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“Mmph!”
Hina stumbles backwards. She can feel it – she’s losing her balance all at once, and no matter how she tries to reset her feet, she’s going to fall – so she holds the box of donuts in her hands aloft and takes the loss. It hurts. Landing on her butt and with one leg twisted underneath her – not really the best way to fall. The best way to fall is to find a way to fall forward so she can put her hands out, so she can spread that balance out, but then she would have had to drop the donuts, and really the most important thing is the donuts. She even keeps the one half-eaten in her mouth! It does mean she bites her tongue and hurts her jaw, but! No donuts lost!
See – here’s the thing: this isn’t a normal situation for Aoi Asahina.
Well, mostly it’s not a normal thing. The donuts are definitely normal. It’s the first day of the week – Monday! – which is the worst day of the week, after having the whole weekend off – so she always brings in donuts. Always. It makes the day just a little bit better!
But the falling isn’t normal. The running into someone because she’s super late isn’t normal. The being super late isn’t normal.
It’s the whole new schedule thing.
See, her coach thought it would be better if Hina shifted a few things around, and Hina might be a fantastic swimmer – Olympic gold potential and everything! – but her family’s not well off enough for that to be the only thing she does with her time all the time, so she’d had to get a job, and her last job hadn’t been particularly accommodating of all the time she wanted to spend swimming – and less accommodating of all the matches and stuff she needed to do to prepare for Olympic try-outs, and—
Brand new job, same old Hina!
With a box of donuts.
Running late because she caught herself on what her friend Chiaki calls Default Mode, which is when she goes without really thinking about it and finds she’s where she’s supposed to be but doesn’t remember exactly how she got there, and this time, she’d been on Default Mode to her old job, only she was supposed to be going to the new job, and—
Finds herself on her butt with one leg twisted under her and the box of donuts held in the air like a treasure chest – because it is a treasure chest, and no one will ever be able to convince her that it isn’t – and a donut half-jammed into her mouth that she quickly eats around (even though she definitely bit her tongue; there’s a bit of a copper taste to these donuts that should not be there) so that she can say, “Sorry, sorry! I wasn’t looking where I was going!”
“Are you okay?”
Hina’s eyes widen, and she glances up, past the hand being offered to her, and to the musclebound woman in front of her.
Now, that was the thing about the new job. It was particularly accommodating to potential future Olympians, so there were all sorts of athletes of all kinds who worked here – and even a handful who’d been medalists in the past! So it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the woman that so much of news media had branded The Ogre standing in front of her. It shouldn’t! But it still is.
“You’re her,” Hina says, instead of answering the question.
Immediately, the other athlete’s face freezes, falls. “If you are referring to The Ogre, then—”
“Sakura Ogami!” Hina tries to scramble to her feet, except that the box of donuts is still in both of her hands, and it’s hard to prop herself up without either of them, and actually her leg kind of hurts when she gets it out from underneath her. “I’ve been wanting to— Um.”
“Would you like me to—” Sakura starts to say, gaze shifting to the box of donuts.
“Yes, please!” Hina hands the box of donuts over to her and slowly pushes herself up. Then immediately winces. She reaches down and rubs her ankle. “Yeah, that’s sprained. Dangit.” Then she glances up with a big grin and takes Sakura’s free hand in both of hers. “I wanted to meet you! Sorry for, um. Running into you.” She averts her gaze and blushes. “I’m normally not that clumsy.”
Sakura’s gaze drops to Hina’s ankle. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s not that bad—”
“There’s a nurse on site. I can take you to her, if that is what you want.” Sakura holds the box of donuts carefully in one hand. “Here,” she says, standing next to Hina. “Lean against me when your ankle hurts too much.”
“Oh! Uh. Okay!”
This is not the way Hina expected her first day to go.
But she can’t say she isn’t enjoying it.
Mostly.
(The sprained ankle’s a real pain in the—)