It started out as a challenge.
A normal person might know not to mention Pique's fleeting crush on Mytho, which happened all but a couple of weeks ago, but then again Lillie did not count as a normal person. Under certain circumstances, this qualified Lillie as interesting, albeit eerie and morbidly honest enough for Pique to pick her out from the rest of the girls as her friend. While Pique rarely gained a sore spot for anything that happened, she clamored to prove her determination.
In this last thing, Lillie had the advantage. After the Great Lovey-Dovey Letter Operation to Fakir on that Valentine's Day, the two troublemakers met up with Ahiru again later that evening. They sat together on the floor in Pique and Lillie's room, gossiping the latest confessions, couples, and discussing the chances Ahiru had of receiving an optimistic response from Fakir.
"Fakir?" Ahiru cried, blushing, when her two friends asked whether she knew he had received "her" love letter. "I didn't-! I mean, I don't-! So, why-?"
"That's right! Even though you were nervous he would reject you in front of your classmates, you got your hopes up and had to send the love letter to him! I bet he rejected you. How wonderful!" Lillie said, smiling and fondly cupping her cheek with a hand.
Ahiru sunk her chin into her duck pillow laid out on the floor, her face fallen in defeat. "So it was Uzura after all," she murmured.
"Never mind that, though!" Pique said. "We saw him come up to you. So hey, what did he say?"
"I told him you guys wrote it and then he called me an idiot and said not to waste his time," Ahiru murmured again.
Lillie turned to Pique. "No way! She told him we did it?"
"Guess so."
"Now he won't direct his rejection solely towards Ahiru; he knows it was us. Oh no!"
"Why are you smiling?"
"I'm smiling?"
Pique sighed and returned her attention back to Ahiru, her eyes shining. "Anyway, there's one way to remedy this! He's got to know that you didn't get scared confessing and copout--"
"I didn't copout…"
"—by letting us write your love letter! Plus, it's supposed to be really effective."
Seeing eager, mischievous grins grow on both Pique and Lillie's cheeks, Ahiru hesitated to ask, "What do you mean?"
Lillie and Pique squealed in unison. "A kiss!"
Ahiru had never blushed harder: her eyes watered with the massive heat to her face as she scrambled to deny that action or any feelings for Fakir. What came out, however, sounded like, "No- you don't get- I just- it's not like- wait- not like- un-!"
"Oh good!" Lillie exclaimed, springing on the bright red, semi-conscious Ahiru and holding her by the shirt collar. "How brave! You'll do it then!" She nodded. "Put all your extra heart into it." She nodded. "Then when you really mess up the kiss and get sloppy, it'll look all the more cute when he's disgusted!" She nodded then cradled her cheek with one hand. "I'll be watching! Oh, I can't wait."
"You know, you really shouldn't say things like that," Pique said.
"Hm? What things?"
"Never mind. Just don't worry, Ahiru! Kissing isn't that hard."
"Oh? Have you kissed the wrong man and ended up in a dramatic feud between lovers, battling to win his heart? You must tell me more!"
"Well…I haven't actually kissed anybody…"
"You haven't?"
Pique flushed, and the corners of her mouth deepened into a frown. "But it shouldn't be that hard, you know!"
"It is easy, isn't it? But I bet for you it'll be the hardest and worst-received thing ever! Wouldn't that be great?"
"It would not be the hardest--!"
Lillie had already moved on to the next subject deserving her attention, in this case, the dazed Ahiru still being held up by Lillie's iron grip on her shirt collar. "Ahiru? You haven't spoken once since then. Ahiru? Are you mute?"
"You did that."
"No way!"
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Ahiru swung the door partway closed, leaving a three-inch crack open to peer out at her friends. "Good night!" She said, unable to help but smile, and the door closed in front of her with a resounding click. Pique could hear the soft patter of Ahiru's feet outside the room as she skipped down the hall to bed. Sighing from the exhaustion of such a drama-filled holiday, Pique resigned to lie back on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Her thoughts wandered to the people important to her, not just Fakir but also to her friends. Whether on purpose or by mistake, Pique didn't know, but Lillie could always dig at the right spot and make her blood boil.
"Ahiru is finally going to fail big time! I might not be able to sleep, I can already wait!" Lillie exclaimed, moving to sit on top of her bed.
"But like I said, a kiss shouldn't be too hard, right?" Pique asked. "Well, for her…"
"Mm-hm! Ahiru is going to have a problem with something so simple!"
"Hey, you've got to spill! You haven't kissed somebody before, have you?"
A dark, low chuckle emitted from Lillie's lips. Pique thought that she no longer wanted to know the details of such an answer, but her friend did not drop the subject – rather, she turned it on its head.
"What if I told you I kissed Mytho?" Lillie suggested, placing her fingers at her lips as though to control her amusement.
Such a reply was so unexpected that the words sent Pique's mind racing to find out when such a far-fetched event could have happened. Her eyes widened and her brows furrowed in unison. "What? When did that happen?"
"Just kidding," Lillie chided. "Though that would be crippling to you, wouldn't it?"
While Pique's expression had slowly been waning into defeat, this last comment left her determined once again, perhaps more than usual. One could hear irritation thick her firm and defensive voice. "I told you! I don't know what happened with that, it was pretty weird of me, but I'm not into Mytho anymore! I'm a Fakir fan, remember?"
"Oh? Are you sure? Maybe you just gave up?" Lillie had turned her eyes to the wall in thought, but as she continued, she rotated her head back to Pique in the affect of a doll's cold face twisting into the light. "Perhaps you wanted to kiss him at that time and he refused? Perhaps he could not decide between your kiss and Rue's?" At the end of this, she gave another sinister giggle.
"Okay, that whole thing was odd, and I don't get what my obsession with him was, but I wouldn't give up from something like that!"
"Maybe you couldn't do it? I wish I had been there to see it!"
Somewhere in the back of her thoughts, Pique knew why this subject had lit a blazing fire within her, but no matter how it caused her heart to suddenly thunder in her chest, she could not pinpoint this reason. Her skin began to go all clammy, and yet she did not want to admit to having a nervous reaction - even to herself. "I'm not the type to back down!" She clenched her fists and raised them to the space in front of her chest. "I could kiss somebody if I wanted to! I could do it, but not Mytho – just somebody I liked!"
"You should try it and fail miserably!
"Maybe I will!"
The outburst had a bold strength that appeared to echo in the silence long after it ended. Lillie locked Pique's eyes unabashed, waiting on the edge of the mattress for the moment when Pique crash-landed the challenge. While Pique matched Lillie's stare with her own stubborn eyes, after several seconds, the apprehension had grown in Pique's stomach. She broke away, diverting her flustered stare to the floor, feeling a tight knot in her throat that she tried to swallow down. She felt like her mouth had a lot of water. When she imagined fulfilling her challenge, her heartbeats thrummed in her ears at an increasing pace. But she was Pique; she was tough. She had to do this. Why would I back down? She thought.
What translated initially into steps, into the simple touching of the outside of a person's mouth onto another person's, however, soon turned into something much more knee-shaking when you were the one to have to do it. Pique understood this all the better now but attempted to ignore the blush crawling up her neck as she stood up. When she started over to her bedside facing Lillie's, Pique found she must have forgotten how to walk. Her each clumsy step could have been taken in mud. By the time she sat down on the edge of her own bed, confronting Lillie with a flushed but nonetheless iron-willed disposition, she felt as if she had finished a journey. The task still facing her, however, towered like a wall.
She couldn't prove the challenge with Fakir. That was too weird. Maybe if she had his consent, but that didn't cure her discomfort no matter how attractive Fakir appeared in retrospect. For Lillie, Pique had her consent – if only because Lillie wanted more than anything to see her fail. That wouldn't happen, though. No, she had to prove herself, and more-so, she believed she could do it in part because she wanted to enjoy it.
That sounded even worse if Pique thought about it, but by this point, Pique tried hard not to think at all. Just do it, she told herself. Just do it and it won't be so bad. It isn't that hard, I bet! She shifted forward, and the bed squeaked beneath her a little. Lillie didn't so much as flinch.
The action took all the strength in the world, and her breath had turned a little ragged with her jittering pulse, but she closed the distance in one fell swoop. Her lips brushed Lillie's soft ones by centimeters – which hardly seemed sufficient, but Pique hesitated in her inexperience. Despite Lillie's careless exterior, - and Pique could not mistake this, - her breath shuddered as it mingled with the warmth of Pique's. Seconds, like long years, passed. The situation began to grow on Pique like a new room; thinking maybe that she had nothing to lose, maybe that she could no longer stand this dissatisfaction, she dug her lips deeper into Lillie's. Mere seconds of flittering electricity passed before Lillie, mostly static during the kiss, drew back with a larger smile on her face.
"That was good."
Pique's mouth formed an impressed "o", and her heart lurched in a sudden surge of confidence. She almost spoke her triumph and victory until Lillie rested the back of her hand against the corner of her mouth, lowering her eyes into glittering crescent shapes.
"…For an anteater."