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Mahiru remembers Ai kissing her in this very classroom.She remembers how her lips tasted. Like salt, with the lingering aftertaste of something bitter. She tasted like tears and cigarettes and ash, and she wore black lipstick that left green on Mahiru's own when she pulled away. She tasted alive .She smoked, sometimes, but she was trying to quit. When Mahiru ate the filling out of an oreo, Ai would pluck the cookie left behind, and bite into it with a smirk. "An indirect kiss," she would say, as if they didn't just make out moments earlier, and Mahiru would laugh, trying to hide it behind her hands. They went for ice cream, once, she remembers. Passionfruit: that's the flavor Ai got. It suited her; she joked that it matched Mahiru's hair, artificial color, a laugh caught on the corners of her mouth. Mahiru got dragon fruit, she recalls. They shared with each other—Ai must have eaten at least half. She leaned in close when she did so, and Mahiru could smell it, smell her—cigarettes and cherry blossom. The smell of her shampoo and lingering smoke.She held her face gently when she did it. Ai was always so, so gentle with her. She could be so passionate, so loud, but with Mahiru, she was always tender. The press of her lips was barely there, as if afraid to hurt her.Mahiru remembers Ai kissing her in this very classroom—she will never be able to again.Because sitting there in a pool of her own blood, Ai Sato lays dead.