a/n: intentional manic pixie dream girl reina is a headcanon i hold near and dear to my heart and i somehow managed to write a 2k oneshot based solely on that and an aesthetic post on tumblr, which is a good metaphor for reina herself i think

The first thing that struck Kumiko was the sheer beauty of the ballroom. It was meant to host a dance - a dance that she had decided not to attend - but Reina had coyly invited her to meet up afterwards, and she didn't have any reason to decline. It hadn't seemed like much when Kumiko first saw it, not when the lights had been shut off and she had needed to more or less kick the door open, but she could hardly breathe when Reina, still dressed in her uniform from earlier that day, flicked on the lights.

"It's like a starry sky," Kumiko breathed. The entire room was cast in a pale purple glow, tiny lights strung along as the floor was coated in what looked to be plastic flower petals lit up by the room.

"I figured that it'd be best to do one last thing like this before . . . erm, before school lets out."

"W-what last thing?" Reina reached out a hand.

"There's nobody else here." Kumiko took it.

"What if someone finds us, though? A janitor, or something?"

"Let them." Reina's eyes flashed with some sort of daring edge that made Kumiko shiver. "I'll be gone by tomorrow, anyway."

"What?"

"It's not important." Reina seemed younger, somehow, in the light of the late-night auditorium-turned-ballroom, chairs kicked aside as she waltzed like she had been doing it all her life. Kumiko followed her steps the best she could, clumsily tripping over her own feet as Reina danced along the floor with such expertise.

"You're good at this," Kumiko breathed.

"My parents made me take classes when I was younger." Beads of sweat dripped down Reina's face, plastering her bangs to her forehead, but she didn't stop. "I suppose it's somewhat like riding a bike. You never quite forget."

"They said that it was a scandalous dance, back when it was first introduced." Kumiko's fingers were interlocked with Reina's, palms pressed up against each other, and she couldn't have been happier in that moment.

"R-really?" Reina nodded.

"I don't quite know how, but I suppose it would have been considered somewhat . . . intimate, hundreds of years ago." She twirled, still only allowing the smallest of smiles to cross her face. "It isn't anymore, but I doubt that the others would enjoy seeing us like this."

The others. Kumiko knew that she was talking about the rest of the band, the rest of the school, and perhaps her family. It wasn't a pleasant thought, not in the slightest, to imagine them all watching. The lighthearted dance music still played on from the old stereo in the corner of the room, a soft type of static, but it might as well have been the whispering wind outside, for how much Kumiko and Reina paid attention to it. They danced off-key, and Kumiko wondered if Reina was intentionally moving against the pop songs, slowing down when they sped up, speeding up when they slowed down, and soon she held a rhythm of her own, and Kumiko was mesmerized.

"I doubt that I'd mind if we stayed like this forever," Reina murmured, still stepping to the opposite of the song. Kumiko had grown too tired to do much more than bob back and forth in her spot, her mind buzzing, but she still managed to feel the weight of Reina's words in that purple-tinted ballroom.

"I wouldn't, either." Kumiko found herself leaning against Reina's shoulder as the song slowed, breathing in her scent of rosemary and brass. It was surely past midnight by now, but Kumiko couldn't be bothered to care.

"Still, there are things to be done. I'm not an idealistic person, Kumiko, I don't try to live in moments long past." There was a pause as Reina let her hair down from its ponytail. "This isn't the past, though, not yet, and the night hasn't quite ended."

"What, do you have some big plan to go and prank people who've wronged you?" Kumiko joked.

"No, not quite." Reina stepped back, shutting off the stereo. "Follow me." Kumiko shrugged and followed Reina out the door, through the school and finally to the smell of crisp night air. The town had long since gone to sleep, and Kumiko was fearful as Reina walked ahead.

"You're not, uh, worried about being out this late?"

"No." Reina's trumpet case - which Kumiko hadn't even seen her pick up - swung side to side while she walked. "If something does happen, I can just hit the person with this."

"Oh."

It was strange, the way the town felt at night. Kumiko thought that perhaps the feeling just came from the fact that she should be in bed at this point, but Reina surged ahead in such a way that felt positively surreal.

"Where're we going?" Kumiko asked. Reina, despite her talk of hitting people with her trumpet case, seemed uneasy.

"I'm not sure," Reina admitted.

"What?"

"I just told you, I'm not sure." Reina paused, her shoes scratched on the pavement. "I just needed to go somewhere . . . else, I suppose. Somewhere nobody else has been to before, at least not at a time like this."

"Reina?"

"Yes?"

"Are you, uh, are you bored?"

"What makes you wonder that?"

"You've been kinda restless all night."

"What are you trying to get at, Kumiko?"

I don't know how to get closer to you. "I don't know what you want." They were at the foot of a park, Kumiko idly noticed.

"I could say the same of you," Reina said, clutching the trumpet case close to her chest. "Even now, without a single person around but me, you still put on the good-girl skin, and I can't understand why."

"It's, uh, the middle of the night. I'm worried."

"That's not what I mean."

"Are you hiding something, Reina?" Reina turned on her heel to face Kumiko, her eyes nearly glinting as the moon cast a glow on her features.

"I don't want to waste the time we have left," Reina simply replied.

"Reina, please." Kumiko felt as if the very nerves in her body were leaving, hollowing her out until she was nothing more than a shell. "Why're you acting like this? D-did I mess something up? If I did, p-please tell me what it is. I want to fix it. Please."

"You didn't do anything." Kumiko thought back to the auditorium-turned-ballroom, the music that Reina had so aggressively danced against, and she wondered if Reina had some kind of plan, if this had all just been leading up to something she wanted to prolong as much as she could. "This is something that I've chosen to do myself." She walked forward a few steps, turning her back to Kumiko. "I simply wanted one more night like this."

"I'm scared, Reina."

"You shouldn't be."

"You haven't given me any reason not to be!" Kumiko hadn't noticed the way her knees were shaking until this moment. She felt weak, positively weak and vulnerable and all she could do was stand there as Reina kept on walking. "Is this . . . is this all s-some big scheme to break up with me?" The air felt thick and cold, now, and Kumiko shuddered.

"Why would you think that?"

"Answer me, Reina, p-please." A few droplets of rain fell from the clouds, weighing down the leaves of neighboring trees as Kumiko tried to catch up to Reina.

"Has it occurred to you that perhaps there is less to this night than you think?" Kumiko froze. "I'm not quite as much of a troubled soul as I pretend to be, at least not in the ways you'd often assume." Reina sat down on a grassy hillside, seeming to ignore the rain that was now coming down in sheets. "I'm not going to do anything reckless." Kumiko tentatively crouched beside her, trying to ignore the way her shoes squelched in the mud as Reina looked up at the cloud-covered moon.

"Why'd you invite me here, then?"

"I . . . my parents want us to move." The words hit Kumiko like a bomb thrown in her face - confusing, strange, and then painful beyond comprehension. "My father has some kind of a job offer in place, they said that I'll finish my education at a different school, the house is bought, it's all figured out." Reina wrapped her hand around Kumiko's clenched fist and slowly, gently, unclenched it, rubbing her thumb on Kumiko's palm. "I don't want that."

"You want me to run away with you," Kumiko breathed. Reina shook her head.

"I can't do that. They would catch me, it would be all too easy for them to figure that out. I want to stay here, in this town, at this school, with you."

"Reina, you c-can't-"

"I can." Kumiko thought back to the mountain for just a moment, her heart seized in the hands of Reina's all-encompassing beauty, the breath-stopping power of her words, and she understood. "I can dupe Taki-sensei easily enough, I have money saved for a small apartment, and I'll find a way to take classes without being seen."

"They'd f-find you, Reina, they'd probably figure it all out and then we'd never see each other again and-"

"Let them. I won't give them a reason to take me to some school where I won't learn, some instructor who won't understand." Kumiko looked down at the rain-drenched sidewalk. "I won't be able to become special, otherwise."

"You're delusional, Reina," Kumiko chuckled. "I'll try to help you, though. I want to help."

"It won't be easy. You could get in deep trouble with your family, you know. I wouldn't put you through that if-"

"I won't be able to stop you from doing this, right? I'll make sure that things go alright, even if this is a crazy plan that probably won't even, uh, work." Reina's lips quirked into a smile.

"You really are terrible, Kumiko." It hardly took a second before Reina's hands were buried in her hair and Kumiko tasted rosemary and nighttime on her lips, soft and caring and passionate, and she never wanted to let go.

several months later

It was part of the plan not to see each other, at least not often, and it was because of this that Kumiko found herself anxiously twiddling her thumbs in an old diner while watching the broken analog clock on the wall tick twenty minutes slow.

She said that she'd be here by now. Maybe her parents found her, maybe she didn't have time to tell me and now she's going to some town hundreds of miles away and I'll never see her again and-

"Hello?" Kumiko looked up. A figure wearing two pairs of sunglasses and a detective's cap stared down at her, sliding into the booth. Kumiko might as well have had the word relieved written on her forehead, for how plainly it was shown in her face.

"I was, uh, kinda worried," she admitted. Reina set down her trumpet case beside her, looking around the near-empty diner.

"I was running late," Reina replied.

"What's with the disguise, anyway? You, er, sorta look more suspicious that way."

"I saw it in a movie once, or at least something like it." Reina took off the sunglasses. "It worked well enough for the superheroes."

"Well, anyway, how have you been?"

"I've been managing." Kumiko noticed the uneasiness in Reina's expression, the way her eyes darted back and forth, and she wondered briefly if this really was the best option.

"Reina . . . c-couldn't you just call them and say you're fine? You're missing, you know."

"I'm well aware of that." There was a gauntness to Reina's face that wasn't often there, her hands paler than usual as her eyes stared dimly at the table, and Kumiko again felt the pang of wrongness in her gut. "They would drag me there, now, if they knew that I was deliberately rebelling against them."

"It's only been a few months," Kumiko said softly, resting her hand on top of Reina's. "You're really g-going to keep this up for two more years?"

"I have to."

"You have to what? Act like a ghost in your own hometown? Live here, alone, h-hiding from everyone? Look at you, Reina, you're exhausted!" A few of the people in the diner turned their heads. Kumiko was on the brink of tears. "You c-can't just . . . you can't just keep on going like this." Reina pulled the cap down further, and Kumiko wondered if she was trying to block her out, trying to pretend that she wasn't there.

"What do you expect me to do?" Reina murmured. "I can't go back, and according to you, I can't stay here. Where else should I go? I've spent most of my money on rent for the apartment, the landlord is very generous, and-"

"Run away with me," Kumiko breathed, the words tumbling from her mouth so quickly that she hardly had time to realize that she had said them.

"What?"

"That's what you wanted, r-right? The first time we were on that mountain, together, you said you wanted to take a train and travel. We could do that, Reina, we could go and we could . . . we could never look back."

"You would do that?" Kumiko wiped away the last of her tears, and through her blurry vision she could've sworn that she saw Reina stare in awe. Kumiko smiled.

"It's a confession of love, after all."

"We'll leave tonight. Nobody would be on the trains so late on a Wednesday."

"I'll tell my mom." Reina stiffened. "She'd understand, y'know. At least, I think she would. If she doesn't, I'll just tell her that it's for a school trip or something." Reina let out a hoarse chuckle.

"I doubt that I'm going to be able to talk you out of this, hmm?"

"Not a chance, Reina."

They danced on the empty train as it set off beneath the moon until Reina was all but asleep, and it was at that point when Kumiko looked out the window, the girl she loved leaning against her and sleeping peacefully, and she saw the trees and hills rush by in the wind.

All of this, she thought, and she's still so incomprehensible.