Archive of Our Own

It's spring, and the cherry blossoms are about to bloom, when Kanade finds herself forced to return to a question she'd much rather not answer.

If you no longer had to make songs for Mafuyu... what would you do?

Except now, the question has suddenly become far more pressing, because with the coming of spring comes the end of the school year—and thus, the day Mafuyu graduates from high school. Along with that come the inevitable questions of the future: what university will Mafuyu go to afterwards, and where will she live?

Mafuyu's mother, naturally, sees a future Tokyo University medical student in her daughter, and is more than happy to let her continue to live at home while she studies there. Mafuyu herself would much rather go to a less competitive school for nursing, and move out of the Asahina household.

Another confrontation looms on the horizon. Mafuyu stands on the cusp of her future; if she is ever going to break free from her mother and choose a path for herself, then now—more than ever—is the time for her to make that clear.

(Coincidentally, as a fellow third-year, the spring also brings with it Kanade's own graduation. Her pile of unread college recruiting emails continues to grow day-by-day—but even just looking at the subject lines filling her inbox fills her with dread, forcing her to close the email window before she descends into outright panic. Her own future remains a terrifying mystery.)

Two weeks before her graduation, Mafuyu decides that her graduation day will be the day she makes her intentions clear to her mother. She'll live a life of her own, whether her mother likes it or not.

This won't be anything like the first time Mafuyu left home, though. This time, she's more prepared. More certain.

(Not long after Mafuyu tells Kanade this—later that day, in fact—Kanade's grandmother calls, to once again remind Kanade that her graduation is coming up and to ask if she has a university in mind. Kanade hastily says she's still weighing her decision, and that she'll get back to her later—and so the question continues to go unanswered. The call marks the fourth time this has happened, in as many weeks.)

And Mafuyu doesn't stand alone, of course. Kanade, Ena, and Mizuki will all be there when Mafuyu goes to confront her mother, and Mafuyu's father has also already privately affirmed his support for his daughter's chosen path in advance. The Virtual Singers have her back, too, each providing guidance and support for Mafuyu in their own different ways, in the run-up to that day.

(At the same time, Luka keeps prodding Kanade with that same painful question, almost every single time they meet in SEKAI, and Kanade continues to avoid answering her. It's to the point where Kanade begins to actively avoid Luka, telling herself that she can't afford to be distracted at such a critical moment. Just like always, Mafuyu's future takes precedence over her own.)

As Niigo's plan to confront Mafuyu's mother on Graduation Day comes together, it becomes clear to Kanade that there is no way they can fail. The confrontation is going to be daunting and stressful, to be sure—but Mafuyu's come too far and has too many people supporting her to be pushed aside, now.

Niigo are going to make this work, come hell or high water. It's not even a question; Kanade has complete and utter faith in them all—and in Mafuyu.

But with that faith comes a stark realization: Mafuyu has been saved.

The proof of that stands before Kanade's eyes now: it shows in Mafuyu's determination to choose her own path, and in all of the people around her who are helping to make things work. In hindsight, she was probably saved long ago; this is just the first time Kanade can see it all coming together so concretely.

Kanade's happy about having finally saved Mafuyu, of course. How could she not be happy about the one she loves finding her future?

Meanwhile, it's also equally clear to Kanade that she, herself, hasn't changed at all. She still barely goes outside, still overworks herself to collapse, still knows nothing of life other than musical composition. All she has is her guilt, and her quest to resolve it; nothing more.

It's pathetic: over the past four or five years, Kanade has watched Mafuyu grow from an uncertain, empty shell, into a young woman willing to stand up and assert her own identity, even if it means enduring great pain—and throughout that whole time, Kanade herself has remained completely stagnant and static.

The most shameful part is that her stagnation isn't for lack of support or resources, either. She's surrounded by friends and people who love her—and it hasn't helped her change at all. She's been given every opportunity—had so much time, energy, and love poured into her by her friends—and she's let it all go to complete waste, squandered it on cup noodles and useless music. Nothing can help her.

(Nevermind the fact that Kanade's never truly talked to anyone about her problems beyond the surface level, beyond the fact of her guilt. Neither Mafuyu, nor Ena, nor Mizuki, nor Honami know of this facet of her trauma, of her growing despair over her stagnation. She's always deflected their questions, by redirecting their attention to Mafuyu—by using her as a shield. As an excuse.)

Really, that's the worst part. Her friends keep trying to help: keep trying to make her take care of herself; keep pushing her to shower and eat and sleep more regularly; keep going out of their way to look after her; keep throwing away their lives bit by bit in an effort to prop her up. And it all ends up being wasted, in the end.

(They do not realize they are only treating the symptoms—not the disease. There is little point to feeding a body that is only living half of a life. Getting 8 hours of sleep every day won't change how she spends the other 16 locked away within her room, day in and day out.)

Kanade was, is now, and forever will be a hikikomori. This is all she will ever be able to do: hide away in her room, rotting away until she inevitably disappears. She's a failure.

Kanade has proven herself to be completely beyond saving. She has no future.

Kanade's friends see her unresolved guilt, and believe that to be the sole problem—as if resolving the past hangups she has over her father would be enough to fix the smouldering wreckage that has been her life for the past few years. But her troubles are more expansive than that; they cut deeper, intermesh with each other in ways she can't even begin to untangle.

Mafuyu, Ena, Mizuki, Honami... they all see the singular tree of her guilt, and miss the forest that has grown around it over the years.

Sure, it still feels wrong for Kanade to even consider her own future now, when there are surely so many others out there who she could save before then...

But at the same time, how could Kanade ever move past her guilt when there is nothing beyond it for her to move towards? How could Kanade ever focus on her own happiness, when she doesn't have a future to be happy about?

It's a Catch-22. She's damned if she does, damned if she doesn't. Trying to fix one problem only leads her to run headlong into another problem. She tugs on one string to try and unravel it, and merely tightens the knots of a different thread.

Kanade could never talk about any of this with her friends, though. She will not allow them to suffer her problems; it would only hurt them even more, and she cannot have that. Not when they have trauma of their own to grapple with.

The forest would be too much for them to bear—so instead, she will let them focus on that one tree they have found, to keep them from looking further.

(She continues to run away and hide from the world, much like Mizuki—only in a way that's somehow at once both more drastic and more subtle.)

In the meantime, everyone else's post-graduation plans continue to come together, as well.

Ena sets her sights on a nearby arts university that provides everything she's looking for in an art program, while also remaining conveniently close to home. For that matter, it's also close to Mafuyu's school—and Mizuki is all too happy to find that it offers courses in fashion design that are perfect for her own future plans.

(Meanwhile, every time Kanade looks at the dizzying array of schools she could apply to, she mentally shuts down and spirals into a panic attack. The weight of the future is crushing, and it feels like it's going to kill her.)

And speaking of Mizuki, Kanade isn't surprised at all to hear that she and Ena are already looking at apartments together. Mizuki's a year younger than the rest of them, so it'll be some time still before she can officially move in with Ena—but she's already making plans to do so, and her parents are more than thrilled to hear about it.

Mafuyu has also been looking at apartments and places to live here and there as well, though she hasn't officially settled on one yet. Strangely, though, Kanade gets the sense that the purple-haired girl has actually already made up her mind about where to live... but Mafuyu refuses to give Kanade a straight answer about it, when she asks.

(Kanade herself, on the other hand, can't imagine living anywhere other than her room. She knows she will live and die within these four white walls. The idea of doing anything else is too terrifying to consider.)

One night, as they're talking about all of this, Ena asks Kanade about what school she's planning on going to. She, Mafuyu, and Mizuki are all a bit startled to find that Kanade hasn't yet decided on one—

—and when they start to ask questions, Kanade 'accidentally' kicks the power button on her PC and fakes having computer trouble for the rest of the night to get out of it. Fortunately, Mafuyu has gone back for yet another try at living in her own home again for the time being, so Kanade doesn't have to suffer through the lyricist walking into her room to continue grilling her in-person.

(What Kanade does suffer through, though, is the inevitable shame and self-disgust that follows. Everyone else is making so many plans for the future—so why can't she? Why is she, alone, this pathetic?)

(Why would she much rather die than go outside?)

(It feels strange for her to say, and it ties her stomach in knots to admit, but she actually envies Ena, for being able to chart a course for herself so easily.)

Kanade's been stuck in place for so long that she's forgotten how to move forward. Her legs have withered away—atrophied to nothing. All she can do is sit motionless in her room, and wait to die.

The future—the idea of being a person, instead of just a sack of meat that spits out music—is too much for her to contemplate. There can be no future for someone like her, because she doesn't even know how to live anymore. She can't do this.

Maybe that's why Kanade can't let go of her guilt—because letting go of it would mean letting go of music, and it would mean having to actually face the future. It would mean letting go of the last thing holding herself together. Self-flagellation is preferable to outright dissolution.

Or maybe she's finally succeeded in molding herself into a perfect composer—scrubbing and grinding away every facet of herself over the course of years spent isolated, hollowing herself out until nothing remains but music composition. Maybe she doesn't know who she truly is anymore, aside from just 'a composer'.

Or maybe she's just being childish. Lazy. Pathetic. Maybe she's letting the despair win—making excuses for why she's not putting forward any effort to live or be a functional human being.

Really, more than anything... Kanade wishes that everyone else in Niigo would just leave her behind to die, already. It's what she deserves.

But she doesn't say that out loud, though, because she doesn't want to trouble them.

(Instead, she keeps up her mask of obsessive devotion and guilt for another day, so that no one can see the other problems deeper within.)

At that moment in the Empty SEKAI, Miku looks up, startled, as the world starts to shift. The light from the sky is dimming, like day turning to night, and in the growing dark she can see little boxes of harsh blue-white light—the glow of distant computer screens. It catches the Virtual Singer by surprise: Mafuyu is doing better than ever, so why is the SEKAI changing like this now...?

Next to her, Luka looks up at the sky as well, her face wrinkling in distaste.

"That girl," she mutters. "Her wish..."

(Kanade doesn't see this for herself, though—because she's started avoiding the SEKAI and the Virtual Singers entirely, after one question too many from Luka.)

There's about a week left to go before Graduation Day, when the full weight of what's happening sinks in for Kanade.

This is it.

That day—Graduation Day—is the day Mafuyu finally becomes free. It's the day her future begins.

And, inevitably, it will be the day she begins to leave Kanade behind.

Sure, it's not like Mafuyu is suddenly going to stop being friends with Kanade on that day—but she knows that life will inevitably cause them to drift apart. Mafuyu has a future; she'll move forward and live alongside Ena and Mizuki, while Kanade keeps rotting away in the past.

That thought hurts. The first time it comes to her, she curls up in her chair and weeps miserably, and she's thrown too far off-balance to do any meaningful composition work for the rest of the night.

But the next night, Kanade realizes that the alternative outcome—where Mafuyu stays with her—is actually even worse, because that means that Kanade will inevitably drag Mafuyu down with her. Kanade would just be a chain shackling Mafuyu to the past, an albatross around her neck, a burden keeping her from living her life to the fullest.

That thought hurts even more than the first. It makes her blood turn to ice, and it makes her want to vomit—and yet Kanade ends up obsessing over it for the rest of the night, turning it over and over in her head, inspecting and dissecting it in minute detail, imagining all the horrible things that she would inevitably do to Mafuyu if they stayed together.

Kanade can already picture Mafuyu taking care of her long-term, as she vegetates for years on end without making any progress; Mafuyu cares too much to let Kanade be, and she would probably go through the entirety of nursing school and into her career afterwards without Kanade changing a single iota. Kanade would just be a constant drain on Mafuyu—a parasite lodged firmly within its host's heart.

(Much like her father, Kanade would end up confined indoors, constantly tended to by a nurse and forever trapped in the past. And much like with her father, it would all be Kanade's fault.)

Eventually, as Kanade sits and stews in her room—alone in the dark—she realizes: she's too broken to be loved.

She's toxic. Loving her can't be healthy for anyone. All she will ever do is hurt the people who love her.

And then, immediately after that... Kanade comes to a decision: she cannot allow herself to hold Mafuyu back.

She has to let go, for Mafuyu's sake.

(Meanwhile, Mafuyu, Ena, and Mizuki have all begun to message each other, because all of them have noticed Kanade acting a bit off—but none of them are able to pinpoint anything specific, other than Kanade seeming to be a bit distracted lately. Kanade doesn't tell them anything when asked, of course.)

The thought of letting go finally leads Kanade to her answer to Luka's question.

Said answer comes in the form of a bundle of wires—discarded MIDI cables, a broken Ethernet cord, spare USB connectors and charging cables, an unused XLR patch cord, and more—braided and zip-tied together to form a long, thick rope. She ties one end of it to the ceiling light fixture in her room; a quick test indicates that both ceiling and rope are strong enough to support her weight.

The other end, she ties into a noose.

This is Kanade's answer: she will take the frayed thread of her life—the one tangling them all—and cut it to pieces, for everyone's sake.

(Kanade considers other options, too. For example, she could just hurl herself in front of a train; there's a level crossing not far down the street from her house, and the train would get things over with quickly—but at the same time, she didn't want to potentially traumatize some poor train conductor just doing their job. Cutting herself to death is out for similar reasons: it would be bloody and messy, and there's no way she'd make Honami clean up something like that.)

(Hanging really is her best option—it's clean and simple.)

Graduation Day.

She'll do it on Graduation Day, after everything is said and done with Mafuyu's mother.

Mafuyu will make her path clear to her mother, and one way or another she'll start walking towards her future. Niigo will stay with Mafuyu afterwards, of course, to help her process the immediate emotional fallout—either all celebrating together if it goes well, or all crying together if it goes poorly. Mizuki will probably make them all cuddle together at some point, too, and Ena will probably sputter and object at first, only to quickly fold as she always does.

More importantly, neither Mizuki nor Ena will let Mafuyu be alone that night.

They also have to sleep at some point.

And at that point—once everyone else was safely asleep—Kanade will then be free to sneak back home, and hang herself.

Everything falls into place: date, time, and method. It's a solid plan.

And the more Kanade thinks about it, the more right it feels: by the end of the day, both of the biggest obstacles in Mafuyu's path will be gone. She'll be free to move forward with her life, without anyone holding her back. She'll be able to live, finally.

Sure, it'll hurt for her, Ena, and Mizuki in the short term—but they have each other to lean on, and Kanade has faith that they'll bounce back. In time, they'll see that this was all for the best.

Sooner or later, they'll realize that there really was no other way Kanade's life could've gone—that she was doomed to fail from the start. This was always how her life was going to end, one way or another. The disease is terminal.

Eventually, they'll see that there was nothing they could've done for her.

You can't save someone who never had a future to begin with, after all.

The days fly by from there.

It honestly feels like a weight has been lifted off of Kanade's shoulders: she finally knows what to do, now. She finally has a path forward—a short path, to be sure, but a path nonetheless. Her future isn't a problem anymore.

And really, why shouldn't she be happy? She saved Mafuyu, after all; she finally accomplished what she set out to do, in the end. Now all Kanade has to do is make sure Mafuyu stays saved.

Kanade can do that. She has to.

(Kanade continues to avoid going to SEKAI, though, because she's sure that the Virtual Singers will hear her screaming on the inside.)

Mafuyu, Ena, and Mizuki all notice Kanade's abrupt shift in mood, of course; by the time they ask her about it, though, there's only a day left until graduation, and so she's able to convince the three of them to save their questions for after they confront Mafuyu's mother. All she needs is a little bit more time.

"I won't put your questions off forever," Kanade lies to them, in voice chat that night. "Just for a day or two. Until after we talk to Mafuyu's mom. Please?"

Ena makes a discontented noise, and Mafuyu also sounds hesitant at first—but thankfully Mizuki accepts Kanade's excuse, saying she understands that Kanade needs time to face her feelings, and she pulls the other two along in the process.

(Mizuki's dead wrong, of course. In the end, Kanade's been stewing in these feelings for years, to absolutely no avail.)

(Time hasn't done Kanade much good. But she doesn't tell Mizuki that.)

And then Graduation Day arrives.

Kanade spends the morning making sure the noose is properly tied and securely attached to the ceiling of her bedroom, setting up a chair underneath, and in general making sure everything is ready for her suicide later tonight. She even does her best to clean up her room and the house, though 'her best' isn't very good at all.

After all, Kanade has no idea what emotional state she'll be in when she returns here to hang herself, so it's best if she does all of the preparation now—to make things as easy and hesitation-free as possible later, when the time finally comes to make her exit.

She also writes a note, though it turns out very short: I'm sorry, but this was for the best. I love you all. — Kanade

She debates adding more, but ultimately decides not to... because she doesn't know how to put it all into words, this tangled mess of self-hatred and failure and stagnation that's choking her. How could she describe the feeling of having no future with just one measly letter?

Mafuyu probably could do it, actually—she's the group's lyricist for a reason—but she's the last person Kanade wants to know about any of this. After all, if Mafuyu knew, she'd probably try to help Kanade, and that's exactly what she's trying to avoid: she can't let Mafuyu waste any more time and love on someone as fundamentally broken as herself.

Kanade might've saved one person... but in the end, she knows she's unsalvageable. It's best if everyone else simply stays away.

Once her preparations are complete, Kanade leaves her house one last time, to go meet up with Niigo.

The confrontation with Mafuyu's mother... actually goes about as well as any of them could hope for.

That's not to say that the discussion doesn't get heated and tense at points—and both Mafuyu and her mother end up shedding more than a few tears in the process—but in the end, Mafuyu is able to get her mother to back down and let her go, with help from her father and from Niigo. Kanade couldn't be happier or more relieved.

And then Mafuyu blindsides Kanade by announcing that she wants to move into the Yoisaki house for good.

In hindsight, Kanade definitely should've seen this coming.

Mafuyu gets her parents to accept this, too, of course; it helps that it's just solidifying an existing arrangement. Naturally, Kanade is more than happy to let her move in, as well, and agrees in the moment—

—and then, after all of that is said and done, Mizuki unilaterally decides that the most logical next step is for Niigo to spend the night at Kanade's house.

Kanade can't come up with any good arguments or excuses against that, so they all end up going with it.

It's at this point that the reality of the situation catches up to Kanade, and she begins to panic internally because oh fuck the noose is still in her bedroom.

She does her best not to let this show on her face, though. She can maybe still salvage the situation, if she can just get a minute alone in her room to take the noose down from the ceiling. She just needs to make sure none of the others look into her room before then.

This plan immediately falls apart when Ena asks how Kanade's been doing lately, after a few weeks of living on her own again. Kanade tries to insist she's fine, but something about her response still piques Mafuyu's interest enough to make her look into Kanade's room, alongside Ena and Mizuki.

In the end, all Kanade can do is watch helplessly as the three of them open her bedroom door... and find the noose set up in the middle of the room, with the chair sitting pretty right beneath it.

The world stops, utterly.

All conversation and noise dies out abruptly at that moment. It's like the air around them has vanished, leaving no medium for sound to travel through and no oxygen for Kanade to breathe.

Ena stares in bug-eyed disbelief at the rope hanging from the ceiling, mouth agape as she processes the implications of what she's seeing; next to her, Mizuki stands frozen in mid-joke, the smile on her face slipping second by second and millimeter by millimeter.

Finally, Kanade can't see Mafuyu's face from where she's standing, at first—but it's impossible to miss when Mafuyu slowly turns around to look at her.

The look on Mafuyu's face can only be described as one of sheer terror.

"K-Kanade...?"

Mafuyu reaches out a hand towards Kanade, breaking the illusion of stillness—

—so, naturally, Kanade decides to book it, running out the front door and down the street, with Mafuyu in hot pursuit.

"KANADE!"

The level crossing.

Kanade has to reach the level crossing.

It's still early enough in the evening that the trains are still running—and if Kanade is right, there should be one passing by, at around this time. One last chance.

She can still fix this. She just needs to reach the tracks.

"KANADE!"

She can't look back.

"PLEASE!"

She has to keep running.

Kanade's body might be an out-of-shape wreck, sapped of its vitality by years of overwork and malnutrition—but right now, she has a hell of a lot of adrenaline to make up for it. She has a chance, maybe... but, god, she's already getting so tired. Her legs and her feet are starting to ache and grow heavy. She can't pull enough air into her lungs.

Still, she keeps running, forcing herself to stay ahead of Mafuyu.

"WAIT!"

Don't stop. Don't look back.

She can see the crossing now, further up the street—the caution lights flashing and the barrier gates descending.

Kanade leans into her run ever-so-slightly, as the sound of the warning klaxons reaches them... and she can feel the shift in the atmosphere, as Mafuyu finally picks up on her intentions.

"NO! PLEASE, DON'T!"

Kanade wills herself to run faster. This is it—the only way forward. She has to reach the tracks, or else...

...or else...

...

...or else, what?

(What if there's another way forward?)

A kernel of doubt enters her heart as she hits the final stretch, mere meters away from the crossing gates, and she stumbles—

"KANADE! STOP!"

—and a pair of hands grab hold of her from behind the instant she wavers.

Mafuyu grabs hold of Kanade's jacket first, before her arms wrap around Kanade's middle; Kanade struggles in response, flailing and thrashing in an attempt to escape from Mafuyu's iron grip, throwing herself forward in one last-ditch attempt to reach the end—

—only for two more pairs of hands to grab hold of her, a second later: Ena and Mizuki, desperately trying to help Mafuyu drag Kanade back, away from the train tracks—

—and then there's an earth-shaking roar and a blur of grey that fills Kanade's vision as the train thunders through the crossing...

...

...and a second later, the train clears the crossing—leaving Kanade untouched, if frazzled.
She'd been standing less than a meter short of the tracks.

The caution lights go out, and the gates lift back up again.

...

...it's over.
There's no escaping this anymore.

Kanade's legs give way, and she collapses to her knees on the asphalt, sobbing as Mafuyu, Ena, and Mizuki hold her in their arms.

Fortunately, one of them at least has the presence of mind to play Untitled.

It takes Kanade a moment to realize she's been brought into the Empty SEKAI, however, because it now looks very different from how she last remembered it. It's still empty, of course... but now it's dark, lit from above by distant, sharp-angled blocks of light that look like computer monitors.

It reminds Kanade of her bedroom. If she craned her head to look straight up, would she find a noose dangling over her head here, too?

(But, as a tiny part of her brain points out... the lights also look like stars, almost. Strange square stars, shining in the 1 o'clock sky. It's oddly beautiful, in its own way.)

She hears footsteps approaching, and when she looks up, she's not at all surprised to find Luka walking up to her. She crouches down, in front of Kanade.

"...you know what I'm going to ask, don't you? You can't keep avoiding it forever."

Kanade knows, of course. But she still can't stop a shiver from running through her body as she kneels on the floor of the Empty SEKAI.

"Y-Yes, but..." Kanade sobs, words and tears alike finally spilling free. "But... I—I don't know, Luka. I don't have an answer. I don't know what I'm going to do, now that—that Mafuyu's been saved. I can't do anything other than compose music. I can't change or grow at all as a person."

She squeezes her eyes shut, curls in on herself with her face to her knees. Tries to block out the world, because it's too much, please make it stop, I can't take it anymore—!

"Every time I think about the future, I break down and panic. It's impossible to think about. I—I don't know why, or even how to explain it—it's just impossible for me to think about what I'm going to do with my life. I've never had a future. I can't have a future."

She continues to say words, though they're starting to blur the line between coherent thought and simple babbling.

"I can't do this anymore. I can't move forward with my life. I can't keep existing like this—I can't. Nothing helps. Nothing works. I just want it to end, already. This was always going to happen. Just let me fade. Everything hurts too much. I can't do anything. I can't live. I don't have a future. Please let me give up already. I need to do this. There's no other choice."

She can feel Mafuyu's hold on her midsection tighten with each word she says, her crying gradually growing louder and louder as Kanade's feelings continue to spill out. It's just another sign of Kanade's failings—she couldn't even die properly, and now Mafuyu's stuck having to deal with all of her nonsense. It's sickening.

"Just let go of me, Mafuyu. Please. Don't waste your time. I can't change or get better. All I'll ever be is a failure."

She failed to die, and now Mafuyu is going to drown with her.

"You can't save me. All I'm going to do is hurt you. Just let go."

In the end, her thoughts converge on that one, simple request. The wish that started this—all of this, from even before she met Yuki, all those years ago.

"Please, just let me disappear."

Mafuyu's reply comes as just a single word.

"No."

Her hold on Kanade tightens further, and she buries her face deeper in Kanade's hair. Kanade can't imagine it's very pleasant—between the sweat she'd built up from running just now and the past few days she'd gone without showering, she knows she must smell absolutely rancid. Mafuyu doesn't seem to care, regardless.

"No, I won't let you disappear, Kanade. How can you say that...?"

She sounds angry. It makes Kanade flinch—and it suddenly reminds her of her first encounters with Mafuyu in SEKAI, when the lyricist had spat bitter words at all of them, trying to get them to leave. And now, almost two years later, Kanade realizes that she and Mafuyu have finally come full circle—only now with their positions reversed.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Mizuki speaks up, staring down at her feet as she shuffles guiltily.

"I understand how Kanade feels a bit, actually... always worrying if you're hurting someone just by being with them, wondering if it's really okay for things to be like this—"

Ena interrupts Mizuki with a huff and a sharp glare.

"Yeah, but how many times am I gonna have to remind you, Mizuki?" she says, sounding stern—though the way she grabs Mizuki's hand at the same time belies her worry. "You can't just force someone to stop loving you. It's their decision to make. Not yours."

Then she turns back to Kanade. "And it sounds like you need to learn that too, Kanade..." she sighs, shaking her head. She sounds absolutely exhausted now, physically out of breath and mentally frayed as the adrenaline leaves her system. "I... I don't want you to die. None of us do."

Kanade feels Mafuyu shift behind her, in what Kanade thinks is a shake of her head.

"No. I won't allow it," Mafuyu mumbles, trembling. "Y-You can't disappear, Kanade."

She lets out a ragged breath that tickles the back of Kanade's neck.

"Maybe I'm just being selfish, but... but I can't lose you, Kanade. You saved me, so please, let me save you now!"

"But I can't be saved!" Kanade argues back, making a completely ineffectual attempt to squirm free from Mafuyu's arms. "It's impossible for me to change! A-And I don't even know what I'm going to do with my life anymore... t-the future doesn't exist, for me."

"It's okay if you don't yet know what to do next," Luka says, still crouched in front of Kanade. She gently pats the top of Kanade's head, ruffling her hair slightly. "And you can change, Kanade. You have people who can help you move forward. Believe in them."

"If you don't have a future yet, then I'll help you find it," Mafuyu affirms, holding Kanade even tighter in response to her squirming.

"...you promise?" Kanade mumbles.

Mafuyu nods, punctuating her words by pulling Kanade closer to her.

"Of course, Kanade. I promise I'll help you find your future."

Kanade's life resumes the next morning, when she wakes up in a different bed than normal—specifically, Mafuyu's.

She awakens to find Mafuyu curled up alongside her—pressed up against her back, with her arms wrapped tightly around Kanade's midsection and her face once again buried in Kanade's hair (which now smells much better, after showering last night). Mafuyu herself is still asleep, if the gentle rhythm of her breathing is anything to go by, and Kanade does her best not to wake her.

Instead, Kanade simply lets herself relax in Mafuyu's arms, taking in the moment: the gentle warmth enveloping her; the quiet, steady pulse of Mafuyu's breath; the soft morning light falling on them through the window blinds.

It feels... comforting, in a way she's never quite felt before. It reaches deep into her soul.

(Though at the same time, Kanade feels a sharp pang of guilt shoot through her, and she wonders if she really deserves this after causing so much trouble last night.)

(But this time, she also tries to remind herself that it's okay for her to be loved—even if, admittedly, she can't quite believe that yet.)

(It's a start, at least. The road to healing will be a long one, but she'll keep working on it.)

Mafuyu wakes up not long after Kanade, though she doesn't say anything; instead, she simply pulls Kanade closer to her, and the two of them simply lay there together, savoring the quiet morning.

Kanade quietly lets out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. Relaxes further.

As they enjoy the moment, though, Kanade's mind drifts back to Luka's question... and, for the first time, Kanade realizes that she has an answer now—or part of one, rather. A fragment of an answer. A piece of the puzzle.

And it is... well, this.
This comfort, this... together-ness.

Kanade still doesn't know what she'll do with herself, now that Mafuyu has been saved.

But even if she doesn't really have a future, yet... she'd still like to have more moments like this.

She knows that much, at least.