NOTE: I do not own Azumanga Daioh. I do, however, own... YOUR SOUL!!! Bwa ha ha.
Anyway, here we go.
Kaorin was unusually subdued today.
"What's wrong, Kaorin?" asked Chihiro. "You seem unusually subdued today..."
"What?" Kaorin was yanked rather abruptly out of her own reverie and it took her a moment to register her best friend's words. "Oh, no, no, I'm perfectly fine. I've just been... thinking..."
"Oh, okay." Chihiro played with her lunch.
In truth, Kaorin wasn't perfectly fine. For the most part, she was doing as well as she usually was. Admittedly this wasn't much, but you get used to the misery when it remains in the background. However, unlike most days, there was something nagging at her in the back of her head. Like most of the time, her troubles stemmed from Sakaki-san, but they weren't directly related to her on this particularly overcast day. No, it was the secrecy.
Kaorin was not normally a reserved person. She didn't wear her heart on her sleeve; she tore it out of her chest and waved it in people's faces. Especially her friend Chihiro's. Not a thought that entered her mind wasn't discussed between the two of them, and often in uncomfortable detail at that.
That's how it used to be, anyway – things were different now. Ever since Sakaki-san had caught her eye, Kaorin had to shut up more than she liked. Frequently she found herself not only stretching the truth, but breaking it completely, stepping on it, hitting it in the face, blowing it up, and not inviting it to parties. This wasn't too bad; it just went against the very grain of her character, that was all. Plus, even then she had trouble controlling her emotions (her father always liked to say she alone created enough jobs to support the hormonal economy, whatever that was supposed to mean). Being like this simply wasn't in her nature. And therein lay the problem: She couldn't keep it up.
"Hello, hello?" Chihiro waved her hand in Kaorin's face. "Are you sure you're okay? You're usually so talkative..."
Back to reality again for our Kaorin. "Oh, no, I'm fine. I..."
Wait a minute – here was her chance! She wanted to tell, why not tell now?
"Actually, there is something that's been bothering me," she began.
"Oh?"
"I'm in love with Sakaki-san," Kaorin wanted to say.
It didn't come out, though.
She decided to start out smaller:
"I'm in love," she didn't say.
Smaller!
"Well, actually..." she failed to begin.
Kaorin cursed herself mentally. Clearly this was not the way to go about things. She'd have to try a less direct approach.
"Have you ever felt... interested in a person?" she asked, carefully choosing her words.
Chihiro, who had been looking a bit apprehensive due to the long silence Kaorin had created, brightened up immediately. "Oh, yeah, I know what you mean! Like Sakaki-san!"
Kaorin practically turned to stone and it seemed as though her heart had leapt into her esophagus... somehow. "S-sakaki-san?!" she squeaked.
"Yeah, she's so mysterious," her friend replied obliviously. "I want to know more about her... Do you think she has a boyfriend? I'd like to meet him..."
False alarm. Kaorin returned to her normal state as quickly as if she was controlled by microchip. Before she had time to let the wave of embarrassment wash over her, she got a little annoyed with her friend. She had missed the point completely! Time to shift her a bit in the right direction...
"That's not what I meant." She scratched the back of her head with her right hand. "I mean... Have you ever wanted to... Have you ever... felt... really good feelings about a person...?"
"You mean like how we're friends?" Chihiro said, puzzled.
"Uh, well... not exactly like that..."
"You mean your mom, then? Isn't that normal?"
That came completely out of left field for Kaorin, but she soldiered on nonetheless, making various hand gestures to complement her explanation. "Actually, this isn't about my mom... this time. What I mean to say is... The feeling you get when you want to be with that person... forever... and... do things. You know, with them. Uh... Fun things. Or... maybe I should say-"
Chihiro cut smoothly through the tangled web of speech Kaorin had created. "You mean you're in love."
"YES! THAT'S IT!" Kaorin said, a bit too loudly than she should have. Everyone else in the cafeteria turned to look at her.
Pause. Chihiro ate some of her lunch.
"Okay..." she said after the staring had ceased, "So, did you do your homework on time?"
Kaorin sweat dropped. "Uh, don't you want to know who I'm in love with?" Honestly. Sometimes her best friend could be so difficult...
"What? Oh, oh yeah, that. Who's the guy?"
Oh boy, thought Kaorin, here we go. She sighed and then prepared herself for Part Two with some hot food.
Out loud, she mumbled, "Uh, well, see, about that..." Clearly she was a very eloquent young lady.
"What do you mean, about that? Is it that embarrassing?"
"Actually-"
"Who is it? Is it the fat kid?"
"No, listen-"
"The guy who picks his nose in English class?"
"Please-"
"Kimura-sensei?"
Kaorin shot her friend look of utter horror and disgust.
"Sorry, that last one was probably uncalled for," Chihiro apologized.
Kaorin then stopped the madness before it could continue. "Actually, I meant something else... You know how most girls like guys?"
"Pretty sure, seeing as that's all some of the girls at this school talk about." Chihiro nodded and briefly glanced in the direction of a particularly giggly table of schoolgirls who were pointing, extremely conspicuously, at guys they found cute.
"Well... then... you know how some girls... don't like guys?" Kaorin felt stupid; there had to be a better way to word that one, and she felt as if some part of her subconscious was intentionally setting her up for failure.
Maybe it was, because Chihiro replied, "What, you mean like they'd rather read a book?"
Well, Kaorin did enjoy a good book... No, no, no, you can't let her throw you off, she admonished herself. "Actually, I meant... you know, you know what guys like?"
"Sports?" Chihiro's baffled look had now been replaced by one simply of blank incomprehension.
"What?! No!" Kaorin was starting to become hysterical. "I mean, if girls like guys, who do guys like?"
"Girls," Chihiro sighed. "What's your point?"
Kaorin felt like yelling, shouting, screaming her lungs out until she couldn't scream any longer, then running around until she tired herself out completely, then tearing all her hair out and doing away with 110 of her sanity until she finally died of exhaustion.
She took about seven deep breaths, brushed her hair out of her eyes, imagined herself lying down on top of a small hill of grass staring up at a ridiculously blue sky trying to discern whether the clouds looked at all familiar, and when she was finally ready, she muttered, barely audible at all, "My point is..."
"Your point is? Your point is...?"
This was it. This was the moment.
Kaorin said the following:
"I'm a lesbian."
"Oh."
Kaorin felt as though she had been carrying an eight-ton backpack and it had just been taken off.
"So what does that have to do with anything?" asked Chihiro.
Kaorin fell out of her chair. I can't win, she thought to herself in between the chokes and the sobs.
I just can't win.
That could have been better, I know... But what do you think? Good? Bad? Ugly? This is pretty much my first try, and I'd like to improve.