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Sara is sitting on the stairs to eat lunch, alone, and that is nobody’s business but her own.
It’s not a matter of bullying or anything. The simple truth of it is this—the lunch area is all tables, around eight or ten seats each, and she is in no friend groups. She is on good terms with her classmates, more or less, but that is all. They ask her for her notes, sometimes; they trade scores, they shit talk teachers, but that’s it, really. All class bonding things. It doesn’t mean she’s in any group.
Her brothers study elsewhere so sitting with them and their would-be friends is also out of the equation. Kujou Takayuki sent them off to an exclusive school; a boys’ school, and there isn’t any girls’ school counterpart—not that Kujou Takayuki would have paid for it anyways—so here she was. It wasn’t as if she was destitute. This school was private as well. But—the situation. No friends and no brothers. Therefore: no lunch table. Therefore: the stairs.
She’s not completely alone on the stairs, at least. She’s seen older students pass by as they ascend floors in sets of two or three, clutching disposable paper containers bought from the canteen as they and their friends tuck themselves into the stairwell. Their chatter floats down from above her, the occasional laugh interrupting her silence, but it’s nice. She can lean her head against the wall and pretend she’s part of the conversation.
Sara unbuckles and unstacks the two metal containers that contain her lunch. One is okonomiyaki on top of rice; the other is filled with lanzones, the small round fruits tucked carefully to fit perfect inside the cramped space.
She begins with the okonomiyaki, because fruit is dessert and you cannot eat dessert first. She scoops it up with the rice in one spoonful, chews in multiples of five. She drinks water in between, cold from one of those lunky thermoses you sling on your shoulder. It’s not in and it’s not cool but it’s hot and she will never give up the luxury of ice water.
She’s halfway through her okonomiyaki when Arataki Itto shows up.
“Hi.” He stands there awkwardly. “I. Um. Do you mind if...?”
Sara, cheeks bulging with food, nods jerkily and chews faster. Seven eight nine ten. God. How embarrassing.
He lowers himself gingerly on the step she sits on, keeping a small distance between them. From his backpack he takes out a plastic disposable container. He cracks this open to retrieve the metal spoon jammed inside and digs into his lunch avidly. Adobo flakes with rice.
Sara tries not to watch him as they both eat, but it’s hard. Outside of their—rivalry, she supposes, although it’s not exactly that—she doesn’t know Arataki Itto too well. The only interactions they’ve had are her yelling at him and his gang of friends for being noisy in class. That, and sometimes they get paired up in P.E. for table tennis and the whole class stops to watch them fight it out, eyebrows scrunched as they whip the ping pong ball back and forth with far more concentration than a minor subject warrants.
So it’s an oddity to have him here. For one: why isn’t he with his friends? They have a table of their own in the lunch area, loud and rowdy at the back, half of which they share with Yanfei and friends, because she and Shinobu are sickeningly in like. (Not love. Very important distinction to make.) They’re not particularly close. What possessed him to come here, sit on the dirty red stairs, and eat lunch with a loner?
She swallows past another mouthful of okonomiyaki and rice and decides to just go for it. “Arataki Itto. Why are you here?”
He startles so comically, spoon freezing halfway to his mouth. “Um. Well!” Itto flounders, and then proceeds to stuff his mouth with food. He points at himself chewing as if to say, Oops, can’t answer right now.
Sara can’t help it; she rolls her eyes. “You’re so childish.”
“I am not,” he protests, muffled through the food.
“You so are.” Sara points her spoon accusingly at him. “And that’s disgusting.”
Itto grumbles, but waits until he’s swallowed the rest to retort. “Don’t think there’s anything behind it,” he says. “I just wanted to eat somewhere new for a change.”
“Why?” Sara’s almost done with her lunch now. She scoops up the—by her estimate—third-to-last spoonful of okonomiyaki and rice, and chews while his eyebrows scrunch. His tiny brain is probably working hard to formulate a reply.
“Because,” he says at last.
Sara snorts. Is that all he has to say?
“Don’t laugh,” Itto complains.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“You,” he says, with great feeling, “are so mean.”
“The next time I see you running the halls, I will report you to Ms. Yae.”
Itto is aghast. “You wouldn’t.”
“I so would.” Her lunch is all finished now. She puts away her spoon, screws the lid back on, and opens the container of fruit. “I’m far too lenient on you and your gang, anyways.”
He grumbles wordlessly again, and chooses to stuff his face with more food instead.
She picks out a lanzones, yellow-brown, and when she begins peeling the skin Itto notices, and cranes his neck to see.
“Lucky,” he says wistfully.
Sara pauses mid-peel, thinking. How many does she have, anyways? Her gaze flicks down to the container she’s set down on the steps. There are seven.
Sara thrusts the half-peeled lanzones towards him. “Extra,” she mutters, by way of explanation. “You can get another after. I only wanted five.”
Itto stares at her like she’s a new species of animal. “What?”
Stupid, she thinks, biting her lip. She needs to stop jumping to conclusions. “Unless you didn’t want one. Sorry. I’ll—”
“No!” Itto blurts. “I mean. I do want one. If you’re still offering.”
Silently, Sara offers him the lanzones again. Their fingers brush when he takes it, but it’s no big deal.
He discards the rest of the peel and pops one of the white translucent segments into his mouth. “Thanks,” he says, muffled through the chewing.
“You’re welcome.” She fishes out another lanzones and concentrates on peeling back the skin again.
They eat in silence for some time, only pausing to spit out the occasional seed. He finishes the first lanzones and Sara wordlessly passes him another one, already peeled.
“You know, Kujou Chicken,” Itto says, picking out another lanzones segment, “you’re really not as bad as you look.”
Sara bristles. “I’m sorry?”
“I mean,” he continues, waving the lanzones at her, “you always give off this super unapproachable vibe, that kind of thing. Half my friends are terrified of you.”
She will never admit it, but that stings. “That’s their problem,” Sara bites out. Her teeth close around the flesh of her lanzones with more strength than necessary.
“Right? That’s what I said,” Itto says. Sara blinks. What? “Plus anyone who’d give me fruit immediately earns my lifelong loyalty.”
“What,” Sara utters.
“Yeah, we’re friends now. You don’t have a choice.”
“What.”
“I’m not gonna let this situation go to waste, okay. This is movie material. Hades-Persephone type of shit.” He pauses. “But like, platonic.”
“Are you arguing for yourself as Persephone,” Sara says, baffled.
“Duh.” He pops another segment of lanzones into his mouth. “I would kill it as Persephone.”
“...Okay.” Don’t get her wrong—she has no problem with any of this. But—? What parallel universe has she stepped into? Are they joking? Are they doing—God forbid—banter?
Distantly she thinks—his words echoing back to her—friends?
“You don’t have to always sit on your own, though.” He’s still talking. “Like, I had fun sitting here with you. But there’s space at our table. And too much silence isn’t good for your brain cells or something.”
She’s too busy being offended to fully process that first part. “I am on the honors list.”
Itto rolls his eyes. “Yeah. And so is half the class.”
“I’m first honor, idiot, it’s not the same!”
He presses his lips together, very visibly trying not to laugh, and despite all of Kujou Takayuki’s lectures on wastage, Sara has never felt so tempted to throw her fruit at someone.
“I take back the pomegranates,” Sara mutters. “You can leave the Underworld right now.”
“Nuh uh. Not unless you leave with me.”
She pictures the lunch area, with all the people and all the eyes. “No,” she says emphatically. “And I was here first.”
Itto does laugh, then. “Yeah, alright. I guess I can’t go against my fruit supplier.”
Sara nods self-righteously, and they lapse once more into silence. Itto savors the remaining pieces of his lanzones, eating slowly enough that she feels bad and wordlessly puts another one atop the plastic cover of his disposable container. He shoots her a quick smile of thanks, bright as the heat that suffuses the always-summer air, and she has to clear her throat and look away, and focus instead on peeling the next fruit.
“Tomorrow,” he suggests, when all the lanzones but one are gone. The brown-yellow skins and seeds are huddled close in his plastic lunch container. “You’re friends with Shinobu, anyways.”
Sara bites her lip. “But we’re not friends friends.”
Itto waves her off. “I have it on good authority that she likes you. C’mon, Kujou Chicken. Don’t tell me you’re too good for our little gang.”
“I didn’t mean—” she protests, and then she realizes he’s smiling, and she remembers, friends.
The right answer to this is: No thank you.
What comes out is: “I can’t sit with your gang if half of them are scared of me.”
Itto laughs, loud and reckless. “Half of us is two! And Genta and Mamoru will come around. C’mon.”
“But...”
“I’ll buy you milo con yelo,” Itto says.
Damn it. How does he know? She’s always wanted to buy a cup, but Kujou Takayuki would never let her have an allowance, and all her recess snacks and lunch food come from home.
“Fine.”
Itto smiles, so wide his eyes crinkle up.
They split the last lanzones. When Sara bites into the clear flesh, it bursts bright and sweet on her tongue.
It tastes, she thinks, like tomorrow.