soundoftheseas | DIAMARI CATCHALL

"It's all your fault I'm like this! You've been the one doing unexpected things...it's been driving me totally pazzesca!"

She swipes the handkerchief, but before Dia has a chance to take her hand back, Mari locks arms with her and holds on tight, letting her fingers nestle between Dia's while she wipes her eyes.

"But, it just means I'll have to surprise you more, too. Doesn't it? You know I'm not gonna let you off easy, now that we've...gotten it all out in the open."

"It's only because you've been pushing me into these situations with your impossible behavior," Dia mutters. There's little bite to it. Her hand is loose in Mari's, neither rejecting nor reciprocating at first -- though her fingers do, after a beat, curl back against hers just barely.

"--And I don't consider this conversation over, either! I still... want to talk to you more." Her eyes dart away again. "Not at school. Just the two of us."

"If it weren't for my impossible behavior, you never would've fallen in love with me, now, would you?"

She's all too eager to say it, and once the words pass her lips, all she can think about is getting to say them again and again. This is all too much...

"Then, shall we go back to my house, where we can have the place to ourselves, just until the rain starts to calm down a bit? Or is that moving just a bit too fast? To take a girl to my bedroom the same day I asked her out, oooh, it's all just so scandalous..."

Edited 2017-02-25 00:41 (UTC)

Dia's face scrunches up in a mixture of embarrassment and distaste. "In that case, forget what I said," she snaps back, planting her hand over Mari's mouth to keep any further nonsense from spilling out. "And don't confess for me before I've said anything!"

She tries to exclaim in protest, but, with her mouth covered, all that comes out is a muffled cry. Dia, of course, should know exactly what she's saying, though--

"Oh, come on, it was just a joke!"

She swats at Dia's wrist with the soggy handkerchief in her free hand, just so she'll get her mouth free!

"Then when we get home, I'd like a full confession. Otherwise, I'm going to just keep putting words in your mouth...though, between you and me, that kiss said plenty, already."

"You'll get one," Dia says coolly, rubbing at her dampened wrist, "if you can stay serious for longer than five minutes."

She doesn't know how to make Mari understand how much this means to her; everything about this situation is new and uncertain, and Dia hates uncertainty. It makes her feel vulnerable. It's scary.

So she goes with the safest bet here: a threat. "The moment you make me angry again I'll get up and leave, understood?"

"I'll do you one better and try for ten. Anything past that, I make no promises."

But she seems to have gotten the message, and scoots in a little closer to Dia's arm.

"I won't get you mad, but only because I couldn't possibly let you go off by yourself in weather like this. The last thing I'd want is for you to catch cold, even if it means I'd get to make you some of my famous Stewshine while you're in bed...you can snuggle up to me under the umbrella on the way back to the villa, okay? It'll be our first romantic walk together! Isn't that exciting?"

"No," Dia answers flatly, fishing her own bright red umbrella from out of her bag. "I have my own, thank you very much."

"I should have known it, you're a total spoilsport! Fine, if you're going to be like that, I'll just have to conveniently forget my own next time..."

She just puffs her cheeks out in indignation; not twenty minutes since she's confessed, and Dia's already being like this! It's cruel and unusual punishment!

"Unless I happen to lose mine somewhere before we leave school..."

"Please, the entrance is less than fifteen feet away." A hearty roll of the eyes. "Sharing an umbrella will only ensure both of us getting wet. And besides--" Dia's gaze flickers towards the hallway-- "the others will be heading home soon, they're going to see us!"

"Ooooh, so that's what the issue is. You're embarrassed to hold my hand in public? Trying to keep this thing of ours a secret? A hidden romance, a private little la cosa nostra..."

Mari, it's a relationship, not a mafia deal--

"Alright, that might be fun, for a little while. Acting like everything's normal in front of the girls, and kissing each other beneath staircases or in the director's office in secret, when no one's watching...Dia, my love, you know how to keep a girl on her toes! But now you're just getting me more eager to have you all to myself!"

If nothing else, it seems to get her off the topic of umbrella sharing..?

Edited 2017-02-25 05:33 (UTC)

The look on Dia's face grows steadily more mortified as Mari goes on, and by the end of it she teeters dangerously close to real, actual distress.

"None of that!" she admonishes, more frantic than stern. "We won't be--" her voice drops to a whisper for the next word-- "kissing, anywhere on school grounds, and certainly not in the director's office! This was a one-time thing, all right? An anomaly! A fluke!"

"Just a moment of weakness, then?"

She can't really help herself but smile at how flustered Dia gets; even the way she has to dip her voice low to even mention the word kiss is enough to make her break out into a grin; it doesn't help matters when she lets her mind wander, thinking about how often she'll get to make her this bashful.

But, for now, she doesn't want to do it so much that poor Dia'll get angry; knowing Dia, she actually will walk off into the rain, and we wouldn't want that, especially after she already did it once today. Which means, of course, Designated Serious Time starts now. (ಠ_ಠ, she already pictures in her head--)

"Then, first things first, we should get off school grounds. The longer we stay here, the less time we get to ourselves at home, right, my Dia? And I'm looking forward to our...well, discussion."

It's such a pain to try and act natural, she thinks as she puts the handkerchief away and gets ready to move, given all that just happened under this staircase, but...well, it doesn't have to be for too long, is her rationale. Once they get to the villa, they'll get to be as cute as can be, but, it's such a trek...it's times like this she wishes she could just have a helicopter swing by and pick them up, but even that's a bad idea in this rain...

Well, even if they won't be sharing an umbrella, walking home with Dia in the rain sounds nice enough, in its own way. Just because it could be more romantic doesn't mean it isn't romantic at all.

Edited 2017-02-25 07:09 (UTC)

"I'm telling you now, but a discussion really is all it'll be, understood?" With that said, she steps out from under the staircase, waiting for Mari to join her before heading towards the exit. As luck would have it, not thirty seconds later do the rest of Aqours follow suit, and Dia breathes out an internal sigh of relief at having rejected the love-umbrella.

"Ah, Mari-san, Dia-san! Looks like the two of you made up, huh?" Chika comes chittering up to them, and Dia rushes to respond before Mari gets the chance to.

"Not yet," she states with an authoritative pound of her umbrella's botton end against the floor. "I'm just about to accompany her home, in fact, so I can thoroughly explain the faults in her behavior."

While it's difficult to determine the extent to which Chika has bought it, she's at the very least willing to accept the explanation without probing further. On the way out, Kanan shoots her an entertained smirk, alongside one pointedly-raised eyebrow.

Dia glowers.

Edited 2017-02-25 23:02 (UTC)

To her credit, when the others come pouring out, Mari tries to look her best to seem utterly dejected, as if she's been the victim of a harsh scolding for the past twenty minutes or so. She can be a good actress, too, Dia, shame on you for not trusting her with this sort of thing! She even has a handkerchief now, to bat at her eyes as if she'd still been crying, and she flinches at Dia slamming her umbrella on the floor...

Of course, it's not like Mari to just sheepishly let Dia handle this, though, she simply must get the last word in--

"Oh, it was all just so terrible! I tried and tried to apologize, to tell her to have mercy and forgive me, but your senpai here can be so hard to get through to. If this keeps up, she'll be berating me until the rain stops completely, or worse...if none of you hear from me by tomorrow, I leave all of my directorial duties to Kanan! Oh, please, Dia, won't you reconsider, it was just a joke..."

There's a particularly intense blowing of her nose and a sniffle before the two head out the door into the rain; it's a shame she's hamming it up so much that she can't really see the look on their faces, to know whether they believe her or not. But it's perhaps a relief that she missed Kanan's expression, because had she known a smirk like that was exchanged, she would certainly have blown it--

She, at least, has the common sense to wait until they're a fair distance from the others before she goes back to normal; or, at least, whatever normal is for Mari. That's probably the most they can ask for, at that point...she tries to keep her voice down, in case there's anyone lurking around, before she asks:

"Do you think we fooled them? I figured it wouldn't be like me to just stay quiet..."

At least, she's got a point there?

"Well, even if the others retained some suspicion, you were far too rambunctious for anyone to get a word in." So despite the weariness to Dia's sigh, you could more or less call it a success...?

Crinkling her nose, Dia points to the handkerchief dangling from Mari's fingers. Between the honest tears and the manufactured nose-blowing melodrama, it's certainly seen better days. "You best be washing that before returning it."

"Look, more is more, right? If nothing else, I bought us a little bit of time to think of what to tell them tomorrow. They were all concerned..."

Herself included, of course. But she didn't run out after her until Kanan gave her a look full of daggers...

"I didn't think you wanted it back, though! I wanted to keep it as a memento! I was going to leave it by my bedside and everything...but I guess, for your sake, I'll part with it, if you really want it. ...And yes, I'll wash it, I promise. Leave it to Mari, okay?"

"You say that as if you're a remotely trustworthy person," Dia counters, carefully stepping around a puddle. She can't help but note, internally, how familiar this all feels -- just how little seems to have changed, when not ten minutes ago Mari was earnestly sobbing in her arms and her own heart was threatening to beat out of her chest.

But she can't let herself relax too much just yet-- right, she owes Mari a proper confession. A straightforward one. As they walk, she tries to piece the words together in her head... and if her pace slows and she begins lagging behind, she doesn't seem to notice.

"You don't think I am? Dia, you always say such rude things! I'm as reliable as they come, a complete open book!"

The fact that she can say that with a straight face seems to prove Dia's point moreso than anything; she's so huffy that she doesn't even bother avoiding the pool of water on the ground, though it's hardly as if she cares. But, it occurs to her that all of a sudden, she's just a few steps ahead of Dia for her liking, so, she decides to slow it down herself a bit and look over her shoulder...

"...Hey, Dia, you're making that face, you know? The one you always make when you're thinking too hard about something...you're not still mad at me, are you?"

"Eh?" Dia lifts her eyes to meet Mari's, and-- huh? Just when did she get so far away?

A shake of the head. She's fallen out of focus, hasn't she... and now she has to answer for it. Unfortunately, being Dia Kurosawa means she never just 'zones out', which means she'll have to provide some explanation. And that means she needs to come up with something and fast, because hell will freeze over before she admits to Mari she was rehearsing confessions in her head.

"No, no, it's nothing like that. Far from it, I just--"

The good news: Dia doesn't have to keep scrambling for an excuse for long. The bad news: the reason for that is an abrupt interruption by a passing truck that raises an entire wave of muddied rainwater in its wake, leaving her drenched from the knees down.

And she just stands there with her mouth ajar, frozen mid-sentence, only the hem of her skirt dripping steadily onto the pavement.

"Oh, crap!! Dia, your skirt...oooh, that jerk, you're totally soaked! I'll find that company and make sure they're bankrupt by Friday..."

Poor Dia may be flabbergasted, but, Mari seems to think quickly; the second she sees the stray wave hit her, Mari's purple umbrella hits the concrete of the pavement and rolls off towards the lawn. She'll need both hands to rummage through her schoolbag and look for a face towel. It isn't much, but, it's better than nothing, and it'll at least dry up Dia's legs before she lets it soak up the water from her skirt...

She scurries right over to Dia when she finds it, and before she can even let Dia get a word in edgewise about it, she's on her knees and wiping Dia's legs down.

"Oh, Dia, even your socks...some people, I swear!"

If there's one thing more humiliating than standing dumbstruck in the middle of the street dripping rainwater, it's standing dumbstruck in the middle of the street dripping water with Mari rubbing frenetically at her legs. People are looking. God-- just how much torture must this day subject her to until it's satisfied?

On the plus side, it sure snaps her into focus real fast.

"M-Mari-san!" Stumbling back, Dia snatches the cloth from her hands. "Please! I can take care of myself!" She haphazardly finishes the task, wishing first and foremost to have this whole scene over with. She'll be cold and wet the rest of the way just the same -- her skirt and socks are beyond any help a face towel can offer.

"Let's just hurry on home," she mutters darkly, snapping the towel into a perfectly even square. She catches herself the next moment -- reminds herself it's none of Mari's fault -- and softens.

"... And thank you."

"I'll make sure I remember the license plate number of that stronzo! He won't get away with making my Dia spend her trip home soaked!"

She had expected Dia to take matters into her own hands, so she doesn't seem put off by how forcefully she takes the towel from her; that's just how Dia is, and, if nothing else, it's kind of cute to see how stubbornly she wants to assert her independence, even when she so obviously needs assistance. She doesn't dare giggle, though; her smile is one of admiration, rather than anything close to any sort of schadenfreude.

It's a shame that they'll have to spend the rest of the way home like this, though. But that's nothing a phone call or two can't remedy, some. Her umbrella is still a bit of a ways off, but she doesn't seem concerned with the light rain falling on her head as she whips out her bedazzled cell and starts blitzing through her saved numbers, her thumb moving at lightning speed as it scrolls through contact after contact.

"I'll just call us a town car, Dia. We can look for a place to get you dry in the meantime! Oh, oh, oh! There's a little cafe nearby, isn't there, around the corner? We can get you some matcha, that'll probably help!"

Dia blinks three times in succession, expression growing wearier with each one. She quickly reaches for Mari, taking hold of her uniform sleeve between her fingertips, and shakes her head.

She doesn't want to put it off. She's been planning this conversation in her head this whole time, and if there's something Dia hates, it's getting wrenches thrown in her plans.

"Let's just go to the hotel, please." She knows Mari means well, but...

"... I'd like to be alone with you."

"dia what's this?" mari asks, pointing at the doll of her crying that hangs from dia's lamp

b l o c k e d

why don't we write the school idol diaries ourselves i'm being 100% serious

agreed tbh

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