Chapter Text
The mirror had never been an enemy, exactly, but it had never been a friend either. It was just there, a flat surface of glass that reflected whatever happened to be standing in front of it, and today what was standing in front of it was Mizuki in a towel, with her hair still damp and her heart throbbing in her chest.
She had been out of the shower for forty-seven minutes. She knew this because she had checked her phone four times, each time hoping the numbers had somehow reversed themselves, each time discovering that nope, time moved forward at exactly the same pace whether she was ready for it or not. The pile on her floor had grown from a small cluster of discarded clothes to something approaching a textile natural disaster, and somewhere in the back of her mind she was already dreading the moment she would have to put everything back.
Not yet. She could worry about that later. Right now, she had more pressing concerns, like the fact that she had tried on eleven outfits and hated every single one of them.
The eleventh, a pale-yellow sundress she had bought on impulse last summer and never worn, was currently pooling around her ankles like a puddle of regret. She stepped out of it, kicked it toward the pile, and stood in front of the closet again, her arms crossed over her chest, her reflection looking back at her with an expression that was somewhere between exasperation and something she did not want to name.
This was ridiculous! She knew this was ridiculous. It was just the aquarium. Just Ena! Just the two of them walking through dimly lit tunnels while fish drifted overhead and the light turned everything blue and soft and… and…
Romantic.
She caught herself on that word and pushed it away. Not romantic, nope. Not a date, couldn’t be a date! Just two friends spending an afternoon together, because that was what friends did, and she was not going to read anything into it, and she was definitely not going to spend an hour trying to figure out which top made her shoulders look best.
Her hand reached into the closet and pulled out a lavender blouse she had worn maybe twice. The fabric was soft, almost silky, and it fell just right across her collarbones. She held it up, considering, then reached for a white skirt she had been saving for a special occasion.
Was this a special occasion?
She refused to let herself answer that question.
The outfit came together slowly, piece by piece, each addition scrutinized in the mirror with a critical eye that she usually reserved for other people. The blouse tucked into the skirt just so. The sleeves rolled up to her elbows because it looked more casual that way, less like she was trying, except she was trying and she knew it and the lie was wearing thin even inside her own head. She added a thin silver necklace, the one that caught the light when she moved, and a pair of small hoop earrings that she had bought because Ena once said she liked hoops.
She had been saving that information for a moment like this. A moment she had told herself would never come. A moment that was somehow happening anyway.
Mizuki stepped back from the mirror and looked at herself. Really looked. The girl in the reflection was pretty, she thought, in a way that felt almost foreign. Her hair was still damp, curling slightly at the ends, and her cheeks were pinker than they should have been, probably from the shower, probably not from anything else. The lavender brought out the faint pink undertones in her eyes, and the white skirt made her look softer than she usually looked.
She looked like someone going on a date.
Her stomach flipped.
"It's not a date," she told her reflection.
Her reflection raised an eyebrow. "Shut up."
She turned away from the mirror, grabbed her phone off the bed, and stared at the message she had sent Ena a few hours ago.
<Amia>: What time should I meet you?
The response had come quickly, almost too quickly, and Mizuki had spent a solid thirty seconds wondering if that meant Ena was excited or if she just happened to be holding her phone.
<Amia>: Whenever you're ready :)
The smiley face. She had added it, deleted it, added it again, and she was still not sure if it was too much or not enough. It was just a smiley face, y’know. Just smiling! It didn’t mean anything… particular.
She typed another message, deleted it, and typed it again.
<Amia>: I might be a few minutes late :P
A blatant lie. She wasn't going to be late. She was going to be early, probably, because she couldn’t stand the thought of making Ena wait, because the idea of Ena standing alone at the train station, checking her phone, wondering where she was, made something twist in Mizuki's chest that felt uncomfortably like guilt.
She sent the message before she could second guess it, then set the phone down and returned to the mirror.
Her hair. She needed to do something with her hair. It was still damp, which meant she had time, which meant she could let it dry naturally or she could blow dry it or she could curl it, or she could leave it exactly as it was and pretend she had not thought about it at all.
She reached for the blow dryer.
Thirty minutes later, her hair was soft and wavy and falling across her shoulders in a way that looked effortless but had absolutely not been. She had used a heat protectant, because she was not an animal, and she had used a small amount of texturizing spray, because she wanted it to look like she had just come back from somewhere nice.
She looked at herself in the mirror again. The girl looking back was someone she recognized, someone she had been trying to become for a long time. She was pretty. She was calm. She was not thinking about the way Ena's voice sounded when she said her name, or the way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, or the way she bit her lower lip when she was concentrating on something, a habit she probably did not even know she had.
Mizuki knew. Mizuki noticed everything about Ena, had been noticing for months, had been filing away small details like a collector hoarding treasures. The way Ena tucked her hair behind her ear when she was nervous. The way she crossed her arms when she was about to argue about something. The way her voice softened at the edges when she was tired, losing its sharpness, becoming something almost vulnerable.
She wondered if Ena noticed things about her too.
Probably not. Ena was too busy being annoyed at her, probably, too busy rolling her eyes and calling her an idiot and pretending she didn’t care when Mizuki said something that made her cheeks go pink. But the pink was there, that was the thing. It was always there, spreading across Ena's face like watercolor on wet paper, and Mizuki had never been able to decide if it meant embarrassment or something else, something she was too afraid to name.
Her phone buzzed.
She picked it up, her heart stuttering in a way that was becoming embarrassingly familiar. A message from Ena:
<Enanan>: Don't be too late. I don't want to stand around waiting forever.
Mizuki smiled at the screen. The words were sharp, but she had learned to read between the lines and had learned that Ena's irritation was almost always a mask for her kindness.
I'll be there, Mizuki typed back. Promise.
She added a heart emoji. Deleted it. Added a star emoji instead. Deleted that too. Left it with just the words, because anything else felt like giving herself away.
One more look in the mirror. She smoothed down her skirt, adjusted her necklace, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her reflection looked back at her, calm and pretty and completely unconvincing.
"You're fine," she said to the girl in the glass. "It's just Ena."
The girl in the glass smiled. It was a small smile, almost sad, the kind of smile that knew something she didn’t want to admit.
She grabbed her bag, checked for her wallet and her keys and her lip gloss, and headed for the door. The pile of clothes on her bedroom floor could wait. Everything could wait. The afternoon was waiting for her too, blue and soft and full of possibilities she was trying very hard not to imagine.
As she stepped outside, the evening air hit her face, cool and gentle, and she took a deep breath. Her heart was still racing, her palms were slightly damp, and she was wearing an outfit she had spent an hour choosing for a person who probably would not even notice.
But maybe she would. Maybe she would look at Mizuki and see something different, something that would make her pause.
Maybe.
Mizuki walked toward the train station, and she refused to let herself hope. But the hope was there anyway, small and warm and buried somewhere beneath her ribs.
Ena’s desk had become a war zone.
Ena sat in front of her mirror, her phone propped against a cup playing a makeup tutorial she had already watched three times, and the battlefield stretched out before her in shades of beige and rose and glitter she had not touched in months. Brushes lay scattered across the surface like fallen soldiers. A palette of eyeshadows sat open, its colors dented and swirled from repeated use. Three different tubes of lip gloss stood in a row, each one tried on and wiped off and tried on again, and somewhere in the back of her mind she was already calculating how much money she had spent on products she only ever used when she was about to see Mizuki.
That thought sat heavy in her chest for a moment, and she pushed it aside with the practiced ease of someone who had been pushing aside the same thought for months.
She had already wiped off her makeup twice. The first attempt had been too heavy, too much, the kind of face you wore to a club or a party or somewhere you wanted strangers to look at you. She had stared at her reflection, at the sharp lines of her eyeliner and the dark sweep of her blush, and she had known immediately that it was wrong. Mizuki would take one look at her and know she was trying too hard, and that was the last thing she wanted, the absolute last thing, because she was not trying at all. She was just… She was just putting on makeup. Like she always did. Like anyone would, before going somewhere with a friend.
Her reflection had looked unconvinced, so she had wiped it all off and started over.
The second attempt had been too light. She looked like she was going to the grocery store, not to the aquarium with the prettiest girl she had ever seen, a girl who would probably show up looking like she had stepped out of a magazine without even trying because that was just how Mizuki was, effortless and beautiful and completely unaware of the effect she had on people.
On Ena.
On Ena specifically, which was the problem, because Ena was supposed to be immune to things like this! She’s supposed to roll her eyes and call Mizuki an idiot and go about her day without her heart doing whatever it was doing right now, pressing against her ribs like a bird trying to escape a cage.
She picked up her eyeliner and stared at it.
Her hands were shaking slightly. She blamed the caffeine. She had drunk two cups of tea, which was not that much, really, but her body seemed to disagree, her fingers trembling as she brought the pencil to her lash line. She steadied herself with a breath, held it, and drew a line.
Not bad.
Not perfect, but not bad.
She exhaled, and her breath fogged the mirror briefly, blurring her reflection. For a moment she could pretend the girl in the glass was someone else, someone who was perhaps calmer, someone who definitely, DEFINITELY, did not spend fifty minutes picking out an outfit and another thirty minutes on her makeup and the whole time thinking about pink hair and a voice that could make her laugh even when she was trying to be angry.
The fog cleared. The girl in the glass was her again, and her cheeks were pink.
She wasn’t fooling anyone.
Ena reached for the blush, but then paused and put it down, and then she picked up a different one, then she put that down too. Frankly, she didn’t need a blush. Her face was already flushed, had been flushed since she woke up this morning and remembered what day it was, since she opened her eyes and felt the familiar flutter in her stomach that she had stopped trying to explain.
It was just the aquarium. Just a trip to the aquarium. Mizuki had suggested it last week, her voice light, almost casual, like she was asking if Ena wanted to grab coffee or go for a walk or any of the other thousand things they had done together that meant nothing. But there had been something in her voice, something that made Ena say yes before she could think about it, made her say yes like her mouth had a mind of its own.
She had been thinking about it ever since.
Her phone buzzed. She grabbed it, her heart lurching in a way that was becoming embarrassingly familiar and saw Mizuki's name on the screen.
<Amia>: Whenever you're ready :)
The smiley face, oh the damn smiley face! Ena stared at it for a long moment, zooming in as if the pixels might reveal some hidden meaning, some secret code that would tell her whether this was a date or just an afternoon between friends. It was just a smiley face. It couldn’t mean anything.
But it was there, deliberately added, and Mizuki never added smiley faces to her messages unless she was flirting or trying to be cute or trying to make Ena's heart do exactly what it was doing right now.
She typed back, and yet everything she wrote sounded either too cold or too eager, too distant or too much, and she simply couldn’t find the middle ground, couldn’t find the version of herself that was neither pushing Mizuki away nor pulling her too close.
She simply gave up and set the phone down, turning back to the mirror.
Her makeup was almost done. The eyeliner had dried into a soft line, the eyeshadow was a wash of pale pink that caught the light when she turned her head, and she had added a touch of highlighter to her cheekbones because she wanted to glow, wanted to look like someone who belonged in an aquarium, someone who walked through blue light and water and came out the other side beautiful.
She reached for the lip gloss. The tube was a soft rose color, something she had bought on a whim and never worn, saving it for a special occasion. She held it in her hand, turning it over, watching the light catch the glass.
Was this the special occasion she was waiting for?
Probably.
The gloss went on smooth and cool, making her lips look fuller, softer, like she had just been kissed or was about to be. She pressed her lips together, the tacky feel of it familiar and strange, and she thought about Mizuki's lips, about what they would look like in the blue light of the aquarium, about whether they would taste like the cherry chapstick she always wore or something else entirely.
She caught herself in the mirror and looked away, her face burning.
This was fine! This was normal, totally normal! Friends thought about each other's lips all the time. Friends spent an hour getting ready to go to an aquarium with another friend and imagined what it would be like to kiss that friend in the dim light with fish drifting overhead and no one watching.
Oh, she was going to die. Shinonome Ena was going to die from being oh-so-gay.
She was going to die before she even left the house, and Mizuki would never know, and the last thought she ever had would be about the curve of a smile she had seen a thousand times and could not stop seeing.
Her phone buzzed again.
<Amia>: I might be a few minutes late :P
Ena read the message twice. Her heart did something stupid. Mizuki was never late. Mizuki was always early, always waiting with that patient smile, always acting like she had all the time in the world. The fact that she might be late meant something was happening, something that was making her run behind, and Ena found herself hoping it was the same thing that was making her own hands shake.
<Enanan>: Don't be too late. I don't want to stand around waiting forever.
She sent it before she could soften it, before she could add a smiley face or a heart or any of the things she wanted to add but was too afraid to. The words were sharp, but they were also honest, or honest enough. She absolutely did not want to stand around waiting. She wanted to see Mizuki. She wanted to see her now, wanted to watch her walk across the station platform in whatever outfit she had spent an hour choosing, and wanted to see if she looked as nervous as Ena felt.
<Amia>: I’ll be there, promise
Ena stared at the word. Promise. It was such a small word, such a common word, but Mizuki had written it like it was a vow, like she was promising more than just punctuality. Ena's chest ached with the impossibility of it; with the hope she was trying so hard to suppress.
She set the phone down and stood up from the desk, still in her robe, her hair still wet from the shower she had taken an hour ago that she definitely had not taken specifically to wash her hair extra nice for Mizuki.
The closet doors opened, and she stared into the darkness, at the hangers and the folded stacks and the dresses she had not worn in months. Her hand reached out, almost of its own accord, and pulled a cream colored blouse from its hanger. The fabric was soft, almost silky, and it fell just right across her collarbones. She held it up, considering, then reached for a floral skirt she had bought two months ago and had been saving.
For what, she had not been sure.
She pulled the blouse over her head, the fabric cool against her skin, and buttoned it slowly, her fingers fumbling with the small buttons in a way that had nothing to do with nerves. Then the skirt, the zipper sliding up her hip, the hem falling just above her knee. She turned to the mirror and looked at herself, at the girl in the cream and flowers, at the soft pink of her lips and the glow of her cheekbones and the way her hair fell across her shoulders in waves she had spent twenty minutes perfecting.
She looked pretty.
She definitely looked like someone going on a date.
Her stomach flipped, her heart throbbed, and her hands, which had been steady for the last few minutes, started trembling again, and she pressed them against her thighs to still them.
"Come on, Ena," she said to her reflection. Her reflection looked back at her with eyes that were too bright, cheeks that were too pink, and a mouth that was trying very hard not to smile. "It's just Mizuki…"
The sound of her own name in her mouth made her chest ache. Mizuki. The syllables were soft, almost musical, and she had said them a thousand times, a million times, in anger and annoyance and something else, something she was tired of not naming.
Fine…
FINE!
She wanted Mizuki.
There! She said it. Not out loud, not yet, but somewhere in the privacy of her own skull where no one could hear her and no one could judge her and no one could tell her how stupid she was being. She wanted Mizuki! She wanted to hold her hand. She wanted to make her laugh. She wanted to be the reason for why those eyes crinkled at the corners, for why that rare and precious real smile would break across her face like sunrise.
She wanted to kiss her.
She wanted to kiss her so badly it made her teeth ache, made her hands curl into fists, made her want to scream into a pillow or punch a wall or do something, anything, to relieve the pressure building behind her ribs! She wanted to push Mizuki against the glass of an aquarium tank and kiss her until they both forgot how to breathe, and the fish could watch! She couldn’t give less of a damn anymore. Let them watch and let them judge! At least someone would be witnessing the fact that Shinonome Ena had finally lost her mind over a girl with pink hair and a smile that could end wars.
"I want her," she said to her reflection, and her voice came out rough, almost angry, like a challenge. "I want her. I want her so much it's pathetic. There. I said it. Happy?"
Her reflection did not look happy. Her reflection looked like it was about to cry, actually, which was not the reaction she had been hoping for. The girl in the glass had tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, her lips pressed together in a thin line, her whole face doing something complicated that was caught somewhere between longing and rage.
She thought about Mizuki's hands. About the way they moved when she talked, graceful and expressive, like she was conducting a symphony only she could hear. She wanted those hands on her. Wanted them in her hair, on her waist, cupping her face like she was something precious. She wanted to know what they felt like when they weren't just brushing against her shoulder for two seconds, when they weren't casual and accidental, when they were deliberate and hungry and meant for her.
She thought about Mizuki's laugh. Bright and unguarded, the kind of laugh that made everyone around her want to laugh too. She wanted to be the one who made her laugh like that. Wanted to be the reason her eyes crinkled and her head tipped back and her whole body shook with the force of it. She wanted to bottle that sound and keep it under her pillow, wanted to fall asleep to it every night and wake up to it every morning.
She thought about the way Mizuki said her name. Ena. Not Enanan, not the teasing nickname she used when she wanted to get a rise out of her, just Ena, soft and quiet and meant only for her.
She wanted to touch her face. She wanted to trace the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. She wanted to know if Mizuki's skin was as soft as it looked, if her hair was as silky as it seemed, if her hands would feel the same on Ena's skin as they did in her imagination.
She wanted to be the one Mizuki came to when she was sad. She wanted to be the one Mizuki trusted with her secrets, her fears, the parts of herself she kept hidden from everyone else. She wanted to be the person Mizuki thought of first thing in the morning and last thing at night. She wanted to be important. She wanted to be necessary. She wanted to be the reason Mizuki smiled, the reason she got out of bed, the reason she believed things could be okay.
She wanted, and she wanted, and she wanted, and it was not fair, none of it was fair, because Mizuki probably didn’t feel the same way, because Mizuki probably saw her as just a friend, just someone to tease, just someone to spend time with when there was nothing better to do.
"God," she muttered, pressing her palms against her eyes until stars burst behind her lids. "Why do I have to be like this? Why can’t I have a normal crush?"
Because there was nothing normal about Mizuki. Nothing normal about the way she made Ena feel, like her skin was too tight and her heart was too big and her whole body was a live wire waiting for something to ground it. Nothing normal about the way she could not stop thinking about her, could not stop wanting her, could not stop imagining what it would be like to just… to just…
To just take her face in her hands and kiss her stupid.
She lowered her hands and looked at her reflection again. The girl in the glass was flushed and fierce, her eyes bright with something that was not quite tears and not quite anger, something in between that made her look almost dangerous.
"I want her," she said again, and this time it sounded like a declaration. Like a promise she was making to herself, to the universe, to whatever gods might be listening. "I want her, and I'm tired of pretending I don't."
She thought about Mizuki's smile. About the way it faltered sometimes, just for a second, before snapping back into place like a mask she had been wearing for so long she had forgotten where it ended and she began. Ena wanted to see behind that mask. Wanted to hold whatever was hiding there, wanted to be the one Mizuki did not have to perform for.
She wanted to be enough. That was the heart of it, maybe. She wanted to be enough for Mizuki, wanted to be the person who could make her feel safe and seen and wanted in return. She wanted to be the one Mizuki chose, not because she was convenient or familiar or there, but because she was her. Because Ena was the one she wanted, the way Ena wanted her, with that same desperate, consuming, ridiculous intensity.
"Mizuki," she said out loud, just to feel the name on her tongue. "Mizuki. Mizuki. Mizuki."
It made things worse, actually, because now the name was in the air, hanging between her and the mirror, and she could almost pretend it was real, could almost pretend Mizuki was standing behind her, could almost pretend those arms were wrapping around her waist and that voice was whispering in her ear.
She was going to lose her mind. Well, she had already lost her mind. She had lost her mind the moment she met Mizuki, probably, had just been too stubborn to notice.
She looked at her reflection one more time. The girl in the glass was pretty, she decided. Maybe not as pretty as Mizuki, maybe not effortless or graceful or any of the things Ena wished she could be, but pretty enough. Pretty enough to stand next to her. Pretty enough to be seen with her.
Pretty enough to hope.
"Fine," she said to her reflection, and there was something defiant in her voice now, something that finally sounded almost like the usual Ena, the one who did not back down from anything. "Fine. I want her. I want her, and I'm going to do something about it. Not… now. But someday. I'm going to make her mine if it's the last thing I do."
Her reflection raised an eyebrow, skeptical.
"Shut up," she said. "I'm having a moment."
She grabbed her bag, checked for her wallet and her keys and the extra lip gloss she had tucked into the side pocket just in case, and headed for the door. Her heart was racing, her palms were slightly damp, and she was wearing an outfit she had been saving for two months for a person who probably would not even notice.
But she would make her notice. She would make her notice if it killed her. She would walk into that aquarium looking like this, looking like the best version of herself, and she would watch Mizuki's face when she saw her, and she would look for something in those eyes, something that said maybe, something that said yes, something that said I want you too.
And if she didn’t see it, if there was nothing there but friendship and teasing and the comfortable indifference of someone who didn’t feel the same way? Then she would deal with that. She would pick up the pieces of her stupid, broken heart and she would keep going, because that was what she did, because she had survived worse things than unrequited love.
But if there was something. If there was even a flicker, even a hint, even the smallest possibility that Mizuki might love her back...
She was not going to let it slip away.
Ena stepped outside.
The afternoon had settled in like a held breath, the sun still high but leaning gently toward the western edge of the sky, and the light was amber and thick, brushing everything with the soft patience of old honey. She walked toward the train station, her floral skirt brushing against her knees in steady, quiet strokes, her heart a restless caged bird in her chest as Ena hoped.