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Handing her poems to Yuri had become a more fluid motion than it was before; less just thrusting it forward and tensing up, preparing to argue. Yuri may have still made it clear that her poems were too simple for her taste and too easy to read, and it still frustrated Natsuki that she could show that with nothing but her eyes and the slightest twitches of her nose and lips, but Yuri had begun to finally take her poems into serious analytical consideration, and Natsuki tried her absolute best to bite her tongue against brutal honesty. Their poems could be similar sometimes, if you really looked.
The two of them had begun to read closer and closer, until they were shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, pages sometimes brushing against one another.Natsuki always brought more than one manga, and kept the others by her side. From the moment she had gotten her hands on manga, on comic books, even on simple four - panel comics on the corner of one of her Papa’s alcohol - soaked newspapers, she had loved them. They were comforting, easy to understand with dyslexia. They made her feel happy - she was still trying to classify the feeling she felt when she saw Yuri stifle a chuckle over a line in whatever thick horror novel rested on her lap - she had a bad habit of trying to read too many books at the same time until their plotlines blended into mush.
Yuri made no comment when she got Natsuki’s manga from the top shelf, so Natsuki didn’t either.
Yuri never moved when Natsuki dozed off on her shoulder.
Yuri began to instinctively make tea for Natsuki as well, and would come in precariously holding her teapot and cups to her chest, fastened by her arms in a cradle shape. Natsuki wasn’t sure of what she thought of Yuri’s tea either - it smelled nice, but it essentially tasted like tired water. She wouldn’t tell Yuri though, and she’d smile up from the cup, and Yuri would blush with the slightest grin.
Of course, this newfound friendship elicited teasing from the other members of their little club. While Sayori went for winks and nudges and outright, sincere, questions that made Yuri squeak and gather her hands at the dip of her collarbone; Monika chose to go for rhetorical questions that sounded oratorical, and trying her best to point out hints that were simply slips of the tongue. Deep in the recesses of her mind, Natsuki knew where this had come from. The night at Sayori’s house, the television autoplaying a new romantic comedy, Sayori sleeping on her stomach with her head in her arms and Monika snoozing on her back with one arm underneath her and the other strewn across her forehead. The room was pink with that 4 AM glow, and Natsuki was braiding a frontal lock of Yuri’s hair, and Yuri brought their lips together, just for a moment.
Yuri wore that kind of braid a lot more now.