Blanc's plush blankets enticed her to slumber, as did the clock on the wall whose hands pointed close to midnight, but she did not want to go to sleep just yet. Night had always augmented her thoughts; sleeping early to her felt like a waste of time better spent thinking. Often she lay awake on her bed to collect her thoughts and mull over her books and stories, or think about her friends; one of her friends in particular had been on the forefront of her mind for hours now.

That friend was the very same person who had once complained to her in jest about not having enough screentime. Not only had that statement been untrue at the time, but it was exceptionally so now, for she captivated the stage of Blanc's mind like a dancer whose footwork spellbound.

Having stared at the ceiling long enough to put a hole in it, feeling utterly unproductive and fruitless, Blanc pulled a pillow over her head and covered her face. This entire time, she had not been able to come up with a single possible solution; she was at the end of her rope. She pressed the pillow into her face harder as if to smother her problems and released into it a wordless scream embodying all the things clawing at her from the inside.

"Are you happy, Noire?" She gripped the pillow harder, knowing but not caring that she was being unfair in blaming her colleague from Lastation. "I talked to her just like you said, but it didn't work. What now—what now, huh?"

The gap between herself and Neptune continued to grow in disregard of all her efforts. They continued to drift apart no matter how desperately her fingers grasped at the threads. Blanc was like a girl holding onto a bundle of balloons, watching them escape and float away one by one.

At this rate, the only future laid out for her was one without the personality, the unfiltered energy, the shining star that had been introduced into her life.

Had she waited too long to apologize? Or had she moved too quickly when she should have given Neptune more time? Had her apology yesterday been too much, or not enough? Blanc questioned herself again and again, only to arrive every time at the same conclusion, only to discard it and start again. She wanted to believe there was some alternative. There had to be a way to right her wrongs, because for all that she wished, there was no undoing the past.

She wanted to talk to Neptune. Neptune did not want to talk to her. What was she supposed to do?

For once, Blanc missed Neptune showing up at random times to bother her. Removing the pillow from her face, she sat up; her body's natural inclination was to fall asleep, and so she had to resist.

Her phone sat on her bedside dresser, no more than two feet away.

Hours prior, when she had been dragging her feet through the academy hallways after class, she had experienced her second confrontation with Noire that week. She had been searching for a glimpse of purple among the after-school crowd, plagued alike by hope and despair—hope whenever she passed by an open classroom, and despair every instance it turned out empty; hope again as she persisted in her search, and despair again as time passed and her search turned up no results.

Neptune had disappeared again. Not surprising in the slightest; there had been no enthusiasm in her goodbye the night before. Blanc was not silly enough to think resolution would have happened just like that, waking up and finding her social life normalized, but nothing had changed. Teeth grit and eyes forward, she had went on down the halls, scolding herself every time her heart jumped in her chest whenever she passed a person around her own height with short, light hair.

Someone had been walking behind her, their shoes tapping briskly on the metal flooring. Blanc had at first tuned out the sound, but when a person jostled her shoulder trying to walk past, automatically she turned and gave them a sharp look.

"Oops," came an unsorry voice. Blanc's features filled in with annoyance. Holding a plain white binder by her side, Noire locked eyes with her and gave a barren smile. It had been no accident, bumping into her here in this way; that much was obvious.

Scoffing by way of greeting, Blanc set her eyes straight forward and walked faster, intimating that they had nothing to talk about. But Noire had matched her pace as if they were buddies, even though they were nothing of the sort.

"Listen Noire," Blanc risked, her voice pithy. "I don't care if we're headed the same way, I'd rather be alone."

Noire said nothing. Blanc refused to even glance in her direction. They had walked in silence, keeping strictly to themselves.

A few of the students that lingered about in the halls noticed them walking and, spying their vice student president, straightened their backs and sent obsequious greetings their way. Blanc, her patience already stretched thin, glared at them until they had all averted their eyes.

"You don't need to be so vindictive about it," Noire said beside her, sounding as if she were sighing. "It's human nature. People are going to be respectful to authority."

"I don't need chumps waving at me because I happen to be walking next to a celebrity."

A group of chumps rounded the corner up ahead. Blanc slipped between them and left her follower behind. She hugged the right-hand side of the hall and slipped through the doorway of the campus library. She had hoped Noire would not follow, but she heard someone else entering the library behind her. Someone clearly did not understand the concept of personal space.

"Stalker," she muttered and headed for the back of the library, where she hid herself between the stacks of books and pretended to browse a selection of seldom if ever read novels.

Seeing Noire stop a little ways away, Blanc cleared her throat and snapped, "What do you want? Are you here to give me another pep talk? To mouth off at me? Spit it out already."

Despite her obvious efforts to remain equanimous, Noire did not seem unaffected by all the antipathy Blanc aimed her way. Her brow twitched, and she sighed, exasperated.

"You're so hard to deal with," she said in a strained but level voice. "Now I see why Neptune's been avoiding you."

Blanc ignored her. The words had struck a nerve, no doubt their intended purpose—but she managed to keep her mouth shut. There was no point in rising to the taunt or trying to one-up it. No big deal; she could get over one dig at her character.

Noire sighed. "Blanc, are you Neptune's friend or not?"

The first words that had come to mind were, "Of course." But she had hesitated. Did Neptune still consider her a friend? Were they ex-friends?

"See, that's exactly it!" Noire raised her voice suddenly, breaking the sacred rules of libraries. "You aren't even sure if the two of you are still friends. If you can't tell me how you feel, what will you say to her?"

"It's not that easy, okay? I tried! I told her how I felt. You were there"—she immediately knew that she was right from the poorly masked guilt that showed on Noire's fact—"you heard everything! You listened to us talk—you know what happened!"

"You aren't thinking about how she feels!" Noire yelled, but then she faltered and grew quiet, the same way the tide crashed over the beach before retreating back out to sea. When she spoke again, it was in a whisper. "It's hard for her too, you know."

Noire looked like someone who had just remembered something they were trying to forget. It was as something had possessed her for a brief second—sapping away the part of her that was always ready with a fast rejoinder. Her entire person had changed; her voice had ebbed, her face had sunk, her shoulders had fallen. But her words, softly spoken, carried.

Blanc felt a fire leave her heart. Strangely, she had no doubt her colleague was right. Even though Noire could be a caustic dweevil at times, she was definitely a good friend of Neptune's.

How she feels... Blanc felt as if a hand had gripped her heart meaning to pull it from her chest. If only she knew what was going on inside Neptune's head; if only Neptune knew what was going on in inside Blanc's own head.

A deep-seated frustration settled over her, aimed more at her own shortcomings than anything else in particular. Her fault, her hesitation, her blindness, her inability to communicate properly. These and more had stopped her from fixing the problem.

"The club is starting to get worried too," Noire continued. "Even I'm getting messages from people asking about you and Neptune. They're all trying to help. Our sisters most of all. Don't tell me you forgot they're all caught up in this too."

Blanc had indeed forgotten all about it. "There is no more Film Club," she replied instantly, thinking of her barren writing desk and the pile of scraps behind it. "Plus, I... I don't have a script anymore."

All Noire had offered for her excuses was a scoff. "You're going to let your own breakups get in the way of the movie?" Her voice carried an edge it had not before. "How will you ever complete something if you shy away every time you get burned?"

Surprised, Blanc raised her head. She met Noire's challenge, eye-to-eye.

"You were the most passionate about making the movies," Noire said. "You were the director, not Neptune. We were your team. She may have brought us together, but without you, none of us would have stayed."

Her team. Her team. Hearing those words from Noire was so surprising, so eye-opening, that it took her aback for a few seconds. It was true that Blanc had always been the source of the Film Club's inspiration; in that, there was little to doubt and little to be modest about. She handled most of the decision-making, and she came up with the ideas, but until now she had thought about how she held the group together.

Blanc had been so absorbed in doing her own role that she had never taken a step back and looked at the big picture: She was the star of their solar system.

But that had never been her intention. As the scriptwriter, she should have been in the background of the movie-making machine.

But...

Writing the script and proposing it to the assembled club members; discussing what was good and what needed revision; planning out the scenes day by day and making the set before finally turning on the camera to film—it had all been so much fun.

There had always been something to look forward to. Every day, she had something to be excited for. And she had not been the only one: The faces of her friends, of Neptune and the others, had always been so full of enthusiasm and never discontent. They had taken their jobs seriously, but the time they spent together as the Film Club (together in purpose) had brought them close.

Blanc's face must have been glowing like a neon sign. Noire crossed her arms, evidently happy with the response she had facilitated.

"We're all waiting on you. Me, Neptune, everyone else. She's been acting a little dejected and moody lately, but I think it's pretty obvious that she wants you to say something. It's not like her to be so anxious. We're talking about Neptune, after all. I would do something about it myself, but... I'm not you. You're closer to her than anyone else." Noire, for a few moments, lost the sharpness in her eyes. "I couldn't replace you. It wouldn't feel right."

Noire then fell silent and shut her eyes, sucking in a deep breath as if she had emptied her lungs of air. Then she had opened one eye and offered Blanc a rare smile.

"Good luck."

Just Another Love Story

A pillow resting in Blanc's lap hit the ground with a fwop as she clambered out of bed and grabbed her cell phone off the drawer. She had dozed off for a few minutes with still on—never a good thing.

Pulling up her list of contacts, she tapped Neptune's name and read the last desperate message she had sent days ago. Biting her lip, she scrolled up, looking guiltily at the message log before flicking her thumb across the screen and bringing herself back to the present. She had one more message to send.

"She'll read this one," she murmured to herself, pulling up the virtual keyboard. Pleading, bargaining, begging, she left all out and got straight to the point.

Please, she prayed silently. Please let me talk to you. Come on, Neptune.

Blanc sent the message and watched it appear in the chat box with all the others, another footprint in the digital sand. However, whether Neptune would actually read it—let alone bother to come—she had no idea. Either way, gawking at her phone would not change a thing.

Night crowded against the glass window on the far end of her room, barely kept out by the string of light fixtures on the wall opposite Blanc's bed. Shadows had already crept into the recesses, particularly into the upper corners of the ceiling. Her surroundings felt almost unfamiliar. At this time, she was usually in author mode—at her desk, pen in hand, with the table lamp on—burning the remaining daylight, so to speak.

This was the first time she sat in bed facing both light and dark, the fluorescent lights lining her wall and the blackened window to the right. It was as if both powers, deeply engaged in contesting the other, had forgotten to illuminate or endarken the farthest corner and the girl sitting there with her knees up. She was left in a murky limbo.

Blanc got up and walked over to the window. She placed her phone facedown on her desk as she passed.

Resting her hands at the bottom of the windowpane, she peered into the darkness, touching her nose lightly to the glass. From her second-story vantage, she could not make out the ground nor the cliffs in the middle of the night. Only the stars in the sky were visible, but the sheer number of them almost made up for the earth's invisibility. It reminded her of Lowee; the lucidity of the stars was stronger there than any other place in Gamindustri. Though, the sky above the academy island sure came close in holding a candle to her boreal homeland.

Although the window was closed, she shivered as if a nocturnal chill had phased through the glass. She could not see a thing, but the sensation she got from looking out of the window was dizzying to the point where she had to drag herself away.

Rubbing her forearms, Blanc plodded to the bed and let loose a pent-up breath. Despite telling herself over and over that her purpose was loud and clear, that she was relaxed and confident and would not falter (in truth she was not) her heart beat out of her chest. It dropped to the ground, pushed itself up on tiny arms and legs, then saluted and vanished into the shadows.

This could be her last chance to save her jeopardized friendship. This could be her last chance to talk to Neptune. Worse, maybe she had already used her last chance. Perhaps now she was waiting for nothing, worrying herself to death until the sun rose in the east without anyone showing up.

Tap tap tap. A wooden sound, thrice over. Blanc froze. Someone was on her doorstep, and it could only be one person.

Without thinking too much about it, she approached the door, her steps hurried, and grabbed the handle, twisted it, opened it. And no matter about all her prefacing, no matter how much or how meager, the strings in her chest tightened at the sight of her friend Neptune standing only two feet away with her hands by her side and her face turned slightly to one side.

"Neptune. You... actually came." Blanc stepped back hastily and opened the door wider, inviting her in. Neptune hesitated, her eyes flashing past Blanc into the dorm as if she were about to enter a monsters' den.

"Yeah. I read your message. I couldn't just not show up. That wouldn't be chill, right?"

Blanc shut the door when they were both inside. At the click of the lock, Neptune stopped and turned around. The look on her face really was like a greenhorn dragon slayer recently reminded that dragon's breath was hot enough to burn. That look vanished after a few moments.

Neptune muttered an apology and removed her shoes, a pair of blueberry-and-cream high tops that she set down by Blanc's at the door.

"It's 11 PM," she pointed out when she had straightened up. "What would you do if I had already gone to sleep?"

"Stand around 'till morning, I guess," Blanc said, her tone implying that she was joking. But she really would have done just that had Neptune never shown up. "Uh... Sit anywhere you're comfortable. You can leave at any time."

Blanc faked a cough to clear her throat and hide the hitch in her voice. Already, she could feel the tension in the room; it was like a noxious mist, thin but impossible to avoid breathing in. It scared her heart into beating two times as fast.

"O-oh, yeah, my bad." Having realized that she was still standing in the entryway (the reason Blanc had told her to sit anywhere), Neptune apologized meekly and moved so they could go in. Her feet moved slowly, her eyes as well, as if she were sweeping for mines. She found none and finally sat down in Blanc's chair, which creaked and settled every time she made the slightest motion. The window and its view of nothingness drew her eyes just as it had Blanc's.

Left with no other place to sit than the bed, the writer eyed her desk wistfully. Barren enough without her papers, notes, and scattered writing implements, it looked even stranger with someone else sitting in front of it.

Well, she's here. That was one victory. But what now? She should have gathered her thoughts while she was alone in her room. Now that Neptune was actually here, it felt as if the air were finite, too little for the two of them. How should she start? Did she attempt to lighten the mood or skip to the point?

She missed her hat. It sat unobtainable atop her dresser, and she did not want to get up and get it.

"Hey..." Neptune herself finally broke the silence. Her voice came out quiet and almost raspy. It tapered until she cleared her throat with a few coughs. "I'm sorry if it seems like I've been avoiding you. I never wanted to fight you like this, but... it's just... been hard, I guess."

Neptune finally turned away from the window, her eyes impregnated with the same ember of melancholy that Blanc had gotten after staring through the darkness-frosted glass. As she brought her hand up to fiddle with her bangs, Blanc was able to see her profile and the unbespoken guilt in her face.

"I don't blame you. Not after all that's happened." Blanc was quiet for a few seconds, trying to think of a better way to convey everything in just a handful of words. "It got... really messy. I wish I could take everything back, to be honest. After we fought, I thought that was it. That it was over, that you'd never forgive me. Something about it scared me a lot. I spent so many hours just regretting things, when I really should have been trying harder to make it up to you."

Divulging all that had lain on her heart for the past week, Blanc found that she was shaking violently, like a lone pine tree in a snowstorm, and that she had already blinked and spilled the tears pooled in her eyes. She could see Neptune's blurry face in her peripheral vision.

Blanc closed her eyes and wiped her face. She waited for herself to calm down.

When she opened her eyes again, her vision was mostly clear, and she caught Neptune's eyes from across the room. Be strong, she told herself, taking a tremulous breath.

As if mindful of Blanc's emotional state, Neptune looked away. "I'm sorry too," she said. "I just... I just..." After a few failed attempts, she scowled, her face warped in frustration. "It was really my fault, Blanc."

Blanc immediately shook her head. "No, it was—"

"You know it's not like me to hesitate," Neptune carried on, cutting her off, "But when it was just me and you, and we were talking, I felt like there was this... invisible wall, between us. I thought you were mad at me, so I didn't want to say anything, but then I started getting mad too." As she spoke, her voice peaked in intensity and plunged in despair until the two were too much the same to draw the divide. Neptune had clearly thought about all of this, that much was clear. "If I had just told you everything from the start without trying to—I dunno, be subtle about it—then you wouldn't have misunderstood and this wouldn't have happened! 'Cause, like, what I wanted to say got mixed up with a whole bunch of other things, and... and then... yeah."

Her last word rode on a tired breath, a sigh over some unforgivable revision. It was the kind of sigh that, if left alone, only bred more of the same feelings—the kind of sigh that required a response.

"We both said things we didn't mean," Blanc said as a way of compromise. She felt that they were dangerously close to arguing who the blame lay with. "I'm sorry for losing my temper all the time. I don't know why you stick up with me after all the times I've snapped at you." Suddenly, Blanc felt as if she could not stop speaking there. The need to explain herself overshadowed her reserve. A tremor entered her voice, and tears entered her eyes. "I'm a terrible person, you know? It doesn't make me happy to see people tiptoeing around me like I'm some kind of time bomb. I don't want people scared of me. It's such a shitty feeling knowing you're such a shitty person"—at this point, she was crying too much to go on speaking coherently. Whatever she said after that, it was slurred and a little repetitive of something she had said already.

When Blanc gave up on talking, her elbows were on her knees and her face was pressed into the web of her hand to obscure the tears flowing freely out of her eyes. All was quiet for a moment, then Neptune spoke.

"You're not a terrible person. You're not a terrible person, Blanc. You're a really good girl, you know that?" Her voice was low and kind. She sounded like a father speaking to his son, reminding him that one weakness didn't define a person. "Just because you aren't good at one thing, it doesn't make it a character flaw. It doesn't make you a bad person just because of it, you get me? Even we aren't perfect, so what would that make everybody else in the world if we're terrible people because of one or two things?"

Neptune got up from the squeaky desk chair and moved over to the bed. She sat down next to Blanc without touching her and went on. "You're my friend, so I'll overlook all that kind of stuff. I know you too well to hold a grudge because I know you never stay mad without there being at least some sort of reason for it. You just have to forgive me for getting all stubborn-like with this stuff every once in a while."

Blanc tried sitting up straight, but she found it hard to lift her eyes. "Thanks." She sighed. "I feel like I don't deserve you as a friend."

"Nah, s'all good." Neptune's face suddenly shifted into a smile. "I like being with you. There's enough good to balance out the bad. I feel like you without your short temper wouldn't be the you that I love hanging out with."

The smile never dropped from Neptune's face. Blanc felt her facial muscles twitching as well. All of a sudden, the entire situation and all of the past week seemed absurd and petty. They had come to an understanding, after Blanc had worried for hours that such a thing was a ghost of a chance.

She breathed a sigh of relief. No more of their stupid feud, their shared fear of bumping into the other in the hallway. Tears threatened to well up in her eyes again, but somehow, this time, she held them back.

A short while passed, feeling more like five minutes than one. The entire time, they held a conversation without words, much like two people watching a familiar movie together. In Neptune's face, she found empathy. She related to the sadness in her eyes and recognized the happiness in her smile.

Blanc crossed her legs.

"H-hey, um. I don't know if it was just me, but, I had a lot of fun making the movies. Even though they are sort of silly and all over the place, and I'm probably way more invested in it than I should be. I got so wrapped up in it that I forgot to think of you. But if you want to keep going, then I promise that I'll always consult with you first."

There we go. She exhaled and casually put a hand over her chest. Her pulse had quickened, and she was hoping it would return to the average soon.

"You weren't the only one. I sort of lost my head too, ha ha ha..." When Blanc looked up, Neptune was biting her lip. "But, you know, I still feel kind of bad for our Tamie tomboy. She's probably scarred for her next two lives."

Picturing Tamsoft's face, its lineaments and loud orange eye shadow, and the look of shock that had been so out of place on it, Blanc was unable to hold back her laughter. It bubbled up from somewhere inside her until it boiled over, infecting Neptune too.

"We should have spared her innocence," she said, composing herself just long enough to speak. Neptune burst into a bout of renewed laughter, and again, Blanc felt the urge—the need—to laugh as well. All the oppressive heaviness from earlier, the force of gravity that depressed shoulders and bent postures, was now blown away. That thin, oxygen-deficit air turned into a delicious breath of relief, rapidly consumed by the two girls making erratic high-pitched shrieks of joy together.