graduated high school."

"Stop it! Don't make me feel old!"

Hisakawa shrugged her defense. "Satomi turned nineteen in April. Remember? Ajisai was almost exactly two years older than her, by less than a week."

"Oh my God." Yuri stared at the markings on her siblings' graves in muted horror. She was right – the birth years didn't lie. "My baby sister would be old enough to drink."

A snort from Hisakawa. "Satomi and Ajisai, going to wild parties together, can you imagine?"

"Not as easily as you can, I'm sure," Yuri replied.

Hisakawa frowned, looking down at the headstones. Her eyes dimmed with sadness at the few years between the birth and death dates. No doubt she saw what Yuri did. A sister that was forever ten – almost eleven, she'd argued to Hisakawa on the phone on the last night of her life, but even then not old enough to come to a birthday party. (Well, not gymnast enough, but still…) Meanwhile, Satomi Hisakawa was nineteen and grown, already working at her family's aquarium. Lucky for the Hisakawas that they still had one daughter to come work for them, since the elder had been hellbent on following different dreams.

"Hisakawa," Yuri said suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. "What are you doing here?"

Hisakawa gave her a brief sidelong glance, then smiled sadly. "Can't a girl come pay respects to her first best friend's little brother and sister?"

"Not 'here' here." She gestured impatiently at their somber surroundings. "I mean here in Akuma. You were happy to go to a university that was so far away. You were done with the small-town life. That was always part of your goal, to go everywhere and see everything. Cross a bunch of stuff off your ridiculously long bucket list." At this, Hisakawa laughed a little, and Yuri turned to face her. "Akuma was just a steppingstone to you. So why did you come back?"

The humor faded from Hisakawa's features. A tiny, strangled sound escaped her, and she raised her eyes to the clouds. "It was back in October," she said, a faraway look in her eyes as if she was disappearing into a memory. "There was this traffic accident, a lot of cars involved, it was really bad. And I was working to keep this one woman alive… her injuries were awful and she knew it. Though she was delirious with blood loss – and I cannot overstate how much blood there was, believe me when I tell you it was a total mess, her hair was so matted with it that it looked more red than purple, and it was pouring down into her eyes so that you couldn't see the green—"

"Okay, I believe you, go on," Yuri muttered, the details turning her stomach.

Hisakawa had the sense to look embarrassed. "Well, anyway, she was awake enough that she saw what was going on and was convinced she was going to die. And, you know, we don't want them giving up on us. So I was trying to reassure her, but she was crying, crying so hard I could barely understand her, I was worried the head wound was worse than I thought." To her credit, Hisakawa looked a bit sick at the memory herself. "But then she kept saying things like, 'I shouldn't have left! I never should have left him!' And I was trying to soothe her, I said, 'I'm sure you had your reasons…' But she just kept crying."

She put a hand to her mouth, needing a moment, her eyes filming over. Yuri could hardly believe what she was seeing as Hisakawa gave a hard swallow. Was it possible that a stranger's suffering had affected her this much?

"She was saying, 'My son… my baby boy… I'll never get the chance to see him again. To tell him how sorry I…'" Hisakawa's breath tremored at this, and she wiped at the corner of her eye. "It was just – she could barely finish a sentence. Her crying kept overtaking her, her regrets were too strong. But I promised her – promised her – she'd get the chance."

A lump formed in Yuri's throat at the woman's desperate words. Her heart wrenched at the memory of Ayame Naoi, threatened to choke her up and make her start bawling. "And she didn't survive?" she asked quietly, for fear of her voice cracking.

"Oh, she did," Hisakawa said matter-of-factly. "I saw her again when she was stable. Talked to her about how she'd been given her chance, and she backtracked and said her son wouldn't want to see her after all this time." She scoffed, crossing her arms. "I mean, he'd gone a decade without her, what's a decade more?"

"That poor woman," Yuri murmured.

"That poor son!" said Hisakawa. "That woman was given a second chance at life. A second chance to conquer her fears and go find someone precious to her and she didn't take it. What if he still loves her? What if he misses her just as much as she misses him?"

Yuri bit her lip contemplatively. "What if he doesn't?" she countered.

"Then good for him," Hisakawa said immediately. "Maybe he is doing great on his own. Maybe he'll find someone else who's brave enough to love him. But she's going to keep wallowing in her regrets and never make things right, because she's too afraid of what could or couldn't happen."

After a lingering pause, Yuri furrowed her eyebrows. "But I don't get it," she said. "How did all of that bring you back here?"

Hisakawa sighed, soft and slow, and lowered her gaze to the headstones. "Because I asked myself if there was anything in my past that made me feel the same way that woman did," she answered. "Anything in my life that I ever regretted or ran away from. Anything I'd talk myself out of or avoid like that woman avoided her son. And it all came back to Akuma."

"What was waiting for you here in Akuma?" Yuri asked. "Not me, of course."

"Well, I didn't know that," Hisakawa said, in a snide albeit humorous way. "Saki told me you and Naoi had skipped town a couple years after I left, but I figured maybe you'd come back for Christmas or your parents' birthdays or something. Besides, your siblings' graves were here. I wanted to visit them. And I missed Saki, and Hirohashi, and Satomi, and…" She trailed off, chewing on her cheek, and gave a small shrug. "You know, the whole motley crew."

Yuri considered her list, noting who she'd omitted. "Well, it's a good thing you came back when you did," she commented. "From what I heard, you were finally able to save a friend's life."

Hisakawa laughed weakly, no doubt remembering what she was like as a teen. "Not just that, but my best friend's little brother's life. I guess I can die happy now," she said, though she looked upset and a bit thoughtful. "But, no… with Souma, it really wasn't about that."

Yuri eyed her doubtfully. "It's always about that with you."

"Yeah, I know what an ass I used to be. And for what it's worth, I really am sorry." Hisakawa said, rubbing at the back of her neck. "I'd tell you that I literally used to dream about fighting myself, but I guess that would speak to how self-absorbed I am, right?"

Despite herself, Yuri snorted with appreciative laughter.

"But in that moment, I was staring a friend's real, possible death in the face, the way I never had before, and it scared me," Hisakawa admitted, and drew a shaky breath. "Deeply scared me. I almost froze up – and not just because I was soaked from the ice-cold river water, though that didn't help things either. I couldn't stop shaking. I almost choked and lost my courage. I barely had enough air in my own lungs. I was losing precious seconds… Souma's seconds." Her eyes grew distant again, carried away by the memory. "I had to stop thinking about myself, and my pride, and being a hero, and start thinking about him instead."

Yuri piqued a brow at her with a half-smile. "That must've been a big adjustment for you."

"Oh, don't get me wrong, that's not to say I haven't been a big pain in the ass since then," said Hisakawa. "But at least when I tried to help him live life again, he didn't punch me in the face. Unlike someone I know." She fixed Yuri with a defiant side-eye, matching her eyebrow raise.

There was a long pause before Yuri began to snicker, and then Hisakawa snorted too. Then they both burst out laughing.

Chitose Hisakawa and Yuri Nakamura, laughing together in front of Shion and Ajisai's graves. It felt wrong, but for some reason that made Yuri giggle harder.


"I should've taken it more seriously," Hejjiguchi said, staring down at his wife's grave.

Ayato harrumphed. "What's that?"

"The thing with your dad," he answered. "I treated it like it was just your excuse. Obviously he had issues, but I convinced myself you were just exaggerating 'cause your mom wasn't going anywhere. I shouldn't have thought so, and I'm real sorry about that." After a beat, he laughed bitterly. "You wanna hear something even worse?"

"Do I?" Ayato gave him a look.

Hejjiguchi tapped his foot restlessly and started to pace around a little. "I used to be envious; I know I've told you before," he said. "Your dad was a jerk, and he hurt her, and she stayed. You looked like your brother, and it hurt her, and she stayed. And even though you said you two weren't that close, I thought, wow, that's a dedicated mom right there." A pause, before he shrugged in disbelief. "Until you left… and she stayed. And I thought, okay, so she's a dedicated wife." He sighed, pushing his hair back against his scalp. "Your mom spent decades by his side. Last year, all I could think of was how unfair that was."

Ayato nodded in understanding. "He got decades with his wife, and your time together was so much shorter than that."

"Exactly…"

He rubbed at his wrist, like a recently released prisoner feeling the absence of his handcuffs. "You remember the wristwatch I had in high school? My father gave it to me when I kept coming home late because I was secretly hanging out with Yuri. It was a passive-aggressive reminder that my time was actually his time," he said quietly. "Last August, I gave it away to a kid who needed it more. Told Yuri later that I lost it. So she got me a new one, way more expensive, that she'd engraved with the message, Till the end of time, saying now we had all the time in the world together… It was a third anniversary present."

Hejjiguchi gave a low whistle. "Three years," he said wistfully. "To think, just a few more months until your fourth. I was jealous of you guys too-"

"We got divorced a month later," Ayato said.

A blink, a pause, two more blinks. "What?" Hejjiguchi scoffed, making a face. "No…"

Ayato silently held up his left hand, revealing his bare ring finger.

"No!" Hejjiguchi said. "Are you shitting me?" Then he winced and looked apologetically at Kurimu's grave, before turning back to Ayato with wide eyes. "No way – there is no way. I mean, you guys seemed different, sure, but… I dunno, joined at the hip. Obsessed with each other as always. Just overcoming another obstacle together…"

"And yet, still divorced," said Ayato.

Hejjiguchi peered at him, opening and closing his mouth like he had a million questions but no idea where to begin. Finally he sighed and settled on: "You are one lucky knucklehead, you know that?"

"Knucklehead?" Ayato repeated scornfully, but Hejjiguchi gestured to Kurimu's grave. "You know what, never mind… lucky?"

"Yes, lucky," Hejjiguchi said adamantly. "You're just divorced. Yuri's still alive, and she came here with you. You want another shot with her, you can just run right down that path and get her. Unlike widowers like me, you can have a second chance at love."

"So can you," Ayato argued, wanting to veer away from what he was implying. "In fact, just by doing the exact same thing."

Hejjiguchi flinched. "What?" he asked, forcing a laugh. "I know I've joked about it in the past, but I'm not gonna swoop in and steal your ex-wife—"

"Oh, please," said Ayato. "Don't think I haven't noticed that little spark between you and your new roommate. How are things with you and Hisakawa, anyway…"

"Y'know what, I don't want to talk about this in front of Kurimu," Hejjiguchi said, and started heading down the path.

Ayato followed him. "Why? You think she'll haunt you about it? It's more in her nature to be happy for you—"

"Yeah, Naoi, I know my wife," Hejjiguchi said shortly. "And I do still say 'wife,' even though I've been a widower longer than I was a husband. How's that for messed up?" He puffed out a sigh, blowing at his bangs. "I became a widower at twenty-three. But I don't regret it. Not anymore. She's my wife. Kurimu… was my wife. Chitose knocked some sense back into my head, reminded me that it was worth it. And for that, she's my friend." He sent Ayato a look of mild warning. "Just my friend."

"Right," said Ayato, skeptical. "Like when Yuri was 'just my friend' back in high school? You didn't exactly take me at my word."

"Give me a break, that's not the same, you two were so obvious," Hejjiguchi complained. "Always being at each other's side, the shared looks, the inside jokes, the protectiveness dialed up to eleven – and the flirting! Oh my God, the flirting. Like, it wasn't so much the flirting itself – friends flirt! I get it! You've probably seen a little flirting between Chitose and me and that's why you're getting the wrong idea. But it was the fact that you two wouldn't own up to it—"

"Souma," Ayato said, stopping and looking him dead in the eye. It surprised Hejjiguchi so much that he shut up. "Are you hearing yourself right now?"

Hejjiguchi stared back at him for a moment, until a wry smile crossed his lips. "Ayato," he countered. "Sometimes denial is all we have."

Ayato snorted sympathetically, and they started walking again. Not as Naoi and Hejjiguchi, but as Ayato and Souma.

"I mean, it took you until just now to call me Souma," the latter said, folding his arms behind his neck. "Remember our little talk at the ski lodge? How you totally called me out on referring to Nezumi by his last name? It was to put distance between us so we would never feel like real brothers. I guess you've finally accepted me as a friend, huh?" Then his arms fell and his hand went to his chin. "I notice Yuri's been calling you Ayato. If she was backtracking to Naoi the way she used to when she was really mad at you, you'd be in trouble, but you're still Ayato to her."

"That's just for show," said Ayato. "We were pretending to still be married so we didn't have to deal with a bunch of questions on top of the funeral. It's not real."

"Uh-huh. That's what I said about you two arranging that little meeting between Kurimu and me on the bridge, and you called me a… 'complete and utter imbecile,' I believe you said," Souma quoted. "Let me ask you something, has Yuri been taking your arm or your hand a lot? Getting some physical contact in, just for show?"

Ayato rolled his eyes. "Yes… and when Hisakawa resuscitated you after your little accident, did she give you mouth to mouth?" he asked, matching his friend's annoyingly smug tone.

Souma looked caught off-guard for a moment, then rather humbled. "Touché," he conceded. "I didn't realize you knew about that."

"It's a small town, you pick up on things—"

"Ami told you?"

"Yeah." They shared a moment of knowing laughter, which died down after they came around a bend and spotted Yuri and Hisakawa in the near distance. "It's crazy to see those two together, isn't it?"

"Looks like they're actually getting along," Souma remarked. "Guess there is hope for them after all."

"Guess so…" Ayato watched the two women talk like old friends, his mind drifting to the art on the pet shop. For once, Yuri wasn't unsheathing her claws, and Hisakawa didn't seem to be unfurling her wings to make herself look bigger. They've known each other for years, so maybe someday they'll get along… Perhaps Kurimu had been right about the cat, bird, and fish after all. "It's the kind of thing that makes you almost believe in second chances."

Souma massaged his wrist all the way up to his own bare ring finger, not tearing his eyes away from the sight ahead of him.

"That's what we're all really looking for, isn't it? Second chances?" he asked. "Or just the courage to live on and take 'em."

Ayato remained silent. Hope, courage… people threw around those words like they were so simple.

After a lull filled with the sounds of spring, Souma spoke again. "Hey," he said tentatively. "I have a semi-philosophical question for you."

"Oh no…"

"Hear me out," Souma insisted, though he sounded as uncertain as he did during that first heart-to-heart in the ski lodge so many years ago. "Who, uh… who do you think counts as your first love? The person you met first, and years later ended up falling in love with, or the person you first knew you loved. The first person you confessed to or knew you would do anything for, who had you imagining running through a field of flowers—"

"Stop, stop, I get it," Ayato said, embarrassed by a few Battlefront-era daydreams he'd unearthed. "The second one, I guess. If you didn't fall in love with the first one you met until after all of that. If up till then, they were just an acquaintance, or a friend, or a classmate."

Souma still looked unsatisfied. "Yeah, but what if you did have feelings for that person back then and you just didn't realize it?" he persisted, "Like you should've known, because maybe just the sight of her made you feel nervous or intimidated, so you were always trying to act cool or impressive around her. Show off and stuff, get her attention even though you assured yourself it's no big deal, she's just some girl. She's just kind of interesting, maybe even a little inspiring. Have you ever met anyone as dedicated or as passionate or as strong as her? Maybe, maybe not, but it's not that deep, right? The fact that you always found yourself looking at her was just because she had a commanding presence. The fact that you felt pleased whenever she talked to or complimented you was just because, hey, you admit it, you've got a little bit of an ego.

"All of that, you completely missed," Souma continued, "maybe 'cause you were dumb or oblivious or you just didn't want to admit it to yourself. For one reason or another. You didn't believe in love. You thought it wouldn't work out. You liked someone else. You thought she'd never feel that way about anyone, including you. You were too alike, too different, it would probably end in disaster. You figured your paths would just split off in different directions, and she should go live her life and you'd go live yours." He gestured vaguely to their surroundings, to Akuma in general. "And then, years later, your paths cross again, and you… realize. So does that make her your first love or your second?"

Despite all of that coming from Souma, somehow Ayato was the one who felt winded. His head was fuzzy, his heart rate increasing as he gazed across the cemetery at Yuri.

"I don't know," he said, wishing the air wasn't suddenly so thin. "Technically speaking, I think your first love is still the one that you first loved consciously. But it sounds like you always had feelings for the other person, even if you didn't realize it. They just didn't take root yet, not until you let them. That's when she became your second love."

Souma nodded, giving it some thought, before looking at Ayato with a slight frown. "But those feelings… even if they did come first… that doesn't make the first love any less special, does it?"

"Of course not," Ayato said with a scoff. A memory came to mind, from the baseball field last Saturday. "Anyway, as a friend of mine told me recently, 'It is possible to love two different people. You just love them differently.'"

"Huh," Souma said thoughtfully, and furrowed his brow before looking up at him. "Speaking of your friends, I've gotta ask. What's up with that Hinata guy? Which one is his girlfriend, Yui or Shiina?"

"His girlfriend?" Ayato pursed his lips. "Shiina, I think."

"Gotcha," said Souma, though he still looked a bit doubtful.

Forcing himself to keep a straight face, Ayato added, "Yeah. Yui is his wife."

Souma looked thunderstruck. "Hold up—!"

"Shiina's dating both of them, actually."

Souma raised a finger as if to say something. "I… okay." He lowered his hand in surrender, going on a bit of a face journey.

Laughing to himself, Ayato turned back in the direction of Yuri and Hisakawa, who were still chatting away. His laughter died down, then, as he regarded Yuri from afar. Standing here surrounded by reminders of death, his mind easily transported him back to the Afterlife, where he was watching her give orders to a member of Battlefront.

It was amazing, the way they'd look at her, the way they'd listen to her. Back then he'd been jealous, resentful – he was their God, not her! – but now… she was missing some of that confidence, and he found himself wanting it back. The fire that fueled the Battlefront and kept them fighting till the end. When it seemed that her fire had died down after her ordeal in the computer room, he had done everything on graduation day to stoke it, even if it got him knocked out by a vicious pillow throw. Even so, it had made him happy, to light a spark in her again.

Ayato drew in a breath and felt the weight of it in his chest, as he watched the breeze flutter playfully at Yuri's hair.

Was it possible… had he really loved her all along?


Preview:

"I've got a finger for him."

"I thought you two had finally made peace."

"She kept it in a jewelry box for years."

"All of it was tainted by him."

"I know what it's like."

"Don't do something like that unless you mean it!"

"I'm sure that's not awkward..."

[Chapter 68]: TBA.