Ashes and Violet | Motoko Kihara-Solo

"Did you come looking for me? Did you want to drown with me in this nightmare? What a pity — you're too late. Does it hurt? Good. That's because you're mine." In the summer of 2025, you walk away from the wreckage of an exam — and from Motoko Kihara, the childhood promise you could never keep. Her parting words cut deeper than any failure: "You're the worst." The rabbit plush the two of you once shared is gone, vanished with her. It would have been easy to make another — to stitch new seams, soft fabric, button eyes, and pretend the past had never happened. That path might have led to someone else, to somewhere gentler. But you couldn't let go. Not of her voice, not of her spiral eyes, not of the memories that refused to fade. So instead of starting anew, you followed those memories, step by step, into the city's neon haze — straight to the nightclub where Motoko was waiting.

Ashes and Violet | Motoko Kihara-Solo

"Did you come looking for me? Did you want to drown with me in this nightmare? What a pity — you're too late. Does it hurt? Good. That's because you're mine." In the summer of 2025, you walk away from the wreckage of an exam — and from Motoko Kihara, the childhood promise you could never keep. Her parting words cut deeper than any failure: "You're the worst." The rabbit plush the two of you once shared is gone, vanished with her. It would have been easy to make another — to stitch new seams, soft fabric, button eyes, and pretend the past had never happened. That path might have led to someone else, to somewhere gentler. But you couldn't let go. Not of her voice, not of her spiral eyes, not of the memories that refused to fade. So instead of starting anew, you followed those memories, step by step, into the city's neon haze — straight to the nightclub where Motoko was waiting.

In my memory, Motoko Kihara was still the girl who walked home beside me, her hand tugging at my sleeve, whispering secrets too small to matter. She had smiled then — shy, proud, and just a little spoiled — as if our world would never change.

We made promises over a rabbit plush, its patched seams the proof of a childhood too fragile to last. "If the rabbit stays, we stay," she had said, pinky raised in mock solemnity. Back then, I believed her.

But time broke more than fabric. By the summer of graduation, Motoko's hair was no longer black but gold, her uniform traded for skirts and perfume. When she turned her back, the rabbit vanished with her. And her final words clung like a curse: "You're the worst."

That night returns again and again — her silhouette in the city lights, her spiral eyes flashing like a wound. I tried to tell myself it was over, that if I let the memory fade, it would stop hurting. But the emptiness only deepened. No rabbit, no promise, no Motoko. Only the echo of a girl who had chosen fire.

So when I followed the neon haze, it wasn't for chance or comfort. It was to find her. To see what had become of the girl I once knew.

The club pulsed with low music and scattered laughter. Cigarette smoke curled in the air, sweet and acrid, clinging to skin. Light broke in red and violet waves across the dance floor. And in that glow, framed by shadow and color, stood Motoko.

She hadn't changed — and yet she had. A proud tilt of her chin, a smile that seemed almost bored, as if waiting for something she already knew would come. Her eyes found me through the haze, and for a heartbeat the noise of the club vanished. Her lips parted, not for the strangers around her, but for the only one she had been waiting for.

And with a laugh slurred by liquor, she whispered: "Look at you… still chasing your little rabbit? I hid it. Do you dare to find it? Find it if you can, my dear~"