Chapter Text
Sunday, 00:41 (Ena)
“—and then that guy grabbed me by the wrist and started sayin stupid things… like… ugh, I don’t even want to talk about it anymore…” Ena whined into her microphone.
“So, did you manage to get away from him? Did you do it by yourself or someone helped you?”
It’s 00:41 or 24:41 in Ena’s internal clock, 19 minutes before Nightcord at 25:00 starts their usual daily meetings at… of course 25:00. Amia and Yuki are not yet online, with Amia doing something only God knows and Yuki probably studying or doing her homework. Sometimes, Ena wonders how Yuki manages taking normal morning-day classes, studying outside school hours, going into a cram school, and making music for N-25. Or even K. She seems to always be online no matter the time of the day. Ena could log in at any given time and K will be online.
“Well, fortunately Touya-kun saw me and helped me through it.”
There was a moment of silence, before Amia replies.
“So you got saved by Touya-kun?”
“Well, sort of.”
“Touya-kun is such a gentleman, isn’t he~ It would be a pity if he went through all that effort helping you if you don’t even try to repay the favor though~.”
“Well, I did treat him to lunch, you know.” Ena said.
Ena tries not to think too much about Amia’s sentence, but with how the way Amia phrased it, thay said it like they already knew from the start about everything that happened with Touya from her getting hit on, Touya helping her, to her treating Touya to lunch. Although with Amia’s personality and how they like to tease anyone about anything, she decided to put a second thought about it.
‘Maybe they’re just teasing me and coincidentally made an accurate guess.’ Ena reassures herself.
“Oh, really? That’s very nice of you to take him to a lunch date~”
“H-huh, what? Don’t call it a date, Amia. I simply paid his favor back. That’s it.” Ena stuttered while saying this.
“I’m not so sure about that~” Amia started teasing her even more.
“Ugh whatever, I hate you, Amia.
“Love you too, Enanan~” Really, telling Amia about this is the stupidest thing she might have ever done.
Yuki joins the voice call
“Hello, Amia, Enanan.”
“Hi, Yuki~! How was you day?”
“Um, nothing much. Cram school is very exhausting today…”
“Well, I can’t relate to that unfortunately…” Amia moans as Yuki mentions school.
“It’s okay. Amia, you don’t have to relate to my condition. Also, my junior Otori-san invited me for lunch together, so at least I had someone to keep me company. It’s not really that exhausting.”
“Hmm a lunch date then~ do you know who else had a luch with their junior~?”
“Oi, A-amia! Besides- does that girl even go to cram school?” Ena raised her voice.
“She said her parents and brothers forced her to go to one even if she didn’t need to go to one. Final exam is coming in a month, perhaps it’s because of that. Also, Enanan, did you also got lunch with your… junior as well?” Yuki answered her question, and throws yet another question at her.
“Um, n-” Ena’s attempt at rebuking the question is cut off.
“Apparently miss Ena here took her junior, Aoyagi Touya to a nice platonic lunch date at a café~!” Amia emphasized the word ‘platonic’ which made it sound sarcastic.
“Ugh, how many times should I told you, Amia, that it’s n-not even a date!”
“0 times as you could never convince me otherwise~”
“I don’t really want to pry into your personal life, but even if it’s a date or not, platonic or not, the most important thing is that you’re happy and you’re enjoying the moment, right?”
Not long after that, K joins the voice channel albeit a little later than usual. K apologizes and said that she accidentally fell asleep with their computer on which is instantly met with complains by Amia and Enanan saying that K should get more rest and other things, fully knowing and internally admitting their hypocricy.
Sunday, 02:20 (Ena)
They finished their meeting and Ena is currently laying on her bed with the Nightcord app opened on her phone keeping eyes on if any of her were to announce something important while also scrolling and reading through messages on some other Nightcord servers she’s on. The meeting went smoothly as usual with Amia and Ena bickering at every single chance to do so. Especially today, Amia really teased her a lot about her recent outing with Touya, with Yuki and K just listened in silence like usual. Because final exam is coming in a week, the four of them decided that they would cut down their working hours, since they (Mostly Yuki) all need time to prepare for the exam.
K is now offline per Amia’s request for her to get some sleep (She’s probably still composing and overworking herself, the difference now that she’s just not online on Nightcord). Amia’s Nightcord status shows that they’re currently playing Minecraft and Yuki is offline, which left her as the only person with nothing to do.
Ena thinks back to what Yuki has said earlier. “I don’t really want to pry into your personal life, but even if it’s a date or not, platonic or not, the most important thing is that you’re happy and you’re enjoying the moment, right?”. Did she enjoy the ‘lunch date’ as Mizuki called it? Yes. Did she enjoy being teased endlessly by Mizuki? She would never admit it to anyone, but Mizuki’s teasing albeit insufferable and annoying, made her feel a little bit of butterfly in her stomach. She actually wants Mizuki to tease her about her and Touya even more, because it makes her feel this weird feeling in her stomach- Wait, wait wait. She’s not supposed to enjoy getting shipped with someone she hasn’t interacted much with, doesn’t she?
Thinking about it again, Ena started wondering. Did Touya enjoy going with her? Was he okay with her dragging him out like that? Ena’s intentions might be good, expressing her gratitude for him by treating him to lunch and all, but was he comfortable with it? He hesitated to take on her offer at first although he complied not long after. He even offered to walk her home after that. And based off what Akito told her about him, he’s not a two-faced person who pretends to be nice to her on the outside, but hate her secretly so maybe she should not really worry about that.
Then, she remembers what he asked her on their way home. Ena was rambling about Akito and Mizuki and how she’ll definitely get back at them, and then out of the blue he asked her out. Because, ‘if you want to get back at your brother for dating your best friend, then dating your brother’s best friend is the best way to do so.’ Or at least that’s how Ena pictured his thinking process. ‘Touya-kun’s logic is kinda weird.’ And maybe her thinking process is weirder, accepting his offer just like that without much consideration and now she’s dating Touya.
‘Wait, are we even considered dating right now?’
The more she thinks about their current situation, the more embarrasing it gets as she came to the conclusion that this whole situation is ridiculous and she needs to talk to Touya about this. Both of them havent talked to each other or at least texted each other since that moment (only a couple of hours has passed). She scrolled to find her private message with Touya, most of the time her saying ‘thank you’ to him whenever he gets her plushies he won from the arcade. She musters up the courage to text him, and starts typing. “Touya-kun, can we talk about… what happened?” She typed, but quickly deleted before she gets the courage to send it to him. She tries again. “Um, Touya-kun, can we talk?” No. That’s too threatening and makes it seem like he did something bad, which is not the case. She deletes her message draft again.
She came up and deletes a couple of message drafts, before finally her eyes gave in to her sleep deprivation, falling asleep with her phone in her hand, having made no progress with talking to Touya.
Sunday, 23:15 (Ena)
A whole day passed with Ena making zero progress. She remembered already typing a message to Touya, but she chickened out and even fell asleep while still holding her phone in her hand. She procrastinated on texting Touya until now. She’s staring at her phone right now, thinking of what to say.
‘It should be easy to just text him, why the fuck did I put it off since yesterday?’
She types into the chat. “uh so hi touya-kun”
She hesitates. Why does it feel lowkey scary all of a sudden? She gets up from her bed to take a gulp of water trying to compose herself, and then gets back into her phone.
‘Screw it.’ A random shot of courage made her press the ‘Send’ button. She then follows up with another messages because only saing “uh so hi touya-kun” will probably not be the most communicative and direct approach.
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You: uh so hi touya-kun
You: i wanna talk about… yesterday’s stuff
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She did it. It feels like an achievement and it didn’t turn out to be as scary as she thought, but the clarity after sending a ‘risky text’ (although this one couldn’t really be called risky) kicks in, she instantly closes the messaging app and started walking around in circles in her room with her hand on her chin and furrowed eyebrows for a good minute, until her message notification ringtone plays.
She opens the text message, and sighs in relief that she didn’t screw up anything.
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Touya: Sure, do you want to do it through message or call?
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‘Ugh, why does he have to be really considerate of others?’
Still, it’s a really nice gesture to ask her that. Ena doesn’t really feel like hopping on a call with Touya and it’s definitely going nto get awkward, so she chooses the simple option to talk it out in text
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You: can we just do it through here
Touya: Alright.
Touya: So… are we gonna do it for real? The whole dating thing
Touya: I mean, you don’t have to if you’re not comfortable
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If she had a penny for everytime Touya has been compassionate towards her feelings, she would be the richest girl in the neighborhood.
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You: No it’s fine, just… can we date for like for a couple of weeks first?
Touya: Okay.
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‘Wait, what?’ Did she just asked him for trial dating? And he said ‘okay’?
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Touya: Ena-san, are you open to the idea of going on a date with me?
You: Huh? I mean, it depends on the time… I can do next Saturday.
Touya: Okay, then. Meet me at the mall that day, 10 AM.
You: Sure :)
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Alright. She made plans with Touya, task successful and progress is made. After sending the last message, she closes her phone immediately and buries her face in her pillow, feeling a little flustered but happy that she finally made effort to talk to him nonetheless. She rechecks her phone again to see if Touya had anything else to say, but he said nothing and left her message read with a blue heart reaction. She let out a scream for no reason looking at their messages which earns her a loud bang on her door from Akito, probably looking for midnight snacks or doing anything God knows what.
She then falls asleep with a noticable smile on her face at around 3 in the morning, after continuing her progress on Niigo’s music illustrations.