run the heart

It was late. Somewhere a clock ticked, minute hand dragging past midnight. Seo snapped her gum. Blew a bubble. On her laptop screen, her character died a gruesome death, falling forward on his face in a pool of pixelated blood, the battlefield greying out to a countdown timer.

“Motherfucker,” said Seo. The bubble popped.

The laundromat was silent save for the ticking of the clock and the frenzied clicking of Seo’s mouse. No one else was around at this hour, which was just how she liked it. The cool night air pricked into her skin; she’d thrown open all the windows despite the chill. It kept her alert. Outside, the moon was a distant pinprick of light in the sky, as though lying dormant, waiting to be awakened. Seo stuck out her tongue slightly, lifted her hand to position her fingers next to where the moon hung in her line of vision, and flicked her fingers. The moon stayed where it was, unmoved. She licked the gum off her lips, casting a disinterested eye over the slumbering rows of washing machines, the empty waiting area, and then went back to her game, clicking her character into the fray of battle. Resumed chewing.

Ding. The ring of the bell on the door, signifying a customer.

“Just here to drop off a load,” came a voice, bright and chipper despite the hour. A hint of perfume, carried in by the wind. Something flowery. Seo grunted, not looking up from her screen behind the counter, and jabbed a thumb towards the washing machines. Footsteps clacked against the tiles of the linoleum floor, leading away. A clinking of coins. On her screen, her character axed an enemy, and then another for a double kill.

“That’s how it’s done,” Seo muttered. Another snap of her gum.

“Hm?” A voice floated from somewhere in the distance, but Seo paid it no attention. There were enemies to be slaughtered, kill counts to be racked up. Fights to be won.

Still, there was a persistent sound in the air that made it hard to focus, like the buzz of an insect that wouldn’t be swatted away. Like someone humming off tune. “Cut that out,” Seo said without looking up from her screen, turning up the game volume. The humming stopped.

In the game someone on her team was yelling at her on the chat, complaining about how she’d stolen their kill. Seo responded by spamming the laugh command until her entire team started threatening to report her. “Boring,” she said aloud. boring, she typed into the chat.

“I’m positively wounded,” someone said, and the voice was strangely closer now.

Seo blew another bubble, still fixated on the game, where she was now dancing obnoxiously over the dead bodies of her enemies on the battlefield while the rest of her team raged at her.

“I’ll see you later, then, stranger,” came the voice. A note of amusement in their tone. Only when the door had swished closed with another chime of the bell did Seo remember to look up, and by then she was alone again. The low hum of the washing machine was the only sign of life in the room. Through the glass, clothing whirled like bursts of colour in the spray of soapy water. There was a faint trace of lavender, still lingering in the air.

“Huh,” Seo said. Popped her bubble once more. Returned to her screen, only to find that she’d somehow gotten killed again while she’d been distracted. An enemy ambush through the river. Now it was her turn to rage in the game chat, as the clothes spun themselves into the cycle of the washing machine. As the moon revolved around itself in the sky, too slow to bear.

Some time later she woke up with her cheek stuck to the warm keyboard of her overheating laptop, mouth sticky with the taste of artificial fruit. It was nearing six AM, the end of her shift. The laundromat stood stock still in the pale gleam of sunrise, all the washing machines silent and emptied. Nothing moved save for the slow dance of dust motes in the air, lit gold by morning. Seo leaned back in her chair, stretched her arms. Remembered something about lavender. The line of washing machines caught the light, chrome and glass glinting, like a wink.

Seo yawned. “Whatever,” she said to the silence of the laundromat, just to make some noise, and then she packed up her stuff. Stuck her wad of chewed gum under the counter for the poor sucker on the next shift to discover. Left to go buy a bubble tea, and to go home to Chiyo.

--

Back in high school, back when university entrance exams were still looming before them like the final boss of a video game battle, Chiyo had launched herself headfirst into the fray, burying herself in books and arriving to class in the morning with dark circles under her eyes. Seo, too, showed up deprived of sleep, but from catching late showings of horror movies and pulling all-nighters at karaoke instead. When she showed up to class at all, that was. It had been a trying time for both of them—Chiyo, because she had her heart set on a prestigious arts university in Tokyo; Seo, because suddenly she had no one to drag to the arcade with her at ungodly hours of the morning.

“If this was a real boss battle, you’d be a cleric, probably,” Seo told Chiyo once, after the fifth time she’d been turned down in favour of studying. “That’s why I need you, see. We’re on the same team.”

“It’s okay, Yuzuki-chan,” Chiyo had said, yawning on her doorstep. It was 2 AM and her hair was sticking up around her face. Seo’s hands itched to take a picture on her phone. Maybe more than one picture. “You’re so good at video games, you can win without me. What’s a cleric, anyways?”

Seo’s jaw had dropped in offense—“What did you just say to me, Chiyo, how dare you—” A few hours later, they both woke up to find themselves sprawled on the floor of Chiyo’s bedroom, laptop still open to a wiki page of RPG classes, sunlight letting itself in through the slant of the window blinds. Neither studying nor arcade gaming had been accomplished that night, but for some reason, seeing Chiyo’s sheepish half-smile, looking well-rested for the first time in a long time, Seo had felt it as a victory all the same.

Later, when the exams had rolled around and passed them by, and even when the results had been posted with her name new and shiny among the top, Chiyo would still fret for reasons Seo couldn’t fathom, staring dejectedly into her lunchbox bento in the cafeteria or at the laptop screen during a movie night.

“Yo,” Seo had finally said, slamming down on the trackpad. She’d paused one of her own favourite apocalypse movies, so this was really serious. “What the hell’s with you? Are you dying or something? It’s just university, man, how can it be as scary as this giant lizard monster? Look at it.”

Chiyo had turned her watery eyes at her then. “But Yuzuki-chan,” she had said, lips trembling downward, “what about you? What am I going to do without you?"

“What the hell are you talking about?” Seo had said, genuinely bemused. “Am I dying or something?” Sure enough, a few short months later when Chiyo made the move to Tokyo, Seo was right there next to her on the train, complaining about the stuffing of the steamed buns they’d bought at the bakery by the station, and as Chiyo settled into the frenzy of classes and portfolio projects and scholarship applications, Seo landed the graveyard shift at the local 24-hour coin laundromat. In the mornings of their shared apartment room Chiyo fixed her bows in her hair and got dressed for class while Seo came back from work bearing whatever she’d deemed worthy of breakfast that day—fish and rice, custard buns, pizza. Day after day had developed into routine, and now, sucking up tapioca pearls through the straw of her bubble tea as the sun rose around her, following the stretch of her own shadow before her all the way home, it was easy to think that nothing had changed but the scenery.

Still, the world was bigger now, and Chiyo’s was bigger than her own. She had a lot of other friends Seo didn’t know, from her clubs, from her classes, and Seo never thought about it much, though that didn’t mean she never met them. Sometimes when she dropped by the university to pick up Chiyo a tall guy named Nozaki would stop her and ask her to pose for him in boxing gloves, and whenever Chiyo invited her to go out with her and Mikoshiba to karaoke she always accepted, even though his taste in music sucked and he always needed at least two hours’ worth of encouragement from Chiyo before he could be coaxed into singing. But that was the extent of it—or at least it was until Chiyo said to her, one day, over lunch at the mall food court—“Kashima’s going to be joining us today.”

“Who?” Seo said.

“I’ve told you so many times already,” Chiyo said, looking crushed. “My friend, Kashima—she’s in the drama club—”

“Never heard of her,” Seo said, going back to her lunch in disinterest.

“Well,” said Chiyo, “she’s very nice. It would be great if you guys got along. She’s studying to become an actress, so she’s the charming, cool-looking type.”

“Oh, Sakura-chan!” A new voice rang out above them. A familiar, flowery scent. “Are you complimenting me? You’re too sweet.” Seo squinted up at her as she slipped into the seat beside Chiyo, across the table—head of short, dark hair, almost blue. A beam on her face. Green eyes widening, as she stared back at her.

“It’s you!” Kashima gasped, pointing an accusing finger. “You’re the girl from the laundromat!”

“Huh?” said Seo, through a mouthful of rice.

“Do you two already know each other?” Chiyo said in surprise.

“Yes!” said Kashima, at the same time as Seo said, “No.”

“I was doing a late laundry load last night,” Kashima explained. “She was behind the counter, and being terribly rude, you know.”

A click of recollection slid into Seo’s head clear as the bell of a closing door. “Ah,” she said.

“You remember!” Kashima jabbed her finger in Seo’s face. “You were playing games behind the counter, and then when I came back to pick up my clothes you’d fallen asleep. Very unprofessional, don’t you think?”

Seo returned to her rice, stuffed a piece of chicken in her mouth. “Boring,” she mumbled.

“That’s exactly what you said last time!” Kashima clutched her chest in offense.

“H-Hey now, guys, calm down,” Chiyo said, looking alarmed. “It’s nice that you guys have met already, isn’t it? Today’s going to be really fun!”

Kashima turned to Chiyo, then, and the smile was back on her face. Eyes softening. “Of course, Sakura-chan,” she said. A pair of passing-by girls swooned as Kashima swept a strand of hair behind her ear, then reached out to clasp Chiyo’s hand in her own. “Today’s going to be absolutely wonderful.”

Seo narrowed her eyes. Her line of vision followed Kashima’s fingers to where they patted Chiyo’s hand lovingly. To the lessening distance between the two of them as Kashima leant in close to compliment Chiyo’s dress, to admire the pink of her painted fingernails. All around them, the cloying scent of lavender, ruining Seo’s meal. An itch dug its claws into the back of Seo’s neck, taking root and refusing to let go. Raising the hairs on her skin.

“Yeah,” said Seo, chewing, feeling the deliberate grind of her teeth, the tension in her jaw. She swallowed her food, and stretched her mouth into a smile. “Today is going to be so much fun.”

--

“Um, guys,” Chiyo said. “This wasn’t really what I had in mind.”

“Oh, yeah?” Seo said, raising her voice. “You think you can beat me in this game? I’m the king of this machine! I practically built this machine!”

“But Seo-chan,” Kashima said. “You haven’t won yet, either.”

“Don’t call me Seo-chan,” Seo said. The claw came up empty-handed once more, and began returning to its original spot. “No, hey, wait, stop, don’t do that. Go back! I almost had it, god dammit, this machine is a piece of crap—”

“It’s okay,” Chiyo cut in, eyes wide. “We don’t have to win, guys, you’ve already spent so much on this claw machine, let’s just go.”

“Nonsense,” Kashima said, feeding another coin into the slot. “We can’t admit defeat, can we, Seo-chan?” She took the joystick from Seo, turned to wink at Chiyo. Seo felt a growl forming in the base of her throat.

“It’s fine if you want to,” Seo said. “I mean, since you’re not even gonna win, anyway.”

Kashima pouted. The claw brushed past the edge of a stuffed toy, pulled back in retreat.

“Hey, hey, Yuzuki-chan,” said Chiyo, with a nervous giggle. “There’s a line forming behind us. Maybe we should just move on. Do you guys want to check out the bookstore? There’s a new chapter of Let’s Love I want to see if they have in stock—”

“Don’t worry, Chiyo,” Seo said, elbowing Kashima out of the way. “I’m the champion, I got this. You’ll have that toy in no time.”

“It’s okay!” Chiyo squeaked. “I don’t even want it, seriously, you don’t have to go through so much trouble!”

Seo narrowed her eyes, gritted her teeth in concentration. Ever so slowly the claw lowered itself down into the valley of toys and began closing its jaws. Seo tightened her grip on the joystick, nudged the claw ever so slightly to the left. The metal grip closed around the beak of a large plush duck and dragged it into the air, as slowly and surely as if it had spread its stuffed wings and flown.

Seo fist pumped the air. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she shouted, and then, punching the claw machine, “that’ll show you, you piece of shit machine.” She turned to bow to the mall passersby with exaggerated grandeur. “Thank you, thank you, no need for applause, really.” Most of them stared at her strangely before hurrying away, but Chiyo was laughing, a little, and she was the only one who mattered anyway.

“You got it!” Kashima clapped her hands together, and the sound of it was loud, jarring. The duck dropped into the toy retrieval chute. “Wow, Seo-chan, you really are the champion.”

“I told you I was,” Seo snapped. The triumph of victory suddenly felt short-lived, and she frowned at Kashima, wondering why she was smiling so wide. After all, Seo had beaten her, hadn’t she?

Kashima was bending down, lifting the giant stuffed duck. It looked ridiculous in her arms, bright yellow and garish against her neatly ironed, white-collared shirt, her sweep of elegantly styled hair.

“Here, Sakura-chan,” Kashima said, thrusting the duck into Chiyo’s arms. “For you.”

“Oi, why are you giving it to her like you’re the one who won it?” Seo said.

“Wow, thanks, guys,” Chiyo said, struggling under the weight of the gigantic duck. “Um, I guess we should return this to our apartment. It’s a bit of a shame, though—we didn’t get to do anything else together.” A pause. “Hey, Kashima, do you want to come over? It’s been ages since we’ve had guests over at our place.”

“What,” said Seo.

“Sakura-chan, you’re too generous!” Kashima beamed. “I’ll have to take up that invitation some other time, though, I’m sorry. I have a rehearsal I should be getting to.”

“Oh, no!” Chiyo gasped. “Is that why your phone’s been buzzing for the past half hour?”

“Has it been?” Kashima peered at the screen. “Oh, it’s just Hori-chan-senpai, he’ll get over it. Anyways, don’t worry; it’s nothing big I’m missing—just one of our final dress rehearsals, you know how those go—”

Chiyo dropped the duck in horror. It rolled across the floor of the mall, and Seo scrambled to save it. By the time she returned Kashima was gone, leaving nothing but a trace of lavender in the air and a crestfallen look on Chiyo’s face.

“You know,” she said. “I was really hoping you and Kashima would get along.”

“What are you talking about?” Seo said. “We got along fine.”

But Chiyo still looked dejected, so Seo fluffed up the duck in her arms, waved it around a little in her face. Punched its belly a few times. “Hey, c’mon, Chiyo, look at this thing,” she said. “It’s so cool-looking, right? Totally worth the trouble, right?”

“You know,” Chiyo said, “it would have cost less to just buy it.”

“You can’t buy the sweet taste of victory,” Seo said, affronted, and she flexed an arm, blew a speck of imaginary dust off her bicep. “That’s what it’s all about, man.”

Still, on their way back home Seo made Chiyo hold the duck. There was something off about it. Every time she buried her face into the soft plush, all she could smell was that maddening scent of lavender.

--

In a few days’ time Seo would have forgotten about the whole thing, if not for the giant stuffed duck that greeted her on the windowsill when she returned home every morning, and if not for the fact that Kashima began showing up more and more at the laundromat, at the most suspicious hours. The first time she’d come back, Seo had been snacking on a bag of chips and watching a horror movie on her laptop, earphones plugged in and dead to the world for all intents of purposes, until she became aware of a distant sound, one that didn’t belong in the soundtrack of screams and blood splatters. When she took out her earbuds and looked up, it was to see a familiar figure bent over one of the washing machines, a load of clothing in her arms, humming a tune.

“Hey,” said Seo. “Stop humming. It’s off-key and it’s distracting me from my movie.”

Kashima stilled, then slowly straightened up, head whipping around dramatically to stare at her. “Off-key?” she repeated. “You need to get your ears checked, Seo-chan. Me, off-key—that’s impossible!”

Seo considered this, then shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “Sure, whatever. Just stop doing it so I can watch my movie.” The earbuds went back in.

But a few minutes later Seo felt a presence at her back, and turned to see Kashima peering over her shoulder at the screen. She paused the movie.

“What is it?” Seo said. “Is the machine out of detergent?”

“Oh, no, nothing of the sort,” Kashima said. “What movie are you watching?”

On screen, the characters were stuck mid-death, waiting for Seo to return to them. “It’s the best movie ever made,” Seo said.

“Hmm,” said Kashima. “It looks interesting. Can I watch, with you?”

Seo considered turning her down, but that would probably lead to arguing, and possibly Kashima pouting, and more effort than she was willing to spare. Also, she liked watching horror movies with other people. Their terrified reactions made the experience all the more savoury. “Whatever,” Seo said, offering an earbud.

Kashima took it with an eagerness that would be quickly depleted by the end of the movie. “Is it over?” she said, peeking out from behind her hands.

The credits were rolling. “Not yet,” Seo said. It took another five minutes for Kashima to realize the movie had long ended and she removed her hands, sulky. Watching her cower from the screen and suffer was almost as good as the movie had been. Almost.

“Well,” said Kashima, popping a chip into her mouth, “that wasn’t a very enjoyable movie at all. Though the actors were quite good, I must say.”

“They died so realistically,” Seo agreed. “Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t say you could eat my chips. Give that back.”

Kashima crunched down on the chip, licked the salt off her lips with a smile. Seo’s eyes followed the movement, the slow swallow of her throat. “It’s called sharing, Seo-chan,” Kashima said.

Chiyo’s face popped unbidden into Seo’s head, then, smiling innocently, and Seo scowled. “I’m not sharing anyone with you and your shady intentions,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” Kashima said, and Seo merely pointed the V of her fingers at her own eyes, then at Kashima, in the universal I’m-watching-you gesture.

But Kashima was watching her back. Gone was the cowering fear she’d faced the movie with, and instead she leaned closer into Seo’s space.

“What?" Seo snapped, unsettled by the weight of her considering gaze.

“My humming is off-key, huh?” Kashima said, almost thoughtful. “Hey, Seo-chan, you must have an ear for music, then, right?”

“Why do you ask?” Seo said in suspicion.

Kashima brightened. “You do, then! You’ll teach me how to sing, won’t you, Seo-chan? I’ve been trying to get someone to teach me singing so that I can convince Hori-chan-senpai to direct the amazing musical I’ve always known he’s capable of, but no one ever takes me up on my offer.” She pouts. “You’ll do it, though, won’t you?”

“No,” Seo said. She wondered what a guy with a name like Hori-chan-senpai looked like. Probably a nerd.

“If you could help me out,” Kashima continued, as though she hadn’t heard her, “I’d be in your debt forever, Seo-chan.”

That got Seo’s attention. “Hmm,” she said. “Sing something, then. How bad can it be?”

Kashima beamed, opened her mouth.

“Hmm,” Seo repeated a few moments later. She put her earbuds back in, started playing another movie. “Keep going.”

The next thing she knew she was waking up from her stiff position on the chair, blinking at the pale light of morning. Kashima was gone, and the laundromat was empty. On the counter was Seo’s phone, screen open to her contacts page, where a mysterious new Ouji-sama stared up at her, complete with its own smiling profile photo. Seo grunted at it in disapproval, but it would have taken more effort to delete the contact information, so she snapped her phone shut instead. Tilted her chip bag down her throat, only to find that Kashima hadn’t even left her the crumbs.

--

Seo didn’t much care for the university Chiyo went to; never had, not even back in high school when Chiyo showed her photos on her phone of the pretentious-looking brick buildings, stars in her eyes. “It’s perfect,” she’d insisted, eyes already glazed over with some fantasy vision of the future, with a dream. Chiyo always liked to hook her hopes onto impossibly high, hard-to-reach places, and Seo’d always thought—she had to have a hard heart, to be like that. In any case, there was one good thing Seo could say about this university: its floors were always polished to perfection, which was killer for sliding down the hallways in her socks. Which was how she bumped into Nozaki one day, waiting for Chiyo’s class to finish so they could go get dinner together.

“Oh, it’s you, Seo-san,” said Nozaki from the ground. He knelt to pick up his books from where they were scattered around him. “What brings you here?”

He reached for the last of his books, but Seo stepped on it casually before he could pick it up. He looked better like this, on the ground, blinking up at her.

“Waiting for Chiyo,” Seo said. “She’s in some art class right now, but we’re gonna get drinks later, so it’ll be worth the wait.”

“Ah, art,” said Nozaki, looking pensive, unfazed from his spot on the floor “I’ve seen some of Sakura-san’s work up in posters around the school, she’s very good. I was actually on my way over to her class, too—there’s a favour I want to ask of her. Why don’t we go see her together?”

Which was how Seo ended up relinquishing the book and resuming her sock-sliding down the hall, expertly weaving through crowds of confused-looking students as she whooped loudly in warning, while Nozaki tried to keep up, furiously scribbling something down in his notepad. Something that looked suspiciously like sketches.

“Come on, man,” she said, “put down your pen and slide with me. It’s more fun that way.”

“It’s more fascinating to simply observe,” Nozaki said, around the pen cap clamped precariously between his teeth as he scribbled. “Hey, what kind of socks do you think the love interest of a shoujo manga heroine would wear?”

Seo thought about it. Shark-patterned, definitely, she decided, and was about to voice this aloud, when she skidded past the open doorway of a room and caught a glimpse of familiar blue. She stopped in her tracks before even realizing it and ended up losing her balance, crashing into Nozaki once again.

“What is it?” Nozaki said, peering over Seo’s shoulder inside the room. “Oh, it’s Hori and the rest of the theatre students, working on their play.” He removed the pen cap from his mouth, then raised a hand, calling out. “Hey, Hori!”

Some guy with a head full of hair gel looked their way, waved. But he wasn’t the only one. Next to him was none other than Kashima, dressed to the nines in an extravagant prince costume, and she was staring straight at Seo, waving her hand frantically.

“Seo-chan!” she said, and then she was running up to her, even as the other guy chucked what looked like a script at the back of her head, shouted Kashima get back here or so help me I will shove your own sword up your nose. “I didn’t know you went to this university! I thought for sure I’d have seen you around!”

“I don’t,” Seo said. She vaguely wondered why she had stopped in the first place. The polished gleam of the hallway floor looked very inviting, especially now that a slightly out of breath Kashima was standing before her, panting slightly. Her getup was still immaculate, though, with not a single wrinkle to be found in her shirt, not a hair out of place. Seo’s hands itched—to mess up her hair, to rumple her collar—and she clenched them into fists instead. “I’m just waiting for Chiyo.”

“Ah,” said Kashima, and Seo caught the blink of uncertainty, the flash of disappointment in her tone, and she narrowed her eyes. She opened her mouth, to say something about staying far, far away from Chiyo, but what came out instead was—

“If you’re supposed to be playing a prince, why do you still stink like flowers?”

Kashima winked. “Why, Seo-chan, it’s precisely because of my royal status that I must remain fragrant at all times!”

“You know what, you’re right,” Seo said. “It makes sense. Rich people stink the worst.”

“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Nozaki said. She’d forgotten he was there, and he was watching the two of them closely, pen still poised over his notepad like a weapon.

“We don’t,” Seo said, at the same time as Kashima said brightly, “Any friend of Sakura-chan is a friend of mine!”

“I see,” Nozaki said, thoughtful. He started sketching something again. Seo hoped it was Kashima’s head on a platter.

“Anyway,” Seo said. “Time to go, bye.” She started to turn away, but Kashima suddenly grabbed her arm, halting her.

“Wait right there, Seo-chan,” Kashima said, and she was whirling around, heading back into the room. Seo watched in bemusement as Kashima ran up to the hair gel guy, expertly dodged the swat of his clipboard, and fished something out of his shirt pocket. In seconds she was running back, waving two slips of paper in the air.

“Here,” Kashima said, and she was grabbing Seo’s wrist, pressing something into her palm. “The first showing of our play is in a few weeks, and though admission sold out ages ago, I’m sure Hori-chan-senpai won’t mind giving up his family’s tickets. It’s more important that you come, after all!”

“Why did you give me two tickets?” Seo said, peering down at the tickets in her hand.

The flicker of uncertainty was back. Seo homed in on it like a predator closing in on its kill.

“Well,” Kashima said. “I thought you might have wanted to bring Sakura.”

Ah. Seo could feel her hackles rising. “I see,” she said. “I’ll be sure to pass on the message.” In her mind she was already thinking of how beautiful the tickets would burn, long before Chiyo ever got to see them.

“Can I have a ticket, too?” Nozaki said.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Nozaki-kun,” Kashima said, not even looking in his direction. “But tickets sold out three weeks ago. Maybe you can find a recording of it online.”

It was then that Seo realized Kashima was still hanging on to Seo’s hand for some reason. The skin of her palms was smooth, unmarred by callouses. Seo bet she’d never punched anyone in her life.

“Kashima,” Seo said. She smiled, full of teeth. “We should go boxing sometime. One on one. Loser has to kneel at the victor’s feet and beg.”

“Sounds fun,” Kashima singsonged. Seo peeled her hand from Kashima’s grip, but the unsettling feeling that she’d been outmanoeuvered somehow was harder to shake off. Beside them, Nozaki was taking notes again, though Seo couldn’t fathom why.

After the hair gel guy had come and dragged a kicking and screaming Kashima back into the room, Seo surveyed the length of hallway before them, turned to Nozaki. “Shark-patterned,” she said.

“What?”

“Shark-patterned. That’s the kind of socks the hero of a shoujo manga would wear.”

“But those are the socks you’re wearing now,” Nozaki said.

“You bet,” Seo said, and launched into a sprint, knocking several people over as she slid down the hall, cackling the whole way to Chiyo’s class. Nozaki had to run to keep up.

In the end, though, Chiyo wouldn’t sock-slide with her either, opting instead to blush and stammer—N-Nozaki-kun, you came to pick me up from class? Just for me? Seo had to wonder why Chiyo was always so surprised, when she set her heart on something and then got it, every time. It had been like that for the university entrance results, too, Chiyo unable to take her eyes off her own printed name, pressing a palm to her forehead and wobbling on her feet like she’d been about to faint. Or maybe it had just been the sleep deprivation catching up to her at last. But now, too, Chiyo was trembling as she walked side-by-side with Nozaki, looking up at him like he was the sun, which was fine, Seo supposed. More floor space for her, as she whizzed down the halls and dodged professors and authority figures, leaving the two of them in the dust. The tickets to the play burning a hole in her pocket, long forgotten.

--

In her dream Seo was chasing something through a forest, flyaway branches scraping at her face as she crashed through the undergrowth, sun beating down through the thick canopies of leaves and sticking against her skin. A bread of sweat rolled down her temple. It was a good dream; her muscles were coiled tight with energy, veins pulsing, heart pumping. The rush of adrenaline meant she was alive. She barrelled through the trees and—there—a glint of brilliant blue—

She dove for it, landing face first in the grass and dirt, fallen leaves crushed under her weight. Her hands closed around something. She’d caught it, she thought, with more than a trace of vindictive triumph. Of course she’d caught it. She always won. She opened her fist to reveal a butterfly, wings broken, lying limp in the lines of her palm.

“Seo-chan,” came a voice. The heat of the forest melted away, and Seo blinked up at Kashima, who was sitting on the counter of the laundromat, legs dangling over the edge. “You’re always sleeping, when I come in. It’s bad customer service. No wonder no one else ever comes here. You should rest more, you know.”

“Rest is for the weak,” Seo said. “I’m invincible.” She eyed Kashima suspiciously. There was something off about her, though she couldn’t quite place her finger on what it was, exactly. “Why are you up at this hour anyway?” But she already knew. There was no other reason for Kashima to be here, to keep returning here, if not to fish for information about Chiyo. Good thing Seo had spotted her game plan early—she wasn’t going to give away a single thing.

Kashima’s smile, though, was spread strangely thin. “Not all of us can fall asleep as easily as you, Seo-chan.”

“Don’t call me Seo-chan,” said Seo.

“What should I call you, then?” said Kashima.

Seo thought about it. “Sensei,” she decided.

Kashima moved closer, propping her chin up on her palm, elbow balanced on her knee. She was still smiling, a little wider now, and Seo didn’t know why, so it made her wary.

“Seo-sensei,” Kashima repeated, slow and deliberate, and Seo remembered the forest, remembered the sweat trickling down her spine. She swallowed. Kashima’s eyes traced the movement, down the column of her throat. There was a pause.

“I bought you a plant,” Kashima said. She placed the pot on the counter.

Seo squinted at the plant. Then at her. Then back at the plant.

“I thought it would spruce up this place,” Kashima said, gesturing around them at the empty laundromat.

“I can’t just bring in a plant to decorate the place,” Seo said. “I don’t actually live here. My shift ends at six.”

“Oh,” Kashima said, dejected. Another pause. “Do you wanna get breakfast when your shift ends, then?”

It was sometime after 4 AM. Seo thought about it, but she could never turn down food. “Fuck it,” she said. “Let’s just go now. Nobody comes by at this freakish hour besides you, anyway.”

Later, they walked back to Chiyo and Seo’s apartment together, Kashima swinging the bag of leftover takeout they’d saved for Chiyo from side to side, Seo cradling the potted plant in her gloved hands. Winter was on the horizon—Seo could feel it in the chill of the morning air. The heat from the forest in her dream was already distant, fading into memory. The sun hadn’t yet risen, and the moon was pale as a thumbprint pressed against the sky, like someone could wipe it away at any moment. Seo lifted her hand to do just that.

“What are you doing?” Kashima said.

Seo lowered her hand. The moon clung stubbornly to the sky, and she bared her teeth at it. “Nothing,” she said.

“Hey,” Kashima said suddenly, like it had just occurred to her. “If I call you Seo-sensei, then that means you’ve agreed to teach me how to sing, right?”

“Sorry,” said Seo. “I didn’t bring my earbuds, so there’ll be no lessons today.”

Kashima grinned. It was a sudden flash of silver, lightning-quick, revealing a peek of tongue, and Seo’s eyes chased the movement. Fish darting into sunlit waters. It struck Seo then, finally, what it was that had been off about Kashima today—she hadn’t bothered to put on makeup. Seo was close enough to make out the shadows under Kashima’s eyes, the dryness of her chapped lips. She wasn’t even wearing her lavender perfume. Something caught in Seo’s throat. In the stillness of the open street they had all the space in the world, but suddenly all she wanted was to close the distance.

“That’s too bad, then, isn’t it, Seo-sensei,” Kashima said, eyes wicked with mischief, and she started singing, some terrible butchery of an old folk song, right there on the sidewalk. If it could even be called singing.

Seo shoved her with her shoulder. “Stop that,” she said, and when Kashima just started warbling louder, she shoved a bit harder. “I said stop that!”

The air was so cold it hurt to laugh, stinging Seo's teeth as the breath rushed out of her in clouds of steam. “Make me,” Kashima said, and then she was running, still singing all the way. Seo stared after her for a moment, the weight of a potted plant in her hands. The streets were empty, the sky a stretch of shadow, the stoplights blinking silently for ghost traffic. At this hour, the entire city felt like a graveyard, alive for nobody but them.

A slow smile spread over Seo’s face. The rush of adrenaline. “That was a head start,” she shouted, and then she was off, the echoes of Kashima’s song straining the space between them. Her silhouette flaring a brilliant blue in the distance.

Later that morning, when Seo was trying to fit the potted plant on the windowsill next to the fat stuffed duck, Chiyo said, voice still sleepy, “It’s nice that you and Kashima have become friends.”

Seo stilled. “What are you talking about?”

The bathroom door was open, so Seo could catch Chiyo’s gaze in the mirror, from where she stood over the sink, curling her eyelashes. “You don’t have to look so surprised,” Chiyo said with a giggle.

“We’re not friends,” Seo said.

“Then what are you?"

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Seo insisted. “She’s not my friend, she just comes into the laundromat all the time because she has a lot of dirty clothes to wash. Like, all the time. It’s kind of disgusting, actually. She must sweat a lot.”

Actually, she didn’t. Seo knew this for a fact because that morning when she’d caught Kashima by the collar three blocks down the road, choking the song to its well-deserved end, Kashima had been pristine as ever, lips curving up into a white-toothed smile. “Okay, okay, you caught me,” Kashima had said. Only a slight flush to her cheeks marked anything out of the ordinary, any sign that Seo had gotten a rise out of her, and Seo had curled her fingers tighter from where she had Kashima’s shoulder in a death grip, wondering what it would take to leave her mark. What it would take, to win.

“Hey,” said Chiyo, setting down her eyelash curler and turning around to meet her gaze for real. “This is what I wanted from the beginning, you know.”

Seo scowled, turned to punch the stuffed duck in its stomach. The duck stared balefully back at her. The potted plant didn’t move, but Seo was suddenly struck aware of how alive it was. Fuck. She couldn’t be held responsible for the life and safety of anything that didn't survive on takeout and junk food.

--

But the plant was still alive when Seo saw Kashima next, a fact that Seo made sure to bring up and brag about.

“It’s a cactus, Seo-chan,” Kashima said, grinning. “It’s pretty hard to kill, don’t worry.”

Seo squinted at her. “Is that a challenge?”

It was late afternoon. They were walking down the street, drinking bubble tea. Or at least Kashima was drinking hers. Seo was more preoccupied with trying to shoot tapioca pearls at Kashima’s face through her straw. Chiyo wasn’t there with them, and Seo forgot to remember that was strange.

“It’s cold,” Kashima pouted, dodging a pearl as it sailed particularly close to her cheek, and then she was moving closer, snaking an arm through Seo’s to sneak her hand into her pocket.

“What are you doing?” Seo said, frowning down at where Kashima was trying to lace their fingers together, deep in Seo’s jacket pocket.

“You’re warm,” Kashima said, breath fanning across Seo’s ear. Seo shivered—an involuntary reaction, pulled deep from the root of her spine. It struck Seo that at this proximity, Kashima’s perfume should have been suffocating, but at some point she’d gotten used to the scent. At some point she’d gotten used to Kashima. Seo would have remembered to feel unsettled by that, but she was distracted by the comfortable fit of Kashima’s hand in her own, and she tightened her grip.

“You’re weak,” Seo retorted. Kashima was wearing a thick puffy jacket against the late autumn wind, but Seo liked the chill biting at her cheeks, at her fingers. It made her feel awake, senses sharpened by an energy her body couldn’t contain, waiting for direction. Her hands, her joints all itching for action.

Kashima hummed in lieu of a reply. “Where do you want to go, today?” she asked instead, and Seo chewed the end of her straw in deliberation. She lifted it, aimed, and shot another pearl at Kashima. This time, it struck her smack dab in the middle of her forehead, and Seo curled her mouth into a smile, still wrapped around her straw.

“Laser tag,” Seo decided, closing in on the answer like an arrow to its target.

Kashima reached up with her free hand, plucked the pearl from her forehead. Seo eyed her warily. Was that a smirk on her face?

“Sounds good, Seo-chan,” Kashima said innocently, and then she popped the pearl into her mouth, sucking the residue from her fingers, eyes never once leaving Seo’s.

Now that, Seo thought, recognizing the rush as hunger, was a challenge.

But Kashima really didn’t know who she was dealing with, not even when they’d forked over their money and gotten geared up with their vests and guns. “See you on the other side,” Kashima said, shooting her a wink before disappearing into the shadows of the arena. Seo didn’t reply; she was already getting into the headspace of competition, of the hunt. Every cell in her body flickering awake, alive, ready to spark.

The laser tag arena was plunged in darkness and artificial fog, lit only by the LED glow of labyrinthine walls and partitions, and the blinking red targets on her own vest. Seo tightened her grip on her gun and darted in blind, pulse drumming to the beat of the loud electronic music playing over the speakers. Kashima was nowhere to be seen, but it was only a matter of time. Seo prowled through the maze for a while, picking her way through groups of other players, sweat licking uncomfortably into the crook of her neck, when a flicker of blue landed on the wall in front of her, just over her right shoulder.

“Oops,” came a voice from behind her. “I missed.”

That was all Kashima had the chance to say before Seo was whirling around, gun already up and shooting. Time seemed to slow down, then, or perhaps stretch out, like a rubber band being pulled out of place. All Seo was aware of for a long moment was the music blasting in her ears, the adrenaline pumping through her veins, the solidity of the trigger under her finger as she slammed it over and over. The bursts of neon red light that bloomed in response. Over and over and over—

When the rubber band let go of its grip on time, snapping back, Seo felt the recoil like a bruise. Jerked out of her trance to see past the crosshairs of her gun, past its neon laser trail, to the shape of Kashima’s silhouette braced against the wall, every target on her vest glowing Seo’s red. She’d won.

Seo lowered her gun. Kashima didn’t move. They stared at each other through the fog, noise still blaring from the arena speakers, other players darting around them, shouting and shooting. Kashima was breathing heavily, her hair mussed, chest heaving, and Seo thought, with perfect clarity, that she’d done that. That for the first time Seo had dug in with her two hands and she’d ruined that perfect picture.

But in the darkness of the arena, their silhouettes backlit by flashing neon lights, electronic music drowning out the thud of Seo’s own heart hammering against her chest, she couldn’t make out Kashima’s face. The look in her eyes, as they stared at each other, neither saying a word.

It didn’t feel anything like a victory.

--

There’d been a weird tension in the air, after the laser tag game. Kashima had been strangely subdued all the way through the dinner they’d grabbed at the mall, glancing at Seo when she didn’t think she was paying attention, eyes narrowed like she was trying to figure something out. Seo didn’t believe in beating around the bush, so she confronted her about it on the bus ride back.

“What’s up with you?” she said. “Do I have something stuck in my teeth?” Outside, the sun had set. A thin sheen of condensation clung to the glass of the bus windows, blurring the glow of the traffic lights. It was cold, so it was strange how Kashima kept herself carefully angled away, a few inches of distance between them even as they were sitting next to each other on the bus, when on the way to laser tag she’d been holding Seo’s hand out of desperation for warmth.

“No, Seo,” Kashima said, her mouth curling into a sheepish smile. “You look fine. You always do.”

“Why are you telling me things I already know,” Seo muttered. Kashima was still tense, though. If she was cold, Seo thought irritably, all she had to do was ask for Seo’s pocket again. But Kashima wasn’t asking, and hell if Seo was going to offer it first. She huffed to herself, clasped her fingers tightly on her lap. She could hold her own damn hand if Kashima wasn’t going to do it.

A pause, as the bus rolled its way around the city, making its stops. Seo turned to the window, wrote her name on the window fog with her finger, claiming the space for her own. Overhead, the moon hung heavy as though close enough to reach, for once, and Seo reached out to press a hand against the glass—

Kashima cleared her throat.

“I know we’re in a fight, or a contest of some sort,” Kashima admitted. “I’m just not sure of what it is that we’re trying to win.”

Seo frowned. Remembered for the first time that Chiyo should have been there, sitting between the two of them.

“Everything’s a fight,” Seo said, and she unconsciously tightened the muscles of her right hand into a fist. “Everything that’s real is what you can feel under your knuckles, what you can touch. What you can take in your hands for your own.” Like how sometimes Seo rode the subway and sat on its pristine seats and stared out the window at a city full of white lights and wanted to smash her fist straight into the glass; like how sometimes she walked home after her shift on the waking 6 AM street with the moon weak enough to look like just another star in the sky and it would force a sudden awareness like a breath down her throat that the only true thing she could be sure of was the ground under her feet. Like how sometimes in a crowd her body would be seized with the compulsion to open her mouth and sing, at the top of her lungs, so they could hear her all the way on the other side of the world. That was the only way you could be sure anything was real—you had to dig in with your two hands and make it. You had to fight for it.

Kashima was watching her, carefully. “So what is it you’re fighting for?”

Seo hadn’t realized she’d been talking out loud. She didn’t voice all of that very often—just to Chiyo, usually, when Seo called her up in the middle of the night from the laundromat just to see Chiyo’s name and contact photo light up her phone like something tangible she could touch, or in the middle of a boring movie with the laptop volume on low when Seo’d had too many beers or—even worse—none at all. Or back in high school, every time she showed up on Chiyo’s doorstep at 2 AM with a shitty excuse to get out, to get lost in the world, to leave it all behind for a little while. Just a little while. And Chiyo—only Chiyo—would always pick up, even in the middle of the night, voice muffled with sleep, but still there through the phone connection; would pour her water between cans of beer and nod, and listen, and get it. She always got it. And back in high school Chiyo would always open the door for her at 2 AM, every time, clad in her sushi-print pajamas, and she would go with Seo, sometimes, get lost in the world, leave it all behind, but she would always bring her back, too. She would always bring her home.

So who was Kashima, really, to look at her now like this, like she’d heard all of what Seo had said, like she’d listened, like she understood? Who was Kashima to watch her like she was waiting for what she had to say? Who was Kashima to ask, as though she wanted to know, when she still held herself so carefully, so deliberately out of reach, perched on the edge of her seat?

“Chiyo isn’t going to go out with you,” Seo said, and it felt a lot like losing, having to say it out loud for the both of them. Like she’d given something away. Like she’d given in. “She’s in love with this other guy. Tall, dark-haired, a total nerd. Maybe you’ve seen him around.”

Kashima was silent, which was strange. Kashima was never silent.

“You’re not her type, anyways,” Seo went on. “All your cheesy compliments—you give her too much that isn’t real. That’s not what she wants.”

Kashima was still silent, not giving away an inch.

Seo’s irritation rose. Well, fine. If she wanted to be that way, Seo could dig the nail deeper into the coffin. “You have to let her come to you, out of her own will,” she said. “You have to give her the freedom to let her choose you—and once she does she’ll never leave, look away.”

Kashima was still watching Seo, but there was something different in her gaze now, something sharp. She blinked. And then she burst into disbelieving laughter, the ends of it lilting up like a question.

“Chiyo?” Kashima repeated, as though incredulous. “Chiyo? All this time—and you think the one I’m trying to date is Sakura-chan?”

Seo squinted at her. “Who else would it be?” she snapped, suddenly angry for some reason. But something in Kashima’s expression was slamming closed, so sudden that Seo only just then realized it had ever been open in the first place.

“Don’t worry, Seo-san,” Kashima said, a hard edge to her voice, but at the same time oddly thin, fragile, like it might crumble if Seo just pressed on it a little. If all she did was push. All she had to do was just push a little. “I won’t take Sakura-chan away from you, or from Nozaki-kun. All I wanted was to be her friend.”

All she had to do was push. But for once in her life, Seo hesitated, held back. She didn’t push.

“Good,” she said, her face neutral. “That’s all I wanted, too.”

The rest of the bus ride was sat in silence. Seo watched the world outside her window, the lights all blurring into one, and wanted nothing more than to punch her fist into the glass. She held the weight of that want clenched in the palm of her hand, but she didn’t do it, not even after Kashima got off the bus three stops later and didn’t look back, the moon in the sky full enough to break.

--

It was late. Somewhere a clock ticked, minute hand dragging past midnight. Seo’s teeth dug into the cardboard rim of her coffee cup as her character died a gruesome death on her laptop screen, falling forward on his face in a pool of pixelated blood.

“Motherfucker,” she said. The death timer started counting down in reply.

The laundromat was empty. The laundromat had been empty every night for the past week, and Seo was not on a game losing streak. Losing streaks didn’t exist, for her. There was no such thing.

Her team seemed to believe otherwise. On the game chat they were threatening to report her for feeding. Seo gritted her teeth. “Boring,” she said aloud. boring, she typed into the chat.

The silence of the laundromat sounded like the echo of where a laugh should be. Seo hated it, so she turned the game volume on her laptop speakers all the way up. Sounds of slashing and stabbing filled the room, but it still wasn’t enough, so she got up from her seat and fed a coin into an empty laundry machine, just to hear it come alive. It struck her as a good idea, so before long she had all the machines up and running. She stayed there for a while, watching the spin of empty water behind the glass, row after row. The mechanical whirr of each machine was slightly off beat from one another, never quite lapsing into synchronization, one cycle starting as another ended. It was strangely calming. By the time Seo remembered to return her game, they had already lost and her entire team had reported her for being AFK.

“Still not a losing streak,” Seo said, aloud. Her coffee was cold, but she drank it down anyway, like a champ. Five and a half hours until she got out of here, and got to go home to Chiyo.

--

“You know,” Chiyo said, “you haven’t hung out with Kashima in a while.”

Seo squinted into her beer can. She couldn’t make out anything inside it, but that couldn’t be right, because she’d just opened a new one and it couldn’t be empty already. Her mouth tasted funny—sour, like she’d just woken up, and couldn’t remember what it was she’d been dreaming about—and she smacked her lips, tilted her head back to suck the last few stubborn drops from the can.

“I haven’t seen her in a long time, really,” Chiyo went on. “I guess she’s busy preparing for her play.”

Seo grunted noncommittally. It was movie night. The film playing on the laptop nestled between the two of them on the bed was one of Chiyo’s favourites, a love story of some sort. On screen, the guy was working himself up to taking hold of the girl’s hand. Chiyo sighed wistfully, rested her cheeks on her palms, propped up on her elbows. Seo wasn’t watching the movie. She was having a staring contest with the stuffed duck on the windowsill instead. The duck was winning, though. Seo scowled at it. Dirty cheater.

“It was nice when she was around, though.” Chiyo still wasn’t done. “You seemed to have a lot of fun.”

“I’m always having fun,” Seo said. The stuffed duck seemed to glare at her in accusation, and she looked away, past it out the window, at the moon. She closed her fist around its shape, but when she opened her palm, it came up empty.

Chiyo hummed. Said nothing for a long while. Seo licked the alcohol off her lips and reached for another can.

“Do you ever miss home, Yuzuki-chan?” Chiyo said, too suddenly, too deliberately for it to not have been a question she’d been meaning to ask for a while now.

“No,” said Seo, and it was true. She couldn’t miss home if she was still there. But she knew Chiyo meant something else, so she asked, “Do you?”

Chiyo bit her lip. “Maybe,” she admitted. “Sometimes. It’s bad, right?” She was wringing her hands. “I’ve worked so hard to get here and I’ve learned so many things and met so many people and I’m really lucky to wake up every day feeling excited for the life I get to live but—but sometimes I can’t help but remember how much simpler it used to be, you know, back in high school, when I didn’t have to do so many things on my own.” She reddened, as though embarrassed by her outburst, and looked down at her hands. “That’s bad, right?” she added, quietly.

Seo yawned, scratched at the nape of her neck. The alcohol was smoothing out the ache in her spine, making her feel loose, limber. Her bones felt like liquid, and it was nice to stretch out on the bed, lazy like a cat. “It was fun,” she agreed. “When we played pranks on our teachers and the corner store was close enough to visit on the way home from school and I knew everybody’s name and face and weakness on the basketball team. But it was also a bit boring, don’t you think? Looking back at it now, wasn’t it a bit small?"

Chiyo let out a breath neither of them knew she was holding. “You’re right,” she said, with a laugh. “It was really fun. But there’s more now, isn’t there?”

The air around them had gained a fuzzy quality, washed in gold, like Seo was floating. She licked at the rim of her beer can, and the press of cool metal against her tongue yanked her back to the ground. “I really liked that time,” she said, “because I met you, and because I got to do a lot of things I wanted, like playing video games and blasting rock music just to wake up the neighbours and going out at 2 AM to eat ice cream by the side of the road. But I still get to do all of those things, and what’s more, now there’s so many other things I get to do, too. Some of them I didn’t even know I wanted to do, before.”

Chiyo was watching her, and Seo never hid from anything, so she opened her eyes extra wide and stared back, but the golden sheen of the world distracted her, made her blink. Damned alcohol. She took another swig.

“And now?” Chiyo said, so softly it might have been a whisper, in the same tone she’d used when she’d pointed at the university insignia on the website she’d pulled up on her phone and announced that’s the one, the same tone she’d used when she’d clutched Seo’s shoulder in the middle of the school hallway and hissed don’t look, don’t look, that’s him, the really tall and handsome one, was he looking at me, what do you mean you weren’t watching, why weren’t you looking at him, the tone that made Seo think, every time, without a doubt: this was important. “Is it still boring for you, Yuzuki-chan?”

Seo’s beer can was somehow empty again. She groaned, smacked it into her forehead. The pain of the resulting metallic clang shot down to her skull, but it suddenly brought flashes of other images to her mind, other memories. The clatter of train tracks, steamed bun burning her tongue, a world whirling by past the windows, an anchor by her side. The echo of her footsteps against the ground, racing the rising sun home after her shift at the laundromat, until her bones rattled and her chest felt like bursting and all the breath in her body couldn’t get out past the hollow of her throat. The clinking of coins, accompanied by a voice, reaching out to wrap around her in a greeting, or a laugh, or the lilt of an awful, off-key song.

Seo wrapped her fingers around the empty beer can, remembered the warmth and the weight of holding Kashima’s hand in hers. Scowled at the blushing couple on the laptop screen. On the windowsill, the duck looked like it was mocking her.

“No,” Seo said. “No, it’s not boring.”

Chiyo was smiling, like she knew something Seo didn’t. Seo hated those smiles. “That’s good,” Chiyo said, her voice light. “I’m glad, Yuzuki-chan. I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Who said anything about being happy?” Seo grumbled. “Hey, do we have any more beer?”

Chiyo raised an eyebrow, tickled her side until Seo felt like she was ballooning like a pufferfish from the exertion of remaining stoic. Still, she whined when Chiyo peeled away, taking the warmth with her. A moment later Chiyo was back with a glass she pressed into Seo’s hand.

“This isn’t beer,” Seo said, squinting down at the suspiciously colourless contents.

“Oops,” Chiyo said, but she was smiling, even after Seo glowered at her. Seo sighed, drank the water anyway.

“If you miss home,” Seo said after a while. “We should go back and visit sometime during the winter holidays.”

Chiyo brightened visibly. “That’s a good idea, Yuzuki-chan, I was just thinking that! You could stay at my house, I know you like my mom’s cooking, and we could take a walk in the park by the school, and visit all our old high school teachers… Maybe I should bake them cupcakes or something, as a token of appreciation, that’d be nice… Why’re you looking at me like that?”

Seo smirked. “No reason,” she said, already thinking of all the thumbtacks she was going to leave on their old teachers’ chairs.

Chiyo’s eyes were getting glassy, from the beer probably, or from the way the couple on the laptop screen were staring starry-eyed into each other’s gaze. “Hey, Yuzuki,” she said, hiccupping slightly. “Nozaki-kun told me Kashima gave you tickets for her play. You didn’t tell me you were going.”

“She did?” Seo’s mind went blank for a moment, then remembered—sock-sliding, in the hallways. Kashima’s hand pressing carefully, deliberately into her own. The tickets still waiting at the bottom of her shirt pocket. “Oh.”

Chiyo punched her shoulder. “You’re totally going, right? Take me, too! Nozaki-kun says he helped write the script, so it has to be good!”

Seo’s eyes darkened. “That’s right,” she said. “Kashima told me to invite you, too.”

But Chiyo was smiling. “See,” she said, as though triumphant, “she knows you so well already.”

“What do you mean?” Seo said, bewildered.

“She knows you’d be more likely to go if you’re with me, silly,” Chiyo said, and then, eyes wide, in a perfect picture of innocence, “though I think she really, really wants you to go for her, not for me.”

“How would you know something like that?” Seo scowled. Her throat itched, but now the water was gone too, dammit.

But Chiyo was batting at her arm, pressing a finger to her lips, pointing at the screen. “Wait, shh, Yuzuki-chan! They’re going to confess to each other!”

“Is that it?” Seo said, peering at the screen, unimpressed. “I thought they’d have at least kissed by now.”

“Shh, shh! This is way better than a kiss!”

Seo obligingly suffered it in silence, though she made a face when the two characters hugged in lieu of kissing like they obviously wanted to. The girl couldn’t take her eyes off the guy’s lips, for god’s sake. Chiyo sniffled, looking suspiciously misty-eyed.

“You know,” Seo admitted. “I was wrong—you’re more of a mage than a cleric, really.”

“What’s the difference?” Chiyo said, falling back onto the pillows. She looked like she was going to fall asleep at any moment.

With anyone else Seo would have sighed loudly in exasperation. With Chiyo, Seo still sighed loudly in exasperation, but she also took the time to explain. “It means you’re more than just a supporting character,” she said. “It means you can handle yourself. Also, your armor is way cooler.”

“Yuzuki-chan,” Chiyo said, voice dreamy. “You know you’re my best friend ever, ever, ever, right?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Seo said. “Of course I know.”

--

The seats Kashima had gotten for them were in the centre of the auditorium, third row, up close and personal. Close enough to make out every intricate detail of the set and costumes, the cardboard rose-thorned bushes and the pale marbled castle spires, the gleam of polished buttons and the cut of high-collared robes. Or so Chiyo would gush to Seo later after the show, eyes shining, breathless with wonder; Seo hadn’t noticed any of it. It was a boring story, really, the same old thing, and Seo might’ve fallen asleep, if it weren’t for the fight scenes. If it weren’t for Kashima’s sword, catching the light with every flick and jab. If it weren’t for Kashima, dancing around the shadows of the stage, back straight, neck bowed in grace, eyes shuttered in concentration.

“I don’t get it,” Seo muttered in Chiyo’s ear, next to her. “So the princess is in love with the frog, and that’s why the wicked witch turned him into a prince? Why’s that ugly dude fighting Kashima? Who’s the lady in the giant balloon thing?”

“Shh,” Chiyo hissed, “the prince was turned into a frog, not the other way around, and it’s not a balloon, it’s a carriage, and that’s not an ugly dude, that’s Mikorin—we’re not supposed to be talking during the play, shh!”

“You’re the one who’s talking so much,” Seo said, and then, perking up, “Hey, is that a real goat?”

Half an hour and a dozen questions later, with Chiyo resolutely ignoring her in her seat, Seo snorted as Kashima leant in close to her love interest on the stage, a smile sweet on her lips. “She calls this acting?” she whispered to Chiyo. “She looks like that all the time.”

Chiyo turned to her then, the light from the stage slanting across her face, so that only half her expression could be seen. “No,” Chiyo said, mouth twitching like it couldn’t decide on a smile, eyes gentle, that tone of hers reaching out to grab Seo by the neck, sit her still: this is important. “She looks like that around you, Yuzuki-chan.”

At that moment, Kashima—reaching the end of a long-winded, flowery speech—glanced up, and somehow caught Seo’s eye, straight across the stage, the spotlights cutting between them. Kashima stared. Seo stared back. There was a pause that might have lasted an eternity, or only a second. Seo wouldn’t know. The stage lights were blinding, scattering blurry spots across her vision, and the silence of the entire auditorium felt like a tangible, breathing layer around them, and nothing felt real—not the uncomfortable seat digging into the small of the back, not the rows and rows of faceless silhouettes surrounding her on all sides, not the lights nor the shadows nor the silence sinking into them all—except for the hesitant tilt of Kashima’s head, the guarded look in her eyes. It seemed foreign on her face, and Seo didn’t like it. Wanted back the smile, curving up easy as the first few bars of a song she knew in her bones, as a victory. But anything you wanted, Seo knew, you had to fight for. You had to choose. You had to dig in with your own two hands and make yourself known.

So Seo waved, then lifted her hands, pulled her lips back over her teeth, and wolf-whistled loud enough to wake up the entire world.

Later, when the security guards showed up to strong-arm her out of the auditorium, Seo didn’t put up a fight. Just sat on the sidewalk outside, blasting rock music out of her headphones, and waited for the show to end. Chiyo emerged with the rest of the crowd, red-faced and embarrassed and refusing to share the post-show refreshments she’d gotten from the lobby, but Seo didn’t mind. She was still full on the memory of Kashima’s blush creeping down past her collar as she launched back into her lines, like a true professional; the slow tug of her smile, like a secret they shared; her eyes, bright and open as the moon hanging over their heads. She’d done that, Seo thought, with perfect clarity; she’d done that, and made that perfect picture.

“Where’s Kashima?” Seo said as Chiyo furiously texted Nozaki on her phone, tongue sticking half out of her mouth in concentration. good thing you weren’t here yuzuki-chan was SO embarrassing i can’t believe she got banned for LIFE from the theatre I’m never going anywhere with her ever again but I really really liked your story!! She took advantage of Chiyo’s distractedness to sneak a sip from her soft drink.

“They’re all gonna be at the afterparty,” Chiyo said, still glued to her phone. “It’s at Kashima and Hori’s apartment, Nozaki’s going to be there, too, we should go congratulate them on a work well done,” and Chiyo was looking up then, “do you wanna?”

Seo hummed, and heard it as an echo of Kashima’s breathy voice, low and light and off-key in the silent stillness of the laundromat. An answer to what she realized now had been calling for her, all along. “Yeah,” she said, and she reached over, stole a handful of Chiyo’s candied pretzels, fingers sticky. “Yeah, I wanna.”

--

Kashima and Hori—the hair-gelled guy with the anger problems she’d seen at their practice that one time, apparently—shared an apartment five blocks down from Seo’s laundromat. If she’d just looked out the windows once while on shift, she would’ve been able to see their apartment building, towering over the rest of the city. In Seo’s defense, though, video games were much more interesting.

It was Hori who opened the door, a beer bottle in hand, greeting Chiyo with a nod and Seo with a bemused knit of his eyebrows. “Aren’t you the one who got kicked out of the theatre during the show?”

“No, no, that was a misunderstanding, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” Chiyo squeaked, at the same time as Seo puffed out her chest and said, “You bet.”

The guy looked dubious, but let them in anyway. Which was good for him, because Seo would’ve fought him if he hadn’t. Inside, the cramped space of the apartment was made more obvious by the rush of bodies that inhabited it, but the arrangement managed to keep short of being claustrophobic, somehow. Everyone had their place—on the couch, at the table, or lounging in the spaces in between—and the rhythm of conversation kept the closeness of the crowd from being overbearing. Chiyo immediately beelined for Nozaki and Mikoshiba, who were standing a little ways off from the rest of the crowd, looking a little awkward as they perused the DVDs on the shelf by the television in silence. Seo’s interest was piqued by the glasses of wine lined up on the counter, but she was more concerned with the fact that, narrowing her eyes and sifting through the crowd, she couldn’t make out that single head of blue hair anywhere.

“Do you go to the university, too?” some random stranger was trying to ask her, and Seo swatted them away. From through the glass doors leading out into the balcony she could make out the moon, gleaming bone-white in the clear sky, and she found herself drawn towards it, out of the fray and into the cool silence of the night. She was turning to slide the door shut behind her when her foot bumped into something solid.

“Ow,” said the figure lying on the balcony. It sounded suspiciously like Kashima. “What’re you doing here?”

Seo squinted down at her red-cheeked face, lit silver by the pale shadow of the moon, by the stray beams of light falling through the glass doors from the party inside. “Are you drunk?”

Kashima’s face twisted into a pout. “No,” she said. She was totally drunk. She was drunk and lying outside on the balcony at her own party in the middle of the night, hugging a ridiculously yellow pillow to her chest. This was amazing.

Seo was already reaching for her phone to take photos for blackmail when Kashima’s hand shot up and grabbed her arm. “What,” Seo said.

“You’re too tall like this,” Kashima said.

Seo peered down at her, unimpressed.

Kashima tugged. Seo went.

It was cold, but Seo didn’t feel it, not with the corner of Kashima’s pillow digging into Seo’s face and her fingers circled around her wrist. Still, maybe Kashima was cold, so Seo pried her grip off her arm, replacing it with her hand. They lay in silence for a while, Kashima hiccupping a little next to her.

“I can’t believe you whistled for me in the middle of my play,” Kashima said. “Hori almost had a heart attack. I could see him in the wings. You have the worst audience etiquette of anyone I have ever seen in my entire life, including Hori’s three-year-old little brother who threw up once in the front row right when the lovers were about to kiss.”

“It was awesome,” Seo said.

Kashima laughed, sounding breathless. “Yeah,” she said. “It kinda was. I didn’t think you were going to show up, though.”

Seo scowled. “Well, who told you to stop going to the laundromat? All your clothes must be so gross now.”

Kashima snorted, batted at her shoulder. “Do you know how many coin laundromats there are in this city block alone,” she said.

“Good thing you found mine that first night, then,” Seo said.

There was a pause, which was strange, because Seo didn’t think she’d said anything worthy of one.

“It was pretty lucky,” Kashima agreed, after a moment. “It was in the middle of the night, and I couldn’t sleep—I’ve had that problem for a while now, you know, and I’ve gotten used to it, but that night Hori-chan-senpai was snoring so loud from the next room and the moon was shining so bright and I just had to get outside.”

“So that’s why you’re always hanging around at weird hours of the night,” Seo said. “You can’t sleep, huh? Aren’t you tired, all the time?”

Kashima shrugged. Her shoulder dug into Seo’s, and Seo shifted to accommodate it. “My doctor says it’s a nerves thing. Sometimes I work myself up too much during the day, and then I can’t come back down. Being an actress doesn’t help, you know—it’s a highly stressful career path, and my scenes are always running through my head. Even when I tire myself out, I still can’t just go to sleep.” Her words were slurring into one another, but Seo didn’t mind. Her restless chatter sounded comfortable, soothing. Like a song of its own.

“I think I know what you mean,” Seo said. “Like hanging onto something so badly, you can’t ever let it go.”

Kashima laughed, and it sounded stretched thin. “Yeah,” she said. “Kind of like that. Except it’s myself I can’t ever let go. Because if I do—if I let myself go, there really won’t be anything left to stop everyone else from doing it, too.”

I won’t, Seo thought, to herself. Not again. I won’t do that to you, again.

“It’s not all bad, though,” Kashima went on, “because I’ve gotten a lot better at acting with all the time I have to practice at night, and also because it’s really funny watching Hori-chan-senpai try to survive early mornings without coffee, since he threw out our coffeemaker after I told him about my sleeping problems and he thought ridding our apartment of caffeine would help.” She giggled. “I’d tell him I don’t drink coffee anyway, but it’s cute when he walks into furniture at six AM with his face all scrunched up and his bangs down. And I really do like spending time outside in the middle of the night, it’s very peaceful—it feels weird to do it without an excuse, though, so I pretend I’m hungry for a midnight snack and go to a restaurant, or I grab my clothes hamper and find a laundromat.”

“It’s not weird to be outside in the middle of the night,” Seo said, when the steady stream of Kashima’s thoughts trickled out. “I do it all the time. That’s when the acoustics are best, you know, for singing.”

“Hmm,” Kashima said, yawning. Now that her words were worn out, it was a lot more obvious that she sounded very tired. “You know, I’ve sung for you so many times now, but I still haven’t heard you sing. Not once.”

Seo smirked. “Is that so,” she said.

Something soft smacked into Seo’s face.

“Did you just hit me with your pillow?” Seo said.

Kashima was rearing back to hit her with it again, but Seo grabbed its corner, tugged the pillow out of her grip, out of reach.

“Hey,” Kashima said, “give it back.”

Seo patted her own chest, grinned extra widely to show all her teeth. “I’m softer,” she said. “C’mon.”

Kashima turned bright red—“You’re not funny, you know—” but she was obligingly scooting closer, nestling her head into the crook of Seo’s shoulder, hair scratching against her neck. Seo could feel her breath blowing across her collarbone, like condensation fogging up the glass of a window, like a message being written there. She wondered what it said.

“You said nothing I gave was real,” Kashima said.

“What?” Seo shivered. Kashima was curled up beside her, body heat pressed against her own, and she was warm, solid. She breathed in the scent of lavender, and it was familiar. It felt right.

“On the bus,” Kashima said. “You said, what I had to give wasn’t substantial. Wasn’t real.”

“Because,” Seo said. She tapped the nail of Kashima’s thumb, ran a finger over her knuckles. “Because I thought you were trying to give it to Chiyo, when you didn’t look like you were trying very hard to fight for her.”

Somehow, Kashima shifted closer, the line of her lashes tickling Seo’s throat. “What about this, then?” she said. “Is this real?”

Seo turned her head. Inside, through the glass doors, the others were raising a toast. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, traced the movements of their mouths instead. They looked happy, Seo mused. That was all. That was all that needed to be known. When she turned back around, Kashima’s head was angled impossibly high to watch her. The light from the party filtering through the glass doors of the balcony reflected a brilliant blue in her eyes, and Seo remembered a flash of something, the crumple of paper-thin wings in her hands, in a dream.

“You’re not a butterfly,” Seo said. Not so easily caught, and not so easily crushed.

Kashima raised an eyebrow. “No,” she agreed.

“You’re not in love with Chiyo, either,” said Seo.

Kashima stilled. “No,” she said again, after a pause. “Though she is very lovely,” she added, like an afterthought.

“Damn right she is,” Seo said.

“It’s a little funny, though,” Kashima said, but she wasn’t smiling anymore. “Of course you thought I was in love with Sakura-chan. She was all you could see, wasn’t she? I knew this, the whole time, but I still—you know, I still—” She was tracing a finger down the shell of Seo’s ear, down her neck—“I still really wanted to be your friend, at least.”

“You know,” Seo said. “In a contest—in a fight—you really shouldn’t settle for anything less than what you want.”

Kashima pouted. Seo could feel the press of her lips into the column of her throat. “But I didn’t want to lose it all,” she said.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Seo said. She could feel her words vibrating where Kashima was nosing into the hollow of her neck, and it made them seem intimately closer to her, somehow, like Seo was reaching her on a level past speech, past the static of sound between them in the air, through a connection unbroken by distance. Through the places where their bodies met. “Because I think you won.”

“Yeah?” Kashima tilted her head up, eyes sleepy, and whispered into the line of Seo’s jaw. “What did I win?”

Up above, the moon was low in the sky, impossibly round, fuller than Seo’d ever seen it. She lifted her hand to reach out, then lowered it again. She didn’t need the moon. The weight of Kashima’s body pinned Seo down to the ground, right where she wanted to be. Right here. So instead she curled her fingers in Kashima’s hair, stroking it in a slow rhythm, to match the lazy pace of her heart. She wondered if Kashima could hear it, pressed against her ear, through skin and bone and space. She hoped so.

“A song,” Seo said. “And I know just the one.” She closed her eyes, opened her mouth to sing a lullaby.

--

It was late. Somewhere a clock ticked, minute hand dragging past midnight. Seo’s eyes were narrowed in concentration, tongue sticking slightly out of her mouth, entirely focused on the task at hand. She aimed. She let loose. The empty candy wrapper sailed out of her hands and arced perfectly through the air, only to bounce off the rim of the trashcan and hit the ground.

“You missed,” said Kashima. She was sitting on the countertop again, because there was only one chair in the laundromat, and Seo wouldn’t share. Kashima had whined about it—“I’m a guest, Seo-chan”—but Seo had put her foot down. She was the one who actually worked here, after all.

Seo scowled. “It was the wind,” she said. “I’m an expert at this, you know, I used to be the star player on my high school basketball team. When I graduated I snuck into the sports equipment room just to autograph all the balls. They could sell those for good money, man, I was doing them a favour.”

“Does this mean you’re famous?” Kashima said. “Am I your number one fan? Come on, hotshot, let’s get a picture together so I can pin it up on my bedroom wall and brag to all my friends.” Her phone was already up and angled towards them as she leaned forward into Seo’s space, slinging an arm around her neck and squishing their faces together. Seo blew a raspberry into Kashima’s cheek, just to feel the throaty vibrations of her giggle. The camera flash went off. Seo blinked, momentarily blinded, and when her vision cleared Kashima was peering down at her phone in satisfaction.

“You look so cute, Seo-chan,” Kashima crowed. “I’m going to make this photo my wallpaper. I’m going to send this photo to everyone I know so that they can make it their wallpapers, too.”

“Gross,” Seo said, but also, “They’d better.”

Now that Seo knew to look for them, the shadows under Kashima’s eyes seemed less pronounced, softer. She smirked—it was probably the doing of Seo’s phone calls every night like clockwork, listening to Kashima talk or singing into the call until nothing sounded from the other side but faint snoring. Sometimes Seo didn’t bother to hang up even after Kashima fell asleep. It made the room feel fuller somehow, more alive, like the two of them were breathing the same air. On the cusp of the same dream.

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Seo, zeroing in on Kashima’s decidedly empty hands, the silent washing machines. “You don’t even have clothes to wash this time.”

Kashima raised an eyebrow. “Do you know how many times I had to re-wash my clothes just for an excuse to be here? I even started having to raid Hori-chan-senpai’s closet. He didn’t seem to mind the free laundry services, and what’s more, he didn’t even notice when I slipped new clothes into his batch before returning them. He wore the blouse I picked out for him the other morning and he totally liked it.” She paused. “Or maybe he was just too groggy to notice. Oh, well, coffee’s bad for him anyway! Aren’t I the best roommate ever?”

“I knew you couldn’t actually sweat that much,” Seo said, feeling oddly vindicated.

Kashima smirked. “Is that a challenge?”

Seo’s laptop was still in her bag, untouched. Kashima was more interesting, anyway. Losers on her team could find someone else to carry them all to victory—served them right for reporting her. And Kashima had brought snacks. Her team could kiss her ass goodbye.

“So did you come all the way here for a bedtime lullaby?” Seo said, tearing open a pack of salted seaweed crackers. “There’s such thing as a phone, you know.”

“Don’t you want to see my face?” Kashima said, pouting. “And you’re eating the food I brought, aren’t you?”

Seo just eyed her suspiciously, like she had something up her sleeve, and Kashima sighed, long-suffering.

“It just seems a waste,” Kashima admitted, cheeks turning slightly pink, “to sleep away the night, when you’re here.”

Seo nodded in agreement. “Damn straight,” she said. “I’m the greatest.”

“It’s nice, though, isn’t it?” Kashima said with a laugh. “Being awake at this hour, in here with you. It’s like we’re the only two people in the world, you know?” She swung her legs back and forth from where she was sitting on the counter. Seo followed the movement with her eyes, like the pendulums of a clock, propelling them forward through the stillness of the night, one moment at a time. “Like the rest of the world just doesn’t matter.”

Outside Seo could make out Kashima’s apartment building, illuminated by the lamp-lit windows of office towers, the neon jungle of hotel vacancy signs and billboard advertisements, the glitz and glitter of overcrowded bars spilling out onto the street. Beyond that, the blocks of parking garages and mall plazas, the convenience stores and fast food joints and hair salons, the tangle of traffic lights and taxicabs that connected them all to each other. Beyond that, the steady rush of people from one place to the next, slowing down to a trickle, to a single stranger walking past the window of the laundromat, hands shoved into their pockets, briefly sharing their same light. Beyond that, the sky. The moon waking up from slumber.

“Like none of it is real,” Seo said, “except for this.”

Somehow Kashima’s legs had ended up on either side of Seo, caging her in her chair. Seo looked up, only to find that Kashima had been watching her the whole time.

“Except for us,” Kashima whispered.

Seo didn’t know who leaned in first—slowly, deliberately, dangling—but they met in the middle like a truce. The slant of Kashima’s mouth opened up under hers, and Seo brought a hand to the back of Kashima’s neck, hooking her in, closer. Their teeth knocked together, and Kashima giggled, nose bumping into Seo’s cheek. Her breath tickled down her throat. Kashima’s eyes fluttered closed, but Seo kept hers open. She wanted to see it all. She drew back, ran her tongue over her lips, and went back in for more.

Kashima tasted full.

She also tasted like salted seaweed crackers. “Hey,” Seo said, “I didn’t say you could have those.”

“It’s called sharing, Seo-chan,” Kashima said. She swooped down, snatched another cracker out of Seo’s bag with her teeth, looking smug. She didn’t look so smug a second later, when Seo lunged forward and swiped it back out of her mouth with her tongue.

“Hey,” Kashima spluttered, “that’s cheating!”

Seo considered it, chewing on the cracker. “You’re right,” she said, swallowing, and then she leaned back in, murmured against Kashima’s lips, “I guess I’ll just have to make it up to you.”

Kashima snickered, batted at her shoulder—“You’re not smooth at all, Seo-chan—” but she still kissed her back. The bag of crackers lay on the counter, forgotten. Kashima tasted better anyways. Five and a half hours until they had to get out of here and go home to Chiyo, but until then, the night was all theirs for the taking.

--

“You know what I think,” Kashima said.

“Uh-huh?” Seo said, a blue lollipop hanging out of her mouth.

Kashima turned to her, flashed a conspiratorial wink. “I think I can get to the auditorium before you can.”

“You’re on,” Seo said without skipping a beat, and they were off, zipping down the polished floors of the hallways. Turned out Seo didn’t need Chiyo or Nozaki to sock-slide with her anyways, because Kashima was more than willing to do it. The door to the university auditorium was just within reach when Kashima bowled into her from behind, knocking the both of them through the doorway. Seo straightened up, Kashima’s steadying hands on her waist, just in time to receive a rolled-up script to the face.

“Kashima, you’re late for rehearsal again!” Hori said. “Where the hell are your shoes?”

Seo rolled the script back up and pitched it right back at him. It bounced off its head, messing up his hair. She snickered around the lollipop in her mouth.

“Sorry, Hori-chan-senpai,” Kashima singsonged, hand settling on Seo’s hip. “Seo-chan was giving me singing lessons, and we lost track of time.”

“You? Singing lessons?” Hori repeated, incredulous. “Is that a euphemism for something?” He squinted at Seo. “Do you even go to this school?”

Seo choked on her lollipop. “Fuck, no,” she said. “Thank god. I’m just here to watch Kashima. Then we’re going out for dinner.”

Kashima beamed, patting the top of Seo’s head. Normally Seo’d bite her hand for an insult like that, but it felt nice, so she let it pass this time.

Hori looked like he was battling a sudden headache. “Rehearsals have a no-audience policy,” he said. “It’s too distracting.”

Kashima pouted. Seo planted herself down on a seat in the front row and stared Hori dead in the eyes, as though daring him to say a word. Hori sighed.

They had to stop rehearsal twice—once to tell Seo to mute the volume on the phone game she was playing, and once because Kashima slipped onstage in her socks and bowled over two other actors, falling into a heap on the floor. Seo took pictures. Hori called it a day and stormed out of the auditorium, a vein pulsing in his temple.

“What’s with him?” Seo said, sucking on the last of her lollipop.

“Don’t worry about him,” Kashima said. There was a bruise forming on her temple from when she’d fallen, but she’d stopped complaining about it after Seo had kissed it better and said it looked badass. “It wasn’t even that important of a rehearsal, just the first run-through of our lines. We just had the roaring success of our last production, after all. Anyways, I’ll make it up to him later—I bought him a new coffee machine.”

“Joke’s on him, anyways,” Seo said, poking Kashima’s chest. “Now we can just go eat sooner.”

The rest of the theatre club had left, and now it was just Seo and Kashima standing in the half-darkness of the auditorium, most of the lights switched off. Kashima’s mouth was hooked up in a grin, and she took a step closer. Seo stayed where she was, and let Kashima come to her.

“Sounds good to me, Seo-chan,” Kashima said, and then, “what do you wanna get?”

Seo bit down on the lollipop, felt the satisfying crack under her teeth.

“Anything,” Seo said, by which she meant, everything.

No way back then, you remember, we decided, but forward, deep into a wood...

-- Marie Howe, Gretel, from a Sudden Clearing

Once upon a time, there lived a girl who was a duck, or maybe it was the other way around. When the story brought her to life again—

But that’s not true, is it? She was always alive. And when the story made her a girl again, she found she had not left behind the wild inside of her.

On the one thousand and twenty-first day of being a duck, Ahiru becomes a girl again.

She takes one stumbling step, two, and then falls into the steady arms waiting for her.

“Oh, Fakir,” she says, eyes filling with tears, “I can’t hear it, anymore.”

“Hear what?” he says. “What is it?”

But it is so much heavier to be a girl than a duck, and the light is tilting in all around, pressing against her, so she allows her eyes to fall closed, and she sleeps.

On the third day of being a girl again, Ahiru is gone.

Meanwhile, on the one thousand and twenty-third day, Princess Rue wakes up as though from a haze, hand still outstretched for a glazed bun at the table. A single thought slides into her head, clear as the call of a bird.

“Ahiru,” Rue says, and the name travels across the table, reaches the prince, who opens his eyes, and understands instantly what she means.

When they arrive, the door opens before they can think to knock.

“Well, it’s about time,” says Fakir. “How was the honeymoon?”

Rue looks right past his words and sees the lines of worry etched into his face, the crooked shadows under his eyes. “Where is she,” she says, and is not prepared for the way his gaze falls to the floor in shame.

“I don’t know,” he says.

And Rue rises up, teeth bared; somewhere she can hear the rustle of feathers. “How can you not know?” she shouts. “How can you not know something as simple, as important as that—”

A hand, at her shoulder, and Rue slumps into its warmth.

“Now what are we going to do?” Rue says, and the answer comes obvious, even to her.

“We do what she did for all of us,” says Mytho beside her, eyes set in determination. “We find her.”

In the deep of the forest, she wandered. She was a duck—no, she a girl; the shadows made it hard to tell the difference. She’d lost the sound again, and now there was only the silence of her own clumsy footfalls. The earth was solid under her feet, but she missed the water, what it meant to move oneself and be moved. Here there was nothing but the ground to catch her when her legs got caught up in each other and she fell.

“Oh, but that’s our silly darling Duck, isn’t she so cute?” someone said, but when she turned to her right, there was no one there. She had imagined it—or perhaps, it was what she had been expecting to hear. Then again, of course, perhaps it was just the wind.

“You’ve got to get yourself together, Duck,” someone else said, but when she turned to her left, there was no one there, either. “Just like how sensei taught us. Don’t you remember?”

The wind was picking up now, twin breezes stroking at her face. “Yes, just like that,” they soothed, as she took one step forward, then another. A pirouette, and the wind ruffled her hair, carried her forward. “It’s all right if you’ve forgotten how to walk, our dear Duck, because we’ll dance with you. Just as how you danced with us, once before.”

Yes, she could hear it again; it was faint and muffled by the trees, but it was her guide. She followed the sound, and the wind lifted her arms, as though they were wings.

When Mytho opens his eyes, the sky is still dark. A small distance away, embers glow from where a shadow is tending the fire.

“You’re awake,” the shadow says.

Mytho sits up, careful not to disturb Rue from where she is curled around him on the grass, still caught in sleep. “You noticed?” he says.

The firelight shifts, falls over Fakir’s face as he turns to stare at him, and there is a weight there Mytho cannot parse. “When have I not,” he says, with a hard edge to his eyes, as though he is waiting, as though he expects something from him. It has been a while since Mytho regained his heart, but it is one thing to recognize his own emotions, and an entirely different thing to understand them in another. Mytho squints at him, in the half-light of the dying fire, but Fakir’s face reveals nothing.

“You look tired,” Mytho says. The fire flickers in response. “I would have thought…” He rubs at his forehead, absentmindedly. “I would have thought that after everything, you would finally have been able to obtain some peace.”

Something flashes in Fakir’s eyes. “Peace,” he repeats, and it strikes Mytho then that he knows what it is clouding Fakir’s gaze—bitterness. “But you’re right. You are the prince, with your princess—how is your fairy tale of peace going for you while Ahiru—Ahiru is gone—”

“You’re angry,” says Mytho, and he thinks he should be surprised, but he is not. Still, something in him aches at the sight of Fakir’s face, twisted into a scowl. “I don’t think this is how it was supposed to end. Now it’s like we’ve gone back to the beginning, all over again.”

“We’re not in a story anymore, Prince,” Fakir says, and it hurts a little, the way he calls him that instead of his name. “We’re going to find Ahiru, and then you can return to your storybook tale.”

Ahiru. Mytho looks around them, at the thickening trees and their towering shadows, and shivers. It’s cold, even with the hearth beside him. This is no place for a girl—a duck, he reminds himself. They must find her, and soon; there is no other choice.

Surprisingly, it’s Fakir who speaks up once more, voice low, strangely quiet. “You were having a nightmare, weren’t you?”

Mytho blinks. “I was,” he says. He’d almost forgotten, but it comes back to him now. The same dream as always, the one that slips into his sleep on the longest and coldest of nights. “Do you want to know what it was about?”

“No,” says Fakir. The anger is gone. All around them, the sun is beginning to rise, bleeding colour into the sky. He pokes his stick at the last of the embers, which have begun to die out. It strikes Mytho that he looks almost sad. But that can’t be right. “I should think I already know.”

Watching him with his head bent over the ashes, Mytho remembers that Fakir was awake long before him. He wants to ask if nightmares had plagued his sleep, too, but Fakir is getting to his feet.

“Come on,” says Fakir. “Ahiru’s waiting for us.” He shakes his head, lets out a hardened laugh. “As usual.”

Mytho turns to wake Rue, only to find that her eyes have been open the whole time. In the weak morning light it is hard to tell who she is staring at—Mytho, or the back of Fakir, turning away.

After a time the sound faded away once more, and though she strained her ears, she could not find it again. “Please,” she called, but her voice was so small, so lonely, and not even its echo would linger. She shivered; the winds had died down, and without them her legs wobbled, her dance losing momentum until she was merely stumbling blindly forward.

“This won’t do,” came a voice at her feet, and she stared down at the cat that curled itself around her legs, warm. “At this rate I will be forced to never take you out of the probationary class. Or…”

She was remembering, now, what it was to speak, to hold the weight of words on her tongue. Still, the words themselves did not come easy to her, not yet. “Please,” she repeated, and it was all she could find. “Please.”

“But of course,” the cat said. “You are my student, after all. Did you think a teacher would abandon you, and leave you out to dry?” It licked at a paw, purred in contentment. “Show me what you’ve learned, Duck. Show me what I have taught you.”

She thought it was odd, to look down at it instead of up, but she could not remember why that was strange. She remembered something else, instead; how to point her toes, thrust her shoulders back, straighten her spine.

“Yes, that’s right,” the cat said. “The basics, Duck, remember? Here we go, now, Duck; I will dance with you, just as how you danced with me, once before. And you shall see to it that you improve your form, or I really will have you marry me, this time…”

The sound was back, thrumming in her ears as she twirled through the trees with the cat weaving in and out between her ankles, leading the way.

The way they walk through the forest is in a straight line: Mytho leading in front, Rue in the middle, and Fakir at the back. An old habit, Fakir supposes. From the back it is easier to be on guard, easier to see. He focuses his attention on the forest at first, the silent foreboding trees and the tall silvery grass, ears pricked and eyes alert—though he does not know how useful he will be, if some unseen danger does surface. He has given up his sword a long time ago, and here in the heart of the forest with the wind shivering at his spine, he almost misses it.

Ahiru, Fakir thinks, has no one to follow at her back, to guard against the dangers. He quickens his pace, and wonders, not for the first time, what on earth a girl like her would be doing in a place like this.

Or a duck, he thinks. Maybe it is only natural—for a duck to return to the wild—but something in his chest tightens, and he refuses to follow the train of thought to its end.

In any case, there’s still no way Ahiru can last, all by herself in the depths of the forest. She’s still Ahiru, even despite the time that has passed, even though they have all grown, in their own way. Yes. Fakir can see it, in Mytho’s broadened shoulders, in his height; in the curve of Rue’s waist, the point of her chin. The way they walk, backs straight, legs steady. They have seen stories, and they have lived them, and they are not children, anymore.

“I can feel you staring at him so hard you might fall over,” Rue says without looking back at him “Cut it out.”

Fakir misses a step and really does almost fall over, but catches himself just in time. “What are you talking about?” he snaps, hoping his face isn’t as red as it feels. “I’m—I’m not staring at either of you!” But that’s not true. He wonders with a start when he had stopped looking at the trees, and started watching Mytho and Rue instead.

Rue does stop, then, swivelling on one heel to stare at him, eyebrows arched. “Me?” she repeats. “I thought it would have been just him…”

She trails off, and then both of them are stuck watching Mytho walk on, oblivious to their conversation, to how they have stopped. The tall grass seems to bend at his feet, swaying in the wind, almost clearing up a path. Through the canopies of leaves overhead, a trickle of sunlight spills softly down, alighting on his head like the circle of a crown. He stops abruptly, and Fakir tenses, but Mytho is merely bending down to the ground, cradling something in his hands. A baby bird that has fallen out of his nest.

“Fakir? Rue?” Mytho turns around for the first time. “What are you doing so far behind? Come help me put this bird back in its tree.”

“He’s hopeless,” Fakir says with a sigh.

“The worst,” Rue agrees.

They follow him together.

She was alone. Even the sound had left; even the cat had disappeared back into the shadows of the forest, and try as she might, she could not remember how to extend one leg in front of the other, how to lift her arms and propel herself forward. But had she really ever known it, in the first place?

“Shh,” something sighed, all around her. She was standing in a garden of flowers, and their petals rustled in the breeze. “You haven’t forgotten. You’ve always known, haven’t you? What it means, to have grace.”

The flowers were so lovely, rising up on stalks and stems to caress her waist, lift her feet off the ground. “What it means, to dance.” A light wind picked her hair up off her shoulders, and settled it back down. “To convey your heart and share it, so that everyone may see the beauty that lies within.”

One step, then another. It was coming back to her now. If she strained her ears hard enough, she could pick it back up again – the sound from the depths of the forest. “It’s okay if you’ve forgotten, Duck, because everything will come clear to you when you dance. When you show your heart.”

The flowers stirred, buds bursting into bloom. “I will dance with you, Duck, just as how you danced with me, once before,” they said as one, and it sounded like the voice of a girl. And as flower after flower sprang up, she thought about how lucky she was to be able to see and share in their beauty as they moved on through the darkness of the trees.

Something about this forest is not right.

Something about this forest is disturbing her, but Rue says nothing, because she’s not sure of it herself. She doesn’t like to dwell on the shadows stretching around them, the tall trees that remind her of feathers, stalks embedded into the earth. So instead she turns her attentions inward, for something about themselves is not right, either. The stirring in her chest, where something had once beat; not a pulse but the weight of wings. The way Mytho sits by the fire, staring into the distance, into the spaces between the trees, a line furrowing his brow. The way Fakir watches the both of them, but only when he believes they are not looking back; how the lingering of his gaze feels like something else, like the longing of a secret that has been left unsaid. And above all, the empty spot in their circle, where a girl—or a duck—should be.

“Do you think we’ll find her?” Rue says before she can stop herself, and regrets it almost immediately. Fakir is bristling, eyes cutting towards her, and the hostility they hold is familiar—a reminder of how it used to be, before Ahiru danced into their lives, before Mytho found his heart, before Fakir put down his sword and before Rue remembered anything of the bird blood in her body. Back when every word between them felt like a war.

“What kind of a question is that?” Fakir says. “Of course we’ll find her, there is no other way—”

But it’s what Mytho says next that stuns the both of them into silence.

“Do you think she wants to be found?”

“What do you mean?” Rue says after a moment. “Why wouldn’t she want to be found?” She touches at her throat, absentmindedly. “Everyone wants to be found.”

“She’s a duck, now,” Mytho says, and he looks down at his palms laid out on his lap, as though remembering the weight of the flightless baby bird in his hands. “Maybe she—maybe she wanted to go back. To her home.” He raises his head, and now Rue can see his face, full of sorrow.

“No,” Fakir snarls. “Her home is not here. Her home is—” And he falls silent, eyes brooding with a storm. For some reason this upsets Rue even more than what Mytho had said—how Fakir won’t look them in the eyes, finish his sentence—so she digs deep and finds it in herself to prod him further. It’s easy, like fuelling an old fire, one that’s still been burning, all this time.

“How does a duck just disappear, anyway?” she snaps at him. “Why would she leave? What did you do, to make her leave—”

“Me?” says Fakir. “I wasn’t the ones who walked away into my happy ending and never came back, not even to visit, not once, even while knowing she was a duck and she wouldn’t have her friends anymore, wouldn’t be able to dance or do any of the things she’d loved anymore—I wasn’t the ones who left—”

They fall into an uneasy silence. Rue’s eyes burn; not with anger, she realizes, but with something worse. She tries to blink them away, but the tears are coming, and there is nothing she can do to stop them. She can almost hear his voice in her ears—the terrible caw of a crow—weak as usual, girl, and you call yourself a Princess?...

Mytho has placed an arm around her shoulder, and she leans into it. Catches the glint that flashes through Fakir’s eyes, then disappears just as fast.

“How could I?” Rue says numbly. “How could I have forgotten her, even if she is a duck? She didn’t forget me, when I was a crow. No, she followed after me. She flew with me…”

“I don’t know how, either,” Mytho says. The light of the fire flickers shadows across his face. “It was like… It was like the story had ended, and all there was left to do was fill out the spaces left behind, go through the motions. There were quite many things that needed to be done in the castle… The meetings… The parties… The golden chandeliers and rose-filled vases and the glazed buns at the table…”

“It has been a long time,” Rue realizes, “since either of us last danced.”

“So that’s it, then?” says Fakir, the fight gone from his voice. “You got caught up in the story, and forgot to live. Forgot you had friends.”

“And you?” Rue says. “Did you live, then?”

Fakir scowls at her. A cold wind picks up, and the fire shudders, but stays burning. Rue wipes at her eyes, wets her lips.

“We’re going to find her,” she says, and the steel in her voice leaves no room for doubt. Still, she finds it takes a long time for sleep to come to her, that night.

Somewhere in the middle of her wandering, the flowers had fallen away and disappeared without a trace, so when she realized she had lost the sound again, there was nothing and no one to comfort her. Her steps became stumbles; her twirls shed their spin. Her path lost its direction, and she came to a confused stop.

Then, in the distance. A flicker of light.

“I’m just a little thing,” came a voice, “but I flood the entire room. What am I?”

The girl shivered. “I don’t know,” she said, but even as she said so, it didn’t feel quite right. She did know, didn’t she? A long time ago, she had known.

“I am a white snake that swallows the sea, and my head is all red. What am I?”

The light was bobbing in the distance, and she instinctively took a step towards it.

“I become shorter the longer I stand. What am I?”

The light danced away, as though just out of reach. “I don’t know, anymore,” the girl said. “I think I must have forgotten.”

“That’s too bad,” said the voice. “It is a terrible thing to be forgotten. But it’s all right. I’ll help you remember, if you come with me.”

The girl took another step towards the light, then hesitated. It looked so very far away, and the shadows around her were growing as the night deepened.

“You mustn’t fear the darkness,” said the voice. “For it is in the darkness where we shine the brightest, and where we can leave a trail of light for others to find us, once again.”

“Others?” the girl repeated. “Others, to find us?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten them, too,” the voice said. “Ah, don’t worry about it. Your shine will be bright enough for them to follow. For now, just focus on your path, and allow me to illuminate the way forward. I will dance with you, Duck, just as how you danced with me, once before.”

The sound had returned, with the light moving back and forth to its rhythm, and the girl followed.

This time when Mytho wakes up, it is to find both Fakir and Rue sitting up and staring at him. How odd, and how strangely fitting, he thinks, that the two of them have unconsciously banded closer together, sitting next to each other by the fire, for they’ve always shared similarities, haven’t they? The burden of their fates written onto their hearts, since childhood, since Mytho has known them. The pain they work so hard to bury, thinking he can’t see it burning bright like a fire inside them. How they have followed him since before even he himself knew he was a prince, like the needle of a compass that only knows how to point north. Even now, the way both of them look at him is exactly the same. Like he is the answer to some question they have been chasing all their lives, and Mytho is unsure of what to do with this responsibility. It reminds him of being a prince in the story, a crown atop his head, a sword in his hand and nothing to shatter but his own heart.

“You were having a nightmare again,” says Fakir.

“You’ve always had them,” Rue whispers, almost to herself. “Even though everything’s over and done with. Sometimes in the night I’d wake up, and you would be lying there, so still I feared you were dead. That was how I knew when you were having a nightmare. And I would hold you, and pretend to sleep, and in the morning you would smile at me as though nothing had happened… I think that’s what scared me the most, even more than the thought of what haunts your sleep at night.”

They’re both still looking at him. His dreams, Mytho supposes, are the one place they cannot follow after him. The one thing they cannot save him from.

Though he can see now that it doesn’t stop them from trying. Fakir is staring at his hands, as though he doesn’t know what to do with them. This time, he asks. “What is it you dream of?”

Mytho closes his eyes and remembers. Coarse black feathers, scraping against the confines of his shirt collar, wanting release. Every mirror shard reflecting beady red eyes back at him. Blood, on his hands, on his lips, running thick and heavy. But none of this is what scares him, as he dances in the spotlight, scraping himself on broken glass; no—what makes him jolt awake in terror every time is the thickness of the void around him, an emptiness so bleak he can feel it seep into his bones, fill him up from the inside out—

“I dreamed of being alone,” Mytho says, and he is not surprised to see the recognition in their eyes, reflecting firelight. “What is it you dream of, Fakir?”

“I told you,” Fakir says, so quiet he can barely hear. “I know what you dream of. I dream of it, too.”

They huddle there beside the fire in silence for a few long moments.

“Well, we’re not alone,” says Rue suddenly, with a fierceness that surprises them all – perhaps even herself. “We found each other, and it’s up to us to find Ahiru. Even if—” she hesitates— “even if she doesn’t want to come back. We at least owe it to her to say goodbye. We owe it to her, to let her know none of us is alone anymore, and it’s all thanks to her. She’d like to know something like that, wouldn’t she?”

For some strange reason there is a small smile on Fakir’s face. Mytho watches it in amazement—he has almost forgotten what it looked like. “She’d think it’s a fine story,” Fakir says. “The very best.”

Mytho reaches out to hold Rue’s hand. A split second later he realizes he’s extended his other arm, as well, but before he can consider withdrawing it, Fakir has already taken it. The three of them sit there, hands linked in a circle around the fire, until the dawn rises up all around them.

When the light flickered out it was with no warning. The girl came to a halt and looked all around her, but it was futile, for the light had disappeared, and it seemed to have taken the sound with it.

“Hello?” she called out. “Are you still there?” But her own words echoed back at her, and there was something else, too, making it hard to see. Something thicker than the shadows—a fog, clinging to the air like smoke. “Who’s there?”

Through the fog, she thought she could see something. The glint of a sword. A phantom pain pricked at her side, and she flinched, as though cut with a blade, as though remembering.

“Are you afraid of me?” the voice said.

If she squinted her eyes, she could just make out the shape of a mask in the likeness of a bird’s curved beak, and the lines of it were hard and cruel. But she recognized the grief there, in the way it hung its head, and that was what made her take a step forward, say, “No, I’m not.”

“And that is rather foolish of you,” the voice said. “But it was you who relieved me the weight of my sword. You showed me that my battle was over, and that my story had ended.”

“Your story had ended?” the girl repeated aloud. “Stories don’t end.” She couldn’t be sure of why she believed this—just that she did feel that way, so strongly she wanted to burst.

“Ah,” said the voice, “mine did, but that is because I am a ghost. You, on the other hand, are a person, not a story.” A pause. “Or are you a duck?”

“I can’t remember,” the girl admitted. “But I think it’s starting to come back to me, now.” Sure enough, the sound had come alive again, steady through the knots of the tangled trees.

“Fair enough,” said the voice. “Then I will dance with you, little Duck, just as how you danced with me, once before.” And dance they did, through the clouds of fog that obscured the darkness of the night.

In the distance a crow calls, and Rue’s hand flies to her chest.

“It’s just a bird,” says Mytho, at her side.

“So is Ahiru,” says Rue, staring out at the web of trees that lie before them. It is late afternoon, and Rue is tired. Her legs are sore from the distance they have walked—so much further than she has needed to walk in a long, long time. She can’t imagine what the pain must be like for Ahiru. Ducks, after all, are made to swim, not walk, nor fly. Nor dance. She means to say some of this aloud, but her throat is dry.

Something in her is stirring. Something about this forest. Something wild, and so surely she can be forgiven for missing the strange look in Fakir’s eyes, at her words.

“I forgot,” she rasps. “In the cold light of the castle I forgot. I was happy, I think, and there was peace, and warm bread, ivory walls and silk sheets, but I forgot I used to be a wild thing. Now I am remembering. I remember what it was to be a crow.”

Mytho’s hand closes over hers. “So do I,” he says.

“And I remember,” Rue continues, “what it was like to live my days marked with grief, but most of all, I remember what it was that saved me. Who it was, who loved me.” She turns to the two of them, and they look uncertain; she must make them understand, must let them know. The truth of it all is tilting through her head, flipping past like the pages of a book, like the dance of fallen leaves on the wind: a smile she received on the eve of the Fire Festival, her fate being unwritten from where she lay in the heart of the raven she once called her father, a window opening behind her on the roof from where a figure reached for her on the sill and called her by her name, her one and only name, Rue, Rue, Rue-chan…

“Mytho,” says Rue. “You saved me first, and last. Fakir, even you, I realize that now, you saved me, too. But it was her—it was Ahiru who saved me when all else had turned their back, when all else had lost faith in me, even myself.” Her face is wet, her throat ragged. “Ahiru called my name when even I had forgotten what it was. And now she’s gone, and how could I have forgotten?”

“It doesn’t fit the story, does it?” Fakir speaks up for the first time, and his gaze is strangely heavy. “Where does the girl—where does the duck belong with the princess, in the happily ever after?”

“Or the prince,” says Mytho.

“Or the fallen knight,” says Fakir, and he clenches his hand into a fist.

The three of them stand there for a long while, in the middle of the forest, until Rue can’t take it anymore and falls to her knees.

“Oh, Ahiru,” she says, hopelessly, into the silence of the wind. “Where are you? Where have you gone? I’m sorry the story tried to write you out of it, out of us. Please, Ahiru—please. We love you. We love you.”

There is not even an echo in reply. But instead, there is warmth by her side. Rue looks up to see Mytho at her right, extending a hand; Fakir at her left, meeting her gaze for the first time in a long time. When she stands, it is to receive them both. They look at her, and she nods.

“We love you,” she repeats, not to the wind, but to the three of them. Then: “Let’s go. All that’s left to do is tell her.”

When the fog lifted she saw a strange shape in the distance. Another person, she thought—at last, she was not alone anymore—but as she approached it she realized it stood earthly still. There was no upward lift, no downward lilt to show it breathed. For though the face was that of a youthful girl, it was carved from stone. A statue.

“Dear little Duck,” came a voice. “Can you hear it?”

“The sound?” asked the girl. “Yes, I still hear it.” For this time the sound had not faded; she could hear it pulsing in her ears, among the trees.

“No, not that,” said the voice. “I ask if you can hear what I was once tasked with delivering, long ago. Words precious to the ear, for they come from the heart, buried for so long they become laced in one’s breaths. Can you hear it, Duck? Can you hear the voices on the wind?”

The girl strained her ears to listen, but all she could hear was the sound she had been following all this time.

“Can you hear the call of your name,” said the voice, “or have you forgotten what it is?”

And there, faint on the furthest echoes of the stirring winds, came the echoes that had been chasing after her and now spilled at her feet—Please. We love you. We love you.

“Rue-chan?” says Ahiru.

“I think,” said the girl, and she shivered. “I think I have forgotten something important.”

“It’s all right,” said the voice. The girl studied the statue, and thought that it had really been quite magnificently carved. Whoever had wielded the chisel must have taken great care, must have held such love in his hands as he traced the curve of her cheek and immortalized it into art. This, too, she thought, was a love letter; one written and received, and remembered. “For I will dance with you, little Duck, just as how you danced with me, once before.”

The whispers on the wind were fading, and so she followed all that was left: the sound beckoning her onward from the depths of the trees beyond.

This time when Mytho sleeps, he dreams of something else. At first, it begins the same way, with the darkness all around him, but after a while he realizes he is not alone. There is a soft pink light, and someone stands before him, someone who matches him height for height. A mirror, Mytho thinks; but no, they are not the same. One is his heart, and one is himself.

“But you’ve already come back to me, now,” says Mytho, fear leaping into his throat—this can’t be real, he can’t be empty. He won’t be empty, ever again.

The other Mytho, slightly tinged with pale red, smiles at him. He lifts an arm and reaches out, traces a finger down from Mytho’s shoulder and stops over a spot on his chest, slightly to the left. “Do you remember,” he says, “what it was like to live without me?”

“In my dreams,” Mytho says, and he trembles.

“Do you remember,” says his heart, “what it was, to cast me away?”

Mytho closes his eyes.

“Why did you do it?” He opens his hand, rests his palm against Mytho’s chest, presses down.

“Because I had no other choice,” Mytho whispers. “Because I was the prince.”

“It’s not a choice if it’s already been written,” the other Mytho says. He leans in close, with a sigh. “Don’t forget. You always have a choice.”

Yes, Mytho thinks, he does. He knows. He made his choices, long ago, when he let Fakir stand at his shoulder, when he took Rue’s hand at the end of it all, when he followed the girl with feathers in her hair—feathers for hair?—and fell into dance with her, and it led him to his heart, every time. But that doesn’t mean he’s stopped choosing. Maybe he forgot for a while, but now he realizes that to make a choice is to choose it every day, as long as he lives—and that, too, is a kind of choosing. To live.

“Thank you,” Mytho says, looking his heart in the eye, and then—like an afterthought— “I’m sorry for casting you away.”

The other Mytho laughs, then. “It’s all right,” he says. “It was lonely, but you found me again, and that, too, was a choice. As long as you find what it is you’ve lost along the way. As long as you don’t forget…”

This time he wakes up before the others, and in the quiet of the dawn he tends the fire, until Fakir blinks open his eyes, until Rue stretches her arms out above her head, stifles a yawn in the palm of her fist.

“You’re up early,” Fakir says. “You should have woken us.”

Mytho smiles. “Why would I do that? You’re never so calm and peaceful as you are in sleep.”

Rue doesn’t bother hiding her laugh as Fakir scowls, ducking his head away as though to conceal the redness of his cheeks. The rising sun is warm, drowsy, and their faces are still soft with sleep, so perhaps that’s what makes Fakir shake his head, frown at Mytho.

“You know what I don’t understand,” says Fakir. “You remembered your name—Siegfried—but you still chose to keep Mytho, instead.”

“Of course I did,” Mytho says. “It was what you named me. And you were the first person who made me real.” He pauses for a moment, struck by a thought. “‘And the prince is just a story…’”

“What’s that quote from?” Fakir says, curious. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it.”

“An old story,” says Mytho. “I once thought it was over. But now I’m beginning to see that stories only end if we choose for them to.”

“Well, then, why don’t we find out how it goes,” says Rue. Her hair is mussed, sticking up all around her face, and it’s unbecoming for a princess. It reminds Mytho of a girl with a tuft of hair protruding straight up on her head, like a beacon waiting to be found.

“Let’s,” Mytho agrees. They leave the fire burning.

The days were growing colder, now, and her movement was slower, more sluggish. She was starting to realize more and more of her body; the ache in her legs, the sores on her feet, the gnawing hunger in her belly. She shivered—what a weakness it was to realize one’s body. She longed to rest, but she had come so far, for so long. To stop now would surely mean she could never start again.

When she came across the river, the day was late, and the low-hanging sun stared glassily up at her from the water’s surface, obscuring her own reflection. Wind rustled through the tall weeds and grasses, and it sounded like a thousand whispers all together, the ends of their voices lilting up into questions: “Who goes there? Who are you? What are you—girl or duck?”

“I don’t think I’m quite one or the other,” she said. “Maybe I will always be a bit of both. Maybe I won’t ever be able to fit in just one word, or the other, and maybe that doesn’t matter.”

“Is that so?” The voices were faint, and she leaned closer to the river. The ripples were clearing, and for a moment she thought she could almost make out her own face. “Well, I suppose you shall see. Everything always becomes clear, in the end. You’re almost there, you know.”

“I know,” she said, because the sound was growing louder, steadily, and she felt its reverberations like the beat of her pulse.

“Follow me, then,” said the river, “and you shall find where it is you are going, but more importantly, you will find that it is not so far away from where you began. It feels a bit like a dance, doesn’t it? Do you remember, what it is to dance?”

“Yes,” she said, because it was true, and she raised her arms above her head, lifted up onto the points of her toes.

“Then dance,” said the river, or maybe the thousands of voices carrying on the wind that had been following her all this time, leading the way, “just as you danced with all of us, once before…”

It’s a little hard to tell who’s in front or behind, now; all of them are aligned under one goal, and they follow it. The three of them are quieter, but perhaps that’s because they have nothing left to say.

But that’s not entirely true, is it, something at the back of Fakir’s mind whispers, and it sounds like what a narrator would say, high and mighty from the safety of the other side of the story, from a distance, and he clenches a fist, grits his teeth. There is none of that, he decides—no story, no author, no machinations or puppet strings leading the way. There is only himself, stark and stubborn and alone, and for a moment he hates himself for it. Maybe if this was a story, maybe if someone else was writing it, maybe then he’d act better, be better. Maybe then he’d be able to find Ahiru.

The thing is, though, he isn’t alone. Fakir lifts his head and frowns at the two figures before him, making their way through the grass. Mytho with his pale head of white hair, Rue in her torn dress with ruffles like feathers. When they’d first showed up at his door he’d thought perhaps he was still stuck in a dream, and even now he half expects them to disappear when he blinks, for they don’t look like they belong here at all, amidst the trees and earth and wild growth.

“I’m worried about Ahiru,” Rue says suddenly. Fakir jumps, and quickly casts his gaze away. “We still haven’t found her, and this forest doesn’t seem like it will ever end.”

“What choice do we have but to keep going?” says Mytho.

“I just—” Rue’s lower lip trembles. “I can’t stop thinking about what you said, about what if she doesn’t want to come back. And even if we do find her, how are we going to talk with her? How can she tell us, if she doesn’t want to come back? If she doesn’t want us here? We did leave her, after all, and she’s a duck, and maybe she doesn’t want us to remind her, of the days when she could dance…”

Fakir looks between the two of them, and he doesn’t understand it, he decides. Mytho with the top of his head looking awfully empty, like a crown should be sitting there. Rue with tears filling her eyes, her lush gown filled with holes, torn by brambles. He doesn’t understand it, and that’s what makes him say, finally, swallowing to get past the ache of guilt in his throat— “Not a duck. A girl.”

The silence is the worst of it, sinking into the space around them. But it can’t last, and it doesn’t.

“What do you mean?” says Mytho, but it’s Rue’s gaze that scares Fakir, sharp, piercing, like the curved beak of a crow, like the toes of a ballerina en pointe, like someone who remembers what it meant to be both those things.

“I wrote it,” Fakir says, and it hurts coming out of his throat, hurts to feel the weight of his words in the air, becoming real. It hurts to create; he wishes he’d known this, before he had tried, before he had picked up the pen in his hands. “I’d been trying for so long—I didn’t think it would work, but it did. One day she was a bunch of feathers splashing around in the shallows and the next—” He swallows, again. “I thought it was what she wanted. But now she’s gone, and I didn’t know—”

“Why would she leave, if she were human again?” Mytho says, bemused.

Fakir rubs at his forehead, tries to form the right words for it. “She was acting strange,” he says. “Sometimes it was like she wasn’t seeing me clearly, or maybe she wasn’t remembering me right. She was having trouble adjusting—I think she’d gotten used to being a duck. I think maybe she forgot what it was to be a girl. And if she’d forgotten that—” he swallows— “do you think it’s possible that she might have forgotten everything else, too?”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Rue says, her voice low, tense. The lock of a bird’s bones before it spreads its wings into flight. “What makes you think you had the right to keep something like this from us—”

“She was the one who didn’t want to tell you,” Fakir shouts, because it’s easy, and familiar, and maybe this is all he knows how to do. In the end, the fight finds him like a home. “For you to come all this way, for the sake of a little duck, or a little girl—You’re the Princess, and the Prince. Why are any of you even here? It’s what I still can’t understand—why you would leave your castle, your happy ending, and come all the way out here into the wild. You chose your story, and it’s over now, isn’t it? You didn’t have any need for her, do you? So why are you here, now?”

Rue steps up to him then, and the flash of her eyes, Fakir thinks, is sharper than any sword he’s faced in battle. He thinks maybe he’s said too much. He braces himself, ready for a blow, but for some strange reason, she isn’t saying a thing. Mytho, meanwhile, is coming up next to her, and the look on his eyes is terribly soft in contrast, so it’s even worse.

“You keep saying for her,” Rue says at last, and the slow bluntness of it, the way she drags the truth it out over her tongue and through her teeth, feels as though the raven has come back to claw through his heart and tear him in two. “But what you really mean is for you, isn’t it? For her—that, you can believe. That, you can believe, because you’d do anything for her, too. What you won’t believe is that we came back for you.”

“Stop it,” Fakir hisses, but Mytho’s reaching out, putting a hand on his arm, gentle, and he freezes.

“Oh, Fakir,” says Mytho, “I’m sorry. Did you think… Did you really think we came only for Ahiru?” He takes a step forward, and Fakir automatically falls back. “Did you think we had forgotten about you?”

Fakir turns away. “Well, you did, didn’t you?” he says, suddenly exhausted.

Mytho hesitates. Even now, Fakir knows, he will not lie.

“That was our wrong,” says Mytho, “not yours,” and all Fakir can think is, wildly—wasn’t it? When he kept Mytho from his own heart, when he refused to trust Rue, when he tried to intimidate Ahiru from dancing into their lives and saving them all? The failure of a knight, making all the wrong choices, again and again—and even after everything had passed, he was still the one to tear them away from their happy ending, writing Ahiru back when she’d never been gone in the first place, until now—until now—

“Fakir,” Mytho says. A hand on his chest. Fakir wonders if he can feel the beat there, like a frenzied bird trapped under his palm. “Fakir, look at me.”

What else can he do, when faced with a prince? Fakir tilts his chin up, and tries to meet his eyes, but he ends up getting caught up in Rue’s gaze instead, staring back at him from over Mytho’s shoulder. Her eyes are dark, and her face reveals nothing, but surprisingly she is the one to speak, holding his gaze even as Mytho keeps his hand clasped over his heart.

“We came back for Ahiru, that’s true,” Rue says, a strange tremble to her voice, though her gaze does not waver. “But what we found was you.”

Fakir flinches—it would have hurt less for her to run him through with a rusty blade. But she isn’t done talking.

“And now, we’re still looking for Ahiru, to find all of us,” Rue continues. The weight of her gaze is so, so heavy. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

It’s Mytho who confirms it for him, with a sigh, with a shake of his head. “Fakir, you saved us both,” and he sounds almost breathless. “How can you have forgotten? You, not the knight, not the writer, but something much more important than that. My first, dearest friend.”

“Do you understand what I am saying?” Rue repeats, and the tremble in her voice, Fakir realizes, might be from desperation. “To find all of us – for we’re not complete. Not without her, and…”

“Not without you,” Mytho finishes.

Around them, the skeletal trees shivering in the wind. It is cold, so cold, and Ahiru is still missing, and how can he have it in himself to hope —standing there before the two of them, so still, so immovable—how can he have it in himself to dare—

Mytho breaks into a smile, and it is unlike anything Fakir has ever seen before, through all their years together. He has only been allowed hints of it, when watching Mytho dance with Ahiru, and when he had turned to Rue at his side and taken her hand. And now, here it is—for him, too. All the breath falls out of him, just like that.

They stand in silence for several long moments. Somewhere, a bird calls, long and lonely, and Fakir feels it like a strike to the heart.

“I understand,” Fakir says, as if in reply to the bird call, but he stands straighter, meets Rue’s eye. “I understand.”

“Silly,” Mytho says. “Of course you do.” He clenches his hand on Fakir’s chest into a fist, grabbing hold of his shirt, pulling him forward towards them. Fakir stumbles forward, too close, and their foreheads knock together, all three of them. Fakir freezes—he can’t help it—and Rue catches it, slanting her gaze towards him; lets out a laugh. The flash of her teeth is blinding.

Fakir shakes his head, but he does not pull back. “You’re all so—” and he does not have a word for it. He thinks it is unbecoming for a writer to not be able to come up with the words. But maybe he wasn’t fit to be one, anyway. He remembers his old days, when he would swear by his sword, and the harsh light that glinted off its edge would blind him; when he looked at Mytho and couldn’t see past the sun that shone over his shoulder. But that pain seems so long ago. Rather, it is the will to protect that is still there, solid in his bones, only now he knows there are other ways to do so, than to lay down his life. Maybe it just means, to live.

“Yeah?” Rue says. Fakir looks at them both in amazement—Rue with her hair mussed, grime on her face, grinning; Mytho’s shoulders shaking from quiet laughter, a light in his eyes. He thinks he has never seen them look more alive. “We’re what?”

“We’re missing someone,” Fakir says.

She is near. He can sense it; perhaps they can all sense it. Like a longing in their bones, for home. Mytho extends a hand, and Rue takes it; she turns to Fakir, then, and offers her other. A dance none has ever seen before, and yet none of them let go of each other as they turn towards the trees and walk on.

She was almost there; she could feel it. The whispers on the wind urging her on, towards the sound, as she quickened her pace, stumbled over the rocks and grasses. The river was widening, opening into a mouth, and then a lake—and there, in the shallows of the water, a flicker of movement—three shadowy figures twirling around each other, dancing—

She knew this. She knew this like she knew a story, or a dream. Cautiously, she took one step forward, then another. Hazy mist rose from the waters all around her; the tall reeds rustled in the wind. On the surface of the lake, a prince danced, with a princess, with a knight.

“Oh,” she breathed. For it was a beautiful sight. The prince’s crown glittered from where it sat in his head of white hair; the princess’s dress spilled out around her in glowing gauzy white; the knight bowed his head and spun them both, on and on into the night. From this distance, she could not make out their faces. And what a wonderful thing it was, to be able to watch something so beautiful, oh!

But the reeds were still rustling, and the wind was still whispering in her ear: “Have you forgotten, little duck, what it is to dance?”

She stopped. Took a step backwards. “No,” she said, “I can’t—I don’t belong here.”

“Why?” the reeds whispered, their trembling beginning to grow in intensity, as the wind shook them into a frenzied dance. “Where, then, do you belong?”

She thought, if she could just remember—there was something hovering in her mind just out of her reach, and if she could just remember— “A lonely dance it is, for three,” the reeds were saying. Or maybe it was the wind. Or maybe it was just a tiny little voice in her head, as it had been all this time. “But even lonelier still for one. Surely you can reach out, and take their hands. Look how they long for you. Don’t be selfish, little duck. What would it hurt?”

She squinted out over the water, at the faceless figures. Something about their dance did seem a little cold—but it wasn’t because they were missing a dancer. Rather, she thought, it was because they were not anyone at all.

“Where are their faces?” she whispered, as the wind whipped her hair all about her face. “Who are they? The prince, the princess, the knight – how can that be enough to let them know who they are?” She fell back a step. “And who would I be, among them?”

The three figures danced noiselessly, gliding over the surface of the water. “The duck,” she said, and it was beginning to come back to her now, maybe—a glint of light gleaming through the static in her mind, piercing— “and I think once upon a time, that would have made me ashamed. Once upon a time I would have backed away because ducks are not fit to dance with princes, or princesses, or knights, and certainly not all three of them. But I know now. Today I back away because I know that I am not just a duck, and I don’t seek to dance with just a prince, or a princess, or a knight.”

She swallowed. The figures dancing on the water seemed to be fading a little, their forms blurred, indistinct. Suddenly she knew what it was she felt thundering in her pulse, beating in time with the sound that still beckoned at her from just beyond the way, the one she had been following all this time. A longing so deep it ached in her bones. She opened her mouth to speak—

“I want to dance with my friends,” Ahiru says. “The ones who know my name. Where—” and the wind grows louder, howling, shaking at her feet— “Where are they? Where have I gone?”

It’s Mytho who finds her, in the end.

They’ve been walking for a while, following the path of the river, when he suddenly draws to a stop, earthly still. His spine tensing rigid, and then the loosening of his shoulders, the slight shudder that seems to wrack his whole body like a sigh. Like it’s over. Like she’s safe. Rue’s heart flies into her throat, but it’s Fakir who moves first, rushing past them both, and Rue stays rooted to the spot, because she can’t quite bring herself to step forward, not yet. She doesn’t know what they’ve found—duck or girl, alive or—no, she won’t even think about that—

“Ahiru,” Fakir says, but it comes out as a gasp, like the breath’s been knocked out of him. Rue brings herself to look, at last, and there is no broken bundle of feathers curled up in the grass. No body, either. Just the shadowed figure of a barefoot girl standing at the edge of the lake, staring out over the waters as though she sees something there. Rue cranes her neck, but as far as she can tell, nothing but fog clings to the glassy surface of the lake.

Then Ahiru is turning her head to look at them, and her eyes are crinkling, mouth turning up into a smile. “There you are,” she says, and her voice comes out scratchy, hoarse. “I was just thinking of you—I was just wondering where you were.” She laughs. “Of course, though. It would make sense that you were all right here, all along.”

Fakir drops to his knees, right there against the grass. His eyes are wide, like they still don’t believe, despite seeing her right in front of them, right there. Mytho still hasn’t moved, his entire body sagging with relief, reaching out with a hand to steady himself, and Rue takes it, can’t bring herself to meet Ahiru’s eyes, because—

“I’m sorry,” Fakir blurts out, and Rue hears it like an echo in her own mind, looks away in shame.

“What for?” Ahiru says, as though in surprise.

“For—for not thinking about what you wanted,” Fakir says, voice trembling under the weight of his guilt. “For trying to write your story, when I didn’t have the right, and when it went against everything we believed in, against everything we had fought for—” He chokes off, then swallows, visibly. He looks exhausted. “For thinking you needed to be saved.”

“For leaving,” Mytho says suddenly. “For forgetting. For not coming back.”

In the brief pause that follows Rue thinks that this is it, that it’s her turn now, that there is something she should be saying, should be apologizing for, but the moment drags on a little too long and Ahiru is beating her to it like always.

“But you did come back, didn’t you?” Ahiru’s still smiling, and she looks mystified. As though she can’t understand why Fakir is on her knees for her, why Mytho can’t stand without clasping Rue’s hand for support, why Rue isn’t looking her in the eye. The only thing she doesn’t seem to be unsure of is why they are here, as though it is something she has known for a long time, even before they themselves were called back. “You’re here now. You found me, when I needed you most—” She breaks off, then, and Rue knows that if she looks up, she will see that Ahiru has turned to look at her. She can feel her gaze on her, heavy, and if she looks up, Ahiru will meet her eyes, and then she will see everything that lies there, and some part of Rue’s body shivers at that, some part of her that still remembers being a bird more than being a girl, some part that now thinks of flight. The bend of her knees and the lock of her arms, they beg for it—to lift off and leave and never look back—

“But I see now, that maybe it is also when you needed me most, too,” Ahiru says, thoughtful. She takes a step forward, and then she lifts her wrists above her head, stretches up onto the tips of her toes. Rue recoils back, like she’s been struck. For a moment Rue thinks she sees a shadow superimposed onto Ahiru’s figure—one with a crown of feathers in her hair, ribbons trailing from her skirt—but it flickers briefly and is gone, and there is only Ahiru, raising her chin, smiling. As there was only ever just Ahiru.

“Mytho,” Ahiru says. Her eyes turn to him, and her smile is sweet. “Do you remember the first time we danced? Not Princess Tutu, not to give back shards of your heart, but just you and I, for the sake of dancing.”

Mytho smiles. “Yes,” he says, and he sounds far away, as though reliving the memory. “It was the day of the Fire Festival.” He looks down at his hands. Rue, too, remembers that day. Meeting Ahiru, and how easy it had been to believe what she said, with her eyes shining, as though genuine. Waiting for hours in the cold, watching all the other couples dancing in the plaza, cursing herself for trusting a stranger, for trusting anyone. And then Mytho showing up after all, taking her hand and leading her into their dance, and when she looked into his eyes she was shocked to see something other than her own reflection looking back at her. But that wasn’t what had scared her, Rue remembers. What had scared her was recognizing the softness of his smile in Ahiru’s, earlier that day—both of them looking at her with that open honesty, sudden vulnerability she had never known and didn’t know how to be responsible for. Didn’t know how to face, when she had suppressed it in herself, all that time. So she had picked up her skirts and run. Flight over fight every time—at least until the crow that called itself her father had taught her what it meant to be a monster. Made her bird beak hunger for a heart.

“And Fakir,” Ahiru says. “Do you remember the first time we danced?”

Fakir winces. Rue doesn’t blame him, remembering the way Fakir had overpowered Ahiru on the stage, cornering her into the shadows and caging her with barely restrained aggression. Less a dance, than an act of violence. But she’s in no position to judge him, and her heart leaps into her throat as Ahiru finally turns towards her—no, don’t say it—don’t make me remember—

“Rue,” Ahiru says, breathy, eyes shining just like the day of the Fire Festival, only now there is nowhere to run. “Do you remember the first time we danced?”

Rue closes her eyes in shame. Thinks of how she’d picked Ahiru out from the crowd because she had known it would highlight her own grace. Twirling and lifting her as though she weighed as light as a feather—and even still how Ahiru gasped in wonder. Had smiled at her, through it all. But above everything, Rue thinks, what comes back to her now is how soft Ahiru’s hand had been, in hers.

“I do,” Rue says, and it comes out as an apology, but Ahiru is still holding that strange, knowing smile. Gentle.

“Good,” Ahiru says, and Rue blinks in surprise. “Then you all remember how to dance, I suppose. Come on, then—” and she raises her chin, uncrosses her wrists. Extends her hands, palms facing up, like an offering. “Dance with me, all of you, as we danced before. As we ought to have been dancing, all this time.”

Rue looks at Ahiru standing before her, and she sees the way Ahiru had looked at her on that day of the Fire Festival, and the way she had looked at her from the window on the rooftop with her hair flying wild in the flurry of crows around them, and the way she is looking at her now—for they are all one and the same. She looks at Rue like she deserves to be saved—but more than that, like she believes in it enough to make it true. And something about it is almost enough to make Rue believe in it, too, every time. Enough to make her wait all night in hopes for a dance with a prince, and in the wasteland of a raven’s heart in hopes for a way out of her story. Enough to reach out, now, and take hold of Ahiru’s hand.

Ahiru beams up at her, like she knows all this, too, and she leans in close, to whisper—as though to tell a secret— “I heard you.”

“What?” Rue says, taken aback.

“I heard you,” Ahiru says, laughing. “I heard your love letter, on the wind—”

“It wasn’t a love letter,” Rue snaps, embarrassed. She can feel her face turning red. Ahiru, though, just grins ear to ear, tightening her grip on Rue’s hand, as though there’s any possibility Rue can still let go at this point, and she twirls around, leads Rue over to Fakir, who is staring at them both, amazed.

“Come on, Fakir,” Ahiru says, holding out her other hand. Fakir hesitates, but then he catches Rue’s eye. Rue, who holds his gaze steady.Remember, you understood, she thinks, and wills the thought hard enough that he might hear it.

Fakir swallows. He takes Ahiru’s hand. They stand there together, Ahiru between them, and it is almost a circle. But not quite.

“Mytho,” Ahiru says, and he comes, completing them. The wind settles, like a sigh; the lake ripples at their feet without a sound. The silver trees bow their heads as the four of them begin to dance.

Rue has not danced in a long time, and after these days in the forest her limbs are aching, her legs shaking. But her body remembers discipline like an old friend, straightening out her spine and marking her steps with intent, with precision. Fakir, too, wavers in his movements, and Rue suspects that he hasn’t been polishing up on his dancing, either, all this time cooped up in a room trying to rewrite an ending to their story and forgetting to live it instead. It’s Mytho who’s still retained the most elegance, not a toe or a wrist out of line; Ahiru is miles away from his steady grace, but she twirls and leaps and laughs through it all. It’s beautiful, if unorthodox, and Rue thinks that this is what she has forgotten: to dance not because she knows nothing else, but because she chooses to, out of love, out of happiness. For that has to be what she is feeling now—her heart light enough to burst, to spread wings and fly, tugging the corners of her mouth up into an impossible grin—surely this is what it feels like, to be happy—

“Ahiru,” Mytho says after a while; Rue has no way of knowing how much time has passed, besides the strain she feels in her bones. He sounds like something has just occurred to him, something he had forgotten. “What were you looking at, over the waters?”

“Oh, it was just a dream,” Ahiru says. “It was only just a dream.”

“I can’t believe you were out here all this time,” Fakir says, half to himself. The look of slight astonishment that has been stuck to his face the whole time is now beginning to wear off, replaced by the beginnings of his familiar scowl. Rue thinks it’s rather rich—and quite late—for him to try and preserve his delusions of detachment at this point, but then again, it’s Fakir. What else would one expect from him? At any rate, he still can’t take his eyes off Ahiru, so it softens the image quite a bit. “All alone.” He shakes his head, disbelieving.

“I wasn’t alone,” says Ahiru. “I was never alone. There were so many people, guiding me along the way…” She trails off, then, suddenly coming to an abrupt stop, eyes wide, and Rue stumbles a little. “I almost forgot!”

“What is it, Ahiru?” Mytho asks.

“Can’t you hear it?” Ahiru says, whipping her head around to stare off into the distance, somewhere into the trees. “The sound that I was following, all this time. It’s so close, now.”

One by one, their heads turn to the trees as though answering the beck of a call. And Rue, too, can hear it now. In the heart of the forest, past the lake, steady as the thump of her heart—the faint beating of drums.

When they find Uzura sitting in a clearing amidst the trees she is still beating her drum, on and on, without any sign of stopping. Only when Ahiru gets to her knees before her, places a hand on her shoulder, and says her name, gently, does she lower her drumsticks and rub at her eyes, as though waking up from a long and heavy sleep.

“There you are,” she says. “I’ve been waiting for you for a very long time-zura.”

“What’s this?” Rue says, and Ahiru starts, because it hadn't occurred to her that she hasn’t ever met Uzura. Neither has Mytho, she realizes.

“It’s Uzura,” Fakir says. “She was made from Edel’s pieces, after she saved us, that night, from Kraehe.”

Rue flinches, but before Ahiru can say anything, Uzura is getting to her feet and pointing a tiny drumstick up at her. “Princess-zura,” she says, waving the drumstick.

“That’s right,” Rue says. Her face softens a little. “I was the princess. For a little while, at least.”

Ahiru frowns. “Aren’t you still a princess?” she says, but Uzura’s already moved on, shouldering her way past to jab her drumstick at Mytho.

“Prince-zura?” she says.

Mytho looks amused. “Depends on who’s telling the story,” he says.

Fakir rolls his eyes. “What a time to start getting philosophical,” he says.

Uzura zeroes in on Fakir, then, and runs straight into his legs, startling him. Ahiru laughs.

“Look, she missed you,” Ahiru says.

Fakir scowls furiously. “She’s a puppet,” he says. “She doesn’t miss people.”

Uzura blinks up at them. “You were missing,” she agrees. She points her drumstick at Ahiru, and then at Fakir, and Rue, and Mytho, in turn. “You were all missing.” She taps a little beat on her drum, shakes her head. “But not anymore.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Fakir says, with that expression on his face that makes him look like he’s battling a bad stomach ache. Oh, how Ahiru’s missed that look.

“Shh,” she says, placing a hand on his wrist to quiet him. Fakir rears back, startled, but she keeps her hand there, and saves a little quiet smile for herself. “Uzura-san, how are you here?”

Uzura keeps drumming. “I walked-zura.”

“Fair enough,” Ahiru agrees. “How about—why are you here? Where’s Drosselmeyer?”

Fakir tenses at the name, and Ahiru pats him a little, as though to remind him that that part of the story is over, that that story’s over, that there is no writer or pen or hand of fate to fear, not anymore.

“Gone,” Uzura says.

“Gone where?” Mytho says. His eyes are clouded with worry, and Ahiru knows what he’s thinking—that Drosselmeyer’s found some new story to write, new people to mold into characters and puppets of his own.

“Just gone-zura,” Uzura says. Another tap on her drum, to illustrate her point. “Where ghosts go when they don’t have anywhere to haunt-zura.”

They all share a look at that, Ahiru barely unable to control the feeling that flutters its wings in her chest, at her throat. Something like hope. “He’s dead?” she says.

“He was always dead,” says Mytho, looking thoughtful. “But he was kept alive by his story. Maybe… Maybe a writer dies when no one remembers his story.”

“Or when a story stops being a story,” Rue says. Her eyes are dark. She looks up, and meets Ahiru’s eyes, and does not look away.

“No story,” Uzura agrees. “So I came back-zura.”

“Me, too,” Rue says, so softly Ahiru almost misses it.

“So does that mean because Drosselmeyer’s gone, I got turned into a girl again?” Ahiru says. “Even though I wasn’t one to begin with?”

“I think,” Fakir says. He hesitates. “I think after he was gone he didn’t dictate what the story said, anymore. So I was free to write you into a girl, even though you didn’t have a say in the matter. Even if you didn’t want to be one.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a girl,” Ahiru says, wrinkling her nose at him. “Though it wasn’t bad being a duck, either. I don’t mind, though—this way, I can dance.” She twirls a little. “And besides, it’s a good thing you did, because it brought all of you here, didn’t it?” She laughs.

Fakir mutters something under his breath that she doesn’t quite catch.

“What?”

“I said,” he says, looking chagrined, “you brought all of us here, not me.”

Ahiru sighs, shakes her head. “You all brought yourselves here,” she says.

Uzura bangs her drum, loud, as though not to be forgotten. “Uzura brought you all here,” she corrects them, and Ahiru laughs.

“But now that we are all here,” says Mytho, “the question is where we go from here.”

They all fall silent. Ahiru looks at them—Mytho with his snowy white hair fallen over his eyes; Rue with fists unclenched at last, a smile unfurling like the wings of a bird stretching for flight; Fakir, half in and half out of the shadows, the skin of his wrist soft under her palm. Uzura at their feet, still banging the rhythm to the tuneless song that had led them all back together. If this were a story, Ahiru thinks, she would say, We go home, and they would walk off into the forest, back in the direction they’d come, and the sun would set over the treetops and the stars would align overhead to lead their way. And it would be another ending, in itself.

That’s the trap of the story, Ahiru thinks now. The story that comes up to you with its arms outstretched, ready to bear upon you the weight, the terrible emptiness of an ending—and to fall into its embrace would be easy, would seem like the right thing to do, but she knows now that it is only when the lid closes that you realize you have been falling all along into your grave—

Ahiru looks at them all again and realizes what it is that has always been the enemy of the story, the fates of the future so written that they may as well be the past: possibility, rising up all around them like the match-lit blue of the dusk, the glow of the setting sun. A fire that puts itself to sleep, only to blaze back into the light of the following day, heralding not the inevitability of the morning but the wonder of all the possibilities it brings. Surely this is what magic is, Ahiru thinks; not being made into a girl, or a princess, or a duck, or any of those things, but instead, to simply be alive. To be free.

“I don’t know,” Ahiru says, and something lodged in her chest loosens, flies free. She laughs, then, and lets herself tip backwards onto the grass, until she’s sprawled out on the ground blinking up at all of them staring back at her in confusion. “I’m a little tired, though. I think I’m ready for sleep.”

“What?” says Fakir, so Ahiru tugs at his wrist until he lets himself fall next to her with a soft thud against the earth. Mytho and Rue look at each other, and then they, too, are joining them on the ground, until all of them are lying next to each other on the grass, looking up at the sky in silence.

Uzura bangs her drum. “What’s sleep-zura?” she wants to know.

Ahiru hums slightly, feels the weariness in her bones sink into something softer, settling. The slow, warm haze of drowsiness weighing down on her eyelids. “It’s when you rest,” she says. “When you close your eyes and dream at the end of the day, so you can be ready for the next one. And everything it might bring.”

“What’s dream-zura?”

“Something that isn’t real,” says Fakir, his voice close beside her, familiar. Ahiru closes her eyes. “Even if it feels like it is. Because dreams end when you wake up—that’s how you know it isn’t real.”

“Like a story,” says Rue, from Ahiru’s other side. “Stories are like that, too.” A pause. “What’s this—Who’s holding my hand?”

“Hmmm,” says Ahiru, stretching her mouth into a yawn. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“So annoying,” Rue says, but she doesn’t take her hand away.

“What’s annoying-zura?” Another bang of the drum.

“It’s what you are, right now,” Fakir says. “Can’t you tell some people are trying to sleep?”

“There’s no need to be so harsh,” Mytho says, voice drifting up from somewhere in the darkness. “She’s only a child.”

“She’s not a child!” Fakir insists. “She’s a doll!”

“Like we used to be?” Mytho says innocently. “Hey—I'm kidding, I’m kidding, calm down, Fakir. Go to sleep.”

A rustle of grass. Ahiru can feel Fakir slowly lie back down from where he’d sat bolt upright at Mytho’s words. “It’s not a particularly funny joke,” Fakir mutters. Somewhere beside him, Uzura starts tapping on her drum again.

“I don’t know about that,” Rue says, laughter colouring her voice. “Your expression looked pretty funny to me.”

“Shut up,” says Fakir, and then he says something else, a little softer, but Ahiru doesn’t quite catch it. She’s tilting over the edge of sleep, surrounded, safe. A smile still curling at the ends of her lips. When she falls asleep it is to the gentle murmur of their conversation, to the slow and steady beat of the drum. The hush of the silver moon hanging heavy in the sky.

“Hey, Nozaki-kun,” says Sakura one day. “Why do you draw shoujo manga, anyway?”

It’s the night before his deadline. Hour seven of working bent-backed over the pages at his desk, and the casualties are piling up: Hori’s composure, Wakamatsu’s enthusiasm, Sakura’s optimism. Mikorin is somewhere on the floor, passed out. Nozaki vaguely wonders if he’s still alive.

“Hm?” says Nozaki, sketching out a curl in Mamiko’s hair. He’s the only one who’s still functioning on a level higher than autopilot; he’s used to this, after all. Late nights are his most productive hours. In fact, he thinks, it used to be harder, back before he found a team. Back when he had to do it alone.

“It’s because he can’t draw anything else,” says Hori. “Imagine if he started a shounen adventure manga—I’d never be able to leave his house, what with all the detailed backgrounds I’d have to draw for him—”

“But shoujo manga is Nozaki-kun’s life work!” says Sakura, who seems almost offended, though Nozaki can’t fathom why. “He wouldn’t have picked it over some arbitrary reason like that!”

“Actually, that is the reason,” says Nozaki. Both Sakura and Wakamatsu gasp from across the desk, as though scandalized. “I’m best at simplistic settings, like school classrooms, which I can easily reference since I see them every day. Although you’re right, it seems a little restrictive that I can’t draw backgrounds very well. I should try learning again—”

“Don’t,” growls Hori. He stabs his pen down a little too hard on his page. “I can’t deal with those boxes again, I won’t.”

“Well, I think it’s cool Nozaki-kun writes shoujo manga, regardless of his reasons,” says Sakura. She seems to have forgotten she’s in the middle of inking a scene, and instead taps her pen against her cheek thoughtfully. 1 AM does that to people, Nozaki supposes. “Think of all the people around the country right now reading his manga! Wanting a relationship like Mamiko and Suzuki’s, being inspired to work up the courage to confess to the ones they love…”

“Sakura, your face is a little red,” says Nozaki. “Is it too hot in here? Should I open a window?”

Sakura’s face only goes redder. “No, it’s fine, Nozaki-kun,” she says. “I just think it’s great what you do, that’s all. Writing love stories—it’s really romantic!”

Nozaki pauses in the middle of drawing Suzuki’s eye. Romantic? Mamiko and Suzuki’s story is a romance, of course. But the act of writing it—is it romantic? Nozaki thinks of sore fingers and neck cramps, of ink staining his fingernails, of staying up late into the night mapping out the spread of panels on a page. That’s certainly a strange definition of romantic, he thinks. He makes a mental note to ask Sakura what she means later, but for now—

“You have ink on your face, Sakura,” Nozaki says. Sakura yelps, drops her pen.

“Hey, guys, where’s Mikoshiba-senpai?” says Wakamatsu.

Hori points wordlessly under the desk, from where Mikorin’s socked feet are poking out. Nozaki hopes he’s not drooling on the carpet.

“Maybe we should wake him up,” says Sakura. “There’s a page coming up with some roses on it, he’ll love to ink that.”

“Maybe we should take a break,” says Wakamatsu. He stretches his arms out with a sigh. “I’m going to be a zombie in basketball practice tomorrow, Seo-senpai’s going to annihilate me on the court—”

“Don’t worry,” Nozaki says. “I have enough cold compresses for all of you.”

Everyone groans, all at once, which is apparently enough to wake up Mikorin, if the loud bang of him sitting up too sharply and hitting his head on the underside of the table is any indication. “Ouch—what? Where am I?”

Hori pats him on the shoulder as he crawls out from under the desk. There’s ink in his hair, somehow. “Welcome to hell,” Hori says, handing him a pen, and Nozaki stifles a smile, outlines the curve of Mamiko’s upturned face on his page.

--

Nozaki’s been having strange dreams lately. They all start out the same way—blinking open his eyes to find that he’s running, and he’s Suzuki, and he’s on his way to find Mamiko. He doesn’t know how he knows this, just that the wind is rushing past his ears and the ground is soft beneath his feet and he’s wearing a neatly pressed suit or a navy sailor’s uniform or—in this case—full-length silver armour. He’s clanking down the shapeless road, holding a ridiculously heavy sword, and there’s a figure down the way, waving out at him from behind a fence. It’s Hori, dressed as a medieval page.

“Hey,” Hori calls. “You’re going to be too late. Everyone else is already ahead of you. Quick, come on, take my hand.”

And Nozaki reaches out, but in the moment before their hands meet the dream shifts somehow, the ground slanting sideways until Hori is rising higher and higher up above him, hand still outstretched, but Nozaki can’t reach, and the sun is too bright, beating down through the visor of his helmet and everything bleeds out into a brilliant white—

“Nozaki-kun, wake up,” comes a voice. The bell is ringing. He’s in his classroom, and everyone around him is packing up their books, pushing back their chairs. Sakura is standing too, peering down at where he’s slumped forward on his desk, and it’s strange, he thinks, having to look up at her for once.

“You slept through the last fifteen minutes of class, but it’s okay,” says Sakura, “you can copy my notes if you want.”

“Thanks,” says Nozaki, and this seems to make Sakura really happy for some reason, so he says it again. “Thank you.”

Later, when they’re in the hallway, Sakura says, “You should try and get some more rest, Nozaki-kun. Our exams are coming up soon, so you need all the energy you can get.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” says Nozaki. He still feels a little off-kilter, like there’s something he meant to ask, once in a dream. Something buzzing around in his skull like a dragonfly. But he lets go of the thought when he catches sight of Hori down the hallway.

“Oh, hey, Nozaki,” says Hori as Nozaki approaches, nodding at him, then staring, alarmed, when Nozaki keeps on walking closer. “What are you doing—”

Nozaki peers down at Hori, from where his chest is almost pressed against him and his shoes are just shy of stepping on his and his chin is brushing the top of Hori’s head. “Just as I thought,” he says aloud, “I’m still taller than you.” Of course he is, he thinks. It was just a dream.

“Ha, ha, very funny,” Hori says, and he looks like he’s ready to yell someone’s ear off. Nozaki mentally sends his apologies to Kashima, in advance.

--

It strikes Nozaki again when he’s on the subway with Mikorin, heading home from the shopping centre, where he’d had to drop by to replenish his supplies and where Mikorin had wanted to check out the new anime figure display. The subway train compartment is crowded, and at one of the stops a pair of girls jostle Mikorin on their way out. “Pardon me,” Mikorin says, with a sweeping bow of his head. The girls giggle among themselves, but don’t stick around long enough to catch the furious blush on his cheeks. Nozaki’s seen it all before. But in his mind he’s already framing the situation in a different context: Mamiko, perhaps, on her way back from the mall, crossing paths with Suzuki on his way to the library, just by chance, in the space between stops, elbows brushing each other—

“Yo,” says Mikorin, waving a hand in front of his face, “you’re spacing out. You okay?”

The curve of a hair ribbon; the lilt of a surprised smile. Nozaki blinks them away. “Say, Mikoshiba,” he says suddenly. “What does love mean, to you?”

Mikorin jerks back, as though Nozaki had reached out and poked him in the face. “W-What kind of a question is that? Why are you asking that all of a sudden?”

Nozaki shrugs, shifts the weight of his plastic shopping bags in his hands. “It’s just a question,” he says. “You don’t have to answer it if it makes you uncomfortable.”

The subway bends around a corner, and Mikorin steadies a hand on the pole. His face is red. Nozaki waits him out.

“Well, you know,” Mikorin stammers. “It’s like, y’know, when you care about someone, and you want to be with them all the time. And it’s when you wanna do cool stuff together, like, uh, d-dating, and playing video games, and watching anime—” He’s picking up speed, having gained enthusiasm at the thought of it. “And it’s when they compliment you, because they think you’re really cool, and charming, and handsome!”

Nozaki considers it. “That does sound like it’s romantic,” he agrees. He'd take out his notepad, but his hands are full.

“And it’s when you want to hold their hand,” Mikorin adds, like an afterthought.

Nozaki thinks of all the times he’s held someone’s hand before. As a child, latching onto his mother when crossing the street. Then, as an older brother, making sure Mayu didn’t lag behind in the middle of traffic. Every time he watched horror movies with Mikorin and then had to calm him during the scary parts. Just last night, helping affix cold compresses to Hori’s neck. Wakamatsu’s forehead. The backs of Sakura’s hands, the skin of her palms soft under his own, a strange flush to Sakura’s cheeks as she tilted her face away.

“I don’t think all the times I’ve held someone’s hand can be classified as romantic,” says Nozaki, aloud. “It wasn’t about love. It was more like wanting to keep someone safe.”

Mikorin squints at him, scratches at his collar. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

Nozaki feels as though he’s been caught, somehow.

“And anyway,” says Mikorin. “Shouldn’t you be the expert on this? Being the shoujo mangaka, and all?”

It’s true. Shoujo manga does more than run Nozaki’s life; it is his life. At any given moment in time Mamiko and Suzuki are always with him, in his mind, in a shadow on the street, in the shape of a stranger’s back turning away. Right now in his head Mamiko and Suzuki are twirling pirouettes in each other’s arms, gazing up at each other’s faces. The perfect angle, Nozaki thinks, and he mentally cranes his neck forward to get a better glimpse, to trace the image to memory, but they keep dancing away, out of reach.

“Do you think that’s romantic?” says Nozaki, remembering what Sakura had said last night. “Writing shoujo manga?”

“Um,” says Mikorin. “Well, I don’t think it’s any less romantic than me and my dating sims.” He puffs out his chest, proud. “Love transcends all boundaries, including that of reality, you know!”

Nozaki sighs, and takes that to mean not very. Funny. He’d thought he was onto something for a moment there. He rests his head against the subway pole, watches the city lights blink past. An itch in his palms—to hold someone’s hand, perhaps, or more likely, to pick up his pen, to draw.

--

In the dream, he is Suzuki, and he’s running, on his way to find Mamiko. The wind is rushing past his ears. The city street is filled with strangers and clouded with cigarette smoke, and he’s wearing a thick black trenchcoat, a wide-brimmed hat tilted down over his eyes. He’s pushing his way through the crowd, lost among the blinking neon signs and shadowed alleyways, when he sees a figure down the way, waving at him from across the road. It’s Seo, in a beat-up leather jacket and a pair of shades.

“Hey,” Seo says. She’s smoking a cigarette; that’s where the smell is coming from. “You’re going to be too late. Everyone is already ahead of you. Hurry up, come on.”

And Nozaki steps off the sidewalk, but in the moment before he can reach the other side the dream shifts somehow, the street widening beneath his feet until Seo is farther away from him than before, blowing a cloud of smoke through her teeth, disinterested, and Nozaki can’t reach her, and the noise is too loud, the screech of car horns and rubber tires against asphalt rising up into cacophony all around him until he screws his eyes shut and everything bleeds into a brilliant white—

“Nozaki-kun,” someone whispers. He blinks his eyes open, startled. Darkness—the smoke, he thinks—and glowing lights, like two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin. And then the in-between: the half-formed silhouettes beside him, the side of Sakura’s face obscured from where she’s leaned over him in her seat. “Wake up.”

They’re in the school auditorium. It’s the first showing of the drama club’s new play. All around him, people are watching attentively as Kashima spars with her rival on the stage. Nozaki rubs his eyes. Hori had worked on this play day and night; for weeks now Kashima would launch into her lines at any opportunity, at anyone who would listen. Sakura had helped paint each set with care. It had been Nozaki himself who had secured the tickets—he’d been hoping for inspiration. How rude of him, he thinks, to have fallen asleep.

“Thanks,” he whispers to Sakura, and straightens up in his seat. Then he catches sight of Seo, sitting on Sakura’s other side, eyes glued to the battle unfolding on the stage, and he shivers, remembering his dream.

“Kill him!” Seo shouts, hands cupped around her mouth, and the illusion fades immediately. Annoyed whispers ripple through the audience. On the stage, Kashima raises her sword, and it catches the light. The fatal blow, Nozaki thinks, and he looks away, rubbing his head—an ache he can’t quite seem to shake off. The insistent drone of an insect, beating in his brain.

Later, after the show, they wait in the wings, Sakura holding a bouquet of flowers, Nozaki ready with his camera, Seo eating a bag of chips. When Kashima and Hori emerge Nozaki snaps a photo of the two of them, caught blinking by the camera flash. Kashima’s still in her knight costume. Hori’s holding her fake sword, along with a bag of props.

“You were amazing, Kashima!” Sakura says, and she thrusts the flowers forward, stars shining in her eyes. “Congratulations!”

Kashima beams. “Thank you, Chiyo-chan,” she says, and then, leaning closer forward, “but you should know, it was the thought of you in the audience watching me that truly bolstered my performance and kept me going strong.” She takes the flowers from a furiously blushing Sakura, then spots Seo. “Hey, can I have a chip? I’m starved.”

Seo squints at her. “Get your own,” she says, through a mouthful of food.

Kashima pouts. Seo remains unperturbed. Nozaki thinks of something strange. The lights from the theatre, in his eyes. The five of them standing there, in a circle, comfortable. In his head the space between Mamiko and Suzuki is lessening. He lifts his camera again, takes another shot.

“Hey, stop that,” says Hori. He looks exhausted, but the line of his brow is relaxed, his mouth in something almost like a smile. “What about you, Nozaki? How’d you like the play?”

“It was a good story,” Nozaki says.

Hori snorts. “Of course you’d say that,” he says, “you’re the one who wrote it,” and Nozaki remembers now, handing over the script bleary-eyed and sleep-deprived after a long night of frenzied writing, the floor of his room littered with balled-up pieces of notebook paper, scrapped ideas. Strange that he’d forgotten. But then again, he writes so many stories nowadays, and aren’t they all the same story anyway? The righteous prince, the courageous knight, and the princess who has to choose between the two of them, as though their love isn’t enough to be shared. As though it isn’t all just about wanting to close the distance, in the end. Nozaki scratches his head. He’d come to watch the play for inspiration, but turns out he’s just been stuck with himself all along.

“Seo-sama,” Kashima is saying, “have I ever mentioned how lovely your eyes are? Like stars, in the sky. The kind that can only belong to a beautiful soul, a kindred spirit… Generous enough to share your chips with a starving friend in need…”

Seo blinks, pops the last chip into her mouth.

“Give it a rest,” says Hori, to a visibly wilting Kashima. “Haven’t you had enough of acting for the day?”

Kashima clutches her heart in despair. “That’s ice cold, Hori-chan-senpai!”

The bouquet of flowers in her hands goes flying in the air, and Sakura scrambles to catch it in alarm. “If we’re hungry why don’t we all just go for dinner?” she says. “The new noodle place is pretty good.”

Kashima perks up. Seo crunches her empty chip bag into a ball, lobs it into a nearby garbage can, whistles—“Score.” Nozaki thinks, maybe not stuck with only himself after all. In his head Mamiko and Suzuki are turning to face him, as though to say, hurry up, you’re taking so long, and he lifts his camera, snaps another shot. For good measure.

“I’d like that,” he says, to his friends. “Let’s go.”

--

He finally remembers to ask one day when it’s lunch, and they’re in the schoolyard, and Nozaki is bending down to retrieve his drink from the vending machine. It’s a blustery day, wind in his eyes, and Nozaki pauses for a moment, something sliding into him like the slot of a coin. It’s perhaps not the most appropriate time, his hand still stuck inside the vending machine, but he turns around from where he’s knelt on the ground and says to Sakura, “What did you mean, that time?”

“What time?” says Sakura. She’s texting Mikorin, telling him where to meet up in the school to eat lunch together. Her bows are crooked, in the wind.

“When you said that you admired me for writing shoujo manga.”

“Oh!” A faint blush spreads across Sakura’s cheeks, in surprise. “You—you remembered that, Nozaki-kun?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Nozaki admits.

“Well,” says Sakura with a stammer. “I do think it’s amazing, what you do. You’re only a high school student like me, but you spend your time making a living, making a name for yourself… Well, a fake name, but you know what I mean… It’s really, um, responsible—no, no, this isn’t right…”

She’s frowning, and her face is awfully red, and Nozaki would ask if she’s all right, but she seems on the verge of some mental breakthrough, and he doesn’t want to interrupt her. Instead he waits as Sakura flounders for the right words, in faith that she’ll find them.

“What I wanted to say is!” Sakura bursts out, all of a sudden. “I really admire you for drawing shoujo manga! Because I—I think it reaches a lot of people, who can read your words, who can run their fingers over your drawings and touch the expressions in the faces you create… And maybe young people, you know, people who are scared or nervous or alone, maybe they can see themselves in the pages… Maybe they can gain hope, or courage, or inspiration, to seek what you have captured in your art. To reach out to the ones they want to love…”

The blush is gone, replaced by a thoughtful look on her face, a sort of surety to her words. As though she truly believes everything she says, and it surprises even herself.

“Because you write love stories,” Sakura says. Her voice trails off, and she turns to look at Nozaki.

“Why do you draw shoujo manga, Nozaki-kun?” she says, after a pause.

For the first time in his life Nozaki is surprised into thinking about it. Is there any other choice? Is there anything else to draw? Isn’t this what it all comes down to in the end—the love story? And to tell a love story—it merits responsibility. He needs to get it right. He needs his notepad, his pen, his camera; needs the choreography for Mamiko and Suzuki in his head, stumbling over each other in trial and error. Everywhere around him, on the television, on the street, everyone falling in love with each other the way rain falls to the ground, and he needs to get it right, for it’s a law of nature, isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

And yet when the storm breaks out overhead, when he brings his pen and paper to take his notes, when he brings his camera to take his photographs—he brings his umbrella, too. Everyone else, their faces turned up to the sky, tasting rainwater. Nozaki thinks, maybe that’s the miracle. The slow dance that has entranced the rest of the world, who in turn entrances him. He thinks he can respect that. He can live with that, from under the cover of his umbrella, content to try and capture what he sees, in order to reflect it to back at them. Maybe then, they’ll finally see what they’ve been capable of, all this time.

“Because it’s the only thing I can draw,” Nozaki says, and he distantly realizes it’s the same answer he’d given back in his apartment the other day, but it still rings true. It’s still the only answer.

“I see,” says Sakura, and she’s looking up at him, and her eyes are shining strangely. “I really am your fan, Nozaki-kun.”

“You know,” says Nozaki after a moment. “It’s not necessarily being the writer, or the artist, that’s admirable at all. It’s in being the reader, too. Seeking out a story so that you can recognize yourself in it, and being loyal to it, as a fan… Choosing to find your own meaning, and to name that feeling within yourself hope, or courage, or inspiration, or whatever you need to move forward in your own life…”

A pause. The wind ruffles his hair. “I think that’s very brave,” says Nozaki. “Don’t you?”

When he turns his head again it is to see Sakura, mouth open, hair flying around her face, poised as though on the edge of some revelation. He waits for it, but there is nothing.

“Sakura?” he prompts. “Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

She closes her mouth, smiles at him, kind, the wind rising all around them. “No,” she says, “that was all. Come on, Nozaki-kun, let’s go find Mikorin.”

--

In the dream he is Suzuki, and he’s running, and he’s on his way to find Mamiko. The wind is rushing past his ears. He’s wearing a school uniform and he’s running down the sidewalk with the cherry tree branches rustling in the wind overhead, the sun a setting smear in the distance.

“Nozaki-kun?” comes a voice. It’s Sakura, on the other side of the road. “There you are. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Nozaki slows, but doesn’t stop. “What?” he says. “I’m not Nozaki. I’m Suzuki.”

“What are you talking about?” Sakura says, with a laugh. The others are all there—Mikorin with his jacket slung over his shoulder, Hori and Wakamatsu, Kashima and Seo. Grouped together by the side of the road, looking at him like he belongs there.

“You know you don’t actually live in a shoujo manga, right, Nozaki?” Mikorin’s saying, shoving his hands into his pockets with an easy grin, like it’s that simple.

Nozaki stops, and it suddenly strikes him that he’s tired of running. A realization that sets in with a weariness in his bones, but at the same time, the relief of rest. Peace. He starts across the road, and in his carelessness stumbles over a stone on the sidewalk.

“Careful,” says Sakura, holding out a hand, and Nozaki takes it, easy. “Are you tired? We can rest here for a bit, if you want.”

“That would be nice,” says Nozaki, and they all sit down on the curb by the side of the road as the sun sets quietly around them. A dragonfly buzzes, distantly. Seo grabs Wakamatsu’s backpack to squash it flat against the asphalt, ignoring his squawk of outrage, but she misses, and it leaps up into Hori’s hair. Hori doesn’t notice. Sakura gasps, and Mikorin’s cowering, but it’s Kashima who reaches up, gentle, to cradle the insect in her cupped palms, lower it to the earth like an offering.

“Look,” she says. “It’s flying.”

He wakes up to drool solidifying from where his cheek is pressed against his desk. There are muffled voices around him, so he keeps his eyes closed as he listens.

“…he’s been a zombie all week.” It’s Sakura’s voice. They’re in his apartment, working on his manga—he must have fallen asleep. It’s strange that they haven’t woken him up. “I don’t think he even realized.”

“I kinda wanna draw on his face,” comes Mikorin’s voice.

“Ooh, we could draw something cute,” says Sakura, “like bunny whiskers, or a heart.”

“I could do my underwear marking,” says Hori.

“How is that cute?” Mikorin says, scandalized.

Nozaki thinks about love. He thinks it must be the kind of thing you see in dreams, like flowers, like the sound of the rain tinkling through silver windchimes, like the shape of someone’s silhouette against the setting sun whose face you can never quite see. He wouldn’t know. In his own dream he sat on the sidewalk and lay his head in Sakura’s lap as Mikorin pressed the cold surface of his vending machine soft drink against his forehead and he closed his eyes to the background music of Hori and Kashima’s gentle bickering, of Seo vaguely humming a song, of Wakamatsu saying out loud, absentmindedly, “I think I’ve heard that tune somewhere before.” And he thinks, it is not anything more. It is not anything less.

“I’ve finished my share of the pages,” comes Wakamatsu’s voice. “Here, let me help with the rest. We’re almost done, right?”

Hori hums in assent. “He’ll be surprised when he wakes up. Bet he didn’t think we were capable of taking care of his story.”

You always imagine the day it finally happens to be special. Like you’ll roll out of bed one day and just know, with the slant of the morning light angled just right through the windows, as though every little molecule in the air and the clouds and the sun marching itself across the sky have all suddenly come anew with purpose. You’ll find him at school, maybe during lunch, or after classes, or maybe you’ll go with him to his apartment, kneel with your knees pressed against the mat and your hands laid in your lap, look up into his eyes and smile. “Nozaki-kun,” you’ll say, and it will all flow out of you like a breath that’s been bottled far too long. Your heart will unfurl like a flower. “I like you.”

You haven’t thought about it any further than that. The rest, you think, will come as it will, as it wills, and there’s no point trying to predict it. In any case, when you peel back the blinds on your bedroom window, it’s raining. Not today, then, you think to yourself, and you try not to think about whether what you feel is disappointment, or relief.

--

The teacher is talking, saying something important, you’re sure, but you can’t quite focus. Everything is distracting. The rain’s weakened to a slight drizzle, and the sun’s filtering through the clouds, refracting light through every little drop and creating a thousand tiny rainbows. The classroom windows are open, and the air is crisp, clear, bringing with it the smell of fresh rain. You doodle vaguely in your notebook, flowers and birds and five-pointed stars. There’s ink stained into the side of your hand.

Beside you, Yuzuki’s phone is balanced on her lap. She taps out a message one-handed. The sprawl of her posture is lazy, propping herself up on her chair with one arm, legs spread out before her. She’s not even bothering with the pretense of taking notes, instead gnawing on the end of her pen, eyes glazed.

“Who are you texting,” you whisper.

She grins at you, a flash of teeth. Still so sharp, so bright, even in this classroom, even after all these years. “Waka’s appalled by the fact that I’m texting him in class,” she says.

“But he’s texting you back,” you say.

“Exactly.”

You slide out your own phone, hidden under your desk, and turn the screen on and off a few times aimlessly. You wonder what Nozaki’s doing right now, if he’s daydreaming storylines in the middle of class, if he’s writing down notes in a fit of inspiration, ink staining his fingernails.

“Seo-san,” the teacher says from the front of the room. “Please sit properly in your chair.”

Yuzuki straightens up. “Yes, sensei.”

You slip your phone back into your pocket. The classroom clock ticks on, and on, into the day.

--

Third year doesn’t feel much different at all from second year, or even first. The classes are harder, but you’ve gotten used to homework, like you’ve gotten used to everything else, to walking with Nozaki after school to his apartment, sometimes with Mikorin slinging his jacket over his shoulder, or Wakamatsu, still eager to impress with his newly bought collection of fountain pens. And it’s easy, to let the days blend into one another, to be taken through the cycle of the seasons and forget that the earth is tilting into tomorrow, into an unknowable future. You think the first time you realized it was at last year’s graduation ceremony for the third years, when Kashima threw on a solo performance to honour Hori-senpai’s graduation, a group of girls swooning into the ground as she delivered her heartfelt speech. You remember it now, sun gleaming gold on every little thing and cherry blossoms in the air and all of you were there to cheer as Hori-senpai emerged from the crowd and only looked a little disgruntled when Nozaki tried to get him to model his suit for his camera, and the noise was so loud, and you looked around, and it occurred to you that none of it could last forever. That it was the beginning of the end.

Hori’s in university now, and Kashima’s the new head of the drama club, and the world revolves on. The papers and quizzes in school are all asking you the same question, where are you going to go after this, where are you gonna go, where are you gonna go. Your answer is always the same. You wait for the final bell to ring, you pack up your bags, and you go meet with Nozaki to head to his apartment.

--

When it happens, the sun’s position will be just right in the sky, and it will make you brave, brave enough to stand tall and look into his eyes. “Nozaki-kun,” you will say, and it will all flow out of you in a single breath. Your heart will open like the mouth of a river. “I like you.”

What will he look like, then? Firm and fixed, as always? Or will you finally see surprise in his eyes? Will you finally have moved him?

--

“You know what your manga needs,” Mikoshiba says. “Pirates.”

“What,” you say.

“Pirates, man,” says Mikoshiba, and he jabs his chopsticks in the air. “Think about it. Mamiko and Suzuki are enjoying themselves on a romantic cruise, when bam! Their ship is suddenly under attack by pirates. And Suzuki has to battle them in a long heroic swordfight, and Mamiko realizes how much he means to her, and their relationship’s made stronger by their life-or-death situation. It’s genius.”

Nozaki looks like he’s actually considering it, which worries you, but not as much as how Mikoshiba’s still shoveling in his lunch while expanding on his idea. “Please finish chewing your food before you speak, Mikorin,” you say, “or you’ll choke.”

“I’m just saying,” he says, after dutifully chewing and swallowing. “Everyone loves pirates.”

“I don’t know if it suits the genre,” you say. Nozaki’s still looking pensive. “Hey, Nozaki-kun. Do you ever think about ending Let’s Love?”

Now he’s looking at you, bemused. “Why would I do that?”

You return to your bento and pick at your rice. “I dunno,” you say. “Just seems like every story should have an end.”

“Not if it’s got pirates,” Mikoshiba mumbles through a mouthful of food, and then he starts choking.

“I’ll still support Let’s Love for as long as it goes on, though!” you yelp as you jump to your feet, start thumping Mikoshiba on the back. But when you look up, Nozaki’s gaze is still on you, unexpectedly heavy, and you thump Mikoshiba a little too hard, so the piece of egg stuck in his throat comes dislodged and hits Nozaki right in the eye.

--

Your face will not go red, and you will not tremble. “Nozaki-kun,” you will say, and it will all flow out of you like it has already been written before. Your heart will open like a clam, as though the time and pressure that has been burying your secret will have turned it into a pearl. “I like you.”

And he will say something, or he will not, and the days will spin on, and on, and on.

--

The rain has started up again by the time school ends for the day, and you stare bleakly out into the storm, wondering just when you’ll grow up enough to remember to bring your umbrella for once. It’s been a long day. You want to go home, to crawl into bed and close your eyes, and maybe wake up later in the night to finish your homework. Then there is a presence at your side, and you already know who it is.

“I guess some things do change,” Nozaki says, and the crinkle of his smile shows he’s pleased with himself. “I remembered to bring an umbrella this time.”

And really, all you can do is smile. All you can do.

“I was thinking about what you said,” Nozaki continues on, oblivious to your reaction. “About ending Let’s Love. You’re right, I think. It needs to end eventually, open-ended, of course, just to represent the hope of every real relationship. It’s been my safety net, but I should try my hand at another story, test my writing abilities. What do you think, Sakura-san? What do you think of that?”

He stands there, umbrella opened up above his head, still so much taller than you, and as he waits for a response and as the moments stretch by longer you can see his features fold into confusion, into concern. “Is everything all right?”

It strikes you then, something so big you don’t even have the words for, you can’t contain it in your throat. And what a shame it would be, you think, if you never told him – if you never told him –

“Nozaki-kun,” you say, and it is as though something in you has been cut loose, free. Your heart opens like the fingers of a clenched fist uncurling one by one. “I love you. I’ve loved you for a very long time. I just thought you should know. I just thought you should hear it, just once. “

There is no sun, and there is no stop. The rain falls, clinking into puddles, against the sidewalk, and time ticks on. But everything has changed. You think vaguely that you should zip up your jacket for warmth, to prepare yourself for walking home alone, through the storm.

Then you look up, and nothing could have prepared you for how Nozaki looks, like he’s caught in a moment of soft shock, for how he smiles, impossibly gentle. “Sakura,” he says. A burst of sun. He weighs each word with the utmost sincerity, serious. Of course he does – you know no one else who treats love with such respect. “Don’t you think you should hear it, too?”

You think, everything has changed. You think, everything is always going to change. In a few months’ time you will be standing at your graduation ceremony and the sun is going to gleam gold on every little thing and there will be cherry blossoms in the air, and you will turn your head to see Yuzuki at your side, scratching at her itchy uniform, Kashima making her graduation speech, Nozaki taking a picture of Mikoshiba with a flower in his hair for reference, and you will already miss it all in your heart, so sorely you can feel it like a bruise.

But here is Nozaki now, looking at you like you’re what he didn’t even know he was waiting for, and everything is new, and at the same time everything is just how it was before. His reassuring weight at your side, his arm angled upwards, offering the space under the sweep of his umbrella. The immense ache in your chest, pulling yourself towards him, as though caught in gravitational orbit. You take a step forward. And another.

Homura wakes up from her dream and turns right around, tries to chase it back down. Wait, she’s calling, running through a murky fog, greyish white and milky. Pieces rub off onto her skin like rot as she blindly makes her way through, until she’s caked in it, dragging her down. Wait. Her arms are outstretched, fingers reaching, as though to touch. She’s so close. The light. The light.

It’s six thirty-two AM and her alarm is ringing, shrill. Outside, the sun is rising. It’s a beautiful day.

--

On her way home from school she passes by the park again, even though she told herself she wouldn’t anymore. The boy is there, as he is every day, knees in the sand. Homura watches him for a while, then steps forward, kneels down next to him.

“Hello,” she says, “it’s me again, Homura. Do you remember me?”

“Madoka,” says Tatsuya. He’s drawn another sketch in the sand; he’s gotten better at it. He looks up at her, grins wide, and it sends a twinge through Homura’s chest. They even have the same smile.

“Madoka,” Homura agrees, with a sigh. He never says any other name. There’s a sudden lump in her throat, even though it’s been a long time, so long. So much longer to go. It doesn’t get any easier. “Can you really see her?”

Tatsuya nods vigorously, points at his drawing. Flowers and frills and disconnected lines, ears pointing out, eyes wide open. Homura looks at it and remembers.

“You know, her shoulders aren’t really that broad,” Homura says. “Her chin’s a little more pointed. And her eyes, they’re soft. Like she could see right into the heart of you, like she could see what lay there and still smile, reach out, take your hand–” She stops. Tatsuya’s looking at her, head tilted to the side, questioning.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she,” Homura says. There’s an ant, crawling over the mouth of the figure Tatsuya’s drawn in the sand. She gets to her feet, to leave.

“Homura?”

Homura’s head whips around so fast her neck cracks. “Madoka,” she gasps, and she’s shaking. The skyline trembles before her, buildings and lampposts blending together against the melt of the sunset on the horizon, and she can’t breathe, can’t think. It takes only a moment. When she steadies, she looks down. Tatsuya is staring up at her.

“Homura?” he repeats, uncertainly. Something in Homura’s chest falls, all the way down. But it comes back up again, eventually. Up, down. The rise and fall of her chest as she remembers how to breathe.

“Yes,” says Homura. “It’s only me. It’s only Homura.” She smiles down at him, gentle. “Goodbye, Tatsuya-chan.”

--

One time when it seems like the wraiths will never end, Homura turns in the midst of battle to shout something – an order, maybe, or an observation, she doesn’t remember now – and sees Kyouko standing there, spear pointed up towards the sky, eyes clouded. She flickers, just barely, and Homura’s heart stops.

“Kyouko,” she calls, a little panicked, and Kyouko looks up at her, blinks.

“Kinda busy right now,” Kyouko says, and she’s moving again, spear raised and slammed back into the eye of a shapeless wraith looming behind her, and it cracks, form disintegrating into dust. The shape of her silhouette against the night sky is so strong that Homura thinks she must have imagined it.

The way Kyouko fights is vicious, a whirlwind of chains blazing a trail of chaotic red and rubble, erratic and unpredictable. Messy, Homura would say, irresponsible, but these days Kyouko’s taken on more of an edge. Eating more and more, like she’s always hungry for something. Teeth always bared, sharp, even as she leaps from wraith to wraith, chains tearing through them in destruction. And who is she seeing, thinks Homura – who is she fighting? The glow of the streetlamps form tall, merging shadows, and from a distance the point where they converge looks almost like a figure, small and cornered at the end of an alley, yet refusing to back down. Memory pulses within her, remembers the glint of a raised sword. Then a wraith shoulders its way into Homura’s line of vision, and the illusion is gone. A trick of the light.

Later when it’s all over, when Mami alights on the ground and Kyouko blows dust off the tip of her spear, Homura walks up to her, hesitates. She’d never have asked, before, but with time she’s realized the permanence of the situation. All those lives, before, and this one is real. This is the only one left.

“Kyouko,” she says. “You’re okay, right?”

Kyouko looks at her like she’s sprouted another head. “Why the hell wouldn’t I be,” says Kyouko, and Homura has no answer for that.

“Hey,” says Kyouko, as they head off towards home. “Anyone got a snack? I’m starved.”

--

It would be so easy. It’s so familiar, like muscle memory in her fingers itching towards her weapon, clenching into fists. A bullet between the eyes, another clipping a hole in its chest. A string of them along its tail. Each one coming with a satisfying bang, ripping into skin, into boneless gut. And then she would take it apart with her bare hands, like she’s done so many times before; tearing off limbs, a twist of the neck. Crush of flesh under her heel. And still none of it would work.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” says Kyubey, tilting its head to the side.

“No reason,” says Homura. Its stark white face looks so wrong illuminated against the horizon – it’s here, when she is not – so she looks away.

Bang, she thinks.

--

On one warm spring night they’re all spread out on the grass, gazing up at the sky. It’s been a quiet evening, and peace comes rare these days. There’s a slight hint of a breeze, and the grass is soft.

“You know,” says Kyouko. She stretches her arms out behind her, shifts, lets the tops of the grass graze her cheek. “On nights like these I feel almost invincible. Like I can live forever.”

Homura looks not at her, but a little past her shoulder, over at the sky, at the stars. Says nothing.

“Hey,” says Mami, pointing up, “a shooting star.” She laughs a little. “Make a wish.”

“Very funny,” says Kyouko.

“Yes, well,” says Mami, settling back into the grass, a slight smile on her face. “I don’t think there’s anything I want to wish for anymore, anyways.”

Homura closes her eyes. She can see her face now, lit like a beacon in the glow of the starlight. And her hair’s blowing in the wind, and her eyes are so bright, and her smile is knowing, is warm, like everything Homura’s waited for her entire life. She’s opening her mouth to speak, and Homura reaches out, because she wants to feel the curve of her cheek under her fingers, where it dips down and gives way to her lips, to the bow of her smile, radiant, because she wants it to be real, because she wants – she wants –

She opens her eyes. The ribbon in her hair rustles in the wind, like the hush of a whisper, like a secret.

--

Homura wakes up from her dream and turns right around, tries to chase it back down. Wait, she’s calling, running through the fog as it envelopes her, tries to smother her. Wait. It’s so thick, and she can’t get free, can’t get through – the murkiness is pulling her under, tipping her over the edge, but she clings on, reaches out, as though to touch. She’s so close. Please. And then the fog is gone, lifted away like it was never there at all, and when Homura breaks through to the other side there’s nothing but the light. The light. Piercing pure and white and Homura doesn’t shield her eyes, keeps them wide open as she holds out her arms, vision clear, heart impossibly light. It’s warm.

Mei Chang bends down to the earth, toes the state line with her shoe. Eyes the sky speculatively.

“Rain soon,” she says.

Behind her, a car door slams, and a figure joins her at her side. “Doesn’t look like it,” says Lan Fan. Her posture is wary, arms folded across her chest, guarded. There’s a spot of blood under her lip. She hasn’t had time to come back down into herself yet. Mei understands why.

Mei looks back out over the road, long and sweeping down the hills of dry desert. At the sun hanging hot and heavy in the sky, and at Lan Fan’s shadow, stretching tall beside her. Then she shrugs. “Rain soon,” she repeats petulantly.

Rain soon, because she can feel it in the air, hot and humid and ready to burst, and in the earth, dry and sore and cracked beneath her palm, and in all of them, bodies tensed and fraught with nerves, pent-up energy from the war. The lull of the trip back is still foreign, unfamiliar, as though some remnant of fear should still be about to leap out at them, as though it isn’t over. In a way, it isn’t. Lan Fan rides in the back next to the covered body of her grandfather, and doesn’t sleep, because of the dreams. Mei knows; she has them too. And then there’s Ling, their future ruler, boy with tired eyes who talks to himself and doesn’t even notice. All of them chafing against each other in the rugged emptiness of the cramped car, the desert skyline. Something has to give.

On her shoulder, Xiao Mei whines loudly in hunger, and Mei reaches up, scratches her under her chin. “Don’t worry,” she says, throat tight. “We’ll be home soon, and then I’ll feed you all the buns I can get my hands on.”

“Save them for yourself, girl,” says Lan Fan. Even her voice sounds heavy. But when Mei turns to look at her, it’s with surprise, because of the quirk of the other girl’s mouth, twisted up into something almost like a smile. A small one, but still there.

“Home, huh,” says Lan Fan, and her eyes are impossibly bright, much too bright for the blood and grime still stuck in her skin, for the barren sprawl of rock and sand and silence that lies before them, for the impending storm. She almost hums in thought. “Home, soon.”

Mei knows exactly what she means.

“Let’s go,” she says, and stands, limbs light under the glow of the morning sun.

--

There’s an itch under his skin that just won’t burn out. Or maybe it’s just the prickling silence in his head, nothing but an immense emptiness, echoes. He left you, you know, thinks Ling, but he also left a whole lot of shit behind, the bastard couldn’t even take a clean leave, couldn’t even –

He’s talking to himself again. He can tell, the way Lan Fan glances at him in the rearview mirror, almost too quickly to be caught, but he’s grown up around her, with her, has long since learned how to see her. He has to stop this, at any rate. When they get home, back to Xing, he’s going to be emperor, and he’s going to be in charge of a whole country. A country he had never stepped foot into, though Ling always talked of it, so much that he got sick of it – yeah, yeah, the great wide land of the strong and the brave, but c’mon, what really matters is how good the food is, you’d better not have been making that up –

He raises a hand to his forehead, shades his eyes from the sun. Tightens his grip on the steering wheel as they speed down the highway for home. Bites his tongue so hard he tastes blood.

“I thought you said it was going to rain soon,” says Lan Fan from the back. Quietly.

Beside him, Mei whips around in the passenger seat, braids flying into his face. Ling yelps as the two of them start arguing about wind and rain and qi flow, narrowly avoids driving the car off the road. His fingers are burning on the edge of the wheel, pulse tight, head pounding. And who was it, says that infernal voice in the back of his mind, who taught you how to drive?

– that infernal voice that won’t die –

He’s dead.

Ling Yao rolls down the window, lets the rushing air into the car. Lets himself breathe. That’s right, he thinks, and it almost sounds like his own voice now, that’s right. He died, and that’s the last of his neat little tricks to show you. Death, heavy in his bones, in the backseat of their car, in the air. Well, he was never really impressed with this kid, this human, or so he said, but Ling has something of his own to show, now. Something better. He thinks of what he’s taking back to his country – a small red stone in his pocket, offering the weight of the future. A body covered in white in the back – but more than that; the soul of a fiercely brave warrior ready for rest at last. Two young women who’ve been through a war, and yet are still fighting, even if just for the pleasure of a simple meaningless argument, about the weather, about the world. And himself. This body, battered but alive. A life. Life. Life. Life.

His country is waiting for him, and he’s going to live to lead them, to see that they do too.

He can hear his laugh in his mind – you’re right, kid, that’s a neat trick, far better than anything I could teach you, don’t you think? But when he looks into the rearview mirror he meets his own gaze, no one else’s.

But that’s not entirely true, either. Lan Fan, still as shadow, strong as the blade she wields. Mei Chang, head cocked to the side, watching him. All waiting for him. For their king.

“Would you look at that,” says Ling, voice remarkably steady. “It’s starting to rain.”

--

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it. As long as he may live, he’ll never get used to this, as he looks left, then right, crossing the street. Overhead, the clouds are heavy, full; pockmarked streets anticipating puddles, ready for the storm. When the first drops begin to fall Alphonse raises his umbrella, cuts open the sky with the sweep of his arm. Walks down the road past buildings, shops, streetlights tall as trees. The crisp splash of puddles underfoot; the scratch of his collared shirt against his neck. The wind curling through his coat. All around, the air thick with pressure, waiting to let go.

And the day is impossibly bright, light filtering through the cracks in the clouds, even as the rain comes down, and it makes him remember, the glint of sun along the lines of armor, the glow of a shard red as blood cradled within his glove, the bleak white of truth where his body waited, where this body waited, where he waited. But this, he thinks, raising his palm to the sky, watching the sun through his outstretched fingers – this is better. This is real.

A little ways down the road there’s a middle-aged man trying to dash down the street with a folded-up newspaper held over his head. Alphonse waits until he catches up, then extends his arm. Offers, “Here, why don’t you take this.”

“Are you sure?” the man says in surprise, but Alphonse is already pressing the umbrella into his hand. A smile, a wave, and he’s off, running through the streets, crashing through puddles and rain seeping into his skin, his hair, heart in his throat and thudding to match every step, and his jumbled breath, all of it so loud, and –

And he shouldn’t be doing this kind of thing anymore, he isn’t invulnerable anymore, his brother always reminds him, snaps at him when he goes out without a coat and returns runny-nosed and sniffling, who do you think you are, fuckin’ Superman? Take care of yourself. And maybe it’s the way he says it, so matter-of-fact, that Alphonse always stills the reply ready on his tongue, reaches to scratch the back of his neck sheepishly instead, sorry, brother, can’t help it. And he can’t. But he thinks maybe his brother understands.

The sun is setting soon, and the rain is getting harder. Alphonse opens his mouth, tastes sky. Curls his lip up into a smile. And he still won’t ever get used to it, he thinks, long as he lives. Long as he may live – and what a thought that is. Long as he may live. He laughs, heads for home.

--

The reporters’ questions are still ringing in his ears when he climbs into the back of the car, the bright flashes of bulbs spotting his vision, though it had been supposed to be a camera-free event. “You’ll fuck up your sight even more like this,” Knox had said. “And it would be stupid to compromise your right to the role even further. So don’t fuck it up.” “Wow,” Havoc had said, impressed. “That’s a lot of cussing.” “Don’t you have some physical therapy exercises to do,” Roy had said, and that had been the end of that. Still, though, the reporters had showed up, with their cameras and their screens and their questions, and maybe Roy had wanted it that way. Standing there on that podium, lights in his eyes, it had truly felt like he was facing a whole nation. Everything laid out bare, for all to see; nothing to hide, not anymore. That reign of secrecy was over. It’s time for a new era. The weight doesn’t escape him now – in fact, he welcomes it.

Then suddenly the car screeches to a halt on the way back to headquarters, slamming Roy forward, forehead thunking painfully against the heavy glass of the window. Instantly he’s moving, straightening up to shout, “What’s the problem,” hands starting to clench into fists, braced for battle –

A hand on his shoulder, stilling him. He recognizes its weight. “Relax, sir,” Hawkeye says dryly, voice laced with amusement. “Looks like someone’s here to visit.”

The car door opens, a blast of cold morning air hitting his face. A voice – “Hey there, hotshot, look who’s made it big,” a vague unformed shape, blurry. Red and gold. Roy lowers his fist.

“Is that how you always greet people,” he says, irritated, “by jumping in front of their vehicles?”

“Well, it’s considerably harder now to get you alone, now that you’ve finally gone and done it,” says Fullmetal, and Roy is taken aback, just a little, by his tone. It’s not aggressive, or grudging, or even surprised. It’s something lighter than that, though not soft. Hardened with purpose. Expectant. “Congratulations on the promotion, Fuhrer. Got five minutes to spare for a chat?”

It’s a cold day, windy, on the edge of spring. The morning is strangely calm, thick clouds and empty streets prophesying rain. They find themselves in a nearby town plaza, close to a lake, with only a few milling bystanders and various fast food stands. Roy leans his head back, closes his eyes, clears his throat. He hasn’t had time to come out like this in a while. Rebuilding a country from the ground up takes time and work, though it’s not like he wasn’t ready for it. Still, he thinks, it’s nice, to find himself in a moment of quiet, wind ruffling his hair. Something almost like peace. But that, he knows, is a bigger task.

“Hey,” comes the voice from behind him, and Roy stops. “You’ve gotten a lot less talkative over the years, huh.”

Roy hums in response. It’s really been that long, has it.

“Would never have guessed you’d finally grown sick of the sound of your own voice, what with all your cheesy speeches on television,” says Fullmetal, and there’s the snicker in his tone.

Roy sighs, weary and long-suffering. He doesn’t turn around. “We’ve all missed your cynical wit back at the office,” he says. “And your, should I say, short temper.”

Fullmetal goes for it. He always goes for it. Some things, miraculously, don’t change with time. “I’m not even short anymore,” he’s hissing, “that was forever ago, why does nobody get over that, I swear – you don’t see me making blind jokes left and right–” He cuts himself off. “Oh. Wait, I just did.”

Roy’s surprised into a laugh. The atmosphere becomes more familiar after that, settling into jibes and taunts that segue into actual conversation. Alphonse Elric is fine, more than fine, healthy as ever. Winry Rockbell’s officially setting up her own automail service centre in Rush Valley, and they’re due to visit her soon, in time for its opening. Fullmetal does most of the talking, and Roy, for once, is content to just listen. If his security detail could see him now, though, in the open, they’d have a heart attack. But Hawkeye had let him go. She always knows what he needs, and for that, he’s grateful.

“Are you falling asleep over there? Damn, Mustang, didn’t think you were getting that old. Hey, hold on a sec, our time’s almost up.”

Fullmetal’s gone, and for a second Roy’s about to follow his voice, but he stops himself. Waits instead. A minute later and the boy’s back, something in his hands that smells suspiciously like –

“A hot dog,” says Roy, amazed. “You bought me a hot dog.”

“A 520 cens hot dog,” says Fullmetal – no, Edward. He’s not a state alchemist anymore, hasn’t been one for a long time. He’s not a boy anymore, either. “I owed you, didn’t I?”

It strikes Roy then that he would like to see the look on Ed’s face, right now. He would like to see a lot of things. The crowd of people in the audience at his inauguration ceremony; each and every one of their faces. The blinding slant of Havoc’s toothed grin when he clamps down on a cigarette, blows smoke into Roy’s face. The eyes Elicia Hughes shares with her father. The shape Riza Hawkeye’s shadow makes at his shoulder. The way the sky looks just before a storm, bright and terrifyingly clear.

“I’m not so sure about that,” says Roy, but he takes the hot dog anyway.

He can feel Ed’s shrug. “Well, screw equivalent exchange, right?” Roy thinks he might be smiling. He can’t be sure, so instead he takes a big bite of his hot dog.

“Imagine the headlines tomorrow,” Ed says. “‘Mustang’s First Act As Fuhrer: Decimates Hot Dog.’ Or, no, get this – ‘Fuhrer Mustard.’” He barks out a laugh, impossibly young. “Not that I’ll ever be caught dead calling you Fuhrer, you hear me?”

“You already did,” says Roy, “back at the car.”

“I did no such thing,” says Ed, “and you can’t prove otherwise.”

They part with the knowledge that they won’t be seeing each other again for a while. There’s work to do. The driver is waiting, Hawkeye is waiting, everyone is waiting. Roy can taste the rain in the air.

“Just one thing,” says Ed, and Roy can hear the grin in his voice now, “I need some change. For the bus fare home. Don’t worry, I’ll pay you back. You’ll make sure of that, won’t you?”

In the car, he can feel the weight of Hawkeye’s gaze, as the driver starts the ignition, pulls out from the curb. He waits for her to say it – he’s grown, hasn’t he, or we all have, too, or we made it, sir, we really did.

“You have ketchup on your chin,” says General Riza Hawkeye, and Roy laughs as the car speeds into the storm.

--

Edward Elric is sprawled on a couch at 3 AM watching the muted television set splay fuzzy shapes and colours over the walls, bright lights, neon. There’s a funny itch in his arm, phantom pain in his shoulder, the juncture between skin and what was once steel. Rain soon. He raises his hands, watches the shadow they cast over his face, claps them together. A magic trick.

“Brother,” says Alphonse Elric, and that’s all he says, and then he sits down on the couch next to him. The cat bounds up into Al’s lap, and that’s just typical, thinks Edward, fuckin’ cat. He bares his teeth at it and it growls back. They lie there for a while in silence. Curtains pulled back on the windows, revealing empty night.

“Hey,” says Ed, eventually, finally, when the light’s coming up and he can start to see the darkness outside distinguish itself into shapes, carved by sun, the quiet creeping of the dawn. The tops of the trees. The shape of the street. Row upon row of little houses, waking up. “Good morning, Al.”

The world is quiet, now, and Luffy thinks that’s a shame. Quiet like it’s holding itself in, wounded, with twisting concrete roads splattered with graffiti and the stench of blood hanging in the air. There aren’t too many people around anymore, just the street gangs like flies buzzing in to fight over a rotting carcass, but there are still seagulls, if you can believe it. Seagulls, swooping low over the empty overpasses, under the dull hot sun, and that’s what makes him decide, one day, casually, while sitting on the railing of a bridge, skinned knees dangling over nothing but asphalt – I’m gonna go see the sea. He’s heard stories. The sea is where there’s still life, where the rest of the world went when it ended. He remembers his two brothers, both gone before him. Lifts the brim of his straw hat to squint up at the sun, pondering, considering. Then grins. Dances off the edge of the railing, almost ends up falling. Follows the road until he’s nothing more than a speck of a silhouette against the setting sun, the wide expanse of horizon laid out before him like a map, paper-bare.

He walks, watches, holds out his thumb. Most days, no one ever stops. No big deal; he scavenges, sneaks half-eaten burgers off of plates, dodges grabbing hands and angry curses – he’s always been quick. Shares his onion rings with the seagulls. On the rare occasion that a beat-up pickup truck grinds to a halt by his side, he always replies to their questions with, “I’m going to the sea.” They laugh, they narrow their eyes –impossible, kid. The sea dried up years ago, way back when the world ended. Or – is this a joke? You think you’re being funny, you little punk? Or they mug him, simple as that, less simple when they discover he has nothing but funny-shaped pebbles in his pockets. Then comes the rage, but he’s always been good at running. One hand pressing his straw hat onto his head, keeping it on as he ducks in and out of alleyways and leaps over fallen trash cans, metal glinting in the light, crows peeking out at him in disinterest. He laughs into the wind.

One morning he’s rudely awakened from his sleep when he spills out unceremoniously from an empty trash can, limbs unfolding and eyes blinking blearily to look up at open sky. Somebody is screeching, rather unnecessarily loud he thinks, and when angry faces loom into view, glaring at him, he’s sure to smile extra widely, yawning, saying, “That was a good nap.”

Three knocked-out stubbled, burly men later, Luffy’s perched on the edge of the trash can, listening as a pale, panicky kid wrings his hands and talks anxiously. His eyes are wide as saucers behind his thick-framed glasses, and his hair’s dyed an interesting shade of pink, though the roots are beginning to show. “Alvida’s the queen of everything ’round here,” he says, fingers fidgeting, eyes constantly darting back and forth. “Her gang’s got this city tucked under her thumb. We’re like slaves here. You… You’ve gotta get outta here, quick, before she finds out what you’ve done!”

“I like your hair,” Luffy tells him. The guy stares back at him. “What’s your name?”

A little while later when Alvida won’t be bothering anyone again for a very long time, Coby finally relaxes a little, smile losing the nervous edge. He tells Luffy he wants to be a cop, dreams of silver badges and justice the same way Luffy dreams of blue wilderness and the shape of his brother’s back, walking away. In the middle of the fight he thought he saw something in the shadows, orange hair and focused gaze. He leaves the city with its memory, Coby, and a name.

He finds Roronoa Zoro tied to a telephone pole. “Wanna join my crew,” Luffy says, flashing his grin, and the guy looks up at him with a sideways, slanting gaze, twists the corner of his mouth into a not-quite sneer. Not exactly impressed, but not dismissive, either. Luffy figures that isn’t too bad of a start.

“He sure fights old-fashioned,” complains Coby as they lug Zoro’s katana together, long and gleaming and wickedly dangerous in the half-light of the rising sun – but he soon changes his mind on that when they watch him fight, limbs whirling and blades ripping through the storm of bullets, the curved edge of his mouth sharper than the steel it wields. After, Coby’s eyes are wide with wonder, and fear, too, but Luffy sits down next to Zoro, bent low on the ground with blood in his mouth, and remembers the way he ate every last piece of rice a little girl gave him. When he asks again, this time the man meets his eyes and says yes.

They leave Coby as a shining young police recruit and start their trek west, always west, and Luffy catches up with the orange-haired girl somewhere in the darker side of town. Or maybe she’s been there all along, because suddenly she’s everywhere. Nami is at the local diner, the run-down convenience store, the bar. Nami is playing pool, beats Zoro with her eyes closed, merciless. Nami is robbing them blind. “A girl’s gotta be places if she’s gonna get anywhere,” she explains from her barstool. She’s smiling, showing teeth. She’s patting Zoro’s back pockets for cash, dancing out of reach when he snaps at her, annoyed. She’s a force to be reckoned with and Luffy’s not about to let her go, smoothly disappear into the city shadows like she was never there at all.

“There are enough ghosts in this world,” Luffy tells her one day, seriously, over breakfast. She’s grimacing at her coffee; he’s sucking up stale Coca-Cola with a straw. “Why don’t you join my crew?”

“You don’t even have a car. Crew? What crew? All I see are a couple of stooges.” Zoro stiffens and straightens up beside Luffy, eyes narrowing, grumbling, but Nami just chugs her coffee, waves him off dismissively. Still, something must interest her, and maybe it’s just the prospect of gold coins and cash, but Luffy doesn’t miss the look in her eyes whenever he mentions the sea. He couldn’t – he’s lived with it long enough to not recognize it in another. Regardless, she’s the one who hotwires them a car – “I can’t believe you idiots walked here all the way from whatever town you came from” – a nasty little thing with rusty brakes and tires that squeal, and the paint job’s peeling at the edges, but Luffy’s happy enough riding in the back laughing as Zoro and Nami try not to kill each other in the front seats, lying back against the patched-up leather and thinking that just maybe he’s finally getting somewhere.

Five short miles lead them to a town with a strange case of questionable graffiti greeting them everywhere they look. ONCE UPON A TIME by an abandoned gas station, THE BRAVEST HERO TO EVER LIVE in tall shaky letters under an overpass, I’M TELLING THE TRUTH!! on the side of a Dumpster, underlined twice for emphasis. They finally find the long-nosed culprit in the process of spraying I’LL SAVE – on the CLOSED sign of an old run-down diner. He tries to make a speedy getaway on his skateboard, but Zoro’s got him by the collar of his battered old T-shirt, and Nami’s chewing him out because doesn’t he know how much spray paint costs in this day and age, shouldn’t he be considering how much money he’s been splattering onto dirty old brick walls – but Luffy’s looking at the words, and Luffy’s looking the kid in the eye, and he asks – “Who’re you gonna save?”

A lot of people, apparently, starting with a kind blond-haired girl who takes them in for the night, and ending with himself. Usopp’s got a lot of tall tales and Zoro and Nami like to scoff. “What do you mean,” Usopp blusters, red-cheeked with affronted rage, “I’m telling the truth, I’ve seen so much of this world – more than you can dream of.” But he’s the biggest dreamer of them all, Luffy can tell – and the way he sees it, there’s plenty of space in the backseat for more. Kaya, however, does them one up and gives them a brand new car, small and sleek with red-and-white-striped seats and actual seatbelts and a figurine of a smiling goat dangling from the rearview mirror. Usopp dubs it Merry, Luffy calls dibs on shotgun, and Nami steers them onto the highway as Zoro sleeps in the back. A mistake, as it turns out, when he ends up with a marker-drawn mustache on his face, but he doesn’t know yet and it’s not like Usopp’s gonna tell him; they’ve all got stronger self-preservation than that. Nami drives with one hand and takes low-quality pictures on her shitty pink phone with the other, and Luffy laughs out the window, loud enough to wake up Zoro, who frowns at them suspiciously from the backseat but doesn’t question it, just rolls over and halfheartedly tries to remember his dream, something about a blue-haired girl and a moon hanging wide and heavy over his shoulders in the dark twilight sky.

It’s almost evening when Luffy starts to fidget, twisting knobs and dials on the dashboard and whining about his hunger. Nami’s saying something intelligent about state lines and speed limits and how far they can make it before the sun goes down, but Usopp resolves the argument by leaning dangerously far out his rolled-down window and pointing at a sign, saying, “Hey, restaurant at next exit!”

And it’s a little surreal, Usopp thinks as they’re getting seated in plush leather chairs, that there are still places like this in the world, with crystal wineglasses and silk napkins and platters lined with gold. He mentions as much to the waiter, all jagged edges and cut lines of his crisp collared linen shirt, and the guy grinds down on a limp cigarette between his teeth, snaps, “Are you sure you delinquents are gonna have enough to pay for this?” But maybe that’s the least of his worries, because Nami’s eyeing the pewter ashtray in his pocket with a devilish glint in her eye, and Usopp’s having the time of his life using his slingshot to impale peas on the edge of Zoro’s blades, and Luffy’s ordering enough meat to shut down several small local businesses, and – “Just who are you punks, anyway?”

“We’re going to the ocean,” says Luffy, grin wide as the memory of the blue, blue sea, and Sanji raises his eyebrow, remembers what it was like to believe.

--

For the most part, they coast on. It’s not all fun and games; sometimes the sun beats down too harsh, sometimes the rain falls thick enough to flood their car off the road. Sometimes it’s claustrophobic, fumbling for elbow space in the backseat of a car that hasn’t been washed for weeks, and sometimes there’s nothing for miles but road upon road of dusty black rock and barren earth. Zoro isn’t allowed to drive anymore, not with his tendency of falling asleep at the wheel, and his lacking sense of direction – “How do you get lost on a fucking highway,” Nami’s livid, Usopp’s trying to make sense of the map but it doesn’t help when Luffy keeps pointing at random roads and chortling at their names. Zoro slams the brakes, snarling, and Sanji blows a cloud of smoke accidentally-on-purpose into his face.

Nami keeps a potted plant on their dashboard, and Luffy gets distracted sometimes, watching the way the tiny sprout bends towards the sun, against the glass. One bleary-eyed morning Zoro is half-jokingly trying to teach Usopp how to wield a katana. “Like this,” he says, “not so forced, but firm. What are you doing? Stop that.” But for a moment, Zoro bends down low to the earth, spine curved, sloping, legs balanced, blade extended outward. Eyes closed. The shape of his still form against the dawn is shadowed, all mussed hair and bare feet, almost soft looking. The edge of his blade catches the light. Something like grace. Then Usopp drops the katana on his foot, wails.

Sometimes they rake up enough cash (“From perfectly legal exploits,” claims Nami, and they know better than to question her by now) to settle down for a few nights at a cheap motel, to spend a few days running wild in the towns and stocking up on snacks. And sometimes there’s nothing but NO VACANCY signs lighting up the side of the highway, everyone else asleep and drooling on each other as Nami heaves a long-suffering sigh. Streetlights burning into her eyes as she glances at them in the rearview mirror, scrubs a hand over her face, absentmindedly reaches down to rub at the tattoo on her shoulder. Plume of exhaust snaking up behind their car like the banner of a flag waving in the midnight wind.

One time, they’re hanging out in a bar when a guy at the next table takes offense, maybe at the way Nami’s cheating him out of all his cash in their game of poker, or at Luffy and Usopp’s obnoxious drunken singing to some old folk song, or at Sanji’s insistence on lighting up a cigarette right under the NO SMOKING sign. In any case, he’s got his band of cronies on their feet and he’s cracking his knuckles menacingly, and Zoro barely even blinks an eye, bored – they’ve been in barfights before, usually borne from Luffy’s inability to keep his nose out of trouble, and they can hold their own. But what the guy says next veers away from the usual script of good-for-nothing punks and gimme-my-money-back.

“You guys honestly think you’re gonna make it to the ocean?” he sneers, and Luffy stops in the middle of his song, straightens up just slightly, imperceptibly. “You’re just a buncha kids, that’s what you are, hung up on some sad old pipe dream. Isn’t it funny–” and he turns to his goonies, an ugly sneer on his face “–isn’t it hilarious how they honestly believe?” Their laughter echoes off the walls, and Luffy’s dead silent.

Nami’s glancing at him from her seat, and her gaze is piercing, strangely serious. A little worried, maybe. Usopp looks like he’s been punched in the gut, eyes wide, wounded. Sanji’s stomping out his cigarette under the heel of his boot, eyes hard to see under his messy blond bangs, and Zoro clenches his fist tight, holds it for one second – two – three – and meets Luffy’s gaze. Nods, then lets it uncurl, lets go.

After, Usopp stumbles over his own feet in the parking lot, squints up at the late night sky feeling half-drunk, streetlights flashing spots in his eyes and spinning. His jaw throbs, and his battered ribs, and his lungs – all blending together into the same dull haze of ache. Nami has bundled Luffy into the passenger seat, muttering angrily to herself and slamming the door harder than probably necessary, digging through the glove compartment for the band-aids. Furrowed brow, angry frown, narrowed eyes. Hand on the side of his face, applying a napkin to the cut on the corner of his lip, impossibly gentle.

“We could’ve taken them,” Usopp says, to no one in particular. He’s lagged behind; Sanji and Zoro have both made it back to the car as well, sitting on the trunk, sharing a smoke, silent. Faces lit up by the warmth of the flame, glowing. Zoro’s left eye is bruised with black, and Sanji’s mouth is bleeding.

And Zoro shrugs his shoulders, loose-limbed, smoke clinging to his cold huffs of breath. Beside him, Sanji’s lips are curled up into an easy grin, smeared with red, but his eyes are hard-set, determined.

“It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it, Usopp?” he asks, hair falling into his eyes, and Usopp snorts, laughs until he’s bowled over his knees, chest hurting, throat sore, because yeah, it kind of is. Laughs because he gets it. He has cuts and bruises everywhere – everywhere but his fists, the grooves of his knuckles, and it feels good, he thinks. Opens his mouth to breathe. His feet drag him up to Merry’s hood, and he places his palm over the gleaming metal, feels the shuddering hum as she comes to life, as Nami turns the keys in the ignition.

“Hurry up and get in this car before I run you over, so help me God,” Nami yells, rolling down the window, and Usopp’s gaze slides past her, to Luffy, face shadowed under the brim of his hat. Then Luffy’s looking up, straight at him, ear-to-ear grin on his face but something sharp to it, dangerous. Something glinting in his eye, steeled, like a wire stretching taut –

Nami blares the horn and barks, “Scramble,” and Usopp picks himself up off the Merry’s hood, but not before being struck with the thought – damn it, he’d follow that captain anywhere. To the end of the earth, to beyond. To the sea.

--

For a day in the life, picture this: Sanji slumping forward in his wrinkled suit, flicking a cigarette before Nami starts screeching no smoking in this fucking car, Sanji, and he tosses it out the open window, accidentally on purpose elbowing Zoro in the side as he does so. The lazy lump doesn’t even budge, snoring louder than a freight train and Sanji shouts for Usopp to turn up the volume on the radio station, regrets it when shitty old pop music comes blaring out of the speakers.

“Hey, I like this song,” says Luffy from where he’s perched on the other side of Zoro’s unmoving form. Sanji turns to look out the window, at cold sky, and imagines an expanse even wider than that, one he can touch, all blue and bright. Pulls up an old memory about how the sea tastes, salty on his tongue. On the radio, some guy croons something stupid, share the world or something like that, and Luffy’s singing along, at least until Nami turns off the radio.

“I can’t even hear myself think – I’ll drive myself into a tree at this rate – dear god can somebody wake Zoro up before I rip my eardrums out?”

“At your service,” says Sanji, sweetly. Elbow, meet Adam’s apple. Zoro cracks open an eye, mutters something about food. Typical. Outside, the sky following them as they zip down the endless dusty road.

--

But there’s more. There’s always more. There are the early mornings, all seamlessly blending together like a pretense of normalcy, familiarity. Waking up with the shape of the backseat indented into skin; brushing teeth by the side of the road and spitting into the gutter. The turning of the key in the ignition, the half-second of stall before the answering rev of the engine as limbs stretch and fold back into themselves, slamming car doors, ready. There is noise, in the chatter of roadside attractions and smoky pubs and the times they collapse at the table of a bar and cry from laughter at Luffy’s funny faces and impersonations. But there is quiet, too, in the lull between conversations, when Nami talks distantly of her sister living far away and Usopp places a gentle hand on her knee, when Sanji whistles softly to himself in some shitty motel kitchen to the low hum of a working stove at last, when Zoro polishes his blades under the cover of the moon and Luffy watches, says nothing, falls asleep to the sound of steel.

And there are the times when Usopp spends hours bent-backed, face smeared with grease, fingers flying in the Merry’s hood, and he won’t eat or speak for hours, or days, or however long it takes to get the Merry up and alive again. There are the times when the air is fraught with a tension that settles uncomfortably underneath their skin, prickling, when barbed words and stony glares won’t back down and they’re reminded of the miles of differences between them. When Zoro disappears off for hours to train in the woods and comes back with a strained spine and teeth bared in frustration; when Nami looks out the window to see nothing but shallow mountains and mist and can’t stop thinking of home.

But the Merry’s strong, stronger than all of them, Usopp thinks sometimes, to be able to carry them all so far, and it always wakes up with a lurching roar in its engine, and he can’t stop his grin from spreading, from saying, “Hey, girl, good morning.” And that’s enough to get them all back on track, riding with the windows rolled down and all of them pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, eyes on the road, on the sky, on each other. Content.

There are the days, and the nights, and there are the dreams. The dreams of a man with smile like fire, tilting the brim of his orange hat, a promise – we’ll meet again. A boy with a chipped tooth and eyes bright as blue, waving, with the courage to go on first. And an old story, about a shore, and a sea, and beyond that – the edge of the world, beyond that –

Luffy opens his eyes. He’s slumped down in the backseat, straw hat over his eyes, alone, but he can hear muffled voices outside. Yawning, he straightens up, rolls his neck, comfortable, and looks out the window. It’s midmorning. They’re parked by the side of the road, next to some grassy clearing, where Zoro and Sanji are in the middle of some makeshift duel. Not a serious fight, Luffy thinks, squinting, but like practice, with Zoro lightly dodging Sanji’s stretched kicks, loose, limber. Easy. Next to them, Usopp is dramatically commentating the spectacle, using a balled-up cheeseburger wrapper as a microphone, and Nami’s rolling her eyes, but she’s laughing, calling out a remark that makes Zoro yell back at her and makes Sanji practically swoon to the ground. The sky is grey, but the clouds are patchy, leaking. Give it an hour or two, and the sun’ll show up.