Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sun is just beginning to set when the storm rolls in. Lightning streaks illuminate the sky in the distance, backed by thunderous footfalls along the street. Mayumi pays it no mind.

Or, she's trying not to, at least.

She steadies her breath and focuses on the ticking clock on the wall, her legs bundled underneath her, the comb gliding effortlessly through her sand-blonde hair. It moves down, releases, comes back like a wave, a steady rhythm as sure as her own heartbeat. Behind her, Sayuri hums, voice soft and even. Her sister's bedside lamp plasters spinning star shapes on the wall that eat away at the darkness.

"Who was your favorite performer tonight?" Sayuri asks, breaking the mellow silence.

Mayumi smiles. "Hamafuna, definitely."

"Hm." Sayuri tilts her head thoughtfully. "I think I'd have to agree." The weight on the bed shifts as she leans over to place the comb on its stand. Mayumi untucks her legs and yawns.

"So, I have some exciting news," Sayuri says, stretching her arms up over her head. "I'm going on a date tomorrow."

Mayumi blinks at her, taken aback. Sayuri’s had many different suitors in her life, ranging from boring as mud to kinda creepy (Mayumi has a fond memory of her sister slamming the door in one particularly awful dope’s face) but she’d never been interested in any of them. The fact that she reciprocated enough to go on a date is just…well, it’s…

Mayumi isn’t sure how to feel. "He must be special," she settles on saying.

Sayuri laughs softly. "He is. His name's Niyan. He’s from Osaka. I think you'd like him a lot, actually. You two have a lot in common."

"Really," Mayumi says, more of a statement than a question. She crosses her arms, turning to look at her sister playfully. "Like what?"

"Well, he's into action movies. He likes travelling. And he's afraid of thunder, just like you are." Sayuri pokes Mayumi teasingly in the ribs. Mayumi lets out an involuntary laugh and swats her sister's hands away.

"I am not afraid of—" a loud peal of uninvited thunder cuts through her words, smothering the house. Within one tick of the clock Mayumi's looped an arm through Sayuri's, clinging to her like algae on a boat.

After a moment the rumbling fades out layer by layer, leaving just as quickly as it arrived. Sayuri chuckles, gently rubbing circles on Mayumi's shoulder. "You were saying?" 

Mayumi unlatches herself and shakes her head, embarrassed. "Nothing."

Sayuri gives a fair-enough nod and stands, her blonde curls bouncing with her. "Well, let's get a good night's sleep. Big day tomorrow."

Mayumi begrudgingly starts to stand, another yawn wracking her small body. Sayuri sees her hesitance, and pats the other side of the bed. Mayumi gratefully crawls her way over, flopping her head down onto the pillow and dragging the soft weighted blanket on top of her. 

She's out before Sayuri even turns off the light.

Sayuri leaves late in the afternoon the next day to go on her date, and the sky is the colour of ink when she finally returns. Mayumi's spent the majority of the evening by the TV flipping back and forth between the news — more earthquakes across Japan, nothing new — and a cooking show she has no interest in. Finally, however, the door opens, and her sister's voice fills the room.

“May," she says excitedly. "come here!" Mayumi obeys. She peeks her head around the corner, and in the doorway stands a tall lanky figure. This must be Niyan, she realizes.

He has a bit of a careless disposition about him, his pose indifferent, but his eyes are bright and unwavering. Scruffy slate blue hair falls haphazardly over his head, and a large scar juts across the bridge of his nose.

Cool.

"This is my sister," Sayuri says proudly, guiding Mayumi to stand closer and squeezing her shoulders. Niyan gives her a small relaxed wave. Mayumi awkwardly waves back. "She's a big fan of Hosekizuka, too."

"Oh, you are?" He asks. "You have a favorite performer?" His voice is warm and inviting, like he genuinely wants to hear her thoughts. Mayumi nods, the tension in her shoulders melting.

"I like Risa," she says. "Risa Hamafuna. Have you seen Hosekizuka, too?" She asks hopefully.

Niyan shakes his head. "Nah. Your sister certainly speaks highly of 'em, though." He winks.

Sayuri winces. "Sorry."

"Nono, don't be! I enjoyed hearing you talk about it," he says, turning to her. Sayuri goes pink at the ears. Mayumi has to smother back a laugh; she's never seen her sister this flustered before.

"There's actually a show on next week," Sayuri says quietly, grabbing at her wrist behind her back. "if you'd wanna come watch with us."

Niyan straightens himself, placing a hand on his chin thoughtfully. "Ya know, I might just have to take you up on that."

(When another Hosekizuka performance comes on the TV, Niyan joins them. Sayuri makes snacks, and they sit around the living room, taking in the elegant costumes and dazzling choreography. Throughout the performance Niyan stays quiet, asking questions only after each segment ends. His focus never seems to waver, which Mayumi sees as a good sign.

"That was pretty cool," he says, once it's over. "So much work goes into all that, ya know? You just have to think about how long they spend practicing each performance. Gotta respect it."

"Keep him," Mayumi demands as soon as he's gone. Sayuri just laughs and covers her face.)

Eventually the leaves begin to fall, and the chill of Autumn bites at Mayumi's ears. She covers them with her hands as Sayuri locks the front door. 

"Alright. Hold still," Sayuri instructs, tugging at the zipper of Mayumi's coat to pull her forward. She kneels down on their front porch, taking the extra time to carefully fasten each button.

Mayumi huffs. "I can do this myself, you know." The jacket's almost too small for her now, the sleeves stretched uncomfortably against her arms.

"I know you can," Sayuri says, gentle as ever. "But you're gonna be big soon and you won't need me anymore. So I'm fastening your buttons while I still can." There's a bittersweet edge to her voice that catches Mayumi off-guard.

I'm always going to need you, she thinks like it's obvious. But before she can open her mouth, Niyan's driven up to the curb to greet them, and they're off.

(In hindsight, Mayumi wishes he hadn't been on time. Then maybe she could've said it.)

(She could have said a lot of things.)

"Do you have to go?" The question sounds pathetically feeble.

Sayuri only smiles at her, suitcase in hand. The sun isn't even up yet. Their parents have already said their goodbyes last night. They’d left for work early that morning, which doesn’t seem like them; normally their mom would have made an endless supply of food for Sayuri to take with her, and their dad would’ve wanted to make sure he’d given her one last hug. 

Maybe they’re just too sad about losing her to say goodbye, Mayumi thinks. Once she and Niyan get married, they probably won’t visit home all that often. The thought makes her feel like sinking into the ground. 

"I told you, it's just to check out some houses in Kyoto. I'll be back before you know it."

"But—but what if I need to call you, or I need help with my homework?” Mayumi says, struggling to find a good enough excuse. “Sayuri, what if the house burns down? ” She raises her arms for emphasis. 

Sayuri's gaze softens, and she crouches down to Mayumi's level. Mayumi grimaces. Oh, no, she’s kneeling. That means she’s serious.

Sayuri places a hand on her cheek. Mayumi looks away, resigned.

"My little Maymay," Sayuri says softly. "Can you be brave for me?"

Mayumi takes in a big breath. Gives her tiniest nod. Sayuri tilts her chin up, eyes squinting. 

"Come on. I know you can do better than that."

Mayumi makes eye contact. Nods, stronger this time. Sayuri nods back, equally strong, and the scariest thoughts crawling their way up into Mayumi's head fall away into nothing.

"Good." She stands, and wraps her arms around her little sister. "I promise I'll be back soon."

“And you’ll call every night?” 

“I’ll call every night.” 

Mayumi gives her one final squeeze and steps back, handing her the last bag. “...and bring me back something from the mall there?”

Sayuri tsks. “I knew there was something.” She shakes her head in mock annoyance. “I suppose I’ll see what they have.” Mayumi giggles.

Lots of kisses blown Mayumi’s way, another wave, and she’s gone. Mayumi watches her car disappear into the horizon and waits until the sun is properly awake before she goes back inside. She’ll make pancakes for breakfast, she decides. 

Maybe she can save some for when Sayuri comes back.

Sayuri and Niyan do call her every night. They tell her about the houses they’ve been to; the pros, the cons, that one house that had a family of ants living on the countertops. Mayumi listens intently, much preferring hearing about their misadventures in the city to doing her homework. She talks to them until the setting sun stretches her shadow thin like taffy and her mom tells her to come inside for dinner.

It’s on day four that Kyoto is ravaged by earthquakes.

The TV has been on all morning, footage of the wreckage overtaking the entire screen. There’s a heaviness in the air as Mayumi makes her lunch. Her parents talk in hushed, worried voices next to her. 

“Do I have to go to school?” She asks them quietly, looking between them. 

They look at her in surprise, as if they’ve just noticed her presence.

“Yes,” her father says hesitantly after a moment, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. “Try to put this out of your mind for now, alright?”

It’s easier said than done — it’s at school too. Her classmates whisper to each-other: “Did you see what happened in Kyoto?” 

“I’ve never seen an earthquake that big.”

“I heard tons of people died.” 

Well, Niyan and Sayuri aren’t going to be two of those people. Mayumi tries her hardest to focus on her homework at lunchtime. She’s lost her appetite, anyhow. 

If they were in that much trouble, they’d be on their way home by now. Sayuri’s fine. She and Niyan are just fine. Mayumi, no matter how violently she digs the tip of her pencil into the groove in her desk, is just fine.

She practically collapses into the phone booth outside her house at the end of the day. Sayuri’s number doesn’t yield any results, and neither does Niyan’s. She tries again and again. Still nothing. The gloomy weather that’s been lingering has finally cleared and faded into a warm wash of pink, and all she’s gotten is Niyan’s voice, over and over again, telling her to ‘please leave a message, thanks man!’.

Mayumi doesn’t even realize she’s hungry and the chill of evening has returned until her mom knocks on the glass of the phone booth, scaring the crap out of her. She holds up Mayumi’s backpack, which she’d tossed haphazardly next to the booth in her hurry, and she knows there’s no arguing, so she steps outside, defeated. 

“They’ll be alright,” her mom promises as they head back inside. “We’ve been through much worse before, haven’t we?”

That night, Mayumi can’t sleep. All she knows is the heartbeat in her head and the numbed pain of her fingernails digging into her palms. Sleep crawls across her thoughts but doesn’t touch her. Everything feels heavy, but she’s never felt more aware of her surroundings. 

Laying in bed with the covers pulled tight becomes pacing the length of her room, until the air feels too stuffed and thin, and then that becomes pacing the length of the yard outside, back and forth, back and forth.

No use in doing nothing while she’s up, she supposes. 

She tries the phone booth again.

“Hi, you’ve reached Sayuri. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I c—”  

Please.

“This is Niyan Takahashi. Please leave a message, thanks man!”

Please.

“Hi, you’ve reached Sayuri. Ple—”

No!

“Please leave a message, tha—”

She slams the phone into its cradle and lets out a frustrated cry, digging her hands through her getting-too-long-again-annoying-annoying hair.

She’s not sure when sleep starts to pull at her, weighing her down, but soon it’s too soft to ignore. Mayumi begrudgingly listens. She slowly slumps against the inside of the booth, curled in on herself. She stares up at the phone, like maybe if she looks for long enough it’ll ring. 

They’re fine. They have to be. They have to be…

The last thought she has before slipping away is of the three of them in the living room, watching Hosekizuka and eating senbei. Their tradition. 

Maybe if she tries hard enough, she can pretend she’s back in that room, huddled between the two of them, warm and happy and safe. Maybe then she can forget.

Wouldn’t that be nice? 

The sky is a soft, powdered blue, still dusty with sleep, when the phone rings. Mayumi snaps awake all at once and lunges at it, yanking it off the hook and holding it to her ear. Her back angrily sends pangs through the rest of her body. 

“Hello?” She coughs, voice unused. 

“Kid! Oh my God—”

Tears immediately spring to her eyes. 

“Niyan! I’m so glad you’re okay!” She doesn’t think she’s ever wanted to hug someone so badly before. 

“Yeah,” he says after a long moment. “Yeah, I’m…” he pauses. There’s a heavy stillness on the other line, tight and strained and off. “Are your parents with you?”

“They’re asleep right now, but—”

“Can you get ’em for me?”

“Wait—what about Sayuri? She’s with you, right?” She grips the phone tight.

A long pause. Mayumi looks out towards her neighborhood and the dawning light. Is the line damaged somehow? Did he hang up?

“Kid—” his voice catches, and Mayumi’s heart falls straight down to her toes.

“Please just get your parents for me. Right now, okay?”

Mayumi stands there, phone in hand, her only anchor. Outside, time has stalled. She stands there for a minute, an hour, an eternity. And then she finds her voice, lost somewhere in her throat.

“Okay.”

And she knows, deep down, when she leaves the phone dangling by the cord and steps outside. She knows when she heads upstairs to find her parents already awake, looking as heavy and sleepless as she feels. She knows as they head out the door, as she loses her will to move forward on the last step on the staircase, as the world goes silent and all she can do is scream.

Her sister is gone.

It’s not long after that her parents decide to move to Tokyo. A change of scenery, her dad says. It will be good for us. A chance to start over.

Mayumi says nothing in the car, placing her chin on one of the moving boxes at her side and watching the rolling fields pass her by. Soon it starts raining, and she closes her eyes, listening to the gentle pattering against the window. It’s a tiny comfort she’ll have to embrace. 

The next few weeks and then months are a blur; getting to the house, moving boxes in, unpacking, being enrolled in a new school. Mayumi feels like a spectator throughout it all, like she’s the one who died. Her parents change, too. Every sentence becomes the same intonation; every facial expression is a bored, glazed hopelessness. There’s nothing in their goodbyes or hellos, just hollow words built by habit. 

It’s not like the move matters, anyways. Sayuri followed them. Her favourite song on the radio, snacks she loved in every grocery aisle, every blonde woman in the crowd who has her smile. The world was robbed of her, and it still had the gall to try and pretend otherwise. 

But Niyan lived. Niyan survived. He’s made no effort to call them since that morning. He never even said goodbye, and it hurts. More than hurts, actually — it’s a betrayal. The word spins in her head the more she thinks about it. He betrayed them.

He’s a coward. She hates cowards, hates him. How could he just let her sister die like that? How could he abandon her, abandon her family? 

It doesn’t matter, she thinks. He still left. He’s still a coward, no matter his reasoning. 

Mayumi doesn’t want him to take up any of her thoughts anymore. Everything that ever belonged to him, any gift he gave her, all of it had been thrown out or destroyed. She made sure of that, no matter how much the small voice in the back of her head begged her to stop. She took a baseball bat to the last of it outside, tearing apart the grass underneath and screaming until her voice went hoarse.

The small voice disappeared entirely after that. 

But she couldn’t bring herself to go through anything Sayuri had owned. The faint memories still linger in each item she’d smuggled into the moving boxes. They sit in the spare room, untouched. Some small, stupid part of her thinks that maybe if they hold onto her stuff long enough, she'll come back to reclaim it.

The only thing of hers in Mayumi's possession is a framed photo of a young fourteen-year-old Sayuri. In it she stands tall, beaming after winning her first award from their old community theatre. Mayumi places it on her bedside, and often finds herself staring at it. 

Sayuri's ghost sits at her side, humming.

After months of blurred faces and white noise and a deep, quiet nothing taking up all her thoughts, a pink-haired girl holding a tray asks her if she'd like to have lunch together. That girl introduces her to her brother, then two more people, then three.

And that's how it starts.

She becomes friends with them, eventually, and they don’t necessarily fill in the gaping chasm left in Sayuri’s wake. But they do take up space right next door, so dear to her in different ways. 

She loves their jokes, their quirks, how passionate they are about their interests. They’re all so full of life, and in turn some of it brushes off on her. Getting out of bed becomes easier once she remembers she gets to see them. Brushing her hair, blessedly short again, making breakfast, getting her bike — everything becomes worth it. Colour floods back into her world, made up of Chuko’s laugh and Pai’s eternally warm hands squeezing her own, of Tattsun’s observations and Pochi’s smile.

They’d all given each-other these nicknames. The one she gets is ‘Jennu’, and she loves it. It’s the shortened version of a theatre term she remembers Sayuri telling her about. The others say it suits her, and she beams with pride. 

To her, it’s almost like a confirmation. That’s right. I’m going to be in the Hosekizuka troupe one day. I’m going to make my sister proud. I’m going to keep my friends safe. 

That, she decides, is her promise.

Chapter Text

The world has ended.

Well okay, fine, not really, but it's the only explanation Jennu has for the state they've found it in.

She knows the following:

One: We the Go-Getters Club were on a field trip to Kamakura. A meteor crashed nearby, and we were all knocked out. 

Two: We woke up in an underwater amusement park and were forced to play a game from a psychotic clown…thing. We escaped and found ourselves in Kagoshima.

Three: The world is empty. There aren't any people for miles, and the only survivors we found were part of a cult worshiping someone called MAIK. We escaped that too.

Oh, and also we’re getting superpowers.

Huh.

Maybe when the teachers ask her what she did over the summer, she'll actually have something to say. If school ever starts back up again, that is.

She quickly buries that thought deep into her brain and tucks it in at the edges. No time to think about that right now.

Everyone's in the process of getting the campsite set up — they've picked a nice spot near Kobe beach, and Jennu's in charge of water. She's gathered enough to fill up Mowchan's canteen at the very least, (the little survivalist has everything — sleeping bags, water purifiers, even a compass. Mowchan's always been prepared for anything. He doesn't give himself enough credit for that, Jennu thinks.) which is a start.

The air blankets her in warmth as she picks up the bucket they've also been using to collect water. It was lucky they'd raided that grocery store; Mowchan's supplies were welcome, but it wouldn't have held them forever. Alongside the bucket they'd found PJs, canned food, batteries for the walkie-talkies, all put to good use. It's the best equipped they've been this entire journey so far.

In the distance, she can hear Kansai arguing with Nyoro. Something about being leader — she shrugs it off. Most arguments with Kansai tend to be about leadership. It's not that the others in the group don't trust him or anything, but power tends to go to Kansai's head the same way gasoline turns a flame into an explosion.

"Why do you want to be the leader so bad anyway, Kansai?" Pai asks, taking a seat on the log in front of the campfire. Jennu lifts her head to look at them from the corner of her eye. Kansai’s eyes are on the ground, kicking a rock in the sand.

"Well..." he mumbles, uncharacteristically hesitant.

"It's ‘cause you wanna be like Niyan, right?" Chuko asks.

It's said so flippantly it almost doesn't register at first, but once it does, the world stops. Ice shoots down Jennu's veins, her stomach flipping like someone just picked her up and threw her into the sea. Of all the names...

"Niyan?" Mowchan asks, tilting his head like a confused puppy.

"He was Kansai's old baseball coach." Chuko explains. "He's from Osaka—”

The rest of the world vanishes, right beneath Jennu's feet. Okay. So. It is the Niyan she thought they were talking about. The bucket in her hands suddenly becomes an anchor, weighing thousands, millions of pounds. Chuko's voice bleeds into the waves, seagulls cawing somewhere over the horizon. Jennu swallows, takes a breath. Don't think about it. All she knows is that she needs air. Needs to be away from them, from everyone.

She doesn't think anyone's noticed her sudden shift in posture, so she quietly mumbles something about getting more water and slips away as quickly as possible. She makes it halfway down the path that leads away from their makeshift camp before she notices the footsteps at her side. Reycho's there, hands behind his back, quiet as ever.

"You wanna come along?" Jennu asks, throat like sandpaper. He nods eagerly, and Jennu complies. At least he won't try to ask her what's wrong — Reycho's not one to pry. So they make their way down the trail to where Jennu knows a creek is waiting for them.

She tries to shove down that name. Niyan. That name is nothing to her.

Not anymore.

Jennu thought nothing could be worse than hearing Niyan's name again.

She was wrong.

She can't sleep. None of them can, really. The beachfront is hauntingly quiet save for the bugs humming in the sweltering air and static in her ears. Her eyes are locked above on the burnt orange tent sheltering her and a few of the others. 

The scene plays over and over again in her head; getting back from the creek with Reycho hours ago. Brushing her teeth by the water. Hearing the scream. Pochi and Pai, distraught, calling out to someone, yelling her name. A name she hasn't heard in two years.

A name they've all sworn to never say again.

Vanilla.

It had taken ten minutes of poking and prodding for them to snap out of their horror and explain what was going on.

Pochi and Pai shared a look that had too many emotions charged for Jennu to decipher. So, they'd managed to say, Vanilla is a ghost, apparently. She showed up about a month after she died. They promised to properly explain everything tomorrow.

Pai had mentioned once or twice that she could see things others couldn't. But Jennu had never suspected that she'd be able to see Vanilla. She'd never even put those two pieces of information together before, but now that she has, it seems so obvious.

But, Pochi and Reycho too...?

Tomorrow feels like an eternity away.

Nyoro's on her other side facing away from her, dark turquoise blanket tugged right up to her neck. Every now and then Jennu sees her toss and turn a little. On her other side she can see the lantern illuminate Pai and Pochi, huddled together, talking in hushed voices.

Okay, that’s it. I can't sleep, Jennu decides eventually, kicking off her sleeping bag and rising to her feet.

She walks until she’s at the edge of the water, questions spiralling around and around in her head. It makes her seasick, and she sinks to her knees.

Vanilla, being with them the whole time...

She digs her fingernails in the sand, gathering clumps to coat her palms. Memories are starting to flood back: holiday celebrations, history lectures, sleepovers on weekends. Was Vanilla there, watching them live life without her, having them be so close and yet being unable to talk to them? Jennu drops her head, the static in her ears roaring now. As if things weren't confusing enough already.

Something lands with a splash in the water farther away, hoisting her out of her thoughts. There, farther down the shoreline, is Aniki, hugging his knees, his hand glossing over the sand to find rocks to throw.

Jennu hisses to herself, suddenly feeling silly. Of course he'd be out here right now. He probably has the most right out of all of them to be here.

If that was Sayuri, I'd be...

No. Nevermind. Focus on Aniki.

Part of her wants to ask if he's okay, but she knows that will only end in being snapped at.

After Vanilla died, Aniki locked himself away from everyone and everything. He only came out of his house to go to school, and even then talking to him was basically useless. Any attempt to get him to open up about the accident was met with fists slammed against desks and getting called every name in the book. The others tried desperately to pull him out of the despair he'd fallen into, but it was no use. Eventually, there was nothing left to do. They gave him the space he so clearly wanted, and the only one who even attempted to reach out regularly anymore was Pai.

But Jennu had tried, once.

On a quiet evening, maybe a month or two after Vanilla’s…after Vanilla, she’d gone to his house. She’d thought about what to say a million times over, rehearsing, making sure every word was timed and emphasized properly, like a true professional. Now all that was left to do was say it. And that, of course, was the hardest part. 

I’m here for you, was her main point. I know your pain.

I’ve been through it. 

She’d knocked once, twice.
“Aniki?”

No response, but she could hear a soft creak on the floorboards from inside. Hoping it was him, she began what she’d rehearsed. “Listen, we’re all…We’re all sorry about what happened. I hope you know we care about you, and we want you to be okay. We want you to talk to us about this.”

Still nothing. She continued on.

“But you’ve been really scaring us. Yelling and screaming — it’s just not like you. And maybe if you talked about it, you’d feel bett—”

Without warning the door gave way and flew backwards, and Jennu stumbled the opposite way to catch herself. There he stood, glowering at her. His hair had grown, hovering just above his shoulders. Dark circles stained the space under his eyes. He looked awful, and Jennu’s heart had ached in sympathy. 

“Go away,” he’d said, voice low and cracked with exhaustion. “There’s nothing you could say that would help me.”

“But—” 

“Go away!” He yelled, loud and so so angry, and she flinched without meaning to, the rest of her script falling apart at the seams. 

She couldn’t believe it. This was the Aniki who would sit with her in the corner of the library and quiz her on history until her eyes would spin; the Aniki who had extra bandages in his backpack, just in case any of them got injured (it usually ended up being Kansai); the Aniki who made sure none of them were ever bullied and was always there to listen and refused to ride the bike he got for his birthday until Vanilla got hers, too. 

This was the same person standing in front of her, one of her very best friends, and it was the first time she’d ever felt afraid of him. 

“I-I just…I wanted to let you know I know what you’ve been through.” She held his gaze, squeezing her hands together. “I went through the s—”

Aniki stepped forward, way way too close, jabbing a finger into her chest.

“No. You don’t know anything. Do you hear me? Anything. You have no idea what I’m going through.”

“But I do know!” She’d exclaimed. “I lost my sister, too.” She hated saying that, hated admitting the truth, but if it would help him open up, she’d say it as many times as necessary.

Aniki only stepped forward again, forcing her to take a step down off the porch.

“Oh, yeah? Did your sister run onto the road when you were supposed to be looking after her?” Another step. “Did you have to hear your sister’s screams get cut short?” Jennu was back on the sidewalk now. “Did your sister die right in front of you?”

Jennu closed her mouth, opened it again, sudden tears burning the back of her eyes. Say something! She’d yelled at herself. Apologize, defend yourself, anything! 

“She was travelling,” was what came out, quiet and shaken. “when she died.”

A terrible, ugly silence. Aniki leveled his gaze at her.

“Right. And how’d that work out for her?”

And then he’d turned on his heel and slammed the door so hard she felt it in her teeth.

She hadn’t tried again after that.

Another splash. Jennu blinks, letting the beach and the sand in her fingernails bring her back to the present. She looks at Aniki again, that same dull ache between her ribs.

Suddenly he spots her. They stare at each-other for a moment, Jennu only hearing the gentle lapping of the waves at their feet. The look he gives her is chilling. There's so much pain in his expression. It screams, so furiously without words, Talk to me, I dare you. Jennu opens her mouth to say something, and stops. Closes her mouth. Sighs. Stands.

And goes to bed.

The next morning doesn't fare any better. Pochi and Pai are doing their best to explain everything, taking turns going through the timeline of events.

It only brings up more questions. Why didn't you tell us? (“We didn’t think you’d believe us.”) How long has she been back? (Since last September.) Does that mean she was on the bus with us? (Yes.)

That last one in particular freaks her out. Jennu remembers sitting on the bus, feeling annoyed at herself for wearing such long pants in the heat, taking comfort in the fans whirring above her head and the open window next to her. Was Vanilla behind her, beside her, her presence merely a few feet away?

She wants to hear them out, to take what they're saying as the truth, but the truth sounds insane. Then again, taking everything that's been happening to them recently...It's just too much information to process.

Apparently, Aniki feels the same, because before Jennu can ask a question of her own, he’s already yelled at them and run off. Jennu’s stomach sinks as they run after him, because who knows what other weird monstrosities have been running around Japan that could be waiting to strike.

They stop in the middle of town. Abandoned cars lay dormant on the side of the road. Jennu places a hand over her eyes to block out the sunlight, sweeping her gaze to see if she can spot Aniki anywhere. Maybe if nothing else, his pink hair would help him stand out. But he's nowhere in sight. Jennu's gut twists.

Not again, she thinks, trying to ignore how badly her hands are shaking. We can't be dealing with this again.

“Aniki!" She calls, cupping her hands around her mouth. "Come back!"

"I'm sure he'll be back," Nyoro tries to assure, but she can't mask the worry in her voice. "He just needs some time to cool down. It's a lot to process."

Jennu folds her arms to hide the shaking. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

Chuko suddenly screams. Everyone turns to her, and she winces, pulling her hand back from where she’d stuck it underneath one of the cars. She nurses it with a pout. Kansai laughs at her, and they start to argue. Jennu tunes them out for a second, glancing down the street again.

Where could he have gone?

Eventually she shakes her head, the brightness of the sun too intense to keep looking. Nyoro’s right, anyways. He’ll be back when he’s ready. 

I hope.

She makes her way to Chuko, gently lifting up her hand to examine it. Embedded there on the back are a few faint scratches that have started to bleed. Jennu hisses in sympathy, and Chuko’s eyebrows scrunch together.

“Is it that bad?”

“Well, it’s not good. We’ll probably have to stop and pick up something for it. Mowchan, you’ve got bandages, right?” 

Mowchan nods dutifully and grabs a couple from his bag. Chuko outstretches her hand, and he places them in a criss-cross pattern across the bite. 

“Thanks,” she sighs. 

“Why were you reaching under there anyways, Chuko?” He asks. 

"It's 'cause you wanted this, right?" 

Aniki’s voice. Everyone's heads snap up to look at him. He’s standing a bit down the road, far away enough that he could turn and run again. Jennu tries to read his face, but it’s empty. Maybe a little annoyed?

In his hand is a bright orange poster. Pochi cautiously steps forward like he’s approaching a spooked horse, and Aniki lets him take it. Pochi passes it to Nyoro, and Tattsun and Yuki huddle on either side of her as she holds it up.

"'If you see this flyer,'" Nyoro reads aloud. "'please come to Kyoto. If you come to Kyoto'..."

She trails off with a frown, turning it to the other side. There's a tear, right where the end of the sentence should be. And from the looks of it, it's the only one of its kind. 

Yup, that seems to sum up their luck so far. 

"This is perfect!” Chuko exclaims anyways. “If we go to Kyoto, we could meet normal people!" 

"But those could be old," Mowchan says. 

"Right,” Jennu agrees. “It could've been written before people disappeared.” 

"But..." Pochi starts.

The conversation devolves, as it's tended to do lately, into arguing. Jennu frowns at the poster. Why is it the only one out here?

And why Kyoto, of all places? 

Well, at least there’s Osaka. She can vote for Osaka. Pai and Kansai and Tattsun are all in agreement with her, anyways.

She’s not sure if Vanilla’s actually in Osaka, as much as she might believe Pai and Pochi when they say she’s been with them up until now. But it’s as good an excuse as any to stay far, far away from the one place she really doesn’t want to go to. The others can go to Kyoto, that’s fine. That doesn’t mean she has to follow them.

She slots her hands together to keep them still.

(She loses the vote, and feels stupid for hoping. Pochi convinces them all to stay together this time, so there’s no hiding, no running to Osaka under the guise of looking for a ghost.  

But it’s fine! They won’t find anybody in Kyoto, just like they didn’t find anybody in Ehime, just like they didn’t find anybody in Kagoshima. All they have to do is walk right through the city, and they’ll be that much closer to Tokyo, to home.

It’s fine. She’ll be fine.)

It’s around 9:30 at night (Jennu’s been given custody of the cell phone they found in Oita, though she’s not sure why exactly. Pai had been the one to find it, after all.) when the sky opens up and rain comes pouring through.

There’s a community centre up ahead, tucked in between a skyscraper and a bridge that leads them deeper into Niyodogawa. Their footsteps splash harshly against the pavement as they run inside. Reycho gets there first, holding the door open for everyone else. Jennu ends up being last, flinching as a particularly fat raindrop hits her in the nose. 

The community centre is huge and empty. There’s a few signs of life Jennu can spot — a pile of backpacks tucked away in a corner and a stray soccer ball next to one of the bathrooms — but not much else. 

Her mind drifts back to her parents. They haven’t found anyone else yet, but surely her mom and dad are still alright. They’re probably trying to find the people who have gone missing, too. Or maybe they’re helping them — her dad is a doctor, after all.

A chill settles in her spine. She doesn’t like the idea of people needing help in the first place. 

The others have begun unrolling their sleeping bags and setting down their stuff, so Jennu follows along. She takes a shirt and pair of pants they’d found on their raid from Mowchan’s bag and tucks them into her arms, heading for the bathroom. 

She gets in her PJs, washes her face, brushes her teeth with her finger and the last remnants of toothpaste they have, trying to fight the exhaustion in her bones. 

Maybe it’s one big prank. Maybe everyone went to Tokyo for some big event. Maybe…

She doesn’t know. 

Most of the others are set up close together when Jennu opens the door. She’ll unroll her sleeping bag first before joining them, she decides. 

She unbuckles the sleeping bag’s straps, resting it on her knee so she can quickly run a hand through her hair—

A hand reaches out and gently tussles her hair.

“Do you like it better short?” Sayuri asks her. She’d cut it the other day in their kitchen. Just like Sailor Uranus, Mayumi had said. That had been the only requirement. It feels amazing to run her fingers through. Mayumi nods with a wide grin.

“I never want long hair again,” she says. Sayuri laughs.

“Whatcha watching?” 

Mayumi adjusts herself from the mountain of pillows and blankets she’s collected, holding her stuffed rooster to her chest. “Sailor Moon.”

“Ah, I should have guessed.” Sayuri scoots forward on the couch until she’s level with Mayumi’s head. “Can I watch with you?”

“Sure. This episode’s a really good—”

“Jennu? Everything okay?”

Jennu snaps herself out of the memory, reeling. She spins around. Aniki’s staring at her, water bottle in hand. 

An awkward second passes while she collects herself, where she is again, what she’s doing. The sleeping bag in her arms has unwrapped itself and spiralled down towards the floor.

“Uh, yeah. I’m fine. Why?”

Aniki looks at her with an expression she can’t read. 

“You sure? You’ve kinda been on edge ever since we left Ehime.” He sounds concerned, which feels wrong, almost. Alien. It’s an emotion that has never really existed in this version of him, not until this trip. 

(She’s seen it, here and there. Hunting for mushrooms in Ehime, saving Pai’s life in the underwater theme park. It’s almost like for a minute, she can catch glimpses of the old him coming to the surface. She doesn’t really know how she feels about that.)

An unexpected anger rises up in her all of a sudden. Why does he have to show concern for this of all things? She must’ve not been hiding it as well as she thought.

“We’ve all been on edge,” she says dismissively. “I’m just tired. Everyone will feel better in the morning.”

Another beat of silence she can’t stand. Aniki finally turns to leave, but stops. He scoffs, looking back at her. 

“You’re such a hypocrite sometimes, you know that?”

It feels like an anvil’s slammed into her chest. A hypocrite? What? Where had that come from?

By the time she opens her mouth to respond, Aniki’s already gone, and Jennu is left alone with a hollow feeling in her chest and an uncooperative sleeping bag.

(Later that night, the rain becomes a thunderstorm.

Jennu used to be afraid of those.)