That day, Chiose kept on smiling, and when Taki saw the corners of Chiose's lips lift, she found herself smiling too.
She figured Chiose was smiling because she was happy—and Taki was the kind of person who could feel happy at another's happiness. That lifted her mood even more.
But amid all the joy, countless things kept reminding Taki that the situation was nowhere near as bright as she'd imagined.
Distorted staves, dark flocks of crows, the scars on Chiose's hands—they flashed before her eyes, seeming to hint that the sweet girl in her arms hid, deep down, a gloom Taki had yet to uncover.
Somewhere Chiose Noshiro couldn't see, Taki Shiina's hands clenched tight.
"Taki..."
"Mm?"
"Want to see something exciting?"
Chiose leaned close to Taki's ear and breathed warm against it, her tone playful and laced with endless temptation.
"What?"
Taki's heart lurched, and her mind filled in an endless parade of scenes.
Something exciting... what on earth did she mean?
Surely it wasn't the sort of thing she was picturing.
What Taki failed to notice was that when Chiose spoke just now, her intonation had been perfectly ordinary—missing the usual distortion in her pronunciation.
Not that she'd have thought much of it even if she had noticed.
Within the space of a single breath, Taki had already surrendered the tempo entirely to Chiose.
"S-sure."
Ten minutes later. BOOM—
The piano let out one final thunderous blast. Chiose drew her fingers back from the keys, fine beads of sweat spread thick across her forehead.
Her hair had come loose during the performance, but she paid it no mind at all.
Gasping in great gulps of air, the silver-haired performer turned her head toward her adorable little listener.
"So exciting... so this is the rock music Little Chiose was talking about."
Hahaha—what was that all about? It had her on edge for the longest time.
Taki shot a glance at the goosebumps on her arm; only now did she recall that she'd never needed to hold her breath at all.
But there was no helping it.
"Well? Taki..."
[Lovely. That's the most avant-garde music I've ever heard. What's it called?]
"Bohemian... Rhapsody. It's Queen's..."
When Chiose reached the word "Rhapsody," she seemed to forget how to say it, tilting her head and thinking for a while before going on.
[Amazing... Little Chiose knows so much, doesn't she.]
Taki, still not used to sign language, felt her hands were about to cramp—but she was glad to do it!
She loved this cramping feeling! So what! She was glad to.
"This is... part of the burning I love, too. Ugh, no good—my speech really is too strange, isn't it."
As wild as she'd been at the keys a moment ago, that was how quiet Chiose Noshiro became once she settled down.
She just sat there, pinching her own fingers, like a fragile flower about to wilt.
[Not strange at all. It's as lovely as Little Chiose's music—and as adorable as... a crow's cry.]
"Really?"
[Really. From now on I'll practice with Little Chiose more. Let's take our time and find the way you used to speak, together—all right?]
"Eh?"
Just as planned, Chiose thought to herself without letting a hint of it show, and she couldn't resist nestling into Taki's arms.
"Thank you, Taki... I love you the most."
"!!!"
You can't just blurt out something like that.
What if Little Chiose said it to someone else?! She had to make Little Chiose understand that words like that couldn't be tossed around!
Chiose, who'd leapt into her arms again, was warm all over, her hair still threaded with the sweat of her playing.
But Taki didn't mind one bit.
Yet the moment the soft, jade-like girl settled against her, a crow appeared out of nowhere in Taki's line of sight.
It stood alone on the windowsill, the feathers over its whole body sleek and neat.
This crow was so unlike any other... its pupils weren't the usual black or deep blue, but a pure gold.
Taki could have sworn she'd seen this color somewhere before.
[Where was it...]
Stroking Chiose's long hair with both hands, Taki now remembered a classmate who'd once raised some strange subjects with her.
Haizuka.
No wonder that touch of gold felt so familiar.
And when Taki turned her eyes back to the windowsill, the crow was long gone, as if it had never been there at all.
What had Haizuka said back then? Haizuka had said...
[You never can tell with things like this. Today in the bathroom I saw a girl about to cut her wrist open with a razor blade—a white-haired girl, rather pretty, actually.]
"!!!"
Without letting it show, Taki closed her hand around Chiose's wrist, and while the other girl was still nuzzling in her arms like a kitten, Taki looked at the underside of it.
As tempting as Chiose's nuzzling was, the wound on her...
Taki's joy sank and vanished, right along with the crow.
She held Chiose by the shoulders, her eyes flickering with the question of whether she ought to ask any of this.
But in the end, she steeled herself for something.
[Little Chiose, your hand?]
To disguise the fact that she'd noticed long ago, Taki deliberately gave it a note of surprise.
"Eh? My hand?"
Chiose seemed to remember something, her eyes darkening, no longer daring to meet Taki's gaze.
She turned her head aside, and the joyful mood around them hit pause.
But this silence—so unsettling to Taki—didn't hold for long.
At last, on the tail of a sigh, the girl fixed her eyes on Taki Shiina once more.
They stayed frozen like that, one girl seated on the other, arms wrapped around each other.
"I... actually, the day I met Taki, I was hurting so much... these are foolish things I did before, too, back when I couldn't find a way out. But Taki made me so happy that those plans of mine simply went away."
Taki swore she rarely lied; her earlier praise that Chiose's speaking voice was as lovely as her music was no lie whatsoever. For this girl, just finishing a whole sentence was like performing a beautiful piece of music that would never be played a second time.
[Really?]
"Mm! Taki saved me. Taki's the best... I really like Taki..."
The girl brushed past the subject so fast that Taki was pulled into another embrace before she could even react.
This time Chiose rubbed her cheek against Taki's over and over, and for a while Taki couldn't breathe or think.
Chiose's words made Taki understand so much.
[So this cheerful, ever-smiling girl is really just as delicate as any ordinary girl... She needs someone to help her, needs a friend, needs... me.]
[The scars on her wrist will never deepen again. No... the truth is, Chiose turning out this way is my fault, too.]
Biting down hard on her lip, Taki Shiina found herself even less willing to confess to Chiose about that accident back in their elementary school years.
She realized that the time Chiose saved her, Chiose wasn't the only one who'd paid a price.
Taki Shiina had paid a price, too.
She understood that she would never be alone again, because now she had one more person's fate to carry.
She had to take up the fate of Chiose Noshiro.
That was how it was.
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