Duran-kun and Kiyo-chan's Omake Theater
(featuring the Tokiha and Minagi family pets)
A/N: It should be clear from the story itself, but just to be clear, this story takes place fairly early in the D&KOT continuity.
~X X X~
"So what's it like living with Fujino?" Mai Tokiha asked.
Natsuki Kuga decided that this was what came of bonds with other people and having a normal social life. One minute you're walking home from class on a sunny June afternoon, chatting about course-work and what silly thing Midori had done in history, and the next somebody's asking shamelessly personal questions.
Really, there was an upside to being a brooding, maladjusted ice princess with trust issues.
"Do I ask you what it's like, juggling the smirking wonder with the scruffy one?"
Mai rolled her eyes.
"Do I look like Chie? I'm not talking about your love life. I'm talking about you two living together. It's been a couple of months now, after all. I can't imagine it's all been roses and honey, not when you're not used to sharing your space. I mean, last year you had a single room in the dorm—not that I know how you pulled that off—"
"Money," Natsuki said. "Sakomizu dropped a word or two in the right ears, too, I think, since he knew I was involved in the HiME stuff, but mostly money. The same way Shizuru and I can rent our house now."
"Just for the record, I hate you."
"Hey, I thought Mashiro not only extended your scholarship, but paid for Takumi's surgery and dropped a substantial fund on you to apologize for getting you sucked into the Festival?"
"She did." Mai grinned. "I'm just exercising the hard-working part-timer's right to be envious of the bourgeoisie."
Natsuki snorted.
"I already live with one wiseacre; I don't need a second one."
Mai shrugged, then unrepentantly told her, "You're just the type that naturally attracts us, I think."
"Did I accidentally violate a sacred site as a kid or something?"
"Anyway," Mai continued, demonstrating the tenaciousness that had helped end the Obsidian Prince's reign, "my point is that I want to know about how you're adjusting."
"You're not going to let this go, are you?"
"Not so long as you're walking over to my place for after-school snacks, I'm not."
"Your food is entirely too effective as a bribe."
"A girl has to work with her strengths. You get a glare that can freeze men's blood in their veins, while I get ramen."
"…I feel like one of those is more socially useful than the other," Natsuki muttered.
Because for some reason the desire to share confidences with Mai had become important to her, though (friendship was a strange and unexplored country), she gave a serious answer.
"But…it's different. I mean, it's nice, but a little weird, too. And Shizuru isn't really good with personal space." Privately, Natsuki figured guilt had a lot to do with that—over being gay, over the things she'd done in the Festival—so that Shizuru would push up against Natsuki's boundaries to reassure herself that she was allowed inside them. Or maybe it was some sort of weird attempt to sabotage herself. Or maybe Shizuru was so sick of hiding herself all the time that she simply was reveling in sharing herself with Natsuki and wanted to be as close as possible. Gah! Why am I worrying about all this? I'm not her therapist!
She almost lost her train of thought.
"So it's really hard to be alone at home, especially with Duran and Kiyohime there, too. If I feel like my brain just can't take this whole socialization thing for another minute, I pretty much have to go get my bike and go for a long ride.
"But that works both ways, too. I mean, my old room? That wasn't…home. It was a place to keep my stuff, sleep, and eat. More like an operations base than anything else, you know? Though maybe you don't know; you've always had Takumi, and now you've got Mikoto. So if you ever get around to having kids, you've pretty much already gotten practice at the extremes from 'responsible and even-tempered' to 'needs constant supervision.'"
"Be nice. Mikoto's not that bad. She just had a strange upbringing and has had to learn to adapt to ordinary life."
Natsuki would not describe herself as a lucky person. On the contrary, she was fairly convinced that any gods that existed spent their time thinking up new ways to prank her. Maybe that's why Nao had become a novice nun, because she figured the divine shared her personality. But every once in a while, life decided to give her something.
They had just arrived at the dorm apartment Mai shared with Mikoto when Mai had made her comment about her roommate's responsibility. The redhead opened the door, and immediately a spray of bright pink goop struck her squarely in the face. From inside came a loud whoop of triumph.
"Hah! I won! That's a three-to-one lead, Miroku!"
While Mai worked to get her face clean, Natsuki risked further projectiles by peeking around her friend's side and taking a look into the apartment.
The foyer area with its shoe table was mostly intact. To the left, the living-room space likewise looked to be in good shape. To the right, though…
At first glance, it looked as if Mai had decided to redo her kitchen and the painter had done a very bad job. The pattern looked like nothing so much as the blood spatter from some gory murder in a horror movie, only in bright pink instead of red.
Mikoto Minagi and her CHILD, Miroku, did not immediately dispel the impression with their appearance, either: Mikoto was holding a baseball bat which, like Miroku's club, was dripping with pink remnants. An overpowering smell wafted out, hitting Natsuki with a wall of scent: sweet…fruity…
"Watermelon!?" Mai put a name to it first. She was right, too: the shattered rinds of several melons lay on the kitchen floor, crushed by ferocious blows.
"M-Mai?" Mikoto gulped, pulling off her blindfold.
"What on Earth are you doing, Mikoto?"
Kagutsuchi fluttered out of the living room and flew over behind Mai, apparently wanting to make it plain that he had nothing to do with any of the chaos in the kitchen. Which was probably the truth, Natsuki reflected, as the dragon-phoenix-whatever's version of trouble usually involved things being on fire.
"Er…it was a hot day, and I was thinking about how much fun we had last summer when we went to the beach?"
Mai pinched the bridge of her nose.
"So you decided to play the watermelon-smashing game? Now? Inside?"
"Uh-huh!" Then, proving that she had no sense of self-preservation at all, Mikoto added, "We've got one left. Did you and Natsuki want to play this time?"
As Mai began to provide her loud, pointed, and extremely detailed explanation of why no, she didn't want to play and that Mikoto wouldn't be playing, eating, or doing much of anything except scrubbing until the kitchen was absolutely spotless, Natsuki fished out her phone to take a picture.
She figured that the next time she and Shizuru rubbed each other the wrong way, it would be nice to have a reminder of what some of the alternatives could be.