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Franziska Von Karma shows up on Miles Edgeworth’s doorstep with little luggage and littler warning. She knocks once, twice and then starts kicking the hardwood when it doesn’t open immediately.
There’s the sound of footsteps pattering towards the door before the whole thing swings open, revealing her brother in flannel pajamas.
“Franziska?” he asks but to his credit, he sounds more confused than annoyed. She takes a deep breath and folds her arms across her chest.
“I’m here because–” Because my roommate is an asshole who won’t stop leaving her shit everywhere and the horrible rules of freshman-year university dictates that I have to be in on-campus housing so they can milk me for all my money’s worth. Her eye twitches at the thought of voicing any of this aloud.
“I’m here,” she finishes stubbornly. Edgeworth’s eyebrow hikes up a millimeter on his forehead but he keeps his mouth blissfully shut and sidles over a couple inches to make room. She slips in through the gap and kicks her shoes off at the entrance.
“You can use the guest room,” he says when she’s already at the doorway. “There’s fresh towels in the closet and the sheets are clean. Let me know if you need anything.”
Franziska nods and slams the door shut.
“So,” Edgeworth says, clearing his throat for the third time. He’s going to make a dent in the floor at this rate with all his shuffling. “So.”
Franziska snaps her paperback copy of Carry On shut, glaring at him over the cover.
“So what? ” she snaps and he swallows, suddenly fascinated with a crack in the wall.
“You remember Wright,” he finally decides on and Franziska rolls her eyes viscerally.
“Of course I remember Wright,” she replies. “You kept a photo of him on your desk for ten years.”
Edgeworth gapes at her like a deer caught in headlights.
“Wright…” he trails off blankly and she drums her fingers against her thigh impatiently. “Wright will be over shortly. We have tea together on Saturdays.”
He’s left blushing like one of those protagonists in a poorly-written shonen manga and Franziska is left horrified at the sight. So that’s why her brother suddenly picked up all his stuff and moved to middle-of-the-nowhere Japanifornia. The pieces slide slowly into place in her mind.
“I understand,” she says curtly, setting the book back on the nightstand. She rummages through her little luggage to find the one pullover sweater she owns–pilfered from Edgeworth’s closet of course–and tugs it over her head.
“That’s not–where are you even going to go?”
“I will take a walk,” she says, checking the battery on her phone. “Some fresh air would do me good.”
Franziska does not want to have her first day of blissful peace and quiet ruined by the sounds of her brother getting absolutely railed. Or hopefully, railing.
If Edgeworth lets Phoenix-sopping-wet-cat-pathetic-Wright top him, then she will have no choice but to deny any relation to him.
“I will be back before dark,” she says and slams the door in his face for the second time in one day.
Her suspicion that her brother lives literally in the middle of nowhere is only confirmed by the scenery.
There are long stretches of empty, yellowish grass in between each house. Several of the buildings have their windows boarded up or look like they’re about two seconds away from caving in on themselves. Franziska passes exactly one store in the span of twenty minutes and it’s a little convenience store with a cat sprawled across the counter. She pets the cat exactly once (which she will deny under duress), buys herself a can of iced tea and then takes her leave.
She’s on the cusp of turning around when someone calls out to her.
“Hey!” a voice yells and Franziska keeps walking briskly, unaware that someone’s trying to reach her. She’s a stranger in this foreign little town–who could possibly be talking to her? There’s the sound of footsteps smacking against the pavement and when Franziska risks a glance over her shoulder at the noise, she spies a girl in a humongous purple sweatshirt barreling down the sidewalk.
“Hey!” the girl shouts, planting herself smack in the middle of her path. “I’ve never seen you around here before! Who are you?”
Franziska looks woefully around the barren street for some other unfortunate passerby but eventually draws the conclusion that the girl is sadly addressing her.
“I’m not from around here,” she says curtly and tries to take a step to the right around her. The girl unfortunately matches her, step for step.
“I’m Maya Fey!” she volunteers unprompted. “What’s your name?”
Franziska tries to feint a step forward in the hopes that she’ll stumble backwards but the girl stands her ground and they almost end up colliding instead. This close, Franziska can see how wide her smile is, spanning toothily from ear to ear.
When she laughs, it feels like it shakes the very ground. Franziska wants to duck and run for cover.
“You look around my age,” Maya says thoughtfully, studying her and Franziska feels suddenly exposed in her gaze, abruptly self-conscious of her brother’s ratty pullover. Fuck him, honestly. “Let’s be friends!”
Franziska has never had a friend before and she certainly doesn’t expect this small-town girl with no concept of personal boundaries to be the first to break the record.
“At least tell me your name,” she wheedles, placing one foot on either side of the walkway to block the whole thing.
“Franziska Von Karma,” she finally concedes when it becomes clear thatMaya won’t move otherwise. She isn’t one to admit defeat–ever–so she decides to consider this a tactical retreat instead. “I’m staying with family for the next two weeks before school starts.”
“Ooh,” Maya says, immediately falling to the side and Franziska takes this as an opportunity to start booking it down the street. Unfortunately, Maya has an equally long stride and manages to catch up to her in seconds. “We don’t get many visitors around here. You here to see the UFO sightings?”
Franziska almost trips on the curb.
“The what ?” she spits out and Maya blinks back at her.
“The one and only thing our little town is famous for? The UFO sightings?” she says, gesturing like Franziska is the crazy one here. And ah, that makes sense now. Edgeworth has always had an obsession with aliens–he used to watch E.T. on their shitty iPad under the covers when they were little. A town with signs of extraterrestrial life and Phoenix Wright? He’d be sold within seconds.
“Seriously?” Maya says at her expression. “You didn’t know? You have to see one. They’re super sick!”
Maya steps off the sidewalk onto the front lawn of a tiny cottage.
“This is me,” she says, inclining her head backwards. “Meet me here tomorrow, I’ll bring out the picnic blanket so we can watch! There’s supposed to be some big alien holiday tomorrow so lots of UFOs!”
Franziska turns on her heel without so much as a goodbye. She doesn’t say yes to the ridiculous proposal but as she walks, she makes a note of the street the Fey house is on.
Edgeworth doesn’t ask about her walk and she doesn’t ask about his “teatime”--if that’s what people are calling it these days. He does, however, show up the next morning at her doorway with the same horribly sheepish expression plastered on his face. Franziska can practically guess his next words but it does little to ease the palpable second-hand embarrassment.
“So,” he begins awkwardly and Franziska kicks the comforter to the edge of the bed. She should at least start gathering her stuff up to go. “Wright is coming over… again… for dinner. You are, of course, welcome to join–”
“I have plans,” she interrupts, cutting him off. He blinks at her like he’s not sure he’s heard right.
“You have… plans ?” he echoes, like an incompetently foolish fool.
“Yes,” she snaps hotly. “With a–” She stops, falling straight over her own words.
“Friend,” her idiotic brother fills in.
“A girl,” she corrects. Something like a smile shines through the cracks of his otherwise monotone expression.
Franziska slams the door in his face–it’s starting to become a routine at this point. And if she spends the afternoon ironing out the wrinkles in her favorite skirt–well, that’s no one’s business but her own.
The picnic blanket, it turns out, happens to be a burrito blanket that Maya stole from her older sister before she left for grad school.
“Here,” Franziska says, thrusting the bag of popcorn at her because she’d been taught at the very least not to show up to someone’s house empty-handed.
“Sweet and salty,” Maya says, doing some horrible wriggly thing with her eyebrows. Franziska throws herself down on the blanket so she doesn’t have to look. “My favorite!”
Franziska makes a noise that is not quite approval but not disapproval either.
“Shh!” Maya suddenly squeals, despite the fact that she’s the louder one of the two of them. “Look, it’s starting!”
The blanket is neither comfortable nor big. Franziska feels the blades of grass underneath poking at her sweater and feels Maya’s hand brush her own before she pulls it back up to point at the sky.
“Look, look!” Maya calls excitedly, following the bright trail of something blazing across the night. Maybe if Franziska squints, she can see a little ring around it like a saucer. “Isn’t it amazing?”
Franziska would rather die than admit that there’s somewhere weight behind her brother’s weird obsession.
But she studies Maya’s profile in the dark, the childish glint in her eyes and the awe etched into her smile.
“I suppose it is.”