Chapter 98: Sleepless Night

I woke up feeling fantastic.

My back didn’t hurt, and neither did my head. Even the storeroom’s lumpy straw mattress felt pretty great for once. On the other side of the crates, Fenna was snoring with one arm hanging off her cot, and honestly, even that sounded kind of nice.

Then, I remembered how the night had ended.

---

After the shoes hit the floor, nobody moved for a solid ten seconds.

Then, very carefully, I lifted myself off of Serena. It made a wet, sucking sound that I was going to hear on my deathbed.

I grabbed my blouse off the floor and my skirt off the lamp. After that, I stood up as straight as I could and held them both against my chest.

"Well..." I looked slowly around the room. "Would you look at that? This isn’t my room at all!"

I shuffled past Lily sideways with my back pressed flat against the wall. The second my foot touched the hallway, I ran for my life. Halfway down the stairs, I finally noticed that my underwear was still hanging off my ankle.

[...Yeah, that’s a problem for tomorrow’s Kohaku to deal with.]

---

Unfortunately, it was tomorrow now, and tomorrow’s Kohaku had training.

"Again," Sabine said.

I pulled Tide up from the ground, through my legs, and into my hips. Right as the band left my ribs, her practice stick came swinging in at them. I twisted and caught it on the flat of my sword, and for a second, I felt the band climb up into my arms. Then, it slipped away from me, and I landed flat on my back in the dirt beside one of the Ripper pools.

Sabine liked training me out here, in the woods past the palms, because the crabs kept everybody else away.

"Eight seconds." Sabine stood over me and blocked out the sun. "Yesterday, you held it for nine. You’re distracted this morning, Kohaku."

"I’m not distracted! Honestly, I’m the least distracted I’ve ever been in my whole life."

"You’re wearing a scarf." She poked it with the end of her stick. "It’s hot out, and we’re on a beach trip. As your instructor, I’m obligated to ask whether you’re hiding an injury I should be reporting under the academy’s duty of care."

"It’s a fashion choice. Scarves are... really popular where I’m from. Everybody wears them, even in summer."

"I’m sure they do." She hooked the scarf with her stick, tugged it down an inch, and stared at my neck. Her eyebrows went up, and she let it drop back into place. "Well. Somebody was very thorough with you last night, weren’t they?"

I sat up and yanked the scarf higher.

"Can we please just do the drill?"

"Fine, fine."

But, before we could get to that...

"Sakana."

We both turned around.

Serena was walking out from between the trees with her arms folded, dressed in the same light hunting clothes she wore out with Lily every morning. Her hair was brushed perfectly straight, but she also had the biggest, darkest bags under her eyes I’d ever seen on a living person.

"Professor," she said. "I need Sakana for a while. Go somewhere else."

Sabine gave her the same smile she gave students right before she failed them.

"Miss Frostfall, students don’t get to dismiss faculty from a scheduled lesson. If you’d like to request some of her time, there’s a form you can submit to—"

"My engagement to Prince Aldric is going to be announced before the end of the year." Serena didn’t even raise her voice. "Once I’m his wife, I’ll outrank everybody on this trip who isn’t royalty, and I’m happy to start acting like it early. So, please, go somewhere else."

Sabine didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, she sighed, turned to me, and patted my shoulder twice.

"Sorry, you’re on your own!" She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "Try to give her back to me in one piece, Miss Frostfall. I’ve spent a lot of time building that body, and I’d hate to see it go to waste."

"I can’t promise you anything, Professor. I’m way too tired to promise anybody anything today."

Sabine walked off into the palms. I watched her until she disappeared between the trunks, and I felt my stomach sink. There went my only witness.

Serena stopped right in front of me. Up close, the bags were even worse. They were practically purple.

"D-Did you get any sleep at all?" I asked.

"No." She rubbed one eye with the heel of her hand. "Everdawn didn’t either, as far as I could tell. She lay in her bed facing the wall the entire night, and she never moved once. I don’t even think she blinked."

[Oh no. Here it comes.]

I braced myself. Then, Serena stepped forward, lazily draped her arms over my shoulders, and locked her hands together behind my neck.

She kissed me.

It was slow, sleepy, and a little sloppy. She pulled back an inch, looked at me with those tired red eyes, and kissed the corner of my mouth.

"I’m going to kill you," she murmured. She kissed my jaw, and then she kissed my lips again. "One of these days, when you least expect it, I’m going to do it."

"Mm~ That sounds fair to me." I slid my hands down her back, past her waist, and a little bit lower than that.

Serena put her palm flat on my chest and shoved me back a full step.

"Absolutely not. I didn’t walk all the way out here past those horrible crabs for that." She yawned into the back of her hand. "Go talk to Everdawn. For some reason, she’s angrier at you than she is at me."

Then, she turned around and wandered back into the trees.

[...What?]

---

For the next hour, I thought about what Serena had said.

Lily was more angry at me than at her. That didn’t make any sense! Serena was the one who dragged me into their room, and Serena was the one who pinned me to the bed. I was mostly just there, being pinned. If anyone had a right to be mad, it was Lily, at Serena, for doing it on her side of the room!!!

Then, halfway through my second lap of the facility, it hit me.

[Oh, shit. She’s mad because I stole Serena from her!]

It made perfect sense. Two months ago, those two weren’t even speaking. Then they finally made up on a mountain, Lily got her childhood friend back, and a few weeks later some fox girl showed up and slept with her.

Of course she was upset! I would be too!

So, when I found Lily down on the sand behind an old overturned boat, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and stabbing a stick into the ground, I already knew what I was going to say.

"Lily! There you are!"

She glanced up at me, then at the scarf around my neck, and went right back to stabbing the sand.

"Hello, Kohaku." Her voice sounded more formal than I’d ever heard it.

I sat down next to her. She scooted about six inches away.

"So, um, about last night..."

"What about it?"

"Well, you walked in on us, and I kind of ran off without saying anything. I wanted to apologize." I took a deep breath. "I know you and Serena only just made up, and I didn’t mean to come between you two. I’m not trying to take her away from you, I swear."

Lily stared at me for a very long time.

"... What?"

"Yeah," I sighed. "I mean, I was drunk so when she kissed me, I... responded. But, I know that now that you two are making up, you’re probably..."

She was glaring at me hard.

[Eh?]

"You can sleep with whoever you want, whenever you want, as many times as you want, in whatever bed you want! It’s none of my business, and you clearly don’t need my opinion on anything."

My mouth opened but nothing came out.

Because I genuinely didn’t know what the problem wa.s

[... Okay, Kohaku, think. What would a normal woman with dating experience do here?]

That was where I ran into the main issue.

In this life, sure, I was doing great. My second body had a better love life in two months than most people get in ten years. But in my first life, I had never really dated anyone. I’d never even held hands with anybody, and I died alone at my writing desk after spending years writing kiss scenes for fictional girls.

I’d written over a thousand love confessions, but I had no idea what to do when a real girl was upset with me.

"Is it the sheets?" I tried. "Because I can wash them for you. I’ll wash them twice!"

Lily turned her head very slowly and looked at me.

"Kohaku. Do you really, honestly think I’m upset about the sheets?"

"I mean, not ONLY the sheets..."

Lily stood up and brushed the sand off her skirt. Her face was bright red, her eyes were a little shiny, and her bottom lip was trembling.

Then, she stuck her tongue out at me.

"Bleh!"

It was as if a very cute sword went through my heart.

She turned around and stomped off down the beach, kicking up sand with every step.

I stayed where I was for a moment. Then, I flopped backward onto the sand with my arms spread out and stared up at the sky.

[... I’d love to apologize, but I don’t even know what I did.]