fic; The Pretty Girl Reaction
Title: The Pretty Girl Reaction
Characters: Nakamaru Yuichi and Sawajiri Erika
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and Stardust Promotion. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: She's like a kaleidoscope, vibrant and bright, but most of all, she's mesmerizing. Nakamaru Yuichi doesn't do well with surprises. So when he bumps into the most unusual girl in Japan, he does what he's trained to: stick to a pattern.
With many, many thanks to L. This is for her.
"I really don't think..." he begins, but his sister is as bossy as their mother, and she'll hear none of it.
"But wouldn't you have the most chance of meeting her?" she looks almost desperate, and Yuichi feels his resolve crack straight down the middle, just like that. "Because Yuu-nii is also a popular musician, right?!"
"It doesn't actually work that way..." he tries to say again, but then he gets the stricken look.
He sighs. "I can try to get her autograph if I ever see her."
She brightens and leaps on him. "Yuu-nii, you're the best!" she shouts, right in his ear.
"OW," he says very pointedly, but his sister's already skipping away, singing FREE at the top of her lungs. Yuichi's heard it so often, he knows the words.
As it turns out, he doesn't even meet her at a variety show, or some glamorous fashion event. (Not that he'd even be at some glamorous fashion event, but really, the likelihood was so much better.)
"I'm really sorry, sir, about the mixup..." The airline staff are repentant; this sort of thing doesn't happen to a Johnny's! "We're so sorry you had to come here and straighten things out..."
"No, no, it's fine!" Yuichi says hurriedly, accepting his plane tickets. "I can make it to Seoul now, thank you..."
He waves awkwardly, steps back when the staff all bow to him in a neat line. It's really quite unnerving. "Well, then, thank you," he says, bowing quickly, and again, backing away hurriedly before they start apologising again.
He's thinking about stopping by the food courts for something to eat when he crashes into her near the Shu Uemura store just right next to a katsu place. "Oh!" he gasps, looking down. "I'm sorry -"
Erika Sawajiri, the infamous Sawajiri, blinks, eyelash curler in hand. "Well," she says conversationally, "you didn't take out my eye..."
"Ah." Yuichi laughs nervously, not entirely sure how to respond to something like that. "That's...uh, lucky, I guess." He steps back, gives her (and himself) some personal space. "I didn't see you..."
"Oh, it's fine." And this Erika isn't like how the tabloids paint her out to be at all. She seems conscientious and polite enough, and really kind of stunning. She flashes him a wry grin and he has to blink, mildly dazed all of a sudden. Pretty girls always get him nervous. "No harm, no foul..."
There's an awkward pause. Yuichi remembers his sister and wonders how he can broach the topic without sounding totally creepy.
Erika blinks, looks him over once, twice. "Ah," she says, and her voice takes on an odd tone. "You're... a Johnny's, right?"
"Oh!" Yuichi feels bewildered; he doesn't get recognised often. "Oh! Um, yeah, I'm - yeah, no, yeah."
Erika stares at him like he's nuts before she snickers, but instead of sounding unkind the little burst of giggles just sounds unbelievably cute. Yuichi shakes his head to clear it. He tells himself to also stop gawking, while he's at it.
It kind of works. "And you're..." he begins, gesturing helplessly. "Ah, er..."
Erika stifles her giggles behind her hand. "Yeah?" she asks.
Yuichi clears his throat. Then he pauses and clears it again. "So," he says nervously, "my sister...thinks you're cool."
There's another awkward pause. Yuichi then fumbles for a piece of paper, because really, this is just really embarrassing. "And, well," he blathers, "I was just wondering, if, I mean. You know. You could. If I can find..."
Erika watches, smirking a little, as he pats his pockets and comes up with absolutely nothing. "I get it," she says, when he looks vaguely panicked. She reaches into her purse - Chanel, Yuichi notes, because being Kame's friend has educated him on things like this -- and pulls out her planner. "What's your sister's name?"
"Nakamaru," he says automatically, and she looks up at him. "OH! No, that's...! I mean...!" he stammers, waving his hands a little. "I mean, yes! That's our name, but..." He stops and collects himself. This is why he doesn't talk to pretty girls.
Erika, to her credit, is pretty patient, and actually not bitchy at all, and waits until he can act like a normal human being, and even asks for his sister's kanji to make sure she's got it right. "Here you go," she says, handing him the folded slip of paper. "Tell your sister thank you for being my fan."
"I will." Yuichi tucks the autograph away with his plane tickets. "I - thanks. She'll be really happy."
Erika smiles, a quirky, little lopsided grin. Yuichi finds himself staring until he realises he's probably acting creepy again.
"Well!" he says, a little abruptly. "I'll just...let you shop for eyelash curlers, then." He bows, and the move is stilted. Erika smothers another set of giggles. "It was nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too," Erika says softly, and Yuichi feels rather embarrassed. He chuckles nervously and starts back out of the store when Erika reaches out, grabbing his hand.
"Wait," she orders, and there's the sudden feel of something pressing on the top of his hand. Lines, her name. An e-mail address. "There," she says, sounding pleased, and lets him go. She smiles another dazzling smile. "I'll be in Paris until July. But we should meet up sometime."
He stares. "Oh," he says faintly. "Yeah."
Erika grins and turns away, and Yuichi walks, as if in a trance. He's in line at the katsu shop when he looks down at his hand again.
Erika, it reads in red ink. No, not red ink...
She'd written on him in lipliner.
~
And because he's him, he never quite mails her. In fact, he doesn't see her at all, buried in plans for the World Big Tour, radio shows, costume fittings and rehearsals.
At least, that's what he tells himself, when he's staring at his phone screen for the umpteenth time and flips it closed, sighing regretfully, when Koki yells at him to hurry the hell up, Taiwan wasn't going to wait forever. Hurry he does, bending down quickly to pick up his bag - he hasn't even straightened up completely when he feels something - someone - bump into him from the side.
"Ow," he murmurs to himself, rubbing his shoulder, just as the person who bumped into him curses softly in English. He knows it because Jin's often heard muttering it himself, many times over - "Oh, shit."
It's a girl, he notes, wearing a purple dress and hunkered down on the floor, picking up the stuff that fell out of an open makeup case she'd been holding. Yuichi doesn't see her face but puts his bag down and goes to help, picking up a stray brush and a powder compact.
"I'm so sorry," she says, grabbing another compact or two. Or five. "I didn't - I was -" It's when she cuts herself off that he looks up, wondering what made her stop, and finds himself staring at Erika in the face, again. She smiles.
Yuichi feels his mouth go dry, and makes a Herculean effort not to go slackjawed. Fortunately, she starts speaking again, saving him from being a stuttering mess - damned pretty girl reaction. "Hello," she begins, her smile going rueful. "I'm sorry, again. I was looking at the..." Unable to find the word in Japanese, she gestures vaguely upward, towards the switchboard.
"No, no, it's okay," he says, "Kame does this all the time."
She laughs, and it's sudden but welcome, a kind of warm, rich laugh that makes him grin, too.
"Thanks," she whispers, zipping her travel case closed. "I've to go, I can't miss this flight, too..."
"Oh," he says, nodding once, "yeah, okay - yeah."
"Thank you," she says sincerely, and she meets his eyes. "Really."
He swallows heavily. Damned pretty girl reaction. "No problem," he says, and he's glad that at least he doesn't squeak. "I'll - um, safe flight."
"You too," she replies, and she's off in a whirlwind of LV and Chanel.
He stares after her and then suddenly looks down at his hand, tightly clutching a compact. Blush, he thinks vaguely, and then -
"W-wait!" he calls, but she's already gone.
~
It's on his way back to Japan from Taiwan that he meets her again, this time without either of them bumping into each other. Erika's seated on a chair, legs crossed and seemingly engrossed in something on her phone, earphones on and surrounded by shopping bags.
Yuichi knows he's going to get, at the very least, an epic amount of ribbing for this, but he swallows down decisively and walks right up to her, thinking about how to best catch her attention without being impolite.
Fortunately, she looks up herself when a shadow casts itself over her screen. When she registers his face, she smiles, and it has the same effect on him as it did a month ago. Erika takes out one earbud and looks at him questioningly, if still amused. Behind him, he can hear KT-TU go completely silent, until Ueda pipes up, somewhat loudly, "Maru walked up to a girl."
He hopes desperately that she didn't hear them. What she says gives him no indication of that. "Once is an occurence, twice a coincidence, but three times is a pattern, Nakamaru kun," she murmurs softly, tilting her head to one side.
Yuichi decides to get right to it before he has a heart attack right there. "I have blush. I mean, for you."
"Oh," she says wonderingly, "and I didn't think to get anything for you."
He pauses, confused, and then bursts out, "Oh, no, not like that! This was originally yours!"
She laughs, and it's the same sound from two days ago, until she thinks to smother it down with one hand. He finds himself wishing she didn't as she takes the other earbud out and he fishes in his coat pockets for the item.
This takes a while. Erika doesn't say anything until he offers it to her, and holds out one hand to take it. "Thank you," she tells him, tucking the blush safely away in her purse before looking back up at him, face tilted up. He was tall. She indicates the seat beside her, currently occupied with bags from Juicy Couture and Vivienne Westwood. "Would you like to sit down?"
She's already moving the bags before he can think to answer, so in the end he can do nothing but plunk himself down, and give his bandmates what he hopes to be a passable evil eye, for all the snickering happening.
They snicker even harder. Erika doesn't seem to notice, tucking a stray strand of her hair behind her ear as she turns to him. "Good show?" she asks, easily.
Work is something he can talk about without sounding like a total idiot, so he launches straight into it, but only after wondering how she even knows. "It was, we all had a lot of fun. I learned a little Chinese while here, too, and the food is really good."
Even to him it sounds robotic, almost like an answer he would give at a press con or a magazine. There's a pause; he wants to facepalm. Instead, she smiles that smile of hers and nods a few times, slowly.
"That's good," she says softly, shifting on the seat so her crossed legs are in his line of vision. Yuichi looks down and swallows; Erika rests her arm on the back of the chair and rests her cheek on one hand, studying him. "We're on the same flight?"
"Y-yes," he stammers, forcing himself to look her in the eye. This was hopeless - he was never going to be able to look at her, full stop, unless he learned to control that cursed pretty girl reaction.
"Where are you seated?" she inquires, then. It allows for some distraction; he fumbles around until he finds the ticket and reads his seat number out to her.
Erika's grin is slow to come, but brilliant. "Imagine that," she murmurs softly, "looks like we're seatmates."
There's an incredible sense of dread when that sinks into his consciousness. And a nagging sense that his heart just swelled. Two hours of the pretty girl reaction? She was going to think he was retarded by the time they landed. "Oh. That's - that's great," he squeaks, instead. See, there it was again!
She snickers, again, ducking to stifle it under the back of one hand - he still thinks it's incredibly cute, a thought that makes him smile goofily, himself. He catches himself when she stops, arranging his face in something less stupid, but she doesn't seem to notice, or mind, if she did.
They open the gate and passengers begin to file in - he helps with her stuff, and that gets him a 'thank you', sweet and low, as they walk in.
He begins to think this is a recurring thing now; her saying 'thank you' and him saying 'I'm sorry' every other sentence. In a weird way, he finds that he likes it. Yuichi helps her stow her things on the overhead compartment and lets her have the window seat before sliding in himself, letting out a breath he didn't even know he was holding.
She looks over at him when he sits down, and he's almost certain he sees an odd emotion in them. But she launches straight into conversation with him, and the look disappears. Yuichi's easily at ease with her; and they talk about work, about his studies, about the World Cup (though she didn't seem to understand, he tried to explain), about dogs and the places she's visited. Two hours pass by quickly, and soon enough they're wheeling their luggage on the way out of the airport, via the VIP exits to avoid photographers.
Erika pauses just inside the door, causing him to pull his own cart to a halt, curious. His bandmates pass by them, not even bothering to hide their collective grins - Koki gives him a hard clap on the back as he walks past, causing him to cough and double over. Yuichi considers throwing him a dirty look, but remembers the lady present.
"You know," she begins, almost uncertainly. "You never did mail."
He's stunned, and then flailing in six seconds flat. "Oh! I - I - I..." Yuichi wishes she wouldn't look at him so. He waves his hands around and shakes his head all at the same time, making himself dizzy. "I was... busy," he finished lamely, scratching the back of his neck, unable to look at her.
"That's okay," she says breezily, moving her hair from her shoulder and smiling warmly at him. "It happens. But... will you, this time?" Her smile wavers a little, here, and he feels so bad about it that he makes a solemn vow to himself never to disappoint her again.
"I will," he replied quickly, nodding his head several times to convey how serious he was. What this does is make her giggle, smothering it under her hands.
"Alright, then," she says later, softly, once she's sobered up. "I'm off." Erika tilts her head toward the exits a little, and he thinks that's kind of cute, too, until he feels himself blushing under the full force of her smile.
"T-take care of yourself," he blathers, despairing at looking like an idiot. There really had to be a way to control this pretty girl reaction. He manages to contain a squeak, though, when he feels her fingers slip in between his, gripping the cart tightly, her palm warm over the back of his hand.
It's just a brush, not even that heavy a squeeze, and doesn't last too long, but when she pulls her hand back he still feels the ghost of it there. Erika pushes the cart forward and the doors open before her. She turns back and lifts her hand in a little wave before going out, entirely, out of his sight.
He realises ten seconds later that he still has his hand up from waving back. Embarrassed, he drops it and ducks his head down low, to look for his bandmates. They come to him with a million questions, messing with his hair, punching him in the shoulder. Several times.
"Sawajiri Erika, man! How the hell did you do that!" Koki sounds mightily impressed.
Yuichi shrugs, looks toward Narita Airport, looming behind them, a smile on his face. "We have a pattern."
Characters: Nakamaru Yuichi and Sawajiri Erika
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Owned by Johnny's Entertainment and Stardust Promotion. Not mine, just messing with.
Summary: She's like a kaleidoscope, vibrant and bright, but most of all, she's mesmerizing. Nakamaru Yuichi doesn't do well with surprises. So when he bumps into the most unusual girl in Japan, he does what he's trained to: stick to a pattern.
With many, many thanks to L. This is for her.
"I really don't think..." he begins, but his sister is as bossy as their mother, and she'll hear none of it.
"But wouldn't you have the most chance of meeting her?" she looks almost desperate, and Yuichi feels his resolve crack straight down the middle, just like that. "Because Yuu-nii is also a popular musician, right?!"
"It doesn't actually work that way..." he tries to say again, but then he gets the stricken look.
He sighs. "I can try to get her autograph if I ever see her."
She brightens and leaps on him. "Yuu-nii, you're the best!" she shouts, right in his ear.
"OW," he says very pointedly, but his sister's already skipping away, singing FREE at the top of her lungs. Yuichi's heard it so often, he knows the words.
As it turns out, he doesn't even meet her at a variety show, or some glamorous fashion event. (Not that he'd even be at some glamorous fashion event, but really, the likelihood was so much better.)
"I'm really sorry, sir, about the mixup..." The airline staff are repentant; this sort of thing doesn't happen to a Johnny's! "We're so sorry you had to come here and straighten things out..."
"No, no, it's fine!" Yuichi says hurriedly, accepting his plane tickets. "I can make it to Seoul now, thank you..."
He waves awkwardly, steps back when the staff all bow to him in a neat line. It's really quite unnerving. "Well, then, thank you," he says, bowing quickly, and again, backing away hurriedly before they start apologising again.
He's thinking about stopping by the food courts for something to eat when he crashes into her near the Shu Uemura store just right next to a katsu place. "Oh!" he gasps, looking down. "I'm sorry -"
Erika Sawajiri, the infamous Sawajiri, blinks, eyelash curler in hand. "Well," she says conversationally, "you didn't take out my eye..."
"Ah." Yuichi laughs nervously, not entirely sure how to respond to something like that. "That's...uh, lucky, I guess." He steps back, gives her (and himself) some personal space. "I didn't see you..."
"Oh, it's fine." And this Erika isn't like how the tabloids paint her out to be at all. She seems conscientious and polite enough, and really kind of stunning. She flashes him a wry grin and he has to blink, mildly dazed all of a sudden. Pretty girls always get him nervous. "No harm, no foul..."
There's an awkward pause. Yuichi remembers his sister and wonders how he can broach the topic without sounding totally creepy.
Erika blinks, looks him over once, twice. "Ah," she says, and her voice takes on an odd tone. "You're... a Johnny's, right?"
"Oh!" Yuichi feels bewildered; he doesn't get recognised often. "Oh! Um, yeah, I'm - yeah, no, yeah."
Erika stares at him like he's nuts before she snickers, but instead of sounding unkind the little burst of giggles just sounds unbelievably cute. Yuichi shakes his head to clear it. He tells himself to also stop gawking, while he's at it.
It kind of works. "And you're..." he begins, gesturing helplessly. "Ah, er..."
Erika stifles her giggles behind her hand. "Yeah?" she asks.
Yuichi clears his throat. Then he pauses and clears it again. "So," he says nervously, "my sister...thinks you're cool."
There's another awkward pause. Yuichi then fumbles for a piece of paper, because really, this is just really embarrassing. "And, well," he blathers, "I was just wondering, if, I mean. You know. You could. If I can find..."
Erika watches, smirking a little, as he pats his pockets and comes up with absolutely nothing. "I get it," she says, when he looks vaguely panicked. She reaches into her purse - Chanel, Yuichi notes, because being Kame's friend has educated him on things like this -- and pulls out her planner. "What's your sister's name?"
"Nakamaru," he says automatically, and she looks up at him. "OH! No, that's...! I mean...!" he stammers, waving his hands a little. "I mean, yes! That's our name, but..." He stops and collects himself. This is why he doesn't talk to pretty girls.
Erika, to her credit, is pretty patient, and actually not bitchy at all, and waits until he can act like a normal human being, and even asks for his sister's kanji to make sure she's got it right. "Here you go," she says, handing him the folded slip of paper. "Tell your sister thank you for being my fan."
"I will." Yuichi tucks the autograph away with his plane tickets. "I - thanks. She'll be really happy."
Erika smiles, a quirky, little lopsided grin. Yuichi finds himself staring until he realises he's probably acting creepy again.
"Well!" he says, a little abruptly. "I'll just...let you shop for eyelash curlers, then." He bows, and the move is stilted. Erika smothers another set of giggles. "It was nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too," Erika says softly, and Yuichi feels rather embarrassed. He chuckles nervously and starts back out of the store when Erika reaches out, grabbing his hand.
"Wait," she orders, and there's the sudden feel of something pressing on the top of his hand. Lines, her name. An e-mail address. "There," she says, sounding pleased, and lets him go. She smiles another dazzling smile. "I'll be in Paris until July. But we should meet up sometime."
He stares. "Oh," he says faintly. "Yeah."
Erika grins and turns away, and Yuichi walks, as if in a trance. He's in line at the katsu shop when he looks down at his hand again.
Erika, it reads in red ink. No, not red ink...
She'd written on him in lipliner.
~
And because he's him, he never quite mails her. In fact, he doesn't see her at all, buried in plans for the World Big Tour, radio shows, costume fittings and rehearsals.
At least, that's what he tells himself, when he's staring at his phone screen for the umpteenth time and flips it closed, sighing regretfully, when Koki yells at him to hurry the hell up, Taiwan wasn't going to wait forever. Hurry he does, bending down quickly to pick up his bag - he hasn't even straightened up completely when he feels something - someone - bump into him from the side.
"Ow," he murmurs to himself, rubbing his shoulder, just as the person who bumped into him curses softly in English. He knows it because Jin's often heard muttering it himself, many times over - "Oh, shit."
It's a girl, he notes, wearing a purple dress and hunkered down on the floor, picking up the stuff that fell out of an open makeup case she'd been holding. Yuichi doesn't see her face but puts his bag down and goes to help, picking up a stray brush and a powder compact.
"I'm so sorry," she says, grabbing another compact or two. Or five. "I didn't - I was -" It's when she cuts herself off that he looks up, wondering what made her stop, and finds himself staring at Erika in the face, again. She smiles.
Yuichi feels his mouth go dry, and makes a Herculean effort not to go slackjawed. Fortunately, she starts speaking again, saving him from being a stuttering mess - damned pretty girl reaction. "Hello," she begins, her smile going rueful. "I'm sorry, again. I was looking at the..." Unable to find the word in Japanese, she gestures vaguely upward, towards the switchboard.
"No, no, it's okay," he says, "Kame does this all the time."
She laughs, and it's sudden but welcome, a kind of warm, rich laugh that makes him grin, too.
"Thanks," she whispers, zipping her travel case closed. "I've to go, I can't miss this flight, too..."
"Oh," he says, nodding once, "yeah, okay - yeah."
"Thank you," she says sincerely, and she meets his eyes. "Really."
He swallows heavily. Damned pretty girl reaction. "No problem," he says, and he's glad that at least he doesn't squeak. "I'll - um, safe flight."
"You too," she replies, and she's off in a whirlwind of LV and Chanel.
He stares after her and then suddenly looks down at his hand, tightly clutching a compact. Blush, he thinks vaguely, and then -
"W-wait!" he calls, but she's already gone.
~
It's on his way back to Japan from Taiwan that he meets her again, this time without either of them bumping into each other. Erika's seated on a chair, legs crossed and seemingly engrossed in something on her phone, earphones on and surrounded by shopping bags.
Yuichi knows he's going to get, at the very least, an epic amount of ribbing for this, but he swallows down decisively and walks right up to her, thinking about how to best catch her attention without being impolite.
Fortunately, she looks up herself when a shadow casts itself over her screen. When she registers his face, she smiles, and it has the same effect on him as it did a month ago. Erika takes out one earbud and looks at him questioningly, if still amused. Behind him, he can hear KT-TU go completely silent, until Ueda pipes up, somewhat loudly, "Maru walked up to a girl."
He hopes desperately that she didn't hear them. What she says gives him no indication of that. "Once is an occurence, twice a coincidence, but three times is a pattern, Nakamaru kun," she murmurs softly, tilting her head to one side.
Yuichi decides to get right to it before he has a heart attack right there. "I have blush. I mean, for you."
"Oh," she says wonderingly, "and I didn't think to get anything for you."
He pauses, confused, and then bursts out, "Oh, no, not like that! This was originally yours!"
She laughs, and it's the same sound from two days ago, until she thinks to smother it down with one hand. He finds himself wishing she didn't as she takes the other earbud out and he fishes in his coat pockets for the item.
This takes a while. Erika doesn't say anything until he offers it to her, and holds out one hand to take it. "Thank you," she tells him, tucking the blush safely away in her purse before looking back up at him, face tilted up. He was tall. She indicates the seat beside her, currently occupied with bags from Juicy Couture and Vivienne Westwood. "Would you like to sit down?"
She's already moving the bags before he can think to answer, so in the end he can do nothing but plunk himself down, and give his bandmates what he hopes to be a passable evil eye, for all the snickering happening.
They snicker even harder. Erika doesn't seem to notice, tucking a stray strand of her hair behind her ear as she turns to him. "Good show?" she asks, easily.
Work is something he can talk about without sounding like a total idiot, so he launches straight into it, but only after wondering how she even knows. "It was, we all had a lot of fun. I learned a little Chinese while here, too, and the food is really good."
Even to him it sounds robotic, almost like an answer he would give at a press con or a magazine. There's a pause; he wants to facepalm. Instead, she smiles that smile of hers and nods a few times, slowly.
"That's good," she says softly, shifting on the seat so her crossed legs are in his line of vision. Yuichi looks down and swallows; Erika rests her arm on the back of the chair and rests her cheek on one hand, studying him. "We're on the same flight?"
"Y-yes," he stammers, forcing himself to look her in the eye. This was hopeless - he was never going to be able to look at her, full stop, unless he learned to control that cursed pretty girl reaction.
"Where are you seated?" she inquires, then. It allows for some distraction; he fumbles around until he finds the ticket and reads his seat number out to her.
Erika's grin is slow to come, but brilliant. "Imagine that," she murmurs softly, "looks like we're seatmates."
There's an incredible sense of dread when that sinks into his consciousness. And a nagging sense that his heart just swelled. Two hours of the pretty girl reaction? She was going to think he was retarded by the time they landed. "Oh. That's - that's great," he squeaks, instead. See, there it was again!
She snickers, again, ducking to stifle it under the back of one hand - he still thinks it's incredibly cute, a thought that makes him smile goofily, himself. He catches himself when she stops, arranging his face in something less stupid, but she doesn't seem to notice, or mind, if she did.
They open the gate and passengers begin to file in - he helps with her stuff, and that gets him a 'thank you', sweet and low, as they walk in.
He begins to think this is a recurring thing now; her saying 'thank you' and him saying 'I'm sorry' every other sentence. In a weird way, he finds that he likes it. Yuichi helps her stow her things on the overhead compartment and lets her have the window seat before sliding in himself, letting out a breath he didn't even know he was holding.
She looks over at him when he sits down, and he's almost certain he sees an odd emotion in them. But she launches straight into conversation with him, and the look disappears. Yuichi's easily at ease with her; and they talk about work, about his studies, about the World Cup (though she didn't seem to understand, he tried to explain), about dogs and the places she's visited. Two hours pass by quickly, and soon enough they're wheeling their luggage on the way out of the airport, via the VIP exits to avoid photographers.
Erika pauses just inside the door, causing him to pull his own cart to a halt, curious. His bandmates pass by them, not even bothering to hide their collective grins - Koki gives him a hard clap on the back as he walks past, causing him to cough and double over. Yuichi considers throwing him a dirty look, but remembers the lady present.
"You know," she begins, almost uncertainly. "You never did mail."
He's stunned, and then flailing in six seconds flat. "Oh! I - I - I..." Yuichi wishes she wouldn't look at him so. He waves his hands around and shakes his head all at the same time, making himself dizzy. "I was... busy," he finished lamely, scratching the back of his neck, unable to look at her.
"That's okay," she says breezily, moving her hair from her shoulder and smiling warmly at him. "It happens. But... will you, this time?" Her smile wavers a little, here, and he feels so bad about it that he makes a solemn vow to himself never to disappoint her again.
"I will," he replied quickly, nodding his head several times to convey how serious he was. What this does is make her giggle, smothering it under her hands.
"Alright, then," she says later, softly, once she's sobered up. "I'm off." Erika tilts her head toward the exits a little, and he thinks that's kind of cute, too, until he feels himself blushing under the full force of her smile.
"T-take care of yourself," he blathers, despairing at looking like an idiot. There really had to be a way to control this pretty girl reaction. He manages to contain a squeak, though, when he feels her fingers slip in between his, gripping the cart tightly, her palm warm over the back of his hand.
It's just a brush, not even that heavy a squeeze, and doesn't last too long, but when she pulls her hand back he still feels the ghost of it there. Erika pushes the cart forward and the doors open before her. She turns back and lifts her hand in a little wave before going out, entirely, out of his sight.
He realises ten seconds later that he still has his hand up from waving back. Embarrassed, he drops it and ducks his head down low, to look for his bandmates. They come to him with a million questions, messing with his hair, punching him in the shoulder. Several times.
"Sawajiri Erika, man! How the hell did you do that!" Koki sounds mightily impressed.
Yuichi shrugs, looks toward Narita Airport, looming behind them, a smile on his face. "We have a pattern."