inthejunk | Pipipipipipi

Pipipipipipi

Hanamura Yosuke. I can't answer right now, but if you leave a message I'll be sure to get back to you!

[She notably laughs at that - it shows in her expression and the way her wings shake, as well as her shoulder, and she leans back against the counter.]

Of course!

I really love the sky.

...Can you fly?

[It's a dumb question. He knows it is as soon as it leaves his mouth. Even though he's fallen asleep more than once during a physics lecture, even he can see that wings that size are just there to...what? Nothing, right? Some sort of unusual decoration. Probably not a very nice story, considering how much Just Nill hadn't wanted to talk about them when they met.]

[Only that's wrong too, isn't it? She certainly didn't meet him that day, even though she did. It makes that spot between his eyes start to ache again, ad he rubs it absently. No, there's definitely no way that wings like that can fly.]

Never mind, that's a stupid question, right? You must like the sky for the same reasons I do, right?

[And these images are nicer. A thousand clear days spent on hills and roof tops and beaches, watching the clouds roll past or the sun go down or the stars come out...]

Yeah. Definitely blue in the stairs.

[Nill seems more than a little surprised at the question - but she laughs, and her wings flutter, and she shakes her head.

It isn't that the question is actually funny - it's just that in three years of meeting people from so many different worlds, she'd never been asked that.]

[She wipes at her eye, and pulls out her NV, typing away as always.]

No-- but it feels like I can, sometimes. When the wind catches my wings, it feels really nice.

But I'm much too big to fly.

[She glances out the window then, the one behind the sink, and her smile softens a little. She fiddles with the NV for a moment before showing the next message. The images are lovely, and she'd linger in those memories all day if she could.]

I love watching clouds with Shika, or seeing the sun rise and set. It's all really beautiful.

[She pauses, and adds,] Before I got here, I'd never seen the sky.

[That's got to be the saddest thing he's ever heard. Yosuke frowns. No matter how lousy his days might be, he's always had the sun to tip his face up to. Or at least a cold, frustrating rain shower to curse at from the inside of an unfortunately placed dust bin.]

How is that possible?

There were levels.

[And after she shows him that message, she holds one hand parallel to the table top, and places her other hand parallel over that. Levels, see?]

Entire cities... maybe the whole world was like that.

[She holds one hand a little higher than the others had been.]

Only one level saw the sky.

[And then, she places a hand flat against the table.]

I always lived on the bottom.