8: Bright Stillness of the Noon

you aren't sick & unhappy
only alive & stuck with it.

—Margaret Atwood, They travel by air

The August volleyball tournament is in a small town called Inaba. Somehow, the name strikes you the way a bell is struck and left vibrating. You are pretty sure that you have never been there, and it is such a small, innocuous town that you doubt that you have even heard of it. Maybe some remote family member resides there, and you have residue memory of your parents' chatter as you played with plastic cars, trying to cram them inside your dollhouse.

You are staying at the Amagi Inn, and the hostess girl has darkly black eyes that unnerve you. She is very pretty, if a little gloomy—a little bit of red would do her well, or maybe longer hair. You seem to have a strong mental image of the girl in a red blouse, matching red headband, longer hair, and glasses.

You shake your head.

The team loses, unsurprisingly. What is surprising is that Rio isn't completely disheartened by it. In fact, Rio seems to have a larger interest in how Yuko and Kaz are getting along. Yes, you agree, the two are obviously meant for each other in a way that everybody else can see and they would deny, but that is universal knowledge. That Rio would turn off the lights and gossip like any other girl is not.

They ask you if you have someone you like, and you don't give the easy answer. Instead, you say, "Oh, there's this upperclassman who plays hooky all the time and I find that and his slouchy coat very attractive. Keisuke's cute in a shy, I-will-educate-him sort of way. That Frenchman Bebe's a little feminine and I suspect that he's gay, but goodness his hair is like 24 carat gold jewelry. And don't let Kaz hear this, but his archenemy Mamoru Hayase from that other school has a really strong nose that I like. On Sundays, this guy goes to the shrine and he's very cute in the sickly, flimsy way with slender wrists and artistically long hair. And let's not forget our local school boxer heartthrob!"

Yuko gapes at you in amazement, "I didn't take you for the kind!"

"What kind," you ask facetiously, "the amorous or the promiscuous?"

Rio blushes, "I mean, you have to choose one, right?"

"Why?" you ask, waving your hand, "I have a right to love everybody until I actually do."

It is a very stupid, deflective way of saying 'nobody', but you like shocking Yuko. So much so, in fact, that you decide to tell ghost stories.

-.-.-

Ken asks you how you take your coffee. You say 'black', because you don't want to get in a conversation about the merits of microfoam and the ratio of it in flat whites.

He nods his head in what he must think to be a somber way, and says, "That's the only proper way to drink it. Milk and sugar is too juvenile," he looks pointedly at Junpei's swirling, beige colored cup, in which he was swirling the residue foam gleefully. "See," Ken adds proudly, lifting his own cup of dark liquid, "I take mine black just like you do."

He's trying so hard to grow up, you think. The moment he actually does, though, he will want to go back to being a kid.

-.-.-

You go in that night because Theo calls and says that some hapless humans have gotten themselves trapped inside Tartarus. You rescue them, and wonder if you should be worried that you've started to refer to them as the 'humans', as if you are not.

-.-.-

You spend the weekend with Junpei, who takes you to the record store and yaps on about The Exile, like he is the first one to find out about them. You kindly do not mention that they sing the theme song for the newest Street Fighter.

The day is well spent, sifting through records that you won't buy, sampling music and trying to find stuff to gross the other one out, going through Florence + The Machine's old albums and a few Led Zeppelin in good condition and being surprised by Autre Ne Veut. Afterwards, you two get ice cream cones and sneak into the theater with a water bottle full of bottom-shelf vodka. The movie is some crappy comedy-drama with an actress who is getting desperate for roles and an actor whose only merit is his youthful, hunky looks. You two take turns downing shots and licking chocolate-raspberry ice cream, giggling through the entire screening. Nobody tells you two to shut up, because the movie is that bad, and also because they think you are two young lovebirds. It is amazing what people will forgive based on unattainable, wistful puppy love.

You even put your hand through Junpei's arm as you walk out, as if to make a point.

You both squint when walking out into the daylight.

There will always be a special place in your heart for Junpei, no matter how tired and fed up you are with everybody, for this boy who again and again, cycle after cycle, learns to look at you in the eyes and not at your chest; who sinks into sulky envy but rises like the phoenix; who never fails to fall into step with you and not behind you. The Magician is always the best friend. (And maybe it's always just nice to have somebody to be discard tabletop manners with when eating ramen, and be completely obnoxious with during the movies.)

There was this one time—one time only, you swear—when you got hurt inside of Tartarus. Like, hurt real bad, hurt beyond a Dia or Diadyne or whatever spells. That was the moment when you thought that maybe this was it, this was the break in eternity. But then Junpei started crying like there was no tomorrow, and you had to sit up and tell him to shut his trap and calm down. He didn't, even though you were the one who was bleeding rivers, and kept piling up his pitiful Dias until he ran Hermes dry, and still the tears poured out of him.

That was when you decided that no, you will never date Junpei, ever, but he will always remain the special one. Something warm runs through your chest and into your eyes, and you blame the bright sunlight for it.

-.-.-

Fuuka locates this full moon's Shadow, and declares gravely that it's not an ordinary one.

You roll your eyes—what is an ordinary Full Moon Shadow? There are only twelve of them after all.

You head over to the Iwatodai underground military facility, and Strega is waiting there for you already. More specifically, Takaya and Jin.

Once, you had sought out Jin and tried to seduce him. You had failed miserably, and that was when you found out why although Strega is a three-member group, Takaya and Jin are always found in pairs.

You made friends with Takaya though, in one cycle where you offered him free weed, and the two of you smoked till you were both flying to the moon on the back porch of some rickety apartment, to the background noise of some guy beating the shit out of his wife or girlfriend, and the two of you giggling to the screams like babies to a rattler. He had said that you're an alright person, and you remember giving him a hug. The two of you lied there like that until Jin found you and put a blanket over the two trembling figures, blue in the lips with cold. The three of you watched the sunrise that morning, and felt like something might go right in the days to come after all.

Two weeks later, you killed the two of them.

In the present time, they introduce themselves.

"It's legal in Denmark," you interrupt their banter with Mitsuru about how they don't want to relinquish their persona powers. "And it's not that expensive to fly anymore."

Takaya look at you in shock, like the rest of your team, but Jin gives you a thoughtful look.

"In any case," you tell them, "you should think about how to enjoy yourselves once in a while. Take a weekend trip. Go on a movie marathon. But for now, leave us—you plan to lock us in, and we plan to stay here and demolish all the Shadows. No conflict of interest here. Say hi to Chidori for me." You smile, nod to Jin, and walk deeper into the base.

"You know those freaks?" Junpei catches up with you and hisses out.

You shrug, "Know is a strong word."

"You know of them," Mitsuru says matter-of-factly.

"Yes," you admit, as you trot ahead, chasing the tread marks on the ground.

"How?" Akihiko asks, his voice gruff and displeased.

"Our days are more than just schoolwork and splitting shadows," you tell them, "And once in a while you learn something pertinent, but that's completely arbitrary. Things happen or things don't. Quantum mechanics, really."

"What?" Junpei asks.

"Take, for example, Schrödinger's cat, and—"

"Whose cat?" Junpei interrupts you.

"Take, for example, any cat, inside a box with a radioactive matter that has a fifty percent probability of decay, and whose decay will release a lethal poison of which the cat cannot possibly escape from."

"That's cruel," Junpei comments again.

"It's not actually—there's no point in actually carrying it out," you explain, "in fact, that would defy the whole purpose. The whole point is that the moment of observation, the two possibilities that are two different waveforms at the quantum level collapse. The events at that level are determined by probability, and aren't resolved until they are observed. The cat has nothing to do with it. My point being, no information is relevant until they are relevant, and there's no point in asking me how I got here."

"A thought experiment," Mitsuru says.

"What the hell is that?" Junpei asks.

Mitsuru scrunches her nose, "Didn't you learn this in school? C'est une méthode pour résoudre un problème en utilisant la puissance de l'imagination."

You look at her directly and drawl out, "Yes, Mitsuru, we know that you understand what a thought experiment is, and that you passed fourth grade French. Se détendre." Your French is just as abominable as hers, botching the nuances of the language, but it's not like anybody can tell here.

Her face flares up even in the muddled darkness of the underground, although with embarrassment or indignation, you don't care enough to find out. (When you are a boy, you are most drawn to Mitsuru, but as a girl, you can't stand her most of the time.)

Akihiko quickens his step and comes by near you, until he is neatly tucked between you and Mitsuru. You aren't sure who he's protecting, but he reaches out a hand and steadies your arm. His grip can be interpreted as warning or pleading, and you can't tell whose side he is on. Akihiko doesn't like taking sides though, so maybe he means it that way. He's not blinking and his eyes look serious and meaningful like always, but you refuse to show understanding.

You refuse to apologize to Mitsuru, because what good ever came out of being polite? Even when you were still fresh-eyed and crisp-smiled, when you chose your words warmly and were liked—what did that ever do for you? You had laughed at not-funny jokes and complimented bad dresses. You treated everybody with a politeness and an eagerness-to-please found in the most servile-minded. What was the point? So now, if you speak truth and remain stoic faced, if you seek not approval but to induce pain, if you grow out of the confusing, needless desire to be liked—then are you not more of a real person now?

Besides, Mitsuru is a little bitch sometimes. Who does she think she is, speaking French like she's some exotic aristocratic? Old money doesn't flaunt wealth—it comes to them as granted as the sweet air of summer. Mitsuru's grandfather made it big, and it takes more than three generations to make blue blood. She'll only ever be Gatsby, will never be Daisy, and you think on how much you hate that book.

The sad thing is, she has made such a large part of her identity her wealth and responsibilities, that if you just strip that away from her, tell her that she's not special, then she's nothing anymore. She has stripped down naked for you because of it.

But you let it go, partially because Akihiko's calluses melt some of the bitterness from you, and partially because Chariot and Justice lie just behind that door.

You take out Helel, mostly because he was so offended last time, and let him cast Morning Star until his SP is drained and he starts using the self-damaging God's Hand on Chariot and Justice alternatingly. Justice is killed first, but before Chariot could revitalize it, Akihiko knocks it to the ground and all four of you pound on it.

It doesn't really have eyes, which help as you clobber it and the monthly guilt rises up in your throat, like sparkling water that you drank in the wrong way.

There will only be four left. Soon things will start to fall apart. Maybe—is it—could you do something? What have you not tried yet? Everything you have done in the past cycles had only led to a quicker end, so should you—might you—would it help? Could anything possibly help?

You look at Chariot helplessly as Mitsuru drives her epee into its left wing. If it could bleed, you think, it would.

You head back to the dorm wordlessly. Pharos comes that night and warns you of the evil flowers blooming in your garden, and you read him Baudelaire.

"I like your room," he says to you after a few minutes of French.

You suddenly remember that Pharos doesn't understand the language.

"It's full of … curiosities," he continues placidly. He looks around: there are books in piles around your bed, for easy access but also thrown together when you are too tired to get out; a corner of your wall is plastered with various postcards, from kitschy scenery to nonsensical, vaguely artistic pictures; there is a pair of strange, wooden masks by your window sill, a man's and a woman's face, emotionless and crafted into smoothness; right by your desk you've pinned up a row of useless stuff that you've hoarded, including an empty chocolate box, a porcelain bird, a seashell flower that fell from a necklace, a cheap, golden ring that you picked up from a flea market but never wears, a silver-brushed ornamental squash that is threatening to fall.

You try to decorate your room differently each time, to make things less timid and impersonal. Once you took to an African theme, with carved bowls and cave painting wall decos, until Junpei called you out for being savagely racist. And if Junpei had a problem with it… so you took them down.

"I like it too," you say, and he smiles at you, his tousled hair splayed out against your green-flower sheets as he snuggles into the bed, relaxed and child-like.

-.-.-

You take Theo to the Naganaki Shrine, where he spends the entire day collecting paper fortunes until he has all of them. It's not Sunday, so you sit where Akinari usually is, while Theo calmly counts the slips of paper. You feel like the sun is warmer in this particular spot, and chuckles when Theo is satisfied with his collection and drops them all in a pocket inside his coat.

Theo always manages to remind you to look at things freshly, childlike, with wonder. What would you be without this reminder—without him, you think. Of course, sometimes Theo looks at you in a way that makes you feel that he remembers—all the iterations, the cycles, the countless times that you've had to die and retake that train—but then Theo always looks like he knows everything.

Well, he doesn't know the horizontal bar at least. He takes a liking to the them, and insists that the Master install one inside the Velvet Room. It hardly goes with the deeply blue decor, but neither of them exhibit traditional aesthetics, so you never know.

-.-.-

The problem with going out with Akihiko is that you get all the high school bitch drama—and that is also part of the appeal. Each time, every time, after all this time, you are still astonished and amused by what these girls come up with: 'He belongs to everyone'? He has it worse than Captain America, or Batman, and the girls don't even know the heroics of it!

He brings you to Beef Bowl Shop, and although it's not what people would think of as a date place (nor does Akihiko realize that it's a date), you still follow him in with a bounce to your step.

Over the steam of two beef bowls, he admits to you that he can't bring himself to say 'girls like you' in response to 'what type of girls do you like', but it makes you happy all the same—not bringing himself to say it just that he wants to say it, no? He is blushing, but the steam is obscuring most of his face, and the next thing he asks makes you think that it is a strategic positioning.

"Are you … you don't have to tell me, or explain … but … it's just … are you … is it true that you're going out with Junpei?"

Akihiko is not a man of eloquence, nor is he a man of trivialities, but even a man like him is capable of green-eyed envy, it would appear. You let him simmer for a good twenty seconds before feigning shock, "What? No! Of course not!"

He apologizes for sinking to the base level of rumors, but you graciously forgive him. He apologizes again, and asks you if you want something else to eat, his treat.

You are indifferent—a bit more wouldn't hurt, but you will be a little too full—but it seems like Akihiko is either trying to make things up or to spend more time with you. Either way, you want to encourage him, so you say, "Sure! There's a cake place in this mall that's pretty good."

"Okay," he agrees happily, "Go all out!"

The Confectionary is known for its cream based cakes, and you order a mille crêpe for him and a banana mille feuille for yourself. You don't think that it's too sweet, but still he complains of its surprising sugariness.

You look at Akihiko and only let leak a little bit of sarcasm into your smile, "Did you expect a bitter cake?"

He has the decency to look a little embarrassed. "Just not used to it, that's all."

"Yukari stuffs you with all the extra macaroons that she can't eat, right? She has more of a sweet tooth than me."

"Yes," he scratches his head, only half understanding the logic behind Yukari splurging on the expensive sweets from a high-end French boutique and then giving them to him forcibly, "She says that she can't afford to eat any more. She can afford to eat a lot of things, in my opinion. She should, actually, to raise her endurance in battle."

You giggle, but the two of you are interrupted by the two girls who seem to frequent the mall in search for Akihiko.

"Omigod, Akihiko! I'm like, just so jazzed to run into you here again! What a coincidence!"

Coincidence your ass.

The other girl flicks her nails at you, "Go hang out with your own boyfriend, Junpei's girlfriend!" She says that like an insult.

You shrug. "Some girls just have it all," you say with false resignation in your voice.

"What are you talking about," the girl with her hair in buns demands.

You just smirk in response.

"She's not Junpei's girlfriend," Akihiko announces, eager to show off his newly gained knowledge. "And we were just leaving anyhow," he says before taking your hand and leading you out.

He doesn't let go of your hand the entire way back, and you briefly wonder if he even notices that before just enjoying feeling his large, warm hand over your own. It's nice to be led, once in a while, even if you can walk on your own.

"Some people in my class were talking about me trying to steal somebody else's girlfriend," he suddenly says gruffly. "I was … that's why I asked you."

"It's okay," you assure him.

"… I don't care what other people say."

It's obvious that he does, but you remain quiet and just pat his arm.

The contact seems to remind him of his hand, and he loosens your grip immediately.

"I had fun today," you tell him.

"Me too," he agrees.

"Even if you had to suffer through sugar and all that evil?" you tease.

"Even so," he says solemnly, but the corner of his mouth is twitching upwards. "Say," he starts, "you're, uh, in the cooking club, right?"

"Yeah, how'd you know?"

"Oh, well, Fuuka said something about it, I think. I uh, just overheard. When I was passing by."

He's such a bad liar that it's so adorable. "I'm trying to prevent her from unwittingly poisoning all of us, and you can't even call that hyperbole."

He chuckles, "Touché. But maybe if you have time someday, you could make me something?"

"Sure, pancakes?"

He seems startled, "Yeah, I like pancakes a lot, how did you know?"

You lower your head and hide a smile, "Just a lucky guess. I'll do a batch of pancakes this Saturday."

"It's a date then," Akihiko says. Maybe he does realize that these are dates, you think as you follow him through the door to the dorm.

-.-.-

He asks you to the summer festival.

Well, of course he asks you to the summer festival, but it's still a gleeful triumph, and it is only with decades of self-containment that you manage to just say yes cheerfully and give a bubbly smile.

Well, Junpei asks you too, but you flatly tell him no, you won't be his arm candy while he babbles self-pity on how his 'bro' is the only one to keep him company on this special midsummer day. Just as Junpei exits your room, dejected, Akihiko comes in. Junpei leaves with a leer and a sideways grin, and Akihiko glares at him until he retreats.

You spend the day trying on different yukatas with Yukari and Junpei at the mall, and for one day, the three of you pretend that deciding what to wear to the festival is the biggest challenge of your lives, and it feels nice to be mundane.

You choose a cream yukata with long, flowering branches of wisteria flowing down in a beautiful myriad of lavender and blue, cinched in the middle with a Chinese brocade sash. There is a matching fan, with flowers outlined in a matching blue and a swallow about to fly away. You like it—you think it's symbolic, but in a Chekhovian aesthetic, not in a Hemingway sort of way.

Akihiko cannot face you as you step downstairs, and as he compliments your dress, his ears are covered in a light dusting of pink the same color as Yukari's earrings.

(It's nice to be together.)

He buys you takoyaki, and the cook mistakes you two for a couple, and gives you an extra ball with a lewd wink. Akihiko stutters and ends up scalding his tongue by shoving the too-hot takoyaki ball into his disobedient mouth. He smiles at you sheepishly, and a tiny scrap of shaved bonito is hanging off his lower lip, the translucent shaving quivering in the air. He turns to the cook and explains that you're not his girlfriend, despite the cook already focusing on the next couple in life.

(Well, not exactly together.)

He reminiscences about childhood and not being able to afford a mask—a cheap knockoff to Noh masks that had looked so wonderfully otherworldly when he was young—and you nod and put on the Izanami mask that he buys you. He strokes the plastic curve of his fox mask fondly, lost in his mind. You know that foxes were Miki's favorite.

"She would be thirteen now," he murmurs to the mask.

Even dead little girls grow up, you know, living inside the ones who carry her memories.

Thankfully, this black cloud is interrupted by a booth assistant who pushes you to play a raffle draw. The assistant is juggling a number of small gifts in one arm and grabs you with the other. Akihiko glares at him and pulls his hand off your wrist.

(Unless he also thinks that you're together. Which he could.)

You win a small kaleidoscope, which you offer him, but he politely declines, drawing the line between yours and his possessions very clearly.

(Or not.)

On the way back, you don't even try to take his hand, discouraged and kicking pebbles on the road like a petulant kid.

Until a gun shot.

The shot is followed by a crack, and you raise your head in time to see the bloom of red tendrils in the sky, showering down gold specks in the distance. Not a gun, but fireworks. Somebody is putting on a private (and illegal) show. Akihiko has also stopped in his tracks, and with a shared smile, the both of you stand on the sidewalk and let the light fall over you. It's a small but carefully selected collection, with high-rising chrysanthemum fireworks and a few straight shots into the sky. It is far enough that you don't have to worry about embers falling on top of you, but not far enough to avoid that slightly charred smell in the air, a little like disintegrating Shadow flesh under a strong Agidyne spell.

You look at the flashes of fireworks, pretty and far off, and then you look at Akihiko, and find that he's not looking at the fireworks, but rather at you. He doesn't turn away in embarrassment like you expect him to, and instead just gazes straight at you as if he is in a trance. The explosions give bursts of light that hit the side of his jaw, and the look on his face is the same look as on the other pedestrians watching the light show: some wonder, a little awed, but mostly just content to be here, almost mindless in the simplicity of the emotion.

You suddenly remember why you are together with him in the first place. It's easy to remember the pursuit, the drive; but it's been so long since you felt that first fluttering realization of 'gosh, I want to be with him'. Akihiko has always been such a simple, straightforward soul. In the old days, you found a kindred spirit in him—and now, you can't but help want to become him, just a little.

-.-.-

That night you find the video of Akihiko reading Cosmo's tips on how to chat people up—you don't think he realizes that it's Yukari's nail-painting read.

He practices on pretending to ask someone to the Beef Bowl place. You're the only person he's taken there—except that's also the only place he goes to—but he sounds just like when he's asking you—until he gives up after a few minutes.

It's okay, you think, you can wait. Akihiko always needs the little push that will come later.

-.-.-

You watch all the movies there are during the movie festival—not for the movies, of course.

You make the unfortunate choice of going to see Once Upon a Time in China with Akihiko—and of course for months afterwards, Akihiko is obsessed with Jet Li and his authentic martial arts moves. You can occasionally see him trying to imitate the tumbling fist in the hall, after he thinks everybody has gone to sleep.

Saori doesn't have an opinion on anything, so you take her to see a 50s Swedish surrealist drama on the themes of death and silence—you've always meant to see it, because it's such a classic and influential piece of cinema, but nobody is ever interested in it. Nothing happens for the majority of the movie, and even when something does happen, you don't understand what's happening. It's only natural that by the time the idiots try to escape death while he's busy with chess, you slump back into the plush seat and fall asleep. Saori, being the quietly, surreally compliant person that she is, does not comment on it. She sweetly thanks you for taking her here, and says that she's enjoyed spending time with you greatly. You feel like Saori must have some dark, festering secret, nobody can possibly be that nice—but then you stop yourself from digging, because what if you actually found one? Can't you just leave it alone, and live with the fact that some people are just nice? So you wave bye to her and go back to Junpei and complain that you'll never watch surrealist oldies again.

You try to entice Junpei into watching another movie with you—anything, you'll even sit through a superhero movie with lots of smashing—but he just whines about the heat and retreats to his room. You have a sneaking suspicion that he has some weed in his room that he's not sharing,. You resent that, so you take Koromaru and try to sneak him some catnip before the showing. Despite Koromaru being a dog, he seems to have a higher intelligence than Junpei (you had once successfully tricked Junpei into believing that catnip is actually a brand of weed), and refuses to touch it. At least the movie this time is a musical comedy that's offensively funny about Nazis, homosexuality, and Hollywood productions, and nobody glares at you for laughing loudly in the theater. In fact, Koromaru joins in by barking, and that even adds another layer of humor to the film.

Junpei apologizes with bloodshot eyes the next day, and the two of you do end up watching the latest Marvel film adaption. It's a grossly clumsy and half-assed movie, and despite the actor's best efforts, he simply cannot pull through the awfulness of the script. A couple of cool effects are enough to hold Junpei captive though, and you always appreciate toned muscles and the long, silvery glint of steel claws.

You watch the new Pixar movie with Rio, and unabashedly cry in the first five minutes of silent, heart wrenching life story of a shy boy transforming into a lonely, bitter old man.

Aigis comes to the theater to meet up with you for the next round of movies, and she nearly slams into Rio, going into attack mode at the sight of your puffy nose and used tissue collection. You skillfully turns this into a three-way hug. Aigis is further confused by the movie—which is a crude-but-hilarious bro-culture comedy of going to Vegas and missing a wedding. Where Junpei would have slapped his thigh and choked on laughter, Aigis turns to you and quizzically asks if one often finds oneself with tigers.

Fuuka really likes the one that's basically a literal take on Kafka's Metamorphosis—albeit a mass-friendly, apocalyptic, alien-rampant Kafka, but you can't take a beetle man in today's society without being associated with Kafka. Fuuka is fascinated with the division of society and the rigor of the fictional structure, and you encourage her with little hums and 'oh really's, because you think this is much more healthy than cooking.

You and Ken see the visual blockbuster and Ken is blown away by all the flying and dragons and wilderness and adventure and fancy technology and cool weapons—and he gushes on and on until he catches himself, then he tries to act nonchalant and say that it's all fake. You think the only fake thing is his stilled face, and the premise that there's a story in this movie (well, beyond a simple Pocahontas story).

Mitsuru invites you to go see the long-awaited romance movie that every teenage girl is screaming to see, and you grudgingly agree, despite knowing that you will hate it. Except you don't—you replaced the water with vodka in a plastic water bottle, and whenever wolves appear, you take a swig. Soon enough (before the werewolves show up, even), you are giggling and enjoying yourself immensely. Mitsuru comes out of it questioning the very basis of love and courtship, and you come out hanging off of her arm and cooing at how pretty her hair is.

Bebe is delighted by the kid's 3-D animated film, and every time the squirrel is close to catching the acorn, he squeals with delight, only to disappointedly let out a long sigh when the squirrel inevitably loses it. It's hard to imagine that this boy recently broke down over his familial duties and his true passion of fashion. His extreme receptiveness to the animation somehow makes his struggles … well, make them appear less dire and less important, because it seems to be as impactful as an acorn.

Yukari picks an indie romance because she's a long-time fan of the male lead, and it's a surprisingly tasteful movie. You even find yourself oddly touched during the middle, emphasizing with the listless, self-indulgent gloom that the dumped protagonist goes through. Of course, you find the female love interest to be utterly insufferable—she's just so quirky and bubbly, and even though you yourself were quirky and bubbly once upon a time, you were decidedly different. When you get back to the dorm, you find that even Junpei finds the girl annoying, and that's really saying something, because Junpei will go for anything with big eyes.

By the time school starts, you are sick of the movies and swear that you'll never do anything for social links again. They're all just meaningless fuckers if you have to go to the theater in order to bond. You have died over, and over, and over again for them, and they can't even remember the first thing about you. Each time, you have to earn their friendship—like you even want it at this point.

Pharos visits you when you are raging, and he quickly warns you before being scared away.

You are one frightening girl, you guess, as you look on at the dark room, and the long mirror that only deepens the empty space.

Maybe next time you'll opt out of a mirror in your room.