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It’s official: he is actually, definitely, no-doubt-about-it going to kill Kashima this time. Hori’s always had a feeling that a day would come when that idiot would push him too far – he just never expected that when it did, he’d be wearing something like this.
“Hori-senpai!”
He glances up sharply from the half-full glass of punch he’s been nurturing for the past ten minutes, startled by the sound. By the time he manages to fully turn around – the most difficult thing about being a princess, he’s learning, is how much harder it is to maneuver when you have so many ruffles and frills weighing you down – Sakura is excusing herself past one last person to reach him, followed by Nozaki.
“Hi!” She chirps, the greeting nearly lost in the noise of the party. The oversized witch’s hat she’s wearing slips down a little, covering her eyes. She pulls it back up with both hands and smiles brightly at him. “Are you having fun, Senpai? Is your costume giving you any trouble?”
One more sip, and he clears his throat. It takes a moment, but he manages to return her smile, if only barely. “It’s fine,” he says. “The wig is a little itchy, but it’s not unbearable.” In fact, he admits to himself, he had almost started to have a little fun with the concept. It’d been just a dreaded obligation to dress up like this at first (let it never be said that Hori Masayuki shies away from challenges, and besides, Kashima’s promise of being early to club meetings for a month had been too tempting to pass up), but once he’d gotten used to walking in the heels, it had become an interesting experiment to see how deeply he could disappear into the role of an (admittedly deep-voiced) princess, soft, elegant mannerisms and all. Of course, that had been before he’d realized –
“Are you okay, Senpai?” Nozaki’s deep voice cuts through his thoughts. He’s dressed like a vampire, artfully penciled-in bite marks and all. “You look upset.”
Hori sighs. If Nozaki, of all people, can pick up on the fact that something’s bothering him, it must be pretty noticeable.
“It’s nothing, it’s just – it’s Kashima,” he says. “She’s been avoiding me all night, and I have no idea why.”
Sakura and Nozaki share a glance, then blink a few times in confused unison.
“That doesn’t sound like Kashima-kun,” she says while he nods in solemn agreement.
“I know,” Hori says. He feels the tiara slipping off his head for the ninth or tenth time; with a few fingers, he tugs it back into place a little too roughly, tucking a few of the wig’s dark curls behind his ears as he draws his hands back down to his side. And then he smirks a little despite himself, because now that he’s said it outloud, it doesn’t sound like much of a problem at all. Most of the time, he was struggling with getting Kashima to leave him alone for a damn minute, not the other way around. In fact, the last thing he’d been looking forward tonight was having to deal with her fawning all over him. If anything, this development should be a relief. “The only other time I can remember her doing something like this was when you two gave her acting advice.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sakura says, thoughtful. “But that wasn’t her fault, Senpai! She explained to you how she was just following Nozaki-kun’s orders, right?”
Hori nods. That had been a strange day, for sure – uneventful, calm in an almost off-putting way. It might have actually been relaxing if he’d known all the facts beforehand; instead, he’d spent a truly ridiculous amount of time wondering what the hell he’d done to make Kashima want to duck away from him again and again. And now here he is once more, practically experiencing déjà vu. His fingers tighten around the cup.“Well, did you have something to do with this too?”
“Not that I know of,” Nozaki says. “Hmm. Maybe my advice worked so well that she’s trying it out again.”
“I don’t think that’s it. After all, she gave up pretty quickly,” Sakura adds, smiling again. “Maybe some of the girls just pulled her away. They probably wanted to show her their costumes!”
“That’s what I thought too, at first,” he says tiredly, gesturing a gloved hand out towards the rest of the party, “but when I find her, she’s standing by herself, for the most part. And the weird part is that I keep noticing her looking at me but then she tries to pretend like she wasn’t, and by the time I can get across the room, she’s disappeared again, and it’s just so…”
He stops there for a second, gritting his teeth. Just the memory of it, of Kashima, badly pretending to be enamored with a picture on the wall or the back of someone else’s head when he’d just locked eyes with her two damn seconds ago is making his blood boil again. He’s not even exaggerating this time – he’s really going to kill her. What was the point of all this? Why would she have begged him to come to this party with her dressed like this when she was just planning on abandoning him the first chance she got?
“I think she’s trying to humiliate me.” The words come out quieter than he thought they would. His throat hurts, all of a sudden, and he’s not sure how to get it to stop. With a deep breath, he finishes his drink and then sets it down. “She wants me to look silly in front of everyone. I should have known.”
“Hori-senpai, you can’t really think that!” He jumps a little when Sakura tugs hard on one of his sleeves, her eyes so big and distressed beneath the wide brim of her hat. “Kashima-kun wouldn’t do that to you! She was really excited about this, she told me, and she did all that work to pick out the perfect dress and shoes and everything, and then there was the—”
“Then what is it?” He interrupts her. “What’s the problem?”
For a moment, her little mouth gapes silently as she struggles for something to say. Then, the light of an idea crosses her face. “Maybe she’s afraid that you’re mad at her,” she offers. “What do you think, Nozaki-kun?” No answer. “Nozaki-kun?”
Sadly, it looks like they’ve lost their vampire to a bickering couple a few feet away. Nozaki’s carefully inching his way towards them in a clear attempt to eavesdrop, his fingers twitching for a pen and paper. Sakura stares after him for a moment, heaves a big sigh that Hori’s definitely familiar with, and then refocuses her attention.
“Could you have said something that upset her?” She asks. “Not to be rude, Senpai, but when it comes to Kashima-kun, you can sometimes be a little…”
“I didn’t do anything!” He feels a little guilty for snapping at Sakura – none of this is her fault, that’s for sure – but he just can’t help it. The more he replays the night in his head, the less sense any of it makes. Even if they were just at a party, he was still essentially playing a role, and that meant no half-assing it, as far as he was concerned. That was why he’d gone out of his way to stay relatively calm – no yelling, no insults, and no inflicting injuries, no matter how much a certain bonehead deserved it. But even so, Kashima had seemed kind of strange ever he’d met up with her, he was beginning to remember. She’d actually been quiet, for the most part, even helping him put his heels on without any of the obnoxious fanfare he’d been bracing for (“like Cinderella,” Sakura had giggled as she patted Nozaki’s face with a healthy amount of white powder, and it had amazed him at the time that Kashima hadn’t come up with the comment first). Even weirder was the way she’d kept awkwardly laughing whenever he said anything to her, responding with as few words as possible before becoming intensely focused on something ridiculous instead, like a building out the window or a tiny knot in Sakura’s hair. By the time they’d actually gotten to the party, she’d stopped talking to him altogether.
Oh, great. Now he has a headache.
Thankfully, Sakura is more sympathetic than startled, even if he wishes she would stop looking at him like he’s a child who needs to be comforted. He’s certainly not sad, after all. He’s thoroughly and rightfully pissed off. There’s a big difference.
“I’m sure we can figure it out, Senpai,” she says. “There must be something that – oh!”
At once, her hand shoots up into the air, waving so frantically at someone behind him that the witch’s hat practically flies off her head. Hori turns to see, more curls from the wig gathering against his cheek, and – well, speak of the devil.
(He hates himself for the fact that even when he’s mad, even when he’s furious, even when all kinds of murderous thoughts are dancing around enticingly in his head – that same split-second, heart-in-his-throat feeling still comes over him when he first sees her. He blames it entirely on the lighting. The way the glow brightens her face and outlines her hair reminds him of how she looks on stage – always every bit the dashing prince, no matter what stupid, obnoxious things she’s done beforehand.)
Kashima’s half-turned away from them, holding a cup in one hand and thoughtlessly tugging at a few of the buttons on her ornate jacket with the other (after promising him she wouldn’t screw around with it, no less; the whole outfit is from the costume closet, after all). She’s not smiling, her brow furrowed as she stares down at her drink. At least it doesn’t look like she’s having fun either. The thought is a little too petty for Hori’s taste, but he lets an indulgent stab of triumph wash over him anyway just this once. It helps his headache subside for a second, if anything.
“Kashima-kun!” Sakura calls, and her blue head of hair bobs upright at once, caught offguard. Craning her neck, she raises an equally enthusiastic hand to wave back, her expression brightening –
- only for it to be instantly replaced with a clear look of complete and utter panic when she locks eyes with Hori instead.
Right away, she spins back around, making a painfully obvious beeline for a nearby group of laughing classmates. Sakura yells her name again, caught offguard by the reaction, but Hori’s prepared this time. He sweeps up the way-too-big skirt of his dress in one hand (the last thing he needs right now on top of all this other nonsense is to trip and fall on his face in front of everyone) and starts after her. At least he’s used enough to the heels at this point that he’s able to practically run with only a small amount of wobbling. A second before Kashima manages to disappear into the masses yet again, he snags her wrist with his other hand and tugs her back hard.
“You’re not going anywhere, you moron,” he spits between gritted teeth.
With all the dread of a criminal about to be led to the noose, Kashima slowly turns towards him. Her smile is wide and strained, her face flushed. She swallows once, then again.
“O-Oh, there you are, Hori-chan-senpai!” There’s that weird laugh again – sharp, hoarse, almost like she can’t quite breathe properly. “Where have you been? I was looking everywhere, but you know, even with the heels, it’s just so hard to find you in a crowd!”
An attempt at a second laugh quickly changes into a big gulp when Hori lets go of her wrist only to grab her collar instead, yanking her down so that she’s face-to-face with him.
“Bullshit,” he growls, just before he turns and starts to drag her along behind him. “Come on. We need to talk.”
*
There was a small backroom Hori had been pointed to at the beginning of the night, empty save for a few stacked boxes on a shelf and a long mirror standing up against the wall. It was where he’d left his change of clothes – dressing like a princess at a costume party was one thing, but he definitely wasn’t planning on riding the train home like that. Thankfully, he remembers where it is quickly enough. He slides the door open, flips the light switch with one stiff finger, and tugs Kashima in past him, letting her go so that she stumbles forward with a yelp, nearly smacking her head into the opposing wall. By the time she manages to turn herself around to face him again, startled and wide-eyed, he’s pulled the door shut again and positioned himself in front of it.
“All right, Kashima,” he says. The mirror glints at the edge of his vision, revealing that all the running and dragging has left noticeable wrinkles all down the front of his dress. He smooths them out and then crosses his arms, fixing her with the most imposing look he can manage. “I want to know what’s going on, and I want to know now.”
For a long moment, Kashima is silent as she surveys the room, transparently searching for some kind of alternate escape route. With a sweep of her hand, she flicks away a few beads of sweat from her forehead, her cheeks faintly red. Finally, a smile surfaces.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Senpai.” She almost manages to sound normal, save for a slight tremor that Hori picks up on right away. He narrows his eyes. “Weren’t you having a nice time? Chiyo-chan and Nozaki seemed happy, and the food’s really good, and they’ll play any song you want, all you have to do is ask!”
“Will you just stop? Something’s wrong. Tell me what it is.”
“Me? Wrong?” A loud giggle bursts out of her. Clumsily, she folds her arms, attempts a casual shrug. She makes a ‘pfft’ sound towards her reflection in a can you believe this guy? kind of way, grinning at it like she expects it to agree with her. “Why would anything be wrong? I’m great! More than great! Never been better! Why do you ask?”
“Because I have eyes, you moron!” Hori cringes as his headache flares up once more. Gingerly, he massages his temples with a few gloved fingers, making a mental note to keep the yelling to a minimum. That’s basically an impossible request when he’s with Kashima, but he’d also like to keep his brain from exploding, if at all possible. “Don’t you think I’ve known you long enough to be able to tell when something’s off?” He continues, a little quieter. “Most of the time, I can’t get you to leave me the hell alone. Now all of a sudden, you’re going out of your way to avoid me. It’s like that day at school when you were following Nozaki’s orders all over again. So what happened tonight?”
“Avoiding you?” More shaky, obnoxious, absolutely infuriating laughter. “I think you must have knocked your head or something, Hori-senpai, I’m not—”
“If you act like I’m just imagining things one more time, I’m going to kick you,” Hori cuts her off so forcefully that Kashima’s smile instantly fades into a vaguely queasy expression. “Kashima, I’m not stupid. You can’t even look at me right now.”
“Of course I can!” She manages to for six whole seconds before her gaze drops down to her fidgeting feet instead. “Why do I need to look at you, anyway?” She asks the ground innocently enough. “It’s not like I’ll forget what Senpai looks like! That would be silly!”
“And yet, you had no problem watching me when you thought I wasn’t paying attention.”
That stumps her. She gapes silently like a fish for a long moment before pursing her mouth shut. Her teeth work along the length of her bottom lip instead.
“Was all of this just a way for you to make fun of me?” Hori can’t hold it back anymore. He means the words to come out angrier, but instead, they’re almost hoarse. That makes him even more irritated. “Were you waiting to see if wearing something like this would embarrass me in front of everyone?”
“What!? No!” At least Kashima’s horrified expression looks genuine enough. That should be a relief, but strangely, it doesn’t do anything to lessen the uneasy feeling of pressure in his chest. “I would never do that! All I wanted was for you to have fun, Hori-senpai, you’re always so busy and stressed about club stuff that you never get a chance to just relax and give into your softer, more feminine desires! Don’t you feel happier now that you’re—”
“All right, all right,” he grunts, holding up a firm hand. He really doesn’t want to get into everything that’s wrong with that ridiculous train of thought right now. Better just to stay focused on the question at hand. “Did I say something wrong, then? Something that upset you?”
Kashima breathes in, breathes out. She meets his steady gaze for a moment before inexplicably fixing her gaze over his shoulder at the door instead. Again, she wipes her brow with her sleeve, swallowing hard.
“No,” she says. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Then is this just…” At a loss, Hori glances down at himself. Some of the curls from the wig spill over his shoulders with the movement and stick to his nose; he blows them back with a few angry puffs of breath, half-ready to just yank the uncomfortable thing off already. “Is it not what you were expecting?”
He regrets the question the second it leaves his mouth. In fact, he’s so instantly furious at himself that he doesn’t even gauge Kashima’s initial reaction, instead shooting a quick what the hell? look at his reflection in the mirror. The one and only reason he did this was to get this idiot to come to club meetings on time by herself for once in her whole damn life, but now he’s had to go and make it seem like he actually cares what she thinks about how it turned out.
Which, for the record: he doesn’t. At all.
“That’s silly,” Kashima says. Her expression is suddenly stricken; she holds out her hands to him, only to pull them back fast against her chest a second later. The golden tassels hanging from the shoulders of her coat shiver incessantly as she shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Of course you’re a lovely princess, Senpai! You look perfect, you look—”
She pauses, coughs. A few of her fingers, pressed flat above her heart, twitch.
“W-What I mean is,” she starts again, smiling weakly, “that’s not it, either.”
“Then what is it?” Hori presses.
Kashima opens her mouth, then closes it, then opens it again. One of her nails keeps bouncing against a brass button on her coat, making frantic, tinny sounds. Just don’t start laughing again, Hori thinks, a whole half-second before she does.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” she says between giggles, shrugging helplessly. “I really am fine! Honestly, I kept meaning to find you, but so many of the girls wanted to show me their costumes, and really, what kind of prince would I be if I refused such cute requests? And then I ran into some other friends, and of course I had to try the food, and before I knew it, it was so late.” She raps on her head with a few curled knuckles. “You know me,” she says. “Always so bad at keeping track of time!”
Hori stares at her. For a moment, he plans to say something more, but the urge fades, replaced by resignation. He’s finished with this. It’s obvious that she’s hiding something, but this isn’t the drama club; he isn’t responsible for Kashima here, and he certainly isn’t obligated to stand here and play twenty questions until he manages to tear the truth out of her. She can do whatever the hell she wants, as far as he’s concerned.
“Fine. Go back out there, then,” he snaps, brushing past her as he crosses to his folded clothes. “I need to change.”
“Why would you do that?” Kashima innocently asks, turning after him. She isn’t laughing anymore, but he can still hear the echo of it in her voice, an annoying ghost. “It’s a costume party! You’ll look silly if you just go out there in your regular clothes.”
“I know,” Hori says to the wall, determined not to look at her again. He takes the tiara off and then the wig itself, running his hand through his hair. A quick glance in the mirror reminds him that he didn’t bother to style his bangs that morning. “That’s why I’m going home.”
“What? It’s not even late! Why would you go home now!?”
“Because I want to,” is his curt answer. After all, you’re clearly more interested in hanging out with every other person here instead of me nearly gets tacked onto the end, but he swallows the words at the last second. He can’t say that. It makes it sound like – it might give her the wrong idea, is all. Kashima’s good enough at concocting those on her own.
“Please stay just a little longer,” she says, more urgent. He dimly registers the sound of her stepping after him, so close that he can just barely feel the heat of her voice on the back of his head. “I’m sorry about before, I really am!”
“Just forget it, Kashima,” he says, working out the tangles in the wig with his nails before setting it on the shelf next to his clothes. “I’m tired, and my head is pounding, and this whole princess stunt was a stupid mistake I should have never let myself be talked into.”
“But Hori-senpai…!!!”
At first, it seems like she’s going to keep trying to convince him – but then her sigh echoes through the room instead, followed by the small, defeated scrape of her heel on the floor as she turns away. Hori keeps staring at the wall, resisting the sudden, ridiculous urge to look over at her reflection in the mirror. He doesn’t care. He does not care, he insists to the excruciating pulse that keeps shooting back and forth between his temples. He twists his arms behind his back, reaching for the zipper so he can finally get himself out of this goddamn dress.
Oh, shit.
He can’t quite grab it. He makes a few different attempts, even lifting his arms up over his shoulders instead, but it’s no good. Straining to the point of pain only gets his fingertips to graze uselessly against the zipper’s tiny, metal edge with no leverage to latch on.
“Kashima,” he says, glancing over his shoulder. Hori expects to see her halfway out the door, but instead, she’s just standing there with one hand on it, staring at her own sad puppydog face in the mirror. “Can you – damn it,” he hisses, making one last attempt only to freeze when the fabric near one armpit tugs too tight, quickly followed by the faint, gaping sound of a rip. He and Kashima borrowed their costumes from the school with the explicit understanding that they’d be returned in perfect condition; he can repair a small tear easily enough, but anything worse, and the drama club will be short a much-needed piece for the upcoming show. “I can’t get out of this on my own,” he finally admits. “Come over here, will you?”
Kashima blinks once, then again. “M-Me?” She stutters, pointing a shaky finger at herself.
“Who else would I be talking to?”
He turns back to the wall, waiting, only to spin around again a second later when Kashima makes a weird sound that falls somewhere between a high-pitched squeak and a strangled gurgling. She’s fallen back against the door, holding herself up with both hands as her legs bend ineffectually against it. “Y’know what, Senpai,” she says faintly, her smile practically looking manic at this point, “I’m going to go right now and find someone else to help you with that, because I just don’t think I’m really the best choice. Maybe Nozaki, or Ayaka-chan and Satsuki-chan! They handle all the costumes in the club, after all, and I saw them here earlier and I’m sure they know everything there is to know about this kind of thing, not like me, I honestly wouldn’t know the first thing about taking that dress off of you, Hori-senpai, because I’ve definitely never thought about doing something like that ever, not even once, why would I, that’s the silliest thing I’ve—”
“All you have to do is unzip me, you idiot!” Hori finally cuts her off, resisting the powerful urge to pick the wig up off the shelf again and chuck it as hard as he can at her face. It’s always been common knowledge that Kashima is lazy as hell, but the fact that she’s willing to spew out a mess of flimsy excuses to avoid taking five steps towards him really takes the cake. If anything, she’s definitely setting a new record for how badly she can piss him off in a single day. “It’ll take you half a second, and then I don’t care where the hell you go. Just get over here already!”
Kashima, for some inexplicable reason, is breathing very hard, but finally, she pushes herself off from the door, wobbling a little on her feet before steadying herself.
“Okay,” she says, almost more to herself than to him, scratching her throat with a few nails. “I can unzip you. That is a thing that I am able to do. Leave it to me, Senpai!”
Hori could throw out yet another sharp comment about how strangely she’s acting, about how stunningly, painfully obvious it is that something’s off about her – but he’s supposed to be done with this, he reminds himself. So instead, he just turns and faces the wall again as Kashima crosses to him. Very carefully, she fits one hand to his shoulder, her fingers faintly cool as half of them settle against the sheer part of the dress’s sleeve.
“Just don’t move, okay?” She says, practically straight into his ear. The sudden nearness of her voice, bright and shaky, jolts him just a little. “I-I might – I don’t want to catch your skin by accident.”
Hori clears his throat. The stuffiness of the room must be starting to get to him; his face feels flushed, suddenly. Nonetheless, he straightens his shoulders and holds them still.
“Fine,” he says.
(Of course, it’s right around this time that two awkward thoughts finally strike him: 1) no matter how brief it is, this is still a pretty intimate activity, one that someone might take the wrong way if they happened to walk in right now, and 2) it’s especially bold to ask a girl for her help and damn it all, Kashima is a girl, how do you manage to keep forgetting this, Masayuki!? He almost tells her to stop, but then he presses to his teeth to his bottom lip instead. It’ll be over in a few seconds, and it isn’t like he’s about to take off all of his clothes in front of her, anyway. That would be wildly inappropriate. Besides, he thinks darkly, Kashima can handle a little awkwardness just fine after she’s put him through the feeling all night long.)
“Done,” Kashima breathes out. Her knuckles scrape across the separated metal teeth, then accidentally brush over his spine, making him shiver. At once, she pulls back, that grating laugh bursting into his ear. “There you go! You’re free and whoops, I accidentally touched your back, sorry about that, and now I’m gonna go, so goodbye!”
“Thanks,” he mutters, planning to go silent before one last thought makes him turn again. “Oh, and make sure you hang up that costume right when you get home, don’t you dare bring it to me all wrinkled like last time, or I swear I’ll—“
The rest of the sentence quickly unravels into a startled huff when he practically steps right into her; he’d assumed she’d already headed towards the door. For a moment, they just stare at each other, wide-eyed. Kashima’s expression gives him pause – if she looked sad before, now she’s completely miserable, her whole face flooded with a healthy shade of red. He can even see sweat shining on her neck, her hands trembling at her sides, her whole posture clearly uncomfortable. And that’s when the truth finally clicks in Hori’s mind.
“Are you sick?” He feels silly for not picking up on the signs sooner. It seems obvious now, in retrospect. “Damn it, Kashima, is that what this has been about? Why didn’t you just say something? You shouldn’t have forced yourself to come tonight if you didn’t feel good.” Before he even realizes it, he’s reaching up one gloved hand to press to her forehead. “You look like you have a fever. Here, let me—”
But he’s barely grazed her with his fingertips when she practically leaps backwards like he burnt her, stumbling straight into the door with her hands held out in front of her. “I’m not sick! I think it’s just the room!” She says way too loudly, even doing a few improvised lunges to prove it. “Don’t you feel hot in here, Hori-senpai? It must be because there’s no window! Tell you what, I’ll go find a window, and when you’re finished changing, I’ll show you where it is and we can both enjoy some fresh air! In fact, I’ll go right now!”
For a moment, Hori stays frozen, just watching with dumbfounded eyes as Kashima reaches to open the door. Then, his expression hardens. He’s supposed to be finished caring about this, about her, he reminds himself for the hundredth time, but something about the way she pulled away, like she couldn’t even stand to be touched by him, makes his gut twist in an unpleasant way.
“Fine. Fine,” he practically spits, turning to face the wall again. He means to stop there, wait until she leaves so he can cool down, but patience’s never been a strong virtue of his. The words keep spilling out. “Just keep lying to me even though you’re terrible at it. I mean, I’ve always known you were careless, Kashima, but this really takes the cake this time. Begging me all week to go to this party with you, forcing me to dress up, and then fucking abandoning me at the earliest chance you get, how much more obnoxious can someone get—”
“But I didn’t mean to do it,” Kashima’s voice cuts in, softer. “I told you, it was an accident! I was—”
“That doesn’t make it better!” He drags up the dress with both hands so he can kick off his heels, one after the other. They slam into the wall with solid, twin echoes. “Hell, at this point, I wish you meant to embarrass me, because at least if that’s true, it means you actually thought about me at all instead of just wanting to mess around with your fangirls all night.”
“That’s not it, Senpai! Please listen to me, I just—“
“And I don’t know, maybe I was too rough bringing you to club meetings or I did something else that pissed you off, but the least you could do is be honest with me about it!” Hori barely knows what he’s saying at this point. His head is pounding and his blood is burning in his veins and he’s angry and he’s frustrated and he’s, he’s – fine, he’s sad, okay? You win, universe. He’ll admit it to himself. Kashima ignoring him makes him sad, and he doesn’t know why the fuck that’s true, but apparently, it is, and he’ll have to live with it. He pulls off the gloves next, so roughly that he nearly tears one of them. “I guess I’m just a clueless idiot like you, because I actually thought we were friends, but that can’t be true because you don’t want to talk to me and you won’t stand within ten feet of me and apparently it’s a struggle to even let me touch you, which is just the stupidest—”
“Hori-senpai!” Kashima practically screams, and that’s what finally makes him stop. “You’re wrong!”
He’s never heard her sound like that before, not even once. Startled, he starts to turn, only for a warm arm to wrap around his shoulders and twist him the rest of the way around. Hori sucks in a sharp breath; the gloves fall from his hands. “What,” he huffs, which is supposed to be the start of the question what the hell are you doing, but he doesn’t make it that far. In fact, he only gets halfway through “the” before Kashima fits her hand to the steady line of his jaw, tips his chin up towards her, and bends to kiss him right on the mouth.
Everything goes silent, then. Hori stares unblinking over their noses at Kashima’s eyes, tightly scrunched shut. His first instinct (painstakingly cultivated after years of having his personal space invaded) is to push her away. He even manages to lift his arms, his palms facing out, his fingers straight and stiff – but then her other hand presses between his shoulderblades, bringing him closer so that she can meet his mouth even more firmly, and they fall limp at his sides again. What’s left of his breath feathers out, hot and thin. Without meaning to, he closes his eyes.
Kashima’s lips are soft and somewhat dry. His brain’s gone completely numb at this point, but small details like that still manage to dimly register here and there. Her hand is cool on his bare back and she’s shaking a little against him and her kiss is somehow nervous, overly eager, and absolutely perfect all at once (of course it is, it’s Kashima, he’d never expect anything less). In fact, it’s so perfect that he’s seeing actual stars bursting across his eyelids, which is the sappiest thing he’s ever heard of, much less experienced firsthand. It’s ridiculous how quickly he’s getting lost in it; he feels himself leaning forward, just completely melting into her embrace like he really is some helpless, lovestruck princess, and somewhere in his useless body, that bothers him, but he can’t quite find the need to be angry about it just yet. Instead, he lifts up onto his bare toes. He tilts his face blindly towards her touch, wanting more, and that’s when Kashima finally pulls away.
The sudden absence of her makes him stumble backwards. Distantly, he hears her gasp, followed by her arm lifting off his back and wrapping tight around his shoulders instead to support his weight. He feels dizzy, but he shakes off the sensation as fast as he can, forcing his way back into reality, blinking over and over again until he can clearly see Kashima looming over him. Her eyes are very wide; a few of her fingers flutter against his cheek and then settle there again.
The only thing Hori can manage to blurt out is a slight variation on his previous question.
“What,” he breathes in, “the hell,” he breathes out, “was that?”
An attempt at a second breath is ruined by Kashima leaping away from him, so suddenly that he almost topples over.
“Window!” She blurts out. “I was supposed to find a window, wasn’t I? Whoops! I mean, just look at you, Hori-senpai, you need some fresh air for sure,” she motions stiffly to him, which probably means his face looks as hot as it feels, “and I definitely need it,” she goes on, blushing so hard that that it looks like she just walked out of a boiler room, “so I’m gonna go and find one right now!” And then she turns on her heel and makes a beeline for the door, looking like she’ll tear it straight off the hinges if it gets her out of the room a second faster.
“W-Wait!” Thankfully, Hori is fast enough to grab her wrist before she makes it there. A frenzied glance in the mirror confirms that yes, his cheeks and his nose and even his forehead are bright, bright red. “What is wrong with you!?” He shouts, hoping she doesn’t notice the way is voice is cracking too. “You can’t just – you can’t do something like that and then just leave!” Kashima straightens her fingers, tries to slip her hand out of his grip lightning-quick (a technique she’s gotten pretty good at it when it comes to escaping him and skipping club meetings, much to his chagrin), but he just squeezes harder, so hard he can feel her pulse hammering against the lines in his palm. He’s practically shaking at this point, out of shock and frustration and some other fierce feeling he can’t quite pin down. “Tell me what’s going on now, Kashima!”
Kashima looks like she wishes the ground would open up and swallow her whole right about now, but she finally stops struggling.
“Can’t we just forget about it, Senpai?” She practically wails, sagging back against the door when he releases her. “I already feel terrible enough! I did everything I could to keep it together, I tried so hard, but you made it impossible!”
“Me?” He asks incredulously. “What did I do?”
“Everything!” She gestures at all of him wildly. “I mean, I’ve always thought you were adorable, and it’s not like I’ve never considered, um, doing something like that before,” she sputters and covers her face with her hand, her blush flashing brightly between her fingers, “but then you came out in that dress and you were actually sparkling, Hori-senpai, you were acting just like you would on stage and even doing all those little movements so sweetly and, and – and it was just too much! It was unfair!”
Hori blinks. He looks at himself in the mirror. The dress has a much weirder shape on him now that it’s unzipped; the neckline gapes, open and uneven, revealing the barest line of his collarbone. She has to be joking, is the familiar thought that comes to mind – but no, Kashima is still trembling a little at her wrists and fingers, and her voice is as high as he’s ever heard it, and he can see actual tears in her eyes. This isn’t like her acting on stage. He’s never seen her look so rattled, so completely out of control before. For the first time in a while, he discards that possibility entirely.
“And I thought, if I could just stay away from you,” Kashima continues at a near-hysterical speed, not even letting him get a word in edgewise, “that I’d be able to control myself and everything would be okay, but I was wrong and you had to be lonely all night and it’s all my fault, Hori-senpai, I ruined your big chance to finally be a heroine like you’ve always wanted and that’s just…”
She covers her face with both hands, hopelessly muffling the rest.
Hori lets a few beats of silence go by as all the gears in his head finally, finally click into place. The truth catches him off-guard; he takes a step towards her without realizing he’s doing so.
“Wait,” he says. “So this whole mess, you ignoring me, all the lying – it was just because you like the way I look?”
It takes a moment, but Kashima nods. She mutters something into her cupped palms that he doesn’t come anywhere close to hearing correctly. With a sigh, he reaches up to peel her hands back, managing to work them down to her pouting mouth. “What?”
Kashima stares at him with doleful eyes. Her breath comes out soft and hitched, briefly hot on his wrist before he pulls away.
“You’re the most beautiful princess I’ve ever seen,” she repeats miserably through her fingers.
For what feels like a very long time, Hori can only stare back, genuinely at a loss for words. At first, he almost laughs (partly from surprise, partly from embarrassment, partly from his growing suspicion that this is some kind of weird dream brought on by stress from the upcoming show) but the sound gets caught in his throat, and he doesn’t try again.
“Why didn’t you just say that, then?” He finally manages to choke out instead. “Why the hell did you put me through all of this when it was something as simple as that?”
“Because I’m your prince!” Kashima sighs. “And a prince is supposed to always be chivalrous and respectful of their lady, no matter what! They shouldn’t have thoughts like that about them,” it doesn’t seem possible at this point, but somehow, her face gets even redder, so much that he can see the color creeping into her ears, “and they definitely don’t take advantage of their sweet, innocent nature! But I did, Senpai, I stole a kiss from you like some kind of lecherous creep and soiled your pure-hearted dream and that’s unforgivable, it’s awful, it’s so awful that I don’t even deserve to call myself a prince any longer, and I…”
She keeps going, babbling on about how she’s going to make this up to him, that she’ll be on time to club meetings for two, no, three months instead of just the one (yeah, he’ll believe that when he sees it), but Hori finds that her voice is starting to go a little fuzzy at the edges, crowded out by everything else that’s going on his head. Between Kashima daring to label him as someone with “sweet, innocent nature” and the question of exactly what kinds of thoughts she was having, there’s certainly a lot to focus on — but the truth is, he’s not thinking about any of that right now. He’s thinking about how the first feeling he’d had when he realized the truth – before surprise, before disbelief, before the familiar, tired, oh-great-this-moron-has-once-again-complicated-my-life-way-more-than-it-needed-to-be wave of frustration – was relief, pure and simple. He’s thinking about how his headache’s suddenly gone, along with the pressure in his chest. He’s thinking about all those times he’d spotted Kashima from across the room only to lose her, all the while wondering why this wasn’t like school or the drama club or the train station every morning, why she wasn’t rushing over and waving like crazy and grinning at him in that embarrassing, oddly exhilarating way. He’s thinking about how it’s been nearly five minutes, and his lips are still tingling.
(It has to be some kind of big, cosmic joke that this is the part he figures out quickly. His common sense must be completely scrambled, too, because he doesn’t even have the decency to be caught offguard by it. No you’ve got to be kidding me, no what the hell did I do to deserve this, no seriously, out of everyone on the planet, why does it have to be HER. There’s just one small, flat word endlessly bouncing around his brain: oh. Oh. Oh.)
“It’ll be all right, Hori-senpai,” Kashima is saying, the sound of his name snapping him back to clarity. She’s got her head tipped dramatically to one side now, her eyelashes bowed, her voice all choked up. “I may have let you down, but there must be someone else out there who can make your fantasies come true in the way you deserve. A true prince who knows how to always be a gentlemen, who can sweep you right off your feet and carry you into the – ow!”
She blinks furiously at him, rubbing the spot on her forehead he’d just smacked with the heel of his palm.
“You’re such an idiot, Kashima,” Hori says. The words come out raspy. He can feel his heartbeat in his toes, high in his throat. “You’re the biggest moron I’ve ever known. Sometimes, I’m convinced there’s not a goddamn thing going on between your ears. Do you bother to think before you speak?” He settles one hand over her shoulder. Kashima’s eyes flicker, following the path of his arm, but she doesn’t move. “What the hell are you even talking about?” He grabs her collar in the other hand, holding it tight. “I don’t want anyone else,” he says, nearly a hiss, and then he yanks her down to meet his mouth again.
It’s a much clumsier kiss. He raises his head too fast and closes his eyes too early, so early that he doesn’t even realize he’s misjudged the amount of force needed until their noses bump together, quickly followed by the painful vibration of his teeth clicking against hers. Hori swears loudly in his head (way too aggressive, you dipshit, what the hell are you thinking); he eases back just a little. His lips slide over the crest of her mouth, lingering there, and God, he hopes this doesn’t feel as awkward to her as it does to him. As much as he hates to admit it, he doesn’t have a lot of experience with this kind of thing – nothing besides a few chaste stage kisses and a peck or two on the cheek with a middle-school crush. He was always just so busy with club stuff to think about dating, and once Nozaki’s backgrounds and the exhausting duty of keeping Kashima in line were both thrown into the mix, his complete lack of free time had destroyed the idea entirely. Compared to the way she kissed him, this is basically amateur hour. He’s tempted to just stop now, save the last sliver of his dignity while he still can – but then Kashima leans forward. Her lips are warm and smooth and practically electric against his; she breathes out, shaky, and he can taste mint candy, the punch from the party. It’s such a small shift, but honestly, that’s all it takes. Hori winds his fingers so hard against her collar that the bones there begin to ache. He stays in place.
It goes on like that for a while – slow and measured, hesitant in a way that’s becoming comfortable. At some point, he feels the light pressure of Kashima’s fingers settling on his waist, pulling him forward one last, small step so that they’re standing toe-to-toe. In turn, Hori lifts his hand from her shoulder and cradles the back of her head instead. He nips at her bottom lip once gently, then again with a little more insistence, his tongue glancing against the thin skin there. She shivers at that; embarrassment flares in his gut. Too much, he thinks. With one last careful sweep of his mouth over hers, he pulls away. He opens his eyes just as Kashima makes a panicked sound, already reaching after him.
“Not yet, Senpai, not yet,” she whispers, practically whines into the thin pocket of space between them, and then it’s like something just snaps. All of a sudden, she has his face in her hands and she’s kissing him again, kissing with so much fierce enthusiasm that he staggers backwards, nearly tripping over the hem of his dress. A few more hurried steps, and he’s pushed up against the wall; Kashima holds him there, her wrists at his neck, her fingernails in his hair. The rhythm of her lips is clever and confident, so dizzying. She coaxes his mouth open, easily slips past his teeth to tease his tongue with her own, and if he was seeing stars before, now he’s seeing meteor showers, fireworks, the deafening explosions of a whole goddamn firing squad. It’s almost infuriating how good she is at this, Hori thinks hazily, gripping her shoulders hard, doing his best to just keep up. Almost.
In the end, he has to push her off of him – not because he wants to, but because if he goes five more seconds without getting any air into his lungs, they might actually implode.
“What’s the matter, Senpai?” Kashima asks after he gets a few gasps in, winded too, and even with his eyes closed, he can just hear the cheeky smile in her voice that proves she’s back to her normal, confident, completely insufferable self. (Thank god, he thinks without meaning to, and then immediately decides to take that reaction to the grave). “Are you going to swoon again? Don’t worry, I’ve got you!” She drops one arm to his waist, squeezing it against him protectively. Hori swats it away.
“I didn’t swoon,” he insists, even though he’s not exactly sure what else you could call the fact that she had to practically catch him after that first kiss. He’s more than a little relieved that he’s got a wall to lean against this time. “I couldn’t breathe! You nearly killed me. Just – just give me a minute.”
“Okay,” Kashima chirps. Her bangs are mussed, falling so that they frame the pleasant flush on her face. “You’ve been backstage for too long, Hori-senpai! You must not have the lung capacity you used to. Or maybe it just has to do with your height.” She beams at him, oblivious to the familiar way he narrows his eyes.
“You’re a brat,” he growls, reaching up to smack her – only for Kashima to surprise him by catching his arm in midair.
“Take as long as you need, my lady,” she says softly. Her voice is serious now, deep in a way that she usually reserves for performances and her fangirls. Anger bubbles up in Hori’s chest at first, but something about the way she’s looking at him dulls it almost immediately, leaving his throat dry in the process. He swallows instead. “In the meantime, I’ll just,” she says, and closing her eyes, she leans forward and presses her lips to his palm. Her breath, hot, slips through his stiff fingers; she raises her thumb and bends them down with it so she can cover his knuckles in delicate, lingering kisses too, one after the other. Next comes the rough scar on his thumb, the inside of his wrist.
“Kashima,” Hori says. He means it to be intimidating, a warning to not get carried away, but it doesn’t come out that way at all. Instead, his voice is small, strained, even more breathless than it was a second ago. What is happening to him!?
She glances up at him. “What?” She asks. The curl of her mouth fades a little, suddenly hesitant. “Do you want me to stop?”
He doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t. He can’t find the words to say it, though – maybe it’s nerves, or stubbornness, or his long-held hatred of giving her any kind of satisfaction when it comes to rattling him. Whatever the case is, Hori gives himself a moment to consider the warm weight of Kashima’s hand curled around his arm; he presses his back firmly against the wall, steadying himself. Finally, he manages a grunt and a brusque shake of his head, coupled with his best oh, go ahead already look, usually reserved for the rare few times he gives in and ends drama club practice a few minutes early.
As dense as she is, Kashima gets it right away, her ghost of a smile blooming into a devastatingly handsome grin that stresses his heart rate even further. She presses her lips to his wrist once more, right over his pulse, and then takes her time traveling up his arm, all the way to the edge of his sleeve. Slowly, she leans into him; she bends a little, pressing one knee just so against against the wall between his legs. Hori barely has time to process what’s happening before she shamelessly, shamelessly hooks a few fingers over his dress’s loose neckline, pressing it down enough that she can kiss the jutting line of his collarbone as well, once, then twice, then a third time, moving towards the base of his neck. Hori bites his lip hard, holding back a groan; her hair brushes his chin, and he lifts his head right away, giving her better access. One last peppering of quick, firm kisses at his throat, and she finally pulls back.
“What about that, Senpai?” She asks, her eyes practically glittering. “Did that give you butterflies?”
“No,” he lies through his teeth, glowering at her. It’s useless, he knows – his skin distinctly feels like it’s one size too tight after that, and he doesn’t even want to know how red his face is at this point – but old habits die hard. Kashima’s pleased expression is completely unaffected. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? You don’t have any damn boundaries. And I’m done with this dress after tonight, so if all of this is just about me wearing it, then…”
“It’s not!” He jumps a little when she reaches for him, grabbing his face in both hands once more so that he has to look straight at her. “I mean, I, uh, might have got a little carried away because of it,” she says, her face warming, “but it doesn’t matter to me what you wear. I still – you’re still my princess, Hori-senpai.” She hesitates for a moment, but the words come out firmly nonetheless. “I want you to always be my princess.”
Nozaki’s manga has finally gone straight to his head. That has to be it. That’s the only reason he can come up with for why he knows there’s a million and one reasons this is a bad idea, that it’s going to turn his life into more a complicated mess than it already is, and he’ll gladly accept all of them if it means he can stay right here for just a few more minutes, so close to Kashima and her ridiculously blinding smile, her thumb stroking his cheek in such a soothing, reverent way.
“Oh, great,” he manages to say after a moment, and it only sounds half as sarcastic as he meant it to. Still, it makes Kashima pause, uncertainty coloring her features. She begins to pull the hand back, but Hori catches it before she can, squeezing her fingers as he holds it in place. Some of her bangs have messily scattered into thick strands over her eyes; with his other hand, he reaches up and carefully brushes them back. “I guess whoever you end up with should already be used to all your nonsense,” he adds, almost matter-of-factly, and there it is – a confession for a confession, he supposes. Strangely enough, it’s the easiest thing he’s said all night. “Anyone else would be in for a rude awakening when it comes to your more moronic qualities.”
Her radiance returns in full force at that. “But you don’t care, do you, Senpai? No matter what I do, I’ll still always be your one and only prince.” She bats her eyes in a self-satisfied fashion, tilting her head at just the right second to graze his hand with her lips as he pulls it back. (You see? Completely shameless.) “You don’t want anybody but me. That’s what you said, remember? You can’t take it back!”
“Like hell I can’t,” Hori shoots back. He can’t muster up any real force behind the words, though; Kashima’s smug expression doesn’t even waver. God, he wants to wipe that look off her face. At least that’s the excuse he gives himself for why he chooses that moment to wrap his arms around her neck and yank her into another bruising kiss. She returns it and then some, grabbing him around the waist and lifting him up against her to the point that his feet are practically off the ground.
(Maybe he will wear the dress again, after all. Considering all the damn times over the last year and a half she’s managed to leave him stunned and tongue-tied, his heart doing literal somersaults in his chest – whenever she’s on stage, after that ridiculous bull ride down the hallway, even that first day in the courtyard when he saw her at the opening ceremony – it seems only right that she should have to suffer now and then too. Turnabout is fair play, as far as he’s concerned.)
“I should have known this would make you happy, Hori-chan-senpai,” Kashima says when he breaks away briefly to catch his breath again. “You love plays about fairytales and royalty and happy endings! Of course your sweet maiden heart was hoping this night would end in a—”
“Are you trying to ruin this?” He cuts her off, pinching her ear. “Shut up and kiss me again.”
She giggles right into his mouth, but Hori is relieved to discover that at least this is one time where he doesn’t have to tell Kashima twice.