[Uma Musume: Pretty Derby fan fiction]
All grown up, just as Mejiro McQueen thought things would settle into something stable, Tokai Teio brought up changes neither of them expected, with long-reaching consequences.
The day started early that particular day, because both McQueen and Dictus had urgent calls from their office. Dictus, of course, in her usual composure, acted quickly and got herself ready. McQueen, however, had to struggle a little—some of her things were in the wrong places, her makeup table was a mess, and she had no idea that she'd run out of tea. That morning was, in McQueen's own tongue, a predicament.
The troubles did not stop. The urgent call she had to respond to was mainly to help with a task done by a struggling colleague, which McQueen handled perfectly, but she was later called by her boss for a scolding about a whole lot of problems with her latest report, from numerous typos to a couple of misformats. It was, by a very large margin, her worst performance to date.
Her boss warned her that they were lucky she was not negotiating anything the past month, because had her errors been during negotiation instead of reporting, things could have been devastatingly fatal.
Her boss was kind enough to keep this scolding confined in the private walls of his own office, and he still noted that McQueen had done really well in the past. But he warned that, if her performance drop continued, he would have to resort to other options which—as he put it—might be 'less favorable' to her situation.
The morning was a predicament, and the day was long. Come sundown, McQueen was told to go home and rest by her boss, who thought that maybe putting her under any further stress would be unwise. The way home was silent, and the moment McQueen came home, she was drained of all energy.
It was, for lack of better words, a disastrous day.
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However, McQueen came home to the sight of Dictus calmly preparing their dinner, and she gave McQueen her usual collected smile as McQueen walked through the door.
"McQueen-san, it has been five weeks. And I can't help but notice…."
The talk, of course, did not begin out of the blue. In fact, for the most part, they had a leisurely chat. McQueen was more than elated that her kind flatmate had noticed that she was in predicament, and was kind enough to actually spare all the extra effort to ease her burden—Dictus had taken over preparing the bath, preparing the meal, and even making her bed, all since she got home. And she did not even leave particularly early that day, just like McQueen. Living closer to the workplace did have its merits, after all.
What Dictus had prepared was, of course, by no means anything too lavish. Dinner was simple omurice with two cups of tea, which told McQueen that Dictus definitely had taken her time before she got home because she clearly remembered the tea cabinet being empty just that morning. But it was over this simple dinner that the two could share an evening with a nice, subdued conversation, which was a great kick back from the more stressful exchanges she'd been having throughout the day.
As was always the case, Dictus provided McQueen with a pillar of stability in the face of a life uncertain.
It was then that Dictus suddenly turned serious.
"Wait a moment, please," McQueen said with a hand slightly raised. "Five weeks since what?"
"Five weeks since you have been acting strangely," Dictus admitted outright. She corrected the position of her glasses with a finger, maybe to help tone down her apparent nervousness in breaching the topic. "I cannot help but notice these little things, McQueen-san. Many of the things you have done in the past five weeks have been … incongruent."
"In what manner have I been incongruent?"
"I suppose you would not have forgotten to restock your tea, for starters," Dictus pointed out. "Our years of living together have told me at least as much. You have also forgotten where you put many things around the house. I have cleaned up your make up table you were out on two separate instances, but I noticed that it did not get much better since."
McQueen suddenly felt guilt creeping up on her. "I—I did not even notice. I'm sorry…."
"It is no problem, I would do it all over again," Dictus said warmly. "However, these are just a few of many other things that seem to fall apart around you as of late, McQueen-san. And I worry."
"Of this incongruence?"
"Yes. You are a very dear friend to me. Above all else, I do not want you hurt." Dictus placed both her hands on the table. "Did something happen five weeks ago?"
Did something happen five weeks ago? Of course something did. McQueen was not sure why, but after she woke up with an unexpected hangover in her room—with her last consciously recorded memory being the housewarming at Teio's—there was an unexplainable sense of dread that kept creeping up in the back of her head.
It began as a simple unease. McQueen could not shake the feeling that something was off, that something had gone wrong. She would start noticing that things had not been so consistent after all—there were entire days without Teio sending a text to her, and entire nights without their usual night calls. It was only a little later when McQueen started having these thoughts that she realized that, to begin with, that had always been the case. She did contact Teio frequently, and she her, but it was really never as common as she felt it was. Nothing had really changed about the way Teio contacted her.
So what changed?
For one, it would be the visits. Five weeks had passed, and McQueen had not visited Teio once. It was probably the longest she'd ever gone without coming over to see her best friend since they both joined the workforce, and the streak was yet to be broken. McQueen could not deny that she missed Teio—but at the same time, she also felt that even if she came over, she would feel out of place. That room no longer belonged to McQueen and Teio alone. That place also belonged to Nature, and McQueen would only be there as a guest.
The simple unease refused to budge, and the dread crept in slowly, steadily, so much so that it was impossible to miss.
It was this very dread that kept making McQueen's hands shake when she grabbed things. It was this very dread that made her forget where she put all her things, or made her mix up kanji letters in important documents. The dread was there, and it was real.
What McQueen could not understand was why she felt so dreadful in the first place.
She looked ahead, directly into the worried eyes of her flatmate. Dictus had nothing but worry on her face, and McQueen felt a pang of guilt for having involved so many people in her personal abyss.
But there's no way she could explain all of these, was there? And if she could expose her anxiety regarding where this dread came from….
… McQueen found herself even more terrified of what the answer would be.
