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Final season always goes back quickly. It’s always the preparation that takes longer, not necessarily the exams themselves. It’s the consistent reading, highlighting, summary making and sleepless nights that make that one or two weeks absolutely unbearable to students. But just as it arrived, hard and quick like winter winds shutting doors closed, it went by. The sun became brighter, every meal tastier, but there’s still a lingering feel of exhaustion. The time and effort put into getting ideal grades doesn’t leave overnight. It stays. It’s glued to work desks, to homework, to glitter gel pens and uniforms alike. And it drains all of your energy, like a monster.
Mitsumi is currently drowning in that haze. Albeit her smile is as big as always, so are her eye bags. As dark as the night, and positioned in her face like low hanging fruit. She’s absolutely destroyed after finals week. After all, you can't blame her. She really does give it her all every time. She wants to get good grades because she wants to progress in life, she has high expectations for her future, and she has to keep track of them at her youngest. Her very own pressure is exhausting, but exciting.
And who’s closer to those feelings than Nao herself. They've been living together since Mitsumi moved out, and it has been nothing but fun ever since. Mitsumi is amazing company, even when she's sad or tired, she still manages to shine bright, to light up the rooms she’s in. She’s everything Nao wishes she could be.
So, when Mitsumi comes back from school one day, extremely tired, almost wishing to go to bed right away if it wasn’t for a workload of weekend assignments, Nao has a table full of nail cosmetics. From colored polishes of any shade imaginable, to cutters and tiny machines that dry out the pain, almost if it was art of magic (or, well, the art of UV light). And she’s sitting, one leg above the other, on one of their dining chairs; the gingham tablecloth matching the cute, almost childish hairpins holding Nao’s hair back, preventing strands from hitting her forehead.
“Welcome home, Mitsumi.” She laughs gently, softly, but full of energy. “You’re in for a little self care afternoon?”
So, there goes her backpack. The annotated textbooks, the bento box yet to be emptied, the pens she threw in a rush yet to be organized. She almost rushes into the chair in front of Nao. And when she sits, she puts her whole back into the wooden chair back, sighing.
“Long day?” Nao asks, dipping a piece of cotton with polish remover. She gently takes Mitsumi’s right hand within hers, and places it on the table so she can start working. She hunches a bit, out of habit, and begins taking worn down color from her fingernails, one by one.
The smell of the chemicals in the products is strangely comforting. For Nao, it’s her world. Even more than that. It’s the universe she created around herself, the things she loves more. Brushes, curlers. Fake lashes and mascara, eyeshadow palettes. And, of course, nail polish.
She’s grown fonder of nails. After all, hands have a history. And there’s nothing lovelier than holding such a fragile part of something, a book that’s consistently writing itself, and offering it a layer of color that its wearer will display for as long as it lasts. Sure, it’s a fleeting ornament. But it brings people together, it creates joy, so they always come back to get a new color, or perhaps a new design. And to chat, of course.
“How’s school going?”
Nao looks at the small creases on Mitsumi’s fingers. Her fingertips have smudges of dark ink. She must’ve been working hard. So, careful not to let her notice, she holds the cotton piece so that it will also wipe some of that black pen ink. Her joints are a little bit pinker in shade, and there’s a couple moles around her hands and fingers. Despite that, they’re still young hands ready to feel the world under them. They look just like her mother’s hands, it’s quite adorable. Her nails, however, are a little bit unkempt. They have been bitten down a couple times, given them an uneven look across all ten fingers. Schoolwork must’ve really been exhausting.
A weight sinks into Nao’s stomach. She should’ve checked in on her more.
Nao’s touch, to Mitsumi, is soft and intimate. Not in the way Shima-kun’s touch is when their fingers rub accidentally, or how the girls sometimes hold her when they’re excited about something. It’s the touch of someone you’ve known for longer than life. Of someone you can tell your every secret to. It’s a gentle touch that she wants in her life everyday. It’s the hands that she wants holding her when she enrolls to a good university, it’s the touch that she wants adjusting her veil as she marries in a white dress.
“Doing pretty good as usual!”
So when Nao grabs her clippers and buffing boards, she just relaxes her head into her free hand, and watches silently and calmly as she does her job. The sensations of getting a manicure aren’t exactly pleasant, as the nails are sensitive and every single thing Nao does either hurts or tingles a little bit, which makes Mitsumi impulsively try to move her hand away, only for both her and Nao to giggle about it as she keeps going, switching hands to repeat the process.
Nao hums a familiar song. The introduction to a show they watched when Mitsumi was just a kid, and Nao was in charge of babysitting her. Back when her prettiness consisted of shorter hair and an insecure appearance, of oversized tees that covered more than necessary and acted as curtains to cover her shame. Back when she didn’t smell like flower crowns and grass, back when she didn’t do nails and cute hairstyles for a living. It’s strange that she still remembers things like that. Especially since she was heavily against babysitting, back before she knew just how much of a piece of sunshine Mitsumi would be to her and her life. And as she feels herself with a memory handcrafted of blurry flashbacks and baby pictures of Mitsumi, the latter starts to doze off in her very own memories.
Back when she met Nao, when she was just a cute little girl in a world way too big for her, she wasn’t nearly as gorgeous as she crafted herself to become. Her hands weren’t always perfectly styled, with a cute color that matches her skin tone and outfit perfectly, covered in her favorite fruit-scented cream. They were rough, raspy and unsure. They had a dream that they weren’t ready to run towards. Scarred by having to cling onto the ropes of hope, of acceptance, despite knowing that she’d never be fully understood, at least not by her closely related.
But just when she was about to let go of that rope of hope, to settle for a 9 to 5 job with a livable enough wage to not become a corporate slave, Mitsumi put flowers in her hands, and called her beautiful. And of course, words of affirmation from a kid are always true. It’s not in their nature to lie and be malicious, but to be fully honest with themselves and their feelings.
And they would play princesses together. She would lend Nao all her dolls, and give her every flower she picked on the way home, she would play the dad in pretend games, so that Nao could be the mother she always wanted.
So she began looking after herself, so that her hands would be soft and pretty, but strong after long and arduous days of work, like her mother’s very own. She wants to grow to be not just a pretty woman, but a strong one. One that can do just about anything. One that can take the weird gazes on the train with absolutely no shame, that doesn’t cry herself to sleep, doesn’t try to become the absolute most feminine girl just for some dude at work to look at her at ground level.
So when she looks at Mitsumi, she feels a little bit jealous. When she clips short her nails and cleans the table off so she can start to display all her colored polishes for Mitsumi to choose from, she really wishes she had the adolescence that she had. That her only concern was whether or not a boy liked her, or that her girl friends were feeling a bit down and she didn’t know how to cheer them up.
“So, which one of these do you like? I chose them just for you!”
But the bright, bubblegum pink reminds her of Mitsumi’s bubbliness. That cute lavender shade of her innocence. And the pastel yellow, of her kindness. She didn’t get to have all of this growing up, so she chooses to give them to Mitsumi. She longs for her to just think about boys and friends and the color of her nails for as long as she can. And even if she ends up going down her path of self experimentation and discovery, she wants to give her the support that wasn’t directed towards her. She wants to lay down all the resources possible and give her a home.
So she looks at her in adoration, as her eyes scan the different colors. She furrows her brows, puts a hand on her chin like it’s a life changing decision she’s making. So of course, Nao will treat it like it’s something that’s gonna flip her whole life around.
“Choose wisely! What if that Shima-kun guy notices!” She gives Mitsumi her softest laugh as she ruffles her hair.
She can see her blushing. It’s not just cute, it's beyond adorable. Her cheeks to her ears are all red, and she covers her mouth with her hands just to chuckle even harder. She looks quite delicate when she does that gesture, it gives her an inexplicable amount of joy. Which she also feels when Mitsumi covers her own face with her hands to hide the rosy color her cheeks have taken over the slight mention of Shima. She really is head over heels, teenage love at its finest, Nao thinks. She picks up the lavender shade and puts it on top of her palm, like she’s displaying it for a photoshoot.
“I don’t believe we’ve done purples in a while, haven’t we?” She suggests, noticing Mitsumi was a bit too distracted by now. “I think it looks pretty cute on you. The girls are gonna love it, too!”
Mitsumi’s eyes glisten, and she nods enthusiastically. The red on her cheek remains. It’s a visual almost from a romance series. She opens up the polish container, and the tiny brush drips with that cute shade of light purple. Mitsumi’s hand lies on top of her, and she applies one coat of color first. Slowly and carefully, she makes sure that it’s perfectly applied so that there won’t be any problems later.
Nao looks extremely concentrated. She bites her lower lip slightly and her brows seem almost knitted together. Her eyes won’t leave Mitsumi’s hands. She knows Nao is typically the chatty type. The kind to get along with people naturally. After all, she can strike up a conversation from any topic in the span of a second. But the silence is nice. It doesn’t feel strange, but rather comforting and gentle. She knows it’s because Nao is putting all of herself into providing for Mitsumi, into giving her confidence and making her feel just so loved. Even just the initial coat of lavender makes her feel so adorable already. She can’t wait to show it to the girls, to take photos, and to get compliments from Shima.
And Nao is well aware of this. She knows it, from the way Mitsumi’s lips curl upwards into a smile, in how her cheeks rise and her eyelids close slightly. She’s giddy and excited. So when she’s done, she puts her hands under an UV machine. She sets the timer and lets her hands both rest under it, as she pulls from within all her supplies, a couple of packages with cute little designs.
“Let’s add some charms when we’re done!”
She wants to give Mitsumi the chance to live her adolescence like a normal girl. To have a trustful adult in her life that she can tell her sorrows and achievements to. She wants her hands not to be scarred in an attempt to cling onto hope to live, like Nao’s own used to be back when she was her age. She wants her to grow naturally, and to one day, look like her grandmother’s own. Beautiful even after all the years of hard work, even through the wrinkles and the old ages, through the joys and the lows. So she wants to look after her, so that she never loses touch, and gets to cup everyone’s hearts in her teeny, tiny hands. Just like she did to hers, after all those years ago.
Even if it’s just by something simple like painting her nails and putting a cute strawberry motif on top. Because her heart knows, deep down, that Mitsumi is comforted by those tiny details, and finds herself at home in them.