Chapter 5 — Tuesday Is Hina

Tuesday morning, and Sora was doing something I hadn't seen her do before.

She was talking. A lot. Quietly, low enough not to draw the teacher's attention, but constant, leaning across the aisle toward a cluster of classmates hunched over festival planning sheets.

"No no no, move the drink stand." She tapped the paper hard enough to nearly poke through it. "People'll bunch up right at the entrance and block everything."

"Oh—yeah, okay."

"And the banner's too low, everyone's gonna walk right past it—"

I watched from two seats back, only half pretending to work on my own worksheet. This was Sora, technically, same uniform, same seat, same name on the attendance sheet. But something about the rhythm was off from yesterday, off in a familiar way I was starting to recognize. Faster. Warmer. Less like she was managing the conversation and more like she was actually enjoying it.

"You're staring," Ren said, dropping into the seat next to me.

"I'm not staring."

"You definately are... at Sora."

"I'm staring at my own paper, which happens to be near Sora."

"Uh-huh." He propped his chin on one hand, grinning like he'd just won something. "You've been on the same math problem for four minutes. I've been watching. Your eyes haven't touched that paper once."

"You've been watching my eyes for four minutes, that's not less weird."

"I multitask. I'm watching your eyes AND theorizing. Very efficient use of my time."

"That's not a compliment to either activity."

"It wasn't supposed to be a compliment, it was supposed to be an accusation, and it landed, so." He nodded to himself, extremely satisfied. "You like her. Sora. You, specifically, like Sora."

"I don't—can we not do this right now."

"That's not a denial, that's a stall tactic, I know a stall tactic when I hear one—"

"Ren."

"Fine, fine, saving it for later, but it's going in my notes." He mimed tapping something into an invisible phone. "Subject continues to deny obvious feelings. Day one of observation."

I decided the fastest way out of this conversation was to change it entirely. "You said you had a new theory."

It worked instantly, his whole posture snapping upright like I'd flipped a switch. "Oh, RIGHT. Okay. New theory. Huge one. Ready?"

"Not really."

"What if it's one ghost. But with split personality. Like different day, different personality's in control—"

Something cold went down the back of my neck that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

"That's oddly specific."

"RIGHT? It explains the voice thing, the whole different-vibe-same-face situation, I looked up split personality stuff and it actually tracks pretty well with—"

A piece of chalk cracked directly into his forehead.

"OW—"

"Theories on your own time, Ren." Godai-sensei didn't even glance up from his clipboard, already reloading from what appeared to be a personal stockpile in his coat pocket. "Sora, Kazuki. You two are on Tanabata booth duty. Talk after class."

The room went quiet, then very much not quiet.

"Wait, they got paired?"

"No fair, I signed up for that booth—"

I turned around just enough to catch the general vibe of the room, which was somewhere between mild envy and open betrayal. Two seats over, Aoyama Shizuka hadn't said a word, hadn't moved, was just looking at me with an expression so perfectly blank it somehow read as more threatening than anything the loud complaints around her were doing.

I decided not to hold eye contact with that for longer than necessary.

"Great," I muttered, mostly to myself. "A festival booth. My favorite."

Godai-sensei's arm moved before I'd even finished the sentence, and a second piece of chalk caught me square in the shoulder.

"OW—what was that for, I didn't even say anything theory related.

"Complaining counts," he said, already turning back to the board like the matter was closed, like this was a documented classroom policy I simply hadn't been briefed on yet.

Ren, still rubbing his own forehead, looked at me with something between sympathy and pure delight. "See, this is the problem with complaining about getting paired with the prettiest girl in the grade. Sensei's got a system now. Some of us would trade a limb for that pairing and you're out here getting chalked for whining about it."

"Nobody's trading limbs today."

"The offer's evergreen. It renews."

Sora caught me at my desk once the room cleared out, bag on one shoulder, standing closer than the moment strictly needed.

"Hey, so, question." She said it casually, but there was something a little too deliberate about the casual, like she'd practiced the delivery in her head first. "You free after school? There's this place I've been wanting to check out, it's kind of cute, I think you'd like it."

"Like, a date?"

"Like a—" A flicker of panic crossed her face, gone almost as fast as it appeared. "Like, for planning! The booth! We should plan the booth there, it's, it's a planning venue. That happens to also be cute."

Somewhere behind us: "She invited him somewhere?"

"For planning."

"Sure..."

Sora's ears had gone faintly pink, though her face stayed carefully composed, the exact kind of composure that only worked if you didn't look too closely at the ears.

"Fine," I said. "Planning."

"Great!" The relief in her voice was almost comedic. "Meet me by the gate after last period."

The place turned out to be tucked down a side street two blocks from the station, easy to miss if you weren't looking for it, sandwiched between a laundromat and a shuttered flower shop. A hand-painted sign above the door read RETRO PLAZA in faded, cheerful lettering, with a pixel-art mushroom character waving next to the text.

"A retro games café."

"Surprise!" Hina was already bouncing on her heels, every trace of Sora-mode gone the second we'd walked the school gate. "Forty consoles. Real cabinets, and not just ports. They've got Star Requiem on THREE machines."

"You picked the location based on Star Requiem?"

"I picked it based on multiple factors! One of which happened to be that."

Inside, warm and dim, fairy lights strung along the ceiling, a dozen games blipping at once. A woman at the counter waved us toward a hallway of little private rooms, couch, TV, a shelf of consoles behind glass.

"They have rooms?"

"Booth rooms! No fighting some rando for the controller." She'd already grabbed my sleeve, tugging me toward the third door. "This one's the best, trust me."

The second the door clicked shut, something in her shoulders just dropped. Like she'd been holding a whole different posture the entire walk over.

"OKAY." She spun around, grin cracking wide open. "No more Sora-brain! We're off the clock! Controllers! Now! Go go go—"

"We haven't sat down yet."

"Then SIT. Sitting's step one!"

She flopped onto the couch, bounced once, and was already elbow-deep in the console shelf before I'd gotten my bag off my shoulder, muttering something about cartridge slots, completely absorbed, completely loud, completely herself in a way I hadn't gotten enough of yet.

"Wait—" She spun back around so fast her hair whipped sideways. "Did you hear what Erika said earlier? About the booth? She said we got picked 'cause Godai-sensei ships us."

"He threw chalks, not cupid's arrow."

"That's not what SHIPS means—"

"I know what ships means."

"I—! That's not—! She misheard him, probably!" Her whole face had gone pink again, fast, and she shoved a controller into my hands like that would end the conversation. "Anyway! Doesn't matter! Play with me, I'm picking the game, no complaints allowed."

"I haven't even seen the game yet."

"Exactly! No complaints in advance either!" She spun back toward the console shelf, running a finger along the cartridges like she was selecting a fine wine. "Okay, question. Original, or remake?"

"Wait..." I turned the controller over in my hands, looking for a start button that didn't seem to want to cooperate. "I thought Star Requiem was a mobile game?"

Hina froze mid-reach, hand still hovering over the shelf, and turned to look at me like I'd just asked whether the sky was a rumor.

"...You've only played Reverie."

"I don't know what that means."

"You've ONLY played REVERIE." She spun all the way around now, cartridge forgotten, both hands coming up like she needed the extra limbs to fully express the scale of the problem. "Okay so, so there's the ORIGINAL, right, that's this, arcade, it's SO good, it's real-time, you and your partner just fighting through dungeons together, one of you's melee and one's ranged and if you don't actually work together you just die, like immediately, it's brutal, and the combo system is honestly better than half the stuff that came out after it, nobody talks about it enough, it's criminal—"

"Oka—"

"—and THEN, years later, some company looks at that and goes, hm, what if instead of any of that, we made it a phone game, with gacha, and banners, and NONE of the co-op, and that's Reverie, that's what you've been playing, it's not even really the same GAME, it just borrows the name and the characters and, and some of the lore, but it's a completely different—" She caught her own breath finally, chest rising fast. " People who played the original have OPINIONS about it. Really strong ones too."

"So the thing I've been grinding—"

"—is the spinoff. Yeah." She nodded, several times, fast, like the nodding itself needed to burn off leftover energy. "This café has the ACTUAL game though. Cabinet and everything. I've been dying to bring someone who'd actually want to—"

She stopped.

Went red so fast it looked almost painful, eyes dropping straight to the floor, both hands coming up to cover half her face. "Sorry. I got weird about it. I do that sometimes... That's the whole thing, sorry."

I looked at her for a second, hunched slightly now, still red, one hand rubbing the back of her neck.

"Don't apologize for being into something," I said. "It's kind of impressive you memorized an entire console war's worth of drama."

Her head came back up fast. "You're not gonna make fun of me?"

"I'm gonna make fun of you a little. But not for that part."

That got a laugh out of her, short and surprised, and whatever weird self-conscious cloud had settled over her cleared out almost instantly. She grabbed the second controller and dropped down onto the couch next to me, close enough that our shoulders nearly touched.

"Okay. You're melee, I'm ranged. Don't die in the first room, it's embarrassing."

"No promises."

"That's a terrible answer. Say it like you mean it."

"I will... attempt to not die in the first room."

"Better. Barely."

The game turned out to be exactly what she'd promised, tight, fast, unforgiving if you didn't move together. I died in the first room anyway, badly, cornered by something that looked like an angry chandelier, and she laughed so hard she had to pause the game just to breathe.

"You had ONE job."

"You said don't die embarrassingly. You didn't say don't die."

"That was implied!"

"Nothing about that was implied."

"It was SO implied, that's basic subtext, you just don't listen to subtext—"

"I listen to plenty of subtext."

"Clearly not this one's."

We got better after that, slowly, her calling out enemy patterns half a second before they happened, me actually managing to block for her once, which she celebrated like we'd won a tournament, both fists in the air, controller nearly flying out of her hands. Somewhere around the third dungeon floor we'd developed an actual rhythm, quiet coordination threaded between all the yelling, the kind of thing that stopped needing much talking a while back and just sort of ran on its own.

It was the console clock, glowing faintly in the corner of the screen, that finally caught my attention.

"Hey." I nodded at it. "It's almost seven."

Hina blinked at the screen, then at her bag, still sitting untouched by the door, planning sheet folded inside exactly where she'd stuffed it hours ago.

"Oh no."

"Oh yeah."

"We didn't do any of the booth stuff. Not one thing." She scrambled for her bag, yanking the sheet out like it might've magically filled itself in while nobody was looking. It hadn't. "We were supposed to plan the whole layout, and the tanzaku paper order, and the bamboo branch, and instead we just—"

"Played games for four hours."

"Played games for four hours." she agreed miserably, both hands coming up to grip either side of her own head. "Oh my god, okay, okay, it's fine, it's not fine, but it's FINE, we can still, we can just, um—" She spun in a full circle for no reason at all, like the answer might be standing somewhere behind her. "We could stay later! Do we have time to stay later? What time does this place close, do you think they'd let us—"

"It's already seven."

"RIGHT. Right, no, okay, different plan, we could split it, you do half, I do half, and then we just—no wait, that defeats the point of planning it TOGETHER—" She'd started pacing now, three steps one way, three steps back, sheet still crumpled in one fist. "Okay. Okay. New plan. What if I just don't sleep tonight, that's fine, people do that, I could just—"

"Hina."

"—or we tell Mio, no, absolutely not, she'll do that thing where she doesn't even yell she just goes quiet and it's WORSE than yelling, okay, not Mio, scratch Mio—"

"Hina."

She finally stopped pacing, chest rising fast, staring at me. "=Huh?"

"I'll take it home."

She stopped mid-spiral, sheet clutched to her chest. "Wait, what?"

"The planning sheet. I'll take it, work on it tonight, bring something back tomorrow." I held a hand out for it. "You don't have to fix an entire festival booth in the next four minutes."

"You don't have to do that though."

"I offered."

"You're offering because I panicked. That's not the same as you actually wanting to."

"Hina." I kept my hand out. "It's fine."

She looked at the sheet. Looked at me. Looked back at the sheet, lips pressed together like she was holding back three more objections at once, clearly running some kind of math that wasn't landing anywhere decisive.

"...Fine." She handed it over slowly, like she was surrendering something worth more than a piece of paper. "But don't finish it without me. I mean it. I'll help when I can, just don't do the whole thing yourself. It's supposed to be both of us."

"I won't finish it without you."

"Okay." Still faintly unconvinced, but she let it go, tucking the empty space in her bag shut like that settled something. "Okay. Good."

The café clerk knocked gently on the door a few minutes later to let us know the four hours were up, and we stepped back out onto the side street to find the sky had gone fully dark while we weren't paying attention, streetlights humming on, the laundromat next door casting a soft fluorescent glow across the pavement.

Hina walked close beside me toward the station, hands tucked into her sleeves against the evening chill, quieter now than she'd been all afternoon, but a comfortable kind of quiet.

"That was really fun," she said, eventually. "Not planning-a-booth fun. Just, regular fun."

"Yeah. It was."

"We should do this again sometime. A real rematch. I'm still mad about floor four."

"You died on floor four too."

"I died STRATEGICALLY. It's different."

"That's not a real category of dying."

"It is if I say it is."

We reached the station entrance, the light there brighter, more people passing through even at this hour, and something about stepping into that noise again made the whole afternoon feel like it was ending faster than either of us wanted.

"This's me," she said, nodding toward the platform behind her, though we both knew she meant something slightly bigger than that.

"Get home safe."

"You too." She lingered a second, toeing at a crack in the pavement, then looked up with a small, genuine smile, none of the earlier fluster left in it at all. "Thanks for today. For real."

"Thanks for the game history lecture. And the strategic dying tutorial."

"That wasn't a lecture, that was passionate education."

"Sure it was."

She laughed, waved once, and turned toward the platform, and I stood there a second longer than I needed to before finally heading for my own train, the planning sheet folded carefully in my bag, already thinking about what I was going to write on it.