Roll to Me

Chapter 9

Akemi held up the scissors. "Are you ready?"

"No, no, I need more time to think about this," Moriko said, stepping back, hands raised to fend off Akemi. "I'm decidedly not ready."

Sighing, Akemi put one hand on her hip, the scissors clicking as she set them on the bathroom counter. The cabin bathroom was itty bitty, but they were lucky they had one. Some of the cabins had a communal set-up instead of having their own. "You already said you would. I mean, you sort of have to if this is going to work. I can't make my hair grow."

Instead, she was in the process of dying it completely black. The two streaks of color that Tengen had helped her put in weeks ago didn't exactly match Moriko's, now did it? To dye it, both of them had bought permanent markers at the camp canteen. It wasn't perfect, they had managed to use the markers to turn the streak mostly black. If you weren't looking for it, it would be difficult to tell, and Akemi thought that maybe she could find real dye once she was back in the real world.

Back in the real world and in a new city with her mother.

The plan was deceptively simple. Akemi and Moriko would spend their last week and a half at camp learning to completely copy each other. When it was time to leave, Moriko would go home with Giyuu and Akemi would go with Shinobu. A month later, they would reveal that they had switched and force their parents to meet up and fall in love again. Moriko would also be in charge of getting rid of Saika, which she seemed to think wouldn't be so difficult.

In theory, it seemed easy enough. But learning each other's mannerisms, speech habits, friends, preferences, old stories and everything else they needed to know to perfectly mimic each other was difficult. Akemi was having trouble keeping her expression as calm, cool, and collected as Moriko. And Moriko was having trouble being openly affectionate and bouncy.

"We have to have this figured out by the weekend," Akemi said. It was going to be their trial run. The camp was having a massive bonfire to celebrate the beginning of the last week of camp on Sunday. During the bonfire, Akemi was going to pretend to be Moriko and Moriko would pretend to be Akemi. Luckily, they had convinced Nakime that they needed to stay in the Cooperation Cabin, and since she didn't seem to actually be interested in what they were doing, she let them do it.

"I know."

"Including the hair."

"I know." Moriko twisted her fingers through her hair. She tossed Akemi a fake smile that was supposed to be like Akemi's smile. "I'm going to let you cut it in just a second, no worries."

Akemi laughed. "Okay, that sounded like me, but you can't smile like you just ate something super bitter."

Moriko rolled her eyes. "You smile too much."

"Maybe you don't smile enough." She looked in the mirror and grinned. "It's not hard."

"You said your dad doesn't smile a lot," Moriko said, "Perhaps he wouldn't mind if you weren't so expressive."

Akemi lifted her eyebrows at her reflection. "Our dad. And uhhh, more like he and everyone else in my family would think I was sick. And I don't smile all the time! I smile a normal amount."

The look on Moriko's face said she disagreed.

"Okay, look at it this way, if I show up at you and start grinning at everyone, they're going to have a problem, right?"

Moriko withdrew her fingers from her hair. "While I doubt that they would immediately jump to the conclusion that we discovered each other and switched places at camp, it might raise suspicions..."