Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Lisa felt her eyes sliding off of the page of her history textbook, unable to continue focusing on the details of the construction of the public transit system, and, once again, pulled out the letter she'd placed folded between its pages. Its energetic, slightly messy handwriting immediately brought to mind the exuberance of the person who'd written it, and she couldn't help but smile faintly.

Hey, Lisacchi! it opened. It's a lot different out here, away from the school. There's not a whole lot of people around, so that's a little less fun, but there's lots more weird magic stuff to mess around with. The old lady I'm supposed to be learning from says I'm 'difficult,' but she sure knows a lot. I should have a whole bunch of cool stuff to show you when I get back!

What followed were several paragraphs of difficult-to-understand descriptions of spells—whether that difficulty came from the complexity of the spells themselves or Hina's unique description of them, Lisa couldn't say—before returning to more personal conversation.

I thought you might get lonely in that room by yourself, so I told my sister and Chisato to keep an eye on you so that doesn't happen. Anyway, it's not too bad out here but no one's as fun to talk to as you are, Lisacchi, so I'll make sure to get back by break!

Write back! The letter urged, then ended with Lisa's roommate's distinctive signature, the one Lisa had seen her practicing on a number of objects that had no reason to be signed. Hina was, as always, Hina, and reading the letter only made Lisa want to see her again more, even though it had only been a couple of weeks since she'd gone off for her specialized training. It was, as Hina had surmised, lonely being in a dorm room by oneself, although the dormitory being full of people meant that it wasn't as difficult as it might have been in another situation.

And, while Lisa appreciated the thought of Hina asking people to check up on Lisa, the people she'd chosen were, well, maybe not exactly ideal for the task. Chisato and Lisa had been on good terms once, but the passage of time and the way the two of them had changed meant that their relationship could no longer really be considered close. And while Chisato was hardly the most friendly person Lisa knew, she was a good deal easier to deal with than Hina's sister, who adopted a sharp attitude even with people considerably more diligent and serious than Lisa was.

She sighed and prepared to fold the letter back up, then noticed a short postscript on the back she must have missed the first time she'd read it.

By the way, I heard from the old lady that there's a whole bunch of secret passages around Hanasakigawa! Piques your interest, doesn't it? Let's go explore some of them when I get back!

It seemed like the kind of thing Hina would find exciting, Lisa thought, smiling to herself. Getting dragged around on one of Hina's adventures was always surprisingly fun—even when things seemed like they were starting to go disastrously, they had a way of working themselves out when Hina was around.

But she'd distracted herself for long enough, so, reluctantly, she turned her gaze back to the too-thorough discussion of train construction in her textbook. And, then, almost immediately afterwards, heard the door to the classroom open as two of her classmates entered.

The shy-looking girl with the silky black hair gave Lisa a reserved wave as she walked in, while the girl with the serious gaze and face strikingly similar to Hina's merely nodded in Lisa's direction.

Speak of the devil, huh? "Hi, Rinko! And you, too, Sayo."

Rinko smiled gently in Lisa's direction. "It's nice to see you."

"Pardon me asking," Sayo said, seemingly seeing no need for pleasantries, "but is that a letter from my sister?"

"It is, yeah." Lisa felt a vague discomfort rising in her chest. It wasn't that she disliked Hikawa Sayo, not exactly. They'd talked a few times, both in class and through Hina, but not enough for Lisa to form an opinion as concrete as that. It was just that Sayo was the embodiment of diligence, the kind of person who approached everything she did with a thorough dedication Lisa couldn't hope to match. That was borne out in their results, too—Sayo was notably better than Lisa was at both schoolwork and magic, a model student in every way. Whereas Lisa was sitting here, in the common room, looking for an excuse to slack off from her studies. It would make sense for her not to be viewed terribly favorably.

But, Lisa thought, despite the differences in their personalities, it didn't seem as though Sayo disliked her either, exactly. She could be strict, but there wasn't usually any particular displeasure or annoyance to her tone, just a firm conviction in how she believed people should act. Rinko, who knew Sayo a good bit better than Lisa did, had assured Lisa that Sayo was, in fact, a kind person; Lisa had yet to see that part of her come out, but it wasn't hard to imagine that it was in there somewhere. (Hina would, no doubt, have said the same thing, but when it came to Sayo Lisa knew that her opinion could hardly be trusted.)

"Did she happen to say anything, well, unusual?"

"More so than she always does? I guess she did mention that there were a lot of secret passages at Hanasakigawa—" Lisa cut herself off at seeing Sayo and Rinko exchange knowing glances. "Sorry, did I say something weird?"

"It's, um, not that," Rinko said. "It's just… she mentioned the same thing to Sayo, so…" She trailed off, seemingly unsure of how best to continue.

"Did you want me to explain it?" Sayo asked, turning to Rinko with an expression gentler than Lisa had been aware she could make. But, then again, Lisa couldn't imagine a person who could be harsh to someone as nice as Rinko.

Rinko shook her head. "I can do it myself," she said, and began to explain.

The Shirokanes, per her telling, were not a particularly powerful or prestigious magical family, nothing like the illustrious families of some of Hanasakigawa's more prominent students. But even so, they had a lengthy history they were, in their own way, proud of, exemplified by a ring they'd received many years ago in honor of their contributions to some long-defunct wizards' guild, which Rinko made clear had been a more or less priceless treasure. But at some point, that priceless treasure had found its way out of her family's hands.

"So, you're saying that you think this ring is at the school somewhere?" Lisa asked. "What happened to it, exactly?"

"My father… lost it when he was a student here, he said. He was trying to inspect its properties by looking in rare books when he took a wrong turn into a hidden chamber… and something chased him out when he was trying to figure out where he was… making him drop the ring. Even if he could find the place again, he said that he was too scared to try…"

"So that's why Hina mentioning the secret passages caught your notice." Lisa put a hand on her chin thoughtfully.

"We had all kind of given up on finding it again, but I thought that maybe… with this…" Rinko paused, then looked up at Lisa and Sayo. "I'd… like to look for it, if either of you are willing to help…"

Lisa glanced over in Sayo's direction, trying to gauge her reaction. Sayo and Rinko were on good terms, she knew, but nevertheless Sayo hardly seemed the type to want to go poking around hidden corners of the school, especially when it seemed like something the teachers might frown on.

But, somewhat surprisingly, the frown lifted from Sayo's face. "If it's that important to you," she said slowly, "I think that it's at least worth doing a little bit of investigation. There might be some unexpected benefits to the whole process."

Rinko beamed, and the two of them looked in Lisa's direction expectantly. It was probably worth genuinely thinking about whether or not she actually wanted to get involved in this sort of thing, but a glance at Rinko's eyes and her decision was made for her. Every time Rinko really wanted something, her eyes betrayed just how important it was to her, shimmering with a faint hope that Lisa couldn't bring herself to crush.

"I guess it's sort of like something out of one of those mysteries you read, isn't it?" she said, smiling. "I don't mind looking into it a little more, no."

Rinko's smile widened, and Lisa sighed internally. It was a good thing Rinko didn't have a manipulative bone in her body, she thought wryly. Who knew what would happen if she did.

"If that's decided, where would you suggest we start?" Sayo asked, frowning slightly.

"I was thinking that it might, um, be a good idea to talk to our history teacher, since he's been here for a really long time. But doing it by myself is a little bit…"

"That does seem like a good idea. I don't mind going with you if it makes talking easier," Lisa said, smiling in Rinko's direction. Rinko's face, which had acquired a trace of gloom, suddenly perked up again.

"In that case, there are a few books I picked up from the library I'd like to look through in case they have any pertinent information." Sayo grabbed a volume from her bag—Mid-Century School Architecture, the title read—and began to flip through its pages. That was a role Lisa was glad she'd been spared.

She and Rinko left Sayo to her reading and headed off in the direction of their history teacher's office, the sound of their shoes echoing throughout the large stone hallway. Stone had been the building material of choice when Hanasakigawa had been constructed, but these days, while certainly impressive, the architecture came off as a little cold and imposing, particularly when sun wasn't out.

By contrast, as they knocked on the door they were looking for and were invited in, their history teacher's office gave off a warm, relaxing atmosphere. Books filled the bookshelves on the walls and overflowed into piles on the floor and their teacher's desk, and a couple of lamps glowed gently over the room, which felt old in a comfortable way, like a pair of well-made shoes that had long since been broken in but had yet to look worse for wear.

As they stepped in, a pair of chairs scooted themselves over towards the desk, inviting Lisa and Rinko to take a seat. Glancing at them over his small reading glasses, their teacher spoke.

"Miss Imai, Miss Shirokane. How may I help you?"

"Um, well, we were hoping we could ask you a question. There's a bit of a rumor going around about secret passages hidden within Hanasakigawa—do you know if there's any credibility to it?"

Their teacher sighed, in that way he frequently did when some student showed a seeming lack of respect for history. "I've gotten that question many times over the years, and the answer is never what students want it to be. There are a handful of what you might call hidden passageways that were used during the school's construction, but they were almost all covered over when construction was finished. And even if there were such a passage, it wouldn't have anything particularly interesting in it."

"This… maybe sounds a little silly… but there's not any sorts of magical creatures guarding anything within the school, then, right…?"

"I have a feeling," he said, "that if I say no to that question you'll start poking your noses around places you shouldn't. There aren't any secret passages, per se, but that doesn't mean you can't get yourself into trouble. Do be careful."

Rinko and Lisa nodded obediently, prompting a sigh from their teacher. "In any case, was that all?"

"I, um, think that's it," Lisa said, glancing towards Rinko for confirmation. "Thanks very much for your help!"

"You're welcome. Hopefully this ignites some interest within you, or within other students, to learn more about the school's history. Preferably not by investigating it yourself."

They each gave him a light bow and left the office to return to the classroom. Lisa couldn't quite tell if the conversation had made Rinko more or less excited about their investigation of the situation.

"Hidden passages, huh," she said, well aware that this was not what she had been supposed to take away from their discussion. "He didn't seem to think they were really a thing, but this seems like the kind of place that might have all kinds of secrets, don't you think? Like paintings that are actually doors, and whatnot. It's kind of made me want to try and look for something…"

Rinko giggled softly. "You'd better not… let him hear that. We'd definitely get lectured…"

But after a second, her face clouded over again, as though something about the situation was worrying her. Lisa considered poking further into it, but figured that it could at least wait until Sayo heard what they had to say.

"I see," Sayo said, frowning. "There's no mention of the construction of secret doors or passageways in this volume either, which lines up with what you've said."

"But I don't think Hina would send us faulty information. She seems to always know when people are lying, somehow."

"You're right. It's a bit of a difficult situation, but I think it's much too early to give up. Do we have any other leads?" Sayo turned to Rinko. "Did your father happen to know anything about where this hidden room might be?"

"He said… he had no idea about how he ended up there. Almost as though some magic had been used to hide the location of the entrance…"

"I suppose it makes sense that these might not be ordinary hidden rooms." Sayo frowned again. At first Lisa had thought that that expression meant that Sayo was upset about something, but maybe it was just the way she looked when she was thinking deeply.

"Do you think talking to Chisato might help?" Lisa suggested. "If anyone can find out this kind of information, it'd be her, right?"

Sayo grimaced, this time a definite expression of displeasure. "You might be right, although I'm loath to actually ask her for help. The two of you would probably have a little more luck."

"What do you think, Rinko?"

"It's worth trying, at the very least…" Once again, Lisa found herself enthralled by Rinko's eyes, which were, even now, shining with a determined light.

The kind of determination she knew she was incapable of producing herself.

"Secrets, hmm," said the owner of a different pair of violet eyes, these sharper and more piercing than Rinko's. Rinko and Lisa were sitting next to each other on the bed opposite from Chisato's, waiting as she thought about the story they'd just told her. Her dorm room had a pleasant, feminine, pastel-colored vibe to its decorations, the kind that evoked Chisato's pale blond hair if not those hard, sharp eyes.

Hina was particularly fond of Chisato, for reasons Lisa remained unsure of. Chisato wasn't the sort to make friends, except maybe with Kanon, who was diligently working on something at the desk in the back, and she was far from easy to talk to. Like glass, Lisa thought, smooth and perfectly reflective, but dangerously sharp when chipped or broken. The length of time they'd known each other—a result of family ties—seemed to stop Chisato from wielding that dangerous part of her to bear against Lisa, which Lisa was grateful for. Not that she really had any idea exactly where she stood with Chisato these days.

Because no matter what the situation was, she had no idea what Chisato was really thinking.

"I'll see what exactly I can find. There should be, if I remember correctly, an old map of the school with various hidden doors and passageways labeled in existence somewhere. I might be able to procure it, or a copy of it… if you're able to give me something of equal value in exchange."

"Chisato…" A soft voice came from the corner of the room. Kanon had paused her work and was looking in their direction, brushing her light blue hair out of the way of her slightly disappointed gaze.

Chisato glanced back in her roommate's direction and mouthed a couple of words, then turned back to Lisa and Rinko with a smile and a cough. "What I meant to say was that I'd be happy to do both of you a favor. I'm sorry, being around certain types of people for this many years has left me with some habits it's difficult to break. You understand what I'm talking about, don't you, Lisa?"

Lisa laughed uncomfortably. She'd been to enough fancy functions, though likely nowhere near as many as Chisato had, to have a good idea of the kind of person Chisato was talking about.

"Thank you, um, very much!" Rinko said, looking extremely grateful.

"…You're welcome, I suppose." Chisato seemed a little bit unsure of how to handle Rinko, which made a faint grin rise to Lisa's lips. This kind of sincerity was almost certainly not something Chisato was used to being faced with.

But, really, it wasn't bad, sincerity. Genuine, straightforward people—Lisa couldn't help but find herself admiring them. Even though admitting that in the wrong company would no doubt get her scoffed at.

Chisato had delivered the map, as promised, late in the evening about a week later, and three of them were currently poring over it in Sayo and Rinko's dorm room, trying to make sense of the faded lines and messy handwriting.

Or, at least, they had been poring over it—at the moment, Rinko was collapsed against her bed, having fallen asleep in the midst of looking up dates in an old school yearbook. Lisa smiled softly at the sight, then looked over at Sayo, who was once more making a difficult face.

"You figure anything out, Sayo?"

"…I think we should be able to locate the entrances to some of these passages. Although that's no guarantee that we'll actually be able to get in—it's entirely possible they may be locked in some manner."

"Well, it's a start, at least, isn't it?"

"I do wish we had some more clues to go off of. It feels in some respects as though we're just guessing blindly about where this ring might be, which may not end up being a productive course of action."

"Yeah. It's a little bit of a tricky thing she wants our help with, isn't it? Not that I'm complaining, really, but…"

There was a brief silence, and then Lisa spoke up again. "Sayo, I've been meaning to ask you this for a while, but… why exactly did you agree to help? It doesn't really, um, fit with my image of you, you know? I get that you're friends with Rinko and all, but still…"

Sayo sighed, and for a second Lisa thought that she might have upset her classmate. But Sayo's voice, when she spoke, seemed more resigned than it did annoyed.

"It's true that I did want to help Rinko. But you're also correct in that tramping around the school on what might end up being a wild goose chase is not how I would prefer to spend my time. What ended up tipping the scales was…" She trailed off, seemingly thinking of how best to continue.

"Lisa, do you remember how we were doing the light-producing exercise in class last week?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, that. What about it?" The exercise Sayo was talking about was a magic practice tool designed to help students with fine control of their magical abilities through the creation of small points of light, which could then be made to dance around or be arranged in various patterns. Lisa greatly preferred doing this sort of thing to brute force tasks like lifting heavy objects, although she was of course nowhere near as good at either as Sayo was.

"You mentioned that my magic looked like it could have been a picture in a textbook."

"Yeah, I guess I did…" Lisa noticed Sayo's displeased expression and hurriedly tried to soothe her. "But I didn't mean anything bad by it! Just that the quality of your lights, and the way you moved them, were really polished, that's all!"

"It's fine. I know you didn't have bad intentions. But I think there was more truth to your words than you perhaps knew there was. After all, I'm the kind of person who's very good at replicating pictures in a textbook. No more, and no less."

Lisa was silent for a second, unsure of how best to respond, and Sayo continued. "I've been thinking, though, lately, that I want to try and find something of my own, that isn't just a copy of something someone else has already done. So I wondered if there might not be some sort of inspiration to be found in doing this sort of investigation. If there's a real Hikawa Sayo out there somewhere… I'd like to find her, I think."

In that moment, a vaguely embarrassed expression on her face, Sayo suddenly seemed to Lisa as though she were shining with light.

"I think that's… really impressive, Sayo. Wanting to change yourself for the better like that."

"Do you really?" Sayo looked in Lisa's direction, clearly surprised by her response. "I think it's only natural, though, when you're unsatisfied with where you currently are."

"Feeling unsatisfied and taking action to do something about it are two different things, I think!"

That much, Lisa knew as well as anybody. After all, no matter how empty, how shallow a person she knew herself to be, not even once had she made a concerted effort to change that.

Hikawa Sayo and Imai Lisa were, it seemed, fundamentally different in that regard.

"If you say so." The skepticism in Sayo's tone was obvious.

"It's true! So if there's anything I can do to help you, just tell me. Like, for example, your room's a little bit bare, so maybe it'd be nice to have some decorations that made it feel more like a space made for you—I know a store downtown where you could pick some stuff up—"

At Sayo's soft laughter, Lisa abruptly cut herself off. Had she gone too far?

But Sayo's words were kind, kinder than she'd ever imagined the other girl could be. "Thank you very much. I, well, wasn't exactly expecting that kind of response to me, but your words are heartening, Lisa."

"You're very welcome! The help's only if you want it, so if you think I'm being too pushy or anything, it's fine to reject it."

"I'm not so rude as to reject someone going out of their way to be kind to me."

At the faint smile that Sayo gave her along with those words, Lisa felt something in her chest stir again. She and Sayo were different. That much this conversation had made clear.

But like a moth drawn to a light, she felt that there was something pulling her towards Sayo. Even if she herself couldn't change, being around someone who was trying her best to do so—maybe that was, in itself, a small salvation.

Their investigation ran into its first hurdle a couple of days later, when, in search of a cellar marked on their map that seemed easy to locate, they found in its place a large, glass building.

"The greenhouse, huh…" Lisa said, stating the obvious. "Do we, um, know exactly when this map is from?"

"Sometime before this building was built, at the very least, it seems." Sayo was frowning again. "It's possible that the cellar is still present even despite the building having been built over it, but it seems unlikely that Rinko's father would have run into it if the building was here when he was. If we don't know those dates, then our efforts might be better spent elsewhere."

"Yeah, that makes sense. We picked this spot because it seemed like somewhere easy to run into by accident, but if it was hidden by the greenhouse all this time, it might not be a good choice…" Lisa leaned against the outside of the glass walls as the three of them pondered their next move.

"I… could go check on the dates. There's, um, a fairly recent book talking about the construction of Hanasakigawa in the library that… might be useful…"

"I guess our other option would be to search another location today instead, but this seems fine too. What do you think, Sayo?"

"We are already here, so it makes some degree of sense to search here if possible. Do you think it'll take you long to find the dates, Rinko?"

"Probably, not very long…"

"Then let's wait for that information and, if it turns out this is an unlikely place, search somewhere else. I think we should have enough time for that."

With that, Rinko hurried off towards the library, leaving Sayo and Lisa by themselves again.

"Want to look inside a little bit?" Lisa asked.

"Were we not waiting precisely so we could avoid having to do that?"

"We don't have to search for anything in particular. It's just, you know, we've got some time to kill, right? Plus, the greenhouse is just an interesting place to look around."

"You've been in here before?" Sayo asked, somewhat reluctantly following Lisa into the heated interior.

"Sometimes I need to come here to get some ingredients for something I'm making. Salves for the infirmary, or just some herbal concoction for one of my friends… I guess you could call it a hobby of mine."

"I see. That's a useful skill to have."

"You think so? It's nothing special, I promise. I'm sure you're able to do a lot of things that're more impressive."

"That's not really the point, is it? I think it's a unique thing to be able to do. I'd like to see you at work some time—I have the feeling I'd learn something."

They really weren't very similar people at all, but there was something about the blunt way Sayo said what she felt that reminded Lisa of Hina. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, but getting praised this much made Lisa feel vaguely embarrassed.

"That's real nice of you to say! Maybe I'll show you sometime."

Sayo seemed as though she was about to say something else, but Lisa hurriedly changed the subject. "So anyway, where's this cellar supposed to be in here? We might as well see if it's easy to find, just in case."

"Give me a second to make sure I have the orientation correct," Sayo said, squinting at the map in her hands. As she did so, Lisa took a look around them at the greenhouse.

It wasn't an enormous place, not like some of the ones she'd heard about, but it was well-sized enough for the school, with most every herb she'd ever used (and plenty more she hadn't) growing somewhere within its walls. Not quite wild and untamed, but more so than the rest of the occasionally too well-groomed school grounds. She found it somehow comforting, not least because of the warmth it gave off during the cold months.

"It should be over in this direction, I believe." Sayo began walking to the right of the entrance, near the greenhouse's closest corner, and Lisa followed, keeping an eye on the ground for anything that looked suspicious.

…They did not, it turned out, have to look very hard. The large pot some sort of bright-leafed tropical plant was growing in close to the entrance seemed to somewhat obviously be at a lower level than the surrounding pots, and after some concentration and their combined effort, they dragged the pot out of the way, revealing a a worn, wooden cellar door at the bottom of a shallow hole.

It gave Lisa a bit of an ominous feeling, looking at it. Their teacher had told them not to pry into matters they shouldn't, and it was entirely possible this was one of those matters. Or maybe she was just feeling spooked for no good reason.

"Do you think it's worth taking a look inside? Just real quick, in case the ring's sitting right there or something."

"I think we should probably wait for Rinko to return before attempting any kind of lengthy search, but if it's a small cellar or obviously has nothing in it a quick look might be fine." Sayo made to reach for the handle, but Lisa put a hand on her shoulder before she could.

"Let's do it from a distance, just in case."

"…I suppose it doesn't hurt to be careful."

The two of them backed up a couple of feet, then Sayo, a look of concentration on her face, slowly lifted the door—

—and something burst out of it, as though it had been lying in wait for someone to open the door, thorny vines flowing out of the cellar like an endless spool of thread. Before they even had time to realize what was going on, they were surrounded.

A nauseous feeling grew in Lisa's stomach as she surveyed their situation. From the cellar entrance, a woody, painfully spiky vine had appeared, cutting off their immediate access to the door of the greenhouse. The other, more roundabout paths to the exit were blocked off by the same vine, which had wound itself across the greenhouse so as to encircle them. At its end lay one large, blood-red flower, its dark center looking unnervingly like a single eye staring them down. Sayo took a step forward, tentatively, and then stepped back as the vine twitched threateningly.

"If only I could get a little closer to it…" she said softly. "At this distance, I don't think anything we could do with magic would cause too much damage. But it'll definitely aim for us if I try and close in."

Lisa's nausea worsened. Sayo was kind of amazing, she thought, in her ability to rationally consider the situation. This was, again, the difference between the two of them, wasn't it—the way Sayo rose to the challenge while Lisa retreated within herself, the way Sayo considered escape strategies while Lisa wallowed in her own mediocrity.

In this situation, she was no better than dead weight.

"Rinko should show up eventually. I think we'd be best off waiting until she does—it might be possible to escape, but not without one of us getting hurt. If our hand is forced, we can make a move, but I'd rather not if we don't have to. Unless you have some sort of plan?"

Just waiting to be saved… it really didn't sit right with Lisa. In the first place, it had been her suggestion to look through the greenhouse, and her failure to mention that she'd had a bad feeling about the cellar door. She at least wanted to do something so that this day didn't end up as a parade of Imai Lisa's bad decisions and failures to act in important moments.

Maybe then, she'd be able to acquire some of that shining light that gathered around Sayo.

"I… might have an idea," she said, glancing at the equipment rack behind her. Sayo would definitely protest if Lisa told her what she had in mind, so she'd have to act fast.

"What is it?" Sayo asked, cocking her head to the side.

Lisa slowly shuffled backwards, the vine making a rustling, creaking noise as it looked… well, seemed like it looked in Lisa's direction. A wrinkle appeared in Sayo's brow, and as she seemed about to say something Lisa made her move. She'd had her eye on the sturdy pair of gardening shears on the rack for a while and, barely thinking about what it was she was doing, grabbed them and ran towards the cellar door.

"Sayo! Distract it!" she yelled, and she heard her classmate curse from behind her before an explosion of light—a lot like the small, dancing points they'd been talking about earlier, but more violent, uncontrolled—seemingly dazed the vine for a second.

It took Lisa no time at all to reach the cellar door, at which point she placed the shears around the vine and began to squeeze them closed with both of her arms, doing her best to support her grip strength with magic. It was tougher than she'd thought it would be given its thickness, though maybe that made sense considering it was obviously far from an ordinary plant.

Slowly, surely, she could feel the wood giving way to the shears, blood pumping loudly through her veins as she tried to will the plant to just collapse, to let the two of them escape.

"Lisa!" Sayo yelled, and she realized that she hadn't been fast enough, that the time Sayo had bought for her hadn't turned out to be sufficient for what she'd needed to do. The blood-red flower was headed this way—it was fast—and it was all Lisa could do to shift her grip on the shears from two hands to one and hold up her right hand to protect her face.

There was a wave of pain as she assumed it had hit her arm, its petals, surprisingly soft given the rest of it, touching her face, but she didn't have the time to think about that, she had to try and finish the job even though with one arm she had a lot less power at her disposal.

Then she felt something warm cover her from behind, Sayo's head next to hers as the other girl laid her hand over Lisa's and pressed as hard as she could, their combined power managing to, somehow, snap the vine in two. The flower, which had been rearing up for another strike, fell limply to the ground, convulsing as it did so but, after a second, ceasing all movement. The other half of the plant vanished back into the cellar, either dead or simply retreating. Lisa wasn't inclined to find out which it was.

She slumped back into Sayo's arms. As the adrenaline slowly left her system, she realized that god, her arm really fucking hurt, didn't it. She almost didn't want to look at it.

"Why did you—I asked if you had a plan, but not this sort of plan! What exactly did you think you were doing? What if its thorns were poisoned? What was your plan in that case?" Sayo was angry—that Lisa had expected—but there was no real bite to her anger. Instead, she sounded like she was about to cry.

Ah. So that's what you meant when you said she was nice, Rinko. Lisa felt a little bad for making Sayo, this strict, serious, but clearly deeply kind girl, upset. But she'd have felt a lot worse if it had been Sayo who'd gotten hurt. So as painful as this was, it was definitely preferable to the alternative.

"I was the one who got us into this mess, so I figured I'd get us out of it. And I did, so it's all good, right?"

"It's not like I would have blamed you for any of this. I went along with it, and I was the one who opened the door, anyway. That's no excuse for getting yourself hurt like that!"

You might not have blamed me, Sayo, but I definitely would have blamed myself. And that's what really matters in the end, isn't it? Despite herself, Lisa could feel a stupid grin forming on her face. She'd done something—even if Sayo called it stupid and reckless—that she felt like she could be proud of. She'd been helpful. That made her, more than anything else, happy.

Her gaze traveled to her right arm, and then immediately jerked away, but not before the image of the line of thorns embedded into her flesh had been seared into her memory.

If those thorns were poisonous, it'll definitely be a pain, won't it, she thought idly.

Hours later, she was back in her room, arm thoroughly bandaged, pain reduced to a dull throb by the soothing properties of the infirmary's salves. Sayo was sitting on a chair next to her bed, still looking exceedingly worried.

"You should really get some more sleep. The teacher at the infirmary said it was a weak poison, but you still need time to recover. Rinko said she'd go grab some food from the cafeteria for you to eat when you wake up."

"Oh, she did? I'll have to thank her later… I guess I've really caused everyone a lot of trouble with all of this, haven't I? Rinko looked like she was about to die of guilt when she showed up."

"It'd help us all out if you weren't this reckless again. But for now, rest." She made to get up, but Lisa grabbed her hand with her still-functioning one.

"…Sayo."

"What is it?"

"Stay with me for a little bit longer?"

Sayo looked at her, sighed, and then sat back down. "You really keep on surprising me, don't you. I got the impression from Hina you were the sort of person who thinks about other people before yourself, like a level-headed older sister. But you're actually a lot more reckless, selfish, and needy, aren't you?"

"It's the poison. It makes me want human company." Lisa tried her best to keep a straight face while she said that, but a bit of a grin seeped through.

"You're hopeless." Sayo's tone was vaguely disgusted, but she made no move to let go of Lisa's hand, and a faint smile played about her lips.

You're the one who keeps on surprising me, you know. You could scold me, reject me, leave me for someone else to take care of. But you don't. You listen to my selfish requests.

If you keep doing that… it's just going to make me want more, you know?

Chapter Text

"What kind of a person… is Lisa?" Rinko repeated back, cocking her head to the side. "I think… you probably have a good idea of what she's like already. She's very, um, kind, and gets along well with everyone, even people like me who aren't very good at talking to others…" She smiled somewhat awkwardly, a hint of the tired, guilty expression she'd shown Sayo at the greenhouse the other day slipping through. "I do wish, though… sometimes… that she wouldn't put other people in front of herself quite so much. It's, um, a good trait, of course… but sometimes…" Rinko trailed off.

"I suppose the events of the other day were a good example of what you're talking about."

Rinko nodded vigorously. "She did it… for my sake, more or less, so I'm happy… I'm happy, but still…"

"I think I understand where you're coming from." Sayo cleared her throat. "In any case, thank you. I realize it was a bit of a strange question to ask."

"Not at all," Rinko said, smiling more genuinely this time. "You've both been very nice to me, so I'm happy to see that you're getting along… I wasn't sure if the two of you would like each other, but it's nice that… you've gotten closer."

"…Maybe we have."

Pleased look still on her face, Rinko continued. "By the way… are you making progress on the incantation you asked me about…?"

"Incantation…? Oh, that." Sayo grimaced, more to hide her embarrassment than anything else. "It's, well, progressing about as well as could be expected."

That response seemed to satisfy Rinko, and she waved and walked off down the corridor, leaving Sayo alone. Leaning against the stone wall, she let out a sigh.

Something about their conversation still didn't sit right with her. Kind, self-sacrificing, sociable; on the surface, all of those felt like the right adjectives to describe Imai Lisa. It was tempting to think that maybe she was exactly as she appeared.

But Sayo had gotten enough glimpses to suspect otherwise. The obviously fake way Lisa smiled when the conversation trended in a direction she found uncomfortable. That brash, foolish smile she'd had on her face after they'd finally cut down the vine in the greenhouse. And most memorably, the selfish, spoiled side she'd showed Sayo after getting out of the infirmary, the one that seemed almost totally at odds with Rinko and Hina's descriptions of her.

Imai Lisa, it seemed, had more masks than Sayo had originally thought.

The word "mask" inevitably led her to think about Chisato, whose utter lack of sincerity had caused her and Sayo to clash on multiple occasions. Sayo was, according to Chisato, a naive girl who only knew how to follow rules and not how to actually talk to people. Which might, on some level, have been true, but to Sayo that was much preferable to becoming so jaded she lost all of her principles.

Perhaps it was that naivete that led her to still trust Lisa, even if Sayo had no idea which of her classmate's faces was genuine. She reached in her skirt pocket and pulled out a small pouch tied with a pink ribbon. As thanks for looking after me, Lisa had said. A mix of herbs—the only one Sayo was particularly familiar with was chamomile—that if brewed was theoretically supposed to reduce stress. The strength of the recipe, according to Lisa, depended greatly on the skill of the person preparing it; she'd noted that the way she'd prepared it, it was hardly more efficacious than an ordinary cup of tea. How much of that was true and how much was self-effacement Sayo was uncertain. Lisa seemed to have a tendency to underestimate—and, occasionally, overestimate—her own abilities.

Her mind drifted back to the incantation Rinko had mentioned earlier. She'd been impressively useless in their encounter with the plant, when she really thought about it. If only she'd been able to act a little bit faster, to do a little bit more, then maybe Lisa could have avoided injury. There was no guarantee they'd end up in a similar situation again, but if they did, Sayo didn't want to be stuck in the same position.

Lightly concentrating, she made a thin, faintly shimmering barrier appear above her head. It wasn't much of a shield in terms of area or strength, but if there did come a time when she needed protection, it was better than nothing.

Whether Lisa would appreciate what Sayo was trying to do, it was difficult to say. But while Sayo had primarily had her classmate's safety in mind when she'd first started studying this sort of magic, she couldn't deny that it would be, well, nice, if she were able to do something for Lisa. To once again have that warm smile of thanks directed her way.

It was a pleasant feeling, it turned out, thinking that you'd done something worthy of gratitude.

The search for Rinko's ring had been put on hold while Lisa recovered, which meant that Sayo, having nothing particular to occupy her time on their day off from classes, was headed to the library for some studying. A boring way to spend one's free time, she had the feeling her classmates would say, but Sayo had never found the act of learning in itself tedious, especially not when she was learning something with practical application to her life.

But as she prepared to descend the staircase to the lower level of the dormitory, a voice called out to her, more exuberantly than she could remember her name having been called in quite some time.

"Sayo!"

She turned and looked back at the brown-haired girl cheerfully waving in her direction. The weather was gradually turning warmer, but Lisa was still wearing a cardigan over her uniform, a fact that did not escape Sayo's notice.

"Lisa. How are you feeling?"

"A lot better! Though my arm still looks pretty ugly, and I'm not supposed to do anything strenuous with it for a while yet."

"That's good to hear."

"But I've been cooped up for long enough that I'm looking forward to getting out and going somewhere. What do you say? Want to take a bit of a walk with me?"

Sayo blinked for a second, unable to fully hide her surprise. She had, she supposed, no strong resistance to going along with Lisa, but she was not exactly used to people actively asking to spend time with her, particularly ones who seemed to have as many other friends as Lisa did.

Lisa seemed to interpret Sayo's hesitation as an expression of displeasure, and smiled somewhat awkwardly. "I mean, if you've got something already planned, that's fine. I don't mind going by myself!"

Seeing Lisa make to turn around and head the other direction, Sayo hurriedly tried to correct her classmate's misconception. "No, that's not the case, actually, I don't have any other plans for today. I was just a little surprised that you invited me, but, well, not in a bad way, it was the kind of invitation I was happy to receive—"

Lisa let out a bright peal of laughter, and Sayo abruptly stopped talking. Her words had sounded a lot calmer and more rational in her head, but when actually given voice to they'd come off as awfully flustered.

"I really got the wrong idea about you, didn't I?" she said, her expression brightening. "You look all serious and scary, but really, you're a nice girl who's just a little bit awkward. And much cuter than I expected, too!"

Sayo could feel her face heating up faintly, but, mercifully, Lisa didn't pursue that line any further. "Well, want to go, then?" she continued. "I was thinking we could go to the east edge of the grounds—the atmosphere over there's real nice!"

"I… don't have any objections," Sayo replied, taking a deep breath. Something about being with Lisa made her faintly nervous, though, as she'd mentioned earlier, it wasn't an unpleasant feeling. Just one she was unused to.

As was the feeling of Lisa linking her left arm with Sayo's right.

The dormitory was on the western edge of Hanasakigawa's grounds, closely bordering the road out into the city proper. It took about twenty minutes to walk all the way to the eastern edge, which ran up against a dense set of woods that covered a fairly large area to the east. What exactly was in those woods, no one seemed to be sure; there had been rumors and legends in the past about wild beasts and suspicious rituals, but Sayo wasn't certain which of those were actually worth paying attention to.

In any case, it was a fairly picturesque place. The woods themselves were more the kind of location Sayo's sister might enjoy than somewhere Sayo would choose to spend time in, but the edge of the grounds was slightly calmer and slightly more well-kept. Not as comfortable as a well-stocked library, perhaps, but still pleasant.

Lisa seemed somewhat more enamored. Come to think of it, she'd mentioned that she'd spent a lot of time in the greenhouse, so perhaps she was fond of these sorts of natural spaces. That would mark one reason why she and Hina seemed to get along so well.

"Look, Sayo! A fish pond! I didn't know there was something like this on—" Lisa ended her sentence abruptly, clearly having been taken by surprise. Curious, Sayo peered over into the pond, the lithe movements of the fish clearly visible in the limpid water. At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but after a second she realized what Lisa had.

Rather than living, breathing, fish, these were magical constructs, likely crafted out of stone, but skillfully manipulated so as to appear strikingly similar to the real thing. Whoever had created them had truly had an admirable level of skill, Sayo thought, more than a little in awe.

"They're amazing, don't you think?" she asked, looking in Lisa's direction.

But it seemed like Lisa's surprise had come from a somewhat different emotion than Sayo's had. "Don't get me wrong, you're right that these are really pretty," she said, a complicated expression on her face. "It's just…"

"Just what?"

"Oh, it's nothing. I guess I just think real fish are cuter, that's all!" She grinned. "Do you think we'll be able to make something this good someday?"

Sayo frowned for a second, fairly sure her question had been evaded, but decided not to pursue it any further. "I don't think any of us are close to that level. But that isn't to say it's impossible to reach, just that more work is going to end up being required."

Lisa laughed. "Dedicated as always, huh? Well, I'm sure you'll get there if you want to, Sayo."

"That… would be nice, yes." Sayo remained still, continuing to stare at the fish. At first, she'd thought that they were just following a set pattern, swimming back and forth, but upon further inspection, if there was a pattern, it was significantly more complicated—whether or not it actually mimicked that of real fish, she didn't know enough to tell, but it certainly was beautiful.

These fish, surely, were filled with the individual traits and particular quirks of their creator. No one else could have crafted them in this particular way; they resembled real fish, but were distinctly unreal in certain ways that only heightened their appeal. It was tempting to look here for inspiration, but even if she were to one day possess the skill to recreate this sort of sculpture, would she really be able to say the result contained something truly her own, and not just a pale shadow of someone else's individuality?

"You're thinking about something difficult again, aren't you?" Lisa asked, rubbing her thumb across Sayo's forehead as though to smooth out its wrinkles. "Need me to mix you some more of those herbs from the other day?"

It was an appealing suggestion, certainly. But then Sayo's mind flashed back to the number of troubled expressions she'd seen Lisa make over the course of the past few days, and she couldn't help but wonder which of them really needed whatever calming effect the herbs might have.

"If you… wouldn't mind, would you like to brew them together?"

Lisa looked somewhat taken aback, and Sayo wondered for a second if she'd been too forward. Had Lisa just invited her out out of sheer convenience, and not due to any closing of the distance between them?

But after a second, Lisa smiled broadly, the warmth of her smile almost dazzling Sayo. "That sounds great! I was actually looking for an excuse to spend a bit more time together, to be honest, but I didn't want it to feel like I was pushing too much on to you…"

"Not at all," Sayo mumbled, feeling herself blushing again. Being around Lisa made her feel distinctly unsettled much of the time, as though her normally calm emotions refused to remain under her control. It was… not something she was used to feeling. She liked being around Lisa, that she couldn't deny, but she wasn't entirely certain she liked the person she became when the two of them were together.

Lisa laughed again, running her hand down Sayo's cheek this time. "I feel like I get to see new sides of you every time we talk. It's cute!"

"…Was there somewhere else you wanted to go or was this it?"

"Aww, don't sulk. Let's walk around this area a little bit more!"

Sayo sighed, but nevertheless obediently followed along after Lisa, the two of them gradually moving towards the border between the school and the woods. Where the territory of one ended and the other began was unclear just by looking, but both of them could feel the faintly crackling energy that marked the magical barrier separating Hanasakigawa from the outside world, designed to protect against a wide range of magical trespasses.

"You think we can slip out this way?" Lisa asked, a mischievous look on her face.

"No." Normally, Sayo might have been a little more willing to at least play along, but the events of the other day and the vaguely uneasy atmosphere—the previously cloudless sky was starting to turn gray—made her reject Lisa perhaps a little more strongly than she'd meant to.

"I guess I'm supposed to be recovering, huh, so it'd be best if I—wait, what was that?" Lisa cut off her sentence partway through, looking at their surroundings curiously.

To Sayo, it seemed there was nothing particularly notable around them other than the gradually thickening trees. "Is something the matter?"

"I thought I saw something flash past us, but maybe it was just my imagination."

Glancing around again, Sayo caught a glimpse of a head of dark red hair through the trees. "Perhaps you just happened to notice those girls walking past," she said, nudging her head in the direction of the two girls standing a distance to their left, having some conversation of sorts.

"Could be," Lisa replied, in a way that suggested she was far from convinced. "I didn't notice that there was anyone else out here, though. We've gotten a little bit off the beaten path, haven't we?"

Sayo had opened her mouth to respond to Lisa's comment when she was distracted by the red-haired girl vigorously waving in their direction. She'd assumed—it was a fairly logical assumption, most of the time—that it was Lisa who was the target of the attention, but the girl's broad grin when she made eye contact with Sayo suggested otherwise.

…Now that she thought about it, maybe they had met before. A couple of new students, asking her for advice, which she'd given without hesitation. It wasn't often that people approached her, despite her being more than willing to help out, which perhaps helped explain why these girls had stuck in her memory.

"Friends of yours?" Lisa asked, clearly curious, as the red-haired girl and her companion closed the distance between them.

"I don't know that I would call us friends, exactly," Sayo responded. "I just happened to answer a few of their questions and guide them in the right direction when the new term started."

"And thanks very much for that, again, Sayo!" the red-haired girl, clearly now within earshot, said cheerfully. "It's kind of a confusing place, this school, so I was happy to find someone who really knew what they were doing." She inclined her head slightly in Lisa's direction. "I'm Udagawa Tomoe. And this is Yamabuki Saaya. It's nice to meet you."

The girl to Tomoe's left—Saaya—nodded as well, her ponytail, bound up by an eye-catching ribbon, bobbing as she did so. "It's a lot less, well, grand, where we're from, so I wasn't sure if we'd have trouble acclimating, but people have been nicer than I expected."

"That's good to hear! I don't know that everyone here is nice, but a lot of people are willing to help. You can always ask me—I'm Imai Lisa, by the way—or this one for help if you need anything." Lisa punched Sayo's shoulder lightly. "She looks a little scary, but I promise she's really a softie."

"Was that really called for?" Sayo asked, but only received a grin in response. Even if she were as intimidating as Lisa had suggested, Tomoe had enough of a height advantage on her that she suspected the effect would be largely negated.

"It was a nice day out," Tomoe continued, "so we thought we might explore a bit more of the grounds. Gotten a bit gloomy here all of a sudden, though."

As Tomoe finished saying that, Sayo saw, out of the corner of her eye, something flash past them. She quickly looked back towards Lisa, who nodded in confirmation, looking uneasy.

"It might be best if we headed back," Sayo said, grimacing.

"I think so too," Saaya replied, seemingly somewhat tentative about addressing an older student, "but, um, which way is 'back,' exactly?"

Sayo turned around, prepared to use the eastern tower as a landmark to aim for, before realizing what Saaya had and feeling her heart sink.

Around fifteen feet in front of her, the landscape had vanished into a thick, white fog, out of which not even a shadow of a building was visible.

"This doesn't seem too good," Tomoe said, scratching her head in bemusement. "I didn't think the weather around her was quite this bad, usually…"

That's because it isn't, Sayo thought, but she refrained from putting that sentiment to words. There was no use in frightening people if there wasn't a clear need to.

"Can the two of you sense the magic barrier separating the school from the woods?" she asked. It was faint, in their current location, but she could feel it pulsing if she concentrated.

"It's a little bit difficult to make out now, but I did notice it was there a little bit earlier." Saaya closed her eyes in what Sayo assumed was an attempt to focus. The contrast between her smooth expression and Tomoe's scrunched-up one would have been amusing had the situation been different.

"Let's move a little closer, then. But you understand what I'm thinking, don't you? We may have limited visibility, but if we keep following the barrier long enough, it should eventually take us back to the main part of the grounds."

"Oh!" Tomoe's eyes lit up. "That is a good idea. I feel like if I'd been by myself I would've just tried to guess the right direction and ended up hopelessly lost."

As they walked towards the barrier, the pulsing feeling of powerful magic growing stronger in Sayo's head, Lisa came up next to her, nudging Sayo with her shoulder and grinning. "You sure seem awfully reliable in this situation, Sayo. Is this the power of being an older sister?"

"I'm not sure I'm doing anything out of the ordinary." Certainly, she'd gotten lost with her younger sister before, but Hina only occasionally listened to what Sayo told her to do anyway. That, and no matter what sort of trouble she found herself in, Hina had a habit of making her way out of it unscathed. So this felt like a fairly different sort of scenario.

Following the feeling of magic over their own eyes was an unusual sensation, and there was more than a little bit of stumbling over roots and rocks in the way (Sayo heard Lisa's muffled laughter from behind her after banging her forehead into a low-hanging branch). The atmosphere wasn't light, exactly, given that they were in an unfamiliar and somewhat uncomfortable situation, but neither was it oppressively heavy.

But if there was any looseness in the tension surrounding the four of them, it tightened right up when they heard the growl. A low, guttural sound, far too low to be any sort of pet or familiar. Sayo considered herself skeptical, in general, about some of the wilder rumors about the woods bordering Hanasakigawa, but that didn't stop several unsettling images from popping into her head. Whatever was out there in the fog, she very much hoped it had no interest in them.

The others had frozen in place, but Sayo urged them on. They weren't going to get anywhere by standing still, and Sayo did not want to spend any more time in this place than she had to.

Then whatever it was growled again, from a different direction this time, and Sayo froze as well. It had seemed as though the sound was coming from the direction they were heading, and while Sayo knew it was fruitless to go back the way they'd come, she also had no interest in tangling with some unknown animal.

Well, "no interest" was a generous way of putting it. Sayo was frightened. She'd been frightened last week, too, when they'd run into the vine in the greenhouse, but at least then she'd known what she was dealing with. This time, there could be anything, out there in the fog. Continuing on could be the right decision. It could also be the worst decision. It was the same with staying in place. There was no way to know.

"Do you think we could take it if it comes over here?" Tomoe asked, bracing herself.

"Tomoe… let's think things out a little bit before we try anything, okay?" Saaya seemed as though she was trying to calm her friend down, but the quaver in her voice undermined the effect.

"If it comes to that, I think we'd be better off trying to run than anything else," Sayo said, vaguely disgusted by the obvious nervousness in her words. She glanced over in Lisa's direction to make sure she'd been heard. This was not the position to do things without thinking about the consequences; Sayo had a feeling they might not escape a scuffle with just a bloodied arm, this time.

An agonizing length of time spent waiting, in near-total obscurity, passed—a minute? Five? Ten?—without any sound from the trees around them, so they concluded it was safe to move on, even more slowly and cautiously than before. The sound of a twig breaking underfoot was enough to make all of them flinch as though something had exploded nearby.

"Sayo," Lisa whispered in her ear, as it seemed as though the trees were beginning to thin, "do you hear that?"

Sayo pricked up her ears—and felt her blood run cold. There was no growling to be heard, but what could be heard was perhaps even more ominous: faint, heavy breathing, again not the kind that was likely to be made by any kind of human or animal Sayo was familiar with.

She stopped for a second, trying to think about what to do. Should they keep going and try to sneak past it? Or would continuing to walk in this direction only alert it to their presence?

But before she could further ponder questions she had no way of knowing the answers to, she saw them. Lights in the fog. Eyes, she somehow instinctively knew, although they looked like no eyes she'd ever seen before, burning with an intense brightness that would put the lamps in the school to shame.

Run. Run, her brain told her, but before she could put that into action those lights came closer, much faster than she'd imagined they could move, and she thought, somewhat uselessly, oh, that must have been what they'd seen flashing past earlier, and then they were upon her and it was all she could do to put up her flimsy shield, the one she'd been working on for the past week, in front of their group, in the hopes that it would do something.

She'd closed her eyes to brace for the impact, so all she felt when it hit her shield was the heat of its breath and an overwhelming weight, enough to send her skidding backwards until she hit her back, harder than she wanted, on a tree. She knew she had to get up and either run or try to defend herself again, but the wind had been thoroughly knocked out of her and she felt a sense of resignation wash over her. Whatever was going to come, let it come. It wasn't as though there was much she could do at this point, anyway.

Someone—multiple people, maybe—screamed, and Sayo heard the loud sound of, hopefully human, footsteps. It would be the best decision for the others to get out and avoid all four of them meeting injury, although being left behind wasn't ideal for Sayo either. She opened her eyes, finally, almost expecting those lights to be right upon her once more.

But rather than any sort of pain or terror, the next sensation that Sayo felt was one of relief. A shield, like the one Sayo had been practicing but much larger, much sturdier, appeared around them, dispelling the fog in the area along with it. It was, she thought, her wits slowly returning to her, their history teacher. In this particular setting, without any books or desks, he seemed slightly out of place, but also deeply assured of himself in a way that Sayo found comforting.

"Head back to the dormitories," he said, his voice more commanding than usual. "We have the situation under control, but it's not safe to stay out here."

Sayo had questions, of course, but this was not the time to ask them. Whatever it was that had come after them, it was still out there, somewhere, and never seeing it again would be preferable.

She felt Tomoe's hand grab hers, warmly, firmly, and slowly got to her feet.

"Are you all right, Sayo?" Lisa asked, peering worriedly at her face. "You're not hurt anywhere? With all the fog, I couldn't see what happened to you. I thought you might have been taken away, or eaten, or—"

"Lisa. I'm fine, mostly. I may have some bruises. But it shouldn't be anything serious."

She heard her classmate exhale deeply, and then wrap an arm around her shoulders, whether to support her or to hug her, she wasn't sure.

"Really, I'm so glad…"

They were only really able to relax once they were within the stone walls of the dormitory, at which point the four of them immediately headed for the comforting confines of the first-floor common room and collapsed into the chairs there. Nominally, it was intended for first-year students, but the rules were just going to have to bend a bit for Lisa and Sayo today.

"So, uh, does that kind of stuff… happen often? Am I gonna want to practice some spells like the one Sayo pulled out?" Tomoe looked at the two of them questioningly. "My little sister loves stories about monsters and dragons and the like, but I wasn't exactly expecting to actually run into the real thing!"

"It's not exactly typical, no. At the very least, in my first year here I didn't encounter anything remotely like this." Sayo leaned back into her chair, for once not concerning herself with correct posture. "Incidentally, did any of you happen to catch a glimpse of whatever it was that was after us? I closed my eyes when it hit me, so I didn't get a chance to see." A less worrying topic might have been appropriate for their rattled group, but that was the first thing that had popped into Sayo's head.

"It sort of seemed like it was… bringing the fog with it?" Saaya replied, tentatively. "All I saw was those lights, and then you being covered in fog, so I couldn't really see anything that was going on."

"I guess I could ask around to try and figure out what it was, but if possible I'd really like to never think about it again." Lisa shuddered. "It still feels like we got a little lucky."

"I'm not sure what would have happened to us if you hadn't thought so quickly, Sayo," Saaya said, a hint of nervousness still slipping through her smile, and Tomoe nodded, face serious.

"Saaya's right, we sure do owe you one. I'll do my best to find some way to pay you back. You can count on that."

"Please, don't worry about it." Sayo was a little taken back by how sincere Tomoe seemed. "It wasn't as though I did it expecting some kind of reward. It was more instinct than anything else."

"Maybe it's just stubborn pride, but it doesn't sit right with me to have someone save me and be unable to do anything in return." Tomoe grinned in Sayo's direction, and Sayo decided it wasn't worth pursuing the matter any further. The sympathetic smile on Saaya's face suggested that this might not have been an uncommon situation when Tomoe was involved.

"Sayo," Lisa whispered. "Your face's red~"

"Stop it," Sayo whispered back, suddenly self-conscious about both her own embarrassment and Lisa's grin. Was this any way to treat someone who was still bruised from getting thrown against a tree?

After a little bit more chatting, they left the two first-years downstairs and headed up, Lisa putting her arm around Sayo's waist for support even though Sayo had assured her it was unnecessary.

"How's it feel being a hero, Sayo?" she asked, voice teasing.

"I'm nothing of the sort."

They reached the top of the stairs and Lisa stopped, looking Sayo squarely in the face.

"I thought it was really impressive, though, honestly. In that moment, I was too scared to do anything. All I could do was wait. Nothing like you."

"Better to wait than to do something that could get yourself hurt," Sayo said, and then winced at Lisa's wounded expression.

"I guess so, huh? Even when I try and do something useful, I just end up causing other people trouble, don't I." She stared at her arm. "I'm sure you and Rinko would be better off without me helping you guys, but you're kind so you won't say that kind of thing. Isn't that it?"

"That's not—"

"Even today, I'm sure you thought it. I need to make sure this girl doesn't do something stupid and get herself hurt. You thought things would be easier if I wasn't there."

"I… was happy that you were there with me today. I enjoyed our time together, even if it got interrupted."

"You liked being with me, but you won't deny I was useless?" Lisa's gaze was sharp and unyielding.

Sayo paused, unsure of how to respond. She didn't want Lisa to continue to hurt herself. And it was hard to deny that she'd been reckless before. But if Sayo said that… she felt like something in their relationship would break. That the gradually shrinking distance between them would increase, permanently.

And, in any case, the practice she'd done this time had helped them escape safely. So even if Lisa did something reckless, if Sayo just kept working at it, she might be able to cover for both of them. Part of the issue was her own inadequacy, wasn't it?

"I'm sorry. I went a little bit too far with what I said earlier. You weren't useless at all."

"…No?" Lisa's voice was still skeptical.

"I said at the time that it would have been better to wait when we were trapped in the greenhouse… but there's no guarantee that things wouldn't have taken a turn for the worse if we'd waited. It's possible your quick thinking saved us more serious injury."

Sayo could see Lisa's expression brightening, and felt a faint sense of nausea rising in her stomach as she continued. "I think your plan would have worked smoothly if the two of us had done things a little better. If I'd been able to distract the plant for longer, or if you'd been able to squeeze the shears a little harder, or if I'd been able to stop the thorns from hitting you. So if we consider it like that, then the problem wasn't with your plan, it was with our execution of it. If we just work a little harder and understand our limits better, then everything should be fine."

She tried her best to smile in Lisa's direction, and then staggered backwards as Lisa leapt into her arms.

"Sayo…" Lisa's voice whispered at her ear. "Thank you. It feels nice to know that I did something that was useful. That I can be proud of."

Lisa had, Sayo thought, even ignoring the incident at the greenhouse, done plenty of things that were useful. Plenty of things that she could be proud of. Plenty of things that Sayo could never do.

But she didn't have faith in her ability to properly articulate those, so for now this would have to do. Not being entirely honest with Lisa rubbed her the wrong way, and there was a part of her that felt like encouraging her would lead nowhere good. But Sayo would deal with that when it came.

For now, the warmth of Lisa's body on hers was just comforting.

Chapter Text

"I… think we should stop looking for my family's ring," Rinko said, a troubled expression on her face. Lisa was leaning against Sayo's bed in her two friends' dorm room, staring up at the slightly faded pieces of art—also family keepsakes?—on the wall above Rinko's bed. Sayo was next to her, at what Lisa felt was a closer distance than she'd been at the last time they'd been in here.

"Right," Sayo said, a hint of gentleness in her voice. "I think this is the correct decision. Based on what's been happening recently, it seems like this is a bit more of a dangerous proposition than we'd originally anticipated. Maybe, if we have reason to believe that things are calming down, we can resume our search, but as it is…"

The students had been confined to a small portion of the grounds for the last week while the administration investigated the breaks in the barrier. Both Lisa and Sayo had had plenty of questions asked of them, presumably in an attempt to pinpoint exactly what the source of the problem was, and Lisa was more than happy, for the most part, to go along with Rinko and leave all of this behind for the moment.

"That sounds good! A little bit of excitement in your life isn't a bad thing, but I think I've definitely gotten a little too much, recently." Lisa smiled in Rinko's direction, then, in a slightly softer voice, continued. "Are you going to be all right, though, Rinko? I know this ring was really important to you, so, maybe, if we find the right opportunity, we can keep searching for it…"

"Lisa," Rinko said, more firmly than Lisa was used to hearing from her. "It is important to me, but… even before I got here, I'd given up on ever finding it again. So it's not, um, as big of a deal as you might think. And also… I don't think there's anything I want badly enough that I'd want either of you to be hurt for it."

"That, I can certainly agree with." Sayo glanced briefly in Lisa's direction, then back to Rinko. "But if either of you do need any assistance with anything—preferably light on danger—I'll do my best to offer my help."

"Thank you." Rinko's smile was warm. "It's reassuring… to know that you think that way."

She was really surrounded by good people, wasn't she, Lisa thought. Better than she probably deserved, although she knew actually saying that wouldn't end well for her.

As she left the room, Sayo called out to her, prompting her to stop in front of their door, upon which the names "Hikawa Sayo" and "Shirokane Rinko" were written in unadorned script.

"Sayo? What's up?"

Sayo looked hesitant for a moment, then spoke. "Are you sure you're all right, ending the search like this? I didn't want you to think it was your fault that things got called off…"

"I'm not that weak of a person, you know, Sayo? Besides, you said it the other day, right? That I was helpful. Not a burden. So I'm not worried about it. Honest."

A slightly painful look appeared on Sayo's face for a second, and then vanished. "I'm glad to hear that," she said. "And then, also…"

"Hmm? There's more?" Lisa asked, entwining her fingers with Sayo's. Sayo gave Lisa a look and a sigh, but made no move to pull away.

"Hina asked me to send her a number of items she can't get her hands on where she is, but I'm not certain exactly where to get all of them… so I was wondering if you wanted to help me do some shopping."

"I'm happy to go, of course, but I'm not sure how much help I'm going to be if Hina wants some really weird stuff."

"That's fine. We can figure it out together," Sayo said, smiling softly, and Lisa felt something flutter in her chest.

"When did you want to go? Our next day off?"

"That would be fine with me, as long as you don't have prior plans. There, well, aren't a lot of people I can ask this kind of thing to, so I'm happy you agreed." Sayo turned her gaze slightly downward, as though embarrassed by her own admission.

"You could have asked Chisato. She should know Hina's tastes pretty well, right?"

"I think I'd go without help rather than stoop to asking her."

Lisa laughed and squeezed Sayo's hands once more. "Anyway, I'll be sure to leave that day open. See you then!"

As she took her leave, she found herself unable to keep a grin off her face. Sayo showing an interest in her had, lately, been more than enough to raise her spirits.

"What's got you so happy today?" Chisato asked. They'd run into each other, coincidentally, just outside of the big dining hall attached to the dormitory and Lisa—maybe because of the good mood she'd been in earlier—had suggested they eat together.

"Sayo invited me to go shopping on our next day off, so that's got me a little excited, I guess?"

"You're really getting along well with her, aren't you. I can't say I quite understand the appeal of someone like that."

"Sayo's a nice person! She's been nothing but kind and supportive to me. Sure, she's a little stiff, but she's cute when she smiles, and fun to be around. I don't know how I could not like her, really."

"By 'nice,' you mean she spoils you? Tells you what you want to hear?" There was an amused look on Chisato's face Lisa found distinctly irritating.

"That's not it. She's genuine, unlike certain people I know. To be honest, she's blunt enough that she says what she means even when it might be better to sugarcoat things a little."

"Human emotions get the better of all of us, you know? I don't think even Hikawa Sayo is above the desire to treat certain people a little differently."

"What are you trying to get at?"

"Oh, nothing in particular. It's not my business, anyway, what's between the two of you. But do try not to do anything too foolhardy. Especially not anything where I'll have to clean up after you."

"That's not going to happen. But thanks for your concern."

Chisato sighed exaggeratedly, then changed the subject. "Incidentally, have you heard anything from Hina recently?"

"Hina? Not since near the start of the year. I think she might have sent something to Sayo more recently, though."

"I see."

"What, are you lonely?"

"That's not it. She just has a tendency to get in trouble, as I'm sure you're aware. I'd like some reassurance that that isn't happening where she is now." There was a faraway, almost wistful look on Chisato's face that Lisa wasn't used to seeing there. Maybe, she thought suddenly, Hina's fondness for Chisato wasn't entirely one-sided.

"…I'll ask Sayo about her for you."

"Oh, would you? I'd appreciate that." Chisato's expression snapped back to its usual unreadable state.

The two of them finished eating, largely in silence. "I have some work to finish after this, so I'm going to head back," Lisa said, gathering her dishes.

"Of course. Enjoy your date, and try not to get hurt. I've heard some… exciting stories about your escapades lately."

"I'll do both of those things, but I don't really need you to tell me that."

Chisato smiled. "I thought you might respond that way. I do mean it, though—it'd be inconvenient if anything were to happen to you."

That was as close as Lisa was going to get to warmth from Chisato. There had been a time, she thought, when the two of them hadn't been quite so guarded around each other. It had happened so slowly and naturally she'd never thought much of it, but suddenly the distance between the two of them felt dully painful, as though she'd suddenly become aware that something she'd cared about had gone missing. Whether it was the kind of thing she could find again or the kind that would never be recovered, she couldn't say.

Sayo showed up in front of her dorm room door on their appointed day off, a somewhat troubled look on her face Lisa didn't fail to notice.

"You all right? Having second thoughts about going?"

Sayo blinked at Lisa's question. It seemed she hadn't realized what face she was making. "Everything's fine, more or less. Why do you ask?"

"You were making a weird face. Like you were worried about something."

"Oh." Sayo sighed. "It's not anything you need to concern yourself with. Something I was practicing just wasn't going the way I planned it to, that's all."

"Maybe this'll be a good distraction, then!"

"Maybe so."

The entrance to the Hanasakigawa grounds—on the opposite side from where they'd met Tomoe and Saaya the other day—was a short distance away from the quiet town that bore the same name. Many of the shops there were well used to getting a lot of traffic from students, and Lisa was herself something of a regular customer at a number of them. Compared to the bustle of the city she'd grown up in, it was a pleasant place, much warmer and more intimate. Or perhaps it just appeared that way because of the people around her.

As they passed a traditional-looking ramen shop, Lisa thought back to the number of times she'd eaten in town with Hina. Sayo's sister was particularly fond of the oily (but tasty) food at some of the more nondescript, out-of-the-way places in Hanasakigawa, and while Lisa was perfectly happy to accompany her, there were a number of other locations she wanted to explore. Hina had mentioned that she and Sayo had fairly similar taste in food, but maybe Lisa could rope Sayo into coming to one of the cuter, fluffier establishments with her sometime.

"What did Hina want, exactly?" she asked, poking her head over Sayo's shoulder to glance at the letter her classmate was holding.

"It seems like mostly reagents and other ingredients. For what purpose, I have a feeling it's best not to ask."

"A couple of these seem like herbs we should be able to get at the place I usually pick them up, and I wanted to replenish my stock anyway, so how about we stop by there?"

"That… seems reasonable, yes."

The shop Lisa had mentioned was a modest place with a thick scent about it, as though herbs being in the building for so many years had caused their smell to sink into its foundation. Walls full of dried herbs took over the entire right side of the store, while the left was a collection of fresh herbs and other miscellany, a couple of pots reminding Lisa of the ones she'd seen in the greenhouse the other day. The sun streaming in through the front window lent the place a warm, comfortable feel, and just being in the proximity of the place made Lisa want to take a deep breath of herb-infused air.

The middle-aged woman who ran the store nodded at them as they came in, her bun bobbing slightly as she did so.

"It's nice to see you again, Lisa. Is this a friend of yours?"

"Yeah, a classmate of mine who's shopping with me today. We actually have a couple of things we're looking for specifically, so I was wondering if you had them here or knew where we might be able to find them…"

As the two of them pored over Hina's shopping list together, the owner posed a question to Lisa.

"That girl you're with… is she the same one you said you wanted to buy herbs for the last time you were here?"

Lisa flinched in surprise upon hearing the question, then glanced over in Sayo's direction to make sure she hadn't heard. Sayo looked back from where she was investigating a shelf of dried herbs questioningly, prompting Lisa to heave an internal sigh of relief. It wasn't as though Sayo couldn't know that information, it was just… a little embarrassing, that was all.

"Um, yeah, that's her. She really liked the mix you recommended me, so thank you for that."

"You're welcome! But I get the feeling that she would have been happy with whatever she received, as long as it was from you." The owner winked at Lisa. "Anyway, I'll try and grab the items you asked for. Feel free to look around a little more if you'd like."

Face slightly hot, Lisa returned to Sayo. "Were you able to find everything?" Sayo asked her.

"Most of it, I think. What about you? There anything you wanted to try?"

"I thought these had a pleasant scent." Sayo passed a small bag to Lisa, who took it and sniffed it herself.

"You're right, they do smell good… but, well, this is a little difficult to say…"

"What is it?" Sayo looked concerned.

"These are usually used as an aphrodisiac, so I'm not sure if they'd be appropriate for something we're making, you know?"

Sayo's face instantly turned bright red, and she hurriedly tried to smooth over the situation. "I'm sorry, it wasn't my intent to suggest anything untoward with my choice—"

Lisa burst out laughing. "Don't worry, I know you didn't mean anything by it! Though you're really cute when you're flustered, Sayo. Maybe we should pick some of these up to commemorate the occasion, huh?"

Sayo glared at her. "I'm beginning to wonder if bringing Chisato along might have been the better decision."

"Sorry, sorry, I'll buy you something nice, so don't get too mad at me, okay?"

After the herb shop, they wandered throughout Hanasakigawa, eventually acquiring almost all of the items on Hina's list—a motley assortment of feathers, strange rocks, and different types of salt.

"You feeling any better, Sayo?" Lisa asked, swinging her bag back and forth as they walked back towards the school grounds.

"With regards to what?"

"Earlier, you said you were worried about something, right? Was this a good distraction?"

"I suppose it was. Thank you, Lisa."

"You're welcome! Though honestly, I think I'm the one who should be thanking you. I had a lot of fun, going shopping together."

"I'm glad to hear that," Sayo said, voice soft. "I know I'm not exactly the most sociable person, or the easiest to get along with, but I've very much enjoyed spending time with you, recently."

Lisa swallowed, hard, and shifted her bag to her other hand. Then, tentatively, she slipped her free hand into Sayo's, feeling the other girl flinch at the sudden sensation.

"Sorry, did you not like it?" So she said, but Lisa made no move to let go. An underhanded move if there ever was one.

"That's, um, not it. I was just a little surprised, that's all." Sayo's ears were gradually turning red, and Lisa, once again, couldn't stop a grin from rising to her face. Was she being too forward? Taking advantage of the seeming difficulty Sayo had in saying no to her? Maybe so. But when Sayo showed her those cute expressions of hers, or told her that she enjoyed spending time together… her desire couldn't help but to swell to greater and greater sizes.

"How did your date go?" Chisato asked in the bustle before their class the next day.

"Good!" Lisa flashed a smile in Chisato's direction. "Been a while since I've been out with someone in town, so that was fun, and of course she was real cute too—"

"What! A date?" They were interrupted from behind by Aya, who'd seemingly come to class in a hurry given the unruly tangles in her hair. "With who? I don't remember hearing anything about this!"

Chisato jerked her head towards Sayo, who was frowning at her textbook in the other corner of the room. "With a certain stiff classmate of ours."

"Chisato called it a date, but it's not like we're going out or anything. Hina just wanted Sayo to buy her some stuff in town, so I ended up coming along. Well, not that I'd mind going on a real date with her, though, you know?"

Aya blinked a few times, seemingly still surprised by what she was hearing. "I mean, I'm happy for you, but I wasn't expecting this kind of thing at all… Sayo, huh…"

"She's real nice, I promise! I think the two of you would get along for sure if you had the chance to talk."

Aya looked as though she hadn't been entirely convinced by Lisa's words, but the appearance of their intermediate magic teacher—a woman on the younger side who the students liked but who had a tendency to be rather strict—ended their conversation before it could develop further.

The day's lesson was focused on what their teacher described as "the arts of the illusive." Deceiving people hardly seemed like something that a teacher would want to emphasize, but there were, she explained to them, a number of reasonable situations where one might want to make something appear as something it was not. Sort of like wearing makeup, Lisa supposed.

The key to making illusions effective lay in belief and imagination, their class quickly discovered. Belief in the sense that some part of you had to actually believe that your textbook was not actually a textbook and was, in fact, whatever you wanted it to appear as (in this case, a cat). And imagination in the sense that you had to clearly picture that cat in your mind in order to have it appear in place of the book.

"Wow, Chisato, you're good at this!" Aya said, looking enviously at Chisato's vaguely flickering, but still generally convincing, cat. Her own was in a pitiful half-book half-cat state that Lisa had to try her best not to laugh at.

"It seems like the kind of thing you'd be good at, Chisato." Really, Chisato was good at most things having to do with magic, but Lisa couldn't resist the opportunity to get in a barb at her classmate.

"You might be right. I thought you'd be a little bit better at it yourself." Chisato glanced at Lisa's slightly malformed cat, which was every so often turning itself back into a book when Lisa's concentration broke.

"Guess I'm just too honest of a person, huh?"

"Speaking of which, your friend over there seems to be having some trouble." The three of them glanced across the classroom at Sayo, whose textbook looked vaguely furry but was otherwise stubbornly remaining a textbook.

"That's, um, unexpected," Aya said. "I don't know if there's anything I've ever been able to do better than Sayo before…"

Lisa hoped Sayo wasn't being too hard on herself for this, but she had a feeling, based on what she'd learned about Sayo over the past few weeks, that her friend most certainly was. In fact, knowing Sayo, she'd probably been practicing, and worrying, about this well in advance of today's lesson.

She was well aware that she was the kind of person who couldn't leave people who were in trouble alone. And when it came to Sayo, that feeling only intensified. Of course, she wanted to do whatever she could for a girl she'd been becoming increasingly fond of, but she also still couldn't shake the feeling, despite what she'd been told, that she'd caused Sayo a lot of problems recently. So if she could do something unequivocally good for Sayo—if she could prove her usefulness—that, more than anything, would calm the swirling unease in her chest.

"Sayo!" she called out, as class ended.

"Lisa. What is it?" The softness with which Sayo had begun to call her name recently was gone, replaced by the sharp, serious tone of Lisa's memories.

"I was just wondering if you were doing all right. You've looked a little bit worried these past couple of days…" She was dancing around saying what she meant outright, worried that doing so might puncture Sayo's surprisingly sensitive pride, but it seemed as though her efforts were in vain.

"You said it earlier, did you not? That you weren't so weak of a person as to need me to worry about you. The same goes for me." They'd gotten along well enough recently that Lisa had almost assumed that Sayo would forgive whatever mistake Lisa might have made, but maybe she'd overestimated how close the two of them actually were.

"Sayo—"

Sayo sighed in response and shook her head slowly. "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to be rude towards you. But I don't think this is a situation I need your assistance with. Like many things, a little more practice and I'll be able to get an acceptable result."

She strode off down the hallway, leaving behind the faint, lingering scent of her hair and a jumbled set of feelings in Lisa's chest: something like worry, something like sadness, something like determination.

Chapter Text

With the possible exception of Sayo herself, the students at Hanasakigawa seemed to be filling with anticipation as the days grew warmer. The anniversary of the school's founding, and its accompanying festivities, were soon to be upon them, and the prospect of a bit of a reprieve from their studies—and soon after that, a full-fledged break over the summer—produced a palpable feeling of excitement in the air.

Sayo, for her part, was considerably more concerned with the oncoming exams, and the areas that were lacking in her repertoire, than she was with any sort of schoolwide event. She'd been spending an increasing amount of time in her room and the library, emerging for the most part only when Lisa dragged her out. After another frustrating class, she was once again on her way back to her dorm room when a voice called her name, cheerfully, from some distance down the hall. Turning around, she saw a tall, red-haired girl waving in her direction, and before she knew it Tomoe was in front of her, scratching her head as though searching for the right words.

"…Tomoe. What is it?"

"Oh! Well, the thing is," Tomoe began sheepishly, "there's something I wanted to get your advice about. Unless you're busy."

Sayo, at the moment, wanted nothing more than to return to her room and continue practicing her as-of-yet pathetic illusion charm. But just curtly abandoning Tomoe didn't sit right with her either, exactly, so she quashed those urges, took a deep breath, and answered.

"That's fine. Did you want to go somewhere more private?"

"Oh, no, it's fine! I just had a couple of quick questions about some of the stuff that's happening at the anniversary… people have been suggesting I sign up for the obstacle course, and I heard you were a strong competitor last year so I wondered if you had any tips!"

Sayo sighed, trying to avoid grimacing too obviously. The obstacle course was one of the more notable competitions that took place at the anniversary, attracting large crowds of spectators to watch students attempt to conquer a variety of challenges that rewarded those well-rounded in their magical abilities. Perhaps some of her fellow students had considered her performance last year worthy of note, but it would be difficult for Sayo to say she was proud of it.

"'Strong competitor' feels like a bit of an exaggeration. I don't remember doing anything particularly remarkable."

Tomoe cocked her head to the side. "I thought I heard that you finished second among all of the competing first-years and even ahead of some of the second- and third-years, though. That sounds plenty impressive to me!"

"Did I? I don't remember that." She remembered it quite well, in fact—how thoroughly and completely her sister had beaten her, to the point where her second place had been closer to tenth than it had been to Hina. What about that was worthy of praise? "But I do have some experience, so I may be of some use. What were you curious about?"

"Just wondering about what sorts of stuff you had to get through last year. You think there's any kind of magic you didn't learn in first year that'd be useful for me to know?"

"They change the obstacles every year, so it's difficult to predict too closely what you might run into. But generally they fall into certain categories—moving heavy objects, manipulating smaller ones, dealing with magical substances, puzzles. Students who were surprised by the chokeweed in last year's competition had a good deal of trouble; I would suggest familiarizing yourself with common plants and substances that might serve as magical hazards."

"Bit hard to just brute force your way through, then, huh?" Tomoe laughed.

"I think that's the intent, yes. Which also has the effect of making it somewhat difficult to prepare for."

"Well, thanks for the information! I'm looking forward to seeing if you're as good as everyone's said."

Sayo frowned. "I don't believe I ever mentioned that I would be signing up this year. It's not my preferred way of spending my time."

"That so?" There was something provocative in Tomoe's gaze. "You sure you're not just worried you might lose to some first-years?"

Sayo glared back at her, more annoyed than the taunt had honestly been worth. "I assure you," she said, icily, "that if I were to participate I would certainly not finish behind any first-years. Good luck in the event."

Without waiting for Tomoe's response, she turned around and stalked back down the hallway.

Back in her dorm, Rinko, who'd had her nose buried in a book as usual, looked up as Sayo came in.

"Welcome back," she said, softly.

"Thank you." Sayo took a seat at her desk and immediately dragged her textbook out of her bag, flipping to the already well-worn page that featured elaborate diagrams and descriptions of basic illusory magic. Her mug, which she'd been attempting to disguise as a flowerpot for several days, was quickly making her annoyed just looking at it despite the design being one of her favorites. Yesterday, she'd managed to make it appear as though it were filled with dirt, which was, depending how you looked at it, progress. Although, practically, the only effect of such an illusion would be to make the people around her worry about her mental state.

The whole exercise was idiotic, she thought, sighing and preparing to take another attempt. How exactly was she supposed to "believe that the object you are disguising is actually the object you are disguising it as" when that was, no matter how she looked at it, not true? And was there really a relevant situation in which she'd actually want to hide something like this? Straightforward honesty, she was fairly sure, would serve her best in the greatest number of situations.

But then her conversation with Lisa from the day they'd run into the fog monster popped back into her head, and she, once again, felt vaguely guilty. Honesty was generally correct, she felt, but that didn't mean she never found herself in situations where it was tempting to obscure the truth in one way or another. Particularly if Lisa was involved.

Her mug looked, this time, slightly more like a flowerpot, to the point where if you looked at it out of the corner of your eye for a brief second it might actually appear as one. An improvement, but not one that would result in an acceptable exam score. She concentrated harder, and the mug seemed to return to being a mug again, to her intense chagrin. From her long hours of practice of almost every spell required for her year and some that weren't, she knew well that progress wasn't always linear. This did not, however, make this particular situation any less frustration.

"Did you, um, want me to help you practice again?" Rinko asked from behind her, and Sayo turned around.

"I appreciate the offer, but I'm not sure I'm going to get anywhere like this today. Maybe on another day."

"That… might be best. You're, um, very talented, Sayo, so I'm sure it'll come to you eventually…"

"I can only hope so." Sayo shut her textbook sharply and stowed it in her bag once more. "To change the subject, what are your plans for the festival this year? I was wondering if you wanted to enter the scavenger hunt together." She'd done it with Hina the previous year and found it considerably less frustrating than other events, both because she had no way of losing to her sister and because the stakes were overall lower.

Rinko blinked. "Is it, um, okay?"

"Is there a reason it wouldn't be?"

"I thought you, well…" She looked away for a second. "…would have wanted to enter with her instead."

"…I don't intend to make a habit of prioritizing some of my friends over others." Some of this was probably just simple pettiness, annoyance at Lisa trying to meddle too closely in Sayo's affairs mixed with no small measure of guilt about Sayo's lack of honesty. But even without admitting all of that, it wasn't as though she was deceiving Rinko this time; their friendship had always been valuable to Sayo, especially given her traditionally small social circles.

"I see," Rinko said, smiling faintly, and Sayo felt better about her choice, although one thing was still bothering her.

"…Can I ask why you assumed I'd want to go with Lisa?"

A blush colored her roommate's face. "Well… you've been getting along really well recently, and also, um, I might have heard some classmates talking about you…"

Sayo sighed. Part of the fault was hers, she supposed, for failing to realize how insinuating some of what they'd been doing had appeared. "We aren't dating or anything of the sort, if that's what you're implying." Certainly there were hints in both of their feelings, probably, of something beyond friendship, but Sayo was hesitant to call that love, exactly. Whether that was the simple naivete of a girl with no experience in these sorts of matters, she couldn't tell, but it felt as though neither of them was being quite sincere with the other. The part of her that wanted nothing more than to unconditionally accept Lisa's affection was as of yet being kept in check by the part of her uneasy about the whole situation.

Rinko nodded, a mysterious expression on her face, and Sayo, for once disgusted by the idea of reading through one of her books, left their room with no particular destination in mind.

Before she'd gone too far, though, she felt a hand on her shoulder and turned around to face the very person she'd been hoping to avoid.

"Hey, Sayo."

"…What is it?"

"Well, uh." Lisa looked vaguely nervous, an expression Sayo wasn't used to seeing on her. Maybe she'd been glaring more severely than she'd intended. "I heard from Tomoe that you weren't going to participate in the obstacle course."

"I did say that, yes."

"You sure? I mean, I think you'd do well, and our class does need a representative. I'm just hoping that you're not taking the whole spell thing you've been worrying about recently too hard—"

"They're not connected. I just have no interest in participating, that's all." Sayo's stubbornness was once more rearing its head. She couldn't quite put her finger on what it was about Lisa's attitude that was annoying her so much, but something had begun to feel wrong.

Lisa looked at her dubiously. "Just because you aren't good at a few things, or someone's better than you in something, doesn't mean you're worthless or anything, you know? There's lots of things you actually are really good at, so why not embrace those instead?"

And with that, the gears finally clicked into place in Sayo's head. She wasn't annoyed at Lisa's meddling, or at least that wasn't all of it. What really frustrated her was that Lisa acted as though she had all the answers, as though she knew what was best for Sayo, and yet—

"Couldn't you say the same thing for yourself? You're even worse than me, aren't you, the way you only ever focus on the negative. Why not take your own advice for once?"

Lisa looked taken aback for a second, and then smiled in a way Sayo found somewhat unsettling. "…Sorry, Sayo, but I don't think you quite get it. But then again, I guess it makes sense that someone like me and someone who's always at the top of the class in everything wouldn't quite see eye to eye, doesn't it?" Come to think of it, they had been friends at one point, her and Chisato, hadn't they?

"I think I understand a lot more than you seem willing to admit, you know."

"Anyway," Lisa continued, as though she hadn't heard Sayo's reply, "I was thinking it might be fun to enter the scavenger hunt together. What do you say?"

"Unfortunately for you, I'm already going with someone else." It was petty, she knew, but Sayo felt a rush of superiority at seeing the surprised, crestfallen look on Lisa's face.

Followed immediately by the dull ache of worry in her stomach.

"You want advice on your love life?" Tomoe asked, a grin on her face. "You know, I'm not really the sort of person people usually ask for that. Saaya maybe, but me—"

"That isn't what this is," Sayo replied, mildly but not seriously annoyed. From beside her, Saaya laughed. "I didn't picture you as the kind of person to make those sorts of jokes."

"Well, you just make it kind of easy, you know? When she's around you're all soft and friendly, and then when I talk to you otherwise you've turned back into the ice queen."

"It isn't normally that much of a difference. I was just in a bit of a bad mood the other day when we talked and took it out on you. I apologize for that."

"Oh, that's no big deal. I tried to get a rise out of you on purpose, so it'd be kind of weird to be mad at you for reacting the way you did, you know?" Brushing her hair behind her ear, Tomoe turned back to her ramen. Eating here had been Tomoe's idea, but Sayo enjoyed the atmosphere of the place. Behind the counter, several different ingredients were floating slowly back and forth across the stove as the owner adjusted the heat of the fire. It was so practiced as to appear easy and relaxed, but Sayo knew that level of fine control was in no way easy to achieve.

"So what did you want to talk to us about, then?" Saaya asked, steering the conversation back in its original direction.

Sayo hesitated, unsure how to begin or how much was actually appropriate to say. "Well… I'm just a little worried, I suppose."

"About Lisa?"

"I can't shake the feeling that she might end up doing something that ends with her getting hurt. But I don't know what the best way to avoid that result might be."

Tomoe blinked. "You mean she's reckless? Gets herself into danger? I kinda can't imagine that…"

"Maybe a better description would be that she's selfless to a fault. If she can do something to help someone else, she's willing even to sacrifice herself." Whether Lisa's actions really were selfless or not was another question, but for now this explanation would do.

"Hmm. I kind of get that way of thinking," Saaya said, looking thoughtful. "I mean, it's easy to feel sometimes like you're not worthy of the kindness you'd direct to other people, and that it doesn't matter if you get hurt as long as other people are all right."

"Seems like the kind of thing that needs to be smacked out of people," Tomoe added grinning. "I might've had to do that for Saaya once or twice."

Saaya laughed, and then Tomoe's face turned serious. "Really, though, the kind of attitude you're describing isn't good for anyone. If you really care about her, you've got to tell her that she's going down the wrong path. As many times as it takes until it gets through."

"Even if our relationship doesn't recover?" The words tumbled out of Sayo's mouth, almost unbidden.

Tomoe and Saaya both gave her worried looks. "Well," Saaya said, "you care a lot about her, right? I think eventually that'll get through to her, even if it's a bit of a rocky journey."

"Right!" Tomoe continued. "It's normal for friends to fight a bit, you know? This isn't the kind of thing that'd break a connection as strong as the one you two seem to have going on."

"That… makes sense," Sayo said, still unable to shake her unease. It felt as though there was something the other two girls weren't willing to say to her, maybe out of consideration for an older student.

"Anyway, I'm sure it'll be fine, Sayo," Tomoe said, clapping a hand on Sayo's back. "And if you've got trouble again, feel free to come back to us!"

The support should have been reassuring, and yet Sayo felt as though she was no closer to knowing what she should do.

After Rinko and Sayo returned from a mildly successful scavenger hunt, they found Lisa waiting outside of their dorm.

"Hey, Sayo," she said. "Got a second?"

"What is it?"

"It might be better if we discuss it somewhere else. How about my room?"

Rinko took this as her cue to vanish into the dorm room, and Sayo, seeing no reason to refuse, followed Lisa down the corridor.

She'd been in this dorm room before, when Hina had dragged her in, but with the absence of her sister it felt somehow empty, more so than just the empty bed opposite Lisa's would suggest. It was always that way with Hina: once exposed to the brilliance with which she shone, even the brightest of flames couldn't help but appear dim.

"Is it lonely, being in this room by yourself?" Sayo asked suddenly.

"Well, yeah, a bit, but it's not like there's nobody else in the dorm, you know? And it's only for a bit longer, 'cause Hina'll be back after break." Were these Lisa's genuine feelings or just a false front? Sayo had no way of telling.

"Anyway," Lisa continued, "I got hold of some information. A family friend graduated from this school a while back and is pretty in the know about a lot of magic stuff, so I sent him a letter and he told me some interesting things."

"…Like what?"

"You still have that map?"

"Somewhere." This conversation seemed, Sayo thought, as though it was going in an unpleasant direction.

"Well, I figured out which secret passage is probably the right one. And yeah, there's something guarding it, but apparently it's designed so that if you just give a bit of a shock to the right part it'll shut down for a while. So it shouldn't be too hard for us to get what we're looking for."

"Didn't the person who originally asked us to start the search decide to call it off?"

"Yeah, but you know she still wants the ring back if she can get it, right? And with this information it's not going to be too dangerous or anything."

"And yet you're telling this to me, not her."

"She'd probably still say it was too risky, you know? You're the only one I can rely on for this kind of stuff, Sayo."

"So you know it's a bad idea." Sayo tried to keep her tone sharp, but she couldn't stop those words from reverberating in her head. The only one I can rely on. "This isn't really about Rinko, is it?"

Lisa laughed and sat down on her bed. "I've been thinking about what you said, Sayo, really. And I'll try to be better in the future, it's just, well, I want something I can be proud of too. I mean, can you imagine the look on her face if we can surprise her with the ring? I feel like it'll make it all worth it."

"And if I say no?"

"Well, I'll do it anyway, but it'll go smoother if you're there with me. So what do you say?"

A thousand gears began to whirl in Sayo's head. Tomoe, surely, would tell her to do her best to stop Lisa, even if that meant some level of discord in their relationship. But if Sayo did that, then Lisa would be well and truly alone, wouldn't she? And Sayo herself—in being by Lisa's side, she'd found a place that felt right to her in a way nothing else had. Could she give that up, all to stop a plan that might very well end painlessly? Like before, this felt like a test. Could she protect her friend from herself? Was she good enough, or was she inadequate?

And ever so slightly, she found herself being swayed by Lisa's argument. It would feel good to be successful at something like this, a task where her sister was nowhere near being present. Of course she had plenty of misgivings, but one way of stopping Lisa from hurting herself was by being as close to her as possible, wasn't it?

"Sayo?"

"I'll do it. If only to make sure you don't do something stupid." She was getting more used to telling these kinds of half-truths, she felt, with no small amount of bitterness.

"Really?" Lisa's eyes lit up, and she got up and hugged Sayo tight, filling Sayo's chest with a churning mixture of guilt and warmth.

"Love you, Sayo," she continued, voice a whisper, and Sayo, unable to respond to either her embrace or her words, simply stood there, the emptiness she'd felt earlier bearing down on both of them.

Chapter Text

"This is a real bad idea, Sayo." Tomoe's gaze was sharp, her normal friendly demeanor turned cold.

"Unless it works, with your help, and then it won't be a bad idea anymore, will it?"

"Nah, it'll definitely still be bad." She leaned back again the wall of the open classroom Sayo had directed them to. "Gotta say, I thought you were smarter than this. Even if it works, how is that going to solve anything? The only lesson you're gonna learn is that it's okay to take risks as long as you don't lose, and that ain't sustainable."

"But you'll still help."

"I said I owed you, and I'm not the kind of girl to go back on her word. That doesn't mean I like it, though."

"You don't have to. In all likelihood, you won't have to do anything, anyway; we'll be able to handle everything ourselves." A strange confidence, or maybe a feeling that she no longer had anything to lose, had begun to flow from Sayo in the past few days, pushing her earlier unease to the back of her mind.

Tomoe gave her a complicated look, as though she again had something she very much wanted to say to Sayo and was holding it back. "I'll just say this," she said. "If you don't end up regretting this immediately, you'll start regretting it soon after."

"I'll deal with that when it comes. If it comes."

With a curse, Tomoe stalked out of the room, Sayo leaning back against the wall herself after her junior had left. As long as Tomoe was willing to cooperate, that was fine. She'd deal with the rest later.

If there is a later, an ugly part of her brain started to say, but she quickly shut it up. There was no point in thinking things like that, not when they were so close to, well, resolving their problems, it felt like.

Despite the nagging unease that still remained somewhere within her, things had been surprisingly normal, the past few days. Rumors had begun to swirl around the two of them—even more than already had been—after Sayo spent the night in Lisa's room, which they'd both had to deny (though the rumors weren't entirely incorrect, even if they hadn't done everything people seemed to think they had). At one point such a thing would definitely have annoyed Sayo to no end, but as it was it felt somewhat refreshing compared to her other worries. Maybe, she thought, it was a glimpse of their school life to come, something a lot more normal than what had come previously.

After a few minutes, the person she'd just been thinking about appeared in the classroom in the flesh, slightly past the time they'd agreed to meet.

"How'd it go?" she asked, putting an arm around Sayo's shoulder.

"She agreed to help us. That's about all I can say."

"So not great, huh? Well, she'll see things differently when we're successful. Is there anything else we should do to prepare, you think?"

"We're almost fully ready, I think. How's that shock spell of yours coming along?"

"Pretty good, I think. Want me to test it out on you?"

"I'll pass." It probably wouldn't hurt very much, at the level they'd practiced it at, but Sayo was not exactly interested in finding that out for certain at the moment. "But since we've gotten so close, did you want to take a bit of a break? I feel as though we've spent almost all of our time on schoolwork or plans, lately."

"Ooh, an invitation on a date?"

"That isn't exactly how I'd frame it."

Lisa laughed, as though she'd anticipated Sayo's response. "Where did you want to go, then?"

"How about a walk around the grounds?"

"That sounds good! I've seen way too much of the inside of these buildings lately, anyway."

They'd gotten a little ways out of the main school building, looking in admiration at the greenery around them (probably enhanced through a little bit of magical gardening skill but still impressive nonetheless), when Lisa made a suggestion.

"I heard about a nice secluded spot around here from an older student. Wanna check it out?"

Sayo had no objections, and Lisa guided her to an almost-hidden opening between a pair of trees that opened into a small clearing, for the most part shaded by the surrounding foliage but offering enough openings for the gradually setting sun to peek through.

"Nice atmosphere, huh?"

"It is."

"Wanna guess what the girls who told me about this were using it for?"

"I might have an idea," Sayo said, then with no serious resistance fell to the grass as Lisa pulled her down.

"Better here than in my room, right?"

"If you say so." It was a nice view, Sayo thought for a second, staring up at the canopy of leaves above her, hints of the purple-streaked evening sky visible through gaps in the branches. Then a head of fluffy brown hair obscured her field of vision, and the soft feeling of Lisa's lips on her own consumed that thought wholly.

This was not, she knew, something people who were just friends did, and yet she and Lisa had yet to put a name to whatever this relationship between them was. Maybe the time to do that would come after they'd completed this task, when (Sayo hoped) they'd stop feeling the need to lie to each other. As it was, it sometimes felt as though Lisa had acquired a worrying new power, the realization that if the conversation trended in a direction she didn't like she could just kiss Sayo and forcibly shift it away. Which was partly Sayo's fault, too, for going along with it, but it was hard not to, especially when she was on unsteady ground with the other people she was usually friendly with. Tomoe, well, there was nothing to be done there, at the moment, but Rinko was a bit of a more complicated case. Was Rinko really suspicious of her and Lisa, or was Sayo just feeling guilty about hiding things from her roommate? Either way, there seemed to be something suddenly awkward about their friendship, once-smooth conversations abruptly reverting to intermittent phrases spoken only out of necessity.

Whereas with Lisa, it was beyond easy to just melt into her, minutes and hours passing as though they were nearly instantaneous. Lisa released her lips from Sayo's, a pout forming on her face.

"You're thinking about something else again, aren't you?"

"…Sorry."

"I guess I'm just going to have to work harder to fully occupy your attention, then, huh?"

Sayo felt a grin beginning to spread across her face.

"Please do."

It was almost fully dark by the time they got out, likely some time past curfew. As they neared the dormitory, the light of a powerful lantern illuminated the path in front of them, as well as the face of the somewhat sour-looking student carrying it.

"Well, if it isn't the rumored lovebirds. They sent me out to look for you, you know, when you weren't back an hour after you were supposed to be."

"I'm sorry," Sayo said almost immediately, and Lisa followed that up with a quick apology of her own. Neither of them sounded particularly contrite, but surely Chisato wasn't the kind of person who was overly concerned with that sort of thing.

"I'd ask what you were doing all this time, but I'm not sure that I want to know the details. In any case, I really don't care what it is the two of you are up to, but do be careful about doing things that might cause other people trouble." The way Chisato said those last few words made Sayo shiver involuntarily. Chisato didn't, she was fairly sure, know the specifics of what she and Lisa were planning, but it seemed as though they'd been seen through to some degree nonetheless.

"Well, I don't think we're doing anything like that, but I'll definitely be careful, Chisato," Lisa said, a smile on her face. At times, the two of them seemed strangely similar in Sayo's eyes, two actresses vying to create the most convincing deception. It wasn't a part of Lisa (or Chisato, for that matter) she was sure she liked very much.

Chisato sniffed loudly. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm looking forward to Hina getting back so there's someone with a little more sense around here. Good night." She walked off, leaving the two of them in the darkness once more.

"Whoops," said Lisa when Chisato was out of earshot. "Guess we got a bit carried away, huh? Though the dorm people never get as mad when you're there, Sayo. Is that what it's like to be a model student?"

"I won't be one much longer if I keep hanging around with you," Sayo said, and Lisa laughed. But the more she thought about it, maybe it wasn't actually that funny.

They'd decided to set their plan into action in the early morning, so as to encounter less potential interference. According to Lisa, the door they were looking for was in a rarely used hallway near the top of the eastern tower, marked very faintly on the map they'd gotten from Chisato months earlier.

"It doesn't look like there's anything here. Are you sure you have the right place?"

Behind them, Tomoe snorted.

"Well, it's hidden, you know? Otherwise people would stumble on it all the time." Lisa stopped in front of a section of the wall that looked more or less exactly the same as the rest of the hallway. "You just gotta know that it's a door, and then it's easy enough to get it to appear."

And sure enough, after a second, the wall shimmered and a rusted, iron door appeared, looking distinctly out of place from the stone walls that surrounded it.

"Neat, huh?"

"I suppose." Though she wouldn't admit it, especially not in front of Tomoe, being confronted with this door was giving her a deep sense of unease. Not that she hadn't been nervous before, but really, despite, Lisa's information, they had no idea what might await them inside. And Sayo had never been fully convinced they were making the right decision by doing this, not to the extent that Lisa was.

But it was too late now, so she took a deep breath and pulled open the door. Unlike the last time they'd tried to open one of these, there was nothing to greet them on the other side of the door, just an ominous, silent pathway extending into darkness.

Sayo swallowed, and turned to Tomoe. "One of us will signal to you if we need your help, though I don't anticipate that happening."

"Yeah. I'll be here," Tomoe replied, curtly.

And with that, the two of them passed through the door, it clanging firmly shut behind them. Sayo had procured a lantern similar to the one Chisato had had the previous night—they could certainly produce light themselves, but it wouldn't be quite as effective. And they needed to save their concentration, anyway, for dealing with whatever it was that was lurking within.

"Kind of spooky in here," Lisa said, clearly nervous.

"Should we head back out?"

"I'm just saying, okay? I don't actually know the layout in here either, the person I talked to hadn't actually been inside before. So it's a little bit nerve-wracking." She gripped Sayo's hand tightly.

"All we have to do is shock the joint at its neck, and everything will go smoothly. Isn't that right?"

"…Right." Lisa's voice was still unsteady.

They walked carefully along the hallway they'd entered, wooden floorboards creaking at their feet, until reaching a dead end. To their left lay a staircase, the bottom of which was obscured amidst the gloom. Sayo put a hand on the railing to begin her descent, only to have her movement stayed by a firm tug on the hem of her uniform.

"Lisa?"

"Sorry. I'm just not sure everything's going to go well, all of a sudden."

"You seemed plenty confident earlier."

"I was! But then I thought about what might happen if you got hurt, and…"

"Not about you getting hurt yourself?"

"Well, I can deal with that. It's other people suffering that's the problem." She laughed.

"…Don't say things like that."

"Sorry, sorry! But that's why I've got you here, Sayo, right? To stop something bad from happening to me. I'm just not sure I'm good enough to do the same for you."

"I'm not certain where all this confidence in me comes from. After all, I seem to remember failing to protect you the last time we were searching for this ring."

"I guess you're just amazing enough in general that you feel reliable to me."

"I've always though the same of you, you know."

"Geez. Getting good at the flattery, aren't you?"

Really, Lisa should've known full well that Sayo wasn't the kind of person who would say something she didn't mean just to make someone else feel better. But then again, she'd done that a whole lot around Lisa, hadn't she?

A feeling of helplessness overwhelmed Sayo, and she turned around and hugged Lisa, as though doing so might alleviate it.

"Thanks for trying to cheer me up, Sayo," Lisa said, stroking Sayo's hair. Which hadn't been Sayo's intent, but she made no move to correct Lisa. "What would I do without you?"

Sayo didn't know the answer to that question either. Which she'd thought was fine, but recently it had begun to feel as though the gears were sliding out of place. Their problems should, by all accounts, be solvable, and yet seemed to have an unpleasant tendency to stick around. If their gamble here didn't work out—or even if it did, and still somehow failed to accomplish what they were hoping it would—where would they turn to next?

A useless question to ask, at this point. But one that stubbornly refused to leave Sayo's head.

"Shall we go, then?" she asked, somewhat reluctantly letting go of Lisa.

"Let's do it!" The bravado was probably fake, but it still cheered Sayo up.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, there was an ominous sound of grinding stone from somewhere in the darkness. Sayo put down the lantern, which illuminated a fair part of their surroundings but not the room in full. The faint glittering of jewelry at certain points in the room filled Sayo with a small wave of relief; at the very least, it seemed like this was a likely spot to find the ring.

But that relief lasted only a second, as she progressed forward slightly and immediately stopped in her tracks, staring at what lay before her. It almost seemed like a huge sculpture of a dog, at first glance, but something about its proportions seemed somehow off, as though—unlike the fish they'd seen on the grounds weeks earlier—it was the craft of someone who'd heard tell of dogs but never actually seen one. Nevertheless, elements of the same odd realism remained, its stone flank moving up and down as though breathing, jewel tongue hanging out of its misshapen snout.

"It seems like it's… asleep?" Lisa had lowered her voice to a whisper. "I guess that makes sense, maybe, since no one's probably been in here for ages."

"I can't tell if this is a good thing or not." It certain wasn't calming Sayo's nerves any, even if their main obstacle appeared to be incapacitated.

"Should we just try and shock it? Or is it already shut down, and bothering it like that is only going to wake it up?"

"You're asking as though I know the answer to that question."

"Let's just… keep an eye on it and start searching. Maybe we can find what we're looking for real quick and get out."

Sayo nodded and headed towards the right side of the room, Lisa taking the left. All they knew about the ring was its inscription, which seemed as though it was going to slow the process down somewhat seeing as they'd actually have to produce enough light to read by. A small flame from Sayo's hand lit up the piece of jewelry she'd picked up, the engraving on which was not in a language she understood. Another problem she hadn't considered, but she'd just have to hope that this wasn't what she was looking for.

As she went to return the item she'd picked up to its original spot, her foot sent some object—a rusted knife of some sort, upon a closer look—skittering across the floor. A loud sound of metal on metal rang throughout the room, and Sayo winced, feeling Lisa's gaze turn in her direction. But it didn't seem as though anything had happened, so the two of them returned to their search.

And then, the stone-grinding noise came once more, and two more lights appeared in the darkness. Luminous, purple, almost like eyes and yet very clearly non-living. The grinding stone transitioned into a low, reverberating growl, and Sayo felt her blood run cold.

Clearly, they'd made a wrong choice somewhere along the line. Likely a lot of wrong choices. And all of those were coming to bear here, in this moment.

"Sayo. I'll act as a decoy, so you go for it while it's distracted, okay?"

"No you won't," Sayo replied forcefully. More than anything, she didn't want this to be a repeat of last time. "We can come up with a better plan if you just wait a second—"

But Lisa had already acted, throwing a bracelet in the guardian's direction and causing it to shift its jeweled gaze towards her. And then, after a second, it charged.

Sayo was already running towards Lisa at that point, but she was no match for the speed of a magical construct, even an ancient one. A faintly shimmering shield appeared in front of Lisa—the type Sayo had taught her—and was summarily blown through, her body hitting the wall behind her with an impact that Sayo desperately hoped wasn't as bad as it sounded.

The hollowness that had been lurking within Sayo over the past few weeks instantly exploded in size, to the point where it threatened to swallow her whole. She'd failed, once again, to protect someone she cared about. And rather than reaching any kind of resolution, they were just repeating the same pattern they'd hoped to escape in the first place.

Everything seemed suddenly futile. In any other situation Sayo would have just given up—and she could feel tears forming her eyes as it was—but, unfortunately, the guardian was currently turning in her direction. It was going to be more difficult getting out of this jam now that it was a one-on-one fight, but she hadn't lost all will to survive just yet. Barriers were no good—maybe it had some sort of enchantment on it to break them—so she'd just have to dodge and hope that gave her an opening.

There was a loud thumping sound from where they'd come in, and someone yelled "Sayo! You all right?" The guardian turned its head to look at the sound, and Sayo saw her chance—but she was just out of range, and it was only distracted for a second, then concentrated fully on her once more.

It was fast, unsettlingly so, but it didn't seem to be able to change directions easily, so she tried to move as far out of its way as she could. But not far enough, seemingly, as it still managed to snap at her leg, a wave of pain rushing through her. Still, maybe she could use that to her advantage, seeing as it was close by—

And then, two well-aimed shocks made a sizzling noise as they hit behind the thing's head, sending it crumpling to the ground.

She looked up to see two girls with grim expressions on their faces. "You didn't call for me," Tomoe said, speaking first, "so I went and grabbed some help because I had a real bad feeling about all this. Seems like I was right, though I sure wish I'd gotten here a little earlier."

"Trust me, I have a lot of things I'd like to say to you, but that can wait. How's your leg?" Chisato produced a light with a flourish and brought it closer to Sayo. Really, she desperately wanted to run over and check on Lisa, but she left that to Tomoe and submitted meekly to Chisato's examination.

"Not broken, it seems, though it sure looks awful. Can you stand?"

Taking Chisato's hand, Sayo pulled herself up, gingerly testing out what it was like to move.

"I'm not sure I can put weight on it."

"Well, hopefully we can make it up those stairs somehow." She glanced over in Tomoe's direction. "How is she?"

"Breathing," said Tomoe. "Must've hit her head real hard. Probably a lot of bruises, hopefully nothing too much worse." She scooped up Lisa in her arms and made her way towards the stairs. "I dunno how long that thing's going to stay like that, so it's probably best not to waste time."

Chisato put an arm around Sayo's shoulder in support. "Let's go, then."

"Hold on. We haven't found what we were searching for," Sayo protested. After all this, to come away with nothing? At the very least, she wanted to salvage something out of this whole scenario. What bright spot did she have to turn to otherwise?

"Give it up," Chisato said coldly. "You two don't get to play the hero, not after all this."

Sayo said nothing. She knew Chisato was right, even if admitting it was painful. They'd been hoping that by being successful at something like this, they'd gain the confidence they needed. But that had never been a good plan, just one Sayo had tried her best to pretend would work. And now all that was left was to pick up the pieces and hope they could be reformed into something workable again.

They slowly, painstakingly climbed the stairs, back into a world that Sayo knew would look very different than the one she'd seen that morning.

interlude: tomoe

Who was the girl sitting up in her infirmary bed with a blank expression on her face, eyes puffy and red from crying? She was almost unrecognizable to Tomoe, the dignified way she carried herself, the sharp, clear way she always spoke, even the soft, rounded edges she occasionally showed around the right people, all gone.

"Well," Tomoe said, "at least they stopped short of kicking you out." It was a rude way to phrase that, she knew, but anger was still bubbling up within her, refusing to subside. Both at Sayo, and at herself.

"I can't say I've ever gotten in quite this much trouble before," Sayo replied, a faint smile forming on her face, and Tomoe felt momentarily reassured to see that the old Sayo wasn't entirely gone.

But then her face returned to blankness. "I'm sorry," she said. "You knew the whole time that this was a bad idea, and yet I didn't listen to you. Chose to believe otherwise, even though I knew you had a point."

"To be honest, I wish I'd pushed harder. I didn't want to intrude too far into your affairs at the time. Well, that, and I didn't think someone like you would actually go through with something quite this dumb."

"I'm a lot weaker and less impressive of a person than you thought, it turns out."

The mopey attitude rubbed Tomoe the wrong way. Saaya had a bad tendency to do the same thing, sometimes, even though that obviously wasn't what Tomoe had been trying to do with her criticism. It wasn't as though making a mistake—even a big one—made you a worthless person, or made the people around you stop caring about you. Which seemed obvious to Tomoe, but might have been harder for other people to grasp than she'd thought.

"What I should have told you back then," she began, "is that a relationship that would break just from you telling the other person they're doing something wrong isn't a relationship worth preserving. If you guys couldn't get through that much, maybe it wasn't good for you to be together."

"…You may be right. I thought it was otherwise—wanted it to be otherwise—but maybe our relationship was weaker than I thought."

"Yeah, but you didn't even try to test it! You just went along with what she told you to do because you were too scared to say no. Some friendship, huh? I can't say for sure what would have happened if you'd put up more of a fight, but whatever happened sure would have been better than this."

Sayo continued staring into space. "I just… don't know what to do from here. It doesn't feel like the future holds anything for me."

Tomoe could feel the conversation beginning to fully fall out of her control. "Wanna come over to my place over the break, then? It seems a lot better than just moping around by yourself. I'm sure my sister'd love to meet you, and we can stop by Saaya's too—they bake stuff, it's real good—" Being desperate wasn't her style, but neither was watching a friend of hers seemingly give up on everything.

"You're too good for me, Tomoe," Sayo said, a bit of emotion returning to her face once more.

"No such thing," Tomoe replied, and meant every word. Even if it still wasn't getting through to Sayo.

interlude: chisato

It was a long train ride to the Hikawas', and Chisato's useless conversation partner only made things feel longer. She'd tried to distract herself with a novel, but the extended sighs and morose expressions kept pulling her attention away.

"Can you quit acting like it's the end of the world, for once?"

Sayo blinked. "Sorry," she said, looking remorseful. "I suppose you're right. It could be worse."

"I'm just glad your… whatever she is to you isn't worse off. You'd be really insufferable if anything serious had happened to her."

"It's certainly fortunate," Sayo said, and then more quietly, "though I'm not sure what she does has a whole lot of connection to me, anymore."

"I won't tell you you shouldn't ever talk to her again, but anyone with a brain could see that it would be best if you put some distance between the two of you for a while. Which you do seem to realize."

"…Yes. Which is why I'm appreciative that you've stayed her friend."

"I didn't do it for you, you know." Sentimentality was hardly Chisato's style, but there were some bridges—no matter how much they might have decayed over the years—that even she couldn't bring herself to just burn and forget about.

"Even so." There it was again, that unflagging earnestness of Sayo's Chisato had never been sure how to deal with—and yet, seeing it show its face once more was somehow reassuring. Better earnest and annoying than gloomy and tedious, she supposed.

Though she was still very much looking forward to spending time with someone more interesting.

interlude: chisato (ii)

"Man, if only I'd been there," Hina said with a sigh, leaning back against the railing of the balcony. "Then I could've helped stop all this. And Lisacchi would be here, back with us, where she belongs."

"Quite the confidence you've got there."

"You don't think I'd pull it off?" She grinned in Chisato's direction.

"…I didn't say that." The difference between Hina's brash recklessness and that of her roommate was, of course, that Hina had the ability to back it up. Which wasn't fair, of course, but lots of things weren't, especially when Hikawa Hina was involved.

It was, in any case, more or less the reaction she'd expected. With one possible exception.

"You aren't mad at her?"

"Lisacchi? Well, if she was here right now I'd probably punch her. But it'd be better for everyone to get along again than to drag things out, don't you think?"

Chisato offered no response. Would she have so easily been able to forgive someone who'd hurt one of the people she most cared about (whoever those people were)? She wasn't certain. But Hina taking everything in stride was part of her charm.

"Anyway, I really did miss you guys. It was fun out there, but even the fun things seem a little more boring when you can't share them with the people you wanna share them with, you know?"

"For my part, I found it rather relaxing not to have to worry about what you were getting up to all the time."

Hina laughed. "But we always have fun, though, don't we?"

"Maybe you do." So she said, but nerve-wracking as her adventures tended to be, though, Hina did have something of a point.

She leaned back against the railing herself. It was a cool night, pleasant after the oppressive heat of the day. Summer was, in some ways, the worst time to be dragged around by Hina; rather than simply feeling as though she'd narrowly avoided serious danger, there were bugs and buckets of sweat to contend with as well.

"Where do you wanna go over the break? I came up with a list of places to visit when I was bored a little while back."

And yet for some reason, when invited she felt no strong urge to refuse.

"I'll take a look at it later and see if any of your choices are acceptable. Did you ask Sayo?"

"Yeah, but I dunno if she's up to it. Either her leg or her brain. But I mean, three or four of us would be a lot of fun, but two's not bad either, don't you think?"

"It's not, once in a while."

"Wow, honest for once! You ever considered doing more of that?"

"It was a slip of the tongue. And I'm not sure what you're talking about; am I not always honest?"

Hina burst out laughing, and Chisato found herself smiling, genuinely, for what felt like the first time in a long while. An arm wrapped around her shoulder, and while normally she would have brushed it off, for tonight she let it stay. It was a bit too good of an atmosphere to ruin.

interlude: lisa

It was just the two of them, together, for the first time since Sayo had come to visit Lisa's bed in the infirmary. Hina had invited both of them out on an off day and then subsequently vanished (purposefully or not, Lisa couldn't tell), leaving Lisa and Sayo somewhat awkwardly biding their time on a bench in town.

"Nice weather today," Lisa said, unable to bear the silence.

"It is. Soon it'll be fall, won't it?"

"Almost half a year since we really talked for the first time."

"Has it been that long?" She smiled, and Lisa felt her heart flutter. "I was about to say it doesn't feel like it, but it actually feels like it's been even longer than that, with all that's happened."

The wind had thrown Sayo's hair slightly into disarray, and Lisa reached a hand out to smooth it back into place, which Sayo offered no resistance to. Then Lisa's hand continued downward, stroking Sayo's cheek gently, and finally she responded, with a resigned "Lisa…"

"Did you not want me to?"

"It's not that, exactly. I'm just not sure what your goal is, here."

"I don't know that I've exactly got a goal in mind. Just doing what I feel like, you know?"

"…So there's no deeper feelings behind what you're doing?"

Lisa was pretty sure Sayo already knew the answer to her own question, but she cooperated anyway.

"Of course there's deeper feelings. I mean, did you expect I'd just stop caring about you over the break?"

Sayo sighed. "I'm not saying that. It's just that, well, it didn't end well for us last time and I don't know if I can say for sure it'll be different if we try again."

"I can change, though, Sayo. We both can, we know better this time." Lisa ran her fingers down Sayo's cheek once more. "And you still like me, don't you?"

Sayo blushed slightly in response to Lisa's question. "That's… precisely why I don't think it'd be good," she said softly. "I depended too much on you. I'm not sure I have the confidence to not do that again, this time."

Is that such a bad thing? Lisa wanted to ask, but she held herself back. It was a bit of a difficult argument to make, after all, given their history. "I just miss you, Sayo. That's all."

"Do you miss me, or do you just miss having someone who'll say nice things to you?"

Lisa stared at Sayo, eyes wide. She was used to getting scolded, especially recently, but coming from Sayo it felt like a knife in the gut. Even when everyone else had been angry at her—including Rinko, who'd repeatedly emphasized just how worthless that ring was in comparison to her friends' health and safety—Sayo had always remained calm. When talking about their failures, it had always been "I" and "we," never "you." Even though Sayo was well within her rights to blame Lisa.

She did get what Sayo was saying, to a certain extent. It was easier to make bad decisions when you had someone who would go along with them. But that couldn't have been all there was to her and Sayo. She was sure of that much.

"I do care about you, Sayo, even independent of how much you might have ended up spoiling me. You know that, right?"

"…Yes." Sayo sighed. "It just feels a little optimistic to say we can that easily take the good parts of being together and dump the bad."

"What's wrong with being a little optimistic every once in a while?" Lisa put her hand over Sayo's. "I really do think we can make it work out. So what do you say? Want to start over and do things proper this time? We can start going out for real. Have a more normal relationship. Don't you think that sounds good?" There was an edge of desperation to her voice she made no effort to hide. It was obvious to both of them how invested she was in this, anyway.

Sayo squeezed her hand back, and for a second Lisa thought everything was going to be fine. Then she smiled sadly in Lisa's direction.

"I'm sorry."

With those two words, it finally sunk in. No matter how much she wanted them to, things weren't going to go back to the way they had been. Not anymore.

Chapter Text

Autumn had come in full swing to Sayo's simple two-room lodgings, the breeze now a little too chilly for her to open the small window in her kitchen during the evenings. Being at the university was, in some ways, not terribly different from Sayo's previous school experiences; there was more freedom in taking classes and more privacy within her room, seeing as Rinko had chosen a different city to continue her education, but the tight-knit atmosphere and Sayo's position within it felt relatively unchanged. And even the "privacy in her room" part was somewhat questionable, seeing as there seemed to be any number of students who had no qualms about entering Sayo's room uninvited.

Focusing on her studies or practicing some kind of magic had always been Sayo's default use of her free time, a way to clear her mind and prepare for the days ahead. And while she still valued these peaceful afternoons, it wasn't always bad, having them interrupted. Living by yourself was, she mused, possibly lonelier than she'd expected.

And as if on cue, there was a knock at the door, and one of Sayo's juniors poked her head into the room, a worried expression on her face.

"Um, is now a good time?"

"As good as any other," said Sayo, putting down the book she'd been thumbing through. "What is it?"

"Well, me and another student—she doesn't go to this university, she just offered to help me out—were working on some herbal mixtures I needed for a class, but it seems like there was some kind of weird reaction… she says she's all right, but sure doesn't look it. So I figured if anyone, you might know what to do."

"I'll take a look. Though perhaps the infirmary would have been a better choice."

"Arisa?" came a somewhat woozy voice from the corridor outside, and Sayo's eyes widened in recognition. "I told you it wasn't a big deal, didn't I?"

"Well, you did, but I think getting it at least checked out would be good…" Arisa sighed and turned back to Sayo. "Sorry, I'm not really very good at dealing with her like this."

Then she half-dragged the girl following her into the room, and Sayo froze in place, unsure of how to respond.

"…Sayo?" The look of surprise on Lisa's face was, Sayo suspected, mirroring the one on her own.

"Hello," she replied, hoping she didn't sound as awkward as she felt. It wasn't as though they hadn't seen each other at all in the time since they'd graduated, but their conversations had been fairly sparse, and certainly none of their interactions had ended up with one of them in the other's room. She turned to Arisa, hoping focusing on business rather than pleasantries would smooth over the awkwardness somewhat. "So what exactly happened here?"

Arisa explained the details—she'd given Lisa an herb extract to test, and it had reacted badly, spraying a cloud of something vile-seeming in Lisa's face. It didn't seem to be seriously poisonous, as far as she could tell, but Lisa had been strangely out of it ever since.

So, Sayo thought, Lisa getting hurt wasn't the result of her doing something ill-advised, this time. Unless there was something to the story she was missing.

"I'd expect you to be the one who knows about antidotes, given what you've been studying," she said to Lisa.

Lisa laughed weakly. "You'd think, but I'm feeling a little fuzzy, after all this. You're no slouch yourself, right?"

"I'll mix you something to drink and let you rest for now. But if things continue, I'll drag you to the infirmary myself, all right?"

"You're kind as always, Sayo," Lisa replied with a faint smile. "Guess I'm taking advantage of that one more time."

Sayo sighed and directed her to the bedroom. Despite Lisa's earlier protests that she was fine, by the time Sayo returned with some simple fever-reducing tea her old classmate was sleeping peacefully, slightly curly brown hair splayed out over Sayo's pillow.

Back in the other room, the juniors had multiplied. Saaya waved in Sayo's direction, looking somewhat apologetic. "Sorry for intruding," she said. "I heard what was going on and wanted to make sure everything was all right."

"It should be," Sayo said. "With some rest, she should be fine."

"That's good to hear! But, well, Lisa aside, are you going to be fine? She can rest at my place instead, if you'd rather…"

"There's no problem. I'm not so heartless as to turn away someone in poor health just because of a bit of awkwardness."

Saaya laughed, and Arisa looked at her, then at Sayo, a confused expression on her face. "Uh, did I do something I shouldn't have here? I didn't realize you and Lisa knew each other…"

"You couldn't have known," said Sayo, "and in any case it isn't a serious bother to me anyway. Please don't worry about it."

"It's pretty funny, though, Arisa, to think that you just dragged someone's ex-girlfriend into their room by accident." There was a teasing smile on Saaya's face.

Arisa looked surprised, then immediately sullen. "Shut up," she said. "But, well, you're right that I wouldn't ever have guessed that that was what was going on. You're, um, not very similar. If you don't mind me saying."

"Maybe that's why things didn't work out." Or maybe, Sayo thought, it had been the opposite problem, that they'd been similar enough so as to lean into each other's worst instincts. But she'd thought that over countless times to no avail, so there was no reason to re-litigate the mistakes of the past now.

Saaya looked in her direction with no small amount of sympathy in her eyes, and Sayo had to restrain herself from snapping at a girl who didn't deserve it. I'm not as vulnerable as you seem to think, she wanted to say, even though that reaction in itself suggested that the old wounds still hurt a lot more than she wanted to admit.

"Do be careful from now on," she said brusquely to Arisa, who stiffened and nodded vigorously. As she and Saaya took their leave, Sayo wondered if it wouldn't have been smarter to ask them to stay, to at least reduce the awkwardness somewhat. But doing that felt too much like admitting defeat, and in any case she wanted a bit of time to gather her thoughts before they were, inevitably, thrown into disarray once more when Lisa awoke.

Not for the first time that day, a deep, heavy sigh escaped her lips.

Around the time the fragrances from Sayo's cooking had begun to waft throughout the room, Lisa wandered back in, rubbing her eyes.

"It's fine to rest longer," Sayo said, glancing up from her pan of gradually frying fish.

"Oh, I'm okay, now. Promise."

Sayo gave her a look, and Lisa responded with a smile, the kind she always gave when she didn't want to give a hint of her real feelings. In another time, Sayo might have tried to push harder to see what lay behind that facade, but, desire aside, she no longer felt as though she had the right to do something like that.

"You're welcome to eat here if you'd like. I've made enough for two."

"Well, thanks. But you'd rather I didn't, wouldn't you?"

"…I'm used to all kinds of people eating here, by this point."

Lisa laughed. "Popular with the younger students as always, huh, Sayo? But I think I'll pass and let you eat in peace."

This was enough for Sayo to get the hint. At one point, Lisa would have jumped at any opportunity to get closer to Sayo once again, but it seemed as though that was no longer the case. Likely a change for the better, if one that felt somewhat lonely. Hina won't be happy to hear about this, next time I see her, she thought. Her sister had always hoped that her three favorite people, as she called them, would one day become friends again, or at least come to tolerate each other's presence enough that they could do things together. But that didn't seem anywhere near close to happening, at least between her and Lisa.

"Well, good luck with your classes," she said. Those words seemed somehow inadequate, insincere, but no better alternatives came to mind. "Make sure to take care of yourself."

"Thanks, Sayo. And I will. Chisato'll get mad at me if I don't, after all."

"You're still in contact with her?"

"Yeah. I know you guys never really got along, but she's been a big help to me, honestly, over the past couple of years. I've never been any good at supporting myself alone, after all." Those last lines were said with a laugh, even though they didn't seem very amusing to Sayo.

"I don't think any of us can exist without depending on others," Sayo said, purposefully choosing a more positive interpretation of Lisa's words.

"Maybe so!" she replied, and then waved and left, hair waving behind her as she disappeared down the corridor.

They had no real points in common, not anymore. Once Lisa vanished from sight here, who knew when—or if—their lives would intersect again?

How Sayo felt about that, she couldn't yet put to words.

"I ran into Sayo today," Lisa said casually as she opened the door to the room next to hers. The lodging at her university was nice, and cheap, enough that most students ended up staying here; the location was pretty good, too, close to most university buildings and a walking distance from the center of the town.

It was also, she thought, a lot closer to where Sayo was living than she'd ever realized.

Hina and Chisato whipped their heads in her direction, Hina's eyes filled with excitement, Chisato's with something quite a bit more grave.

"How did that happen, exactly?"

"Did you guys make up?"

"Well, uh, the girl I was helping out wanted to ask someone for advice with something, and that someone turned out to be Sayo. So I spent a bit of time in her room." There was no need to worry them with information they didn't need to know. And it wasn't technically a lie, what she'd said. "But no, we didn't really make up, as such."

Hina's expression deflated. "That's no fun, Lisacchi. Was she at least nice to you?"

"She's always nice to me. Actually, she invited me to eat dinner with her, but I ended up saying no."

"Really? Why?" Hina tilted her head to the side in confusion.

"I'm curious about that as well," said Chisato, gaze still fixated on Lisa.

"I mean, I wouldn't have minded eating together, but I thought she might have just been saying that to be polite. And I didn't really trust myself not to latch onto her again."

Hina made a rude noise. "You've turned into a real coward, Lisacchi. You know there's a middle ground between never talking to her and being so obsessed you ruin everything, right?"

"Yeah, but at this point, I don't know where to start bringing things back. We don't really have any points of connection anymore."

"Well," said Chisato, "I can understand why you wouldn't want the baggage that would come with bringing Sayo back into your life. But it's obvious you're not fine like this, as much as you might try to pretend you are."

"Yeah," Hina added, "and you know who might be able to help her out, more than anyone else?"

"Lisa, be careful listening to her. She's got her own agenda in mind, not necessarily your best interests."

"I kinda don't think you, of all people, get the play the pure-hearted card."

Not for the first time, Lisa was glad she wasn't rooming with either of them. "You've both got good points!" she said. "I'll think it over. Just wanted to hear some opinions."

"Lisacchi, you're getting too good at that," Hina said, staring at her. "The thing where you hide how you're really feeling. It was more fun when you said what you meant."

"I'm nowhere near as bad as Chisato, though?"

"Yeah, but you're you. Not Chisato. The look doesn't suit you."

Lisa didn't think it suited Chisato either, but she kept that to herself. It turned out there were fewer problems the more you did that, she'd found. Baring your heart—like she'd done with Sayo—had the unfortunate effect of providing a big, soft target for any sharp object that happened to be directed your way. Not to mention that it could serve as a weapon of its own, being too honest. One frequently more dangerous than any of Chisato's pointed jabs.

"She's right, this time," said Chisato. "For better or worse, the Imai Lisa I know is appallingly sincere. I wouldn't want her to stop showing her face entirely."

"It's harder to be sincere around people who know too much," Lisa replied, and instantly regretted it. Both Hina and Chisato were giving her strange looks. "Anyway, I'm feeling pretty hungry, so I'm going to eat something. See you later."

She shut the door behind her and sighed. Really, she was glad to have both of them around—after things had turned sour with Sayo, she'd at least had someone to rely on while she recovered, both physically and mentally. But when you got too close to someone, they started to feel as though they knew what was best for you, even more than you did yourself. Maybe they were right. But Lisa wished they'd keep their distance from her a little bit more.

Chisato's voice echoed accusingly in her head. As if you don't do the same to half the people you meet. It was a fair point. But she didn't mind being a hypocrite about this, at least not at the moment.

As Sayo returned to the entrance of the building that housed the university's dormitories, a couple of students loitering around the entrance were talking excitedly about something.

"…did you see the girl who just went in here, super pretty!"

"Like a doll, almost. She's not a student here, right? Wonder who she's here to see…"

Nothing more than uninteresting chatter, to Sayo. She'd never been terribly interested in whatever sort of drama or intrigue was going on with people around her, not to mention their physical attractiveness. Aren't you a girl, though, Sayo? Lisa had asked her once, but Sayo couldn't see how those two things were related. In any case, she'd gotten more than her fill of public attention, both good and bad, in the past. It was a lot more peaceful, living outside of that sphere.

Or it was as long as people weren't trying to drag you back into it, Sayo thought as she reached her room. The girl waiting outside of Sayo's door was, as advertised, pretty and vaguely doll-like, not that Sayo had much of an eye for such things. Upon noticing Sayo coming towards her, she smiled.

"How nice to see you, Sayo. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"Chisato. Were you waiting long?"

"Not long, and I didn't tell you in advance I'd be here, so it'd be unfair to be upset, wouldn't it?"

"…Come in, then." Sayo could tell they were attracting a few curious onlookers, and while she wasn't exactly thrilled about spending her evening with Shirasagi Chisato, declining seemed like more effort than it was worth.

They entered, and Sayo gestured towards a chair, which Chisato sat down in, putting her bag down on the floor next to her.

"Would you like something to drink?"

"No, thank you. This shouldn't take too long." Chisato surveyed the room around her with a look of vague distaste. "It's awfully bare in here, isn't it?"

"It serves its purpose. What did you come to ask me about?" Chisato wasn't the kind of person who came over to someone's room just to chat. At the very least, not when it came to Sayo.

"I heard Lisa was here the other day."

"That's correct."

"Well, I'll get straight to the point, then: how do you feel about her? I really don't care about romance or whatever, but do you think you two could be friends again?"

"Us becoming friends isn't something I can decide by myself, is it?"

"No, but if you don't agree nothing is going to start. Answer the question."

"…Why are you so concerned about us? Is there something in it for you?"

Chisato looked Sayo over coolly. "You do realize," she said, "how your sister feels about all of this, don't you?"

"So you're trying to get us together because it'll make Hina happy?"

"That's part of it. The other part is that I don't like seeing Lisa the way she is now. I still have my doubts about whether it's good for her to be around you, but I figure it's at least worth a shot to see if she'll start opening up again. She's gotten better at the facade of normalcy, but it's still a facade, in the end."

"That's very altruistic of you."

Chisato sighed. "You were both stupid girls, back in school, but I might have liked you more. It wouldn't hurt to learn from your sister and be a little more honest with your feelings."

Sayo decided not to remark on the irony of Chisato, of all people, telling her that. "In any case, I wouldn't mind talking with her again, no." She still wasn't entirely sure what Chisato was planning, but it wasn't as though an excessively onerous task was being asked of her. So there was no real reason to continue being contrary.

"That's good to hear." Chisato smiled again. "How would you feel about going on a bit of a trip over the break, then? The four of us, together."

"No objections."

"Hina or I will let you know when things are decided, then."

"…Do you think she'll agree?"

"That I can't say. But I'm fairly sure she wants to come. She's just, as Hina would put it, a coward." An expression of vague frustration crossed Chisato's face, the first sign of human emotion Sayo had seen from her all evening.

"I see," she said. Even if they had been close once, she no longer felt qualified to speak on what Imai Lisa was or was not. They weren't strangers, exactly, but a few years of distance had made it so the things they didn't know about each other far exceeded the things they did. But it was good to see that at least someone was looking out for Lisa, in her own way.

"I still can't tell what either of them see in you."

"Hina's my sister."

"And Lisa?"

"I'm not sure I can explain that one either," Sayo said, and Chisato laughed, seemingly genuinely.

"That's more like it," she said. "You've always been honest to a fault. Not my style, but it works for you."

"Thank you." Sayo wasn't entirely sure if she'd been complimented, but she'd take it as such.

Still looking amused, Chisato got up and bid her farewell. "Send my regards to our old classmates if you see them," she said, and once more Sayo was left alone. She hadn't wanted to spend more time with Chisato, exactly, but in some ways it was preferable to being in a room with just her and her thoughts.

The gardens were silent at this early hour, or at least silent of human noises; the chatter of birds and gentle sound of the flowing stream faded into the background of Lisa's mind as she walked. She liked human company, quite a bit, but this had become her preferred spot recently. Being alone in her room was lonely and vaguely empty, but this was an entirely different feeling. There was a kind of peace that came from being alone outside, in this kind of natural environment, that she hadn't been able to get anywhere else recently.

So she couldn't help but feel a vague sense of disappointment when someone else came up to her, drawing her back into the world of humans.

"Hi, Lisa," Kanon said, falling into step next to her. "It's a nice day out here, isn't it?"

"It is!" Lisa replied. If it had been Chisato, she might have told her It was nicer before you came along, but Kanon wasn't the kind of person you could be mean to without feeling bad. And she wasn't the type to ask nosy questions, either, so if Lisa was going to have company this was more or less ideal.

"I heard from Chisato that you guys were planning a trip. Sounds fun," she said wistfully, and Lisa had to suppress the urge to sigh. "Fun" was far from the first word she'd use to describe her feelings toward their travel plans, not that Kanon needed to know that.

"We are, yeah. Been a while since I got to travel anywhere, so maybe it'll be a change of pace."

"Aya and I were thinking about doing something a little more small-scale… well, that actress she loves is on stage again nearby, so she invited me to come with her."

"She never changes, huh." Aya had been obsessed with the same actress for years, which at first Lisa had found strange. But it was hard to watch the fervor with which Aya chased her dreams and not be swayed. "I'm a little jealous."

"It's what I love about her," Kanon said, smiling. "Watching Aya, you start to think that you can do anything you put your mind to."

Compared to Lisa's current aimless, transitory existence, the unflinchingly honest way Aya plunged in the direction she believed was right seemed like a faraway dream. If only, she thought, something would push her onto a similar path, one that didn't just lead her back to the same place she'd started over and over again.

It was scary, diving into the unknown. And yet, she reasoned, if she didn't take the gamble of going on this trip, nothing was going to change. Maybe nothing would change anyway. But for once in her life, she wanted to do everything she could to make things better. Even if giving it her all produced failure, from the very act of trying that hard, something might be born.

As much as she hated to admit it, Hina had been right in calling her a coward. She'd been granted an opportunity—it almost felt like fate—to reunite with the one person she'd ever felt truly understood her. Turning that down in order to resume meandering through her education once more was cowardly without a doubt, and plenty stupid besides.

She stared up at the grand, towering trees planted off to the side of the path. Greenery could be calming, inspiring even, when viewed alone, but it had never seemed so beautiful as when Sayo had been by her side.

Chapter Text

Hina seemed to be in a particularly good mood as they descended from the train, cheerfully humming a song of some sort. Why exactly this group of people gathering was such a fixation for her, Sayo couldn't quite tell, but it was nice to think that her presence alone could make someone happy. Especially since neither of their other companions seemed terribly pleased to be here.

Chisato was as usual, seemingly vaguely displeased with the entire situation, while Lisa had been staring blankly off into space, avoiding all interaction with Sayo. Why either of them had even agreed to come along, Sayo was still unsure. But it was getting late—they'd left in the afternoon, after the last classes had ended, and it had been a couple hours' journey—so maybe things would clear up in the morning, when everyone was less tired.

They deposited their baggage at the inn they were staying at and laid out their futons, Sayo flanked by Hina at her side and Chisato above her. Despite Sayo's sister's excited suggestions that they play a game or tell horror stories, she was vetoed by Lisa and Chisato, and the four of them settled down to sleep, weariness soon overtaking any desire Sayo might have had to stay up.

When she awoke, the room was still dark, illuminated only by the faint moonlight filtering in through the window. Next to her, Hina and Chisato were breathing gently but Lisa was nowhere to be found, a few rumpled blankets lying in her place. Sayo stood up, taking care not to wake either of her other companions, and opened the screen, shivering as cold night air hit her skin.

There, as she'd expected, was Lisa, staring into the distance, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. If she noticed Sayo coming up beside her, she showed no signs of it.

"Couldn't sleep?" Sayo asked softly, and finally Lisa turned to face her.

"Something like that," she said, a distant look in her eyes. "If you're worried about me, I'm fine. You can go back to sleep."

"I think I'll stay out here for a bit," Sayo replied, and then shivered again. Lisa laughed and held up her blanket.

"Wanna share?"

"If you're offering," Sayo said, and let Lisa extend the blanket around her, warmth—a kind she wasn't entirely sure how to feel about—spreading through her body. They stood there like that for a few seconds, staring out at the night sky, before Lisa spoke.

"I really didn't want to go on this trip, you know."

"I… thought that might have been the case."

"Hina and Chisato—well, Chisato, at least—seemed to think it'd be good for me. And I kind of talked myself into it, but now that I'm here I don't know what I'm actually going to get out of it. I mean, whatever it is I'm actually looking for…" She trailed off.

"Lisa?"

"Never mind!" Lisa grinned in her direction. "Just something I've got to think about myself, that's all. Should we go back to bed?"

Sayo nodded slowly. She'd entertained a faint hope—maybe because of Chisato's suggestion—that Lisa would, in fact, open up around her, that this new environment would help bring back some of the closeness they'd once shared. But perhaps it had been naive of her, assuming that the wounds of the past would close that easily.

Still, now that they'd come this far—there had to be something she could do, didn't there? Or was she just, once again, being a fool?

The sunlight was already bright in their room as Lisa opened her eyes once more. It seemed as though she'd slept in a bit, which was maybe to be expected given the time she'd spent outside last night.

"You're finally awake," Chisato said, putting aside the newspaper she'd been reading. "The other two already left, a little earlier. They'll be back by the afternoon, allegedly."

"Hi, Chisato." Lisa sat up and brushed her hair out of her face. "Where'd they go?"

"I didn't ask the specifics. It seemed a little too exciting for my taste."

"Huh." She was, to be honest, more than a little relieved at not having to deal with Sayo for a little while longer, but saying that seemed like it would ignite a complicated discussion with Chisato she wanted to avoid, so she kept quiet. "Wanna go somewhere, then?"

"Where did you have in mind?"

"The beach? I feel like I haven't been anywhere with a beach in ages."

"That sounds fine," Chisato replied, her businesslike manner returning. She had largely stayed out of Lisa's face in the past few weeks, which was appreciated, but Lisa had a suspicion that meant she'd just moved her scheming to a less obvious level. She hadn't wanted to push one of the few people she really trusted away from her, but it seemed like that was what had happened nevertheless. A predictable ending, given Lisa's usual results with close relationships.

They regrouped outside, after each of them had gotten ready. Now that Lisa thought about it, it was a little bit cold to be going to the beach, but it was too late to worry about that now.

"What about you, Chisato?" she asked as they headed down the predictably empty path towards the water. "Been to the beach at all recently?"

"I came here with Kanon, this past summer. She was looking for some sort of underwater creature for a project, though, so it wasn't as though we were just there to enjoy ourselves."

"She's really into that kind of stuff, isn't she? I'd find it hard to get that excited about any assignment I was doing."

"I suppose so," said Chisato. They'd reached the sand, and Lisa immediately kicked off her shoes, enjoying the sensation of sand underneath her feet. Chisato, as expected, didn't follow suit.

Wandering down to the water, the two of them stood just outside the reach of the tide, Chisato a few steps further back than Lisa. An unexpectedly high wave crashed down closer to them than the others, water lapping at Lisa's bare feet and prompting a yelp.

"It's cold!"

"What a surprise."

Lisa laughed and scooped up a handful of seawater, flinging it in Chisato's direction. Most of it just dampened the sand around her, but Chisato's grimace suggested that Lisa hadn't entirely missed her mark.

"I thought Hina not being around meant I'd get some rest this morning."

"You can't go to the beach and not touch the water at all, can you?"

"I'd argue that you can, and especially so when it's freezing cold."

"It's not so bad when you get used to it. After a while, you stop feeling the cold and your feet kind of just feel numb instead."

With that, Chisato cracked a smile, the first genuine one she'd shown Lisa in who knew how long. "You're that opposed to this trip, that you'd try and get frostbite to cut it short?"

"Guess I gave the game away, huh?" Lisa replied, grinning.

Chisato's face returned to its normal excessive seriousness. "That was a joke, of course, but are you really not enjoying yourself? You seem a lot more animated now than you did yesterday, and I can't help but wonder if it's connected to a certain someone's presence."

"Oh, that. I was just tired, you know? It's not a big deal."

"Lisa…" Chisato sighed. "I won't press you if you don't want to talk about it. And I said it before. I don't care if you hate her, or don't want to talk to her again. But you're not going to get anywhere like this. You know pretending everything's all right doesn't actually make it all right, don't you?"

"…Why?" The word slipped past Lisa's lips, almost unbidden.

"Why what?"

"Why do you care so much? What's in it for you?"

A sad look crossed Chisato's face, and Lisa found herself momentarily spellbound. She'd never seen Chisato look like this, and there was something about genuine emotion that made her already pretty face stand out even more.

"I don't know what you think of me, but it isn't as though I'm not human. Even I have people I care about. Especially ones who've been in my life for so long."

Lisa stared at Chisato blankly. This hadn't been the response she'd expected at all.

"You remember, don't you? All that time spent together at stuffy parties we didn't care about. We can't return to back then, but… those memories aren't nothing. At least to me, they aren't."

A flood of nigh-forgotten days rushed back to Lisa. Her grabbing Chisato's hand and leading her off into the mysterious corridors of whatever estate they were at. Chisato showing off some ostentatious magic she'd picked up to an awed Lisa. The two of them trying their best to decipher a potion recipe in a book far too complicated for their skill level. As a teenager she'd been vaguely embarrassed by her past with Chisato, but looking back through these memories there was something there too valuable to be so simply discarded. A bond of some sort had been forged, back then, and even time and distance, while they might have weakened it, couldn't completely unbind the two of them.

At that thought, Lisa suddenly felt tears well up in her eyes. Raising her hand to rub them, she felt Chisato grasp her wrist and stopped. Then, slowly, the two of them slipped their hands into each other's, the strength of Chisato's grip belying her delicate appearance.

"Don't assume you know everything about the people around you without asking them, all right?"

Lisa sniffled for a few more seconds before finally calming down enough to respond. "Thanks, Chisato," she said softly. "And I haven't forgotten, either."

"Good to hear." Chisato squeezed her hand harder.

Wiping the last of her tears away, Lisa grinned. "You'd better be careful about being this nice to me, though. I might fall for you."

"Please don't. I like you, but not that much." She let go of Lisa's hand. "And don't you want to say that to Sayo instead?"

"I guess so!" Even to her, her laugh sounded forced.

Sayo returned from her excursion with Hina to find Lisa and Chisato back in their room, munching on sandwiches.

"Wait, where'd you get those?" Hina asked, a sulky look on her face. "You didn't get me one too?"

"I had no idea when you'd come back or if you'd already eaten," Chisato said. "There's a number of shops not too far from here if you're hungry, anyway."

Hina groaned. "Guess I'll go grab something, then. What do you want?" she asked, turning to Sayo.

"Whatever you're having is fine. As long as it's nothing too weird."

She saluted and ran out the door, leaving a mildly awkward atmosphere between the remaining three of them.

"So," Sayo asked, "what did you end up doing while we were away?"

"Oh, we just went to the beach for a bit." Lisa grinned in Chisato's direction.

"…Isn't it a bit cold for that?"

"That's what I said." At Chisato's amused expression, Sayo felt oddly left out, like an intruder in a private chat between good friends. Even though I should be the one who knows her best, she thought, and then squashed that thought more or less immediately.

Hina soon returned and restored the room to its former energetic state, both she and Sayo quickly stuffing their faces with sandwiches. As Sayo, finally finished eating, was about to ask for opinions on where the four of them should go next, Hina grabbed hold of Chisato's arm. "We've got some plans, so I'll see you guys later!" she said, winking in Lisa's direction, and Sayo groaned. Was there a need to be quite so obvious?

After another too-long silence, she spoke up again. "We ran into a pretty walking path when I was out with Hina earlier. How does that sound?"

"Sure."

A far cry from the energy their back-and-forths had once had, but this would have to do. Nothing good would come out of obsessing over the past in any case, though Sayo couldn't seem to stop herself from doing it when she was around Lisa.

And neither could Lisa, apparently. They'd just passed a lively street of vendors and slipped off into a much greener area—one that seemed as though it was almost a different world from the one they'd just been in minutes ago—when she spoke for the first time since they'd left.

"This is kinda what we would've done on an old date, isn't it? Wander around town or go on a walk somewhere pretty?"

"I suppose it is." An array of casual, joking responses popped into her head, but none of them felt right for the situation. It was hard to know which lines to cross and which ones not to, anymore.

But she'd picked, fortunately enough, the kind of place that was easily enjoyable even without words. Lisa had always liked green places, and Sayo had come to enjoy them too, for reasons perhaps more academic than aesthetic.

"I don't think I've seen anything like this before," she said, gesturing towards a stone post covered in vibrant moss.

"Good at staunching bleeding," Lisa said brightly. "It gets a little too warm and dry back home for this stuff to thrive there, though, which is probably why you're not familiar."

"You sure know a lot."

"Well, I haven't been doing absolutely nothing, these past couple of years." She laughed.

"Hina said you were working at the local apothecary part-time."

"That's right. Don't know if I really love love what I'm doing, but maybe if I keep at it long enough I'll get to a place I'm happy with. That's what I'm betting on, at least."

"If you need any help with anything, I'm willing to offer it."

"Thanks, Sayo. But I think I'm all right."

"Are you sure? You aren't pushing yourself too hard with no support?"

Lisa stopped walking and looked Sayo in the eyes. "I've got support," she said softly, "even if it took me a while to realize it. And, not to be mean, but… I don't really know what we are anymore, Sayo. You rejected me, right? And since then we haven't even been friends."

"I… it was the right decision to make for us at the time. Surely you aren't trying to blame me for that, are you?"

"What I'm trying to say is that you can't have it both ways, Sayo. Even if it was best for both of us, walking out of someone's life for a few years has consequences. We're not going to just be able to pick up where we left off."

Sayo took a step backwards. This wasn't the direction she'd expected this conversation would go.

"Is it just that you're scared?" she asked. "You think if you're around me, one of us will get hurt again?"

"A little bit, yeah. But that's kind of operating under the premise that I really want us to go back to the way we were, and… I'm not sure about that yet."

"You were happier when we never talked, then?"

"That's not it. I don't hate you, Sayo. I don't mind being friends, either. It's just—"

"Then why are you refusing my help? Why can't I be the support you're talking about?" She'd known Chisato and Hina had grown closer to Lisa than she had over the past few years, and been grateful for that. But there had been a part of her—amplified by the two of them telling her as much—that believed that she was still special, that she could be something for Lisa that others couldn't. After all they'd shared with each other, it was obvious, wasn't it? And yet—

"Sayo. I said it, didn't I? You haven't been in my life for years. I really did care about you, once, and maybe I still do. But relationships take time to build back up. It's not like Chisato and I got this close overnight."

Sayo heaved a sigh. "I get it," she said. "If she can give you the support you need, I suppose I have no real right to complain. That's the most important thing, after all."

"Oh, now you're going to take the high road?" A hint of anger had seeped into Lisa's voice. "Just admit it, Sayo, you're jealous. You missed your chance to be the hero back then, and now you want to make up for it by swooping in and saving me from my troubles."

"That's not—"

"When you rejected me, you asked if I really liked you or just liked having someone who'd say nice things to me. But aren't you the same way? Do you like Imai Lisa, or do you just like the idea of someone needing you more than anyone else?"

"You're going too far." In another time, Lisa's words might have stoked the flames of Sayo's temper higher, but arguing any more in this moment felt fruitless. "And so am I, probably. I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what?"

"Sorry for trying to act as though I knew what was right for you. It isn't really my place to try and butt into your life like that, not anymore."

Lisa looked pleased. "I feel like we've almost gotten back on the same page again, for once."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, nothing's going to start unless we both know where we're starting from, right?"

"I see."

"So," Lisa said, walking forward once more, "to begin with, I'd better at least get on the level of those cute girls following you around."

"Haven't you already passed that?"

"I haven't been over to your place yet! Well, not while you wanted me there."

"If you'd like to, then be my guest. I've gotten used to it being more lively there, anyway."

"I'll take you up on that, then, sometime. But for now, want to enjoy the rest of our walk?" She reached out a hand, and Sayo took it. Come to think of it, it had always been Lisa dragging her around, throwing her emotions into disarray with careless ease.

Though really, she'd never minded that.

Hina and Chisato looked at them with expectant gazes once they returned, as though they were assuming something had happened between the two of them. And maybe it had. Sayo wasn't entirely sure.

"Did you two have fun?" Chisato asked.

"It was terrible, Chisato!" Lisa said, diving into Chisato's arms. "Sayo yelled at me, and I was real scared the whole time…"

"You were not," Sayo shot back, but Lisa's acting had earned her a pat on the head from Chisato, and she turned around and stuck her tongue out at Sayo.

Hina was looking between them with a confused expression on her face, but since neither Sayo nor Lisa seemed willing to provide any answers she quickly gave up.

"It feels less squeezed in than it did earlier, so we're really bopping now," she said cheerfully, then looked to Sayo. "Wanna go unveil what we've been working on?"

"I suppose now's a good a time as any. It'll probably look better outside."

The four of them headed outside their room once more, and Sayo and Hina, with a kind of practiced ease gained from long hours spent together, let out a blast of sparks that exploded into the air. They twisted and spun, eventually intertwining into a flower, then a dog, then Chisato's face, a wave of brilliant colors that lit up the evening sky.

"Hey, can you do one of Hanasakigawa? For old times' sake," Lisa asked, eyes shining.

"I don't know if I can picture it in my head clearly enough." Sayo frowned slightly.

"You can't?" Hina asked. "I guess I can do it myself, then." And just as she'd assured them, a picture of Hanasakigawa's eastern building appeared, smaller than the ones they'd created together but snugly fitting into what Sayo remembered of her time there.

"Thanks, Hina!" Lisa grinned, then a faint melancholy passed over her face. "Too bad the four of us never really got to spend time together when we were there, though."

"And whose fault is that," Chisato asked, but there was no venom in her voice for once.

Hina looked briefly confused. "It's all right, though, isn't it?" she asked. "I mean, we're all here now, and having fun. So I don't really get it, worrying about the past."

"You wouldn't," Chisato said, "but I'll concede you may have a point."

When they'd been out earlier, Hina had asked her a question, Sayo recalled. If you could go back and do things with Lisacchi over again, would you? she'd said, eyes full of that trademark innocence. Sayo had never liked hypotheticals of that sort, but she couldn't deny it had been a question that had crossed her mind. In some alternate timeline where Sayo had acted differently, had there been a happier future awaiting them?

But maybe she'd just have to concede that she wasn't destined to be the hero. It had been partly her fault that things had imploded, and there was nothing to be done now but pick up the pieces and see if they could be reformed into something workable again. Whatever the end result was, it would no doubt be cracked and unseemly, barely resembling the original. Though upon thinking that, she could hear Hina's voice in her head, offering up a counterargument:

That doesn't mean it can't be pretty, though, does it?

Chapter Text

There was an ostentatious-looking letter on Chisato's desk when the four of them returned, which she looked at with an air of distaste. "Not what I was hoping to come back to," she said, and shoved it in a drawer.

A broad grin appeared on Hina's face. "Hey, Chisato, is that from who I think it's from?"

"One more word out of you and I'll slip poison into your drink."

Lisa laughed and gave Chisato a sympathetic look. As usual, Sayo was the one left out of the loop, with no idea as to what the other three might be talking about. She'd found this to be the case fairly frequently on their trip, which Lisa had always seemed apologetic about. But Sayo really couldn't care less about whatever was going on in Chisato's personal life, so ignorance, in this situation, might be for the best.

"I'll go ahead and get started," she said, placing the groceries they'd purchased on the way back on the kitchen counter. Neither Hina nor Chisato were much for cooking (or any domestic chore), so Sayo had offered to cook for them. Chisato seemed reliable enough that Sayo wasn't too worried about her, but when it came to her sister she could never be sure Hina was eating right, especially now that they weren't living close by.

"Give me a second and I'll be right there," Lisa replied cheerfully.

"You're not obligated to help, you know."

"Yeah, but I'd feel bad if I just let you do everything. Plus you've been cooking for yourself a lot recently, right? Maybe I'll pick up some tips."

"You'll only set yourself up for disappointment."

Lisa laughed, and Chisato turned her gaze in their direction. "Flirting again already?" she asked. "Seems as though that must have been a particularly eventful conversation between you two, a few days back."

"What, sad I'm not paying enough attention to you?" Lisa teased. "You'll just have to make do with Hina for a bit, all right?"

Chisato glared at her but offered no objection, and once again Sayo marveled at Lisa's ability to handle Chisato, who had always seemed to her to be impenetrable to any verbal attack. But maybe, she thought, it was much like what people said to her about Hina.

The plan for the day was to make soup, and Sayo soon immersed herself in cutting up vegetables. It wasn't really a complicated enough recipe to require a second person's assistance, but she didn't mind having the company in the kitchen. And knowing that she had people willing to eat her cooking made it a good deal more enjoyable than just making a meal for herself, anyway.

"It's good!" Hina said excitedly once the soup was finished and served. "Wish we were still living together so I could eat this kind of thing more often…"

"It's not that impressive, is it?"

"It could be total slop and she'd still say that," Chisato said. "But it isn't bad cooking. Thank you for making it."

"You're welcome," Sayo replied, and Hina nodded vigorously in assent before opening her mouth again to change the subject.

"So what are you gonna do about that letter, Chisato? You can't just ignore it like the previous ones, right?"

"Unfortunately not, it seems," Chisato said, her annoyed expression returning. "She usually isn't quite so persistent, but this time…"

"Uh, you wanna explain what's going on to Sayo?" Lisa asked, interrupting. "She seems kinda lost here."

"I'm not going to be offended if she doesn't want to tell me," Sayo said, but Chisato was already sighing, seemingly resigned to her fate.

"It's fine. One of you can tell her about it."

"So basically," Hina began, grinning once more, "there's a certain classmate of ours who's had her eye on Chisato for a long time, and despite being told no a bunch she still won't give up. In the letter Chisato just got she's talking about formally submitting a marriage request to her parents! I thought it was pretty funny, but Chisato didn't seem as thrilled, you know?"

"I told her I was already engaged to someone else, and she said she'd give up but only after she meets the person in question."

"You're engaged?" Sayo asked, blinking in surprise.

"Of course not, which makes it difficult for me to fulfill that request. Of course I'm not obligated to listen to her, but if she does ask my parents to marry me it's going to turn into something more complicated than is preferable. Not that I can't get out of it, but if at all possible I'd like to avoid getting to that stage."

"It's easy, though, isn't it?" Hina's eyes were sparkling. "You just gotta get someone to pretend they're engaged to you and everything will be solved!"

"You're not volunteering for the part, are you?" Chisato said, looking at Hina dubiously. "I'm not convinced anyone's going to buy that we're engaged. Engaged in some shady business, maybe."

"Lisacchi, then?"

"I mean, I wouldn't mind doing it if Chisato wanted me to, but I'm not sure I'm exactly what she's looking for."

Chisato shook her head. "A lot of what's important in dealing with people like this is appearances, and regardless of what kind of person you are I don't think Lisa looks the part. But, well," she said thoughtfully, "speaking of looking the part…"

Sayo felt a chill run down her spine. "Surely you aren't suggesting I do it, are you? I can't see any way in which that turns out well."

"Why not? You're self-serious, work hard and excel in academics. My own preferences aside, you're exactly the kind of person my parents would find impressive."

"But your preferences do matter, if we're supposed to be engaged. I'm not convinced we'll be able to play the part of a happy couple."

"Do you dislike me that much, Sayo?"

"That isn't it, exactly. I just feel as though there are likely to be better people than me for the job."

"Well, I won't force you. But I seem to remember someone saying that she was deeply in my debt and, if I were ever in trouble, she'd do anything in her power to aid me. Which made sense, given I may have saved her life."

Sayo gritted her teeth. She had said that, years ago, and meant it—who knew what might have happened had Chisato not been there. But this wasn't the kind of trouble she'd anticipated helping with, and she couldn't shake the feeling that Chisato was doing this in large part because she knew Sayo would hate it.

"I'll do it," she said, capitulating. "Since you seem to want me to that badly."

"Excellent," said Chisato, and both Lisa and Hina grinned widely. Sayo fixed a glare in their direction.

"I won't forget this," she said, but that only served to widen the others' smiles.

"That might work on the younger girls, Sayo, but I've known you too long to think you're scary anymore," Lisa said, trying to affect seriousness and failing. "But I'll try and hold back on the teasing a bit, all right?"

"I won't!" chirped Hina, and Sayo felt a headache coming on already.

"So," Chisato said as they sat on the sofa in her and Hina's room, "the meeting is set for next week. Hopefully we won't need to do too much practice to get our stories straight, but I'd like to at least do enough so that it won't be too obvious we're faking it."

"That makes sense. So, er, what kind of information do you think will be important?"

"First of all, I think it's probably best to use as much real information as possible, because that reduces the amount of things we have to remember. So the two of us are old classmates who met because of our connection through your sister, when you fell in love with me at first sight."

"Did I."

"But rather than persistently declare your love for me, you kept it silent until the day of our graduation, when we'd become much closer. Swayed by your serious manner and honest, unvarnished way of speaking, I accepted your confession." Chisato said all of this with the demeanor of someone reading a particularly boring history book.

"I think I can remember all of that fairly easily. But why choose that backstory in particular?" Sayo asked, slightly curious.

"Everything is best when you do it thoroughly. I'd like to imply to her that the kind of romance I'm interested is the opposite of everything she's tried on me, just in case this doesn't make her give up. Incidentally, if she mentions anything about theatre, you hate it."

Sayo had begun to feel a little bad for the woman who'd so attracted Chisato's ire, whoever she was. Might there be something going on here beyond what Chisato had told her? But speculating about other people wasn't Sayo's favorite activity, so she brushed those thoughts out of her mind and obediently continued their practice.

"Your list says we could use a shared hobby, but I don't know that I have any good ideas," she said. She didn't have a whole lot of hobbies in the first place, and even fewer that she thought Chisato might reasonably enjoy.

"You both like Lisacchi a whole lot," Hina suggested from across the room, and Chisato shot her a dirty look.

"If you're not going to be helpful, then shut up," she snapped.

"It was the only think I could think of! You guys don't really like the same sorts of things, really."

"Perhaps a reason why this was a bad idea," Sayo said with a vaguely bitter tone.

"Well, if something doesn't really exist we'll just have to pretend as though it does."

"Is that your motto for life?"

"It might be. Well, I do have a dog, back at my family's house, so maybe we're both into animals…"

"That… might work, now that you mention it. I suppose we just need to dig a little harder for some of these questions."

"Now that's more like it," Hina said cheerfully. She wandered over and put an arm around each of their shoulders. "It might be fun if you guys started up a real relationship after this, don't you think?"

Neither Chisato nor Sayo dignified that with a response.

They arrived at the agreed-upon restaurant the next week, Sayo still feeling vaguely apprehensive about the whole situation. Was she just going to end up making a fool of herself and end up as the new target of Chisato's wrath? It seemed worryingly possible.

"That dress does look nice on you," Chisato said appreciatively. "Your normal clothes are so boring I hadn't noticed, but you clean up well."

"…Thank you." Hina had suggested Sayo wear a suit, originally, but that had been quickly vetoed by Chisato ("It's something she might wear, so absolutely not," she'd said) and so Sayo had ended up wearing a dark blue dress that bared the shoulders, borrowed from Lisa. To be quite honest, she wasn't used to wearing things quite as fancy as this, but Chisato was usually grudging enough with her praise that any compliment, even a backhanded one, probably meant it looked better than Sayo was imagining.

At one of the tables, a woman stood up, her somewhat ostentatious white suit making her stand out even in a room of well-dressed people.

"Chisato," she said, "how very nice to see you." Her full height was a good bit taller than either of them, and she exuded a certain aura of glamour—gaudiness, Chisato would no doubt call it—that put Sayo slightly off balance.

"Kaoru," Chisato replied, distaste evident in her voice.

"And who might this lovely lady you've brought along be? The rumored fiancée?"

"Er, that's right," Sayo said. "Hikawa Sayo. It's nice to meet you."

"Seta Kaoru, ally to beautiful women everywhere." Kaoru took Sayo's hand and kissed it, then sat down, Chisato and Sayo following suit. "In any case, it is not my plan today to interfere with the passionate atmosphere of love I can feel between the two of you. But I am curious about the woman who's so captured Chisato's heart."

"Well, ask away, then," Chisato said impatiently.

"In the end, there is one question that matters above all others, so I will first ask that. Sayo, will you promise to make Chisato happy?"

It was a heavier question than Sayo had expected, and hints of guilt began to bubble up in her. "Well," she said, thinking about how to be as honest as possible, "Chisato has done a lot for me and the people I care about. So if there were something I could do that would make her happy, I would do it."

Chisato gave her a strange look, but Kaoru seemed pleased. "A good answer, Sayo," she said, smiling gently. "I can tell you're the kind of person who means what she says."

"Unlike a certain person who dresses everything up to the point where all meaning is lost."

"Oh, but in the intricate combination of words beauty is born, and that beauty is meaning in itself, is it not? Were everything obvious, the indescribable emotion of the stage would fail to function… tell me, Sayo, do you like theatre?"

Sayo knew what answer Chisato was looking for her to give, but it felt a little rude to do so in this position, even if she wasn't entirely certain what Kaoru was talking about.

"To be honest, I don't have much familiarity with theatre," she said truthfully, then winced as Chisato kicked her under the table.

"Is that so? Well, if the feeling ever strikes you, I'd love to see you at a performance. You, too, may be stricken by the awe of acting!"

"I'll think about it," Sayo replied, and Kaoru nodded appreciatively. From there, the conversation drifted around to various topics, Sayo attempting, and largely failing, to keep pace with the other two, whose dynamic, despite its ostensible one-sidedness, seemed to be something both Kaoru and Chisato were long used to. Whatever it was she'd been dragged into, it didn't seem as simple as Chisato had originally suggested.

"…and the heroine of the play, once she has learned her lover's intimate secrets, can no longer return—"

"That makes a certain degree of sense, actually," Chisato said, interrupting Kaoru. "After all, I know plenty of intimate secrets about Sayo, don't I?" She smiled in Sayo's direction, and Sayo instantly panicked. Of course, she had never revealed anything to Chisato that could be described as intimate, but a certain person Chisato was close with certainly might have, and Sayo was intensely uninterested in finding out what it was that Chisato knew about her.

"Chisato… this maybe isn't quite the right place for that sort of discussion, is it?"

"For example," Chisato said, raising her voice, and then abruptly stopped. "You may be right, Sayo. Perhaps the rest is best left to Kaoru's imagination."

"Ah, love," said Kaoru. "Truly a wonderful thing!" Her attitude was exceedingly strange, Sayo thought, even aside from the obvious. If Kaoru really was that in love with Chisato, then it would make sense for her to be sad, or at least disappointed, at learning that Chisato was engaged to someone else. And yet Kaoru had shown none of that to either of them; rather, she seemed to be quite enjoying herself.

"And with that," Kaoru continued, "I think I shall take my leave. But before that, might I speak with Sayo in private for a brief moment?"

"Go ahead," Chisato said. "I'll be waiting outside."

After she left, Kaoru took Sayo's hand once more. "It makes me happy," she said, "to see that Chisato has such lovely friends. Really, it is that that I most came to see."

"Well, yes," Sayo said, once more unsure of how to respond to the sincerity, "that is nice."

"Whatever path the future takes, if she can find happiness, then how can I not be happy myself?"

Sayo suddenly found herself unable to resist asking the question that had been bothering her all afternoon.

"If you don't mind me asking, are you not upset to hear that Chisato isn't interested in marrying you?"

"Ah, but love is a mysterious thing, and who can tell what shape it may take? Good luck, Sayo, and perhaps our paths will cross again someday. If you'd like, the play I'm appearing in begins in a couple of weeks." Slipping a couple of tickets across the table, she smiled mysteriously and Sayo, still confused, was left behind as Kaoru swept her way out of the restaurant.

Wait. Had she called Sayo one of Chisato's friends, rather than her fiancée? A slip of the tongue, perhaps, or maybe…

In any case it wouldn't do to keep Chisato waiting, so she stepped outside as well.

"What did she want to tell you?" Chisato asked.

"It was a little bit difficult to understand, honestly," Sayo said, which wasn't entirely a lie. Whatever Kaoru had been trying to tell her, she didn't know how to properly convey it to Chisato.

Chisato sniffed. "That sounds like her. Once upon a time, you actually used to be able to tell what she was trying to say, you know."

"I see."

"To be honest, I don't think she'll stop bothering me even after this. But hopefully she'll at least give up this stupid plan of hers."

"Do you think she really wants to marry you?"

"Who knows? But I'm not interested in it, whatever she wants from me."

"She didn't seem like a bad person to me, though, regardless of her eccentricities."

Chisato gave Sayo another strange look. "You know," she said, "Lisa said more or less the same thing to me the first time she met Kaoru. You two have some strange similarities. Or maybe some of her eternal good-naturedness rubbed off on you."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Just an observation. In any case, thank you for your assistance. It was much appreciated, not to mention entertaining."

"Glad to be of service," Sayo said, and Chisato smiled. Then she walked off, leaving Sayo in a state of what she supposed was freedom, though it didn't exactly feel like it.

When Sayo returned to her room, Lisa was waiting for her patiently outside the door, rising up from her position leaning against the wall once she saw Sayo.

"Hey," she said. "How'd it go?"

"Not the way I'd expected. But not in an unpleasant way, exactly."

Lisa laughed. "Kaoru's kinda like that, huh? By the way, that dress looks real nice on you. As I expected!"

"Chisato said the same thing."

"Did she? I guess we've got similar tastes. The bare shoulders look nice too, they're different from your usual style."

"…Give me a second and I'll get changed." It hadn't been entirely bad, wearing clothes she wouldn't normally wear, but she didn't want to give Lisa the satisfaction of saying so.

"All right," Lisa said, following Sayo into her apartment. It took Sayo a short time to remove her dress and change into a more modest, comfortable skirt and blouse, by which point Lisa was sitting comfortably on her sofa and patting the spot next to it to encourage Sayo to sit next to her.

"Was there something you wanted to talk about?" Sayo asked.

"Not really. But I'm kind of curious about what it was like, being engaged."

"We've broken it off, I'm sorry to say."

"Oh, too bad. Well, Chisato's kind of got her own thing going on so I don't really anticipate this happening to either of us, but don't you ever wonder what'd happen if someone proposed to you?"

"I can't say I've ever thought about it."

"Well, what if someone proposed to me? What would you do then?" she asked, a hint of teasing to her voice.

"It would depend on what you wanted me to do, wouldn't it?"

"What if I said nothing? You just happened to hear it from someone else."

"I'm not sure I really understand what you're trying to get at here. You said you didn't want someone to save you from your troubles, before, but now it feels as though you're trying to goad me into saying just that."

"…You sure take stuff seriously, don't you, Sayo?"

"I'd think you would know that by now."

"I guess I do. I'm just a dumb girl who doesn't know what she wants. I meant what I said the other day, and I don't really think it would be good for either of us for you to do that kind of thing, but… I mean, there's definitely a part of me that would've been happy if you'd said you would save me from whoever was trying to steal me away."

Sayo sighed deeply. "I won't tell you you shouldn't feel that way, but… that sort of thing isn't going to be productive for either of us."

"Would you honestly be all right if I told you I was going to marry someone else?"

"I don't know that it would be my place to say anything." They'd spent more time together over the past couple of weeks, but Sayo was still being extremely careful around Lisa. Maybe there was a part of her, too, that wanted nothing more than to be Lisa's hero, but with proper self-regulation—theoretically something Sayo was good at—it wouldn't show its face. Or so she hoped.

"Huh," Lisa said. Sayo could guess that she hadn't given the answer Lisa had been hoping for, from her companion's expression. But she couldn't say what that answer was, or whether it would actually be correct in this particular situation.

"Kaoru gave me a couple of tickets to her play," she said, in an attempt to change the subject. "Is that something you'd be interested in?"

"Sure," Lisa said after a brief pause, then grinned. "That theater's kind of fancy, right? Wanna try out a different dress?"

"I'll consider it."

It had been an entertaining enough play, Sayo supposed, though she could hardly be said to have a discerning taste in theatre. After it had ended, they worked their way down to the dressing room to pay their respects to Kaoru, who was surrounded by admirers. Upon noticing Sayo and Lisa, her expression brightened, and she said, "Alas, my kittens, our time today must come to an end, for I have some special visitors. Until we meet again!"

The crowd quickly dispersed, and Kaoru greeted them in her usual manner. "So you came, Sayo, and Lisa as well. Two lovely flowers, and looking all the more lovely today. Did you enjoy your time? Were you dazzled by the thrill of this wonderful play?"

"I enjoyed it," said Sayo, and Lisa nodded in assent. "Sorry," she said apologetically, "I think I forgot something at my seat. I'll be right back."

Kaoru continued unfazed. "It is a wonderful thing, is it not? The way in which emotions flow from the actor to the audience."

"It was certainly an emotional play. The knight's sacrifice was quite moving, I have to admit."

Kaoru smiled. "Have you ever considered acting yourself, Sayo?"

"I don't believe I have, no. I'm not sure it's something I would have the aptitude for."

At Sayo's words, Kaoru shook her head. "Acting is not a matter of how good one is, but rather a matter of what one stands to gain from it. In your case… forgive me for saying so, but my impression of you was of someone who may not always be able to convey her emotions the way she wants to. But perhaps the stage might become a worthy conduit for those feelings."

"Perhaps," Sayo said. "Thank you for the suggestion, in any case."

After a second, Lisa returned, and they said their farewells.

"Do come again, my friends, should the desire strike you," Kaoru said, bowing with a flourish.

"I'll see you next week, then, Kaoru," Lisa said. "Don't get too behind on your assignments, all right?"

And with that, the two of them exited the theater, blinking faintly at the contrast between the darkened interior and today's bright sunlight.

"Thanks for the invitation, Sayo. It was a nice way to spend a day off!"

"I'm glad you enjoyed it."

"You've got good sense, by the way, Sayo. It's pretty romantic, inviting a girl to the theater, don't you think?"

"I wouldn't know. That sort of thing isn't my area of expertise."

"So it was an accident, inviting me?"

Sayo stopped walking and stared at Lisa. "I just don't get it," she said. "What do you want from me? Why won't you say it straight?"

"You're saying that, Sayo?" Lisa shot back, meeting Sayo's gaze unflinchingly. "Ever since we met again, you seem like you're totally determined to avoid letting me in at all costs. Like you think being friends means that we can't open up to each other at all. It's like talking to a brick wall sometimes, you know?"

"That isn't what I—"

"You know what, it's fine. Wanna head back?" She turned around and began walking in the other direction, and Sayo felt something close to panic assault her.

"Lisa."

"Yeah?"

"Whatever it is you want me to tell you, I'll do it. Just say the word."

There was a faintly mocking ring to Lisa's laughter as she turned around. "I don't want to tell you what to say, Sayo, not anymore. But if you have something you want to say to me, I'll listen."

Sayo took a deep breath and thought for a second. She wasn't an actress, not by any stretch, and she had no confidence in her ability to produce the kind of flowery language or emotional intensity that Kaoru could.

But at the very least, maybe she could be honest.

"I was in love with you," she said, "very much, back then. It's possible I still am now."

"That's the kind of thing I wanted to hear a long time ago, you know?"

"I… understand that. And understand that I might just be creating trouble for you by saying it now. But I want you to know that I really do care about you."

"In a romantic way?"

"That's, well, harder to say. But I do want to be someone you can rely on. Even if you feel like you're all alone, I want you to at least have me. To think of me as someone who you can go to whenever you're troubled. If possible, before anyone else."

Lisa was silent for a second, and Sayo felt awkwardness overcome her. "I get that it's selfish. But you asked for my honest feelings, so here they are."

Finally, Lisa let out a sigh and smiled. "Thanks, Sayo."

"For what?"

"For finally showing me the real you. Not the Sayo who tells me everything I want, or the one who hides her true feelings because she feels like it's the right thing to do."

"Is… that all?"

"If you're asking if we can be in the kind of relationship you want, well, like I said the other day, it's going to take time to get to that level. But the sentiment makes me happy."

"I don't need to be patronized—"

"That's not what I'm doing." Lisa laid her hand on Sayo's arm. "How could I not be happy, hearing that you think about me that way? I was always in awe of you, even before we'd ever really talked—the way you were so calm about everything, the way you accomplished whatever task was set before you but were never arrogant or unkind. To think that the person who can turn that Hikawa Sayo suddenly passionate is me… well, it's enough to make my ego swell, you know?"

"It could probably stand to swell a bit, couldn't it?" Sayo said, cracking a smile.

"So I guess what I want to say is that I'm looking forward to it too. Us reaching that point you were talking about. Because I care about you too, Sayo. Maybe not in the way I did back then, but still so, so much."

A response was prepared on Sayo's lips, but a sudden wave of emotion seized her and stopped it from coming out. Lisa smiled at her, the kind of smile she reserved for hopeless people she was still, for some reason, fond of. "Geez, don't cry, Sayo. People are going to think I'm being mean to you."

"Sorry," she finally managed to force out.

"Let's go home, why don't we? I'll make some food, and we can invite Hina and Chisato over. It'll be fun. What do you say?"

Sayo was silent for a second, more from emotion than from actually thinking about Lisa's proposal, and then felt Lisa's arms wrap around her.

"You all right, Sayo?"

"Yes." And then, "…I love you."

"I know that much." Lisa released her embrace and took Sayo's hand instead, laying a kiss on it. "Shall we go, my lady?"

"As you wish." And with that, they were off, Sayo once more being dragged to wherever Lisa wanted to take her. But this time, she hoped, she knew exactly where they were headed.