AN: Yay, an update! It's a miracle! But school also started for me! Boo, a disaster!

That being said, this may be the first update in a long while. I know that I have another to work on (looks at Negitoro), but that one and this one will be worked on as my time allows. I'm dying with all these AP classes I'm taking, I don't know what I'm thinking. i love to die, tbh

And, once I'm done with this story, I was considering making an AU regarding Aqours as well. LL!S! has taken over my life, and Kanan is my beautiful wife.

Ciao. c:

Honoka didn't know what to do.

Here she was, standing in front of her two best friends. They were at their usual spot, sitting at the bench that stood in the shade of the largest tree in the school courtyard. All three of them were enjoying their lunches when Kotori decided to drop the bomb on Honoka. The orange-haired girl didn't believe her own ears, and even after Umi reiterated what Kotori said, Honoka still wasn't sure if she should believe them, which prompted her to jump out of her seat.

After all, the news was just too good to be true.

"Wait, wait, wait. Are you two serious?" Honoka's wide eyes grew even wider, up to the point where one might think that her eyeballs might pop out of their sockets.

"Why wouldn't we?" Kotori asked cheerfully, laughing at Honoka's reaction.

"Would we ever lie to you, Honoka?" Umi added with a coy look.

Honoka's expression tightened into a pout, her lower lip jutting out. She knew full well that her friends were getting a kick out of her, and she refused to give in and dance in their palms.

"Unless the both of you have proof, then I won't believe it!" Honoka said as she placed her fists on her hips, nodding her head more to herself than to her friends.

The two exchanged confused glances with one another.

"Proof?" Umi began, "How are we supposed to give you proof?"

Honoka grinned. "That's for you two to figure out!"

"She has no idea, does she Umi-chan?"

"No, she doesn't."

"Hey!" Honoka exclaimed, "I can hear you!"

Kotori and Umi shared laughter together, and Honoka eventually joined in. As the wind carried their joviality away and the orange-haired girl sat next to Kotori, she looked at her friends with furrowed eyebrows.

"Wait, don't you two have other things to do out of school? Won't adding a job be too difficult to handle?" She asked, trading worried glances between blue and gray.

Umi hummed and leaned back against the bench, staring up sky through the thin fingers of the tree. "It'll be hard to juggle archery with a job like this, but I can handle it. An alumni used to do the same thing, but always managed to come for every competition, so I think I can do it too. Besides," she turned and gave her friends a small smile, "we're just reviewing old techniques for the newcomers until the competitive season starts."

Honoka gave an exclamation of understanding and nodded several times before looking at Kotori. "How about you? Isn't your internship almost a full-time thing?"

Another breeze blew past, but this time it left an uneasy silence in its wake. Kotori's amber eyes faltered under Honoka's gaze and she looked ahead of her. Eventually, even that became too much for her and she drifted her eyes to stare at the foliage-covered ground.

"I'm going to quit my internship today," Kotori muttered softly.

Honoka froze.

Now she really didn't know what to do.

The first thing she did was open her mouth, and sputtered out unintelligible noises until she closed it. Words were flashing across her mind, but she was unable to formulate a coherent sentence. She opened her mouth again, taking a moment to glance at an Umi who was now staring at the sky with a grim expression, before finally deciding to speak.

"But why?" She asked.

"Because we knew that you couldn't save the cafe with only four people." It was Umi who spoke.

"And because of that," Kotori began, "we decided to join you at Muse. So that we can help you save it."

Honoka couldn't believe what she was hearing. Her eyesight wavered, unsteady and wobbly, as if the breeze that blew past was enough to knock it down. "But—"

"It's because we care, Honoka," the blue-haired girl said as she stared Honoka straight in the eye with a steady gaze.

An unbelievable amount of guilt was beginning to eat up at Honoka's chest. "But that doesn't mean you had to give up on your dream, Kotori-chan."

The gray-haired girl finally looked up and gave a shaky giggle. "N-no! It's okay, really. I'm sure I'll find another fashion opportunity one day. Besides, it's not like I'm going to abandon creating designs forever—maybe I can help Muse with their uniforms, you know?"

A warm hand covered Honoka's fist; the orange-haired girl didn't realize she had clenched her hand in the first place.

"Don't feel bad, okay? I did this of my own accord," Kotori said with a gentle smile. She squeezed her friend's hand with a light pressure.

Honoka forced herself to smile but it threatened to fall off, so she taped it on with the façade of joy.

"Yeah, I guess it's fine," Honoka said, squeezing back.

It wasn't fine.

-X-

Nico was dead tired.

She didn't know how she did it, but she managed to enter her apartment and trek all the way into her bedroom. However, that proved to be too much for her and she ended up collapsing onto the carpeted floor right beside her bed.

She groaned into the floor.

The urge to close her eyes and sleep for all of eternity was very tempting, but she had work later that day, with Nozomi as her partner in crime.

God only knows what that woman would do if she was by herself in the cafe.

"Ah dammit, might as well get ready then," Nico muttered to herself as she slowly got up. She managed to get on her knees then crawl the rest of the way to her bed, but stopped when she noticed three similar-looking faces, two girls and a boy, staring back at her.

"You said a bad word," the oldest of the two girls said.

The girl in the center, who was coincidentally the middle child out of the three brats, nodded her head in agreement. Her red eyes gleamed, even in the dim room. "Yeah, a bad word!"

"Bad word," the boy at the end reiterated with a sniffle.

Nico stared at her siblings with a deep frown.

"Why the he—why are you three here?" She asked.

"It's super cold," the middle girl said, "and your room has the only working heater. And it's suuuuper big compared to the rest of ours so we get to play—"

"Cocoa, did you touch my stuff again?"

"—and then we get to end up sleeping together because the bed is suuuuper big!" Cocoa finished with a flourish of her arms, effectively ignoring her eldest sister.

Nico sighed through her nostrils, taking her little sister's denial of answering the question as a "Yes."

"Did you guys eat yet?" Nico asked, finally getting up from her knees and standing on her sore feet. She promptly threw herself onto the bed, smiling as she relished the feel of melting into the warm embrace of the mattress. Her youngest siblings took this as a signal to start climbing on top of her.

"No, not yet," the boy said, deciding to the spot on Nico's stomach. The woman noticed a familiar shine coming from his nostril.

Disgust contorted her face as she wiggled underneath her brother.

"Ugh, Cotarou! Blow your nose I can see your snot—NO DON'T COME CLOSER WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

The raucous laughter from the middle child, who decided to settle on Nico's legs, echoed through the room as Nico struggled with her brother. Eventually the woman won and she flung Cotarou to the spot next to her, his tiny body shaking with mirth.

Watching her siblings have a good time made Nico smile tiredly; if her suffering was enough to make these brats happy, she would willingly do it time and time again.

Suddenly her eyes widened and she turned to the second-oldest sibling, who was wearing a patient, yet amused smile. Despite her young age, Nico always had the impression she knew much more than she was letting on.

"How come you guys didn't eat yet, Kokoro? I'm pretty sure there's still leftovers from last night-"

"Mom came by today!" Cocoa interjected, scooting up so she sat on Nico's stomach.

The woman wished her sister hadn't done that—she could feel something churning in her gut.

"Mom?" Nico asked, unable to keep the shocked tone out of her voice. A bitter taste was beginning to develop in her mouth, and she swallowed before she continued. "What was Mom doing here?"

"She came by to give us some stuff," Cotarou said quietly as he sniffed.

"She also gave us money," Kokoro added.

Nico hummed to herself as she stared at the ceiling, digesting the information. She couldn't remember when the last time their mother had visited was, but Nico knew for a damn fact that it was a long time ago.

Nico sighed; she was starting to feel a buildup of bitterness in her chest, despite knowing why her mother had to—

Three fingers poked her face and Nico snapped out of her thoughts.

"You're going to be late for work, you know," Kokoro pointed out.

Cocoa nodded a bit too enthusiastically. "Yeah, late!"

"Late," Cotarou mumbled.

Nico narrowed her eyes in confusion and glanced at the clock that hung on her wall that ticked away the seconds without a sound.

Her red eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.

"It's 4:55 already?" She screeched, picking Cocoa up from her stomach and setting her beside Kokoro. She scrambled to her sore and screaming feet, and raced to her drawers. She pillaged every shirt, pair of shorts, and underwear until light coughing and sniffling caught her attention.

Nico looked down to see Cotarou staring at her while pointing at the door.

"Your apron is there," he said.

Despite her panic-ridden self, Nico smiled gently at him and placed a soft kiss on his forehead. "Thanks," she said before snatching her green apron from the back of the door. Rushing over to her sisters, Nico gave them sloppy kisses on their foreheads as well. Cocoa giggled uncontrollably while Kokoro squinched her eyes tightly.

"I'm going to be heading off now," Nico began, "so you guys better take care of yourselves! You know the rules. Kokoro, you're—"

"—in charge of the others and the food," she finished with a small smile.

The woman nodded affirmingly and turned to Cocoa. "And you—"

"—need to finish homework and chores," she grumbled with crossed arms.

Finally, Nico looked over at Cotarou, who was know picking at his nose. "And you—"

"—need to take my medicine and focus on getting better," he muttered.

Nico flashed him a disapproving frown. "And quit picking your nose!"

Cotarou didn't stop, and Cocoa's loud laughter filled the room again. Eventually, Nico joined in and, surprisingly, so did Kokoro. The only one who seemed utterly confused by everything was the young boy, whose finger was still stuck up his nostril.

"Come here," Nico said with shuddering shoulders as she extended her arms. All three children attached themselves to her, like nails to a magnet, and squeezed their older sibling with all the strength they could muster. "I love all of you," Nico mumbled into Kokoro's shoulder.

"We love you too," the other three chanted in unison.

Nico smiled and tightened her hold on them.

She always hated letting go first.

-X-

Umi couldn't stop bouncing her knee.

The sound resonated through the empty hall she sat in, bouncing off the immaculate gray walls, gray ceilings, gray chairs—everything was gray.

The realization made her knee go faster.

She had no idea why she was nervous in the first place. After all, she wasn't the one resigning from an internship—that was Kotori.

Umi crossed her arms across her chest and dug her nails into her biceps; now she was really getting nervous.

Suddenly, the heavy gray doors sighed open and Umi jumped to her feet, back straight and eyes wide with attention. Kotori walked through with a calm smile, but Umi noticed that her knuckles were bone-white as she clutched at her handbag.

"They didn't really get it, but they understood," Kotori said, answering Umi's unspoken question. Her amber eyes glimmered in the bright light. The blue-haired girl couldn't force herself to smile, even though she knew she had to.

Knowing Kotori was holding back her tears was enough to dampen Umi's spirits.

"You know you didn't have to quit," Umi said with a gentle quietness, reminiscent of a mother reminding her child.

"You know I had to, Umi-chan," Kotori muttered as she shuffled along, looking as if the lightest touch could topple her over. Her eyes, still glimmering, were fixated on the ground, and only stopped when Umi's shoes came into her line of view.

The blue-haired girl caught the slightest crack in Kotori's smile, and she quickly gathered her friend in her arms. Kotori rested her forehead on Umi's shoulder and sighed; the blue-haired girl could feel the other's spirit leave her body with the drooping of her shoulders. A strained chuckle came from Kotori, and Umi felt a cold wave wash over her. Hearing such a low, downhearted noise when she was used to a high, energetic titter made her more than a little uncomfortable.

"Even though I chose to do it, this kind of feels like a break up," Kotori said, her already-quiet voice getting even more muffled as she spoke into Umi's shoulder.

"It always hurts when you part with something you love," the blue-haired girl mumbled.

Umi held Kotori tighter when she felt something wet seep into her shirt and chill the skin underneath.

-X-

When the bell rang twice to announce her arrival, Maki couldn't believe two things.

One, she couldn't believe how empty it was.

Two, she couldn't believe that she actually showed up to Muse.

Her violet eyes instantly went to the register, and saw that it was unmanned. If this was any other establishment, like A-RISE for example, Maki would have scorned on such irresponsibility. But no, Maki had foresaw this kind of thing happening, and like any reasonable person, she decided to promptly leave.

But unlike any reasonable person, she found herself rooted to the wooden floorboards like a nail. She didn't know what, but there was something about this place that didn't make her want to leave, just like that God-awful flier—

A young woman with purple-hair poked her head out from a door behind the counter, which Maki assumed led to the back of the cafe. It only took a split second for the barista to lock eyes with the redhead, and when she did, Maki knew that it was too late to back down.

"Welcome," the woman said as she walked over to stand behind the register. A small, yet ambiguous smile played on her lips, and Maki suddenly felt on edge.

"...Hi," the redhead greeted tersely.

"Are you one of Honoka's friends?" The barista asked, tilting her head to the side. Her long pigtails swayed with the movement, and that smile of hers was just—

"If you're talking about that orange-haired girl," Maki began, "then no."

The woman closed her eyes in thought and held her chin in between her thumb and index. "Then how'd you know about this place? I mean, it's nothin' but a dump, right?"

An indignant splash of red coated Maki's face. "W-what? I never said that—"

"But that's what you were thinking, wasn't it?"

"N-no!" Maki screeched, "This place isn't a dump, it's actually really charming and-" She shut herself up, slapping her hand over her mouth when she saw the woman's smile grow with victory.

Maki cursed herself and the woman—she walked right into a trap.

"Why don't you come over here and order something? It might be on the house if I really like you," the woman said, her tone carrying more than several teasing notes. The redhead bristled and heavily considered walking out, but considering how much effort and time she put in trying to find the cafe, Maki begrudgingly took up the woman on her offer and forced her feet to shuffle to the register.

The woman's name tag gleamed in the sunlight coming through the windows, and Maki stole a quick glance at it.

Nozomi.

A light giggle sounded in the air, and the redhead gave Nozomi a confused look.

"My eyes are up here, you know."

A red-faced Maki felt the urge to punch her in the face.

"Anyways," Nozomi began, effectively cutting Maki off before she had a chance to speak, "what will your order be?"

"The raspberry-acai iced green tea and..." Maki hesitated as her eyes flitted over to the confectionary case that sat beside them, flaunting its tempting sweets, especially that amazing looking chocolate-chip—

"—a poppy-seed muffin," she finally blurted. In the inside, Maki grimaced; she hated muffins.

The register's beeping filled the air as Nozomi punched in the redhead's order, calculating the price. In the middle of it all, however, she shot a coy glance over the register. "Not into coffee?"

The girl made a little noise in her throat as she tried to look anywhere but at the heavy gaze of emerald weighing on her. "N-no, I'm just not in—"

"It's okay," Nozomi laughed, pressing a final button to calculate the total price, "I'm not fond of coffee either."

Maki slowly took her wallet out of bag, shooting a dubious look at the barista. "Then what are you—"

The purple-haired woman clapped her hands together to cut off the redhead. "Your total is going to be—"

With a sharp flick of the wrist, a credit card appeared in front of Nozomi's eyes, successfully stopping her words. She chuckled and took it with a smile, and began to process the transaction.

-X-

Nozomi couldn't help but find the redhead—Nishikino Maki was her name according to her credit card—very interesting.

She reminded Nozomi very much of two other women: unhonest about her feelings, constantly wearing a mask of impassiveness, trying to build themselves up to be someone that they weren't. The list could go on and on if Nozomi tried, but she contented herself by watching her lone customer with her hidden smile.

"You haven't touched your muffin yet," Nozomi pointed out. The muffin was still sitting on the small china platter, waiting patiently. The tea, on the other hand, had been hastily gulped down and less than half remained.

"I'm just saving it for last, is all," Maki mumbled under her breath as she went ahead to take a sip of her drink. Her cheeks were splattered with pink, and Nozomi noticed that she looked like a child getting caught for telling a lie.

Ah, another thing she had in common with those two: they were all horrible liars.

Nozomi shifted her weight on her toes to peek over the muffin, and saw only crumbs of the cookie she "didn't realize was on the plate."

Her smile grew at the sight.

"More of a sweet than a savory person too, huh?" Nozomi asked coyly. The redhead's cheeks darkened to match the color of her hair.

Got her.

"I-isn't this harassment?" She stammered, looking in the direction of the door as if she was contemplating whether or not she should dash out the cafe.

The woman tilted her head to the side. "Are you uncomfortable?"

Hesitation. Then, "O-obviously."

"Then," Nozomi began as she took out her beloved tarot deck from her back pocket, "how about a little fortune telling? To break the ice, y'know?"

The girl turned to stare at the deck, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. She opened her mouth to say something, but the raucous beeping of an alarm sounded instead of words. Maki fumbled for her phone, stared at it for a bit, then turned off the alarm. With sudden urgency, she gathered her things and slipped something under the saucer.

"I have band practice," she said curtly, slinging her bookbag over her shoulder. Before she reached the door, she hesitated, then turned her head halfway so that she was staring at the armchair in the corner, rather than at Nozomi. She made a little noise in her throat, one that sounded like a cross between a whimper and a cough, and Nozomi made a perfect imitation of Eli's restrained laugh as she pocketed her deck.

"You have somethin' to say?" The woman asked.

"Thanks," Maki mumbled, her tone sounding rushed in a timid sort of way, "for the cookie."

"Don't worry about it. Just pay me back by playing something for us later. We have an old piano rotting somewhere," Nozomi replied, a corner of her lip turning up ever so slightly.

Maki turned on her heel, her face red with indignation. Her lips were pursed into a pout, and after a moment of staring at Nozomi, she turned around again and stomped out, throwing an "As if!" over her shoulder.

Before the bell said its goodbye to Maki, Nozomi caught her saying, "What a waste of a good piano."

The woman gave an amused huff; perhaps Maki was honest in her own way.

The back door opened and Nico walked out, looking more confused than her usual mask of boredom. She went on her toes to take a glance at the door before looking at Nozomi.

"We had someone?" She asked, looking at the almost-finished beverage and the neighboring muffin sitting next to it. "Who didn't eat what they ordered?" Nico sounded thoroughly offended, and while she had every right to be (because, after all, who buys something and doesn't even take a bite out of it?), Nozomi still chuckled.

"She's unique," the purple-haired woman said.

Nico scoffed. "Yeah, uniquely rich," She had walked over to collect the used cutlery, and took out the piece of paper that Maki had slipped under before she left. At first, Nozomi thought it was a note, but when Nico unfolded it and the purple-haired woman saw the number in the corner of the bill, her eyes grew.

"Wow," Nozomi breathed out.

"What do you mean, 'wow?' The kid's filthy rich!" Nico scoffed again and waved the bill in the air as if it was a flag. "The hell are we supposed to do with this kind of money?"

Nozomi closed her eyes and hummed, holding her chin in her fingers again. After a while, she smiled softly. To give such a generous amount after sneaking her one little cookie? A simple "Thanks" would have been enough, but….

"She really is more honest than I thought," she said aloud.

Even if the purple-haired woman couldn't see it, Nico narrowed her eyes at her friend. "What're you talking about?"