Jii winced.

"Ayae?"

I plopped excitedly on the bed.

"You're awake," I exclaimed, relieved.

Jii slid up. He glanced around the hotel room, pausing at Jei's empty bed. Everything looked worse in the morning light.

I hoped their all-expenses-paid program paid for damages because, uh, I had exactly two bucks in my wallet. And I was not enthusiastic about signing another wage contract. In fact, I was okay never doing that again.

"Where's…?"

"They went to get lunch," I explained. "You've been out for two days."

Everyone had gotten sick of the hotel food.

"Ah. That's… a longer nap than I planned," Jii joked.

"You didn't tell me Teacher Wai was your mentor," I said, crying waterfalls. "I had to tell her what happened because you weren't waking up. If she didn't hate me before I'm sure she does now."

Jii laughed. "Y? No way, she's the chillest."

Jii got ahead of himself and tried flipping to his feet. He fell back down, lightheaded.

I brought him water. As a surprise gift, I also gave him a box of pokkii that I had picked up from a convenience store.

Curious, Jii tried one of the chocolate biscuit sticks and immediately understood why Mama A wanted them. Giggling, I took a biscuit stick for myself.

"You look better," Jii commented. "Are you feeling better?"

I nodded. Surprisingly, yes.

Was everything I thought I knew a lie? Yes. Did I freak out? Yes.

But every emotion that had washed over me came and… then went. I didn't crumple and disappear as I thought I would. I still woke up the next day. I was still here.

Jii looked glad.

"And you?" I asked. "Are you okay?"

"More than okay." Jii snapped a pokki stick. "I dreamt about you."

I went wide-eyed.

"Really?! Me too!"

"No way!"

I nodded furiously. "Yeah, we were floating on a carpet but my shoe fell so I went down to pick it up but the frogs in the pond sang this song that turned me into a dumpling and the only way I could turn back was for you to try to eat me while we were spinning in this boat but I knew it would never happen because I was wasabi-flavored." I wailed. "Stop laughing!"

Jii removed his hand from his mouth. He had to immediately cover it again.

When he uncovered his mouth again, he had the widest smile. "You know I'd do it if you asked me to, right babe?"

I wrinkled my nose. "Even if I was wasabi?"

"I like a little kick." Grinning, he dramatically leaned forward. "Or a lot of kick."

We were in a silly mood. We tossed around in bed and dramatically bit each other in the arm, laughing. We were happy to be together again. Two days was too long.

For the rest of the morning, we did stretching exercises to get Jii back in tip top shape. We did side bends and squats and back twists. We pressed our feet together, pulling each other by the arm.

As we did, I told him about everything he missed, including the talks I had with Jei, Emu, and En. Real friends had real talks, and sharing the bad stuff had brought us all closer together.

"It's still hard for me to accept that our world is like this," I admitted. "That kids like us… would be okay with anyone killing our own classmates."

"People are okay with a lot of things when it's done by the government and enforcers," Jii said dryly. "For many people, if a law says something is fine, then it's fine. And if someone breaks a law, then they deserve to be punished."

I was quiet. I thought back to my own schools, how everyone moved on from Ryuu's disappearance. How hardly anyone questioned Shao's arrest.

"It can be okay to think like that," Jii continued, "if everyone had an equal say on the law. But ever since the parties emerged, our laws have become the prize of a messed up popularity game. Now they're just a way for certain people to get away with whatever they want."

Something that hadn't made sense to me before suddenly did.

"Jii…"

"Hm?"

"Is the reason all your friends and family left you… because you broke the law?" I asked. "Because you're a criminal back home?"

Jii stiffened.

The answer was in his silence.

"Oh for earth's sake, he painted some stupid walls."

It was Jei. He was back. Emu and En were behind him, showing us the bags of takeout they got.

"It's a crime to… paint?" I asked, twisting around.

"In public spaces, yes," Emu said, side-eying Jii.

"Where everyone can see."

"And no one can ignore."

"No way we can let our big beautiful city…"

"...be covered top to bottom by annoying messages."

"We call that vandalism, Ayae," En hissed.

"Oh but it's worse," Emu continued.

"What if they corrupt the youth."

"Or brainwash the people!"

"Now you're spreading propaganda!" they gasped.

"But it's fine if the Jouge do it."

"Then it's advertisement," they deadpanned.

I realized they were being sarcastic and just teasing Jii.

"Z's about as much a crook as I am a raccoon," Jei assured, closing the door.

Jii finally relaxed a bit. He smiled at his friends for coming to his defense.

Gathering his courage, he looked at me.

"Ayae, you're right." He swallowed. "I have an arrest record. If that bothers you…"

I blinked.

"Huh? Oh, I'm fine! I busted someone out of jail before, so I get it." I turned to Emu and En, who plopped on the floor with us. "Did you get my dumplings?" I had been craving dumplings ever since my dream.

"Hold up, rewind," Jii said. "You did what?"

"Oh yeah, you weren't here for the full story," Jei said, dropping next to him. "Your girl here got a crazy past."

We filled Jii in about the explosive powder incident.

"Keep this one," Jei told Jii seriously.

Emu and En agreed. "Fire girl best girl."

I warmed at the compliment, chewing happily. To Jii, I offered my carton of dumplings.

"Dhmn?" I pointed to them with my chopsticks.

Jii looked at the carton, then me. He accepted.

I paused.

Jii was acting weird. He looked like he still couldn't believe that I didn't mind his time in jail.

His friends noticed too.

Shaking a soy sauce packet, Jei began to brag about Jii's artwork to me. Emu and En jumped in.

They described this one piece Jii did on a metro train, where the images jumped to life when the train moved, playing like a cartoon. It was insanely original and had the city talking for weeks. Everyone was trying to guess who the mystery Sayuu artist was.

In awe, I could only imagine what all those artworks must have looked like. The one he had painted for me had been so amazing, seeing it had been one of the best experiences of my life.

We chatted some more. By the end of it, Jii was laughing with the rest of us.

Feeling recovered, Jii went off to take a shower.

Emu and En plopped on the beds for their handheld games. I helped Jei with cleanup.

Then Jei and I worked together to gather all the laundry.

Being fashionable came at a cost, and that was laundry. My friends had a lot of laundry, switching outfits every day. They were appalled when I told them that growing up, I sometimes didn't change clothes for days, even weeks. Survival training and all.

"How can you stand to wear dirty clothes after a shower?" Jei asked, nose scrunched.

"Who says we shower," I said, beaming.

I giggled. Even if Konoha was a creepy, shadowy place of knives, blood, and doom, it was still funny to see their reaction.

The hotel had a laundry service but we needed to bring it there ourselves. Our laundry bag ended being very big. Bigger than the both Jei and I combined, in fact. I could lift it myself, but I didn't want to draw attention. I had realized that city girls were much more... willowy... than countryside girls, and all my casual lifting had made me stand out like a sore thumb.

So Jei and I carried it together, holding opposite ends.

Once there, the mister at the counter held his hat seeing the size of our bag. He climbed down his footstool and parted the cloth divider, beckoning us in.

Inside was a big laundry machine, filled with moving wires and pulleys. Clothes moved down the line, dunking into different tanks of water before getting wrung and moving to the air tunnel. We dumped our bag at the starting place.

The mister gave us a ticket, then shooed us out. He would call our number when the time came.

Jei and I waited at the bench in the hallway.

I turned to my side.

"Jei?"

"What's up."

"Thanks."

He turned to me.

"For comforting Jii earlier," I said. "I carelessly spoke without thinking. I made him reveal something before he was ready to tell me."

Where they were from, breaking off from your family was no big deal. Where I was from, going to jail was no big deal. I grew up hearing Shisui talk about drunk uncles and angry neighbors and money scammers all the time. You were judged by your crime, not by your punishment.

But going to jail must be a taboo over there, for Jii to have reacted like that.

Jei sighed.

"In Kurohyou, if you're convicted, you can no longer vote," he explained.

My eyes widened.

My friends had stressed over and over again the importance of voting in their home city. Every person voted. A person who couldn't vote… wasn't a person.

Jei explained to me that when the Jouge took control, they did everything to make sure they'd keep control. So they created a bunch of laws that would get their opposition arrested.

If an opposing hub wore certain clothes, they made it illegal to wear them, saying it was indecent.

If an opposing hub liked to eat certain foods, they made it illegal to eat them, saying it was uncivilized.

They did this with jobs. They did this with hobbies. They even did it with love.

In doing so, dissenters were one by one stripped of power. And, of course, the public now distrusted them too. The Jouge had successfully flipped the script. Good guys now looked like the bad guys, and bad guys now looked like the good guys.

I was quiet.

"You're a good friend. I'm glad Jii has you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

I pulled in my legs and folded my arms over them.

"How long have you known Jii?"

Jei chuckled. "Honestly, I don't remember a time when I didn't."

Jei told me they were part of the same group in first and second grade, them and three other kids. They would take the metro together and hang out at each other's places every day. There was this popular cartoon in Lightning called Super Squad where each hero had an outfit of a different color. So in their friend group, they decided to have matching shoes and paint each pair a different color, to show they were also a super squad.

But starting around third grade, the group began to split as everyone found other friends to hang out with. By fourth grade, Jei actually didn't talk to Jii much anymore. Not because they didn't like each other, but because Jii had so many other friends.

Jii was what the people of Kurohyou called a star boy. It was someone who was extraordinarily good-looking and talented, the type of personality to get admirers in the tens of thousands. In a celebrity culture like theirs, they were the poster child of what the Jouge claimed to be.

Maybe that was another reason why Jei kept distant.

They were getting old enough to understand what it meant to be Jouge or Sayuu. And Jei saw how much the Jouge adored Jii, how much Jii belonged to them.

It didn't matter how humble someone was. When the Jouge wanted you to play for their team, they came bearing deals that warped reality itself. They promised to put you in the sky, where you had floors of gold and walls of glass, with banquets on your pillow and a hot spring in your bathroom.

For a chance at that, for the dream of something like that, people were more than happy to side with Jouge.

For Jii, that wasn't even a dream. It was a signed deal. Talent recruiters lined at his door. Jii's parents were ardent Jouge supporters grooming him for the very top. And everyone knew about his girlfriend, the star girl of the senior class and daughter of a high-ranking Jouge official.

If anyone had reasons to vote Jouge, it was him.

That he was the anonymous artist who had been spreading Sayuu politics and driving the Jouge up the wall… no one saw that coming. Not even Jei, who grew up with Jii, who saw him paint his first shoes and knew, knew, his art style as well as his own.

Even the Jouge thought they had caught the wrong boy. They gave him a chance to plead innocent. He didn't. They gave him a chance to repent. He refused.

So they made an example of him instead. Said if he didn't repent, maybe he would learn to regret.

When Jii returned from his sentence, classmates almost didn't recognize him.

But the worst was not what happened to him in jail. It was what happened after. To see society turn on you. For your family to throw you out. Teachers to ignore you. Authority to stop you. Stores to dismiss you. Classmates to jump you in the streets.

It was his girlfriend who hurt him the worst. Of all the people Jii thought he had, he thought it would be her. Like him, she had Jouge parents. But her strongest art was acting. Jii thought she had been playing the part to appease her dad. He never considered the possibility that whenever they were alone… she was echoing whatever Jii wanted to hear too. That by being together, both their popularity soared.

Jii broke after realizing the person he loved most… had been broken a long time ago.

After that, he gave up on having anyone. He accepted he was alone.

So when he got jumped again, he was surprised that Jei would come to stand up for him.

Honestly, Jei was surprised too. He was a safety-first kind of guy. Siding with the school pariah was probably the fastest way to die.

But Jei forgot to think of the consequences. All he could think was, man, he had to pay Jii back for the shoes.

I blinked. "The shoes?"

Jei leaned back.

"Yeah. When we first painted our shoes, the other three kids told me my color was stupid. They ganged up on me. Said it wasn't a normal color for shoes. Said it wasn't going to work. Said I would embarrass them if I wore that. Not going to lie, I nearly cried. I was about to laugh it off and say I wasn't serious. It was just a joke. I was curious to see what was the worst that I could do. But then Z, without even looking up, just said, 'Cap, J has the best eye here. No way he'd pick a stupid color'. Then he saw my shoe and told me, 'Whoa. Okay, I'm jealous too.' He straight up dissed the whole group, then went back to painting like nothing happened."

I opened my mouth.

"What color was it," I whispered grimly.

"Mustard yellow."

I gasped. "I love yellow!"

"It's a good color."

"Especially when it's with, um, um, that blue-green."

"Teal. Yes, thank you. Finally someone with good taste."

Jei laughed. "Yeah, Z stood up for me first. Not that he remembers. But I do, and I… I had to return the favor."

It was rough. Everything hurt for months. Jei got kicked out of the house too.

But he was determined to get them out of the shelter. Desperate, he remembered he had an aunt who was Sayuu, who was never invited to the family get-togethers.

His aunt turned out to be a blessing. She took both of them in. She even got something called a lawyer. They were people who heckled law officials for you until you got your way. The lawyer managed to get the enforcers to remove the trackers on Jii and end his parole.

It was while living together in his aunt's house that they became close friends again, even more than when they were younger.

One night, Jii told Jei he wished they had been together all this time, instead of having wasted his time on fake friends. He beat himself up for not realizing Jei voted Sayuu.

In Jii's defense, Jei was hiding it. He hid it from everyone, but especially from Jii.

Jii was alarmed by that. He asked why.

Jei admitted he just assumed Jii voted Jouge. Of all the kids to rise to the top, it was obviously going to be him. The Jouge had practically promised him a place in the sky.

Jii was a very easygoing person. He wasn't the type to get offended. I couldn't even imagine it.

Jei promised me that Jii absolutely could. It happened exactly once, that night, when Jii stared straight into Jei's eyes and said coldly:

"'What makes you think I want to live above a pile of bodies.'"

Jii said he hadn't voted Jouge since he was eight years old, when he finally looked out the metro doors and saw all the people his parents pretended not to see. Hot springs didn't magically appear in the sky. It was lifted there on broken backs and callous hands.

The Jouge dream was a Jouge delusion. Jii told him he'd rather be dead than a slaver.

Jei was quiet.

"I'm not a good friend," he confessed.

A good friend wouldn't stand on the sidelines and watch Jii get beat up and humiliated for weeks.

Jei didn't rush to Jii's side out of compassion. He did it because he had to. Because if he didn't, Jii was going to die. And if Jii was dead, then who was going to stand up for Jei the next time kids ganged up on him for wearing weird-colored shoes.

Jei wasn't like Jii. He didn't vote Sayuu because it was right. He wasn't thinking of other people at all. He voted Sayuu because he knew, deep inside, he wasn't safe inside a Jouge world. He might not be targeted for a purge like Emu and En were, but it was only a matter of time before his turn came.

Everything Jei did, it was because he didn't want to die alone.

Breathing, Jei turned to me and laughed. "Yeah, you picked the right one. Z deserves a girl who doesn't see him poorly because of a misunderstanding."

We sat in silence.

The sound of the laundry machine ran in the background. The mister hummed. One by one, he added the clothes to the moving wire, pinching each piece in place with clothespins.

"I think I understand now," I finally said.

Jei stared at the floor.

"Jii has a good, but stupid, friend," I grumbled.

"Excuse me?"

"You and Jii do the same things, but somehow, in your mind, he's selfless and brave, and you're selfish and cowardly. Did I get that right?"

Hearing no comeback, I turned to him with an evil smile.

"Sounds like you're putting him up there and yourself down there," I said, pointing. My fat smile grew fatter. "Sounds like Jouge brainwashing to me."

Jei had no words.

Pleased, I giggled and turned back.

"You know, as Jii's girlfriend of three whole days—" Two of which he was unconscious, but details, smetails. "—I feel like I can speak for him and say that… maybe what he told you is what he meant?" My shoulders lowered. "If he'd rather die than follow Jouge, then isn't what he's doing… also survival? Isn't he scared of dying alone too?

"The only difference I see is, Jii's more reckless, so he got caught first. And you're more cautious, so you came out second. And because of that difference, maybe you admire Jii for his bravery. But why wouldn't Jii also admire you for your prudence?"

I huffed. I had seen how Jei took care of Jii the past two days, perched at the foot of his bed like an overprotective hen. I had no doubt who was the responsible one between these two.

"Oh, and Jei?"

Jei dared to look up again.

"You are a good friend. To me too. I don't think the reaction of a selfish person, hearing where I'm from, is to ask if I'm okay."

I patted his head, letting him cry it out.

There, there.

I gave a soft smile.

Both our attention were drawn to the sound of a yelp and bad machine rattle.

Parting the divider, we saw the laundry mister tugging miserably at a piece of cloth jammed in the machine.

"Oh no."

.

Jii was chatting with the twins when Jei slammed open the door to the hotel room.

Jii had finished his shower a long time ago, and now sat in shorts with a wet towel around his neck. He beamed seeing the laundry bag Jei dragged across the floor.

"What took so long?" Emu asked.

"Where's the rest?" En asked, frowning.

It wasn't the same bag we left with, only about a tenth of the size.

Jei collapsed face-first on the bed.

"Okay, but hear me out. Have y'all… considered… minimalism."

Everyone stared at him in horror. Emu and En clutched their accessories for dear life. Jii grabbed Jei by the shoulders.

"Who are you and where's J."

"He's dead. Done. Deceased," Jei screeched. "Bruh, do you know there's a thing called handwash?"

The twins blinked.

"Like washing…"

"... your hands?"

They made the washing hands gesture.

"You… you…" Jei couldn't even bring himself to say it, just weakly making an up and down motion, before dropping back down like a noodle. "Your girl be mad crazy, yo."

I blinked when everyone looked at me as I came in. I settled down the rest of the laundry. Cheery, I dramatically gestured to the life-sized bag to show it was all done.

"Sorry it took so long. The laundry machine broke down. I don't think it was made for all fashions." Sweating, I showed them the fringed shirt that had gotten caught in the machine. Unfortunately, it had ripped down the middle in our attempts to get it out. The pained cry told me it belonged to Emu.

"Anyway, a mechanic wouldn't be able to fix it until next week, so we washed everything ourselves. The soap and water was all there, and you can crank the air tunnel so…" I shrugged.

Jii recovered. "Thank you. You're a miracle, babe." He glanced at the laundry bag again, looking abashed. "But let us know next time? We could have waited–"

Emu and En snapped their heads toward Jii with a look of "speak for yourself".

"—you didn't have to…"

"I wanted to!" I blurted.

Jii jumped, startled.

I'd never want to wash, scrub, or clean anything ever again for some stupid wage contract, but I'd clean a billion times over if it meant seeing Jii in more cool outfits! Just thinking about how good he looked on our date, I wanted to cover my face and roll on the floor in happiness.

The world was a dumpster fire, and everything I knew was a lie. We were a group of kids, all of us two steps away from the most horrible end. And you think I'd have the patience to wait for the laundry machine to get fixed?

No! I wanted to see these threads on my boy now! And every day after!

I wanted to be wow'ed! I wanted to squeal over beautiful things! My friends had shown me what the world is, and now I wanted to be shown what the world can be, what was possible out there within an infinity of choices!

"I want another date, please!"

Luckily for me, Jii never had trouble matching my pace, excitedly patting Jei on the shoulder.

Jii tried flipping to his feet again. This time, it was a solid 10/10, the perfect landing.

He looked into my eyes and grinned.

"You got it."