---
I find her two stalls down, standing in front of a yakitori stand, pretending she didn't just run away from me like I asked her to prom using interpretive jazz.
She's holding a grilled skewer. It's slightly burnt.
She's also very clearly not eating it.
Instead, she's staring at the fire like it owes her money.
"New food?" I ask.
She flinches. A little.
Then turns around, masking her entire face with a fox mask. Literally.
"I am the night," she declares, voice muffled. "I consume only vengeance and moderately priced festival meat."
I stare.
"You dropped your candy apple," I say, deadpan.
"I never loved it anyway."
I hand her a new one. Bought it on the way over. Didn't think too hard about it.
She takes it without looking.
Mumbles, "Thanks."
---
We walk again.
Slowly.
Carefully.
Not saying what we're both still feeling from earlier — that almost-head-on-shoulder moment. That maybe.
Instead, she dives headfirst into chaos.
"Mask stall!" she exclaims, pointing like she's spotting a rare Pokémon.
It's a cheap booth with plastic masks of everything from anime mascots to realistic cat faces to weirdly buff frogs.
She starts trying them on like it's a fashion show from a fever dream.
First: a demon with huge horns.
"How do I look?"
"Like someone I wouldn't sit next to on the train."
Next: a screaming chicken.
She flaps her arms. I take a step back.
"You're just jealous," she says.
"I'm not even sure what of."
Then: she puts on a tanuki mask — matching mine — and grins under it.
"You know what's cool about these?" she asks.
"What?"
She leans in until we're face-to-mask.
"You can say stupid things and pretend it wasn't you."
"That's dangerous."
"Exactly," she says. "So... if someone were to say, hypothetically, that tonight feels a little like a date, and also that you look unfairly good under lantern lights—"
She pauses.
Then adds, through the mask:
"—that might not even be me saying it."
I don't respond.
Not because I don't want to.
But because every part of me is short-circuiting like a broken vending machine.
She doesn't wait.
She turns around and says, "Okay, my turn to be emotionally distant now. Let's go get shaved ice."
---
We find a bench.
She gets strawberry syrup. I get melon.
We make fun of each other's choices.
"You chose artificial sadness," I say.
"You chose depression in food coloring form," she counters.
For a few minutes, it's like nothing happened.
Like we're just… us again.
Until a group of kids run by with sparklers.
And one of them bumps into her.
Not hard.
But enough.
Her shaved ice tumbles.
Splat.
Right on her yukata.
She gasps. Not dramatically this time.
Just softly.
And then — something I've never seen before — she freezes.
Absolutely still.
---
I panic.
"Are you—"
"It's fine," she cuts in.
But it's not. Her voice is thin.
I grab tissues from my bag, kneel down, try to help dab the syrup off.
She stays frozen.
"Sorry," she whispers. "Sorry, I—this is a rental, and I didn't mean to—"
"It's okay," I say quickly. "Seriously. We'll clean it. Or I'll pay for it. Or we'll blame the tanuki mask."
She gives a weak laugh at that.
But it sounds like it's running out of batteries.
---
I sit beside her again.
Close.
Closer than usual.
She's not eating. Not joking.
Just staring at the ruined patch of red on her light blue yukata.
"It looks like a murder scene," she mutters.
"Fashionably tragic."
She snorts. Still doesn't look at me.
Then, finally—
> "I wanted today to be different. Like… like a memory."
"It still is."
"Yeah, but not the kind you scrapbook. The kind you bury under a pile of other ones."
I hesitate.
Then pull something out of my hoodie pocket.
A folded, slightly crumpled piece of paper.
She tilts her head.
"You're giving me trash?"
"Look closer."
She unfolds it.
It's the doodle I did earlier — her in the tanuki mask, looking like she's about to commit crimes against jazz.
Below it, I scribbled:
"Don't forget the weird days. They're the ones that mean something."
She stares at it.
Longer than she usually stares at anything I make.
Then — very gently — she folds it again.
Puts it in her bag.
Next to the fox mask.
---
The fireworks start again.
She leans her head back, this time resting it fully on the bench.
"I'm tired," she says.
"Of the festival?"
"Of pretending."
Then she glances sideways.
At me.
And adds, "But with you… it's not pretending. It's just being."
I don't say anything.
Because honestly, that's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in my entire life.
And I'm afraid if I open my mouth, a literal bird will fly out.
---
We sit there a while longer.
No touching.
No almost-anythings.
Just us.
And in a weird way, that's more than enough.
---
As we walk to the station, she stops beside a lantern-lit booth.
Buys two candied plums.
Presses one into my hand.
Then, looking almost embarrassed:
"Thanks for not… leaving. Earlier."
I blink.
"Didn't think that was an option."
She laughs.
Not loud.
But real.
"Good," she says. "Because I wasn't done with you yet."