Chapter Text
Probably by far the most groundbreaking discovery made by Iroha throughout some twenty years of living is that Kaguya can cook.
Granted, there are a lot of things Iroha doesn’t know about her, only that Kaguya is all jumpy, impulsive and a ball of explosive energy and definitely looks the type to put aluminum foil in the microwave. Not the best judgement of a book’s cover, in which case Kaguya’s made purely out of titanium and Iroha genuinely can’t see her being anywhere near a kitchen.
“I’m gonna impress your mom,” Kaguya had told her when they were holed up in the bedroom, Kaguya perched on the bed and Iroha rummaging through her suitcase trying to find her lucky socks.
“Good luck with that,” Iroha had replied, distracted.
“No listen, I have a gameplan,” Kaguya had sat herself down on the other side of the suitcase, forcing Iroha to look at me, what are you looking for anyways? “I heard your grandma say she’s making omurice for dinner, and the omelette I make is god tier, so I think I’m gonna go help out in the kitchen later. The goal here is for your mom to think I’m wifey material, meaning you’re pretty much set for life.”
“You can cook?”
“Yes!” Kaguya exclaimed. “Don’t act so surprised, should I be offended?”
“You once thought the tip of a marker pen was edible, I think any sane person would be a little wary,” Iroha had grimaced at the memory of Kaguya getting her lips blue after trying to eat a marker pen back in high school. It had taken approximately three students to peel her away from said marker.
“You saw that?”
“The whole class did, Kaguya,” Iroha rolled her eyes playfully. The socks were stuffed between two shirts of the same colour. She waved them around, and said, “I feel obligated to warn you that my mom’s hard to please, but knock yourself out. ”
“Don’t worry, I got this,” Kayuya had beamed at her, hand on her forehead as a mock salute.
So. Anyway.
Much of the cooking has already been done by the time Iroha is summoned to the kitchen to help out with utensils and plates. It’s crowded in there, do they really need five people just for omurice?
The answer, Iroha will never know. She just knows that she’s bumped shoulders with Kaguya approximately three separate times, to the point it’s starting to feel deliberate. All Kaguya does is smile at her, cheeky, multitasking between looking like the literal sun and cradling too many glasswares in her arms.
Kaguya starts distributing beverage glasses next to the plates, and her method of distribution is: sliding them across the table with reckless abandon until one of them skitters dangerously close to the edge, caught by grandma with lightning-fast reflexes and a horrified look on her face.
So much for trying to impress them.
The omurice, however, is delicious.
Her grandma finishes them under ten minutes, and quite frankly Iroha doesn’t know how she managed that with half her teeth already gone. Makima and Mikado nod together in approval, giving Kaguya a thumbs up, who just sends another one of her signature grins their way.
Her mother, on the other hand, just eats in silence.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’d like to hear the story,” Her grandma’s voice comes out loud and strong, eyes in contented crescents and lips curved upwards. She looks happy, relieved even, that Iroha’s here with them. With Kaguya.
If she finds out that this is all a lie, she might actually keel over on the spot and die. And if anyone’s going straight to hell then it’s Iroha. Kaguya’s coming with her too, by association.
Suddenly, Iroha and Kaguya are smack dab in the middle of the room, the center of everyone’s attention.
“They’re the newly weds,” Iroha points at where her brother and his fiancé are sitting. “Ask them.”
“Yeah but we’ve heard their story a bajillion times,” Her grandma rolls her eyes.
Iroha blinks. Kaguya stops eating.
“Your story,” Iroha’s brother, her blood-related brother, that good for nothing ogre-looking man, is repeating after their grandma. He’s looking far too interested for Iroha’s liking. “Let’s hear it.”
Things are starting to get really messy, really fast.
“We met in university, that’s it,” Iroha tries to shoot the question down with a brusque answer. She manages a faint smile though, even when her mother is looking pointedly at her.
“You’re a shit storyteller,” Mikado comments. Iroha glares daggers at him to tell him to shut the fuck up now or else, but is beat to it when Makima digs into his arm, a reprimand.
“You asked for the story and that’s the story. Suck it up, unc,” Iroha shoots back.
Before her brother can come up with any kind of insult that will surely result in a WWE match breaking out on the dining table, her grandma interrupts by waving her spoon in the air.
“We wanna hear the real thing,” she says. “Like how you guys met, all that sappy young love that makes me miss your dead grandpa.”
The problem here is that there’s no real thing. How did Iroha not think about this beforehand? About their story, about this whole escapade, about—
To her surprise, it’s Kaguya who answers the question, but not before her hand finds purchase on Iroha’s, bringing them onto the table for the world to see.
It’s a little awkward at first, holding hands like this in front of her family, until Kaguya slides her fingers through the spaces between Iroha’s and suddenly the awkwardness dissolves into something far less nerve wracking and far steadier.
“We went to the same high school,” Kaguya begins, leaning back in the chair. “Never talked to each other much back then, which is a real shame, but I’ve always thought she was very pretty. I never worked up the courage to approach her, though.”
It’s not obvious under the yellow lights but being this close to Kaguya, Iroha can see the feathered pink dusting her cheeks. A blush.
Kaguya is looking at her, but Iroha doesn’t trust herself enough to speak, knowing that her words will come out either choked or completely garbled.
“Then we met again in first year of university, at the cafe across the engineering building, where she was having a crisis,” Kaguya follows through with a short chuckle, this part sounding familiar. Oh yeah, that was when Iroha and Roka were trying to come up with a scheme to worm their way into this wedding without any casualties.
Kaguya’s grip tightens vice-like around Iroha’s hand as she continues, “It was just a math tutorial she was having a hard time with and I happened to be nearby enough that she recognized me. She offered to buy me coffee if I helped her, and so we did that every week for the whole semester. The rest is history.”
She tells the story without a single tinge of stuttering and Iroha is convinced that Kaguya isn’t in political science, that she has to be in theatre to pull off lying like this so flawlessly.
Cast her in The Odyssey right this instance.
“Sometimes you get a second chance—” And then Kaguya smiles at her, not her usual with teeth and wrinkles between her eyes. But a soft one, tender, like clouds in the cerulean sky. “—And you take it no matter what.”
Iroha’s heart drops to the ground. The breath she just sucked in burns through the lines of her trachea, rendering her into a heap of nervous distress because she’s never seen an expression so genuine, so real.
From across the table, everyone is staring at them. Her grandma and her mom are mostly stunned by the bold and borderline emotional confession. Meanwhile, Mikado looks only momentarily touched before he’s pretending to vomit into his food, earning a glare from both their mom and Makima—babe, please behave.
Iroha is pretty sure her hand is now covered in sweat and it’s gross, really, but Kaguya doesn’t pull away. Just draws tiny circles on the back of her palm, sending tingles crawling underneath her skin.
Instead she finds herself returning the gesture, fingers automatically curling into Kaguya’s like letting go is not an option. On the forefront of her mind she’s thinking about how constipated she probably looks, eyes looking everywhere but Kaguya and conveniently tuning out noises from around her when someone says, “That was nice, really nice. True love right there.”
The night doesn’t end there, unfortunately.
Mikado had been put on dishwashing duty because he’s the only one who didn’t contribute to dinner. Makima has not an ounce of pity for him, forgoing helping her fiancé to instead drag Iroha and Kaguya into her room to check out their wedding photos.
Iroha is still reeling from the story earlier, but Kaguya doesn’t seem at all affected by it, which, Iroha thinks, is a good thing that at least one of them has got their shit together.
“Where’s grandma?” Her mom pokes her head through the door, finding three grown women sprawled out on the bed squinting down at a photo album. “She’s supposed to take Kaguya’s measurements for her dress today.”
“I think she’s in the backyard feeding the cat,” Makima supplies.
Iroha’s mom leaves without another word.
“You have a cat?” This, Kaguya directs to Iroha, a hint of surprise across her face.
“It’s our family cat,” Iroha simply shrugs. “I was going to name him Toast but I lost the coin toss to Mikado.”
“What’d he name him, then?”
“Dexter Morgan.”
“What the fuck,” Kaguya’s face twists into one of distaste, now looking at Makima. “Do not let him name your children, please.”
Later, her grandma catches them both by the wrist before they head upstairs to call it a day. She stacks their hands on top of each other within her wrinkly palms, rubbing soothing strokes and smiling widely at them, the kind that’s warm enough to thaw the Alps in seconds.
“It’s so nice seeing you both together,” she gushes. “Iroha, I know your mom may not seem like it but just know that she’s happy for you, too.”
Iroha hopes that that’s the end of the conversation because she physically cannot handle two more seconds of having Kaguya’s hand on top of hers while her grandmother is talking about her mom being happy for her. It’s rarer than the blue moon, and Iroha wishes she could hear it directly from her mom instead.
She smiles back, Kaguya smiles, and grandma smiles wider. At this very moment, Iroha realizes she has definitely lost her place in heaven.
The bed situation resolves itself without much ceremony.
Kaguya insists, gently but firmly, that she doesn’t want to impose, that Iroha’s family is already enough of a circus without adding another complication. That this is only supposed to be pretend, so she should sleep on the floor and Iroha the bed.
It makes perfect sense. It also makes Iroha feel like absolute shit.
Because Kaguya shouldn’t have to be the one that has to factor Iroha’s comfort into every decision like she isn’t the victim dragged into a melodramatic soap opera, acting like Iroha is the one being inconvenienced when this entire mess exists solely because of Iroha’s terrible life choices.
The guilt settles acidic on her chest, the kind that makes it easier to give in than argue but not after fifteen consecutive minutes of going back and forth with each other.
They compromise in the laziest way possible—rock, paper, scissors—because it feels less personal that way. Fate can take the blame.
Fate, apparently, hates Kaguya. Or Iroha, depending on the perspective.
They’d somehow managed to sneak a futon from a nearby closet unnoticed. Kaguya accepts her loss with exaggerated grace, joking about how she’s survived worse, and Iroha pretends not to notice the bile rising up her throat, thinking about how unfair it is that Kaguya ended up down there at all.
In the morning, Iroha is woken up by a booming noise of what she can only assume to be a heavy object being dropped on the floor coming from downstairs, followed by Mikado’s high-pitched shriek, and something very warm pressing into her torso.
In her groggy state of mind, she cracks one eye open just enough to register that the warmth is, unfortunately, a person. Golden hair spills messily across her field of vision, bedhead in its most aggressive form, as Kaguya attempts to fit herself into the narrow spaces between Iroha’s ribs.
“What are you—” Iroha slurs, her tongue uncooperative and voice thick with sleep. From her peripherals, she notices that the futon on the floor is nowhere to be seen.
Either it grew legs, or Kaguya ate it. Both feel equally plausible right now.
“Keep it down, she’ll hear us,” Kaguya says in a low hush, voice just as wrecked as if she was woken up against her will. “Can you move.”
A very detailed explanation of how their whispers could never outdo the disaster happening downstairs is sitting right on the tip of Iroha’s tongue, but the fact that Kaguya is showing no respect whatsoever regarding her personal space is enough to twist her tongue into a knot where words die on it.
There isn’t much space to move either. Impressive, because this is a full-sized bed. Iroha has this habit of sleeping on one side of the bed and leaving the unoccupied side lined with extra pillows and stuffed toys, a habit she’s developed since childhood when she believed they would protect her from possible evil ghosts.
Based on the available space, the full-sized bed has been downgraded to a twin.
“Iroha, move—” This, Kaguya actually hisses, wiggling her way into the bed and her knee digging into Iroha’s hip bone.
It’s awkward for two grown women to maneuver into such a tight space, and as Iroha scooches over, pillows begin to topple off the bed like dominos, followed by several stuffed animals, including her favourite red octopus! Whatever is happening makes no sense, but Kaguya looks panicked enough that Iroha decides the octopus is a worthy sacrifice.
She’ll apologize to him later. Her attention is otherwise occupied by the fact that Kaguya, lacking better options, ends up straddling her as a compromise, hovering just inches away, their noses nearly brushing.
“Kaguya,” Iroha manages just above the audible level, tightening her grip on the sheets next to Kaguya’s knees as she tries to adjust them into a more comfortable and less suffocating position. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Kaguya shushes her. “Someone’s coming—”
Which isn’t very helpful at all, really.
This isn’t the first time that Iroha has woken up to find herself in a rather compromising position with someone else. She and Roka had been found on the floor once, after a drunken night out, with legs tangled, hair stuck in mouths and Mami’s phone camera in their face.
Those were accidents. This, whatever this is, is intentional, orchestrated by the one and only Kaguya who has made some pretty questionable choices so far. The instant Iroha’s hands slide up to steady her by the waist, the bedroom door flies open to reveal her mom with an annoyed frown between her eyes.
“Iroha, it’s time to get up. Noi and Rai are already—” Her mom freezes, blinks, jaw hanging slightly ajar and Iroha would find it hilarious in any situation other than this. She knows how this looks—pillows scattered on the floor, Kaguya literally on top of her, their hair messy.
Let Iroha die now, she’s ready.
Her mom closes her mouth and clears her throat. “Noi and Rai are downstairs. Come down when you finish your business.”
Then she retreats.
God forbid asian parents ever learn how to knock before invading their children’s privacy because how is Iroha supposed to ever look her mom in the eye again after this extremely embarrassing display?
She’s too caught up in this predicament to realize that Kaguya is still on top of her, one hand absentmindedly scratching the back of her neck accompanied by a sheepish, almost apologetic crinkle in the corner of her eyes.
“Oops.”
“I’m breaking up with you,” Iroha grumbles, throwing an arm over her face, skin growing hot by the second. All of a sudden, she’s hyperaware of Kaguya’s weight on her, the way she’s staring down at Iroha with a hint of red painting her cheeks, face falling slightly.
Something starts jackhammering against Iroha’s ribcage, the same feeling as last night when Kaguya had smiled at her after lying through her teeth, and Iroha doesn’t quite understand. It must’ve been from the adrenaline, the embarrassment of having her mom see what she wasn’t supposed to.
There’s no other explanation for it.
“Sorry,” Kaguya says, diverting her eyes away from Iroha to stare at a pillow dangling off the edge of the bed. “I just—I heard your mom coming upstairs and I didn’t want her to see that we slept separately. That would’ve raised questions, no?”
Yes, it would’ve and Iroha is dumb as fuck for risking their whole act just to draw a boundary that supposed couples shouldn’t have. Roka is right, she is an idiot.
“You’re right, don’t apologize. It’s my fault for dragging you into this,” Iroha sits up, sighs, and makes to run her fingers through her greasy hair. There is only one way to fix this. “We’ll share the bed from tonight onwards. Honestly, I don’t know why we even decided to sleep separately in the first place knowing my mom could walk in on us at any given moment.”
Kaguya’s face lights up at this, “You sure about that? I’m a big cuddler.”
“I can see that,” Iroha nods, looking down to find that Kaguya is very much still attached to her lap without an inkling of intention to move away. After a few seconds of silence, Iroha's words seem to have registered and Kaguya jolts herself out of position, scrambling to stand on both feet.
Iroha doesn’t comment on the redness of her face, just finds herself hating the loss of contact and warmth when Kaguya stands. And Iroha must have gone completely insane because she thinks Kaguya looks cute like this, flustered and panicked and muttering another apology in between.
Fuck, Iroha really needs to get her shit together.
When she hops off the bed, she sees the futon hastily kicked under the bed in an attempt to hide it. They won’t need it anymore, it can stay there.
They get dressed in a fog of mutual silence.
Iroha keeps her back turned longer than necessary, pretending to be deeply invested in locating a clean hoodie while very intentionally not thinking about how Kaguya had looked at her with those eyes, or how easily her body had adjusted to Kaguya’s warmth like it belonged there.
Downstairs, something crashes again. Mikado yells, and someone—probably Noi—laughs like this is entertainment.
“What is going on downstairs?” Kaguya asks mildly.
“Animals,” Iroha replies, finally mustering up enough fight to turn around. “I haven’t told you this, but I’m playing for Mikado’s band with his friends at the reception. They rented out a studio for practice today.”
There’s a very brief moment where she considers not saying anything else, where she lets the sentence end there and pretends she doesn’t care whether Kaguya comes along or not.
Instead, she clears her throat.
“You don’t have to come,” she adds, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “It’s probably boring if you’re not into that. We’re just loud, and bad at staying on topic. But if you really want, you can come with—”
“I’d love to,” Kaguya says before Iroha can even finish her sentence, like this was never a question.
The words land softer than Iroha expects. No hesitation, straight up yes.
“Oh,” Iroha says stupidly.
Kaguya laughs. “Is that okay?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course,” she stumbles, a little too quickly. “I just—yeah.”
It’s that grin again, the one like Kaguya’s got the sun in her palms, and Iroha feels herself burn from head to toe. That weird, unfamiliar tug in her chest, the kind that doesn’t hurt, just lingers.
Iroha ignores it.
Obviously.
Iroha would really like to know where Mikado got his hands on all this gear. The Roland Juno-60 itself cost around four grand, and Mikado isn’t the type of person to spend that much money on one singular thing no matter the occasion, let alone an instrument he doesn’t even play.
For a brief, shining moment, Iroha seriously entertains the idea that he robbed Long & McQuade.
That theory dies quickly when Mikado announces that they’ll only be playing one song—About You, and that The Real Band who owns these instruments will take over for the night once they are done, assuming nothing catastrophically implodes before then. Which, judging from how things are currently looking, is highly unlikely.
“Wait, pause for a sec,” Mikado says into the mic, cutting the sound and swiveling around to point an accusing finger at Noi. “You’re rushing.”
“I was trying to match your pace, bro,” Noi scoffs. “You’re playing like your dick’s on fire.”
“You need a metronome,” Mikado clips back.
“You need a lesson on counts,” Noi scowls at him.
“Your wedding invitation has just been revoked,” Mikado says, making a grand gesture towards the exit for dramatic emphasis. “Go home!”
This should’ve been easy—Iroha on the synthesizer, Noi on the bass, Rai on the drums, Mikado on the guitar and the vocals, and a straightforward song in D major. But no, because this is Mikado and his friends she’s talking about. It’s like locking Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Marco Pierre White in the same kitchen and expecting the house to still be standing afterward.
Iroha’s experienced this enough times throughout the years to not bat an eye anymore, just tweaking with the knobs and volumes of the synthesizer hoping they’ll eventually realize this childish bickering isn’t going to get them anywhere.
Kaguya watches the crime scene unfolding in front of her with increasing concern, looking over at Iroha and mouthing we should call 911, to which Iroha responds with a fond snicker and a wait it out.
“Both of you need to shut the fuck up and lock in. Especially you, Mikado,” Rai, sweet, sweet Rai who is always the neutralizer and the only one blessed with saintly patience, intervenes. “Unless you want Makima to run off with someone who can actually differentiate between a fourth and an eighth.”
“Christ,” Mikado huffs, pulling over a chair by the door to sit down so he can focus on the music sheet displayed on his iPad. “Okay, time out. I just need to nail the timing on this section.”
“Need help?” Noi just loves being annoying. They flip each other off.
They regroup, count in, and try again.
The opening synth line settles in nicely. Rai locks into the groove, Noi follows, and for a miraculously fleeting minute, they sound like an actual band instead of a group project put together by a professor who takes pride in failing his students.
Then they hit the bridge.
“We need a female vocalist here,” Mikado says, looking directly at Iroha.
Nothing else needs to be said out loud for the implication to stand loud and clear.
“Fuck no,” Iroha doesn’t hesitate. The word leaves her mouth solid and immediate, keeping her eyes on the keys in hopes that refusing to look at him might make the suggestion dissolve on its own.
Her brother rolls her eyes, expecting this feral hostility from his feral sister. “Nobody here sounds remotely similar to Carly Holt except you.”
“That’s insane,” she says, finally glancing over. “I don’t sound like her, I just play the piano.”
“That’s not mutually exclusive,” Noi adds helpfully. Iroha shoots him a pointed glare.
“I can’t sing for shit,” she argues again, louder now, flattening her tone the way she does when trying to kill a conversation before it grows tiny legs capable of running off and never to be found again. She looks at Mikado when she says this, “And you know this.”
“You talk in tune,” Mikado quips. “That’s basically singing.”
Iroha shakes her head. “It's not.”
“It literally is.”
Things devolve quickly. Mikado insisting, Noi instigating, Rai drumming his sticks violently to channel his growing irritation, and Iroha threatening to tell Makima about this whole thing, which is supposed to be a surprise carefully constructed by Mikado. She turns a knob she’s already turned twice, mostly to give her hands something to do while she waits for the universe to get involved.
It does.
“I can do it.”
The room pauses, everyone looking over.
Kaguya, who has been quietly existing this entire time like a normal person, lifts a hand slightly, expression calm and entirely too reasonable for this poorly put together operation.
“I can sing the bridge,” she says. “If you want.”
Mikado’s face lights up. On the side, Rai looks relieved. He asks, “You can?”
“Probably. I know the lyrics.”
Of course she does. Of course this is happening.
Mikado claps his hands once. “Problem solved. From the top.”
The start again.
Iroha counts them in out of habit, fingers settling into place, muscle memory taking over even as her brain stays snagged on the fact that Kaguya is standing near a mic like this is a thing she does. She tells herself she has heard people sing before, objectively better-trained people.
None of them have ever sounded like that.
Kaguya’s voice comes in soft, just a touch behind the beat, like she’s testing the water before stepping fully in. There’s a slight tremble to it, not the bad kind exactly, more like the sound of someone being careful with something fragile. Her timbre isn’t perfect, either, but that’s okay, it’s warm and human and very much there.
Iroha misses the B minor chord.
She recovers immaculately, effort from almost ten years of piano lessons. But her attention keeps slipping sideways to the way Kaguya leans into the mic without realizing it, how her shoulders relax halfway through the line and exhales between phrases like she’s surprised she’s still being allowed to continue.
Halfway through the bridge, Kaguya glances over at her. It’s quick, shy, a flicker of her eyes finding Iroha’s.
Am I ruining your song?
Iroha doesn’t remember shaking her head, but she must have, because Kaguya smiles small and crooked, trying not to make a big deal out of it. And something in her voice steadies.
This time, Iroha forgets to breathe, which is fucking ridiculous. Objectively, Kaguya isn’t doing anything flashy—no belts, no vibrato or showing off of any kind. She’s singing like someone who sings because the melody fits comfortably in her chest and she’s letting it sit there.
And that’s somehow ten times worse.
By the time they reach the end of the verse, Iroha is playing on autopilot, lungs doing something deeply unhelpful behind her ribs. She becomes painfully conscious of the fact that this voice is attached to the person who ate breakfast with her and crawled into her bed like it was the most natural thing in the world.
When the song stumbles to a stop, because of course Mikado messes up the final transition, Noi whoops, Rai groans, and Mikado starts talking all at once.
Iroha doesn’t hear any of it, though. She’s still looking at Kaguya, who has her attention on the boys, embracing their overly positive feedback with arms wide open and too many high-fives.
“Kaguya’s amazing,” comes Mikado’s voice, Iroha being so much in a daze she doesn’t realize a hand brandishing in front of her. “I know you’re starstruck and everything but we’re going again."
Leave Mikado to say the most outrageous things, rendering Iroha either speechless or exasperated his field of expertise. She clears her throat, notices Kaguya is giving her a thumbs up and a big, blinding smile, Iroha barely able to resist the itch to pinch her in the cheek, saying good job.
“Shut up,” she says to her brother instead.
When practice is over, Kaguya drags her by the wrist towards the general direction of the exit, expression urgent and excited when she says, “Hurry up, before Rai makes us carry all the stuff back to the van.”
Iroha asks incredulously. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know, I just want to walk around town with you,” Kaguya answers with a flourish to her voice, hand now sliding down to slot themselves into the empty spaces of Iroha’s fingers.
They are out and about within the bustling streets of Canmore, their hands remaining intertwined and Iroha wants to say there’s no family member around so they don’t need to pretend anymore, but something lodges in her throat preventing words from being said.
Iroha finds that she doesn’t mind this. She doesn’t mind at all.
Bless her grandma for pouring blood, sweat, and her soul into caring for this gigantic apple tree grown in the backyard, the only sanctuary providing shade underneath what feels like a thousand suns beating down on them.
It’s either this or the havoc in the house.
Mikado has been granted permission to make lunch for everyone, and last time Iroha put something he cooked in her mouth, she spent thirty straight hours contemplating her mortality. It is safe to assume that she was poisoned, or that every ingredient he used was expired. Either way, just why they would ever let him set foot in the kitchen is beyond Iroha.
Makima had sworn to the devils beneath them that she would make sure the food is at least halfway edible, but Iroha can only imagine the challenge with Noi and Rai as Mikado’s sous chefs.
Iroha doesn’t want any part in that, so here they are instead.
The grass is warm beneath her palms, Kaguya’s thigh pressed against hers even warmer. Iroha doesn’t know why Kaguya chooses to superglue herself next to her when they have the whole backyard to themselves. She doesn’t ask either, merely accepting the fact that Kaguya is physically affectionate by nature.
Kaguya rolls a fallen apple between her palms.
“This tree is crazy,” she observes. “Do you think these are edible or are they the decorative kind?”
“They’re edible,” Iroha confirms. “But they’re sour. Like, enough to melt your enamel.”
She takes a bite anyway, then promptly spits it out, littering her grandma’s perfect backyard and face twisting in an overdramatic wince. Iroha gives her exactly eight seconds to recollect herself before snorting and calling her an idiot.
The unfinished apple is tossed and rolled to the side. Dexter Morgan jumps off the deck to chase after it, stumbling heavily on the uneven lawn until he eventually trips and rolls over along with the fruit.
“I want to know,” Kaguya says, casual but not careless. “How did Mikado and Makima meet?”
It’s hard to recall now. They’ve been together for seven years, so their story is ancient and Iroha wasn’t born with exceptional memories.
“They met at a gig, I think? It was a long time ago, when he was still in university,” Iroha squints up at the leaves, sunlight flickering between them. “Mikado was playing this horrific set—like, genuinely unlistenable—and Makima told him off.”
Kaguya laughs, a twinkling sound in the wind. “Romantic.”
“He fell in love right there,” Iroha deadpans. “She said she admired his confidence, I think she meant his delusion.”
“And that worked?”
“Unfortunately,” she shakes her head. “They’ve been disgusting ever since.”
Kaguya hums, thoughtful. “Guess it helps when you have a real story.”
The words are light, but they land anyway, stretching the air around them into a beat of quiet and allowing room for Iroha to start thinking about their story—the one Kaguya spun so effortlessly at dinner everyone had swallowed it whole without a shred of doubt, the way it still echoes in her chest when she’s not even trying to think about it.
Iroha doesn’t look at her when she lets out a soft, barely audible, “Yeah.”
“Still,” A nudge in her shoulder, Kaguya’s knuckle digging lightly through the fabric of her shirt. “I think we’re putting on a real good show.”
“You think so?”
“Mhm,” Kaguya nods eagerly, unapologetic. “Your brother told me at band practice, I’ll quote: take care of my little shit sister for me. Pretty sure that qualifies me as an elite-tier fake girlfriend.”
Iroha rolls her eyes so hard she’s afraid she’ll roll them to the back of her brain. “Yeah yeah, get off the high horse.”
Kaguya laughs aloud into the hot afternoon air and Iroha can feel the telltale fire creep up on the tip of her ears from the embarrassment, and probably from the heat. Most probably from the heat.
She doesn’t get Kaguya, not really. The way her mind works, tossing things out casually without realizing the effect they have on people. People like Iroha, who can brute-force her way through Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 but cannot, for the life of her, decode the enigma sitting beside her.
Everything about Kaguya is a mystery.
So Iroha decides the only reasonable solution is to stop trying. Screwing her eyes shut, she focuses on the rustle of leaves overhead, the distant chirp of birds, anything but the sound of Kaguya’s breathing next to her.
But Kaguya is stubborn and has never respected anyone’s coping mechanisms, or when to stop coming up with methods that send Iroha’s poor, poor heart into tachycardia.
“Hey,” Kaguya calls, and there’s something off about her voice that makes Iroha look back at her. Front on, eyes squinted, and eyebrows furrowed from the sunlight. “Don’t turn around, but your mom’s looking at us.”
At that, Iroha’s muscles tense up and her first instinct is to do precisely that—whip her head around, confirm it, brace for impact—but stops herself just in time. Instead, she shifts to face Kaguya completely, shielding her face from giving herself away to her mother’s piercing gaze.
“How bad?” She asks, keeping her gaze fixed on Kaguya’s silky blonde hair fluttering along with the breeze.
“Not bad,” Kaguya flicks her gaze to the glass window by the deck, where her mom is likely standing. “Just observing? I can never tell what she’s thinking.”
Her fingers curl into the grass and she feels ridiculous, suddenly conscious of her own body, her posture, the way she’s angled towards Kaguya. Is this how couples sit together? Do they sit closer? Hands all over each other? Maybe she should—
“We should keep the show running,” Kaguya says quietly, eyes now on Iroha. If Iroha thinks there was something off about her before, the confirmation comes now. Kaguya's expression carries a wave of intensity never seen before, softness melting away to sharp edges akin to doubt. Or perhaps something more suggestive.
She is closer than Iroha remembers, close enough that the space between them feels theoretical at best. This proximity allows Iroha to follow the sunlight filtering through the apples overhead and breaking across Kaguya’s face in uneven patches, catching in her lashes and warming the bridge of her nose. She looks unreal in the way things do when Iroha stares at them for too long, her brain not quite able to decide whether to catalog reason or abandon sanity.
The sun is to blame for this, because Iroha’s gaze drifts without permission, slipping from Kaguya’s eyes, down the curve of her cheek, to her mouth.
And that’s the biggest mistake she’s ever made.
Her lips are parted just slightly like she’s mid-thought or mid-breath, and Iroha becomes excruciatingly aware of how close she is to finding out what that softness really feels like. The idea hits her so hard her body reacts faster than her pride can stop it, breath stuttering and nails digging further into the grass like it might anchor her to the ground.
This is bad, her brain thinks. This is necessary, her chest breathes.
“We should,” she says, and she’s affirmative her words came out as a pitiful squeak.
Fuck.
The world narrows to the heat pressed along Iroha’s side, to the faint scent of soap and summer clinging to Kaguya’s clothes. Kaguya is watching her now, can feel it in the way the air is suddenly charged with something deadly thick that Iroha is having a hard time breathing with Kaguya’s face being only inches apart and stealing all the oxygen away from her.
Heavy realisation clicks into place—Kaguya isn’t pulling away.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. The urge to lean in and kiss Kaguya silly burns lustrous where it sits just below Iroha’s ribcage and in her fingertips, so absurdly unorthodox and every bit dangerous to act upon pent up urges now.
Iroha swallows thickly and wonders what the hell she’s even doing, why she’s digging her own grave even deeper than it has ever been, but she suppresses the obscurity to the back of her jello brain to lean in and press a feather-light kiss to the center of Kaguya’s lips, the tip of their nose bumping slightly.
The kiss is nothing more than just two mouths resting on each other, the touch so light she can barely register it. But then Kaguya tilts her head, and all sense of coherency leaves Iroha’s body to give way to an inferno lighting up her flesh, goosebumps tingling every inch of skin.
Kaguya kisses her like she’s been thirsting for this kind of intimacy and only just remembered that it’s right in front of her. It’s still gentle, restrained, but there’s intention now. A slow deepening that makes Iroha’s knees feel untrustworthy. Kaguya’s mouth moves against hers with careful confidence and Iroha reaches up to brush her fingers along the pale jawline.
She isn’t even sure if her mom is looking their way anymore, and yet here she is, giving in and pressing exhaustingly closer until it’s possible to distinguish whose hands are whose. Iroha sighs into the kiss without realizing she hasn’t been breathing, and the sound slips between them undone.
The heat builds and every small thing becomes unbearable. The faint hitch in Kaguya’s breath, the curve of her lips molding perfectly against Iroha’s, the barely-there brush of fingers at Iroha’s knuckles.
Kaguya tastes like sour candy and fresh wood and Iroha’s whole world tilts.
No more thoughts, just sensation and pressure and the dizzying discernment that Iroha doesn’t want to stop, that she wants to be able to kiss Kaguya whenever the hunger arises. It’s electrifying, swallowing Kaguya’s breaths like this and licking her desire away, as addictive as drugs.
“Oi, lovebirds! Lunch is ready.”
The kiss breaks abruptly at the echo of Mikado’s voice coming from the deck. Iroha’s head snaps to her brother, her face so hot that ketchup might as well start dripping off of her skin. When she glances back at Kaguya, her eyes are wide, lips red and swollen and it’s taking every living cell in Iroha to not pull her into another kiss and sink her teeth in, never let go.
But her brother is looking out at them, and she fears this might’ve been too much. There’s a line they shouldn’t cross, but it feels like they are careening wildly towards the edge with how Kaguya is staring at her with equal desire alight.
Later. She will deal with this later.
After lunch, or preferably never.
Shoving jumbled thoughts to the deepest crannies of her mind, Iroha groans out loud at Mikado’s fantastic timing, whispering to Kaguya a shaky let’s go. They stand up at the same time, shoulders brushing and Iroha wonders if she should take Kaguya’s hand while they saunter across the backyard back into the house, though she doesn’t think it’s ideal for her chest which is still thumping hard. So she doesn’t.
“Get a room,” Mikado says to her when they get close enough, Kaguya already walking ahead when her mom motions for her to go help out. This is the optimal time to elbow Mikado in the stomach, tell him to shut his goddamn mouth, but Iroha’s energy reserve has just been thoroughly drained by the ghost of Kaguya’s lips on hers.
“Can you go away please,” is all she says instead. It’s not so much of a demand as it is a weak attempt at shoving him away, her state of being too hazy to bother wrestling with him.
Mikado, ever so perceptive, notices right away. He reaches out a hand to ruffle Iroha in the hair, and this is one of the few moments in her life that she doesn’t swat him away.
“I’m just glad,” he mentions, pauses and flashes Iroha a genuine smile. “You seem a lot happier with Kaguya.”
The simmering tension shatters.
She thinks Mikado might just be right.