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When Carmilla wakes up, it’s dark outside (winter means that she’s never up early enough to catch the sunset). Laura’s face is thrown into sharp relief by the bright, harsh colors rapidly flickering across her computer screen. Carmilla squints at the screen on her way to the fridge and catches a glimpse of a mildly infantilized girl, bright flashes of light, stars, and red ribbons. Acres and acres of red ribbons that appeared out of nowhere for no particular reason, as far as she could tell.
"Sometimes, I think mankind would have been better off without the internet," Carmilla drawls as she comes to hover over Laura’s shoulder.
Laura jumps. “Oh, hey, I didn’t realize you were up,” Laura says as she takes out her earbuds and pauses the screen.
The barely clad girl is now frozen in a pose in front of the…moon?
"Why are there flowers?" Carmilla asks incredulously, torn between confusion and apathy.
"What, this? Oh, it’s the new Sailor Moon remake! I used to love this show as a kid. I always thought it was because I connected to the primary theme of the inherit incredible power of femininity, but now that I’m watching it again I think it might have actually been the gay characters…" Carmilla only catches about every third word of Laura’s babbling, still trying to make sense of the tableau before her on the screen.
Laura’s eyes light up at Carmilla’s apparent interest before she hastily hides her excitement. “Do you wanna watch it with me?” she tentatively asks.
Carmilla, despite her better judgment, is intrigued. There has to be an explanation for the flowers (and the outfit), right? But what she says is, “I suppose this is slightly more worthy of my attention than attending a lecture on Kant for the sixth time.”
"How many philosophy degrees do you—no, you know what, don’t answer that. The answer will just depress me."
Carmilla’s eyebrow rises a little as Laura unpauses the screen and an Asian language bursts out of the speakers.
"It’s not in English?"
Laura pauses the screen again quickly. “What? Oh, no, this is a Japanese cartoon, so the voice acting is all done in Japanese. There are English translations, but everyone knows that the Japanese voice acting is better. Even if you can’t understand it. I think. At least, that’s what the internet says.”
Carmilla nods, slowly, accepting this explanation for now until she has time to confirm it for herself later.
"Don’t worry, there are subtitles," Laura adds as she unpauses the show again.
Carmilla never does get an explanation for the outfit. Or the ribbons. Or why their mentor chose the guise of a talking cat.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
A few weeks later, when Laura returns to the dorm, she finds Carmilla watching the newest Sailor Moon episode in her bed with a small, thickset book on her lap.
"Hey, I thought you promised that we would watch the new one together—is that a Japanese dictionary?" she says in astonishment.
"What? Oh, yes, it is," Carmilla replies without bothering to unpause the episode.
"Wait, when did you learn Japanese?" That had not been on the list Carmilla had given her two months ago of all the languages she spoke. ("Carmilla, it wouldn’t be out of the question for the ghost haunting the language lab to be multilingual. Perhaps if he or she—or they spoke to someone who knew as many languages as…the ghost does, we would get something other than gibberish out of the Ouija board.")
Carmilla rolls her eyes as she finally pauses the episode. “I decided soon after my rebirth into immortality that I would never voluntarily read a translation of any work. Might as well use my infinite lifespan for at least some self-improvement. So, I started studying the language a few weeks ago. I still need to work on my verbal skills, but I can understand a majority of the dialogue.”
Laura just stares at Carmilla, incredulous.
"What? It was much easier than Cantonese was the first time. Some free life advice, cupcake: if someone tries to convince you to take a field trip to China because ‘you heard they had some great stuff called opium,’ refuse. The language is difficult enough to learn in your right mind." When Laura makes no movement towards the bed, Carmilla turns entirely to face her. "So, Sailor Spaz, we gonna watch this episode or not?"
Laura shakes off her bewilderment as best she can and files this wealth of new information to process later as she joins Carmilla on the bed. (Japanese? In a month? OPIUM?)
As Carmilla starts the episode over, she adds with a smirk, “By the way, the internet was right. The Japanese voice acting is much better.”