Story:

And Shiro led Yui to her own living quarters—untouched for nearly three months, the incense still faintly scented with the morning she'd left.

Three months. Shiro stood in the middle of the familiar room and felt the weight of all of it land at once.

Three months of new encounters, of dying three times and being pulled back by fate's hand. Three months of learning that her friends: Bill, Shiori, and Miffy—the isekai versions of them—were standing on the opposite side of every battlefield.

"Shiro-san?"

The tears came before she could answer. Three months of held-breath strength, gone all at once, streaming down her face.

Yui didn't say anything clever. She just turned, opened her arms, and pulled Aunty Shiro into a big, fierce hug, holding her while her shoulders shook—sharing even a small piece of that long-carried weight.

"I'm sorry," Shiro managed, half-laughing, half-sobbing. "I'm the adult. I'm supposed to—"

"You're tired," Yui said into her hair. "Being tired isn't a failing. It's the receipt for everything you carried."

They sat like that a long while, until the storm passed.

Then, calmer, tea cooling between them, Shiro began to talk—haltingly at first, then warmly—of raising Ai and Mai here since they were small. The girls learning to sweep the steps with brooms bigger than they were.

Mai hiding Ai's shoes before festivals. Ai crying the first time she saw snow, and Mai crying because Ai was crying. Three little meals burned together. Three kimonos, hand-sewn.