So here's my shot at writing another Girl Friends manga (I started one under the name iatethepoison apple (or xXLiStLesSXx, depending on when you knew me. I'd give an explanation, but it's a looooong story that I've (attempted) to tell and gone over in my head far too many times now, one that always makes me hate how stupid and immature I let myself become. If I'd just let go in the first place like I wanted to…UGH. I hate female pride :/). I got inspired by the physical release in America (!) and, once again, I am horribly frustrated with Sugi and Tamamin's ship being sunk. I mean, that whole 'someone I can love forever' thing had it written all over it. But anyway. I threw this together late tonight, and I've edited it and all, but I'm sorry if it's no good—I'm going through some NASTY writer's block but I really want to write, so this is how I'm trying to battle it. Please leave me a review if you like it, it really helps to motivate me!

Also, I kind of just…let my mind loose here—just wrote and let the plot come to me. I think I managed to tie it together, but I'm sorry if it doesn't flow properly :(

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Graduation is over.

Akko and Mari are more in love than ever.

Tamamin, it turns out, really is as thick as she appears.

And, hardly for the first time, Sugi wonders when exactly she got dragged into the middle of all this. It isn't like her at all to surround herself with the problems of others (and actually care about the outcome). She's always been more reserved—for as much as she likes to party and drink and give out her affection like candy at a parade, not one of her boyfriends knows a single thing about her. And, back when Akko first dragged Mari into their superficial little circle, neither had anyone else.

Then Akko had come to her with the problem of a friend who'd kissed another friend, and at first, Sugi had just chalked it up to her outgoing friend's naiveté. After all, friends kiss friends all the time (not only is it a symbol of affection, but it can also function as a fantastic release for pent-up sexual frustration while one may or may not be completely and utterly totally fucking sloshed).

But then Akko had looked down, and Sugi had caught a glimpse of the very rare, somber side of the hyperactive girl.

"But this friend…they were crying."

It hadn't taken long for Sugi to catch on to whatever Akko and Mari had going on—they really were terrible at hiding it. Luckily, they had still been in high school at the time, and high school girls do have a rather nasty tendency to be so completely absorbed in their imagined drama that they often suffer from truly extraordinary cases of tunnel-vision.

It's almost funny, that as for hard as Sugi had tried to keep the others at arms' length, she may as well have saved her breath. She thinks maybe it had something to do with Mari—Mari was different than most high school girls. There always seemed to be something more to Mari—something about the way that she had changed completely and yet was still just the same. She was the glue their group had been missing. Or maybe just Akko.

Either way, in a sense, Akko and Mari's love had brought them all together—had forced them to take the time to get to know each other just a little better while teaching Mari about the world.

And now, at the end of it all, Sugi's stuck standing here, caring about Tamamin and her stupid, geeky boyfriend (only he's not geeky at all—he's actually a good guy, despite what Akko may have to say to the opposite effect. But that doesn't make Sugi like him).

And of course she cares—Tamamin is the kind of girl who believes in loyalty and monogamy and Sugi really doesn't think she's the type to fall for the whole 'it's not cheating if it's a girl' spiel. She's losing her drunken makey-outy partner. Akko is out of the question (Sugi would never consider it—they have some sort of convoluted bromance, she's realized, thanks to Akko's inability to hold down a girlfriend for more than a week), and though Sugi wouldn't mind having a go at Mari (and she knows she could take Akko), she loves them too much to jeopardize their relationship for a bit of fun.

(And God, this is why she keeps people at arms' length. It's a pain in the ass to care about her own feelings, let alone those of other people)

Obviously her boyfriends are out of the question—Sugi learned long ago that kissing is better with girls. It's something about the feeling (also something about how Tamamin didn't have stubble, and how she never reeked of too much Axe), how she feels like there's some kind of hole inside of her that she didn't even know was there until it's filled with the pressure of Tamamin's little tongue. It's something about how they've drunk a whole cabinet's worth of beer and gin and Tamamin somehow tastes like bubblegum.

Sugi sighs as she allows reality to break her from her thoughts—Tamamin's tugging at her arm now, pulling her toward some manga store that's undoubtedly filled with sweaty otaku stink (yes, there is a difference between regular boy sweat and otaku boy sweat). She watches Tamamin out of the corner of her eye as the smaller girl clutches her arm, bouncing around in excitement.

It'll suck to have to find a new make-out partner, and she's sure she'll never find one she fits with quite so nicely as she does with Tamamin, but it's doable. Hell, Sugi knew she could probably pick and choose—she's caught every type of person from train station pervert to good Catholic girl staring at her in the past. So really, it isn't a tragedy that Tamamin's finally found a boyfriend. If anything, it means that Sugi won't have to be Tamamin's cosplay dummy anymore.

Therefore, she can't quite understand why she feels nauseous whenever she sees his picture, or why, when Tamamin goes on about how she's finally found a boy who will cosplay and put up with her obsession with manga (and hello, Sugi does that too—what's so special about that?), she feels like rolling her eyes until she sees the back of her head.

She also (still) doesn't understand just how she came to love these girls, or why she wants to find one person she can love forever when she's got five men who'd take a bullet for her in a heartbeat, but that's the last time she ever gives anyone advice on a 'friend'.

Thanks for reading! Please review if you'd like to see more!