Work Text:
There are three steps to a Wonderhoy, apparently.
Shutting off her phone, Mafuyu watches from across the courtyard as Ootori and another first-year student seem to be engrossed in a conversation about it, voices loud enough to be heard across the school. Otori is smiling, stars in her eyes sparkling as she very enthusiastically explains to her friend the steps with huge hand gestures and twirls.
She’s always smiling, now that Mafuyu thinks about it, never a frown or displeased look on her face. It’s only with her that she’s been able to see an expression other than that—fear, mostly, or maybe it’s nervousness, as Kanade and everyone tell her. Right. A junior being nervous to speak to their senior. Only she isn’t a normal junior, as it feels just like yesterday that Otori Emu and her crossed that finish line for the three-legged race.
“You’re smiling, but it doesn’t feel like you’re really smiling.”
“Hey.” One of her classmates taps her shoulder, snapping her out of her thoughts. Otori and that first-year student are still going. “Don’t you think they’re being so loud?”
“I—“
“Yeah, they’re disturbing everyone’s lunch,” another one says.
Mafuyu opens her mouth to protest (because while it’s true they are being loud, they’re at least keeping to themselves) but snaps it shut just as quickly. The sound causes everyone to look at her. She laughs. The sound rings hollow to her ears. “Excuse me. I’ll go talk to Otori-san to see what they’re up to.”
“Ah, really?! Thanks a lot, Asahina-san!”
“So responsible—guess that’s just like her though.”
She waves goodbye and doesn’t look back as she walks to the pair. The first year is a bit familiar, the blonde hair with pink tips, and her cheerfulness is as infectious as Otori’s, it seems.
“And then you just go—A-asahina-senpai?!” Otori shrieks, garnering all the attention of everyone in the courtyard if they weren’t already watching.
Mafuyu smiles. “Hello, Otori-san. It’s been a while.”
“Uh, um yeah! Yes! It has! Been! A while!”
The other girl is saying a hello to Mafuyu and a goodbye, something about meeting up with another friend, and then it’s just the two of them. Otori’s words are stiff, body even more rigid if not for the shaking of her hands.
Kanade and the other’s words come back wrong. She’s not nervous—she’s scared. Of her. Mafuyu wracks her brain for a reason and comes up with none. Huh. This again. Amidst all the confusion, there is one thing she knows for certain.
She doesn’t mind—
(No, that’s not it. Last time, yes, but Otori’s becoming a presence in her school life now, jumping to greet her between classes or after school. A voice suspiciously like Ena’s is yelling at her from the faint vestiges of her mind. Say what you feel.)
She doesn’t want Otori to be scared of her.
“Otori-san? Are you feeling alright?” Are the words she decides on.
Otori blinks, unfrozen, though her face is the slightest bit paler than it normally is. “Are you feeling alright?” She parrots.
“Yes, of course. It’s a beautiful day outside.” That’s what everyone’s been saying, at least. The flowers are apparently brighter than usual. They didn’t look any different to Mafuyu when she arrived.
Otori perks up at that. The flowers behind her do look a little nicer. Maybe it’s the sunlight in this spot. “Mhm! Perfect day for—wonderhoy!”
She waves her arms up and smiles, eyes sparkling. Mafuyu tilts her head. It’s that word again. “What?”
A shriek. It takes a moment to register that the sound came from Otori, whose face is paling like before. All that blood rushing back and forth cannot be healthy. “It didn’t work again!” She wails.
“Er, what didn’t work?”
“That!” Otori yells, now up in Mafuyu’s face. With their height difference, she’s on the tips of her toes to meet her. There’s a faint scent of something sweet in the air. “Hmmmm, maybe we just need to get you into the wonderhoy spirit!”
“The what?”
“Alright! Coming right up!” Stepping back, Otori breathes in and twirls. “So, we are in the stomach!” And before Mafuyu can even ask what that’s supposed to mean, Otori is clearing her throat. “I am a cupcake!”
“…eh?”
“‘Please, let me into the stomach!’” Otori says, though it’s not her, as the voice is higher, pleading. It then switches to something deeper. Ah, a performance. “‘No can do!’”
“‘But why?’“
“‘There is no room left. Sorry.’”
“‘But I have come all this way! I have been eaten! Please, there is no where left for me to go!’“
“‘Why don’t you go out the way you came?’”
Otori runs around the flowerbed and it’s there that Mafuyu realizes just what a crowd they’ve gathered now. Everyone’s whispering. They’re staring. Her fingernails dig into her palms. She should leave. She should go—
“‘I can’t!’” Otori yells, back into acting and back with her. If she’s aware of the crowd, she shows no sign, continuing her bravado without a care in the world. The scent is back. Sugar? No—it’s cotton candy. She did mention she worked at a theme park, after all. “‘Please, you have to let me in!’”
“‘I’m sorry. We cannot.’”
Otori slumps down as the cupcake. Then, she switches back to the other role and jumps. “‘Wait a minute! Are you a cupcake?’”
She goes back into her slumped posture and perks up. “‘Yes, I am!’”
“’Well then, why didn’t you say so? Come right in!’”
“‘Huh?! Why?!’”
“‘Because there is always room left for dessert!’”
…
…
…
Mafuyu laughs.
She runs the joke in her mind. A cupcake in the stomach? Naturally, neither of them should be talking, and it’s more or less the lengthy set up that would get people rather than the content itself. “That’s a great punchline. You must be a very talented—O-otori-san?”
Holding her head in hands, Otori slowly sinks to the ground on her knees. She’s muttering and shrieking a lot of things that Mafuyu can’t make out, but what she does catch is: “Uwaaa! Sorry, Tsukasa-kun! I’ve failed yet again! ‘Operation: Make My Scary Senpai Smile’ is a bust! Abort mission! Abort!”
“Otori-san?” Crouching down herself, Mafuyu reaches out to carefully tap her shoulder. Otori does not flinch from her touch as she expected, but she does peek out between her fingers. “I thought it was a very good skit. Don’t be too hard on yourself.”
They’re words really just meant to get her to stand back up, but they don’t taste bitter on her tongue like most of the compliments she has to give. They ring true and it’s probably that that gets Otori to uncover her face fully, a small smile blooming across her face like spring flowers. “Hehe. Now, do you want to try to ‘Wonderhoy’ with me?”
This girl. Mafuyu is prepared for one thing only to be thrown for a loop by another. “Eh, what?”
“Here, here! I was doing it with Saki-chan before you came over!” Before Mafuyu can protest, Otori grabs her hands and hauls her up with surprisingly great strength for her size, balling Mafuyu’s hands into fists and putting them up. “Step one! Put your arms like this!”
“I—uh, okay?”
“Step two! Go around…and swing!”
Go around and— “Like that?”
Otori nods her head vigorously. “Mhm! Now for the best part!” She repeats all of the motions and swings. “Won-won—Wonderhoy!”
Otori is always smiling, always cheerful and ready to go. Yet, when she says her trademark catchphrase, her eyes shine brighter than they usually do, actual stars and hope brimming in her gaze. There’s not a doubt that this isn’t her actual smile. It must be the exact antithesis of what Mafuyu’s is, the one that puts everyone at ease but terrifies her. Otori’s is goofy while hers is perfectly put together, but this smile would accomplish more than hers ever could and then some.
Mafuyu glances around. Their audience is gone, and before she can wonder why—
“NOOO!” Otori wails in time with the school bell ringing. Right. Class. Placing one hand across her chest and one on her hip in declaration, Otori announces, “I will be back, Asahina-senpai! Goodbye for now!”
With that, she dashes off to her class, a whirlwind of pink and smiles.
Mafuyu stands there. Blinks. Something bubbles up in her chest, something light and airy, like the end of her goodbye to her and the echo of a laugh.
She really does not get that girl at all.
Once she returns home, greetings and conversation with her mother over for the day, Mafuyu glances around her room. In the emptiness of her aquarium, her reflection stares.
Mafuyu stares back. She raises an arm, then the other, and swings them around.
“Wonder-hoy?”
It’s a far cry from Otori’s, but she knows that girl would be ecstatic regardless.
Bonus:
An ear-splitting screech. This is the reason why Yuki has headphones. Also the reason why she shouldn’t have brought up the events of today in the first place. But Amia had asked, and it’d gone on from there. “What do you mean you didn’t want her to be scared of you?!”
“H-hey!” Amia’s voice cuts in. “That hurt my ears!”
Enanan ignores the complaint and barrels on. “That’s it?! That’s all you thought you felt?!”
Well— “I guess.”
A sigh. Yuki can hear her lean back in her chair, it heaving under her weight. “You are hopeless,” Enanan mutters.
“It’s a start, though,” K says into her mic. “She went from ‘I don’t mind either way’ to ‘I don’t want’.” Yuki can hear the soft smile in her words. “You’re really curious about this girl, aren’t you?”
Curious. That’s…one way of putting it. Curious of how Otori may be terrified of her but had no qualms trying to get her to smile. The way her eyes sparkled in the sunlight and the faint smell of sugar when she was with her. Mafuyu shakes her head, realizes they can’t see her do that, and speaks. “You’re looking too much into it.”
“Ouuu see, Enanan! She went from ‘don’t look too much into it’ to ‘you’re looking too much into it’ now! Two in one day!”
A grumble, though in Enanan’s language that means she is appreciative according to Amia’s translations. “They still mean the same thing!”
“You’re arguing semantics,” Yuki says, though her protests fall on deaf ears.
“Ehh, still! Look at you go!”