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The end of the year brings Christmas parties, and with Christmas parties brings a wealth of opportunities to sow the seeds of romance — so of course Toshiko keeps her eyes peeled while she watches her schoolmates bustle about the room, decking out the dorm’s dining hall in tinsel and fairy lights.
She takes a slow sip of her hot chocolate. Ingrid, who's sitting next to her at the table, is currently regaling her with the painstaking process she and Jean had gone through to put Grace in a Christmas tree suit.
“You should’ve seen the look on her face!” Ingrid giggles good-naturedly. “Started spouting off at us as soon as she saw the darn thing.”
“Mm-hmm,” Toshiko says. Another sip. Eva and Damon are sat in a corner on the other side of the table, engrossed in whispered conversation. Kai is tip-toeing up behind them with a reindeer headband in each hand.
“Oh, but you know Grace — she’s just a big softie inside. All Jean had to do was push her a little, and she caved.”
By the door, Jett is making grabby hands at a tray of gingerbread cookies while Desmond twists and turns to try and keep it out of his reach. Eloise laughs at the scene as she sets out the dinnerware with Cassidy.
“And just look at her! Doesn’t she look like the sweetest thing?”
Toshiko, following the point of Ingrid’s finger, turns to look — but her eyes skim off a very peeved, stupidly-costumed Grace and land instead on the only two students huddled in the far back of the kitchen.
Hm.
Toshiko has to admit, Ulysses and Wenona are a surprising case. They’d never even crossed her mind as a potential pair at first, mostly due to their… contrasting appearances (which Ulysses could improve on if he would just listen to Toshiko and get rid of those awful eyebags already!). But after the debacle that was the first week of class and Grace demanding a roommate swap, the two have proven that they —
Toshiko’s thoughts pause when Wenona suddenly leans in to nudge Ulysses on the arm.
She sits up straighter. Their backs are turned and she can’t make anything out from where she’s sitting, but whatever the entrepreneur says causes both of their shoulders to shake in laughter. The slight tilt of Wenona’s head shows a smile Toshiko isn’t sure she’s ever seen before — a smile alight with something almost…
Fond?
Toshiko stares. Fond? Wenona?
The same girl who told the class that the Ultimate program had stooped low for letting some of them in, who allegedly gave a glare so nasty during orientation that it sent Eloise running out of the room in tears? The same girl whose lips only ever seem to quirk upwards when it’s in smugness or derision?
That Wenona?
She… she isn’t some heartless monster, of course. Toshiko knows that. Wenona is still an Ultimate of Eden’s Garden Academy, decorous and dutiful and distinguished beyond compare, but also just so very cold. Toshiko could never imagine that the Wenona she’s known for the past few months would look at someone that way, unless they were —
Wait.
Unless… they were…
“Together,” Toshiko breathes.
Ingrid blinks. “What was that?”
“I,” Toshiko starts. Stops. It feels like a hundred billion neurons are all firing off in her brain at the same time, because — it makes sense. A lot of sense, too much sense. They’re both quiet people who prefer to keep to themselves — roommates, conveniently, and what does Wenona love to harp on and on about? Laying low. Staying out of trouble, knowing when to keep your mouth shut. She would obviously hate the drama that could crop up from a public relationship.
Ingrid's expectant eyes are still on Toshiko, so she pushes through the fuzz in her brain to speak. “U-Ulysses and Wenona. Are they… together?”
The blacksmith’s brows shoot up. She glances towards the pair in question, pressed almost shoulder to shoulder in the kitchen. “As in, dating? Well, if they are, no one told me about it!”
Toshiko flicks her fan restlessly. “Right? I haven’t heard a thing either! B-But they’re…”
Ingrid looks back to Toshiko as her voice fades out, and understanding seems to flit across her face. She smiles, the slant of her lips almost amused. “Wenona sure doesn’t get that close with the rest of us, does she?”
Toshiko watches as Wenona reaches to tap Ulysses’ shoulder. Whatever she says this time causes her smile to turn teasing, and Ulysses coughs into a fist as he looks away, the tips of his ears pink.
“She doesn’t,” Toshiko says, a new truth unlocked in her head. “She definitely doesn’t.”
-
“Pleeease! Come on, pleeeease!”
Toshiko is nearly bowled over when two speed-walking figures speed-walk straight into her — Ulysses, with an anxious expression half-hidden under his notebook, and Kai, looking on the verge of tears with his hands clasped together in prayer.
Toshiko gives them an affronted scoff as soon as she regains her balance. “Watch where you’re going! Your rashness almost caused a lady harm!”
“Toshiko, you have to help me,” Kai begs. “Talk some sense into this guy, please — my life is on the line here!”
“You can handle it yourself,” Ulysses says, slightly muffled under the notebook. “I don’t see why I have to be dragged into this…”
Toshiko frowns. “What ails you?”
“It’s Wenona,” Kai sniffles. “I had a joint project with her, a-and I — I seriously messed it up, man! I can’t break the news to her. She’s gonna gut me like a fish!”
“You’re overreacting…” Ulysses protests.
“It can’t be that bad, surely?” Toshiko says.
“I-I mean, it was a completely honest mistake.” Kai’s voice trails off quietly, “How was I supposed to know clicking one stupid button would trash our entire spreadsheet…?”
A sense of foreboding comes over Toshiko. “Oh. That’s bad.”
That helpful input seems to whip Kai into a frenzy all over again. “Dude! Even she agrees it’s bad, see?” He tugs on Ulysses’ sleeve, desperate. “You have to help me! Just — just help me tell her the news, or stand in front of me while I do it.”
Toshiko’s eyes go wide. “You’re using him as a human shield?”
“No, I’m taking the logical course of action to ensure my survival!” Kai says. “It’s a no-brainer — Wenona never gets mad at him.”
Ulysses’ brows furrow. “That’s not true… she gets cross at how often I stay up late.”
“But would she gut you like a fish over it? No! Case closed.”
“I… I’m sure she would understand if you just chose your words carefully. She really isn’t that hard to get along with.”
Kai groans. “Yeah, that’s because you’re you, Ulysses. You know, Damon told me the other day that Wenona just straight-up guessed where he lived. Like, if she can dig up that sort of info on a guy that chronically offline, I don’t wanna know what she could do to me. That shit’s scary, man!”
Ulysses shifts from foot to foot, sweat beading his brow. “I…”
“If I may offer my own two cents,” Toshiko interjects, “I do think it would be best for you to go along with Kai. I fear the poor fool won’t make it back in one piece otherwise.”
“Yes!” Kai claps his hands together, looking heavenward. “Thank you, god…”
“But stand next to him, not in front.” Toshiko pats the historian’s arm. “And tell Wenona I said hi.”
-
It’s not every day you get to see the Ultimate Entrepreneur skulking the hallways while dragging around a parcel that’s clearly too heavy for her to handle, but Toshiko has always been in Lady Luck’s good graces.
She’s rounding the corner to look for Ingrid when she comes face to… well, back, with Wenona. The woman seems too engrossed in staring down the large box at her feet and muttering under her breath to notice Toshiko behind her.
“Salutations!” Toshiko pipes up. And Wenona doesn’t startle, per se, but a very slight jerk does run through her frame before she whips around.
“Good grief,” she says in lieu of a greeting.
Toshiko gestures to the box. “What wares have you procured?”
Wenona’s already furrowed brows furrow even further. “Straight to the point, aren’t you?” she says, then, “They’re books. Ones covering the complete history of the Middle Ages, to be precise.”
Toshiko’s eyes widen. “I wasn’t aware you were interested — ”
“Hmph. Not particularly, no.” Wenona crosses her arms, a faint look of disdain settling over her delicate features. “But do you recall the little incident Jett caused last week?”
“Oh… er. How could I forget.” It’s not every day you get to see the Ultimate Drag Racer blow up the dorm’s mailboxes by accident, either, but Eden’s Garden Academy was clearly full of surprises.
“I thought so. There was a book Ulysses had been waiting on for a while that got caught up in the fire. He’s been moping non-stop ever since.”
Toshiko tilts her head, a growing excitement starting to thrum in her chest. “A book? But this looks — ”
Wenona clicks her tongue. “Yeah. I went ahead and ordered the full box set. It barely cost anything, I just didn’t expect it to be this…” she gives the box an uncharacteristically childish kick. “Heavy.”
Her grumbling passes like wind through Toshiko’s ears. “S-So what you’re saying is that these tribulations are all in an effort to surprise him with a gift?” she gushes, hopping closer, and whatever expression she’s wearing causes Wenona’s lips to twist into a weary grimace.
“Oh, spare me the theatrics. He’s a terrible conversationalist when he’s sad, that’s all.”
It’s not all, Toshiko is sure. “But to buy him a full box set! He only lost one book in the fire, did he not?”
Wenona waves a hand like she’s shooing off a particularly annoying bug. “Consider it an investment, to ensure I have at least one person around who’s capable of intelligent speech — a rarity few and far between, here.”
The obvious slight doesn’t even sting over the fireworks in Toshiko’s head. “Of course, of course,” she giggles. “An investment.”
Wenona sighs. “Don’t know why I even bother,” she says lowly, before bending down to resume dragging the parcel towards her dorm room. Toshiko leaves her to it with a skip in her step.
-
It takes Toshiko a second to realise that the strange brown lump in the middle of the academy courtyard is Ulysses.
She pulls her coat tighter against the chilly air as she approaches, and sees that the historian is lowered into a squat, rifling through the pile of fallen leaves at his feet with stern concentration.
“Did you happen to lose something?” she asks.
Ulysses looks up with an owlish blink. “Ah. Toshiko. No, I’m just… looking for good leaves.”
Toshiko cocks her head. “Good leaves?” Then her gaze dips down to the notebook in his hands, and sees a red maple leaf tucked into its open pages. “Oh, are you pressing them?”
He nods. “Yes… along with some flowers. I’ll probably paste them onto some nice paper once they’re dried.”
“Hm.” Toshiko has a hunch, and she strikes out at it. “Is it a gift?”
Ulysses’ brows shoot upwards. “How did you know?”
Toshiko tamps down a giggle, suddenly feeling very pleased with herself, and very, very excited. “Divine intuition!”
Ulysses frowns. “Erm, right. But yes, it’s a gift for Wenona.” He picks up another leaf, golden this time, and spins it languidly by the stem. He takes a breath. “Recently… we’ve been talking a lot about home.”
“Oh?”
He nods. “Like the museum I work at, her clan, things of that sort. It was nice, but when she talked about her favourite spots in the forest, she also seemed… a little down? Homesick? So,” he pauses, as if gathering his words, “I just thought, maybe… I could try to bring a bit of nature to our dorm room.”
It takes a gargantuan effort for Toshiko to not start hopping in place out of sheer glee. “That’s very kind of you, Ulysses.”
“Aha, you think so?” He ducks his head down awkwardly. “I don't know the first thing about gift-giving. But if it could make her even a little bit happy, well… I would like that.”
“She’ll love it!” Toshiko says just a little too loudly, before she hurriedly clears her throat. “I mean. I’m confident your gift will be, ah, very well received.”
“Thank you. It’s reassuring to hear that from you.” After a moment, he carefully places the golden leaf into his notebook. “...She told me something else, too.”
The tone of Ulysses’ voice is different, suffused with a quiet joy — this isn’t something he’s sharing with just anyone. “Do tell,” Toshiko presses, her voice prim like she isn’t ready to grab him by the shoulders and start shaking it out of him.
“When I told her about the museum, I mentioned our nature exhibits. And she said that, perhaps, over the holidays, if she had the time, she could… come visit. And I could show her around.” A small smile creeps up his face, hopeful and so very, very helpless. “Can you believe it?”
-
“Hey.”
“Hey. Toshiko.”
Toshiko stops in her tracks the second time she hears the voice call out to her. It’s coming from inside the laundromat, and she takes a few steps backwards to peer through the doorway.
She’s met with Wenona’s piercing gaze boring right back at her. The entrepreneur is sat on one of the benches in front of the washing machines with her arms crossed and legs folded over the other, and Toshiko thinks she can glimpse the blue of Ulysses’ sweater next to her, but he’s mostly obstructed from view at this angle.
“Come here for a second,” Wenona says.
Toshiko obliges. She enters the laundromat —
And nearly spontaneously combusts, because Ulysses is fast asleep with his head lolled against Wenona's shoulder.
“Oh my gosh,” Toshiko says in a stage-whisper that promises an imminent increase in volume. “Oh my — ”
“Shush.” Wenona’s eyes steel deadly sharp as she presses a finger against her scowling lips. “I didn’t call you in here to wake him up.”
Toshiko covers her mouth with a squeak. “Sorry! Sorry.”
Rolling her eyes, Wenona lowers her hand. “Anyway. Would you do me a favour?”
At Toshiko’s wordless, uncertain nod, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a room key. “Here,” she says. “Go to our room. On my desk, the one on the right — there should be three stacks of documents. Take the one in the middle and bring it to me.”
Toshiko’s mind is still buzzing. She must not have responded fast enough, because Wenona continues. “Oh, and don’t forget to grab a pen.” Then, tacked on shortly as an afterthought, “Please.”
“You…” Toshiko manages to say, “you’re going to… work?”
Wenona looks unimpressed. “What, you expect me to sit around here and do nothing? I have assignments due.”
“You could wake him up to go back,” Toshiko suggests only half-seriously.
Wenona snorts. “Not likely.” She reaches over to pry Ulysses’ glasses off the bridge of his nose, folding it before setting it gently onto the bench. “I can count on one hand the number of times he’s gone to bed at a reasonable hour these past few weeks. I’ll wake him when our laundry’s done.”
“Oh. Okay.” Toshiko pauses. “He’s drooling on you.”
“I’ll live,” Wenona says. Toshiko has the distinct feeling that she wouldn’t be so nonchalant had it been any other classmate of theirs — if she’d even let them sleep on her, in the first place. “Any more questions?”
Toshiko shakes her head, taking two steps back towards the door. “No. No, none left…” and because she just can’t resist, she blurts out, “You two truly make an adorable pair.”
For a split second, Wenona’s expression goes carefully blank. Her mouth loosens into a line and her eyebrows arc upwards ever so slightly as she levels Toshiko with an unreadable look.
“Do we, now?” she says, and that’s all Toshiko sticks around for before she’s running out of the room to fetch those documents.
-
February, in Toshiko’s expert opinion, is the second-best month of the year (the first obviously being November).
The start of it marks the two-week countdown to Valentine’s Day, which Toshiko has the divine duty to make sure goes absolutely perfect — so she’s constantly flitting around from room to room in the academy, checking up on all of her classmates to make sure no one has been caught up in any bitter matters of the heart.
“Oi!” Grace spits as Toshiko darts under her arm to head to the gym’s exit. “Watch it, gremlin! I coulda elbowed you in the face!”
Paying the golfer no mind, she flies down the hallway, mentally taking stock of every student’s whereabouts and potential company. And when she glances past the open doors of the dining hall —
“Ah,” she says, “Ulysses!”
He’s standing by the kitchen counter with his back turned, but she sees the boy perk up at his name. He looks back — his eyebags are still as terrible as ever, she notes with a faint displeasure — and gives her a small nod of greeting. “Oh… hello, Toshiko. How are you?”
“I’m fantastic!” Toshiko can’t help but grin, skipping ahead to his side. There are two mugs placed before Ulysses, one teal and the other yellow, dwarfed by the large French press in his hands. She can see coffee already steeped within the glass. “What business are you attending to?”
A yawn. “Nothing exciting. Just making Wenona and I some coffee.” He pushes the plunger of the press down, watching with lidded eyes as the grounds separate from the finished brew. “We should still have some oat milk leftover…”
“Do you require assistance? Many hands make light work, as they say.”
He waves her off kindly. “Thank you, but it’s fine. Wenona can be, ah… quite particular about how she likes her drinks. I should handle it, since I know the specifics.”
“Oh,” Toshiko says. She scans the rest of the countertop, and finds it surprisingly bare. “Without your notebook?”
A smile ghosts the corner of his mouth. “Yes. Without my notebook.”
If Toshiko were a lesser woman, she would’ve let out a squeal right then and there piercing enough to shatter both the mugs and the press in front of them. But she is the Ultimate Matchmaker, and professionals do not squeal — so she diverts that energy into furiously, professionally fanning herself instead.
“W-While I am happy to hear that,” she manages to harrumph, “I remain deeply disappointed in you, Ulysses! Valentine’s Day is at our doorstep and you still have not heeded my advice to fix your sleep schedule and get rid of those horrid eyebags!”
Ulysses raises the press, pouring into a mug as he gives her a quizzical look. “Um. Sorry, I… fail to see the correlation between the two subjects. I don’t have any plans for Valentine’s Day.”
A faultline splits through Toshiko’s dainty heart. Pure, unadulterated horror, because —
“What!” she shrieks, and Ulysses jumps, clearly caught off guard. “What do you mean you don’t have any plans?”
“I — huh?” Ulysses blinks once, twice. “I mean I… don’t have any plans. I don’t — did I schedule something with you?” He looks around blearily. “Ah, my notebook…”
“This shouldn’t be something you need your notebook for!” Toshiko stamps her foot, snapping Ulysses' attention back to her. Not very professional, she will admit, but that’s a regret for later. “How on earth do you have a partner and no plans for Valentine’s Day?!”
Ulysses’ jaw drops. “A partner?” he echoes, eyes wide.
“Wh — yes?” Toshiko could explode from the sheer audacity. “Ulysses, what are you going on about?”
“What are you going on about?” he shoots back, looking more and more alarmed by the second. The French press in his hand is set down and promptly forgotten. “Toshiko, I don’t have a partner!”
“Yes you do!” she says, her voice turning shrill and petulant, because this is something she has never been more sure of, she knows it for a fact like she knows the sky is blue — “You’re making her coffee right now!”
And something in Ulysses seems to skid to a halt entirely.
“Wenona?” he sputters.
“Who else?” Toshiko says.
Ulysses opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. For ten long seconds, his lips form a variety of words — what, I, who — that shape halfway and dissipate into air before they can be given voice, all while a brilliant flush of red begins to crawl up from the pale of his neck to the tips of his ears.
Toshiko wonders, for a moment, if she’s accidentally set off one of his two dozen or so health complications.
She’s about to run off and fetch aid when Ulysses’ brain finally seems to catch up with his mouth, and he chokes out, “We aren’t — Wenona and I, we’re not… together.” He pushes through the last word with considerable effort.
Toshiko’s legs feel like they’re glued to the ground. “I’m sorry. Come again?”
Ulysses manages to redden even further, somehow. “We’re. Not together. Wenona and I.”
“What,” Toshiko says, completely flat. “What do you mean you’re not together.”
“I — ” Ulysses looks like he’s in physical pain. “Toshiko, what do you want me to say? We aren’t in a relationship!”
Now it’s Toshiko’s turn to gape. “Then what on earth were you two in before?”
“What?”
“All that — everything!” she bursts out, gesturing wildly, and it’s clear from Ulysses’ expression that he doesn’t have a clue what she’s talking about. “All the gifts and the physical contact and the Christmas party a-and Wenona letting you drool on her — ”
“Drool?” Ulysses says, horrified.
“You guys were — I was so certain you two were in a relationship,” Toshiko stops, clutching her head. “Are you completely, absolutely sure you aren’t?”
“I think I would know, Toshiko!”
“Know what?” a third voice says.
The room immediately falls into a pin-drop quiet. With wide eyes, they both turn to see Wenona standing at the doorway of the dining hall.
She cocks her head, clearly unaware of the turmoil she’s just walked into. “Know what?” she repeats.
“Wenona!” Toshiko cries, because it’s been a horrible day and her entire life is a lie and she is utterly distraught. “Is it true you and Ulysses aren’t — mmph!”
She’s abruptly cut off as a hand claps over her mouth and drags her backwards, before a voice sounds by her left ear.
“Toshiko,” Ulysses hisses through gritted teeth, “Toshiko, what are you doing?”
I’m figuring out what the f— heck is wrong with you two! she tries to yell, but it sort of filters out into garbled nonsense between the older boy’s fingers. She twists her head to look up at Ulysses, and for a second she’s struck by just how panicked he looks. It’s like his face can’t decide if it wants to be drained of blood or flushed with it, and the mass of emotions churning beneath his eyes are intensified tenfold by the dark circles lining them.
These past six months, Toshiko has seen Ulysses sit on wet paint, lose his glasses at the beach, eat a three-year-expired pizza roll, and be beaten with a stick when Ingrid mistook him for the piñata at her birthday party — yet none of those things had made him look even close to as distressed as he does now.
Toshiko turns back to look at Wenona, who’s still staring at them, but with the added bonus of a raised eyebrow. “Aren’t… what?”
“W-Wenona,” Ulysses starts, her name tapering off into a nervous laugh. “Just — forget what she said, please. Toshiko’s only… spouting her usual nonsense.”
Usual?! comes Toshiko’s furious, muffled scream. And because no one smears her professional image and gets away with it, she finishes it off by biting down on his hand. Hard.
Ulysses yelps and loosens his grasp enough for her to wriggle free, which she immediately follows up with another attempt. “What I wanted to ask before I was so rudely interrupted was — ”
“No,” Ulysses locks a desperate grip onto Toshiko’s shoulder. “No, she doesn’t have anything to ask.”
“Yes I do!” Toshiko huffs.
“Do not.” Ulysses says.
“Do too!”
“Do not.”
“Do — ”
“Okay,” Wenona interrupts, and Toshiko genuinely can’t tell if she’s amused or annoyed. “You two really don’t have to keep up…” she makes a vague motion at them, “whatever this is. I already heard your conversation before I walked in.”
Then there’s dead silence. That, and the weakening hold on Toshiko’s shoulder.
“You what,” Ulysses says.
Wenona shrugs, clearly free of the weight of the conversational bombshell she just dropped on them. “I heard everything.”
“E…Everything?” Toshiko says.
“You were having what was functionally a screaming match in a common room while the door was open. How no one but me managed to overhear it is a wonder, honestly.”
Very carefully, Toshiko spares a glance towards Ulysses, who’s steadily looking more and more ready to keel over and die. She looks back. “And… um. What did you… make of it?”
Wenona tilts her head. “To tell you the truth? It was exactly what I needed to hear.”
Toshiko blinks. “Huh?”
Wenona curls the tail end of her braid around a pointer finger, her expression turned contemplative. “Hearing you, the Ultimate Matchmaker, talk about it actually put into perspective just how… inefficiently I’ve been handling this.”
“Inefficiently…” Toshiko begins, but Wenona holds up a hand as she continues.
“I’ve wasted a ridiculous amount of time stalling on something I could’ve done months ago. I’ve never been the type to tiptoe around what I want, so why do it now?” She clicks her tongue. “About time some sense was knocked into me.”
“...Oh,” Toshiko says. Her brain is gathering the largest batch of fireworks it’s ever gathered. “Oh!”
Ulysses finally moves to take a tentative step forward. His eyes are roiling with fear, fear, fear — and the tiniest sliver of hope. “S-So… so what you’re saying is…”
“What I’m saying,” Wenona says, a hint of a smile in her voice, “is that you have plans for Valentine’s Day, Ulysses. For the sake of your partner, make sure they’re good ones, would you?”
Toshiko is quite positive that in all the years of her storied career, she’s never taken a swing and a miss this hard into success before. Ulysses is standing so still that she has half a mind to think he’s gone catatonic. Perhaps the rollercoaster of emotions really did set off a health condition, after all.
Wenona strolls past them to peer down at the mugs on the counter. Picking up the teal one, she takes a sip — and an actual smile spreads across her lips as she hums.
“But I’m not too worried about it,” she says. “You always remember what I like.”
With that, the Ultimate Entrepreneur walks out the room with a casual wave, setting the room’s occupancy back to two stock-still statues. How very like her, Toshiko manages to think at the back of her mind, to drop the suavest love confession out of the blue and flee immediately after.
When she looks back at Ulysses, his face seems to have, at last, decided on a shade: scarlet.
“I think I’m going to pass out,” he says quietly. Toshiko scrambles to grab him a chair.