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It was because of Shiori that Juri first met Tsuchiya Ruka.
It was back in their first year of middle school, before everything had fallen apart, before anything had fallen apart. They had still been best friends, and had thought that they would be forever. Shiori had talked about sword fights and brave knights, and Juri, twelve years old and oblivious to why she liked to watch the way Shiori’s hands moved when she talked, signed up to learn to fence.
“You have potential,” Ruka had said to her; at twelve Juri was pretty sure adults said that to everyone, and hadn’t realized that three years wasn’t that much older than her, but she had still glowed at it and come back the next week. When it became clear that she was sticking around he pulled her aside and taught her one-on-one. Just the two of them in that high-up room with its faded tiles.
At thirteen, when Juri had realized the truth about herself — well, she’d told Shiori everything, before then. They’d been best friends and there had been no secrets between them. But she obviously couldn’t tell Shiori this, and so she had told Ruka.
She’d told him everything, and he had listened, and when Juri had said in her thirteen-year-old melodrama (her arms wrapped around her folded legs, her chin pushed into her knee) that it would take a miracle for her to be happy like this, he had hugged her and told her it would be okay. He was bigger than Juri and he held her firm and tight. At thirteen, when Juri had still believed in miracles and in shoulders to cry on, that had been a good thing.
The one-on-one fencing lessons became long rambling conversations, alone in the room with the faded tiles on the bench that looked out at the sky. Ruka had given her a locket for her birthday and Juri had known, immediately, whose picture would go in it.
Shiori had complained that Juri was getting distant. Juri, thirteen-almost-fourteen and all too aware of why she liked to watch how Shiori’s hands moved when she talked, hadn’t known what to say, and so she just... didn’t answer. If she didn’t say the right thing, at least she wasn’t saying the wrong one.
(Maybe that was where things had gone wrong. Or maybe it was earlier than that, when they were children and had promised each other to be friends forever without thinking of what that meant, or maybe even earlier than that. She’d been melodramatic at thirteen, but she wasn’t convinced she’d been wrong.)
And then Juri graduated middle school and joined the fencing club properly, as a high schooler, and Shiori left Ohtori with the boy she thought she had stolen, and it was just Juri and Ruka alone. The room where he taught her to fence became a refuge and Juri had felt safe in it, and then —
And then —
And then she had not cried on anyone’s shoulder. Had not asked for a hug, and had not received one. Instead she’d taken a lot of showers, and fantasized about miracles.
-
It was only Juri, Miki, and Nanami at the student council meeting, which Juri had gotten used to during Saionji’s expulsion, but was still kind of strange now that he’d been readmitted and Touga had rejoined them. Relaxing, though. Without Saionji or Touga around there were fewer mind games. And in some ways it was nice to be the oldest person in the room.
“So,” she said, the first to break the silence. “Ruka’s back.” She was staring out at the sky, her face away from the other two. It was a clear day. Solid blue, without a cloud to break up the flat color.
“Great,” said Nanami. “Who’s Ruka?”
Which was, Juri thought, the downside of being the oldest person in the room. If Saionji or Touga were here they’d know him or at least know of him, they were both seniors and had been in high school when he’d left, but of course Miki and Nanami wouldn’t, they’d both have been in elementary school. “He’s the fencing club captain.”
That afternoon Ruka had taken his mask off in the fencing hall and said in front of everyone there that he shouldn’t have hoped Juri would improve in his absence. Juri had not allowed herself to freeze up, had not had any feelings at all (hadn’t been prepared, not like she used to for every meet, but Ruka had been gone for long enough that she’d come to feel safe on the piste —)
The click of Miki’s stopwatch. “But Juri-san, I thought you were the acting captain.”
Yes. After more than two years, so had she. “I’ve... just been managing things in his absence,” she said, and tried not to care too much about it. It was going to be harder to fence, if she had to see him every club meeting, but maybe she could offer to tutor Miki or Utena or some of the girls from the club privately and practice that way —
“Oh.” Miki was quiet. “I had no idea.”
No, you wouldn’t, I don’t like to talk about him, Juri did not say, because then she would have to explain why she didn’t like to talk about him, and some things she did not want to say to Kiryuu Nanami or for that matter to anyone.
“Great,” Nanami said again, still sounding intensely bored and intensely thirteen. “So what the heck is he doing back here?”
“I’m hurt, Nanami-kun,” said a voice from the shadows, and Juri went stiff.
Had he been on the student council? She didn’t remember. She couldn’t remember seeing him in the council uniform, but she couldn’t remember seeing him in the regular boys’ uniform either, he’d always been in fencing gear when they’d spent time together. Touga would have known but Touga wasn’t here —
“Is that any way to talk to an upperclassman who’s been away sick?” Ruka was saying, and Juri was quietly, quietly grateful that she was already facing away, that whatever her face was doing did not betray her.
Nanami gulped and apologized and Juri did not waver. Did not turn towards Ruka as he explained the patently obvious, that after so long away due to his illness, he had now returned. Did not watch him loom over Nanami (he was exactly as tall as Juri remembered him, somehow, even though she’d grown in the last two years; she had half-convinced herself he couldn’t possibly be as much taller than her as he’d been in her memories, she’d just been small in most of them, and then he was —) and didn’t respond when Nanami, stutteringly, congratulated him on his newfound health.
“Thank you,” Ruka said, and Juri could hear his smile. “End Of The World seems to be unhappy with you all. He complains you’ve lost your nerve.”
“So you’ve been chosen too, then?” Juri said. She still wasn’t looking at him. She didn’t remember a ring on his finger but she wasn’t sure she would have, before she’d known what the rings meant, and maybe he’d taken it off to fence —
“Are you going to challenge Tenjou-san too?” Miki asked, painfully sincere.
Ruka laughed. “I’ve only just recovered. I think I’ll take it easy, actually.” He came to stand just behind Juri. She didn’t move away however much she wanted to. (It had been months before she’d been able to relax with anyone behind her.) “I’ve been away for a long time, after all. Maybe I’ll have a normal school life.”
After two years and change, Juri could still recognize the way Ruka’s voice tilted when he was joking. She didn’t laugh. It wasn’t funny.
-
Girls, it seemed, adored Ruka. Juri wasn’t sure if that was more true now that he was a mysterious, handsome newcomer, or if she just hadn’t noticed before because she’d been thirteen and caught up in her own girl troubles. Either way, there were more spectators at fencing club meets than there had ever been before.
The way Ruka flirted with club members while adjusting their stances or explaining a move, though, was definitely new. If he’d done that before, Juri would never have accepted lessons from him in the first place.
(Maybe that would have been better. Maybe it would have saved her a world of pain. Or maybe it just would have driven her away from fencing, away from the sport she loved, away from any shot at the miracle it would take for her to be happy.)
Juri watched as Ruka made a girl blush bright and blatant, touched her far more than he needed to in order to explain what she was doing wrong, tucked her hair behind her ear for her instead of telling her to wear it tied up. And when Shiori stared down at Ruka from the balcony, a flash of familiar orchid purple in the corner of Juri’s eye —
Well, Juri watched that too.
Something happened in the locker rooms — Juri didn’t know what, she was always very careful to make sure that the locker rooms were empty by the time she was in them — and Shiori and Ruka became the talk of the school.
Juri didn’t comment, and she and Shiori were distant enough these days that nobody asked her to. That was — a good thing, objectively, even if it hurt to think about, it was good that she was not asked to have an opinion on Shiori and her new boyfriend, that she was not asked to think about Ruka with the girl she loved.
Juri took a lot of showers, and tried not to watch too obviously the way Shiori hung off Ruka’s arm like she was a prize for him, tried not to listen too closely when strangers discussed how quiet Shiori had always been and how cool it was of her to go for it when she decided she wanted Ruka. Tried not to think about how if Juri and Shiori were walking like that, the gossip would not be about how cool they were.
(The girl Juri had grown up with had been shy until you spent enough time around her that she decided she liked you, and then she had been talkative and intense. She had talked with her hands, when she trusted you. These days Shiori kept her hands clasped in front of her, holding her bag, and she looked pretty and feminine and sweet and it made Juri’s heart ache.)
“I want to talk to you,” Juri said to Ruka after a fencing meet. “You know where.”
-
“I’m glad you remembered this place,” Ruka said. “It brings back so many old memories.”
It did, being here with him again. Juri spent more time in this room than she probably should, but before Ruka’s return it had been hers and hers alone, in a way that even her dormitory wasn’t.
Outside the windows the sky was blue and clear. How many times had they sat together on this bench, talking about nothing and everything? How many times had they sparred here, with no stakes and nothing to win or lose? (And then the last time she’d been here before Ruka left the school two years ago had been when he’d — she wasn’t going to think about that.)
“I taught you everything I knew here,” he continued. He was sprawled on the bench that used to be theirs, limbs outstretched. Juri stood next to it, her face turned away from him. Her shoulders were so tense it almost hurt. “You were brilliant, you know that? From your first time coming to the club you had so much potential.”
Yes. She knew. He’d told her. “You’re the captain of the fencing team,” Juri said, “and I leave the management of the club in your hands.” Even if it did make her feel a little bit sick, how Ruka blatantly flirted with girls he was captaining. “And whatever you’re plotting as a Duelist is none of my concern.”
“Oh?”
Juri steeled herself and said what she’d come to this room at all to say. “But keep your hands off Shiori.”
On the bench behind her Ruka shifted. “Why?”
“She’s...”
Her oldest friend, her childhood crush, the girl she loved — the image of an orange rose, of the boy Shiori had once thought she’d stolen, of Shiori at twelve with her hands in motion, if you really believe in miracles — she had told Ruka at thirteen that she was in love with her best friend and didn’t know what to do, but he hadn’t known Shiori then, he might not know who she was — or maybe he did, and just wanted to make her say it. Her locket rested heavily over her breastbone.
“She’s an old friend of mine,” Juri said.
“I see. But I think there’s something you’re misunderstanding.” Ruka stood up.
Juri did not bristle. Some part of her was screaming, even though his footsteps were moving away from her, not towards.
“What?” she said, and tried not to let the screaming show.
“Like I said, I’m just living a normal life right now. And I’m free to fall in love with anyone I want, aren’t I?”
By the time Juri opened her mouth to speak, Ruka had left, and she was alone again against a backdrop of blue.
-
It wasn’t that Juri was waiting for Shiori at the fountains. She had never been waiting for Shiori at the fountains; she’d been sitting by the fountains at night since before Shiori had ever transferred back to Ohtori.
But if there was someone there to be a witness if Ruka hurt her — if she could tell what they were doing, if she could reassure herself that Shiori was okay — if she could just see Shiori — well, it wasn’t exactly a downside.
Shiori ran to meet Ruka. Juri held her locket tight and tried not to let that sting. (She had once run to meet Juri that way, when they were small, when they had been friends — but Ruka was a boy and he got to have her and Juri was not and did not and she had accepted that, she wasn’t thirteen, she knew a miracle wasn’t going to happen —)
She couldn’t hear what they were saying, not over the fountain, but when they kissed Ruka looked Juri in the eye over Shiori’s head.
He knows, was her first thought, which was absurd, because of course he knew, he had already known. Juri herself had told him. But she couldn’t think of anything but the way he’d looked at her every time she’d showed up at fencing practice after he’d —
After he’d —
The water stopped. Ruka and Shiori left. Juri stood still, watching the dry, empty fountain under the blank blue night, for much too long before she managed to move again and try to go back to bed.
-
The sunset had come early; the light through the window of Shiori’s classroom was tinted orange as flame. Shiori’s hair glowed in it. She looked up, smiling brightly, and then her face twisted into something sweet and false when she saw that it was only Juri. Juri wished very much that she didn’t care.
“Oh, Juri-san! What’s going on?”
The last time they’d talked properly had been in the fencing hall at nearly-sunset, when Shiori had told Juri she was pretty when she hurt and had touched her chest and had held her locket like a prize and had pulled a sword out of her chest. The light had been blazing orange and Shiori’s hair had glowed in it.
Juri had considered for nearly twenty minutes in the shower how best to approach the subject, how to soften the fact that it had been months since she and Shiori had last said anything to each other but pleasantries in the halls. But what she wound up saying, faced with Shiori smiling at her syrupy-sweet in the orange light, was “It would be better if you stayed away from Ruka.”
“Oh?” There was something so familiar in the way she said it — like they were in middle school again and Shiori was inviting the boy she had thought Juri loved to go on gossiping, like a locket was about to fall out of her hand, to be dangled in front of Juri’s face like bait or a trophy or both — except the locket sat heavy and skin-warmed against Juri’s breastbone, securely under her shirt; she hadn’t thrown it away again, hadn’t been strong enough — she needed to stop thinking about this —
“I... know we haven’t talked much recently,” which was the understatement of the month, good god she needed to get a grip on herself, “but I’m worried about you. He’s — not someone you can trust —”
“Juri-san,” Shiori said, still smiling sweetly.
Juri stopped dead. She couldn’t have looked away from Shiori in that moment if she’d tried. Shiori’s hair glowed copper-violet in the sunset light; she stood the exact same way she had when she’d put her hand on Juri’s chest and pulled a sword from her sternum and left Juri half-apart on the floor.
“You’re the worst,” Shiori said. She was still smiling. “You haven’t spoken to me in what, a month? Two? And the first thing you do is tell me not to date a boy? Don’t act like you care.”
Juri stood there, frozen to the spot — just like she had in the fencing hall when Shiori had — no stop it she needed to get a grip —
“Shiori, what are you doing?” said someone from the hall. Juri stared at the empty desks, and listened to their voices fade into the background.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, nothing,” Shiori said cheerily.
“You’re so brave, Shiori, Arisugawa-senpai is terrifying,” said one of the girls Shiori walked with, whose name Juri did not remember.
(Was she? Shiori had never seemed afraid of her. Shiori had seen her come apart, had reached in and touched her beating heart and smiled sweetly like it barely mattered.)
Shiori giggled, far enough away that Juri could barely hear. It sounded just like it had when they were young, and still friends, before it had all fallen apart. “Oh,” she said, “is she?”
-
It was nearly three in the morning, and Juri couldn’t sleep, couldn’t tell whether she was sick with worry or just nauseous from staying up too long. She would, on any other night, have gone out and sat at the fountain, but she didn’t especially want to see Shiori kissing Ruka tonight.
It was not, you understand, that she was under any illusions that Shiori was a good person. She just wasn’t strong enough to stop loving her anyway. In elementary school it had been cute, and in middle school it had been funny, and if Shiori was mean now that they were sixteen and it wasn’t cute anymore, if she was pushy and a gossip and lied for fun, then it had started as a way to make Juri smile back when they were ten and eleven and twelve.
And loving Shiori from a distance was a comfortable sort of ache, like an old scar that hurt when it rained. It was familiar. Juri knew how to do it.
Even if she was awake when the clock struck three in the morning. Even if she had gotten very, very good at making sure nobody noticed, when she spent too long in the shower so no one would hear her cry. Even if her locket did, sometimes, feel like a noose.
-
And then —
-
“Sticking your nose in,” said Juri to Tenjou Utena, “is a bad habit of yours.”
Utena had been glaring at her for a day and a half, since Shiori had broken down in the courtyard with what felt like the entire school watching.
“Aren’t you worried about her?” Utena demanded. (Of course Juri was worried. She’d spent the last day and a half throwing herself into fencing and unable to concentrate on any of her classes. But of course, she thought bitterly, Utena hadn’t seen that, so it must not have happened.) “She’s taking it really hard. Aren’t you two friends?”
Leave it to Utena to ask the hard questions. “It’s between the two of them, and none of my business.”
Shiori had made that plain enough. Juri had not stayed in the courtyard with all of their classmates and half the teachers. She had picked her way through the crowd, stony-faced, and tried not to listen to Shiori saying that she didn’t know what she would do without Ruka, that he had to believe her, that he was all she had. She had not stayed to listen to Shiori cry; Shiori wouldn’t have thanked her if she had.
“I have no intention of interfering,” she continued. She sounded calm, collected; if she wasn’t looking Utena in the eye, that could have just been because she didn’t care enough to, and not because if Utena tried to be sympathetic Juri was going to break something. Then, quieter: “I have no right to.”
Shiori had always cried loud and dramatic, even when she wanted to be quiet so nobody would look at her. Juri hadn’t stayed in the courtyard to watch, but she could hear it, even from the halls. It hadn’t been for her. Shiori wouldn’t have wanted her to hear that, would have lashed out if she’d known Juri was listening.
But of course if Tenjou Utena had ever encountered the concept of not having a right to interfere, it hadn’t left much of an impression. “How can you do nothing when your friend is hurting like that?”
Juri had already made three of her classmates cry for the crime of calling Shiori a whore who’d gotten what was coming to her and shouldn’t have expected any different. She could feel her nerves fraying. “Don’t make me repeat myself,” she said, and walked away before she had a chance to say something much, much worse.
-
“Oh. Juri-san. It’s you.” Shiori didn’t take the chain off the door. “What do you want?”
Shiori looked... tired. There was little else to say. Her skin had gone pale and the purplish circles under her eyes looked like bruises. “Shiori,” Juri said, and then stopped, because she couldn’t think of anything to follow it with.
If they were still friends, she would offer to duel him. Three years ago, she would have let herself into Shiori’s room and cooked for her and gotten her to shower and made a nest out of blankets and watched movies with her. But now, with three years and reams of words unspoken between then, she didn’t know what to do.
But Shiori was already continuing. “You’re here to make fun of me, aren’t you?”
“Of course not, Shiori —”
“You must be thrilled now.” She spat the sentence like bile, acidic and bitter. “Perfect, gorgeous, talented, successful Juri, and your charity case just got dumped by the only other person who ever wanted her. Were you hoping I’d come crying to you? Or were you hoping you’d get to sweep in and save me?”
Juri flinched like she’d been hit in the face. Had Shiori always thought that, had Juri just not noticed when they were younger? Or was this new, could Juri have repaired their friendship if she had just been less of a coward?
“Too bad,” Shiori said. “I’m not doing what you want. Fuck off, Juri.”
And she shut the door.
-
“You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Juri snapped.
Ruka raised one eyebrow. (Juri had taught herself how to mimic that same expression when she was in middle school, and Ruka had laughed about it the first time she’d done it in front of him.) “Surprising,” he said, “since only a few weeks ago you told me to keep my hands off her. You want me to take her back now?”
Juri did not — would not, could not — let herself get distracted. “What I want,” she said, “is for you to stop hurting her.”
A pause. Ruka looked at the windows. “Sorry,” he said, “but I can’t do that.”
Can’t take her back, or can’t stop hurting her? Juri did not ask. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer.
Ruka continued on. “I appreciate that she’s your friend, but she’s selfish, pushy, a gossip, and a liar to boot.” He turned to look Juri directly in the eye when he said, “Who the hell would want a girl like that?”
“Oh fuck you.” That was a bad idea, Juri knew as soon as she’d said it that it was a bad idea, but she’d said it and she was committed now, “What the hell do you think gives you the right to hurt her?”
“That,” Ruka said cooly, “is none of your business. And what, exactly, do you think gives you the right to interfere?”
And Juri — didn’t have an answer to that. Didn’t have the right to interfere, she’d told Utena as much only hours before.
Before she’d registered what she was even doing she was moving to punch him, no swords this time — he grabbed her hand, she should have stopped but she wasn’t thinking, he had both her wrists — and Juri could have been fourteen years old again and Ruka was bigger than her and loomed over her and —
“But how about this instead?” He was smiling. He was much too close. Juri could feel the heat of him through their fencing uniforms and he had both her wrists and he twisted and pinned her back against the wall and she tried to push back and couldn’t he was stronger than she was and get a grip panicking will not help but that wasn’t helping either and —
Juri was fourteen and terrified and sixteen and terrified and she couldn’t move and he was so much taller than she was. “I was thinking I’d go out with you next,” Ruka said, or maybe that was what he’d said before, time felt wrong, and Juri at sixteen would have said something cool and collected or at least tried to but Juri at fourteen wasn’t collected just scared and she screamed something about him being an asshole and Ruka was still so calm when he said “Don’t you love me? I’m your captain, after all,” and all Juri could think was no no no no no and she opened her mouth to say so and —
— he was kissing her and she couldn’t move and there was no such thing as miracles, help was not coming —
He pulled away. His lip was bleeding. She’d bitten him. Her breath came loud and shallow but he wasn’t touching her and she couldn’t think of anything else. She wrapped her arms around herself, firm and tight.
Ruka held up her locket.
No no no no no — it should have been under her jacket, how could he even have — this wasn’t helping — he dropped it on the ground. Moved to break it. No — and then Juri was on the ground and holding her locket and Ruka had a flushed mark on his face and Juri was shaking. Something had happened in those seconds but time was wrong, darting forward one moment and slowing like molasses the next.
“I’ve changed my mind,” Ruka said. He was not smiling. “I’ll take Shiori back.”
Juri made a strangled sound.
“You hate me more than you can stand, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question. Juri didn’t have an answer. Everything felt like it was moving very, very slowly.
He turned to leave.
“Ruka.”
He stopped. Turned back.
“I challenge you,” Juri said, still shaky, “to a duel. If you win, I do what you want. And if I win, you and Shiori —”
“I accept.”
-
By the time they were done — by the time Juri finally stumbled and did not recover — the sunset had come and faded, the sky gone from blue to blazing orange and back to blue. The irony was not lost on her.
Ruka stood by the bench. Juri sat on the floor rather than sit next to him, her arms wrapped around her folded legs and her chin pressed into her knee. Her fencing uniform was stiff and uncomfortable and there would be bruises on her limbs tomorrow from all the times she’d been shoved to the floor. She couldn’t quite bring herself to care.
“You’ve always been a brilliant fencer,” Ruka said. Juri didn’t look at him. “From when you first joined the club it was obvious.”
“You’re exaggerating.” She’d lost, after all.
“Is that so?”
Juri didn’t answer. She continued to not look at him. She didn’t want to know if he was looking at her.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” said Ruka, after a moment of silence.
Then Juri did look up, because there was a strange high-pitched pulsing sound, coming from everywhere and from nowhere.
“You can hear it, can’t you?” Ruka continued. The sound of a car revving, closer than any car could possibly be. “If you haven’t given up entirely...”
She could. She couldn’t block it out if she’d tried, it was everywhere. “What is it?” she said before she could stop herself, and then the car crashed through the wall and the pulsing stopped.
“Go on, get in the car,” Ruka said. She could tell without looking at his face that he was smirking. “You said you’d do whatever I wanted, after all.”
They were six stories up, some part of Juri observed. A car shouldn’t even have been able to get there. This was a distraction, and she wasn’t sure if she needed that or if she needed to focus. Blankly, numbly, she got in the car.
The road stretched out wide and featureless through the night. There was a line of streetlights along the road, but if there was anything else to see, Juri couldn’t see it. The sky was blank and starless, a flat expanse of blue. Juri sat in the back seat; Ruka was in the passenger’s. The driver, a tall man who looked a bit like Himemiya, smirked and said nothing.
The car purred and the engine throbbed; she could feel it like loud music pounding in her breastbone, reverberating through her whole body, too-intense and too-much and setting her teeth on edge. In the back seat, Juri did not curl in on herself, did not let him see her weak. She sat tall and straight-backed, like there was a sword in her spine. (There had been, once, and then Shiori had pulled it out, and it had felt like throwing up and it had felt like choking and it had felt like an orgasm and it had felt like someone cutting her open and reaching in to touch her beating heart, all at once, and — she needed to stop thinking about this, needed to get a grip —)
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, instead of thinking about being vulnerable and scared and on her knees in pleasure-pain with someone standing over her. The streetlamps passed over her, and if the light touched her at least it was not in a way she could feel.
Ruka, instead of answering, reached out and hit the cassette deck.
“Tsuchiya-senpai, you’re the only one I have,” said Shiori’s voice. A beep. “Tsuchiya-senpai, you’re the only one I have,” and again, and again.
That wasn’t an answer, unless maybe it was. Nothing quite felt real; Juri might have been a bit to the side of herself, or watching herself from above. “Do you really enjoy hurting her as much as you seem to?”
There was another pause. “If we could bring out your potential, you’d be unbeatable,” Ruka said, sounding like he was choosing his words carefully. “I bring that out in you. If we fight together we can defeat the current champion, and win the power to work miracles.”
So, no. Shiori had been a means to an end. Juri wasn’t sure if that was worse or better. It didn’t really matter, though, did it? “That’s why you’ve been after me and Shiori like this?”
“To get a miracle you need a sacrifice,” he said, as if it were a complete answer. Tsuchiya-senpai, you’re the only one I have, Shiori’s voice repeated in the background.
“You want a miracle that badly?”
“You’re the one who wants it, Juri. ‘It would take a miracle for me to be happy,’ isn’t that what you said to me?”
She had, when she was young enough that she had still believed she might get one. It still stung. “Shiori isn’t a tool for you!”
“And yet,” he said, “you duel.”
The night was blue and blank and endless and the streetlights did not change. Part of Juri wondered how badly it would hurt if she opened the door and jumped out without waiting for the car to stop.
“You seem to be misunderstanding something.” Through it all her voice was as hard and as cold as steel. There could have been a sword beneath her breastbone. Maybe there was. “I don’t need my feelings to be known, and I don’t need to be happy. And even if I did gain the power to work miracles, all I want is to free her from you. That’s it.”
In the passenger’s seat Ruka smiled and tilted his head back. The car purred; the engine throbbed; the vibration settled in Juri’s bones. Nothing felt real. It might have been the road or it might just have been her. “So you’ll fight?”
She did not curl in on herself. She held her head high. (She desperately wanted a shower, to get the feeling of being touched off of her, to be able to cry with no one seeing.) “...I’ll fight.”
-
Tenjou Utena’s cruel innocence had held true. “You too?” she’d said, shocked and hurt, when Juri had challenged her to a duel. Juri hadn’t looked at her, hadn’t even tried to hide how dead her voice sounded or to disguise the way she looked out across the courtyard at Shiori, who had been staring wistfully up at the sunset sky.
Here in the arena, though, the sky was blue and the light was strong, like it always was.
When Shiori had pulled a sword from Juri’s chest it had hurt, and more-than-hurt; it had been the most intense thing she’d ever felt. “Do it,” she said to Ruka, prepared for it to hurt again, steeling herself against the hand on her face and the overwhelming sensation, but it didn’t. It didn’t feel like anything at all.
Her own sword should have felt right in her hand. She moved — charge argent on field sable, courtly etiquette; charge sable on field argent, the shape of a shield — Ruka had stepped aside and pushed her to the ground the day before — Utena went sprawling on the floor, got back up again, Juri charged — or, argent, purpure, vert, gules, azure, sable — her sword was an inch from Utena’s face.
“Don’t hesitate, Juri!” Ruka yelled, and she moved, faster than thought — the Grotto of Orpheus, Neuschwanstein, Santa Maria della Conzecione — “Only people like her get miracles, isn’t it unfair!” he’d said, and it was, it was, and maybe he’d meant Shiori or maybe he’d meant Utena but it was —
Utena’s sword came down like holy judgement and Juri flicked up to block her rose and —
The chain snapped and her locket went flying —
and it shattered on the ground.
No, was all Juri could think, just no, no, no, over and over again. Which was stupid, on the face of it, how many times had she told herself she’d throw the locket away if she were strong enough, it was a necklace not the person inside — but still it was true. No.
No, she thought again, and then, I don’t want to do this anymore. If this is the sacrifice it takes for a miracle, I don’t want one.
The duels were over when one opponent’s flower was cut from their chest.
I don’t want to do this anymore, Juri thought. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears. And then, So I’m going to stop.
Juri’s rose hit the floor of the dueling arena, intact. The sky had gone grey.
It had never rained on the dueling arena before, even when it was raining on the ground below them. It might have been one of the many, many showers she had taken over the last three years — except that it was cold, and she wasn’t alone, and it was in all ways completely different. Juri had never even heard of anyone forfeiting a duel. But it was done.
“Juri,” Ruka said. “It’s going to be okay, Juri.” His voice was soft; if it were any quieter she wouldn’t have heard it over the sound of the rain and the windshield wipers. It could have been a mockery of what he’d said that day in the high-up room, when Juri was thirteen years old and still believed in miracles, in help, in shoulders to cry on, in him. It could have been an echo.
Juri wasn’t sure she cared which one it was. She turned her face up to the rain and cried, and she didn’t care if Utena or Ruka or the whole world saw.
-
Ruka vanished after the duel, as if he’d never been there in the first place. Leadership of the fencing club fell back to Juri. The flood of spectators receded to a trickle, which made it easier for everyone to concentrate. Shiori no longer spent her time on the balcony.
And Juri’s life went, largely, back to normal. She didn’t manage to look Shiori in the eye; she spent most of her time alone or with Miki.
She didn’t take off her ring, and didn’t stop going to student council meetings, but she wasn’t sure what she’d do if she got a letter from End of the World. She had forfeited her duel; she didn’t know if she knew what that meant. Slowly, she stopped reaching up to touch the place where her locket would have rested.
Walking back from the hospital in the fading orange-tinted light felt — strange.
He knew just how sick he was, but he still left the hospital to go back to school, the shadows had said. There must have been someone he really loved in the fencing club.
Ruka had not fought like a dying man. And —
(Juri remembered herself at twelve, pulled aside for one on one fencing lessons, lit up with the glow of being good at something; remembered herself at thirteen, needing a hug and getting one and being told she would be okay. Remembered herself at fourteen, terrified with nowhere to turn. Remembered herself with her arms around her waist, breathing heavy and desperate, and You hate me more than you can stand, don’t you?)
— Juri wasn’t sure love was the word she would use.
And remember what he used to say? That he wanted to give the power of miracles to the one he loved. That he wanted to free her from something.
What’s that supposed to mean, I wonder?
She didn’t feel free. She felt uncertain and vaguely hollow. The weight of a locket no longer rested over her breastbone. Was that what freedom felt like? Would she know, if it was?
What had Ruka wanted to do with a miracle if he’d gotten it? What would Juri have done with her miracle, if she’d gotten it? Which of them had he been trying to help?
And if she’d gotten a chance to ask, would he have said he’d succeeded?
-
Coda
The world ended while Saionji made skewers on a camping grill, or maybe it didn’t. Tenjou Utena did not return from the duel called Revolution.
And life went on. Saionji and Touga sparred in the kendo hall, and both of them smiled. Nanami learned to make tea and Tsuwabuki learned to use a stopwatch. Kozue was not a virtuoso and didn’t care enough to try to be, but she sat at the piano with her brother and hit keys for fun while Miki did his best to incorporate her random plinking into the song. Shiori, tentatively, joined the fencing team. Juri wasn’t sure how she felt about that, but she neither went harder on Shiori than any other new arrival nor went easier. It was easier than she’d expected, seeing Shiori’s face in the crowd, and certainly much easier than seeing her watch from the balcony.
The months went by. Himemiya disappeared and nobody was quite sure where she’d gone, and Nanami followed her not long after. Juri stayed. She had no idea what she’d do with herself, if she left.
When Shiori hung back after practice, Juri could almost have fooled herself into thinking she was here to ask about fencing stances. The sun was starting to go down; the light was yellow-gold, not quite orange yet.
“Did she give you her picture?” Shiori said. Her chin was lifted; she looked ready to start a fight. Juri had to think for a few seconds to figure out what she even meant.
Can I get a picture? I thought I’d put it in my new locket, she’d said to Utena before that last duel, playing badminton in the courtyard in the sun, and all of them had laughed. She hadn’t realized Shiori had heard.
That was new. There was a time when she would have been hyperaware of Shiori’s presence, would have felt the weight of her watching like a physical touch. When had that changed?
“There’s no new locket, Shiori,” Juri said. Maybe she should have been sad about it, but it had been a long day and after fencing practice she was honestly just tired. Besides, she wasn’t sure she had it in her to care about what she should feel anymore. “It was a joke. I was joking.”
“Oh.” Shiori’s shoulders curled inward, just a little, like she’d had a purpose when she came here to start this fight but had now forgotten what it was. “...why not?”
Juri stepped back and looked at her. Really looked at her: not a photo of the girl she’d known at ten or the girl she’d known at thirteen, not a memory of a girl in a sunset-lit hall, but the real face of the girl standing in front of her now. Shiori’s head was ducked down, her shoulders curled inward. She did not look like the girl who had dangled a locket in front of Juri; she looked sad and small.
“Because,” Juri said, “I needed to stop carrying people around my neck. And it wouldn’t have been about her, if I’d kept a photo in a locket, it would still have been about me. If that makes any sense.”
Shiori’s face scrunched up, but she did look up at Juri. “It kind of doesn’t.”
Juri was tempted to smile sadly and say ‘someday it will,’ the way she’d smiled at Tenjou Utena and called her innocently cruel.
But she’d made her decision, had given up her miracle, had thrown an old photo away. She’d been the first of them all to forfeit. There would be no more carrying people around in lockets, or trying to. And Juri did not believe in miracles, but she had believed in help once, so what she did instead was offer Shiori her hand.
“That’s okay,” she said. It was almost sunset. Soon the sky would be lit up purple-orange. “Do you want to walk with me? It’s been a while.”
-
fin