simpler than fairy tales.

Life, Mitsuru thinks tiredly, would be a lot more enjoyable if there weren't stupid people around.

She sighs and looks up at the clear, reddish sky, chewing on her yellow gingko yakitori and grimacing at the bitter aftertaste. "I'm seriously begging you, Yuzu-chan," Mitsuru says. "It's been a long day."

"But what if," Yuzu insists, taking a bite of her own yakitori. She looks up at Kou and Mitsuru, who each eye her warily, exchanging glances that say, Not this again. "What if," eyes wide and uncomfortably sincere, "Just think about this for a moment, okay? I'm about to say something that's been bothering me for a really long time—"

"Yuzu-chan, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I just took a chemistry exam and I probably got like an eighty-three on it, so it would be great if we could just talk about something easy and not dumb—the weather, maybe—I mean, I hear there's a storm coming soon—"

"Kou-chan!" Yuzu hisses. "No. This is important, okay? Hear me out, and you might thank me later. I mean, I might—I might open a whole new world to you." She leans her head back and swallows another bite whole, and then furrows her eyebrows at them. "Hypothetically speaking," she says mysteriously, "What if a father and mother named their child something like… Inoue Inoue?"

A pregnant pause follows. "So listen, Mitchan," Kou says flatly, "I'm going home this way, okay? Sorry about this, but I just—I can't do this."

Mitsuru spins around and half-glares, half-grovels at Kou with her pale eyes. "Kou-chan," she begs. "Have some pity—You can't just leave me with her! She's a murderer… a murderer of brain cells—"

"Mitchan," Yuzu only murmurs, shaking her head. She balances her takoyaki toothpick on one finger, the same concentrated, concerned expression on her face. "Think about it. Inoue Inoue."

Mitsuru and Kou stare at her flatly.

"I mean, what if Inoue Inoue-san had a boyfriend? But they were both massive introverts and had wild complexes over calling each other by their first names? And one day, the boyfriend says, 'Inoue-san… I think it's time we step up our relationship. If it's all right with you, Inoue-san, may I call you…" Yuzu clasps Kou's hand in hers and widens her eyes. "Inoue-san?'"

They stare at each other for a long moment. And then: "I'll kill you!" Kou screams, and Mitsuru has to hold Kou's arms behind her to stop her from slugging Yuzu in the stomach.

Yuzu only shrugs, tapping her finger against her chin. "I think it'd be pretty bad. It might cause a lot of problems, right? You can't go around calling strangers by their first name."

"Last time you asked what life would be like if dolphins could soar through the sky with their flippers as wings," Mitsuru sighs in resignation.

Kou takes a beat and holds up a hand. "Oh, but hypothetically speaking," she clarifies. "Not to be confused with when dolphins actually soar through the sky with their flippers."

Yuzu frowns at them. "Isn't that interesting, too, though? I mean—" she sighs contentedly. "I mean, wouldn't it be beautiful? Imagine yourself, waking up on a Sunday morning. You've finished all your homework and you know you can just relax for a day. It's sunny and warm, and as you go outside with your cup of coffee to watch the sun rise—"

"Yuzu—"

"You see, in the distance, what? A dolphin, piercing through cumulus clouds!" She giggles. "Wouldn't that just be romantic? Majestic, even?"

Kou purses her lips with an expression that wants to say five thousand things, but finds no words. She looks slowly at Mitsuru, says simply, "Bye," and spins around and walks away.

Mitsuru sighs and crosses her arms. "Yuzu-chan," she sighs. "I think maybe you were born high."

Yuzu pouts, plucking a gingko bean from Mitsuru's stick and popping it in her mouth. "You were born too serious, Mitchan," she whines. "Where's your imagination? Your appreciation for beauty? Your interest in the wonder?"

"Something like that," Mitsuru murmurs, "is impractical. Beauty is only skin deep, right?"

The light-haired girl pauses at that, reaching for another gingko bean, but Mitsuru snatches away the stick before she can touch it. Yuzu pouts, but continues. "Well, I don't think so. I don't think beauty ends at the skin—I think it begins there, and can only go deeper."

Mitsuru blinks at that. So Yuzu isn't filled with only nonsense, she muses thoughtfully. She has some profound things in that head of hers, too.

She watches carefully as Yuzu jumps on top of a stone wall, holding her arms out like a bird as she balances on the edge. "Think about it. Beautiful people are beautiful because they have nice souls, you know—not because they have pretty lips, or high foreheads." Her foot slips and she nearly falls from the wall, and Mitsuru has a near-heart attack as her friend threatens to crack open her skull, but she bounces right back into balance with a soft, knowing smile. "Those contribute, of course—people find something pretty if it's aesthetically pleasing. But that kind of prettiness doesn't last. It has to have something behind it, to support it." Yuzu looks up at the sky, reaching up a hand as if to clasp the sun in her palm. "A pretty soul, you know?" she says, and sighs romantically.

Mitsuru restrains a snort. "That sounds like something straight out of a chick flick," she murmurs.

"You know Kise-kun?"

The change in topic is fast and unexpected, and Mitsuru glances up at her in surprise. She recovers quickly, though. Who doesn't know him? Kise Ryota—the boy in her class. A famous model, a star basketball player, and the ambition of every fair maiden's heart. Tall, with a perfectly charming smile and straight, white teeth. She harumphs in response to Yuzui's question. "What about him?"

"He's pretty, isn't he?" she turns to the taller girl, pressing a finger against her lips in deep thought. Mitsuru nods. No question about that. "He's pretty, but—do you think he's beautiful?"

Mitsuru almost sighs at the stupid question. He's a model, she thinks. Of course he's beautiful. If he wasn't, maybe school life would be… She thinks of the hordes of girls with cell phone cameras, crowding around the door to their classroom in between periods. Quieter.

"I mean, do you think he has a pretty soul?" Yuzui asks, clarifying her earlier question.

Mitsuru opens her mouth as if to answer, but doesn't. She stares at her shoes—a little worn out, she observes absently. A little old—maybe, she thinks, I'll go shopping this weekend. "Who knows?" she says finally. "There's no use speculating if we don't know him."

Yuzu shrugs. "But it's fun, Mitchan."

She scowls. "It's not. I don't think so. I think it's rude, Yuzu-chan. I think you should know someone before you talk about him."

Yuzu quiets for a moment. Not offended quiet, or scolded quiet, but thoughtful quiet—Yuzu's brand of quiet. "Ne, Mitsuru-chan," she says finally, and Mitsuru turns, only because Yuzu's voice sounds so strange—overly sincere. "I was thinking…"

Mitsuru swallows the last gingko bean and drops the stick into a trash can as she passes it. "Yes?"

"Just… what if…" Yuzu stops moving and jumps down from the stone wall. She leans forward, leaving her face inches from her own. "What if… Kise-kun's name was Kise Kise? Wouldn't that—wouldn't that be kind of… amazing?"

The sound of Mitsuru's slap echoes down the streets, followed by Yuzu's howl of pain.

At school the next morning, Mitsuru feels sick to her stomach. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a pack of painkillers and stabs open one of the pills, holding it up between her fingers. One of the girls in her class takes notice and taps her shoulder, a concerned expression on her face, but Mitsuru just smiles comfortingly and waves her off. "Cramps," she explains simply, and the girl gives her a final sympathetic nod before turning back to her friends.

It really is no big deal. She gets stomachaches often, after all; probably something genetic, because her dad isn't good with acidic foods, either. Still, it's been a while since the last one, and the pain feels particularly sharp. It's with this thought that she realizes she forgot her water bottle today.

She stares at the small white pill in her hand, rolling it around along the lines of her palm. She wonders if she can pull it off—swallowing a pill whole without water to wash it down—but she doesn't bother to try. Just the thought of forcing something down her esophagus makes her sick again. Mitsuru is, after all, the epitome of "better safe than sorry"—something she is, in fact, proud of.

She sighs and glances up, wondering if she has the energy to straggle to the nearest water fountain. But the thought quickly escapes her mind as her gaze rests on is a perspiring, turquoise-colored water bottle, balanced on the edge of someone's desk. It's nearly half full. Something as plain as water has never looked so beautiful.

When she turns to look up at the person sitting at the desk, she sees Kise Ryota. He's not looking at her; he's looking at his phone, swiping the screen like he's looking through a gallery of pictures, a slight smile on his lips. She rests her cheek on her fist and watches him laugh quietly to himself—the corners of eyes crinkling, his lips gliding across his face as he smiles, the way he pulls at his yellow hair with two fingers. He really is pretty, she thinks absently. The world was right to make him a model.

She shakes away the unnecessary thoughts and hesitates for only a heartbeat before reaching out for him. Her fingertips hover over his shoulder, not touching his sleeve, but he seems to sense something anyway. "Um… Kise-kun…"

But just as she does, an onslaught of deafeningly loud shrieks sounds from outside the classroom. A sharp pain stings at her stomach again at the noise. Oh... It's starting, she thinks miserably, and closes her eyes to avoid the flashing camera lights from the girls' cell phones. If Kise was about to turn to her, he isn't now; he focuses his attention on the fans outside the room, smiling and waving amiably for their photographs. She retracts her hand and presses her fist into her stomach. Loud... she thinks, and rests her head on the desk. So loud.

She doesn't have the courage to ask Kise Ryota for his water bottle that period. She pretends that it's not because she's intimidated by him; she doesn't want to admit such a thing. Instead, she keeps her eyes shut tight and her fist firmly against her stomach for the rest of the day, clutching the small white pill in her other hand until it melts and leaves a sticky white residue on her fingers.

(1) I'm aiming for a simple atmosphere that looks at beauty in the world and beauty in people; (2) This is going to be a comparatively short story, + there won't be any real love triangles in here (simple story!); (3) Did you guYS SEE THE NEW KUROBAS PV; and (4) Once you have, you all should read/watch Prince of Tennis, and when you're done with that, check out the echoes of angels and 250 Dark Stars by ff user Neon Genesis. They're seriously two of the best I've ever read and I'm obsessed with them. She won't update, though, so help me bully her into it.

Also, I hope you liked Mitsuru—I really wanted a heroine OC who isn't annoying, but still quiet and shy.

Thanks for reading an OC fic! & sorry for the very long author's note.

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