⭐️400 Thank-You Bonus Short Story (Hiyori’s POV): The Smell She Likes — My Smell.

“Maya, I’m going to buy perfume. Come with me.”
“…Hm? Why do I have to?”

After-school classroom.
Only a few weeks since the twisted arrangement called “Yuri Friends” had begun.
The discipline committee chair, tidying textbooks on her desk, let out a faintly dim-witted sound at my sudden announcement and blinked.

“Because I gave you that atomiser and now mine’s nearly run out.”
“I mean — I never said I wanted it, and you pressed it on me without even asking…!”
“Right, off we go!!”

I grabbed the arm of the still-protesting, red-faced Maya and half-forcibly hauled her out into the evening town.

◇◆◇◆◇

Our destination: the cosmetics corner of a Don Quijote, heaving with people.
Maya looked up at the shelves packed tight with bottles in the narrow aisle, blinking with the slightly overwhelmed air of someone out of their depth.

“I’d never really looked before… there are this many kinds of perfume?”
“Right? Perfume is something you swap in and out depending on the image you’re going for, or your mood that day. Let me see…”

I ran my eyes along the back of the POP-plastered shelf.

“Got it, here it is.”
“That’s… just the same musk as always, isn’t it.”

Watching me reach for the bottle without a moment’s hesitation, Maya let out a mildly unimpressed sound.

“Yep, this brand with a bit of citrus mixed in — this is the one.”
“You literally just said you swap perfumes around, but I feel like you only ever wear this musk…”
“That’s true actually. Honestly I only ever use this one.”
“What? Doesn’t that contradict what you just said?”
“Whatever. If you find something you like, using it every day is also correct.”
“At this point it’s all correct…”

Watching me pull the translucent purple package out with obvious affection, Maya fiddled with the nozzle of a different tester she’d picked up.

“There are sweeter ones, all kinds of different things… why do you like that one?”
“Hmm, let me think…”

Through the plastic of the box in my hand.
Maya’s face, distorted in the curved surface of the purple bottle.
I shifted the angle slightly and the overhead light caught it, flashing sharp — and wiped Maya’s face away entirely.

◇◆◇◆◇

— The middle of winter, first year of high school.

The time when I kept making my appearance flashier and flashier, wanting Maya to turn around and look at me, wanting her attention.

After looks, next is smell — that’s what I thought, and started hunting for a perfume.
Which was fine, except I obviously didn’t have the money back then to buy loads of different kinds to swap around with my mood every day.

If I was going for flashy, maybe something sweeter, or exotic, in the opposite direction — I used parts of my brain I didn’t normally use until I got completely muddled.

In the end, what I bought was one bottle of musk perfume.
There wasn’t really any particular reason.
It felt a little grown-up, a little like I was reaching beyond myself… that was about it.

“Excuse me, Asahina-san.”
“What is it~ Yamami-mama?”

At the shoe lockers, the familiar clipped sound of hard loafers approaching — and a tap on my shoulder from behind.
I turned around, and there she was, inevitably.
Yamami Maya, the school’s most straight-laced discipline committee member, standing there as reliably as ever.

“What, nothing — the sloppy uniform aside, that smell!”
“Hm~? I wonder, maybe it’s fabric softener~”

Exaggerating sniffing at my own sleeve, I played dumb.

“That’s a lie! My nose won’t be fooled! That’s definitely perfume!”
“Ehh? Why are you getting so worked up about it. …Was it, like, too strong~? Sorry, sorry.”

I was about to laugh it off as another lecture, same as always — and then.

“No, it’s… clean-smelling, actually quite nice…”

Maya looked straight at me with those honest eyes and let that thought slip out, quiet and unguarded.

Ambush.
Ouch.
My heart gave a loud thud.

“Oh… nice, is it…”

She always looked at me like I was trouble, and yet here she was making that face — completely beyond my calculations, and I felt my head go hot all at once.

“— W-well, that’s not the point! It’s not about whether it smells nice or not — you can’t bring it to school at all, that’s what I’m saying! Absolute school rules violation!”
“Oh, Mama, you’re good at the straight-man comeback, aren’t you. Want to enter M-1 together?”
“Wh-what on earth are you saying?!”

Maya was lost for words for a moment, then — realising she’d put her foot in it — went red and hurriedly raised her voice to cover for herself.

“Right, I’ve got Mama’s official nice smell seal of approval! I’ll be wearing it as my discipline-committee-approved perfume every single day from now on! Okay then! That’s settled!”
“Hey, wait…! Don’t run in the corridors!”

I let my indoor shoes slap against the floor as I bolted away down the corridor, putting distance between us and her red-faced pursuit.

— Clean-smelling, actually quite nice.

Those carelessly spilled words spread warmly through my chest.

(Oh… so that’s it. Huh. So Maya likes this kind of smell…)

I’d read somewhere that perfume pushes you toward the image you want to become.

Maybe — even if just in terms of smell — I want to be the kind of me that might suit that serious Maya. A little refined, a little clean.

Some painfully sweet, completely out-of-character wishful thinking I wrapped around my heart that day.
That was when it was decided. My perfume — musk, and nothing else, ever.

…Though with my looks and behaviour this far gone in the opposite direction, I don’t know what I thought I was doing.

◇◆◇◆◇

“Hey, Hiyori? Are you listening?”
“Oh, sorry, sorry. Just thinking about something~”

(…well. The person herself has definitely forgotten some throwaway line from that long ago.)

“Found what I came for, so! Let’s pay and get out of here!”
“Oh — okay…?”

Bottle in hand, I moved quickly to take Maya to the register.
I pulled out my phone as we lined up in the shop.

“Hey — I’ve got the Don Quijote app but if you pay by barcode it’s pointless for the rewards, right? Such a pain to top up.”
“I don’t come here much so I wouldn’t know about things like that…”

Maya, eyebrows drawing together, murmuring helplessly.
Even that slightly mismatched exchange with my strait-laced discipline committee chair was somehow funny and dear to me.

Paid up, we headed back out onto the lively evening street.
Walking along, I couldn’t wait — I opened the plastic case, took out the new purple bottle, and spritzed once on my wrist.
Then held it out, waving it under Maya’s nose.

“Here. What do you think? The smell of a fresh bottle.”
“…Hey, don’t just shove it at me without warning…”

Maya flinched back slightly, then drew in a small breath through her nose, taking in the fresh new smell rising from my wrist.

“Mm, it smells nice. …Which is why I’m saying don’t bring it to school in the first place!”

One honest moment, eyes softening — and then Maya caught herself and switched straight back into lecture mode.

“…This is exactly the kind of thing I like, I think.”
“Hm? What, the perfume thing just now?”
“Nothing~ Okay okay, I’ll put it away properly when I feel like it.”
“Hey, I’m not done talking yet!”

Walking beside her as she carried on with her little scolding, I made a show of blocking my ears, and laughed my quiet fufu.

(Well — it’s fine if love starts from something that small, right?)

Evening light, the walk home, side by side.
I slipped the new purple bottle, with great tenderness, into my bag.

(The End)