Kissing in the Rain

Yekaterina "Katyusha" - Ukraine

Elizaveta Héderváry - Hungary

Señor Fernandez-Carriedo - Spain

Caterina - Nyo Romano

Emil - Iceland

Madeline - Nyo Canada

Toris - Lithuania

Ivan - Russia

Natalya - Belarus

Yekaterina was tired. She had stayed up late the night before studying for a bio quiz, and now it would seem that she was paying for it with the itchy almost-tears behind her eyes, the heaviness of her lids, and the cotton balls stuffed in her head.

Señor Fernandez Carriedo was a very nice Spanish teacher, all things considered, but he couldn't excuse anybody from their work on the premise of fatigue alone, otherwise all of them - students and teacher alike - would be sitting in a circle playing Cards Against Humanity. It didn't matter how much you had or hadn't slept, it simply couldn't be done, not fairly anyways.

That was how Yekaterina had found herself partnered up with one Elizaveta Hérderváry. Elizaveta was hardly Katyusha's first choice of partner, and she highly doubted that she was Elizaveta's, either. Everyone around them had moved a bit fast and they a bit slow and by the time the two of them had realized that everyone else had paired up, they were the only ones left.

Elizaveta and Yekaterina had belatedly moved to sit at the other's desk, and decided on Elizaveta's.

"So," she breathed, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Let's get started."

God, she's gorgeous, Yekaterina thought to herself. That was the main reason she hadn't wanted to work with her - whenever she was around Elizaveta, Katyusha's brain got too mixed up to properly think.

"Hey, are you listening to me?" Elizaveta asked, flicking Katyusha's forearm with her finger and thumb. Katyusha blinked at her slowly, foggy brain trying to comprehend. "I asked if you wanted to go first?" Elizaveta prompted.

"Oh," she muttered, then turned her attention back to her textbook pages. There was a bunch of stock questions and their answers listed. "Sure."

"Okay!" the other girl smiled encouragingly at her, something Katyusha sorely needed as she listened to Caterina rip into whoever she had partnered with for not knowing Spanish - even though the class was the lowest level of Spanish offered to their grade.

Katyusha squinted at the textbook. "Um," they were supposed to be learning basic greetings and introductions. "Como te...ah, como te llama?" she asked nervously, voice rising dramatically in pitch at the end.

Elizaveta answered in Spanish, butchering the pronunciation, and they continued like that - one of them saying a greeting, or asking for their phone number, and the other responded in the role they were meant to be playing, wether that was a classmate, teacher, or group of people.

After about five minutes, they finished up. Katyusha laid her head down, using her arms as a pillow as she listened to Señor Fernandez Carriedo remind Catarina that she was repeating the class due to her poor work ethic and subsequent low grades last year, and so it was unfair for her to be rude to other students about their lack of mastery of the Spanish language.

Katyusha stared up at Elizaveta as if in a haze, looking at the way her hair fell down her back as if a waterfall of wavy brown.

She played with it a lot, almost as if unable to decide if she wanted it behind her back or down her front, behind her ears or pinned pack, or neither, or maybe both. Katyusha had never noticed that before, despite the countless times her tired eyes had drifted to Elizaveta.