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“This is getting ridiculous,” Ena huffs, arms crossed over her chest. Koharu, bless her heart, is doing a pitiful mimicry of her stance next to her, going for intimidating and landing somewhere closer to adorable. “You two nearly let the target get away–for the third time in a row! Fight each other when there’s not a mission at stake.”
“Potato, puh-tah-toe,” Chiyo says, flipping her hand at her. “It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”
“No thanks to you,” Ena hisses and nods once at Koharu, who walks off to the corner of the room. “I didn’t want to resort to this but you leave me no choice. Koharu, if you will.”
The last thing Chiyo sees before her world goes dark is Ena’s scowling face behind her glasses. It feels like she’s being suffocated by a giant sheep until something finally tugs over her head and she can see light again. The first thing she notices is that Kanna is significantly closer than she was two seconds ago and Chiyo instinctively leans away. Unfortunately, the fabric of whatever Koharu threw over her head snaps her right back into place.
“This,” Ena says, gesturing at them. “Is the get-along sweater.” Chiyo glances down to see that the words “GET-ALONG SWEATER” are indeed stitched along the front in hot pink, along with a big ugly heart. “It comes off when you two learn to actually get along. You don’t want to know how much karma it cost me to get this so you better make it worth the investment. Goodbye.”
And with that, Koharu and Ena beeline for the exit. Chiyo’s heart starts thumping in her chest in panic while Kanna, completely indifferent to the whole shitshow unfolding in front of her, stares at the wall unfazed.
“Hey!” Chiyo hollers at their backs. “Where do you think you’re–” The door clicks shut behind them. “Going.”
Chiyo switches targets instead, turning to glare at Kanna and regretting it instantly when they bump foreheads in the process.
“Shouldn’t you be more freaked out about this?” she snaps. Kanna inspects the hand that’s poking out of the sweater, studying her nails in the light.
“Hm,” she says and Chiyo grinds her teeth together. She’s going to smack that nonchalant expression right off her face.
“Any ideas on how to get out of here?” she grits out and Kanna hums again.
“Hmm… oh, I got it!” Kanna says, snapping her fingers. “How about we try getting along?”
“When hell freezes over,” Chiyo snarls and Kanna smiles, lazy and slow. The sight makes Chiyo’s stomach burn.
“Now that’s not very angelic of you.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Chiyo huffs and walks away from her.
Unfortunately, the fact that they are literally stuck together hits her two seconds later when she’s thrown off-balance by the sweater and brings them both crashing to the ground.
“Want something to eat?” Kanna asks twenty minutes into their team torture.
“Is it gonna explode this time?” Chiyo snaps and Kanna smiles, her teeth flashing quickly.
“If I gave you a bomb like this, we’d both explode,” she points out and Chiyo glares at her for lack of a better comeback. “There’s onigiri in my bag, come on.”
“Where’s your bag?” Chiyo asks and Kanna points wordlessly at the corner of the room. Chiyo grimaces as the zipper seems to glint in the light, mocking her.
Twenty feet has never felt further in her fucking afterlife but somehow, with a lot of squabbling, squawking and tripping, they manage to make it to Kanna’s bag relatively unscathed. It’s a whole different ordeal trying to get the blasted thing open and by the time Kanna finally digs the onigiri out, Chiyo doesn’t give two fucks about stupid things like table manners. She tears into the plastic with her teeth, half-destroying the onigiri in the process, and she gets rice all over Ena’s stupidly expensive sweater out of spite.
Kanna stares at her in some mixture of amusement and horror, like she’s watching a wild animal feast and Chiyo feels heat curl in her gut in spite of herself.
“What?” she bites out and Kanna shrugs, having somehow maneuvered her onigiri seamlessly out of its plastic with one hand. Fuck her.
“Nothing,” she says and Chiyo continues devouring her onigiri.
“Hey,” Chiyo says when she’s picking the rice grains off her fingers. Kanna makes a slight hum that means go ahead and Chiyo hates how unbothered she is by this, by everything, her voice barely hitching in tone as she speaks like she doesn’t have a single care in the world. “You never told me why you picked up the whole mentor shtick.”
Kanna shrugs, rolling her shoulders.
“Just felt like it,” she says and Chiyo snaps her head to the side to glare at her. She remembers this time to lean back a little so they don’t collide head-on.
“Bullshit,” Chiyo says and Kanna blinks, slow and lazy at her. “What happened to the old Kanna that didn’t give a shit about anything?”
Kanna shrugs again and Chiyo wishes so bad that she had both her arms free so she could grab her and shake her by the shoulders.
“People change,” she says vaguely.
“Not you,” Chiyo bites out and Kanna turns to stare at her. And then–
And then Kanna has the audacity to start full-on laughing. Chiyo blinks at her because she’s never seen Kanna crack a smile wider than two inches, let alone have a full-bellied laugh like this. Chiyo feels like she’s being mocked somehow, shame coursing through her veins, and yet she can’t pinpoint the reasoning.
“So that’s what this is about,” Kanna says when she finally stops laughing long enough to take a breath. “I’m still planning on being a Cupid for a long, long time. Reincarnation still isn’t in the cards for me, I just wanted to try being a bit of a better role model for Koharu.”
Chiyo feels her face warm because that’s–that’s not what she meant. Kanna implies that she’s going to do something stupid like miss her in her absence.
“Shut up,” Chiyo snaps. “It would just be boring without someone’s ass to kick all the time.” Kanna offers her another lazy smile and Chiyo feels that same fire churn in her stomach.
“I’d miss you too.”