Chapter Text
”Hey, Sojiro. Um. I…” Futaba pushed the curry around her plate, avoiding eye contact, and took a deep breath. “Ihaveaboyfriend.”
“Pardon?”
“I. I have.” She gulped. “I’mgoingoutwithsomeone.”
“Didn’t quite catch that.”
Futaba twisted her hands in her lap, and was about to give it a third pass to see if she could manage to get the words out at anything less than sonic speed, when she heard a muffled chuckle from across the counter. She narrowed her eyes and whipped her head up in time to see Sojiro quickly cover his mouth, a twinkle in his eye.
“Hey! Come on, that’s no fair!” She put on her best pout, even as she felt relief course through her. She’d been pretty sure Sojiro wouldn’t pull the overprotective parent thing, but not completely.
“Sorry, sorry.” He removed his hand, revealing an unexpectedly gentle smile. “I’m just glad you feel comfortable telling me, rather than trying to sneak around. Yusuke… he’s a good kid. Polite. Takes life seriously. Odd, but then again who isn’t, in your little band of misfits?”
It was said with amused fondness, and Futaba nodded agreement, picking up her spoon again, appetite restored. Then she paused, a spoonful of curry halfway to her mouth, tilting her head as she considered it. “Wait, how did you know it was him?”
“I’ve had my suspicions,” Sojiro said, shaking his head in response to the accusatory look on her face. “I was young once too, you know. It’s not like he hasn’t been spending enough time here to make it obvious. Of course, teenage boys look a lot less harmless from this side of things.”
Futaba rolled her eyes. “You’re not gonna give him the dad talk, are you?”
“Do you want me to?” Sojiro stroked his beard in contemplation. “I think Akira left a couple of his model guns upstairs. I could sit on the doorstep with one, next time he comes by.”
“Ugh! Great time to develop a sense of humor,” Futaba complained. She looked down at her dinner, then looked up, fidgeting in her chair. “So… you’re really okay with it?”
“Futaba…” Sojiro sighed, then leaned his forearms on the counter. “A year ago, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you out of your room again, much less making friends. I’m not the best parent out there— no, let me finish,” he said, holding up a finger when Futaba opened her mouth to protest. “I’m muddling through this, the same as you are. But I meant it when I said I would always be here for you. The fact that you can handle going to school, or going on trips with your friends, or even dating, well… if it’s something you’re ready for, far be it from me to tell you you can’t.” He cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed, and straightened up, picking up a dish towel and wiping some invisible smudge off the counter. “That being said, you’re only sixteen. I don’t want to see you getting too serious too quickly. Schoolwork comes first, no gallivanting around when you have exams to study for. And I still expect you home every night at a reasonable hour…”
She hopped off her chair and came around the counter, as he was doing his best to lecture sternly. He only broke off when she wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed him into a hug, pressing her face into his coffee-stained apron.
“Thanks… dad.”
He didn’t bother to hide his smile as he returned the hug. “Sure, kiddo. Any time.”
————
Futaba gulped as she looked around the plaza. The last time she had been to Odaiba, the rain had kept the area looking like a ghost town, but the difference between then and now was night and day. She clutched her tote bag close to her body; it was filled with thermoses of coffee, lunches packed by Sojiro, and her secret weapon. She hadn’t been sure she was going to use it, but as her eyes darted around, she was relieved she’d thought to prepare it. Everywhere she looked, hundreds of people were headed towards Comiket: men with professional cameras trudged yawning to the muster area; girls in groups of two and three pulled bright-colored hard suitcases behind them, their faces in full makeup and their hair braided close to their heads, prepared for wigs; people of all ages carried boxes and rolling carts, filled with booklets and music CDs, prints and buttons, prepared for a long day of sales.
“I can’t run up the escalator like you with this, you know,” she heard Yusuke sigh. She turned her head to see him emerging from the subway station with the dolly that held their cardboard boxes of products and signs. He tilted it as he drew level with the pavement, dragging it behind him for a few steps as he came to join her. Then he tilted his head, looking at her expression. “Are you all right?”
“Hit points at sixty percent,” she said faintly, then shook her head firmly. “I-it’s okay. I can do this. It’s not like this is any more people than rush hour at Shibuya. R-right?” She fumbled with her bag and pulled out one of the thermoses. The coffee was still hot enough to burn her tongue, but at least the taste and sensation grounded her in her body. Crowds were nothing, she told herself firmly. She had techniques to deal with crowds by now. When riding the busy, rush hour train to and from school, she was able to pull her headphones over her ears and listen to her favorite playlist, shutting out the crowds as she wedged herself against the wall of the train, holding her school bag in front of her as a barrier. Once at Shibuya station, she’d make a beeline for the bakery by the Ginza line, where most days Ann or Ryuji would meet her to run a short escort mission the rest of the way to school. But— a treacherous voice whispered from inside her head, undermining her— but riding the train was different. You didn’t have to talk to anyone, on the train. You didn’t have to try to sell them things! She could barely manage helping out at Leblanc, what was she thinking? Last week she’d dropped a customer’s change all over the floor and had had to scurry all over like a moron gathering it from under the stove—
A gentle pressure on her upper arms brought her back to herself, and she found that Yusuke was standing in front of her, grasping her arms lightly, standing between her and the crowds so that all she could see was the striped pattern on his short-sleeved button-down shirt.
“Breathe,” he reminded her quietly.
She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
“I’m okay,” she reassured both him and herself, a little surprised to find that she was telling the truth. She could already feel her brief panic fading, receding until she was at her normal ambient level of about 20% formless anxiety. Was it Yusuke, shielding her from the crowds in a nonchalant way so as not to attract unwanted attention towards her? Or was it the months she’d spent gritting her teeth through busy stores and train rides, yanking herself through her discomfort until her brain learned that every sudden noise wasn’t a reason to lose itself to panic? Not that she could have done that without her friends at her side in any case, giving her something to hold firm to when those treacherous self-destructive thoughts threatened to overcome her.
In any case, it didn’t really matter right now. She wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for Yusuke, and more than that, she wouldn’t have wanted to be.
She tucked the coffee thermos back into her tote bag and craned her neck to look up at him, pushing her glasses up her nose. “All right! Enough standing around. This is a time-limited quest. If we don’t get in the exhibitor line soon, it’s gonna back up like crazy, and we’ll melt once the sun gets up high enough.”
“I thought about that, and came prepared,” Yusuke said, digging into his own personal bag and pulling out a box of cooling gel pads. He ripped open the cardboard and handed her one; she took it greedily, peeling the backing off before slapping it on the back of her neck.
“I should have thought of that! I forgot to make a list of other things to bring, I was so focused on the merch…”
“At least one of us had the foresight to check the weather forecast.”
“Hey!” Futaba poked him in the side, right in the ticklish spot underneath his ribs. “I did my research. I still know more about this whole thing than you, remember! In fact… you should be calling me ‘Futaba-sempai’.”
“I will not.”
“Say it! Call me sempai!”
“This is ludicrous.”
She laughed and set off, mood buoyant once again. Yusuke followed slowly, a couple of paces behind her. She was about to turn around and tell him to hurry up when she felt a hand on her lower back. She grinned to herself a little, thinking wow, Inari, you can’t keep your hands off me, huh? and was about to retort to that effect when—
The hand on her back pushed her t-shirt up a few inches, and with his other hand, Yusuke slapped the cooling pack right onto the bare skin at the small of her back. Futaba screeched, nearly jumping out of her skin and probably deafening everyone in a ten-meter radius.
“Don’t get all cocky just because you have the legs of a giraffe!” she shouted after him as he easily passed her at a brisk trot, evading her attempts to grab him and enact her revenge. “You’ll have to stop running someday, noodle boy!”
(Even with Yusuke pulling the dolly, she still tired first, legs unused to more exercise than lamely trying to avoid being anywhere near the action in gym class. Yusuke walked back to meet her with a chuckle, and a wordless truce was called as she slipped her hand into his to continue the rest of the walk at a more sedate pace.)
————
“We could put the acrylic stands on the left. Or do you think the postcard prints would get more attention there? Everyone else has more decorations than we do, why didn’t I think of decorations? If we’re not eye-catching enough…” Futaba stood back from the table, left hand gripping her right elbow, right hand up by her mouth as she chewed on her fingernails.
“You’re not going to have any nails left,” Yusuke admonished her, pulling her hand away from her mouth. “You need a different calming technique. Although I have to say, even I find being here somewhat overwhelming. The sea of people outside is somehow different from a typical crowd. Is it their shared purpose, perhaps? Are we feeling the weight of their expectations and excitement?”
“Uh-huh,” Futaba said grimly. “It’s gonna come down on us like a wave. And worse, they’re gonna wanna talk to us.” She shook her head. “All right. I wasn’t sure I’d have to do this, but I prepared a secret technique, just in case. Futaba… transform!”
Of course, there was no transformation sequence. She knelt down and dug under the table for her tote bag, and then searched blindly around inside of it. She handed Yusuke the thermoses to get them out of the way, found what she was looking for folded somewhat less than neatly at the very bottom, tugged it out, and shoved her bag back under the table, crawling out backwards. She stood up, brushed her knees off, and threw it over her head, repeating once more, “Futaba… transform!”
There was a few seconds of silence, and then she heard Yusuke make the exact sudden chuckle of realization that she’d been hoping to hear, when she’d asked Sojiro to sacrifice an old sheet and pick her up a bottle of black fabric paint.
As far as a first cosplay went, Medjed was probably the simplest there was.
“The eyeholes kinda slide around, but meh, no big. Not like I’ll be moving around much,” she said, lifting her arms and twisting from side to side to flutter the hem of the white sheet back and forth. Her view of the world narrowed to uneven holes no bigger than a coin, she felt ready to take on whatever this crowd could throw at her. “Heheheh. And you thought we were on a lot of layers of meta before this.”
“Does that mean that ‘cosplay’ is allowed for artists, as well?” Yusuke asked as Futaba crawled back under the table to the artists side. He threw the term in with as much separation as one would a foreign term they weren’t quite sure they were using correctly. Futaba could practically hear the air quotes clank into place.
“Umm, no rules against it,” Futaba said with a shrug, pulling the hem of the sheet up to reveal her face again but draping it around her shoulders so it would be ready to fling back over herself the moment the doors opened to the public. “Usually nobody does anything elaborate, since it’s a hassle to get a spot in the dressing room when you’re trying to sell. But people online were saying that artists still wear accessories and stuff sometimes.”
“Good. I wasn’t sure of the etiquette, but just in case…” Futaba took her seat and looked on curiously as Yusuke dug in the cardboard box and pulled out a festival mask oddly similar to his Fox mask. He strapped it to his head, continuing, “I went back and bought it later on, at the festival. I’ve never been to an event like this, obviously, but I thought having something like a costume would make me feel more a part of things.” He cocked his head to the side. “Was that silly?”
Futaba shook her head, grinning at his earnestness. She reached up and patted his cheeks with both hands. “You’re really taking this seriously, huh. We’ll make a nerd of you yet!”
“Perish the thought. I’d have to give up my sense of style.”
Futaba was about to shoot a comeback about her shirt being a limited edition that she’d paid a proxy a lot of money to buy at a pop-up Featherman cafe— but at that moment two girls arrived to set up their wares on the table next to them. They were chatting boisterously, and Futaba clammed up the moment they dumped their boxes of doujin on the table with a loud thump and excited laughter, pulling the sheet of her costume back down over her face.
“I can’t believe we got here so late!” one was complaining, starting to open boxes; the other leaned around her and gave a cheery wave.
“Hey! I’m Akki. This is Momo. We brought a ton of snacks, so let me know if you want any, okay?”
Yusuke introduced himself with genuine warmth, with the prospect of snacks on the table; Futaba half-turned and gave a little, nervous wave.
Akki laughed out loud. “Ohh, I was wondering what the sheet was! I get it now! Medjed, that’s super fun. I really wanna cosplay the design from Destiny/Grand Order, d’you play it?”
“…Sometimes,” Futaba replied cautiously, as if surprised that this boisterous girl was actually interested in holding a conversation with her. “I didn’t have time to rank in the last event, though. Um. Do you… wanna trade friend codes?”
“Oh yeah, totally! Lemme just…” Akki plopped down on her chair and pulled her phone out. Futaba lifted the sheet once more, so she could actually see her phone without tilting her head this way and that to align the eye-holes. “Man though, I was super bummed, I saved up for months to pull for the summer outfits and still didn’t get Nero. How’d you do?”
“Crappy,” Futaba said, shaking her head. “I think I’m gonna stop saving for specific boxes and focus on events, my luck hasn’t been great lately. OK, here…” She turned her phone around to show her friend code. They continued in that vein for a bit, Akki helping her friend lay out display copies while she talked, Yusuke listening with bemusement until he could no longer hold back his interjection.
“Are you speaking of Marie Antoinette, the historical figure who was executed by guillotine?”
“Ehh, kinda yes, kinda no. Oh! Actually, it’s a little like…” Futaba hunched over her phone, her thumbs whirling as she typed for a solid thirty seconds before Yusuke heard his text tone go off.
His brow furrowed as he read, then cleared. “Oh! I see,” he said.
“Anyway, we’ll leave you be to finish setting up! Let’s trade later, okay?” Akki said with a wink, the meaning of which was entirely lost on Futaba. (The other girl’s thought process was along the lines of: ‘This girl seems a little shy, so she probably wanted to say something private to him! Are they dating? High schoolers are so cute!’. What Futaba had actually been doing was writing out a three hundred word essay on the way the collective unconscious thought about the aspects of different historical figures and how that applied to both personas and her anime phone game about collecting fancy jpgs, which couldn’t be said aloud for an entirely different reason.)
Seeing as she already had the app open, and this was something else she didn’t want the other girls to hear, she kept typing.
FUTABA. I forgot
FUTABA. everybody here likes the same stuff I do
FUTABA. I can talk about anime and games no problem
FUTABA. and plenty of people on forums online aren’t great with IRL stuff, but still come to Comiket… so even if I’m nervous, other people probably are too.
YUSUKE. You’re doing well so far.
YUSUKE. I’d like it if you could continue to enjoy yourself, and not merely endure.
FUTABA. ehehe… I feel like I leveled up!
She grinned up at him just as the loudspeaker crackled to life and the doors of the large hall were opened to the public.
The waves of people herded in like cattle were overwhelming, the noise was deafening, and it wasn’t long before customers were arriving at their table to peruse their books and other wares. Futaba was surprised and pleased when a few girls bought from them without so much as a glance inside the book, saying they’d seen the previews on their twitter account, and had come to their booth first of all.
(“We have a twitter account?” Yusuke asked.
“I’ve been impersonating you for weeks. Don’t worry about it.”)
But what surprised Futaba most of all was the fact that she was, largely… fine. Was it her shield in the form of her mask-like costume? Was it that the anticipation had been worse than the reality? Was it Yusuke’s calming presence beside her, having an impassioned debate with their other set of neighbors about the merits of traditional versus digital mediums?
Was she finally, in some measure at least, better?
“I’m not sure why you’re surprised,” Yusuke replied, when she asked him what he thought during a lull in traffic. “You’ve always been perfectly fine speaking about what interests you. Is it any wonder that you’re better at peddling fanart at a comic convention than working the counter at Leblanc?”
“It feels like… I’m cheating somehow,” she replied, wrinkling her forehead. “Like I’m getting a boost I don’t deserve.”
Yusuke shook his head. “You’re always trying,” he said reasonably. “You’re trying your hardest every day. Even when you whine about it, you try. You’ve more than proved yourself. What’s wrong with playing a level that’s a lower difficulty?”
“Yusuke Kitagawa, was that a video game reference?” Futaba shot back, lifting her sheet so he could see her astonished face as she nudged him in the shoulder.
“It was. I fear I’m irreversibly contaminated.”
She grinned. Then, after weighing the dangers for a moment, she offered, “It’s pretty quiet right now. You should go look around.”
“You’re sure?” he asked, surprised.
“Uh-huh.” He’d been itching to do it, she could tell, looking this way and that, craning his neck to get glimpses of the other artwork, asking visitors to the booth what table numbers they’d bought particularly appealing comics from. “I got this.”
He was gone for a solid half hour, during which time Futaba had a productive discussion with Akki about the likelihood of Feather Black returning for the next season, given the ambiguous way the season finale had left his death. She even got up the courage to ask the other girl to take a photo of her to send to Akira, although she first scampered out from behind her table so she could just pretend to be another customer.
She was just texting him the photo when a loud thump made her jump. She looked up to see the impressive pile of comics Yusuke had dropped on their table, and up further to see his eyes sparkling.
“I can’t believe you spent your half of the profits before you even left the building,” she scolded, although the impact was somewhat lessened by the eager way in which she picked up the first comic on the pile to flip through. “What happened to you seeing manga as a lower form of art, huh?”
“Everyone is devoted to their craft, and that deserves respect, no matter the medium,” he replied, turning sideways to scoot through the narrow gap between tables. “Anyway, some of them are for you.” He sat back down in his chair, flipping through the stack and pulling out a selection of volumes. Futaba grabbed them eagerly; most of them featured the character supposed to be her on the front, although there was one with a passable interpretation of Morgana.
“Hey, hey!” Akki leaned over, waving to get their attention. “I didn’t want to ask before you were back, Kitagawa-kun, since you’re the artist, but did you guys want to trade?”
“With pleasure,” Yusuke said, leaning around Futaba to hand her a copy of their comic. “I wasn’t sure of the etiquette, but I did notice your comic features one of my favorite characters…”
“Narcissist,” Futaba whispered, elbowing him in the stomach as he took Akki’s comic with a smile. The cover did indeed feature “Go”, the fandom-assigned name for Fox, according to his place as number five in the lineup shown in Shido’s calling card. Yusuke ignored her and removed the plastic wrapping from the comic to page through it, but she got her revenge when his eyes went wide halfway through. She snatched it from him, only to let out a peal of laughter when she saw the full-page spread of “Go” half-naked, very disheveled, and wrapped head to toe in “Niko”’s whip.
“Thanks, I love it!” Futaba said to Akki, who was looking a little confused at her reaction. Then the other girl’s expression cleared, and she clasped her hands together.
“Oh, I get it!” she said, pointing to the mask perched sideways on Yusuke’s head. “You cosplay him! You must be a really good one, since you’re so tall.”
Yusuke inclined his head gravely. “Thank you for the compliment. If there’s one thing that I and this character have in common, it’s certainly my height. Don’t you agree, Futaba?”
Futaba, eyes glowing, had come to a different conclusion, based on a certain red outfit she had always admired and envied. “Oh, man. That’s right! People totally cosplay the Thieves! As soon as I get home, I’m going on Taobao and ordering a catsuit.”
———
“Safe room!” Futaba groaned as she crossed the threshold of Yusuke’s dorm room. She kicked her shoes off, staggered down the short hallway, then collapsed face-down on his bed. Just because Comiket hadn’t been an insurmountable obstacle to her didn’t mean it hadn’t been absolutely exhausting.
She heard a quiet thump, and rolled over onto her back. Yusuke had put down the cardboard box that held their leftover merchandise, and straightened up, stretching his arms over his head.
“Less than ten copies left of the book,” he said, sounding pleased.
Futaba flashed him a thumbs up, before folding her arms over her face, blocking out the light of the orange sunset streaming through the windows. “Sweet. A copy for each of us, and I’ll list the rest on Toranoana.”
“What?”
“Internet sales, old man.”
She kept her eyes closed as she listened to the sounds of Yusuke puttering around the room. A shuffling noise as he straightened their shoes, left carelessly askew by the door. A soft clatter as he took his wallet and keys from his bag and placed them on his desk. The gurgle of his hot water heater as he filled two cups to make tea.
He put one down on the windowsill by her head. A few footsteps padded across the floor, and then the mattress squeaked and sunk as he took a seat down by her feet. “What is it?”
“Ugh.” She shifted her arms slightly and opened her eyes, looking up at the ceiling. “It’s dumb.”
“That’s fine.”
She snorted, a short burst of laughter escaping her. Usually people would say ‘No it’s not’ to a statement like that. Not brutally honest Yusuke, though; he was reserving judgment until he heard it. She folded her arms on her stomach, tilting her head to look at him. “It’s kinda like… okay! We did it! It went good! Now everything goes back to normal, like it didn’t even happen. It feels kinda gloomy.”
Feeling fidgety, she sat up and took the mug from the windowsill, curling her arms around the warm ceramic. It was an elegant black and red design, with a curling handle and a chip on the rim that betrayed its flea market origins. Yusuke sipped his own mug, then frowned.
“I should have let it steep longer. The flavor isn’t rich enough.”
“Tastes fine to me,” Futaba said with a shrug, after taking an experimental sip of her own. “Tea’s tea.”
“Tea brewing is a discipline that spans centuries of carefully perfecting techniques. You’re just biased towards coffee.”
“You got me there.” She smiled half-heartedly, and Yusuke put his mug down on the floor, leaning back on his hands as he looked at her, head tilted to the side. “What?”
“It’s always difficult to return to daily cares from something grand and meaningful,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t referring to doujinshi. None of them had ever really spoken of the sense of loss that came with the dissolving of Mementos back into the void, and with the knowledge that no matter how urgently you could feel your persona burning under your skin, you’d never summon them again. “This time, it’s not over, though, is it? It’s a respite, not a finale. We have, what, four months until the next one? And weren’t you talking about smaller local events as well?”
Futaba felt a smile creep onto her face. “You really still wanna keep going? All the nerds didn’t scare you off?”
“Of course. I don’t say things I don’t mean. It was a fascinating experience. Besides…” He reached a hand over and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, the tips of his fingers lingering on her cheek. Futaba’s heart immediately shot up to three hundred beats a minute, the exact same way it had done every time this past week Yusuke had done anything remotely romantic, because he was incredibly effortlessly unfairly cool about all of this and she had all the inner grace of a potato.
Chill, Futaba, she scolded herself. Okay, so he manages to be unbearably smooth sometimes. He also once called pineapple “especially invigorating, what with the mildly painful mouth tingling it causes” and Makoto had to break it to him that he was allergic. He wrote a strongly worded letter to a purikura company because the drawing time wasn’t sufficient. He spent a whole week obsessed with the word ‘effervescent’ and used it to describe a cookie and gummy worm sandwich I made him eat. The weirdness should take the hotness down by, like, six points, at least! The problem with that line of thinking, of course, was that those were all things that were somehow endearing to her, and she resigned herself to death by sudden heart explosion as he leaned in to kiss her.
It lasted barely a moment before he leaned back suddenly, exclaiming “Ah! That’s right! The whole reason I wanted you to stop by…” before jumping off the bed and crossing the room to rummage in a pile of canvases. Futaba let out a deep breath, covering her face with her hands, screaming silently into her own head.
“Here— no, leave your eyes covered.” The bed sank slightly as he sat down next to her. “All right. You can open them.”
Futaba peeked out from between her fingers, then let her hands slowly drop off her face as she stared at what he was showing her. The canvas was small, only a little more than a foot square. The subject was undeniably her, although seen from behind in near-profile view, eyes gazing towards the distance, where in the night sky a riot of color blazed. It reflected off the edges of the window, and off her hair, which streamed out behind her, fading to insubstantial impressions along the edge of the canvas.
She took it from him when he offered, although something seemed to be wrong with her throat, making both breathing and speaking suddenly impossible. “That was my tenth attempt,” Yusuke offered, filling the silence, although he seemed to grasp its meaning anyway. “My first was five feet tall. I kept repainting and attempting to render in more and more detail, seeking perfection… it had me in quite a state.”
“This one is perfect,” Futaba squeaked out, finding her voice.
Yusuke shook his head. “It’s rough. Only the center is rendered in any detail, and the colors were chosen based entirely on feel, without worrying about a coherent palette. But, you see, it clicked once I realized what I was trying to capture. It was that day in Odaiba, in the rain, that I first realized my feelings for you. A moment like that isn’t a moment of final perfection. It’s a beginning.”
Futaba forced herself to look up into his eyes; his gaze was direct, but to her surprise, he was blushing slightly, cheeks and ears red. She only lasted a moment before her embarrassment had her looking back down, but she made up for it by putting the canvas down and wrapping both arms around him, burying her face in his shirt.
“That’s so cheesy,” she mumbled.
“I don’t deny it.”
“Like, the cheesiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“That’s going a little far.”
“Sojiro would have had a stroke if I tried to bring a five foot tall portrait of me into the house.”
“Nonsense. He’s a cultured man, even though not a true art enthusiast.”
Silence. Yusuke was stroking her hair with one hand. She pressed her face closer into his shirt.
“Thank you. I love it.”
They stayed that way for quite a while, long enough for Yusuke to scoot back on the bed so he could lean against the wall for support, long enough for Futaba to curl up tightly and begin to drift in and out of sleep. Long enough, in fact, for Futaba’s phone to alarm; when Yusuke looked over her shoulder to see what it said, he saw the alarm was labeled “IT’S TWENTY PAST NINE! FORTY MINUTES UNTIL SOJIRO MURDERS YUSUKE”, causing him no small amount of uncertain existential dread.
Oh, well, he thought, as Futaba began to stir, making small complaining noises and managing to turn off the alarm blind by slapping the bed wildly behind her until she hit the phone, an experienced oversleeper. A certain amount of existential dread was probably good for you, and, under the circumstances, entirely worth it.
————
And then it was the last week of summer vacation, with school looming on the horizon. They had a surprise party planned tonight, to celebrate Akira’s birthday before he had to return home. The fact that his birthday wasn’t actually until November was part of the surprise. Akira was somewhere out in the city with Ryuji, who had the task of distracting him until the evening. The rest of the squad would be by in a couple of hours with food and decorations. Yusuke had shown up at ten in the morning, telling a not-at-all-buying-it Sojiro that he had come early to help Futaba clean. The look Sojiro gave him said volumes, most notably You and I both know Futaba has never cleaned in her life, but I’ll let it slide without comment and I don’t disapprove of you but no funny business, I can hear everything that goes on upstairs so I will know.
It was the afternoon, getting on towards three o’clock now, and at this point Yusuke and Futaba had been bickering aimlessly and without malice for a solid half-hour, because some things never change. It had started halfway through Futaba’s latest attempt to teach him the basics of her most treasured hobby, like how to hold a video game controller the right way up and why turning on smart steering was for babies, and in the way of these things, had meandered along the path of petty sniping until they ended up right where they started.
“Whatever. You’re just mad I beat you at Mario Kart.”
“You did not beat me at Mario Kart. You distracted me, and I dropped the controller. It doesn’t count.”
“Sore loser.”
“Cheater.”
Futaba ducked her head and rubbed her cheeks furiously. The hardest part of squabbling with your boyfriend, she was learning, was trying to keep your face looking petulant and wronged when it kept wanting to smile all the time.
“Besides,” Yusuke continued, looking up from his magazine and brushing his hair out of his eyes to fix her with a raised eyebrow, “You’ve been playing video games since you were a child. I played Mario Kart for the first time last week. You should be embarrassed to even count me as competition.”
Futaba picked up a pillow and halfheartedly tossed it at his smug face; he batted it out of the air with a chuckle before returning his attention to whatever he was reading. Akira’s bed (or rather, Akira’s mattress-on-wooden-crates) had morphed into a daybed-slash-couch over the months, as Futaba added pillows and plush animals won from arcade games, and Sojiro added a new mattress topper he needed to get off his hands (aka, that he bought specifically for Akira, but didn’t want to admit to). All Akira had done now that he was back for the month was push the pillows to one side to make room for him to sleep, so they were still handy to use as ammunition.
At this point, the only thing the attic was missing was insulation and air conditioning. The windows were wide open, curtains hanging limply in the hot air. Futaba was sprawling out intermittently in various positions on the bed, trying to get airflow, while Yusuke was sitting up, leaning against the wall. He had even made a concession to the heatwave by wearing a t-shirt, which was surprising, considering Futaba hadn’t previously been sure he even owned one.
Too hot to keep arguing, she rolled onto her back, propping her legs up on the wall in an attempt both to get airflow and to distract Yusuke, something that was quickly becoming her favorite hobby. If he was going to give her heart palpitations by being all sweet, she was going to revenge-flirt like her life depended on it.
Yusuke, irritatingly, remained focused on his magazine.
She frowned. Rolling over onto her stomach, she rested her chin on her hands, trying to catch his eye. She was still adjusting to the fact that she could get affection whenever she wanted it, and from Yusuke, of all people; he was usually so poised and reserved that she’d expected him to shy away more. But he was perfectly happy to hold her hand when they walked down the street, or let her drape herself all over him while they sat on the couch watching some paranormal documentary. If he was sketching, she’d quietly occupy herself with her own business, content to be in the same room, the same way he’d doze on her bed listening to music when she was teasing out the tendrils of a nasty computer virus quarantined on her desktop, but anything else was fair game. Usually. She wondered if his focus had anything to do with the stack of thin volumes he’d shoved under a pillow for safekeeping as he settled on the bed.
She gave up all attempts at coy subtlety, scooting over and resting her head in his lap, propping her heels on the down pillow at the head of the bed (sorry, Akira). When even that didn’t con him into paying attention to her, she reached a hand up to tilt his magazine downwards into her view.
“A-ha! I thought so!” Nestled behind the pages of the innocuous cooking magazine was one of the doujins he had picked up at Comiket. She grinned up at him. “Is it one of the horny ones?”
“It’s not.”
“Bet it is.” She plucked it from his hands before he could protest, flipping through the pages with a smirk.
“For your information, it’s completely innocent. The cover would simply be hard to explain if Sojiro should suddenly— there,” he said with satisfaction, as he snatched it back, holding it high over his head.
Futaba affected a pout; Yusuke flicked her on the nose, and then brushed a stray strand of hair off her cheek. He looked at her for a long moment, head tilted, a slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, and if it was possible for her face to feel any warmer in this heat, it did. She didn’t mind when he looked at her like that; quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. But it was a lot to handle, especially from someone with such a naturally straightforward, intense gaze. Day by day, though, she was getting used to it, and every time he gazed at her with that warmth in his eyes, she felt a little more like she deserved it.
And then he was leaning down, and she closed her eyes, wondering if her heart would skip a beat every time—
“Hello~o! We’re early, but we’re here to set up—“
Futaba’s eyes flew open and she sat up abruptly. A sudden surprise impact had her seeing stars, and Yusuke let out a strangled yelp.
“Oh my God! Yusuke—“
She shook her head quickly to reorient herself, then opened her eyes, holding a palm to her forehead and grimacing; Ann raced across the room to kneel in front of Yusuke, who was doubled over, hands clutching his face.
Futaba stared for a moment in horror. “I broke him!”
“You didn’t break him. Well…” Makoto, emerging from the stairwell and hurrying over, pulled Yusuke’s hands from his face for a moment. Blood ran freely from his nose, and she hastily pushed his hands back into place before running to the shopping bag that Ann had dropped on the floor in her worried haste.
“I’m fine,” he said thickly, as Futaba wailed, Ann dithered, and Makoto pulled out a package of napkins and swiftly opened them before pushing them into Yusuke’s hands.
“Pinch your nose and tilt forward,” she ordered.
“What in God’s name are you all yelling— oh, good grief—“
“SOJIRO I BROKE HIM—”
“No, you’re supposed to tilt backwards!”
“He’ll swallow it if he tilts backwards!”
“I’ll call the clinic doctor—“
In the end, after he had been marched down the street to Takemi’s office, it was determined that Yusuke did not, in fact, have a broken nose. “Things like this bleed pretty impressively, but no real harm done,” the doctor informed them, cracking an ice pack and handing it over after cleaning the worst of the blood off of Yusuke’s face and giving him strict instructions to avoid blowing his nose for a few hours. She also handed over a lollipop. And then one for Futaba, too, who seemed like she needed it. And one for Ann, who seemed jealous.
“She never gave me a lollipop,” Akira said, a wounded note in his voice, as the story was relayed later that evening.
“She said she has a lot of new pediatric patients recently, so she stocked up!” Ann chirped, opening her second bag of potato chips. The attic was strewn with snacks and drinks, and with teenagers sprawled over every surface. Some variety show was playing on the television, and there were decks of cards and handheld consoles scattered on the low table, but for the moment everyone was focused on Yusuke’s harrowing experience.
“What happened in the first place?” Haru asked. “Did you trip, or…?”
“Well,” Ann said, a mischievous grin spreading across her face. “I mean, I don’t know anything for sure, but as I was coming up the stairs, I thought I saw—“
“You didn’t see anything!”
“—thought I saw something veeeery interesting…”
Futaba let out a wordless groan, covering her red face with her hands. Yusuke, sitting a respectable three feet away from her on the couch, held Ann’s gaze with a remarkable poker face.
“Oh, knock it off, Ann,” Ryuji said cheerfully, tossing a pillow in her general direction. He was stretched out on the bed, and half on Akira, too; he had been lying on his back, but rolled onto his stomach and sat up, eliciting an “oof” from the other boy as he accidentally drove his elbow into his side. “Put ‘em out of their misery. Guys, we all know. I mean, not that it hasn’t been funny to watch you try to sneak around, but you’re really bad at it. And this is coming from me.”
Futaba spread her fingers to peer out from between them nervously. Makoto leaned over to ask Haru exactly what they all knew; Haru whispered in her ear, and Makoto turned pink, looking between Yusuke and Futaba with the accusing air of someone who wanted to know why they hadn’t been briefed on the subject.
“Ooh, does Boss know?” Ann interjected, clapping her hands together and looking at the stairway with trepidation. “Should we keep our voices down? I could see him getting really protective…!”
“He’s known for weeks,” Akira said laconically, rolling over and stretching out his arms now that he was no longer pinned down by Ryuji. “He’s been asking me about it.”
“We haven’t been dating for weeks,” Yusuke responded, furrowing his brow. Akira stopped mid-stretch, his right arm shoved under a large mauve pillow, as he hit something unexpected. “That aside, though, I seem to be in his good graces for now. The watermelon may have softened his opinion of me.”
“The watermelon had n-nothing to do with it!” Futaba squeaked out, finding her voice at last to chastise him. “I still can’t believe you bought him a watermelon. He likes you anyway, you dummy.”
“It’s a seasonal gift!”
“He wrapped it,” Futaba continued, looking at Makoto for backup, hands no longer covering her face. “He spent five minutes explaining his research into traditional wrapping techniques!"
“Boss asked me to!”
“Only because you somehow bent physics to perfectly wrap a sphere!”
“The precision of traditional wrapping techniques is too valuable to be lost over time. If more people studied Japanese arts—“
“Some things never change, eh?” Ryuji said, elbowing Akira with a grin. The other boy failed to react, and Ryuji leaned over to look over his shoulder. “Whatcha got there? A comic?”
“Found it under the pillow,” Akira replied absently, eyes glued to the page and getting wider by the second.
Yusuke cut himself off mid-word, head whipping over to stare, dismayed, at the other boys. That had the unfortunate side effect of attracting the attention of the rest of the group; Haru scooted over towards Akira, catching a glimpse of the cover of the comic.
“Oh my,” she said, half-shocked, half-laughing, as Futaba let out a small screech too high-pitched for anyone but dogs and Morgana to hear. The latter winced, sitting up from his warm spot on top of the television and flicking one ear irritably, before jumping down to see what all the fuss was about.
“‘Leader, your broad shoulders aren’t broad enough to bear the weight of the world alone,’” Akira read out in a hushed tone, staring at the page, his grin growing wider by the moment.
“Yes, I wasn’t impressed by the writing in that one,” Yusuke sniffed, distracted from imminent peril by his natural impulse to provide unsolicited art criticism whenever the opportunity presented itself.
“Funny, seeing as you’re apparently the one saying it.” The shock on Ryuji’s face as he pawed through the pile of comics was mirrored in reverse by the glow in Akira’s eyes as an entirely new world of hilarity opened itself to him. “Futaba. Explain.”
Futaba squirmed. Dead-on as always, she grumbled to herself, shifting her eyes from side to side as she stalled. “I-it’s not my fault you aren’t up on current fandoms! I-I mean, I told you Yusuke was taking me to Comiket.”
(“Hey, this one’s you, Ann!”
“My chest has never moved that way in my life—“)
“—A-and it’s crazy, right? It’s like we’re some kinda anime characters! Anyone would wanna see themselves drawn by a bunch of really good artists—“
(“Ridiculous! They drew me as some kind of— of dim-witted, bobble-headed mascot!”
“Well, if the shoe fits—“
“Shut it, Ryuji!”)
“—And you know how Yusuke spends his money, there’s no way we weren’t coming away with forty comics—“
“Actually, my share of the spending money ran out after thirty-two.”
“Not the point!!”
“Mako-chan, look!” Haru said, nudging Makoto with her elbow to show her a particular page in the comic she’d taken. Makoto, slightly confused and incredibly unamused by this whole business, peeked over to see what Haru was staring at with such fascination, but as soon as her vision was assaulted by the sight of a rogue nipple protruding from a shredded and incredibly Skull-esque costume, she immediately mumbled something about forgetting how to see, and shoved her face into a pillow.
“It really does look quite accurate,” Haru mumbled to herself, one hand absently patting Makoto on the shoulder as her eyes roved along the pages.
Yusuke, unable to stop himself, leaned forward eagerly, hands clasped around his knees. Futaba had dashed over to the bed in an attempt to distract Akira by showing him a particularly charming volume of a character who almost resembled Morgana, running about the town and having a cute adventure with absolutely no hanky-panky to speak of, and so wasn’t on hand to dissuade him. “I see. You have discerning taste as always. I would welcome your opinion on that volume.”
“Well, it’s very well-drawn, of course, but there’s a certain… charm about it?” Haru said, cocking her head to the side. “It’s as if the artist sees the characters as people, in some way. Skull even has the same posture…” That came close, somehow, to the small thought that was buzzing in the back of her mind, and she closed the slim volume, checking the front for the circle name. “Did they have any other comics for sale? Let’s see, their name is Shke… Shiher…” Her tongue stumbled over the foreign syllables, written obtusely in roman letters, and she frowned. “Ann-chan! Can you look at this?”
Ann broke off from the comic she was sharing with Ryuji, a volume with a scandalously clad Joker on the cover, to scoot over. “What’s up?”
“Am I reading this right? It’s a bit of a tongue twister…”
She handed over the comic. Ann took a moment to appreciate the anatomy on display on the cover before turning her attention to the circle name. “Oh! It’s pronounced ‘Scheherazade’. Yeah, that’d be tough if you don’t recognize it. Here, I’ll write it out in katakana for you.”
“Is that English?” Haru inquired, as Ann typed it out on her phone to show her; the other girl shook her head.
“Nope. It’s, uh, Arabic maybe? I had a picture book about her as a kid. She was this princess who had to tell stories to this sultan or he’d kill her, or something. You’ve probably heard some of them before. You know, like Aladdin, or Alibaba and the…”
Ann paused. Then she snatched the book out of Haru’s hands, flipping it open and racing through the pages, staring at the two boys depicted within with fierce concentration.
In tandem, she and Haru looked up at Yusuke. He held their eyes for a moment, then spread his hands out, shrugging with a sigh.
“You know how much Futaba enjoys her clever nicknames,” he said in a tone that implied that really, there was no reason to make the amount of fuss he was resigned to them making.
A beat, and the attic erupted into cacophony. Amid the backdrop of Ann’s peals of laughter, Akira locked his arm around Futaba’s shoulders before she could scurry away from him. “All this time—“
“Lemme go!”
“All this time we’ve been watching you two spending so much time together, waiting, making bets—“
“Bets!?”
“—on when one of you would say something, and all along—“
(“I want royalties!” Ryuji sputtered.
“You can’t have them. I spent them already. I’ll sign a copy, if you want.”)
“—it was just a smokescreen for your lewd side hustle—“
“You’re one to talk! You’re king of side hustles! Your side hustles have side hustles!”
Amid the drama happening over on the daybed, Morgana’s complaints about Yusuke not drawing him instead, and Ryuji being corralled by Ann, telling him not to be such a spoilsport, Haru meandered over and sat next to Yusuke on the couch.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Of course.”
She tapped her fingers together in front of her mouth, gazing at her friends, with a predatory light in her eyes that spoke of a newly-acquired interest.
“What’s your commission rate?”
Days until Winter Comiket: 120
Accept mission?
>YES
NO
MISSION START