Sometimes Shiki would catch Neku reaching up and touching his ears. He would look like he'd so lost in those moments. Then he would catch himself, his hands dropping to his sides.

"Is something wrong, Neku? You keep messing with your ears," realization hit her and she bit her lip, "Do you miss your headphones?"

"Yeah, it's not that I want everyone to go away or anything anymore," Neku's eyes were trained on the ground and he kicked at nothing with his foot, "It's just that sometimes it gets too loud for me."

"Why don't we go see Mr. H? His place is always pretty quiet."

"Don't tell him that; he'll take it as an affront to himself."

Shiki laughed and led the way to the Wildkat cafe.

"Say, Neku, am I too loud?" Shiki mumbled, half-hoping that he wouldn't hear her.

"Well, I used to think so," Neku looked up, then down, and then turned to face her, clearly a little uncomfortable with answering the question, "But now I kinda like hearing you. That's why I don't bring my headphones out anymore."

"That's the reason why?"

"Well, one of the reasons," he replied, his chin dropping into his collar.

"L-let's get going!" Shiki knew she was losing him. It would be better for her to stop asking questions. He might slip away into "old Neku mode" and she liked him the way he was now too much for that.

They were also reaching the borderline of Awkward Territory, where all of the words that they wanted to say started clogging in their throats. Shiki wasn't bothered by all the unanswered questions anymore.

Not so long ago, Neku wouldn't tell anyone how he was feeling. Now, he was a little different. She wasn't quite used to hearing him tell grade-school stories in a wavering tone over bowls of ramen. Or blurting out some strange fact about likes or dislikes while searching through the racks at 104. Once he'd stopped in the middle of the street to tell her about his parents.

At first he'd just listened to people, but now he was reaching back to them. Neku was only just starting to expand his world.

Shiki was glad that she could see such a thing. Shiki made a little game of noticing something new every day. Some way they were different now, as the days went by, piling up. Shiki didn't want those days to feel empty and useless again.

Not now that she knew how much a day was worth.

Writer's Woes: wow that got cheesy. I want to find a balance between my older more ornamented writing style and my super-bare-bones now style. So this appears to be Post-Game, but I think that it works with the spirit of this collection? Yeah, we're gonna go with that.

Stay fabulous,

Hillary