#hellalara

chitanda is the daughter of a well known and powerful daimyo, and her family is so revered that rumor has it she has known the empress-to-be, fuyumi, since they were children. she has ties to the imperial family of old, although her side had married out long ago, though they did not lose their prominent sociopolitical position. in fact, she spends nearly every summer at the kyoto imperial palace, though she would rather be helping work the land back home. though her personal values are much simpler and more provincial than her family’s strict, business-oriented ways, she is honored by her name and carries it with pride as the future head of the family (once she finds a husband). despite her formal and elevated ways, however, she has a curious mind and regularly sneaks out of the palace at night to peruse the city in search of intrigue. that’s where she meets houtarou.

houtarou comes from a family that once served as advisors to the emperor, but has since retreated from most involvement with the imperial court to focus on scholarly pursuits. houtarou has never understood this, preferring to steer clear of his family’s academic inclinations, although with a best friend like satoshi fukube, he doesn’t have much of a choice. tomoe, unable to support the closed-door policy of old, left to travel many years prior, knowing full well that it would mean she could never come back. houtarou couldn’t care less about the way the country is governed—he doesn’t even know the names of all the members of the royal family. kyoto is honestly a terrible city for someone so apathetic to be living in, but live in it he does—he even passes a precious few of his long summer days in the palace, in the company of his childhood friend, satoshi, the only son of the emperor’s brother. 

satoshi is grateful that he’ll never have to be emperor. or any kind of ruler, really. sure, the shogun are kind of scary, but the fact that they’re ruling everything with an iron fist over in edo means he’ll never have to, and that’s good—he’s just a wellspring of information. he can’t draw conclusions on how to govern people, or how to make everyone happy, or how to fight wars. he used to obsess over learning everything, being the best at everything, just to prove that he could—to himself and his family—but has since abandoned those pursuits, and lives a happy-go-lucky life with relative freedom. his branch of the imperial family has had so little to do with ruling, in fact, that commoners don’t recognize him when he strolls blithely around town with houtarou. he’s generally quiet, lackadaisical, and carefree, determined to bring houtarou out of his shell and into the wondrous world of edo period society. if you’ve got any questions on the imperial family tree or any of the daimyo, though—that will certainly get his attention. 

mayaka is the daughter of prominent woodblock printmakers who aspires to master the art herself one day. she has long been in love with satoshi, who frequently visits her family’s shop because the craft interests him, although she knows there is little hope in this coming to fruition and he rebuffs her regularly, lying and saying that it’s his personal lack of feelings for her rather than a rigid social rule, because it hurts less. mayaka also knows houtarou well, as he loiters around the single bookstore that her family supplies a supply of books to. sharp-tongued and bristly, she is nonetheless charmed when she makes the acquaintance of chitanda at the bookstore one night while she’s closing it up. she is not charmed that oreki is there, staring dumbfoundedly at the daimyo’s daughter like a stupid fish, but she will endure. like houtarou, she comes from a significantly less privileged family than the likes of satoshi and chitanda, so she is well acquainted with him, much to her chagrin—probably even more than satoshi is. 

houtarou meets chitanda by chance one night when he happens to walk into the empty bookstore at the same time she’s exploring it, and again several days later while napping in one of the palace gardens while satoshi chatters on about nothing. that’s right about when he realizes that she’s not just some bright-eyed local girl with an affinity for asking questions—a fact that’s explained to him, at length, by an enthusiastic satoshi. after this whole embarrassing introductory debacle, houtarou notices that chitanda seems distracted; she confesses that she’s lost her comb, and when houtarou offhandedly mutters a theory about where it could have gone, she lights up and ensnares him into a search that will take all day with just a few simple words: “watashi kininarimasu!” 

“Lame.” She sighed, and it crackled over the speaker, and Wakamatsu was suddenly kind of sleepy again. “I can’t sleep.” 

“Senpai,” Wakamatsu mumbled, covering his itching eyes with one exasperated hand, “that’s… not really my problem.” 

“Ehhhh? That’s pretty rude, Waka. You’re not going to try to help me out?”

“I’m tired,” he whined. “Sen-pai, can’t you give me a break, just this once?” 

“But you weren’t asleep,” she said, in that tone that he was used to hearing whenever she was trying to make him feel like an absolute loser. “You’ve got insomnia, stupid; everybody knows that. Not like your time’s super limited, anyway, since you don’t have much of a life outside of basketball.” 

Wakamatsu scowled. She certainly said stuff like that blithely! 

“Wh-Why can’t you sleep,” he managed to grind out with some level of calmness after a couple of seconds. 

“I dunno,” she replied. For a second, he could see her—splayed out unceremoniously on her bed, hair more mussed than usual, pajama shorts one size too big for her, lame t-shirt riding up a little. “But i knew you’d probably be up, so I thought I’d call.” There was a pause that Wakamatsu didn’t realize was taut until much, much later. “Guess I’m lucky Lorelei hadn’t sung you to sleep already, huh.” 

“Don’t say her name like you know her,” Wakamatsu grumbled. “I’ve been trying not to listen to her as much.” 

“How come?” 

“I don’t want to rely too much on her,” Wakamatsu said, quietly, watching his dim bedroom slowly seep into focus. 

Crickets were chirping frantically outside in the late spring air. He could hear Seo breathing over the phone, a soft sound that mingled with the tranquil insects outside, as natural a part of the air around him as anything. 

“How come?” Seo repeated after a moment, less audible this time. 

“Because she’s not always going to be around, you know?” He didn’t even know what he was saying anymore. He was starting to sound like some idiot in Nozaki-senpai’s manga. “And I… I haven’t even met her. So what’s the point?” 

“Hey, what the hell?” Seo snapped, jumping Wakamatsu’s heart into a brief beat of wakefulness. “Do you turn into some whining cynic after midnight, or something? Don’t give me that crap! She’s your goddess, right? You love her, right?” 

That certainly woke him up. 

“I-I-I-I-I don’t l-l-love her!” He sat up swiftly, like it would somehow add authority to his words. “D-Don’t say such embarrassing things, senpai!” 

“Oh, whatever.” She sighed. There was an odd bitterness in her voice that filled Wakamatsu with an inexplicable guilt that he proceeded to ignore, because the next words she spoke left no room for the feeling. “Just don’t come crying to me if you meet her someday and find out she loves you back but you’re too late to do anything about it because you gave up too fast. She doesn’t deserve that. You don’t, either.” 

Wakamatsu blinked, his glare slackening. He’d never heard Seo talk like that. He’d always been sure she wouldn’t know love if it sang right into one of her tone-deaf ears.

Not knowing what to say to any of it except for an uncertainly mumbled, “sorry,” he shuffled back down under the comforter, lying down and staring up at the ceiling. 

They didn’t really talk much after that—Seo spouted off the occasional non sequitur, and Wakamatsu hummed distantly to show that he had heard it—and eventually, to the steady sound of her ridiculous stories, he started to doze.