notes: i actually did it, 5k words on a fic that only about 4 people (including myself) would read, and i have no regrets. do you understand how much yukiatsu and tsuruko's characters were MADE for the pacific rim/drift system? because i sure do, also mizuchi as in mizuchi the japanese water dragon

mizuchi's

The letter arrived a week after he graduated from university.

His mother cried as she passed the ripped envelope over to his father, who then passed it on to him when he was done reading.

It was an honour - or so the letter insisted. To be handpicked by the PPDC for such a highly sought after position affirmed your worth and your talent and skill. Yukiatsu thought it was just a very nice way of telling you you were special enough to die for your country. Yukiatsu read it over and over again, over the word 'compulsory' and 'within 1 week', his father consoling his mother in the background.

The next person to cry was Anaru. She thought they'd all gathered in Starbucks just to catch up with each other. Poppo was recounting his close encounter with a Kaiju when he was hosting a tour in Okinawa last month. The oldest Japanese Jaeger, Tacit Ronin, had intercepted the Category II before it could smash through the town where Poppo and his tourists had taken shelter in.

"They called it Gamafrog, right? That's because it hopped about and made the ground shake and had this long, slimy tongue. I saw it with my own eyes! The tourists were not happy to have a Kaiju unceremoniously added into their itinerary, that's for sure," Poppo said in his usual lighthearted way. It had become a habit of his, just like how habits had made homes in all of them.

As he proceeded to describe the Kaiju in further detail, Anaru balked, Jintan looked worried and Tsuruko sipped from her mocha.

"Man, but it was really scary." Poppo's smile fell for a moment, and he looked thoughtful. "I don't think anyone would ever willingly go up to a Kaiju, that's just crazy," he said as he finished telling his story.

Yukiatsu chuckled.

The group seemed to shift in unison.

"Eh, what was that about?" Jintan tugged at the collar of his shirt as he asked.

"I'm going to become a Ranger," Yukiatsu said a matter-of-factly.

He watched his friends react. Poppo and Anaru burst into noise and Jintan's face showed an unflattering mix of shock and confusion. Even Tsuruko looked surprised by her standards. She lowered her eyes and the hand around her mug of coffee stiffened.

"You?" Jintan pointed a crooked finger at him.

"Who else?" Yukiatsu smirked. "I'm going to become a hero. This is obviously what I was destined for."

"D-don't joke about stuff like that!" Anaru slammed her manicured hand against the edge of the table, her bottom lip quivering. Seconds passed, but he did not blink as Anaru looked at him, as if waiting for him to reveal it was all a poorly crafted lie. But, Yukiatsu never told substandard lies. Finally, Anaru's expression crumpled and tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes. "Don't... don't say stuff like that," she sniffed as Poppo held a handkerchief out for her.

Yukiatsu looked over at Tsuruko. It felt like ages since they last talked. She still refused to speak to him, the rims of her spectacles red and angled downwards as she bent her head over the mug resting on her lap. She must have nothing to say to him then. Fine, if she was going to be that way. Fine.

"Yukiatsu. So, you're... going?" Jintan's question caused him to look up from the floor.

How typical of him to not understand, to ask pointless questions, to be worried on someone else's behalf. A selfless person. The complete opposite of what Yukiatsu was in every single aspect. Here he sat with his medical degree, and there was Jintan with his messy hair but caring, caring eyes. Who was the real winner here? Yukiatsu hated how the answer wasn't as clear as he hoped it would be. Maybe this time he could one up Jintan. Just this once.

He put on a smile.

"Of course."

Jintan, Anaru and Poppo came to the airport to see him off.

"I know you'd hate to do it, but mail us once in awhile, okay?" Anaru said sternly.

"Maybe. It'll depend on my mood." Yukiatsu shrugged his shoulders. The girl threw a punch at his arm, like she was going to be mad, but then her expression softened, and she was sad all over again. Anaru stared fiercely at him, her brow creasing. Hard as he searched, he could not find anger in her eyes, only sorrow framed by green contact lenses.

"Where's Tsuruko?"

Jintan shook his head. "I asked her along but she didn't want to come." He bit his lip, a shadow of hesitation crossing over his features for a split second, still an uncertain person, still fractured because of Menma. Jintan shook it off as he raised his head, appearing different, more like a twenty-four year old with a grip on his life, a teacher in a high school now, a decent member of the workforce, but even more - a decent human being. "... Yukiatsu, you should've said something."

Yukiatsu remembered: as much as Menma had broken them, she had also healed them. It was too bad not everyone was as lucky as Jintan, not everyone healed so easy. Not everyone had it like Jintan. Yukiatsu clenched his hand and wondered why, even after twenty years, some things never changed.

"What was I supposed to say?" He couldn't help but sound annoyed.

"Anything," Jintan replied. He dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out his handphone. He pressed it into Yukiatsu's palm. "Here."

He didn't need anymore prompting. Turning away from the group, he dialled Tsuruko's number.

"How cold of you to not come and see me off," he said once she picked up.

"Do you really need me to do that?" Tsuruko's voice, dulled and resilient, answered.

It was odd how Tsuruko, predictably cool and distant, said the most unpredictable things. He had thought he would have grown used to it by now. "... It wouldn't have hurt, would it?" Yukiatsu replied after a moment.

Tsuruko didn't say anything after that, and the silence they shared over the line was - for once - almost uncomfortable.

"Bye, Tsuruko."

The two years in the Jaeger Academy passed quickly.

Alaska was cold and unforgiving, an environment that Yukiatsu thought suited him.

Yukiatsu first chatted with Anaru whenever they both happened to be online. It only occurred when Anaru was staying up late, fighting with deadlines, and he was awake before breakfast. When he wasn't tormenting her or letting her complain, he asked about Tsuruko offhandedly, but the reply he would get was that none of them had any idea where Tsuruko had gone. Eventually, after the first few months, he and Anaru stopped talking altogether. Maybe Anaru had gotten a proper boyfriend. Yukiatsu spent a period of time vaguely musing about the possibility. He moved on to wonder whether he would be invited for the wedding. If the groom happened to be Jintan, he wasn't sure if he was going to attend.

After that, he had nothing else to concentrate on except for his training. His trainee life was made up of talking extensively in English to all the other students, a hodgepodge of people who ranged from teenagers to those well into middle age. It was suffocating to be constantly surrounded by others, to be forced to talk so often and about so many things. He never came to meet with the other Japanese students that were rumoured to be around. He was herded from one session to the next, his English improving in a short amount of time, as did his hand-to-hand combat and his knowledge of Jaeger technology. Classes were touch and go, they had to be in a war against the Kaiju, but Yukiatsu followed along well enough. He rose to the top position of his class, something he hadn't been able to do in Medicine school. It distressed him to know that he was apparently a better Ranger than a doctor.

The only good thing about the academy was how far it was from home. There was hardly anything that could remind him of his hometown and everything associated to it. This was ideal, he thought. This was what he had needed for a long, long time. Maybe he could let matters rest at last. But whenever he thought things would work out, something always happened. He'd accidentally glance out the window, see the snow falling outside, pure white and free, or someone would knock over a bucket of mopwater which would stream uncontrollably across the tiled floor - and he'd be back to square one, to where he'd been standing since he was seventeen.

When he returned to Japan, a golden badge pinned to his collar and a rank printed on his shoulders, he was tired.

A young woman in uniform approached him as he entered the hall with the rest of the travelling personal. She gave him a once over and he returned the gesture. She had long hair, dyed a platinum blonde, and her cheekbones were sharp. She bowed as she spoke, "I'm Hana. In charge of all the Rangers in the Tokyo Shatterdome. Nice to meet you." She punctuated her introduction with a bright smile.

He bowed shortly, glad to hear spoken Japanese after so long. "Matsuyuki," he greeted as he hiked his duffel bag up his shoulder.

"Oh, I know about you," Hana said, "they couldn't find you a drift-compatible co-pilot in the Academy, so they shipped you back here and crossed their fingers. Don't you worry. I'll find you a few potential candidates soon enough. Can't afford to let skill like yours go to waste, can we?"

[Neural Handshake failed. Would you like to try again?]

Over the course of a few months, Yukiatsu became familiar with this message blaring from the control system.

[Atsumu Matsuyuki. 60 drops. 51 kills.]

In comparison, the Jaeger simulator was always a breeze for him when he ran solo. As long as the right hemisphere followed his decisions and movements, he was certain to win. Of course, once Yukiatsu got out of the simulator, limbs aching and hair wet with sweat, the ever present question of who in the world would ever be able to sync with him became more and more apparent.

Hana lined up a few select individuals for him to test his compatibility with once or twice a week. Men at least five years older than him, boys who were only twenty-one years old, girls who had freckles and even the occasional foreigner. Yukiatsu never felt more than a brief spark of connection from a few of them. It wasn't a surprise to him that the people he usually connected with were known to have a mean streak in them.

During the rare event that he was proven compatible with someone else, and allowed into the cockpit of one of their older Jaeger models, the Drifting sequence never followed through. He would always be out of alignment with the other party, whether they were a man or woman, a child or an adult, he could never establish a neural bridge with anyone. A computerized voice announced their incompatibility over and over again, and Yukiatsu found himself suffering from headaches after every failed run. It infuriated him.

Hana, peppy as if she ran on sugar and sweets, would always reassure him and blame herself for the bad assessment. Yukiatsu let her spin these words of comfort, if only for everyone else to hear. He knew the real reason why he couldn't Drift. He could never let anyone in his head. There were too many things that he owned that he didn't want to share with anyone else. Even then, if he were to let someone share minds with him, he doubted that the person would still want to co-pilot with him when they found out what sort of person he really was inside. He didn't have that blind sort of faith. Did he even possess any sort of faith?

The only thing he believed in was that once, when he was sixteen, a ghost in a pretty white dress had smiled at him.

On empty nights after dinner, Yukiatsu read novels in his room. He replied to Anaru and Poppo's emails when he felt like he had nothing better to do. He thought about why he was wasting his life trapped in a dome that built flashy war machines and created soldiers to send off to fight great beasts, a hand over their hearts. In any other circumstance, he would be leading a undisturbed life as a doctor: charging people to prescribe them medicine, opening and closing his clinic under his call, touching and examining weakened bodies, interacting with humans on a daily basis. He wondered what it would be like to be killed in a Jaeger in contrast, to be crushed under tonnes of wire and metal and alien flesh, to die far far away from anything even remotely human.

Yukiatsu had a hard time deciding which fate suited him better. Sticking needles into people to save them, or risking his life in metal armour to save them. Both scenarios seemed too kind for someone like him. He was never the type to think about anyone other than himself, after all. Heroic acts like that were meant for foolish people like Jintan.

Ah. He was thinking about that person again. How annoying. He switched off his bedside lamp and made a mental note not to think of any of the Super Peace Busters for as long as it took that ridiculous name to slip out of his mind.

"Tsurumi."

They were too old for childish, clingy nicknames now. He tried to smile at her, but gave up when he realised the nonchalant expression on her face wasn't going to change. She was still the same, and the way she stared at him told him that she could still read him like a book. There was no point to act on pretences around her because it wasn't going to work. It had never worked.

Somehow, the thought made Yukiatsu unhappy yet relieved.

She was sporting a short pixie cut again, just like she did when they were in high school. After they entered university, she had started to grow it out, and he had always felt that the longer her hair grew, the more distance she'd placed between them. Against his expectations, she didn't apply for the same course as him. They had both easily qualified to take up Medicine in university, and Tsurumi had always said that she would become a doctor when they were still classmates, still young enough to throw tantrums and wear summer uniforms and walk by the train tracks that snaked through their home town.

In the end, she entered a course on Art History. He had felt betrayed when he found out, and the betrayal sunk deeper when she didn't even try to explain herself. Tsurumi had always assured him that she would go into a 'respectable' occupation, and he thought it implied that she would follow him wherever he chose to go. That was how Tsurumi was. She either told you straight how she felt, or she left clues - bits and pieces of information for you to understand her. The only thing she never did was lie. It took Yukiatsu over a year to come to terms with the fact that he had taken her for granted.

On campus, he had only ever seen her once in awhile, and she'd only acknowledge him if he greeted her first.

Now, she was standing just across from him, holding a sparring stick like she knew what it meant. She still looked like a young girl, not as scrawny as before, no, but the golden emblem of the PPDC on her shirt, the crowd of watchers shifting and whispering behind her, the dark red colour of the arena's floor, and Tsurumi herself - they didn't fit together. The scene before him was incongruous. Yukiatsu then realised that he didn't quite understand what was happening.

The instructor tapped his bare foot impatiently against the mat. "Are we ready?" he asked.

Tsurumi nodded curtly. She pushed her spectacles against the bridge of her nose. Then, she stepped into the arena and positioned herself. Yukiatsu copied her absent-mindedly. His head fogged up with questions and hesitation, his arms tensing. There were still too many things he didn't understand, he couldn't fight with her now -

The man raised his hand in the air. His voice rang loud and clear. "Begin!"

Tsurumi flew at him.

"Atsumu! Atsumu! Listen to this."

He looked up from his lunch tray as Hana sat down on the bench. It was odd to see her not doing work for once, but then he spotted the clipboard tucked snug under her arm and decided otherwise. She flipped through the papers as she grabbed a bread bun and took a large bite out of it. Her eyes flitted from the top to the bottom of the report she was reading, and as she moved on to the next page, Yukiatsu realised that she had been side-tracked.

"Oi." He tapped his fork against her juice box.

"What is it?"

"You wanted to tell me something?" he reminded her, asking himself if it was wise to entertain her.

She gobbled down the rest of her bun. "Oh, right, yes, yes I did." However, she left her mouth agape as another thought struck her. "Wait! Did you even see your drift-compatibility with that new trainee? All the technicians and even the engineers were gossiping about it. Can't blame them. I was floored, really. Never saw you move like that with anyone before. I heard she'd just come in from the Jaeger Academy yesterday night. Tsurumi-san looks like she has the most potential to be your co-pilot, doesn't she? Isn't that great for you?"

He prodded at the mashed potato on the corner of his plate and decided that he was going to find a new, secluded place to have his lunch.

Hana sat back down and looked at him with a wry smile. "You know her, don't you?"

"I've known her since I was six."

"Wow." Hana was awed. "That's twenty years. The longest our other Rangers have known each other are, on average, eight years."

"I haven't spoken more than a sentence to her in five years," Yukiatsu added. He scooped the last portion of rice off his plate.

"Wow." Hana's voice changed. "Never thought you were the type to have problems with the ladies, sir," she teased. When he glared at her, she picked up her juice and sucked nervously through its plastic straw, eyes wide and trying their best to look innocent.

Yukiatsu sighed. "What did you want to tell me?"

"Right!" she said for the umpteenth time. "I just had a breakthrough this morning. You know how you've never successfully drifted before," Hana started, a lively smile on her face. Yukiatsu maintained his impassive expression, not taking kindly to being reminded about it.

Hana was undeterred. "Well, I think the terminology in the LOCCENT has been wrong all this time. It's not that the Neural Handshake failed. It's more like... it was rejected, to put it simply."

"How does replacing one word change anything?"

"Oh, it changes lots of things," the woman insisted. "It means that it was never my fault for picking people who weren't compatible with. It's because of you. It's not because you can't establish a neural bridge. It's because you don't want to." She chewed her food, waving her chopsticks in the air.

Yukiatsu picked up his tray.

"I was right, wasn't I?" Hana called after him as he left the cafeteria.

"You aren't supposed to be here."

That was the first thing he said to her in two years. He recalled that before this, the last thing he said to her was 'bye'.

The thought of her being his co-pilot became more and more far-fetched. Tsurumi had quite possibly been the last person he thought of when he tried to create a list of people who would ever be drift-compatible with him. She had always closed herself off, even as she held herself nearby, two train seats away or five steps behind him as they walked home after school. He had never understood her well, and by far the biggest part he didn't understand was how she had liked him when they were teenagers. There was honestly nothing likeable about him past his good-looking face. Tsurumi was one of the few people who knew that, and yet...?

But when they had fought, Yukiatsu had known where to move, had parried as he predicted how Tsurumi would react. It came to him on instinct, it didn't need him to think like he did when he sparred with all the others before her. That was a fact he couldn't ignore either, no matter how much it puzzled him.

Tsurumi stepped away from the door of her cabin and moved to sit on her desk chair. She tucked a few stray strands of hair behind her ear, where she used to have an old, unforgotten flower hairclip pinned. "I'm just doing what I want to do," she told him, soft but firm. Her voice itself seemed to be part of a memory because of how often he spent in the simulator, stewing in his own private memories. Menma's laughter was what he heard most often, and if it wasn't that, it was a young Jinta Yadomi's declarations of rash adventure, and Tsurumi's adolescent words, calculated to pierce his ego.

Still, he could differentiate memory from reality. Tsurumi's voice had changed over the past few years, if only slightly.

"You aren't meant to be here either, Yukiatsu."

"Don't call me that." That name was annoying, it carried too many things he was supposed to have outgrown by now.

"... Matsuyuki," Tsurumi tried again, sounding displeased. The name felt awkward and stilted, as she said it. In this setting, it was easier to tell how her voice had changed. Her words were no longer hardened, no longer the way they'd been in high school or in university, like the walls of an impenetrable fortress Yukiatsu would never be allowed into. The precision though, the way she spoke volumes in just one word - Tsurumi still had it. He knew how Tsurumi could pack a dozen different accusations and meanings into a simple word. She knew as well as he did - he was far too egotistical and damaged to ever pretend to be a hero in a Jaeger.

But she leaned against the chair and said nothing, her arms loosely folded. He decided that he missed having someone who was as unforgiving as her around.

"It's good to see you again," he said.

That got a dry smile out of her.

She stood over them like a white, sturdy tower.

"Frigid Mizuchi. Mark-4. Capable of handling up to Category IV Kaiju, which HQ is predicting will appear in a year or less. She's a sweetheart but hard to tame unless you're up for the challenge. Very different from all the other Jaegers we have, but I'm sure you can see for yourself." Hana seemed to gaze lovingly at the machine from behind the glass panel of the control centre, pausing for a moment just to bask. Yukiatsu thought that the Jaeger did seem oddly beautiful. Unlike most other Jaegers that had well-defined arms and hands, thrusters had been moulded into the ends of her limbs. Tsurumi flipped through the blueprints Hana had passed to them earlier before handing them to him to skim through. The thrusters could turn into claws.

Frigid Mizuchi supposedly had anti-Kaiju missiles mounted not only across her chest, but also in her legs and arms. He raised an eyebrow in mild impress when he saw that for hand-to-hand combat, the engineers had opted for a spear. The compact, streamlined frame made it easier for the Jaeger to move in the ocean, and her head was stylised to looked like a dragon's.

"She's made for underwater battles. The world's fastest Jaeger in the water," Hana narrated. "Do you both think you're up for it?"

Yukiatsu tossed the clipboard back to Hana and stood in front of the gigantic being. Tsurumi combed a hand through her hair, her subtle method of agreeing.

After three years of waiting, he'd be able to operate a real Jaeger.

Tsurumi looked odd in the Drivesuit. It struck him that she had grown up. He gazed down at himself and then back at her. They had grown up.

"Yes?" She raised an eyebrow when she noticed he was looking at her.

"You look weird," he told her plainly. No sense to lie in here where none of that would work. Yukiatsu then realised how ironic it was that he was supposed to be one of the brightest Rangers of the Japanese division. He laughed.

Tsurumi creased her brow at him. "Are you okay?"

He shook his head and leaned against the interface of the left hemisphere. "I really shouldn't be here," he said between a few more chuckles.

She grabbed her helmet and wore it in one swift motion. "You've caught on," Tsurumi said, the corner of her lip lifting just so. It was hard to see because of the reflection off the surface of the helmet.

Without exchanging any more words, they readied for the test run in Frigid Mizuchi. As the technicians doublechecked the cockpit and made sure they all the equipment was functioning, he and Tsurumi got into their designated positions. He glanced over at the woman. When was the last time she'd stood beside him? When they were in their last year of highschool, maybe? When the veins in her hands weren't so visible, when her hair had touched her shoulders, when she didn't need to use a job as a reason to be in the same room as him.

As much as he hated his childhood and those years growing up without Menma, it was almost comforting to have Tsurumi next to him now. If he had to share his mind with someone, at least it was Tsurumi, who already knew how he actually was. It didn't make this any easier, and he breathed deeply as Hana's voice boomed through the communicator, telling them they were initiating the Drift.

For a moment, as he felt his mind being pulled tight like a sharp tug at the back of his head, reluctance crossed a corner of his mind - but then, in the flurry of images and rushing memories, Tsurumi's mind was open for a brief instant, and Yukiatsu found himself speeding towards that opening through Frigid Mizuchi.

He barely heard Hana as the memories hurtled through him. The time Poppo had fallen over and scrapped his knee. The time in class on Valentine's Day when Nishida-chan confessed her love for Togashi-kun, and then, suddenly, Menma walking up from the never-ending darkness, a shining beacon all on her own - laughing and crying and grinning and running with her hands tossed in the air. With Tsuruko's memories adding onto his - she was alive again. She was alive. Yukiatsu wanted to cry just then, and felt all his regret, all his apologies, brimming in his eyes, a sensation he'd long abandoned. Half of him was caught in the memory, almost never wanting to leave.

When he felt the warm tears rolling down his cheeks, he remembered where he was supposed to be. It took so much force that he surged forward when he burst out of the Drift and the cockpit of Frigid Mizuchi, alight in red and blue, appeared all around him.

"Atsumu's stabilised, Atsumu's stabilised!" Hana reported, sounding like she was jumping up and down. "Tsurumi's still out of alignment!"

"Tsuruko?!" he shouted over to her.

Her face was blank. She was looking at Menma as the small girl wandered closer to the stream bank. "Don't."

Menma leaned over to gaze into the rushing stream. "Don't." The girl reached a hand into the water.

"Tsuruko!" Yukiatsu yelled. "Snap out of it! I'm here!"

Tsuruko froze. She blinked, stray tears flicking off her eyelashes. "Yu... kiatsu?" She turned to look at him, a forlorn expression on her face. It was the first time he had ever seen her look so lost. He nodded at her as Hana's voice rang overhead.

The strongest emotion he had felt when he Drifted with her had surprised him.

She still had feelings for him. She had joined the Jaeger Programme because of him.

"Tsuruko." He scowled as the name left his mouth. Damn. An irritating side effect from drowning and thrashing in their memories. He tried to swallow it back down as he turned to look at her. "Why?"

She held his gaze with her red eyes. Her armour seemed to suit her better now.

"You were in my head. You should know why."

She removed her helmet, slinging under one arm, and walked out of the cockpit without looking back.

He wanted to get the answer from her. Not through sifting through her thoughts, not through a system that forced them to meld with a robot. He paced back and forth in her room as she sat quietly on her bed.

"I'm disappointed," he said.

"By my performance in the Jaeger?" Tsuruko asked in a calm tone, adjusting the frame of her spectacles.

"Not that," Yukiatsu corrected her. "It's about your reason for joining. It's foolish. It's not something someone like you would do. I'm a shallow person, I'm rotten to the core, and you were in my head so you know: I still think about Menma." He was a lost cause. He would spend his entire life thinking about her. There was no other way out. Tsuruko had to understand that. She knew him so well - of course she understood that. Why then, did she persist with these feelings?

The woman didn't budge. She let out a sigh and looked at him. Her next sentence completely swerved out of the way and caught him off-guard. "I shouldn't have chased the rabbit."

But he knew better than anyone else. In the Drift, the rabbit, dressed in snowy white ruffles with bright, happy blue eyes, was the one that chased them.

His phone rang one night. Yukiatsu let it go on for awhile, unfamiliar with the number that was displayed on the screen. The person seemed insistent as the ringing continued until he decided to answer the call.

"Hey, Yukiatsu."

"You. I didn't expect you to call me."

Jintan laughed uneasily. "Yeah, I know. Sorry I haven't been keeping in touch."

Two years ago, Yukiatsu wouldn't admit that he looked forward to hearing Jintan's voice. But now, it was hard to lie even to himself.

"So, I heard you and Tsuruko are going to pilot a Jaeger together."

"That's the plan." Yukiatsu flopped onto his bed, staring at the blank ceiling. "We didn't do well the first time, but we've gotten the hang of it now." He closed his eyes and flashes of memories - were they his or Tsuruko's? - faded in and out of focus, and Jintan's face stood out at that very moment. It didn't matter if the memory belonged to him or Tsuruko. Both of them had seen Jintan in the same light when all was said and done.

"Well, good luck. We're all rooting for you over here," Jintan said. Yukiatsu could hear him inhale softly across the line, as if preparing to say something important. "... you're a real Super Peace Buster now, after all."

Frigid Mizuchi's first battle was harsh on them. They had been deployed when the LOCCENT decided that one Jaeger wasn't going to be enough to defend the Japanese shoreline from the Catergory II Kaiju, Eel Tail. Yukiatsu had been so terrified that Mizuchi's movements were strained for the first few minutes as they dove into the water. Once they had caught sight of the Kaiju, all that Yukiatsu could think of was defeating it in the most efficient way possible. Tsuruko swung her fist into the skull of the Kaiju, and Yukiatsu followed. It felt odd not to be the one leading, but he couldn't complain.

The stronger they fought back, the more he felt his mind synchronize with Tsuruko's. Things became clearer for once in his dark life. The reason Tsuruko had chosen to study Art, the reason why she had latched onto the R.A.B.I.T. -

"... You still think about Menma too." Yukiatsu said as they walked away from Mizuchi's battered frame.

Tsuruko's shoulders tensed up, but, as if she had decided to give up being the person she was for so long, all the stress in her body seemed to leave her just then. "I do," she admitted.

"And I knew," Tsuruko said in barely above a whisper, "you wouldn't be able to Drift with anyone."

Yukiatsu stopped walking. His legs were exhausted, not to mention his arms and the ache in his head, but rest could wait. He had to say it.

"I Drifted with you."

Tsuruko looked into his eyes.

No words passed between them. There was nothing else to say.