Title: First Encounters
Characters: Yui, Nodoka, Ritsu, Mio, Mugi, Ui, Azusa
Pairings: Not really any
Nodoka Manabe knocked on her best friend Yui Hirasawa's door. Yui had texted her, inviting her over. It wasn't as if Nodoka had anything else to do, since it was still summer break. A minute after she'd knocked, a smiling brunette opened the door.
"Oh, hey, Nodoka. Come on in! I invited the rest of the Light Music Club over 'cause we're working on a song for the school festival." Yui held open the door for Nodoka, who stepped inside. Sure enough, she heard the sounds of a bass coming from Yui's living room.
"Are you sure it's okay for me to come over while everyone's here?" Nodoka asked, slipping off her shoes and following Yui to the living room. Inside, three other girls were sitting around the table with their instruments, except for Ritsu, who was drumming on the table. Instead of looking down at her keyboard, however, Mugi was glancing down at a vaguely familiar photo album. Nodoka sat down and looked at it, recognizing one of the photos.
"I remember that," Yui said, sitting on Mugi's other side. She pointed at the photo Nodoka had recognized. "It was the summer of our first year of middle school, when we went to that movie premiere, right?"
Ritsu and Mio glanced over at the photo. "What movie was it?" asked Ritsu. Nodoka told her the name of the movie, remembering what it was.
"Hey, I remember that! I think we went to see that movie too!" Ritsu exclaimed.
"Who's 'we'?" asked Mugi.
"Look at that!" Mio said, pointing. In the very background of the photo was a young dark-haired girl. "I think that's me!"
"No way. You mean we all went to the same movie together once without knowing it?" Yui asked.
"I guess so," Nodoka answered, and as she did, the memories of that day came back to her…
It was just after school had gotten out for the summer. Middle school first years Yui and Nodoka walked up to the ticket booth of their nearby movie theather.
"We'd like two tickets for this one, please," Yui said, tapping the poster of the scary movie that had just come out. The teenage girl working at the booth looked down at them and wrinkled her nose.
"Are you sure you're old enough to see this?" she asked them.
"We have the money for it," said Nodoka, pulling out a few bills. The teenage girl was about to say something, but was interrupted by a new voice.
"Hey! How come you aren't letting them get tickets? That's not very nice!"
Turning around, Yui and Nodoka saw two girls their same age. One had long, dark hair, and the other had short brownish hair and golden eyes.
"You give them the tickets NOW!" continued the speaker, who was the golden-eyed girl. She pointed at the teenager and glared with such ferocity that the other girl flinched. Nodoka passed over the money and the girl gave them two tickets. The dark-haired girl, who hadn't said a word, came up to the teenage girl. She said something and got two more tickets in return.
"What are you going to see?" the golden-eyed girl asked. Yui told her the name of the movie. "Oh, us too!" The dark-haired girl came over and handed her a ticket.
"I'm Yui Hirasawa," said Yui cheerfully. "This is my friend Nodoka Manabe. What's your name?"
"I'm Mio Akiyama," the dark-haired girl said shyly. "And this is my friend Ritsu Tainaka."
"You don't go to school with us, do you?" Nodoka asked Ritsu and Mio politely. She told them the name of the school she went to, and they shook their heads.
"No, we don't go there," said Mio.
"Hey, why don't we sit together?" Yui asked the other girls.
"Sure," shrugged Ritsu. So they all bought popcorn and sat down next to one another. As soon as the credits started flashing across the screen, Mio shrieked and buried her head in her arms.
"Do you not like scary movies?" Nodoka asked her. Mio whimpered in response.
"Oh, she doesn't," Ritsu said in a creepy tone of voice. She poked Mio. "Ooh, Mio, someone just got decapitated…"
"Be quiet!" shrieked Mio. People turned in their seats to look at her. "I'm not looking, I'm not listening," Mio said to herself. She was breathing shallowly and seemed genuinely freaked out. Whenever she looked at the screen, she immediately buried her head in her arms. This, of course, allowed Ritsu to steal all of her popcorn.
Overall, Yui and Nodoka enjoyed the movie. The occasional scream right next to them also added to the creepiness of the whole thing. By the time it ended, Ritsu had to half-drag Mio out of the theater, and they lost Yui and Nodoka in the crowd.
"Those girls were pretty weird," Nodoka admitted as they stood in front of the movie poster and had their picture taken by the teenage girl managing the ticket booth. She was the same one Ritsu had yelled at, and was now too freaked out to do anything but be nice to Yui and Nodoka.
"Huh? What girls?"
"Yui! Was the movie that scary that you forgot about them already?"
Yui waved a hand at Nodoka. "No, no, I remember them." Both of them smiled as the camera flashed. Since the camera itself was a Polaroid, the picture came out immediately, and Yui pocketed it.
After dinner that night, the two Hirasawa sisters were left sitting at the table together while their parents cleaned up. As she was placing the photo from earlier in an album, Yui turned to her younger sister and asked,
"What did you do today, Ui?"
"I went to the library and this really nice girl named Nakano helped me study. She was so pretty, like a Japanese doll. What did you do, Onee-chan?"
"Nodoka-chan and I went to the movies and met these two funny girls. One of them kept getting scared and the other one would tease her."
"What were their names? Did you know them?"
Yui scrunched up her face. "No...I didn't really know them. And their names were, um...um..." For some reason, she just couldn't remember. Then again, Yui had never had the greatest memory.
"I remember everything now!" Yui cried, looking down at the photo album again. Everyone had crowded around it to see the young Yui, Nodoka, and the distant Mio.
"You know, since we're digging up old photos…" Mio trailed off, looking thoughtful. Maybe she was thinking about old photos she had found too. Hadn't she found some old Light Music Club relics at the beginning of the summer?
"Hey, where am I?" Ritsu protested. "I never show up in photos."
"Yes, you do! You have more photo albums than Yui does!" Mio cried. Everyone giggled at that.
Just then, Nodoka glanced down at the time on her phone. "Oh, no. I should go, Yui. It's almost dinner time, and besides, you four need to work on your new song. The school festival isn't that far away, you know."
"Aw, but, Nodoka," whined Yui. "I wanna look at some more photo albums."
"Yui, you need to practice." Nodoka got up and walked to the front door. Pulling her shoes on, she bid a still complaining Yui goodbye. As Nodoka walked back to her own house, she compared what had happened on that day to what was going on now. It didn't seem like very much had changed, though everyone was now in their first year of high school, not middle school. She wished that someday everyone would become just a little bit more mature.
Since she wasn't paying attention to where she was going, Nodoka walked right into somebody. "Sorry!" she exclaimed, straightening the person in front of her.
"It's okay," Azusa said shyly. She hadn't been paying attention to where she was going either.
"Take care," said Nodoka, thinking back to her own middle school days, which was, after all, what she and the others had just been talking about.
"O-okay." Azusa continued walking, passing Nodoka. Nodoka herself glanced back at the younger, dark-haired girl for a moment, then resumed her own way home Neither of the girls knew that in one short year, they'd actually know one another and be friends. That was just the thing with first impressions: sometimes, they were bound to change.