There were no eyelids left to close when Haruka set Mirai down this final time. Each dream had Mirai's body start off with some mangled remain from the previous.
She had hoped finally being Uranus would have caused an end to the nightmare.
What transforming did do was allow her to finally yank open the damned door.
Haruka's arm flew up over her brow to shield her from the blind light. All the butterflies fluttered away.
Her steps echoed on a linoleum floor. Squinting against the white glare, Haruka's eyes adjusted until they saw a familiar figure at the center of an endless colorless corridor with no walls.
Michiru was in the same strange uniform as last time. Her hair was combed back into a red-bowed ponytail that revealed a profile focused on something before her that Haruka could not yet see.
"Michiru?" Calling out her name hadn't been a conscious decision.
Michiru blinked and turned. Suddenly the hall shrank and the distance between them was less than a meter.
A butterfly, wings carrying stars, flew past Haruka's shoulder and then over Michiru's.
A droplet collected at the end of Michiru's damp hair. Haruka noticed she was soaked, as if caught in the rain. But that didn't make any sense, they had been dry under the gazebo…
"Haruka, you're so pale," Michiru whispered, taking a step closer, "What happened?"
Suddenly aware that her hands were in pant pockets, Haruka's fingers curled in and out of fists, reminding herself of the movement Mirai made whenever she couldn't verbally express what she wanted.
"Is it really you?" Haruka whispered. She inspected Michiru, the girl appeared to be every bit the girl she had kissed the previous night.
"I don't know. I could be asking you the same thing, couldn't I?"
"…True."
They exchanged of small tepid smiles, each further assessing the other. Neither deemed the other true enough to relax. But when Michiru turned to the left, Haruka turned with her. Now they were facing a window. A hospital viewing window to a nursery.
Across the gridded glass was no more than 9 swaddled babies. A digital clock hung overhead with the hours and dates changing rapidly. Some dates were centuries in the past, some yesterday and some at least a month ahead. In unison with the clock, 8 of the 9 babies flickered in and out of their clear bassinets at a dizzying rate. Only the center one remained constant. She was a dark-haired thing swaddled in indigo.
"What is this?" Haruka asked. There was a hint of a distant echo from her words. Just a little, the baby squirmed.
"Reincarnations," Michiru answered with moderate confidence, "Of those recently passed. Of those long passed. Of those who will pass. All those who are still have a soul."
Haruka watched the clock. While some dates went as far back as BC times, no date later than the longest day of next year showed. An omen. She furrowed her brow.
"But how can these be reincarnations… if they're being born in the future?"
Michiru had a hand at her temple, as if supporting a debilitating headache. "You're assuming that we are from the present, not the past. Time has yet to visit us."
Right, Haruka supposed that made sense, whatever the hell that meant.
The way Michiru's eyes flickered over the lot; Haruka got the sense she was searching for someone.
"Are you looking for Yasho?"
For a moment Michiru seemed surprised that Haruka had guess correctly. "Yes. I have been, for a long time. Along with others," she still admitted. "His heart had been all in a million splinters. So fine, it was more dust than crystal. I don't know if there's anything left of it, for a past life or a next."
So that was the price of a corruption, Haruka realized. Something detached from the flow of all the worlds. All who they couldn't save, now or tomorrow, or all who they broke, were forever lost.
A wail shook the world.
Michiru cursed, hunched down and clutched her head. Immediately, Haruka wrapped an arm around her. "Michiru! Michiru, are you alright?"
"Yes," Michiru hissed unconvincingly. "The baby… I don't think she…" The pain must've been horrendous, Michiru grinded her teeth shut and failed to finish the sentence.
Haruka held her tighter but straightened to get a better look at the now crying baby. She felt a painful pang—unable to identify it as something nostalgic or something terrible.
The baby cried and cried, her little fists broken free and balled in the air. Her cheeks were turning crimson red.
The other babies grew upset with the noise. The rate of their change drastically slowed down.
With her free hand, Haruka touched the glass. It rippled. She pressed in. Now there was no glass. The baby kept crying.
"What are you doing?" Michiru's strained words carried a hint of disapproval.
"Someone has to hold her, don't you think?"
After a moment of deliberation, Michiru nodded.
The ease with which Haruka reached out to pick the baby up made no physical sense, but yet there she was- in Haruka's arms and still sobbing. But the second Haruka bounced the baby in her arms, the sweet thing quieted. When she opened her eyes, both girls melted.
"My, what an angel," Michiru cooed, her migraine evidently resolved, "You're so beautiful! Aren't you beautiful, little dear?"
At the sound of Michiru's beautiful voice and affection, the baby awarded them a gurgle and toothy smile.
"Do you want to hold her?" Haruka asked quietly, still bouncing the baby. She had aged out a swaddle, now she was a toddler nearing two.
"Yes," Michiru admitted, not commenting on the change, "But I'm scared I'll hurt her."
"Have you never held a baby?"
Michiru shook her head.
"You won't, trust me. They're not as fragile as you think."
"But—"
"Trust me."
With that, Haruka passed Michiru the baby. In those seconds, future memories, true and as pure as those from their past, came rushing to Haruka. Her gut twisted at the sight of her possible shining future.
And then it hit, the second Saturn was out of Haruka's arms—the pain of it all. The pain of losing parents. Of children. Of friends and family. Of the clouds and the sea. Of Michiru dead.
"Haruka?" Michiru's voice echoed in the distance. The image of Michiru holding Hotaru was growing blurry and dark. "Haruka, are you alright?"
She had lost her voice. How was she going to warn them of the looming shadow behind them?
She wanted to scream. What was she to scream?
"Haruka, you're crying."
Their blood was boiling hot when it splattered on her.
Michiru woke, hands pressing hard over her mouth, muffling her cries as to not wake her mother in the next room.
The school was uglier that Michiru had expected it to be. Then again, she had never been a fan of overt modernism.
Neutral palettes, outside of traditional Japanese design, were more of a disease than a design choice in Michiru's eyes. Stainless steel and glass were its lazy sidekicks.
Still, with the walls covered in paintings— a couple of her pieces mingling with those of her contemporaries— and the floor flooded with hundreds of colorful evening gowns, the evening's visuals weren't horrendous. Michiru even almost liked the layered chandelier which hung from the exuberantly high ceilings. But every time she stood under it and looked up at its ominous spiral, Michiru got the distinct feeling its crystal bulbs could shatter into a million pieces with the smallest disturbance.
Someone bumped into her, splashing a drop of champagne upon her dress. Over the drawl of live saxophone and choir, Inojin started apologizing profusely. Running her hand over the dark silk lining her abdomen, Michiru accepted his apology and reassured him it was quite alright. Despite recognizing the poorly hidden ruse to strike up a conversation with her, Michiru indulged him. What else was she to do? Her mother and father were mingling deep in the crowd, so if not Inojin then someone worse than him would start pestering her.
There were a handful of half familiar faces in the crowd. Michiru recognized most of the string players, having either played with or against them. There were fellow painters, few younger and far more prodigious than she, who were in attendance this well.
What surprised Michiru was not the diversity of just the prospective student body, the promise that everyone came from different corners of the world was certainly upheld, but the diversity of the talents as well. Half were of the traditional arts: visual, instruments, vocal and acting, while the other half came from sports which Michiru hadn't been aware were in the Olympics. In the past hour, she had found a momentarily playful rapport with a boyish snowboarder and caught sight of a fair-haired archer that mistakenly made her heart skip a beat.
It was stupid, Michiru recognized, but her eyes never stopped searching the crowd. Haruka had flown out in the morning, leaving Michiru torn between acknowledging the hole in her chest or pretending that there was still a possibility that the tallest and fairest woman in the room would be Haruka. Somewhere in the middle, feeling hollow but occasionally glancing over Inojin's shoulder, was where Michiru had landed.
A tug on her hand jolted Michiru out of her head.
Startled from the autopilot she ran on for her conversation with Inojin, Michiru's free hand flew to the purse at her hip which was just big enough to hold her phone and one other item.
Indigo eyes. Plum dark hair. Painfully familiar features.
Michiru's heart sank.
With a blink, the young girl was gone. In her place, Sora Sato stared up at her with soft round eyes.
Michiru's heartbeat resumed. She almost put her hand to her chest in relief as she happily exhaled, "Sora! My goodness, you scared me! It's good to see you!" Her hands went to her knees as she bent them to be closer to the boy's eye level. "Did you get an invite too?" she mused softly, but earnestly. The school's youngest students would be just about his age.
"Yes, Yes!" Sora exclaimed brightly and maybe a little too loudly. Michiru saw he was missing his two front teeth now. "I tharted rathing," he announced proudly, chin in the air.
Oh, how Michiru wished Haruka had been here to witness this. Inojin shifted uncertainly at her side.
Michiru squeezed Sora's hand and congratulated him. She tried hard to appear as excited as she wanted to be.
"Are you here with your mother or father?" Michiru asked. He only nodded in response. Unprompted, he began to tug Michiru in the direction of the tables along the perimeter, most likely in the direction of his parents.
Inojin stepped forward, ready to say something, but Michiru quickly tossed him an apologetic smile with a departing wave. She mouthed an apology as she let Sora steal her away. Inojin was left with his mouth half open and an expression she had seen Elsa wear before.
Watching the back of the little boy's head as he so confidently guided her through the swirls of satin dresses and dark suits, Michiru tried to quiet the pounding of her heartbeat.
This had been the first time a dream had extended so vividly past her slumber. And what a dream she had had last night. The memory of her arms cradling Saturn as they watched Haruka's consumption was almost as vivid as her vision of the other guardian just now had been.
It couldn't be a good sign.
"Sora!" Rin exclaimed with a scowl when she spotted her son. The expression quickly melted into something softer as she recognized Michiru.
Sora, ever the troublemaker, had left both his parents in a stressed frenzy. They had been trying to find him as quickly and quietly as possible, without drawing attention to their poor parenting skills (or so said as he appeared.) Michiru laughed, genuinely. She hadn't realized how much she missed the pair until she saw them.
When invited, Michiru settled at a seat at their table. The three of them were quick to exchange gossip.
Dr. Sato grimly confirmed Sora's racing wasn't a joke. Children as young as 3 started training, same as any other competitive industry. Michiru couldn't imagine the logistics of toddlers driving. She would have to text Haruka about it.
When asked about her, Michiru told the parents as it was: that Haruka too had received an invite but hadn't been able to attend because of Dubai.
"Dubai!" Sora practically jumped out of his seat and into Michiru's lap. His mother sat him back down and Michiru did her best to explain what she knew.
"I was unaware you were so well versed in automobile racing," Michiru's father's warm scratchy voice came with two firm hands at her shoulders.
Both Dr. Sato and Rin raised their brows. Suddenly, Michiru remembered the context of how they met. Hastily, she laughed as demurely as possible. "Well, I did have to do my research."
Her father gave her a quizzical look. Michiru rushed to start the introductions, knowing was the sort of man her father admired.
Bows were exchanged and all was going well until asked her father how he was liking his car. Her father furrowed his brow and answered that he enjoyed his car as much as the next man in a tone that was entirely devoid of the expected pride about a daughter's gift.
Michiru giggled to hide her unease and slid her arm into the crook of her father's elbow. "We'll be right back," she interjected, "Don't run off again, Sora!"
"Okay…" the boy murmured obediently just as Michiru all but dragged her father away from the table. That had come embarrassingly close to revealing herself as a liar, something she couldn't bear neither Dr. Sato nor her father witnessing. She had no clue how she would defend such a seemingly unnecessary lie either.
"That was a little rude, dear," her father said uncertainly, he wasn't a man used to lecturing his daughter. Michiru wanted to play dumb but couldn't bring herself to deceive her father yet again. "I know," she said with a dip of her head, "It won't happen. I'll apologize."
Her father nodded, his parenting coming to an anticlimactic end. He notably hesitated before saying, "I must say, those were not the sort of friends I've pictured you having."
They were strolling the periphery of the crowd rather than mingling. Those that were still in their table seats were parents, observing their children befriend both peers and rivals. Was that what her parents been doing before Sora dragged her away from Inojin?
Had circumstances been different, Michiru wouldn't have been acting any different than everyone else. It would've been the sort of party she dreamed about— surrounded by people who shared her love for all her art, listening to the swell of divine music, and dressed in a way that made her feel more beautiful than she had ever felt.
Yet Sora had been her only distraction from a certain ghost this evening and already now she was tempted to stretch her neck at every glimpse of blond.
"What sort of friends did you picture me having?" Michiru asked as she subtly raised herself just a couple centimeters on her toes. The only notable sight was catching her reflection on a window across the room, informing her of how silly she looked. She immediately sank down to her heels.
"Ones your age, ones that can keep you company and last a lifetime. Not a married man my age and a toddler."
Immediately, Michiru picked up on, and didn't appreciate, the suspicion. She bit her tongue from pointing out that was at least a decade younger than he and Sora was firmly past toddlerhood. She knew her father's unease manifested in snide remarks, not entirely unlike her.
"They are just acquaintances," Michiru muttered stiffly. Then a lie followed. "I know them through a friend. A true friend, my grade."
Her father immediately straightened, interested and mood warming. He wanted to know more.
"She's a racer," Michiru said, a mix of pride and dread growing within, "One of the top. I met at an event supporting her."
The way her father's eyes were shining from finally hearing details about Michiru's eyes made her sick. If only he knew.
"She sounds like a worthy friend, someone to keep pushing you to be your best."
Michiru smiled. "That's true."
"Did she not receive an invite?"
"No, she did," Michiru's gaze fell briefly to her shoes as she spoke, "But she had to fly out this morning for more pressing matters."
"I see, I see," her father nodded, "Will she be back?"
"Yes," Michiru looked up and smiled.
Her father patted her hand. "That's good. And with all the technology you youth use these days, I'm not all convinced physical absence is noted between you lot."
Michiru remembered kissing Haruka.
Her father leaned in and dropped his voice in a conspirator's whisper, "Now, I won't deny that your mother didn't put me up to this, but what about boys?"
Michiru almost laughed at the disdain that came with her father's last word. She raised her brows. "What about them, father?"
"I hope you have them eating out of the palm of your hand."
"I don't have much I want to give them," Michiru mused. This really wasn't a conversation she was dying to continue.
Michiru's father frowned. "Now, don't say that, Michiru. Boys your age want only one thing—"
"Video games," Michiru rushed to say. She carefully slipped her arm from the nook at her father's elbow. "The youth and their technology, as you said."
Michiru could see their table now; her mother had risen from a seat to wave them over. There were waiters carrying trays of drinks at the center of the floor.
"I'll grab you and mother drinks," Michiru said, rushing to step away. She left her father as quickly as she left her previous company. Winding gracefully through the crowd, she took sharp turns to avoid meeting Inojin and others she had already spoken with.
Amongst all the strangers, the laughter and swaying bodies, Michiru couldn't shake the feeling of being a caged animal. It was the rising claustrophobia that made her peer through the bodies to the tall glass walls that showed an open night sky with heavy clouds and flashing lights smudged by the heatwaves and humidity.
Michiru was struck by her reflection, a head bobbing between a sea of people, only visible above some shoulders thanks to her heels. She pictured herself, Neptune, peering through the other side of the glass, balancing on scaffolding bars that were no longer there. The urge to slip through the masses and meet her reflection was overwhelming — Michiru would have caved if she had not heard a semi-familiar voice at her side.
Michiru's hair tickled her upper back as it fell over her shoulder. She turned to eye the back of the young man's head, take in his semi-messy hair and moderate stature. He was gesticulating wildly with his champagne glass, not unlike a conductor, to the company he was entertaining.
Michiru took a step closer. "Kai?"
This time, when Michiru saw a glimpse of blonde in the distance, she didn't scold herself.
Haruka's brother turned around. His eyes lit up with recognition. "Michiru! I was wondering when I'd spot you!"
How quickly her mind spiraled with questions: Why are you here? Shouldn't you be in Dubai? Or did you stay behind? Or is she with you? She has to be with you or else you wouldn't be here— right?
Michiru dipped her head in an appropriate bow, hoping her frame wasn't trembling like a leaf.
Kai casually returned the gesture before adding, "You sure are a sight for sore eyes! How beautiful!" It was the kindness and mirth in Kai's voice that made Michiru blush for the first time that night.
"You look quite dashing too," Michiru replied politely, and she meant it- Kai looked quite dapper in his suit.
Was Haruka wearing a suit? Michiru figured she was, picturing her in something akin to the tux she had worn at the yacht party.
Michiru was itchy to ask about her; was itchy to spin around the room and try one last time to spot Haruka. But her manners preceded her and she took notice of the girl that was just within Kai's reach— not so subtly trying to sneak away.
"And you must be Mirai?" Michiru asked, uncharacteristically speaking out on an assumption. The moment the girl stopped fidgeting Michiru knew she was correct. She smiled and added, "Haruka told me much about you and your lemonade."
The girl blushed but stood a little straighter when she nodded. Kai squeezed Mirari into his side, which she reluctantly allowed. "Yeah, did Haruka tell you this one was running us to the ground like slaves? Making us do all the dirty work?"
Mirai protested, trying to wiggle away. The mention of Haruka's name heightened Michiru's senses and as innocently as possible said, "Must be hard to keep that line of working going with her being in Dubai."
Kai furrowed his brows in confusion and Michiru's heart started racing.
"What—?"
The ringing of glass interrupted Kai. The music stopped. The crowd suddenly hushed and clustered forward.
Michiru was able to exchange one last glance with Kai before she was swept in the tide of bodies drifting to the center stage. Before the jazz band and behind a propped red ribbon stood a small group, the Mugen principal at the center and esteemed guests at his side. Michiru caught Inojin's eye and he gave her a small smile from where he stood before the band.
All eyes set on the bespectacled enigmatic principal, who raised his champagne glass high in the air for a toast.
All eyes but Michiru's. Now, she was on her tiptoes, craning and stretching over the shoulders around her. She saw her parents, side by side and raising their glasses with the speaker. She saw and his family, whispering comments to each other as the principal exchanged his glass for ceremonial sheers. She saw Haruka's family, still by her side, just as invested as everyone else in the ribbon cutting that was about to happen.
But no one else of importance.
Why was it so hot? Why was it so bright?
Michiru arched her neck back and found herself staring up at the eye of the chandelier. She squinted. Had it grown brighter? Had its light bulbs always been so swollen looking? They looked less like glass and more like balloons ready to burst.
A sharp note of metal gliding against itself came forth and a roar of applause followed. Michiru narrowed her eyes at the strange bulbs.
They erupted.