Hotaru huffed as she ripped open a box, refusing the knife her friend Tatsura was holding out for her. She was not about to be bested by some stupid cardboard and packaging tape. She dumped the contents on the floor, forgetting to check the sharpie scrawled on the side to make sure whatever was in the box wasn’t breakable. It wasn’t.
“That’s your box, right Hotaru?” Tatsura asked, holding back a giggle.
“Yes?” Hotaru said, reaching for another box. “Why?”
“That’s a pretty nice plushy collection you got there.”
Hotaru’s face lit up a bright red as she shoved the stuffed toys back into the mutilated box that did indeed have Plushies scrawled across the side. She shoved the box under her bed and then turned back to the second box she had grabbed. This one- she made sure to check- was labeled Tatsura’s Books in said girl’s handwriting. She ripped off the tape and then pushed the box to the pink haired girl. Tatsura grabbed it and started pulling out her books.
Hotaru flopped onto the floor and let out a loud sigh. Moving into an apartment with her friend was sure fun, but it was also a lot of work. But the two girls had basically been living with each other for the past while anyway because of all the sleepovers they had. She stayed on the floor as Tatsura put her books away. They were pretty prepared for this. Both girls had a job- Tatsura was working at a library and Hotaru was working at a pizza place. So they wouldn’t have any problems. Hopefully.
“You wanna go get something to eat?” Tatsura asked, taking a break from setting up her bookshelf. “I don’t feel like cooking for your sorry butt tonight. You’ll run our food bills sky high the way you eat!”
Hotaru sat up, her blue hair sticking out all around her like a lion’s mane. “I resent that statement! I eat the same stuff you do!”
Tatsura laughed happily and helped her friend up, patting down the other girl’s out of control hair as she did so. Her pink hair was pulled up into a bun at the moment so it would get in the way of the unpacking. The two girls walked out and down to the road. People rushed around and ducked in and out of shops. Hotaru loved it.
They two stepped into a coffee shop and ordered a snack and a couple drinks. They picked a table and sat, watching people out the window. Really, there wasn’t anything weird about their lives. Everything was normal as normal could be. Hotaru hated it. So many cool things were happening to their old friends and here Hotaru and Tatsura sat, just moving out of the house and getting into the important part of their lives. If anything were going to happen, it would be now.
“Are you listening to me?” Tatsura asked, poking her friend. “Geez, you could pay a little more attention. This is why colleges aren’t calling you back.”
“Nah, they’re just too overwhelmed by my pure awesomeness,” Hotaru said, taking a sip of her drink. “And no, I wasn’t listening. There’s a guy on the other side of the street picking his nose or something and I-”
“EW!” Tatsura screamed with a laugh. “Why were you watching that? Anyway, I just wanted to know if you might have accidentally put a book that belonged to you in my box. Cause there’s a book in the bottom of the box that I haven’t seen before.”
Hotaru to a big gulp, finishing off her drink and then wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She then shook her head and bit into her bun. She hadn’t put anything of hers into any of Tatsura’s boxes, it would have just made things confusing as heck when they were trying to unpack. It was probably just a book Tatsura had forgotten about, and Hotaru voiced this. Tatsura insisted that she had never seen the book before.
Hotaru quickly finished her bun and leaned back, waiting for her friend to finish so she could go back and check out this mysterious book. Tatsura took an agonizingly long time finishing her drink and pastry, finally finishing quickly when Hotaru started whining about time that could have been spent unpacking. Tatsura gave Hotaru a playful smack on the head as they walked out and Hotaru stuck her tongue out at her friend’s back.
The two had been friends for as long as they could remember. Though they didn’t really look like they type to get along, they did. Both were fairly tall for their age, but their clothing styles were very different. Hotaru tended to lean towards the jeans and a t-shirt type of clothes where as Tatsura would often sport a floral prink top and denim shorts of a skirt. Tatsura looked sweet and kind, but could fight like a mad woman. Hotaru looked tough, but could break down as easily as the next person. Really, they were opposite sides of the same coin.
As they walked shoulder to shoulder, Hotaru could tell this book thing was stressing Tatsura out more than she let on. Once they were back upstairs in their space Hotaru took the book and flopped on the couch. Tatsura was taking over the unpacking for now, promising to leave anything that seemed too embarrassing for Hotaru to open tomorrow.
Hotaru leafed through the first couple pages of the book, but they were all blank. She held the book over her head as she thumbed through the next couple pages. A single world was scrawled across one of them in light ink. The blue haired girl brought the book closer to her face, hoping to make the faint word out better.
“N… Nizq? What the heck kind of word is-”
She stopped talking when a searing pain shot trough her arms and she tried to throw the book across the room but found her fingers wouldn’t uncurl. Her next reaction was to scream for Tatsura, but her voice wouldn’t work. So Hotaru sat there in pain until it slowly subsided. The book fell to the ground with a loud thud and Tatsura peered around the corner.
“What happened?” She asked worriedly, quickly moving to kneel beside her friend. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m crying?” Hotaru asked, slowly moving her hands to her face and feeling her wet cheeks. “It… It was the book. It burned me.”
“Don’t cry wolf,” Tatsura scolded. “Books can do no such thing.” She picked it up and imidiately her face went slack and her fingers clutched the book so tight her knuckles turned white.
Hotaru screamed a gut-wrenching scream and tugged at the book, trying to get it away from her best- and only- friend. She ended up kicking Tatsura in the stomach to get the girl to drop to the ground. She felt bad right after, but something was bubbling up in her throat past the lump that had been formed. Not her food, thank goodness, but a word.
“UJUWA!” She cried, not even knowing what the word meant.
Tatsura took in a sudden breath, like she had been holding hers, and her eyes shot open in alarm. She stared at Hotaru and then at the book in the girl’s hands. She stood slowly and then took a deep breath.
“This… This isn’t normal,” she said.
Being the person she was, Hotaru gave a cheeky grin. “Well, we always wanted our lives to be interesting.”
