By the time you notice him coming down the hall towards you, it's too late. The corners of his lips twist into a mocking smirk as his gaze meets yours, and he raises a hand in a greeting devoid of any real camaraderie. Souichiro's lucky your own hands are busy with a couple of cans of paint, otherwise you'd have responded with a very different sort of gesture.

"Hard at work, eh?" he drawls ever so punchably. "Can't wait to see what 2-B's come up with!"

"Yeah, I fuckin' bet," you mutter under your breath as he passes. The day of the festival can't come soon enough.

True to his word, Souichiro got you off the hook for both the fight in the locker room and ditching school afterwards. However, it didn't take long for him to make you feel that expulsion might have been a more preferable outcome. Not only does it seem like he's been going out of his way to run into you in the halls, but he's also done you the "favor" of putting you in charge of organizing your homeroom's exhibition, instead of your class's representative. Utterly insufferable.

Shifting the paint cans into a more comfortable position (the handles are missing, of course), you trudge back up the stairs towards your classroom. You can't help but think that your time would be better spent doing literally anything else, especially in a situation like this. Maybe that's the point.

"There he is," says Hayate as you push the door open with your shoe. "Put 'em right over here."

Crossing the room, you set the paint down on a small folding table beside several large slabs of plywood that are going to become the façade for your class' cosplay café.

"Thanks," Koharu mumbles around the pencil in her mouth as she erases some errant linework. The design's barely more than a sketch, but it appears to feature several shirtless renditions of popular male anime characters.

"Uh…Koharu…I appreciate the help and all, but I think they oughta be a little more modest."

She shoots you a heavy-lidded glare dripping with exasperation and spits the pencil out onto the plywood.

"I'm doing this out of the kindness of my own heart, you know. This isn't even my homeroom. Besides, this'll sell tickets."

"Well...okay, yeah, probably. But don't you think it might create the wrong expectation?"

She throws her hands up in concession. "Fine, you're in charge. Dunno why it matters, anyways. 'Mister President' probably doesn't give a rat's ass how your exhibition turns out."

"Yeah, I'm with you," says Hayate, cracking open a can of soda and slumping into a chair. "This whole thing's a waste of time. He's just screwing with you 'cause he thinks he's got you by the balls."

"Well, he does," you reply, more than a little bitterly. As much as you'd like to be able to tell Souichiro to shove it, you can't bear the thought of explaining your expulsion to Dad. Not with everything he's dealing with. Mom finally came home a few days ago, but you haven't seen her at all. Dad's kept her shut up in her room the entire time, and the few times he's emerged to fetch something for her, he's looked haggard and worn down. So for now, all you can do is grit your teeth and deal with it.

"You guys don't have to do this if you don't want to," you offer, but Koharu and Hayate respond with snorts of derision.

"Don't worry about it," Hayate reassures you. "We're not gonna make you deal with this by yourself. What else would we be doing, anyways? Sitting around, waiting for Friday? That'd just suck in a different way."

"Fair point," agrees Koharu as she sketches an open jacket over a butler boy's tight pecs. "It's not really such a bad thing, having something to keep us busy."

Straightening up, she casts around on the desk next to her for something that isn't there.

"Hey, did you pick up any fine-tip brushes while you were in the art room? I need 'em to finish the linework."

"No, didn't know we needed any," you say, swallowing a groan as it tries to escape from your throat.

"Do you think you could go grab some?" she asks with a wince.

"Let me go with you!"

Suddenly, Mariko is at your side, giving you a start. She's been so quiet that you'd almost forgotten she was here.

"I'm not all that good with tools or drawing, so I've kinda just been sitting around." Then, in a lower voice, she whispers, "And maybe Souichiro won't bug you if we go together."

"S-Sure. Let's go."

The halls are alive with bustle and chatter spilling from almost every room as the rest of school prepares for the festival as well. Yet somehow, the tapping of your heels against the floor echoes oddly in your ears, drowning out the rest of the din and creating the discomforting sensation that you and Mariko are the only ones still here.

Neither of you exchange a word on the way to the art room, although not for lack of trying. As much as you'd like to be able to carry a regular conversation with Mariko, any attempts at small talk meet a quiet death at your lips. Although she hasn't made any attempt to talk about your visions since that evening in your garage, the memory of her tear-streaked face still haunts your every interaction with her. Staying silent feels like the only way to keep the topic at arm's length, to keep things normal.

Fortunately, you've been back and forth to the art room so many times over the past few days that you know exactly where everything is kept, so it only takes a few seconds to locate the brushes in a cabinet next to the sink.

"Here we go," you mumble to yourself as you pull them out. However, as you turn to leave, Mariko reaches out and grabs your sleeve. Her smile flattened, she fixes you with a confused, searching gaze.

"Did I do something wrong?"

Of course that's what this is about. You should have known you couldn't keep avoiding it forever.

"No. Nothing. I'm really sorry, Mariko, it's just…"

You trail off, caught between being unable and unwilling to explain. Nisekao's memories have never been easy to think about. Whenever they resurface from the depths of your mind, they create ripples of emotion – anger, loss, guilt – that crescendo with overwhelming strength until your thoughts are forced to turn elsewhere.

Yet, despite your instincts preventing you from dwelling on it for too long, there's something else behind all that noise. Something important. Missing. Painful. You're compelled to seek it and shy away from it all at once, a paradox that is bewildering and frustrating. Perhaps you could focus your thoughts and push through the dissonance to grasp at the slippery thing underneath, but ultimately the prospect of confronting it proves too terrifying.

What's more, ever since Mariko shared the contents of her visions with you, it's become practically unbearable to think about them whenever she's around. It's as though all that grief coalesces into a blade with its tip digging into your heart, threatening to plunge through unless you shun her.

How could you even begin to tell her something like that?

"It hurts you too, doesn't it?"

She stares right through you, and instantly, you realize that she already knows.

"I'm so sorry. I never meant for it to be like this. But something feels wrong, Tetsuo. I don't feel like myself."

"What do you mean? Is it BMS?"

She shakes her head and shivers. With her skin so pale, she's become like a porcelain doll, fragile and small.

"No. At least, I don't think so. I've been forgetting things, Tetsuo. It's like entire parts of who I am are slipping away. I can't remember anything about last year, or the year before that, or the year before that, or the year before that, or the year before that…"

Come to think of it, neither can you. Before, you'd simply dismissed last year as being uninteresting or unnoteworthy, but to hear Mariko say it herself, you realize that part of your life simply doesn't exist anymore. How long has it been like this?

Mariko sinks to her knees, her lips stretched into a tight grimace.

"The last things I do remember are from…I don't know, it feels like a long time ago. Dad…Big Brother…an angel with a giant, terrible face…"

At this, she lets out a squeal and collapses, burying her face under her arms as she convulses and sobs.

"No, no, STOP! Don't come in! Don't come in!"

Startled, you crouch down beside her and wrap an arm across her shoulders, doing your best to push your own feelings of dread aside and comforting her as you would an upset child. As shaken as you are, it wouldn't do if you started breaking down, too.

"Shh, shh. Hey, it's okay. There's no one else here, it's just me."

It takes a while, but eventually her breathing steadies until she's able to sit up straight again. Wiping her eyes with her sleeve, she gives you a sad smile.

"You see what I mean? No wonder I'm hard to be around."

"Don't say that. How can any of this be your fault? You're right that something feels off. I" – you swallow hard – "I think it might be happening to me, too."

Pushing herself to her feet, Mariko crosses the room to stare out the window. Below, the courtyard is stained a vibrant yellow by the sunset, freckled here and there by clusters of fluttering black wings.

"What's going on, Tetsuo? These things we're forgetting - they're not gone forever, right? Do you think we'll ever remember everything?"

As you join her at the window, you can't say whether you want to or not. But that doesn't seem like what she wants to hear.

"It's got to be all the Shadows out there. All those different realities they're making must be overlapping and messing with our minds. I think that once we beat Souichiro, everything will be just fine. Let's just…not think about any of this stuff for now."

Mariko sniffles and lets out a small sigh.

"Yeah, you're probably right."

She glances up at you, her eyes ringed red and still shimmering with wetness.

"You're a lot like him, you know."

"Hm?"

"Big Brother. When you say that everything will turn out all right, I really do believe you."

At least someone does. Personally, you can't help but feel like things are beginning to come apart at the seams right at the moment you can least afford it. Stopping the Shadows has to be the solution – it has to be. Otherwise…

No. Can't think that way. This memory bullshit is just a distraction. All that matters is stopping Souichiro. Everyone is relying on me.

"Of course it'll be all right. We've been through a lot already. It's only one more Cloud. Now c'mon, let's get these brushes back to Koharu. God, she must be pissed by now."

Mariko chuckles under her breath, but before you leave, she pulls on your sleeve one more time.

"Hey, does this mean everything's normal again? I really want my friend back, you know?"

"Yeah," you answer, even though that twinge of pain in your heart flares up again as you do. "We'll get through this. I promise."