Pretending is harmless, right?

"Why am I here?" Karin pulled on the sleeve of Fu's school uniform. "Hey, Fu, I'm talking to you."

The answer was very prompt and equally rude. The right arm of the older girl, currently pressed hard against the edge of the corner of a very tall building, reached for Karin's left arm and pulled her closer, so she could see.

"It's Tougou and Yuna. And look at them, they're totally on a date."

"So what? Don't tell me you're going to-" Karin found the answer almost immediately after the words had left her mouth. Fu dragged her from one corner to the next, tailing Yuna and her date all the way to a shop for summer clothes.

"Stalking is a crime, you do know that, right?" Karin wasn't comfortable following them around but there was a sense of unbound curiosity that drove her to do it anyway. A real hero didn't lie to themselves... right?

"We're not stalking them, just supervising them on their date. It's my responsibility as their club leader."

"I'm pretty sure that's not your responsibility and you're just super curious." Karin turned away and was about to also walk off when Fu grabbed her with an insane look in her eyes.

"Don't you wanna know? You want to know, don't you?"

"I actually don't and I'm going home. It was stupid of me to even come when you called. Don't call stuff like this an emergency!"

"I bet you're just going home to be alone and train." Fu grinned when Karin twitched, a sure sign that she had hit bullseye. "Yuna and Tougou are totally beating you in being adults, you know? You might as well be a kinder-" Fu realized was coming on a little hard when Karin nearly exploded.

"I-I could find a date anywhere if I-I wanted to! That's a piece of cake!"

"Eh, I wonder if I should put you to the test then. As the experienced woman between us, I'll let you go on a date with me." Fu very much enjoyed pushing Karin's buttons, even if it sometimes had surprising results.

"Fine by me! Let's go! I'll show you how amazing I can make a date!" Karin was screaming internally at frequencies that were very much reserved for other lifeforms.

"Eh...?" Fu hadn't quite anticipated that she would jump on that. She had precisely zero dating experience and expected Karin to have just as much, but she couldn't be sure. But it was too late to get out. She had to show off her girl power now!

Going into the summer wear shop, Fu and Karin immediately took cover behind a shelf, spying on Yuna, who was in the process of holding a rather sexy dress up in front of Tougou.

"I don't know, Yuna. Isn't that rather risque?"

"I think your hero outfit is a lot more risque than this." The comment had the unintended effect that Tougou would very much feel self-conscious about her rather good figure the next time she transformed.

"What are they talking about?" Fu was leaning against Karin, who was growing intensely uncomfortable with the sensation of Fu's rather sizable breasts pressing through the clothes and on her back.

"Clothes, what else." Karin blushed a little because she did hear what Yuna had said and because of the situation, her mind wandered back to that little trip to the beach and Fu in a bikini. The memory did not help her keep her cool one little bit.

"Can't you hear what they're-" Fu flinched and distanced herself a little from Karin when a clerk noticed them and approached. Grabbing the first thing within reach, she took it and spoke out loud. "Do you think this would look good on me, Karin?"

"What are you talking-" Karin looked over her shoulder and noticed the approaching clerk and Fu's evasive maneuvers. Nervously, she looked without really looking and answered as non-specific as possible. "Why don't you try it on?"

Both of them felt rather nervous. If they were just there to shop, that would've been one thing, but Karin still had the date thing in mind and Fu would die of embarrassment if she was caught stalking her friends on a date out of wild curiosity.

The clerk reached them just as Karin saw what exactly Fu was holding. To call it a sexy swimsuit would still be an understatement. It resembled a one-piece that was cut in as many places as possible, putting some rather strong emphasis on a small waist and the breasts of whoever wore it. "Can I help you, dear customer?" Noticing how nervous both of them were, she quickly came to a horribly wrong conclusion as to why and cracked her most awkward smile.

"J-Just asking for my girlfriend's opinion." Fu blurted out without thinking and noticed that the awkward smile of the clerk didn't get any more awkward.

"We have fitting rooms over there. I will have to remind that while it is not against store regulations to enter an occupied cabin with permission, we have strict guidelines on conduct regarding the-" The clerk's incredibly specific and forced explanation was rudely interrupted by Karin, who was just stammering the word conduct over and over until Fu grabbed her hand and pulled her a few meters away from the clerk.

She didn't actively try to form an opinion on it but holding Karin's hand left the clear impression of Nice with her. "Great acting." The sarcasm was so thick that Karin could have choked on it.

"I didn't expect her to expect us to do s-stuff in a public place!"

"Probably the fault of this thing I picked up." Fu would describe it only as adult when asked about it at some point.

Grabbing Karin and pulling her behind another shelf, Fu continued where she had left off earlier, spying on Tougou and Yuna, who were just entering the one fitting room that was larger than others. It did quite amaze her just how many places were wheelchair accommodating nowadays. "Damn, they're out of sight."

"A-Aren't you gonna try that on?"

"Try what on?"

Karin pointed at the swimsuit that Fu was still holding. "That."

Unable to make up her mind on the fly if she should act embarrassed or play it tough, she went with tough. "Want to see? Was looking at my sexy body at the beach not enough?" Fu loved to exaggerate a bit. Or a lot.

"O-Of course. What kind of date would we be on if I wasn't interested?" Karin was almost literally fumbling her words but managed to get something like a sentence together before the embarrassment made her head explode.

Fu was suddenly backed into a corner. Rejecting the idea would be very bad but wearing that thing would immediately raise her personal rating from T to M and she wasn't quite ready to wear something like that, even though it technically covered more skin than a bikini.

Two minutes later, Fu refused to come out of the dressing room and waved Karin in, instead, under the pretext that they could eavesdrop on Yuna and Tougou who were in the next cabin.

No eavesdropping was actually happening but a lot of blushing, jaw dropping and intense blushing, which is completely separate from regular blushing, happened in rapid succession of each other. "I'm... I'm buying that." Karin was, by completely coincidence, whispering since she thought she was only thinking those words.

Fu regretted teasing Karin about her dating experience right now but not as much as she felt flattered since Karin's eyes were figuratively glued to her and she hadn't ever before gotten attention like that.

"Don't you think it shows off my breasts too much?" Tougou's voice from the cabin next to the pretend couple.

"That's why I picked it!" Yuna sounded much too happy.

That their words seemed like the thoughts going through Fu's and Karin's minds were pure, if hilarious, coincidence. "I'm changing back." Fu announced with a low voice and looked at Karin, who just stood there for a few more seconds. "Karin, wait outside the cabin and follow Yuna when they come out!" The loudest whisper humanly possible got Karin to leave.

Waiting outside, ready to hide when necessary, Karin got her act together. "I was just showing you what a real date would go like! I'm still winning!" She wasn't entirely sure what she was winning but she was definitely winning something.

Fu managed to come out of the cabin before Yuna and Tougou were finished in theirs. "We'll wait outside. It's too hot in there, I feel like I'm melting." What was actually melting was her brain. She had definitely felt her heart go into an overdrive that felt like she was running hard enough to keep up with a bullet train. A pretty serious question popped into her mind. Was she much hotter than she gave herself credit for?

There was also a silly question that dealt with actually, possibly, eventually, somehow liking Karin the way guys would like her. But that was ridiculous. Right? Right? Totally ridiculous.

"You were all I'm so experienced but you're not even holding my hand." Karin preferred to not make sense of whatever was going on in her head and just focus on what was important. Winning this contest of who was the better... had the most... she was getting a headache trying to accurately specify what she was winning again.

Fu wasn't quite opposed to that nice feeling she got when holding Karin's hand but with every second she did do that, the silly question got a little less silly and equally little more worrying. What if she was actually into girls? That would explain so much, Fu thought.

Especially that burning hot feeling in her face when she woke up in the middle of the night and Karin was cuddling with her and she could feel her breath on her lips and-

Fu's train of thought was very simple from there on and went something like this: I am totally a lesbian, aren't I? But considering I'm also a magical girl, an eye-patch wearing volunteer and raising my little sister on my own, that's kinda a minor thing, right? Nothing to make a fuss about. Yep. Nothing to fuss about.

Her head tried to fuss about it a lot, especially when confronted by her chest with the fact that she was holding hands with a rather, something she realized rather suddenly, cute girl that she had already kinda, somehow, spent a night with. Not that way of course, but still.

"They're going into a cafe." Karin observed in a matter of fact way. Pulling Fu to a nearby and awfully conveniently placed street vendor that was selling big hats, sunglasses and summer scarves, she got a big hat for herself and big sunglasses for her girlfriend. Paying with her phone, one of the benefits of being employed by the Taisha, Karin found that Fu actually lost a bit of charm with the sunglasses. "I prefer your eye-patch but it's a dead give-away. I'm trained in disguises, so leave staying undetected to me."

Fu was thankful for the distraction because the I'm a lesbian, what now? and Is this actually okay? forces in her head where about to go toe to toe with rather large metaphorical bats.

Slipping through the second door of the cafe, towards the back, Karin and Fu sat down at a round table that was a few meters away from Yuna and Tougou, putting a large potted plant, that looked extremely exotic and unnatural in the otherwise pretty normal cafe, right between them.

This time, it was Fu who was listening in. "Let's get this one, Mimori."

Fu immediately commented on this sudden development. "Yuna switched to calling Tougou by her first name. I had totally forgotten her first name is Mimori."

Karin's face was buried, not literally of course, in the menu pamphlet, trying to prevent yet another clerk related accident that would result in- "You left the swimsuit!" Karin said a little louder than she had planned.

"Of course I did!" Fu countered and blushed just thinking about it. "Sssh, they're ordering." Fu was quiet for a few seconds before quietly whistling. "They're ordering the Cupid Sundae. Man, how did they keep this kind of relationship a secret from us all this time?"

Karin's mind was unusually focused on something she specifically didn't want to focus on which in this case was the image of Fu in that super sexy swimsuit. When the waitress asked her for the third time what her order would be, Karin lost all control, panicked and simply repeated the last thing from the menu. "One Cupid Sundae."

Expecting the waitress to ask Fu for her order, Karin was incredibly confused when she simply walked away. "Did you already order?" Karin grabbed Fu's hand to get her attention. To onlookers, it gave the impression of a caring girlfriend.

"I thought you ordered for both of us? What did you get?"

The realization of what she had actually ordered hit Karin like a brick to the face, flying at nearly the speed of sound. "The cupid sundae." She wanted to hide behind her own embarrassment because it was solid and visible enough to make a wall out of it.

Fu blushed and tried to play it off as yet just more pretend-date activities even though it was very rapidly turning into something else. "Good thinking. We're on a date, so of course we'd get a couple sundae."

"Cupid Sundae." Karin corrected her and felt that she was missing a point or a dozen, possibly.

Five minutes, that were actually twenty months to the two girls sitting at the table, on a pretend date, working out a lot of complicated issues like what their sexuality really was and whether they were still winning, later, a cupid sundae was delivered to them in one big glass, two straws and one spoon.

Both of them hoped it was a mistake and that the waitress would realize it, but Fu only needed to take a quick look at Yuna feeding Tougou and roles reversing for the next spoonful to know that it was no mistake and that the hole she and Karin had dug themselves into was being filled with a one of a kind pink concrete and there was no escape.

Karin took the initiative, fit some of the red, presumably strawberry flavor, ice cream on the spoon, leaned forwards and waited for Fu to do what they both knew couples would do in situations like this.

Feeding each other in total silence, so total that even a sledgehammer of a topic couldn't have broken it, Fu was rapidly discovering in her head that she, probably and most likely, was rapidly coming to like Karin the exact way Yuna liked Tougou, possibly minus a few hundred levels of obsession.

After the sundae, that seemed like it was regenerating before their eyes, was finished, both girls were mentally tired out. Fu needed a hot bath and maybe some actual quiet minutes to figure out if she was actually okay with liking Karin, who was just now figuring out that that winning wasn't quite what had been happening the last hour or so. Puberty hormones be dammed, both of them thought.

Remembering their purpose in even being there, Fu turned around only to find Yuna and Tougou's table to already be cleaned, meaning they had left at least a few minutes ago. Coming to terms with the incredible fiasco, and depending on the angle of view: success, that the stalking, she meant observation, had turned into, Fu called it quits. "Looks like we lost them. I, err, need to go home and actually start making dinner for Itsuki." A bold-faced lie, because it was barely three in the after-noon.

"I need to finish my daily training." That lie was even bolder and possibly bold enough to whack someone over the head with and leave them unconscious for Karin was on a prescribed resting day.

Paying very quickly, Fu paid, both girls went their separate ways, not noticing that it was now them who were being watched.

"Operation complete." Tougou grinned and looked up at her girlfriend. "How did you figure out it would happen like this, Yuna?"

"I had no idea actually!" Yuna laughed and scratched her cheek. "I thought they were getting really close and since Fu obviously can't date Itsuki, I figured they would figure things out if we got them in the mood!"

"Jeez, Yuna..." Tougou giggled. The operation was complete but their date still had a lot of life left in it.

=== End ===