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i.
Akane’s hand is warm in hers.
This isn’t the first time they’ve held hands, no, they’re childhood friends for crying out loud. Their hands have always found their way to each other’s. Be it on walks home, play dates, across tables. Though those instances have since lessened as they grew up, his… fixation on her growing into what she doesn’t hesitate to call an obsession on some days and infatuation on normal ones, it’s a welcome weight at the end of the day.
Akane is warm, Akane is familiar. People can’t fake the way their hands feel. Aoi isn't sure of many things, now most especially, but one of them is that Akane’s hands will always grant her comfort.
(When they aren’t around her neck, suffocating her, throwing her onto the ground-)
“Ao-chan, are you okay?”
Akane, warm and familiar, isn’t looking at her- he can’t- but Aoi knows it’s a near thing.
“I’m fine,” she lies. Nene will hate her, she doesn’t say. Nene will loathe her, she doesn’t cry. Aoi is resenting herself even more for what she did to her, to Akane. Because how could she not? Self-hatred seeps into her bones like an old friend, filling her, uncurling in her insides. She will apologize, she will break down, Nene will see, Nene will leave.
No one stays once they’ve seen the real Aoi, underneath all the rumors and plastic smiles.
“You’re lying,” Akane says, stony.
“I am,” she concedes, “Nene-chan… I’ve hurt her. I owe her an apology-”
“It was hardly your fault.”
“But…”
“Ao-chan.” She imagines his gaze to be cutting. "It wasn’t your fault, but,” he squeezes her hand and Aoi feels her heart leap, “if you apologize, then we’ll do it together.”
That, what just happened, is downright cruel to Aoi. Because Akane nearly convinces her that someone sees her for her, that someone will stay, never leave. That what he’d tried so desperately to prove to her is actually true.
“I like giraffes.”
She speaks her truths, if only to get away from the lie.
Akane doesn't miss a beat. “Then let’s go to the zoo.”
“I like sweets.”
“Let’s go to the cake shop in front of the station then. It’s been a while.”
Is Akane lying? Even the slightest bit?
“I… I like games too.”
“Let’s play them together. No matter how late, I’ll stay up with you.”
Akane, warm and familiar, sounds so earnest.
“Is that a promise?”
“Of course.”
“What do you like, Akane-kun?”
“I like you, Ao-chan.”
She lets herself believe.
She doesn’t even notice that they’ve returned to school.
ii.
Nene engulfs her in a crushing hug when they reunite, crying and shaking like Aoi hadn’t just betrayed her and thrown her in a pit to die. The apology has barely even left her lips when Nene forgives her, watery smile and bright, shining eyes. Always so kind, always so sweet.
Aoi ends up breaking down too. Akane sees, President Minamoto too, her ancestor who looks eerily similar to her, and the odd boy who eyes her like she is the oddity. She supposes she is, crumbling and vulnerable in Nene’s arms.
It’s ok, Nene tells her quietly and Aoi believes her.
She meets Hanako for the first time, the dead boy who’s somehow monopolized all her best friend’s free time.
“So you’re the one who stole Nene-chan from me.” Aoi’s smile is sharp and fake, but there is a part of it that is genuine because here he is. Nene hadn’t left her for no reason. Nene hadn’t grown tired of her, she’d just been distracted.
“And you’re the one who nearly got us killed,” Hanako returns, voice dripping with mischief and chaos and oh, Aoi thinks, oh. Nene’s gotten herself into trouble with this one.
She thinks they’ll get along.
iii.
They go to the zoo.
Aoi gets to see giraffes for the first time and they’re amazing as they are in the pictures, in the wildlife documentaries. Akane takes every opportunity to snap a picture of her and Aoi lets him, wondering how many of those smiles will appear genuine when they’re printed, wonders if he and Nene will be able to discern them from the fake, automatic smile she’s trying to retire.
Aoi meets Kou for the first time then too, after Nene’s dragged him along into their little date and all Aoi can think of as she shakes his hand is, ah, her best friend really did have her hands full with him and Hanako.
Kou is bright and earnest in a way Aoi envies. He isn’t fake, not in the slightest. He wears his emotions on his sleeve, clear to the world with a furrow of an eyebrow, a toothy smile, a bellowing laugh.
“You’re very transparent, aren’t you, Minamoto-kun?”
The words just escape her. Akane and Nene have been telling her to express herself more and she’s been doing that, yes, but only with them. Her venture in baring herself, speaking her thoughts to someone else begins today, on a stone bench surrounded by animals and tourists with a boy she’s seen a handful of times, but has only formally met today.
Kou gives her a sheepish smile.
“I’ve been told that, yeah. I can’t really help it." He scratches at his head before continuing. "Not really a fan of miscommunication these days anyway, so it works.”
“Isn’t it hard?” Aoi’s voice is quiet, nearly swept away by the wind.
“What is?”
“Letting yourself be vulnerable.”
When Kou stills beside her, she instantly wants to take the words back. This isn't a topic you broach on the first meeting. She’d gone ahead and made things uncomfortable, stifling. Kou will look at her weirdly and make an excuse, leave her on that bench alone to wallow and realize she’d been right. Everyone will leave-
“Sometimes,” Kou says wistfully, hands clasped in front of him, “but I learned the hard way about what could happen when you don’t express yourself... when you don’t talk.”
A pained look crosses his eyes then and there’s a story there, Aoi knows, but she’s done enough genuine today and she doesn’t know how far Kou is willing to let her dig through, so she keeps quiet. For both their sakes.
They stop talking, but Aoi thinks she’s learnt something.
iv.
Aoi thinks she’s happier now.
Days are spent giggling in class with Nene, tutoring her, playfully competing with Akane in terms of grades, spending time with him more, being genuine. She taunts Hanako and hogs Nene, has pleasant lunches with Kou, and encounters more supernatural happenings. Her life is more exciting now, more fun, she’s smiling for real these days and, though the rumors may be changing around her, Aoi cannot bring herself to care.
Akane tells her he loves her everyday. Aoi thinks she’s learning to do the same.
v.
Good things don’t last. She should’ve known something was wrong. Hanako stares at her far too often for far too long. Something shifts and Aoi feels her world fall out of its axis and she tilts, tilts, tilts-
vi.
Nene disappears one day. No one thinks much of it.
Aoi is distraught, unsettled, and wracked with a horrible, ominous feeling that everyone is all too keen to point out, but never directly address. The rumors swirl again. Aoi doesn’t care. Nene is gone.
“Nene-chan’s stuff is gone from her locker, Akane-kun." She keeps her voice controlled. "Everything was there yesterday. What do you think happened?”
Akane waves it away. “No. 7’s probably just messing with her again, Ao-chan. Don’t worry about it too much.”
“Ok,” she says, even though it isn’t.
“She’s probably just sick today,” Kou tells her the next day, eyes shining like nothing is wrong and it makes her sick.
“Yashiro-san’s always had a history of unexpected absences,” Teru tells her smoothly the day after, smiling his usual plastered-on grin except it’s actually genuine and it scares her.
It’s a small thing, she knows. Nene did have a history, but her absences never lasted a week. Or two. Three. Four. A month.
“Looks like your time’s finally run out,” Hanako says and, somehow, Aoi knows exactly what he’s talking about.
vii.
Kou is next.
His seat is empty, his things are gone, and his classmates don’t have any idea about who Kou Minamoto was or if he ever even existed. Though dread fills her like a flood, she cannot bring herself to be surprised. Of course. Of course.
When she leaves what used to be Kou’s classroom, she takes note of the vacant seat in front of where he had sat. It seems significant for some reason. She doesn’t think she’ll ever find out why.
When Akane is suddenly President of the Student Council, Aoi cries.
She’d never been particularly close with Teru Minamoto, but he is gone now, just like Kou, just like Nene.
There is only one other person that can be taken away from her.
“Akane-kun, you said you’d never leave me,” she cries into his shirt. Behind them, through the windows of the classroom, the skies are tinged purple and orange. They are not the usual colors of the sunset, but they are familiar. She knows where they’re from. She knows and she’s terrified.
Akane looks startled when she tilts her head up to meet his eyes. “Ao-chan, what’s wrong?”
“You said you loved me." She holds onto him tightly, fiercely, but she knows deep down that it’s a lost cause. Akane will leave or be ripped away from her by force.
“I do.”
“You said you’d stay.”
“I will.”
She knows he doesn’t mean to lie, but it stings all the same.
“You should’ve kissed me when you had the chance,” she says quietly as she feels him slip through her fingers.
Akane doesn’t answer, he only disappears.
viii.
“You knew this would happen." Aoi’s voice echoes tinnily in the bathroom.
“Maybe,” Hanako responds without looking at her. He twirls his knife with one hand and swings a pocket watch in the other. Aoi wants to laugh. Akane would be angry when he’d find out about how the boy’d somehow managed to snag the trinket from him. Nene would force him to return it and Hanako, ever so smitten, would only hold onto it for a second longer before returning it with a smirk and a laugh.
Except Akane and Nene are gone. Now there is only Aoi and the seventh school mystery.
“Was any of it real?” She smiles despite it all. She will not last, she knows, but it’s a question she wants the answer to.
Hanako meets her eyes and if Aoi had known him just a little better, she’d be able to recognize the hardened regret in his.
“You were.”
ix.
Aoi opens her eyes to a beautiful purple sky tinged with orange.
Her back is wet. This is how she finds out she’s laying in water. She moves her arms, but they are heavy, brought down by soaked robes and the tiredness of her own limbs.
Somehow, she manages to stand and she isn’t the least bit surprised to see the familiar broken down structures of what she’s been told is the far shore.
Her tears join the water.
(She doesn’t notice the boy eying her from behind the pillar she and Akane had nearly kissed in front of. Doesn’t notice the wide grin that suddenly settles on his face. When he reveals himself, Aoi will be alarmed. Aoi will think Hanako is playing some sick, twisted joke on her, but she will see the seal on the boy’s right cheek and when he asks her if she wants to make a wish, she will think about how she has nothing left to lose anyway.)
x.
Hanako dispels the hakujoudai with a swipe of his hand. A quick glance behind him tells him Yashiro and Sumire hadn’t noticed, too busy hugging each other, relieved. He almost wishes he could join them.
He lets his gaze linger on Yashiro before turning to look out the window.
Switch successful.
This is goodbye.