"Should I keep going?"
Yukinoshita Shizuku asked again, out of nowhere.
Mrs. Yukinoshita put on that expression again — the one that said you really are still too young — and replied.
"Then you force the issue — cook the rice until it can't be uncooked!"
"Ah! But you just said that approach was too hasty!"
Shizuku stared at her mother in shock.
"That was those brazen hussies rushing things from the very start."
"I had already laid a solid foundation."
"By that point, even if he still hadn't caught on — forcing the issue would still work. He'd have no choice but to go along with it, however reluctantly!"
"The key is reading the situation and the timing."
"When it calls for patience, you take it slow. When it's time to act, you don't hesitate."
"So, Shizuku — do you understand now?"
Mrs. Yukinoshita finished speaking and looked over at Yukinoshita Shizuku with a fond, indulgent smile.
---
The next morning, Tsushima Kagami woke up, yawning, and made his way downstairs from his room on the upper floor.
When he arrived in the living room, he found Yukinoshita Shizuku already at the kitchen counter, making breakfast.
"Morning, Shizuku."
"Morning."
Kagami exchanged greetings with Shizuku, then stepped into the bathroom to wash up. By the time he emerged, feeling marginally more human, he settled into his seat at the dining table.
Shizuku carried over the sandwiches she'd just finished making and set a plate in front of him. She took her own plate and sat down across from him, beginning to eat.
Kagami picked up his sandwich and took a bite, then asked.
"Where's Mother?"
"She went back to the office early this morning."
"Oh — she also said she won't be seeing us off this afternoon. We're to head back to Tokyo on our own."
"Finish eating and then go pack your things."
"Right, sure."
Kagami nodded, finished the sandwich in his hand, wiped his mouth and fingers with the napkin beside him, and was just about to push his chair back and head upstairs — when he finally noticed it.
Shizuku had been keeping her head down this entire time. All morning.
"Shizuku — why are you keeping your head down like that?"
"W-What do you mean? I'm not."
"Then look up and let me see."
Kagami walked over to Shizuku's side and bent down to get a look at her face. Shizuku immediately turned her head away in the other direction.
"Hey — don't lean in that close!"
Shizuku shoved the approaching Kagami away with one hand.
Kagami quickly sidestepped — and in the exact moment Shizuku started to turn her head back, he had already anticipated it. He spun around, cutting her off.
"Huh?"
"Your eyes — why are they all red and swollen?"
Kagami stared at Shizuku's puffy, reddened eyes and was immediately reminded of the time Mrs. Ijichi had been in the car accident — the way Shizuku had cried her eyes out then, sobbing right in front of him.
"Did you..."
"Did you get scolded so hard for eavesdropping last night that you actually cried?"
"Honestly. How old are you? Still crying like that."
Kagami teased her.
Shizuku didn't dignify that with a response. She simply picked up both their plates and walked back to the kitchen counter to wash them.
Kagami watched her go, sinking into thought. She was acting strange today — something was off about her mood.
Is it that time of the month?
He looked over at her again.
"Shizuku."
"What?"
Shizuku glanced at him over her shoulder as she rinsed the plates.
"Make sure you drink plenty of brown sugar water today."
"Weirdo."
---
Bunkyo Ward. The Yukinoshita apartment.
After packing their bags and having lunch, the two of them made their way back from Chiba to Tokyo.
Thanks to Shimizu Nayotake's regular visits to feed Yukino and tidy up the place, there wasn't really much cleaning left to do. In the end, the two of them washed the bedsheets and duvet covers, hung them out together on the balcony to dry, and then Kagami finally sank onto the living room sofa and began lazily petting Yukino.
Shizuku drifted over to the refrigerator, opened it, and surveyed what ingredients they had left — thinking vaguely about what to make for dinner.
"What do you want to eat tonight?"
Kagami asked, glancing over at her.
"Let's not cook tonight. Let's go out."
---
After dinner at a Japanese restaurant near the apartment, Tsushima Kagami and Yukinoshita Shizuku stepped back outside together.
On the walk back, Kagami noticed that Shizuku had been trailing behind him the whole way — distracted, her mind clearly somewhere else entirely. He turned around and asked.
"You've seemed out of it all day. What's going on?"
Caught off guard by the sudden question, Shizuku's gaze dropped to the ground without any particular reason.
"It's... it's nothing."
"I probably just didn't sleep well last night."
She finished speaking — and then felt her right hand being lifted by a warm palm.
She looked up. Tsushima Kagami had taken her hand. On instinct, she tried to pull it free.
He held on tighter. She stopped resisting and simply looked at him.
"What are you doing?"
Kagami smiled — a slightly mysterious smile.
"I'm taking you somewhere good."
With that, he tugged her along toward the nearest subway station.
---
Setagaya Ward. They emerged from the station exit.
Shizuku suddenly stopped walking. Kagami turned back to look at her.
"Why did you stop?"
Shizuku stood there and shook her head without a word.
Kagami walked back to her. He reached out and took her right hand again.
"We've come all this way. Let's just go take a look."
She looked down at her hand, held once more in his — and all at once, her heart began to pound.
Not with shyness at being held. Not with that kind of feeling.
It was something else. It was the feeling that this hand holding hers — these hands — might not be there much longer.
If she just kept following him like this, kept walking forward, she felt as though something inside her was about to come to an end.
She was afraid.
She almost regretted coming. She wanted to go back.
But by the time that thought surfaced, she was already walking — already out of the station, Kagami's hand still in hers.
The two of them moved through the night in step with each other, not saying a word.
When they finally stopped —
Kagami let go of her hand.
Shizuku looked at what stood before her. The iron gate. The garden. That building.
All of it achingly, impossibly familiar.
Without knowing why, she pressed her right hand over her left chest.
Then Kagami held out a key ring from beside her. She recognized it immediately.
She looked up at him.
He just smiled.
"Aren't you going to go in and have a look?"
When she heard those words, something came over her — like a spell. She had believed she would never set foot here again. Her mind went blank, a soft haze settling over her thoughts until she couldn't even form a question. Her hand moved on its own, reaching out and taking the keys from Kagami's fingers before her brain had even caught up.
She walked to the iron gate. Without even looking down to find the right key, her fingers found it by touch alone — a single light brush across the ring.
She raised her hand to insert the key into the gate lock — and then stood there, motionless, for a long moment.
Finally she turned to look at Kagami. He was smiling at her. He gave a small, quiet nod.
She took a breath, pressed down the feeling swelling in her chest, and turned the lock. She pushed the gate open — and, without a word, walked slowly into the garden.
Unlike the last time she had come here, the path lights along the garden were lit — just like every other house on the street. And from the wide floor-to-ceiling windows of the house nearby, warm, golden light spilled out into the dark — exactly as she remembered it.
Shizuku didn't go straight to the house. She walked through the garden first, taking in the greenery — untouched, carefully tended, exactly as it had been before they moved out.
She followed the small path of smooth river stones around to the back garden. There, just beside the open terrace at the rear of the house, stood a Japanese maple.
She remembered what her mother had told her — that when her parents first bought this place, her father and mother had planted it together.
And after she was born, every year on her birthday, all three of them would have their photo taken beneath this tree.
She'd never thought much of it before. She hadn't imagined it would hit her this hard now — like something she had always taken for granted, suddenly made precious.
She walked up to the tree and ran her fingers along the bark, searching for something.
In the glow of the nearby garden lamp and the light from the terrace, she could just make it out — a series of horizontal lines scratched into the trunk at different heights, each one labeled with a year.
Every year, her father had loved to measure her height here.
She stood there for a long time before finally lifting her hand away from the bark. She looked over at the terrace, which had already been opened to let in the night air. She sat down on the edge, slipped off her shoes, picked them up, and stepped inside.
The living room was wide and bright. She stood there staring at the furniture and the arrangement of the room — everything that should have been moved away, and yet here it all was, exactly as she remembered.
"So? What do you think?"
"I asked Mother to help. We did our best to restore everything to how it was before — the furniture, the layout, all of it."
Kagami stepped inside behind her, carrying his shoes as well, casting an appreciative eye over the interior. The furnishings, the decor, the whole aesthetic of the place — he liked it very much.
Shizuku's father and mother had similar taste to mine, it seems.
He was still admiring the room when a gust of evening wind swept in through the open terrace at the back, lifting the curtain of the floor-to-ceiling window nearby with a soft, billowing rustle and a quiet clap.
Shizuku dropped the shoes she was holding.
She turned and walked straight into Kagami's arms.
Caught completely off guard, Kagami stumbled backward — and, making sure to keep her safe, let them both slowly sink to the floor.
"You don't have to throw yourself at me even if you're happy. That's dangerous, you know."
Kagami smiled down at her.
Shizuku lay against his chest in silence, saying nothing at all.
Kagami was just about to say they should get up — when he heard it.
A heartbeat. Faint, barely there.
He couldn't tell if it was his or hers — or both of them, together.
Fast, then slow. Slow, then fast again. He lay there and listened carefully, trying to tell them apart — which one is Shizuku's? Which one is mine?
Then the girl lying against his chest raised her fist — and brought it down against him in a weightless, feather-light thud.
And with it came a sound. Small, muffled. A sob caught in her throat.
"I know this isn't Kagami's fault."
"I know I should be grateful for everything Kagami has done."
"But..."
"But why..."
"Why couldn't Kagami have changed sooner — so much sooner — earlier than this?"
"If the Kagami who exists now had been there that day..."
Shizuku pushed herself upright. She sat astride his waist, both hands pressed against his chest, and kept hitting him — soft, over and over, barely any force behind it at all.
She lifted her head and looked him straight in the eyes.
And then the tears fell — heavy, one after another — landing on his face.
"You could have found a way to talk Father down from that rooftop!"
Kagami had braced himself for the possibility that Shizuku might be moved, might be overwhelmed by memories and cry. But he hadn't expected her to ask him this.
Her grief rang through the empty living room — raw and tearing, filling all the space.
There was nothing he could say. He simply reached up, wrapped his arms around her as she collapsed back onto his chest, sobbing — and held her. His hand moved slowly, steadily across her back.
---
It was deep into the night by the time they left — long past the last train. They flagged down a taxi and rode back to the Bunkyo Ward apartment in silence.
Shizuku had already showered and gone to bed in her room. Kagami sat at his writing desk, the fountain pen Shizuku had given him in his hand, writing something on a sheet of manuscript paper.
Knock, knock.
The door — left slightly ajar — was tapped, and then, without waiting for an answer, slowly pushed open.
Kagami turned around.
Shizuku stood in the doorway. She was wearing a pale blue spaghetti-strap nightgown, a pillow clutched to her chest — and her eyes were even redder and more swollen than they had been that morning.
"Weren't you asleep?"
"I can't sleep."
Shizuku hugged her pillow and shook her head.
"In that case — do you want a snack? Some warm milk, maybe? Apparently that helps."
Kagami scratched his head. He wasn't exactly an expert in curing insomnia. The system hadn't exactly provided him with any sleep-inducing tonics or tricks either.
Shizuku shook her head again. Then she tilted her head just slightly to one side and looked at him.
"Can I sleep with you tonight?"
"Sure."
Kagami agreed without a second thought.
He set down his pen, tidied away the paper, and walked over to the bed. He turned to Shizuku.
"Do you want the inside or should I take it?"
Shizuku walked over to his bed with no hesitation, climbed in, set her pillow down on the inner side next to his, and lay down. She looked up at him.
Kagami picked up the air conditioning remote.
"What temperature do you want it at?"
"Just leave it as it is."
Shizuku said, her voice quiet.
Kagami nodded, then opened the wardrobe beside the bed and pulled out a blanket — intending to put it over Shizuku.
"I want Father's haori."
"Alright."
Kagami set the blanket aside and took out the haori instead — the one they had washed and carefully folded away.
He switched off the light, padded slowly to the bed, and eased himself down on the outer edge. He drew the haori over Shizuku.
"You use it too."
Shizuku's voice came from the dark.
Kagami laughed softly.
"It'll be too small for both of us."
"I'll just use the blanket."
Before he could even reach for it, Shizuku shifted closer — pressing against his pillow.
"You use it too."
In the darkness, Kagami could already see her — lifting one edge of the haori, holding it open for him.
He set the blanket aside. He moved closer. Shizuku lowered her hand, and the other side of the haori settled over him.
"Can I hold you?"
"Go ahead."
Shizuku pressed herself against him, her cheek resting against his chest.
"I'm sorry."
"It's alright."
"Your heart is beating so fast."
"Is it? I can't hear it from here."
"Your breathing got heavier."
"Didn't you already tell me during the last training camp that I breathe loudly?"
"Pat my back."
Kagami wrapped his arm around her and patted her gently.
"So noisy."
"Then should I stop?"
"No."
"Won't that just make it even harder to sleep?"
Kagami felt Shizuku pull him a little closer.
"Hey... tell me a bedtime story."
"Alright — how about The Three Little Pigs?"
"That's so old-fashioned."
"Want me to pick something else?"
"No. That one's fine."
"Once upon a time, in a faraway mountain village, there lived a mother pig and her three beloved little piglets..."
Kagami told the story, his hand moving in slow, gentle circles across her back.
The soft, steady rhythm of her breathing, growing longer and deeper against his chest, made his own eyelids grow heavy.
He held on against the pull of sleep, word by word — and by the time he spoke the very last line of the story, he was already drifting, slipping quietly under.
The two of them lay beneath the same haori, warm and still, and fell asleep together.
____
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