fic: Near Kinkaku-ji
Near Kinkaku-ji
Johnny/Stéphane, Shizuka/OMC
PG
4803 words
It was three o clock by the time the Shinkansen stopped at Kyoto to let them off, right on time. Niigata: take two.
Huge thanks to nova33 for betaing. This is for strange_bt_true.
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
-- Izumi Shikibu
Shizuka hadn’t planned for this, was the thing. She’d been glad to see Stéphane again, and glad to be skating alongside him -- “I missed you,” he said the first day back, pulling her close into a hug, and she’d patted him on the back and smiled -- but it was supposed to be a show, that was all, and then they’d all go back to their respective countries and continue with their own lives. Shizuka wasn’t very good at keeping in touch with people, and she thought Stéphane was probably the same way. He liked being around people when it suited him, but if there wasn’t anyone around then that would be all right, too.
But since they’d flown all the way to Japan, Stéphane wasn’t going to leave quite so soon, and he’d persuaded Johnny to stay another couple of days with him. Shizuka thought that made sense. She knew they were good friends, those boys.
She hadn’t counted on Stéphane turning to her and saying, “You should come with us.”
Shizuka didn’t know Johnny very well. They’d skated in a few shows together, and they had been at a lot of the same competitions, but back then she hadn’t spoken English very well and she’d stuck to talking with her own teammates. Shizuka thought it was rather silly and pointless to make friends at competitions, anyway. She thought Johnny was nice -- rather hard to impress, perhaps, but she respected that. They simply weren’t friends by any definition of the word.
Stéphane wanted to be friends with everyone.
This was why she’d hesitated, worrying her lip even though she hadn’t anything scheduled over the next week or so, as Stéphane made pleading eyes at her and said it was absolutely ages since Thin Ice, and wouldn’t a little sightseeing be fun? She didn’t want to disrupt anything between Johnny and Stéphane.
“You could be our tour guide,” Johnny said, smiling at her. Stéphane flung an arm around her and she didn’t shrug him off.
If she could justify her presence, then, well -- that was all right.
---
Shizuka had only been to Niigata once before. Brief memories of a school trip when she was seven stirred at the back of her mind -- what for, she couldn’t remember. There wasn’t much to do in Niigata at all. Johnny and Stéphane listened attentively when she said they could move around, perhaps, and nodded when she suggested Sado Island first. Johnny didn’t say anything except, “That sounds wonderful,” when she constructed an itinerary and shared it with them -- they’d visit Sado Island the next day, then take the Shinkansen to Kyoto. Their flights back to their respective countries from Tokyo were both on the 15th, so they didn’t have a lot of time.
“Most important of all,” Stéphane pronounced, “We will all be together!” And Shizuka didn’t know of any way to react to that; that wouldn’t be either a letdown or untruthful, so she just smiled back at him and smiled over at Johnny too, as he rolled his eyes at her sympathetically. There was something soft in his face when he looked at Stéphane, though, and Shizuka wondered yet again why they weren’t actually together. At least, she didn’t think they were. She always thought -- maybe it was Johnny, because from what she knew of Stéphane, he’d never been anything but fearless about throwing himself into new things, relationships or otherwise -- but that seemed unfair, and it wasn’t her place to judge.
---
Sado was all right. Shizuka got sick on the ferry -- not badly, but it came quickly enough that she had to cover her mouth with one hand and flap the other for a paper bag, which was soon delivered. “Here,” a warm voice said, and someone held her hair back as she retched into the mouth of the paper bag, held between her knees. After she’d vomited she felt much better, and reached into her handbag for a pack of tissues, feeling mildly embarrassed. Usually she wasn’t this pathetic.
When she looked up, it was Johnny who’d been holding her hair. He let go quite quickly.
“Better now?” he asked. His eyes were kind.
“Thanks,” she said. Stéphane offered her a sip from his thermos and she took it without even knowing what the drink inside was; it turned out to be green tea. He leaned forward and squeezed her hand.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the coastline growing more and more visible from their fixed point in the middle of the sea, “We’re nearly there.”
---
They’d talked about covering the whole island, but really they didn’t end up doing much. Mostly they walked around the coastline and took pictures of the gorges and cliffs -- Shizuka took most of the pictures, smiling when they egged each other into hamming it up for the camera. Her favourite picture of the both of them, though, was the one where they posed against the colourful fishing boats lined up on the beach. Their arms were around each other and Stéphane was serious for once, and Johnny gave a smile that would have been prim if it weren’t so wide. She showed it to them after and Johnny said, “You’ll have to send that one to me.” It’d been taken on Stéphane’s camera.
“Shan’t,” Stéphane said, sticking his tongue out at Johnny. Shizuka handed the camera back to Stéphane and walked ahead slightly faster as Johnny dug his elbow into Stéphane’s ribcage and Stéphane howled with glee. She looked back at them, taking in the way they looked, two figures clinging to each other in the sand and the seaside wind. Stéphane waved at her, and she raised a hand in reply.
---
It was three o clock by the time the Shinkansen stopped at Kyoto to let them off, right on time. It was a rush to check in at the small exclusive ryokan where Johnny had managed to get reservations for all three of them, but eventually they made it. Shizuka blinked when she heard that only two rooms had been reserved -- but she wasn’t surprised; she was many things but oblivious was not one of them. That was why she had been so surprised when Johnny and Stéphane had asked her to come along with them.
Kyoto was beautiful as ever. It was a slightly drizzly day, but they had umbrellas -- “I love these see-through umbrellas,” Johnny said, nodding to the umbrella he’d picked up at the hundred yen store a couple of days ago, “I’ve never been able to get them anywhere else,” -- and strolled along Higashiyama, snug underneath those.
They entered a temple there. “Kiyomizu,” Shizuka read aloud for their benefit, and shrugged when they looked at her like she was expected to tell them where to go.
Kiyomizu had a waterfall. Stéphane took advantage of that to stand before it, hands outreached, his belly peeking out under his windbreaker, and Johnny reached out and snapped a photo of that before Stéphane could give the permission that Johnny didn’t ask of him. They had a shrine, Shizuka read in the brochure they gave her going in, Jishu Shrine, where they had love stones you had to walk around if you wanted luck, or something of the sort, but Shizuka didn’t mention it because it sounded rather cheesy, and anyway they didn’t happen to pass by it.
Next to her Stéphane was walking with his head inclined against Johnny’s, his arm snaking around Johnny’s waist. Johnny tolerated it for a couple of seconds before shaking Stéphane off and walking ahead, hands tucked in his back pockets and turning around with a smile to take the sting away.
Stéphane laughed quietly, and transferred his arm to Shizuka’s shoulder instead. “He always pretends to be annoyed,” Stéphane said, as much for Johnny’s benefit as it was for Shizuka’s, and Johnny sped up. Now Stéphane spoke quietly, as if what he had to say was something precious, “Thanks for coming along,” he said, and Shizuka gave him a quick nod as they walked along more slowly together, the corners of her mouth turning up.
“We like having you here,” Stéphane continued, pressing her hand between both of his, and looking up at her earnestly. Sometimes she wished he wouldn’t do that. “Really, you know --” and Shizuka understood that this was somehow important to him, for her to know it. Johnny and Stéphane got so wrapped up in each other sometimes that there wasn’t much space for anyone else.
“It was Johnny’s idea to ask you to come,” Stéphane spoke into her ear, arm still around her, and Shizuka turned look up at him. “I’m so glad you’re here, and he is, too --” and Shizuka stopped walking, opened her mouth to say something, but Stéphane took that as his cue to hug her instead. Before his face disappeared into her shoulder she saw that it looked blank, the kind of expression he always took on when trying to be polite, even when he was sad or unhappy, and she thought that if he didn’t want to talk about it, then neither did she.
---
After dinner they landed up on an overhead bridge around the area, for reasons that were less than obvious. Johnny had said, “Jesus, I’m tired,” and Stéphane plopped down on corner at the top of the steps to oblige him. Shizuka sat down a couple of steps below because while normally she might have been wary of doing this, she’d drunk enough that night for it to seem like a good idea.
There had been sake, at dinner. And now there was to be beer. They’d stopped by a convenience store so Johnny and Stéphane could zoom in on the sweets aisle, cooing over the Pocky and Hello Panda and Little Twin Star sweets. All kinds of sweet things that skaters weren’t allowed to eat. Johnny fell prey to the Hi-chews, while Stéphane brought a whole armful of Meiji chocolate to the cashier like it was something special. Shizuka lingered by the drinks cooler and taken down some Asahi beer, one can for the each of them, and when she joined them at the counter she blinked at them, vaguely embarrassed.
“You said you wanted to try --” she said.
“Thanks,” Johnny had said, and Stéphane took the cans, insisted on paying for it along with his swag. And now they were drinking it. Shizuka had never liked drinking very much, not even when she’d first entered university. Too much studying and skating to do, she supposed, and afterwards drinking was never something she’d really gotten into. Even cracking the tab of the beer can open now seemed vaguely illicit.
She was reminded why she didn’t drink much, as soon as she took her first sip. The taste of beer wasn’t wonderful. But Johnny and Stéphane took her cue, and opened up their own cans. When Stéphane opened up his can the foam spilled out, drenching his knuckles. He cursed softly under his breath, and Shizuka thought she heard Johnny chuckle before standing up.
“I need a cigarette for this,” he said, and Shizuka was vaguely surprised to hear that Johnny smoked. “If you don’t mind --?” and technically he was asking the both of them, but Shizuka knew he was really asking her. She didn’t laugh -- people in Japan smoked, far more than they did in any other country she’d been to -- and pointed down to the vending machine in the middle of the shop row at the foot of the bridge, so he wouldn’t have to walk back to the convenience store, saying, “There.”
“I’ll be back,” Johnny called, voice rather loud. Shizuka leaned her head against the stair rail and stared at the traffic of Kyoto passing by below.
When Stéphane drank, even just a little, he got clingier than he normally was. Shizuka found herself not minding tonight. His arm reached out, elbow balancing on her shoulder, and she could take it. She tucked it to her chest and they stayed like that for a little while, both of them watching Johnny walk over to buy his cigarettes.
“Sharing a room, huh,” Shizuka said. It wasn’t the kind of thing that she would have said normally, but Stéphane was her friend, and tonight it seemed like a good idea. It was an off-hand remark. One that Stéphane could have ignored if he so chose.
“He doesn’t mind,” Stéphane said, “If it’s only for a little while. Not in the long term, he likes his own space, but he doesn’t mind if it’s only for a little while. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Poor Stéphane, Shizuka thought, even though really she couldn’t say who was to be pitied in this business, and she stroked his hand, still sticky from the beer-froth. She tipped her head back so she could look him in the eyes, but all she got was the night sky and a hint of his floppy hair. It was only when he replied that she realised she’d spoken aloud.
Stéphane shrugged. “I am content,” he said. “I don’t get to see him very often.”
“But did you ever ask him?” Shizuka asked, even though she should really, really stop asking questions. She had a vague inkling that she’d regret all they’d talked about in the morning, but Stéphane didn’t seem to notice, or mind.
“We don’t talk about this,” Stéphane said, in a tone of voice that made Shizuka think that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about it, at least. He sounded sad, and Shizuka allowed herself a moment of utter dislike for Johnny. Even if he knew -- he knew what he was getting himself into --
“He shouldn’t be treating you like this,” she said.
“It’s not just him,” Stéphane said. His arm twitched strangely on her shoulder, like he’d either been shrugging or laughing. “I promise.”
Johnny was approaching them on the steps now, pulling himself up by the handrail at first and then letting go to light himself a cigarette. Shizuka watched through bleary eyes and from a distance as he cupped his hands to the cigarette and then let go, revealing the lighted end flaring into life. She heard, rather than saw, as Johnny sat down heavily with a kind of sigh behind her.
“Stéphane, have you been drinking my beer?” he said.
“You drank it all,” Stéphane said. “This is my can, get off, no --”
Shizuka tipped her head back and laughed lazily. He deserves it, she thought, and hoped that Johnny knew the way back to their inn, because he was probably going to be the most sober one by the end of the night.
---
The morning after all three of them woke late and stumbled together into the buffet breakfast their inn offered, after Stéphane knocked on Shizuka’s door.
“Sleep well?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “I wasn’t expecting to -- but tatami’s more comfortable than I’d expected, so it was good. And given the state we were in last night, I guess that didn’t make as much difference.” He caught Shizuka’s eye and they exchanged sly smiles, both on the verge of bursting into laughter. Johnny was wearing a scarf, even thought it was the middle of summer, and when he leaned forward for some rice, chopsticks held carefully just so, it slipped down, and Shizuka noticed a red patch on the skin that would otherwise have been covered by the scarf. She took another sip of her miso soup.
Stéphane looked up and smiled cheerfully. “Good for the back,” he said, and Johnny rolled his eyes. “Not yours, old man,” he said, and Stéphane cackled with glee, and Johnny leaned over and pinched him. They have inside jokes, Shizuka thought, somewhat fondly, and wondered how that fit in with what Stéphane told her last night. Stéphane didn’t seem shaken or particularly sad, Shizuka thought, just happy to be on a holiday with some friends, and five seconds later he was leaping on her and demanding a visit to the Imperial Palace.
---
The next day Shizuka got a call from her boyfriend. She’d texted Osugi to say she wouldn’t be back in Yokohama for a few days yet, and hadn’t felt the need to do more. They hadn’t been dating for a very long time, all things considered -- it was her first real relationship, actually, and she wanted to be cautious, but anyway she hadn’t thought to seek his approval before touring Kyoto with her friends.
“Shizuka-san, what are you doing?”
“I told you,” Shizuka said, slightly baffled. She’d been in her room, packing. A hairpin fell out of the side pocket in her overnight case and she bent over to pick it out of the patterned straw of her tatami, pricking herself slightly in the process. “I’m in Kyoto. There were friends --”
Osugi sighed. “You didn’t say anything in advance,” he said. “I had plans, that’s all.”
The worst thing about Osugi was that you couldn’t possibly get angry at him; he was always so polite and self-effacing, even when it came to matters of the heart. Shizuka wondered if she’d be better off with someone else who was quite as strong-willed as she was, a businessman perhaps. Osugi always made her feel guilty, and then made her lash out, because of that.
“I’ve lived on my own for a long time,” she said. “I’m not used to being accountable to anyone for where I go, or who I choose to meet.”
There was a long reproachful pause, down the line. Osugi had been wanting to get married for a very long time, she knew, and she’d always maintained a distinctly respectful silence because she wasn’t sure yet, was never quite ready. Marriage meant retirement and children, in that order. Shizuka didn’t feel like tackling that at the moment.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, making her voice deliberately free of all inflection. “I’ll see you in two days, all right?”
“Shizuka --” she heard Osugi begin to say, as she pressed the ‘end’ button on her phone. At least it didn’t begin to ring again, which was something. Shizuka sat down and stared at the wall on the opposite end of the room, feeling like a terrible person. Osugi was a good man, and she was in love with him. Something in her just kept making her shy away from talk of more, and that was it.
Shizuka was disrupted from her reverie by the knock on her door. She slid the door open and Stéphane was there, dressed in the yukata that the inn had provided. “Is anything the matter, Stéphane?” she asked.
Stéphane grinned, quick and happy, and Shizuka moved aside to let him enter. “Nothing!” he said. “Johnny’s using the bathroom, he always takes a long time, and I thought I might say hello. Hello!” he wiggled his fingers at her dorkily, and Shizuka’s mood began to lighten.
Not quite enough for Stéphane to not notice, it seemed -- he peered closely at her face, and his own expression dropped into one of sympathy. “Shizuka -- is anything the matter?”
“Nothing,” Shizuka said, and tried to smile. “I just had a fight with -- someone, that’s all. With my boyfriend.”
Stéphane made a face, and pulled her into a hug. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” he said into her shoulder, reproachfully.
“You didn’t ask,” Shizuka said.
“I want to know, though,” Stéphane said. He pulled back. “Who is he?”
“No one you know,” Shizuka said. “His name is Osugi. He’s an... optometrist.”
Stéphane didn’t seem to understand, and it was rare, Shizuka thought, that she knew a word in English that he didn’t, and she said, “Eye doctor? Spectacles?” and he grinned, made circles around his eyes with his hands even though he didn’t have to. Shizuka smiled and nodded, just like that, yes. They both sank to the floor, sitting next to each other with their knees pulled up against their chests. It was convenient that she was wearing trousers instead of a skirt, Shizuka thought.
“It’s just hard -- being away --” Shizuka said, not caring for once that she wasn’t making any sense, but Stéphane was nodding. He covered her hand with his, and Shizuka let him.
“It’s hard,” he agreed quietly. “Maybe it’s worth it?” Shizuka got the feeling that he wasn’t just talking about her, but she didn’t mind. She thought Osugi was worth it, a lot of the time, even nearly all of the time. Worth trying to balance the rest of her life with, at least. It was still difficult.
“You need some chocolate,” Stéphane said, and Shizuka snorted because Stéphane was being -- well, he wasn’t being silly, Shizuka thought some chocolate would be nice, but it was just typical Stéphane.
“Wait here,” he said, and left the room, returning just as quickly as he’d departed, bearing the box of Royce chocolate he’d bought the other day triumphantly aloft. When he opened the box Shizuka saw that just a row of it was gone, and picked up a piece, stuffing it into her mouth and letting it melt there slowly. It was extremely good.
When she opened her eyes Stéphane was smiling at her, the beginning of crows’ legs showing around his eyes. He picked up another square with the toothpick, and put it in his mouth.
---
Life, Shizuka thought, was confusing -- or perhaps that was just the people she was travelling with now -- but still tolerable, and she did enjoy walking around Kyoto a lot with them, even if Johnny and Stéphane did give her worried looks on occasion and ask if she was enjoying herself. Each time they asked she smiled and said yes, thank you very much, and where did they want to go next? It was an easy companionship, the sort she didn’t really think she’d be able to develop with anyone so quickly. She knew they weren’t fully convinced, but otherwise she wasn’t really sure how she would be able to make her delight clearer. There was a casualness in the way Stéphane and Johnny talked to and touched each other, which Shizuka could never bring herself to emulate, even with people she’d known a long time. She had reservations.
“I wish I had come to Japan earlier, you know,” Stéphane said, walking between Johnny and Shizuka, both their arms linked with his. “But I made Dai come to Switzerland when I choreographed,” -- his chest puffed out a little with pride, because of the way he’d managed to make someone do something for him, and Shizuka smirked -- “Daisuke Takahashi, you know,” he added, looking left and right in his uncertainty. Shizuka wasn’t sure for whose benefit he’d said it for.
“Daisuke is a nice boy,” Shizuka agreed. “He will do what you want him to, and Switzerland is very beautiful.”
Stéphane laughed. “We discussed you,” he said, eyes dancing. Shizuka darted a glance across Stéphane’s profile, and Johnny seemed to be listening intently. “He calls you Arakawa-san.”
Shizuka couldn’t help smiling. It was just like Daisuke, she thought, to resort to the formal way of addressing someone when (she guessed) he wasn’t clear quite how well someone knew a mutual acquaintance of theirs; or perhaps he was simply bashful. Daisuke was prone to being very shy. Especially to people who were older, no matter how small the age difference was. He made her feel old, and protective. Too many people were making her feel that way these days, against her will.
“Don’t let him mislead you, I know him quite well,” she said instead. “We went to a Beyoncé concert together last year, and he danced.”
“You like Beyoncé?” Johnny said. His eyes crinkled up when he looked at her. It was inconvenient, Shizuka thought, to walk along like this in threes, but Stéphane was groaning -- he pretended to dislike Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, for some reason that had to do with Britney; when he told Shizuka she was unimpressed at first, and then amused -- and Shizuka found herself grinning a little wickedly.
“I love Beyoncé,” she said.
---
On Johnny and Stéphane’s last day none of them felt very inclined to do anything. All the shopping had been done the day before. Shizuka thought that the memory of Johnny marching down the streets in Arashimaya with his bag drawn firmly over his shoulder would probably stay with her for a very, very long time; she’d laughed.
(“What are you laughing at?” he’d demanded.
“You remind me of my mother,” she said, not shy about saying it for once, and a slow smile had spread across Johnny’s face until he was giggling as hard as she was. When Stéphane had emerged from the toilet in Starbucks, his gaze had travelled from Johnny to Shizuka before he demanded, “What?“ Neither of them had said anything, and he’d assumed they were talking about him, and a huff had ensued.)
Perhaps it was the effect of the hot springs they’d soaked in last night. Shizuka didn’t like hot springs, normally, not even when it was winter, but she thought it was something Johnny and Stéphane should experience while they were in Japan. Hot springs were segregated by sex in their inn, as most of them were, and Shizuka went to the female one alone, and thought about nothing in particular while she was soaking -- her younger cousin, who’d been like a sister growing up. They’d splashed each other in a hot spring, once. Her mother, and her best friend from university. She hoped Johnny and Stéphane were having fun.
The relaxing effects of the hot spring had seemingly carried on to their last day together, anyway, and neither of them seemed to want to do or say much. They found themselves sitting on a bench outside Imperial Park, looking at the cherry trees that had, ostensibly, bloomed to great effect three months ago. Now the boughs were not laden with much fruit to show for it, Shizuka thought. Time was passing so quickly. Soon summer would end, and autumn follow on its heels, and before anyone knew it the year would be over.
Stéphane sighed happily. “I wish we could remain here, like this, forever,” he said, and Shizuka bit her lip and looked away.
Her phone rang, and Stéphane looked at her disapprovingly. He was strangely conservative about phone etiquette, Shizuka knew, and it was always rather quaint to her, and to Johnny she suspected. She jerked her head at her phone. The notes of Exile’s latest single was still spilling out from it.
“I’ll be back,” she said, and hurried a few steps away before picking up. From the corner of her eye she saw Stéphane scoot over, even though the bench was emptier because she’d just vacated it, and rest his forehead against Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny patted absent-mindedly at the hair at the back of Stéphane’s neck.
She flipped her phone open. “Oka-san,” she said, by way of greeting.
“Shizuka, where are you?” her mother asked. She sounded worried.
“I told you,” Shizuka said, trying not to recognise the squirmy feeling in her gut as guilt. “I’m in Kyoto, with a few friends. I’m taking a few days off after the tour.”
“Osugi called,” her mother said, soft and resigned, and Shizuka tensed. When she’d started bringing Osugi home, he and her mother had gotten along unexpectedly well, as if her mother had found the son she’d never had. Some days, too, she’d come home to find Osugi there already, sitting in the kitchen over glasses of fruit juice, conversing in low voices. Just talking.
“Yes,” she said, agreeing with nothing. “He called me, too.”
“You shouldn’t have been angry, he was worried,” her mother said, and Shizuka tensed, unhappy. “I made kakinoha sushi yesterday, and you weren’t even around.”
Shizuka sighed, but silently. “I apologise, mother,” she said, excessively formal, and turned around.
“When are you coming home?”
Stéphane and Johnny were still sitting next to each other, on the bench under the cherry tree. As Shizuka watched, her phone cradled between her shoulder and her ear, Johnny shifted away from Stéphane. Stéphane didn’t move to accommodate the sudden space Johnny had left between the both of them, his posture oddly bereft. Instead he was gazing at the loping curve of Johnny’s back, as Johnny leaned his elbows against the armrest, expression still and intent.
“I don’t know,” Shizuka said. “Soon.”
Johnny/Stéphane, Shizuka/OMC
PG
4803 words
It was three o clock by the time the Shinkansen stopped at Kyoto to let them off, right on time. Niigata: take two.
Huge thanks to nova33 for betaing. This is for strange_bt_true.
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
-- Izumi Shikibu
Shizuka hadn’t planned for this, was the thing. She’d been glad to see Stéphane again, and glad to be skating alongside him -- “I missed you,” he said the first day back, pulling her close into a hug, and she’d patted him on the back and smiled -- but it was supposed to be a show, that was all, and then they’d all go back to their respective countries and continue with their own lives. Shizuka wasn’t very good at keeping in touch with people, and she thought Stéphane was probably the same way. He liked being around people when it suited him, but if there wasn’t anyone around then that would be all right, too.
But since they’d flown all the way to Japan, Stéphane wasn’t going to leave quite so soon, and he’d persuaded Johnny to stay another couple of days with him. Shizuka thought that made sense. She knew they were good friends, those boys.
She hadn’t counted on Stéphane turning to her and saying, “You should come with us.”
Shizuka didn’t know Johnny very well. They’d skated in a few shows together, and they had been at a lot of the same competitions, but back then she hadn’t spoken English very well and she’d stuck to talking with her own teammates. Shizuka thought it was rather silly and pointless to make friends at competitions, anyway. She thought Johnny was nice -- rather hard to impress, perhaps, but she respected that. They simply weren’t friends by any definition of the word.
Stéphane wanted to be friends with everyone.
This was why she’d hesitated, worrying her lip even though she hadn’t anything scheduled over the next week or so, as Stéphane made pleading eyes at her and said it was absolutely ages since Thin Ice, and wouldn’t a little sightseeing be fun? She didn’t want to disrupt anything between Johnny and Stéphane.
“You could be our tour guide,” Johnny said, smiling at her. Stéphane flung an arm around her and she didn’t shrug him off.
If she could justify her presence, then, well -- that was all right.
---
Shizuka had only been to Niigata once before. Brief memories of a school trip when she was seven stirred at the back of her mind -- what for, she couldn’t remember. There wasn’t much to do in Niigata at all. Johnny and Stéphane listened attentively when she said they could move around, perhaps, and nodded when she suggested Sado Island first. Johnny didn’t say anything except, “That sounds wonderful,” when she constructed an itinerary and shared it with them -- they’d visit Sado Island the next day, then take the Shinkansen to Kyoto. Their flights back to their respective countries from Tokyo were both on the 15th, so they didn’t have a lot of time.
“Most important of all,” Stéphane pronounced, “We will all be together!” And Shizuka didn’t know of any way to react to that; that wouldn’t be either a letdown or untruthful, so she just smiled back at him and smiled over at Johnny too, as he rolled his eyes at her sympathetically. There was something soft in his face when he looked at Stéphane, though, and Shizuka wondered yet again why they weren’t actually together. At least, she didn’t think they were. She always thought -- maybe it was Johnny, because from what she knew of Stéphane, he’d never been anything but fearless about throwing himself into new things, relationships or otherwise -- but that seemed unfair, and it wasn’t her place to judge.
---
Sado was all right. Shizuka got sick on the ferry -- not badly, but it came quickly enough that she had to cover her mouth with one hand and flap the other for a paper bag, which was soon delivered. “Here,” a warm voice said, and someone held her hair back as she retched into the mouth of the paper bag, held between her knees. After she’d vomited she felt much better, and reached into her handbag for a pack of tissues, feeling mildly embarrassed. Usually she wasn’t this pathetic.
When she looked up, it was Johnny who’d been holding her hair. He let go quite quickly.
“Better now?” he asked. His eyes were kind.
“Thanks,” she said. Stéphane offered her a sip from his thermos and she took it without even knowing what the drink inside was; it turned out to be green tea. He leaned forward and squeezed her hand.
“Look,” he said, pointing to the coastline growing more and more visible from their fixed point in the middle of the sea, “We’re nearly there.”
---
They’d talked about covering the whole island, but really they didn’t end up doing much. Mostly they walked around the coastline and took pictures of the gorges and cliffs -- Shizuka took most of the pictures, smiling when they egged each other into hamming it up for the camera. Her favourite picture of the both of them, though, was the one where they posed against the colourful fishing boats lined up on the beach. Their arms were around each other and Stéphane was serious for once, and Johnny gave a smile that would have been prim if it weren’t so wide. She showed it to them after and Johnny said, “You’ll have to send that one to me.” It’d been taken on Stéphane’s camera.
“Shan’t,” Stéphane said, sticking his tongue out at Johnny. Shizuka handed the camera back to Stéphane and walked ahead slightly faster as Johnny dug his elbow into Stéphane’s ribcage and Stéphane howled with glee. She looked back at them, taking in the way they looked, two figures clinging to each other in the sand and the seaside wind. Stéphane waved at her, and she raised a hand in reply.
---
It was three o clock by the time the Shinkansen stopped at Kyoto to let them off, right on time. It was a rush to check in at the small exclusive ryokan where Johnny had managed to get reservations for all three of them, but eventually they made it. Shizuka blinked when she heard that only two rooms had been reserved -- but she wasn’t surprised; she was many things but oblivious was not one of them. That was why she had been so surprised when Johnny and Stéphane had asked her to come along with them.
Kyoto was beautiful as ever. It was a slightly drizzly day, but they had umbrellas -- “I love these see-through umbrellas,” Johnny said, nodding to the umbrella he’d picked up at the hundred yen store a couple of days ago, “I’ve never been able to get them anywhere else,” -- and strolled along Higashiyama, snug underneath those.
They entered a temple there. “Kiyomizu,” Shizuka read aloud for their benefit, and shrugged when they looked at her like she was expected to tell them where to go.
Kiyomizu had a waterfall. Stéphane took advantage of that to stand before it, hands outreached, his belly peeking out under his windbreaker, and Johnny reached out and snapped a photo of that before Stéphane could give the permission that Johnny didn’t ask of him. They had a shrine, Shizuka read in the brochure they gave her going in, Jishu Shrine, where they had love stones you had to walk around if you wanted luck, or something of the sort, but Shizuka didn’t mention it because it sounded rather cheesy, and anyway they didn’t happen to pass by it.
Next to her Stéphane was walking with his head inclined against Johnny’s, his arm snaking around Johnny’s waist. Johnny tolerated it for a couple of seconds before shaking Stéphane off and walking ahead, hands tucked in his back pockets and turning around with a smile to take the sting away.
Stéphane laughed quietly, and transferred his arm to Shizuka’s shoulder instead. “He always pretends to be annoyed,” Stéphane said, as much for Johnny’s benefit as it was for Shizuka’s, and Johnny sped up. Now Stéphane spoke quietly, as if what he had to say was something precious, “Thanks for coming along,” he said, and Shizuka gave him a quick nod as they walked along more slowly together, the corners of her mouth turning up.
“We like having you here,” Stéphane continued, pressing her hand between both of his, and looking up at her earnestly. Sometimes she wished he wouldn’t do that. “Really, you know --” and Shizuka understood that this was somehow important to him, for her to know it. Johnny and Stéphane got so wrapped up in each other sometimes that there wasn’t much space for anyone else.
“It was Johnny’s idea to ask you to come,” Stéphane spoke into her ear, arm still around her, and Shizuka turned look up at him. “I’m so glad you’re here, and he is, too --” and Shizuka stopped walking, opened her mouth to say something, but Stéphane took that as his cue to hug her instead. Before his face disappeared into her shoulder she saw that it looked blank, the kind of expression he always took on when trying to be polite, even when he was sad or unhappy, and she thought that if he didn’t want to talk about it, then neither did she.
---
After dinner they landed up on an overhead bridge around the area, for reasons that were less than obvious. Johnny had said, “Jesus, I’m tired,” and Stéphane plopped down on corner at the top of the steps to oblige him. Shizuka sat down a couple of steps below because while normally she might have been wary of doing this, she’d drunk enough that night for it to seem like a good idea.
There had been sake, at dinner. And now there was to be beer. They’d stopped by a convenience store so Johnny and Stéphane could zoom in on the sweets aisle, cooing over the Pocky and Hello Panda and Little Twin Star sweets. All kinds of sweet things that skaters weren’t allowed to eat. Johnny fell prey to the Hi-chews, while Stéphane brought a whole armful of Meiji chocolate to the cashier like it was something special. Shizuka lingered by the drinks cooler and taken down some Asahi beer, one can for the each of them, and when she joined them at the counter she blinked at them, vaguely embarrassed.
“You said you wanted to try --” she said.
“Thanks,” Johnny had said, and Stéphane took the cans, insisted on paying for it along with his swag. And now they were drinking it. Shizuka had never liked drinking very much, not even when she’d first entered university. Too much studying and skating to do, she supposed, and afterwards drinking was never something she’d really gotten into. Even cracking the tab of the beer can open now seemed vaguely illicit.
She was reminded why she didn’t drink much, as soon as she took her first sip. The taste of beer wasn’t wonderful. But Johnny and Stéphane took her cue, and opened up their own cans. When Stéphane opened up his can the foam spilled out, drenching his knuckles. He cursed softly under his breath, and Shizuka thought she heard Johnny chuckle before standing up.
“I need a cigarette for this,” he said, and Shizuka was vaguely surprised to hear that Johnny smoked. “If you don’t mind --?” and technically he was asking the both of them, but Shizuka knew he was really asking her. She didn’t laugh -- people in Japan smoked, far more than they did in any other country she’d been to -- and pointed down to the vending machine in the middle of the shop row at the foot of the bridge, so he wouldn’t have to walk back to the convenience store, saying, “There.”
“I’ll be back,” Johnny called, voice rather loud. Shizuka leaned her head against the stair rail and stared at the traffic of Kyoto passing by below.
When Stéphane drank, even just a little, he got clingier than he normally was. Shizuka found herself not minding tonight. His arm reached out, elbow balancing on her shoulder, and she could take it. She tucked it to her chest and they stayed like that for a little while, both of them watching Johnny walk over to buy his cigarettes.
“Sharing a room, huh,” Shizuka said. It wasn’t the kind of thing that she would have said normally, but Stéphane was her friend, and tonight it seemed like a good idea. It was an off-hand remark. One that Stéphane could have ignored if he so chose.
“He doesn’t mind,” Stéphane said, “If it’s only for a little while. Not in the long term, he likes his own space, but he doesn’t mind if it’s only for a little while. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Poor Stéphane, Shizuka thought, even though really she couldn’t say who was to be pitied in this business, and she stroked his hand, still sticky from the beer-froth. She tipped her head back so she could look him in the eyes, but all she got was the night sky and a hint of his floppy hair. It was only when he replied that she realised she’d spoken aloud.
Stéphane shrugged. “I am content,” he said. “I don’t get to see him very often.”
“But did you ever ask him?” Shizuka asked, even though she should really, really stop asking questions. She had a vague inkling that she’d regret all they’d talked about in the morning, but Stéphane didn’t seem to notice, or mind.
“We don’t talk about this,” Stéphane said, in a tone of voice that made Shizuka think that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about it, at least. He sounded sad, and Shizuka allowed herself a moment of utter dislike for Johnny. Even if he knew -- he knew what he was getting himself into --
“He shouldn’t be treating you like this,” she said.
“It’s not just him,” Stéphane said. His arm twitched strangely on her shoulder, like he’d either been shrugging or laughing. “I promise.”
Johnny was approaching them on the steps now, pulling himself up by the handrail at first and then letting go to light himself a cigarette. Shizuka watched through bleary eyes and from a distance as he cupped his hands to the cigarette and then let go, revealing the lighted end flaring into life. She heard, rather than saw, as Johnny sat down heavily with a kind of sigh behind her.
“Stéphane, have you been drinking my beer?” he said.
“You drank it all,” Stéphane said. “This is my can, get off, no --”
Shizuka tipped her head back and laughed lazily. He deserves it, she thought, and hoped that Johnny knew the way back to their inn, because he was probably going to be the most sober one by the end of the night.
---
The morning after all three of them woke late and stumbled together into the buffet breakfast their inn offered, after Stéphane knocked on Shizuka’s door.
“Sleep well?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “I wasn’t expecting to -- but tatami’s more comfortable than I’d expected, so it was good. And given the state we were in last night, I guess that didn’t make as much difference.” He caught Shizuka’s eye and they exchanged sly smiles, both on the verge of bursting into laughter. Johnny was wearing a scarf, even thought it was the middle of summer, and when he leaned forward for some rice, chopsticks held carefully just so, it slipped down, and Shizuka noticed a red patch on the skin that would otherwise have been covered by the scarf. She took another sip of her miso soup.
Stéphane looked up and smiled cheerfully. “Good for the back,” he said, and Johnny rolled his eyes. “Not yours, old man,” he said, and Stéphane cackled with glee, and Johnny leaned over and pinched him. They have inside jokes, Shizuka thought, somewhat fondly, and wondered how that fit in with what Stéphane told her last night. Stéphane didn’t seem shaken or particularly sad, Shizuka thought, just happy to be on a holiday with some friends, and five seconds later he was leaping on her and demanding a visit to the Imperial Palace.
---
The next day Shizuka got a call from her boyfriend. She’d texted Osugi to say she wouldn’t be back in Yokohama for a few days yet, and hadn’t felt the need to do more. They hadn’t been dating for a very long time, all things considered -- it was her first real relationship, actually, and she wanted to be cautious, but anyway she hadn’t thought to seek his approval before touring Kyoto with her friends.
“Shizuka-san, what are you doing?”
“I told you,” Shizuka said, slightly baffled. She’d been in her room, packing. A hairpin fell out of the side pocket in her overnight case and she bent over to pick it out of the patterned straw of her tatami, pricking herself slightly in the process. “I’m in Kyoto. There were friends --”
Osugi sighed. “You didn’t say anything in advance,” he said. “I had plans, that’s all.”
The worst thing about Osugi was that you couldn’t possibly get angry at him; he was always so polite and self-effacing, even when it came to matters of the heart. Shizuka wondered if she’d be better off with someone else who was quite as strong-willed as she was, a businessman perhaps. Osugi always made her feel guilty, and then made her lash out, because of that.
“I’ve lived on my own for a long time,” she said. “I’m not used to being accountable to anyone for where I go, or who I choose to meet.”
There was a long reproachful pause, down the line. Osugi had been wanting to get married for a very long time, she knew, and she’d always maintained a distinctly respectful silence because she wasn’t sure yet, was never quite ready. Marriage meant retirement and children, in that order. Shizuka didn’t feel like tackling that at the moment.
“I’ve got to go,” she said, making her voice deliberately free of all inflection. “I’ll see you in two days, all right?”
“Shizuka --” she heard Osugi begin to say, as she pressed the ‘end’ button on her phone. At least it didn’t begin to ring again, which was something. Shizuka sat down and stared at the wall on the opposite end of the room, feeling like a terrible person. Osugi was a good man, and she was in love with him. Something in her just kept making her shy away from talk of more, and that was it.
Shizuka was disrupted from her reverie by the knock on her door. She slid the door open and Stéphane was there, dressed in the yukata that the inn had provided. “Is anything the matter, Stéphane?” she asked.
Stéphane grinned, quick and happy, and Shizuka moved aside to let him enter. “Nothing!” he said. “Johnny’s using the bathroom, he always takes a long time, and I thought I might say hello. Hello!” he wiggled his fingers at her dorkily, and Shizuka’s mood began to lighten.
Not quite enough for Stéphane to not notice, it seemed -- he peered closely at her face, and his own expression dropped into one of sympathy. “Shizuka -- is anything the matter?”
“Nothing,” Shizuka said, and tried to smile. “I just had a fight with -- someone, that’s all. With my boyfriend.”
Stéphane made a face, and pulled her into a hug. “I didn’t know you had a boyfriend,” he said into her shoulder, reproachfully.
“You didn’t ask,” Shizuka said.
“I want to know, though,” Stéphane said. He pulled back. “Who is he?”
“No one you know,” Shizuka said. “His name is Osugi. He’s an... optometrist.”
Stéphane didn’t seem to understand, and it was rare, Shizuka thought, that she knew a word in English that he didn’t, and she said, “Eye doctor? Spectacles?” and he grinned, made circles around his eyes with his hands even though he didn’t have to. Shizuka smiled and nodded, just like that, yes. They both sank to the floor, sitting next to each other with their knees pulled up against their chests. It was convenient that she was wearing trousers instead of a skirt, Shizuka thought.
“It’s just hard -- being away --” Shizuka said, not caring for once that she wasn’t making any sense, but Stéphane was nodding. He covered her hand with his, and Shizuka let him.
“It’s hard,” he agreed quietly. “Maybe it’s worth it?” Shizuka got the feeling that he wasn’t just talking about her, but she didn’t mind. She thought Osugi was worth it, a lot of the time, even nearly all of the time. Worth trying to balance the rest of her life with, at least. It was still difficult.
“You need some chocolate,” Stéphane said, and Shizuka snorted because Stéphane was being -- well, he wasn’t being silly, Shizuka thought some chocolate would be nice, but it was just typical Stéphane.
“Wait here,” he said, and left the room, returning just as quickly as he’d departed, bearing the box of Royce chocolate he’d bought the other day triumphantly aloft. When he opened the box Shizuka saw that just a row of it was gone, and picked up a piece, stuffing it into her mouth and letting it melt there slowly. It was extremely good.
When she opened her eyes Stéphane was smiling at her, the beginning of crows’ legs showing around his eyes. He picked up another square with the toothpick, and put it in his mouth.
---
Life, Shizuka thought, was confusing -- or perhaps that was just the people she was travelling with now -- but still tolerable, and she did enjoy walking around Kyoto a lot with them, even if Johnny and Stéphane did give her worried looks on occasion and ask if she was enjoying herself. Each time they asked she smiled and said yes, thank you very much, and where did they want to go next? It was an easy companionship, the sort she didn’t really think she’d be able to develop with anyone so quickly. She knew they weren’t fully convinced, but otherwise she wasn’t really sure how she would be able to make her delight clearer. There was a casualness in the way Stéphane and Johnny talked to and touched each other, which Shizuka could never bring herself to emulate, even with people she’d known a long time. She had reservations.
“I wish I had come to Japan earlier, you know,” Stéphane said, walking between Johnny and Shizuka, both their arms linked with his. “But I made Dai come to Switzerland when I choreographed,” -- his chest puffed out a little with pride, because of the way he’d managed to make someone do something for him, and Shizuka smirked -- “Daisuke Takahashi, you know,” he added, looking left and right in his uncertainty. Shizuka wasn’t sure for whose benefit he’d said it for.
“Daisuke is a nice boy,” Shizuka agreed. “He will do what you want him to, and Switzerland is very beautiful.”
Stéphane laughed. “We discussed you,” he said, eyes dancing. Shizuka darted a glance across Stéphane’s profile, and Johnny seemed to be listening intently. “He calls you Arakawa-san.”
Shizuka couldn’t help smiling. It was just like Daisuke, she thought, to resort to the formal way of addressing someone when (she guessed) he wasn’t clear quite how well someone knew a mutual acquaintance of theirs; or perhaps he was simply bashful. Daisuke was prone to being very shy. Especially to people who were older, no matter how small the age difference was. He made her feel old, and protective. Too many people were making her feel that way these days, against her will.
“Don’t let him mislead you, I know him quite well,” she said instead. “We went to a Beyoncé concert together last year, and he danced.”
“You like Beyoncé?” Johnny said. His eyes crinkled up when he looked at her. It was inconvenient, Shizuka thought, to walk along like this in threes, but Stéphane was groaning -- he pretended to dislike Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera, for some reason that had to do with Britney; when he told Shizuka she was unimpressed at first, and then amused -- and Shizuka found herself grinning a little wickedly.
“I love Beyoncé,” she said.
---
On Johnny and Stéphane’s last day none of them felt very inclined to do anything. All the shopping had been done the day before. Shizuka thought that the memory of Johnny marching down the streets in Arashimaya with his bag drawn firmly over his shoulder would probably stay with her for a very, very long time; she’d laughed.
(“What are you laughing at?” he’d demanded.
“You remind me of my mother,” she said, not shy about saying it for once, and a slow smile had spread across Johnny’s face until he was giggling as hard as she was. When Stéphane had emerged from the toilet in Starbucks, his gaze had travelled from Johnny to Shizuka before he demanded, “What?“ Neither of them had said anything, and he’d assumed they were talking about him, and a huff had ensued.)
Perhaps it was the effect of the hot springs they’d soaked in last night. Shizuka didn’t like hot springs, normally, not even when it was winter, but she thought it was something Johnny and Stéphane should experience while they were in Japan. Hot springs were segregated by sex in their inn, as most of them were, and Shizuka went to the female one alone, and thought about nothing in particular while she was soaking -- her younger cousin, who’d been like a sister growing up. They’d splashed each other in a hot spring, once. Her mother, and her best friend from university. She hoped Johnny and Stéphane were having fun.
The relaxing effects of the hot spring had seemingly carried on to their last day together, anyway, and neither of them seemed to want to do or say much. They found themselves sitting on a bench outside Imperial Park, looking at the cherry trees that had, ostensibly, bloomed to great effect three months ago. Now the boughs were not laden with much fruit to show for it, Shizuka thought. Time was passing so quickly. Soon summer would end, and autumn follow on its heels, and before anyone knew it the year would be over.
Stéphane sighed happily. “I wish we could remain here, like this, forever,” he said, and Shizuka bit her lip and looked away.
Her phone rang, and Stéphane looked at her disapprovingly. He was strangely conservative about phone etiquette, Shizuka knew, and it was always rather quaint to her, and to Johnny she suspected. She jerked her head at her phone. The notes of Exile’s latest single was still spilling out from it.
“I’ll be back,” she said, and hurried a few steps away before picking up. From the corner of her eye she saw Stéphane scoot over, even though the bench was emptier because she’d just vacated it, and rest his forehead against Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny patted absent-mindedly at the hair at the back of Stéphane’s neck.
She flipped her phone open. “Oka-san,” she said, by way of greeting.
“Shizuka, where are you?” her mother asked. She sounded worried.
“I told you,” Shizuka said, trying not to recognise the squirmy feeling in her gut as guilt. “I’m in Kyoto, with a few friends. I’m taking a few days off after the tour.”
“Osugi called,” her mother said, soft and resigned, and Shizuka tensed. When she’d started bringing Osugi home, he and her mother had gotten along unexpectedly well, as if her mother had found the son she’d never had. Some days, too, she’d come home to find Osugi there already, sitting in the kitchen over glasses of fruit juice, conversing in low voices. Just talking.
“Yes,” she said, agreeing with nothing. “He called me, too.”
“You shouldn’t have been angry, he was worried,” her mother said, and Shizuka tensed, unhappy. “I made kakinoha sushi yesterday, and you weren’t even around.”
Shizuka sighed, but silently. “I apologise, mother,” she said, excessively formal, and turned around.
“When are you coming home?”
Stéphane and Johnny were still sitting next to each other, on the bench under the cherry tree. As Shizuka watched, her phone cradled between her shoulder and her ear, Johnny shifted away from Stéphane. Stéphane didn’t move to accommodate the sudden space Johnny had left between the both of them, his posture oddly bereft. Instead he was gazing at the loping curve of Johnny’s back, as Johnny leaned his elbows against the armrest, expression still and intent.
“I don’t know,” Shizuka said. “Soon.”