Work Text:
Ichika wouldn't call herself a procrastinator. Most of the time, even if her focus wasn't on a school project, she wasn't about to take out her phone and start playing video games because she disliked what she was doing. When her compositions started to become very difficult to continue, she would go outside or find some other source of inspiration in a book or in conversation with her friends. And if even that didn't work, she would move on to something else and wait for genius to strike. This system worked one hundred percent of the time, and she'd never had a reason to mess with it. After all, her teachers said not to fix that which was not broken, and, well...
Despite all of this, she hadn't been able to make any progress on her essay, which was due tomorrow. Her prompt lay in front of her, taunting her with its simple words:
What does love mean?
If this assignment had been about platonic love, Ichika would have been able to finish it so easily. She could write about how much she loved her friends, how she wanted to stay with them no matter what, and she'd have to rewrite it in formal language and back it up with sources, but at least she'd know what to write. Unfortunately, her teacher had confirmed that the essay was meant to be about romantic love.
And... Ichika had no experience with that. She didn't know how it felt; she'd heard the rumours about how you were supposed to feel when you were in love, about what crushes meant and who you were supposed to have them for.
Once or twice she thought she'd gotten a glimpse into that world, when Honami had given her a smile worth a million words, when Saki had given her a very big hug at the end of practice, and when Shiho had praised her musical creations. Her heart would flutter then, and on at least one day she'd gone home, her face all red, and buried her face in her pillow, but those days were rare. If she assigned those little moments in time to romance, then wasn't it by definition the most fickle feeling in the world? Though Ichika was generally opposed to getting in fights with people, she'd felt on several occasions that she was angry enough to find a god and beat them up all on her own, and that feeling was much more prominent than anything even close to romantic.
Was something therefore wrong with her?
All of her classmates had practically leapt for joy when they'd heard the prompt and gotten the confirmation that it meant love in a romantic sense. For they all knew what it was to love, didn't they? Most of them spoke of having crushes or having boyfriends; even Saki had a crush on someone (she'd said it was multiple people, actually), but they weren't a boy, so Ichika knew that at least one other person was different from the norm... except she still fell in love.
Ichika sighed. She needed to get this darn assignment done.
Her phone buzzed. It was Saki.
Can you pretty please let me know if you're done with the essay? I wanna ask about our next song...
It took her a while to formulate a response. Sorry. I haven't started.
Icchan, do you need help? I can let you read mine! But, um, it's... detailed?
Ichika smiled, then shook her head. That really was just like Saki. Sure. I don't think I'll get a good grade either way.
You will!
It's not easy to write an essay about things you don't understand, she typed, and then accidentally sent. Oh no.
And before she was able to send an 'ignore' message, Saki had seen it, reacted with an emoji Ichika hadn't been aware of before this, and sent, wait what do you mean????
Well... she hadn't exactly told her friends about this. I... don't really experience romance. Um, I think once or twice I've felt something but...
Saki went completely silent for the next five minutes. Ichika glanced at the clock. Nine-thirty. If she got an idea right now, she could probably write a decent first draft and pass it off as her final copy tomorrow. (She'd done that once before when she was in middle school and for some reason, her teacher hadn't said a thing.)
well. Saki was typing again. You could... write about platonic love as if it was romantic?
Now that was definitely a suggestion. Then I'll make it sound like I'm in a polycule.
That's not a problem!
Ichika took a deep breath. Okay. She had a plan. It was bad and might result in her failing the assignment, but the situation was much better than it had been an hour ago. Thanks for your help, she typed. I'll tell you when I get this done.
The guidelines for her essay stipulated that it had to be six pages long, double spaced, printed front and back. That was... three pieces of paper, or six pages on an online word processor, except she'd have to actually print it later. She found that method to be faster, though, and she wouldn't have to painstakingly write out everything twice to ensure it looked nice. Ichika turned her attention back to her laptop. This was going to be one of the least fun assignments she had ever had.
Two hours later, she ought to have been in bed, but instead, she was having Saki look over her first draft while on a Nightcord call while she looked through the links Saki had sent her about something called the aromantic spectrum. She learned a few things while being told where she'd made grammatical mistakes and, crucially, what she'd misremembered in her rush to make something presentable. Saki even got out one of her journals from when she was younger to prove her point, and when presented with glitter ink and stickers along with dates detailing every day of Saki's childhood, she had little to argue with.
"Okay, so that happened in July," Ichika mumbled, correcting her first paragraph. "Did we have to fact-check the personal examples?"
"If you want it to be super accurate, yes." Despite the late hour, Saki seemed very energetic. Maybe a cup (or three) of coffee was to blame for that. "Icchan, did you get the links?"
"Read through a couple," she said.
Saki's expression conveyed all the information Ichika needed.
"Yes, it was relatable."
"Sorry if that's making you question your whole identity." Saki twirled a strand of her hair around her finger. "But I thought it was important to know!"
Ichika smiled. "It's fine. I'll... think about it more after I get six hours of sleep."
"You're waking up at five in the morning?" Saki sounded more horrified than anyone Ichika had ever met.
"No, it's almost midnight."
"Oh." Saki leaned back in her chair and glanced at the clock. "That's. I should also go to bed."
"Shiho's going to be mad with both of us, isn't she?"
"Only if we're not honest about why we were up this late." Saki glanced at the ceiling and then back at the camera. "There's a spider. Can you- ohhhh. I'm that tired." She yawned.
Ichika fought back laughter as she responded. "Sorry I can't dispose of the spider at your house."
"So mean, Icchan." Then, a knock sounded from her end of the call. "Oh crap."
"Saki?" Tsukasa sounded oddly quiet. "Are you still awake?"
"I have to go," Saki whispered, then tried to hit Leave Call and raised a virtual hand instead. "Onii-chan, I was helping Icchan with her essay due tomorrow."
Tsukasa didn't seem surprised by this. Still: "It's almost midnight."
Saki pouted.
Ichika listened to a good thirty seconds of silence before Tsukasa said, "I'll go to bed and stop rehearsing if you'll go to bed."
More silence ensued.
"Okay," Saki said. Then, after the door was closed, she turned back to her laptop. "Oh. Hi, Icchan. Did I press the wrong button?"
"Yep."
This time, when Saki attempted to end the call, she succeeded, and Ichika was left staring at the How was your experience screen as her mind ran through different scenarios. She might get a good grade on her essay, but the process of writing it had opened up several cans of worms and questions of identity.
... okay, she wasn't getting those six hours of sleep.
Ichika typed aromantic spectrum into the search bar at the top of her screen and waited impatiently for the results to load. When they finally did, she was met with a hundred words she did not understand and definitions that made... sense.
She read through each term carefully to ensure she did not miss any crucial details. Some of them, she couldn't relate to; others piqued her interest but upon further investigation meant nothing in the end. Maybe she should be carrying out an investigation of this sort when she was more alert, when her mind would be more suited to difficult tasks. Still, she pushed on, reading article after article, watching video after video, looking up clarifications when she found something that made little sense, and if she found herself stumped even then, she'd look for a personal account. In some ways, this process was more intensive than writing her essay had been.
At one in the morning, her frantic research was interrupted by a notification from Nightcord:
Your friend, K, is online.
Ichika squinted at the message. Though she didn't know much about Kanade's sleep habits, that looked odd. No one should be awake at this hour unless they were working, and... well, Kanade didn't seem like the sort to enjoy late-night shifts. Was she even old enough to have a job that required those? Ichika highly doubted that.
Maybe it was a sign that she needed to go to sleep.
So, with a lot of regrets in her mind, she printed off the final copy of her essay, neatly placed it in her schoolbag, and flopped into her bed without having brushed her teeth nor having changed into her pajamas.
Somehow, nothing plagued her dreams nor made it any harder for her to pass out the second her head hit the pillow.
Her parents did scold her for staying up so late the morning after though and she did not blame them for it.
Ichika was surprised when her teacher gave her a ninety-nine out of a hundred on her essay. All she'd done was lie, essentially, about her relationships, and somehow that was deserving of a near-perfect score? Saki had full marks for it; of course she did, she'd been working on it for ages and she'd written several different drafts. She'd even sourced her own journals in a works cited and brought them with her in case the teacher wanted to check that she'd done it correctly.
How on Earth was a single draft, sparsely edited, worth almost as many marks as that? Ichika struggled to believe it. Still, she wasn't going to question her grade; it would do a lot for her overall marks, and her parents would be proud of her for it.
Saki was proud of her for it too though she knew it wasn't fully true and her teacher had asked no questions about it so...
Ichika lay in bed that night looking up at her ceiling; at the pictures and stars and stickers that everyone had stuck up there day by day, year by year, until every morning when she woke up, she was greeted with happy memories. In middle school she'd debated whether to take them down or not; for a time, looking at the images of their little friend group, then torn apart by time and circumstance until they barely knew each other and Ichika's only friend was Saki, but she was glad now that she had chosen to allow the pictures to remain there. Shiho had taken hers down, but Saki had rather insistently put them back up recently and so all was right with the universe, was it not?
She sighed.
Did she love them the way she had told her teacher she did?
After all, romance was foreign to her. Though she had covered love songs with her friends – and they'd praised her voice, said it was beautiful, but she didn't experience the feelings conveyed in the lyrics and it had been much harder for her to get into the right mindset when she'd first looked at the words on the page.
But in no universe did she not love them. Except it was... not romantic as far as she could tell. Ichika would give anything for those she loved – but not a kiss on the lips. She would spend countless hours at sleepovers with them, write songs dedicated to them and forever sing with them; only rarely could she detect any sort of true love as everyone called it for them in her heart.
Her phone buzzed.
Ichika picked it up to check who the sender was.
Icchan, are you okay? You missed band practice.
From Saki.
... wait, they had practice today-
Ichika felt herself react before she had the time to properly form a coherent response, and in doing so, she sent Saki a text consisting only of the number three and jumped up so fiercely that she ended up banging her knees against the wall and falling back on her bed before she could process what had happened. Her parents were out on a walk, so she had to walk herself to the freezer to get an ice pack because everything hurt now.
As she sat on the couch, she composed a reply to Saki.
I'm really sorry. I got really lost in thought about my essay. And now my knees hurt, so I'm not sure I want to reschedule.
She set her phone down for three seconds before she got a reply.
It's okay!!! do you want us to come over?
(Saki was always so kind and loving and Ichika... couldn't love her the way she did.)
Are you sure you're okay with that?
Well, Shiho-chan has to go home, but Hona-chan says she'll come with me.
Thank you. Please do.
Saki responded very enthusiastically to that, with a bunch of thumbs-up emojis and stickers, and Ichika put her phone down again. This time, she did not pick it up until Honami called to ask if they'd gotten on the right train and she had to tell them that they were on the right line, but going the wrong direction. Eventually everything went quiet and she closed her eyes. Saki was just so kind and she- Saki was in love with her, Shiho had said after she'd read Saki's essay. Saki was in love with all of them, romantically, and Ichika would love her that way if she could but she didn't feel those emotions and she felt awful about it.
She hugged a couch cushion close to her chest, pretending it had all the answers she needed, and though she wanted to cry, she was asleep long before her eyes responded to her emotional state.
Will she still want to be my friend if I can't...
Of course she will. Saki wouldn't hate me for that.
But isn't this selfish?
When Ichika woke up, she was back in her bed, Saki curled up next to her, reading some book she'd chosen for her novel study with a frustrated expression on her face. She was quite concentrated, and Ichika didn't want to break her focus, but-
"The protagonist is only kissing that guy because she was told to," Ichika said.
Saki startled, whipping her head around to face her, smacking Ichika in the face with her ponytails as she did so. "You're awake?"
Ichika nodded. "I've read the book before, too."
"Good morning," Saki said, then, when Ichika's expression suddenly changed: "I mean good evening. Hona-chan said she'd make dinner if that's okay with you. Well, she's already started, so I sure hope it's okay."
"It's fine," she mumbled. "I'm sorry."
Saki shook her head. "You were tired. I don't mind staying with you to make sure you're okay."
"No. I'm sorry for being unable to fall in love with you." ... why had she said that? Why hadn't she just kept it a secret and kept the fragile balance of their friendship? Why couldn't she-
The surprise on Saki's face was understandable. "Icchan, I... you don't have to fall in love with me. We can stay friends. I know- I love a lot of people. And sometimes it's romantic, but if you don't feel that way, we can just be best friends forever."
"But you'd be happier if I was dating you, right?"
Saki shook her head. "I'm your friend. We don't have to be anything other than that. And- I might not ask Honami or Shiho if they love me in return. And I'd be okay with that. Because you're important to me regardless of whether or not you want to date me. And no, for the record, I wouldn't be necessarily happier if we were dating."
"Okay."
Then, from downstairs: "Saki, would you mind waking Ichika up? Dinner's ready."
"We're coming," Saki replied. "Icchan, we can talk about this more later if you want, but I do really mean that. You're always my friend."
"Thank you."
"You don't have to thank me," she said. "Hona-chan mentioned something about making yakisoba..."
And Ichika was out the door faster than one could say wait for me!
(Honami did indeed make yakisoba, and it was delicious, and then they had apple pie for dessert and that was almost as good.)
Ichika felt... like she could continue to live like this. She could love her friends as deeply as she did and not experience romance towards them. Especially when Saki would mess with her hair only to brush it out properly and braid it and Honami would always sit with her and listen to her concerns and let her walk Shibao even if he seemed to hate that and Shiho would gently steal half her ramen when they went to any restaurant where Ichika would order it despite having already consumed a large bowl of it.
They were friends. And though she would be open to them becoming lovers, she did not think she would ever feel that sort of feeling for them, and that was fine. They liked her all the same and did not begrudge her for it.
Saki put some old movie on the TV and made popcorn while Ichika rested her head on Honami's shoulder while the opening scene played. They sat together on the couch for a while, laughing at some things and crying at others, the bowl of popcorn resting in Ichika's lap as if it belonged there.
This was nice, she decided, as Saki gently tugged on her arm while gesturing wildly with her free hand to explain something on screen.
If they could do this sort of thing every day (with Shiho, of course), then life would be absolutely perfect.