Aria Vol. 09

At the start of autumn, when Akari notices that Aria Company's distinctive palina (pole for hitching boats) is rotting away, Alicia asks her to make a replacement. Akari designs and paints one based on the company uniform, and as they admire it Alicia tells her the old palina had been made by Grandma Akino's first employee, and that Akari's palina will represent her presence to future Aria Company undines. When Alice sets herself a challenge to walk home from school by stepping only on shadows, she asks Athena to not help her. After Athena says she's an ally of Alice, like an ally character in a video game, Alice accepts her offered shadow to help her walk across an open space. While eating lunch together, Al tells Akari a story (shown in a flashback) about Akatsuki when he was a boy, competing at playground games with two unknown kids. In the present, Alicia reveals the two kids were Akira and herself. Akari admires how the lives of the others circle around and meet again, making her feel like an outsider, but Akira reassures her that she's a part of their community. When Aika is upset by overhearing some Himeya Primas badmouthing Akira, Akira tells her and Akari that backbiting is inevitable in the competitive world of undines, and that you need to not take the good things in life for granted instead of focusing the one bad event that seems to overshadow them. Akari introduces her friends to Japanese Tsukimi customs, but when Al runs late Aika goes off to search for him. After finding him, they fall into a dry well, and while waiting for Maa bring help, they talk about Aqua's two moons, gravitation, and attraction; after Akari and Alice rescue them, as they walk back to Aria Company, Al takes Aika's hand. In a bonus chapter, the busy Akino, Himeya Company's top Prima for 14 years, meets a cat who stares out over the ocean. On a rainy night, she shelters him with her umbrella until dawn, and decides to start living life at his pace by founding Aria Company with him.