431/So We Go Forward

So We Go Forward
Date of Scene:	11 September 2023
Location:	Mamoru and Koji's Dorm
Synopsis:	After Double Trouble impersonates Naru and before Pyrite asks to meet Sailor Moon, there is comfort and reassurance in the middle of the night.
Cast of Characters:	Mamoru Chiba, Kazuo Saitou, Usagi Tsukino
Tinyplot:	Dangerous Orbits

---

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
    Darien TXT: kazuo-kun
    Darien TXT: can you come over
    Darien TXT: i know it's nighttime i hope you're not asleep

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
    Kazuo TXT: This is where I claim I don't sleep. Heading over.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
A bit later:

Mamoru's been alternately sitting on the edge of his bed and getting up and pacing, unable to read, do homework, listen to music-- unable to even play stupid phone games.

Once Kazuo's there-- once he opens the door to let him in and it's closed behind him, he unashamedly just hugs the other teenager, who's that little bit taller. There's a muffled, "Not wailing like a tiny child today. Just--"

He pulls back and oh he looks tired and jittery all at once, and he lets out the shortest little breath before making himself take a deeper one. "A giant invisible monster almost got an elementary school today, and then I went to a big idol concert to try and get some work out of the way and someone else sicced a monster on it, and then I dropped off a hot dog for Usa, and I offered to stay because-- because she's SO upset and contact helps her but she sent me off and I'm not as upset as she is, I can't imagine how she feels right now, but this is awful and I can't fix it, Kazuo, I can't fix it!"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
    Kazuo looks just a trifle less put together than usual, when he's at the door - someone grabbed the outfit from earlier in the day to wear over. Clean clothes for the morning might be in his overstuffed satchel, just in case. But he's still quick to slip inside, and his smile is still just as amused on just as much of a foundation of cocksure, and he's still quick and sure to return that hug, quiet and firm and asking no questions.

    Well. Not until Mamoru runs out of words, anyway, and Kazuo lets his eyebrows twitch upward just a touch. "Was the hot dog also a monster?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru stares uncomprehendingly for a second, then sputters and laughs, and the laughter is shaky but real. "No. No, it wasn't a monster. Neither was the glowstick. I'm sorry."

He takes a ragged little breath and then sighs, and his hand tries to smooth a wrinkle in Kazuo's shirt sleeve, where he hasn't let go yet. "Sorry. You were asleep."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"And a glowstick. So you gave her light to keep her company." Kazuo's smile strengthens for a moment, becomes a little more real than merely habit, before he grows serious. "That doesn't fix this, no, but it's a way of still her having you with her while she needs to be alone. That helps. More than you might think, sometimes."

He answers touch with touch, a hand moving up to Mamoru's shoulder for a moment. Reassuring. "And nah. I was staring at the ceiling and listening to the dark. Sleep's a random encounter for me, too."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's a little bit of relaxing at the first reassurance, and the hint of a lopsided smile joins it at the second. 'Contact helps her' -- it seems contact helps him too.

After a moment he says quietly, looking at Kazuo's wrinkly shirt, "I was going to go out, maybe run, maybe beat on some monsters or sit on the roof or something, but I didn't want to not be here if she came over without texting." He looks up again, glasses smudged, and finishes, "So I bothered you. I'm glad it's okay."

Then there's tugging, toward the bed and the chair on his side of the room, and he asks, "Does the dark sound like an open window, or like the humming of a refrigerator?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"Good call. She might only need to be alone for a little while, and if she needs company... sometimes she moves in straight lines." Kazuo's attention goes straight to that smudge, but he manages not to do anything as intrusive as reach for the glasses. Instead, he follows the tugging. There's another straight line.

"In this case, the dark sounded like the humming of a refrigerator, the ventilation system, someone muttering and fidgeting in their sleep on the other side of a door, and the upstairs neighbors trying to stalk back and forth very quietly while keeping their argument low enough not to bother anyone else. It was a noisy dark, but not unbearably so."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru closes his eyes as he sits down on the edge of the bed, not letting go, but listening.

Listening.

He's imagining hearing the dark in Kazuo's room? House? Apartment? Apartment. He'd said, but Mamoru's memory had been terrible at the time, all holes in it and scrambling to catch up with it-- Mamoru thinks he'd said, maybe he didn't. The important thing is that there are all these details to paint an invisible picture with, in the dark, and for once the dark behind his eyelids is quiet and calm.

There's a little more relaxation, shoulders untense. The desk lamp is on, but not the overheads. Mamoru takes his glasses off and leans to put them on the nightstand, still not letting go of Kazuo-- until he does, and his hand falls away, and he's sorry for the decision but it's still quiet, so everything's still all right.

"There are crickets here," he says, finally, "and you can hear them-- the night chorus of insects and even some frogs in the little pond over that way-- you can hear them really well with the window open. It's important, remembering everything's alive."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Upstairs neighbors. Probably an apartment. Probably. And he did say ... but even if he hadn't, there are enough tells to paint a picture. In the dark behind his eyelids.

When Mamoru's hand falls away, Kazuo does not step back. Only stays. Until Mamoru says 'it's important.' Then he moves, quiet and sure, not needing to look around for the window. Eases it open a little. Considers. Eases it open further, just in case. Lets the night chorus in, nonhuman but familiar as breath all the same, and accompanies it back to Mamoru. Hand on his shoulder again, brief and light. That's alive, too, warm with the blood running through it, solid with the muscle and bone beneath the skin.

There are awful things happening. But there are also things beyond those, things beyond this moment, and some of those things are always singing.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Some of those things are always singing, and right now, Mamoru's eyes sting in the dark behind his eyelids. He listens, and it quiets his nerves and the buzzing of dark energy under his skin, and so does the warm weight of Kazuo's hand on his shoulder. It would be safe to let the tears out like he did before, the day Naru was taken and Kazuo wanted to know what he could do for him, but he doesn't-- the calm is enough, and so is a deep breath, and so is another.

Before that brief hand can leave his shoulder, Mamoru lifts his own to settle over it, and he leans his head just a little in that direction, and he sighs. It doesn't hitch anymore.

"You could always do that," he murmurs as his eyes open, just loud enough to be heard over the nighttime out the window. He lets go of Kazuo's hand, and blue eyes that are almost dark grey in the dim light focus up on the other boy, and Mamoru gives him a very small smile. "Thanks."

A beat, and he reaches for his smudged glasses again. "And thanks for bringing an overnight bag. Gonna have trouble for vanishing in the night again?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Could always. Could always - do what?

Kazuo doesn't ask. There are times when putting things back into words makes things worse, not better. Right now he can live with moving blindly, with doing what feels right instead of thinking about it too hard. It's comforting, existing like that. Dangerous, but comforting. Like being in a fight all the time. And who knows? Maybe he is.

"Probably," he answers, laughing and unworried. "But I left a note, and she can yell at me in the morning. Is she going to be the one waking me up, or is your roommate due back in?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru gives Kazuo a rueful, sideways little grin. "She will. Koji's not due back until--" He fishes in his pocket and pulls out a watch. A literal pocketwatch. "--later today. Let's change the sheets first anyway. I mean, his are clean, but they're his, so-- well, I mean, we can cram in on my bed too. Or if Usa does show up we can drag both the mattresses onto the floor!"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo should ordinarily just start moving, because sheet-changing is a thing that can be done, so why wait on doing it. Except.

Except Mamoru pulled --

"Is that a pocketwatch? I ... did I get confused about what decade we're in?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Immediately, Mamoru's comically protective of it, clutching the watch to himself and making a massive stinkface at Kazuo. "It belonged to-- to one of my parents," he says defensively. "And besides, do you really think I had a phone growing up?" And then he opens his hand and looks down at it. He adds stoutly, "Anyway it's cool and you're just jealous. You can see it if you want, just be careful."

And then he holds it up -- he'd stand, but Kazuo is right there -- for the other teenager to take and examine.

It's old. It's very old. It's also expensive; it's probably not gold-plated because it's too heavy, but the minuscule dings in the surface indicate that it's also probably something like 14-karat. The glass isn't quite as old, it's not very scratched even though it mostly lives in a pocket with a loose fob. It's wind-up, and it looks like the background may move to indicate whether the 12-hour clock is daytime or nighttime.

If Kazuo actually touches it, it feels a little like Mamoru somehow, beyond the warmth of body heat.

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
The first sentence would have been enough. "That's the best reason to be in a different decade," Kazuo agrees, instant and decisive: 180 in a second's span from 'blink in disbelief' to 'I am part of your defensive wall on this.' But he doesn't stop Mamoru from the rest of it.

And he doesn't take it to examine. He sits down beside Mamoru instead, and reaches carefully to shift it a little in the dim light, looking at the way the light plays over it. Feeling the way it feels like Mamoru. Like dreams are steady, and time moves with them, and reality is wrapped and folded and crinkled into the play and places between.

"You're right," he says after a moment. "It is cool." And, slightly reluctantly, lets his hand fall again.

He has the slightly unnerving feeling that he should own a bowtie, and not as a joke.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
TXT Usagi to Darien: can i come over a lizard person impersonated naru-chan

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There may be a little leaning against Kazuo's side as the white-haired teenager looks over the watch, examines it, touches it. The defensiveness was exaggeraged for show, but any actual ruffled feathers smoothed down at the instant pivot--

It is cool.

Mamoru's smiling as he puts the pocketwatch back where it usually lives, and then his phone buzzes in his other pocket. It's after midnight-- he straightens up and scrambles to get it right away.

Then he stares at the message and has no idea how to feel about that sentence, so he just texts back:

TXT Darien to Usagi: yes let me come get you kazuo is here too

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo starts to say something else, but Mamoru's phone buzzes and he shuts up, and glances away rather than looking over shoulder. If Mamoru moves, he doesn't get in the way.

Hopefully it's Usagi.

Hopefully it's not work.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
TXT Usagi to Darien: i can come to you I'm in my dorm also if i walk it off maybe i wont kick sunbreaker's face in

It's not that Usagi doesn't know a teleport would be faster. It would be, undeniably. But she could use the walk, even just across the building and up a floor, to try and control the tangled mass of emotion in her chest, work it into something less volatile, less scared-angry-confused-raging, could make it something she doesn't have to word vomit all over her friends. She's still going to word vomit to them but at least there'd be the chance of coherency.

TXT Usagi to Darien: tell kazuo-kun i said hi even tho i will say hi in three minutes

In slightly more than three minutes, there is a knock on the door. When it's opened, Usagi is on the otherside, pajama clad (a long sleeved and long-legged two piece set, pink with red lining. Her hair is sectioned with little pink bows, to avoid tangling in sleep. Her expression is exhausted and unamused; she wrangles a smile for them anyway.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
TXT Darien to Usagi: np np
TXT Darien to Usagi: ill tell him

And he doesn't, quite; he nudges Kazuo and shows him the screen instead. Tiny ragged breath out, after being held for a second, and he just shakes his head.

(There may be some hasty tidying.)

As soon as Usagi's actually right there, Mamoru reaches out to pull her into the room, into a hug, fierce and tight and enveloping.

(There may be some teetering as he tries to move them away from the door so he can nudge it shut with his foot, unless Kazuo is quicker.)

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo is quicker, but only because Mamoru's first job is catching an Usagi. Kazuo's first job is being Mamoru's spare pair of hands, which means getting the door closed without a word.

Kazuo's negative-third job, after or possibly during the hasty tidying, was raiding his satchel. No, not for clothes. To put out a white cloth napkin with three packaged konbini pastries, pulled at random from the limited-time selection so that if Usagi winds up with any bad associations from lizard person did what, they attach to something that will disappear from the world within a few weeks or months instead of risking spoiling donuts for her for years.

... no, he did not know about the lizard person on his way over. But it was Darien. And that meant Usagi. And with Naru missing, Usagi had to be having more trouble than usual.

(If he were worried first about Darien, there would've been canned coffee. Instead there's the vague trust that Darien or Koji has something on hand, there.)

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The hug is needed, wanted, and very much appreciated - Usagi wraps herself in Darien's arms and shuts her eyes, let's the world disappear in favor of breathing in time with him, her racing heartbeat gradually slowing. She doesn't even notice the teetering or shifting as they move from the door. She's tired. The walk had been helpful - she isn't a pot overflowing with feeling anymore. Now she's a simmer, able to settle that little bit from an explosion.

"I've never wanted to kick someone until they die before," she mumbles into Darien's shirt, only just barely shifting her face so cheek rather than lips are pressed against him and her voice can be understood. "Now I do. I really do."

She notices the snacks set out, pastries on a napkin and she smiles a little, more genuinely than before.

"Thanks."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
There's that long, silent hug, breathing in time, and Mamoru's already relaxed because Kazuo spent effort to help him do so, and now he's sharing it as best he can. He vaguely wants to scoop her up, but it's not the time. He murmurs against her hair, folded down as he is, "That's very understandable. I'd like to help."

Then she spots the snacks Kazuo has puttered around into displaying and perks up a little, and the last little bit tension melts away.

She won't kill, he's sure of it.

(99% sure.)

Mamoru unfolds, still holding Usagi but not so tightly, standing much straighter. And then he lets go one arm and half steps back, just enough to look down at her and tuck a wisp of hair behind her ear. "Come sit, have something to eat. Then if you want to talk about it, please do, and if you want to be distracted, that can be arranged."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
She can relax in his arms. She can breathe out and let the fear go through her because it won't go into him, it will just be safety and reassurance and she can relax. There's guilt about that too - Usagi has barely had a thought not tinged with guilt, these last endless days that Naru has been missing and gone and held hostage and in danger - but it doesn't grip at her.

"I want you too," she mumbles back, of the help, because even now, even with her anger and frustration and exhaustion from it all, she doesn't actually want to kill. She wants to kill in the way that teenagers screaming in a rage want to kill, the kind that wants an end to anger and would be accompanied by horror if it came true. She's just angry, so angry, and violence has solved an inordinate amount of her problems, lately. When Mamoru steps away (don't ask her how she knows, that it's not Darien now, that it's Mamoru; she just does) she allows it, dragging up a smile as he tucks her hair behind her ears. One of her arms clutches at her middle, hugging herself.

"Okay. A snack is a good idea. I was - I just - lizard people are supposed to be one of those online buzzwords, you know?"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
An after-midnight konbini pastry, delicious and terrible, has Mamoru giving Kazuo a grateful look, and he leans over to pick one up at random and nudge it into Usagi's hand, and then he unceremoniously picks her up and steps backwards to sit on the edge of his bed with her in his lap -- THUMP(bounce). The arm across her middle spoke volumes in a single second, and he suddenly remembered what it was like to deeply regret something a breath after doing it-- so here's the first (probably awkward) thing he can think of to fix it. He doesn't hold her too tightly, she can slide off or move any which way. But he's there and not quite so tall.

"So when you say a lizard person impersonated Naru, do you mean there was a lizard person wearing a wig and a school uniform...?" he asks, very seriously.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
The snack is nudged into Usagi's hand, and held. And then Usagi is taken hold of, and held, and she blushes, good old fashioned teenage embarrassment enough to overpower even the heaviest worries for a moment.

But Mamoru is warm and comforting and Usagi has always hated to be alone. Sitting on his lap isn't where she expected to end up, but now that she's there? She settles her head against him and takes a bite of the pastry, the different filling enough to surprise her for a moment, tasting, thinking, and then she swallows.

"They looked like Naru-chan. And they sounded like Naru-chan, and she - she came home." Her voice breaks for a moment. She tries to carry on like it hasn't. "But they didn't act like Naru-chan, and I tried not to - it was just the two of us in my room and I tried not to show I was suspicious, but they must have known, because then instead of Naru there was this, this lizard person with a tail and lizard eyes and everything."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Usako," murmurs Mamoru, now with his face against her hair so much more easily, and it's a word overloaded with aching sympathy. It's almost like he can feel what she's feeling, almost. His arms tighten around her a little and he is warm, and strong, and even with the influence he's been under for as long as she's known him, he's also always had a focus for her. "I'm so sorry. How dare they. To be so cruel-- and how frightening, to be there with someone who's not, and you know it, right after being so relieved--"

There's a thrill of fury through him, but he stamps it down, all except for a reflexive sudden brief tension. It stirs the energy that shouldn't be coating his soul, and that's why he stamps it down, no matter how much he wishes--

"I'll definitely help you kick," he says firmly, the resonance of his voice a solid thing.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
It was terrifying. It was infuriating. It was devastating, to have and lose Naru-chan again in seconds, but worst of all had been - "How long is she planning to keep Naru-chan, if she sent a fake to come back to our room."

That's her real fear. Even beyond the creeping suspicion that meeting an actual shapechanger has inspired, she's terrified of what it means that Sunbreaker had sent a fake to take Naru's place. It doesn't matter that they're trying to find Naru, that they're going to find her before long - it matters that Sunbreaker wanted them to stop looking.

She feels the tension and her hand lifts, settles on one of Mamoru's arms, squeezes his tense bicep. "The shapechanger... they said Naru was okay. That she's just bored. And that sounds more like her, than the crying they did when I first saw them, so I hope -"

She shudders.

"We're going to kick her so hard."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Darien makes himself relax again, lets the energy go-- it's not what Usagi needs, it's not what anyone needs. Well, he needs it, but not right now. Absolutely not right now.

Mamoru lets it go, with Usagi on him, her hand on his arm, and Kazuo right there; he nods, and maybe his breath on her hair is ticklish, maybe his heartbeat is loud.

"We are," he agrees, "and what a terrible actor, honestly? If they saw she was bored and thought to themself, oh, I'll have her cry because she's a teenaged girl and being kidnapped is probably scary, her best friend from childhood would never believe her actual behavior-- and she must be fine, because it's so at odds with the performance, right?"

He doesn't address the first question. He doesn't know how.

Instead, Mamoru says softly, "I was listening to the crickets and cicadas and katydids from outside, with Kazuo. He opened the window to let in the songs. I bet you Naru-chan can hear them too."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Kazuo is the one who picks up the first question - quiet, from where he leans against the wall by the door, and inserted in between the rhetorical question about performance, and the quieter-still words about the insect chorus outside. "It doesn't matter how long she's planning for. She doesn't get to decide that." Just a matter-of-fact statement. Sky is blue, grass is green, Sailor Moon is going to kick her so hard, Naru is coming home earlier than planned.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"I miss when she just wanted to fry my face," Usagi sniffs, and takes another bite of her pastry, calmed just a bit more by Mamoru's closeness, the snark. "They were not good at their job. The shapechanger. If I didn't want to believe them so much -"

She shakes her head. Kazuo's input, his firm statement of reality, as if he gets to decide how the world works - Usagi doesn't see why he shouldn't. He's a cool senpai.

"You're right. No matter what her dumb plan is, we're going to get Naru-chan back, and make her regret taking her in the first place. Naru-chan might be doing that already.... I bet she's asking a million questions... and really missing the bugs and the creepy crawlies,"

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Judgemental Mamoru is occasionally a good distraction. But Usagi's just distracted him, even as he nods at Kazuo-- he blinks down at the girl in his lap, pulling his head back. "Naru-san likes bugs?" he asks, not in disbelief but in honest startlement. "Is it an art thing?"

He looks at Kazuo, eyes wide. "Does she go on bug safaris with you when you're running? I mean, yes," he looks at Usagi again, accidentally getting odango in his face this time and then craning his neck to get hair out of his mouth, "yes she's absolutely asking a million questions, but what if she's also subjecting Sunbreaker to bug facts?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
"We might have talked a little about the idea of art with live pieces, once," Kazuo admitted. "But she decided it was too difficult to keep everything healthy and sanitary. Besides, ethics." He does not mention whether or not they were bugs. Because he is too busy trying not to snicker at wide-eyed Mamoru with accidental odango. "Art facts, now. I wonder if she's critiquing Sunbreaker's aethestics. Or her costume."

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"I don't think it's about liking bugs as much not being creeped out by them? She's like such a morning person, you know? And in the morning, there's bugs, and they make noises, and if she's locked up somewhere and bored, there probably aren't any noises or people to talk to or do things with or -"

She groans, putting a hand to her mouth. She's making herself sad, honestly, and rambling.

"Naru-chan's like.. an extrovert, you know? She'd never be able to be my friend for like, forever if she wasn't. I just worry Sunbreaker isn't even talking to her."

A pause.

"No, if Naru-chan's insulting her costume, they're definitely talking... Sunbreaker's such a - a - delicate flower or something."

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Can't take criticism?" Mamoru asks knowingly, then makes a terrible face at Kazuo for not-quite-laughing at his not-quite-suffering. "I know someone like that too. A guy, though. And I guess only a little like that, he's great at recovery and return-insults." And then he tilts his head the other way, avoiding hair in his mouth this time, and looks lopsidedly fond for a moment, just for no reason.

Then he says, contemplatively, "You don't have to like looking at bugs to like listening to choruses of them, though. I like summer a lot, so it's always a sort of... everything will be okay sort of sound. Sometimes if I can't sleep in the winter I'll get my headphones and listen to youtube loops of summer nights. I get it if that's not for you, though."

And then he says under his breath, "Maybe between kickings we can put bugs in Sunbreaker's shoes."

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
Naru-chan's like an extrovert. Yes. Yes, they know. "Don't worry too much," Kazuo says to Usagi, and his tone's light, almost cheerful. "Just think of how much mileage she's going to get out of all the people that want to fuss over her when she's home. And maybe all the stories she'll tell, if she decides she wants to." An important if, but ... it's Naru. He expects new hypotheses.

The terrible face gets a covert grin. Well, no. Pretend-covert. It's angled off at the window. Maybe Kazuo is grinning at the chorus.

Hopefully those are not the bugs Mamoru is planning to put in Sunbreaker's shoes. It'd be a terrible return for their service.

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
"Can't take a losss, even. If she thinks Naru-chan made me win... I mean, she did. But not with magic... unless friendship is magic?" She wrinkles her nose, thinking about the sentiment. It was the sort of sweet, corny idea she loved in manga, but in real life... "She got mad that Naru-chan fought back. Like it was crazy that she'd want to fight for herself, and insulting that she got mopped up."

A beat.

"Literally. Naru-chan whacked her!" It had been funny at the time. Terrifying, but funny. It's still a little funny now.

"I like spring best. When all the flowers are coming back, and it's raining, and winter is finally over... but Summer is good. Summer is fun. We had fun this summer. And - we'll have more fun, next summer. All of us." A scrunch of her nose, "Naru-chan's going to have a dozen different theories, and she's going to want to try all of them, and I bet at least a quarter involve Sunbreaker not getting kicked to bits and bits."

Unfair.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
"Good," says Mamoru in absolute satisfaction at 'Naru-chan whacked her', instant and heartfelt. "Even against Morga when she was scared out of her mind and losing air, she fought back. I was--"

Oh shit. Mamoru freezes for a half second. Then,

"Summer! Yes. Yes, we had a lot of fun this summer, didn't we?" A much better topic to latch on to. Also, more solid ground ethically. "We'll definitely all have more fun next summer, because we'll be done with this. No more kidnapping, no more Dark Kingdom, no more-- no more of this."

They all know it's fantasy, but it's a comforting one.

"Maybe things won't go back to the old normal, but... I don't like my old normal very much. I like knowing you two, and Naru, and Koji, and Chiyo and the guys and even Inai-san, and I like living here, and I even like school better than I used to. How about you? Who have you met this year that makes you happy?"

Usagi Tsukino has posed:
Mamoru freezes and Usagi doesn't. It's as simple as that. Mamoru brings up their past, and Usagi - "You were impressed? You were really nice, you know? I wouldn't have made it my first day without you."

There's no pretending. No taking it back. The way they met was how they met, but Darien had been as kind as he could be. And he wasn't the one who'd dropped Naru on the ground -

"We had fun. And we're going to have more fun. You and me and Kazuo and Naru-chan of course, but there will be... there will be..."

And he suggests what Usagi has known, for a long time now (it's only been a few months) (it feels like it's been forever). But then he makes it easier. And it is easier. "There's - Tragar-chan. And Wako-chan, and Ikiko-chan, and Rei-chan and everyone and I used to want to go back. But going back would mean losing all of you. So - we go forward?"

Kazuo Saitou has posed:
There's a quiet laugh from Kazuo, echoing Usagi's impression. "I met her the morning after that, I think? She was coping my making it in to school early. One determined stagger at a time." Apparently that last can be warm, and a little affectionate.

And he pushes away from the wall at last, and comes and settles on one knee beside Usagi, and, if she lets him, covers her hand in his. "Yes. We go forward."

And try not to think too much about the ground between them and their destination. But that's all right. It's better than what comes of standing still.