III. Discovery
Note: Another non-erotic chapter. Originally, it wasn't, but for the length of the chapter, I decided to split it into two chapters. Hopefully the next scene will more than make up for it.
Women talked amongst themselves in the locker room.
Ai hummed to herself quietly as she moved back to her locker, her backpack releasing rattling noises as she moved.
She silently cursed her animation teacher, and his penchant for keeping students late.
While it normally didn't cause her much trouble, she really wished she'd had the time to run her backpack home.
Leaving her things in a locker, even locked, while she was in the gym doing practice always made her anxious.
Even though the room was locked from anyone but the cheerleaders practicing while they worked, the idea that her things were unprotected was always present.
That she hadn't thought to take her supplies for Rachel's gift out of her bag made the concern that much more embarrassing.
She moved to the emptiest row of lockers in the room, hoping that it'd make her things that much safer.
In her daze, she didn't notice Annabelle glaring at her from the end of her row of lockers.
Annabelle, on the other hand, noticed when she gave her bag a nervous glance after she'd finished changing.
An idea formed in the redhead's mind, and she slipped around the corner to finish changing herself without alerting Ai to her presence.
She didn't know if it was just her imagination, but Annabelle found herself wondering at the reason behind her squad mate's nervousness.
Remembering the humiliation her words caused the previous day, Annabelle found herself hoping it was something embarrassing.
While nowhere near as bad as the ideas rolling around to get back at the Goth, she nonetheless didn't take Ai's defense of her as anything but the insult that she thought it was.
She didn't expect her to jump in and help her haze her housemate, but that she'd been on Rachel's side pissed Annabelle off to no end.
Ugly memories arose, and her eyes narrowed to slits as she pondered again on whether to go through with her threat.
Ai remained oblivious to the redhead's ire, cursing as she realized she'd forgotten her lock.
It was, again, something that she normally wouldn't have paid much attention to.
That day, though, she found herself really wishing she'd had the time to run home.
The sound of a locker closing snapped Annabelle out of her thoughts, and she slowly slinked around the corner to avoid being seen by Ai.
Once Ai was in the front of the room, chatting with some of her teammates, Annabelle moved to her locker.
Casting a quick look around herself, she pressed up as slowly as possible.
The metal door slid free without so much as a squeak, and Annabelle took in what lay inside.
Under a frilly blue shirt and a pair of jeans, her backpack lay partially hidden.
Wondering if she'd thought it would hide her bag better if someone took a look, Annabelle chuckled to herself before taking her phone out.
Snapping a picture of the exact placement of the clothes, she lifted them up and pulled the small, black bag free.
The door to the gym opened, and suddenly she found herself in a totally silent room.
Holding her breath, she waited to make sure she was really alone.
When a full minute had gone by without any sound, her lungs forced her to pull new air in.
The zipper slipping free was obnoxious in the silence, and then Annabelle was shamelessly looking for anything to embarrass Aiko.
Shuffling the items around, Annabelle spotted the open drawing pad at the bottom of the bag and grinned.
As soon as she lifted it up, she began reading Ai's neat handwriting mixed with multiple notes to self, the letters forming a much better picture than she'd hoped.
Happy birthday, Rachel!
Before you open the box, there're some things that I need to say that, if I tried to say out loud I'd probably end up having verbal diarrhea and screwing up. You could open the box now, I guess, but that'd probably just confuse you, without reading this first.
Thank you! I want to start by thanking you. If you hadn't appeared answered my ad, I would have been on the streets. Well, maybe not, but I would definitely have had to move to someplace far less convenient for going to school. After moving here with Alex, it could've been ugly suddenly living with someone I'd never met before.
So thank you, for being such a great housemate and friend for the last year.
I thought that I'd celebrate in a way that wasn't just the usual stuff, so I thought I'd make this an exciting one for you. I know we kinda' went out of the usual process with all this, so keep in mind that I'm asking this not as your Mistress, but just as Ai.
While our sessions are the best thing that happened to me in a long time, I've recently been enjoying them more than how I did when we first started. I thought it was just the escalating things and trying a lot of different things that were doing it, but then I started enjoying just having you around, almost as much.
Too creepy!
So, despite how fun things are, I've recently been thinking maybe I'm enjoying them too much. I started enjoying just having you around almost as much the sex. Trust me, that's saying great things about you, not bad things about the sessions. (Too cheesy?)
So I started thinking, and I realized that I'm starting to act like Alex when he was starting to get serious about Laura. I swear I'm not trying to get too cheesy, or to scare you off. If you don't want anything more than staying in the apartment and going back to just being friends, while I won't enjoy it, I'll understand it.
I just wrote this to make you aware of this, since it's been driving me insane. And it'd be unfair to keep going like we have been while not letting you know that it could be getting serious. You don't have to answer right away. I want you to seriously think about things. If you decide after soul-searching that you'd like to date-
Think of better way of asking!
Annabelle lifted her eyes from the page, her face glowing nearly bright enough to match her hair.
Several things were running through the cheerleader's mind as she reread the letter.
Evidently, saying that Rachel probably kept her roomy in the dark about her liking women had been more wrong than she thought possible.
Much more interesting was the "Mistress" bit.
She wasn't surprised that Rachel was into that kind of thing, after the stories she'd managed to get from a very drunken Zoe about her escapades with the blonde back home.
That Ai was into it was much more surprising.
She'd heard stories ever since she'd met Ai about her father, Bochi Kai.
From everything she knew, Ai was very much striving to be the opposite of the party-nut rockstar in every way except for being artistic.
If she was getting freaky with Rachel, though, her theory on that was clearly wrong.
Giggling, Annabelle snapped a few photos of the letter with her phone.
She may have just found a way to get back at them both.
A memory surfaced as she finished her impromptu photo session, and her smirk morphed into an ugly expression.
"If it's Rachel, this'll probably be better for Ai in the long run, anyway," she growled to no one.
Shaking her head in disgust, she bent down to get Ai's things back in order.
Before she slipped the book back into the bag, though, a thought occurred to her and she began flipping through the numerous pages before the one containing the letter.
With each page she flipped, her eyes grew wider and wider open, her face turning almost pure scarlet.
Annabelle had only ever seen Ai's short movie projects when she'd deigned to join the other cheerleaders and humor her.
Her assumption that Ai couldn't draw was shattered with each page.
More importantly, the subject of each image became more and more detailed.
While she wouldn't have been able to accurately guess what most of the items drawn were before, Ai's letter allowed her to fully discern the various bondage tools she found illustrated.
Annabelle wondered on why she hadn't decided to be a fashion designer, with the amount of incredible detail she'd put into the corsets, collars, and restraints she found drawn.
What was disturbing, though, was that each and every one had a model drawn under them that resembled, in great likeness, Rachel King.
She'd never pondered what the blonde looked like naked, but she felt with each drawing like she was being forced to imagine it.
Blushing, she started snapping more photos, going through the images while trying to will her face back to a normal skin tone.
Finally, she finished up, and as she slipped Ai's clothes back into perfect position, a giggle left her throat.
She was going to save Ai some pain, even as she screwed Rachel back with interest.
A brief thought on whether Zoe would approve of the plan appeared to dampen her giddiness, but with a shake of her head, she shoved the thought down.
When she showed up in the gym, spouting an excuse for being late, none of her squad mates questioned it.
She held off on grinning through the entire practice, but just barely...
Ai sat at her desk, humming a soft tune to herself as she worked.
The scenes came to life in the video editor, bringing an even bigger smile to her lips.
Seeing everything the way she wanted, she gave a satisfied nod to herself and popped the CD at her elbow into the computer.
As the video began rendering to the disc, she brought her letter closer to her side and got to work on typing it out.
With the more she typed and edited her sincere words, the more she blushed.
She wondered on how Rachel would react.
While she knew how she felt, or was at least beginning to suspect on it, she only had a guess on what Rachel would think about being asked out.
A thoughtful frown on her face, she found her mind wandering before she could put any effort into focusing...
Ai stared at the box in her hands.
Looking up at her grinning brother, she raised an eyebrow in question.
"You're buttering me up for something, Al," she quipped.
Grinning sheepishly, Alex's eyes moved up to the roof.
"No easy way to tell you this. I'm, uh, moving out at the end of next month."
Ai's smile dropped in an instant, her heart skipping a beat.
"What!?"
"Okay, that sounded bad. Let me back up," he quickly responded upon seeing her shocked expression. "Laura and I have been getting serious lately."
"I noticed," Ai quipped as her heart started calming down.
