Two days.
That was what stood between the evening of Nino's return and the festival, and those two days had a specific texture — slower than usual, expectant in the way that days before things you're looking forward to tend to be expectant. The city didn't change. His grandparents' house didn't change. But the light seemed to fall at a slightly different angle, which he understood was a condition of his own attention rather than the light.
He told his grandparents about Nino over dinner. Sakura remembered her — a child who'd come to one of their family visits years ago and had attached herself to Eadlyn with the absolute conviction of a person who had identified where they wanted to be and saw no reason to be subtle about it. Reno said, small world, in the tone of a man who had lived long enough to stop being surprised when it proved to be.
The next morning his phone had messages from three different people:
From Ken: bro you're going to the festival with SAYAKA-SENPAI explain yourself immediately
From Rin: you're brave (sent without emoji, which made it read as either deeply sincere or mildly ominous depending on your interpretation of Rin, and by now he knew it was both)
From Manami: good luck — cryptic, two words, carrying the weight of a person who knows exactly what she's watching but has decided not to say it out loud yet
And then, separate from the group chat, from Nino: you're going to the festival with the girl from the window aren't you and then, before he could respond: say hi from me :)
He stared at that last message for a moment.
The girl from the window. He hadn't mentioned Sayaka to Nino. Which meant Nino had connected something from the neighbourhood — had seen something, or heard something, or simply assembled the available information the way perceptive people do.
She was sharper than she let on. He filed that.
Reno produced the yukata from a chest Eadlyn had never seen opened — navy, with a subtle pattern that only became visible in the right light, the fabric worn in a way that meant it had been used and cared for rather than stored and preserved. He held it out without ceremony.
"This was mine," he said. "From about your age. Try it."
It fit. Not perfectly — his shoulders were slightly broader — but enough.
Sakura appeared in the doorway, looked at him for a long moment with the expression she got when something confirmed a feeling she'd had for a while, and came forward to adjust the obi with hands that knew exactly what they were doing.
"You're going with Sayaka," she said. It wasn't a question.
"We're meeting at the festival."
"Same thing." She tied the final knot and stepped back. "Stand straight. You represent this house."
He stood straight. She looked at him with something in her expression that took him a moment to identify as pride — the specific kind that comes from recognising yourself in someone, from seeing something you valued being carried forward.
He thought about the prayer at the shrine.
That I become someone worth that kind of patience.
He thought he might be moving, however slowly, in that direction.
From his window that afternoon, he could see Sayaka's garden.
She was out there in the early evening light, sitting at the small table with a notebook, writing something. She'd changed out of her school clothes — lighter now, summer fabric, her hair loose rather than tied, which he saw so rarely that it registered as a different kind of presence. More private. More herself and less the version of herself that the school day required.
She hadn't seen him.
He watched her for a moment — not intrusively, just long enough to notice that she was doing the thing she did when she thought no one was looking, which was: nothing in particular, and all of it fully. Writing whatever she was writing, sitting with it, not performing patience but simply being unhurried.
She looked up, as she always seemed to, at exactly the moment he was looking.
They held it for a second.
She tilted her head — slightly, a question without words.
He raised a hand. A small wave.
She returned it. Equally small. Then looked back at her notebook.
He stepped back from the window and went to get ready.