"No."
The word flew out of Hotaru's mouth before she registered putting it in. Then she realized that it hadn't been her who'd spoken.
"Ruka," Hyuuga said, his voice steely.
"Natsume, no."
"Ruka" had momentarily piqued Hotaru's curiosity. He sounded guilty, she thought.
"I thought you agreed to work with me."
"I thought I was going to work alone, Natsume. You don't know what you're doing and to be honest, me neither—"
"Time for dinner!" Mikan called. "Guys, I think I finally mastered it this time!"
The two men exchanged a look laden with an emotion Hotaru couldn't interpret. As Hyuuga stood, his friend looked briefly at Hotaru and then away. His glance was fleeting and searing.
Mikan appeared in the doorway. "It's going to clump if you don't hurry," she started, flitting across the room to Hotaru's side, pulling on her elbow and leading the way to the dining room. She threw a dirty look at Hyuuga, one that didn't escape Hotaru's notice.
Four steaming bowls of yellow porridge were set around an assortment of side dishes. The texture looked right this time, but the color was enough to put Hotaru off and look towards the side dishes instead.
"I bought caviar and crab roe," Mikan said. "Sorry, Ruka. Ruka is a vegetarian," she told Hotaru. "Has Natsume even properly introduced you? I bet he hasn't! He's useless —"
"— hey —"
"— it's true," Mikan shook her head. "Anyways, Ruka, this is Hotaru Imai. She's the best friend I keep talking about. We've known each other since we were 8 and now we're 28, isn't that crazy? And Hotaru, this is Ruka Nogi. He's Natsume's close friend since pre-adolescence. I kept seeing him in Natsume's old photo albums and then we finally met last week and already we're getting along fantastically."
Nothing about that story made sense. Nogi, Hotaru silently labelled him. Then she tried it out loud.
Three sets of eyes swiveled to her.
He looked at her with those haunting, despicable blue eyes. "Yes."
"How come we've never seen you around?"
"He—" Hyuuga began, but Hotaru cut him off with a wave: "I was asking Nogi, not you."
He cleared his throat and opened his mouth, as if trying the shape of a sentence. "I was in Germany for a while."
Mikan shook her head.
Hotaru felt the inkling form itself physically before it congealed into an idea in her head. She felt the hairs on her arms rise and set slowly.
There existed a word where you bit off more you could bargain for. There also was a word for where you knew it was a bad idea to keep going yet couldn't stop. Hotaru felt the shadows of these two concepts wash over her. "Germany, huh," she mused. "How long is a while?"
He looked straight into her eyes. "Two years before Natsume and Mikan started dating."
"So that's around six years." If Hotaru's theory was true, Mikan had been hiding something important from her for quite a while.
"I met him last week, Hotaru," Mikan said softly.
Hotaru refused to look at Mikan lest the slap of betrayal make itself known on her face. A week was still a long time to keep a secret. "Where do you work, Nogi?"
He was still looking at her with straightforward eyes, although it seemed less that he was seeing her and more that he was seeing through her. Or looking at her and seeing somebody else. It seemed he couldn't hear her, even when she repeated her question, which only reaffirmed the voices in her head.
The white noise in Hotaru's ears was loud. She knew logically that the sound came from blood rushing through her veins at a high speed, but instead she felt that ghosts were whispering in her ear.
Having fun, little sister?
"Nogi," Hotaru said. She suddenly realized she was holding a fork the wrong way. The tines pressed into her skin, leaving angry red little indents. "I said—"
"That's enough." Hyuuga put down his spoon in his porridge. Hotaru turned her angry eyes onto him. She wasn't surprised to see that his face was tranquil like he had been expecting this conversation. She hated him at that moment. "If you want to know, Imai, you can accept my proposition of working with him."
"No!" Mikan exclaimed. "I keep telling you to lay off it!"
"I know you've been doing research on interspecies relationships and how deep they go," Natsume continued as if nobody had spoken. "Who better to consult than a highly qualified vet?"
"So you've been keeping tabs on my work." Hotaru narrowed her eyes.
"To fulfill your own selfish means," Mikan muttered. Her fingers were bunching up the table cloth, then releasing. Wrinkles were going to form on her beloved linen sheet.
"I won't be the only one who gets something out of it, though?" Natsume said. "I for one feel grateful that Ruka has offered his skills."
Hotaru stayed quiet. Hyuuga met her gaze honestly. How duplicit of him, she thought. That he could look at her with those tired, guilt-free eyes and make himself out to be doing something good. That this atmosphere, so itchy and heavy on the back of her tongue, was something he felt comfortable confronting. They'd never talked like this before, with their silences.
Mikan sighed hotly with frustration, standing up from the table abruptly. She took ahold of Hotaru's wrist, and Hotaru allowed herself to be led quietly like a lamb. She didn't look back. But somehow she knew that the two men would remain where they left them, sitting in their places, one frozen and the other contemplative, in front of the perfect porridge nobody had even tasted.