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Yukari is running late.
In almost two years running of these secret little appointments, this is the first time she's so thoroughly lost track of the hours leading up to midnight. It's already nearly half past, meaning her time tonight is cut short because she was—distracted. And because, all told, it's difficult to make up a good enough excuse to up and leave in the middle of a conversation.
She unlocks a side door and traipses through the dark, abandoned halls of Gekkoukan High School with ease. To think she'd once been so on edge sneaking through here on an operation, bracing herself for ghosts around every corner—well, at least she's got the sense of humor to laugh about it now. The stairwell echoes with her steps, and she knows she's being a little too careless and she'll get flack for it if she gets caught by security, but it doesn't matter because she won't.
Three flights later, she throws open the door to the roof. Moonlight streams in. Hamuko, already sitting at their usual bench, turns her head.
It hits Yukari like a punch to the stomach how real it makes her look. How her face lights up when she sees Yukari. How, like this, she could easily believe that Hamuko is a normal, living girl waiting for her best friend, who is half an hour late.
"Yukari!" Hamuko grins, opens her arms.
"Hey! Sorry I'm late." Yukari grins back and hurries over to her. Hamuko puts her arms down, a little sadly, because she knows. There's just no overcoming the human instinct.
She usually sits here and watches Hamuko materialize from thin air in the minutes following midnight. If there are clouds, if there's a sliver missing from the moon, her image is a lot fainter. They've tried the shrine, the dorm rooftop, and the mall, but Gekkoukan's rooftop is still the clearest. Tonight, the air is crisp, the moon is splendidly full, and Hamuko looks like Yukari could reach out and touch her.
She sits down close, but not too close, so that it doesn't dispel the illusion.
Hamuko leans in anyway, her hand propped on the bench between them. "What's new? You promised me an update."
Yukari laughs. "Nice try. You first."
"Not much happens to me." She always says this because she'd rather listen to Yukari yap, for some reason.
Well, Yukari concedes that being the Great Seal on the moon is not exactly conducive to having a lot happen, but still. "How's Ryoji-kun?" she prompts.
"He's a great alarm clock. Always makes sure I wake up in time to come see you." Hamuko kicks her feet in the air as she says this, disarmingly easy.
Yukari sets aside the strange feeling it gives her. "What, he doesn't need to sleep?" she jokes.
Hamuko just laughs. "Why would he? Death never tires."
Death. Every night, every day, she sleeps in Death's embrace. The image is a little too eerie for Yukari to shake.
"He's good. He's..." Hamuko rests her chin in her hand, elbow on the bench armrest. Her cheek squishes slightly under her fingers like she's made of flesh and blood and not moonlight. "Actually, I don't know. We haven't talked much lately."
"What do you mean?" Yukari says, uneasy. What else is there to do up there to pass the time?
Hamuko is silent and still for a long moment. Yukari doesn't dare take her eyes off of her, waiting for her image to flicker, wondering for a brief and terrible moment whether this is it.
"I don't remember," Hamuko says finally. Placidly. "It gets really hard to stay awake."
Yukari swallows. "I guess so."
It's so unfair. Having Hamuko here at all is already more than she expected, more than she should ever ask for, and yet.
Is it really right to keep meeting up with her like this? Would Yukari even have the heart to tell her she won't be coming next month when Hamuko's so happy to see her every time? Is it selfish if it goes both ways?
Slowly, Yukari lets out a breath. She loosens her fists and smooths out the crumpled wrinkles in her skirt. It'll be fine; she just has to believe.
"How's it going with you?" Hamuko asks.
"Um. Fine. Classes are so tiring now that filming has started." So mundane. So unexceptional, so everyday. She has an entire life now that she can only share with Hamuko in bits and pieces like this. "Ken-kun's been really amped up about it. I keep asking if he can come to the set and watch a shoot, but the directors are trying to keep a tight lid on everything... so much so that it's a little annoying, actually. Mitsuru always asks me how it's going, but I'm not supposed to tell anyone anything about it."
"Good thing I can keep a secret, then," Hamuko says teasingly.
"You sure you want spoilers?" Yukari shoots back. "It's gonna be a good season. You'll want to watch it blind."
"Knowing how things are gonna end ahead of time is kinda my thing, though."
Yukari glances up at her. Hamuko's looking at her with that familiar tilt of her head and a sly smile on her lips. Her ponytail swings to the side and her bangs fall into her eyes; Yukari wonders suddenly about the fact that she's never seen Hamuko with her hair down.
"So, how are things with Kirijo-senpai?" she says.
Of course. Yukari bites her lip; she had to know this was coming. "I was just having tea with her. We got to talking about, um... this book we've both been reading lately, and then she mentioned she wanted to write a memoir of her father. Well, she said that, but it turns out she already had a draft most of the way done, and she wanted me to read it and give her my thoughts."
Hamuko raises her eyebrows. "It was amazing, wasn't it?"
Yukari can't suppress the smile that bubbles up from somewhere deep in her chest. "It was amazing. She's—amazing."
"I knew it. I knew it!" Hamuko breaks into a grin, her eyes gleaming, and her hand goes right through Yukari's shoulder.
Oops.
They both move back on instinct. "Sorry," Yukari says, though she doesn't really know why she's apologizing.
"It's fine. Like I said, I don't really feel anything." Hamuko looks down at her hand, holding it in the other.
Yukari shivers a little. In her rush, she'd forgotten her coat; this early in spring, it's still chilly enough at midnight to raise goosebumps on her arms, though one of them now feels colder than the other. What's the point of that, then, if Hamuko doesn't at least get a little of her warmth?
The excuse she'd made to Mitsuru once she saw that midnight had already come and gone was that she had work early the next day and urgently needed to head home and get some sleep. Considerate and lovely as she was, Mitsuru offered her a ride back to her apartment and she couldn't refuse. All this time, and she still can't bring herself to tell the people she's closest to about Hamuko, because—because the longer this goes on, the harder it gets to explain why Yukari's kept her to herself.
Or—is it because—she's afraid that if she speaks it out loud, it might cease to be real?
She reaches out. Her fingertips turn cold where they pass through Hamuko's hair. "You really can't feel this at all?"
Hamuko turns her head. Her smile turns wobbly where it overlaps with Yukari's hand, like faint ripples in a pond. "You don't have to worry about me, Yukari."
"I'm not worried, I'm just—" Yukari pulls her hand back and shoves it in her lap, her skin tingling. There's a little piece inside her that feels like it's going to crumble.
"It's peaceful like this. You know, I was alone for so long before I met you. It almost feels like it was just yesterday. So, it's not so bad, really."
Yukari is speechless. She hates it; it makes her feel so powerless. Hamuko's eyes are so distant, so dark that there's no distinction between iris and pupil, just a void where light goes in and doesn't come back out. There's no reflection in them at all when she looks at Yukari.
Is this really her best friend? When she was—when she was around, she'd never be caught dead saying something like that. Or—did Yukari never really know her at all?
"I'm glad you and Kirijo-senpai are still close," she says.
"Yeah. I mean—yeah, we are, we talk almost every day, and it's... really nice." Nervous, frustrated, distracted, Yukari tucks her hair behind her ear; it feels jarringly corporeal now. "She's been so good to me. I... I really like her."
"You should've stayed and talked to her."
She should have. They're young, but there's still a limit on the time she and Mitsuru have together; they know this more intimately than anyone their age should. Hamuko, on the other hand—
Yukari forces a smile. Just a small one. "Well, then I would've missed you!" she says. "And then I would've had to wait another month."
Does Hamuko know anymore how the months drag on and at the same time vanish in the blink of an eye? Graduation day was two years ago—an eternity, and yet it does feel like it was just yesterday. Yukari's finished high school and started university and become an actress and yet underneath that new skin she'll always be the person who watched her best friend close her eyes for the last time and go utterly, terribly still here on this very rooftop.
She'd spent so long watching the ends of her hair flutter in the spring breeze, waiting for her to move again, pretending that her eyes were just lying to her. Telling herself that any minute now Hamuko would get tired of the joke and sit up and smile at her again.
Hamuko's image puts her hand on Yukari's. Through Yukari's. "You know I'll always be here."
Should she be? Is she really here, even now?
The rooftop door behind them opens with a creak. Yukari jumps and whips her head around, wide-eyed.
It's Fuuka.
She stands in the doorway, fiddling with her hands. "...Yukari-chan?"
Yukari blinks at her. "Fuuka? What're you doing here?"
"Um. I thought I sensed..." She trails off, looking at Yukari strangely. "Are you here by yourself?"
Slowly, Yukari turns. The bench next to her is empty.
Fuuka walks over and sits down on her other side. The door, left open, swings gently on its old hinges.
"I was going to say, I thought I sensed two people, so I came up to see who it was. But when I opened the door it was just you, so I thought I made a mistake." Fuuka purses her lips, furrows her brow. Her slight figure feels so solid and real next to Yukari. "Um, I know it's none of my business, but..."
"No, it's okay. I was..." Yukari takes a deep breath, stalling for time. She looks up for the moon, finds that it's disappeared behind a swath of cloud.
What does she say? This isn't the first time Hamuko has reappeared after she—after she became the Great Seal. The Abyss of Time was a stab wound, and these meetings have been a balm. A bandage. It was never goodbye here, it was always see you later, because—Yukari would always see her again. Her best friend, who just happens to live on the moon.
"Have you... um." Yukari fiddles with the hem of her skirt and stares down at her knees. "Never mind. I was just talking to myself."
"Oh, you do that too? Phew." Fuuka chuckles. "It is nice to have a quiet place where no one will judge you for it."
"Yeah. I might just, uh, stick to my room from now on, though. It's kinda cold up here." Yukari rubs at her arms; the chill has sunk so deep it doesn't register much anymore.
She casts her gaze over the empty section of the bench. Would Hamuko forgive her if this was the last time they met? She didn't even get the chance to give her any parting words this time.
But—isn't it already too late for that? She's gone. There's no point telling them to her ghost.
Yukari stands on wobbly legs. In front of her, the sea stretches out forever and holds the sleeping city gently in its arms.
"Maybe it's because I haven't been up here since she died," Fuuka says quietly. "But... I can't help but think of her."
Yukari swallows down the lump in her throat. "Yeah."
"I really miss her," Fuuka says.
"Yeah." For the first time, Yukari turns and meets Fuuka's eyes. "I miss her, too."