Chapter Text
Oh, it was a tea party, all right. There was cake, and there was tea—the strong kind, bitter, green the color of mint leaf—and forks and knives and plates and cups and spoons, all Western, all porcelain, all glass and steel, painted and molded in delicate shapes and colors as if to offset the presence of sharp objects on the table. She half-expected a rifle to be lying on the table among all the other weapons; it was so dangerous. Kyouko twirled her spoon around a dollop of fresh whipped cream, noting in back of her head that it would make it harder to clean her plate later. She always cleaned her plate. That was one of the—admittedly very few—things Mami appreciated about her. She didn’t pick it at like a bird; she made no effort to be delicate; she ate it, she enjoyed it, she voiced her thanks, and then she left. Life really was that simple, and it bothered her when people couldn’t get that through their heads.
Homura, for instance, was on her left and feeding mechanically. Everything about her was like a machine: prepared, rehearsed, done in advance and foreseen, as if she had expected to eat this exact piece of cake in this exact manner at this exact time two weeks ago and were only doing it now as a courtesy to people who were not previously aware of it. Nothing ever came as a surprise to her, even things that probably should have. It was honestly kind of creepy. The only time anyone could ever throw her off was when someone mentioned the name “Madoka,” and then all the pretense would fall apart and she could see a bit of what was left behind it.
It was cruel, though. If Kyouko recognized nothing else about her, she recognized that distant look of shock.
She ate voraciously, irritated by the silence. It was hard enough now that Sayaka was dead. Mortality was hanging over their heads like a great guillotine blade: taboo to speak of, but palpable in the air. She imagined the blade going down—snap!—slicing through her apathy and letting her compassion for others bleed all over the place. She hated feeling anything for anyone. They always died before she did.
“Sakura-san.”
She hunched over an empty plate, exhausted. It wasn’t fun to care. It wasn’t fun to not care. She didn’t want to talk about it, either. They’d probably get into another stupid argument again.
“Sakura-san, are you OK?”
She heard the clicking of porcelain against porcelain, teacup against plate, breakable as the composure of this room. Mami wasn’t looking at her.
“’M fine.”
She bared her teeth in an attempted smile, but instead it became a feral gesture, something animals did when they wanted to look threatening. How long had it been since they’d talked to each other like this? Homura had convinced them to reconcile—forced them, really—and in such a way that neither could argue against her: it was only practical, it was only sane, and if they wanted to live longer than Sayaka did then they had better get over their petty arguments and hurt feelings or be miserable, lose faith and die. It had been harsh. It wasn’t even about them, at that point.
Morbidly curious, she glanced over at Homura, who was going through the motions of sipping tea. Homura deigned to give her a sideways glance. She tried to see contempt in it and failed. Pity? No. Compassion? As if. It was a look, and nothing more than that. It was an acknowledgment of her existence, as if she’d forgotten for a minute that Kyouko was there and needed to check. Maybe she really had.
Still, she really hadn’t wanted to make up. She only agreed to talk with Mami after Sayaka died, aware, in a numb way, of the need for closure—for allies. Their relationship was only barely better than it had been, but even a month ago Mami wouldn’t have let her take so much as a step through the doorway. It was better than nothing, she supposed. If she wasn't wanted here, then at least she was tolerated. It would work out. It had to.
Suddenly, she heard a screech and a crash. The bland silence had ended, and in its place, she saw little white shards of china all over the floor. Kyouko’s eyes searched Mami’s hands and clothes for bleeding. Nothing.
“This is miserable,” Mami finally said, and Kyouko burst out into laughter.
The three of them cleaned up afterward, in a not wholly uncomfortable silence. They charted miasma patterns, ran logistics—boring things—and tried to estimate where the next big outbreak would be, and when. Homura was good at it, but then again she seemed to have an uncanny knack for everything. Kyouko lounged around the apartment as the sun went down, on the couch, and thought about tomorrow, but never past it. Mami tried to hold a conversation with her. It lasted a few minutes. Homura disappeared in the way she was wont to but eventually returned. She always did.
Kyouko wondered what kept her coming back. She never seemed to be enjoying herself—never even tried to, really. She acted like a traumatized war veteran, concerned with survival and nothing else. Ghosts seemed to haunt her every step; she was obviously disturbed, and her fixation on this Madoka person made it all even creepier. Homura was willing to do anything to survive, and Kyouko knew that their alliance was simply a means to her own end. To her credit, she had expressed her condolences at Sayaka’s death, but even that had to be plotted out in advance. If she didn’t express sympathy, then Kyouko would find her callous. If Kyouko found her callous, then they wouldn’t be able to cooperate, and she would have one less person to watch her back in a fight. Homura was easy to read, that way. Predictable as anything else, at least. Still, she didn’t necessarily have to stay around after she had finished with her business. It wasn’t like she ever talked to anyone.
And then there was Mami: friendless and excessively polite. It rankled when Kyouko talked to her. They didn’t like each other now any more than they did before; they were only tolerating each other’s presence because Sayaka had kicked it, and they needed the support now more than ever. She had the weird feeling, like a dream, that there maybe should have been someone else patrolling with them in Mitakihara, but she chalked it up to whimsy and sentiment. She really wanted someone else, though, someone less crazy than Homura and less defensive than Mami. Someone who was actually nice.
She stretched out on the couch and sighed. Yeah, right. At some point tonight Homura would leave without a word, and Mami would kick her out onto the street, sick of the pretense, and she’d take her stuff and find somewhere else to sleep. Like quarreling lovers. She’d spent a few awkward nights at Homura’s place; her apartment was sterile and lifeless, like the rest of her. On the other hand, she’d been expecting to find some sign of her craziness, some vestige of insanity, lurking somewhere in the shadows, and found none. She had either taken steps to hide it, or had nothing to hide in the first place. The weirdest part about it all was that there was no sign of this Madoka person: no pictures, no keepsakes, no nothing. She did have a photo of a family that was ostensibly not her own. Whatever that was about, Kyouko figured that her secrets could stay secret. She just needed a reliable place to crash.
“Sakura-san.” Homura materialized above her, like a wraith.
Kyouko started. “Y-yeah? What?”
“Are you planning to stay here tonight?”
She couldn’t be serious.
“No way. Mami always kicks me out after you leave. You’re the only reason I’m even allowed in here in the first place.”
She frowned. Then again, she was always frowning. “That means you still aren’t getting along.”
Well, duh.
“Look, I know you think we’ve made up and all, but it’s not gonna be that easy. This kind of thing takes time.”
“How long will it take?”
“I don’t know, but asking isn’t gonna make it happen any faster.” She sighed. “You can’t just—expect people to suddenly get along like that. It doesn’t work that way.”
Her frown softened, only barely. “I see.”
“You really mean that, or are you just saying that to agree with me?”
“Why?”
“Why...?” Kyouko scrunched her brow. “Why what?”
“Why can’t you get along? What’s stopping you?”
“We disagree,” she mumbled, “on a lot of things. She’s too idealistic. She thinks she can make friends with everyone, and when she can’t she throws a fit. She tries so hard to put on this front when she’s just as broken as the rest of us on the inside. She’s so... phony.” She spat the word out, and felt a little better afterward.
“Phony?” Homura looked back at the bedroom, where Mami would be doing homework, or whatever she did in her spare time. “And that bothers you because...?”
Kyouko grimaced. Was this girl even human anymore? “Because it’s annoying! She pushes you away when you try to help her or tell her what the world is really like, and it’s like she doesn’t even want to hear it anymore. It’s hopeless. She could die for all I—”
Homura slapped her. It stung.
“Don’t say that,” she hissed.
Kyouko pushed herself up so she was slouched against one arm of the couch, and cricked her neck. She knew a fight coming when she saw it.
“I don’t want a fight,” Homura said. She held her hand out, and her Soul Gem materialized, nearly black in color. “I want you to make sure that yours don’t become like this.”
“Whoa, hey!” Kyouko sat up. “You should do something about that!”
Homura glared at her. The Soul Gem disappeared.
“I’m serious. Want me to get Kyubey? I’ll even go with you; I got nothin’ else to do anyway.”
She turned away. “It doesn’t matter. It’s always like that.”
“How? What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why—”
“I said it’s nothing.” Homura turned and walked off, just as quietly as she had come over. The door closed behind her with a soft click.
Kyouko collapsed back onto the couch and groaned. Soon Mami would be coming to kick her out once more, and Kyouko would grudgingly drag her stuff out of the apartment and onto the elevator, and into the night: try fighting solo, or find some abandoned building to sleep in; steal some food from one place, and store it somewhere else; dig through trash, or just wander aimlessly, thinking about nothing in particular. She fell asleep, dreading the moment she’d be woken up.
Kyouko woke up feeling stiff. Then she realized she hadn’t left the spot where she had been yesterday.
“Oh, crap.”
She looked around. This was still Mami’s apartment. No good. Had she forgotten? She obviously hadn’t come out to wake her up. Maybe she’d fallen asleep in her room, too. She gathered up her things and prepared to leave.
Then she realized the door wasn’t opening. She wrestled with the knob. What kind of apartment used keys nowadays, anyway! Shouldn’t they all have been replaced with cards or chips or something electronic by now? What kind of psycho would—
“Dammit, Akemi!” Kyouko kicked the door, and then swore. If Mami wasn’t awake already, then she was definitely awake now. How did she even figure out how to do this? Did she leave something heavy in front of the door? Did she screw with the lock? Did she just use magic? How desperate was she to have them fix their relationship, anyway? If she was going to die soon anyhow, then it shouldn’t have mattered to her what happened to them.
Panicked, she ran over to the glass sliding doors that led outside to the balcony. If she transformed, she could jump without causing too much damage, but she hesitated to break the doors if those were locked as well.
They were.
Kyouko fell to her knees, sliding her hand down the glass. “That idiot...”
“Sakura-san.”
“What.”
“Why are you still here?”
“You didn’t wake me up,” she said, lamely.
“Even so. You should have left on your own.”
“Akemi locked the doors.”
Mami paused. “What?”
“I said, she locked the doors.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean I can’t open them!” Kyouko snarled, turning around. “At least not unless I break them down.”
“Akemi-san is an odd one...”
“No, shit.” Kyouko stood up. “Whatever, it’s fine.” She transformed, and held her spear aloft. “I’ll just break it.”
“Wait, don’t!” Mami grabbed her wrist.
“Wh... What’s your problem?” She struggled against her, and failed miserably. Why did magical girls have to be so strong?
“Do you know how long it’d take me to pay for those doors? Wait here until she comes back; I can’t let you break them.”
“You trust her to come here anytime soon? We’ll starve before she comes back; she’s completely lost it!”
“Kyouko, stop.”
“Don’t call me that.” She shoved Mami away. Her spear disappeared. “She showed me her Soul Gem yesterday. It’s almost black.”
“Is that so?” Mami looked at her, with some measure of concern on her face. Not for her, of course. “Though to be honest, I can’t say I’m surprised...”
“She’s completely unpredictable,” Kyouko muttered. “I always figured some day she’d snap.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Ah, shuddup.” Kyouko looked out the window. “I dunno whether this was supposed to be a cry for help or what. She just had to do this now of all times, too...”
“We should look for her before it’s too late.”
Kyouko glanced at Mami, and then turned back to the window. “Maybe that was her plan all along. By the way...”
“What?”
“Which door am I breaking?”
Mami sighed. “The front.” She looked at the door, and then at Kyouko. “Just try not to use too much force. I really liked that door.”
Kyouko grinned. Her spear reappeared, doubled in size. She pointed it at the door. “You and your obsession with old things...”
Mami, ever the paradigm of propriety, opted to attend school, so Kyouko was by herself until she got out. Homura was ferociously calculating, but she was a goner all the same. The only question was when she’d totally break, go past the point of no return, disappear. Some days it seemed like she embraced the idea, though—as if death were something warm and pleasant, and life were cold and miserable. Kyouko couldn’t tell whether this was some elaborate ploy to force them to cooperate or just a way to keep them from looking for her. Whatever the case, it was working: Homura was one person in a city of thousands, and they’d have to spend a long time looking for her. Unless she was out fighting demons, finding her would be a bitch, and even then, it might already be too late.
“Ah, who cares if she dies!” she groaned aloud, walking down the sidewalk. “That’s what she wants anyway.”
“Are you perhaps referring to Akemi Homura?”
Kyubey sat high up on a brick fence, staring down at her with its beady red eyes. It creeped her out only marginally less than it had the first time she saw it.
“Yeah. What’s it to you?”
Kyubey followed her. “It would be a problem if she were to pass away now. I would like to ask you to ensure that her death does not happen for a little while longer. Please try to help her. We cannot afford to lose her at this time.”
Kyouko bared her teeth. “You, too, huh.”
“It would be beneficial to you as well, if you attempted to help her. You cannot stop fighting demons if you wish to survive, and she is unnaturally skilled. You would be losing a valuable ally.”
“I know that,” she growled. “God, what are you, a salesman?”
“I am only trying to determine the best course of action for you, with the provided information.”
Kyouko stopped and looked at it. “Why don’t you help me, then?”
“I can only point you towards demons. If you assume that she is fighting them, then you may be able to find her. Otherwise I am unable to tell you where she is at the moment.”
She kept walking. “I don’t know what she’s doing right now.”
“Then I cannot help you. However, I am certain that she is still alive. You should look for her before she dies.”
She flapped her hand at it. “Yeah, yeah, whatever...”
“If you fail, then we will be taking additional measures to find her. We ask that you continue to cooperate, as it will make matters more convenient for us.”
“I am, I am, jeez; I get it already.” Kyouko slowed to a stop. “So where’re these demons, huh?”
“I understand,” said Kyubey. “Follow me.”
What was she trying to do, play matchmaker?
Demons materialized in dark alleyways and abandoned buildings, tall, dark, distorted things that either staggered like zombies or moved like wraiths, stealing in and out of dark patches even in broad daylight. Kyouko cut them down—one, two—twirling her spear like a baton. The blade sliced through bodies left and right, leaving behind black, crystalline cubes. She grabbed them as they appeared and shoved them in her pockets. Her Soul Gem was bright as day: a little tarnished, maybe, but she expected it to be. Someone else needed them more right now. She moved on instinct, and before she knew it, the fight was over.
The first wave was always the easiest, though. She took a moment to count the number of cubes she had swiped: three. The second wave would bring a few more, four or five tops, at the cost of several more demons. If she was unlucky, there would be a third. Afternoons tended to be slow, though. She didn’t expect any more after this.
The fight had given her adrenaline, though, and now she was pissed at Homura. Sayaka had disappeared and Homura expected her to bounce back from that and partner up with someone she hated? True, they’d been friends before, but that was in the past. And Homura had lost it, anyway. She'd been kind of weird when they met her, and she had only worsened since. There was no way she was coming back from that, not without a lot of time and a lot of effort. Her chest tightened. She was losing people—friends, allies, whatever you wanted to call them, whatever they meant to her—left and right. All the other people in the world could disappear, and she was sure that the only one left standing would be Mami. No. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it?
Mami had been her mentor, once upon a time, when she had just been starting out and didn’t know anything, before she had developed a taste for elaborate baked goods and expensive confections. She was cloyingly sweet, rather like the desserts themselves, and Kyouko greeted her affection with as much relish as she did the food itself. She’d felt bad for her, before she lost her own family, and now instead of pitying her she felt angry: angry at herself for abandoning her, angry at Mami for being so ingenuous, angry at them both for letting the feelings fester until things got awkward.
She saw the demons emerge, and grunted. She wished there were a little variety to these things every now and then. Maybe a bit more color, too.
She counted how many of the cubes she had collected. Seven. It would have to be enough.
Kyubey showed up out of nowhere, as usual, to greet her. “You’re not going to use them, Sakura-san?”
“’M saving them,” she said. “For a rainy day.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“I know you don’t.”
She started heading back to a more habitable part of the city. Mami wouldn’t be out of school for a few more hours. She wasn’t sure whether to be disturbed or not that Mami picked school over searching for Homura—did she just not care enough, or did she figure that Homura would be easier to find at night when more demons were out, or what? Maybe she just didn’t want to be around Kyouko as much. Yeah. That would explain it. She couldn’t blame her, either. They pretended to act as a unit, but they were terrible at it. Whenever they fought together, everyone would always go off on their own. They couldn’t coordinate; someone was always getting in another person’s way. They totally sucked.
Kyubey disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and Kyouko was left wandering the city on her own again. She looked for Homura for as long she bothered to, and killed the rest of her time at the arcade until Mami called her over to the school entrance. She was stuffing her face with a melon bun when Mami arrived through the gates.
“I’m assuming you didn’t find her.”
“Nope.”
Mami glared at her. “You didn’t try at all, did you?”
“How am I supposed to know where she is?” Kyouko snapped. “I’m not her keeper!”
“Well, why not start with the most obvious places?”
“What, you mean like her apartment?”
“For instance.”
“I checked. She wasn’t in. I mean, all she does is really... fight demons,” said Kyouko. “But after I fought a couple waves, my Soul Gem didn’t react to anything else. If she’d been fighting them, then I would’ve seen her there. She’s gotta be somewhere else.”
“How about that family she’s always with?”
Kyouko scrunched her face up. “The... The Kanames? I didn’t bother with them, but I assumed they were out.”
“Well, why don’t we start with them first?”
She grimaced. “I don’t get why we have to do this.”
“I’m sure she would do the same for you.”
Kyouko looked at her. “You think so?”
Mami smiled. “She’s not that heartless.”
Kaname Junko, the mother, and the only person capable of speech in the house at that particular moment, said that she hadn’t seen Homura all week. Typical. She had a tendency to vanish for days at a time, and then reappear without a word. She slipped in and out of school the same way, but her grades were always at the top of the class. People didn’t ask after Homura. It felt rude, almost. Intrusive.
She invited them in anyway, delighted to see that Homura’s friends were looking after her. Kyouko wanted to accept the invitation, but Mami politely declined, and so they left the house none the wiser for it. She felt frustrated—they weren’t getting anywhere—and that was when her Soul Gem winked.
They ended up at the same abandoned row of warehouses, in a different one this time, but a familiar sight all the same. In the center of the mess stood Homura, surrounded by a wall of arrows. Her expression was stoic. If Kyouko didn’t know any better she’d have thought Homura had been there all day.
“Akemi!” Kyouko and Mami ran over to her, plowing through demons as they did. “We were looking all over the place for you. What happened?”
She didn’t respond. She notched an arrow into the bow, and then released, sending all the other arrows flying with it. A dozen more of the things fell, and Kyouko swiped at a few more as they came at her. This was a huge crowd, one that must have spawned from the most horrifically negative emotion. A thought crossed her mind: was it Homura?
Something exploded behind her back.
“Watch yourself, Sakura-san.” A demon collapsed in front of her.
“Just call me Kyouko,” she groaned. “Might as well.”
They finished the rest off, and split them evenly among the three of them. Kyubey came to collect their empty shells and then left, apparently satisfied that they had managed to find Homura. Kyouko held out the cubes she had saved from before.
“What are these,” Homura asked, though it didn’t sound much like a question.
“They’re for you,” she said, shoving them at her. “We went on this wild goose chase ‘cause we thought you had snapped and all this time you were running around fighting...” She sighed. “That was a pretty stupid thing to do, y’ know.”
“What thing?”
“Never mind.”
“Akemi-san,” said Mami, approaching her, “why don’t you spend more time with us? You ought to try to conserve your magic.”
She looked dully at her Soul Gem, and pressed the other cubes to it. If it changed, then Kyouko couldn’t see it.
She whistled. “That’s not good, y’ know?”
Homura shook her head. “I appreciate the effort. This will keep me going for a little longer.”
“Anyway, what was that about?” Kyouko snapped. “Locking all the doors and then running away? Are you nuts?”
“Did it work?”
They looked at each other.
“We were worried about you,” said Mami.
“Yeah, you scared us for a while, there.”
“I see.” Homura looked at her Soul Gem curiously. “But it hasn’t changed anything, has it.”
“Not really,” Kyouko said. “Especially if you’re not gonna run around acting like that.”
“You should come back with us,” Mami said, extending a hand. “We can discuss this somewhere safer.”
She kept staring at her Soul Gem. “I wonder why it’s not getting any brighter.”
“H-hey, Akemi-san...” Kyouko muttered, “it’s all right; we can always get some more later.”
Her fingers closed around the gem, almost caressing it, and Kyouko realized with alarm that she had enough strength to crush it with her bare hands. Mami unfurled one of her ribbons and yanked Homura’s arm to one side; the gem flew out of her hand and Kyouko rushed to catch it, barely saving it from falling to the concrete floor. She heard a sob. Homura was on her knees, covering her face with her free hand.
“I don’t understand why I keep doing this... There’s no point if she isn’t here!”
Kyouko looked at Mami. She undid the ribbon, and Homura’s other hand fell to her side, lifeless.
“You mean Madoka?” Mami asked, quietly.
Homura exhaled, shuddering, and said nothing.
Kyouko shook her head. “Forget it.”
“Kyouko-san!”
“She obviously doesn’t want to be bothered. I mean, look at her! She’s a mess.” Kyouko gestured to her. “She can barely take care of herself anymore. I’m not gonna waste my time with her until she learns how to deal with her own issues. I’m sick of her acting like this!”
“Not everyone is as strong as you are. Besides,” she said, “you have no idea what she’s gone though. It seems like she’s been through much worse than either of us.”
“So what. She’s an asset one day and a liability the next. She isn’t reliable anymore.”
“And she won’t be unless we help her,” Mami said firmly. “Don’t you remember? What your dream was?”
She clenched her teeth. “I don’t believe in that stuff anymore. My family’s dead; Sayaka’s dead; your parents are dead; what are you even fighting for? It’s pointless!”
“Then why are you still here?”
Kyouko looked down at Homura, and then at Mami, who was staring at her directly.
“Well? If you don’t want to help, then leave.”
She didn’t budge. “You wouldn’t understand how to help her anyway.” She motioned to Mami. “C’mon, let’s go. She’ll get up eventually.”
Mami hesitated, and then followed her. They walked for a little bit, and then turned around. Homura was still on the ground.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” She strode back over to Homura’s side, and bent down. “C’mon, we get it. You’re depressed. Let’s go already.”
Still nothing. Kyouko still held her Soul Gem in hand, reluctant to give it back to her if she was still considering crushing it.
Mami walked over to her, and knelt to her left. “You know, Akemi-san, we can’t help you if you don’t say anything.”
“No, shit, she can’t,” Kyouko snarled. “She hasn’t been able to for ages! She’s got all this pent-up stuff inside; what makes you think she’d be able to say anything now?”
“We’re not leaving her here.”
“Then what? We’re just going to stay here until she decides to stand up by herself? Who knows how long that’s going to take?” The conversation suddenly started to sound familiar. If only it were that easy...
“I don’t think she’s going to do it.”
“Do wh...” Kyouko looked at her Soul Gem. She narrowed her eyes. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“You absolutely sure?”
“Yes, I am. There are easier ways to do away with herself, if she wanted to.”
She had a point. Even if Homura looked like she had given up, her Soul Gem said otherwise. She held it in front of Homura’s face, and it vanished, reappearing on the back of her hand. “Now what?”
“Now we wait.”
“You’re nuts.” Kyouko walked off, and then froze abruptly. She stomped back over to Homura and turned around.
“Kyouko-san?”
“Dammit, I’ll just bring her with us.” She bent down, pulled Homura’s arms over her shoulders, and slid her elbows under her knees. Homura was silently compliant, shifting weakly in response to her movements. Kyouko stood up. “We can take her to your place.”
They laid her down on the couch in Mami’s apartment. She was decidedly limp. It bothered Kyouko to see her like this, so... absent. So gone. She seemed more lifeless than anything; the tears had long dried up. She kept her face buried in the cushions, too ashamed or depressed to even look at them. Did people really just break like this?
“It’s fine if she stays like this,” Mami said. “It’ll be easier to keep an eye on her.”
“No, it’s not. I don’t know how much longer she’s going to last.”
“I don’t think she’s feeling much of anything right now, honestly. I doubt she’ll get any worse.”
“This’s gonna drive me nuts,” said Kyouko. “I mean, how come she’s still alive and Sayaka ain’t? What’s the difference between them; how could someone so pathetic live for so damn long?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and then paused. “For some people, I guess... That’s all they know how to do.”
Kyouko instantly felt guilty. “Not you, too.”
“We should inform Kaname-san of this.”
“You sure she can do anything?”
“She isn’t a magical girl,” said Mami. “It might help if Akemi-san can get away from the stresses of being one for a while. Besides... They seem like good people.”
“So she gets a surrogate family, and we don’t?”
“I don’t understand what your problem is.”
“Everything,” she said. “Everything, and I’m just going to wind up being a failure again... Sometimes I wonder why the hell I don’t just give up too.”
“We’re saving people,” Mami said sternly. “You’ve seen what those demons are capable of. They’re going to hurt people if they go unchecked.”
“But it’s never the people I want to save.”
“You’ve saved my life plenty of times.”
“Yeah. I guess...” she muttered.
“It seems a lot less significant while they’re still alive, doesn’t it?”
Kyouko’s mouth twisted into a wry grin. “You have a point.”
“I have an extra futon,” Mami said. “You can sleep on it, just for tonight.”