Promptober 2026 Day 29: Lantern
(This is part 2. Part 1 can be found here.)
The temperature in the shed was dropping.
For a long time, neither of us said anything.
In the last two years, I had learned a lot about Anon. Her likes, her dislikes. The things she was good at. The things that pissed me off.
“I thought.. ‘well, if I had to quit, Rikki’s probably the only one who wouldn’t be that upset about it.’”
Until she said that, I didn’t know she had gotten in. That, at some point in the last two years, Anon became someone with power over me. Someone who held a little part of me in her hands.
I didn’t know that she could hurt me.
I reached up and banged my fist on the door again. The sounds of the parade had faded into the distance - it was probably on the other side of the shrine grounds by now. Through a crack in the door, the fading daylight was being replaced by the warmer, more distant light of lanterns on strings that crisscrossed above the road and hung from every pole and overhanging branch. Night was falling.
“What about your promise to–”
“To Tomorin?” Anon finished my sentence. She had pulled her knees up to her chest, and was shivering a little. “I don’t know. I don’t want to quit, Rikki.”
“...then don’t.” There was something petty in my voice, like a child arguing with her parents.
She scoffed ruefully, then coughed. The coughing persisted for almost ten seconds, and had lost its previously dry quality. It sounded worse.
“It’s that easy, huh?” She croaked, still smiling, still sad. “I can’t disappoint my mom again. I think it would actually kill me. Do you know what she did when I dropped it on her about wanting to withdraw from school in London?”
I shook my head. “Read you the riot act?”
“I called her, I was a wreck. It was like… six in the morning here. I think I woke her up. I’m sobbing, right?” She mimed holding a phone to her ear. “And she listens to me for a long time, and when I finally run out of steam, she says… ‘Thank god. There are planes that leave first thing in the morning.’”
The corners of my mouth twitched upward, but it was all I could manage.
“All that wasted time and effort,” Anon murmured. “All that money. Rikki, it had to have been millions - between flights, deposits, tuition, uniforms - just for me to give up three weeks in and come home. And she never said a word about it.”
“So you feel like you owe her,” I said.
She nodded. Her shoulders were trembling - from cold, I surmised, rather than from emotion. Finally, I could stand no more of it - I shrugged my heavy coat off and stood up.
“What are you– come onnnnnnnn.” Anon groaned. I draped the coat around her shoulders.
“Zip it up,” I said.
“What are you going to do?” She made a pained face at me. “We’re both girls, you know, you don’t have to–”
“Oh, now I’m a girl? Zip it up. You’re wearing a kimono. I still have long sleeves, I have gloves. It’s like four degrees.”
She shook her head. Her lip was jutting out mulishly. “No. I’m fine.”
“Anon.”
“Rikkiiiiiiiiiiiiiii,” she shot back, drawing the last syllable out for several bars. She pouted for a minute, then sighed.
With a groan, she climbed to her feet.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Shut up. I have a better idea. Sit down here, so you can still hit the door.” She indicated a place next to one of the shelves.
With a skeptical look, I did as she said. She turned, and in a single fluid motion settled down to rest on top of my lap, facing away from me. She had turned the coat around so it draped around us both like a blanket.
“...oh.”
“It’s fine. It’s warmer.” She paused. “We don’t have to tell them about it.” Without seeing her face, I couldn’t tell if she was joking.
It was warmer. That was the really annoying thing about it. Where am I supposed to put my hands? I sighed and rested my head on the shelf behind me.
“...what about you?” She asked.
“What about me?”
“Like… you said you did your career goals and stuff, right? So, like… what are you gonna do?”
I shrugged. “The band. For as long as I can.”
“Your parents are okay with that?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Ah… so it's like that,” she murmured.
“Like what?”
“Well… I’ve met Soyorin’s mom. I’ve met both of Tomorin’s parents. And while I’ve never talked to Raana-chan’s grandma directly, I’m at least aware that she exists...”
“...you met Tomori’s parents?”
“Huh? You haven’t?” She sounded surprised. “Don’t you walk her home two or three times a week?”
I flushed. “W…well– I mean. We usually… we say goodbye on the pedestrian bridge outside of her apartment.”
“...no way.” She sounded genuinely shocked. “But– I mean, you’ve… been inside, right?”
“Of course I’ve been inside. We’ve all been over there together, remember?”
“...Taki-chan.” Anon turned her head, so that she could just see me if she was looking fully side-eyed at me. “You’ve been in there… alone with her, right?”
I leaned my head back against the shelf again, steadfastly avoiding looking at her.
“...Rikkiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.” Anon groaned and leaned a little more into me. “What are you doooooiiiiiiiing?”
“Shut up.”
“You’re going to miss your chaaaaaaaaance. Remember earlier this year, when that first-year asked her out?”
Of course I remembered. In the thirty seconds between learning that it happened and learning that Tomori had turned her down, I had thrown myself into traffic in my own head about six hundred times.
“You’re so dumb. You’re just a dumb boy, Rikki.”
I unfolded my arms and, under the coat, slid them around her waist, pulling her that last inch closer.
“I’m cold,” I said.
“Me too,” Anon murmured. “Hit the door again.”
Thump. Thump.
She sighed.
“...you can’t leave, then,” I said.
She was quiet for a long time. “Why not?”
“Soyo definitely wouldn’t console me if Tomori and the Stray hook up.”
That got her. She started laughing. The sound traveled through the air and up my arms, making the night feel a hundred miles away.
I reached up and thumped the door again, then rested my forehead on the back of her neck.
“You’re wrong.” My lips barely moved as I spoke. “If you left… I’d just be lost again.”
I felt, rather than heard, her breath hitch. But the next time she spoke, her voice was almost totally steady.
“We’re gonna have to break the door down at some point,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“...we can give it a couple more minutes though, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “A couple more.”