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Mirei spends a good hour in the bath – uncharacteristic, Mamori thinks, considering she’s normally in and out back at her side in a flash, but Mamori thinks she could probably stand to relax a little anyway so she doesn’t say anything. Instead, she busies herself checking their inventory.
... Well, in their rush to get off the island they didn’t actually pack very much. She’s got, what – a change of clothes? Mostly rags, really, nothing she’d like to wear personally: she’s gotten, perhaps, a little used to the fancy uniform she normally parades about in and the frilly bits and bobs, she thinks, are more than a little cute.
In the aftermath of Momoka (Mamori still shudders to think of her, her shrill laugh, her blown-open eyes, her lips-!) there is very little of the island left and with that comes very little of what had been on it. The long and short of this: they have no clothes, not really.
This isn’t so much a problem for Mirei, who seems content to just wander around topless most of the time – Mamori, meanwhile, is stuck incapable of looking directly at Mirei as a result and frequently has to have conversations with her by proxy of the back of her hand. Sure they’re both girls but it’s different. Kissing someone doesn’t make it all okay!
“Ignoring the fact that you two have done more than just kiss.” says Rain, suddenly, like she could read her mind. Mamori swallows the yelp and when she turns both she and J are staring her down. Normally not a problem, but Mamori has a suspicion that she’s not quite going to enjoy this topic.
“W-we have not!” Mamori squeaks, hoping it doesn’t sound quite as defensive as she feels it is. “Touching someone’s,” she lowers her voice a little. “Breasts doesn’t count as any sort of base, before you say anything!”
“The girl named ‘virgin’ would know,” says Meifon. No one acknowledges her; or rather, Mamori does acknowledge her by way of a frustrated glance – she’d hoped they were past that, honestly - but she doesn’t say anything directly to her. Meifon shrugs at the cold reception and dips her hat over her head, dozing off again.
Then Rain blinks, saying, “You mean you could transform without any real stimulation?”
J whistles. “So cute,” she says, cupping a cheek in her hand, as if it truly delights her. “Teenagers are so cute and so horny.”
“Virgin,” says Meifang, in a sing song sort of voice, very obviously not actually asleep and Mamori kind of hates her for it.
“What’s this all about, anyway?” Mamori asks. “This is all a little bit uncalled for, if you ask me.”
“It’s only that that big puppy of yours looks at you like you’re the whole world,” J tells her. Mamori feels her heart quicken – she doesn’t think it’s true, really, they just happen to be partners in a very homoerotic-but-not-actually-gay way, but still, hearing something like that... “And we’re just wondering when you’re planning on talking about this, now that the whole transformation bit isn’t entirely required anymore.”
‘This’ is accompanied by a wave of J’s hand, gesturing wildly between Mamori and the space just in front of them. Mamori feels her head fall to the side. “What ‘this’?”
“You know,” says Rain. “This.” Again, said with a very all-encompassing and graceful hand gesture, like she’s giving a concert and waving the baton. Mamori suddenly feels very much like Rain will probably be dominating this topic.
“That doesn’t help me,” she says, and the two of them glance helplessly at each other.
“Oh, for the love of-“ Meifon says suddenly, pulling herself back up. The soles of her boots make so horribly loud a whack against the wood panelling of the boat that Mamori catches herself jump. “Mamori, how do you feel about Mirei?”
This is obviously a very serious topic – all three of them are looking at her with, perhaps, more gravity than the situation calls for, considering they look more concerned with this than the whole Momoka shebang – so she tries to hold in the hopeless flailing and instead, keeping her hands on her chest, genuinely thinks on it.
She gets about three seconds into genuinely thinking about it before she feels her face flush and, when her hands fly up to hide the blush quickly making its way across her skin, she doesn’t even think it hurts because it feels weird and this isn’t nice to think about, she feels. “I feel... funny.”
“Funny?” says all three of them at once, with varying degrees of confusion, disappointment, and outright annoyance. Clearly that wasn’t the answer they expected, nor wanted.
“Yes! Funny! I don’t feel much of anything about her!” she insists. “I feel all funny and I don’t know what exactly it is.”
This time the glance is shared between all three of them. It’s one of those particularly pitiful looking ones that Mamori feels bad over having managed to get out of everyone and she shrinks a little, when they turn back to her, feeling as though she’s missing something that really should be awfully obvious.
When Mirei finally comes out of the bath – Mamori asks her what took her so long, and observes her features soften when she turns to look at her, saying she just wanted to take a longer one for a bit – the conversation ceases but Mamori still feels them stare at the back of her head. She doesn’t like that, feeling small under a gaze coloured with something she can’t identify.
--
Rather, more accurately to saying she didn’t feel much of anything, it’s more that Mamori feels so much that she’s not entirely sure what it is.
In the aftermath of Mermaid she’s been left a little shaken. Never mind the whole ‘kidnapped and put on the middle of an island, forced to scavenge for her life in addition to other girls, many of whom end up in deadly battles on a daily basis also she’s like half-sword or something’, which all things considered didn’t actually bother her too much, once she got used to it. That’s easy to recover from, she thinks: she hadn’t been grievously injured; no one had been, even; and she’s walked out with friends who see knows she can trust.
But she’s not used to the texture of another woman’s lips against her own. She’s not used to smooth hands that aren’t her own on her breasts. She’s not used to soft fingers caressing her inner thigh and travelling slowly up, agonisingly so considering their lives depended on her arousal (shockingly!) and Mamori finds her stomach churning uncomfortably as she thinks on it as well, anyway, let alone actually having it happen to her and, and...
She buries her face in her knees. She doesn’t get it. It’s uncomfortable and she doesn’t know why J and Rain don’t seem to understand that, or why it seems to them cute that she’s struggling like this. She doesn’t have a problem with Mirei, or with her apparent crush on her, or anything like that! Her parents taught her better and she knows everything that happened on the island was a consequence of having been stuck there with no way off and they had to fight for their lives or lose it, which is why Mirei kissed her, and why Mirei touched her like that, and maybe why Mirei came to the conclusion that they were meant to be together.
But girls aren’t supposed to kiss girls, she thinks! Or at least Mamori isn’t supposed to kiss girls. She’s supposed to be whisked off by a cool prince or knight type, who’ll put her on top of his horse and ride off with her into the sunset. No, in this case girls are supposed to desperately make out in a final stand against opponents and transform into magical weapons to do deadly battle until one of them comes out victorious. That’s more normal; or at least, that’s what she’s come to expect of ‘normal’.
Mamori’s normal isn’t girls. Mamori’s normal is princes and horses and a fairytale life she’s still waiting for. Mamori’s normal isn’t Mirei and her stomach churns uncomfortably when she thinks that and she doesn’t know why. If she kissed Mirei it wouldn’t be what she’s been waiting for so she can’t kiss Mirei. She’s looking for soft and sweet and flowers blossoming between her and her princes’ lips, but Mirei will only give her crude and harsh and...
And her stomach keeps churning uncomfortably, not entirely due to the rocking of the boat.
--
They shut the boat off when it gets too dark and no one can see in front of them. Meifon suggests J use Rain to shoot into the sky and light up the path but Mamori tells them not to, because the last thing they need now is for someone to find them and for word to reach out that they’ve snuck away from returning home, so they don’t. There is alarmingly little to do when in the middle of the ocean besides play board games and they’ve been playing those all day so when the boat comes to a smooth stop the two of they all decide yes, sleep is probably the most appealing course of action at the moment. Meifon, again, tries to suggest otherwise but she yawns in the middle of her protest and when she stops she seems to know she’s forfeited her ability to complain.
Anyway Mamori enjoys and appreciates their company but when they all say ‘goodnight’ and turn to face the wall – Rain faces J’s back, actually, as they start spooning and it’s cute but Mamori suddenly thinks about herself and Mirei doing that and her stomach flips again so she has to look away – she sort of breathes a sigh of relief because finally, she gets a bit of a break. Mostly from their personalities and partially from the strange sense of judging she feels from them now. Like she’s doing something wrong. She doesn’t want to be doing something wrong! Anyway, she doesn’t think she’s doing something wrong (and she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she feels like she’s doing something wrong).
She dozes off and then the rocking of the boat means when it sways particularly hard her misplaced head – too close to the side of it - gets a solid knock on it from the swaying; an unfortunate wake up call and she means to just shift and go back to sleep, if slightly frustrated over it now, but when she sits up she spots Mirei, sitting at the helm of the boat and staring out into the ocean.
Mirei, who’s kissed her. Mirei, who’ s fought for her life. Mirei, who touched her-
With a squeak she shakes it out of her head; it’s dead silent aside from the crashing of the waves around them so maybe that’s why Mirei hears her and turns around, even though she doesn’t think it’s all that loud. Maybe Mirei’s just got a second instinct for her. Maybe they are meant to be together-
Her stomach flips. Suddenly being left alone with your thoughts when you don’t have to worry about whether you’ll be alive the next day is more than a little maddening, considering Mamori can’t seem to think of a thing besides Mirei, and not in the good way. Not in the fairytale, knightly way. Not in the way she wants someone to be occupying her thoughts. Really, none of this feels good. She’d have thought her feelings towards a person she’s kissed before would be better, but Mirei is nothing if not upsetting now.
Maybe Mirei catches onto that; when she kneels down to be at eye level with her – or at least, as close to eye-level Mamori can possible think she can get, considering Mirei is almost double her size, actually – she does her best to look as non-threatening as possible. Mamori almost feels sorry; she wants to say it’s not you, it’s me to her but then, if Mirei hadn’t done that whole kissing thing with her, she thinks they could have been pretty unapologetic friends. They were, on the island; back when kissing girls was normal. But it’s not normal anymore, not for Mamori’s normal. So maybe it is Mirei and Mamori really hasn’t done anything wrong, but her stomach churns again anyway. A kiss doesn’t make it all better, and certainly not one from Mirei.
“Are you okay?” asks Mirei, in her very curt voice.
Rubbing the back of her head Mamori replies, “Yes,” equally shortly but then finds herself saying, “Are you?”
She doesn’t dislike Mirei. Of course she doesn’t! Who could? They can just be friends and Mamori doesn’t mind that, she thinks (she doesn’t feel that but she doesn’t listen to it because that’s not normal). Mirei says, “Yes, I am fine. I don’t think you’re telling the truth, though.”
Mamori’s arms find themselves around herself in a patchwork kind of hug to herself. It doesn’t feel right and she only entertains the idea that she’d much rather Mirei be hugging her for a moment. “I am. I don’t think I’d lie to you.”
“’Think’?”
“Mirei,” says Mamori. “All that stuff we did on the island was out of necessity, right?”
She doesn’t acknowledge the brief flash of hurt that dashes across Mirei’s features. She doesn’t want to; she doesn’t know why she’s being like that because Mamori hasn’t done anything wrong- “Do you want it to be out of necessity?”
Mamori holds herself a little tighter. She doesn’t acknowledge that her first thought is no, either. There are a lot of things she won’t acknowledge, because she doesn’t think they’re normal and anyway, all she needs is to wait for her prince. When they get back to civility all this will blow over and she can find a knight in shining armour and he will hold her softly and ask her if she’s alright and she will say yes, now that you’re here. And they will kiss because she likes kissing boys and not girls and that will be normal and it will be right.
She says, “Yes, please,” and doesn’t know who she’s pleading with. Mirei looks to their side, out onto the ocean and shuts her eyes before nodding. Mamori doesn’t know why she feels so wrong because Mirei really, truly isn’t what her dream wants.
--
Anyway the next day they spend a couple more hours playing board games before Meifon seems to momentarily lose her mind and throws the board they’re in the middle of circling for the fifth time into the ocean with a banshee-like screech.
“Why,” says J, simply. “Why did you do that?”
“I’m sorry,” Meifon tells them, looking a little glassy eyed. Not enough for them to think it’s a genuine health concern but enough for Rain to pat her lap and Meifon lies down. “I never want to see the ocean ever again after this, just saying.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” says Rain. “I’m quite fond of the ocean, regardless of this dismal journey.”
“I met you there, didn’t I?” J says, smiling. Rain turns and nods to at her, an equally soft smile on her lips. “Yes, it’s difficult to hate the place you meet someone you cherish, isn’t it.”
Mamori doesn’t hate the ocean despite this; by its shore is where she’d met Mirei. She tries not to look into it.
“Oh, come to think of it, I don’t know how you two met,” Meifon says. “So c’mon, spill it. We don’t have much else to talk about here.”
“Well,” says Rain, glancing at Mamori. Mamori tries to pretend she hasn’t noticed by suddenly finding a bucket in the corner of the boat particularly fascinating. “That’s not entirely true.”
Mamori spots J tap her on the shoulder and shake her head a little. A moment passes between them before Rain turns back to Meifon, smiling, abandoning her previous point. “Anyway, how we met? It’s not a particularly exciting story, really.”
“For listeners, at least,” says J dreamily. Rain puts a hand on her thigh and Meifon sticks her tongue out at them.
“I was at the beach, newly brought onto Mermaid, and there J found me,” Rain tells them. “I was so lost and had no clue what to do with myself. J approached me, equally lost, and we sort of just stuck together, didn’t we?"
J’s nodding almost sickeningly lovingly when Meifon blows a raspberry. “That’s way more boring than I expected. With your whole dominatrix looks I was expecting something else.”
“Like?”
Meifon waves her hands haphazardly. “You know! Maybe in the middle of battle, taken by the throes of passion you grab each other and kiss, leaving you to discover you two make excellent partners. Or something.”
“Well,” says Rain. “That certainly did happen afterwards.”
“Multiple times,” adds J. They share a particularly lewd look and Meifon sticks her tongue out as she pulls herself off Rain’s lap, probably sensing – along with Mamori – that they probably don’t want her to be in-between them that particular moment.
They’re giving each other a look Mamori feels like she’s seen before. She tries to ignore the flash of Mirei that crosses her mind – that’s not normal! – but unfortunately she’s sitting right next to her, the mighty glacier as always; Mamori casts a glance at her exactly as Mirei looks at her and their eyes catch.
She turns away instantly. Meifon turns to her and she thanks the stars for the immediate distraction, so she doesn’t have to think about whether or not she hurt Mirei, doing that.
Meifon says, “So how did you two meet?” and Mamori doesn’t know what’s worse: the fact that they’re back on this sort of topic, or the fact that apparently she and Mirei are on the same level on the girls sitting over there who could make even the most loving married couple gag.
Mirei doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t do casual talk. Meifang knows this, which is why she’s (and Rain and J, apparently knocked out of their reverie at the revival of this oh-so-delightful topic) staring at Mamori and expecting an answer.
She wrings her hands a little: she’s not entirely willing to throw herself off the boat to dodge the topic but really, she’d do it if she weren’t entirely sure Mirei would dive after her to save her. How uncomfortable that would be! Then she’d have to answer the question ‘ok why did you do that’ and she’d have to answer ‘I don’t know how I feel about Mirei’ and she’d see that hurt across her normally impassive features. Only Mamori can make her feel like that. She doesn’t want to be the person that makes her feel like that.
Anyway: biting her lips Mamori says, “... I was getting attacked, and then Mirei showed up.”
She stops there, hoping that’s enough. A few seconds pass and Meifon leans forward a little, circling her hands, prodding her to continue. More please.
She hunches her shoulders, feeling a nervous smile cut across her face. “And she... well, you know. We kissed and I transformed and we won and we’ve just sort of... been together since.”
“By the sea?” asks Rain. Mamori nods. She knows it’s coming, but, “how romantic!” still makes her feel a little uneasy.
“Say, Mirei,” starts J, and Mamori releases a breath. The proverbial gun gets cocked at Mirei and she gets a moment to still her heart and catch her breath. “What made you help her that day, anyway?”
Mirei doesn’t say anything for such a long time that Mamori feels her heart sink – is she going to say something like, ‘because I love her’? How is she going to answer something like that? She doesn’t want to say no. She doesn’t want to say yes. She doesn’t really know what she wants to say and everything swirls and swirls and swirls.
Until Mirei says, “Let’s change the topic,” in her steady voice and suddenly the amicable atmosphere that had blanketed them – that Mamori was, unfortunately, insulated from in her awkwardness – is cut with a butter knife and spread over the horribly burnt toast that replaces it. That is to say, Meifon’s face falls and she leans back, and all four of them, apparently, momentarily lose the ability to speak.
“Oh,” says Rain. There’s a smile that very obviously reeks of uncomfort; at least she’s trying, compared to J, who’s looking at the two of them so palpable, almost like a mother disappointed in a child she’s caught stealing pennies out of their own swear jar. “Alright.”
So Rain starts talking about the next island they’re going to and everyone gets stuck in on that conversation – including Mirei – and if they notice Mamori’s gone a bit quiet, fiddling with a pigtail, no one says anything. She tries not to think about how she might have kissed her then, had she said she loved her.
--
When the other three are below deck, J approaches her: “Let’s talk properly about this.”
Mamori resists the urge to sigh in annoyance. They’re like lions prowling around her, striking at different times, so she decides to play cooperatively and says, “If we do, can we drop this topic for real?”
J nods, so Mamori takes a deep breath. “I really don’t know how I feel about Mirei.”
“In a good or bad way?” says J, and there’s a soft tone in her voice so Mamori knows she’s not trying to be malicious, not really.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“Say,” says J, putting a hand on her shoulder. It’s warm and reassuring but all Mamori can feel is unease welling up inside her chest. “Mirei cares a lot about you.”
Mamori nods shortly. She knows that. She cares about her too!
But she doesn’t know if they care in the same way. She doesn’t know if she wants to. She doesn’t know; ever since the island, she’s felt like she doesn’t know anything about herself.
“Mamori,” continues J, after a prolonged silence. “What’s stopping you?”
“It’s just,” she says, her throat dry despite the choking sea-scented breeze that blows past them and through her hair. “This isn’t how I pictured it at all.”
“How did you picture it?”
A fairytale dream. But, she supposes, all dreams die when someone wakes up; maybe the island was her wake-up call. Or maybe some dreams are meant to be resurrected; maybe Mirei was the wizard who brought it back to life.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. “There’s no certainty.”
At that, J smiles. “Sweetheart: there never is.”
--
She thinks about that for a while.
There’s no certainty, not at all. But there can always be someone standing beside her.
Her fairytale, dreamy knight in shining armour, atop the white horse to ride into the sunset with might be a boy with fair hair, pale skin, dressed head to toe in white and red and gorgeously strapping – but the real person next to her is a girl with blond hair, tanned skin, dressed in a school uniform that looks haphazardly thrown on her no matter how often Mamori pauses to straighten it out.
She’s pretty and quiet and Mamori’s friend, and has saved her life. Her stomach swirls uncomfortably and she still doesn't know what it's trying to tell her. Maybe this is what she wants; and maybe it isn't. She doesn't know. She doesn't know! So maybe she should find out; it wouldn't be too far from what they've already been doing.
And hey: maybe with that, she doesn’t actually need a knight in shining armour to come save her anymore.
--
Maybe the three of them figure out that Mamori’s looking to talk to Mirei alone, because when she walks out from below deck (purposely having placed herself there beforehand, of course) and walks over to Mirei, who’s sitting at the front checking the map.
They clear out instantly (Mamori doesn’t have to look behind her to know that they’re eavesdropping). Mamori takes a moment to take a deep breath – smells like the sea, obviously, salty and just like Mermaid, really – and then sits down next to Mirei.
She wonders briefly if anyone else would have noticed the way her eyebrow quirks, even though she doesn’t move at all otherwise. “Hi,” says Mamori, unusually sheepish around her suddenly.
Mirei blinks. “Hello.”
It goes quiet. Mamori starts fiddling with her hair again, not sure what to say. In the end, so little has been cleared up and she doesn’t know what to do now, either.
Mirei, ever coming to save her, says, “It’s nice out tonight.”
“Yes,” says Mamori, looking to follow her gaze. She’s looking at the moon – a little cloudy but otherwise huge and gorgeous. “It’s almost as clear as it was back on Mermaid!”
She turns back to see Mirei looking fondly at her. Her stomach does another flip as Mirei turns away quickly to look back at the map. She’s made her uncomfortable, too. They made each other comfortable, and now they’re making each other uncomfortable.
She taps her fingers across the hull of the ship, next to where she’s sat at. “I’m sorry,” says Mamori. “About how weird I was being.”
Mirei shakes her head. “It’s nothing to do with you. You’re right: I let myself get the better of me. It was a,” and Mamori's heart actually aches from how sorry she sounds. "Professional relationship."
“No, I,” she bites her lip. “It’s just, I grew up my whole life thinking the first person I’d kiss would be a man. And... it wasn’t. And it shook me a little.”
Mirei stays quiet. Mamori takes a deep breath. She has to get this out.
“And,” she continues. “I got a little confused. I spent so long thinking I’d be whisked away by a... prince, I guess, and it doesn’t look like that’ll be happening...”
Dreams are meant to be followed, she knows that. But maybe some dreams are born out of something else, sometimes, and insidiously, take over what you really want. Mamori wanted an image, she thinks: an image fed to her by a dream she never really wanted, after all.
Instead she takes Mirei’s hand into hers. “I had a dream, you know? It wasn’t a good dream, I think.” It made her nervous when she thought about it not coming true; it made her upset when something better came along.
Right: some dreams just have to die, and she’s Sleeping Beauty, kissed awake by the roses that surrounded her comfortably, instead of the stupid prince. She leans forward and kisses the rose gently on her lips and something blooms between them. She tastes salt and she thinks it’s the sea breeze but when she pulls away Mirei wipes a tear away from her and the trails down her cheek feel cold.
“If you’ll still have me,” says Mamori, voice steady. “I’d like to have a new dream, instead.”
Below deck erupts into cheers.
A kiss doesn't make it all better, but it can certainly start to, and her stomach turns when Mirei kisses her softly and she's uncomfortable in a whole new, intoxicating way.
Mirei laughs, soft and sweet against her lips, and she thinks that’s better than any old silly prince.