Inori obediently followed Hare to the supermarket.
She had no idea what she was in the mood for, so she just grabbed a few packs of marinated pork cutlets from the freezer — but Hare pulled her back and made her add a pile of green vegetables and mushrooms to the basket. By this point Inori was genuinely ravenous, and Hare seemed to notice. On their way out, she bought a small sandwich from the self-serve counter to tide Inori over.
Inori devoured it like she'd never seen food before.
"You really inhale food, Inori."
"I'm starving. Can't help it."
Inori took the wet wipe Hare handed her and dabbed her mouth, then crumpled the wrapper and the used wipe together into a ball with the casual dexterity of a wild boy, and landed them both cleanly in a public trash can.
"You can't stop yourself from feeling hungry any more than you can stop your nails from growing."
"...That's strangely compelling." Hare found the comparison genuinely original and smiled. "Come on, let's head home. I'll make us a proper dinner."
"Sure, sure."
Three stops on the rail line later, they arrived at Hare's place.
It was evening by then. A persimmon-red light poured across the city like an overturned basin of water. This part of town sat on slightly higher ground than the surrounding districts, which gave Inori a clear sightline over the skyline — and there it was: the single most distinctive, defining, and powerful structure in this era of Japan.
The white skeleton Christmas tree.
The GHQ headquarters. The symbol of the highest authority in this country.
Ten years ago, on Christmas Day, a catastrophe known only as the Apocalypse had struck without warning. The virus had radiated outward from the Roppongi district and swept across the entire nation. Infected victims crystallized in seconds, then shattered. Survivors called it Lost Christmas. The Japan that emerged from the disaster was a gutted, paralyzed ruin — and a UN-sanctioned organization called "GHQ" had intervened by force and assumed control of the government.
That Lost Christmas had been caused by the other half of Inori's existence — Mana Ouma. A meteorite had struck near the Ouma family home, and Mana, the first to make contact with it, had been chosen by the virus as its Eve — its original host. A betrayal of her emotions had triggered an uncontrolled release of the Apocalypse Virus. That was the truth.
"Come on, Inori — my place is just here."
Hare noticed her standing there staring into the distance and thought she must still be hesitating, still carrying some lingering doubt.
"Right."
Inori came back to herself, offered a small smile, and fell into step beside her.
Honestly, Hare's home caught Inori completely off guard.
It was a standalone two-story villa.
This girl is secretly loaded? She couldn't recall anything in Guilty Crown about Hare's family background. By genre convention, only a girl who liked the male lead could qualify as the second female lead — but Hare's screentime had been almost criminally sparse. Her character only really came into focus in the moment she sacrificed herself to save Shu Ouma.
"Come in — shoes off, please."
Hare kicked her own shoes off with practiced ease.
"Nobody's home, so make yourself comfortable."
"Hm?" Inori had just stepped onto the soft carpet when she paused. "Where are your parents?"
"They work overseas. They might come back two or three times a year."
Hare kept smiling, bright and easy.
But Inori caught it — a flicker of quiet grief behind her eyes, there and gone in an instant. So she carries that story too. Growing up without her family nearby had probably been exactly why she'd been drawn to Shu Ouma — that outwardly gentle but actually cowardly boy, with his own broken home. Younger girls were vulnerable to that kind of "gentle" danger. And Shu was objectively good-looking, to be fair — with Mana as an older sister, it would've been hard to end up otherwise. Factor in the protagonist's aura, and...
Well. That aura won't be blessing him in this timeline.
"Hare — why don't you study abroad and live with them? This country isn't exactly safe right now, what with the virus and everything."
Inori helped herself to the couch, both hands propped under her chin, watching Hare with open curiosity.
"Because of that Christmas."
The brightness in Hare's expression dimmed. She suddenly looked deeply downcast.
"The disaster hit while I was at my grandmother's in Japan... so I'm registered as a potential virus carrier — unconfirmed status. My parents can't take me out of the country. My information flags at the border. Even if I left, foreign schools couldn't process my enrollment."
"I see."
Inori nodded, her voice even.
These were the shadows the anime had never shown. A disaster is always a disaster — it strikes in an instant, but the wounds it leaves take decades, generations, to fade. Hare was carrying one of those wounds: a forced separation from her own parents.
What Hare didn't know — would never know from this angle — was that the root cause of every misfortune she'd endured, the reason for that Lost Christmas and everything that followed, could be traced back to the boy she quietly liked. To his cowardice. To the moment he'd recoiled from his sister's reaching hand and called her monster, triggering the emotional collapse of a developing virus that then spiraled out of control.
That little bastard.
"Inori — your expression just now. You looked scary."
Hare had caught the shift — Inori's brow drawn tight, something dark moving behind those crimson eyes that the lighting couldn't quite explain away.
"It's nothing. Just something unpleasant crossing my mind."
"Are you thinking about your parents?" Hare remembered what she'd said earlier, still convinced Inori was a runaway in a rebellious phase. "I know we've only just met, but... I genuinely hope you can work things out with them. Because for someone like me, even getting to see my parents is a luxury I can't always count on."
"That's not it."
Inori cut her off.
She knew she wasn't being entirely honest with this kind girl — but the outcome of this arrangement would bring Hare no real harm. That was enough justification, she'd decided. A lie told with the intention of not hurting someone carried no true fault.
"I don't have parents anymore."
"What—?"
Hare had just changed into house clothes and was picking up the groceries to bring to the kitchen. The sentence stopped her cold. The bags slipped from her fingers and hit the floor. She didn't seem to notice.
"Inori, what are you saying?"
She forced a small, uncertain laugh — certain she must have misheard.
Inori said nothing more. She let her expression do the talking — those deep red eyes carrying the weight of things she couldn't name. Helplessness. Resentment. Her face was pale as fine porcelain, radiating no warmth. Only cold.
She reached up and let the coat fall from her shoulders, revealing the white restraint suit beneath. She let Hare see what she was really wearing — the GHQ emblem printed clearly on the fabric.
"I escaped from a GHQ research facility."
She stepped a little closer, so Hare could read the insignia without squinting.
"They killed my parents because they were infected with the virus."
"They tormented me as a test subject. Today was the first chance I found to run."
The words came out measured, level — and all the more devastating for it. But underneath that composure there seeped a faint grief and indignation, like incense slowly releasing its scent. That's what makes it believable.
Hare's brown eyes filled almost instantly. She pressed her hand over her mouth. Another second and the tears would spill over.
She hadn't imagined — not for a moment — that this girl who'd stolen food out of sheer hunger had a fate like this waiting behind her.
"But what does running away really accomplish?"
Inori laughed at herself, quietly, bitterly. "I have nowhere to go. Nothing to hold onto."
— Of course, that was entirely performed.
"Once they realize I'm gone, they'll come looking. They won't spare me."