When it came to the inland base exploration, Gin Toudou sought out Shirase Kobuchizawa and personally asked her to join the team. Shirase hesitated — but in the end, with Tamaki Mari and the others gently pressing her, she steadied herself, made up her mind, and agreed to go.
She was going to reach the last place her mother had ever been. She was going to see, with her own eyes, everything her mother had seen.
Takako Kobuchizawa — traveling under her alias, Ms. Ozawa — was naturally part of the exploration party as well, alongside Jhin. During a rest break, she stood watching her daughter laughing and tumbling around in the snow with her friends, and the emotion hit her so hard she began to breathe in sharp, ragged bursts. The dry, blade-sharp polar wind rushed into her lungs and forced the feeling back down, steadying her whether she wanted it to or not.
Jhin stood at her side and said quietly, "Ms. Ozawa — don't go and blow your cover right before the finish line."
"I know, I know, Jhin," she said. "It's just — knowing we're getting closer to that place... I can't help it."
"Watching your daughter grow up right in front of your eyes this whole journey — that must have been quite the surprise for you, too."
"It really has been..." Takako Kobuchizawa's heart was full to the brim with gratitude toward Jhin and Nymph. Without them, she would never have had the chance to watch over her daughter from the shadows — alive. She let out a soft, wistful laugh. "You know, if you didn't already have a girlfriend, I'd want Shirase to marry you."
"Ahem — Ms. Ozawa, I really think it's better if you don't go down that road. Knowing Shirase's personality, she'd probably assume I had pressured you into saying something like that. She might actually try to fight me."
"Ha. What a shame, then."
The snowcat ground forward on its steel treads, pressing deep tracks into the white expanse — tracks that the falling snow would erase within the hour. Midway through the planned route, the radio inside the cabin crackled with a warning from the research base: the wind was about to pick up significantly. The snowcat had no choice but to halt and wait out the storm.
That night, Takako Kobuchizawa lay awake watching the snowflakes streak past the window like thrown knives, impossibly fast in the dark.
That day... the weather was something like this, wasn't it. Looking back now — God, I was such an idiot.
After a night of waiting and rest, the snowcat set off again. By the afternoon of the second day out from the base, it delivered them to the inland base — battered and half-swallowed by years of wind and snow. Shirase Kobuchizawa climbed down from the vehicle with unsteady steps. She stood and stared at the crumbling ruins of the facility. Something in the wreckage — the broken walls, the scattered debris, the whole mute testimony of the place — told her exactly what the team had felt when they had fled. The pain. The confusion. The grief.
And yet, standing there, Shirase felt almost nothing.
No elation at having finally arrived. No sorrow. Just a hollow, weightless stillness, her feet rooted to the spot while her eyes stared forward at nothing in particular.
I've reached the end of this journey. But... what now?
Mom is never coming back.
"This isn't right!" Tamaki Mari couldn't bear to watch her friend standing there, expressionless and empty. She grabbed Shiraishi Yuzuki and Miyake Hinata, marched straight to Gin Toudou to ask where things used to be stored inside the old base, then snatched up an oil lamp and charged in without a second thought.
"Mari!" Shirase Kobuchizawa jolted out of her stupor and scrambled after them.
"Captain Toudou — Ms. Ozawa and I will follow them and make sure they stay safe."
"Please. Thank you, both of you."
Tamaki Mari held the oil lamp aloft and led the other two through the dim interior of the base, rummaging through everything they could find.
"Mari, Hinata, Yuzuki — just leave it," Shirase called from behind them, her voice strained. "It's been three years. How could there possibly be anything of Mom's left here?"
"You don't know that!"
"Exactly — think about it the other way: no one's been here in three years. Nobody would have moved anything."
"Don't give up yet."
The three of them split up at a junction in the corridor, pressing on through the dimness, the single oil lamp casting a small, trembling circle of amber light as they dug through the clutter.
"Mari!"
Shiraishi Yuzuki's cry — bright with shock and disbelief — made Tamaki Mari drop what she was holding and sprint toward the sound, Miyake Hinata right at her heels.
Shiraishi Yuzuki's hands were trembling. Her eyes were red. She was cradling a laptop computer blanketed in snow, and as she brushed the frost away from its surface, a photograph emerged from beneath — a mother and daughter, cheek to cheek, smiling.
The three of them turned together toward Shirase Kobuchizawa, warm, relieved smiles on every face. They had found it. Something Takako Kobuchizawa had left behind.
Shirase stepped toward them slowly. Before she could reach out to take the laptop, a hand came from behind her and lifted it first.
"It really has been three years, hasn't it..."
The voice was familiar and utterly impossible. Shirase spun around so fast she nearly stumbled. The tears came before she could stop them.
"...Mom?"
Takako Kobuchizawa — her Anti-Cognition System disengaged at last — stood there holding the laptop and opened her arms wide. Her own tears were already streaming freely.
"Shirase. I'm so sorry. And — I'm home."
"Sh-sh-sh-she — she—" Tamaki Mari went white as a sheet and instantly flung her arms around the other two, all three of them clinging together in pure, animal terror. "Th-th-that's not — that is not Shirase's mom's ghost, right?!"
"Rest easy, all of you — that is one hundred percent the genuine, original Takako Kobuchizawa, in the flesh."
Jhin strolled in from behind, applauding slowly, a quiet smile on his face as he took in the sight of the reunion.
"Kobuchizawa-san," he said, "as for the final reward at the end of this Antarctic journey — are you satisfied?"
"!!!"
The combined shriek from the three of them nearly blew the ceiling off. It was simply too far outside the bounds of anything their brains could process.
Once the storm of emotions had finally settled, Jhin sat down with them and explained everything that had happened to Takako Kobuchizawa — including the three years she had spent living under a false name, quietly watching over her daughter from nearby.
Shirase Kobuchizawa's voice came out raw and hoarse as she turned to Jhin and bowed — a full, deep ninety-degree bow.
"Thank you. Thank you so, so much."
"Of course. Though — please, all of you, be careful not to let any of this slip out. I'd rather not end up as the subject of tabloid headlines."
The joke landed lightly, lifting just enough of the weight from the air.
"We'll be careful," Takako Kobuchizawa said, pulling her daughter close and nodding with quiet gravity.
"Kobuchizawa-san," Jhin asked, "do you hold it against me — that your mother vanished from your life for three years because of me?"
"How could I? If it weren't for you, Mom would be gone from my life forever."
"Then let's go back out and give Captain Toudou a little surprise, shall we?"
"Yeah."
The group made their way back to the rest of the exploration party, trailing warmth and barely-suppressed joy behind them. Gin Toudou and Kanae Maekawa were fussing over an astronomical telescope when the sound of approaching footsteps drew them around.
"Hey. Gin. Kanae."
Takako Kobuchizawa raised her hand in greeting — exactly the way she always used to, as if no time had passed at all.
Kanae Maekawa's brow furrowed so hard it nearly folded her face in half. She scrubbed at her eyes with both fists. The "vision" of Takako Kobuchizawa before her refused to disappear — and then it walked forward and patted her on the shoulder.
"Hey... Gin," Kanae said slowly, nudging Gin Toudou, "am I still dreaming?"
There was no answer. The moment she touched Gin Toudou, the woman tipped like a plank of wood and went down — she had been rigid with shock from the first instant, and she had simply fainted on the spot.
"Gin! Are you alright?!"
Takako Kobuchizawa lunged forward and caught Gin Toudou before she could hit the ground. The tears she had thought were spent began threatening to fall again.
And with that, the inland base exploration was declared complete.
By unanimous agreement between Gin Toudou and Kanae Maekawa — once Gin had been revived and the three of them had held each other and cried themselves out — Takako Kobuchizawa accepted the Anti-Cognition System device from Jhin once more, resumed her identity as Ms. Ozawa, and returned to the research base with the rest of the team.
Only a few days remained before the expedition would come to its end.
____
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