Kaguya could have sworn she felt a thud somewhere.
The meal was mostly finished by this point, the majority of it having disappeared into Kaguya’s stomach. Kaguya’s brother had been right—between the two of them, they really had managed to work their way through the food.
“I could go for more, to be honest…”
“You’re kidding me…”
“I don’t understand how that’s enough food for you! Don’t you get hungry later?”
“Hey, I’m the normal one here. I don’t understand how you manage to eat enough for six people.”
“Don’t ask me.”
She didn’t know, either; she was just born that way.
Her brother stood up, his chair clattering, and headed toward the refrigerator. Kaguya watched him like a hawk, her eyes glued to his sleepy profile and somewhat tense gaze.
“Ren? What are you doing?”
“Dessert,” he answered simply. Kaguya’s eyes widened, and she stood up in delight.
“There’s dessert, too?!”
The news was enough to make Kaguya’s heart leap in her chest. But it wasn’t just the dessert she was excited about. The fact that her brother had gone to such lengths just for her was what made her happiest of all.
He pulled a sky-blue tub of ice cream out of the icebox and served the ice cream into a glass dish, piling the scoops up high. It looked vivid and exciting. It was even sprinkled with eye-catching silver dragées.
“It’s so pretty…,” Kaguya said reflexively. “It almost feels like a shame to eat it.”
Sky blue and silver. Something about the color combination worked so well. But she felt a strange sense of déjà vu, as if she had seen that combination somewhere else before.
“Don’t be stupid,” her brother laughed. “Eat up before it melts.”
Without hesitation, he scooped up a full half of the ice cream with his spoon. Imitating him, Kaguya did the same and was just about to place the spoon into her mouth.
The air suddenly smelled like sakura.
Kaguya stared wide-eyed, caught off guard by the unexpected scent. Was there another dessert waiting for them somewhere? Something pink, like cherry blossoms? Where was that smell coming from all of a sudden?
“Do you smell that—?”
“I don’t think you should eat that, Kaguya.”
“?!”
It was Sakura Arakawa. She was suddenly sitting at the end of the table from out of the blue. When had she gotten here?
“S-Sakura, you surprised me. What are you doing here? Actually…” Kaguya cocked her head at Sakura’s appearance. “Why are you in uniform? Weren’t you supposed to be off today, too…?”
“Kaguya,” Sakura said, ignoring her question. She glanced disdainfully at the empty plates and ice cream on the table. “Are you happy right now?”
“What?” Kaguya furrowed her eyebrows. Why would Sakura ask something like that? “Where did that come from? Where did you come from, for that matter…?”
“Just a minute, Arakawa,” Kaguya’s brother said, speaking up in Kaguya’s place. “How disrespectful can you be, bursting in here without even announcing yourself first?”
“You’re the last person I’m interested in hearing about disrespect from.”
“Sakura, please…!” Kaguya said, rebuking Sakura. Why was she being so hostile all of a sudden? “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to scold you, but Ren is right… You should at least say something before coming in uninvited. Technically, this is trespassing. You don’t belong here.”
“No, Kaguya. The one who doesn’t belong here right now is you.”
Kaguya was visibly confused. This conversation wasn’t making any sense.
First of all, Sakura wasn’t acting anything like herself. She wasn’t the kind of person to do something so rude as to enter a person’s house uninvited and interrupt their meal.
There was the sound of a chair sliding across the floor. Kaguya’s brother had stood up. He stepped toward Sakura and grabbed her by the arm.
“W-wait, Ren…! Please calm down!”
Kaguya leaped to her feet to stop her brother. He did have a bit of a violent side sometimes, after all. Sakura, however, ignored Ren completely and continued to speak to Kaguya alone.
“There is an underground lab at Technical… You know it well, don’t you, Kaguya?” For some reason, Sakura’s smile looked pained. “A place, like an operating room. It was dark. But sometimes the Director would come. She must have thought I was someone she could talk to, seeing as I couldn’t speak. She told me a lot of things.”
A vision of the place floated into Kaguya’s head. Yes, there was an operating room down there. She had been to it several times. But she was pretty sure Sakura had never visited.
“Sakura, how do you know about—?”
“That’s my little secret,” Sakura said, placing a finger to her lips with a chuckle. “In any case, the Director spoke about you a lot. About how hard you were working. Too hard, sometimes.”
The Director and Sakura? Surely, they had never even met.
“Even the Director was worried about you. She had a lot of worries on her mind, which is why it was so sad, one of the saddest things I had ever seen when she died like that in front of me. She was a good person.”
“Wait. What do you mean? Who died?” The way she was speaking, she almost made it sound as if the Director was dead. “Sakura, that’s nothing to joke about. And when did you ever meet the Director? You’re acting very strange! I never would have expected this kind of behavior from you!”
“Are you sure about that?” Sakura was not letting her off the hook. “Kaguya, try to remember. Really remember. Just like you always ask others to do.”
Sakura’s tone was gentle, but the words sounded accusatory to Kaguya’s ear. As if, whatever it was Sakura was saying, Kaguya didn’t want to hear what came next.
She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew she didn’t want to remember it. She felt a vague sense of terror. It felt like if she remembered whatever it was she was supposed to remember, she would no longer be able to stay here. As if all this happiness would just slip away.
“What do you mean, like I ask others to do? What do I ask them to do?”
“Don’t you remember? You find people lost in their own chimerical dreams and make them confront reality.”
Sakura’s words shook Kaguya. She bit her lower lip hard. Sakura was just talking about what they all did, entering the heroes in order to wake them up. Wasn’t she?
“B-but…that’s something we all do. Everyone can do it, even you, Sakura…”
“I wish I had been able to do it…” There was a hint of regret in Sakura’s smile. The sight made Kaguya feel uneasy. “I know how hard this is, but let’s go home, Kaguya.”
“G-go home…? To the barracks?”
“Yes and no.”
There was a flash of glittering light.
The space around Sakura suddenly seemed like a different world, far away from this house. As if Sakura was repelling the space around her. The table, the food, the ice cream, the furniture, all of it.
“I’m not going to insist. I’m in no place to stop you. I’m the last person who would have that right. Not after having turned into a hero myself.”
“A hero…”