Chapter Text
Raindrops pelt the roof of Tracen's cafeteria late on a spring morning. It's early enough in the season that the last of winter's chill can still be felt in the wind, and cold weather means lots of freshly-baked pastries for Rice Shower and Haru Urara to enjoy and warm their bellies.
"Whatcha get today, Rice? I really love the cream buns—I couldn't pick just one, so I got three! I got strawberry, and coconut, and pistachio." Urara raises the tray with her buns over her head, mimicking a sportscaster's voice as if commentating a race. "Haru Urara is the new triple bun champion. Undefeated!"
Rice giggles at the thought of Urara racing against all manner of sweets. "I got the carrot melon pan," she says. She has six of them to her name. "They taste just like a carrot cake!"
"Yummy!"
Their trainer—Big Sister, if your name is Rice Shower—gave them the morning off the moment she realized the rain wouldn't let up until the afternoon.
"You've been doing well in your last few races, Rice, so you deserve this," she'd said with a glint of pride in her eye. "Urara... well, you got fourth place for a change, so I'll call that a win too."
So here they were, gorging themselves on desserts an hour before lunchtime.
"Hrf, howb 'ou sheem Bowbom?"
"Urara, swallow your food first!" Rice admonishes her friend, but not without a smile. Urara wipes her face with her sleeve ("Don't let Big Sister see that!") and grins back with bits of strawberry stuck between her teeth.
"Sorry! I was saying, 'Hey, have you seen Bourbon'? but in Creambunese. She was umazing in her last race! She was all zoooooooooooooooom and all the other umas were like nyoooooooom but not fast enough to get her!"
Pink dusts Rice's cheeks recalling Bourbon's latest performance. She nibbles on her carrot melon pan shyly. "Bourbon really is the coolest. I think she's training a lot like always. She's so dedicated."
'Coolest' is a vast understatement to Rice—Mihono Bourbon is her inspiration, her idol, her rival. The one who gets her feet on the track every morning, who pushes Rice to be the best version of herself she can be, whom she'll be chasing after for the rest of her life...
"Rice? You look like you're going nyoooooom too, but in your head."
"Oh. Um. I was?" Rice scratches her face with a finger.
"It's alright! You're so fast, so it's gotta be a good thing that your brain is doing the same thing!"
"Y-yeah," Rice nods under threat of Urara finding out about her thoughts on Bourbon.
Urara licks a stray globule of pistachio cream off her wrist. "Anyway, if Bourbon's training lots even when the track's all muddy and blechty, that makes her even cooler!"
"Mm." Rice contemplates on her third carrot melon pan. "Maybe Rice should get some training done too, if Bourbon is—"
"—Riiiiiiiiiiice!"
Rice and Urara snap their attention towards the cafeteria entrance, where they find Nishino Flower sprinting towards them with an urgent wave.
Rice blinks at the sight of Bourbon's roommate. "Flower? Is... is something wrong?"
"I finally found you, Rice!" Flower pants between breaths. "I really need your help. Bourbon hasn't gotten out of bed at all!"
Rice finds her brain going nyoooooooom all over again. Bourbon? Not up and about by 11 AM? Something terribly wrong must have happened to her!
"Oh no! Is she sick? Maybe she caught something because of me..."
Flower shakes her head. "No, she really just won't get up! I've never seen her miss any of her 4 AM alarms before," of which Bourbon has eight. "I thought she just slept through them by accident, but no matter what I do, she doesn't want to budge! I don't know what's going on..."
"I think I know why!" Urara's hand shoots up like she's reciting to save her grades.
"You do, Urara?" Flower's eyes sparkle with admiration.
"Yeah! I bet her blankets are hugging her too much and we need to tickle them off of her!"
Flower's expression remains the same, but the sparkles disappear. No matter. Urara takes Rice by the hand, along with the tray with three carrot melon pan left, and drags her with to Ritto dorm.
"C'mon, Rice! We gotta save Bourbon before her blankets eat her all up!"
A rattled Rice follows because she has no other choice. "Bourbon's too big to be eaten by her blankets!"
"Then she's gotta have MEGA blankets!"
They leave Nishino Flower to stand dumbfounded in the middle of the cafeteria, her face still frozen in its awe of Haru Urara's wisdom before she understood what that wisdom entails, and just in time for Seiun Sky and friends to lift her from her place as if she were a statue so they could move her to their table.
Rice Shower tries to ignore the throbbing of her heart reaching all the way to the tips of her ears as she and Urara stand at Mihono Bourbon's door.
"B... Bourbon?" Rice knocks twice. "Um... it's Rice. And Urara! Flower said you haven't gotten out of bed."
No response for the first 2.869 seconds, which is an anomaly for the cyborg girl who has learned to live every facet of her life with mechanical precision. Rice already fears the worst.
"Hnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn."
Rice's ears flick with confusion.
"What... what's that sound?"
Urara bangs on the door, pressing her face against it so she could yell through the wood. "Bourbon, are you short-circuiting?!"
"Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngh."
"Rice, if you're gonna go nyoooooom, you should nyoom into her room so we can save her!" Urara whispers. Rice yelps, as this pulls her out of a longwinded, self-disparaging internal monologue about how she only brings bad luck to her friends and Bourbon turned into a robot for real and she's short-circuiting because she's friends with Rice Shower and she deserves a better rival than Rice because she's that wonderful and considerate and gentle and—
"W-was I that obvious?!"
"You were doing the face again like awhile ago!"
"Urara!" Someone calls from the other end of the hallway. "Pilfering the cafeteria trays for your personal use is not a first-rate thing to do!"
"King!" Urara runs to her roommate to give her a big, big hug, completely forgetting the reason why she brought it (and Rice) to Bourbon's doorstep in the first place. The tray and its three passenger pastries fly into the air. Thankfully, Rice's fear of invoking the wrath of the Ritto dorm leader outweighs her Bourbon-induced nerves, and she manages to catch everything in her hands. By the time she collects herself, she realizes that a conspicuous lack of Urara beside her has developed.
"Urara?! Don't leave me alone to—"
Rice stops herself because there's no use in talking to thin air. Right. Bourbon. It's just Bourbon. Her ultra-disciplined, unflappable, umazing rival and friend who outshines her in every possible aspect, her ultimate goal to work towards, her hero rather than the other way around, even if Bourbon insists otherwise... still.
"Come on, Rice... Bourbon needs you!" She shivers out her anxiousness like an ashen warrior preparing for battle, her tail shaking with anticipation. "Be her Hero!"
She takes a breath and charges.
"I'm really sorry, Bourbon! I'm coming in!"
The sight of her is completely anticlimactic. Mihono Bourbon, double crown classics champion with only a single loss to her name across her entire Twinkle Series career, is tangled in a bevy of blankets and pillows, her head hanging off of the edge of her bed. She's still in her pajamas and her hair's all up in knots, corroborating Flower's account of her having not gotten up all morning.
Rice has enough composure intact to set aside the tray with the remaining pastries before she sputters at the sight of her ultra-disciplined, unflappable, umazing rival slowly falling off of her bed like a slug.
"B-Bourbon?! Are you okay?! Are you sick? Did you get hurt after your race? Did you train too hard? Did you—"
"Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice."
Bourbon makes grabby hands at Rice. Mihono Bourbon. Grabby hands. And upside-down at that. The monotone of her voice still being present is the only thing that clues Rice in to the fact that this is, indeed, her ultimate goal to work towards. Her hero.
"B-Bourbon, it's almost twelve noon."
"It's cooooooooold. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice." Three goddesses, she couldn't even keep up the robot talk. At least she still sounds like a hanging computer. In reaching out to Rice Shower, who is standing a mere 30 centimeters away from her reach, Bourbon ends up completing her fall from grace and collapses onto the floor of her dorm room. Rice steps another 30 centimeters away in response.
"Noooooooooooooo. I need my Rice." The absurdity of the situation is the only thing stopping Rice from exploding.
"Then, um, y-you can stand up to get me."
Rivals push each other to be better, right? Bourbon needs to be better than this. That's what Rice tells herself to justify talking back to Bourbon in a way she'd never imagine herself doing. Her arms are crossed like she's reprimanding a child.
And yet, instead of doing what Bourbon would do, the Bourbon-shaped slug at Rice Shower's feet propels herself across the floor by kicking against the furniture rather than getting up like a normal person would. She grabs onto Rice's leg with a tight bear hug.
Again, the one thing stopping Rice from exploding into a real rice shower is the fact that she's never seen Bourbon so... lazy. And clingy? It's like saying that water isn't wet, or that Ms. Tazuna is an uma in disguise. She can hear Bourbon's stomach growling all the way down there.
"Um. Bourbon, don't you think getting lunch is a good reason to get up from the floor and out of your room?"
Bourbon looks up at Rice with, and the emphasis must be made, puppy eyes. Puppy eyes on a completely stolid face, but puppy eyes nonetheless.
"You brought food for me."
Rice is a weakling. She acknowledges this. She takes one of the carrot melon pan and offers it to puppy-slug-Bourbon, who begins nibbling on it with a happy swish to her tail.
"I... I don't think eating while lying down is good for you, Bourbon. You might choke. Please don't choke."
Bourbon starts humming GIRLS' LEGEND U while chewing her carrot melon pan instead of heeding Rice's warning. It's getting a bit too much for Rice to handle.
"What can... what can Rice do to convince Bourbon to get out of her room?"
"Press the power button," Bourbon says with crumbs falling from her lips. Is this really Mihono Bourbon whom Rice is looking at? Will one cyborg-ism be enough to convince her of the truth? Rice crouches down and pokes Bourbon on the cheek.
"Beep. Thrusters not engaged."
She tries Bourbon's belly next.
"Beep. There are no buttons on the fuselage."
"What's that?"
"The belly of a plane."
"Bourbon, you're not a plane."
"I am also not a robot."
"Then why did you ask me to press the power button?" Rice's voice begins to crack with the slightest frustration. With tears in her eyes. And a little pout. Mihono Bourbon is a mere novice in the art of being stupidly cute; Rice Shower is a consummate professional, and the proof is in this being what finally spurs Bourbon to move.
"Demonstration mode initiated."
Bourbon pulls Rice down to her level and presses a carrot-scented kiss to her cheek.
"Rice Shower, of course, not being of the MB-19890425 make, does not have a power button to speak of. Location used for demonstration purposes has been chosen arbitrarily."
That sounds more like Bourbon. This feels more like Bourbon, even if Bourbon has never done anything like that with Rice before, ever. She finally pushes herself off of the floor, hoisting Rice up with her, as if none of what Rice has witnessed in the past hour ever happened. She even cups Rice's cheek the same way she did back in that fated Tenno Sho against Mejiro McQueen, but this time it's to brush off the crumbs she left on Rice's face.
"Do you suppose they'll still have hamburg at the cafeteria by the time we go down?" is all Bourbon says, with her trademark emotionless face, before she leaves Rice standing there stunned to go brush her teeth without another word.
Rice is feeling a lot of things right now. Her mind is going so nyooooooooom that it might fly off into the cosmos. She feels giddy. And panicked. And bewildered. And flustered. But above all else, she feels lost. Yes, her rival (and she'll now admit to herself, outside of Urara's earshot, that rival is synonymous with crush in the jargon of Tracen academy) apparently reciprocates her feelings and was even bold enough to make the first move, but...
At this point, does she even know who Bourbon is?
She feels horrible. Accursed. Nothing in the world would make Bourbon happier than for Rice to follow through with their unspoken connection, but all Rice could think of is how she could no longer see Bourbon as that unflappable, unrelenting goal that she'd always chase after, always just out of reach.