Momiji had never been in love.
It only made sense given how young she was, but she had never once felt such a thing towards anyone except her sister. She had never even considered romance as something she would need to worry about until at least high school.
But then, one day, that all changed.
It wasn't all at once, but it all began to day she saw a scared girl that looked to be her age next to a store, and then Momiji, being the kind person she was, had helped the girl out, only to learn she was friends with her sister. The moment eventually led to a friendship between them, one that even extended to Momiji's other friends, making them a quartet.
However, one event had started to make things go awry even before that: the time that Momiji had accidentally groped Mahiro.
It had been an accident of course, and one she'd felt the need to apologize six separate times before, but even as she was apologizing, all she'd been able to think of was how soft the girl's small chest had felt, even through her clothes, and how Momiji had enjoyed it immensely, more than she should've.
It had also been a nightmare to explain to her sister and Mahiro's, but they'd understood, even if Kaede kept giving her funny looks with that stupid smile of hers that sometimes made Momiji smile in return
while other times made her angry.
But while she merely chalked up her strange feelings to being something unique to the moment that she didn't need to worry about, the weird feelings only continued as they hung out more.
From the moment she introduced Mahiro to her friends, Asahi and Miyo had taken to her well…especially Asahi. The girl had always been clingy even since grade school, but while Momiji had grown accustomed to it, something about seeing her hug her relatively new friend so much made Momiji feel…uncomfortable. It was a feeling she couldn't quite describe better than that, though it had led to her constantly trying to break them up and merely getting funny looks from Miyo now instead of her sister.
Though she supposed Miyo was always like that.
Mahiro eventually started going to school with them, which made Momiji incredibly happy, though once again, she couldn't help but feel she was happier about it than she should've been. It was always so strange to her to think about, and it frustrated her young mind.
It wasn't until Momiji saw her starting to strip off her clothes in the classroom that it finally hit her. She had nothing to base it off of other than TV shows and movies but…could it have been…she was attracted to Mahiro?
She tried to deny it, as while she knew the world was accepting of that kind of thing, to her it still felt somewhat weird and wrong for a girl to like another girl, especially when most media said that only girls and guys ever actually got together. She'd tried to force the feelings down and say they weren't true, that it had to be something else, something she just didn't understand, but then when she saw Mahiro standing in the changing room in only her underwear, the feeling had come back even stronger.
And when she saw Mahiro staring, and that adorable girl flashed her a nervous smile, it had struck her heart so hard that she'd nearly fallen over.
She couldn't deny it after that. She was almost positive it was some form of crush, Momiji's very first. Of course she wouldn't tell anyone, because she didn't know how people would react to such a thing, both for her liking someone and for it being another girl.
So she kept it down, deciding to see where things went. They'd only been friends for a short time, after all. It would be too brash to rush into things. So, she decided to wait and see how things went.
Momiji had never once considered romance to be something she'd have to worry about until high school at the very least.
But that all changed when she met the wonderful girl named Mahiro.