Perfect: An Anita/Hisami Interlude
Disclaimer: The characters appearing and/or mentioned in this story are not the creations of the author, who couldn’t invent an interesting character if she tried.
The hour was early evening, and the sun, just beginning to set, cast a warm, sleepy glow that poured in through the windows of the school library.
A general atmosphere of peace pervaded, and all was quiet.
Almost all, at any rate.
Hisami giggled softly as Anita ranted merrily on, pacing feverishly back and forth in front of the desk. The pink-haired girl’s cheeks were flushed, and her eyes sparking furiously.
“How could they not tell us something like this!” she demanded rhetorically, nevertheless stopping and watching Hisami as though she expected an answer.
“Are you sure that Miss Sumiregawa and your sister are together?” the dark-haired girl asked slowly and thoughtfully after a moment of silence broken only by the frantic tapping of Anita’s foot.
“Of course I’m sure!” Anita replied, an edge of annoyance that Hisami knew far better to take seriously in her voice. “They wouldn’t have been doing what they were doing unless they were.”
“What were they doing?” Hisami asked, determined to talk Anita out of this bluster.
That same Anita came to a dead stop and stared incredulously.
“Hisa!”
“Were they…um…well…”
She trailed off, blushing brightly, and thinking that really, if this was the case, Anita might be forgiven for reacting this way.
The shorter girl looked at her blankly for a moment. Then, as realization dawned, her expression grew horrified.
“No! They weren’t doing that! But they were…uh, napping together.”
“But you’ve done that with Miss Sumiregawa, haven’t you?”
“Well, yeah, so has Michelle,” Anita shrugged before propping her elbows up on the desk and hiding her face in her hands and continuing, the words muffled. “But not like this.”
“Why? Did they have their clothes off?”
“Hisa!” Anita exclaimed, even more scandalized and blushing brightly. “What have you been reading lately?”
Cheeks pink, Hisami merely giggled again, and after a moment, Anita continued, hopping up to sit on the desk.
“They were just…like, really cuddling. They were sort of like…” Here, the pink-haired teen trailed off into a series of arm movements that could have had no practical meaning to anyone on earth save for herself.
“I don’t really know what you mean, Anita,” Hisami admitted, eyes wide and confused.
“Well, you know,” Anita said, exasperated. “They were kind of…” This time, Anita’s arm movements were bigger and more dramatically sweeping, but certainly no more comprehensible.
“I’m sorry, Anita,” Hisami said helplessly. “I still don’t know what you mean.”
Anita slumped forward slightly in defeat. There went her chance of getting Hisami to understand why this was such a big deal.
“Never mind,” she sighed.
Hisami thought carefully for a moment, her legs twisting absently around the legs of her chair.
“Well, why don’t you show me?” she asked, as though this was the most sensible thing in the world.
Anita very nearly fell off the desk in shock, and spent an anxious moment flailing for her balance.
“Show you?” she choked.
Hisami nodded cheerfully.
“Yeah!”
“Uhm…you might have to come up here,” Anita said hesitantly, patting the desk next to her.
“Okay,” Hisami agreed shyly, rising from her chair and climbing carefully onto the desk.
Her cheeks grew slightly pink again when Anita put one hand one her knee and went briskly about the business of positioning her so that she was sitting with her legs dangling comfortably off the edge of the desk.
“Maggie was sitting like that,” she explained. “And Nenene was lying down, with her head in Maggie’s lap. Like this,” she finished, sliding down the desk and then curling up slightly, her head resting comfortably against Hisami’s leg.
Hisami nodded, smiling encouragingly down at her friend.
“And Maggie had her arm over Nenene, kind of like this,” Anita continued, positioning Hisami’s arm so that it rested loosely over her shoulders.
The next second, she looked up, bewildered, as she felt something soft and soothing brush her forehead.
“Maggie wasn’t doing that,” she pointed out.
“I know,” Hisami said, flushing sweetly pink again, and continuing to brush strands of hair out of Anita’s eyes. “It seemed nice.”
“Yeah,” Anita agreed, sounding vaguely surprised. “It’s nice.”
A long moment passed, during which two fluttery butterfly-feelings in two little stomachs settled into comfortable friendship and something else that wasn’t quite friendship but was still comfortable and for right now, just perfect.
“They were like this?”
Anita started slightly, shaken out of a near-doze by this question, asked softly. She pulled herself back into a sitting position, and then smiled sleepily at Hisami.
“Yeah. They were like that. And they looked kind of embarrassed when they saw that I was there.”
Hisami pondered this carefully.
“I guess that probably means that they’re together now. But Anita, I think it’s kind of sweet.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Anita sighed, cupping her chin in one hand and staring into space. “But they could have told us.”
“What does your other sister think?”
At this, the pink-haired girl’s expression tightened into a good-natured glower, and then relaxed as she sighed and stretched, hands tucked behind her head.
“When I told Michelle, she started dancing around and squealing – you know how she does – and said something like, I knew it all along! I had a feeling!”
Hisami carefully hid a smile.
“I think you probably don’t have to worry about it, Anita. It sounds like Michelle thinks Miss Sumiregawa and Maggie are going to get along really well.”
“Yeah,” Anita agreed, as though something was dawning on her for the first time. “I guess it really does work.”
And it was true. Suddenly, Nenene smiling a lot more and being a lot more relaxed around Maggie, and nicer to Maggie than she was to anyone else, began to make sense. Along with Maggie always somehow ending up close to Nenene; and looking up from her book and smiling when Nenene came over (barging in, Anita usually said with a snort), instead of just muttering a bit and flipping the page; and carrying her to her coffee again a couple weeks ago when they went over there early in the day – before noon! – to return some books. Maggie hadn’t blushed that time, but Anita was pretty sure she’d been smiling a little.
Okay, so maybe they were a good match.
Maybe they were a really good match.
Almost perfect.
But not quite.
Because Nenene still sometimes said things that hurt Maggie’s feelings, even though she didn’t mean to, just because she didn’t always think about what she was saying, and what it might mean to Maggie. Even though she was an author, and it was her job to think about the effect of her words. Conversations on paper, she had been known to sigh before trying to set things to rights with the tall dark-haired girl trying valiantly to not be hurt, were a lot easier than conversations in real life.
And sometimes Maggie still broke things when she was helping Nenene to clean, or got so into a book that she missed the story of the ignorant guy on the train so that Nenene had to tell the whole thing again. Or said with her eyes and her silence something just as hurtful as Nenene could say with words. And like Nenene, unaware that she had said it until she found herself trying awkwardly to repair the damage, difficult because she could hardly apologize for looking as she could have for words.
Anita, of course, did not put all this into words, but the essence ambled through her head, cooling her temper as it went.
Basically, a real relationship, with real people. Good, but not perfect.
But still good.
Gradually Anita brightened, then turned to her friend.
“Thanks, Hisa.”
And when, the next day in the library after school, Anita flopped back against the desk with a long sigh, Hisami asked, sweetly teasing, if it was about Miss Sumiregawa and her sister again.
When the smaller girl replied, cheeks colouring slightly, that it was, Hisami asked, again very gently teasing, if Anita would like to tell her about it, or would prefer to show her again.
Only to be taken completely by wonderfully sweet surprise when, after a moment of looking vaguely like a small animal in the headlights, Anita smiled, at once terrified and tranquil, and then turned around on the desk and leaned down.
The next moment, a kiss given softly, shyly, sloppily, and received with – almost – unhesitating elation.
In a word, perfect.
End Notes: Hehe! I’ve been meaning to do this one for a while. But now I’m not sure about it. I really think that Anita would bluster a bit if one of her sisters started seeing anyone, let alone her Nenene, without telling her. :) But I’m not sure about Hisami’s characterization. I think I’m working with an image of her as level-headed (when she puts down the book), and very calm. I can honestly see her talking Anita back to a rational mental state, and kind of enjoying the trip. That said, there were some parts that felt kind of off to me. The ending in particular. Also, was Hisami a little too bold? I think she’d be comfortable enough with Anita by this point to initiate some friendly hugging and such and consider it completely innocent, but I haven't got a good handle on either of these little cuties' characterization yet.
So basically, this was once again an example of Rhianwen wanting REALLY BADLY to write something (in this case, an Anita/Hisami fic), but not having any good ideas. Which means you’re all stuck with this instead. :)
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