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Mona had never really been one to celebrate, nor care for Valentine’s day. It was expensive and overpriced in her opinion. To her, Valentine’s day was just an excuse for people to feign ridiculous amounts of affection for others that they didn’t really mean underneath it all.
No, it wasn’t because of the fact her boyfriend in seventh grade had given her a book that contained the moon cycle for the year. For the year prior. He had clearly brought it and not looked inside or outside, thinking that it would be a good gift for Mona and useful for her astrological hobbies. It wasn’t, obviously. In fact, she’s pretty sure she still has it lying around under her bed at home, collecting dust.
And no, Mona hadn’t had a petty vendetta against Valentine's day ever since then.
So when Mona’s university tries to push the agenda for Valentine’s day, she ignores it.
She ignores the way Lumine mentions it during their lunches together, ignores the way groups of friends chat about it excitedly all around campus in the weeks leading up to it and she especially tries to ignore the hundreds of roses that she sees on a table by the entrance of her university building on Valentine’s day.
Lumine is sitting behind the table of roses, dressed in pink and red, a headband with cartoon hearts sat on top of her head as she grins ear to ear at Mona as she gestures for her to come over.
Mona might hate Valentine’s day and she might be moody on this cold Tuesday morning but she’s not about to be a bad friend to Lumine, so she forces a smile on her face and makes her way over to Lumine, whose smile only continues to grows as Mona’s stands just in front of her. The scent of roses is entirely overpowering and Mona can’t help but feel a little overwhelmed. Red covers every corner of her vision, even Lumine is a big ball of red in front of her, only the pink of her cardigan breaking it up. How Lumine wasn’t overwhelmed, she wasn’t sure, because she is and she’s only been here a grand total of thirty six seconds.
“Hey you,” Lumine grins at her, all confident and cheerful and it makes Mona feel like maybe Lumine knows something that she doesn’t. She can’t tell if there’s a cunning aura in Lumine’s eyes or if it’s just her just wishing, hoping that there is. “I didn’t think you were coming in today.”
Mona hadn’t planned to come in today. She had saved one of the only days off she allowed herself every year for today, but when one of her partners for a group project had called her last night, begging for her to come in and help track down their other partner who had been ghosting them, she figured she might as well make use of the free meals if she was coming onto campus anyway and get here a little earlier.
“Yeah, me either,” Mona offers, her eyes trailing amongst all of the roses surrounding Lumine, eyeing the tags that dangle off some of them. “Group project duties, you know.”
Lumine nods, a smile still present on her face as she taps on the empty fold-up chair next to her own. Mona bites back a sigh and takes the seat begrudgingly.
“How long before you have to meet your group project partners?” Lumine asks, shuffling through a handful of the roses, cautious to not prick herself on the thorns. Huh. Makes sense though, Mona thinks, of course their university would be too cheap to remove the thorns.
Mona looks down at her phone and curses herself for arriving too early. She had originally planned to get here at around lunch time to grab some free lunch, head straight onto meeting her partner and then begin their search of campus together – instead 10:32AM stares back at her. Of all the days her bus had to actually show up on time, of course it was today.
“About two hours.” Mona mutters and watches as the smile on Lumine’s face only seems to grow.
“Do you want to stay with me until then?” Lumine asks, before she’s looking away from Mona and catching the eyes of a girl Mona vaguely recognizes.
“Oh!” Lumine begins, instantly rummaging around in the array of roses in front of her. “Kokomi! These three are for you.” She gives her a wide grin, holding out three different roses that all have tags to Kokomi on, Mona thinks she can see a name on each one but she doesn’t want to pry.
Kokomi smiles at Lumine, it’s blindingly pretty and Mona can definitely see why Kokomi is getting roses today.
“Thank you so much Lumine!” She says as she takes the roses from Lumine’s awaiting hands. “Happy Valentine’s day!”
As Lumine recites the greeting back to Kokomi, Mona watches the entire interaction between the two of them and decides against telling Lumine the full story as to why she was on campus today, knowing that Lumine will be irritated at the girl who’s been ghosting Mona and her other partner. If there’s one thing she doesn’t want to ruin, it’s Lumine’s love for love, and the enjoyment she gets from Valentine’s day. Mona might hate it, sure, but she’s not about to ruin it for Lumine, there’s no reason for her to. However, she can’t help but feel a little bad about how she feels towards Valentine’s day – it obviously brought others a lot of joy, her best friend included, so why didn’t it bring her joy? Was it because it was an ever present painful reminder that nobody had ever liked Mona in that way, apart from the boy in seventh grade who gifted her an out of date moon cycles book? Probably, she thinks bitterly.
Lumine’s looking back at her now, expectantly and Mona realizes she still hasn’t answered Lumine.
“Sure,” Mona huffs, fiddling with the end of one of her twintails. “I’ll stay for a bit.”
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
Mona officially regrets offering to stay approximately an hour and twenty five minutes later when Scaramouche walks through the double doors and stops directly in front of her and Lumine after Lumine had yelled out his name.
He doesn’t reply to Lumine, just offers her a glance as he starts walking over to her, but when his eyes fall on Mona, he doesn’t even try to stifle the smirk that begins to make its way across his face.
“You’re being optimistic, Megistus.” His smirk only grows, his tone condescending and Mona decides that she really, really hates Valentine’s day.
“I’m not being optimistic, thank you very much,” Mona spits, focusing her attention on the wall behind Scaramouche instead of on him. “I’m just helping Lumine.”
Lumine remains silent between the two of them as they throw jabs back and forth, but Mona can hear her shuffling around amongst the roses and she can’t help but think really – who would buy such a smartass like Scaramouche a rose on Valentine’s day?
“You might be ‘just helping’,” Scaramouche begins, eyes staring straight at her. “But how come Lumine already has some roses addressed to her and you don’t?”
Mona’s eyes snap back onto him immediately, glaring at him with an annoyance that she didn’t want to admit to. So what if Lumine had roses and she didn’t? It wasn’t like Mona wanted any anyway.
Lumine doesn’t let Mona respond, she’s holding two roses in her hand and Mona forces herself to look away as Lumine hands them to Scaramouche.
Mona, however, can’t help herself from looking over as Scaramouche begins reading the tags attached to the roses. She watches as his face crinkles up in frustration before he’s ripping the tag off of one of them, scrunching it up into a ball into his hand. Mona stifles her laughter behind the back of her hand. Lumine watches on in horror and when Scaramouche catches her horrified gaze, guilt passing on his face for a split second before he’s gritting his teeth.
“Fucking Ajax.” He mutters, throwing the now labelless rose at Mona. Mona catches it, her fingers millimeters away from the thorns. Lumine’s laughter is soft and gentle, making Mona swallow down any questions that she so desperately wants to ask.
Mona watches as Scaramouche looks back at the other rose in his hand, taking the tag between his fingers as he reads this one.
“Not from Childe this time?” Lumine quizzes, leaning across the table as she attempts to look.
“No.” Scaramouche huffs, looking away from both Lumine and Mona with a red hue on his cheeks.
“Ooooh, who’s it from then?” Lumine sing-songs out, sitting back into her seat next to Mona.
“Doesn’t say,” is all Scaramouche offers before he’s taking the note off – gentler this time and putting it into his backpack, into a smaller compartment that Mona can’t see as he places the rose inside, zipping his backpack up carefully so he doesn’t catch the petals inside the zip.
Scaramouche doesn’t say anything as he leaves, just stares at Mona for a second longer than usual and watches as she runs her fingers along the petals of the rose he had thrown at her.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
Mona remains seated with Lumine until she gets the text from the other person in her project and says her goodbye’s to Lumine, promising to come back after she’s finished.
And much to Mona’s dismay, they find their other group member relatively quickly. To make matters worse too, the lunch line was practically nonexistent – meaning that Mona finds herself back at the slowly emptying table with Lumine far sooner than she had expected. Lumine is still sitting there patiently, handing out roses to almost everyone who passes.
“Ah, Mona!” She exclaims when she spots Mona making her way over. “This one is for you!”
“Me?” Mona quizzes, trying to feign disinterest – trying to act like the glimmer of hope she feels isn’t there.
“Yep!” Lumine says cheerily, holding out the rose to Mona. “I brought you one as a thank you for helping me today!”
Oh.
Mona’s grateful. Really. She is. It’s just that glimmer of hope wasn’t snubbed out nearly enough as it needed to be before Lumine had uttered those words.
“Thank you, Lumine.” Mona offers her a smile in response as she takes the flower from Lumine’s awaiting hand, taking her seat back next to Lumine.
Disappointment stirs inside Mona but she doesn’t admit it.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
It’s not until it’s nearly the end of the day and there’s only about five roses laying across the table that Mona allows herself to feel a little upset.
Mona wouldn’t tell Lumine, but she was relieved when Lumine had offered her a seat earlier that day. She needed an excuse to be there when Scaramouche collected the rose she had brought for him – and yeah, sure, maybe she sacrificed today’s meal for this, that’s why she had to make use of the free lunches on campus, especially this week – so what?
So when she had seen Scaramouche scrunching up one of the notes on his rose, she was so sure it was the one from her – the one she had left ambiguous on who the sender was so Scaramouche wouldn’t know it was her, she was sure he had figured it out and was furious it was from her – so when he had said Childe’s name instead, a weird sense of relief had flooded over her.
Mona didn’t know why she liked Scaramouche. She had never known why. She just did and that was all there was to it. She liked their dynamic, she liked bickering with him over useless and trivial things – she liked him and it had taken her a solid year to be okay with it, but just because she was okay with it didn’t mean that she could tell him, or anyone for that matter, how she felt. So she didn’t. She stifled how she felt and hid behind an anonymous rose on the one day of a year she couldn’t stand, the words I like you far more than you’ll ever know scribbled onto the tag that was wrapped around the delicate flower with twine.
She was a coward, she thinks bitterly.
One by one, the remaining roses are given out to people as they leave the campus until there’s only a single one left on the table. Hope glimmers inside Mona again but she tries her best to distinguish it. It’s not for her, she knows that, but it still hurts when she watches Lumine reach forward for the rose and hand it to Eula, someone Mona remembers from one of her classes in her first year.
Eula offers Lumine a smile and her gratitude and Mona fights off the sigh that threatens to spill out of her mouth. So what if Scaramouche didn’t send her a rose? Why would he? There was no reason for him to and she knew that, but it was hard to admit to herself, no matter how much she knew it.
Mona begins packing up the fold up table that all of the roses were previously arranged on as Lumine chats away happily to Eula, watching bitterly as Eula runs her fingers along the stem of the rose, avoiding the thorns carefully.
Eula leaves shortly after and as soon as she’s gone, Lumine’s exclaiming all of her gratitude to Mona – for helping out today, for coming in on a day she hates, for helping clean up and Mona just brushes it off, trying to play it casual like she really didn’t mind. When she’s finished, Mona offers to take the table back to wherever Lumine had got it from, to which Lumine begrudgingly accepts and tells Mona the room number it belongs in. Mona’s relieved when the words leave Lumine’s mouth – it’s Lumine’s physics classroom and Mona’s been there plenty of times to meet up with Lumine after class.
Mona nods, telling Lumine to hurry along so she won’t be late for her date – Lumine offers her a big grin in response and Mona is at least grateful that Lumine’s happy.
What Mona doesn’t expect as she turns the corner into Lumine’s physics classroom is to see Scaramouche sitting there. His eyes flash over to Mona the second she enters the room.
“What are you doing here?” She asks, sure that he had just cornered her to make fun of her again.
“I was waiting for you,” Scaramouche admits, his voice far, far quieter than usual, missing the harsh tone Mona had grown used to. “Come here.”
Mona places the table by the door and makes her way over to him, until she’s standing directly in front of him.
“Put your hands out.” Scaramouche mumbles, his cheeks stained a little red and Mona thinks her heart is beating so fast she might die.
She does as he asks and when something heavy hits her open palms, her eyes practically spring open.
Mona looks down, her hands now wrapped around a thick spined astrology book that she had been saving up for nonstop over the last three months. She looks back up at Scaramouche, confusion written across her face.
“Why did you buy me this? What do you want?” Mona asks defensively.
“What do you mean why did I buy you this?” He responds, gesturing down at the book in Mona’s hands. “It’s Valentine’s day. What else would I buy you? A rose?” Scaramouche asks and tries to ignore the flush that graces Mona’s cheeks as she realizes what he’s implying.
“Why would I buy you something that you don’t even want when I could buy you something that you actually want? It’s not like you waste money buying yourself flowers instead of astrology books.”
Mona bites back a smile and wraps herself around him instead, cautiously holding her new book to the side slightly. Scaramouche is rigid against her for a few seconds until he relaxes into her touch.
“Thanks for the rose, by the way.” Scaramouche says as he wraps his arms around her, accepting her hug.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆
When Mona gets home later that night and flips open her new astrology book, she’s surprised to find a bookmark sitting inside it on the first page.
It’s pretty, Mona thinks, as she picks it up and runs her finger along it, feeling the plastic seal.
It’s as she does so that it dawns on her what it is.
Inside the bookmark – that’s seemingly handmade – is a pressed rose.
Mona flips the bookmark over instantly, looking at Scaramouche’s cursive handwriting.
Happy Valentine's day Mona. I like you more than you realize too.