Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater

(featuring the…actually, just Nao)

"Here," Nao Yuuki declared, dropping the bag onto the table with a thump. "Don't ever say that I never get you anything."

Natsuki Kuga looked up from her paperwork.

"What's this?"

The redhead rolled her eyes.

"It's dinner, Kuga. Can't you smell it? I figured someone who's half dog like you'd have noticed it when I was still halfway across the room."

Natsuki's eyes narrowed.

"All right, what's the catch?"

Nao snorted and pulled out a chair.

"It's called an act of charity, numbnut. It's one of the things novice nuns are supposed to be doing. I've still got the uniform on, in case you needed a clue." Indeed, she was still wearing the habit and wimple from her part-time job at the Fuuka Academy chapel.

Natsuki wasn't quite sure how spiritual a church could really be that hired Nao and Miyu as novices. Whether the former thief or the nearly emotionless combat android was the more compassionate was pretty much a toss-up.

"Like I said, what's the catch?"

"Keep mouthing off and you're going to catch one in the teeth, Kuga. Why is it so hard to believe that I saw a poor, dumb animal moping around like someone had kicked her puppy and figured I ought to get her something to eat in case she's not bright enough to feed herself?"

"I am not moping!"

"Uh-huh," Nao said, her disbelief not hidden in the slightest. If she really had been wrong, Natsuki would have shot back more insults, instead of arguing the accuracy of Nao's statement. Really, it's too easy to read somebody this simple. "Tell me another one. I could use a good laugh."

"I'm not!"

"And that's why you're hanging around the student council room after hours, when you ought to be home eating dinner?"

"I've got all this paperwork to do!" Natsuki waved at the scattered pages in front of her. "Do you know they're talking about making me executive committee head next year? Me? Yukino's running for president and she's got this bee in her bonnet about me taking over her current job!"

Nao laughed. Actually, "guffawed" would be a better word.

"Oh, that's rich! The lone-wolf, class-skipping delinquent is going to be leading the student cops!"

"I didn't say I'd do it."

"You will. You're a marshmallow these days, Kuga. You'll cave so fast she'll keep trying to persuade you for another five minutes before she realizes you've already agreed."

"Keep laughing, Nao. If I do get roped in, I know who I'm making my aide."

"Oh, hell, no you're not."

"Are nuns supposed to say 'hell' like that?"

"Shows you what I think of enforcing the rules. And by the way, none of that tells me what you're still doing here so late."

"It's not that late!"

Natsuki's stomach betrayed her by growling, setting Nao off into fresh gales of laughter.

"Just shut up," Natsuki said. "What's in here, anyway?" she added, reaching for the bag. Pulling down the plastic revealed oblong coated-paper boxes bearing stylized pictures of a Chinese temple. "Wait, you got take-out Chinese?"

"You eat it all the time," Nao protested, sensing Natsuki's hesitation. "I hear you complain about Fujino's antics to Mai at least once a month."

"Since when do you hang out with us?"

"I don't. But Chie Harada does hang out with Mai, and Harada is the biggest gossip in the school."

Natsuki went so ash-white at the thought that Nao found herself taking pity on her.

"I'm just joking. Mikoto and I hang out now and again, that's all. Your lecherous secrets are safe. Speaking of which, what was the fight about?"

The sudden shift of topic went too fast for Natsuki. She just looked blankly at Nao, slack-jawed and blinking. The novice figured the expression was itself worth the price of admission.

"Fight?"

"The one you had with Fujino," she said slowly and patiently, as if speaking to a very small child.

"I didn't say that I had a fight with Shizuru!"

Nao rolled her eyes as theatrically as she could manage.

"I hope you haven't mistaken me for an idiot? You've waited here for three hours, doing unnecessary paperwork that you could have taken home with you if you'd really, really gotten attached to it. Obviously you don't want to go back to your cushy love nest. Then I get you a perfectly good dinner and instead of diving in like the starving beast you are, you give it weird looks and make wistful faces at it. I don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to connect the dots."

"We didn't have a fight."

"You may be the worst liar ever."

"We didn't have a fight."

"You may be the worst liar ever, and I say that while being a friend of Mikoto Minagi's."

"We didn't have a fight!" Natsuki yelled, then, after about ten seconds, looked down and mumbled, "I ran off to school before Shizuru said anything back."

Nao smirked in a way that by itself was probably a violation of a number of vows, or at least commandments.

"Ah, the frosty stares, the defensive yelps, people leaving the room in a huff. Seriously, just because most of your fights used to involve shooting people or beating them unconscious doesn't mean that you can't also have normal fights like the rest of us."

"In what world are you normal?"

"Normal fights, Kuga. Pay attention."

"Is there a point to this?"

Nao leaned forward and jabbed Natsuki in the sternum with a forefinger.

"The point"—jab—"is that if you're here, instead of making with the lovey-dovey nonsense, then you've got a problem, and I for one prefer the soppy idiot Kuga to the sulky emo Kuga."

Natsuki stared at her, a mix of bewilderment, confusion, and general what-the-hellness in her expression. At last, her face picked a different emotion, settled into more typical crabbiness and she sighed heavily.

"Fine. But you have to promise you'll keep this to yourself."

Nao rolled her eyes. They were getting a lot of exercise in this conversation.

"I mean it," Natsuki insisted.

"Haven't you ever heard of the sanctity of the confessional?"

"This isn't a confessional, and even I know enough to remember that's only for priests."

"At least that makes you brighter than most of the students that come to the chapel and whine at us. Fine, I promise I won't tell anyone else; I'll just hold it over your head and give you grief on a personal level."

The fact that Natsuki did not immediately light into her for that remark was an indication of just how much the situation was actually bothering her.

"Look, you know how Shizuru likes to tease me, right?"

"Sure." From Nao's point of view, it was one of Shizuru's five major moods: tease Natsuki, lech after Natsuki like a horny old goat, be sickeningly mushy over Natsuki, maintain a veneer of ladylike poise, and be scary as all hell. "From what I gather, it's her favorite hobby."

"Well, this morning she took it too far. I told her to knock it off, but she just wouldn't let it drop. I mean, geez, okay, I get it, it's funny that I put my bike suit on backwards and didn't notice until I started hunting for the zipper—"

Nao figured God owed her bonus points for her act of Christian charity in maintaining a straight face.

"—but there's a point where it's just time to drop it. I told her that it wasn't funny any more and to just knock it off, but she just had to get one last crack in, so I totally lost it and up and ripped her a new one, then stormed out and went off to school." She flexed her right hand with the memory, coiling and uncoiling her fingers into a fist.

"When you say, 'ripped her a new one,' you didn't hit her or anything, right?"

"God, no! What do you think I am?"

"Easy, Kuga; I was just asking."

"Well, don't. You ought to know better than that." She flexed her hand again. "I did punch the garage door getting my bike out, though, and I think I bruised my hand."

"So you got mad, said some things you regret, and now you're hanging around here because you're too embarrassed to go home?"

"Could you try making it sound a little less pathetic?"

"Not without lying."

Natsuki's reply was not really suitable for the delicate ears of a Sister of the Church.

"You ought to watch your language more, if that's the way you talk to your girlfriend, too."

"Bite me."

"You've got somebody for that already. Seriously, suck it up and apologize, if it's bugging you that much."

"I don't want to apologize."

"You could have fooled me."

"I don't! Sure, I got angry and a little out of line, but she's the one who acted like a complete ass, and without any reason for it. With all the effort she puts into digging all that romantic stuff out of me, you'd think she'd have a little respect for my feelings."

She opened one of the food packages and thrust the chopsticks into it like she was impaling a target with a knife. She scarfed down noodles as if she was waging a war on them, with a ruthless efficiency.

It wasn't as if Nao didn't get the point. To say that Natsuki had trust issues was like saying that Godzilla was an inconvenience for Tokyo real-estate values. Shizuru had been the one person to get through that wall and make Natsuki react like a human being instead of a block of ice. What had gone between them in the HiME Festival was…complicated, to put it mildly; Nao didn't even know all of it even though she'd been part of it. Of all people, Shizuru ought to have known Natsuki wasn't going to take it well when someone she believed in let her down.

On the other hand, she'd just made one too many dumb jokes at Natsuki's expense. That was hardly a hanging offense, and whatever Natsuki had said in return, it was pretty plain she, at least, figured she'd gone too far, or else she wouldn't have been feeling guilty over it.

"Look, just go talk to her already."

"I'm not going to run back and grovel at her feet."

Nao rolled her eyes yet again. She really needed to find a way to monetize that.

"Spare me the melodrama, Kuga. I'm not telling you to roll over and play dead, just to go talk to her. Unless you're planning to crash here tonight? 'Cause that's going to get pretty embarrassing if you oversleep in the morning and the student council finds you."

"Nao, I can't go crawling back to her like that."

"Well, one of you has to be the first to speak up."

"Then why can't she be the one?"

"It's not a bloody contest, Kuga. You don't win anything if you hold out longer. That only applies to dumb sitcoms and shoujo manga. Just call her, already. One of you ought to act like a grown-up, and it might as well be you."

"What if she doesn't want to talk to me? Maybe she…some of the things I said…"

"We are talking about a girl you literally killed once." Like she'd thought before, complicated. "The idea that Shizuru Fujino would break up with you over a stupid fight doesn't even make sense."

"Well…maybe…"

She didn't grab for her phone, though, but instead fished a fortune cookie out of the bag. Natsuki tore off the cellophane, bit the cookie in half, and extracted the slip of paper before beginning to chew. She read the fortune while she finished the cookie, then immediately reached into her jacket pocket for her phone.

"Finally seeing sense, eh?"

"Well, when even my dinner starts agreeing with you, I figure I haven't got much choice."

She passed over the fortune, which read, "Don't wait for your ship to come in; swim out to it."

"What, you won't listen to good advice from me, but you'll take it from a cookie?"

"Hey, fortune cookies have a long history of having good romantic outcomes for Shizuru and me." She actually blushed a little at that, making Nao wonder what the story there was.

"Yeah, fine, but since I brought you the dinner, I'm still taking credit for this."