“I like this place,” Sana said, with the most popular girl in school walking just a few steps behind her.

They weren’t at school, of course. Sana had dragged her away to the botanical gardens where she usually hung out with her friends when they weren’t at school or someone’s house. They walked by the pond, with birds lazily floating on the water nearby and trees casting just the right amount of shadow over the area.

Mina hummed, a quiet tone serving as her non-answer. Sana sighed – this kid was so hard to get through to. She turned around, pouting, and Mina blinked with surprise, like she wasn’t expecting Sana to know she was there.

“You’re supposed to talk when you’re hanging out.”

“I didn’t exactly volunteer for this,” Mina said, acerbic and almost even bored. Sana rolled her eyes.

“No, but your eyes did.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Mina scoffed. That thick outer shell just goes on forever.

“You act like the most mysterious person in the world but you’re pretty straight-forward, Mina.”

Mina looked at her blankly, then looked away, sighing. “Right,” she said. Something about her was almost cartoonish.

“You’re just a ‘whatever’ away from slamming the door and telling me it’s not a phase.”

Mina snorted – a piece of laughter! Sana was holding her smile down, but she let it show now, grinning at her new friend who just looked at her and waited for the next interaction. She wasn’t big on initiating. That was okay, though, because Sana knew she was finding the edge of the thick outer shell.

“Okay. Help me out here. How do your other friends get through to you?”

“I don’t have friends,” Mina answered instantly. She wasn’t sad – it wasn’t a confession. She was just saying it, like you might say that you like curry or that you learned to ride a bike when you were six.

“I… um…”

Dammit, Sana, get it together!

“Why… not?”

“I…” Mina finally winced, crumbling slightly, looking at the ground. “Look, I really ought to go-”

Dammit. Sana had screwed up. She shouldn’t have reacted like that – but she still grabbed Mina’s hand again, keeping her from going. “Why? Do you have plans?”

“I need to practice,” Mina said, meeting Sana’s eyes. She wasn’t angry or harsh or aggressive, just intense, and she looked into Sana’s eyes hard, like she was delivering a message.

It was a call for help if she ever saw one. Mina wanted to stay. Sana wondered if Mina even knew she was doing it.

“Why don’t you practice here?”

Mina laughed, confused. “That’s not how it works,” she said. “I need to be in the studio, for more than 4 hours, and I need to have music playing, and I need to see my reflection, and I can’t have people around who aren’t trying to make me improve.”

“What?” Sana heard it all, she even comprehended it mostly, but that last part was so strange – on so many levels. It sounded almost like an attack. “It’s not like I don’t want you to improve. I mean, if you want that…”

Mina pulled her hand away, harsh, and she was angry now.

“That’s not what I mean! You don’t get it at all. You think this has anything to do with me? Or my happiness? I’m a well-oiled machine, and I’m not performing well enough, and it won’t help if people just smile at me and tell me that it’s about what I want!”

Sana didn’t know what to say. Mina was angry, emotional, and suddenly Sana was scared that it was too much. She’d wanted to help. How do you help someone who keeps doing this?

“Mina, do you even like ballet?”

Mina rolled her eyes. “Did you even hear me just now?”

“I heard you. You said that it doesn’t matter. And you’re wrong, because of course your happiness matters, it matters more than anything, but even then, it doesn’t need to matter for you to answer my question. Do you like it?”

She lifted a hand to her head, hiding her face, and exhaling strongly. She was quiet for another second; Sana watched, hand clenching the bottom of her own blazer for lack of anything else to hold on to, and she waited.

“I guess I do,” Mina said eventually. “I guess.”

Her voice was weak, high-pitched with the stored up tension.

“I thought so,” Sana answered. “Because… when I saw you dancing earlier, you were really beautiful. I don’t think anyone can look like that when they’re not happy. You know, people doing what they like are always the most successful. When they’re happy and they love themselves.”

“Why would I love myself? That’s called narcissism. It’s considered a bad thing, you know.”

“Not like that,” Sana said hopelessly. “I just mean… I mean, even if I’m probably failing all my classes, I still know I have good qualities. After all, the fact that you’re here with me has to say something, right?”

“I think that says more about me than you,” Mina answered in completely deadpan.

“Okay, ouch.”

Mina’s laughter was faint, something impulsive that she just couldn’t hold back. “Okay, maybe it has a little to do with you.”

Sana beamed. Why did such a simple sentence get her so heartwarmed? It was incredible. Sana guessed that was the sort of power cold people had. Their warmth was so special.

Or maybe that was unique to Myoui Mina.

“See! I knew it!” Sana reached out, grabbing Mina’s hand again and hopping happily. Mina’s eyes didn’t leave Sana’s, a strong link that kept them telepathically communicating somehow. “So, what do you want to do? You really can dance, you know. I’d love to see more of it.”

Mina quickly shook her head, a small smile appearing on her face. “N-no. If I’m going to stay here ballet is the last thing I want to think about.”

“Alright, let’s think about other things!”

Sana grabbed the shorter girl’s arm, pulling her robotically and positioning it so that she could link her own arm through. They walked side by side from then on, Mina’s warmth fading slightly as she looked at the ground with a piece of distance in her eyes.

“So, Mina, how much do you want to bet that I get above a 60 on my history exam tomorrow?”

She didn’t look at Mina, having faith that the younger girl was thinking as she blatantly stared at Sana’s face. Sana looked at the views, admiring everything - including her own success at getting Mina to stay.

“How do you do this?” Mina asked, her voice a gentle whisper. Sana faltered, looking over and meeting her eyes.

“Wh-what?”

“I have no idea what I’m doing here. But I’m here anyway. What’s up with that?”

“You’re unwinding!”

“I shouldn’t unwind. How does that help? You can’t just stop caring about your problems. That’s not a solution.”

She wasn’t angry like before. It sounded more like she genuinely wanted an answer.

“Of course it isn’t. But neither is crying over them.”

Mina freed her arm, standing tall to face Sana. Of course.

“I wasn’t just crying,” she said, sensitivity returning.

“You were wandering. Was that solving anything?”

She pursed her lips together, trying to fight the wobble that betrayed her feelings. But Sana saw it anyway, because again, it was in her eyes.

“No,” she said simply. She released the shaky breath she’d been holding, looking down. “I’m useless.”

Sana couldn’t bring any words to mind, but she tried, making quiet noises with open as a billion ideas hit her and were abandoned before she could flesh them out.

“What’s… going wrong?” She ended up saying, sitting herself down in the middle of the tight pathway of the botanical garden. Mina looked down at her, glimmering eyes confused.

“What?”

“Sit down. Just tell me everything that’s wrong. It helps to get things on the table – then we can start fixing it.”

Mina didn’t say anything as an answer, and she also didn’t sit down. Something about her seemed to become less miserable, and she stood quietly, staring at Sana, that sad puppy look on her face, for more seconds than Sana bothered counting.

Eventually, she her lips, averting her eyes to look at a tree with foliage falling over the place where she stood and Sana sat. And then, finally, she sat herself, cross-legged, facing Sana.

“Ballet isn’t working out?”

“N-no,” she said. “I’ve been through so many auditions. All of them end up picking someone else.”

“You haven’t even gotten stand-in?”

“W-well, I have. But that’s even worse than failing. I rejected it.”

“Oh,” Sana said. “But… I don’t get it. What’s wrong with that?”

“I just need to deal with the fact, every day, that I’m coming second. I need to learn a whole routine just so that I can watch someone else do it. I need to see everyone in the performance just so that they can make sure I’m even slightly comparable to the real winner.”

“You’re a perfectionist,” Sana said, laughing slightly as she reached a hand forwards, taking Mina’s to comfort her.

Mina stared at the hand, frowning, but her not pulling away was enough encouragement for Sana.

“Of course I am,” she said. “There’s no room for not being perfect.”

“That’s never going to be how it works,” Sana said with a smile, and a flicker of angry frustration spread across Mina’s face as she finally pulled her hand out of the blonde girl’s.

“Maybe not in your world,” she said, sounding spiteful. “You don’t know what they say to me every time I fail. What they’re going to say the moment I get home… And I’m late anyway. I’m going to die.”

She was crying again, just barely trying to hold it back as her face twisted and crumpled, a tear falling from her eye – one that she rubbed away with a fist instantly, trying to look away. Sana could see that she was just a second from breaking down, sobbing and crying, so she took both her hands again, gently moving them away from the girl’s face, and stared hard into her eyes.

“You’re allowed to make mistakes,” Sana said. “It doesn’t matter if anyone else is wrong. It doesn’t matter if your parents are wrong.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t need to see them tonight.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’ll think you’re okay no matter how badly you fail, though.”

Sana didn’t understand Mina’s response; she swallowed, she blinked and the tears seemed to fade, but at the same time she seemed somehow even more miserable.

“But I don’t want to fail. How can I do anything in the future if I keep making these terrible mistakes?”

Sana squeezed Mina’s hands, smiling softly, staring straight into her eyes.

“What do these mistakes have to do with the future? Mina… have you ever seen a good movie where nothing went wrong?”

a/n- Look at how beautiful this all looks now!! :D I sent in a request for Club X to give this story a cover and a background and they blessed me. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter, sorry it was so uneventful, this story is a slow burn. I definitely need to work on writing Sana, I think, since I always end up much prouder of my Mina chapters. And Mina really loves her italics apparently lol.