The last week before the start of the school year was marked with Sour Sweet’s comeback. Indigo was greatly relieved by that – Lemon Zest and Sunny Flare were awfully quiet around her and she started to feel guilty for yelling at them.

“So, how was the farm?” Sugarcoat asked, when they finally gathered at her house, swarming her room, raiding the fridge, and, in case of Lemon Zest, playing with her rats.

“Fine,” Sour Sweet replied. “I hate it, sometimes. Fresh air, cows fucking, staying in touch with nature, slaughtering pigs, horse riding, this kind of things.”

“That’s… good, I guess?” Lemon Zest shrugged, smiling sheepishly.

“The lambs haven’t stopped screaming,” Sour Sweet said. “But the food was fine. How was your vacation?”

“Good,” Lemon Zest replied before anyone could open their mouths. “Except Indigo is like that all the time.” She pouted, crossing her arms.

“I’m not!” Indigo exclaimed. “Also, you and Sunny started it.”

“Oh, please,” Sugarcoat muttered. “Everyone is getting excited by Indigo and Bulk as if they were a thing. Meanwhile, I’m going on a date soon…”

Indigo coughed. “What? Who’d be brave enough? The owner of a cabinet of curiosities?”

“Sandalwood,” Sugarcoat replied. “We met once, talked about rats… Time for the second base, at least.”

“Already?” Indigo asked.

“Why waste time?” Sugarcoat shrugged. “Life is short. Meanwhile, you and Bulk circle each other like two pieces of–” She made a brief pause, scratching her chin. “– lather in the drain.”

“You’re all crazy,” Sour Sweet muttered, shaking her head. “I love you for that.”

Bulk put the barbell on the rack and sat on the bench, wiping sweat from his forehead. The gym was almost empty at this time of the day, save from a few girls using the machines. He looked at them, but he didn’t know any of them.

He was about to start another series of repetitions, when he saw Sandalwood walking into the gym. Bulk suppressed a groan, seeing his friend walking carelessly across the place, munching on some cookies.

“Hello,” Sandalwood said. “I met some girl scouts. Do you want a cookie?”

“No, I need a spotter who doesn’t spit crumbles on my face,” Bulk muttered, putting more weights on the barbell.

Sandalwood shrugged, grabbing another cookie. “You can always ask that Indigo. I guess she’d provide more aesthetic impressions than the humble son of my mother.” He stood above the bench, watching Bulk lifting the barbell. “You should invite her more often. Finally some bowling challenge.”

Bulk didn’t reply, focusing on the barbell. After the tenth rep, Sandalwood looked at the weights with horror, but it took five more before Bulk put the barbell back on the rack.

“Are you sure you even need a spotter?” Sandalwood asked.

“Well, weren’t you supposed to work on your legs?” Bulk sat on the bench. “Remember that workout plan I prepared for you?”

“How could I forget?” Sandalwood shuddered. “After the first training I thought it’d be easier to walk home on my hands.” He smirked and grabbed another cookie. “On a side note, seems that you became a trendsetter. I’ve met a nice Crystal Prep girl recently…”

Bulk grabbed a pair of dumbbells and started a series of bicep curls. “You can ask her if she wants to go bowling.”

“Surely.” Sandalwood took an unsure look at the leg press. “We kinda fell into the swimming pool, then we talked about rats, I drove her home, I got two new rats…”

Bulk focused on the exercise, ignoring Sandalwood. He finished the bicep curls and smoothly moved on to triceps kickbacks. After he was done, he wiped sweat from his forehead and looked at Sandalwood.

“... and then she called me a regressive ecoterrorist cuck,” Sandalwood said. “She has a rather interesting idea of dirty talk. Joke’s on her, though, because if I’m a cuck then it means she’s a–” He was interrupted by the ringtone of the phone lying on the windowsill.

“It’s mine,” Bulk said, walking to the phone. However, Sandalwood intercepted it first.

“Speak of the devil,” he muttered, looking at the screen. “Your doe is looking for her deer.”

Bulk snapped the phone out of his hand. “Call her that one more time and your next workout will consist of you running with me on your back, Master Yoda style.” He picked up the phone. “What’s up, Indy?”

Sandalwood rolled his eyes. “Indy?”

“Hello,” Indigo said. “What are you doing?”

Bulk shrugged. “Well, I was just working out. Umm… How about you?”

“Sour Sweet came back and I talked with my friends a bit,” Indigo replied. “Apparently Sugarcoat is in some kind of a dynamic relationship with Sandalwood. I had to suffer through her very technical description of how this came to be.”

“I can imagine.” Bulk looked at Sandalwood, who suddenly became very interested in the leg press. “Umm… Do you have any plans for today?”

“Well, I was just gonna ask you the same thing,” Indigo replied quickly. “You know, if we, like, met today and grab some coffee and talk… Alone, that is… That’d be great.”

“Sure thing.” Bulk nodded. “How about that small cafe near the mall? The one with masks on the walls. I’ll be ready in an hour.”

“Okay,” Indigo said. “See you around.”

“Coffee, huh?” Sandalwood smirked, putting the sled of the leg press down. “Not bad at all, dude. You just have to stop being so shy.”

“You heard everything, didn’t you?” Bulk sighed.

“Of course. Musician’s hearing.”

“You play bongos!”

“That still requires good hearing.” Sandalwood shrugged and started another series of lifts. “You should be more like her. She says stuff first and only later thinks of what she said. It’s useful, I’d say.”

“Yeah, like when you told my father, uncle, and two cousins that cutting down trees is murder?” Bulk chuckled.

Sandalwood blushed more than he should from all the weights on the sled he was lifting. “Well, at least I talked myself out if it.”

“Actually, it was me who talked them out of shaving your head and throwing you naked into a field of nettle so you’d become one with the nature,” Bulk replied. “But if you start singing The Lumberjack Song in their presence again, I may not be able to intervene.”

“Meh.” Sandalwood shrugged, adding some weights to the sled. “You’d better hurry up, dude. You don’t wanna miss a date and your muscles must be perfect.”

Bulk sighed. “Sandalwood…”

“And remember, bros before does.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Due to some manipulations of the free market’s invisible hand, the area around the mall was blessed with not one, but three cafes. The design of the first one appealed to the likes of Sandalwood – made entirely out of recycled materials, with fair trade, gluten-free coffee prepared by a hermit who lived in a hut made of sticks.

The other was also rather hipsterical in appearance, although not entirely recycled, and with prices suggesting that the hermit could afford sticks of mahogany. Indigo had been there once, when Sugarcoat invited her; they did have decaffeinated coffee, but a sleepless night afterwards convinced her that her body really couldn’t stand coconut milk.

The third cafe was completely different. The masks Bulk had mentioned would suggest that the owner was somehow interested in theatre. However, it was only partially true, as the owner was a retired luchadora – a large, motherly-looking woman in her forties, with a thunderstorm of red curls and hands that could turn a coffee cup in a fine powder. The only part of the place that could be associated with theatre was a green-haired girl called Drama Letter, who had gotten hired for vacation as a barista.

Currently, Drama Letter was sitting by the coffee machine, thinking of all the people who were misinterpreting Romeo and Juliet. For way too many of them, it was the greatest love story of all times. For Drama, it was about a pair of dumb teenagers and their even worse parents.

Indigo Zap didn’t have such problems, not only because she just skimmed the play in question and relied on Sugarcoat’s notes during the lesson. She also had other things on her mind.

“Iced coffee,” she said. “Decaf.”

“What’s the point of drinking coffee without caffeine?” Drama Letter asked.

“Placebo effect,” Indigo replied. “I don’t feel like being addicted to anything, you know.”

Drama Letter shrugged and went off to prepare the coffee. Soon, Indigo was sitting at the table, sucking at the straw and looking through the window at the street. It was hard to miss Bulk – he walked down the pavement in his orange sleeveless shirt, saw Indigo’s bicycle parked by the cafe and walked in.

“Hello,” he said, sitting at the table. “What’s up?”

“Many things,” Indigo replied. “You’d better grab a coffee because it may take a while.”

“Did something happen?” Bulk asked, looking at the door.

“Coffee.”

Bulk sighed and walked to the counter. Drama Letter gave him a weird look when he ordered a latte, but didn’t say anything about it. When Bulk came back to the table, Indigo was drinking her iced coffee in a rather casual manner, leaning back in her seat.

“So, what’s going on?” Bulk asked.

Indigo put the cup on the table. “Well, I was thinking…”

“Yes?” Bulk took a sip of his coffee.

“Don’t look at me like that, it happens to me from time to time,” Indigo chuckled. “Don’t you think that it’s annoying that everyone around is, umm… in a relationship?”

“Umm… no?” Bulk shrugged.

Indigo sighed. “I mean, Twilight is okay. But Sugarcoat and Sandalwood, out of the sudden? Weird. Though at least this one will last two weeks at best.”

“Should I tell him?” Bulk asked. “Not that he’ll mind.”

“No, it’ll be amusing to watch,” Indigo replied. “Anyway, you know how it is, people fall in love and then it goes wrong, they shout at each other, forget about their birthdays…”

“I don’t even know when is your birthday,” Bulk said.

“October 10th,” Indigo muttered. “Wait, why do you think I’m talking about us?”

“You aren’t?” Bulk raised his eyebrows.

Indigo smiled sheepishly. “Maybe…”

Bulk said nothing. There was a brief moment of silence, interrupted only by the sounds of coffee machine and Drama Letter trying to explain something to her boss over the phone in a bizarre mixture of English and Spanish.

“So…” Indigo took a sip of her coffee. “I mean… We barely know each other but… I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?” Bulk asked.

Indigo shrugged. “I don’t know.” She chuckled. “Lemon says my ability to express my feelings has been ran over by a train when I was a kid.”

“Maybe I can help?” Bulk asked. “It’s fun to hang out with you. And I most certainly won’t forget about your birthday.”

“You don’t know everything about me,” Indigo said.

“Should I?” Bulk looked down at the table. “Do you eat people or something?”

Indigo smiled. “Of course not! Unless I need proteins.”

“My distant cousins probably do, but they live in a small village without internet,” Bulk said. “Hope you like mountains.”

“I do,” Indigo replied. “As for the family, I have a sister, but don’t worry about her.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “She was so unconvincing that they won’t release her from prison in the next twenty years or so.”

“What happened?” Bulk asked.

“A lot of bad decisions,” Indigo replied. “My parents are kinda crazy about me, but so far I didn’t steal any car and don’t feel like it, so maybe I’m not like her.”

“Well, you definitely seem nicer,” Bulk said. “And my family is pretty boring, you know.”

“Except they eat people.” Indigo chuckled. “Well, we’d better stay on topic. I mean, we know each other a bit and we feel it’s fun to be around each other and…”

“You’d like to know me better?” Bulk asked.

Indigo raised her eyebrows. “How do you know?”

“Well… That’s what I feel too,” Bulk replied.

“I wonder if it’s love,” Indigo blurted out. Bulk nearly choked on his coffee. “I mean, Sugarcoat told me about a way to check that, but…”

“I guess that’s the same thing Sandalwood told me,” Bulk said. “If you think you’re in love, you need to go and–” He got interrupted when Indigo leaned over the table and planted a kiss on his lips. Before he could do something, she broke away and sat back in her seat, blushing profusely.

“What was that?” Bulk asked.

“I, umm… Sometimes I prefer to rush into things without thinking, you know,” Indigo replied.

“I see.” Bulk leaned over to Indigo and kissed her. She stood up and embraced him, closing her eyes and knocking over the cup with the remains of her coffee. For a while, they stood there, locked in a hug, forgetting about the whole world. Which currently included Drama Letter, who winced and made a gagging noise.

Finally, Bulk broke the hug.

“I guess we may give it a try,” Indigo said, smiling. She grabbed Bulk’s hand and pulled him away from the table.

“Yeah,” Bulk replied. “Wait, where are you taking me?”

“For a little walk,” Indigo replied. They rushed out of the cafe.

Drama Letter watched through the window as Indigo took her bike and the two walked away. She shook her head and walked to wipe the table.

It was a sunny afternoon in the park. Sugarcoat was lying on a blanket under a tree, reading some book, while Lemon Zest listened to music next to her, coughing and wiping her nose from time to time – as usual just before school, she caught a cold. Sour Sweet sat beside them, resting her back against the trunk and watching people walking by, while Sunny Flare seemed completely lost in her bracelets.

“How about this one?” Sour Sweet asked. “Fat or pregnant?”

Sugarcoat turned away from the book and looked at the direction her friend was pointing at. “Fat and pregnant, I’d say.”

Sour Sweet looked again. “You may be right,” she said. “But I’m still winning.”

Sugarcoat straightened out her glasses. “You do realise that as long as we don’t walk to everyone to ask, the results are unreliable?”

“Yeah, the results are unreliable.” Sour Sweet shrugged. “That’s the same thing doctors said when your parents asked if you were a boy or a girl.”

Sugarcoat rolled her eyes. “Questioning my femininity now? Please. I liked it better when you were implying that I lit my cradle on fire and my father put it out with a shovel. Or that my parents fed me with a slingshot when I was a toddler.”

Lemon Zest sneezed and lowered her headphones. “Are you still being horrible people?”

“Yes,” Sugarcoat replied.

“No.” Sour Sweet smirked. “Or yes.”

Lemon Zest shrugged and took a look at the screen of Sunny Flare’s bracelets. “Hey, you know you’re making a lot of typos, right?”

The stare Sunny gave her lowered the temperature by a few degrees. “Those aren’t typos,” she replied. “I always wanted to hack iPear servers, but the only guy who knows how to do that only speaks Tagalog.”

“Ah.” Lemon Zest nodded, shrugging. “So, you want to tag along?”

Before Sunny could reply, a powerful noise assaulted her ears. She looked at her headphones, but they couldn’t possibly be the source of it. Mostly because she was only listening to ambient recently.

However, Sugarcoat quickly gave her a hint. “Sour Sweet, dear, why are you shrieking like a baboon in heat?”

“Your mother was a baboon,” Sour Sweet replied. “But please, tell me I’m not the only one seeing that.” She pointed at one of the paths surrounding the lawn.

“What the hell?” Lemon muttered.

“Interesting…” Sugarcoat’s eyes narrowed.

“Putang ina mo…” Sunny Flare whispered with an accent that wouldn’t fool anyone in Manila. Her friends looked at her. She cleared her throat and decided to observe how the situation would unfold.

There was plenty to start with. What they saw was Bulk running down the path, carrying Indigo on his back. She laughed, waving at them, and whispered something into Bulk’s ear. He rushed across the lawn, almost losing Indigo, but she held him as tight as she could, considering her endless fit of laughing.

“Hello,” Bulk said, stopping by the blanket under a tree. “What’s up?”

Sugarcoat looked up at him. “Indigo. What are you doing?”

“I’m being carried around,” Indigo replied, smiling. “Don’t look at me like that. Haven’t you done anything spontaneous in your life?”

“I did,” Sugarcoat replied. “On the first day at school I asked you where the class was. Also, I need to have a talk with Sandalwood.”

“His back muscles could use some work, yeah.” Bulk chuckled.

“And I wonder what’d happen if you switched places,” Sour Sweet said.

“No, thanks,” Indigo replied. “I really like my spine. It’s the only one I got.”

“Oh yeah, if it broke, you’d be disabled.” Sour Sweet nodded. “Don’t worry, we’d take care of you. Or push your wheelchair down the stairs if we feel that’s better for you.”

“Chill out, Sour,” Lemon Zest said. “Do you have any selfies together? Because you totally should.”

“Maybe later.” Indigo rolled her eyes. “For now on, we have to go!” She smacked Bulk’s arm, making him whinny like a horse and rush back across the grass. Sunny, Sour Sweet, Sugarcoat, and Lemon Zest watched them until the disappeared behind the hill. Even then, the remained silent, processing what just happened.

“Okay, I’ll sum it up,” Sugarcoat said, turning to Lemon Zest and Sunny Flare. “You two created a monster.”

“Hey, at least I’m not dating a hippie!” Sunny Flare exclaimed.

Lemon Zest pouted. “And she didn’t even want our makeover!”

“But you planted the seeds, I’d say,” Sugarcoat replied. “And if what I’ve heard about my glasses is true, you did that twice.”

“Not sure about them, but some seeds will eventually be planted,” Sour Sweet muttered. “And then everyone will cry.”

“Eww…” Lemon Zest winced, covering her mouth in a fit of coughing. “I really didn’t need that mental image.”

“Deal with it,” Sugarcoat muttered. “As we all will have to…”

Author's Notes:

If I got a dollar for every time I misspelled "Indigo" as "Inigo" or "Indiana" (sic), I wouldn't have to write for a living.

Oh wait, I don't write for a living anyway.