Hikage, a girl who lacked emotions, had scored herself a date with her fellow student and close friend, Yomi. With wet, round eyes and cheeks glowing pinker than sakura blossoms, the young blonde woman had proposed a going out together with the Hebijo classmate. Hikage, barely able to even muster up dull surprise, accepted the offer without any further consideration. Deep, deep down inside of her, there was likely a little something called 'happiness' that cried out with joy at that moment. Unfortunately, due to the hectic schedules of teenage evil ninjas, the two girls had to postpone their date again and again, for almost two whole weeks. During that time, Hikage thought up of several different ways she could properly express her feelings for Yomi in words when they went on her date. She didn't wish to beat around the bush; she really did like Yomi, and she wanted to ensure the girl understood that fully and completely. These were just a few such proposals Hikage had in mind:
"I want to kiss you."
"May I touch your breasts?"
"Would you like to sleep with me sometime?"
"Nothing would make me happier than to be able to rub my face deep inside your bosom right now."
"Whether we do it in a bed or in a bathroom stall, I don't care where, I just want to do it with you."
Hikage had thought all of those and more were adequate enough, but when she relayed her ingenious idea to her comrades, they immediately cut her off short before she could read another one off of her very long list. Hikage stared at them, asking what was wrong.
"H-Hikage, come on now...Yomi isn't going to like it if you say any of those things to her..." Homura was literally trembling, but it was because she could barely hold herself back from doubling over with laughter.
"You're going to get slapped, not kissed, you idiot!" Mirai shouted.
"Oh dear...Hikage, even I am shocked at how blunt you could be about your desires, and yet look at how I live..." Haruka remarked with some bemusement.
Hikage tilt her head. "Then what do you think I should do? I spent a week preparing all of these. I wrote out more than fifty pick-up lines already."
Mirai and Haruka immediately swiveled their heads in Homura's direction. Their smiles seemed to stretch and contort across their faces, until they appeared quite eerie, no attempt being made to even conceal their secret spite toward their friend. "Yes, Homura," Haruka exclaimed, "Please instruct our love-struck friend, would you? You know more about this than Mirai or I, don't you?"
"Err..." Homura cringed; yes, she and Asuka had been dating steady for a few months, but it was her very first relationship, and it certainly didn't mean she was qualified to be handing out love advice to just anyone on the street. In fact they hadn't gone beyond the first stage of kissing either.
However, someone like Hikage, whose lack of emotions would make romance incredibly difficult if not entirely impossible to properly experience, needed all of the help she could be handed right now. Whether or not she was actually feeling it, Hikage wanted to make Yomi hers, she wanted to be Yomi's, it was that intense desire to have an interpersonal connection with another person. Homura loved all of her friends, and she wouldn't be able to bring herself to turn away the other girl. Mirai and Haruka didn't need to keep staring with such fierce glares, though. She just needed a few seconds to think on the subject.
"Uh...well...you can't just ask someone to sleep with you, especially not a friend or someone you're actually attracted to..."
"Even if it's true, though?" Hikage asked.
"ESPECIALLY if it's true!" Mirai snapped back.
"That's a shame. I don't have emotions, so I figured this was the best I could do."
"I'm the only one who is shameless enough to try and do things like that, and look where it's got me now? The girl I love is with another woman! You must be more considerate of the other party's feelings...!" Haruka exclaimed, trying to sound profoundly hurt in having to admit the truth, although it may have been a part of her not-so-well-hidden fetishist side, hoping to be consoled or berated for her pitiful state so as to obtain sexual arousal.
Mirai would have made a remark about how Haruka still had her little 'harem' of masochistic slaves she kept in her underground lair, so there was no reason Haruka should have felt alone without Hibari. However, Mirai had a good hunch that she wasn't supposed to know about either that place or those people in the first place.
"Hikage, you have to be charming, suave, sweet to her; you need to make her feel like she's the only girl in the whole world who matters to you. Making her feel special and important is the most important thing; you gotta act like your true desires for her come second." Homura explained.
"True desires, eh?" Hikage rubbed her chin.
"Is that really how you look at Asuka too, Homura? You only pretend to not want her body first?" Mirai gave the older girl an extremely distasteful look, as if she were looking at at a pile of manure and sewage sitting inside a dirty toilet bowl, and Homura immediately shrunk back, face paling.
"N-No, I...I didn't mean it that way...honest...I was just saying, for Hikage..."
"Hikage, do you really want Yomi in the first place?" Haruka decided to ask while her two friends bickered on the sidelines. Homura was desperately pleading her case while the surprisingly unforgiving Mirai continued to needle her further with accusations.
"Hmm?"
"What makes you like her so much at all? Have you considered the reasons, besides how adorable she is and how lusciously round and bouncy her breasts are? You don't have any emotions, as you've said time and again, so there had to have been an aspect about her that transcended your emotional disconnection and actually made you feel something in your heart, right?"
Hikage thought about it: what was Yomi?
Yomi was undoubtedly someone important to her, as all of her friends were. Yomi was one of the sweetest, kindest, most forgiving girls Hikage knew. Yomi loved bean sprouts to the point of an unhealthy obsession, but she was always willing to share some too. Yomi was beautiful and intelligent, although a little gullible sometimes, almost to a fault. Yomi swung around a sword bigger than her own head as if it was nothing, her physical strength was incomparable for a girl her size and age. Yomi was someone who had pushed Hikage to open up about her emotions before any of the other girls tried. Yomi was the one who asked her out on a date. Yomi was the one whom Hikage wanted to express desires of unrepentant lust for. Yomi was the one that Hikage wanted to change herself for. Yomi was...Yomi was...
"I think I get it now."
Homura, Mirai and Haruka looked up at their friend, who had jumped to a stand with an expression that could almost be considered actual shock on her face.
"What?"
"I know what I'll tell her now. I'll make sure she understands how much I care about her."
"You...you do? But I didn't even finish-" Homura started to say, but Mirai gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
Haruka leaned in closely. "So what is it? I'm dying to know!"
"It would be best if I kept it to myself until the right time. I'm going now. I will be ready for my date with Yomi by tomorrow. Thank you all, for your help." Hikage flashed the briefest, thinnest of smiles, and with that, she disappeared in a flash. The other girls had no chance of following her. She was the fastest of them all, except for Homura with her seventh sword unleashed, and they certainly weren't about to do that now.
"She left already, and we didn't even give her all that much helpful advice."
"She said she has something in mind, and I suppose it's only right we put our trust into it. Hikage may be emotionless, but she's not stupid. I'm sure she was even joking about those blunt pick-up lines too...I hope...and by the end of it all, Yomi will be her girlfriend!"
"Are we going to spy on their date?" Mirai asked, sounding more hopeful about it than she properly should have, as she desperately wanted to be there when Hikage finally confessed to Yomi. She would even bring a camera.
Homura and Haruka snickered to themselves.
"Of course we will! Why be ninja if we can't spy on our friends' dates?"
The next day, Hikage and Yomi went on their date, in the shopping district of the little city. While it appeared from an outsider's perspective like they were busy picking out groceries, at least Yomi was trying to decipher which bean sprouts were the tastiest and the cheapest, Hikage was already formulating her 'romantic verbal onslaught' in her mind. She was not going to let Yomi slip away from her; Hikage would have probably declared this an S-rank mission, though, as she had never felt so strangely unsettled about her plans on 'taking care' of her opponent before. Cutting down nameless rival ninja or even combating Katsuragi from Hanzo Academy hadn't made her heart waver like this.
Hikage swallowed her spit rather loudly. Was she...was she feeling nervousness right now?
"Hikage!"
The green-haired girl snapped out of her trance to realize that her date was talking to her.
"You okay?" Yomi asked, eyebrows knitting together with fervent concern.
Hikage nodded. "I'm fine. What is it?"
"You wouldn't believe what I just found!" Yomi presented a transparent plastic bag filled to the bursting point with tiny, dry sprouts, "Bean sprouts! 200 of them! For only five bucks! They're only a few days from expiring so they cut the price down even further! It's like a Christmas Miracle, except in the summer! We can have a bean sprout hot-pot tonight! Doesn't that sound delicious?"
Hikage nodded mechanically; bean sprouts were certainly far from her mind at the moment. "Yes. Sure."
"I'm sure we can afford a daikon or two to go along with it. And maybe some carrots and potatoes...what do you think?"
Hikage shrugged, and when Yomi turned, she tried to reach for her friend's hand, but Yomi had already put enough distance between them that it was impossible. Hikage sighed. She needed to just come out and say what she wanted to say. For someone who supposedly lost her emotions long ago, she was sure having a difficult time speaking her mind, she noticed. The words were there, dangling like fruit ready to be picked from Hikage's tongue, but no matter how hard she tugged, no matter how hard she forced, they refused to budge even an inch, much less break off from the branches.
"Yomi,"
"Hmm?"
"Would you..."
"Would I what? Buy another pack of bean sprouts? Oh, Hikage, don't tempt me so much!" Yomi giggled.
"Would you let me rub your tits?"
'She didn't take our advice at all!' Homura, Mirai and Haruka all blanched as they watched on from their hiding spots throughout the marketplace.
Yomi, however, was burning hot enough to sustain an entire solar system.
"Oh my...Hikage...you..."
Hikage nodded. "I want to grip your breasts tight in my hands while I kiss you deeply. I want to do those sort of things with you. Is that wrong, Yomi? I am very conflicted about this. I found myself hesitating to act in telling you these things, even though I was sure I had no reason to hold back. Is there something wrong with me?"
Yomi brought a hand to her chest, and with a tiny, happy smile, she asked, her breath caught in her throat, "You...you actually feel something for me, Hikage?"
"I think I do, or I know I do, actually."
"Hikage, I've tried so hard to help you open up and express your true emotions," Yomi dabbed at her eyes with a spare glove, as if it were a handkerchief, "But this...even though your face hasn't changed in the slightest, I can hear the emotion in your voice and with your words. Oh, Hikage, I'm so happy! I'm so happy, I could...I could..."
"Kiss me?"
Yomi nodded, and she proceeded to lean in, closing the gap between her and Hikage little by little, Hikage shutting her eyes in heated anticipation, Yomi's heart throbbing so joyously inside her chest, all the while the three other friends looked on with dropped jaws.
"I guess she didn't need us after all," Mirai sniffed, feeling ignored.
"Hikage and Yomi must have had more going on between the two of them than what we even knew about." Haruka giggled.
Homura put her hands behind her head. "Well, it looks like that's been settled. Now we have nothing left to worry about except graduating! Right? Heh heh...heh...why are you two staring at me like that?"
Mirai and Haruka started to cackle at the same time.
"There's still the matter..."
"...Of getting you to finally go to the next step with your beloved Asuka, Homura."
Homura took a moment to think about what they'd said, and her cheeks set ablaze upon realization. She quickly turned and started to run.
"That's none of your business! I...I'll do that when I want to! Get off my back!" Homura cried. She needed to hurry and confront Asuka, to make sure that Haruka had not slipped the Hanzo girl any aphrodisiacs or the sort, to trick her into expressing sudden desires for the flesh. That was certainly the reason Homura told herself for why she was visiting her girlfriend right now, at least.
Haruka smirked. "I certainly do enjoy pulling her strings."