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Stepping from the crisp chill of the street into the dewy warm humidity inside the arcade was like stepping into a bath. Ami scuffed the ice off her boots, and unpeeled herself from her cream coloured jacket.
“Geez, it’s toasty in here!” Makoto gave a contented sigh, as she began to unbutton her own jacket. It was a stylish thing – a double-breasted sleek black, that matched her heeled boots. Even when she removed it to reveal a thick knitted sweater – reindeer over a striped field of burgundy and hunter green – it did little to alter Ami’s impression. Makoto already looked like a gorgeous adult.
“I can’t believe you talked me into coming here,” Ami pouted, pulling off her hat and picking soberly at her nails.
“Well, you’re here, so you can believe it,” Makoto announced cheerily. “You might as well enjoy it now.”
Makoto grabbed her by the waist, and ushered her forward to reception desk, but let her go when they got there. “Furuhata? Is that you?”
Indeed, the attendant they were passing coats and bags to across the glass counter was one Furuhata Motoki.
He placed their things each in a separate cubby behind the counter, with the kind of practised ease of someone long used to working in customer service. “Yup,” he agreed. “Grad program’s on hold until mid-January, and the arcade is short on hands, so I’m back at Game Center Crown for the season. It’s good to see you girls again.”
“It’s good to see you too,” Ami said, and was rewarded with a bright smile, before Makoto launched into the small talk of catching up.
“So how are things? Your sister’s still helping out your parents at Fruits Parlour Crown, right? I ran into her the other day.”
As Motoki answered, Makoto folded her arms and leaned over the glass counter. Ami watched the way her sweater bunched at the elbows. She looked down through the counter, at the trays of brightly coloured plastic rings and rubber balls leading to pricier figures and electronics.
Eventually they had their point cards refilled and free reign of the arcade. Ami and Makoto sat on opposite sides of the fighting game aisle and battled it out.
“You’re just too good at this,” Makoto let out a whine, as Ami hit another combo. The screen flashed with a bright red K.O.
“It’s just about timing,” Ami said. “Patterns and timing. Once you figure it out, You just have to repeat it again and again. The same input will produce the same output.”
“You say that like it’s easy,” Makoto said. “You’re just too good at everything, Ami.”
Ami won the next round with a combo that ended in a little animation of lightning shaped like dragons flying from her fighter’s fists.
“Do you think Usagi can make it as a pro-gamer?” Makoto asked, as they started up the next round.
“I don’t know if she will,” Ami answered, “but she definitely can.”
Usagi’s streaming channel already had nearly a quadruple digit follower count.
Ami shrugged. “It suits her.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Makoto said serenely.
Ami couldn’t imagine doing what Usagi was planning to do after high school. But, then again, she couldn’t imagine doing what Makoto or Minako were planning to do either. Ami could only be herself.
They played a few more games, before Makoto got sick of losing. She headed over to the shooting range, and got dragged into a game with a bunch of boys a few years younger than her.
Ami sat at the booth to play Space Invaders and, out of the corner of her eye, watched Makoto exchange banter and potshots with the boys. Makoto spun the set of plastic guns in her hands, and pretended to shoot at the other players.
Ami forced her attention to the game of Space Invaders. The management had wiped the high scores since she’d last been in, and Ami focused on setting a new one.
She lost herself in the rhythmic flow of the game until Makoto finally returned and indirectly sent Ami’s laser cannon down a spiral of death.
“Hey, why don’t we race for a bit?” Makoto asked. She seemed unconcerned with Ami’s loss and mimed turning an invisible steering wheel in her hands.
The physics in the racing game were absolutely atrocious. Ami catalogued the knowledge Haruka had shared with her from her time on the race track. She eyed the distances simulated by the game and the numbers on the simulated dashboard, and calculated speed and acceleration and force of impact. All of which the game blithely ignored.
“Woohoo!” Makoto called, as she swept past the finish line.
Ami’s vehicle was still spinning against the wall of the track, but she found herself smiling at Makoto.
“There you are,” Motoki said, sweeping past in his apron. “Are you guys doing well? Enjoying your visit? Can I get you anything?”
Ami felt herself blush. She looked down from where her eyes were tracing Makoto’s legs, stretched out over the racing seat. Ami fiddled with her hands.
“We’re doing good!” Makoto laughed. “Is work going okay for you? Nothing going bump in the night in the control room downstairs?”
“Not that I know of,” Motoki said easily. “There are a lot of customers today. Because of the break from school, I think. I have to mop the entrance and get some snacks from the back room to refill the display up front.”
“Well, chop chop! Get to it!” Makoto teased. “No time to stand around looking after us.”
“Well, I need to take care of our special customers. You girls can always let me know if you need anything. And not just in my capacity as a part time worker,” he laughed. “You know that I appreciate everything you guys do for us – Mercury, Jupiter.” He winked. “So please don’t hesitate to ask if anything comes up.”
“Aw, you softie,” Makoto shifted in her seat and batted at his arm.
“Thank you very much.” Ami managed to look up in spite of her embarrassment. “We appreciate the offer.”
“Of course,” Motoki said, before he let Makoto shoo him off. Ami watched the swivel of his hips as he left.
When she turned back, Makoto was leering in her seat and smirking. “That’s still going on, huh?” she asked.
“What do you mean?” Ami asked non-committally.
Makoto wasn’t having it. “You used to have a crush on him. So that’s still going on? He’s your type, right?”
Ami huffed. “That’s not true. The only man for me is Albert Einstein.” She leaned forward to swipe her point card against the reader on the racing game to initiate another round, and selected two player mode on the screen.
“Liar,” Makoto said. And instead of hurrying to swipe her own point card. She pushed herself up on her knees, and swivelled so she was leaning up over the back of her chair. “Furuhata!” she called. She raised both her arms and waved. “Actually we could use your help after all.”
“What are you doing?” Ami hissed. But before Makoto could answer, Motoki had swept back over.
“Yes?” he said guilelessly.
Makoto swiped her point card and leaned back in her seat. “Actually, Ami is having some trouble with this game. I thought you could take a look at how she plays and give her a few pointers.”
Ami tried not to scowl. She knew of course that, terrible physics engine aside, to win at a game you had to play by its own rules. She had let herself be distracted by equations and science before in part because she enjoyed seeing Makoto win.
“It’s unusual for you to have trouble with a game,” Motoki acknowledged. But his tone was non-judgemental, and Ami felt trapped in the best way when he leaned over the top of her racing seat. “Let’s see how you play.”
He was standing very close to her, and she did not have to try to be distracted from the game as she attempted to race the course.
He offered advice intermittently, and did not seem disappointed when Ami didn’t take it. “You have to accelerate into the turns more,” he said, after Ami pulled behind the last of the NPCs at a corner.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ami pouted. “You need to decelerate when you’re changing directions like that in real life.”
“I know,” Motoki laughed apologetically. “But it makes the game fun doesn’t it? Speeding through the curves.”
==
Three years ago, on the advent of their acceptance to high school, the Soldiers had all studied together for entrance exams. Ami incorrectly assumed it would be like that this time.
Back then, Ami had been the only one aiming for the science and technology course at Juuban Municipal High School. The others intended to focus on the humanities. But this did not stop Ami from scheduling out their study sessions for them, counting out the minutes and the material they would need to review separate from her own equally controlled schedule. They had all five of them squeezed into Makoto’s condo, and Ami had ruthlessly corralled them through curriculum. Rei was the only one who had made it easy. Ami had needed to drag Usagi and Minako away from their games and manga and TV shows, and drag Makoto away from her cooking and cleaning and decorating.
Well, at least some things never changed.
“I made western style meatloaf and mash!” Makoto announced from the kitchen, clattering a long pair of cooking chopsticks in her hand. “It’s a Kino family speciality!”
Ami didn’t know how it could be a Kino family speciality when Makoto didn’t have any other family. Or maybe Ami did know. Makoto was going to make a household and a family all her own – that was her dream, wasn’t it? The one that wasn’t the dream they all shared as Sailor Soldiers.
“Isn’t meatloaf too difficult to eat when you’re studying?” Ami asked, folding her legs under the kotatsu. “A sandwich or cup noodles would take less hands.” She knew she was being petulant.
Makoto hummed non-committally as she fussed with the oven and fridge and cutting board.
Ami let herself go back to studying. She was memorising history, the advent of the age of enlightenment, when Makoto appeared and set a tray at her side.
It had tea in a cup and saucer, apples cut like rabbits, cherries in a bowl, and four little triangles of sandwich with the crust removed. They were filled with meatloaf sliced thin and covered with layers of mash, lettuce, ketchup and mayo, white bread. The entire thing was held together with cocktail picks with little tropical fish designs on top. There was nothing on the tray that could not be eaten using only one hand.
“You act like I don’t know you at all,” Makoto said smugly.
Ami had no answer to that except a blush, which made her thankful that Makoto didn’t wait around for one. She stood tall and strode back to the kitchen for her own tray, and settled across on the other side of the kotatsu.
Ami unloaded her bag slowly as she worked her way through the material. The pile of textbooks and notebooks grew next to her – literature, math, chemistry. Medicine. Microbiology and immunology and epidemiology. Practice tests. She ate her sandwich and fruit as she turned pages.
Across the table, Makoto gave her own tray of food her full attention. No sandwiches, just meatloaf and mash and salad arranged in a triangle on a circular plate. She held fork and knife in each hand. When she was done and had bussed her dishes, she retrieved her household account book, filed through a sheath of receipts, and filled numbers into the grid. When she was done with that, she turned on the television – volume down, captions on – and folded paper flowers onto wire stems as she watched the serial.
There shouldn’t have been anything to be distracted by. It was just the two of them. Ami no longer had other people’s study schedules to arrange and police. Makoto did not interrupt her as she leafed through her books and notes.
But Ami found herself distracted anyhow. She watched over the rim of her glasses, following the blurred edges where Makoto’s ponytail fell over her shoulder. The curve of her shoulders and bust as she leaned over the kotatsu. Ami couldn’t help but think this would be less distracting if the others were here.
“Are you going to be able to afford it?” Ami found herself asking.
Makoto turned to her. Her fingers pulled the paper petals of her flowers in curling ruffles. She blinked, apparently confused.
Ami nodded at the household account book, now closed and tabulated and set aside. “Will you be able to afford culinary school?”
It was a rude question maybe. None of Ami’s business.
Makoto smiled like it didn’t bother her. “Things might be a little tight for a while, but I think I’ll be able to do it!”
“That’s good,” Ami said. She felt her cheeks heat, and buried her face back in her textbook. She fiddled with the zipper on her pencil case, and pressed her finger to the charm hidden in the bottom of it.
When Ami had asked Usagi if she wanted to study together over winter vacation, Usagi had babbled out an excuse about needing to buy a gaming headset and run off.
When Ami had asked Minako, Minako had walked out of the bathroom stall in her McDonald’s uniform and told Ami she’d be spending whatever free time she got at idol auditions.
When Ami had asked Makoto, Makoto said she’d be happy to have Ami and any of the others over for a study date. She’d make tea and snacks for anyone who came.
Of all of them, Ami really only expected Rei to show. Rei’s dad had sent money for her to attend university, and her grandfather had talked her into taking it. He wanted her to have as many options open to her as possible. Nothing was stopping her from retaining her duties as a shrine maiden between her classes, if that was what she wanted.
So Rei was the only other one that needed to study for exams. But when Ami had asked Rei, during one of their group meet-ups, Rei had only tugged the edge of her grey blazer aloofly.
“Studying with you and Makoto?” she asked rhetorically. “Thank you for the offer. But, no, I don’t think so.”
It was cold and curt and unfailingly polite, and Ami had felt a little hurt despite herself. Despite the fact that she knew Rei could just be like that, and Rei didn’t mean anything by it.
But Rei texted her the next day to say she was dropping by Juuban Municipal High School, and had something for Ami. She came to the door of the computer club and dug through her briefcase for an envelope, and handed it to Ami with natural grace.
“For success at your study sessions,” Rei had said. “I put in an offering and a prayer at the shrine on your behalf.”
Ami had opened the envelope and poured the contents face down out onto her palm. It was an omamori charm from the shrine, wooden prayers wrapped in red paper wrapped in plastic. “Oh, for diligence and good luck on my exams.” It was a thoughtful gesture.
Rei had looked at her as if she was stupid. But Ami didn’t pay her any mind. Rei often looked like that, even and especially when she meant to express nothing in particular.
Ami turned the charm over in her hand so the bell attached to the string gave a little chime. There was a piece of pastel pink paper pasted over the top of the satchel, and Ami assessed the character painted across its face by parts. Thirteen strokes. Four radicals – heart, claw, and winter all under the same roof. Ai.
Ami felt her skin prickle and her face heat.
“It’s a love charm,” Rei said directly, before turning on her heel and striding away.
==
“And so I told him, ‘You can’t possibly think béarnaise sauce and béchamel sauce are the same?’” Makoto crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the UFO Catcher machine. “…I probably came off like a snob. Do you think I’m a snob?”
“I don’t think you’re a snob, Mako,” Ami said, as she tapped the claw over and tried to hook a prize by the ring.
“It was supposed to be a fun meet-up between like-minded people before our course starts. These were supposed to be my people, and they didn’t even know their sauces mères.” She narrowed her eyes at Ami. “Do you know the difference between béchamel and béarnaise?”
“Um…” Ami stalled, frowning as the prize slid off the hook – too heavy for the machinery holding it. “One of the sauces is from Béarn, one of the traditional Basque provinces in the southwest of France. Famous for Pau Pyrénées Airport, the site of the world’s first aviation school.”
Makoto let out an offended gasp. “Béchamel is made from milk and roux. Béarnaise is an egg sauce, like mayonnaise.” She crossed her arms and sighed resignedly. “It’s like none of you guys know French.”
“You don’t know French either,” Ami pointed out, as she paid out for another turn on the UFO Catcher.
Makoto ignored her. “I’ll have to quiz you on types of tomato sauce next. Or it will be the one question on the Center Test you didn’t know the answer to. The reason you get ninety-nine percent correct instead of one hundred and get rejected by Tokyo U.”
Ami thought about that as she tried and failed to hook a plushie from the machine. Of course there wouldn’t be any cooking questions on the Center Test exam. But realistically they could ask a lot of questions that Ami didn’t know the answer to.
“Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said that,” Makoto apologised. “You know it was a joke, right? There’s absolutely no way you’re not going to ace the test and get into every university you apply for.”
“Speaking statistically–” Ami began.
“Nuh-uh. No way. You tied for the highest score on the mock exam. On a national level.” Makoto shook her head. “I wouldn’t be surprised if every university in the country had their acceptance letters already written, and were just waiting for the appropriate time to send them.”
“Technically they probably do have the acceptance letter written,” Ami pointed out. “It’s a carbon copy they just switch out the names on.”
Makoto swept Ami’s hands away from the claw machine, and looked her directly in the eyes. “You’ve worked really hard,” she said, peering into Ami’s soul. “And you’re super prepared. And you will definitely do well on your exam and be able to go to school wherever you want.”
Ami felt her whole body go hot. She looked down to break eye contact.
The UFO Catcher timed out and the claw clenched around empty air.
Makoto seemed to realise she’d been over-aggressive and dropped Ami’s hands. “Oh, sorry. Waste of two hundred yen. I guess I felt strongly about this and got a little carried away.”
Ami shook her head. “No, Mako, you were-” There was no way to finish that sentence that wasn’t embarrassing. “Thank you.”
They stood there for a moment, and Ami wasn’t sure what to say or do or if she should just go back to playing games, and Makoto was still looking at her a little too earnestly, when Motoki arrived.
“No luck with the UFO Catcher?” he asked.
Ami felt completely caught off guard. “I’ve had a lot of trouble with these items,” she admitted. “It’s hard to determine the weight of them just by looking.”
Makoto seemed to have a completely different agenda. “Geez, Furuhata. Way to ruin the moment.”
“Me?” he asked, before looking between them. “Oh, well… Oops.”
Before Ami could perseverate on this overlong, the conversation whipped back.
“If Ami can’t get a prize from it, your UFO Catcher must be rigged,” Makoto said suspiciously.
“It’s not rigged,” Motoki said. “Or no more than it is by the usual flimsy construction… The Game Center Crown specifically didn’t rig it.”
Makoto gave him a look that was probably meant to be judgemental, but came out coquettish.
“Alright, alright,” Motoki shook his head. “Since you guys have been at this machine for a half an hour already, I think I can hook you up with some prizes. So long as you don’t tell anyone. I can’t have anyone accusing me of playing favourites.”
“Aren’t we your favourites?” Makoto asked.
Motoki smiled guilelessly, as he waved them away from the UFO Catcher and up to the counter. “You can consider it my apology for interrupting you earlier.”
“So you say, but- Ooooh, Furuhata, are you stealing plushies from the arcade to use for picking up girls? Should we report you to Luna?” Makoto nettled, but she followed him anyway.
“Hey! I’m taking it out of my paycheck!” Motoki protested, as he slid behind the counter.
Ami trailed behind, biting her lip. “You don’t have to do that…”
“But I want to,” Motoki said earnestly. He bent down to examine the boxes behind the counter. “Let’s see…”
Makoto leaned over the counter to look down at his back appraisingly. Ami watched her watch him.
Motoki didn’t seem to take notice, when stood up a moment later with a large sized plush like a blue dolphin. “One of these for Ami.” He handed it over to her, and she accepted it in both hands.
“And one of these for Mako,” he said.
“Bread? You got me bread?” Makoto pouted at the cushion he set on the counter in front of her, shaped like a loaf of sliced bread with a happy face plastered on the side. Atop the counter, it came up as high as her shoulders, and was wider than she was.
“It suits you, doesn’t it?” Motoki asked. “You like cooking and food, right?”
“Why you-!” Makoto collapsed over the top of the cushion and swatted at him at the other side of the counter. But Ami could tell she wasn’t really angry, because she bounced happily over the cushion. And they both laughed as she swiped her baseball cap off the top of her head and hooked it over the top of his.
Ami raked her fingers over the dolphin plushie. She peeled the fibres apart and held it up to her face. It was warm against her warm cheeks and she took a deep breath, smelling the acidic whiff of synthetic fabric.
==
It was a given that Usagi would spend Christmas with Mamoru. Usagi told them he’d made a reservation at an Italian Restaurant months in advance.
Minako had laughed anxiously and said she and Rei were going to go man-hunting at the big tree in the centre of Patio Juuban. Which prompted a scathing look from Rei and a sarcastic comment about how saying you were going man-hunting in a crowd of happy couples was just the perfect cover, closet case.
Usagi had intervened quickly, flailing her arms and changing the subject before it could turn into a fight.
As a result, nobody got around to asking Ami about her Christmas plans until a week later. She was combing through her text on Confucian ethics, when Makoto asked casually.
“Soooo, are you doing anything in particular for Christmas?” Makoto peeled the tangerines on the table.
“No, nothing in particular,” Ami said. She was reading about the applications of filial piety, and thinking about her dad’s painted postcards which she did not quite expect, but hoped for, come New Years.
“Are you going to spend time with your mom?” Makoto asked.
“Nope. Mom can’t make it. I’ll probably just be studying.” Ami closed the ethics book, and dug through her bag for her practice test booklet. There were a number of textbooks in the way, and she dropped anatomy, history, and literature on the table. “We’re going to have a special dinner together sometime in February to make up for it. But the hospital is always so busy this time of year. Everyone is so stressed and overworks themselves, and it can cause complications with high blood pressure, intestinal issues, strokes. Mom’s super busy as a result.” Ami shook her head. “Isn’t it terrible how people won’t take a break and won’t take care of themselves?”
Makoto’s face was partially blocked by the mound of textbooks, and she didn’t respond verbally as Ami searched her bag for her timer. She wanted to take the practice test in a manner as close to the actual test as possible.
“Yeah, that’s… uh, really terrible…” Makoto finally managed.
Makoto was interrupted by the ringing of her own timer. And got up from the kotatsu to check the oven.
Ami was ten minutes into her practice test, when Makoto came back with a platter of carrot muffins and laid them out in front of Ami.
There was no talking during the test. You were not allowed to talk during the test.
Ami finished two more questions before she broke her own rules. “You didn’t have to make all this for me,” she said. And it was for her, because Makoto didn’t eat any of it herself – just listlessly peeled apart the segments of her tangerine as she read one of Usagi’s light novels.
You didn’t have to make all of this for me, she thought. You didn’t have to sit here and feed me sweets when you have better things to be doing.
Makoto blinked up from her reading, and picked the tangerine’s white pith from her long nails. “Don’t worry about it.” She smiled. “I’m planning to bring sweets for everyone when we meet up at Rei’s shrine for New Years. You can just think of these as practice batches.”
Ami knew somehow that this was an excuse, but she accepted it anyhow. She turned back to her test, and worked twice as fast to make up for the time she’d wasted.
Ami’s mother wasn’t there when Ami returned to her apartment later that night. But she wanted someone to share the results of the practice test with, and that was the reason she gave herself when she decided to give Setsuna a call. This was also an excuse, she knew.
Setsuna answered, and listened to Ami as she worked herself up about velocity and acceleration and derivative functions and exponential growth.
“That’s why the relationship between a logarithm and an exponential is such that the log natural of x to the n-th power is equal to n times the log natural of x,” Ami said.
“See?” Setsuna was an expanse of enviable calm. “You know all the answers already. It becomes clear to you when you put it into words for someone else.”
Ami wondered how Setsuna did this. Setsuna spoke very little, had spent the entire call listening to Ami explain her studies, but somehow Ami was the one who walked away knowing more than when she came.
“I think you shouldn’t forget what it is you like about learning,” Setsuna said. “The Center Test will only take one day, but your knowledge lasts beyond that. You should schedule some time just to read something you’d like to learn more about, even if it’s not on the curriculum the test makers set out.”
If anyone else had said it, Ami would have told them there was time to study what she’d like later. But coming from Setsuna, who was exactly the kind of academic that Ami hoped someday to be…
Ami thought about something she might like to know.
“Do you have plans for Christmas?” she asked. And then immediately felt her face heat, because that had come out wrong. And what if Setsuna thought she meant-
Setsuna did not take it the wrong way. “Me and Hotaru are going to do some crafts and check the telescope and watch a few movies. We already decorated the house. She’s really excited for the holiday.”
“You’re not going to spend it with Haruka and Michiru?” Ami asked. And that was even worse, because she was nosing around in Setsuna’s private life and-
Setsuna took this question, too, with perennial ease. “Well, I do love them. But they can be very… energetic. And dramatic. I thought they could use a little alone time for the holiday. And I don’t mind looking after Hotaru.”
It was such a simple answer. Setsuna didn’t seem even at all bothered or insecure about her lovers having a special date all for themselves. She really was such an adult.
“What about you?” Setsuna asked. “Are you doing anything special for the holiday?”
Ami felt herself gape. The muscles in her arms and legs tightened. And she knew that there was some logical inconsistency here, because she hadn’t worried earlier telling Makoto that she didn’t have plans. But the question had grown in her mind since, opened a Pandora’s Box of hopes and expectations, and for some reason telling the same answer to Setsuna that she’d given to Makoto before felt insufficient and dishonest.
“You know,” Setsuna began, “if you’re not busy, you’re always welcome to-”
“You know, Mom will probably be home soon,” Ami said. “I just remembered something I have to look up. About sequential formulas. Thank you for your time, sensei.” And then she hung up the phone. Like an idiot.
The western style table and chairs in her apartment felt stiff and cold, and Ami shifted in her seat feeling the fool. And she tried not to think about a romantic Christmas and Setsuna’s unshakable ease versus her own insecurities. And she was about to call Setsuna back and apologise, when the phone buzzed and lit with the notification for a text message.
Our conversation got cut off rather abruptly. But I wanted to wish you a good night. I hope you’re able to find the equation you’re looking for. And give your mom my best. And I hope you have a lovely holiday, no matter what you end up doing. Always feel free to call me if you need anything.
~S. Pluto
Setsuna really made things easy and effortless, and Ami breathed a sigh of relief for being given a way out, and waited a few minutes before texting back her thanks.
==
Makoto and Motoki were watching Ami play through the Sailor V side-scroller together and speculating on whether Artemis had programmed it.
It was hard mode, and a level Ami hadn’t seen before, where the little Minako sprite at the centre of the screen used her compact to disguise herself as a stewardess. The goal was to dodge enemy attacks on the way through the airport, to confront the boss monster on the plane. But even though Ami hadn’t played it before, the level seemed to peel out before her in a completely comprehensible pattern.
“It must be hard, since cats don’t have opposable thumbs,” Makoto was saying. Ami saw in the reflection off the screen the way Makoto spread her fingers in front of her and flexed.
There was a strange pause in the conversation. The Sailor V sprite was using a vacuum and a drink cart from the cabin crew to clear alien sludge from the plane’s turbines.
“What?” Makoto said.
“I really like your sweater,” Motoki said.
The words seemed to sink in Ami’s gut, but Makoto seemed to take it more easily.
“This?” She pulled on the front of the sweater. This one had bright white stars over a snowfield filled with pine trees, and a red banner with the words Merry Christmas printed in English. It fit her a little bit loose, even over the ample curve in her chest.
“It’s festive.”
Makoto laughed self consciously and hunched over. “Well, it hides how broad and mannish my shoulders are at least.”
Ami was fighting the boss, a big green monster that had taken over the cockpit of the plane. Sailor V had revealed herself, and was shooting at the monster with a pair of pistols.
Neither of her spectators were looking any more. Motoki seemed to hesitate for a moment, before he reached forward to gently place a hand on her shoulder.
“Try not to worry.” He tilted her up, so her back was straight. “Your sweater is nice,” he said. “And your shoulders are nice, too.”
There was a collision somewhere else in the arcade, and a splash like someone had spilled a cup of soda. And Motoki left to go take care of it.
Ami beat the boss. And, before the next level started, she glanced back. She did not need to look to know that Makoto was standing there breathless, cheeks flushing a deep crimson. But she saw it anyway.
The game was restarting, and Ami turned back to the screen as Makoto caught her breath.
“I’m going to-” Makoto started. And then- “Furuhata! Motoki!” she called. “I need to ask you something about your parents’ café!” Before dashing off into the maze of the arcade to find him.
The next level of the Sailor V game had Minako dashing through rooftops and sewers after a cat monster. Ami beat that level, and the level after that. She saw Makoto and Motoki later. Motoki was smiling that kind and guileless smile. Makoto tucked her hair behind her ear, grazed a finger across the back of the lobe where her rose earrings were. She was standing just a little bit taller than she normally did, which was still half a head below Motoki’s height.
Ami thought about the time that Makoto had danced with her, and led the way a man was supposed to. It had been fun, but Ami couldn’t make Makoto stand with that kind of confidence in herself as a woman.
Really, Ami was just getting in the way.
So when Makoto texted her on the Emperor’s Birthday and invited her over to study, invited her to the arcade, Ami made up some excuse and declined. She had things to research on the computer. She had chores to do. She had studying that was best done in an empty apartment.
==
The first half of Christmas day passed dully if not uncomfortably. Ami didn’t see the point in going out on a day when most of Azabu Juuban would be wrapped up in the hectic bustle of romance and commercialism. There was onigiri in the fridge and study material on her desk. And the apartment was a familiar type of cosy, in spite of the fact that the apartment managers had set the heat a few degrees too cold for Ami’s liking.
A holiday parade was playing on the television. Ami watched it with her mom over breakfast, and when they were done she wished her mother a good day at work, fed the fish in the aquarium, turned off the television, and spent the rest of the morning tweaking her study guides.
It was early afternoon when Ami came to the break in her schedule. Setsuna had advised her to make time to study something simply by her own choice. And, right on cue, Ami was feeling melancholic, as she knew she would. So she decided to cheer herself up by researching something fun.
What she decided to research was astronomy. There were things she had seen personally, as a Sailor Soldier, that science had yet to explain, but it was interesting reading about it from the perspective of those in the academic field. She read reports about how 31 Crateris was briefly mistaken for Mercury’s moon in the nineteen seventies, and then proceeded down the line of the rest of the moons in the solar system. Phobos and Deimos circled around Mars. Ami was reading about the sulphur volcanoes and mountains and rivers on Io, and the hypothesis of an underwater primordial soup under Europa’s ice, when she realised suddenly she had made a terrible, horrible mistake.
Ami ran through the series of conversations in her head – bullet points only now coalescing into a larger picture. The five of the inner planetary Sailor Soldiers had been discussing their Christmas plans. Usagi had told them about her date with Mamoru. Minako and Rei had stolen all the air out of the room arguing about their own holiday. Nobody had gotten around to asking Ami what she would be doing, until several days later when she was studying at Makoto’s place. Ami had called Setsuna later and learned about hers and Hotaru’s and Haruka’s and Michiru’s plans.
There was one glaring oversight in all of this – Ami realised suddenly that she had never gotten around to asking Makoto her Christmas plans. Ami had been so busy worrying about studying and exams and the time she was wasting at the arcade and her own Christmas plans, or lack thereof, that she’d completely forgotten to return the favour when Makoto asked her.
And, worse, Makoto didn’t have anyone to fall back on. This wasn’t Usagi or Minako or Rei. This wasn’t Hotaru doing crafts and watching movies with her third mama. This wasn’t everyone else, who had family to spend the holiday with even if they didn’t manage to land a date. This was Makoto, who lived alone in a condo paid for by her parents’ life insurance.
It was one thing for Ami to spend the holiday alone in her apartment. Ami didn’t deserve the love letters she’d found in her locker. She always had a way to busy herself with studying and didn’t need anyone to be here for her. But Makoto was different. Makoto deserved the world, and it was completely one hundred percent unacceptable that she might be lonely on Christmas.
Ami rushed for her phone, because it might not be too late to fix things. To call Makoto and right the terrible social faux pas of not having asked her about plans, and make sure that she was busy for the holiday. And she flipped through the contact list, pressed to dial, and heard the ring on the other end of the line one time before she realised that she might be making another damning social faux pas altogether.
Because what if Makoto did have a date, and Ami was interrupting. It would be terribly rude to call someone in the middle of a date on Christmas day and flounder through a conversation where you double checked their plans several weeks later than you should have. It would be completely unacceptable, and Ami took a moment to weigh these possibilities in her head, before Makoto picked up the call and took it out of Ami’s hands entirely.
Well… Judging by the bustle in the background of the call, Makoto was not spending Christmas alone in her condo.
“Ami?” Makoto asked. “Ami is that– Hey, watch it!” She snarled at someone on the other end of the line, before switching her tone and apparent attention back to Ami. “Hey, I meant to call you just as soon as we got done with this. What’s up?”
There was a moment as Ami searched for the right words over the crowd chatter and honking horns and ringing bells at the other end of the line. “I, uh–”
“Sorry, can you speak up a little?” Makoto asked, over an announcer shouting numbers.
Ami took a deep breath. “I realise I never got around to asking you what you were doing for Christmas and I, uh, wanted to check on you. So… what are you up to?”
This was all the invitation Makoto apparently needed to vent. “Oh god, Ami, it’s a complete circus out here! I mean, not like the Dead Moon Circus was but, you know–!”
“I see,” Ami said, although she didn’t.
“I thought I’d seen the worst bargain shopping – fighting housewives whenever eggs and radishes go on sale – but this is ten times, no, a hundred times worse! A bunch of people dropped their orders on the way out the door. The staff has broken up two fights already. This one girl caught her boyfriend two-timing. And some nerd brought a boombox and blasts horror music and anime character songs every five minutes. And we’re only halfway through!”
There was a scream in the background. Someone was wailing about their chicken. At times it was hard to hear Makoto over the interference.
“I’m sorry?” Ami said dumbly.
“And now my phone is dyyiiiing,” Makoto whined. “I’m so sorry, Ami. I meant to charge it, but I was up late making the cake and slept in too late and now- Do you hear it beeping for low battery?”
“I think they set the frequency so you can only hear it from your end of the call,” Ami said. Not that she’d have been able to hear it over the racket on Makoto’s side of things anyhow.
“How am I going to call you once we’re done then?” Makoto despaired. And then, just as quickly, reached a solution. “I know!” she announced. “Do you have Furuhata’s number?”
“…No?” Ami responded.
Makoto’s voice was further away again. “Hey, Motoki, what’s your cell number? …Yeah, I have your number, but Ami doesn’t. She said you didn’t exchange it with her… How about with Usagi? She has everyone’s number, right? Do you-?” She sighed and put her mouth to the receiver again. “It’s his own number, and he says he doesn’t know it off the top of his head. What an airhead,” she said fondly. “He’s looking it up right now. Maybe it would have been faster if I got you to tell him your number.”
Maybe it would have been, but Ami was having enough trouble figuring out what was going on as is. “Makoto?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“I’m getting you his number so you can call his phone,” Makoto explained. “Since mine’s about to die. Except maybe don’t call for another half an hour or so. After we’re done with this zoo.”
Right , Ami realised. She was supposed to call Furuhata Motoki to reach Makoto. Because he and Makoto were together. Now. On Christmas.
“Bingo!” Makoto cheered. “Okay, get ready to memorise. His number is 090-5456-##–”
It was that moment when the call dropped. The only sound left was the quiet of the apartment and the soft babble of the aquarium filtration system.
Ami stared at the phone as it blipped back to the wallpaper. She opened up the call screen, and stared at the ten numerals and star and pound keys. But she was missing two digits of Motoki’s number, which meant a hundred different possible numbers to call, even assuming she’d memorised all the other digits correctly. And maybe she could call Usagi or Minako and they might have Motoki’s number, or at least Unazuki’s. But that would mean interrupting even more people’s dates and that would be-
Way too embarrassing.
And even though Makoto had asked her to call back, there wasn’t really anything Ami really needed to call back for.
Makoto and Motoki had worked things out. And, really, this was the best case scenario, Ami reasoned. She had called Makoto to make sure Makoto wasn’t alone on Christmas, and Makoto wasn’t. Problem solved.
Ami might have felt envious, or upset, or something like it. But one of the good things about studying was that it was an unending task, and Ami had gotten very, very good at concentrating on it to the expense of all else. Ami pulled out her tabulated biology notes. Going through the whole folder would have kept her safely distracted from her feelings for days. So, really, it was more than fit for the task of keeping her distracted for a couple of hours, after which there was a knock on the door.
Ami checked the time – still too far early for her mom to arrive home. And she told herself that she didn’t know who to expect when she looked out the peephole into the hallway.
Makoto was wearing a green sweater, and Motoki one in a rich purple. Ami unlatched the lock and opened the door.
“May we come in?” Makoto asked, holding up a paper box.
Motoki was carrying far more – a bouquet filled with Makoto’s paper flowers, a sack of persimmons, and a paper bag that smelled strongly of fried chicken.
Ami stepped aside for them. “How did you get in the building?” she asked.
“One of your neighbours let us in,” Makoto explained, as Ami brought her into the dining room. She set down the paper box and began to slough off her scarf and coat.
Motoki followed suit. “Do you think you still count as neighbours with the other people you live with in a thirty story skyscraper?” he pondered idly.
“Maybe it depends. Only if you live within five floors of one another,” Makoto joked.
Ami wasn’t sure herself. She closed her notebook, stacked her books off to one corner, and felt keenly aware that she wasn’t as good a host as Makoto. Rather than Makoto’s toasty kotatsu, Ami’s apartment only had a western style wooden table, a china cabinet full of cold crystal, and a set of two chairs. There was one for Ami and one for her mom – and Ami wondered from where she might drag a third one.
She wondered if she should be offering drinks or snacks. But it seemed that Makoto and Motoki were ahead of her on that, too. They unpacked the bag of chicken and a bottle of sparkling cider.
They were reaching around one another and brushing casually against one another’s sides – too far close within one another’s personal bubbles for it to not mean anything. But then Ami was standing pretty close to Makoto too. Which meant she was standing pretty close to both of them. The triangle was more equilateral than obtuse.
“Sorry, we’re so late by the way,” Makoto sighed. “And for all the trouble with my phone. It feels like we spent half the day in that line waiting for chicken. And then we had to swing back by to pick up everything else.”
Makoto opened the paper box to reveal a chocolate roll cake, obviously handmade.
“I can’t tell if you two are artists or muses,” Ami said, and she didn’t think of how strange that was to say until they both looked to her curiously. Ami felt her face heat. “Why are you both here?” she asked, before she was asked to explain the rest.
“We thought you could use a break from studying,” Makoto announced. “And we figured if we did all the work and brought everything to you, you wouldn’t have an excuse not to.”
That answer wasn’t unfair or untrue so far as Ami could tell. But it was not the one she was looking for either.
“I meant-” She licked her lips. “You were on a date. Why would you take time away from that to visit me?”
Makoto flushed. “Oh, it’s sort of obvious, isn’t it? I don’t think I’m telling you anything you don’t know but-” Makoto gathered herself. “I thought it might be nice to have a date with all three of us.”
“Only if you’d like,” Motoki added.
Ami was pretty sure she might combust on the spot. “Oh,” she said. She supposed it wasn’t really a surprise.
“Motoki,” Makoto urged, tugging on his sleeve.
Without missing a beat, he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.
Makoto giggled and pressed him away. “Yes, very sweet. But I thought you might show Ami.”
He shuffled over to Ami’s side. “Ami?” he asked.
Ami hesitated a moment, and then answered by tilting her head up and turning her cheek.
He leaned down and his lips were warm on her skin. And it seemed like he was wearing cologne, because he smelled clean and sweet under the chicken grease that permeated the room. She inhaled deeply.
When he pulled back, Makoto moved into the space he vacated and leaned forward into Ami’s side. “So, what do you think, Ami?”
“I think I’d, um…”Ami leaned into her, just a little. Reciprocating the gesture. “I’d love to have a Christmas date with the two of you.” And she thought about apologising, for letting Makoto make all the plans, or for not having taken the initiative to ask the questions she had spent the last couple of weeks dancing around. But instead Ami said, “Thank you. For everything.”
“It was nothing,” Makoto said. “I was glad to do it. For you.”
She was close enough that Ami only had to lean in a little to brush their lips together. Makoto was also warm and sweet. Brown sugar and cologne. Perfect, Ami thought, for a romantic Christmas.
Makoto reached a hand up through Ami’s hair. And when she pulled away, she brushed Ami’s bangs from her forehead and pressed a little kiss there too.
“Alright,” she said, coaxing Ami like a proper hostess. “Let’s go get the swivelling chair from your room, and you can invite us to take a seat.”
