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“Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey…”
It was not the first time Fakir had wondered why Karon had seen fit to give Uzura a drum, and he doubted it would be the last. His work on weapons was solid, but his design sense on puppets definitely left something to be desired. Bad enough that she woke him up with it every morning - and usually before he was ready - but now he had to be disturbed while he was trying to do his homework?
“Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey…”
Even worse, the noise was getting closer, meaning Uzura was on her way upstairs with a new awkward question on her inquisitive little mind. Fakir steeled himself for whatever it was going to be this time.
“Fakir!”
He didn’t bother to look up. “What is it?”
“I found Ahiru’s lovey-dovey-zura!”
“Wh-what?!” He whirled around in his chair to face her. “Wh-what do you mean, her…” His voice trailed off as he saw what Uzura was holding. “What’s that?”
“It’s Ahiru’s lovey-dovey-zura! It’s for you-zura!” Beaming, she deposited it in his lap, and then turned to head back downstairs, banging away on her drum as she went. “Lovey-dovey, lovey-dovey…”
Why his mouth should have suddenly gone so dry as he stared down at the garish red envelope resting on his legs he couldn’t think. The two names written on it didn’t seem to make sense at all. None of this made sense at all if he stopped to think about it, which admittedly was proving difficult right now.
He picked it up gingerly, as one would do with something that was liable to explode or attack, and held it at what seemed like a safe distance. The first thing he allowed himself to think about was the question of how Uzura had “found” the letter. That answer came easily enough - he remembered her bursting into the library, wearing a donkey mask over most of her small body. He’d recognized the mask when he paused to think about it - it belonged to that girl who took it upon herself to deliver love letters for other students. She’d paid him a visit more than once in the past, and he’d always told her to throw away whatever she had for him, though admittedly that had pretty much dried up after the events that led to his recent suspension. Not that he minded; it was one less nuisance to deal with. So Uzura had been hanging around her, for whatever reason, and had somehow gotten hold of one of her deliveries.
It must have fallen out of her bag. If it hadn’t been for Uzura, it never would have made its way to him and he never would have known about it. Therefore, there was no reason to open it. There was no reason at all why his palms should be sweating, why his heart should be racing, why there should be knots in his stomach, or why he should all of a sudden feel uncomfortably warm and light-headed. Absolutely no reason at all. And if he tossed it into the trash bin, all of that should go away.
The sound of the envelope tearing open seemed horribly loud. He froze. Was it going to bring Uzura or Karon up here to find out what he was doing? He looked around frantically for a place to hide it for several tense seconds, before realizing that nobody was on their way up to investigate. Idiot. He let his breath out and slowly - slowly - resumed opening it. Why this whole thing was having such an effect on him he didn’t know, and only made it more irritating.
Once he’d eased the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it, he began to relax. Just a little. The envelope bore Ahiru’s name, but whoever had written this was most certainly not her. It was far too overwrought and flowery, and didn’t sound a thing like her. Even as Princess Tutu, she didn’t talk like this. If she ever were to write a love letter, it would undoubtedly be clumsy and awkward - with plenty of places where she scribbled over a word or phrase she’d changed her mind on - but heartfelt, with real emotion poured into it instead of this frothy nonsense.
… stop that. Fakir barely resisted the urge to slam his head against the desk in an effort to rid his mind of the image of Ahiru laboring over a love letter, her little face screwed up in concentration. The point was that she hadn’t written this herself. So who had? The most likely suspects were those friends of hers. That meant that this was either a cruel prank on their part or that… that she had enlisted their help in writing it, by having them compose it for her, or taken advice from them on how to write it herself. Given that she was unlikely to have had prior experience with such things, that was believable.
Well. It was believable if one believed that she would have a reason to do this in the first place. But that wasn’t the case.
… was it? No. No, it couldn’t be. She didn’t have those kinds of feelings for him, it was Mytho she wanted. Right? This was some sort of joke or misunderstanding. It had to be. And yet… no. No, he was not going to think about that. He was not going to let himself… no.
Fakir slid the offending missive back into its envelope and set it aside. There was only one way to find out for sure.
And it was definitely going to wait until tomorrow.
***
It was only after he’d walked away that Ahiru noticed something significant about the envelope in her hands: it had been opened. Whatever Lilie had written, Fakir had read it. The realization made her insides squirm in ways she couldn’t quite define. The question now was, did she want to read it? The thought of it made her anxious, but she also supposed that after all the trouble it had caused, there was no sense in not reading it. At this point, the damage had been done, so she might as well.
The second question was where to read it. School was over for the day, and she was finished cleaning the practice room (Neko-sensei had been in rare form today and had tolerated her mistakes less easily than usual), so she could go back to her dorm room and read it in privacy there. But could she wait that long to see what Lilie had concocted? She wasn’t at all sure of that. Before she knew it, she was hesitantly sliding the letter out of the silly, heart-covered envelope and opening it up, her stomach twisting as she did so.
Oh, my dearest darling Fakir! For so many sleepless nights have I writhed in agony over how to express these words to you, yet only now do I find some semblance of courage, and in a mere letter! Can you ever find it in yourself to forgive me for baring my feelings to you in this manner, instead of whispering it directly into your ear? Please, please say you will, for even as I put pen to paper my heart throbs with yearning for your touch, and I ache to be enfolded in your manly arms! My love for you burns like hellfire within my very soul, and I must know if you feel the same way! I beg you, come to me, my love, and abscond with me, that we might then partake in illicit passion!
“… wh-wh-whaaaaaat?” Ahiru clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a quack. What… what was this? Was this really how people wrote love letters to each other? Had Fakir read this and actually thought it had come from her? Did he really think that this was how she’d write a letter to him?
Her face flushed bright red at the idea. This wasn’t at all how she’d write to him, none of this was right. If she were to write a love letter to Fakir, she didn’t know how exactly she would say it, but she would include things like how kind he really was even when he tried to hide it, or how much it meant to her that he’d never looked down on her for being just a duck, or how good a dancer he was, or how nice his smile was whenever he actually smiled, or how much she trusted him now, or how much she appreciated that he had told Uzura all about her even though it had been embarrassing to have her search for her tail, or…
“… w-w-w-wait! What am I, what am I thinking? Ahahahahaha…” Ahiru shook her head frantically. “Wr-writing that… to Fakir… I - I’m not… how silly!” If anything, it made more sense to think about writing a love letter to Mytho, not Fakir, even if she couldn’t and wouldn’t, especially not now. So why was she thinking about this, of all things?
The letter. It had to be the letter. She looked down at the slightly crumpled paper and let out another peal of nervous laughter. Yes, this was all Lilie’s fault, putting this in her head and making her think thoughts she normally wouldn’t. She stuffed letter and envelope into her uniform jacket, determined not to think about it until she got back to her room, where she could figure out a way to safely dispose of it and thus erase it from existence, making it like this whole thing had never happened.
Not once did it occur to her to think about the fact that she had a longer list of things she liked about Fakir than she did of things she liked about Mytho.