There’s still a stretch of time before the next match; Mizuki keeps her pace calm, like a lake unruffled by wind. For her, it’s enough to burn steady and try her best. She hasn’t trained much these days; beside those who grind every day like a tide beating the shore, she knows she can’t compare.

She draws Yun Shi by the hand into a quiet corner, where the chatter thins like mist. Only then does she stop and turn to face her.

“W-what are you doing?” Her voice flutters like a sparrow skimming a branch.

Unease knots in Yun Shi’s chest. She pinches the hem of her skirt. Whenever she faces Mizuki, her own presence feels like a candle in wind—was that just her imagination?

Mizuki looks at this one who, in her eyes, resembles a girl, a lodger in her heart like a warm ember in winter. She feels a tug to pull her into an embrace, but her cool head douses the spark.

“Tell me, Xiao Yun—why are you still wearing that outfit? Didn’t you say you wouldn’t?”

Mizuki ventures a gentle start, voice as soft as falling snow.

“Uh…”

Yun Shi glances down at her clothes, face flushing like sunrise; for a long moment no words come.

She can’t just say she wants to dress like this, can she…

“Ahem, well, there’s a reason…”

“What reason?”

“T-this… well… my divination said wearing women’s clothes brings good luck today!”

After hemming and hawing, she blurts it like an arrow loosed—shameless and brazen.

To put it simply, it’s dead serious nonsense, a painted mask over flying leaves.

Yun Shi wants to bang her head against a wall—how could she say that?

“Is that so… makes sense. Divination can be pretty accurate. Still, a boy like you reading fortune? That’s a surprise~”

Mizuki knows Yun Shi’s mortification, yet she forces a laugh and pretends not to notice, laying down a gentle stair in the rain.

“W-well, I just got suddenly interested, hehe…”

Yun Shi is mortified; what else can she do. It feels like she spilled two lifetimes of saved-up virtue like coins across a road.

“By the way, your match is about to start. Go!”

“Right. I’m off~”

Yun Shi fobs Mizuki off like a moth ducking the flame; if that gaze keeps burning, she’ll die of embarrassment.

It’s the second day of the sports festival, and Yun Shi’s mood brightens like a sky after drizzle. Her friendships aren’t fully mended, but with Mai there’s a bit of new green; that one’s just too blunt…

All of it is thanks to Mizuki, Yun Shi truly feels, like a cup of warm tea pressed into cold hands.

“Anyway, this is just gratitude! It’s not like I did this for her on purpose—right, that’s it!”

She looks at her outfit, denial flaring like a paper shield, yet a small hope glimmers like a firefly. Only she knows what she’s really thinking.

Today’s field hosts Mizuki’s match. She’d thought her registration was wasted, that she’d be stuck abroad till the festival ended; making it in time feels like catching the last train at dusk.

Mizuki enters singles tennis. After changing early, she steps onto the court, footsteps like beads on a string, to face a second-year senior.

“Ready—start!”

At the ref’s call, the opposite racket smacks the ball hard, like thunder in a small sky. Mizuki reacts fast; she rides the wind-whistle and returns clean.

Mizuki used to practice; she can handle tennis. The senior opposite is different, a club member with skill honed like steel, many times beyond Mizuki’s. It’s hard to see Mizuki beating her.

Yet Mizuki has stood on battlefields, and Andrea’s hellish training forged her like iron in the furnace. For a while they fight evenly, banners level in the wind.

Cheering swells around them, throats stretched like drumskins. Fewer voices shout for Mizuki; maybe they think her chance is slim, like a lone boat on rough waves.

“Don’t lose! Take her down!”

Among the shouts, Mizuki catches a familiar call, a bell struck in her chest. She stalls for a heartbeat and almost misses a shot.

“That’s it! Attack—faster!”

She turns and sees that figure, a bright banner in the stands, cheering just for her.

Her match was never favored, so no cheer squad showed. Yet beyond the lines, one person in a cheer uniform waves and cries—for her alone.

“Xiao Yun…”

To be honest, Mizuki is moved, like frost melting under sunlight. That proud one rarely acts first, let alone shows a soft side; today, Mizuki sees the face she hides from the crowd.

She’s always known that person is lonely, a winter tree standing alone. Time and again she dragged her out, forcing her into warmth like a quilt in sunlight. And before, she gave her comfort again, a hand in the dark.

Yun Shi thinks it’s pure gratitude, a clear spring. Mizuki thinks the same.

Neither notices that hearts can echo like two drums beating in the same rain.

“Ha!”

Mizuki surges with drive, torch flaring. Her swing speed jumps a notch; slowly the opponent falters, sweat raining to the court line by line.

Because the one she likes is cheering, she cannot yield; she must win. With that thought burning like a lantern, Mizuki fights fiercer.

Though this isn’t a battlefield, it feels like a cliff-edge where life and death are weighed. Mizuki has one thought: win. She must win.

“Impossible—how did she suddenly…?”

The second-year senior can’t believe it. The skill honed through sweat can’t even survive ten rallies in Mizuki’s hands; pride cracks like thin ice.

Sweat soaks her clothes, colors bleeding like watercolor in rain; she can barely keep up.

Thud!

With the final point lost, she has no strength to turn the tide.

“Match over. Winner: Miyuki Kiseki of Class 1-A!”

Clap clap clap—the applause crackles, laced with surprise, pouring heat on this dark horse. The senior leaves with reluctance like dusk retreating. Mizuki’s breath is ragged, yet victory turns the ache to mist.

She lifts her head to that figure in the stands and lets a small smile bloom like a moonrise.

“Thank you, Xiao Yun.”

Thanks to you, I held out three more minutes today. Just those minutes decided everything, like the last embers that tip a night into dawn.

Yun Shi’s cheeks tint pink; she dodges Mizuki’s gaze like a skittish doe. She tells herself she’s done what she should, paid what she owed. That should be enough!

She hides behind that excuse, a thin veil over a restless heart, to cover why she cheered.

Outside the field, a slightly solitary girl watches in silence, then leaves like a shadow slipping behind a cloud.

Sham had imagined many paths, even that Yun Shi would choose no one. But seeing Yun Shi choose Mizuki in her heart makes hers crack like pottery.

Resentment wells strong, grief nearly unbearable, yet no tears fall; her eyes are dry as stones by a river.

It isn’t that she’s not good enough, nor that Yun Shi is fickle. It’s simply that the one being waited for isn’t her. She was a passerby who met a girl waiting by the roadside, and stepped onto that journey by chance, like boarding the wrong train.

Sham should never have loved one she shouldn’t—too painful. Who understands the tears of unrequited love? Who can truly read rain that falls where no one looks?

She blames herself—she stirred this feeling, she lost first. She let chances slip, many paths that could have led to what she wanted. Again and again she missed them, gifting them away like flowers left on a bench.

“Xiao Yun…”

Is Sham sad? Of course. But more than grief, it’s regret, thick as dusk pooling in alleys.

“Sham-chan…”

A girl walks up and blocks her path, like a slender tree across a narrow trail.

Sham stops and looks at her, eyes a tangle of vines and shadow.

“What I needed to know… I think I understand.”

Mizuki means nothing else by it; she speaks of the truth of the world she stumbled into last night, a curtain briefly pulled aside.

Sham doesn’t know what to say; in the end, she sighs, wind leaving a hollow.

“I’m sorry, Mizuki.”

What else can she do but apologize? She wishes she knew. Her voice carries the weight of fatigue, the kind that makes listeners ache; she’s tired, body and heart, like a traveler after long rain.

Asagi Renka walks through the school and soon finds who she’s seeking. That person sits in the stands, watching the field; follow that gaze and in the court stands Miyuki Kiseki, smiling at her, a thread of light between them.

These two are no ordinary pair. Lian Hua chuckles inwardly, a fox’s tail flick in her thoughts.

She walks over and taps Yun Shi’s shoulder, a small drumbeat.

“Hm? Asagi Renka, when did you get back?”

“This morning’s flight, just in time. But I can’t stay long—I’ll be off again soon.”

“I see.”

Yun Shi shows little interest, barely invested; fair enough—Asagi Renka isn’t exactly someone vital to her, a leaf she doesn’t bend to pick up.

Lian Hua isn’t surprised; she sets a teacup of business down.

“Yun, may I borrow you for a word?”

The moment Lian Hua’s face turns serious, Yun Shi knows it’s no small matter; clouds gather, and she follows without protest.

Mizuki sees the president take Yun Shi away and feels a twinge, but classmates hem her in like reeds; she can’t break free.

In the small grove, the two hold a businesslike talk. With each sentence, Yun Shi’s expression darkens deeper, until her brows knot like twining vines.

“What you’re saying—is it real?”

“Of course. I never do things half-heartedly.”

Yun Shi thinks again. If Asagi Renka’s idea becomes reality, it would raise their odds and even be decisive. The trouble is, it’s hard—maps are easy, mountain paths are not.

“I know what you’re thinking. But, Yun—haven’t you thought the same as I have?”

“…”

“Honestly, you want to do this too. If not for your status and limited pull, you’d have done it already, right?”

“…Asagi Renka, you’re terrifying.”

“Flattered~ So, what’s your decision?”

This isn’t child’s play. In the Underworld, a relay of fights was safer; a straight-up assault now is perilous, a storm at sea. To decide this takes a mountain’s worth of courage.

“Is there really no better, safer way?” Clutching a last sliver of hope, Yun Shi asks, like holding a thin reed in the current.

“Sorry, no. You know in war people die; no one can change that. Since that’s true, why not go all out? If you don’t risk, you’ll never know if there’s a return.”

Asagi Renka makes sense. If you shrink back, you end with nothing; without sowing, how do you harvest?

“I understand. I’ll go to the Italian front.”