What A Girl Wants

Six

It wasn't until about eight weeks in when Sae noticed something she'd been dreading. Last year's captain has warned her about the dreaded first semester plateau. Sae had naively thought she'd be too good a captain for this to happen to her. Or maybe it was wishful thinking. She distinctly remembered the conversation.

"And when you hit the first semester plateau," Luna had said to her.

"If I hit it," Sae said, not even bothering to look up from her cuticles.

Luna grabbed her face on either side and tilted it up towards her own. "Sae, listen to me."

Sae didn't like being touched at the best of times, but there was a certain level or respect among captains.

"When you hit it," Luna said. "Which you will, this is how you deal with it."

And then she said a phrase that made Sae shudder to her very core. It never failed. The concept was that horrific. That had been why she'd been so naïve or wishful or whatever she was in avoiding it.

You get everyone together for a team building activity.

Sae had done one the previous year under Luna as captain. And the year before that. And the year before that. She'd hated every single one. And she knew full well that it was a selfish hatred. She knew the team building activities worked. Everyone liked bonding and laughing and making inside jokes and friends. Everyone except her, that was. Rin was the only one who ever agreed with her.

That was fucking stupid. Rin would say.

Tell me about it, Sae would say.

And because they were among the best, their opinions were more correct than everyone else's. But that hardly mattered this time. Sae couldn't just grin and bear it when it came to this year's team building activity. She had to organize it, tell everyone about it, be overly involved. It made her cringe. She took her duties as captain very seriously, but this was something she was planning on pawning off on the others as much as humanly possible.

Which she did, first and foremost, by bringing it up during one of the post-practice debriefs. Oliver took a seat on the mats and pulled Shuto into her lap. Rin openly cringed and grimaced at the two of them as she sat by her lonesome a few feet off from them. Sae lay on her stomach on one of the mats and Ryusei settled into the spot next to her, as she normally did, so close that their arms were pressed right into each other. So close that if they looked at each other at any point, their faces were very, very close. This too, Rin noticed and seemed disgusted by. Sae wasn't. Not really.

Rin, like Sae, had never really understood all the proximity that seemed to come along with female friendships. Ever since grade school, as soon as girls got friendly enough with them to be less than acquaintances, they wanted to hug hello, hug goodbye, lay their heads on each other's shoulders, grab each other's arms, lay their hands on each other's knees.

Why the fuck are girls like that? Rin would ask.

Right? Sae would say in agreement. Like, don't fucking touch me,

These days, however, she was having a change of heart. In that, she was learning to understand it. If not understand it, she was learning to tolerate it.

"Okay," Sae said, trying to regain control of the meeting before someone, Rin and Ryusei being the usual suspects, undoubtedly took it off the rails. She looked directly at Oliver to rope her in. "It's time."

Oliver fake gasped through her shit eating grin. "Say it ain't so."

"Shut up," Sae told her. "So, what should we do? I'm open to suggestions."

"That's a first," Ryusei said, turning towards her in her peripheral vision.

Sae didn't respond and she didn't turn. She couldn't lose her footing this early in such an important meeting, and that's exactly what seemed to happen every time she realized how close their faces were in these situations.

"Time for what?" Shuto asked. Before either Itoshi could snap at her, Oliver leaned forward and whispered in her ear. "Oh, okay."

"Let's just do a carwash and call it a day," Oliver said.

"Yeah!" Shuto agreed. Because not only was she a people pleaser and Oliver her best friend, but what little brain cells she possessed were all dedicated to being boy crazy.

"No," Sae and Rin said at the same time.

"That was my most hated team building activity," Sae said.

"It's too hard to do full team activities," Rin said. "Every stunt group should split off and do an escape room."

Now it was Sae's turn to roll her eyes.

"Yeah, okay," Shuto agreed, because her people pleasing skills hardly ended with Oliver. Her thinking was that if extended this to Rin, she might earn herself some spare kindness from her. It wasn't entirely unsuccessful. "That's a good idea too."

"No," Sae said, entirely selfishly. She didn't know much about the new base to her stunt group, but between herself, Ryusei, and Oliver, they would need a miracle to get themselves out of a puzzle based game. "We're a team. It has to involve everyone."

"What about-" Shuto started.

"No boys," Sae snapped.

Shuto shut her mouth and did not continue.

Ryusei leaned her head onto Sae's shoulder. Sae let her. She even found herself habitually shifting to make it more comfortable for her. "What if we did a slumber party?"

"No," Rin said basically immediately.

"Aw, why not, Rinrin?" Ryusei teased. "Not confident in your pillow fight skills?"

"Pillow fight?" Rin asked, just as flat and sharp. "Does all your slumber party knowledge come directly from porn?"

"Mostly, yeah," Ryusei answered. Oliver and Shuto shared a barely audible laugh. "But I've seen a chick flick or two."

"So, you've never had a single friend in your entire life," Rin spat. "Got it."

"I have one," Ryusei said, turning her head without lifting it, looking up at Sae in this way that she sometimes did, wide eyed and eyelashes fluttering. "Right, bestie?"

Sae, however, was less patient and friendly in these moments than she was when they were alone. "Shut up. Both of you. I need real ideas."

"Mine is a real idea," Ryusei said. "Girls love sleepovers. You stay up late, you gossip, you do each other's nails, you play truth or dare, everyone gets ridiculously close. You want team building? That's the way to do it."

Sae considered it. Briefly. Then she shook her head. "Our team is twenty one girls. Where would we even do that?"

"Why not at your house?" Ryusei asked. "The thing could house fifty."

"When the fuck were you at my house?" Rin asked.

Ryusei didn't answer. She just started kicking her feet back and forth in the air. Sae didn't have to see her grin. She could feel it radiating into the side of her face.

"It could be fun," Oliver said.

"Yeah!" Shuto agreed. "We could go shopping for cute pyjamas."

"I don't fucking like this idea," Rin said.

"Do you have a better one?" Sae asked.

She wasn't quite sure why she was suddenly so invested in the idea, but out of all the activities she'd ever participated in and ideas she'd heard, it didn't sound all that bad. She'd be in the comfort of her own home, the girls would basically plan their own activities based on their moods, and for most of it, she'd be able to be asleep. She could even sneak back up to her own room if she got sick of it, and because everyone would be there, nobody would even notice.

"My idea was better," Rin fought back.

Sae shrugged. "Slumber party it is."