The rest of the team started showing up and things, in Sae's mind anyways, calmed. It further softened the blow that everyone was impressed with what she had done, eager to pick out sleep mats beside their friends and help themselves to handfuls of candy. She was feeling like a very triumphant captain indeed. More than once, she caught sight of Rin's bitter eye roll, and it was the cherry on top to this absolute win.
Without much effort or prompting on her part, the girls decided much on their own that they weren't yet hungry and they should start with nails. Which was fine by Sae, as long as they were busy and entertained and feeling like a team. She let them pair off and scramble all over the colours, save Rin, who plucked the black nail polish bottle right out of another girl's hand and stomped over to her own sleep mat, warning everyone else to leave her be.
Sae was happy to take whatever colour was left over, but Ryusei had other plans for her. She grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her over towards the mat she'd claimed and the one she believed to be Sae's.
"But I," Sae started to protest, pointing towards the nail polish, but not really pulling away.
"I've already got yours," Ryusei said, proudly displaying an incredibly obnoxious pink bottle in her free palm. Sae was about to protest more, but she caught on to the reasoning right before she said it. "So we can match."
She stopped fighting. She followed the direction her wrist was being pulled in and sat obediently upon the mat she was pretending was hers. It was hers, for now, for all intents and purposes, but the second she suspected the last girl had fallen asleep, she was sneaking right upstairs, equipped with a reasonably believably lie about being a light sleeper and early riser if anyone were to catch her.
She offered her first hand and found that the colour did indeed match Ryusei's nails almost uncannily. And as she watched her shake and open the bottle and start applying it to the first of her fingernails, Sae got her first real good look of Ryusei's bizarre nails.
She had acrylics. Sae had known this about her since she first approached her in the gym that day. But she'd never gotten a real good look at them. Since getting to know her, she knew Ryusei to have a temper, or allude to having one anyways, not that she'd really seen it, and had all these insane stories about how she spent her childhood and current day spare time. As such, Sae always thought she had picked up a habit of breaking her nails.
But it wasn't the case. They weren't sharp or jagged or misshapen. Some of them were made short and filed off that way intentionally.
"Why are your nails like that?" Sae asked as Ryusei started to apply the second coat on her first hand.
"Like what?" Ryusei asked, not looking up.
"Like," Sae said. "Some are short."
She looked up then. And until she did, Sae hadn't realized how close they were sitting or how that gaze would burn into her. There was something deadly in those pink eyes in this moment, and the smile that came with it didn't provide any salvation.
Ryusei's bottom lip twitched, like she was just on the verge of speech, but when she parted them, all that came out was laughter.
"What?" Sae asked.
These moments happened far too often for her liking. These moments of her missing out on some private joke of Ryusei's that she assumed was obvious. They frustrated her. For all the time she spent with her, she still didn't really understand her all that well.
"What?" Sae demanded again.
"Nothing, nothing," Ryusei said. She picked the nail polish brush back up and took Sae's hand back. Sae let her. "It's because, well, it's because,"
The sentence never finished, because Ryusei's voice was overtaken by her own laughter again. Sae rolled her eyes, but because Ryusei was still looking down at her hand and still bemused by whatever this moment was saturated by, she didn't notice.
When she finally stopped laughing, she shook her head a little and said, "Maybe I'll show you later."
Sae still didn't understand the joke and was too proud and ashamed to ask after it or let it be known, so she shrugged and said, "Okay."
If only to take her mind off of it, Sae looked up and started looking around for the first time since they'd sat down. She found herself pleasantly surprised with how well things were going. The entire basement was a shrine to the art of female friendship. Girls laying and leaning over each other, whispering and giggling like children, oohing and awing over each other's nails. You're getting it all over my cuticles, you monster! This colour is so pretty. It matches my hair, don't you think? Can you draw bees on my thumbs? I think you're giving me too much credit. Don't forget to use topcoat! Or else it'll chip off in like, five seconds! Even Rin, who was still looking sour and painting her own nails, had a few of the underclassmen members gravitate over to her, and she was throwing a word or two into their conversation every now and again.
By the end of the makeshift spa time, Sae's nails were atrociously pink. She smiled and such but she couldn't wait to wipe them clean and do her usual clear coat the second the last girl left tomorrow morning.
The nails dried and hunger was upon them, so before the snack and candy table became a warzone, Sae enacted the ordering dinner part of the plan. She'd had an airtight and solid plan, but it became derailed almost immediately. Nobody could agree on anything, and most choices derailed into a flurry of mockery and joking and it was like pulling teeth to get all twenty of them back on track.
It was, however, a problem that solved itself.
"Shut up!" Rin eventually yelled, grabbing the pizza brochure right out of Sae's hands and stomping her way towards the stairway. "All of you just shut up! None of you get to pick anymore! You've lost the privilege! I'm choosing for all of us, and you can deal with it or starve!"
She stomped up the stairs too, and slammed the door at the top of them for good measure. Sae didn't mind. She had her own non-bread and cheese based dinner waiting upstairs in the fridge for her. She actually found herself thinking, as she sometimes did, that Rin would make a half decent captain next year.
When Rin came back, still huffing and puffing about how the entire room had about two brain cells combined, they had about an hour and a half to kill. Sae felt a lull, and she desperately needed to avoid it. Her entire cheerleading career, well, that and her daydreams about bragging to Luna about her superior team building activity, hinged on it.
But before it came, Ryusei filled the space between them with something it seemed she'd been waiting to say all night. "I know. Let's play truth or dare."
The room erupted. Sae had always thought truth or dare a childish game, but it was an unpopular opinion and greatly unshared sentiment. Still, if the girls were that gung ho about anything, and it made them connect and therefore perform better, she was all for it. It's not like she was worried. She was the captain, but more than that, she was Itoshi Sae. Nobody was going to dare turn the game on her. Not a single one of these girls had the nerve. She knew that for a fact.
So, fine, she decided, and took up a spot among the group, Ryusei pressed up beside her, leaning her own obnoxious blonde head right on top of Sae's and forcing her to spend the better part of the first few rounds brushing pink and blonde hair out of her face every time Ryusei laughed.
The first few rounds were boring. Barely worth paying attention to. Or so Sae thought. They were a team, sure, and there were friend groups between them, but in this awkwardness, Sae could really feel the disconnect. You could see who would go after their friends, who was adventurous enough to branch out, who would test the waters of how far they could take things and who would just piggy back off of someone else and repeat a question or task. She found it interesting, actually, seeing how the girls behaved. Much more interesting than who was saying or doing what.
Until it came to Shuto's turn. Sae stiffened a little. She was pretty sure she'd follow suit and leave her alone, but her stupidly ridiculous princess pyjamas had been making her a fair bit bolder than she normally was.
"Nagi!" Shuto said, her voice shrill and high pitched. Sae breathed a sigh of relief. "Truth or dare?"
The white haired girl barely lifted her head off the lap of that purple haired flyer of hers before deciding, "I don't feel like moving, so truth."
"Okay," Shuto said, pretending to ponder. "Who do you like?"
"Huh?" Nagi's lazy eyes widened ever so slightly, and she looked up at Reo, as if looking for confirmation that she'd heard correctly. But then she lay her head back down and closed her eyes again. "Reo."
"No," Shuto said. "I meant, like, who do you have a crush on?"
Nagi's eyes opened again and looked back up at Reo, even more confusion flowing in them. She didn't answer.
Reo did, though. "We're dating."
It snapped through the air.
"Oh, sorry," Shuto said, blushing furiously, looking down at her lap. And to her credit, she seemed to genuinely mean it. "I didn't know."
Sae hadn't known either. Not that she'd been paying attention or particularly cared one way or another. It hardly bothered her who dated who as long as they still performed as athletes, which they did, so it didn't matter.
It mattered to Ryusei, apparently. For a reason she didn't quite understand. It's not like she said anything about it, or audibly reacted, but Sae felt her shift and lift her head and then she could feel her gaze burning into the side of her face. When she turned to her, it only confirmed what she'd felt. She was watching her, both intensely and intentionally, as if trying to gauge her reaction.
"What?" Sae snapped at her.
Ryusei didn't flinch or cringe away. Through her grin, less than a foot away from her own face, she said, "Nothing. Nothing at all."