Dreams of Tanabata

"Thank you so much for making us dinner," Kokomi's mother says.

"It's no trouble at all. I like cooking." Kokomi replies.

She killed their only son. This is the least she can do.

While they are eating, her father asks, "Why don't you try dipping your toes in the idol industry yourself? It would be a good way to get your mind off this whole awful business of your brother's disappearance."

Her mother smiles and says, "That's a wonderful idea honey! I'm sure Kokomi would be very good at it."

Kokomi is sure of this as well. In fact, she's pretty sure that, with the combination of her natural gifts and the pure and elegant manner that she's spent most of her life learning how to cultivate, she could be the best there ever was. Strangely enough, this conviction wards her away from venturing into showbusiness. Not out of fear that it will prove incorrect as much as out of a fear that it won't.

Kokomi's always strived to be a shining, extraordinary moment in the ordinary days of those lucky enough to be graced with her presence. A resplendent flower growing beside the sidewalk, a breathtaking sunset seen on the way home from a convenience store.

The serendipitous element of such encounters would be lost if she were to become a star and have her beautiful visage plastered everywhere. More than that, becoming an idol beloved by all, would collapse her future possibilities into a single path. It would surely be a beautiful path lined in luxuries but the thought of walking it for the rest of her life feels like crawling into her own coffin.

"I'll think about it." she says, "I still need to keep up with my studies, after all."

"Don't worry, Makoto was always able to balance his career and his studies well enough and he wasn't nearly as well organized as you," her mother says.

"I'll speak to some of my industry contacts to arrange an audition for you sometime soon," her father says.

"Thank you. That's very kind of you," Kokomi capitulates.

What right does she have to refuse this path that they want her to walk?

She killed their only son after all.

*

"So, how have you been liking it here so far?" Touma's mother asks him when he comes home from his first day at his new school.

"Decently enough, I suppose." Touma says. He doesn't really feel like he's better or worse off here than in his hometown in any significant way.

"Well I like it here. Did you know this place has the lowest violent crime rates of any urban area in Japan?"

"I was unaware of this fact. Was that the reason why you chose Yumetani for us to move to?"

His mom's always been super paranoid about such things, which is probably related to the frankly excessive amount of crime fiction, true crime and thrillers that she reads though Touma has never been able to determine whether these are the cause of her anxiety or a method for coping with it. Perhaps the one feeds into the other, creating a hamster wheel of bloodstained nightmare scenarios for her overactive imagination to run through.

"Can you blame me for wanting some piece of mind? Though that isn't the only reason. I also heard this town got such a fanciful name because of how beautiful it is in the spring when everything blooms."

"It really is a pity that it seems we arrived slightly too late to witness this sight. I would have liked to see a profusion of blossoms so great as to make this place seem like something from a dream. Presuming that I grasped the intent behind the name correctly of course."

"Well, there's some pictures from past springs available online and I suppose you can see them in person next year."

Personally, Touma would prefer a living place with more exciting draws than peace of mind and pretty flowers in the spring, but he supposes that somewhere dull but pleasant is a nice enough place for him to be stuck until he can attend university somewhere more suited to his interests.

*

Kokomi is walking through a summer festival enjoying a crepe stuffed to bursting with berries and sweet cream that she'd charmed out of a vendor, when a hand snakes around her ankle. She turns and sees Makoto crawling on the ground behind her.

He looks terrible, his complexion pallid, his hair wild, and his eyes haunted.

"Kokomi, it's really you isn't it?" He says, embracing her calf.

His hands, his arms, bend too much, give too easily against her body as if they were made of melting wax.

"It is," Kokomi says.

"Ah, Kokomi. Thank goodness, I've finally found the real you."

"But how are you here? You're dead. I killed you." Kokomi says, the words falling from her mouth like dead leaves.

Makoto looks up at her a stomach-churning tenderness in his eyes and says, "Are you talking about how you pushed me down all those stairs? Don't worry about that Kokomi. I'm not mad. I know you didn't mean to do that. I promise that I still love you just as much as I ever have, and I'll find my way back to you no matter what."

"Please don't." she says and immediately wonders why she said it.

If her brother really isn't dead then, surely she should want him to come back, shouldn't she? In fact, he does want him to come back doesn't she?

Even if only so she doesn't have to become an idol in his place.

Her brother's face falls, only to rise again contorted with enraged frustration.

"You liar! The real Kokomi would never say something so awful." he says, gripping her calf tighter and tighter until his hands burst open, leaving gory red handprints on her smooth, pale skin.

Kokomi wakes up tangled in her bed sheets.

Similar nightmares haunt her every night after that.

Ones that start off as regular dreams until her brother finds her to cling to her with his melting body and beg for her to help him in long raving speeches that don't make a lot of sense.

It makes it hard to sleep and renders what little sleep she does manage to get far less restful than it should be.

She goes through her days trying to be as brilliant a light to the world as she's always been, despite the scuzzy grey film of sleep deprivation coating her mind. She manages it quite well for over a week before she passes out in the hallway on the way to her homeroom.

She wakes up in the nurses office a few hours later having slept too deeply to have any dreams at all.

*

A first-year approaches Touma in the hallway. They're a girl even shorter than him with pale blond hair done up in two neat pigtails.

"Excuse me, you're in Miss Teruhashi's class, right?" she asks.

"Possibly. I am not very skilled at remembering names. Could you provide a description of this person?"

"How do you not know Miss Teruhashi? Blue eyes, blue hair, easily the prettiest girl in school if not the world."

"Oh, yes there is someone in my class who fits that description. She seems like an exceedingly pleasant person. Why do you ask about her?"

"I'm worried about her. Surely you've heard about how she passed out in the hallway yesterday. The whole school was talking about it."

"I had not in fact heard this, or at least I had forgotten about it if I had." Touma says. He generally pays little mind to gossip unless it happens to be related to a subject of interest to him, "I can see why'd you'd be concerned after an incident like that but I'm afraid that I don't understand why you're talking to me about this. I only moved here a little over two weeks ago, so you almost certainly know Teruhashi better than I do even though I share a class with her while you do not."

"I heard that you had a reputation for your detective work at your old school." The blonde girl says, looking him up and down with curled back lips and narrowed eyes that suggest she finds this rumor rather less then believable upon seeing him.

"That is true. One of my cases was even deemed worthy of a small story in a local newspaper which I believe I still have a copy of at home if you require evidence of my skills." Touma says.

Given the other things he had a reputation for (i.e. driving his bullies to madness through some unknown, presumably occult, means) people usually only came to him for a very particular type of investigation but the cases that they gave him were quite fascinating even if the seeming supernatural activity that they usually involved invariably had a perfectly rational and mundane explanation .

"Well in that case could you find out what's wrong and tell me?" the blonde girl says, tugging at the ends of her sleeves, "So I can, you know, help her with whatever this is."

"Certainly! While I cannot promise any results, I will do my best to discover the source of Teruhashi's current trouble." Touma says, clasping his hands together.

Such a project will provide some much-needed stimulation to distract him from the stresses of having to adjust to a new town.