[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.
There was one sin that McQueen came to realize she was doing, if a little too late, and she had no idea how to make up for it.
The year came to an almost too abrupt of an end, with Christmas looming right before her very eyes before she could even prepare. Winter had set in early that year, and what could have been a simple White Christmas turned into something a little more sinister. There were hails a few days before Christmas Eve, and McQueen took full advantage of it as an excuse to not meet up with anybody outside of work. Not that anybody actively tried to meet up in that timeframe, of course.
With exceptions numbering in two—namely Tokai Teio and Gold Ship, respectively.
McQueen had responded to neither.
Gold Ship, she believed, would understand. It's not that they actively replied to each other's contacts that often to begin with. Gold Ship was an extremely busy woman, and while McQueen knew that being in contact with Gold Ship was itself a miracle, she also knew that Gold Ship was not one to push her boundaries. Setting boundaries was what McQueen did best, and what McQueen decided, she followed. Unless, of course, when she felt that McQueen's course of action was not the wisest—Gold Ship would jump directly to her face and kidnap her like a trained criminal to right her ways.
That forceful personality of hers was how she convinced McQueen to join Team Spica, after all.
The fact that Gold Ship did not push the matter was the answer McQueen needed: that her request, as hard as it was to come by, was by no means something urgent, and she was letting it slide. Teio, on the other hand, was a different story.
To put it simply, McQueen had no idea how she was supposed to answer.
McQueen was still yet to visit Teio again. They'd been keeping up contact, if nothing else, but McQueen often found herself staring blankly at her chat screen with Teio, thinking very carefully of how to reply to Teio's texts so that nothing seemed particularly off or wrong. There was a painful level of self-awareness in every letter she wrote down, as if she had to wear a mask of a Mejiro McQueen to come across as the Mejiro McQueen that Teio knew. Which was weird, because she really was Mejiro McQueen. How'd that even figure?
It also really did not help that Teio had started chatting McQueen up more often than she used to. McQueen would notice—she was, to begin with, the first to worry about the frequency with which they talked. McQueen noticed that Teio had been coming up with more and more topics at a rapid speed, quickly switching from one to another when the conversation seemed like it was dying, and all McQueen had to do so far was to simply play along. McQueen had no idea why. Teio's pace felt like she was desperately searching for something, and McQueen was not sure if she could give her whatever it was Teio was looking for, so she spectacularly dodged Teio's every attempt.
Even McQueen was not sure why she dodged everything Teio threw at her. This wasn't like her. McQueen was the hardheaded pride of the Mejiro family—why would she run away from a challenge?
Why would she consider chatting with Teio a challenge? Wasn't it what she always did?
And not only that—wasn't it what she was always looking forward to?
What changed?
… of course McQueen knew the answer to that. Of course she knew what changed. She just wouldn't say it out loud, because acknowledging the answer would force her to face an entire world of pain and ugliness that she was not ready to face alone.
When Dictus forced her to confront the answer on the table some time ago, McQueen couldn't give her an answer. Dictus patiently waited, and after a few minutes of deafeningly loud silence, Dictus finally relented to the fact that McQueen wouldn't answer her question. She simply let McQueen off with a very gentle reminder that McQueen would be putting her own life on the line if she kept this up.
"I would hate that," she said. "After all, you are very important to me, McQueen-san. If nothing else … would you let me be a bother and care about you?"
McQueen herself relented to the fact that her flatmate apparently cared about her more than she thought.
McQueen gave herself a mental slap on the cheeks. She had to get her act together. She was dragging a lot of people down with her numb moping, and she had better pick her pace up.
For whatever reason she was depressed—nope, still not going to acknowledge that—she had to at least put up a front so that nobody noticed.
Her performance did not get much better after that, but at the very least, she did not get worse either. Well, she did get better, but even she herself realized that she was nowhere near her usual performance. She had no excuses.
Apart from all these worries, McQueen couldn't help but ask herself everything she thought she knew about her own relationship with Teio. How far were they really? How far did they use to be? What was their actual comfortable distance?
What was she to Teio, and what was Teio to her?
How should she gauge their proper distance from each other?
What kind of relationship exactly did they want from each other?
Why did the fact that she did not want to lose Teio, no matter the cost, hurt her so badly?
McQueen, using the hail as an excuse, rejected Teio's request to see her during Christmas Eve. It was weak, even if it made sense, because the fact stood that Dictus did go to see Machitan and Turbo over that weekend. Nature, she heard, couldn't come along because of said winter hail, so at least she knew that Teio would buy her excuse.
She also knew Teio was stubborn enough to push through a hail had McQueen decided to agree to see her that Christmas Eve, so in her heart, at least McQueen was glad that Teio wouldn't have to go through all that.
On the other hand….
That night, as McQueen went to bed half asleep, she decided to open her chatroom with Teio, and for the first time in almost two months, she sent a chat on her own.
MEJIRO MCQUEEN I do not want to lose you, Teio.
There was one sin that McQueen came to realize she was doing, if a little too late, and she had no idea how to make up for it.
She had no idea how to apologize to Teio for toying with her heart.
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