Chapter 8:

Oh my God, It's Motherfucking Sakaki

***

The cool tall walking long-black-haired unexpectedly towering female figure, soft-looking resplendent alluring with the incongruously unconfident stride and unseasonably cold clothing was motherfucking Sakaki. Sakaki fixed her sad eyes upon the delirious woman in front of her. Sakaki was shivering in the snow, her lips and extremities were all painfully numb. The outfit that would have been discreetly fashionable on the streets of Tokyo was absurd in Hokkaido. What was equally absurd was the expression on the face greeting Sakaki, frozen agape, somewhere between shock, awe and enrapturement, stammering sibilantly: "S... Suh... Suh..."

The face brought back hazy recollections and stirred up a lot of dormant feelings. A strange dissatisfied incomplete feeling. A friend she never got close enough to. A dance that they had shared. A summer vacation they rode in Yukari's car for. A night they spent stargazing together, the time they met in Okinawa together, the way she always looked so sad and seemed so distant in their senior year...

"Ah, Kaorin..."

A dawning shock appeared on the face of the woman greeting her upon being recognized. But Sakaki couldn't mirror that emotion in herself. The cold was numbing her to the core, and she felt strangely calm and faraway in the midst of it. In the throes of a deep, chilly brain fog, she felt and thought with an arresting certainty, a single, resounding, all-encompassing eureka thought.

"I'm an anime girl."

In fact, Sakaki realized that they were both anime girls, that she and Kaorin were both anime girls and Osaka was an anime girl and Kagura and Tomo and Yomi and President Chiyo Mihama of the United States of America were all anime girls. And even though this was such an insane thing to think, she was genuinely and profoundly so much righter than she knew, but in the moment where hypothermia had pushed her anime body to the brink of collapse, she had absolutely no idea what this strange thought meant.

Then she grew insensate from the cold, and fell forward towards Kaorin, who barely had the wherewithal to react in time and catch her. The feeling of her lifetime deferred desire secretest ultimate crush's frigid skin pressing down against hers did nothing to alleviate her state of virtual shock, so quite naturally and unsurprisingly she passed out too, and minutes later, you wouldn't guess who happens by, of course it's none other than dutiful, commendable Yuuka, who brings the two in from the cold, gets them blankets, and doesn't ask questions about how they wound up in an awkward, snow-dappled catatonic embrace. They sleep a quiet sleep, side by side, and then dawn comes for Kaorin and for motherfucking Sakaki. They wake up side by side, gaze into each other's eyes, and suddenly their initial quiet bewilderment transforms into good old full-blown mutual panic.