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It had been chilly that morning, or so her mom had said. There was no way for Mizuki to know if that was true. At that time, she had been drifting somewhere between awake and asleep, always chased by nightmares of that rooftop, that face. Ena.
Certainly, the afternoon was not chilly, but she’d brought the sweater her mom had shoved into her arms on her way out the door for when the temperature would surely plummet come sundown. She wasn’t sure if she cared enough to wear it.
The weather had not quite caught up to the changing of the leaves; this sort of heat was abnormal for late October, at least according to the newscaster whose voice had echoed up into Mizuki’s room. She had been awake then, or maybe not. She could’ve dreamt it.
At an intersection, she passed by a stout maple, its leaves a brilliant red. They were as ephemeral as the cherry blossoms in the spring, soon to flutter down to the pavement dry and dead. It was so unfair. The very thought of seeing the cherry blossoms in half a year made her stomach clench and she had to stop under an awning, gripping her arms hard enough for the pain to stop herself from gagging. Maybe she would never see them again. Her world had ended, and Mizuki was on her way to work.
Her place of work was a boutique: an excellent Akiyama family find. It sat just down a quiet street from her sister’s favorite fabric store, and Yuuki herself had worked there in her own high school days. It specialized in Miuzki’s favorite fashion styles, and best of all, it was far out of the way from Kamiyama High. She had never once seen anyone from her school visit it, only ever being recognized by a few of her sister’s old friends. Mizuki never brought anyone she knew there. No one from her music circle. Not even Ena.
Mizuki was grateful she was restocking the shelves as her mind wandered to those forbidden places so she only shared her grimace with a mannequin. Its blank plastic face stared back impartially. The sob that followed, she was able to stifle under the soft din of the store. It was a good thing she was kneeling, because her legs would surely have given out. Already, they felt ice cold and weak. What a pain. Would thinking of them—of her—ever stop hurting like a spear driven between her ribs?
The afternoon shift dragged by at an agonizing pace. Each minute felt longer than an entire day of school—one of the bad ones too. The twin aches in her chest and gut had refused to entirely abate, always reminding Mizuki of their presence. She could no longer remember life without them. She could only think back on the before as time slipping through her fingers, playing around with false hope before the inevitable collapse.
Surely, she was scaring customers: her voice too shrill, her smile too false. Mizuki didn’t know how much longer she could take it. Everything she ever loved was poison, killing her from within. Maybe she should just quit. Or stop showing up—that would be better. Then, she wouldn’t have to explain herself.
Just thirty more minutes until it was over. Her feet ached as she stood at the register. What would she do when she got home? Watch an anime? Maybe, but the one she had started was agonizingly poor-paced. Besides, she never dared watch for too long, lest someone from Sekai attempt to contact her. She was pretty sure MEIKO had already tried on several occasions. More likely than not, she would just curl up under her covers and doze until sleep claimed her.
Jing-a-ling!
Somebody stepped into the store with all the hesitance of a first-time shopper. On instinct, Mizuki straightened up; a part of her still wanted to survey the newcomer, figure out how best to help them, like a puzzle. She was short, with brilliant pink hair and blue-jean overalls over a buttery yellow t-shirt. Mizuki’s heart clenched, a chill settling within the aorta, the atria and ventricles freezing over. She recognized that girl.
Ootori Emu surveyed the boutique with unrestrained enthusiasm and as she spotted Mizuki behind the counter, her already beaming smile only grew larger. An inevitability.
The first time Mizuki had learned that the sun would one day expand and consume the Earth in its fire, she had been devastated; it didn’t matter that such an event lay several billion years within the future. This feeling was worse.
Waving frantically, Emu sauntered towards her with a bounce in every step which only she could achieve. As she drew nearer, Mizuki desperately forced a smile, trying to remember how the before-Mizuki would have acted.
“Ohmygosh, hi Mizuki-chan! I didn’t realize you–” Emu’s voice, punctuated at every word with an exclamation mark and at every second word with an additional smiley-face and sparkle, died mid-sentence. A series of emotions crossed her face in quick succession: surprise, confusion, fear, before settling on a big frown. “Mizuki-chan…”
Even with her heart pounding in her ear, thrusting against the icicle spear embedded right beside it, Mizuki hated that frown, so unbelonging on someone like Emu.
“H-hey, Emu-chan!” She thought she had the right timbre, that she sounded truly excited to see her. Mizuki widened her smile to match, forcing down the sharp bile rising in her throat.
“Eep!” Emu flinched back so violently that she almost ran into a mannequin behind her. Her face turned pale enough to be mistaken for a ghost. “W-w-what’s the m-matter?” she stammered.
All Mizuki could manage was a “Huh?” Anything more she could’ve said was lost as her throat dried out like a desert. She felt faint: uncomfortably hot and dizzy. Was she still smiling? Emu knew something was the matter; if she kept prying, she might find out what had happened. An image of an umber sunset flashed through Mizuki’s mind. If she grew worried enough, she might tell Rui, and— And she knew Mafuyu and Ena, too!
Mizuki forced herself to plant her feet, forced words out through her clogged throat, putting on her best impersonation of Akiyama Mizuki. Anything to convince Emu that nothing was wrong.
“Huh? Haha, no, I’m a-okay. Maybe I didn’t get enough sleep last night, but other than that, I’m just dandy! Haha.” Her eyes finally flitted to Emu to see if it was working.
Emu blinked. “Oh. Um, okay.” Her voice had risen to become as tinny as the ringing in Mizuki’s ears. She smiled, but it looked more like a grimace. “Well, then have a wonderhoy day Mizuki.” She took a step back, then another, and with a final glance at Mizuki, Emu scampered back out the door. It jingled, then shut. Through the windows, Mizuki saw a flash of pink and she was gone.
Shoulders hunching immediately downwards, Mizuki wanted nothing more than to collapse, maybe cry—though she knew the tears would never, ever come—but, feeling another set of eyes on her back, she straightened up. From the door to the back room, her manager was eyeing her, sporting her own worried frown. Had she seen the way Mizuki had scared away yet another customer?
“Are you feeling alright, Akiyama-san? I can take over on the register if you feel up to finishing taking stock of this new delivery.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Mizuki winced. “I’d appreciate that. Thanks, Inuzuka-san.”
She took the clipboard handed to her and slipped into the dim light of the back room, shooting the most vacant nod to her manager. As the door shut behind her, Mizuki stumbled not to the boxes of new stock for the boutique, but into the small restroom at the back of the building. She shut and locked the door behind her, then knelt, forehead resting against the cold toilet seat as if in prayer, fighting against the roiling clenching of her stomach. She would give herself two minutes to stop shaking from the encounter, to stop from desperately wanting to run out the back door and away from everything. Two minutes, starting now.
The moment her shift ended, Mizuki was out the door, hardly hearing her manager telling her to get home safely. The sun was beginning to set, but the promised chill had not yet set in. Agonizing memories of her time with Nightcord, which had plagued her all day, had been replaced by an incessant drone, buzzing in her ears and behind her molar teeth. She wasn’t sure yet which she preferred. Still, despite the grey muting all the colors around her: the blue of the sky, the blinding yellow and red of a fast food restaurant across the street; despite the numbness which had fallen over her entire body that followed with it, the pain in her chest was as sharp as ever. It stabbed deeper with every breath she took.
Somehow, that grey also failed to steal the vibrancy of the flashing pink that materialized in her path.
“Mizuki-chan!” Emu clasped her arm in a steel-like grip before she could even react. Mizuki just about jumped out of her skin, with a yelp to match.
She was struggling, trying to force her arm out of Emu’s grip before she was even sure what was happening. Her small hands only tightened their hold, bordering on painful. Her palms were warm, soft, human. Maybe that was what kept Mizuki from falling into senseless panic.
Emu, with all her determination clearly displayed on her face: eyebrows arched down at steep angles, teeth clenched and jaw set, began to pull her along with surprising strength for such a short girl. After a brief and silent battle of wills, Mizuki gave up on bothering to resist—people were starting to stare—and let herself be pulled along towards a nearby park.
As it turned out, the park was the very one she had always loved to visit in the past; the very one where she and Kanade had found the carnations. Though the beds were fallow for the winter, Mizuki had a flash of recollection to a warmer, hopeful spring. She could do nothing to hold in the groaning sigh which passed through her lips, the same as she couldn’t stop her legs from turning to gelatin, dragging her down towards the ground. Emu, seeming to recognize that she was about to keel over, led her to a nearby bench and sat her down.
Mizuki immediately buried her face in her hands, setting her elbows on her knees, which she pressed together until it hurt. Hunching over as she let the air out of her lungs, she peered through her fingers at the sidewalk beneath her loafers. Perhaps if she sat very, very still and didn’t make eye contact, Emu would forget that she was there and leave her be. Anything was possible.
She could lie down in the grass and turn to soil with the worms, forgotten by everyone. She was so tired; exhaustion razed every cell in her body like plague. She didn’t flinch even when Emu sat down beside her, close enough that Mizuki could feel the heat of her body. She had fallen too deep into her own mind.
Ena was gone. Nightcord was gone. She was certain that the girl beside her would be gone before long as well.
It had to have been minutes, but it felt like hours. In her peripheral vision, Mizuki caught bright pink eyes patiently lingering on her. She tried to stay as still as she possibly could, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from stealing a glance, checking what expression lay on Emu’s face. A cruel part of her hoped it would be disgust.
It was not, but rather a sad sort of worry, like one would make when visiting a grieving friend.
The memory of her final moments with Ena, the ones she’d desperately been running from, flashed through her mind with the force of a freight train. Those eyes, gleaming in the sunset and blown out with shock; that slightly-parted mouth.
Mizuki was up before she even realized why, her legs moving half on instinct to hurtle her towards the public restroom at the nearby entrance of the park. The door was flung open and she was inside, hanging her head over the toilet. The door hit its frame once with a loud clatter and swung open again.
The initial gagging was the worst part: the hacking from deep within her throat as her body tried to heave her stomach out through her mouth, while she could only hang her head in defeat. Once it started, it was not much better; there was nothing she could do but let everything out in one mortifying flood. Tears streaming down her cheeks, Mizuki slowly shut her mouth, shuddering at the acrid taste still strong on her tongue. She could not bear to open her eyes.
Slowly, very slowly with her head still swimming, the rest of the world returned to Mizuki. She felt a steady pressure on the small of her back.
“Is that everything out?” It was said with such care, but Mizuki still flinched as if shocked. To her despair, everything was not out, although this time it was much less: nothing but acidic bile. Mizuki sobbed, half in embarrassment. The back of her throat burned like it had been flayed.
Emu’s other hand found its way to her upper arm: an awkward half-hug in the cramped bathroom stall. Mizuki slowly sat back, kneeling, and Emu’s hand left her arm for just a moment to flush the toilet. As it gurgled, she finally opened her eyes. Emu was right there, the emotion in her eyes just like how her sister’s had been so often during those horrible junior high days.
“Mizuki-chan… Did something happen?”
Mizuki hesitated for a moment, then slowly nodded. Her eyes burned, but no new tears slipped out.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Just like the previous question, this one lingered in the air. Mizuki wanted to. She wanted to tell Emu everything, like a confession, but fear twisted her guts and held her tongue. She shook her head then, still wincing under Emu’s deepening frown, croaked, “No…”
Emu’s quiet “Oh,” reminded Mizuki painfully of Miku whenever she found out one of them was feeling down. Albeit for different reasons entirely, she didn’t want to disappoint either of them.
Without any warning, Emu’s hands left her arm and her back. They snuck down and clasped her hand, pulling her away from the toilet and her shame, forcing Mizuki to face her. No matter how much she longed to look away, Mizuki found that she could not escape the sudden fierce determination in Emu’s eyes.
“Mizuki-chan, I don’t know what you are going through, but if you aren’t smiling by the next time I see you, I’ll…” Emu paused to think for a moment. “I guess I’ll have to bring you back to feeling all sparkly myself!”
“I–I…” For the first time in several days, something other than despair was blossoming in Mizuki’s chest. A meek little voice wondered if, somehow, this wasn’t the end.
“I’ll try my best, Emu-chan.”