taking a break from working on my costumes. Wish I’d been able to afford the same type of foam as my co-conspirators, but I spent that money on buying pretty fabrics so… yeah. And then I was bleeding and now I am typing.

——- prompt: RED ——-

“Hey Rabbit! You still alive in there?”

Tyson Brady was starting to get worried. It had been a long couple days, and despite having managed to convince Usagi to stick out at least the first semester of classes, the number of times she’d broken down so far was starting to get into the double digits. He could understand her distress; catching your fiancé with another woman was only a good thing if you had been looking for an excuse to break off the relationship. Usagi, on the other hand, had invested the whole of herself into this relationship and the betrayal was destroying her. 

He should know; they’d been introduced in 5th grade, when their teachers had arranged a pen pal exchange. She had sent him an absolutely terrible letter in half learned English, and the one he had sent back had been in equally terrible katakana. Their friendship had just seemed to fall into place at that point. They had gone from letters sent by teachers, to letters sent by family, to emails and phone calls. Over time, she had taught him Japanese, and he had taught her English. 

Despite their long friendship, he still didn’t quite know what to expect from this break up. Usagi was a sweet girl, slightly naive, and kind of a flake. She also loved with her whole heart. He still wasn’t entirely clear on the details of how she and Mamoru had gotten together, even with years of detail on every other aspect of their relationship to call upon. It had been her first real experience with love, he knew, and the first one always hurt the worst. 

“Y-yeah… I’m. I’m okay…” Usagi’s voice was still saturated with heartbreak. Tyson just wanted to wrap her up in a hug and let her cry her heart out again. That wasn’t how their relationship worked, however. The distance between them was comfortable, a result of years spent living an ocean a part. Phone calls and letters had been their only contact for so long that even lending a shoulder to cry on felt awkward and stilted.

So instead he had commandeered an out of the way washroom so that Usagi could put herself back together; get rid of tear tracks, redo her make up, comb her hair… that sort of thing. The only problem was that they’d taken over the washroom twenty minutes earlier, and the water had long since stopped running. Whatever she was doing in there, it was taking a hell of a long time. 

“You’re going to have to come out of their sometime, Miss Rabbit.”

The nickname was old and familiar, and in deference to her desire to ‘not be Usagi anymore’ he hadn’t called her by anything else since. On the long list of things he wasn’t sure of was whether or not that was the best of ideas he’d had, but it had at least garnered a smile out of her. It had been small, true, but it was a smile nonetheless.

“I know.” the words were said petulantly, but the sound of the door opening stopped the comment that was on the tip of his tongue. Or maybe it hadn’t been the door opening so much as it had been the sight he’d been greeted with when he turned to look. 

She had cut her hair off. Oh, not all of it, but with the length of her hair it was rather impressive. The edges were cut ragged and rough, the uneven strands crimping and curling in ways that their previous weight had stopped. Taken out of her perpetual pigtails the hair now only barely brushed her shoulders. If that hadn’t been enough of a shock, the hair around her face had been colored with red sharpie marker.

The ink had stained her cheeks and her fingers, despite obvious attempts to wash it off, and she still held the marker in one clenched and trembling fist. The most important detail of the image she presented, however, was the hesitant and hopeful smile. 

“I think I should go red.”

Brady couldn’t help but smile back and laugh with relief.