Chapter Text
Hello, avid Sumika watchers! Sumika has brought you some very good news, like a modern day Hermes – only without having stupid wings on her shoes. Wings on hats are okay. Wings on shoes are never okay. In fact, Sumika tries never to show off her shoes if she can help it, which gives her an air of mystery. Is she wearing wellington boots, or lace-up stilleto heels? Maybe it’s open-toed sandals? Nobody will ever know except Sumika, but you’re allowed to imagine it as long as you don’t tell anybody and you don’t ever come near her in real life.
Anyway! Lately Sumika has been looking to optimise her SEO. Right now she has an SEO of zero because she hasn’t actually published anything, but she’s looking towards her bright future as a mega influencer and pop idol. To help with that, she has taken the liberty of making a team name for all of you! From this moment onwards, everybody who reads this is part of the Sumiquad. It’s a combination of Sumika and squad! It doesn’t mean quad Sumikas, because that would be far too much power. We would combine into one mega-Sumika and take over the world as a benevolent dictator. She would make a little country for all her Sumiquad supporters to live peacefully, for a reasonable monthly fee.
Now that the good news is out of the way, Sumika has to report the bad news. Today, she’s stuck babysitting her big sister Sora, who, unbeknownst to Sumika, was actually a raging lesbian the entire time! In fact, she’s such a big lesbian that she needs two girlfriends just to keep her happy, which blows Sumika’s mind. Buuuuut, both of her girlfriends are very cool people who ply Sumika with treats and give her compliments sometimes, so she’s decided to allow it for the moment.
“You think Hime’s doing okay right about now?” Sham asks.
We’re all lying on our stomachs in Nath’s apartment, playing cards. Sumika is using her superior strategic processors to help her win, but she’s actually getting completely thrashed. Listen, looking smug when you draw a good hand is a basic human right! Sumika isn’t going to stop just because she keeps losing because of it. Smug is love! Smug is life! This sadistic grin is Sumika’s charm point!
By the way, even though Sumika is last, Sham isn’t doing much better. She seems to be holding back because Sumika whined a lot before the game, so Sumika has already conquered her psychologically. Sora is in second, because nobody actually knows what she’s about to do and she has a good poker face. Nath’s winning, because she’s actually good at card games.
It’s been pretty fun so far, but Sumika wishes that they would stop dealing the cat in. The cat isn’t playing, and it’s messing with the card distribution. All the cat wants to do is chew on Sumika’s hat and tempt her with his enchanting belly fluff. She’s still not sold on the whole animals existing thing, but maybe she can allow it.
“I don’t think you need to worry about Hime,” Nath replies, throwing down another winning hand. “You lose again, Sham. You shuffle.”
“Bleeeeeh.” Sham sticks out her tongue while she shuffles the cards. Sumika has never related so hard to somebody else in her entire life. “I just can’t get fired up for a game with no stakes. Why don’t we start a betting pool? One smooch per winning hand, at a time, place and body part of the winner’s choosing!”
“Blech! Why do you have to bring gross kissing into a card game?” Sumika asks. “And also, the prize is worthless to Sumika! What are you planning to do if she starts winning, huh?”
“Oh, that’s easy. You won’t,” Sham winks.
Sumika thinks there has to be a limit to how cheeky one pop idol can be. Card games are all about luck and strategy, and Sumika can just download a winning strategy from the internet! Even if it’s just about luck, Sumika’s got as good a chance of winning as anybody else. If she pulled out all the stops, there’s absolutely no way she could lose even to Nath’s super card shark powers.
“It’s okay.” Big sis Sora reaches across and pats me on the back. “Sham’s not trying to be mean. She just gets fired up when smooches are on the line, so her power increases a whole lot.”
“Right,” Nath says, rolling her eyes. “Sometimes she gets so fired up that there’s more aces in her hand than we put in the deck.”
“Ehehe. All’s fair in games of love! If it’ll get me the maximum amount of smooches, I’ll manifest an Ace of Hearts in my hand through pure will!”
The only reason Sumika is hanging around with these love freaks is that they bribe her with candy and cat bellies. But the other only reason is that her big sister Hime has taken that silver-hair out on a date today, and asked these three to run interference. Sumika wishes that Hime would settle down and be a responsible member of society instead of trying to get her mack on with the guardian of planet Earth, but she supposes that not everybody can match Sumika’s level of maturity.
To be honest, though, Sumika wouldn’t have messed with their date anyway. See, she’s had this brilliant idea. After Sora formed her Thirst Trio or whatever she called it, Hime got super competitive because they were “beating” her, and now she’s really gunning for Suguri’s heart. Or her chest, but her heart is inside her chest, so Sumika is assuming she’d get to that eventually. She’s not that sure how relationships work yet.
But because Sumika’s pretty much given up on beating the silver hair, she figures it’s a lot funnier to watch her try and deal with Hime’s aggressive date expansion strategy. Even if Sumika can’t conquer you, she’ll just watch her sister do it! It’s kind of like that. She would get a bucket of popcorn to enliven the viewing experience, but watching those two kinda removes her desire to eat, so she’s saving money on corn kernels. Economising is important.
She hasn’t told anyone this yet, though, because big sis Sora keeps running interference to help Hime out, and that means Sumika’s got somebody to play with. It’s all part of her master plan.
...Actually, Sumika has one other secret.
She’s not started it yet, but she has a very big project in mind. See, Sora and Hime aren’t Sumika’s only sisters. For starters there’s Sham and Nath, who are her big sisters in law and who are absolutely required to spoil her as a result, but she also has all of the other women her Papa experimented on. They’ve all spread out over the world, but she knows they’re there, even if they never come to visit.
According to Hime, they’re pretty much wandering around trying a bunch of stuff and seeing what they like, and figuring out where they want to call home. Which Sumika thinks is pretty dumb, honestly. She knows they can’t all stay at Suguri’s house, because there’s already a dire shortage of beds, but they should all have a place to come back to already, right? Obviously, it’s Sumika!
The spaceship version, that is.
The Sumika was originally a colony ship, so at its peak, it was kind of like a big city with some thrusters on the bottom. A lot of it got destroyed in the incident with Sumika’s Papa and the subsequent landfall, but she thinks she could still salvage enough for it to be a really big house. Everybody would have their own quarters, and if we salvage the greenhouse and recreation blocks, it’d be like having a garden and a boomerang court! Sumika supposes you could use the space for other, inferior sports like tennis, but she thinks competitive boomeranging would be the most optimal solution.
On top of that… Sumika isn’t like the others. She knows planets don’t last forever, and she’s got to think about what to do when the Earth finally dies. One way or another, she’s going to need the Sumika again one day.
She knows you’ll miss her when she eventually goes back to space, loyal Sumiquad members! Well, okay, you won’t. Sumika is going to outlive all of you by a truly massive amount. But she hopes you’ll be cheering her on from the afterlife. You don’t get to stop being loyal fans just because you’re dead! Prepare yourselves for an eternity of joyful service!
That’s Sumika’s current ambition. She’s going to repair what’s left of her spaceship, spruce it up, and then invite all her new family to stay over whenever they feel like it. She’ll even let Suguri stay, as a show of generosity. It might take her a few hundred years to manage it all, but she’s got time. She won’t stand for any funny stuff under her roof, though. The Sumika is a chaste, wholesome place, like Sumika herself!
But if she doesn’t see it, it didn’t happen. So she’ll turn off the cameras if Sora, Sham and Nath stay over. She can do that much at least.
“Looks like you won, Sora,” Nath says coolly. Since Sumika was busy with her extended monologue, they decided not to deal her in. “I guess Sham and I owe you a kiss each.”
...Actually, why the heckie does Nath just go along with stuff like that? Sumika thought she’d put a stop to their illicit smooch gambling, but maybe she’s secretly into it?
Sora shakes her head. “That’s okay. You both give me a lot already.”
“But you’d be happier with more, right? Right?” Sham asks, leaning over the table. The cat baps her with his paw, because she made a movement without his permission. Cats are imperious beasts.
“Maybe. But I don’t need them. You two already make me feel very loved.”
Urrrrrrrrk! How can she just say stuff like that point blank?! With such a serious look on her face, too! Sumika wants to throw herself on the floor and roll around out of pure embarrassment. In fact, she’s going to do exactly that! Orah!
“Instead, can you both help me brainstorm some jokes? I need a good one, but I haven’t been able to come up with much.”
The idea of Sora as a budding comedienne is so absurd that Sumika stopped rolling straight away. Actually she stopped rolling because Nath’s cat brought down the iron paw of justice on Sumika’s face, but the shock definitely had something to do with it.
“You need one? I don’t mind helping out, but what’s so urgent about it?” Sham asks.
“Hime got a letter from Alte the other day. But one came through for me, too. It was from Mira, and all it had was a knock knock joke,” Sora explains. Wait, Sora’s explaining stuff? Straight away, without making them spend ten minutes dragging it out of her? It must be some kind of girlfriend privilege. “It was a very good one. But now I need to send one back.”
“So… It was just a knock knock joke? It didn’t say anything else? No… news, or apologies, or anything?” Nath asks, furrowing her eyebrows. Sumika has heard rumours that her eyebrows are extremely powerful, but she doesn’t get it herself.
“Mm. It was just a knock knock joke. So I’m sending one back.”
“Uh… why, exactly?”
“Because if we’re telling each other jokes, that makes us friends,” Sora says patiently. “That’s how it works.”
If that’s how it works, then why didn’t you tell jokes to Sumika instead of suplexing her the first time we met?! Why did she have to do the ‘defeat means friendship’ thing when nobody else did? This is discrimination! She’s going to pursue the matter with the highest authorities!
“Alright,” Nath says, squaring the cards and putting them away. “Let’s divide the jobs. I’ll help Sora with brainstorming. Sham, you’re a performer, so you’re in charge of delivery. Sumika, you can be the audience.”
Eh? Sumika’s the audience? Don’t take this the wrong way, but Sumika thinks you have your roles mixed up. She’s way funnier than any of these three. When it comes to clowning, she’s in a class of her own. They named it after her, actually. It’s called S Class.
“I hope you like puns,” Sora tells me.
“Actually, Sumika hates puns. She thinks they’re the lowest form of comedy! Comedians who rely on wordplay bore her to sleep!”
“That’s okay too. Now we know that if we manage to make you laugh, it was a really good one,” she replies.
Sumiquad, please take notes. She knows that all your brains have been rotted by shonen anime, but this is what an unbreakable will looks like in real life. It’s not about gritting your teeth or having a battle aura shaped like a dragon. It’s about having eight equally stupid reasons for every single action you take, and buying into all of them super hard.
So, that’s more or less what Sumika’s doing today. She’s being assaulted with puns by her big sister and her two cool (provisional) big sisters-in-law, so that her other sister can put the moves on her favourite floozy, while also plotting how she’s going to turn the remains of her spaceship into her very own castle, which may or may not fly (she’ll have to wait until she turns the thrusters on to find out). She’s living a quietly chaotic kind of lifestyle.
But she thinks it’s a lot better than being alone. And it’s probably much more fun than she’d be having if she tried to enact vengeance on Suguri, so she’s happy with it.
Until next time, Sumiquad! Brush your teeth! Do some squats! Clean your internet browsing history! And, most importantly: tune in next time for the next exciting episode of the Chronicles of Sumika! She’s going straight to the top!
She’ll see you again soon!
Long live the cuddle puddle! Art by @CoffgirlDAZE