Chinatsu was confused when it came to Akari. She tolerated Kyoko, and Yui was the greatest, most important person in the world. Every action she took made the world a better place, especially when it involved fending off the demon woman with the red bow. Akari inspired neither love nor hate. She didn't inspire anything.
Yet on that day, when Comuket was going on, Chinatsu had practiced kissing on Akari. She thought it was normal for middle school students to experiment, even moreso when they attended a girls' school. Her lips locked and her eyes crossed with Akari's, and she saw the nothingness in the something. It was like kissing the warm air coming off a heater. There was something there, but it had no form.
Since that day, Chinatsu had been keeping close to Akari, wondering if she was still alive. Her eyes had gone blank after that kiss. Chinatsu wondered if that blankness had truly disappeared, or was still hiding somewhere in Akari's heart. So she set off into Tokisadame, faintly aware of her presence.
Chinatsu turned the street corners, ignoring the heat beating down on her back. The sounds of the river altered her to someone wading in the stream, gazing up at the clouds with her straw hat. Chinatsu made a sharp turn down the hillside. The edge of the water pushed up against her shoes, covering them with dirt.
The woman in the river turned around. She had long, black hair and glasses, and an expression that Chinatsu could not decipher. Chinatsu reached into her bag and scribbbled something down on the back of a napkin. Maybe if she showed a picture of Akari to this girl, she'd be able to help.
"What did Akari look like again?" Chinatsu thought.
She presented the drawing to the girl. Mai, the girl form the title call, looked deep into the napkin. It was a swirling black mass of nothing. The white spaces left in between the scribbles formed a faint silhouette with two unbalanced balls of hair on the side of its head. Mai turned her head to the left and tried it from another angle.
"Black hole?" she asked.
"Wha-NO!" Chinatsu said, "Have you seen this person?"
Mai shook her head from side to side, and lifted one arm towards the riverbank. Chinatsu followed Mai's arm upward, and saw it pointing towards a person with blonde hair and a red ribbon on top of her head. This was pretty far out of the way. Maybe Kyoko had already found Akari, and was coming to inform her? Should she be happy to see Kyoko at all?
Haruna Annaka was enjoying her Sunday, taking in the scenery of the town. She was on her way to a photography meetup when she saw Mai Minakami and a girl with pink hair wading in the river.
Mai snatched the napkin out of Chinatsu's hands before Chinatsu realized what she'd done. She walked out of the river and met with Annaka.
"Minakami. How's it going?" asked Annaka.
"Have you seen this person?" asked Mai, flashing the napkin before Annaka's eyes.
From where Annaka stood, the ink of the napkin was almost seeping off the thin paper, emanating an aura of incomprehensibility. It wasn't abstract art. It was barely art. If there was supposed to be a picture of someone within this reflection of antimatter captured in a napkin, it was beyond her brain's comprehension.
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH?" shouted Annaka.
Her scream could be heard down the road, startling Kojiro the Goat.