Chapter Text

Swear To My Bones

Cover Art by Ana Haynes

@aranciart on Twitter and Tumblr

Chapter I

A labyrinth of twisting stone stretched ahead of me to infinity as red and black rolling haze churned beneath my feet. To my left stood Ryuji, his eyes locked into focus, his face young and determined; and to my right crouched Morgana, his sword in his hand and his slingshot at his side. The rest of the team held steady behind me, equally poised, a collage of colorful eyes that all shared the same lightning.

Before us crept an ocean of patrolling Shadows, twisted and lethargic in their movements. While I was tired, and though my muscles ached, my spirit did not waver. That familiar flame blazed within my chest.

With a pounce I wrangled one of those dark monoliths, my fingers finding the corners of its mask and digging under it, pulling with all my might. It came off in a stringy mess of black as the Shadow collapsed into itself. In an instant, a Chimera leapt from that bubbling carcass, roaring with guttural bloodlust, eyes locked on me, claws outstretched and reaching.

I brought my hand to my face and from that burning in my chest came blue flames to my fingertips. I called for Arsene and he found me, guiding my hand, shattering the invisible chains that held still my heart, and in that moment I was self-assured and uninhibited and free.

He swooped to meet the Chimera mid-leap, and the scream of battle that ensued pulled me back into the world.

I woke slowly, and let my eyes adjust. In the grey light of morning that bled in from the closed curtains, I watched Haru's ribs slowly rise and fall with the metronome rhythm of deep sleep. She clutched the covers close, her fluffy hair buried in the pillow.

I turned and looked up at the ceiling. The adrenaline I'd felt coursing through my veins mere seconds ago had vanished without taper- now I felt only the soft sheets on my skin and the cool air conditioning in my lungs. The morning was silent, like cotton falling on snow.

I got out of bed slowly, so as not to disturb her, and made my way to the kitchen. I took a mug and a bag of my favorite blend from the cupboard, which I closed silently, before grinding the beans and setting the carafe to boil. Once everything was set, I turned to look out the window as the coffee brewed. Tokyo greeted me, still as stone, shrouded in morning mist.

It had been fifteen years since I'd been to the Metaverse, but the heavy air rife with crackling energy that had filled my dream felt vivid enough to make up for my absence. There had been a time when that realm felt like a twisted haven of sorts from the unjust world that it underlaid, but that time felt almost foreign now- something about it intangible, unreal, irrelevant. Dormant or fleeting, I couldn’t tell.

When the coffee was done, I turned and poured myself a cup. The steam billowed up from the mug like a ghost, arms reaching and spreading out into the morning air, finally released. I took a sip and heard Haru stir in bed the next room over, a few gentle creaks punctuating the silence. Before long, she appeared in the doorway, eyes half shut with sleep and soft voice singing a groggy “Good morning, you’re up early.”

“I had a weird dream,” I replied as I grabbed a second mug from the cupboard and started pouring her a cup.

“A dream?” she asked hazily. “What about?”

A moment of silence passed as I filled her mug to the brim and mixed in a single packet of sugar.

“We were in Mementos.”

She took it from me carefully and savored her first sip. “I’ve had dreams like that as well. It’s always exciting.”

We made our way over to the table. She always sat facing the window and I always sat with my back towards it- one of those subconscious habits people tend to adopt, I suppose. Her hair was ruffled from her sleep, and her brown eyes in the light revealed some intangible tiredness. The face before me was deeply familiar. Each eyelash was one I’d studied before.

We drank our coffee wordlessly, until I broke the silence. “You know who else was there? In the dream?”

A little anticipation tugged at the corners of her lips. “Who?”

“Morgana- but in his real form.”

She grinned and brushed her hair behind her ears. “I’d almost forgotten what he used to look like. I wish we’d kept pictures.”

“He had on that little mask. And he had his sword at the ready.”

She looked down, pondering something. I thought about how she used to look, too- I remembered so clearly her hat with the feather.

“Did you ever get the flour we needed?” she asked.

I nodded. “Mhm. I picked it up a few days ago.”

“Okay, that’s really great. I was worried we might run out today.”

We sipped our coffee quietly as the faintest sounds of a summer shower tapped on the window.

I stood up and brushed my hand against her hair as I made my way to the sink to put away my mug. “I’m gonna go check on Kunikazu.”

She watched me leave the room with a slow kindling in her eyes.

Kunikazu was asleep in his bed, Morgana curled up by his feet. I turned on the bedroom light and they groaned in unison.

“Akira… please… too early…” Morgana croaked, covering his eyes with his paws. My son had a similar reaction- turning himself over and slamming the pillow on his head.

“Come on, both of you. We’re helping mom with the cafe today.”

Another synchronized groan.

“I’ll make breakfast.”

They only stirred at first- but it wasn’t long before Kunikazu groggily lifted the covers and his adjusting eyes found me.

“Can we have omelettes?” he asked eagerly.

“Mmhmm.”

Kunikazu was our only child- if we weren’t counting Morgana. He had dark hair like mine, with a hint of Haru’s curl, and he’d turned eight years old just a few months ago. He was a kid with a razor sharp wit and an earnest, gentle heart. He was, of course, the light of my life.

“Fish omelettes,” suggested Morgana, now wide awake.

Kunikazu raised his brow at the cat. “There’s no such thing as a fish omelette.”

I told him to brush his teeth and get ready for the day, and left the two of them to wake up together- and to continue their debate over the existence of the fish omelette.

As soon as Kunikazu had learned to talk, we realized he was able to understand Morgana. We weren’t sure why this was- we only knew that we were going to have to deal with this wholly unique issue on our own terms as soon as our two year old son began happily chatting with the family cat. Long ago, the three of us had put our heads together and decided it probably had something to do with him being the son of two Persona users- perhaps as a result he would have a stronger connection to the Metaverse in some way, but we gave up trying to find out exactly where the ability came from long ago. He and Morgana were very close- they did almost everything together.

Back in the kitchen, my wife was finishing up her cup of coffee and marking away at her calendar. I hovered over her as she worked, and rested my hands lightly on her narrow shoulders.

“They’re up. Can I get you anything for breakfast?”

“A pastry, please,” she replied, grimacing over the schedule. “Thank you.”

I turned on the stove and for a brief instant felt the kick of gas pervade the indoor morning air. The burner lit with a few clicks, and I opened the fridge to get some eggs. One by one, I cracked them on the rim of one of Haru’s favorite ornate bowls and whipped their yolks into a creamy yellow. The house was silent, save for my cooking and some muffled high-pitched conversation from Kunikazu’s room down the hall.

Haru marked some scribbles on her calendar. “Hey, you can take him to school tomorrow, right?”

“Of course,” I replied.

“Thank you.”

While the eggs bubbled gently in their pan, I took a cherry pastry from the cupboard and prepared it on a plate with a napkin and a glass of water. Haru only liked the cherry pastries- we had a pantry full of them. I set it on the table for her and she gave me a little grin, not quite looking up from her work.

“Is there fish in them?” Kunikazu inquired as he entered the room, wearing some sweatpants and a printed t-shirt.

“Not today,” I answered.

Morgana, at his heel, scowled. “Guess it’s kibble for me this morning, then.”

Haru kissed Kunikazu good morning as I prepared everyone’s plates. The clinking of each item against the countertop had become the minimalist soundtrack of our Sunday morning ritual, and now it played with hushed accents over the scene. I set the plates down and Haru put away her calendar. Steam from the hot omelettes billowed forth like smoke from the summits of tiny smoldering volcanoes.

I seated myself at the circular table. Morgana had been serious about his protest, and crunched on some kibble near the stove.

“Mona-chan,” Haru asked. “Do you want any of my pastry, perhaps?”

He shook his head dramatically. “I’ll have a meal or nothing at all!”

“Suit yourself,” I said, cutting into my omelette.

A quiet moment passed as we ate. When I looked up, I thought I glimpsed some distant thought swimming behind Haru’s eyes- but in an instant, it was gone.

The quaint morning all but disappeared in the hot and hectic rush that followed. Okumura Cafe had humble beginnings- Haru had started work on it soon after we started dating- but in the past four years or so it had really started to snowball into popularity. The early mornings that were once quaint and sparsely populated had become bustling and frantic, particularly on Sundays. Most mornings, I was here, helping Haru run everything smoothly and doing my best to outwardly represent the sincerity she so deeply valued at the core of her business.

Today, Kunikazu and I were helping with brews and korokke in the back while Haru was taking orders and waiting tables.

“Hey Dad?” Kunikazu asked. “How did people first think to drink coffee?”

I thought about it. It was kind of an odd thing to try.

“Well, I’m not really sure. I imagine someone tried because the beans smelled good.”

“There’s just a lot of steps,” he continued. “They have to cook the seeds, right?”

“That’s right.”

“So who thought to cook a seed!? And drink it?”

I imagined that a lot of people died eating things back in ancient times, but I held my tongue about that.

“People are definitely weird,” I said.

“Cats are weird, too.”

Morgana gave his very expected- and impressively consistent- reply from somewhere past the storage closet: “I’m not a cat!”

Just as I’d finished the brew, Haru opened the kitchen door and poked her head in, her fluffy hair bouncing.

“I hate to bother you,” she asked sweetly. “But do you think you could help me out here for a moment?”

I patted my hands dry on my apron and nodded.

She made her way out of the kitchen to the front of the store and I followed, examining her back as she walked with that muted urgency I’d grown familiar with. She wore a light pink blouse and a clean white apron, and I suddenly realized I’d been wearing the same apron since my days with Sojiro at LeBlanc. It was a little strange; I’d never been particularly passionate about coffee, but it felt like I shared some fateful link to it- I’d been living above cafes for the greater half of my life, after all, through no real desire of my own.

The front end of the shop was a mess. Itsuo, one of our part-time high school employees, was struggling to understand a suit-wearing man who was half yelling into his phone and half ordering something large and complicated while a line of four or five impatient businessman built up behind him. Each of our booths were completely full, forcing a few patrons to stand around and wait for their order. A confused cashier, backed up service, a spill unattended to on the wood floor- another Sunday morning at Okumura Cafe.

“We’ll handle the tables,” Haru assessed. “That should take a bit of pressure off of Itsuo.”

I nodded. “Want me to do something about the spill?”

She looked over at it, and her cheeks flushed. She must not have noticed it. “No, no. I’ll handle it. You’re doing enough.” She took a short breath. “Thank you.”

With that she headed over to the booths, clasping her hands together beneath her collarbone and greeting the seated man with genuine appreciation. “Good morning sir! Welcome to Okumura Cafe!”

I followed her example with significantly less charm, approaching a quiet middle aged man playing with a straw wrapper in the adjacent booth and asking him if there was anything I could get for him.

“One cup of black.” he replied simply.

I nodded and headed towards the back to fetch his order, passing Haru’s exchange with her customer and pausing when I heard:

“...waiting here for a good half an hour.”

I stopped and observed the situation, just in case she needed a hand. It wasn’t rare for customers to take blatant advantage of her kind nature.

“I’m very sorry, we’re just so busy.” she responded, true concern in her voice. “I can get you something on the house, if you’d like.”

“Don’t give me that act,” the man scoffed. “I’m not sure why you’re prancing around here like that when there’s a spill right in the middle of the floor. I nearly broke my neck on it.”

“I’m truly very, very sorry.” She stuttered a bit. “W-We’re going to get that cleaned up right away for you. I hope you weren’t hurt.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll get on it right away, sir. Did you know what you wanted to order?”

“Let’s talk when my area’s clean. That’s the first step.”

She nervously fidgeted with her apron. “Of course. Sorry.”

He turned his attention back to his phone. I’d seen countless men like him before- the sort of man who took every meager chance he could to make himself feel powerful. Haru turned around and wordlessly headed for the storage closet, eyes cloudy. I followed her.

“Let me clean up the spill,” I offered. There was no reason why she had to do that right now. I wasn’t very good at speaking to customers anyway, and that was where she shined.

“You’re doing enough. It’s more than I could ask for.”

For a quick moment she leaned against the counter, closed her eyes, and took a short breath.

Running this cafe with her had taught me one valuable lesson- food service patrons were vicious assholes. The first time I said “Someone needs a change of heart at table 4,” Haru laughed so hard she spilled the cup she’d been carrying. I found myself wishing I would’ve saved that joke for this moment instead.

“It’s just a spill,” she said. “Don’t worry so much.”

And with that she grabbed the mop and some paper towels and went back to keep doing what she’d always done- breathing in the parts of the world that were hard, jagged, and foul and breathing them out soft, sweet, and beautiful.

The morning was hard work, but it went on as usual. Haru managed to keep everything running without issue for most of the day, and as she preoccupied herself with pursuing perfection, I found myself drifting away from my work- like my mind was somewhere outside, shrouded in the sunshower.

Now it was around eight, just as the sun was starting to settle over the bronze horizon. Kunikazu was playing videogames with Morgana’s help in his room, and I decided to take a shower and start getting ready for bed. I liked getting ready early, letting my warm hair dry itself as I lounged in a towel, feeling sleep creep over me slowly and never all at once.

The bathroom mirror fogged as the shower heated up. I watched myself slowly vanish into the mist.

As I stepped into the shower and massaged the hot water through my hair, I thought about my Mementos dream. I wondered if Arsene was still with me- if that part of me saw us at the cafe today, through my eyes, and watched me as I worked.

When I got out of the shower, I lay in bed for a while, looking up at the textured white of the ceiling and watching the dark corners of evening slowly spread like moss across the room. Haru emerged from her own shower, smelling like cinnamon and daffodils, dressed in her oversized sleeping shirt and purple plaid pajama bottoms. She climbed into bed beside me with an exhausted sigh.

After a long silence of settling in, she spoke groggily. “I wish we had space for a garden here.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but her breath already carried with it the shallowness of sleep.

The sun rose to the sound of birds singing on the telephone wires outside. When I opened my eyes, a sight so gorgeous greeted me that I couldn’t be sure I was awake. Summer shimmered outside the window in glorious motion- sun-pierced leaves swayed lazily against a backdrop of crystalline blue as rolling white clouds, like mountains, cascaded against one another in the skies. Our street below shone in the light, little crystals embedded in black gleaming, building faces hand-painted with bright color and deep shadow.

“It’s beautiful today, isn’t it?” Haru asked. “Nothing like that ugly rain yesterday.”

I turned to see her illuminated in the morning light, wearing her pink blouse and apron, her hair held back with a hairband. She looked classically beautiful- something that channeled the smell of home cooking and fresh flowers.

I nodded. Although I liked the rain too, today was something else.

“You’re up early,” I observed.

“I thought I’d get a head start on everything. I don’t want things falling apart like yesterday.”

I climbed out of bed and she gave me a quick morning kiss, her lips as warm as the summer air. Then she looked at me, her brown eyes clairvoyant in the sunshine.

“You can still take Kunikazu to school, right?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Okay.”

Then, unexpectedly, she drew me into a hug. Her hands gripped my back with a certain urgency, her hair soft like feathers against my neck. I hugged her back, and she held on tightly, pressing her head into my shoulder. Her breathing felt anxious. We stood like that for a moment, until she released me and walked back into the bathroom, closing the door without another word. The birds outside chirped gleefully, muffled through the glass.

Kunikazu was already dressed in his uniform and ready to leave when I went to his room to wake him, and that’s when I realized how late I’d slept in. There was no time to cook, and so I got Kunikazu one of Haru’s pastries from the pantry and we hurried out the door, down the stairs, and onto the street.

Here, the sun was even more brilliant. The world simply went on and on- no screen or window to box it in, the streets and powerlines and the clouds all bleeding into a single massive painting, a still backdrop against which we moved as we made our way to the station. Kunikazu ate his pastry and looked around at the pastel scene.

The crowds weren’t too thick, but they were definitely tangible. A shifting and scattered mass of men and women ebbed and flowed around us, all black and white, almost indistinguishable from one another. They reminded me somehow of electrons, or how I imagined electrons would look. I thought back to my chemistry class at Shujin- diagrams on the blackboard, language that described motion, unpredictability- mindless scattering that held up the world.

“I don’t like going to school.” Kunikazu said plainly, between bites.

“Why not?” I asked him.

“It’s boring.”

I suppose he wasn’t wrong about that part. I did well enough in school, but I never particularly enjoyed it.

“The classes might be boring,” I replied. “But what about your friends?”

“They’re pretty boring, too.”

For a moment I thought back on my days when I was his age- trying to remember how I felt about school back then, or friends, or anything. I was surprised at how few memories came. I remembered getting in trouble a lot- constant write ups, lectures, and punishment at home. But not too many friends, and the friends that came to mind were now distant names and shapes, formless and memorialized, long gone.

“It gets better,” I assured him. “Once you get a little older, your friends will change and you’ll be grateful for them.”

“Okay,” he said.

I thought about my dream, those youthful faces, their electric eyes.

We arrived at the station and I sent him on his way, down the stairs, to ride the line to school alone.

I floated back to the cafe as the sun perched itself over the world. The buildings that bordered the street looked like the walls of a concrete canyon, all the signs and billboards like little imperfections on a desert rock face.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Ryuji or Ann in almost a year, and that I hadn’t seen any of the others for at least two. I felt almost guilty about the way I spoke to Kunikazu, always telling him this or that, letting him know when things would be better and how, when in reality I had no idea what path his life would take, and neither did anyone else.

Last I knew, Makoto was somewhere out in California, Futaba was living in Osaka, and Ryuji and Ann were moving into a new place not far outside of Shibuya, although I couldn’t recall exactly where. Yusuke may as well have been a ghost- I hadn’t seen him in the longest time out of any of them, and I didn’t have a clue where he might be. Something about that didn’t feel right, like the compass in my head couldn’t find north.

When I turned the corner onto our street, every thought in my head dropped to my stomach and exploded at once. A fire truck sat parked on the curb in front of the cafe, siren screaming at uneven intervals and lights flashing, as a panicked commotion echoed from a crowd that hovered around the scene. I searched for Haru’s shape among the countless others, but didn’t find it.

Now my stomach was a forest fire and my footsteps were cracking tree branches as I jogged up to the cafe, pushing my way wordlessly through the crowd. I spotted the yellow jacket of a firefighter, and grabbed his shoulder from behind.

My mouth was dry as bone. "This is my house. What happened?"

He turned and looked at me without a modicum of concern, like his eyes were goddamn rocks.

"There was a fire in the kitchen."

"My wife, is she alright?"

"There's a woman inside, yes. She's okay."

I brushed past him and went to the front door of the cafe, opened it, and hurried in. I took a sharp right past the counter into the kitchen, muttering some things under my breath, little comforts without form.

Haru stood shaken in the middle of the kitchen, drenched in water from the sprinklers in the ceiling, hair dark and matted, her eyes glazed over with shocked confusion. I went to her.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded, dazed. “Mmhm, yes, I am. The stove...”

I looked past her. The entire stovetop must’ve caught fire- leaving the countertop and oven charred black and deformed, warped like a metal fungus. The damage spanned about a third of the entire kitchen, but was worst at the far wall. Soot and ash and smoke floated in the air and coated the white tile floor in a sickly grey film. The sprinklers still misted the scene as two firefighters squatted close to the damage, inspecting it.

She looked at me, at first the words catching in her throat. “I don’t really understand.”

“It isn’t your fault,” I told her.

“I didn’t even see what happened… ”

One of the firefighters must have noticed me come in. He stood up and approached us, his demeanor rigid and stern, like a human tree trunk.

“The fire came awfully close to hitting the gas line,” he said matter-of-factly. “This could have been much worse.”

At that Haru shuddered and inhaled sharply, completely harrowed. She looked cold in her wet clothes.

“Thank you,” I said, pulling the man aside. “Is everything okay now? Is there anything we need to do?”

“We’ve already turned off your gas line. You won’t be able to turn that back on until the damage is repaired properly. Beyond that, there’s very little else we can do here, save for turn off the sprinklers.”

He chewed on some tobacco in his lip, and brushed his scraggly beard with his fingers. I imagined that all he did was fight fires and sleep. “Had it burned for another few minutes, the gas line would have exploded and killed everybody here. Next building over maybe, too.”

I looked at him. His eyes were grey and didn’t know how to tell a lie.

I took Haru to one of the booths to sit down and the firefighters turned off the sprinklers and left. I thanked them for their help on their way out but they all ignored me, save for the one I spoke to in the kitchen, who gave me simply an affirmative nod. The crowd of customers dispersed from the front of the store and the fire truck pulled away silently, and in what felt like mere seconds the shop was silent as a graveyard, it’s new state cemented in reality.

Haru just sat there and stared at the table, her breathing slow, her hair dripping, her eyes filled with a thousand thoughts.

“Come on,” I told her. “Let’s go upstairs and dry off.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

We opened the door to a very angry and confused Morgana.

“What the hell happened, guys?” he spat. “I heard a huge commotion and I couldn’t even get down there!”

His demeanor softened when we entered. “Is she okay?”

“I’m okay, Mona,” she said quietly. “We really do need to get you a cat door.”

I explained the situation to Morgana and then we went to the bedroom as he rushed downstairs to see the damage. I picked Haru out some dry clothes from the closet and handed them to her as she undressed in the bathroom. She emerged disheveled, her hair towel-dried and her under-eyes dark. She sat down on the side of the bed, supporting herself with her hands, looking down at the floor.

“It isn’t your fault,” I told her, taking a seat, the bed creaking with stress as I did so.

“I don’t really want comforting right now, I don’t think.”

“I’m not comforting you. I’m being honest.”

“I opened the shop alone,” she said plainly. “I turned the stove on, and I left it on, and then I left the room. Then, it caught on fire.”

The ceiling fan spun quietly above our heads with an electronic whirr. I wasn’t sure what to say.

“I suppose that’s right,” I said.

She nodded. “I know.”

A brief moment of silence passed as she searched for words.

“I was taking orders by the booths,” she said. “And then, I heard this really loud pop. For some reason, my first thought was that it was a gun. Like in Mementos. Everyone in the cafe looked up. And all of a sudden there was smoke pouring out of the doorway. And I just stared. It was so…”

She leaned back and lay down on the bed, and I did the same. We both stared up at the spinning ceiling fan.

“...strange,” she concluded. “Because I didn’t even move, or panic. Everyone just got up from their seats and left very quickly. One moment they were all sitting there, and before I even knew it, it was just me and the fire.”

I watched her recall it all, her eyes tracing the spinning wooden blades above us.

“And then I realized that it was me who had to deal with this,” she continued. “Like it was some great revelation- like, Oh, I should probably do something about the fire .”

She shook her head. “I just walked into the kitchen, calmly. I wasn’t afraid of the fire at all. I didn’t even feel urgent about it. I just went to look. Like I was curious. And that’s when the sprinklers turned on.” She took a deep, long breath. “And before I knew it, I was hearing sirens, and the firefighters were there, and then so were you.”

She turned and looked at me, a sad guilt written on her face.

“Is that bad?” she asked me. “I feel like that wasn’t how it was supposed to feel.”

I looked her in her hazel eyes, tainted now with grey. Gone was their brilliant shine from the sunlight of morning.

“I’m not sure,” I answered honestly.

She sighed to herself. “Hm.”

We didn’t speak for a moment. Outside I heard someone honk their car horn. Summer went on as usual.

I pictured her standing in that kitchen as the sprinklers poured down, as the fire raged on the stovetop, just watching. Pictured that flame burning closer and closer to the gasline, inches away, seconds away, and how my entire world would have been obliterated in a single flash of white hot energy, like it never existed. I would’ve returned home to a crater. I couldn’t fathom it. Instead I chose to study the fabric on my wife’s shirt as little dust planets floated in a sunbeam, and to let that other reality fade into nothingness, unacknowledged, unreal.

“Do you remember that first summer,” she asked me, “when we moved here together?”

I nodded. “Everyone helped with the boxes. And we were juggling Kunikazu from house to house almost every night.”

“And Morgana kept trying to carry boxes on his back.”

I remembered that. He was stubborn, that couldn’t be denied. “I think he actually managed one of the smaller ones, didn’t he?”

“He never let any of us forget it,” she recalled, smiling to herself. “He kept saying he’d done more than Ryuji.”

She searched for something in my eyes. “That was a really good summer.”

It had been. Kunikazu had been just a baby, and the cafe below had been an abandoned bookstore. It had all felt new and charged back then, like every floorboard was brimming with an energy we sipped from with every new day, as we restructured and recreated and made it all our own.

“It was.”

“Today,” she said with a deep melancholy, “I couldn’t believe I was watching the same house burn. It was like those memories weren’t made here.”

I lightly combed my fingers through her hair. Her gaze fell to the bed sheets. It lingered there for a long while.

“I miss them,” she said. “I think I want to see them again, if we can.”

“I’d like that,” I replied.

We spent the rest of the day lazing around at home. Haru took a long shower and I made myself some food in the kitchen and talked to Morgana about how ugly firetrucks were. I got Kunikazu from the train station in the afternoon and told him what had happened, but he didn’t seem too surprised, or particularly concerned. For him, it was just another thing that had happened. We watched one of Haru’s favorite TV shows about gardening, although it was a rerun, and I made a call to a local contractor to get a head start on the kitchen repairs. Outside, I knew the world was blooming, but inside, the world just felt small.

The next morning, I sent Ryuji a text. Haru dozed quietly next to me, unmoving, her breaths rhythmic and calm. I was glad her mind had seemed to settle.

“Hey Ryuji, how’ve you been?” I typed, pressing send after a quick proofread.

Before I could even put down the phone down, it buzzed with Ryuji’s reply:

“DuDE! What’s up? I was just gonna text you yesterday!!!?”

I smiled.

Some things never change.