a/n: i saw the finale oath trailer and suddenly got overwhelmed with how much i can't stand shuumiko and all the kumirei subtext that's never going to be text and then this happened

so it's a lot more experimental and weird than my usual stuff

Kumiko felt bile rising in her throat as soon as Shuichi disappeared into the dark, her entire body feeling like it all of a sudden belonged to someone else. She wanted to throw up.

Reina Kousaka - she was someone known for her conviction. Sturdy, statuesque, determined. Single-minded, almost. And yet. And yet her mind seemed to swarm around and around when she tried to think of Kumiko Oumae, tried to figure out why she . . . why she made her feel like that.

Uncertain.

Reina's spontaneity was always planned - she'd downloaded an app for the mountain date, had sifted through old middle school programs to find the song, looked up the approximate time it took to climb to the top. Even the white-blue dress and the heels were a part of it.

She knew just what she was doing, even as her hands fizzled electric at the contact with Kumiko's skin.

What this girl did to her, it drove her insane. She had to become special, nothing could distract her from that. Nothing.

Reina was . . . Kumiko had a lot of words for her. Ethereal was the first one that came to mind, followed soon after by strange. She'd judged her unfairly and yet she loved her all the same. To love. What a strange and tumultuous thing. So unlike what'd happened with Shuichi, when he'd grabbed her hand and it was sweaty and hairy and sticky and sent little needles piercing through her skin. She could still feel it. She still hated it.

Kumiko was not headstrong. She was not like that. Which is why she ran and loved Reina even when she was terrible, sometimes, because that was love.

Reina detested not knowing herself, not knowing what to do. Taki-sensei was normal, easy to handle, unattainable. A goal she would never reach and could therefore continue to strive for. Isolation was not so bad, once you got used to it.

It beat this . . . this longing, at least, for something more. For her.

She believed in soulmates.

She believed in ambition. There was no string of fantastic happenings that had tied herself and Kumiko together, it was just- biology, happenstance. Luck. Star-crossed lovers, destined to break apart, she hated the concept of it. Just passing each other like ships in the night because she couldn't ever form attachments correctly.

Kumiko was friendly, she liked people, but Reina had reached right into her that night and pulled out the ugliness she'd kept inside - distant, distant, a good-girl skin stretched over the truth. She admired Reina for being so open about her own feelings towards the world - hiding nothing, baring her teeth and her ambition for everyone to see. Judge me if you want, her actions seemed to say. It won't affect me.

Reina was the same, almost, not entirely. A reverse image, you might say. Mirrored, lonely and hiding it behind that ice-queen persona she put forth so often.

Seventeen, seventeen, that was how old both of them were now - they'd been fifteen and sixteen when they were on the mountain, twelve and twelve when they met for the first time in middle school. Not that they'd known each other then. Oumae-san was the euphonium player with the puffy hair, that was all Reina thought of her until the final competition, I'm so upset I could die, just confusion on that girl's face. Someone else would've reached out, tried to comfort her. Not Kumiko Oumae.

What a strange girl you are, she pictured herself saying, like the woman in a movie she'd seen alone that cold, cold winter when the world seemed to revolve around Asuka-senpai. Flung out of space.

How she wished Kumiko would return to the stars and bring her along.

Kumiko ambled through life.

Not that she was unhappy, just . . . not happy, either. Malcontent, Reina would call her, on a day she was feeling particularly pretentious. Kumiko doubted Shuichi even knew how to wax poetic like Reina did, but-

But.

He was a boy. A nice one, too, someone who she'd almost viewed as a brother until society reared its ugly head and demanded they fall in love. That she didn't see him that way was confusing to people, and to normal people to boot - people like her friends, people like Asuka.

God, her hand still tingled. She resisted the urge to bury it in the nearest snowbank, let the flakes rinse away the grossness she felt. Frostbite wouldn't do anyone any good.

This was the same bridge she'd screamed out her need to improve, less than a year ago - a million years ago. The purple scarf around her neck felt like a noose, tightening and tightening, until she yanked it off and let it flutter in her closed hands.

It snowed outside, heavily, like a scene from a movie. If this were a movie, Reina would run out and find Kumiko, tell her everything, but it wasn't a movie. She had no way of knowing where Kumiko was, nor any way of knowing if she wanted to talk to her. A date with candy apples did not repair months of distance - somewhere deep within the pits of her soul Reina still resented Kumiko for leaving her behind- for abandoning her without even knowing it.

Not that Reina would ever kill her, no matter what she'd said in the heat of that moment. No, she loved too much and too deeply for that.

Oh, she was lonely. It wasn't hard to turn her mouth into a small frown, to walk with purpose (like a queen, how ironic, who ever said Reina Kousaka didn't have a sense of humor) but to find solace with someone - to find someone who understood - that seemed damn near impossible.

Flung out of space.

Who was left to melt the ice queen's heart?

Kumiko shuddered, not because of the cold but because she'd always known, of course she'd always known, and she'd never minded it but . . . but it hurt anyway.

Knowing Hazuki saw her as a romantic rival for all the wrong reasons.

Knowing Asuka could coyly wink and waggle her eyebrows and think she'd solved the world.

Knowing Shuichi thought it was fine to grab her hand like that, nearly send her skidding on the ice, confess like there was something he could say to make her not herself.

Crouching by the bushes, Kumiko grew dizzy.

I'm going to throw up, she thought. White dots danced in front of her eyes and she had no idea if they were snowflakes or her own brain. I'm going to throw up and someone from school is gonna find me here - if it goes the same way this day's been going it'll be Shuichi and oh God-

She convulsed again. It was a public bridge, a public space, she was a little girl curled up in the bushes and coughing and gagging so why didn't anyone come for her- she knew the answer, it was because she was invisible. Certainly some onlookers had noticed Shuichi's confession, thought about young love. None of them had stuck around.

Who wanted to see her? Who would let themselves look at this?

With trembling fingers, she unzipped her coat, dug her phone out of the pockets of the sweater beneath it, scrolled for Reina's name. Wrote at bridge get me before the hot tears started dripping down her cheeks. Distant. Was that what Reina had called her? She'd also called her terrible. Both were true. One of the tears fell on the phone screen, the fat droplet making a tiny rainbow in the white void of the text chat. Kumiko let out a short cry. It was so cold around her but she was sweating and whimpering and alone, alone, always alone.

Distant.

Terrible.

Her stomach lurched again.

Was this how Reina felt all the time? This strikingly horrible loneliness? Was this why- oh.

That was why she'd been like that after Asuka rejoined, after the Nationals. Of course.

Reina was lonely too.

I fucked up.

Reina lived walking distance from the bridge - it was the midpoint, really, between her and Kumiko's houses.

Which is why she ran - she couldn't drive, after all, and the train wasn't really much help. Her shoes - the school-issued loafers, the flattest things she owned - skidded against the pavement furiously, the snow falling and falling and falling. It was nighttime. It was nighttime and it was snowing and Kumiko was out there somewhere and she needed Reina's help which, despite everything, felt nice. Which was a terrible thing to think, of course, but then again- then again she'd never exactly tried to hide her nature.

Not like Kumiko. Never like Kumiko.

Reina wondered if Tsukamoto had confessed yet. It was only a matter of time before he did.

Kumiko sobbed and sobbed until all that was left was her heaving body, curled into a tiny ball. Nobody was coming for her. The world felt like it was falling away - maybe I'm blacking out, she thought, wouldn't that be something - and she wasn't supposed to be like this and Reina-

Reina?

"Reina!" she croaked out, almost joyous. I must be going insane, she thought, the world suddenly shifting to the present, I'm going insane and I'm imagining her running towards me like this but obviously she wouldn't because why would she ever-

and then Reina Kousaka crashes into her with her whole body and all Kumiko can do is apologize over and over again until it's not even a word anymore, and Reina is doing the same thing even though she has nothing to be sorry for, she's perfect and Kumiko's terrible but she's hearing the opposite and it's still snowing despite everything, and she notices that and starts laughing and Reina does, too, even though she has no way of knowing why Kumiko is laughing in the first place.

"T-thank you," Kumiko says, clutching the fabric on the back of Reina's jacket like it's a lifeline. Reina doesn't speak, just holds her tighter, and the stars spin above them.

a/n: as i wrote this i started realizing that reina might idolize kumiko the same way kumiko idolizes her. certainly something to think about