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Chisato has never quite liked the taste of coffee.
It’s funny, all things considered. She works at a café, and everyone around her seems to love it, but Chisato has never been able to palate something as bitter as coffee. She whines, always, that if she’s going to burn her tongue on a drink, she might as well do so with something sweet.
Chisato’s lips pull into a grimace as a burnt shot of espresso settles awkwardly in her stomach.
Chisato has never quite liked the taste of coffee, but she is still trying her best to learn how to make it. Mika lays a heavy hand on her shoulder, and Chisato is all too happy to stop there for the day, shooting him a smile as she heads into the dressing room, changing out into her Lycoris uniform.
A balmy summer breeze flits about the ends of Chisato’s hair, and it is almost a shock when she feels how they dance at the spot right under the nape of her neck. She really should get a trim. Some other day, though. Today is busy, busy, busy. She smacks her palms against her cheeks, forces a pep in her step, and makes her way towards a new day.
She stops a back-alley robbery. She delivers coffee grounds to the yakuza. She quietly drags a carjacker into a bush, restrained and unconscious, for some other Lycoris girls to pick up at some point. She teaches foreign language classes. She catches a pervert on the train, screaming very, very loudly that he was trying to get pictures under a girl’s skirt while holding his hand in a bone-shifting grip at the train platform. She teaches the preschool children.
Busy, busy, busy.
She stops by Yamigishi’s office for a physical, and ignores her pointed remarks about how great it is that she’s finally started caring enough to make it to them at all, if not on time. She goes up to Kusunoki’s office and states, in no uncertain terms, that she will be taking the next week off, and that she can either grant her leave or deal with trying and failing to find her while she takes it anyways.
She gets the week off.
On the way back to her apartment, Chisato stops by a vending machine and gets herself a can of lukewarm, bitter, horrible coffee, determined to ingrain the taste into her brain until it is second nature to replicate it at the café. She stops in front of her door, staring out from the veranda.
A city and a three-story fall greet her.
Chisato stares out and down, down and out. She closes her eyes, throws back her head, and knocks down the rest of the coffee until every part of her feels black and bitter, down to the metal plating on her heart.
She lets the feeling fester as she pushes herself up on the veranda. A city and a three-story fall. The crinkle of the can as it is crushed against the metal railing. The sounds of car horns and bicycle chains and trains and laughter and dogs and drunkards. The dizzying feeling of her feet hovering off the ground.
A breeze, again, against the too-long tips of her hair, just under the nape of her neck. Chisato opens her eyes, and sees a brightly-lit city staring back. She eases the tension off her arms, her shoes thumping solidly against the ground, and throws the balled-up can in her fist, not even waiting to see the moment it clatters into the open dumpster in the parking lot.
Chisato has a promise to keep. She took the week off to keep it.
The door to her apartment clatters shut, lock clicking into place, and Chisato cannot fathom why, but she finds that a little bitter too.
She spends the first day sleuthing around Kita Oshiage Station for good food, good picture spots, tucked away shrines, anything at all.
It goes... surprisingly well.
It makes sense, really, that she’d never paid much attention to the area around the train station. Usually, her concerns regarding it only extended to whether she would be on time for the train or not, a responsibility that would often fall on Takina’s shoulders anyways.
Chisato stuffs her face with a chocolate-covered crêpe and thinks of that no more.
She catches a couple at one of those public-use pianos performing something slow and melancholy, and drops a thousand yen in the hat at her feet. She stops by a fancy brand-name clothing store, picking up an overpriced sweater she still won’t need for months. She takes a picture of this cute little patch of flowers just off the entrance to the subway, noting with a wry smile that the grass had already started drying up for the summer. She dumps the change she’s gathered throughout the day into a cute little shrine, clapping her hands and ringing the bell, hands clasped in front of her in prayer.
And when the sun starts dipping under the horizon, a hazy golden glow settling over the city, Chisato goes back to LycoReco to burn more coffee.
Chisato thinks of sad pianos and fancy sweaters and old shrines and Takina, Takina, Takina, and finds that it doesn’t seem quite so bitter this time.
She spends the second day at Enkuboku.
It is a strange place to be, she recognizes. Chisato hardly has any fond memories of the place, and no hopes of making any new ones, and yet here she is anyways, staring up at six-hundred and thirty-four meters of cold steel, a feeling not unlike vertigo suddenly washing over her. She spots a flock of birds flying under the observation dome, recently repaired with help and funding from the DA, and tries not to mistake it for a cloud of wicked-edged glass.
Being a Tuesday, Chisato is unsurprised to find the elevators nearly empty. She spots a group of obvious tourists, a couple with their newborn child, and a group of maintenance workers, and all of them walk out at the first observatory, leaving Chisato alone with her thoughts for the hundred-meter ascent to the second.
She closes her eyes, the fluorescent overhead lights painting the back of her eyelids a sickly green-white. She shifts on her feet, the strange half-weightlessness of the elevator tickling at the barest thread of the feeling of freefall. The elevator clatters and clunks, and she imagines it to be the sound of crackling glass and fireworks. The elevator slams to a stop with a sound just a step removed from a gunshot, and Chisato’s eyes snap open, the drab gray of the observation room peeking out from the chrome doors of the elevator.
Chisato takes a shaky step out of the elevator, and thinks on that no more.
Looking out over the city hurts. The scorching midday sun glints off homes’ windows, car windshields, phone screens, bicycle reflectors. Chisato squints as she makes her way to the vending machines right by the elevator, eyes catching on the mellow green of the soda she had split with Majima. The one he had called too sweet.
She wonders. She slips a bill into the machine, presses the button for the soda, and wonders.
The crack and hiss of the tab is loud against the white noise of the observatory, a pleasant voice droning on and on about Enkuboku, its height, its construction, its role in broadcasting and advertising. Chisato leans against the railing at the edge of the room, idly lifting the can to her lips as she stares out over the city she had saved, lorded over by the radio tower she had once doomed.
Bubbles pop against her gums as she stares out over a city and a four-hundred-and-fifty-meter fall. She closes her eyes and knocks her head back, uncaring of the way some of the drink spills out from the corner of her mouth, draining the can before crushing it against the railing.
It’s too sweet. Chisato could rage against the irony of it all, if she had any rage left to give.
One of the sharpened edges of the crumpled can snags against her palm, a point of pressure that she could push for blood, if she really wanted to.
Chisato opens her eyes to a city bursting with light.
The roaring in her ears, which she had barely even noticed, quiets down, leaving nothing but a throbbing headache pulsing behind her eyes. Chisato’s fingers uncurl around the crushed can of soda in her hand. Her eyes catch on the color, a mossy green that, in her head, waves and flaps in a harsh breeze as it falls four-hundred and fifty meters down, down, down, before bursting into rust red.
Chisato throws the can in a bin, eyes fixed on the murky, unknowable, three-foot-deep depths of the bag.
“Goodbye,” she whispers, not sure which of her ghosts she’s speaking to. Thinking on it again, she picks one of them and amends, “Good riddance.”
“I don’t get it,” Chisato whines, laying her head down on the counter, careful not to jostle the cup of coffee in front of her. “It tastes better, but I don’t really know what I did different?”
Mika smiles, his fingers brushing at the edges of Chisato’s hair. “Maybe you’re just getting used to the taste of coffee,” he says mirthfully, grabbing a strand of wheat-gold between his thumb and index finger, no doubt thinking, too, that it has gotten just a bit too long by now.
Chisato groans.
She spends the third day at Sumida Aquarium.
It is, all things considered, an obvious destination. Chisato had known she’d come here from the moment she’d thought up this little week-long vacation, and though she wishes she’d been able to save the aquarium later in the week, it came as something of a surprise when she realized that there weren’t that many places she could go. Not even enough for one a day, really.
It is a bittersweet realization to have.
Still, the aquarium is... nice. It is, again, quiet. Slow, soft music filters through old, crackling speakers. The warm, dim lights and the roiling reflections of blue coming from the tanks meld into liquid gold at Chisato’s feet, dragging about her feet as she wanders the halls aimlessly. She feels herself pulled into the lazy pace of the animals around her, drifting along invisible currents.
She passes by the spotted garden eels, a laugh bubbling from her lips. She looks up at the giant, centerpiece tank, eyes catching on the way the light fades from striking amethyst to deep sapphire. She trails a finger over the seahorse tank, remembering the way Takina had ardently insisted that there had to be some practical reason it evolved into this form, despite still technically being a fish.
Something about that hangs over Chisato’s shoulders strangely, following her into the darkened halls where they keep the jellyfish. Her mind goes in circles, wondering over and over and over again if everything must happen for some perfectly practical reason.
Chisato feels something warm and wet land on her cheek, and fights against the memory of Takina’s blood against her skin while she wonders, over and over and over again, if Takina found her own death perfectly practical, too.
Chisato buys some bubble tea to wash the taste of that thought out of her mouth, sitting at the same bench she and Takina had, a year and an eternity ago. She barely even tastes the tea, if she’s being honest. She is too busy locking eyes with one of the fish as it slowly, effortlessly drifts against the glass of its enclosure. She thinks Takina had looked it up last time. Bumphead parrotfish, it was called.
Takina, Takina, Takina. The thought of her crashes against every corner of Chisato’s head, an unruly guest she cannot will herself to be rid of. That she doesn’t want to be rid of. Moving on feels like betrayal, and every day she feels herself more and more an unwilling Judas. Her hair grows longer. The days grow shorter. Sodas start tasting too sweet. Coffee stops tasting too bitter. She has tried so, so hard to cling to the pain of her grief, but—
"I have to live, don't I?" Chisato asks the shining blue of the aquarium tank.
A dead-eyed stare is her only response. The dull roar of the AC. The occasional gurgle and bubble of a nearby tank. The sound of a stroller pushed over smooth linoleum.
The fish darts away, leaving Chisato all alone with nothing but her thoughts, an only slightly more certain future, and the taste of something sweet on her tongue.
Chisato learns to make a good cup of coffee.
Chisato turns nineteen years old.
Chisato gets a haircut.
Chisato lives.
She spends the day waiting for snow.
Chisato pulls out her phone, the tips of her fingers red and numb from the cold, and quickly checks the weather forecast for what feels like the hundredth time in as many minutes. Ninety percent chance of snow at 9pm, same as it had been the last time she checked, and every time before that. She slips her phone back in her pocket, wrapping both hands around the warm plastic of the coffee she’d bought at the gas station.
She lifts the cup to her lips, careful not to spill any as the train jostles and sways, smacking her lips around the taste it leaves behind. It’s not as good as what Mika makes, or even what Chisato herself makes, but it was warm and cheap and it didn’t make her gag, so she’ll call it good enough.
She gets off at the Keiō-nagayama station, then catches a bus to Sakuragaoka Park, drawing smiley faces on the misted glass of the bus windows and draining her coffee one sip at a time. She is unsurprised to find herself part of a crowd, this time around. The cherry blossoms aren’t blooming at this time of year, but the park still has a reputation for its view of the city. Tourists, couples young and old, and tired salarymen clearly looking for something new to do with their nights accompany her on her journey. Chisato helps an old lady and her husband off the train, offering the hand that’s not busy holding rapidly-cooling coffee, and then starts the slow, steady trek to the hill at the center of the park.
A light dusting of snow starts falling before she makes it to the benches, and Chisato must keep herself from laughing out loud. Once too early, once too late. Maybe next year will be the charm. She moves her coffee from one hand to the other, and swipes her marginally warmer fingers over the bare nape of her neck, wiping off the pinprick-cold touch of a snowflake as she finally crests over the top of the hill. A snowflake lands on her lips, and she lets herself imagine that it is her congratulations for the climb, a breathy giggle slipping from between her lips as she takes a seat.
Chisato closes her eyes and knocks back the rest of her coffee. It is bitter, and slightly burnt, and a bit too cold for her liking, but oh well. She'll live.
Chisato opens her eyes to a sea of lights shining just for her.