Catnip(v.2) - 4

Sayuri’s sitting by herself in the library, studying for the upcoming midterms. There’s an incessant squish-splash coming from the other side of a bookshelf, someone chewing gum with no regards for how obnoxious it sounds. Were she bolder, she’d ask them to cut that crap out. Were she less sensitive, she’d have pulled out a pair of headphones and drowned them out. But since she’s too polite and the feeling of leather on her skin makes her sweat behind the knees, she’s got no choice but to endure it. With every other table occupied, it’s either this or staving off a heart attack every time someone so much as breathes her way.

Normally, she would’ve been home more than an hour ago, but then she would’ve missed going home with Asami. Again. Part of Anna’s plan to help her fit in has involved strong-arming the track and field club to accept her as one of their members. However, their grumbling only lasted until Asami put on her running shoes and hit the rubber. On her first run, she came within two tenths of the school’s hundred metre dash record. Less than a week later, she’s become the relay team’s anchor, much to her shock.

“It’s just a bad idea, honestly,” she texted Sayuri that night. “My speed falls off a cliff after the first race. Unless I’m only running the relay, I don’t see why they’d pick me.”

It took all of Sayuri’s strength not to snark her on the spot. Needless to say, she had to retype her text a couple times to make sure none bled through. “Maybe the captain sees something in you. Something that you don’t.”

“Yeah, or maybe he’s blind.”

She decided it was best to change the topic after that, lest she tried flicking Asami’s forehead through her phone screen.

Her gaze drifts out the window, settling on the sprinters, little ants that they are on the faraway pitch. Though her eyesight isn’t the best, it doesn’t take her too much effort to find Asami, her hair and ears sticking out like a buoy in a monochrome sea of black buns and ponytails. She’s doing her stretches a fair distance away from everyone else, her tail tucking between her legs with every toe touch and lunge. Sayuri’s always found it cute how she has to ‘manually’ move it out of the way; Asami always complains that it’s annoying.

The whistle rings, a sharp shrill that distance numbs, but doesn’t fully stifle. The runners line up in a row, Asami sandwiched somewhere between them, the fourth lane if Sayuri counts right. The goldilocks spot. Like synchronised swimmers they settle into the starting blocks one after the other. There is a moment’s quiet, anticipation stretching it longer and longer. The commands follow in quick succession: ready, set, and the gun fires on go.

The race is close, but far from most. Asami and her fellow hot-seater dash ahead the rest from the very start, and stay there until the very end. By the halfway point, they’re neck-and-neck, Asami first her senpai a quarter of a pace behind. But with five metres to spare, she inches ahead, crossing the line with a stride of distance to spare.

Sayuri bites her lip. Asami lost by a whisker and she’ll probably spend an extra hour training after club to try and gain. By the end of it all, she’ll be all sweaty, exhausted and hardly in the mood to talk. Which, if she’s being honest, Sayuri doesn’t mind all that much.

Lately, she’s found that she’s most comfortable around Asami when quiet settles neatly between them. It’s an odd solace, though. In a way, their relationship has become a series of litotes: hanging out with her is not bad; talking to her is not unpleasant, waiting for her isn’t the worst part of her day. She doesn’t know when this started, how long she’s been cherishing an absence rather than a presence, and she doesn’t know what to do about it.

Because there’s nothing she can do. Doing something or not doing anything, everything turns out wrong in the end. All she can hope for is that one day, she’ll figure out the right thing, far and unlikely as that may sound.

Hands on her eyes. Hot air on her neck. A tender whisper. “Guess who?”

Sayuri melts into her touch for only a second, before fight or flight sends an electrifying tingle from her head down to her toes. Mitsuki. “M-Morikawa-san,” she sputters out.

“Ding!” Mitsuki releases her, sliding into the adjoining chair. “Now, why am I not surprised to see you here?”

Because I look like a bookworm, Sayuri thinks, but she can’t bring herself to even attempt to say it. It’s the answer Mitsuki’s expecting after all, the answer that’ll springboard a conversation, which she doesn’t feel at all ready to engage with.

After lunch with her and her friends, Sayuri’s never even seen her around school, let alone gotten to talk to her. Of course, she didn’t lose too much sleep about it. Their friendship has been superficial from the get-go, predicated on nothing more than whim, advanced by another, then cut short by a final one. That Mitsuki’s here right now, talking to her instead of the fifty other people in the room, is nothing short of startling, barrelling towards disconcerting.

“I-I don’t know,” Sayuri mutters, shuffling to the corner of her seat. Perhaps noticing, perhaps just trying to fill up the empty space, Mitsuki shuffles closer in turn.

“Aww, cat got the little library mouse’s tongue? Let’s see.” She leans over her notebook, sparing it only a glance, before shifting her attentions towards Sayuri herself. “Figured you’d be here doing your Maths homework; you’re in Yukimura-sensei’s class, after all. I had him myself in middle school and his exams were a real pain. Thankfully, he always gave us questions we solved in class, so you should be fine if you were paying attention.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you okay –”

“What do you want, Morikawa-san?”

She didn’t intend to come off that cross; the words spilled out before she could filter the emotion out of them. But in the end, she likely would’ve cut her short at some point anyway. It was a question of when rather than if.

Mitsuki purses her lips into a pouted grin. “Nothing. I guess I just wanted to catch up with you, that’s all.”

“We haven’t spoken in a while,” Sayuri says, halfway between a musing and a blunt statement.

“Yeah, I know. I’ll admit, with how upset Kitora got after that one lunch, I wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to talk to you. You two are pretty much joined at the hip, after all.”

There’s something sombre hiding behind her gloomy tone; something she’d rather spit out rather than chew on all pensive like that; something Sayuri doesn’t miss. Reflexively, she goes on the defence. “We’re not that close.”

“Oh, c’mon. You eat every lunch together, you walk home together every day. You stood up to her against the scariest person in all of Hakuin. If she’s not your best friend, then what is she to you?”

“I –” Sayuri exhales, shrugs. “I wish I could tell you. Don’t get it twisted, I enjoy spending time with her, I really really do. She’s funny and witty and brave in so many ways I could never be. But… ugh, this is gonna sound so wrong.”

“Go on, then. I won’t judge.”

“You promise?”

“Strike me down if I don’t.”

Sayuri lets a tiny smile tint and tug at her cheeks, the first honest one she’s ever flashed Mitsuki, but her relief is short-lived. The moment she opens her mouth, the tightness in her chest steals the wind out of her lungs. But it’s no good bottling it all in, she tells herself, if only as a psych-up pill; if it doesn’t spill out now, it might do at a far worse time.

“Okay, here goes,” she murmurs, then raises her voice to something Mitsuki can hear. “Sometimes, I get the feeling that I don’t like her for who she really is. She’s amazing when she’s just a girl and nothing more than that. But when the cat worms its fuzzy little way in, it feels so odd. It’s like it’s all I can see, her little tics and mannerisms, everything Kageyama-san pointed out and more. And I feel like I should be able to look past all of them, see only the human beneath the pointy ears – but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to.”

Mitsuki lifts her chin, shakes her head as if she’s chewing on an answer, but only as if. It takes her too little to spit something out, almost like she’s reciting lines off a script she’s rehearsed countless times before. “Why do you need to look past it at all?”

“What other choice do I have?”

“Embrace it,” Mitsuki says with a matter-of-fact chime.

“… I dunno about that. I have a sneaking suspicion she’s not all that enamoured with her condition.”

“Well, like it or not, there’s no cure for it. There is treatment, I’ve heard, but it only makes it easier to deal with rather than go away entirely. If you ask me, trying to ignore it sounds like you’re just helping delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, she’ll have to contend with the fact that she’ll be stuck like this until she takes her last breath. And when she does, it’ll be far easier for her to accept that if there’s someone out there who accepts her just the way she is.”

Her soliloquy over, Mitsuki heaves a long, drawn-out sigh, a bitter grin casting her face in a melancholic shadow of gloom. There was a passion in her speech that Sayuri hasn’t missed, an emotion so poignant that no actor no matter how good could ever hope to perform. It takes an honest heartache for something so pure and profound.

“Is someone close to you a catgirl as well, Morikawa-san?” Sayuri asks.

“Yeah, there is.”

“How have you gone about… umm… err”

“Heh,” Mitsuki chuckles. “I didn't overthink it, for one. Just let the idea sit at the back of your mind; it won’t take too long to grow roots. But if you want some more targeted advice, I guess try not to focus on the differences all that much. The more you do it, the more you’ll end up defining her by what she’s not rather than what she is.”

With that, she slides out of her seat, head bowed and steps hasty towards the door. But before she can even round the table, Sayuri stops her dead in her tracks. “Wait! I don’t suppose you’ve come around just to hear me vent, did you now?”

Mitsuki rubs her thumb to her open palms, before tucking them inside closed fists. “Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing. It’s been a while, haha.” A pause, short and punctuated by a short puff. “But actually, I was wondering if, maybe, you’d want to hang out sometimes? I could show you around the city, give you the down-low on all the good clothes shops and cafes…”

“Oh.” Sayuri’s brow flies up despite herself. Much as she’d like to say yes – Mituski’s been far too patient with her for anything else – she’s not sure about it. It’s too sudden. Too soon. Too much. “Umm, sure. I’ll think about it. Maybe we can have lunch together again until then?”

She doesn’t get an answer, not right away, and not for a discomforting while. And when she does, it’s nothing too special, just a blunt, “Okay,” snuck in through gritted teeth. Pressing her foot into the carpet with every stiff stride, Mitsuki turns the corner down the first aisle, her disappearance swiftly followed by the back entrance door swinging out, then back into its frame.