Spoilers for the prequel manga, read at your own discretion!

Shoko spends the rest of the day holing herself up in the infirmary and doesn't get home until around ten. To her surprise, she finds Satoru on the couch eating a bowl of much too sugary cereal while the cats compete for who can take up the most attention on his lap. Honestly, they seem to love him more than her lately. It's a betrayal of Caesarean proportions.

She sets her purse on the counter, and drops her keys into the bowl.

"Making yourself at home, I see." Shoko asks, sitting on the armchair opposite him. He's changed clothes since she's last seen him at school in the morning, to jeans and a black sweater and a tiny pair of sunglasses. She doesn't recall giving him a set of house keys – but this is Satoru. What's breaking and entering to him? "Don't you have an estate of your own?"

What she's really saying: I heard about Suguru. You're here to tell me about him, aren't you?

Satoru stifles a yawn and sets the empty bowl on the coffee table. Immediately, Frappy and Chino spring off his lap to get to the residual milk. "Can't I come visit a friend?"

Your visits are never just visits, Shoko thinks. Suguru's name lingers in the air, but goes unsaid, neither of them willing to broach the subject first. She could ask him to leave. She knows it's disastrous, knows how she's only courting heartache and trouble. She's been forced to pick up the pieces of both herself and Satoru after Suguru's departure, but something hasn't healed quite right in either of them.

She knows a thousand cures for illnesses and maladies, but she can't find one for mourning the loss of a friend.

Suguru may be gone, and Satoru's about all she has left in memory of him. Seeing the tense set to Satoru's shoulders and the lines etched into the corners of his mouth does something to her insides and makes her chest constrict painfully. It's guilt, she realizes.

Guilt at not being able to stop Suguru, of conversations replaying in her head.

Her replaying the scene countless times in the years long since passed, each time thinking of different things she should have said and done.

Which is why she finds herself agreeing, pushing to her feet wearily.

"Sure. Why don't you pick out a movie?"

An hour later, with her hair still wet from her shower, Shoko finds herself huddled under a blanket on the couch in the sitting room, sharing a gallon of vanilla ice cream with Satoru, and watching a cheesy love story play out on the screen of the television.

Along with tawdry romance novels, these are another of Satoru's guilty pleasures. The lead actress plays a sick cancer patient, complete with oxygen tank and cannula. And as Satoru's voice fills the silence, explaining to her why The Fault In Our Stars is a star-crossed tragedy for the ages, bathed in the television's glow, does Shoko start to relax a little.

"They're really going at it."

"He's relapsed."

"Spoiler much?" Shoko asks, adding a copious amount of whiskey to her cup of tea. It leaves her mouth dry when she swallows, and within seconds, she feels a burning down her throat that has nothing to do with the heat of the tea. "What's the point of watching this movie if you've seen it before?"

Satoru gestures wildly with his spoon. "You haven't seen it before, right?"

"No." Shoko says eventually, waiting for the romantic music to stop. "But the story always ends the same way, doesn't it?"

She half expects him to respond, at least with some witty comeback or snide remark, but instead he just stares into space. Resigning herself to wait, Shoko simply sits as the minutes fall away, as the scene cuts away to the couple wandering around the city of Amsterdam. She sips on the remains of her lethal tea, keeps her eyes trained on the screen.

"Shoko."

She knows that tone of voice; it's the same tone Yaga had used when she'd answered the door in her pajamas all those years ago, asking to speak to her about Suguru, telling her that he had become a Curse User after murdering an entire village. "I'm sorry," Yaga had told her, as if sorry, as if lots of apologies would undo what had already been done.

And now, even though she knows what's coming, what Satoru's about to say, dread still clutches at her mind and heart because she knows that this won't be anything good. An emotion she can't quite name claws and drags at her chest; it's been months, it's been years, but the very mention of Suguru's name, she feels a teenager all over again.

Satoru leans his head gently on hers, so that she can feel his breath stirring the hair on her head. A deliberate motion, she's sure, so that she won't be able to read the fresh pain in his eyes, written all over his face. She tries to ignore the burn that this gesture is causing her, twelve years of grief welling up and spilling over.

Finally, Satoru says, "Suguru's –"

"I know." Shoko says, just as quietly.

What she's really saying: You don't have to say anymore. Please don't say anymore.

She takes the spoon from Satoru, and dips it into the mound of ice cream.

It melts on her tongue, cloyingly sweet.

Deep in the pit of her stomach, something aches.