The front door clicked shut, leaving me in the sudden, ringing silence of my own home, Haru's footsteps already fading down the street. I stood there for a long moment, my arms wrapped tightly around the two notebooks he had pressed into my hands. They felt impossibly heavy, laden with more than just paper and ink. They were a physical manifestation of yesterday's horror, and of an unexpected, bewildering act of kindness.
My heart still hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. He had come. To my house. He had faced me in my disheveled, tear-stained state and hadn't recoiled. He had spoken to me with a quiet gentleness that felt utterly foreign after the raw cruelty I'd endured. And he had brought back my words, my private thoughts, my fledgling ideas.
Slowly, as if in a trance, I carried the notebooks to the small table in the living room. My fingers trembled as I laid them down. The festival notebook, its spiral binding slightly bent, a few smudges of what looked like dried mud on the cover. And beneath it, my smaller, private journal. My breath caught. This was the one.
With a surge of desperate anxiety, I snatched it up. Had he read it? The thought was a fresh wave of nausea. I fumbled it open, my eyes scanning the pages, looking for any sign – a page creased differently, a smudge that wasn't my own, anything to indicate it had been explored. My gaze snagged on the page with the pencil sketch of him, the one Emi had so cruelly announced to the literature class. It looked untouched, undisturbed. I flipped through randomly, my heart pounding. There were my messy poems, my scrawled fears, my observations. It all seemed… just as I had left it, before Emi had snatched it the first time.
Relief, so potent it made me feel weak-kneed, washed through me. Perhaps he hadn't looked. Perhaps he had simply seen it lying there, recognized it as mine from the classroom incident, and rescued it along with the other. Or perhaps, even if he had glanced at it, he possessed a quiet integrity that made him turn away from another's private thoughts. I clung to that possibility, a fragile shield against the mortification.
Then I picked up the festival notebook. Tucked inside the front cover was the sheaf of folded papers Haru had given me – notes from Aya, clear and concise, detailing their discussion from that day's group meeting, along with a few new, more refined sketches of the swirling energy patterns we had hesitantly begun to explore. And beneath that, the homework assignment from Ms. Sato, a stark reminder of the school life that was continuing on without me, a life I was now terrified to rejoin.
Aya's notes were thoughtful, building on my single arcing line, expanding it, giving it context within the folklore Kenji had provided. They had even left space on one of the diagrams with a small, neatly written question: "Minami – any more thoughts on how the 'flow' initiates?"
They were including me. Even after my flight, even in my absence. They were waiting for my input.
And Haru… Haru had brought this to me. He had faced me, spoken to me, told me they were worried. He had said my notebooks looked "important."
I sank onto the sofa, the notebooks clutched to my chest. The silence of the house was still heavy, but it no longer felt quite so tomb-like. It was filled with the echo of Haru's quiet voice, the memory of his steady gaze. His actions were a stark contrast to Emi and Rika's brutality, a beacon of unexpected decency in a world that had felt relentlessly cruel.
Mom came home that evening to find me much the same as the night before – quiet, pale, and unwilling to offer much more than, 'Still tired, head hurts,' written on the kitchen notepad. The lie felt heavier now, tainted by the knowledge of Haru's genuine concern, a concern I was hiding from my own mother. She looked at me with that familiar worried frown, felt my forehead, and sighed.
"School tomorrow, Mina?" she asked gently, her eyes searching mine.
I looked away, the dread a cold knot in my stomach. 'Don't know yet,' I wrote. 'Maybe.'
It wasn't a no. But it wasn't a yes either.
The night was another restless battle. The fear was a living thing, coiling in my gut every time I thought of walking through those school gates. Emi's sneering face, Rika's shove, the laughter – it was all there, waiting for me. How could I face them? How could I endure another onslaught? The memory of my own broken words, "I want to die," whispered in the park, still made me cringe with shame.
But then, another image would surface: Haru, standing on my porch, holding my notebooks. His quiet determination. His signed word, SAFE. Aya's encouraging notes. The blank space on the festival diagram waiting for my input.
They hadn't forgotten me. They hadn't discarded me.
Haru had gone out of his way, risked awkwardness and my probable rejection, to return something precious to me, to deliver a lifeline from the small, fragile connection we had started to build in that group.
It wasn't about courage; I felt I had none left. It was something else. A tiny, stubborn spark refusing to be completely extinguished. Was I going to let Emi and Rika win? Was I going to let them shatter every small chance, every tentative step forward? Was I going to hide forever, a ghost in my own life, letting the silence and the fear consume me completely?
The Haru sketch. The poems. My private world. He'd had access to it and, as far as I could tell, had respected its sanctity. That gesture, more than anything, resonated deep within me. It suggested a level of understanding, of fundamental decency, that was so rare, so precious.
As dawn approached, painting the sky in bruised purples and reluctant greys, a decision began to form, hard and terrifying, but undeniably there. I couldn't keep running. I couldn't keep hiding. The cost was too high – the slow, inexorable fade into nothingness.
With trembling hands, I got out of bed. My reflection in the mirror was still a pale, haunted version of myself, but there was a new, faint line of resolve around my mouth. I looked at Haru's blazer, still neatly folded in my closet. I wouldn't wear it to school – that felt like too much, too soon, too obvious a tell. But I touched it, just for a moment, drawing a sliver of its borrowed strength.
My school uniform felt like a suit of armor I was reluctantly donning for a battle I was almost certain to lose. But as I tied the ribbon at my collar, my fingers fumbled less than they had yesterday.
The fear was a cold, living thing in my chest. The thought of Emi's eyes, of the whispers, of my own inadequacy, was a paralysing wave.
But beneath it, something else stirred. A tiny, almost imperceptible shift. The weight of a second chance, offered by an unexpected act of kindness.
I picked up my school bag. Inside, nestled safely now, were my notebooks – my voice, however hesitant.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I walked out of my room, down the stairs, and towards the front door. Towards the world that had hurt me, but also towards the faint, flickering possibility that not everyone in it was cruel. Towards the group that was, inexplicably, waiting for my input. Towards Haru, who had seen me at my worst and hadn't turned away.
The walk to school would be the hardest I had ever taken. But I was going to take it. One step at a time.