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Emu often finds herself mesmerized by life.
She would stop in the middle of a park and watch how a trail of ants collect leaves for their colony. She would follow a lost plastic bag being carried by the wind while she's out skipping steps in the center of the city and she would return it to the recycling bin once their trip is done. She would find joy in jumping in the puddles on the street and her heart would fill with gleam at seeing a small glimpse of a rainbow after a long, rainy morning.
There's an all-imposing wonder around her. A passing feeling that life goes on before her eyes and she cannot wait to experience whatever it has for her.
Recently, she’s been finding herself mesmerized by Kusanagi Nene.
She'd liked Nene the second she ‘saw’ her, a No-Name robot made to resemble her. She still liked her after their first official show as a troupe show had been ruined, when her heart yearned with the need to comfort her. She likes her after that, with the thick sarcasm dripping from her voice at Tsukasa’s antics and her nervous fidgeting behind Rui whenever someone new came to greet them at their stage. She likes her now, sitting beside her as she prepares herself for the next match. Being next to Nene was comfortable, the kind of cozy, warm feeling that you’d get from sitting close to a heater in winter.
Nene's changed ever since Emu met her for the first time, her confidence and talent growing every single day, and she’s glad she can be beside Nene so she can watch her grow before her very eyes.
"Are you sure you don't wanna play?" Nene says suddenly, waking Emu up from her daydream. "You're pretty good at shooters and I've got a second controller right here."
Emu straightens up a bit from where she’s sitting on the pillows, right next to Nene’s large pink bean bag. She can't say that she wasn't surprised when Nene invited her for a sleepover after parting ways with Toya and Akito in the arcade, but the surprise was quickly replaced with the utmost joy she'd felt in the evening. It's not like Nene doesn't go out of her way to spend time with Emu, but when she does, Emu’s heart fills up instantly, a rush of adrenaline that lasts even after they part ways.
"No need!" Emu answers. "I like seeing you play."
Nene hums, "If you say so…" She seemingly gives it no thought as she selects the 'Search for other players' option on the screen, putting the green headphones over her ears, a loading bar fills the screen. "Just don't complain when you get bored."
Emu exhales and rests her head on the bean bag. That's silly, "I'd never get bored of looking at Nene-chan…"
'Ah, I wasn't supposed to say that,' Emu thinks, and her face loses color for a second. Nene takes out her headphones and looks at her, tilting her head a bit to the left. Her brows furrowed in confusion but not much else changes in her expression, which means that she hasn’t heard her. Emu thanks all the technology lords above for creating noise-canceling headphones.
"N-nothing! Just nonsense! I was thinking out loud!"
Nene keeps her confused look but she puts on her headphones anyways and Emu lets out a relieved sigh.
♡
Like most things in her life, it happened before she could realize it. Emu already thought a lot about her friends, how could she not? She loved all her friends to bits and pieces, yet Nene always seemed to find a way to pop into her head and rattle her mind around like a present eagerly to be opened. She settled inside her thoughts nicely, almost as if she belonged there.
Emu keeps a quick access to their messages on her home screen. She likes sending Nene good morning texts and telling her about the things she sees and Nene’s replies were almost instant; something about that made Emu’s heart rate pick up.
After some time, Nene also started to initiate the texting between them; news about brand new shops that had opened that she wanted to visit, cute pictures of animals she found on the way from practice, whatever she was eating on lunch when Emu couldn’t visit her troupe at school, good luck messages when exam season was approaching.
Emu started to anticipate her messages more often, keeping her phone as close to her as she could get it, waiting patiently for the small notification to show up on her lock screen. The minutes passed by on the lit screen, the background of her troupe posing in front of Phoenix Wonderland accompanying them.
Whatever was happening inside her heart, whatever the itch inside her stomach was, it was something new. The things she felt towards her beloved Phoenix Wonderland, towards hers and her grandpa’s dream, and towards her quest of making people smile most definitely didn’t feel like this.
Sometimes, it was euphoric, it made her float towards the sky just like she would inside her dreams.
Nene’s smiling face on the lock screen looks back at Emu.
Other times, it ached.
♡
When her heart didn’t weigh on her, she asked around.
Honami, who startled too easily but whose heart was one of the kindest Emu had the pleasure of knowing, said it sounded like first love. Saki, who shared the same shiny stars in her eyes as her brother, agreed with a grin. They both gave their good luck to Emu as they left for band practice. She asked her mascots, the ones that had been next to her for most of her life, who gave her nothing but words of encouragement toward her love.
She asked Tsukasa after rehearsal, who was nothing but surprised (mostly because Emu tackled him to the floor mere seconds before) but still recommended her some books and musicals, saying that they had helped him come to terms with his own feelings. She asked Rui as he worked on NeneRobo backstage, who told her to listen to her heart and be kind to herself, that the answers would eventually show up. She even asked both of her brothers and her sister at the dinner table.
“Is this something appropriate to say at dinner?”
“She’s at that age, Shousuke-nii, cut her some slack.” Her sister had replied.
In between her sibling's bickering came Keisuke’s advice, “Sounds like infatuation, but those feelings can quickly grow into love. What matters is what you plan on doing with them; confessing, keeping them to yourself, whatever might be. Take care of your heart, it’s your most prized possession.”
“Confessing…” Emu ends with a whisper, falling deep into her thoughts.
Their future was uncertain, that’s for sure. She of all people knew how fleeting happiness was, how quickly it escaped your hands once you managed to capture it, and how lovely it was to have something for yourself, even if it eventually went away.
Oh, how she wished for an everlasting kind happiness, something she could hold forever until her time came to an end.
Even with that small anxiety bubbling up inside her, ready to eat her up, she tried to live her life to the fullest, not thinking much about the future except their shows and her dream. Her desires might be a little much for what she’s allowed to have. For now, she just wanted to be next to Nene.
That was enough.
“Surprisingly soft coming from you, Keisuke-nii, is there something you’re hiding from us?” Shousuke sneers, Hinata chuckles next to them, also waiting for a reply.
“Keep eating.”
That, surely, was enough. That ache would fade away. Eventually.
♡
Her small flashback ends as soon as the game is over. Her eyes travel to the 'Victory' message that pops on the screen and goes back to Nene. She cheers alongside her, lowering her voice as much as she’s able to because it’s late at night and they need to get up early tomorrow. She was more interested in seeing Nene's reactions than the game itself and she finds that she doesn't feel bad about it.
Well, maybe just a bit.
"Was my face really more interesting than the game?" Nene asks with a small smile, fixing a strand of hair that got caught in the headphones as she tilts her head again, high off her victory.
Emu gulps. But what would she do if it never faded?
"Mh-mh." She manages to respond with a nod, she knows it isn't really an intelligent response but there's not much running through Emu's mind now that isn't how pretty Nene is, of how badly she wanted to reach out her arm and fix her hair for her, but she can't possibly say o do that to her.
So she settles on saying the next best thing that comes to her mind.
"Nene-chan, can I kiss you?"
Nene's shoulders go up immediately and her eyes widen and– 'Ah, I wasn't supposed to say that either…'
"Sorry, sorry! It just escaped me, sorry!" Emu babbles incoherently in the middle of it all, fumbling her hands around the air and trying to get up from the floor. "I-I'll call Keisuke-nii so he can pick me up!"
"Emu! Emu, it's 11 PM, there's no need!" Nene retorts, fumbling her arms in front of Emu as well, trying to tell her to stay seated without outright saying it. "Please stay down, I haven't given you an answer yet!"
That shuts Emu off for a while and she stays in her place, the pillows below her feel foreign and her body refuses to stay still, waving from side to side impatiently. Nene lowers herself to the floor, sitting in front of her. Their knees are almost touching.
"You want to kiss me," Nene looks directly at her. Emu never had any issue with looking people in the eyes, but for the first time since they met, Emu wants to avoid Nene’s gaze. "Why?"
"Why wouldn't I want to kiss you?" Emu tilts her head to the side and returns the gaze with genuine confusion. "You're not only the prettiest person I've ever seen but also the most dazzling, my eyes go kira-kira when I see you on stage, and every time you sing I want to fall asleep to it, b-but in a lullaby way because it soothes me. A-and your smile is one of my favorites because seeing it brings me so much joy and being next to you makes me want to explode with how much I like you. Kissing you has passed so many times in my head that sometimes it's the only thing I think about when I see you.”
Emu lets her lungs fill with air after all that, her feet twitch anxiously as the air around her grows warmer and warmer. Or maybe that's because of the blush that covers her face. Even if her mouth keeps finding more ways to praise Nene, she feels that she’ll eventually run out of words to describe how different the world feels when she’s standing next to her. And it scares her a bit, her eyes lower to her hands, fidgeting. What good are her hands for if she doesn’t know where to put them?
"Emu." At the mention of her name, she looks up, freeing herself from her swirling thoughts. The low light that comes out from the computer is not enough to illuminate them both, but Emu swears Nene’s eyes are shining. "Emu, please kiss me."
And Emu doesn’t need to be told twice.
Their kiss might not be as magical as the romance musicals Tsukasa recommended to her (their hands are clammy when Nene intertwines them and their noses squish uncomfortably for a brief moment), but it might be for the best because she’s sharing it with Nene, who lights up her world in ways she’ll never be able to explain. Emu thinks this is exactly how it would feel if she could stroll along the cotton candy clouds of the SEKAI, those sweet clouds that always felt so far away, a distant fantasy that she couldn’t reach no matter how hard she tried.
Nene separates their lips and Emu has to fight against the need to feel her close again. A sort of anxiety bubbles under her skin, an uncertainty she’s afraid of addressing.
Those concerns don't last long, thankfully, because Nene throws herself at her, wrapping her hands around Emu in a tight hug. "I really like you too," she whispers, and Emu breathes again.
Her heart beats so fast she’s sure it’ll explode right out of her chest, but as she returns the hug and lets her head rest on Nene's shoulder, she feels how Nene's heartbeat matches her own and her mouth curls upwards, relieved.
"If we want keep hugging like this then maybe we should move to the bed," Nene says, after a few hours, or maybe a few minutes. Time seems to be moving so slowly for someone like Emu, who likes to sprint through life as quickly as her feet allow her to. "It’s getting late and my butt kinda hurts from sitting too long."
"Want me to carry you?"
"What are you saying... I can still walk on my own, you know?" she chuckles, the sensation sending shivers down Emu’s spine, she’s never been too good at thinking before doing or saying something, mostly letting her impulses win over her reasoning.
So Emu untangles herself from the hug and rises from where she sat, her head swims with the nausea of standing up so quickly but her heart is more determined than any of her other bodily complaints; Nene barely catches what’s happening until her feet leave the ground, one of Emu’s hands settles on her back and the other settles itself under her knees, Nene finds herself caught between in a princess carry that steals her breath away.
‘What a literal way to sweep someone off their feet.’ Nene’s subconscious provides, bewilderment follows not long after.
"Where did you get this much strength?!" Nene's voice raises some octaves higher than what was socially acceptable at this late hour, but the surprise won’t let her think properly.
“I’m escorting Princess Nene to her chambers after a long, long, lo——ng day of fighting! It’s expected for a bodyguard to carry this kind of strength isn’t it?!” Emu puts on a deep voice, fixed with an accent neither of them recognizes and Nene's upcoming complaints turn into giggles, which then turn into full-on laughter.
Maybe that everlasting happiness is something that won't be achieved by her hands. But she’ll make sure that every second Nene spends next to her is filled with nothing but sunshine.
♡
Sleep never comes easily to Nene. No matter how hard she tries to keep up a steady routine, her schedule always ends up all over the place.
It might be because of the games, she'd read enough articles about how much she was messing up her eyesight by playing games late at night, but she didn't care enough to stop. In the case she ended up needing glasses she'll just use contacts and be done with it. It also might be the stress, exams getting closer each day. Or it might be NeneRobo needing to spend more time at Rui's garage as her AI advances and needs to be maintained more often. Or it might be her current lack of ideas for their next show. Whatever it might be, it feels like all the problems were slowly piling up inside her.
Lately, another issue popped up that she wasn’t expecting; there is someone that has been bewitching her heart.
Those feelings started brewing some time ago; she found it hard to remove her gaze from Emu’s whenever they were rehearsing, she kept waiting patiently for Emu to show up at their school, ready to eat lunch with them, her smile found a way into her thoughts no matter what she did to prevent it. Her feelings transcended the precious friendship they had and it scared her.
She didn’t plan on telling anyone, ever (Turns out Rui already knew, of course he did), she would keep those feelings close to her and move forward with them, admiring Emu from afar. Because there was no way someone as radiant as Emu could be interested in her. She seemed so far removed from anything romantic that Nene’s mind couldn’t possibly imagine her getting something other than just a close friendship. The Sun was there for her to bask in its warmth, to admire from a distance.
Nene brings her free hand to run her fingers between the soft pink strands of Emu's hair, caressing her as she sleeps peacefully. It doesn't wake her up, but she hugs Nene a bit tighter as if saying I'm here.
I’m here and I'm not going anywhere.
Nene's heart skips as she thinks of everything.
(Snowflakes fall around her as she gains courage. The cold ocean waves reaching her knees at night. The lit fireplace that warms up her skin.)
Of nothing.
(Compressed air inside a Ferris wheel. The smell of an artificial forest and the distant sounds of a ballpoint pen taking notes. The stickiness of the brand-new paint at the arcade they visited earlier today.)
There's so much she's seen already, and so much she'll see tomorrow. She’s glad to see that Emu will stay right next to her, laughing along with her, grabbing her hand and aiming towards the light.
Nene holds Emu closer, close enough that their heartbeats become one, and closes her eyes.