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The middle of the night was, of course, the best time to make potions—they don’t call 3AM the witching hour for nothing—but seemingly Sucy Manbavaran was the only one who best understood that out of all the girls in Luna Nova Witches Academy. She would always stay up mixing various ingredients into her desktop cauldron since her dorm mates Akko and Lotte were deep sleepers. Even the bubbling of the brew or an eruption of smoke couldn’t interrupt their slumber, so Sucy was free to get as maniacal with her delight in potionry as she pleased, and even better, she could try her creations on her favorite test subject, Akko Kagari.
With her freshly prepared vial of a sickly green liquid in hand, Sucy crept up to the snoring girl’s bed, the bottom bunk below Lotte’s, which made her the easier target anyway. Usually Akko slept on her back, but at that moment she lied on her side with drool trickling onto her pillow. This sleep position would never work out for Sucy to get Akko to drink the potion. She nudged her shoulder with the bottom of the vial, and the sleeping girl obeyed, rolling onto her back again while grumbling something unintelligible.
Sucy looked down at her for a moment. She looked so peaceful. Gently, Sucy’s free hand brushed aside a dark lock of slobbered-on hair stuck by her parted lips, fingers just grazing Akko’s cheek. The contact was minimal yet it still made a warmth rise up her face. Such an out of place reaction, Sucy couldn’t help but scoff at herself. Staying up late multiple nights straight was causing some kind of delirium to kick in.
The first light of dawn was already streaming through the window; she had been working on this potion for a while so she had to see the effects before going to sleep. Sucy brought the rim of the vial to those delicate lips and tipped the contents onto her tongue.
Akko, still asleep, swallowed the substance as her nose scrunched up at the taste. “Urgh… who’s the chef in this place?” she mumbled as she tossed back onto her side. Her soft snores resumed as if nothing happened, but her skin began to glow a dull light, not bright enough to fully illuminate the dark room but maybe the next attempt would work better.
Now, however, was the time she caught her much needed two or three hours of sleep, and after cleaning her work station, she went to bed to do just that. While it was a short rest she had, she had to appreciate any number of hours of sleep she could get after working long nights on her own projects in order to keep up in class and keep up with her roommates—roommates who woke up well before her and whose conversation started to rouse Sucy from her slumber.
“Akko, you’re glowing!”
“Hm? Oh, Lotte, don’t flatter me!”
“No, you’re actually glowing!”
“Wha— Sucy!”
Sucy had been half-awake to catch the exchange, fully waking up when Akko shook her by the shoulders. Her head pounded from the back of sleep. Upon opening her eyes, the first thing she sees is Akko’s irritated face, her dark hair falling over her shoulders as she hovered over her, and Lotte was right: she was glowing, even with the dry line of drool streaking her cheek and with tousled hair. Groggy and tired, Sucy let out a smug laugh. Well, not to say she wouldn’t do the same after proper sleep.
“Glowing? No, you look like the same mess you always have been,” she quipped before sitting up in her bed.
Akko was clearly unamused and her fuming made her even shine brighter. With a huff, she hopped up to her feet. “This isn’t funny. Man…how long until this wears off?”
Sucy shrugged. “We’ll figure it out as the day goes on.” She reached for the book and quill on her desk, mumbling as she rubbed the tiredness out of her eyes, “I have to keep a record of all this.”
Lotte chimed in, putting on her glasses. “Maybe you should go to the nurse’s office before class.” It was a reasonable suggestion, but Akko preferred getting breakfast after they changed into their uniforms. So they went through classes with Akko emitting a dim light. At least it wasn’t that obvious at a glance in the natural sunlight pouring from the windows, so it wasn’t much of a distraction for their classmates.
Except for Sucy.
It must’ve been exhaustion, must’ve been the fact that Akko was alight, but Sucy couldn’t take her eyes off Akko. It was difficult to focus on much else. She did have to keep a record on the effects, so it wasn’t that odd of her, really.
“Sucy, careful!”
Sucy flinched at Lotte’s sudden warning, dropping the entire vial of the incorrect ingredient into the trio’s potion which blew up right in her face, but not on Lotte at the end of the desk or Akko off getting a new dropper since theirs had cracked.
Professor Lukić exclaimed in surprise, scrambling to set her own vials safely on the rack to whip out her wand and wrangle the dangerous smoke away. “Sucy! You of all students should know to add the cornstarch first to temper the concoction’s reactivity to melted down star jelly!”
Tiny mushrooms burst through her skin on half of her face—her long side bangs having protected the other half—as well as her clothes. Although Sucy barely seemed to notice with her usual disinterested expression left unchanged, Akko sure did once she hurried over to her side. “Professor Lukić, can I take Sucy to the nurse?”
Sealing the spore riddled smoke in a conical flask with a cork, the older witch nods. “Yes, yes. Wouldn’t want her to collapse on her way there alone after inhaling any of this!” she says, shaking the flask to punctuate her sentence before putting it on a shelf.
“Uhm, yes, ma’am. We’ll catch you later, Lotte,” Akko told Lotte who nodded in response, having already begun swiftly cleaning their work area with caution. “C’mon, Sucy.”
Akko guided her out the classroom with her hands on her back away from the budding fungi on her clothes. As they rushed down the corridors together towards the school infirmary, Akko spoke: “Geez, Sucy, something like that’s never happened with you before. Usually it’s me messing things up like that,” she said with a laugh in her self-deprecation, to which Sucy chuckled a bit as well. Akko had it rough trying to grasp magical concepts as someone without the natural inclination, but it was inspiring and in a way endearing seeing how in spite of her lack of skill she never stopped trying. In a more concerned tone, Akko asked, “Is something wrong?”
Sucy shook her head. Nothing was wrong apart from sleep deprivation finally catching up with her. “I’m fine. In fact, I kind of like being one with the mushrooms.”
“Be serious! If you breathed in too much of that stuff, it could be bad.”
“I’m fine,” she iterated, a tad firmer in her tone. “At least since you’re coming with me, the nurse can nullify my potion on you.”
Akko tilted her head. “Oh, that? You must’ve missed it. It actually wore off a while ago. Guess your potions aren’t as strong as you thought!” Sucy blinked up at her, causing Akko’s cockiness to disappear quickly. “But that’s okay. It still lasted a good while, no need to try it again!”
Now that Sucy was looking at her properly, she could tell Akko wasn’t physically glowing at all. It was all a trick of the mind. With the uncertainty as to when the effects wore off, her findings on how Akko shined the strongest when she smiled and laughed or talked about a topic passionately were now inconclusive. All because of a lack of sleep. If only Sucy had some sort of Super Energy Drink this mistake would not have happened. How embarrassing.
Sucy pushed past the thought. Besides, whatever she was feeling was the type of thing she’d cut down in the name of discovery. “The longevity was rather impressive, yes. It’s the brightness of the light I’ll have to improve next without affecting its runtime.”
After a discontented grumble from Akko, there was a short silence until Akko leaned forward with a kind smile. “You’ve been real distracted all day. If something’s wrong you can tell me.”
Akko had no idea her soft, caring expression was having the opposite effect on Sucy from the intention. It's not like Sucy could easily tell Akko she’d been distracted solely by Akko the entire time for who knew how long since the elixir's effects died down. Seeing Akko’s concern wasn’t making it any easier.
Her heart fluttered. From the moment they met, Sucy had picked on Akko, yet Akko’s devotion as a friend never wavered.
That’s all she was, wasn’t she? A friend.
Sucy could only try to ignore the way that intruding truth turned fluttering into stinging.
“I didn’t sleep much. It’s probably just delirium,” Sucy said, both as a response to Akko and an explanation to her own emotions—surely, only sleep deprivation could muddy the mind like this—and they walked into the infirmary.
Upon entering, the unsurprised nurse looked at the pair. There was always something with their group, and the entire faculty knew by that point. She just signed Sucy in and sent Akko off for a clean uniform set while she tended to the ailments.
“You really should get more sleep instead of, you know, trying potions on me,” Akko suggested while Sucy changed behind the curtain behind her cot. After hearing Sucy’s hum of indifference, Akko added, “I’m serious. That could’ve been bad—er, worse.”
Sucy had to admit to herself that Akko had a point about her lack of sleep causing carelessness; she had to disagree about no longer experimenting on Akko, though. She was lucky that the fungi were only skin deep and the peculiar smoke she inhaled wasn’t much, making it an easy fix. She pulled the curtain to the side to look at Akko’s stern expression once she finished changing into her clean outfit, now sporting the thick healing cream on her face with her pale puce hair clipped back out of her face. “I just hope I can keep some of those mushrooms from my clothes. That would save me the trouble of going out for them.”
She sat on the bed, and Akko joined her with a begrudgingly amused eye roll. She dropped her chin into her hands with a wistful sigh. “I seriously don’t get you sometimes, Sucy.”
Sucy shrugged. “There’s a lot of things you don’t get.”
“Ah, you’re so mean. After I just single-handedly saved your life, too,” Akko bemoaned facetiously. Sucy just snickered against her knuckles. “Hey, what did the nurse do about the weird smoke thing?”
Sucy shook off some of the lotion from her index finger. “Just gave me some kind of nasal spray after finding it wasn’t much.”
“That’s good. I was worried. Hopefully you get to leave soon. Even though you really piss me off with your little pranks, it keeps class interesting.”
Sucy suppressed a smile, which she was skillful at, and thankfully the face mask made it so she didn’t have to worry about her blush showing. It was the small things that Akko did and said that made her heart race, and it was terrible Akko did them effortlessly and frequently. All it did was make Sucy’s mind a mess. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So you don’t think Lotte is interesting? I’m telling her once I get out.”
Akko hopped in her seat on the bed. “Hey! Don’t! You know that’s not what I meant!”
“Akko,” the nurse began from her desk, cutting the banter between the girls, “you can go back to class now. Sucy will have to let that set for a while.”
Akko sighed and flopped onto her back in dramatized disappointment. “Aw man, I wanted to stay a little longer.” Still, she stood up. “I’ll see you later then,” she said, making her way out.
“Right.”
The door shut with a heavy thud, effectively leaving Sucy alone. Keeping Akko around secretly would’ve been nice. The weird cream healing her face was starting to make it numb and Akko would have made for a good distraction since she’s always willing to ramble about something. Then again, probably not the best option. Being alone with Akko might have just replaced one odd feeling with another. When it was them and Lotte as a trio, Sucy never had any problem; only when she’d be alone with Akko did internal issues arise. Fortunately, Sucy was discreet so everyone was none the wiser.
Sucy lied back. Since she was alone to wait out the slow-working effects of the cream, she opted to take a quick nap, which was easy seeing as she only slept for three hours at most last night—or would it be that morning?
Either way, armed with less than an extra hour of sleep on top of the earlier three and her notes, Sucy was ready to get straight back to work that night. In the dark of the dorm, Sucy slinked out of bed once she was certain Lotte was asleep after reading more of those overwritten yet admittedly interesting novels the redhead liked so much. Her two dormmates lied in their bunks as she began setting up her station and—
“Aha!” Akko shot upright, pointing an accusatory finger at Sucy. Her voice was an assertive whisper. “What are you still doing up?”
Sucy gestured towards her work desk. “I’m working.”
Akko put her hands to her hips, drawing out a long breath. “Quit staying up late to make stuff… and then mess with me with said stuff,” she reprimanded with a sharp glare and a pout. It was difficult to take Akko’s scolding seriously when she got all huffy, and Sucy wasn’t subtle this time about it with her unsuppressed smirk, though the fondness in it was much more concealed, as always, especially in the pale moonlight faintly illuminating the room, so Akko didn’t notice it. “You’re going right back to bed.”
She hopped out of her bunk, took Sucy by the wrist, and led her back to the singular bed on the other side of the room. Sucy shook her head, humoring the girl’s behest and getting into bed, and once she was under the covers. Akko sat in Sucy’s desk chair with a satisfied grin and, pointing a thumb to her puffed-out chest with authority, said, “I’m going to make sure you stay in bed. So I’m not just staying here until you fall asleep. Nope, I’m keeping guard the whole night.”
Sucy raised an eyebrow over at her. Akko looked determined now, but it wouldn’t be long until she’d fall asleep, Sucy knew it. She was proven right when, maybe half an hour later, Akko began nodding off. Sucy was fairly awake albeit a bit drowsy now after lying down doing nothing. If she waited a bit longer, Akko would fall asleep and Sucy could take the opportunity to get out of bed, move her equipment a bit to the left or maybe lie Akko down if she were careful enough, and resume her work.
Outlasting Akko would’ve been easy, but with the comfort of her bed even with Akko’s closeness—maybe because of Akko’s closeness—Sucy didn’t want to try clinging to consciousness.
She shifted towards the wall. “You’re falling asleep.”
Akko’s head jerked back up and alert. “I don’t know how you can stay up so late,” she admitted with a sheepish smile. “You don’t even look half-asleep yet. Well, maybe you are. Your eyes sort of just look bored and tired all the time, so I can’t really tell.”
“No, I am.” Sucy hesitated. “You can lie down if you want,” she offered, holding the blanket up. It was a bit bold, but hopefully Akko wouldn’t think much of it.
Akko lit up—figuratively; last night’s potion didn’t take effect again, but it might as well have in Sucy’s eyes. “Really? Okay!” She eagerly slipped herself under the blanket, and to Sucy’s surprise but not her dismay, Akko ensnared her in a hug declaring, “Now you really won’t escape. You’re going to sleep!”
A light tint of pink grew over Sucy’s fair skin. “Hm.”
Akko heard the noise, mistaking it for unease so she pulled back. “Ah, sorry. Is this okay?” Akko asked.
If Sucy were to be fully honest with Akko, she’d say how this was more than ‘okay,’ how she liked this little moment of intimacy more than just a friend might. She could deny the feeling no longer but never share it and risk making things awkward. They were roommates after all and offering her a spot in her bed was risky enough. While Sucy knew Akko wasn’t the type to be up in arms about those sorts of things, Sucy still decided her feelings were best kept to herself.
“Well, you’re definitely taking your duties seriously.” She turned onto her side, her deep taupe eyes meeting Akko’s crimson ones. “It’s fine.”
Akko relaxed, and she hugged Sucy again, laying her head on her shoulder. Sucy’s heart was beating fast for someone lying down, but that was to be expected. Still, in spite of her internal nervousness brought upon by this tight proximity, she was comforted by the warmth between them, enough so to allow Akko’s soft breathing to lull her to sleep.
“Good night, Sucy. Good thing that potion wore off way long ago, huh? It would suck if I had to be glowing right in front of you trying to sleep.”
Sucy, while her eyelids slowly fell shut, replied with a murmured “You’re always glowing,” unrestrained in her tiredness. The last thing she heard clearly was a soft giggle and she was off to the best sleep she’s had in a while, possibly ever, in Akko’s arms.