“Naaah,” Emi chuckled, “I’m just messing with you!”

“O-Oh!” Himari covered her mouth as she giggled demurely. “You have quite the imagination, Seto san!”

“Hmmm?” Emi cocked her head slightly to the side. “Oh! No, no! Everything was true. But no one here needs to worry about me perving on them. I’ve already got a girlfriend and I’m a witch of fidelity.”

“Oh,” Himari replied, waiting for Emi to say she was just kidding again. When that didn’t happen, she took a deep sip of her tea hurriedly, not really caring that the hot liquid felt like molten fire burning down her throat and into her belly.

“I like you, Emi!” Tsubaki declared, shattering the silence. “Have a seat! Riku! Tea all around! In fact, break out the good stuff! This is a celebration!”

“Y-You mean…” Riku looked at Tsubaki aghast.

“That’s right,” Tsubaki fixed her with a look of burning determination. “Bring out my private reserve.”

“Right away!” Riku declared earnestly, hurrying to a cabinet in the far corner of the room.

“Have a seat, Emi,” Tsubaki repeated, dragging both Emi and, in turn, a stunned Satomi toward the table. “You’re either going to have to let her go or buy her dinner, Satomi.”

“Huh?” Satomi glanced down and realized she was still glomped on to Emi’s arm and let go sheepishly. “Sorry!”

“So, I’m curious,” Emi nodded in thanks as she sat down on the offered chair and dropped her heavy bag gratefully onto the floor. “Are these uniforms made of human hair?”

“I…Why would they be made of human hair?” Himari shrunk back slightly in horror.

“I read a manga once where the 3^rd years had their hair cut off and turned into uniforms for the middle schoolers and this school kind of tosses out kind of that ‘hair rapey’ vibe.” Once more silence descended upon the room. “Not to mention they’re stupid itchy.”

“You read strange things, Seto san,” Chie noted, blinking at her from across the table.

“You have no idea,” Emi grinned. “I can show you if you want! I’ve got a really good book in my bag! I bought it at the bookstore with Kasumi.”

“Oh,” Chie replied evenly, eyes widening slightly, yet still maintaining that sleepy quality which her whole being seemed to exude. “I-I trust you! You don’t have to show me!” She waved one hand as if to ward off a blow.

“The winter uniforms are made of wool, I think,” Himari supplied. “I wouldn’t imagine human hair would be a very good choice for school uniforms, so you don’t have to worry.”

“I feel better, now,” Emi nodded appreciatively. “It’s like when you hear a noise on the train and convince yourself a cobra has escaped from someone’s luggage and is under your seat ready to bite your ankle if you move. You know? It plays on the mind.”

“A-Ah!” Satomi said, at a loss as to how to respond but feeling if she did not the awkward silence would become unbreachable.

“S-So what interests do you have, Seto san?” Himari asked, desperately trying to wrest the conversation away from hair rape and train cobras and back into areas she was more comfortable with and knowledgeable in.

“Ah!” Emi said with a broad grin. “What am I not interested in? I like reading and games and onsens and candy and eating and sleeping and baths and information collection and dissemination and fluffy animals and petting the kitty and righting social injustices and plushies and reading manga and rolling on the floor on warm days.”

“It sounds like you have quite varied tastes! Have you considered joining one of our clubs? We have quite a few.” Himari asked as Riku began placing cups of tea in front of everyone, whisking away and replacing Himari’s other cup with a new one. “I’m sure you can find something to pique your interests.”

“Well, I’m more of a leader than a follower,” Emi shrugged. “Thanks for the tea! I was thinking maybe I could make my own club. I’ve always fancied myself a benevolent-ish witch queen sort of person.”

“Creating a club of your own is absolutely encouraged,” Himari smiled. “Do you know what kind you’d like to create?”

“I was thinking a…” Emi paused. Perhaps, she decided, subtlety was best in this sort of situation. Change would come. Oh, yes. The entire school positively begged for liberation from staid, societally enforced conformity and she was, after all, a witch of freedom. But there was an order to this sort of thing. She couldn’t go around and smack people to wake them up. She had to be smart about things. After all, she reasoned, change could be painful for those unaccustomed to it. “Flower Appreciation Club.”

“Delightful! You enjoy gardening?” Himari enthused.

“Not gardening, per se,” Emi shrugged. “But I certainly enjoy encouraging people to slow down and caress the lilies from time to time.”

“Isn’t that ‘smell the roses’?” Chie asked, cocking her head to the side.

“Is it?” Emi sipped the tea Riku had put in front of her. “This is great tea!”

“Right?” Tsubaki enthused. “It’s my family’s own blend!”

“Well, it is amazing!” Emi sipped her tea again and sighed. “Delightful.”

“We absolutely encourage starting your club and you can ask any of us if you need any help,” Himari sighed in relief as the conversation seemed to have returned to an area she was less likely to get a headache discussing. “Oh, my! Have you been assigned an onee chan?”

“Nah, I’m an only child,” Emi replied with a shrug. “I always wanted a sister, but Yoko decided pregnancy and childbirth didn’t really suit her after the first one.”

“Yoko?” Himari asked.

“My mother. Not to mention there’s the whole taking a bath thing and whether it’s acceptable to wash each other’s unmentionables and not think anything of it or if it’d get awkward somehow. I mean, it’s fine when you’re both younger, but you need to figure out when the cutoff point is. Is it an age thing or a body development thing? Who even gets to make that decision in the first place? Is it a mutual decision? What if one person doesn’t want to stop and the other does? Then things could get awkward. Is there going to be some sort of incest sort of thing going on or is it incest light? Maybe it's completely platonic with heavy, innocent bathing and potential petting. There’s a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. Obviously, there’s just a lot to take into consideration, you know?” Emi shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

“I- “Himari glanced around for help but everyone else at the table was pretending to have not heard anything, leaving her on an island. “Anyway! What I meant is we generally assign someone who’s been here for some time to a new student to help them get acclimated. I imagine you already have a roommate at the dorms, but your onee chan can help you get acclimated to how the school functions and act as another friend.”

“Isn’t that a little tropey?” Emi cocked an eyebrow at her.

“I know just the person!” Himari grinned. The other girls at the table nodded back.

“Momomoo!” They all said at once.