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Gura is lost.
No matter how many times she turns her map upside down and right side up, she can't find her dorm. She's supposed to have a guide. She's not familiar with this town and she has no one to rely on but the staff the school was supplying her with. They’d given her a location. All she had to do was step off her train and wait at the station until her shuttle picked her up and her guide could tell her all about this new, unfamiliar place.
The shuttle never came.
Gura grips her backpack strap and marches on. She’d waited a whole hour with no help arriving. She’s burning daylight. Her calls were unanswered and her stomach unfilled. She was going to get food dammit and find a bed to sleep in before dark. She had school starting in a day and she’d be damned if she traveled all the way here to miss her first class because she was asleep in an alleyway.
Gura shivers. Not happening.
Her first priority is food. She can already tell that’s not happening as the path she walks turns to dirt and the trees around her turn a pastel pink. She squints ahead of her at the park. Benches were arranged along the path and she could see someone walking their dog. Not abandoned, that was good. She kicks her feet, debating between exploring and finding food.
Ask someone. She decides. There’s gotta be someone at the park.
The trees are pretty. It’s a nice distraction from the falling sun and her growling stomach. Blossom petals float past her nose. She catches one in the air, rubbing it between her fingers. She likes the softness of it. She hears the sound of a camera shutter and looks up.
A girl is leaning against one of the benches. There’s a lollipop in her mouth, her blonde hair tied into a side ponytail. Blue eyes are watching her mischievously from over her phone.
Gura blinks, “Did you just take a picture of me?”
Wordlessly, the girl turns her phone to face her. Gura cautiously peers at the picture. There’s a filter placed over it. She can see herself grabbing the blossom. Her expression is awed, but on top of her head are two cat ears. It looks ridiculous and hysterical.
“Sorry.” The girl is shyly taking her phone back. She’s still smiling. “You had a face that was…” She trails off, her hand reaching up to fiddle with her bangs, “Nevermind, that’s weird.”
“Uh, kinda.” Gura leans back on her heels. The stranger doesn’t look intimidating at all when she’s fidgeting like that. “I actually have a question.”
“I’ll delete the photo.” The girl is saying.
“No, not that, pfft, whatever.” Gura waves her hand. She pauses and then mutters, “Actually, what filter is that on?”
The girl perks up, “It’s on this app. Here, lemme show you.”
Blonde hair brushes her shoulder as the girl instructs her to download some video app. Gura hums and listens, but she’s distracted by the way their shoulders touch. Her eyes are seriously blue. It reminds Gura of sunset beaches. Pretty, she thinks. The thought is wild to have of someone she just met and she has to turn her head to hide her blush. The girl pauses in her rant.
“Sorry, this is weird.” The girl mutters, cautiously stepping back. “You probably think I’m a lunatic.”
Gura exhales heavily through her nose. She mumbles, “Tell me how to put cat ears on people and we’re even.”
The girl laughs, “What?”
“You heard me. C’mon, weirdo, if you’re gonna put cat ears on cute girls then at least put some on yourself.”
“You callin’ me cute?”
Gura fumbles with her phone. She almost drops it to the ground. She hurriedly belts out, “No way, you’re a menace.” She realizes what she just said and her voice jumps up four octaves, “Wait, I didn’t mean that.”
The girl is giggling. Gura falters, her face warm and her heart in her ears. She takes a sloppy picture of the girl in retaliation. The app even gives her different types of animal ears. The entire time she browses, the girl is watching her in amusement.
“There.” Gura smugly presents her picture. It’s her mystery blonde giggling, her eyes closed and her head crowned with a pair of dog ears. “I win.”
The girl feigns surprise, “Woah, how’d you get a picture of a rat?”
“Oi, you-!”
Her stomach growls. Gura’s ire dies in an instant. The girl is looking at her with wide eyes. Gura wants to crawl into the dirt and never be found.
“Actually.” Gura whispers out in one strained breath, “Can you tell me where I can grab a bite to eat?”
“Uh, yeah.” The blonde jabs a thumb over her shoulder, “My granddad makes pizza-”
“Oh my god, I’m marrying your grandpa.”
“What the heck.” The girl laughs, “Maybe I should leave you here, weirdo.”
Gura claps her hands under her chin. She gives her biggest eyes and her best pout, “I’m new. Have mercy.”
“Give me a name first and I’ll consider it.”
“Gura.” She offers her hand.
The girl takes it, her fingers threading with Gura’s, “Amelia. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but it’s gonna be real awkward if you’re flirting with my-”
“Oh shut up.” Gura gripes. “Show pizza or give me an open grave.”
Amelia laughs.
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Gura floats into the pizzeria. The heavenly smell of toasty five cheese deliciousness and hot pepperoni is practically lifting her off the floor. She hangs in the doorway for a moment and grips the doorframe like she’s dying.
Amelia smiles in amusement, “You’re blocking the door.”
“Let me have this.” Gura whispers, tilting her head back dramatically, “I need this.”
“Oh my god, c’mon.”
Amelia grabs her hand. Gura lets herself be dragged inside, her skin prickling where Amelia’s fingers touch. She’s too distracted that she almost runs into Amelia’s back when the blonde abruptly stops.
“Oh hey.” Amelia’s saying but it’s to someone else, “Did you just stop by?”
“Yeah, sorry.” A voice pipes up. “I was looking for you.”
Gura peeks over Amelia’s shoulder. Sitting at one of the tables of the pizzeria is a girl with long midnight hair. She has a backpack in her lap, her arms folded over it shyly. She’s brushing her bangs behind her ear. She looks adorable.
Amelia hums, “Sorry Ina, I picked someone up.”
Ina looks up in surprise, “Someone-?” She blinks as her gaze meets Gura’s. Gura is startled by the blue of her eyes. It’s different from Amelia’s. Darker and mysterious. “Oh, hello.”
“Hi.” Gura greets. “I’m here for pizza.”
Ina smiles, “You’re in the spot for it.” Her gaze travels down to their joined hands. Her smile falters. Gura feels goosebumps on her arm and wiggles her hand free. Amelia doesn’t notice.
“I’ll go get some food.” Amelia chirps, shoving Gura towards the table, “Ina, this is Gura. She’s new to town.”
Gura almost misses her chair and barely manages to save herself from falling to the floor. She grabs the table, but her phone goes flying from her hand and knocks out the napkin holder.
“Uh,” Ina says.
Amelia claps her hands as she walks backward away from them, “Great! I’ll be right back!”
Ina watches her go. When she looks back at Gura, she’s smiling helplessly, “Need help?”
Gura’s face is burning as she situates herself in her chair, “Yeah. My phone.”
“Here.”
When Ina grabs her phone, her expression changes. There’s a brief moment where her brow furrows. When she slides it over to Gura, she says softly, “You just met Ame?”
“Uh, yeah.” Gura glances at her phone. It was still displaying that picture she took of the blonde. “She’s a wild and crazy time.”
Ina is rubbing her arm, “Oh. Yeah.” She mutters something Gura doesn’t catch. It’s started to unsettle Gura. She drums her fingers on the table. The awkward silence between them is rattling her nerves.
“So uh!” She starts too loudly and winces, “Uh, you go to school?”
“The academy,” Ina confirms.
Gura almost sobs in relief. A conversation hook! “Hey, that’s where I’m transferring.”
Gura was hoping for a gasp and a smile, like the one she gave her earlier. They’d start talking about the school and Ina would promise to be her guide or something. Instead, Ina looks down towards her lap and mumbles, “Oh.”
Gura wants to grip her head and scream. What am I doing wrong?!
“Uh, how about you?” Gura asks. “How long have you known… Ame?”
Ina purses her lips, “Since childhood.”
“Oh.”
The weird tension is cut by a pizza box planting itself on the table. Amelia places her hands on her hips, looking smug about it.
“Fresh outta the oven. I know the cooks and they give me freebies. Dig in!” She pauses as she takes them in, “Something wrong?”
“No,” Gura says at the same time as Ina. They look at each other. Gura cannot tell what Ina’s eyes are conveying. She doesn’t know if she likes it, “Uh. Thanks for the pizza.”
Amelia glances between them. Her eyes glint when she says, “Anything for a new friend.”
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This is where it starts.
Gura’s first day is her messing up her dorm room beyond recognition because she can’t find her damn skirt to this stiff academy uniform. She might have shoved a few students down in her dash for class, but she made it in time. She also made a colossal fool of herself by ramming her nose into the door going at a near sprint. Her new classmates got a kick out of that.
One of those who were laughing at her was Amelia. She doesn’t know whether to be grateful or not. On one hand, a friendly face. On the other hand, Ina wasn’t a friendly face. Well, Gura was happy to see her. Her face was impassive from beside Amelia’s.
“C’mon, we can make room.” Amelia pats their bench. “How’s your first day going?”
Gura awkwardly has to shuffle her way along the bench. She’s surprised Ina makes room for her. She sits down beside her, hugging her bag to herself. She’s unsure of what Ina thinks of her when the girl hasn’t even greeted her.
“It’s going okay.” Gura answers. She has to lean forward to see Amelia. “This place is pretty big.”
“You get used to it.” Amelia yawns into her hand. Gura’s heart does a flip flop over the way she leans into her palm, half awake and making sleepy noises. “Sleep okay?”
“Uh.” Gura exhales. “Yeah. You?”
“Eh. Ina woke me up.”
Ina’s voice is quiet, “You kept kicking me in your sleep.”
Gura paused. Her brain is running loops around that. She can barely hear Amelia grumbling back to Ina about their sleeping arrangements. What? Gura drills holes into their desk. Sleeping together? Did they push their beds together or something? Are they…?
Ina’s voice is much more lively in her ear as she says, “Ame just wanted to skip.”
Gura looks over at the blonde. Amelia shrugs in a what-can-you-do kinda manner. It makes Gura smile, “I’d be in hot water if I skipped the first day.”
“But it got your attention.” Amelia shoots her finger guns.
Gura giggles. Ina looks at her suddenly, her expression different from before. It makes Gura’s heart tremble and she has to turn her gaze back to their desk. She can feel Ina looking at her. It doesn’t feel unfriendly, but she has no idea what to make of it.
Lesson learned. Gura frowns. Don’t put cat ears on cute girls.
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The afternoon is theirs. Gura is half expecting to be abandoned and is pleasantly surprised when Amelia invites her to join them on the roof. Them, because Ina is there. Gura doesn’t know how to feel about that. She would like to have an idea of what the other girl thought of her.
And then Amelia goes, “Woah, whoops, my bad, I forgot my books.”
Ina’s eyes go wide, “But we don’t have books?”
Amelia is already walking away, “What? I said my books. You guys go on without me!”
Gura holds back the whiny noise in her throat. She glances at Ina. Ina glances at her. The awkward tension between them is stifling.
Ina is the one who whispers, “...to the roof then.”
“Yeah.” Gura chokes out. “Roof.”
Gura feels like she’s on a cramped airplane. There’s no one beside her because Ina is sitting a full five feet away from her but she feels like her shoulders are being crushed together. Her heart is hammering in her ears and her palms are sweaty. Ina hasn’t looked up at her and is helping herself to a soda.
“What do you guys usually do for fun around here?” Gura asks. It feels like she dumped a bunch of nails on the floor with how loud her voice felt.
Ina mumbles, “We makeout.”
Gura loses all the air in the lungs, “Huh?”
Ina’s face is going red. She’s trying to hide it behind her bangs as she says, “Uh, it was a joke, never mind.”
“That was a joke?!” Gura pauses, “Wait, are you two dating? Like for real?”
Ina’s face falls into her hands, “I’d like to be!”
“You aren’t?!”
“Well, what about you?” Ina whirls on her, “I’ve seen your face!”
Gura makes a strangled noise, “My face? The heck is wrong with my face?”
“You’ve been making soft eyes at Ame all day!” Ina squeaks, head ducking behind her knees, “This is embarrassing!”
Gura can barely form a coherent come back to that. Soft eyes? I’m making eyes? What? Gura covers her mouth with her hand. Her face feels way too hot. It doesn’t help that Ina is making cute sad noises into her hiding spot.
“Well, uh,” Gura taps her fingers on the ground. The search for a good answer ends up with her saying, “Uh, she has two hands?”
Ina looks at her like she just threatened to throw her off the edge. Gura backtracks, all but yelping, “Joke! That was a joke!”
“You only just met her,” Ina says. “Do you really have a crush on her?”
Gura throws her arms around her head. Her sleeves block everything including the expression Ina is giving her. It doesn’t cover any images of her head of a blossom-filled park and the pink in Amelia’s eyes. She groans, “Listen! She’s cute, okay, I think the same about you!”
There’s the sound of Ina spitting out her soda, “Huh?!”
“It’s not a big deal!” Gura scrambles to her feet. Ina is looking up at her in awe and a bit of horror. It has Gura pacing, “When a cute girl invites you to get pizza, it’s game over. When her cute friend is there? Stop making that face I’m right!”
Ina sets her soda aside. She looks pained, “I haven’t been nice to you at all.”
Gura stops at that, “Wait, you’ve been intentionally mean? I thought you were shy.”
“Kinda.” Ina wilts, her arms wrapping around her knees and bringing them closer to her like a security blanket. “I just...got a little jealous.”
Gura remembers the pizzeria. Ina’s face when she picked up her phone. She’s fishing the said phone out of her pocket. She’d set her lock screen to the picture. She looks at Ina who is pouting down at the rooftop, her face flushed from embarrassment and her arms hooked around her knees. It’s cute. Gura isn’t thinking at all when she takes a picture.
Ina’s head whips up to gawk at her, “Did you just-?!”
“I learned a pretty important lesson on my first day in town,” Gura announces. Her voice cracks in the middle and her bravado wavers. The dumb app was taking a while to load. “Uh, give me a second.”
The app saved previous images for her. The only image is of Amelia and her closed eye smile and little dog ears on her head. Gura’s hand hovers over the cat ears. Her gaze is drawn to something else.
“Okay, done.” Gura crouches down. She holds out her phone for Ina to look at.
Ina tentatively peeks at the picture. Her eyes go wide and her hand slaps over her mouth. It doesn’t stop the snort she gives, nor the giggles that follow. Gura preens, happy with the results.
“What are those?” Ina gasps out.
“No idea. The app calls them Takos.”
Ina is laughing now, “What? That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s the first rule of seeing a cute girl.” Gura recites. She can feel her face burning again as Ina looks at her. It’s an entirely different expression from before. It’s soft. “Throw some cat ears on her.”
“What?” Ina smiles helplessly. “Is that what Ame did?”
“Yup. I got her back. I think you saw this.” Gura is scrolling her phone over to the first picture. Ina’s smile wavers at the picture. Gura is starchly reminded of their earlier conversation. She squirms in her spot. “Listen, I just… I want to be your friend.”
“I’d like that too.” Ina whispers, “But we’re crushing on the same girl.”
Gura crosses her arms over her knees. She frowns at Ina’s shoes, her brain turning itself over and pretzeling itself over this problem. She can grasp why Ina was so cold to her now. She rubs her arm self consciously.
“Well, uh.” Gura can’t meet Ina’s gaze. “Does that make us rivals or something?”
“That’s really corny.”
“I know.”
Ina smiles weakly, “So what do we do?”
Gura doesn’t know. She bites her lip, unsure of what to say to fix the problem. She doesn’t get a word in before the rooftop door is being opened. Amelia pokes her head out.
“Hey.” She greets. “Having fun without me?”
“Oh yeah,” Gura squeaks out, “We were making out and everything.”
Ina chokes on air. Amelia stumbles, her face going red. Gura stares uncomprehendingly, her own words short-circuiting her brain.
Amelia pouts at them, “You didn’t wait for me?”
“Maybe I,” Gura has no idea what she’s doing. She’s stuttering and sitting down next to Ina, their shoulders touching. She can practically feel Ina’s confusion, “Maybe I like Ina more.”
“What? After I gave you a tour and everything?” Amelia is sitting down on Ina’s other side. Gura can see the dark-haired girl shrinking, her eyes wide and her face as red as a tomato. “Besides, Ina is mine.”
Ina chokes out, “Don’t I get a say?”
“Nope,” Gura says at the same time as Amelia. She can’t help but laugh. Amelia is grinning too. She looks like the cat that just got the canary. The whole situation feels absurd. “I was asking Ina what you guys do in your free time.”
“We makeout,” Amelia says.
Gura bursts into laughter, “Wait, I thought that was a joke!”
“Gura, shh!” Ina cries. She’s pawing at Gura’s shoulder. The touch sends electricity down Gura’s arm. She likes it. “We’re just joking.”
“We?” Amelia echoes. “Wait, I thought I was the clown. Ina, are you making jokes behind my back?”
“Ame!” Ina cries, burying her face in her arms. The reaction is adorable. Amelia is laughing and nudging Ina’s shoulder. Gura smiles, leaning back on her hands. The tension was being shaken off by the banter. She liked this Ina much more than cold Ina.
“Did you guys wanna go get pizza?” Amelia is asking, stretching her arms above her head. “The vending machine didn’t give me my money back.”
“So you’re gonna freeload off your granddad's stuff?”
“You bet.”
Gura snickers, “You had me at pizza. Let’s go.” She pauses and tentatively nudges Ina’s shoulder, “Ina? Up for pizza?”
Ina looks at her. Gura can feel the tremulous ground between them. She holds her hand out, her heart resting in her palm. Ina reaches out and takes her hand in her own, cupping her heart with tender fingers.
“Yeah.” Ina whispers, her eyes shining softly, “Let’s get pizza.”
I think I have a crush on more than just Amelia, Gura realizes. Ina doesn’t let go of her hand as they move to stand. Amelia leads the way, her hands behind her back as she chatters to them about something. Gura can barely hear her. She feels like there’s a train in her ears.
She whispers to Ina, “I owe you a soda.”
Ina smiles at her. Gura likes it as much as she did when she first saw it in the pizzeria. She wants to steal it for herself, but she turns away. Her face feels like fire. There’s a dumb grin on her face.
Ina squeezes her hand. It’s the smallest reassurance. It does wonders for Gura’s heart.
Lesson learned, Gura thinks, always put cat ears on cute girls.
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END