Chapter 12: Yanami Anna: At This Point, Let's Just Eat.
....
The morning's incident concluded.
Yanami Anna could not look at Kihara directly. The image had been processed by her brain and filed somewhere that kept generating retrieval requests at inopportune moments, turning her thoughts into a state that could best be described as lukewarm porridge. She pushed the bento box into his hands, turned, and walked out the front door on steps that didn't feel entirely connected to the ground.
"Lala — can you keep an eye on Anna on the way to school? The state she's in, she'll either walk into a utility pole or fall into a drain."
"Mm! What time will you be back today?" She had already taken both bento boxes from him, and was now examining them with curiosity. "Why are there two?"
"If shooting goes smoothly, I'll be home before you get back from school. If it runs late I'll call. Anna got up early enough that she probably didn't make herself a bento, so that second one is for her — can you pass it along?"
Lala tucked both boxes into the transmitter phone. "I'm heading out then!"
"Travel safely."
Yanami Anna was currently functioning as a steam locomotive in human form.
The volume of pink vapor rising from her head was sufficient to draw looks from every direction on the morning street. She was walking quickly and looking at nothing in front of her, because looking at anything in front of her required using the parts of her brain that were currently occupied.
That thing. When it woke up. It was that big?
The diagrams in the textbook were completely wrong about the scale—
There was a concrete utility pole directly ahead of her. She had not noticed it. She was going to walk into it at full speed in approximately three seconds.
"Anna!!"
Lala covered the distance at a speed that didn't match her apparent effort, pressed both hands to Yanami Anna's shoulders, and stopped her.
"Kihara was right to worry. Why aren't you looking where you're going?"
"Lala...?"
"You look really strange. Are you okay?"
Yanami Anna stared at her. Lala's expression was completely normal — the same open warmth as always, no trace of the morning's events having registered as anything worth carrying.
"You saw it too, right? Kihara's... that."
"What thing?"
She couldn't say it directly. She leaned over and whispered several words into Lala's ear.
"Oh~ You mean that handle with the nice grip~ I'd never seen one of those before either. Is something unusual about it?"
"No — it's just — don't you two have different biology? Like, structurally?"
The disconnect was so complete that Yanami Anna had no idea where to begin.
A white smiley-face hair clip near Lala's temple spoke up. "Yanami-san, please excuse Lady Lala's unfamiliarity. Due to her rather laissez-faire upbringing, Lady Lala has not received any formal education regarding the relevant biological topics. And no one has quite had the courage to provide it informally either."
"Oh no... the more I think about it the more dangerous it seems that she's living with him... wait, where is that voice coming from?"
Lala pointed to the hair clip with a smile.
"That's Peke! My all-purpose transformation robot~"
"Pleased to meet you, Yanami-san. I am Peke."
"Ah... yes. Hello."
Yanami Anna spent a moment studying this piece of alien technology with the expression of someone updating their model of what was possible, then redirected her attention to Lala. She checked the street — empty in both directions — and lowered her voice.
"Did Kihara try anything last night? Like, anything suspicious?"
"Suspicious? What do you mean? He'd never try anything like that."
"I mean like... using your chest to hold something in place. Or blindfolding you to taste-test things. Or—" she lowered her voice further— "drinking milk."
"None of that~ He told me some stories about the film set and then fell asleep, and I used the Jumping Warp-kun MK1 to move us to the bedroom."
"Then... good." Yanami Anna pressed both hands to her own chest and exhaled. The stone she'd been carrying since she woke up settled down from somewhere in her throat to somewhere more reasonable. She turned to Lala with the serious expression of someone issuing safety guidelines. "Listen. If he ever asks you to do any of those things — use exactly the tone I'm using right now, and say no. Understood?"
"Why?"
"Guh—" The purity of the question hit her like a blunt object. She staggered back two steps. "It's too innocent — I don't even know where to start—"
Lala's eyes filled with the specific brightness of intellectual curiosity. She seized both of Yanami Anna's hands and shook them up and down. "Anna, please explain! I'm very interested!"
"This is — these are things you only learn after you're properly married. Asking now won't help you."
"But you obviously already know."
Yanami Anna became acutely aware that she had backed herself to the edge of a cliff. Sweat gathered on her forehead. She searched for an exit.
"It's getting late! We should head to school!"
"You're right!"
Lala's attention pivoted cleanly. She nodded, took Yanami Anna's hand, and pulled her toward school.
Without Kihara present, the ambient attention in the classroom redistributed itself. The dedicated observation network was at reduced capacity. Several male students, reading the opportunity correctly, moved to fill the social vacuum around Lala.
Yanami Anna noticed this immediately and had already mentally volunteered herself as security — she'd intercept the approaches, redirect, maintain Lala's perimeter.
She didn't need to.
When the boys talked to Lala, something happened to her energy. Not unfriendly — Lala wasn't capable of unfriendly — but there was a quality to her responses that could only be described as a door that was politely ajar but not open. One after another, the approaches failed to gain traction.
Yanami Anna filed this observation for later.
Lunch. The rooftop.
The rooftop was Kihara's — or more precisely, it was a small privilege he'd negotiated with the previous principal using his name and reputation, which meant only he and Yanami Anna had keys. It had been their lunch spot by default since he'd started at Gensokyo High.
Yanami Anna had picked up bread and milk from the school store on the way up. She found Lala already there, pulling out the bento.
"Oh — sorry, Anna. I forgot to tell you Kihara made you a bento." She produced it with an apologetic smile.
"It's fine. I can eat this too."
She accepted the bento, sat down, and weighed whether to ask what she'd been thinking about since morning. Decided yes.
"Lala. When you talk to the boys in class, you're completely different from how you are with me and the other girls. Why?"
"Ah... I thought your expression looked a little off. So that's what was on your mind." Lala laughed softly and explained.
It turned out to be straightforward: she'd grown up in an environment saturated with arranged marriage politics, which had developed in her a sensitivity to the difference between goodwill and the other thing. She needed about one look. The boys who'd approached her that morning had been carrying something — not directed at her specifically, just ambient — that registered as wrong. Enough to put them behind a line.
Then, apparently warming to the subject, she lit up and started describing her first impression of Kihara.
"When I appeared suddenly and he looked at me, there was nothing — not even a trace of that feeling. And he was so considerate, preparing a handle for me right away—"
"Oh. Right. Wow. Impressive."
Yanami Anna deployed the classic three-part non-response — oh / right / wow — and opened her bento box with the focused energy of someone who had decided food was more emotionally manageable than this conversation. Lala showed no signs of stopping. Yanami Anna raised her chopsticks.
This is how things stand. Might as well eat.
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Thank you for reading.