☆ In which post-it notes are slightly involved. ☆
The first thing you see when you make it back to your room is the moon, softly bright behind the final fading layer of daylight.
The second is the lack of space on your mirror.
Your breath catches in your throat. There is yet another post-it waiting for you on your dressing-table mirror, blue in colour. You are almost afraid to draw closer; the sense of apprehension causes your heart to pound unnaturally fast. When the note is in your hands, translucent blue paper beneath your fingers, you inhale sharply in recognition of the handwriting.
Thank you, written in doctor's scrawl.
☆
"Chishiya, look!" You flash your wrist, where colourful beads smile against colourful thread. You are aware of how you are beaming - the notion of wearing a friendship bracelet at the ripe age of your early twenties in some kind of Death Land has a glaring sense of ironic charm. The beads that collect like those of an abacus on either side of the bracelet's thread as you move your wrist from side to side were undeniably cheerful.
Plus, it was sunny. Perfect friendship weather.
Chishiya looks up from where he sits cross-legged on your bedroom floor, closing the novel in his lap with a careful movement. Recently he and Kuina had been treating your room like a personal clubhouse, walking in uninvited and promptly rooting themselves there for the next couple of hours. You didn't mind (to be honest, you loved it), but you nudge the blonde with your foot playfully before coming to sit beside him. Flecks of sunlight freckle the right side of his face and warm his eyes. "Exactly what am I meant to be looking at?"
"Friendship bracelet," you sing, jingling the beads on your wrist once more before decanting an abundance of beads and twists of thread in the space in front of you. You send him a bright grin, and he eyes you warily. "Kuina found a whole pile of beads and thread somewhere. Do you want me to make one for you?"
"I'm not really-" he flicks his eyes from the beads to your face edgily, "-in the business of wearing friendship bracelets, no."
"Then we'll just have to change that, hm?" You say teasingly, already reaching for the thread. Chishiya sighs as you take his wrist and experimentally measure out lengths of blue and white.
"I didn't really have a choice, did I?" He mutters, watching as you sort through beads. You laugh and shake your head.
"No, you didn't," you say with a smile, "but had Kuina been here instead of me, I'm afraid you would already be swimming in bracelets."
Chishiya frowns, although the effect is offset by the amusement dancing in his eyes. "Aren't I lucky." He says, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Did you bring a congratulatory card as well, or is it just the bracelet?"
"Alright, less of the sass," you respond, rolling your eyes. "Blue, or white?"
He gives a noncommittal shrug. "You pick."
You deliberate, wrapping both colours around his hand. "How about blue then? Mine's blue, too."
"Sure."
"Aww, so we can match." You coo, and giggle at the scowl Chishiya sends you. He attempts to wave his hand in a 'get as far away from me as possible' movement but it is trapped within the ring of thread you have held to his wrist. "Blue it is, my dearest, darling friend."
Chishiya laughs at that, genuine and surprisingly happy, and you have to refrain from giving him one of the sappiest smiles imaginable. He smiles as he watches your hands braid thread and beads together, reflecting sunlight, and you realise that you really, really like it when Chishiya laughs. Slightly flustered, you turn your focus back to the bracelet, and scramble to recover a dropped bead.
"You can keep reading your book, if you want," you say, eyes still on the braid of thread and bead. "I'm kind of slow at making these, so it may take a while."
Chishiya hums. "I'm surprised you don't have a conversational topic prepared," he smirks. "One about the joys of friendship, or something like that."
You snort, and nudge him lightly with your knee. "Is this your roundabout way of telling me you want to talk to me?"
"It sure is, sweetie." Kuina cautiously pushes the door to your room (aka The Clubhouse) open with her foot, holding a plate of cookies. She sets them down next to your pile of bracelet material and bit into a cookie with a grin, flashing her own blue, beaded bracelet. "Nice to see you're joining the club, Chishiya. Good man."
You laugh and Chishiya swats Kuina's bracelet-clad arm away, looking less-than-thrilled to be joining any kind of club. He shoots her a murderous look and she shoves a cookie at him. "So, what's on today's agenda?" Kuina sparkles at you through a mouthful of cookie.
"I don't really have a topic in mind." You say, setting down your thread to reach for a cookie. Your bracelet slides down your arm as you reach, and you shake it back so it doesn't fall. In doing so, the rings on your fingers gleam in caught sunlight. "What do you want to talk about?"
"Mm...let's see. Friends talk about romance and stuff, right?" Kuina frowns, munching. "Anyone have a thrilling love life to share?"
Chishiya eyes her with distaste. "I'll be getting back to my book, then," he says, and begins to flip through pages without another word.
"It's okay to have no game, Chishiya." Kuina says, eliciting a 'go to hell' from the blonde man without looking up from his novel. She sighs and looks at you pleadingly, as if puppy-dog eyes would conjure colourful love stories from your lips. You hum as you continue to braid, slotting thread through more beads.
"I received a few confessions back in high school," you muse, pausing your braiding momentarily. Kuina's face lights up and Chishiya arches a brow, although still not deigning to look up from his book. You stifle a laugh. "Don't get too excited. A couple of letters on Valentine's Day one time, that's about it."
"Oho! You got love letters? That's so cute!" Kuina says, clapping her hands in delight. "Oh my God, were they super poetic? With like, rhymes and stuff?"
"I wish! No, they were like... you know those store-bought Valentine's cards? And then there's like, 'let's go out' written on the inside." You laugh, amused by her enthusiasm. Those letters were rather on the horrific side, although slightly endearing, often smudged with ballpoint pen and containing zero originality. "I would have loved a proper love letter, though, I was a sucker for that stuff."
"Aha! So you're a love letter person?" Kuina grinned, waving a cookie at you. "I must say, that's rather cliché, sweetie. Would you like a bouquet of flowers at your door with that too, or would a nice box of chocolates do instead?"
You threw a bead at her in mock indignation. Admittedly, Kuina was correct. You would have loved flowers and a letter, but there was no need to reinforce her accusation. "What's wrong with flowers and a letter?" You protest, flapping the half-woven bracelet in her direction. "Love letters are full of words from the heart, and you can keep it forever."
"Is that why you keep all those post-it notes on your mirror? Your love for the written word?" Kuina teased. The two post-it notes flutter charmingly in the sunlight, and you wished they would sink beneath the surface of your mirror. "Ah, would you look at that, there's one from Chishiya up there. I'd recognise that snarky tone anywhere."
You reach over to smack her, laughing, while Chishiya finally glances up from his novel to survey your mirror. His eyes locate the white post-it, and he snorts.
"Shall I write you a love letter, instead?" He smirks, gesturing to the white post-it on your mirror. "Lots of words from the heart, of course."
"You both are the worst people I've ever met," you groan.
"I thought I was your dearest, darling friend," Chishiya points out, and you pelt him with a stray bead. He grins, a few golden strands of hair falling over his face as he tilts his head forward. Kuina looks on in interest.
"A Chishiya-letter? Gosh, just the thought makes me scared." Kuina says, pretending to shudder, dreadlocks swaying lightly. "Pray tell, what would you write in such a horrifying letter?"
"I can't even imagine." You laugh, and add a final knot to your thread-bead braiding. "There! All done." You hold up the bracelet, observing it in the sunlight, and smile in satisfaction. "Here, Taro, give me your hand."
Chishiya looks at the bracelet as if it is laced with poison, but offers his arm up to you with a resigned exhale. You wrap it carefully around his wrist and tie the ends together, giving his wrist a tap afterwards to signal you had successfully put the bracelet on. You can see the little stars between the strands of thread and bead, unseen by everyone else but you. "There you go," you say proudly. "Pretty, isn't it?"
"Wonderful." He says, and although he rolls his eyes you notice the way his expression softens slightly, just for a second, as you smile and clasp his hand with your matching bracelet dangling from your arm. Kuina holds up her arm too, showing off the circlet of thread and bead around her wrist.
"Welcome to the club," she laughs, as if your hotel room really is The Clubhouse and this was some kind of Blue Bracelet Initiation. The man stares at the bracelet hanging off his wrist, and sighs.
"A 'thank you' would be nice," you tease, tugging his bracelet lightly. "Ah, that can be what you write in your love letter. Thank you for the wonderful bracelet."
"I'm not going to thank you for something I didn't even ask for," he snips, and Kuina scoffs, but he hasn't moved his hand from where it is laced with yours. The two bracelets you had made loop near each other, little stars falling in the space between them.
☆
The note grows heavier in your hands the longer you hold it, and so you set it down.
There is yet one more item left on your dressing table, one you hadn't noticed before. A twist of blue thread and beads, sitting beneath your mirror where the blue note had been previously posted. You blink. Your own bracelet is in your dresser drawer, safe from being lost, and yet there is another one here, glittering on top of your dressing table. You open your drawer, just to make sure, and sure enough your own bracelet sits on the polished wood.
An inexplicable sadness washes over you, for there are few other people to whom this bracelet could belong to.
You turn Chishiya's bracelet over in your hands and feel your chest squeeze uncomfortably. So he returned it. You are pretty sure of what is happening at the moment; ominous notes that said thank you and the returning of personal items were quite commonly acknowledged as a form of goodbye. Every other warning sign of him leaving suddenly surfaces in your mind - the sudden divulgence of personal information, the thing with Arisu - and you sigh. Having predicted the situation weeks in advance had not made it any easier to come to terms with once it finally came.
What do I do? You find yourself, for the first time in a long while, unsure of what to do next. Are you meant to run through the hotel to find Chishiya, before he makes his inevitable disappearance? How much time is left?
Something seems to constrict your throat, and you draw in a shaky breath. Surely, he must be long gone by now. You have missed your window, your only chance.
But just when you are sure you will never see Chishiya again, he appears in your doorway.
Your eyes widen. Chishiya, as always, glows. You feel almost as you did when you first saw him, luminescent under the moon, sitting under the stars. And when he looks at you he wears that expression that you could never place, seeming almost confused at finding himself in your doorway. You and me both, Chishiya. You've never felt so helpless in your life, the one situation you had never prepared for.
"You forgot the 'wonderful bracelet' part." You mumble, indicating the note on your dressing table.
Wordlessly, carefully, Chishiya steps into your room and wraps his arms around you. His hand absentmindedly rests behind your head, fingers threaded through your hair. You breathe in again, less shakily than before, and hug him back.
"So I did," Chishiya says, and you rest your forehead against his shoulder with a sigh.
"You're leaving," you say softly, words muffled by the fabric of his hoodie. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"There was nothing to tell," he says, and it's true - to be honest, you're unsure of what you would've done if he had told you before he decided to leave. Maybe you could have persuaded him to stay.
But you already know that never would have happened.
You hesitate. "Take me with you."
"I can't."
"You can't, or you won't?" You press.
Chishiya is silent for a moment. "I won't," he says at last.
You lift your head from his shoulder and pull away from him to look him squarely in the eye. "Why won't you? We're friends."
"We're not friends-"
"Don't say that." You shake your head. "Especially not now. Why do you keep saying that? We both know it's not true. It won't kill you to admit we're friends, Chishiya."
"It will," Chishiya says quietly. You blink. "It will kill me. How can you, of all people, not understand this? Use your head. You're a Hearts player. If we are friends, that means I have a weakness. Do you know what that means? In this world, weakness means death. I can't, and I won't, take you with me." His voice is laced with desperation, urging you to understand. "You will be the death of me."
Is that all I am to you? A weakness? You wanted to be childish, you wanted to lash out. You did understand, of course you did, and yet you still found yourself holding on.
"But you promised," you whisper. You knew how desperate you sounded, but you found you didn't care. Weren't you allowed to be desperate for once, to keep a friend from leaving? But this time it is Chishiya who shakes his head.
"I never promised anything." He says, and abruptly releases you from his hold.
And as Chishiya leaves, you realise with a pang of something bitter that he really never did promise.
Watching the empty doorway, you feel - with a kind of numb surprise - the sting of what must be tears behind your eyes, and how all the stars that had collected in Chishiya's presence seem to wink into razor-edged shards.