I. Setsuna
"Puu, what was your first kiss like?" Small Lady and Hotaru sit in Setsuna's kitchen wearing matching purple pajamas and freshly painted fingers and toes, drinking steamed milk with honey.
Setsuna searches the muddy apocrypha of her memories, dredges impressions: the smell of olives, humidity on her skin, a full sky of stars, a large calloused hand gripping hers, a beard scratching her chin. Her efforts to translate this into an answer—a face, a name, a place—slip away, like recalling a dream an hour after waking.
Setsuna puts on her largest sphinx smile. "It's a secret," she says.
II. Makoto
They were cutting class together in the woods by the gym. Senpai moved in for the kiss so quickly that Makoto didn't have time to get nervous. It felt very sneaky and very grown up.
He then smiled and asked her, would she like to come over after school on Friday? He had been practicing on his guitar, but thought he'd do better if he was playing for a pretty girl like her. She nodded, and beamed, and spent the rest of the day floating, because she was thirteen, and she had been kissed, and Senpai thought she was pretty.
III. Ami
At the end of their date, Urawa asked if he could kiss her. She knew he knew her answer but nodded anyway. She wished she had thought to research how to kiss beforehand.
After an awkward pause, their faces collided, and it took a few seconds to get the right amount of pressure on each other's lips. Neither closed their eyes. Ami noticed his irises had gold in them.
And then the bus was abruptly there, and he simply said "goodbye" and got on. She started to walk to the shrine, her hand over her mouth, her face on fire.
IV. Haruka
Setsuna had told them to go home and rest after they left Marine Cathedral, but instead Haruka and Michiru drive to the beach and open up a bottle of a very old and expensive Cabernet.
"What do we do now?" Michiru asks. She smiles coyly, her posture relaxed, but the wine is making tiny waves in her glass.
Haruka pauses, takes a deep breath. She closes her eyes, leans in, and kisses her. The wine sloshes over the glass onto her bare feet and the sand. She feels one hand, then another, touching her face, and the shaking stops.
V. Minako
"…Usagi never shuts up about kissing Mamoru, and Makoto isn't a virgin, and even Ami's been kissed. Ami! She can't read a love letter without getting hives!" Minako melodramatically flopped back on the shrine steps. "Chibi-Usa's been kissed—I mean sure, by a horse, but still! and Unazuki got kissed last week, and Naru's been kissed, which means UMINO'S been kissed, and what is wrong with this world when Umino gets kissed before the goddess of love…"
Rei leaned over Minako, grabbed her shoulders, pressed their lips together, and counted to ten before she let go.
"Better now?" Rei asked.
VI. Hotaru
He insisted on walking her to her front door. "I had a nice time," he said. "Me too," Hotaru said.
He then kissed her without warning. The motion sensor light came on and Hotaru felt an insect fly into her ear. When he broke away he stammered, "So, I'll, uh, see you at school?" and ran down the driveway before she could answer.
Hotaru opened the door.
"How was your date?" Setsuna asked.
"Is he your boyfriend?" Haruka asked, her eyes narrowed.
"Wait, was that your first kiss?" Michiru asked.
Hotaru ran upstairs, mortified, her mothers' giggling wafting up after her.