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Every interaction with Chiyo eventually, somehow, led Kanna directly to a fight. She had to ask herself: why did she keep trying? She'd tried to keep Chiyo away from Koharu, at first, because she knew Chiyo was a bad influence. For some reason, that didn't matter as much when it came to herself.
When Kanna had first become a cupid, Chiyo had already been around for years. Kanna's actual mentor didn't care much for being a kohai, and Chiyo had, for some reason, taken an interest. She showed it through a habit of appearing whenever Kanna dreaded it most.
Chiyo's battle obsession had forced Kanna to get better. It wasn't a fact that Kanna was fond of, but it it was the truth. She wouldn't be the cupid she'd grown into if not for Chiyo. What she hated almost as much was the fact that she was attached. Chiyo mattered to her. Mattered so much that it terrified her. She wasn't supposed to be able to fall in love, but if she could, she had a feeling Chiyo would take that spot.
(That wasn't even a prediction, but a fact. Something she knew in her soul. It scared the shit out of her. She couldn't become human again— not if she'd just pine for a girl who didn't plan to go back to being flesh and blood.)
Koharu was busy integrating herself into the group. Ena was completely absorbed by this case— to an uncharacteristic degree. That left Chiyo and Kanna to try and get along. Koharu had to learn to do this without Kanna— although hopefully, she'd get karma quickly enough that she wouldn't need to do so for very long.
"Do you think cupids really can't fall in love?" Kanna asked. They'd talked about this before. Not often, but hardly rarely. Usually when they did, Kanna's mind was in a much more abstract place.
"Yeah." Chiyo halfheartedly rolled her eyes. "We're immune to the bullets. Isn't that enough of an answer?"
"That could just be because we're servants of the goddess of love, and they're her weapons." Kanna's elbow wormed its was around Chiyo's, their fingers sliding together easily. "We can't fall for humans. But…" she hesitated.
Chiyo laughed. Not the way she usually did: the tone taunting and dancing. No, this had something desperate in it. "Falling for another cupid? You can't rewrite the rules." The other part, the even-if-we-want-to, went unsaid. The corner of her mouth twitched upwards. "If you want love so badly, dork, you could've come back by now."
A desperate not-without-you almost slipped out of Kanna's lips. Almost.
Kanna hadn't been interested in returning to her life in a long time. Chiyo probably hadn't thought about it in at least a century. She was the oldest cupid that Kanna knew, and she had enough karma that she could leave today— if she wanted to. Sometimes Kanna suspected that Chiyo had done this so long, she'd forgotten what it was like to be a person. That Chiyo didn't know how she'd act in the human world. As rarely as Chiyo was scared, Kanna knew she was nervous to go back to being a person.
She could understand. She'd been the same way. Her old life was years in the past. Everyone she knew was growing up— they were out of her reach. One of her early assignments had been her own mother, which was how Kanna had found out that her father died.
Going back wouldn't just mean fitting in as a person, after all that'd changed. It'd mean starting completely from scratch.
Maybe she fought more than Kanna understood. Maybe she was a little rash, and didn't make the best decisions. Still, Chiyo was someone Kanna could rely on to stay the same, and someone who had accepted living as a cupid just as much as Kanna had.
After all this time, Kanna didn't want to go fall for someone new. Maybe as a cupid, that made her defective. She should want to go back, because it'd be her chance to find love. Still, when Chiyo smiled like that? Or better, when a fight started and excitement lit a fire in her eyes?
It was hard for Kanna to believe she wasn't in love.
"I need to help Koharu first," Kanna deflected. Her eyes focused on some tree in the distance, far enough away that she couldn't look into Chiyo's eyes. Chiyo's palms were so warm against her own. "You know, if you'd stop spending all your points on ammo—"
"Yeah, yeah." The sun made Chiyo's white hair glow. She was ethereal. "As if you don't find this fun."
She shouldn't flirt. Not yet. But Chiyo looked so kissable, and there was nobody to interrupt them. Not now. "It's only fun with you." It was hard to hold back a giggle when Chiyo— cocky, headstrong Chiyo who never backed down from a fight— bowed her head, hiding the blush starting to cover it.
"What are you doing?"
"We can't fall in love. None of us have had our first kiss." Kanna's hand ghosted under Chiyo's chin, lifting Chiyo's head towards herself. "Who better to experiment with?" As if that were the real reason.
Cupids can't feel love. Kanna wished she could believe she was the exception. She knew she loved Chiyo, she knew it'd be romantic someday— knew it might already be romantic. It wasn't unheard of for cupids to try to be in a relationship. It never went well, because their feelings could only grow so deep, and they could only stay together for so long.
It was just practice. She didn't dare try to dream of having a relationship until they could both be human. Chiyo's lips were so soft on Kanna's mouth, tasting of gunpowder just as much as Kanna did. The feeling was new. Kanna wanted to experience it again, and again, until it felt familiar. Until Chiyo was engraved into her mind.
Kanna could go back to being human once Koharu got her chance, and once Chiyo was finally ready. She'd envisioned it: She and Chiyo would both go back. They'd take a train, find each other fast. A cupid would shoot through Kanna, and the bullet would pass through Chiyo as well. They'd go out for coffee, maybe, or ice cream, or some sort of hike.
It'd be a while. Until then, at least Kanna could dream about the real thing.