It was like a cloud of poisonous fog had displaced all of the air in the room. It was suffocating her, wreathing around her neck, layered with tension and heavy enough to instill panic in even Kyouko Toshinou. She wanted to badly to escape—to run to the door, the window; to throw it open and flee down the dimly lit hallways or jump out. If anything, it would get her out of this room, with its suffocating atmosphere and horrible sounds.
However, she knew without doubt that it would be the worst choice she would ever make. The second she stood up, the second she left the room, her relationship with Yui would be broken. At that point, it would be better if the two had never become friends in the first place. No—running away was not an option.
She felt helpless. For all of her reputation as the energetic, infinitely cheerful, always smiling girl, there was nothing she could say or do in this situation. When it was most important, her voice failed her and her smiled faded, and she was left helpless in the face of the one who needed her to be energetic, cheerful, and smiling. The irony was almost physically painful, not to mention frustrating beyond the point of agony.
Her head had been bowed while she tried to collect her thoughts. Yui had been crying the whole time, and Kyouko knew this although she had subconsciously filtered out the sound a while back to maintain her own sanity. A thread of hope was dangling in front of her, but it was becoming fainter with every passing moment. The crying would slow down, only to return moments later. Hope was consistently pulled from Kyouko's grasp. Why was she so useless? Where was her wit, her smile, her ability to lighten the mood by saying something, anything, off the top of her head?
However, Kyouko knew that it did not matter that she had "lost" part of her personality. Even if she had a chance to make a joke, a reason to smile, or words to disarm the situation, there was no way she could take them. There was no way she could attempt to brush this off as if it were not serious, as if it were a lighthearted matter. Her initial reaction had not been her own; she never would have acted so irrationally, so insensitively, and so ignorant of her best friend's feelings. Yet, her reaction had been her own. Thanks to her moment of shock, Yui was buried in undeserved feelings of guilt over this—over something that should have been trivial, especially to a person who never faulted and never cried.
After minutes of sitting without saying anything, Kyouko knew she would have to be the one to act first. Anything would be better than this silence filled with sobbing. She shut her eyes, grit her teeth, clenched her hands into fists, and tensed her shoulders.
"Yui..." It came out as a breath, so quiet she barely even heard herself. However, the person whose name she had called looked up at her with teary eyes; whether it was in response to what she had said, Kyouko did not know.
"K-Kyou... Kyouko, I..." Yui's voice, already unsteady and weak, faltered as the girl struggled to get a grip of herself. "I'm sorry. I, I shouldn't have said anything in the first place..."
"What are you apologizing for?!" The words came out forcefully, loud in comparison to the whisper of a conversation so far. It shocked both of them, Yui because of the change in volume and Kyouko because of how sudden her own reaction had been. "Don't say sorry, it's not your fault!"
Yui wiped at her face, trying to clear away the water in her eyes. Her lips were moving without sound, and Kyouko leaned in across the table. It crossed her mind to just move around to the other side, not only so she could hear, but so she could be closer. As she approached Yui, the guilt riding on Kyouko's shoulders started to weigh heavier. The black-haired girl was quivering like a rabbit facing death, and her hands still pawed at her eyes.
"I d-don't know why I'm crying... I don't know," she mumbled, not only once but twice, then thrice. If Kyouko had not intervened, the phrase might have been uttered enough times to fill a page in a notebook. She could no longer bear to see the pathetic state of her friend—this was unacceptable, for Yui of all people to be reduced to sobbing, sniffling, and shivering—and took the girl's arm with two hands.
"Yui, listen to me. Yui, please," she called several times. Her fear fed upon her friend's unresponsiveness, growing with every second that passed. She was afraid that she would be pushed away or struck across the face; at this moment, any form of rejection might cause her to lose her already fading courage. All that kept her holding on was pure willpower, in the name of helping Yui out of this hole.
"Kyouko, I'm sorry," Yui croaked. She swallowed, her breathing no longer sporadic, and sat with both of her hands, gripping each other tightly, in her lap. "I can't believe it, that I'm acting like this. I'm..." Her voice faltered again, and she closed her eyes and tried to shrink into herself. Kyouko gave her arm a squeeze, hoping it would translate into encouragement. When Yui did not move, the blonde girl threw subtlety to the wind and leaned in, hugging the other girl and pulling her close.
She could feel the warmth of her friend's body, and she could hear the small, heart-rending sounds of her crying. "No, it's fine, Yui. There's nothing to be sorry about. It's okay," she crooned, feeling the characteristically unshakable individual tremble in her arms. "This entire mess is my fault anyways, so please—"
"Why aren't you mad? Why aren't you angry with me, because of what I said?"
"—don't feel bad," she finished, quieter than she had started. Her voice wavered, but she forced herself to continue. "How could I be mad at you? You just confessed, you just told me your true feelings—" although she could not bring herself to feel the same way—"and... and now I've hurt you."
Kyouko held Yui to her as a mother would a child, hoping that all the hurtful feelings would be gone soon. While she had been talking, a pair of arms had slipped around her and around her shoulders: that was a good sign. Comforting words passed through her lips in a low tone, and she ran her hand up and down the depression of her friend's back. Never had she expected to play this role, especially not with Yui; even though she was the reason that the girl was troubled in the first place, a warm feeling filled her heart.
"But why not? Kyouko, I know you don't feel the same way." The embrace tightened as Yui spoke; that was probably an unconscious action on her part. Kyouko did not mind. "I saw it on your face, when you stood up. You tried to leave, because you... You don't feel the same way, and it shocked you, right?"
The words, uncertain as they were, struck like an arrow tinged with paralysis poison. In the span of a second, Kyouko felt a handful of emotions try and influence her decision. She wanted to slap herself, for just how badly she had handled herself earlier; she wanted to go back in time, so that she could have avoided this mess in the first place. Or, at the very least, she could have made sure it did not follow the same painful path. Unfortunately, neither of those options was available to her. The only thing Kyouko could do was hug Yui even tighter, as if she was trying to stop the pain by holding tight and not letting go.
"You don't feel the same way, and I know I scare you. It's weird, and it's wrong, and I shouldn't have said anything!" Yui kept talking at an increasingly rushed pace. The words kept coming, tumbling out of her mouth and onto the ground. "I should have stayed quiet, I should have waited for them to go away. I know you're scared of me now. I don't know why you're still here, because you should have left already! You probably hate me by now. Even I hate myse—" She stopped abruptly. Kyouko, holding her companion by the shoulders, looked into a pair of teary, brown eyes and saw the confusion in them. She stared into Yui's eyes; then, at her face, which bore an almost noticable red; then, at her own hand, which had moved of its own volition.
"Yui," she reached up and, with the very hand at fault, stroked the cheek that she had struck. She herself had barely noticed, so it could not have been a serious injury, but she did not want to make Yui feel that the slap had been out of anger. "Don't say that. Please, stop saying those things. It... It hurts, to hear you blame yourself," she murmured, caressing her friend's face. A gasp slipped from Yui's mouth, words soon to follow. Instead of letting her speak, for she knew the question before it had been asked, Kyouko put a hand over the parted lips. "Wait, let me explain first!" Kyouko wanted to smile, but she could not bring herself to do so. She drew in a shaky breath, then she exhaled slowly. Again, she breathed in, then out.
Why had she reacted the way she did, so insensitively and without reason? Her actions at the time of injury had done nothing but make Yui's condition worse, even when her own state of affairs was taken into consideration. There were a dozen other ways she could have confronted the confession, and most of them did not include emotional trauma. No matter how good of an excuse she came up with, an apology was absolutely necessary.
Actually, what were her reasons in the first place? It definitely was not because of Yui or what she had said. Kyouko was, after all, in no way averse to her best friend or even her best friend's romantic thoughts for her. On any other day, she could have treated it with all the normality in the world—with a laugh, a smile, a hug—and the confession might have even left her in higher spirits. However, there were things on her mind that did not agree; it was safe to say that those things were directly related to the events of yesterday.
What should she say? How should she say it? Her head was awhirl with questions but no answers. Saying the wrong thing was the last thing she wanted to do; the risk of that alone was almost enough to put a stopper on Kyouko's courage. She looked again into the desperate eyes of her friend. They were holding each other at arm's length, close enough so that she could make out every detail and expression. Yui's eyes, still wet from crying, seemed to sparkle.
Kyouko did not love Yui, nor did she hate her. If anything, she had been inclined to return the love that her best friend felt for her. However, it was that thought to love Yui plus the memories of yesterday—of Ayano—that fueled her actions. The shock of the confession was not actually because of the confession itself; she was shocked because as soon as she heard the words from Yui, her very first instinct had been to fall in love. Yet, was she not already supposed to be in love? She felt conflicted over the issue. She needed time to think, time to divine her own feelings and figure out who she herself felt most in love with. Ayano had asked her first, but Yui was her best friend. Who was to take priority over the other? Would it be the girl who had liked her for years, or the girl she had known for years? If it would result in someone getting hurt, emotionally or physically, then could it be that her own feelings could not take priority? This was something much, much deeper than just the debate of to love one or to love another.
This was completely different from having friends. Kyouko wished, in the very back of her mind, that she could have avoided any sort of romantic relationship in the first place. At the very least, it would have been much easier if there was only one person, and not two. She could not help but wish that she had not been at the student council room yesterday, or that she had not gone to visit Yui today. If she had only been in one of those places, things might have turned out better.
She sucked in as much air as she could, letting it press down on the weight in her chest. How she would convey all of her emotions and thoughts was not something she had figured out in advance, but this time the words seemed to flow like water through her lips. Even though the storyteller was herself, Kyouko felt like she was listening to another person verbalize her own emotions. Everything, from what had happened in the student council room, in the hallways, on the roof, even in her own mind, was revealed. She confided it all in Yui, who sat and listened without comment.
At some point, Yui had hugged her. Kyouko was not sure when this had happened, or even how or why it had happened, but those were not things she was concerned about. Right now, all that mattered was holding her in both arms. She was leaning on Yui, letting Yui hold her and squeeze her and finger her hair.
The warmth of her best friend was surrounding her, an all-encompassing shield that put her worries to rest.
A minute passed, but it was not with the same uncomfortable quiet as before. Instead, it was the sort of silence that only good friends could share: the type that seemed to speak for itself.
Yui was the one to speak first. "About yesterday. What did you tell Ayano? Do you... Do you feel the same way?"
Kyouko did not respond for a while. Her face, pressed up against Yui's shoulder, showed no signs of the unsurety she actually felt. "I didn't turn her down," she said. Standing in the middle ground and dodging the question was the only way she could answer honestly. She herself did not know whether she reciprocated Ayano's love or not. "I didn't see a reason to. Even now, I don't know what I should... what I should do..."
Her voice, which had performed beautifully only minutes ago, started to fail her. Kyouko swallowed and opened her mouth again to speak, but Yui stopped her simply by hugging her tighter. It was strange to think that their embrace could be any closer or tighter, considering how much they had hugged throughout this entire encounter. It was like they had never left each other's arms for hours on end.
"I sort of get what you're saying," Yui muttered. She sounded distracted, or just thoughtful; Kyouko could not tell the difference. "I'm hoping that these feelings will go away. They just appeared, for no reason, with no build up or anything. I think it's, just a phase. I want to keep you as my friend—not a lover."
"Me too." A wide smile took over Kyouko's face, one that was emphasized by the notes of cheer that had returned to her voice. "I think you're hot and all, but being friends with you is the best decision of my life."
"Way to break the tension, silly." Regardless, the smile was infectious. Relief was plain on Yui's face.