[Big sis has gotten as gentle as Mama.]
Mama. Now there was a word that felt impossibly far away.
Breakfast, clearing the table, washing the dishes — a quiet, unhurried half-morning that belonged entirely to Chiose and Kyoumoto.
After lulling her little sister to sleep with the guitar, Yoshiiro Chiose dragged a chair out onto the balcony and sat alone in the breeze.
She savored this kind of ordinary, do-nothing day with her whole heart — and she knew, without a shadow of doubt, that she had earned every second of it.
"Mama, huh."
After their parents died, Chiose had always felt a quiet envy toward children who still had a mother at their side.
She had once burned with the desperate wish to become someone strong enough to protect Kyoumoto — to fill that role herself. And yet, now that Kyoumoto had actually said she was like Mama, the feeling that rose in Chiose's chest wasn't happiness.
Still. Becoming someone like her mother wasn't a bad thing.
If she could be that for Kyoumoto, then maybe little Kyō would never have to envy other children for having a mother at their side.
"Though Kyō has given me a rather good idea. A mother, hm."
In a simulation, there was no rule that said her age had to match the character she was playing.
The biggest gap so far had been in her second simulation with Takamatsu Tomori — a difference of just over four years.
Who was to say that gap couldn't grow to fourteen years someday? Or twenty-four?
By then, she could step into the role of a mother figure for her simulation targets — and then, ever so thoroughly...
"Big sis! Big sis, where are you? Wuu… I — I had a nightmare…"
Haizuka Kyoumoto's small, frightened voice drifted in from the bedroom. Chiose dragged her chair back inside, deftly twisting her hair up into a neat updo.
"It's okay, Kyō. Big sis is right here."
Was it her imagination?
Yoshiiro Chiose had the distinct feeling that even her voice had changed.
The old urgency — the edge of panic she used to carry — was gone. In its place, something settled and strangely assured had taken root.
"Or maybe that's what those little rings in my eyes have done to me."
[Taki, why are you crying… Are you trying to show me that what lives inside your tears is something even deeper than love?]
Shiina Taki huddled under the table, replaying it over and over — a life that had been given to her all at once, and snatched away just as suddenly.
"Oh God, you've got it all wrong…"
I was supposed to be a bright, cheerful Tokyo high school girl — lugging my drumsticks around with my bandmates, losing myself in the music, stopping off at the corner shop for ice cream with Kochiose after school, making day trips to Akihabara to hunt for merch.
Weekends in Hokkaido to catch the first snow of the season. Fireworks festivals in matching yukata, hand in hand with Kochiose, watching the lights bloom in the sky…
How did it end up like this…
"How did it end up like this — giving me those gentle memories, only to shove me back into this cruel, cold reality?"
Reality was worse than the dream by every measure.
At least in the dream, she had possessed Yoshiiro Chiose…
Had she ever possessed her in the real world?
The Taki who was a failure in the real world… didn't even know who Yoshiiro Chiose was.
In the end, Shiina Taki came to realize that the only person who had ever traded sincerity for sincerity with her across all these years — was nothing but a phantom who existed only in a dream.
This long-yet-short life of hers. The more she turned it over in her mind, the more Taki herself felt like laughing.
"No. I can't just waste away here."
Taki hauled herself up off the floor, yanked open the curtains, changed her clothes, and scrubbed the tear tracks from her cheeks with a bathroom towel.
"Kochiose… Kochiose should still be around, right? I have to go find Kochiose."
Whether Kochiose knew who she was or not.
"I have to find Kochiose. I have to see her — just once. For just one meeting, I'd do anything. I…"
Taki dug through the cabinet for her keys, but no matter how hard she searched, they were nowhere to be found.
She upended everything inside onto the floor, leaving the whole place in a chaotic heap.
"Taki? What's going on?"
Shiina Maki stepped out from her room.
She stared at the wreckage spread across the apartment and at her sister — currently in full-blown feral mode — and took a moment to process what she was seeing.
Was this child auditioning to be a Husky at the crack of dawn?
"I'm fine! I'm just looking for something… ugh, where are my keys, I can't find them anywhere — Sis, just give me yours for a minute!"
"Huh? I—"
Before Maki could finish the sentence, Taki shoved her aside, snatched the keys off Maki's desk, and bolted out the front door.
The whole thing was over in the space of ten seconds — too fast for Shiina Maki to even react.
She watched Taki disappear into the distance, shook her head slowly, and pulled the front door shut.
"What on earth has her in such a rush that she couldn't even close the door."
Had her little sister found herself a girlfriend?
What lucky girl had that turned out to be?
By the doorstep lay a flower, crushed flat under a single careless footfall.
Taki had stepped on it — though no one paid it any mind.
Yoho Rain Street. Xisì Road. Everything at once familiar and strange.
Shiina Taki made her way along roads that should have been completely foreign to her — and arrived at the place she knew better than anywhere else in the world.
This is Kochiose's place… no, wait, a few steps further… yes! I remember — it's just around the corner!
Every blade of grass, every branch of every tree along the way held a memory of her and Yoshiiro Chiose.
The thicket over there. The Park. Places where they'd gathered materials together, and the side streets and back alleys where they'd jointly assaulted a vending machine that had swallowed their drink money.
All of it, razor-sharp and vivid.
In Taki's eyes, everything in this world had been dyed in Yoshiiro Chiose's color.
Every single thing she looked at seemed to drag a memory up from somewhere inside her.
"Don't. I can't keep thinking about this… it hurts so much…"
The girl who had weathered every storm alongside her… didn't know who she was. The girl who did know her existed only in a dream.
All of it was false. So why did something false leave such an unbearable, lingering ache?
Shiina Taki felt as though heavy chains had been bolted around both her ankles.
Memory was the shackle — the one that imprisoned her and stopped her from moving forward.
"Just get to the corner. Just get there — and everything will sort itself out. If I just knock on her door… if Kochiose hasn't had anything happen to her yet… I…"
Bracing one hand against the wall, Taki lurched forward like a drunk, clinging to that last sliver of hope. When she finally staggered around the corner, almost at her destination, she saw it.
"Huh? Why…"
In the empty lot before an abandoned apartment building, a lone girl stood in a daze.
This entire area had been acquired by the Togawa Group for redevelopment — a planned underground performance hall — but for reasons unknown, the project had stalled out years ago and been left to rot.
Shiina Taki stepped closer and looked at the small building — so achingly familiar, yet completely overtaken by weeds. A wave of dizziness crashed over her.
She staggered inside to find the stairwell entirely blocked off.
Without a word, she cleared the passage in numb, mechanical silence.
And at last — she made it to the place she had been longing for.
By this point, even Taki herself didn't know what she intended to do.
But she truly, truly needed to see Chiose's little home — even just once.
When she finally reached that half-open door, she found she didn't dare take another single step.
"Ha… haa…"
What was she even doing.
All of it… was nothing but a lie, after all.
Unable to open the door, Shiina Taki turned and retraced her steps — down the stairs, around the corner, her feet moving faster and faster until, just as when she had come, she was running flat-out —
Bang.
"Ow!"
"Ngh…"
Taki collided head-on with a girl passing by. The physical examination report the girl had been holding fluttered up and plastered itself across Taki's field of vision.
"Watch where you're going…"
Wincing, Taki pried her eyes open — irritation already rising — and found herself looking at the girl who had run into her: a girl with white hair and red eyes.
「!!!」
Her pupils contracted violently in the span of a single heartbeat.
____
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