#u know... hypothetically......................

Tajima cackled. “Okay, who’s next? Kousuke?”

“Hmm.” Izumi leaned back on his hands and looked at the ceiling nonchalantly. “I’d date Hamada, if he were a girl.”

Several people turned to look at him, baffled. “But he’s not a girl, though…?” Oki said, as if now he was wondering if Hamada was a girl and no one had thought to tell him.

“Whatever!” said Tajima. “Why Hamada? Doesn’t he annoy you?”

“Well, yeah,” Izumi said, “but that would be cute if he were a girl.”

Abe sighed, loudly. Suyama was eyeing the door with something like desperation.

Tajima slung an arm around Mihashi. “Dude! We could have been third-wheeling them the entire time!”

Mihashi tittered and nodded. “Hama-chan…would…too!”

Tajima jostled him playfully. “Yeah, I guess their whole thing makes sense if it was always secretly sexual tension, huh?”

Across the room, Izumi casually flipped him off. “What about you, Ren?”

Mihashi jumped. “M-me?” he squeaked.

“Yeah, Ren!” Tajima cheered. “Tell us!”

Mihashi’s glance darted around, collecting his teammates’ expectant glances. “W-well…” he started, “I would, um. That is…” He sat up straight. “With A-Abe-kun!”

Tajima grinned. Everyone else looked at Mihashi in confusion.

“Abe-kun?” said Sakaeguchi. “Abe Takaya? That Abe?”

“Mm!” Mihashi nodded.

There was a short silence as everyone processed this.

“You mean, if he were a girl?” Izumi asked.

“I guess?” Mihashi tilted his head to the side. “That is…”

(“Abe?” Mizutani was saying. “Our Abe?”—but it was at the same moment Oki and Nishihiro were saying “Him?” and “But why?”, and their intonations matched so perfectly that they cancelled each other out and no one heard any of them.)

Tajima leaned in. “Or even if he weren’t a girl?”

Mihashi nodded several times.

“But that’s…” Hanai frowned. “Is that allowed?”

“I did say anyone in the school,” Tajima pointed out. “So in this scenario, everyone has already confessed to Ren. Including all of us on the team! We all want to date him!!”

Awkward shuffling greeted this pronouncement. The room had become…squirmy. All except for one corner, where Abe was staring straight ahead in statue-stillness, pen raised over a sheet of game stats.

“Okay, but,” Nishihiro chimed in, “do you just mean you might as well date him because you already spend so much time with him, and if you added a new person you’d have to cut into your time for baseball?”

“Ohhh,” said Mizutani. “That makes sense.”

Nodding all around.

“Hang on,” said Tajima. “Ren, let’s say you could date someone without taking any time away from baseball. There is suddenly one extra hour per day and it’s impossible to play baseball during that hour because if you try the ball just floats away into the sky! You have to spend that extra hour hanging out with this person. Who would it be?”

Mihashi looked a little confused by this strange new world where the laws of physics had changed so drastically, but he still sounded quite confident when he chirped out, “Abe-kun!”

“But you mean as friends, right?” That was Hanai.

Mihashi twiddled his fingers. “B-but…can I…” He looked at Tajima questioningly.

“You can date him, sure,” Tajima said. “Or you can hang out as friends. Your choice. What do you want to do?”

“Both!” Mihashi said.

Oki and Nishihiro exchanged a glance. Mizutani looked lost. Hanai looked mad, but he often looked mad, so that didn’t mean anything. Izumi was smirking mysteriously. Suyama had the look of perplexed concentration characteristic of someone trying to do long division in their head.

Sakaeguchi was looking at Abe, who had been holding his pen in the air for so long that his hand had started to shake.

Mihashi looked around at his teammates. His face fell. “Or…is that…I’m…” He swallowed. “S-selfish?”

There was a chorus of “No!”s and frantic headshakes as the team scrambled to do damage control.

“Not selfish!”

“You’re just answering the question…”

“We support you!”

“Even if you want to date that guy. Of all people.”

(Nishihiro under his breath to Oki: “Does Ren get out enough? Should we be introducing him to girls? Or, like, guys other than Takaya?”)

Mihashi had already started crying. The team clustered around him, jostling each other in their clumsy attempts to comfort him. He sniffled and looked down. “But, what…? Is Abe-kun. Mad?”

Eight heads turned in unison to stare at the Abe statue. For a second, no one said anything.

Then the statue stood up. He wavered a little on his feet, as if his muscles hadn’t totally unlocked yet. “Uh,” he said, eloquently. He stood there for a moment. “Excuse me.” Then he staggered, leaning against the wall, to the door.

Mihashi’s emotional support guard dog followed this trajectory with all eight of its heads.

Abe slid open the door and stopped, gripping the doorframe. He took a deep breath, then stepped through and slid the door closed behind him. His footsteps receded as he made his way downstairs.

“Well,” Sakaeguchi said into the silence. “He didn’t seem mad.”

“That’s true,” said Suyama thoughtfully.

“He didn’t even yell,” Oki added in wonder.

“Everyone just be normal,” Hanai said. “Don’t treat him any differently. He hasn’t done anything wrong.” He glanced down to where Mihashi was weeping exhaustedly into the floor. “Technically.”

“It was just a what-if,” Tajima told Mihashi. “You didn’t do anything wrong either.”

“No, of course not!” Sakaeguchi rushed to agree. “And Takaya knows that.”

“He’s just thinking about it,” Izumi said reasonably. “This kind of thing isn’t really on his radar. He needs to reanalyze.”

“Should someone…go check on him?” Nishihiro asked. “I nominate Yuuto.”

“Seconded.” “Thirded.” “Fourth…ed.”

“Okay, okay,” said Sakaeguchi. “I’m going.”

“Better you than me,” muttered Mizutani. Oki shuddered.

Sakaeguchi extricated himself from the huddle and crossed the room. He was reaching for the door when it slid open of its own accord.

Or rather, Abe opened it. He was holding a glass of water, as if he’d just gotten thirsty and gone down for a drink.

“Wuh…..aooohwoahoh,” Sakaeguchi said in greeting. “Heyyyy, man. I was just coming to look for you.”

Abe looked at him oddly. “I’m busy,” he said. “Can it wait?”

Sakaeguchi blinked. “Uh, yeah. It—was nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

“Cool,” said Abe, stepping around him. He headed straight for the dogpile. “Hey, Ren.”

Various piteous noises indicated Mihashi must be somewhere under the press of bodies, but he did not otherwise give any signs of life.

Abe sighed and crouched down. “Okay, everybody get off him. Give him some air.”

The heads exchanged glances. He still wasn’t yelling. They separated, revealing Mihashi’s shuddering back.

“Ren,” Abe said again. He reached out tentatively, hovering for a second, and then all at once pressed his hand flat to Mihashi’s back, between his shoulder blades. “Breathe.”

Mihashi froze, then sucked in a breath. He exhaled, a shaky hiss.

“That’s it,” Abe said. “Again.”

The team watched in silence as Abe coached the pitcher through a breathing exercise. When he started stroking his hand up and down Mihashi’s trembling spine, they exchanged significant eyebrows. Suyama started inching silently for the door. Were they really going to watch this?

“Good,” Abe said, when Mihashi’s breathing had calmed to the occasional hiccup. He reached around Mihashi with his other hand, the one holding the glass. “Now, drink up. After all that, you must be dehydrated.”

Mihashi gazed down at the simple glass of plain water like it was the greatest gift he had ever been given. He reached for it with shaky fingers, but Abe didn’t let go. So he wrapped his hand around Abe’s, and they lifted the glass up together.

When he had drunk his fill, he guided the glass down to rest on his thigh, but he didn’t release it. Neither did Abe. Mihashi turned his head slightly, looking at Abe in his peripheral vision.

“N-not mad?” he asked quietly.

“No,” said Abe.

“Still my ca-catcher?” Mihashi asked.

“Always,” was Abe’s response.

Mihashi swallowed. He sat up straighter. “I-if Abe-kun could…” He licked his lips. “Date. Any-anyone. In the school. Who…?”

Suyama froze mid-scoot. Hanai clapped a preemptive hand over Tajima’s gleeful mouth. Oki and Nishihiro clutched at each other. Sakaeguchi bit his pillow with stress.

Abe huffed. “I don’t…know,” he said slowly. “I’ve never thought about it.”

Mihashi wilted slightly.

“And there’s no time for that anyway,” Abe continued. “It’s baseball season.”

(No one even dreamed of reminding him of the extra-hour physics exemption.)

Mihashi’s posture slumped further.

“So,” Abe said gruffly, pressing Mihashi’s back until he was sitting up straight again, “let me get back to you.”

Tajima whooped. Hanai tackled him. Sakaeguchi fainted. Mizutani panicked, grabbed Mihashi’s glass, and threw the rest of the water into Sakaeguchi’s face. Izumi looked on, laughing, as Suyama patted the victim dry and ordered Mizutani to elevate his feet.

“That’s nice, but…” Nishihiro tapped his chin. “I still wonder if we should make sure Ren knows there are other fish in the sea. You know? He could do better.”

Lady Ryu appeared only recently, she is The Jester's long lost wife, though wife seems too small a word for her. I heard she was swallowed by time itself, a ghost that should never have been seen again... yet here she stands. Her beauty intact, her eyes dark with knowledge we could never name, though her temper has even the bravest attendants scurrying to shadowed corners. She is half-mad, we all whisper, sharpened to a breaking point by horrors nobody should live through. Yet, there are moments when she manages to convince you, if only for a second, that she could never be the monster her moods make of her. And her face, her bearing… perhaps that is why he keeps her near, even if no one else dares to.

And then there is Lady Winter... Pantalone's jewel and thorn, already known to us all. She carries herself less like a wife and more like a queen in exile. She is entirely too confident for a woman surrounded by men who could silence her with so much of a gesture. Yet she does not bow, not even before her husband. She keeps the region in check, and each errand is rewarded with another set of jewels, gowns, praise that turn her into the sweetest of her kind once his hand smoothes over her silken hair. She has a way of making you feel as though you are nothing more but dirt under her shoe. A shoe more expensive than all the mora I could ever earn in my entire life living through this torture.

Strangest of all is the way they fit together. One would think that two such women would despise one another. And yet, I have seen them together: the way they laugh, the way they exchange a single glance as though sharing secrets the rest of us are too small to comprehend. They are something closer, fiercer, each recognises in the other a reflection they had long been seeking. They fit, somehow, like jagged shards of the same broken mirror clicking together in a way that feels terrifying.

Their footsteps echo in the halls like a storm, their voices bright and cold. I do not know what they conspire, but I feel it, there is a power woven between them. It is a terror not born of the Snezhnayan blizzards, but of two women who have found each other, and in doing so, have become something far colder than the frost clawing at our walls.

I pray to the Tsaritsa that they never turn their eyes on me...