"Taki, do you want this red panda charm, or this creepy yellow-headed crow?"
[11111. The red panda, obviously.]
There's a lot to watch out for when you wear a skirt on a rainy day. For instance, your best friend might decide that 'aren't your legs cold?' is a perfectly reasonable excuse to lay a hand on your knee and warm it up for you.
Chiose dangled the two little charms from her fingers. Taki's hand rested on Chiose's knee like it belonged there.
They both had beautiful futures ahead of them.
"Why isn't Sakiko here yet? Her phone won't even go through."
Soyo paced the length of the rehearsal room. Something had drained out of her face.
The easy, unhurried air she usually carried had slid away like the raindrops on the floor-to-ceiling window beside her, and vanished.
Incidentally, Takamatsu Tomori had called in absent today.
"Soyo, do you want to come sit down for a while?"
Chiose couldn't hear a word Nagasaki Soyo was saying, but she offered the friendly invitation anyway.
"Ah… Little Chiose…"
Giving up, for the moment, on waiting for a reply that was never going to come, Soyo looked at Chiose Noshiro with complicated eyes.
The girl in front of her was the most extraordinary girl she had ever known.
She was slight. She was quiet, never any trouble. She would sit there and simply smile at you. That was the kind of girl she was — a small, precious creature who made you want to protect her just by looking at her.
As a bandmate, Chiose Noshiro worked hard enough to put everyone else to shame; as a friend, her liveliness and energy caught hold of you and lifted you up.
Nagasaki Soyo suspected she would remember this friend for the rest of her life.
Soyo answered in halting sign language:
[I'm all right. Walking around makes me feel a little better.]
Soyo wasn't the only one in the room waiting for Togawa Sakiko. Chiose stood up and went over to the girl called Wakaba Mutsumi.
"Mutsumi, these are cucumbers I grew myself. Please, have some!"
"Hm?"
Mutsumi took the paper bag Chiose held out, not quite following.
She didn't know sign language, so the only way to talk with Chiose was by message.
[Mutsumi (Wakaba Mutsumi): It hasn't been long since you asked me how to grow them. Little Chiose got a harvest this quickly? Thank you.]
There was a strange girl in this band.
Mutsumi set her phone down. Her eyes had never once left Chiose Noshiro.
She thought of Chiose as 'strange,' but she didn't mean it as an insult — and Chiose was definitely the more normal one of the two of them.
Chiose was strange because there was an obsession in her that Mutsumi felt she could almost understand, and yet never quite.
Her eyes lowered, her lashes trembling a few times. After a silent moment, Wakaba Mutsumi went back to typing.
[Mutsumi: How has Little Chiose's piano been lately.]
Mutsumi — and everyone else there — still remembered that Chiose had started out as the reserve keyboardist.
And that was exactly where Mutsumi's strange feeling about her came from.
In certain ways, she thought, Chiose was the same as her. Only in Chiose it ran far, far deeper.
[Chiose (Chiose Noshiro): It's going well! Next time I'll play for you, Mutsumi. How does that sound?]
"Mm."
Wakaba Mutsumi nodded, the motion as small as ever — but Chiose Noshiro caught every last detail of it.
In these two weeks she had already worked out Wakaba Mutsumi's temperament and her whole backstory. Heh. Whether for this Simulation or for some future one where she got the chance to Simulate Mutsumi herself, it would absolutely come in handy.
Light rippled across Chiose Noshiro's eyes.
[The cast of every Simulation has something to do with this band. A band complicated enough to seem fated to go through no end of twists and turns.]
In the instant before Chiose's phone screen went dark, another message dropped in.
From Taki Shiina, of course.
[Taki: Let's go home. Stop waiting.]
"Mm… but…"
"What's the point of waiting for her every single day? Come on."
Taki didn't look well. Chiose tilted her head back to look up at her standing behind her, then blinked at her, leading with cuteness.
But the cute act, so reliable in the past, didn't seem to be working today.
The worry stayed knotted between Taki's brows.
"Okay…"
A wave, goodbyes, out the door, down the stairs. Taki said nothing as she led Chiose out into the open, holding up an umbrella wide enough for two.
Chiose couldn't hear a sound, but she could already picture how the world was sounding.
There would be nothing around them but raindrops kissing the pavement. Taki would not be saying a word. Somewhere far off, maybe a car horn.
Who could say, really.
The one thing Chiose knew for certain was that it was her cue to go to work.
"Taki…"
She gave Taki's cuff a careful tug. Her voice was as small as ever.
[What is it.]
"Taki… are you… mad at me?"
[No.]
Taki Shiina didn't know what was wrong with her either.
But every time she pictured Chiose Noshiro waiting for Togawa Sakiko to come back, exactly like the rest of that lot — and worse, that Chiose Noshiro might want Togawa Sakiko back sooner than anyone — her chest hurt.
She wanted Sakiko to come back too. She just didn't think Sakiko was someone you could count on.
From the very beginning, if Chiose Noshiro hadn't wanted to join a band, she would never have set foot in this so-called Crychic, this so-called community of shared fate.
And now Togawa Sakiko was behaving exactly like a swindler who takes your heart and skips town. Every time Taki Shiina watched Chiose go on hoping for her, naive as anything, it hurt.
"Really? You're really not?"
[Fine… I am. Why do you have such high hopes for Togawa Sakiko? She hasn't come in a whole week. She won't pick up the phone, she won't answer messages… Isn't it obvious? She didn't want the band and she ran.]
"But… but…"
Chiose looked stricken, her hands scrambling to sign something, but in the end all she did was repeat that one word over and over: but, but.
"But Sakiko is… a really good person… Sakiko said we'd build a band that lasts a lifetime… how could she run away… she wouldn't, right?"
"You— hey, wait, don't cry."
Taki still had more she wanted to say when Chiose Noshiro started to cry, softly.
Taki Shiina had no idea why Chiose Noshiro was so taken with Togawa Sakiko, but she knew for certain that now was not the time to ask.
She held Chiose, patting her back in small, steady beats — and then a thought struck her like lightning.
[Maybe… maybe Togawa Sakiko knows that 'burning' feeling Chiose always talks about, too? Is that why Chiose feels this… this kinship I can't understand, with Sakiko, who plays keyboard just like she did?]
"Haah…"
Taki took Chiose's chin between her fingers and wiped the tears from her face.
Rain came down all around them, and Chiose's tears fell to the ground with it, mixing into the rain until you couldn't tell them apart.
[That was my fault just now. Will you forgive me?]
"Taki… it's okay. It's me… I haven't been in a good place lately."
You're still so gentle… Chiose Noshiro.
Even when your lies are childish, you'll still use them to patch things up for the person who hurt you, won't you.
"Haah…"
Your eyes are beautiful.
It's all right that you saw the wrong thing in someone. It's all right that you cry so easily.
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