Fuu hates summer. Not because of the free time, which she loves, or the summer homework, which she doesn't mind, but the sun. There is always sun in Twilight Town, much to her annoyance, but in summer it's absurd. Fuu hates sunscreen, but wears it anyway because otherwise, well, she turns redder than Rai's shirt. And when the burn finally peels off after an agonizing week-and-a-half, she's just as pale as before. Rai doesn't burn, of course, brown as he is, and Seifer manages to somehow acquire only a golden glow. She isn't sure about Vivi.

But still, at least they don't mock her when she shows up in long pants and a sweater, glowering from under the brim of a hat more absurd than Vivi's. On days like those, when the sweat pours into her eyes after five minutes at the Sand Lot, Seifer moves the gang inside.

Of course, it's not just sun that bothers her. It's the ice cream too; Fuu hates ice cream. It's delicious, sure, and cold, but somehow hers melts faster than everyone else's, leaving her with a sticky mess all over her hands and clothes. Luckily, Vivi's taken to bringing extra napkins just for her, and Seifer is remarkably apt at noticing when her sea salt popsicle is about to drip all over her pants (invariably white).

But what bothers Fuu the most about summer, yes, even more than melted ice cream and sunburns and the embarrassing countermeasures, is the beach. At the beach, the sun is worse, with no buildings or trees to shade her, and, of course, you can't wear pants and a sweater to the beach.

Fuu knows how ridiculous she looks with a bikini-shape burned into her skin; Rai told her last summer.

But, even though she hates parading her blindingly pale flesh around, Vivi, with his oversized hat and shadowed face, seems to distract enough of the attention the four get. And the water is cool and salty, like the ice cream, not as delicious perhaps but also not as messy. There's no Hayner and co. at the beach, either, so they don't have to be the bad guys all the time. Not that Fuu really cares; Hayner annoys the snot out of all of them, but it's nice to just focus on each other.

So even though Fuu hates the beach, the bottle of sunscreen she glops on, the fascinatingly red sunburn she will get despite the sunscreen, and the inevitable jokes later; even though she hates the mess that the ice cream makes (it somehow manages to adhere half of the freaking beach to her thighs, giving the impression that she is some breaded cutlet, much to the boys' amusement) and the subsequent battle to clean it off, maybe it isn't so bad.

After all, sunburn or no sunburn, she and Vivi can still manage, through some freak accident of nature, to crush Seifer and Rai at beach volleyball. And on the train ride home, as Vivi tries to remind them of their summer assignments and Seifier insists her victory was a fluke, as he has the last eight times, and Rai maybe pats her on the back a little too hard for her reddened skin, well, she isn't alone.

So maybe, Fuu amends, she doesn't hate summer.

…but that doesn't mean she has to admit it.

-

I quite like this.