[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Awkward, Part 2

Thank you to the lovely and talented Coffgirl for the new cover art!

Genre: Slice of Life/Humour

Length: 2372 words

B/D: I owe the world more hugs. Here's one of them. Link to the first part here.

***

It was morning in the Suguri household. Birds were singing, eggs were frying, and Hime was as close to dressed as she was going to get. Suguri had surprised her earlier in the week with a gloriously fluffy pink dressing gown; Hime had very quickly decided that an existence spent wrapped in luscious softness was better than the alternative, and resolved to wear it at all points in time.

Suguri herself was still very much asleep, draped diagonally over the bed. When they ‘acquired’ Sora, Hime had been banished from her bean-bag sleeping spot and installed in Suguri’s bed, with a pillow wall for propriety. She had quickly discovered that Suguri was a very mobile sleeper, who tossed and turned until she finally came to a rest, star-shaped, with her silvery hair fanned out underneath her. The pillow wall, it turned out, was a meaningless formality; one way or another, Hime usually woke up with her friend snoozing on top of her.

Sora, on the other hand, was as still as a mountain when she slept. Whatever position she was in when she dropped off she would keep, and she occasionally settled in some very odd positions. Currently, she was kneeling on the floor with her head thrust face-first into the pillowy centre of her beanbag, snoring soundly. For the first few mornings after she arrived, Hime had tiptoed around her when making breakfast, but it soon became apparent that Sora woke up when she was good and ready, and no amount of noise or prodding would get her up any sooner.

The eggs were just about ready to be dumped out onto plates and married with thick, toasted bread when a knock came at the front door. Perhaps ‘knock’ was overly generous; it was more of a thump, which seemed to reverberate around the walls of the entire house. For a moment, Hime thought it might have been a visit from the postman, which to her was akin to being visited by the stork. It simply never happened. They lived too far off the beaten path, and whatever authorities were in their district were either friends of Suguri’s or were smart enough not to bother her.

“Yes, yes! I’m coming. You don’t need to kick the door down,” she called as she plated up breakfast and trotted through the living room, lightly balancing Sora’s plate on her back as she passed. Sora continued to snore, no doubt exploring the mysterious space inside her own head.

Hime didn’t know what she had been expecting when she opened the door. A lost traveller, perhaps, whose car broken down on the road, with whom she would embark on a wonderful adventure into the world of automobile repair, or potentially a misguided religious missionary who, like a sunflower turning its face towards the sun, would gratefully drink in her attention. She hadn’t been expecting Nath.

“I apologise for kicking your door,” Nath said. She had, unintentionally, begun to loom. She was tall, and habitually stood with her back perfectly straight, a look of careful neutrality stuck like glue to her features; looming was something of an occupational hazard for her.

Luckily, Hime was not a girl to be loomed at. She looked up at Nath’s impassive face, at her armless shoulders, and favoured her with a glittering smile. “I suppose I can forgive you, this once. Do you need a hand? Or two, as the case may be?”

Nath blinked. The number of people in the world who were brave enough to steal her joke right in front of her was very low. “I’m looking for Sora,” she said. Then, after a pause: “She has my nose.”

“I… see. Well, you’re certainly missing something, but your nose is still very much attached, as far as I can tell. I suppose I’m not an expert on the matter, though. How do you two know each other?”

Nath found herself caught between conflicting emotions. On some level, she realised that this was how other people felt when she made jokes about her limb deficiencies: they didn’t know quite how to respond to the joke. But on the other hand, she couldn’t help but like somebody as charming, fearless, and therefore dangerous, as Hime was proving herself to be.

“We tried to kill each other ten thousand years ago. Then we met again the other week. I told her where to find spoons. She stole my nose.”

Hime nodded, wondering privately if everybody from the past used the same strange type of dream-logic that Sora and her friend seemed to function on. “I see. She is here, but she’s asleep at the moment.”

“When are you expecting her to wake up? This year, or later?” Nath asked, concern worming its way onto her face.

“Well, I was rather hoping she’d be awake in the next ten minutes, or her else her breakfast will get cold.”

“Acceptable.” She paused. “I’m Nath.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Hime,” the blonde said, her smile still sparkling. “Tell me, Nath. If I were to – on a whim – poke your cheeks right now, would you be able to do anything about it?”

“I suppose I couldn’t stop you,” Nath replied, her eyes narrowing, “but I might hurt you afterwards.”

“Hmhmhm. You might try. Come in, some in,” she said, beckoning with her hand. “We have eggs and toast and cocoa, the breakfast of gods.”

Inside, Nath found the house as confusing as she had found Hime. There was a barstool upside down on the kitchen table. A wicker chair had been colonised by some strange, fabric monster nested in the corner of the room. There was what appeared to be half a door with a table leg glued on, resting by near the kitchen; Nath assumed it had led to the pantry, but had been replaced with a bookcase on rollers. On closer inspection, the books contained seemed to be split evenly between the subjects of pirates and baking.

From deep within the heart of her beanbag, Sora moaned. “Himeeeeeeee. There’s something on my back.”

“Oh, you’re awake! Good morning, Sora. It’s a plate of food. How will you get yourself out of this predicament with your breakfast intact, I wonder?” Hime teased cheerfully.

“Uuuuuuuuuu.”

Nath watched incredulously as Sora began, slowly and carefully, to shimmy the plate down the length of her own back, until it was perched neatly on her bottom. With a quick jerk of her hips, she sent it skyward; then, like a cat righting itself in the middle of a fall, she flipped herself over and shot her hands up to catch the plate before any of the precious breakfast had left it. “Safe.”

“Bravo,” Hime said, and threw a knife and fork at her underarm. Sora plucked them out of the air with barely a thought, and began to munch on some toast. “You have a guest, by the way.”

Nath stepped forward, considerably less sure of herself than she was. She had intended to drop by, ascertain Sora’s location, engage in a little small talk about times past and then leave the girl to her own devices; still, she clung resolutely to her excuse for being there. “I have come to take my nose back.”

Sora stood up and looked at her. There was a peaceful smile on her face, but Nath had no idea what was going on inside her head. Her eyes gave no indication; they were like black holes that sucked in logic and spat out mystery. After a moment of thought, she held out a bite of fried egg on her fork. 

“Ahhhhhh.”

“Wh...ah. No thank you.”

Sora gestured impatiently with the fork. “Yes.”

“No.”

A moment’s pause. “I’ll wrestle you.”

“…Ugh. Fine,” Nath said, and rolled her eyes. Sora gently pressed the fork to her lips.

“Good?” Sora asked as Nath began to chew.

“Ish good,” Nath mumbled, grudgingly. She fought the urge to blush.

“My goodness,” Hime giggled. “That was magical. It was like seeing a unicorn.”

Nath had a glare that could weld steel girders, and she focused it directly on Hime’s forehead. Hime continued to smile, utterly unfazed. Meanwhile, Sora held out another bite of egg on the fork. “This is getting out of hand,” she muttered.

Her saviour came in the form of slippers on the stairs, an incomprehensible mumbling that came down from on high. Suguri had descended, warm and happy, one foot in the waking world and one still in the world of blissful sleep. She peered around the living room with bleary, half-closed eyes; details were lovely, but they could wait. Important things needed her attention, and one thing was more important than the rest.

“Hug.”

Nath watched, dumbstruck, as a silver-haired girl she didn’t know shuffled towards her, arms outstretched. Nothing that had happened today had made any sense. Hime wasn’t afraid of her – her, a former ultimate weapon. Sora operated on strange rules that were never explained. Now she was going to be the victim of an arbitrary hug attack. Luckily, Sora stepped forward to intercept her assailant. Gently, but firmly, the blonde-haired soldier turned Suguri around until she was pointing in Hime’s direction, and set her loose.

“Fluffy,” Suguri mumbled as she collapsed into her morning hug.

“Yes, yes,” Hime replied, nuzzling the top of her friend’s head. “You know, I sometimes wonder if you bought this dressing gown for my benefit, or for yours.”

Nath looked at Sora, who had long hair and made no sense to her, and at Suguri, who had long hair and made no sense to her, and then at Hime, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying herself. “You have two of them?” she asked.

“For my sins.”

“It’s as if you collect girls with long hair,” Nath remarked coolly.

“It’s not that I collect girls with long hair. It’s that this one collects blondes,” Hime chuckled, motioning at the girl in her arms. “Or perhaps Sora is collecting the world’s strongest women?”

Sora neither confirmed or denied it, which raised a lot of possibilities that didn’t bear thinking about. Instead, she turned to Nath. “Are you okay? You look confused.”

Nath frowned, and tried to marshal her words in a way that wouldn’t ignite a conflict. “Well… I do find the situation a little disarming,” she said. Suguri snorted. Good. It was enough. “I came because you invited me, but I don’t really know what I wanted. Other than my nose back, of course. I’m missing enough body parts.” This time, it was Hime’s turn to snort. “I… don’t really know how to react to this.”

Sora put a finger to her lips, allowing the words to turn over in her head. “Maybe you wanted to talk about the war?”

“Maybe. But I also don’t want to talk about the war. Or think about it,” Nath frowned. “I don’t know. When I look at you, Sora, it’s so obvious that you’ve changed. But I don’t feel like I’ve changed at all.”

For another moment, Sora was silent. Then she brought her gaze level with Nath’s. Such green eyes. Deep, and unfathomable. Oceans, unexplored. Didn’t humans once believe that above the sky there was an ocean, the boundary of heaven? But they weren’t blank. They had been, in days gone past. “You make bad jokes. That’s one change.”

“One change in ten thousand years is fine for geology, but not for people,” Nath said ruefully. Her own eyes were still the same as they had been in the war. The view in the mirror had not changed.

Whether Nath was right or wrong, she didn’t get far in her thoughts. Sora crossed the room in two quick strides, quietly and without warning; one moment she was clutching a plate of breakfast, and the next she was throwing her arms around Nath’s shoulders, pulling her into a clumsy embrace. She was strong, and warm, and closer than anybody had dared to come for thousands of years.

“Nath. We should be friends,” Sora said, with the certainty that runs through dreams. “We didn’t get to be friends during the war. That can be change number two.”

Something deep inside Nath was trembling. Wobbling, like a top that had been spinning for far, far too long, supporting itself through momentum and nothing more. The feeling was terrifying. The future was terrifying. But it was inevitable, and inevitably, she fell.

“I suppose that is acceptable,” she said, and buried her face in Sora’s hair. She didn’t want Hime to see her expression. This moment was private, for them alone.

The hug lasted half a minute more before Sora’s arms slackened, and she set Nath free to muster some dignity. She turned towards Hime and Suguri, bubbling with excitement. “Suguri, Suguri. It worked. I hugged her and we’re friends now. It’s like magic.”

“Ahahaha… Sora, please don’t take Suguri as an example of how to make friends. Her methods are unique, shall we say,” Hime replied, although the look on her face made it clear she would have it no other way. She caught Nath’s eye, and brushed her hand over her mouth: I shall say nothing, for now.

“Ahem. Well. I should probably go now. I have some errands to run,” Nath said, abruptly. She could feel the warm blood rushing to her cheeks. “We’ll meet again, Sora.”

“I still have your nose.”

“Keep it, for now. If I can get along without fingers, a missing nose should be fine,” Nath replied, rolling her eyes.

“We should meet at your house next time.”

“Although you’re more than welcome to visit us again,” Hime chimed in. “That said, it might be an idea to come later in the day next time. The house makes a little more sense in the afternoon.”

Nath shook her head, laughing. The idea that anything about this house could make sense seemed unlikely. Bookcase doors, breakfast acrobatics, green-eyed girls who didn’t say what they were thinking and left you to fill in the gaps. It was chaos, but a very peaceful kind of chaos. A smile played around her lips as she said, with what she realised was total honesty:

“I suppose I’ll get used to it.”

A/N: I love the idea that, if this piece were from Sora's perspective, everything she says and does would make perfect sense, but she's running on a different wavelength than everybody else and never quite explains what's going through her mind.