A/N: Even though it may not seem like it in this chapter, this is absolutely a Sachiko/Yumi story. I ship them quite hard. I'm not sure what other pairings might or might not appear in this work, so stay tuned.
A couple short months before Sachiko's final year at Lillian's Academy, Suguru did the absolute unexpected and cancelled their engagement. It came as quite a shock to Sachiko, who had braced herself for their inevitable marriage for years, knowing that she would always feel more strongly for him than he did for her. This breakup technically meant that Sachiko was free, but she couldn't help but feel dejected. Now that she knew for sure that they would never marry, she knew she had to let go of her last bit of hope that Suguru would eventually grow to love her. She knew that was a hope she would have needed to get over sooner or later anyway, and it was probably better to lose him under these circumstances than to have him on paper but never in reality.
Thanks to her parents' plan to simply marry her off the moment she finished high school, Sachiko had no idea what she was going to do without Suguru. For the first time in her life, Sachiko found herself in need of a real plan. His timing was absolutely terrible; he had to wait until all of the most prestigious academies in Japan stopped accepting applications. Thankfully, she found out that Lillian University was still accepting applications. After praying every day for a good five years, Sachiko finally knew that Maria-sama had heard her. Sachiko was going to college.
Filling out the application felt bold and daring, much like eating fast food and wearing jeans with Yumi. Sometimes it felt like choosing Yumi as her petite soeur had changed literally everything about her life. Nothing had been the same since the pigtailed underclassman entered her life.
Yumi expressed her condolences after she heard about Suguru, but Sachiko insisted that everyone remain positive around her. Graduation was coming up, and she had four more years of school to look forward to. As the student council prepared celebrations, Sachiko chatted casually with a few other students who planned to attend Lillian University. It was supposed to be an excellent school, even if it did not have the far-reaching reputation of its related high school.
Sachiko's parents sat her down on her last night before move-in date at Lillian University. The fact that they were in the same room together and her father wasn't off with his mistress meant that something serious was up.
"We wanted to talk to you about your prospects," her father said with a serious affect. "We have decided that you may pursue potential suitors on your own, but in the end, we will have to approve any man that you choose. Does that sound fair?"
It was a better arrangement than her last one, but Sachiko didn't feel entirely comfortable with it. Suguru was the only man she had ever felt any attraction to. The rest of her experiences to attraction happened at Lillian's, where no men were even allowed. She had never quite admitted this to herself much less to anyone else, but Sachiko was beginning to wonder if Suguru was actually a fluke and her sexual interests leaned mostly toward women. If that was the case, she would be in a lot of trouble once her parents found out. This was why she needed to do her best to find a man she could handle the thought of being with.
A few weeks into her first year, there was a formal dance that was open to Lillian University students and students from a local men's college. Yumi teased Sachiko over the phone and begged for details about the dress Sachiko would wear, the hairstyle Sachiko would choose, and so forth. Again and again, Yumi encouraged Sachiko not to be afraid of men. They were just people, like everyone else. Sachiko wasn't ready to tell Yumi that men being people didn't make them exciting all by itself.
She forced herself to dance with a few different men, each a worse dancer than the last. During each dance, she remembered the waltz she did with Yumi before the school's production of Cinderella. It had been so easy with Yumi, not just because Yumi was a girl, but because she was Yumi. If only she could feel that way with one of these guys.
Halfway through the exhausting party, another figure in a suit and tie approached her. Before she could groan, she looked up and saw that it was Sei.
"Sei-senpai!" Sachiko said warmly. Sei happily threw her arms around her high school classmate.
"May I have this dance?" Sei asked her.
Sachiko figured it wouldn't look that weird for her to dance with a girl, at least for a little while. She had danced with more than enough boys this evening to balance things out. "Sure," she said.
"I had no idea that you went here," Sei said enthusiastically. "I thought you weren't going to college."
"My engagement was broken off right before I graduated," Sachiko explained. "My parents had no choice."
"Are you okay?" Sei asked.
"I'm fine," Sachiko said, trying her best to sound like she meant it. "Great, really."
"Any new boys in your life since then?" Sei asked.
"No. Any new…girls in yours?"
"No one serious," Sei responded. "I got out of a serious relationship last year, so now I'm playing the field."
The two spent a bit more time with informal chit-chat about what dorms they were living in, what they thought of the cafeteria food, what courses they were taking, and which professors were unbearable.
It was several weeks before Sei crossed Sachiko's mind again. It was a cloudy morning when Sachiko was tempted to take her umbrella with her to class, just in case it started to rain. As she walked across campus to her first course of the day, she thought over her predicament. The only dance that had felt even close to natural was the one she had with Sei. It wasn't quite as natural as dancing with Yumi, but it had been nice nonetheless. Why did everything seem so much easier with girls? She did like men, didn't she? It was difficult for her to say. She had only experienced one kiss in her entire life, a single slightly-drunken peck on the lips from her ex-fiancé at one of her family's New Year's Eve celebrations.
Even still, she knew that she enjoyed dancing with Yumi and with Sei. She knew that she found women physically attractive, and she knew that the idea of being coupled with most men made her feel ill. She had always told people that she hated men because a man broke her heart, but as she made her way into the dark, empty classroom that she was half an hour early for, she wondered if that was really the reason.
After turning on the light, she sat down and opened a book so she could pretend to be reading instead of brooding over her orientation. Sure, the men last night were bad dancers, but she didn't hate them. What she felt around most men wasn't hatred. It was fear. How could a girl feel anything but fear around a gender that seemed to control every aspect of her life, just by default? Setting her book down for a moment, she tried to imagine a world in which they didn't. In it, her mother was the head of the household, always running off on romantic escapades with younger men while her father stayed home and masked his loneliness with piano playing and dinner parties. Would she fear men in that world? She realized that she definitely would not. Would she hate them? If she didn't fear them, then she wouldn't hate them either.
Would she love them?
That question was more difficult to answer. She wrestled with it for the rest of the day, in spite of her best efforts to stay focused on her coursework. She kept on imagining more and more intricate details of her reversed fantasy world. In it, she would have been the one to break up with Suguru, not the other way around. Once she had broken up with him, what kind of a person would she target next? A nice man like Yumi's brother? Yumi herself?
The questions were making Sachiko dizzy. When classes were over, she found her feet traveling toward the third year dorm, looking for Sei. It didn't take long to find her, seeing as everyone seemed to know Sei. It figured. She was a hard person to miss.
Sei laughed, but her expression quickly sobered when she saw Sachiko's expression. "Are you okay? Do you want to come in?"
Nodding, Sachiko followed her friend into her dorm room. Like Sachiko, Sei had a single this year. Hers was a bit more spacious and more recently built than Sachiko's was, but the layouts were similar. They both had beds against their right wall and desks against their left. There was nothing particularly identifying about Sei's room except for a few photos of herself with friends. "I actually came to talk to you about something," Sachiko said.
"Have a seat," Sei said, motioning toward the room's only chair. Sachiko sat down, and Sei sat across from her on the bed.
"I don't want to burden you," Sachiko said quickly. "I hope I'm not intruding or anything."
Sei's posture didn't look too burdened. She sat comfortably with her legs crossed and her hands in her lap. "It's no trouble at all," she said. "What can I do for you?"
Before Sachiko even knew what she was saying, the words came out. "I think I might be…like you."
Sachiko heard her older classmate giggle. "You mean a confident, intelligent young woman with style? Of course you are."
"That's…that's not what I mean," Sachiko said, squeezing her knuckles tightly.
"I see," Sei said. "So we have something else in common. Whatever could it be?"
Sachiko could tell her friend was playing dumb to make Sachiko say what this was really about. "I think…I'd rather fall in love with a woman than with a man," she said quietly. It was a new thing to actually say out loud. So far, Sei was the only person who knew.
"I can't really say I'm surprised, Sachiko-san," Sei said gently. "It was always pretty obvious to me at Lillian's Academy. Have you told Yumi yet?"
Yumi was finishing her final year at Lillian's Academy. She had her work cut out for her with coursework and with her student council duties. "Why Yumi?" Sachiko asked.
"Because you're in love with her," Sei said matter-of-factly.
Somehow, the dots had not connected for Sachiko yet. "You think I'm in love with Yumi?"
"Well she is pretty cute," Sei said, just to watch Sachiko's cheeks redden with anger. "When I first saw you two together, I noticed the way the two of you looked at each other. I wanted to find out if the two of you felt something more than friendship, so I flirted with Yumi in front of you a little. You should've seen your face!"
"She was my little sister," Sachiko objected. "Of course I was upset."
"Not yet, she wasn't," Sei said. "You pursued her, even when she didn't seem to want you as her onee-sama. You had to have Yumi because she was the only one for you."
"Stop making speculations," Sachiko said. "Yumi and I are literally like sisters."
Sei giggled. "Not like sisters. Like Lillian's soeurs. Honestly, the whole thing always seemed a little weird to me."
Sachiko took a little offense at her school's sacred tradition being referred to as "weird." "Then why did you participate?" Sachiko asked.
"I was lonely," Sei said. "So was Shimako. I never had any expectations for us to go anywhere, but we had our moments in my last year."
Once again, Sachiko found herself surprised. "You and Shimako?"
Sei nodded. "She's bisexual, and she knows she'll be expected to marry a man someday, so we didn't go very far. Still, it kept both of us from feeling depressed for a while. I think she's at least found some new friends now, so I don't have to worry about her too much."
"How about you?" Sachiko asked. "Any new…friends?"
"I dated my first-year roommate for a while, but we broke up near the end of last year."
"I'm sorry," Sachiko said.
"Eh, it's okay," Sei said with her typical carefree smile. "We weren't meant to be. That does mean I'm single now. If you ever want to explore with someone, I'm happy to teach."
Sachiko's heart jumped at her friend's boldness. "Sei!"
"What?" Sei asked casually. "It was only a suggestion. I think you're hot, and I wouldn't mind spending some time with you. That's all."
Although they had shared student council duty for two years, Sachiko had never thought about Sei-senpai in a sexual way, however much the older girl insisted on flirting with and teasing nearly everybody. There was no romantic tension between the two of them, which meant that it might be possible to have a no-strings-attached encounter. Sachiko felt a throbbing between her legs, indicating that her body was a lot more okay with Sei's suggestion than her brain was. Still, Sachiko had only just admitted to herself that she liked women today. Having sex later this evening seemed like a bit of a rush for Sachiko, who liked to carefully plan things over and think things through.
"Maybe not now. Um…thank you."
It was the strangest thing Sachiko had ever thanked a person for. If Sei had made the same advances even one year ago, Sachiko would have rebuffed her much more harshly. Now, Sachiko wasn't even sure that sleeping with Sei was the wrong thing to do. If it was wrong, it was because Sachiko hoped for her first time to be special, not because Sei was a woman. That part was feeling more right every day, and that terrified Sachiko.
As the year progressed, Sachiko started to have panic attacks. At first, they were fairly minor. She could excuse herself and go to the restroom until they passed. By midterms, they were so bad that she could barely breathe when they hit. She would hyperventilate, lose her breath, and feel as if she was literally dying. Eventually, a professor noticed and sent her to the wellness center to have her vitals taken. Sachiko agreed to go between panted breaths, but she headed in a different direction instead. She headed to see Sei.