Chapter 3: Ask Questions Later

For a split second, Sei's mind traveled back to the alleyway, back to that night.

"Uh, what's your name anyway?" Sei asked. "A moment ago we were sharing our germs with each other, so at the very least we should properly introduce ourselves, I guess. I'm Satou Sei, by the way."

She looked up at Sei pleasantly. "My name is Alice. How do you do?"

"Howdy-do," Sei said, returning the greeting with a careless informality. Then she cleared her throat, glancing down the alleyway, out towards the main street. "Look, kid," she said, "I'm no good for you. You don't want to mess around with somebody like me, anyway. Let's just chalk it up to a silly mistake. No big deal. Nobody's fault."

Alice looked down at the ground, shrugging a single shoulder. "If you say so." Another gust of wind blew through the alley, and she crossed her bare arms over her chest, tucking her fists between the creases of her elbows.

Sei stared a her for a few seconds, then sighed. "You look pretty cold in that sleeveless number you have on."

"Yeah, I really should have put on something warmer—but the weather's so unpredictable this time of year. And besides...most of my thicker clothes aren't as pretty."

"What you need to do is eat a sandwich. You hardly have any blubber to survive past the spring, you little bean pole."

For the first time, Alice glared at her. Sei found that she privately considered it an accomplishment, though. There was just something about pushing girls' buttons that she liked more than anything else.

Well, almost more than anything else.

"All right," Sei said, "I'd hate to see you go home as a pile of goose flesh, so I'll tell you what—I have a sweater in my car. I'm parked in the garage just down the street. Follow me there and I'll lend it to you." She hesitantly reached out for Alice—not touching her, just guiding her towards the outside street.

On the way to the garage, she felt Alice hovering behind her, using her as a makeshift windshield whenever the air blew hard in their direction. The heat of her body, the sensation of her presence, or something else about her seemed to radiate towards Sei, filling Sei with a strange frustration she was not quite ready to acknowledge. She wanted to put an arm around her, to warm her up, to feel her skin pressed against her.

No, Sei thought. And that was it.

The elevator ride up to the third floor of the garage was particularly tense, but as a few other people piled on and stood between them, things went a bit more smoothly.

When they reached Sei's car, she popped the trunk, and pulled out a cable-knit sweater that had been hanging out near her spare tire. She rustled it a few times to get the dust off, getting a whiff of rubber and stale motor oil. Oh well, Sei thought. Better than nothing.

She unbuttoned the sweater and draped it over Alice's shoulders. It was a few sizes too big, and it made the girl look oddly small and defenseless. For a short, awkward, beautiful moment, their eyes accidentally met and the kindness of Sei's gesture seemed to temporarily shift into the realm of intimacy. It was of course not lost on her that this was something that lovers did.

She cleared her throat again, louder this time, loud enough that it echoed across the walls of the concrete garage. "Well," she said, then she stepped over to the driver's side door without saying anything else.

"Wait." Alice held out a hand, reaching out to the empty air in front of her. "How do I give this back to you?"

Sei looked at her for a moment in contemplation. Indeed, she hadn't thought this far ahead—a recurring theme that night, it seemed. After a few seconds, she merely shrugged dismissively. "You don't," she said.

"What?"

"Just keep it. It's not like I can't get another one."

Alice looked touched with gratitude, but a bit of concern tinged her face as well. "Are you sure?" she asked.

"Yeah, no problem. I parked here, after all, didn't I? You know these places cost like a gazillion yen per half-hour. What's an old sweater to me when I'm going to be in debt for the rest of my life for spending two hours here?" Sei scratched her chin. "Hm, maybe I can sneak around the boom gate somehow."

"Thank you!" Alice said, and the look on her face, the brightness in her eyes, made Sei forget all about the parking fees for a split second.

Then Sei turned back to her car and fiddled with her keys. "Yep," she said, and that was it.

She waited until Alice had meekly turned around and started walking back towards the elevators. She waited, and then she started banging her head lightly against the frame of her car, the sweat from her forehead making thin streak marks on the window.

Alice.

Alice.

Alice.

She mumbled her name with every deliberate tap.

You can go right to hell, Alice, Sei thought. Or to wonderland. Or to wherever the hell you came from.

"Arisu...gawa," Sei muttered under her breath.

Alice. Arisu. Arisugawa. It all suddenly made sense.

The two of them continued to gaze at each other for an awkward period of time, as if it were the first time they had ever seen another human being.

Alice's mother let out a nervous laugh. "Well, Kintarou, don't just stare at your new teacher like that! Invite her in, give her the house slippers!"

This "Kintarou" bowed dutifully, then crouched over the rise in the foyer to hand Sei her indoor shoes. Sei, for her part, stowed her shoes in a nearby cubbyhole and took the slippers from him. Their hands briefly touched during the exchange, and Alice seemed to recoil a little. Otherwise, they both went through the motions seamlessly, as if they had rehearsed for this play all their lives.

"Perfect," the elder Arisugawa-san said when Sei had stepped onto the main floor. "Now show her to your room, Kin-kun. You two can run along upstairs and I'll be right there with some tea." She disappeared into a different hallway from the one her son had emerged from, presumably headed for the kitchen.

The rather robotic Kintarou silently led Sei through the living room and up the first flight of stairs. In return, she said nothing at first, though her eyes did fall on his rear end at some point as he climbed above her on the steps. Was this really the same body she had fondled only the week before?

She could still remember what it had been like, could still remember the tastes and smells. Though Alice had been shy at first that night, her girlish energy had shined through her hesitation, and Sei's body had easily responded with lust.

Right now, though, as this Kintarou boy ascended the staircase, she felt absolutely nothing—no attraction, but also no repulsion or disgust—just nothing at all. From what she had seen downstairs, he still had a beautiful face, but the flame that had burned inside the both of them for those short minutes together in the alleyway had been decidedly smothered.

When they got to the top, the boy pushed the first door on the left open and stepped into a medium-sized room. Sei noticed that there weren't many furnishings, though. There was only a Western-style bed in the corner, a desk on the far wall, a bookcase, and a small Japanese low table near the middle of the room.

He sauntered over to the table and Sei followed him, dropping her handbag full of books on the carpeted floor. The thud seemed to startle the boy, and he jumped.

"Easy there," she said "Nobody's set off a bomb yet."

He looked at her. For a brief—very brief—moment, Sei thought she saw a spark of Alice once again in the kid's eyes. However, his face went blank immediately as his mother made her way through the doorway.

"Please help yourself to some tea, Satou-san!" she said, carefully placing a tray on the low table next to them. "Would you like me to pour it for you?"

"I'll pour it, Mother," Kintarou said, finally speaking for the first time. His mother looked at him in a moment of hesitation, and Sei could almost read her thoughts.

Pouring tea was a lady's job.

But pouring tea was anybody's job when you had a guest, and certainly Sei outranked him, so it was okay, right?

Arisugawa-san merely nodded and smiled that tight smile that she seemed to wear habitually. "Very well," she said, but she shot Kintarou a brief look of warning, as if to say: Don't enjoy it too much. After a moment of awkward silence, she exchanged bows with Sei and headed towards the door. "I'll let you two get to it. I'm sure you have lots to go over." Then she disappeared into the hallway.

Sei noticed with some amusement that she had indeed left the door open. Guess that answers my earlier question.

Alice...or Kintarou...or someone knelt down by the low table and Sei followed suit. He poured Sei's tea with deliberate concentration, a soothing sound filling the room as the liquid hit the cup. When he was done, he poured his own, then stared silently at the rising steam without saying a word.

Sei glanced at the doorway, checking one last time for any sign of his mother. Now that the coast seemed clear enough, she turned back to him...or her...or whatever this person was. "So, 'Kin-kun'? Is that what they call you?" Sei whispered, trying to lighten the mood. "That doesn't even sound good. It's like 'King Kong' or something."

The Kintarou boy said nothing, staring at the vapor over the cup, seemingly waiting for his tea to cool down before taking a drink.

"Ah," Sei said after a moment. "I see we're still pretending we've never met each other. That's fine, I guess. I can't say that I can blame you."

"Satou-san," the boy said suddenly, his tone still overly formal. "How rude of me not to ask: do you like sugar?" He started to reach for the condiments on the other side of the tray.

The question sounded a little funny to Sei's ears at first, since her family name was pronounced the same way as the Japanese word for "sugar." She smiled a little. "Do you?" she asked, unable to resist an obvious chance to tease him.

He dropped the small dish of condiments with a loud clatter. There was finally a crack in his facade, albeit a small one. His eyebrow twitched a little and the corner of his mouth grew tight.

"I...I take mine unsweetened," he said, "but thank you for asking."

"Better to ask first," Sei said, staring right at his face as he tried to avoid her gaze, "than to give someone too much sugar and then ask questions later, right?"

A touch of pink started to color his cheeks, telling Sei that he was indeed human. However, the way he gripped his cup just then looked at little scary. He held it with both hands and his knuckles were turning pale. She had the distinct impression that he was considering throwing the contents in her face.

He took at sip. Perhaps it had only been her imagination, then.

Sei sighed deeply, pulling her eyes away from him and putting her hands around her teacup. This could be a lot less tedious if only he would lighten up, she thought. After all, in the grand scheme of things, it was a funny situation. Once she was over it, it would be the sort of story she could tell over drinks and chuckle about in hindsight.

If he wanted nothing to do with her, that was fine—neither did she, in a way—but now that they were here, they may as well try to make things pleasant. It was easier now that her burning attraction for this person had seemed to wear thin, too. Maybe that other night had been a fluke.

"Alice," Sei began to say. She stopped when she saw a sudden panicked expression come over the boy.

He dragged his eyes slowly, very intentionally across the room until they were pointing directly at the empty doorway.

Sei followed his gaze and understood. I see, she thought. So the walls have ears.

She put her tea back down without taking a drink, and reached into her bag for a couple of books. As she spread one of the textbooks open in front of him, she leaned in a little closer, so that only he could possibly hear her. She whispered, "You don't have to pretend with me, Alice. I know what it's like to be different and to have to pretend that you're like everyone else. It's exhausting."

In that moment, Alice turned to look at her, and their gazes met straight on, their faces merely centimeters apart. Alice blushed more openly this time. Then Sei felt that glimmer of attraction erupting all of a sudden, and it grew to full intensity for a fraction of a second—and it disappeared when Alice broke away. It was like someone had violently struck a piece of iron against a rock, but there was no tinder to catch the sparks, so the flame died in an instant.

Jesus Christ, Sei thought. I need to get away from this person. I need to leave before I—

"So, I've been struggling a lot with vocabulary in particular, Satou-san," Kinatrou said, projecting his voice conspicuously. "I just can't remember all of the words. English has so many...colorful sounds."

Sei stared at him for a second, then she came to her senses quickly. Right, English. She was there to give the gift of English. She wondered momentarily why he was being so polite about the language's ridiculous pronunciation challenges, as if he were going to offend her personally by mentioning it.

"Well, uh, the key to remembering that kind of thing is sheer exposure," she responded, quickly shifting into the role of teacher. "As long as you expose yourself to English every day, eventually…."

As the night wore on, Sei found that once she got into the swing of things, it became easier to ignore the giant 800-pound gorilla in the room. Actually, there were two gorillas: the one that screeched about how this "Kintarou" fellow was very obviously a girl, and the one that sang songs about how Sei was pretending not to want her. Occasionally, the gorillas waltzed around the room, stepping between them, making Sei lean back a little or making Alice avoid her gaze.

All in all, they both did an admirable job of ignoring the obvious, Sei thought. When the time came for the tutoring to be over, Sei couldn't help but feel overcome with the desperate need to leave. Without the lessons as a distraction, she didn't think she could survive the small talk.

Kintarou's mother poked her head through the door before long, smiling at the both of them. "How did everything go? Splendidly, I imagine?" The derision she had shown towards Sei before emanated from her eyes again, barely disguised by her bubbly demeanor.

As the three of them walked down the stairs to the first floor, Sei racked her brain for some kind of excuse as to why she would be unable to come for the next tutoring session. Or the next. Or ever again.

Her daydreaming was cut short, however, when they came to the foyer. Standing just inside the house, leaning against the wall and stepping into his house slippers, was the boy's father. He looked up at Sei and smiled.

"Well, well, can my son chatter like an American yet?" he asked, giving a hearty laugh. "Did you perform that miracle I asked?"

"Not exactly," Kintarou responded for her.

His father patted him on the back. "Don't worry, son, you'll get there soon enough. I have full confidence in your tutor; she comes with splendid references."

Sei bowed politely and told them that she needed to get going. As she stepped down into the foyer and started changing her shoes, the man leaned down towards her and whispered, "Thank you, Satou. You don't realize how much of a help this is. It's extremely important that our son become fluent."

He pressed a wad of paper into her hand, and Sei rudely stuffed it into her shirt pocket without looking at it, thanking him quietly. Once they had exchanged goodbyes and she was just about to step out the door, she heard the father calling after his son: "Hey, wait a second, Kintarou. Don't run upstairs just yet. Your tutor hasn't even left! Why don't you walk her to the gate?"

Apparently, Sei hadn't been the only one trying to escape.

As they walked side-by-side down the concrete path, and the door closed behind them, Sei could see from the corner of her eye that the kid was trying to steal a glance at her inconspicuously. She jammed her hands into her pockets and let out a breath, turning to look at this oddly frustrating person.

Alice looked back her. It was unquestionably Alice this time. Her real face was somehow bursting through the facade again, though Sei couldn't really put her finger on what the differences were between now and earlier—they were stark, nonetheless. The girl echoed Sei's previous sigh and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say that the situation was out of her hands.

"I'm sorry," Alice said.

"For what?"

"Back there." Alice shook her head. "In there, in that house, I can't be who I am. It's impossible. It isn't even about whether I'm a girl or a boy. No matter what I am, they don't want it. And my mother, she's always making sure I never forget it."

Sei stopped for a moment and regarded her with a soft gaze of understanding. "You won't be in that house forever, you know," she said. "When you finally do leave, what's going to happen to you if you never learned how to be yourself?"

"Well, I can't wear dresses around here for now."

"It's not about wearing dresses," Sei said. She paused, a small grin forming on her face. "Girls wear pants sometimes, too, Alice."

Alice smiled back at her, then looked at the ground. "My mother doesn't like you."

Sei nearly burst out laughing. "Gee, you don't say! I hadn't noticed."

"Normally, she doesn't like women around my age very much. She thinks that they're too...loose and wanton with their lives. But I could tell right away that she really didn't like you," Alice said. "Maybe she sensed that you were a little different—a bit like me."

"Maybe so. It's hard to turn that off, even around older people. It's not like I hide it."

Sei turned to the gates as they started to open, and waved at Alice casually as she headed towards them. Alice took a hesitant step forward, as if to walk up to her, as if to touch her, but Sei ignored the gesture and walked a little faster.

Nope, she thought. We're not playing that game again, Alice.

It was only when she had walked a few blocks towards the bus station that she thought to pull the folded stack of cash from her pocket. Curiously, she spread the bills apart in her hand to take a look at how much Alice's father had given her.

Sei stopped in the middle of the street. It's just money, she reminded herself. That's all. Just money. You can always make more somewhere else.

Still, it was much more than she had made anywhere else so far. It was enough for her to park at her favorite garage downtown for a few weeks straight.

"So, how did the first tutoring session go with that student that Kawakami recommended?" Kei asked with mild interest, prodding at her soup with a plastic spoon. It looked too hot to drink from yet, a haze of steam billowing from the bowl. "What was his name again?"

"Arisugawa Kintarou," Sei mumbled. She was flipping through a magazine and shoving clumps of rice into her mouth in a most unrefined manner.

Kei looked at her with a bit of surprise. "Wow. It's not very often that I hear someone's name coming out of your mouth with zero hesitation. Are you turning over a new leaf and actually remembering people now?" She paused. "Or did he make that big of an impression?"

Sei shrugged at her, her gaze wandering vaguely to the other people who were milling around the cafeteria. She had been trying to put the whole ordeal out of her mind for the past day-and-a-half, but now that it was Wednesday, she'd have to come to some sort of decision as to whether she would return to the Arisugawa house or not.

On the one hand, the pay was very good, and a man with connections like the senior Arisugawa would mean access to other high-paying clients, probably.

But on the other hand…

On the other hand, there was Alice. There was something inexplicable that was tugging Sei towards her, some kind of black magic, some kind of intense curiosity that she simply couldn't dismiss. It stimulated her and scared her at the same time, and it made her want to avoid the place.

It was an irrational fear, though, wasn't it? Nothing could ever really happen between them. Even if Sei allowed these weird feelings to run their course, they could only go so far. After all, Alice was…

Sei thought she heard someone calling her name. She looked in front of her at Kei, but it didn't seem to come from her. Kei wasn't even looking at her. Her gaze was falling somewhere over Sei's shoulder and a smile was spreading across her face—the kind of smile that would have never been meant for Sei.

"Hello there, Fukuzawa-san," Kei said, though her face grew a bit less bright as she seemed to study the space behind Sei's back.

Sei turned around immediately, and was met with a pair of brown eyes. They looked at little watery, puffier than usual. Yumi didn't even have to say anything as they quietly exchanged a glance.

Sachiko, Sei guessed.

"Sei-sama," Yumi repeated, standing up straight, seemingly trying to compose herself. "Could I speak to you in private?"

Sei didn't even push in her chair as she got up. She took Yumi's hand and led her outside, then brought her along the walkway to a grassy spot near the back of the library, where few people ever wandered.

She sat down beside a tree and patted the ground next to her. Yumi hesitated—perhaps noting the clods of dirt over the turf that Sei had completely ignored—but finally she sighed and sat right down. Leaning her back against the tree, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as fresh tears began to spill.

Strange. There was no sobbing, no shudders racking her body, as Sei was used to when Yumi cried. The tears only seemed to fall as a reflex, without conflict, without violence.

"What's wrong, Yumi-chan?" She reached over and wiped a few tears with her thumb, but otherwise she didn't coddle her.

Yumi took a deep, shaky breath. "Onee-sama invited me over to her house today. At first I thought she just wanted to hang out like we usually do, but then...she brought me up to her bedroom. She wanted to talk."

Sei only listened, turning her body towards Yumi, watching her eyes carefully.

"She's marrying Kashiwagi-san after university. It's been decided," Yumi said.

"Yes, I know. Youko mentioned it to me. But you knew that already, too, didn't you?"

Yumi nodded. "It wasn't a shock or anything; I had figured that she wouldn't have changed her mind. She told me that they had already started making plans for the wedding now, that she had a certain familial duty to fulfill, that Kashiwagi-san would make a good husband because they had an understanding with each other."

Sei frowned deeply. Surely, she thought, Yumi hadn't been expecting that Sachiko would turn her back on her family and derail her plans just to...what? To run away with Yumi? Was that it? A bittersweet feeling of nostalgia came over Sei for a moment as memories flooded her head. She had tried that once herself, and it didn't work out very well.

"This is just the way things are, Yumi-chan," Sei said, trying to console her with a smile. "Relationships are always temporary, or else they transform in ways we might have not expected or wanted. This doesn't mean that they don't mean anything while we have them, or that they haven't changed our lives for the better."

Sei stared out across the gardens wistfully. It was true, though, that the kinds of relationships that people like them tended to have were far more fleeting and temporary. She couldn't blame Yumi for her frustration, especially considering that her relationship with Sachiko was also the kind that could never be consummated.

She sometimes wondered if Sachiko was aware of Yumi's feelings and was simply ignoring them, or if she really was so blind as to assume that Yumi's intentions were completely platonic.

"It's not that," Yumi said, putting her face in her hands. "Onee-sama told me she had called me up to her room to ask me something—something about our future."

"Hm?" Sei was a bit confused now.

Yumi sucked in a sharp breath. "She asked me if I wanted to live with them. After they were married and after I graduated. She wanted to know if I would consider staying in the Ogasawara home, living like an adopted family member."

Sei was immediately taken aback. Without Yumi even having to explain, she knew exactly what it all implied. It was just something she had never expected from Sachiko.

Sachiko wanted a sham marriage. She wanted the same thing that Kashiwagi did. Now that she had a reason to do it and a person that she could do it with, she apparently had no qualms.

Sei looked directly into Yumi's face. "She wants...to take you as a lover?"

Yumi tightened her lip, but fresh tears appeared seemingly against her will. "At first, I wasn't sure if that's what she meant. You know how she can be so vague about this kind of thing," Yumi said. "Eventually, she told me a bit more clearly, when I acted confused. She said that I could sleep in the same room with her, in the same bed, if I wanted. If I wanted." Yumi smiled mirthlessly. "That's when I knew what she was implying. The look on her face just confirmed it. She wouldn't even look at me while she said it. It was all so weird."

"Have you two ever…?" Sei ventured to ask. Her expression filled in the blank.

Yumi shook her head. "We had never even kissed at that point."

"'At that point'? You mean, a few hours ago?"

Yumi sighed. It was a gesture of exasperation, but at the same time a blush had begun to crawl up her face. "I hadn't kissed anyone before." She paused, then looked at Sei. "Do you remember that time?"

Again, she didn't need to explain. Sei knew exactly what "time" she was talking about, just by the tint on Yumi's cheeks. She was talking about the time that she had kissed Sei in the empty classroom, right before Sei's graduation.

"You asked me for a kiss on the lips," Yumi said. "I wasn't totally certain whether or not you were serious. To be perfectly honest, I kind of wanted to do it, but the main thing that was holding me back was…."

"It would have been your first kiss."

Yumi nodded. "So instead, I kissed you on the cheek."

"You got the side of my mouth, too. I felt it," Sei teased.

"I kissed you on the cheek," Yumi repeated, her lips pursed. "And I decided, because of that, it didn't count. Though I'll admit that I felt a little guilty that I was 'cheating' on Onee-sama back then." Yumi pulled her knees up to her chest. "I guess I was saving the real kiss for her all this time."

It really was a tragedy, Sei thought. Here she was—this bright, adorable girl on the brink of adulthood—and she had never even kissed anyone. Nineteen years old, and she had been saving herself for someone who didn't even notice her romantic feelings.

Or so it seemed until about five minutes ago. Perhaps Sei had been wrong.

"When we were in her room today," Yumi continued, "After she told me all of that, I just didn't know how to react. I just stood there, frozen, confused. Then she took my face in her hands, like she had done a bunch of times before. It was different this time, though. She looked right at me, with an expression I hadn't seen on her face in so long. She had been so caught up in the conflicts of the engagement, she had been so distant from me lately—and that's when I realized that the real conflict inside her had been about approaching me and asking me to live with her. I can't even imagine how long she must have been wrestling with herself."

Then Yumi looked away, her expression taking on a new layer of embarrassment. "After a second, she kind of leaned in a little. Just a little. And I don't know what came over me—I was so overwhelmed with everything—but I leaned the rest of the way and we kissed. I'm not sure if that had been her intention, but she didn't stop me. It was short, just a light kiss. Her lips were smooth and warm...and she smiled at me when we pulled away."

Sei stared at her, transfixed. She could hardly believe it. "Well, it seems that you got what you wanted," she mumbled. She said it in a tone that seemed to ask: What's the problem, then, Yumi-chan?

Yumi shook her head. "Do you know what it was like to kiss my Onee-sama?"

Sei said nothing, only waited.

"It was like...kissing my own sister." Yumi looked up at Sei, not a shred of irony in her voice.

Sei suppressed a sardonic laugh, and it erupted out of her as a fit of loud snickers instead.

Yumi glared at her, then pressed her forehead to her own knees and covered her face with her folded arms. "It's not funny, Sei-sama. It's awful."

Sei nodded, trying to throw her an understanding glance, but Yumi wasn't looking at her anymore. It was true, she thought: it was awful. Yumi had carried a torch for this woman for years and years, building her up in her mind, masochistically enduring the pain of having her seething passions ignored—only to find that the flame of the torch had fizzled by the time her love was returned. Or maybe she had only just discovered that what she felt for Sachiko had never actually been physical attraction the whole time.

"Ah, but that's how love is," Sei said. At first, she had intended to say it only in her mind, but it had come out freely nonetheless. She smiled and patted Yumi warmly on the shoulder. "That's why you have to move fast, Yumi! Then at least you'll know early on. Kiss first, ask a lifetime of questions later!"

"Like you?" Yumi's pretty little face peaked out from under her arm. Her tone was not friendly. There was more than a touch of bitterness, but Sei forgave it easily.

Sei stretched her legs out in front of her, folding her arms behind her head and looking out into the open lawn pensively.

But she didn't answer.

"Are you still in love with her?" Sei asked instead.

Yumi shrugged, hiding her face again. "You can't just turn off almost four years of feelings. Of course I still love her—but the moment she had asked me to be part of some secret marriage, I just couldn't see myself with her anymore. The reality of the situation—of what being with her would actually mean on a day to day basis—just became too clear. It wasn't a fantasy anymore, where I could pretend that everything would be perfect. If that kiss said anything to me, it was that she wanted to have this semi-romance, the same one we've been having for years—to be not quite lovers." She swallowed hard. "I guess I've just grown past that. I'd like to experience what it's like to have an actual lover. Even if I misread her and she wanted a normal romance somehow, I don't think I could spend years and years hiding the relationship."

"It wouldn't be hard to hide," Sei said. "You could live with her, even sleep in the same bed, and no one would bat an eyelash. Hardly anyone would think that you were anything other than good friends, and even those who suspected probably wouldn't say anything about it." Sei paused. "But you don't want to live like that, do you?"

Yumi shook her head. "It's not that I want to tell the whole world who I'm with or anything," she said. "I just don't want to have to hide it, either, like it's some huge secret."

"You don't want to be like Kashiwagi...or now Sachiko, too, I guess."

"No, I don't," Yumi agreed. She finally looked up at Sei again. "Kashiwagi was there today. He gave me this funny look before I went to Onee-sama's room. I think he knew what she was going to say to me. I can't see them discussing the implications openly, but she had to have told him that she was going to ask me to live with them."

"I'm surprised he hasn't already amassed a collection of his own young lovers in that house yet," Sei huffed.

Yumi stared a her for a long moment, her face suddenly a bit tense.

"What is it?" Sei asked.

"Well, it's funny you should say that," she said cautiously, watching Sei's face with a strange level of attention. "Someone was with him there today. They were on their way out the door—going to the arcade, he said—but there was a weird air about the two of them."

Sei became serious. "'Someone'?"

Yumi looked down at her now grass-stained shoes. "It was Alice."

A/N:

Hey, guys, thanks so far for the reviews, I really appreciate the feedback! Even the lurkers, thanks for taking the time to read my story. :)

Next chapter should be up soon...probably.