"Ahem."
"Ahem, ahem."
"Ahem, ahem, ahem."
Taki really was too much of a loser. All she could do was hide behind a few coughs.
"Taki, cute, like. Best friend! Like, hehe."
"S-stop saying stuff like that, I... I..."
You're going to coax me right back into an embryo at this rate.
Taki all flustered and squirming was a delicacy Chiose Noshiro simply had to taste.
Every so often she'd tease Taki a little, then sit back and wait for the adorable reaction.
The cost? A few weightless lines that cost her nothing at all.
A loser like Taki Shiina would always give Chiose exactly the reaction she wanted.
Even her walk had gone stiff and unnatural. Taki Shiina kept dropping her head, then lifting it again, as if she had no idea where to put any part of her body.
"Hehe. Taki, like you~"
"You already said that once! Why are you saying it again?"
Walking hand in hand toward Chiose's house, Taki was fairly certain the sunset wasn't as red as her own skin.
"Happy. Taki, I'm taking the hearing aid off now. Say something to me, one last thing."
"Ah... something, let me think..."
Taki Shiina cursed her own brain for not measuring up to Einstein's. If it had, she'd have worked out the optimal answer ages ago.
What should she say? She'd say—
"I really like... Little Chiose, too. We're best friends."
"Too late, I took it off ages ago!"
Chiose waved the hearing aid back and forth in front of Taki's eyes like a victorious general showing off her spoils.
"How could you! You're so mean..."
"Hehe. No idea what Taki's saying right now... All right, I'll give you a hug. Honestly, you're just like a little kid."
She pulled Taki Shiina into a gentle hug, and past her shoulder Chiose saw crows wheeling through the sky.
"Taki, the crows' cries, they sound lovely, don't they? I can't hear a single one anymore... yoo... you enjoy them for me, all right?"
A few days of intensive speech rehab had let Chiose correct most of her stranger pronunciations, but every so often something odd still slipped out.
"Okay... I'm listening. When you're away from your hearing aid, I'll be your ears."
Half her small face buried in Chiose's hair, Taki Shiina knew Chiose Noshiro couldn't hear a thing, and that was the only reason she'd worked up the nerve to say something so strange.
They were just close friends, nothing more. And these were just the ordinary little whispers close friends shared...
Taki had never had a close friend before, so she assumed this was how close friends worked.
"Crows..."
Once the hug ended, Taki tried to spin the subject out into a longer conversation with Chiose.
Tonight she wanted to stay over at Chiose's house. If she could just keep the talking going, she could fudge her way through with an excuse like [It isn't safe to go home now].
[I heard that the color of a crow's feathers falls outside the range of human vision. The wavelengths of their feathers actually look brilliantly multicolored to other birds.]
This was precious knowledge Taki had earned by going home specifically to look it up, memorize it, and study it.
Sunset, crows, joined hands. The warmth of the moment set like glass, and the small, trivial unpleasantness from the band's founding get-together earlier drifted away like passing smoke.
Only... her explanation didn't sound very romantic.
An unromantic explanation... would Chiose find it dull?
"Crows... they're so cute. What drew me in at the start was exactly that, that they're colorful... no. I should call it xuan, that deep, dark black."
Chiose narrowed her eyes and smiled. She had just finished acting out a scene she'd once imagined back in reality.
One afternoon in reality, on the way home from school, a similar conversation had happened in a similar setting. Thank you, reality, for supplying the material.
"No wonder the legends say crows used to be called Rainbow Crows." The road stretched on ahead of them, and so did the steady, ticklish scratching of Chiose's finger against Taki's palm.
"That's... nice," said the victim, Taki, with a shiver.
A sharp, powerful dread rose in her.
She tilted her head to catch the flock overhead in the corner of her eye. They were beautiful, Taki thought, and still she couldn't shake the nameless unease.
Dusk was a mournful kind of beautiful. If one day she and Chiose were parted the way daylight is parted from night, no longer together... what would she do then?
When that day came, would everything beautiful about right now really not cut her like shards of broken glass?
Enough, Taki. Enough...
Taki Shiina talked herself down.
[Being able to enjoy the here and now is the best there is.]
The crows' cries thinned away into the distance.
Some people praise the crow as sacred. Some condemn it as an omen of ruin.
But the crow doesn't care. A crow is simply a crow.
"Tonight we're having soba noodles and Miracle Tonkatsu! Diner Taki Shiina, please take your time and enjoy."
"Ehh—?"
She'd only mentioned it in passing, once or twice. And Chiose had remembered what her favorite food was?
Hand pressed over her heart, Taki couldn't make herself pick up her chopsticks.
The way it sped up like that was such a strange feeling...
It heaped even more delight onto the joy she already felt at the total success of her sleepover plan.
[Taki, what do you think of Sakiko's suggestion?]
[What?]
Just as they were about to start eating together, the sign language Chiose was shaping set Taki thinking.
After turning it over, Taki chose not to interfere with what Chiose wanted.
[I'll support you all the way, Little Chiose. Whatever you decide to do.]
"You'll support me no matter what?"
[Yes.]
"Then I think... I can still give it a try. If the first band I ever join only puts me on the reserve bench, I'd never make peace with that."
Chiose stared down at her food and stopped watching Taki's hands.
A whole chain of interesting plans had already taken shape in her mind, and on top of that she held intel on every one of these people...
This time she absolutely had to earn a few extra years back.
"Thanks for the food! Taki, hurry up and eat."
"Ah... oh, right. Thanks for the food."
The tonkatsu was crisp and juicy, the soba noodles clean on the tongue, and the person eating beside her was the dearest friend and benefactor she cared about most in the world.
Taki Shiina couldn't remember much of her past clearly anymore, but every small moment since meeting Chiose Noshiro had etched itself into her.
Chiose caught Taki smiling at her, a faint smile that left no trace, and answered it with a sweet one of her own.
It was the kind of smile a person might not see more than a handful of times in a lifetime, the kind you'd never forget after seeing it once.
"Little Chiose... you're even tastier than the food..." Only because Chiose Noshiro couldn't hear a sound did Taki Shiina dare say something like that.
What she didn't know was that even as she smiled, Chiose Noshiro had never once stopped using [Humble Devouring].
[Taki Shiina... you really are one big idiot of a loser.]
Chiose thought.
[Worthy of being my best friend... one of them.]
[Humble Devouring: Once per day. View the target's inner voice a single time, obtaining their real-time state so as to make a move more easily. Lifespan cost: one month.]
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