It was the morning of the Cotton Drifting Festival. The sun was out and there were a sparse number of clouds in the sky. The main road was full of people celebrating and going about the booths. Little kids ran looking at all of the neat games and goodies available at the booths. Occasionally, you could hear booth vendors advertising their products.
Keiichi and Rena arrived together. As they reached the top of the stairs, they saw that Satoko and Shion were already there. "Where's Mion?" Rena asked Shion and Satoko as they approached. "No idea," answered Shion. "She said something about final preparations when I saw her last." Shion did have some idea of where Mion was. Shion had heard about what happened to her sister last night.
The assault had left a bruise on Mion's face. She had spent much of the early morning trying to find a way to hide it. In the end, she was unsuccessful. When Shion saw her that morning. Mion had asked her not to tell the others about what happened. Before she left, Mion said she had some last minute work that she had to take care. When Shion asked what it was, Mion avoided the question and instead asked Shion to go and take Satoko to the festival and then she ran off.
Shion was confused by this. Satoko was old enough to get herself to the festival, something Satoko would be quick to point out. The last time she was asked to do that was by Satoshi, just before he... Shion shook that thought out of her head and did as Mion asked. Surprisingly, Satoko did not object, except to the use of the term 'take', which she rephrased as 'go with'.
Back in the present, Satoko teasingly answered Keiichi, "She's probably finishing her plan to get back at you, Keiichi." Before Keiichi could do a come back, Rika showed up. "Sorry for keeping you waiting," Rika greeted them. She was wearing her red hakama and white haori for her ceremony in the evening.
"You look great, Rika," Satoko commented.
"It looks better on you than last year," Shion said.
"Soo cuute." Rena exclaimed. "I want to take you home with me!"
While they were admiring Rika's outfit, Mion showed up. When they saw her, they immediately noticed the small bruise on her face. "What happened to you?" Satoko asked. "It's nothing," Mion waved her hand dismissively and said. "I just walked into a wall." Before anyone else could ask her why she was late or about the bruise, decided to start things off. "Now that we are all here, let the Battle of Six Evils begin!" Mion said.
The first round of the battle was an eating competition at all of the booths. They went from booth to booth, chowing down on cotton candy, ice cream, and other goodies. They soon arrived at a familiar booth.
It was the booth that Keiichi had help set up. It was now complete with a banner, which had some restaurant's name on it, followed by the word 'Taiyaki'. "So he's selling taiyaki," Keiichi said out load.
"What are you talking about?" Rena asked curiously. "It's nothing," Keiichi explained. "I just helped the guy in charge of the booth set it up. He said what they were serving was a surprise."
"Maybe he'll give us a discount for your work," Mion said as approached the booth. There was no one up at the front of the booth, but they could hear someone working in the back. "Excuse me," Keiichi called when he reached the bar.
"I'll be with you in just a minute, sir," a voice answered from the back. A moment later, a young man with black hair and where an apron, with the same logo on it from the banner, came out from behind the booth carrying a batch of taiyaki. Mion instantly recognized him.
"You!" Mion exclaimed, as she pointed at him, before she realized what she was doing.
"Is something wrong, Mion?" Rika asked. "Do you know him?" All of Mion's friends were now looking at her with great interest and curiosity.
"Well...uhh..." Mion mumbled nervously as she tried to make an excuse.
"We met in town a few days ago in passing," the young man quickly answered. It seemed that he understood that Mion did not want to tell her friends about the incident yesterday just yet. "Though I didn't introduce myself then. I'm Takashi."
"What's going on here?" a new voice inquired. Everyone turned to see an older man approaching the booth. It was the man that Keiichi had helped the other day.
"Oh, it's you." the man said when he saw Keiichi. "I see you brought your friends with you." The man then turned to the young man working the booth. "That's the young man who helped me set up the booth. I didn't know that you knew each other."
"Actually dad, I've only met..." Takashi started to say, but then realized that he did not know any of their names. "I'm sorry, but I didn't ask your name when we met in town."
"Oh, I'm Mion," Mion said. After her, the others introduced themselves. Once they were done with the introductions, Takashi's dad turned towards his son.
"Well, your shift is over, so go ahead and go hang out with your friends." he said. "You're welcome to join us," Keiichi said. "Alright," Takashi answered as he started to take off his apron. "So what are we doing?" Takashi asked as he left the booth and joined them.
As it turned out, Takashi was able to do well in the competition. At the ring tossing booth, he was able to score the highest out of all of them. Their next stop was the shooting gallery, where Takashi did well again, but was not the highest scorer.
"That makes Takashi two and Keiichi one," Mion announced as they finished at the shooting gallery.
"Weren't we all competing against each other?" Keiichi inquired.
"Well, that was before Takashi joined in," Mion began to explain as if it were obvious. "It only makes sense that the only two boys in the group should compete against each other."
"You're just doing this to get back at me for the last game." Keiichi angrily retorted.
"Be a man and stop making excuses, Keiichi." Mion replied dismissively.
"At least she's not using you to get back at someone else." Takashi pointed out.
"No," Mion said defensively, "I'm not using you, Takashi." But he and Keiichi ignored her.
"You're not the only one," Keiichi said. "She made me do all of the set up work for our last game." Meanwhile, Takashi nodded in agreement with Keiichi and Mion was becoming angrier. "She can be a..." Keiichi tried to continue, but he was interrupted. Mion couldn't take it anymore.
"Why you guys!" she yelled as she throw two punches, one for each of them. Takashi quickly moved out of the path of Mion's punch and blocked it. "You really shouldn't hit people for no reason like that."
"But if that's what you think," Keiichi began. "Then why did let her hit me?" Keiichi was on the ground, rubbing the bruise that Mion's punch left on his face.
"Because I thought it would be funny." Takashi answered playfully. To this the others laughed. While they laughed, Takashi extends his right hand down and helped Keiichi up. When Keiichi was up, they were starting for the next booth, when Satoko noticed something.
"Hey," Satoko said. "What's going on over there?"
She pointed to a crowd that had formed at one end of the festival. They were all facing away from them towards something in the center of the group. "I'm not sure," Shion answered. Next to her, Mion had a knowing look on her face. "Perfect timing."
Before they could ask what she was talking about, the crowd started to make way for someone. As the crowd moved, they were able to make out some of the features of that person. It was a young man with short blond hair. Over his back, he was carrying a large teddy bear. Satoko's eyes widened in surprise and tears started to form at the sight of this familiar person.
"Nii-nii!" Satoko called out to the blond-haired boy as she ran towards him. A smile formed on the boy's face as his gaze came upon Satoko as she rushed to him.
"'Nii-nii'?" Keiichi repeated. "Does that mean he's Satoshi?"
"Nii-nii!" Satoko cried as she lept towards Satoshi. "You came back!" Satoko tightly wrapped her arms around her brother. "I'm sorry I was gone." Satoshi apologized. He brought the teddy bear he was carrying of his back. "And I'm sorry that I didn't give you this sooner." Satoshi said as he gave the bear to Satoko. "Happy birthday."
"You don't look surprised." Keiichi noted when he briefly looked away from the touching moment to see the others reactions.
"Well, this wasn't exactly a surprise," Mion began as they made their way to Satoko and Satoshi. "You see, it turns out that Satoshi hadn't left the village. Around the time he disappeared, Satoshi went into Level 5 and was formed into a coma by Dr. Irie. He's been in the clinic's basement ever since."
Hearing this, Satoko let go of her brother and turned towards Mion. "If you all knew about this, why didn't you tell me?" Satoko demanded. "That was my doing," answered the voice of Dr Irie. "At the time, there was no hope for him to recover, so I thought it would be better if you didn't know."
"But then, how is he here now?" Shion asked. "A month ago, I was contacted by an organization interested in the work I was doing here," Irie began to explain. "Satoshi had already begun to show signs of recovery, and with their help, I was able to stabilize a lot sooner than I thought."
So that is what was going on, Shion thought to her self about the shipments to the clinic. Meanwhile, Irie continued. "About a week ago, Satoshi woke up and was stable. After a few days of observation, I meet with the village elders about Satoshi."
"And that is where I came up with the idea for this reunion," Mion finished for him. "So you all knew?" Satoko inquired.
"I knew where Satoshi was, but I didn't know he recovered," Shion said.
"You two were the only ones we didn't tell," Mion confirmed.
"Wait, no one told me!" Keiichi annoying exclaimed. "Oh, I guess I forgot," Mion answered, though you could hear in her voice that she had not forgotten. Meanwhile, Satoshi got up and walked to Shion. Reaching out with his hand, he patted her on the head, like he did back when they first met. "Thank you for taking care of my sister," he said. "I can't take all the credit," Shion said. "She's grown up a lot since you've been gone." Shion noticed that there was something different about how Satoshi patted her head now as opposed to two years ago. Before she could think about it any more, Satoshi had moved on to introduce himself to Keiichi.
When the excitement of the reunion had settled down, they went back to the Battle of Seven Evils, seven now that Satoshi had joined them. They continued to have fun for the rest of the day. In the evening, Rika did her ceremonial dance for the festival. After that, the villagers started to take chunks of cotton and sent them adrift in the river.
It was getting late and Takashi had to go. Before he left, Mion came up to him, away from her friends. "Thank you," she said. Takashi smiled. "It was no problem and I had a good time with you and your friends."
"Will you be here tomorrow, so I can return your shirt?" Mion quietly asked. She didn't want anyone to over hear that. "Yeah, I'll be here tomorrow morning helping my parents pack up the booth,"
"Alright, I'll see you then."
Meanwhile, Shion was watching Satoshi and Satoko setting two pieces of cotton adrift in the river. She hadn't stopped smiling since she saw that Satoshi was awake. She was so happy. Suddenly, Shion thoughts were interrupted when she noticed that Satoshi was looking over at her. Before she could read anything from his expression, he quickly turned and looked back at Satoko.