A/N:

So, if you're re-reading this chapter and it seems a bit different than before, you're not going crazy, haha. I didn't like how the first version turned out, so I heavily edited this chapter. (I've done this several times before, and didn't mention it because the changes were minimal.) The direction of the scenes are still exactly the same, so it doesn't affect the story. It was more for stylistic choices and some issues with internal monologue that I edited it.

Chapter 11: Leaning Over the Bridge

"Excuse me, excuse me!"

Yumi pressed her face against the wood of the door frame in defeat. The musty smell of old books wafted easily through the cracks and she could just barely see the outline of the bookcases through the frosted glass. It looked like there was a small, glowing lamp in the far corner of the room, but she couldn't tell if anyone was standing near it. Otherwise, the room looked devoid of life, only the dull sunlight that oozed through the windows giving any sense of warmth or occupancy.

She clutched the small paperback by her side and knocked against the door again. This was the third time, and she was just about ready to give up. She knew the library was officially closed on Sunday, and that there was a high chance that the usual girl who organized the shelves wouldn't be working so late during the weekend, but it was worth a shot considering the alternative.

She had already tried to donate the book on Friday. The sister who had been manning the front desk immediately frowned as Yumi presented it, pushing the book back over the counter as if Yumi had offered some kind of smutty magazine. "I'm sorry, but we don't carry books like these in our collection."

The nun gave her a withering stare and Yumi had been unable to come up with any reply in the moment. So instead, she nodded meekly and rushed back out the door, her cheeks burning with both embarrassment and annoyance.

Still, she couldn't get the idea of donating the book out of her head. Ever since she had re-discovered it at the bottom of her desk drawer a few days before, she had this weird inkling that someone in the school would need it some day—the same way she had years before.

In a sense, it was an offering to Maria-sama, out of gratitude for everything that God had given her over the past week.

But after the close encounter with the ornery nun, she decided that she'd need to be a bit more discreet about such an infamous novel. She knew that a classmate of hers occasionally tidied up the library on Sunday afternoons, and it struck her that she might be able to call in a favor and stealthy get that paperback officially on the shelves. That plan seemed fine until she was faced with a locked door and not a single person in sight.

Yumi sighed and peered one last time through the hazy glass of the door. When she still could not make out even a vague shadow of human presence, she resigned herself, her shoes giving out a loud squeak as she spun around to go back. Once she had taken two hesitant steps, though, she thought she felt a rush of air behind her.

Her body jerked with the sudden excitement of possibility. She quickly turned, her movements messy, her smile a bit too eager.

But as soon as she met eyes with the girl whose face had appeared between the crack of the door, she stopped. It was a somewhat familiar face, but it was certainly not the person she had expected to see. In fact…

The girl stared at her with a question in her eyes and it took Yumi a moment to place where she had last seen her.

"Ah...Kawakami-san?" Yumi guessed, taken off guard by the circumstances. Yumi recognized her as an upperclassman who had done a few group projects with Sachiko-sama—and she had also noticed the girl consorting with Sei before—but otherwise they didn't know each other that well. "Good afternoon. Uh, where's Sasaki-san? I thought she was the one who worked at the library after school."

"We both do," Kawakami answered, her tone rather flat and lifeless. Some kind of dark mood had overtaken her, and Yumi could feel it immediately emanating from behind the door to the point where it made her uncomfortable. Even still, the girl's eyes were darting up and down Yumi's body, as if she were trying to make sense of what she was seeing. "We alternate days," she explained, "but today we were both supposed to do some inventory since the end of the school year is coming up in a few weeks. Sasaki is at home, though. She came down with a fever, so I'm all alone in here." The girl paused with an awkward look on her face. "...Fukuzawa-san?"

"Yes?" Yumi answered automatically, still a bit confused.

Kawakami nodded then. "Yes, I thought that was you. You're Ogasawara-san's 'little sister,' right? And...Satou-san's friend." Her voice sounded strange when she said the last part. Her mouth seemed to tighten on Sei's name.

Ah, she's still awkward about Sei-sama, Yumi thought to herself. In a sense, Yumi couldn't blame her, considering that last she heard, Sei had rejected her quite open advances.

Kawakami must have taken Yumi's silence as confirmation, because she pulled the door open further and waved at her to step past the threshold. "Come in," she said quickly. When Yumi obliged, she shut the door behind them.

As it turned out, the small light that Yumi had seen from the outside was coming from a wide table near the middle of the library. It was strewn from corner to corner with books, some of which were stacked neatly, and some of which were open and positioned near a chair, as if someone had been reading them.

Seeing the library in this uncommon level of disarray was a bit of a distracting novelty, enough that Yumi lost her train of thought at first. She stared at the empty shelves of the nearby bookcase, feeling a bit uncomfortable that she had walked in so abruptly on the library's nakedness. The more polite part of her wanted to apologize, but before she could feel too weird about it, she felt that steady gaze scrutinizing her once again.

Yumi looked at Kawakami, who was looking at her in turn with expectation.

"What can I do for you, Fukuzawa-san?"

"Uh, um, this book," Yumi stuttered. She wasn't sure why she was nervous; maybe it was because she had already tried to offer the donation before and was unambiguously rejected. When she noticed that Kawakami had raised an eyebrow in confusion, Yumi tried to collect her thoughts. She took a breath and held the small book out towards her companion. "Pardon me for the intrusion, but I came to donate this," she said, bowing slightly. "The library has a popular fiction section, doesn't it? I thought this would be perfect for it."

Kawakami tilted her head. "Oh, is that all?" She graciously accepted the novel with both hands and sauntered towards the front desk.

Not knowing what else to do, Yumi followed her.

"Of course," the girl added, when they had reached the counter, "it will have to go through an approval process before we put it on the shelf—but we're grateful for the submission."

Yumi gritted her teeth slightly. "Ah, is that so?" She mentally calculated what the chances were that it would be accepted. If it fell into the hands of the right librarian, then they might not notice or care about the contents. At the very least, she had increased the odds by finding someone who was willing to even start the process.

Yumi heard some rustling coming from behind the counter as Kawakami stooped down and disappeared to rummage through some of the drawers. She reappeared shortly after, a few very official-looking print-outs in her hand. She grabbed a pen from a nearby tray, but as her hand hovered over one of the pages and she seemed to finally examine the book's title, she stopped. She stared at the cover for a long time.

"The Forest of Thorns," Kawakami said, her tone so blank that Yumi couldn't tell if she was uttering the title for the first time.

"Do you know it?" Yumi asked. Either way, she wasn't sure if Kawakami's familiarity with the book would be a good thing or a bad thing.

But the girl shook her head. "No," she said. "I just thought I might have heard the title before. If I'm not mistaken, it was a popular read at Lillian high school a few years ago, but I only started going here my first year of university, so I have no idea what it's about."

"It's...a tragic love story, you could say," Yumi mumbled. Perhaps it was best if Kawakami didn't know, especially considering the nature of the rumors that had surrounded it.

Yumi winced a little when Kawakami turned the book around in her hand and started silently reading the back. The girl's eyes widened momentarily as the realization seemed to dawn on her.

"Ah, I see," she said. "It's that sort of novel. I can see why you chose to come when the sisters weren't in." She put the book down. She looked up at Yumi with an enigmatic expression. "Is that all?"

Yumi stared at her. "Uh, yes. Yes, that's all!" she said, a bit thrown off. For some reason, she had expected further questions. She nodded and started to take her leave with deliberate slowness, knowing that if she dashed out of the library as quickly as she wanted, it would be terribly rude.

Just as she was about to turn around, though, Kawakami stopped her.

"Fukuzawa-san, wait."

When Yumi looked at her, the girl gave out a pained sigh. She was staring at the desk beneath her, averting her eyes from Yumi's gaze. Kawakami's face was now eerily obscured by the shadow of her shoulder-length hair, and the dark mood from earlier had begun to seep back into the room. The girl seemed to take a moment, to steel herself, as if she were working up the nerve to say something distasteful.

"Fukuzawa-san," she said finally, "how well do you know Satou-san?"

"Hah?" Yumi blurted out. It was one of those random vocalizations that her Onee-sama frequently disapproved of, but that she often couldn't help when faced with the unexpected. She cleared her throat and tried again, shooting for coherence this time. "I—I suppose I could say that I know her well. Those sorts of things are hard to measure, of course."

"How long?"

"Er, since high school. About four years, I guess. Four years this coming fall," Yumi said, looking at Kawakami with confusion. "Why do you ask?"

Kawakami shook her head, her hair dancing around over her face until Yumi couldn't even see her eyes anymore. "No reason. I just see the two of you walking together sometimes. You seem very close."

Yumi couldn't help the blush that was threatening to crawl up her cheeks. "What do you mean?" She tried not to give anything away with her expression, but it was exceedingly difficult.

"Would you mind if I asked something? About her? You don't have to answer if you don't want to." Kawakami's voice was growing shakier and she still wouldn't look up. She had started playing nervously with the papers on the desk, her hands tearing a small piece off the corner of a sheet.

Yumi didn't like where this seemed to be going. While she knew that Sei didn't go to huge lengths to hide anything about herself, having someone else talk about such personal matters was another thing entirely. Even being so close with Sei-sama, Yumi felt like she had no right to gossip about what Kawakami was probably going to ask.

"There was nothing there," the girl said suddenly, without waiting for Yumi's reply. Yumi could just barely see the whites of the girl's widened eyes as they gleamed in the dying sunlight. Her stare was still pointed squarely at the desk. "I tried," she said, "and there was nothing there. I feel stupid now." The girl let out a loud breath, and to Yumi's horror, she realized that it was nothing more than a suppressed sob. Kawakami's fingers curled tightly against the desk, her nails sliding along the wood with an unpleasant sound. "Now I wonder if I really did make everything up in my head. Maybe there was no connection between us at all, and I was just desperate to find someone who could understand the feelings that I was fighting with. Maybe it was unfair of me to throw all of that onto Satou-san, just because she...because she's also…."

A part of Yumi wanted to desperately turn and sprint out the door behind her. Her muscles were stiff with energy, an energy that had grown more and more with each piece of Kawakami's semi-coherent explanation.

But Yumi planted her feet hard into the carpeted floor. She couldn't understand everything that Kawakami was getting at, but she could understand that it was supposed to be important. She forced herself to listen.

"Now I don't even know if she's actually…," Kawakami trailed off, then shook her head again. "No, it doesn't matter if she is or not. I mean, I was sure of it. I had heard the rumors around school, and then when I heard my aunt complaining about her—Satou-san tutors my cousin, you see—it only confirmed it even more. But whether she is or she isn't, it's not right for me to assume that she owes me any of her time just because we have...that in common."

Filled with a sudden rush of sympathy, Yumi found it in herself to take a step forward. She hesitated for only a moment, like a weak force-field of unpleasant emotion was pushing her back from the desk. Still, she reached towards Kawakami and put a hand on the back of the girl's tensed fingers. "What was it that you wanted to ask, Kawakami-san?" she said gently. She tried to smile, even if they couldn't see each other very well.

Kawakami looked up at her finally. The increasing dimness of the room made the finer details of her expression look smeared, like a blended charcoal drawing. Only the corners of her eyes looked sharp and tight with suppressed emotion. "Nothing, I guess. It doesn't matter now. It's probably better that I let things go, especially now that I saw that she has a boyfriend."

Yumi blinked. Her mind became blank in the face of something so totally unexpected. For a moment, nothing computed in her brain, and then finally a wave of amused confusion reached her. If it hadn't been completely inappropriate in the emotional air of the situation, she might have laughed out loud. "Pardon me, Kawakami-san," she said, fighting a crooked smile that threatened to erupt on her face, "but we're talking about Sei-sama here, right? Satou Sei-sama?"

"Yes?" Kawakami said, looking carefully at Yumi's face. "I ran into her this last week. She was with some rich boy, parading around in a sports car. I either completely misread her at first or she's trying to hide what she does by dating a man. Either way, it's not my place to interfere, of course." She brought a hand up to wipe her eyes. "I just feel so alone sometimes. Like I'm the only one."

The only one.

Yumi's eyes widened. Without thinking, she grabbed hold of Kawakami's hand and blurted out, "You're not the only one! I promise. Trust me. There are plenty of people like us!"

Kawakami's breath hitched. She had been staring down at the desk again, her tears dropping heavily on the stack of papers in front of her, leaving wet stains all over the neatly-printed ink. When what Yumi said appeared to sink in, she slowly lifted her head. "'People like us'?"

The sudden look of hope in her eyes made it impossible for Yumi to regret her outburst. Instead of retreating like a small part of her wanted to do again, she took half a step closer and found herself nodding in confirmation. "I'm like that, too, Kawakami. And…." She stopped for a moment, thought carefully about what she was about to say, and then decided that there was no good reason not to say it. "Sei-sama is like that. You weren't wrong. She doesn't hide it, either. It's not some big secret."

Kawakami looked at her with confusion. "What about the guy in the red car?"

"A red car?" Yumi asked. But the thought had hit her before she had even finished saying it: Kashiwagi.

Yumi shook her head and gave the girl an amused look. "If it's who I think you're talking about, then that's my Onee-sama's fiancé. He and Sei-sama are just friends...sort of. Even if she was into that kind of thing, he'd be the last person she would date." Still, she had no idea why Sei would be riding around with Kashiwagi. That was a question for another time, though.

"Oh," Kawakami said simply. For some reason, this revelation served to calm her down a bit. Her face seemed to relax and her breathing seemed to grow less labored, though a few teary hiccups escaped from her nonetheless. "I wonder why she told me he was her boyfriend, then."

"What?" Yumi said before she could stop herself.

On some level, she couldn't believe the lengths of absolute insensitivity that Sei was willing to go to, but on the other hand she couldn't say she was totally surprised. There were so many things that she loved about Satou Sei, but this was definitely one of the more difficult features to deal with. She had the habit of playing with other people's emotions way too casually, without even realizing that she had.

Yumi clutched Kawakami's hand a little tighter, her expression sympathetic in the midst of a slight anger that was growing in her chest. "Please allow me to apologize in her place, Kawakami-san. What she said was inexcusable, but it was probably meant as a joke. She can be completely oblivious to people's feelings sometimes and she can end up saying very hurtful things. It's just how she is."

Kawakami said nothing for a long time as she appeared to take in this new information. She tipped her head up a little more and some of the light from the middle of the room reached her face again. Yumi could see that her cheeks were still a bit wet, but the glassy varnish of unspilled tears was missing from her eyes, much to Yumi's relief. Soon enough, she began nodding slowly. "It sounds like you do know her rather well." Then Kawakami's body jerked slightly, as if a sudden thought had come to her mind. She mirrored Yumi's apologetic look and she leaned over the desk with an intensity that seemed to come out of nowhere. "Fukuzawa-san, I'm so sorry! I—I should have considered this before, but frankly it didn't even register until now. I didn't mean to intrude between the two of you. Are you and Satou-san…?"

Yumi pulled back a bit, taken off guard. She held in the light yelp that she was about to give out. She really should have anticipated that this line of questioning would come up eventually, but for some reason she hadn't.

There was no confusion, though. She knew exactly how she wanted to answer. The real issue was whether she had the nerve. Yumi wavered for a moment, but then finally she looked Kawakami in the eyes.

"Yes," she murmured. Intuitively, it felt like the right answer to Yumi. It was the answer that had floated up into her mind first, above the barrage of uncertainty and fuzzy lines, even above the doubt she had felt after spending the past few days without speaking to Sei even once. Somehow, if she had answered any other way, she felt like she would have been lying. "Sei-sama and I are together," she said confidently. And that was it.

"Ah!" Kawakami said, her face looking simultaneously deflated and relieved somehow. "Ah, no wonder. That's explains a lot. I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize," Yumi replied, giving her a genuine smile. She moved her hand from atop Kawakami's, and instead pressed it against the cover of the book that sat between them. She pushed it forward, until it was centimeters from the girl's chest. "I kept wanting to donate this to the library because I couldn't help but think that someone would be looking for a book like this someday. I didn't know it at the time, but it was exactly what I needed when I read it myself. It made me feel less alone. Maybe I already found the person who was meant to read this next, though. Maybe that person is you, Kawakami-san."

The girl looked at Yumi gratefully, traces of a smile finally appearing on her face. She touched the edges of the book with curiosity, as if she had only just noticed that it was there. "Thank you, Fukuzawa-san," she said.

Yumi gave her a small bow and pulled her hand back until it rested lightly on the left side of her chest. "You can call me Yumi, you know," she said. "That's the custom for those of us who grew up in the academy division. Besides, we've already over-shared enough that I think we can go by our first names, huh?"

Kawakami let out a small laugh. "Thank you, Yumi-san," she repeated. "I guess all of this wasn't really about Satou-san at all, was it? I really need to think about these feelings I've been having towards...certain kinds of people. Maybe it's something I should explore on my own before I try to act on it."

Yumi nodded. "If you ever need someone to talk to, though, you can come to me...Keiko-san. You're not alone."

Kawakami smiled and picked up the book, pressing it against her chest, holding a posture not unlike that of Yumi's. They looked at each other in silence for a moment, an appreciative, supportive silence, the kind that came with accepting each other completely for no particular reason. I see you—the real you, Yumi's gaze was saying, and so was the gaze that returned to her from the other side of the desk.

Before long, the mood began to shift. As soon as the rush of the moment subsided, Kawakami turned back down to the paperwork with embarrassment and began to methodically fill in all of the lines.

Yumi glanced at her one last time, bowed again, and murmured a polite goodbye before making her way towards the door. The pages of the open books by the far table rustled as she passed by.

When she reached the exit, though, she paused. She debated making one last thing known because it struck her that it wouldn't be very fair if she didn't. She looked over her shoulder at the girl behind the desk and called out, "Say, Keiko-san."

"Y-yes?" Kawakami said, perhaps still a bit unused to being called by her first name.

"Sei-sama and I are together," Yumi said, "but you don't have to be sorry for liking her. It doesn't bother me."

Kawakami's eyebrows shot up abruptly. "But…?"

Yumi couldn't help but feel a bit sheepish. This confession felt somehow more taboo and unusual than the one she had given just minutes before. Still, she managed to shrug, to give Kawakami an encouraging smile. "We have a very simple, very complicated relationship," she explained, "but that's something between Sei-sama and me, something that no one could interfere with. Now, I'm not going to pretend that she'll pay any attention to you—and maybe you shouldn't, either, because there are sides to her that are very frustrating, to be honest—but I just think you should know that I'm not the one to stop you." Yumi paused for a moment, not quite sure if she was conveying it clearly enough. Finally, she looked at the girl directly and said, "You and I are not rivals for anything, Keiko-san."

She left before Kawakami could respond, her cheeks burning with a new kind of embarrassment that she couldn't quite define. On the one hand, a small part of her brain was mumbling that she shouldn't have said all of that—but on the other hand, some deeper part was pleased that she had told the whole truth.

Sei tried to focus on her breath and drown out her other senses. Externally, there wasn't much going on to ignore. The last few birds were nearly finished giving off their chirps as the light died away, and there weren't too many cars slithering around anymore.

Inside, though, there was a cacophony of sound, thoughts that bounced off the walls of her skull like ricocheting bullets.

As the last few days had passed, it seemed like there was nothing she could do to calm the barrage of emotions. She had sat at the edge of many park benches and idled in the middle of many empty libraries. She had closed her eyes and tried to pretend that life could go on as it had before, that she could somehow detach herself from everything that had happened. And even along with the weariness, that vague pressure to act had begun to grow slowly as that day came ever closer.

And now she sat at the top of a hill, trying to ignore the weight of indecision, trying to let her body fade into the cool air. She was not alone, and for once that seemed to help a little bit. The relative darkness helped, too.

They were a bit far from most of the street lamps, staring down at the neighborhood that spread in all directions, a view blocked only by the fencing and walls of the school. Moments before, the fading sun had painted the tiny leaves around them with a touch of pink, but now the sky had begun to fall and the colors had begun to disappear.

They were surrounded by trees and vines in a little alcove near a fence. Sei couldn't help but think that it felt a bit like she was sitting in a cave, especially as the moon began to replace the last bits of sun. Those brave first leaves of spring cast a grid-like pattern all over the ground, like they were shielding her from too much light, giving her a chance to turn inward instead. There was something comforting and uncomplicated about it, something that made her want to lean back and close her eyes.

I could sleep here tonight, she thought. I could climb up that tree over there and become an animal, lose all of my human problems. I could tear off my clothes right now and turn into a caterpillar and forget all about my plans tonight.

At this thought, she couldn't help but laugh. She imagined the look of bewilderment on the faces of the Lillian faculty as they'd be forced to call the fire department on Monday morning. Since it was already Sunday evening, though, and almost everyone had sauntered home, she figured she'd have at least one night to herself before being discovered.

"What's so funny?" A voice emerged from below.

Sei looked down at the strands of silky black hair that were draped over her knee, at the familiar profile of that face that was pressed against her thigh. In an unusual reversal of roles, it was Katou this time who was stretched out and relaxed, her body strewn lazily along the grass.

Her head was in Sei's lap. When Sei had first noticed this some minutes before, she had tried her best not to act surprised. Kei was hardly ever the one to touch her first—when she was sober, anyway—but every once in awhile, some affectionate mood would strike her, and she would hold Sei's hand, or lean against her without warning, or even just look her way with a small semblance of tenderness.

But before long, she would always go back to their typical distance. Because it was always so fleeting and their friendship so often tepid, Sei didn't want to discourage her this time. Katou had actually been the one to suggest that they watch the sunset, which Sei had found particularly strange, enough that she had to fight the urge to make mocking comments about it.

She held still and looked at Kei with a wistful smile.

"I was just thinking that I should become a caterpillar," Sei explained with no context, as usual.

Katou didn't even turn her head to look up at her. She continued to stare off into the distance, at the path that led down the hill and towards the street. "You never even try to make any sense, do you?"

"Maybe it's your ears that aren't hearing any sense," Sei replied. She had a weird feeling that she should reach down and touch Katou's face, perhaps because it seemed so open and vulnerable at the moment. She held back the impulse, though.

Katou sighed. "At least this is closer to your usual self. I was starting to wonder if the real Satou Sei-san had been abducted by aliens."

"Whaaat?" Sei chuckled at this, too. "Now you're the one who's not making any sense."

Katou finally rolled over slightly. She gave Sei a wry look—but there was a touch of concern there. The eye contact immediately made their relative positions feel more intimate, and Katou seemed to notice this quickly as well; a tiny blush colored her cheeks, even through the mild annoyance.

"I'm sure you know what I'm talking about, Sei-san," she murmured. "You've been staring into space all day. You've been acting weird in general these past few weeks, but today it's like you've disappeared into another dimension altogether. I had to call your name five times when we ran into each other near the gate before you even realized it was me."

"Fair enough." Sei broke away from Kei's gaze and let herself fall backwards until she felt the grass crunch beneath her. The ground was softer than it had looked, comforting in its familiarity. The skinny blades seemed to weave themselves into her hair, grazing her scalp and making her head feel instantly cooler. "You're not wrong," she said after a moment, speaking up towards the trees.

"Does it have something to do with Fukuzawa-san?" Kei asked. Her head was still on Sei's leg, but Sei could feel her turning so that her voice projected more directly.

Sei said nothing at first, though she couldn't really tell why she was feeling a sudden wave of hesitation. Katou was a good friend of hers—probably one of her best friends at this point—and yet there were still certain things that never felt easy to say, even with her.

Katou had also made a guess that was just a bit too close.

Sei let out a long breath. "It has nothing to do with Yumi-chan, not directly anyway. Actually, she's been a big help. She's been handling me quite well, so you don't have to worry." She smirked at that, though she knew Katou couldn't see it.

"Oh? Well, I asked because she had seemed a bit out of sorts herself that day that all of you came to visit. You know, the day that girlfriend of yours had tagged along."

Sei jerked her head up, enough that she could meet Katou's eyes again. She gave her a wry look. "You're quite perceptive there, Katou-san, but Alice is not my girlfriend."

"Ah, so it has to do with her, then," Kei said. Her self-satisfied look bothered Sei a little. Usually, Sei was ten steps ahead of most people, but this time she had walked right into the trap; the whole ordeal of the past few weeks must have been dulling her wits. Though truth be told, sometimes Katou was perceptive enough that it would catch her off guard.

"Is she the one that you've been hung up about this whole time, Satou-san?"

Sei stared at her. A little too close, she thought.

After a moment where she seemed to contemplate what she should say next, Katou finally asked, "Is it because...she's a different kind of girl? Is that the problem?"

Again, Sei tried not to react, but her eyes must have widened at least slightly with surprise because Katou's smile only grew more confident. "How did you know about that?" Sei said, managing to keep her voice neutral somehow. She looked at her friend with curiosity.

If she was perfectly honest, she found it perplexing that Katou knew. What exactly had given Alice away? Sei herself hadn't noticed that anything was different until...until she had felt the difference for herself. Obviously Katou hadn't gotten nearly that close to the girl. Maybe it was simply that lust had blinded Sei to the finer details that first night that she met Alice, and there was something big that she had completely missed.

Katou shrugged, her shoulder making the grass rustle lightly. "I didn't know," she said, "not for sure, anyway. I've known a few people like her, though, so I got a certain vibe, you could say. It was merely an educated guess—which you just confirmed." She paused, and seemed unfazed by the annoyed look that Sei was throwing her. "So," she prodded again, "is that what the problem has been this whole time? Does it bother you that you're attracted to a girl like that?"

Sei tilted her head in contemplation—but it didn't take long for her to settle on an answer. "No," she said after a few seconds. "I don't care about that part. At first, it was kind of awkward, but pretty soon I realized that most things about her were the same as any other girl, and my raging hormones helped me figure out the rest."

It was Katou's turn to look surprised. "Ah, so you've actually…."

"Yes," Sei murmured, nodding but looking off at a distant patch of trees. "We have."

"Then what's the problem?"

At this, Sei felt her jaw convulse slightly. She felt that irritating warmth rising up her face, the same that she had felt days before, when she stood in front of a naked and vulnerable Alice in the old dressing room. She found it difficult to conjure up the memory of that encounter without a wave of tangled emotions filling her chest—frustration, arousal, anger, even an edge of fear that was making the tips of her eyelids swell with heat.

Somehow, she swallowed through it. Katou looked over at her with expectation, either oblivious to the internal conflict, or politely ignoring it.

"She...has too much of my attention," Sei whispered, her voice a bit hoarse. "It's been almost a week since I last saw her, and I haven't been able to forget about what happened between us, as much as I've tried. And I can't just ignore the fact that she's locked in that house, with two people who refuse to see who she is and who force her to dance around like a trained monkey." The image of those massive iron gates flashed in her mind for a moment and she grimaced at the memory. Slowly, though, the grimace turned into a cynical smile. "But I can't rescue that girl from herself, either. I'm no prince on a white horse."

"Why do you need to be a prince?" Kei said, in a huffing tone that made it sound like she wanted to roll her eyes. Still, she didn't. She gave Sei a pointed look. "All right, so I don't know your situation that well. Why can't you just be open with her, though? Why can't you tell her how you feel, and then let her decide what she wants to do?"

Sei pushed her hands hard against the dirt beneath her, until her fingertips could feel the roots of the grass. "You know me, Katou-san. I don't do vulnerability well. She'll probably reject me at this point; it's inevitable. The circumstances just don't line up for us."

"Then it sounds like she's perfect for you," Katou told her, quite unexpectedly. When Sei gave her a questioning look, she explained, "You can't have love without a certain amount of vulnerability, can you? It seems that you're perfectly fine being completely open with anyone else about who you are—it's like you're invincible, completely impervious to outside forces, like no one can ever get to you—except when it comes to romantic love, which you run away from. Maybe she's the one who will finally expose those weak parts of you and bring them out to the light."

Sei took a hard breath once again and stared at Katou with confusion. "I'm not invincible," she said.

Katou laughed. "You could have fooled me—at least when I first met you. You seemed completely unconcerned with what anybody else was doing or what anybody thought of you. It's actually extremely attractive. It's no wonder Fukuzawa-san chases you around the way she does."

"She does not," Sei protested, if only because Katou had pushed her into a contradictory mood. Kei was sort of right, though. The rather humble Yumi made a natural counterpart to the aloof and overly-confident Sei. They had always been drawn to each other like the opposing poles of a magnet.

Katou paused, as if she were thinking something over. Then her face relaxed suddenly in some kind of resignation. "Actually, it wasn't just Fukuzawa-san. As long as we're being honest here, I may as well tell you that I really liked you when we first met."

Sei stared at her, a bit stunned, but still unwilling to assume what Katou had meant. "Do you mean…?" It wasn't like it made a difference now after all this time, but Sei couldn't help feeling curious nonetheless—especially since she had clumsily pursued Katou for a short time back then, and had been mostly ignored.

"Yeah." The light blush had returned to Katou's face. Then she added, pointedly: "Liked. Past tense."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Sei found herself asking, in a voice that was a bit more demanding than she had intended.

Katou pursed her lips and shook her head. "C'mon, Satou-san. Even then I knew very well the kind of walls I would have to chisel through to get you to go there with me. Even if those walls were light-hearted and built from your goofiness, they were walls just the same. Somehow I knew that I wasn't the one to do it. I don't know if I have the patience." She smiled softly; it was the generous smile of a person who was about to deliver a stinging rejection. "It wasn't always the easiest thing to ignore, especially since I knew you liked me back, but sometimes Satou Sei-san is just too much to deal with."

Sei felt her vision growing fuzzy, felt her eyes glazing over in stunned realization. "Well damn," she whispered. "Who else have I pushed away without even realizing?"

"Fukuzawa-san, for sure," Katou said, and her tone made it sound like it should have been obvious. "That girl is hopelessly in love with you—and don't tell me that you didn't know. I think her saving grace is that she's known you for so long, so she's had time to wear you down, to earn your trust."

"You've been watching us rather carefully." Sei stared at Katou again, her eyebrows raised, her tone one of playful accusation.

"I didn't have to watch much. Once you know what to look for, it becomes completely obvious. Fukuzawa's face is an open book." She rolled over onto her back, her shoulders pressing into the meaty part of Sei's thigh. Her gaze seemed to look up and through the canopy of the nearby trees, perhaps at the stars beyond them. "I think this Alice girl has something else, though. If I had to guess, there's some element to the connection that makes you question something about yourself, something that forces you to face your fear. You're not friends with each other, right?"

Sei shook her head. She wasn't sure what Katou was getting at, though. "We're strangers, practically."

"Maybe that's it," Kei said. "Maybe there's no friendship there that allows you to pretend that what you have with her is anything other than what it is. It's just plain, uncomplicated passion—the kind of thing that terrifies you. To pursue that would mean to trust a stranger with the most vulnerable parts of you. You told me before that you're more romantic with your platonic friends, and that you purposefully sleep with people who you're not that close to, and that this compartmentalization keeps you from facing too much drama and intensity. Well, in that sense, Alice-san is the worst of both worlds for you, isn't she? You have romantic feelings for her, but you barely know her."

At this, Sei took pause. It was true. In this sense, Alice was the biggest danger she had faced in a long time. Without the veneer of friendship, there was nowhere to hide, no pleasantries as a distraction. Everything about their relationship was extreme. It very much mirrored what she had experienced for that intense year with Kubo Shiori, a relationship that had defined her entire emotional landscape for years—and perhaps still did.

There were definitely artifacts left over from that time, wounds that were triggered by Alice's presence. As with Alice, she had fallen in love with Shiori immediately, as a complete stranger. The love was completely irrational. It had grown not from shared experience or trust or logic, but from some swell of raw instinct inside of her.

Katou was right: it was terrifying. This instinct was like a dormant monster that lived inside of her, one that she had mistakenly thought died years ago, the moment Shiori had generously abandoned her at a train station. Something in Alice had awoken it from its long slumber and now it haunted Sei relentlessly.

She brought her hand up to rub her face and let Kei's words sink into her brain for a moment. "There was something about her, from the moment I met her," Sei began. She looked at Kei, but could barely see her as the moon began to disappear behind a cloud. "Maybe I want to trust her with those parts of me. Maybe I want to be hurt by her, deep down. Kind of like when you lean over a bridge and some weird impulse to jump comes over you for no reason, even if you're scared to death of falling."

Katou glanced at her with some concern. "That's not exactly what I meant. I don't want to see you turn into a masochist, either, Sei-san."

"Is it masochism?" Sei asked. Then she smirked. "Maybe the only path to that invincibility that you mentioned is to face the pain. Maybe this is what I'll be doing later tonight—walking right over the edge of that suicidal bridge." But a gust of wind burst across the space between them just then, and she doubted that Katou had heard the last part. The wind picked up some of the dirt and sod that she had loosened unconsciously, which made her reflexively close her eyes.

When she had opened them again, she looked down at her left hand. Katou's fingers were ever so slightly grazing hers.

"Say, Satou-san," Katou said, lifting her head a little. "What are those suicidal plans of yours? You keep mentioning that you have somewhere to be tonight, but you keep dragging your feet. Why won't you just leave already?"

"You're the one who asked me to come out here, so should you really be saying that, Katou?" Sei replied with a grin. Katou's tenderness was already fading, as Sei had anticipated. "To tell you the truth, I think I've been unconsciously sitting here, watching the entrance to the school, waiting for Yumi-chan to magically appear. I've been wanting to see that face."

"It's Sunday and she doesn't belong to any clubs, does she? Why would she be hanging around here?"

"Mmm, it's just a feeling I get, you could say. Sometimes I can tell when she's calling to me with her mind."

Katou rolled her eyes at this. She pulled her hand away from Sei's and began to sit up, the ground rustling with her movements. "You can always use this thing called a phone, you know."

"Nah," Sei said with a laugh, as if it were the silliest notion in the world. "When I see her, I'll see her. We've kind of been ignoring each other since Tuesday morning, so I'll let fate decide if I deserve it."

Katou raised an eyebrow. "Ignoring each other? Did something happen between you, Satou? More importantly, was it your fault again?"

Lots and lots of things happened, Sei thought, but she decided not to mention it, and she suppressed the inevitable smile that was fighting its way onto her face. "That's just the way we are," she said instead, and it was still the truth. "If we pull a little closer to each other than usual, then we need to push each other away for awhile."

"Are you sure that isn't just the way you are?"

Sei thought about this for a moment, tapping her finger against her chin. As she was about to answer, though, a very familiar silhouette floated into her line of sight. At first she thought she was imagining it, given the topic of conversation and the suggestible state of her mind, but when she focused her eyes and the figure drew closer to the gate, it was unmistakable.

Katou seemed to have noticed, too. "If you aren't the Pied Piper, then I don't know who is," she said in a wry tone. She sounded totally unsurprised, in spite of her earlier skepticism. She turned to Sei. "Well, are you going to just stare at her like a creep or are you going to go up to her like a normal person, Satou-san?"

"Neither," Sei declared, hopping to her feet with renewed energy. "I'm going to go up to her like a creep."

Katou sighed loudly, but she seemed to be unable to hold back a smile. She waved Sei off, as if she were dismissing her and couldn't wait to be rid of her. It was the usual lie that they allowed to dance between them for propriety's sake.

Sei jogged a few paces down the hill, training her eyes on Yumi's form, feeling the essence of the wind as it filled her lungs. Even just seeing the girl gave her a strange rush of joy. She hadn't gone far when she felt her body stop short, though. Her heels dug into the ground.

Before she could second-guess herself, before she could make any excuses, before the strange wave of energy that filled her body had a chance to dissipate, she turned around and dashed back up the hill. She was met with the bewildered face of Katou Kei.

Sei immediately leaned down and pressed a kiss to the corner of Katou's lips. Most of it landed on her cheek.

"That's for tonight," she panted, nearly out of breath. "And for when we first met, when neither of us had the guts."

She waited for the slap, but it didn't come. Instead, Katou pressed her fingers to the edge of her mouth and stared at Sei, completely shocked, completely speechless. Before anything else could happen between them, Sei spun around and ran back down the hill, waving her hands in the air like a madman who had just escaped the asylum and burst into a world of freedom.

Sure enough, she caught the attention of a befuddled Yumi, but it was only half a second later when she realized that the girl wasn't alone. A second, taller figure regarded her from underneath the shadow of the outer gate, offering a gaze that somehow reminded her of Maria-sama's watchful eye.