A cool breeze blew over the grass on the levee, leaving the air unsettled, filled with the sort of latent, electric energy one can only feel as summer draws to a close. It felt as if at any moment it might let the water trapped within it burst out all at once, soaking the dirt and the concrete. A final act of catharsis after months of shouldering its burden.

It was enough to make anyone’s heart race.

The slope of levee was dark, but in the distance one could see the glowing lights of the ongoing festivities; faintly hear the murmurs and shouts of its participants.

Raana was sitting on the grass, looking elsewhere.

“Raana-chan.” Tomori stepped up beside her and leaned in, holding something out.

“I… brought you some taiyaki.”

Raana looked up at her, took the fish-shaped pastry with one hand and bit down on it. A smile crept up on her face as she tasted its matcha filling. She chewed on, still looking out past the river below.

Tomori cleared a space next to Raana and sat down. A minute passed in silence. Another breeze stirred the shrubs nearby.

“…Did you not… like it at the festival, Raana-chan?”

Raana shook her head. “Too many people. Hard to move around,” she said, her mouth still full of dough. “I got bored.”

“A-ah… I get overwhelmed too, sometimes. When it’s crowded.”

Tomori fidgeted with her fingers. She caught a glimpse of Raana looking her way and jumped; Raana smiled.

Then another minute passed. Scattered clouds crept along overhead, dancing along the starry sky.

“Why are they all there?,” Raana asked.

“E-eh?”

“The festival. How come?”

“Oh!” Tomori’s eyes lit up. She leaned over towards Raana and pointed nearly straight upwards. “Um. You see…” She searched through the stars until she found her mark.

“Up there… Altair, a-and Vega right above it. The two really bright ones.”

The sky was just clear enough to make out the faint traces of the Milky Way cutting between them.

“I-I’ve shown you them before, I think…”

Raana responded with an ambiguous hmmm.

“A-Anyways.” Tomori continued. “Um… there’s… a story about them. Once upon a time, there was… a princess, named Orihime. She… um, fell in love with a boy named Hikoboshi. But… Orihime’s father didn’t want them to be together, so… he cut open a river between them, to separate them.”

Raana was still chewing on her taiyaki, a placid expression on her face. Her interest was hard to gauge.

“That river is the Milky Way. You can sort of see it, separating them… B-but! Orihime was so sad that her father felt sorry for her, so… he decided to let her visit Hikoboshi, once a year. And… that’s today. That’s, um, what the festival’s for.”

Raana turned and gave Tomori a stare.

“…R-Raana-chan?”

She kept staring.

“Um…”

“—Tomori.”

“E-eh?” Tomori jumped again. “W-what’s up?”

“What’s ’love’?”

Tomori blinked, looking at Raana like a deer in headlights. After a moment, she found a bittersweet smile.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “People use that word a lot… it… feels like there’s a lot of things I don’t really get about it. B-but… If I had to try and guess…”

She took a blade of moist grass in her fingers and began playing with it, rubbing it until it broke off its roots.

“…I-if I could only see you once a year, Raana-chan… I think I’d be really, really sad.” She squeezed the grass between her fingers. “…So sad I wouldn’t know what to do.”

The clouds rolled briefly over Altair, then Vega.

“B-but what about you, Raana-chan?,” she finally asked.

“Mm?” Raana tilted her head.

“I-if you couldn’t see me more than once a year… how… would you feel?,” Tomori said, with some trepidation.

Raana blinked, then looked away. The silence lingered for just long enough to make Tomori anxious. “Um, s-sorry—you don’t—”

A sudden, heavy feeling came over her shoulder.

Raana was resting her head on it. Both her arms were wrapped around Tomori’s right. Her half-eaten taiyaki was matcha-first in the dirt. Her skin was warm.