VIOLET SKY, takigawa chris yuu

━ chapter thirty

act iii

life will go on;
together?
no.

chapter thirty

❛we're just doing the best we can❜

━━━━━━

By the next day, Amara knows what she has to do.

It helps that, in the morning, Hiro drops by her dorm and apologizes for blowing up at her.

"It was just too close to home," she mumbles, rubbing her arm and standing awkwardly in the entryway while Amara pulls on her knee socks. "But I guess . . . things are different for you and Takigawa. You're both going in separate directions so . . . I'm sorry."

Amara stands, smiling softly at her. "I know. It's okay. I understand."

Hiro nods, fidgeting in her spot. Amara picks up her bag and goes over to her, slipping on her shoes. "Come on, I'll spend breakfast with you."

Arm slung over Hiro's shoulder, they head for the building. It's one last problem finally taken care of, which lets her think about her foremost concern — Chris.

She spends the rest of the day thinking about it, rehearsing what she might say in her head, hoping that if they do have this talk today, it won't ruin the next two weeks.

Since Chris doesn't go to PT everyday anymore — he's on the final stretch for recovery, just in time for when he starts baseball in April — she accompanies him to his dorm after school, listening to him talk, cold anxiety freezing her insides.

"— really tried to pack most of the stuff we don't need anymore. Jun was fine with picking his clothes out of boxes but that's a bit much in my opinion," he says as he unlocks his door and lets her in first.

She laughs, scanning the room as she toes off her shoes. "You're doing this so early. We have time, you know."

The empty state of his — of Ryosuke and Jun's — dorm makes her chest ache. The usual clutter on the wood floors is gone, replaced with brown boxes, taped shut and stacked around the room.

Her throat feels unbearably right.

Chris shrugs. "Doesn't hurt to pack up early." She smiles slightly, watching him step ahead of her, dropping his bag by his desk chair. "I'm going to shower."

She hums and takes a seat on the edge of his bed; he collects his clothes from his drawers and ducks into the bathroom.

The shower turns on, pipes singing with the pulse of rushing water. The floor is strangely cold underneath her sock-clad feet. Her toes curl involuntarily.

If this were any other day, any other time, she would change out of her uniform and into one of his t-shirts and boxers. Make herself comfortable on his bed for whatever studying that they were going to (attempt) to do.

But this is not the usual situation.

She sighs and takes out her sketchbook, flipping through the pages.

Many sketches are unfinished or simply not good at all, but she halts on a sketch of everyone — their friends, Chris. They're sitting at the table in the cafeteria. She isn't in it, but they're smiling and laughing.

She looks at a few others; a sketch of Stamp curled up on Chris' chest, the pool at the hotel in Palm Springs. She works backwards and eventually finds the sketch of the bench from the park in Nakatsuwa.