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In a rare occasion aboard the Astral Express, March actually found herself in her room for once. She sat atop her bed, countless photos splayed out before her. She sorted idly through them, noting the absurd amount she’d taken recently, even by her own standards. She also couldn’t help but notice just how many of them featured the Astral Express’s newest passenger.
With a shrug she figured she must just be happy to not be the newbie on board anymore. There was absolutely no other reason she could possibly have for having so many pictures of Stelle. Not a chance.
As if on cue a knock came to her door, and without looking up March chimed, “Come in!”
The door slid open to reveal the one and only girl March was just thinking of, and as she sprang up from her bed she asked, “Oh, Stelle! To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I was just coming to get you,” Stelle answered as she walked. “Mr. Yang said he wanted to…”
Her train of thought derailed as her eyes wandered, landing on the countless screens on March’s wall, each playing slideshows of entirely different sets of photos.
“Every time I come in here, your dedication to photography catches me off guard all over again,” she mused.
March puffed her chest out, hands on her hip as she boasted, “Someone’s gotta preserve every memory we make on the Astral Express. I could even tell you exactly when I took each of these.”
To prove her point she strided over to the wall, indicating a photo she took of herself and Dan Heng running with panicked expressions.
“Look, this is one of the times Dan Heng and I had to flee for our lives after accidentally threatening to assassinate a foreign diplomat!”
One of? mused Stelle, absentmindedly nodding along to March’s explanation. At least, until an idea spawned from the aether and wafted down into the cabin, landing directly in her noggin.
“March, would you want me to join you in taking pictures?”
“Would I?!” March asked in return, her eyes somehow shimmering even more than usual. “I keep trying to get everyone else to join me, but Himeko and Mr. Yang just laugh me off, and Dan Heng just goes ‘the archives are more than enough to keep all records of our adventures’.”
Stelle suppressed a laugh at that last line being delivered in a dead ringer for Dan Heng’s typical flat tone, then slid her phone out of her pocket. Inspecting the lens on its back, she asked, “Would just using my phone be okay?”
“I guess,” March pouted, “but next time we stop on a planet you gotta let me take you camera shopping!”
Stelle nodded as she started to put her phone away, but March intercepted her, snatching her phone and holding it aloft. “In fact, since we’re officially photo buddies now, we should commemorate it by taking your first photo now!”
“You can’t come up with a better term than ‘photo buddies’?” Stelle remarked, not resisting as March dragged her close despite her sass.
“It’s a work in progress,” March retorted, one of her arms around Stelle’s waist. “Now, say cheese!”
“Say what?” Stelle asked as her phone made a shutter snapping sound.
The two were quick to inspect Stelle’s official first photo as March’s photo buddy (title pending). However, the picture in question caught the former in the midst of turning her head, the resulting blur making it look more like a cryptid sighting than anything.
Stelle narrowed her eyes at the sight. “Should it look like that?”
March laughed in response. “No, it’s because you were moving when I took the picture.”
“Because you said something about cheese.”
“Hm? Oh, ‘say cheese’ is what you say when you want people to know you’re taking the picture.”
“But why cheese?”
March shrugged. “Beats me.”
Stelle’s eyes narrowed further, so much so it was a small wonder she could even still see the picture. “Can we delete this one?”
“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that! We can take another one, but this is a precious memory too.”
“Doesn’t feel very precious right now.”
“A lot of them don’t at first,” March admitted as she rubbed the back of her head. “Give it a bit of time.”
The two sidled close together once more, ready to get it right that time. March made her cheese declaration once more, but this time Stelle was prepared and did not falter.
What she did instead however was recall a specific thing March did in a lot of her photos. She wondered idly if there was some special reason for it, especially considering she never did it in photos with her. In the instant between March’s exclamation and her taking the photo, Stelle decided to try it for herself.
And so that next photo of the two had Stelle kissing March on the cheek and the kiss’s recipient blushing furiously.
March withdrew from Stelle, one hand cradling her cheek. She squeaked, “Where did that come from?”
Stelle shrugged. “I’ve seen you do it all the time with the others in pictures, but not with me. I wanted to try it for myself.”
Her mind still running a mile a minute, March vividly recalled every time she jokingly gave another member of the Astral Express a peck on the cheek in a picture. But considering Dan Heng would always flatly admonish her for it and anyone else would just laugh it off, she had never thought anything of it.
But when it was with Stelle, much less her being on the receiving end…
“Th– that was just– all those were…” she started, unable to admit she only ever did it to mess with her fellow trailblazers.
“Is it some kind of picture-taking ritual?”
“Th– that’s not–”
“Does it only work when you’re the one doing it?”
“Stelle, I’m trying to tell you…”
“C’mon, try it on me now.”
March’s words faded before the steadfast look in Stelle’s eyes, resolute in this conclusion she jumped to out of nowhere. The longer she stared into those golden eyes, the faster her heart beat, and the more words she felt being stripped out of her vocabulary.
Her sigh was the signal to Stelle that her coaxing had worked, and with a small yet triumphant smile she held her phone aloft. March scooted back next to her, her lips puckering. She inched closer and closer to her face, and for as long as it took Stelle never once wavered, patiently awaiting the perfect moment to capture.
And that moment came not one millisecond after March’s lips brushed her cheek.
The instant the deed was done March turned away, cradling her intensely blushing face. All her thoughts were on whether she really did just that and why she was only so hesitant to do it with Stelle and why Stelle kept making her feel like this and–
“This doesn’t look quite right,” Stelle mused, jolting March right out of her reverie.
Looking over she asked, “What do you mean?”
“Look how red your face is in this one. It isn’t with anyone else. We must’ve messed up the ritual somehow.”
Still unable to admit it wasn’t any sort of ritual, March forced a laugh. “Dang, that’s unfortunate. Guess this whole experience will just be a funny memory then, huh?”
“We should try again.”
March froze, her face somehow reddening ever more. “Huh?”
The cycle repeated countless times more. Stelle would insist on receiving this strange “ritual” from March. March would blush too intensely for whatever Stelle was looking for from it. She would have to calm her pounding heart down before trying again.
She swore she ended up kissing Stelle upwards of a dozen times. By some miracle however she managed to get through one particular attempt without even a tinge of red on her face.
“There, that looks good!” Stelle declared, gaze fixated on the picture on her phone screen. “Now that’s a memory worth preserving!”
“I think we made a lot of those…” March muttered, averting her gaze and brushing a finger over her lips.
Until she remembered something, that was.
“Wait, what was that about Mr. Yang wanting to see me?”
Stelle blinked.
“Oh, yeah.”
The two rushed to the parlor car and to the waiting Welt, who insisted he was not mad despite every indication to the contrary. They apologized as one, though Stelle’s vague explanations of why they were late and March’s refusal to elaborate upon them did not win them any favors.
Despite that incident Welt’s reason for wanting to see March was fleeting and unimportant. As a result life on the Astral Express by and large returned to normal, with only a few minor ripples to the status quo.
March saved every picture taken in her room in that moment. She found herself constantly looking over them in rapid succession while splayed on her bed. Every time she did she felt embarrassment mounting in her, but could not find it in herself to stop looking at them.
Stelle also saved every one of those pictures. She had worried that she was laying it on a bit too thick with the playing dumb act. After all, would March have really believed that she had no idea what a kiss was? But all the pictures she so admired were clear indication that yes, she would have. And every moment Stelle idled away looking through those pictures again, she was thankful once more that her most ridiculous of lies was not exposed instantly.
Unfortunately for Stelle, it didn’t take much longer than that to get exposed. Random small talk March made with other trailblazers blew Stelle’s scheme wide open, and the instant she found out she sought to unleash her righteous fury.
Fortunately for Stelle, March’s righteous fury was quick to falter in the face of her own burgeoning affection. And although the moment did come with much petty squabbling and lovers’ quarreling, the two were quick to kiss and make up.
Figuratively and literally.