“Shini-sama. . .Shini-sama. . .”

Rin remained unmoving with his head down on his desk. After calling a few more times, Wen Xulong gave up and smacked him on the back. “Shiniama Rin, are you alive?!”

Rin jerked upright so fast that his chair tipped backward. For a frightening moment, he thought he would collide with the floor, but Wen Xulong caught the chair before it fell. He grinned down at Rin. “For a moment I was worried you had stolen away your own soul!”

“Fuck off,” Rin grumbled, sitting forward and rubbing his eyes. “. . .Class is over?”

“Been over for a bit now!” Wen Xulong said. “Did you stay up all night? You look like Death!”

It was true that he hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Ever since he’d lost his temper and yelled at Nao in the classroom that day, he’d been unable to stop thinking of the other boy’s expression. It made him feel restless and aggravated with himself. But no matter when he tried to catch Nao so he could apologize, it seemed that Nao was always unavailable. At last, his wish had come true, just in time for him to regret it.

If Nao was going to leave him alone, he didn’t want it to be because he’d been a jerk.

“Had homework,” Rin said, opting for a half-truth. “Lemme copy your notes. If I fail this exam, my mom is gonna. . .” He came to a sudden stop, then continued, “My aunt is gonna kill me.”

Wen Xulong tossed over his notes from the last class. “You were really up all night just doing homework? I’m not buying it, Shini-sama. You were like this yesterday too. And all of the past week, actually.”

“Like what? This is the first time I’ve fallen asleep,” Rin said, holding his bangs back with one hand and dutifully copying notes with the other. His tone was distracted, and the characters on the sheet became messier and messier until Wen Xulong himself could barely read them.

He took back the notes and Rin’s copy, writing it out himself. “Shini-sama, c’mon, get it together. What kind of handwriting is this? My grandma would beat you up with a baseball bat if she saw this. You’ve been like this for the last week—distracted, sleepy, all dull. It’s like you’re sedated all the time. Liven up some.”

Rin sat back in his chair and scrubbed his hands over his face, still half-asleep. “. . .It’s just a temporary case of insomnia. Not a huge deal. Oh. . .no practice today. I have to stop by the school’s office.”

“Oh? And what for?” Wen Xulong asked.

“Gonna apply for a dorm on-campus,” Rin said. “It’s a pain going back and forth from my house every day, and that place is way too huge anyway. I’m also turning eighteen this year, so it’s best to start living independently.”

More than any of those reasons, Rin wanted to move out because he could no longer stand the place he’d grown up in. Without his parents, it had lost all warmth, becoming nothing more than a tomb for his childhood. He hated it.

“You might wanna find a roommate if space is your problem,” Wen Xulong said. “All of the school’s dorms are built for two people. My brother has one; it’s roomy even with two.”

“Mm, I’ll figure it out.” Rin looked around the classroom, then frowned. “Is Nao gone already?”

“Yeah, I think he headed out about ten minutes after the bell,” Wen Xulong said. “I guess he wants to study a lot or something. Shini-sama, is that disappointment I see?!”

It was. Yet another time, Rin had missed Nao before he had a chance to apologize to him. Still, he wasn’t about to admit that to Wen Xulong; instead he pushed him off the desk. “Shut up, Long-xiong.”

Wen Xulong landed on his feet and continued to copy notes for Rin. “Shini-sama, it’s Friday. Let’s go out tonight.”

“Sorry, you aren’t my type,” Rin said.

Wen Xulong flicked his forehead without looking up. “And you aren’t mine either. You know what I mean. And I already talked to your aunty, so you can’t get out of it this time.”

“. . .Where do you want to go?”

“To that street-food place you like, of course,” Wen Xulong said. “We can eat, then head to the karaoke room or the arcade.”

Rin drew in a breath, held it for a moment, then blew it out in a sigh. “Fine. But my curfew is ten.”

Wen Xulong clapped him on the shoulder, tossing the notes onto his desk. “Knew that already! Well then, I’ll meet you at that place. Oh, and seeing as it’s four thirty already, you might wanna head to the office and fill out that form.”

With that, Wen Xulong picked up his bag and left like a spring breeze, there and then gone. Rin sat in the half-vacant classroom and spaced out for a moment, then rubbed his forehead with another sigh and picked up his things.

The classroom door slid open with a click and a rattle. Rin frowned at the noise as he closed it once more, listening to the sound of the latch.

He shook his head and made his way to the office. He requested the form, then sat and went through it, filling in the blank spaces. His eyes went out of focus several times, and this combined with his distractedness resulted in sloppy handwriting. He handed it back when he was finished, said his thanks, and left.

It was still early enough that the station hadn’t closed down. Rin began descending the steps to the road and paused suddenly.

He looked up. Though the city surrounded the school much more closely than it did the courthouse, the view from their steps was still very similar, enough for one to be reminiscent of the other. Rin abruptly recalled the sight of another person standing on the steps just like this, eyes round with shock, horror, and awe all at the same time, hair drifting with the wind.

His heart stuttered in his chest. Forcing those memories out of his thoughts, Rin hurriedly went down the rest of the stairs. He climbed into a travel pod and set the course for home, cranking the speed all the way up. Within moments, he was disembarking.

The breeze was stronger now. The weather had begun to cool, so when the wind blew, it cut straight through the thin fabric of Rin’s uniform, chilling his skin. It helped to clear his head a little, made it easier for him to think.

He thought of Nao’s expression in the classroom that evening, when Rin had shouted at him.

He hadn’t looked upset or hurt, but that only made Rin feel worse. All there had been in Nao’s face was wistfulness and self-deprecation. No anger or blame or indignation. Just reticence and that awful melancholia.

But when he really thought on it, he hadn’t ever seen Nao smile without that same sorrow filling every plane of his countenance. It was the sort of expression that seemed to belong to gods and angels, not human beings.

Rin entered his room and cast off his bag, still frowning in thought.

It had been about three weeks since Nao’s rebirth. Rin couldn’t recall the exact date of Nao’s actual birthday, but he knew it was in the First Age, less than halfway through. At first, he hadn’t thought much about what that meant. Only after seeing Nao at the graveyard did he have some inkling of what Nao’s life must be like. But he still hadn’t thought about it in more depth.

After more than a century, it was entirely impossible that anyone he knew was still alive. Nor was the city at all the same after so many advancements and improvements. Judging from how disoriented he’d been back then, Nao probably hadn’t even known he was dead until he’d been reincarnated. He’d been uprooted completely and transplanted into a world that should’ve been familiar, yet was anything but.

Plenty of people talked to Nao in passing, but Rin hadn’t yet seen any of them approach him more than once. Nao was probably dying for a person to call his friend, and even so, Rin had. . .

. . .Gotten angry at him for expressing gratitude and berated him for no good reason.

Rin wanted to go back in time and punch his past self in the face.

He changed from his uniform into casual clothes quickly, then sat down at his desk to write a letter. If he couldn’t catch Nao in person, then he would resort to the next best thing. He could show up to school early on Monday and leave the letter on Nao’s desk, then leave it up to him whether or not to accept the apology. It would be good for both sides.

It really was a good idea, except for the fact that Rin’s hand froze every time he set pen to paper. He stared at the blank page for almost fifteen minutes before giving up with a groan. No matter what he thought of, it didn’t sound right. It was either too cold or unusually soft or sounded selfish. After struggling with it for this long, he knew he would just have to wait until he found an opportunity to speak with Nao in private.

If they could bump into each other on accident so many times in the past, then it wouldn’t be much harder in the future. Rin consoled himself with this thought, then headed downstairs.

Wen Xulong was probably waiting for him at the restaurant by now. Slipping on his shoes, he called out a simple farewell to his aunt and left the house.