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The sky stretches a light, sunny blue over the field. The dry heat of summer approaches, and the temperature alone is enough to warp shapes and colors from a distance. Despite it, the other kids on the playground still run around each other and skip about under the sunlight, enjoying their recess.
“So, why are we hiding?”
Ena doesn't particularly mind seeking refuge from the blaring sunlight under the shade cast by the dense, bushy leaves of their favorite tree. It's just… well, why did Mizuki seem so adamant about sitting on the empty, desolate side facing the wire fence rather than the playground?
The girl in question toys with her fingers as her mind and mouth come up short for a response. She's able to gather her thoughts enough to whisper an unsure, “I don't know.” This time, with more confidence, she explains, “Sometimes, I have these days where I don't wanna talk to people.”
“...What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Am I not a person, too?”
“Oh. You're different. You're my best friend!” she states with such glee that Ena can't help but smile along. “Everyone else in my class is really hard to be around. But my teachers think… they think there's something wrong with me because…”
Her eyes droop until they're half-lidded with dread, and her lips twist into a painful frown that Ena never wants to see from Mizuki again.
“Because what?” Ena coaxes out of curiosity.
“...Nevermind. I'm sorry. If you wanna go play with someone else, it's okay.”
As she apologizes, she brings her knees to her chin and wraps her arms around her folded legs. Ena's not sure what she means by any of it, but she has a feeling she should stay. Besides, house is hardly any fun without Mizuki.
She lets her weight drop onto Mizuki's side, head falling comfortably on her shoulder. Her friend quickly reciprocates, temple bumping the crown of Ena's head as she comes to rest there.
It's quiet for a while. Ena is just as content doing nothing as Mizuki seems to be, if the deep, almost snore-like breaths she takes are anything to go by. Calm as she may be, though, a sliver of restlessness peeks through as she continues to twiddle and twist her thumbs around each other. Ena braces for something sharp to cut the tension, but when Mizuki finally speaks, it's not at all what she expected.
“Thanks for being my friend,” Mizuki says in earnest.
Ena hums, and with their proximity, it echoes sharp against the drum of Mizuki's ear. “That's a silly thing to thank me for.”
“Why's that?”
“I dunno,” Ena wonders to both Mizuki and herself. “Just is.”
This, apparently, is enough to make her friend laugh. “Ena is so wise,” giggles Mizuki, with a smug sarcasm that no person their age should be capable of.
“I thought you didn't wanna talk,” she retorts. “I liked it better that way.”
But that's the thing, isn't it? If Mizuki truly wanted to talk and talk until Ena's ears fell straight off like loose teeth, she wouldn't mind. She brings some unfamiliar comfort that Ena hasn't quite learned the words to describe yet. It's entirely unique to Mizuki, which becomes even more apparent when the girl laughs again at her comment, pride swelling in Ena's chest for having caused it. There's something special between just them two, and the only thing she can even remotely equate to that would be…
“I think I like you,” she states simply, like she's just read it off the morning paper. “Can we be married?”
The weight atop her head lifts, leaving Ena unsettled as Mizuki removes herself from the other girl's side to stare off, looking like she's seeing every possible equation.
“I think I like you, too,” Mizuki finally decides. “Let’s make rings for each other. To make it official!”
She looks much more excited by the idea of designing an accessory than the idea of marrying Ena, which is surely the reason she even brought up rings to begin with. And maybe that makes her a little jealous, but Mizuki is smiling a lot now, so maybe she can let it slide.
Before Ena can agree, though, the school bell rings out, signaling them back to their respective classes.
“Ah,” Mizuki breathes, disappointed, gaze falling to meet the grass.
“It's okay!” Ena cuts in, frantic to cheer the girl back up. “Now, we at least have extra time to take it home and stuff. We'll show each other what we made at recess tomorrow, got it?”
She stands and puts her hand out just as she's used to doing by now, though she's recently been making an effort to come across more gently. For a second, she really isn't sure if that was the right thing to say because Mizuki just stares at her, tilts her head like a lost puppy—oh, but then—there's the smile she was after.
It's wide and wrinkled and partially toothless, one of her canines and a half-hidden molar having been yanked out a few nights prior, courtesy of her older sister, Yuuki. As gummy a grin it may be, Ena still thinks it's pretty—pretty like a sunrise or like a baby bunny hopping in the forest.
Her hand is taken. It's near muscle memory by now, the way she leans back, fully trusting that Mizuki will keep her from falling as Ena uses the leverage to help pull her up and off the ground.
With nothing else to say, Ena begins side-stepping toward where her class is already starting to line up. “...Well, I guess I'll get going then—”
“Wait!”
Mizuki had finally been convinced to trim her long nails just yesterday, Ena recalls. Had it been done only a day later, her arm would’ve surely been shredded like paper with the way the girl grips her wrist now.
Mizuki second-guesses, retracts her arm and her confidence all at once. “When I get… bad days. My sister usually hugs me, and it helps a lot, so I thought maybe—oof!”
A soft thump rings out in time with Mizuki stumbling backward, narrowly avoiding a blunt collision between her spine and the tree trunk behind her. Ena's face rests somewhere against her shoulder, while her arms squeeze at Mizuki's midsection like she's trying to wring the soul out of her body.
When Mizuki hugs back, it isn't nearly as tight an embrace as what Ena is giving, but it's not her fault she feels like a puddle, like if Ena let go even a little she might fall face-first into the ground, melted and oozing out of her skin.
But eventually, Ena does let go, and Mizuki's wobbling legs miraculously hold up without aid. As they part, she gives one last, “Feel better, Mizuki. See you tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” her friend mumbles back, teetering the line of incomprehensible, especially with their increasing distance. “See ya.”
The last thing she remembers of Mizuki that day is the bow swaying at the back of her hair as she walks, beaming under rays of sun.
When she gets home a couple of hours later, Ena's chock-full of bright ideas, but one in particular speaks to her the most. So, she beelines to the living room, in which sits the only man fit for this job.
She rounds the couch, then scales the cushions, hopping up and crawling until she's curled up next to her father, who's invested in some important-looking news segment up until he catches sight of her. A strong, broad arm comes around her shoulders, combs through her hair and undoes her pigtails with the same callused hands that had tied them that very morning. It's peace. It's home.
“How was school, Ena?” Her father asks quietly, idly, out of habit rather than with the expectation of an interesting answer.
“Good. I'm getting married to Mizuki tomorrow,” she mumbles back, eyes closed, lost in the pleasurable sensation of fingers running down from the top of her head to the back of her neck. Though just as she thinks she really might fall asleep like this, the hand stops, and she swivels to see her father frozen, trouble etched into the aging lines of his face.
“What's wrong?” she asks him, clueless, painfully ignorant.
“Two girls can't…” he begins and just as quickly pauses. “Forget it, actually. That's nice. I like Mizuki.”
Ena knows when he pulls her back against his chest and starts stroking her head again that it's meant to quell her need to ask more questions. She really does want to know what he was going to say, but there are things much more imperative to her mission at the moment.
“Can you help me make a ring?”
She reaches around his lap and uncurls his other hand out of its fist to reveal the two pink bows that he had just neatly untied from her hair. Grabbing one, she holds it up to her father's face.
“With this,” she clarifies.
She's definitely doing a little too much when she bats her eyes, just so, in a way she knows he'd never say no to. And he doesn't, just smiles at her as if admiring a work of art.
“Yeah,” he says, seemingly entranced as he stares, brushes her bangs away from where they fall onto her brow. “Yeah, I can do that.”
And he does, after dinner and once Ena is ready for bed. With a paperclip, hot glue, and a dream. The paperclip is bent into a band fit to Ena's ring finger, looping multiple times in a coil for the sake of structure. The bow is then placed on top, the parts of the ribbon normally used to gather Ena's hair now wrapped about the metal base they made.
“Whoa,” Ena gawks, toying with the ring in her hands.
Her dad chuckles, low and quiet. “Have Mizuki try that on for me, and if it doesn't fit, I can fix it.”
Ena nods, thanking him with a hug to his long leg, before something dawns on her.
“How are you gonna do my hair with one ribbon?”
“We have other ones.”
“But I like this one. It matches Mizuki's ring now.”
Her dad seems to think it over for a moment, and he looks serious too, but eventually he just sighs, shakes his head.
“You're a lot like your old man, you know. Persistent.”
That's just another word for stubborn, Ena knows, but he leans down and kisses her forehead so gently that it feels like a compliment anyway.
“I'm an artist, Ena. And you, my magnum opus. Don't you think I can figure something out?”
Ena doesn't entirely understand what he's saying—what in the world is a magnum opus?—but she concedes to the fact that she does trust he'll figure it out. Not, of course, without a yawn as she rubs her eyes of the sleep weighing them down. Her dad is quick to scoop her up, tucking her in and kissing her goodnight.
Normally, Ena has trouble falling asleep, but her eyes droop shut on their own tonight, a girl in pink dancing through her mind as she drifts off.
“I like your hair.”
Mizuki doesn't even greet her. This is the first and only thing out of her mouth when Ena approaches the tree where her friend is already sitting.
True to his word, Ena's dad did her hair just fine with the one ribbon. He'd said it was a little too short for a ponytail and instead braided a small lock on the side, tying it off with the ribbon. When Ena first saw it in the mirror, she twirled the plait between her fingers, shook her head around and watched it sway proudly.
And it was one thing that she thought it was pretty, but Mizuki liking it too just made it all that much better.
“Thanks,” she returns with a smile, plopping down against a particularly large tree root. “My dad did it. He's an artist, you know.”
“Of course I know! Ena talks about him all the time.”
“Well, duh. My dad is the best painter in the world. He helped me make your ring, too.”
Just as she did yesterday, Mizuki lights up like a Christmas tree at the mention of accessories. “Can I see, can I see, can I see?” For good measure, she shakes Ena by the shoulders, the girl's head wobbling back and forth loosely as she does.
“Wha—okay! Jeez!” Ena replies, shoving her friend back lightly with a chuckle. “But you gotta show me yours, too.”
With a horribly uncoordinated countdown from three, they reveal to each other what they'd made. Mizuki squeaks and squeals, just as she'd honestly expected, but Ena is enraptured by what the other girl holds in her palm. In the middle of the band is a flower cut from fabric—long, U-shaped petals which alternate between white and pink. Ena doesn't know much about flowers, but she recognizes this one by its shape.
“A daisy,” she says, not a question, but a statement.
“Yeah!” Mizuki nods, ecstatic. “Yuuki said that pink daisies mean love. And I forget what the white ones mean ‘cause it was something boring, but I think it looks good with the pink anyway!”
In the few seconds Ena takes to process this, Mizuki has already become restless. When Ena peers back up at her, she's holding her breath and bouncing a leg as if she might combust.
“You wanna put yours on, don't you?”
“Yes please!”
“Okay. Let's go find Akito,” Ena decides, dusting off her knees as she stands. “He needs to be the guy that says, ‘You may now kiss the bride.’”
“Are we gonna kiss?” Mizuki asks as Ena pulls her up by the hands. They start walking.
“If you want. I'm pretty sure it's the whole point of getting married.”
“Hm. That makes sense.”
As they trek across the field, one of Ena's hands grasps onto Mizuki's, guiding her around. In her other hand is a promise, one that is as light now as they are young. Her thumb fiddles with the ring's bow and her eyes catch onto Mizuki, whose focus darts about in search of Akito. And she's just as pretty as always—pretty as the skyline or the smell of the street when it rains. Pretty as the ribbon in her hand.
Mizuki is taking the lead now. Ena's not sure where she's being pulled, but her hands hold on a little more gently.