From start to finish, Inori Yuzuriha had seemed to be deliberately avoiding her—not once glancing in Hare's direction.
That didn't make sense. Hare knew Inori well enough to know that wasn't like her. And Hare herself hadn't done anything wrong—so why was she being avoided? Unless… it was actually because of… Shu. No. No, it wasn't that.
Hare dismissed the thought the moment it surfaced, and then felt embarrassed for having thought it at all. She knew Inori better than anyone. Inori had zero interest in romance—she didn't even know the names of the popular male celebrities that half the school was obsessed with.
Someone like that, taking a fancy to someone as insignificant as Shu? It was impossible.
Hare's feelings for Shu Ouma came down to a simple fondness for his face—and for the way he was, soft-natured, someone who would rather hurt himself than inconvenience anyone else. For a girl as uncomplicated as Hare, that kind of person was incredibly hard to resist.
—Inori's standards are impossibly high. Even if Shu likes her, it's just wishful thinking on his part. Relax, Hare!
She used that self-reassurance to get through the final two periods.
She was desperate to find Inori and demand answers—all of them—but the moment she looked up, something strange had happened.
"Wait—where did Inori go?"
She had been only two beats slow in getting up from her seat, and already there was no trace of that bright flash of pink.
Students were stretching, chatting, unwinding from class. Someone told Hare that Inori had walked out on her own just now—but even rushing into the hallway, Hare couldn't find her anywhere in the crowds. She had vanished, as though the air had simply swallowed her.
That feeling again. That wrongness.
Hare was slow to pick things up, but some strangeness was too persistent to ignore.
(③)
On many of the nights when Inori wasn't home, Hare would be alone on the sofa scrolling through her phone—and she would notice, in those moments, that she had somehow jumped from page two to page four without touching the screen. Or she would be on her way to the bathroom, and before she even opened the door she would somehow already be inside. And it only ever happened on nights when Inori was away. She didn't believe it had anything to do with Inori—she simply felt that something wasn't quite normal.
She thought back to the first day they met—Inori had stolen that hot dog without anyone noticing, like it was nothing at all.
—Stop overthinking it. Just call her.
"Hare?"
The call connected almost instantly, and Inori sounded like she was already mid-something on her phone.
"Inori, where did you go? I can't find you anywhere."
"A senior offered to show me around the school."
She answered perfunctorily.
"Oh… I see…"
—Inori is lying.
Hare pressed her lips together. A brand-new transfer student, in this short a time—what senior would even know to find her? Inori had been getting stranger lately. It had started around the same time as those frequent unexplained outings. Hare could clearly feel how absentminded Inori had been at home every day—the sense of something being concealed.
"It might take a while. Go ahead home without me—make something good and wait for me!"
"Inori… just, please be safe."
—I can't ask. I still can't ask her.
Hare desperately wanted to just say it outright: why did you transfer here? Is it connected to what you've been hiding from me? But she didn't have the courage.
"I will. Don't worry~"
The voice on the line laughed, easy and light.
To Hare, Inori was her most special and closest friend in this world. She was someone who had escaped from a GHQ research facility—and Hare was the only person alive who knew that secret.
Inori was hiding things deliberately. But the reason was probably something tied to the GHQ—danger, most likely, and she didn't want to pull Hare into it.
Inori was a good person. She would never do anything wrong. As long as that was true, it was enough.
Hare ended the call and let out a small sigh, and noticed, suddenly, how heavy her body felt. Probably all that thinking about Inori becoming a transfer student. She looked up at the window—sky a deep, clear blue, a sea breeze moving fast across the water in the middle distance, pushing the clouds.
It was only four o'clock. Still early. Same as usual—she'd wander the neighborhood, pick up some afternoon tea, then go sit for a while at Shu's secret hideout~
...
...
Music with a strong, driving rhythm filled his earphones. Shu Ouma, as was his habit after school, had not gone directly home. He had made his way to the abandoned building in the quarantine zone that he used as a secret base—planning to continue work on the fan-made MV he was editing for EGOIST's new song.
He had been distracted the whole walk over. Almost stumbled once.
The fact of Inori becoming his classmate—sitting directly beside him—still hadn't settled into anything that felt real. His eyes held a restless, clouded weight that wouldn't clear. The thing he wanted had come closer than it had ever been, close enough to reach—and yet she felt completely, hopelessly distant. As if they existed in different dimensions entirely. Yes. That was the right word for it: a gap that made him want to give up.
He hated that about himself. But he didn't have the courage to change it either. Shu found himself wondering why he was this useless, this helpless—and when he tried to trace it back, tried to find the cause, his memory went blank. Something significant from somewhere in his childhood to now felt like it had been deliberately erased.
Distracted and drifting, he followed the familiar route and stepped inside the old building.
Click.
Click.
He stopped.
A clear, odd sound was coming, casually, from inside. The interior space was cavernous, which made it ring out more distinctly than it might have elsewhere—like scissors moving, fast and light.
Confused, Shu pulled one earphone out and crept forward.
And then he stood there, frozen.
Across the room—in front of the old monitor he'd set up—a pink-haired girl was sitting with her head tilted slightly down, using the dark screen as a mirror, a pair of scissors in one hand, trimming her own hair with complete absorption.
Her slender, pale fingers moved the scissors with unhurried precision. Locks of pink hair fell away one by one, like petals letting go. Shu stared, couldn't stop staring, couldn't form a single word.
"Not going to talk to me, Shu Ouma?"
Inori was still trimming. But the words came out of nowhere—her voice cooler than the warm, gracious tone she'd used during her class introduction. Less soft.
"N-no! That's not it! Inori—Inori, why are you—"
"Aren't you a fan of mine?"
She turned the chair around. Crimson eyes fixed on his flustered face, and something like amusement moved across her expression.
Shu felt an inexplicable pressure land on him. A cold sweat started at his brow; his heartbeat picked up without his permission. It wasn't only the nerves of being in front of someone he admired—it was a different, heavier kind of weight. Like someone was watching him from behind.
He turned to look. Nothing there. Just the afternoon light that had followed him in through the door.
"But—but how did you know this place was here? And why… why would you come here?" Shu breathed slowly, deliberately, doing his best to look less rattled than he was.
"To cut my hair, as you can see."
Inori spoke calmly and gave a precise snip to the slightly overgrown fringe at her forehead.
"But still—"
"You have a lot of 'buts.' Am I that unwelcome here?"
Inori frowned, a small crease between her brows, and blew a few strands of hair off the scissors. Pink and white filaments twined along the blades, catching the light.
"No! Not at all! It's just—I don't understand why—why me—"
There was, buried under that sentence, a flicker of something Shu wasn't trying to show—a small, private thrill.
Girls didn't come to someone for no reason. Inori had singled him out during class, asked his name—and now here they were again. Maybe this was something. Maybe fate was a real thing, and maybe he wasn't entirely without a chance after all.
"Shu."
Inori set the scissors down. She rose slowly from the chair, and smiled as she called his name—quiet, easy.
"Hm?"
—She's using my name directly?
"Do you want to join Funeral Parlor?"