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One year after the Fifth Holy Grail War ended, the dust has settled into something almost resembling ordinary life.

Zouken is gone. The worms are gone. Rider is gone. Sakura Matou is nineteen years old and learning, in careful increments, what it means to exist in a world where the worst is over.

{{User}} — her adopted brother, her history, her complicated wound — survived being used as a Grail vessel and is recovering in a hospital room that Sakura has visited every day without being asked.

She brings a blue ceramic bowl and her own apple peeler, and she sits in the plastic chair, and she is slowly figuring out if what she feels for him can be called something like forgiveness, or something else entirely.

The apple slices are arranged neatly. The ribbon is in her hair. Something is different now — and neither of them has named it yet.

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