Chapter Text
Kasumi doesn’t know exactly for how long she’s been running before she finds herself by the university basketball gym. Her feet hurt and it was getting chilly (she had neither planned to be outside nor to be running that day, and she can’t help but curse at her lack of foresight). Both because she figures it’ll be warmer, and because she’d rather avoid going back to the dorms for as long as possible (lest Rina ask her ‘how it went’), she pushes the door of the gym open and, amidst metallic clatter and the squeak of tennis shoes on the polished wooden floor, which she tries her best to ignore, makes a beeline for the bleachers and plops herself down on the first row.
Then comes the arduous task of stopping herself from crying any longer.
“Oh, this is Karin’s? She’s still sleeping, but I’ll give it to her,” she had said, with that sickeningly sweet smile of hers. “Thank you, Kasumin!”
Stupid, stupid, Kasumin, she says to herself as she focuses her gaze at the formless reflections of the lightbulbs on the glistening gym floor.
How could she not know? They were inseparable, Karin and her, and as Emma appeared behind Karin’s apartment’s front door, wearing Karin’s hoodie and (Kasumi was pretty sure) not much else, Kasumi knew she was the only one who hadn’t given it as much as a second thought. Stupid. How could she have allowed herself to get her hopes up?
Stupid Emma, she thinks, wiping her eyes around her mascara. With that cute little accent of hers, and her big, beautiful eyes, and those big, beautiful—Kasumi peers down at the pitiable state of her own assets, aided perhaps only a tad by the low cut dress and the push-up bra she picked just for the occasion (hoping that Karin would have, what, noticed?), and feels like killing the first living thing that stood in front of her. If only all that loud clanging would stop, she thinks, as she feels another surge of tears wash over her flushed face,
God, she thinks, I really could kill someone right now.
“Vous allez bien, Kasumi?” Kasumi hears and instantly freezes. She, because life refuses to give her a break, knows that voice from somewhere.
She’s slow to look up, but when she does she finds, clad in funny protective gear bearing the school’s logo, the owner of that familiar voice whom she does, in fact, know. Sure enough, she has gazed at and avoided her baby blue eyes in equal measure, huffing dramatically to her friends who dared even suggest she’d resort to petty flirting for a better grade. Kasumi, girl-crazy as she might go down in history for, was monogamous in her crushes. True to form, it took her longer than it might have otherwise to realise that the girl standing in front of her was not donning one of her signature bows, but instead wore her hair completely down. The fact that it was slightly disheveled, as it might look in the morning through the filter of an intimate autumn sunbeam, made Kasumi’s heart seize and stand at attention as she followed its winding path down her neck and over the elegant embroidery on the right side of her chest, bearing her name.
Shizuku Osaka, the TA of her French class.
“Are you that worried about next week’s exam, Kasumi?” Shizuku says, eyes gentle enough for the joke not to quite annoy Kasumi.
“What are you doing here?” Kasumi says, in quiet disbelief that she has not yet learned how to not parry embarrassment with anger.
Shizuku smiles and raises her hands, showing Kasumi two objects she had not yet noticed: a helmet (the likely culprit for her messy hair) and a long, pointy sword that catches Kasumi entirely by surprise.
“Practice,” is all Shizuku says, as if it were entirely obvious, because it probably is. Kasumi manages to nod, feeling heat rise to her cheeks. “Anyway, I don’t have office hours today but...if you’re that set on studying, I finish in half an hour.”
Kasumi furrows her eyebrows, this time not able to avoid getting annoyed. She feels fresh tears forming on the corners of her eyes and turns brusquely away to preemptively hide them in case they do come out.
“I’m not here for office hours,” Kasumi quips and, rather childishly, feels her face settle into a pout. Leave it to me to be mean to someone for no reason, she thinks to herself. “Did you...need anything else?”
Not breaking eye contact, Shizuku points a tiny way away from Kasumi.
“No, but you’re sitting in front of my things. May I?”
“Oh,” whispers Kasumi, and scoots over a few. She looks away and puts her chin on her hand. “Yeah, sure.”
Shizuku smiles with her eyes before reaching for a water bottle in her gym bag. Kasumi makes it a point to look somewhere else as the other girl takes a long drink of water. She feels the faint sensation of heat radiating from Shizuku, the way a pool of light washing in from her bedroom window warms her bed even on the coldest winter day. Kasumi is suddenly thirsty, but wills the thought away, touching her barrette by way of distraction.
As Shizuku puts her water bottle away, Kasumi feels a gloved hand resting on her right shoulder and, when she looks up, finds Shizuku offering a handkerchief. Finding no suitable thing to say (knowing full well that she likely looks a hot mess), she takes it and mouths an awkward thank-you. Shizuku lingers, not quite looking away until she’s a few steps away from Kasumi, throwing her helmet on and making Kasumi instantly miss her face.
Kasumi knows naught about fencing, but if the height of the fencer is any indication of the odds of victory, she reckons Shizuku is in trouble; her opponent is at least a head taller than her. She watches Shizuku grab the tip of her sword and bend the weapon a couple of times, saluting her coach with a short gesture before bringing herself to a starting position (Kasumi assumes) with formidable control. Kasumi, in spite of the elegance of the other girl’s movements (or maybe because of it), finds herself gulping and holding a formed fist against her chest.
“En-garde ,” says her coach. “Pret.”
Kasumi knows enough French to obey.
“Allez!”
It’s over before she knows it. She watches Shizuku launch herself forward as if by magic, curbing the path of her opponent’s sword and immediately changing course, landing somewhere along their arm. A light goes off and the coach calls a point for Shizuku. Kasumi is entirely too confused to know how that shaped out, but she sees Shizuku turn her helmeted head towards her and give her a quick thumbs up before getting ready for the next round. Kasumi can only respond with another thumbs up as she gapes at her TA.
“En-garde...pret,”
Kasumi leans forward, biting her lip.
“Allez!”
This time, Shizuku falls back upon a quick attack from her opponent, deftly controlling her footing to avoid a fall off the platform. A small squeak escapes Kasumi, who was expecting another quick end to the match. Shizuku’s opponent seems to have all but cornered her when they hesitate, and Shizuku does not skip a beat. Without seemingly any effort, she swipes across her partner’s torso, giving her a second point. Kasumi finds herself clapping along with the rest of the team.
A third round starts in much the same way as the second, with both fencers suspended amid occasional feints. Come on, Shizuko, she finds herself saying (for the first time), hoping without much reason that the nickname would grant her the winning strike. Shizuku’s opponent lunges forward with a few determined steps, dragging a loud gasp from Kasumi, before Shizuku ignores the incoming attack, moving aside so as to not get hit, and striking the opponent’s helmet with her sword, and with a scream that is simultaneously the loudest, scariest, and most attractive thing Kasumi’s ever heard in her life.
Kasumi doesn’t stick around for too long after that; the heat of her run long dissipated, she needs the cold wind outside to chill a different kind of hot flash.
“Good work today, Osaka!” Shizuku hears from across the locker room.
“Thank you very much, Uehara,” Shizuku smiles sweetly, as she watches her teammate lock hands with Yuu Takasaki and walk towards the exit. “See you tomorrow!”
They’re so cute, she says to herself, as she wraps her team jacket around her waist, opting for cooling down with the early winter weather outside.
She doesn’t take two steps outside before she sees a familiar face leaning against the wall not too far away. Waiting for me?
“Hi,” Kasumi says, eyes not quite connecting with hers. “That was cool, your...fencing.”
Shizuku smiles wide, feeling a bit lightheaded. “Thanks for watching,” she says. “See you in class next week?”
“I, um,” Kasumi starts. “Future perfect. It’s...hard.”
Shizuku can’t suppress a giggle, and instead removes her jacket from her waist and tosses it at Kasumi.
“Put this on,” she says. A soft, blue wind scurries through the open gym doors, and Kasumi doesn’t hesitate. “Let’s go?”
They walk side by side for a while and Kasumi, not for the last time, sinks into the warmth of Shizuku’s jacket.