When Honoka woke up the next morning, she noticed that she was the only one in bed. She figured that Maki had just gone to the restroom, but when she rolled over to the other side of the bed, she found Maki laying on the floor. "Maki-chan? Why are you on the floor?"
Maki stirred, Honoka's voice having woken her from a somewhat uncomfortable slumber. She looked up at Honoka, blinked a couple times, then remembered why she was on the floor in the first place. "Uh, I... drop... I dropped something." There was no way she could admit that she had to practically throw herself onto the floor to avoid constantly looking at Honoka in her underwear.
It was an awful excuse, one that she came up with without really thinking. However, it seemed that Honoka bought it, as she just smiled and nodded. "Okay! Well, now that we're up, we should get ready to hit the slopes!" She jumped out of bed and rushed to the restroom, giving Maki another nice view.
Was she the luckiest or unluckiest person in the entire lodge?
All four of them were standing at the top of a small slope. Both Maki and Umi were relieved that they were indeed going to start on a beginner's slope. Still, Maki was nervous. They hadn't even started yet and she had already made a fool of herself. Before they reached the edge of the slope, she had put on her snowboard, and then immediately fell over trying to move forward. Too bad the snow didn't let her sink through in embarrassment.
It wasn't a big slope obviously, but as far as Maki was concerned, they might as well have been jumping off of the lounge roof. Her breathing started to pick up, and she felt acutely aware of everything around her. She could tell that Honoka was looking at her, and she could hear Umi complaining about how cold it was.
"Let me show you two how it's done." Honoka grinned brightly as she stood on the edge of the slope. Tipping her snowboard downward, she started to descend down the slope, giving them a quick wave before her eyes darted forward. While Maki wasn't surprised that she was good, she also felt an underlying surprise that this was possible without falling right away.
There weren't any fancy tricks to be seen. Honoka merely was showing how to snowboard on a basic level. While watching, Maki tried to make as many mental notes as possible, all while memorizing them to the best of her abilities. From the looks of it, Umi was doing the same. They both were probably just trying not to wipe out immediately.
When she reached the bottom, Honoka moved to the side, but didn't come back up. Both Maki and Umi looked towards Rin for an explanation. "Hm? Oh, Honoka-chan? She's gonna stay down there for you two when you reach the bottom." She winked at them, gently prodding Maki forward. "Get a move on, Maki-chan!"
"Alright, alright!" Maki stared down the slope, gulping nervously. She looked down at Honoka, and she didn't know if that made her feel better or worse. Well, she couldn't stay up there forever, or Rin might just push her down without warning. ... Actually, Umi might do it first.
Okay, she could do this. It was just like skateboarding, but on snow, which was softer than wood. A fall wouldn't hurt as bad, which had to be some kind of comfort. Without letting herself think through her actions any longer, Maki tipped her board down and started to go down the slope.
At first, it seemed like things were going fine. She was a bit wobbly, but she stayed upright. At least until she reached the halfway point. It was there that her legs shook too much, and with wide eyes she found herself falling. Yelping, she waved her arms desperately in an attempt to stay upright, but it only served to make herself look stupid as she hit the snow.
The snow slowed her down considerably, and she found herself staring up at the sky, half-buried in snow. She hadn't even been able to fall to the end of the slope. It took some effort to push herself back up, and when she looked back up the slope, she was sure she could see Umi laughing at her misfortune. She didn't even want to look down and see if Honoka was laughing at her too.
Of course, she wasn't left with much choice. If she wanted to get down the slope, she'd have to look where Honoka was. Or... Or she could just do it with her eyes closed. ... No, that probably wasn't a good idea. She was just going to have to suck it up and look.
Well, Honoka wasn't laughing. That was good. Maybe she had just finished laughing, though. Sighing, Maki pushed herself back up onto her feet, nearly falling over again when she started to slide down the slope. Somehow she was able to keep upright until the end, but she managed to fall again upon reaching the bottom.
Honoka came over to help her up, and Maki blushed with a combination of embarrassment over failing so spectacularly in front of her crush on the easiest possible slope, and their close contact. "Are you okay, Maki-chan?"
"Yup, absolutely." She brushed snow off of her jacket and followed Honoka out of the way so that Umi and Rin could follow them down. Maki took some comfort in knowing that Umi was in the same boat as her, watching as her friend fell pretty quickly and rolled head over heels all the way down the slope. It took a supreme effort to keep her from falling over laughing.
When she and Honoka went to go help Umi up, she couldn't suppress a grin as she watched Umi try to brush the snow out of her hair. "You know, I at least made it halfway down the slope."
"I don't want to hear it from you," Umi muttered crossly, folding her arms. "I didn't ask for this." Maki just chuckled quietly as they all waited for Rin to come down the slope. Of course, like Honoka, she didn't make any mistakes. In fact, she showed off by jumping up, doing a 180, then going down the rest of the slope backwards.
"Well now that Rin-chan's done showing off..." Honoka clearly wasn't annoyed though, with the fact that she high-fived Rin right after she came over to them. "I wanna try my favorite slope before it gets too crowded! Who wants to come with me?"
In the back of Maki's mind, logic was speaking pretty clearly to her. Whatever Honoka's favorite slope was, it definitely wasn't as easy as this one, and she'd already failed spectacularly on this one. It would be in her best interest to stay here and try to conquer not falling off her snowboard first. Then she looked at Rin, and knew that someone as experienced as her would go with Honoka, and the thought of the two of them alone made Maki feel ill again.
"I'll go with you." The moment the words left her mouth, Maki knew she was making yet another mistake. She'd been making plenty of mistakes ever since she first laid eyes on Honoka, though. This was no longer an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence.
"Awesome!" Honoka clapped happily, slinging her snowboard over her shoulder. "Let's get going then!"
"Maki..." Umi made an attempt to stop her, but Maki gave her a 'I have to follow my heart' look. Responding in kind, Umi shot her a 'Your heart is stupid' look, whatever those very specific looks may look like. Regardless, Maki grabbed her snowboard and went over to Honoka, relieved that she could be near her crush while simultaneously keeping a presence between her and Rin.
"You two have fun then. I'm gonna keep helping Umi with her technique." Rin grinned and poked Umi's cheek. Maki had been so sure that Rin would go with Honoka, though. This... was just her brain being paranoid, and she'd fallen for it again. She was going to die on these slopes.
Resigned to her fate, she followed Honoka away from their friends and over towards the chairlift that would take them to their destination. When they reached it, they were the only two left, so they both got in and pulled the bar down over them. Then they were off, the lift pulling them higher and higher into the air.
Maki clutched tightly onto the bar as they rose higher. She shut her eyes to avoid accidentally glancing down at the ground, but knowing how high up they were going was throwing her into an internal panic. Every gentle sway of the lift got a quiet whine of fear out of her, and it felt like it was taking forever to reach their destination.
Eventually though, the lift stopped, and Maki opened her eyes. They had actually reached the top of the slope, and she let out a sigh of relief. Honoka pulled the bar up, and the two of them stepped off onto the snow. There was a sign stuck in the snow, and Maki went over to check it out. It had a black diamond on it, but there was nothing else to explain what the symbol meant.
"Hey Honoka, what does this sign mean?"
"It's a rating system for each slope. A black diamond means it's a lot of fun!"
"Uh huh..." Honoka's definition of fun was probably a different definition than her own. She went over towards the edge and made the mistake of looking down the slope. It was... Well, it was a long way down, to say the least. She had to pull away lest she faint and fall all the way down.
She turned to look at Honoka, who didn't seem scared at all. In fact, she seemed really excited about the death drop. Honoka really was brave. "Incredible..." Maki whispered to herself, her quiet words whisked away by the wind. Apparently she wanted Honoka so badly that she was willing to face certain death. This sounded all-too familiar...
Well, it was time to face that certain death now. Maki walked over to the edge, refusing to look down. Now that she thought about it, being dead would not help her be with Honoka. Most girls weren't into dead people. This was the kind of thing that was important to think about before heading up Death Mountain.
"Are you ready for adventure, Maki-chan?" Nope. This was a terrible, horrible mistake. Maybe it wasn't too late though. She just had to tell Honoka that she didn't think this through, and she wasn't ready for a slope so drastic. All she had to do was look in Honoka's eyes and say...
"Your eyes are really pretty."
"Huh?"
"Slope! Down the slope, ahaha! Ready, so ready! Never been readier in my life!" Death was the preferable option now. Trying to pretend nothing had happened by laughing very conspicuously, Maki got her feet into the harnesses of the snowboard and practically threw herself down the dangerous slope. Death before dishonor and all that.
Maki screamed like the mature woman she was as she careened down the slope, covering her eyes as by some miracle of the Gods she didn't immediately fall over and break her neck. Then she remembered that she had definitely seen trees on the slope, so not looking where she was going might just break more than her neck. So she uncovered her eyes and started to scream again.
"Isn't this great?" Honoka had caught up with her, 'boarding down the slope with ease. "Don't you just love the rush?"
"Aaaaaah!" Maki responded with much elegance. She hadn't been taught how to speak and fly down a huge snowy mountain during that first lesson. Maybe she should've stayed with Rin and Umi. Yes, she definitely should've done that. Stupid jealousy making her do incredibly stupid things.
As they continued to head down the slope, it felt like the trees that were fencing them in were drawing closer. It was probably her imagination, but it freaked her out all the same. How far were they from the end? She wanted to ask Honoka, but she had a feeling that her words would just end up being unintelligible screaming again.
In the middle of the slope was a skinnier tree. Why they left a tree in the middle of the path, Maki hadn't the foggiest idea. Maybe it was to kill off poser snowboarders like her. "Right or left, Maki-chan?" Honoka was trying to direct her, but they were coming upon it too fast. She wasn't ready to make this kind of decision yet.
"Uh, uh?! Reft! No, light!" They sure were heading for that tree awfully quick. Unable to choose a direction in time, Maki jumped into the air, hoping to somehow get in between the branches and land like some cool action hero. Instead, she slammed right into a low-hanging branch, the wind getting knocked right out of her as it connected with her stomach.
For a moment, Maki hung on the branch like a limp noodle, her eyes half-lidded as she stared at the snow in a daze. Then she began to slide off, falling onto her back into the snow. She pulled her helmet off and dropped it next to her. "Did someone... get the license plate of that car?"
"Maki-chan!" Honoka had skidded to a stop and removed her snowboard, stomping over to where Maki had gotten broadsided by nature. "Are you okay?" She extended her hand so that Maki could grab it and get back on her feet. As soon as she rose up though, she felt sick. Weakly pushing Honoka aside, she put a hand onto the tree and vomited into the snow.
It felt like her back was being snapped in half, and the pain drove her down to her knees. Whatever meal she last had, it certainly wasn't in her stomach anymore. The meal before that probably wasn't either. In her mind, in the middle of throwing up her insides, she remembered that Honoka had asked if she was okay. Well, she certainly wasn't, but this was probably the best time to pretend she was and try to salvage something out of a terrible morning. Could she blame her pain for her terrible thought process?
Rather than saying the truth - which would've been something along the lines of "I think I'm dying" - she gave Honoka a thumbs up and mumbled "Never better" before retching again. She didn't know how Honoka reacted to that until she finally pulled herself back up and turned to find her crush smiling brightly at her.
"You're amazing, Maki-chan!"
"I... I am?"
"That was a wicked wipeout, but you handled it really well." 'Really well' must've been a relative term. "I've never seen anyone hit a tree like that before. It was cool!" Maki wasn't sure how cool it really was, but the best thing for her to do was to smile and nod... or at least just nod. The smiling would probably be forced.
Honoka stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Maki, pulling her into a gentle hug. That caught Maki completely off guard, who froze in Honoka's arms, eyes wide. What had she done to deserve such close contact with her crush? It wasn't time for questions. She just had to not say something to ruin the moment, which would be easy, considering that her vocal chords had apparently frozen over too.
"Maybe we'll try an easier slope, though. Ahaha, sorry for heading up here so quickly."
"N-No problem." At this point, any regret Maki had was pushed into the back of her mind. Getting any praise from Honoka had a funny way of doing that.
"Think you can get down the rest of this slope?" She wasn't sure if that was supposed to sound like a challenge or a sincere question of her abilities. The latter would make sense, honestly. Regardless, the sensible answer would be that she clearly couldn't, but at this point, there was no way in hell she actually believed she would give an answer that wouldn't cause her bodily harm.
"O-Of course." All she had to do was get down the rest of this treacherous slope, and she'd be able to go down easier slopes. Though she had failed to even get down the easiest one... At least she'd be with Honoka. That was good enough. Surely she could finish this slope off on a high note!
She fell five times the rest of the way, sustaining what may have been a fractured wrist, though it was so cold she could barely feel it anyway.
That night, Honoka and Maki entered the ski lodge, with Rin and Umi trailing after them. Even when they'd switched to the easier slopes, Maki still failed spectacularly, though by the end of the day she was able to go down an entire slope without falling on her face. That had to count as improvement.
Her wrist was aching something fierce, and the rest of her body didn't feel much better. Despite that and the constant cold, her insides felt warm due to all the time she spent with Honoka. The extreme amount of craziness she went through now had to be measured in how much Honoka she got to experience. This one rated pretty damn high.
"I think you were really improving at the end there!" Honoka smiled and put a hand on Maki's shoulder, keeping the two of them close to each other. "Next time, I bet you could successfully go down two slopes in a row!"
"Ahah, yeah... N-Next time." She swore that she could feel Umi's 'I told you so' gaze on her back. That had to ignored, though. Now was the perfect opportunity to ask Honoka a very important question. How was this the perfect opportunity? The cold had numbed her to her normal levels of extreme embarrassment. There would be no other time to ask Honoka to go out with her.
"H-Hey, Honoka?" She was still nervous, but this time she was going to push past it and succeed, or die of embarrassment. "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course!"
"I... I wanted to... to... t-to ask you out!" That was pretty loud. She really hoped that neither Rin or Umi had heard that, though considering Umi was aware of her crush, that probably didn't matter. Either way, she didn't want to look back and check their faces. All she was concentrating on now was Honoka and keeping a blush from taking over her face completely.
A bit of surprise registered on Honoka's face, but it quickly disappeared in a big grin. "I was wondering when you were going to ask!"
"You... Wait, what?! You... You were waiting for me to ask?"
"Oh yeah! I mean, I knew you had a crush on me." Honoka giggled at Maki's dumbstruck expression. "I just didn't know if you wanted to date or something."
"H-How long have you known?" There was no way she could've been so obvious, right? ... Right? Who was she even asking?
"Since you ran out of my parents' sweets shop." That was the first time they had met! Oh jeez, why hadn't Eli or Umi told her she'd been so obvious about it? What kind of roommates were they anyway?
"That... I... thought I was more discreet than that," she mumbled in embarrassment, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger. This wasn't the time to lose her cool, though. Honoka hadn't laughed specifically at her request yet, so maybe there was still a chance. "B-But I still want to ask you out, though! I... think you're really amazing, a-and brave, so-"
Her rambling was interrupted by a gentle hug from Honoka. "Haha, you don't have to flatter me to get me to say yes. All you have to do is ask." Oh, it was that easy?
"O-Oh, well then... Honoka, will you go out with me?"
"Hmm, I dunno..." She laughed again when Maki's face fell into a look of disbelief. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! Of course I'd love to go out with you." That was an emotional rollercoaster, or maybe an emotional ski slope, but it led to a happy conclusion after all. Maki couldn't help but smile as she finally reciprocated Honoka's hug.
"What an exciting day!" Honoka exclaimed as she took Maki's non-injured hand and led her towards their room. "Now I know the best way to cap off a great day like this."
"How's that?" Honoka stopped and turned around, leaning in until they were face to face. Their sheer proximity made Maki's breath hitch.
"Well, since we're sharing the same room, and the same bed... and we've got some adrenaline going on." Honoka winked at Maki, squeezing her hand. "Maybe we could go and celebrate the fact that we're going out, hmm?" An incredible blush spread across Maki's face, and she couldn't really pretend that it was the cold causing it. She knew exactly what Honoka was talking about. Okay, so she was an amateur when it came to dating, but she wasn't ignorant of what other people did with each other... to each other.
There was only one answer to give in this situation, though. She may be dumb sometimes, but she wasn't a dweeb. "A-Absolutely. Yes. Celebrate good times, come on." Honoka laughed and once again led them to their room, with Maki following in a trance.
When the door was opened, Honoka grabbed Maki by her jacket collar and pulled her into the room, shutting the door behind them. This left Rin and Umi just staring at where they had just been. The conversation hadn't exactly been quiet. At least, not as quiet as they may have thought.
"That... was more than I needed to know." Umi groaned and covered her face, a blush spreading across her own cheeks.
"Woo Honoka-chan!" Rin shouted and pumped her fist in the air, drawing the attention of a few loungers. "You know, Umi-chan, I bet we can be louder than they'll be-"
"A-Absolutely not!"