Mizuki sat on her bed with her hands folded in her lap. She’d said ‘five minutes’ but it felt like she should have said more, because she’d hardly had time to look in the mirror and straighten her hair, and her fingers were still pruny from doing dishes. She wanted to look professional and put-together, which was a difficult thing for her. She didn’t have the demeanor or the training for it. Now Verity, there was someone who could look professional. She could look professional like no one’s business, or maybe like it was her mother’s business. Having long black hair had helped Mizuki, made her look more serious, but she felt a constant urge to put it up in a playful knot, and more often now, the urge to just cut it all off and go back to what she’d had before.

She was still thinking about her hair when Alfric came into the room.

“You wanted to talk?” he asked.

“Er, yes,” she said. She was facing the room’s one comfy chair, and Alfric took his seat. He didn’t have any trouble looking serious, though his seriousness had a different tone from Verity’s, like he was ready to get to work tackling a problem, rather than like he was about to demurely serve tea. She paused. “Do you like my hair?”

Alfric took a moment to consider that. Of course he did, it didn’t matter that she was just saying something for the sake of saying something.

“I think it doesn’t suit you,” said Alfric. “It also seems to get in your way a lot.”

“I think that’s partly because I’m not used to it,” said Mizuki. “Some girls who’ve had long hair their whole lives have twenty different tricks for getting it out of the way, and they don’t even really think about how often they’re brushing it aside or tying it back. I was thinking about cutting it.”

“I did like how it looked before,” said Alfric. “Either way is fine, it’s just a question of whether it goes with your overall style. Same with the robes.”

“You don’t think they suit me?” asked Mizuki, looking down.

Alfric shrugged, then seemed to think better of indifference. “Not really, no. They make you look … like a wizard, I guess, but also a bit bland.”

“Ah,” said Mizuki. “A bland wizard.” That was fair, but it still hurt a little bit. It felt nice to be told that you had a good outfit, and if the outfit that Mizuki was wearing most days wasn’t a good one, that stung a bit.

“I get the feeling that this wasn’t what you wanted to talk about?” asked Alfric.

“Not really, no,” said Mizuki. She moved her hair so it was all flowing down her back. “Things have been weird between us.”

“Mmm,” said Alfric.

“You disagree?” asked Mizuki.

“I think ‘weird’ is a word that … perhaps isn’t the best,” he said. “It doesn’t communicate much.”

“I don’t know how to say what it is,” said Mizuki. “It used to be easy between us. It was like settling into a comfy chair. We had a rapport, you know?”

Alfric considered this, then nodded.

“Now,” Mizuki continued. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m trying, and you’re trying, and we’re not connecting anymore, and I feel like it’s because of whatever happened at the party, or the undone day after the party, or because I’m at school, or something, and I want to fix it.” She spread her hands in front of her. “This is me doing as much as I can to fix it.”

“Can I be forthright with you?” asked Alfric.

“I really don’t know if you know any other way to be,” Mizuki replied. “So yes.”

“I feel it too,” said Alfric. “A sense that we’re … trying.”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. She paused for a moment. “That wasn’t you being frank.”

“No,” said Alfric. He sighed. “I’ve spent more time with you than you have with me. Maybe as much as double or triple the time, because on undone days, you like to be with me the whole day, and when it’s a normal day, we see each other a lot less. So I like to think that I know you, I guess. It feels like there aren’t a whole lot of mysteries left.”

“Okay …” Mizuki said slowly.

“The whole thing with the party, the fireballs, the undone day, the guilt you felt, all that,” said Alfric. He bit his lip. “It wasn’t a surprise to me.”

“It was a surprise to me,” said Mizuki.

“You doing something ill-advised that you regret, that’s … it’s in character,” said Alfric.

“Is it the fireball thing that bothers you?” asked Mizuki. “Or the general drunkenness, which has never been a problem, or … the other thing?”

Alfric was silent for a moment. “It’s the other thing.”

“Yeah,” said Mizuki. She’d had a feeling that was it, the source of the weirdness between them, the thing that they hadn’t really talked about, couldn’t really talk about, without talking about other stuff. “You think less of me.”

Alfric considered that. That was what he did for everything, but here, it hurt, because he was searching his feelings. If Mizuki had been asked by anyone if she thought less of them, she’d have answered on impulse, said ‘no’ without even stopping to think about whether or not it was true. She was surprised by how much it hurt. He hadn’t even said ‘yes’, he was just thinking about the question, or the statement, and whether he did like her less than he had before.

“It’s complicated,” said Alfric. “Let me think about how to explain it.”

“Alright,” said Mizuki. She folded her hands in her lap and sat there, in silence, trying to be patient with him. How was it so hard for him to get things out, to think through what was going on in his own head? It made her feel weird, like she had too little going on in her brain.

It took Alfric some time to compose his thoughts, and Mizuki tried not to feel too antsy about it.

“I decided, some months ago, that I needed a plan for if something happened between us,” said Alfric. “There was a time on one of those undone days when you were in a particularly flirty mood, and you seemed like you were on the verge of kissing me, or like you wanted me to kiss you, and,” he let out a breath, “there’s a part of me that thought for sure that it would happen, that it was only a matter of time. One day I made this joke about forks, and laughed and leaned forward, and I thought ‘uh oh, this is it’. So, I started making plans. I started planning for what I would do when that day came, when it wasn’t just flirting anymore, when you took it a step further. I was ready to have that talk with you.”

Mizuki frowned. “What was the joke?”

“It was just the usual one,” said Alfric with a grin. “It wasn’t funny, but you were in a good mood and ready to laugh at anything. ‘Forking and spooning’, that kind of thing.”

“Alright, but this wasn’t something you disclosed, was it?” asked Mizuki. She thought she’d have remembered.

“I can’t remember everything we talk about,” said Alfric. “Certainly not a day’s worth of jokes.”

“Not the jokes,” said Mizuki. “The other stuff, the — I mean, you thought that I was going to kiss you, that stuff.”

Alfric licked his lips for a moment. “It’s a sticky issue,” said Alfric. “With disclosure, there are elements of interpretation, and all that, it was all me trying to read you, making some assumptions about what you were thinking, how you were feeling, trying to work it out on my own. We don’t tell people that, or we’re not supposed to. You tell someone what happened, then they get to have their own interpretation, and if they’re angry, they’re angry, and if they’re not, that’s okay too. You don’t just go up to someone and say ‘on the last time I did this day, you felt sad about this thing that happened’. It’s prejudicial, telling someone how you thought they felt, and if I had told you that, what I thought you were feeling at any given moment, it would be saying more about me than you.”

Mizuki watched him. “You know, I know that stuff, I’m pretty sure we talked about it before. You talk about disclosure a lot, and I mean a lot. But it’s — you had this idea that I was going to slip up or something on an undone day, that I’d think that it didn’t matter to you?” She felt affronted and slightly flushed. “Alfric, I absolutely know that it’s important to you, that it’s something super sacred. I would never violate that, never put you in this uncomfortable position where you’d have to explain uncomfortable things on an undone day. Why would you think that I would?”

“Sometimes you just do things,” said Alfric. “You don’t think about the consequences. That’s … I mean, it’s true, right?”

Mizuki folded her arms. “I guess. But there’s a difference between breaking a window and breaking someone’s trust. I would absolutely break a window.” She felt like throwing something through her window just to prove her point, that windows didn’t matter, but she thought better of it. “I would never make a move on you in an undone day, never, because I know how you would feel about that. I mean, you’d basically be forced not to undo the day, from everything you’ve said about it.”

“I think I misjudged you,” said Alfric. “But to go back a little bit — I wasn’t quite done — I made these plans for when it was going to happen, when you’d have an impulse towards me that you wouldn’t ignore, and the thing was, I was starting to think that it was never going to come, that all these conversations I’d rehearsed in my head were going to go to waste. And then you kissed someone else, and it felt terrible.”

Mizuki had her eyes on his. She had trouble making eye contact now, but he was saying things with those brown eyes, which were boring into her.

“You wanted to be able to give me a speech,” said Mizuki. “And … you’re upset about not being able to give it.” She was deliberately misinterpreting him, she knew that, but it felt easier, safer, to say.

“No,” said Alfric. “No, I wasn’t upset about all my plans being thrown in the fire, I was upset because I’d thought — can I give you the short version?”

Mizuki kept her hands folded across her chest, but she threw one of them up. “Sure, okay.”

“Alright,” said Alfric. He looked up briefly, like he was trying to find his place, and for some reason that annoyed Mizuki to no end.

“So for the sake of this, I should pretend that we’ve just had a pleasant day together, and I just couldn’t help myself, so I planted a kiss, and now you’re saying ‘we need to talk’, and this is your response to that?”

Alfric paused for a moment and looked at her. “Yes?”

“Did you kiss me back, in this scenario you were planning for?” asked Mizuki.

“Um,” said Alfric. He looked up again. “It depends.”

“On what?” asked Mizuki. She was baffled, though in retrospect it wasn’t baffling that Alfric hadn’t just had a plan, he’d had a flowchart, with conditionals.

“On how drunk you were,” said Alfric. “And then also on whether I was drunk, though I don’t know if I would be making my best decisions when I’d had a few. Of course, that’s the time when it’s best to have a plan.”

“Assume that I’m stone sober,” said Mizuki. “We have a beautiful day together, go out on the boat, you teach me how to sail, we have a lunch that I made, a late dinner at some tavern on our way home, and we’re cuddled up together when I turn around, place my hand on your chest, and kiss you. In that scenario, you kiss me back?”

“I — yes,” said Alfric.

“And if I keep kissing you, you push me off and say ‘whoa, hold on, we need to talk’?” asked Mizuki.

“I planned to, yes,” said Alfric. “But I think at a certain point the damage is done.”

Mizuki felt that word, ‘damage’, in the pit of her stomach. She’d been holding out hope that maybe his response would be something more like what she’d imagined that it might be.

Like Alfric, Mizuki had imagined how it might go. She hadn’t been making any plans, she wasn’t trying to map out what would happen and what the optimal thing to say would be, but she’d had thoughts, certainly. Sometimes those thoughts were of kissing him, and sometimes of him kissing her, and one time it was a prepared speech from him, but it was about how he’d decided that he thought he could make things work between them.

In her fantasies, they always held off talking until later, if at all. Sometimes those fantasies were dictated by the moment, when they were together, nestled on the couch or sitting in a field, or sometimes when she was taking a shower, or he was working out in the backyard, back when they’d had a backyard. She had always imagined it as feeling good, like a dam breaking, though of course it wasn’t supposed to be a good thing when a dam broke. It would be like rain after a long drought, or a storm finally passing after the garden was drenched, and she would kiss him, and smile, and press her face against his so that he could feel her smile even without seeing it.

Sometimes, in these fantasies, he would say ‘we really shouldn’t’, and then she would kiss him again, and he’d kiss her back, and that would be enough talking about it.

What she’d forgotten, or maybe just not included as part of the fantasies, was that Alfric was a brick.

“I think,” continued Alfric. “That there’s some level of mutual attraction between us that we’re both aware of and have silently acknowledged. We get along well, we have fun, we enjoy talking, we like spending time together … and I think that trying to make that work, as a relationship, is probably a mistake for a number of reasons.”

Mizuki rolled her eyes. “I mean, okay, I’m sure you have your list ready to go with all these ‘reasons’. But that’s not — I mean, I think yeah, that’s probably why it felt like a mistake with that other guy, whoever he was, and I think that’s why I asked you to undo the day, that I was, I guess, waiting for something to happen between us, but it’s not going to happen, is it? So why do things have to be weird?”

“I don’t know,” said Alfric. “I think it’s the death of possibility.”

Mizuki mulled on that. It felt like the kind of sentence that he’d thought up the night before, or even a week ago. She didn’t like that either. If you were going to think something up and save it for the right moment, it should be a joke, or better, a pun.

“Well, for my own sake, can you run through all the things that wouldn’t work?” asked Mizuki.

“Sure,” said Alfric. He seemed a little bit sad. “To start with, we live together and we work together. There’s a risk of making everything awkward for the party, and breaking the party apart entirely once it fails. Courtship is about trying to figure out whether you work well enough to make a marriage, and a failed courtship would be pretty catastrophic in this case, even if it was amicable, especially once we were past the grace period and started seeing other people.”

Mizuki was listening, holding back her disagreements. There was no reason that it should fail, except that every relationship Mizuki had ever had ended in failure. She also didn’t like that framing of ‘courtship’, as though it was because this was some kind of husband-seeking algorithm. It was fun to have a boyfriend, someone you could kiss and hold and pretend would be yours forever, someone to fantasize about, to fantasize with, to tell you that you were pretty and perfect. It didn’t seem like it needed to be more than that, and Alfric was only eighteen. From everything he’d said, he wasn’t actually looking to get married, not in the near future.

It felt like Alfric had started making a list of all the reasons why it was a bad idea, and now he was just going through it, listing them off one by one.

She didn’t want to argue with him though.

“As you know, I’m out of my chrononaut pact,” said Alfric. “But it still places a strain on a potential relationship, and with my family … my mom likes you, you’ve met my siblings, but you’d be an outsider to the chrononauts. And between the two of us, it would be hanging over our heads, a complication every time we had an argument, a moral hazard even if it never actually comes to that.

Mizuki didn’t agree with that either. His family was nice, they wouldn’t treat her differently even with the weird pact thing, and she trusted him, even though he felt like no one ever really truly did. He’d run into too many rumors to be secure about a ‘position of potential power’, and most of that was just Lola, or at least it felt that way to Mizuki. Trust was something earned though, and she thought maybe with another year away from Lola’s influence, and not too many bumps in the road from people who actually did hate and distrust chrononauts, he’d be fine.

“I just think we’re very different from each other,” said Alfric. “It would cause problems, down the line, almost certainly.”

Mizuki was aware that she hadn’t said anything for a very long time, and had kept too many of her thoughts to herself. But Alfric didn’t want an argument, certainly not the kind of argument that she was capable of giving him. Besides, anything that she could think of, he’d have already thought of, he was good at looking through all the angles.

He’d looked at her, considered everything, and decided against it.

“I think I’m going to take off,” said Mizuki.

“Mizuki,” said Alfric, half-rising from his seat.

“I’m just going for a walk or something,” said Mizuki. “I’ll be back in time for dinner, don’t worry.”

“Look,” said Alfric.

“No, makes sense, wouldn’t work, still kind of sad that it wouldn’t work,” said Mizuki. She was starting to cry, and wanted to get out of the room before it started. There was no reason for him to see that.

She moved out of her room, well aware that she was doing a terrible job of hiding her tears, and managed to make her way outside without having anyone ask her what was wrong. That was a relief. Once she was out in the field, she just started walking until she was far enough away that no one could see her, into a bit of woodland that ran along a creek, too steep for anyone to farm.

She cried for a bit. She usually didn’t when she was rejected, but she’d never been rejected by someone that she cared so much for. Alfric had been living with her for what felt like a long time, and she’d held a candle for him for most of that. It was the longest crush she’d ever had, which was something. Maybe she’d just let the fantasies steep for too long.

A large black bird hopped down from one of the trees and landed not too far away from Mizuki. It did a small dance back and forth, peering at Mizuki and twisting its head to get a better look at her.

“Go away, Isra,” said Mizuki. “I’ll talk to you later.”

The bird cawed loudly, then flapped away. Mizuki didn’t have any idea whether that had actually been Isra or not. The idea that she might have insulted a bewildered bird that was now wondering whether its name was Isra did cheer her up a little bit, but there was no one to share the idea with.

If Alfric wanted to talk to her, he could use the party channel at literally any time, but if that was what he wanted to do, he’d have to speak to everyone. She thought that he might, and didn’t really want to speak with him, but she wasn’t going to go so far as to leave the party over this.

“Alright,” said Mizuki. “Get it together.”

She rose to her feet and took a deep, shaky breath, then started walking again, deeper into the not-very-deep woods.

What bothered her, what really bothered her, was that he was attracted to her, he had been a complete flirt, he’d joked and waggled his eyebrows and had possibly been shirtless more often than he strictly needed to be. He liked her. He thought she was funny.

It would have been one thing if he’d just not been that into her. She’d had boyfriends like that, going both ways, either boys that she’d only dated because it had seemed like a good idea at the time, or boys that had just not been all that interested in her. That had been fine, she understood it. If Alfric had said ‘hey, I’m not that into you’ she’d have said ‘oof’ and then moved on.

It was all that other stuff though, the outside factors, or just nebulous worries that maybe it won’t work out. The more Mizuki turned it over in her mind, the more she thought that it was a load of total bunk. She’d sat through enough weddings to know that most people thought the entire point of a marriage was facing things together head on.

And as for being too different from each other, that was also a complete load of crap. Did you make a soup with just seven varieties of onions? No, you added all kinds of ingredients together, ingredients whose differences complemented each other and brought richness to the dish. Mizuki was pretty sure that Alfric wasn’t even under the misconception that two people would get along best when they were similar to each other. In fact, Mizuki thought that if Alfric had ever come across a woman like himself, he would probably have a cold, cordial friendship with her, and if they somehow ended up dating, it would be completely by the books.

She couldn’t imagine that was what Alfric actually wanted. Alfric liked excitement, danger, situations that he could adapt to, and he’d often talked about how a dungeon that went completely by the books would probably get a little old for him. Dungeon Variation 3G would maybe allow him to demonstrate his mastery of dungeons the first time he came across it, but the second time, what would he have? Did he really see himself settling down with a safe, boring, consistent wife?

And really, Mizuki thought as she wandered down what she thought was a trail, wasn’t her being silly one of the things that he liked about her? It didn’t make sense that silliness would somehow disqualify her. She could stop being silly, if she wanted to. She had stopped, more or less, for wizarding school, where they didn’t seem to find any value in humor or spontaneity.

The more she considered it, the more she thought that Alfric was just flatly wrong. It made her a little bit angry, and she imagined some conversations with him where she expressed that anger. She hadn’t really said much in their talk, had only listened and felt sad, but it was clear now that she should have come back at him with something.

In fact, it was kind of messed up that he’d been having all these conversations without her. He’d been tackling the ‘problem’ without her input, even though she was one of the two people who would be affected most. It was almost like he’d had a conversation with her on an undone day — he wouldn’t do that, of course — and then had just made up his mind without her.

Being annoyed felt better than feeling sad. Mizuki was pleased that the tears had dried away, and as she kept walking in what she hoped was the direction of home, she tried to think about what her next steps would be.

If he’d just appeared in front of her at that very moment, she might have just let him have it, rambling through all her disorganized thoughts and rebuttals. It would feel nice, she thought. It had been quite a while since she’d yelled at anyone. Mostly, she liked to get along with people, and Hannah had said she was bendable to a fault.

The more Mizuki walked, the less confident she was that she was going the right direction, which was a bit embarrassing. Normally, she’d just use the warp, but she didn’t know this hex very well, and had no idea whether the warp would take her further or closer to the house. She didn’t actually know how to get to the house, other than following the path she’d taken.

The extra time gave her a moment to consider. She didn’t really know why Alfric was being such a pessimist. She tried playing out the conversation in her head, and ended up accusing him.

“You’re just scared, because last time it turned out so bad!” she yelled at him.

That felt true, at least a little. Alfric was very practiced at his cold-eyed analysis of situations, but it wasn’t a technique that worked all that well on feelings, nor on people. The whole reason he’d struck out before coming to Pucklechurch was that he’d not been considering people as much as he should have, thinking of them as creatures of logic. That it had worked out in the end was mostly luck, or possibly Hannah’s intervention to tamp down on the worst of his schemes.

Mizuki looked around her, and accepted that she was lost.

It had happened much faster than she’d thought it would, and she wished she’d had the presence of mind to grab the helmet so she could fly up into the air. It was always so much easier to navigate from the sky. She hadn’t even brought her bag with her, which normally had snacks and water in it.

Mizuki finally gave in and used the warp, which brought her to a sleepy little hamlet where the church was the largest building around. There was a market, but it was closed down, all the stalls shuttered, so she went to the hamlet’s one tavern and took a seat there before realizing that she didn’t have any money on her.

It didn’t take long to get directions to the traveling house, which had made a bit of a stir, as it often did in places like this. Verity was set to play at that very tavern later in the night, and everyone was excited for it, or at least curious enough to attend, since word of this impromptu tour of small towns had begun to spread ahead of them as they took their path.

The trip back to the house was two miles or so, which was a bit of a walk, but better than traipsing through the woods.

When she finally got back to the house, she was feeling a lot better about herself, though still annoyed with Alfric, and very convinced that he was wrong.

Mizuki said into the party channel. It was the first time anyone had used it that day.

said Alfric a few seconds later.

That no one was asking after her was a sign that Alfric had already talked to them, or at least given them some minor kind of warning. She understood that, but didn’t particularly like it.

Once they’d all eaten their dinner and emptied out of the house, Mizuki crept down the stairs and grabbed some of the leftovers. Hannah had cooked, which meant that it was a quietly understated meal, of chicken, potatoes, and asparagus. It was worse after having a chance to cool, but Mizuki ate, even though she wasn’t all that hungry.

Then, she went upstairs to prepare.

She started by cutting her hair, which was really no big deal given that they had a way to regrow it. Haircuts were almost always better done by someone else, but they didn’t have the ability to make clones just yet, and besides, she wasn’t sure whether she would have trusted herself. Thankfully when wearing her hair up it wasn’t all that noticeable, and she put her hair into two messy buns, which had been a common style for her.

She spent some time picking out clothes. At first she went for a more traditional style, or at least traditional for her, but she thought about it some, and decided she’d go for a simple robe with a shift beneath it, which she often wore for pajamas. It was the same thing she’d been wearing that first morning that Alfric had come over and woken her up, minus the shift.

She put on a little make up, though not that much. She didn’t really like the feeling of it on her face, or what felt like the feeling.

Then, she waited.

Admittedly, the waiting took longer than she’d thought it would. She’d underestimated the amount of time it would take for them to walk to the hamlet, have the concert and a few drinks, then walk back. She was missing out on all that, but she had a plan, so she turned on a light, sat in bed for a bit, and read through one of her books, then did more of the rock petting. She felt like her ability to concentrate on somewhat boring things was improving, which she thought was mostly because she was being put in a position to do that more.

Murmured conversation was what let her know that everyone was back in the house. She tried to listen in, even though it definitely wasn’t intended for her, and stayed still in her room as there was more movement of people through the house. The walls were fairly well insulated, keeping conversation from carrying too far, but it was possible to hear other things, like when the faucet in the bathroom had been turned on, or when a door closed. Mizuki had spent much of her teenage years learning the sounds of the house in order to better avoid them when she snuck out or back in.

Alfric was the first to bed, ascending up to the third floor where his rooms were. Mizuki listened in closely to the sound of him taking a shower up there, then brushing his teeth, then getting in bed. Hannah was in her hidey-hole, while Isra, Verity, and Pinion were all downstairs and probably having some wine before bed, or talking about the concert.

Mizuki left her room for the first time in hours, then crept upstairs to Alfric’s room.

“Hi,” he said as she came in.

“Hi,” she replied.

The attic had been the beneficiary of his woodworking efforts, with all kinds of shelves, tables, and other things spread around it. It was all very functional, finished with attention and care, and didn’t draw attention to itself. The lights were shuttered, which meant that they were looking at each other in the moonlight. Alfric was in bed, on his back, shirt off, covered in his blankets, ready for sleep.

“How are you?” he asked.

Mizuki moved across the room, padding along on bare feet, and climbed into bed with him. She got close to him, laying on her belly so that her ribs were touching his. One of her arms was placed on his chest, so that her fingers were resting on the meaty muscle of his pec. It was surprisingly easy to forget how muscular he was. He didn’t give off the vibe of someone muscular.

“I was thinking today,” said Mizuki.

“Yeah?” he asked.

She could smell his breath, which had the spiced tang of the cream he used for toothpaste. It came from Dondrian. Her face was close to his, and he wasn’t saying anything about that, which she took as a good sign.

“You’re wrong about basically everything,” said Mizuki. “Which is tragic, because you’ve got a pretty good track record, aside from the whole dragon demiplane thing.”

“You think so?” asked Alfric.

“Yup,” said Mizuki. “And you know, I thought that I would come up here and give you a lecture about how wrong you are, but then I decided there was something that I needed to do first.”

“Which was?” asked Alfric.

Mizuki drummed her fingers on his chest and looked into his eyes. She was halfway supporting herself on him, and moved over more, so her hip was on top of his, at least on the side, and her shin was touching his.

“You gave me this whole lecture that was supposed to come after I’d been reckless and impulsive and had kissed you,” said Mizuki. “And the thing is, I didn’t even get to kiss you. Which feels very unfair, even just on the face of it.”

She was keeping her tone light and airy, flirty even, but she was starting to get nervous. Alfric hadn’t pushed her away, as she thought he might, but he wasn’t touching her either. She was touching him, not the other way around, and he’d done nothing by way of encouragement.

She went for it, leveraging herself forward, and kissed him before he could say anything. His lips were soft and warm, and he kissed her back, pressing her face to hers as much as he could with her on top of him. It had been a long time since she’d kissed anyone, and she’d forgotten how much she liked it. She liked the feeling of his skin, the wetness of his lips, the smell and taste, which was less of his toothpaste by the moment and more of his particular mild scent.

She kept kissing him. He’d said that he would kiss her back, if she kissed him, and she’d found a clever loophole, which was that if she just never stopped then he wouldn’t stop either. She’d intended to say that to him, then give him her speech about how it was wrong, that actually they’d make a great couple, and any problems they had, they would deal with together.

He didn’t actually stop kissing her for her to tell him that though. His hand — his free one, the one she hadn’t pinned under her — went to her back, and she thought that he was going to push her away, but he only rubbed her back some, touching her.

When Mizuki was finished, it was more because her lips were feeling funny than because she really wanted to stop.

She laid her head on Alfric’s chest and listened to the beating of his heart. It was going as fast as her own. She was waiting for him to say something, to reiterate that this was a mistake, that no amount of kissing or persuasion was going to change his mind, but he moved the arm that she was on top of and placed it on her back, so he was holding her in an embrace.

Mizuki’s heart started beating more slowly as the silence stretched on. It was nice to be with him, to be held beneath the covers, to know that he did like her, that his reservations weren’t enough to push her away.

She fell asleep.

When she woke up, she was feeling warm, the closeness of their bodies too much in the late summer. She was sweaty, actually, but still didn’t want to move, not when she realized that she was still with Alfric, still with his arms around him and her head on his chest. She turned slightly, so she could kiss him.

“It’s just past the witching hour,” said Alfric. She hadn’t known that he was awake.

“Ah,” said Mizuki.

“Sorry if I woke you,” said Alfric.

“I got sweaty,” said Mizuki.

There was silence again, but Mizuki didn’t think that she was going to fall asleep, not laying there with him.

She kept wanting him to say something. She had no idea what was going on in his head. It felt like he was going to say ‘this changes nothing’, but she hadn’t made her ‘everything will actually be great’ argument yet. Maybe he was waiting for that.

“If we break up, I’ll let you say that you told me so,” said Mizuki. “That’s as much as I’m going to sweeten the pot.”

“Hmm,” said Alfric.

“Alright, alright,” said Mizuki. “How about this, if we go the distance, I won’t hold it over you.”

“What does that mean?” asked Alfric. “‘Go the distance’.”

“I dunno,” said Mizuki, though she very well did know. Marriage, children, all that kind of thing. Or maybe just a one year anniversary where she would say something like ‘and you had no faith in us’. She didn’t want to say that though, not when it seemed like things might be going her way.

“Kiss me again?” asked Alfric.

She propped herself up on him and kissed him again. She used her tongue this time, darting it just a bit between his lips, and he made a small noise she found quite pleasing.

After a time, he picked her up and laid her on her back with such startling ease that she had a jolt of surprise. Then they were kissing again, with him on top of her. He was so much bigger than her, so much stronger, and she ran her hands over his arms, feeling his muscles.

When they were done, Alfric laid himself down beside her, and this time he was the one nestled against her.

“Alright,” he said. He kissed her neck. “We’ll give it a shot.”

Mizuki felt electrified, in a good way, and a part of her wanted to go back to kissing, or maybe something more. Instead she just laid there, feeling happy.

Sometimes when you made a plan, things worked out.