Author's Note

Here's the next story in this double feature! This one is Kiriko x Philia, and is also a small part of a story which I plan to release at some point in the future. That story will have multiple chapters and will probably be at least ten installments long, but this version is going to be self-contained. There will be some differences between this iteration's scenes and the full story's versions, but most of them will be at the point where this one ends.

Interestingly, this story takes place in a rock band AU. The main character, Philia, is the lead singer and songwriter of a popular rock band, which I have yet to come up with a name for. But you'd hardly notice any of that in this small piece because barely anything even references that part of the characters' lives up until the very end.

Anyway, I'll let you read now. Shouldn't take that long to finish this, it's only got thirteen hundred words of story!

The Yuri Drabble Zone

Story Three: Lasting Impression

Soft. Her lips were really soft. It was all I could think about as I felt them push against my own. Maybe it was the effect of the alcohol we'd snuck into my apartment, but it seemed like the entire world around me faded into nothingness as my best friend's lips hungrily, almost desperately molded themselves against mine.

It was terrifying, but also exciting. The experience gave me intense anxiety, but also thrilled me in a way I couldn't even put into words. It instilled feelings in me which I'd never felt before, ones that I'd never thought I'd feel only a short few months before this night.

My closest friend and savior's eyes were closed, her glossy black bangs almost completely covering one of them. With her face so close, I couldn't see anything else but slivers of my bedroom's beige-painted walls in the background and the unfolded black collar of her old, well-worn leather jacket.

I normally didn't notice it that much, but I could very easily smell the light perfume she always wore. The exact scent gave off the impression of both femininity and masculinity waging war on each other for supremacy, much like the sometimes self-contradictory manner in which the perfume's wearer carried herself. It was a mild, almost completely undetectable smell from a normal distance, but up close and personal like this, it was downright intoxicating.

Just as I began giving into the emotions I couldn't identify and started to melt into the kiss, my eyes beginning to close automatically… she pulled away. Just like that, the world came careening back into full focus as my eyelids snapped back open. The anxiety I had felt during the event itself suddenly magnified greatly and almost completely crushed the mix of other feelings I'd just experienced for the first time.

The person who'd put me through this emotional rollercoaster's eyes were still closed, a toothy grin completely contrary to her normal calm, collected demeanor taking up a good portion of her pale, completely flawless face. Her cheeks were tinged pink – though whether from embarrassment of her own actions or from the cans of alcoholic lemonade we'd drank together, I couldn't fathom.

"W-w-w… what was that?!" The booze acted like a speech impediment at first, but with enough concentration and effort, I managed to get the intended message across.

I could feel my own heartbeat, and it didn't feel safe – it felt way too fast to be normal. It felt so fast that the idea of a heart attack being imminent did not seem at all improbable. I didn't have a clue that anxiety could make it beat this quickly and irregularly… it was truly terror inspiring to me at the time.

"What do you think it was, Philia?" The person responsible for putting me in this state didn't seem inclined to try to make it go away. "There's only so many ways to frame what just happened."

After responding to my question remarkably coherently for someone who'd had twice as many cans of alcohol as I did, the girl sitting next to me on my blue-blanketed bed started giggling loudly, as if she'd said something hysterical. In my state of emotional turmoil, the sight and sound of it absolutely infuriated me.

"What's so damn funny?!" I emphatically spat out the curse word to accentuate the rest of my question's tone of voice. Tears began to prick at the corners of my eyes as some more of the reality of the situation caught up with my buzzed brain. "T-that was my first kiss… you stole it…"

When she noticed me starting to cry, all traces of amusement disappeared at once. Her face became almost unreadable, but in her stormy gray irises, I saw anxiety equal to or greater than what I felt… but more than that, I saw an intense fear that seemed to directly outweigh all of the emotions I felt at that exact moment. I had no idea what to make of any of this – I couldn't even make sense of my own feelings, so how could I possibly comprehend someone else's?

Despite seeming to be less emotionally stable than I was, she looked me dead in the eyes and spoke in a clear, calm, somewhat tentative voice as regret flashed through her eyes along with everything else. "Sorry. Were you… were you against it?"

I had no idea how to answer that. I could clearly remember all of the feelings that the kiss evoked, even in my somewhat drunken haze… and not all of them were bad. Some of them were even good. But others were terrifying… and I had no idea which side outweighed the other.

"I…"

A loud, continuous beeping noise slowly roused me from my night's sleep. I could still vividly remember the dream I'd had – or rather, the memory I'd relived in my slumber. As I thought back to the event itself and how it played out after that, my mind still groggy but thick with the emotions I'd been reminded of, I reached an idle hand up to the spot beside my pillow and grabbed my vibrating smartphone. I checked its lock screen to find out what alarm had woken me up that particular morning.

"Morning practice…" I read the alarm label aloud in a groggy daze. As I tapped the button to make it stop, I began to repeat the phrase I'd uttered over and over in my head, knowing that eventually it would register and I'd figure out why exactly I needed to get up at six thirty in the damn morning.

After the alarm disappeared from the lock screen and the sounds and vibration ceased, I found a text notification from one of my friends, named Sinon as far as my phone knew. It seemed to have been sent about fifteen minutes prior to my alarm going off. All it said was that Strea was skipping practice again… and that we had a meeting with our producer at ten.

I knew she didn't ask and probably didn't care, but for my sleepy mind, the most important thing in the world was the vividly accurate memory of a dream I'd just had. I swiped at the text notification and unlocked my phone before typing out a simple message.

"I had the dream again."

I'd touched upon this subject with everyone in our band, so I didn't need to bother describing the dream to her. She knew that if I just said "the dream," then it would be this one. It took a few seconds, but after a small wait, I noticed the little bubble telling me that she was typing out a reply. A few moments later…

"Sorry, that probably sucked. But on a side note, I think your brain is a little obsessed."

It was the speed of the response that shocked me. Not the content – that was basically what I'd been expecting. It was the speed… because it hit me that she typed that as quickly as humanly possible, assuming you didn't take any time whatsoever to think about what you wanted to say. Time wise, she seemed to go straight from picking up her phone to typing that out.

It suggested that she'd been planning on saying that to me since way before I actually brought up the subject. Which, knowing her incredibly detached, calculating, methodical nature, did seem entirely possible. She was the type to plan out what she wanted to say in every situation in advance if she got the opportunity, which she definitely did here.

I tapped at my screen, sending a simple, sarcastic, "You think so, huh?"

You think I'm obsessed? No shit.

Anyone who so much as listened to my song lyrics would figure out pretty quickly that my mind was absolutely fixated on that event, even after five years in the music industry. But who could blame me? That event – well, my response to it – was the single greatest fuck up I'd ever made in my entire life.

After all, when you cast aside your best friend right before realizing you're in love with them and you can't make up for your own actions, it tends to leave a lasting impression on you.

Author's Note

So, how was that? Are you interested in reading the full version now? I'll probably have it out in a few days, so if you read this and want to read more of it, just follow me so you'll get an email when the thing goes live!

Anyway, I don't have a lot to say. This is a short release, so I don't want to take up too much of everyone's time with author notes…

See you next time!