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"Waka, you're so adorable!"
"Huh?" Waka turns around sharply, hoping his expression doesn't give away his shock. Did Seo just ...?
But when he turns, she's staring at her goldfish, not at him. "Who's a good boy?" she asks. "You are!"
"Are you -" It' a stupid question, but he never knows what she's thinking, so he has to ask. "Are you talking to me?"
"Why would I be talking to you?" she asks. "I'm talking to my goldfish."
"That still doesn't make sense," he tells her. "That's not how you talk to a goldfish. That's how you talk to a dog."
"I don't have a dog," she points out, as if she's being totally reasonable.
"That still doesn't make sense!"
"Why not?"
"You said my name!"
"Oh," she says. "I decided to call it Waka."
That's ... actually he has no idea how to respond to that. (So, a pretty typical feeling when he's dealing with Seo.) Is it supposed to be a compliment? Is she going to go home and kill it?
"You can't name a goldfish after me," he says finally.
"Why not?" she asks. "It's already his name. He'd just get confused if I changed it now."
"Goldfish don't get confused!"
"Waka does."
Yes, Wakamatsu thinks. He does.
"I want to win a stuffed animal," she says then, as if it isn't an abrupt change of topic. Before he can protest, she grabs his hand, dragging him forward so quickly he almost loses the grip on his own fish. Which he's now kind of regretting catching. He barely survives any given encounter with Seo; he has no idea how a fish is going to.
Especially when she picks up a rifle.
"Don't shoot me!" he says, putting his hands up, one of them still holding a goldfish.
Seo frowns at him. "Why would I shoot you?"
Because I would shoot you? he thinks but doesn't say. Of course he doesn't say it; she's still holding a weapon.
"We're playing this," she says instead, turning to face the target. Those poor cans, he thinks. "First to three wins."
"Wins what?" he asks, not sure if he really wants to know.
She stares at him flatly. "Wins," she says, like there's something he's not getting. He suspects there's more than one thing.
"Oh," he says. And then, not quite sure why he's agreeing, "Okay."
Seo shoots first. Of course.
She's really good at it. Of course. She's good at it the same way she's good at basketball - terrifyingly, intensely, violently good. And he has absolutely no desire to compete with her at all.
Except -
Except when she hands over the rifle, and there's this glint in her eye, like she doesn't want to let go of it. Maybe, even if it's just in Wakamatsu's head, like she's afraid he might beat her.
And that's enough.
-
"Yes!" Seo yells, pumping her first in the air, grinning as the festival worker hands her a giant teddy bear. It's probably supposed to be cute, but at that size, it looks like it could probably eat him.
Not unlike Seo.
"I'm sorry I'm so good at this," she says to him, like that's supposed to be some sort of consolation. If so, it's the worst apology he's ever heard. "I can't believe how bad you were, though. Did you even get anywhere near the cans?"
Okay, no. That's the worst apology he's ever heard.
"Double or nothing?" she asks, and Wakamatsu wonders what he ever did to anyone to deserve this.
-
In the light of the fireworks, she almost looks ... well, like a normal girl. Her cheeks are flushed from running (and why, why, does she absolutely insist on sprinting everywhere?), her hair golden underneath the bursts of light, and he could almost imagine the way she's smiling has nothing to do with wanting to see him suffer.
And for a second, he isn't.
"Hey!" Seo calls down to him, in between near-deafening explosions. "I dare you to jump off this thing."
For a second.
-
"Here," Seo says, after she's climbed down from the statue, while Wakamatsu's still not sure how he managed to escape without her forcibly hauling him up there and pushing him off. "You can have this."
It's the bear. The enormous, terrifying one that's definitely going to give him nightmares.
"Why?" he asks. And then cringes, because that's rude, even if he's talking to Seo.
"That's what you do," she says with a shrug. "Isn't it? You're supposed to win them for someone else."
You're supposed to win them for your date, he thinks, and panics. Is that what this is? Is he dating Seo? He's almost certainly doing it wrong, if he didn't even notice. Does he even want to be dating Seo?
Oh, god, is she going to kill him if he messes this up?
"Fine, if you don't want it," she says, snatching it back.
"No!" he says, before he even knows he's going to protest. It's ... not that scary, he guesses? Not as scary as making Seo angry, anyway. "I mean, thank you."
She's not blushing. She ran everywhere tonight, she's just flushed from the exertion. Seo doesn't blush.
"It's not like it's a big deal," she says. "Those games were so easy, only a total loser wouldn't have won anything."
In a way, he's almost glad. Seo doing something nice for him without insulting him would have just felt wrong.
Except then neither of them says anything afterwards, and to fill the awkward silence, he says, "I had fun tonight."
He has no idea why he says it. (He tells himself it's definitely not true.)
"All right," she says, snorting. "No need to confess to me or anything."
"I wasn't -" he sputters and tries again. "I would never -"
"Come on, Waka," she says. "Let's go back to my place."
Back to her place? Did she just -
"Where are you going?" she asks, when he turns to follow her. He stares at her for a minute, confused, and then - comprehension dawning, his face heating - he looks at her fish.
"Nowhere," he says. "To find my friends. Um, my other friends."
"Whatever," she says. And then, as she's about to turn away again, "You can take me out again."
Is that a concession, or a demand?
(A smaller, more traitorous part of his brain asks, does it really matter?)
"Okay," he says, before he can even think about it. It was a reflex; he doesn't like her.
Except when he looks up, she's already gone.
"Thank goodness," he says to his terrifying, only slightly adorable bear. He's going to call it Seo. "I don't actually want to date her."
He wonders if stuffed bears can tell when you're lying.