"I'm glad you're back," Kyouko half-smiled, her eyes appearing dim as if she were sleep deprived, although none of her other features indicated such. Excited, relieved, or happy are terms that would not describe her appearance at that moment. Nonetheless, Yui gathered no negative feelings from the statement either. Kyouko acted indifferent above all else, and the words felt more like they were coming from a sibling or elder family member rather than a best friend: genuine, but dispassionate.
"Yeah, the choice was between school and the doctor. It was an easy one for me."
"You sound a lot better, but you look really tired."
"That's what happens when you take cold medicine and sleep all day. I was up most of the night."
"Oh, wow." The otaku could have related with her own archive of all-nighters before school, but instead maintained terseness. "Do you think you'll go home early?"
"Nah. I took a short nap and my mom cooked a full breakfast, so I think I'm good. I'll probably pass out as soon as I get home, though." The recovering girl laughed a little while Kyouko reacted minimally. Yui prearranged to transition into a question about whether the club would be meeting after school, but the teacher had intruded and sat at her desk, signaling that the class cease conversation. Kyouko was still wordless after the last sentence anyway, so Yui figured the discussion was naturally concluded for now, and she focused fully on the lesson.
Being absent to start the week had left her with a lot to catch up on. The minutes proceeded by, quickly becoming hours, and through class after class she was persistent in completing as much homework as possible during the day in the hopes of being granted a stress-free evening at home. As the blistering sun rose higher in the sky, she grew increasingly thankful to her mother for taking time out of work to start her daughter's day right. Without the boost in energy from her complete morning meal, Yui would never have had the calories to burn by working her mind at such an aggressive pace.
Inevitably, though, she was beginning to burn out by lunchtime. The black-haired girl elected to eat in the classroom. Her blonde friend was nowhere to be seen, leaving Yui a bit lonely, save for the kind-hearted greetings and well-wishes from some of the other, less acquainted class members.
"Kyouko must be in the club room."
She was likely alone if this was the case, as the underclassmen typically remain in the main building for lunch unless the group is summoned by Kyouko beforehand. Perhaps the club leader was waiting patiently in the scorching hot tea room, fully expectant of Yui's arrival. Or possibly — and more realistically, given the situation — she wanted to remain alone, away from the group. Thinking back on the morning, Yui remembered that nothing had really happened yet; they certainly had not talked things out. Minor paranoia decided for her that things would be best if she just allow Kyouko her space, if only until the end of the day.
An uneventful few hours later, during the break preceeding the final class of the day, the two childhood friends crossed paths in the hallway. Yui skipped a greeting and spoke, as if continuing their now half-day-old conversation like only a second had passed.
"I meant to ask, are we meeting in the club room after school?"
Kyouko froze mid-step and turned to face her counterpart, startled as much by the girl's presence as the spontaneous question directed towards her. She had clearly been spaced out a bit as she navigated the crowded halls.
"Oh, Yui! I didn't see you there." The shock faded from her expression. Yui felt comfort thanks to a slight sparkle in Kyouko's piercing blue pupils when the pair made eye contact. The brown eyes trailed down the blonde's face a fraction of a second later, stopping to gaze at her mouth which began to play into a small smile.
"Maybe she was just tired this morning," Yui considered while anticipating the traditional goofy yet sincere expression of happiness which was forming on her friend's face. She began thinking that Kyouko might finally be happy to see her.
During the same instant as that thought, Kyouko's nearly-smiling lips contorted inversely, and she leered down at the floor. The weighted question that had been thrown over her head a beat ago began to trickle down into her conscious mind, and it did not settle well.
Yui caught on straight away; the explicit change from standard joy to a minor frown on her childhood friend reminded her yet again that the last time she, Kyouko, and Chinatsu were together did not turn out very well. "It might have been better to bring up the Amusement Club a little less casually."
By the time the logical girl processed these thoughts, Kyouko's expression had blurred back into neutral territory, as if the negativity had never even been present.
"Well, I sort of owe Ayano some pudding from lunch..." The otaku's words trailed off musingly, and she gazed without emotion into the wall next to them before wording her final answer. "You guys can go, but I'll be a little late."
Yui couldn't help but twist her lips in a questioning way. First of all, Kyouko transformed from a state of happiness, to disappointment, to complete apathy all in the span of about five seconds. Secondly, she had apparently chosen to pester the student council during lunch and pay Yui no mind — an act which Yui would not have thought impracticable if Kyouko had said something to her. As things stood, the dark-headed girl could not say for sure whether the blonde was holding a grudge against her or something different altogether.
"And what's with that wording?"
~"You guys can go, but I'll be a little late."~
So was Kyouko coming, or not?
"Kyouko, I really want you to be there. The club hasn't been together since last week," Yui affirmed pleadingly, with a hesitant touch a shame backing her words for the latter sentence. "And I really want to talk to you," she added mentally, although for now her primary intention was to bring Chinatsu and Kyouko back onto level terms. No matter what angle Yui saw it from, having those two in the same room together without an argument would be the first step in making amends, as well as assuaging her guilt.
With her head titled down quizzically as if she had miraculously forgotten, Kyouko answered: "Hm. I guess you're right." The bells chimed, dispersing a thin mob of students every which way. Yui huffed in discontent at having yet another conversation interrupted by an outside force. "Well, I'll see you later!" Kyouko scurried off toward her final class and Yui motioned to do the same, albeit in a different direction.
"Yeah, bye." Yui felt a disturbance in the pit of her stomach while watching her best friend trot away.
Thankfully the last class on the day of her return was an easy one, with the usual assignment being replaced by a detached lecture. Rather than take notes, Yui chose to finish some simple homework for another subject. On top of the work, she dug deeper into her brief talks with Kyouko throughout the school day in an attempt to diagnose the uneasy feeling they had granted her.
The blonde was not noticeably depressed, dejected, or at all offended by Yui's presence. By Kyouko's standard she was maybe a little calm or quiet, but she still seemed like Kyouko, without a doubt.
"So she isn't mad. I should be thankful then, right?"
The logical girl, taking all these observations of normality into account, concluded one thing: something was terribly off. How and why would Kyouko not be angry, or upset in some other way, after everything that happened? And if she wasn't upset, then what explains the distance between them during breaks today? And why was she not excited to see Yui return to school, especially considering that it was apparently a surprise to her?
Kyouko's underwhelming display of emotion was a valid premise to be concerned about, but the dark-headed girl's deductions did not end there. The personality she had come to know so well may have been more or less intact, without seeming forced, but the mindset was different. Kyouko would normally be focused on nothing but friends and fun when the school day drew near its end. The situation on this occasion may not have been ideal in that respect, but rather than react emotionally or invest energy into returning things to normal, Kyouko repeatedly distracted herself from the whole ordeal, in a manner almost contradicting to her personality.
"Maybe I'm just reading into it too much," Yui suggested to herself. After conducting a quick survey of the obscenely high amount of doubting she had done throughout the last handful of minutes, she was sure of it. "Yeah... I'm just overthinking it."
The only thing to do next was await Kyouko's possible appearance at the tea ceremony club room. Eyeballing the clock is a bad habit Yui would usually avoid, especially with eagerness crawling around her consciousness and making the minutes feel longer; nevertheless, her internal sense of time was absolute in its certainty that the bell would be ringing very soon. She fought her impulses and refrained from glancing at the incessantly ticking analog clock dangling just outside her periphery until finally, having finished all the day's homework and organized it in her book bag, she caved and looked. Before the lens could adjust its zoom to pinpoint the minute hand, the sound of a bell answered her curiosity.
Out the door, down the stairs, through the exit and up the path. It was a completely familiar route which would be over with in no time, seeing as she had zero stops to make. Well, no expected stops, anyway.
"Yui-chaaan!" Akari barrelled into Yui's right arm and hugged her.
More modest was the upperclassman's arm-over-the-shoulder return hug. Not many words need be spoken as the two had already shared their personal reunion, in between first and second period. Yui managed to recall Akari exuberantly welcoming her back, saying she missed her, and telling her a few other, incidentally, unremarkable things.
"I'm sure that was a long day for you. Do you have a lot of homework?"
"None at all, actually," Yui smiled. Akari mirrored the gesture, fully aware of her determined friend's obvious hard work to finish everything in class. The duo stepped away from their waypoint at the bottom of the staircase and began walking to the silently agreed upon common destination, side by side.
"Say, Akari, how did you find me so quickly?"
The redhead turned her head, lifted her gaze to meet that of her long-time friend, and tweaked her brow in slight confusion. Yui simply looked back at her, suddenly a bit dumbfounded. The younger girl slumped, expectant of her forgettable fate.
"Akari always walks by here on the way to the club room. We see each other here all the time, remember?"
"Eheh... I guess I'm more tired than I thought," Yui sweat-dropped. Akari pouted and winced in the usual fashion, and most of the walk after that was silent.
...
...
Sugiura Ayano was deserving of her relatively prestigious position, managing the day-to-day grind of paperwork which defines her role in the student council with humble diligence. In comparison to her less focused crack team of schoolmates, Ayano was easily the hardest worker, discounting the silent president herself. She was never the type to complain, and always the first to buckle down and persist whenever necessary.
However, today was not a day requiring any extra effort. Actually, the council's list of duties on this day was so short that the two younger members had taken it upon themselves to spot clean the entire room — rather, pretend to do so while bickering nonstop — as a means of simply passing time. Chitose incidentally appointed herself moderator of the couple for when their arguments became too... energetic. Meanwhile Ayano scribbled soundlessly, solely handling some backed up forms from last week, seated in the corner chair nearest the door and not lifting her determined stare from the papers until every last one had been sorted and accounted for.
"Done!" The purple-head exclaimed while slapping her pen to the table. Chitose turned her attention away from Sakurako and Himawari, who were caught in a staring contest with spray bottles of cleaning chemicals poised toward each other's faces, and acknowledged her best friend who had hardly spoken a word for the last ten minutes.
"Wow Ayano-chan, you sure worked hard today~"
"Did I?" Ayano threw her hand to the back of her head and looked aside. "...I guess my mind is just somewhere else."
Glasses served as windows to midnight blue eyes which lit up with developing fantasies.
"Ohh, does somebody have a secret to tell?"
"Well, I... I mean no, no way Niagara!" The tsundere's attempt at playing it off was far easier to read than she had hoped for.
Fantasy potential was growing exponentially, but Chitose found herself unable to reach for her glasses due to the mix of surprise and joy which had paralyzed her limbs. Yesterday marked the second consecutive day that Ayano had visited Kyouko. The contents of both encounters had still been mysteriously kept quiet, and when accused of holding a secret just now Ayano was reduced to blushing and stuttering.
Chitose's vision narrowed to exclude the underclassmen, and in her mind the only person on earth was Ayano. If there really was news, she would never want her friend's secrets exposed to the rest of the group, but by nature the white-haired girl became too invested in the conclusions her imagination was jumping to to consider that. She tried to settle her racing thoughts enough to ask a clearly worded question, but in the meantime the two remaining team members (or at least the louder of the two) inserted themselves into the conversation.
"Wait, did somebody say secret?!" Sakurako leaned on the table dramatically, face-to-face with the vice president whose blush turned bluish at the accusation.
"Sakurako, try minding your own business."
Interrupting Himawari's scolding was the noise of the door sliding open.
"Sugiura Ayano!"
"To- T- T- Toshinou Kyoukooo!" The blue of her cheeks turned virtually white.
"Gah!" Chitose fell backwards, a fountain of red trailing the path of her head on its way down.
"Ikeda-senpai!" Both first years rushed around the table to assist their fallen member. The blue-headed girl pounced upon the cabinet to find a box of tissues while her counterpart tried to remain standing through the laughter, finding comedy in the blood coating the school's floor and furniture.
The background noise of the event served as cover for Ayano's escape from the room. She scurried past Kyouko into the vacant hallway, pulling the blonde outside the door and slamming it on her way. Ayano flicked her head side to side like a criminal on the run, assuring herself of the emptiness of their immediate extremity before she slumped and released her pent up breath in a relieved sigh.
"Toshinou Kyouko, that was really bad timing."
Kyouko snickered, "Heh, well if you wanted to escape, maybe I could take you somewhere..."
The reddish purple locks framing her eyes bounced, and Ayano twitched into a statue-like position as the offer struck her.
"Th- Th- That would be like a date... Sh- She wants to take me on a date!" One might think after everything Kyouko had shown the tsundere, she should be more hardened to relatively mild surprises such as this, but perhaps her rapidly advancing relationship (not that you could call it that yet — at least not officially) with the blonde had failed to sink in.
The fire in Ayano's eyes died momentarily, though, when she realized a relevant factor. It was this variable which she questioned aloud before her mind even considered it — an impulsive and likely regrettable action.
"What about your club?"
Kyouko raised an eyebrow, but did not respond verbally. Ayano couldn't think of anything else to say, so the choice was between having an unbearable awkward silence or discussing this further, thus moving the focus from the potential date. She decided that since it was already brought up, she may as well explain the reason she was asking. "W- Well, Funami-san returned today, so I thought you guys might be getting back together."
Based on the convenient wording, the otaku's reflexive thought was about herself and Yui as a couple. This innocent inquiry regarding the Amusement Club as a whole had spurred another recollection of all her stress and misfortune; Kyouko had to remind herself that Ayano knew nothing personal about the relationships and feuds being molded amongst the group of friends, and that she was simply asking a valid question.
Surely if Kyouko wasted one more second before responding, though, Ayano would notice her hesitation. Always the quick thinker, she decided to go on the offensive — an unfailingly amusing tactic against a tsundere.
"Are you asking me to leave~?" The teaser accused, sporting puppy eyes and her best mock-pouty face.
"N- No!" Ayano's heart melted, but the manifestation of doubt that had flashed across the blonde's expression an instant beforehand enabled her to recover from the teasing in record time. "Dammit, Toshinou Kyouko. I'm trying to help you," she said in her head, confidently reinforcing her motives. "I- I just thought... Your friends might like to see you, too."
The purple-head second-guessed her course of action immediately. She wondered why she had been just as attentive to her crush's friendships lately as to the girl herself. Confusion burrowed in her brain until Kyouko spoke.
"You're right." The slightly shorter schoolgirl stepped back, forfeiting her shenanigans for the time being. The complacent look on her face burned onto Ayano's retina. It was then that the vice president remembered, and all her questions were answered: Toshinou Kyouko was unhappy without her friends. Ayano could not stand to see her unhappy.
The doubt welled up in the pit of Kyouko's eye again, oh so acutely, but not beyond the observant gaze of her formerly-secret admirer. That unique boost of energy soared through Ayano's veins again, sort of like adrenaline but in response to emotional distress instead of physical danger. This time, her initiative brought her as far as feathering a hand lightly atop her lover's shoulder. Her confidence may have begun improving since the events of yesterday, but it was still limited.
"We can do something after, if you still want to."
Kyouko nodded weakly. She absolutely dreaded the discomfort of sitting in the club room with a spiteful kouhai, an inconsistent-as-of-late best friend, and the unbearable radiating heat. Worst of all was the creeping sensation of uncertainty: Kyouko was without a clue as to what might happen with everyone together again, how things would turn out on a larger scale, or what she needed/wanted to do about either of those things. Two days was not even a fraction of the time it would take for her to figure it out.
"I'll talk to you soon, okay?"
Never mind all those concerns; what about the girl in front of her?
"Yeah." Kyouko lifted her gaze which had been locked with melancholy to a tile in the floor. "Thanks again, Ayano-chan."
Ayano only smiled in return, and Kyouko was on her way.
"I hope everything works out," the vice president thought, as if she had any idea what the problem was in the first place. Her eyes followed Kyouko on her somewhat dejected shuffle down the hallway. Ayano spun around to reenter the council room, and a thought occured to her.
"I just turned down a date with Toshinou Kyouko!" Her mouth slunk open in shock. She shook her head furiously, denying the evident stupidity of the decision, insisting to herself that it was the right thing to do in the circumstances. Ayano managed to settle down and recover her normal appearance before sliding the door open.
An inch beyond the doorway she met the deer-in-headlights expressions of three girls, somehow stacked on top of eachother, looking exactly like a sitcom eavesdropping scene while trying to listen through the crack in the door. The difference between the cliché and this setting, however, is that Chitose was the highest of the three, and the blood from her nose trickled down over the others making Sakurako and Himawari's heads like the levels of a fountain.
Conflicting the red in her face from anger and embarrassment, Ayano also found the visual undeniably laugh-worthy. It was over nearly instantly as gravity caught up to them, and without the door for support Himawari lost balance, leaving her accomplices to topple to either side of her.
...
...
"Ah, Chinatsu-chan is already here."
Chinatsu dislodged her chin from her sweat-slickened palm and looked across the room to view the intrusion of her closest friend alongside her girlfriend, and to her relief, no sign of Kyouko with them. She made a mental note to thank Akari later on for delivering Yui to her successfully. For now, she paid the redhead no mind and dove past her, greeting the upperclassman with a hug.
"Yui-senpai!"
First Yui was surprised, and then she was surprised by the fact that she was surprised. The couple had not seen each other for two days, and this reaction was comparable to the typical Monday morning reunion after spending a weekend apart. Yui also acknowledged that her arrival sans Kyouko must have immensely boosted Chinatsu's mood.
"Careful, you might catch my cold," the more reserved member in the embrace gently cautioned her kouhai after she had maintained the hug for a few extra seconds. She was the one to notice that Akari had stepped away and sat at the table during that time, seemingly avoiding looking towards the doorway where the pair still stood.
"...Was that awkward for her or something?" Yui wondered. Akari was never known to shy away from the yandere's advances toward Yui. That, or Yui had just never noticed it before.
"How do you feel?" Pink clumps of hair swayed back, adding emphasis to Chinatsu's genuine, curious expression as she detached herself from her crush's torso.
"Ah... Pretty good. Just a little worn out from all the backed up lessons I did."
"You look kinda tired."
"So I've heard."
The two carried on chatting back and forth as Yui filled Chinatsu in about her day, leaving out of course her disappointingly uneventful conversations with Kyouko. As they filled out seats around the Amusement Club's table, the couple took their places on opposite ends without much thought, leaving Akari at the side between them. The quiet redhead spun her head left and right, attentively following the conversation but not entering it.
Akari had made clear her willingness to help her friend (and had already performed the bulk of her duties by bringing Yui to the room before Kyouko), but it wasn't as if they had formulated a plan. All Chinatsu knew was that she must somehow get her girlfriend to provide an answer to a question she didn't even have; the best goal she could think to set for herself was to have Yui either reveal something, or ease her mind in some as of yet unknown manner. She was confident, though, because once the subject of their relationship was touched upon, Yui would no doubt be honest and forthcoming and hopefully the unknown thing plaguing their kindling courtship would be revealed.
But suddenly, as was inevitable, the small talk had naturally concluded, and now the three girls sat choked to silence by fiery humidity. Neither half of the previous conversation had a book, or a bag to dig through, or anything interesting to look at except for the other faces around the table. There were no distracting activities, which dispersed an uncomfortable sense of tension to linger about their atmosphere.
It was an awkward silence.
Captured fuzzily through her periphery, Chinatsu noticed Akari swallowing as if she was about to speak. The pink-head's thoughts zipped through a thousand scenarios in a single instant and she deduced, through pure logic and knowledge of the girl, that she was about to ask Yui where Kyouko was. This would certainly close any window through which Chinatsu could possibly obtain her answers. By shifting Yui's attention to the blonde, a veil would fall over their secret relationship, and any discussion of it would be impossible to bring up. She couldn't allow it! Akari's lips parted, unnoticed by Yui because before she could sound a syllable, Chinatsu's adrenaline fueled her to an outburst.
"Se- Senpai!" Her eyes were burning a bright cerulean; her mouth dangled parted for a moment before she snapped it shut, her face like the concept of determination personified. She had heightened herself by sitting up on her knees, leaning forward and using fully outstretched arms pressing down on the low table for support. Yui's eyes widened a little in response to the sudden intensity. Seeing this, Chinatsu sweatdropped. "...What do I say?!"
"Chinatsu-chan?" Akari's expression was slightly more calm, and more based around confusion than shock. The pink-haired girl relaxed her brow muscles as she broke her stare with Yui and leered at the redhead, displaying just enough anger to send a subtle message to her friend. Akari was flabbergasted: her eyes went wide, her left eyebrow shot up, and her lips scrunched into a solicitous swirl. "She's mad at me!?"
Chinatsu sighed, letting her eyelids rest closed while doing so. She sat back down to a normal position, but her posture did not slouch. The other four pupils in the room were zoned in on her movements as she took a deep breath and released it steadily. Her eyes reopened in calm rhythm with the air coming out, the target at the end of their gaze again being Yui. The shape of her face indicated no emotion as she spoke.
"I want to talk about us."
"What?" Yui blinked several times in a single second. Her mouth didn't close fully after the word. For Yui, it was a relatively severe reaction of surprise. Chinatsu didn't move in the slightest. "Now? That was so sudden."
The dark-haired club member couldn't quite shake off the fact that innocent, impressionable Akari was still seated only inches away. "Whether she already knows or not, I do not want to discuss any part of this topic with Akari in the room."
Unbeknownst to the currently attending club members, only a few feet away and seconds from breaking the threshold and sound barrier of a sliding door was another person whom they would definitely not want involved in this discussion. Meanwhile, Yui quickly erased the reaction from her face and prepared her thoughts before speaking. "Yeah, we can. Maybe you should come over to my place?"
Yui's back was to the door, so she didn't realize until Chinatsu looked past her. The sensation of a person standing behind her was secondary to the defeated look on Chinatsu's face, which clearly spelled out the identity of the surprise arrival. Yui could virtually see Kyouko's reflection in the white of her eyes.
By the time Yui turned around, Kyouko had turned to leave. The kuudere instinctively dashed after her.
"Kyouko!"
While watching her girlfriend step away, Chinatsu slotted her chin into her palm and huffed in discontent. She felt all energy and enthusiasm seep out of her core. A cloud of disappointment loomed above her, the amount of rain pouring from it heavier than any summer storm. The pink-headed schoolgirl was resolute in her belief that she had done no wrong, like she had played another perfect game but still found herself on the lower step of the podium while the other guy lifted his trophy.
Around the corner from the main space of the club room but still within earshot of the younger members, Yui caught up to Kyouko and gripped her shoulder from behind with some pressure. She let a paranoid fantasy play out in her head which consisted of the blonde shrugging away the contact and marching out of the small building without a word. Fortunately, it did not come to fruition; Kyouko froze in place and spoke before turning around.
"Go spend time with her. I had plans, anyway." Her voice came out small and undignified — almost spitefully, but too emotionless and blank to know for sure. Yui's reaction was a burst of adrenaline, as a sort of autonomous response to the anger and disgust (at herself, most likely) she immediately felt.
Kyouko wasn't sure if the words had carried far enough for Chinatsu to hear them, but at this point she didn't care much. Yui was obviously eager to spend personal time with her and no one else, so it would be wrong to get in the way, right?
The thought of the most valuable person in her life blowing her off consistently — choosing someone else — flashed across her mind's eye. The idea that Yui would ease away from her, even over a short time frame, was enough to ball up the fluid in her tear ducts and express ship it to her cheeks. But Kyouko, despite the tendencies left over from her childhood, managed to overcome. She blinked hard, mopping up the still formulating tears with her eyelids, and inhaled through her nose. It was then that she broke free from her best friend's clutch. It was after that that she stepped towards the exit, shrouded by a cloud of unbearable silence.
"No, no wait, it was a misunderstanding!" Yui thought, unable to get the sounds past her throat like she was choked by a tight collar. "You don't know the context..."
There was a lot of context, yes, but she hadn't been given the chance to explain yet. "Don't just walk away like this!"
The adrenaline boost coerced Yui into acting before thinking. With a feminine grunt she tugged at the club leader's sleeve, reaching it just before Kyouko escaped the range of her arm's length. The normally collected and rehearsed girl could only hesitate after that. Acting on impulse and out of ideas, she was forced to wait for Kyouko's reaction before deciding her next move.
The reaction was favourable for Yui. The blonde turned ninety degrees; not far enough to make eye contact, but perhaps implying a change of heart about leaving. The dark-haired girl proceeded to make the choice for her.
"Come on." She pulled that sleeve in the direction of the inner doorway, only with the strength of her thumb and index finger at first.
"Yui— stop!" Kyouko interjected upon herself as the grip of her uniform fastened. Yui now possessed the entire sleeve in her fist, leaving Kyouko's slightly inferior strength and greatly diminished willpower no chance of backing out any longer.
"Club meeting, now."
"I don't wanna!" the often childish girl whined. If it had crossed her mind, Kyouko would have probably been embarrassed at exposing a snippet of her old behavior to Chinatsu. She was, however, far beyond the emotional maturity of a preschooler, and the anger Yui feared earlier was now evident in her tone. Yui could not tell for sure whether it was real anger or a mock anger masking another emotion, though her powers of deduction led her to the latter conclusion. In any case, Kyouko continued stepping along behind the girl with relatively little physical resistance.
By the time their one-sided return was over, Kyouko had visibly resigned herself to the fact that her attendance at this so-called "meeting" was unavoidable. Yui played the cool side of her personality and sat at her previous seat without a word. This left the otaku stuck nearby, the only one still standing, flustered by Yui's momentary aggression and now stricken from movement by apprehension. Chinatsu, who was still sitting on the far end of the room, averted her eyes out of antipathy. Kyouko avoided looking her way as well, but moreso because of the fear of what she might see on the yandere's face if they were to make eye contact. It was as if Kyouko's sense of self-preservation painted a black bar across Chinatsu for her own protection.
Kyouko pensively waded through the damp air to what the process of elimination had elected as her seat, and lowered her backside to the floor carefully as if a bomb might go off with any sudden movement. Yui sat with her back perfectly upright, her face the typical blank, her eyes half-lidded. Chinatsu's head aimed in the furthest direction away from Kyouko it could, toward the wall on her left. The pink-head seemingly basked in a fuming aura of contempt, though the upperclassman wouldn't dare bring her into focus enough to confirm the expression.
Akari was the only one looking up, doing so with quite a standard expression of interest or curiosity. The practically invisible girl nervously awaited Kyouko's next action. She recognized Chinatsu's absolute disgust at how this entire situation was unfolding, and experienced guilt for being so useless in remedying it. Akari would have never imagined the club's reunion to be so tense.
"This is bad..."
To be continued...
