a picture surrounded by flowers and incense

As much as Soujiro wants to, he doesn’t respond to the frantic, angry phone calls of Fujinomiya Haruko, matriarch of the Fujinomiya Estate. The moment he does, he’ll spill the beans about where Fuji is. The moment he spills the beans, Fuji (Sr.) will try to sue everyone involved, daughter included. It’ll happen sooner than later, but for now, there are more important matters at hand: hot pot.

After leaving Otohama Medical Center, it takes less than twenty minutes to reach Mrs. Matsueda’s house, and that’s after taking a detour to tell the Eguchis to feed Nagumo’s dogs. After all, he’s taking a warrior’s rest now. The map he drew before going comatose is also disturbingly symmetrical.

Worryingly, the only one left at the center is the French girl. Dr. Shimazu is “on call”, whatever that means. It’s late enough that the sky has begun to bruise, and it wears so many stars that it almost looks fake.

Still, Soujiro stares at it for some time. It’s nice. Then he reaches the house. It’s small. They seem to be growing some kind of vegetable next to it.

“Iroha!”

Before he can call out for Mrs. Matsueda, Dr. Shimazu slams the sliding door open, teary-eyed, wearing a kimono, her frizzy hair pulled into an elegant, loose bun. Since Soujiro didn’t expect to get body-slammed by a doctor, he’s too close to the door to dodge her in time, so then he gets body-slammed by a doctor.

With the squealing gasp she emits, one would’ve thought she deflated herself like a balloon.

Mrs. Matsueda emerges from the hallway. “Iroha, let me—oh, my.”

Dr. Shimazu runs past him—tries to, anyway, but then she body-slams the ground.

It soon becomes apparent that this outfit choice was a scheme by Mrs. Matsueda. It’s not like either of them say this out loud, but Soujiro knows. He just does.

Since he also knows that offering a hand to Dr. Shimazu would be a futile endeavor, he awkwardly takes a seat while Mrs. Matsueda heads back to the kitchen, but it doesn’t take long for him to get jittery. For one, Dr. Shimazu sits across from him at the table, shaking and wide-eyed like a chihuahua. She was told to serve tea which currently swirls on a kettle between them, but if she does, she’ll spill it, and since she knows this, she hasn’t done anything. Mr. Oda hasn’t arrived to save them yet.

Soujiro clears his throat.

Soujiro checks his phone.

Soujiro asks a chatbot how can I talk to women who fear me? The answers are discouraging.

“Dr… Shimazu?”

She jumps.

“I can help.”

“H-help with what!?”

“The tea.”

“Tea!?”

Why does she sound so surprised? What does she think he’s referring to? “I can pour it if you’d like.”

She shakes her head. Well, it’s not exactly following etiquette, so he understands. Going to prison felt like being reset. Getting out was worse. By this point, Dr. Shimazu has begun to resemble jelly during an earthquake, but what’s Soujiro supposed to do? Leave? But he wants hot pot… but if he must…

When he stands up, Dr. Shimazu recoils, but she manages a, “Where…?”

“I just remembered I have something to do,” Soujiro replies.

“Oh…”

“Yeah. Yes.”

“What about the hot pot…”

It physically hurts to reply, “I’ll pass, but thank you.”

For the first time, Dr. Shimazu looks at him—at him. “Really? But you looked so happy when, um. Sorry.”

“Happy?”

“Never mind.”

Mrs. Matsueda hums in the kitchen. Mr. Matsueda is a picture surrounded by flowers and incense at the corner of the room. Shimazu Iroha is an overworked doctor coerced into wearing traditional clothing and hosting someone she’s terrified of. Hino Soujiro is an ex-convict who shouldn’t be here. “Thank you anyway,” he says. “Please rest, Dr. Shimazu. You deserve it.”

By the time he leaves the house, the sky has bled out. There’s a cliff between the house and the beach, adorned by a fence that barely reaches his hips. Soujiro makes sure not to lean against it. He just stares at the sea until he shivers.

“Cold,” he mumbles, then begins to walk.

***

Sometimes I wish our bodies were as strong as our minds, but that’s when I feel ill. Sometimes I wish our minds were as strong as our bodies, but that’s when I feel sad. Why are humans so weak?

Post.

Koharu reads through the thread because there’s nothing else to do. She passively-aggressively likes comments telling her to get real problems. It’s past midnight and the silence is too noisy. At 1:05 AM, she turns on her phone’s flashlight. At 1:10 AM, a familiar blue light pops in the distance, then closer, closer, until the nurse asks, “Everything alright?”

The nurse is Gaillard this time. “Yup,” Koharu replies, but then she sinks into her lucky blanket #2. “Well, almost. I can’t sleep.”

“Oh, no… are you in pain, Ms. Fujinomiya?”

“You can call me Koha-chin. Also, no. I just can’t sleep.”

Gaillard bites her lip for a moment. “Would sleeping pills work?”

“Um, maybe… how about a playlist?”

“Pardon?”

That means ‘I’m sorry’ in French. Koharu has now proven she’s bilingual. She knows a little bit of Korean too, and a few words in Italian. She’s basically a polyglot. To add credence to this, she responds en Francais. “You can share a playlist with me. I’ll give you mine.”

Gaillard’s blue eyes are wide, her eyebrows raised high enough to disappear into her fringe. “...uh… um. Uh.”

“Just to clarify, I don’t mean my song covers.”

“Yeah, I… I imagined.” Gaillard speaks in Japanese anyway. “I’m very flattered, Ms. Fujinomiya, but I can’t… do that? Can I? No, I can’t. I’m very sorry. I’d be more than glad to bring you some medicine if you’d like.”

“How about talking?”

“Talking? But how would that help you?”

“Where’s Nagumo?”

“Sleeping.”

Koharu would’ve sit up, but that would mean endless agony. “Still?”

Gaillard nods slowly. “Still.”

So she lays down. She pulls a pillow over her head.

“...Ms. Fuji–”

“Koha-chin.”

“Ko… Koha… b-but I can’t—”

“That’s fine! That’s fine. You can’t. That’s perfectly fine. I’ll try to sleep now.”

There’s a pause before Gaillard responds, “Alright. If anything happens, please let me know. I’ll be… around. Alone…”

And so will Koharu.

At 2:47 AM, she scrolls down her old pictures. They’re cheap and sterile like soda. She finds no mentions of her possible location aside from speculation, which is good. They’ve correctly guessed she’s in Kyushu but keep arguing about the dialects and position of the sun. Someone brought a map of the clouds, but her ‘leak’ was too blurry to confirm anything. Koharu spreads misinformation in twenty-two of her alts.

3:00 AM.

Time has stopped—there’s no other explanation. She’s at the edge of a black hole. No events will ever occur again.

Koharu hate-scrolls through Kerochan’s profile. Nothing to see there. Her co-stars are next, then the social media pages of her show. The latest post on all of them is the apology for the delay. Comments are turned off. Below that is Koharu’s cover of the opening song, and her co-star Yukida Fumito is there, she supposes. Her hair was down to her waist back then. She regrets cropping it to her mid-back. It had been part of her wellness journey.

3:13 AM.

Nagumo’s profile is grueling. There’s only so many photos of dogs Koharu can take, however aesthetic. Koharu’s fans complained about her bug pictures and her manager forced her to take them down, but she still alternates between Sharky and the… vertebrates. Dog lovers are the worst kind of deranged.

A lot of older pictures have him visiting amusement parks with his friends. Older as in, five years ago. He seems to have become a lot less active since. Does the Nagumo from five years ago look like he’d pass out in front of a patient? Not really. He looks like he’d share music with a stranger to help them sleep.

4:35 AM.

Does the Koharu from five years ago look like someone who’d transfer to a clinic in the middle of nowhere? Not really. She looks like nothing. If someone were to switch her with any of her peers, it’d be the exact same.

Her phone dies before the night does, but she can’t tell Gaillard to help her charge it. After all, she’d just get told to swallow drugs to sleep.

She takes her burner phone.