There are times she wants more than anything to disappear into the water. To vanish. To dissolve and become something flowing, inhuman. Something irresponsible.

They both have their own ways of dealing with things. Haruka goes hard, distant, angry, tight and wound up like a punch waiting to happen. This is how she deals with the knowledge that she will have to kill someone who doesn't deserve it. Will have to put aside 'what little morals' she ever had. Michiru disagrees but when Haruka is like that, there's no way she will listen.

Michiru collects sea shells, to listen to the sea. There are times she will hold up one of the small ones, curled and twisted, no larger than the nail on her thumb, and imagine the soft creature that once lived within. That, she tells herself, is Haruka these days. But the shell is empty now.

She wonders sometimes if it was wrong of her to have ever helped Haruka recall her true self. The guilt from that is almost as heartrending as the that of the knowledge that she will murder an innocent soon.

Arms at her sides, she floats in their swimming pool, eyes closed, face and breasts and the top of her thighs the only thing breaking the surface of the water. Her hair coils around her like something foreign. She listens to the noise of the apartment as distilled through the water and thinks that she can drift apart like this. Fall apart. Float off in the ripples.

This is her method of dealing.

Her mind goes first, spreading thin, slowing. As if it is too much effort to think. The guilt holds her aloft and floating. Her eyes closed, the sunroof filters light and makes everything behind her eyelids red.

A noise: dialogue filtered through water. It is hard to hear down here, and takes her a moment to translate:

"It's not fair."

She opens her eyes to Haruka, crouched on the edge of the pool, her school tie dangling so that the tip of it is wet in the water, her slacks tight against her knees.

Haruka's eyes are dark with something like pain. "You always go into your own world, and I can't follow you."

In the end, it is this that always brings her back.