Was this how the entire time in Sagiri was going to be? Moriko was making a valiant effort to not shrink away as Akemi's cabinmates hugged her, thrilled that she was back among them for the duration of the bonfire. They had welcomed her in like they were hailing a conquering hero.

"Oh my gosh, I thought you got kicked out of camp!" one of them wailed, flinging her arms around Moriko. "I'm so glad you didn't!"

"Someone said Nakime took you into the woods and fed you to the spiders," another girl was saying, her hands flying around as she spoke, "But I knew that couldn't be right."

"That's just a story, she doesn't sacrifice people."

"No, she just looks like a ghost lady."

The Camellia Cabin girls continued to babble around her as she kept Akemi's at-ease smile on her face. One of them, the one with the braid named Chiasa, looped her arm through Moriko's. She reminded herself that Akemi was find with physical contact, she actually initiated it often.

"Why did you dye your hair?" Chiasa asked. Her other hand came around and touched Moriko's ponytail. Somewhere in the flickering firelight, Akemi had her hair up in the same ponytail. They were actually in completely identical clothes right now. At the last minute, they had decided to see if they could get away with switching places in the middle of the bonfire without anyone noticing.

Moriko let her ponytail bounce. It felt so strange without her normal braid and its butterfly clip. Akemi was currently wearing it. "Oh, Nakime made me." No one would question that, and no one was going to ask Nakime if that was actually the case. Everyone avoided her if they could possibly do so.

"That's too bad, they were really cool," Chiasa said.

"Duuude, how do you survive having to live with Ms. Know-It-All?" another girl, Masa, asked.

Moriko blinked. Did Akane used to call her that? "Uh, she's not so bad. When did you start calling her that?"

Masa shrugged. "When you got put in camp prison with her," she said, tossing her wavy dark brown hair over her shoulder, "Seriously, Mimi, it's not fair, you should ask for them to let you move back to Camellia."

Inwardly, Moriko released the flash of tension that had caught her. At least Akemi hadn't called her that name, as far as she knew. However, they hadn't been friends before they had been forced into close proximity in the Cooperation Cabin. If Akemi had called her a know-it-all, that was in the past. Besides, the other students at school called her that all the time. She doubted if some of them knew her actual name.

"Is she totally awful? She seems so stuck up," Masa said, "It must be torture to have to be around her all the time."

Moriko felt her usually calm temper begin to flare. She forced herself to smile and then remembered that Akemi was actually very good at being honest. "Hey, can we talk about something else? Like this bonfire." She gestured toward the roaring blaze that they were approaching. "Or what you all have been doing while I've been away?"

"Sure, sure," Chiasa said, patting her arm, "Definitely understand."

Moriko reminded herself that when she went home with her father to Sagiri, this conversation about how awful Moriko was wouldn't be an issue. Instead, she would have to remember all of the details about Akemi's family that she was telling Moriko every day. She had a notebook dedicated to those details, but she was going to have to be so careful about where she hid it. If her father discovered it, he would certainly have questions, since it included details about inside jokes, fears, likes, dislikes, interests, and jobs that Akemi wouldn't have to write down.

Around the bonfire, campers were laughing, talking, and eating snacks that the counselors had provided. Most of those counselors were hanging out farther away from the fire, watching the potentially dangerous situation from afar. Moriko guessed that they weren't actually paid very well, hence the somewhat hands-off attitude that many of them had.

Susamaru, the energetic recreation counselor, was gathering some of the campers to play flashlight tag. Some were going willingly while others were probably joining because she might get her revenge later during one of her chaotic camp games. Akemi might have volunteered, but Moriko, acting as her twin, decided that Akemi would also want to hang out with her former cabinmates.

She wondered if Akemi still preferred them over her. Perhaps she did, she had know some of them longer. A tiny kernel inside of her hoped that one day she and Akemi would be best friends. Moriko had never had a best friend before, and while she didn't believe in twin sense, she did believe in the idea that twins could be best friends.

"Do you want another slice of orange?"

"No, thank you," Akemi said, her hands in her lap as she watched the flames dance over a log, little snatches of blue occasionally appearing near the center. Or that's what it looked like to her. Pretending to be Moriko was…interesting? Difficult. She wanted to be excited about things or talk more, but Moriko was a listener and a watcher. She didn't jump in to participate like Akemi did. But that did mean she noticed more things, like the colors in the fire.

Sakura, Moriko's cabinmate, gave her shoulder a quick pat. "We missed you."

"Did you?" Akemi asked.

"Of course," another cabinmate, Nobuka, said. "Honey Bee wasn't the same without you."

Akemi nodded, still figuring out how to fully pretend to be Moriko. Tricking the Honey Bee campers would be a lot easier than tricking her mom and aunts and uncles, and wow, she was really going to have to act super well. And acting wasn't exactly her thing. But Moriko was her twin, so if there was anyone she could mimic, it would be her. Also, no one would be expecting her to be not Moriko.

Did her mom miss her? Akemi scraped her fingers against the log she was sitting on, playing with the bark. Not her as Moriko but did Shinobu actually miss Akemi? She still wanted to know why her parents had decided to split up and also split up her and Moriko. Maybe it was a good thing she was going to go stay with her mom and pretend to be Moriko otherwise she might just be incredibly mad at her dad for a while. Being mad wasn't useful.

Getting her parents back together was.

Her dad needed to realize that the woman he dated wasn't any good for him and that her and Moriko's mom was still the one true love of his life, which obviously she was. Otherwise wouldn't he have already found someone else? It had been almost a decade. They had looked so effortlessly happy in those pictures that Moriko had, the ones that matched the two that she had.

Akemi reached up and touched the butterfly in her hair. Moriko had been very adamant that she would have to take it and wear it every day when she went home with Shinobu. Every woman in her family apparently had one or two butterfly hair pins that they wore, each in a different color. Moriko's was teal.

Maybe one day, after Akemi was able to tell her mom who she really was, she could get a butterfly hair pin of her own. Maybe a yellow one? Or if not, that would be okay, no big deal.

She just really hoped that one day her mom could love her as Akemi.

"I think that went rather well. However, you are exhausting."

"Being me isn't that bad! Is it?" Akemi asked as she fell backwards onto Moriko's bed. It had been a long night, and they both smelled like campfire and nature, the smoke lingering on their clothes and hair. No one had figured out that they had switched, and no one noticed when they switched back. "It's harder not saying things."

"How is that more difficult?" Moriko asked. She sat down on her bed, her socked feet brushing the floor. "I had to contribute to conversations."

"Fine, fine," Akemi said, gesturing into the air, "But I couldn't say stuff I wanted to say!"

"I talk," Moriko said, rolling her eyes. "You can speak when you're pretending to be me. If you never speak, my family, our family, is going to eventually become concerned."

Akemi rolled her eyes. "That's not what I mean. I meant I can't say things that I would actually say. Me, not you."

"Oh. There is that."

Akemi tugged on Moriko's arm until she flopped back onto the bed as well, her arms crossed over her chest. The thought bounced around in both of their minds that maybe, if they had grown up together, this was what their life would have been like. Sharing a room, sharing secrets, talking late at night and coming up with plans like this one.

"Hey."

Moriko didn't take her eyes off the ceiling. "What?"

"I'm glad we accidentally met at camp. I think like having a twin."

Moriko smiled a tiny bit. "I do, too."