Journey Of Fate ~ mayakuro

•Haunting Realizations•

When Claudine emerged from the bathroom, Maya was sound asleep, in her pajamas now, thank God. Claudine carefully grabbed her phone from the hotel vanity and slipped out the door. She wasn't keen on standing on the balcony in the middle of winter at night in Chicago, but this was the best location to have an incognito discussion without the risk of waking Maya. The breeze outside was loud enough to obscure her words from any possible eavesdropping, although Claudine didn't think Maya would awake from her slumber. She looked down at her phone. To be honest, she had no idea where Futaba was right now. She was somewhere in America, but with the time zones, she wasn't entirely excited about calling. She could be calling her at 1 AM to complain about her Maya problem for fucks sake. Still, she hit call and brought the device to her ear, waiting with baited breath.

Ring... ring... ring...

"Hello?"

"Err, bonjour Futaba." Claudine wasn't sure how to start.

"Claudine? What the fuck? It's like... 11 PM?"

"Ah, yes, sorry about that," the French woman replied sheepishly. "I was calling about something important that I wanted to ask you. I really need an answer right now or else I think I'll go insane."

"Oh? What is it?" Futaba asked, concern evident in her voice. Claudine smiled at that. Futaba was truly a great friend, being willing to offer her help even in the dead of night.

"Well, you see..." Claudine trailed off. When she considered calling Futaba, she hadn't quite thought through that she'd actually have to tell her about all the disastrous moments she'd had on the road trip so far. Like, actually admitting that she may have been leering at Maya.

"C'mon, Kuroko, just spill already. You don't want Kaoruko to wake up and listen to this, do you?"

"God no! Oh my god, please tell me she is still asleep."

There was a pause.

"Yeah, she is still asleep. Now, telllll me."

"Okay, so, um, Maya asked me to go on this road trip with her, right?" Futaba hummed.

"Well, I've just been feeling... kind of strange? Like, we held hands for warmth this one time and I kinda enjoyed it? Shouldn't I hate that? She had remembered her gloves and I hadn't, so we had to hold hands? Shouldn't I be mad out of my mind because stupid Maya had one-upped me yet again? But I wasn't, y'know? I was actually kind of... happy about it? But I don't know why! That's the thing! I feel this warmth in my chest whenever I see her, and I just don't know what it is? I think it was there in high school, but I'm not entirely sure. And then! You won't guess what happened today! This moron decided to try to ice-skate on Lake Michigan without any ice-skates! Can you believe her?! Well, of course, if she had listened to me, we wouldn't have ended up almost drowning because the ice broke! Then when we got back to the hotel room, we..." Claudine swallowed nervously. Kaoruko better not have woken up while she was talking. "Well, we were really cold, so we kinda just started... started... um... stripping... in the same room. And I wasn't even aware." She heard Futaba burst out laughing on the other end of the line.

"Hey! This is serious!"

"S-Sorry Kuroko! But that is... that is really something else! Hah, that is something only you and Tendou-san would do, oh man!" Claudine scowled.

"Okay, if you could stop laughing for a second, I could continue on with my story," she huffed.

"Heheh, yeah, yeah, sorry. Go on."

"Okay, so like I was saying, we, um, were both stripping and well, I was lecturing her about how stupid she was for going out to the lake. She wasn't listening to me! Can you believe that woman?! Anyway, I got mad, so I looked over at her to see what she was doing and then I-I saw it!"