November 6, AD 2095

Yotsuba Main House

Parlor

“Oh,” muttered Tatsuya as he was looking out the window to the courtyard.

It pulled Miyuki’s mind back to the present. “Tatsuya?”

“It’s the Kuroba siblings.” He answered her unvoiced question, his expression betraying a hint of surprise.

“Ayako and Fumiya?”

Tatsuya may have only shown slight surprise, but Miyuki was different. In a fluster, she started to rise, paused halfway up, changed her mind, and sat back down.

“It looks like they’re just returning.”

The Kuroba siblings had just exited a detached building where their grandmother lived. The younger sister of Tatsuya and Miyuki’s late grandfather, she was aunt to the current family head, Maya. Fumiya Kuroba was the number two candidate to take over the Yotsuba. It wasn’t strange to see them come to their grandmother’s dwelling to see how she was doing. Miyuki didn’t seem surprised at the fact that they’d come here, either—her surprise was because of something else.

“…Could it be a coincidence?” she asked.

“It wouldn’t be like them to know we were here and not say hello.”

Miyuki thought he was right.

“I can’t tell if fate ties us strongly or not. We always seem to barely miss one another.”

They never actually bumped into one another, but they never entirely missed one another, either. Miyuki, thinking the same thing as her brother, reflected on what had happened on the only night they had ever interacted…