After Dell closed the door behind him, Miku pressed her hands to her flushed cheeks. She was leaving, really leaving this hellhole.

Dell explained she had twelve minutes to pack up a few belongings and meet him in front of his office. The facility would be under lockdown, every door locked tight until morning, in fifteen minutes. If she didn't show up after twelve minutes, he was leaving without her.

Miku closed her eyes to think. What could she possibly want to bring? It would have to be small, and practical. She didn't own much, only a large assortment of hospital gowns and the standard-issue set of toiletries given to each patient. And she didn't want any of those, anyway. She didn't even want to think about this place after her new beginning in the outside world. There were only two things that had any significance to her during her stay, and one of them was the bad-tempered albino freak busting her out of here. The other was dead, but Miku never wanted to forget her.

She knew she needed something to remind her of Neru, and Dell might appreciate it, too. But what? Neru didn't have much either, only her hospital gowns and -

Miku's eyes shot open.

Neru was an artist. And every artist had a sketchbook.

Miku happened to know that Neru's sketchbook was stashed under her mattress, where no nosy nurse would find it.

Miku shot up from her bed and tiptoed into the hallway. The final stragglers that wandered the hallways after sunset had cleared, and the hall was dark. Neru's room was twenty feet away.

Please, please, please let her sketchbook still be there, was Miku's internal chant; a mantra, of sorts.

The door was unlocked and swung open with a cringe-worthy creak. Miku's bare toes were chilled against the floor as she crept to Neru's old hospital bed. She fought back disgust; they hadn't even stripped the sheets after Neru's death, like once she was dead so was everything else concerned with her. Miku touched the sheets where Neru had slept and swallowed hard.

She rummaged under the scratchy mattress until her fingertips brushed a worn cover. Jackpot.

Miku clutched the book to her chest like a lifeline as she cast one more look around the room. It was bare, the closet vacant, no decorations or beeping machines scattered around.

She sighed and blew an awkward kiss to the hospital bed as a final goodbye.

I'll never forget you, Neru Akita.

Miku ran from the room as if chased by ghosts.

Dell sat impatiently outside his office. It hadn't taken long to grab his laptop and make his office look as bare and utilitarian as possible. After all, it only contained his desk and laptop, a beaten old chair from his college days, and a dusty filing cabinet that had been obsolete since all of the patient records became computerized.

He spent one last moment looking around the room he had practically lived in for the past five years. The desk was blank, the filing cabinets just so. The carpet was dusty, the walls faded. Kind of like him.

Good riddance.

He locked the door for the last time and sat outside in the hallway for Hatsune.

Dell wasn't sure if he was doing the right thing. He was leaving everything he had known for the past five years. He was leaving her, for God's sake. He was leaving Harris and the crazies and crappy breakfast food and hours spent with psychoanalysis. It was practically all he knew. And now it was ending.

But maybe there was a beginning in there, too. A beginning where he could maybe go into research psychology, and do research on brain trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. Maybe even amnesia. Or he could take another career path, such as computer science, which is what his major had been before the accident. Get himself a new apartment, or even, gasp, a house. Make some friends...?

Okay, let's not go too far with this.

But this was a new beginning, starting with getting Hatsune out of here. Then they would drive off into the sunset.

He wasn't planning on eloping with her or anything. He didn't even plan on her sticking around for long once she had her freedom. They didn't love each other, didn't even like each other. Yet they were still sharing the first day of the rest of their lives. Once that day was over and Miku had gone back, however, he would be alone.

... No. Not alone. He had her with him now.

Oh, just man up and say her name. You owe her that much and more.

He had Neru with him. He had her obnoxious attitude, honking laugh, chaste kisses and starry eyes that yelled 'surprise, surprise!' Forevermore. However sappy it sounded.

"Hey, Dell, your eyes were all blank again. Don't space out on me; we have three minutes to escape this joint."

Hatsune was standing over him impatiently. Dell glanced wearily at her and scrambled to his feet. He saw she was holding something - A book? A journal? - to her chest. It was a small notebook, bound in cheap lemon cloth with words scrawled across the cover.

"Art Journal, Property of Neru Akita"

Dell's eyes began to water as Miku opened the book and leafed through the pages, showing him sketches of whales, bugs, Frank Iero, and high-fashion gowns. He saw bits of text, too; anything from sentence fragments and demotivational quotes scribbled in page corners to multiple-page journal entries.

At the back of the book was where he really started to cry.

There was an entire page devoted to drawings of him. One of him slouching in his chair with a clipboard. One that just showed his face cloaked in shadow. Some basic body sketches and attempted cigarettes. At the center of the page was a fully drawn, inked, and penciled portrait of him, flicking a cigarette into the concrete, slouching against a wall, with a faint smirk on his face. His eyes were looking at the viewer, unusually soft and rounded.

So that's how I looked whenever I saw her.

Miku gently turned a couple of pages and stopped on one that was filled with images of Miku. These were not as numerous and detailed as the ones of Dell, but they were still just as lovely. They showed Miku's snarl, her grin, her rare laugh.

The pages were arranged in Neru's book as follows:

First was Dell's front and back 'devotion page', then it skipped a page, then Miku's. But Dell saw the skipped page was the most important of all, for it was the glue between Miku and Dell's pages. It had no pictures, only a brief journal entry.

Dear Journal,

This page is the best page of all, even though I hate to pick favorites. Its right between the two devotion pages of two people who are my favorite people in the world. Miku Hatsune, my newfound best friend, and Dell Honne, who is something else entirely.

I really love them. Miku's sweet and a good listener, but she can be kind of aloof and maybe regal sometimes. When my brain skips a piece of the puzzle she doesn't judge me. She accepts me even though I have brain trauma. She seems to like my art.

Dell is my doctor. I sit with him everyday, for therapy and at night I just talk with him. I like the night sessions better because he doesn't have to write notes about my mental problems on that stupid clipboard. We just talk and sometimes I cry and he gets this sad look on his face like he's gonna cry too, even though he wouldn't let anyone see. He acts really rude and abrasive around everyone else, especially Miku. And she's mean and gnarly right back. I wonder why they hate each other?

Anyway, they are like my stars, tiny pinpricks of light in a vast void. This place is dark and my eyes can't seem to adjust, but knowing they're there helps.

They are stars, if not to themselves then to me.

And these stars won't go out.

Neru

After Miku and Dell scanned the page, both of them were crying. In thirty seconds of looking at this book, both of them had their hearts crushed all over again.

Miku finally spoke. "Dell, we need to leave now before the doors lock."

She saw it written plainly on his face that he didn't want to. How could he, leave the memories of his love for something better and brighter?

It may have been dark here, but it was real.

He knew now that this was the place Neru had learned to love him again, even though she had no memories of before and Dell was a broken shell.

"Dell," she snapped. "Come on. We can't give up now. I know how you feel, I truly do. This is where she is, where you knew her best. I did too. But once you leave, do you doubt for one second that she'll follow? Because if you do, then we might as well just stay and this would all have been for nothing." The hitch in her voice betrayed her crying. She was trying so hard to be strong.

There was a long pause, and Dell looked her hard in the eye, took both of her hands in his and said, "This may be the one time you have been right, Hatsune. If we're gonna make it out there, it better not be the last."

He guided her to the exit door, yanked it open, and pushed her outside. Outside. Miku was outside.

He closed the door behind him, grabbed her arm, and ran to his Acura. Miku was practically vibrating with excitement. Once they exited the building, there was a short bush-lined sidewalk that led to the vast parking lot. The facility behind them was dark, no lights on at all, though the parking lot was illuminated by the lights on the road that lead from the hospital into the highway. That road lead to freedom.

Her naked feet scraped against the concrete as they ran fifty feet through the parking lot to Dell's car. It was a tiny silver thing, covered in bumps and scrapes. To Miku it was like the chariot of heaven.

Dell swore as he fumbled with the key and eventually unlocked the car. Miku jumped inside, her stomach doing backflips while her bare thighs squeaked on the leather upholstery. They were really escaping, with nothing left to stop them except time.

Dell buckled his seatbelt and started the car. His fingers shook. He was leaving for the last time, leaving his office and the therapy room and Neru's body. He glanced at Hatsune, who was beaming at him like she just won the lottery. He was leaving one dead girl behind to save a living one. But even if he left, the dead girl would always follow them.

And at that piece in time, Dell Honne was absolutely certain that he was doing the right thing.

And at that moment, the doors of the mental ward locked, barring the escapee duo from return.

It had been thirty minutes since the great escape, and Miku already felt transformed. Maybe it was physical changes. Dell had some of the clothes and toiletries belonging to his half-sister Haku that she left in the car when she went with him to the beach last summer, and miraculously they seemed to fit Miku. She had been able to use deodorant, brush her teeth with one of those mini disposable toothbrushes, and pull her teal locks into a messy bun. She had swapped her hospital gown for a lacy black tank top, red short shorts, and a black oversized open-stitch sweater. Miku loved open-stitch sweaters.

Besides her changes in appearance, Miku felt transformed mentally as well. She was more excited than she had ever been, watching the wretched hospital fade behind them in the distance as they drove down the highway, which was vacant at 12:30 at night.

Dell stayed silent the entire trip, save for a slight smirk as he tore his eyes away from Miku changing in the backseat. Not that the girl would have noticed his pervy leer; she was too focused on feeling clean and pretty and normal again for the first time in a month.

Now she sat beside him, staring up at the stars that hadn't quite been blocked out by highway lights. Her face lit up like a little kid as she whispered, "Do you know how long it's been since I've seen the stars, Dell?"

Dell supposed their old hatred was gone, now that they had seen Neru's journal. He knew Neru had loved him in two lives, and that she had loved Miku, and if his only love on this Earth cared for Miku, then by God he could leave his childish grudge. She seemed different too. More innocent now, and she smiled a lot. Maybe it was the rush of escape and the thought of a new future outside of therapy and numbing drugs and permeating chills. Or maybe the knowledge that she had been loved at her worst of times. Maybe both.

Dell divided his gaze between Miku and the road as she stared up at the sky, her mouth parted in a perfect O like a kid at Disney World.

"These stars won't go out," she whispered as old tears made her eyes sparkle. Dell found himself sighing. God, he missed Neru. But there was an unspoken promise there. Dell no longer wanted to die. He couldn't, wouldn't let one of Neru's stars go out. Not after she lost so much.

Miku tore her gaze from the stars to look at him. Her smile was gone; something was up.

"Dell, before our lives begin, I'm afraid something important must take place," she announced, burying her hands in her shirtsleeves.

"Hatsune, are you asking me for ritual sex?" he scoffed.

"Only you would think that, you nasty old creep. But, no. I want you to see something. Make a detour."

"I have no interest in seeing your old McMansion, Miku."

"Not that," she huffed. "I want you to see where Len died."

He looked at her in horror. "Hatsune, that is fucking morbid as hell -"

"No," she interrupted,"I don't want you to see it just because he died there! I want you to see how he died, and why. Please. Just one last thing. I need this, and you do too." Miku was begging?

Well. That settled it.

Dell was really regretting that decision after Miku managed to direct them to the ass-crack of nowhere.

He had driven off the highway, down some little country roads that didn't even have pavement, and past the old train tracks and sugar mill. Now he was parked fifty feet from a cliff, dense pine forest at his back. Admittedly, the view off the cliff was beautiful, but he still didn't get what this had to do with the Kagamine kid's suicide.

"Look at it, Dell," Miku breathed, running her fingers through her hair as she gazed out at the sea. The sliver of beach lay just below the steep cliff, several yards down. From there, the ocean went on for miles. The only source of light was the full moon shining overhead, and those incredibly insignificant stars.

"Len and I used to fly here. You run and jump off the cliff, suspended in the air for the briefest second, the you fall, and the sky and the air whip past your face, and you watch the ocean that makes you feel so small as you fall. Len and I used to fly off this cliff, but Len took off wrong, and

speared himself on these cliffs. He died at the bottom. But it's worth it. So worth it. Closest thing to actual flight I ever experienced."

She looked at him expectantly, eyebrows raised to ask a silent question. Fly with me?

Dell tried to picture it. Pushing off this cliff, wind whipping his hair into a frenzy and roaring in your ears, heart thumping like a rabbits, tears stinging in his eyes as he feels so weightless, so free. And the moon sparkles on the waves and it's so goddamn beautiful. Beautiful like Miku's rage and Neru's tears and like nothing else he's ever seen.

To answer Miku's question, he took her slender hand in his calloused one and nodded.

As one, the duo took a few steps back, facing the cliff. Miku closed her eyes and began the old countdown she and Len used to use, counting from one to ten instead of ten to one, using each second to review the past month of her life, the most heartbreaking and fire-starting

month of her entire life.

One. Len flies and dies. She is checked into that stupid hospital.

Two. She spills her guts to the doctor and lets long-buried memories resurface.

Three. She meets Dell Honne, who is a man that cannot be described with words.

Four. Dell shows her a bit of his pain, and by doing so becomes her biggest emotional catalyst.

Five. She meets Neru, that wonderful, terrible girl that managed to change her future with a journal and a wink.

Six. This is when Miku realizes that Dell and Neru must have some kind of relationship. Dell is more emotional and passionate than usual, and usually comes to work hungover.

Seven. Neru is killed and her two bright stars want to snuff themselves out.

Eight. She and Dell grieve, in their own ways.

Nine. She escapes her prison, both physical and mental, and takes the most meaningful person in her life to the most meaningful place.

Ten.

Miku and Dell share one last glance before running towards the cliff and the ocean and towards life and death.

Together, they jump into oblivion.