Toshi found Burajiru near the edge of the dance floor.
The teddy bear costume had acquired a small amount of punch on the left ear at some point in the evening. Plum was nearby talking to another student, animated, her chicken suit feathers moving with the conversation. Burajiru watched her with the specific expression of someone who is keeping one eye on a thing they find worth keeping an eye on.
Toshi came to stand beside him.
"Hey," he said. "That's a beautiful woman you've got there."
Burajiru turned. "Thanks, man." He looked at Toshi. "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere?"
Toshi held his bottle and kept his expression easy. "Yeah. I've been around, sometimes I feed your cats over by the abandon house."
He sat down.
Burajiru "Oh, yeah white haired man."
Toshi "I'll take it."
"Iv'e sen you a few times and don't know why but, I feel like.." Burajiru's brow came together. He looked at Toshi with the specific focus of someone reaching for something that keeps moving when they get close to it. "I feel like I know you but from somewhere else. Have we met before..."
Toshi "We did, it was on the moon."
Burajiru "The moon, wait, I have dreams about the being on the moon but i can't quite remember the dream or what it even means.
Burajiru looked up as if the moment was divine, He looked back at Toshi.
Burajiru "Are you an angel?"
"I'm not angel, don't think too hard about it," Toshi said. "Enjoy yourself. It's a good night."
Burajiru looked at him a moment longer.
Then Plum appeared at his side, slipping her hand into his, and his attention completed its transfer without him deciding to let it. He turned toward her and the reaching stopped.
Toshi watched them.
Plum said something that made Burajiru laugh, the full kind, the one that came from somewhere real, and Burajiru said something back and Plum pushed his arm and he caught her hand when she pulled it back and didn't let go.
Jexa appeared at Toshi's shoulder. She sat beside him.
"You alright?" she said.
"Yeah," Toshi said. "I'm good."
She looked at where he was looking. At the bear and the chicken standing at the edge of the dance floor holding hands.
"Is that him?" she said. "The old friend you're always talking about?"
"Yeah," Toshi said.
Jexa looked at Toshi's face.
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She didn't say anything.
Toshi watched Burajiru and Plum for another moment, the easy way they stood together, the specific gravity of two people who had found each other and stopped moving away, and something moved through his expression that wasn't sadness exactly. More like patience. The patience of someone who understands that the right moment is coming and is willing to wait for it.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get home."
He turned and moved toward the exit.
Jexa watched him go.
She looked back at Burajiru and Plum on the dance floor.
She looked at Toshi's back moving through the crowd.
"I need another beer," she said.
She went to find one.
The Corner. Yusuke and Einstera.
They had found a corner of the gymnasium that was slightly outside the main energy of the dance floor, not removed from it, just adjacent, the music reaching them clearly while the crowd gave them the specific privacy that corners at school dances provide.
Einstera held a cup of something that was not wine but was cold and occupied her hands, which was what she needed it for.
Yusuke stood beside her and they watched the dance floor together for a while without needing to fill the silence.
"We didn't win anything," Einstera said eventually.
"No," Yusuke said. "The other couples, people know them. We're fairly recent."
Einstera looked at her cup.
"Recent," she said.
"People will know us eventually," Yusuke said.
Einstera turned to look at him.
"Wait," she said. "We're a couple?"
Yusuke looked at her.
The composure that he maintained in most situations with the ease of someone who had been maintaining it for a long time found its limit.
"Um," he said. "Well. What I meant was.." He stopped. "I mean the context of what I said was.."
He looked at the dance floor.
Einstera was blushing.
Yusuke was blushing.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
The music continued.
After The Party
The dance wound down the way good things wind down, gradually, with the specific reluctance of people who have been somewhere worth being and are not entirely ready to leave it behind.
Burajiru and Plum had changed out of their costumes.
School uniforms. The regular ones. The ones that existed on the other side of the evening that had just happened.
Burajiru found the bench in the academy's east courtyard, the one that looked out past the building toward the open sky above Dragon Hive, where the stars did what Dragon Hive stars do on clear nights, which was arrange themselves with the specific abundance of a sky that has never had to compete with too much artificial light.
He sat.
He looked up.
Plum came and sat on his lap.
They stayed like that for a while. The sounds of the dance fading behind them. The night settling into its quiet.
Plum looked at him looking at the stars, at the specific expression he had when he was somewhere that felt like enough, the one that didn't perform anything, the one that was just him being present in a moment without managing it.
She moved.
She sat on his lap.
He put his arms around her, the way you accommodate something that belongs there.
The stars continued.
The night continued.
Plum "Sun Bear you've been such a good boyfriend, it's hot, I want you to eat me, I don't want to wait."
Burajiru leaned back with a smug little grin.
"Nope. You have to wait."
Plum's orange eyes narrowed slightly before a playful smile spread across her face.
"Let's play rock, paper, scissors," she said. "If I win, you have to do it. And if you win.."
Burajiru cut her off immediately.
"You have to wear that outfit you had on in the store. The one with the leather jacket."
Plum smirked.
"Deal."
They both raised their hands.
"Rock... paper... scissors!"
Burajiru confidently threw scissors.
But in the exact instant before Plum revealed her hand, time stopped.
Everything froze.
Burajiru stood motionless, still holding scissors in the air.
Plum casually glanced down at her own hand, which had been paper.
She rolled her eyes.
"Yeah... no."
She calmly reshaped her hand into rock, then blinked.
Time resumed.
Burajiru blinked.
He looked at his scissors... then at Plum's rock.
His eyes widened.
"You won?!"
Plum smiled innocently.
"I win."
Burajiru sighed dramatically.
"Fine."
He leaned over and playfully pretended to bite her neck, making an exaggerated growling sound.
Plum burst out laughing.
"Sun Bear that tickles."
The two of them sat there laughing under the night sky.
The end.