Two years passed.
Emily's rank was upgraded to S-Rank, the youngest healer to hold the title, a fact that made the news for approximately one week before the world moved on. Kagekami and Ms. Kasami continued to occupy each other's orbit in ways that neither of them had formally named yet. Saito trained. Sora went to school.
Life, in its way, continued.
The school yard was warm and unhurried, the kind of afternoon that makes homework feel like someone else's problem. Sora and Lily sat together on the bench they had claimed through years of consistent occupation, a card game spread between them that had long since stopped being about the cards.
"That's cheating," Lily said flatly, staring at the result.
"It's called strategy," Sora said, with the composed dignity of someone who has won.
"It's called cheating and you know it."
"This is what happens when you eat my lunch money."
"I was hungry." Lily produced tears with impressive immediacy. "I was so hungry, Sora."
Sora's smile came despite herself. soft, genuine, the kind that belongs to someone who has been friends with a person long enough to find them genuinely funny rather than merely tolerable.
"Did I miss something?"
Sora's smile faded.
She turned.
Judy was crossing the yard toward them unhurried, the particular walk of someone who owns the space they move through with two girls on either side of her and three boys trailing behind. Mara was on her left, wearing the expression she always wore when she had decided something was going to happen.
Lily's hand closed around Sora's arm. "Let's go."
"Going so soon?" Judy's voice carried just enough sweetness to make the words worse.
Sora kept her voice even. "We don't want trouble, Judy. What do you want?"
Judy said nothing. She looked at Sora the way she always looked at Sora like something she had already categorised and found uninteresting except as a subject for demonstration.
Mara spoke instead. "Two years since your brother became an S-Rank Protector." She tilted her head. "And now suddenly you have the courage to look at us?"
"Attention-seeking brats," Lily said, under her breath but not far enough under.
Mara's eyes moved to her. "What was that?"
Lily stepped forward. "You heard me. Why do you treat her like she's nothing? What is wrong with you? What is actually wrong with you?"
Sora turned and put her arm across Lily's chest gentle, firm, the gesture of someone who has been here before and knows how it goes. "Let's go home, Lily."
Mara smiled. "Home to who?" She let the question sit for a moment. "You don't even have a mother to go home to."
Judy laughed a light, easy sound, like she'd heard something genuinely amusing.
"Don't say that," she said, still smiling. "She might get a doll and pretend."
Lily walked past Sora's arm.
The slap she delivered to Mara's face was clean and immediate and turned every head in the yard.
Mara stood very still for a moment. Her hand came up to her cheek. Then she said quietly, which was worse than if she'd shouted "Get them."
The boys moved. Two of them grabbed Lily before she could step back, pulling her arms behind her, holding her in place. The third moved toward Sora.
Judy caught Sora by the arm and shoved her to the ground.
Mara walked to Lily. Looked at her with the focused satisfaction of someone settling a debt. Then she slapped her hard, deliberate, the kind that's meant to humiliate as much as hurt.
Sora looked up from the ground.
Something shifted in her expression.
She reached out and grabbed Mara's ankle and pulled.
Mara went face-first into the puddle. The impact was immediate and total mud, shock, a sound that the watching crowd would remember later when they described what they'd seen. Judy laughed involuntarily, quickly covering it.
Sora pulled Lily toward her and started moving.
The third boy stepped into their path and grabbed Sora's arm. She thrashed hard, instinctive, her elbow connecting with his nose with enough force to draw blood. He reeled back.
Then his fist came forward.
It caught her across the face and she went down.
"SORA!"
Lily fought against the two holding her kicking, twisting, getting nowhere. One of them clamped a hand over her mouth.
Mara stood up from the puddle.
She looked at her hands. At her clothes. At Sora on the ground, one arm braced underneath her, trying to get back up.
Something in Mara's expression closed off entirely.
She walked forward and kicked Sora in the gut.
Sora folded. Coughed.
"Have you forgotten who I am?" Mara said. Her voice had gone very quiet the particular quiet of someone who has stopped performing and started meaning it.
Sora looked up at her from the ground. Her voice came out low and unsteady but it came out. "You're just a rich brat who relies on other people to do things for you."
The kicks that followed were not about making a point anymore.
Mara kicked her in the gut once, twice, again, the sound of it carrying across the suddenly silent yard. Each time Sora's body tried to curl inward to protect itself. Each time Mara's foot found her again.
"You're nothing!," Mara said, each word placed between strikes. "Nothing. Nothing!"
"Mara." Judy's voice came from behind her. She had stepped forward, her earlier laughter completely gone, something uncomfortable in her face. "That's enough. You've made your point"
Mara shoved her away without looking.
She kept going until Sora stopped moving.
The yard was very quiet.
Lily had stopped struggling as tears streamed down her face. The boys holding her had loosened their grip without deciding to. Everyone watching from a distance had stopped moving.
Sora lay on the ground and didn't get up.
"Please." Lily's voice had lost everything except the desperation underneath it. "Please just leave her alone. I'm begging you. Please."
Mara looked down at Sora on the ground. At the stillness of her. Then she turned and walked away without a word. The others followed Judy last, glancing back once with something unreadable in her expression before the group disappeared around the corner of the building.
The schoolyard was quiet.
Lily dropped to her knees beside Sora and grabbed her shoulder. "Sora." No response. She shook her gently. "Sora…Sora, look at me."
Nothing.
Her hands were already moving through her bag before she had consciously decided to reach for it. She found her phone and dialled with fingers that wouldn't quite cooperate, pressing it to her ear and wrapping her other arm around Sora's shoulders, pulling her upright against her chest.
"Please," she said, when the operator answered. "I need an ambulance. My friend she's not responding, she's been." her voice broke and she pushed through it, "please just come."
She stayed on the ground with Sora in her arms and waited, her face pressed against the top of Sora's head.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry, Sora."
The ambulance came.
Lily watched them load Sora in with the focused, dissociated calm of someone whose body is functioning on its own because the rest of them hasn't caught up yet. She climbed in after her without being asked and nobody told her she couldn't.
At the Association the afternoon had settled into the particular quiet that follows a productive morning. Kagekami, Ms. Kasami and Saito sat together in the kind of comfortable arrangement that had become unremarkable over the past two years.
"You're right," Ms. Kasami was saying. "That was the same week she left for the overseas meeting. She does keep in contact." She kept her expression neutral and thought Mostly to ask about Kagekami and grit her teeth quietly. "Regularly."
Saito looked at her with the directness she applied to most things. "I want to spar with her."
Ms. Kasami laughed a genuine one, surprised out of her. "You're a hothead, Saito. I mean that affectionately. But don't convince yourself you can take Grace on alone."
Saito opened her mouth.
Kagekami's phone rang.
He looked at the screen. Unknown number. He answered.
"Hello is this Sora's elder brother?"
"Yes."
"Your sister has been brought to the hospital. We'd like you to come as soon as you can."
The call ended.
The room changed.
It was nothing visible no sound, no movement. Just the air doing something that air isn't supposed to do, thickening, pressing outward from where Kagekami was sitting in a way that Ms. Kasami and Saito both felt simultaneously in their chests.
He stood. "Someone attacked Sora." His voice was completely even, which somehow made it worse. "She's at the hospital."
He was already moving toward the door.
"Kagekami." Saito was on her feet. "We're coming with you."
He stopped. Looked back at them. Something shifted in his expression not softening exactly, but opening slightly, the way it does when someone accepts help they hadn't planned to ask for.
"Come closer," he said.
Ms. Kasami and Saito glanced at each other a brief, wordless exchange and moved toward him.
Kagekami opened his arms and pulled them both in. Ms. Kasami's eyes closed without her deciding to close them. She held onto him and felt his heartbeat fast, controlled, the heartbeat of someone managing something large and the darkness gathered around all three of them slowly, like a tide coming in.
Saito's heart was doing something she was choosing not to examine. She pressed her face against his shoulder and held on.
The darkness took them.