"Now, doesn't someone look happy?!"

"Quite! People always have to eat, after all! It's 'mission accomplished'!"

"So, whatcha gonna do now?"

He wasn't referring to the object. After she had bought the trinket with actual gold coins she had been hiding underneath her countless layers of clothes, they had separated from the crowd, simply staring at the multiple faces passing by.

Night had fallen. Still, Nii had made no signs of returning to the hotel and instead returned to her humming while she lovingly gazed at the spice mill as if she had found a long-lost treasure. She had a satisfied look on her face, and an air of accomplishment surrounded her as if she had just completed an important task, a long-time mission, a life mission.

A thought had suddenly come to him, like connecting the dots:

I'm here to see a friend.

I'm going home.

She was closer.

I figured it's safer to travel in a group.

I'm looking for something!

Her erratic behaviour, her awkwardness, her habit of finding excuses and running away; what had she come to Sao Paulo for, again? Whom had she come to meet? To meet an old friend, to confront her past, to overcome her past and to move on, wasn't that it? So that she could go home without feeling like having failed, so that she could go home with her head held high. Or were these his feelings?

Had she succeeded? Though sharing a close relationship with Pania, they hadn't actually appeared to be all that close. It almost looked like that. No matter how close they got, they would never actually touch. There had been an invisible distance between them that could never be overcome. But wasn't that the case for everyone?

Had he succeeded? Was he ready to face his past, to go back home? Could he really say that he had grown as a person? The changing of the times hadn't left him untouched, it had let his past seem trivial at some point, and it most likely was. But for himself, wasn't his past still haunting him? No, not his past. It was his failure that was still haunting him. But wasn't that, too, the case for everyone? Every time we screw up, these incidents leave us with scars that change us forever. Wasn't that just how things were? Was that really something to be hung up on? Wasn't he at this very moment leaving his past behind, this stalemate he had found himself in?

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Kazuya looked at the girl, seemingly growing younger by the second. What had been this burden that had weighed her down so much that she had aged beyond her years? Had it been the things she had seen, the things she had done or perhaps had failed to do? Had it been these social interactions she had so clearly no skills in? If so, why had the burden suddenly been lifted from her? Why did it feel like she had accomplished everything she had sought to do? Had she already put her past behind her? That was it, wasn't it? But in that case

'She isn't planning on heading back. She is'

And as if to complete his thoughts:

"I'm going home."

So that was the reason for the sudden change. There simply had been nothing to burden her anymore. She was free, at last, free to be herself, free to be honest to herself, free to live as she wanted to, as she had always wanted to.

"What about you?" Where are you headed?

'I'm heading home

We all are heading home, we who live, we who still wander this earth.

Home? Where is that?'

The town where he had been born in?

The city he had first found his calling?

The city where he had lost it?

The city where he had started anew?

What exactly was home?

Where were they all heading to?

And, what for?

What had they hoped to find?

What had they hoped to find afar that had let them wander all across the globe?

What were they hoping to find, going back to the places they had left behind so long ago?

What would they find?

What would he find?

What would she find awaiting her?

"Will you accompany me for the rest of the journey?"

It had never been about a lost friendship.

It had never been about safety.

It had never been about practicality.

It had never been about entertainment, about that change of scenery, though he had clearly been waiting for that fresh wind that would chase out the stale air of the city. But even so, that, too, had just been an excuse, an excuse he had been waiting for; they had all been waiting for. He just hadn't expected it to take this particular shape.

It had always been about them, a reason to move forward in a world where clocks had stopped ticking. It had all been for them. Everything they had done had all been for them.

「みんな同じ。」 Nii added as she turned her back to the city.

"So this is the breaking of the fellowship", huh? She had really gotten to him, hadn't she? When did that happen?

She just laughed at that. She laughed with a clear tone, like bells ringing in the dawn.

And together, they headed into the distance. Home.