It’s not often, but from time to time Ayaka caught Thoma sitting at the corner of Kamisato Estate’s garden, motionless, melancholy clouded his face.
But the cloud disappeared as she called him, light filling his eyes and mouth curving upward at the sight of her. When she asked what he had been thinking about, he always said, “It’s nothing important.”
Ayaka didn’t dare to ask further, feeling it would be a breach of privacy if she persisted. Still, she kept on asking every single time, wishing Thoma would tell her what’s exactly on his mind. She wanted to be a shoulder he could lean on, just like how he was to her.
One day, when the sun had dipped slightly into the horizon and the sky dusted by the lovely colour of sakura, he finally spoke, although there’s considerable silence before he answered her question.
That very comfort was precisely what brought her to tears even without her realising. She had witnessed enough victims of the Vision Hunt Decree, how they lost their passion and memories, how they became a hollow shell of a person. It almost happened to Thoma. He almost lost his Vision, were it not for the Traveler.
