Nana's apartment at six in the evening had the particular warmth of somewhere that had been home long enough to mean it.
Yoru sat on the sofa with both hands around a cup of tea she wasn't drinking, in the posture of someone who had arrived with feelings and was still deciding which ones to lead with. Nana sat across from her with her own cup and the posture of someone prepared to wait as long as the tea lasted and longer if necessary.
Saki and Hana were at the low table doing homework with the focused energy of children who had assessed the room's atmosphere and decided cooperative invisibility was the correct strategy.
The cartoon was off.
"Tell me," Nana said.
So Yoru told her.
The classroom. The hand on his sleeve — not hers, someone else's. The name. Minami Tsukasa, said out loud in a room, attached to a face, attached to eyes that had looked at him the way Yoru recognised because she had felt the same thing from the inside.
She told her about being sent home. About the fine she had said and meant and was still processing. About the walk back, fast and furious and frightened underneath.
Nana listened with her cup in both hands and the expression she had when she was being very still on the outside because something was moving on the inside.
When Yoru finished the apartment was quiet.
Saki turned a page of her textbook.
Hana erased something carefully.
"She grabbed his sleeve," Nana said.
"Yes."
"In front of you."
"Yes."
"And asked for him—" a pause "—privately."
"Yes," Yoru said, and the word came out with a texture that hadn't been in the previous ones.
Nana looked at her cup. Yoru looked at hers. The tea was getting cold. Neither of them was drinking it.
"She's the one," Nana said. Not a question. The flat, precise delivery of a woman identifying a category. "The memory he mentioned. The warm one."
"I think so."
"She's been in his class since Monday. Sitting beside him."
"Every day," Yoru confirmed.
Another silence. Longer. The kind that has something building in it.
Nana set her cup down slowly, with the deliberate care of someone choosing their movements. She looked at the middle distance with the expression she wore when she had arrived at a conclusion and was examining it from all sides before speaking.
Then she smiled.
Not the warm smile. Not the fond one or the knowing one or any of the smiles Yoru had catalogued in the past week of knowing her. The other one. The quiet one — the edge now visible, no longer half-hidden. The smile of a woman who had decided something and found the deciding clarifying.
Yoru looked at her.
Then, without fully meaning to — the way you catch an expression from someone standing next to you — she felt her own face doing something similar.
The cup in her hands came up slightly.
Nana's cup came up to match.
They looked at each other over the rims.
From the low table, Saki looked up from her homework. Looked at her mother. Looked at Yoru. Looked at the cups. Looked at Hana.
Hana looked back with the eyes of someone who had seen this energy in this room before and had opinions about it.
"Mama," Saki said carefully.
"Homework," Nana said, in a voice of absolute velvet calm.
"You're doing the face."
"What face."
"The one that means someone is in trouble."
"Nobody is in trouble," Nana said warmly. "Study."
Saki studied. With the posture of someone studying while maintaining full peripheral attention on the room.
Nana looked at Yoru.
Yoru looked at Nana.
The cups were still raised.
"So," Nana said, very quietly, in the voice of someone opening a board meeting. "A girl has made a move."
"On our—" Yoru started. Stopped. The word she'd almost said sat in the air between them, slightly embarrassing, entirely accurate.
"Yes," Nana said, without requiring the word to be completed. "On our."
A beat.
"How dare she," Yoru said. Quiet. Precise. The temperature of something very cold.
"How dare she," Nana agreed, in the same register.
The smile widened by a millimetre on both faces simultaneously.
From the low table, Hana leaned toward Saki and whispered: "She found a partner."
Saki whispered back: "Scary."
"Very scary," Hana confirmed.
They returned to their homework with renewed focus.