Grace

The nice thing to do (Asuka knows) would be to spend time with Ryoko as soon as all of her things are brought up, to flop down on the couch in the common area and laugh about everything, to swipe a cup of cool water and chug it down in one gulp while they get to know each other better.  But she looks at the small stack of boxes lined up against her wall and the furniture that Ryoko helped her situate just so and decides that should be her priority instead.

Before Asuka can suggest that, however, she overhears the door opening, then slamming shut, and someone – likely their other roommate – crying out, “Ryo-chan!”

Ryoko reddens again at the sound of her name spoken so affectionately.  “Haru-chan,” she murmurs, then offers Asuka a little bow.  “Excuse me.”

Perhaps it’s rude to shut her door as soon as Ryoko leaves, but it’s all too easy for Asuka to actually do.  Then she flops backward on her bed and stares blankly up at her ceiling.  Too many flights of stairs, too many boxes, too many books and CDs of euphonium music that she couldn’t afford to leave behind.  (If she had, who knows what her mother would have done with them?  She likes to think her bedroom will be left just as she left it, but Asuka has no assurances that will be the case.)

Without the stairs, Asuka would feel much the same as she did the first few days of her first year marching.  Carrying boxes – even heavy boxes full of books – is a lot like carrying her euphonium as she marches, instead of resting it on her thigh during concerts.  But the stairs add an extra layer.  Her legs quiver, muscles flexing and unflexing, as she lays still.  Tomorrow, she’ll be sore.  Good thing she moved out here early enough to have some free time before her classes begin.  Free time that she intended to use getting to know her new roommates – their schedules, their personalities – as she learns to adapt to living with them.

Asuka’s eyes glance over her pile of boxes again, over the luggage bag she first brought in, and finally over to the last box she brought in, one that’s significantly smaller and more flimsy.  She pushes herself up onto her elbows.  The box sits on her new desk, testing her.  She moves to get up—

Her door slams open.

Asuka reaches for bedsheets that aren’t there, then pulls her hands up to her chest.  “Don’t look!”  She lifts one hand to her forehead and shuts her eyes, turning away.  “Hide your eyes from this—”

“What are you talking about?”

Not Ryoko.  Asuka sighs.  She drops her hand to her mattress and opens her eyes, pouting reflectively.  “Nothing.”  Her head tilts to one side.  “Tanaka Asuka,” she says by way of introduction, pushing herself from the mattress and holding out her hand.  “You must be—”

(It doesn’t strike her that she words her introduction almost identically to Ryoko’s.)

“You’re not a ghost, are you?”

Asuka blinks.  She stares at the other girl.  This one doesn’t have the same familiar air to her that Ryoko has – and doesn’t have the same air to her beauty that Ryoko has either, although between her earnest, honey-colored eyes and the way her copper hair frames her face, she could have a stint in modeling, too, for a certain set of viewers. (Maybe they’re both models, and Asuka got roped in because their third decided to go in a different direction.  Maybe they’re scouting for a new third model.  Probably not.  Even if they are, she already knows her answer.)

“Or an esper?”

“What is this, one of those Tag Yourself memes?”

It would be appropriate for Asuka to laugh, to cover her mouth, to do something that eases whatever is happening here, but she doesn’t.  Instead, she sits back and meets the other girl’s intensity with the smallest of smiles.  “I don’t think Ryoko-chan would let me—”

The girl’s eyes narrow.  Probably the familiarity with which she uses Ryoko’s name, after only having known her in person for a few hours (at most).

Asuka continues as if she doesn’t notice that.  “—live with you if I were a ghost.  You’d have noticed me by now, right?  And would a ghost have all this stuff?”

“So you’re an esper.”

Very matter of fact.  As though espers actually exist, as though Asuka has to be one or the other and nothing in-between, as though human is a bad word.  And maybe it is – Asuka only sent messages to Ryoko before moving in; she’s never talked to this girl, only heard about her from Ryoko.

She’s…intense.

Asuka thought that meant in a hobbies kind of way, not a Fox Mulder kind of way.  (Not that she’s ever seen that show.)  “No,” she says, that small smile still playing about her lips, “I’m not.”  Her gaze shifts to the door, where she catches sight of Ryoko’s shadow but not Ryoko herself.  Her smile spreads into a grin.  “Wait, does that mean you’re something, too?  Or Ryoko?”  She leans back against her bed and slaps her legs.  “Which is she?  Is Ryoko an esper?  Or a—”

“Ryoko’s a ghost.  Duh.”

Asuka stays focused on Ryoko’s shadow, which doesn’t flinch, and hums pleasantly to herself.  Her gaze returns to the other girl.  “And what are you?”

“Suzumiya Haruhi,” the girl finally says, introducing herself, “and I’m only interested in—”

“Siren.”  Asuka drums her fingers on her upper thigh, gaze shifting away.  “Since you’re Suzumiya-san, I feel obligated to tell you.”

Haruhi keeps her arms crossed.  “Sing something for me,” she demands.

“My beauty isn’t enough to convince you?”  Asuka gestures to herself, but Haruhi doesn’t seem to care.  If anything, she’s evaluating her.  “I see, I see!  I don’t hold a candle to Ryoko-chan!”

Haruhi ignores this, instead insisting, “What, you’re not going to sing?”

At first, Asuka doesn’t say anything.  She lets the silence linger, allowing that to be an answer all on its own.  Then, as Haruhi stands there, unmoving, staring directly at her with her arms crossed and her honey-colored eyes full of determination, Asuka sighs.  “You don’t understand, Suzumiya-san.  Monsters like Ryoko-chan and I, we’re not at our full power anymore.  All that disbelief, it really gets to us!”  She waits to see if there’s a chip in Haruhi’s stance, but if there is, she doesn’t notice it.  “Some sirens still sing, sure, but I’m not one of them.”

Something in Haruhi’s eyes shifts.

Good.

“And you don’t really want to hear me anyway.  Then you’d be under my spell, and I think you like being yourself an awful lot more.”  Asuka winks.  “So don’t worry!  You won’t ever need to hear me sing!”

Haruhi stares at her.  Her jaw tightens.  Then she turns on one heel and storms out of the room.

A few seconds later, Ryoko’s shadow shifts, and she curls her fingers on Asuka’s doorframe and pokes her head in.  “Told you,” she says. “Haru-chan is kind of intense.”

But Asuka doesn’t care about any of that.  Her eyes meet Ryoko’s, and her head tilts again. “You’re a ghost?”

Ryoko shrugs, but doesn’t deny it.  “Haru-chan sees what she wants.”  She twirls a strand of her white-streaked red hair around one finger and doesn’t meet Asuka’s eyes.  “I mean, it’s not like you’re a siren, right?”

“Right.”

Asuka’s gaze drifts from Ryoko, who isn’t looking at her, to her euphonium case.  A true siren would be a musical master, and she would be able to lead her band family not just to Nationals but to winning gold.  Of course, that would be cheating, but only if she knew that’s what she was doing.  Besides, a real siren would know that they were one.  They’d be able to—

What is she thinking?  Sirens don’t exist.

(She takes too long, looking at her euphonium case.  She doesn’t catch Ryoko’s glance flicking to her, then to the euphonium case, and then back again.  By the time Asuka’s gaze returns to her, Ryoko’s already glancing away, averting her eyes and twirling that strand of hair around her finger like she already was.  Like she wasn’t paying attention to Asuka’s distraction at all.)

Even so, it’s Ryoko who breaks the silence between them first.  “I’ll go talk to Haru-chan.  She always gets her hopes up when she meets someone new, and she’s always disappointed.  She’ll get over it.”  She offers Asuka a weak, but comforting, expression – not quite a smile, not quite not.  “Don’t worry, okay?”

Asuka wasn’t worried to begin with, so she can’t be less worried when Ryoko prances away.  She pushes herself up from her mattress and closes her bedroom door once more, hoping that maybe this time she won’t be interrupted but not particularly expecting it.  Then she pauses next to her desk, runs her fingers along the smaller and more fragile box she’d set there, then rummages through it until she pulls out a single framed photograph.

Her band doesn’t smile at her, not exactly, from their Nationals photo shoot, but she can see herself as she once was, surrounded by Kaori, Haruka, and Kumiko.  They aren’t happy, but she still was.  She’d gotten what she wanted after all – not gold, maybe, which she’d wanted the most, but her father….

He’d seen her, and he’d made sure she heard him.

(Sirens don’t exist.)