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Utena Tenjou isn’t tactful .
She’s got a great deal of positive qualities and she’s quite assured in that, but “tact” isn’t a tool in her repertoire that she’s familiar with utilizing often. At the very least, she recognizes that she’s distinctly lacking in tact.
But typically not until the words are out of her mouth and free-floating in the world of their own accord.
“Did you get any Valentines, Himemiya?” she asks.
Utena’s own stash of Valentines barely fits in her bag, and she’s certain she dropped a few of them in the hall on her way from class. Some of them were generic, sweet little cards handed out to everyone in her homeroom. Others were more intricate, slid onto her desk with purpose and detailed with gilding or calligraphy or lace or some gaudy combination of all three.
Anthy is not the kind of person who gets Valentine’s Day cards from her admirers. She’s not the kind of person who has admirers.
She gives Utena one of those smiles , a barely-there creep of her lips that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, paired with a slight tilt of her head. “No, Utena-sama,” she says. “It seems I haven’t gotten any this year.”
“Huh,” Utena says, and she walks the rest of the way to their dorm building in silence.
No Valentines.
“It’s a stupid tradition anyway,” Utena offers once the two of them are hard at work on their arithmetic.
“What’s that, Utena-sama?” Anthy asks, and it occurs to Utena that maybe their earlier conversation hasn’t been plaguing Anthy for the last half-hour like it has her.
“Oh,” Utena says dumbly. “Valentines. It’s stupid anyway. It’s just, like, a popularity contest or whatever.”
“Hmm,” Anthy says, that smile spreading over her face like blood in fresh snow, “I guess I’m just not very popular.”
“I didn’t mean-” Shut up, Utena! Stop talking, you’re only making it worse! Utena curses to herself, then buries her nose back in her math textbook. “Nevermind.”
They sit in silence for a long time, a quiet punctuated only by Anthy’s occasional hum and Utena’s deep sigh.
“I must be stupid,” Anthy says cheerfully at last. “Could you explain problem 4 to me, Utena-sama?”
Utena jumps at the opportunity, glad to have a chance to do something other than put her foot in her mouth.
🌹
Utena Tenjou isn’t precise.
It’s a critique that’s been lobbed at her by teachers, coaches. She can’t get by on brute force alone and she needs to utilize precision, needs to exercise a bit more grace, focus on the finer details. Accuracy isn’t her strong suit, and any task that calls for it will likely end in a mess of epic proportions.
She wouldn’t call herself dainty or ladylike, not even close; she’s just not good with detail work.
And a Valentine is nothing if not detailed.
While Anthy is away doing… whatever it is Anthy does, Utena lays all of the cards she received out in front of her, assessing them. Some are criss-crossed with ribbon and dotted with bows, others bear a light fairy-dusting of glitter, and more still are adorned with lacy doilies and heart cut-outs. Some, like Wakaba’s, are an eclectic blend of all of the above.
It’s difficult to know where to begin, but she starts with the card itself. That’ll be the base of the Valentine, so it has to be strong or the whole thing falls apart. Most of the Valentines Utena received are constructed of cutesy, craft paper.
Utena is not crafty, and she certainly isn’t cutesy.
In the absence of any suitable paper, she repurposes an old gift bag that she thinks Anthy might like, cutting it out until it’s the right shape. It’s a nice pink; it reminds her of some of the roses in the rose garden where Anthy is always hanging out.
The accents would be the next part, Utena figures. Glitter is nixed entirely - she doesn’t have any lying around anyway, and even if she did, she hates the way it gets on everything and sticks around. She’s half-tempted to throw all the glittery cards out with the exception of Wakaba’s - even though Wakaba knows better - but she feels bad so callously tossing out the cards the girls worked so hard on.
In any case, she skips the glitter.
Ribbons, too, are out of the question. If she had a hair ribbon, Utena would gladly give it up for the cause, but hair ribbons aren’t very princely so she doesn’t really keep them around.
Some of the Valentines have cute little heart cut-outs, which is definitely an idea Utena can get behind. She still doesn’t have any paper, so she nudges a snail aside to snag a colored pencil out of Anthy’s pencil box and draws a few lopsided hearts. At the last minute, she copies a more anatomically correct one from her biology textbook. Drawing cartoon-y organs on a greeting card is a little strange, but she thinks Anthy might like this one a little better.
Lace won’t be a problem; luckily, Utena has an idea. She just hopes whatever school staff maintains this building won’t notice the jagged hem of the tablecloth she desecrated for her crafting purposes.
And when it’s all done, Utena realizes that she definitely can’t swing calligraphy.
Maybe if she just concentrates really hard on making her chicken scratch legible, that’ll be good enough for now.
🌹
Utena Tenjou isn’t shy.
So why is she acting like it now, all of a sudden?
She curses herself for jumping when Anthy comes home, creeping silently over the carpet and scaring Utena out of her skin when she sees the glint of spectacles inches away from her face.
“Himemiya!” Utena yelps.
“Did we have art homework?” Anthy asks, eyes drifting over the mess at Utena’s feet.
“Ah, no.”
“Oh.” Her brow furrows. “Then what are you working on?”
Utena runs through her options, and short of “lie” and “eat the Valentine’s Day card” there really aren’t many. So she takes a deep breath, hopes Anthy doesn’t notice that her hands are shaking, and hands the card over.
It’s, admittedly, pretty ugly.
Her handwriting is messy and the lace started to fray after she cut it off the tablecloth and the hearts look more like smudgy little red blobs and the pink of the card itself got uglier the longer Utena worked on it and -
And Anthy is smiling.
Just a little. It’s not a full-on grin, there are no tears of joy.
But her lips turn up at the corners just a little, and she cocks her head to the side and asks, “Is this for me?”
Utena nods. “You’re supposed to give them to people you care about, right?”
Anthy nods. “That’s the idea, I think.”
“Well, there you go.”
“Thank you for thinking of me,” Anthy says. She props the card up on her desk, then moves her pencil case to hold it up when it falls over, unable to stand of its own accord. “It’s very cute, Utena-sama.”
It’s not, and Utena knows it’s not, and Anthy knows it’s not.
But that’s what you do for people you care about.
🌹
Utena Tenjou is alive.
When Anthy finally reaches the end of her search, she forgets all of the social norms she’s carefully cataloged over the years, every more she’s filed away for future reference, each convention she’d thought ridiculous but abided by nonetheless.
“Utena!” she cries, flailing her arms over her head in an overjoyed wave.
The girl on the basketball court stops, giving a member of the opposing team an opportunity to jostle her. She almost falls over, but catches herself, then swipes a strand of pink hair out of her eyes before giving Anthy a puzzled smile and a curious wave in return.
She returns to the game, quickly overtaking her opponents and sinking a basket. Amidst their volley of high-fives, she turns around to see if the girl in the pink jacket is still there, but Anthy has disappeared into the thin sliver of space between buildings.
Of course she doesn’t remember; Anthy wouldn’t have had to come looking for her if she remembered.
No, as she grows closer to Utena - first as friends, and then as more - she will come to find out that Utena’s memory of Ohtori Academy is blurred around the edges and chipped in places, like old pavement or an eroded cliffside or a photograph with the faces all scratched out.
The bits and pieces she manages to hold onto come only in dreams: roses, snails, swords, Valentines.