The gymnasium had become something else entirely.
Whatever it was during school hours, the place with the squeaky floor and the folded bleachers and the smell of effort, it wasn't that anymore. The decoration committee had done their work completely and the result was a space that held the specific magic of somewhere that had been transformed by people who cared enough to transform it. Lights ran the ceiling in warm gold and deep blue. The tables had their centerpieces. The dance floor was full of people who had decided tonight was worth showing up for.
The music moved through all of it like weather.
Students arrived in continuous streams and the energy of the room built the way crowd energy builds, additively, each person adding to what was already there until the whole thing was larger than the sum of its parts and running on its own momentum.
Einstera found Plum near the center of the dance floor
Not by accident. She had been looking, moving through the arriving crowd with the specific purpose of someone who had decided something needed to be done before the evening went any further and was resolved to do it before her courage found reasons not to.
Plum was in the chicken suit, radiant, accepting compliments from three different students simultaneously with the ease of someone who had made complete peace with her situation. Burajiru was nearby in the teddy bear costume talking to someone who had asked about the ears.
"Plum," Einstera said.
Plum turned.
Einstera looked at her sister's face, the warmth of it, the openness of it, the specific brightness that Plum had carried since childhood despite everything that had tried to take it, and felt the thing she'd been carrying since the boutique arrive at full weight.
"I have to tell you something," Einstera said.
Plum read her expression in one second. She took Einstera's arm and moved them both to the edge of the room away from the crowd.
"It's Xiu," Einstera said. "She caught me watching Yusuke's workout videos and I wasn't just watching them I was..." She stopped. Started again. "She blackmailed me. She said if I didn't make sure you wore something embarrassing to the dance she would tell everyone." Einstera's voice was steady right up until it wasn't. "So I took you to the store and I told you everything looked ugly and I made you buy the chicken suit." Her eyes went wet. "I'm sorry. You're my little sister and I let someone use me against you and I..."
She stopped because she was crying and crying while trying to finish a sentence was not a combination her composure could manage.
Plum looked at her.
Then she lifted Einstera's face with both hands the way their mother used to do, the specific gesture, the one from before, the one that meant I see you, and pulled her into a hug that didn't have conditions attached to it.
Einstera cried.
"I figured something was wrong with you," Plum said.
Her voice was warm and complete. "And I know how much you love Yusuke. And I know how much of a hater Xiu is." She held her tighter. "It's okay. I will always love you, big sis. Always."
Einstera held her back.
Outside the competition announcements were beginning. The music shifted. The crowd responded. The evening was starting.
Einstera pulled back and looked at Plum in the chicken suit and laughed, the real kind, wet and relieved and genuine.
"You look adorable," she said.
"Thank you for picking it out for me" Plum said.
The First Competition, Best Dressed.
The announcement came through the gymnasium speakers with the energy of someone who had been waiting to make it.
"Welcome to the Dragon Hive College Academy Dance! First up, the outfit competition! Contestants please make your way to the stage!"
The contestants assembled.
Xiu arrived at the stage in her dress looking like exactly what she had described herself as, the Sexiest Amazon Alive, with the composed confidence of someone who had done the work and expected the work to speak for itself. The crowd responded. Enthusiastically.
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Roxer came out and the gymnasium responded louder. He wore a suit that had been chosen with the specific understanding that a suit on a person built like Roxer was a different category of garment than a suit on anyone else. He knew this. He walked with the knowledge.
Jaja moved through the space with the quiet authority of someone who didn't need to perform.
Yusuke came out in his dance suit and Einstera, watching from the crowd, found something to look at near the ceiling for a moment.
Einstera herself came out and Yusuke, watching from the stage, adjusted his posture slightly for reasons he didn't examine.
Then Toshi appeared.
Nobody knew who Toshi was.
This was not apparent from his presentation. He had arrived at the competition through a chain of events that began with finding wine, continued through becoming considerably more relaxed than he'd started the evening, and concluded with a group of students near the stage who had decided he was clearly supposed to be in the competition and had added him to the list before anyone could verify this.
He moved through the stage introduction with the specific ease of someone whose confidence had been chemically elevated past the point where the question of whether he belonged somewhere could gain purchase.
The crowd watched him with the delighted uncertainty of people encountering something they hadn't expected.
"Who is that." someone near Eurika said.
Eurika had her camera up. "I don't know," she said, taking the picture. "But he's that."
In the crowd Jexa, who had also found the wine, watched Toshi navigate the stage with the expression of someone observing something they had a strong opinion about.
"THAT'S MY MAN," she said.
Several people near her turned.
She pointed at the stage. "THAT ONE. THAT'S MINE."
Toshi heard this from the stage and smiled without looking down.
Then Plum walked out.
The chicken suit caught the light in a way chicken suits are not designed to catch light. She walked with the complete ownership of someone who had processed their situation fully and emerged on the other side of it. She smiled at the crowd. The crowd made a sound.
Not the competitive sound of an outfit competition. The other sound. The genuine one.
"Oh my gosh she's so cute.."
"The chicken suit.."
"How is the chicken suit DOING THAT.."
Plum waved.
The crowd waved back.
In the lineup Xiu watched the audience receive a chicken suit with more warmth than it had received her carefully chosen dress and felt the specific frustration of someone encountering a variable their model hadn't included.
"She's literally dressed as a chicken," Xiu said, to herself, to the stage, to the fundamental unfairness of the situation.
Nobody heard her.
Everyone was watching Plum.
The Couples Competition.
The pairings were announced and the crowd responded to each one.
Xiu and Roxer, the gymnasium lost its composure. Two people who had each individually been generating significant crowd energy, combined, produced something that temporarily overwhelmed the room's capacity to respond proportionately. Xiu stood beside Roxer and smiled the smile of someone whose plan was proceeding.
Einstera and Yusuke, the crowd responded again, differently, the sound of people recognizing something that looked right without being able to articulate why.
Jaja and Elsa, the Amazons together produced a response that was partly crowd appreciation and partly just people wanting to continue looking.
Toshi and Jexa, Toshi raised his cup. Jexa raised hers from the crowd. They made eye contact. The students near them applauded for reasons they couldn't fully explain.
Burajiru and Plum.
The crowd went quiet for one moment.
Then it did something softer and more complete than anything it had done all evening.
"Awwww..."
The sound moved through the gymnasium like something being collectively felt rather than performed.
"A chicken and a bear..."
"That's the kind of love I want.."
"Look at them holding hands..."
Burajiru held Plum's hand and looked at the crowd with the calm of someone who had made a decision and found no reason to revisit it. Plum held his hand back and smiled the smile that started slow and arrived completely.
The crowd kept going.