Hahaha I swear I didn't forget about this story :'D
Knowing what an uphill battle she had in front of her didn't make it any easier. Designing the Medicuboid was the easy part, relative to getting people to accept that it could in fact be a good thing.
Shigemura outright shuts it down when she brings it up. Too deep in his hatred for the NerveGear, the prison he gifted his daughter, he flatly refuses to listen to any of Rinko's reasoning, even when she tries to use the 'saving the lab's reputation' argument.
Higa is waiting for her in the hallway when she shuts the office door behind her, and his expression, at the first glimpse of hers, twists into dejected sympathy.
"No luck, huh?" he asks, falling into step with her. Lately, she's been talking a little more to him, since he has a knack for prototyping, and she needed his help with the Medicuboid.
She shakes her head, already tired, and they haven't even had lunch yet. "It's fine. I was banking on him refusing, so I've been talking to other people. I'll be leaving the lab soon anyways, so it doesn't matter what he thinks."
"Wish I could go with you," Higa sighs, scratching the back of his head of spiky pale hair. "It's been a fight every time to get him to clear even some of our regular projects."
"You could always take a gap year and apply somewhere else," she suggests. "Or transfer next year." Higa had already decided to stay here at Toto for grad school when his application was accepted, but that was before the launch of SAO. It's too late to change now for the upcoming year.
"Yeah, I'll probably end up transferring…" He shakes himself briefly, like a dog shaking off water, and gives a nonchalant shrug; even his bristling pale hair seems to stand up a little straighter. "Well, it's not like he can just keep shutting down research."
He leaves with a cheery wave and an offer of help with the Medicuboid if she needs it. To be honest, she thinks she will miss him, as well as this lab, once she leaves. She's been here for nearly seven years now. And Akihiko, who was here even longer, still has his mark all over the place here, impossible to ever forget, so it feels just a little like home even without him—a hollow imitation of it, at least.
But at the same time, there are too many memories here. When she sits down at her desk, all she remembers is how they practically used each other's workspaces as their own, leaving notes and files and empty coffee cups. For weeks, she would grab two coffees on the way in before realizing, although it wasn't always a bad thing; she needed the extra caffeine more often than not.
His cubicle is empty still, and she pities whoever gets it next, whenever it'll be. She's the only one who's touched it recently, having needed a flash drive that she left in the back corner of a drawer. The keyboard that she got him on Christmas that one year is still there, decorated with a fine layer of dust now.
They never really made their relationship public, although Rinko is pretty sure everyone at the lab suspected or knew anyways. Neither of them were prone to showing affection in public, but it's not like they actively tried to keep it a secret either. Even so, strangely enough, this lab—and just work in general—is where they felt closest, unified in his dream.
As far as she can remember, they more or less simply grew into dating. Rinko can't remember a specific day that them spending time together outside of the lab suddenly transformed from just hanging out and talking to an actual 'date'. She hadn't approached him all those years ago—has it really been that long?—with the intent of asking him out; she didn't even know him, or know about the kind of prestige he had or the specifics of the work he was doing. But she can admit that she's always been the kind of person to take care of others, even if they don't ask for it or need it (or deserve it).
At the same time, she was never blind to his genius, even before she knew who he really was, nor acted like it wasn't a part of him—quite the opposite, in fact. It honestly baffled her how he could get so much done when he frequently forgot about things like, for example, food. And sleep. He was a real pain sometimes—still is.
But they had the best conversations. He listened, and took her seriously, and he went along with her whims as much as she went along with his, and she's not sure when she started to love him; maybe it was when his dream became hers as well.
They were inseparable. And the worst part is that she knows that nothing happened to them to change that, because from the start, he was always an entire world away.
o0o0o
Sometime in the middle of January, she turns in her final thesis at last, so that's one more thing off of her plate. And when a hospital in Yokohama agrees to host the trial run for the Medicuboid, Rinko finally feels like she might be able to take a break and get some real sleep for the first time in…
Well, stopping to think about how long she's gone without quality sleep is mildly horrifying, so she just tries not to.
She stays in regular contact with Dr. Kurahashi, the one in charge of the Medicuboid tests at the hospital, as they try to get the word out about needing a test subject, for lack of better phrasing, to be the guinea pig. It's this part of the whole ordeal that has her thinking that designing the Medicuboid was, again, by far the easiest part.
Finally, sometime near the end of February, she gets an excited email from the doctor about having found a pair of twins living in Tokyo whose family agreed, albeit reluctantly, to allow one of their daughters to test the Medicuboid. Something in Rinko's heart squeezes painfully when she hears of the situation of the two girls—HIV, from an infected blood transfer during birth, and now AIDS.
They're warriors, Dr. Kurahashi tells her, these twelve-year-old girls who have spent their entire lives fighting, and Rinko wants to know if there's a part of her that just refuses to let her be even a hundredth as brave as these girls so that she can take it and shoot it.
o0o0o
Winter is melting away down on the ground, but up in the mountains, it's still got its claws dug in deep. According to Akihiko, it'll be weeks until it starts to thaw. As spring starts to awaken and the days grow longer, Rinko feels like she's being left behind, up in the frozen mountains where time doesn't seem to go anywhere.
It's only in the figurative sense. Life still moves on down on the ground below, whether or not she's mentally present for it. The term's not over yet, not officially, but she's started her new job already. It's closer, making the commute marginally less exhausting, and she doesn't even have to physically be there as much as before, which is...well, she's not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing.
On one hand, getting up early to make her way down the still frozen mountains nearly every day was probably the most aggravating part about her current life, and she's infinitely glad she only has to do it maybe two or three times a week now instead of five or six. On the other hand, there's nowhere else for her to go that doesn't involve going down the mountain anyways, so the only other option is to stay here, with him, and commuting less means more of that.
He might be a world away, but the weight and shadow of his presence is something she still feels keenly, even after months of living here.
Has it really been months…? Time, like everything else, feels frozen up here.
Rinko blinks, and mutters to herself with a shake of her head, "Up here…?"
For probably the last time, she's standing at the gates of Toto Institute of Tech, watching people bustle about, most of them dressed up and buzzing with excitement. It's strange; there's a part of her—some days, it's a very big part of her—that always feels as though it's kilometers away, in that cabin in the mountains, even when the snow-encrusted peak is barely visible to her from the city.
He's always captivated her, effortlessly held her attention, but for once, she wishes he just wouldn't.
Rinko heaves a long sigh; she's still getting used to not seeing her breath steam in the air anymore when she's in town. She must be the only one here feeling so miserable today.
"Senpai!"
A tiny smile unwittingly finds its way to her lips as she turns to see Higa running towards her, his tie flapping loose as he putters to a stop in front of her.
"I thought you weren't coming!" he exclaims, batting a hand absently at the tie now half wrapped around his neck. She can't quite remember the last time she saw him dressed up at all, though his unruly pale hair is a comfortingly familiar sight.
"Not as a graduating student," she agrees.
She hadn't had the heart to go to the actual ceremony. It doesn't feel like a huge loss to her, since she already went to the ceremony for her bachelor's degree, although her parents might feel otherwise, but she still doesn't think she has the guts to face them either. When they asked, she'd made up some excuse about having to attend something for her new job.
"And on that note, you can stop calling me 'senpai'," she adds, raising her eyebrows at him pointedly. "We don't work together anymore."
Despite herself, she can't stop a hint of wistfulness entering her voice as she speaks. She truly will miss this place that's been her home for seven years. And people skills have never been her strong suit—perhaps that's why she got along so well with Akihiko, because in that vein, he was even worse—but she learned so much about herself and made good friends here.
Most of whom she doesn't talk to anymore, she adds as a bitter afterthought. And as for what she's learned about herself, well, she's learned that she's a spineless coward, but that's neither here nor there right now.
"You'll always be my senpai," he informs her brightly, and she rolls her eyes, pretending to be annoyed. "So what are you doing here? You leave something at the lab?"
"No, I just thought I'd come and…" 'Say goodbye' sounds too blunt, since they'll probably see each other again, being in the same field. "...wish you well in the future in person?"
It comes out sounding more like a question than anything else, but Higa's face splits into a massive grin.
"Awww, senpai!" he cheers, and she takes a cautionary half step back, genuinely thinking he might try to hug her.
"Not your senpai anymore," she reminds him, fairly certain that he's not listening.
She's reminded of the day he joined the lab, a fresh-faced kid newly out of high school. They didn't take many undergraduate students—Rinko herself was an exception—and Higa just sort of fell under her wing at the time as her mentee. And despite how new he was, Higa had the passion and the brains to keep up with even Akihiko and his looming steel castle—up until the moment he left them all behind on the ground, that is.
Higa glances past her. "Oh, there's my family. We're going out for dinner. Uh, you wanna come with?"
She shakes her head. "No, thanks. Go have fun. You deserve it."
"Thanks. Well, uh-" He rocks back and forth on his heels and awkwardly takes a few steps in the direction of his family. "If you ever need any help fine-tuning your Medicuboid or anything, just—y'know. Hit me up. Or if you just want to hang out. Well." He makes a few vague hand motions that somewhat resemble a wave. "See you!"
Rinko gives a small wave in response to his back, and wonders if it's just a prerequisite for being in the Shigemura lab, to be more fluent in programming languages than people skills.
A sudden gust of wind makes her scrunch up her face, huddling in her coat. As an afterthought, she glances back in the direction of the lab one more time; she can barely spot the building's glass windows and shiny steel supports in the distance, but she knows there's nothing left for her there—not a future, nor a home.
Wind rushes at her again, and she sighs, letting it push her out of the gates of Toto without another backwards glance, instead training her tired gaze on distant snow-capped peaks.
Home is where the heart is.
She wonders if it'll ever leave.
Shoutout to Yuuki :D
Higa grew on me just a little for some reason XD Probably also the last time we're gonna see him though...