That Eternal August I Spent With You ↬ Act Ⅰ ║Mina Ashido X Reader║

August 7th / Part 3

I rubbed my knee and finished standing up. "I'm... uh... Not that hungry anymore, actually," I said defeatedly, plopping back down onto the couch.

Then, Mina suddenly hops off the couch and walks over to her suitcase. She rummages through it for a few seconds like a raccoon going through a trash can. After doing the aforementioned rummaging for a few more seconds, she finally pulls out a small tin, used for holding cookies. She excitedly runs back over to the couch and sets the tin onto the table. The way she ran back over was honestly really cute, but I kept that thought to myself.

She turned to me with a smile. "What do you think is in here?" she asked.

I tilted my head to the side. "I'm gonna guess... Cookies?"

"Nope!" she exclaimed while shaking her head. "You're close, though!" But, before she gave me another chance to guess, she popped off the top of the tin and pulled out... a deck of cards.

I stared at her, confused. "How is that close to cookies...?" I asked.

"Don't worry about that. So, do you wanna play?"

I looked over at the TV to see some random news station going on about stuff that honestly could barely even be called "news" and looked back to Mina. "Well, we don't really have anything better to do. Why not?"

A big smile grew on her face and she took the cards out of the little box. "What game do you wanna play?" she asked. "Go Fish? War? Crazy Eights?"

"Hmm..." I pondered. "I haven't played War in a while,"

"Alright! War it is then!" she exclaimed before setting up all the cards for the both of us. After she was done, she overdramatically raised her arm and quickly brought it back down to point directly at my face. "How about a little wager?"

I stared at her finger and then switched to staring at her. "What kind of wager?" I asked.

She quickly brought the finger she pointed at me with over to her chin and thought for a moment. "How about... If I win... you have to sleep in that bed with me," she said, pointing over to the queen-sized bed in the corner of the room.

My face started to get a little hot after she even mentioned that. I gulped and laughed awkwardly. "Haha... good joke. What's your actual wager?"

"That is my wager," she said, but this time in a more serious voice.

'Oh shit. She isn't joking,' I thought.

I cleared my throat and scratched the back of my head. "A-alright," I stuttered, "Well, if I win, I get to sleep on the bed and you have to sleep on the couch!"

Mina nodded. "That sounds fair!" she exclaimed with a satisfied smile.

"You seem confident..." I said, beginning to get a little nervous.

In response, she picked up a card from her stack in between two of her fingers and covered her right eye. "Maybe a little..." she said, menacingly. 

I gulped once more. "Okay, best two out of three. Let's start this,"

This was a battle for life or death. In my head, all I could think about was victory. I had no other option. I needed to win this, no matter what!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
11:23 P.M. / Tuesday, August 7th
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"That's another win..." Mina said regretfully. "Are you sure you wanna keep going? You can't really come back at this point,"

"No!" I exclaimed. "Just one more round! I swear I'll win the next one!"

If it wasn't obvious, Mina had destroyed me brutally. We ended up going through five different card games, and in every single game, she kicked my ass. 

Mina checked her phone and saw the time. "[F/N], we should probably stop, it's getting late," she said. I sighed and sprawled out onto the card covered coffee table, accepting my defeat. She looked at me with a saddened expression. "You don't have to sleep in the bed if you don't want to. It was just a game, after all," she said, trying to comfort me.

Slowly, I lifted myself up from the table and stood. "No, no. It was a wager and I lost. You won fair and square, so I should go through with it," 

Mina smiled. "Alright,"

...

And so, after changing into our pajamas, we ended up in the same bed. Well, I was basically on the edge of my side, so I'm not sure if it really counted.

'Yep... It's just as I predicted,' I thought. 'This is awkward as hell!!'

We weren't saying anything. The last thing that was said was the usual "good night", so now awkward silence filled the room. 

'Ahhhh...! Should I say something? Wait, that would probably make it even more awkward! I don't know why I'm freaking out about this. She's probably just trying to sleep. If I tried talking to her now I'd just annoy her! Yeah, it's best to just keep my mouth shut and go to sleep too. I gotta stop worrying so much-'

Suddenly, I felt two hands press onto my shoulders and a head press into my back. A chill went down my spine and my body froze up. I slowly turned my head around as far as I can and took a deep breath.

"H-hey... I don't know if we should be doing this...!" I said shakily. "This isn't safe-!"

"I..." she muttered.

"Huh...?"

"I'm scared... [F/N]," she said. "I'm... really scared,"

Somehow, over the past few days, I forgot about the one thing that brought us together in the first place. The fact that Mina is dying.

"When your own body is on a time limit... It's really hard to keep a smile on your face..." she said, trying to hold back tears. "So, I just... wanted to ask... Am I... doing a good job...?" she asked.

Honestly, I thought I was gonna cry at that moment. That sudden question from Mina really opened my eyes. I had questioned it before, but it was then I realized how strong Mina really was. Even though she was driving straight into her own death, she was able to keep a smile on and show people that she didn't care if she was dying. She lived with it, and that's what made her strong. So, how could I not praise her?

"Mina, you're doing great," I said.

Then, all I could feel was her head press against my back harder and her grip on my shoulders tighten. She cried for a few minutes before speaking up once more.

"Can I... stay like this for the night? If you don't mind..." she muttered.

I nodded. "Yeah, you can," 

"Thank you... [F/N]..." she whispered before tightening her grip even more and sobbing.

I didn't expect that night to play out this way. Nowhere in my mind would I have guessed Mina would do something like that. But, now that I think about it, I'm glad she kicked my ass in those games. If she didn't, I wouldn't have been able to see that side of her before she passed.

-End of August 7th-