[Fanfic, 100% OJ] Beach Party pt. III
Genre: Slice of Life/Romance
Length: 4915 words
B/D: Well, here it is, the final part of the Beach Party arc. I could have probably split this even further, but this has been going on for a while now, and put together, the Beach Party stories are 15k words, so I kinda just want it done and out of my system so I can write other stories with these characters.
Parts 1 and 2 are here and here.
Parts 1 and 2 are here and here.
She can’t sleep.
Her mind is tired, but her body is restless. On edge. She’s not used to other people being in the room when she’s asleep; even Sora’s soft, snuffling breaths are enough to jolt her from her drowsiness. She slips away for a half hour, an hour, and then wakes again, endlessly. Frustrated, she rolls over, the bedsprings creaking ominously under her weight; she feels sweat gathering under the collar of her pyjama shirt, newly bought just for tonight. Too many new things, people, sensations. Too little wine.
“…So. What was the matter this morning?”
Her skin prickles as she hears a voice float softly in from the kitchen. It is a moment before she can place the warm, calm tones as Suguri’s. There’s the sound of a long sip, then a cup being carefully put down on the coffee table.
“Ahaha… I didn’t mean to make such a big deal out of it, it was just–” Light, cheery. Perhaps a little artificially so. Sham’s voice. But it is deeper and softer than it was yesterday, with less high strung energy, and more richness. More depth. “I was sorta wrong-footed, you know?”
There’s a slow, lingering silence. The cup is picked up, sipped from, put down. Suguri speaks. “…Let’s say I don’t know. Talk to me about it.”
A beat passes; perhaps Sham is thinking. About how much she wants to say. What she wants to reveal. Or whether she wants to reveal anything at all. But Suguri’s voice has an authority to it; gentle, yes, but irresistible nonetheless. Sometimes, she speaks like a child. But sometimes, she speaks like a prince, or a king, like the planet’s wise regent who only wants the best for the world she surveys.
“Well, I mean… I just wasn’t expecting them to… you know. Hug. Like that.”
“Ah.” Suguri’s voice is warm, with just a hint of amusement. “Sorry. That’s something we do.” Another long sip. “Hime and I enjoy our hugs. We’ve probably influenced Sora a little.” She pauses. “And Nath, come to think of it.”
It’s difficult, but she manages to avoid snorting when she hears that. It’s probably true, but a little too on the nose not to laugh at.
“It’s not that they hugged. It’s the way they hugged.” A small, anxious pause. “I mean, I’m an idol, right? I sing the goofy, sappy songs that people fall in love to. And I can tell you, that wasn’t a friendly kind of hug. That was a ticking timebomb hug. A ‘when, not if’ kind of hug. I didn’t know… how to react to that, I guess.”
She feels herself stiffen. No. She doesn’t want to hear this. She doesn’t want to think about this. As quietly as she can, she shifts her body in the bed so she can peek at the floor, where Sora set up her sleeping bag between Sham and Nath. In the half-light, the blonde girl’s eyes are closed, her eyelids fluttering as she dreams. There’s no change in her breathing to signal she’s awake. That’s something to be relieved about, at least.
She turns back over to face the wall, suddenly more awake, more alert, than she’s been in months. A ticking timebomb. When, not if. Is that what they look like? Is that what they are? The questions that run through her head are ones she’s been trying not to ask herself for a long time now. She waves them away as best she can, prickles under the unspoken weight of them. She’ll think about it later. Next week. Next month. Next year. Later.
“I see,” Suguri says. Her heart sinks. She was hoping Suguri would tell Sham it was nothing. That she was imagining it, reading too deeply into two friends reuniting.
“But it’s not just the hug.” Sham’s voice sounds sullen now. Childish. “Have you noticed how they act? When they’re in a room, they lean towards each other. If they’re not looking at anything else, they’re looking at each other. It’s like neither of them realises it. Like magnetism. That’s not something friends do. Not like that.”
Even as she lays silent in her bed, she denies the accusation to herself. Lean towards each other? She hasn’t noticed it at all. If she’s leaning, it’s because her back hurts. And as for how her gaze falls so often on Sora… well, what else is there to look at? Is she supposed to stare longingly at her own ceiling, rake her eyes across the stucco walls? Sora at least does things. And even when she doesn’t do things, looking at her is… restful, somehow. Like watching a cat. It doesn’t mean anything. Or at least, it doesn’t have to.
Suguri puts her cup down on the table again. There’s a long pause before she speaks.
“Are you jealous?”
Are you crazy? How blunt can you be? she thinks, faintly horrified on Sham’s behalf. Not even Hime would get away with asking a question like that. She’s sure that any second now, Sham will get offended, or deny it–
“Of course I am!” There it is: a note of urgency in her voice, the sound of an emotional undertow being dragged to the surface. “How could I not be? I spent–” Her voice hitches – “–for ten thousand years, I looked after Sora. I worried and I cried and I hoped for her. I made her a part of my life. But now she’s awake, I’m the person who’s had the least time with her. Out of anybody. And in the time I wasn’t there, those two got that close!” She sniffles. “It’s not… it isn’t fair.”
This is painful to listen to. She has a sudden, deep desire to burrow into her bedding, put her pillow over her ears and block it all out. But she knows that not hearing it, and wondering what was said, would be so much worse. The knowledge doesn’t make her any less uncomfortable.
“And you know what else isn’t fair? How they met. To just meet on the street, not long after Sora finally woke up… That’s fate, right? I can guarantee one of them’s thought about that at some point. Probably both of them. And how did Sora find me? I popped up in a search engine,” she says, her voice bitter in the last words. “How am I supposed to compete with that?”
“For the record,” Suguri says, evenly, “the moment she saw you in a video, she recognised you. She dropped everything to try and find you. If we hadn’t made her wait, she would have flown out of the house, crashed your concert and probably put your security team in hospital. We had to argue with her. We don’t usually argue with her. Ever.”
Sham sniffles. “Okay. Well, that’s a little better. But it’s not destiny.”
The air is still a few moments more; for a second, she thinks – hopes – the conversation will peter out, that Sham and Suguri will return to their beds and leave the subject alone. But her hopes are in vain; Suguri speaks once more, still warmly but with obvious caution. “You seem to be thinking about Sora in… well. A romantic sense. It might not be my place to say it, but… Isn’t it a little soon? You’ve barely had any time together.”
Sham takes a deep breath, sighs. Fingers drum on the coffee table.
“It is,” she says, very slowly, “but it isn’t. If you were around somebody for ten thousand years, but you never dated or anything, wouldn’t you be a little curious what it would be like? To kiss them, or hold hands with them, or just be around them? I’ve always… wondered. What kind of a couple we would be. Even if it didn’t work out, I wanted to at least have the opportunity, you know?” She breathes deeply, heavily. “But I don’t… think I have that. Because of one year, one year that Nath’s had against ten thousand of mine… I don’t think I have a chance. If Nath were a normal human, I wouldn’t even feel bad about it. She’d die in a hundred years or so, and eventually I might have another chance. There’d be hope. But…” She sighs, deeply. “I guess I’m just complaining because I can’t change anything.”
“…It’s not hopeless. You and Sora get along well,” Suguri says, non-committally. “She and Nath might not think about each other that way… there are a lot of potential outcomes.” A few steps, and the sound of running water. A cup being washed out. The kettle clicking on. “Coffee?”
“N-no, I’m fine. I’ll be heading back to bed after this anyway…” Sham says, and giggles nervously. “Say… Would you mind? If I dated Sora?”
The question hangs in the air for a while as Suguri considers her answer, or considers how she wants to phrase it. The sound of grains of sugar falling against the sides of her cup, milk being taken out of the fridge.
“I don’t mind,” she says, cautiously, “so long as whoever Sora dates makes her happy. Whether it’s you, or anybody else.”
“I see… ehehehe. Thanks, Suguri. I… feel a lot better having got it off my chest, you know? Now I can go out tomorrow and enjoy the beach to its fullest! I won’t give up… just because Nath got a head start, doesn’t mean I can’t swoop in and steal the victory!”
“Hey. Don’t talk about it like you’re fighting for her,” Suguri says, quiet but reproachful. “No matter what the cause, it’s no good for friends to be fighting in earnest.”
Footsteps on a wooden floor. Through one half-open eye, Nath can see Sham’s shadow in the doorway. She rolls over again as quietly as she can.
“That’s the thing about love and peace,” Sham’s voice says, much closer now. Her tone is remorseful, a little sour. “Sometimes, you can only have one or the other. Goodnight, Suguri. Thanks for hearing me out.”
She hears bedsprings shifting as Sham settles down in the bed opposite hers, the sound of the blankets being rearranged as she gets comfortable. Eventually, silence, broken only by Sora’s breathing, the kettle boiling, and her own thoughts echoing inside her head.
What is Sora to her? What… what does she want Sora to be? She’s avoided thinking about it for so long, because she’s afraid of what the answer might be. For a long time, she was content to think that her relationship with Sora was its own thing, to be explored over months, years, decades. Now, suddenly, there is a time limit. An outside element forcing her hand, and also quietly snoring five feet away.
She closes her eyes, knowing that she will be awake again in an hour and a half, and that the same thoughts will be waiting to greet her. The last thing she hears before she drops off into a restless sleep is water being poured into a cup, and Suguri’s voice saying softly in the distance:
“How troublesome.”
She’s being stupid, and she knows it. But knowing it and
stopping it are two very different things.
Spread out on the bed is the swimsuit that Sora gave her, and, no matter how she looks at it, it’s just right. Not too showy, easy to put on, the right kind of colour, the works. But, she thinks, didn’t Sora say that it matched hers? Certainly, Sora’s own swimsuit is the same kind of colour and material. Probably even the same brand. But Sora’s has a different shape, like a high-necked sports bra. Hers is a much more traditional bikini cut. The cut is modest, yes, but there’s still a certain plunge to the neckline, an attention paid to cleavage in potentia. She wonders to herself if Sora meant anything by that. Of course, there are a thousand innocent explanations, but can she bring herself to believe any of them?
Laid out next to it is Hime’s offering, which is still very, very pink and very, very sparing on the coverage. She doesn’t even know why she took it out. Or why she’s looking at it. Or why she’s more and more tempted to put it on. It wouldn’t be practical at all, she tells herself. They’re meant to have fun in the sun, and that probably means swimming, or volleyball, or running around on the beach firing lasers at each other. Wearing this kind of swimsuit to any kind of vigorous activity is asking for a disaster. Like fine art, this kind of clothing should be admired at a distance. If possible, while still on the clothes rack.
But there is a small, treacherous part of her that looks at it, and thinks back to what Hime said yesterday. ‘Something to catch the attention of a special somebody’. Her motivations might be dubious, but it can’t be denied that Hime Knows Things, and the Things that she Knows have been proven to work, at least on Suguri. Sora and Suguri are in many ways alike.
Eventually, she gives a final, stubborn shake of her head and starts to slip out of her pyjamas. She can’t waste time forever. The others are already waiting for her at the beach. All she needs is a swimsuit she can have fun in. She allows all the other concerns to float away as she begins to fiddle with straps and ties.
As she walks out of the house towards the beach, she spies the discarded husks of two inflatable beach balls, and hears very loud voices in the distance. It seems the fun has already begun.
“…it’ll be fine, alright? If you keep your shield generator that high, it’ll pop the ball every time!”
“Muu. I like keeping it on in case there’s a surprise attack. Just don’t hit me with the ball.”
“Heh heh. It doesn’t matter how high your shield generator is, you’re still vulnerable to the most dangerous type of attack – a tickle attack!”
She arrives just in time to see Sham, clad in her very own school swimsuit, advancing on Sora with her hands out and fingers wriggling. So, she does not miss the look of surprise on her face when Sora slips behind her, grabs her by the belly and suplexes her into the sand in a single, efficient motion. As the sand clears, she sees Sora absent-mindedly pondering whether to follow up with an armbar, before her wide green eyes snap to Nath’s face.
“Oh,” she says, her eyes flicking to several parts of Nath that are very much not her face. Mainly the bits not covered in bikini. “You look good,” she says, after a moment of intense consideration.
“Ah.” Her voice sounds more uncertain that she wants it to. She reaches down, coaxes the warmth from her vocal cords and into her words. “Thank you. You do, too.”
She’s hit by the realisation that she would have said that pretty much regardless of what Sora was wearing. But that’s not to say that the sentiment is wrong. She had always assumed Sora and Suguri’s choice in clothing was a result of Hime’s intervention, and that deprived of her they would quickly descend into a haze of scruffiness and odd socks. But the swimsuit Sora picked out for herself – for both of them – does a good job of accentuating her finer points while still being practical. The powder blue sports bra is gives her ample support for fun and games while preserving modesty, but in a sense, the way that it clings to her bust might be more alluring than a plunging neckline would have been. The bottoms, too – they’re high waisted, and not particularly revealing, but the way that the fabric sits at the very top of her hips before sweeping down in a smooth curve is hard to ignore. Also hard to ignore is the way that it shows off so much of her midriff, because Sora’s midriff is a rare and valuable commodity.
“Ohoho. Good morning, Nath. I was rather hoping you might give my swimsuit a tiny try, but Sora’s suits you well enough,” Hime says, peering out from a beach umbrella. She and Suguri have set up an outpost at the corner of the beach, out of range of Sora’s wrestling moves and the cold touch of the ocean. “You’re blushing, by the way.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not,” Suguri confirms. Despite having been up all night, there are no dark circles under her eyes; she looks as fresh and wide-awake as she ever does. She does seem just the tiniest bit embarrassed. Her swimsuit has a few too many ruffles to be taken seriously. “Is Sham okay?”
“She’s okay. We’re playing,” Sora nods, standing up. Sham, Nath thinks, does not seem to be playing; she seems to be counting the stars she can see circling around her head. “Let’s do volleyball,” she says, ambling across the sand towards them on legs that seemed longer and more slender than Nath remembered them.
“Oh, absolutely! You can start whenever you like. Suguri and I will join when we can. We have sunscreen to apply, you see,” Hime says, wearing a smirk that could have been borrowed from a passing shark. Only the brave or the foolish would refuse the hint.
“Suguri doesn’t need sunscreen,” Sora says, because she has seen the end of the world and it has chased the fear of almost everything else out of her. “Neither do I. We have shields.”
“But I do,” Hime says sweetly. “And Suguri has very kindly agreed to help me apply it, in lieu of wearing the swimsuit I had first picked out for her.”
A swimsuit which, Nath thinks, probably has about as much fabric as three band-aids. “Yes, well,” she replies carefully. “Compromise is the sign of a happy marriage.” Hime’s smile widens, and becomes just a fraction more gentle – but only a fraction. It makes her no less eager to leave the two guardians to their own devices. She turns to Sora. “Looks like it’ll just be you, me and Sham for a while.” She tries not to look behind her as Suguri is summarily dragged back to the privacy of the beach umbrella. She might be struggling. She might not. No-one will ever know.
“Three isn’t a good number for volleyball,” Sora murmurs, and she is, in fairness, right. Three players means that either one player sits out, or two players gang up on the unlucky lone opponent. Neither lives up to the ideal of sun in the fun that the blonde ex-soldier seems to be cultivating in her heart. Nevertheless, she looks down at Sham, looks up at Nath, and declares: “You two be a team. I’ll face you.”
“...eh? Whuzzat? I’m teaming with Nath?” Sham asks, finally climbing to her feet. There is a certain… thickness to her voice. She’s probably not concussed, but it remains a probability. “Can’t I team up with Sora instead?”
Nath frowns. After overhearing the conversation last night, she can’t read Sham’s suggestion any other way than sheer, naked ambition. She briefly contemplates stepping in to shoot her down, but is relieved when Sora shakes her shaggy head.
“No. Nath’s not good at arms yet. And you don’t do much sport. So it’s more fair for you two to team up against me,” Sora says, and then a glint of cockiness enters her eye. “I can take both of you, no problem.”
“Is that a fact?” Nath asks, arching an eyebrow. It probably is, she thinks privately. But it’s good to indulge in a little competitive spirit from time to time. Sora takes everything seriously, even fun. Especially fun. So sometimes, she needs a serious rival. “Sham and I aren’t pushovers, you know – even if we are at a disadvantage.”
“Yeah! And when we win, we’ll bury you in the sand and stick a flag on top!” Sham declares.
They look at each other, and, for however briefly, an accord is struck. A net is erected, and they shake hands before Sham raises the ball for her first serve – two rivals, setting aside their disagreements to form an uneasy partnership against a formidable opponent.
To say they got destroyed is an understatement.
“Nath?”
“Mm?”
“What do you think cats dream of?”
Sora’s voice is slow and heavy, as if it’s been dipped in honey. Nath feels that way herself. Being buried in the sand isn’t so bad. It’s warm, after a little while, and it’s easy to let the sound of waves lull her into a deep, bottomless sense of peace.
“I don’t know,” she replies. “We can ask him when we get back.”
“Roger’s your cat, so he probably dreams of you.”
“His name’s not – well. His name’s not Roger yet.”
Sora doesn’t giggle, but Nath can tell she’s thinking about giggling, and that’s a tiny victory all by itself.
“I’ve had a couple of cats. Down the years,” Sham says dreamily from Sora’s other side. “They were super cute. Bushy tails and twitchy whiskers, yay!”
They’re buried in the sand together. At first, it was just Nath and Sham, as their penalty for losing so badly at volleyball. But then it apparently looked so fun that Sora wanted to be buried too. Summarily, Hime and Suguri were summoned from their beach umbrella haven, and Sora entombed between her two old friends. Hime gave their burials an artistic touch as well, sculpting the sand around them in whichever way amused her. Nath had been transformed into a macho bodybuilder with massive, sandy biceps. Sora was turned into a sand squid. Sham was a turtle with her head poking out of a sandy shell. They were all more or less happy with the arrangement.
“I wish I were a cat,” Sora says dreamily.
“I wish you were a cat, too,” Sham agrees.
Nath snorts. “You basically already are. Both of you, I think.”
“You should be a cat as well. We could be a happy cat family.”
Neither Nath or Sham respond to this, although with the pacifying sound of the ocean to fill the space, it doesn’t feel awkward. Just contemplative, as if Sora has spoken a great truth and they are meditating upon it. They’re not – at least, Nath thinks she’s not – but it feels that way.
“I like dogs as well, though,” Sham says eventually.
“Oh. I see dogs woofing at me sometimes when I fly around, but I’ve not pet one yet. Are they good?”
“All dogs are good dogs, even if they don’t know it yet.”
“They’re not that bad,” Nath says. Usually, she’s not a fan of dogs, particularly the little ones. They always jump up and bite her sleeves when she’s not wearing her arms, and then she has to just stand there until their jaws get tired and they drop off again. But here, now, warmed by the sun and pacified by the sea, she’s inclined to agree that dogs are Okay, and could be Okay in the future as well.
“We should go swimming later,” Sora says distantly. “And find some dolphins. Suguri told me about meeting dolphin pods when she was cleaning up the oceans. I want to meet some.”
Nath smiles. It’s such a simple ambition. Sora – all of them, in fact – have all the power that the world could ever throw at them, and all they use it for is volleyball and dolphin relations, with the occasional high-powered squabble that gets resolved and quickly forgotten about. They’re living in an enlightened age.
“Actually,” she says, the thought jogging her mind, “I had something else in mind for this afternoon. It’s… important, I think. For you. For both of you.” She nods in Sham’s direction. “Would it be okay to look for dolphins tomorrow?”
“Mm. If it’s important, it’s important,” Sora replies. “...but let’s nap first. You and Sham look tired.”
She grins ruefully. Of course the two people who were up all night look tired, although neither of them is in a position to tell her that. “...You sure?” she asks. “If we got up now, we could at least do a little swimming practice or something. I don’t want to waste your vacation.” It’s a fine thought, but getting up now would be very difficult. The weight of sleep and sand are sitting on her chest.
Sora shakes her head seriously. “Vacation is for resting as well as fun. And napping is fun as well.”
Somewhere beyond her, Sham begins to snore. Nath smiles. It seems she’s been outvoted by the Sleepyhead Party. She turns her head to the side, closes her eyes, and takes some rest herself.
“Sorry. We’ll be intruding.”
The sunset coats the grove in gold and throws shadows between the headstones as she walks. Sora, Sham, Suguri and Hime follow in her wake, looking up at the spreading ivy and the greenery overhead. Her back is straight, her head held high. There’s not all that much she’s proud of having done, but she’s proud of this.
“This… this is what you could call my real job. Maintaining this place. I built it a long time back, and paid for what I couldn’t do myself,” Nath says. Her voice is warmer, softer than usual. As if she’s surrounded by old friends. “Look around.”
Without questioning, they follow her instructions. The graves are arranged neatly in rank and file, each one carved with name after name, the stones clean and well-kept. Above them there is a canopy of spreading vines, thinned out in places so the sun can drift through and warm the air. The stillness is broken only by the butterflies, wandering from plant to plant, completely unafraid; this is their place, too.
“It’s very picturesque,” Hime says. Her eyes drift lower than the headstones and to the small pockets of blooming colour at the floor, the flowers that have stolen into a sacred place. “Did you do the gardening yourself?”
“No. I’m not much of a gardener. I just come once a year and trim it all back. The flowers do the hard work themselves.”
Suguri listens, nodding. “They do that,” she murmurs, her fingers tracing the worn lettering on one of the graves. She knows what this place is, even without Nath having said it. She recognises some of the names from her data trawls, from her long research into the calamity that befell the world. That she helped repair.
“Ah… Is this… what I think it is?”
Sham’s voice trembles. She, too, has begun to recognise some of the names here, dredged up from her distant memories. But they’re not points of data for her. They’re old heroes, temporary friends, disappeared rivals. They were people she knew, idolised, hated, loved. Her hand comes up to her chest.
“…Yes. It’s a memorial for the fallen soldiers of the Great War.” She walks, step by step, to the great marble slab, the collection of names. “Sora, Sham. I wanted to show you this. More than anything.” Her voice is steady. She refuses to let it crack. Some things need to be said, and said clearly. “To show that they’re being remembered, even now. All these people gave their lives. They gave them for good reasons. For bad reasons. For reasons that didn’t make sense. But they gave them.” She pauses. She doesn’t know quite what she’s getting at. “I think… it’s important,” she finishes, a little lamely.
Sora has said nothing, and says nothing still. But she stands beside her at the marble slab, and, very slowly, as if her body has forgotten the motion, touches her hand to her head in a salute. On Nath’s other side, Sham follows suit. Finally, Nath does as well, hoping she’s getting it right; she never had arms to practice with during the war.
“Ah…” Sham says, when Sora has lowered her hand and the moment is over. Her voice is chocked with emotion. “Thanks, Nath. For this. You ever… um… you ever had that feeling that you needed something real bad, but you didn’t know until you got it?” She sniffs in such a way that even Nath knows she’s going to cry later, when she’s alone. “There’s names here I haven’t thought about in forever.”
“Mm. This is a good place,” Sora murmurs. “I don’t know a lot of the names. But they must be happy to sleep in a place like this.” She turns, her stride suddenly businesslike. “Hime. Can we go looking for wildflowers tomorrow? I want to make a wreath.”
“Well, certainly, but… if we do that, you won’t have time to find dolphins, you know?”
“Dolphins can wait.”
Nath smiles as they say their goodbyes to the grove. She finds herself smiling more often than not, lately. There’s still a whole lot left to be done, and thought about. Her relationship with Sora, and what she wants from it. Sham – what her feelings are, and how to understand her. And, of course, she needs to ask them both if they’ll look after this place when she’s gone. There’s a lot left undone.
But a lot has been accomplished, too. She’ll be able to walk forwards tomorrow and have as much fun as she can, with a clear conscience and a refreshed mind. And, if she works hard enough when they’re gathering flowers, there might be time for dolphins after all.
A/N: Whew, finally complete! One of the things I've always struggled with as a writer is handling longer stories; I naturally work better in shorter bursts. But the only way to get better is to do it, and I may have bitten off more than I could chew with this sequence. There's a few gaps here and there, including at least a whole other day of vacation, but I've intentionally left those open to perhaps go back to them later. Right now, I feel like doing some more concise stories and aiming for elegant shortness again, so we'll see how that shakes out. Hope you enjoyed the series!
Her mind is tired, but her body is restless. On edge. She’s not used to other people being in the room when she’s asleep; even Sora’s soft, snuffling breaths are enough to jolt her from her drowsiness. She slips away for a half hour, an hour, and then wakes again, endlessly. Frustrated, she rolls over, the bedsprings creaking ominously under her weight; she feels sweat gathering under the collar of her pyjama shirt, newly bought just for tonight. Too many new things, people, sensations. Too little wine.
“…So. What was the matter this morning?”
Her skin prickles as she hears a voice float softly in from the kitchen. It is a moment before she can place the warm, calm tones as Suguri’s. There’s the sound of a long sip, then a cup being carefully put down on the coffee table.
“Ahaha… I didn’t mean to make such a big deal out of it, it was just–” Light, cheery. Perhaps a little artificially so. Sham’s voice. But it is deeper and softer than it was yesterday, with less high strung energy, and more richness. More depth. “I was sorta wrong-footed, you know?”
There’s a slow, lingering silence. The cup is picked up, sipped from, put down. Suguri speaks. “…Let’s say I don’t know. Talk to me about it.”
A beat passes; perhaps Sham is thinking. About how much she wants to say. What she wants to reveal. Or whether she wants to reveal anything at all. But Suguri’s voice has an authority to it; gentle, yes, but irresistible nonetheless. Sometimes, she speaks like a child. But sometimes, she speaks like a prince, or a king, like the planet’s wise regent who only wants the best for the world she surveys.
“Well, I mean… I just wasn’t expecting them to… you know. Hug. Like that.”
“Ah.” Suguri’s voice is warm, with just a hint of amusement. “Sorry. That’s something we do.” Another long sip. “Hime and I enjoy our hugs. We’ve probably influenced Sora a little.” She pauses. “And Nath, come to think of it.”
It’s difficult, but she manages to avoid snorting when she hears that. It’s probably true, but a little too on the nose not to laugh at.
“It’s not that they hugged. It’s the way they hugged.” A small, anxious pause. “I mean, I’m an idol, right? I sing the goofy, sappy songs that people fall in love to. And I can tell you, that wasn’t a friendly kind of hug. That was a ticking timebomb hug. A ‘when, not if’ kind of hug. I didn’t know… how to react to that, I guess.”
She feels herself stiffen. No. She doesn’t want to hear this. She doesn’t want to think about this. As quietly as she can, she shifts her body in the bed so she can peek at the floor, where Sora set up her sleeping bag between Sham and Nath. In the half-light, the blonde girl’s eyes are closed, her eyelids fluttering as she dreams. There’s no change in her breathing to signal she’s awake. That’s something to be relieved about, at least.
She turns back over to face the wall, suddenly more awake, more alert, than she’s been in months. A ticking timebomb. When, not if. Is that what they look like? Is that what they are? The questions that run through her head are ones she’s been trying not to ask herself for a long time now. She waves them away as best she can, prickles under the unspoken weight of them. She’ll think about it later. Next week. Next month. Next year. Later.
“I see,” Suguri says. Her heart sinks. She was hoping Suguri would tell Sham it was nothing. That she was imagining it, reading too deeply into two friends reuniting.
“But it’s not just the hug.” Sham’s voice sounds sullen now. Childish. “Have you noticed how they act? When they’re in a room, they lean towards each other. If they’re not looking at anything else, they’re looking at each other. It’s like neither of them realises it. Like magnetism. That’s not something friends do. Not like that.”
Even as she lays silent in her bed, she denies the accusation to herself. Lean towards each other? She hasn’t noticed it at all. If she’s leaning, it’s because her back hurts. And as for how her gaze falls so often on Sora… well, what else is there to look at? Is she supposed to stare longingly at her own ceiling, rake her eyes across the stucco walls? Sora at least does things. And even when she doesn’t do things, looking at her is… restful, somehow. Like watching a cat. It doesn’t mean anything. Or at least, it doesn’t have to.
Suguri puts her cup down on the table again. There’s a long pause before she speaks.
“Are you jealous?”
Are you crazy? How blunt can you be? she thinks, faintly horrified on Sham’s behalf. Not even Hime would get away with asking a question like that. She’s sure that any second now, Sham will get offended, or deny it–
“Of course I am!” There it is: a note of urgency in her voice, the sound of an emotional undertow being dragged to the surface. “How could I not be? I spent–” Her voice hitches – “–for ten thousand years, I looked after Sora. I worried and I cried and I hoped for her. I made her a part of my life. But now she’s awake, I’m the person who’s had the least time with her. Out of anybody. And in the time I wasn’t there, those two got that close!” She sniffles. “It’s not… it isn’t fair.”
This is painful to listen to. She has a sudden, deep desire to burrow into her bedding, put her pillow over her ears and block it all out. But she knows that not hearing it, and wondering what was said, would be so much worse. The knowledge doesn’t make her any less uncomfortable.
“And you know what else isn’t fair? How they met. To just meet on the street, not long after Sora finally woke up… That’s fate, right? I can guarantee one of them’s thought about that at some point. Probably both of them. And how did Sora find me? I popped up in a search engine,” she says, her voice bitter in the last words. “How am I supposed to compete with that?”
“For the record,” Suguri says, evenly, “the moment she saw you in a video, she recognised you. She dropped everything to try and find you. If we hadn’t made her wait, she would have flown out of the house, crashed your concert and probably put your security team in hospital. We had to argue with her. We don’t usually argue with her. Ever.”
Sham sniffles. “Okay. Well, that’s a little better. But it’s not destiny.”
The air is still a few moments more; for a second, she thinks – hopes – the conversation will peter out, that Sham and Suguri will return to their beds and leave the subject alone. But her hopes are in vain; Suguri speaks once more, still warmly but with obvious caution. “You seem to be thinking about Sora in… well. A romantic sense. It might not be my place to say it, but… Isn’t it a little soon? You’ve barely had any time together.”
Sham takes a deep breath, sighs. Fingers drum on the coffee table.
“It is,” she says, very slowly, “but it isn’t. If you were around somebody for ten thousand years, but you never dated or anything, wouldn’t you be a little curious what it would be like? To kiss them, or hold hands with them, or just be around them? I’ve always… wondered. What kind of a couple we would be. Even if it didn’t work out, I wanted to at least have the opportunity, you know?” She breathes deeply, heavily. “But I don’t… think I have that. Because of one year, one year that Nath’s had against ten thousand of mine… I don’t think I have a chance. If Nath were a normal human, I wouldn’t even feel bad about it. She’d die in a hundred years or so, and eventually I might have another chance. There’d be hope. But…” She sighs, deeply. “I guess I’m just complaining because I can’t change anything.”
“…It’s not hopeless. You and Sora get along well,” Suguri says, non-committally. “She and Nath might not think about each other that way… there are a lot of potential outcomes.” A few steps, and the sound of running water. A cup being washed out. The kettle clicking on. “Coffee?”
“N-no, I’m fine. I’ll be heading back to bed after this anyway…” Sham says, and giggles nervously. “Say… Would you mind? If I dated Sora?”
The question hangs in the air for a while as Suguri considers her answer, or considers how she wants to phrase it. The sound of grains of sugar falling against the sides of her cup, milk being taken out of the fridge.
“I don’t mind,” she says, cautiously, “so long as whoever Sora dates makes her happy. Whether it’s you, or anybody else.”
“I see… ehehehe. Thanks, Suguri. I… feel a lot better having got it off my chest, you know? Now I can go out tomorrow and enjoy the beach to its fullest! I won’t give up… just because Nath got a head start, doesn’t mean I can’t swoop in and steal the victory!”
“Hey. Don’t talk about it like you’re fighting for her,” Suguri says, quiet but reproachful. “No matter what the cause, it’s no good for friends to be fighting in earnest.”
Footsteps on a wooden floor. Through one half-open eye, Nath can see Sham’s shadow in the doorway. She rolls over again as quietly as she can.
“That’s the thing about love and peace,” Sham’s voice says, much closer now. Her tone is remorseful, a little sour. “Sometimes, you can only have one or the other. Goodnight, Suguri. Thanks for hearing me out.”
She hears bedsprings shifting as Sham settles down in the bed opposite hers, the sound of the blankets being rearranged as she gets comfortable. Eventually, silence, broken only by Sora’s breathing, the kettle boiling, and her own thoughts echoing inside her head.
What is Sora to her? What… what does she want Sora to be? She’s avoided thinking about it for so long, because she’s afraid of what the answer might be. For a long time, she was content to think that her relationship with Sora was its own thing, to be explored over months, years, decades. Now, suddenly, there is a time limit. An outside element forcing her hand, and also quietly snoring five feet away.
She closes her eyes, knowing that she will be awake again in an hour and a half, and that the same thoughts will be waiting to greet her. The last thing she hears before she drops off into a restless sleep is water being poured into a cup, and Suguri’s voice saying softly in the distance:
“How troublesome.”
Spread out on the bed is the swimsuit that Sora gave her, and, no matter how she looks at it, it’s just right. Not too showy, easy to put on, the right kind of colour, the works. But, she thinks, didn’t Sora say that it matched hers? Certainly, Sora’s own swimsuit is the same kind of colour and material. Probably even the same brand. But Sora’s has a different shape, like a high-necked sports bra. Hers is a much more traditional bikini cut. The cut is modest, yes, but there’s still a certain plunge to the neckline, an attention paid to cleavage in potentia. She wonders to herself if Sora meant anything by that. Of course, there are a thousand innocent explanations, but can she bring herself to believe any of them?
Laid out next to it is Hime’s offering, which is still very, very pink and very, very sparing on the coverage. She doesn’t even know why she took it out. Or why she’s looking at it. Or why she’s more and more tempted to put it on. It wouldn’t be practical at all, she tells herself. They’re meant to have fun in the sun, and that probably means swimming, or volleyball, or running around on the beach firing lasers at each other. Wearing this kind of swimsuit to any kind of vigorous activity is asking for a disaster. Like fine art, this kind of clothing should be admired at a distance. If possible, while still on the clothes rack.
But there is a small, treacherous part of her that looks at it, and thinks back to what Hime said yesterday. ‘Something to catch the attention of a special somebody’. Her motivations might be dubious, but it can’t be denied that Hime Knows Things, and the Things that she Knows have been proven to work, at least on Suguri. Sora and Suguri are in many ways alike.
Eventually, she gives a final, stubborn shake of her head and starts to slip out of her pyjamas. She can’t waste time forever. The others are already waiting for her at the beach. All she needs is a swimsuit she can have fun in. She allows all the other concerns to float away as she begins to fiddle with straps and ties.
As she walks out of the house towards the beach, she spies the discarded husks of two inflatable beach balls, and hears very loud voices in the distance. It seems the fun has already begun.
“…it’ll be fine, alright? If you keep your shield generator that high, it’ll pop the ball every time!”
“Muu. I like keeping it on in case there’s a surprise attack. Just don’t hit me with the ball.”
“Heh heh. It doesn’t matter how high your shield generator is, you’re still vulnerable to the most dangerous type of attack – a tickle attack!”
She arrives just in time to see Sham, clad in her very own school swimsuit, advancing on Sora with her hands out and fingers wriggling. So, she does not miss the look of surprise on her face when Sora slips behind her, grabs her by the belly and suplexes her into the sand in a single, efficient motion. As the sand clears, she sees Sora absent-mindedly pondering whether to follow up with an armbar, before her wide green eyes snap to Nath’s face.
“Oh,” she says, her eyes flicking to several parts of Nath that are very much not her face. Mainly the bits not covered in bikini. “You look good,” she says, after a moment of intense consideration.
“Ah.” Her voice sounds more uncertain that she wants it to. She reaches down, coaxes the warmth from her vocal cords and into her words. “Thank you. You do, too.”
She’s hit by the realisation that she would have said that pretty much regardless of what Sora was wearing. But that’s not to say that the sentiment is wrong. She had always assumed Sora and Suguri’s choice in clothing was a result of Hime’s intervention, and that deprived of her they would quickly descend into a haze of scruffiness and odd socks. But the swimsuit Sora picked out for herself – for both of them – does a good job of accentuating her finer points while still being practical. The powder blue sports bra is gives her ample support for fun and games while preserving modesty, but in a sense, the way that it clings to her bust might be more alluring than a plunging neckline would have been. The bottoms, too – they’re high waisted, and not particularly revealing, but the way that the fabric sits at the very top of her hips before sweeping down in a smooth curve is hard to ignore. Also hard to ignore is the way that it shows off so much of her midriff, because Sora’s midriff is a rare and valuable commodity.
“Ohoho. Good morning, Nath. I was rather hoping you might give my swimsuit a tiny try, but Sora’s suits you well enough,” Hime says, peering out from a beach umbrella. She and Suguri have set up an outpost at the corner of the beach, out of range of Sora’s wrestling moves and the cold touch of the ocean. “You’re blushing, by the way.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not,” Suguri confirms. Despite having been up all night, there are no dark circles under her eyes; she looks as fresh and wide-awake as she ever does. She does seem just the tiniest bit embarrassed. Her swimsuit has a few too many ruffles to be taken seriously. “Is Sham okay?”
“She’s okay. We’re playing,” Sora nods, standing up. Sham, Nath thinks, does not seem to be playing; she seems to be counting the stars she can see circling around her head. “Let’s do volleyball,” she says, ambling across the sand towards them on legs that seemed longer and more slender than Nath remembered them.
“Oh, absolutely! You can start whenever you like. Suguri and I will join when we can. We have sunscreen to apply, you see,” Hime says, wearing a smirk that could have been borrowed from a passing shark. Only the brave or the foolish would refuse the hint.
“Suguri doesn’t need sunscreen,” Sora says, because she has seen the end of the world and it has chased the fear of almost everything else out of her. “Neither do I. We have shields.”
“But I do,” Hime says sweetly. “And Suguri has very kindly agreed to help me apply it, in lieu of wearing the swimsuit I had first picked out for her.”
A swimsuit which, Nath thinks, probably has about as much fabric as three band-aids. “Yes, well,” she replies carefully. “Compromise is the sign of a happy marriage.” Hime’s smile widens, and becomes just a fraction more gentle – but only a fraction. It makes her no less eager to leave the two guardians to their own devices. She turns to Sora. “Looks like it’ll just be you, me and Sham for a while.” She tries not to look behind her as Suguri is summarily dragged back to the privacy of the beach umbrella. She might be struggling. She might not. No-one will ever know.
“Three isn’t a good number for volleyball,” Sora murmurs, and she is, in fairness, right. Three players means that either one player sits out, or two players gang up on the unlucky lone opponent. Neither lives up to the ideal of sun in the fun that the blonde ex-soldier seems to be cultivating in her heart. Nevertheless, she looks down at Sham, looks up at Nath, and declares: “You two be a team. I’ll face you.”
“...eh? Whuzzat? I’m teaming with Nath?” Sham asks, finally climbing to her feet. There is a certain… thickness to her voice. She’s probably not concussed, but it remains a probability. “Can’t I team up with Sora instead?”
Nath frowns. After overhearing the conversation last night, she can’t read Sham’s suggestion any other way than sheer, naked ambition. She briefly contemplates stepping in to shoot her down, but is relieved when Sora shakes her shaggy head.
“No. Nath’s not good at arms yet. And you don’t do much sport. So it’s more fair for you two to team up against me,” Sora says, and then a glint of cockiness enters her eye. “I can take both of you, no problem.”
“Is that a fact?” Nath asks, arching an eyebrow. It probably is, she thinks privately. But it’s good to indulge in a little competitive spirit from time to time. Sora takes everything seriously, even fun. Especially fun. So sometimes, she needs a serious rival. “Sham and I aren’t pushovers, you know – even if we are at a disadvantage.”
“Yeah! And when we win, we’ll bury you in the sand and stick a flag on top!” Sham declares.
They look at each other, and, for however briefly, an accord is struck. A net is erected, and they shake hands before Sham raises the ball for her first serve – two rivals, setting aside their disagreements to form an uneasy partnership against a formidable opponent.
To say they got destroyed is an understatement.
“Nath?”
“Mm?”
“What do you think cats dream of?”
Sora’s voice is slow and heavy, as if it’s been dipped in honey. Nath feels that way herself. Being buried in the sand isn’t so bad. It’s warm, after a little while, and it’s easy to let the sound of waves lull her into a deep, bottomless sense of peace.
“I don’t know,” she replies. “We can ask him when we get back.”
“Roger’s your cat, so he probably dreams of you.”
“His name’s not – well. His name’s not Roger yet.”
Sora doesn’t giggle, but Nath can tell she’s thinking about giggling, and that’s a tiny victory all by itself.
“I’ve had a couple of cats. Down the years,” Sham says dreamily from Sora’s other side. “They were super cute. Bushy tails and twitchy whiskers, yay!”
They’re buried in the sand together. At first, it was just Nath and Sham, as their penalty for losing so badly at volleyball. But then it apparently looked so fun that Sora wanted to be buried too. Summarily, Hime and Suguri were summoned from their beach umbrella haven, and Sora entombed between her two old friends. Hime gave their burials an artistic touch as well, sculpting the sand around them in whichever way amused her. Nath had been transformed into a macho bodybuilder with massive, sandy biceps. Sora was turned into a sand squid. Sham was a turtle with her head poking out of a sandy shell. They were all more or less happy with the arrangement.
“I wish I were a cat,” Sora says dreamily.
“I wish you were a cat, too,” Sham agrees.
Nath snorts. “You basically already are. Both of you, I think.”
“You should be a cat as well. We could be a happy cat family.”
Neither Nath or Sham respond to this, although with the pacifying sound of the ocean to fill the space, it doesn’t feel awkward. Just contemplative, as if Sora has spoken a great truth and they are meditating upon it. They’re not – at least, Nath thinks she’s not – but it feels that way.
“I like dogs as well, though,” Sham says eventually.
“Oh. I see dogs woofing at me sometimes when I fly around, but I’ve not pet one yet. Are they good?”
“All dogs are good dogs, even if they don’t know it yet.”
“They’re not that bad,” Nath says. Usually, she’s not a fan of dogs, particularly the little ones. They always jump up and bite her sleeves when she’s not wearing her arms, and then she has to just stand there until their jaws get tired and they drop off again. But here, now, warmed by the sun and pacified by the sea, she’s inclined to agree that dogs are Okay, and could be Okay in the future as well.
“We should go swimming later,” Sora says distantly. “And find some dolphins. Suguri told me about meeting dolphin pods when she was cleaning up the oceans. I want to meet some.”
Nath smiles. It’s such a simple ambition. Sora – all of them, in fact – have all the power that the world could ever throw at them, and all they use it for is volleyball and dolphin relations, with the occasional high-powered squabble that gets resolved and quickly forgotten about. They’re living in an enlightened age.
“Actually,” she says, the thought jogging her mind, “I had something else in mind for this afternoon. It’s… important, I think. For you. For both of you.” She nods in Sham’s direction. “Would it be okay to look for dolphins tomorrow?”
“Mm. If it’s important, it’s important,” Sora replies. “...but let’s nap first. You and Sham look tired.”
She grins ruefully. Of course the two people who were up all night look tired, although neither of them is in a position to tell her that. “...You sure?” she asks. “If we got up now, we could at least do a little swimming practice or something. I don’t want to waste your vacation.” It’s a fine thought, but getting up now would be very difficult. The weight of sleep and sand are sitting on her chest.
Sora shakes her head seriously. “Vacation is for resting as well as fun. And napping is fun as well.”
Somewhere beyond her, Sham begins to snore. Nath smiles. It seems she’s been outvoted by the Sleepyhead Party. She turns her head to the side, closes her eyes, and takes some rest herself.
“Sorry. We’ll be intruding.”
The sunset coats the grove in gold and throws shadows between the headstones as she walks. Sora, Sham, Suguri and Hime follow in her wake, looking up at the spreading ivy and the greenery overhead. Her back is straight, her head held high. There’s not all that much she’s proud of having done, but she’s proud of this.
“This… this is what you could call my real job. Maintaining this place. I built it a long time back, and paid for what I couldn’t do myself,” Nath says. Her voice is warmer, softer than usual. As if she’s surrounded by old friends. “Look around.”
Without questioning, they follow her instructions. The graves are arranged neatly in rank and file, each one carved with name after name, the stones clean and well-kept. Above them there is a canopy of spreading vines, thinned out in places so the sun can drift through and warm the air. The stillness is broken only by the butterflies, wandering from plant to plant, completely unafraid; this is their place, too.
“It’s very picturesque,” Hime says. Her eyes drift lower than the headstones and to the small pockets of blooming colour at the floor, the flowers that have stolen into a sacred place. “Did you do the gardening yourself?”
“No. I’m not much of a gardener. I just come once a year and trim it all back. The flowers do the hard work themselves.”
Suguri listens, nodding. “They do that,” she murmurs, her fingers tracing the worn lettering on one of the graves. She knows what this place is, even without Nath having said it. She recognises some of the names from her data trawls, from her long research into the calamity that befell the world. That she helped repair.
“Ah… Is this… what I think it is?”
Sham’s voice trembles. She, too, has begun to recognise some of the names here, dredged up from her distant memories. But they’re not points of data for her. They’re old heroes, temporary friends, disappeared rivals. They were people she knew, idolised, hated, loved. Her hand comes up to her chest.
“…Yes. It’s a memorial for the fallen soldiers of the Great War.” She walks, step by step, to the great marble slab, the collection of names. “Sora, Sham. I wanted to show you this. More than anything.” Her voice is steady. She refuses to let it crack. Some things need to be said, and said clearly. “To show that they’re being remembered, even now. All these people gave their lives. They gave them for good reasons. For bad reasons. For reasons that didn’t make sense. But they gave them.” She pauses. She doesn’t know quite what she’s getting at. “I think… it’s important,” she finishes, a little lamely.
Sora has said nothing, and says nothing still. But she stands beside her at the marble slab, and, very slowly, as if her body has forgotten the motion, touches her hand to her head in a salute. On Nath’s other side, Sham follows suit. Finally, Nath does as well, hoping she’s getting it right; she never had arms to practice with during the war.
“Ah…” Sham says, when Sora has lowered her hand and the moment is over. Her voice is chocked with emotion. “Thanks, Nath. For this. You ever… um… you ever had that feeling that you needed something real bad, but you didn’t know until you got it?” She sniffs in such a way that even Nath knows she’s going to cry later, when she’s alone. “There’s names here I haven’t thought about in forever.”
“Mm. This is a good place,” Sora murmurs. “I don’t know a lot of the names. But they must be happy to sleep in a place like this.” She turns, her stride suddenly businesslike. “Hime. Can we go looking for wildflowers tomorrow? I want to make a wreath.”
“Well, certainly, but… if we do that, you won’t have time to find dolphins, you know?”
“Dolphins can wait.”
Nath smiles as they say their goodbyes to the grove. She finds herself smiling more often than not, lately. There’s still a whole lot left to be done, and thought about. Her relationship with Sora, and what she wants from it. Sham – what her feelings are, and how to understand her. And, of course, she needs to ask them both if they’ll look after this place when she’s gone. There’s a lot left undone.
But a lot has been accomplished, too. She’ll be able to walk forwards tomorrow and have as much fun as she can, with a clear conscience and a refreshed mind. And, if she works hard enough when they’re gathering flowers, there might be time for dolphins after all.
A/N: Whew, finally complete! One of the things I've always struggled with as a writer is handling longer stories; I naturally work better in shorter bursts. But the only way to get better is to do it, and I may have bitten off more than I could chew with this sequence. There's a few gaps here and there, including at least a whole other day of vacation, but I've intentionally left those open to perhaps go back to them later. Right now, I feel like doing some more concise stories and aiming for elegant shortness again, so we'll see how that shakes out. Hope you enjoyed the series!
Bravo! This was another enjoyable story and I love how you finished the Beach Party off. The new development that's going on between Sham, Nath, and Sora is exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing how that's handled in the future.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the good work Vulp.