Maki's too young, at first, only a child in Nozomi's wise eyes. But Nozomi's a child too, full of secrets and hopes, and one day they both grow up. It happens to Nozomi first: A day after graduation Eli leaves, called back to Russia by an aging grandmother, and Nozomi seems to break. There are seven others around her but she is alone, and Nico gets tired of waiting. Two months pass and she's chasing her idol career and she's wildly successful- by the time Maki enters college she's a faded name gathering dust.

Maki doesn't know what happened to her.

She leaves college, several years later, doctor degree in hand. Somehow she winds up on Nozomi's doorstep and she wonders if time truly is the best medicine after all, for Nozomi's happy again, smiling again, and Maki takes her out to dinner and proposes that very same night. It's a silly thing, and Nozomi laughs. She turns Maki down, and Maki says that's fine. She didn't know what came over her.

Later, she realizes she meant it.

Slowly, Maki starts working her way into Nozomi's home. They chat on the weekends, cups of tea warming their hands, and retrace sepia-toned memories. Maki buys her flowers, little animal figures, a pack of glow in the dark stars they spend an hour arranging on the ceiling. It feels... different, from how it used to, but Maki couldn't explain it. Nozomi still speaks with dancing words, talking about everything and nothing at the same time, and Maki still burns with frustration at all these riddles. But one day she snaps at Nozomi, and the genuine hurt on Nozomi's face is something completely new.

Maki has never regretted anything more.

They aren't kids anymore, Nozomi says with words as fragile as silk, but she's still terrified of growing up. Of losing what made her whole, of making a mockery of what had once been her dreams. It was like childhood had been bursting with color, but now the world has run out of ink. The next time Maki's working at the hospital, she sees the white lab coats and the white walls and white stretchers with new eyes. Some distant part of her wants to cry.

When was the last time she cared enough to cry?

Sometimes Nozomi asks herself the same question, but she knows the answer. She still remembers Eli leaving, remembers how her future shattered into a thousand pieces and instead of cleaning up the shards, she hid herself away. She cried a lot back then. For herself, mostly, and a little bit for the people she knew she was leaving behind. She spent a long time in the dark, waiting for someone to be her light, until she finally realized she had to be her own.

Now, once again, Nozomi is tired of waiting.

She goes to the store and picks out nine buckets of paint, then finds one more because she's not going to fall into the old symbolism again. It's time for something new- a new digit, a new color, a new chapter of her life. She and Maki paint the entire apartment in the span of ten hours. Every room is dripping with a different color and Nozomi can't help but laugh as she dances through them all. Maki gets caught up in it too, feeling the joy run through her like music used to. Her doctor's coat is splattered with paint, and normally she'd be upset, but she decides she likes it better this way. She throws it around Nozomi, pulls her close, and they share their first kiss in a room the color of sunshine.

They wed in the spring of next year, and neither of their dresses are white.