Inori wasn't sure whether this was her own gift, or something inherited from Inori Yuzuriha herself.
That uncanny, quietly devastating performance — the grief in her posture, the subdued pain threading through her voice — as though she had genuinely, in that moment, become the girl she'd described: a girl carrying a past as cruel as the words she'd spoken. She wasn't thinking much at all. She'd simply reached for the image of Inori from the "Euterpe" music video — wings of black feathers, eyes full of sorrow — and imitated it as best she could. She hadn't expected herself to pull it off quite so completely.
A sharper observer might have found the performance a little overwrought, the cracks visible. But Hare was not that observer. Hare was exactly the kind of tenderhearted, trusting girl this approach worked on.
"Inori!"
Just as she was quietly congratulating herself, someone suddenly threw their arms around her without warning.
"I'm so sorry — I had no idea you — that you were..."
She was actually crying.
Inori felt the damp warmth soaking through her shoulder, and the trembling of the girl crying in her arms. Hare's emotion passed through the contact between them, raw and unfiltered.
And also — unmistakably present — the soft fullness pressing against her chest.
— WAIT. That sensation. That perfect, indescribably excellent sensation. Niiiiiice.
"I'm sorry — I said those things to you, and you'd already been through so much. You must have suffered terribly. I'm sorry, Inori. I shouldn't have pushed you to talk about any of it."
"It's fine. You didn't do anything wrong. Stealing is stealing — I'm not going to blame you for calling it out."
Inori decided this had gone on long enough and gently eased Hare back, putting space between them.
The girl's wide eyes were brimming. Tears were already falling, one by one, tracing down her smooth cheek.
Seeing Inori smile at her so calmly in the middle of all of this — that only made it worse. What kind of iron will did it take to speak of something so brutal with such composure?
"I'm sorry."
She just kept apologizing.
"Alright, alright. Stop crying."
Inori reached over and wiped the tears from her face.
The more Hare did this, the heavier Inori's conscience got — and yet she couldn't tell her the truth. She'd arrived in a strange world with nothing. No identity. No address. No means of living a stable life. All of this had been necessary.
"Go make dinner. I'm still hungry, you know~"
"...What are you going to do after this?"
Hare wasn't ready to pretend she hadn't heard anything.
"I'm not sure." Inori exhaled softly, letting uncertainty into her eyes. "I'll probably find somewhere that doesn't check ID or registration. The Roppongi restricted zone seems like the kind of place that attracts people in my situation. I might try there."
"Not Roppongi!" Hare's whole demeanor snapped to alarm. "Inori, you absolutely cannot go there!"
"Why not?"
Inori raised an eyebrow, blinking with practiced innocence.
"It's a GHQ-restricted zone! It's full of criminals, addicts, drug users — there are even terrorists operating out of there!"
Roppongi was the epicenter of that Lost Christmas — the point from which the Apocalypse Virus had spread the furthest. Like the exclusion zone around a nuclear meltdown site, contaminated for decades by fallout that clung to every surface and infected anything it touched. The Apocalypse Virus likely worked on similar principles, which was why GHQ had sealed the area off entirely.
"I know," Inori said with a rueful smile. "But what choice do I have?"
Silence.
Hare lowered her head. The shadows caught the lower half of her face and held it. Something was being decided in there — and for an ordinary girl, it wasn't a small decision.
But she opened her mouth quickly.
"Inori — come live with me."
"...?"
Her inner reaction was quiet delight. But she still needed to refuse first.
"Do you know what you're saying?"
She fixed Hare with a serious look.
"In their eyes, I'm a fugitive. An escaped test subject might not be their top priority, but the risk still exists."
"You don't have to take that on for someone you just met."
Only a character written the way Hare was — gentle as a saint — would arrive at a thought like this. She was taking Inori's story entirely at face value, without stopping to consider whether it was true, or what the consequences of sheltering this girl might be if it wasn't.
"I might not fully understand you yet, Inori — but there's no question in my mind that you're the strongest person I've ever met. We can get to know each other slowly. I just..." She swallowed. "I really want you to be okay. If I learned about something like this and did nothing, I'd never be able to live with myself."
Hare said it the only way she knew how: plainly, entirely sincerely.
The large living room went quiet. Hare stood waiting, tense. Inori's face was unreadable, pale lashes hovering low, the tips nearly touching.
"It's very hard to say no to that."
Inori was quiet for a long beat before she answered.
"Please — call me 'Matsuri.'" Hare smiled, taking it as a yes.
"Matsuri." Inori tried it out, a little awkward with the unfamiliarity, then looked at her with quiet gravity. "I may bring trouble to your door. I want to be honest about that."
"But I also know that I need help right now. You offering — it means a lot. More than I can really say."
— That much, at least, was completely true.
"I'm glad too. I'm glad you're here, Inori."
Hare wouldn't have to come back every evening to an empty house, carrying the weight of her loneliness in silence. She had a feeling — an instinct she couldn't have explained — that this girl called Inori was about to turn her life completely upside down.
"I'll stay for now. Not forever — just until I sort something out."
Inori smoothed a strand of hair away from her ear where it had been tickling her, and said it plainly.
"Once I find a proper place to land, I'll be out of your hair." A faint, sly glint crossed her face. "And I won't be a freeloader, by the way. Give me a few days — I'll get work and pay you rent."
"Inori!" Hare puffed her cheeks out, brows curving in protest. "We're friends now. Don't say things like that. This is my choice — I want to help you!"
"No, I'm serious about finding work. I mean it."
"But you look so young. For part-time jobs here, if you're underage they need a parent or guardian to co-sign the contract before anything takes effect."
"I never said it had to be a conventional job." Inori held her gaze, steady and unhurried. "I'll find something that only I can do. Don't worry, Matsuri."
"Something only you can do...?"
The phrasing made Hare immediately suspicious.
She looked at the girl in front of her — beautiful beyond any flaw she could name, skin so pale it seemed to carry its own faint luminescence, a subtle bloom of rose at the nose and cheeks that caught attention and held it. And given that she was still in her form-fitting bodysuit, the rest was... not difficult to assess. Slender waist. Perfectly proportioned, long legs. Breasts already starting to develop — though not as full as hers.
Charm like that could bring any man to his knees. When she said "something only I can do"—
Could she possibly mean... s-selling herself?
Hare covered her mouth in fear.
"It looks like you're imagining something terrible, Matsuri~"
Inori caught the expression and read it instantly. She brought her hand up and tapped Hare lightly on the forehead.
"What I want to do..."
"It's singing~"