My face had taken on something of a semi-permanent scowl as I stared down at the tablet in my hand then up at the corresponding figures situated among the display cases. What had I done wrong? I mean, Aria had been curt the rest of the day, a strained smile and vacuous conversation had greeted me every time I tried to talk to her. When I tried, again, to apologize after school she had interrupted me with a falsely chipper “It’s ok!”, patted me on the shoulder and rushed off. Were we having a true lovers’ quarrel?

Honestly, I had no idea. Having never had a lover but many quarrels I was having trouble squaring the two disparate concepts in my mind of what a lovers spat would resemble. Unless, a thought occurred to me, she actually was ok, and it was all in my imagination. It was possible, I thought. Possibly when she said it was ok, she had actually meant it was ok. But then why was she acting the exact opposite? If it had truly been as she said, wouldn’t she have had lunch with us? Wouldn’t she have been acting the same as always? No, I decided, we were definitely having a lovers’ quarrel.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten angry with her the night before. I hadn’t gotten angry at Emi for bringing Jun up, why, then, should I get mad at Aria? Because you don’t love Emi and you don’t trust Aria, an annoying voice in my head answered abruptly. Because you’re afraid of her having any contact with anyone because you’re not confident you can hold anyone’s interest long enough for them to bother with you, especially someone like Aria. I winced, my own honesty a jarring and thoroughly unpleasant experience.

“Did you finish the categorizing?” Komari asked, not looking up from the issue of Egg she was intently browsing through.

“Yes, the ‘Nekomimi Orgasm 4000’ dolls should be in the hentai section in the back,” I sat heavily in the chair opposite her and held the tablet out.

“Why?” She didn’t even glance at the tablet, merely tossed it onto her desk and went back to her magazine.

“Eh?” I scowled at her. “It’s a hentai series. The hentai series go in the back.”

“The figures aren’t anatomically correct, though,” she pointed out. “Besides, their skirts are adorable.”

“I don’t want to know how you know they’re not anatomically correct,” I shook my head. “I’m just saying, we don’t have any other hentai figures up front.”

“You make an excellent point.” Komari droned, turning a page without looking at me. “Over-ruled.”

“Fine, but I’m not sure why you sent me through the store looking for misplaced figurines when you were going to ignore what I found. Not to mention the figures’ bare breasts are on the box.”

“Oh, yeah, they are, aren’t they?” Komari’s lip twitched thoughtfully. “Ah, well, the figurines themselves don’t have nipples.” She reached into a drawer without looking and threw a roll of medical tape in my direction. I blinked down at the tape in my hand.

“What is this for?”

“Take the tape and cover their nipples with it,” Komari directed with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“The tape will ruin the boxes, you know,” I warned her as I climbed to my feet again.

“The boxes are waxed cardboard, and the tape is designed not to damage wounds. It’s fine. Go. Go.” I sighed in displeasure as she waved me away with one hand. I spent the next hour placing tiny squares of tape over hentai cat girl nipples on boxes. I finally returned to the chair opposite her and smacked the tape down irritably on the desk.

“Done,” I frowned. Komari hadn’t moved in the entire time I was working. She might as well have been a statue.

“Good. Now little Kenji won’t have his first sexual stirrings gawking at nipples on a box in my store. Society can go on for another day.”

“That’s fucking gross,” I gagged.

“Yep,” Komari agreed. “So, what’s your problem, princess?”

“Besides the fact I’ve spent the past hour censoring nipples?” I ran my hands through my hair irritably.

“Yep,” Komari tore her gaze from the pages of the magazine and looked up at me intently. “Not that I care, but you are distracted, and a distracted worker makes stupid mistakes. Like ignoring the entire section of ‘Abandoned Housewife Wants Hot Butt Sex With A Mackerel’ videos I placed over by season 3 of Inuyasha.”

“What?” I gasped, turning to see, true to her word, a box of hentai videos cozying up to Kagome. “Why would you do that?”

“To test you,” Komari glanced up at me expressionlessly. “And you failed.”

“What are you? Yoda?”

“I’m Yoda if Yoda was a fashion model with impeccable taste and a banging body,” she returned to her magazine. I was utterly lost for words. “So, what’s the story? Trouble with your boyfriend? He wants you to give it up and you want to save it for marriage? Or vice versa? Once again, not that I care.”

“Well, if you don’t care why’d you ask?”

“Because I pay you to do a job, not to wander around and abuse my tablet with an angry look on your pretty face. No one likes angry pretty people. It’s why I’m never angry. I’m just pretty.”

“And humble,” I mumbled with my recently ever-present scowl creeping across my face once again.

“The humblest,” Komari acknowledged. “Spill it.”

“I’m having an argument with my g- “I stopped myself abruptly before I blurted out the damning truth. That treacherous witch had lulled me into a false sense of security, and I’d almost blown it. She showed no outward signs of noticing so I quickly plowed onward to avoid any awkward silences. “My friend. She’s mad at me.”

“I see, and this fight with your girlfriend is your fault, I take it,” Komari prompted in a monotone, still reading her magazine, or at least appearing to read it.

“Not my girlfriend,” I snapped. “She’s a female and she’s a friend, but not a girlfriend.”

“How Milk Morinaga of you,” the corner of her lips curled up for a moment in as close an approximation of a smile as I’d seen from her, yet, before her face returned to her usual inscrutable mask.

“She’s not!” I snarled, growing angry at her mocking tone and my own guilt over lying. “I don’t swing that way.”

“What way?” Komari glanced up at me, her eyebrow rising slightly.

“The…lesbian…way,” I stammered, quickly drowning in a pool of quicksand of my own making. “No- “

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it?” She finished for me. I shrugged and sat with my hands between my thighs. “I never said you did. You shouldn’t get so defensive; it makes you appear guilty.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” I declared loudly; fully aware I was being toyed with. Just as I seemed unable to not rise to the provocations.

“Again, never said you did,” Komari shook her head at me. “You need to get better at hiding things if you don’t want your business spread all over town.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“So, what did you do to piss off your girl friend?” Komari ignored my question in a most infuriating way, heavily emphasizing the space between girl and friend as if to mock me.

“Why should I tell you?” I demanded, sniffing.

“Because you want to tell someone who doesn’t give a shit and isn’t involved,” Komari flipped the page again. Apparently deciding the page she was looking at wasn’t very interesting she flipped again before settling in to read, seemingly more satisfied with its content.

“No, I don’t,” I sat back and folded my arms over my chest, glaring at her.

“Ok, princess,” Komari shrugged nonchalantly.

“Don’t call me princess.”

“I can if I want,” Komari intoned before lapsing into a silence that quickly lengthened and grew until it became unbearable.

“Fine! “I growled irritably. “Yes, it was probably all my fault, but I apologized. It should be over, right?”

“You’ve obviously never been in a relationship before,” Komari smirked at me over her magazine.

“We’re not in a relationship!” I protested angrily, rising to my feet with as much indignation as I could manage.

“There’s that guilt thing, again,” Komari turned another page and whistled. “Noice top.”

“Well, you keep saying weird stuff! It’s normal for people to get defensive when you say things that make them upset,” I pointed out.

“Is friendship not a relationship?” Komari looked up at me and blinked innocently, with her copious amounts of eyeshadow she looked a bit like a surprised tanuki. “You can’t rush to assumptions, princess.”

“Well, don’t say suggestively weird things and stop calling me princess,” I muttered, sitting back down in the chair.

“Well, since your ‘friend’ is mad at you and you two are ‘close’ it’s going to take some time for her to forgive you. It’s how the game is played in some ‘friendships’,” Komari lowered the magazine to her lap for a moment.

“Please don’t make air quotes,” I shook my head with a growl of displeasure. “And what’s that supposed to mean, anyway? What game?”

“I call it the relationship game,” Komari puffed her chest out proudly as if she’d discovered the secret to a controlled fusion reaction.

“Wow,” I deadpanned. “What insight.”

“Princesses shouldn’t be snide. It makes them ugly,” Komari scowled at me. “Relationships work on a point system.”

“What are you talking about?” I had no idea what she was saying.

“Sometimes you score points by doing smart things like telling them they look nice or bringing them flowers or lying and saying their voice sounds like an angel during karaoke. You lose points when you don’t notice their new hair cut or their new clothes or tell them the truth about their singing skills. In an ideal relationship you want no net points at the end of the day.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I insisted without conviction. Was that really how relationships worked? It seemed crass and not romantic at all.

“You said something stupid; they got mad at you for saying the stupid thing. You lost two points.” Komari lectured. “You apologized either right away or as soon as you realized it was stupid and gained one point back. In the game, they have the right to continue to punish you until the point drops off and you are back to zero again.”

“Why didn’t I get two points back?” I cocked my head to the side.

“You can’t unsay or undo stupid things so, no matter how heartfelt, you only ever get one point back for an apology,” Komari said like it was the most understood thing ever spoken.

“That doesn’t seem fair at all,” I shook my head.

“Relationships are even less fair than life,” Komari nodded at me sympathetically.

“Saying you’re right, which I’m not!” I wagged my finger for emphasis. “But giving you the benefit of the doubt and saying you are, how long does the point take to drop off?”

“Well, that’s the tricky part,” Komari scratched her cheek thoughtfully. “It depends on the person. Now, the best-case scenario is they do or say something stupid, and you get the moral high ground back and score points then you have the advantage. Worst case scenario…who knows? Until you’ve learned your lesson, I guess.”

“That is probably the most cynical thing I’ve ever heard,” I marveled.

“Welcome to relationships, princess. Feelings between people are a breeding ground of cynicism,” Komari shrugged, returning to her magazine. “At least now you know the rules.”

I turned my gaze out the window as snow began to swirl from the darkening sky. Was Aria really playing this contemptuous game like Komari suggested? No. We already had our rules we’d settled on. Relationships couldn’t be broken down to a series of mahjong games where the winner had the most points. Could they?

“Are they all like that?”

“In my experience they are.”

“That’s depressing,” I murmured. “Does it ever get better?”

“Not until it ends.”