I didn’t sleep.
I lay on the cot with the phone face-down on my chest, watching the ceiling go from black to gray to the color of old dishwater. At 4 a.m., I wrote three different texts to Mio and deleted them all. At 5, I almost called Jin. At 6, my mother woke up, looked at me, and said, “You look worse than I do.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Ren.”
“I’m fine.”
She gave me the look. The one she’d perfected over nineteen years. I’m a woman with a stitched-up heart and a dead husband’s debts, and I can still see through you in the dark.
“Go get some air,” she said.
I went.
The roof of Teito University Hospital is a flat, windswept stretch of gravel with a few dying planters and a view of the whole city. At 7:15 on a Friday morning, it was deserted. Pale light washed over the rooftops. A pigeon watched me from a vent.
I sat on a bench. I stared at my shoes.
At 7:40, the stairwell door opened.
Mio stood there with a paper bag in her hands, scarf pulled up to her chin, hair mussed by the wind. She’d obviously come straight from the dorm. She looked tired. She looked tender. She looked so much like the girl who’d held my hand on a curb outside a convenience store that for a second I forgot why I was angry.
“Hey,” she said. “I brought breakfast. Onigiri. Salmon, I think. And the weird pickled plum one you like, even though it’s disgusting.”
“It’s not disgusting.”
“It’s a crime.” She sat beside me and held out the bag. “Did you sleep?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“Why not?”
She hesitated. For half a second, so briefly I almost missed it. “Studying.”
There.
It was a tiny thing. A catch in the breath. A flicker in the eyes. But I’d spent three years learning every tell in my own face, and I knew it the way you know your own handwriting.
“Mio,” I said quietly.
“Mm?”
“What did you and Reina talk about on Tuesday?”
She went white.
Not pale. White, all at once, the color draining from her face like water down a sink. The paper bag slid out of her hands and landed on the gravel with a soft thump.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
“How do you know about that?”
“She texted me.”
“She what?”
“Last night. At one in the morning. She said to ask you.” I kept my voice low and even. It took everything I had. “I’m asking.”
Mio stared at the bag on the ground. Her hands were shaking.
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“After Friday.”
“Why after Friday?”
“Because...” Her voice cracked. “Because you had so much going on. Your mom, and Jin, and the announcement, and I didn’t want to, to pile it on, I thought...”
“You thought you’d handle it yourself.”
“I thought I’d protect you.”
The word hit me like a slap.
Protect. The thing I’d done for three years. The thing I’d told myself was love every single time I’d lied to my mother about the bruises.
“Tell me,” I said.
She told me.
All of it. The observatory. The pudding. The tea. The way Reina had said Shun like she was reading it off a page. The line, the thing holding the other end, the idea that memories didn’t vanish, they went somewhere. The request.
Ren’s phone. One minute. On Saturday.
When she finished, there was a long, ugly silence.
“You kept the card,” I said.
“Yes.”
“For three days.”
“I...”
“You had it in your pocket when you held my hand outside the 7-Eleven.”
“Ren.”
“You smiled at me with it in your pocket.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Isn’t it?” My voice cracked. I hadn’t meant to raise it. “I told you everything. Everything. I came back from Reina’s house and told you about the vessel offer in ten minutes. I told you I was scared. I told you I’d never use you. And you looked me in the eye and promised, ‘No editing.’ And then you edited.”
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“I was going to tell you!”
“When it was convenient?”
“When it was safe!” She was on her feet now. Tears glittered in her eyes. “You don’t understand! You’d have told Jin, and Jin would have said it’s a trap, and you would have agreed, because you’re careful, and you’re scared, and you’d have decided what I could and couldn’t do. For my own good. And then Shun would stay gone forever.”
“Because it is a trap!”
“Maybe!”
“It’s Reina! She’d lie to the sun!”
“Maybe it’s a trap,” Mio said, her voice shaking, “and maybe it’s the only chance I’ll ever have. And I’d like to be the one who decides that.”
I opened my mouth.
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
Because she was right. She was completely, horribly right. I would have said no. I’d have said it’s too dangerous, and we’ll find another way, and let me handle it, and I’d have meant every word as love. And she’d have been standing in front of me with a hole in her chest the shape of her brother, and I’d have been the one telling her she wasn’t allowed to look.
I’m doing it again.
I’m being my father’s son. I’m making the decision for someone I’m supposed to trust.
But the anger was still there, hot and bright and stupid, because I was scared, so scared, that she’d walked out of that dome and into the fire without telling me, and I’d never even know.
“You’d have gone behind my back,” I said. Quieter now. Rawer. “You’d have taken my phone. You’d have let Reina read it. And I’d never have known.”
“I wouldn’t have.”
“You said you were thinking about it.”
“Thinking. I didn’t do it.”
“But you would have.”
“I don’t know!” She was crying openly now. “I don’t know, Ren! I’ve been alone with this for three years! I’ve been carrying him in a notebook, and somebody finally walked up and said, ‘He might still be out there,’ and you want me to just say no? You want me to be reasonable? You, of all people?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you don’t get to be angry.”
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t get to.” She wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You don’t get to stand there and say I betrayed you. You don’t get to talk about trust. Because you’re the one who forgot me.”
The words rang across the empty roof like a gunshot.
I felt the blood leave my face.
Mio’s hand flew to her mouth.
“Oh my God,” she whispered. “Oh God. Ren. I didn’t, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean...”
“No.”
“I didn’t mean it...”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“It’s true.” My voice was strange and flat. Hollow. “It’s exactly true. You’re right. I did forget you. I looked you in the eye in a cafeteria and told you I didn’t have a favorite constellation. I made you carry all of this alone. You’re right. I have no right.”
“Ren, please.”
“I’m not mad,” I said, and it was the cruelest lie I’d ever told her. “I just need a minute.”
I stood up.
“Don’t,” she said. “Please. Don’t walk away. Not like this.”
“I’m not walking away.”
“You are.”
“I’m breathing,” I said, and I heard how it sounded, how cold, how small, how exactly like my father in the doorway of our old apartment with a suitcase in his hand. “I just need to breathe, Mio. I’ll be back.”
I walked toward the stairwell door.
“Ren.”
I stopped. I didn’t turn around.
“I’m sorry,” she said, in a voice so small it barely carried across the wind. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.”
I opened the door and left her standing alone on a roof in the dawn, with a bag of cold onigiri at her feet.
I hated myself for the rest of the day.
I tutored Daichi on autopilot. He asked me why I looked like a sad ghost. I said it was allergies. He said, “It’s October, Onii-san. There’s no pollen,” and I said, “Do your fractions.”
At noon, I found Takumi in the courtyard, sitting under the ginkgo tree with a melon bread and a stack of lecture notes. He took one look at me and set down the bread.
“Who died?”
“Nobody.”
“Then what?”
I told him.
Not all of it. The app was still a stone I couldn’t hand him. But I told him about Reina, and the card, and the rooftop. I told him what Mio had said, and what I’d said back.
Takumi listened with his arms folded and his brows furrowed like a man reviewing a very sad legal contract.
When I finished, he sighed.
“You’re both idiots.”
“Thanks.”
“I mean it.” He picked up his melon bread. “You’re two people who communicate exclusively through meaningful silences and brooding stares. It’s like watching two cats try to share a sandwich.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“I’m not done.” He took a bite. Chewed. Swallowed. “She hid something because she was scared. You got mad because you were scared. Neither of you did anything evil. You’re just both really, really bad at saying the actual words.”
“What actual words?”
“I’m afraid.” He shrugged. “I’m afraid I’ll lose you. Those ones.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
“And, for the record,” Takumi added, “she didn’t use the card. She told you. Eventually. After being pushed. That’s, like, forty percent better than you.”
“Forty percent?”
“I did the math.”
I sat there, staring at the grass, as the words slowly sank in.
I’m afraid I’ll lose you.
“I’m going to fix it,” I said.
“Good.”
“I’m going to apologize.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to say it all, the actual words, I’m going to...”
My phone buzzed.
Mio: Observatory. 8 tonight.Mio: I’ll tell you everything. I won’t leave anything out.Mio: Please come.
My heart did a ridiculous, hopeful backflip.
Me: I’ll be there.Me: And MioMe: I’m sorry too
There was no reply.
I stared at the screen until Takumi plucked the phone out of my hand, read it, and handed it back with a satisfied nod.
“There,” he said. “Now eat your lunch.”
At 7:50 p.m., I climbed the stairs to the roof of Building 7.
The sky was violet. The first stars were pricking through. The air smelled of rain and cold concrete. I had a speech ready, a real speech, with actual words, not a single one of them I’m fine.
I opened the door to the dome.
“Mio?”
Silence.
The brass telescope stood in its usual place, aimed at a patch of empty sky. A single stool sat beside it. On the stool was a cup of pudding. Caramel. Unopened. A little plastic spoon stuck out of the lid.
Beside the pudding lay a folded sheet of paper.
My stomach dropped.
I picked it up with shaking hands and read it.
Ren,
I’m sorry. You were right. I wasn’t ready to say it out loud, so I’m writing it instead.
I can’t ask you to let me go to her. I know what you’d say. And you’d be right, and I’d go anyway, so let me do the one honest thing and not make you stop me.
I need to look her in the eye. I need to know whether she’s lying. It’s my brother. Please let me do this part.
Don’t follow me.
Eat the pudding. It’s a day that deserves it.
— M.
The paper crumpled in my fist.
No. No. No, no, no, no.
I turned. The cream-colored card was gone from the corner of the stool where I’d imagined it. The star-shaped keychain she always carried was nowhere to be seen. The notebook was gone.
My phone rang.
I answered it before the first ring finished.
“Ren.” Jin’s voice was low and clipped and utterly without inflection. “Where are you?”
“The observatory. Mio’s gone, she left a note, she’s...”
“At my family’s estate.”
The roof tilted under my feet.
“What?”
“Tsukishiro Mio entered the east gate of the Kurose estate at 7:12 p.m.” A short pause. “My security cameras flagged her. She walked in on her own. Alone. Reina met her at the door.”
I was already running.
“I’m sending a car,” said Jin. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Too late,” I said, and hung up, and took the stairs three at a time.