They Prefer The Terms Inuit, Yupik and Aleut, Actually
Yokai Academy Student Festival
Late in the day
Even the longest and most painful lecture has to come to an end sometime, when the points have been reiterated often enough that the weary lecturer is convinced that they've been driven home to the still-more-weary lecturee. Right at the moment, the two exceedingly weary lecturees were slumped at a table nearby, while their lecturers, not nearly so weary, were seated at a different one, watching them.
"Do you think we should tell them?" Kurono Ageha asked, seemingly out of nowhere.
Shirayuki Tsurara considered this as she sucked on her lollipop. At length, she shook her head. "I don't think it would really make either of them happy. Certainly not Mizore, but probably not your girl either."
"I'm not so sure," Ageha mused. "That girl ... she's so much more innocent than I was, and so much more lonely, too -"
"Innocent here meaning hadn't worked her way through the boys of her middle school class," Tsurara observed as dryly as dry ice.
Ageha simply glared.
"Speaking for myself, I'm happy that my girl is not nearly as shy as I was at that age," Tsurara continued.
"Not as shy here meaning she actually talked to the boy she was stalking before trying to jump his bones, instead of it coming as a wonderful surprise," Ageha riposted with a rapier-thin smile.
Tsurara shrugged.
The smile on Ageha's face faded, giving her a much more melancholy look when she spoke again. "How is he, by the way?"
Tsurara blinked, and actually removed the lolipop from her mouth when she finally replied. "He ... he died. A long time ago."
"What?" asked Ageha, gaping.
"I honestly thought you knew."
"But ... but I heard you were married, and -"
"Afterwards, I married an old friend of ours, one of a family of Yeti who shared the region with our clan," Tsurara explained, still surprised. "I think Mizore thinks he's her father. She doesn't remember him."
"... what ... what was it?"
"Cancer. When she was a year old."
Ageha struggled to absorb it. "By Malcanthet herself, I swear I did not know," she said quietly. "So then, even if ..." She fell silent, then shook her head. "You're right," she said, after another moment. "It's better they don't know."
"I think so," Tsurara said. Her lips quirked up in a faint smile. "It's funny to watch them fighting over a guy, though, isn't it? Just like their moms."
"Maybe it runs in the family," Ageha mused. "Maybe our moms even -"
"Tengri, I hope not," Tsurara said, mock-angrily. "It's hard enough knowing that you're my eskimo sister, I'd hate the thought of us as actual sisters ..."
They laughed then, quietly, the shared laughter that belongs only to those who've known joy and grief together. Eventually, their daughters regained enough animation to offer to show them more of the festival, and they moved on.