Archive of Our Own

When Saiguu mentions that Makoto is transferring to Hakushin State University come fall of that year, Yae Miko pays her no mind. 

"Finally," Saiguu says, across the table in the library, "I don't have to pay for a full round trip just to see her." Her fingers stop tapping mindlessly on the cover of her laptop, and a smattering of red spreads across her face. A lock of white hair falls in front of her face as she shakes her head to clear a thought. "Make sure you never tell her that it was expensive for me. She would feel guilty for not offering to cover everything."

Yae literally does not care. She's not planning on talking to Saiguu's highschool sweetheart, and she's especially not planning on being anywhere around the both of them at the same time. Heavens forbid her from firsthand experiencing being a third wheel, the couple in question including Saiguu no less.

Her lack of response likely speaks loud enough for itself, and Saiguu snickers at the mindless scrolling she's caught Yae doing on her phone. "Don't sulk, girlfriend. I promise you will get at least 30% of my attention," she giggles, her head lowering and tilting up and therefore being closer to the center of Yae's vision. 

Yae drops her phone to the table and rolls her eyes. She leans back and watches a handful of students flit about on the suspended walkway over the second floor of the library. "You don't need to lie to me. Just let me know you're alive at least once a month with a text or something."

"Okay, fine," she relents. "You're right. Makoto consumes 80% of my attention, so you get the remaining 20%." Then, after pausing in thought for a moment, she snaps her fingers. "I forgot about classes. You get 10%, Miko."

Yae has already filtered this information away, and therefore it is no longer useful. She's more worried about the stress of the coming semester and the lack of stress she's forcing upon herself over the summer.

Yes, she thinks to herself, her next semester will be another unrelenting but quality one, just like the one she's finishing right now. She doesn't need to be distracted like how Saiguu will be.

Three months later, she meets her for the first time in her Music History & Culture class.

The girl has a gorgeous doll-like face, but a handsomely indifferent expression donned. Her thick, dark braid reaches far down her back, curling around her hip as she seats herself elegantly. The side profile shows Yae a knife-sharp jawline, and suddenly she understands why Saiguu is so smitten.

It's one thing to see her in selfies that her best friend has shown, and it's another to see her in person. The transfer student in front of her may as well be a completely different person than the girlfriend about whom Saiguu has been gushing for years, even though all of the physical details are the same. There's no way she would be able to miss this girl, not with literally every aspect of her being so recognizable. She's more surprised at her own prior reactions to Saiguu's media of this girl, or rather, the lack thereof.

With the knowledge that she does, in fact, find Saiguu's girlfriend extremely attractive, she sits as far away as humanly possible. She makes sure she gives a very wide berth whenever she has to pass by. The few times she catches her eyes straying to the dark-haired beauty over the course of the hour, she wants to punch herself in frustration. Gritting her teeth from the sting, she pushes the end of her calligraphy pen into the back of her hand when the girl meets her gaze once with curious, intelligent eyes, and Yae has to look away with a furious blush.

"Saiguu, I have a dark confession," she states very calmly over the phone that night. It's only the first day of classes, and she already has to make a new confession.

"What have you done now?" she responds. Yae hears some background noise, some talking, as if she's already at a party. On a Tuesday night.

Seating herself higher on the couch, Yae spins a pen more aggressively with her free hand. "I… find Raiden Makoto gorgeous."

"She is gorgeous. I agree."

"This is serious."

"Oh, Miko," Saiguu says with a sweet tone. "Thank you for telling me, truthfully, but I know you will never do anything. You telling me this on the first day only proves that you can be trusted around pretty girls who are taken."

Barking a pitiful laugh for herself, Yae drops the pen so that she can mindlessly comb out some knots in her hair with her fingers. "I don't even trust myself. Your pictures of her didn't do her justice."

"Hey, now. If you continue speaking like that, you're going to convince me that you really can't be trusted," she teases. "Besides, where did you even see her long enough that you had already decided she's indeed the most beautiful gorgeous woman in all of Inazuma?"

Yae scoffs at all of the unnecessary additions to her dilemma with Raiden. "She's in my Music History & Culture class. Tuesdays and Thursdays."

"Hmm? But…" Saiguu trails off, confused. "I don't think she's taking that class." For a brief moment, Yae can hear the phone microphone getting covered, then a muffled, "Makoto?" from Saiguu. "You're not in a music class, are you?"

The voices on the other end are unintelligible on this side, but soon she hears an explosion of a laugh.

" Ohhhhh!" Saiguu exclaims brightly, clearly in a positive mood. A cacophony of muffled noise reaches Yae's ear before Saiguu's microphone returns to being directly by her mouth. "Miko, that was the wrong Raiden you saw."

"What?"

"Makoto has a twin sister. They're the Raiden twins."

"What."

"You saw—" she breaks into a giggle fit, and Yae stares a hole into the decorative painting on her wall. "That was the wrong Raiden twin. Oh, you mixed them up on the first day!"

"Saiguu," Yae hisses, slightly manic. “Who's the other twin, then?”

A thought-heavy noise comes from her best friend. "I don't know her that well since she transferred to a different high school early on, but that is so funny. This always happens! I can't believe you mixed up the Raiden twins—"

Humiliated, Yae rips the phone from her ear and slams a finger on the end call button, stopping the background noise from Saiguu's end. Her apartment falls completely silent instantly, and her ears start to ring.

So what if she got twins mixed up? Identical twins are hard to tell apart, especially when they're not right next to each other. Just because Saiguu is dating one twin, it doesn't mean Yae should be able to tell them apart. Before now, she hadn't even known that there are two Raidens.

Thinking back to the girl she saw earlier, she wonders if she'll even be able to face her now that Raiden Makoto knows she's mixed them up, and likely the Raiden in her class knows, and Saiguu definitely knows. She hopes more than anything that Saiguu keeps her chattering mouth shut about Yae's attraction. She doesn't want this much embarrassment encumbering her right as the semester starts.

Then, with a jolt, she realizes that she doesn't even know what the other Raiden's name is. Referring to both of the twins as Raiden feels even more wrong and embarrassingly unlearned with all of the new knowledge she has about them from the first day.

Yae supposes talking to a girl to get her name wouldn't hurt anyone.

"My name is Raiden Ei," the girl says eloquently as soon as Yae walks into class on Thursday morning. Her calm gaze is expectant and clearly directed at Yae.

She's going to murder Saiguu ten times over.

Yae instantly throws a hand over her face, feeling the unwanted blush overcome her features. She pushes the other Raiden twin further into the classroom, past the threshold, and into a seat by the corner, and only after she's seated herself she allows her mouth to open. 

Pushing a hand down to hoist herself over Raiden, Yae tries to be threatening and intimidating. "You did not hear anything from your sister, nor did you hear anything from Saiguu," Yae states, enunciating her words. She points an accusatory finger directly between bewitching amethyst orbs. "My name is Yae Miko, and this is the first time I have seen you, talked to you, or thought about you. I do not know that you have a twin sister."

Raiden is neither fazed nor convinced, instead having a stupidly cute smirk on her lips. "Everyone mixes us up, even after getting to know both of us."

Yae plummets down her seat and sobs into a puddle. Some other peers in the classroom snicker at the display.

"You know, Yae," Raiden continues, "I've heard about you from the others. I wanted to speak with you since you're almost a familiar face, but we were like two north poles on Tuesday."

With closed eyes, Yae tilts her head back and listens to the sound of light conversation in the room for two breaths. "If you are a reasonable person who understands social cues, you will not say anything about me that I don't want to hear."

"Don't worry. I've only heard good things."

She shakes her head with a grimace. "If you've heard about me from Saiguu, it was not all good things."

With a comfortable smile on her lips, Raiden leaned further over her desk to meet the gaze of Yae, and suddenly the low angle she's put herself doesn't block her from any exposure anymore. For a moment, all the other girl does is look at her with those calculating, calm storms in her eyes, and Yae wonders whether or not this Raiden twin is also taken.

As the professor walks over the threshold of the door and into the classroom, a smooth and delicate hand places a note on Yae's desk. She furrows her eyebrows and pulls herself up into a normal seating position to read what's written on the yellow note.

It's a phone number. She raises a brow and glances at her desk neighbor, who is already shifting her focus to the professor.

Trying to be inconspicuous, she flips her phone around and pulls it into her lap, tapping the screen.

"Is everybody awake this morning?" Dr. Yukatsura pipes, a mug in his hand and a gaze sweeping across the room. He receives a handful of murmurs.

She adds the number to her contacts list and sends a quick text with her name, and now it is done. Yae Miko has a Raiden Ei in her contacts list.

This class isn't supposed to be particularly difficult, considering it's an underclassmen-level course, but she appreciates that Raiden is willing to lend a hand as a fellow peer taking the course for when the support is needed. She stifles a smile at the thought of Raiden calling her in the middle of the night asking for help with homework for this course.

Perhaps Raiden is the type of girl to exchange numbers upon first meeting any peer. She spins the phone back into her lap, out of sight, and that is that. 

Unfortunately for Yae Miko this semester, lunch hour does not exist on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She is forced to rush from block period to block period until well past lunch hours. Even though she'd already been made fully aware of this fact when forming her schedule last semester, the long hours are still tiring. She's resigned herself to waking up early in order to make herself large breakfasts and some snacks to aid her through the long day until her last lecture ends.

Today, she already regrets not following through on her own plans—she definitely did not sleep in and forget to make a large breakfast, instead settling for a quick bowl of cereal—and the lack of carbs in her system is getting to her.

This lecture isn't scheduled to end until almost 5 o' clock, and she knows this, but she can't help but constantly glance at the clock as it slowly ticks the minutes away. She's already out of the singular granola bar she'd packed for herself in the morning and has been as of four hours ago.

She's going to be leading a very miserable semester of Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Swaying in her seat slightly, Yae rips her gaze from the clock on the far end of the lecture hall and focuses on her still-empty notes. Today has only been a course overview, briefly reviewing the syllabus from Tuesday, and Yae could be much better off not here in the first place. In a hall of two hundred other students, no one would care if she were to up and leave. She swears that there have already been other students that simply packed their bags and left the room throughout the lecture.

Idly, she finds her phone underneath the lip of her desk and fiddles with Raiden's contact page. So far, there are only two messages in their conversation history.

You [Today at 09:13a]: This is Yae Miko

Raiden Ei [Today at 10:24a]: Thank you.

And she's already itching to say something more, even though she's certain that Raiden is the type of girl who will neither respond to notifications quickly nor appreciate pointless conversations over text. She gets tell me in person vibes from her, instead.

You [Today at 04:29p]: i am very hungry

Instantly, she flushes and throws her phone face down onto the desk, cursing herself for being so weak. Why would Raiden Ei care about whether or not she's hungry for a little bit? Hasn't Yae just classified her as someone that doesn't do small talk over text? What is she supposed to do after reading that text—rush over and present Yae with the food that she's so desiring?

Most importantly, Yae is definitely treating this relationship way too casually. She doesn't think she should be irritating a girl she'd talked to for the first time that very day about the fact that she's a little hungry. For all she knows, Raiden could literally be in her own class right now, and the notification could distract her from her studies.

She can't take the notification back, but she wishes this major transgression she'd just committed gets brushed over quickly and as painlessly as possible.

Staring at the back of her phone case, she realizes that it's not yet too late to be forced to accept a full load of mortification. In fact, to lessen the load of the embarrassment, she should probably apologize before Raiden responds with annoyance. It's better to admit that she's wrong first.

You [Today at 04:30p]: I'm sorry for saying that.

She stares at the sent icon next to the text message for all of five seconds before jamming her phone underneath her thighs and digging her head into her arms, heat blasting across her cheeks. 

Yae Miko, she thinks to herself while digging her fingernails into her palm, you are a calamity upon this earth.

She agrees with herself wholeheartedly. Now, there are two entire notifications for Raiden to go through, neither of which are necessary in any way. She may as well be tying a brick to Raiden's writing utensils with how much of an extemporaneous appendage she is to the other girl's college load.

No, she understands, you cannot take back your wrongdoings. Face the reality of what you've done, you dirty gremlin.

She goes back to watching the clock on the wall tick its rhythm painfully slowly, ignoring the complaints of her stomach.

Within the hour, while she is finally, blessedly scarfing down the warmed up leftovers in the comfort of her apartment, she receives a response from Raiden. She pauses her episode of Hamavaran Hegemony to tap on the notification.

Raiden Ei [Today at 5:15p]: Glad I was able to lend a hand. Let me know if you ever need help again.

Yae skewers her noodles with a greater intensity, a deep, irksome itch spreading down her spine. She almost grinds her teeth smooth with how angrily and violently she chews the rest of her dinner.

Of course, Yae does meet Raiden Makoto soon after meeting her twin sister. It's the last stretch of the weekend studying in the basement of the library, and Yae has a laptop open to her right, a notebook in front of her, a half-eaten bag of chips to her left, and her phone in one hand.

She's about to pop in earbuds when the voices approach her in the whisper-quiet hallway of the library.

"Yae? Is that Yae Miko?" someone calls out in a subdued voice, calm with nothing urgent.

Putting her phone on the table, she twists in her chair to spot… is that two Raidens? And they're walking side-by-side, wearing opposite palettes of colors, one with hair flowing down and free, and the other whose hair is braided long and elegant. She furrows her eyebrows, gaze darting between the two Raiden twins to spot all of the differences. Beyond the obvious duplicate facial features, hair consistency, skin tone, body form, eye color, and—Yae does not look at this—lip shape, the sisters have clearly put in effort to distinguish one from another.

She stands up from her seat to greet them as they approach her table, a polite smile upon her lips. This is Saiguu's beloved, after all, and she would rather give a good first impression for one of them than none. "Hello to you both," she greets. "Raiden, and… Raiden."

Raiden Makoto, clearly the speaker for two, shares an amused look with her twin, as if mutually humored by the same inside joke. Stepping closer, she juts a thumb to her side. "Call this one by her first name Ei, and you may call me Makoto. We don't need the confusion."

"Thank you, Makoto."

Pointing to the activity upon the table, her Raiden—not hers; just the one she has met already—Ei wrinkles her nose. "How are you already deep in your studies in the first week of classes?" she asks.

Surprised, Yae fidgets with the edge of the notebook next to her fingertips. "I have major projects that I need to plan out, so I'm judging their workloads based on the information we've received on the syllabi."

“By the first week?”

“What?” Yae simpers. “Is it so foreign to you that I’ve already activated my brain?”

Throwing her arms together, Ei huffs with an adorable pout on her lips. “Don’t tease me,” she throws at Yae’s jab. “I asked a question.”

She holds herself higher and mirrors Ei’s crossed arms. “Yes, by the first week. I don’t want to fall behind.”

“Is this what studiousness looks like?” she ponders with faux wonder, eyebrows raised into her bangs.

Makoto shakes her head with her lips curled up. “She wouldn’t know,” she says to Yae.

Giggling lightly, breathlessly, Yae feels slightly overwhelmed, unsure of how to interact with these two twins. She needs Saiguu here to speak for her, and she can be the cherry on top with her one-liners. She doesn’t ever have to be the pleasant one with whom others hold a conversation. 

“What about you two? What brings you down here?” she asks.

Makoto gestures to the general vicinity around them. “We’re working on getting used to the campus, since we didn’t take the opportunities to visit before,” she explains.

Yae nods once. “Well, welcome to the library building. Where are you headed next?”

“There’s no particular agenda. We’re just exploring here and there.”

Grabbing her phone, she holds it up for them to acknowledge. “If you have questions, Ei has my number.”

Makoto raises an eyebrow and glances at her sister, a question in her gaze. Without breaking a sweat, Ei simply shrugs it off. “I do, yes.”

“You sure work fast,” Makoto comments.

“Yae was the one that pushed me down into a chair even before our first conversation,” she deadpans completely nonchalantly, as if documenting some historical facts about penguins.

The other sister’s head snaps toward Yae at the same time a deep flush comes over Yae’s face, and she splutters out, “Um, context, please! You ambushed me at the door! I was not prepared to introduce myself first thing in the morning with all eyes on me.”

“Makoto,” Ei calls in a straight voice, “I ambushed Yae at the door, and because of that she pushed me into a chair before our first conversation.”

Yae desperately wants to reverse the entire conversation of both today and last Thursday, the humiliation stemming from the situation feeling like being submerged in a bubbling pool of water up to her neck. She wants to plead that Ei forget everything she’d said, that Makoto not say anything to further the conversation, but the genuine smile placed upon Makoto’s lips is telling enough that Ei is, in fact, teasing, and that stops Yae in her tracks.

Huffing, she shuts her eyes to mitigate the severely debilitating stimuli of having two nearly identical beautiful women teasing her. “Yes, well… you should refer to me by my first name: Miko. No more of this Yae business. That’s only fair.” She taps the side of her arm, briefly counting the number of people who are allowed to call her by her first name.

“Miko does not appreciate my jokes,” the one who clearly has to be Ei says. 

In contrast, her sister, despite having the same timbre, speaks with a more fluid tone, clearly unafraid to display her emotions with her words. “Does this bestowal of a first-name basis also extend to me?”

Yae opens her eyes to give Makoto a flat look. “Yes it does, Raiden Makoto.”

“I’m honored,” she grins, holding a hand to her chest.

The twins excuse themselves to continue exploring the major parts of campus before the sun sets, leaving Yae to return to her own devices. She slumps back in her chair and pulls out Ei’s contact information once again.

There’s no message, of course, since she had just been talking with said girl not five minutes ago. She can’t help but stare at the name for longer than she needs to.

The week goes by at a snail’s pace. Now that the introduction week is over, the lectures have started, but the majority of her classes are upper division courses now, so these sessions are mostly content review.

She doesn’t want to allow bad habits into her semester this early on—she’s fully aware that they will come, regardless of when it happens—but she finds herself awake on Friday night in her sofa at the window, both earbuds in, and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake flowing through its full-length ballet. Were someone to ask Yae Miko at this moment, “tell me what you’re thinking about,” she would completely ignore them because she has no answer. In some sort of meditative state, Yae stares up into the few scarce stars in the night sky visible in the darkened city, absorbing the rolling and washing of the music.

It’s a Friday night, she tells herself. I’ll be in bed in a few minutes, she reasons. This will be the last movement , she promises herself.

She gives the clock another quick glance. It isn’t even two in the morning yet, she rationalizes. I have time to stay up, she concludes.

Some indefinite amount of time later, her phone buzzes with a notification. She flinches slightly, awareness slamming back into her body after a long period of emotional surrealism. Without pausing the music, she turns her phone over with a slow, creaking hand. The brightness forces her to wince slightly and squint at what it reads.

She has to blink for many seconds, rub her eyes, pause the music, make sure she’s reading this correctly.

Raiden Ei [Today at 03:57a]: Miko, do you want to come over right now? I made too many pancakes.

A million thoughts run through her head. She’s slightly dazed at the fact that she, yes, Yae Miko, is a real person, and she exists. The proof is right there in front of her eyes: someone named Ei is referring to her directly. She feels like she doesn’t even know where she is, what year it is, how she got here.

First, she realizes that the time has ticked to nearly four in the morning, and she instantly feels that spike of anxiety pierce through her chest at the fact that she is still awake, and it is four in the morning.  

Second, she realizes that the entire Swan Lake ballet had already finished, and she has been listening to various shuffled pieces from a related radio. She yanks the earbuds out of her ears, shocked at the out-of-body experience she’d just had.

Third, it is Raiden Ei who has just texted her, who is also awake, and—she reads the message once again—who is inviting her over right now .

You [Today at 03:59a]: ??????????

Raiden Ei [Today at 03:59a]: Makoto is asleep right now, so we’ll have to be quiet.

She jams her thumbs into the phone keyboard, a menace upon her own screen.

You [Today at 04:00a]: WHY AREY OU AWKAE??

Raiden Ei [Today at 04:00a]: Fine. I guess I’ll throw the rest of them away.

Jumping up onto her feet, Yae presses the call button and spins the phone to her ear. She storms over to her bedroom door to behold her bed, and she can confirm that she is indeed awake right now; her bed is untouched, meaning she has not yet slept, and she is awake right now.

Ei picks up after many long seconds of ringing, the slight static reaching Yae’s ears instantly. “Hey, Miko,” she hears in a quiet, sobering voice. “I had to walk downstairs quickly.”

“Ei, I—” Yae cuts herself off when she registers Ei’s words. She snaps her mouth shut with a click and shakes her head once. “ Waiwaiwaiwait —what did you say? Downstairs? You live in a house?”

“Uh, it’s a duplex, but—”

“ And! You made pancakes? At four??”  

“Do you want any?”

“Ei, my gods, I shouldn’t even be awake. You shouldn’t even be awake.”

“I… couldn’t sleep. I guess you couldn’t either,” Ei chirps jauntily. “So come and enjoy some of my pancakes.”

"Why did you expect me to be awake?"

"I gave it a shot, didn't I?"

Archons, Yae has to be the reasonable one between the two of them. She groans in resentment of all things that had led to her being in this situation right now. “You.”

“What is it?"

“Ei."

“... Yes. Me.”

She forces herself to regain her bearings as quickly as possible. She is currently standing in the threshold of her bedroom in her apartment, and it is four in the morning of Friday night, technically Saturday morning, and a girl she’d just met last week is on the phone with her, telling her that there are pancakes available.

Yae says, “What’s the address of your duplex?” 

Of all things to learn on Saturday, Yae learns that Ei cannot cook.

“Don’t tell me you consumed any of these… monstrosities,” she states with her nose wrinkled, not bothering to hide her disgust.

“I had to try one, you know?” Ei says, holding up a blackened slab of floppy charcoal between her fingers, observing it like she would her shopping list. In leggings and a long t-shirt, she is so incredibly adorable with how she processes the situation. “They’re not very good, though.”

Yae approaches the plate with a heaping pile of some suspicious lumpy substance on it, daring to poke it with a finger. “Why… why did you keep making them? This is a one by one process, no?”

Ei lights up, her thick braid jumping with her. “Oh! I actually went for a full sheet pan instead of the stovetop,” she explains, pointing a finger at the half-submerged pan in the sink, “since I didn’t want to end up making ten full ones or so, then have just that little bit extra that’s not enough for another full pancake, so I’d have to throw it away, or something…”

Ei trails off when she meets the intensely steady glower of disquietude that’s surely on Yae’s face, and Yae forces her eyebrows to relax from deep furrowing. Said sheet pan is completely crusted, blackened, and disregarded in the sink. Yae’s attention shifts to the rest of the dirty objects in the sink, and she has to wipe her eyes clean when she sees—she stalks closer to the sink, and she sees—

“In what godforsaken world of absolute mayhem where all hope is lost do you use a cheese grater to make pancakes ?” she demands.

Looking slightly sheepish, Ei cracks a smile and looks away. “I’m… uh—I had to… grate the butter?”

Disbelief rolls through her. “And the colander?”

Confused, Ei looks over to the utensil in question, and a look of realization dawns upon her. “I didn’t know it was called that. I just used it for the eggs.”

Yae gapes blankly, a dripping cheese grater in one hand. She feels slight hysteria overcome her features, forcing a laugh to bubble up. But she cannot stop when it grows, and soon she drops the grater back into the water with a ploop and doubles over with maniacal laughter.

“O-okay, I get—we get it…” Ei tries, clear mirth in her own voice. She, too, gets overtaken by laughter, likely understanding the situation as well.

She can't help but guffaw at said situation. And when Yae squints up at Ei with blurry vision to see the other girl wheezing, leaning over the counter with a hand to her forehead, tears streaming down her face, she instantly tumbles into convulsions, and she can’t seem to get enough air into her own lungs, and she’s forced back into the clutches of laughter.

Gasping, she presses her hands into her knees, her body still trembling. “Ei—you moron —” she manages before immediately seizing into another fit of hysterics.

“S-stop! We’re goi—Makoto is…” Ei chokes in a breath, eyes curved into wide upturned crescents. “If she wakes up… I am so dead—”

That pulls another seizure out of her abdominal muscles, which are starting to become very sore, so she pushes a hand against her mouth to keep it together. “That’s—that’s why you… cook at four in—” she gasps for air— “ the morning?”

“She… she banned me from the—”

Yae howls in laughter.

It takes a few long minutes before Yae crumples to the floor, unable to hold herself up anymore. Her vision has become completely washed in tears, so she tries to wipe her eyes in the midst of the lingering chuckles. She groans from the aching in her stomach.

Ei slumps against the counter across from her, a blurry figure of collapsed limbs. Both of them forgo trying to speak as they catch their breaths. Looking over at Ei, her lean form still racked from lingering tremors, Yae feels some part of her feeling like she’d bonded, with how much laughter had been wrought from her to the point of being deceased. She can see the headline of the news article detailing her case: college girl in pajama shorts collapses after touching suspicious pancakes.

“Oh, gods…” she mumbles out, squeezing more tears out of her eyes.

Before she can pull herself back together, she registers the sound of a door opening and soft footsteps padding closer to the pair on the floor. With that now happening, she may as well accept her impending demise, so she collapses fully onto the floor.

“What… the actual hell…?” Raiden Makoto mutters over the two of them, voice scratchy from sleep.

Although Yae cannot see her, she definitely feels the presence of a girl who had just been rudely woken up and climbed out of bed in her sleepwear. Yae also fails to have the energy to climb to her feet and explain the situation.

“Hi… Makoto…” Ei wheezes out.

“Ei, what the hell?” she repeats. “At this ungodly hour?”

The twin sister on the floor just groans in response.

“Yae Miko…” Something stops Makoto in her tracks, and she seems to regain more consciousness in a flash. “Wait a minute.”

Makoto steps over Yae’s stretched out legs and storms over to Ei, a sign of death in her glare.

“How long has she been here, Ei? Explain yourself. Did you two really—?”

“Gods, no…” Ei interrupts. “We didn’t have sex or anything. She just got here like… what time is it?”

Yae rests the back of her head against the hard tile, dazedly looking at the ceiling. A part of her is humiliated beyond relief, but mostly she just wants to actually get the sleep she’s been missing all night—and there is absolutely no part of her that wants to embrace Ei with newfound affection. She feels over-tired to the point where her mind is frustratingly circulatory with its ramblings, yet cognitively sluggish.

“It is five in the morning,” Makoto says. “Five. In. The. Morning. And I know for a fact that you have not slept yet.”

Another wheezing laugh escapes Ei. “Miko got here like… twenty minutes ago, or something.”

She turns to squint at the scene around. “And you made—” A deep sigh comes from Makoto, sonorous and ragged, and she drops her head into her chest. From what Yae can see from the floor, she has a crumpled sweatshirt thrown on that hangs over whatever shorts she has on underneath, and bare feet tap in irritation.

It seems Makoto has finally seen the grotesque Frankenstein conglomeration that Ei had put together.

“Sorry…” Ei whispers. “I felt inspired.”

“By what? The toilet after you took a massive dump?”

Yae cackles again, unable to help herself.

Indignant, Ei meets her sister’s death glare unflinchingly. “No! When… Papa made pancakes.”

“Seriously?”

“I-I missed them. Still miss.”

For a moment, Makoto says nothing, but she is quickly in action, lifting the plate of largely offensive content and stalking over to the trash bin. She steps with purpose and clarity, clearly having done this in the past.

“My… my pancakes…!” Ei protests.

“Ei, help me clean up this mess you made.”

“I could just do it myself. You can go back to bed.”

“No, you really cannot do it by yourself.”

“Miko can help me.”

When Makoto looks over at Yae’s prone form, Yae shields her vision of the plate with a hand. “I am neither affiliated with nor responsible for the horrifying atrocity that you’re holding. Do not group me in with that.”

Ei whips her head to look at her with utmost betrayal.

“Miko,” Makoto calls with a much more pleasant, awake tone, “you can go sit down and explain what happened.”

So, as the two sisters scrub the remnants of charred pancake mix from their kitchen, Yae watches them from the table and recounts the brief explanation of how she had gotten here. There isn’t much to explain, but with how unresponsive her mind is, Yae feels like she’s telling a grand dramatic story. She doesn’t explain why she was awake at such hours, but no one asks about that.

Makoto, brows furrowed and a sponge in one hand, blinks at Yae in a paused heartbeat. “What possessed you to accept the invitation?”

She shakes her head, leaning upon the table with her elbows up. “I have absolutely no clue.”

“Well, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Don’t be. That was the greatest laugh I’ve had in years.”

Ei, throughout the entire process, has the widest grin on her lips. She’s clearly fatigued from the way she has to stare at Makoto for longer than necessary when given directions, but she occasionally giggles at nothing in particular.

Yae finds it horribly endearing, and she stops looking at the sisters.

She does eventually make it back to her apartment after declining Makoto’s invitation that she stay for breakfast, since she’s absolutely sure that her bodily functions will cease to exist if she does not sleep. Graciously, however, she accepts a drive back, so that she doesn’t have to walk the distance to the apartment complex.

Makoto doesn’t trust Ei to drive at this hour, so she demands that Ei actually sleep before taking Yae home.

It feels a little bit like being a child again, even though Makoto is the same age as both her and Ei. Yae stifles another laugh in the passenger seat at the thought of Ei being treated as a child by her own twin, and she herself is just caught in the midst of it.

“You also need to sleep,” Makoto asserts, pulling into the complex.

“I definitely do.”

Humming, the Raiden twin pulls the SUV to a stop at the designated building at which Yae had pointed. “I’m not actually mad at Ei. I was surprised to see that she was laughing so hard today.”

“Oh?”

“We went to the same high school for part of freshman year, but then our father passed away that year. Ei had an episode of social anxiety and transferred to a private school after that,” she explains. 

Some emotion wells up inside of Yae, and she says nothing as to not betray a trembling voice.

Makoto tilts her head and smiles at Yae. “It’s good to see that you two click. I feel you were kind of annexed into our… friend group via Saiguu, but still.”

“She would do that, wouldn’t she?” Yae barks a laugh.

When she finally falls into her bed, the sun has already started to rise. She glares at the open window, willing that the sun un-rise so that she doesn’t have to feel that niggling guilt at the glaring fact that she’d stayed up this late.

She sighs deep in her sheets, the exhaustion seeping into her bones.

Surprisingly, it is Mikoshi Chiyo who invites Yae Miko to the party.

Yae vehemently declines. "It's a Sunday, and you are all crazy."

Mikoshi never falters and simply shrugs it off with the same wide grin on her lips. She waltzes by Yae, her shorter form full of life. When she spins around and opens her mouth to speak, Yae can't help but be amused. "There always has to be the boring one," Mikoshi laments.

She's not that close with Mikoshi, but she knows that this entire friend group goes all the way back to high school. Saiguu, Makoto, and Mikoshi had all graduated together, and Ei had always been mutually connected. Regardless of her lack of history with any of these girls prior to meeting Saiguu at the university, Mikoshi had always treated her kindly and with that familiar spritz of life.

"Besides," continues on, now walking beside Yae once again, "I would understand if you didn't want to be there for a tipsy Saiguu and Makoto situation."

Yae shudders. "I am so sorry for your loss."

"Friends be friends, right? I can handle it." She winks with a sunny grin.

With no threat of Ei bothering her tonight, she resolves to go to sleep early tonight. Both yesterday and today had witnessed Yae waking up feeling like a well-rested zombie, looking at the clock, and hastily lumbering out of bed in the hours of the afternoon. She will absolutely regret staying up when her alarm rings tomorrow morning, and she has to go through a day of classes.

She should have known that it'd be too much to ask for if she’d wanted to go to bed early and remain unbothered.

"Hello? Ei?" she says calmly into the phone after answering the impromptu call. She's at her desk simultaneously practicing her calligraphy and analyzing the character development path of one of her originals, and had been surprised to see the caller ID.

She hears some distorted music coming from Ei's end, signifying the location from which the call is taking place, and after a moment, Ei literally squeals into the microphone.

"Hi, Miko!!"  

Wincing, she pulls the phone away from her ear a distance, and she looks at the time. Ei should be at the party right now, so she has no idea why she's calling her. "Is everything alright?" she asks.

The glee from the other end is concerning to Yae. "Yes, everything is alllll–" Ei's slurred words suddenly cut off, and with it the background noise. A hum of brown noise greets her.

"Hello?" Yae tries.

"—goood…!" Ei finishes in a much more somber, quieter tone. It sounds as if she'd moved to a different room. Perhaps this so-called downstairs again.

Yae stiffens at the tone she's being handed. "Ei, are you drunk?"

She hears some quiet yet unhinged giggling. "So drunk right now."

Rolling her eyes to the moon, Yae sighs into her chair. "You are so going to regret that come tomorrow."

Of course Ei is a partier. If Saiguu is one, and Ei is from the same group of friends, then of course Ei is a partier. Yae had hoped that Ei is better at handling herself than Saiguu, but given the sudden situation, that doesn't seem plausible. These poor college students don't even look ahead and anticipate what's coming, only staying for the highs.

Ei, suddenly timid and unclear, as if far from the microphone, mutters something that Yae only hears as, "You should have come."

Yae is quick to respond. "Hell no. This is precisely the reason I don't go to parties."

"What is?"

"Look at yourself, Ei. You're drunk on a Sunday night, and you have class tomorrow morning. You're going to be hungover for hours tomorrow, and it's going to be the most miserable time of your life. And I'm not making you mozzarella sticks to help you out."

"Stop speaking so—" she inhales sharply, shallowly, in what is probably a hiccup, "fast. I can't… I can't…"

Then, Ei giggles again. This time, however, she is quick to shut herself up, muttering a quiet apology in response.

"Don't you hate the hangover every time you do this?" Yae asks.

"I dunno… I've never been this drunk before," Ei slurs.

"I hope you never do again, not when you're going to have to go to class with a pounding headache."

Ei hums audible in thought, though Yae wonders how much thought goes on in that moment. "I think I'm… gonna skip… tomorrow," she says, getting quieter with every word.

Groaning, Yae prepares to launch the lecture of a lifetime about being a legitimate college student and treating college like a legitimate institution, but Ei's sudden sob brings her pause.

"... Ei?" Calming a wild animal with unpredictable actions.

The sob has no follow-up, and instead all she hears is a huge, unnecessarily long sigh. "I'm tired…"

Slightly confused and also winded from how quickly Ei jumps from mood to mood, Yae slows down and enunciates her words. "You should let the alcohol run its course for a little bit."

"... and the world is spinning," she continues, as if Yae had never spoken at all.

She finds that she much prefers the Ei who cannot cook over the drunk Ei.

"Ei, what’s going on right now?" Yae asks directly.

"I…" she responds slowly, warming up the words as she speaks them, "This call is actually happening at a good time. I wanted to, erm, talk with you."

"You can speak with me any time, but why now? While you're blasted beyond the moon?"

She hears Ei clear her throat. "Because I have heard that alcohol loosens up the tongue, so I’m talking to you after having some, so now I’m drunk and loosened up, so I might say dumb things."

With the way Ei rolls through all of those thoughts without seemingly breathing, Yae almost believes that she's being pranked, but the slight slurring evident in those words tells her otherwise. She slides the papers beneath her fingers against the desk, fidgeting slightly. "Did Makoto put you up to this?"

"What's this?"

"The alcohol and now the state in which you’re presenting yourself, you jarhead."

"Oh." She sounds embarrassed. "No, I—I went downstairs… by myself. This is all me being me."

Called it. "Okay, so did you just want to talk?"

Ei hums in agreement, sounding much more forlorn than she had at the beginning of the conversation. Or maybe it was just the drunkenness making her dead tired.

She still has time before she wants to call it a night—meaning she has time before she's planning on laying in bed and rewatching her favorite scenes from the latest episode of Hamavaran Hegemony. "Fine, then," Yae says, crossing her legs on her seat. "Tell me what's on your mind."

"Yeah…" Ei exhales, sounding like her final breath. 

Yae waits through the long moment where she hears nothing but Ei's slight breaths. Even completely slammed, it seems Ei is very in control of herself.

"You know, it's not bad at all. Being this, erm, drunk," she ponders, and Yae clicks her tongue.

"Afterwards, it's going to suck. And considering you can still walk, and you're comprehensible, you could be a lot more inebriated."

Ei chokes on her breath. "I-I'm mentally the same… I think." She sucks in an audibly ragged breath. "If I just sit and p-process, not moving, I don't—I'm not affected at all—"

Suddenly, she starts sobbing into the microphone again, and Yae furrows her eyebrows in confusion. She holds her breath when Ei sniffles wetly and coughs out one last sob before falling deathly silent.

Neither of them speak for a few heartbeats. Yae places her pen down.

"Maybe you can study, if you're so sure your brain is fully activated right now," she says, pushing the conversation further without addressing Ei's bouts of wailing.

"Gross," Ei spits. She laughs lightly, sounding relatively intact with her chuckles. "I like your voice."

If she were not genuinely focusing on Ei's words, Yae would have ignored the comment as the ramblings of a drunk girl. However, her body reacts by darkening her gaze against the wall and sending a tingle down her scalp, and she flushes in surprise.

Ei soldiers on without pausing at all. "I slept horribly yesterday… after you left. So I think I'm on, ummm, maybe two—three hours, plus last night, however much that was, for the entire weekend—"

She bursts into tears once more, muffling her cries into her palm, from what Yae can hear. The weeping rips into Ei's lungs, forcing out broken sobs firing off like gunshots. Although subdued, the crying comes out all at once, and Yae hears a decade of emotion spilling out.

Then, as quickly as it came, Ei gasps in a single breath and holds it for a moment of silence, before it is released calmly and quietly. As if she'd suddenly fallen asleep, and her breathing has deepened.

Yae swallows to gather courage and empathy. "Ei… will you tell me what's really on your mind?"

"Molasses." Ei giggles. "I'm in molasses."

Goddesses give her patience, too. "Please. Why are you crying, Ei?"

She doesn't receive a response for a little bit, and she doesn't hear any breathing on the other side, either. Perhaps Ei really doesn't want to explain her grievances, but rather called Yae in pursuit of a distraction.

That would be assuming Ei is actually as cognitively astute as she claims, where she is fully aware of why she is crying and deliberately chooses not to answer Yae's questions, instead acting as if she is speaking to a stuffed animal in order to avoid directly answering the question at hand. If she's so aware of the conversation, she really does have an incredibly resilient mind.

Considering the tittering coming from Ei's side, Yae highly doubts that.

She shifts the phone over to the other ear. "Don't pretend you weren't just crying your eyes out. Tell me what's up."

Ei stutters over her words, scrambling for her cognitive posture. "I-I don't know, Miko. I don't—" She interrupts herself with a laugh that turns into soft crying almost instantly.

"What do you not know, Ei?"

"I don't know why—why I'm crying…! I'm being completely truthful, and that is the truth! The truth…" Ei trails off wistfully.

Huffing, Yae returns to repeating specific elegant strokes on her paper, holding the pen delicately. "What is it that sends you into such emotion?"

"Nothing, really… maybe just talking to you."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

Humming, Ei fumbles with her phone, the crackling coming directly into Yae's ear. "Maybe just talking to you makes me… emotional, um, I think."

She writes this off as more ramblings of a drunk girl. 

"I wish you could be here with me right now," Ei whispers.

Yae pauses. "Is this, like, an emergency?" she asks cautiously.

"No," she assures, "just… miss you."

"We ate lunch together today," Yae reminds her, though a pleasant flutter in her stomach betrays her attempts at being apathetic.

"I know… but still."

"Ei, did something happen there? Are you mentally okay?"

"I'm… I'm fine."

"Hmm? You didn't answer my first question." Or either of them, for that matter.

Ei groans in discomfort. "Okay, they—they just got me to drink… a lot, so early in the, uh, the night," she goes on, "so I'm giving myself…" a ragged inhale, "some time."

She's still not fully drained of worry, so she marches forward with her detective action. "Is there something that you keep thinking about to make you cry?"

"No, it's just you—"

"So being on the phone with me makes you cry."

"Didn't I—" Ei breaks into hysterical giggles, and any traces that Yae may have had before about how potentially not slammed Ei is are thrown out the window. "Didn't I say that?" Ei retorts. “It’s your voice, probably.”

“I’m pleased to find out that sadness is spread courtesy of my speaking.”

Surprisingly patient, Ei helps herself to a deep breath. “You’ve got it all wrong,” she whispers, “I’m not sad at all.”

“You mean to tell me that those soul-breaking sobs coming from you are actually happy tears?” she replies sardonically, though her tone is light and she can’t help the relieved yet bewildered smile on her lips.

“What can I—” Ei chokes on her next words, “what can I say? I guess I’m an emotional drunk, hehe…”

Yae rolls her eyes to the heavens. Still, assuming Ei is telling the truth—and she doubts the other girl is sober enough to hide her feelings—Yae allows the question of whether or not Ei is grieving to be put to rest, despite not fully believing her. Perhaps Ei's mind is truly more resilient than Yae had given her credit for, and she's deliberately leaving out parts of the truth. She'll have to wonder about it later. 

“So why did you call me, then? Just because you wanted to talk?” she asks, wondering what the situation of her party is.

Ei sniffles. “Say that again?”

“Why did you call me, Ei?”

“... what?” she echoes in confusion. “You were the one that called me, Miko…”

A rush of prideful fire inflates Yae’s breath, and her face drops into a scowl. “You’re saying I called you first?”

She gets a low hum of casual manner in response. “Well, I picked up, I think…”

“Uh-uh. Wrong.” Yae is quick to swipe to the call details on her screen, and there in the text: incoming call . She wants to bark out a laugh from the insinuation that Yae would be the one to first call Ei, when in her eyes, they don’t know each other that well, they’ve never called on the phone before, Ei is currently at a party, and Yae had already promised herself that she’s going to take an easy night before she dives into the next week of classes. 

She wants to tell Ei that there is no way in hell that she, a prideful creature, would be the one to call Ei in such an idiotic situation, as if she’s that desperate to hear the voice of an attractive girl.

She doesn’t say any of that because as she stares at their call history, she realizes that they have actually called on the phone before, and it had been her that had pressed the call button at four in the morning, just yesterday morning, and she realizes that she’s completely wrong about herself.

She deflates as she starts to understand what it is about her feelings for Ei that makes her so confused. “Just… look at the call details on your phone, but it really doesn’t matter.”

Supposedly, Ei takes a look, because she again says, “Oh,” and sounds embarrassed again. “Whoops. Must’ve been an accident or something.”

Despite herself, she chuckles without any breath left in her lungs. Yae pushes a hand against her face. “I got butt-dialed by a drunk girl at a party.”

“Sorry. You should… go and continue what you were doing, then,” Ei says.

She’s going to stay up late emptying her head of its intrusive contents by watching Hamavaran Hegemony. “Yes, I should. And you should join the rest of your company and not drink anymore.”

“Hmm, okay. I’m hanging up, then.”

“Goodnight, Ei.”

“Goodnight.”

Yae pulls her phone away to end the call, and as soon as the screen lights up again, their call history pops up again.

She closes out of the phone app quickly before she can catch herself staring at the page detailing two calls, one outgoing and one incoming. She knows no one is in her apartment except for her, but she checks left and right before she whips the door to her refrigerator open and sticks her head into its coolness to calm the heat that had risen to her cheeks.

Monday does not treat Ei well. Yae can tell based on how strange the other girl acts during all of their admittedly few interactions.

She sends a text in the morning, asking how Ei feels. Surprisingly, she gets a response within a reasonable time.

Raiden Ei [Today at 07:58a] I feel like those pancakes I'd made over the weekend, if that properly answers your question.

You [Today at 07:58a] Wow, that's a terrifying and miserable experience

Raiden Ei [Today at 07:58a] Miserable, somewhat yes. However.

Raiden Ei [Today at 07:59a] I may look like a zombie on the outside, but I look a lot worse than I feel. Overall verdict: 3/10.

You [Today at 07:59a] That is not a very fair analogy for "somewhat miserable"

Ei does not, in fact, look like a zombie. A few hours later, Yae spots her walking down the winding paths cutting across the expanse of the mall, head angled as she appears lost in thought. She looks completely normal, albeit aloof, and her steps are smooth and elegant as usual. Seeing her causes some emotion to jump inside of Yae, and she unashamedly smiles wide and strolls down the path to meet her.

"Did you want to get lunch today?" she asks when they approach one another. She herself is in a great mood, having slept well and high on that unnamed ounce of excitement that stems from talking to this girl.

The girl in question, however, doesn't meet her gaze and barely slows down her pace. "Uh—I got… work to do." She checks her smartwatch distractedly. "Sorry."

Bewildered, Yae stops to watch the other girl continue on by, hearing her grumble about some foolish mistake someone made. She pushes off this distractedness as the work of a hangover.

The second time it happens, however, she concludes that Ei is avoiding her.

"Saiguu. Emergency," she wails into her phone, storming down the side of the street toward her apartment.

"What? What's happening?" Saiguu demands. "Are you safe right now? Where are you?"

"It's Ei."

"I'm going to head over right now. Where are you?" Saiguu repeats with heightened urgency, audibly shuffling around hastily.

"I don't know where she is, but she's avoiding me now. And she has been all day. Like she doesn't even know me."

The signal from the other side goes completely silent for a long moment, and Yae, confused, stops playing with the ends of her pink hair and pauses on the curb.

"Did… did you hear me?"

Saiguu spills her cackling and explodes into relieved laughter. The familiar brightness bleeding out of Yae's phone forces her mood to lighten up, and she huffs in slight irritation.

"This isn't a joke."

Her friend's voice trails in a high ohhh, and it takes a few more chuckles before Saiguu responds. "Yes, yes—so, Miko, dear," she says, all scheming, "what did Ei do to make you come to this conclusion?"

She continues walking toward the complex. "She rejected my lunch offer, firstly," Yae explains hotly, "then just now before I started walking back, she pretended that she didn't even see me when I was clearly waving at her, and she literally looked at me, then went on as if she never noticed me at all."

"Oh, y'all are so—" She wheezes out another laugh. "Miko, you should see me right now. I've got a cardigan hanging off of one arm and one flat on, and I'm halfway out the door, and this is your emergency."

"This is an emergency."

"Yae Miko, shut your flapper," Saiguu demands with mirth. "Ei is not avoiding you. Give her a call right now and ask if she would jump off a bridge at your command. I guarantee a yes and a 'how high?'" She clicks her tongue. "Now, I'm going to finish my dinner. Bye."

Click. The line goes flat.

Madly insulted at Saiguu's tone, Yae blocks her friend for the rest of her walk back to her complex, but she starts to feel bad as soon as she walks into her apartment and unblocks her quickly. Instead, she switches her target quickly.

"Raiden Ei," she starts as soon as Ei picks up the phone. She delivers a flat and serious tone to reflect her current mood.

"Hello—what? Yes?"

Yae opens her mouth to spill the question that would apparently persuade her that Ei is, in fact, not avoiding her. "If I asked you—"

She snaps her mouth shut, realizing how asinine that is.

The speed at which Yae shuts herself up apparently winds Ei. "If you… huh?"

Shaking her head, Yae decides that she will get concrete answers now, with Ei speaking to her. "How have you been today? Still hungover now?" she interrogates with a pump of friendliness.

"I—no, not anymore," Ei stutters. "Miko, I've been fine almost all day. This morning, I had a slight headache, but it was gone after a few hours because I took it nice and easy last night before I went to bed."

"In the morning. I invited you to have lunch with me… for lunch."

The sound of a whispered ah comes from Ei. "I'm sorry I couldn't join you."

“It’s whatever. I’m over it now,” Yae says flippantly. “I mean, I was definitely confused when you brushed me off like that, but if it’s all a big misunderstanding, I can understand it. And when you were definitely ignoring me just a little bit ago, maybe you actually didn’t see me. I was waving at you, hello? But it’s totally possible that you didn’t notice, even though you definitely did.”

“I—”

“I get it, though. It’s a Monday, and you were hungover all day. We don’t have any classes—”

“I wasn’t—”

“... together on Mondays, so two—well, one—interaction is still more than what’s to be expected, right? You’re lucky it’s not a Tuesday, otherwise I would be grilling you hard for ignoring me. We literally have a class together tomorrow, so I expect you to properly interact with me. But I suppose if you—”

Yae gasps in a breath.

“—completely miss me trying to talk with you at other times of the day, I can pass it off as your shenanigans, or whatever. Since it might be a normal thing for you to do. You know, ignoring me. Like, I’m stretching out a branch here, and you snip it right off! That could be normal. You bring your blow torch and burn off half my arm! And I wanted to have lunch with you!”

She exhales loudly, breathes for a few long seconds, swallows the rest of her words. Her bitterness diffuses out with her next exhale, and she drops into a chair in her kitchen to let her legs rest from pacing a hole into her carpet.

Ei finally dares to speak after she’s silent for a while. “Are… are you feeling better now?” she asks slowly, in a timid voice.

“Yeah,” Yae breathes, relieved, “yeah, I am.”

Still clearly confused, she clears her throat. Slightly taken aback. “I didn’t know that… you put so much emotional value on the chance that I may join you for lunch.”

A boulder of shame drops down her neck, forcing her to stiffen up and grit her teeth. “Y-you didn’t hear anything I said.”

"But I'm kind of glad to hear that I'm not the only one who wishes we shared more classes on the other days, or something."

"What?" Yae's not sure if she's understanding the meaning behind Ei's words, or if the other girl understands them either. "I didn't even say anything like that." 

She wouldn't dare admit that she wants to spend more time with Ei. That's the equivalent of accepting that she does in fact have the biggest loser crush on Ei, which she does not accept because that's horribly embarrassing to accept.

"Well, I'm sorry for, um, ignoring you today, still," Ei says. "I've gotta go, though. Our cousins are in town, so we're going to a family dinner."

"Oh." Yae blinks dumbly. "Bye, then."

"Bye. And… I'll see you tomorrow."

"Of course?"

"Are you and I good?"

"Yeah. We're good. Sorry."

"Mm."

She holds the phone to her ear for too long, waiting for Ei to continue saying strange things, but after too many seconds of awkwardly waiting, Yae pulls the phone away and looks down. It's the contacts page pulled up, meaning the call has already ended.

Yae puts this off as the third strange interaction of Ei today, but at least she can label all of these as simple eccentricities. Maybe it really is just an off-day for Ei after her hard partying last night. 

She approaches Ei in the lobby the next morning, before their class. The girl is busy tapping away on her phone while she sits on one of the benches lining the wall, seemingly in a furious debate over text, but her face is calm as usual.

“Ei,” Yae greets, plopping herself down next to her.

Looking up to meet Yae’s gaze for a brief second, Ei barely reacts. “Good morning,” she responds with an amiable tone. She resumes busily typing away.

It’s very casual of her to act this way, Yae thinks. Almost like they know each other well enough that words need not be spoken for a mutual understanding to fall between them. Almost like they’re friends.

She doesn’t mind any of this. Whatever is normal between friends in a case like theirs, Yae is accepting of it. She pulls out her own phone to scroll her library, perhaps find something new to read.

When she notices Ei turn her phone down onto her lap and turn her head to the light commotion of students walking in and out of the building for a brief moment of returning to reality, she randomly decides to reach over and snatch the phone.

Without even looking back at Yae, the purple-haired girl snaps at Yae and beckons with her fingers. “Give it back,” she demands flatly.

“My, my,” Yae drawls, looking at the lock screen. “Is that the hand of Raiden Ei holding five sticks of dango? I didn’t know she had such a sweet tooth.” Another notification pops up from the messaging app, and the phone buzzes quickly in her hand.

Ei plucks the phone right out of Yae’s fingers and delves back into her texting conversation.

She can’t help but point at all of the notifications lining the screen as it lights up again. “Okay, but you should clear all of those out.”

“No need. I know what’s important.” She shrugs.

“Literally just tap the clear all notifications button. Seeing that bugs me.”

“Don’t look, then.” And yet Ei swipes down to clear all of them, anyway. She twists to poke Yae’s shoulder with a small, fake smile. “Just for you.”

“Thank you.”

Ei grunts.

"If any of you took a look at your syllabus, you will see that your first quiz is coming up this Thursday."

The sound of someone's jaw dropping open causes Yae to turn her head toward Ei, who gapes openly at Dr. Yukatsura. A muscle twitches under her right eye, right where a beauty mark dots her fair skin. Ei had been trying to inconspicuously insert a wireless earbud into an ear hidden under her thick curtain of hair, but the fingers of one hand are frozen around one innocuous earbud.

"I figured I should tell you all now instead of the day of, so for those of you that have not yet reviewed any of the previous sessions… you have two days to do so," he continues, a sharp eye clearly directed at the students lined around the edges of the classroom.

A handful of whispers fill the room. As if expecting it, Dr. Yukatsura raises his mug to amused lips.

Yae giggles at Ei's shocked reaction. She knows about it, of course. Yae has been periodically studying this first unit over the weekend, but the content is very light. There will be no issue for her, hopefully. She doesn't yet know how this professor likes to arrange his quizzes, but this first one appears to be light enough that the stakes are low.

Ei, however, whips a panicked look toward Yae. Eyes wide and three fingers now fidgeting with an earbud in the open air, she mouths to Yae, I haven't studied!  

With a gentle smile, Yae reaches over and pushes the contraband-holding arm below the desk, out of sight. Easy quiz, she mouths back. She bends her palm down at the wrist, dumping an invisible object into a bin. You'll be fine.  

Imperceptibly, Ei shakes her head with fervor, shaking up her dark purple locks around her face. She panics further, whispering, "No, no, no," while pleading with her eyes at Yae. Do something.

Yae just dismisses the other girl with two taps to her phone and a final chuckle. Later.

Ei prevents her from getting up when the class gets dismissed.

"I need you," she hisses urgently, suddenly holding both sides of Yae's desk and bending into her space menacingly. Yae jumps and angles back, one knee leaping and crashing into the underside of the desk violently. "I don't know whatever the hell goes on in this class. I have no idea what's on the syllabus. I am so royally screwed."

Yae stares back, fixed, like a deer in the headlights. Her knee throbs from the pain of the impact.

"Consider paying attention in class, Ms. Raiden Ei. Take notes," the professor deadpans from beside the upright piano, not even looking at the pair.

"Help," Ei urges, ignoring the professor's admonishment. She gives the desk a small yet strong shake.

Yae gulps, feeling her heart pound, or maybe that's just her knee. She brings a hand down to soothe the offending bruise with forceful rubs. With her other hand, she pushes Ei out of her bubble, lest her panic show itself. "You're welcome to study with me. That's the best I can do for you," she says.

Ei nods with forced enthusiasm, which is strange coming from her. "Name your time and place." Her intense stare doesn't falter, despite Yae having wedged some semblance of physical distance between them.

"Uh…" Yae flatlines, before forcing awareness back into herself. She stretches her lips into a coy smile and leans her chin on the back of a hand. "My place, tonight?" she drawls. "Seven P.M., and I'll—"

"Deal." Ei slams a hand down on the desk with a loud smack and rushes out the door in one gust of wind. Her lingering scent of amakumo trails behind her long braid, whipping behind her as she disappears into the hallway.

Stunned, Yae blinks at the space that had just been occupied. She hadn't even packed her bag yet.

She immediately drops her smile and drags herself to her next class, feeling as if she had just missed Ei on her orbital ring and instead got sent flying in a completely different trajectory.

The text comes while Yae is reading a novel, and she's fully expecting it.

Raiden Ei [Today at 07:11p] I don't actually know where you live.

The text is just much, much later than she anticipates. Considering the multiple times they've spoken to each other today, the topic of their meet-up place should have come up, but it never did. Yae had assumed that perhaps she'd mentioned it at some point and somehow forgot, so Ei had already known, but she's not forgetful. Otherwise, the topic of their study session should have been explored further throughout their conversations, right?

And of course Ei is incredibly late and only after the designated time of meet-up does she decide to ask where said meet-up is happening.

You [Today at 07:11p] And here I thought you were magically going to show up at any minute

You [Today at 07:12p] But nooo you're taking your sweet time not knowing where I live

Raiden Ei [Today at 07:12p] Calm down. I'm already here at the building. Makoto told me where it is, at least.

You [Today at 07:12p] It's apartment 1311. Ask your better half for the complex address

You [Today at 07:12p] Fool.

In the time it takes for Ei to reach her door, Yae pulls open her laptop and scrolls to the relevant chapters of their sole online textbook for their music class. She’s certain that she could just make Ei read the two chapters and learn all the content required in an hour, but she supposes that impromptu study sessions like this are likely the reason Ei had shared her phone number in the first place.

Ei knocks on the door with two sharp raps, and for some reason, the soldier-esque fashion by which she does so makes Yae laugh a little. She goes to open the door while swallowing a giggle.

On the other side of the threshold, Ei presents herself with a very neutral expression. She has her hair down and loose around her shoulders, and the sight of such a relaxed appearance on such a stoic face forces a small little jump in Yae’s system.

“Come in,” she gestures wide into her apartment, a lingering smile still on her face. 

“Something funny?” Ei asks while wandering in, eyes darting around the area. Her gaze automatically gets glued to the art decorations lining the walls and the tall bookshelf behind the small couch.

Yae lets out the chuckle building up behind her teeth. “So you’re a Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 type of door knocker,” she muses quietly.

Ei shoots her a confused glance, as if asking what the significance of that is supposed to be.

Yae has no idea what the significance of Ei’s knocking pattern is supposed to reference. “I’m just getting into the mood of studying some music,” she explains offhandedly.

“That makes one of us.”

They settle into the couches, and Yae drops her notes onto the coffee table. It’s a little bit of a scribbled mess, but it is mostly minimal. She turns the notebook around so that it faces Ei, and the other girl glances at the multiple sporadic lists in her notes.

“Am I supposed to memorize all of this information like this?” Ei asks.

“It’s easy.”

The purple-haired girl sighs loudly and exaggeratedly, picking up the notebook. Her intense eyes flit across the page, quickly enough that Yae doubts she’s even reading anything at all.

“What do you know from the class at all? Have you paid any attention whatsoever? Did you read the chapters?” Yae fires off.

Ei puts on a thinking face. “I took piano lessons when I was a child.”

She groans and stares at the ceiling. Her open computer almost falls off of her lap. She’s just going to make Ei read the chapters and take notes.

“Here,” Yae says, dropping her notebook back into Ei’s hands after flipping to an empty sheet. “Read the first chapter and write down all of the characteristics of each composer.” 

Frowning, Ei turns to the previous sheet, where all of Yae’s notes are contained. “That sounds… incredibly boring. And redundant.”

This girl doesn’t even open up her expensive laptop. It just sits there, closed, on the couch next to her. “Are you here to study or not?”

“What are you going to do?”

Yae lifts her computer. “I can annotate my own textbook for a while, but honestly I don’t think I need to review for that long.”

“Erm,” she clears her throat. “I don’t have the online textbook on mine, so I’ll need to use your computer.”

“It’s literally on the class page.”

“I’ve never been. I don’t know how to access it.”

“Then let me show you.”

“I also don’t have WiFi.”

“I can give you the password here.”

“I don’t want to consume your bandwidth. Textbooks can be big.”

Yae stares at this stubbornly lazy girl, wondering how she has even made it this far into her college years.

“So,” Ei continues on, “since you’re also going to need your computer, we’re in a bit of a conundrum.”

“For archons’ sake, Ei! Do you actually want to pass that test or not?” she exclaims, tossing her computer right onto Ei’s lap. The screen scrolls down the open textbooks in a flash, the touch sensor somehow catching onto Yae’s fingers as she releases it. Pages and pages of the textbook fly across the screen. “Take my computer, then. You’re such a younger sister.”

“Wait—” Ei grabs ahold of the computer before it falls off, with how unceremoniously Yae had deposited it. “I don’t want to stop you from getting stuff done. We can just share the screen.”

Yae looks down at Ei’s fingers. The other girl has the audacity to pat the spot next to her on the couch. “What? Are we watching a movie now?” she ridicules with exasperation.

“No, but that’s something we could do later.”

“You’re going to study—no, learn first. Then, we can talk about a movie night.”

“What about a weekend movie night? Together, as a date, maybe with dinner?”

“You—wh—”

She stops, and the world comes to a standstill.

She gapes at Ei, who notably busies herself with furiously scrolling back up to the first chapters of the textbooks, not looking at Yae at all. Her eyes blink too fast, and her lips are pressed together too hard, and her face is tinted slightly darker than normal.

“E-excuse me?”

Ei brings her eyes up then snaps her gaze back down. “So…?” The phonetic end to the word trails off of her lips in an unanswered question. Her hand twitches.

Yae closes her mouth slowly, swallows, opens her mouth to speak, takes a few more seconds before the words come out. “You did not just ask me out right here,” she deadpans, though her voice is not fully concrete in confidence.

Ei’s throat bobs. Her cheeks flush redder. Her fingers fly up and down the touchscreen, scrolling mindlessly to who-knows-where on the textbook. 

“You did not,” she repeats. A mantra.

Yae slams herself down onto the coffee table, both palms flat down, and she angles herself closer to Ei. With all the emotion she can garner, she directs the most scathing, yet concerned, yet confused snarl she can shove together right at Ei’s cute face, and she squeezes her eyes shut a few times, as if her blinks have suddenly become a terribly taxing ordeal, as if she hadn’t heard Ei clearly.

Ei startles slightly, but she says nothing. Because her nonchalant question had been very clear, and neither of them misunderstood it.

“You will sit here,” she hisses venomously, “and not move from my apartment until I come back.” She licks her dry lips. “Do not break my computer. Do not step foot in my kitchen, unless you want water. Then, by all means. But you are not allowed to cook anything.”

Before Ei manages to get in any question, Yae rushes out the door in a flash.

In the near future, if someone were to ask any of the neighbors of Yae Miko, anyone that lives in the buildings near her own, if something of note had happened right outside of building 13 around the time the sun started setting, they would ponder briefly about the scene in which Yae Miko plops herself right on the curb and hyperventilates into the sleeve of her shirt for a long moment, then stares at the asphalt with a forlorn expression on her face, as she, numb, picks at the grass with her fingers, but would ultimately disregard that moment and answer with a confident denial.

She sweats a puddle into her clothes trying to answer all of the questions that keep circling back through her head, and she tells herself that the real reason she enters her apartment again is to drink water.

The offending subject now stands up, the notebook and a pen in her hands. “Miko?” 

Yae chugs down a glass of water before opening her mouth to speak. She doesn’t look at Ei, quite yet. “I’m going to take a quick shower. You continue your studying,” she says pleasantly, walking into her bedroom for a change of clothes.

“I-I barely just started. You weren’t out for that long. Where did you even go?”

She doesn’t answer, just closes the door to the bathroom and peels off her clothes.

Standing under the stream of water, her hair loose and thick, Yae simply lets the sweat run down her body. Her hair almost completely covers her face, and the water rolling down her nose and mouth has her spitting out whatever pools on her tongue every time she breathes out.

She used to think resorting to the sledgehammer drop that is the friendzone is a somewhat cruel answer, but this is assuming both parties of the inquirer and the inquiree are friends to begin with. If the question comes from someone less than a friend, then to shoot the target and land on the friendship tile would still be an increase in relationship status. In that case, it’s a merciful refusal.

Yae spits out some water.

If both parties are of mutual agreement that their relationship is already on the grounds of friendship, then to once again declare such a relegation is either a cruel reminder of the maximum potential of the relationship to the person asking, or a step backwards onto the stepping stone into the vulnerability that stems from friendship. Either way, the result is unpleasant.

Then, after that killing blow, both parties must tread forward with the knowledge that one person wishes for a deeper relationship but cannot have that, and must instead continue as friends.

Yae spits out more water.

However, the inquiree could also accept the proposition and enter a dating relationship, or simply land a refusal with utmost clarity. The terms by which the respondent accepts are likely based on the chance that the inquiree does foresee a pleasant dating relationship between the two parties, in which case answering with an affirmative would be to acknowledge that both parties accept the circumstances of dating each other.

She’s also aware that these are not the only situations and direct outputs to each circumstance, and there are far too many chaotic elements to properly pinpoint one answer to each question. In her case, she doesn’t see any answer at all, because all she can think about is—

Yae spits out a mouthful of water. “Ei, you moron. You gorgeous, silly, lovable moron,” she mutters. 

After she’s done, she runs the towel through her hair messily and drapes it over her torso, holding it up. Gingerly stepping out, Yae beelines for her bedroom. The colder air of the apartment swirls over her exposed skin, and she hastily throws on her clothes.

When she goes back into the bathroom to pick up her clothes, turn off the lights, and hesitate at the vanity, she feels Ei’s gaze tracing her steps. She doesn’t bother to reapply her make-up, because she knows for a fact that Ei is not supposed to be here, and because of that, the other girl does not get the privilege of Yae’s effort.

Yae returns to her seat on the small couch, peering over at Ei’s notes. There are actually written down a few neat lines of handwriting. The script is quite elegant and put together for someone like Ei.

She covers the teasing grin on her lips with one hand. “So you’re a numeric system type of note taker,” she muses.

Ei raises a brow, setting down the computer and the notebook on the table. “Are we just going to continue on…?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t even—” Ei looks away, “answer my question at all.”

“No, I didn’t,” Yae affirms. “Because you asked me out at the dumbest possible time, and so I won’t give you the satisfaction of any answer.”

“Would you rather I text you? I’m being serious.”

Yae’s heart flutters. “So am I,” she says as nonchalantly as possible. “Ask me properly, when we’re not bickering like an old couple, and I’ll answer you properly.”

Her dumb face lights up. “Properly?”

“Get to work studying.”

Ei looks like she’s scheming as she continues to skim over the textbook.

So she really shouldn’t be surprised when, the next morning, a singular Raiden with her flowing hair braided gets forcefully pushed out onto her feet on the path directly in front of Yae, as she’s about to enter the student union from the back door. Another head of purple and a pair of hands disappears back behind the trimmed layer of foliage decorating the landscaping in a flash.

Yae just stops and blinks at Ei, who reorients herself on the cement and giggles at herself when she meets Yae’s gaze. 

“Good—ah, morning,” she says eloquently to Yae. She clearly has her hands in the large belly pocket of her hoodie, and there’s a too-mirthful expression on her face.

Yae peers at the folds of said hoodie pocket. “Am I about to be assaulted?”

“Maybe,” Ei answers, walking steadily closer.

Yae counts in her head the ten biggest regrets of her life up to this final moment, but only manages to make it to one by the time Ei pulls out a small object and drops to one knee in front of Yae.

She almost leaps backwards to turn tail and disappear, but all her body manages to do is take one confused step backwards.

Completely unceremoniously, and Ei is in jeans and a hoodie, the girl is on one knee before Yae, and she holds up a small velvet box. There’s a goofy smile on her lips as she looks up to connect their gazes, sharp amethyst holding onto violet, and suddenly Yae cannot tell if she is actually thinking any proper thoughts at all and they are just completely indecipherable or if her mind has completely stopped working for the time being.

“What,” is all she manages to squeak out as she watches Ei lean up slightly to open the top half of the box, a thumb and middle finger delicately holding the material.

“Yae Miko,” Ei booms out, at least that’s what Yae thinks, since she swears she has never heard her name be spoken so clearly and directly before in her life.

She stomps a foot down, hands up—one holding a phone—to hover around, not sure if she should push the box back toward Ei or to actually turn around and disappear, so she just throws both of her hands up and violently whips her head from side to side. “Stop,” she demands, shaking. “What are you doing?!”

And Ei peels open the box, and Yae is blinded by the brightness—

“Do you want to go on a date?” says Ei, holding an open velvet box, kneeling before Yae.

“...”

Yae looks down at the contents. It’s a badly cut-out strip of paper, small enough that she has to reach down and pick it up to read it.

A screenshot of a cinema confirmation ticket, with any details under the date cropped from the cut. One singular ticket.

She looks back at Ei, whose face is slightly red, whether that be from the embarrassment of the situation or from the fact that she’s visibly trying her absolute hardest not to burst out laughing, Yae can’t tell.

“Is… is this a prank?” she asks in a high-pitched voice.

Ei releases a singular laugh. Something between the lines of a snicker and a quick exhale. “I thought the movie ticket would be funny, but I promise this is not a prank,” she says. “Go out with me, Miko.”

She’s shocked, really, that she can’t find any of the correct words to respond to this situation, when the answer should so clearly be a resounding yes! But all she can do is stare, blink, process, and after too long of a moment of silence, she feels a snicker rising up her throat, too.

“I’ve—” she gasps, “I’ve never felt so offended by something you’ve done, more than this moment right here, Raiden Ei.” A laugh bubbles up. “But of course my answer is I will, if you really mean it.”

And she lets the bubbling giggles escape as she brings a hand up to wipe a tear that spilled from likely the anxiety of the situation Ei had brought, and she laughs at the sky, and she pulls Ei up to her feet to squeeze an arm around her trim waist, and she only wheezes harder when Ei almost loses her balance and tumbles into Yae’s embrace.

She hears whooping from behind, and only after she lifts her head quickly does she see the phone camera that had been peeking out from the greenery and is actually connected to the entirety of Raiden Makoto in the flesh, who steps onto the path with a wide grin and a camera directed right at them.

“That was—” Yae forces a quick breath into her lungs, “ so stupid. Did you set this up, Makoto?” She points a long finger at the person in question.

“Ei asked me for help,” she explains brightly, putting the phone away. “She said she needed a ‘proper’ execution.”

The girl in the middle looks away with a toothy grin, seemingly barely holding onto any embarrassment anymore in lieu of relieved laughter.

Yae slaps the small paper on Ei’s shoulder, and it sticks on the clothing. “You’re so inane, seriously. Why couldn’t you just ask me out by yourself and not make a whole scene?”

“I thought it’d be funny!” she defends herself again.

“Okay, I admit it was funny. You had me for a moment.”

Makoto holds up the phone, a scarily similar toothy grin on her face. “I’m sending this to Saiguu. She’s going to flip at your reaction.”

“But who does that?” Yae throws her arms out and gestures to the ground on which Ei had been kneeling. Then, after thinking about her first reaction, she starts to burst into more laughter.

Makoto, after a few minutes of laughing, leaves them alone with a single comment of, “You two figure out the details. I’m going to class.”

With that, Yae turns to Ei and looks at the piece of paper still stuck to her shoulder. “You actually want to go to a movie theater with me?” she asks.

“It doesn’t matter to me,” she responds. “We could get dinner. I have a car.”

Yae’s still stuck on the thought of, I have a date with Raiden Ei .

She just shakes her head with a smile. “Let’s do both, then. I look forward to it.”

And when they part ways to go to their classes, Ei trots away looking like she’s just won the jackpot in the lottery, with an untamed smile on her lips and a little strip of paper hanging off of her shoulder. Yae keeps glancing over until she has to run to make it on time, and she’s sure she probably has the same grin on as well.

white-haired menace [Today at 08:35a]: your face LOLOLO how did you manage to look so scared, angry, and concerned at the same time

[Today at 08:35a] white-haired menace embedded an image.

You [Today at 08:36a]: Did you know about this whole thing???

white-haired menace [Today at 08:36a]: (:

“Yae Miko. Phone.”

“Yes, ma’am. Sorry.”

On the day of their quiz, she’s one of the first ones in the class to finish, and so she politely and quietly places the small packet onto the music stand and exits the silence of the room. Another boy in her class has also just finished, so she approaches him in the lobby to ask what’s up.

“How do you think you did?” Yae comes up and leans against the tall table at which he’s seated at. She lowers her voice in the stillness of the hallways, where the hustle and bustle is extinguished until the next block of classes ends.

He acknowledges her presence with a very brief two-finger wave and a quick glance. “Terrible. I failed.” The phone in his hand pings with a notification.

“With such confidence, too,” Yae comments. “That was definitely a lot harder than I’d expected, though.”

“So much of that was definitely not covered from his lectures, so I probably just screwed myself by not reading the chapters.”

She shakes her head. “A lot wasn’t from the textbook, either.”

“Oh, great,” he sighs. “I hope he curves the grades, at least.”

Slowly, more students exit the room, and a few also stop to complain about the ambiguity of the questions. Even Yae isn’t fully confident in her abilities to garner the knowledge required for these examinations, so she mostly hopes that she can be better prepared for the next one, now that she knows what to expect.

Ei eventually staggers out of the room, looking like the muscles on her face have failed and have left her sagging in her own bones.

“How was it?” Yae asks.

Uncharacteristically, Ei slumps further. “My funeral is next Tuesday at 9:25 in the morning, after we get our quizzes back.”

She smiles at the exaggerated reaction. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”

Ei straightens herself and reassumes her tranquil expression. “I’m joking,” she says. Her thumbs get shoved into the pockets of her jeans. “I think I did fine.”

“Really?” Yae leans in to spot the bluff on this lying girl’s face.

“These last two days have been filled with nothing but hard studying.”

She gets reminded of the scheming that the twins had done, and Ei is so clearly speaking nonsense.

She just pats her arm with a sympathetic, condescending simper. “I’ll say nice things at your funeral.”

Ei shrugs slightly, and her backpack jumps slightly with the movement. “We have some time before the next class starts. Do you want food?”

“I already ate,” Yae says, “but I’ll go with you.”

The smile she receives in response sends a flurry of raised hairs down the back of her neck.

“Also,” Ei continues, walking them down the hallway, “where do you want to go for dinner, tomorrow?”

Yae grabs an arm and dons a pleading smile. “You’re paying, right?”

A flicker of apprehension appears behind Ei’s eyes. “Yes.”

“Take me to Shigura’s, then.” Triumphantly, Yae taps Ei’s nose.

Dark eyebrows raise and disappear into low bangs. “Really? Okay.”

“What?” Yae retorts heatedly, releasing the arm. “What’s wrong with Shigura’s?”

“Nothing’s wrong with them. I enjoy their food, too,” Ei elaborates calmly. “I just thought you were going to make me really pay, but this is actually quite relieving.”

But Shigura’s is expensive, Yae notes. “Just stop talking.”

Ei can be truly charming if she wants to. She takes Yae out on a non-extravagant date night that's just as wonderful as Yae likes it to be. Dressed in a sweater that exudes elegance and self-assuredness to the outside world, Ei treats her in a way that explains a few things about her psyche.

Firstly, Yae learns that Ei is picky about the food presented to her. She only ever sees the girl eat her own prepared food. Apparently she doesn't like specific cuts of pork.

After she receives her own noodles and takes the first taste, she completely freezes, eyes stuck on the bowl before her.

"That bad?" Yae comments with a giggle. "I should have known your tastes are too high and mighty for such a place as Shigura's."

She finishes processing the flavor, albeit slowly and with a few sips from her glass. After clearing her throat, Ei pushes the food away from herself, into the middle of the table. "That's not my taste. I'll order something else."

"Mind if I try?"

Ei pushes the dish all the way to the other side, deferring her rights to this dish. She hasn't even touched her chopsticks yet.

Dipping her own renge spoon into the broth of Ei's ramen, Yae gently blows on the hot liquid, cognizant of the gaze fixed upon her. She takes a tentative sip, bracing herself. The salty flavor is familiar and pleasant to her taste buds.

"It's good. I like it," Yae concludes, finishing her spoonful. "What's wrong with it?"

Ei wrinkles her nose. "It tastes too much like western bacon, which I don't like. Besides, pork belly is gross anyway."

Well Yae is going to continue enjoying this, then. She pushes her own bowl of noodles over to Ei. "Try mine, then. It's tofu."

Ei does so—Yae does not think about the exact location in which the other renge spoon is placed and how Yae had already sipped from that side and therefore they are sharing an indirect kiss—and this time she does not have any complaints. "I've had this udon before, and it's always been a good option. I just didn't want to make the same order as you."

"Particular gal," Yae says. "We're trading, then. I like this ramen regardless."

Frowning, Ei protests. "But you ordered the udon that you liked."

"Eat it or buy another bowl." To prove a point, Yae swirls up a clump of noodles with her chopsticks and scarfs it down.

When the purple-haired girl transitions into eating the noodles, Yae gets distracted by Ei's fingers dexterously handling the chopsticks. She trips over her words.

Secondly, Yae learns that Ei can turn off her snark while on dates and instead show a little bit of vulnerability.

They're sitting in adjacent couch seats in the cinema, waiting for the show to start, and the menu features a sake that interests Yae.

"You should drink with me," she says after sending the order back to the staff. "I like that brand."

"I don't drink," Ei responds succinctly.

"I don't care that your tolerance is probably hilariously low. I want to see you drunk again, this time in person."

Ei shifts in her seat slightly. "You have never seen or heard of me being drunk."

"Oh?" She wonders if Ei somehow forgot. But the deliberate not looking at Yae has her realizing that Ei is actually embarrassed about it.

Well. Considering some of the things said.

"I have tissues on me, so we're prepared," she can't help but prod.

"For the movie, of course."

"And also for when we—" she coughs, " you— get disgustingly emotional and start crying happy tears."

Ei draws up close, and Yae's mouth snaps shut faster than she can blink. "Only because you're on my arm," she says smoothly.

"Right," she chokes, every hair on her body raised from the close presence of Raiden Ei leaning into her space, her arm looped around Yae's.

"As far as you're aware," those knee-weakening smooth lips word out—Yae's not sure if she's hearing anything except for her bloodstream in her ears, "I have never been drunk before, so we don't know what I'm like when it comes down to it."

She can't say she's surprised at Ei's response. Even on that call, she hadn't wanted to properly explain that she's an emotional drunk and that had been the extent of it, so Yae decides to push this topic to a future date in which there are more opportunities to properly tease her.

Thirdly, Yae learns, or rather solidifies her knowledge, that Ei is blunter than can be remembered, and it is always—

"So, can I call you my girlfriend?"

—jarring, when it shows itself so clearly.

Yae stops walking toward the car underneath the dim streetlights and makes Ei stop beside her as well, and only after they actually look at each other does she cross her arms and speak.

"Say that again," Yae commands, her heart beating a little bit too quickly, "but actually look at me while you ask."

Ei gazes deep into her eyes. Yae's soul is getting sucked out of her body with full consent. "Be my girlfriend."

The words hang in the air for a long moment. A weak gust of wind blows a lock of Ei's hair into her face, and it is extremely distracting. "How long has it been since we first met?"

"Uh…"

"Less than three weeks," she enunciates with full clarity.

The girl just shrugs. The audacity. "I like you."

She wants to demand rationality. She wants to spew numbers and data. She wants to say that Ei is moving way too fast.

But she mostly wants to live it out during her college years, and so she says, "Be my girlfriend, Raiden Ei," while jutting a thumb into her sternum. "That's my response."

The smile that splits Ei's lips is too wide to be natural, so she can't imagine what her own grin must look like, God forbid.

She spends all night back-and-forth texting Ei burrowed in her blankets, and that smile fails to disappear.

"Your quizzes are graded and online. There are some questions that a lot of people got wrong, so we'll go over those specific ones today."

Yae can't tear her eyes away from the grade listed on the quiz handed back to her. She sits rooted in her seat, blank, and all she sees is, in blue pen—

87/100.

And she slowly twists her neck to look at Ei's quiz on the adjacent desk, the same penmanship writing her grade at the top, and in blue pen, it reads—

99/100.

That poor oblivious girl busily reading the notes written on the side of the question she received partial credit for, not aware of the death glare being targeted right at her cranium.

Yae slaps Ei as hard as she could lightly. "You… barely studied!" she hisses.

Dark eyebrows raise in innocence. She glances down at Yae's written grade. "Hey, that's higher than the class average."

"You should have flunked this!"

Ei raises a hand to her chest, wounded. "I did say that I took piano lessons as a child, didn't I?"

"As a child."

"Since I was five, up through secondary school."

Yae narrows her eyes.

"I already know all of this stuff. I just need the credits."

“Betrayal!”

She returns her gaze to the first quiz grade of the semester, and although it’s acceptable, she can’t help but feel like she’s completely lost her way. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the niggling thought of this is a B, not an A tries to push its way forward, but Yae is still stuck on the fact that Raiden Ei , the girl who doesn’t pay attention in class, nearly aced the quiz.

And Yae is supposed to be the one without distractions.

She shifts a glance back over to Ei, angling her nose into the air. “I’m not going to tutor you anymore,” she concludes haughtily.

A wolfish grin comes upon pink lips, revealing the frustrating whiteness of the blessed Raiden genes. “More time for dates.”

Ei hides her mad grinning behind an elegant hand, the picture of politeness. Yae just rolls her eyes.

She may need to reconsider her options as a college student if this keeps up. Although, she supposes as she spots Ei quietly crossing her ankles, things could be worse.