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There are a few things Himuro believes in.
One is perfection. Like a mantra, she repeats to herself that she has to keep the perfect face, the perfect exterior. She has to train harder than everybody (because she isn’t a natural) so that her moves can flow like water.
The other is deception. If she’s perfect outside, nobody can see her core, where she’s rotten with envy and too ruthless for her own good.
Himuro doesn’t consider herself a good person, really. When she arrives at Yosen, she isn’t thinking about playing nice or making friends at all. (She can still feel her knuckles burn from when she’s punched Taiga.)
But, when presented with Murasakibara, it’s easy to slip into being caring, being soft. Patient. She’s not a good person, but she finds herself doing all of these good things. She has to be perfect, after all.
She doesn’t know what’s going on, really. She thinks it might be like playing pretend. Murasakibara pretending she doesn’t care about anything at all, and Himuro pretending she cares about someone who isn't herself.
She sees Murasakibara for the first time during lunch break. Japanese school is still weird for Himuro, with seniority and a love letters in her shoe locker, and she hasn’t made friends with anyone yet. That will probably change when she joins the basketball team.
She’s walking alone in a hallway, when she spots a head of purple hair. The unusual colour makes her think of Taiga, and subtly clench her teeth.
But when the girl comes closer, Himuro forgets about Taiga to notice how tall she is, how tangled and messy and long her hair is, the rumpled collar of her blouse and the ribbon coming loose around her neck, the lint sticking to her tights, and the enormous quantity of snacks she’s carrying with her.
The girl doesn’t seem to notice her staring, too busy juggling the food in her arms, and goes inside what must be her classroom without giving Himuro a single glance.
As far as first encounters go, it’s pretty bleak.
The second is much more striking, as Himuro shows off her basketball prowess on the court, and Murasakibara, still sitting on the bench with the air of a very lazy cat about to take a nap, follows her with seemingly-bored eyes. Her gaze is sharp, though.
Of course she plays basket, she’s so tall, Himuro thinks, and that’s has far as she goes before she sees Murasakibara actually play.
She goes weak in the knees, then, the old bile rising up in her throat.
The first thing Himuro gets told when she makes first string is: if you want to get along with the ace, offer her snacks.
“What kind of snacks?” she asks Liu, who was so kind as to inform her. They’re in the same class, which pleases Himuro for exactly one reason: she can talk with Liu instead of having to indulge all the girls coming to her desk to fawn over her hair or ask her how living in Los Angeles was.
“Sweet ones, usually. Although she does like potato chips and the sort.”
Himuro asks Fukui, too, later at practice, while Murasakibara is out of earshot. Fukui scratches at her head, shakes sweat out of her hair and says “I think the only time I’ve seen her excited was when they launched a new Umai-bo flavour, so that’s a pretty safe choice.”
“Thanks a lot, senpai.”
Next day, after her morning run, she stops at a convenience store on the way back, and spends fifteen minutes and a good portion of her monthly allowance in the snack aisle.
During lunch break, she finds Murasakibara’s class before she can get out to buy food for herself, and puts the bag of snacks on her desk. Murasakibara looks at her from under her messy bangs, mildly curios and vaguely annoyed (which is more emotion than Himuro has seen her show in the last two days).
“Good morning. I thought I’d bring you some treats,” Himuro says, and patiently waits for Murasakibara to look into the bag.
Turns out, she got most of the snacks right. She sits in the chair in front of Murasakibara’s desk, during lunch, and waits for her verdict, watching out of the window and listening to her chew, methodical.
When the bell is about to ring, Murasakibara cleans off her fingertips with quick kitten licks, and states more than asks “You got in the team, haven’t you.” As if they haven’t had two practices together already.
Himuro smiles. “That’s right. I’m Himuro Tatsuko.”
Contrary to almost anyone else since she came back to Japan, Murasakibara doesn’t look the least bit charmed by her politeness, soft voice or complaisance. She just grunts, and opens up the last packet of Pocky Himuro’s offered her with a sharp flick of her wrist. “Buy me more snacks next time, Muro-chin,” Murasakibara says, shoving two of the chocolate-covered sticks in her mouth. Strawberry flavoured.
She doesn’t look one bit embarrassed by her bluntness. Himuro smiles, sweeter than the treats Murasakibara’s eating, sickly-sweet. “Of course.” The bells rings, and she gets up. “See you at practice, Murasakibara-san.”
Himuro doesn’t have many girl friends, if you don’t count Taiga - but Taiga is not really her friend, is she. Her friends were always big guys who shitalked her, at first, only to subside, later, gaping in awe at how hard she could throw a punch. When a girl grows up on street courts, things tend to go that way.
She doesn’t know how or even if she’s friends with Murasakibara Atsuko, really. Her childish personality, dragging feet and shabby appearance would have put Himuro off for good if it were anyone else. But there’s something about Murasakibara, which just... draws her in.
Is it because she’s a genius? That can’t be it; she’s always hated those types, the ones so good that everything seems to come natural to them. The feeling of being bruised and battered and still not having got better is so ingrained in Himuro’s body and mind, it defines her; she hates whoever hasn’t felt it at least once in their life.
Such a feeling must be completely foreign to Murasakibara, who aces tests after barely having opened a book, who can play basketball like other people can breathe.
But then again, Murasakibara’s hair is always tangled and mussed, her clothes messy or ill-fitting, and she looms over everybody with her too-long limbs and grumpy face. She could get in everybody’s good graces, if only she tried a little - her childishness can be endearing, and she has a cute face under her hair and permanent scowl - but instead, she just goes through life like it’s too much of an effort to even be awake.
It gives Himuro a satisfied feeling. Where she wears an armor made of silky long hair, soft smiles and soft voice but sharp eyes, Murasakibara is just herself, relentlessly so, until not a single person can say anything about it.
That’s probably what’s so enticing about her.
She asks Murasakibara if she can call her by her first name one late evening, as they’re coming back from a snack run.
They’ve taken to doing this thing where, on weekends, they go to all the closest Konbini in the area, so that Murasakibara can look at all the new flavors and promotions, and buy as many treats as her little heart desires.
Murasakibara is not a talkative person, but during these snack runs she’s distracted enough that she lets a few things slip out: how she misses Tokyo’s shopping district with its cheap sweet stores, how her older brother always brings her macarons when he comes back from a business trip, how she used to have this friend who would buy her snacks but that is now in Kyoto.
At some point, though, her face usually does this funny thing where her mouth pulls further down and her eyes turn emotionless, and she stops talking for the rest of the day, if not to ask her “Would this flavour be better, Muro-chin? Seaweed or Chili?”
They’re going back to Yosen that evening, taking a shortcut that goes through a cluster of sakura trees, and Himuro is looking at the bare branches, all of the blossoms gone. Her chest feels heavy, for no particular reason.
Murasakibara is just trudging alongside her, chewing on a white chocolate bar, wearing sagging jeans that fall too short on her ankles and an oversized yellow sweater that clashes with her matted hair. Murasakibara never looks awkward in her skin, for all that she treats her body like it’s not actually hers; Himuro feels a surge of... something, so deep in the pit of her stomach, that she has to stop looking at the naked branches contrasting against the darkening sky. It’s not envy, for once.
“Hey,” she says, “Can I call you Atsuko?”
Murasakibara doesn’t stop eating, just gives her a sidelong glance through her hair. She thinks on it for a bit, chewing, looking at the path in front of her, looking up at the sky for a moment, before she shrugs. “If you want.”
One thing that drives Himuro up the wall is watching Atsuko wash her hair after practice without brushing it once. Her hair would be beautiful, if she took the least care of it, instead of simply letting it grow like some kind of monster swallowing up her face.
“Why do you keep it so long if you don’t care for it?” she asks one day, as they’re drying up after their shower.
Atsuko makes a face, sitting down on the bench even though she’s still only clad in her towel. Said hair is dripping down her back, a mess of curls and tangles. “Haircuts are troublesome. I don’t want people to touch my head.” She sounds positively disgusted by the idea.
Himuro sits down beside her to tug up her thigh highs. “But you used to have it shorter in junior high. I saw pictures.”
“Mmh.” She finally starts to rub herself dry, sliding into her panties and bra without taking her towel off, in a practiced move. Atsuko doesn’t seem to care about her body, but she’s so secretive about it that, once you’ve noticed, all pretenses fall away.
Finally, when Himuro is folding up her towels and putting it in her locker, Atsuko sighs and stops glaring down at her blouse like that’ll get it to button up by itself. “In junior high,” she says, like it’s a chore, while she fumbles with the buttons, “Kise-chin used to cut it for me. She was really good at it.”
“Ah,” Himuro nods. She purses her lips, looking at the dark spots appearing on the white of Atsuko’s blouse, her hair still wet and dripping.
Before she can point it out, Atsuko sits on the bench in front of Himuro’s locker and, giving her a look from over her shoulder, she says “Brush it for me, Muro-chin.”
She pretends that she’s long-suffering instead of startled by the request, but it comes almost as second nature to spread a towel over Atsuko’s shoulders and fetch her brush back out of her bag. She starts prying the tangles loose, slowly, carefully. She fights not to let the memories of doing this for Taiga, squirming and apologizing about it, cloud her vision. The ring feels impossibly heavy from where it dangles over her chest.
A weird hush has fallen over the locker room, but Atsuko just takes a packet of chips out of her bag and glares lazily from under her eyelashes at their onlookers.
Once Himuro’s done, Atsuko’s hair falls like wet silk over her shoulders. She wrings it out with the towel, brushes it one last time, then asks Fukui, who’s one of the last in the locker room, still looking at them with an awed expression, if she has a spare hair tie.
Her fingers, usually dextrous, are clumsy when she makes a braid out of it. They might be shaking. “Here, Atsuko.” Her voice doesn’t sound sweet, but soft.
Atsuko tilts her head back, crumbs scattered around her mouth, and very nearly smiles.
When she was a kid, she used to love it when Taiga called her ‘her big sister’; but, as time passed, it felt more and more like a travesty. Taiga was taller than her, better than her at basket, stronger than her in a fistfight.
When, in a fit of envy and rage, she’d told this to Alex, she’d said, “Yeah, but she still looks up to you.”
But it didn’t matter, really. One day, Taiga was going to look down at her, and that was unacceptable. She wasn’t going to need her anymore. Every time Himuro looked at her, her fiery hair shining in the sun, she’d felt bile rising up her throat.
Atsuko doesn’t feel like a little sister at all. She feels like a bad-tempered house pet, a climb so steep its goal is invisible, a warm blanket when she’s shivering. She feels like the shivers down her spine.
After a while, the taste filling her mouth is not acrid anymore. It’s sweet.
Once, while she’s reading with her head in Himuro’s lap, Atsuko lets her book fall on her chest, looks up at her, and says, very serious: “Muro-chin.”
She’s distracted, playing a game on her phone, and she’s taken by surprise when Atsuko touches her cheek. Her fingertips are calloused and dry, and they smell like the chocolate cookies she’d been eating.
“Yeah?” She sits still, waiting for an explanation, but Atsuko just keeps touching her face without saying anything. She brushes her thumb over the mole under Himuro’s eye, and then pushes her hair out of her face; an almost sudden gesture.
She stares at her naked face for a while, before making a satisfied little noise. “Muro-chin looks prettier with her hair out of her face.”
She picks her book back up, and Himuro is left staring at its cover, with an inkling that Atsuko is keeping it so high just to hide the blush on her face.
She’s not a good person, but somehow, she finds herself wanting to do good things for Atsuko, and it’s not playing pretend, this time.
She thinks it’s the way Atsuko has given up on looking anything other than herself that does the trick. Once you look under her frown, see the softness of her downturned mouth and the sharpness of her droopy eyes, it’s so easy to love her.
So Himuro starts brushing her hair before class in the morning, tying it up for her. She brings Atsuko her favourite snacks. She lets Atsuko rest her chin on the top of her head when she’s too tired to stand straight.
The feeling of her hair in her hands, of Atsuko’s chest pressing against her back, settles in her gut like a stone.
If Atsuko’s not caring is just an old habit, then Himuro’s caring may be nothing but a faded photograph of two girls holding a basket ball and smiling towards the camera, dull colours and too-still expressions.
“You know, Atsuko,” she says, while they’re in the snack aisle of a Konbini near the school. They’re buying supplies for their trip to Tokyo tomorrow, and Himuro will have to stop Atsuko from eating everything the moment they’re out of the convenience store.
Atsuko answers with a low, distracted hum; she’s trying to decide between takoyaki Umai-bo or the natto ones. The lollipop stick poking out of her mouth wiggles whenever she twists her lips in concentration.
“I... I’m not a very good person,” Himuro blurts out, in the end, because Atsuko looks distracted, and also because she didn’t sleep well. In her dreams, Taiga's shocked, crying face after she'd punched her alternated with an ugly sneer at how pathetic Himuro had become.
She keeps wishing she could just miss Taiga, and be happy about seeing her again. But maybe humans aren’t supposed to be that simple, maybe they’re made to always feel a tangle of different, unpleasant emotions.
Alex used to say “You’re always trying to make everything go smooth, but Tatsuko, life has edges,” touching the hinge of her glasses.
Atsuko looks at her, her expression plain and detached. But then she tucks a long strand of purple hair behind her ear, only to look at Himuro. Her stomachs bottoms out.
“Muro-chin,” she sighs, and takes the lollipop out of her mouth. “Everybody’s bad. If you think too much about it, it’ll make your belly ache.”
The laugh just tumbles out of her lips; a short, graceless sound. “You sound very wise, Atsuko-sama.”
She scowls, puts her lollipop back in her mouth, and fetches another one out of her skirt pocket. It fits her nicely, for once, but that’s mostly because Himuro picked it out for her the last time Atsuko (unwillingly) accompanied her on a shopping trip.
“You’re not bad to me,” Atsuko says, offering her the lollipop. It’s grape, Himuro’s favourite flavour. “If you were, it would probably be my fault, too,” she adds, thoughtful, the lollipop stick bouncing on her lip. “So I would forgive you, Muro-chin.”
She doesn’t know what to say to that, so she unwraps her lollipop and licks it, sweetness flooding her mouth. She feels something crack open in her chest, as Atsuko tells her about how she can’t wait to eat the special monja Umai-bo, sold only in Tokyo, again.
Maybe one day she’ll be able to look at Taiga, the lights reflecting in her hair like a forest fire, and feel just that old surge of affection, envy only a distant afterthought.
Maybe she’ll stop feeling so dirty whenever she looks at the honesty on Atsuko’s face when she says, like it’s a given, “Well, I like Muro-chin,” with her mouth full of gummy bears.
It's so easy to love her, Himuro forgets why she shouldn't - until all pretenses fall and she's left crazy with rage, the skin on her knuckles burning once again as her tears fall down on Atsuko's face.
It’s snowing in Akita when they get back from the Winter Cup, and the cold night air stings at Himuro’s face. She shivers in her tracksuit, looks at Atsuko standing beside her. Wonders if her cheek hurts, still. How are her legs.
“Well, I’m going to bed, then,” Himuro says, and wishes her voice would sound less uncertain; even and soft, like it was when they first met. But she’s already lost it, she’s already cried on front of Atsuko, she’s already destroyed that perfect facade. There’s nothing to do about it anymore.
Atsuko just looks at her, blinking slowly.
“Call me if you need me,” Himuro adds, before hightailing it to her room, where everything will smell aseptic from the cleaners and she’ll feel empty and tired.
It doesn’t hurt so bad, really. She’d thought losing to Taiga would be crushing, but it only felt bittersweet. The way Taiga’s fingers had curled in her sweatshirt when she’d hugged her had spoken of affection, but Taiga had grown up; she didn’t need Himuro like she had when they were kids.
“But I still love you, you know,” Taiga had said, looking down at her hand, still fisted around her ring. Thinking about that makes Himuro smile.
A snow flake falls on her nose, and she thinks about Atsuko’s ugly sweaters and the ridiculous bunny-shaped ear mufflers contrasting with her grumpy face, matching with her warm hands.
Before falling asleep, their last night in Tokyo, already in bed, Atsuko had whispered, “I wanted to win for Muro-chin,” her words muffled in her pillow.
She’s halfway to the second years’ dorms, her hands shoved deep inside her pockets and her shoulders hunched, the metal of the chain around her neck still cold despite her body heat, when her phone rings. She has to dig it out of her bag, snow falling all over her hair, melting and making a mess out of it. She thinks about Atsuko’s hair, hopes she’s already inside so it doesn’t get wet. Atsuko’s always too lazy to dry it properly: she’s lucky she hasn’t got sick yet.
The snow falls over her phone screen, and she wipes it dry with her thumb and answers before it can get wet. “Hello?”
“Muro-chin,” comes Atsuko’s voice, whiny. “I need you.”
Her heart skips a bit.