She staggered a step forward, her knees trembling so violently it looked like she might collapse right there onto the hard concrete. Her hands clenched into tight, bloodless fists at her sides.
"I wanted to kill you because of what you did to *her*!" Ayumu cried out, her eyes blazing through a sudden, blinding veil of tears as she pointed a shaking finger directly at Kanata. "Because while we were all screaming, and crying, and writing songs about how much we hated you... she was the only one who didn't say a single word. She just worked. She worked until her hands shook, she took care of Haruka, she smiled for us, and then she would drop like a stone the second the lights went out!"
A collective intake of breath rippled through the club. Setsuna stepped forward, her hand reaching out instinctively toward Ayumu, but she stopped, paralyzed by the sheer, unadulterated grief pouring out of her friend.
"You think you're being her protector now?!" Ayumu's voice dropped to a ragged, suffocating whisper, the rage burning out to leave only a hollowed-out despair. "Where were you when she was starving herself of sleep just to keep this family from falling apart after you walked out? You want to talk about a script-writer's idea of a betrayed wife? I didn't care about *us*, Agung! I cared that she was dying on her feet, and the only person she wanted to talk to... was a ghost who wasn't coming back!"
She looked down at the discarded knife, a bitter, self-loathing laugh tearing from her throat.
"I didn't want to kill an interloper," she whispered, her shoulders slumping as the last of her defenses completely withered away. "I wanted to kill the only man who could make her look that miserable... and the only man who could make her look that alive again."
The revelation struck the rooftop like a physical blow. The "hierarchy of importance" Agung had just dismantled hadn't been built on vanity or idol politics; it had been built on a desperate, fiercely protective trauma response. Ayumu hadn't been fighting for her own closure. She had been fighting a losing battle against the quiet, enduring grief of the person they all considered their anchor.
Kanata's eyes closed, a single, heavy tear finally escaping and tracing a slow path down her pale cheek. She didn't look at Ayumu, and she didn't look at Agung. She just stood there, the center of gravity for a broken family that was finally, violently airing out its darkest corners.
Agung didn't move. The icy, unyielding armor he had just put on didn't shatter, but a distinct, heavy crack formed right down the center of it. He looked at Ayumu, truly looked at her, seeing past the weapon and the drama to the raw, bleeding core of a girl who had simply watched her friend drown in silence for three long years.
The silence returned, but it wasn't the silence of submission anymore. It was the silence of a mirror being held up to everyone on that roof—showing them exactly what their anger had been hiding.