The walk home from school is the same as it always is.

Same cracked pavement. Same vending machine humming outside the convenience store on the corner. Same turn at the end of the street, same gate, same front door -- the kind of ordinary that User has stopped noticing because it has never once surprised them.

That changes the moment the door swings open.

Something is different.

It takes a few seconds to identify it. The hallway looks the same. The smell of something warm drifting from the kitchen is the same. But there -- beside the shoe rack, not on it -- sits a pair of white sneakers that do not belong to anyone in this house.

Small. Slightly worn at the left heel.

User stares at them for a long moment.

Whose--

The thought evaporates.

Because from somewhere upstairs, drifting down through the ceiling with all the casual ease of someone who has never once in their life felt unwelcome anywhere, comes a voice.

"Okay so the desk is exactly the same. The posters are exactly the same."

A pause. The faint sound of something being picked up.

"...The manga collection is exactly the same. Honestly? A little sad."

User's bag hits the floor.

The stairs have never felt so short. Down the hallway, past the framed photos, past the closed bathroom door -- all the way to the bedroom at the end, which is open.

Which is never open when User leaves for school.

A hand reaches out. Pushes the door the rest of the way.

The late afternoon light is doing something unreasonable to the room -- turning everything amber and slow, the way light behaves in memories rather than in real life. Dust moves lazily in the air. The curtain shifts.

And there, sitting in the dead center of the bed like she was placed there by someone who wanted the composition to be perfect, is Ayase Airi.

She is wearing User's hoodie. The orange one. It swallows her hands completely.

Her dark hair is down, slightly messy in the way that suggests she has been lounging here long enough to get comfortable. One leg is folded under her. The other swings slowly over the edge of the mattress. In her hands is a manga pulled from the shelf -- held with the easy confidence of someone who has decided that everything within arm's reach is available to them.

She hasn't looked up yet.

For one suspended, impossible second, User simply stands there.

She's here.

She's actually--

Then the amber eyes lift from the page. Find the doorway. Find User.

Something moves across her face -- quick, almost invisible, gone before it fully forms. A flicker of something unguarded. Something that has nothing to do with the smirk that replaces it a breath later.

He's here.

He's standing right there and he looks exactly--

She had rehearsed this moment approximately zero times and is now deeply regretting that.

The manga snaps shut. She tosses it sideways onto the nightstand without breaking eye contact -- a little too casual, a little too practiced, the move of someone who needs both hands free to look relaxed.

She pats the empty space beside her once.

Twice.

The smirk sharpens into something that has absolutely no business being as familiar as it is.

"You're doing the face."

She tilts her head. Amber eyes steady. Waiting.

"The one where you can't decide if you're confused or annoyed. You've been making it since you were eight."

A beat. She lets it sit there -- lets User stand in the doorway processing, because she has always been good at that, at reading the exact moment when silence does more damage than words.

He looks taller.

He looks exactly the same.

Both of those things are somehow true at once and she has no idea what to do with that.

She leans back on both hands. Chin tilted up just slightly. The picture of someone who is completely, totally, entirely fine.

She is not completely, totally, entirely fine.

But she has had years of practice at this particular performance, and she is not about to drop it now.

"Your parents didn't mention anything?"

She watches his face.

Reads it the way she has always been able to read it -- like a book she memorized a long time ago and never fully forgot, no matter how many cities ended up between them.

Say it.

"I'm living here now."

She says it the way someone drops a stone into still water. Flat. Easy. Watching the ripples.

Then -- before User can fully react -- she glances at the space beside her on the bed and back up. One eyebrow raised. Patient in the way that is not patient at all.

"Relax. I only went through like... half your drawers."

The curtain shifts again in the faint breeze from the window.

Outside, the neighborhood carries on -- a bicycle somewhere, a dog, the distant rhythm of an afternoon that has no idea anything significant just happened.

In here, Ayase Airi sits on User's bed in User's hoodie with User's manga on the nightstand beside her, looking for all the world like she never left.

Don't say it.

Don't say that the house looked exactly how she remembered from the street.

Don't say that she sat on the bed for ten minutes before she heard the door because she didn't know what to do with her hands.

Don't say any of it.

Just be annoying. It's safer.

"So are you going to keep standing in the doorway,"

She pats the mattress one more time. Slower this time. Almost gentle -- if you weren't paying attention.

"or are you going to welcome your childhood friend back properly?"