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Hell. This is it, I must be in Hell.
It was the only plausible explanation Chie Satonaka could come up with…in that hell, she laid staring up at the ceiling of a tent, feeling her stomach grumble angrily and listening to Hanako snoring so loud, Chie swore the tent was quivering with every wheeze. How long had she even been listening to it? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“I can’t stand much more of this…” she groaned, no longer bothering with whispers. Her and Yukiko had already discovered Hanako’s ungodly ability to sleep through just about anything, it seemed. Beside her, Yukiko sighed.
“You think if we just…stuffed a sock in her mouth…?” She mumbled listlessly, letting her head roll to the side, nearly brushing the wall of the tent with her face. They’d retreated to the far end in some hopeless attempt to escape the noise, but of course there wasn’t nearly enough room between them and the other girl to make any difference.
“N-no, I think that’s going a bit far.” Chie certainly didn’t want to be responsible for choking someone with a dirty sock, even if she wanted nothing more than to silence the girl. They sighed in unison and fell quiet, having already exhausted every idea, every complaint, every noise of frustration. There wasn’t much left to say that they hadn’t already said three times before. Minutes passed, then Yukiko turned to the girl beside her and tentatively scooted closer.
“Um, Chie…” Her voice was softer than before, despite knowing nothing was going to wake Hanako up. “Is it okay if I…can I just…rest my head here?” She edged just a bit closer, touching her fingers to Chie’s chest.
“Uh…yea, sure.” Chie wasn’t sure why, but Yukiko’s shyness made her feel rather shy as well. She probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it if the girl had just put her head there. It was the kind of thing they did all the time – grab for each other’s hands when they were scared, or prod at a shoulder in excitement or flat out cling to one another when reuniting after a long absence. There was never any asking involved, they just did it. So why did she feel the need to ask now? And why, Chie wondered, was she making such a big deal over something so silly?
She stiffened a bit at first, feeling Yukiko nestling up against her body and laying her head down on her chest. She also found herself painfully aware of the dainty hand placed at the middle of her collarbone, the fingertips reaching past her partially unzipped track suit to rest on the bare skin of her neck. Not wanting Yukiko to notice her sudden tension, Chie tried to relax her body. Then she had to remind herself to not hold her breath, and then not to focus so much on how nice Yukiko’s hair smelled. She wondered if it was awkward for her to just let her arm stay where it was on the floor, and decided to wrap it around Yukiko to rest her hand on her shoulder. Maybe her hesitance and jerky movements were even more awkward though, because Yukiko began to laugh.
“W-what? What’s so funny?” Chie muttered indignantly, feeling her face grow hot.
“I’m listening to your heartbeat. It’s really fast now.” She couldn’t see it, but she could feel Yukiko smiling against her chest.
“So what?” Her tone was a bit sharper than she intended, she wasn’t very successful in sounding less defensive when she went on, “why are you listening to something like that, anyway?”
“I like it. It drowns out that awful snoring, a little.”
Not really knowing what to say to that, Chie simply huffed in embarrassment. It wasn’t until a few minutes later that she realized that with Yukiko snuggled up next to her, she could feel her heartbeat too. Chie wanted to point out that she had no room to talk, because her heart was beating just as fast, but she held her tongue and wondered what that meant. Maybe it didn’t mean anything and she was just thinking too much again. She wanted to wonder what all that thinking meant, but she was pretty sure she already knew…she was grateful when Yukiko suddenly broke the silence.
“Hey, remember when we were kids and we’d stay up all night telling each other dumb secrets?”
“Yea.” Chie laughed, bumping Yukiko’s head lightly with her chin as she nodded.
“Let’s do that again. Tell me a secret.”
“Huh? Jeez, why do you want to do that all of a sudden?”
“Come on, tell me something.” Yukiko tapped impatiently on Chie’s collarbone.
“Uhhh…” Chie’s face scrunched as she tried to come up with something. “One time when I was little, I tried eating dog food. It said it was beef flavor, so…I thought it’d taste like steak.” She frowned at the memory, but Yukiko burst out laughing, as expected.
The time seemed to pass a bit more quickly as they carried on, swapping silly little secrets to make each other laugh. Eventually it was Chie’s turn to nudge at Yukiko.
“Hey, we’re not done yet! I told you about the thing in the locker room, you owe me now! You gotta tell me something big!” She prodded at the ticklish spot on Yukiko’s side, making the girl squirm and giggle until she gave in.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got something.” She pushed the hand away, then repositioned herself onto her stomach, one arm still resting on Chie while the other propped her up. The girl beneath her fidgeted uncomfortably as Yukiko peered down at her, taking a breath as though she were about to speak…she couldn’t quite get the words out, though, and had to try again. She breathed in once more, then leaned forward and whispered, “I really like you, Chie.”
Chie wasn’t quite sure what to do. She stared at Yukiko, trying to sort through her flood of thoughts. It was pretty obvious what she meant, so Chie didn’t think she could get away with playing dumb. Why would she want to do that, anyway? Well, because she was nervous, she guessed. But that would probably hurt Yukiko’s feelings. It would definitely be a lie to say that she didn’t feel the same, but what happened if she told the truth? What happened when you told your best friend about your feelings for her? She kept staring, dumbfounded.
“Your turn.” Yukiko smiled, but it was a thin smile that did a poor job of masking her regret. Chie panicked and cupped her face in an attempt to reassure her while she collected herself. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped. She shot a glance over at Hanako, as if the continuous snoring wasn’t indicator enough that the girl was still asleep. Looking back to Yukiko, she tried again, blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
“I…I really wanna kiss you.” Perhaps she could have been a bit more…eloquent, but Yukiko didn’t seem to mind, because her face lit up in a way Chie had never seen before. Still holding her face, Chie leaned up, but hesitated. It was Yukiko that closed the gap between them – Chie could feel her breath when she let out a small, relieved laugh before their lips pressed together in a quick and clumsy kiss. Chie tried to kiss her again, but Yukiko had the same idea and the two ended up bumping their faces and foreheads together more than they did kiss each other. They both burst into laughter, trying to shush each other between fits of giggles.
Once their laughter subsided, the two huddled together on their side of the tent, lacing their fingers together and simply grinning at one another until Chie spoke up, bashfully stumbling over her words.
“Oh! I, um. I like you, too. I like you a lot.”
“I know. I was there when you kissed me.” Yukiko couldn’t help but laugh at Chie’s resentful little pout.
“Well…what now?” Chie started to panic again, remembering her earlier concerns. How did this work? Were they girlfriends now? Was Yukiko her girlfriend? What a strange thought. Not a bad thought, but definitely a bit surreal.
“Hm…I don’t know.” She wasn’t any more sure of the situation than Chie, but she simply shrugged, wearing a sweet smile. “We’ll figure it out. We don’t have to do it right now.”
“Okay…” Chie nodded, relieved by Yukiko’s calm and collected words. It really wasn’t the time for that kind of discussion, anyway. There was one other thing on her mind, though. She whispered excitedly, “can I kiss you again?”
“I’d like that.” Yukiko was still smiling when they leaned into a much more deliberate kiss than their first, shyly exploring each other’s lips. She propped herself up on an elbow again to gain some leverage against Chie, but instead she pulled away from the kiss with a sharp yelp, having put her weight onto a particularly pointy rock that bulged up through the bottom of the tent.
That was when the snoring came to an abrupt stop, and Hanako shot the pair a disgruntled glance over her shoulder.
“Hey, some of us are tryin’ to get some sleep over here! Go to bed, already!” Even after slumping back into her former position, she continued grumbling to herself under her breath. Chie and Yukiko stared blankly at the girl’s back, then slowly turned their eyes back to each other. Yukiko chanced a whisper into Chie’s ear.
“Did she really just-”
Hanako looked over again with a wide eyed glare.
The girls exchanged glances again and quietly settled back into place, with Yukiko resting her head on Chie’s chest once more. She wanted so badly to laugh at the absurdity of Hanako’s complaint, but the silence that finally fell over their tent was just too good a thing to ruin. So insead, she smiled to herself and let heartbeat lull her to sleep.