Natsu/Yuzuko, penpals AU, please!:)
Prompt meme thing! Thank you for indulging me with Teppu prompts <3
At first it wasn’t even that important. It was Kei’s fault with her insidious sweetness and overt enthusiasm. Penpals was a big thing in their class at the moment and Kei brought addresses to lunch and talked about it excessively. It couldn’t hurt really, to send just one letter. Everything was so tedious anyway and volleyball was so easy and not even Natsuo’s teammates loathing her supremacy was fun anymore.
Her first letter was formal and polite and she forgot about it the moment she sent it. That is until the minute she actually got a reply, marked with a Brazilian postmark but in perfect Japanese.
She stared at the letter. The extremely happy letter. With four exclamation marks in a row after half of the sentences. Those exclamation marks were taunting her. She felt with a sudden intensity that she loathed this girl more than she ever loathed anyone in her life. This girl who was so happy and whose life seems so utterly and completely perfect. She grabbed a pen, angrily started to write, put the pen down and picked it up again. She managed to formulate a letter that sounded properly scathing and went off and put it in the mail. It didn’t occur to her until long after she posted it that she wasn’t bored anymore.
“You seem energetic today,” Kei told her at lunch the next day and Natsuo shrugged.
Two weeks later she got a reply again. Just as happy, totally uncomprehending of her general unpleasantness and containing a picture of some weird girl with huge eyebrows. Huge eyebrows. It also talked supremely enthusiastic about MMA and about a gala in Japan in six month. Suddenly with clarity as she had never known before Natsuo realized here true meaning in life. She needed to learn MMA much better than this girl and utterly and totally crush her spirit when she came to Japan. Absolutely destroy her will to live. Make here regret every single exclamation mark. Something in Natsuo’s soul found peace at this realization.
MMA turned out to be a good idea. Violence was supremely satisfying. Less satisfying was the painful flow of letters with too many exclamation marks. Natsuo had no idea why she kept replying to them. Nobody should be this happy. It should be some kind of crime. From articles online she had to concede that the weird eyebrow girl actually could fight. Natsuo watched the same three youtube fight videos obsessively over and over again. Kei snuck a peak at what she was watching on her phone.
“Is she that girl?” she asked cheerfully. “She looks nice!”
If Natsuo actually had the capacity to glare at Kei, this would be the time she did.
Exactly 180 days later she was standing around at an airport so filled with adrenaline that it was actually like she was going in for a fight. Because this was like a fight. And she would totally and utterly destroy this girl and she had been practicing for just this. And when she heard a far too loud and far too enthusiastic “NATSUO!”she knew she had this in the bag.
Years later, when Yuzuko gets her in a sidemount and cheerfully arm locks her into staying in bed and cuddling Natsuo realizes that was the exact moment was when her life really went wrong. Strangely she is not as bitter about this as she should be.