Sincerely, Me [Kindaichi Yuutarou] | ✔

Fall

Shino held the eraser end of her mechanical pencil to her lips, her brows furrowed in a slight frown. She was hunched over her study desk, but her textbooks and homework sat in a neat pile on the side of the table. What she was really poring over was an A3 sketchbook that she had dug up from somewhere, half-filled with old drawings that she had done during middle school.

The lips don't look right, she decided as she flipped the pacer around in her fingers and rubbed out the offending facial feature. About fifteen minutes later, she was satisfied, and straightened her and held up the book to get a good look at the final product.

A paper and lead version of Sayori stared back at her, her uncolored hair curling around her shoulders like a wispy, yet defined cloud. Her eyes were closed, and her lips were pursed in a peaceful expression—what she imagined Sayori would look like after in an afterlife without suffering. She observed her drawing for a little while longer before turning to a new, empty page.

Her pencil touched the paper once before she turned it so that it was landscape in her perspective. There was a little snore, and Shino turned in her chair to see a sleeping Pochi. The sight brought a contented smile to her lips before she returned to what she was doing, gliding the pencil around the page as she sketched.

"Honey~" The door opened and Miho entered. She was off-duty today, and had stayed at home the whole day. "I brought you a snack." The woman was holding a bowl of sliced oranges with a tiny fork stuck in one of the pieces.

"Thank you," Shino said as her mother placed the small bowl of oranges next to her textbooks.

Miho nodded, her gaze flitting over to the light sketches Shino had made on the paper. "What are you drawing?"

"My friends," Shino said through a mouthful of orange. "I might draw Shibayama-san—Yuu-kun—next."

Miho's cognitive function immediately stuttered to a halt at the word 'friends' and 'Yuu-kun'. "I-I see..." She offered her daughter a smile. "I'm so glad, Shino-chan."

Pochi, who had been stirred awake by the noise, lifted his head curiously, his tail starting to wag.

"I love you more than anything in the world," Miho said solemnly, wrapping her arms around Shino from the top, and resting her chin on her daughter's head. "I'm glad you're making friends."

Her mother's long blonde hair tickled her chin, but Shino did not complain, enjoying the warmth of her mother's body.

"Now, then," Miho said, stepping back and giving Shino another one of her tired, tentative smiles. "I'll leave you to it, my little artistic genius. Make sure you bathe before dinner."

"I will."

xXx

"Ugh, you jerk!" Najimi shouted, clutching her wrist as she glared at Kunimi, who looked wholly unconcerned. "I can't believe you just threw a softball at me like that!"

"It's your fault that you didn't catch it," Kunimi retorted, his lips thinning in displeasure. "Don't come whining to me just because you're incompetent."

"What was that, you robot-perv?! Just because I'm injured doesn't mean that I can't still shove my fist up your—"

"OKAY!" The gym teacher intervened just then. "Why don't you just..."

Shino never got to hear what the gym teacher had to say next, tuning her words out. Next to her, Kindaichi was laughing at Kunimi's pinched expression and Najimi's furious one.

"Poor Suzuki-san," Kindaichi said to her, gesturing with his thumb at the soft-spoken baker, who seemed torn between intervening and staying uninvolved. "I guess what's what you get when you're friends with someone like Kurokawa-san."