When it's in your hands: MFB (3)

The song from the last chapter, The 12th Day, is accredited to Autopilot Off.

You could still see the cars.

Even in the long months of winter, they'd lain there, buried underneath heaps of snow like gargantuan beetles hibernating below the surface of the earth. With nobody to claim them and the keys buried hundreds of feet deep, they stayed on like tombstones of the dead beneath them.

The government hadn't bothered to remove them. In fact, it would've caused quite an uproar if they had; they were lost pieces of the people from inside the building, who had slept in them, ate breakfast in them, drove their kids to school in them.

Tsubasa wove in and out between the Chevies and the Hondas and the Cadillacs as half-open buds and lost petals floated from the sky around him, thrown down by the bucket load from helicopters imprinted against the bright blue. It seemed cruel that this day should be so pretty.

He stopped for a moment, glancing back at the statue atop the hill as the others left the parking lot. That necklace seemed so familiar, like somebody he knew wore one just like it. But he couldn't place whom.

Kyouya stared across the street vacantly at the happy, living building standing firm on its foundation. The whole gang had walked down a few blocks to a coffee shop, for the spring air still held the chill breath of winter in its breeze.

How had this happened?

The fact was, he'd known it would happen. It was only the night before that he'd felt something tug at his mind as he fell asleep, then only a few moments later, in a dream, it had come to him. A tall building, hauntingly familiar, against a sky half-blackened with city smog. Melting like the death of a candle on the desk of a writer.

And then the next day, seeing it on the television, just as it had been in his dream...it had all come out to too much. He'd run back to the bathroom before the dream could end with Tobio being crushed beneath the melting doorway, huddled on top of the toilet seat and wishing for it to be over.

But Tobio hadn't died, in the end. He'd gotten out. And he'd been there at the Meltdown Memorial, just a second ago.

"You gonna drink that?"

Absent-mindedly, he surrendered his coffee to Masamune (who really didn't need it) and decided to forget the whole thing. It was a glitch. A coincidence. He'd dreamed the whole thing.

Really, he had dreamed the entire thing. He'd been asleep.

"Do you notice that Kyouya's acting weird lately?"

"Aside from the fact that he's a totally psychotic blader bent on destroying Gingka?"

Madoka glared and put her hands on her hips. "You know what I meant."

Tsubasa chuckled. "Yes, I know." Then his face grew serious. "But I've noticed it too."

"He got that headache in the bathroom a few months ago, just when they started showing the Tokyo Meltdown on TV."

"Yes, and he ran into the middle of the apartment building screaming 'The building's melting'."

"I have no idea what's wrong with him..."