A Year In The Life, 4/4
A Year In The Life - Part Four
Fried and Greasy
A triumphant scream comes from Shihori's bedroom, and Jun looks up from the magazine he's reading with an embarrassed look. He turns to look at Nino. "She didn't...she didn't just..."
Nino chuckles, seeing her come running out of her room, fully clothed and clearly not having gotten off in the next room over when they're both sitting here eating breakfast. It turns out Matsumoto Jun is more perverted than he looks. "She's too classy for that, Jun-kun."
"Too classy for what?" Shihori asks, nearly vibrating in happiness.
Jun turns scarlet. Nino waves his hand. "Nothing, it's nothing. Why are you screaming?"
"I've found them!" she says, clapping her hands. "Onion King."
"Your chips? I thought they were taken off the shelves," Jun says.
"I know," she replies, clearly about to launch into one of her patented Onion King excitement dances. "But there's a guy who imported them, cases of them, right after the announcement. He has the largest stash in Japan!"
"Someone imported potato chips?" Jun continues. The whole thing confuses him. He'd tried one before and nearly puked from the taste of them. He's clearly remembering them now and looking ill again. As the summer continues right along, Jun has lost some of his initial thoughtfulness around them and has become fully immersed in their den of sarcasm and dumb situations.
"Right, he's up in Ibaraki. I told him I'd come up any time and buy some, and he said today is fine so I'm going!"
"Ibaraki?" Nino and Jun exclaim, almost as though she's said Mongolia or Madagascar.
"He might be a pervert though, so can one of you come with me?"
"We'll look stupid carrying bags of potato chips on the train," Nino says.
"Yeah yeah, I know," she replies dismissively, heading for Aiba's room. She emerges a moment later with a set of keys. "So we'll take Aiba's car. He won't mind so long as I put gas in it."
"This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Jun declares, a little Matsumoto honesty earning him a scornful glare from Shihori. She does not tolerate Onion King dismissal.
"Then stay home and eat some celery, you weirdo!" She turns to Nino with hope in her eyes. "Please Nino?"
"Why doesn't the guy just ship them here?" Jun continues, not caring what Shihori thinks. "He probably lures women in with the promise of chips and then cuts them up in his basement. Is that how you want to end up?"
Nino doesn't like the thought of Shihori going alone to some stranger's house either so he just nods. "Fine, I'll come."
"Thank you," she says overdramatically.
By the time they're dressed decently enough to leave the apartment, however, Jun has changed his mind and decides to come along. He's a curious person at heart and probably wants to take a look at the chip guy for himself. Not many people can pass up such an opportunity, not really.
It's decided that Shihori will drive there and Nino will drive back. Jun declines, informing them that back when he and Aiba were in training together, he crashed Aiba's car into a toll booth one day. He's fairly certain Aiba would not like to find out that Jun has driven his car again. The good thing about this is that Jun pays for the gas to make up for it. They fuel up Aiba's car at the ENEOS station, informing the on-duty Ohno about their road trip.
"Chips huh?" he says, pumping gas and nodding thoughtfully. "Well I hope it all works out."
Shihori smiles. "Thank you, Oh-chan. Of all the men in my life, you are consistently the nicest."
He smiles back, turning a bit red. "Someone has to look out for you."
"Alright, alright, that's enough," Nino interrupts. "We're making sure she's not walking into a serial killer's trap, you know. We're not so bad."
"Right?" Jun chimes in, giving Ohno a stern look.
And then they're off, the address in Mito, Ibaraki programmed into both Aiba's car GPS as well as Jun's phone. Shihori looks ridiculously cute when she drives. When they got in the car, she swore and complained until she was able to get the driver's seat to move up so she could reach the pedals. And now she sits with her hands firmly on the steering wheel at 10:00 and 2:00, making little panicky grumbles whenever a truck passes her on the expressway.
It's the height of summer, and the air conditioning is raising goosebumps on Shihori's skin. Nino tries not to stare, tries not to see if her nipples are hard in her thin tank top, especially with Jun in the back seat saying extremely unsexy things like "you can go around that guy if you want, the other lane's clear." He tries instead to look out the window, tune Jun's yammering out, and listen to the radio station.
It's just after lunch time when they arrive, pulling into the parking lot of a two-story apartment building that's seen better days. Half the flowers in the flower bed out front have wilted and died in the summer heat. "I knew it was going to be a shady neighborhood," Jun is muttering as Shihori parks. He gestures down the road to a vacant lot. "I bet that's where he buries the bodies."
"Oi, shut up!" Shihori complains, reaching in the back seat to wiggle her finger at him in warning. "Be quiet, don't ruin this for me! He'll raise his prices if he sees you scowling at him like a delinquent."
Jun is offended. "I'm the one who's like a delinquent in this context? This guy is selling black market potato chips out of his apartment!"
Nino sighs. "Can we just do this already?"
The three of them get out of the car, and Shihori in her bright green sandals leads the way up the steps to an apartment in the middle of the corridor, threatening to kill them herself if either of them speaks out of turn during her "deal." Nino feels that he'll look back on this time fondly someday, but right now he feels like he's surrounded by insane people. Even one insane person he very much wants to sleep with.
Shihori rings the buzzer, and it's a few moments before a guy arrives to push it open. He seems a little confused to see three people, but he recovers quickly and smiles. Nino doesn't think he looks like a murderer. He's tall, decently built, with a cheerful face that has the same kind of lackadaisical innocence that Oh-chan has.
"Maruyama-san? I'm Kanjiya from this morning," Shihori says.
His smile gets a bit brighter, and Nino has to put his foot down hard on top of Jun's sneaker to keep him from conducting an interrogation of the poor guy. "Kanjiya-san, happy to help. I'm so thrilled to meet someone who understands."
Shihori introduces Nino and Jun as "the help," and the three of them enter Maruyama-san's apartment. Nino bites the inside of his cheek. Nearly every available surface in the tiny apartment, from the countertops to the TV stand to the bedroom floor, is covered with cardboard boxes, some of them open with individual-sized packets of Onion King spilling out.
Jun looks on the verge of hysterical laughter the entire time as Shihori and Maruyama-san gush about their love of Onion King, which nearly sets Nino off too. Maruyama even pulls up an American Onion King commercial from the 80's on his laptop and sings the song for her in a language that might be English or might be complete nonsense. Jun has to excuse himself to stand outside midway through the serenade. Finally Shihori agrees to buy ten of the boxes for an unbelievable 60000 yen, with each box containing 20 individual bags of Onion King. Together he and Jun pick the boxes up from Maruyama's bedroom floor ("it's been hard to watch TV lately, can you take from here first please?") while Shihori pays in cash.
"Please come again," Maruyama says, waving to them as they get everything loaded up. A few boxes have to sit in the back seat of Aiba's car with Jun.
"Please come again," Nino mutters once they're back on the road after driving nearly two hours to get there. At least this time he can focus on the road and not on the breasts beside him. "By the time you finish all of those, the ones he has will have gone bad. Chips get stale."
"I know," Shihori admits, slipping out of her sandals and resting her feet on the dashboard. It makes her skirt ride up, pooling around her hips. If Nino looks with enough dedication, maybe he'll spy panties. He instead looks at the expressway while Jun's on his phone trying to find them a place to get off and stop for lunch. They opt for a rest area near Tsukuba, and the skirt goes back to its proper placement.
It's mid-afternoon and the cafeteria area is nearly empty. They buy a sampling of croquettes and follow it with ice cream, and Jun must be in such a strange mood from the day's events that he doesn't even complain about what he's ingesting.
"So Maruyama-san," Nino asks the table, having a spoonful of ice cream. "Girlfriend situation."
Shihori elbows him. "He just saved my life, and you're criticizing. He was nice!"
"Virgin," Jun chimes in, and Nino nods in agreement.
Shihori rolls her eyes at them. "The two of you, honestly."
"He lives alone in a place like that with boxes of potato chips," Jun says. "No woman is setting foot in there, period. You're a woman and I can't see you going for it."
Shihori continues to defend her Onion King supplier. "Well maybe he goes to love hotels. Maybe he doesn't take them home."
There's a middle-aged man and woman at another table giving them dirty looks, but it doesn't slow them down. "Okay, so I'll allow for a love hotel," Nino decides. "But what does he say to get her to go there with him? What's his pick-up line?"
"You're too much," Shihori complains.
Jun opts for a goofy Maruyama-san-like smile and looks deeply into Nino's eyes. "You look just like a potato, I'm in love." He jolts, having been kicked hard under the table by Shihori. "Ow! Damn it, that hurt!"
Nino snickers, looks back at Jun with what he hopes is equal longing. "Oh Maruyama-san," he says, aiming for an imitation of Shihori's voice. "Do you like them baked or mashed?"
Jun leans forward, licking his plastic ice cream spoon. "Kanjiya-san, I mostly prefer them fried and greasy."
Even Shihori has to cover her mouth to keep from laughing, and Nino lets out a near-squeal, his whole body shaking. "I'm going to leave you two here. Acting like a pair of kids," Shihori hisses as Nino and Jun are both turning red from trying not to disturb the entire cafeteria.
Shihori opts to sit in the back with her precious chips for the rest of the drive home while Nino and Jun sit up front and nearly drive one another to heart attacks play-acting the romantic encounter that will sadly never be between Maruyama-san and Shihori. When they exhaust their ideas about potatoes, they switch over to onions. She tries to look angry, but whenever Nino glances back in the rearview mirror she's smiling.
They get the boxes inside back at home, and Jun gets on a chair to stack them on top of the kitchen cabinets and on top of the refrigerator. She seems willing to space out the consumption of her purchases, going the rest of the day without eating any of the Onion King packets. Jun, more of a social butterfly than either of them, heads out to enjoy his evening off with plans to meet friends at some club. He bids farewell by calling Shihori a "hot potato" in English, closing the door behind him before the slipper she flings in his direction smacks him.
"You really are a hot potato though," Nino says, changing channels to watch a ball game. Aiba's team, the Lotte Marines, are getting their asses handed to them tonight, and Nino considers waking him up with an email but decides against it.
She sighs next to him on the couch, looking back at her manga. "Compliment not accepted."
"What'll you do when you run out again?"
He looks over, seeing her eyes glaze over. He fears losing her to the depths and sorrows of permanent Onion King withdrawal. "I don't know yet."
"Find a new snack maybe."
"Maybe."
"But nothing lasts forever, you know. We live in Japan, land of the limited edition everything. Surely you anticipated this."
She allows herself a sad smile, turning to look at him. "Thanks for coming along, all the same. I promise to make the most of the Onion King that remains to me in order to show my appreciation for what you and Jun-kun did for me."
"We acted out a scenario in the car in which you and Maruyama-san make love on top of a stinky mound of onion powder. Jun is much kinkier than he looks."
"Perhaps you should date," she suggests. "You'd make a cute couple, a love driven by roleplay."
He rolls his eyes and laughs. "Jun-kun's not my type."
"But I am, aren't I?"
This leaves him speechless for a moment. The announcers on TV are oblivious to Nino's sudden distress, describing the various merits of the relief pitcher the Golden Eagles have just brought in for the top of the 8th. He figured there'd eventually be some kind of confrontation, especially after the night she brought him to her bed and neither of them spoke of it again.
"Yeah, you are," he admits, knowing he can't take it back. That the dynamics in the apartment will change from this moment forward. It's a moment he's been dreading more than anticipating these last few weeks, expecting an apology or some vague allusion to Matsumoto Jun.
Instead Shihori looks thrilled, bringing the tips of her fingers to the inside of his elbow, dragging them down toward his wrist. Her eyes don't move away from his. He takes a deep breath when her fingers start the motion over again, back to his elbow and down. He should kiss her, lift that tank top and lose himself in every bit of her soft skin, but it's late and they both work tomorrow. And maybe it's enough for now that the secret's out, especially that it's out and she seems very receptive to it.
She squeezes his hand before picking up her manga and heading for her bedroom and closing the door, leaving him to watch the rest of the game remembering how to breathe.
--
Playing To Win
He likes Shihori, and apparently she likes him, but given how they've always worked, approaching the next level becomes a game of who will slip up first, who will give in. And it's a game they're both playing to win.
While Jun or Aiba are home, it's easy to keep the status quo. They spend the next two weeks in this holding pattern, making small talk, discussing what happened at work, complaining about expenses like a jump in the cable bill. But it's the height of August's miserable, sticky heat when four doesn't become three but four suddenly becomes two for a week-long stretch. If the flight attendants have intentionally scheduled themselves this way, Nino doesn't want to know about it.
He gets home on work nights just before 9:00, already exhausted from work and the walk from the station to the apartment leaving his clothes clinging to him. The apartment's aircon works overtime, even though it costs a ton, and it welcomes him in its icy embrace. On this week, the first week of Shihori and Nino alone with their feelings, he comes home to find her in a tight t-shirt and a pair of very short jean shorts, legs bent at the knee and feet propped on the table. There are little wedge things between her toes while she waits for a fresh coat of nail polish to dry. She smiles at the sight of him in the doorway.
"Hi. Welcome home."
"Hi."
He ignores the stink of the polish, dumping his bag on the floor and running a hand through his hair. He needs a cut. It's gotten to a point one might describe as "floppy" or even "unkempt," and it sticks to the back of his neck when he walks at the warehouse and in the heat. "I need a shower."
"You usually do," she teases, wiggling her big toes. All he sees is legs from her not-fat ankles up to her not-fat calves up past her knees and her soft-looking thighs.
"Ha ha," he says, putting the water on colder than he likes once he's shut the bathroom door.
The next night she's doing her exercise DVD when he gets home, neon pink hand weights in her grasp as he enters the living room. She's mid-lunge, her hair tied back but little wisps of it teasing along her face. Her face is pink and glowing from exertion. Unlike previous occasions, she doesn't bolt at the first sign of someone catching her with one of the DVDs playing.
She's finished with it when he gets out of the shower, but she's holding a water bottle while she sits on the couch, watching a nature documentary. She spends the next twenty minutes sipping from it slowly or tapping the rim of it against her lower lip, rubbing it back in forth. It's a very long, miserable night in Nino's bedroom, and many tissues give their lives. He's pretty sure that he's going to lose this game, whatever it is.
The third night is a no-go because she's snacking on Onion King when he returns home. Satisfied that the compulsion to kiss her won't overwhelm the fear of the onion breath, he can go on the offensive. He brushes his teeth and goes to her bedroom without asking, making himself at home amongst the sheets. She eventually joins him, and even though he wakes the following morning with some of her hair in his mouth, they've managed to get through the night without sleepwalking their way into each other's pants.
But it's night four that dooms him. Even though he's tired, even though there's a cover charge and a two drink minimum, he's promised to check out Subaru's new band, and Shihori has asked to come along. Since moving out, Subaru has been traveling the country finding people to play with since his last group fell apart. Too many marriages and leaps into maturity to keep the rock and roll alive. He's a front man, a voice that needs instruments to best complement it. He's found a drummer and a guitarist, and they're playing some dive bar in Adachi.
Oh-chan's already drunk when they arrive, and he gives Shihori a hug that lasts a bit long. She doesn't seem to mind, giving him a kiss on the cheek when he finally lets go. "I've got us a table!" Oh-chan says, as loud as he'll ever get. Shihori gets some drink with an umbrella in it from the bar and Nino gets the cheapest shit that's on tap. The "table" Ohno has wrangled for them is next to the speakers, and they get through soundcheck and one drink before deciding to keep their eardrums in working order. Oh-chan will probably leave halfway through the set anyhow to smoke a joint in the bathroom with some girl that's way too young for him and won't be seen again until he surfaces at work the next day.
Instead they stand in the back when Subaru and his two new pals take the stage. The bar straddles two neighborhoods, a working-class maze of apartments and a place where biker gangs were once notorious. That scene has probably died down a bit, but the bar still has an edge to it that makes Nino uncomfortable. Subaru writes his own music, but the set list is a mix of things Nino's heard from him before and covers of stuff that was popular in the 90s. The drummer's decent and the guitarist is incredible, but Subaru, now boasting stringy black hair and a Jesus beard, holds up his hands during a break in the music to let the crowd know they don't have a name yet and they're taking suggestions in an empty fishbowl on the bar.
He and Shihori spend the next three songs scribbling terrible names on cocktail napkins. Among them are "Naked Clowns," "Waseda University Jazz Band," "I Just Shit My Pants," "Subaru Fucked My Girlfriend," "Engorged Penis," and of course, "I Just Shit My Pants Again!" He almost writes "Onion King," but decides that's in poor taste if he ever wants to get laid. Nino almost wishes Aiba was here to lend them his particular brand of genius, but they wad up all the napkins and shove them into the fishbowl midway through the set, almost crying in laughter.
Now that the crowd's mostly met and exceeded the two drink minimum, Nino and Shihori included, the place starts to get rowdy. Most of the attendees are early-to-mid-20s, escaping the tedium and politeness of everyday existence to dance around or sway, sing along with the lyrics they recognize. Save for some track lighting by the bar, it's darker than some back alley Kabukicho club you find in gangster movies. The whole place is probably a fire hazard, days from being shut down. Subaru likes to pick places like these.
To keep people from bumping into them, Nino pulls them away from the bar, back against a wall near a broken electronic dartboard. Subaru and his nameless band get the crowd going, and Nino has his back to the wall and Shihori in front of him, hands clasped around her waist. Her hair's tied up and out of the way, and she's got this long silver chain on, a heart-shaped pendant that rests between her breasts. Nino takes advantage of the dark bar to nuzzle against the back of her neck, tongue slipping along the little chain links.
She's hot, her skin's so hot, and she grows fairly still, eventually cocking her head to the side so he can kiss from just behind her ear and down her neck. His hands slide down to her hips, and she doesn't make him stop when he moves kind of awkwardly against her, knowing she can feel and confirm that he wants her. Eventually she squeezes his hand and says "let's get out of here."
They split the cab fare home because she knows and puts up with how cheap he is, and when they're halfway up the steps to the apartment she loses a shoe and they sit down right there to share their first kiss. Their clothes smell like smoke from the bar and so does her hair, but that's not what Nino will remember later on. He'll just remember cradling her head in his hands, her fingers twisted in his t-shirt. Things get a little more serious, and she's kind enough to let him paw at her like he's drunker than he is, squeezing her through her bra, grasping her ponytail.
Eventually they're laughing, two adults making out on the stairs, sitting uncomfortably on the ugly orange carpet that runs up them. "Let's go inside already," she complains, getting up and retrieving her shoe. When they get inside and lock the door, he tries to pin her against it, to get right back to it, hands reaching down to lift at her skirt, but she's still laughing, turning her face away. "Calm down, the world's not ending tomorrow."
"We smell terrible," he reluctantly agrees, opting instead to press a kiss to her cheek and let her go.
She disappears into the bathroom for a while, emerging in nothing more than a towel because why not, he's already felt her up, and he cleans off the stink of the bar when she's finished. He finds her in her room running a comb through her hair.
"Do I get to sleep in here?" he asks. "I like your bed more than mine."
She rolls her eyes at him. "I don't have sex on the first date, Nino."
"Is it really a first date?" he wonders, leaning against her doorframe. "We've been living together so long and have probably skipped over so many important dating moments."
She sets the comb down. "I don't want a first time with you to be the same night I wrote down 'I Just Shit My Pants' on a cocktail napkin. I know what I'll remember ten years from now."
He crosses his arms, pretending to be offended. "I am much more memorable than a cocktail napkin. I can get you some references."
Shihori heads to her bed, turning it down for the night. "I don't want your references. I'll make up my own mind when the time comes, thank you." She pats the mattress next to her. "You can still share. I know Kenji prefers sleeping in your bed when you're not in it."
"That's a very Kitagawa thing to say."
She shakes her head. "Ugh, I know. We know who really rules this house, don't we?"
He makes sure the apartment's locked up for the night, and he joins her in bed, turning out the lamp. He doesn't press the issue, contents himself with kissing her every place she's willing to allow. He thought he'd be more nervous, that there'd be more hesitation on her end. He thought it would be a more complicated feeling, giving in and allowing himself to tangle their lives together. Instead he feels good, he feels perfect, discovering how she fits beside him.
--
For Your Information
They tell Aiba and Jun because they have to tell Aiba and Jun. Aiba is jubilant, claiming to have been supportive from day one even though he has never openly spoken of it before. But he issues a stern warning for them not to have sex in his bed. It's a fair point, too. Of the four of them in the apartment, Aiba's mattress is the largest and nicest, something he'd gotten from a discount superstore in Saitama and managed to strap to the roof of his car and get all the way here. It's a precious thing to him.
But, Nino and Shihori reason one night when they're a little tipsy and things are going in a handsy direction, it's not like Aiba ever uses it for sex with anyone but himself. His lady friend is on the other side of the ocean. If Aiba doesn't mind them borrowing his TV or his car...
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Shihori decides when they're alone in the living room, her hand exploring inside Nino's boxers for the first time and appearing to like what she finds. "I know I'd be freaked out if Aiba had sex in my bed."
Nino has no rebuttal in that moment because it's been so long and feels so good.
It's Jun's reaction he's more worried about anyhow. When Nino asks Shihori point blank if she's interested in Jun, she doesn't deny it. "He's carved out of marble," she says. "I mean, have you seen him with his shirt off?"
Nino has not. When peering down at his own body - smaller proportions, thinner hair, no muscle tone, nothing that could be described as carved marble - he worries he's not enough. He worries that he'll "do" for now, that if she had a shot with Jun that she'd drop him. Even if Nino could tolerate it, being non-exclusive, he doubts that Jun would be the type to share. So he'd have to yield in favor of what was best for everyone. But his worries are short-lived when Shihori whispers to him before bed one night.
She's curled up at his side, tracing along his jaw. "Jun-kun is pretty. He's nice to look at and he's sweet and caring. But I can't tell him everything. Not the way I can tell you."
"So it's brains over beauty in this instance?"
She chuckles, squirming around under the blanket when he squeezes her bottom, one of his favorite new discoveries. "If in your mind trust equals brains, then fine. Brains over beauty. But you're cute in your own obnoxious way."
He's close to patting himself on the back, settling instead for her closeness, the smell of her shampoo. "How long has it been then? Since you've decided I was worthy of you?"
"I don't remember the date, but I remember waking up one night to use the bathroom. You were still out in the living room playing games. When I was about to go back into my room, you called out to me. You said 'Good night, Shii-chan' in this tired voice without even looking up from your game, and I just..." She's clearly embarrassed, her voice getting quieter. "You knew I was there. Without even having to look. I guess I just felt safe."
"If someone broke into this apartment, I'd run the other way..."
"I don't mean safe in that way," she sighs, poking him in the chest. "I can't explain this that well when you've got a hand on my ass, either." He doesn't move it. "I just didn't want to wake up and not find you here. It's been a very long time since I've felt like that, about anyone."
He understands. There have been moments, dozens of scattered little moments over the past several months, that have convinced him too. Of the necessity of her, of what it means to unlock that door after a long day's work and hear her voice, be surrounded by her scent and her words, even when they're silly. It only scared him before because it's always scared him. Having a need rather than a want when it comes to the person he cares about. There's a permanence in that feeling that's always put him off, but he'd be stupid to throw it all away.
When they tell Jun, it's at the kitchen table. He's cooked for them from scratch, and Shihori starts the conversation by saying "If I'd known you could cook this well all along, Jun-kun, perhaps I wouldn't be saying this to you right now..."
Nino gives her a hard poke under the table with his toe, and she beams at him before Jun puts two and two together and laughs. "Congratulations," he says, looking pointedly at Nino. "And if you break her heart, I'm taking her side."
He scoffs at this. "No solidarity among men?"
Jun's smile gets even bigger, something he rarely shows them. "If I took your side, I think Keiko-san would murder me."
Shihori nods, sipping her tea. "Oh yes, nobody would be safe. Kei-chan is very protective of me." She gives Nino a wink. "And don't you forget it."
The fierce loyalty of female friendships has never been made more clear. Later, he and Shihori are doing the dishes, and she's handing him things to dry. "It wasn't so bad then, telling him," Shihori says quietly. Jun's in the bath, but she's keeping her voice down anyhow.
"Did you think it would be?"
"He's different from Aiba-chan. A little more sensitive. I didn't want him to be weirded out by living with a dating couple after everything he's gone through."
"Then we just need to find him a girlfriend too," Nino jokes, but she stops her washing and he realizes what he's done.
She's grinning like an idiot, deciding that everyone in their circle of friends needs to be paired up, needs a happily ever after. Not that Jun isn't deserving, but Nino doesn't like to interfere. It's too late now.
After Jun leaves for work a few days later, plotting begins in earnest. Even overseas Aiba is roped in via email, a long chain of nothing chatter clogging up Nino's phone memory. Shihori and Aiba offering lame psychoanalysis of Jun's positives and negatives, Keiko offering a laundry list of single women she works with, Sho going off on tangents about various restaurants to organize a get-together. Nino's only contribution is a single email reply: "Jun-kun doesn't seem to have a type other than someone who isn't an idiot."
A decision is reached one night over Skype when Keiko is having one of her virtual playdates with Kenji. Shihori plops down with the cat in front of her laptop so Keiko can see him, and these sessions can go on for up to an hour while Keiko talks to Kenji and parades an unwilling Pom Pom around on her end. Sho is usually in the background of these sessions making faces behind Keiko's back that keep Nino from wanting to shoot himself.
It's in Pom Pom's high-pitched voice that Keiko reveals the plot. The cat is held in front of her, his little paws being moved as though he's giving a proper speech. "There's a girl in Mama's office! She's super perfect for Jun-kun!"
Sometimes Nino wonders if Keiko uses her Pom Pom voice in the bedroom with Sho. He hasn't dared to ask Shihori for fear that she'd actually know the answer. Nino prefers to keep these questions hypothetical.
"She's a little younger," the Pom Pom voice continues. Sho is sitting in the background eating from a bag of baby carrots and rolling his eyes. "But she's very cute, and she likes to run! And guess what, Mama saw her at lunch the other day. She's a vegetarian!"
While Jun isn't, this health consciousness seems very compatible. Even Nino has to concede that. Finally, thankfully, Pom Pom retires for the night, leaping off of Keiko's lap in a desperate move to get away. Keiko seems unaffected by the cat's flight, and she and Shihori move on to working out details of the Great Jun Plot. In a week's time there will be a triple date, and Jun will be introduced to Keiko's co-worker, Mizuhara-san. Apparently this will be happening whether he likes it or not - there seems to be no stopping these two women once they have a plan in mind.
Before Sho-kun can finally join the conversation in earnest, having compiled a list of restaurants that will suit Jun's tastes as well as the vegetarian Mizuhara's, Keiko signs off and closes her laptop. Shihori seems very pleased with herself, signing out and shutting off her computer for the night. She heads off for her bath with a grin on her face, and Nino finds himself admiring the Kitty Kondo. After many weeks of indifference, Kenji has taken to the thing with vigor, scratching the hell out of it and not bothering with any of his other toys. Jun's hard work has finally paid off. Maybe it's good that everyone's pitching in with the goal of making him happy in return, much as the Nino of only a year ago would have never agreed to participate.
Shihori finds him there, still staring at the silly cat contraption. She wraps her arms around his waist. "Aiba-kun is back tomorrow."
"He sure is."
He looks down and she looks up. He's been happy to go at her pace, but there seems to be an urgency in her eyes tonight. Nino doesn't quite know how any woman could be interested in having sex directly after a Skype session with a friend who creates cat voices, but then again, Shihori isn't just any woman.
They fulfill their promise to Aiba by not using his bed for their first time. There's a false start right there in front of the Kitty Kondo, but with Kenji's judgmental eyes shooting daggers from the couch, they retire instead to Shihori's room. He's nervous, she's self-conscious, and it's so mediocre that when it's over they're both laughing. In the morning they make up for it, and he discovers there's nothing much better than her legs around his middle and her smile of satisfaction when they get it right.
--
Moving On/A Year In The Life
Jun is scowling at his phone. "I'll kill him."
"Maybe we already passed it," Shihori says, trying to calm him down. "We could turn around."
"Why did he get to pick anyway? He's such a weirdo..."
Nino and Shihori are discovering that when faced with a blind date, the usually stoic Matsumoto Jun turns into a complete basketcase. Nothing has gone his way. They had planned to take Aiba's car, but it's at Narita. "That idiot," Jun had grumbled adorably. They missed the express train and had to take a packed local. It's a neighborhood all three aren't all that familiar with, north of Kichijoji Station, and they've been wandering in circles looking for some curry place Sho has decided upon, a recommendation from someone he went to school with who now teaches at Seikei University in the area.
It takes an angry phone call (Jun calling Sho 'Sensei' in the most condescending tone Nino has ever heard) and another ten minutes of walking before they get there, discovering that the place is located in the basement level of a building they had passed half an hour earlier. But as soon as the door opens, Jun's entire face changes, and Nino has to hide his laugh against the back of Shihori's head, pretending to kiss her.
The woman of the hour, one Mizuhara Kiko, is a fairly new employee at Keiko's firm, and refers to Keiko only as "Senpai" throughout the evening, something which Keiko seems to enjoy a great deal. She's taller than both of the other ladies at the table and is able to look Nino straight in the eye when they greet each other. Her hair's cut in a short bob style, and when she excuses herself briefly for a bathroom break, Keiko drops the bomb that Kiko-san is only twenty-three. Nino can see Jun doing the mental math, halfway between a grimace and a smirk at the realization that Kiko-san is a full ten years younger than his last girlfriend. She also did some modeling in college, which might explain her fancy clothes and equally fancy handbag despite her age.
But any misgivings and doubts disappear over the course of the evening. Kiko-san is a bit loud in a way that might annoy someone like Jun, but it seems like the months spent in their group's company has lessened his irritation about such things. Especially once Kiko begs him to tell her all about his exciting job and what it's like getting to stay in Paris so often. While Nino doesn't think passing out peanuts and closing overhead compartments is glamorous, Kiko-san hangs on every word. The pair of them even order the same thing off the menu, and Sho, who has spent most of the evening cowering in fear, finally gets his self-satisfied grin of meal planning success back.
Her smile is endearing, and the more Jun talks, the more the rest of them sit back, eat their food and let Jun come out of his shell. When Kiko-san laughs, Jun blushes at the attention. The transformation is really quite nice to see, Nino thinks, remembering the quiet Matsumoto Jun he met that one night who could only keep it together by putting together a cat play set in a strange apartment. This Jun has been here all along, the Jun that Shihori had her crush on. The Jun who is finally getting back in the game.
Upon their return to the apartment, Jun coolly reveals that Mizuhara has already given him her number. Nino rolls his eyes, remembering the Jun of mere hours earlier who had asked Nino in a panicky, whiny half-sob if he had any offensive looking nose hairs sticking out.
"Do you mind it if Jun is off the market?" he whispers later that night, stroking Shihori's hair in the dark. "You'll have to dial down your admiration."
"Any woman is lucky to have him," she mumbles, letting him turn them so she's on her back and he's comfortably fitted between her legs. "Hey now, he's on the other side of the wall."
"And they're probably sending each other flirty texts, he won't even notice."
"He's not even ten feet away," she hisses. "You know the bed creaks."
But she's trembling and her body is responding positively. As soon as they're together, she stops complaining and instead holds him tight, moaning her encouragement quietly in his ear. Jun on the other side of the wall becomes an afterthought, and all Nino knows is her.
-
In the days and weeks that follow, spirits at the apartment are lifted all around even as the summer winds down and the nights become a bit cooler. Autumn hits, and the trees are aglow in fierce reds and burnt oranges. Jackets and coats re-emerge, sweaters return. The electric bill drops, and the sun goes away earlier and earlier.
Jun starts bringing home macarons for Mizuhara instead, and Shihori doesn't complain. Their dates become more frequent until one night Jun doesn't come home, and Shihori drops everything to call and squeal about it with Keiko.
The supply of Onion King slowly dwindles until Aiba returns from Los Angeles one week with bags of Onion Prince, a knock-off brand being produced just over the Mexican border. A road trip with his girlfriend allowed for the discovery, and Shihori nearly breaks down in tears at the realization that the chips, brought across two international borders just for her, taste almost identical.
When Keiko is away one week on a business trip, a nervous Sho asks the group for advice at their favorite bar. Shihori nearly knocks the guy over with the force of her hug when Sho reveals his plan to ask Keiko to marry him at Christmas. It's Oh-chan who actually comes up with the best proposal idea. Most of Sho's ideas are over the top or cheesy and not suited for someone like Keiko at all. Oh-chan merely takes a sip of his beer and says "just sneak an engagement ring into the cat's Christmas stocking." Nobody at the table bats an eye at the mention of the cat having a Christmas stocking to begin with.
Nino continues to endure long days at Rakuten, watching co-workers drop like flies and get replaced in the blink of an eye. He walks ten to twelve miles a day, still scanning, still bending, still putting things into bins. But now when he gets home there's someone waiting for him with a smile and if he's lucky, with a smile and without her clothes on. Shihori has always been straightforward and blunt about what she wants, and Nino is thankful every day that what she wants is him. On his days off he'll start a futile game of Zelda, willingly getting a game over because she's pulled off her panties and climbed into his lap. He doesn't call it love, and she doesn't either. They're comfortable, they're happy, and that's enough of a definition for the time being.
When January comes, Nino marks a full year in the four-bedroom apartment above the dental office. He still has to fill orders for lube and dildos, Shihori still washes windshields. Aiba and Jun still fly around the world. Sho and Keiko's names will be the same come summer, but he still makes fun of her when she drinks and she still makes fun of him when he writes lengthy treatises about ramen broth. Oh-chan is personally thanked in the liner notes of Subaru's first album - turns out that Ohno's suggested band name, the extremely original 'Subaru BAND', was the best option in the fishbowl.
A year, Nino thinks, has it only been a year? He comes home one night to a pointless argument about Dragon Ball. Kiko's in the kitchen with Jun, her hand slipped casually into his back pocket while he dices up vegetables for dinner and shouts his own complaints at Aiba concerning Piccolo. Shihori is sitting at her laptop ignoring the guys, holding Kenji up to the screen for Keiko to coo at. In the background, Sho is grading papers with a new pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Nino drops his bag and lies down on the floor, letting the shouting go in one ear and out the other while he waits for the meal to be ready.
He wouldn't want it any other way.
Fried and Greasy
A triumphant scream comes from Shihori's bedroom, and Jun looks up from the magazine he's reading with an embarrassed look. He turns to look at Nino. "She didn't...she didn't just..."
Nino chuckles, seeing her come running out of her room, fully clothed and clearly not having gotten off in the next room over when they're both sitting here eating breakfast. It turns out Matsumoto Jun is more perverted than he looks. "She's too classy for that, Jun-kun."
"Too classy for what?" Shihori asks, nearly vibrating in happiness.
Jun turns scarlet. Nino waves his hand. "Nothing, it's nothing. Why are you screaming?"
"I've found them!" she says, clapping her hands. "Onion King."
"Your chips? I thought they were taken off the shelves," Jun says.
"I know," she replies, clearly about to launch into one of her patented Onion King excitement dances. "But there's a guy who imported them, cases of them, right after the announcement. He has the largest stash in Japan!"
"Someone imported potato chips?" Jun continues. The whole thing confuses him. He'd tried one before and nearly puked from the taste of them. He's clearly remembering them now and looking ill again. As the summer continues right along, Jun has lost some of his initial thoughtfulness around them and has become fully immersed in their den of sarcasm and dumb situations.
"Right, he's up in Ibaraki. I told him I'd come up any time and buy some, and he said today is fine so I'm going!"
"Ibaraki?" Nino and Jun exclaim, almost as though she's said Mongolia or Madagascar.
"He might be a pervert though, so can one of you come with me?"
"We'll look stupid carrying bags of potato chips on the train," Nino says.
"Yeah yeah, I know," she replies dismissively, heading for Aiba's room. She emerges a moment later with a set of keys. "So we'll take Aiba's car. He won't mind so long as I put gas in it."
"This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Jun declares, a little Matsumoto honesty earning him a scornful glare from Shihori. She does not tolerate Onion King dismissal.
"Then stay home and eat some celery, you weirdo!" She turns to Nino with hope in her eyes. "Please Nino?"
"Why doesn't the guy just ship them here?" Jun continues, not caring what Shihori thinks. "He probably lures women in with the promise of chips and then cuts them up in his basement. Is that how you want to end up?"
Nino doesn't like the thought of Shihori going alone to some stranger's house either so he just nods. "Fine, I'll come."
"Thank you," she says overdramatically.
By the time they're dressed decently enough to leave the apartment, however, Jun has changed his mind and decides to come along. He's a curious person at heart and probably wants to take a look at the chip guy for himself. Not many people can pass up such an opportunity, not really.
It's decided that Shihori will drive there and Nino will drive back. Jun declines, informing them that back when he and Aiba were in training together, he crashed Aiba's car into a toll booth one day. He's fairly certain Aiba would not like to find out that Jun has driven his car again. The good thing about this is that Jun pays for the gas to make up for it. They fuel up Aiba's car at the ENEOS station, informing the on-duty Ohno about their road trip.
"Chips huh?" he says, pumping gas and nodding thoughtfully. "Well I hope it all works out."
Shihori smiles. "Thank you, Oh-chan. Of all the men in my life, you are consistently the nicest."
He smiles back, turning a bit red. "Someone has to look out for you."
"Alright, alright, that's enough," Nino interrupts. "We're making sure she's not walking into a serial killer's trap, you know. We're not so bad."
"Right?" Jun chimes in, giving Ohno a stern look.
And then they're off, the address in Mito, Ibaraki programmed into both Aiba's car GPS as well as Jun's phone. Shihori looks ridiculously cute when she drives. When they got in the car, she swore and complained until she was able to get the driver's seat to move up so she could reach the pedals. And now she sits with her hands firmly on the steering wheel at 10:00 and 2:00, making little panicky grumbles whenever a truck passes her on the expressway.
It's the height of summer, and the air conditioning is raising goosebumps on Shihori's skin. Nino tries not to stare, tries not to see if her nipples are hard in her thin tank top, especially with Jun in the back seat saying extremely unsexy things like "you can go around that guy if you want, the other lane's clear." He tries instead to look out the window, tune Jun's yammering out, and listen to the radio station.
It's just after lunch time when they arrive, pulling into the parking lot of a two-story apartment building that's seen better days. Half the flowers in the flower bed out front have wilted and died in the summer heat. "I knew it was going to be a shady neighborhood," Jun is muttering as Shihori parks. He gestures down the road to a vacant lot. "I bet that's where he buries the bodies."
"Oi, shut up!" Shihori complains, reaching in the back seat to wiggle her finger at him in warning. "Be quiet, don't ruin this for me! He'll raise his prices if he sees you scowling at him like a delinquent."
Jun is offended. "I'm the one who's like a delinquent in this context? This guy is selling black market potato chips out of his apartment!"
Nino sighs. "Can we just do this already?"
The three of them get out of the car, and Shihori in her bright green sandals leads the way up the steps to an apartment in the middle of the corridor, threatening to kill them herself if either of them speaks out of turn during her "deal." Nino feels that he'll look back on this time fondly someday, but right now he feels like he's surrounded by insane people. Even one insane person he very much wants to sleep with.
Shihori rings the buzzer, and it's a few moments before a guy arrives to push it open. He seems a little confused to see three people, but he recovers quickly and smiles. Nino doesn't think he looks like a murderer. He's tall, decently built, with a cheerful face that has the same kind of lackadaisical innocence that Oh-chan has.
"Maruyama-san? I'm Kanjiya from this morning," Shihori says.
His smile gets a bit brighter, and Nino has to put his foot down hard on top of Jun's sneaker to keep him from conducting an interrogation of the poor guy. "Kanjiya-san, happy to help. I'm so thrilled to meet someone who understands."
Shihori introduces Nino and Jun as "the help," and the three of them enter Maruyama-san's apartment. Nino bites the inside of his cheek. Nearly every available surface in the tiny apartment, from the countertops to the TV stand to the bedroom floor, is covered with cardboard boxes, some of them open with individual-sized packets of Onion King spilling out.
Jun looks on the verge of hysterical laughter the entire time as Shihori and Maruyama-san gush about their love of Onion King, which nearly sets Nino off too. Maruyama even pulls up an American Onion King commercial from the 80's on his laptop and sings the song for her in a language that might be English or might be complete nonsense. Jun has to excuse himself to stand outside midway through the serenade. Finally Shihori agrees to buy ten of the boxes for an unbelievable 60000 yen, with each box containing 20 individual bags of Onion King. Together he and Jun pick the boxes up from Maruyama's bedroom floor ("it's been hard to watch TV lately, can you take from here first please?") while Shihori pays in cash.
"Please come again," Maruyama says, waving to them as they get everything loaded up. A few boxes have to sit in the back seat of Aiba's car with Jun.
"Please come again," Nino mutters once they're back on the road after driving nearly two hours to get there. At least this time he can focus on the road and not on the breasts beside him. "By the time you finish all of those, the ones he has will have gone bad. Chips get stale."
"I know," Shihori admits, slipping out of her sandals and resting her feet on the dashboard. It makes her skirt ride up, pooling around her hips. If Nino looks with enough dedication, maybe he'll spy panties. He instead looks at the expressway while Jun's on his phone trying to find them a place to get off and stop for lunch. They opt for a rest area near Tsukuba, and the skirt goes back to its proper placement.
It's mid-afternoon and the cafeteria area is nearly empty. They buy a sampling of croquettes and follow it with ice cream, and Jun must be in such a strange mood from the day's events that he doesn't even complain about what he's ingesting.
"So Maruyama-san," Nino asks the table, having a spoonful of ice cream. "Girlfriend situation."
Shihori elbows him. "He just saved my life, and you're criticizing. He was nice!"
"Virgin," Jun chimes in, and Nino nods in agreement.
Shihori rolls her eyes at them. "The two of you, honestly."
"He lives alone in a place like that with boxes of potato chips," Jun says. "No woman is setting foot in there, period. You're a woman and I can't see you going for it."
Shihori continues to defend her Onion King supplier. "Well maybe he goes to love hotels. Maybe he doesn't take them home."
There's a middle-aged man and woman at another table giving them dirty looks, but it doesn't slow them down. "Okay, so I'll allow for a love hotel," Nino decides. "But what does he say to get her to go there with him? What's his pick-up line?"
"You're too much," Shihori complains.
Jun opts for a goofy Maruyama-san-like smile and looks deeply into Nino's eyes. "You look just like a potato, I'm in love." He jolts, having been kicked hard under the table by Shihori. "Ow! Damn it, that hurt!"
Nino snickers, looks back at Jun with what he hopes is equal longing. "Oh Maruyama-san," he says, aiming for an imitation of Shihori's voice. "Do you like them baked or mashed?"
Jun leans forward, licking his plastic ice cream spoon. "Kanjiya-san, I mostly prefer them fried and greasy."
Even Shihori has to cover her mouth to keep from laughing, and Nino lets out a near-squeal, his whole body shaking. "I'm going to leave you two here. Acting like a pair of kids," Shihori hisses as Nino and Jun are both turning red from trying not to disturb the entire cafeteria.
Shihori opts to sit in the back with her precious chips for the rest of the drive home while Nino and Jun sit up front and nearly drive one another to heart attacks play-acting the romantic encounter that will sadly never be between Maruyama-san and Shihori. When they exhaust their ideas about potatoes, they switch over to onions. She tries to look angry, but whenever Nino glances back in the rearview mirror she's smiling.
They get the boxes inside back at home, and Jun gets on a chair to stack them on top of the kitchen cabinets and on top of the refrigerator. She seems willing to space out the consumption of her purchases, going the rest of the day without eating any of the Onion King packets. Jun, more of a social butterfly than either of them, heads out to enjoy his evening off with plans to meet friends at some club. He bids farewell by calling Shihori a "hot potato" in English, closing the door behind him before the slipper she flings in his direction smacks him.
"You really are a hot potato though," Nino says, changing channels to watch a ball game. Aiba's team, the Lotte Marines, are getting their asses handed to them tonight, and Nino considers waking him up with an email but decides against it.
She sighs next to him on the couch, looking back at her manga. "Compliment not accepted."
"What'll you do when you run out again?"
He looks over, seeing her eyes glaze over. He fears losing her to the depths and sorrows of permanent Onion King withdrawal. "I don't know yet."
"Find a new snack maybe."
"Maybe."
"But nothing lasts forever, you know. We live in Japan, land of the limited edition everything. Surely you anticipated this."
She allows herself a sad smile, turning to look at him. "Thanks for coming along, all the same. I promise to make the most of the Onion King that remains to me in order to show my appreciation for what you and Jun-kun did for me."
"We acted out a scenario in the car in which you and Maruyama-san make love on top of a stinky mound of onion powder. Jun is much kinkier than he looks."
"Perhaps you should date," she suggests. "You'd make a cute couple, a love driven by roleplay."
He rolls his eyes and laughs. "Jun-kun's not my type."
"But I am, aren't I?"
This leaves him speechless for a moment. The announcers on TV are oblivious to Nino's sudden distress, describing the various merits of the relief pitcher the Golden Eagles have just brought in for the top of the 8th. He figured there'd eventually be some kind of confrontation, especially after the night she brought him to her bed and neither of them spoke of it again.
"Yeah, you are," he admits, knowing he can't take it back. That the dynamics in the apartment will change from this moment forward. It's a moment he's been dreading more than anticipating these last few weeks, expecting an apology or some vague allusion to Matsumoto Jun.
Instead Shihori looks thrilled, bringing the tips of her fingers to the inside of his elbow, dragging them down toward his wrist. Her eyes don't move away from his. He takes a deep breath when her fingers start the motion over again, back to his elbow and down. He should kiss her, lift that tank top and lose himself in every bit of her soft skin, but it's late and they both work tomorrow. And maybe it's enough for now that the secret's out, especially that it's out and she seems very receptive to it.
She squeezes his hand before picking up her manga and heading for her bedroom and closing the door, leaving him to watch the rest of the game remembering how to breathe.
--
Playing To Win
He likes Shihori, and apparently she likes him, but given how they've always worked, approaching the next level becomes a game of who will slip up first, who will give in. And it's a game they're both playing to win.
While Jun or Aiba are home, it's easy to keep the status quo. They spend the next two weeks in this holding pattern, making small talk, discussing what happened at work, complaining about expenses like a jump in the cable bill. But it's the height of August's miserable, sticky heat when four doesn't become three but four suddenly becomes two for a week-long stretch. If the flight attendants have intentionally scheduled themselves this way, Nino doesn't want to know about it.
He gets home on work nights just before 9:00, already exhausted from work and the walk from the station to the apartment leaving his clothes clinging to him. The apartment's aircon works overtime, even though it costs a ton, and it welcomes him in its icy embrace. On this week, the first week of Shihori and Nino alone with their feelings, he comes home to find her in a tight t-shirt and a pair of very short jean shorts, legs bent at the knee and feet propped on the table. There are little wedge things between her toes while she waits for a fresh coat of nail polish to dry. She smiles at the sight of him in the doorway.
"Hi. Welcome home."
"Hi."
He ignores the stink of the polish, dumping his bag on the floor and running a hand through his hair. He needs a cut. It's gotten to a point one might describe as "floppy" or even "unkempt," and it sticks to the back of his neck when he walks at the warehouse and in the heat. "I need a shower."
"You usually do," she teases, wiggling her big toes. All he sees is legs from her not-fat ankles up to her not-fat calves up past her knees and her soft-looking thighs.
"Ha ha," he says, putting the water on colder than he likes once he's shut the bathroom door.
The next night she's doing her exercise DVD when he gets home, neon pink hand weights in her grasp as he enters the living room. She's mid-lunge, her hair tied back but little wisps of it teasing along her face. Her face is pink and glowing from exertion. Unlike previous occasions, she doesn't bolt at the first sign of someone catching her with one of the DVDs playing.
She's finished with it when he gets out of the shower, but she's holding a water bottle while she sits on the couch, watching a nature documentary. She spends the next twenty minutes sipping from it slowly or tapping the rim of it against her lower lip, rubbing it back in forth. It's a very long, miserable night in Nino's bedroom, and many tissues give their lives. He's pretty sure that he's going to lose this game, whatever it is.
The third night is a no-go because she's snacking on Onion King when he returns home. Satisfied that the compulsion to kiss her won't overwhelm the fear of the onion breath, he can go on the offensive. He brushes his teeth and goes to her bedroom without asking, making himself at home amongst the sheets. She eventually joins him, and even though he wakes the following morning with some of her hair in his mouth, they've managed to get through the night without sleepwalking their way into each other's pants.
But it's night four that dooms him. Even though he's tired, even though there's a cover charge and a two drink minimum, he's promised to check out Subaru's new band, and Shihori has asked to come along. Since moving out, Subaru has been traveling the country finding people to play with since his last group fell apart. Too many marriages and leaps into maturity to keep the rock and roll alive. He's a front man, a voice that needs instruments to best complement it. He's found a drummer and a guitarist, and they're playing some dive bar in Adachi.
Oh-chan's already drunk when they arrive, and he gives Shihori a hug that lasts a bit long. She doesn't seem to mind, giving him a kiss on the cheek when he finally lets go. "I've got us a table!" Oh-chan says, as loud as he'll ever get. Shihori gets some drink with an umbrella in it from the bar and Nino gets the cheapest shit that's on tap. The "table" Ohno has wrangled for them is next to the speakers, and they get through soundcheck and one drink before deciding to keep their eardrums in working order. Oh-chan will probably leave halfway through the set anyhow to smoke a joint in the bathroom with some girl that's way too young for him and won't be seen again until he surfaces at work the next day.
Instead they stand in the back when Subaru and his two new pals take the stage. The bar straddles two neighborhoods, a working-class maze of apartments and a place where biker gangs were once notorious. That scene has probably died down a bit, but the bar still has an edge to it that makes Nino uncomfortable. Subaru writes his own music, but the set list is a mix of things Nino's heard from him before and covers of stuff that was popular in the 90s. The drummer's decent and the guitarist is incredible, but Subaru, now boasting stringy black hair and a Jesus beard, holds up his hands during a break in the music to let the crowd know they don't have a name yet and they're taking suggestions in an empty fishbowl on the bar.
He and Shihori spend the next three songs scribbling terrible names on cocktail napkins. Among them are "Naked Clowns," "Waseda University Jazz Band," "I Just Shit My Pants," "Subaru Fucked My Girlfriend," "Engorged Penis," and of course, "I Just Shit My Pants Again!" He almost writes "Onion King," but decides that's in poor taste if he ever wants to get laid. Nino almost wishes Aiba was here to lend them his particular brand of genius, but they wad up all the napkins and shove them into the fishbowl midway through the set, almost crying in laughter.
Now that the crowd's mostly met and exceeded the two drink minimum, Nino and Shihori included, the place starts to get rowdy. Most of the attendees are early-to-mid-20s, escaping the tedium and politeness of everyday existence to dance around or sway, sing along with the lyrics they recognize. Save for some track lighting by the bar, it's darker than some back alley Kabukicho club you find in gangster movies. The whole place is probably a fire hazard, days from being shut down. Subaru likes to pick places like these.
To keep people from bumping into them, Nino pulls them away from the bar, back against a wall near a broken electronic dartboard. Subaru and his nameless band get the crowd going, and Nino has his back to the wall and Shihori in front of him, hands clasped around her waist. Her hair's tied up and out of the way, and she's got this long silver chain on, a heart-shaped pendant that rests between her breasts. Nino takes advantage of the dark bar to nuzzle against the back of her neck, tongue slipping along the little chain links.
She's hot, her skin's so hot, and she grows fairly still, eventually cocking her head to the side so he can kiss from just behind her ear and down her neck. His hands slide down to her hips, and she doesn't make him stop when he moves kind of awkwardly against her, knowing she can feel and confirm that he wants her. Eventually she squeezes his hand and says "let's get out of here."
They split the cab fare home because she knows and puts up with how cheap he is, and when they're halfway up the steps to the apartment she loses a shoe and they sit down right there to share their first kiss. Their clothes smell like smoke from the bar and so does her hair, but that's not what Nino will remember later on. He'll just remember cradling her head in his hands, her fingers twisted in his t-shirt. Things get a little more serious, and she's kind enough to let him paw at her like he's drunker than he is, squeezing her through her bra, grasping her ponytail.
Eventually they're laughing, two adults making out on the stairs, sitting uncomfortably on the ugly orange carpet that runs up them. "Let's go inside already," she complains, getting up and retrieving her shoe. When they get inside and lock the door, he tries to pin her against it, to get right back to it, hands reaching down to lift at her skirt, but she's still laughing, turning her face away. "Calm down, the world's not ending tomorrow."
"We smell terrible," he reluctantly agrees, opting instead to press a kiss to her cheek and let her go.
She disappears into the bathroom for a while, emerging in nothing more than a towel because why not, he's already felt her up, and he cleans off the stink of the bar when she's finished. He finds her in her room running a comb through her hair.
"Do I get to sleep in here?" he asks. "I like your bed more than mine."
She rolls her eyes at him. "I don't have sex on the first date, Nino."
"Is it really a first date?" he wonders, leaning against her doorframe. "We've been living together so long and have probably skipped over so many important dating moments."
She sets the comb down. "I don't want a first time with you to be the same night I wrote down 'I Just Shit My Pants' on a cocktail napkin. I know what I'll remember ten years from now."
He crosses his arms, pretending to be offended. "I am much more memorable than a cocktail napkin. I can get you some references."
Shihori heads to her bed, turning it down for the night. "I don't want your references. I'll make up my own mind when the time comes, thank you." She pats the mattress next to her. "You can still share. I know Kenji prefers sleeping in your bed when you're not in it."
"That's a very Kitagawa thing to say."
She shakes her head. "Ugh, I know. We know who really rules this house, don't we?"
He makes sure the apartment's locked up for the night, and he joins her in bed, turning out the lamp. He doesn't press the issue, contents himself with kissing her every place she's willing to allow. He thought he'd be more nervous, that there'd be more hesitation on her end. He thought it would be a more complicated feeling, giving in and allowing himself to tangle their lives together. Instead he feels good, he feels perfect, discovering how she fits beside him.
--
For Your Information
They tell Aiba and Jun because they have to tell Aiba and Jun. Aiba is jubilant, claiming to have been supportive from day one even though he has never openly spoken of it before. But he issues a stern warning for them not to have sex in his bed. It's a fair point, too. Of the four of them in the apartment, Aiba's mattress is the largest and nicest, something he'd gotten from a discount superstore in Saitama and managed to strap to the roof of his car and get all the way here. It's a precious thing to him.
But, Nino and Shihori reason one night when they're a little tipsy and things are going in a handsy direction, it's not like Aiba ever uses it for sex with anyone but himself. His lady friend is on the other side of the ocean. If Aiba doesn't mind them borrowing his TV or his car...
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Shihori decides when they're alone in the living room, her hand exploring inside Nino's boxers for the first time and appearing to like what she finds. "I know I'd be freaked out if Aiba had sex in my bed."
Nino has no rebuttal in that moment because it's been so long and feels so good.
It's Jun's reaction he's more worried about anyhow. When Nino asks Shihori point blank if she's interested in Jun, she doesn't deny it. "He's carved out of marble," she says. "I mean, have you seen him with his shirt off?"
Nino has not. When peering down at his own body - smaller proportions, thinner hair, no muscle tone, nothing that could be described as carved marble - he worries he's not enough. He worries that he'll "do" for now, that if she had a shot with Jun that she'd drop him. Even if Nino could tolerate it, being non-exclusive, he doubts that Jun would be the type to share. So he'd have to yield in favor of what was best for everyone. But his worries are short-lived when Shihori whispers to him before bed one night.
She's curled up at his side, tracing along his jaw. "Jun-kun is pretty. He's nice to look at and he's sweet and caring. But I can't tell him everything. Not the way I can tell you."
"So it's brains over beauty in this instance?"
She chuckles, squirming around under the blanket when he squeezes her bottom, one of his favorite new discoveries. "If in your mind trust equals brains, then fine. Brains over beauty. But you're cute in your own obnoxious way."
He's close to patting himself on the back, settling instead for her closeness, the smell of her shampoo. "How long has it been then? Since you've decided I was worthy of you?"
"I don't remember the date, but I remember waking up one night to use the bathroom. You were still out in the living room playing games. When I was about to go back into my room, you called out to me. You said 'Good night, Shii-chan' in this tired voice without even looking up from your game, and I just..." She's clearly embarrassed, her voice getting quieter. "You knew I was there. Without even having to look. I guess I just felt safe."
"If someone broke into this apartment, I'd run the other way..."
"I don't mean safe in that way," she sighs, poking him in the chest. "I can't explain this that well when you've got a hand on my ass, either." He doesn't move it. "I just didn't want to wake up and not find you here. It's been a very long time since I've felt like that, about anyone."
He understands. There have been moments, dozens of scattered little moments over the past several months, that have convinced him too. Of the necessity of her, of what it means to unlock that door after a long day's work and hear her voice, be surrounded by her scent and her words, even when they're silly. It only scared him before because it's always scared him. Having a need rather than a want when it comes to the person he cares about. There's a permanence in that feeling that's always put him off, but he'd be stupid to throw it all away.
When they tell Jun, it's at the kitchen table. He's cooked for them from scratch, and Shihori starts the conversation by saying "If I'd known you could cook this well all along, Jun-kun, perhaps I wouldn't be saying this to you right now..."
Nino gives her a hard poke under the table with his toe, and she beams at him before Jun puts two and two together and laughs. "Congratulations," he says, looking pointedly at Nino. "And if you break her heart, I'm taking her side."
He scoffs at this. "No solidarity among men?"
Jun's smile gets even bigger, something he rarely shows them. "If I took your side, I think Keiko-san would murder me."
Shihori nods, sipping her tea. "Oh yes, nobody would be safe. Kei-chan is very protective of me." She gives Nino a wink. "And don't you forget it."
The fierce loyalty of female friendships has never been made more clear. Later, he and Shihori are doing the dishes, and she's handing him things to dry. "It wasn't so bad then, telling him," Shihori says quietly. Jun's in the bath, but she's keeping her voice down anyhow.
"Did you think it would be?"
"He's different from Aiba-chan. A little more sensitive. I didn't want him to be weirded out by living with a dating couple after everything he's gone through."
"Then we just need to find him a girlfriend too," Nino jokes, but she stops her washing and he realizes what he's done.
She's grinning like an idiot, deciding that everyone in their circle of friends needs to be paired up, needs a happily ever after. Not that Jun isn't deserving, but Nino doesn't like to interfere. It's too late now.
After Jun leaves for work a few days later, plotting begins in earnest. Even overseas Aiba is roped in via email, a long chain of nothing chatter clogging up Nino's phone memory. Shihori and Aiba offering lame psychoanalysis of Jun's positives and negatives, Keiko offering a laundry list of single women she works with, Sho going off on tangents about various restaurants to organize a get-together. Nino's only contribution is a single email reply: "Jun-kun doesn't seem to have a type other than someone who isn't an idiot."
A decision is reached one night over Skype when Keiko is having one of her virtual playdates with Kenji. Shihori plops down with the cat in front of her laptop so Keiko can see him, and these sessions can go on for up to an hour while Keiko talks to Kenji and parades an unwilling Pom Pom around on her end. Sho is usually in the background of these sessions making faces behind Keiko's back that keep Nino from wanting to shoot himself.
It's in Pom Pom's high-pitched voice that Keiko reveals the plot. The cat is held in front of her, his little paws being moved as though he's giving a proper speech. "There's a girl in Mama's office! She's super perfect for Jun-kun!"
Sometimes Nino wonders if Keiko uses her Pom Pom voice in the bedroom with Sho. He hasn't dared to ask Shihori for fear that she'd actually know the answer. Nino prefers to keep these questions hypothetical.
"She's a little younger," the Pom Pom voice continues. Sho is sitting in the background eating from a bag of baby carrots and rolling his eyes. "But she's very cute, and she likes to run! And guess what, Mama saw her at lunch the other day. She's a vegetarian!"
While Jun isn't, this health consciousness seems very compatible. Even Nino has to concede that. Finally, thankfully, Pom Pom retires for the night, leaping off of Keiko's lap in a desperate move to get away. Keiko seems unaffected by the cat's flight, and she and Shihori move on to working out details of the Great Jun Plot. In a week's time there will be a triple date, and Jun will be introduced to Keiko's co-worker, Mizuhara-san. Apparently this will be happening whether he likes it or not - there seems to be no stopping these two women once they have a plan in mind.
Before Sho-kun can finally join the conversation in earnest, having compiled a list of restaurants that will suit Jun's tastes as well as the vegetarian Mizuhara's, Keiko signs off and closes her laptop. Shihori seems very pleased with herself, signing out and shutting off her computer for the night. She heads off for her bath with a grin on her face, and Nino finds himself admiring the Kitty Kondo. After many weeks of indifference, Kenji has taken to the thing with vigor, scratching the hell out of it and not bothering with any of his other toys. Jun's hard work has finally paid off. Maybe it's good that everyone's pitching in with the goal of making him happy in return, much as the Nino of only a year ago would have never agreed to participate.
Shihori finds him there, still staring at the silly cat contraption. She wraps her arms around his waist. "Aiba-kun is back tomorrow."
"He sure is."
He looks down and she looks up. He's been happy to go at her pace, but there seems to be an urgency in her eyes tonight. Nino doesn't quite know how any woman could be interested in having sex directly after a Skype session with a friend who creates cat voices, but then again, Shihori isn't just any woman.
They fulfill their promise to Aiba by not using his bed for their first time. There's a false start right there in front of the Kitty Kondo, but with Kenji's judgmental eyes shooting daggers from the couch, they retire instead to Shihori's room. He's nervous, she's self-conscious, and it's so mediocre that when it's over they're both laughing. In the morning they make up for it, and he discovers there's nothing much better than her legs around his middle and her smile of satisfaction when they get it right.
--
Moving On/A Year In The Life
Jun is scowling at his phone. "I'll kill him."
"Maybe we already passed it," Shihori says, trying to calm him down. "We could turn around."
"Why did he get to pick anyway? He's such a weirdo..."
Nino and Shihori are discovering that when faced with a blind date, the usually stoic Matsumoto Jun turns into a complete basketcase. Nothing has gone his way. They had planned to take Aiba's car, but it's at Narita. "That idiot," Jun had grumbled adorably. They missed the express train and had to take a packed local. It's a neighborhood all three aren't all that familiar with, north of Kichijoji Station, and they've been wandering in circles looking for some curry place Sho has decided upon, a recommendation from someone he went to school with who now teaches at Seikei University in the area.
It takes an angry phone call (Jun calling Sho 'Sensei' in the most condescending tone Nino has ever heard) and another ten minutes of walking before they get there, discovering that the place is located in the basement level of a building they had passed half an hour earlier. But as soon as the door opens, Jun's entire face changes, and Nino has to hide his laugh against the back of Shihori's head, pretending to kiss her.
The woman of the hour, one Mizuhara Kiko, is a fairly new employee at Keiko's firm, and refers to Keiko only as "Senpai" throughout the evening, something which Keiko seems to enjoy a great deal. She's taller than both of the other ladies at the table and is able to look Nino straight in the eye when they greet each other. Her hair's cut in a short bob style, and when she excuses herself briefly for a bathroom break, Keiko drops the bomb that Kiko-san is only twenty-three. Nino can see Jun doing the mental math, halfway between a grimace and a smirk at the realization that Kiko-san is a full ten years younger than his last girlfriend. She also did some modeling in college, which might explain her fancy clothes and equally fancy handbag despite her age.
But any misgivings and doubts disappear over the course of the evening. Kiko-san is a bit loud in a way that might annoy someone like Jun, but it seems like the months spent in their group's company has lessened his irritation about such things. Especially once Kiko begs him to tell her all about his exciting job and what it's like getting to stay in Paris so often. While Nino doesn't think passing out peanuts and closing overhead compartments is glamorous, Kiko-san hangs on every word. The pair of them even order the same thing off the menu, and Sho, who has spent most of the evening cowering in fear, finally gets his self-satisfied grin of meal planning success back.
Her smile is endearing, and the more Jun talks, the more the rest of them sit back, eat their food and let Jun come out of his shell. When Kiko-san laughs, Jun blushes at the attention. The transformation is really quite nice to see, Nino thinks, remembering the quiet Matsumoto Jun he met that one night who could only keep it together by putting together a cat play set in a strange apartment. This Jun has been here all along, the Jun that Shihori had her crush on. The Jun who is finally getting back in the game.
Upon their return to the apartment, Jun coolly reveals that Mizuhara has already given him her number. Nino rolls his eyes, remembering the Jun of mere hours earlier who had asked Nino in a panicky, whiny half-sob if he had any offensive looking nose hairs sticking out.
"Do you mind it if Jun is off the market?" he whispers later that night, stroking Shihori's hair in the dark. "You'll have to dial down your admiration."
"Any woman is lucky to have him," she mumbles, letting him turn them so she's on her back and he's comfortably fitted between her legs. "Hey now, he's on the other side of the wall."
"And they're probably sending each other flirty texts, he won't even notice."
"He's not even ten feet away," she hisses. "You know the bed creaks."
But she's trembling and her body is responding positively. As soon as they're together, she stops complaining and instead holds him tight, moaning her encouragement quietly in his ear. Jun on the other side of the wall becomes an afterthought, and all Nino knows is her.
-
In the days and weeks that follow, spirits at the apartment are lifted all around even as the summer winds down and the nights become a bit cooler. Autumn hits, and the trees are aglow in fierce reds and burnt oranges. Jackets and coats re-emerge, sweaters return. The electric bill drops, and the sun goes away earlier and earlier.
Jun starts bringing home macarons for Mizuhara instead, and Shihori doesn't complain. Their dates become more frequent until one night Jun doesn't come home, and Shihori drops everything to call and squeal about it with Keiko.
The supply of Onion King slowly dwindles until Aiba returns from Los Angeles one week with bags of Onion Prince, a knock-off brand being produced just over the Mexican border. A road trip with his girlfriend allowed for the discovery, and Shihori nearly breaks down in tears at the realization that the chips, brought across two international borders just for her, taste almost identical.
When Keiko is away one week on a business trip, a nervous Sho asks the group for advice at their favorite bar. Shihori nearly knocks the guy over with the force of her hug when Sho reveals his plan to ask Keiko to marry him at Christmas. It's Oh-chan who actually comes up with the best proposal idea. Most of Sho's ideas are over the top or cheesy and not suited for someone like Keiko at all. Oh-chan merely takes a sip of his beer and says "just sneak an engagement ring into the cat's Christmas stocking." Nobody at the table bats an eye at the mention of the cat having a Christmas stocking to begin with.
Nino continues to endure long days at Rakuten, watching co-workers drop like flies and get replaced in the blink of an eye. He walks ten to twelve miles a day, still scanning, still bending, still putting things into bins. But now when he gets home there's someone waiting for him with a smile and if he's lucky, with a smile and without her clothes on. Shihori has always been straightforward and blunt about what she wants, and Nino is thankful every day that what she wants is him. On his days off he'll start a futile game of Zelda, willingly getting a game over because she's pulled off her panties and climbed into his lap. He doesn't call it love, and she doesn't either. They're comfortable, they're happy, and that's enough of a definition for the time being.
When January comes, Nino marks a full year in the four-bedroom apartment above the dental office. He still has to fill orders for lube and dildos, Shihori still washes windshields. Aiba and Jun still fly around the world. Sho and Keiko's names will be the same come summer, but he still makes fun of her when she drinks and she still makes fun of him when he writes lengthy treatises about ramen broth. Oh-chan is personally thanked in the liner notes of Subaru's first album - turns out that Ohno's suggested band name, the extremely original 'Subaru BAND', was the best option in the fishbowl.
A year, Nino thinks, has it only been a year? He comes home one night to a pointless argument about Dragon Ball. Kiko's in the kitchen with Jun, her hand slipped casually into his back pocket while he dices up vegetables for dinner and shouts his own complaints at Aiba concerning Piccolo. Shihori is sitting at her laptop ignoring the guys, holding Kenji up to the screen for Keiko to coo at. In the background, Sho is grading papers with a new pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Nino drops his bag and lies down on the floor, letting the shouting go in one ear and out the other while he waits for the meal to be ready.
He wouldn't want it any other way.