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With a live show coming up in just a little over a month, rehearsals have begun in full swing. Some of the songs in this concert they've never performed on stage before, so Eli had had to create new dances for them. Now that they've all had time to commit them to memory, all nine of them have gathered up to do a run-through of the choreography. They're not worried about singing for now -- instead, they let the recording play in the background as they focus on the dancing alone. Eli watches all the way throughout, commenting on each girl's performance and pointing out unsatisfactory areas. ("Rin, don't swing your arm up that high!" "Nico, your turn is too slow!") Nozomi smiles a little to herself as she listens to her voice, even when Eli calls for her to stand up straighter, and not fall behind. Eli's very good at being authoritative.

They get through the group dances first, then move on to the units, and finally, pairs. The very last song on the list is Glass Garden, and Eli resigns from her position in the peanut gallery, and joins Nozomi in the center of the roof. Nozomi offers her a grin. From her spot near the CD player, Rin announces "Okay, ready!", and when they respond in kind, hits play.

They've practiced it well, Nozomi thinks. There's a bit of tension to the choreography, like a fear of coming too close for too long -- but then, it might very well be all in her imagination. Regardless, Eli is as graceful and poised as ever, and at the end of it, Nozomi feels they did a pretty good job.

Honoka applauds. The others, though, don't appear as enthusiastic.

"Mmm... somehow, it's a little..." Kotori begins, but doesn't quite have the heart to finish the sentence. Thankfully, Umi picks it back up for her: "Wrong! Totally wrong! It doesn't capture the feeling of the song at all!"

"Right?" Nico chimes in. "The choreography blew! Eli, you were stiff as a pole! A song like that's gotta have appeal, you know? It needs on-stage chemistry! Without it, there's no point at all!"

Nozomi looks to Eli with a sheepishly raised brow. Maybe it wasn't just her imagination, then.

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Eli has her back turned to the girls, chugging from her water bottle as they offer their excited approval. Even with their screaming, Eli's ears ring for another reason entirely.

She turns to Nozomi, a smile forced on her lips. "Yeah! Good job, Nozomi. Thank you for taking the lead on that one. She turns to everyone else. She's out of breath and her words come out all too quickly. "Alright, I'm glad we're all happy with it now. We'll work on perfecting it this week. Good practice everyone! Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom."

Eli walks back into the stairwell and feels like she can breathe again.

Edited 2014-08-21 19:10 (UTC)

"Woah, that ended quickly," Honoka comments with a raised brow, but then perks right back up. "Well, we really did a great job today! Good going, everyone. I'll see you all again tomorrow!"

"Yeah!" comes the eager chorus in response, and practice breaks up. The girls help each other stretch, chatting among themselves with contented exhaustion; Rin and Hanayo go together to return the speakers to the teachers' lounge.

As Nico leans her negligible weight against Nozomi's back to help her stretch, she idly comments, "Man, did Eli drown in the toilet, or something?"

Nozomi hums faintly in response, fingertips pressing to the floor as far away as her arms can reach. Then she slowly uncurls her back, and rises to her feet.

"Done stretching?"

"Yeah, I'll go check on her on the way outside."

Waving the remaining girls goodbye with a smile, she steps through the door leading back inside the school, to look for Eli.

Eli finishes splashing water on her face. She braces herself against the sink, eyes closed, and just lets the water drip down. She doesn't know what to do.

The last few weeks of ignoring it haven't made it disappear. That unease she feels when she wants to know what Nozomi is thinking. If her touches have any sort of meaning behind them or Eli's just making it up. If Eli's supposed to discourage it. She sometimes wonders if anything in her own actions or words ever lead Nozomi on and that worries her even more; she doesn't want to hurt Nozomi any more than she already has.

Her rejection hadn't been clear, but she thought Nozomi had understood. But that doesn't mean she can stop those looks or those touches, or reading into them.

There's a knock at the door and she hears Nozomi's voice on the other side.

Eli takes a breath and grabs a paper towel to wipe at her face. "Sorry, I'm almost done."

Nozomi nudges the door open, poking her head in with a look she hopes is reassuring. "Mind if I come in?"

"No, go ahead," Eli responds quietly, muffled by the paper towel as she finishes drying her face. "Sorry, did I take that long?"

"Everyone's finishing up their stretches," she offers as her answer. "It's no good to skip those, you know."

Eli nods. "Right. I'll do them later."

"Should I help?" she suggests, pleasant. The two of them always pair up, after all.

"Ah, that's fine," Eli responds. Nozomi usually does help her during cool-offs, but today she's not sure she'd be able to breathe. "I'll just do them myself."

"Okay," Nozomi says simply, and at first thinks to leave it at that. To pretend she can't tell what this is really about, like everything is fine. Just the way she's been pretending this past month.

But... her hands ball into fists at her sides and her shoulders tense as she thinks -- how much longer can she keep pretending? If she acts like this is normal every time Eli pulls away, then Eli will get farther and farther away from her, until she'll be completely our of reach. They haven't talked about this once, not even on the day Nozomi admitted her feelings, and she thought she'd be happy leaving it at that -- but she can't stand the thought of standing idly by and watching as their friendship crumbles into dust.

She should say something. They can work this out. If she just...

"Did you hate it that much?"

Nozomi swallows harshly, taken aback by the words that just left her own mouth. That wasn't right. It sounded-- accusatory. She hadn't meant to say that at all. Where did it come from?

Eli stands rigid in the silence after Nozomi's question. She could've sworn hours went by.

Ah, of course Nozomi's felt it too. She's never been as good as Nozoomi at hiding how she felt. And apparently she'd been doing an even worse job than she thought.

"I didn't... hate it..." She starts quietly, eyes cast downward. "But I was... uncomfortable. That song, and what happened... aren't you uncomfortable too?"

Nozomi laughs, but it doesn't sound believable even to her own ears. "Don't be silly!" she responds, forcibly injecting chipperness into her tone. "It's just a song. I made Umi-chan write it because I thought it'd be funny, remember? Everyone knows it doesn't really have anything to do with us."

Just voicing the words feels like pulling teeth, and the edges of her mouth are starting to hurt from all this smiling. The corners of her eyes, too, have an odd strain tugging at them.

Eli doesn't have to look at Nozomi to know she's lying but she looks up anyway. "But it's not, is it? You told Umi to write that before you told me that you..." She's writing the paper towel in her hands. "I can tell when you're lying, Nozomi."

Nozomi opens her mouth to give another lighthearted protest, but it dies on her tongue at those last words. It's true, it doesn't matter how long she keeps this act up -- in the end, the only one she's trying to kid is herself.

She drops her eyes to the floor, guilty. The smile wavers on her lips.

"Are you scared of me?"

Eli wrings her hand in front of her to stop herself from going to Nozomi. "I'm not scared. Or maybe a little. But not scared that you'll do something or anything I mean..." Now she's frustrated and she rubs at her eyes with one hand. "I--I don't know what I'm feeling. Mostly confused and worried... weird. I feel weird."

She closes her eyes against her hand and leans back, against the sink. Her voice is very quiet. "I'm sorry."

Edited 2014-08-22 00:45 (UTC)

Nozomi hears Eli's words, but they can't seem to quite settle in her mind -- too fleeting, too difficult to fully grasp. All she hears is 'maybe a little' (that is to say: 'yes'). 'Weird'.

She shakes her head. "No, it's my fault. I made everything weird... I'm sorry." Her voice hitches a little near the end, and she feels the sting in her eyes intensify. Nozomi bites at her lower lip to keep it at bay, but she know she won't be able to ward it off for long. Even with how long they've been friends, she can't let herself cry in front of Eli. Least of all now, after the mess she's made of their relationship.

"Um, I should..." she starts weakly, and doesn't even bother finishing the sentence before turning away. Any excuse she'd come up with wouldn't be believable, anyway -- there's no reason to bother.

For all this, how she feels and how she can tell Nozomi feels, Eli's glad they're talking about it. They haven't really talked about it since Nozomi brought it up and even then they didn't talk about it much.

So when Nozomi turns to leave, Eli's immediate reaction is to reach out for her arm and stop her.

"Wait, Nozomi!" Her voice hikes up at the end. Somehow, it's like a dam breaks and Eli has to explain. "We should talk about this, don't you think? Things have been different since that day, but I don't want them to be. I'm just confused and scared, I've never had anyone say something like that to me. And I can't stop thinking about it or if you're thinking about it, and every time you look at me or we touch I just feel this weird thing in my stomach and you're my best friend and I don't know what to do but please don't go!"

Nozomi freezes in place, not from the force of Eli's grasp so much as her words. Her head is hot and heavy, and she doesn't know how to make sense of them -- there's a strange, almost hopeful dip in her stomach, but unable to pinpoint its source, she can only think of it as irrational. Even her own emotions are jumbled up beyond recognition. She doesn't know what to say to any of this -- she doesn't even know what to feel.

But if Eli wants her to stay, she'll stay.

"Th-then..." Nozomi swallows through the hot bile climbing up her throat, still not turning back around. "What am I supposed to do?"

Edited 2014-08-22 01:54 (UTC)

"I--" she starts, searching for something to say. "I don't know. I feel like we've lost something, and I don't want that."

Eli's still holding onto Nozomi, and even though she knows she has no reason to anymore, she doesn't let go.

"I feel like I want to talk about it more but I don't know what there is to talk about."

That makes the two of them, then. Nozomi exhales through her nose, shaky and shallow, rooted stiffly in place.

Something in her shifts with discomfort, even though she knows it shouldn't. It's wrong of her to, and yet she can't help thinking -- if Eli really doesn't want anything to change, then why...

"... You never come to my house anymore."

Eli feels as if her nerves freeze, almost like she knew eventually Nozomi would ask that and she was dreading it. She doesn't really know how to answer it either.

"Well we were busy, and it just didn't seem like..." she stops, and lets out a harsh exhale. She shouldn't make excuses, not now. Not with Nozomi. "I'm sorry. That was really wrong on my part. I think I was still just thinking through all this. But I do want things to go back to how they were. Including that."

"Okay," Nozomi murmurs. She should be happy with this. It's what she wanted all along. If they could just go back to being normal friends, it's really more than anything she could've asked for, and yet...

And yet her shoulders shake, and the sob wrangles its way from her throat before she has the chance to bite it back.

Eli feels that not in her throat grow the size of a big rock when Nozomi starts crying. She brings up her other hand to her back, wanting to comfort, but stops just short. What could she possibly offer Nozomi right now, when she is the very reason she's crying. She feels her own eyes watering.

In this moment, Eli has never hated herself more.

"I'm so sorry, Nozomi." Without another thought, Eli pulls Nozomi to her and wraps her arms around her. "Please don't cry."

Nozomi doesn't want to be crying, either. But once the first tears spill out there's no stopping them, no matter how incessantly she wipes at her eyes.

She doesn't want to be like this. She hates being this selfish. And though Eli undoubtedly wouldn't be holding her right now if she understood the full extent of how she felt, Nozomi sinks into her hold all the same.

"I am thinking about it," she answers the question Eli never really asked, voice small and choked between sniffs. "All the time."

Eli can't stop shaking and she doesn't know if it's really her or Nozomi. They're both just crying and holding each other in the bathroom and while she's sure it's a strange sight she wouldn't care if anyone saw them.

She doesn't even feel like letting Nozomi at her admission, and simply pulls her closer.

"I'm sorry," is all she keeps saying. She doesn't know what else to say. "I'm sorry." All the smiles and laughter, this whole time Nozomi was really forcing herself. Her voice is quiet against Nozomi. "It's okay. Me too."