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When she caught the side of a pale blue head in the audience, King sighed.
“Qué?” El warbled, springing from some complicated stretch to speak directly into her ear. The immediacy of her reaction time would be impressive, were it not for their circumstances, and King’s impending tinnitus. Such things were quite elegantly resolved with an elbow to the ribs. El was already barreling back into her peripherals, winding up for the inevitable comeback, but that was fine, too— it gave her just enough time to get her hopes up about her ability to keep this under control, until Grass began to take notice, at which point the cat was well and truly out of the bag.
“Ah,” Grass said, forebodingly.
It was difficult to get into the Fan Fest. King knew this, intellectually. Director Akikawa was famously stringent with the safety of Tracen’s students, and she was unconvinced that the sheer pandemonium occurring outside could be attributed to mundane Tokyo scramble. (They had temporarily cordoned off the path to her beloved practice turf in hopes of fielding traffic, that morning. The injustices visited upon her station were, as always, astounding.) A bread-eating race was hardly the Arima Kinen, but one wouldn’t know it from the line outside: she’d observed more than one enterprising soul curled up in their folding chair since morning. Students and their associates were exempt from such tribulations, of course, if they were willing to be mobbed by both the public and the press. Unless.
“Where did she get those sunglasses?”
“I’m sure we don’t know who you’re referring to, Spe-chan.” Grass was still, but she looked intent, uncomfortably alert, whole face gone bright with withheld laughter. Some traitorous sort of noise must have escaped King, or her affront was simply that palpable; Grass turned with a sympathetic hand on her arm and smiled, the tips of her fingers pressed lightly to her lips. “I’m sorry, King, it’s only that you look so…”
“She’s just so proud of herself,” King muttered. “It’s outrageous.”
Seiun had claimed the hotly contested patch of territory towards the front of the spectator crowd, having affected a look King immediately knew belonged to her roommate: since the Takamatsunomiya Kinen, she had visited their room a number of times, and the heavy cream cardigan draped over Seiun’s shoulders rang bells at the back of her memory. Folding Laurel’s laundry, she’d said. Just returning a favor. King pinched the bridge of her nose, resigned. Seiun didn’t do favors. She certainly didn’t do laundry. Truly, she had no one to blame but herself.
It wasn’t an ineffective disguise. Seiun was lean, usually, willowy, in her particular and appealing way. The shapeless coat and a baseball cap— and, yes, she despaired, those wretched sunglasses— did well enough to obfuscate the identity of their generation’s double crown. Perhaps she would even escape with a minimal line of autographs. King felt a familiar surge of affection for her. Exasperated, terribly fond. Even as something inside of her wrestled with the unfamiliar, irrepressible weight of Seiun’s attention, there was a larger part that was so pleased it rendered her very nearly senseless. She had once prided herself on being the type that was immune to infatuation. Had never craved anything to the point of obsession, entertained no indulgent desire, awoke only when it suited her to run. The rites of a true king. Perhaps the burden of one.
“Bueno!” El flexed approvingly in Seiun’s direction. Predictably, the crowd lapped it up. Seiun flashed a peace sign in response, and then, silently, reached behind her back to unfold a garish banner the length of both arms. First-rate in our hearts!
I may have a fever, King thought.
-
Seiun found her some time after the race had ended, after she’d finished basking in the praise of a king’s glorious fourth place. At some point between the seventh and eighth failed attempts she had considered, genuinely, if the sign itself hadn’t been part of some harebrained scheme to fluster her, but it really was difficult to be upset. She could register only distantly now that losing so dramatically, at something so ridiculous, might have destroyed her— a total eclipse of her week, or possibly the month. Somehow, all of it had grown pleasing to her. The trying, the failing, the roar of the crowd. The way she pulled them in. On the eleventh leap for the bread, when she’d jumped just high enough, just hard enough, the ripple of joy had run through them like a cloak on her own shoulders. A comfortable weight.
The idea of leaving Seiun to fend for herself after the crowd’s dispersal had been one of real, actual concern (as if she wouldn’t deserve it), but it became King who was swept into the unending line of autographs and handshakes and photos instead. She wasn’t sure why she had expected to slip away, exactly. No one in the so-called “Golden Generation” unwilling to engage in Seiun’s madcap hijinks or similar was spared from the public eye eventually. Her relationship with the media had always been tenuous, and she let her trainer steer her gladly from reporters, who would almost certainly have her face on the pages next to such enlivening drivel as “El Condor is the Upper Crust; King Halo is Toast!” by tomorrow. Not half as decent as that, even.
When the heaving mass of people parted to permit a young girl through, she had crouched down before realizing that she, too, was an Umamusume, clutching a glossy printout of King in racewear like it was the only thing tethering her to the very earth. It was a snapshot taken from, goddess forbid, that disastrous Japanese Derby, but the familiar disgust she expected from herself at the memory had never come. If the girl even realized her favorite had lost, it didn’t seem to upset her in the slightest, and King gave her signature effortlessly, the way she'd practiced one hundred times over in the anonymity of her room.
“Aw, that’s cute,” Seiun said, with all appearance of sincerity. “Someone told me my cosplay was bad.”
King flicked the sweaty towel she’d been handed back at her. It was, inexplicably, branded, emblazoned with Seiun’s name and racewear, and the likely casualty of what she could only assume was a very poorly minded URA mechanise table. Seiun just laughed, leaning back in one of the training room’s creaking plastic chairs.
“The sign’s perfect, though. You can’t say it’s not.” She put her elbows behind her head and kicked her feet up on the couch. Too self-content by half. King allowed herself a moment to eye the shades perched on her forehead with something approaching genuine disdain. The color clashed unspeakably against all the lovely cool tones of her face, which was almost certainly on purpose. Seiun smiled, mysterious. “If you do, I’ll tell Urara.”
King immediately startled up into sitting where she’d been laid out on the old couch. “Urara made it?”
“Well, it says our hearts, doesn’t it? Nyaha.” Seiun said. King flicked the heel of her boot where it rested rudely on the cushion. “She just helped me out. She’s pretty cute, too. Does she really sleep on your bed sometimes?”
“She sleepwalks if she forgets to eat enough at dinner,” King murmured, out of habit, but her mind was twitching. Something in her had gone prickly to the touch, like a spitting cat. Those two must have met up while she was elsewhere, she supposed. Training for the Yasuda Kinen. There was an uncanniness to the idea that someone would work to her benefit behind her own back, let alone someones, but she struggled to pin down the particulars. Her gaze skipped to the sign where it was draped on the table. Mission completed, it had seen fit to begin shedding glitter absolutely everywhere, which would be someone’s problem, surely. Her brow furrowed.
“I was under the impression that you were scheduled to hold some sort of… press briefing.”
Seiun flapped a hand at her, eyes half-lidded. Half-asleep, more like. “Eh, I said my trainer would do it. They just wanted to yell at me about the spring Tenno Sho some more.”
Did your trainer know your trainer was doing it, King thought, grimacing with a certain sympathy. That wasn’t really what was bothering her, though.
During the race, after the other three had already passed her, and the mud was splashing up nearly into her eyes, there had been the telltale murmuring— the whispering— an audience member at the rail who was telling someone all about how they should go easy on her and let her use her hands. Go easy on her. Like she was infirm. She’d been trying not to think much of it. They, too, had given her a king’s commendation eventually, and she could hardly fault anyone else for experiencing a momentary lapse in confidence. Nevertheless. Perhaps that girl hadn't been upset because she knew King wouldn’t win to begin with. Perhaps Seiun knew that, too. Her fists clenched numbly in her skirts.
“That wasn’t necessary, you know.” King said, shortly. “I don’t need your pity. Or Urara’s.” Or anyone’s.
“Huh?” Seiun sat up again, ears twitching. King was trying not to look at her, but the heavy sleeve of the cardigan had dropped down, exposing a pale slip of wrist that drew her gaze like a magnet. It felt exceptionally unfair, that even in this moment the urge to set aside her dignity was as strong as it ever was, wrestled only by the more vital and urgent need to not make a complete fool of herself. Exceedingly unfair. King hadn’t even done anything wrong. There was a certain mystique made of these things, having a rival in one’s own generation, and never once had it captured anything King actually felt. Of course, they weren’t the regular sort of rivals. She had begun to think they weren’t the regular sort of anything. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means what it means. I’m not some… charity case. Perhaps, after the Kinen, you…” Got the wrong idea, she wanted to say, though it stuck in her throat. The wrong idea about her.
Or, even worse, she had gotten the perfectly right idea: that King Halo spent her precious little free time crying in hallways and sneaking into someone else’s dorm. That she couldn’t stand to be alone. A child. These things would be less frustrating, she thought, if one found the shame to go along with them. Meekness had never been one of her great talents.
“Can we skip this part? It’s boring.” Seiun raised her eyebrows when King made to retort, and she stopped, though she couldn’t say why. “You already know I don’t care about any of that.”
“Any of what?” King said.
It was genuinely upsetting to find that it came out as a question, and not a quiet one. She wanted to say which part, which part don’t you care about, and was it one of the important ones, or could they go on pretending? Did she mind, really, truly, that King never answered her phone? Seiun probably had all that craft glitter in her clothes now, too. And the press would never speak to her again. Not after that little stunt at the conference. It would be just the two of them, with those stupid sunglasses, in all the gossip rags’ pages, forever. Seiun Sky had two crowns, as much as she seemed better inclined to forget it.
She couldn’t actually want this. Any of it.
“Hmm,” Seiun said. She sounded contemplative. King briefly considered finding more merchandise to throw at her.
Seiun brought the sunglasses from her forehead to the table with a soft linoleum click. The cardigan was next, draped over the back of the chair. This close, King could watch the expressions move over her face, like the small hand on a clock. Here was the curl in her mouth. Here was the careful blankness of her face. She didn’t know enough to truly understand it, not yet, but she always knew when Seiun was being flat on purpose. It had become plain to her that most of their peers (and even some of their friends) saw it as a mark of apathy. King had never thought of her that way, because it wasn’t true, and diminutive besides; she was still as alarmed as anyone at the sheer not-apathy with which Seiun began to advance on her.
“Now,” King started, holding up a hand. That’s enough of that, she meant to say, but Seiun just linked them by the fingers, so that clearly wasn’t going to work.
“I was going to make my trainer talk to the news anyway. I hate that stuff.” Seiun said. It wasn’t really much of anything, as a statement, but King shivered all over still. There was a hand on her knee. A knee by her thigh. Seiun was climbing the length of the couch, boxing King into the corner, taking up all the air in the room. Greedy now.
In lieu of an answer, King encircled the wrist gripping her knee with her own hand. Just a loose hold. She wanted to know if Seiun would let her do it. To admit that her control of the situation was slipping felt unspeakably shameful, so she didn’t. To admit that she didn’t mind not having control of the situation robbed her of everything left, including words.
“I can do it, if you want. I bet they’re still there. I’ll go. I’ll be nice.” Seiun smiled. King blinked at her. She felt a little dazed, which seemed reasonable. Beneath that, though, her whole body was thrumming, bright-hot like a live wire. They were close enough to feel Seiun’s breath on her skin. “Do you want me to be nice?”
“You’re a fool.” King muttered, only so she didn’t have to say no. It was just as good as conceding, if not more. She couldn’t pretend that any ounce of her had designs to keep Seiun away. Maybe someone of stronger stuff would have tried. A king wasn’t covetous, but it really was difficult to covet what was being offered to her, anyway; practically thrown in her lap. That was frustrating, too. Enthusiasm was a much more complicated thing than pity. King wanted to shake her until answers fell out, and she was afraid Seiun would let her.
Well. Not afraid that Seiun would let her. Afraid she wanted Seiun to let her. Afraid that Seiun wanted that, too.
“I simply don’t see why…” King said, gnawing on the question. Seiun looked perfectly content to have flustered her, and the way she was eyeing her mouth didn’t help. King briefly considered herself. Bitten-lipped, flushed, wild-haired. Thoroughly made a mess of. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be done for Seiun’s particular delusions. She wanted to be there for her own reasons, so it seemed, and King knew better than anyone not to question someone else’s mind once they’d made it. But there was a part of her— the part that had, once, been led by the hand through the hallway, and promptly spent five hours unconscious in Seiun’s bed— that was… curious. Perhaps even charmed.
She couldn’t see what Seiun saw in her. That didn’t mean, strictly speaking, it wasn’t there.
King squeezed their hands together and tried not to think too unkindly of her sweaty palms.
“Thank you. For the sign.” She said. It sounded stiff to her own ears, but Seiun slackened, a tension that must have been hidden to her falling abruptly away. King supposed she would be thinking about it forever. “It’s lovely.”
Seiun rested her head on her chest. Made a soft little pillow of herself, just beneath the breastbone. King clenched a hand in the short, scruffy hair at the base of her neck, and they didn’t need to say anything at all.