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A classmate of Shiori’s—in elementary school, she doesn’t remember what grade—gives a presentation on plants from her mother’s garden. Roses and dried hyacinths are passed around. The other girls fawn. They giggle when a boy is the one to pass it to them, even though the boys are also the ones who break off some of the petals, who crumple the buds in careless hands.
Shiori is the last to receive the hyacinth. It feels like a husk. As if it’s withered away just here in her small palms.
She almost crushes it then. It’s so ugly just sitting there. At least the destruction would be something, the burst and crunch of dead petals in the close of her hands.
“Please pass it back to the front, Takatsuki-san,” the teacher says.
Juri was lovesick.
No one else would be able to tell, of course, but Shiori had learned to read Juri as a matter of course. Her footwork during fencing was efficient but automatic: distraction. There was a slight flush to her neck, which only served to highlight the richness of her hair. Sometimes her steady voice lilted up, or stuttered softly on a wrong note, as slight as a breath.
Lovesick. Shiori was certain. She’d spent her whole life learning Juri, and she hated it the same way she hated mathematics (she’d barely passed the exams, even with Juri’s unfailing tutoring) or piano (Juri’s playing was delicate; Shiori’s fingers slipped past delicacy every time).
No—truthfully, Shiori hated learning Juri more than that. More than piano or mathematics. More than anything. Learning to read Juri was like squinting into the face of the sun and trying to make out anything on its brilliant, shining surface. Every graceful touch of the epee, every perfect curl that brushed the hollow of a pale throat, every coolly fond look that sometimes Juri deigned to give her...they burned.
But it was worth it, because while others were content to bask in Arisugawa-senpai’s implacable good manners, which would once in a while direct themselves at one of the ordinary students of Ohtori, Shiori found something different.
Weakness. Imperfection. A misplaced foot; a breath of a pause; a flicker in Juri’s shining brilliance. Shiori hoarded these failures. They filled her with an abrupt, almost terrifying glee and made her heart race: they felt like a glimpse of a falling star. In a moment, Shiori imagined, Juri would crash to the ground, as rocky and plain and earthbound as her.
It was possible, wasn’t it?
It had to be, if Juri was lovesick. What a pathetic feeling.
After the flowers are passed back, the classmate tells them about weeds. Thistles and choking honeysuckle, mile-a-minute. Shiori’s favorite is stinging nettle, because—the classmate says, like they’re proud of knowing—they stop stinging if you hold on tight enough.
That’s interesting.
But the weeds are not passed around, not like the stupid ugly dead flowers, so Shiori doesn’t get to try.
After this revelation—lovesick Juri! it fizzled in her chest all day—Shiori considered carefully what to do with it.
Her first thought was to invite Juri to her house for a sleepover. Juri had always seemed above such girlish things, so much so that whenever Juri was at Shiori’s house, Shiori shrank into herself. She tiptoed and flushed and shied away from imagined touches. She slept with her knees pulled up while Juri was clear across the room, facing the unsophisticated curtains—and no, she wouldn’t sleep, not really. Anger would keep her awake, slinking its fingers through her ribcage and rattling: so weak! how could she make you feel so weak—in your own home!
And so Shiori had stopped inviting Juri around.
(Juri took this rejection with unrelenting grace and a brief look of apology, and Shiori hated her even more for it.)
But now that Juri had descended into such a girlish thing as lovesickness...maybe things would be different. Shiori spent her classes daydreaming:
Juri would come to the door with her standard gift (she never forgot to bring one). “Oh!” Shiori would exclaim, “that’s wonderful, Juri-san, thank you!” Juri would wait for her to place the gift on a side table, her eyes only momentarily drifting toward Shiori’s fingers (Shiori would move with exquisite loveliness, buoyed by her secret knowledge. Juri would wonder about it).
They would make small talk, and Shiori would wait for the pull in Juri’s neck that meant she was slightly unsure. “Why did you invite me over today, Takatsuki-san?” Juri might ask. Her voice might even quiver.
And Shiori would smile blithely: “You’re my best friend, Juri-san. I wanted to talk to you.”
“...What did you wish to talk about?”
“Oh, Juri-san, you’re always so serious! Best friends should talk about things, don’t you think?”
And she would bring Juri up to her room and twist the truth out of her, until cool, collected Arisugawa-senpai was laid bare and raw, and perhaps Shiori might even wring a few tears out. Would she confess: I love him so much I could die, and lay her head limply on Shiori’s shoulder? Would she become angry—why are you doing this to me, Shiori? To torture me?
Either way, Shiori would embrace her, and the thrill would come with her teeth an inch from Juri’s neck.
“There, there,” Shiori would say. Or, “I only want to help you, Juri-san. We’re best friends, after all.”
If Juri had learned how to read her in return, she would know what Shiori was really saying: I’m doing this because I hate you. I hate you. I hate you so much I could die. I want these words to hook into your softest parts and tear them open for me, I want to see them bleed, I want, I want—
But then why would Juri ever spend her precious time learning to read someone like Shiori Takatsuki?
And besides—even if she did, then surely wise, gracious, intellectual Juri would know her better than Shiori herself, and what would Shiori do with that?
Shiori does not forget about the stinging nettle.
After school, she rushes home. Her mother has not yet weeded the garden, and she is certain she’s seen the stalks there, their leaves large and jagged and green.
She holds onto the picture in her mind, lets the fierce beat of her footsteps drown out whatever her classmates are saying around her. Poor Takatsuki-san, without any friends.
Her voice hurts my ears, though! And she’s weird, you know.
Weird, huh? What does that mean?
Well, she’s just not—
It’s all in her head, of course. They aren’t saying any of that.
They aren’t saying anything about her at all.
For a week, Shiori thought she could stay silent on the matter. Knowing Juri’s weakness still felt powerful. It was something that only the two of them shared. Something of Juri’s that only Shiori held in her hands.
The other girls couldn’t touch it.
The boys couldn’t, either.
The teachers were none the wiser.
This was Juri’s, and this was hers, and now when Juri looked at Shiori over the tip of her eraser, or released a flood of those perfect curls from her fencing helmet, it felt less like the sun scorching cracked earth. Any time she wanted, she could yank on the tether of this secret and Juri would come tumbling down, flesh and blood and close enough to dig nails into.
I have you! she wanted to scream. I finally have you!
But it wasn’t enough. If Juri ever confessed, this one tether that bound them would unwind, and Shiori would find herself burned away.
“Arisugawa-senpai and Tsuchiya-senpai are close, aren’t they?” she heard one girl whisper after fencing practice. Ruka and Juri were still in the center, reviewing their match. Today they had declared a draw. “Arisugawa-senpai is so lucky...”
Ruka laughed at something Juri said, his head thrown back. His jaw was sharper than Juri’s; his mouth was a handsome slash where Juri’s was full and lush. Juri was smiling at him.
“I wonder what those lips taste like,” the girl’s friend giggled.
Shiori’s hand closes around the nettle, and it hurts. No, not hurts— burns, as if a thousand needles are searing deep under her skin. Her eyes water, but that just makes it strangely beautiful.
Her mother has despaired of her hands: a touch too clumsy, wrists not quite dainty enough for modelling, fingers slightly too harsh for music. There is always a fidget when she sits. When she’d painted her nails—once, from a cheap bottle of nail polish gifted by a distant aunt—it had looked beautiful for a week. Then she had watched it chip away, revealing again the puffy nail beds and the dull colorless shade of keratin.
The pain makes her mediocre hands jolt. It feels like crushing the hyacinth, a last, burning gasp of life.
In the end, Shiori waited for Juri outside of the gym.
She watched as Juri exited and caught the infinitesimal pause of her left foot, the slide of her blue eyes as she registered who was there. Juri would always stop for Shiori. The fact that it was pity left an ashen taste in Shiori’s mouth—but then, soon, it would not be pity anymore.
Juri let out a tiny breath: her gathering-up-politeness breath. She smiled tightly. What a burden to pretend to be kind to you, it said. “Shiori-san. Did you need something?”
“Yes.” Shiori rose from the step. “Do you have feelings for someone, Juri-san?”
“What?”
“What are you doing?”
The voice cuts through the electric thrum of pain like a bell. At first Shiori thinks it’s a boy; the voice is low and effortlessly cool in the way the popular boys sound and the average boys affect. But the person that comes striding toward her is not a boy.
She isn’t average, either: orange ringlets curl at her jaw like fine ribbons; her face catches the light on proud angles. She wears her school uniform as though she’s too big for it, her sheer presence straining at the seams. Shiori’s breath catches. When she wears her school uniform, it always feels like it’s wilting around her, like it will swallow her up in its drabness.
This girl is not drab. She is...handsome. Cool. Strong.
The nettle’s next sting seems to pierce even deeper, and Shiori wonders if poison has entered her bloodstream that way, if that is the uneasy, twisting thing coalescing in her stomach.
“What are you doing?” the girl repeats.
Shiori flushes. “Picking flowers.”
“Ah.” The girl’s face does not change, but she steps closer, and Shiori gasps when the sole of her perfect shoe lands in the dirt. “Here.”
She bends down; Shiori unclenches her fist from the nettles; and then with a quick, white-knuckled tug the girl pulls them all up. Their roots hang below, tangled and clumped with dirt. They look strange and lowly in the girl’s strong hands.
Shiori’s own delusion of strength withers on its stem. This girl hadn’t even flinched.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Juri said blandly. Shiori could tell, though: she was cornered.
“A crush,” Shiori pressed, viciousness dripping from her smile.
“I don’t—” Juri’s voice trembled. She shook her head. “Shiori—”
When Shiori had played this encounter through in her mind, this had been her favorite part: Juri’s voice strangling itself on Shiori’s name, begging. She had imagined the rough sweetness of the sound, the eyes gone round and wide. She had practiced different responses, too: Oh, Juri-san—you can trust me—I’m sure he’d want someone like you—how pitiful.
Juri reached up and closed her fist around her locket.
And suddenly—the foundation seemed to shift underneath Shiori’s feet. The viciousness that had coiled hard and tight in her stomach lost its aim. It wasn’t quite that she regretted this, wasn’t quite that the desire to sink her teeth into Juri’s invincible composure had faded. No. She just thought—Shiori wondered if—
If, now that Juri knew what it was like to hold onto things that hurt, that burned, that were precious because they hurt, she would finally understand—
“Shiori...” Juri breathed again. Her tone was impossibly (insincerely) gentle. “Are you...all right? What do you need...? I—I can get Ruka, if you—”
The strange, stretched hope snapped in two. Juri wouldn’t understand. It had been weakness again to think that way.
Shiori bent and plucked one of the flowers growing between the steps. It was a gangly bud; its weight would pull it down quickly if it bloomed. “Here, Juri-san,” she said, thrusting it at Juri with her too-small, too-clumsy hands. “Believe in miracles, and they will know your true feelings.”
“Why were you picking stinging nettle, Takatsuki-san?”
Shiori hums. They’ve made their formal introductions now: they’re the same age, taking the same classes. Peers and equals. But with every word that drips honey-like from Juri’s lips, Shiori can feel herself pressed downward, prostrating herself to catch the sweetness.
“I don’t know. They looked pretty enough.”
Juri looks sidelong at her. “It’s dangerous to pick them. They’re not called ‘stinging nettle’ for nothing. Oh—” she glides to a stop and waves toward Shiori’s hands, “—are you hurt, Takatsuki-san?”
Shiori reddens. “No, thank you, Juri-san. It’s just...”
Abruptly Shiori recognizes Juri’s own hands—pale, fragrant, with slender fingers to model engagement rings—and the words burst on her tongue. As though speaking through a mouthful of petals, she says, “It’s nothing. I knew it might hurt.”
“Then why did you do it?” Juri asks, eyes soft and frowning.
Shiori shrugs. Juri’s gaze feels—strange, exposing. “I don’t know. It’s a little romantic, don’t you think? Well, I don’t mean I’m a freak or anything, but the pain makes you feel...”
Cool? Strong? Knowledgeable? Resilient?
The words die again.
But Juri’s face smooths over; Shiori watches the sun pass over the curve of her cheek, the angle of her jaw, like a statue carved of marble. “I understand,” Juri says, very distantly. “I think I know how you feel.”
Shiori laughs. She imagines her heart the desiccated hyacinth, the ugly roots of the nettle, stinging and crumbling in her own hands. She imagines Juri grasping it, holding it, understanding what she’d taken in those soft, stainless palms.
I think I know how you feel.
That would take a miracle.