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Akazawa Izumi paced around her room. She was trying to figure out the words she wanted to use when she spoke to Misaki Mei, and unfortunately, she was running short on time. School was going to start soon, and she’d have to leave before too long.
Sighing, Izumi turned back to the letter on her desk. It sat in the middle, a clear space around it despite the rest of the desk being cluttered with books, notebooks and writing supplies. The chair in front of it was spun around to face away. She collapsed into it.
Izumi was in what could charitably be described as a predicament. Today, she was starting high school in North Yomiyama, in Class 1-2. Also in Class 1-2 was Mei, who alongside Izumi, was one of the few survivors of North Yomiyama Middle School Class 3-3 the previous year. The unfortunate part about this was that Izumi herself had tried to kill Mei under the false belief that it would stop the calamity from striking anymore. She felt like such an idiot for it, and the worst part was, she hadn’t even apologized.
What could she even say? Hey, Mei, I’m sorry I tried to murder you, no hard feelings? Like that would ever work. It’d be stupid to try to explain why she did it, of course. It didn’t matter if her reasoning was, at least to her at the time, airtight. She had tried to kill Mei. She had been so full of anger that everything was going so wrong, and she well and truly believed that it would stop the calamity for some reason. Really, she couldn’t even remember why.
She looked at the clock on her nightstand. 7:30 a.m. She had to go. She groaned, stood up, grabbed her bag, and walked out of the apartment she lived in by herself. Her family owned the complex, and it was a small one in the corner, so she got to stay there for free. She didn’t mind, it wasn’t lonely, and it was a little closer to the school than her parents’ house.
The walk to school was uneventful, and Izumi found her locker easily enough, so she had a bit of extra time before her first class started. She decided to spend that time exploring the school a little, familiarizing herself with the layout. The school was three stories tall, and had roof access. The door was propped open, and Izumi’s breath hitched as she stepped through.
Standing at the edge of the roof, looking through the tall fence, was Misaki Mei .
Mei stood by herself, overlooking the back of the school. Her dark hair covered her eyesight enough that she couldn’t see Izumi standing in the doorway, looking at her. She had certainly heard the door open though, and she spoke only loud enough for the person standing there to make her words out.
“If you’re here to tell me to go to class, I’ll be there shortly,” she said in a curt, near-monotone voice. She turned to see Izumi and reacted in brief surprise. Surely she had known that they’d be in the same class, but to see Izumi on the roof with her wasn’t something the girl expected.
Izumi felt her heart flutter as Mei broke into a soft smile. She was wearing an eye patch, though it didn’t surprise Izumi. Mei had worn an eye patch for as long as Izumi had known her . What did surprise her was the warmth in her cheeks. Mei was pretty, Izumi had always known that, but had she always been this pretty?
“Misaki-” Izumi paused. What honorific should she use? Surely they weren’t close enough for the -chan honorific, but would -san be too formal? She also had no idea what to say. She still had no apology prepared.
“ Akazawa-san ,” Mei greeted, bowing lightly. “I didn’t expect to see you up here.”
-san it was.
“Apologies, Misaki-san, I was exploring the school before class started,” Izumi bowed in return. Internally, she screamed at herself to say something, anything, to apologize.
“Hmm… Okay, Ak-a-za-wa-san,” Mei hummed, enunciating every syllable. “I’ll see you in class then, soon, won’t I?”
“Uh, yes, Misaki-san, I suppose you will,” Izumi replied nervously. Sweat began to bead around her face.
This was useless. She couldn’t apologize today. She still had no idea how. She stepped back from the doorway before she could embarrass herself any further. She still needed to think about this, to try to come up with something decent as a way to apologize. Without so much as another word, she turned and took leave of Mei’s presence.
Roughly three weeks into the first month of her first year in high school, Misaki Mei was once again approached by Akazawa Izumi. They were in the same class, but Izumi had seemed to avoid Mei like the plague. It truly frustrated Mei.
She knew why Izumi was behaving like this, of course. It didn’t take a genius to tell how guilty Izumi felt about the hostility the previous year. But if she were to be honest, Mei didn’t blame Izumi at all. She understood why Izumi had acted the way she did, and it wasn’t out of any true malice or hatred. She understood that Izumi was hurt, and she was angry that her efforts to stop the calamity had seemed to be in vain.
And sure, maybe Izumi had tried to kill her, but that was water under the bridge as far as Mei was concerned.
On the other hand, if Mei was anything, she was distant. It wasn’t that she disliked Izumi, she just rarely reached out to anyone. Perhaps that was ironic, given that Mei was friends with Izumi’s cousin, Hiratsuka Sou, who was one of approximately two people she found herself ever being the one to initiate contact with, but that was just who Mei was.
She had been sitting alone in the library of the old school building, working on a sketch of some angelic figure—no one character in particular, just an original design Mei had come up with on the spot—when Izumi approached her.
“Misaki-san,” Izumi had greeted her. The words were accompanied by a polite bow. “I wanted to ask if you would maybe like to… How do I say this…”
Izumi struggled to find the words even still. Really, she hadn’t figured out her apology yet, but she knew she would soon enough. She had to. She just needed to give herself a deadline.
“Would you like to come over to my place soon? For, uh…” She hesitated again. Could she give a good reason? There weren’t any notable exams to study for soon. What would a good reason be? She thought for a moment, then blurted out the first reasonable excuse she could think of. “I’ve been practicing piano and I want an audience for feedback.”
Mei’s lips curled into a soft smile. She’d finally asked. Closing her one functional eye, Mei nodded softly.
“I’d be happy to,” she replied curtly. Once she was done speaking, her face returned to its usual blank expression.
“Thank you! Uh, I wrote my address down here! And my phone number, if you want to call before coming over!” Izumi explained rapidly, handing Mei a slip of paper.
“I’ll be there some time this week,” Mei nodded, taking the paper and slipping it into the pocket of her blazer.
“I also had something else I wanted to say, but… Uh… I don’t know how to say it, exactly,” Izumi admitted, then immediately cursed herself internally. She had just recognized that she still had no idea how to apologize, why was she bringing it up now?
This gave Mei some pause. Izumi not knowing how to say something? The only thing Mei could think of in the moment was that it was a love confession, but for some reason, she found that hard to believe. Sure, Izumi hadn’t hated her, but as far as she could tell, that was entirely due to her friendship with Sou. Izumi had been clear that she had found Mei’s aloofness, her cold and detached personality, to be creepy. Had something changed?
“What might that be, Akazawa-san?” Mei inquired.
There was no avoiding it now. No matter how much she may want to, Izumi was incapable of rewinding time. Since she’d already said something, she supposed she had to follow through now.
“I wanted to, um… to apologize, Misaki-san,” she stated quietly. She shifted her weight between her feet, glancing down at the floor, then up to Mei, then back down anxiously. Why was she so anxious? “I… Last year, I…”
“Oh, it’s okay,” Mei replied indifferently. She turned back to her sketch, but Izumi’s voice pulled her back once again.
“Okay? How- In what world would it ever be okay?” Izumi was dumbfounded. She expected anger, sadness, anything like that, but for Mei to be so indifferent about it, so dismissive of the horrible things Izumi did to her, that wasn’t something Izumi prepared for at all.
Mei should hate her. She had tried to kill Mei! How could she just say it was okay and then go back to sketching like nothing was wrong?
“Nothing can change it now, so why bother worrying about it?” Mei answered nonchalantly. “I’m still here, you’re still here, the calamity ended, so there really isn’t an issue, right?”
“Isn’t an issue?” Izumi repeated, voice full of and dripping with absolute incredulity. “No, there is an issue, a very big issue! I… I was cruel to you, I tried to kill you! I nearly did kill you!”
“And yet, here we are, alive and well. There’s no point in stressing over the past now,” Mei offered. She frowned slightly, noticing that Izumi didn’t seem particularly pleased by this answer. She gawked for a moment before speaking again.
“I… I could understand forgiveness or hatred or- or anything but shrugging it off! I- How could this not-?” Izumi found herself at a loss for words again. This wasn’t right. She needed to do something else, something more.
“It’s really not a big deal, I promise,” Mei insisted, again shrugging the previous year’s events off her back. Her classmate still seemed unsatisfied with this response. Just what did Izumi want from her here?
An answer wouldn’t come immediately, though. Instead of saying anything more, Izumi took her leave. With her typical detached demeanor, Mei watched as Izumi scampered off, leaving her sitting alone again. After a beat of silence, she shrugged, and once again returned to her sketch.
“You’re her friend, though, Sou. If anyone would know what she’d like, it’d be you, right?” Akazawa Izumi paced around her small apartment as she spoke to her cousin. Her phone, a cordless landline, was gripped tightly in her right hand as walked.
Izumi’s cousin, Hiratsuka Sou, was friends with Misaki Mei for a decent enough amount of time now. Following the disastrous apology and the subsequent piano recital—Mei had spoken nothing but praise for Izumi’s musical ability—Izumi confided in him about just how to approach her situation regarding Mei.
“You’re asking about what kind of materialistic gifts she might like, Izumi. Mei isn’t a materialistic person. You’re much better off just spending time with her and talking to her,” Sou replied, his voice slightly distorted and hazy over the phone. “Besides, you also could have asked Sakaibara, he’s also friends with her.”
“But this is different. I can’t trust him with the exact specifics of this, Sou! You know that!”
“Right, your crush on Mei,” Sou poked, causing Izumi to grumble. She wasn’t open to anyone other than Sou about her attraction, and the reason she was honest about it with him is because he had already came out to her as being gay too. Unfortunately, she didn’t anticipate him teasing her about any crushes she may have as a result.
“You don’t have to say it so bluntly!” Izumi sighed and collapsed onto the small couch she had in the corner of her apartment. “Besides, it’s not just that I like her, it’s that I tried to kill her last year and she doesn’t even seem remotely fazed by it! I can’t truly apologize to her if she doesn’t even understand how wrong what I did was!”
“Have you considered that shedoes understand and just genuinely doesn’t blame you?” Sou offered. “She’s not someone who gets hung up on that kind of thing, for better or for worse.”
That couldn’t be it. Izumi knew it couldn’t. Her eyes darted to a vase of roses on the tiny dining table sitting across the room from her. The red reminded her of Mei, of her eye that still worked. How troublesome.
It had been roughly two and a half weeks since Mei’s first visit to Izumi’s apartment, and in what Izumi could only describe as an unimaginable shock, Mei had asked if she could come again.
Her thoughts were a jumbled mess as she thought about Mei. Was it possible that she really didn’t feel anything about it? It seemed like such an underreaction given what Izumi had done… but wouldn’t it be better for Izumi if Mei just genuinely didn’t care about that?
“I don’t understand why she-” Izumi began to speak, but she was interrupted by her bell ringing. Mei was there already. “She’s here, I have to go.”
“Izumi, it will be fine, I promise. Just spend some time with her, talk to her, it will be okay,” Sou insisted. “Call me when you’re done, tell me how it goes, okay?”
“Alright, I will,” Izumi nodded. The two bid their goodbyes, and Izumi hung up and put her phone back in its place. She took a deep breath, then rushed to let Mei inside.
Mei had found herself inside Izumi’s apartment again shortly after. She immediately took note of the roses, which hadn’t been there before. The color reminded her of Izumi’s hair.
“So, uh, what… what brings you here today?” Izumi asked, fidgeting with her fingers.
“I was thinking back to when you invited me here before. You mentioned having something you wanted to say but didn’t know how, and I wasn’t entirely sure if I had the right idea about what that might be,” Mei explained. She invited herself to sit down on the couch, and Izumi joined her. “I ended up talking to Sou about it, and now I feel far more confident in my initial assessment.”
That bastard, Izumi thought. Had he already told Mei about her crush? Now, she was certain he had.
This gave Izumi doubt again. Was this all some way to get back at her? Mei wasn’t that kind of person, was she? She wouldn’t use something like that against Izumi, right?
No, Izumi decided, she wouldn’t. Mei may have been aloof and distant, but she wasn’t cruel. Not like Izumi had been to her. Even if she believed she would deserved it. If anything, Mei was kind. Far kinder than Izumi probably deserved.
Maybe Sou was right. Maybe she should just go for it.
“Would you like to go out with me?” Mei asked abruptly, jolting Izumi from her thoughts.
…
…
…
What?
“Go out with you?”
“As girlfriends. I like you, I am almost entirely certain you like me, so…” Mei trailed off for a moment, then wrapped her arms gently around Izumi. “Honestly, ‘like’ may not be enough to truly describe it, but I don’t want to scare you off by saying ‘I love you’ too early.”
“No!” Izumi replied far quicker than she would have liked. “I mean, no, you, uh… You don’t have to worry about scaring me off, I mean!”
Izumi’s heart was beating out of her chest. There was no question, Mei did reciprocate her feelings. She couldn’t help but smile and wrap her arms around Mei in return.
“In that case, Izumi, I love you, and I want to go out with you,” Mei reiterated.
“Well, um… I… I think I’d like that, if you’d have me.” Izumi was blushing now. She could feel her cheeks burning.
Misaki Mei.
Her girlfriend.
It sounded absolutely wonderful.
“Are you going to say it back?” Mei asked. She looked up, her eye peering into Izumi’s eyes. There was a warmth in her cheeks, but it was nothing compared to the blush she saw on Izumi, especially now.
“Oh, uh, of course!”
Izumi stammered. She took a deep breath, and let the words flow out freely, with far more ease than anything she’d ever said to Mei before.
“I love you too, Mei.”