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Tomoyo's mom got her a fish once.

It was a Dwarf Gourami. A tiny, shimmering creature with orange and turquoise scales that always caught the light. What Tomoyo loved most were its whiskers. Not whiskers, technically, but pelvic fins. Still, they looked like whiskers to her - long, delicate threads that the fish would extend and wave around, as if it were saying hi to the world.

She named it Bubbles.

Everyone thought it was weird that she got so attached to a fish. But Tomoyo loved Bubbles anyway. Maybe it was because she had never been responsible for something that depended on her. She woke up early to feed it, tapped on the glass to watch it swim over, pressed her nose against the tank and tried to imagine what it was thinking.

Then one morning, Bubbles was just floating there.

Her mom said it was probably old age. Her brother swore he hadn't overfed it, though he wore the same guilty look he always had when he broke something.

Tomoyo cried for hours.

A week later, her mom brought home another Dwarf Gourami. Same colors. Same whiskers. Same everything. She smiled as if she had fixed the problem.

But wasn't that cruel? To lose something you loved and simply… replace it? People did it all the time with dogs and cats too. One died, and within a month there was a new puppy running around the house. Was it supposed to make the pain go away faster? Did it actually work that way, or did you just end up overwriting your memories of the first one?

The new fish swam in circles. Even tapped the glass with its whiskers.

Tomoyo couldn't look at it.

She never got another pet after that.