Editing Shizune's route

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{{To-do|checking for any grammatical errors, and adding information to make this page more detailed and user-friendly}}
{{Realpage|Shizune Hakamichi|[[Shizune|here]]}}

{{Infobox act
| name=Shizune's Route
| image=1Learning-to-Read.png
| prev=Act 1
| prevdesc=Life Expectancy
| scenecount=34
| choicecount=1
}}
==Act 1 ~ Life Expectancy==
[[Hisao]] meets [[Shizune]] and [[Misha]] on his first day at [[Yamaku Academy|Yamaku]], being paired together to work in a group by [[Akio Mutou|Mutuo]], their homeroom and science teacher. At first, Hisao confuses Misha with the student council president, but is quick to realize that Misha is only the interpreter for Shizune, as she is deaf. Hisao also notices Shizune's burning desire to finish their schoolwork first, and Misha's overwhelming enthusiasm, letting Hisao get a glimpse of what the girls' personalities may be like. Afterwards, Hisao decides to have lunch with the girls, where they ask if he has any questions about the school over lunch. Later, the girls help Hisao find the nurse's office, and plan on seeing him the following day. Upon learning that Hisao has no interest in joining any particular groups or extra-curricular activities at lunch, Shizune and Misha (despite Hisao's protesting) decide to ask Hisao through a series of suggested bets and games, to join the student council. They finally decide on playing ''Risk, "''with no strings attached." After a lengthy and wild game, Misha and Shizune are impressed with his daring play style, and praise him for taking his chances.  

The following day, Shizune and Misha drag Hisao off to the [[Shanghai]] cafe for an extended lunch, with Hisao having to endure more of the pairs' relentless teasing and recruitment attempts. Later in the week Hisao accidentally worms his way into an argument between Shizune and [[Lilly]] over the amount of work Lilly has done for the festival. Due a poor choice of words on Hisao's part, Shizune and Misha successfully coerce him into helping them build several of the festival stalls. After a while, (much to the girls' delight) Hisao reluctantly, gives in and joins the student council.  

If Hisao races with Emi: Hisao suffers a heart flutter on the track and is taken to the Nurse's office. When he returns to class Misha pesters him to find out where he was. Although Hisao does not reveal the incident on the track the duo coerce him to have lunch with them... 

If Hisao takes it easy when running with Emi: The day before the festival, Misha and Shizune barge into Hisao's room, where Hisao feels extremely uncomfortable and embarrassed about his medications being strewn all over his dresser. However, Hisao manages to avoid telling them about his [[Arrhythmia]], and Misha comforts Hisao by telling him that she and Shizune will wait for Hisao to feel as if they are good enough friends that he is comfortable enough to share what they're for. And, Hisao appreciates the fact that the two are good natured people.The next day Shizune and Misha takes Hisao to Shanghai "tea shop" again and makes him do more student council work later that day.  

On the day of the festival, Hisao spends the day with the two girls, where they eat fried food in order to celebrate Hisao's new membership into the three-man student council. Later, the trio visit many stalls, including a stall that Hisao remembers building. It just so happens to be the exact stall Misha and Shizune wanted him to visit, a milk jug toss stall. Hisao then wins a stuffed cat doll, struggling to decide who to give it to he hands it to Shizune, and attempts to win a second one for Misha. In the process Hisao's day is abruptly spoiled by a reminder of his weak heart, and his fragile mortality when he suffers a brief heart flutter, a fact he keeps from the two girls. 

Later, on the school rooftop, the trio eat more fried food for dinner and stared at the stars when Misha falls asleep. Continuing to grope the stuffed cat Hisao won for her, Shizune tries to communicate by using gestures, to no avail. The two have a special moment, despite the fact that the two cannot communicate properly. Shizune shows Hisao the stars and the view of the town and the festival in an attempt to raise his low spirits. As they watch the fireworks together Hisao thinks that he might be growing attracted to Shizune, and says this to her, taking advantage of her deafness.

==Act 2 ~ Learning to Read==
[[File:1Learning-to-Read.png|thumb|Act 2: Learning to Read]]
Hisao wakes up the day after the festival, lingering on the night he had with Shizune and Misha. He realizes that he can't be thinking about how the festival went when he has exams to focus on, as they happen immediately after the festival, which he finds unfair. Deciding to study before class, Hisao goes outside to do so in the nice weather, still thinking about how things went at the festival being accompanied by Misha and Shizune. His thoughts are interrupted by Shizune approaching him from behind. Hisao attempts to greet her forgetting that she can't hear him, and greets her after realizing with a wave. He tries asking where Misha is, thinking that it's less awkward actually trying to hold a conversation with her by talking, even if she can't hear him.

In an attempt to communicate, Shizune slowly makes gestures in response. He sits there not knowing how to communicate back when Shizune realizes his struggle, taking the initiative by pulling out a pad of paper and pen. They then further their conversation this way, beginning with small talk, until Hisao asks about the stalls that they went to. Shizune tells him that they went to the stalls that he had built so he could feel a sense of accomplishment and feel proud about the work he had done. He thinks that it was a trick, but she explains that they had done so because he had looked depressed. She leaves soon after wishing him luck on his exams. Hisao thinks about the oddness of having a conversation on paper between two people that are in each other's presence and ponders learning sign language. Afterwards, Hisao decides to head back to the dorm to try and find Misha, and tells her that he wants to learn sign language. She asks why, and he replies that it would make conversing with Shizune much easier, although requests that she keep it secret. After a sign language lesson Hisao runs into Misha who remarks that she wants to be a sign language teacher, which is why she is at Yamaku. She offers to tutor Hisao since he is behind the rest of the class, and he accepts somewhat reluctantly after a false start.

Hisao is later woken by Kenji who asks Hisao to retrieve his package from the post office, due to a lack of trust in the student counsel for delivering his mail to him. When he retrieves the package he finds himself stopping at the Shanghai cafe for lunch, wondering how it's still in business given that it is empty once again. Outside he meets Shizune, but the two are unable to communicate, which causes Yuuko some upset in trying to determine their order. She also remarks on the strange absence of menus and contradictory nature of a western style tea-house called the Shanghai. Hisao talks aloud to Shizune who cannot understand him and she in turn signs to him although his basic grasp of the language is wholly insufficient to understand. He notices that while he is talking to fill the silence, Shizune appears simply unwilling to change her normal behaviour for anyone. 

Shizune turns mischievous and tries to open the package, Hisao scolds her, but Shizune writes on the box saying "lets play a game", wherin the rules are that they both hold the package and the one that makes the package fall carries the package all the way to the dorm. Although suspicious Hisao accepts, reasoning that 50/50 odds are the best so far for games with Shizune. On the way, Hisao accidentally touches the fingers of Shizune under the package and makes her drop it, so she brings it to the dorm, unwilling to accept Hisao's attempt to carry the package for her. He realizes that the game was an exercise in teamwork and not a competition, and that with her hands carrying the box Shizune is effectively 'silenced'. On the way back to Yamaku Shizune shivers in the cold air and Hisao offers her his jacket. She startles when his fingertips brush against her shoulders, but clumsily offers her thanks. 

Sometime later Hisao is studying a sign langauge textbook in the cafeteria when Misha and Shizune recruit him, ostensibly for more student council work which he has neglected lately in order to study. When he reaches the office however the three play games, enjoying a respite before the stress of arranging the school's Tanabata festival.<!--(Mind that there will be more information come the next week)-->

==Act 3 ~ Sleight of Hand==
[[File:2Sleight-of-Hand.png|thumb|left|Act 3: Sleight of Hand]]

The next morning, if Hisao rejects Misha's advances, he realizes that Misha's situation hit him harder than he thought. Feeling depressed, he skips class and hides in the library. Shizune finds him, and confronts him, remarking that she hasn't seen Misha all day either. The conversation eventually leads to the fact she's noticed Hisao's distress, and she asks him if he's all right. When he asks the same question of Shizune, she doesn't give a complete answer, and leaves. Hisao heads up to the roof, where he finds Misha sitting alone, depressed. It is now that she tells Hisao the truth: she has feelings for Shizune as well. She admits that she didn't initially want to come to Yamaku High, and she got dragged into the Student Council by Shizune just like Hisao. Shizune pushed her so hard to succeed, motivating her to get better at sign language and work hard in Student Council, that she eventually fell in love with her. She confessed her feelings to Shizune, and got rejected, and what bothers her most is that Shizune treated this event like she does with everything else: wiping it away, and moving on, as though it never happened. Misha's bitterness festered for 2 years, before Hisao showed up and began immediately growing just as close to Shizune as Misha had always wanted to be. All this time, Misha has been drifting away, eaten alive by her jealousy, angry at herself for being a hateful person. She is now having suicidal thoughts, and leans against the fence on the roof, as if she hopes to fall through it. Hisao pulls her back, and opens up, explaining his time at the hospital, and noting that Shizune doesn't let people in close unless it's on her terms. He knows she probably only got so close to Hisao because he rejected her so adamantly. She is always trying to pull people in close, and his determination not to let her in drove her to push harder. Hisao tells Misha that he admires her for having struggled the same way he had, all for the same reasons, and he is sad and angry that she is giving up. Shizune finds Hisao and Misha alone, and, sensing the tension in the air, proposes that they do something fun together in the Student Council room. Hisao remarks that it sounds like another trap to do more work, and Misha laughs. The tension subsides, and they leave together hand-in-hand.
==Act 4 ~ To My Other Self==
[[File:3To-My-Other-Self.png|thumb|Act 4: To My Other Self]]

The next day, Hisao thinks back to something Misha said, about not wanting to miss people and grow apart anymore, and he realizes that they will be graduating soon. Misha's fear of losing Shizune for good might actually be justified, and Shizune has been treating her feelings with the same coldness that she afford to everything, which is making things worse. Hisao also starts to worry about losing everyone else he's met in his short time there, and he talks to Yuuko for advice. Once done, he finds Shizune alone. She noticed what he and Misha were talking about yesterday, and once she got Misha alone and made her talk, she feels as though everything is all her fault - she tries too hard to bring people close, then pushes them away. She realizes Misha is right, that the Student Council being empty is also her fault, and that she has shut Misha out just like everybody else. She is at a loss for what to do, and thinks herself a bad friend for being the way she is. She vows to fix things, starting with Misha, starting the next morning, and Hisao offers to help.

Shizune wakes Hisao the next morning and proposes a picnic, hoping they could eat together as a group again, but when Misha refuses to cooperate, Shizune becomes increasingly aggressive, and Misha leaves. Not wanting their food to go to waste, Shizune and Hisao go on a date with it, and the conversation leads to Shizune discussing her failure as a friend. Hisao reminisces about how Shizune tried to hard to pull him out of his rut, and succeeded, but wonders if Misha is rejecting that same help because she knows she will never have Shizune's hand. He ends up saying nothing, and Shizune falls asleep, having stayed up all night working on her picnic. The next day, Shizune's father shows up at her school to bring her a new phone and take her on a family trip, but she refuses, still worried about Misha. It is now that Hisao realizes the crucial flaw in Shizune's approach: she sees Misha's depression as a personal failure to correct, not a difficult time in Misha's life. She wants and expects things to go back to normal so quickly that she isn't taking the time to relate, and it is driving them further apart.

The next day, Shizune and Hisao split up to look for her, and once he finds her, he takes her to lunch with him at the Shanghai to talk. There, Misha admits that even though she didn't want to hate or upset Shizune, she has done both. Hisao tells her that even though Shizune is terrible at discussing her feelings, she still needs Misha, but Misha is afraid of making things worse, so she chooses to do nothing. Hisao berates Misha for giving up so easily, and he takes Misha on a tour of the school, discussing how he felt when he first got there, how Misha and Shizune turned his life around, and how he now regrets leaving all his old friends behind on such a sour note, encouraging Misha not to repeat his mistake. 

=== Bad Ending ===
The next day, Misha is back in class but appears to have lost the spark of her old self that Hisao had enkindled with his impassioned tour of the school. Shizune is absent from class, and when lunch comes around he decides to eat by himself. While he looks for an empty classroom, he stumbles upon Lilly who invites him to join her. They talk about Shizune and the Student Council, and Lilly confirms that Shizune scared off most of the old members with the force of her ambition. She hated having Shizune constantly talking about outdoing the last Student Council by creating bigger and more events, but Hisao argues that it made so many people happy which is what Lilly joined the student council for in the first place. Hisao reflects that his work with the student council, while time-consuming, has kept his mind off self-pity.

When he seeks out Shizune the next day, Hisao finds her sitting restlessly in the Student Council room by herself. He offers to help her with the remaining work but she brushes him off, saying that she also dismissed Misha and can handle it herself. He questions her about it but she refuses to answer him directly, so he seeks out Misha for an explanation. When he finally finds her, Misha has no idea why Shizune is acting so coldly either. Misha wonders if it's her fault, and Hisao thinks it's more likely something he did. They go to bed without discovering an explanation for Shizune's distancing. Hisao wakes a few hours later and goes for a walk where he bumps into Kenji. As they're talking, Hisao reminisces on how he lied to Shizune about everything being fine after he slept with Misha, and how Shizune might have read their lips while they were talking about it afterwards.

The next morning Shizune comes to Hisao's room and the two of them skip classes to wander around the empty school. Shizune continues to close herself off to him, and finally tells him that she's screwed up. She explains her constant drive for ambition, fighting to be the best at everything in life, and then when she's won discarding the victory as meaningless. She feels guilty for dragging Misha and Hisao into the orbit of her life because they were interesting, and jerking them around for selfish reasons. She questions whether all her relationships are like this: competitions to win and games to play. She wants to stop hurting people and be away from them, and so she breaks it off with Hisao. He calls her selfish, but she accepts it. She raises the day on the roof with Misha after he had slept with her, and how he told her everything was fine. Although it's unclear how much of the conversation she understood, she knows something was wrong and tells him she can never trust him again. He leaves her, heartbroken.

=== Good Ending ===
The next day, Hisao and Shizune eat together on the roof, where Shizune reveals that thanks to Hisao, Misha has cheered up. She credits Hisao for making it possible, and blames herself for her flawed way of thinking, but she is glad that everything worked out, and vows to improve herself.

After delivering orientation speeches to the new Student Council, the group hangs out, reflecting on how much they will miss being in the Student Council once they're gone, and Misha leaves, opting not to have a celebratory dinner with the others for fear of saying any early goodbyes. Shizune and Hisao have passionate sex in the student council room. Afterwards, Hisao and Shizune sneak to the other end of the school to spy on Misha. On discovering Misha was taking supplemental lessons with Mutou, Shizune realizes that Misha has had more ambition than she had previously credited her. She had always wanted to connect with people, but the only way she could speak was through Misha, and she found it impossible to talk naturally with others. She started to see Misha as just an extension of herself that could speak, and failed to realize that Misha was the friendship she had wanted all along. She feels guilty that Misha sees her as an inspiration, as she has no goals for the future, and was only Student Council president because the job was forced upon her. She loved having more responsibility, but she realizes that being a leader is more than just about giving orders, it's about setting a goal, something she failed to do. Having no direction, she tried to do everything at once, and it harmed everyone she touched.

On the last day of school, Hisao starts saying his goodbyes to the people he will miss. He stumbles into the new Student Council as he searches for Shizune and Misha, and they thank him profusely for his hard work. He finds it curious that they thank him as all he did was follow in Shizune's wake, but he is gratified to see how many students have joined and how ambitious they are. When Hisao finds Misha, they talk about whether Shizune will ever be happy: whether she discards her victories like an artist who throws away their paintings because they never leave the mark they wanted. Hisao argues that, while winning is important to Shizune, her legacy is in making other people happy, and that celebrating the joy of others is the greatest happiness of all. Consequently, Shizune is planning on being a millionaire, and later a philanthropist. Misha is impressed by how well he knows Shizune and confides that she always wanted to be with Shizune and walked in her shadow. But when she realised Shizune's ambition wouldn't wait for her, she decided to go her own path and declares that she is moving overseas, perhaps to teach sign language.

The two of them go to find Shizune and they discover her at the front gate. Hisao hangs back to let the two of them talk privately, and he reminisces over what he's going to do after graduation. He suddenly realises how much he wants to teach at Yamaku, so that if he ever met someone who was filled with bitterness like he was, he would be able to help them like Shizune had helped him; to bring inspiration to a person that needs hope without pity. Yuuko takes their first group photo, and at Shizune's insistence they pose dramatically like musketeers to capture the joyful moment of celebration. Hisao resolves that he too will live to make others happy, and to feel the joy this brings during his own shortened lifespan. Inspired by this chain of thought, Hisao finally tells Shizune that he loves her. She accepts it happily and the three of them agree to meet again before the next school reunion.
[[Category:Plot]]