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Repeat by Ear - S15 Submission for hdkv
Saki, Akira and Miki search for Christmas gifts.

Repeat by Ear

The student council room had a way of becoming crowded near the winter break.

Every class and club needed something or other, which meant frequent trips by class and club representatives to the student council room. The method by which representatives were picked was not universal, but it was safe to say that most were not volunteers.

It hadn’t always been this way; last year, begging the student council for money or reservations of school equipment had been almost cordial. Even earlier this year, things had gone more smoothly than this. Something had changed since then.

“Unacceptable!” Shiina shouted, standing beside Shizune, who was signing furiously. “Absolutely unacceptable! We can’t be changing school policy for something as minor as this! There are rules that we have to follow, and it’s important that the members of the student council follow the rules more than anyone, since we set the example for the rest of the school.”

“We don’t have to change our policy, Shizune,” Lilly replied, her voice stern, but tinged with exasperation. “However, bending the rules is necessary, occasionally, if it results in good outcomes for everybody. Moving the scheduling around won’t change anything.”

Saki could guess what had changed. The trio of Lilly, Shizune, and Shiina had been having more and more fights like this. Nearly every time Saki came to the student council room, they were arguing. If they weren’t, it was because one of them was absent.

Saki was not a volunteer. Neither, she guessed, was the boy across from her, who represented the track and field club. She could never remember his name, even though he’d probably told her a million times. Really, it was very strange that she couldn't remember his name, because he was built like no other boy she’d ever seen, and if his nose was a little flatter he would almost be handsome. Saki found herself wishing he would fall on his face during one of his track meets.

The school only had one sound system, and while the track and field club usually had it booked for weekends, the music club wanted to get some extra practice in for their end-of-year performance, ideally outside.

If the student council wasn’t involved, there wouldn’t be any issue. The track and field club was perfectly willing to forgo using the sound system for a weekend, and the boy had assured Saki repeatedly that it was no big deal. The problem, then? Apparently it was against student council policy to change reservations for school equipment if the change was requested within three days of the booking. Otherwise, Shizune signed, everyone would make their reservations at the last minute.

But the track and field club didn’t want the sound system, and they didn’t care. At this rate, it was looking like the two of them would just have to arrange something out-of-court. It’s not like the student council would come over and check who was actually using it on the day of.

Saki and the boy from the track and field club stared at each other, tiredly, because they really were very tired. Saki was finding it hard not to lean excessively on her cane.

“This is so like you, Lilly! To want to give everyone who asks nicely special treatment!” Shiina said, crossing her arms momentarily for emphasis, before returning to signing. Saki wondered what the purpose of that gesture was, if Lilly wasn’t able to see it.

“And how, might I ask, is this ‘so like me?’”

“Your little ‘friend’ in our class is a delinquent! She skips half her classes. And what do you do? Well, we’ve never seen you reprimand her.”

Shiina, Saki noticed, was not easily portraying the confidence and sharpness in Shizune’s signing. In fact, she was starting to shrink. These fights were entirely between Lilly and Shizune, and Shiina was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with being stuck in the middle. When she felt nervous, Shiina had a habit of twirling her hair around a finger, like she could curl it with nothing but willpower. Saki wondered if curls would look good on Shiina. The plain, straight, brown hair Shiina had was getting a little boring.

Speaking of being stuck in the middle.

“Maybe we can come back another time…” Saki mumbled.

“Hanako,” Lilly began, “is far from a delinquent, and I don’t think the pot should be calling the kettle black. I’ve seen the two of you skip classes plenty, and I highly doubt you had proper excuses, unlike Hanako.”

“And what, exactly, is a ‘proper excuse?’ This is exactly what we mean by special treatment! A member of the student council should be impartial.”

“This isn’t ‘special treatment,’ this is just common sense.”

Shizune recoiled in disgust, and Shiina, a moment later, copied her.

“Everything you come up with is always ‘common sense.’ I don’t see why you think that whatever happens in that mind of yours is so ‘common.’ Maybe pedestrian would be a better word for it.”

Lilly sighed. “I understand we have policies that are important to follow, but the point of the student council isn’t to prevent clubs from having fun, it’s to facilitate their normal activities.”

“And how do you suppose we do that, if we have to make up new rules every time someone comes along, clearly violating our policies? If we keep this up, we’ll only make more work for ourselves, and guess who will end up doing it?”

“We don’t have to make new policies! This can be a one-time excep-”

“Us!” Shiina shouted. “We’re going to end up doing it! Because it’s never you, is it?”

Saki turned around and made eye contact with the boy from the track and field club, shaking her head. She sighed and reached for the door.

“What’s all the commotion ‘bout?”

Behind the door was a girl in a pinstripe suit, her hands in her pockets and an expression on her face that could be differentially interpreted as either amused or curious. Saki recognized her as Lilly’s older sister, Akira, which was obvious because they were both blonde. She could remember Akira’s name because it was the same as that movie with the motorcycles and lots of explosions. Sometimes Akira came to visit Lilly at the school, because visitors were allowed on the grounds after hours so long as they were relatives of the students. Everyone liked to gossip about how cool Lilly’s older sister was. They did that whenever they weren’t talking about how cool Lilly was.

“Oh. Hi,” is all Saki said. She opened the door and stepped aside to let her in.

“Akira?”

“Hi, sis. What’re you guys up to?”

“We’re trying to reschedule the usage of the sound system, but we’re running into some difficulties.”

“Ah, very official student council-ey business, then. Got it. Whadda you guys say about going to get a drink at the Shanghai?”

“Akira…”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Saki said.

“Unfortunately, I can’t come, I’ve got a test on Monday I have to study for, and this has kept me long enough,” said the boy from the track and field club.

“Oh well. And the rest of you?”

Akira turned to Shiina and Shizune. The two of them seemed to be involved in a heated discussion, which, Saki guessed, was probably about whether the Shanghai’s pastries were delicious enough to warrant interrupting their argument with Lilly. After a few frustrated seconds, Shiina resigned herself to her fate and gave up. “And we can’t come either, we really need to get this finished. Sorry~.”

Akira shook her head. “You’re all lame. Lilly?”

“Sorry, Akira, but this issue won’t resolve itself.”

“Extra lame,” Akira pouted. “How is it living in the dorms, by the way? Everything going according to plan? Getting your nightly escapades in?”

Lilly reddened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “Living in the dorms is going well, thank you very much.”

“Welp, I know you’re a busy, busy girl, so I won’t disturb you. I’ll be back later and we can talk some more.” She turned to Saki. “Looks like it’s just you and me, then, huh?”

Saki nodded. Akira turned around and stepped out of the student council room, and Saki and the boy from the track and field club followed her.

Outside, Saki and Akira said goodbye to the boy from the track and field club, who bowed and started walking towards the dorms. Walking, Saki noted, not running. It was good to see that that particular quirk was only the problem of one individual in the track and field club. Well, Saki thought, I guess there is more to track and field than running, so that makes sense. But it would be nice if he did run, a little bit, because then he might trip and fix his nose.

Akira saw Saki staring at the boy’s behind, and mistook it for Saki staring at the boy’s behind, and she grinned, elbowing her lightly.

“He is built like a refrigerator, ain’t he?”

“Nutella jar,” Saki corrected.

“Huh?”

“He’s built like a Nutella jar, not a refrigerator, but I see what you mean. I’m glad you’ve kept your penchant for teasing everyone about their relationships, but my intentions are pure.”

Akira laughed. “Really? What are your intentions, then?”

“I just want to fix his face.”

Akira tilted her head in confusion. After a few moments of silence, wondering if she should blush or not, she jolted herself into motion, following behind Saki, who was slowly hobbling down the hallway in the direction of the door, where Akira’s car was presumably waiting by the front gate. Akira’s car was in the rear parking lot, so she had to catch up to Saki and point her the other way.

==========

Saki was strange, but she wasn’t actually that strange. If you got her talking about a sensible topic she was a perfectly reasonable conversational partner, but her mind tended to wander to strange places when she got distracted. She was just a bit of a goofball; at least, that was Akira’s interpretation of her. She’d only talked to Saki a handful of times, but they were all pleasant experiences. In truth she hadn’t really wanted to talk to Saki, and had just wanted to try and find some way to pry information out of Lilly herself, but if she really wanted to make it a surprise, Saki was a good compromise. Saki would probably have better advice on what to get Shizune, anyway, since Lilly seemed to be feuding with her at the moment.

“So that’s the situation. I think I can improvise something for Lilly, but last year I ‘improvised’ by completely forgetting, and ended up getting her a gift card at the last minute. I’ve never been all that great at this whole Christmas gift thing.”

They drove out of the front gate, and Saki leaned forward from where she sat in the passenger seat, resting her head on her hands.

“I’ve got a couple ideas,” Saki said, “but I don’t see why you’re so uptight about getting them such amazing gifts.”

“I dunno, but every time I see those two, they’re always fighting. It didn’t used to be that way. I just wish we’d get some real holiday spirit ‘round here, you know? Maybe if I got something for them that reminded them of their past relationship, they wouldn’t- hold on. Look at this fucking moron. He’s parked in the middle of the road. Gramps can’t fuckin’ drive. This town is full of old geezers. C’mon, move! Christ on a bike. Okay, there, he’s moving his ass. Where was I?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, yeah, shops. You said you had some ideas for gifts? How about the two of us go out shopping this weekend, once school’s out, and you can show me some good gift shops. No clothes. I hate shopping for clothes.”

“No promises. Your treat?”

“Within reason, sure. You’re doing me a favor anyway.”

“Sounds like a date,” Saki nodded, smiling. “Grab Miki.”

“Miki?”

“That girl. Right side of the road. Tracksuit. She’s in Shizune’s class.”

“Ah- ah shit, you gotta give me more warning.”

Akira slowed down, jerking the car across the road and pulling into a lane on the opposite side. They were just rounding a corner about halfway down the hill Yamaku was situated on, and she narrowly avoided barreling into a parked car’s front end. She led the car to a slow roll down the road, matching the pace at which Miki was jogging. She rolled down her window.

“Hey! Hi!” Akira shouted awkwardly, not used to picking up high school girls. “You wanna go get something to eat?”

Miki kept running. Akira realized that sounded strange, and she shook her head and tried again.

“Me and your friend are going out, you want a lift?”

Somehow, that sounded even weirder. Saki suddenly unbuckled and climbed over Akira, sticking her head out the window.

“We’ve got candy in the back of the van!” she shouted.

Miki saw Saki’s face and screeched to a halt on her heels. She laughed. “You aren’t driving a van!”

Akira thought she would have a lot of trouble stopping the car with Saki all but taking up the entire windshield. She managed it surprisingly deftly, however.

“A lost puppy, then. Can you help us find our lost puppy?”

“You’re gonna get me put on a list,” Akira commented, into the side of Saki’s torso.

“What’s up?” Miki asked. “Emergency Shanghai?”

“Emergency Shanghai,” Saki agreed. “Akira’s treat.”

Akira frowned, though no-one could see it. “I was talking about when we go shopping.”

“Akira’s treat?” Miki said. “Sign me the fuck up.”

“Who are you, anyway?” Miki asked, once they were settled in the Shanghai, because she didn’t really know who Akira was. She stayed silent and awaited an answer while stuffing her face with chocolate croissant.

“She’s Lilly’s older sister,” Saki answered.

“I’m Lilly’s older sister. Why’d you get in the car with me if you have no idea who I am? I guess this is a pretty small neighborhood, but really, as a high school girl, you should be more wary about this kind of thing.”

“Who’s Lilly?”

“Oh,” Saki exclaimed, pouting. “The tall blonde girl. I thought you would know.”

Miki chewed around her chocolate croissant, then swallowed. “I’m not much of a gossip hound,” she said, and Saki wondered what kind of gossip would be required to notice a tall blonde girl. “I’m usually busy with track. The captain’s been on my case for skipping practice.”

Akira grinned and gave Saki some side-eye, but Saki didn’t seem to notice. Akira coughed. “Anyway, do you know anything about Shizune? Like, what would be a good Christmas gift for her, perhaps? Lilly and Shizune have been fighting a bit, and I want them to make up, but I’m not all that great at mediating. Saki was going to help me come up with some gift ideas, and then we were going to go shopping next week.”

“Who’s Shizune?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“I am,” Miki said, and she burst out laughing.

Once Miki had calmed down, which took a long time, Akira set to explaining her shopping plans for that weekend. The three of them eventually agreed on Saturday, which was tomorrow, since both Miki and Saki had club business on Sunday. This drew a lot of smiling confusion from Akira, who didn’t understand why they were both perfectly okay with skipping Saturday classes, but not Sunday club meetings, to which Saki and Miki only shrugged.

It was only a week away from the winter break, and Akira still needed to help Lilly pack up her stuff so she could move back to their apartment for the holidays. Lilly had only started living in the dorms a few months before, much to Akira’s chagrin, as Lilly’s absence would deprive her of her free bento-box making machine. They eventually agreed to the stipulation that Lilly would move back in whenever she got off school, for breaks and the summer.

“You still aren’t living with your boyfriend?” Saki asked. “Haven’t you two been together for over a year?”

“No, not a year yet,” Akira replied. “And it wouldn’t make much sense for either of us to move in with the other. Our jobs’re on different sides of town.”

“You’re always thinking about your job. I think you ought to chase love occasionally. There really isn’t anything bad about being selfish.”

“You mean there isn’t anything bad about being selfish once in a while.”

“What? No.”

Akira raised an eyebrow. “If I said those words to Asahi, he’d spontaneously combust.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s all that complicated,” Saki said, stirring her tea absentmindedly. “If I was dating your boyfriend, living with him would be a no-brainer. He’s a hot piece of ass.”

“First of all, he’s eight years older than you, so ew.”

“No-brainer,” Saki repeated. “Don’t you think, Miki?”

Miki was on her second chocolate croissant, because Akira had been too slow and had gotten hers snatched.

“Huh?” Miki said. When she saw Saki nodding her head, she copied the gesture. “Yeah, sure.”

“Two on one,” Saki smiled, and Akira rolled her eyes.

“Back to the topic at hand; looks like we’ve worked out when and where we’re going, but we still need to figure out what we’re getting. Are you guys planning to buy any gifts?”

“Sure, I have some ideas,” Saki said.

“Who for?”

“Not telling.”

“Alright, alright. Miki?”

Miki paused her chewing momentarily. Only Saki caught it, and already Saki knew exactly what it meant.

“Yeah,” is all Miki said.

“Who for?”

“Not telling.”

Akira sighed. “I don’t know why I picked you guys, of all people. No-one’s any fun today. I bet Shizune and Lilly are still in the club room right now, having lots of fun yelling at each other. I can practically hear them; Lilly’s probably throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation and shouting something like ‘I don’t know why you’re making this such a big issue!’”

Miki laughed. “And Shizune’s probably pointing at her furiously,” she chimed in, “as if it’ll make Shiina louder, and signing something like ‘this is only an issue because you’re a fucking mimsy-arsed bitch!’”

Saki giggled. “And Shiina is probably standing beside her,” she added, “absolutely flabbergasted as to how on earth to translate that without getting herself smacked upside the head.”

“I don’t know why you’re making this such a big issue!” Lilly shouted, in the club room, throwing her hands up in the air in exasperation.

“This is only an issue because you’re a fucking mimsy-arsed bitch!” Shizune signed, pointing at Lilly furiously, as if it would make Shiina louder.

“What does ‘mimsy-arsed’ mean?” Shiina asked innocently, standing beside Shizune, entirely unaware of the rapidly increasing probability of being smacked upside the head.

So Saki was a little wrong about that last one, though really it wasn't her fault. It was only the fault of her personality, whose fault could only be attributed to her parents, whose fault could only be attributed to their parents, and so on and so forth in a cosmological game of hot potato, chicken and the egg. Who is to blame when there’s no-one to blame? Someone has to be at fault.

Though, of course, neither Saki nor anyone else at the table had any way of knowing that Saki was a little wrong for the same reason that she frequently said things that other people didn't really understand, despite finding them hilarious and not knowing how everyone could be missing all of her jokes. Her problem was a very simple one, but it had yet to be distinctly identified by a single human being, including herself; Saki was completely incapable of understanding how anyone could have a thought process different from her own. She lived entirely in her own head, but her head, she thought, was such a wonderful place that she had never felt the need to leave.

Living in Saki’s head was almost as entertaining as living in Miki’s head, which, Saki thought, must have been positively glamorous. Except Miki didn't really live in Miki’s head. Not entirely. A little bit of her must have lived inside Miki’s hand, which she had lost more than four years ago in an unfortunate accident that really wasn’t much of an accident.

Miki shook her head furiously, looking down at her empty plate and finding her croissant mysteriously replaced. It was like she had never eaten the previous two, and Miki could hardly complain. Saki was the culprit; she had swapped their plates while Miki wasn’t looking; she was timing Miki using the clock on the far wall and wanted to see how quickly she could scarf down three of them.

“See? We’re plenty of fun!” Miki protested. “And I know exactly what to get Shizune.”

“Well, lemme hear it.”

“A watch. You know, because she’s so anal about us being punctual all the time, and she likes being organized.”

Akira squinted. “That’s… actually not a bad idea.”

“She doesn’t have one, either,” Saki added. “Or, at least, I’ve never seen her wearing one.”

“See?” Miki said smugly, pointing at her head. “Pretty smart, huh?”

“Sharp as a marble,” Akira concluded, nodding approvingly, and Miki smirked and copied the gesture. Saki noted this in her mind as a very interesting quirk of Miki’s. She’d done it twice now, and Saki vowed to get Miki to nod to something even better next time.

“Now that that’s settled,” Saki declared, clapping her hands together, “girl talk!”

Akira stood up abruptly and started walking to the counter. “I’m getting the bill.”

“Wait!” Miki said, with panicked urgency. “Before you go-”

Akira looked down at her plate, which was empty again. “Lemme guess, another chocolate croissant?”

“What? No,” Miki said, her face marred with utter confusion as to why Akira would ask something like that. “A glass of water, please.”

Akira shot Miki a thumbs-up and spun around.

“Four minutes and twenty-five seconds,” Saki said, once Akira had left. “That’s pretty impressive, but I think you ought to shoot for a little faster. If you get to under a minute per, that’d really be something special. I wonder what the Guinness World Record is?”

“What are you talking about?”

There was a long pause where the two of them just stared at each other blankly. Miki had a vague but overwhelming feeling that she really, really… ought to have asked for a glass of milk, instead.

“Now,” Saki began, “can you give me some help here so I can pry some girl talk out of Akira? Ideally without her being cold and dead.”

“What do you want to ask her about?”

“Her boyfriend, duh. She’s the only one of us actually dating, so I need to gather what I can while I can.”

“What do you want me to do?”

Saki sighed. “I just need you to back me up, I’ll cue you in.”

Miki didn’t have a good feeling about this. When Akira walked back with the glass of water and placed it down in front of her, Miki picked it up and drained the entire thing. Akira watched her in amusement, and then sat back down.

“You have any dates planned?” Saki asked immediately.

“No,” Akira responded tersely.

“W-what? Shit, that was like the most important question. I was going to ask you about locations and restaurants and things for good dates, and now you’ve ruined it. You really don’t have any dates planned?”

“Once you’ve been in a relationship for a year, they stop being ‘dates.’ It’s just hanging out.”

Saki leaned forward, invested in every syllable that came out of Akira’s mouth.

“You mean, you two go to each other’s places?” she asked.

“Apartments? Yeah. Honestly, we don’t go to restaurants that often.”

“You guys have dinner together?”

“Sure, pretty often.”

“Breakfasts?”

“Sure, most-” Akira paused. She saw the look on Saki’s face. “Wait, that doesn’t mean-”

“You’ve been staying over!” Saki squealed, and Akira dropped her face into her hands. Miki, strangely disconnected from the conversation despite sitting at the same table, scratched her chin in guilt.

“Haha!” Saki continued, laughing. “How is he? Does he know stuff? Does he-”

“Shut up,” Akira moaned. “Dear god, please shut up.”

“Okay, okay. You don’t have to tell me everything. I’m just happy that you two have been getting along.”

“We haven’t, actually.”

Saki tilted her head. “Hmm?”

Akira’s voice sped up, in the kind of worried tone you get when you’re trying to move through a subject quickly, because you don’t know why you brought it up.

“We had a fight last week. I yelled at him a bit, stormed out. I’m older, so I really shouldn’t be worrying you about this kind of crap.”

“I want to hear about it,” Saki pleaded. “What did you fight over?”

“Nothing. It’s just…”

“...Just?”

“I dunno. He gets depressed, sometimes, and I just feel like his job is draining him too much. I just want him to be happy, but we seem to have different ideas on what ‘happy’ means. Isn’t that strange, that people aren’t even able to agree on something so basic? The worst part is that everyone thinks their own idea of happiness is the only one that’s obvious…”

Saki was quiet. She was frowning. An uncomfortable, eerie silence had descended upon the table, and Akira immediately regretted saying anything.

“That isn’t good,” she said, finally.

“No, that isn’t good.”

“Have you seen him since then?”

Akira shook her head. “No.”

Saki smiled tenderly. “Why don’t you call him?”

Her voice was soft, but Akira could tell that if she outright denied her request, she would probably pressure her about it.

“You seem to have a lot of ideas for a girl that’s never had a boyfriend,” Akira teased.

“Y-You don’t know that!” Saki sputtered. “Besides, I think this is pretty obvious. It’s applicable to any kind of relationship.”

Saki was probably right. Calling Asahi wouldn’t do any harm, it just made Akira’s stomach churn.

“Alright, fine. If you guys come help me get gifts tomorrow, I’ll call him later today.”

“Yay!” Miki interjected. “Happy ending! Everything’s settled! Now can we please stop talking about relationships. My brain’s gonna explode.”

“Spoilsport,” Saki said.

There was a silence as the three girls stood up and collected there things, when suddenly some sort of great realization seemed to dawn over Miki, and her jaw dropped open in amazement. Saki waited eagerly, wondering what kind of earth-shattering, enlightening thought could trigger such a reaction.

“Wait,” Miki said, “marbles aren’t sharp.”

==========

Akira slammed the car door shut behind her as she sat in the driver’s seat. She rubbed her hands together and breathed on them to warm them up; the temperature had dropped quite a bit over the past few hours, as the sun had gone down. Akira twisted the keys in the ignition and set the heating on full blast, then fished her phone out of her back pocket, punching Asahi’s number into it with numb fingers.

Dial tone. Silence. Akira looked up and down the parking lot, feeling strangely awkward. Dial tone again. The dull orange of the dome lights casted a cool glow onto the dashboard. She double checked that the heating was on full blast, and placed a hand over a vent to verify that it was, in fact, blowing slowly warming air onto her face.

A beep. Silence, this time shaded with a hint of static.

“Hey, Asahi.”

“Akira,” he said. His voice was deep and bassy and sounded much older than he really was. Akira said it was because he smoked, but Asahi insisted he’d always been that way.

Akira caught the sound of traffic in the background.

“Heading home?” she asked.

“I am, yes.”

“How are you?”

Asahi was silent for a moment. He had a tendency to overthink courtesy questions like this, instead of answering them automatically. No aspect of conversation was automatic with Asahi.

“I’m doing well,” he said, finally. “You?”

“Just peachy.”

Asahi laughed nervously. He had a deep, rumbling laugh, even when nervous. It didn’t fit the person it belonged to, or the mood, and Asahi seemed to realize that very quickly. He shut himself up and the line was quiet for a few seconds.

“I’m sorry, Akira. Listen, you were right. About every-”

“I didn’t mean to be sassy, sorry. I’m doing well, I mean.”

Asahi paused. “That’s… that’s good.”

“Yes, that’s good.”

“We’re, um, we’re coming up on our anniversary, right? I don’t want to spend it like this.”

“No, I don’t want to either. That’s why I called you.”

“Oh!” Asahi exclaimed, betraying his happiness. Akira realized that he might’ve guessed she was calling him just to break up. She felt a little annoyed he’d thought so little of her. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t break up over the phone.

“Are you free over the weekend?” she asked.

“I, um, why, yes, I am.”

For some reason, the sound of traffic in the background gave Akira the heebie-jeebies.

“I was imagining a quiet, patient conversation between the two of us, maybe in a coffee shop. Can you do that?”

“Yes!” Asahi replied, and Akira nearly laughed at the enthusiasm in his voice, before mentally slapping herself.

“I’m driving some of Lilly’s friends to town to go shopping for Christmas gifts around noon. If you want, you can come with, or I can meet you at Café Duo around two or three.”

“If they’re Lilly’s friends, I wouldn’t want to make them nervous.”

Akira thought about Saki’s comments at the Shanghai, and raised an eyebrow, smiling and rolling her eyes. “I don’t think you’d make them nervous. I’ll ask, though. They’d probably appreciate a workhorse to carry their things.”

“Okay, just… you can call me again, and let me know.”

“Sure. Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow.”

Akira took a deep breath, then sighed.

“You know I don’t hate you, right?” she said.

There was a long pause.

“Yes, I know you don’t hate me, as much as I think I deserve it.”

“You don’t.”

“Okay.”

“See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow. Love you, Akira.”

“Love you.”

Akira hung up the phone and decided she would break up with Asahi the next day.

“We’re meeting your boyfriend?!” Saki shrieked into Akira’s ear from where she sat in the passenger’s seat, nearly deafening her.

Akira winced. “He has a name, you know.”

“Holy shit, we’re meeting your boyfriend,” Saki exclaimed, then turned to Miki in the back seat. “Miki, did you hear? We’re meeting Akira’s boyfriend.”

“I think the entire intersection heard.”

“I’m supposed to shop and think while your hunk of a boyfriend is carrying my bags?” Saki asked, dropping back against the headrest with a whump.

“Maybe we can stop off at a gym along the way and get you a cold shower,” Akira said.

“What? It’d ruin my hair,” Saki stated, plainly, as if it was obvious. She sat back up and pulled the sun visor down, using the little mirror in the center of it to check her face.

Miki leaned forward from the back seat and stared at Saki with a confused look on her face. “I don’t understand how horndogs like you can live in this world. I bet your room’s full of posters of Leonardo DiCaprio, or something.”

“Leonardo DiCaprio?” Saki scoffed, again, as if it was obvious. “I’d rather you caught me dead. Ever since Titanic, that bastard has always had the worst facial hair. If they’re not clean shaven, I don’t want them anywhere near me.”

“Uh oh,” Akira mumbled beside her.

“And I’m not a horndog!” Saki protested righteously. “I just like my life to be exciting. You can all keep your boring lives, I want some proper romance.”

“Mmhmm,” Akira hummed. “But you do have posters of a celebrity in your room?”

Saki was silent.

“You read Twilight?”

Saki was still silent.

“Who did you ship in Harry Potter?” Akira asked, her voice dripping with a kind of sultry sadism.

Saki was silent for the rest of the ride.

When Akira finally parked the car on the corner of a street in the center of the city, Saki was all too eager to hop out and hurry the others along, remembering what had excited her in the first place, though she prefaced their walk to the plaza, which was only to take a few minutes, by saying to Akira:

“I would like to appendix your comments by saying I did not enjoy Twilight.”

“But you read it,” Akira said, whistling and walking away. Saki scrunched up her mouth and grimaced.

The walk to the plaza did, indeed, take only a few minutes. Akira led the way, because they were meeting Asahi at a location only she knew of, and so Saki and Miki trailed behind, walking beside each other. They were both very quiet, Saki because she was both embarrassed and was barely able to contain her excitement, and Miki for a reason unknown. Saki had noticed the previous day that Miki seemed out of it. She was obviously thinking about something, but even that was strange. This was strange because Miki was not usually so quiet or oblivious. Usually she was the exact opposite of quiet and only mildly oblivious.

“Ah, there he is,” Akira said, breaking the silence.

She pointed towards a bench near the entrance of a coffee shop, where a tall, goateed man in a plaid suit, jacket and jeans was already waiting, smoking a cigarette. Akira waved to him and he waved back, smiling gently. The two of them hugged each other, and Akira pecked him on the cheek. Miki, a little amused, noted just how closely they seemed to match; Akira and Asahi, pinstripes and plaid. She pointed this out to Saki and got a nothing-reply. The two of them said hello and introduced themselves to him briefly, and he nodded and said something about how they better get started, after a noticeable but not overlong pause as he glanced over Saki’s cane and Miki’s bandaged stump. He was, Miki reasoned, fairly handsome. Miki could understand what Saki and Akira saw in him, even if she herself didn't particularly care. Then she remembered Saki’s comments about facial hair, and looked over to her, not really knowing what to expect.

Saki was staring straight ahead with a blank, serene smile on her face. She was sagging slightly against her cane, using both arms to support herself, like her bones had been turned to jelly. There was no scream of agony or “dear god” or anything of the sort, and Miki wondered if Asahi’s facial hair, which she supposed was newly grown, had actually passed the bar. That would explain what was making Saki weak in the knees.

Miki stepped forward to follow the couple, and then looked back at Saki. She was frozen in place. Miki stepped forward again. Still nothing. She walked back to Saki awkwardly and waved a hand in front of her face.

“Saki? You there?”

Saki nodded slowly, still wearing that serene smile. This time, when Miki turned around again, Saki actually followed.

“You good?” Miki asked cautiously.

“Yes, why?”

“Okay, cool. I was wondering if, like, you had narcolepsy, too. Haha. You were, like, catatonic. Uh. Yeah. He’s a decent-looking guy, I think. I guess I understand why you like him.”

“Who?”

“Asahi.”

“That name is dead to me.”

“Ooookay.”

The city was strung up with lights like it was trying to prove something. There were wire-frame deers hanging off of roofs and ornaments hanging off the wire-frame deers. Saki had never been to this part of town and looking around did a good job of keeping her distracted from the abominable, tumorous growth that had so suddenly and so viciously overtaken Asahi's face. This was a tragedy, she thought, smacking the softly falling snow off of her coat, an utter tragedy. Yes, it was better to forget that Asahi had ever existed than to try to reconcile his past with his present. She went back to thinking about what could be done about the boy from the track and field club's nose.

“Miki,” she said. “There’s a boy in your club.”

“I think there is, yes.”

“I keep forgetting his name. He’s… hmm, let’s see. He’s fairly tall, brown hair. I think he does shot put? Or maybe long distance running. In any case, he’s very…”

Miki raised an eyebrow. “Well built? You talking about Koro? He does shot put, yeah.”

“Yes,” said Saki, grinning giddily.

Eventually the four of them pulled into a store that Saki did not have the opportunity to read the name of. She scraped her boots off on the entrance mat and looked around to see an entire store full of watches.

“Oh, an actual watch store?” Miki asked, puzzled. “Isn't this gonna be, like, super expensive? Or are you secretly loaded and I had no idea.”

“This place ain’t too bad,” Akira said. “And you don't really have to worry about that kind of thing. I managed to guilt the folks into sending me some money for Christmas gifts.”

“That’s a check for ‘secretly loaded.’”

Akira dragged Miki to one of the displays and the two of them set about scanning it for something they thought would fit Shizune, leaving Saki and Asahi to stand in the corner and observe.

“What do you think about that one?” Akira said, pointing at a black one with silver hands.

“No. It needs Roman numerals. Shizune would love Roman numerals. This one?”

“It can’t have a big fat logo right in the middle. It needs to look fairly utilitarian, but still classy.”

“What color do you think? Silver?”

“You need to shave,” Saki said simply, standing beside Asahi. She didn’t even turn to look at him.

“Okay?” he said, laughing nervously and running a hand up and down his other arm.

“Maybe silver with golden hands. See if you can find silver with golden hands.”

“There, silver with golden hands,” Miki said, pointing. “Two of them, actually. And they both have Roman numerals. Jackpot. Take your pick.”

Akira stooped down to take a closer look at them, rubbing her chin in ponderous amusement. At last she declared “that one,” and rose and rang the bell on the counter for a small elderly woman who emerged from behind a door a few seconds later, removed the watch from its display case, and put it in a small velvet box. She then wrapped that small velvet box with some cheesy gift wrap, and an even cheesier shiny red bow, and handed it to Akira, who took it with a gleeful smile and bowed to the woman in thanks. The four of them looked at each other, except for Saki, who did not look at Asahi, and then they filed one by one out the door.

Akira crossed her arms in satisfaction. “Well, that’s the easy part over. Now we need to figure out something for Lilly. Anyone have any ideas?”

No-one had any ideas, least of all Miki, who was in shock at how much the watch had cost and still did not know who Lilly was.

“Alright, let’s just take a walk and see what we can see.”

Seeing what they could see did not inspire any ideas. Saki took advantage of the opportunity to lead the group into every other clothing store she laid eyes upon, and, being the only person in the group who particularly cared about clothes, monopolize Asahi’s empty arms with various bags, accompanied always with the simple utterance to “hold,” as if he was some sort of simple-minded homunculus who could not understand more lengthy commands. She did not, however, insist that anyone else pay for her things, which Akira found to be surprisingly moral, even if she had asked, the previous day, not to be dragged into clothes shopping the previous day.

“I asked not to be dragged into clothes shopping, Saki.”

“And I said ‘no promises,’ so everything’s in order, isn’t it?”

It was funny; Akira had never been into this kind of thing, and she had a sister who, despite the fact that her personality likely would lend her to shopping, had a disability that prevented it. Akira’s curiosity got the better of her, and she went along with it in the moment.

At the fourth or fifth clothing store, however, she noticed just how thin and pallid Miki was starting to appear. It was like she was mummifying before her very eyes. Asahi, reading the expression on Akira’s face, suggested a dumpling place around the corner that he knew of, and the four of them walked there after Saki had finished selecting a particular white cardigan out of a sea of indistinguishable white cardigans.

“Now does anyone have any ideas?” Akira asked, looking over at Miki, who seemed to be gradually regaining her life force with each bite of dough-encased pork she shoved into her mouth.

Miki groaned. “Can we just bite the bullet and get her some clothes?”

Saki rolled her eyes.

“I was thinking of something more specific, but if that’s what we have to do, then that’s what we have to do.”

“We can get her a new tea set,” Saki suggested. “I remember her complaining about dropping a cup, mainly because Shizune made a big deal about how it showed how clumsy she is. Apparently she’s looking for a new one.”

“What?” Akira said. “You sure? She never said anything to me.”

“Well of course she didn't say anything to you,” Saki said. “She's your sister, and it’s just a tea set. She wants everything to look perfect. She wouldn't want to bother you about something like that.”

Though Saki's statement was fairly innocuous, and Akira was initially prepared to challenge it, she stopped herself. That was entirely possible, she thought. In fact, it was obvious. But, then, was it because of a lack of trust, or something else? How many other things had Lilly hidden from her, just because she didn't feel like causing her trouble? Just yesterday, Lilly had seemed unnaturally hesitant in her reassurance to Akira that she did, in fact, want to come back for the holidays. Did she actually want to stay at Yamaku, with Hanako, and was just ignoring her wants in order to please Akira? She was already such a people-pleaser when it came to their parents, and Akira already suspected that Lilly and Shizune's little spats were more than just them not getting along.

The more Akira thought about it, the more she wanted to stop thinking about it. If she kept asking herself these kinds of questions about her sister, she would drive herself crazy. It was an important point to think about, but there was no need to second guess everything Lilly had ever said. The best thing she could do right now was to trust Lilly's words.

“Why didn’t you suggest this earlier?” Akira asked.

“I forgot,” Saki said, because she really had forgotten.

Akira shook her head. “Alright. Now, where the hell are we gonna find a tea shop around here?”

==========

Akira shook her head. “I can’t believe you found a tea shop around here.”

“The battle isn't over yet, Akira,” Saki scolded, knocking the snow off her boots with her cane and setting off into the thick of the store. “Now we have to find a tea set that doesn’t scream old man or menopause.”

“I actually… saw this one, while we were walking. I was about to mention it, but then Saki just kept going in the right direction,” Asahi mumbled, smiling in resignation to a fate he hadn’t even foreseen yet. “Maybe she knew about it, too.”

She hadn’t known about it. She’d just gotten really lucky.

The tea shop had bright fluorescent lights and continued the city’s theme of having an unnaturally high amount of Christmas decorations. The tea shop was really more of an all-purpose china shop, which Miki found strange, not because it was an all-purpose china shop, but because she still didn’t understand why china was called china if it was from Japan, or anywhere other than China, really.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s just one of those things like with brands, but with countries, instead. Like how Americans call all facial tissues Kleenex,” Asahi said.

“Was I asking that out loud?” Miki asked out loud.

“Were you asking what out loud?”

“Whether Americans call all- fuck, no. Um. Whether all china is from China.”

“You never asked that. You asked why china is called china if it’s not from China.”

“I did? Oh. Um, do you know why?”

“No, I just said I think it might be one of those things like with brands, but with countries, instead. Like how Americans call-”

“I got that part,” Miki interrupted. “Sorry, I’m a bit out of it.”

Asahi looked at Miki with a raised eyebrow, then turned away, not really knowing what to say. The two of them were still standing by the front door while the other two went on into the store in search of a tea set that didn’t scream old man or menopause.

“Old man, old man, old man, fancy British old man, old man,” Saki mused as she walked by tea set after tea set, discarding the entire aisle they were walking down and turning into the next one with Akira following behind her.

“You want to go and follow them?” Asahi asked.

“Not really,” Miki said, because she was feeling an awful lot like an elephant in a china shop.

“Bull in a china shop,” Asahi corrected.

“Isn’t it an elephant in a china shop?” Miki asked.

“No. It’s an elephant in the room, but a bull in a china shop.”

“A china shop is a room.”

“It’s a metaphor.”

“No, I’m pretty sure a china shop isn’t a metaphor, either, but we were talking about elephants.”

“We were talking about rooms.”

They hadn’t been talking about either of those things.

“I think I agree with Saki, actually,” Miki mused, turning to Asahi with an unnatural grin.

Asahi’s eyes widened in abject horror. He felt every hair on the back of his neck stand up as he froze in place, not daring to look anywhere but straight ahead. “W-what?” he quavered.

“You would look better if you shaved.”

The cold words sent a chill down Asahi’s spine. His mouth dropped open in helpless exhaustion. “Akira said she kinda liked the goatee!” he whined.

“I don’t know. I said I kinda liked the goatee, but now I don’t know,” Akira wondered aloud on the opposite side of the store, despite knowing absolutely and wholeheartedly that she loved the goatee, and not just because of what it was doing to Saki. She turned to Saki with what she supposed was good comedic timing. “What do you think? Do you kinda like the goatee?”

Saki stopped in a section of the cutlery aisle and gazed longingly at a particularly shiny set of knives. She turned away from Akira and continued walking with what she supposed was better comedic timing.

“I’m kidding,” Miki said with impish glee, her face cracking into a suppressed smile before finally erupting into laughter. Asahi watched her in confusion for a few moments before following her, filling the store with his booming, thunderous cackle.

“What the hell are they laughing about?” Akira wondered aloud again.

“Old man, old man, creepy old man, menopause, here,” Saki also wondered aloud, walking down the aisle and finally selecting a tea set on display. She pointed at it and nudged Akira forward to take a look for herself.

The display had four tea cups, a pot, several dishes for saucers, and a small, almost doll-like spoon for each dish. The set’s motif was pure white, with a plain golden trim around the edges of the cups and the plates, and simple pink floral designs only in the center of the saucers, leaving the cups unstained and unaltered. It was really a rather nice looking tea set, and Akira looked at it from where it sat on the counter with a strange, rapturous befuddlement.

“This is pretty damn nice,” she said.

Saki frowned. “Everyone’s always confused when I have good taste. I don’t know why.”

“They’ve got a wishing well,” Miki said to Asahi, pointing at a big display they had in the entrance of the store with a little fountain about the size of a dinner table. The bottom was littered with one and ten yen coins.

“Wishing fountain,” Asahi corrected.

“Is that all you do? Correct people? You like telling people when they’re wrong?”

Asahi scratched his bearded chin sheepishly. “It’s not all I do, but yes, I do enjoy it. Do you want to make a wish?”

“Sure,” Miki said, fishing through her pockets for a coin. “Do you?”

Asahi shook his head.

“Spoilsport.”

“You say that, but after you toss that coin in there, I’ll be ten yen richer than you.”

“One yen,” Miki corrected, and punched him in the liver. Asahi absorbed the blow to his side with surprising elegance and giggled.

“No punching my boyfriend,” Akira chastised, as she sidled up to the front of the store with the tea set in a box under her arm.

“Even if he does need to shave,” Saki added. “We’re doing a wishing well?” she asked.

Asahi opened his mouth and then closed it.

Miki and Saki stood side-by-side in silence and made their wishes and tossed in their coins as Asahi watched, while Akira, similarly a cheap spoilsport, went to the front of the store and paid for the tea set. The man at the counter wrapped it in slightly less cheesy Christmas gift wrap and a significantly less cheesy shiny red bow. This bow was significantly less cheesy because it didn’t exist, leaving the gift wrapping plain and unadorned. The four of them looked at each other again and nodded and thanked the man at the cash register, which Akira just realized she hadn’t done at the watch store, and then walked out. Though the tea set had cost much less than the watch, Akira felt strangely more satisfied with it as a gift, which she figured was probably because it was for her sister and not her cousin.

The four of them backtracked to the coffee shop they had started at. Saki noticed Miki nearly walked into a pole a few times, but she didn’t bring it up.

==========

“Are you girls sure you’re gonna be okay?” Akira asked, at the door to the coffee shop.

“Yes, mom,” Saki said.

Miki smiled. “I think we’ll be alright.”

“Okay, well, I’ve got my phone and you’ve got my number, so you can call me. How about an hour, we meet back here?”

“Hour and a half,” Saki bargained, turning to Miki and nodding. Miki nodded back, then realized what she was doing and frowned.

Akira thought for a moment, then gave a thumbs-up. “Okay, an hour and a half.” She turned into the coffee shop with Asahi. “See you guys.”

Saki and Miki waved. “See you,” Miki said.

When the couple had disappeared into the Café Duo, Saki turned around and started down the street, her cane clicking on the sidewalk beside her, occasionally muted by a patch of snow. Miki fell into step beside her, and the two of them started looking around, across the street, at all the names of the shops they walked past.

Miki’s eyes widened as she remembered her near-death experience only an hour earlier. “We’re not doing any more clothes, please.”

“No worries. I got all that settled while Asahi was around, so he could help carry it. Otherwise I’d just be dumping it on you, and then we’d have two girls with only two open hands between them carrying heavy shopping bags, which wouldn’t be very fun.”

“Oh,” Miki said. “That’s, uh, surprisingly thoughtful.”

“Not really, I wasn’t really thinking of you guys, just myself.”

“Kind, then.”

“Kind for you, maybe. Kind for Asahi, not so much. I told you and Akira I’m selfish, yesterday, right? I was just trying to get as much shopping done as possible, carrying the least amount of things.”

“Asahi didn’t mind, though, I don’t think. Neither did Akira.”

“Again, I wasn’t thinking about them, though.”

Miki pursed her lips. She looked up and down the street again, and Saki wondered what she was looking at. “Do you think you’re a bad person, or something? Because you’re not.”

“No, I don’t think I’m a bad person. Anyway, let’s change the topic. What do you want to shop for?”

“You’re asking me?”

“I am.”

“Oh,” Miki said. She scratched the back of her head awkwardly. “I… was hoping I could actually buy some jewellery.”

Saki’s eyes widened. “For yourself?”

Miki turned away, feeling her face redden. “No…”

“A girlfriend?”

Miki momentarily felt her heart explode in her chest, and then remembered that that word didn’t necessarily have romantic connotations. Just a normal, usual girlfriend. Haha. Heehee. Girlfriend. Miki twiddled her thumbs in unconscious delight.

“Sure,” she said.

“Suzu, right? How long have you two been dating?”

Miki froze in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at Saki with her mouth drooping half open. Saki was only able to keep her expression stoic for a few seconds before cackling maniacally and tapping her on the shoulder apologetically.

“Haha! I can’t believe it!” Saki giggled. “Look, normally I’m really oblivious when it comes to people, but trust me, my gaydar is off the charts, and you two are always giving each other these looks.” She giggled again. “I knew it! Come on, talk to me!”

Miki was finding it hard to talk. She had a frog in her throat, and she had never talked about Suzu to another soul. As far as Miki knew, no-one other than Miki and Suzu had known that Miki and Suzu were together. She was terrified of how a notorious gossip hound like Saki could use this information, and to what ends.

“I’m not gonna tell the entire school, Miki,” Saki promised. “But I am curious as to why you’re hiding it.”

Miki startled back into some semblance of awareness. “We’re gay, Saki,” she stated plainly.

“And does that make you an alien, or something? Congratulations, you’re in ten percent of the population. Now what? Going to mope about it for the rest of your life?”

Miki looked up and down the street before leaning close to Saki’s face and whispering her answer. “If people knew about us, who knows what could-”

“A couple of assholes would make some comments, get their asses handed to them, and the rest of us wouldn’t care.” Saki waved a hand in a dramatic flourish. “Most people would be happy for you, I think.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t. And neither will you, if you hide your love away for the rest of your life!” Saki spun dramatically, clenching her hands to her heart. “Oh, forbidden love!” she swooned. “Life is so cruel!”

Miki was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to strangle her, though it faded quickly because she was in a public place and realized she would almost certainly be caught, even if she was pretty good at running.

“Can we just stop talking about this, please?” Miki bargained desperately.

Surprisingly, Saki sighed and nodded. “Sure, sure. Sorry, I didn’t want to be mean, but I do think you need a bit of a kick in the butt.”

Despite receiving a kick in the butt, Miki was not particularly moved. Miki did not really care about what people said about herself, but what people said about Suzu mattered to her quite a lot. She could not stand to see people insulting Suzu, because of her. She absolutely could not stand to see Suzu’s parents get mad at her, because of her. But long term, did Miki really have a plan? Not really, and she figured she didn’t need one. She had never been very good at planning, anyways.

Miki knew she was just procrastinating.

Saki and Miki found a shop with some cute jewellery and Miki let Saki pick out something that would match Suzu’s hair, because she really had no idea what good jewellery looked like, beyond the fact that it was probably expensive and shiny. Suzu had a handful of necklaces and earrings that she wore occasionally outside of school, all of which Miki liked, but she wasn’t sure if she liked them because they were good necklaces and earrings or because they were on Suzu. Saki looked through a stand of earrings and lifted them up to Miki’s ear to judge, before gasping in shock.

“You don’t have your ears pierced?” Saki shrieked. “Where were you raised? A barn?”

“The country.”

“A barn!” Saki confirmed, before collecting herself and grabbing Miki by the wrist. “That’s it,” she decided resolutely, “you’re getting your ears pierced.”

“W-what?” was all Miki could manage, before being dragged off to the front desk of the boutique, where Saki seized the clerk by the ear almost as forcefully as she had seized Miki by the wrist and demanded immediate service. It was like a dream, or maybe a nightmare. She hadn’t even had the opportunity to process the fact that they do piercings in the same stores that they sell the earrings, which seemed obvious to her now. Suddenly Miki was sitting on a big padded chair with a little old lady looming over her like a spectre of death, approaching her virgin ears with a device that looked frighteningly similar to a stapler.

Pain.

It wasn’t that painful, actually. It was a slight pinching feeling and then a small trickle of blood for each ear. A visit to the dentist was worse, and took much longer. Then Miki was standing in front of another collection of earrings as Saki held up several options and then thrust three different colors of small studs into her hands.

“Those are good, hopefully they shouldn’t catch on your hair,” she said. “Pick one and I’ll show you how to put it on.”

Miki flipped through the three sets of studs dumbfoundedly, wondering when she would wake up.

“This one, I guess.”

“Blue really is your color, huh? I wonder what’ll happen if Suzu ever changes her hair dye.”

“Maybe blue is her natural hair color,” Miki deadpanned, not willing to admit to herself that she hadn’t even noticed the studs were blue.

Saki rolled her eyes. “Then the two of you really are aliens.”

Saki took the studs off the little cardboard holder they were attached to and showed Miki how to put them on.

In the mirror, Miki looked at herself. She looked awkward. Incredibly awkward. Her hair was maybe a bit too long and the ends had frizzed up from walking around in the cold with her coat on. She had to brush her hair back and hold it behind her ears to see the earrings. They were shaped like tiny blue teardrops and glittered in the fluorescent lights of the boutique. Miki could not decide whether she liked them or not, but they were definitely different. This was certainly the kind of gift that would knock Suzu’s socks off. She could get a second pair of the same studs and then they could have matching earrings.

For some reason, that thought lit Miki’s face up like a match.

She jittered. “Okay, okay,” she said, filling the silence and turning to Saki, who was studying her quizzically. “When can I take them off?”

“What?” said Saki. “Not until the piercings heal, or it’ll just seal up again.”

“How long will that take?”

“Depends,” Saki shrugged. “Probably a few months.”

“A few what?”

“A few months. Come on, let’s go get something to eat. I’m getting hungry, and I don’t have the endurance of a track and field star like you.”

“Excuse me?” Miki laughed. “I just got holepunched like a fucking cardboard cutout, and you’re talking about my endurance?”

Miki followed Saki to the front counter, where she covered Miki’s piercings so long as she paid for the earrings. The little old lady bowed and smiled gently at the two of them, and they left and crossed the street to a noodle house. They were seated in a booth by a waiter who reminded Saki of a male version of Yuuko, completely out of his depth, and Saki picked up her menu and flipped through it. Miki kept twirling the set of studs she had gotten Suzu in her hand with a cheesy grin on her face.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Saki asked her.

It took a while before Miki realized she was talking about Akira and Asahi.

“No idea,” Miki replied. “Probably talking about couple stuff.”

Saki rolled her eyes. “You’re in a relationship, what do you mean ‘couple stuff?’ Shouldn’t you know all about this couple stuff?”

“I never answered you when you asked how long Suzu and I have been dating. Three months now. I barely have any idea about couple stuff.”

“Three months? Huh,” Saki pouted, disappointed. “Have you two fucked yet?”

Miki choked on her own spit. Saki giggled, watching her flail for her glass of water.

“And you said you aren’t a horndog?” Miki demanded, once she had recovered.

Saki leaned her head on her chin. “I just wanted to see what would happen,” she said somberly. “I haven’t talked much to Suzu, actually. Does she watch your track meets?” Miki nodded. “I’ll come cheer you on at your meet tomorrow, once I’m done with band.”

Miki decided it was her turn to start teasing Saki.

“You’re just pining for Koro,” she said.

“Shut up!” Saki hissed. Miki was right, though.

“You know, there’s talk about him ending up as captain, next year.”

“C-captain?” Saki exclaimed, dumbfounded.

“Yeah. I mean, he deserves it. He runs our entire field section; shot put, all the jumps.”

Track captain? Saki thought, repeating it to herself and nearly squealing. Track captain?!

“Really?” she asked.

“Yeah, he just kinda sucks at running.”

“Well, duh, how’s he gonna move anywhere with that-”

Saki paused, scratching a chin in thought.

Miki grinned. “That…?”

“Nothing special. Oh, look at the time. Once we eat, we’ll have to start heading back to those two.”

“You really hate that goatee, huh?” she asked.

“Shut up!” Saki hissed again, burning with comic rage. She did not want to think about Akira’s boyfriend’s goatee. She did not even want to think about Akira’s boyfriend.

“Saki,” Miki asked, her tone suddenly low and serious. “What did you wish for, in the wishing well in the tea shop?”

Saki turned her nose up prudishly. “Not telling. You?”

Miki grinned.

==========

“...and he gives me this whole, long-winded introduction; ‘Akira is one of our most trusted advisors on this subject, and you should really believe what she says, please, even though she’s a woman, blah blah blah.’ I swear; every time I want to speak in a meeting in this branch, they have to spend five minutes justifying my existence at the table, but every man that stands up, even if it’s the first fucking meeting he’s ever been to, just has to say his name and position, and he’s all set to mouth his mug off for as long as he wants. It’s absolute bullshit!”

Akira punctuated her rant with a slam of her paper coffee cup onto the table, causing a few drops to slosh out and fall onto the varnished wood.

Asahi, across from her, just smiled. He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the table, then sipped from his own coffee.

“That does sound like bullshit,” he said, simply.

The Café Duo was placed very unceremoniously on the corner of one of the biggest streets in Sendai, and was always appropriately busy. The first time Akira had brought Asahi here, he’d made some offhand comments about it having bad feng shui, and it had taken a few elbows to the ribs to get him to enter. In the end, though, the Café Duo was a far better coffee shop than the one he’d brought her to the following week. Even he’d admitted that.

That was back when Akira only knew him as a friend of a friend from work. They’d been dating for nearly a year now.

“Oh, don’t get me started,” Akira said, and sighed.

“You’ve been going for a while now, I think.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Akira laughed. “So, how are things with you? Your boss up and die yet?”

Asahi smiled and shook his head. “I would never be so lucky. It’s all the same with me. Sometimes I wish they’d transfer me so I could do something useful.”

Akira scoffed. “And give up what they’re paying you? You’d have to be an idiot to ask for something like that.”

Asahi laughed into his coffee, sending steam up his face.

Asahi was a chemical engineer for the city. Government job; cushy office position. He’d miraculously managed to score a position with better pay and better hours than Akira, even though he was a year younger than her, and she had nepotism on her side. If Akira were to be frank, she didn’t really understand what Asahi did; it had something to do with toxin levels in corporate landfills. It involved a lot of paperwork and a bunch of sciencey stuff that Akira couldn’t wrap her head around.

Asahi was a smart cookie, and if you were to zoom back and look at both of their positions from an objective lens, they both had it very well off. Most people their age were busy slaving away for pocket change.

But Akira had coworkers and bosses that were infuriating and incompetent, and Asahi worked for a government that never did anything, which, by consequence, meant he would sometimes come home looking even more like a zombie than Akira did after pulling an all-nighter. He would collapse on the couch after pouring the two of them something strong, and if Akira could ever pry something about what had happened at work out of his lips, it wouldn’t be anything coherent by the time enough alcohol had passed them.

Asahi was a lightweight. Akira found it cute. She would find it cuter if it didn’t come up so often.

Oh, shut up, Akira thought to herself. Asahi wasn’t an alcoholic. She’d known actual alcoholics, and they were a hundred times worse.

“Are you doing anything around Christmas?” Akira found herself asking, against her will.

“I-I don’t know.”

“Can you take a day off?”

Asahi fidgeted nervously.

“Christmas is on a Sunday, right?”

“They have me working Sundays, starting last week.”

“What?” Akira asked, scrunching her face up. “Take a day off!”

Asahi nodded, after a slight hesitation. “O-okay. I should be able to. You have something planned?”

Akira picked up and drained the last of her coffee instead of answering. She didn’t understand what she was doing, even as she was doing it. She loved Asahi, didn’t she? That question had an obvious answer. She had decided to break up with him because she loved him; she didn’t think they were right for each other. But now that line of reasoning seemed profoundly contradictory to her. Why would she break up with someone because she loved them? Especially when Asahi seemed to be doing everything in his power to reconcile their relationship, and even Akira had planned this date under the guise of reconciliation. She could not stand to lie to him. To go back on her promise would be more than just breaking a promise; it would be relinquishing some kind of duty.

She did not know what duty exactly.

But maybe he was just being led along. She thought about Lilly, and the possibility that she was coming back for the holidays simply to make her happy. She thought about Asahi and how much he worked. Why was it so hard to do things for people? Why couldn’t people just say what they wanted? Akira had never had issues with that. Maybe she was strange.

She didn’t know why she felt this way. In the broad spectrum of couples on the planet, her and Asahi got along far greater than the average. This was the only real fight they’d ever had, and they seemed to already be over it. An entire year, and only one fight? That seemed far better than all the couples around her her age. Seemed. She wondered which of her coworkers she could grab and pry an answer out of that would reassure her.

She couldn’t talk to her parents. She wouldn’t. Her mother’s dating advice when Akira was in high school had been worse than abysmal. Her father would probably disapprove of any relationship she could possibly find herself in, and then complain almost immediately afterwards that she needed to get married and have kids, as if that was somehow possible without dating, as if she could just saunter up to a church like a girl in rural Alabama and raise her hand and say ‘one loving husband and five children, please. While you’re at it, how about a house with a mortgage payable on a single household income?’

That’s why she wasn’t dating a coworker. That’s why she wasn’t even dating someone that knew any of her coworkers. She’d met Asahi through the ancient method, perhaps more ancient than church, of bar hopping.

She pursed her lips, smiling at Asahi, but he was staring down at his hands on the table. He had a habit of doing that; he’d place his hands flat out, palms down, in front of him, whenever he wasn’t doing anything with them. Akira had mentioned it, once, and he’d said that his parents had drilled it into him to make him seem more ‘professional.’ Akira had scrunched her face up in confusion; it didn’t make him look professional, it made him look like a convict being interrogated.

“Usually it should be the man making and planning the dates. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, shut up. I was just ranting about sexism. It goes both ways.”

“You were, you were,” he said, nodding. “I’ll make sure your Christmas gift knocks your socks off, then.”

“Really? I’m looking forward to-”

Akira froze. Asahi raised an eyebrow.

“Oh shit,” she said. “I just remembered Lilly’s coming back to live with me for the winter break.”

“And?” Asahi asked, worriedly.

“Where do I hide her gift? The closet? My dresser?”

“She’s blind, though? Can’t you hide it anywhere?”

“Well, yeah, genius,” she said, and she smacked one of his hands on the table. He jolted back and pouted, rubbing the back of his hand tenderly, as if it really hurt. “But that’s kinda shitty, isn’t it? It’s like talking behind a deaf person’s back, knowing they can’t hear you. I can get away with it, but I mean, in principle, I should make an effort to hide it.”

“Why don’t you bring it over to my place?” he offered.

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Why would I mind? Your clothes already take up half the space in my dresser.”

“They do not.”

“I liked it when in the summer you would hang your underwear on the clothesline outsi-”

Akira stood half out of her seat and leaned across the table to shove her hand over Asahi’s mouth, silencing him with a muffled “mmf.”

“Not in public you ass,” she scolded, whispering through her teeth as her face reddened, then eventually contorted against her will into a grin. She could feel Asahi’s cheek muscles move and his beard bristle against her fingers as he smiled. She removed her hand slowly, eyeing him suspiciously as she sat back down. He laughed again.

“I don’t deserve you,” Asahi said, and he looked at her sadly.

“Shut up about that, too.”

There was a very long silence, the two of them just enjoying each other's company as they watched the busy lives of the people outside. Akira felt the mood shift. Just when the quiet was starting to feel awkward, Asahi reached across the table and placed his hand on top of Akira’s. The two of them interlaced fingers.

“I’m sorry about last week,” he said quietly.

“What is there to be sorry about? I got upset at you for being tired. That’s a stupid reason, isn’t it?”

“Akira-”

“Your job is really important to you. It doesn’t matter if it drains you, so long as you’re happy. I think what you do is really amazing. I mean, I’m not doing anything particularly important to society. You’re really smart, you know that?”

“Akira, please.”

“If anything, I should be the one that’s sorry. You always want to put all the blame on yourself.”

“Akira, can you shut the fuck up and just listen to me, please?”

Akira shut up and just listened to him, and then he shut up. He looked like he wanted to say something, and then he stopped.

“How about we just split it halfway and accept we both handled it poorly,” he said, finally.

Akira did not want to. She felt like there was no point to that, but she decided not to argue, in the hopes of getting along.

I’m happy, Akira thought. We are getting along, aren’t we? And I love him? I ought to be happy.

The drive back to Yamaku wasn’t very interesting.

If Saki had to name one interesting thing about the drive back, it’d be how Akira had suddenly become so quiet, and Miki had suddenly become so talkative. It was like the dynamics had flipped, and one’s soul had possessed the other. Miki rode shotgun this time instead of Saki, but she spent almost the entire ride resting her elbow on her armrest so she could twist around and talk to Saki in the back, since Akira seemed to be exercising her previously unknown ability to answer every possible question in two words or less. Saki and Miki talked about school and complained about their respective homeroom teachers, and talked about their clubs and complained about their respective clubmates who were almost as bad as their classmates except for that girl who sat next to Miki with blue hair, who Miki didn’t like to badmouth for fear of supernatural punishment. She was a master of hexes and curses and all sorts of black magic. She was already turning Miki’s brain into goop. The same kind of blue goop she used to dye her hair, maybe.

Akira parked in the rear parking lot of Yamaku again and unloaded all of Saki’s bags upon her with a salute and a comic “good luck,” so Saki implored Miki for help while the three of them walked to the dorms. It was only around five in the afternoon, but winter’s shorter days were in full force, and the sun was already starting to set. Saki figured she should head over to the club room and check if the triumphant trio had figured out her sound system situation yet. She didn’t think they had, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

It hurt to check. The student council room was in shambles. Shiina was the only one inside. She was picking up an absolute whirlwind of papers that seemed to have vaulted out of the filing cabinet or off of the tables and spread themselves across every uncovered inch of the floor. Some of them had even slipped under the door and floated into the hallway, and Saki picked a few up off the ground in confusion.

“What happened here?” she asked curiously, when she walked in, using her cane to push some of the papers out of the way so she didn’t step on them and get them any dirtier than they already were.

“Haha~,” Shiina laughed nervously. She was sprawled across the floor in an extremely awkward position, on her side in an almost ‘draw me like one of your French girls’ pose, trying to fish underneath one of the desks as she snow-angeled her way through a sea of papers that coated the floor like snow.

“That’s not an answer,” Saki said, frowning.

“Big fight. Very big fight. Wahaha~. Papers everywhere! As you can see.”

“Why are you spread out like that? If you need someone else to help you, go and ask.”

“I have to help,” Shiina said somberly, as if she was trying to convince herself. “A student council secretary should handle the papers. I have to.”

“I can’t help you. Crawling around on the floor like that would kill me, I’m sorry.”

Shiina frowned. She looked as if she was going to cry. “It’s alright. If you want to go and find someone to help me, I’d appreciate it…”

“Please stand up, Shiina. Come on.”

“Okay, okay~!”

Shiina sprang up abruptly, dropping a stack of papers onto the desk and spinning around, looking at the others while scratching her head.

“I’m assuming our sound system issue didn’t get fixed, then?” Saki asked.

Shiina looked at Saki with a startled look, her eyes slightly wide. “You haven’t heard?” said Shiina. “Oh, I guess you were away this morning...”

“Haven’t heard what?”

“Koro tripped during a run this morning! Fell. Broke his nose.”

Saki looked at Shiina blankly. She forgot all about getting someone to help Shiina with her papers. She pursed her lips and abruptly turned around and left the student council room, walking down the hall towards the infirmary.

“I didn’t mean it!” Saki cried, her voice echoing down the hall. “Thank you, wishing well!” she sobbed, “but I didn’t mean it!”

==========

The walk to the infirmary wasn’t very interesting either, but Saki made the best of it by making it as short as possible, speed-walking as fast as she could across the school and out the door and across the small section of sidewalk connecting to the medical building. She walked halfway down through the long hallway of doors and knocked furiously against Nurse’s door.

“Come in,” he called, after a small silence.

Saki pushed the door open and practically fell into the room before steadying herself against the counter near the entrance. “Hello!” she said anxiously. “Is Koro alright? Where is he?”

Nurse sprang up and helped Saki in. “Woah, woah, careful. Koro’s alright. He’s in right now.” He motioned to the curtain separating the examination bed from the rest of his office. “But I believe he’s asleep.”

“Am not,” called a tired voice from behind the curtain.

“Well, there you have it,” Nurse told Saki. He turned to the curtain. “You mind a visitor?”

“No.”

“Go right in, then,” Nurse said, walking Saki over and holding the curtain open. Saki stepped past the curtain before she could even look at Koro, and when she did, she gasped instinctively before silencing herself with a hand over her own mouth.

Koro was lying on the examination bed under a thin green blanket. He had a large white bandage over his left eye and several strips of white tape across his nose. What little of his nose Saki could see was bright purple, and his nostrils were packed full of tissues. His good eye was pressed shut, and his lips looked dry and chapped. He licked them futilely when Saki stepped in, before coughing wetly and moaning in pain. He looked, Saki thought frankly, fucking miserable.

“I broke my node,” he said simply, when Saki stood there for a while without saying anything.

“I’m sorry,” Saki whimpered. Koro did not reply. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Glad of water.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Could you get me a glad of water, plead?”

Saki walked out, she made eye contact with Nurse and a few moments later she walked back in and handed him a small paper cup full of water.

“Anudder, plead,” he said, when he had finished that one.

Saki walked out. She walked back in. Another cup of water.

He finished that one. “Danks,” he said. “I’m awright. De pain ain’t too bad, now.”

“You look awful,” Saki moaned in frustration, perhaps with herself, perhaps at the cruelty of the world. She felt helpless, seeing him, and she wanted to avert her gaze almost as badly as she wanted to reach out and hug him. If only there was something she could do, if she just willed it hard enough, to make him heal faster.

“Yeah, prolly. But I look word dan I really am, trud me.” He coughed wetly again and opened his good eye to take a look at Saki, then regretted it and shut it. Saki looked up at the shutters on the window, but they were already closed. She walked out.

“Can we turn the lights off?” Saki asked Nurse.

“I’ve been meaning to help him back to his room, so let’s get on that.”

“He’s not going to a hospital?”

“Realistically, a hospital can’t do much more than I’ve done. They could take an X-ray to check how bad the break is, but the treatment would be the same; bedrest. I’ve already taken a look at it, and it doesn’t look any worse than a fracture.”

“He’s swollen like a beach ball,” Saki seethed.

“Swelling is an immune response, and from what he tells me, he’s a pretty fast healer, so calm down a little. He’s already stopped bleeding. I’ll check up on him over the next few days and make sure everything’s going well. I gave him something for the pain just an hour ago.”

“Gib me more,” called the voice from behind the curtain.

Saki furrowed her brow, then closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. She knew she shouldn’t be getting angry at Nurse. Nurse wasn’t responsible for Koro’s accident.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s move him back to his room.”

Koro was able to stand up and walk around fairly well with a little help, and Nurse walked him back to his room with Koro’s arm around his shoulder to steady him, while Saki followed worriedly behind. Koro’s room was exactly how Saki imagined it; fairly messy, clothes strewn everywhere, shelves stocked with sports trophies instead of books. She closed the curtains and got a bottle of water for him from a vending machine downstairs before setting about cleaning his room as he laid down, sleeping. A few hours later, she woke him up with a bowl of chicken soup she had managed to scramble together from some ramen noodles and chicken stock she had borrowed. Caring for him was automatic; she felt responsible, even though she knew she really shouldn’t, and she hated that no-one else had volunteered to take care of him for the few days it would take before he could do most things himself. Nurse probably would’ve searched for someone else to saddle with the task, since he couldn’t just let Koro starve to death in his room, but Saki’s eagerness shut him up. He gave Saki, as a parting gift, a bottle of fairly strong pain meds to administer twice daily.

The following morning, before her track meet, Miki paid a visit while Saki was feeding him some more soup, and briefly tried to help before getting kicked out of the room by an irate Saki for trying to poke Koro’s bandage to ‘see how bad it is.’ Miki was already aware of Saki’s grappling abilities, but she did not know Saki had a black belt in cane-jutsu, which gave her lightning-quick reflexes and taught her to only aim for the shins.

But then Miki came back from her track meet and Saki was still there, not doing much besides sitting by his bedside and watching Koro sadly. She was going to be late for her band meeting. Miki grabbed Saki and managed to strike a deal where she promised she would attend her meeting and not skip any of her classes that week so long as Miki didn’t touch Koro's bandage and promised to go buy her some proper food for her to cook for him. Miki took a jog down to town that evening and bought a bunch of vegetables and soup broth and better noodles and some other things Saki had written down on a list for her. When she jogged back, already the rumor mill had started to turn. Someone had seen Saki entering Koro’s room. The next day, it was the talk of the entire school.

“Did you hear about Saki and Koro?” a girl asked another girl in the back of a classroom during first period while the teacher was still talking.

“What do you think it is? Surely it’s not nothing, if she’s spending so much time in his room,” another girl brainstormed with the rest of her friends in the cafeteria.

“He’s a lucky, lucky man,” a boy said, nodding approvingly with his clubmates in the art room.

“Koro’s finally getting some action, and with Saki, too,” said one of Koro’s peers lustily at one of the track and field club’s morning runs.

“The school jock and the band rep? What the fuck is this? America? Mean Girls? This is the cheesiest shit to happen to this school in months!” said a boy in the theatre club, throwing his hands into the air in distress.

“I hope he heals well,” said a poor girl in the literature club who said everything Saki usually said about boys but meant all of it unironically. “I kinda liked his nose.”

“I bet they’re making out, like, all the time,” said a girl in first year, blushing furiously, who didn’t even know Saki.

“Who’s Saki?” Miki joked huskily in Suzu’s bedroom, avoiding the question. “Why would I have eyes for anyone else?”

Miki was avoiding the question because she was afflicted with a terrible condition: she loved Suzu too much. Suzu was all she could think about whenever she was around, and very frequently even when she wasn’t around. Suzu was like some sort of brainworm. She was hypnotizing her. She was turning Miki’s brain sinful and evil. She was probably affecting Miki’s grades, although they were never too spectacular to begin with. Sitting next to her and having to deal with Suzu in her field of vision the entire day was not conducive to proper academic focus.

But they didn’t talk all that much in school, because Miki was afraid other people would figure out what they were to each other. They didn’t even eat lunch together, though very often Miki would try to find a place to sit where she could keep an eye on Suzu, as if having her in her field of view kept her anchored to Earth. This was ‘stupid,’ as Saki put it; people would not suspect that two girls had romantic feelings for each other simply because they ate lunch together. They only reserved that kind of stupidly hasty judgment for two members of the opposite sex, as while the world was becoming more accepting of same-sex couples, most people simply didn’t have the thought occur to them. Saki implored Miki to eat as many lunches as she wanted with her girlfriend, and that it would make absolutely no difference so long as they didn’t start making out on top of the table, but Miki had just shook her head and said ‘no, no, I can’t, no,’ as if repeating some sort of mantra to herself.

Miki was still not better. Her mood lifted for a few days after their shopping trip, and then relapsed, like she had an addiction to moping. She had spent the past few days listening to rumors about how dastardly Saki and Koro’s relationship was, and found the contrast with reality to be darkly hilarious. Saki and Koro were both famous. They were the greatest power couple in the school. The only thing left was for them to get together. Miki could not imagine what she would do if she and Suzu were ever in that situation.

Whenever Saki wasn’t in school, she was either in Koro’s room, or she was running around frantically searching for something to get for Koro. The past week had been hell for Saki, trying to manage the last week of school before the break, as well as band, as well as getting Koro on his feet. And he was mostly on his feet, now. He could do everything himself except cook, which he wasn’t able to do when he was healthy, anyways. But Saki knew, or at least insisted she knew, that the moment she let Koro out of her sight, he would start eating chips and ice cream and fried food and would never get the kind of nutrients needed to properly heal a wound. She didn’t know what kind of nutrients were needed to properly heal a wound, but she felt that chicken soup had to be one of them.

She and Koro were getting along. They were getting along well. Really well. Once Koro didn’t have to live off pain meds anymore, the two of them had hour-long talks about all sorts of things. Saki had never crushed over someone, and then, after actually getting to know them, found her expectations surpassed. Koro was kind, sensitive, intelligent, talented, and best of all, brave. He took his injury like a champ, and though he clearly appreciated what Saki was doing for him, he made a point of trying not to put too much on her plate by doing whatever he could himself. He was nothing like the stereotypical meathead that he looked like before he fixed his nose. And his nose was fixed, now, even though the only thing that had actually changed was Saki’s perception of his nose. He was still pretty damn hurt, and he kept the bandage over his nose on his face for the sake of it, but the bruise he got on his upper cheek never developed into a black eye.

Saki eventually fulfilled her promise to Miki of attending some of her track meets, though not because she wanted to talk to Suzu. Koro insisted on attending them as soon as possible, even if all he did was sit on the bleachers, which is damn sure all Saki made him do. She had reeled in a potential track captain here, and she was not letting go any time soon. The only people that were still attending track meets were the people who were crazy enough about track that they didn’t need too much monitoring anyways, and Saki had by now completely forgotten about the sound system issue of the weeks prior. The only issue for Saki was getting Koro to understand that she liked him, which was made especially difficult by the fact that she couldn’t tell him she liked him.

“What do you think of Emi?” Saki asked him one day, as the two of them sat on the bleachers and watched Emi dash around the track like a mad woman, the only difference between her winter gym uniform and her summer one being that she wore slightly longer shorts. Saki wanted to snarl at her like a rabid animal. At least Miki had the decency to wear a tracksuit.

“Oh, Emi?” Koro said plainly, tilting his head and thinking to himself. “She’s definitely the hardest worker on the track team. I think she’ll do very well for herself.”

“I meant, like, as a person, not as a member of the track team.”

“She’s kind and funny,” Koro said, wringing his large hands together and once again thinking to himself. “Not very humble, though.”

“I meant, like, as a girl, not as a person.”

“Hmm?” Koro raised an eyebrow, though it wasn’t able to go very far, because there was a bandage in the way. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand what you mean. I think she’s nice, and she’s pleasant to be around.”

“Am I nice, and pleasant to be around?”

Koro blinked at her. “Sure,” he said, as if it was obvious. “You’re the nicest person I know.”

Saki wanted to tear her hair out. He was oblivious! Completely oblivious, but only to one specific area, which Saki had found a recurrent issue with some of the boys she’d talked to in the past, but never to as great a degree as with Koro: he had absolutely zero idea how to flirt, and absolutely zero idea when anyone was flirting with him.

“I don’t understand,” Saki told Miki one afternoon in the cafeteria, “how boys can be this dumb. The only thing I could do that would be more obvious is to buy him some flowers and ask him to date me!”

“Why don’t you buy him some flowers and ask him to date you?” Miki replied.

Saki paused. She put her hand to her chin and thought for a moment. Suddenly her face broke into a tomato red. Miki could almost see the steam whistling out of her ears.

“I can’t,” Saki moaned hoarsely, absolutely stupefied with the horrible, lewd thoughts flowing through her head.

Miki could relate, unfortunately.

==========

Akira couldn’t relate, because she was busy trying to piece her relationship together, and therefore had no more time to think about her relationship. Isn’t that strange, Akira thought, how you become consumed by the circumstances instead of the person? It was the antithesis of connecting with another human being, and even though Akira felt her mind working very clearly and rationally, she found herself hating Asahi and loving him at the same time. What did that mean? She’d been in a couple relationships before, and when she’d wanted to break up with them, it’d all been very clear cut. She had a date with him that afternoon and she decided that she was going to figure it out.

“If you ever even consider breaking up with someone while you’re under the age of thirty,” her mom had said to her, once, when she’d been in high school, “then that means you should break up with them. It’s quite simple, I think. At that age, you don’t have time to be wasting on useless namby-pambys.”

And for years, Akira followed that advice. And for years, Akira never had a relationship last more than about six months. And then she met Asahi, and the six month marker passed by almost unnoticed, and another six months went by and things were back to normal again. Why? Was her mom right? Akira didn’t like the idea of her mom being right, because look what a fine piece of work she had landed for a husband. Their dad was a workaholic among workaholics. He placed his job above seven years of his children’s lives.

Was Asahi the same? Not exactly. He placed Akira above his job; that much was abundantly clear. It was also abundantly clear that he placed his job above himself. Akira could not understand it. He valued his relationships first, then his means of making his livelihood, and then lastly himself. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? Akira wanted to throttle him and teach him how deserving of love he was; how kind and generous and smart and handsome he was. He did not deserve to have such a low opinion of himself. Akira wondered what else he deserved that he did not have. A girlfriend that didn’t want to throttle him, maybe.

She found him that evening at the corner of the town square, the sun already down, smoking a cigarette while leaning against a tree. She thought smoking was kind of cool, even though the first time he offered her one, she almost ate it when she doubled over to cough her lungs out after the first puff. He was still wearing that goddamn plaid suit jacket, too, and Akira sighed, laughing to herself. He had four or five of them, and he just rotated through them every few days. Someone must’ve told him that he looked good in plaid suit jackets, once. And they would’ve been right, Akira thought to herself, because he looked really goddamn good in plaid suit jackets, but Akira sometimes found herself wishing that he would show up with something different. Oh well, she thought, at least they weren’t turtlenecks, or sweatervests, or something. The plaid suit jacket hill was not the worst one to die on.

“Hello, Akira,” he said, and she pecked him on his fuzzy cheek.

And everything was happy, and that was the end, and Akira loved him, as always. That had never been in question, right? And their date was perfect, and they did not even speak about any argument they ever had, and Asahi was handsome, and Akira knew she was looking pretty handsome as well, in a red dress he’d never seen before that he could not stop staring at. They did not talk about their jobs and they did not talk about themselves. What did they talk about, then? Whatever couples talk about when the world is an infinite expanse of eggshells, and you just want to make the other person happy. You learn to hold still.

She held still all the way until their date was over, and they were just leaving the restaurant, and then she got a phone call.

Work.

Akira’s heart started racing in her chest. She did not really care about the people at work. She might get angry at them, sometimes, but that was an isolated part of her life. She shared it with Asahi just to vent.

But she cared about the infinite expanse of eggshells. She told herself she would not pick it up. She was on break. She had no obligation to listen to the suits right now.

“Sorry, I’m just going to take this,” she said to Asahi, and he smiled and nodded.

She walked a few steps away from him, around the corner of the restaurant, and adjusted her coat on her shoulders. She listened to a nondescript voice apologize to her a thousand times.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Akira said over the phone, and Asahi’s eyes widened.

“What is it?” he asked.

Akira stormed another few steps away and continued her conversation, where Asahi couldn’t distract her. She came back a few minutes later red in the face with rage. She looked like she wanted to hit something.

“What is it?” Asahi repeated.

“They want me to go on a fucking business trip! I booked this break what must have been six months ago! They’re just trying to dangle a promotion in front of me to see if I’ll drop onto my knees and suck all their dicks!”

Asahi winced. “You don’t want to go?”

“NO!” Akira shouted. “No, I don’t want to fucking go!”

Asahi raised his hands. He looked up and down the street and saw no-one, but felt anxious anyways.

“Can we stop shouting, please?” he shouted.

“You would go, wouldn’t you? You don’t care if your job bends you over backwards, you just let it happen! I’m going to tell them to fuck off, and we’ll see what they do about it!”

“Akira, I don’t know what the hell kind of world you think we live in, but this is Japan, on Earth, okay? What if they fire you?”

“They’re not going to bloody fire me,” Akira seethed, trembling with rage. “They’re too afraid of my dad, and now they want me to be afraid of them! Why don’t you grow a fucking spine, for a change?”

“Oh, really?” Asahi hissed, feeling himself pulled along. “Well why don’t we look at where I am, and where you are, huh?”

“Yes, let’s,” Akira yelled, “because over the course of the past six months I’ve watched you turn into a fucking zombie. You come home and the only thing you have energy to do is drink. You used to draw! We used go out and watch movies, while you weren’t fucking blasted. I’ve watched you melt, okay? And all because you don’t have the balls to tell people to screw when they need to be told to screw!”

“I’m doing my goddamn job! I’m doing everything for you, and you don’t even know it! You’re always so selfish, Akira. The only person you ever help is yourself! What do you do, huh? You shred papers for billion dollar corporations, that’s all you do! Where would this city be if it didn’t have engineers making sure the streets aren’t full of shit?”

“There you go. There you fucking go, talking about helping everyone, about how amazing and wonderful your job is. Who?” Akira demanded. “Who are you helping?”

Asahi paused. “I’m helping everyone,” he said sternly.

Akira’s tone lowered. She wasn’t shouting anymore, which only made her anger more pointed. “Someone else can do your job.”

“They’d do it worse. They might make mistakes.”

“That’d be their problem, not yours. You’re miserable.”

“I'm not miserable,” Asahi said, but his voice wasn’t as resolute as he hoped.

“Oh really? Well, what about everything you keep saying about how you ‘don’t deserve me’ or how you think I should hate you, what the fuck is that all about? Don’t you realize that six months ago, you would never have been saying any of that shit? What are you trying to do, make me want to break up with you? You don’t get to decide that! That’s for me to choose! I tell you how much I love you all the fucking time! Why can’t you listen to me?”

“Well, I’m sorry, alright?” Asahi shouted abruptly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t smart enough to get into med school! But this is the best job I can get with the degree I have to help the most people!”

Akira sneered. “And helping people makes you happy?”

“It does,” Asahi said.

“You’re happy?”

“I’m happy,” Asahi said, shriveling up. “I should be happy.”

Akira leaned against a lamppost. She ran her hands down her face.

“Listen, Asahi,” she began, her tone mostly softened, but not entirely. “I know a little while back, I said you'd have to be stupid to quit your job. I take it back. You should do what makes you happy. The two of us are lucky enough that we could afford it, even if you were to go and get a job that pays worse. You could even... you know, you could move in with me, and then we wouldn't have to be paying for both of our apartments.”

“It’d just depress you, if you had to deal with me all the time.”

“But I'm saying that if you changed jobs, maybe you wouldn't be so depressed.”

Asahi did not know he agreed with her. “I can't move in with you right after your sister moved out. She'd think you just kicked her out to replace her.”

“She wouldn't think that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I could tell her that I didn't mean it that way, and she'd believe me, because it's true.”

Asahi went quiet, and so did Akira. The snow was coming down in a fine mist. Akira swore she could see the individual snowflakes, melting against the glass of the restaurant. She knew that what she was suggesting would not work. Not in the long term. She figured Asahi knew it, as well.

She felt helpless. She felt like nothing ever worked for her. She felt like she never wanted to do this again.

“I think we should break up,” Asahi suggested sadly, after a long pause, and Akira was suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to strangle him.

And then she stopped, and she remembered that this was what she’d been thinking about for the past two weeks. She didn’t really know why, at the time. Just a vague, gut feeling. And now she knew. The part of her that wanted to salvage their relationship was dying. Because there are different kinds of people, in love. There are people that can lose nothing, people that can only lose a part of themselves, and people that can lose everything. Saki, Akira, Miki.

She nodded, slowly, and the two of them stood in front of each other, both avoiding the other’s eyes.

“Why did we end up here?” Akira asked. Not to Asahi, really.

“I don’t know,” he said.

There were snowflakes gathering on Akira’s shoulders. Oh, Akira thought, when did it start snowing?

“Maybe if we talked more, early on?” Asahi suggested.

“Those first few months.”

“Maybe.”

Akira’s cheeks were wet. She wiped her face with her sleeves. Oh, Akira thought, when did I start crying? She had never cried in front of Asahi before.

“We’re doing all this random bullshit,” Akira sobbed, “because we want the other person to be happy.”

“Is that so wrong?” Asahi asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. But then why do I end up hating you so much?”

Asahi was silent, he looked at his feet.

“I really, really loved you,” Akira said, stepping over to him and wrapping him up in a hug. She nuzzled her face into his chest. She felt either the melted snow or her tears mat his coat to her cheeks.

“I loved you, too,” he said, over her shoulder.

==========

Miki was lonely. She gazed despondently over the cafeteria and her eyes traced over where Suzu would usually sit, the table empty and just as lonely as Miki; the chairs had been scavenged and used to crowd other tables. There was no-one left in her life that she could turn to. No-one to share her pain with. She could feel herself aging. She dropped her head into her hands and almost sobbed. There was no-one to talk to.

“Miki, have you heard a word I’ve said in the past five fucking minutes?”

“No,” Miki answered honestly. Saki glowered at her.

“This is unnatural. This is insane. I can’t stand to see you like this. You’re going to waste away.”

“No I won’t,” said Miki, wasting away.

“You’re really out of it, huh?”

Miki did not reply.

“Let me guess; love troubles?”

Miki sighed. Saki tilted her head, and she was a little pissed off. Miki was back to being depressed, and Saki did not know why, and she didn’t really think it was love troubles. She was just trying to distract her. Saki was a little pissed off, but more than that, she was worried.

Miki still did not reply, and Saki stood up abruptly and pounded the table. Miki nearly jumped out of her chair.

“That’s it!” Saki said adamantly. “I’m declaring an Emergency Shanghai! Complete with at least three chocolate croissants!”

“Three chocolate croissants?” Miki repeated, stupefied by the gluttony of the girl before her. “Who the hell’s gonna eat three chocolate croissants?”

“I can’t believe I ate three chocolate croissants,” Miki said, slouching into her chair in the booth and patting her stomach.

“Three minutes and fifty-five seconds,” Saki said, eyeing the clock on the far wall again. “You’re getting faster.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”

“I don’t know either,” Saki laughed, “but it’s impressive.”

Miki pushed her plate forward and reached for the glass of milk she had asked for. She drained it and set that back on the table, too. Saki watched her with a slightly sad expression.

“Well, what is it? I know you do have love troubles, from that sigh, even if I don’t think that’s the only issue. But you can tell me about your love troubles, at least. I think I know how to deal with those.”

Miki dropped her head into her hands.

She wondered if she was really going to start talking about relationship issues with Saki. Miki and Suzu had done a good job of hiding it; they barely ever talked during school hours, and were always very careful not to get caught visiting the other’s room, unlike Saki, who somehow managed to get caught in less than twenty-four hours with her boyfriend-to-be.

And yet Saki saw through them anyway. Maybe they were not nearly as subtle as they hoped.

If Saki already knew, who else might there be that was aware of their secret? Nurse, probably. Any number of her classmates might have seen these supposed ‘looks’ that Miki and Suzu gave each other that Saki had pointed out. It was unlikely, but if the two of them being together was already an open secret, then that must’ve meant that the people that knew were kind enough not to go shouting it from the top of the roof, like they had with Saki and Koro’s supposed ‘relationship.’

Miki decided, finally, that she didn’t care.

“Suzu…” she said, “gave me an ultimatum, yesterday.”

Saki waited, watching her.

“She told me that she can’t keep hiding, because it’s stressing her out too much, and she thinks it's making me paranoid, and she’s probably right.”

Saki nodded. “So…”

“Either we stop hiding or we break up.”

“Shit,” Saki said.

“Yeah, shit.”

“And you don’t want to do either of those things, do you?”

“No.”

Miki could not contemplate the idea of breaking up with Suzu. She could contemplate the idea of telling others about the two of them, but she could not contemplate the idea of Suzu getting hurt.

Miki loved everything about Suzu. She loved the way she sat, her head tilted lazily to the side and her feet pointed inwards, her knees pressed together. She loved the way she would snore, sometimes, her head on Miki’s chest, and then insist vehemently that she had never snored in her life. She loved the way Suzu’s collarbone was sculpted, almost out of porcelain, in the shape of a recurve bow, and how she painted it all the way across with purple kisses. She loved how Suzu got strangely good grades despite shamelessly sleeping through all of their classes. She loved how Suzu never bragged about it, only insisting on helping her with her studying despite knowing guiltily how most of their tutoring sessions tended to go. She loved how she could draw a yelp from Suzu’s lips just by walking up behind her and innocuously patting her on the shoulder, stealthily tracing a finger down her neck as she did so. She loved how she could make Suzu squirm the entire day with just a handful of touches, and then take her apart like a doll whenever she wanted, because Suzu would sit patiently on her bed while they talked about whatever seemed to come to mind, and Miki would pretend she couldn’t see Suzu clenching her thighs together or bunching up the sheets in her hands. She loved how the only place Suzu wanted to be put back together after being taken apart was in Miki’s arms, her skin blisteringly warm and snoring again.

“Why don’t you want other people to know about you two?” Saki asked, drawing her back to the present. “We… kind of danced around this subject, when we bought those earrings for you, and I didn’t press because I saw that you didn’t like to talk about it. But you didn’t make me swear to secrecy, so clearly you’re okay with some people knowing.”

Those kinds of memories with Suzu were sacred, Miki thought. If other people knew about their relationship, who knows what they would think? Miki had just lived through a week of absurd, lewd gossip related to Saki and Koro, and already the idea of the same thing happening with herself and Suzu sickened her. They were stomping all over holy ground with their very thoughts.

“You don’t understand,” Miki grumbled, leaning her chin against her hand and turning away.

“No, I don't fucking understand. I can’t imagine why the hell you would think boobs are so great, for example. That kind of thing I’ll never understand. But the social stuff is just people. I don’t really understand people, either, but I can at least try to, so long as you tell me.”

Miki sighed, flicking the crumbs of her chocolate croissant around on her plate.

“Do you know what people have been saying about you and Koro, for the past week?”

“I can imagine,” Saki said, shrugging. “I’ve heard some of it.”

“How can you stand it? Imagining people saying things like that about Suzu and I… it makes my skin crawl.”

“It's a part of life, isn’t it? Horny teenagers are everywhere. I’d know; I’m one of them.”

“Weren’t you denying being a horndog, earlier?”

Saki shrugged again, smiling sheepishly. “I’ve learned to accept that part of myself.”

“Over a week?”

Saki shrugged a third time, her sheepish smile growing wider. “Character growth,” she said simply. “It’s all the rage nowadays.”

“Doesn’t it make you feel sick?” Miki interrogated desperately.

“Why on Earth would it make me feel sick? What’s there to be ashamed about?”

“Losing control. I feel like I’m going to go crazy.”

“Oh,” Saki said, pursing her lips. “You've got it bad, don't you?”

Miki dropped her head into her hands. “Very, very bad.”

Saki leaned forward, scrunching her face up in thought. “Well, I think the only reason it should make you feel sick is if you believe that having a sex drive is bad, which it isn’t. You’re obviously super in love with her, which I think is great, and wow I just realized I’m lecturing someone about how to have control over their crushes. Goddamn. Boomerang.”

Saki went quiet. She shook her head, amused at how ridiculous this situation was. Miki looked up at her exasperatedly for the same reason.

“Having a sex drive isn’t evil, Miki. The reason you think you’re going crazy is probably because you think it is, to some degree, and you flagellate yourself whenever you have thoughts that aren’t beautiful and innocent and pure. Repressing thoughts just makes you focus harder on repressing them. It’s a cycle.”

“So what’s the solution, huh? I just end up like you?”

Saki winced.

Miki’s face dropped into a frown. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it like…”

“No, I know what you mean. I’m kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, and you want to be somewhere in the middle. We’ve gone on a massive tangent, anyways. What about Suzu, again? You still haven’t told me about why you don’t want people to know about you two, since I’m pretty sure you being horny isn’t the only thing.”

“I’m not-” Miki began, and Saki smirked. That smirk infuriated Miki. Mostly because she knew Saki was right.

“See, you can’t even handle being called horny!” Saki pointed out.

Miki frowned. “You really have a way of getting on people’s nerves, don’t you?”

“I have nurtured this talent my entire life.”

Miki leaned in and dropped her tone. “Listen, Saki…” Miki said, and the mood shifted. “I don’t give a shit about my parents. They’d probably dislike me being gay, since they already hate the fact that I do sports, but I don’t care what they think. Suzu’s parents, though… she really loves them. She couldn’t handle it if they started hating her because of this.”

“And you think that if you’re open around school, the news would eventually get around to her parents?”

“Yeah,” Miki said. “They visit pretty often, and they talk to the teachers and staff. It might happen in a year, or it might happen immediately, but they’d find out eventually.”

“Hmm,” Saki hummed in thought. “And that’s not even talking about her career.”

“Exactly,” Miki agreed. “Suzu’s way smarter than me. If she wants to go to university or get a good job, they’re going to care even more about that kind of thing.”

Saki leaned back in her chair and frowned, reaching for her cup of coffee and taking a sip. She tilted her head and rubbed her chin in thought, fiddling with the lanyard on her cane. After a few moments, she locked eyes with Miki again.

“Don’t you think… Suzu has already thought about this?”

Miki frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s her life. After so long being together with you, don’t you suppose she’s thought about what the consequences of the world finding out she’s gay would be? She wouldn’t give you this decision to make if she hadn’t considered it at all, or, at least, if she didn’t find the pain of hiding away to be worse than the potential pain of being open.”

“I-I-” Miki sputtered. “Of course she’s thought about it! It doesn’t mean that she’s making the right decision!”

Saki frowned and looked Miki dead in the eyes, tapping on the table for emphasis.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like to hide the fact that you’re in love with someone, because I’ve never done it, but it sounds like the most painful experience on the planet. Maybe it doesn’t matter all that much to you, but to Suzu, it might mean everything.”

Miki was standing up now. “Of course it matters to me! It hurts all the fucking time! But I’m suffering for her!”

Saki stared at her resolutely. “Don’t you think that’s super patronizing? Suzu’s decided. She’s weighed what matters to her and decided that she can’t keep hiding with you because it would hurt her too much. Maybe she has a plan for what will happen after you two go open, but it sounds to me like you haven’t even talked about this with her. It sounds to me like you’re just making all these decisions for her, without even respecting her opinion enough to listen to her. I know you say you’re doing it out of love for her, and I believe you, but if you really love her, shouldn’t you respect her wishes for herself?”

Miki slumped back into the booth. She ran her hands down her face in exhaustion.

“I just… want her to be happy.”

“And sometimes that means letting people make their own stupid decisions for themselves,” Saki smiled gently, giggling. “I’m not saying to run around the school screaming how much you love Suzu like some kind of character in a manga, I’m just saying that you should talk about it with her. Maybe she has more of a plan than you do.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Miki sighed.

“I know it’s natural to worry about other people, especially the people that you’re in love with, but you need to think of yourself first, and let other people handle themselves. Worrying about others to the detriment of yourself makes no sense.”

Saki slammed her cup onto the counter, causing a few drops to slosh out.

“Listen, Miki,” Saki said, her voice harsh, like a mother scolding a daughter, but her harshness was not really directed towards Miki. “I only have fifteen years left on this rock, max. I don't have time for this ‘will I, won’t I’ bullshit. I don't have time to feel bad for no reason. I don't have time to worry about other people's happiness when the best thing I can do to avoid making people unhappy is to just stop fucking caring, and worry about myself. Maybe that makes me weird and awful and evil, and maybe society really would collapse if everyone thought like me, but I just don’t care anymore.”

She huffed and slouched back into her seat. Miki was staring at her intently.

“You agree?” Saki asked, after a moment.

“That’s… no, not really. I can’t just ignore other people. It’s second nature to me.”

Saki frowned. “Aww,” she moaned. “I thought I was getting through to you. If I can get one person to really see eye to eye with me on this before I kick the bucket, I’d be happy.”

Miki shook her head sadly. “I understand what you mean, though. The best way I can show that I love her is to let her make her own decisions.”

“Yes!” Saki exclaimed, straightening. “Exactly! Communication is the most important part of relationships!”

Miki tilted her head in a combination of confusion and amusement. She couldn’t understand how Saki was saying that, given her own circumstances. She shook her head and stared at Saki quizzically.

“Really?” Miki asked, half-jokingly.

“Really,” Saki replied.

“Really really?”

“Really really.”

“Really really really?”

“Okay,” Saki stopped her, “I know you’re trying to allude to something, here, but I literally have no idea what it is. Adding another ‘really’ isn’t going to help.”

Miki facepalmed, laughing to herself. She was looking at the biggest, dumbest, most lovable hypocrite on the planet. She realized that her own circumstances with Suzu were just as dumb; she only had two options, didn’t she? Either break up with Suzu or don’t.

“You know what?” she said, deciding something. “Fine. Me and Suzu are going public. On one condition.”

Saki tilted her head. “Huh? What’s that?”

Miki smiled devilishly. “You’ve gotta do a favor for me.”

==========

Akira knocked on the door to Lilly’s dorm and prayed she’d found the right one. Akira had already called her to tell her she was coming, but never asked for the room number. She didn’t want to let on that she had forgotten it. She figured it would come back to her when she got to Yamaku, but it hadn’t, and so she’d been forced to ask one of the girls in the common room, which went smoothly but was plenty embarrassing.

She heard some scrambling inside the room. She figured Hanako, Lilly’s friend, who was practically attached at her hip in the same way that that Shiina girl seemed to be attached to Shizune’s hip, was visiting. This was a bit of an issue because Hanako was extraordinarily shy, and Akira had only met her a handful of times. They knew each other enough that Hanako didn’t immediately run away at the merest sight of her, like she did the first time they met, but she still barely talked when Akira was around.

“The door’s unlocked,” she heard Lilly’s voice call from inside. She pushed the door open and stepped in.

“Heya, sis. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Akira. How are you doing?”

“Well, thanks.”

Lilly and Hanako were sitting on opposite sides of a kotatsu, both in their pyjamas, which initially surprised Akira before she checked her watch and saw that it was getting pretty late. She walked over and dropped to her knees at the closer side of the table while Lilly poured her a cup of tea.

“School’s fine?” she asked.

“Yes, no changes there. My grades are all very good, although I’ve had to put a little more effort into math than usual. I can fetch my test papers, if you would like to see them.”

“You don’t have to. I trust you.”

Lilly smiled. “Thank you.”

Akira returned the smile. She stretched her arms over her head and arched her back. She’d been sitting in the car too long. “How’s living in the dorms been?” she asked.

“Pleasant,” Lilly said, turning to Hanako. “The two of us and I can have visits like this, now.”

“You’re all packed? You don’t mind coming back for the holidays.”

“I am, my suitcases are by the bed, and yes, I don’t mind. The two of us have discussed it.”

“I-I’ll be f-fine,” Hanako said, her voice barely audible. “Lilly didn’t used to l-live here, anyway.”

“If you really want to stay, I’m perfectly fine by myself, Lilly. I was just teasing you when I said I needed you at my place or I’d eat takeout every night.”

“So you haven’t been eating takeout every night?”

Akira frowned. “No…” she said.

“Are you alright, Akira? You seem a little down.”

“I am; a little down, that is. I’ll get over it, though. I’m happy.”

“Oh? What’s the occasion?”

“Getting to see my sister.”

Lilly’s face reddened slightly. Akira realized she would probably ask about Asahi at some point, but she didn’t care. She’d tell her when she needed to tell her. She just wanted to see her sister again.

“Hey, sis,” Akira began.

“Yes?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

Akira scooted over beside her and wrapped her up in a hug. “For being my sister,” she said.

Lilly went quiet. After a moment, she settled in and returned the hug. She was not used to Akira showing her affection in such a straightforward manner; she decided she liked it.

“Come here, you,” Akira called over her shoulder, and Lilly realized she was talking to Hanako. “Don’t you want in?”

Hanako squeaked. She inched around the table and looked at Akira worriedly, before finally enveloping Lilly in a hug, too. The three of them stayed there a long time.

==========

The common room, too, had a way of becoming crowded near the winter break. Though winter break had already started for some, since few could really be bothered to attend classes on the last Friday before said break. Yamaku had really splurged on their budget for the common room, since usually when parents came to visit and examine the dorms the common room was all they saw. As such, it had four large, expensive sofas, a considerable selection of no less than five potted plants, which kept dying because the girl put in charge of watering them changed every month and usually forgot about halfway through. It even had a big flatscreen TV that Rika and her first-year friends were hogging. They were mashing buttons on strange, rectangular controllers with stick-up bits like an old Atari, though Suzu was pretty sure it wasn’t an Atari.

Suzu liked the common room because the sofas were comfortable, and she didn’t really mind the sound of the robotic voices on the TV shouting dumb things like “hiya!” with every other punch, or coughing a “hmmph!” whenever they got hit. Rika knew practically every character’s win quote, and she would sometimes copy their pose and say even dumber lines like “it is time to judge your crimes!” and “this place will be your graveyard!” when she got really into it. She was undoubtedly the best Street Fighter player at the school, and Suzu would watch in awe as her fingers danced across the controls as she simultaneously taunted her opponent. It made Suzu sleepy.

Sometimes Rika challenged Suzu to a match just to get her off the sofa and away from whatever book she was reading, and Suzu would have to learn the entire control scheme all over again. She was hopeless. One day she had decided she would really try to learn it, and she spent three continuous afternoons playing an hour of Street Fighter a day, until something interrupted her. She came back after a day off and could not even remember which button attacked and which button blocked. Rika gave up on her after that. Suzu couldn’t blame her; she gave up on herself after that.

Suzu had read the last page in her book probably four times over, and still couldn’t get anything to stick. She set it down on her chest and stared at the ceiling. When the ceiling got boring, she let her head drop to the side and she watched the characters move on the TV, Rika rocking excitedly back and forth as she sat on the floor and taunted the girl sitting beside her. Most people liked Rika once they got to know her, but some of the girls that didn’t know her didn’t like her because her console ended up with the girls’ common room packed full of boys. Some girls appreciated that; most didn’t. Suzu didn’t really care either way, but she thought she probably didn’t have much of a right to comment, since she was in a unique circumstance.

What was Miki doing, right now? Miki went to classes that morning, for some reason, but she should have gotten back. Was she at the track? Suzu sighed. She knew that pushing Miki like this was the right thing, in the end, but she still worried about what Miki would choose. She liked to think that Miki would choose her. Every instinct of hers told her that Miki loved her just as much as she loved Miki. She knew Miki was probably just as worried about her.

“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout, sleepyhead?” Rika asked her. At some point Rika had paused her game and spun around to face her, probably at the insistence of the light-haired boy sitting beside her, who was looking at Suzu strangely nervously. Everyone except Suzu knew that the light-haired boy had a crush on her, even though he was only a first year.

“The progressive decay of society due to the tendency of our moral systems to idolize a lack of self-esteem, resulting in a self-oppressing society.” Suzu answered blithely. “What else?”

“You’re reading Nietzsche again?” Rika scolded, turning back to her game. “That shit’ll rot your brains, trust me.”

Suzu smiled. “I like my brains just how they are, rot and all.”

Suddenly the door to the common room slammed open. Suzu could not see why, because she was lying down on the sofa and it was in her way, but it was loud.

“Hey, suckers!” shouted a voice from the entrance to the common room, interrupting them. “Where’s Suzu?”

The room went silent. After a few moments, Suzu called back, sheepishly, without raising her head above the back of the sofa: “M-Miki? W-what are you-”

“I love you!” Miki cried. “Merry Christmas!”

And Suzu heard her shoes slap roughly on the ground as she ran away, followed by the door to the dorms creaking open and slamming shut.

Suzu stammered. She was not able to get a word out. Their secret had just washed over the room like a tidal wave. Suzu wondered if she was dreaming. The entire common room was looking at her. Rika was looking at her. The boy with the light hair was looking at her.

“What just happened?” Suzu asked, and everyone pretended that they had no idea, even though all the girls lived in the same dorms and the walls were paper thin and Suzu and Miki had started wearing the same earrings. Rika laughed and unpaused her game.

==========

The walk back to the school had been completed in a great amount of shame. It started to snow, about halfway up, though it wasn’t all that cold. When they got back to the dorms, Miki had to leave Saki outside, dart in, dart back out, and then grab Saki again before she could sneak off. She was dragging Saki along and leaving two thin trails in the frosted dirt where Saki’s heels were dug into the ground, trying in vain to slow herself down. Karma, Miki thought, is a bitch.

The truth is that Miki’s heart was pounding in her chest so hard she thought she was going to explode. She had never been very good at planning, so she did everything on impulse and regretted it afterwards. Things were going badly for her this time; she regretted it now! She thought that more than just her brain would soon be melting into goop. She thought she would die. She was seriously contemplating the prospect of rolling up into a big ball and dying, like that one song about rolling up into a big ball and dying. She was already making plans to drag Suzu into bed to do evil, sinful things, like talk about their feelings. Before she decided whether or not she had to die afterwards, however, she needed to beat this confession out of Saki.

Miki dragged Saki to the track. Koro was there, watching Emi circle the track in a dead sprint and a handful of other guys tossing a ball back and forth. Miki was almost as much of a track addict as they were, but she still couldn’t understand why any of them would be here on Christmas Eve, of all days.

When Koro saw the two of them approach he stood up off the bleachers and walked towards them, hands in his pockets so his large, muscled arms stuck out to his sides like chicken wings. Saki was salivating, and then she remembered she was supposed to be putting up resistance. But it was too late. She was already at the track and Miki had already grabbed Saki by the shoulder and pushed her forward, nodding to Koro and walking away casually for a few moments before breaking into a dead spring of her own back towards the dorms. Saki reached out to her, but did not move.

“Hey, uh, Saki,” he said, watching Miki leave curiously.

Saki stared at the ground. She was hiding a bouquet of flowers, clasped shakily in one hand behind her back.

“What are those?” Koro asked, stepping closer to her.

“Flowers,” Saki said. “Here. Now you can give me flowers.”

Saki handed him the flowers.

“What?”

Saki took the flowers back.

“Oh my!” she exclaimed. “Are these for me? I’m flattered that you would do such a thing! Whatever could this mean?”

Koro stared at Saki, blinking. He could guess what was coming, even if he did not know what to say. There are things that people ought to do, and things that people ought to feel, Koro thought. Saki was smart and pretty and kind. He liked when she was around, and she had nursed him back to health when everyone else who he had thought loved him so much had been content just to visit him once or twice. He’d heard Saki had chased a few of the more overzealous visitors away, so maybe that was part of it, but now he also had her to thank for that, too, because he didn’t love having visitors while his face was swollen and purple.

“I’m making this pretty easy for you, I think,” Saki said, interrupting his thoughts.

“You are, thanks. I’m… uh… I want to say I’m flattered, but you just said that.”

“We can both be flattered.”

“We can both be flattered.”

“If you can’t tell,” Saki blushed, “I really like you.”

“Thank you. I do too.”

Koro scratched the back of his head. The two of them went silent again. He did like her, right? He ought to want to date her, no? It’s not like they had to be a couple immediately; she was just asking him on a date. And if he chose not to, he would just be upsetting her. For what? His feelings? Upsetting her, and not even because he wanted to upset her, but simply because he felt indifferent, would be relinquishing some kind of duty.

He did not know what duty exactly.

Koro grew uncomfortable, and he spoke just to fill the silence.

“So… I guess… here we are. Out in the cold.”

Saki looked down and held the bouquet behind her, tapping her feet against each other as she felt her face ignite.

“I just… want to know if you would… maybe… go out with me?”

Maybe he would grow into it. If he just gave it some time, maybe he would start blushing when he thought about her, like she was now.

“I would love to,” Koro said, smiling.

Saki jerked her face up, her eyes as wide as dinnerplates.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Really really?”

“Really really.”

“Really really really?”

“Really really really.”

“Oh my god,” exclaimed Saki, dropping the bouquet behind herself to clap her hands to her cheeks and squeal in excitement. “Merry Christmas!”

The End.

I love this reference: "repeating by ear" is something any musician is familiar with! And the story is quite repetative...

Akira is as funny and as lively as ever, until she isn't; Miki is, well, Miki... until she becomes kinda Rin in the second part, your Saki is the biggest horndog ever, and boy, interrogating Akira about her love life is too much fun (she will date Hisao in a few years anyway.), and ooooohh Akira delivered her revenge so perfectly!

What does the "mimsy-arsed" mean? Aaaanyway...

Another good advice from this story: bois, shave your face regularly. There is no second time for the first impression

All the inner dialogue of Akira about relationships and people is something, that I assume, happened to everyone at some point. Got me some introspection about my past too, hah.

I thought Koro would reject Saki, given, that the established half-canon around him that he's gay. Happy to be proven wrong.

Fear you wishes, they may come true. Love yourself and love your loved ones as much as you love yourself. Stay safe.

This was an amazing story, and a perfect Christmas gift, thank you!

PS: you forgot to show people the prompt.

I did in fact forget to show people the prompt, here it is:
"Three best girls in all of the KS (I mean, Saki, Akira and Miki) are packing Christmas gifts that they plan to give people they like the most and discussing how they want to deliver it to make it the biggest surprise of the year."

There was a second part of it, I wonder if Prof delivered it to you: "Hisao is absent of the story."

You did fulfilled that too regardless!

Airhead Miki is a delight.

I also got baited into thinking Koro would reject Saki, assumed he was supposed to be the gay track captain referred to in the VN.