Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater
(featuring the Kuga-Fujino family pets)
It was a beautiful Sunday morning in Fuuka. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, the crisp and clear air was stirred by a gentle breeze, and the temperature was just in that sweet spot between requiring short sleeves and needing a jacket.
Natsuki Kuga moaned and wished the entire concept to the devil.
Her head was throbbing like someone was striking both temples with rubber mallets. Her eyes felt like every spark of light was a burning needle stabbed into her optic nerve. Her stomach gurgled and churned with nausea even though she was sitting still. Her mouth tasted like something had crawled inside and died three days ago, and was somehow dry and sticky at the same time.
"I think I figured out why the drinking age is twenty," she groaned. "Explain to me again why your grandmother sent us that sake to celebrate your winning that internship?"
"I am twenty, Natsuki," Shizuru pointed out.
"Then you should know better than to give booze to a minor."
She thought that was a pretty good comeback for a woman who was desperately hung over.
"Surely this was not Natsuki's first time drinking," Shizuru said. Her voice sounded as thick and blurry as Natsuki's, which was kind of a relief. Natsuki didn't think she could have taken it if Shizuru had been bright, chirpy, and completely unaffected.
"No, it wasn't." Heck, in her mid-teens rebellious phase (the "hunt down a secret government conspiracy involving supernatural powers and forbidden technology" period of her life) she'd spent enough time in shady bars meeting with shadier clients that she'd developed an idiosyncratic taste for rye whiskey and raspberry wheat ale.
This had been, however, her first time splitting two bottles of sake heated and served in traditional Japanese fashion, like they'd been samurai at a geisha house.
Idly, she wondered where Kiyohime had learned to serve sake. Shizuru's hydra clearly had untapped depths.
"Well, then."
"It wasn't yours, either, though, and yet there you are, sprawled half across the table."
Shizuru squinted at Natsuki. Her eyes were normally red, but they were so bloodshot it looked like the whites had decided to match colors with the irises.
"Are you," she said slowly, "taking it as a point of pride that when you passed out, you managed to do it on the floor?"
"I will take small victories where I can find them at this point."
"While you're finding things, you might want to locate your pants."
"Why should I? If history is any guide, you were the last person to have your hands on them."
"Then can you find my dress? I vaguely remember you tearing it off of me."
"Buttons are hard when you're drunk," Natsuki said, then added, "I think. Everything is kind of a blur after the fifth cup. Um…do I need to apologize if I ripped it too badly to fix?"
Shizuru shook her head, then winced and pressed her fingertips to her temples. Clearly, she hadn't had enough experience with serious hangovers to know to avoid rapid head movements.
"No, if I start complaining about Natsuki tearing my clothes off of me in a lecherous frenzy then I will be betraying the dedicated purpose of the last four years of my life."
"Idiot."
"I will have to start wearing more easily removable clothes, if I intend to do more serious drinking with Natsuki."
"I think we can rule out too much alcohol as any kind of plan," Natsuki decided. "It's one thing to get drunk and pounce on you, but I'd rather be able to remember it in the morning."
Shizuru managed a smile.
"Well, then, I think that we've made definite progress in our relationship, if Natsuki wants to engrave every moment of our intimacy into her mind."
Natsuki stared at her for a long moment.
"That's what you came up with? That had enough serious feeling in it that it barely qualifies as teasing."
"I did consider saying, 'well, if Natsuki regrets being unable to remember, then she can always repeat the experience now that she is sober,' but the way I feel right now, I didn't want to offer an insincere invitation."
"…I deeply regret that my head hurts so much that I can't even boggle at the spectacle of Shizuru Fujino explicitly rejecting the possibility of sex. And now I'm talking like Nao. So apparently Nao is hung-over me, which explains a lot."
Natsuki didn't know whether Shizuru would have had any clever remark to offer in response to that or would have just focused on the primary activity of lying there and trying to keep her stomach contents down. Nor would she ever find out, because Duran walked up to them, dropped a leash between the two girls, and barked twice.
In fairness to the steel wolf, it was a friendly, good-morning, please-let-me-out woof. It only sounded like he'd installed some kind of sonic disruption weapon.
"Man's best friend, they say. Not woman's, mind you, which is apparently important," Natsuki moaned.
He woofed again, more gently this time.
"All right, boy. Let's get you outside." She turned her head. "Oh, hey, my pants." The black jeans had been draped over one of Duran's rifles for some reason (probably "Shizuru had a good throwing arm"), so Natsuki grabbed and squirmed into them, then pulled her shirt down from where it had been bunched around her neck. It only took three tries to get her left arm into the sleeve.
"Okay. I can go outside now and not get arrested." She paused a second for Shizuru to make some sort of suggestive remark, but none followed. Natsuki decided to stop off at the drugstore while on their walk; obviously her girlfriend was feeling even worse than she was.
She clipped Duran's leash to his collar and started towards the door, then stopped.
"Let me get Kiyohime, too. Fresh air is all well and good, but if I have to take two walks then someone's getting shortchanged, and I don't think Shizuru is going to be walking anywhere this morning."
"Ookini, Natsuki."
"Not a problem."
She almost called for Kiyohime to get her lazy butt (to the extent that a hydra had one) out of bed, but recognized before she opened her mouth that raising her voice would be a bad tactical decision. Instead, she went into the bedroom.
"Hey, Kiyohime, it's time to get up."
She was greeted by the plaintive hissing of four heads. Since the hydra had six heads, she thought this was unusual. She peeked around the corner of the bed and saw that Kiyohime's first and fifth heads were flopped limply to the floor, looking a very sick shade of purple compared to the rest of her.
"Okay, I sort of understand how you'd kind of have to have all your heads functioning to move your body around, but how on earth do some heads get worse hangovers than others when you all share the one stomach?"