Sunset ^beta

Yukari had it all planned out.

Akira's grandmother and sister left the cultural festival shortly before closing, as did the younger girls from the patisserie, but Yukari and Akira had to stay until the end to help clean. Well, Akira cleaned, anyhow; Yukari's contribution was to gather up the leftover cookies from the home ec event and pass them around to keep morale high. Once she was done with that, she found Akira carrying one of the tables that had been set out in the tea party area, and tailed her back to the school cafeteria. When Akira set the table down and then took a moment to lean against it and catch her breath, Yukari snuck up behind her and started rubbing her shoulders.

"Hello, Yukari," Akira said without turning around.

"Hello," Yukari answered. The surface layer of muscle tension melted away beneath her capable fingers, but still there was that one stubborn knot just at the base of Akira's neck. Today I am finally going to defeat you, she thought as it slipped about beneath Akira's skin, defiantly evading Yukari's attempts to subdue it.

"That feels good," said Akira, sighing contentedly.

"I know," said Yukari. "You should come home with me this evening, and I can make you feel even better."

Akira whirled around so quickly she nearly knocked the table over and ruined all of her hard work. "W-what?"

"My house has an excellent bath," Yukari told her. "And I have some bath salts I want you to try." There was a specific extra-innocent smile she had meant to put on at this point, but it would have involved closing her eyes, which she refused to do when Akira was wearing such an adorable expression herself. "If you thought I meant something else, I might not mind doing that too, but you're going to have to ask with your words."

"Should we really be discussing this here?" Akira asked.

"Absolutely not," Yukari said. "We should be discussing it at my place." Akira had shaken off her touch when she'd turned to face her, so Yukari reestablished it by taking hold of her hands.

"My grandmother..."

"She's accompanying Miku back to the hospital, isn't she? If you head home now, you'll be in an empty house for most of the evening. That would be too sad."

"Well, maybe..." Akira looked around at the disorder in the cafeteria. "I hadn't really been planning on heading home now, though. I could probably keep busy for another couple hours at least." She could be infuriating sometimes. This was exactly why Yukari had been so hesitant to love her.

It was also why, in the end, she hadn't been able to stop herself.

"Akira, did you notice that my grandmother wasn't here at all today?" Yukari asked.

"Ah!" From the abashed look on her face, it was obvious that Akira hadn't noticed. "I'm sorry! I wasn't paying attention. Is she all right?"

"She's fine," said Yukari. "Just away."

"Yukari..." Akira squeezed Yukari's hands, then released them to slide her own hands up Yukari's arms and grasp her by the shoulders. "I understand. Don't worry, Yukari. I won't let you be alone tonight."

"Thank you." Yukari's thoughts dissolved into the pleasant dizziness that sometimes overcame her when Akira held her so tightly. She felt as though if Akira lifted her hands just a little, her feet might float right off the ground as her body moved to follow the touch. She found herself slowly leaning forward as though drawn by a magnetic force.

The spell was broken by the trilling voice of a first-year. "Akira-sama! We're having trouble lifting the— Oh! Sorry! I'm interrupting something, aren't I?"

Yukari made sure she was smiling again when she turned to face the younger girl. "Not at all!" she said, and thought, Because I won't let you. "I was just feeling a little bit faint, so Akira is going to walk me home."

"That's right!" Akira agreed readily, and Yukari's smile dropped into a slight gape of surprise for just a fraction of a second before she was able to smooth it out. She had expected Akira to protest, or at least to falter a little before going along with the fib. "I'm sorry to leave so suddenly, but I know that the rest of you can manage things from here. Do your best!"

Then she linked arms with Yukari, and Yukari leaned against her shoulder, and the two of the them walked right past the flustered underclassman on their way out the door.

"R-right!" the poor girl managed to call after them, apparently regaining her voice once their backs were turned to her. "We won't let you down, my prince!"

She's my prince, Yukari thought, but the thought was toothless and docile. It floated harmlessly in the clouds around her head. Akira held her close enough to make everything else feel distant.

When they got home, Yukari led Akira directly to the bathroom, showed her where the towels were kept in the changing area, and then undressed herself.

"Wait, are we going to be bathing together?" Akira asked. She was blushing and very determinedly not looking at Yukari, but her voice remained admirably steady.

"I wouldn't mind that," said Yukari. "But at the very least, I thought I would draw the bath while you rinsed yourself down, and then I could rinse down while you bathed." After folding her clothes and setting them aside, she reached in front of Akira to grab a towel, which she immediately put up around her hair rather than using it to cover herself. "You can look if you want to, you know. It's okay because we're both girls."

"That isn't funny, Yukari," Akira said for some reason. She did look, though, and kept on looking as she peeled off her own clothes and wrapped her own towel around her head. Yukari looked back, and found herself feeling dizzy again. At this rate, and with the steam from the upcoming bath factored in, she almost thought she might end up fainting for real. That would be amusing.

They moved on to the bathing area, which Yukari knew was quite impressive to most people. The sunken tub went deep enough that, once filled to the top, the water would come up to her waist if she stood at the center, and nearly up to her chin if she sat on the bench along the side. Akira barely even looked at it, though. Her eyes seemed to be stuck on Yukari's body. It was all very strange, but not in a bad way. Finally, Akira turned away to go sit on the shower stool and rinse herself, and Yukari was so caught up in her wake that she almost followed her there before remembering that she was supposed to be drawing the bath.

Yukari turned the tap on and let the water run until it was hot before closing the drain. She sifted a generous scoop of her favorite bath salt into the tub as it filled, turning the liquid pale purple with a head of pearlescent, floral-scented foam. The steam that wafted up from the basin carried the fragrance with it as it spread throughout the room.

 "So that's why you always smell like flowers," Akira noted. When Yukari looked up, she could see the ridges of the other girl's spine, the outer curves of her bare breasts, the way the drops of water from the shower head clung to her skin until they grew too heavy and then slid in shimmying streaks down the lines of her body. "Violets, right? But not just violets. There's something else in there."

"Violets and blue pea blossoms," Yukari confirmed. "Such a bright, sweet scent. It doesn't suit me at all, but I don't dislike it."

"I think it suits you just fine," Akira said. She stood up from the stool and approached the tub. Yukari stood up from where she had knelt above the tub and went to take Akira's place on the stool. As they passed each other, Yukari felt herself drawn in once again by Akira's magnetic pull. Maybe Akira felt something similar, because she let her hand drift just enough to brush lightly over Yukari's hip, sending a shiver to Yukari's core in spite of the warmth of the room.

Yukari sat down to her own shower. She heard Akira plunk into the tub behind her, followed by her musing,  "Now I'm surrounded by your scent."

"Mm-hm," Yukari said. "When you're done there, you'll be covered in it yourself."

"How devious of you, Yukari," Akira said. Yukari could hear the smile in her voice. "Was that your plan this whole time?"

"You really think it's that simple? I'm a complicated woman. I have plans within plans." She angled the shower head over her shoulder to rinse her back, wondering whether Akira would watch the water running down her skin. "Besides, like I was saying earlier, I'm not so sure that it's really 'my' scent. It might even suit you better. Though I do like whatever that is you usually wear."

"You mean my deoderant?" Akira sounded amused. "I don't normally use bath salts myself, let alone scented lotions or perfumes."

"I don't care what it is. I just like it. It doesn't smell like chocolate, but it's sweet and a little bit spicy the same way that chocolate is." There was a beat of silence, and Yukari decided to take a slight gamble. "Enjoying the view?"

Akira chuckled. "You caught me. It's like you've got eyes on your back."

So she had succeeded at sounding more confident in her guess than she'd felt about it. Good. "I don't have any such thing. As you can clearly see right now." She finished rinsing, stood, and turned to find Akira looking up at her from the tub, her arms resting on its ledge and her chin resting on her arms. A tuft of foam had somehow found its way into her hair, and she didn't seem to notice. Yukari sauntered over to her, kneeled down, and leaned in close enough to blow the foam away with just a slight puff of breath.

Akira giggled. That was new. And interesting.

Yukari slid into the water. Akira started to shift her position to keep looking at her, but Yukari said, "No, you stay kneeling on the bench there and facing that way. If you could just relax a little more though, and let your arms into the water..."

"Like this?" Akira asked, following instructions perfectly.

"Yes, just like that." Yukari stood behind her and began to massage her submerged shoulders. "There. That's even better than before, isn't it?" Akira hummed in agreement. "Like melting chocolate in a hot water bath. All your muscles get nice and loose, and that means..." She pressed her knuckles into the knot at the base of Akira's neck, and Akira actually moaned a little. "I can do this!" She rolled her hand a bit, as though she were kneading dough, until she felt the knot release.

"Ah!" Akira's back arched and her fingers curled. She tilted her head slowly from side to side, as though experimenting with the range of motion in her neck. "That was amazing! My whole body feels lighter now. Yukari, how did you do that?"

"Magic fingers," said Yukari. Once Akira stopped wriggling, Yukari settled her hands right back down on her shoulders and started rubbing them again — more softly, this time, now that she'd gotten Akira's deep muscle tissue all straightened out.

"I don't think I'm — oh, that feels really nice! — quite as good as you are," Akira said, "but let me know when you want to switch places, all right?"

"Don't bother," Yukari told her. "You just spent the whole cultural festival running around working yourself ragged for everyone else, while I spent it entertaining myself by making everyone run around for me. Now I can take the energy I got from them and give it back to you, so it all balances out in the end."

"That's a good point," said Akira. "But still, I don't want to neglect you."

"I don't feel neglected at all," Yukari assured her. She knew that she would never be the only person Akira wanted to take care of, but maybe she could become the one person Akira let take care of her. That would still make her special. "You're here with me, doing what I want you to do. Just keep humoring me and looking pretty."

"'Pretty'?" Akira asked. "Do you think so?"

"How could you be surprised by that?" She couldn't possibly be oblivious to how gorgeous she was, could she? If anything, Akira was even more popular with girls than Yukari herself. "It's a nice view from up here, looking straight down on you. The bubbles only cover so much."

"I'm glad that you like how I look with my clothes off," Akira said, sounding completely in earnest.

Yukari laughed out loud. She couldn't help herself. That had come out of nowhere. "Oh?"

"That sounded weird, didn't it?" Akira was already flushed from the heat of the bath, but her neck and shoulders managed to get even redder. "I'm serious, though. The way I dress isn't an accident, you know. Most of the time, I don't really mind being mistaken for a boy. But if you saw me as basically the same as a boy, or if you lost interest when I wasn't dressed like that... I think that would make me sad. I love you because you're like me, even if we're also different, and I hope that you see me the same way. Does that make any sense?"

Ah, so that was what she'd meant. It did make Yukari wonder whether anyone else had ever seen Akira this naked and vulnerable before. She didn't much like the thought of that possibility, but if some other girl had been too dim to know what a good thing she'd had and thrown it away, that wasn't Yukari's problem. "You should be more careful, Akira," she teased. "If you tell me your secrets, I'll probably use them against you."

"If you did, I wouldn't mind it," Akira teased back.

"Cute," Yukari said. Then it occurred to her that, since Akira was stealing her phrases, now might be the ideal time to ask about earlier without ruining the playful mood if Akira didn't want to talk about it. "Are you okay?"

"Very, very okay," Akira answered. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"That battle... all that time Elisio had you alone with him, and then when I finally got to you, you could barely stand. Whenever he shows up, something painful happens. I don't much care for it."

"I..." The way that Akira hesitated made Yukari worry that she might have missed the mark on keeping things playful. "I wasn't alone. He had Miku, too."

"Oh." Definitely missed the mark, then. "That's right, she was there. And all those other people." Yukari had been so focused on Akira when she'd burst through the barrier, she'd barely paid any notice to the crowd of festival attendees who'd been passed out at her feet. It was just like her to forget something that important if it didn't affect her.

"He tried to make me choose who to save," Akira confessed. "My sister, or... everyone else."

"And instead of choosing, you did something dangerous," Yukari surmised.

"I guess I did. And that's why I looked like that, when you found me. Sorry for making you worry."

"You say that you're sorry, but you're just going to keep doing it," Yukari said before she could think better of it.

"Probably. Sorry."

"What am I supposed to do if I lose you?"

"Yukari, your fingers are digging in." Akira's voice sounded strained. "It hurts a little."

Yukari's grip went slack, and her hands slid from Akira's skin and fell into the water. "I'm terrible."

"What are you talking about? You're wonderful!" Akira stood and turned to face her. Her gorgeous breasts rose out of the water, still glistening with pearly foam and crystal droplets, and Yukari hated herself even more for focusing on that.

What if it had been me instead of Miku? the angry child inside of her wanted to ask. What if it had been me against Miku? What if there hadn't been another way? I already know the answer, so go ahead and tell me! Go ahead and hurt me, like everyone does sooner or later!

Instead she said, "If I had to choose between a handful of strangers and my most important person, I don't think that would be a hard choice at all."

"I don't blame you," Akira told her. "Honestly, what I did was a gamble. If it hadn't worked... well. I couldn't blame anyone for being unwilling to take that risk."

"That's not the point. I wouldn't be thinking of it in those terms."

"I was barely thinking at all," Akira said. "At a time like that, I doubt that many people would be thinking clearly. But maybe you would be. In that case, I have a feeling that you might just do the same thing I did."

"Why?" Yukari demanded. "I'm not a good person, Akira!"

"You are a good person," Akira insisted. "But that's not exactly what I'm trying to say."

"Then what are you trying to say?"

"I just think, knowing you, that if you were ever in a situation like that... Well, I can't picture you going for anything less than a perfect score."

"Oh." It took Yukari a moment to realize that the stinging in her eyes wasn't the steam irritating them, and the warm dampness on her face wasn't from the steam either. "You really do know me. I don't know why I keep forgetting." The way that Akira looked at her — so fond and patient, with a smile in her eyes as well as on her lips — seemed to pull Yukari toward her even as it made her want to turn and flee in panic. She swayed indecisively on her feet, back and forth, but then Akira's inescapable pull won out, and Yukari fell forward into her girlfriend's arms and shamelessly buried her face in the cushion of Akira's breast.

"There there," Akira said. "Let it all out, Yukari. You aren't alone anymore. I've got you."

"I just don't understand!" Yukari sobbed. "You know exactly who I am, and you aren't pretending not to, but you still say that I'm good! Why?"

"I don't know how I can possibly explain that," Akira said, "when to me, it doesn't make sense that anyone who knew you would ever say anything else."

"No one ever has said anything else, but that's because they're lying! They talk to me like I'm some other girl entirely, like I really am perfect and pleasant and kind, and I play along because I don't know what else to do! But you aren't lying, and that's what doesn't make sense!"

"You are kind," Akira said, planting a kiss on top of Yukari's head. "Even when you're cold, even when you can't feel the compassion in your own heart, you still do your best for the people around you." Another kiss. "You are pleasant. I have never experienced a greater pleasure in this world than spending time in your company." Another. "You are perfect, for all your imperfections. Surely an experienced tea ceremonialist like you can understand that."

"It's one thing for a teacup to have a chip in it," Yukari said, "but if we're talking about a person's heart..."

"You think that a girl's heart should be handled with less care than a piece of pottery?" Akira asked. "That it should be thrown away more readily?"

"No! No, of course not." Even hearing Akira suggest that was so unbearably sad that the tears came pouring out hotter and stronger. Her knees folded from the force of her own sobs, and she felt Akira's arms tighten around her to hold her steady on her feet.

They stayed pressed together like that as the minutes ticked by, with the violet-scented water lapping at their waists and the foam tickling at their skin. Eventually, Yukari's tears subsided as suddenly as they had begun. She felt calm, then, but not in the listless, foggy way that calm all too often meant to her. It was more like the electric calm of the air after a thunderstorm, sharp and bright and laden with potential.

Her heart felt so strangely light that she found herself wondering whether hot water baths might loosen up more than just muscles.

"Are you okay?" Akira asked her.

"Yes," Yukari said. "Thank you. And sorry. I was supposed to be pampering you, but in the end, you're always the prince, aren't you?"

"It's sort of a habit," Akira said, sounding vaguely apologetic in a way that made Yukari's heart melt even more. "But even so, this is honestly the most relaxed I've been in days. You've done a wonderful job, Yukari."

"I want to do more, though," Yukari insisted. "Let me make you dinner."

"I would appreciate that."

"And tea, of course."

"Well, naturally, given the venue."

"And dessert. We're not as well stocked as KiraPati, but I could make rice cake or red bean jelly. Or melon buns, maybe, if you want something less traditional."

"Melon buns sound perfect," Akira said. "But if you're going to be baking, there's no way I'll be able to make myself sit out the whole time."

"So stubborn," Yukari chided her fondly. "Fine: when I get to the baking, you can help a little."

"It's a plan," Akira agreed.