AN: I tried many times to write an epilogue to Broken Glass unsuccesfully. Initially, I'd planned for it to be based around Hachiman recalling the case later on in his life, but everything I wrote ended up feeling shallow or inadequate. After giving up for what (shamefully) ended up being months, I realised that Broken Glass didn't need an epilogue in the traditional sense. Really, it needed a sequel. This story won't be as long as Broken Glass, but it will serve as a far better conclusion to the narrative of the story than my attempts at a single chapter epilogue. The tone and style will be pretty much the same as its predecessor.

Again, I'd like to sincerely thank everyone who read Broken Glass the first time round, during its publication and updating stages and anyone whose read it in the months following that. It was probably one of the best writing experiences of my life- I know the conclusion won't have satisfied everyone but it was always my intention to have the culprit (won't spoil it if people still wanna read) who they were. One of the things that drew me to the idea first was to try and challenge perceptions of the Oregairu cast and see how they'd react/treat others in much darker situations. This sequel will continue that theme and then some. I suppose I also see it as another, more mature attempt on my part to tackle the 'post Soubu High' plotline that I tried in Anniversary.

Ten years have passed since the death of Hayama Hayato. Hikigaya Komachi often asked her brother about what truly happened, to no avail. Now, Hachiman is dead, and she can't help but feel the same as he did back then- that things are not as they seem. (Sequel to Broken Glass)

Shattered Memories

Chapter One:

"Excuse me, but... I've seen you before, haven't I?"

Hikigaya Komachi looks up from her meal, almost gratefully. After spending half an hour in the closest branch of Saize to her house, one of many in Chiba alone, she can barely comprehend the swelling urge that had pushed her through its doors. Komachi has always strangely enjoyed being a face in the crowd- another inconsequential expression in the latest barrage of people on their way to a meeting, a date, a love, amongst the granite hallways of Chiba. In a crowd, you can be merely anyone else, and allow yourself to be consumed by a secure feeling of normality. Normality is precisely what she needs right now.

She has not visited Saize in what seems like too long. This, too, is incomprehensible to her. She has no reason to miss this place. She never hated it, merely because, to her, summoning any emotion in response to something as arbitrary as a Saize restaurant was pointless. She is coming close now, however. Everything about this place, with her sitting in an isolated table towards the back, seemingly forgotten by her frantic waitress, is wrong. The lighting is unpleasant. The people are either too loud or unpleasantly silent. The food she's paid for has the undeniable texture of cement.

The Hikigaya Komachi of three months ago would, undeniably, have passed this Saize restaurant without a second thought. She could be home by now, sipping her favourite drink with her boyfriend.

The food does not merit anyone's attention, let alone her's, so she looks up assuming that the silvery, feminine voice belongs to someone who has made a mistake.

"Sorry, I think-"

She stops mid-sentence. The face that stares back at her, fronted by a pair of vivid blue eyes, is eerily symmetrical, and eerily unwelcome.

"Gosh! It really is you! It's Hikigaya... Komachi, right?" The name curls on her tongue like singe-kissed paper.

"... Right."

Yukinoshita Haruno, as is probably to be expected, has aged impeccably well. Komachi saw the features only sparingly in her school days, but the fluttering black hair still wears its pristinity with an effervescent pride, and the startling translucency of her skin is unlikely to be chased from memory without a fight. Ten years, unlike the many dozens of jaded faces that she's abandoned after a single meeting, cannot even begin to dim the memory of a Yukinoshita. Neither of them. She wonders whether the same could be said for a Hikigaya.

"You look like you've seen a ghost. Am I really that frightening?" she says, with a giggle.

Komachi shakes her head, summoning a customary cheerful smile from somewhere. "Not frightening. Just unexpected."

"Well, sorry if I took you by surprise, but I just had to come in and say hi. There I was thinking this was going to be another boring day, when I see a Hikigaya sitting in the window." Her eyes glint with something indefinable. "Say what you like about your family, but you've never been boring."

Komachi feels a wave of discomfort, but hides it well. Yukinoshita Haruno once had a habit of expressing extremely odd sentiments as if they were very regular, and it seems that, in the ten years since they last saw each other, little has changed. And, she notes, this table is by no means in the window.

"I could say the same about yours."

Haruno laughs. "Very true, Komachi-chan. Very true." She gestures at the empty seat in front of her. "May I sit down?"

No. Kindly leave now.

Instead, Komachi flashes her pearly white teeth. "Of course! I'm sure we have lots to catch up on."

Sat down, the qualities that elevate Yukinoshita Haruno above everyone else in the world are revealed almost impolitely. Komachi can only think of one phrase to describe her- an adolescent boy's wet dream. All full-blooded grins and laughter, teasingly sharp remarks, starkly visible chest and tightly accentuated curves, no matter where you looked. She was wearing smart work attire that was just normal enough to be civil and just fashionable enough to be close to breathtaking. All she needed now was a large shopping tag reading 'priceless' hanging around her neck.

"So, what are you doing back in Chiba?" Komachi asks cheerfully.

"Back in Chiba? What makes you think I left?"

"Yukinoshita-san! You're cute, pretty, intelligent and talented. Chiba's too small for a person like that."

"By that rule, you should've followed me to Tokyo."

"Oh stop it-"

"False modesty is unattractive in a woman, Komachi-chan. Anyone will tell you that."

You mean that one person in particular would tell me that.

"I'm only recently a woman," she jokes with little conviction. "The rules don't apply just yet."

"Yes... I suppose you only graduated from university a couple of years ago? You were still in middle school when we last met, so you must be, what, twenty five?"

"Twenty four." She half considers telling her it isn't attractive of a woman to guess at ages either.

"Don't worry- the years haven't ruined your looks one bit."

"Thank you. And likewise."

"Though... you do seem very different."

She raps her forehead with her knuckle cutely. "I'm sure that's not true."

"Oh no. Very very different. Maybe others have rubbed off on you."

"Nah... I suppose I just grew up a little."

Haruno looked her up and down, smiling. "In some ways, perhaps."

The jibe at her height hit a sour note; Komachi finds herself nodding at Haruno's chest. "And you grew up even more, I see."

The older woman laughs loudly. "There's the difference! A bit more... would you say cynical?"

Anyone will tell you that. Maybe others have rubbed off on you. Cynical. Haruno likes to leave her clues. There's no game in winning before you begin. She is here for a reason, and Komachi can already tell what it is.

She wants to leave.

Komachi takes out her iPhone and checks the time. "Ah... I'm really sorry to say it Yukinoshita-san, but I won't be able to stay very long. Do you mind if I head off in five or ten minutes?"

Haruno shakes her head, as if the mere thought of Komachi leaving brought her physical pain. "Didn't you mention that we had a lot to catch up on? Whatever you're late for can wait, surely."

She sighs dramatically. "I wish that were true, but that's my boyfriend for you. He gets so worried if I don't get back when I say I will."

"I'm sorry to say it, Komachi-chan, but you don't strike me as the compromising type."

"Believe me- in our relationship, its usually the other way round. But he's better than most men, so I try where I can."

"I'm sure he likes that."

Haruno's grin really is devilish, she thought, as the older woman continued. "Do you mind me asking his name?"

"Shuya. Chikashi Shuya."

"How long?"

"Two years. We met just after I graduated."

"Oh? He's older than you?"

"Yes. Twenty nine."

"Does he earn a lot?"

"Not as much as you do, I'm sure." She tilts her head. "You do work?"

"Yes. I'm an editor for a magazine."

"Which one-"

"Well, I hope that Chikashi Shuya is as happy as he should be."

Komachi would've smirked if it wasn't so grating. If Haruno decided that she wasn't getting her way, there was little anyone could do about it.

"Any reason that he wouldn't be?"

"None at all." Haruno leant back. "I haven't been quite so... I suppose you'd say successful."

"But you're so beautiful!" Komachi gushes dramatically. "It can't be your fault."

"Oh believe me, it usually was."

"Where any of them-"

"Cruel? Good-looking? They were all the same person, Komachi-chan. A carefully picked man with an expensive suit and yen in his wallet." The tips of her fingers drum on the table. "In my experience, interesting men aren't like that."

"How would you know if you if you've only been with the same pers-"

"An interesting man, Komachi-chan, is usually the opposite. An arrogant man is too predictable, and a kind man is unforgivably dull. You want someone in the middle. Arrogant enough to be unkind, but modest enough to know when they should be kind. Oh, and a little cynical too, like you." A pause. "Is Chukashi Shuya like that, Komachi-chan?"

They stare at each other. As Haruno had been speaking, Komachi's expression stayed warm, but without restraint it would've turned as cold the untouched food on her plate.

"I think that I should be going," she says carefully. "I don't want Shuya to-"

"Are you working at the moment too?"

"... Yeah. Nothing impressive I'm afraid, he he-"

"I'd still like to know. Just before you go."

"... I'm doing shifts in retail."

She laughs, this time even louder. "Only temporary, I expect?"

"Yes. It's more so I have something to do until I can get back to my real job."

"A schoolteacher, wasn't? And they gave you compassionate leave?"

"... Yes... Training to be..."

"What is it?"

"... How did you... Like I said, Yukinoshita-san, it's time that I moved on-"

She starts standing up. Her eyes were fixated on the now enormously welcoming doors to Saize, but now they look down at Haruno's slender fingers, digging into her hand. The sudden contact, holding her in place, catches the attention of several tables nearby them.

Their eyes meet. Haruno's eyes are full of an intensity and the indenfinable something that, earlier, had deeply unsettled her.

"I'm here for a reason, Komachi. If you leave now, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

"..."

Komachi prizes the hand of her wrist, and then her voice drops to a whisper that, had it not been for the fact she was in public, might've been a scream.

"Is it... is it about..."

Haruno nods. Her face is not sombre. Serious perhaps, but still glinting with a kind of sickening curiosity.

Hikigaya Komachi sits down.

"I will give you one chance to tell me what your... what your reason is. And," she adds, cutting off the interruption, "if you delay it or, or... or try to make a game out of this, I am going to leave."

Quiet falls between them. Haruno does not look satisfied; a child who has been told that their prank hurt its target's feelings. But she does not protest.

"... Did your brother ever tell you what happened ten years ago?"

Komachi's fingers drill into her kneecap.

"... I... I asked him, but he... I think he wanted to forget."

"That doesn't surprise me. He changed a lot of things, your brother. Ruined them, really. You see, I suspected Komachi. I'm sure all of us suspected we knew something or other about what happened that night. But I never suspected him. I... I underestimated him. I never thought that he would go that far. And what could we do about it when he got the truth that he wanted? What did he get from it? Nothing."

She licks her lips. "Do you remember the day that I came over to your house? You were listening at the door when I confronted him, weren't you?"

"... Yes."

"I don't remember everything that we said... I remember the anger. I don't think I'd ever been so angry at anyone in my life. I could see what was going to happen; he was going to ruin things forever, and I knew even before I came that he was too stubborn to be stopped. Too obsessed with his riddles. But I remember one thing that he said to me in particular. Do you know what that was, Komachi-chan?"

"Of course I don't."

"He told me that if a riddle was good enough, the answer was always worth finding." She hesitates, and Komachi thinks that the Yukinoshita sister almost giggled. "He really was an interesting man, Komac-"

"Stop it. Sto- stop teasing me. I'm not your sister, Yukinoshita-san."

"No. Your Hachiman's sister. That's why your the only one who might be able to make some sense of things."

"... What?"

She smiles. "There's another riddle, Komachi-chan. His riddle, this time."

"..."

Yukinoshita Haruno reaches into her handbag and removes a plain, pale white envelope. It's ruffled and has clearly been opened previously, only to be carefully sealed once more. Not carefully enough. She places it with the back facing upwards on the table.

"Take it. It's for you. Maybe you'll be able to tell what the fuck he was talking about."

Haruno barely had time to finish her sentence. Wiping a line of sweat that had begun to form over her brow, smudgeing her well-applied makeup, Komachi lifts herself up and walks away. Away from Yukinoshita Haruno and her disgusting, repugnant curiosity. Away from the disgusting, repugnant Saize food. Why? Why the fuck did you choose to come back here?

You know why.

Only when she's pushed her way through the Saize doors, leaving Haruno to foot the bill, does she feel oxygen rush back into her lungs. Only then does she realise that the hand holding the letter is trembling like the arms of a tree in a storm. She takes the hand with her other, steadies it, pulling it back under control.

Silently, she turns the letter over until the front is facing up, and chokes when she sees the address.

To be given to HIKIGAYA KOMACHI on the event of my death,

Signed, HIKIGAYA HACHIMAN