Oh my god I'm writing something that isn't Love Live? What happened?

Sumireko wasn't sure what exactly drew her into that little café that morning. Whether it was the damp chill hanging in the air that told of an incoming storm, or the smell of warm vanilla that wafted from the little shop, she was drawn towards it regardless. She silently admitted that this wasn't the kind of place she would usually find herself in on a Friday morning, or any morning for that matter. Yet there she found herself, her feet carrying her across the threshold of the place. It was cozy, with only a few tables and even fewer people sitting at them, and a small rack of sweets on the front counter. It was quaint and casual and it didn't suit her in the least. She didn't spend too much time glancing about, and without looking at the chalkboard menu that hung on the wall she approached the timid-looking girl that stood behind the counter.

"W-what can I get for you?" the girl said with a small smile, brushing a bit of platinum blonde hair from her face. She was small, with wide, stormy gray eyes that mirrored the color of the cloudy mid-morning sky outside and a pale indent of a scar running down the side of her face.

"Hmm. Surprise me," she replied, giving a small smile of her own. "I've never been here before to be quite honest."

The barista gave a small nod before setting to work, dropping a small pouch of coffee grounds into the espresso machine and fumbling with the buttons. She looked very clearly flustered, as though she wasn't entirely sure of what she was supposed to be doing. "I-I'm actually new here myself," she spoke up quietly after she finally got the machine to start working. "This is the, uh, f-first day that I'm here alone."

"Well you're doing a wonderful job," Sumireko assured her, gently leaning her arm against the counter and glancing down at her watch. It was still a little early for her to show up to her first class of the day, and this frail little girl making her coffee was cute. She was interested, to say the least, and she couldn't help the small smirk that rose to her face when she glanced up to find the girl quickly turning her gaze back to the paper cup in front of her, the lid almost slipping out of her hands as she struggled to put it on. The girl quickly scribbled something on the side of the cup before handing it to Sumireko and tapping a few buttons on the register.

"Th-that's two-" she was interrupted when the strawberry blonde gave her a 500 coin.

"Keep the change," Sumireko said, the smile still present on her face. She took a small sip of her drink as she turned to leave; a cinnamon sugar cappuccino with a hint of vanilla. Fitting, she thought. Halfway down the block she glanced at the hastily-written scribbles on the side of the cup. It was a cellphone number. Her smile returned in full force as she decided that she had no intention of paying attention in class today.

It was pouring out at this point; she had made it to class only moments before the downpour started, and now an hour later the sky was dark gray with clouds and the sound of water hitting the windows drowned out the noise from the front of the lecture hall. The numbers and letters on the whiteboard probably wouldn't mean much to her if she looked at them, but her attention was entirely focused on the phone in her lap. She had sent the cute barista from earlier a text about halfway through class and was idly waiting for a reply, figuring her lunch break must be sometime soon. She found herself staring out the window to her right when a vibration from her phone brought her back from her thoughts.

"Just started break, how are you?" it read. Sumireko had to hold back a giggle at how awkwardly formal it sounded, as though she was inexperienced with texting.

"Class is boring, go figure. Thinking on it, I never did catch your name," was the reply she sent. It was another few minutes before she got another reply.

"I have a gig later. If you go I can tell you then."

"Mysterious. I'd be glad to."

The next text she got was an address and a time, 11pm, and she let a small grin paint her face. She quickly looked up the address on her phone. It was a small club downtown, and she found herself wondering what sort of gig a timid little girl like that could possibly have at a place like that? It didn't suit her in the least.

She was finding it progressively harder to sit still through the rest of her calculus class and the business class that followed an hour later. She had a feeling tonight would be fun.

She found herself standing outside the little downtown club, tucked away and a little harder to find than she had expected. The rain had stopped a few hours ago but the ground was damp, reflecting the glow from the streetlamps overhead. She checked her watch, even though she knew she was a little more than 15 minutes early. She stepped through the door anyway, a weird bit of nervousness running through the back of her mind.

The place was smoky and dim, and the floor was sparsely populated with people. The music in the background was loud but it was sloppy, lackluster, and the group on the floor was swaying lazily along to it. She found her way to the bar and quietly asked the bartender for a small jack and coke. It was interesting in a strange way, letting her eyes scan over the place. There was a small stage packed with speakers and various sound equipment that she didn't recognize, and it shook slightly with the movement of the small crowd. For the second time that day the girl found herself in a place she wouldn't expect to be, but there was something exciting about the change of pace from her usual routine.

The music came to an end and a voice rang out over the speakers, ushering out the DJ whose name she didn't care to pay attention to, and introducing the next one. The crowd on the floor had gone from small waves of people to a sea of bodies in nearly an instant. Another voice, booming and rough, with an odd air of confidence rang out from behind the stack of amplifiers that crowded the stage. The voice sounded oddly familiar, and it was clear in the girl's mind that this was the main event. The barista girl from earlier in the day took the stage, but she was vastly different somehow in a way she couldn't quite describe, and Sumireko couldn't tear her gaze away from those stunning gray eyes. She quickly gulped down more of her drink in an attempt to hide, from nobody in particular, the excited grin that plastered her face.

The beat started up suddenly, and it was loud and intricate in the best sort of way, the tracks flowing together perfectly. She watched the platinum-haired DJ shift dials and sliders on the synth from across the place and it was absolutely mesmerizing. She could feel her heart speed up with the thump of the bass, her mind filtering out the noise of the crowd shifting on the floor and her feet tapping away on the barstool along with the beat. If she'd been a little more daring, a little more intoxicated even, she might have found her way to the dancefloor.

Sumireko barely noticed that it was an entire hour later when the beat came to a close. The sound of the crowd cheering and shouting on the floor was suddenly that much louder and the announcer's voice called out over the loudspeakers again, but what he said didn't even register with her. Just as she made to turn back around in her seat and place the empty glass she'd been nursing onto the bar, a figure leaned an arm on the counter next to her and ordered a pair of drinks that she didn't hear the names of. She looked up only to be met once again with that pair of slate eyes.

"Yo," she greeted casually, in that rough voice from before. "Enjoy the show?"

"Very much so, unexpected as it was."

"The name's Shinya, by the way."

"You seem… different."

The bartender set a pair of filled lowball glasses in front of them, and the platinum-haired girl immediately took one of them and slammed the liquid down. Sumireko followed suit, albeit a bit more slowly.

"Heh, yeah. The other one's name is Mahiru. Quiet little thing, I'm surprised she had the balls to give ya our number. She's hidin' right now, though," Shinya smirked, leaning a bit closer to the seated girl. "Can I get a name to go with that pretty face 'a yours?"

"Sumireko," she said, feeling a blush creep onto her face.

Shinya laughed. "Doesn't suit ya. This place doesn't suit ya either," She leaned further towards the blonde girl, a suggestive grin forming on her face. "My bedroom would suit ya a lot better, I think."

Sumireko wasn't sure if it was the dim lighting, or the bass thumping in the background, or the slight buzz of the alcohol in her system that made her want this girl that she had only just met this morning, but regardless she let out a small chuckle and replied, "Well, yes, I'd say I'm much better suited to such environments."

"That's the spirit. Let's get the hell outta here."

The walk back to the mysterious girl's apartment had seemed painfully long for being a mere 2 blocks down the street. The walk up the 6 flights of stairs to the floor it was on seemed somehow even longer. Sumireko was nervous, to say the least. She had come to the sudden realization that in a little over 12 hours she'd managed to completely fall for this enigma of a girl, and it was equal parts exciting and terrifying. She was so lost in her thoughts that she barely registered the shorter girl unlocking her apartment door and gently, but not too gently, pushing her in. The only light on in the small studio was a wall lamp in what appeared to be the kitchen, and she blinked a few times to adjust to the dimness of the room as she made to unbutton her coat. She was wholly surprised when she found her back pressed against the now-closed door, with Shinya holding her wrists between them and leaning into her. She pressed her lips to the blonde's, cautious at first, exploring. Shinya's lips tasted like honeydew and vanilla, and Sumireko found that she wasn't surprised by this.

"Lemme help ya with that," Shinya said with a slight growl to her voice that sent a shiver down the blonde's spine. Needless to say, she allowed Shinya to undo the buttons on her coat and slip it off of her, tossing it carelessly into the room behind her. She leaned in closer this time, looking up slightly to meet Sumireko's eyes before grasping at her hips and meeting her lips again in a delightfully rough kiss, her teeth sinking into the taller girl's lip almost hard enough to draw blood. Sumireko felt hands wander up the front of her shirt, jagged nails raking against her sides, causing her to let out a small gasp. She grabbed at the front of the other girl's sweatshirt and pulled her head back slightly.

"Impatient, are we?" she said jokingly, but her breathing was heavy and an obvious blush painted her cheeks.

Shinya replied with that gravelly chuckle of hers before planting a few hurried kisses on the other girl's neck. She nipped lightly at her ear before whispering, "Tell me how ya want it, Princess."

"Hmm. Surprise me," she said with a twinkle in her eyes, echoing her own words from much earlier that day. Shinya met her eyes with a hungry grin, grabbing her hands and dragging her behind her to the bed in the far corner of the studio. Their shoes along with Shinya's coat were lost somewhere between one side of the room and the other, and Shinya wasted no time in pushing Sumireko down and straddling her waist, a look of utmost pride on her face, like a carnivore that just cornered its next meal. And maybe that's exactly what she was. She pulled off her sweatshirt and undid the buttons on her polo, never breaking eye contact with the girl beneath her.

Sumireko's breath caught in her throat as the platinum-haired girl started going to work on the buttons of her shirt, licking her lips as she revealed the pale skin underneath. She leaned down, hair falling in her face, grazing her teeth against Sumireko's neck and her collarbones, hands trailing up her skirt and dragging her nails across the outline of her hips. Shinya's teasing was agonizingly slow, drawing plenty of small gasps and whimpers from the girl that laid under her.

"You're too damn cute, Princess," Shinya whispered, trailing her nails down the girl's inner thighs, leaving angry red scratches. "Lemme hear more of ya."

Sumireko's reply was cut short before she even uttered it by a rough bite to side of her neck, and instead her only answer was a short moan and her hands tangling up in Shinya's mess of silvery hair. A few more bites followed and she didn't even care about the marks she knew they'd leave behind. Shinya met her lips with more kisses, licking at her bottom lip and earning another gasp from the girl, her hands sliding up to slip under the blonde's back, pushing her hair to the side and expertly undoing the lacy little bra that she wore. Sumireko untangled her hands from Shinya's hair just long enough for her bra to be tossed aside to who-knows-where.

Shinya immediately went back to kissing down her chest, hands raking down her body and leaving even more little red scratches on her skin. She hooked her fingers under Sumireko's skirt and started to pull it down ever-so-slowly, all the while littering her chest with rough kisses and bites until she was practically squirming beneath her.

"Gettin' impatient, Princess?" Shinya whispered, rubbing small circles over the girl's panties with that feral smile still firmly on her face.

Sumireko mumbled something, covering half her face with a slightly shaky hand.

"What was that?"

"I said," she began, her face blushing a dark shade of pink, "Hurry up and take me already."

Shinya replied with a short laugh, "That's a fancy way 'a puttin' it. But since ya asked so nicely…"

Sumireko wasn't exactly one for sticking around after nights like this, not that it happened very often, but when she woke up the next morning with the platinum-haired girl snuggled up against her comfortably, sunlight pouring into the room and over them like a bright blanket, she found that she didn't really mind; she could get used to this, even.

Yawning, she stretched her arms out before carefully extracting herself from the other girl's arms to search the small apartment for the bathroom. As she suspected, her makeup is smeared and what was previously last night's expertly winged eyeliner now appeared to be sub-par smokey eye.

She wandered back out after cleaning her face up. The other girl was sat on the edge of the bed, silently checking her phone when they catch each other's gazes. The other girl blushed, looked away sheepishly.

"Th-thank you for showing up last night. I was worried that you wouldn't," she said quietly. "It made me really happy."

Sumireko sat down next to her. "So you're Mahiru now, then?"

The girl nodded in response. "You d-don't seem too bothered by that."

"Most things don't bother me, honestly. You're very interesting, you know?" Sumireko gave her a gentle smile. "When's your next gig? I'd very much like to attend."

Ckik here. Honestly this fic had been sitting, 95% done, in my docs for nearly 8 months because I've turned procrastinating into an art. So this technically predates all of my Love Live fics. Which in writer years makes it ancient.

The working title for this was actually "Tiny Little Robots" because I listen to entirely too much Cage The Elephant, but I decided it didn't make much sense as a real title.

Drop a comment if you even know what Akuma No Riddle is, since apparently we only have 17 people in this fandom. Remember to spay or neuter your pets.