Sunbeam - Prelude

Sayuri leans her chin on her hand, her elbow on the table, then sighs. She’s back in the library now, and though the weather has only gotten hotter and heavier as they dipped into June, the air is far easier on the lungs now than it was last month. The air conditioning has been fixed, windows long stuck shut have been unlocked, and the pressure of studying has been lifted off her shoulders. All of Hakuin got their midterms back the other day, and far from flunking out, Sayuri managed to squeak into sixth place, eight points away from first.

“Wrong?” Asami growls, flitting back and forth between the answer key and her notebook. “Where does that ‘y’ vanish all of a sudden, what?” Any other time, whining would’ve earned her a word of comfort. But after failing to score into the upper half, all she gets from Sayuri is a playful roll of the eyes.

“Try it again from the top,” she says. “And write out every step this time. It makes it easier to backtrack and find any mistakes.”

Though she groans, Asami complies nonetheless. It might not be the most enjoyable thing in the world, but iterating over a practice until she gets it right has helped her make more progress in a week than she did in half a term. Besides, with how much of her spare time Sayuri’s sacrificing for her sake, she’d be nothing short of an ungrateful brat to even begin to question her methods, let alone complain.

Of course, that’s only Sayuri’s view on Asami’s obedience, and a charitable one at that. After all, she’s under no impression that tutoring Asami is a perfectly selfless act. However, when it comes to figuring out what more she’s hoping to gain out of boosting her grades, that’s where she starts drawing blanks. Wherever her thoughts may wander, they always come back to the same three moments from back in Minoda: the two of them holding hands, hugging, and bathing together.

A sigh wells up in her chest and she sneaks it out under her breath. Subtly, her chin sinks further behind her hand, a feeble attempt to hide her flushed cheeks. She’s said and done so many embarrassing things on that school trip, but weirdly enough she doesn’t regret any of them. If anything, it was fun letting go just a little; it felt good; she can’t help wishing she’d done more of that.

She’s not sure why, but hanging out with Asami always seems to draw out parts of her personality that she never knew existed: bravery verging on impulsivity; sincerity bordering on bluntness; caring indistinguishable from affection. And underneath them all, that same unknown desire simmers one stir away from boiling over.

“Oh, there’s a formula!” Asami flicks her gaze to the ceiling, before letting it fall back on the page. Three furiously-scribbled lines later, and she’s come to another answer. A beaming grin lights up her face. “Sayuri? I-I think I got it.”

Cautiously optimistic, Sayuri leans in closer, scanning over her work with tepid, yet mounting interest. But for one spot where she wrote the exponent over the wrong variable, only to correct herself later on, everything looks correct. “No kidding. But see, here: you already had the binomial you were looking to simplify. You didn’t have to go through all of this just to form it again. You just had to split that term like… this.”

Asami blinks. “What. B-but why – where – how do you even notice these things?”

“Eh, some would call it intuition, but it’s really just experience. You solve enough problems and you realise it’s just the same handful of tricks over and over again.”

“I see… To be honest, I’m not sure I’ll ever get to that level if the basic stuff is giving me this much grief.”

That’s when Sayuri feels it, that familiar tingle in the pit of her stomach, bubbling up her throat, coating her tongue in a saccharine sweet film. Her hand moves on its own, bashfully seeking Asami’s plush hair. There are probably a million better ways Sayuri could reassure her, tell her that she’s doing great, but combing through her locks is the only one she can think of in the moment.

“There, there,” she says, fingers brushing the fluff on Asami’s ears. First they twitch, the startled response, then they fall flat against her head, only to perk back up. “Don’t worry about it, you’re a smart girl.”

“Nowhere near as smart as you.”

“Doesn’t matter. Practice makes perfect.”

“Not if you practise mistakes.”

“Oh, c’mon. You still got it right, you know?”

“Yeah, but…” Whatever snarky reply Asami had prepared trails off into a soft coo, then an even softer murmur. “What are you doing, Sayuri…”

“What does it look like?”

“… Stop,” Asami says, but the way she melts into Sayuri’s touch tells a different story altogether.

A teasing grin spreads her lips. “Are you sure about that?”

“Mmm… you know I’ll start purring if you keep going…”

She knows; that’s exactly what she wants, to hear that contented rumble, the one telltale sign of delight. And the moment she picks up the first signs of it, the mewling whimper that starts it all, she pulls away fast enough to fall out of her seat.

The floor catches her with a merciless thud. It takes her a second to shake off the dizziness, a longer second to drain the blush from her face. What on earth was she thinking? How could she do something so brazen, so scandalous, so intimate – and why is she worrying about these things? It’s not uncommon for friends, girls in particular, to be this close, is it?

Asami comes out of her daze with a low moan. “S-Sayuri? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine!” she says, shouts it. Too loud even if they weren’t in a library. “I’m fine, just dropped a pencil, everything’s fine!” she repeats, trying to get up, only to bump her head against the table. A pencil rolls off, then another one after it, both silent when they bounce off the carpet, rolling towards the bookshelves.

“Oh here, I’ll help you –”

“No!”

“What do you mean, no?’

“I mean, I’m fine, just don’t come – don’t look at – stay up there, I’m okay, I’m fine!”

A moment of perfect silence, punctuated by Sayuri’s frantic panting. There’s too many nerves to handle all at once, so she does it one slow exhale at a time instead, eventually shooing them all away. On all fours still, she crawls to the end of the table and retrieves the fallen pencils, then slowly – and very carefully – stands back up.

Anna’s humourless scowl greets her. “What on earth is all this commotion about?”

“Oh, Fujiwara-san. I was just being a little clumsy, haha...”

“Really? ‘Cause from where I was standing, it sounded like you were having a panic attack.”

Sayuri fans the sweat off her brow. “N-no, nothing of the sort.” She should know. The last time she had one of those, she ended up throwing up all over her desk in the middle of class. Almost five years later, she can only hope that she’s improved enough to leave all of that clinical anxiety behind. Though when she finally straightens up and turns around to Asami, the same concerned state everyone threw at her back then pelts her right between the eyes.

“Are you one hundred percent sure?” Asami asks. “You were all good one second, then suddenly you started yelling.”

Sayuri bites her lip. “Yeah. One hundred percent… A bit tired, maybe,” she lies. It’s easier than explaining the truth. “It’s probably best I call it here for today.”

“Wait,” Anna says. “Before you go, since I caught you both here, I wanted to run something past the two of you.”

Asami’s voice falls to a flat, guarded tone. “What’s that?”

Anna crosses her arms, glancing around before fixating on the library’s main door. Though she looks serious, almost uneasily so, there’s a bitter note set on her jaw that Sayuri doesn’t miss.

“I’ve been informed that you had a couple issues during the school trip,” she tells Asami. “Things that, for better or worse, the school could help with, should you be willing to let them know how. But when I was talking to Michi about all of this, she also suggested that, well,” Anna heaves out a weary breath, “maybe everyone should learn a little more about you. And if recent history is anything to go by, I’m inclined to agree. Hopefully that’ll make it easier to prevent future mishaps.

“So, what do you say?”

There are several questions crossing through Sayuri’s mind right now – What would the school be helping with? Who is Michi (though that one’s pretty easy if she thinks about it)? And most important of all, why is Anna so accommodating all of a sudden. But there’s no point asking any of those; you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, after all. Even so, there’s still one thing she’s curious about.

“Where do I come in?”

Fujiwara scoffs. “Isn’t it obvious? You’re her best friend. Some people need emotional support for less. What about you, Kitora-san?”

Asami twiddles her thumbs, tucks a strand of hair behind a ear she never had – funny how instincts can go both ways like that. Her eyes make a full tour of the room before settling on the exposed line of floor by her feet. When she speaks, it’s barely louder than a whisper. “If Sayuri’s gonna be there with me, then I’m fine with it.”

In turn, Sayuri’s heart starts beating so fast that even the deaf could hear it.