"I'm not sure," he says, smiling shyly. "Um, the weekend probably, unless you have - I don't know - plans?"

"Bending lessons are all on weekdays, everything else can move," Beila says, shaking her head. "Day after tomorrow, after lunch? My house or yours? Or I guess we could use the library."

"Library!" he says. "Definitely the library. Unless there's some really good reason not to use it that I don't know about. Squirrelbats nesting in the walls?"

"Far as I know the library's uninfested. They're just strict about quiet and I'm not quite automatic enough with anything as complicated as soundbending to let us talk above a whisper anyway."

"Oh," he says. "Yeah, there's that. I don't know, I don't think it'll be a big problem, do you?"

"Not if you don't mind whispering. But I think I actually have enough books to do the whole project at home. My mom teaches at an airbending dojo, we live about a block away from it, and they do history lessons there once a week, most particularly about Aang."

"Oh!" says Dao. "Well, then I guess we can go to your place!"

"Okay! It's not that near here, I usually fly - have you got a shuttle pass or do you want me to pick you up or do you really like walking or what?"

"I do have a shuttle pass," he says, "although if the other option is riding a roc I'm a little tempted to suddenly and mysteriously lose it."

Beila snorts. "Goodness gracious, how could you be so careless. Where do I fetch you from?"

Beila writes this down. "Can do. I'll see you then."

"Then!" he says. "Yes. Then. After lunch. The day after tomorrow. At that time."

"Hi! All set?"

"Yep!" he says.

"All right - now, getting on her's a little tricky without any airbending, will you freak out if I just waft you up?" Beila asks, demonstrating this wafting.

"I think I will probably survive wafting!" he says optimistically.

Waft!

"I feel very wafted," he declares.

He nevertheless feels compelled to ask: "Um... to what?"

"Just sorta hug me 'round the waist. You'd pull her feathers out if you held on to those. I'll steady us both as we go but it's good to have an extra layer of caution, you know?"

"Okay," he says dubiously, and he hugs her 'round the waist.

"That was awesome," says Dao.

"Liqing's great! People keep asking me why I don't have a sky bison, like everybody has a sky bison, they have no idea how much those things eat, the ancient nomads could only keep them because they moved around all the time," says Beila. "Liqing, on the other hand, fishes for herself, and the bay fills itself up with fish neat as you please. So. Have you got any thoughts about our topic? 'Cause 'Avatar Aang' is a pretty broad subject."

"Well, everybody knows about all the famous stuff he did after he got out of the iceberg," he says. "But I kind of wonder more what his life was like before that, you know? Do we know much about the time he spent with the original Air Nomads?"

"Not all that much. He wasn't much of a writer, himself, all the primary sources are people who knew him and most people who knew him then were dead by the time anyone knew he needed to be written about. Basically we know the general biographical details - which temple, what years - and some things about the people he visited while he was traveling. And what he taught his kids and the Air Acolytes about the culture. Much of which, mercifully, has been discarded since, I wouldn't really want to shave half my head. The tattoos would probably look cool, though," she adds thoughtfully.

"Think that's enough to make a history project?"

"It'll depend on how liberally we interpret the assignment, if we count Air Acolyte practices, but you know what, Aang totally founded the Acolytes, they count. And they were really good recordkeepers even if they've basically died out as a separate-from-airbenders thing." She heads for the bookshelf and starts scanning titles. "Good idea."

"I had a good idea," he says, bouncing happily.

Beila fetches hers - she breezes it and catches it rather than getting up and crossing the room - and detaches the chordpress into her hand and starts typing up an outline as she scans the book in her other hand. "If you wanna divvy up the books differently, speak now," she adds.

"Nope, I'm good," he says. Typetypetype!

Typetypetype indeed! She sets her book down briefly to turn on update protocols so his screen will have a remote copy of her work. "Need your screen number," she says, and she rattles off hers, although she has to consult the spot it's written in the corner.

"Sorry," Dao says ruefully.

"No big deal." Typety-typety. "You want to go with the presentation or the essay? Essay's longer but some people don't like public speaking."

"I bet I can handle public speaking!"

"Cool. And the test of whether the teacher is elementalist or not will be whether he confesses that he was hoping I'd do a demo after we go up and we talk about slides."

Dao giggles.

Typety-typety. "Lemme know if I'm distracting you," she adds.

"Nope!"

"Awesome, I'm good enough at multitasking that I'd rather also chat intermittently while writing about how Aang always spoke fondly of airball and the thing he most regretted about having only one airbender kid was that he didn't have anybody to play with later in life."

He giggles again.

"I don't think I've had a class with you before this year. What do you do with your time?" she asks idly, turning a page and adding a bullet point.

"Um... not... much?" he says cautiously, like he expects this to be the wrong answer.

"No hobbies or electives or anything?"

"I, um... woodcarving," he admits. "Woodcarving is a hobby."

"Totally a hobby!" agrees Beila. "What kinda stuff do you make?"

"Stuff! Just... stuff. Little stuff. Turtleducks and squirrelbats and stuff."

"As opposed to table legs and wooden whistles," says Beila. "Neat."

"I could make table legs, but I don't have a table to stick them to," he laughs.

"So they'd be quite useless," Beila says. "It is wise of you to skip it."

Dao giggles some more.

"How d'you get into woodcarving? Doesn't seem like the sorta thing they put you in lessons for when you're three."

"...I dunno," he says, "I just kinda... did."

"Had a knife and a random brick of wood and a squirrelbat happened?"

"Well, the first one probably wasn't a very good squirrelbat."

"I would hardly expect it to be, no."

"But I'm all right at it now."

"Being good at stuff is more fun," asserts Beila.

"That's true," he says, "it is."

"Happy not your birthday yet!" says Dao.

He smiles at her.

She smiles back! He's cute. She should write about that, decide if anything needs doing. "You gonna bake me mooncakes?" she teases.

"Man, you don't want any mooncake I'd bake," he laughs. "Maybe I'll carve you a present. A little tiny roc."

"Aww, that would be adorable," says Beila. "I would love a tiny little roc."

"Okay! Then you will have a tiny little roc," says Dao.

When she gets to class, there is a little tiny roc waiting for her on her desk.

Awww! She pockets it. Where's Dao?

Two seats away!

"Don't you usually sit here?" she asks him, pointing at the vacant chair right beside hers.

"Uh - yeah," he says.

"It's not like I'm any more likely to start accidentally firebending than I was yesterday," she points out. "Thanks for the carving, by the way, it's really cute."

"It's. Um. ...You're welcome," he says, with a brief flash of a hunted-looking smile.

"You okay?" Beila asks.

"No, seriously, did something happen, is something wrong, I totally have license to go around fixing wrong things now if something is wrong."

He smiles weakly. "So I've heard."

"Yeah, it's all over the news, I glidered in, Liqing would freak with all the reporters, I'm just glad they're keeping out of the school building proper," laughs Beila. "What's the matter?"

"I guess I just don't think I'm friends-with-the-Avatar material," says Dao.

"I'm still the same person. I've been the Avatar since I was born," Beila says. "They just didn't tell me till this morning."

"Okay," says Dao, "well, I guess I am not really handling it that well."

Beila sighs. "Well - well, why not?" she asks.

"Because... of... stuff?" he tries.

"I'm not, like, overwhelmed with people who wanted to be my friend before knowing I was the Avatar," Beila points out. "I'm not saying I can never make new friends, but they'll be a little trickier to vet, you know?"

"...yeah. I guess," he says.

"But okay," she sighs, "if you wanna sit over there, you wanna sit over there."

He smiles tentatively.

"So is this a - a 'I am concerned in spite of your reassurance that you may unexpectedly firebend' or a 'I want some distance from your incipient fan club' or a 'get away from me, spirit-touched creature, I certainly do not want to go flying with you next weekend' or what?"

"Um... it's not really any of those," he says. "...Did you want me to go flying with you next weekend?"

"I had considered asking you," Beila says. "You seemed to have fun. It's better when it's not commuting."

"Flying with you was... fun," Dao admits.

"Yeah?"

Shyly, "Yeah."

"But now I'm the scary Avatar, woooooo?" She waggles her fingers. "I mean, if you don't want to sit next to me in class you probably don't want to sit behind me on a roc."

"Maybe I just - need some time to get used to it," he says hopefully.

"I guess," sighs Beila, and then class is starting - they have literature first today.

Dao pays attention to class.

Dao is sitting two seats away from her again.

Today, it seems he has gotten up the courage to sit next to her.

"Hello again."

"Hi."

"Got used to the idea?" she asks mildly.

"Trying to, anyway."

"Can I help?"

"I'm... really not sure," he admits.

"Okay, well, lemme know if I can."

"Okay."

Dao sits next to her again. He seems more comfortable today.

"Pff, what was that for?" he says, giggling and rubbing at the droplet.

"'Cause I can!" she says. "Waterbending's fun. Shifu Hayaka says at the rate I'm learning I can get out of basic exercises and into healing inside a month." She caps her water bottle. "Which'll be potentially useful."

"Okay, well, as long as you don't do the same thing when you get to earthbending," he says wryly. "Or fire. Please do not hit me in the face with fire because you can."

"Noooo," denies Beila. "I am a playful fun Avatar! I'm very nice."

"Okay," says Dao. "You're a nice playful fun mean Avatar."

"I'm not mean," laughs Beila.

Dao giggles.

"Seriously, I'm gonna solve people's spirit problems and avert natural disasters and, I dunno, build a giant bridge across the ocean, and work with scientists to figure out what makes bending work. I'm gonna be awesome and everyone'll love me." She chews her lip. "I'm reasonably popular now, but it's for no reason, which kind of bothers me."

"That would bother me too!" says Dao. "It seems like it would be - really weird."

"It's like how there's still technically an Earth Monarchy," suggests Beila, shrugging. "Like, the politics of the entire world are all folded into the United Republic of Nations and the Earth Queen only ever does anything ceremonial anymore, but you can bet if she gets married it's on the news, if she gets pregnant it's on the news for weeks. Avatars regardless of what we do are a focus point for everyone's gossipy attention. I mean, I get it, it's just - I'm going to do awesome stuff, I feel like everyone could stand to wait a few more months till there's something to talk about besides what color I painted my bedroom and what my favorite subject in school is?"

He nods. "Yeah, I see what you mean. Well, I guess it also means that when you do start doing awesome stuff, you'll have plenty of attention already?" he offers.

"Yeah, I suppose. On some level I'm concerned that the questions about where I get my hair cut and whether I'm showing too much favoritism to Republic City by not going to the North Pole for my waterbending training will ever be completely replaced with 'so how did you go about designing that awesome bridge, huh?'"

"Bridge across the ocean," he muses. "How would you do it?"

"Spirits, I don't know, that's an earthbending-slash-architectural question," laughs Beila. "I'd get help, that's how, I'd talk to some people who know bridges and by then I would know rocks and we would do bridge-rock-things to figure it out."

"Well, you better make sure you know your stuff by the time you're getting interviewed on it," laughs Dao.

"Yeah, no kidding, that would be embarrassing - 'So, Avatar Beila, how do you plan to build the proposed bridge?' 'With... rocks?'" she says.

"Big rocks," Dao says solemnly.

"Super big rocks, probably from the ocean floor," agrees Beila, nodding sagely.

"Sounds press-ready to me," he says, totally failing to keep a straight face.

"Future Avatars -" Beila makes a slight face, that has only just occurred to her - "will say 'super big rocks' the way everyone since Korra announces that they look forward to serving you."

"...Is there a problem with future Avatars?"

"I have to die first," Beila points out. "Not looking forward to that."

"Well, sure, but it happens to everybody," says Dao. "And then you get to, like, hang around in the spirit world and tell them how to handle their rocks, or something. Don't you?"

"Yeah, I do, but, like, then I miss everything except for a handful of special occasions once Random Water Tribe Boy is running the show. I suppose it's comforting that I will still exist, but I don't think the spirits of past Avatars are - fully conscious, or I'd expect them to have more effects on things. They can do some stuff, but, like, Avatar Meixing wrote a lot about the landscape of the spirit world and it didn't look like the previous incarnations were all hanging out someplace having fun. My impression is that they pretty much sleep and lend emergency power and advice and then sleep again. Maybe I'll ask them when I figure out how to talk to them."

"Still a better deal than the rest of us," Dao points out.

"I suspect you'll get to persist in some sort of spirit form too, just not with a convenient line of succession so that people can talk to you. But I'll look into it," Beila says. "It sucks for anyone to have to die."

"...Wait, really? You'll look into how death works?"

"Yeah, and see about putting a stop to it. I'm supposed to be able to do spirity stuff, right, not just move elements around, maybe I can."

"Come to think of it I don't know why it hasn't been tried before. Is it not obvious that dying is bad? Maybe previous Avatars have been more inclined to count reincarnating, but, come on, I'm nothing like any of the previous Avatars I know about, that's not hardly living on."

"Maybe somebody did try," he suggests, "and it didn't work, and now whenever a new Avatar tries it Avatar So-and-So shows up to tell them all about how death is inevitable, but nobody tells people because it sounds depressing and nobody else is thinking about it anyway?"

"Maybe. Guess I'll find out. I'm sure thinking about it, though."

"Well... good luck, anyway."

"Thanks!"

He grins a little.

"So having worked up to sitting next to me in school do you think you'll be in a roc-sharing sort of mindset by the weekend?"

"One way to find out!"

"When shall I swing by to conduct the experiment?" snorts Beila.

"Uhhh, good question. I'm pretty much free all weekend," he says.

"Same time as last week, then?"

"Sure!"

"I'll try not to schedule any interviews for then."

He giggles.

Dao opens the door, looking a little fluffy; he hasn't combed his hair yet, and it shows.

"Hello, I'm with the Republic Newscorps! Are you Dao Jukai?" says the reporter. He's wearing one of those eyepieces that will relay what he's looking at and hearing to a computer somewhere on his person and record it.

"What the hell?" says Dao.

"Are you Dao Jukai?" repeats the reporter.

"No, me first," says Dao, "what the hell?"

"I'm with the Republic Newscorps," repeats the reporter patiently, "and I'm looking for Dao Jukai."

"Is there a reason you're looking for Dao Jukai or were you just really bored this morning?"

"According to some of the students at Northwest Secondary, he's dating the Avatar," explains the reporter. "Are you him?"

"Wow, you're good," says Dao, "you found out I was dating her before I did, that must be some kind of record."

The reporter smiles winningly. "So tell me about Avatar Beila! What's she like on a personal level?" he says, apparently heedless of the actual content of Dao's statement.

"Go away," says Dao.

"I won't take but a few minutes of your time," says the reporter.

"You've already taken more of my time than I want you to have," he says, and shuts the door.

The reporter knocks again.

Dao ignores him!

The reporter carries on badgerdoggedly knocking at irregular intervals.

The reporter spots him coming around the corner of the row of houses. "Dao!" he calls, like Dao is his old friend who has inconveniently managed to miss this visit he would surely wish to receive. "Dao, just a few minutes, please." He jogs to catch up.

The reporter follows him.

Dao finds a public park, and sits down on a bench, and gets a knife and a block of wood out of his bag, and starts carving.

The reporter watches him do this for a while, then says, "I'd just like to talk to you for a few minutes about your relationship with the Avatar, Dao."

"Go away," says Dao.

"Now, there's no need to be so unfriendly," coaxes the reporter.

"You spent two hours knocking on my door after I closed it in your face, I think that's actually a really good reason to be unfriendly," Dao points out.

"You could've gotten rid of me in five minutes," the reporter says. "What're you hiding? Did Avatar Beila ask you to keep the relationship a secret? Is she ashamed of you?"

"Just doing my job, Dao," says the reporter. "How long have you known the Avatar? Were you and she together before she was named, or only since?"

"I am just gonna stay here and carve this lizard crow," says Dao, returning his attention to his block of wood, "and if you want to stand there and ask me stupid questions while I do it, then I guess I can't stop you."

...He starts laughing.

"Is something funny, Dao?"

"Yes. You," he snorts. "You are what's funny."

"I'm just an extension of the curiosity of Republic City," says the reporter. "Come on, talk to me, I'll get out of your hair."

"Nuh-uh," says Dao.

"I can be patient. Sources say you gave her a birthday gift. When you picked it out, did you already suspect that she'd also be celebrating being named Avatar?"

"Did you know the otterpenguin can hold its breath for up to six hours?" says Dao, going back to his carving.

"...What does that have to do with anything?"

Dao just smiles.

"Do you feel that otterpenguins are in some way emblematic of your relationship with Beila?" attempts the reporter gamely.

"The panda carp almost died out four times in the last sixty years," he says conversationally, "but last year somebody managed to get a population established in the wild again for the first time since 495."

Dao snickers to himself.

Beila shows up after lunch at his place on roc-back.

He's sitting outside the door again, with his half-carved lizard crow.

"Hi!" says Beila, wafting off Liqing with a gratuitous midair spin and making a three-point landing. "How're you?"

"Uh, a reporter showed up at ugly o'clock in the morning and followed me around asking intrusive questions because some people at school told him we're dating," he says. "But I started answering all his questions with totally unrelated trivia and he gave up."

"That's one way to deal with them. Spirits, I'm sorry, I have no idea who told him that," says Beila, shaking her head. "I haven't been bothered all that much at home but I think it's mostly because my dad is a cop."

"Yeah, that'd do it," snorts Dao.

"If it happens again tell me and I can ask Dad about getting, like, a patrol around this neighborhood to shoo them if they get annoying?"

"I think I'm good for now," he says. "If the next guy doesn't run away when I start talking about panda carp, then your dad can help."

"Panda carp?" snorts Beila.

"They almost went extinct a bunch of times, but they're doing pretty good now!"

"Hooray for panda carp!"

Dao giggles.

"Are you waft-ready over there or do you want to finish what you're working on?"

"Nah," he says, stuffing the lizard crow and carving tools back into his bag. "I'm good."

Beila breezes the both of them up onto Liqing at the same time. "Anywhere in particular you want to go or d'you just want a scenic tour of the greater Republic City area?"

"Scenic tour sounds awesome!"

"This is... very scenic," says Dao.

"I know. You haven't seen the city till you've gotten a look at it from the sky."

"I am starting to see that!" he agrees.

"Side effects include finding all other forms of transportation dreadfully dull, though."

"I think I can live with that."

"I bet!" She grins. "How d'you feel about fancy flying?"

"...Kind of scared I'll fall off!" he admits. "You won't let me fall off, right?"

"Well, you should hold on, and I'll steady us, and I'd have plenty of opportunity to catch you if you did fall," Beila says.

"Okay," he says. "Then sure."

Liqing pulls up still well above the ground and they're both pressed into her feathers as she heads steeply upward. Beila's got both hands firmly on the strap around the bird's neck, holding on, and she whistles again, and Liqing banks, ascending in a broad spiral.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," giggles Dao.

"I think this is exciting enough for me," he laughs.

Beila grins and pets her roc. "I love my Liqing," she says happily.

"I think I love your Liqing too!"

"Nah, my house is fine," he says.

Blushing harder: "What?"

"You're blushing," Beila says.

"I hadn't noticed," he lies transparently, scrubbing at his cheek with the corresponding wrist. It does nothing to erase the blush.

"I'm so glad I could enlighten you," giggles Beila.

He splutters a little.

"Why're you blushing?"

"No good reason," he groans.

"Do you just have no idea?"

"Yes. That. Yes."

Beila's not fully convinced.

"...I could probably figure it out if I put my mind to it but I really don't want to because you're standing right there paying attention to me and my blushing," he mutters.

"Would it help if I turned around?"

"Not really!"

"I guess I could just leave and suffer through an itchy mystery till I see you at school again."

Dao buries his face in his hands and says, "Aaaargh."

"Sorry, I'm being pushy," laughs Beila. "I'm a pushy Avatar. I'll leave you be." She flicks her glider open.

"Thanks," says Dao, somewhat muffled on account of the hands.

"No problem." She takes a running start, bends wind under the glider wings, and flies away.

And Dao goes back inside to do his blushing in peace and quiet with no one bothering him.

Beila attends school at the start of the next school week. She is practicing maintaining ice; she has a bit of it in her water bottle and she's refreezing it whenever it tries to melt.

Dao sits beside her again, but eyes her nervously when she shows up.

"Hi."

"Hi."

She feels bad about being pushy, so today she's not even going to start.

After a few seconds, he smiles tentatively.

"Have a good weekend?"

"Yeah. You?"

"Pretty good. Played with ice. Talked to the nun who's supervising me about spirit stuff. She taught Avatar Meixing airbending."

"Oh, wow," he says. "Cool."

"It's all right, but she wants me to spend a lot of time meditating, like, a lot, like I'd have to drop out of school, which maybe I should do anyway."

"...oh," says Dao.

"Hmm?"

"...well, if you wanted, we could still hang out sometimes. I'd have some free time, just not enough to do school."

"I'd want!"

"I thought I might've overdone it the other day," she admits.

"Um... it was kind of uncomfortable," he says. "But, you know. You stopped."

"I do try to be nice. I'm not perfect. I'm only human. That and an ancient reincarnated spirit-person."

He giggles softly.

Beila smiles at him, and refreezes her ice.

Dao pays lots of attention.

And school ends, and Beila's idly reshaping her ice in its bottle: now it's a cube, now it's a sphere, now it's a triangle, now it's a lopsided star. "I think I'll stick out the term," she yawns. "It's only a few more weeks, and that'll put me at a better stopping place."

"Okay," says Dao.

"I feel like going and buying some juice and seeing if I can turn it into a tasty slush," she says, "want to come?"

"Sure!"

"Yeah." She releases the ice from its crystal structure and it reintegrates with the rest, and retries. This time she manages to form some bits of apple ice spread out a bit more evenly through the juice, but not to the point where it could qualify as a slush. She frowns at it and tries again and gets the texture she had in mind. "Awesome. You want it?"

"...Sure!"

She hands over the apple slush and buys a lemon juice to repeat the trick with. This one she slushes on the first try and drinks herself, grinning.

Dao follows, enjoying his apple slush.

"I want," Beila says, "to talk about something besides Avatarhood, and bending, and the media, for once this week. I dunno what. Read any good books lately?"

"Nope. I did finish that lizard crow, though!"

"Yeah, how'd it turn out?"

"One wing is kind of obviously bigger than the other," he admits. "I'll try again."

"You can't just - carve down the bigger wing? I don't know how this works."

He shakes his head. "I could've if I'd caught it earlier, but now that it's finished, no. Because, like... the wood that's where the too-big wing is isn't in the right place, physically, to be part of a wing that's small enough."

"Most people don't! But think about it," he says, holding out his arm with the elbow bent. "Imagine if I was a statue, and my arm was too big so you had to carve it down." He hunches the arm in a little closer. "See how everything moves? It's even worse with wings because they have all those feathers."

Beila peers at his arm. "Yeah," she concludes, "that makes sense. That's a pity. But you can always try again. The roc is perfect - I've been thinking about trying to string it onto a necklace or something but there's no natural place to put the string and it'd be kind of horrible to have it drilled."

"Aww," he laughs. "I can try making you another one that fits on a necklace!"

"But it's not going to be my birthday again anytime soon," she replies. "Speaking of which, when's yours?"

"Fourth of Spark! What, I can't make you stuff because I feel like it? I make stuff because I feel like it all the time."

"I guess you can make me stuff because you feel like it if you feel like it," giggles Beila.

He cracks up.

"And I made you an apple slush," she realizes, nodding, "so there we go."

"You did! And I appreciate that! Because this is one tasty slush!"

Beila slurps her lemon one. "Well, I can't take credit for the flavor," she laughs.

He shrugs. "You gave it to me, I think you can take credit for all of it."

"All right. I totally invented apples," says Beila, nodding importantly. "Also, I domesticated them, picked the specific specimens involved in that juice, juiced them, invented cups, made that one by hand, and then slushed you a slush."

"You sure are accomplished!"

"So accomplished! My interviews should all be about apples and plastic from now on."

Dao laughs.

"But augh, I didn't want to talk about the media. Bleah. Okay, what else do you do besides carving and school? What do you like, in school?"

"...I want to be a structural engineer when I grow up," he confesses.

"Ooh, you can help me with my bridge across the ocean," Beila says, grinning.

"I was thinking that, yeah!"

Beila grins. "Cool. You need tertiary school for that, right?"

"Yep. So I'm not gonna join you in dropping out," he laughs.

"I'm a little concerned people are going to think that, like, being Avatar's an excuse to neglect my education, but it's really just going to be concentrating on - and there I go with forbidden topics again, wow, I'm going to turn into a boring one-note conversationalist if I do not curb this habit immediately, let's, I don't know, let's go see a movie and then we can talk about the movie?"

...Dao blushes!

Beila sighs. "You're doing it again," she says.

"Stop that," he says, attempting not very successfully to address his own face.

"Are you telling your face not to blush?"

"Y...es..." he admits, and then he starts laughing.

"Why would you do that? It's cute," laughs Beila. "Even if I don't know why it's happening."

"Maybeit'sbecauseIwannadateyou," he mutters.

"Say again?"

He covers his face with both hands and repeats, "Maybe it's because I wanna date you!"

"Yeah? Why not?"

"I just - I'm surprised! That is a good surprise," he says. "That is the best surprise. Let's go see a movie!"

"Sure! I have - absolutely no idea what's playing! We will find out," she says, nodding. Also, she transfers her slush to the hand that is farther away from him so that the nearer hand will be available for holding, if he opts to take a hint.

Beila decides about halfway to the nearest theater to just hold his hand herself.

His blush intensifies, but he doesn't pull away.

"You're adorable, d'you know that?"

"No," he says, blushing some more. "I had no idea."

"Well, now you do," Beila says.

"You are pretty cute yourself," he dares to mention.

"Thanks!"

Dao beams.

Here is the movie theater! "What's your genre?" Beila asks. "I'll watch most anything as long as it's decently written and doesn't have Neko Li in it." She scans the listings on the wall critically.

"What's wrong with Neko Li?"