Work Text:
“Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, come down
Won't you get up off, get up off the roof?
You're scaring us and all of us, some of us love you
Achilles, it's not much but there's proof”
Nemu opened her tome. “This concludes the briefing on your mission. I will now fuse the Rumor of Chelation Land with you.” She flipped opened a page with a bookmark. “Think of the memories you shared with me, and the process will be over soon.”
Tsuruno closed her eyes. “Understood, Nemu-sama.”
“You crazy-assed cosmonaut, remember your virtue
Redemption lies plainly in truth”
The hallway is dark, but the shadows are preferable to the light and angry voices behind the door.
Tsuruno holds her breath as she places her hand on the wall. Her younger sister, clad in pajamas, grips her sleeve. Their older sister leans on the wall across from them.
“We won’t send Tsubame to that university overseas,” says Grandmother.
Their mother’s voice replies indignantly, “Listen to me—Mother, please—Tsubame has what it takes! She gained early admission! Why are you so against this?! Don’t you want the best for your granddaughter?”
The granddaughter in question—Tsuruno’s older sister, Tsubame—leans against the wall, looking at her feet while Tsuruno’s gaze ping-pongs between her and the closed door. Their little sister, Suzume tugs on Tsuruno’s sleeve and whispers, “What’s going on?”
Tsuruno holds her hand.
Grandmother replies, “What does overseas prestige matter? She could go to Todai and be similarly respected. I don’t want her to go so far away. It will be expensive to live there.”
“She saved up her allowance and New Year’s money for the testing fees! The fact that she went behind our backs like that shows how determined she is!”
At this, Tsubame finally looks up. Tsuruno nods toward the door and pointedly widens her eyes. Suzume yawns.
“She showed us her TOEFL score earlier, remember? Her scores were in the 99th percentile for Japanese students! My daughter has what it takes! Do you have any idea how rare it is for students with our socioeconomic standing to reach this level of academic excellence?! Think of the opportunity you’d be wasting.”
Perhaps this will end sooner than Tsuruno expected. Then Mother asks, “What do you think, Yasuo?”
“Well…I’m not sure,” Dad stammers. “I don’t know….” His voice trails away. Mother and Grandmother must both be glaring daggers at him. Any hope of a short discussion dissipates immediately.
Tsubame shifts away from the wall. “That’s my cue,” she mutters to Tsuruno, and pushes the door open to let herself in.
“About money, Grandmother—” Tsubame starts. “The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has options for financial aid. I’ve been talking to some Japanese students there I met online—” Tsuruno takes her cue to lead Suzume away.
They climb up the stairs to their bedroom on the third floor. Now that they’re far enough, Suzume asks—out loud— “What’s going on this time, onee-chan? What's Tou-fu-ru? What’s a percentile? What kind of university is onee-san trying to go to?”
Suzume is naturally curious, just like Tsubame and Tsuruno herself when they were her age. Tsuruno thinks it’s a good thing, because it encourages her to learn and become academically successful like them. She just wishes Tsubame was here to answer her questions instead.
“Well, she begins,”—-wincing a little at how much she sounds like Dad—“Nee-san wants to go to a university in America.”
“America? That’s far, isn’t it? It’s across the Pacific Ocean.” Suzume points at a map on the wall of their shared bedroom. The map itself is older than Suzume and has been on the wall since Tsubame and Tsuruno shared this room as little girls. It stayed when Suzume moved in and when Tsubame moved into the attic to get more peace and quiet to study for entrance exams. If only she’d been more upfront about which exams she was studying for…
“That’s right,” Tsuruno replies. She sits down on the tatami and points to the northeastern corner of the United States of America. At least where she thinks it is—some distance north of the capital, marked with a star. “It’s called the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Remember how Nee-san couldn’t play with you on the weekends because she was studying on the computer? That’s because she was studying English and coding. She was studying coding so she could get into the university, because it’s primarily for the sciences. She was practicing English so she could take a test to show her English is good enough to study overseas. That’s the TOEFL. Nee-san’s scores were among the best of the best—that’s the 99th percentile.”
Suzume doesn’t reply immediately. Her eyes roll around as she considers this new information. Finally, she exclaims, “Wow! Onee-san really is amazing. But why does she have to study coding? Don’t universities have entrance exams?”
“America’s universities are different.” Tsuruno does not elaborate, because Tsubame didn’t bother telling her more. It doesn’t matter anyway, because sending one daughter overseas would already be a burden upon their family’s finances, let alone two.
Thankfully, Suzume accepts this response. Then she pops the difficult question: “How much will it cost?”
Tsuruno takes a moment to performatively hold her chin with her fingers and close her eyes. What kinds of expenses would it take to send her sister to one of the best universities worldwide? There’s tuition—private school tuition—as well as living expenses. Housing, food, miscellaneous fees associated with schooling, cell phone plan…Tsuruno only really understood grocery budgets, and that was in Japan. Tsubame claimed the school had financial aid for tuition and housing, but she’d also admitted the cost of living in America was much higher.
She opens her eyes. “I don’t know.”
Suzume deflates. But she does not prod further. After all, she and Tsuruno are in the same boat: flies on the wall, unseen and unheard. Instead they hear everything, and Suzume knows far more about her family’s finances than any of her classmates and far more than Tsuruno is happy with.
The digital clock on Tsuruno’s desk reads 22:28. They’ve already stayed past Suzume’s bedtime to eavesdrop on the adults. Tsuruno helps Suzume lay out her futon and she crawls in, immediately conking out like a light switched off. Tsuruno thanks the gods for making her little sister a heavy sleeper as Tsubame slides the door open without preamble.
“How’d it go?”
“Could’ve been worse. Grandma will be opposed until I pull up an invoice of how much it will cost and Dad’s on the fence because he’s scared of her, but Mom’s still on my side.” Tsubame sighs. “I guess I’ll be in touch with Student Financial Services soon. At least I got in with Early Admissions. If I got deferred I’d have graduated and committed to a Japanese university by the time Regular Admissions come out.”
That’s another part of the American university admissions throwing their household off the rails. Tsubame had jumpscared their parents and her homeroom teacher during their pre-winter break conference with an online portal displaying “Congratulations!” in English and confetti. That was a week ago. The three-way tension between Tsubame and Mother, Dad, and Grandmother kept Tsuruno and Suzume squirreled away in their room on the third floor despite the respite from the cold they could find from the kotatsu in the living room.
Mother wants Tsubame to commit to MIT. Tsubame has two months to convince Grandmother, who wants her to take the Todai entrance exams in a few weeks. Dad is caught in the crossfire between his overbearing wife and mother.
Long after Tsubame and any talk of higher education have left the room, Tsuruno stares at the ceiling and thinks to herself that the only thing stopping Tsubame from going is money, or the lack thereof.
-
The next morning Tsuruno wakes up an hour later than she does for school, which is early enough for her to read a few chapters of a book before she heads down to the kitchen. Dad is already there, cooking chashu and braised vegetables for their most popular menu items. She joins him at the counter to cut up toppings: scallions, cilantro, garlic, ginger.
On holidays they’re busier, so she has to help out. She doesn’t mind, really—she likes being in the kitchen with Dad, likes riding her bike to deliver orders around Sankyo Ward.
It’s like a more restful version of a school day—instead of detailed notes on electrons and writing out geometry problems on the board she takes orders and mans the cutting board at home. She still eats the same food and goes out on her bike, though. After all, her bentos usually contain leftover braised dishes and she bikes to school when it isn’t snowing, with Tsubame in front on her own bicycle and Suzume on a trailer behind her.
In all ten years of her perfect attendance she has bought food from the school cafeteria approximately twice, and she spends bus fare only a few weeks a year. Her life is casually intertwined with Banbanzai in a way that seems to inspire frugal habits. Not that she minds, but it stings a little to know that her savings born from years of careful spending habits are nevertheless trivial.
-
“I said in my order that I didn’t want cilantro,” the angry woman grumbles from the doorway! The receipt in Tsuruno’s hand says otherwise.
“It’s okay, Ren,” her husband tries to mollify her with a hand on her shoulder. “My dumpling soup doesn’t have cilantro, you can have that instead.”
He checks the receipt as Tsuruno hands over the paper bag with their order and smiles sheepishly. “Sorry about that, Tsuruno-chan. I should’ve double-checked.” “That’s okay, Tanaka-san!” Tsuruno pumps her first in the air. Tanaka-san is one of their regulars and knows the menu like the back of his hand, but he usually comes in person when his wife is on business trips.
“Thanks for getting the order here so fast It’s still piping hot,” he says, and closes the door behind him.
Kamihama’s streets are slightly less busy than usual; in the first week of the new year people Mizuna Ward’s shrines hold festivals. Thus there is only a small queue when Tsuruno passes by and sees the ad outside the convenience store for takarakuji.
“Buy a ticket for a chance to win 800 million yen!” the son of the convenience store’s owner, Shimada-san, cajoles as he rings a small bell. “Ring in a fortune with the new year!”
A small crowd of college students titter as they fill out the numbers.
“Do you think you’ll win it?”
“No way, man, my luck is abysmal.”
“It’s fun to dream, though. And it’s only 200 yen.”
200 yen is enough for one or two beverages from a vending machine or conbini. If Tsuruno bought one it would make a small dent in her monthly allowance. She definitely can’t afford to buy a cold drink every day in summer. Even though it’s just 200 yen.
Dropping 200 yen for a game with nonexistent payout is pointless. Even with her bravado Tsuruno would not do that—she’d buy a hot drink instead.
She parks her bike next to Banbanzai as she goes through a list of things she could buy with 200 yen: onigiri, nikuman, a small oden…
“What if you could guarantee the payout from the lottery?”
The unfamiliar voice comes from behind her. Tsuruno turns around to see a small, white, cat-like creature with long ears sitting on the seat of her bicycle. It wasn’t there a minute ago when she was pedaling home.
She stares. It doesn’t look like any animal Tsuruno has seen or heard of. Its coloring is unnatural and frankly, it looks supernatural. It looks kind of cute, though—like a fairy from Suzume’s favorite shows.
The expressionless creature speaks without opening its mouth. “My name is Kyubey! I can grant any wish of yours. In exchange, you must make a contract with me and become a magical girl!"
-
Kyubey’s terms were simple: she could make a wish and as long as it was concise enough, it would come true as she’d envisioned. After that she would be bestowed with magical powers and a duty to fight witches.
Tsuruno was strong; she was a few centimeters taller than Tsubame and showed no signs of stopping anytime soon. She’d always been stronger and faster than Tsubame—and most of her classmates at that. With magical powers, physical fights wouldn’t be a problem. She was infinitely more scared of what the cold war between Mother and Grandmother would do to their family. As Kyubey promised, she won the 800 million yen lottery.
"The self is not so weightless, nor whole and unbroken
Remember the pact of our youth”
On the last day before winter break, Tsuruno meets her older sister in front of the elementary school division of Kamihama City University Affiliated School. Tsubame takes her hand, and they walk to the train station together to go back to Sankyo Ward.
There are a few regulars—old friends of Grandfather’s—whose weathered faces wrinkle further when they smile and ask them how school was. At this point Tsuruno does not know that most of them, along with her own beloved grandfather, will stop coming at various points of time in the next decade.
Instead, she greets them in turn and runs up the stairs with her sister.
“We’re home!” Tsuruno shoves past Tsubame to kick her shoes off at the genkan.
“We’re home.” Her ever-patient older sister slips off her shoes to join her inside.
“Welcome home.” Their mother, eight months pregnant, waits with two mugs of steaming-hot barley tea and a basket full of oranges on top of the kotatsu. They join her under it, drawing the covers over their leggings and sock-clad feet. Tsubame reaches for an encyclopedia she left nearby on the floor the previous night; Tsuruno pulls a coloring book out of her randoseru.
Tsubame pauses while poring over a page about the fall of the Heike clan to the Minamoto. “Where are Grandfather and Grandmother?” she asks Mama.
“They went out shopping twenty minutes ago,” Mama replies. “They’ll come back with fried chicken and a Christmas cake.”
Pouting, Tsuruno scribbles extra hard. The page tears. “They left already?! Why didn’t they wait for us?”
“Because you’d take forever to look at all the cakes and decide which one’s the prettiest,” Tsubame deadpans. Tsuruno scowls but doesn’t object, because it’s true. That doesn’t mean she still doesn’t want to look at all the cakes, though.
An hour later, Grandfather and Grandmother come back in their bulky winter jackets. Grandfather triumphantly holds up three disposable plastic bags, strong with the aroma of fried chicken.
“We got the cake first, so the chicken is still warm!”
Grandmother holds the cake carefully. She’s probably worried our money will go to waste if she drops it, Tsuruno thinks.
“This was the cheapest cake,” Grandmother crows.
They gather around the dining table, Tsuruno and Tsubame on one side and their parents on the other. Grandmother sits on the short end between Tsubame and Mama, while Tsuruno sits next to Grandfather and opposite from Papa.
The table is laid with fried chicken, salad, vegetable stir-fry, and bowls of white rice. After they eat their fill, Mama brings out the cake. Tsuruno and Tsubame dig into the cake while the adults watch TV dramas.
“How is Banbanzai doing?” asks Grandmother. Her brow is furrowed and Tsuruno instinctively avoids eye contact.
“Okay,” comes Papa’s reply. He doesn’t say much else.
The girls eventually fall asleep under the kotatsu amongst the coloring pages and colored pencils.
Distantly, Tsuruno hears Grandfather murmur, “You’re doing fine, son. Keep doing your best.”
She doesn’t know it yet, but the next day she will once again open her Christmas presents and decide she likes Ojii-chan’s best.
“Hurt and grieve but don't suffer alone
Engage with the pain as a motive”
Grandfather smiles in his photo on the family altar. It sat in the same frame at the funeral three years ago, surrounded by white chrysanthemums and burning incense.
“Good morning, Ojii-chan.” Tsuruno kneels in front of the altar. “I hope you’re doing okay over there. Today was my first day of middle school.
“I miss you. Even after you retired, Dad was much happier when you were around. Banbanzai isn’t doing very well. Mom says it’s because Papa is still sad. Obaa-san says it’s because Papa is weak.”
She signs and smoothes out her red uniform skirt, courtesy of Tsubame.
“Do you think I can help with the business side of Banbanzai when I get older? My classes were pretty easy, so I’ll definitely have time.
“I want to help Dad. Mom started working again and all Tsubame does now is study, so it’s just him and me now.”
Tsuruno clasps her hands together. “Please keep watching over us from the other side.”
She then walks down the stairs to the kitchen.
-
From the afternoon to dinnertime, Tsuruno chops scallions and ginger and kikurage and waits tables. Between the dinner rushes of college students and office workers, she sits on a stool in the kitchen and takes the bowl Dad ladles to her.
Halfway through her tantanmen, Mom barges into the kitchen in her pantsuit for work, brows furrowed.
“Tsuruno!” She turns from her bowl, chopsticks in hand, and blinks owlishly at her. She doesn’t know what she’s done to incur this displeasure, but she has an idea.
“I’m done with most of my homework already.”
Mom blinks. “Oh, is that so? When?”
“When I got home,” Tsuruno replies, and slurps a noodle. It is delightfully spicy, although her sister tells her Japanese people have much lower spice tolerance compared to the rest of the world.
Mom’s posture loosens. “Alright. Just make sure to keep this up, okay? Now that you’re a middle school student you can’t be spending hours every day working in the restaurant.”
“Okay,” Tsuruno replies.
“And you!” Mom turns to Dad. “You better not overwork Tsuruno, either. Think about her future!”
Tsuruno drains the bowl and leaves before she hears anything else. True to her word, she finishes her English workbook assignment in her room. She isn’t the best in her class for nothing. Suzume reads a picture book on the other side of the room.
Tsubame’s footfalls approach their room; she enters with a bowl of fried rice in one hand and a bookbag on the other shoulder. She sits down with the rice and eats while her sisters read. After emptying the bowl she opens her bookbag and takes out her workbook.
They work deep into the night.
“Today, of all days, see
The most dangerous thing to love”
The metal of Tsuruno’s bike chain is somehow still cool in the sweltering heat. She locks it at the school gate and goes off to buy an iced tea from the vending machine. Her wallet jingles with the 1000 yen she brought for the cafeteria’s katsudon special.
Her new shoes shine in the bright sunlight.
After she won the lottery, Grandmother finally acquiesced. Tsubame committed to her dream school. Mother made shabu-shabu and brought cake home after work. Dad was much more relaxed at home, now that Mother and Grandmother were too. Tsubame left the attic to read with Tsuruno and Suzume.
She breezes through her classes and kills a witch in two minutes on her way home. Today she’d be early for Banbanzai’s prep.
Or she would have been, had it not been closed, shutters down.
She tiptoed to the second floor. Dad sits at the table, a torn-open envelope in his hand. Two more are unopened next to him.
-
Mom took half the money from her lottery winnings, but left letters for Dad, Tsubame, and her.
“Dear Tsuruno, I hope you do not hate me for this.”
“For a long time, your father and I have not seen eye-to-eye.”
“I made this decision with Suzume’s future in mind. Tsubame is going overseas soon, and you have always sided with your father.”
“I’m keeping my phone number, so please call me if you ever change your mind.”
-
Tsubame had hugged her tightly at the airport.
“Thank you,” she’d whispered. After all, without her lottery winnings she would not be there in the first place.
Tsuruno would next hear from her a day later—without phone service, Tsubame would only be able to use Wi-fi to talk with her over LINE.
She sat in her room—hers alone now.
“Achilles, Achilles, Achilles, jump now
You are absent of cause or excuse”
Throughout the years, Tsuruno has sat through many lectures at school, eyes fixed on the blackboard as the teacher wrote in chalk. This eventually changed to whiteboards and projectors not unlike the one before her.
The little girl with chestnut hair and parasol is—-according to Iroha—-the same age as her missing sister. That would make her a year older than Suzume. Tsuruno watches Satomi Touka’s black hair ribbon bob as she paces, and wonders if Suzume still does her hair the same as two years ago.
Done with her soul-gem-and-battery analogy, Satomi Touka cheerfully flips through a slideshow of graphics that look like a cross between ancient Greek pottery and shadow puppets.
“Girl D was unable to go that day, so their team of five was reduced to four. There, Girl E took a blow for Girl A.
“As Girl A held her in her arms, Girl E’s soul gem cracked. Can you guess what happened?”
Iroha makes brief eye contact with her. The two of them can’t not know, considering Tomoe Mami almost killed Iroha.
Unfortunately, Tsuruno is a good student. She sits still while Felicia and Sana recoil when Touka replies, “Nope~ She turned into a witch~”
Like a sick and twisted version of showing a documentary at school, Touka moves them all into a gondola to watch a short film. The interior reflects Mifuyu’s tastes; it would be beautiful if Tsuruno didn’t know what it was for.
The antique projector plays a hazy, third-person view of Yukino Kanae, whose concert photo with Mifuyu and Yachiyo sits on a shelf in the manor, who died at sixteen.
She watches from a distance, immobile as Mifuyu grips Kanae’s shoulders and shouts her name at the abandoned warehouse. Yachiyo checks Kanae’s pulse and finds none; they find her shattered soul gem together.
As Mifuyu weeps over Kanae’s limp hand and Yachiyo holds her, the scene shifts to Mikazuki Villa. It’s a normal school morning in the villa, ignoring the presence of Momoko for one, and Mel. Girl C had clearly been Kanae, ceasing to move when her soul gem was in pieces. She knew all too well who Girl D would be.
Sure enough, she barrels into the front door with three bentous wrapped in Banbanzai-branded handkerchiefs. She sets them on the table, next to half-full mugs of earl grey tea. Dark blue for Yachiyo, lavender for Mifuyu, red for Momoko, mint green for Mel.
It was supposed to be a leisurely weekend day before their nightly patrol for witches.
Tsuruno hears her own voice from Yachiyo’s phone, asking for a break from patrolling to serve a large party at Banbanzai. Then by the witch with thorny spiders in its hands, and Mel’s last words.
It all makes sense: now older the team split apart. Momoko to Chuo, Mifuyu fo Hokuyo, and Yachiyo here in Shinsei ward.
Mel would still be with them in Daito, if it weren’t for her that day.
“You crave the applause yet hate the attention
Then miss it, your act is a ruse”
Not much changes about Tsuruno’s day-to-day life after the household shrinks from six to two. School is the same: she gets to campus with time to spare, tutors her classmates during study halls, eats from the same lunchbox each day.
But now she eats alone; Yachiyo and Momoko no longer meet her on the roof. Like Tsubame, Yachiyo is a first-year in university now. She goes to school on an entirely different campus now, and leads a very different life as a working adult.
The last few times Tsuruno asked to meet up, she either had group assignments, a photoshoot, or household chores to do. Tsuruno no longer asks Yachiyo to hang out.
Momoko must’ve had some kind of falling-out with Yachiyo. Tsuruno learned this the hard way when she suggested they hang out with her.
Those two and Mifuyu had all drastically changed after Mel’s death. She wasn’t surprised—- Grandmother, Dad, and Mom all had too after Grandpa died.
“Watch out, Yui-san!” a classmate cries out. The basketball hits the back of her head.
The girls immediately surround and began fussing like a flock of mother hens.
“Oh no! I’m so sorry!”
“Yui-san, are you okay?”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“What if I make her stupid?”
“Don’t be silly, she’s too smart for a toss from you to ruin her brain.”
Tsuruno waves and laughs. “Don’t worry about me! I’m the strongest after all. Nothing my hard head can’t handle.”
The class president frowns and stands up. “Concussions are serious, Yui-san. Let me take you to the nurse’s office.” It’s not a request.
-
The nurse frowns when the class president recounts the injury. “You should avoid physical activity for the next few days. Don’t push yourself.”
They both leave Tsuruno in a cot behind a curtain, alone with only her thoughts for company. When she gets back late and tells Dad the truth, he’s the same: fussing over her like glass.
He forbids her from working or leaving the house. It’s really asking a lot from her, to do nothing.
“It is empty, Achilles, so end it all now
It's a pointless resistance for you”
“Tsuruno, wait!” Dad called. He was panting already, out of shape. He usually did deliveries via motorbike, whereas Tsuruno rode a bicycle to school and fought witches on an almost-daily basis.
She knew he wouldn’t catch up.
He likely wouldn’t see her again for a long time. Tsuruno did not know how long she would be gone, but she knew she was living on borrowed time.
Mel’s death had been a tragedy, but one caused just by an unfortunate coincidence. Who knew when a day gone wrong could lead to her end? No matter how strong she was, she would be in danger so regularly as long as she was a magical girl.
She could die in battle like Kanae. Her lifeline was encased in a bright red gem that could shatter with a single blow.
She could die a less immediate death like Mel, her soul gem transforming into a grief seed. It could happen from magic overuse. It could be from despair. If it weren’t for the Doppel system, Mifuyu would have been long gone.
Touka was waiting at the edge of Sankyo Ward in a limousine. “You’re late, Miss Mightiest.”
They sped past the familiar streets of her neighborhood, past the gated mansions and gardens of Hokuyo Ward to the forest north of Kamihama. The limo drove through a curtain of mist to an old-fashioned Western hotel. It would pass for another wealthy scion’s home were it not for the telltale signs of a Rumor barrier.
Touka smiled. “Welcome to Hotel Fendt Hope.”
“You may feel no purpose nor a point for existing
It's all just conjecture and gloom
And there may not be meaning, so find one and seize it
Do not waste yourself on this roof”
“Snap out of it, Tsuruno!” Yachiyo lunges with her halberd. “You’re the strongest, aren’t you?”
“I just want to rest!” Tsuruno swiped at Yachiyo, who spun just out of reach. “I’ve been putting my all into everything for so long.
“I made my wish to fulfill my sister’s dream and keep my family together! I tried to keep the team together after Mel died. But my lottery ticket gave my mother the chance she needed to leave! And everyone else turned their backs on each other!”
“What does it matter if I’m the best in my year? If I can hunt the most witches? If my luck runs out I’ll become a witch anyway!
“Being the strongest has never done anything for me.”
The truth breaks its lock in her chest and pools in the holes in her heart. She puts her hands over her ears as the girls of Mikazuki Villa are caught in a rotating column of turquoise wind around her. The Rumor of Chelation Land cackles with wicked, inhuman laughter.
“Today, of all days, see
How the most dangerous thing is to love
How you will heal and you'll rise above”
“We’ll separate you from the Rumor even if it costs us our lives!”
That was the last thing Tsuruno remembered.
When she came to, it was to Felicia’s face directly above hers, ruddy with tears. “I’m sorry, Tsuruno! From now on I’ll let you do whatever you want! I’m so sorry for being so selfish…”
She sobs while Yachiyo pats her back. Her eyes meet Tsuruno’s from behind Iroha and Sana’s worried faces.
When they leave Hotel Fendt Hope, Tsuruno thinks, she’d like to talk to Yachiyo, heart-to-heart, for real sometime.