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“So, ten o’clock?” Kozue twirls the phone cord around her finger.
She knows the flirtatious gesture is wasted, Nanami can’t see her, but she does it anyway.
“Yes, fine, God. You and your nocturnal nonsense,” Nanami grumbles. Kozue would bet her life savings that Nanami is rolling her eyes right now. Not that her life savings mean much to her, she knows as well as anyone that she’s never going to graduate.
“Great. See you then.”
“See you then.”
---
Kozue is nocturnal, but that’s not the only reason she chose this time. It’s after the school day, so neither Nanami nor Miki can give her any shit for skipping, and it’s well after almost everybody else has left the McDonald’s. And just as she thought, aside from the employees, she’s completely alone.
Nanami shows up in her Student Council uniform- no, her dueling uniform. Kozue used to assume the Student Council just wore those to show that they were the leaders, but she can see their purpose now. Nanami’s in particular is skin-tight, nothing’s going to snag her clothes unless it’s stabbing her. Her hair is a different story, but at least she bothers to keep it out of her face.
Kozue has occasionally considered telling Nanami that she knows about the Student Council’s… off-book activities. She always shuts herself down. If the Student Council knows she knows, she gets dragged in officially. She doesn’t want to be a duelist. Well, she suspects she’s already dueled once, but she can’t quite nail down the memory, and she honestly doesn’t want to.
Sometimes she thinks she would be good at it. Most of the time she aimlessly floats through the world feeling like a shell of a person, but there’s a deep, deep well of anger and desperation that she knows would push her farther than she could imagine. And having that Anthy Himemiya girl as a bride might not be all that bad. But sooner or later, she would have to fight Miki, and that’s where her resolve ends. She may get under his skin on purpose, but when it comes to this, she wants to stand with him, not against. And besides, she’d never beat him. She doesn’t measure up in any other way, why would dueling be different?
Nanami hurls herself onto the booth across from Kozue, draping herself over it like a queen on a throne. Kozue almost laughs.
“Don’t get too comfortable, I was planning for us to go into the PlayPlace.”
Nanami raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t that for little kids?”
“Yeah, but it’s not like they’re gonna enforce the age limit right now. I think the cashier fell asleep standing up.”
Nanami looks apprehensive, but she follows Kozue in anyway. They leave their shoes right next to each other.
When Kozue is halfway through the plastic tunnel she has to crawl through to get to the start of the longest slide, she sees through a tunnel window that Nanami is still standing at the base of the play structure, staring at it as though it were an alien mothership. Kozue laughs and keeps crawling.
The slide isn’t very long, at least not to someone Kozue’s height, but it’s still fun. When she comes out the other end, she waves to Nanami.
Nanami, who is, for some reason, blushing profusely.
Red really isn’t her color, Kozue thinks. Sometimes she can’t believe Nanami and Touga are related.
Nanami seems to be trying very hard to avert her eyes, and Kozue figures out what the problem is. She hadn’t bothered holding her skirt in place, so it had ridden up on the slide. Honestly, you’d think Nanami would have gotten used to things like this by now, going to a school where the uniform skirt doesn’t even come down to mid-thigh.
Kozue snorts, but still makes sure to adjust her skirt when she stands up and walks over to Nanami.
“You alright?”
“Have some decency,” Nanami mutters.
“What’s the problem? It’s just us.”
Nanami stays silent, which doesn’t surprise Kozue.
“I swear it’s easier to navigate than it looks. Like you said, it’s for little kids. They had to make this thing idiot-proof to avoid getting sued,” Kozue says, pointing to the play structure.
Nanami huffs. “I wouldn’t get lost! I’m not stupid! It’s just weird-looking, that’s all! Now… show me the way.”
Her voice is softer at the end. Kozue takes her by the hand and leads her to a different opening in the structure, one that leads to a sort of staircase. They walk up together, trying not to hit their heads on the ceiling, until they reach a platform with the mouths of several tunnels and other pathways surrounding it.
Nanami lets go of Kozue’s hand and sits down and leans on the wall between two tunnels. She hadn’t said a word the whole way up. Kozue sits down next to her.
“Hey, I was kidding before, but seriously, are you alright? You seem… off.”
It’s not unusual for Nanami to have mood swings, but just because it’s normal doesn’t mean it’s good. Besides, Kozue doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to this particular mood of Nanami’s- where she stops making all her movements and expressions so dramatic, where instead of crying or screaming or pouting, she’s just… quietly sad or disturbed. It just looks wrong on her.
“I think I’m a bad mother,” Nanami whispers.
Kozue blinks. “…why do you think that?”
What else could she possibly say?
“I had an egg to take care of, and I couldn’t handle it.”
“An egg- oh, you mean for Health Class? I’ve heard of the assignment where you take care of an egg, but I didn’t know they did it at this school.”
Nanami’s face switches expressions a number of times and Kozue can’t quite read it. What Nanami eventually says is “…yeah”, which Kozue feels is a lie. But whatever, where Nanami gets eggs is her business.
“I loved it, Kozue,” Nanami says, voice cracking a bit, like she’s about to cry. “I loved it. Even though it couldn’t talk or walk or do much of anything, it was still mine. I didn’t know I could love something that much, except for…”
Nanami shrinks in on herself, pulling her knees to her chest. Kozue sees very familiar fingerprints on this situation- she’s yet to find anyone else who can make Nanami look this small.
“Touga,” Kozue mutters.
Nanami nods. “But he thought it was- that I was- that the kind of girl who-” she doesn’t finish.
Kozue can’t piece together what exactly Touga had said, but it doesn’t really matter. Knowing Touga, he probably didn’t even mean half of it. The fact that he said it to Nanami cements that suspicion.
Back when she and Touga had been seeing each other, he hadn’t talked about Nanami much. But the few times he did, Kozue paid attention. And now that she’s been around Nanami more and heard some of her stories, she can understand a bit more. Their dynamic is a mess, but the two important things Kozue knows are: 1), Touga’s approval makes or breaks Nanami’s day, and 2), Touga gets a real kick out of riling Nanami up.
She can relate to wanting to drive her sibling up the wall, but her sibling is Miki, not Nanami. He barely even looks at her unless she does something wrong. But Nanami clings to Touga like he's the only thing that can keep her from drowning. Doesn't Touga understand how lucky he is? The lengths Kozue would go to if it meant Miki caring half as much as Nanami does?
But Touga and Kozue aren't the same, just similar. Kozue can't be sure, but she's suspicious that Touga just likes to watch the world- and his sister- burn for the sake of it.
That’s the main reason she hasn’t been meeting Nanami at the Kiryuu residence. If Touga knew they were friends, he would absolutely tell Nanami about the relations Kozue had with him, just to stir the pot. And while Kozue isn’t ashamed of her extracurriculars, she’d really prefer if Nanami didn’t hate her forever.
“What does this have to do with you being a bad mom?” Kozue asks, shaking herself out of her thoughts.
“Because I abandoned it,” Nanami whispers, hoarse.
Everything in Kozue grinds to a halt.
“I… I couldn’t handle what he said, so I took it out into the woods in a blanket and left. I got scared and came back for it later, but it got away from me again.”
Nanami looks haunted.
Kozue tries to force a casual air, but her words still come out slow and deliberate.
“The egg will be fine.”
Nanami looks at her, wide-eyed. “You really think so?”
“I know so. Wild animals know how to fend for themselves.”
Nanami’s face falls. “But it wasn’t wild, it was mine. I’m not wild. It can’t- it can’t just go around with no one to lean on. I’m all it ever knew, all it ever had, and I just left it.”
You came back, Kozue wants to say. You obviously loved it. What she says is, “It’ll survive. It doesn’t have a choice.”
This is, of course, the wrong thing to say. The tears in Nanami’s eyes spill over and she sobs, burying her face in her hands.
“It should have had a choice!” She chokes out. “Maybe it’ll live, but what kind of a life is that? A life with no family, with nobody at all who loves you?”
Kozue can’t handle this. She has to say something, anything, that will fix it. She doesn’t know how, but she puts her hand on Nanami’s shoulder and tries her best.
“Well… just because you’re all it ever knew doesn’t mean you’re all it ever will know,” she says, “it’s an egg! It hasn’t been born yet, it has a whole life ahead of it if it survives, which it will, and then it’ll find… it’ll find a friend.”
Nanami puts her hands down and sniffles, turning her teary eyes in Kozue’s direction. “A friend?”
“Yeah. And it won’t be family, but it will be something. Something it can count on.”
Kozue realizes that even though she really had no idea what she was going to say, she believes what she ended up saying.
Nanami is quiet for a while, and then she takes Kozue’s hand.
“Thanks.”
Kozue smiles. "You're welcome. Now come on, you haven't even seen the best slide yet."
Nanami follows her, and neither of them let go.
This slide isn't as long as the other one, but it's a lot steeper, and it's pitch dark inside. Kozue bends her knees and tries to keep as much of her bare legs as possible from touching the slide, which in hindsight might not have been the best idea. Nanami's tights are made of something shiny and smooth that sends them down terrifyingly fast. Kozue will admit under threat of torture that she screamed almost as loud as Nanami.
When they come flying out the other end, their wide eyes meet. Neither of them say a word before scrambling up to do it all over again, hand in hand.
---
Miki is waiting for Kozue when she gets home. “Where were you?”
Kozue says the same thing she almost always does- usually it’s a euphemism, but this time it seems oddly sincere.
“With a friend.”