Archive of Our Own

“The men who built this house are long dead, but their instructions linger in the architecture.

In the narrow staircases that forced one to walk single-file, in the mirrors that distorted one’s reflection into obedience, in the locked rooms whose keys were always missing. 

We had believed in order above all things, in symmetry, in inheritance. But symmetry, if repeated long enough, becomes a kind of madness.”

They said the house was perfect. They said it made perfect girls.

Daiwa Scarlet had learnt those rules early.

“Hush now, sweetheart. Stand up straight. Smile. The cameras love a pretty winner.”

Her first gift wasn’t trophies or ribbons.

It was eyes—watching, judging, shaping her into something beautiful and obedient.

The heavy, expectant gaze of elders, who saw not a child, but clay. Perfectible clay.

Perfection wasn't just desired. It was demanded. Salvation offered in exchange for flawless performance. Be the brightest. Be the fastest. Be the best. 

Erase the dirty little secret with blinding light.

“Forget, Scarlet. Forget what scares you. Just run.”

She became a masterpiece of control.

Every gesture rehearsed, every word polished.

People called her graceful and cheeky, little Miss Perfect.

They never saw how hard she worked to keep the cracks sealed, or at least covered up.

To stumble meant to fail.

To fail meant to prove them right… that she wasn’t perfect after all.

“You smile when people watch. You speak when they ask. You don’t laugh too loud. You don’t stay out late. You don’t say things that make the other girls uncomfortable—because if they are uncomfortable, they will tell. And who do you think they will believe? Them. Not you. Not a pretty girl who looks like she already has everything.”

She was nine when she was first taught how to “be small”.

“If anyone ever asks, you’ll say what we taught you. You’ll say you were happy. You’ll say you were fine. Because if you lie small and soft and grateful, they’ll give you more chances. If you don’t—well…” 

The sentence hung, an empty loop.

“You don’t want to be the kind of girl who ruins people’s plans, breaks people’s hearts, don’t you? ” 

finally said, almost tenderly.

“You don’t want to be the story they laugh about later. You want your life, don’t you? You want them to keep giving you what they give. So be careful with your heart. Be careful with your hands. Keep your secrets buried so deep you forget they’re there.”

Then came Vodka.

Not soft. Not demure. All jagged edges and fierce laughter and a challenge that didn’t feel like a threat, but an invitation…

She was exploiting her, wasn't she? Dragging that bright, fierce spirit down into her own ruined orbit. Her perfect act wasn't just protection now; it was a desperate smokescreen for the "sin" festering beneath. How could something that felt like sunlight also feel like the ultimate confirmation of her deepest shame?

And in the quiet after the cheers, she wonders if the house was ever real at all,

or if she just learned to mistake her own reflection for home.

—

“A pity he does not exist,

A shame she’ll never try,

That version of her killed me once,

And still I don’t know why.

There’s no one else I think about,

No man can fill that lack—

For I’m in love,

Forever in love,

With Vodka in drag.”

Vodka hated how quiet the dorm got after lights out. Hated how her thoughts always circled back to the same stupid thing—Scarlet.

Scarlet, who was everything Vodka wasn’t allowed to want.

Scarlet, with her perfect hair and sharper smile, who burned brighter than anyone else on the track.

Scarlet, who made the world seem both cruel and soft at once.

Vodka pressed her arm over her eyes, trying to block out the afterimage. It didn’t work. It never did.

Scarlet told herself she liked rivals because rivals made her better. They gave her purpose. Direction. Meaning. But Vodka wasn’t just that.

Vodka was the heartbeat under every race, the pulse of something Scarlet couldn’t name without it breaking her apart.

She was the one person who could ruin her with a glance.

And the one person she couldn’t let herself ruin.

There were moments, small, shamefully sweet ones, that didn’t belong in any rivalry.

Vodka tugging Scarlet’s jacket straight before an interview, muttering “you look fine” in a tone too gentle for the words it carried. Scarlet brushing rain from Vodka’s cheek and pretending it was accidental. Their reflections caught in each other’s eyes for just a second too long before one of them looked away.

If anyone saw them like that… if anyone knew—Scarlet’s stomach tightened. The world was not kind to girls who looked at each other that way. Even the whispers would be enough to tear their fragile world apart.

They’d both seen what it did to others; the quiet ostracism, the shift in tone, the way conversations stopped when someone entered the room. Japan didn’t punish queerness loudly. It just starved it out with silence.

And Scarlet could not afford to be seen differently.

Miss Perfect.

Scarlet could never quite explain the exhaustion that came from being adored.

Adoration was supposed to be flattering—validation, even. Yet every smile directed her way felt like a blade honed on the edge of expectation. “Miss Perfect,” they called her, as if it were her name and not a title carved out of discipline and fear. Straight A’s. Perfect posture. Poised speech. The kind of beauty that photographers loved because it never looked out of place.

The kind of girl parents pointed to when they said be more like her.

It was a role she wore like glass heels Scarlet knew exactly what kind of woman she was supposed to be.

The kind that boys wanted and girls envied.

The kind that smiled even when she didn’t feel like it.

The kind that kept her head high and her emotions lower.

And most of all, the kind that belonged to someone else—eventually, quietly, as society intended.

Vodka didn’t fit anywhere in that picture.

Their rivalry had been the perfect shield at first. A script she could follow. Enemies, rivals, competitors—all of it safe, all of it familiar. But then Vodka started laughing that loud, unrestrained laugh during training, and Scarlet’s heart did something it shouldn’t have. It stuttered.

She’d catch herself watching Vodka’s hands, the sharp lines of her shoulders, the way sweat clung to her neck. She’d tell herself it was study, just another form of competition, knowing your rival, reading her body like strategy.

But no strategy made her pulse skip when Vodka leaned in too close, or when their fingers brushed during relay exchanges. No strategy made her ache when Vodka smiled at someone else.

Scarlet learned to redirect her eyes before anyone noticed. Learned to smother every spark of want beneath layers of composure.

Because perfect girls didn’t have wants like that.

Perfect girls didn’t look at other girls that way.

In front of others, she shone. She smiled in interviews, spoke in tidy phrases that left no gaps for rumor or doubt. Every gesture rehearsed, every expression softened into something palatable.

They called her “graceful.”

They meant obedient.

When the lights dimmed, when the room was hers alone, Scarlet would peel off her image like a second skin. She’d stare at her reflection—hair immaculate, makeup precise—and wonder what she’d look like if she stopped trying to be everyone’s idea of perfection.

Maybe she’d look a little more like Vodka. Messy. Real. Alive.

The thought alone felt dangerous.

Scarlet sat on her bed, phone in hand, staring at Vodka’s contact name for far too long. She typed you charm me, then deleted it. 

Typed I wish I could be more like you, then deleted that too. What she wanted to say didn’t fit in words.

It pulsed quietly under her ribs.

It was in the way her heart leapt whenever Vodka looked her way.

It was in the way her mask cracked every time Vodka smiled.

It was love, though Scarlet would never call it that. Perfect girls didn’t fall in love with their rivals.

Perfect girls didn’t fall in love with girls at all.

Scarlet’s phone screen dimmed, plunging her back into near-darkness. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to banish the image of Vodka laughing earlier that day—head thrown back, utterly unselfconscious, sunlight catching the sweat on her throat. 

The sound had vibrated through Scarlet, a warmth spreading in her chest that had nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with a terrifying, beautiful ache. 

Perfect girls didn’t feel that ache.

And if there was any mercy left in the world,

maybe, just maybe, Vodka would hear it echo somewhere —

in the silence between applause,

in the faint tremor of Scarlet’s breath

when she forced herself to smile one last time.

Because love, when you can’t name it,

still hums beneath the ribs.

Still burns quietly.

Still hurts beautifully.

And Miss Perfect, for all her polish,

was still just a girl who wanted to hold someone’s hand.

—

The first time Scarlet saw her, she almost laughed. 

Almost.

Vodka had shown up to the costume event with her hair slicked back, shirt unbuttoned just enough, tie loose around her neck, swagger dialed up to eleven. Someone had dared her to “try the host club look,” and of course Vodka, always game for a laugh, went all in. 

She even called herself “Victor” for the night, smirking as she adjusted her cuffs and winked at the girls who swooned on cue.

It was supposed to be harmless fun, and maybe it was, to everyone else. But Scarlet’s pulse wouldn’t settle.  Because something about the sight of Vodka like that, confident, effortless, untamed… hurt.

She wasn’t supposed to think that way. 

Not about her.

And yet… she couldn’t stop noticing. The way Vodka carried herself, how easily she occupied space that Scarlet was taught to shrink from. Scarlet had spent her whole life learning to be soft, delicate, presentable. Vodka, in that outfit, was all edges and ease, laughter without restraint.

Something inside Scarlet twisted—admiration and jealousy tangled with something far worse: want.

When the segment ended, the others moved on. Laughter, chatter, phones clicking. Scarlet lingered. Because in that moment, as the borrowed masculinity fell away piece by piece—the slicked hair loosening, the makeup wiped off, the illusion fading—Scarlet felt her chest cave in.

It wasn’t the act that hurt. It was that she realized she preferred the illusion. That something in her had awakened not because Vodka looked like a man, but because Vodka wasn’t one.

The sight of her, halfway between both selves, felt like watching a dream dissolve in daylight.

A pity, Scarlet thought, though she didn’t know who she pitied, Vodka, for not knowing what she’d stirred, or herself, for not knowing how to stop it. A shame, she thought, that this version of Vodka, this impossible, dazzling in-between, didn’t really exist.

And she understood then, bitterly, painfully, that she was in love with something that wasn’t supposed to exist. That there was no Victor to love again.

The only girl Scarlet would anything—was Vodka in drag.

She remembers that day like a fever dream, stitched in laughter and disbelief. Vodka, with her hair slicked back, shirt half-buttoned, tie hanging loose like she couldn’t quite take herself seriously. Scarlet had laughed first—because what else could she do?—and Vodka had grinned wider, cocky and careless, the kind of grin that made the air taste like rebellion.

But something happened in that grin.

Something small and irreversible.

For the first time, Scarlet saw her not as a rival, not as a nuisance, not as a mirror she wanted to outshine… but as something fragile.

Something human.

Something terrifyingly beautiful.

Loathe and love were the same word wrapped in different skin. Scarlet learned that too late. She despised how Vodka made her heart race, how she made her doubt, how she made her want. But love was just loathing in a prettier dress. 

Both hurt. Both left marks that wouldn’t fade.

When Scarlet tried to remember the sound of her laughter, she found it impossible. The memory had frayed around the edges, fading like an old ribbon bleached by time. All that remained was the ache, the ghost of warmth pressed against her ribs, the shadow of a hand she never reached for.

The world moved on without her, as it always does.

Trophies gathered dust. Titles lost their shine. Crowds forgot the sound of her name.

But that day Victor—Vodka in drag—stayed.

—

“I’ve always chased the finish line, and never once looked back, 

But I’d trade every trophy shine for ‘Victor’ in slacks.

I’d give up all my pride and poise, the fame I used to brag,

If I could spend my reckless youth with Vodka in drag.”

She remembered the shape of it, though—the curve of Vodka’s grin beneath the fake sideburns, the way her voice deepened half a pitch when she teased, “Well? How do I look?” And Scarlet, trying too hard to act unimpressed, had swallowed something that tasted a lot like panic and said, “Ridiculous.”

It wasn’t a lie. It was ridiculous—how her heart had thudded, how her throat had gone dry, how she had wanted, just for a second, to run her fingers through that slicked-back hair and pretend the world wasn’t watching. 

Vodka had laughed, because of course she had. Everything was a joke to her. The kind of joke that hurt more when you were the punchline.

Scarlet grew up chasing things she could measure: seconds shaved off a time, trophies polished until they reflected her face, titles that told her she was enough.

She never chased Vodka. Maybe she didn’t know how. Maybe she was afraid to. It was easier to believe that Vodka would always be there, teasing, matching her stride on the track.

The world had already decided what she was allowed to want.

And Scarlet—Scarlet had always been a good girl, hadn’t she?

Good girls don’t stare at other girls. Good girls don’t desire such things.

So she started to build another house inside herself… 

One with no windows, no mirrors, no room for laughter. Every time Vodka smiled at her, she would lay another brick.

And when Vodka calls her name, voice low, too soft too honest—

Scarlet won’t say anything.

Brick by painful brick, she’d rebuilt that place.

And in the silence that followed after, she felt the walls close again.

The house was still alive after all.

And this time, it lived inside her.

—

The victory ceremony was a blur of flashing lights and hollow applause. Scarlet stood on the podium, the gold medal cold against her chest, colder than the winter air biting through her sweat-damp silks. Vodka’s hug lingered like a brand.

The phantom pressure of her arms, the fleeting warmth of her breath against Scarlet’s ear, the whispered words Scarlet still couldn’t decipher over the roar of her own frantic pulse. You were amazing? I missed you? Or just the static hum of proximity? The ambiguity was its own exquisite torture.

Later, in the sterile quiet of their dorm room… The tension crackled louder than the radiator. Vodka flopped onto her bed, kicking off her shoes with a sigh that sounded suspiciously like contentment. Scarlet remained rigid by the window, staring out at the darkened training track below, a geometric prison under floodlights.

"You were incredible out there," Vodka said, voice muffled by the pillow she’d buried her face in. There was genuine admiration, but also that effortless ease Scarlet could never replicate.

Scarlet didn’t turn. Her reflection in the dark glass was a pale ghost superimposed over the harshly lit track. Too aware. Always too aware. Aware of Vodka’s every rustle, every sigh, the way her jacket was slung carelessly over the foot of her bed. Aware of the rules etched into the walls, the invisible eyes of trainers and sponsors, the suffocating expectation that demanded rivals, not lovers. 

Girls in love didn't win sponsorships; they caused scandals. They disrupted the profitable, predictable hierarchy.

"Mhm.” Scarlet’s voice was flat, polished marble. Weaponized softness. She smoothed non-existent wrinkles from her pristine pajamas.

Vodka rolled onto her side, propping her head up. Scarlet could feel her gaze like a physical touch on her back. “What’s wrong?” She pushed herself up, sitting cross-legged on the bed, leaning forward. The lamplight caught the gold flecks in her eyes. "What are you so afraid of?"

You. 

The answer screamed silently in Scarlet’s skull. 

Me needing you. What it would cost. What it would reveal. 

That I’m not strong enough to survive it. 

Her tragedy wasn't softness; it was the desperate armor she forged from softness, the need to be hurt just to prove she could endure the breaking.

"Everything," Scarlet whispered, the word scraping her throat raw. "I'm afraid of everything." It was the closest she could come to the truth. Especially of you.

Vodka stared at her, the frustration melting into something heartbreakingly tender. Understanding? Pity? Scarlet couldn't bear it. She looked away sharply, focusing on the pattern of the carpet.

Silence descended, thick and charged. The hum of the heater filled the space where words should have been. Words of confession, of defiance, of revolution whispered between two beds. Words that could shatter everything.

Scarlet heard Vodka sigh again, softer this time. Resigned? Disappointed? The bedsprings creaked as Vodka lay back down. Scarlet remained standing by the window, a statue carved from longing.

Minutes bled into an hour. Scarlet finally moved, preparing for bed. She avoided looking at Vodka’s sleeping form, but she felt her presence like a gravitational pull. In the dim light, Vodka’s face was relaxed in sleep, lips slightly parted, one arm flung above her head.

Scarlet slipped into her own cold bed, pulling the stiff sheets up to her chin. She stared at the ceiling, listening to Vodka’s soft, rhythmic breathing. The sound was a lullaby and a torture. She pressed her palm hard against her chest, right over her pounding heart. The medal lay heavy on the nightstand, a cold, metallic reminder of the rails she ran on.

Who cares? Vodka would say if she knew Scarlet’s thoughts. Who cares?

Scarlet cared. Too much. Always. The fear was a cage within the cage. 

And lying there, bathed in the pale light, listening to the soft sounds of the girl she loved sleeping just feet away, Scarlet wondered if this suffocating ache, this constant, terrified vigilance, was the only proof of love their world would ever allow her. It felt less like proof and more like a slow, complicit undoing.

Love? Here? Between them? It wasn't forbidden by law, no. That would imply it was considered important enough to forbid.

It was worse.

It was inconsequential. A silly phase. Girlish affection. Disposable distraction from their real purpose: becoming perfect assets in the Racing industry. Love between them wouldn't produce profit, wouldn't obey the hierarchy that demanded rivals, not partners. It would be treated as a cute anecdote, a quirk to be dismissed.

The avoidant were meant to sting, to push Vodka away into familiar, safe animosity. 

But Vodka didn’t retreat. Instead, she met Scarlet’s gaze head-on, her own gold eyes losing some of their practiced fire, revealing an intensity that made Scarlet’s breath hitch. 

"Scarlet, what do you think of me?" Vodka said, her voice dropping, losing its forced bravado. She took half a step closer still. The distance between them was suddenly intimate, charged. The playful insults hung in the air, brittle and exposed.

Scarlet’s perfect composure faltered. Her smile tightened at the corners. "Annoying piece of junk," she insisted, but her voice lacked its usual melodic conviction. It sounded brittle. Defensive.

"Really?" Vodka breathed. She reached out, not to strike, but to gently brush a stray, sweat-dampened strand of hair that had escaped Scarlet’s braid back behind her ear. Her fingers grazed the shell of Scarlet’s ear, a touch so feather-light yet devastatingly intimate in this sterile, surveilled space. "Then why are you shaking?"

Scarlet froze. She hadn’t even realized she was trembling. Vodka’s touch burned like a brand. It wasn't the controlled pain she sought in training, the proof of endurance. This was different. Terrifying. Exhilarating. It was a vulnerability laid bare.

"I'm not—" Scarlet started, her voice barely a whisper now, the ‘Miss Perfect’ facade cracking under the heat of Vodka’s proximity and that impossible gentleness.

But Vodka wasn’t listening. The dam holding back months, years, of confused longing finally burst. The puppy crush had metastasized into something deep, aching, and utterly terrifying in its reality. Seeing Scarlet vulnerable, truly vulnerable beneath the polished armor, undid her completely.

"Scarlet," Vodka murmured, her voice thick with an emotion too big for the training hall, too dangerous for their world. Her other hand rose, hovering near Scarlet’s face. Her gaze dropped to Scarlet’s lips—usually curled in a cheeky smile, now slightly parted in shock. "You drive me insane. You always have. But lately…”

"No," Scarlet breathed, the word a desperate gasp. She wrenched herself back, stumbling a step away from Vodka’s touch as if burned. The cold steel wall hit her back. The mask slammed back into place with terrifying speed, harder than before. Her smile returned, wider than ever, but brittle as glass, her eyes like a princess. 

"Don't be absurd, Vodka." Her voice was high-pitched, almost shrill with forced levity. 

"Things are getting to you." She laughed again, the sound jarring and hollow in the sudden silence. “Just shut up.”

Vodka flinched as if slapped. The raw hope, the terrifying vulnerability that had shone in her eyes moments before, crumpled into hurt and then hardened into defensive anger. The cool rebel persona snapped back into place like armor plating. 

"Right," she spat, taking several deliberate steps back, putting a chasm between them. Her fists clenched at her sides. "Stupid me. Forgot who I was talking to for a second." The bravado was back, laced with venom now. 

"The untouchable Scarlet. Wouldn't want to mess up your perfect little world with something messy like me."

—

“Hey Scarlet. Ever think about… what you’d do if the world was ending tomorrow?

’Cause I do.

If it were, I’d drop everything, theres nothing to win, after all, no stupid rivalry, no “who’s better” crap…

I’d get on the next train, find you, and just… say it:

“Come with me, Scarlet. Let’s just love each other. No rules, no fear, no damn holding back. ’Cause it’s all over tomorrow anyway.”

…Maybe that’s the only reason we keep hesitating, huh?

’Cause we think there’s time. That we’ll always have another day, another chance to figure things out.

But what if we don’t? What if time’s just… just some joke we keep telling ourselves?

Heh. If the world really was ending tomorrow…

Maybe then I could finally say everything I’ve been too damn scared to.

We could do a hell of a lot for each other, huh?”

The paper trembled in her hands. Not from the breeze sneaking through the dorm window, but from her own pulse hammering through her fingertips. Vodka sat cross-legged on the floor, the only light a desk lamp that hummed and flickered, bathing everything in that sad, yellow half-glow that made memories feel too close.

Vodka read the words again, ink still wet enough to smudge if she touched it. “Come with me, Scarlet.” It looked so stupid now. So raw. So much.

Her throat tightened. The silence in the room pressed in, heavy and aware. The kind of silence that knew what she wouldn’t say out loud. She barked a laugh, sharp and wet. “God, Vodka… you idiot,” she muttered, dragging a hand down her face. “Who writes something like that?”

She looked at the letter again. The way her handwriting shook when she wrote “love.” The way she’d pressed too hard, carving the word into the page like it might disappear if she didn’t mean it enough.

“Like she’d ever…” Vodka mumbled.

Scarlet, with her perfect smile, her camera-ready grace, her voice always just a little too careful.

Scarlet, who probably never even thought about her this way.

Scarlet, who’d laugh if she ever saw this.

Vodka swallowed hard. Her eyes burned. She knocked herself on the forehead with her fist, once, twice. “Get a grip, dumbass. This isn’t some movie.” She laughed again, but it cracked down the middle, splintering into something small and helpless.

She folded the page, hesitated, then unfolded it again. Her gaze traced every line, every confession she’d never say out loud.  And for a heartbeat, she imagined it… the running, the freedom, Scarlet’s hand in hers, no noise, no rules, just them.

Then she exhaled. The image vanished.

With a sigh that felt too old for her age, Vodka crumpled the paper into her fist. The sound was louder than it should’ve been.

Crumple. Crack. End.

She threw it into the trash beside her desk.

—

The cafe air hummed with the low thrum of refrigerators and the distant clatter of dishes. Sunlight, sharp as a honed blade, sliced through the large front window, illuminating dust motes dancing in the sterile air and falling across the untouched pastry on Scarlet’s tray.

Her fingers, usually so precise, traced the cool rim of her teacup with a distracted tremor. Her mind wasn't on the lukewarm liquid; it was trapped in the charged silence of last night’s dorm room, replaying on a loop: the look in Vodka’s eyes when her hand had grazed Scarlet’s hair. 

A touch so accidental it should have been nothing. A touch that had ignited a wildfire in Scarlet’s chest, terrifying in its intimacy, its potential. It shouldn’t have meant anything. Yet it meant everything, threatening the fragile architecture of control she’d built brick by painful brick.

Then, a shadow fell over her table, “Scarlet. Hey.” 

Casual smile, too much cologne. He wasn’t a stranger, exactly. Just one of those boys who believed his presence was a compliment.

“You look tense,” he announced, leaning forward, elbows planted firmly on the small table. His eyes roamed her face.“You need to loosen up. Seriously. Not everything’s gotta be about racing stats and perfect form.”

Scarlet summoned the reflex. The practiced, polished mask settled over her features like glass. A smile, tight at the corners but convincing enough. 

Her voice, modulated to pleasant neutrality: “I’m fine. Just tired.” 

Just drowning. Just remembering how her touch felt.

He didn’t retreat. He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur that felt like spiders crawling on her skin. He was shaking his head as though gently correcting her. “You know, that’s kind of the problem with girls like you.”

Scarlet blinked. “Girls like me?”

“Yeah,” he said, as if explaining something obvious. “You try so hard to compete like us—the guys—but it’s different, isn’t it? You can’t pretend it’s not.” His tone softened in that false, patronizing way, 

“Boys and girls aren’t meant to be rivals. Or even friends, not really. It messes things up. Nature has balance, right? We’re supposed to challenge each other, not… confuse the order.”

Scarlet stared, unsure how to respond. “Confuse—?”

He smiled wider, leaning in. “You get it. You’re sharp. But you’d be happier if you stopped trying to act like one of us. You don’t have to be so cold. You could let someone else take the lead for once.”

A pause. “It’s not weakness. It’s just… how things are supposed to be.”

“C’mon, don’t play shy. Everyone wonders what you’re really like once you drop the whole…” He waved a dismissive hand at her posture, her composure. “…‘Miss Perfect’ act.”

Snap. 

It wasn’t a crack of thunder, but the silent, catastrophic failure of a load-bearing beam deep within her. The careful construction of poise, the weaponized softness she wielded like armor, buckled under the sheer, vulgar weight of his entitlement. 

The smile vanished. Her eyes, usually so sharp and focused, emptied out, becoming flat, unnervingly calm pools of nothing. She looked directly at him, through him, and said, her voice devoid of inflection, chillingly clear: 

“You’re gross.”

The silence that followed wasn't merely absence of sound; it was a vacuum, sharp enough to draw blood. It sucked the oxygen from the air.

His face contorted, the fake charm evaporating into raw fury. His palm slammed down on the table hard enough to make her untouched cup rattle. “What did you just say?!”

Panic flooded Scarlet’s veins like ice water. Her mouth went desert-dry. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. “I—” she started, voice strangled, but he was already surging to his feet, looming over her, his shadow engulfing her.

“Oh, so that’s how it is!” he spat, his voice rising, drawing glances from the few other patrons who quickly looked away. “You think you can just say whatever you want because of that pretty face? Because everyone kisses your ass?” 

He leaned in, venom dripping from his words. “You’re all the same—smile sweetly, bat your eyelashes like some helpless doll, manipulate everyone into giving you whatever you want. Entitled little princesses who think the world owes you!”

Scarlet opened her mouth again, but only a thin gasp escaped. Her body screamed run, but her legs were uncharacteristcall leaden, rooted to the spot by years of conditioning: Be polite. Be perfect. Don't make a scene. The familiar cage of expectation clamped down.

“Say something,” he demanded, voice cracking with that particular brand of outrage, the kind born not of harm, but of being denied deference. “Come on. Show that poise you’re so proud of—!”

Slap!

He hit her. It wasn't a wild swing meant to injure. It was calculated. Small. Precise. A sharp crack that landed squarely on her left cheekbone with a sting that radiated through her skull.

Not enough to knock her down, but for humiliation. Her head snapped sideways. The world tilted, colors blurring at the edges. Her brain short-circuited into white noise.

He was still shouting accusations twisting into bizarre shapes: entitlement, manipulation, using people. Demands for respect she supposedly owed him. 

The words were a distorted buzz beneath the roaring in her ears, beneath the phantom echo of that slap and the horrifyingly familiar taste of powerlessness it invoked.

Something deep inside her chest froze solid. A glacial core spreading through her panic. She stood up abruptly, mechanically. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated with shock. 

And then, horrifyingly, automatically, the smile returned. Not her racing smile. Not her polite smile. A ghastly rictus of terror and ingrained obedience, trembling violently at the corners of her lips like a marionette trying to perform grace under duress.

“I’m sorry,” she blurted, the words tumbling out too fast, too high-pitched. “I’m so sorry! What did I do wrong? I didn’t mean to—! Please—” Her voice fractured, raw and desperate, even as the awful smile clung on.

He sneered, a look of utter contempt twisting his features. He muttered something low and vile—"crazy bitch" or "ungrateful slut," she couldn't quite catch it over the ringing in her ear—and turned on his heel, striding away.

Scarlet remained standing for several heartbeats, frozen in the spotlight of her own humiliation. Her cheek burned with a heat that felt like shame made visible. Her hands shook uncontrollably at her sides. The smile remained etched onto her face, a mask welded to bone. 

Then the tears came, silent, hot, immediate rivulets tracing paths down her undamaged cheek. Mortification scalded her worse than the slap. She snatched her bag and fled before anyone could witness the collapse.

Outside, the sunshine felt jarringly bright, falsely cheerful, illuminating a world that seemed suddenly staged and artificial. The air was too clean; it couldn’t wash away the smell of his cologne or the phantom pressure on her cheek. 

She pressed trembling fingers to the stinging skin and let out a choked sound… not a sob, but a short, ugly bark of laughter that tasted like bile.

Why? Why laugh? Because she could still feel the imprint of his hand? Because she knew, with chilling certainty, that whispers would circulate: Scarlet snapped at him first, what did she expect? She can be so cold. 

Because a corrosive voice inside whispered he was right—she was playing a role, manipulating perceptions… wasn't she exploiting everyone's admiration? 

Wasn't her entire cheeky persona just a coward's shield? Wasn't this smile, this perfect performance, inherently deceptive? Wasn't she just as much a monster as anyone else? 

Her need to be untouchable was just another form of exploitation.

And beneath it all, a deeper, more terrifying current: the flash of understanding in his eyes when she called him gross… not anger at being called out, but disgust at her.

The disgust she felt for herself whenever she looked at Vodka and felt that treacherous surge of something hot and needy and utterly wrong. 

Girls weren't supposed to feel like this about other girls. It wasn't serious. It wasn't real. It was just a phase, a cute quirk dismissed—harmless schoolgirl infatuation that wouldn't interfere with their real purpose: to run, to win, to generate profit for the system that owned them. 

Romance between girls didn't threaten the hierarchy; it was neutered by condescension. It was disposable. Like everything else they felt.

So she ran. Blindly. Desperately. Sneakers pounding pavement with no destination except away. 

Away from the cafe, away from his sneer, away from the memory of Vodka's touch that had made her feel strong enough to momentarily defy him… a strength she couldn't afford. Her lungs burned with exertion and unshed screams.

She finally collapsed against a cold metal railing overlooking a quiet side street, gasping for air that wouldn't fill her lungs. Tears streamed freely now, silent rivers carving tracks through dust and sweat on her face. Her cheek throbbed. She pressed her forehead against the cool metal.

And into the uncaring afternoon air, barely a whisper rasped from her bruised throat: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” 

An apology to the world for daring to momentarily step out of line, for failing to maintain the flawless facade that kept everything—including her own terrifying desires—contained.

The echo of footsteps made her flinch violently, hunching her shoulders as if expecting another blow.

“Scarlet?” The voice was rough with concern, laced with a familiar bravado that couldn't quite hide its tremor. Vodka stood a few feet away, having followed her frantic flight. Her usual swagger was gone, replaced by wide-eyed alarm as she took in Scarlet’s shaking form, the red mark blooming on her cheekbone like a grotesque badge of shame, the tear tracks glistening.

Vodka took a hesitant step closer. “Hey… hey! What happened? Who did that? Talk to me!” Her hand reached out instinctively.

Scarlet recoiled as if burned, scrambling back against the railing. “Don’t!” The word tore from her throat, raw and ragged.

Vodka froze, hand suspended in mid-air, confusion warring with dawning anger on her face. “Scarlet…?”

The sight of Vodka’s concern, genuine, open, fiercely protective… was like acid on Scarlet’s raw nerves.

It cracked open the fragile dam holding back her self-loathing. She couldn’t bear that concern. Not now. Not directed at her. She was poison. A liar. She’d asked for it, hadn’t she? By existing too visibly? By feeling too much? By being weak?

The mask shattered completely. Not into vulnerability, but into something jagged and defensive.

“Why do you care?” Scarlet spat, her voice trembling but edged with unexpected venom. She wiped savagely at her tears with the back of her hand, smudging them across her cheekbone near the red mark.  “Come to gawk? See the ‘Miss Perfect’ finally crack?” Her laugh was harsh, brittle. “Satisfied?”

Vodka looked stunned, hurt flashing in her golden eyes. “Wha—? No! I saw you run outta that cafe like hellhounds were after ya! I saw your face! Who hit you?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Scarlet snapped back, pushing off the railing to stand shakily but forcing her spine straight. The movement sent a fresh wave of dizziness through her. She needed Vodka gone. She needed to be alone with her shame and her monstrousness before she contaminated her too. 

Before she proved herself right; that she exploited everyone around her for her own twisted needs.

“Maybe I deserved it! Maybe I am gross! Maybe I do just use people! Smile and flutter my eyelashes and expect everything handed to me!” She threw his accusations back at Vodka like knives, trying to cut the connection between them.

Vodka flinched as if physically struck. “Stop it! That’s bull and you know it!” She stepped forward again, urgency overriding caution.

Panic surged through Scarlet again; panic at Vodka seeing through her, panic at Vodka getting close when she felt so utterly filthy and wrong. Without thinking, fueled by a desperate need to drive her away, to protect Vodka from the ugliness inside herself and reaffirm her own monstrous narrative, Scarlet lashed out.

Her hand shot forward, not a punch, but a frantic shove against Vodka’s shoulder.

It wasn't strong. Vodka barely staggered back half a step.

But it stopped Vodka dead.

The shove wasn't hard, but it landed like a physical manifestation of the chasm between them. Vodka stumbled back, more from shock than force, catching herself against the brick wall. 

The sting in her shoulder was nothing compared to the bewildered hurt blooming in her chest. 

Scarlet stood rigid, chest heaving, tears still carving silent paths through the dust on her face, her hand trembling where she’d pushed.

"Scarlet..." Vodka breathed, her voice thick with confusion and a rising tide of helpless anger. "What the hell? I'm trying to help you!"

"Help?" Scarlet spat the word like poison. Her eyes, usually so sharp and calculating, were wide, dilated with panic and a raw, unfiltered self-loathing that was terrifying to witness. The ghastly smile was gone, replaced by a grimace of pure distress. 

"What do you know about helping? You think offering a hug fixes this?" 

Vodka stared, utterly lost. The Scarlet she knew was sunshine and cheekiness, challenge and controlled fire. This raw, exposed nerve was a stranger.

"It doesn't matter!" Scarlet yelled, her voice cracking. "He was right! Don't you get it? He was right!" She wrapped her arms around herself, shrinking inwards as if trying to disappear.

"I am gross. I am manipulative. I play the part, don't I? The perfect little racer, the charming cheeky number one everyone loves? But underneath? It's all just... rotten." 

Her gaze darted to Vodka, then away, "You saw it last night. How I... how I..."

"Last night?" Vodka echoed, genuinely perplexed. "What about last night? …I-It meant nothing!”

The words were meant to reassure, to dismiss the tiny moment that had felt strangely charged in the quiet dorm room. 

But for Scarlet, they were gasoline on the flames of her internal chaos. 

Meant nothing. 

The confirmation she both dreaded and, perversely, craved. Proof that her terrifying surge of feeling… the heat, the awareness, the desperate want ignited by that accidental touch …was insignificant. Disposable. A phase. Just like everyone said.

"Exactly!" Scarlet choked out, a fresh wave of tears welling. 

"Nothing! Because that's all it can be! Don't you understand? You think you can just... just be buddy-buddy?" She flung the phrase at Vodka like an accusation, her voice thick with scorn and a desperation that bordered on hysteria.

“Touching me, looking at me like that…”

Vodka flinched. "Like what? Scarlet, I'm just—"

"Stop it!" Scarlet shrieked, "Stop pretending! Stop looking at me like you care! Stop trying to get close! It's disgusting!" 

She was imbuing it with all her own internalized horror.

Vodka froze, the pieces crashing together with brutal clarity. Her words, something happened, someone told that to her... they hadn't just offended Scarlet; they had ripped open a wound Vodka hadn't even known existed.

A wound tied to her. To whatever terrifying, unnameable thing flickered between them that Scarlet saw as monstrous. 

Something that made her feel "gross".

"Scarlet," Vodka said softly, cautiously taking a half-step forward, her voice low and urgent. "Whatever you're feeling... it's not gross. It's not wrong…”

Scarlet recoiled as if Vodka had struck her again. The vulnerability, the open acceptance in Vodka’s words.

It was worse than the accusation. It threatened to dismantle the fragile scaffolding of self-loathing that was holding her upright. 

She couldn't handle kindness. Not now. Not from her. 

"Don't!" Scarlet gasped, backing up until the cold railing dug into her spine again. "Don't you dare say that! Don't pretend to understand! You don't know! You don't know what's inside me!" 

Her breath came in ragged gasps. "Just... just leave me alone! Go back to your world, your simple little world where everything makes sense! All sunshines and ‘coolness’!”

She saw Vodka hesitate, conflict warring on her face, concern battling against the sting of rejection, anger wrestling with a dawning understanding of Scarlet's turmoil.

Scarlet breathed in, the fight draining out of her, replaced by utter exhaustion,

"You’re gross.” She said.

Vodka stood rooted for a long, agonizing moment. Slowly, painfully, she nodded. The hurt in her own golden eyes was deep, mixed with a terrible pity and a crushing sense of helplessness. She took one step back, then another.

"Okay," Vodka said, her voice rough. "Okay, Scarlet." 

There was nothing else to say that wouldn't be a violation, another unwanted touch. 

She turned and walked away, her shoes heavy on the pavement, leaving Scarlet alone with the wreckage of her composure, the echo of the slap, and the suffocating conviction that the truest thing she’d said was also the most damning: I am gross.

—

The rot didn't start with the screaming headlines. It started with a number.

97.4%.

It glowed on Scarlet’s phone screen, bright and cruel against the darkness of her pre-dawn dorm room. 

The scale rating on "Uma Pulse", the unofficial but terrifyingly influential fan site that ranked the umamusume not just on speed, but on a chilling trinity: Innocence, Femininity, Charm. 

For years, Scarlet had been its undisputed queen, her percentage hovering consistently, reassuringly, in the high 90s. A validation as essential as air. Proof she was perfect. Worthy. Loved for being exactly what they wanted.

Then the rumors began to whisper. Not loud at first. Murmurs in comment sections beneath footage where she and Vodka stood a fraction too close. Speculation in forums analyzing their "intense synergy." 

Harmless shipping, she’d told herself, forcing a smile for the cameras. But the number… it flinched.

96.1%. 

94.8%. 

92.3%.

Each drop was a physical blow. She’d refresh the page obsessively, fingers trembling, heart hammering against her ribs. 

88.7%.

Comments bloomed beneath the plummeting number like toxic fungi: "Lost her sparkle." "Seems… distracted lately." "Too focused on other things besides winning, ne?" "Disappointing. Used to be the perfect idol."

"Other things." Scarlet knew what they meant.

She became a prisoner of the percentage. Training sessions became agonizing exercises in maintaining a facade of cheerful perfection while internally screaming at the phantom number hovering behind her eyelids.

She stopped eating meals with others. She ran extra miles, punishing her body for the sin of existing outside the perfect image, trying to run away from the plummeting score.

Her reflection became a stranger. Staring into the mirror before yet another promotional shoot, the carefully applied makeup felt like war paint over crumbling ruins. 

Who is that? she’d think, tracing the hollows starting to form under her eyes. 

The vibrant crimson hair, once her proud banner, felt like a costume. The smile she practiced felt like a rictus grin. The scaler number wasn't just a rating; it was an algorithm slowly erasing her face.

85.2%.

Then came the messages. Not typed comments, but patterns she saw in the digits themselves. Her fractured mind, starved of sleep and sustenance, wired on anxiety and shame, began to find meaning in the chaos.

They weren't just numbers anymore. They were commands. 

Condemnations spelled out in digital code only she could decipher. The plummeting percentage wasn't just disapproval; it was a countdown.

77.0%.

And then, one bleary-eyed dawn, after another night spent refreshing, refreshing, refreshing, the numbers rearranged themselves before her burning eyes.

Suddenly—

39.5%

Voided contract. Breach of 'morality clause'. The manager wouldn't meet her eyes. Sponsorships dissolved overnight. 

Hashtags rending, attached to images she couldn’t unsee.

Fabricated. All of it. Spliced footage, deepfake pornography depicting her and Scarlet in lurid, degrading scenarios. Leaked anonymously across every major imageboard and social media platform in Japan. 

The comments were a sewer: fantasies about their ‘secret life’, speculations on who ‘topped’, vicious critiques of their bodies juxtaposed with the very fetishization that fueled the hate.

Vodka had been blindsided. Training and family had kept her offline. 

She emerged to a shattered career and Scarlet… gone. Vanished. Her dorm room emptied, phone disconnected. 

Vodka had found her once, days after the leak, huddled in a shadowed corner of a equipment shed. Scarlet had been ghost-pale, trembling not with anger, but with a soul-deep terror Vodka hadn’t understood then.

Harder than ever, the leaden feeling in her muscles that no amount of stretching eased, the gnawing emptiness in her gut that had nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with Scarlet’s terrifying withdrawal. 

Her fans adored her grit, her relentless drive, her come-from-behind victories. They loved the runner, not the performer. But watching Scarlet disintegrate felt like watching the heart get ripped out of the sport itself.

She didn't understand the numbers. Didn't grasp the invisible cage of expectations built on femininity and innocence that Scarlet was suffocating under. 

Vodka’s pain was the blunt force trauma of a stalled career intertwined with a desperate, helpless love; Scarlet’s was a thousand paper cuts administered by an algorithm designed to measure her worth as a marketable object, slowly bleeding her dry.

—

Then came the men.

They found Vodka late one rain-lashed night. Not reporters. Something colder. Faces obscured by umbrellas and the downpour. One held a tablet, illuminating more of the vile deepfakes.

"What do you want?" Vodka spat, rain plastering her hair to her face.

The man holding the tablet stepped closer, its glow illuminating his smug, weasel-like face. "Want? We're helping, sweetheart." 

He tapped the screen, displaying another grotesque deepfake splice of Scarlet, contorted in fake ecstasy. "Cleaning up the sport's image. Getting rid of… distractions." He leered. "But we're reasonable. We can make it all vanish. Poof." He snapped his fingers, the sound swallowed by the downpour.

Another man, broader, chuckled, a wet, phlegmy sound. "Yeah. For a price. A small demonstration of… commitment."

The third, lankier one, shifted. "Yeah. See, we hear you're tough. All that 'come-from-behind' spirit." He gestured vaguely at her legs. "Prove it. Show us you're serious about putting this… perversion behind you. Really focus on your career."

The weasel-faced leader grinned, revealing stained teeth. "Simple. Break it."

Vodka stared, rainwater dripping from her chin. "Break what?"

"Your leg, genius." He pointed at her right foreleg, the powerful limb that had carried her to victory countless times. "Snap the tibia. Clean break. We get footage proving your dedication outweighs your… deviant tendencies." He tapped the tablet again.

"And maybe we delete this trash. Maybe."

They were pathetic. Cowards hiding behind technology and rain, their threats as flimsy as their umbrellas. But their weapon was potent. More images of Scarlet and Vodka, violated and splashed across the internet. More humiliation piled onto her shattered psyche.

They demanded blood or rather, bone, as tribute. Not understanding the fire they were playing with. 

Not understanding that Vodka’s defiance wasn't performative grit for the cameras; it was forged in the crucible of loss, honed by the agony of watching Scarlet unravel. 

They mistook desperation for recklessness. 

They mistook love for weakness.

Vodka didn't hesitate. She didn't rage, didn't scream. Her expression went terrifyingly blank, a mask of pure, detached resolve. Her eyes scanned the alley, landing on a discarded length of rusted metal pipe leaning against a dumpster.

The men watched, confused, as she walked towards it, her steps deliberate on the wet concrete. The broad one snickered. "Gonna hit us? Cute."

Vodka picked up the pipe. It was cold, heavy, solid in her rain-slicked hand. She hefted it, testing the weight. Then, without a word, without a single glance back at the men, she raised it high above her head.

For a split second, silhouetted against the alley light, she looked like a dark angel wielding judgement.

Then she brought the pipe down.

Not on them.

With a sickening, wet CRACK that echoed obscenely off the alley walls, she drove the pipe into her own right shin.

The sound was visceral, brutal. A sound of irrevocable damage.

Vodka didn’t cry out. A sharp, choked gasp escaped her, her body jerking violently, but she stayed upright, leaning heavily on the pipe now embedded… no, braced against the shattered bone. Her face was bone-white, etched with agony, but her eyes burned with a fierce, terrifying triumph fixed on the men.

Panic erupted. The weasel-faced man dropped the tablet with a clatter, screen shattering on the wet pavement. The broad man stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet. The lanky one just stared, mouth agape, eyes wide with primal horror.

"WHAT THE FUCK?!" the leader shrieked, voice cracking. "YOU CRAZY BITCH!"

"Take it," Vodka hissed through teeth clenched against the white-hot agony radiating up her leg. Her voice was guttural, strained, but terrifyingly clear in the sudden silence after their panic. 

"The footage. Your ‘proof’." She gestured weakly with her chin towards her ruined leg. "delete it all."

They didn't need telling twice. Scrambling like roaches exposed to light, they fled down the alley, abandoning the broken tablet in a puddle. Their terrified shouts faded into the drumming rain.

Vodka swayed. The world tilted. The pain crashed over her in nauseating waves, black spots dancing at the edges of her vision. She looked down at her leg. The angle was wrong. Hideously wrong. The pipe lay beside it now, glistening wetly.

She managed to fumble her phone from her pocket with trembling hands, fingers slipping on the wet screen…

—

The hospital room smelled of antiseptic and quiet despair. Pale morning light filtered through the blinds, painting sterile stripes on the wall opposite Vodka’s elevated leg, encased in plaster from knee to ankle. Morphine dulled the sharpest edges of the pain, leaving a heavy, throbbing ache and a profound weariness.

Scarlet sat in the rigid visitor’s chair beside the bed. She looked like a ghost of herself. Her crimson hair was lank, unwashed. Dark smudges bruised the skin beneath hollow eyes that stared fixedly at Vodka’s cast, not her face. Her hands lay clenched in her lap, knuckles white.

The silence stretched, thick and suffocating. News of Vodka’s "freak training accident" was already circulating, a convenient cover story swallowed whole by the media machine.

Vodka watched Scarlet’s profile. The rigid set of her jaw, the way she seemed folded in on herself, smaller than ever. The memory of those alley scavengers and their digital poison twisted in Vodka’s gut alongside the pain.

"They came for me," Vodka rasped, her voice rough from disuse and painkillers.

Scarlet flinched minutely but didn’t look up.

"Men," Vodka continued, pushing through the haze of drugs and exhaustion. "Cowards with umbrellas and a tablet. Showing me… showing me more of it. The deepfakes." She saw Scarlet’s hands tighten impossibly further. "They wanted… they wanted me to break my leg. Said they’d delete it all if I did."

Scarlet finally moved. Her head turned slowly, agonizingly slowly, towards Vodka. Her eyes, when they met Vodka’s, were oceans of shattered ice – horrified, disbelieving.

"So I did it," Vodka said simply, the words dropping like stones into the sterile silence. She gestured weakly towards her cast. "I broke it."

The dam broke.

Scarlet made a sound like a wounded animal; a low, guttural moan ripped from somewhere deep and broken. She surged forward out of the chair, not towards the door, but towards Vodka on the bed. She didn't seem to think; she moved on pure, desperate instinct.

She threw her arms around Vodka’s shoulders, burying her face in the crook of Vodka’s neck. Her body shook with silent, violent tremors. "No," she choked out, the word muffled against Vodka’s hospital gown. "No, no, no… you idiot… you brave, stupid idiot…"

Vodka froze for a second, stunned by the sudden contact, the raw vulnerability after weeks of Scarlet’s terrified withdrawal. Then, slowly, carefully avoiding her injured leg, she brought her arms up to encircle Scarlet’s trembling form. She held her tight, feeling the frantic beat of Scarlet’s heart against her own.

"It was for you," Vodka whispered hoarsely into Scarlet’s damp hair. "To stop them… to try and fix it…"

Scarlet lifted her head slightly. Their faces were suddenly mere inches apart in the hushed room. Tears streamed down Scarlet’s pale cheeks, tracing paths through days of accumulated despair. Her breath hitched, warm against Vodka’s lips. Her eyes, wide and drowning in anguish and something else searched Vodka’s face.

The proximity was electric. The shared trauma, the brutal sacrifice, the weeks of enforced separation and suffocating fear… it created a pull stronger than reason.

Vodka’s mind, fogged by pain and medication and the sheer emotional cataclysm of holding Scarlet again after believing her lost forever… went blank.

She leaned forward those final inches.

Her lips brushed against Scarlet’s.

It wasn't planned. It wasn't fiery or demanding like their rooftop almost-kiss or Scarlet’s desperate command in the bathhouse steam long ago. 

It was soft. Tender. 

A feather-light press born of exhaustion, relief, and an ache so profound it bypassed thought entirely. A reflex of comfort, of connection against the crushing darkness.

For one heartbeat… two… Scarlet accepted it.

She didn't pull away. Her lips softened infinitesimally against Vodka’s. A tiny sigh escaped her, warm and trembling. Her eyes fluttered closed. It was surrender. A momentary lapse in the fortress walls of her terror and shame.

For one suspended moment…

Then reality slammed back into Scarlet with the force of a physical blow.

Her eyes snapped open wide, not with warmth, but with abject terror. The specter of plummeting percentages, dissolved contracts, lurid deepfakes splashed across screens nationwide flooded back.

The disgusting thing inside you. The filthy, rotting thing that ruins everything.

She recoiled violently as if Vodka’s lips had scalded her.

With a choked gasp that was half sob, half scream stifled in her throat, Scarlet shoved herself away from the bed so hard she nearly toppled the chair she’d been sitting in.

She didn't look back.

She fled.

The door slammed shut behind her with a finality that echoed through the sterile room and through Vodka’s broken body and heart alike.

Vodka was left alone. The silence after Scarlet's flight was deafening, broken only by Vodka’s ragged breath and the relentless beep of the heart monitor beside her bed

—

Once upon a racetrack. We watch them run, we marvel at their prowess, we invest our hopes into victories… We often forget that they are young women beneath the silks. We forget that their hearts beat as fiercely as ours.

I remember it, I remember everything.

I was a ghost in the stalls of memory, but ghosts remember what the living try to forget.

It started with a thread in a forum, a photo here, a video there. But this noise grew teeth.

It was a scandal before it was even a story. Screens glowed with words sharp enough to flay skin.

“Digusting.”

Disgusting. Digusting digusting disgusting…

Ah—but the internet loves a witch-burning.

Especially when the witches are idols of dynasties. Young, naive, eyes sparkled with stars picked right from the skies.

Sponsors withdrew, but managers said nothing. 

I watched from somewhere between memory and myth.

I watched the crowd that once built them now tear them apart.

And I thought: this is how idols die.

Not with scandal, but with disbelief that they were ever real.

I’ve since learned that memory is just a cage made of names, Everyone did forget me, after all.

But I realized the cage had doors, and they were never meant to open them.

Once upon those two wishful stars.

the audience applauded.

Until they realized stars burn out, when you stare too long.

Now, only the ghosts clap. And I clap too.

Because even ruins remember what it felt like to shine.

—

The sterile light of the hospital hallway felt like an interrogation lamp. Scarlet pressed her back against the cold wall, trying to anchor herself, but the world kept tilting. Days of sleeplessness, the constant hum of whispers following her like a toxic fog, the phantom taste of bile in her throat… 

It had all coalesced into a pressure behind her eyes that threatened to crack her skull open. She’d snapped at a reporter. Again. Called a well-connected sponsor’s assistant "irrelevant." 

Rumors weren't just whispers now; they were headlines. 

They didn’t say ‘lesbian’. Not directly. They used words like ‘inappropriate attachment’, ‘distracting intensity’, ‘disgusting hobbies’, ‘unhealthy codependency’... 

Words that, in the context of two top-tier umamusume constantly under scrutiny, carried the same damning weight.

Vodka, in crutches, found her there, slumped against the wall, eyes wide and unseeing, fingers digging into her own arms hard enough to leave crescent moons on her pale skin. "Scarlet?" Vodka’s voice was soft, tentative, a stark contrast to her usual bravado. She limped closer, hand outstretched. 

"Hey, c'mon. You need to—"

"DON'T!"

The shriek tore from Scarlet’s throat, raw and guttural, a feral sound ripped from some deep, wounded place she didn’t recognize. It echoed obscenely down the empty corridor. She recoiled violently, slamming her shoulder blade hard against the unyielding cinderblock. 

Pain flared, sharp and welcome, a concrete counterpoint to the internal chaos. Vodka froze mid-step, her hand jerking back as if Scarlet’s skin radiated acid.

Scarlet’s breath hitched, ragged gasps scraping her throat raw. She wasn’t seeing Vodka anymore. Not really. She was seeing the ghosts conjured by the whispers: her trainer’s stony disapproval in yesterday’s meeting, the flicker of unease in everyone's eyes, the pixelated cruelty of anonymous forum comments scrolling behind her eyelids. 

Her carefully curated mask of a cute, little miss perfect she presented to the world, lay in shards at her feet. What remained was naked terror and corrosive self-loathing, twisting her features into something unrecognizable.

"I CAN'T STAND YOU TOUCHING ME!" she screamed, the words trembling with hysteria. "I CAN'T STAND YOU LOOKING AT ME!" 

"Sca–?" Vodka pleaded, her own voice thick with confusion and fear. "Scarlet, what are you—?"

"THE THING!" Scarlet shrieked, clawing at her own temples with desperate fingers, nails biting into skin. "The disgusting thing inside me! The filthy, rotting thing that ruins everything it touches!" 

Her gaze snapped back to Vodka’s face, horrifyingly lucid now, filled with a devastation so profound it stole Vodka’s breath. 

In that moment, Scarlet saw not just Vodka, but Vodka’s future crumbling—endorsement deals evaporating, training opportunities revoked, whispers hardening into career-ending verdicts. All because of her. Because of the poison leaking from her own fractured heart.

"I DID IT!" The confession ripped out of her, ragged and broken. 

"I RUINED MY LIFE! AND I RUINED YOURS!" 

Sobs choked her, violent, wracking spasms that doubled her over.

"I'M SORRY! VODKA, I'M SO SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN IT!" 

She slid down the wall, collapsing onto the cold linoleum floor like a puppet with severed strings. She drew her knees up tight to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, making herself small, wishing she could disappear into the grout lines.

The rumors hadn’t just spread; they’d mutated. From the initial snickers about their intense rivalry-turned-closeness, easily dismissed as ‘cute’ competition by fans who shipped them harmlessly. iit had curdled into something darker. Someone had planted a seed:

It’s not just friendship. It’s real. They’re lovers. And Japan’s double standards had done the rest.

For the public? Queer relationships between idols, athletes… they existed in a strange limbo. Squealed over in fan circles when presented as pure, aesthetic, non-threatening romance between beautiful girls. But real? Legitimately? For the public? 

Love between idols, athletes... it existed in a carefully curated limbo. Tolerated when presented as aesthetic, pure, unthreatening fantasy between beautiful girls on screen or stage. 

But real? Deep? Consuming? Between two women representing multi-billion-yen racing dynasties?

That was different. That was messy. That threatened the carefully constructed narratives of purity, dedication to the sport, and marketability to a broad audience. 

Management hadn't banned them; they hadn't needed to. The implication alone was poison.

Their innocence was irrelevant. The accusation itself was the condemnation. The lack of "proof" wasn't exonerating; it became proof of secrecy, of shame. 

Whispers became "concerns" raised in meetings. Sponsors got skittish. Training schedules were subtly shifted to keep them apart more often. 

The media parsed their every interaction for hidden meaning. The playful shove during practice became "volatile aggression." A shared glance of concern became "inappropriate intimacy." Vodka winning a race Scarlet lost became "emotional manipulation affecting performance."

Scarlet had internalized it all. Every disapproving glance from a trainer, every veiled comment about "focus," every headline implying she was unstable, became proof of her own monstrousness. That the warmth she felt for Vodka was not love, but a contagious disease, an inherent flaw that inevitably destroyed everything good.

The silence stretched. Outside, the wind hit the glass hard enough to rattle the frame.

Vodka finally spoke. “Do you hate me?”

“I wish I did.”

A confession of Scarlet's own profound failure. Her failure of fighting the fundamental truth of her own heart. To have it weaponized against her and the person she craved most.

Vodka didn’t move for a long moment, stunned by the raw, broken sound of it. The frantic energy that usually crackled around her was utterly gone, replaced by a stillness that felt heavier than the silence itself. 

Seeing Scarlet—the indomitable, infuriatingly perfect Daiwa Scarlet—crumpled on the floor like discarded trash, consumed by a self-loathing so absolute it bordered on madness…

It shattered something fundamental in Vodka too.

The rumors, the whispers, the subtle shifts in their schedules, the cold disapproval—Vodka had raged against them. She’d channeled her frustration into harder training runs, sharper barbs in their public ‘rivalry,’ a fierce determination to prove they were nothing more than competitors. She’d told herself it was just noise, that their connection was theirs alone, untouchable. 

Seeing Scarlet like this proved it was a lie. The poison had seeped in. 

The institution, the machine designed to churn out profitable, marketable idols of speed, was grinding Scarlet down from the inside.

—

The room was unnervingly tidy. But there were trophies gleamed dully on a shelf, devoid of meaning. Training schedules lay stacked neatly on the desk, the last few days conspicuously blank. Scarlet stood by the window, watching the first grey light of dawn seep over the silent training track. The familiar sight that used to ignite a fierce hunger now only evoked a hollow ache.

She picked up a small, framed photo; not of a race victory, but a candid shot taken a while ago: herself and Vodka, arms slung over each other's shoulders after a grueling practice, both grinning with genuine, exhausted delight, mud streaking their faces. 

That unguarded moment felt like it belonged to another person, from a different universe. 

A girl who believed in being seen, in striving, in winning. 

A girl naive enough to think her feelings could be anything but a fatal flaw.

A final wave of grief, sharp and brutal, threatened to buckle her knees. This was it. Not just leaving Vodka, but annihilating everything she'd ever been. Killing 'Scarlet'. She reached out, her fingers rubbed over the photo…

No. Reminders were toxic. Nostalgia was a trap. 

To disappear completely, she needed to become nothing. To be forgotten entirely, she needed to forget first.

—

The day Scarlet disappeared, the air felt wrong. Like the world was holding its breath and didn’t want to tell me why.

She was supposed to show up for a sponsor event. Scarlet never missed anything, not rehearsals, not press, not even the dumb morning jogs we do that she swore she hated. When they said she hadn’t checked in, I laughed. Told them she was just cooling off somewhere, probably practicing lines in front of a mirror. Scarlet always overthought everything.

But she didn’t show the next day either.

By the third day, the headlines called it a disappearance. The word still sounds stupid. Like she just evaporated.

I joined the search teams. Every morning I was there,  running through train stations, asking shopkeepers, chasing shadows that looked like her from far away. Every night I’d come home and look at that picture, her laughing at something off-camera, sunlight spilling across her hair like the world itself bent toward her.

“She’ll come back,” I told anyone who’d listen.

“She just needs time.”

I said it so much it stopped sounding like words and started feeling like a spell I was trying to cast. If I said it enough, maybe she’d hear it. Maybe she’d remember me.

And yet, the more I spoke, the harder it became to believe. Each word made one more muscle tense. Each repetition was another hair falling out from stress. But from the start, there was always an aching, tearing fear nipping away at my hope.

The trainers stopped calling after a while.

The news stations found something else to chew on.

People stopped asking.

Months passed. 

The posters peeled from the walls. Her trophies got shoved to the back of glass cases, next to the names no one remembered. Every time I saw her face on some old highlight reel, it felt like watching a ghost.

But I kept looking.

One step. Look for her. Another step. She’s not here.

Step. Step. Step.

In the rain. In the dark. In the cold. I couldn’t stop.

I checked the riverside we used to run by, the old park bench where she’d read while I napped. I even went back to the track we trained on, long after they’d repaved it. There’s a stretch of dirt there that never quite settled right. I used to think maybe she’d left something of herself in it.

Step. Step. Step.

I’d check them again. And again. Day after day. After training. After a race. On my days off. 

Step. Step. Step.

Gimlet told me to move on. She didn’t say it cruelly—just quiet, like someone telling a dog the door it’s scratching at will never open.

I didn’t listen. Couldn’t.

Step. Step. Step. Step.

Through the tears.

Step. Step. Step. Step.

Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step.

Step. Step. Step. Step. Step. Step.

Step. Step. 

…

Step.

… 

(editor note: honestly the last step sequence might be a bit much but I liked how it symbolized vodka searching for scarlet. Her efforts grew more and more until she broke and eventually stopped. Feeds really well into the 5 years later)

Five years later, I stopped showing up at search briefings. Not because I stopped caring—God, I could never—but because hope had started to feel like a kind of rot. It got under my skin, made everything heavy.

I still dream about her.

Not the happy kind, the kind where I’m running, lungs on fire, and she’s always a few steps ahead. I keep calling her name, but she never turns around. Just keeps running until the world fades to white.

—

Before Vodka lost all her spirit…

They said Europe would be a fresh start. New races. New trainers. New everything.

A clean slate, that’s what the manager called it, like I’d just spilled something on my career that could be wiped off if I ran fast enough somewhere else.

I almost said yes. Almost packed my bags. Almost convinced myself that leaving meant moving forward instead of just… running away.

But then I found her old shirt.

Scarlet’s, the one she’d left behind after her last race. It still had that faint smell of her perfume, sharp, floral, like confidence bottled. I sat there, holding it like it was something alive, and all that stupid talk about Europe felt so far away.

My fingers ran across the tightly woven threads, each stitch cold. The once forgotten designs resurface memories repressed by years of training. It’s haunting.

The thing is, I don’t even remember putting it there. Maybe she did. Maybe she knew I’d find it when she was gone.

So when my trainer asked if I’d finalized the paperwork, I just said,

“No. I’m not going.”

He blinked, pen hovering over the clipboard like I’d just spoken another language. “You’re… not?”

“I changed my mind.”

“Vodka, this is the opportunity of a lifetime. You’ll be racing in the Prix de l'Arc. Top sponsors. Full press support—”

“I know.”

He stared, waiting for something that would make sense. Something like injury, or burnout, or fear. But those would’ve been lies, and I was done lying to myself.

“I just can’t,” I said finally. “There’s… someone I can’t leave behind.”

His expression softened a little, the kind of pity people save for things they think you’ll outgrow. 

“Vodka, Scarlet’s gone.”

“I know.”

I did know. I knew better than anyone. I’d seen the way everyone stopped saying her name. How her posters came down from the training hall walls, one by one. Like she was a stain they couldn’t scrub off fast enough.

I can’t look up. Can’t meet his gaze. My arm is shaking, a motion not under my control. All I can do is grab and hold it still.

That’s the thing. When you lose someone like Scarlet, the world doesn’t just go quiet. It echoes. Everything she ever touched keeps vibrating with what she left behind.

And I can’t ignore it. The deepest part of me won’t quit. Not yet.

“I need to find her,” I said. My voice cracked halfway through it. “Even if it’s just to know she’s alive. Even if she doesn’t want to see me again.”

She’s my fiercest rival but also my closest…

I didn’t tell him that part. I didn’t tell him about the map I’d drawn in secret; all the cities she might’ve gone to, the names of every contact who might’ve seen her. Or that sometimes I dreamed of her walking into a crowd and never turning back, and I’d wake up with my hands reaching for someone who wasn’t there.

Instead, I just said, “I’ll stay here. Keep racing. Keep looking.”

He didn’t argue again after that. Maybe he saw it in my face, that stubborn, reckless thing that had always made him sigh and Scarlet mad.

When he left, I sat there for a long time. The fabric was still in my hands. A part of me refused to set it down. My finger wrapped around it tightly until my knuckles turned white. Until the sun was setting outside. Red light spilling through the windows. It felt like the world was bleeding quietly, but still pretending to smile.

I pressed the shirt to my chest and whispered, “Wait for me.”

I didn’t care if she couldn’t hear it. 

I just needed to say it out loud.

Because if I stopped talking to her, if I stopped believing she was somewhere out there—then she’d really be gone.

And I couldn’t live in a world where Scarlet was gone.

—

The dorm room chair groaned in protest as Vodka bounced on it, bare feet planted firmly on the cold linoleum. She leaned forward, practically pressing her nose against the laptop screen, a wide, toothy grin splitting her face. 

On the screen, her mother’s weathered but kind face smiled back, her father’s broad shoulders just visible behind her, the familiar backdrop of their farmhouse kitchen warm and cluttered.

“Pops! Ma!” Vodka’s voice boomed, loud enough to rattle the flimsy speakers. “Told ya! Told ya I’d crack that 2:30 barrier! Felt like thunder rollin’ down the straight! Pure fire in the belly!” She punched the air. “Ain’t nothin’ but packed dirt waitin’ for me!”

Her father chuckled, a low rumble. “Thunder’s good,” he said, using her given name with a warmth that softened the country roughness. “But thunder needs direction. Don’t just run fast, girl. Run smart. Feel the track under ya, not just the fire in ya legs. Remember what I always said?”

Vodka rolled her eyes playfully, flopping back in the chair. “Yeah, yeah, Pops. ‘Run with your gut, but steer with your head.’ Heard it a million times!” She grinned again, energy crackling off her like static. 

“But sometimes the gut just knows! Like when I saw Scarlet lining up beside me last spring? Boom! Knew I had to leave nothin’ in the tank! Gotta show that city-slicker princess what real stuff looks like!” Her laugh was bright, infectious.

That was months ago. The energy had been a tangible thing back then, a crackling current propelling her forward.

(Hanshin Spring Program, pristine) Scrawled neatly in the corner: Feb 10th. 

Pops called. Told him about shaving 0.8 sec off my best. He grunted. “Smart run?” he asked. Damn right it was smart! And fast! Feels GOOD. Real good. Like… purpose? Yeah. Purpose with a capital P. Bring on the next one.

(Tenno Sho Schedule, slightly bent) Margin note, ink smudged: April 5th. 

No Scarlet in the lineup, finished 3rd. Good time. Empty feeling. Track felt… quiet. Too quiet. Even with the crowd screaming.

—

The video calls home got shorter after that. I still called, still smiled. But even I could hear how fake it sounded.

“How’s the new bike, Pops?” I asked one night, picking at a loose thread on my sleeve instead of meeting his eyes. “He’s strong,” he said, but his tone changed. “You soundin’ distracted, girl. You runnin’ after somethin’ I can’t see?”

I laughed, but it came out thin. “Nah, just savin’ my boom for the big races.”

He didn’t push, but I saw the worry crease at the edge of his eyes. When the call ended, the dorm went quiet again,  that kind of quiet that hums in your teeth.

—

Scrawled across a photo of the finish line: May 28th. Wherever she is, did she eat well? …I won the trial heat. Fastest time this season. Felt like… runnin’ through fog. Thick, cold fog. What’s the point if she ain’t there to chase? Or to chase me?

I sat hunched over her laptop, the light from the screen casting deep shadows under her eyes.

“Ma?” My voice was quieter now, almost hesitant. 

“Yeah… yeah, I ate.” A pause. 

“No, not ramen. Proper stuff.” Another pause, longer. 

My gaze drifted away from the screen, towards the window, towards the distant lights of the training track. “Pops there?” Her voice hitched slightly.

My mom’’s face softened with concern. “He’s out. Said he’d call you tomorrow mornin’, early. Before first track.” She leaned closer to the camera. “You sure you’re alright, sweetheart? You look… tired.”

I rubbed a hand over my face, rough and tired. “Just… trainin’ hard, Ma. Real hard.” 

I tried for a smile, but it faltered instantly. “Tell Pops… tell him…” I trailed off, swallowing hard. 

What was there to say? That his advice about running smart felt meaningless now? That her gut was knotted with something cold and heavy that wasn’t fire? That the thunder was gone? 

“Tell him I’m runnin’,” I finished lamely, “I’m still runnin’.”

I ended the call quickly after that, the image of my mother’s worried face lingering in the dark room long after the screen went black.

—

Entry scrawled in messy script across the margins: June 14th. 

Back on track. Thought the break would help. Wrong. Legs feel like lead pipes someone welded to my hips. Crowd’s roar? Used to be jet fuel. Now it’s just… noise. 

White noise. Tried to picture Scarlet in the stands. Used to see her there, even when she wasn’t, that smirk like a challenge. Today? Blank seats. Nothing but empty plastic. Finished 7th. Not bad. Just… nothing. 

Like running through wet cement. Trainer said, "Lack of focus." Gimlet looked away. Focus? I’m focused alright. Focused on every shadow in the crowd that might be a shade of red hair. 

Focused on the exit gates, scanning for someone who vanished a long time ago. Racing’s just the thing I do between searches now. Pathetic.

(A blurry photo of Vodka mid-stride, face strained, eyes distant) Caption beneath, written later: August 3rd. 

This race was slick. Should’ve been my element. Used to thrive in the slop. 

Today? Felt detached. Like watching someone else pilot this body. 

Mind kept drifting—Did she like the rain? Did she ever run just for the feel of it? 

Missed my mark coming into the final turn. Overcorrected. Heard the pop before I felt it. Left knee. Sharp, hot. Staggered. Finished. Somehow. Limped across 10th.

The pain was… clean. Honest. Better than the hollow ache inside. Trainer’s face said it all: Disappointment, thinly veiled concern. "Rest," he ordered. 

Rest? How do you rest when half your soul’s missing? How do you heal a leg when your spirit’s fractured?

(A medical report clipped to a page) Diagnosis: Grade II MCL Tear. Rehabilitation Timeline: 8-12 weeks. 

Vodka's handwriting, shaky: September 18th. 

Rehab sucks. Boring. Repetitive. Pointless. Ice packs. Stretches. Strength exercises that feel like moving mountains. Therapist keeps chirping about "positive mindset," "visualizing success." 

Success? What’s that? Winning a race nobody important watches? Finding a clue that leads nowhere? Scarlet wouldn’t sit here icing her knee. 

She’d be doing something. She’d be relentless. I just feel… tired. Bone-deep tired. The fire’s guttering out. Trying to stoke it feels like blowing on wet ashes. Saw my reflection in the clinic window today. Didn’t recognize the eyes. Flat. Empty. 

Where’d the spark go? Did she take it with her?

(A single sentence on a torn piece of notepaper, October 31st.)

Told them I’m done.

(A formal retirement announcement clipping) Headline: "’Wild Top Gear’ Vodka Announces Early Retirement Citing Injury." Vodka's note scribbled angrily over the article: 

"Citing Injury." Sure. That’s the ticket. Not "Citing Soul-Crushing Despair." Not "Citing Inability to Run While Constantly Looking Over Her Shoulder for a Ghost." Not "Citing the Fact That Winning Feels Like Ashes Without Her There to Beat." Packed up my locker. Threw away most of it. Trophies? Dust collectors. Silks? Shrouds. Only kept one thing.

(A small, worn square of fabric pinned to the page) Beneath it: 

Her scent’s almost gone now. Just threads of memory. Five years of searching. Five years of hope curdling into something sour and heavy in my gut. The money… the fund… for private investigators, billboards, ads in every damn town… sits in the bank. 

Mocking me. 

What’s the point? She doesn’t want to be found. Or she can’t be. Or… worse. Can’t think about worse. Need out. Need away from these tracks, these memories screaming from every corner. Need… motion.

(A glossy brochure for a powerful touring motorcycle) Circled model: Midnight Blue with silver accents. Writing jagged, pressed deep into the paper: November 15th. 

Did it. Emptied the search fund. Every last yen meant for finding her. 

Bought the bike. Not freedom. Escape. Punishment? Maybe both. Feels like betrayal carved into my ribs. 

"Funding for Scarlet's search team and awareness advertisements." Yeah.

Turned it into chrome and engine instead. Stood in the dealership, hands shaking as I signed the papers. The salesman grinned like he’d sold me paradise. All I felt was the cold weight of giving up. Trading hope for this. Trading her… for speed that goes nowhere.

(A photo of a rustic countryside house, smoke curling from a chimney) Vodka's handwriting, smaller, flatter: December 1st. 

Home. Parents' place. Cold air bites clean, sharp. Different cold than the city. Saw Mom’s face light up when I rolled up on the bike… then crumple when she saw mine. 

Little brothers tackled me, taller now, voices deeper. Tried to match their energy. Tried to be the wild big sister they remember. Felt like acting. Hollow performance. Dad clapped my shoulder, didn’t ask about racing, didn’t ask about… her.

Just said, "Glad you're home." The quiet here is heavy. Not peaceful. Empty. The bike sits in the old barn. Looks alien next to the tractors. I run my hand over the cold tank sometimes. The engine could roar, eat up miles… but to where?

(Blank except for a single smudged line) 

The spark’s not gone out. It just… ran too far ahead. And I can’t catch up.

—

I left the highway at dusk because the sky was the wrong color. That coppery haze, all bruised and blinking like a migraine coming on, it made something in me buckle. Like my ribs weren’t bones anymore, just scaffolding wrapped in paper, ready to fold in on itself.

So I parked my motorcycle at the edge of nowhere—dust road, dead gas station sign twitching in the wind like it had something left to say. I don’t remember the name of the town, or if it ever had one. Just a vending machine full of expired cola and a row of crooked mailboxes, mouths open like they were screaming into the wind.

I sat on the gravel and cracked my knuckles until they popped like firecrackers. Over and over. Something about the rhythm felt safe. Felt like a cage I could climb into.

I watched the sun hemorrhage behind the hills and thought: maybe this is what it looks like when a god gives up. No thunder, no final sermon, just light leaking out like someone punctured the sky and forgot to patch it.

The gravel under me was still warm. It radiated up through me like it wanted to remind me I was still here. Still real. I didn’t buy it.

My motorcycle ticked behind me, cooling like a wounded animal. I used to love that sound. Now it just makes me think of time. Of heat escaping. Of endings I can’t outrun no matter how fast I twist the throttle.

I stood in the shell of the busted gas station, knife in one hand, can of peaches in the other, and for a second—maybe longer—I forgot which was meant for eating. The metal glinted the same. Both promised sweetness or blood.

I laughed. Not a real one. The kind that sounds like a rusted hinge giving out. Sharp. Brittle. Something with teeth. Then I dropped them both, clang, thud, and leaned my head against the old freezer chest. It wasn’t even plugged in, but I pretended it hummed. Pretended it had a language I could crawl inside. Pretended it cared.

I feel like I’m peeling away. Like a sticker half stuck to the world, curling at the edges. People talk about dissociation like it’s a floaty feeling. Mine isn’t. Mine’s like sinking in glue, molasses thick with the past. It’s not drifting, it's drowning. 

But quietly. Elegantly. Like a performance no one claps for. 

This morning… what even is morning anymore? The sun was up, and then it wasn’t. I blinked and time had bled out. My hands were red. Ink, probably. Or maybe rust. Maybe ketchup from a packet I didn’t open. I’d written something on the station wall, over and over. 

Can’t read it now. Letters blurred like they didn’t want to be known. Names, maybe. Or warnings. Or prayers misspelled on purpose.

Could’ve been Scarlet’s name. Could’ve been mine. Does it matter?

Sometimes I think my soul already bailed. Maybe it cut loose, hitched a ride on someone more intact. Maybe I’m just echo now. A vessel. A thing that remembers how to move but forgot why.

And honestly… there’s peace in that. No weight. No expectation. Just motion. Breath. Rot.

I think I love her more than the world deserves. It’s the only thing about me that feels clean. And that’s dangerous, isn’t it? 

Because I’ve loved before. And every time, I ruin it. Every time, I touch something beautiful, I leave fingerprints shaped like bruises. 

I don’t want to do that to her. So I stay inside. So I press my face to the floor. So I become less. For her. For once, let the madness stop with me. 

Let me be the last infected branch. 

Let me rot quietly, without passing it on.

…

I thought if I stayed still enough, long enough, I’d vanish. Just... dissolve into the cracks of this place. Let the dust claim me. Let my motorcycle rust down to bones. Let the air forget the shape of my name.

But the stillness turned on me.

It always does.

I was lying on the cracked linoleum, tracing the dirt lines with my fingertip like they were veins on a map I could read back to sanity. The silence buzzed like a loose wire in my skull. Every muscle in me was clenched like I was bracing for something—except there was nothing coming. No threat. No voice. Just stillness. Endless. Loud.

And then something shifted.

A can rolled off a shelf somewhere in the back. Just a tiny sound. Harmless. Stupid. But it punched a hole in the calm I’d wrapped myself in. My breath caught in my throat like it was suddenly a foreign thing. My jaw clenched so hard I felt my molars grind. And all at once, my skin didn’t fit anymore.

I stood up too fast. I don’t even remember telling my body to move. Just the sharp sound of my boot heel scraping the floor. Then my hand, without thinking, grabbing the rusted wrench from the counter. Cold. Heavy. Familiar.

I didn’t mean to throw it.

Didn’t mean to smash it into the vending machine.

But I did.

Once. Twice. Three times. The glass didn’t even shatter. It just cracked like a spiderweb frozen mid-breakdown. And I hated it for not giving. For not falling apart like I needed it to.

So I kept going. Knocking everything over. Cans. Bottles. The busted fan. My knuckles split somewhere in the chaos, and I didn’t even feel it. Not at first. I was too busy trying to exorcise something wordless. Something deep and sharp and red that had been clawing inside me since—

Since forever.

The anger wasn’t loud. It wasn’t fireworks. It was a slow burn turned wildfire. It was heat behind the eyes. It was the kind of fury you swallow and swallow until one day it chews its way back up your throat and asks why you ever thought you could contain it.

I dropped to my knees like the floor had called me home. Blood from my hand dripping onto the peeling tile in little dots, red punctuation marks on a sentence I couldn’t finish. My breath came in stutters. Not crying. Not really. But that shaking thing. That quiet quake under the skin when your body’s trying to hold in a scream your soul already let out.

And all I could think was: I almost made it. I almost made it through today.

But the day didn’t want to be survived.

The silence came back. Thicker this time. Like it was ashamed of me.

I pressed my back against the wall and slid down, curling in on myself like I could pretend I was smaller, less dangerous, less wrong. My fists throbbed. My teeth ached from clenching. And still, the hurt trembled in my chest like a motor idling, ready to burn through whatever I had left.

I whispered, just once, to no one:

“Wherever you are…“

I almost smashed an object again. I don't remember what. but I held back, it felt like such a tiny thing that it felt like it would make me feel more insignificant.

“...Don’t come find me, Scarlet.”

—

The next morning, I woke up to the floor. My hand stuck to the linoleum where the blood dried. It took skin when I pulled it away. I laughed a little—Don’t know why, dry, humourless—because I guess it looked like I'd shed something, like maybe the bad part of me had peeled off in the night.

But then I tried to stand.

And the world buckled.

It wasn’t painful at first. It was tilting. Like gravity had changed its mind about me. The walls leaned closer, and the air went thick. My vision went white at the edges, sound drained out of the world, slow, syrupy, and I hit the counter before the floor found me.

The next thing I remember is the taste of metal. And the smell of rain.

Then the hospital.

They said words I didn’t understand at first. Tissue. Damage. Degeneration. Something about the body forgetting how to repair itself. My trainer’s face went blank in that polite, professional way, like maybe if he didn’t react, it wouldn’t be true.

I laughed again. Because I’d been through fractures before. Breaks. Torn muscles. Racing hurts. That’s what we do, right? We fall apart, we heal, we get up. Simple math.

But this… this wasn’t that.

The doctor kept talking. Something about how it had started small, microscopic. Like a fuse burning quietly somewhere inside me for years. The crashes, the overtraining, the sleepless nights—it all added up. A slow-motion suicide dressed as ambition.

And then he said it.

“It’s terminal.”

—

Years Before… When she had her first injury:

There’s no one left.

The world is so big when you have no one to walk beside. This hospital hallway is endless. I could keep going forever and still never find anything worth speaking to. 

The silence is not peaceful. It is complete. I would beg for a sound now. Even one last command. But all that’s left is the hum of my own limbs and the whisper of air conditioning. 

I don’t know if I did the right thing. I don’t know if it matters.

I thought I’d feel something after it all. Determination. Rage. Clarity. 

But there is only this ache—like a wound I can’t reach, like a question no one answers because no one is listening. 

Gimlet once told me that  we people make meaning from suffering. That pain was the ink we wrote our stories with. 

But my story doesn’t read like a fable. It reads like a scream someone tried to bury under snow.

I am so cold.

I am so tired.

I would give anything now to hear someone say my name like it still belonged to me.

Just once.

Even if it were a lie…

“Vodka.”

Smiling?

Smiling.

Yes. That’s what I thought at first. Her mouth was bent at the corners in that familiar charming way. 

But something was wrong.

I didn’t notice it until the lights burned out. Until every other thought faded. Until time stopped, as if caught in amber.

I stood up.

And she was still smiling.

But not blinking.

Not breathing.

Her eyes… those weren’t her eyes. They weren’t like the sparkling passion or storm clouds I remembered. They were empty. Glossed over. There was no warmth in it. No spark. Just the shape of Scarlet, like someone had remembered her too hard and broken the memory trying to keep it.

“...Scarlet?” 

I croaked. My throat burned when I said it. I knew it couldn’t be her. I knew. But my mouth said it anyway.

She tilted her head, hair falling in that flawless wave she used to brag about before a race. Her lips moved too slowly. No breath. Just the faint scrape of air through something that wasn’t lungs.

“What’s wrong?” she whispered. 

“Feel like a waste?”

Those words. Too gentle. Too cold. They hollowed me out like she’d scooped the inside of me away.

“You’re still fighting, huh?” Scarlet murmured. “Even now. Broken bones, no passion. Still pretending you’ve got somewhere left to run.”

I wanted to argue.

To tell her she was wrong, that I could still go abroad, still chase that dream we used to talk about when the lights went out in the dorms. 

But the thick air wrapped around me, like barbed wire on my throat.

She smiled again. That… wrong smile.

“You always said you’d go farther than me,” she said. “That you’d run until the sky gave out. So why are you still here, Vodka?”

I turned away. I couldn’t look at her.

“Because you’re… somewhere. I have to…” I whispered, but words gave out. 

“Then what’s left for you?” Scarlet asked. “The track’s empty. The cheers are gone. You’ve already run every mile we dreamed of. But me… I’m still waiting.”

Scarlet whispered. “What of it?”

And then, just like that, her eyes softened. Not forgiveness. Not comfort. Just that same fierce calm she had right before the starting gun.

She leaned in,

Closer.

Closer.

Until our foreheads touched, and her voice came again, faint as breath against glass:

I shook my head weakly. “You’re trying to—”

Her hand cupped my jaw, thumb dragging slow along my lip. I couldn’t tell if it was pity or cruelty anymore.

“Stop running,” she whispered. “Retire. Rest. If you go home, I’ll be there. I’ll be waiting in every shadow. Every breeze that brushes your mane. You’ll see me again. Isn’t that what you want?”

Her eyes softened… or pretended to.

“I missed you,” she said. “It’s lonely, you know. And you don’t look so tough now,” 

She went on. “No crowd. No spotlight. Just tubes and pity.”

I felt breath on my icy lips. Only to realize it was my own panting. 

“You used to sneer at me for playing it safe. For being the golden girl. And look at you now—nothing left to prove, and nothing left to lose.”

And then, something shifted.

I saw it in the slackening of her shoulders, in the stillness that followed her breathless silence. Not forgiveness. Not mercy. Just the heavy resignation of a girl looking at a collapsed cathedral and still recognizing the stone.

She opened her arms.

Hugging me. 

In this moment—this ruin of a moment, this hallucinated grief—she pulled me in. Her arms closed around me. Stiff. Alien. A memory rehearsed by something that didn’t know how to mean it. But I let her. I collapsed against the shape of her like it still mattered. Like my weight could be carried again.

“Vodka.”

she said it like she was mourning it.

“Vodka…” she whispered again, voice cracked open and soft and crumbling. “Oh what happened to you?”

It broke something in me. Because I would’ve given anything—anything—to hear my name like that. Like it still belonged to me…

And now here it was.

Given to me in a lie. A hallucination. A ghost conjured from the wreckage of my own mind.

And still, I leaned into it.

Still, I let myself be held.

Still, I closed my eyes and pretended she was real.

Because I was so, so tired.

—

And here I am again. 

The lights buzzed like dying fireflies. Too bright. Too sterile. Too far from the sunlit dust of home. As I lay still beneath thin sheets, my breath rasping shallow and slow, each exhale catching on the edge of something final. 

Tubes hummed faintly beside me. The monitor ticked out a rhythm that sounded nothing like a heartbeat it was too mechanical, too steady, too cruel in its impersonation of life.

When the doctors say degeneration, what they mean is that one day, my hands won’t remember what to do when they see an engine.

What they mean is that every morning, I’ll wake up a little farther from who I used to be.

That the girl who stood on that hill, promising to protect everything she loved, has already started to vanish.

But sometimes, in the quiet, I hear Papa again; not in words, but in the weight of that one-armed hug, the grease on his sleeve, the smell of tobacco and summer grass.

And I think maybe he didn’t mean strong like I thought he did.

Maybe he meant steady.

The kind of strength that endures in memory, not muscle.

So I hold onto that.

When the pain flares. When I can’t lift a wrench. When I wake in the middle of the night, gasping because I dreamt of running again.

I whisper it back to the dark, a promise reshaped by time:

“I’m still the coolest, Pops. Still keeping it safe. Just… slower now.”

And in the silence that follows, I can almost hear the Norton’s engine ticking as it cools.

A familiar heartbeat.

Fading.

But still mine.

…

Her mother reached out, trembling fingers brushing Vodka’s pale hand resting on the sheet. "My girl… please… we’ll find a way…" Her voice dissolved into helpless weeping.

Vodka’s gaze drifted past them, settling on the weak sunlight patterning the far wall. It reminded her of dappled light through trees during early morning runs, chasing a blur of crimson ahead. 

Always chasing. The memory was a phantom limb, present, aching, yet impossibly distant. She felt untethered, adrift on a tide pulling her inexorably away from this shore of grief and desperation.

"Listen," she breathed, the word barely audible over the machine's rhythmic sigh. She gathered her strength, a flicker of the old stubbornness surfacing not to fight, but to be heard one last time. 

"The money… my savings…" She gestured weakly towards a drawer where her battered leather wallet lay. Inside, alongside faded receipts and an old racing license photo where her grin still held genuine spark, was a bankbook. The sum wasn't vast, but it represented years of grueling races, endorsements scraped together before her fall, and… the remnants of the search fund turned motorcycle money.

"Use it," she said, "All of it. For you."

Her father shook his head violently, tears carving paths through the lines on his weathered face. "No, Vodka. That's yours. For… for things."

"What things?" she asked softly, a ghost of her old cheekiness touching her lips for a fleeting second. "New tires for the bike I can't ride? Flowers for a grave?" She looked at each of them… her parents, burdened by life and now this; her brothers, youth overshadowed by loss. "It’s just paper now. Numbers. Meaningless." She took another shallow breath that rattled in her chest. 

"Take it. Go to Europe. Don’t waste it trying to keep me here.”

A faint, wistful light touched Vodka’s eyes. "See… see the places I raced… places I wanted to race." 

Places I dreamed of going with… The thought remained unspoken, a familiar ache.

"See the mountains. The sea. The cities." Her voice grew even softer, dreamlike. 

"Run… through fields that aren’t rice paddies. Feel… different wind on your faces." She looked at her brothers. 

"For me. Do it… for me. That’s how… how you remember me best. Not like this." Her gaze swept the sterile room, the tubes, the evidence of decay. 

"Remember the speed. The stupid grin. The wild hair… Live with love. Embrace the pain, the frailty and the moments so unbearably shameful. Forgive yourself… Again and again, endlessly. Because everything… begins from there.”

Vodka’s gaze drifted upwards again, past the ceiling tiles, past the hospital roof, towards some unseen horizon only she could perceive. Was it the finish line? Was it a sunlit field? Was it… a figure with crimson hair finally turning around? Her voice was the barest whisper now, a sigh woven into words meant for those gathered around her bed and perhaps for someone impossibly far away:

"I lost my fight with fate. It’s time for me to rest."

The room did not fall silent when Vodka’s voice faded. It only changed its kind of noise. The kind that hums in the wires, that waits in the walls, the sound of life continuing around what has just stopped.

Her brothers’ cries came first. Small at first, unsure, as if the world might punish them for making sound in the presence of something sacred.

Then louder. Raw.

The nurses tried to lead them away, but they wouldn’t move.

Her mother bent forward, forehead pressed against the sheets, whispering her name over and over like a spell too late to work.

Her father’s hands shook at his sides, not because he wanted to hold her again, but because he didn’t know what to do with them anymore.

Outside the window, sunlight quivered over the glass.

The faint reflection of her face lingered there, young, determined, loving, and for a moment, it almost looked like she was smiling back.

Or maybe that’s just how memory lies to the living.

Because memory is cruel that way.

It keeps what you can’t bear to lose, but never the warmth that once lived inside it.

It fades the sound of laughter, but keeps the echo of the room where it once rang.

It lets you remember that someone loved you, but not exactly how it felt.

Vodka simply stopped fighting the tide. Her eyes remained half-open, fixed on that distant point beyond the ceiling.

She was prepared, waiting for that steady beep of the heart monitor stretched into a single, endless tone; a flatline against the soundtrack of her family's shattered sobs. The last echoes of her defiance, her wild spirit, her desperate search, dissolved into silence.

She’ll wait.

—

It was late afternoon in Florence when the light began to lean, that fragile, gold-hour ache before dusk, where everything softens and nothing can lie.

I had been walking without direction for hours, the kind of wandering that makes the streets blur into a single thread. Cobblestone. Shopfronts. The faint tang of espresso and old paper. My notebook was heavy in my coat pocket, its pages swollen with years of things I couldn’t say out loud.

And then, I saw her.

A woman was sitting at a café terrace, a book in one hand, a chipped cup of cappuccino in the other. Her hair was shorter now, darker at the roots, sun-faded at the ends. She wore glasses. Nothing could hide that way she tilted her head when listening, the way her fingers twitched restlessly against the rim of her cup, like she was keeping time with something no one else could hear.

The bell over the café door chimed when I stepped closer. The sound seemed to stretch too long, like it didn’t want to end.

“Excuse me,” I said, the words landing strange in my mouth. “You’re… Daiwa Scarlet, right?”

She looked up.

For a moment, there was nothing but the clink of her spoon on porcelain. Then—a soft laugh. A perfect, easy laugh, practiced. “Oh, that name again,” she said in Italian, then switched awkwardly into English. “People keep saying that! I must have one of those faces, you know?” She smiled, too wide. 

“I’m sorry, but no. You’ve mistaken me.”

She went back to stirring her coffee, as if that was the end of it.

“You’re Daiwa Scarlet,” I said again.

The air in the room thinned. A fly buzzed somewhere near the counter and even that sounded too loud.

She glanced around, starting to back away, “You’re mistaken,” she said, quieter this time, the Italian slipping from her tongue like a costume. “I’m nobody. Please leave me be.”

“Scarlet,” I said. The name cracked between us.

Her eyes were wide, wet, terrified. Staring at me with the color of storms, of endings.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t call me that.”

I waited. Then.

“I…I thought I look completely different now.”

She looked at me again, tears trembling on her lashes. “Please,” she said, her voice a child’s plea in a stranger’s mouth. “Let me stay dead. I’ve learned to be nobody. Don’t take that from me.”

I should’ve said something. But silence felt heavier, truer.

—

“To my dearest Daiwa Scarlet

I saw you again last night.

You were waiting by the rail, sunlight in your hair, smiling like you used to when you thought no one was looking. I called out, but you didngt turn. You just looked right through me, soft as a ghost.

I woke up crying. Didn’t even mean to. Guess I still can’t stop.

I don’t know how to start this. Feels wrong, talking to paper when what I want is you.

I keep thinking about how scared we both were. You were scared of being known, and I was scared of saying I already knew you. 

You were my reason. You made all the hurt mean something. When you were gone, it all went quiet. Too quiet.

Eighteen… werent you?

I’m older than you now. 

Isn’t that strange? You were always ahead, weren’t you? Always a step faster, always looking like you knew where you were going. I used to think I’d chase you forever. Now I’m just tired.

Sometimes I get mad at you for it. For leaving me to grow old in a world that don’t want girls like us unless we’re selling something pretty. 

They turned us into a story they can clap for without thinking about what it cost. But then I remember how scared you were. 

How you thought the only way to stay pure was to disappear.

I wish I could’ve told you then. you didn’t need to be perfect. You didn’t need to be brave all the damn time. You could’ve just been. You could’ve just stayed.

My hands shake now. Doctor says it’s the heart. Figures. It’s been breaking for years anyway.

But if there’s something after this… someplace quiet, someplace where no one’s watching, I hope you’re there. I hope we can walk a lap without running from it this time.

Sometimes I think about what it would’ve been like if we’d just said it plain. If I’d told you that the reason I ran so hard was ‘cause you made me want to live. Not win. Live.

I hope wherever you are, you’re not hurting anymore. I hope the noise is gone. I hope you know I never stopped loving you, even when I didn’t know how to.

If there’s a next place, and you’re waiting by that same fence…

I’ll come running.

With all my love — Vodka”

—

The alley behind the café smelled of wet stone and memory.

Evening had folded the sky into blue silk, and the streetlamps buzzed like faint, tired insects. Scarlet stood there, her back to the wall, arms wrapped tight around herself like she could make her body smaller, harder to recognize.

“I didn’t mean to be found,” she said. Her voice was low, uneven, but there was a practiced rhythm to it,  the voice of someone used to performing sincerity. “I told myself Florence was far enough. I dyed my hair. Changed my name. Learned to smile differently. But you still saw me.”

Her laugh was thin, bitter. “You always saw me.”

I didn’t speak. I let her unravel.

“I ran,” she whispered, as if confessing to the stones. “Not from the cameras, not really. From myself. From that thing they built out of me. Daiwa Scarlet. Idol. Rival. Sinner. Whatever name they needed that week.” 

Her hands shook as she touched her own face, tracing features she seemed to despise. “Do you know what it’s like to live inside a rumor until it becomes your bloodstream? To wake up one morning and realize your skin isn’t yours anymore…. But public property?”

Her voice broke. “I was supposed to be the golden girl. The smile that never faltered. The one who ‘burned bright.’ That’s what they called me. So I smiled. I smiled until my teeth hurt. Until my jaw locked. Until I could feel the muscles dying under my skin.”

The word smiled came out like a slur.

She took a step closer, trembling, the dying light catching in her eyes—the same eyes that once lit up with determination. 

“And then came the stories. The pictures. The lies that weren’t even lies, just truth rearranged until it stank. ‘Scarlet loves her rival.’ ‘Scarlet betrays her fans.’ ‘Scarlet’s dirty little secret.’ I remember the comments. How they said I was disgusting. How they said I was a fraud. How they said—” Her breath hitched, her voice splitting. “...They said she was better off dead.”

Her hand went to her throat as though the memory itself was strangling her. “And I believed them.”

The words spilled faster now, raw, scraped out of her lungs. “I told myself I was a monster. That I’d ruined everything she touched. Her career. Her name. Her life. Because if I hadn’t—if I hadn’t been weak, if I hadn’t felt anything—none of it would’ve happened. I thought I was doing her a kindness by disappearing.”

Scarlet’s gaze flicked to the alley mouth, where the city hummed and moved without her. “I thought if I erased myself, the noise would stop. I thought forgetting could be a kind of mercy.”

She looked down at her trembling hands. I wanted to reach for her, but she recoiled before I could move.

“Don’t,” she said sharply, then softer, “Don’t look at me like I’m worth saving.” A long silence stretched between us, filled with the distant toll of a church bell and the slow drip of rain from a gutter.

When she finally spoke again, her voice was smaller, but steadier—the way someone sounds when they’ve finally accepted the shape of their grief.

“Daiwa Scarlet wasn’t brave. She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t even kind. She was a coward who smiled through panic attacks. Who let herself be worshipped because she didn’t know how to be loved. She was the kind of girl who’d rather destroy everything than admit she was afraid.”

Her eyes lifted to mine, hollow and shining. “I’m not her anymore. She died when Japan stopped cheering. Let her stay dead.”

She exhaled, a shudder that sounded too much like prayer. “I’m just… a woman who wants to be forgotten. Remembering hurts too much.”

The words hung between us like smoke, like incense at a grave.  And though I said nothing, she looked at me as if she recognized the quiet in me, too.

Somewhere in the distance, church bells began again, thin and far and unrelenting. She flinched. Then, almost pleading, she whispered,

“Please… if you must remember me, remember the lie. It’s kinder that way.”

Scarlet didn't see the societal machinery grinding them down. She saw only the wreckage she believed she caused. She was the monster. She had exploited Vodka’s brightness, hadn't she? Dragged her into this filthy secret? Her cheeky grins, her "I'm Number One!" declarations… all just cowardice. A desperate pantomime to hide the terrified girl inside who knew she was wrong. Broken goods. Contaminated by the shadows she carried and now by this illicit wanting.

Now, she sat exposed. 

The architecture of her lies crumbled around her. 

The plea "Let me stay dead" wasn't melodrama; it was the desperate gasp of a soul convinced annihilation was its only path to redemption and peace. 

Remembering was agony. Being remembered was torture. To be forgotten wasn't just a wish; it was the only absolution she believed possible for the sin of being Daiwa Scarlet—the little Miss Imperfect.

The weight became unbearable. The Golden Child’s pedestal transformed into a pillory. Every look felt like an accusation. Every whispered conversation might be about her, about them, about the ruin she’d wrought on Vodka’s brilliant future and her own. 

Her mind, already frayed by years of relentless performance and buried trauma, fractured under the strain. Psychosis bloomed like nightshade… paranoia choking her, voices echoing the world’s condemnation as her own deepest truths: Monster. Ruiner. Freak.

I hear that, one night, the fear became too vast. The self-loathing too complete. Staying meant watching Vodka drown in the fallout she caused. Disappearing was the only mercy she could offer. The ultimate act of cowardice dressed as sacrifice: Erase “Daiwa Scarlet”

She packed a single bag with cash and false documents bought in desperation. She boarded a train, then a plane, shedding her identity like a snakeskin she hoped would decay quickly. She dyed her hair, bought cheap glasses, learned basic Italian phrases like lifelines. Nessuno. Nobody. The name became a prayer: Let me be forgotten. Let Vodka forget me and thrive. Let the world forget I ever existed.

I should have spoken comfort. Offered a lifeline. But the weight of her shattered plea, the sheer, absolute need within her storm-grey eyes to vanish, was a language beyond platitudes. 

The silence between us felt heavier than words could ever be. Truer. It held the echo of slammed doors in narrow staircases, the distorted reflection in obedience-mirrors, and the final, irrevocable turn of a key in a lock she believed could only ever seal her in darkness.

I said nothing. I just watched a tear trace a path through the saltwater constellations forming on the cheek of a ghost begging to remain buried.

And I watched it land on the cobblestone like a dropped star, too small to change anything, too real to ignore.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke. The hum of the café behind us was distant now, swallowed by the alley’s narrow hush. The air was thick with all the words she hadn’t said in years, the words I’d carried like a wound that never closed.

Finally, “You think forgetting will save you. But forgetting doesn’t heal, Scarlet. It just lets the wound rot where no one can see it.” I said.

She flinched; not from the words, but from the name. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. “You don’t understand. I can’t heal. I tried. I tried so hard. And every time I thought I was getting better, something—” she broke off, pressing the heel of her palm against her forehead. “Something dragged me back. The voices. The whispers. The guilt. I ruined her life, don’t you get that? Vodka’s! The only person who ever—”

Her voice cracked. The sound was soft, but it split the air cleanly.

“She quit. She retired early,” she whispered. “And I wasn’t even brave enough to be there.”

The way she said quit—it wasn’t a word, it was an open grave.

“She’s gone because of me. And I don’t get to move on from that. I don’t get to ‘heal.’” She laughed again, hoarse and hollow. “I get to sit here, drink bad cappuccino, and pretend to be someone who doesn’t remember her own name.”

“Then remember her,” I said. “Don’t let her die twice.”

Scarlet’s head snapped up, her breath catching. “You—” she started, but I cut her off with the gentlest thing I had left.

“She loved you,” I said. “Even when the world didn’t. You shared those feelings too, didn’t you?”

For a heartbeat, everything in her face collapsed—the deflection, the trembling smile, the practiced poise. All that was left was the girl who used to run barefoot before dawn, laughing because the cold air bit her lungs and she mistook it for freedom.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “If I remember her, I’ll remember me. And I don’t want to.”

“Then remember differently,” I said. “Not the shame. Not the headlines. The mornings. The laughter. The running. Remember her hands on your shoulders at the starting line. Remember what you were before they told you to be perfect.”

She looked away, “You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not,” I said. “It never will be. But forgetting isn’t peace. It’s paralysis.” I paused… let the words find their shape. “You’ve been a ghost so long you’ve started believing you were born one.”

Scarlet turned her face toward me, eyes rimmed red, lashes trembling. “And what are you, then? You talk like you know what it’s like to be remembered wrong.”

“I don’t like being forgotten,” I said.

Something flickered in her gaze… recognition? No, more like the ghost of recognition. The name she couldn’t say, the one that lived in the seams of every half-remembered nightmare and dream. She didn’t ask. I didn’t confirm.

Instead, she sank slowly to the damp stones, her breath uneven. “How?” she murmured. “How do I even start?”

I knelt beside her. The air between us hummed, fragile and heavy. “By forgiving the girl who ran,” I said. “Not because she was brave. But because she was scared… and she lived anyway.”

Scarlet closed her eyes. A tear slipped through her lashes, but this time it wasn’t just sorrow; it was release, the faintest thaw in a frozen sea.

“Maybe,” she whispered. “Maybe I could try.”

I stood, offering her a hand. She hesitated, then took it,  trembling, but firm enough to rise.

“Come on,” I said quietly. “There’s still light left.”

And for the first time in years, Daiwa Scarlet—whoever she had become—stepped out of the alley and back into the sun.

—

The house still stood, though time had softened its edges.

The mirrors had cracked, the locks had rusted, the staircases no longer demanded a single-file ascent to virtue. No one called it perfect anymore.

They said it had been haunted.

And perhaps, in a way, it was…

not by ghosts,

but by echoes of girls who had once been told they were never enough. Daiwa Scarlet used to be one of them. But not anymore.

The men who built this house are gone, And their rules died with them.

Where narrow staircases once choked the air, she tore down walls.

She made wide, open halls where laughter could echo without consequence.

The mirrors that had once warped her reflection into obedience now hung shattered on the floor, shards glinting like fallen teeth—proof that even control can be broken, and still, the world does not end.

She no longer feared the symmetry.

She painted over it, messy and bright, with colors that refused to stay inside the lines.

Once, she believed order was survival.

Now, she knew disarray was freedom.

There were days she still woke with the old ghosts whispering:

Be smaller. Be softer. Be good.

But she’d learned how to answer them, voice calm, unafraid:

“I don’t need to be good to be real.”

And when she ran again…

not from, but toward…

the wind didn’t punish her anymore.

It carried her. It lifted her. It forgave her.

In the place where the house of pain once stood, wildflowers grew through the cracks of its foundation. No gardener planted them; they simply appeared, stubborn and alive The earth remembering how to heal itself once no one demanded it stay pristine.

And if you asked her now…

if you said, “Scarlet, what became of the perfect girl?”

she would smile, soft and unafraid, and tell you:

“She died when I stopped mistaking perfection for love.

She died,

and I lived.”

The house didn’t win. It never could. Because Scarlet learned how to leave it burning behind her, and still walk forward, barefoot, into the open air, where the light no longer hurt to stand in.

—

Rain had started to fall the moment her plane touched down at Haneda—thin, needling rain, the kind that seemed to dissolve everything it touched. Scarlet sat in the back of a taxi, fingers twisting in her lap. The city outside the window blurred into a gray mosaic of headlights and umbrellas. Tokyo hadn’t changed; it was still too loud, too bright, too fast. 

It just felt bigger now… bigger than her.

She hadn’t said her real name at the airport. Hadn’t said it at the hotel. Even now, when the driver asked politely where she was headed, she used the name that had protected her all these years—soft, foreign, harmless.

But her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

The slip of paper in her pocket was creased nearly to tearing: Vodka’s contact number.

She’d rehearsed what she’d say a thousand times on the flight.

Hey, it’s me.

I’m sorry.
I’m alive.
I’m ready.

Her thumb hovered over the call button. She hesitated, then pressed it.

One ring.
Two.
Three—

“Hello?”

The voice was unfamiliar. Calm. Flat. Professional.

Scarlet blinked. “Uh—hello? Sorry, I’m trying to reach—Vodka. Um. Daiwa Vodka?”

A pause. Then, softly, too softly: “I’m afraid you can’t. This is… the hospital line.”

Something in Scarlet’s chest went very still. Her voice fractured. “Hospital? W-why would—why would she be—”

“I’m sorry,” the nurse said. “If you’re family or a friend, you should come quickly.”

The rain on the window blurred the whole city to silver. Scarlet didn’t remember ending the call. Didn’t remember saying anything to the driver.

All she knew was motion—violent, desperate. Her door flew open before the taxi had even stopped. “Miss! Wait!” the driver shouted, but her legs were already moving.

She hit the asphalt hard, ankle twisting. Pain shot up her leg like electricity, but she didn’t stop. She ran.

She RAN.

Pain screamed through her ankle, her lungs clawed for air, but her mind, her mind was howling louder than anything else. 

No no no no NO—

Rain slashed her face, hair plastering against her cheeks, her coat heavy, dragging her down like hands, like grief trying to pull her back. But she couldn’t stop. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

She’s okay. She’s okay. She has to be okay. She has to be okay.

Her heartbeat was a drum, too fast, too loud, drowning out the city. Cars honked, someone shouted her name—did they?—she didn’t know. Didn’t care. The world narrowed to her pounding footsteps and the red lights ahead, blurring like blood.

Her vision tunneled, streetlights smeared like comets, and every shadow was her. Every doorway was her. Every breath was her.

The hospital doors swallowed her whole. Fluorescent light, blindingly white, stripped everything raw. The antiseptic smell—chemical, suffocating—clawed down her throat. 

Vodka. Vodka. Vodka. 

The name hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird trapped in bone. Her ankle screamed with every limping step, a sharp counterpoint to the frantic drumming in her chest.

"Room?" she gasped at the harried nurse at the central station, voice shredded. "Vodka? Where?"

The nurse scanned a screen, eyes flicking with impersonal efficiency. "ICU West. Down the hall, left. But visiting hours—"

Scarlet was already running. Or staggering. The polished floor reflected the harsh lights, creating a dizzying infinity of identical corridors. 

Too late too late too late. The thought was a razor wire tightening around her lungs. People blurred past, hushed voices, rolling carts; nightmare procession in sterile white.

ICU West. A corridor hushed, heavy with the low hum of machines and the smell of desperation. A different nurse stood sentinel outside a closed door, her expression professionally grave. Scarlet skidded to a stop, breath ragged, her ankle buckling.

"Please," Scarlet choked out, the word scraping raw. 

"Vodka. Is she…? Please, I need to see her!”

"I'm sorry," the nurse said, her voice low, calm, a terrifying counterpoint to Scarlet’s internal hurricane. "Family only right now. Immediate family only. She's… critical."

"I am family!" The cry tore from Scarlet, "More than family! Please, just… just let me see her face. One look. Just one!"

The nurse shifted, a flicker of sympathy quickly masked. "Rules are rules. For her protection. You can wait in the family room." She gestured vaguely down the hall.

Protection. The word was acid. Protection from her? After all these years of hiding? Scarlet’s vision swam. She swayed. Her hand shot out, bracing against the cold wall beside the door. The door with the small, reinforced window.

Desperate, instinctive, she turned her head. Looked through the glass. And for one awful, endless second, Scarlet thought she was too late.

Then—

Vodka’s eyelids fluttered.

The tiniest motion.

A breath caught between worlds.

Her gaze, heavy and dazed through the blur of painkillers and panic, drifted toward the door, toward the movement beyond the glass.

And then their eyes met.

The air collapsed.

Everything—the noise, the lights, the machines—fell away into nothing.

It was her.

All the years between them, all the things unsaid, all the blood and rain and regret, they slammed into that single heartbeat, that single look. Scarlet’s breath broke on a sob she didn’t dare release. Her fingers curled against the glass, nails scraping, trembling.

Vodka’s pupils widened. Her brow furrowed; fear, disbelief, something rawer and deeper flickering there, something that ached like recognition and terror all at once.

Her lips moved, slow, tentative… barely shaping sound.

But she saw it.

Saw it and felt it tear through her like lightning.

“Scarlet…?”

Mouthed, not spoken.

Fragile as a ghost of breath.

But it hit her harder than a scream.

Scarlet’s body trembled, tears stinging, breath stuttering out of her. She pressed her palm to the glass, desperate to bridge the impossible inches between them.

Vodka’s hand twitched on the sheets, struggling, reaching out, at least, a weak echo of the gesture, trembling with effort.

Too late. Too late. Too late.

The single second stretched into an eternity of exquisite, unbearable agony. She saw the hollows beneath Vodka’s cheekbones, the terrifying fragility. 

She saw the echo of the vibrant woman being devoured by stillness and plastic tubes. She saw the end rushing in, silent and absolute, on the green lines of the monitor tracing Vodka’s fading pulse.

Then the nurse’s hand was on her shoulder, gentle but implacable. "Miss. You must step back. Now."

Scarlet stumbled away from the door, away from the horrific tableau. 

Her legs gave way completely. She crumpled onto the hard, cold floor of the ICU corridor, the crumpled slip of paper with Vodka’s number falling from her nerveless fingers, landing like a shroud on the sterile linoleum. The rain dissolved Tokyo outside. The machines hissed the countdown inside. 

And Scarlet, her true name, a forgotten ghost on her tongue, could only stare at the closed door, seeing only that face. That terrible, dissolving face.

Alive. The nurse had said to come quickly. But Scarlet had seen. She knew. The Vodka she loved was already gone.

—

It was late.

Too late for girls like them to still be awake, the sky bruised purple over the dorm roofs. The cicadas were screaming like they were trying to fill a silence neither of them knew how to break.

Vodka had a stick between her teeth, lazy grin tugging at her lips. Scarlet sat beside her, arms around her knees, perfect posture already starting to wilt.

“Hey,” Vodka said after a while, voice low, like she was scared the night would mock her for being serious.

“What d’you think love is, Scarlet?”

Scarlet glanced at her, startled. “Love?” she repeated, like it was a word she wasn’t supposed to say out loud.

“Yes, love,” Vodka said, tilting her head. “You know, that thing people write songs about. The thing that makes folks stupid.”

Scarlet scoffed, but her heart beat faster. “Love makes people soft and dumb. I don’t see the appeal.”

Vodka chuckled, then shrugged. “Yeah, but… ain’t softness kinda the point?”

She leaned back on her hands. “You can’t stay hard forever. You’ll just crack.”

Scarlet didn’t answer at first. She watched the fireflies float between the grass, blinking like tiny broken stars.

“My mom says love’s a distraction,” she said finally. “That it takes the best parts of people and wastes them.”

Vodka laughed under her breath. “Sounds like your ma’s never been loved right.”

Scarlet turned sharply, but Vodka’s tone wasn’t teasing, it was gentle, almost pitying.

“You talk like love’s a storm,” Vodka said, squinting at the moon. “Like it wrecks whatever it touches. But maybe it’s just… rain. Comes down, makes things grow.”

Scarlet stared at her rival—the girl who never seemed to bow to anything—and felt something twist deep inside her chest.

“That’s stupid,” she muttered.

“Yeah,” Vodka said, smiling. “Most true things are.”

They fell quiet again. Somewhere far off, a night train moaned.

Scarlet spoke first this time. “Maybe love’s… remembering someone’s face after they’re gone. Even if you hate them.”

Vodka blinked, then smiled, softer this time. “That’s pretty, Scarlet. Didn’t think you had poetry in you.”

Scarlet flushed. “Don’t make fun of me.”

Vodka raised her hands in surrender. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Then, quieter: “I think love’s what makes the world stick together, even when it’s falling apart. Not the pretty kind. The kind that hurts, but you’d still do it again.”

Scarlet didn’t know what to say to that.

She only knew that when Vodka looked at her, the world didn’t feel quite so cruel.

Just heavy. 

“I don’t think I understand love,” Scarlet whispered.

Vodka smirked, eyes glinting in the moonlight. “Yeah. Me neither. Guess we’re even for once.”

And this was the first time, they didn’t argue about who was right. The silence that followed wasn’t rivalry. It wasn’t victory or loss. It was something else resting gently between them, like a secret neither dared to touch.

—

Weeks later, a woman with tired eyes but newly done twin tails walked into a Tokyo police station. She moved with a fragile steadiness, like someone relearning solid ground after a long fall. Her name wasn't Scarlet. Not officially.

She’d been "Aya," hiding in Europe after fleeing her own breaking mind, convinced her love for Vodka was a monstrous thing that would destroy them both.

"Healed" wasn't quite right. The fractures were still there. But the running had stopped. She’d heard whispers… rumors of Vodka… and finally found the courage, or perhaps just the crushing weight of finality, to call Vodka’s number.

A stranger's voice had answered. A nurse. Explaining Vodka had passed. Terminal complications.

Scarlet, with the tiara firmly placed back atop her head like reclaimed armor, felt the earth drop away all over again. She’d run too long. Run so far she’d missed the final lap entirely.

Standing before the confused desk sergeant, she drew a deep breath that shuddered through her entire frame.

"My name is," she stated, her voice clear despite the tremor beneath,

"Daiwa Scarlet. And I need to report where I've been."

She was done running. The race was over. The only finish line left was facing the wreckage, alone. The giant hadn't won; it had simply outlasted love.

—

The rain fell soft and cold, the kind that seeped into bones already weary with decades. It pattered against the black canopy stretched over the small, sparse graveside gathering. 

Only a handful remained, distant relatives Vodka hadn't seen in years, a stooped former trainer whose name Scarlet couldn't recall, and a young priest murmuring sutras into the damp air. The obscurity of it was a final, cruel twist. 

Vodka, whose spirit had burned so bright, whose defiance had once threatened to ignite a revolution, extinguished quietly. A brief obituary in the local sports section, buried beneath racing results. Unfulfilled. Unremembered beyond these few mourners and the gray, weeping sky.

Scarlet sat in her wheelchair at the edge of the gathering, a thick wool blanket draped over her lap. Age had softened the sharp angles of her face but deepened the lines etched by sorrow and regret. Her once-vibrant crimson hair was now a faded silver-white, pulled back severely. 

Her hands, resting on the blanket, trembled slightly, not just from the cold, but from the weight of memory pressing down.

The priest finished. People began to drift away, murmuring condolences Scarlet didn't hear. Her aide, a kind-faced woman hovered nearby, offering a silent presence. Scarlet’s gaze remained fixed on the simple wooden coffin being lowered into the wet earth. It looked unbearably small.

"Miss Scarlet?" she murmured gently. "Shall we go back to the car? The rain is getting heavier."

Scarlet didn't answer immediately. Her eyes scanned the departing figures, then settled on the lone woman arranging flowers near the grave—Vodka’s elderly cousin, perhaps. Scarlet wheeled herself forward, the rubber tires whispering on the wet grass.

The cousin looked up, her eyes red-rimmed. "Scarlet…" she acknowledged softly, her voice thick. "It was… kind of you to come."

Scarlet nodded, the movement stiff. Her voice, when it came, was a raspy whisper, worn thin by time and disuse. "She deserved… more."

The cousin sighed, a sound heavy with shared grief and resignation. "She lived… fiercely. To the end." 

She gestured towards a small, open box resting on a nearby folding chair. Inside lay a few personal effects deemed unfit for burial: a worn racing glove, a chipped pin, a pair of strange earphones, "Would you… like something? To remember her by?"

Scarlet’s breath hitched. Her trembling hand reached out, hovering over the box. Her eyes locked onto one of the earphones. 

Not a pair. Just one. It was scratched.

Her fingers closed around the single earphone. It was cool, inert metal, glowing with hues of yellow and blue. A relic. A piece of a whole that was forever sundered.

"Thank you," Scarlet whispered, clutching it tightly in her palm. The edges dug into her skin, a welcome anchor.

Back in the warmth of the car, the rhythmic swish of the wipers against the rain-soaked windshield was the only sound. Akemi drove carefully through the gray streets. Scarlet stared down at the earphone in her lap. The scratched silver casing caught the dim light. It felt impossibly heavy.

"Could you…" Scarlet began, her voice barely audible over the engine. She cleared her throat. "Could you find me a strong cord? Leather, perhaps? And a clasp?"

The caretaker glanced in the rearview mirror, her expression gentle. "Of course, Miss Scarlet."

Days later, alone in her quiet, sunlit room overlooking a garden blurred by rain, Scarlet worked with stiff, arthritic fingers. The caretaker had brought a thin strip of dark brown leather and a simple silver clasp. The process was slow, frustrating. Threading the leather through the earphones loop took several attempts. 

Tying a secure knot felt like solving an impossible puzzle. Her hands shook, betraying her.

The rooftop. Vodka leaning too close, grinning. Scarlet pulling back like she’d been burned. Vodka’s soft, confused laugh. Something cracking. Scarlet’s breath caught in her throat, a dry, painful sound. 

A tear escaped, tracing a slow path down her wrinkled cheek and splashing onto the leather in her lap.

Finally, it was done. A crude, simple thing: the worn metal earphone suspended from the dark leather cord. She lifted it. It felt… right. Solid. Real. A tangible piece of the ghost that haunted her.

With trembling hands, she fastened the clasp behind her neck. The earphone settled against her sternum, resting just above the faded silk of her blouse. It was cool at first, then warmed slowly against her skin. She placed her palm over it, feeling the familiar, comforting pressure of the metal casing, the slight protrusion where the speaker had been.

She closed her eyes.

She saw Vodka laughing, careless and bright. She saw the fierce, terrifying triumph in her eyes as she stood bleeding in the rain after shattering her own leg, a sacrifice Scarlet had fled from. She saw the hospital bed, the agonizing proximity, the accidental kiss that had been both salvation and damnation.

"Do you hate me?" 

"I wish I did."

The echo was clearer now than it had been in decades. The fear that had choked her, the shame weaponized by the world, had calcified into a lifetime of solitude. Vodka had died unfulfilled, her fire dampened but never truly extinguished, even in obscurity. Scarlet had lived, but half a life, haunted.

Now, the weight against her chest was an answer. A penance. A promise.

You were my revolution, Scarlet thought, her fingers tightening around the earphone. My forbidden, broken heart. The world forgot you. It tried to erase you. But I carry you here.

She opened her eyes, gazing out at the rain-streaked window. The garden was a blur of greens and grays.

Half of my heart, she vowed silently, the words resonating in the hollow chambers of her aged chest. 

Even when I join you, this piece remains. Anchored. Alive.

—

“Goodbye, Vodka, my precious one.

I don't know if this letter will reach you up there, not really. Maybe it's too late, maybe it's always been too late. But if by some miracle the wind still carries our words somewhere, then let this one find you.

I used to think I had to be perfect. I thought that if I smiled just right, spoke just right, ran just right—then maybe the world would love me back. Maybe you would, too.

But you already did, didn't you? You loved me even when I was cold, when I was cruel, when I made everything harder than it had to be.

You once said the sky over the track looked lonely.

I don’t think I understood what you said then.

Now I do.

It isn't the sky that is lonely; it's the people who gaze up at it, feigning not to miss someone.

You were sun, Vodka: loud and foolish and full of life. You carried everything I was too proud to say.

I used to resent you for that. I thought being careful was strength, but it was you who were brave, laughing in the face of everything that wanted to make us small.

I forgive myself now.

For running away. For being scared.

For not being the kind of woman that the world said I should be.

You were right, you know: It was never about winning.

It was about running beside someone who made the world less cruel for a while.

If you can hear me—wherever you are—thank you for every mile, every laugh, every fight. Thank you for loving me even when I couldn't say it back.

I've stopped trying to be the sun. I've learned to be the season instead, coming, going, leaving beauty and warmth where I can. And when the time to rest comes, I will rest easy and know we had our spring.

We had joy. We had fun. 

If I could do one thing in this world… it would be to grow old. To make a letter for my 18-year-old self saying I made it.

I don’t care if I’m withering away alone, or if I die with honor and success to my name.

To grow old is to survive.

To survive… is to love, still.

Daiwa Scarlet. That’s the name that’ll be etched in my gravestone.

I hope under it, there will be:

2004 – 2084.

I don’t care whether there’s a message or not, whether I’ll drift and be forgotten. Whether people give me flowers everyday; though, that would be nice. I just want to grow old. 

Through all my pain. No matter what. I’ll be alive.

And when the dusk comes, I’ll meet you at heaven’s gate.”

…Love, Scarlet.

—

The rain in Tokyo wasn't the sharp, cleansing downpour of Hokkaido, nor the persistent grey drizzle of the European city she’d hidden in. It was a fine, misting veil, blurring the edges of the meticulously kept memorial garden attached to the Tracen Academy annex for retired umamusume. Daiwa Scarlet, the name reclaimed like a discarded sword lifted from a battlefield.

She guided her wheelchair along the smooth path with practiced, if slightly stiff, movements. The twin tails she'd meticulously braided felt less like armor today and more like a ritual, a necessary costume for facing ghosts.

She found Gold Ship exactly where the taciturn caretaker had said: beneath the sprawling branches of an ancient cherry tree, bare now save for the persistent rain clinging to its gnarled limbs.

She sat on a stone bench, staring not at the koi pond nearby, but at her own hands resting limply in her lap. The vibrant, chaotic mane of golden hair was still long, but it hung lank and dull, lacking its characteristic wild energy. 

The mischievous glint in her eyes, the perpetual aura of barely-contained absurdity that had defined Gold Ship, was utterly absent. She looked… hollowed out. Smaller. Just another shape in the grey garden.

Scarlet rolled closer, the soft whirr of the motor breaking the quiet patter of rain. Gold Ship didn’t startle. Her head turned slowly, as if weighted down. The eyes that met Scarlet’s were a flat, faded gold, devoid of recognition for a moment. Then, a flicker. Confusion, then a slow dawning of disbelief that didn't quite reach shock. It was as if shock required energy she no longer possessed.

"...Scarlet?" The voice was Gold Ship’s, but stripped of its usual playful lilt. It was low, rough with disuse.

"It’s been a while, hasn’t it?" Scarlet replied, her own voice carefully modulated, a stark contrast to the raw screams echoing in her memory of their last encounter years ago. She maneuvered the chair parallel to the bench, leaving a respectful distance. The rain misted her cheeks.

A long silence stretched. Gold Ship looked back at her hands. "They said you vanished. Poof. Gone." A pause. "Like smoke." There was no accusation, just a statement of fact, tinged with a profound weariness. "Heard whispers… Europe?"

Scarlet nodded, the movement tight. "Yes." No elaboration came. What could she say? 

I ran because I thought loving Vodka made me a monster? Because numbers on a screen told me to erase myself?

The absurdity of it choked her now, bitter as bile. "I heard… about Vodka." The name hung heavy in the damp air.

Gold Ship flinched, almost imperceptibly. Her fingers curled slightly on her lap. "Yeah." Another weighty pause. The rain filled it. "Went quick, they said. Near the end." 

Her gaze drifted towards the empty path winding through the garden. "Stupid. Always thought she’d… just keep running. Forever. Like she was meant to." There was a bleakness in those words that scraped against Scarlet’s soul.

"Meant to," Scarlet echoed softly. The phrase resonated with a terrible finality. "We all were, weren’t we? Born dreaming of wind and turf and crossing lines." She looked down at her own legs, hidden beneath a blanket, the muscles wasted, the nerves damaged beyond repair. 

"The dream feels like… someone else’s story now."

Gold Ship finally looked back at her, her eyes tracing the lines of fatigue on Scarlet’s face, the unnatural stillness in her posture, the wheelchair that spoke volumes louder than words. "What happened to you?" The question wasn't prying; it was flat, devoid of its usual chaotic curiosity. It sounded like someone asking about the weather.

Scarlet closed her eyes for a moment. The phantom numbers and headlines flickered, but they held no power over her now. Only grief remained. 

"I broke," she said simply. 

"Shattered into pieces so small I thought I’d never find them all again. And by the time I tried…" Her voice hitched. "...it was too late for her." Too late for me too, she didn't add.

Gold Ship nodded slowly, a gesture of understanding that needed no further explanation between veterans of the same brutal, beautiful machine. "Running…" she murmured, looking back at the path again. "After I retired… it was like losing a limb. Worse. Like losing your lungs. Your heart." She gave a short, humorless bark that wasn't quite a laugh. 

"Thought I’d go crazy. Tried stupid stuff. Pranks… parties… anything to fill the hole." Her shoulders slumped. "Just makes it louder. The silence when you stop moving." She gestured vaguely around the tranquil, rain-slicked garden. 

"This… waiting… it’s worse than any race I ever lost."

The profound loneliness radiating from Gold Ship was palpable, a mirror to the desolation within Scarlet. They were both ghosts haunting different parts of the same graveyard, one tethered to a place of faded glory, the other bound to a body that could no longer carry the dream.

"What do you do?" Scarlet asked quietly, genuinely. "With the silence? With the… waiting?"

Gold Ship was silent for so long Scarlet wasn’t sure she’d answer. Then she sighed, a long exhalation that seemed to deflate her further.

"Watch," she rasped. "The new girls train sometimes. See 'em out on the track from the window." She pointed a listless finger towards the distant oval barely visible through the mist and trees. "See the fire in 'em. The pure, stupid need to run."

"It hurts like hell. But…" She trailed off, shaking her head slightly. "Don't know what else to look at."

Scarlet followed her gaze towards the obscured track. She couldn't see it, but she could feel it… he vibration of shoes on turf, the gasp of effort, the electric buzz of competition. It felt like a lifetime ago. A different universe.

"Maybe," Scarlet said slowly, the words forming with difficulty, "looking isn't enough anymore." She turned back to Gold Ship.

"For either of us."

Gold Ship finally turned her head fully, meeting Scarlet’s gaze directly. The emptiness was still there, but beneath it, a flicker of something else… a question.

Scarlet took a shaky breath. The tiara felt cold against her scalp. 

"I spent years running away. From myself. From… everything. Then I ran too far." Her hand tightened on the wheelchair's armrest. "I don't want to just… wait. Or just… watch. I don't know what I want to do starting from now on. But hiding… waiting to fade away…" 

She looked down at her useless legs, then back up at Gold Ship with a fierce determination that startled even herself. "...it feels like letting the giant win twice."

The faintest spark ignited in Gold Ship’s dull eyes. Not energy, not her old mischief, but a weary recognition of shared desolation and a sliver of defiance against it. She didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. But she gave one slow, almost imperceptible nod.

—

Dear Daiwa Scarlet

You never showed up in the skies with me. And now, after seeing you for that split second… I understand.

Scarlet. Oh, Scarlet.

I was just starting to dream them, you know? The silliest, softest of dreams. 

Not of podiums or crowds, but… of quiet mornings after the storm. Of your hand finding mine. Dreams so fragile I barely dared breathe on them. 

I miss you. I will always miss the fire in your eyes, and the terrifying vulnerability you hid so fiercely, the vulnerability that was just for me.

I’m so sorry. 

For everything long ago, for every careless word that might have fed your doubts. And especially… how I ripped open a door you’d welded shut with terror. I broke your heart then, shattering whatever fragile peace you’d forged in that cold isolation. And I fear… I fear my leaving first, this way, will break whatever might have been left of yours.

For that, Scarlet… I will never forgive myself.

But you must let me go now. Truly go.

Yet… still, please, let me be selfish this once: Tell me that you love me. Please… tell me you loved me.

Forever waiting — Vodka.

—

The misting rain didn't so much stop as surrender. One moment, the air was a clinging, grey veil; the next, a palpable shift occurred. Then, like a hesitant benediction, the weak autumn sun pierced the thinning clouds. 

Rays, tentative at first, spilled across the wet garden path, glinting off the rain-slicked stones and dripping cherry branches.

Gold droplets fell like scattered diamonds onto the path between them.

Gold Ship tilted her face upwards, closing her eyes against the sudden brightness. The light caught the damp tracks on her cheeks, turning them to liquid gold. 

She didn’t move for a long moment, absorbing the unexpected warmth. When she spoke, her voice was still rough, but less hollow. It carried the weight of stones dragged from a deep well.

"Grief," she began, the word tasting unfamiliar on her tongue, "it’s not… a storm you weather. Not really."

She opened her eyes, squinting slightly against the sun, her gaze fixed on the distant, now visible track where tiny figures moved with impossible speed. "It’s more like… becoming the landscape the storm wrecked. You’re just… there. Changed. Forever.”

"You wait for the ache to fade, but it doesn’t. It just… settles. Becomes part of the ground you walk on. Part of the air you breathe." She looked directly at Scarlet, her faded golden eyes holding a depth of understanding that hadn't been there moments before. "Mourning… that’s different. That’s choosing to live on the wrecked ground. To plant something anyway. Even if it’s just… weeds."

Scarlet listened. Gold Ship’s words resonated deep within the fractured landscape of her own soul. Her hand, resting on the wheelchair arm, moved almost unconsciously. It drifted upwards, fingers brushing against something cool and smooth resting against her collarbone beneath her blouse. Slowly, deliberately, she drew it out.

Vodka’s silly bulky earphones. It hung from a simple silver chain, a stark, fragile pendant against the somber fabric of her mourning clothes. 

Her fingers closed around it, yellows and blues glowed under her grasp. It felt cool, inert. Yet, holding it flooded her with sensory ghosts: the phantom thrum of bass vibrating through Vodka’s shoulder when Scarlet leaned close; the scent of ozone and sweat mixed with cheap shampoo; the blinding, reckless grin Vodka would flash her before exploding from the starting gate.

Half, 

Half her heart.

Every reckless charge, every stubborn refusal to yield, every fierce, protective glare she leveled at anyone who dared look at me sideways… it was love.

Raw, unrefined, terrifyingly vast love.

She wasn't just fueled by competition. She was built of it. Built of love. For the track, for the wind, for the impossible dream… and for me and her family.

A tremor ran through Scarlet. It was a tremor of pure, unadulterated longing, a shift within her ruined landscape. 

The sun felt suddenly warmer, brighter, almost… present. The urge was primal, undeniable. She needed to stand. Not metaphorically. Physically. To meet this light.

Her hands gripped the armrests of the wheelchair, knuckles whitening. Muscles long dormant screamed in protest. Her legs, frail and unresponsive beneath the blanket, felt like pillars of lead. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Gold Ship watched, silent, her own grief momentarily eclipsed by the raw intensity of Scarlet’s struggle.

With a gasp that tore from her throat, Scarlet pushed. She threw every ounce of will, every memory of strength, every echo of Vodka’s defiant spirit, into the motion. 

Her body strained, trembling violently. For one impossible, suspended heartbeat… she rose. Not fully upright, but lifted off the seat, supported only by her trembling arms and sheer, desperate will. Her head tilted back, face turned fully towards the sun.

And in that blinding, golden light, she saw her.

Not a ghost. Not a memory. Vodka was the sun. Radiant, impossibly close, her wild blue hair dissolving into streams of pure light, her fierce grin softening into an expression of infinite, encompassing warmth. 

She wasn't running ahead anymore. She was here. Surrounding Scarlet, filling her, holding her aloft in that impossible moment. The love Scarlet had just named wasn't just remembered; it was palpable, a tangible force humming in the air, vibrating in the sunlight.

She was built of love, 

Every atom. Every stride. Every retort, every tear, every reckless, beautiful moment. She was love incarnate, poured into the shape of a girl who ran like the wind.

Tears, hot and unchecked, streamed down Scarlet’s face. Not tears of despair this time. Tears of revelation. Tears of a love acknowledged too late, yet finally, fully seen. She clutched the earphone pendant tightly against her chest, right over her own frantically beating heart.

Her voice, when it came, was a raw whisper, scraped thin by emotion but carrying the weight of a lifetime. It wasn't spoken to Gold Ship, nor to the empty garden. It was spoken directly into the sunlight, towards the presence she had momentarily touched.

"I love you."

Scarlet closed her eyes, pressing the bulky earphone harder against her skin, as if trying to fuse it with her own heartbeat.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't tell you that earlier."

THE END.

They say remembrance is an act of mercy.
That to remember is to hold a soul in place, keep it from slipping quietly into the undertow of time.
But mercy is not simple. It cuts both ways.

To remember is to wound yourself on what’s gone.
To forget is to wound what was once alive.
And between the two, we live.
Half ghost, half survivor, building shrines out of what we cannot bear to release.

I’ve spent years thinking about the difference.
About how they all ran… not away, not toward, but through.
Scarlet with her desperate hunger to be good. Vodka with her stubborn need to protect. Gold Ship with her laughter that cracked to dust.
Each of them carried the same torch, passed hand to hand through love and ruin and shame:
Remember me, but not like that.

Maybe that’s the quiet truth of living after them, or among them,

 It isn’t about mending what broke.
It’s about learning to look at the fracture and still call it beautiful.
To stand before what time took and whisper,
You mattered.

Scarlet rebuilt herself from the wreckage she once fled.
She didn’t erase the girl who ran too far, she carried her, scarred and trembling, into a gentler kind of world.
Vodka’s memory stayed, not as a wound, but as a rhythm.
A heartbeat. A lap unfinished but never lost.
And Gold Ship, once the fool, learned that grief isn’t comedy’s opposite… it’s proof that something once mattered enough to miss.

The house they tore down. The one built from rules and shame and small, perfect lies. it didn’t vanish.
It became dust in the earth, foundation for something new.
Not a house of obedience, but of remembering.
Of love that was once unspeakable, now spoken quietly, freely, at last.

And maybe that’s all any of us can hope for.
Not to be immortal. Not to be forgiven.
But to be remembered kindly, and to forgive ourselves for the versions of us that couldn’t be.

I’ve told their story so I wouldn’t lose them.
Because forgetting is easy. It’s clean.
But remembering… that’s living with the ache and calling it holy.
That’s how you honor the dead, the broken, the disappeared.
You remember them as they were; flawed, beautiful, terrified, trying.
And you keep running, even if your legs don’t work anymore.
You carry their names, their noise, their heat, until it becomes your own.

That’s all remembrance is.
An unfinished race we all keep running.
A prayer we whisper into the dusk,
I won’t let you vanish.

My name is Aston Machan.
And I remember them.