Disclaimer: Do. Not. Own.
Warnings: Fem!Sena.
Additionally: Based on the 30 Moments Themes from the 30_moments lj. Not official, not posted there.
3. lighting the way
At the last minute, Karin decided to go and meet Sena at the airport, and she was standing there, at the waiting area for arrivals and more nervous than she'd been at any snap of the ball, when someone called her name and she looked up from checking her texts to see a woman smiling at her from the open gate.
"Koizumi-san!"
She didn't recognize the woman. Shorter than her, with a head of shoulder-cut, unrestrained dark hair. Dark, dark eyes. Looking tired from the twenty-hour flight, but still immaculate in a black military jacket, skinny jeans, and ankle boots Karin herself would have died for.
"Koizumi-san!"
When the woman walked toward her, people turned to watch her as she passed.
Karin's heart was pounding. She opened her mouth to say Excuse me? and the words caught in her throat. She kept thinking, Who is this woman?, except there was something familiar about the way she moved, the way she turned to avoid passing people and carts, as though if Karin were to remove a few inches of height and shorten the hair and exchange the Burberry for a private school uniform and somehow pull a layer of uncertain potential over the inevitable fulfillment of that face—
Ah, some part of Karin was whispering, that same part that had so calmly filled out the application for Enma. Ah.
"Koizumi-san," the woman said as she reached Karin, her face flushed with pleasure, "you didn't have to come all the way here! I thought we were going to meet at Enma? We're just on our way—"
And through all of her turmoil, through all the disorder and breathlessness and this strange sensation of falling that was overwhelming her as she looked at Kobayakawa Sena for the first time in a year, Karin managed to stammer, "Ah—w-we?"
The large hand that appeared on Sena's shoulder seemed to silence all of Karin's confusions at once. People stared and pointed.
"So," said Donald Oberman, "you're Karin?"