"Dango~ dango~ dango~ dango, dango~ the big dango family~"
Humming a gentle nursery rhyme, Chiose weaved her way through the nighttime city.
"So this is what the area around home is like. Compared to ten years from now it's a bit retro, but compared to ten years ago there's so much more here."
She'd been away on business so long that Chiose had almost gotten herself lost.
She swore that this time she'd rest for a few more days before running another Simulation!
Otherwise she really would start being unable to tell reality from the virtual.
The neon lights lining both sides of the street and the men and women out enjoying the nightlife made for quite the lively scene—but the liveliness was theirs, and had nothing to do with her, a white-haired girl merely passing through.
Noshiro Chiose didn't feel the least bit lonely. She held her phone in her hand, her steps unhurried and light.
In such a noisy world, she was as quiet as a butterfly.
Stepping into a greengrocer's, she bought up every fruit that would do a growing child good. As she walked out the door, Chiose found that a light rain had begun to fall outside.
Tokyo rains often, and Chiose, who had lived here for years on end, always remembered to keep an umbrella on hand.
But there were always fools on the streets who went out without any rain gear; they let out little yelps in the rain and scampered off, laughing and playing.
"Sigh, I just wonder how little Soyo is doing right now."
Waiting for the red light at the intersection was a trial. Chiose usually didn't play on her phone at moments like this.
After she had made, in reality, a friend she could spend a whole lifetime with, in order to ensure that this lifetime lasted at least a few hundred years, Chiose had grown even more mindful of her own personal safety.
After all... lifespan only guaranteed agelessness and immortality; it couldn't guarantee surviving unscathed after being hit by a truck.
But maybe lifespan could be exchanged for a powerful body? Chiose hadn't yet found anything like that in The System's shop.
Putting on her earphones and raising her umbrella, all she had to do was head toward the intersection where the streetlamp stood, turn right, and walk a short stretch, and she'd reach the little home she shared with Kyoumoto.
It was only around seven or eight o'clock now, with a fine, dense drizzle still falling. Sure enough, nothing beat going home and cuddling up close with her little sister.
Chiose walked on, but soon she sensed something off about the streetlamp across the road.
The streetlamp itself was fine; the problem was what lay beneath it.
There seemed to be someone crouching down there under the streetlamp.
Could it be some drunk who'd had one too many?
Although there were plenty of foolish drunkards near the downtown or the commercial district's stations who got sloshed at night and couldn't make it home, this was still the first time Chiose had seen one so close to her own home.
The rain kept falling. Chiose listened carefully to the soft music and to the sound of raindrops kissing her umbrella.
As the distance narrowed, Chiose realized it seemed to be a girl.
And she looked quite young—perhaps a high schooler, or maybe a middle schooler.
With no umbrella to shelter her, the girl was soaked from head to toe; her decently made clothes clung, crumpled, to her skin.
[A little... familiar?]
Chiose's vision began to sharpen, and in an instant her pupils shrank to pinpricks.
[No way—this person looks like...]
Noshiro Chiose took a few uncertain steps forward.
The girl had the lower half of her face buried between her knees and chest, and she stared blankly at the pavement.
Barely making out the girl's features, Chiose swore it was a face she could never forget for the rest of her life.
Rain trickled down the girl's pale face; this person was far more bedraggled than in Chiose's memory.
[Soyo? Nagasaki Soyo?]
Mm...
This was her mother, her daughter... her Nagasaki Soyo.
If the Soyo she had seen in the Simulations was an elegant young lady, a noblewoman of impeccable bearing, then the Soyo before her now was a drowned rat.
How could... it be like this?
Chiose hesitated for a moment, and in the end her lips still trembled a few times:
"Hey! Are you all right? Why are you out here alone in the rain? Hurry on home, or the rain's going to come down even harder soon."
"!!!"
Beneath the streetlamp, Nagasaki Soyo lifted her head in disbelief. In the real world, this was the second time the two of them met each other's eyes.
Gray-blue met golden-red, striking sparks of a fate that belonged to the two of them alone.
"You..."
"Me?" Chiose didn't show the slightest hint of unnaturalness, pointing rather oddly at her own face. "What about me?"
"You! I... no... no... ah... I..."
Soyo's brain short-circuited countless times in the span of an instant, to the point where she couldn't even get out a single complete sentence now.
It was Chiose! It was the real Chiose!
[Is it a hallucination? Please, no! It's a hallucination before death, isn't it... ah... whatever. It's so wonderful to see her for real—I wouldn't mind dying right now.]
Tears slid down, mixed with rain; weeping in the rain kept Soyo from letting Chiose see her even more wretched side.
"Did the rain make you go dumb or something? Want me to help see you home? If not, then I'll be on my way."
Holding the umbrella over Soyo's head, sparing this poor child from the ceaseless downpour, Noshiro Chiose forced down the waves stirring in her heart, her tone calm and languid.
And that very tone stirred Soyo's heart all the more.
[It's really Chiose, it's really Chiose! I—I actually managed to meet Chiose!]
She had to consider whether this might be one of the precious few chances Nagasaki Soyo would ever get in this life to see Chiose again.
She couldn't shrink back the way she did in her dreams! She—she would make her move!
Soyo tried with all her might to calm herself down, her mind full of that scene from years ago, when she had picked up Chiose beneath the streetlamp at the intersection.
Who would've thought that in reality it'd be the other way around?
"I... don't have a home anymore." Nagasaki Soyo unleashed her world-shaking wits, and in the space of mere seconds she had already worked out a whole series of... plans to cling to Chiose's side!
Yes... she'd just cling to her side!
Soyo's burning gaze sent a chill of dread through Chiose, but what concerned Chiose more was the information the girl had conveyed.
No home anymore? What kind of plot was this—had the timeline gone wrong?
"Huh?"
"Please, kind-hearted passerby, could you take me in for just one night? My house caught fire, the home is gone, my mother's in the hospital, and I have nowhere left to go now...."
"???"
Was this right? No, this wasn't right, was it.
Could it be some hidden plotline she'd never learned about?
In the rain, the silver-haired girl helped up the brown-haired girl.
This was the first time they properly met each other with the hearts of young girls.
The moment Soyo finished her last sentence, she lost all her strength, toppling straight into Chiose's arms and pretending to have fainted.
[So soft... so fragrant... So this is the scent of the still-green Chiose-mama and the grown-up little Chiose? So moving. Reality and all really is wonderful—this is the third chance Heaven has given me, isn't it? Right!]
"? What on earth is wrong with you?"
The instant Soyo fainted, it was Chiose's turn to panic.
One hand supporting Soyo, the other holding up the umbrella and the fruit, Noshiro Chiose was thrown into disarray in the rainy night.
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