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Bear's house is cluttered and small, given how famous he is, but Tsukasa likes it. It reminds her of Net Slum, full of books and papers, half-dead plants and empty mugs, art she can't even see behind everything else. He has a cat named Pangur Bán that sleeps on Tsukasa’s chest most nights, and Bear complains, good-naturedly, that it’s not really his cat at all anymore. Tsukasa feeds it; she pets it; she keeps it alive.
She thinks she’s doing alright.
She reads the books Bear leaves lying around, poetry and history, books by authors she’s never heard of. She eats the takeout he brings home, and they talk, haltingly but comfortably enough, about the books Bear is writing and Pangur Bán, and not about Tsukasa’s father or the custody case or how Tsukasa still calls him Bear and never Ryo-san.
He’s gone a lot, though—or, more often than she would have thought, since his job was writing books. But he likes to get out into the world. He says it’s important. He doesn’t insist or even suggest very strongly that she come with him, but he goes on little errands, to bookstores and events around the city, to the FamilyMart on the corner when he runs out of lemon iced tea. He’s gone on one of those little errands when Subaru calls.
Or—Mariko. The screen reads Mariko. Tsukasa lifts the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello!” Subaru’s voice, cheery but still soft, echoes down the line. Tsukasa closes her eyes to listen, imagines the sharp edge of a heavy axe, a curl of powder blue hair against pale skin. That is what Subaru is to her, and yet that isn’t her at all. She’s so much more than that. “I’m in your neighborhood—near Ryo-san’s apartment, actually—and I wondered if you’d like to come get tea with me?”
“Ah, sure! One second.” She hurries to find her jacket, her shoes, her bag with her book and her wallet. Most of her things are new—she hasn’t been back to her father’s house since waking up, and she didn’t take much with her that first visit. Nothing had been certain, then, least of all where she would be staying after things settled. And for all Bear’s lawyer’s assurances, it’s not even certain now. She slings her bag over her neck, then scribbles a note for Bear and hurries downstairs.
Subaru is waiting at the foot of the stairs, cellphone still in hand, and they go together down onto the main street, where pedestrian traffic parts awkwardly for Subaru’s wheelchair. There were never any crowds like this in the World, and Tsukasa’s still getting accustomed to the lack of open space and private places. Places where the land stretches out and out and out, mountains and rivers and sky uninterrupted by buildings. She misses the quiet. She misses the simplicity.
“Are there any places you like nearby?” Subaru asks, over the sound of cars passing. Her voice is as kind and gentle as it has ever been—that, at least, hasn’t changed.
“There's a coffeeshop a few blocks away. We could go there. Bear really likes it.”
“As long as you like it too,” Subaru teases.
“Ah. I—haven’t actually been to it yet,” she says, and then adds quickly, “but I’d like to! I mean, I wouldn’t mind trying it, not if you don’t.”
“Not at all. I’d like that.”
As they walk, Subaru tells her about her university exams, and where she hopes to go, and her plans for the future. Tsukasa hasn’t given as much thought to what she wants to do, though Bear encourages her, and the therapist she’s seeing does too. It’s just that she never thought she’d have much of a future at all. She can’t quite put that into words yet.
The coffeeshop is small, and cozy, and looks exactly like the sort of place Bear would love. It’s in the middle of town, though, with full-length windows facing the street, the tables nestled up against the glass, the chairs nudged in close against the tables. When she and Subaru take their seats with their drinks, their feet bump up against each other’s every now and then. Outside, the world keeps moving.
“There’s so much concrete here,” Tsukasa says, staring down at her tea. ”I spent so long in The World that, coming back… I forgot what it was like. Living in a city, I mean.”
“Do you miss it?” Subaru asks. Her head’s tilted a little to one side, and her expression looks genuinely curious. Genuinely concerned.
Tsukasa shrugs. “Sometimes. It was… easier, sometimes. A lot of the time.”
“Would you ever go back?”
“I….” The question catches her off-guard, and she blinks at Subaru through a shifting slash of sunlight. “I don’t know.” Past Subaru’s shoulder, Tsukasa can see the shrine on the other side of the street. She can see through the bright torii gate, down the long sando, through the huge, thin chinowa to the incense rising from the burner on the other side. The smoke creates a thin gray haze in the air, obscuring even the stairs leading up into the last building. “I’m seeing a therapist,” she tells Subaru, looking down at her hands. “She says I shouldn’t. At least, not right away. But maybe later, when things are… more settled.”
Subaru smiles, the gesture fond and small. “You’re braver than I am.”
“I made good memories there too. When… if I go back, will you come with me?”
Subaru’s face lights up, just as it had when she first saw Tsukasa coming down the stairs. “Of course!”
It makes something warm swell up slow and huge in her chest—even more when Subaru reaches across the table and takes Tsukasa’s hand. That is a sudden warmth, a golden rush that makes her whole arm, her whole body, tingle. She’s smiling. More than leaving her father's house, more than Bear letting her live with him, more than anything, being able to do things like this with Subaru makes her happy. The World gave her so much—it gave her this, too, even if she still doesn’t know what it is, exactly. A second chance? Looking at Subaru, seated across from her and still smiling, Tsukasa thinks maybe that's it.
She'll take it.