Unsurprisingly, the raccoon is the first to act. After only about five awkward seconds, Stelle stands up, the click of her heels cutting through the soft hum of the phonograph. She walks across the car and takes a seat next to March, who isn’t looking up from the floor.

“Hey, um… March, are you feeling okay? You’ve been acting a little strange…”

March nods faster than should be considered normal, and her response is more like a squeak than the “mhm!” she intended to let out.

Gears begin to turn in Stelle’s head, and she furrows her brows as something clicks into place.

“March, do you… not like my haircut? I didn’t think to ask you beforehand, but maybe I should have, I just saw some people with similar hairstyles that looked really pretty, and I thought maybe I should try it out, but—“

The sudden rambling is enough to make March glance up, hoping that Stelle would be looking somewhere else while her mind ran wild. Instead, she finds herself staring into a sea of gold, framed perfectly by beautiful, messy gray bangs.

Her self-control vanishes instantly. She jumps out of her seat and grabs Stelle by the wrist, cutting off her speech and prompting a startled yelp. There isn’t much reason to be in a hurry, with no one around to see, but March hasn’t been thinking clearly for some time now. She makes a mad dash for the passenger car with Stelle in tow, and it’s only a few seconds until the door to March’s bedroom is sliding shut behind them.