Lonely No More
by Cyberchao X
Chapter 29
Disclaimer: Back to basics.
*still sometime in January*
"Hey, not so close," Suzuka said softly as Arisa put her arm around her at lunch, "we're in public."
"Such a stickler for the rules. Can't you use your power as a member of Student Council to ignore regulations?"
"That's not it. Have you forgotten?"
"…You're still not open about your sexuality."
"Nope. You won't hold that against me, will you?"
"Of course not. But…it's still disappointing."
CCX: Told ya the issue that caused Chapter 27 to cease being the final chapter wasn't even addressed in Chapter 28.
"It's been…kind of awkward between us lately," Kokuro said. "I don't really like that. I'm sorry—"
"Stop. Don't apologize. You did nothing wrong. What I did was stupid, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that."
"I could've been more attentive, though—"
"Don't worry about it. I think maybe you were right, after all. It's not like I contradicted you when you first said you didn't feel it; it was only after my other dates turned out so badly that I started thinking that someone like you, whom I have a lot in common with, would be good for me. But you're right; we just aren't right for each other." "Truthfully…I'm starting to doubt that any boy will be. Arisa and Kanna-chan keep teasing me that I'm really a lesbian who thinks she's bi, but…"
"Yeah…we should try to stay friends." Suzuka just nodded.
"So, how are you going to handle it when your new boyfriend finds out you're only a first-year?" Yuriko asked.
"He already knows," Mayu replied. "And he didn't end it."
"You should be careful," Hanna said. "There's only one reason that guys go for younger girls."
"Hey, I may not be built like you, but I still managed to make a convincing third-year!" Hanna nervously put her arms over her chest.
"That wasn't what I meant. I just don't want you to be taken advantage of."
"I can handle myself. You're not worried about being left behind, are you?"
"Don't be ridiculous. I'm not concerned with doing 'that' yet, but if I wanted to, do you really think I'd have a problem finding a willing partner?"
"Both of you, be quiet," Katsura said. "Yes, Hanna-chan, you've been getting plenty of attention from the boys in our class since you stopped binding your breasts, but you can do better than our fellow first-years."
"You've got it easy, Katsu-chan. Thinking about the relative maturity levels, it's easy to understand why you're attracted to girls."
"Hey. You know I'm still the same as I ever was, right?"
"Sempai's really okay with that?"
"She didn't seem to object when we brought it up at the onsen. Although we weren't actually dating yet at the time, and there wasn't necessarily anything about me continuing… But I can't see why she'd have a problem. She did have an agreement in place allowing her to have a boyfriend and a girlfriend at the same time."
"'Did', huh? Things still not so cordial between you and Hayama-sempai?"
"Nope. Though I really don't feel like I'm the one he should be mad at."
"Why is that?"
"It doesn't seem like he had any particular affinity to Arisa-san, so it shouldn't matter one way or the other. But she was the incumbent, and I was the interloper, and Sempai chose me when she was still in a relationship with Arisa-san."
"It represents infidelity."
"Exactly. But I wasn't unfaithful to anyone."
"…And if you want to keep it that way, maybe you should rethink the idea of continuing to engage in our old shameless boy-chasing shenanigans."
"…You're probably right."
"Hey, Arisa-san. I would've expected you'd be just as busy this season, since this was your sport too."
Arisa was momentarily taken aback. The end of the conversation at Suzuka's New Year's party—after Suzuka had prevented their fight from escalating to physical blows—had been somewhat civil, but this was the first time she'd ever heard Katsura speak to her without the slightest hint of venom in her voice. "Y-yeah…I only had practice today, so I was still able to make it in time to see Suki play."
An uncomfortable pause. "That's what I figured. I was hoping that there were other friends that you were here for, but…I didn't think that was it."
"…I ignored her phone calls for a week after we broke up. I only started talking to her again because Suzu-chan said I should; the break-up didn't have to be any worse than it was."
"So then are you…"
"We're just friends. Very close friends, but…" Arisa sighed. "I'd be lying if I said I don't still have feelings for her, and I know she still has feelings for me, too. But I've got Suzuka now, and she's got you. So no hard feelings."
"Of course not. You seem like a fine person, and the only problem I ever had with you was that you were in the way of me being with Sempai. Now that…ha. I was going to say 'now that that's no longer an issue, I have no problem being friends with you', but that really sounds like gloating and I didn't want to do that. I guess it's kind of hard not to sound selfish where love is concerned, though, isn't it?" (CCX: I'm suddenly reminded of the chorus of "Misery Business" by Paramore. There's no songfic potential there, though, because the verses don't come close to applicability with these characters.)
"Yeah, I guess you're right. Now that we're no longer fighting, I'm starting to see what else Suki-tan sees in you."
"What else?"
"Well, it's obvious you're very pretty."
"Don't sell yourself short. Yeah, your look is definitely very tomboyish, but you make it look good. And you seem to be good at accentuating what you've got."
"Ah…actually, this was an outfit I bought when Suki-tan and I were shopping together. She picked it out for me."
"Damn. Now I wish you weren't seeing me in my uniform. She took me shopping, too; most of my new favorite outfits were picked out by her."
"She definitely knows how to flatter a girl's body."
"Well, given the one she's got, she'd better."
CCX: I'm suddenly once again aware of the natural Americanitis that occasionally pervades American-authored fanfiction. It's been noted already that Suki's body is very much more typical of an American than a Japanese person, even though she's mostly Japanese with only a little American, but now that I think about it, that should mean she wouldn't easily be able to find clothes that fit her.
CC: Don't worry about it. It's anime Japan, not real-world Japan, so demographics may not be exactly the same.
CCX: Yeah, but… Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha is for the most part pretty good about realistic hair colors. Granted, we don't even see too many Earth-born characters, but most of the ones we do see are various shades of brunette, with the exception of Arisa who is explicitly noted to be a foreigner. If you wanted to quibble, you could say that Suzuka's hair is a bit too purple to just be a different shade of black, and Nanoha (and her mother) trend almost to the reddish side of the brunette spectrum, but all in all, I'm going to have to say that the show seems pretty good about giving people appropriate hair colors, saving the wilder (or just less Japanese) ones for characters not native to Earth. Back to the story.
"Arisa-chan!" Suki cried out happily upon emerging from the locker room after the game, before noticing that Katsura was right there. "Ah, um…"
"Still the last one out of the locker room? You know that you don't have your old excuse for that, right?" Arisa teased.
"Well, I have to clean up nicely for my…" she hesitated, "well, apparently I have a couple of people I have to clean up for."
"You could've just said 'girlfriend'. She is here, after all."
"But we both know that I'm not the one she's concerned about. Which seems odd because you're a jock yourself."
"Well, I get to see a lot more of you," Suki said, wrapping her arms around the younger girl and giving her a kiss.
"Do you now?"
Arisa received a playful slug for her trouble. "Not what I meant, you perv! Although, I wouldn't mind seeing you out of that uniform…"
"And you accuse me of being a perv. You'd better watch yourself around this one."
Arisa was unnerved by the grin she received in reply. "I'm sure."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" Suki asked.
"I was just assuring Arisa-san that her worries are misplaced."
"Uh…I guess I should just leave you to that."
"No, seriously, what did you mean?"
"That it's not me she should be worrying about."
"If only we had the time for that now. But I've got to be getting home, and I'm sure you do too. So that lovely body of yours will have to wait."
Katsura smiled. "Yeah, I know… Perhaps you could get an early start to school tomorrow?"
"Before school? Wouldn't that be a bit more…noticeable?"
"Yeah, I guess you're right… I have phys. ed. first period, so I could easily change out there, but I suppose I'd still have to wear my uniform to homeroom first. Also…there's the matter of getting a spare into my gym locker…"
"Eh?"
"I've got regular clothes with me. The ones you helped me pick out on my birthday." Katsura was already leading Suki back into the locker room. "And I believe you said you wanted to undress me?" It wasn't long before Katsura was naked from the waist up. "Whoa, oneesama, calm down! This is supposed to be the 'pressed' uniform! You're going to mess up my skirt!"
Suki eased up and gently removed Katsura's skirt and stockings, teasing at the younger girl's mound as she lay on a bench. "Better?"
"M-much."
"Why so shy again all of a sudden? Is something wrong?"
"N-nope, nothing."
"Oh…don't tell me that you don't have a change of panties?"
"That I don't," Katsura said, as the ones she was wearing started to moisten—just with sweat for the moment, but other fluids would soon follow.
Suki straddled her partner, grinding on the girl's pelvic area as she removed her top. "You're such a bad girl."
"Don't you know it."
"Nothing like the sweet little innocent thing I remember first harboring such illicit desires for."
"Sweet, yes. Innocent, never."
Suki was just about to remove her panties when she was interrupted. "Hey, Suki-chan, I really need to get this place locked up and turn the keys in to coach."
"Ah…sorry, Rioni-sempai!"
"Geez, why do you like to use the locker room for your illicit rendezvous, anyway? Surely there are better places."
"You can't blame me for last year. I was just a first-year, and I was dating the team captain."
"Yeah…that's what I'm worried about. You really don't seem to have much in the way of leadership qualities."
"Is that a problem?"
"…Not necessarily. But if past trends continue, you're likely next year's captain."
"You think so?"
"You'll have to ask your girlfriend—ex-girlfriend if the trend continued back to her first year, but I'm at least the third straight captain that's, well, less than completely Japanese." (CCX: I originally put a note about this after the surname was first revealed, but this line made it unnecessary. Even though there's nothing in the name that can't be Japanese, as a whole it sounds kind of Italian.)
"Sounds a bit like racial stereotyping to me."
"Well, we'll know when it comes time to vote on a captain for next year. Because at the moment you haven't got it on merit."
"That was cruel," Katsura said after they'd parted ways with the captain.
"It was the truth. Personally, I don't even care about being team captain next year. Yeah, I guess it would be kind of cool to follow in Arisa's footsteps, but…I don't know. Sometimes I think I only even ended up in this sport because of my height. I don't regret it, because without it I wouldn't have met Ari-chan…and by extension, might never have realized that I liked girls as well, lest you think that I'm just pining over an old love."
"I'm cool with you talking about her. You can't just stop having feelings for her altogether just because there's someone you like even more, can you?"
Suki shook her head. "Thanks for understanding."
*(probably) February 14*
CCX: Why probably? Because I've been trying to avoid pinning down a specific year for this fic—that's why I've usually only given the month, and avoided setting an exact date for Tanabata. Now, there have been some hints. In Chapter 28, I set both January 7 and January 8 as school days, so we can rule out any year that starts on a Saturday, Sunday, or Monday…no, wait, actually Saturday's still in play, because there actually is school on Saturdays in Japan. I also set both February 14 and 15 as school days last year, which…hm. Let's see if we can figure this out.
January 1 was not a Sunday or a Monday, so February 14 is not a Tuesday or a Wednesday. The previous February 14 was not a Saturday or a Sunday, so this February 14 is not a Monday and can only be a Sunday if the previous year was a leap year. So we've actually ruled out…15 years out of any given 28-year cycle. That's kind of more than I had hoped. If we assume that it's somewhere in the new millennium (which we should because at the very least, cell phones seem to have reached their current level of ubiquity)… that would put us in one of these years (or some number that exceeds them by a multiple of 28): 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2025, or 2026.
Well, I guess that's still vague enough. The "most likely" candidates would probably be 2004 (with the assumption that StrikerS is set in the year that it aired) and 2013 (which works with the assumption that A's is set in the year it aired, and would also set the very beginning of this fic in the end of 2011, which was when I started writing it), but yeah, it still plays loosely enough.
"I just want to stress that all of this is giri-choco, nothing more," Suzuka said, having made chocolates for everyone in her class.
"You got us chocolates, too?" one of the girls asked.
"It's only fair."
"I do hope you remembered to include me in that count as well, Tsukimura-san."
"Oops." "Of course I did, Nitamura-sensei!" "Lucky that Chura-san's absent today."
"Good girl."
Unfortunately for Suzuka, Chura wasn't outright absent, just extremely late. Late enough, at least, that class was already well underway and Suzuka wouldn't be able to give him his chocolate right away anyway, so Nitamura wouldn't know that Suzuka had forgotten about her and covered it by giving her the chocolate meant for Chura.
"Geez, where were you this morning? You missed out on iincho-san's giri-choco," Nitodaki said as Class 1-A headed off for lunch.
"Missed out?"
"Yeah, sorry…I'll make it up to you. I was giving it out to everyone, both boys and girls, but then Sensei asked if I'd included her in my count and since you weren't here I lied and said I had," Suzuka explained.
"Don't worry about it. The last thing I need at the moment is more chocolate."
"You got a lot of chocolates?"
"No…just one very large one. That's why I was late; it was too big for me to even fit in my locker. I had to detour home to drop it off."
"Wow. I've made some serious honmei-choco before, but never one so large it wouldn't even fit in a school locker." "Though maybe I should have. I think the chocolate I gave to Arisa this year might not have been as good as last year's."
"Yeah, Mai-tan's such a sweetheart. I haven't tried it yet, though…I'm kind of afraid that maybe it'll turn out she's actually a horrible cook, and I'll be stuck with this gigantic chocolate that's completely awful."
"Mai…I thought you were going to break it off with Aoba-san."
"I never said that. I just said I'd have to confront her with what I learned."
"Again, policeman's daughter."
"What can I say? I like that she's a rebel."
Suzuka sighed. This was going nowhere.
"So, I don't get a honmei-choco?" Kanna teased.
"No, you don't. I only made one honmei-choco this year, and I'm sure you know who that was for." "Also one extremely extravagant giri-choco."
"Yeah. You gave it to her this morning before school?"
"A couple of days ago, actually. Better to keep it on the down-low that way."
"I don't get you. You seem to have embraced your lesbianism, but you're still trying to act straight in public."
"Just…leave it, okay? Hey sw—Arisa," she said, nearly slipping up.
"Like I said, you really should just come out of the closet."
"So, Suzu-chan, you think you can win the chocolate battle this year?"
"Which battle is that?"
"Why, giving me the best honmei-choco, of course. I doubt that Yagumi-sempai's will measure up, especially since our relationship was always mostly physical anyway, but from what I hear, Suki-tan's been practicing." (CCX: Oh, surely you remember Yagumi Miura, right? Well, okay, surely you don't remember that name, because I only just made it up now, but she was mentioned indirectly in Chapter 13. I think she's also the first named character that's currently a third-year in high school, which is interesting because the just-introduced Rioni is the only current third-year junior high student in this story thus far—just about everyone else is either a first- or second-year in junior high or a first- or second-year in high school, with the exception of Natsume who's still in elementary school.)
"You giving anyone chocolates today?"
"Nah, I've been enough of an homme that I'm pretty much completely tied to White Day now."
"While I'm still doing nothing but receiving, then. It must be interesting having to be on both ends, like Suki-chan."
"Both ends?"
"Well, even though she was definitely the femme when paired with you, I can't imagine her taking the same role with Himiya-chan."
"-chan?"
"She's still small enough to deserve it. The little one is a -tan."
"Fair enough."
"Of course, something tells me her best chocolate of the day won't be a honmei at all. Sucks to be Himiya-chan."
"Suzuka-chan…"
"I consider Suki-chan to be a very close friend now. We've…certainly gotten close, and as such, she deserves only the best giri-choco I have to offer."
"Better than the one you made for Kan-chan?"
"I didn't even get a special one. She gave the entire class giri-choco, and they were all the same."
"Yep."
"Is it a bribe to keep her away from me?"
"Now why would I want that? More like a bribe to keep me in the loop."
"Right. I'll inquire about having Suki gauge Katsura-san's openness to a foursome," Arisa said dryly.
"Thanks," Suzuka smiled, "You're the best." And she gave Arisa a quick kiss.
"…You know that that kiss is going to start the rumor mill up again, right, Suzu-chan?" Kanna asked.
"Yep. I'm okay with that. I don't even mind I people start thinking I might go both ways."
"You don't go both ways."
"Details."
"My turn to show up at your game," Suki said. The game hadn't started yet. "Good luck." She presented Arisa with her honmei-choco.
"I'm surprised Himiya-chan let you out of her grasp, today of all days," Suzuka said.
"While it isn't exactly a huge secret that Himiya-san is more than just her biggest fan, in the public eye Suki-chan's still my girlfriend."
"Oh. Didn't see you there, Hayama-san."
Tatsuke sweatdropped. "Of course not."
"Anyway, Suki-chan, you're my friend too now, so I made a giri-choco for you as well."
"That's…mighty extravagant-looking for a giri-choco. Would this by any chance be a bribe to keep me away from Arisa-chan?"
"Funny, Arisa asked the same thing when she found out my intentions. But no; it's just a reminder not to forget about me."
"I doubt Katsu-tan would be open to a foursome. Tatsu-kun probably would,"—Tatsuke nodded that this was correct—"but I doubt that either of you two would care much for that."
"Damnit, why does everyone assume I'm not bisexual?" Suzuka asked, perhaps a bit too loudly. Were this a comedy, there would've been a lull in the crowd noise at this point, but it isn't, and there wasn't.
"Because you're so natural in bed with a woman."
"All part of being a domestic goddess."
"We'll just see about that… Oh, fuck this is good. If you would embrace your homosexual side, you could have women falling all over you, because chocolate is the best way to a girl's heart."
"I thought that was diamonds."
"You can't drizzle liquid diamonds all over your naked body."
"Kinky. You sure you can't—wait, how are you and Arisa on the same wavelength like that?"
"Huh?"
"The foursome comment. I had that exact same conversation with Arisa-chan at lunch today. She asked if that chocolate was a bribe to keep you away from her, and I said it was more like a bribe to keep me in the loop, and she said she'd make a note to ask you to gauge Himiya-chan's openness to a foursome."
"Well if you covered yourself in nothing but chocolate I'm sure you'd be able to convince her. Though it probably wouldn't be a foursome—she and Hanna-chan are very close, especially where feats of perversion are involved, so I'm sure she'd manage to give her some licks as well."
"I thought Watagami-san was allegedly totally straight," Tatsuke said.
"True. She'd probably prefer a hot guy covered in chocolate."
"Will you lay off with the chocolate?" Suzuka asked.
"But I like chocolate!"
"Of course you do. …Did I upstage Himiya-chan?"
"Eh?"
"Is my chocolate the best?"
"…It would be a disservice to your chocolate to merely say 'yes'. Katsu-tan's not exactly skilled in the kitchen. But…yes, yours is the best I've had in the past couple of days, including when I was testing my own chocolate."
"It's better than yours?" Tatsuke asked incredulously. "I don't believe it. Let me try."
"No way! This is all mine!" Suki said.
"Well, then, I refuse to believe it's better than yours."
"You can still taste it." She gave her boyfriend a long, sloppy kiss, allowing the taste of chocolate in her mouth to permeate his. "So?"
"Well, that's not fair. Yeah, that was tasty, but it had you mixed in. And we all know how sweet you are." Suki grinned mischievously.
Suzuka couldn't help but laugh at the exchange. "So that's how they're still together in spite of all of the girl drama Suki-chan goes through."
CCX: Okay, I think that's all, although I feel like there ought to have been more to this Valentine's Day.
CC: Oh, there will be more. Although…the presence of afterschool activities probably rules out Saturday as well.
CCX: …Not necessarily. Saturday afternoon games would actually make perfect sense. Cyberchao X, signing off.