HEART WORLD

~ Shin ~

"Wow." Toma gave me an amused look as we prepared to leave after having finished closing the café up. "You're changing out of your uniform very… Furiously."

"You should know better by now than to keep messing with me when I'm mad," I muttered. "Leave me alone." All I wanted to do now was just go home.

"Fine. By the way, can you do me a favor?"

I heaved a sigh. "What?"

"I promised Michi I'd meet up with her and catch up after I got off, but I forgot I have something else to do. Can you walk her home and tell her I'm sorry? Thanks, bye!"

"Wait, hold on!" I grabbed onto the back of his shirt. "What is it that's so important you can't just do it yourself?"

"Uh… I have to go and… buy some milk! That's it."

"You're obviously lying. What are you trying to do?"

He grinned at me. "Nothing. Nothing at all. She's waiting out front, by the way." I let go of him, and he ran out. It was obvious now that he was trying to get me to spend time alone with Michi, but to what end? My head already felt like it was going to explode; I wasn't sure I could take much more of this craziness.

I took a breath before heading towards the front. Michi was muttering to herself, it seemed like.

"Stupid bombs, always messing me up… Argh!" She was staring intently at her phone.

"What are you doing?" The words slipped out before I could stop myself.

"WAH!" She leaped to her feet and stared at me, taking some sort of bizarre crane stance. "Don't sneak up on people like that!"

"… Sorry." If I actually tried to think about how to talk to her, I couldn't come up with anything besides an apology, for everything.

"I was playing Minesweeper. But I've never been good at games of logic, haha…" She laughed, an awkward and forced one, as she peered past me. "Is Toma off yet?"

She had been so engrossed in her game, she hadn't even noticed him leaving… "He had something to do that he forgot about, so he asked me to come and say he was sorry."

"Seriously?" She frowned. "Humph. He should have apologized himself. That would have been less rude, instead of forcing you to do it." Her cheeks had puffed out slightly in indignation, and I had to force myself not to laugh a bit at the sight. "Well, thanks for telling me I guess. See you at work." She started marching off.

I hurried to catch up with her. "Toma asked me to walk you home. Just in case. It's going to get dark, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I know that. But I'll be fine on my own." She paused. "What I mean is that you don't have to force yourself to be around me."

"I could say the same to you." I kept blurting things out, instead of doing the safe thing and just saying nothing.

"Huh…" She frowned and narrowed her eyes, and for a second I was actually afraid she would blow up at me. "I guess that's true. But I'm coming back to Meido no Hitsuji because I want to, and walking beside you right now because it's not something I'm totally against."

For a long while I just couldn't think of how to respond, and we ended up back at her apartment building before I could even start to process how amiable she was being. "But why? What changed all of a sudden?" Her new attitude wasn't something I was comprehending.

She laughed and stopped walking in front of the steps that led up to the level her residence was on. "It's complicated, trust me. The bottom line is that I…" She stopped walking, so I stood tensely a few feet away from her. "Are you able to look me in the eyes and understand as I say this?" She was looking right at me with her chin tilted up, a fierce pride lighting her eyes that I had to force myself to meet head on.

"What is it?" Being around her was making me sick to my stomach, just the idea of her hatred for me and my father.

"I don't hate you. Not anymore. What happened isn't your fault, so… I guess that I… I'm sorry for everything I said. It's not true. I was just out of my mind with grief, but that doesn't excuse me lashing out to cause you even more pain too. Please forgive me, if you can." Even though she had wavered with her words here and there, she hadn't broken eye contact.

It was all too much. I just couldn't take it.

~ Michi ~

Even after I had mustered everything up to say those words, he was just staring at me, his expression showing a sort of vulnerability his appearance usually hid. "Um. You don't have to say anything right now, I guess. I just wanted to apologize and – WAH!" I yelped as he just fell over, without warning.

"Oh my God you killed him!" Musca gasped.

"That doesn't even make any sense!" I yelled at her, forgetting to use telepathy in my panic. I crouched beside Shin, shaking him by the shoulder. "H-hey, are you alright?" Had he fainted? But no, he was moving around. He had put his arms up to cover his face, one mostly over his eyes and the other concealing everything but his mouth. "Shin, you're freaking me out over here."

"Sorry. You just… You really surprised me."

"But are you okay?"

"Sort of."

"Can you get up?" I tugged on his arm, but he shook me off.

"Just give me a minute." His teeth were gritted, his hands clenched into fists. I nodded and sat back down beside him, rubbing his arm without realizing it. He probably needed a moment to process things, yeah. After a few minutes he spoke again. "What are you doing?"

"Huh?"

"Your hand."

"Oh." I blinked down at my hand on his arm. "I guess I was trying to comfort you, in my own way…"

"By petting him like a dog?" Musca asked, tilting her head down at us.

Shut up, you.

"You're so strange… You always have been." Shin sat up and put his arms down, and I decided not to comment on how his eyes were bright with threatening tears that he had evidently been trying to contain.

"So, uh… You okay now?"

"… Don't know." He looked away from me, frowning.

"I think he's embarrassed…" Musca noted. "And he's still shaking a bit."

"Hey, you should come on upstairs with me until you're feeling better."

"What?" His gaze snapped back to me, shocked now.

"Unless you'd rather sit out here some more while it gets darker."

He hesitated, standing and brushing himself off slowly. "Alright then…?"

"Alrighty then." I took his arm to make sure he was steady. "Just until you're feeling better, okay?"

"Yeah." A bit, just a little bit, he allowed himself to lean on me.