A/N: Hello!
Hoping everyone has survived the Thanksgiving festivities.
It's amazing to think that some of us overthink things so much, we end up putting ourselves in difficult situations for lack of courage. Sei and Youko are no different, hence chapter three of this story.
Thank you for reading!
Sei
Out of all of the people she could have encountered, Youko wasn't ready for it to be Satou Sei; it was summer break, after all. Lillian University's campus was deserted, the trail connecting the library to the front gates only had the gingko and sakura trees as company, though if one looked closely toward the path, they could see a head full of blonde hair leaning against the trunk of a tree, and Youko could spot that yellow head from a million kilometers away. The brunette tried to ignore what she saw, but her legs betrayed her, taking a detour from the paved path onto the green grass leading to the woman who made Youko's heart weak.
"Sei." Youko whispered trying not to startle the blonde who was sound asleep.
Slowly, Youko closed the distance between herself and the blonde, squatting in front of Sei before trying again,"Satou-Sei-san!" her fingers stroking Sei's face with the ultimate care.
That simple touch was capable of carrying enough power to make Youko's heart want to escape from her chest. It was as if every butterfly, quietly house within that strong muscle, had decided, all at once, it was time to flee.
When tired gray eyes finally met ebony ones, Youko's voice was caught in her throat and only after much effort she finally managed to ask Sei what she was doing there alone.
"I'm just lying here."
Youko asked about sunscreen, which she knew Sei had forgotten to apply on herself, and she received a "save your investigations for the classroom" jab back.
"Sei…"
"That's my name."
Youko wanted to scream. She wanted Sei to be safe, happy and she wanted the blonde to live a good life, which was the reason why Youko had distanced herself after graduating from high school. After all of those years together in the Yamayurikai, the former Rosa Chinensis had finally realized that Sei was at her best when Youko wasn't around. Plus, Sei had Yumi – who had filled a large void in the blonde's heart. The younger Red Rose didn't walk on eggshells around Sei, like Youko did, perhaps because she was never around for the Kubo Shiori debacle, or perhaps because Yumi was much braver than Youko could have ever been. Although the former Rosa Chinensis thought herself to be a woman of strong resolve, when it came down to Satou Sei, Youko felt like a craven child. In any case, Youko thought Yumi was better off that way, the tales she heard about 'Forest of Thorns' were only words being regurgitated by people who thought they knew what had happened. Even Sei was rather cavalier when retelling her story to both Yumi and Yoshino back in high school.
The truth of the matter was that Youko liked Sei. She had liked the blonde for a long time and had kept her feelings to herself because she didn't want their relationship to change had Sei not reciprocated her feelings. To Youko, the implications of telling Sei how she felt were much bigger than simply confessing to a friend, and Rosa Chinensis wasn't ready for a White and Red rose revolution; therefore, she remained silent.
Moreover, Youko still thought that those feelings, hidden deep under the layers of her heart, were going to dissipate sooner or later. To Youko, that school crush that had turned into a dolorous wound would heal as soon as the right person came along – and the brunette was more than ready to be swept off her feet by her knight in shiny armor.
"I…" Youko stood, moving her messenger bag from one shoulder to the other, "…wasn't expecting to see you here."
In all honesty, Youko didn't want to cut the conversation short, though she said those words carefully, thinking about what the blonde's onee-sama had once told her many years ago: If we force things upon Sei, she'll break into a million pieces and who's going to pick them up?
Youko would.
But Youko wasn't Kubo Shiori. In many ways Youko was not Kubo Shiori. Youko would have picked up the pieces of Sei and put them back together with all of the care and love a person could have for another human being. But Youko wasn't Kubo Shiori, and that was an issue, because to Youko, Shiori was the only person who could have saved Sei, and without Shiori, Sei would have lived her last year of high school as a shell of herself; simply going through the motions, never committing, never taking any more chances and trying to protecting her heart with all of her strength.
When graduation rolled around, Youko broke her own heart by promising herself she would cut ties with the blonde. To the brunette, the distance was a necessary choice if she were to move on, and every day she made a conscious decision not to contact the blonde as well as to avoid any communication coming from Sei. Everyday she berated herself for being a coward and for not telling Sei the truth. When Sei's attempts to reach out to Youko subsided, the former Rosa Chinensis was absolutely devastated by the very thing she wanted the most. Even so, life went on, though that void in Youko's heart was never again occupied.
There was a warm breeze reaching the top of the trees lining Lillian's paths, and such draft did nothing to help with the heat, on the contrary, the wind was a reminder that summer was around the corner and that there was no escape, try as one might, from the changing of seasons.
The awkward silence between the estranged friends lasted but a flash, "Look around, Youko-san, what do you see?"
Such a peculiar question which could only have come out of Satou Sei's mouth. The campus was empty, even the library, visited by Youko not even fifteen minutes prior to that encounter felt as if it had been abandoned, save the one lonely librarian who was sitting at a corner behind the counter, reading a paperback.
Looking around part of Youko felt sad for missing the high school side of that campus so much; life was so much easier within the Lillian gates, "I see you," she answered with her back toward Sei.
"But do you see anything else?"
"The path, trees, buildings, the sky. I don't think I understand you."
"I think you do understand… This path is wonderful when it can be seen like this: in its most natural form, without the cluttered of people around it. All of these things you see, I see also. All of these things; from the grass, to the shades of the trees; everything is flawlessly positioned…"
Whether it was the amount of pot Sei had been smoking or the amount of Dewey she had been reading, whatever it was, it was doing wonders to the blonde's soul.
Youko couldn't fathom the changes she saw in Sei after Shiori left – the brunette thought Sei was out of her mind for trying to build a wall around her heart because Shiori wasn't woman enough to love her. Seeing Sei in one piece again was a relief for Youko who had always worried about the people she loved. However, the fact that Sei's heart had healed also told Youko that the blonde might have been ready to love again.
Thoughts of Sei being intimate with another someone flooded Youko's mind. It was the caressing of another someone's skin, the carefulness of Sei's lips touching another's, the sweet words being whispered inside someone else's ear, the featherweight touch of her fingers on another someone's skin and the thrusting of hips. It was the trembling of plateau and the quivering of Sei's body when she had reached climax; Youko wanted that somebody to be her so badly, she had completely missed the last part of Sei's philosophical explanation of Lillian's lonely path.
Youko had finally turned around to face the blonde again, and Sei looked at her like she had asked Youko the ultimate question and had gotten absolutely nothing for an answer.
"I have to go." Sei stood and started to walk away.
If we force things upon Sei, she'll break into a million pieces and who's going to pick them up?
###
"Sei." Youko's voice reverberated in Sei's dream.
The small campus was barely empty and Sei had always thought it looked better that way. People's presence did nothing but deface the view. The path, which connected the main buildings of Lillian University, was beautifully taken care of and although the temperature was quite high, the grass still looked pristinely green.
Sei liked being out in the open, without the confinement and the limitations of four walls – no matter how big a room was. Even within a 250-person lecture hall, the blonde still felt constrained. Being able to enjoy the warmth of the sun in that lonely afternoon had made the blonde's day all the more enjoyable.
"Satou-Sei-san!"
It couldn't be.
When Sei opened her eyes and sat up from lying on the grass, the vision across from her was magnificent, and the butterflies hit the blonde's chest like a mallet.
"What are you doing?" Came the harmless chuckle, in the soft melody that was Mizuno Youko's voice.
"I'm just lying here."
"In this heat? You're probably not even wearing any sunscreen, are you?"
"Youko, please, save the investigations for the classroom."
"Sei."
"That's my name."
Youko explained that she wasn't expecting to stumble upon the blonde. There were books she needed for research that were only available at Lillian and for that reason she had to cross town to pick them up.
It was a bit surreal for Sei to have been awoken by the former Red Rose. Out of all of the people that could have crossed paths with the blonde that day, Youko was at the bottom of Sei's list. She knew for a fact that Youko rarely made her way to Lillian's neighborhood –whether it was on purpose, in order to avoid the blonde, or just a matter of convenience, for having everything she needed by Tokyo University. The blonde had been avoided like the plague by Youko ever since they had graduate from high school, which strengthened the girl's assurance that she could stroll around the small campus without fearing that her heart would be pulled out of her chest and squeezed into mush by just accidentally running into Youko.
"Youko-san…"
The blonde felt an unexplainable force moving her lips on its own accord. Perhaps it was time to say the things that she left unsaid so many times before. Perhaps that force, compelling Sei to speak, was the last of the strength the blonde had mustered within her heart, the last string of hope connecting the two friends.
"Yes?" Youko asked, looking straight at the blonde. It was breathtaking, the sun reaching the dark hair and shining its light on that girl who was already lovely in the eyes of Sei.
"When you look around, what do you see?" Was what came out of Sei's mouth.
Youko took the question literally, looking around as her body turned 180 degrees, "I see you," came the answer.
Sei's throat tightened. Youko had this incredible ability to set the blonde's heart ablaze with the simplest of the words. But Youko was a prude. Youko was a know-it-all, fucking prude. Youko wouldn't understand that if there were anyone who could have picked up Sei's broken pieces, it would have had to be the former Rosa Chinensis. Youko wouldn't have understood that Sei's scars had healed long ago, and that she was finally able to love herself and consequently, she was also finally ready to love Youko the way the brunette deserved to be loved: unconditionally, unabashedly, entirely. To have loved Youko in any other way would have been simply unfair.
Moreover, to have confessed to Youko after having invested so much of herself in Shiori would have seemed as a cheap rebound, an excuse to forget what had happened, and it was not as if Sei wanted to lose herself in Youko in hopes to forget about Shiori; it had never been about forgetting Shiori, it had always been about falling for Youko too quickly after having lost Shiori – although the feeling was there, ever so strong, Sei was scared. After all, to have loved Youko without healing first would have completely destroyed any chance that Sei had to truly give the brunette everything she thought Youko deserved.
Unfortunately, Sei had waited too long to voice her feelings and Youko started to distance herself before the blonde's heart had been able to be picked up and put back together. Then Youko decided to attend a university other than Lillian, which made it easier for her to stop answering the phone calls and text messages from Sei. Every attempt Sei had made to see Youko and talked to her was somehow ignored or avoided. So the blonde tried to let Youko go, and she thought she had done a very good job until the woman had walked up to her just a few minutes prior to the start of that conversation.
"But do you see anything else?" Sei berated herself for sounding jaded, though it was either that or no voice at all.
"The path, trees, buildings, the sky. I don't think I understand your question."
"I think you do understand."
"…"
"This path is wonderful when it can be seen like this: in its most natural form, without the clutter of people around it. All of these things you see, I see also. All of these things; from the grass, to the shades of the trees; everything is flawlessly positioned. Right now, I look around and I fail to see one thing that I don't love."
To Sei, there couldn't be a clearer way to speak of her feelings toward the lovely woman across from her. Nevertheless, since Youko had completely ignored the last portion of her explanation – not even caring to face the blonde – Sei had gotten her answer and was ready to walk away. It was time to move on, for real that time, so she stood, grabbed her book and her keys and started to walk, "I have to go, Youko."
"Wait!"
Youko ran toward the blonde, reaching for the woman's hand, "Say it again…"
"Youko…" Sei looked at her feet, her white sneakers stained in various shades of green. Then instead of green-stained shoes, Sei faced a pair of ebony orbs as Youko stood in front of the blonde with the resolve of not letting her go until she had an answer, "Please, say it again…" the brunette pleaded.
"I said…" Sei looked deep into Youko's eyes, "that I didn't see one thing around me that I didn't love."
Youko claimed Sei's free hand, "Do you mean what you say?"
"Look, Youko…"
"Just answer the question, Satou Sei."
There was silence, but it wasn't awkward any longer. Sei's heart was pounding against her chest, her skin burned where Youko's fingers landed, whether Youko would turn down Sei's advances or actually say yes to her words didn't matter to Sei anymore. That moment though, when onyx locked with gray, would have been branded in Sei's mind for eternity, either as a beautiful memory of the beginning of a new story, or as the bittersweet ending of whatever was left from their friendship, and there was no avoiding either one or the other. Regardless, Sei was ready, the moment was overdue, so she spoke, " I mean every syllable, every single word, the entire sentence. But I lied about one thing."
"Sei, you can't take that back, you're not allow—"
"Out of everything I see, I love you the most."
A/N: How was it?
Again, thank you for reading! :)
