It starts innocuously enough.
So there's this little student kitchen in the senior high division, right, that was meant for cooking classes but just fell into disuse somewhere along the way. And it comes with this adorable attached café, and of course the first thing Anna and Nonoko do after donning their grey plaid uniforms is to get matching aprons and seize control of the whole setup.
Two months later, they've somehow pieced together a menu that actually manages to be both delicious and charming, and the dishes don't even threaten to explode or hurl insults.
What's more impressive, they decide to consult Hotaru Imai for business advice. Five-hundred-rabbit fee inclusive, of course.
"You need a compelling reason for people to spend their rabbits on your food, when they already get all their meals free," Imai had said, leisurely feeding the coins into her Piggy Bank (equipped with an array of anti-theft features, including police-dial, auto-alarm, and of course, finger-removal). "You need an edge...something other than just the food."
Hence the genesis of Parley and Parfait, Alice Academy's first and only board game café. And this is where the story actually begins.
:.:
It starts innocuously enough.
"Guys!" Mikan cries, rushing into the classroom with her trademark half-stumble, half-skip. "Today's the day! The grand opening! We need to go support Anna-chan and Nonoko-chan!"
"I'll come, Sakura-chan," Yuu volunteers immediately. Somewhere over the course of junior high, he shot up in height and lost the quaver in his voice – but he's still ever the sweetheart, Mikan thinks fondly.
"Hotaru?" Mikan asks eagerly.
"Over my dead body," her best friend replies without batting an eye, gaze still trained on her excessively thick copy of Advanced Quantum Computing.
Mikan pouts. "Ruka? We need four, c'monnnnn." Ruka rolls his eyes without venom.
"I'll come," he relents, "if Natsume does."
Mikan grins at her boyfriend, whose arm is slung around her shoulders as he casually pretends not to listen. "Nat-su-me," she singsongs. "You'll come, right?"
"Like I had a choice in the first place," he says without heat, and smirks. "But get ready to lose, Polka."
:.:
After all that push-and-pull, love-hate drama in their younger years, most people expected them to just fall into an easy cliché after getting together and be done with it.
Of course, that's not what happened.
Instead, the couple – as though they'd exhausted all their passion and sexual tension in their, admittedly, excessively dramatic pre-relationship phase – skipped straight to old-married-couple and spent their days lounging under the sakura tree, going on dates to town, and in other words, being unforgiveably boring, much to the disappointment of the Academy's eager student tabloid.
Which is why it comes as quite a surprise when a piercing shriek comes from their table.
"HA!" Mikan declares triumphantly, slamming her cards down and almost upending her omurice in the process. "I win – AGAIN. Pay up."
Grumbling, Ruka and Yuu push a few rabbits across the table. Natsume, however, doesn't move, arms folded tightly, a frown seemingly stitched into his forehead.
Ruka suddenly gets a sense of deep foreboding. The thing is, Natsume doesn't frown at Mikan – hasn't in ages. Mostly, he smiles like the complete and utter sap he is. Sometimes, he smirks or rolls his eyes or bops her on the head.
Frowning, though? That's new.
"I don't get it," he says finally. "How the heck did you manage to win?"
"Oh, it's just like chess," Mikan says airily, with the supreme confidence of an Undefeated Board Game Queen. "Sometimes you've got to sacrifice your king to win."
Natsume stares at her. "That's exactly how you lose at chess, Polka."
"Whatever." She shrugs. "Now pay up – I'm thinking this weekend, I'm going to buy myself a deluxe box of Howalon."
Natsume shoves the rabbits across the table, which Mikan gleefully sweeps into her purse. "Let's do another game," he demands, and Ruka notes nervously a spark of heat in his voice. "And this time, you're going down, Polka."
:.:
Three hours later, Mikan's razor-sharp gameplay and unpredictable, ingenius strategy has won nearly every round of every game.
Yuu won the first round of Risk, and Ruka managed to score a victory in Cluedo.
Natsume has won absolutely nothing.
He's starting to get very red, Ruka notices. His tone is getting snappier, and with every defeat, he surrenders his rabbits with a little more viciousness.
To her credit, Mikan is so delighted by her success that she's completely oblivious. "Okay, guys," she proclaims gaily, "last round?"
There's a murmur of defeated assent, which is then rudely interrupted. "No," Natsume almost snarls. "We're not moving till. I. win."
"Actually," Anna ventures timidly, "we're closing in –"
"Back. Off," he grits out, and the room's temperature seems to climb a degree or two. Quite belatedly, Mikan notices her boyfriend's escalating temper.
"Sure, hun," she says easily. "You know what? You pick the next game. Anything you want."
They play exploding kittens – a game of chance, Natsume reasons. The chances of her losing are three to one. I can do this.
To no-one's surprise, Mikan wins, and Natsume looks like he's about to explode himself.
He stands up abruptly, eyes flashing. "I'm calling it a night," he says tightly, and marches off.
"Have a nice evening!" Anna calls. The café door slams shut quite loudly.
A few seconds later, an enraged howl echoes down the corridors.
Mikan shoots Ruka a winning smile. "Say, Ruka –"
"Don't even try," he cuts her off, and offers her an ironic little grin. "He's your problem now."
:.:
"Go away."
She settles herself down into the faded picnic blanket by the sakura tree. The grass is soft and pliable and no longer pokes into her back like it used to, permanently flattened by their hours spent lying on it.
She stares up at the evening sky. It's past sunset, the sky washed of its brilliant reds and golds, its pale lilac slowly deepening to night-indigo. The first few stars flicker weakly into existence across the sky, and she feels the urge to trace them into a constellation.
"This is my blanket too, thank you very much," she retorts. Natsume doesn't answer.
"You know," she says softly, "Jii-chan and I used to play games together, all the time, back home." He shifts slightly beside her, and she knows he's listening intently. She smiles.
"It was kind of our thing," she continues. "Like, you can't exactly play video games with your grandfather, and he was never interested in talking about clothes or puppies or even Hotaru. So we played games. And I guess, somewhere along the line, I got real good."
She turns to look at him. He's staring straight up at the sky, and there's no heat left in his dark eyes.
"So don't feel bad, 'kay?" she asks. He sighs, and rolls over to press his face into her side.
"Sorry for being a sore loser," he mumbles. She laughs softly.
"You are a hundred percent forgiven." She stands up and brushes herself off. She grins at him, her eyes sparkling with gentle mirth, and there's a a slight pang in his heart. "But hey, Natsume?"
She really is beautiful, he thinks absently, grasping her outstretched hand. "What is it?"
"You really, really suck at board games."
[Reposted from AO3]
So, hello, world. Long story short, I'm sort of trying to get some of my writing game back.
And I know I'm not quite there yet. After years of writing only ~serious adult things~, I've kind of lost my writing legs, if you know what I mean. Like that comedic sense, that romantic edge, et cetera.
Hopefully, I get that all back in time. But for now, I do hope you enjoy what this old bird has to offer.