[HorridSubs] Puchi Pura Midori! - 07 [1080p HEVC 10bit AAC][50B5C10D].mkv

" Homecoming

/ Okaerinasai, Midori "

The bell rings.

Miyanami Midori, the green-haired 'heart' of the Flower Arrangement Club (Tentative), kneels on a futon on the tatami floor of the traditional clubroom at Umehara Middle.

A befuddled, amazed expression on her face, as her gaze alternates between the teary-eyed, joyful faces of her four friends all around her.

Lotte pounces, wraps her arms around the twin-tailed Midori.

"… You're back! We were so worried about you!" cries Lotte.

"Welcome back, Micchan," smiles Tomoe, her cracking voice betraying her almost-cool exterior.

"W-we th-thought we w-would never see you a-again," sniffles Hanako, who takes off her glasses to wipe away her tears.

"What was it like on the other side?" monotones Sana. "Did you see Santa Claus?" Then, with a slight smile, "… Though, I'm glad you're back here with us again."

Midori, speechless.

"I, uh—"

Midori (Real) shuts her eyes. Repeating to herself, "It's not real, it's not real, it's not real," like a mantra.

She opens her eyes again.

Lotte, Tomoe, Hanako, and Sana stare back, confused.

"I'm in a dream, right?" laughs Midori, exasperated.

Then, Slap!, as the green-haired student begins slapping herself across her own face, hard.

Slap!

Slap!

Lotte, concerned, grabs ahold of her friend's wrist.

"Hey. Hey! Micchan, stop. Don't do that!"

Sana nods, knowingly. "It's okay, Lotte. Percussive massage for the face. Good for circulation. I do it too. Helps keep my youthful appearance. Humu-humu."

Midori shakes her head, twintails swaying. "Y-You can't be real. This can't be real. You're not real. Y-you're ... drawn. Animated."

Hanako stutters, "M-Micchan ... Th-the fourth wall ..."

Lotte grins smugly. "Well, if we're gonna throw stones … Maybe you should take a look at yourself," as she conjures up a handheld mirror from behind her back, and holds it up to Midori's face.

Midori looks at her reflection, dumbstruck, as though it's the first time she's ever seen herself.

With a shaking hand, she touches her own face.

Her drawn face.

Feels her animated cheek, her chin. Peeling her proportionally oversized eyes open, examining her crystalline pupils, the enormous whites of her eyes. She pinches her skin, pulls at it, which jiggles at 24 frames per second.

A breathless, unbelieving laugh.

She closes her eyes again.

"… Breathe, Misaki, breathe," Midori whispers to herself. "Okay. What's the last thing you remember?

"Who's Misaki?" asks Lotte, tilting her head.

"… You were at the ryokan," continues Midori, ignoring her clubmate. "… Dinner. Drinks. … Standing on the table. … You crawled into the futon. … You fell asleep."

"'Ryokan'?" asks Tomoe. "There are no inns in Umehara, though …"

Lotte snaps her fingers. "Oh! Maybe Micchan's talking about the time we went on the class trip! That was so fun! Hey, we should go there again! Just the five of us, this time. We can take the train …"

Tomoe: "That was nice, wasn't it? The onsen … The food … The ping-pong battles …"

Sana mimes swinging a paddle. "Heh. I won't go easy on you guys. I've been honing my skills since last time. Next stop: Wimbledon."

Tomoe side-eyes Sana. "That's tennis, Sana."

Hanako giggles. "A trip together sounds like fun. (I-I'll have to a-ask my parents first, though …)"

Midori, ignoring the others, shakes her head again. "No, this isn't real. This … isn't … real!"

For the first time since waking, she tears her attention away from her friends, and looks around at the clubroom, as though she'd never seen it before in her life.

Hanging above her, on the opposite wall, a large banner, decorated in sparkles and colorful block letters.

WELCOME BACK MIDORI

"Ahh …" chuckles Lotte, scratching the back of her head, somewhat embarrassed. "You like it? We made it ourselves. … We didn't know when you would be coming back, but we wanted to be ready for when you did."

"It was Hanako's idea, to have a party to welcome you back," adds Tomoe.

Hanako blushes, looks down. "… I-It w-was a team effort, really …"

Sana crosses her arms and declares, "I was there to provide moral support."

Lotte grabs Midori's hands. "But! You're here now! Oh, Micchan, you wouldn't believe how strange things were when you were gone. We were all having these strange dreams … Where the sky was all gross and orange all the time, and I mean all the time, and there was no day and no night …"

Tomoe adds, "Weird, violent dreams. We all had them."

Hanako nods along. "It was really scary … I d-didn't like it …"

Sana: "They were too strange, even for my tastes. And 'Strange' is my middle name."

Tomoe: "(We're Japanese, Sana. We don't have middle names.)"

"A-and," continues Lotte, "we found this weird doll, made to look like you! None of us know where it came from … or even where it is now … b-but we found it in the closet, a-and—…" Lotte shakes her head. "Whatever, it doesn't matter now! What matters is you're here, you're back with us, and now things can finally go back to normal!"

A stack of papers on the floor catches Midori's eye.

Missing posters, all with Midori's smiling face printed on them.

MISSING - HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

"MIYANAMI MIDORI"

Tomoe, noticing Midori staring, says, "We made so many posters. Not just us, but the whole school, and the townspeople helped too. See, Midori? Everyone was really worried."

But Midori shakes her head again, clutches her head. "No. No no no no no …"

Sana places a hand on Midori's shoulder. "It's okay. The nightmare's gone now, whatever it was. The Great Sana—"

Midori slaps Sana's hand away.

She shoots up, and runs out of the clubroom.

She hears the club members call after her, but she ignores them.

She begins running down the halls of Umehara Middle.

*

Midori (Real) is running, running.

Warm sunlight shining in through the windows of the corridor, real sunlight, that she feels on her skin.

The Slap! of her indoor slippers on the hard floor.

As she runs, she passes by classmates, who exclaim:

"Miyanami-senpai! You're back!"

"Miyanami-san! Where have you been!?"

"We missed you!"

"Welcome back!"

She rushes past the faculty office, where her homeroom teacher, standing in the doorway, clutching a large stack of papers, remarks, "Ara! … Miyanami-kun … It's nice to see you again."

But Midori ignores them, all of them.

She runs, without the slightest idea where she's running to. (… Or from, perhaps.)

At some point, she finds herself sprinting toward the front of the school, headed for the entrance doors.

She doesn't stop.

She bursts through the double doors, out into the open air of her hometown.

The town of Umehara.

*

Midori (Real) continues running.

The riverbank, to her right.

Down the residential side streets.

She passes by the candy store, the post office. The bus stop.

Not for a second does she stop.

Her legs ache, her lungs are burning, but even still she runs.

And at each of these familiar Umehara-ian landmarks, which she has known all her life, friendly townspeople call out to her, expressing their surprise, their joy, that she has returned.

"Miyanami-chan! Welcome home!"

"Well, if it ain't little Midori-chan!"

"Oya oya, Miyanami-kun's finally back!"

But Midori pays them no heed.

She runs on.

All the while a bewildered, crazed look on her face, as though in constant, frantic disbelief at the simple mundanity of her own hometown's existence.

*

When at long last Midori (Real) finally does stop, it is not out of exhaustion, as you, or she herself, might have expected; but rather from a patch of bright green twintails in the corner of her eye, the peripheral sighting of which she follows down, drawn moth-like to its verdant flame, to the park, in the center of town.

To the very same playground where she and her club members have stopped by on their way home from school countless times before, munching on snacks, chatting excitedly about nothing and everything all at once.

But if such nostalgic remembrances occupy any space in the middle schooler's mind now, her face betrays no hint of it at all.

… Because Midori stands there now, hunched over, hands on her thighs, gasping for air, while she glares straight ahead, at the twin-tailed, green-haired figure, her doppelganger, sitting on the swings.

The straw doll's back turned to the real Midori.

Unswinging. Unspeaking.

After a long silence:

"… It's you," says Midori (Real).

No answer from the false Midori.

"… I've seen you in my dreams," continues the true Midori. "… This was your doing, wasn't it? You brought me here."

Creak of the rusting chains, as the straw copy slowly turns to face the original.

Her terrible doll-grin, her limpid glass eyes, revealed.

Midori (Fake) smiles wide, and responds, "Me? I did no such thing."

The real Midori clenches her fists. "Take me back. Get me out of here."

"Back where? To reality? And what's waiting for you back there? Disappointment. Shattered dreams and unfulfilled promises."

The doll hops off the swing, begins limping toward the real Midori.

"Aren't you sick of the enthusiasm you have to force, every time Rikki-tan gets a new headlining role each season? (Not that you even bother to do that much anymore, nowadays.) And aren't you exhausted from the sheer jealousy you wish you didn't feel but do, every time you read Sasa-shi's name in the news? And how about the fact that you don't even feel guilty anymore when you catch yourself wishing the worst for your own friends, your only friends? … And let's not mention the increasingly concerning fact that lately you don't even care so much about the absence of guilt itself, as the absence of the absence. … And hey, even that much is beginning to fade, isn't it?"

Midori (Real) growls, "Shut. Up. You don't know anything about me."

The doll's eyes widen. "Oh, but I do. I know more about you than you could ever imagine."

The straw Midori leans in close to the true Midori's face. "… I was modeled after you for a reason, you know."

Leaning in even closer.

"… Because you created me."

Midori (Real) grits her teeth.

"… You gave birth to me. Your anger, your private impotent railing against your own failed potential. Because you know in your heart of hearts that you should've gotten the same success as the others. You just never got the same chances. The cutesy characters you're best at—well, they stopped making those, haven't they? Whatever few happy-go-lucky moe girls exist these days, the competition's fiercer now, isn't it? And even within those characters, you're too … Midori-ish for them. It's not fair. But it's not your fault either. … Hence," gesturing to her doll-self, "… me."

Midori (Real) bites her lip. So hard it draws blood.

After a while, the true Midori says, "That's got nothing to do with anything. Send. Me. Back."

The doll scoffs. "I can't do anything, sweetie. I'm just a doll."

The doll turns back around, away from Midori (Real), her doll-hands clasped behind her innocently, and skips (limps) back toward the swings.

"… No, I can't do anything. Don't you see? Just like how you created me—you were the one who brought yourself here. You unconsciously wished for it."

"That's … not true."

The doll spins back on a single heel, to face the real Midori.

"But it is true!" the doll chirps. "And you know it is. … Would it really be so bad to stay here? As the true Midori? You're only fulfilling the role you were meant to play all your life."

The doll jumps on the swing, standing atop it this time, both feet planted on its plastic surface. She grabs the chains, begins swinging herself.

"The best parts of your life," continues the false Midori, "when you think back on it, have been as Miyanami Midori. In the recording booth. Whenever you cosplay as Midori for events. And remember the piano performance at the live concert? That was you at your most Midori-esque. When you and the character came together as one. And it was the happiest damn moment of your life."

Midori (Real) looks at the ground. Idly kicking at the dirt.

"… Oh, you don't have to make up your mind now," says the doll. "… And like I said, you're free to leave at anytime. I wasn't lying when I said, I had nothing to do with this."

The doll hops off the swing. And smiles.

"Whatever happens now is completely up to you."

And begins walking off, headed for the entrance of the park.

"… It's always been up to you."

Leaving Midori (Real) with her thoughts, alone.