Noire tapped her foot and crossed her arms, standing in front of the niche in the wall around Neptune's room door. She had knocked earlier, but still she waited to hear the footsteps of someone inside coming to let her in. Minutes had passed, when in reality she should not have been kept waiting for more than thirty seconds.

What is she doing in there? Patience dwindling, Noire put an ear up to the door and knocked again, listening closely for the slightest sound of life. This process should have been routine by this point. Not even Neptune could forget that Noire had come by every day for almost a week now—ever since the suspension of the Film Club's activities.

Not a sound from within. Not even the noise of a video game. Noire huffed and settled her back against the wall of the entryway. If Neptune had decided to lock herself up like a mouse in its hole, then Noire would play the role of the patient cat. However, it was beyond logic that Neptune would suddenly start ignoring her. All week, Neptune had accepted and maybe even appreciated her company. There had to be a different reason she had not opened the door: She was sleeping, or she had not come back to her room yet. Yet where else would she have gone?

Noire's mind wandered as she got comfortable next to the closed door. The stern shape of her lips melted away as she relived what had happened earlier that week.

As any good friend would have done, she had grown worried having not heard a peep from Neptune all weekend. For a normally proactive socialite, Neptune not begging to hang out was abnormal. So the next day, not even an hour after classes had ended, Noire had climbed the stairs to the second floor and rapped her knuckles on the door she knew belonged to Neptune, and she had waited. And waited.

Eventually, she had gotten tired of waiting and dialed Neptune's number on her phone, only to be redirected to an obnoxious voicemail that only Neptune could have thought up.

When told to leave a message after the beep, she had started to talk as if she were actually standing face to face with Neptune. "Neptune, I'm giving you three seconds to answer the door. One. Two. Th—"

At that moment, she had heard something hit the ground with a thwump. The door had opened a few instants later, revealing a messy-haired moron with a smile that said she had just tumbled out of the bed to make it to the door in time.

The memory filed itself away. More than a few minutes had passed by now, and a familiar impatience took root in her mind. Something was wrong, else Neptune would have come out by now. Either sleep had a firm hold of her, or she really had not come back yet. Today marking the end of the week, the possibility that Neptune had gone to the school's convenience store to stock up on snacks and food was very real. Sensible, in fact, even probable. Maybe I'll do that myself. I could bump into her too.

Already drawing out the path to the campus corner store in her head, Noire left the quiet dormitory alone and thought instead about what she could whip up for a meal plan this weekend. Something sweet for dessert, definitely, and a hearty dish she could make one day and heat up the next.

Before she could walk very far, her phone vibrated in the pocket of her skirt. The caller identity, when she had dug her cell out and glanced at the screen, made her put all other thought processes on hold. Her thumb had tapped the answer button before even the second vibration.

"Neptune? What's up? Where are you right now?" she asked, the questions unceremoniously spilling from her lips.

"Whoa, that was fast! Hi there, Noire." Neptune greeted through the receiver, her voice hampered by feedback that never seemed to end, "And I'm, uh, not sure."

Just Another Love Story

Despite its namesake, Gamicademi Island drew most of its livelihood from the sprawling city bordering the actual school. Expansive, modern, and impossibly picturesque, a megalopolis like this provided no end for ambitions. Thrill-seeking youth filled residential towers, smart prospectors set up shop along major roads. Built of metal and glass, from the impressionable carbon-steel roads to the tops of every building to pierce the heavens, a civilization like this existed for some architects only in dreams.

Not every building soared a hundred of meters into the sky, and those that did not stood out for being remarkably out of place in a giant's playpen. One café, whose outdoor seating jutted out to cover half the sidewalk, sat almost as if at the base of a great wall, for how huge the buildings were behind it. Though its exterior fit in well with the fluid urban environs, what was visible through its glass windows looked like an old-world coffee shop with chalkboard-black walls and hanging lights over the counter and every table. A charming appearance in a dense concrete jungle, its design was no doubt meant call out to the city's tireless business class coming home from work.

In front, seated at a round table with her arms folded on the polished limestone surface, Neptune gazed vacantly at the glass-windowed face of a business office across the street. And in front of her was a menu printed on creamy paper, its choices centered neatly on the page. It offered a limited selection of sandwiches and drinks, but despite the loose credits in her pocket, there was too much on her plate already to be excited at the prospect of a meal.

She had gone for a walk to clear her head as soon as classes permitted. What had driven her to do so, she did not remember exactly. The notion of leaving the school and walking around the city had come to her as a spontaneous thought, like a falling leaf touching the surface of a pond. It just happened.

In a city like this, Neptune would normally never lose her way. But she had taken a few turns without paying attention, her mind playing back a sequence of events that always came back to that day she argued with Blanc, a week ago.

At one point, her feet had taken her across the river separating the academy's half of the island from the city, and yet she could not remember when.

Every step had taken her into territory less and less familiar. This city and its design were still unknown to her. It covered a literal half of the island and was only marginally like the place of her birth, Planeptune. That place she knew like the back of her hand, but this place?

When her pace had finally slowed to a halt and she had looked around only to recognize nothing around her, the nameless energy source powering her legs had just fizzled out. She had slumped into the nearest chair—which happened to belong to the café—and let her shoulders fall. This far from the grounds, there was no risk of being seen by anyone she knew.

Now, about five minutes later, one of the waitresses walked toward her to see if she had finished reading the menu. A woman in her early twenties, she wore a welcoming smile and held out a miniature notepad. Her black hair was tied up in a short black ponytail that draped over her shoulder like a fur.

"Hey," she greeted Neptune cordially, "You must've come from the academy; we're too far to get a lot of you students. Would you like something to eat or drink?"

That friendly smile persisted even after Neptune shook her head. "No thanks, I'm... waiting for a friend."

"Alright. Wave if you change your mind, dear."

The waitress walked away, leaving Neptune to herself. Thankfully, there was only a modest amount of business at the café. She could see inside the building, where a few business suits sipped their coffee and frowned at their laptops.

Enough seating to accommodate all the clientele meant that she would not be turned away even if she waited to order anything. At the very least, it bought her more time to sit and mull over her situation. Resting her chin on her hand, she breathed in and released a long puff of air.

Bored of waiting, she reached into her pocket and checked her phone. An hour and a few minutes had passed since the end of class. Taking into account the time she had spent returning to her room—not long—and getting ready to go out, she was probably at least thirty-five minutes out from the academy building. Noire would not be here for a while.

Noire. More than it should have, the name lingered on her mind the way a coin glinted at the bottom of a pond, making her subconsciously glance from time to time to check that it was still there.

Neptune couldn't remember the last time she had wanted to see someone so badly. All last week she had lived under a storm cloud. Blanc had left a sour taste in her mouth—or, rather, it was the words they had traded that she could not wash down with a glass of juice. Things had escalated so quickly, and Neptune knew it was not wholly her own fault; her friend had a short temper, and sometimes good friends were prone to argue often. But the conversation had taken a horribly wrong turn at some point, maybe due to her own inability to say what she had wanted from the start. All I wanted was for her to talk to me more. Agonized, Neptune bowed her head lower, until the limestone table was all that she could see.

Blanc was such a hard worker. Stubborn, unyielding, but oh so solitary. Neptune had wanted to lend a hand with the tedium that her willful director took on all alone without complaint. Being president, she should have been helping from the get-go. But Blanc had taken her proffered assistance in all the wrong ways. If Neptune had cut to the point instead of dancing about the subject, trying to be subtle, this situation could have been a hundred times better. Her own feelings, she had bottled up to keep her voice from quivering, her legs from giving. Just so she could talk to Blanc with a calm face, a conversation that should have been over in minutes.

Then—when exactly, she did not remember—the jar holding them had tipped and shattered, and the mean words inside had taken to the air with the beating of a hundred wicked wings. What did I say to her, Neptune withered, cursing herself. She must hate me now.

Something crept up behind her eyes. Her hardest to push it back down was not enough. These tears had already been shed, and for the very same thoughts, but in the privacy of her own room. No, she could not cry twice over spilled milk—not here in public, with prying eyes everywhere.

She had hardly left her dorm room last weekend. Those forty-eight hours she had spent confined within her chamber, she had killed with her collection of video games and a few books. But the only thing she remembered was lying in bed dreading the next morning, when she would have to go back to class and smile again. Oh, she had tried to act as if nothing were wrong. Tried to keep everything under wraps, so nobody would get involved with her problems.

Maybe stupidly, she had underestimated the strength of her emotions to bring her down. How hard was it to just ask for help?

That was when Noire had shown up in front of her door and demanded to be let in.

Noire had ordered her through the phone, voice sharp as a switchblade, to unlock the door or else. A momentary terror had filled Neptune's body. What had she done this time, to incur Noire's anger when she already had Blanc's to deal with?

Yet, at the sight of her in the entryway with a hand on her hip looking vexed like none other, Neptune had felt the most warmth she had in days. It meant more to her in that instant than ever before that someone wanted to see her, not because of any reason in particular, but just because. She found out swiftly that Noire had not come to pressure her for answers or details, which had been her fear from the beginning. She had come for the sake of visiting a friend.

They had not done anything together, alone in Neptune's room. Only played games and whittled away the time, like true friends would. And it had reminded her of something she had forgotten, a wordless exchange pushed out of her memory by a storm of self-loathing: the day the Film Club met for the last time, when Noire had locked eyes with Neptune. They had, for a fleeting moment, been on the same frequency. Tacit understanding. As if in that moment, Noire had been saying, "I know."

Neptune turned her phone in her hands. About twenty minutes had gone by since she had called Noire. Genuine worry had been in her friend's voice, as well as the customary annoyance. After listening to Neptune's flimsy explanation and getting the street name, Noire had hung up with a brief, I'll be there soon.

It was selfish, but Neptune felt excited to see her again. She was wasting Noire's time by making her come all the way out here, and yet no amount of guilt could stamp out her joy. That Noire would do this for her in the first place lit a warm match in her chest.

Like the evening chill, time's slow progress settled over her as if she could see the hands of the clock, their halting stop and go. She glanced at her home screen; not long had actually passed compared to how rooted she felt to her seat. A few games were downloaded on her device, but she was in no mood to play a game, too lazy to stretch her fingers for any of the colorful apps on the screen. So she checked her messages for the hundredth time, knowing precisely what she would find there. A few worried texts from her sister. A few from her friends and her sister's friends asking her what she was doing this weekend. And a whole list of them from Blanc...

Her thumb paused over Blanc's name in the list. If she tapped it, she could read each and every one again. They were practically the five stages of grief in an IM medium, all culminating in a two-second voice message. Neptune had played the clip no less than a dozen times, trying hopelessly to find some meaning in those two seconds. Blanc had clearly been trying to say something, but she had not gotten past the first strangled syllable. Her courage must have failed her, as otherwise there would have been a second, maybe more successful attempt.

The thought made Neptune's heart twinge. If only Blanc had just said something, anything, it would have been grounds enough to forgive her as far as Neptune was concerned, though there was always the unthinkable possibility that she would hear the words she did not want to hear.

"I have half a mind to turn you in for leaving the grounds during the week, even if the week is technically over. I do have a heart made out of ice, if you didn't know."

That voice—sharp as a switchblade. Neptune's phone slipped from her fingers, and she stood up, pushing her chair back. Irritated frown and hand on her hip, there stood Noire.

For a single, insane second, Neptune wanted to hug her.

She quelled the whim and laughed, surprising herself, "I bet there's a cute framed photo of us two in that snowed-over heart of yours."

"Wow, gee, I was just thinking about how annoying you are, making me come all the way out here to pick up a lost child." Her flat voice told Neptune more than she needed to know. "Let's go back." Already turned away, Noire glanced over her shoulder and waited. For now dismissing Blanc from her mind, Neptune turned off her phone and shoved it deep into her pocket.

As she fell into step behind her friend, Neptune realized she did not want to walk away from the café without ordering anything. To do so after such a kind reception felt like ingratitude, alongside being a rare visitor from the academy. She chanced a look over her shoulder, about to open her mouth and tell Noire she wanted to stay and grab a drink. The waitress from before was now standing by her table and watching her go.

Their eyes met for a brief moment, and the waitress gave her a wave and a friendly smile. Neptune returned both.

Simple as it was, the gesture did away with her reluctance. As if a weight had been lifted from her chest, Neptune put her eyes front and felt a smile coming on naturally. She took a few steps forward to walk side by side with her friend.

"Hey Noire. Let's come back here sometime, okay?"

Just Another Love Story

A plastic bag stuffed with snack food swaying at her side, Noire climbed the stairs up to the second floor, disregarding the attention she got from the scattered cliques of students loitering in the halls. Painful as it was to admit, she had earned somewhat of a notorious title among the student body, especially the first years. In a competitive streak with Vert during their first year at the academy, she had campaigned for the student council, specifically for the role of ASB president—and lost.

On the bright side, finishing in second place secured her spot on the council as vice president. Unable to decline the position, she had eventually taken to her newfound authority with the zeal of a taskmaster. A little too much zeal, to be exact. Trying to totally reform the school in a matter of days, in a manner of speaking, was no small feat, and one in which Noire had been forced to admit defeat. Rumors of her unpopular policies dissociated through the student body like salt in water. Maybe enlisting Plutia as the chair member of the new disciplinary committee had been a bad idea.

But their looks had never bothered her. Students would be students, and their impressions of her were worth no more than a cent each. What mattered to them did not matter to her; she had other things to do than worry twenty-four seven about her reputation.

Having committed Neptune's room number to memory, she found her destined dorm easily; it was, after all, only fourteen doors away from her own. Just as she had requested before she left, the entrance had been left unlocked for her.

When the door was shut and locked, she became aware of a low noise in the room. Sound effects and the occasional roar that belonged in a video game. Stepping farther into the room, she saw Neptune sitting on the bed with the lights dimmed, blankets piled up around her like a ring of mountains enclosing a valley.

"Welcome back Noire," Neptune said without taking her eyes off the game. Her character unleashed a series of sword slashes at an enormous red-and-white dragon taking up over half the screen. "Did you lock the door?"

Noire checked to make sure she had indeed turned the lock and, not wanting to break her friend's concentration, refrained from walking across the room to reach her desk. Instead, she sat down on the edge of the bed and started sorting through the snacks she had bought right there.

At the corner store, she had let herself go and grabbed some of her own favorites. Since she was shopping for two people, why not pick up some junk food for a change, was what she had reasoned. Though most of the selection had been standard convenience-store fare, rumors circulated that a certain type of dessert had been added to the store to commemorate, and accommodate, the CPU of Planeptune. They had proved to be true.

"Oh, yeah... I found this at the store and thought you might like it." Noire pulled out a packaged cup of flan and held it out for Neptune to see. "I'll just put it in your minifridge... unless you want it now?"

Neptune shook her head softly. "Nah, I'll have it later. Can you?"

At the base of the television set was a short steel minifridge that went up to Noire's waist which held the staple foods for any average college student: grab-and-go snacks, soda cans, and juice boxes.

"Why don't you have any fruit in here or something?" Noire grumbled as she pushed a few cans to the side. "And can't you at least keep your soda and juice separated?"

Noire heard her humming, thinking, and could practically imagine her shoulders lift in a careless shrug. "It doesn't bother me, but you can reorganize it if you really want," she heard after some time and sighed. Knowing Neptune, the fridge would be back to the way it was now after a day anyway. She closed the fridge and stood up, straightening her back and feeling her joints shift pleasingly with a series of cracks. When she turned around, she was surprised to find Neptune eying her warily.

Seeing that the boss fight was over, a serene view of an island unfurled with the saurian monster's defeat, Noire crossed the room to grab her book lying on the desk. She had left it here since she was in the habit of visiting Neptune daily. Neptune had not commented on it, but she had probably taken a peek at the back cover out of curiosity.

"What's that book about?" she asked now, finally removing her eyes from the screen.

"Hm... A little bit of everything. Historical fiction, murder mystery. It's pretty interesting so far."

The heroine of the novel, a stage illusionist with as many secrets as tricks, found herself the center of unwanted attention after the death of a man in her same line of work. She was used to being the star of the show, the spotlight, the crowd pleaser, but too much close scrutiny shook the very foundations of the world she had sculpted for herself, making wobble the house of cards she had dedicated her life to.

"Only the detective and his partner can get involved," Noire explained the nature of the investigation. "Otherwise, people would discover the tricks behind her act and stop believing what they see." Always, the illusionist pushed aside her personal life before stepping onto the stage, else the illusion be broken. Even her real name, she exchanged for a pseudonym.

"Is that why she never goes by her real name?" asked Neptune. "To keep people suspended in disbelief, 'cause they'll never know who she actually is?"

Noire nodded a few times, having never thought of it that way. Neptune was sharper than she let on.

The two lapsed into quiet. Neptune played for a little while longer before returning the controller to its spot under the TV and turning off the flat screen. Noire felt the bed shift when Neptune sat down and burrowed into the blankets again. The bag of snacks rustled as a hand sorted through it.

Noire watched as Neptune picked out a box of chocolate biscuits from the bag. "I thought you were going to eat that pudding?" she asked curiously. Neptune hesitated, her fingernail already wedged partway under the top fold.

"Eh, I'm... not in the mood right now." A puff of air like a sigh trailed her words, as if she had taken too deep a breath but spoken too fast and the excess just spilled out.

"Not in the mood? That's a first," Noire lifted an eyebrow and went back to her book. Those words almost worried her, uncharacteristic as they were, but at this point she was willing to take the anomaly at face value. The list of facts she knew about Neptune grew by the day, so it was no use getting hung up over every little thing.

Noire kept reading, a page away from the end of a chapter, and could not help but wonder if the hero, a detective agent investigating the murder with the illusionist's help, cared about the heroine in more ways than one. The lengths to which he went to ensure her safety went beyond her value as a case witness. Even though they were only together because of the case investigation, he treated her like a family member.

I wonder if he even realizes he likes her, she mused as she closed the book and got up to put it back on her desk. One chapter was enough for today—not like her reading focus had been doing very well recently anyway. "Neptune, you mind if I play a game?" she asked, her eyes on the controller by the base of the television stand.

Neptune looked up, shook her head and said, "Nah, go ahead. I'm just looking to see if I missed anything important in the last area." Nodding, Noire went to the TV set and ran her fingers slowly over the spines of Neptune's game library. There was quite the selection, and she was pleased to find a number of games developed by Lastation.

Beyond the window, the blue of the sky started to fade as the sun breached the horizon. The jingle of the evening bell scared away a flock of birds alighted on the grass in front of the academy. By neither of their standards was it late, but normally it was around this time that Noire returned to her room. However, she could make an exception today. There were no classes tomorrow, and she was hardly so swamped in work that she had little time to waste.

But right on cue, Neptune motioned at the clock. "Aren't you going back soon though? It's already almost time."

Noire shrugged, sitting up on the bed with the controller in her lap. She could hear the hesitation in Neptune's voice, as if the girl were loath to remind her. But her words asked, with some rhetorical sarcasm still, "Do you want me to leave? If you want some time alone, you just have to say."

"No! No, that's not what I meant," Neptune shook her head without meeting Noire's eyes. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, and she tugged on her ear lobe. "It's not that I want you to leave or something like that, okay? I was just asking, just 'cause you usually... go around this time..."

Noire coughed and interrupted her, feeling a bit of guilt for insinuating. But at the same time, she wished she had a camera to snap a picture of Neptune's adorable sulking face right now. "I'll stick around a while longer and keep you company, then."

The two of them settled down, and once again their eyes went back to their devices. On the big screen, carved bronze letters spelled out the name of the game, and Noire nodded when she noticed the familiar motif of a monster's eye with a slit pupil replacing one of the letters in the title. Rather than continue from Neptune's save file where a few hours were logged already, she started a new game.

"I haven't had the time to play this one yet, so I'm going to start with a clean save till I get the hang of it." Neptune nodded, eyes glued to her phone screen. When Noire began to personalize her avatar, however, the bed moved as Neptune leaned over to put her phone on the desk. "Done looking at the walkthrough?" she asked with a glance at her friend, who was now watching the screen with mild interest. Neptune nodded and made herself comfortable next to Noire.

Creating a character was expectedly uneventful, but Noire finished the customization in less than two minutes and skipped the opening cutscenes to get straight to the game. She walked around to talk to the locals and get used to what would become home base for her monster-slaying expeditions. A virtual sun crawled slowly across the sky.

In the real world, what had been bright sunbeams was now a dusty evening glow, coloring the bedroom with sunset hues of orange and red. The room lights off, darkness bided its time in the farthest corners of the ceiling.

"It's going to be dark soon," Noire thought aloud, yet she made no move to do anything about it. Some light still remained in the day, and the gradual change of colors at sundown put her at ease regardless. Dusk's tempered shades reminded her of Lastation, where the setting sun drew the entire city in silhouettes and ushered the orb lamps dotting the street to gutter on.

Noire nudged the control stick lazily, still stuck in conversation with the hunter's guild girl. Between her life in Lastation and her time spent here, it should have been an obvious choice which one she rathered. But one thing stopped her from wishing she were at home.

Before she could accept one of the few requests being offered to her, Neptune sidled closer and touched her shoulder. Very little space left between them, Noire's breath caught and she had to resist the impulse to jerk away. "Neptune?"

"Noire, I want to thank you," she said, tone low, "For keeping me company all this week, even though I've been acting out of it." Neptune moved an inch closer yet.

Unused to this level of honesty, Noire stopped caring about the game altogether. Her eyes found a point on the wall above the TV screen to study. "You don't have to thank me for it," she mumbled and under her breath added, "That's what friends are for."

To her delight, Neptune nodded. "But I'm not just thanking you for that..." Her words came to a complete stop, and she laid her head on Noire's shoulder. "Um. Sorry, I'm pretty bad at this whole heart-to-heart thing. Aha ha ha..."

That uncharacteristic, nerve-wracked attempt at laughter was what tipped Neptune's hand. Noire could literally hear her hiding something. She leaned away and ducked her head, trying to get a better look at her friend's face. But a ball of purple fuzz moved with her, obscuring her vision. "Hey, what are you do... ing... Wait, Neptune, you're—"

"D-don't move around so much!"

Hiding her face in the hollow of Noire's shoulder, Neptune clung to her closely like a child. However, even in the dim lighting Noire had only needed to look at her for a second. Eyes watering, lips drawn tight, dark crimson dyed across her cheeks. That fleeting image of her closest friend which was impossible to unsee.

Noire heard Neptune's name in her own voice before she could think of anything proper to say. Neptune was the only person she ever let her guard down in front of. There was just no need to have reservations around someone so easygoing and friendly. It hardly mattered if her mood was happy or sad, because she could let it all out in Neptune's company. But in this moment, she felt that their roles had reversed, and now she was the one getting to see a different side of her friend she never knew existed.

Neptune lifted her head and breathed in calmly, her chin down to her chest as she collected herself to go on.

"The other day, when we had the last meeting," she stated, and Noire nodded once. She remembered. "You asked me on your way out if I was okay, and that"—Neptune's voice shrank and she swallowed, wetting her lips and starting over—"you asked me if I was okay, and that really meant a lot to me. When you said it, it just made me feel so... so appreciated."

Neptune's composure started to crack by the second. Noire could hear, feel the emotion pouring off her friend's words, and her own throat was growing tight.

"And then, erm... this week, you know?" Neptune continued in a small voice. "It makes me ha-... hap-... really happy that you came to see me. Th-that day, when I said you were sweet, I wasn't—I mean I was... Agh, what the heck!"

Neptune suddenly gave up, moaning and cradling her head in both hands. "Why am I like this?" Frustrated, she turned away and hit her own thigh as if it would help. "What's wrong with me? I can't say anything without sounding like I'm crying!"

Noire wanted to say something to calm her down, but no matter how hard she tried to come up with the words, the only thing she could think of doing was giving Neptune a big hug then and there. Her friend was so sincere, so adorable, she almost could not help herself.

Finally, she figured out what she wanted to say. "Neptune, I—huh?"

As soon as she had opened her mouth, something had touched her cheek, warm and slightly wet, like a fine point brush had just dabbed some paint on her face. "Wh... wha..." Noire unfroze just enough to turn and look at Neptune, who had pulled back but was still facing her, redder than before. Oh my god, she freaked out, her head going white at the realization. Oh my god she kissed me!

Noire felt dizzy all of a sudden, and she had barely gotten out the words, "I need to lie down," before her back hit the mattress. Her head rushed, trying and failing to process what had just happened. This had to be some sort of mistake. What was happening? Why? How?

Neptune was hovering above her, lips moving in speech, but Noire could hardly hear a thing over the noise of her own heart beating like a taiko drum. Something was dripping on her face and neck. She heard Neptune calling her name, then the words "I'm sorry—"

Noire sat up, head still spinning, and Neptune scooted away hastily to give her room. "No, I'm sorry," she muttered, hating the tears making trails down her friend's face. "I'm just... so startled... Neptune, d-do... do you like me? Like, like me?" She was still in disbelief. The real reason she asked was not to know but because she needed a single truth, at least one concrete fact to keep herself grounded and her thoughts based in fact. Whether that truth was yes or no, either was better than building conjecture upon muddled conjecture. Still, it would have been a thousand times better for her heart if Neptune had just laughed and said "Nope, just kidding!"

But Neptune wiped her eyes and said nothing.

This can't be happening. Her pulse roared in her ears. Not in a lifetime. Not in an eternity. Her best friend just confessed to her. The only person she spent time with outside of school and work was in love with her.

Noire argued, grasping at straws, "We're both girls." Obviously aware, Neptune looked away stubbornly.

"I know that. But it's not like I can help it."

Noire treasured their relationship. It was something special to her, and she had always gotten the impression that Neptune thought the same. But now things were changing, and this new perspective made her think back in retrospect—had they really been seeing eye to eye all this time, or had one of them been seeing something more than the other?

Noire had always known Neptune was cute, and likely vice versa. There was no denying it, for they both had their shares of admirers, but just because she acknowledged the fact did not mean she was interested. Sure, they were both attractive people, but that hardly meant they had to be attracted to each other.

The idea of getting involved with Neptune did not bother her per se; more so it was the conflict of emotion with reason. In no way was she averse to love between girls, but her practical mind demanded that she assess every possible repercussion of entering a romantic relationship with Neptune. Noire hated to treat a confession like a business proposition, yet her mind was simply wired that way. Logic dictated that she reject Neptune's advances, if only because it would complicate their relationship—not as lovers, but as authority figures of two independent nations.

And yet...

She had always dreamed of living a full life—one not tied down by her inalienable mantle and responsibilities, but one in which someone else did that work for her. If she could abdicate her position as Lastation's dutiful to another, so many things would open up for her. A new place to live, a new job. More time for her hobbies. Room for a lover in her life. Gamicademi had let her live that dream, even if it was only temporary.

No matter how much thought she gave it, she came back to the same absolute truth: Neptune's confession was the best thing to ever happen to her.

The window had been left slightly open. Neptune's purple bangs hung over her eyes and swayed gently in the dying breeze. She looked nothing like her usual self, framed in fading daylight. Nothing like the eternally energetic goddess that everyone thought they knew. Noire leaned back on her hands and watched the curtains ripple.

"Neptune," she began, seeing in her peripheral vision Neptune's head snap up. "You're serious about this, huh?" Noire saw her nod but still had to ask again. "Really?"

"Yeah. Really, I am!" Neptune asserted, raising her voice. "You care about me. That's... that's enough for me. You've always treated me like I was important to you. No matter what," she finished softly.

The fragrance of lingering shampoo on the air. The memory of Neptune's body against hers, of feathery lilac hair brushing against her cheek. Every detail stuck fast in her mind like darts in a throwing board. A wave of longing washed over her all of a sudden. However much time they had left at Gamicademi, she wanted to spend the rest of it like this, with Neptune.

Know what? I'm not spoken for. If her best friend had fallen for her, then so be it. She had nothing to complain about.

Noire took Neptune's hand and held it in both her own until her fist softened. "I'm your friend no matter what happens," she said, softly twining their fingers together. "I know we don't always get along, but that's normal. If it's what you want, then we can be more than friends."

The words echoed in her head. More than friends. That was what they were now. After she had said it, she knew their relationship would never be the same. It scared her just a bit. What kind of things will we be doing from now on?

But then Neptune smiled, her eyes wide with surprise and relief. Her fingers squeezed Noire's for a second before she pulled away and got up on her knees to put her arms around Noire's neck.

"Thank you Noire," Neptune whispered near her ear, her heartbeat felt by the both of them. Noire might have been imagining things, but after a few seconds it seemed like their hearts had adjusted to beat in sync.

A sniffle broke the silence, and Noire smiled. Arms wrapped snugly around Neptune, she exhaled and closed her eyes, embracing her friend and newfound lover. "Yeesh, you crybaby. Go wipe your nose, or I won't let you near me anymore."