My fingers tighten around my elega and I begin to play. The same song I had played my third-grade classmates. A gentle, happy song, the one that my grandpa taught me. The one with the lyrics about how to cook meat.

It would have been appropriate to add melodramatic content about how I always play this song in front of my grandpa's grave to make him happy, but the fact is that my grandpa is alive and kicking and currently walking his shiba inu beside the river by his home in Kumamoto.

I play, and watch as daylight fades gently away. The sun is setting, the sky ablaze in a series of pink and purple and fiery orange. Dark-Shun fades away also, screaming and gurgling as he goes, and with him goes the wispy, grabby darkness. I do not worry that I have killed him. I know I haven't killed him; I've just... uh, eliminated a part of Shun that he doesn't need. So that the one that I need, the one that I remember and love and care so much about, remains.

I set my elega down with a sigh. Suddenly everything is okay now. The sunset is beautiful; I wish I could have gone back to my elementary school days just to watch it. Or perhaps it will still be there if I go at the right time. One day, when I go back home to Fukuoka, I'll—

The sound of turbulent water breaks my reverie. I glance at the pool and see Shun flailing like a madman.

Oops, he still can't swim.

I launch myself into the pool and hoist him to the surface, where he gasps in a desperate, anguished "HAAAH". My heart goes out to him, but at the same time I am overjoyed because all of a sudden he feels so real. Ever since he had undergone that machine brainwashing thing, since like chapter eight, he hadn't been completely here. He hadn't been fully himself at all, and it only got worse and worse. I'm surprised I didn't feel it at first, but now that I'm right here beside the real thing the difference hit me full force.

It's like how a frog in warm water that is being heated slowly doesn't notice the temperature difference and doesn't realize it's being cooked.

Terrible comparison, but... you know.

We slump onto the concrete side of the pool and just float there, heads leaning against the warm, hard ground, too exhausted to fully climb up to dry land. We don't need to, I figure. It doesn't matter where we are as long as the others pull us out sooner or later.

Shun's eyes are scrunched tightly shut, and he coughs and spits out water, dragging in hoarse, shallow gulps of air. And he's real.

He's so real I start feeling horrifyingly embarrassed and have to look away because he's too close and I can practically feel his harsh breaths on my face and our shoulders are touching and I'm terribly innocent for my age. I try to focus on other things, such as my own frustratingly rapid heartbeat, the gently setting sun and the soft lapping water, but my eyes automatically follow a water droplet that is trickling down Shun's face and my heart is filled with envy.

Yes. Here I am, envying a water droplet. But it gets to touch Shun's parted lips and is therefore tons luckier than me. I personally don't think it's fair that Shun is capable of looking so pleasing to the eye despite nearly drowning while I'm pretty sure I just look like a wet mess that is in dire need of a hair dryer, though Shun is probably too busy catching his breath to care what I look like.

And surprise-not-so-surprise, the first thing that comes out of his mouth as soon as his breathing has become less erratic is "Oh my god Tomomi I'm so sorry—"

"What," I exclaim, "is there to be sorry about?"

Shun looks incredulous for a second and my heart leaps in relief to see that he is now capable of making facial expressions that are not that of pain. He narrows his eyes as if he has trouble understanding me. "I almost killed you—"

"That wasn't you," I point out. "Like Ikoma-san said—"

Shun does not want to hear what Ikoma-san said. "Of course that was me. If I had never once in my life entertained the idea that you were bewitching, this wouldn't have—"

"Uh, Mr. Umemoto planted that idea in your head, so technically you couldn't have avoided that. No one in our third-grade class could have avoided—"

"Yeah, but I let the idea grow. My mind and no one else's somehow linked the idea that you were a witch and the idea that witches were supposed to be drowned, and therefore it happened. Therefore that monster happened. It lives inside me—"

"Lived," I correct him, "it doesn't live inside you anymore. I can tell. We killed it."

Shun looks almost at peace for a second, and then his eyes widen again. I see so much guilt inside it that I want to slam my head on the side of the swimming pool, because there is nothing to be guilty about.

"Oh, and... and about what happened... I—Mr. Eto—he—I couldn't—"

I decide that this is the perfect time to talk some sense into him. "Listen, Mr. Eto did nothing to me. I fell into the pool, he saved me, and he took off his suit because he didn't want it to get wet or something. That was what happened."

The look on Shun's face is priceless. He forgets to breathe for about three seconds and succumbs to a series of mad coughing again.

"Really?" He demands between gasps for air. "He really didn't...?"

"He really didn't," I confirm.

"And I thought he did for six years and pretty much ruined his career?" Shun exclaims, slapping himself on the forehead.

"We can... er... find him and apologize?" I suggest lamely.

Shun sighs. He blinks water out of his eyelashes and a content smile spreads across his face.

"That's... that's great to know. I felt so bad about it... all this time I felt so bad about it..."

"I'm sorry you felt that way for so long. I wish I'd known." I sigh. "I could've told you right away that it wasn't like that, you know?"

Shun groans. "But how could you've known? It's not like I could just walk up to you and be like, hey Tomomi, about that time the teacher touched you—"

"Well, he didn't touch me," I conclude, "except for the parts he had to touch to lug me out of the water but that's it."

Shun nods. "That's good to hear. I had been so mad at myself, you know..."

"Which you shouldn't have been," I argue, "because even if something actually happened, it was no fault of yours. You were in third grade for god's sake, how could you have done—"

"No, no," Shun cuts in, "what kind of guy lets the girl he likes be raped by a teacher and doesn't do anything to stop it? I swear I felt so useless—"

I interrupt, because despite feeling bad for cutting off Shun's sentences all the time this is kind of drastic. "Wait, wait! What did you just say?"

"I said," Shun patiently repeats, "what kind of guy lets the girl he likes—"

"You like me?" I shriek, nearly banging my head on the poolside ground in the process. But it couldn't be. Not me. The girl who can't mindhack, can't light matches, doesn't know how to put batteries in a remote control (it's difficult, come on!) and can't turn around without spraining her waist.

And then I remember our little conversation back in the mindhacking classroom, where Shun confessed to liking a bewitching girl.

And he has just called me bewitching. A dozen times, in different forms. Including having a witch-hating version of himself drown me. It doesn't get any realer than that.

He thinks I'm bewitching, and he likes me.

Oh my god.

My brain struggles to process this new piece of information. If we could hack inside my mind right now, we would probably be hit by asteroids because it feels like the Big Bang has happened inside it, twice over.

"You—I—wait—" I stutter, still unable to fully comprehend this situation. "Me?"

Shun looks like he isn't sure whether to find me hilarious or exasperating. "I would have thought it would be fairly obvious. I jumped into a 10 FT pool for you, and I can't swim."

"I thought it was because... you're nice?" I stammer, and Shun looks like it's his turn to whack his head on the poolside.

"Listen, Tomomi—I've had a crush on you since god knows when, and I know that there's this guy, whatshisname, Yuuto or something—"

"Yusuke," I supply.

"—Yusuke, yes, but he's in Canada and I'm right here, he can sing but I can also sing—"

"You're tone deaf," I inform him, just in case he hasn't realized it himself.

"Fair point, but that doesn't matter. The point is, you now know that I like you and even though you don't like me back I—"

I decide that since I have been interrupting Shun's speeches for the good part of the past three minutes I might as well do it again, so I pull him towards me and kiss him.