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A spell’s been cast on Barbara’s heart. It’s the kind of spell that cranks up your heartbeat, the magic that makes your cheeks bloat up red. Even worse, it's a spell that’s been around since the dawn of time, and it's a magic we like to call love.
It took a couple of dreams, nightmares, fantasies - whatever you want to call them - for Barbara to accept that she had a crush on Lotte. At first, it was the night after the Night Fall festival - that dream ended up with Lotte and Barbara sharing a kiss over two copies of the same book. Then there was the time they shared a broom during class because Akko had snapped Lotte’s broom by ramming it into a tree - her dreams that night lead them to float above the speckled lights of London night in each other’s arms. Then there was that day when Akko, Lotte and Sucy were tossed into the courtyard fountain… That dream in particular had Barbara waking up in cold sweats.
She just knew that there was something wrong, and it was something to do with Lotte. She figured it out eventually, but now there was an even bigger problem: what could she do about it?
“Don’t you think the front-on approach is best?” Hannah mentioned during class, her legs twiddling over girl gossip, “I think if a handsome girl asked me out on the spot, I’d fall over heels for her!”
“You should develop a friendship first,” Diana told her the night before, “I wouldn’t say the same for the rest of her friends, but Miss Jansson is a responsible girl at heart. If you show that you care for her, she would certainly return some care back.”
“Tell her,” Sucy said, “or I’ll tell her myself. Once I’ve finished this batch of explosive powder, that is.”
Barbara was doomed. It felt like she would confine her feelings to the shadows, watching from afar as Diana and Hannah teased the heroic trio of Akko, Lotte and Sucy by themselves, but when there’s magic, there’s a way.
“Alright, one chance!” Barbara whispered to herself, as she grabbed a handful of sloppy pickled plums out of her pocket, slightly squirming at the moment, “ Metamorphie Faciesse!” In a whip of smoke, Barbara emerged as a mirror reflection of the only pickled plum eater in the school: Akko. It was dark out, and Diana had talked earlier about Akko being sentenced to the library all night for low performance: if there was a chance to talk to Lotte, now was the time. After all, if Barbara couldn’t handle the embarrassment herself, why not get someone to take that embarrassment for her?
She was outside the dorm room door, half anxious that this was the wrong room. Barbara - out of character - slowly, calmly and passively opened the door. She wondered why she expected this room to be better, where the bottom bunk looked like a trash pit and the entire place smelt like burnt-up mushrooms. Sucy was at the desk brewing away at her latest fiasco, humming a foreboding tune only crows could sing. Lotte seemed to be absent, but from the corner of Barbara’s eye, someone was on the top bunk - probably dozing away. Well, she hoped that was Lotte. Sucy was in the way.
“Korri Dulala!” Barbara hid under her breath. All it took was a small little spark, a deep breath, and then Sucy face-planted straight into the hands of Morpheus, slamming her face into the desk. After a quick poke on the cheek, just to make sure she was asleep, Barbara carefully climbed up the bunk bed.
Lotte was lying on her back with an open book in her chest, her glasses still on. She probably must’ve read too much for her strength and passed out, but Barbara was too lost in her closed eyes, her sleepy whimpers, the way her hands were so delicate and how her hair was dreamy like cotton candy. Barbara could watch her like this for hours, and she knew why. Slowly, her eyes started to flicker, and she peeked her head to the side to see the face of a disgruntled gremlin to her side.
“...Akko.” She deadpanned.
“Hello.” Barbara stuttered.
“What are you doing?”
Barbara sprang off the bunk bed frame. “Oh, I beg my pardon! I just thought I had left something up on your bed earlier, and thought I’d come and collect it.”
Lotte sat up with a doubtful expression. “Why are you speaking so politely?”
“Ah,” Barbara remembered. With a flick of her feet, she changed her stance and parted her legs slightly. She couldn’t just pretend to look like an idiot, she had to be the idiot! “Hahaha!” She laughed awkwardly, “all that detention’s got me acting up! Maybe I need to stop hanging around Diana too much!”
“Mhm.” Lotte seemed a little too dazed to finish off that conversation. She started to look around her bed, “There’s nothing here that you seemed to have left behind-”
“Oh really?!” Barbara exclaimed, “what a shame!” Barbara nodded vigorously with the dumbest smile she could fester.
“I thought you had detention though,” Lotte said, “you’re not skipping, are you-”
“NOPE,” Barbara replied, “Not at all.”
Lotte squinted her eyes at her. “Well, I’m going to sleep,” she started to lie down and turned her back away, “Goodnight Akko.”
“Wait!”
Lotte let off a very obvious sigh and sat back up, tired written all over her face. “There is something you need, isn’t there?”
“Yes, there is!” Barbara started to stutter in her speech a bit. This was the moment. “So do ya like girls?”
Lotte’s eyes started to light up a little. “What do you mean?”
“Just wonderin’.” Barbara was whistling to herself and was getting a little too much into character. Maybe being an idiot is fun once in a while.
Lotte looked at Barbara for a moment. “Are you talking about…?”
“You know, kissy stuff.”
After a short silence, Lotte slowly slid off the bunkbed and made her way to the front door, where her cloak was. Barbara could feel her mood flip upside down, as she softly put on her cloak with a sombre look in her eyes. “I feel like this is a kind of conversation we should take outside.” She looked at the door again and noticed Akko’s cloak was absent. “You were looking for your cloak?”
“I suppose I was,” Barbara blurted out.
“Well, let’s get going.” She opened the door, and they walked out. Everything was going better than planned.
As they were making their way down the moon-draped hallways, Barbara felt the fatigue of keeping up the pretentious idiot act. She was purposefully walking slowly so she could dream over Lotte’s golden hair. But Lotte was too quiet, almost like she was acting alongside Barbara. There was definitely something she wanted to say, something that had to be said alone. Barbara could see it in the way Lotte’s footsteps felt so quiet, the way her eyes were looking away, her sight trying to escape through the windows. They were halfway through the courtyard when she stopped her steps. It was just them now, Lotte and her best friend. Barbara wished she could say there was a third person there.
Lotte pushed her cloak back and sat down on the cold stone bench, “So um…” Lotte started, looking down at the grass, “I don’t really know how to talk to you about this. I feel like you’re the last person who would understand, but… would you listen to me?”
“Just say what’s on your mind!” Barbara tried to keep up the act with a cute pose with a stupid face as a side.
“It’s just that… I don’t think you could really see it.” Lotte’s voice was starting to flicker a little: it was more than just the cold that was biting at her. “Rather, I think - I know that I know I’ve got some kind of crush on someone. But she’s someone like…”
“She’s someone like me?!”
“Not really.” Lotte deadpanned. She started to shiver a little. Her hands were gripping the sides of the bench like she was about to fall into a pit she couldn’t get out of. “I think if I told her, she’d laugh at me and call me weird. I don’t think she’d ever want to look me in the eye again…”
“That’s uh…” Barbara hesitated to try and find the right words - she had to find out who this was, “That’s a lot of pish-posh! You’re such a nice, caring, beautiful girl! No one would hurt you like that, not under my watch!”
“But she does…” Her voice was whimpering further to the point of muttering. “She said I was forgettable, she told me I wasn’t going to amount to anything.” Barbara was standing in yet another pose, but she started to fade back to a normal stance, her goofy face falling away. She could hear Lotte sniffling, her eyes were starting to shine. “I don’t understand…” she continued, “why would I love someone that treats me like that? Why do I want happiness from someone like her?”
“Who is this person that hurts you, Lotte?” Barbara asked wistfully.
“It’s…”
“Tell me,” Barbara said.
Lotte couldn’t hold her tears back any longer, and it was clear that she was trying her hardest. “It’s… Barbara. Diana’s friend. She’s mean and she’s spiteful, but she loves Night Fall. I can see her reading it in class sometimes, and I see her smiling in a way that I can’t understand. It keeps me up all night. I know what that feeling’s like, to get lost in a wonderworld and how it makes me want to keep going. Maybe I think Barbara keeps me standing up on my feet. I don’t know… I see a part of her that I want to know more about, but I couldn’t ever speak to her. I don’t think I can even look at her again…”
Barbara’s face fell, and her act was gone. “She doesn’t deserve you.”
Lotte started to wipe her tears away with her cloak, sniffing and puffing, “I know…” she cried, “I want to just forget any of these silly feelings exist…”
“Don’t do that!” Barbara exclaimed. Her sudden step forward shocked Lotte, their eyes interlocking. Lotte’s best friend was standing in front of her holding a face of resentment and anger as she had never seen before. “I mean…” Barbara was too pitiful, too ashamed to grasp back into the acting spotlight, but she had to try. It was that or she would start crying too. “...You could always talk to her about it. If you tell her you’ve hurt her, I’m sure she would apologise, I can guarantee it.”
Lotte stood up, blowing her nose on a handkerchief, “I’ll do that tomorrow, then…” she whimpered. She walked up to Barbara and wrapped her arms around her, burrowing her head into her shoulders. “Thank you, Akko.”
Barbara held Lotte softly. “It’s going to be okay, I promise,” she whispered back.
They stayed in their arms for a moment. Barbara was wondering why she didn’t let go earlier, but it wasn’t like she wanted to let go either. Lotte looked into Barbara’s eyes with a satisfied smile and beady eyes, and they both chuckled a little. “We should head back now, I think.”
Barbara saw Lotte turn around and waited, so she could see Lotte’s puffy hair again, but this time Lotte stood still. Her face froze up. Barbara looked in Lotte’s line of sight and observed a figure in the distance. They were holding a large number of books under her arm, her jaw was smacked to the ground, and she was wearing her cloak. Shaking in pure fear, the very disturbed and real Akko pointed her arm at Barbara while hissing the noise of unparalleled shock. Lotte turned around towards Barbara, her face was broken.
“Who are you?” She whimpered.
Akko dashed at Barbara, wand in one hand and books in another, “I-IMPOSTER!” Barbara made a run for it as Akko sprinted behind her, shouting and throwing bits of paper at her. Dashing out of the courtyard and into the darkness of the school halls, Barbara rang the halls apart with desperate footsteps, crying to herself as her illusion of Akko fell apart, and it was nothing but her true image, the moonlight, and her patheticness.
Lotte didn’t show up to class the next day. “She’s got a case of the blues,” Sucy said as she created a hurricane inside a glass jar, “Crush fever, I’ve been told.”
It’s class time. The corridors are golden and lonely. Barbara was pacing up and down the dormitory corridor with an English gift set in her hand, desperately trying to grab onto some kind of courage. She’d already spent the majority of it skipping class.
“Why would I love someone that treats me like that? Why do I want happiness from someone like her?”
Those words under Lotte’s suffering voice had kept Barbara up all night in tears. She succeeded last night, didn’t she? She managed to find a way into Lotte’s life and speak to her, but Barbara didn’t deserve her at all. How could she even start?
Knock on the door. Tell her you’re sorry. Maybe talk about Night Fall with her. Leave. That’s what she had to do. Remember where this starts, she kept saying to herself, it starts at the door.
But what if Lotte knew it was her in disguise last night? Oh, great heavens. She’s had time to think about it, hasn’t she? With the way she talked about Barbara last night… who else could she think it was?
With a large gasp of air, Barbara knocked on the door loudly and out of rhythm. There was a moment of silence, the realization of what was about to happen was shaking Barbara by the spine. The door handle quietly pressed down, and the door slowly opened. Lotte was standing there with her uniform on, supposedly going outside with her cloak and broom. The two looked at each other, and both their eyes widened. Lotte seemed to be so shocked by her guest that she wasn’t saying anything. Barbara didn’t know what to say either, but she had to try something.
“Hello, Lotte,” Barbara started, “I was wondering if you had a moment to talk. Maybe over a cup of tea!”
Lotte’s surprised expression slowly started to drop, “Is there something I could help you with?” She replied, as her demeanour began to drop.
“Not really,” Barbara nervously chucked, trying to keep it compressed, “I’m not here to cause any trouble.”
Lotte was looking straight into Barbara’s eyes. There was some kind of anger Barbara could see in them that she had never seen before, a kind she would never imagine to see, “You are nothing but trouble.” With a glint of melancholy, she quickly started to shut the door.
“I-I had a chance encounter with Akko last night.” The door paused in motion. “I mean, I was walking back from the cafeteria and I bumped into her. She was furious at me.”
The door slightly opened up, but Lotte wasn’t looking back at Barbara.
“It was scary, seeing Akko like that. She told me she was looking for me, she said I hurt you.” Barbara was clenching the tea set in her arms, and she took a heavy gasp, “...She told me that you wanted to be my friend, but you were too scared because I’d call you weird. I came here to apologise, but… I want to be more than sorry, Lotte.” Almost on the verge of letting a tear out, she held up her tea set in her hands. “I want to be better!”
Barbara didn’t know what she had done, but Lotte’s face had started to shine up - still, but bright. Her lips parted slightly, her eyes started to glisten, and her cheeks started to blush up. “...I don’t really know what to say.” She stuttered on her words.
Now’s her chance. “Maybe we should… talk over some tea?” Barbara smiled.
And so it turns out, talking about it was the solution all along.
“Okay,” Lotte smiled back.