"Interestng and fun, huh?" Marisa took a minute to work through this. She'd imagined people admitting this kind of thing to her, sure. It had always come from handsome strangers by moonlight. Or at a fancy party with coy looks. Or maybe while huddling for warmth during a storm.

The point was Marisa didn't only read spellbooks. She had a small collection of cheap romance novels, some of them from the outside world (and boy were THOSE hard to follow, but she'd done her best), hidden under her bed. None of them involved a confession in a dingy gardening shed at two in the afternoon on a sunny day.

Then again, you could also say that none of them came from a girl to another girl in those books. Meiling wasn't a mysterious stranger, but she was tall and, in her own way, handsome. And really, "interesting and fun" was a better compliment than any of the pretty but timid girls from her books.

"...I think I'm okay with that. Thank you."