Lonely No More
by Cyberchao X

Chapter 11

Disclaimer: You know the routine by now.

CCX: I'm amazed at how quickly time flies by. I had such a large buffer versus the real calendar, and now I don't. Just been so busy lately…

…Anyway, yeah. Here we go.

*April—first day of high school*

"They really should open the doors early on the first day," thought the overwhelmed teacher in charge of monitoring the halls, as a crush of first-years swarmed to find their class assignments. "Or perhaps just send them advance notifications." Second- and third-years were in the same-lettered class as the previous year unless otherwise notified, which would usually only occur if there was a severe problem with two students being together or, far more commonly (though still fairly infrequently), multiple students transferred away in between years and one student needed to be moved in order to balance out the class sizes.

Arisa and Suzuka were disappointed to learn that they were not in the same class. Suzuka was in Class 1-A, and Arisa in Class 1-D. "Well, it could be worse. At least we have the same lunch period." Due to sheer numbers there were two lunch periods; A-K classes had the first one while those designated L and above had the second. (This was an even division when first instituted, but there hadn't been a Class V for a few years.) They headed their separate ways.

"Well, at least there are a couple of familiar faces," Arisa said. "Funny running into you again after we barely talked at all throughout junior high." (CCX: If you can reuse OCs, there is no good reason not to do so—although I'll admit, I had created a first name for Kaburagi when she first appeared and now have no memory of what it was, since the need never came up. I suppose it might still never come up, but it'll bother me.)

"Yeah, it's not like we've got a good chance of keeping the same classmates after changing over. I'm all for making new friends, but I'm glad to see someone I can talk to that isn't a complete stranger," Kaburagi replied.

Arisa opened her mouth to protest, as there was another of their junior high classmates in Class 1-D, but remembered her last conversation with Kaburagi and changed into "concerned" mode. "That's the guy? …Wow, that's rough. Does he know your feelings and not return them, or does he just not know?"

"Not so loud. No, he doesn't know…I can't tell him. He's already got a girlfriend…and she was a close friend of mine."

"Was?"

"She swore she was just trying to help me out, gauge the situation for me, and things went wrong…but she could've turned him down. Ah, class is about to start… Talk to you later, Bannings-san."

Suzuka, on the other hand, had no familiar faces at all in her class. "Just my luck," she thought, "more guys. Looks like I might be tested in a hurry…" The class was about two-thirds male, and Suzuka could see that many of them were sizing up the girls in their class and that she had generally been judged favorably.

She wasn't the only one who had noticed this fact. "Looks like you're going to be the 'popular' girl in this class? Shinamori Kanna," she introduced herself. (CCX: They do introduce themselves last name first, right?)

"Ah…pleased to meet you, Shinamori-san. I'm Tsukimura Suzuka. And yeah, I kind of noticed that the boys are staring at me…"

"You don't sound very comfortable with that."

"Well, it can definitely be a hassle. Not to mention that it invites jealousy from the other girls… case in point this conversation."

"…" Shinamori paused. "…I'm not jealous of you." The last two words sounded almost like an add-on. "Ah, I just wanted to be friends. Is it shallow of me to try to seek out and befriend the popular girls?"

"I'm no 'popular' yet. And I'd be happy to be your friend, Shinamori-san." A few of the boys grumbled discontentedly and turned their gaze elsewhere; Suzuka noticed the former but not the latter.

On the way to lunch, however, she got her explanation. One of the boys from her class approached her with a…rather unexpected message. "Tsukimura-san? I just wanted to give you a heads-up…about Shinamori-san."

"She seemed nice enough. Is that not the case, Kokuro-san?"

"She…may not be after what she said she was after. As far as I know they're just rumors, but she's turned down every guy that's asked her out and some of the girls at our junior high have made some accusations…"

"It's okay; you can say it." "Is it me? Am I the lesbian magnet? I was the first to meet Hayate-chan, after all… Nanoha-chan and Fate-chan had already fought the Wolkenritter by then, so I thought it must have been Nanoha-chan, but…"

"You sound…oddly unperturbed."

"Some of my best friends are lesbians." This came out right away, and it was true—Nanoha and Arisa were her two closest friends dating back to the first grade, and Hayate was a very good friend as well, and all three were unabashedly homosexual. "I can assure you that they're no worse at respecting boundaries than straight people are." Exactly what "boundaries" would be set Suzuka wasn't sure, but thinking about the notoriously perverted Hayate refraining from molesting her under the mistaken belief that she didn't swing that way, she figured that it was unlikely that much harm could come from it either way. Now it was just a matter of meeting up with Arisa before anyone could interpose themselves.

"Anyone else", she corrected, as it became obvious that contrary to what he said, Kokuro was using this as a way to get closer to her and would likely try to join her.

"Hey, Suzuka!" a voice called out. "I saved you a seat!"

"…Thank you, Arisa." The table was already mostly full, and Suzuka was all too happy to settle in beside her best friend and part-time lover. "So, Ari-chan, how's your class? Make any new friends?"

"More like I made an old friend. A couple of our junior high classmates are in Class D with me, and I had actually had a nice little chat with Kaburagi-san at graduation anyway so we decided to be friends."

"I've…certainly gotten to know a lot of people. I think most of them want to get to know me a bit better."

"Male people?"

"…Mostly. One of them 'warned' me that the girl who was so eager to be my friend is rumored to be a lesbian." Suzuka lowered her voice. "So should I go for it?"

"Why are you asking me?"

"Because, well…us, you know?"

"You want my blessing? Remember, I do still have a girlfriend. My only concern is that if you found this out from someone else, it means you could be ruining your chances to pass as straight—and last I remembered, you still were trying to work through your feelings."

"I think I'm starting to get a fairly good idea of what my feelings are…but then again, at this point in our lives monogamy is overrated. Let's try some different things and see how it all plays out."

"Sounds like a plan. Don't worry, I'm not the jealous type… And besides, I know that I'm the one you love anyway."

The same could not necessarily be said about her own girlfriend. Arisa was surprised to find a missed call from Suki on her phone when she turned it on after school—and seeing as how their schools let out at roughly the same time, Suki must have called right after getting out of class. Arisa listened to the voicemail, but before she could even erase the message, she got another incoming call. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Suki-tan," she answered. "Don't worry, you haven't been replaced."

"There's no cute sempai that's caught your eye?"

"Not yet. I hadn't really been looking, though. I'm perfectly happy with the girl I've got." It took a conscious effort not to pluralize "girl".

It also took a conscious effort not to bring up the fact that Suzuka might have found a potential girlfriend of her own, because Arisa realized that Suki didn't even know that Suzuka was also either bi or a flat-out lesbian—and if Arisa had understood Suzuka at lunchtime, it seemed like she was leaning towards the latter.

"Aw, you're so sweet. I don't deserve someone as good as you."

"…And what does that mean? Don't tell me you've found an adorable first-year who idolizes her Makimaro-sempai the way you did to me!"

Suki laughed nervously. "No! Well, not exactly…I mean, Himiya-chan is adorable, and she does seem to idolize me, but only in that she wishes she could be like me—tall, pretty, popular, handsome boyfriend…"

"…Right. I forgot that just because you let your boyfriend know about us doesn't mean that your bisexuality is common knowledge."

"Now you get it. Seriously, if I had found a replacement for you, why would I be desperately calling you to make sure I haven't been replaced as soon as I got the chance?"

"You could've been calling in hopes that you had been replaced so that you could pursue your new relationship free of any guilt. …But I'm glad you weren't."

"Don't be too sure of that," a voice whispered in Arisa's ear.

"Shinamori-san!"

"…Oops. Sorry, Tsukimura-san…I guess the cat's out of the bag. I'd understand if you didn't want to be friends with me now that you know I'm a lesbian…"

"Is something going on on your end?" Suki asked.

"Nothing you need to concern yourself with. Just Suzuka-chan and one of her new friends. …We didn't end up in the same class," she added, before Suki could even ask the question.

"Sorry to hear that. Well, if you've got friends with you, I won't take up any more of your time. Talk to you later."

"Later."

Arisa turned to Suzuka in time to hear her ask, "Why would you think that you being a lesbian would change anything when I only found out because you couldn't help yourself upon finding out that my best friend is also a lesbian?" Shinamori didn't have an answer. (CCX: It seems really weird to me switching between referring to characters by their first name and by their last name within the narration, but it seems as though the narration kind of follows the main characters' familiarity level with the characters, which is why Suki is the only one whom the narration generally calls by her first name—even though only one of the two main characters does the same.)

"'Couldn't help herself,' huh? Hey, Suzuka…looks like you found yourself a keeper. With a little luck, she might even be a halfway decent replacement for Hayate-chan…"

"Arisa!" The blonde girl found herself being slapped by her best friend.

"So my instincts were correct. I thought you looked awfully uncomfortable with all of those guys' attentions."

"Only because there were so many of them. I am interested in boys," she said, not entirely sure she believed it.

"And this 'Hayate-chan'?"

"Just a friend. A…close friend, who was considerably closer with the rest of our group of friends. Arisa-chan included, though not as much so as the other two."

"…But not you."

"No, not me, because she didn't want to jeopardize our friendship."

"…So then it sounds like you were the token straight girl in a group of lesbians. Weren't you ever…curious?"

"…Okay, fine, you got me. Yes, I've been…assuaging my curiosity lately." She grabbed Arisa and pulled her close. To any onlookers, there was nothing particularly damning about the gesture, which could've easily been just friendly, but to the girl who had heard what had preceded it, the implication was unmistakable.

And yet she smiled. "I see. So, then…Arisa-san," she said hesitantly, not wanting to be rude but having not been properly introduced to the girl she was addressing and having only the name given by a best friend who didn't even always bother with honorifics to go on, "is my job to take care of Tsukimura-san for you, or to get your current girlfriend out of the way so you'll be free to be with her yourself?"

Arisa hesitated, briefly considering the second proposal, before Suzuka cut in, "Your job is to discreetly allow me an alternative while I continue to project a public image of heterosexuality. You're only the fifth person to learn otherwise, and like I said before three of the other four are no longer," she mentally edited what she was about to say, which was "on this planet", and didn't show the slightest hesitation as she finished, "in this country."

"…I think I can accept that. Now, I'm not usually in the habit of calling people I just met by their first names, so unless you'd like to get 'better acquainted with me' tonight I'm going to need a proper introduction."

"Right," Arisa said, having not even registered that Shinamori had addressed her by her first name until she had brought up this point. "I'm Arisa Bannings."

For a split second Shinamori was surprised, hearing the name she'd believed to be a given name come out first, but upon hearing the full name she realized it was in western order. "Bannings-san, is it? That's not a Japanese surname."

"I'm half-Japanese." (CCX: Not sure what canon has to say about this—I know that she does use English in her speech in the original Japanese and that the English dub switches it around so that there are some Japanese words used, but it doesn't really seem to say anything about her heritage.) "I believe the custom is to introduce yourself as well."

"Heheh…right. Shinamori Kanna."

CCX: Hmm…perhaps I shouldn't have put an embedded A/N so close to the end of a chapter. So anyway, when I started this chapter it seemed to merely be a lack of a buffer, but I'm pretty sure I'm downright overdue by now. But I'm still going! And I've officially reached the point where I need a separate document to keep track of all of my OCs, an honor previously only bestowed upon a certain other work that lacked copyrighted characters completely. :-(

…But enough about that. There's one other thing I have to curse out…and that is that there's a 15-character limit on usernames on Twitter, when my username on the site which eventually led to me breaking down and joining Twitter is 20 characters long. I'm sure you'd all recognize the username, since it was based off of a fanfiction I was working on at the time I joined up there and I then turned around and used it as a subtitle for that fanfic's sequel. So since "ScarletDevilRhapsody" is five characters too long, you can follow me at "ScarletDevilCCX", which is just short enough to fit. I'll be tweeting whenever I post a new chapter, although I can't guarantee that my other tweets won't seem like they're a completely different person because the site where I'm "ScarletDevilRhapsody" is not really somewhere that you'd readily associate me with. Well, until then, this is CCX, signing off.