[gift!fic] for soloproject;
3,015 words. Gift!Fic: Four Seasons, feat JaBun.
Characters from four_seasons belong to soloproject, cherprudence, metronome & co. Marui Bunta & Kuwahara Jackal belong to Konomi Takeshi.
Notes: Bunny, it's not what I originally planned, but I hope you love it nonetheless. Happy 23rd Birthday, ILU!
“Just Remember To Breathe”
for Bunny, on her birthday.
She watches the way the ocean breathes. It exhales and the waves roll over the shore, shading it darker than the rest of the beach. It inhales and children paddle furiously with their legs even as they are gently towed outwards into open water.
Arashi smiles to herself, feeling the heat of the sun rise up from the ivory sand. It’s early still, possibly no later than nine in the morning and clever fingers are weaving her hair; twisting strands of it into fine braids that curve along the back of her head.
She feels the snap of elastic as the last band is wound into place.
“Thank you,” Arashi’s voice is pleasant as she accepts the small hand-held mirror that is offered to her. When she looks into it, her reflection smiles back, pleased with the result. She hands it back to the middle-aged woman and fishes out the cash to pay for the service.
Later, she thinks, I’ll get a henna tattoo.
She turns to walk back towards the Regency when a Frisbee comes to a stop at her feet. She bends down slightly to pick it up only to lift her eyes to a young man possibly in his early to mid-twenties who has come over to retrieve it.
“Thanks,” he tells her, lingering awhile to offer his name and a gradually brightening smile.
“You’re welcome,” she replies, but keeps her name to herself, moving past him to head for the shade.
That night she orders a green apple martini from Pat’s Creek Bar. There’s reggae music playing from a group performing on the small makeshift stage, but the words are different and unfamiliar. Once in awhile she’ll catch a line in English, but the rest is sung in a foreign tongue.
The beat makes her want to dance. She doesn’t, and instead she wanders over to an emptied table to sit and listen and people-watch.
There’s an elderly couple two tables away. She notes how they’re surrounded by family - children, teens, adults. Notes that the boy from earlier is there. Notes how he laughs and playfully punches one of the boys to his right. How he grins before he opens his mouth to say something and then sip. How he slides his gaze over and sees her. How he smiles when she does.
There’s something about the way the family is clumped together that reminds her of another place, another time. The table looks lop-sided because the boys are all on one-side. When they order a second round of beer, the couple stands to dance.
Ara’s gaze follows them, even as her cheek leans lightly against the back of her hand. She watches as they sway together, watches as the man’s hand comes to rest on the small of the woman’s back; watches the way they look at each other.
Watching them reminds her that she too knew what it was like to be in love.
They drive out of town in the summer of Hikari’s freshman year in Junior high. She’s sitting in the back seat of the van, semi-preoccupied with the strawberry lollipop that she’d unearthed from her bag. Kenta argues with his elder brother who just whistles and sings louder to the music blaring from the radio.
Once or twice she grins at Bunta, who winks back playfully through the rearview. While they aren’t exactly close, Arashi and the eldest Marui brother have always managed to get along.
Maybe it’s because she’s always taken everything he’s said with a grain of salt. Maybe it’s because Bunta has often commented that he admires Ara’s overall style. Maybe it’s just that they both adore Kenta, and that that kind of love draws them together to make them something like family.
She hears Kaede’s laughter as it catches on the wind. It flows free, out of the open windows as they drive out of the city and onto the rest of their world. He and Hikari are engrossed in playing Tekken on their PSPs, completely oblivious to the fact that Kenta nerves are well beyond frazzled.
Ara never did quite get the whole story out of her best friend, but Jackal, Bunta’s old doubles partner had remarked once that it had something to do with Bunta and Kenta joy-riding at two in the morning and being semi-high on Red Bull the whole way through.
“So what’s Brazil like, Jackal-kun?” She asks the half-Brazilian then, tipping her chin down so that her large Jackie-O sunglasses slide down the bridge of her nose. She loves the way he smiles - honest and real - and how despite all that he’s probably been through, his sincerity never fades.
“It’s hard to explain.” He tips his bowler hat to one side and pops a square of dark chocolate into his mouth. “It’d be better if you experienced it for yourself. You should go there. I think you’ll like it.”
“Will you teach me to salsa before I do?” She falls back against the seat and hip-hop turns to pop-country, prompting Bunta to snort before he changes the station.
“If you wanna learn,” Jackal winks playfully, “we’ll dance until you say you’re tired of being on your feet.”
Arashi can’t quite remember what it was she thought the Coco Mangas would be like. A college friend had raved and raved about it to her the summer before, but all she can think of as she steps over the threshold is that the place is small and more dark than dim and it smells more of salt from ocean and sweat. The music is pumping hard and neon lights cut across the shapes bobbing on the dance floor.
She wouldn’t call it dingy, but it sort of is, especially when she catches sight of leggy, tanned women who are all but plastered up against too-tall foreign men who leave no room for the imagination to speculate on where they’re likely to end up hours from now.
It makes her want to shudder and leave, but she pushes past the bodies clustered around the bar, where boys who look like men cheer as the bartender lays out fifteen shots for the next unsuspecting victim. Close to the ceiling a blackboard charts countries and her eyes seek out Japan.
“Hey sexy,” someone’s hand slides across her hip, fingers sticky and a tad too familiar for her taste. “Want a dance?” The words are not quite slurred, and that makes her want to recoil more than she would have if it were otherwise.
When the smell of alcohol and breath invades her lungs, she wonders if she should have had more than just one drink, maybe to dull the senses, maybe to make her joints loose, her gaze not as aware.
“No thanks,” she says, but the words are drowned out by cheers and some Western rapper going on and on about body-bumpin’.
“There you are,” a hand catches her by elbow but she doesn’t flinch. “Sorry pre’, she’s with me.” There’s something about the way this hand slides into her own that makes her trust, makes her hold on, makes her heart slows back to its regular pace.
She follows it through the crush, her gaze falling to the tribal tattoos etched in henna down the back of the boy’s neck.
“Sorry about that,” he tells her, coming close to her cheek when he turns around. His palm comes to settle down, light, against the small of her back and he nudges her to climb into the rattan couch booth. “The name’s Paolo, by the way. You looked like you wanted an out.”
She hesitates just a moment before she tells herself to breathe. “I did,” she musters a smile and climbs in. She notes that the pillows are hard and thin. “Thank you,” she exhales and tells herself to relax. “And I know. We met this morning.”
He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t move in, and just beams as the rhythm slows. “Oh hey, you remembered.”
They were never really an item in the traditional sense. They, meaning her and Kaku and whatever it is that bloomed between them in those few months that they came together.
She was always just Arashi, he was always just Kaku. There was no possessiveness, no worrying over whether they should hold on tight, tight, tight hoping the other was holding on just as firmly in return. There were no worries over coming home late after days and days of being gone, no sense of anxiety when the other one didn’t call.
There were more “It’s good to see you”s than “I missed you”s, though the essence of their fingers touching, hands connecting was always the same. While neither knew all the things that happened in the other person’s life, they both knew everything that mattered when it mattered.
“You’re looking good,” Kaku told her once over coffee, his eyes peering up at her over the rim of his cup. The sleeves of his gray shirt were tugged and tucked up, and she let her eyes wander appreciatively over the hint of muscle under his skin.
“You’re not so bad yourself.” She’d always reply and then, when they exited the little family restaurants they ate at, he’d pull her close several steps down the street and slant his mouth over hers.
“So you’re from Japan?”
“Yup.”
“You don’t look at all Japanese.”
“I’m half-French.”
“Wow, nice.”
Contrary to her first impression of him, Paolo is actually sweet and soft-spoken and enjoys listening as much as he does talking. Arashi likes the way he can make light of things one moment, be totally serious the next and jump back as if they’d never stopped laughing and joking around.
They dance a couple of times on the makeshift wooden dance floor, toss back a couple drinks and cuddle on the way back from the club to Station Two. She lets him pull her close against his side, oddly aware in what little time she’s known him that he’s not really the type to steal a kiss even if the walk back to the resorts is impressively dark thanks to the endless shade of trees.
She laughs when he tells her that she couldn’t possibly be in her late twenties. She punches his arm when he admits he looks older than he is. When she falls quiet, watching the black ocean that is fitful in its sleep, he waits and doesn’t touch her, in the way Kaede used to do way back when.
“So you came alone?” He ventures and shivers just a little from the cold.
“Yeah,” she lifts her hands and tucks her hair behind her ears. “I needed a break from life.” The smile comes easy when she looks at him. “Won’t your family wonder where you went?”
“Nah,” he shrugs and grins broadly. “We made mom and dad promise to pretend like we weren’t here. I’ll just sneak back into the hotel room and crash later.”
“That’s nice.” Arashi chuckles and rubs her palms over her knees. “Second honeymoon?”
“Nope, just a trip.”
Arashi notes how he tips his sandal over to get rid of the sand.
“Family get-together. My cousins flew in from the States because they wanted a pre-Christmas trip at the beach. The elders figured it would be a good reason to fly down from the city.”
“That’s a novel way of spending the holidays.”
“Yeah, it is.”
They lapse into silence together, trade smiles to fill the quiet. They wait a little for the words to come and talk a little more about trivial things - questions and answers - all the way until dawn.
“We leave the day after tomorrow,” he tells her when he walks her past the Regency pool, up the stairs and right to her hotel room door. “Will I see you again before then?”
He looks so hopeful and Arashi wishes it were so easy to say yes.
“We’ll see,” she tells him instead and runs one hand through her hair. “I’m here all week and the island’s small enough, so you never know.”
She lets him kiss her good morning and pulls back gently like it’s good night.
At 3 a.m. Kenta is freaking out and Arashi is thankful when Kaede pulls him aside, pulls him close to tuck the smaller boys’ head under his chin. They’re in the hospital and Ryocchan is getting the cut on his forehead patched up by a nurse who assures him that they’ll both be fine, but the doctors might need them to stay overnight.
When Raiden arrives, he’s wide-eyed and ashen, and before Arashi can say his name, her brother’s arms are around her and he’s whispering prayers of thanks while shaking all the same.
When she checks her phone an hour and a half later, there are several messages from Kaku, asking if she’s alright, and a call from Heaven and Shige that Kaede takes outside when she doesn’t reply.
She’d been on her way to the airport with Ryocchan to pick up Rai. They had been listening and singing loudly to Panic at the Disco on the way to Narita when they’d suddenly swerved instead of stopped, spun and halted to find that their chests hurt from the pull of the seatbelts crossed over their hearts.
No one ever did get the plate number of the other car. Rai fumed about it for weeks.
Kaede treats her out to coffee a few days after that, and Arashi leaves the house and her brother, who has burrowed under blankets and sheets, muttering about making omelets breakfast. She and Kae forego Starbucks and Jackal’s presence for a little, hole-in-the-wall café a little ways from Kae’s university. They order hot drinks instead of cold and just sit until Kaede says, “I need to tell you something.”
Arashi nods quietly, waits and watches as his thumb smoothes over the rim. “Shozo was at the hospital last week. He didn’t see you, but he heard your name from one of the doctors who handled you. He called me the other night. Asked how you were.”
Arashi’s not quite sure what to say to that, so she just stays quiet and downs the last of her drink like she was swallowing the last pieces of her heart.
Soon it’ll be winter, she thinks. Soon. And Kaede reaches over to catch her by the nape of her neck while she shuts her eyes as he presses a kiss to her forehead.
It’s strange how her body forgets how cold winter can be in Tokyo. When she walks down the avenue, Arashi pulls her scarf tighter around her neck, pushes the collar of her jacket up to shield her chin from the chill. It’s Christmas Eve and teenagers are roaming about in pairs - couples, friends - arms looped together and bodies pressed close, side-by-side, as if to ward away the cold.
Tonight, she’ll crash at Kenta’s flat and laugh with Bunta and be swept away as she dances with Jackal. They’ll trade gifts and she pictures what she would like to be Hikari’s pleased and surprised expression as he unearths the gift that she bought for him two months in advance.
She knows that they all know how much he wanted that ridiculously expensive Armani sweater. She knows that he’s been trying to save up for weeks; it had even come up several times in random phone conversations with Kenta. But between school expenses and other necessities, Hikari had still come up short and therefore declared that it was something he didn’t need. She preferred to think otherwise.
When her phone rings, she stops and doesn’t bother to check the screen, going “Yeah, yeah, I won’t forget to buy drinks, geez Kenta, quit worrying. I love you but honestly, go finish that thing for work or something. Better yet, call Kaede up and make up already. It’s Christmas, you should be smooching not sulking.”
“Uh… I guess this is a bad time?”
She freezes then and feels her lips part. She tries to speak but her throat feels like ice.
“You look good. I like the beanie.”
She lifts her head and looks around, body following the twist of her head when someone’s hand catches her wrist. Arashi stills, and turns back the other way.
Now the trouble with finding the great love of your life is that that’s exactly what it is: that great love of your life. Some people get lucky, but more often than not, there’s nothing after that. No such thing as the greater or greatest love of your life, because then the declaration would just be plain useless.
Arashi would like to think that Shozo isn’t and could never be the great love of her life. But after all that they’ve gone through, it just seems like every detour between the moment she first smiled at him in Harajuku up until today, Christmas Eve on a busy street, has just rounded her back to the beginning.
When he lifts awkward fingers wrapped in gloves to brush along her cheek, she tilts her head into the warmth of it and lifts both hands to curl around his forearm and wrist.
“Ara…” he starts and she lets her hands fall, the fingers of one pulling the glove off the other so she can lift two fingers to his lips.
“Lemme finish,” he grunts and pulls her hand away with greater control than he ever had before, and he steps close. So close that he can pull her to him if he wanted to, which he does but doesn’t do.
“I wanna try again.” The words are measured, cautious, uncertain. “If you’re okay with that, that is.” Shozo shifts his hands under hers then, keeps his fingers open, gives her room to say no, to pull back, to let go. “I’m not saying be with me forever, I know you can leave if you wanted to, but still, I’d like-”
When her lips press against his, she smiles and he holds on and the answer is: “Yes. Yes, let’s give it another go.”
/fin.
Characters from four_seasons belong to soloproject, cherprudence, metronome & co. Marui Bunta & Kuwahara Jackal belong to Konomi Takeshi.
Notes: Bunny, it's not what I originally planned, but I hope you love it nonetheless. Happy 23rd Birthday, ILU!
“Just Remember To Breathe”
for Bunny, on her birthday.
She watches the way the ocean breathes. It exhales and the waves roll over the shore, shading it darker than the rest of the beach. It inhales and children paddle furiously with their legs even as they are gently towed outwards into open water.
Arashi smiles to herself, feeling the heat of the sun rise up from the ivory sand. It’s early still, possibly no later than nine in the morning and clever fingers are weaving her hair; twisting strands of it into fine braids that curve along the back of her head.
She feels the snap of elastic as the last band is wound into place.
“Thank you,” Arashi’s voice is pleasant as she accepts the small hand-held mirror that is offered to her. When she looks into it, her reflection smiles back, pleased with the result. She hands it back to the middle-aged woman and fishes out the cash to pay for the service.
Later, she thinks, I’ll get a henna tattoo.
She turns to walk back towards the Regency when a Frisbee comes to a stop at her feet. She bends down slightly to pick it up only to lift her eyes to a young man possibly in his early to mid-twenties who has come over to retrieve it.
“Thanks,” he tells her, lingering awhile to offer his name and a gradually brightening smile.
“You’re welcome,” she replies, but keeps her name to herself, moving past him to head for the shade.
That night she orders a green apple martini from Pat’s Creek Bar. There’s reggae music playing from a group performing on the small makeshift stage, but the words are different and unfamiliar. Once in awhile she’ll catch a line in English, but the rest is sung in a foreign tongue.
The beat makes her want to dance. She doesn’t, and instead she wanders over to an emptied table to sit and listen and people-watch.
There’s an elderly couple two tables away. She notes how they’re surrounded by family - children, teens, adults. Notes that the boy from earlier is there. Notes how he laughs and playfully punches one of the boys to his right. How he grins before he opens his mouth to say something and then sip. How he slides his gaze over and sees her. How he smiles when she does.
There’s something about the way the family is clumped together that reminds her of another place, another time. The table looks lop-sided because the boys are all on one-side. When they order a second round of beer, the couple stands to dance.
Ara’s gaze follows them, even as her cheek leans lightly against the back of her hand. She watches as they sway together, watches as the man’s hand comes to rest on the small of the woman’s back; watches the way they look at each other.
Watching them reminds her that she too knew what it was like to be in love.
They drive out of town in the summer of Hikari’s freshman year in Junior high. She’s sitting in the back seat of the van, semi-preoccupied with the strawberry lollipop that she’d unearthed from her bag. Kenta argues with his elder brother who just whistles and sings louder to the music blaring from the radio.
Once or twice she grins at Bunta, who winks back playfully through the rearview. While they aren’t exactly close, Arashi and the eldest Marui brother have always managed to get along.
Maybe it’s because she’s always taken everything he’s said with a grain of salt. Maybe it’s because Bunta has often commented that he admires Ara’s overall style. Maybe it’s just that they both adore Kenta, and that that kind of love draws them together to make them something like family.
She hears Kaede’s laughter as it catches on the wind. It flows free, out of the open windows as they drive out of the city and onto the rest of their world. He and Hikari are engrossed in playing Tekken on their PSPs, completely oblivious to the fact that Kenta nerves are well beyond frazzled.
Ara never did quite get the whole story out of her best friend, but Jackal, Bunta’s old doubles partner had remarked once that it had something to do with Bunta and Kenta joy-riding at two in the morning and being semi-high on Red Bull the whole way through.
“So what’s Brazil like, Jackal-kun?” She asks the half-Brazilian then, tipping her chin down so that her large Jackie-O sunglasses slide down the bridge of her nose. She loves the way he smiles - honest and real - and how despite all that he’s probably been through, his sincerity never fades.
“It’s hard to explain.” He tips his bowler hat to one side and pops a square of dark chocolate into his mouth. “It’d be better if you experienced it for yourself. You should go there. I think you’ll like it.”
“Will you teach me to salsa before I do?” She falls back against the seat and hip-hop turns to pop-country, prompting Bunta to snort before he changes the station.
“If you wanna learn,” Jackal winks playfully, “we’ll dance until you say you’re tired of being on your feet.”
Arashi can’t quite remember what it was she thought the Coco Mangas would be like. A college friend had raved and raved about it to her the summer before, but all she can think of as she steps over the threshold is that the place is small and more dark than dim and it smells more of salt from ocean and sweat. The music is pumping hard and neon lights cut across the shapes bobbing on the dance floor.
She wouldn’t call it dingy, but it sort of is, especially when she catches sight of leggy, tanned women who are all but plastered up against too-tall foreign men who leave no room for the imagination to speculate on where they’re likely to end up hours from now.
It makes her want to shudder and leave, but she pushes past the bodies clustered around the bar, where boys who look like men cheer as the bartender lays out fifteen shots for the next unsuspecting victim. Close to the ceiling a blackboard charts countries and her eyes seek out Japan.
“Hey sexy,” someone’s hand slides across her hip, fingers sticky and a tad too familiar for her taste. “Want a dance?” The words are not quite slurred, and that makes her want to recoil more than she would have if it were otherwise.
When the smell of alcohol and breath invades her lungs, she wonders if she should have had more than just one drink, maybe to dull the senses, maybe to make her joints loose, her gaze not as aware.
“No thanks,” she says, but the words are drowned out by cheers and some Western rapper going on and on about body-bumpin’.
“There you are,” a hand catches her by elbow but she doesn’t flinch. “Sorry pre’, she’s with me.” There’s something about the way this hand slides into her own that makes her trust, makes her hold on, makes her heart slows back to its regular pace.
She follows it through the crush, her gaze falling to the tribal tattoos etched in henna down the back of the boy’s neck.
“Sorry about that,” he tells her, coming close to her cheek when he turns around. His palm comes to settle down, light, against the small of her back and he nudges her to climb into the rattan couch booth. “The name’s Paolo, by the way. You looked like you wanted an out.”
She hesitates just a moment before she tells herself to breathe. “I did,” she musters a smile and climbs in. She notes that the pillows are hard and thin. “Thank you,” she exhales and tells herself to relax. “And I know. We met this morning.”
He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t move in, and just beams as the rhythm slows. “Oh hey, you remembered.”
They were never really an item in the traditional sense. They, meaning her and Kaku and whatever it is that bloomed between them in those few months that they came together.
She was always just Arashi, he was always just Kaku. There was no possessiveness, no worrying over whether they should hold on tight, tight, tight hoping the other was holding on just as firmly in return. There were no worries over coming home late after days and days of being gone, no sense of anxiety when the other one didn’t call.
There were more “It’s good to see you”s than “I missed you”s, though the essence of their fingers touching, hands connecting was always the same. While neither knew all the things that happened in the other person’s life, they both knew everything that mattered when it mattered.
“You’re looking good,” Kaku told her once over coffee, his eyes peering up at her over the rim of his cup. The sleeves of his gray shirt were tugged and tucked up, and she let her eyes wander appreciatively over the hint of muscle under his skin.
“You’re not so bad yourself.” She’d always reply and then, when they exited the little family restaurants they ate at, he’d pull her close several steps down the street and slant his mouth over hers.
“So you’re from Japan?”
“Yup.”
“You don’t look at all Japanese.”
“I’m half-French.”
“Wow, nice.”
Contrary to her first impression of him, Paolo is actually sweet and soft-spoken and enjoys listening as much as he does talking. Arashi likes the way he can make light of things one moment, be totally serious the next and jump back as if they’d never stopped laughing and joking around.
They dance a couple of times on the makeshift wooden dance floor, toss back a couple drinks and cuddle on the way back from the club to Station Two. She lets him pull her close against his side, oddly aware in what little time she’s known him that he’s not really the type to steal a kiss even if the walk back to the resorts is impressively dark thanks to the endless shade of trees.
She laughs when he tells her that she couldn’t possibly be in her late twenties. She punches his arm when he admits he looks older than he is. When she falls quiet, watching the black ocean that is fitful in its sleep, he waits and doesn’t touch her, in the way Kaede used to do way back when.
“So you came alone?” He ventures and shivers just a little from the cold.
“Yeah,” she lifts her hands and tucks her hair behind her ears. “I needed a break from life.” The smile comes easy when she looks at him. “Won’t your family wonder where you went?”
“Nah,” he shrugs and grins broadly. “We made mom and dad promise to pretend like we weren’t here. I’ll just sneak back into the hotel room and crash later.”
“That’s nice.” Arashi chuckles and rubs her palms over her knees. “Second honeymoon?”
“Nope, just a trip.”
Arashi notes how he tips his sandal over to get rid of the sand.
“Family get-together. My cousins flew in from the States because they wanted a pre-Christmas trip at the beach. The elders figured it would be a good reason to fly down from the city.”
“That’s a novel way of spending the holidays.”
“Yeah, it is.”
They lapse into silence together, trade smiles to fill the quiet. They wait a little for the words to come and talk a little more about trivial things - questions and answers - all the way until dawn.
“We leave the day after tomorrow,” he tells her when he walks her past the Regency pool, up the stairs and right to her hotel room door. “Will I see you again before then?”
He looks so hopeful and Arashi wishes it were so easy to say yes.
“We’ll see,” she tells him instead and runs one hand through her hair. “I’m here all week and the island’s small enough, so you never know.”
She lets him kiss her good morning and pulls back gently like it’s good night.
At 3 a.m. Kenta is freaking out and Arashi is thankful when Kaede pulls him aside, pulls him close to tuck the smaller boys’ head under his chin. They’re in the hospital and Ryocchan is getting the cut on his forehead patched up by a nurse who assures him that they’ll both be fine, but the doctors might need them to stay overnight.
When Raiden arrives, he’s wide-eyed and ashen, and before Arashi can say his name, her brother’s arms are around her and he’s whispering prayers of thanks while shaking all the same.
When she checks her phone an hour and a half later, there are several messages from Kaku, asking if she’s alright, and a call from Heaven and Shige that Kaede takes outside when she doesn’t reply.
She’d been on her way to the airport with Ryocchan to pick up Rai. They had been listening and singing loudly to Panic at the Disco on the way to Narita when they’d suddenly swerved instead of stopped, spun and halted to find that their chests hurt from the pull of the seatbelts crossed over their hearts.
No one ever did get the plate number of the other car. Rai fumed about it for weeks.
Kaede treats her out to coffee a few days after that, and Arashi leaves the house and her brother, who has burrowed under blankets and sheets, muttering about making omelets breakfast. She and Kae forego Starbucks and Jackal’s presence for a little, hole-in-the-wall café a little ways from Kae’s university. They order hot drinks instead of cold and just sit until Kaede says, “I need to tell you something.”
Arashi nods quietly, waits and watches as his thumb smoothes over the rim. “Shozo was at the hospital last week. He didn’t see you, but he heard your name from one of the doctors who handled you. He called me the other night. Asked how you were.”
Arashi’s not quite sure what to say to that, so she just stays quiet and downs the last of her drink like she was swallowing the last pieces of her heart.
Soon it’ll be winter, she thinks. Soon. And Kaede reaches over to catch her by the nape of her neck while she shuts her eyes as he presses a kiss to her forehead.
It’s strange how her body forgets how cold winter can be in Tokyo. When she walks down the avenue, Arashi pulls her scarf tighter around her neck, pushes the collar of her jacket up to shield her chin from the chill. It’s Christmas Eve and teenagers are roaming about in pairs - couples, friends - arms looped together and bodies pressed close, side-by-side, as if to ward away the cold.
Tonight, she’ll crash at Kenta’s flat and laugh with Bunta and be swept away as she dances with Jackal. They’ll trade gifts and she pictures what she would like to be Hikari’s pleased and surprised expression as he unearths the gift that she bought for him two months in advance.
She knows that they all know how much he wanted that ridiculously expensive Armani sweater. She knows that he’s been trying to save up for weeks; it had even come up several times in random phone conversations with Kenta. But between school expenses and other necessities, Hikari had still come up short and therefore declared that it was something he didn’t need. She preferred to think otherwise.
When her phone rings, she stops and doesn’t bother to check the screen, going “Yeah, yeah, I won’t forget to buy drinks, geez Kenta, quit worrying. I love you but honestly, go finish that thing for work or something. Better yet, call Kaede up and make up already. It’s Christmas, you should be smooching not sulking.”
“Uh… I guess this is a bad time?”
She freezes then and feels her lips part. She tries to speak but her throat feels like ice.
“You look good. I like the beanie.”
She lifts her head and looks around, body following the twist of her head when someone’s hand catches her wrist. Arashi stills, and turns back the other way.
Now the trouble with finding the great love of your life is that that’s exactly what it is: that great love of your life. Some people get lucky, but more often than not, there’s nothing after that. No such thing as the greater or greatest love of your life, because then the declaration would just be plain useless.
Arashi would like to think that Shozo isn’t and could never be the great love of her life. But after all that they’ve gone through, it just seems like every detour between the moment she first smiled at him in Harajuku up until today, Christmas Eve on a busy street, has just rounded her back to the beginning.
When he lifts awkward fingers wrapped in gloves to brush along her cheek, she tilts her head into the warmth of it and lifts both hands to curl around his forearm and wrist.
“Ara…” he starts and she lets her hands fall, the fingers of one pulling the glove off the other so she can lift two fingers to his lips.
“Lemme finish,” he grunts and pulls her hand away with greater control than he ever had before, and he steps close. So close that he can pull her to him if he wanted to, which he does but doesn’t do.
“I wanna try again.” The words are measured, cautious, uncertain. “If you’re okay with that, that is.” Shozo shifts his hands under hers then, keeps his fingers open, gives her room to say no, to pull back, to let go. “I’m not saying be with me forever, I know you can leave if you wanted to, but still, I’d like-”
When her lips press against his, she smiles and he holds on and the answer is: “Yes. Yes, let’s give it another go.”
/fin.