Chapter Text
“Okay, for the bouquet, they say you can add a note onto it. The tag is three inches by two inches, so barring about a quarter inch border for readability, I figure we have enough room for about 150 characters written in a moderately sized script,”
“Jesus Noelle, don’t make it sound so mathematical,” Min said, shooting her a look of absolute disgust from across the library table. “This is a prank, not a nuclear space exploration mission,”
Noelle scowled back at Min as she continued scribbling down notes in a composition notebook. “If we want the prank to have the most optimal amount of success in being humorous, we have to be at least a little pragmatic about it Min-seo,” she remarked angrily. Min flicked a crumpled shred of paper she’d picked off one of her assignments at Noelle's face in reply, hitting her squarely on the cheek. Noelle’s attempt to dodge it was delayed by almost two full seconds. “Also, the involvement of nuclear fission in the propulsion of spacecraft can hardly be described as 'nuclear space exploration',” She added hotly.
“All it has to say is ‘from your secret admirer,’ right?” Diya asked, her voice coming out of Min-seo’s phone a little crackled from the bad service in the school library. Since so much of their time together was spent at school with Akarsha present, they’d decided to do a bit of last-minute planning during Min and Noelle’s weekly tutoring session, with Diya present via phone call.
“Right, that’s the most essential information,” Noelle said. “But I feel as if we might get a better reaction if we added some kind of additional profession of love on the note as well,” She said, aggressively attempting to erase an attempt she’d just written in her notebook. “I fear I may not be the best at that sort of thing, which is why I was hoping to consult with you two,” she concluded.
“Have you tried writing something?” Min said excitedly. “Oh my god, read it to us. I can’t wait to hear how horrific and mathy it is,” she jeered, standing up and leaning over to try to peer into Noelle’s notebook, which Noelle yanked away from her sight quickly.
“You think I’m keen to share after that declaration?” Noelle said, keeping her angered voice just below yelling so as to not alert the librarians. “Absolutely not. The only thing I’ll say is that I was experimenting with playing off of traditional romantic literature, but that it seems poetry might not lend itself to the clearest declaration,” Min must have been worn out from studying, because she gave up and sat back down after her initial unsuccessful attempt to grab the notebook. “Also, I’m struggling just a bit at avoiding verbosity,”
“What the fuck hell is that supposed to mean,” Min said incredulously.
“Means she keeps writing too many words,” Diya replied. Min’s expression softened every time Diya spoke up, just as if hearing her voice was enough to momentarily pacify her. It didn’t last long this time however.
“Oh, you’re right then, you really have never been able to shut the fuck up,” She said to Noelle menacingly.
“You’re both being downright unhelpful right now,” Noelle said. “Do you have a suggestion or should I go with a Shakespearean sonnet? I feel like I almost have iambic pentameter figured out,”
“If you write it in iambic pentameter, she’ll know it’s you,” Diya deadpanned.
“What the fuck is ionic pentameter??” Min said, throwing her hands in the air.
“I- am -bic,” Noelle corrected. “Seriously Min-seo, we covered that just 2 months ago from the Shakespeare unit you had in English,” Noelle said disgustedly. “But you are right Diya, sadly it seems the limited number of people versed in elizabethan literature at this school may help Akarsha narrow things down more than we’d like,”
“Instead of some frilly Shakespearean shit, why don’t you use a more normal poem, turbo nerd,” Min said, after struggling to come up with a direct comeback to Noelle's previous remarks about her failure to remember the English unit.
“Which is? Enlighten me, oh connoisseur of ‘normal’ poetry,” Noelle said flatly, rolling her eyes.
“I dunno, like, roses are red, violets are blue type shit!” Min said hotly. The librarian closest to their table flashed them an irritated look, causing Min to slouch back in her chair and lower her voice.
“That’s a good suggestion Min,” Diya said. Min turned to Noelle with the brightest smile on her face at Diya’s affirmation. “Classically cheesy and mainstream enough to be undetectable,” she finished.
“Roses are red, violets are blue,” Noelle repeated thoughtfully. “The poetic pattern for that one is an additional two lines, the second line ending in a rhyme or near-rhyme with ‘blue’, correct?”
“I think so,” Diya replied. Min was still smiling quietly with the euphoria that Diya had thought her idea was good.
“I think I can work with that then,” Noelle said, writing down the first two lines in her notebook above a five line sonnet that was covered in edits and scribbled out words.
“Just think about how you feel about calculus and traffic laws and it should come easy to you,” Min said proudly.
“I am NOT romantically interested in calculus and traffic laws! I simply think they have useful functions in society and are underappreciated and over-antagonized!” Noelle contested. The librarian turned to them again and this time gave a rather obvious ‘sshhh!’ at Noelle’s remarks, causing her to shirk back in embarrassment. Min was snickering quietly at the sight of the librarian’s own favorite being the first of them to garner a proper shush.
“In any case, I think two lines is more than manageable,” Noelle said quietly. “Diya, I’ll send it to you tonight for you to check before I hand it off to the MSA tomorrow,” She finished.
“You’re gonna send it to Diya but not me??” Min balked.
“I know she’ll just send it to you right after, it’s not like you won’t see it,” Noelle said, closing her eyes in annoyance. “I don’t know why I’d subject myself to your immature criticism so directly,” she muttered. Min gave her shin an indignant kick under the table. “OUCH!” Noelle yelped at the attack, alerting the librarian a third time as they sushed them again.
Later that evening, Noelle sat at her desk with her composition notebook open once more. They really could have just gone for the simple ‘from your secret admirer,’ but of course she’d decided to over-complicate things once again. Fortunately now that any specific meter was no longer necessary, composing some kind of poem had gotten much easier.
Beside her on the desk was the two by three inch card she’d picked up from the MSA that day. It was made from a sturdy piece of paper, and had a hole punched into it on one of the short ends for threading a ribbon through.
Noelle’s exposure to romance was primarily from media she had consumed (which was not much, on account of any historical or scientific inaccuracies immediately disqualifying her from enjoying something) as well as direct observation of Diya and Min-seo. Before she’d seen a relationship like that up close, romance had simply seemed like a foreign concept to her. It wasn’t as if her parents ever acted toward each other in a way that could be perceived as ‘romantic’ by any means, and she’d never understood why her peers in middle school would talk about boys as if there was something interesting or intriguing about them. The act of being in love herself was something that simply had never crossed her mind, so she felt as if she were treading in troubled water trying to put herself in the shoes of some fictional admirer.
Love never crossed my mind , she wrote out, contemplating her current string of thought.
Noelle imagined that it would truly take something monumental for her to succumb to referring to any kind of feelings as romantic. In her opinion, she’d always perceived it as somewhat of an unnecessary type of emotion, one that she could control if she ever felt so swayed. The types of attributes someone would have that would cause her to genuinely perform an act such as presenting a bouquet didn’t even seem conceivable to her. If ever she ended up partaking in romance, the benefactor of her affections would truly be someone she couldn’t even imagine existing at this point.
And yet here I am, writing a poem to string onto a bouquet of a dozen roses, she thought to herself. Successfully messing with Akarsha had always given Noelle such a large amount of satisfaction that she’d rather be caught dead than tell anyone genuinely how much joy she felt doing it. A little panic rose in her chest at the thought of those rather strong emotions, so she quickly shoved them back down.
Love never crossed my mind… till the day I met you , she wrote. Momentarily disgusted at how genuine it sounded, she slammed the notebook shut, before opening it again a few moments later to look over her work.
Noelle nervously fiddled with the ballpoint pen she’d picked out to write out the message on the card. She startled as her phone finally let out a bright tone notifying her about a new message, and she fumbled the pen, accidentally grabbing at the tip and getting ink on her thumb and index finger. Cursing internally at the mess, she opened up her phone.
Diya 10:52 pm
:D
it’s so good!
She let out a sigh of relief at Diya’s positive appraisal of the poem. For the past 10 minutes, she’d been practicing modifying her handwriting so it would be as inconspicuous as possible. Her phone let out another ding.
Min-Seo 10:54 pm
YUOR POEM SUCKS ASS
Noelle was genuinely surprised Diya had waited longer than 1 minute to share it with her girlfriend. She let out an annoyed sigh as she grabbed the tag and pulled it to where she could begin to work on transcribing the poem onto it.
Min-Seo 10:55 pm
diya rlly likes it tho
so im pissed i didnt come up with it first
She rolled her eyes at the follow up message Min had sent before flipping over the card, as she noticed her ink-stained index finger had left a little smudge on the side of the card she’d originally intended to write on. She couldn’t wait to see the look on Akarsha’s face when she read it.
That morning, Noelle felt as if she had eaten something disagreeable upon walking into the classroom - she was so filled to the brim with anticipation of the delivery of the bouquet at the end of the period that she’d hardly been able to hear the morning announcements over the intercom and had only taken one page of notes during the lecture for the day. Finally the end of the period had arrived, and a few upperclassmen had begun to filter through the classroom door with an assortment of presents to deliver.
“We should have a reverse Valentine’s Day where we give annoying, terrible gifts to our enemies on purpose.” Akarsha said, turning from her seat in front of Noelle to address her. The sudden reminder of her proximity momentarily made Noelle’s heart rate jump.
“You mean, what you already do to me every single day of my life ?” she replied, forcing a scowl as she looked back at her friend.
“Oh, true…” Akarsha said in response, her signature mischievous smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
Noelle’s breath stops for a second when someone enters the room with a full bouquet of roses. As they walked over to the row where she and Akarsha were seated, she tried to glance over discreetly to catch Akarsha’s reaction to the approaching senior.
“Are you Akarsha?” They asked. “This is yours,” Akarsha’s eyes were open as wide as they could be as she nodded and accepted the bundle of flowers. Noelle was already actively fighting herself to keep from grinning ear to ear. She turned quickly to see Diya, who also looked as if she was about to combust with glee.
Now convinced Akarsha was entirely too distracted by the gift to notice her blatantly staring, she observed her closely as she noticed the note attached to the ribbon keeping the flowers together. She gingerly grabbed it between her index finger and thumb and turned it horizontally to read it, tilting her head slightly when the tag couldn’t fully turn sideways. Noelle watched her mouth fall open just a bit, a warm red tint spreading quickly on her cheeks and ears.
After a moment or two, Akarsha’s head whipped up quickly, then scanned the room, looking back and forth as if she were looking for someone who’d just called her name. Eventually, she settled her gaze on her two friends sitting beside her.
“Someone sent you flowers?” Noelle said, attempting to sound as surprised as she could possibly be.
After another second of processing, Akarsha seemed to regain a bit of her composure. “I told you I was a hot commodity! I charmed the pants of someone without even knowing it!”
“What’s the note say? Let me read it,” Noelle replied, curious to hear about the effectiveness of the poem she’d penned last night.
“Wh-why do you care?” Akarsha said, an anxious look briefly crossing her face. “You jealous?”
“In your dreams,” Noelle said nonchalantly. As if she’d ever envy being pranked as hard as Akarsha was being played at this very moment.
“I bet she won’t show us because they misspelled her name as ‘Arkasha’,” Diya added, beaming and very apparently holding back a laugh.
“Why’re you so mean today?! I’m gonna tell the teacher you’re bullying me!” Akarsha whined, moving the bouquet out of Diya’s reach. She turned her attention back to the note, turning over the tag and inspecting the back. With a very contemplative look on her face, she drew the card up to her face, and then gave the paper a tentative sniff. This was a far better reaction than Noelle could have ever hoped for.
“What’re you doing,” Diya said, threatening to explode into giggles as she spoke.
“Quiet, meanie!! I’m trying to crack the code!” Akarsha retaliated defensively. “You’re interrupting my mind palace technique!!” she said, waving her hand in Diya’s direction while she stared down the note, as if she was trying to ward off smoke. Her brows furrowed in concentration again as she appeared to lose herself in thought for another moment or two. After several seconds, she looked up to meet Noelle's gaze again. “It’s either fake or real,” she stated.
“You don’t say? Thanks for narrowing it down for us,” Noelle said smugly. She felt overwhelmingly thrilled at the great success of her plan. All those months of scheming were paying off in the most glorious way almost instantaneously after she’d received the first bouquet.
“B-be quiet!” Akarsha huffed. She turned her head again to look at each corner of the room - no doubt inspecting each of their classmates for suspicious behavior. Diya locked eyes with Noelle briefly, the both of them exchanging a secret cheer at the triumph of their plot. Akarsha whipped her head around again to catch Diya trying to cover her grin with a hand as she looked away. “What’re you smiling about?” She demanded.
“Nothing. Just happy for you,” Diya states, tilting her head a bit to smile directly at Akarsha.
Her chest swelling with an exciting warm feeling as they walked out of the classroom together, Noelle made a mental note to herself to jot down some ideas for next year’s poem once she got home that day. This was going to be her greatest scheme yet.