Best Friends and Girlfriends

The Better Friend

One of Kiazuki's favorite hobbies was laughing at dumb stuff.

She liked laughing at dumb movies with implausible plots. She liked laughing at cheesy YA books populated with teenagers that took themselves far too seriously. And most recently, she had taken to laughing at her sister's relationship, which from the outside seemed like every ridiculous rom-com and fairy-tale cliche come to life.

"Oh, Kiyoshi's just wonderful! He's so kind and gentle and brave! I want us to spend the rest of our lives together! He's my first, my last, my only!"

The 'my only' part of that quote turned out to be extremely accurate. As soon as the two hooked up, the couple seemed to forget that they had lives apart from each other. It was so ridiculous that Kiazuki couldn't help laughing.

But it got even better. Kiazuki had always expected any relationship her sister got into to be characterized by an initial period of lovey-dovey sugary sweetness. What made this particularly impressive is that the initial honeymoon period just kept going. Neither her sister nor Kiyoshi ever seemed to wake up and realize that, 'Hey! This isn't a romance novel! Let's go back to being regular members of society while still maintaining a healthy relationship.' And that was the most ridiculous thing of all.

Kiazuki didn't mind being ignored. It wasn't like she Hanazuki had ever had the closest relationship in the first place, and she knew despite that even though it had lasted an abnormally long time that her all-consuming love would have to die down eventually, without her interference. Then they could laugh about it together. Their love was just a dumb little thing.

Until it wasn't.

She hadn't thought much of Maroshi when she'd first met him at the cafeteria, other than the fact that as Kiyoshi's best friend, he might be a good person to laugh at the future couple with. From what she heard from Hanazuki, he was generally a nice and chill guy, if a bit airheaded. She saw all that from their short interaction, even if he was a bit more snarky than she expected (although she had a tendency of bringing out the more sassy sides of people). But the day he showed up at her house for their movie marathon, he'd been so upset that she could scarcely believe that it was him.

With a level of patience she usually reserved for Hanazuki, she listened to Maroshi unload his rather messy rant, which was half him yelling about his 'stupid best friend and his stupid girlfriend' and how awful they were, and half him apologizing, rambling about how Kiyoshi was a great friend and Hanazuki was a wonderful person, and how he really shouldn't be mad at them. He'd sworn her to absolute secrecy, and they'd enjoyed the movies thoroughly.

She hadn't been expecting Maroshi to be so hurt. In a way, he was taking the relationship just as seriously as Hanazuki and Kiyoshi were, and that made him just as silly. But it wasn't funny; it was just sad. So she told Maroshi that he could vent to her anytime, because he clearly needed it.

At first, Maroshi really only called her up when he was really upset, which wasn't all that often. But soon, he called her just to hang, or check out a movie, or to talk about things that weren't depressing. And before Kiazuki could do anything to stop it, the two were genuine friends.

They weren't best friends though. Kiazuki would never want to be someone's bestie, and Maroshi still held that spot in his heart for Kiyoshi, in spite of the fact that at this point, the two barely talked, or hung out together, or really do anything warranting a regular friend label, let alone a best friend one.

But Kiazuki was fine filling up the void that Maroshi's so-called best friend had left behind. If Kiyoshi was content to ignore his best friend in favor of his one twue wuv, she was content to be Maroshi's better friend for now.