“I thought we had an agreement,” I snapped. Aria sagged, her hands tracing down the sleeves of my jacket as she hung her head in resignation. The bitter December wind blew cold off the sea, biting and tearing at any exposed flesh with ravenous, icy fangs. The protection offered by the building we stood beside was better than nothing but still not enough to cut the awful wind completely.

“What do you mean?” Aria shook her head tiredly. “What did I do wrong?”

“I thought Daishi was a ‘beard’,” I retorted. “You said you wouldn’t date him and yet he came over and propped his feet on the damn table while calling you ‘babe’ like he owned you. I didn’t know this was going to be part of the plan.”

“It’s not part of the plan!” Aria insisted. “He’s arrogant and an asshole. He’ll get tired of the charade soon enough and go away again. I’ve known a lot of people like him, and they all follow the same pattern. Trust me!”

“You said we should always be honest. Rule #1. Remember?” I paused and raised my head, staring into the slate gray sky, my breath puffing out in gusts of icy haze. My teeth chattered slightly from the cold. “Why’d you drop my hand like I was something dirty?”

“You know that wasn’t what I intended, K-chan!” Aria took my hands in hers earnestly. “If this was up to me, we would declare we love each other and are dating and let the chips fall where they may. You know that, right?” I sighed.

Of course, she was doing this for me. I knew that. This whole charade was because I was too afraid of the consequences of loving someone society decided I shouldn’t. I had been grappling with that reality for over a month, now, and was no closer to a suitable solution. On one hand I wanted to do exactly what she suggested. Tell everyone I was in love with Aria, consequences be damned. Maybe things would be ok. Maybe my parents, specifically my mother, would be disappointed but understand in the end. Maybe Mizuki would be fine. Maybe the rest of the school would ignore my love life and I could continue the way I had been without a secret which grew bigger and heavier every time I thought about it hanging over me.

Yeah, right, I scowled. Like any of that would happen. When I looked forward to my life all I could see was an endless parade of lies and half-truths I would have to perpetuate because I committed the crime of being different. No parole, no commutation for good behavior. Nothing but endless hiding on top of endless worrying.

Why couldn’t I have fallen in love with a boy like a normal person, lived a little life filled with nuggets of mostly hollow joy and called it a day? Why did I have to be like this? It was like some little switch in my brain which should have been left off got switched on for some reason and now here I was, huddled close to a building in the biting cold with the girlfriend I couldn’t even admit I had. I was glad I loved Aria, but why did everyone else have to have such a huge problem with it and why couldn’t I bring myself to not care they did?

“I know,” I finally said, looking up into her eyes. Her luscious lips tugged upward in a smile, and she drew me in, hugging me close.

“One day we’ll live on our own and once we do, I will never let your hand go again,” Aria soothed, running her hands over my back. I felt her touch through my heavy jacket and smiled against her shoulder.

“Promise?” I asked, closing my eyes, and pulling her tighter.

"Of course,” she said close to my ear, her breath causing a thrill to run down my spine.

“But don’t drop my hand anymore!” I pouted. “And tell Daishi if he calls you ‘babe’ one more time I’ll ushiro ura mawashi geri him through the fucking wall.”

"I have no idea what that means,” Aria giggled, “but ushing people sounds like a bad time. He probably deserves to be kicked through the wall but hold off for now, ok?”

“I’m not fucking with you!” I glowered, pulling back, and staring into her deep blue eyes. “I will knock that fuckmonkey into next week.”

“Ok! Ok!” Aria held her hands up in surrender and giggled. “Seriously, though? Fuckmonkey?”

“He is what he is,” I shrugged with a reluctant grin.

“Well, you’re not wrong,” she grinned back. “Shit! I have to go! I’m supposed to go shopping with my aunt!”

“Ah, I see,” I mumbled, a bit disappointed. There wasn’t much I could do, I supposed. We had to keep up appearances, after all, which meant going about our days as we always had with small moments stolen where we could. “I should probably go home anyway.”

 “I’ll call you tonight, K-chan!” Aria kissed my cheek softly.

“I’ll talk to you then,” I waved as she scurried away from the protection of the building and toward the bus station at the end of the street and quickly vanished into the gathering gloom. I pulled the collar of my jacket up closer to my neck to ward off the wind and headed toward the high pass and home.

“I’m telling you, mom,” an angry voice protested from the kitchen. Immediate my jaw clenched tight in disgust. Jun was the last thing I needed to deal with. “She lost her mind! I never did anything to her and all of a sudden, she’s going around the school telling these lies about me. She even told the teacher, so I got called into the administration office.”

“People can’t be trusted,” my mom’s muted voice soothed. Let me guess, I scowled, hanging up my jacket and taking off my shoes. Jun got suspended for something he “didn’t do!”. It was so much bullshit. That would make three times now in two years he was completely blameless for getting suspended from college. Not to mention the at least five times back in high school. There were some people who went through life burdened with responsibilities so great their backs bent under the weight of them. Then there were normal people who took responsibility for things they’d done but otherwise left the world to its own devices. Then, there was Jun.

Jun could get caught stealing red handed, look you in the eye and, with all seriousness, tell you it wasn’t him. But in the off chance it was him, he was utterly blameless. But, then again, nothing was ever Jun’s fault. Inevitably someone else had caused whatever hardship he’d been dealt. He was always a victim of forces beyond his control or people who ‘had it out for him’. He was simply a martyr thrown onto the pyre by the cosmic forces arrayed against him. Of which most appeared to be female, oddly enough.

By itself that sort of attitude would be maddening, but as I listened to my mother help him excuse everything away my temper flared and grew like a wildfire. Jun could shoot someone in the face, blame the other person for getting in the way and she would not only buy his bullshit, but enable his pathetic, self-serving sniveling with excuses of her own. There were always going to be enablers for staggeringly selfish people like Jun, but my mother took things to whole new lows. She’d gotten to the point where she was, in a very real way, an accomplice after the fact.

“She obviously has mental problems, Jun,” mom droned on. Suuuure, she does, I thought as I trudged down the hallway. I’m positive the girl is wholly to blame and the prodigal son is an innocent bystander. I had liked Jun at one point. That point, however, was so long ago as to be prehistory as far as I was concerned. His existence filled me with disgust and loathing. Now, the bane of my existence was back early. Fuck.

I had forgotten how blissfully delightful the house was without Jun. Well, relatively speaking, of course. But now that he was back, what little joy I had been able to glean while at home was stolen away. Well, I thought, going into my room, and closing the door behind me, if I couldn’t take his crap anymore, I’d simply have to kill him and hide the body.

I lay back on my bed and groaned, my shoulders aching from the stress of Jun’s existence. The cast wasn’t due to come off for another two weeks and the hand itched and ached fiercely when the weather was cold. I flexed my hand and the tendons creak in response. Yeah, winter was definitely coming if not already here. I suddenly understood what my dad had been saying every time he complained about his knees aching. “The rain’s comin’. I can feel it in my bones.” I was already old, and I wasn’t even 17, yet. I jumped as the phone kicked to life beside my head.

“Hello?” That greeting always struck me as odd. Why was the first thing we said on the phone was phrased as a question. It seemed a strange way to begin a conversation. I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever met someone at school and started our conversation with “Hello?” That sort of greeting was one step away from demanding “What the hell do you want?” to my mind.

“You’ll never guess what just happened to me!” Emi bubbled across the line. Given what I knew of Emi, she was most likely one hundred percent correct in that statement. I waited for several moments but it fast became obvious I would have to ask.

“What happened,” I finally gave in.

“Are you ready?” Emi’s voice was brimming with excitement.

“Oh, yes. Most assuredly. I am, in fact, all aquiver with anticipation.” Either she didn’t catch the sarcasm in my voice or didn’t care.

“Are you sitting down?”

“Just tell me.”

“Ok! I was out in the garden feeding the koi when- “Emi began.

“Wait, you feed the koi in your pond?” I scowled. “Don’t they eat, like, koi things? Why would you feed them?”

“I don’t like cauliflower, Kasumin,” Emi snarled irritably. “Yet what was for dinner this evening?”

“Cauliflower?”

“Well, shrimp stir fry,” Emi admitted. “There was cauliflower, though! Cauliflower! In stir fry!? What kind of monster does that?”

“Ms. Harada?” Emi’s family’s housekeeper had been with the family since long before Emi’s birth and, though she was always kind, her culinary experiments sometimes left a lot to be desired. She had made us onigiri once with a thick red bean and chocolate sauce inside. While the idea was intriguing, the result left more than a little to be desired.

“Ms. Harada,” Emi confirmed. “So, anyway, I was outside dumping the cauliflower in the pond when guess what happened!”

“You were attacked by seagulls with a grudge?” I asked half-heartedly.

“What? No. I’ve done nothing to seagulls,” Emi seemed taken aback.

“What about when that seagull stole your cookies and you chased it half a block until you took them back?” Emi was very small, but she was savage when necessary. The bird had put up a decent fight, but since the thing couldn’t take flight with the packet of snacks in its beak Emi had eventually wrestled the bag away, leaving the gull bereft of its ill-gotten dessert.

“That was fair and honorable combat,” Emi argued. “I still have a beak scar, by the way. But that wasn’t what happened! Let me tell the story!”

“Quit asking me to guess, then,” I rubbed the cast over my eyes. Emi was a handful at the best of times.

“Now I’ve forgotten where I was,” Emi paused.

“You were in the garden giving fish cauliflower,” I supplied helpfully.

“Ah, yes! Anyway, the mailman showed up!”

“Wow!” I muttered mockingly. “That doesn’t happen every day. Wait, no, it does,” I shook my head. This story was getting all too long.

“It’s just this sort of attitude which makes you seem sullen to people,” Emi’s voice dripped with disappointment.

“I am sullen,” I pointed out.

“I got mail,” Emi blurted, ignoring me.

“Uh…ok?” The reveal was significantly less world-shattering than she’d made it out to be.

“A confession!” Emi crowed. “Someone confessed to me!”

“Wow!” I genuinely enthused. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks!” I could see Emi beaming across the phone.

“Who was it from?”

“I have no idea,” she didn’t sound overly concerned about specifics. “It was anonymous. But it was so amazing! See? You should have put a ring on me when you had the chance, Kasumin. You left me a free agent too long and now someone’s realized how awesomely amazing I truly am. Are you sad? You should be sad.”

“So, you’re going to accept the confession, then?”

“No clue! But I have been officially confessed. I am at least 67% along the stairway to adulthood by now. I have pubic hair and my stunning looks and personality have attracted the eyes of a potential suitor.”

“Oh, at least 67%,” I agreed. “If they were anonymous and sent the letter to your house, how are you supposed to respond?”

“No clue!” Emi was positively giddy and couldn’t be bothered with trivial things.

“Say, do you know anyone who’s hiring?” I asked, awkwardly lurching from her mysterious admirer to a sudden thought which had flitted into my mind without so much as a decent segue to speak of.

“Miko gig not affording you the lifestyle you’d like to become accustomed to?”

“I just need some extra money for a few months.”

“Well, my cousin’s friend owns a shop and she’s been trying to hire someone for a few weeks, now. I can take you there tomorrow if you want. Provided you help me write a spectacular letter back to my secret admirer that is.”

“Deal.”