Noshiro Chiose was a gentle, well-mannered girl, the kind who reminded you of some small animal.
Sitting across from Shiina Taki, Chiose nibbled her way through a small slice of sea-salt cream toast in tiny bites.
Her lips were so delicate that even bites that small left the corners of her mouth dusted with crumbs.
[So cute.]
Shiina Taki swore she wasn't the type to fall for girls who were cute like small animals. She was just easy to trigger a protective streak in, that was all.
Mm... and maybe a little guilt had a hand in it too.
She stared like that until Chiose had finished the entire slice, and only then did Taki realize how rude her gaze must have looked.
[Can I wipe the crumbs off the corner of your mouth?]
That was what Taki wrote.
Chiose looked a little puzzled, but she nodded and agreed to Taki's request all the same.
The crumbs clung to her fingertip. Under the table, Taki's hand started rubbing at them without thinking, and when she finally let go, the crumbs were gone.
[It's getting a bit late now, and I have things to take care of. Taki, let's meet again next time.]
The sheet of sketch paper pushed in front of Taki had already been written in Chiose's notebook, which meant Noshiro Chiose had prepared her goodbye well in advance.
With no excuse and no reason to keep Chiose there any longer, Taki could only nod.
[Want me to walk you out?]
Chiose shook her head, and as she turned to leave she remembered to wave. The bell over the shop door jingled a few times, and that crow-like girl vanished once again.
"Haah."
She was so pretty.
The air still held traces of her scent. Taki gazed blankly out the window at Chiose's figure until it was swallowed whole by the bustling crowd.
Today was the most unforgettable day of her life.
She had met Noshiro Chiose. That girl she had glimpsed once, years ago, at the bottom of a lake...
Around a few alleys, across one very large intersection, then a right turn at the mailbox on the corner, and there stood the house where Chiose lived now.
A modest detached house with Boston ivy climbing the outer walls. In this life, Chiose's late parents had left their daughter a relatively comfortable place to live.
Light rarely entered the rooms. The curtains were drawn and the windows and doors shut tight. Chiose liked this kind of quiet, dim environment.
[Humble Devouring: Once per day. View the target's inner voice a single time, obtaining their real-time condition to make it easier to move against them. Cost: one month of lifespan.]
That was right. She had already listened to Taki's inner voice once, back there while they were together.
All in all it matched her expectations nicely. Even the marks of her injuries had been noticed by that relatively attentive Taki.
She sprawled her whole body across the piano. A tangle of disordered noise burst out, then the calm of the room slowly returned.
[Silly Taki. How many years should I keep you company this time, I wonder.]
[Mm.]
Second year of middle school, third year of middle school, first year of high school... first year of university.
That was Noshiro Chiose's plan this time around. She would set herself into the years of Taki's youth like a jewel into a setting, folding herself into every ordinary day of the other girl's life.
"Last time it was just too short... if it were a little longer, would that be better?"
She couldn't hear her own voice, but Chiose still wanted to be someone who spoke aloud often.
Otherwise, once the Simulation ended, she was afraid she'd have forgotten how to speak at all.
The hearing aid engraved with a pirate galleon lay quietly on the desk a little distance away. Chiose had deliberately gone most of today without it. Besides, she couldn't wear it for long stretches anyway.
After lying draped over the piano for a while, Chiose seemed to remember something. She hopped over to the big full-length mirror and began fixing her hair in front of it.
[Come to think of it, if I want her to carry this regret for the rest of her life, isn't being just a friend a little too much of a half measure?]
If, and Chiose only said if.
[If I left the world as her girlfriend, or her wife, would she cry a whole lot louder?]
"Pfft, hahaha..."
How cruel.
But, well, no real problem there.
That was simply how things were.
...
Come to think of it, every year on the anniversary of the day Taki nearly drowned, her mother would take her out to the countryside to pay respects at the wooden carving of the Umibozu.
The Umibozu was said to be a monk who lived in the sea. Some regions held that the Umibozu was a messenger of the sea god, or the incarnation of a restless spirit.
Even now there were fishermen who would throw rice, salt, or sake to appease it and ward off disaster.
By the time they came back down from the shrine it was already dark. Time was merciless like that, and the round trip alone ate up more than an hour.
Any other year Taki would have found the whole thing an enormous hassle, but today she was strangely calm.
"Haah."
Sighing the whole way, Shiina Taki finally made it back to the foot of her apartment building.
"After all that running around, I still didn't manage to apologize, huh."
Could what she'd done that day really ever be forgiven? Probably. Chiose looked like exactly the sort of girl who was easy to push around, easy to talk to.
And that was precisely the sort of girl Taki absolutely never wanted to push around.
"If I'm going to take responsibility for the rest of someone's life, maybe it's better not to say anything at all?"
It was funny, in a way. Taki was only in her early teens, and here she was already working out how to shoulder another person's entire life.
But Taki understood that all of it was something she had no choice but to do.
After all, that girl had traded her hearing for Taki's life. Every bit of it was a debt Taki owed.
Her steps were heavy on the stairs, each one as if weighted with a thousand pounds of sand and stone.
"I'm home."
"Eh? You're back late today. Did something hold you up?"
Mom and her big sister poked their heads out of the kitchen, and her father, reading the paper on the sofa, set the pages down. Sukiyaki was simmering on the stove, and honestly the smell had already been impossible to hide out in the hallway.
The warmth of her family reminded Taki all over again: every bit of her happiness had been bought with Chiose's sacrifice.
"It's nothing... I..."
The words came to her lips and refused to arrange themselves. A quick summary would have been the smart move, but Taki was so tired, and she had no idea where to start with a day this surreal.
[A crow, a girl, scars, music. That was my day.]
"Go wash your hands and eat. Just hand your bag to your big sister, she'll hang it up for you."
Her mother brought in the slippers she'd washed that day from the balcony, and her big sister took the shoulder bag off her. Standing in the entryway, Taki finally couldn't hold it in any longer.
"I think today I made a friend I'll be able to spend my whole life with."
"Eh?" Shiina Maki blinked. "Taki's got herself a girlfriend? How nice. So how many times did you two kiss today?"
"Big sister! You jerk!"
Her parents' teasing laughter filled her ears, and Maki ruffled Taki's head, smoothing down the hair she'd just made stand on end.
"Hmph."
Taki really did love this day.
She really did.
Even if her big sister was a menace.
It didn't change the fact that today was a day worth taking out and savoring slowly, on every lonely, aching night that came after.
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