Chapter Text
It’s a cold June this year, Fuuka notices, the day they bring her to Iwatodai dormitory. Not terribly, really — it’s not like she can see her breath — but there’s a definite bite to the air, which the muted, faint sun and the dorm’s heaters do nothing to mitigate.
“This must be a very old building,” she says to the red-headed senpai, who is watching the boy in the cap and the gray-haired senpai lug three identical Kirijo-branded duffel bags upstairs. “Is it always this cold here? Should I go get my winter clothes?”
The senpai tells Fuuka that she’s describing a side effect of overextended Tartarus operations, which should pass at about the same rate as a head cold. She suggests bed rest and gives Fuuka a few pills — over-the-counter painkillers — from a cute change purse full of, apparently, over-the-counter painkillers. Part of SEES’s function is writing medical notes, she adds, as if it’s an afterthought, so she won’t be counted as absent for any classes. It all sounds a little stiff, as if she’s reading a prepared statement. But this is still the kindest anyone her age has been to her in months.
“Thank you,” says Fuuka. “For everything.”
Somehow, she can’t quite hear her senpai's reply.
She gets a little lost on her way upstairs, and gets off at the wrong landing, the boys’ rooms instead of the girls’ rooms. At the end of the hallway someone’s left out a suitcase. Inside is 19800 yen in non-sequential bills and a muscle drink. This might be important later, Fuuka thinks, and pockets it, but she can’t find it in the morning, or the suitcase, for that matter, so it was probably a dream.
Pink cardigan girl — whose name escapes her, embarrassingly enough; imagine forgetting someone’s name when they’ve saved your life — quits SEES when Fuuka joins it, all in one meeting. Not that she notices until the argument is more or less over; in the throes of a Tartarus migraine she only catches keywords: Evoker — demise — records — cover story — disgusting, this last accompanied by slim hands slamming against the table. Judging by Lucia’s analysis, SEES hasn’t profited from the exchange; the pink girl has wind and healing magic, whereas Fuuka only knows things, and she doesn’t even know that much.
The red-haired senpai asks her to please reconsider, and the girl points behind her in Fuuka’s direction — Fuuka startles like she’s been called on in class unexpectedly and jostles her head a little too much and feels sick — and shouts that she intended to stick it out, that she would have swallowed her pride and gone with it, if not for this. She says that Mitsuru (the senpai, probably?) — and all the rest of them, she adds, at which the boy in the cap shifts awkwardly in his seat — should be ashamed of themselves. That they’re being exploited by people who don’t care if they live or die, that will keep using them and using them until they’re used up.
She comes close to Fuuka before she leaves, and tells her that she doesn’t have to do this — not hugging her, just standing there, hands balled at her sides, but close enough that Fuuka wants very badly to step back. The girl’s face is smeary with mascara in long, meandering tracks, but her voice is even and steady like she’s clamped down on it with her teeth to hold it in place.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” says Fuuka.
No one helps carry the girl’s suitcases out, and she throws her SEES gun thing at a wall as she leaves, holster and all. No one else seems willing to touch it after, so — feeling mildly responsible for the whole thing — Fuuka brings it upstairs and returns it to its carrying case, embossed with SEES’s full title and its owner’s name, Takeba Yukari.
Oh. Her name was Yukari.
There are flowers on the steps of the art building. Calla lily vases, gypsophila wreaths, a few stray persimmon blossoms that must have been picked from the Bookworms couple’s tree, and nubbin candles. Here and there there are copies of a pamphlet entitled Gekkoukan Cares — How You Can Stop Bullying In Your Class, most of which are grimy and crumpled and covered in prints from outside shoes.
Fuuka wonders if it might have been her bullies who caused this with some other victim of theirs — because this is a memorial, she can tell. Rumors around campus say that they went too far, and a girl died. Now, apparently, strange sounds can be heard coming from the gym at midnight, and everyone at fault is mysteriously disappearing.
She’s not sure where she heard the rumor — she’s been recuperating in her room at Iwatodai dormitory, waiting to get over her chills and headaches and, recently, nightmares. Maybe the boy in the cap. He’s been telling her stories recently. It’s nice of him, when she can’t go to classes yet and can’t work on her computer, though sometimes it makes her feel a little childish to listen to him doing funny voices for all his classmates.
In any case, he must have been exaggerating about the disappearances, because Houjou-san — one of Moriyama-san’s friends — is fiddling with her phone by the entrance to the photography club room. A former backup on the girls’ boxing team, Fuuka remembers. She’s learned a lot about her bullies over the years, since they never worried about speaking candidly around her. Who would she tell?
It would be suicidal to tap Houjou-san’s shoulder, so instead Fuuka just clears her throat and speaks, her voice feeling oddly unused. “Excuse me?”
Houjou-san’s neck goes stiff and straight. She asks who’s there.
“Houjou-san, um… you’re in front of the door. I’m sorry, but could you please move?"
She raises her head but doesn’t turn around. This isn’t funny, she says. Yamagishi didn’t sound like that anyway. Which is a novelty, because Houjou-san always called her Fuuka-chan, with a cutesy little lilt. Like: Fuuka-chan, I dropped your phone in the toilet, so sorry.
“I, um, have a cold.”
This isn’t funny, says Houjou, again. Natsuki’s in the hospital, and Yamagishi is… she doesn’t say what Yamagishi is, but Fuuka can see her almost trembling.
“...were you worried about me?”
Natsuki’s in the hospital. They don’t know if she’s going to wake up. And you’re here fucking with me. (Her fists are clenched. Her voice sounds choked.) Are you not satisfied? Have I not been punished enough already?
There’s a lot of subtext here that Fuuka frankly has no idea how to read. “I don’t mean to bother you. I’ll be out of your hair once I have my camera, really. And I’m not attending classes for a while, yet, or leaving campus, so you don’t have to worry about running into me...”
Silence.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of you to get hurt.” and Fuuka swallows a strange lump in her throat and goes on anyway, like now is an appropriate moment for catharsis. “I was… thinking about transferring. Before all this. There’s a school in Tokyo with a medical program I could have attended, and then I wouldn’t have bothered Moriyama-san so often. Everyone would get what they wanted.”
You should shut up, says Houjou. This isn’t even a good imitation.
“I thought that was what you wanted. But even after I started leaving class to eat in the toilets, you came and found me. You and Moriyama-san and Furude-san, you kept finding me.”
She’s gone. Fuuka’s gone.
“I went as far away as I could. Farther away than anyone could reach. I’m sorry, I really am, but I just don’t know why you all kept coming back to me —“
Houjou-san wheels around and throws a punch —
It’s ten seconds later and her tormentor has run for the stairs, tripped in her haste and fallen two flights, and now she’s howling like a child and clutching her head. Null physical, volunteers Lucia, to explain why Fuuka hasn’t staggered, and this will later also explain why the cheek that Houjou-san hit doesn’t bruise, or ache, and how the only person who’s touched her in months might as well not have touched her at all.