10:45 PM.
The Yuuki household was usually settling down by now. Tonight, it felt like a crime scene.
Upstairs, Lala was sniffing loudly, frantically using the Clean-Clean-kun to scrub the ink stains from the tatami mats.
"I'm sorry, Rito..." she whispered to her robot, wiping her eyes. "I just wanted to help. I wanted to be part of the team. Now Mikan-chan hates me."
Downstairs, Rito stood in the kitchen. The silence was deafening.
He looked at the clock. Forty-five minutes. The convenience store was a five-minute walk.
"She's not back…" Rito muttered, his stomach twisting into a cold knot.
He looked at the kitchen table. There, sitting next to the fruit bowl, was a small, familiar object: Mikan's favorite cat-patterned coin purse.
She had said she was going to the store. But she had left her money.
Rito stared at the purse, and the realization hit him like a physical blow. She hadn't gone to buy milk or snacks. She had just... run. She had wanted to get away from the house, from Lala, and from him so badly that she didn't even care where she went.
He gripped the edge of the table, his knuckles turning white.
'I did this.' he thought, a wave of self-loathing crashing over him.
He had always known Mikan was his world. Before Lala, before the Harem Plan, before the "Hoshino Ryūto" dreams, it had always been just the two of them against their parents' absence. She was the one who made the house a home. She was the one who grounded him.
And for the past month, he had taken that foundation for granted. He had been so busy playing "King", so busy training his body, so busy managing Run's career and Haruna's feelings, that he had let Mikan slip into the background.
He had promised her pancakes, and then let the harem invade breakfast. He had promised her a partnership with the manga, and then let Lala destroy her work.
"I'm the worst big brother in history." Rito whispered to the empty kitchen.
He didn't grab a jacket. He didn't call Lala. He grabbed his shoes and bolted for the door.
He didn't need future knowledge or dream memories to find her. He didn't need Peke's sensors. He knew Mikan. He knew where she went when the world was too loud and she felt too small.
He burst out of the house, sprinting down the dark street, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
'Please be there. Just be there.'
…
Rito ran.
He ignored the burn in his lungs and the stitch in his side. He ran past the convenience store without looking in the window. He ran past the brightly lit shopping district.
He turned left down a narrow, steep residential street that led away from the city lights, toward the older part of the neighbourhood.
It was a small park, tucked away behind a row of vending machines and an old shrine. It wasn't a place for dates or hangouts. It was just a rusty jungle gym, a sandpit, and a set of two swings.
It was where they used to come when their parents first started leaving for months at a time. It was where Rito had pushed Mikan on the swing for hours because she was too small to pump her legs, telling her stories to distract her from the empty house waiting for them.
Rito skidded to a halt at the park entrance, gripping the chain-link fence, gasping for air.
It was dark, lit only by a flickering streetlamp.
But she was there.
Mikan sat on the left swing, her feet dragging in the sand. She wasn't swinging. She was just sitting, her head bowed, her hands gripping the rusty chains.
She hadn't gone to Sachie or Mami's house. She hadn't gone to buy juice. She had come here, to the place where they used to be just "Rito and Mikan", and she had sat in the dark for an hour.
Rito walked forward, his footsteps crunching softly on the gravel.
"Mikan."
She didn't jump. She didn't look up. She just tightened her grip on the chains.
As Rito got closer, his heart broke all over again.
She hadn't washed her face. The black, greasy ink from Lala's pen was still smeared across her cheek and chin. Her hands, clutched around the cold metal, were stained dark. She looked like a child who had been playing in the mud and had no one to clean her up.
"You didn't take your purse…" Rito said softly, stopping a few feet away. He was panting, sweat dripping from his chin, his chest heaving.
"I didn't need anything," Mikan whispered. Her voice was rough, like she had been crying, but her eyes were dry now. "I just... didn't want to be there."
She looked up at him then. The streetlamp cast harsh shadows across her face, highlighting the ink stains and the redness around her eyes.
"Why did you come?" she asked, her voice devoid of hope. "Lala-san is probably crying. Run-san is probably confused. They need you. They're your wives."
"I don't care!" Rito said instantly, the words flying out of his mouth before he could filter them. "I don't care about that right now. I care that my little sister ran out of the house without a jacket."
He took off his own zip-up hoodie, he had grabbed it unconsciously on the way out, and stepped into her personal space. He draped it over her shoulders. It was warm from his body and smelled of him, sweat, soap, and the faint scent of ink.
Mikan flinched at the contact, but she didn't push him away. She pulled the hoodie tighter around herself, burying her nose in the collar.
"You're stupid," she mumbled into the fabric. "You'll catch a cold."
"I'm an idiot," Rito corrected her, crouching down so he was eye-level with her. He reached out, his thumb gently brushing the ink stain on her cheek. "I'm the biggest idiot in the galaxy. I made you feel like you didn't belong in your own home."
Mikan's breath hitched. The wall she had built, the cold, efficient housekeeper mask, cracked.
"It's not my home anymore," she whispered, her voice trembling. "It's the Palace. And I'm just the maid."
*****
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