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It was a warm summer afternoon with clear and cloudless skies, the sun hanging high above and lightly broiling everything unfortunate enough to be outside, and somewhere down below, in a small and friendly Japanese town, two houses. There was nothing particularly remarkable about two houses in the grand scheme of things, but these two house were home to two girls who very much were remarkable.
These two girls, polar opposites in virtually every way, had met two years prior after being thrown into an extraordinary sequence of events together, a sequence of events that led to them becoming magical girls of the sort they had read about and watched on TV when they were little.
This story doesn’t concern those events, though, their magical girl exploits were all wrapped up a year ago with the two of them—along with their two other friends—defeating the bad guys and returning the world to normal.
No, this story concerns something that happened later, when they had settled down into their ordinary school lives again, no longer needing to be heroes or putting themselves in harm’s way to save their friends. Something that had been mildly bothering Tsubomi for the last half a year or more.
She was currently visiting her best friend and fellow retired magical girl, Erika, who lived next door. Erika, being a boisterous and at-times unthinking girl even now, used to intimidate Tsubomi back when they first met. Tsubomi was so quiet, shy, and introverted that she could barely even introduce herself when she transferred into Erika’s school.
But Erika… Erika had brought her out of that shell, opened her right up and created a new girl out of what she found inside, resulting—over time—in Tsubomi transforming herself into something different, something better than she had been before. And right now, the two of them were as close as it was possible to be without delving into some pretty complicated nuclear physics.
However, Tsubomi felt that close wasn’t quite appropriate any longer. Somehow, she felt that a new word was required, but wasn’t quite sure what. Sitting on Erika’s bed, legs slightly spread to allow room for the rather shorter girl to sit between them, with Erika’s head relaxed comfortably against Tsubomi’s chest as she read a manga volume, she once again had the feeling that maybe their relationship wasn’t quite what she thought it was.
She shifted position slightly, not wanting to disturb her friend’s comfort, and put her arms around Erika’s waist, resting her hands lightly on her tummy. This was perfectly normal for them, they were pretty touchy-feely with each other, but at the same time Tsubomi felt it was… not normal, not normal at all.
“Erika?” she said quietly.
Erika tilted her head back to glance at Tsubomi’s upside down face. “Mm? What’s up, Tsubomi?”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something for a while now, Erika,” Tsubomi said, sounding hesitant.
“We talk all the time!” Erika responded with a grin.
“Yes, but I mean something that, well, something that has been bothering me.” Tsubomi’s hesitation over things she was worried over was something of a holdover from her old self, and something she still wished she could change.
Erika decided to grace her friend with a right side up face, so she put her manga down and then quickly jumped up and spun herself over so she was lying on top of Tsubomi. “Okay! Let’s chat!”
Erika’s overbearing personality and energy still gave Tsubomi pause sometimes, even now. She loved both traits and sometimes wished she could be a bit more like Erika, but she could also find them tiring. “I was thinking about us, Erika.”
Erika’s eyes widened. “Eh? What’s up with us?”
“Nothing’s up, Erika, I was just thinking about how, um, how close we are.” Tsubomi’s face was gradually turning a pleasant red colour, almost matching her hair.
“We’re best friends, Tsubomi, how much closer can we be?” Erika pointed out with a question she had no expectations of an answer on.
“We are best friends, yes, but at the same time don’t you feel something else, Erika? Something… more?”
“More?” Erika’s face screwed up in thought.
“More. Like… how we are right now? Is it normal for two girls to be lying together like this, Erika? I don’t think any of our other friends do this…”
“They don’t?” Erika said, raising an eyebrow.
Tsubomi was starting to suspect that Erika actually thought their behaviour together was normal. “No, Erika, they do not,” she said with a sigh.
“Sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Oh. I like being like this with you though?” Erika turned a statement into a question, hoping to elicit a positive response from her best friend.
“I… do, too, actually, I feel most relaxed when we’re together like this,” Tsubomi said, realising that maybe, just maybe she was overthinking things and worrying over nothing.
“There you go, then, nothing to be worried about!” Erika said, clearly thinking the matter was now closed.
Tsubomi sighed. “I don’t know, Erika, while we both enjoy it, it still doesn’t feel quite… normal.”
“Tsubomi?” Erika looked straight into her friend’s eyes.
“Yes?”
“We can transform into magical girls with powers that would make most of the world’s militaries embarrassed at how weak they are, I don’t think normal really applies to us.”
“That’s true…” Tsubomi conceded her friend’s point with some hesitation. Her hands, now resting on Erika’s small posterior, clenched a little as Tsubomi continued thinking about this in the privacy of her head. Erika didn’t seem to notice that Tsubomi was now firmly grasping her bottom. That, or she just didn’t mind.
“Anyway, so what if we’re not normal? If anything, I think we’re not together enough!” Erika said firmly.
Tsubomi gasped at her best friend’s candidness. But she also felt something else, an increase in heart rate and a degree of heightened perspiration around her forehead, making her worry even further. “Erika!?” she said, noting how her friend was looking defiant.
“I’m still not sure what you’re worried about, Tsubomi,” Erika said, almost sullenly, an interesting change from her usual personality.
“I just worry that we’re being a bit more than simply friendly,” Tsubomi said, unsure of whether Erika would even understand her allusion.
“We are more than simply friendly! Silly Tsubomi, we’re best friends!”
“Erika…” Tsubomi gave another sigh at how dense this girl could be at times. “I mean more than best friends friendly, Erika.” She nodded a few times at Erika, hoping it would get through this time.
“Well… I love you more than anything, Tsubomi, so wouldn’t lovers work?” Erika said, unthinkingly as usual. Or rather, she had thought about it, and quite hard, too, but she had come to an odd conclusion at the end of her deliberations and possibly hadn’t quite got the hang of what ‘lovers’ actually meant.
“Eri… ka?” Tsubomi couldn’t believe Erika had managed to jump straight from ‘more than best friends’ to ‘lovers’ in the space of less than thirty seconds. “I love you, too, Erika, I think you know that, but I don’t think you quite have the right idea about what the word ‘lovers’ means.”
“Means we love each other, right?”
“Well… yes, that, too, but it… it…” Tsubomi hesitated. Sometimes she really did wonder if Erika was dense on purpose, if she was really just playing with Tsubomi to see how embarrassed she could make her. It certainly wouldn’t be out of character for her, Tsubomi considered. “Haa, I give up, you win, Erika, let’s just say we’re best friends and lovers and call it a day.” Tsubomi sighed, feeling utterly defeated.
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Erika said with a mischievous grin.
Some days Tsubomi really felt like strangling Erika. But other days, like today, she was happy to just snuggle with her on the bed and be best friends and lovers, and she felt that was okay, too.