01

Life does not follow the outline of a yuri story, or so Rin Tsukino had thought.
At first, everything had seemed fine to her.
It had all started with act one.
She, the cute new transfer student, had entered the stage.
Small stature, a hint of a swimming tan, very short hair, pretty sporty, with a love for music and a passion for the fine arts.
Her new all girls high school had welcomed her with open arms.
A few shy glances had been exchanged and a confession letter or two had found their way to her locker.
She had saved the cat.
She had met the love interest.
Then, the divine author had somehow lost the plot entirely.
She could still recall the scene as if it had been yesterday:
“I am really sorry,” her now girlfriend of a month had said, “but I think we should see other people.”
“What do you mean?” Rin had asked aghast.
“Look, I’ll be 18 in a week, this is our final year of high school, and we’ve barely even kissed,” her soon to be ex girlfriend had said.
“But that wasn’t…” Rin had stuttered.
“See, there’s this boy I met and…” her soon to be ex girlfriend had said.
“What? But… No…” Rin had stumbled over her words.
“Really?,” her soon to be ex girlfriend had asked, irritated. “We’re not kids anymore. Please don’t make this harder than it already is.”
“But… but…” Rin had stuttered, “what does he have that I don’t?”
That last part had been answered surprisingly quickly and straight forward. It happened to start with a ‘D’ and ended with a sudden, very unpleasant feeling of ick.
After she had witnessed her first love abandon her for the goddamn jock of a basketball team captain from the boys school around the block, everything had made sense.
How could a cute introvert of average complexion possibly have competed with a gross, sweaty collection of muscles and machismo with more fan girls, height, and testosterone than your average athlete?
If the one eyed man is king in the land of the blind, the tomboy could have ruled in the land of lilies.
Or at least made a humble living.
Or so she had hoped back then.
But reality had been much crueler.
They had been living on borrowed time, inside a walled garden, and some of them had started climbing the walls, even before they had fully broken down.
What a reality check that had been.
It had all fallen into place.
Life had been following the outline of a yuri story after all, and it was all destined to end the traditional way.
Dream time would be over soon.
Bonds would be broken.
Lovers would be left.
It would be just a phase.
It would be just an experiment.
It would be just some girls fooling around.
How could that have possibly worked out anyway?
Not a single one of them had been meant for each other.
Only tragedy would await those that still held on to their delusions when the last bell of the last day of the last year rang to announce the beginning of their adult life, and all those hopeful fools would be forced to face reality.
But she had been two steps ahead by then.
She had seen the writings on the wall, and the graffiti artist that was society was a misogynist all along.
She had seen which way the wind was blowing, while her first love had blown that damn oaf.
Springtime is over.
Summer is gone.
Autumn has ended.
Winter had been coming, and all the lilies would freeze to death.
So she had looked around, had picked an arts college in the big city, had grown out her hair as far as she could in the remaining months, and had entered her new life with a fresh wardrobe and a muscle memory more adapted to recently seen makeup tutorials than to her competitive sports of old.
Had it all worked out in the end?
Kinda.
The first weeks of college had been cool.
Her friend group had been expanding.
She had met a tolerable boy after some time, and had slowly grown accustomed to him.
Love as intended.
They had had a date, he had kissed her straight, or that’s what she would have told her future children.
Their first time had hurt a lot.
So had the second.
But that was normal.
Her new friends had said so too, while they had reminded her that her boyfriend was quite the catch after all.
Handsome.
Generous with his money.
He held a well paying part time job at a bank, while he was studying finance, with great career opportunities for the future, but he was a bit of a workaholic, and was a little sickly.
Between work and recovery, the gap between dates had been growing further and further.
And then he had canceled their second date in a row because of a high fever.
—
Today was a Friday evening. The spring semester was well underway and she was about to step up to her new role as girlfriend and wife material.
She wasn’t exactly a chef, but even most rice cookers had a setting for cooking congee, so she shouldn’t fail.
Rice, a few eggs, chicken stock, a few toppings… everything was ready. Just in case. She had seen his fridge after all, and it had been a sad sight to behold. Not like she had much right to complain, but at least the pot had found a kettle.
All that was left was to inform Prince Charming of her nursing plans for the weekend.
He wasn’t exactly the spontaneous type, and hated unannounced visits and real surprises more than vampires did sunlight.
So she grabbed her phone and selected his number.
The phone rang.
And rang.
And rang some more.
Nothing unusual so far.
Then he finally picked up.
Or so she thought, but there was a woman's voice greeting her from the other end.
\# 02
Life was a drag, or so Ada Lovelass had thought.
And not always the fun kind, at least not during this seemingly unending Friday evening.
The mixer she was a part of had turned out to be a complete and utter convention of bores.
This was the worst kind of way to start a weekend.
Even the smalltalk sucked.
“You know, you must have the most nubile black hair I’ve ever seen, kinda like…” said the oldest guy of the group who had bothered her from the start while he named either a model Ada didn’t know, or more likely a favorite porn star of his.
“I don’t think you know what that word means, or how to use it in context” Ada quipped back.
“Aww… don’t play hard to get, tall girls like you are my type, you know,” he said. “You probably think men are intimidated, but most of us just prefer shorter girls. You should cut your losses and take what you can get. You won’t get any younger after all, and your attire isn't exactly a classy choice either. But if you’re a good girl, daddy might give you some pocket change.”
She almost threw up, then quickly pivoted back to talk to the least objectionable man of the group so the earlier guy would bother someone else.
She had already sunk the better part of an hour into this farce, and the side room was reserved until morning.
They had been short on girls, which had led some of her fellow students to nag her for hours. When the cute blonde freshman she had an eye on had joined them, she had finally given in, but now that Jezebel had shown her true colors.
Not like Ada would have minded a seductress in any way, quite the contrary, but the freshman’s attention was focused at everything but her. That turncoat sat on the other end of the room and flirted with one of the finance bros, while his colleagues tried their luck with Ada and the others.
The cutie was gone for good and all of Ada’s hopes and dreams for the night were shattered.
Now she was drunk and frustrated.
But not so drunk that she wouldn't have been able to notice her main wannabe suitor’s phone, along with his unlock pattern, which she had just now memorized.
She swiped his device with a sleight of hand while he tried, and failed, to playfully grope one of her coursemates.
So much for information security.
The (hu)man was usually the weakest chain in the link, and this magic trick was easier to pull off than stealing a kiss from a bi curious young lady or top secret documents from the feds.
Once a grey hat, always a grey hat.
She excused herself and went to the restroom.
If this bore’s phone held hints to any skeletons in his or his colleagues' closets, she’d call it a night.
If all was green, she might grab another cocktail or three, and see if she could get frustrated enough with her situation to drink that wannabe twink attractive.
Well, he didn’t look that bad, though that was probably her blood alcohol speaking.
One way or another, tonight, she’d leave some backdoors on his device, and maybe use a device on his backdoor. That last part was more wishful thinking and revenge fantasy, since his ‘jokes’ towards her had grown more and more suggestive and anal by the minute.
But before she had the chance to fulfill her part of the karmic cycle, she encountered less of a ‘closet’ and more of an ‘open cemetery’.
Actually, forget ‘open cemetery’, an ‘ongoing sky burial’ would be a more accurate description.
The folders themselves were labeled plain enough, ‘ToDo’, ‘Done’, ‘Discard’, ‘Discarded’.
Their contents were everything but.
The mentality, of what one might suspect from a self-proclaimed king among pickup artists, almost jumped out of the screen, and it wasn’t pretty.
The notes beside the images were vile.
He had taken advantage of all those poor girls and then thrown them away like used tissues, while keeping their nudes.
At least now she had a mission for the night.
After making copies of his important files, and leaving some other surprises on top of her main presents, she was about to leave the restroom, return to the others, and slip back his phone.
But before she could do any of that, the phone rang, as ‘Country Bumpkin III \- 4/10 \- Discard’ tried to reach the jerk.
Ada organized her thoughts quickly.
She had planned to break his operations for good, so why not start right then and there.
So she answered the call.
With a pseudonym.