Aito

"Let's be best friends."

- Koito to Ai.

Koito × Ai is the femslash ship between Koito Nagase and Ai Ohto from the Wonder Egg Priority fandom.

Canon
Both Koito and Ai are equal in the fact that they don't have any best friend, even though Koito does have friends, but artificial ones according to her. Ai always wished for a best friend, so Koito did too, and then Koito appeared in her life. At first Ai didn't like the fact that Koito was around her, because other people would bully her if she was around Ai, but Nagase didn't seem to mind it at all. Koito even visited Ai in her house and so chatted with her a little, for then Koito ask Ai for being best friends, which this made Ai happy, showing a small smile that Koito couldn't see as she was hugging Ohto.

Once, Koito asked Ai about the reason of why she was hiding her other eye all the time, and when she saw her condition, she said that she wasn't even a little uglier, as she continued squeezing Ai's face while pointing out about her unique hairstyle, and big and round eyes, which were of different colors; blue in left and gold in right because she was heterochromatic. Ohto was shocked as she heard that her best friend Koito was dead since she commited suicide, and went to check right on the place where she commited the act. In a balcony she could saw Koito's putrid dead body with some flies over her feet. Koito seemed on being tired of life when she was being bullied by her classmates because, according to her before dying, she always had the teachers' attention and that it wasn't because of Ai's influence around her.

She managed on seeing Koito as a statue when she was inside the world of dreams while a girl emerged from Ai's Wonder Egg was dealing with some creatures as Ohto was unaware that the girl was still alive. Ai was sleeping and then woke up inside the world, and when she raised her head, Koito's statue started to shed real tears as Ohto inmediately recognized and called for Nagase's name in the statue, when then a tear had fell on Ai's mouth and so Ohto swallows it in the process. After Ai saved Kurumi, the girl that was with her, both had introduced themselves, quickly becoming friends but Kurumi then disappears as she tells Ai to not forget her. Moments later, after Kurumi disappeared, Acca, the person responsible for giving Ohto the Wonder Eggs which had people inside and Ai had to protect, told Ai that she could save [Koito] if she cheered up during her missions, leaving Ai in doubt as she asked Acca's voice if she keeped protecting people she would see her again.

During Ai's missions for protecting the Wonder Eggs' people, she always says to her teammates that she's doing it for seeing Koito again, as she was risking her life more and more for fulfilling that.

In the last episode, when Koito is finally revivied, she looks up at Ai and smiles, before disappearing into dust. As Ai was reminiscing about her last Wonder Egg mission to Neiru, she tells her that Koito was a fake friend. She had always known this, but decided to ignore it in the fact that she could have a friend, no matter how fleeting it would be.

Fanon
It is the most popular ship in the fandom, although the anime itself is new since it was released not much ago. The ship can be interpreted as a one-sided on Ai's side, even though she doesn't show signs on liking her romantically, neither Koito. After the anime was released the pairing received fanbase in Tumblr, tagging the ship as Yuri, or Shoujo Ai (Girls' love) inmediately.

Ai, in fact, does feel fond of Koito since she was her only best friend she could make. For that reason, people would parallel the ship with the ship between Sorawo Kamikoshi and Toriko Nishina from the Otherside Picnic fandom, as both ships showed a bit of similarities. Their similarities would be that both of the ships are femslash, which one ships implies one girl showing attraction to the other one (Sorawo to Toriko's case), and with the other ship, one girl shows affection, if not a crush or attraction, to the other one (Ai to Koito's case), finally, both ships come from new supernatural animes that quickly gained popularity, if not a big one. The main characters from both animes share similarities too, as both are very solitary persons that one day they found someone that had changed their lifes, and also both are heterochromatic and with this condition, both have different eye colors; a yellow/brown eye and a blue/purple one (in Sorawo's case, one of her eyes are from a different color when activating her power, after using it her eyes go back to normal, while Ai was born with it).

Koito×Ai are part from the ships that quickly sailed as a new anime was released, and inmediately got popular in a small amount of time, one example would be Renga, the slash ship between Reki Kyan and Langa Hasegawa from the Sk8theinfinity fandom, which anime was recently out and inmediately received fanbases from different places like Twitter or Tumblr and the ship itself became the most popular of the anime. Another example would be Soriko, which anime even if it didn't get a big popularity, it is appreciated by the yuri's anime fans on Tumblr, which it gets a small fanbase, and along with Koito×Ai both are part from the "shōjo-ai" section, but like said before neither Ai or Koito had shown attraction on each other but a little affection. Yet another example would be the ship between Ramune and Kuro from the Dr. Ramune Mysterious Disease Specialist fandom, though for this one the anime doesn't have a massive popularity and the ship itself doesn't have any fanbase yet, but eventually the ship will grow as the anime continues.

On AO3, the ship currently has one fan fiction.

Fandom
FANFICTION

TUMBLR