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“You saw the lineup, right?” Brains asks. “Obviously we’re going to this.”
“Obviously,” Derlyn says. “Except tickets are like a million neopoints.”
“Tickets are 300k.” Brains informs her, like maybe that was an honest rounding error and not a completely hyperbolic statement. “Do Trudy’s Surprise for, like, three months. And then you’re there.”
“Not counting travel costs.”
“Not counting travel costs. Four months of Trudy’s Surprise. Sell some feet pics. Isn’t Kreludor the best-ever greatest all-star champion yooyuball team to ever play yooyuball, ever in existence ever? Don’t they pay you guys?”
Derlyn sighs. “Yeah, we’re on our fifth year running with this shitty-ass Achyfi endorsement. I can barely afford to keep the gravity on.”
“Genuinely,” Brains says. “Play for any other team. Come to the Haunted Woods. Join me. The sun never shines, and my neighbor almost got mauled by a sentient tree yesterday. But you know what? They pay us. You could replace Crade. Fuck Crade.”
Brains makes some compelling points. But Derlyn fundamentally cannot follow the money. Team Kreludor is her baby. She built her band of misfits from nothing. “If I left Kreludor, I wouldn’t get to be a team captain anymore. And then how would I pick up babes?”
“You’re right. You’d look like such a loser. Wouldn’t be able to score even a single babe. So absolutely nothing would change, in that regard. But you’d be getting paid enough to go to the When Weewoo Young festival next year. C’mon. There’s literally going to be a Cobrall Starship reunion. C’mon.”
“Yeah, I’d kill a man to be there for the Cobrall Starship reunion-”
“-They’re gonna play all of ¡Viva La Cobrall!. Entire album. Start to finish-”
“-But I’m not spending 300k on a ticket.”
“Even though Fall Out Koi is headlining.”
“Even so.” Derlyn says. “It’s way out of my budget.”
“That’s such a bummer.” Brains says. But he lets it drop.
They chat for a while, and Derlyn hangs up first. She looks around her apartment. It’s a setup that, Mirsha once commented, nobody would ever wish on their worst enemy. But Derlyn likes it just fine. She has her comfy chair. Her foam roller for when she gets home after practice and her entire back starts locking up. Freezer full of omelet. Cabinet full of protein powder. Laminate counter-top that still has a little bit of an orange stain from the last time she dyed her fur and accidentally knocked over the applicator bottle.
Framed pictures on the windowsill. There’s a glossy photo with the Kreludor team back in Year 14, after the big first-place win, grinning like unbeatable underdogs. A Polaroid with Brains at a Halloween party. A photobooth picture strip with Mirsha, from two summers ago. Mirsha is smirking at something, and Derlyn is laughing with her entire face. Whatever it was must have been really funny, because they aren’t even changing up their poses between panels. It’s four consecutive squares of nonstop hilarity. In all her immortalized halcyon glee, Derlyn looks younger in the photobooth pictures than she does in the Year 14 group shot.
So, yeah. Her apartment is a livable space. And she’s plenty comfortable, as long as she doesn’t do ridiculous things like drop 300k on one-day festival tickets. It’s a little bit lonely, sometimes.
But the tickets wouldn’t have helped with that.
Derlyn is in the Zurroball practice tank. If you get really good at Zurroball, the skills are actually pretty transferable to yooyuball. It builds your stamina, and hones your reflexes. Derlyn makes the rest of her teammates practice Zurroball at least twice a week in the off-season. They all bitch about it nonstop. But then they come back for spring training and they can spike wall-rebound goals like nobody’s business. That’s why Derlyn’s the captain. She knows best, on things like this.
The Zurroball drops below the red line. Derlyn smacks it back up toward the ceiling again. There’s a certain type of zen calm that Zurroball can provide.
Derlyn’s phone buzzes from outside the practice tank. That’s Mirsha calling. So fuck Zurroball, actually.
“Derlyn!” Mirsha chirps. “Can I geek out about something to you, for a second?”
“You can geek out about something to me for an entire hour, if you want.” Derlyn says.
No response. Shit, Derlyn thinks. Too much. That was way too much.
Mirsha laughs. Just kidding. Everything is fine. “Seriously! I bet you already saw this, but I’m freaking out about the When Weewoo Young lineup for next year. And the full-album setlist thing is bananas. I’m obsessed.”
“Me too!” Derlyn assures her. “What album do you think Fall Out Koi is going to play? So Much For Staragus?”
“I dunno,” Mirsha says. “People online are saying they’ll probably do a mix of all their hits. But I think if they pick one it’ll be From Under the Money Tree. It’s got their most recognizable songs, and it plays into the whole nostalgia throwback theme.”
“If they’re going nostalgia throwback they better whole-ass it and do some songs off Take This To Your Grave Danger.”
“Why stop there? Crack open the time capsule and let’s hear some Evening Out With Your Neofriend. I want a deep-cut so obscure that the people onstage don’t even know the words.”
“That might not be too hard to achieve,” Derlyn figures. “This is Fall Out Koi we’re talking about. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen Pete successfully nail his line in a live performance of Our Lawyerbot Made Us Change the Name.”
“Maybe so,” Mirsha laughs again. But it’s less of a real laugh this time. More perfunctory. “Are you going to go?”
“To the festival?” Derlyn asks. Yeah. The festival. Duh, the festival. “Um… I mean, the tickets… It’s kinda pricey…”
“No, I get it. I’m probably not going either. It’d be kinda far away, to go to Tyrannia all by myself… and it’s not Ginia’s scene at all.”
Derlyn says something in response, but she’s not entirely sure what. She can hear words leaving her own mouth, but they don’t necessarily connect all the way back to the decision-making part of her brain. Sometimes this happens to her on the field. She’ll suddenly click into the zone, and let the muscle-memory puppeteer her through a completely instinct-driven play. Except in this case, the instincts are auto-piloting her into trying to flex on Mirsha’s girlfriend.
Brains is a zombie usul. When Derlyn first met Brains, most of his windpipe was in a sort of suspended decay. Like, he could strong-arm a yooyu halfway across the pitch, but he was distinctly missing fleshy chunks of his neck. People didn’t really want to tackle him, most of the time. He looked like he might spontaneously finish decomposing. Or maybe start biting. He didn’t really talk. He was always on the field, or he was in the gym, pumping iron and oozing ichor.
Derlyn remembers that year’s Altador Cup, when she met Brains. It’s not a year she’s especially proud of. Someone nominated her for biggest underachiever. Team Kreludor was one misplaced sock away from a locker room meltdown. She spent most of her break time following around Mirsha like some sort of well-trained spardel. Mirsha was nice about it, but eventually Derlyn realized it was all probably getting to be a bit much, and switched over to hanging out in the training gym for hours on end.
That’s where she met Brains. He was a good listener. And because he couldn’t talk, Derlyn figured he’d probably be a good confidant.
That second part ended up being patently untrue. Brains is the biggest gossip-hound that Derlyn has ever met. And now that he’s got a new trachea stitched in, he’s talking again. Sounds like a gravelly old radio DJ, and bullshits like a champion. Funny as hell, actually. But he’s also deeply perceptive. And even if he wasn’t, this whole thing about the music festival was basically guaranteed to make it back to him sooner rather than later.
He calls while Derlyn is laying in bed, doomscrolling on her phone. She’s lying on her back, holding the phone up above her face. She visualizes the situation as if she’s supine on a tiny life raft, lost adrift in the ocean, and the phone is the unforgiving specter of the moon, looming above her. Except really it’s nothing like that and she’s just being dramatic while half-absorbed in memory foam. The phone buzzes with the call notification. She almost drops it on her snout.
The professional athlete reflexes kick in. She catches the phone mid-fumble and accepts the call.
“Hey, what the hell?” Brains asks, which could refer to anything.
“Hi Brains,” She says. “I was just asleep, actually. But it’s cool. I forgive you. What’s up?”
“What happened to too expensive, huh?”
“Okay, but Mirsha actually found a really decent deal on tickets, so I didn’t end up paying the full-”
“Consider this: I’m going to kill you.”
Derlyn makes a loud groaning noise of exasperation into the phone. Brains is obligated to understand sentiments expressed through grunts and moans, because he’s a zombie. Derlyn elaborates further. “Okay, fine! Mirsha said that Ginia didn’t want to go with her. Mirsha was so disappointed.”
“Oh, and I bet she had the biggest saddest eyes, when she told you about it. Now I understand,” Brains deadpans with zero sympathy.
“I never get to hang out with just Mirsha, anymore,” Derlyn says. “I always end up third-wheeling with her and Ginia. And Ginia lowkey sucks.”
“Ginia is so sweet that she’s genuinely a little bit sickening to spend time with. You lowkey suck.”
“No, she seems sweet, but she’s wicked manipulative! Like, she’s their team coach. No one considers what that does to the power dynamic in a relationship.”
They go back and forth. Brains is generally unsympathetic. Ginia is a nepo baby. Shenkuu hasn’t had a top-three finish since she took over as head coach. But Brains doesn’t see it that way.
It’s not even that Derlyn even really hates Ginia. It’s just easier to act like she does. But in moments like this, she’s forced to experience blistering breakthrough moments of clarity.
When you’re young, you have crushes. Crushes on strangers, and your friends, and sometimes you really fall hard for your friend. And it’s something stupid that tips you off. The conscientiousness. She sends you a picture of the purple flowers you said were pretty, the last time you visited. Includes a little note saying she finally identified them. They’re Pebeanjays. Isn’t that cool? They’re indigenous to Neopia Central, but they’d probably grow alright on Kreludor, if you keep ‘em warm enough. She’ll send you some seeds. Then somewhere along the way while you’re waiting for the seeds to ship, you find yourself thinking that what you’ve got here must be special.
At least, that’s how it felt, to Derlyn.
And then, sure, Mirsha had some casual girlfriends. But, like, they were young. You don’t marry the first person you date. There was that aisha, who baked her own bread. The goth xweetok, with all the piercings. Derlyn wasn’t worried about them. They’d be around for a few months, then there’d be some sort of understated breakup. No harm, no foul. Mirsha is something of a serial monogamist. She’s upbeat enough that heartbreak rolls off her like water off a mallard, and she’s charming enough that the next girl is always clamoring for a chance.
They’re older now. They’re older, and now Mirsha wants something long term and reliable. Mirsha probably wants to settle down. Get married, play rec league gormball in the off-season. Have a favorite side of the bed, and make two cups of coffee in the morning.
So now Derlyn is facing the looming eventuality that she might’ve really actually missed her last chance with Mirsha, forever. That Mirsha might genuinely just go ahead and be happy with Ginia for the rest of her life.
Derlyn has to deal with that realization, and she has to deal with it at the same time she’s forced to confront her worst haircut ever.
“You brush your hair to the left?” Qlydae asks, looking over her shoulder in the mirror.
“Uh,” Derlyn says. “Not usually.”
“Hum,” he says. “You may want to start. Cover up that bit near the part?”
“I’m gonna be real with you,” Derlyn says, “The next time I need my bangs trimmed, I’m not coming back to you. I’m asking Motor to help.”
Mirsha used to cut Derlyn’s hair. It was an unmitigated disaster the first few times, because Mirsha has shiny smooth hair, while Derlyn’s mane is curly to start with, not to mention fried twice over with bleach and dye. But Mirsha learned. And now Qlydae is going to learn, because Mirsha’s post-haircut scalp scritches might prove lethal, in Derlyn’s emotionally compromised state.
Ginia has perfectly glossy sideswept bangs. But she gets her hair cut at the salon. She posted a selfie from the cosmetologist’s chair. It came up in Derlyn’s social media feed, recommended apropos of nothing. The algorithm thinks that Derlyn and Ginia should be friends.
Derlyn is going to give herself two or three more months of unreasonable unmitigated hatred toward Ginia. Then she’ll crunch her feelings into little pieces underneath her own hooves, and give up forever. Then she and Ginia can be friends, probably.
Derlyn is swiping through a dating app. She’s got Brains screen-shared in, so he can give unhelpful feedback and make snarky comments.
“Straight up,” Brains says, “If I was in unrequited love with someone who had an identical twin, you know what I’d do?”
Derlyn snorts. “I want you to think seriously about that suggestion, and then tell me honestly if you think that sort of behavior would be in any way healthy or healing.”
“You and Atsumi could be living off-grid in the woods… de-cluttering your lives…”
“Atsumi doesn’t even own a phone,” Derlyn says. “Also, I’m not a fucking sociopath, so I’m not going to treat Atsumi like some sort of second-choice clone.”
Brains snorts. “Okay. Don’t date Mirsha’s crunchy granola sister.”
Derlyn swipes left on a grundo wearing plaid. Left on another grundo pouting toward the camera. Left on a robot chia wearing sunglasses. Right on a grundo. It’s a match.
“What’re you going to message her?” Brains asks.
Derlyn clicks on the profile. “...Nothing. I didn’t read the bio before I swiped. She’s trying to buy foot pictures.”
Back to swiping. A grundo, standing in the Altador Cup bleachers, wearing a yooyuball jersey. The jersey is for the DC team. That’s a left swipe.
“You see the news on The Cap'n Threelegs Swashbuckling Academy Is…?”
“That they’re performing on a glass bottom boat tour, next year?”
“Yeah. Are we gonna go to that?” Brains asks.
Derlyn swipes again. “No. I mean, obviously I want to see About a Grarrl performed live in Year 26. But that’s, like, the month after When Weewoo Young.”
“What if I get Mirsha to go?” Brains asks.
“Your sarcasm is not appreciated. Nor is it topical, because Mirsha would never agree to go on a boat, anyways.” Media coverage on the whole Cyodrake’s Gaze debacle really hit Mirsha hard, at an impressionable age.
That’s information that Derlyn could actually stand to forget. Who needs to know Mirsha’s childhood fears? Replace that mental nugget with something more useful. The name of the new left forward on the MI team. Potted plant watering schedules. Corrective calculations for the low-gravity practice chamber. Song lyrics.
One of Derlyn’s matches sends her a message. She clicks to check. It’s the foot pics grundo.
Derlyn reaches the statute of limitations on wallowing in her own feelings.
She realizes it, somewhere in the middle of streaming Reptilliors on a Plane. She’s slouched there, watching hapless airline passengers get mauled by venomous petpets. She’s thinking about texting Mirsha, who loves bad movies. She gets as far as mentally workshopping the text. Then she gets thinking about how whenever she watches a movie with Mirsha, they have to have the subtitles on because Mirsha talks through the whole thing. And that’s fun for shitty movies, but it’s not great for anything with an even slightly nuanced plot. Frankly, that’s probably why Derlyn always puts on garbage when they want to stream something together.
That makes Derlyn think, maybe Mirsha has some other negative traits. Traits Derlyn has been overlooking, through her rose-colored glasses. And that leads to texting Brains, and then calling Brains, when he doesn’t immediately answer.
“Heyo,” Brains says.
“Hey, do you think Mirsha is kind of self-centered?” Derlyn asks.
“Uh,” Brains pauses. “A little bit. Not to the extent that I’d call someone up to complain about it.”
“But she is, right?”
“Sure,” Brains says. “So are you. So am I. If we weren’t all a little egotistical, I doubt we’d have made it as professional athletes.”
“Yooyuball is a team sport.”
“Okay, Miss I’m The Captain.”
“Whatever. Look, the point is, I think I’m finally over Mirsha. Like, I’m still going to go to When Weewoo Young with her, because I already bought a ticket. But not in a hopeless lovesick warf way. Just in a friend way. Because I just had a breakthrough. Mirsha is flawed, just like the rest of us. She’s sort of self-centered. And she’s impatient. And she talks really loud when she’s drunk. She’s just another imperfect gnorbu, making her way through the world. And if she’s happy with Ginia, I don’t need to hold a torch forever. Because I’ll find someone else who measures up.”
“Sure,” Brains says. “That sounds like a healthy attitude to have. Do you hear screaming?”
“That’s the movie,” Derlyn says. “Don’t worry about it. Yeah, today is Mirsha and Ginia’s anniversary. And I can genuinely just be happy for them, because I don’t have to feel that oppressive competitive antagonism anymore.”
“Really?” Brains asks.
“Yeah,” Derlyn repeats. “It’s Reptilliors on a Plane. There’s way more screaming in this than I remember.”
“Obviously that’s not what I was asking about. It’s Mirsha and Ginia’s anniversary?”
“Mhmm,” Derlyn remembers the detail, but she doesn’t feel any particular way about it. She’s just blissfully indifferent. “Two years. They went hiking on their first date.”
“Neither of them posted about it,” Brains says.
“You probably just didn’t see it.”
“No, I would’ve seen it. I’m checking both their pages right now.” A pause. “Nothing from either of them. Last post from Mirsha was a week ago.”
“They’re private.” Derlyn says. “Did they post about it last year?”
“Not that you care, right?”
“Shut up. Did they?”
Several excruciating minutes of backscrolling later, Brains has found zero past anniversary posts from Mirsha. There is a post on Ginia’s page, dated exactly one year ago today.
“It’s the two of them at some sort of fancy restaurant? A banquet hall, maybe?” Brains says. “I don’t know. Neither of them are dressed up- shit!”
“What?” Derlyn asks. “Oh fuck, you didn’t like it, did you? I’m going to fling myself out the airlock.”
“Chill, no,” Brains tells her. “I just lost the post. I clicked on it and it must’ve scrolled… or.… huh. That’s interesting. It’s gone now. I think she just deleted it. Or made it private, I guess. But it’s not showing up anymore.”
One time Derlyn thought she was drinking regular Krawkade, and then after she’d slammed like two bottles of the stuff, she found out it was actually the energy infusion type. Her paws were jittery for the rest of the day. She couldn’t keep her vision focused on any one particular thing. When she tried to go to bed to sleep it off, she ended up tossing and turning for hours, until her parasympathetic nervous system finally kicked in and she ended up sleeping for thirteen consecutive hours.
This is like that, except instead of a highly caffeinated sports drink, Derlyn’s bloodstream is being infused with the possibility of a Mirsha-and-Ginia breakup. She’s not happy. She’s not happy! She has to hang up on Brains, because he keeps insinuating how happy she must be . Which she isn’t. Because they probably didn’t even break up, in which case there’s nothing to be happy about. And if they did break up, there’s especially nothing to be happy about. Because Derlyn would be saddened for her best friend.
She’s compulsively refreshing all of Mirsha’s social media pages, just in case anything updates. There’s nothing with Ginia, anymore. Mirsha definitely used to have pictures with Ginia. One time Mirsha posted a selfie with Ginia, and then the Neoboards blew up because you could see the Shenkuu team strategy chalkboard in the background. And then Mirsha re-posted the picture with the chalkboard blurred out, and Larcy commented with the rolling-eyes emoji, because he has a really dry, sarcastic sense of humor. Or so Mirsha says. And then everyone thought Mirsha had beef with Larcy for that whole season.
After all of that pandemonium, Mirsha has now deleted the blurred-out chalkboard selfie. People were selling T-shirts to commemorate the moment. Wild. There’s still plenty of pictures of Mirsha with Derlyn. Just… you know, an unrelated observation.
Derlyn’s phone buzzes with the Mirsha ringtone. She picks it up and acts casual.
“Hi Derlyn,” Mirsha starts. It’s kind of hard to get a read on her tone of voice. Like, maybe it’s slightly sadder than usual? There isn’t the usual upward inflection.
“Hi Mirsha,” Derlyn says. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Mirsha says. “Why would I not be fine?”
Damning thing to ask.
“Um,” Derlyn says. “We’re friends. On music streaming. And also, like, in real life, obviously. But on streaming, too. I can see the songs you’re playing. You’ve been listening to a lot of Faellie a Deux today.”
Kind of a lie by omission, but also wildly true.
“Of course I’m streaming it. We just passed the fifteenth release anniversary,” Mirsha says. But her voice sort of breaks on the word anniversary. Mirsha coughs. “Oh boy. Yikes.” She coughs again, and kind of half-laughs like she’s maybe covering up some other noise. “It’s… I broke up with Ginia.”
Derlyn says nothing.
“Yeah, it wasn’t any big thing. But our anniversary was today. And things were… it was all good, but it wasn’t like, oh, this is for forever. I look forward, I don’t know, ten years, and I see the way I imagine my life going. And my teammates are there. My family is all there. You’re there. But Ginia isn’t. Does that make sense?”
“That makes sense.”
“But she should be! Right? She’s my team coach. Why am I a fucking idiot? Why did I date my fucking team coach. Why did I dump my team coach? On our anniversary! I’m gonna be running sprints at every practice for the rest of my life.”
“Hey,” Derlyn says. “You’re a romantic. It’s what you do.”
“I sure hope not,” Mirsha says.
“Well… not the breakup part. But you can’t prolong something that you know won’t work.” Unless you’re Derlyn, in which case, prolonging things that won’t work is the funnest pastime in the world. Prolonging for forever and ever.
“Where does romanticism ever get me?” Mirsha asks. “I’m exactly back where I started. Like, I’m not even sure I learned any lessons. I just fucked around and wasted everyone’s time for two years. I shouldn’t date anyone ever again.”
“Maybe that’s the lesson?”
“I hate that lesson.”
Derlyn cringes at herself. “Wait, let me try that again. Not never date anyone ever again. But just… maybe to take some time off. Date yourself.”
Mirsha sniffs. Then she half-laughs again. More like a three-quarters laugh, this time. She’s building back to full humor. “I can do that. For like a month.”
“Could you do it for a year?”
“How about ten months?” Mirsha says.
“Big plans for next…” Derlyn counts. “October? Gotta be ready to mingle at When Weewoo Young?”
“Absolutely,” Mirsha claims. “You know me so well.”