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"Swimming?" Himeko gulped. "We're going to be swimming in phys. ed. today?"

"Yeah, they announced it right at the end of class yesterday. Didn't you hear?" her best friend Marika Ohgami confirmed the bad news.

"Um, no..."

Marika shook her head, causing the glitter gel holding her forest of golden and aqua spikes upright to sparkle.

"Really, Hikari, you really can be a space cadet sometimes. It's hard to believe you and Miya-sama are twins."

It was hard for Himeko to believe, too. Especially since in their present lives as Hikari and Tsukuyo Asamiya, they still possessed all the memories of their previous lives as Himeko Kurusugawa and Chikane Himemiya. Even more especially because in those past lives they hadn't been sisters or even related. They'd been lovers. Or more accurately, still were lovers.

"Y-yeah," Himeko stammered as they walked into the girls' locker room, making Marika-who knew perfectly well about Himeko and Chikane's actual relationship-grin evilly.

Their lockers were adjoining, which was good because Himeko figured she would need some support. Facing the grim inevitability of it, she took off her blazer and began to unbutton her shirt. Marika glanced at her oddly as she stripped off her uniform.

"You wore your gym clothes under your uni today?"

"Um, yeah. Mom and Dad had a dinner party with one of Dad's co-workers last evening, so they were gone most of the night."

"Oh, man, you mean-?"

Himeko nodded sadly, then gritted her teeth for the inevitable and pulled off her shirt. She had the shorts off, too, before someone noticed.

"Waah! Miya-chan, what happened?" someone squealed.

"Omigod, look at her!"

"But...but I didn't even know she had a boyfriend..."

"Such a shameless display. How can she embarrass Miya-sama like that?" a particularly sneering voice chimed in, no doubt belonging to one of Chikane's fangirls.

"But she seemed so innocent!"

The reactions weren't out of line, thought a frantically blushing Himeko. Not when her collarbone, breasts, stomach, back, and upper thighs were liberally speckled with the red and purple marks of (as she'd best been able to count) eighteen hickeys.

"N-no, it's not what you think," she protested, fluttering her hands helplessly. "It's-it's just hives, that's all. I always break out this time of year, something about all the pollen being bad for my allergies."

"Yeah, she gets this a lot," Marika chimed in, coming to her friend's defense. "What, you seriously thought Hikari had been out with some guy?"

The couple of seconds that passed seemed like an eternity for Himeko, but the big sigh and murmurs of disappointment that went through the other girls as the potential for juicy gossip evaporated then brought blessed relief. She turned back to her locker to get out her swimsuit.

"Pollen, huh?" Marika murmured softly so that no one else could hear her, then added with an evil grin, "Allergic to your sister's lip balm, I might have believed!"