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Utena had no recollection of applying, let alone submitting her application, so the letter of admission came as a surprise to her.
“Huh.”
She looked up from the bolded CONGRATULATIONS! and swung her head towards Anthy.
“I got accepted into Harvard,” she said.
Anthy took off her gloves. Their dinner for the night was instant tteokbokki, which Anthy had insisted on preparing. The instructions on the side of the cup stated only two steps: one - add water, and two - microwave. Anthy had gone ahead and wedged a new step in between anyway – she was shredding the rice cakes with a mandoline. Apparently Chu-chu liked his tteokbokki thinly sliced. Utena thought Anthy just had a rather morbid obsession with mandolines.
“Harvard accepted me,” Utena added for good measure.
Anthy placed her gloves onto the counter and walked towards the fridge. She opened it and took out all of their condiments: store-bought mayonnaise, homemade mayonnaise with organic eggs, homemade mayonnaise with free-range eggs, homemade vegan mayonnaise with tofu, and aioli. Then she pulled out an envelope.
Utena squinted her eyes, trying to make out the words on it, then gave up and came closer to Anthy. The envelope was dated back to three months prior and addressed to one Himemiya Anthy. There was a red logo in the corner. Anthy took the content inside out and handed it to Utena.
Utena read out the first line, “‘I am delighted to inform you that the Committee on Admissions has admitted you to the Class of 2003.’ Huh.” She cocked her head to the side. Something about the situation was decidedly not normal, not that Utena was too keen on “normal” these days.
She didn’t feel the rush of excitement and adrenaline commonly spoken of, but neither was she dispirited. Going to Harvard meant leaving Japan again, and they had only been back for what seemed like mere months. But being in America meant Utena might have a chance of meeting Lebron James and Serena Williams in the flesh. Plus, she wasn’t going alone: Anthy was coming with her.
Just then, a thought popped into her head.
“Do you think they’ll let us room together?” Utena blurted out. She averted her eyes to the abandoned mandoline. Chu-chu was getting dangerously close to it; Utena had to be ready to intervene at any moment.
“My, my,” Anthy intoned, stepping closer. “You just might have to be stuck with me for yet some more time, Utena.”
Anthy brought a hand up and tucked Utena’s side bangs back. Her fingers smelt faintly of the tteokbokki sauce, and underneath that, even more faintly, of rose leaves after a mango shower. The fridge let out a beep, its door cracked ajar. Utena shifted her gaze back. She brought her own hand up and laid it over Anthy’s, suddenly struck by a want to inspect the scent more thoroughly. Her mouth parted open on its own accord, letting slip the slightest of sounds, “Huh.”
That was March. It was now August. There were approximately 7 hours left before Utena and Anthy had to leave for the airport. Anthy had stuffed all of Chu-chu’s surprisingly many effects into a cabin suitcase and called it a day, leaving Utena to wrestle with her own luggage.
Utena had thus far managed to pack her two lucky pairs of sneakers into her suitcase, as well as her baseball bat, her baseball, and the badminton set Juri and Miki gifted her. The basketball was giving her quite a bit of trouble, though.
“Maybe I should deflate it first? Do you think they sell pumps over in America, Anthy?” she asked.
“I imagine that they do. They might even sell whole basketballs,” Anthy replied, flipping her kitchen appliances catalogue.
Utena opened her mouth, then promptly shut it up again. With years of companionship under her belt, she liked to think she was no longer as dumb as a box of rocks, but only as one singular rock, when it came to Anthy.
“Ha ha ha. But this one’s special.”
“Really, now.” Anthy flipped another page.
Utena contemplated the basketball balancing precipitously on the side of her suitcase. Was it really special? Utena couldn’t say for sure. She didn’t even know when she had started to use it, didn’t know if it was even hers, only that it was the very same one she had been using since middle school.
Ah, middle school. Things started to fall into place. Her memory had never been sharp, but it must have been especially bad in middle school. Utena could barely recall anything from that period of time. Sure, she remembered the people… well, she remembered some people, and sometimes snapshots of a scene would drop by her head, but she struggled to string them together and make sense of her life back then as a whole. Whenever she tried, all her memories would blur together, like lentils mixed in with ashes, and there were simply no magical doves around to help Utena pick them apart.
She flung herself backwards onto the bed and looked up at Anthy. It wasn’t an angle of Anthy that she was particularly familiar with. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the sight again, but all that came up were purple orbs randomly splaying around on a pitch black background. Utena reopened her eyes, this time determined to commit the view to her memory. What she didn’t naturally possess, she would simply have to make up for with practice.
“Would Utena tell me if there was something on my face?” Anthy asked.
There was, but it was only Chu-chu, and he was closer to her ear than her face.
“Would Anthy pay me any heed?” Utena answered. They lapsed into silence again.
The silence was neither uncomfortable nor unwelcomed, but since Utena’s eyes were working overtime, her mouth must have felt neglected, and it itched to be put to good use.
She spoke up, “Why do you think Harvard accepted me, anyway?”
Anthy moved, disrupting Utena’s view. She screwed her eyes shut, scrunching up her entire face in the process, and opened them up again to purple orbs randomly splaying around on the brown background of Anthy’s left thigh.
It was summer, but Anthy still wore her ankle-length dresses to bed. She combatted the heat by simply turning the AC on and pushing her dress up. Utena craned her neck and pressed her nose up against the thigh presented to her. The warmth there made her feel acutely just how cold her own skin had been.
“Tenjou Utena is an individual of outstanding accomplishments and noble beliefs, both of which are in total alignment with Harvard’s core values.” One of her hands dropped the catalogue, parsing through Utena’s hair instead.
Utena considered Anthy’s words. Then she considered Nanami’s half-dozen emails inquiring about how Tenjou could have possibly gotten in? Surely it was on a sports scholarship?
She let out a wide yawn, her upper lip grazing Anthy’s skin, and said, “Hmm. Well, I did hear that they have a thing for orphans.”