Chapter Text
Madoka hates storms in a very particular way.
The first time it shows, she’s in her crib. It’s 20:37, February 22nd, 1997. She’s been crying for hours, for no reason at all, as though someone stole something from her but nobody saw it happen. Tomohisa stays with her through it all, Junko a sporadic presence as she takes over the chores for her husband. They take turns trying to calm her down, but she’s inconsolable. She wrestles the white rabbit plushie when it’s presented, uncoordinated limbs attempting to rip the button eyes out. She cries harder when given a black cat instead, yet won’t let go of it once it’s in her arms. Tomohisa has to leave to prepare a late dinner. Junko stays, rocking Madoka in her arms monotonously. It helps, but only because Madoka soaks tears and snot into her shirt.
The first crack of thunder is dry. It’s close, and loud, and Madoka falls silent as soon as she hears it. Junko watches her closely, waiting for the shock to subside and the fear to set in. The sky rumbles. Madoka stares blankly at the shadows coating the corners of her room’s window.
It begins to pour. It comes down all at once, like the clouds are crying for her now that she isn’t.
Madoka goes very, very still.
“Madoka ?”
She doesn’t respond. She’s fixed on that window, on the heavy raindrops, on the flashes of light and the echoing sound. It’s dark, but the streetlamps and the neighbours’ light spilling through their curtains glance off the falling rain like evanescent stars in the night.
There’s something there. There’s nothing there.
Junko jostles her, calling again.
She has to go. She has to stay.
The storm subsides after three hours. She doesn’t move until Junko brings her out to the living room for food. She doesn’t eat. She crawls to the glass wall, slow as she drags the black cat in one arm, and sits there and watches.
Every storm after this is the same: Madoka silently, blankly stares out the window until the rain ceases. Her parents take her to a child psychologist but they don’t know anything about it either.
It becomes normal. Tomohisa makes a habit of checking the forecast every day. Dinnertime is pushed earlier or later every once in a while. The white rabbit gathers dust on one of her shelves, untouched and unloved. As soon as she can walk, she waddles over to the big floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and sits quietly until the storms are over. A cushion makes a permanent home there. Sometimes Junko sits with her, looking for whatever captivates her so.
They forget that it’s weird, and they forget to talk about it.
-
It’s Sayaka who reminds them. It’s June 6th, 2003; a completely normal Friday, one like any other.
Sayaka’s staying over today. It’s not the first time, it won’t be the last. It starts raining at 19:41, a slow, lazy drizzle that becomes torrential all at once a few minutes in.
Tomohisa’s busying himself with the dishes, occasionally glancing up to check on them. Madoka fidgets, keeps glancing out. She hasn’t reached out to the cookies on the table since the first raindrop. Sayaka takes the opportunity to pig out on them. Madoka watches their number dwindle, unable to bring an appetite to herself.
Before long, she’s standing in front of the window. Sayaka joins her shortly.
It’s not the first storm Sayaka’s spent with Madoka. It won’t be the last.
“Hey, Madoka ?”
The last time Sayaka asked was the first storm they spent together. This time, Madoka responds.
She mumbles, “Sayaka-chan ?”
It’s monumental in a small way. Something shifts in Madoka’s tiny world, readjusting itself.
“Do you like storms ?”
There’s a long pause. Sayaka doesn’t particularly expect Madoka to answer. Her friend is normally cheerful and sociable and warm, and in her young mind, the quietness is like balancing it out, like she’s taking the words out of the storm to speak them outside of it. Madoka does answer, though. It’s simple, a single word.
“No.”
Sayaka takes a moment to chew over that. “Oh.”
The storm lasts 21 minutes. They sit down a quarter into it. Sayaka falls asleep on Madoka’s lap. Tomohisa drapes a blanket over her with a gentle smile. It continues to lightly rain for 24 minutes after the worst has passed.
The sky clears enough for the last embers of the day to slice through the clouds in long curtains, falling over skyscrapers and old architecture alike. Madoka watches the city from the comfort of home, drinking the sight in with the kind of awe children tend to have for the mundane.
-
“You’re not asleep.”
It’s 23:18 on a school night. Junko notices the light framing the door and checks on her daughter, finding her staring out the window in her pajamas. It’s not unexpected.
It’s storming, outside.
“Sorry,” Madoka mutters.
“Can I come in ?”
“Yeah."
She takes Madoka’s desk chair and sits next to her bed. Madoka doesn’t look away from the window.
For the first time in forever, Junko asks herself why. She looks at Madoka and doesn’t see an idiosyncrasy, but a puzzle with a real answer. She studies her for a moment. Madoka’s blanketed legs are drawn up to her chest, encased in her arms. It’s how she always sits in front of a storm. Her eyes wander aimlessly through the darkness, idly looking for something in it.
“Are you scared of storms, Madoka ?”
Madoka gives no indication she heard her. Junko waits patiently.
“... No. Yes. Maybe... I don’t know...”
“You don’t know ?”
“Mhm.”
Madoka doesn’t have a name for that feeling yet. There are lots of things she doesn’t have words for, yet. She still has her whole life to learn.
“I think... it’s, um, anxiety.”
“Does the storm make you anxious ?”
“It’s not... the storm.”
“It’s not ?”
Madoka’s pupils narrow as she focuses on the flickering light of a radio tower in the distance.
“Mama,” Madoka starts, and she sounds choked up. She reaches out, splaying her fingers across her reflection in the glass. “I think it took something from me.”
She keeps looking for it, expecting it, waiting for it. She finds her own eyes and her own face. It’s not enough.
“And I miss it, but I don’t what it is.”
She’s so cold, even her mother’s warm hand feels like frostbite on her back.
-
It’s February 22nd, 2006. Madoka’s off all day, missing, missing, missing.
She wakes up crying. It takes her too long to stop, but she does eventually, halfway through her breakfast. Her parents worry, and Madoka wills the tears away. She has to go to school.
The sun is bright and gently kisses her puffy eyes. The warmth almost brings her to tears again. She wants a hug, but not from anyone. She breathes in shakily, tightening her coat around herself. It feels like the whole world has been quietly shifted two centimeters to the left.
Hitomi and Sayaka are waiting for her at the intersection. Madoka trots over to them.
Sayaka grins, waving. “Madokaaaaa ! You’re late— oh !” She grabs Madoka’s face with a concerned frown. “You’ve been crying ?”
Madoka smiles shakily. “It’s just one of those days, you know ?”
It’s not the first time this happens. It’s not like it happens often, exactly, but it’s happened enough for her family and friends to understand it as who she is: some days she just cries uncontrollably, for no real reason. That’s just the way it is.
Sayaka squints suspiciously. “You sure ? You’re not being bullied ?”
Hitomi sighs, side-eyeing Sayaka. She looks like she’s about to swat Sayaka’s hands away from Madoka’s face with her bag. “Madoka will tell us if something’s wrong. Right ?”
“Right,” she agrees, and the smile on her lips feels a little more genuine.
Madoka’s grateful for her friends, she really is. She makes a mental note to get them both a present sometime.
The rest of the morning is spent in a limbo of focusing on not crying. She misses every word from the teachers, face buried in her arms. She’s not called on, thankfully. Lunch can’t come soon enough, but it does come, and finds Madoka sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree with Sayaka and Hitomi flanking her.
She’s hungry without an appetite, chewing her father’s lovingly made bento mechanically. Sayaka playfully ‘attempts’ to steal a rolled egg straight from Madoka’s chopsticks and succeeds, to her own surprise. Madoka simply goes for another while Sayaka sits frozen in place, contemplating the piece of egg between her chopsticks like it’s a chicken with four legs. Hitomi shoots the bluenette an incredibly unimpressed look for a nine-year old.
A few minutes later, Madoka stares into her empty bento and nearly starts crying.
Hitomi bumps shoulders with her.
“Are you okay ?”
“I— I don’t know.” Madoka chews on her lip. “I feel like I’m missing something. Or forgetting. I just...” She clenches the box between her hands, frustrated. “I don’t know. It’s one of those days.”
“Maybe it’s, like, a soulmate,” Sayaka proposes pensively.
“A soulmate ?”
Hitomi’s eyes sparkle. “You mean, like in the stories ?”
Sayaka grunts, tilting her body left and right like she’s physically generating thought. “Maybe ? The TV show I saw didn’t really explain it that well.”
Hitomi hums, considering it. “It would explain why you always feel as though you’re missing something.”
Madoka turns the idea over. A soulmate. Someone tied to her. Someone meant to be with her forever. It doesn’t feel impossible.
Should it feel impossible ? She’s just... her. Not special, or anything.
“Why me, then ? There has to be others who deserve a soulmate more than me.”
“Nah, if it’s gonna be anyone, it’s gotta be you ! Like, you’re so nice all the time. And you’re pretty ! And you’ll definitely make a good wife !” Sayaka punches the air with a grin. “Grrr ! Now I’m jealous of your soulmate !”
Madoka laughs, small but real. “We don’t know if it’s really a soulmate.” It’s a childish idea.
Hitomi smiles. “But it would be quite romantic if it were.”
Maybe. It’s a beautiful thing to believe in.
If this crushing sorrow is from someone else — someone who shares a fate with her, who will love her and be loved by her — carrying it together doesn’t seem so daunting.
-
Are they afraid of storms ?
It’s an idle question. Madoka’s stuck at school because of one. The wind is loud, even through the library windows.
There’s an umbrella in her bag, but, well.
She props herself up on her arm. She has a stack of books in front of her, a third of them fantasy fiction, a fourth a collection of trashy romance stories, and the rest a variety of genres.
She has not read a single one of them, yet the titles are all oddly familiar, and not because of the generic nature of some of these. She runs a finger over the spines and pulls one out at random.
It’s a mystery novel. A french one, actually, translated into Japanese. Not something Madoka would enjoy, or read for leisure. It’s not particularly long.
She already knows how it ends. She can even vaguely remember something about the reversed number 4 and charcoal-covered corpses. Again, she hasn’t opened the book a single time in her entire life. She didn’t even know it existed before the title caught her eye while she was browsing the shelves.
Her gaze drifts back to the window, where rainwater traces long streaks downward like tears.
Being scared of storms is... kind of cute, isn’t it ?
“It’s okay,” she whispers, splaying her fingers across the cold glass. “I’m here.”
-
Madoka is eleven when she realizes the voices aren’t normal, which may be later than she should probably be making that realization. Of course, it’s an old TV drama she’s watching with her mother that tells her.
It’s a mystery thriller. The current main suspect is a man with schizophrenia. One particularly insensitive police officer is accusing him of listening to the fairy voices in his head that must have told him to do drugs, or something.
Madoka, curious, asks about it.
Kaname Junko is not an expert in psychology. She strenuously reaches for her phone on the coffee table, swollen stomach in the way. Madoka grabs it for her. She smiles and somewhat clumsily sums up the first result she finds, right as the man’s flashback to the day of the crime ends.
What she gets is this: schizophrenia is a mental disorder that is heavily stereotyped, and she for sure does not have it. She wonders if maybe people diagnosed with it also had soulmates.
The detective considers the suspect’s story, and that’s when Madoka suddenly just knows it’s the victim’s girlfriend that did it. The voices must have a sense of humor.
“I bet you two slices of cake it’s the girlfriend.”
Junko squints. “I bet you it’s the boyfriend.”
Two weeks later, she proudly savors two slices of strawberry shortcake after dinner while they both watch the police unsuccessfully chase after a 26 year-old woman through an obstacle course of an alley.
The boyfriend goes on to become a very successful singer as he uses his late partner’s inheritance to buy himself an incredibly expensive microphone from one of the companies sponsoring the show. It’s a clearly shoehorned-in plotline with the pure nonsense of it all and Junko rambles about how that’s not how singing careers work for half an hour.
-
She sees them while out at the mall with Sayaka. It’s not some big thing, really, her eyes are just drifting through the accessories on display while waiting in line. Sayaka’s saying something about looking forward to surprising Hitomi with their matching keychains. There’s nothing special about them, but her attention stays on them, and before she knows it, they’re in her hands.
“Oh, you want those, Madoka ?”
“Umm.. are they too flashy ?”
Sayaka squints at her, groaning as she works her brain’s imagination neurons to overlay the accessories onto Madoka. “Nah ! The color’s gonna look great on you !”
Madoka smiles. The cashier rings them up. As soon as they’re out of the store, Sayaka urges her to try them on.
The red ribbons are smooth in her hand, easy to tie in bows around her pigtails. She spins on herself for Sayaka, who laughs and claps loudly enough to turn heads.
She catches her reflection in the window of a store, and it feels right. She gives herself a smile.
-
It’s March 1st, 2011. Madoka wakes up with her hands shaking. There’s a sinking feeling in her gut, stuck halfway between anxiety and melancholy. It doesn’t go away. She watches out the windows like expecting a storm.
She asks into the void: “Are you scared ?”
-
It’s March 13th. She digs out the old black cat plush from the depths of her closet and holds onto it tightly. It’s not enough. It’s never enough.
-
It’s March 15th. She’s scared. Her heart hurts.
She stays in bed all day.
Sayaka and Hitomi are sending her concerned messages over their group chat. She watches the notifications light up her phone screen, buried under a mound of blankets.
With trembling fingers, she types in: I think my soulmate is dying.
-
Madoka wakes up. It’s March 16th. The voices are crying.