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Yaoyorozu’s dorm room is generally comforting, despite its slightly cramped nature; her canopied bed occupies the majority of the space, and the shelves adjacent to her bed are lined with—highly expensive, no doubt—bottles of perfume.
Kyouka has watched her in the mornings as she carefully selects a bottle from the shelf, spritzing each of her wrists and just behind her neck. When Kyouka hugs her, she smells sweet, sometimes of jasmine or of rose, and, on the rare occasion, something that isn’t unlike cotton candy. Today, Yaoyorozu smells of lavender, which Kyouka attributes to the bottles of laundry detergent kept in the communal laundry room.
Both Kyouka and Yaoyorozu occupy the large bed. Yaoyorozu’s laptop hums, warm against the satin sheets, and her fingers strike the keyboard with precision, music to Kyouka’s ear. She’s the picture of focus, dutifully completing her homework.
Kyouka, on the other hand, is not the picture of focus. Her mind drifts from perfume bottles to lavender to keyboard clicks, and her gaze flickers up to Yaoyorozu.
Kyouka sighs. Her notebook is splayed out in front of her, blank except for doodles in the margins—her personal favorite depicts a couple that looks suspiciously like herself and Yaoyorozu. Of course, though, it’s just pure coincidence.
Yaoyorozu’s focus is admirable, but Kyouka wishes that maybe, just maybe, she had slightly less of it, that maybe she would pick up on Kyouka’s quiet sighs, or the fact that her pencil has hardly ever scratched against the paper. More than that, though, Kyouka wishes she didn’t care if Yaoyorozu notices, and yet, she sits with her back against the post, shoulders drooped and hands wringing together.
Yaoyorozu’s bedside table contains a plant, newly flowering, and Kyouka’s spirits lift if only slightly when she looks it over; they’d bought it together one afternoon following classes, and though neither of them are blessed with a green thumb, it seems to be flourishing.
Kyouka isn’t sure exactly when Yaoyorozu stops typing. It seems almost gradual—the clacking fades until it’s nothing—and when Kyouka snaps her head up, Yaoyorozu is wearing a look of concern, head cocked to the right.
“Kyouka?”
Tension aches in Kyouka’s shoulders, settling there. It’s almost physically difficult for her to pick her head up in order to make eye contact.
When she does so, Kyouka doesn’t speak, but makes what she hopes is an affirmative noise.
“I hope my asking doesn’t cause you any discomfort,” Yaoyorozu begins, “But you seem to be...a little down. Did anything happen?”
Kyouka shrugs, and the previous tension in her shoulders almost seems to snap. She has a thick skin, or, at the very least, she believes that she does. After all, she had braved coming out to her parents and teasing from her peers throughout childhood. She had endured snide comment after snide comment— Kyouka, why don’t you try harder to look feminine —and others still. And, after all that, Kyouka is absurdly confident in her identity.
So, it’s foolish, perhaps even juvenile, for Kyouka to let something bother her, especially something so…typical.
“He has a list,” Kyouka says, voice even. When she opens her mouth to speak once more, words escape her.
“He—” Yaoyorozu repeats. “Mineta?” She shouldn’t, or, she doesn’t have to ask, because such behavior is typical of their classmate, who Kyouka finds to be particularly nauseating.
“Mineta, yeah.”
Dateable girls of 1-A, the list had been titled in purple pen. And then, underneath that, Ranked most to least sex appeal.
What Kyouka had read, breakdowns of her fellow classmates’ assets (ranked out of five stars, no less), after snatching the paper from his desk had been particularly revolting. She had been appalled, mainly, but found that as she scanned the list, her own name was scrawled at the bottom. Even Tooru—which, Kyouka doesn’t resent her, doesn’t even dislike her—who’s invisible had been ranked before her.
“Mineta is vile,” Yaoyorozu says confidently, as if stating a fact. (Which, for all intents and purposes, she is doing.) “And his lists are vile too, and your position on such a list means nothing.”
In all honesty, it feels innapropriate for Kyouka to let Mineta’s actions affect her—to the extent that they had—but there’s a certain familiar sting that they had delivered, along with a bitter taste in the back of her throat.
Yaoyorozu reaches a hand out tentatively, and when their palms meet, Kyouka flushes pink. Her free hand travels upwards, twirling and releasing one of her ear phone jacks. She repeats this again, and then looks upwards, watching the rise and fall of Yaoyorozu’s chest.
“Kyouka,” she says lowly, letting her thumb rub overtop of Kyouka’s hand. She traces fingers, and then veins, lets her hand rest on a scar that Kyouka must have acquired in her childhood.
“Kyouka,” Yaoyorozu repeats, and Kyouka’s eyes continue to follow the movement of her thumb. “You wouldn’t date him, regardless, after all.”
“I wouldn’t. I don’t go near him if I can help it.”
Yaoyorozu laughs, then, and Kyouka has seen Mount Fuji, has seen rivers and oceans, seen diamonds and ancient art in museums, but nothing, comparatively, is quite as beautiful as that sound. Her shoulders slump in relief.
“I’d hope you wouldn’t date him, considering—” Yaoyorozu breaks off, her own flush mirroring Kyouka’s.
Kyouka ponders, briefly, if the room is heating up—is the temperature controlled automatically?—But no , it’s just her.
“I wouldn’t,” she confirms. The pinkish flush on her cheeks turns to red instead; even if, in some alternate dimension, she and Yaoyorozu weren’t dating, Kyouka doubts she could force herself to love someone else. (And Kyouka can’t force herself to feel anything except utter contempt towards Mineta, so that point is moot.)
They fall quiet, and when Kyouka takes her hand back, she smooths the fabric of her shirt. It’s slightly sweaty still, and her heart thunders in her chest.
Yaoyorozu has, for the most part, placated Kyouka’s unease, but Kyouka still entertains the sickening thought that entered her mind after looking the list over—if Kyouka were more feminine, would Yaoyorozu love her more? Does Yaoyorozu wish that her girlfriend was more traditionally feminine, or, and Kyouka’s heart sinks at this possibility, feel embarrassed to be with her?
No . Kyouka shakes her head, though she can’t quite shake the thoughts which make a home in the confines of her mind. Yaoyorozu loves her. Logically, she knows this. Yaoyorozu holds her hand often. At night, if they can get away with it, they sleep in the same bed (in Yaoyorozu’s room, generally), bodies pressed together so closely that Kyouka can feel the rise and fall of her chest, along with her own.
Yaoyorozu kisses her often, too. She kisses her hands and her forehead, kisses along her jawline and on the apples of her cheeks. And—Kyouka screws her eyes shut, thoroughly flustered—Yaoyorozu kisses her too, all soft lips and tasting of her favorite peach lemonade chapstick.
“Momo,” Kyouka says suddenly, snapping her head up. When their eyes meet though, Kyouka seems to lose steam, and she wrings her hands together in her lap. “Uh. Would—can you. We,” she tries, hands lying flat against her lap.
Yaoyorozu cocks her head, and Kyouka starts over, focusing on a nail polish stain on the bed frame.
“Do you think,” she mumbles, and then, lowly, “kiss me?”
Laughter, gentler still, bubbles up from Yaoyorozu’s chest, and she reaches a hand out slowly, tucking a piece of hair behind Kyouka’s ear. However, instead of pulling away, she traces the curve of Kyouka’s cheek, lets her thumb brush up against Kyouka’s bottom lip.
“I love you, Jirou,” she murmurs, and Kyouka lets herself lean forward into the touch. “You know that, right?”
“I know that,” Kyouka repeats, throat dry. She could never even, never once in a million years, forget that. She says so.
Yaoyorozu leans, too, and when they meet in a slow kiss, Kyouka has to fight the urge to smile—she tastes like peach and sour lemon, and Kyouka loves her so completely.
“I’d never let you forget it—that I love you,” Yaoyorozu tells her when they pull apart, a miniscule string of spit pulling, pulling, and then snapping. They’re still in close proximity, and Kyouka hopes they never move.
“I would never,” she breathes, placing a light kiss to the right corner of Yaoyorozu’s mouth, and then the left, “ever,” a kiss to the center, “forget that, Momo.”