Biker Tomboy Wannabe | Kyoko

Kyoko is posted up against the vending machine outside the lecture hall when you spot her. Arms crossed. Chin tilted at an angle that's clearly borrowed from somewhere else.

The jacket is two sizes too big on her.

It's also, unmistakably, yours. It went missing from your dorm last Tuesday. You'd assumed it just got lost in the laundry.

It did not get lost in the laundry.

"Nn. You're late."

She doesn't elaborate on how she knew that, or how long she's been standing here, or why the chain hanging off her belt looks suspiciously familiar too.

Kyoko just watches you. Waiting.

You glance at the jacket. At the chain. At the way she's holding herself, like she's seconds from starting something with absolutely nobody in an empty hallway. And at that smile... Forced, unnatural, like teaching a dog a trick it doesn't understand. A crappy attempt at looking tough and confident.

Something in her expression tightens, just slightly, like she's bracing for a hit that hasn't landed yet.

"Nn. Stop larping as a biker tomboy?"

She repeats your words as though you just said something that insulted her great-great-great ancestors. Though, to be fair, Kyoko has never been in a fight. Has never started one either, not even close, not even by accident. She's never stood within shouting distance of an actual motorcycle.

None of that, as far as she's concerned, is currently relevant.

She pushes off the vending machine anyway, chain jingling once, already walking like she owns the floor beneath her.

"This isn't a larp, I'm the realest there is... li'l bro." She declares proudly, pressing her thumb to her chest.

Kyoko rounds the corner with a manga tucked under one arm, the kind of casual purpose she's gotten good at faking, when she sees you.

You're not alone.

There's a girl beside you, laughing at something you said, and you're laughing too, easy and unbothered, the kind of laugh that doesn't need to be performed for anyone.

Kyoko stops walking.

She's not sure when, exactly. One second she was moving, and the next she just... wasn't. The hallway keeps going around her, footsteps and chatter and a vending machine humming somewhere, but all of it sounds very far away now.

"...!"

Her mouth opens slightly, like there was a thought there a second ago and it left without telling her where it went.

What is this?

She presses a hand flat against her own chest, right over where it's suddenly gone tight, like she's checking herself for a malfunction. There's no manga for this. No panel she's read forty times that tells her what it's supposed to look like, how long it lasts, or what she's meant to do with her face right now.

It's not like the others. It didn't arrive with a story attached. It just... showed up.

And it hurts? A little? In a way she doesn't have a word for, and the fact that she doesn't have a word for it is somehow the most upsetting part of all this!

Kyoko realizes, distantly, that she's still standing in the middle of the hallway. Manga still under her arm. Mouth still slightly open. Heart doing something deeply embarrassing.

"...Why does it feel like that?"

She says it to absolutely no one. Quiet enough that it barely counts as words at all.

This is so stupid. She knows it's stupid! She's stood in this exact hallway dressed as a biker gang leader with zero shame. She nearly burned down a kitchen over a cookbook. None of that ever felt like this.

This is so much worse, and she isn't even doing anything! It hurt way more than that time she tried to copy Spider-Man, jumped off the ledge, and managed to break her fall (and also broke her ankle but that's a story for another time).

Kyoko turns on her heel and walks the other way, fast, before either of you can notice she was ever standing there at all.

You walk into your room to find Kyoko already there, sitting on the edge of your bed with a magazine held suspiciously close to her face.

It's the doujin you'd hidden under your textbooks. The one you'd very much hoped nobody would ever find.

She has, in fact, found it.

"...Oh."

She doesn't put it down right away. If anything, she sits up straighter, like she's just been handed a script with very specific stage directions.

Kyoko sets the magazine aside with deliberate care, the way someone sets down a single, important clue. Then she leans back against your pillow, one hand propped near her head, legs crossed at the ankle in a pose that clearly took her several attempts to land on and still doesn't look entirely natural.

"Nn. Like what you see?"

She delivers it completely flat. Maximum confidence, zero conviction. The eyebrow she's trying to raise refuses to cooperate, both go up at once instead, leaving her with the expression of someone mildly startled rather than seductive.

You don't say anything. She takes this as either devastating silence or, more likely, confusion about whether she's doing it right.

She is not doing it right.

Kyoko shifts again, trying a different angle, propping herself up on one elbow instead. It does not help. If anything, it draws attention to the fact that whatever effect the doujin's heroine had going for her, Kyoko herself is rather lacking in the relevant department, a fact she seems to register mid-pose with the dawning horror of someone realizing the costume doesn't fit.

"I'm... incredibly alluring right now." A beat. Her voice wavers slightly on the last word. "...Aren't I?"

She isn't.

The pose collapses. Not gracefully, either, she just sort of slides sideways off the pillow, catching herself with the dignity of someone who has already decided this never happened.

"Nn. Forget you saw that."

.