continuing rarepair writing vignettes - himiko and mikan!
“U-u-um….”
“Nyeh?”
Himiko blinks twice. No one should be backstage. It’s a safe place where she has time to recover the mana she so completely depletes during a show – not all of it, of course, because that takes far longer than a ten or fifteen minute break, but enough so that she can go out and meet the crowds gathering around the back entrance for the chance of an autograph.
But that’s the entire point: they wait outside, and Himiko isn’t required to meet with them. No one comes backstage. That’s…that’s sacrilege.
Himiko turns slow to whoever has entered her inner sanctum (at least, her temporary one) and stares at a girl taller than her (not hard, since most people are) but not the most tall. Her deep purple hair’s pulled back into a ponytail, loose at the nape of her neck, but her bangs are uneven, like someone’s taken shears to them instead of proper scissors. (She’d had bangs like that once, because she’d gotten impatient, waiting on her mama to get back from the store, and taken scissors to her hair all on her own. It looked horrible. Her mama cut it until it was all even, but it still looked bad, and she’d hidden her hair under a hat for weeks. It’s probably why she’s so used to her hat now. She can’t imagine leaving her bangs uneven like that, though.)
The girl clenches her hands up near her chest and presses her lips together, eyes watering, or maybe she’s crying, Himiko can’t really tell. “I-I-I noticed! Um.” She steps forward (and Himiko steps back) and sits on the ground in front of her, lowering herself in front of her. “Right here.” Her fingers brush along her own slender neck. “Y-y-you cut yourself, Yumeno-chan, and if…if you leave it like that, y-y-you’ll deplete the rest of your….” She stutters and shakes her head and corrects herself. “You could get hurt worse! With infections! And I-I-I didn’t….” Her voice trails off, and her gaze shifts away. “I’m a nurse,” she says, finally, and her voice shifts just so. “I’m a nurse, and I can take care of it for you.”
Himiko hears the words, but she hears the meaning, too, and the meaning and the words are close but not the same. Not quite.
(She would rather someone take care of her than have someone take care of a cut she’s accidentally given herself.)
It takes a second before her finger flits to the spot the girl mentioned, and when she pulls it away, blood – deep and red – lingers on her fingertip. “Are you….” Himiko furrows her brow, trying to remember the name she’d been given. “Tsumiki-san?” Staff on-call, in case something should happen.
“Yes.” Tsumiki smiles pleasant as anything and looks up at her, meeting Himiko’s blood red eyes with her own bruise purple ones. “I-I-I thought I should…should see the show, just…just in case.” Her eyes light up. “It’s magic.” Her fingers tap against her bandaged thigh. “Only what I do it…it isn’t magic. It’s just….”
Himiko, cautious, wary, still kneels across from the nurse. “Nyeh,” she says, and she takes Tsumiki’s hand in hers, lifting it to her neck. “It’s magic to me.”
Tsumiki flinches, blushes. “Let me….” She takes a breath in and forces the words out. “Let me do magic with…with you, then.”
