Chapter Text
At first, she was an annoyance.
This loud red-haired girl that didn’t know anything about anything.
This idiot that broke her window and almost broke her HAL and thought she was Gon-chan’s servant.
Gon-chan had told her that she should take the mermaid back to her house after she’d fallen from the sky, so she did. Gon-chan knew this girl, so Mari allowed her to stay just for a little while, but if it hadn’t been for Gon-chan, Mari would have kicked her out the very next day.
She dragged the dumb redhead out of the ocean, she saved her life and all she got for her troubles was some whining about a ring. Like really, who cares.
But her grandmother had always told her that it was important to be kind to those who needed kindness. And this lost mermaid did seem like she was in need of some kindness.
Mari pulled Lara out of the rain and bought her a can of hot chocolate not out of empathy or friendship, but rather out of a vague feeling that this was the right thing to do, that leaving her to sit in the rain would be unkind.
She still fully intended to kick Lara out of her room as soon as Gon-chan would let her.
Here was the problem:
Lara sipped her can of hot chocolate like it was ambrosia, she cupped her hands together and tilted her head back as if she really was a princess, and Mari found herself watching without intending to.
Lara smiled like she hadn’t come close to drowning five minutes earlier, and she thanked Mari like she really meant it, and Mari realized that this girl was actually sort of rather beautiful.
Here was the problem:
Lara looked up at her with sparkling eyes and told her that she had a lovely name and Mari found her chest filled with an unfamiliar warmth. She attributed this warmth to the hot chocolate and she did not think about it any further.
Lara was still an annoyance.
But as early as the third time that Mari woke up with Lara sleeping two feet away, Mari discovered that she was already used to having another person sharing her room. Lara fit right in as if she’d always been there.
She would, as time went on, think of Lara’s wide-eyed idiosyncrasies less and less as annoying and more and more as endearing. She would, gradually, realize that the room felt empty when Lara wasn’t there.
The warmth would come back again and again, and it would become familiar as Lara herself would become familiar. In Mari’s head, Lara would come to mean warmth.
“Mariii!”
She looked up from her phone to see Lara trotting towards her, waving one arm above her head.
“Lara. You’re done?”
“Yep!”
Mari stood up from the bench she’d been sitting on. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Lara was carrying a bag with a white paper box in it. Probably filled with sweets. Lara often brought food home from work, and no matter how many times Mari explained the strict athlete’s diet that she tried to keep, Lara always insisted on sharing it with her.
“Thank you for waiting for me to finish cleaning up! You don’t have to wait, you know? You can go home when your shift is done.”
She shrugged as Lara reached her and they both turned to start walking towards their bus stop. “It’s fine. It’s not much of a wait. And you’ll just get off at the wrong stop again.”
“Mari!” Lara shot her a greatly insulted look, and Mari had to suppress a smile. “That was only twice!”
“Three times.”
“Hmmph. The bus system is very confusing, you know? But I’m pretty good at it now.”
“If you say so.”
It was dusk. The sun falling towards the horizon in the distance. Shopkeepers closing their stores, bars and restaurants starting to get busy. A flock of birds wheeling above them. A summer evening: just the right temperature.
They walked down the streets of Shiga together, on their way home, and Lara yapped about her shift at work and all the things the other bakers had said, and Mari listened.
After a minute or two, they reached their bus stop.
Mari stopped, but Lara took another couple steps and looked back at her with a smile.
“It’s a gorgeous evening, let’s keep walking!”
Mari thought about it for a second, then shrugged. “Okay.”
Lara talked about the youngest male baker’s troubles with his girlfriend, and the advice he’d been given, and what she thought about that, and Mari nodded along.
Lara talked about another baker’s arguments with her father, who wanted her to be an accountant like him, and about another’s college exams, and Mari listened.
Lara talked about the right temperature to bake cookies at, and Mari hummed along in response.
Normally, she would have preferred to get home as soon as possible. Mari had never exactly been much for stopping to smell the roses.
Normally, she wouldn’t have cared about any of the stuff Lara was talking about. She had no interest in romantic woes or other people’s family drama, or baking techniques.
She liked boxing. None of that was interesting in the slightest compared to boxing. She was not unaware that this attitude, perhaps, had been one reason she’d never had any friends, but that was how it was—boxing was interesting and not much else, and she was bad at pretending otherwise.
But things were different with Lara.
Lara talked about things that Mari didn’t really care about, and she still found herself happily following along, and actually listening, rather than tuning her out and thinking about boxing.
They arrived at the next bus stop on the route. Neither of them said anything, but their eyes met and Lara grinned, and they kept on walking.
Lara just had this way of making everything interesting. She faced the world with endless, wide-eyed enthusiasm, with the boundless curiosity of a child, and it was hard not to get swept away by it. She brought so much life with her, it spilled out of her, she practically glowed.
Mari had started to notice that the room seemed brighter when Lara walked in.
“…and then he dropped the measuring cup on his foot! Oh, Mari, come this way.”
Lara grabbed her by the hand, and pulled her along, and Mari followed.
They left the town behind as Lara led the way across one last street and into a little park that bordered Lake Biwa. In front of them, the vast blue of the lake stretched out to the far horizon, sparkling slightly as the sun descended towards the land.
Lara dragged her towards a grassy slope bordering the water, and pulled Mari down to sit on the grass. Then she pulled out the box she’d been carrying.
“Here, we made these today. They’re not on the menu yet.”
Lara opened the box to reveal two danishes topped with cream and slices of peach, then picked one out and handed it to Mari.
“Here, try it! I helped make it!”
“You mean you washed the tray it was baked in?”
Lara pouted. “No! I actually helped! Taste it first, then I’ll tell you what I did.”
Mari frowned, then reluctantly raised the pastry towards her mouth. She wasn’t entirely confident that Lara, still a very novice baker, had gotten everything right. And really, the amount of sweets Lara was feeding her these days was not good.
But when her teeth closed down, she was pleasantly surprised. The dough of the pastry itself was perfectly crumbly. The peaches were perfectly ripe. The cream was just the right level of fluffy and sweet.
“Mmm. It’s good.”
A wide grin spread across Lara’s face. “You like it?!”
“Yeah.”
“What part do you like the most?”
Mari considered her options. Clearly, Lara had contributed in some substantive way to the pastry. The dough seemed like it would still be beyond her skills. Slicing some fruit didn’t seem like enough to be proud of. “…the cream is good.”
Lara’s face lit up, her eyes sparkling with delight. “I helped make the cream! I mixed it myself! Is it really good?”
“It’s great.”
She took another bite. It really was good.
“…Lara.”
“Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to eat yourself? You’re just watching me eat.”
Lara’s laughter was light and melodic, like birdsong. “I like watching you eat! I can tell how much you’re enjoying it.”
“You can?”
“Yes!”
Across the water, the sun was setting. Blue already caramelizing into orange, red, pink, above the water. The sounds of the city behind them growing quieter.
“A couple people have told me they can never tell what I’m thinking. That I’m impassive.”
“What? That’s not true at all!” Lara’s face had made a drastic shift from happiness to outrage. “I can always tell what you’re thinking!”
“…no you can’t.”
“I can!”
She took another bite of the pastry. “Prove it.”
“You pretend you don’t want to eat cakes and sweets, but you actually like them. You argue with Gon-chan all the time and pretend to get annoyed with her, but you actually like her a lot. And you weren’t actually worried that I might get lost on the way home, and—“
“That’s enough.” She looked away so that Lara couldn’t see the very slight blush that was appearing on her cheeks.
“So, I just mean that if people told you anything like that, they’re the ones who are wrong. They should be paying more attention.”
“How about you pay less attention to me and eat your own dessert.”
Lara obeyed, and finally turned her attention to her danish, leaving Mari, who’d already finished her own, to take her turn watching the other girl eat.
If Mari had looked like she had enjoyed her treat, then Lara looked like she was on her way to heaven. Her eyes were closed and she was practically shivering with joy as she bit down into the danish.
Mari watched as a dab of cream got stuck on Lara’s lip. She stared as Lara’s tongue flickered out, as if in slow motion, across Lara’s glistening lips to swipe the cream into her mouth. Then she looked away, back towards the ocean, because there was no reason for her to be staring at her friend’s lips like that.
“This is good!”
“Mmm.”
“Though I guess most of the work is making the dough and baking it. That’s the hard part, the part that actually takes skill. All I did was run a big electric mixer for the right amount of time.”
Mari watched a small boat crossing the middle of the lake, towards the island in the middle.
“…but you did it right. It tastes really good. That’s enough to be proud of.”
She kept her gaze trained forwards, but she felt the warmth of Lara’s gaze on her face like a sunbeam. A couple second of silence passed. Then she heard Lara respond in a quiet voice.
“Thank you, Mari.”
Mari looked back to see Lara looking at her with a smile that was, well, she wasn’t sure exactly how to describe it.
Fond, perhaps.
Whatever you wanted to call it, it was an expression that made her chest fill right up with that warmth that was becoming familiar to her. The warmth that often threatened to subsume her in these long evening moments when it was just her and Lara.
“…come on. Dinner’s probably been served already. Finish your danish and let’s go home.”
“Okay!”
It didn’t take long for Lara to finish her pastry. All the while, Mari stared out at Lake Biwa and thought about why her chest felt so warm. It was a pleasant warmth, but she hoped she wasn’t coming down with the flu or something.
Out of the corner of her eye, she at last saw Lara shove the last bite of food into her mouth, and brush her hands free of crumbs. Then Mari sighed, stood up, and stretched her arms out above her head.
She held the stretch for a couple seconds, then from her side she heard the click of a camera. Mari’s head spun around towards Lara with a frown, to see her holding the little green camera her father had given her.
“Hey. Don’t take pictures of people without their permission.”
Lara laughed. “Sorry! It just looked so pretty, with the sunset behind you!”
Mari looked back down at Lara. Anyone could look pretty with a sunset backdrop, but Lara was always gorgeous.
She reached out her hand towards Lara. "Let's go."
Lara took her hand. It was warm.
She pulled Lara to her feet, and they turned back to the street, and they walked the whole way home.
Mari was not a prince.
That much she knew for sure.
She didn’t come from a rich or noble family.
She wasn’t the slightest bit charming or chivalrous.
She didn’t dress nicely.
And, most importantly, even with her hair cut short there was no way anyone was going to mistake her for a man.
Lara was searching for her prince, and Mari was not a prince.
And that was fine.
She wanted Lara to be happy.
She wanted Lara to find true love.
And to make that happen, Lara needed to find a prince. And she’d found one already, which was great.
“You two seem pretty good together.”
Luca had all the characteristics of a prince. He was handsome and charming, according to the other girls in the boxing club whose opinions she’d requested. He was a man.
Those seemed to be the essential elements.
(There is not a single person on the planet to whom Mari would admit this secret, but she once took a selfie with an app on her phone that would transform the photo into a male version of her face, to see if she might be handsome and charming. She hated the result.)
She’d never really gotten the appeal of the “prince” type. Boys in general had never really been her thing. But Lara seemed to love princes.
From the beginning, Lara was looking for her prince. Lara loved talking about love, and love was finding her prince. Lara loved the princes on TV.
And now she had her prince, and he had flowing blonde hair, and she was going to fall in love with him.
This was all fine with Mari.
She was happy for Lara.
Well, maybe not quite entirely happy, there was always a little pit in the bottom of her stomach when Mari talked about Luca, but that was something she could ignore.
Because she really did want Lara to find her true love.
She wanted Lara to find her prince. She really had.
Whatever emotions kept circling around in her own chest were irrelevant, because she was not a prince, and she therefore had nothing to do with the whole thing. All she could do was cheer Lara on as her friend, and she intended to do that.
She was fine with this.
She had been fine with this.
Then she found out that Lara was going to die.
22nd National Junior Boxing Championship Women’s Champion Otsu Mari.
Every time she walked into her room, the trophy was there. She hadn’t gotten used to its presence on her shelf yet, it still gave her a little thrill of pride every time she noticed it.
She’d won.
And below it, a photo of her and Lara. A trophy as well. A very different feeling in her chest.
“You look at that photo a lot.”
Mari shrugged. “Yeah.”
Gon-chan drifted slowly in the tank, her eyes lazily following Mari. “You look at it more than you look at the actual trophy.”
“It’s a good photo.”
“…”
“Gon-chan?”
“What?”
She looked away from the photo, and fixed her eyes on Gon-chan in the fish tank. “Do you really think that Luca is Lara’s true love?”
“…do you not think he is?”
“I don’t think he is.”
“She said she felt a spark with him.”
“Yes, but—“ With a grimace, she turned away. The futon on the floor was lying where it always was. Her stuffed fish sat on the edge of her bed, and she leaned over to give it an affectionate pat. “It just seems…like she’s forcing herself.”
“…”
“She doesn’t want to die. I don’t want her to die. So of course she needs to…try. With Luca. Because he might be her prince.”
“What if he isn’t?”
“Don’t say that.”
Mari picked up the stuffed fish and hugged it.
“…”
“I hate it when she talks about him.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
“…”
“I hate the look in her eyes when she says she thinks he might be her true love. I’m not sure if she really even believes it herself.”
“You think she’s pretending to like him?”
“No. She wouldn’t pretend. She does like him, just…shouldn’t she look more happy when she’s talking about him? If he were her true love? Shouldn’t she be smiling? She just looks worried.”
“She could die. It’s normal to be worried about that.”
“But…I’ve seen her look so happy. When she’s helping with the cakes at work. When we’re watching movies together. When we’re eating some new food she likes. When I won the tournament. I know that she can smile, her smile is beautiful, it lights up the room, and she smiles sometimes when she talks about Luca but it’s not quite…”
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
Mari buried her face in her stuffed fish. “…I don’t know.”
“…”
“…I don’t want her to die.” The words barely came out. Her throat was too tight. “I really really don’t want her to die.”
“…”
“But there’s nothing I can do. She has to force herself to fall in love with Luca, and if she doesn’t she dies. I hate it. I HATE it. I just want to see her smile properly, but not if it means she might die. I can’t do anything. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do if it meant I could save her, but what can I do. She has to fall in love with Luca. There’s no time to find someone else. So it has to be Luca and I hate it, but seeing her with Luca is better than losing her.”
Mari took a deep breath. She kept her face buried in her fish, not wanting Gon-chan to see the tears on her face.
Though Gon-chan probably knew she was crying anyway.
“Mari…”
“I just want her to stay here. I want her to keep sleeping in this room.”
“Mari.”
“I want her to bake me a cake.”
“Mari—“
Whatever Gon-chan was going to say was cut off by the sound of Mari’s phone vibrating. She dropped the stuffed fish and picked up her phone to see Lara’s name on the screen.
“Lara?”
“Mari! I was just hanging out with Himeka and she showed me something incredible!”
“What is it?”
“She was telling me about a date she went on with her new boyfriend and they had these dessert wrap things with cream and chocolate and strawberries, I think they’re called ‘crepes’? They look really delicious! I want to try them, can we go try them together?”
“…okay. Lets go try crepes tomorrow, together. I think…you’ll like them.”
“Yes! I’m going to be home soon! I’ll see you in a bit!”
“I’ll be waiting for you.”
The call ended.
Mari held the phone in her hand, to her ear, for a couple seconds more, unmoving.
Then, slowly, she lowered her arm, relaxed her fingers, and left the phone fall to the ground with a thud.
She grabbed the stuffed fish again and sunk her face back into it.
There was nothing that Mari would love to do more than to go get crepes with Lara. But as fun and wonderful as that sounded, there was still a pit at the bottom of her stomach.
“…shouldn’t you be calling Luca for something like that?”