#thinking back;

//Ayano has never really gotten over her mother’s death.

Yeah, yeah, it’s silly and dumb. She’s not the only one with a dead mom. There’s plenty who have lost their whole families! Ayano has her siblings, and they’ve done more for her than they’ll ever know. She is, for the most part, happy, because she’s had time to move on, so she doesn’t complain and hardly ever speaks of her mother with anything other than a genuine smile.

//ayano is relatively good at baking! she likes making cookies a lot, and her cakes aren’t half bad either

//i’m not even surprised omfg i know what you’re getting at here

ayano loves love. she loves all of the different kinds of it and the ways that it manifests in different people!!

she’s felt plenty of love before, for her parents, for her siblings, and maybe a certain childhood friend okay and they’re all different kinds of love. her parents were great people, and even though her dad’s presence kind of faded after her mother died, she can’t bring herself to think him less for it. although her siblings tend to be viewed as a whole, she loves them all individually, too, for who they are and whoever they might grow up to be. ((do you even need me to explain about love no.3))

The problem with having a particularly energetic little sibling is that there will be times when you run into each other. There will also occasionally be times when you turn around, accidentally thumping heads together hard enough to send one of you onto the floor.

So naturally, this used to be a regular occurrence in the Tateyama household, especially when the younger sibling was Kano.

"Shuuya-kun, I’m- ow…" Ayano mumbled, rubbing at her head. There was a dull throbbing in it now, but if it hurt her, how did he feel? She was tiny, but he was still smaller than her at this age. "I’m really, really sorry! That was my fault, I’m so dumb- you’re not hurt, are you?"

The boy stared up at her for a moment, face blank, until his eyes started to shine with tears. “Oneechan…”

Oh no. Oh no, no no no. She made him cry-?

"Shuuya-kun, Shuuya-kun, no, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry!" Ayano scooped him up. She was almost in tears herself now! "Please don’t cry, sh, I’ll get some… ice? That’s what you do for things like that, right?" What was she doing asking a crying 10 year old for advice, even?

He was trembling like a leaf. The poor thing-

Wait.

Since when did Kano… ever call her that except for when he was teasing her? She shot back from him to get a look at his face.

The boy was shaking with laughter.

"I’m- I’m sorry," he snickered, covering his mouth with his hands. "But you really overreacted, oneechan!”

Ayano’s face heated up. She felt so stupid, to have thought that he was actually hurt! He’d probably use that against her later, wouldn’t he? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The two girls sat shoulder to shoulder in a library, making more noise than was really appropriate for the setting or their attitudes.

"Did you see the face the teacher made, though?” Kahoko smiled into her hand. “It was like she’d seen a ghost, she was so pale!”

Ayano giggled when the moment came into her mind and gently elbowed her companion. “You’d think that’d she’d be used to you-know-who by now, right?”

 Kahoko, speaking as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, replied, “Yeah, you know how Makoto-kun is.” They sighed happily. It would be out of character for them in any other situation to be openly cooing over boys, but it couldn’t hurt to be a little immature every now and then, right? Plus, Ayano was just excited to be talking to someone else, to be honest.

"Rin-kuuuun, please don’t mind me, but what is this question asking?"

The red head glanced up and in front of him, as if considering even responding to Ayano. With his frown becoming a little more distinct, he slowly rose from his desk to stalk over, and even as he looked over her shoulder to read the paper, she could feel him judging her with every word.

"Tateyama, you can’t actually be serious about this.” His voice was flat and cold, which only heated her face up.

"But I am!" Ayano laughed like her hands were funny. "This is really hard."

"Can you even read? It’s on the paper. The answer was in the chapter we read in class today. Never mind reading, did you listen to what the teacher was saying at all?”

She refused to meet Rin’s eyes. “Well, if I’d known you were going to be this mean about it, I wouldn’t have asked…” A pause. “You’re the only one here, so I figured that maybe you were working on something too.”

They were both quiet. What was he doing? She didn’t even hear him leave or anything. …But there he was, sitting next to her, the homework in hand. Ayano’s face lit up, but before she could say anything, he cut her off.

"Don’t get the wrong idea, Tateyama. I’m just not done with it either. We’re going to look through the chapter together, or something. You still have to figure it out for yourself, though." That may as well have been a victory, so she scooched up to him, ignoring narrowed eyes she was familiar with already, and opened her book.

…They got about two minutes in when Rin snapped his book shut and said, “Never mind, this is really boring. Just… finish the homework tomorrow or something.”

Her conscience at least telling her it wasn’t right to not at least attempt to finish the assignment, Ayano hesitantly closed her book.

"Alright. Um," wanting to at least say something to him, she said, "do you want to go over anything else?"

"Not especially. I’m leaving."

…well then.

The last person she’d ever expected to wait out a storm with was a pop star.

Ayano’d been bolting through the streets, hands over her head as she tried to dodge the droplets of rain and get to somewhere dry, when she’d crashed into someone with enough force to send them stumbling backwards. She looked up to see-

Momo Kisaragi. She knew the face and name. Even without the billboards and the music charts, she’d heard plenty of the name- very little of it ever mentioned positively- from the girl’s big brother throughout middle school. Ayano knew that Shintaro was hardly the go-to source for kind words, though, so she reserved any judgement.

"Oh, gosh! I’m so, so, sorry!" Ayano started, lifting up her hands in defense, laughing nervous and too forced.

"No, no, don’t be!" Momo shook her head rapidly, even as she clutched at it. "That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you come with me into the cafe right now so I don’t have to face the people in there alone until the storm’s over.”

Ayano stared, mouth agape. What.

"If you, uh, want?"

——-

And now the two of them were at, you guessed it, the cafe, perched across from each other at a booth. Ayano was texting each of her family members, apologizing for being late, only occasionally glancing up to see how Momo was doing. Neither of them had really spoken to each other aside from some awkward introductions.

crack

Ayano flinched so badly that she almost dropped her phone. The idol did not seem nearly as fazed, cheering as the thunder’s roaring slowly died down.

"Did you hear that, Ayano-chan?" Momo whirled around to face her with a huge grin. "That was awesome! That’s the biggest one yet, I think!” God, how could she not have. It was hard not to crack at least a small smile at Momo’s enthusiasm, though.

It wasn’t very often that Ayano panicked. She never really put herself in situations where she could have room to panic, after all. But when she lost one of her most prized possessions, her scarf, she saw that as a good enough reason to be a little freaked out.

It was a hot day, and in the sweltering heat of the AC-less food joint where she was picking up food for her siblings, she’d realized that her neck was starting to pick up sweat. So she gently folded up the scarf and left it on the table behind her for the moment, figuring that no one would see the need to steal it- it was a scarf. In the middle of summer.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. She’d brought it upon herself, hadn’t she? You don’t just leave your possessions lying around in public. She could save it, though. Whoever had it couldn’t have gone far! While she was contemplating this, a quiet voice sounded out from behind her.

"It was me."

Ayano swung around- woah. The stranger towered over her. That wasn’t important, though- what was in his hands was, and that was her scarf. She opened her mouth to ask, but he wordlessly handed it back to her. …Huh.