The Tanaka home appears at the end of the next block.
They continue beneath the streetlights with their hands still linked.
“That makes twelve,” Aina says.
Sayuri looks toward her.
“Twelve what?”
“The number of times you’ve checked whether I can still walk.”
Sayuri’s next step lands slightly out of rhythm.
“I was observing our surroundings.”
“The traffic is in the opposite direction.”
“I was also observing you.”
“So you admit it.”
“I admit nothing.”
Aina’s smile gains a trace of mischief, though exhaustion remains dark beneath her eyes.
She rubs her thumb along the strap of her school bag as they walk.
“You’ve been monitoring every step since we left RAWSON,” she says.
“Your balance remains unreliable.”
“I tripped once.”
“Once was sufficient.”
“My reputation for balance will recover.”
“Your balance should recover first.”
Aina laughs quietly.
This time, the sound carries none of the panic from the convenience store.
Sayuri looks ahead before the relief on her face can be noticed.
“You’re feeling better.”
“Enough to count to twelve.”
“I’m glad.”
The confession leaves Sayuri before she can examine it.
Aina’s teasing stops.
“…Me too.”
They walk several more paces.
Their shoulders brush once, then remain close.
“Ryosuke will still use today’s missed practice against you.”
“He already did.”
The name comes too easily.
Sayuri hears it after the fact and finds herself remembering the challenge in Ryosuke’s eyes outside RAWSON.
Aina lowers her attention to the pavement.
The smile at the corner of her mouth becomes smaller.
“You’re incredibly stubborn,” she murmurs.
“Ryosuke says the same thing”
There it is again.
Sayuri adjusts the shopping bag against her free wrist, unsettled by how readily his name keeps entering the conversation.
Beside her, Aina draws a loose curtain of crimson hair across her cheek.
“He’s right,” Aina says.
“Do not encourage him.”
“I don’t think he needs encouragement.”
Something in her voice has changed.
Sayuri looks toward her, but Aina is already facing the warm windows ahead.
Before Sayuri can ask, they reach the Tanaka home.
At the front step, Aina’s fingers slip free from Sayuri’s.
Aina raises her hand toward the entrance.
The front door opens before she can touch it.
“Aina?”
Her mother steps outside.
Concern crosses her face before relief replaces it.
“Oh, thank goodness.
You brought Sayuri-chan.”
“Sorry for worrying you again, Mama.” Aina directs her attention toward the entryway tiles.
Aina’s mother turns to Sayuri.
“Thank you for walking her home.
Truly.”
Sayuri bows, her posture settling into formal precision.
“It wasn’t any trouble.
I wasn’t going to let her walk home alone.”
“I wasn’t going to collapse between school and here,” Aina says, facing the flower garden.
The color in her cheeks undermines the complaint.
Her mother looks between them, affection warming her expression.
“You two haven’t changed at all.
Whenever one of you is unwell, the other immediately forgets about herself.”
Neither girl answers.
Sayuri glances at Aina.
Her friend turns farther toward the flowers, the color in her face deepening.
They enter the house, remove their outdoor shoes, and step up from the entryway in their socks.
The familiar scents of simmering soybean-paste soup and roasted sesame drift from the kitchen.
“Tanaka-san?” Sayuri asks.
Aina’s mother pauses beside the kitchen counter.
“Yes, Sayuri-chan?”
“If it isn’t an imposition, may I stay through the weekend?
I want to make sure Aina has fully recovered before classes resume on Monday.”
Aina’s mother smiles.
“Of course.
You know you’re always welcome here.” Her expression softens.
“And you don’t need to be so formal with me, Sayuri-chan.
You’re already like another daughter.
Please, call me Yoko.”
Sayuri inclines her head.
“Thank you, Yoko-san.”
“Just Yoko.”
“I will try, Yoko-san.”
Aina’s mother suppresses a laugh.
“We’ll work on it.”
Aina, already two steps up the staircase, misses the next one.
She catches the railing and turns around, color spreading rapidly across her face.
“The entire weekend?”
“Yes.”
“You decided this when?”
“Before we reached RAWSON.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“You would have argued.”
“I’m arguing now.”
“It is less effective indoors.”
Yoko covers a smile with one hand.
“Go upstairs, girls.
I’ll finish dinner.”
Aina remains beside the railing.
“You didn’t bring clothes.”
“I’ll manage tonight and retrieve what I need tomorrow.”
“What about Saturday practice?”
Sayuri considers this.
“I suppose I’m missing two days.”
Aina stares at her.
“You don’t skip practice.”
“Apparently, I do.”
“You don’t have to rearrange your entire weekend for me.”
“It is not a sacrifice.” The certainty in Sayuri’s answer leaves no room for debate.
Aina takes another step, then looks back.
“You’re really staying.”
“Yes.
For as long as you need.”
Something unguarded passes over Aina’s face.
She turns toward the railing before Sayuri can understand it, but not quickly enough to hide the helpless curve of her mouth.
“You’re impossible,” Aina murmurs.
“I’m trying not to be.”
A quiet laugh escapes her.
“You really have been paying more attention.”
Sayuri pauses.
“Have I?”
She cannot identify what has changed.
She knows only that leaving Aina tonight feels illogical.
Aina does not answer.
“Come upstairs.”
They walk to Aina’s bedroom at the end of the hallway.
A small wooden nameplate hangs from the door, decorated with a faded, hand-painted strawberry left over from a childhood art project.
“You still have that,” Sayuri says.
Aina glances at the strawberry.
“Mama likes it.”
“I remember.
You tried to convince her to replace it with plain wood.”
“It was more elegant.”
“It looked exactly like mine.”
Aina’s hand stops on the doorknob.
Sayuri studies her reaction.
“That was why you wanted it.”
“It was elegant,” Aina repeats, opening the door before further evidence can be presented.
Amusement loosens Sayuri’s expression.
“Your handwriting was already neater than mine.
You didn’t need to copy my door to prove anything.”
Aina enters without a word, but the color climbing her neck supplies one.
The familiar bedroom receives them with shelves crowded by archery magazines, textbooks, university pamphlets, and photo albums.
On the bed sits a battered white rabbit with one ear drooping stubbornly to the side.
Sayuri walks over and brushes her fingertips across its worn fabric.
“You still have him too.”
Aina collects the rabbit and holds it against her chest.
“I’ve had him forever.”
“You cried for three hours when you thought you lost him at the summer festival.”
“I was eight.”
“He was underneath your blanket.”
Aina’s protest fades.
“I remember.”
“I stayed until you stopped crying.”
Tenderness softens the severity in Sayuri’s face.
In the violet evening light, with the old rabbit held between them, they are only themselves again.
“Dinner’s ready, girls!” Yoko calls from downstairs.
“Come down before it gets cold!”
The familiar voice breaks the moment.
✦ ✦ ✦
The dining table is crowded with steaming bowls of soybean-paste soup, grilled fish, sweet rolled omelet, and freshly cooked rice.
Yoko conceals a smile behind her teacup while the girls carefully avoid meeting each other’s eyes.
“You look exhausted, Aina,” she says.
“You’re still pale.”
“I’m only a little drained.” Aina moves her rice from one side of the bowl to the other without eating any.
“She slept through lunch,” Sayuri adds.
She moves a piece of sweet rolled omelet from her own dish onto Aina’s rice.
Aina looks down at it.
“You always do that.”
“You need the energy.”
Faint color touches Sayuri’s cheeks as she returns to her meal.
After dinner, Yoko sends Aina upstairs to rest while Sayuri remains behind to help clean the kitchen.
Sayuri stands beside the sink, drying the porcelain plates as Yoko washes them.
“She’s calmer tonight,” her mother says.
“When she came home earlier, she looked overwhelmed.”
The dish towel stills between Sayuri’s hands.
“She has a great deal on her mind.”
Yoko passes her another plate.
“Aina has always looked for you first whenever she enters a room.”
Sayuri sets the dried plate on the counter with meticulous care.
The rim touches the surface without making a sound, though her fingers are no longer entirely steady.
“Thank you for staying,” Yoko continues.
She rests a gentle hand on Sayuri’s shoulder.
“I trust you with her, Sayuri-chan.
More than anyone.”
Sayuri lowers her head before emotion can disturb her voice.
“I won’t let anything hurt her,” she says.
“I promise.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Minutes later, the lower-floor bathroom door clicks shut behind Sayuri.
Sayuri turns on the shower and arranges the toiletries beside the sink, but the ordinary routine fails to occupy enough of her attention.
Only then does her disciplined posture loosen.
She touches her lower lip.
“It happened while you weren’t looking.”
Aina’s teasing voice returns more clearly than the sound of running water.
The stumble outside RAWSON.
Her instinctive reach.
Aina looking up at precisely the wrong moment.
The brief contact returns with humiliating accuracy.
It was barely a kiss—only a startled brush of lips—yet Sayuri cannot place it safely among the day’s other events.
Every time she attempts to dismiss it, she remembers Aina stepping half an inch closer afterward.
“Good.
Because I’d hate to think tripping over a curb is what finally catches Sayuri off guard.”
When did she become so bold?
Aina used to catch Sayuri’s sleeve whenever the world became too loud.
Today, she looked directly through every defense Sayuri attempted to raise and teased her for having them.
Sayuri faces the mirror.
Steam gathers along its edges, leaving her flushed reflection clear in the center.
“You are an archer,” she tells herself.
“Control your pulse.
Regulate your breathing.”
Inhale.
Exhale.
Neither instruction helps.
Sayuri turns the shower sharply toward cold.
Water strikes her shoulders hard enough to pull her attention into the present, but the remembered touch remains.
When the heat has finally left her face, she dries off and examines the sleepwear Yoko provided.
Cotton pajama top.
Matching bottoms.
Nothing else.
Sayuri looks toward the school uniform folded on the bathroom stool.
In her haste to follow Aina home, she brought no overnight bag, no fresh underwear, and no spare bra.
The omission is unacceptable.
She puts on the borrowed pajamas, opens the bathroom door a few inches, and calls toward the staircase.
“Aina?” Her voice emerges much smaller than intended.
Aina appears at the upstairs railing.
“Is everything okay?”
“I forgot something.”
“What?”
Sayuri cannot force the words past the opening.
Sayuri gathers the edge of the clean hand towel around her fingers.
“I didn’t bring an overnight bag.”
A brief silence follows.
“Oh,” Aina says.
Sayuri closes her eyes.
“Oh!
You need—”
“Yes.”
“Wait there.
I’ll find something clean.”
Aina returns carrying fresh underclothes folded inside a clean towel.
In her hurry down the stairs, her slipper slides on the final step.
Sayuri catches her around the waist.
Aina’s palm lands high against Sayuri’s chest, just beneath her collarbone.
The thin pajama fabric and their sudden closeness make the position far more intimate than either expected.
Neither moves for one startled second.
Then Aina snatches her hand away.
“I’m sorry!”
Sayuri releases her and pulls the pajama collar into place with excessive precision.
“You nearly fell.”
“This is becoming a pattern,” Aina says.
“An unacceptable one.”
“My entire body is still under review?”
“More than ever.”
Aina regains her footing and holds out the folded towel without meeting Sayuri’s eyes.
“These are clean.
The underwear is from an unopened package, and the camisole should fit.”
“Thank you.”
Their fingers touch during the exchange, renewing the awkward silence.
Aina retreats toward the bathroom.
“I’m going to shower now.”
She slips past Sayuri and disappears into the bathroom.
The door closes with unusual speed.
Left alone in the hallway, Sayuri looks down at the neatly folded garments in her hands.
Cold water, apparently, has solved nothing.
Once upstairs, Sayuri changes into the fresh underclothes Aina brought her, then folds the borrowed pajamas back into place.
She smooths her damp hair and squares her shoulders, trying to restore the order that cold water failed to provide.
Sitting on the bed is impossible.
Sayuri lowers herself to the floor beside Aina’s study desk and opens her school bag.
She takes out the notes from the afternoon classes Aina missed and begins producing a clean copy for her.
Dates in the left margin.
Formulas aligned.
Important terms underlined once.
The work gives her hands rules to follow, even if her thoughts refuse to obey them.
✦ ✦ ✦
Inside the fogged bathroom, hot water pours over Aina’s shoulders but does nothing to remove the unease gathering beneath her skin.
She shuts off the shower, wraps herself in a towel, and wipes a clear patch across the mirror.
When she raises one arm to dry her hair, a dark mark along her right ribs appears in the reflection.
Aina keeps her arm lifted.
A jagged scar mars the skin where the phantom wound opened inside the dojo.
The tissue is puckered and discolored, as though the injury healed years ago instead of appearing overnight.
A second, fainter mark crosses the skin beneath the first.
A third lies adjacent to them, narrower and paler, as though several wounds from different lives healed across the same part of her right abdomen.
Three marks.
Different angles.
No redness around their edges, no recent bruising, and no injuries in her own medical history that could explain them.
She touches the first.
Pain answers from beneath her ribs—the same place Towa had been wounded beneath the falling ash.
Aina withdraws her hand.
If these are only nightmares, they cannot leave scars.
If they are memories, the scars should not belong to this body.
Are these where they died?
The thought turns colder.
Or where I did?
“No,” she whispers.
Aina soaps a washcloth and rubs the first mark.
When nothing changes, she presses harder.
Her surrounding skin reddens, but the scar remains exactly as it was.
She stops before she injures herself.
The three marks remain in the mirror, as though her skin remembers bodies she cannot prove were ever hers.
If Sayuri sees them, she will take them as evidence of another promise she failed to keep.
She will search for some way to protect Aina from wounds that appeared centuries—or perhaps only hours—before either of them understood what was happening.
Aina cannot place that burden on her tonight.
She dresses quickly, ensuring every mark is covered.
Then she studies the bathroom instead of her reflection.
She fixes instead on the blue tiles across the sink, the low hum of the ventilation fan, and the citrus of shampoo lingering in the steam.
Present details.
Verifiable details.
Only after the room feels solid again does Aina smooth her damp hair and arrange her face into something calm enough to carry upstairs.
✦ ✦ ✦
Twenty minutes later, the bedroom door opens.
Aina enters with damp hair wrapped in a towel and a small wooden tray balanced between her hands.
“I brought water,” she says, placing the tray on the low table.
She keeps her expression composed, grateful that Sayuri is studying the page rather than the slight movement in her hands.
“Thank you.” Sayuri finishes the line she is writing.
“I copied the assignments you missed this afternoon.”
Aina sits across from her and draws her knees close.
“Those used to be my favorite pajamas.
I didn’t realize how much I had outgrown them until I saw the sleeves fit you.”
Sayuri’s pen stops.
“I am a perfectly normal height.”
“I have an entire inch on you.”
“You mentioned that already.”
“It remains true.” Aina’s teasing softens.
“You really came here without planning any of this, didn’t you?”
“I planned.”
“You forgot pajamas.”
Sayuri aligns the bottom edges of the notes.
“An oversight.”
“And an overnight bag.”
“A separate oversight.”
“So you planned everything except the things required to stay overnight.”
Sayuri directs her attention toward the desk leg.
“I planned the important part.”
Aina’s amusement fades into something gentler.
“Making sure I got home?”
“Yes.”
The simple answer leaves her quiet.
Sayuri clears her throat and returns to the safer subject of borrowed clothing.
“The pajamas fit adequately.
The camisole did not, so I left it folded in the drawer.”
“I thought it might be the wrong size.” Color reaches Aina’s cheeks.
“I can find another one.”
“That is unnecessary.
I can retrieve my belongings tomorrow.”
“Right.”
Silence settles over the low table.
Sayuri turns a notebook page with excessive care.
“We should focus on the schoolwork.”
Aina looks at the immaculate notes waiting in front of her.
“You rewrote all of this while I was showering?”
“You missed the afternoon lessons.”
“I was present for Mathematics II.”
“You were asleep in the infirmary.”
“Physically, yes.”
“That is generally the relevant form of presence.”
Aina lifts the first page, unable to suppress her smile.
“Thank you.”
Sayuri lowers her pen to the next line.
“You can thank me by learning it.”
For the next fifteen minutes, only the steady movement of their pens disturbs the room.
At last, Sayuri caps hers and closes the notebook.
“That is enough for tonight.
You need to rest.”
“Right.” Aina stands too quickly and reaches toward the closet.
“I’ll get the extra floor mattress—”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Aina turns.
“What?”
“I will sleep in the bed with you.”
Sayuri delivers the decision with the same certainty she uses on the shooting line.
“W-wait.
In the bed?”
“If another fragment begins while you’re asleep, I need to know immediately.” Sayuri pulls back one side of the comforter.
“I cannot monitor your condition properly from the floor.”
“I’m feeling much better.”
“Aina.”
The single word ends the argument.
Her shoulders lower.
“…Okay.”
Sayuri switches off the main light, leaving only the bedside lamp.
They climb beneath the comforter and settle on opposite sides of the bed.
Aina faces the wall with the blanket drawn beneath her chin.
In the quiet, she begins counting the seconds between Sayuri’s breaths.
Beside her, Sayuri lies flat on her back with her hands arranged neatly over her stomach.
She keeps so still that every minor shift of the mattress feels magnified.
The bedside lamp clicks off.
Pale winter light rests across the room.
✦ ✦ ✦
Earlier that evening, a key turns inside the lock of Suite 307.
Click.
Saki opens the door and enters.
The common room greets him with silence.
A folded sheet of paper waits in the exact center of the dining table.
He sets down his bag, approaches the table, and unfolds the note.
I’ll be away through Sunday evening.
Please make yourself comfortable until I return.
—S.S.
Saki reads it twice.
“S.S.,” he murmurs.
The initials appear on his own belongings too, but another name now rises beside them: the girl outside RAWSON who mentioned a roommate she had never met.
“Suzuki Sayuri.”
An incredulous smile touches his mouth.
“So… you’re my roommate.”
He folds the note along its original crease and returns it to precisely the same place on the table.
“I hope your friend gets better soon,” he murmurs to the empty room.
Then he begins unpacking his belongings as the last twilight fades from the windows.