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It starts on a Tuesday.
Akito hates Tuesdays. On Tuesdays, Touya has library work all of lunch and Akito has soccer practice right after school, meaning they don’t get to properly see each other until well past five in the afternoon. He has to water the classroom’s dying shrubs on Tuesdays. Worst of all, An has hall monitor duties on Tuesdays. There is not a single safe space within school premises on Tuesdays.
This means everywhere: including the abandoned lawn care equipment shed on the edge of the running track, apparently. Akito gets exactly one bite of his sad whole grain bread before An kicks the doors open, holding a broom like one would a baseball bat. “It’s time,” she announces, “and also why are you having lunch in the shed.”
“For this exact reason,” he replies instinctively. “How did you get here so fast?”
Proudly, An pats herself on the back, all with a broom and a stuck up smile on her face. “I know everything,” she answers. “Where you are. Where you’ll be. Where you live.”
He frowns. “Stop that.”
“Your grades. Your mom’s phone number. Your-”
“Who told you?”
“Mizuki,” An replies. She reaches forward to grab the collar of his uniform and haul him up to his feet with strength he doesn’t recall her having (a gym membership? A contract with a supernatural being- like a devil? A holder of a business degree?) and promptly pulls him out of the shed, shoving the doors closed with an echoing bang. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s time for you to finally meet her.”
He lets himself be dragged all the way to the front entrance of the school. He is there because he lets her and not because he’s too weak to resist. He lets her. “Who,” he begins, “are you talking about. Are you crazy.” Only one of these is a genuine question.
“You know,” An says nonchalantly, bringing them to a stop by the bushes (a stalker-aligned decision), “my girlfriend.”
And oh, oh, Oh. An’s ‘girlfriend’.
The story of An’s ‘girlfriend’ also started on a Tuesday, like most terrible things do. It might have been a little under a month ago. It happened like this: An invited him and Touya to the quadrennial Shiraishi family barbecue. Actually, she invited Touya, and said in front of both of them that he could come as Touya’s honourary plus one, only because she supports young love and couples in STEM. He promptly joked (it wasn’t a joke) that she wouldn’t know anything about young love, and then she said it. That she had a girlfriend.
It was a lot of congratulating (on Touya’s part) and disbelief (on Akito’s part) and interrogation (also on Akito’s part) that, conclusively, only strengthened the feeling of disbelief. Because when Akito asked what her name was, An blushed bright red and looked down at her shoes and mumbled a string of word vomit in response. When Akito asked what her hobbies were, An said photography and snake watching, like she was playing a game of build-the-human in her head and suddenly realised she needed something that would make her fake girlfriend have a personality.
And finally, when Akito asked where she studied, An quite literally said Oh she goes to another school somewhere else in the city you wouldn’t know her.
It became a thing. Every time Touya insisted on meeting her, An would say something along the lines of she’s busy, she’s doing tutoring, she’s on a three-day-long intensive animal care workshop. Akito would ask for a picture of her and An would tell him I don’t have any, I upload them to a cloud drive and then delete them, my Instagram just deleted itself and won’t open ever again sorry. It was weird, but what was weirder was that even when he and Touya told her it was fine if she was single, she wouldn’t let it go.
What was the weirdest was that sometimes, he would believe her. He’s caught her smiling at her phone in secrecy, tapping away some misspelt reply in a fit of laughter and pure, genuine joy. He’s seen her looking a second too long at flowers and chocolates whenever they pass by stores on the street. He knows what liking someone that much feels like, and An was nothing if not infatuated.
It didn’t make sense. None of it ever did- but he guesses that’s why they’re here now, crouched by the bushes on a Tuesday lunch break, staring at the front gates.
“You know,” Akito says, “you’re kind of, like. Unwell.”
“Shut up,” An hisses, elbowing him in the side. He coughs and drops the rest of his sandwich right onto the flowerbed. “She texted me to say she’s almost here.”
“You mean she’s real?” Akito laughs, except it isn’t funny because now he’s hungry and lunchless. He shakes her grip away and stands up, dusting his pants. “An, I’m serious when I say I won’t make fun of you if you don’t have a g-”
“There she is,” An says, pointing towards the gate. “Gray uniform. Cute pigtails. Most wonderful person on earth. Right there.”
He looks. Stares. Squints his eyes because he can’t see without his contacts until he can see and There Is Indeed A Girl.
An’s description is accurate right up until the gray uniform. The girl is standing by the side of the front gate, clearly nervous with the way her head whips around, wearing a clean uniform- from where? Is it Miyajou?- and circular thin-frame glasses crooked on her nose. She has bangs that sit messily across her forehead and pigtails that are somehow tied completely uneven. She has a giant backpack, and it’s giant enough that she might actually bring all of her textbooks to class.
“So that’s your girlfriend from another school,” Akito comments. She does, in fact, look like she is from another school. She also notably looks like a loser. “She looks like a loser.”
“Shut up,” An replies, jabbing him behind the knees with her arm. His legs bend into a muted collapse and he’s reminded that An is also a loser. “But yes. That’s my girlfriend. Isn’t she cute? Don’t look at her, though. But she’s the cutest. We met at the cafe, and you know, it’s our two month anniversary coming up soon.”
“Hold on.” Akito sits back down (partially mandatory because he can not feel his legs) and puts his hand up. “She's actually real. What the hell. Why have you been acting so weird about her then?”
An glares. “What do you mean?”
Given who he is, he glares back. “You wouldn’t even tell us her name.”
“It’s Azusawa Kohane,” An answers in one breath. The uncharacteristic blush comes after, dusting itself across her cheeks as she averts her gaze. “I mean, I did. It’s just that whenever I say her name I think of her and- I don’t know. I really like her. Every time I call her name she turns around and smiles all shy and it makes me want to throw up in a good way so I end up shy too so-”
“What about her pictures?” Akito feels breathless. And a little light-headed.
An returns to her normal self almost immediately, giving him a critical side-eye and an angular eyebrow raise. “I’m not showing you her pictures, are you crazy? Those are for me. You are crazy.”
“Are you kidding me,” he replies. “You need to self reflect. You can’t even blame me for not believing you because how could you expect me to when you answer everything so evasively? Even Touya didn’t believe you.”
“Touya knows.”
“Are you kidding me,” Akito repeats.
“Yeah, he and Kohane know each other.” An hums nonchalantly, scratching her head. “They turned out to be neighbours in law or whatever. I introduced them a while back. They get along pretty well.”
That is what finally silences Akito. Instead of replying, he decides to just sit there. He thinks of nice happy things like being able to eat a real sandwich and living in a universe where his boyfriend decided to tell him that his friend’s imaginary girlfriend is actually not imaginary and the only thing imaginary is his dignity.
As expected, An doesn’t care. She takes the opportunity to stand up and wave her arm, yelling with a hand cupping her mouth, “Kohane! Over here!”
Azusawa Kohane from another school finally looks over at her, and even with 20/70 vision he can see how she smiles so bright it’s blinding (although he kind of already is, and no matter how much he wishes for it, two negatives don’t make a positive when the negative is an elongated eyeball). She waves back and runs over, saying something like An-chan! as loudly as her quiet voice can manage, and An is already rounding the flowerbed and running towards her with her arms open wide.
So Kohane is real. Whatever. Akito stands up, ready to introduce himself and his full government name and say that he is very surprised she knows Touya and that Touya never told him even though they’re dating and that An also never told him even though they have been friends for many years, but he doesn’t get the chance. Kohane is giving An a lunch box wrapped in polka dot cloth and hugging her around her waist. An is too busy grinning like an idiot and staring at Kohane like she’s personally responsible for hanging the stars in the sky.
Again, whatever. He supports young love, or couples in STEM or something like that. Honestly, he’s being too nice, especially considering how he was the only one kept in the dark for this long. He could leave now, go to the cafeteria and replace his sandwich with An’s dropped wallet. He could tell Kohane she looks like a nerd. He could tell An she, too, looks like a nerd.
But he doesn’t, because maybe this is the happiest he’s seen An in his life. He watches her say something to Kohane, and Kohane turns to look his way with a small wave and a nice to meet you . He waves back with a yeah, you too, take care of An for me.
He decides to be nice and let it slide. Just this once.