Work Text:
Karin sighed as she finally finished climbing the extensive stairs to the clubroom. Friday was clearly getting to her. Club practise was finished for the day, but she still needed to grab her phone, which she left on the clubroom table. Bag in tow, she opened the clubroom door.
She was expecting the room to be completely empty; club had finished after all. However, it appeared that she wasn’t as alone as she thought she would be.
Ai was hunched over the main table, alternating between scribbling furiously on a piece of paper, and reading what looked to be a copy of The Great Gatsby. Upon the sound of Karin entering the room, she instantly perked up, and put her belongings aside.
“Wow, reading about the unattainability of the American Dream, are we?” Karin asked, slinging her bag off her shoulder and onto the floor. Ai held up the piece of paper, revealing it to be notes and annotations.
“Extension work,” she grumbled. Karin was slightly surprised, as Ai wasn’t really the person who needed to do any extension work for credit. If anything, she should be the one person who works hard enough at school to never ever have to bother. “I’m mainly using it for revision, I’m going to need it for the upcoming exam.”
Karin knew Ai well enough to know she probably didn’t need revision at all, but she chose not to say anything.
“Anyway!” The blonde perked up and stood abruptly, knocking the empty chair next to her over. “Whoops.”
“Anyway?” Karin asked.
“First, your phone.” Ai skidded the phone next to her across the table, which Karin pocketed. “Next, are you free this weekend? You’ll never believe what I found!”
Karin had a fair idea. Ai usually wanted them to go see things like a new attraction that had cropped up, or a new store, or a new menu item, occasionally even a sale happening downtown. The more that Ai talked, the more it became glaringly obvious that Karin had scored a hole in one.
“The arcade got a new game!” Ai started jumping up and down. “We absolutely have to go, like, ASAP.”
Karin sighed as Ai knocked over another chair. “First of all, you are a menace to the furniture in this room.” The younger girl smiled sheepishly. “Second, I already told you I am busy this weekend with modelling, remember?”
That second part wasn’t true, but there is no way that Ai would call her out. Her memory was bad to the point you could tell her anything, act like you had told her before, and she would just go with it.
“Oh, did you?” Ai looked disappointed. “What about the weekend after?”
“What about Wednesday after practise?” Karin asked. Ai’s features lit up before she even confirmed her availability, causing Karin to breathe a sigh of relief.
“Yes!” Ai did a cute little fist pump in the air. “I’ll put it in my calendar!”
That’s the story of how Karin ended up outside the arcade two days later, on a boiling afternoon, contemplating whether she this was actually a good idea. After a few seconds of staring down the place she knew so well, she swallowed her pride, and entered through the front door.
For a Sunday, the arcade was relatively empty, and it wasn’t difficult to find the new game that Ai was talking about. It wasn’t even being used, so Karin did a quick scan to make sure that no one she knew was there, and sped-walked to the machine.
Giving it a once-over, it was clear why Ai wanted to play this with her. It was clearly a ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ type game, where two people could compete to see who could get the higher score, or could do what Karin was about to do, and play a ‘single player’ game to see if you could beat your own personal score.
Fighting the thought that she was extremely cringy, Karin jumped onto the machine, and gave one last look behind her, just to make sure no one was watching. Unfortunately, someone was.
Ai had just walked into the air-conditioned arcade and was walking over to where Karin was operating the new game. The look on her face when the third year noticed her had a resemblance to a deer caught in headlights. Karin had a sinking feeling she looked the exact same.
“What are you doing here?” Ai’s tone wasn’t accusatory, more like she was a detective trying to solve a crime, even though one had not even been committed yet.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“What happened to modelling all weekend?”
“I finished early.” Karin lied. “I just didn’t want to text you on such short notice, especially since we already made plans for Wednesday.”
The look on Ai’s face told Karin that she was seeing right through her bullshit, which was honestly a more common occurrence then you would think. Ai was very much in tune with other people’s emotions, which was both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it’s the reason she and Rina were so close, but on the other hand, it meant that Karin couldn’t lie about doing her homework at one of their tutoring/study sessions.
“So, you decided to go to the arcade by yourself?”
“Don’t tell me there is something wrong with that.”
“Well, I mean…” The blonde looked sheepish. “No one really goes to the arcade by themselves, do they? It’s like, way less fun.”
“I don’t see your escort.”
“Well, why are you here?”
“I told you; I finished modelling early.”
Ai raised an eyebrow.
“No, why are you really here?”
It was in this moment; Karin knew that she can been found out. Maybe it was the fact she could feel her face heating up rapidly, or maybe it was just Ai’s shit eating grin. Apparently, the second year could tell that she had her upperclassman cornered, as she seemed to light up.
“AHA!” The shorter girl yelled entirely too loudly for the establishment, to the annoyance of seemingly nobody. “You ARE trying to get extra practise so you can beat me at our competition on Wednesday!”
Karin was taken aback. Ai was good, and she knew that, but she was a little too on the money. Almost like…
“Don’t tell me you’re here to do the same thing.”
Ai’s facial expression started to get more guilty by the second. Karin was thanking any god that would listen that her best friend was just as easy to read as she was.
“Well… I mean…” Ai shuffled her feet.
“I can’t believe you.” Karin shook her head, mock angry. “How could you get upset with me for cheating when you are doing the same thing?”
“It’s not really cheating…” Ai’s voice trailed off. “You are the one who hides cards up your sleeves in Uno.”
“Ok, now is not the time to bring that up.”
Ai started laughing. It wasn’t like she was throwing herself to the floor, or laughing even particularly loudly, but it was still cute all the same.
“Wanna play together now then?” Ai didn’t wait for an answer before jumping onto the player 2 machine next to Karin. “Come on, we have the time! While we are both here.”
“Fine.” Karin smiled. “As long as the loser buys us both something from the crepe place down the street.”
“Well, aren’t I lucky your modelling pays well!”
“H-hey!”