4/30

Ann hunches over her desk all morning. Her early greeting to Akira and Morgana was soft-spoken and distracted. So when the bell rings, and she spins around and plants her palms on Akira's desk, he recoils from the sudden outburst.

"I need a favor and you have to say yes!" She blurts.

"Yes," Akira replies.

Ann blinks, pulls her hands away and drops them into her lap, and dips her head forward. "Sorry. I didn't mean to sound so crazy all of a sudden."

"That's alright," Akira says. With one hand, he pokes Morgana's nose. The cat sniffles, and rolls away. "Do you need Mona? Looks like he's napping."

"No, it's fine. I kind of just wanted to ask you."

"Alright, what's up?"

Ann's hands ball into fists, and her gaze drifts to the notebooks on Akira's desk. "You know how Shiho woke up yesterday?" Akira smiles and nods. "Well, I wanted to go see her right away, but her family didn't want to overexcite her right after she came out of the coma."

"Makes sense."

"Right. So, they told me I could come today. But..." She trails off. Bites her lip.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm scared."

"Of what?"

It takes Ann a full minute before she can reply. "Shiho."

"You're scared of your best friend?"

Ann rolls her eyes. "Not like that. But, what if she's mad at me? What if she hates me?" Her voice drops to a whisper. "After all, if I had just done what Kamoshida had wanted, nothing would have happened to her."

"Ann, come on."

"What?" She asks, and glares at him. "I'm not saying it's something I should've done, but it's the truth. Isn't it?" Akira frowns, and says nothing. "We both know it. Shiho probably knows it too. So, if I go, and it turns out she hates me... I just, I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Do you not want to go?" Akira asks.

She shakes her head. "I'm going. I said I would. And no matter what she thinks about me, she's still my best friend. I have to be there for her, even if it's someone for her to hate." She looks Akira in the eye, and says, "I want you to come with me."

He nods. "Alright."

"Really?"

"Of course. Should we bring Ryuji too?"

"Umm..." Ann says, and looks away again. "I kind of want to ask him, but I also kind of don't want to ask him. Does that make sense?"

"Not really."

She frowns. "Well, you know how he is. He's like, the living opposite of the word 'calm.' I just don't want Shiho to get even more riled up. Do you get it?"

Akira thinks of Ryuji's abundant personality. "A hospital isn't his kind of place."

She nods. "Exactly." Then she blushes. "I mean, I'd totally like it if he came. It's just, you know, Shiho. Plus, if she totally hates me now, I don't think I'll be able to stand it, and I, uh, don't want him seeing me like that." Her eyes widen and she stares at Akira. "Not that it's all that important anyway, and look why are we sitting here? Can we just go?"

"Sure," Akira says, shaking Morgana awake. The cat protests and lashes out at Akira with his claws, but the teen dodges them. "Let's go."

#

Makoto finds Kurusu as he exits Shujin by the front gate. He stands shoulder to shoulder with Takamaki, and the sight elicits something inside her. It feels a bit like bile in her throat, but she does not feel sick or nauseous. "Kurusu," she calls, and the two stop and turn back to her.

Makoto halts a few steps above them, suddenly wordless. Takamaki looks from Makoto, back to Kurusu, and back to Makoto. "I'll, uh, keep going." She turns around, but glances at Kurusu. "You'll catch up, right?"

"Yeah, just give me a minute," he replies, and Makoto suddenly feels like she's inhaled smoke. He looks up at her. "What's up?"

What's up? What's up? Her hands clench around her bag. She fights to keep her face neutral. What's up? She thinks. What's up with you? "Are you... heading somewhere with Takamaki?"

"Hmm?" He asks, then nods. "Oh, yeah. We're going to see Shiho in the hospital."

Makoto's eyes widen. "Suzui's awake?"

Kurusu frowns. "Oh, crap." He looks around, but no one else is near them. "Listen, could you keep that to yourself for right now? I'm not sure I was supposed to spill that."

Makoto nods. "Of course. Of course." Wait, so they're just going to the hospital? Good. People don't go on dates to hospitals. Wait... do people go on dates to hospitals? What would they do there?

She shakes her head clear. Steels herself. She is a Niijima. Courage. No. Not courage. Fearlessness. "We haven't talked," she says.

Kurusu meets her eyes and she refuses to look away. They stare at one another for a few moments, and then he averts his gaze and says, "No, I guess we haven't. Not since Kamoshida beat the hell out of me."

"Not since you got me out of his office," she says. "I assume that was you who pulled the fire alarm?"

"My cat, actually," he mumbles. Makoto is about to reply to that, when he asks, "Why did you go with him?"

Makoto swallows. She had been so sure at the time, but now? "I wanted to investigate him. To get evidence that he was really committing those crimes." She blushes and says in a lower voice, "And I wanted to stop your expulsion."

Kurusu clears his throat and looks away, and Makoto can see a hint of crimson on his cheeks as well.

"I guess it didn't matter in the long run," she says. "He confessed." He stiffens at this, then relaxes, more than he had been. As if he's trying to appear relaxed. "But, thank you, Kurusu-kun. For what you did." She smiles. "And for the birthday present."

He grins and looks back at her, his eyes alight. "I had a feeling you'd like that."

"Where did you find it?"

"At a second hand store near where I live."

"I couldn't believe it when I saw it."

"That's what I was going for."

"Thank you," she says. "Really. Thank you."

He shrugs and puts his hands in his pockets. "It was nothing. I'm sure you got a lot of cooler stuff than that."

Her eyes narrow. "There's nothing cooler than Buchi-kun," she says, an edge to her voice.

Kurusu's smile morphs into that teasing, knowing, crazy smirk that he always wears for her, and Makoto feels her heart flutter. "Whatever you say."

She realigns herself. Ask him. "There's one last thing I wanted to speak to you about, Kurusu-kun."

"What's that?"

She halts just a moment before she can say, "Our study sessions."

"Oh," he replies. "Right."

"We never really followed up on those. What with everything that happened immediately afterwards, I never got a chance to reach out to you. But, you did meet with me every day, after school, for a week. So, I'll be blunt. I think you can further benefit from them, and I'd like to continue them." She smiles a bit, and her pulse quickens. "It doesn't have to be every day, of course." She keeps her breath steady.

"I'd like that," he says, with no hesitation, and Makoto starts to feel something but then he walks back up the steps, pulls out his phone and says, "Why don't we exchange numbers? That way, if I ditch you, you can threaten my life right away, instead of having to wait until the next day," and Makoto feels something else entirely.

She blushes and says, "That would be agreeable," and then realizes that she just said, "That would be agreeable," and inwardly groans at herself for saying something so dumb. But her voice is steady when she gives him her number, and she is very proud of that. Small victories, she thinks.

Then she goes for a larger one. "There's one more thing. You don't have to keep calling me Niijima-senpai." She resists the urge to swallow, and sort of succeeds. "Actually, I'd prefer it if you called me Makoto."

His flirty smirk disappears, and something else writes its way across his face. Something warm. "Then you're going to have to call me, Akira."

"Very well, Akira." The name, not said in anger or frustration, feels good on her tongue.

He nods, slowly, as if he's confirmed something. "I should get going. But we'll talk soon, yeah? Set up our next session?"

"That sounds like a good idea."

"Good." He half-turns from her, then looks back. The smirk has returned. "See you around, Makoto." Then he turns, and walks off.

It takes a significant amount of effort for her to not sigh. When she realizes what she's resisting, she shakes her head and whispers, "Get ahold of yourself, Niijima."

#

Room 345. The door is thick, painted beige, with a smudgy, rust red knob. A plastic chute hangs off it, and inside rests a clipboard covered in papers in turn covered in phrases and numbers Ann cannot understand. A small whiteboard sits dead center, with the name, 'Shiho Suzui' written in thick, black marker.

Ann's lips are sucked in, forming a thin, pale slice across her face. Akira stands alongside her, singular and silent, the sterile beams of light glancing off his glasses and turning them to opaque reflections of odd shapes and refractions. His bag is still. Morgana is outside.

"You okay?" He asks, and his voice seems to echo as if from very far away.

"Not really," she replies, and hates the way her voice sounds. It is trembling, emaciated, and she had promised herself she wouldn't be this way. Not in front of Shiho.

She's going to hate me. She's going to hate me. She's going to hate me. And she will be justified in it.

"Do you want to come back later?" His voice echoes up from some bottomless pit.

"Thank you for coming with me," she says, and she realizes that her hand is halfway to the knob. "I might be a while."

"I'll be here." The words are a warm compress on her chest. She opens the door and steps inside.

The lights are off and the blinds are drawn. A faint orange early twilight creeps in around the latter's edges, giving the small, box-like room an otherworldly quality.

She sees the bed. It is nondescript, like any hospital bed in any hospital in any country, and this strikes Ann as severely unfair. Don't they know what she's been through? She should get a better bed!

Shiho Suzui lays in it, propped up by a set of pillows, blankets folded up across her waist, hands folded in her lap. Her black hair is absent her typical ponytail, it lays loose down her back. Her head is turned from her, staring at the blinds as if she can see the Tokyo skyline that hides behind them.

Ann's mouth works, but her words become dust before they can escape as sounds.

Her friend's head turns, and Ann sees what she is now. Her skin is so papery, dehydrated and worn. Her eyes are dim and glazed. Strands of her hair clutch, sweat-damp, to her forehead. Her lips are cracked, scabbed, and purplish.

Ann finds her tongue. "Shiho?"

For a brief moment, the worst moment in Ann Takamaki's life, there is no recognition. Confusion scribbles its way across Shiho's face in brought together brows, narrowed eyes, and pursed lips.

And then.

Lights flick on behind her eyes, and they widen. Her cheeks flush. Her withered mouth works and sputters out pale exhales before she finally manages one love-filled, "Ann!"

And then.

And then Ann is crossing the room and a film of tears coats her eyes and broken gasps escape her lips and she leans over Shiho's bed and buries her face into her best friend's neck and clutches her as tight as she can, and she is shouting, "You jerk! You jerk! You jerk! How could you do that?" And she says so many other things about how scared she was and how lonely she would have been and how every day without her had felt like the worst year in the history of years.

And then Shiho's hand rest on Ann's back, and through her own choked sobs, she manages to say, "Wow. Your bedside manner sucks."

And then Ann is laughing and she has never felt so good.

Time passes the way it does, and eventually finds Ann sitting in the room's sole chair, bag at her feet, her body leaning towards the bed. "I'm so sorry," she says.

Shiho's head shakes. "I'm the one who should be sorry."

"No," Ann says, and stomps her foot on the ground. "You didn't do anything! Kamoshida-" but she stops when her friend winces. "S-sorry."

Shiho looks at her lap, a distant look on her face. "It's alright. I know he's not here. My mom and dad told me about what he did. Is it true he confessed in front of the whole school?"

Ann nods. "Pretty much."

They are silent for a time, and when next Shiho speaks, the words are barely above whispers. "I didn't really want to die. I just wanted it all to stop."

Ann rubs her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt. It comes away wet. "I'm sorry I couldn't stop him."

Shiho looks at her, her fragile smile worn like something she is not used to. "I know you led him on for me, Ann." Ann blinks. "I'm sorry I didn't..." but her lip begins to tremble and her head dips forward. "It hurt."

Ann reaches out and takes Shiho's hand, who squeezes it in return, and again they lapse into quiet. Eventually, Ann ventures to speak. "I think," she says. "That if we had been a bit more honest with each other, we could've figured a way out." Shiho nods. "So, that's it. No more secrets. From now on, we tell each other everything." She puts as much steel behind her voice as she can. "I never want to get that close to losing you again." She wets her lips, and looks back at the still closed door. "That's why I have to tell you something. It's going to sound crazy, but I promise it's the truth."

"O-okay," Shiho replies. Ann tells her of the past few weeks, and as she does, Shiho's eyes widen.

#

Akira flips mindlessly through his phone in the hospital's hall, seated in a spare chair seemingly thrown up against the wall. Whatever nurses and doctors pass him pay him no mind, and that suits Akira just fine.

Ann exits Room 345, and looks happily exhausted. She smiles when their eyes meet, and Akira stands. "So, she doesn't hate you."

Ann shakes her head. "Nope."

Akira returns his phone to pocket. "That's good."

"Listen," Ann says, and walks up to him. She folds herself up against his arm, cups her mouth and whispers into his ear, "I told her, about the Metaverse."

Akira blinks, and wonders how he should feel about this. He is surprised when he realizes he has very little reaction. Ann must read his trepidation over this as frustration, because she bites her lip and hurriedly blurts out, "I'm sorry, I just had to tell her. The whole reason I got involved was because of her anyway, and-"

"No, it's fine," Akira says. When Ann blinks, he quickly adds, "Really, it is. Did she believe you?"

Ann steps away from him and a grin cracks her face. "I think so. I wouldn't, if someone told me, but she knows I wouldn't make something like that up." She giggles. "I'm nowhere near that creative."

Akira smiles and they head down the hall together, towards the elevator. "Thanks for coming with me, Akira," she says.

"Anytime."

"Yeah, well, I may take you up on that." Ann pressed the elevator's button and turns back to stare down the hall. "I need to be strong now, for Shiho's sake. She's been through so much and she'll need me. So, do you think you could help me, help her?"

Akira grins as the doors slide open and says, "Of course."

Ann breathes a sigh of relief and steps inside. She leans back against the wall of the elevator and allows Akira to push the ground floor button. "But you know," she says, as the doors shut. "Seeing Shiho and being able to talk to her? I finally feel like this whole thing is over." She slaps her cheeks with both hands, a grin on her face. "So, no more sad stuff! Tomorrow is our victory party!" She lifts her hand into the air for a high-five, and Akira smiles as he answers it with his own.

"We're going to pawn the medal tomorrow," he says. "Right?"

"Mmmhmm," she replies, nodding. "We'll go to that Airsoft store Ryuji took me too. He can't come because he's crazy, but make sure you bring the rest of the loot too. We can cash it all in." She throws back her head and laughs. "Listen to us, talking about selling off all the loot. We sound like real thieves!"

##

A/N: After approximately 70K words and 22 chapters, we've finally reached the end of April.

Holy smokes.

Well now, there's nothing for it but to move onto May! As I said last week, due my finals, I won't be posting again this week until Friday. If that changes... well, you'll probably notice because I'll have posted something earlier than Friday, haha. Thank you very much for all your comments! For all your Kudos! For all your Favs and Follows!

You people are rivers in the dry land that is my soul.