Chapter 11 — Under the Same Sky

You held it together?

I think so. Mostly.

I didn't know why that exchange kept rattling around in my head. I hadn't even heard it firsthand, had no actual proof it had happened the way I imagined it. Just a feeling, something in how Hina's texts had gotten shorter the last two days, something in how Mio had started walking her in disguise to the train station after school without either of them explaining why.

"Kazuki."

I blinked back into the present. Shizuka stood in front of me, arms full of bamboo poles nearly as tall as she was, watching me with the specific patience of someone who'd already said my name once before this.

"Sorry. What?"

"I asked if you'd help me set these up." She adjusted her grip, the poles wobbling dangerously. "Before I fall over, ideally."

"Yeah. Sorry. Got distracted."

"By what?"

"Nothing important."

She studied me for a second like she didn't quite believe that, then seemed to decide it wasn't worth pursuing yet, and turned toward the bamboo stand frame instead.

The school grounds were already loud with festival prep, hammering somewhere near the gym, someone's radio playing pop music too loud from an open classroom window, the whole courtyard smelling like fresh paint and cut wood. It was also, for reasons the universe had apparently decided were funny today specifically, unbearably hot, the kind of heat that made the back of my shirt stick before ten in the morning.

"Okay," Shizuka said, setting the poles down with visible relief. "I'm going to lift this into position."

She grabbed the main pole, braced her feet, and pulled.

It didn't move.

She pulled again, face completely blank, not a flicker of strain or embarrassment, just pure, calm denial that gravity was currently winning.

"...Do you need help."

"No." She let go, stepped back, and looked at the pole the way someone looks at a math problem they've already decided is unsolvable. "I've reassessed. This is now your responsibility."

"You didn't even try a third time."

"I tried enough times to gather sufficient data."

"That's two tries."

"Two conclusive tries."

I picked up the pole. It was heavier than it looked, but manageable, and I got it upright and braced against the support frame within a few seconds.

"...Show off," Shizuka said, without a trace of a smile, which somehow made it funnier.

"You could at least pretend to be impressed."

"I'm doing an internal impressed. It doesn't always reach the face."

"That sounds like a design flaw."

"It's a feature. Keeps people from getting complacent."

Across the courtyard, "Sora" was moving fast, weaving between three separate groups at once, directing someone toward the paper lantern boxes, correcting someone else's banner angle, answering a question I couldn't hear from a kid holding an armful of tanzaku strips.

"Sora, where do the extra chairs go?"

"By the drink table, not the paint table, we talked about this—"

"Sora, is the penguin cutout supposed to go here or—"

"Here! Lower! No, other lower—"

"Sora, Erika wants to know if she can borrow the stapler—"

"Tell her yes but she owes me a stapler-shaped favor later!"

I watched her disappear behind a stack of folding tables, still talking, still moving, and felt that same feeling of worry sitting under my ribs that had been there since Wednesday.

"You're staring again," Shizuka said, not looking up from the string of paper lanterns she was now untangling with the same blank determination she'd applied to the bamboo pole.

"I'm not staring."

"You're doing the thing where your eyes follow her and your face goes somewhere else entirely." She held up a lantern, inspected it, set it down. "It's a very specific expression. I've started cataloguing it."

"That's concerning."

"I have a lot of free time between council duties."

"You catalogue people's expressions in your free time."

"Only the interesting ones."

"Is that a compliment or an accusation."

"Both. It's more efficient that way." She finally looked up at me properly, one eyebrow raised. "You've seemed distracted all week, not just today. Is something going on?"

I hesitated, because the honest answer, I think something happened with the twins and nobody's told me what, wasn't exactly something I could say out loud, not even to her. "It's nothing. Just tired."

"You're a bad liar."

"I'm a-okay liar."

"You paused for one and a half seconds before answering. That's not fine, that's calculating."

"Maybe I'm just a thoughtful person?"

"Thoughtful people don't usually look like they're bracing for bad news."

I didn't have a good response to that, so I busied myself adjusting the bamboo pole that didn't actually need adjusting, and she let it go, mercifully, going back to her lanterns without pushing further.

We got the rest of the frame up between the two of us, mostly me lifting and her directing with unearned confidence, and by the time the sun had climbed high enough to make the whole courtyard shimmer faintly at the edges, we'd earned a break under the one decent patch of shade near the science building, close enough to the koi pond that I could hear the faint splash of a fish surfacing somewhere behind us.

"You know," Shizuka said, settling onto the grass, "for someone who claims not to care about the festival, you've been remarkably invested in whether our class booth succeeds."

"I don't not care about the festival."

"You called it 'a lot of effort for a bamboo stick and some paper' like three days ago."

"That was a general statement about festivals. Not this specific one."

"A very convenient distinction."

"I contain multitudes."

She pulled two rice balls out of her bag, handed me one without being asked, and unwrapped her own with the same careful, precise motion she seemed to do everything with.

"Can I ask you something," I said, mostly to change the subject before she circled back to the distraction thing. "How long have you actually known Sora? Like, really known her."

Something in her expression shifted, briefly, before smoothing back into its usual composure. "A few years now."

"That's a vague answer for someone who catalogues facial expressions for fun."

"Some things I keep less organized than others." She took a bite, chewed, looked out at the koi pond instead of at me. "She's the reason I joined council, actually."

"Really?"

"Don't make it weirder than it needs to be."

"I didn't say anything."

"You made a face."

"I didn't make a face."

"You made the exact face you're making right now."

I tried, unsuccessfully, to make my face do literally anything else, which only seemed to prove her point further. She almost smiled at that, catching herself halfway, and went back to her rice ball like the conversation hadn't happened.

That was when I noticed the small charm clipped to the zipper of her bag. A round, slightly lopsided creature with tiny stub arms and an expression that looked permanently confused, the kind of merchandise design that seemed engineered specifically to make people feel protective of it.

"...Is that a Chiikamaru charm?"

Her hand froze halfway to her mouth.

"No."

"It's literally hanging right there."

"It's a coincidence."

"A coincidence that you own official merchandise of."

"I found it. On the ground. I was returning it to its rightful owner." She set her rice ball down with great dignity. "The investigation is ongoing."

"You've had it clipped to your bag for at least a few days, I've seen it before."

"The investigation is thorough."

"How thorough."

"Extremely. I've interviewed several suspects."

"Have you interviewed yourself?"

"That would be a conflict of interest."

I laughed, actually laughed, and she broke first, the corner of her mouth twitching before she gave up entirely and let out a short, surprised laugh of her own, one hand coming up to cover it like she hadn't meant to let it escape.

"Fine. It's mine. I like the confused one." She unclipped it, turned it over in her fingers. "He looks like he's having the same week I am."

"That's a very relatable little guy."

"He understands me on a spiritual level. Nobody else does."

"I understand you a little."

"You understand approximately fifteen percent of me. The rest remains classified."

"Only fifteen?"

"You're new. Give it time. Sora's known me for years and I'd estimate she's at maybe sixty."

"That seems like a big gap for someone who catalogues faces for fun."

"Some data takes longer to collect than others."

We sat there a while longer, rice balls mostly gone, comparing notes on which festival booths looked structurally sound and which ones were, in her professional opinion, "one gust of wind away from becoming a lawsuit," and for a few minutes I actually managed to stop worrying about anything at all. She had opinions about nearly every booth in view, delivered in the exact same flat, certain tone she used for everything, and somewhere in the middle of her explaining why the neighboring class's papier-mâché arch was "a structural crime," I realized I was enjoying myself more than I'd expected to.

Then someone screamed.

Not a fun scream. Not a festival scream. The real kind, sharp and immediate, cutting straight through the music and hammering and general noise of the courtyard.

I was on my feet before I'd even decided to stand.

Across the yard, a small crowd had already started clustering near the bamboo stand, voices overlapping, panicked, and through the gap between two people I caught a glimpse of dark hair against the dirt, motionless, uniform sleeve pushed up against the ground.

I didn't know, in that half second of running toward it, which one of them I was about to find.