drowning in your heart

Momo's got new glasses, Mina notes to herself. It's with an endearing, dreamy blink, that she finds it first, curtains drawn hastily on the windows facing their svelte backs – they're sitting in the school's quiet, serene library and the air muses damp around them, making Mina feel slightly dizzy. Oh.

It could just be the blossoming scent of Momo's so beloved and rich perfume that's clouding her mind and fanning all her thoughts and words astray.

That elegant pair of glasses suit her just flawlessly, nonetheless.

A faint, sleepy hint of sunshine weaves its threads through the rifts of the window peeking clear and glimmering from behind the waves of the curtains painted in a pretty, pale wine. The light spreads on the thick glass like the branches of the lindens do with their molten shadows, as they're losing their scattered leaves' lush, rich emerald – those tall and so vast, robust trees swaying and bathing in the rubies and oranges and lemons of the setting sun when the brown loafers on Mina's feet are usually already dancing the way home, a tint of Momo's lipstick buzzing on her tanned cheeks like fire.

It's always in these moments, seconds stolen gazing at the rosy shimmer of sunbeams breaking into dazzling slivers on Momo's caramel skin like they shatter to rainbows in prisms, when she feels her heart falling in love again with the way the corners of Momo's mouth curve upwards as she smiles that so beloved, so ethereal smile of hers gleaming celestially at Mina.

There's something flickering in the glow that washes Momo's face a sparkling, seraphic golden in the autumn dusk spread delicate on the inky kanji of their English coursebooks. They've been studying like this for a while, after the schoolbells ring their classes a finish at 4, their navy, pleated skirts across the chairs, billowing in blue creases on one another and Mina's lashes flutter heavy with the sugary perfume raining from Momo's honey-like hairstrands when the older leans close to look up the definition of a words from the dictionary laid out in between the two of them. It's quite simple, the topic they've chosen for today but Momo's not doing as well at English as her groupmates.

But Mina's always been eager to help her whatever she needed.

The glasses sink a bit lower on the tall and wide bridge of Momo's prettily curved nose. Mina wants to reach out and push them back, a flick of her pliant fingers and all but oh- Her heart tears with blood-like drops of fondness over the thought that Momo- Momo's so distant now, Momo can't be hers the way she wants her to be, Momo doesn't love her the way she loves every little breath she takes and every chaste move she makes, no- Momo likes the boys from the gymnasium beyond the concrete bridge across the nearby river and from the high school just around the corner, she likes the soldiers marching and running about the streets of the city loping into a lightless eternity, she doesn't like girls, she doesn't like Mina like that, not at all, not the way Mina desires-

"Mina" The hazy silence dripping between the two girls scatters as Momo's gorgeously scrubbed, black suede oxfords clack against Mina's nylon tights that paint her legs from her feet to her knees a sheer brown. The younger snaps out of her thoughts, pale eyes focusing on the parting of Momo's lips. "Mina-chan, I can't find what this word means."

Mina's sharp gaze softens like clouds melting in the warm sunlight as Momo turns towards her, her ivory shirt following the delicate curves of her enticing body. No one looks as captivating as she does in their uniforms. "Which word is that? Let me see…" Mina follows the plain latin letters under all the kanji, hiragana and kana that Momo's fingers trace on the sallowed old pages of their coursebook.

To drown, it reads. Mina knows exactly what it means right away yet her hand flips through the pages of their dictionary.

Drown – verb. Conjugation: drown, drowned, drowned (drownd). He drowns. Infinitive: drowning. He's drowning.

I'm drowning-

Definition: to die by being underwater too long and unable to breathe.

-in the you of my eyes

Mina's got a meaning of the word drown other than that but she tells Momo what's written down in a neat print of letters right under her fingertips.

"It means to die underwater from breathlessness."

More or less.

The grateful smile Momo's lips shine on Mina has her eyes sparkling mesmerized.

Drowning, the older's pencil scribbles down, to drown and-

I'm drowning in you, Momo, that's what it means, Mina muses in her mind. I'm drowning in your heart.