Koi no Yokan
All of his life, Gray had struggled against the notion of Fate. Or Destiny. Or any crap like that. Like Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. I still needta watch John Wick 2. Dammit.
Loke couldn't shut up about it. Apparently the sequel had outdone the original. He had his doubts, though. The first one had been really good, but sequels tended to not live up to the originals. Not all the time anyway.
Gray loosened his tie and yawned. Big mistake. As if by Divine Intervention, the train came to a lurching halt right at that moment. Gulping down the yawn, he immediately reached up and grabbed the overhead handle to stop himself from slamming into other people in the already crowded train.
But it didn't stop someone else from crashing into him.
The evening rush hour was always worse than the morning. On their way to work, people smelled so nice and fresh. On their way back, they smelled of defeat and sweat and disappointment. Nobody had a single damn to give anymore, so Gray expected people to bump into him.
He honestly never expected a cute redhead to bump into him.
Is this the gods' way of making it up to me after I attended an all-boy's highschool?
The woman placed both of her palms on his chest to stop herself from hugging him. With one hand holding the handle and the other guarding his wallet, Gray had no means to push her away or even stabilise her. Not that she needed it, of course. No sooner had the train halted than she'd straightened with a muttered apology. She brushed away the few stray strands of crimson hair which had come loose from her ponytail and tucked them behind her ear.
She wore a business suit, the top two buttons of her white dress shirt now open. Her bangs were clipped to the right side of her head, and brown eyes now downcast behind her glasses.
Gray smiled. He knew he was about to say something very weird. The stars had aligned to make him bump into someone who wasn't a hairy, overweight man with a dandruff problem. No way in hell could his poor social skills not muck this up.
"I see you just fell for me."
She looked up. The doors of the train closed and it started moving again. Gray gulped. With the doors, his opportunity of hightailing it had also just closed.
I should not be allowed to talk to people.
"I beg your pardon, but I fell on you. There is a difference."
There was an edge of sarcasm to her voice, but she mostly just sounded tired. Gray was happy that she hadn't kneed him in the nuts. Anything he got was better than what he'd anticipated.
"Right. Of course. Sorry," he said quickly and turned towards the window. What was I thinking about again? I lost my train of thought on a train. Ahh, I crack myself up.
He watched the lights flash by outside as evening settled over the city. The voice-lady announced the next stop and he sighed. His stop was still a long way off. About a half hour more of dangling. Just what he needed.
"Thank you, though."
Wait, what? He blinked down at the redhead, who offered a small smile. "For holding me. Thank you."
"I, uh, I didn't-"
"I know. But you were more gracious than the others."
You say that like you're a connoisseur of bumping into people or something.
"Yes, well, neither do people greet each other with lame puns."
"Yet you did."
"What can I say?" Gray shrugged nonchalantly. "I felt something was missing in my life, so I took a course in weirdness after highschool."
That made her grin. "It seems to have served you well."
He couldn't help his chuckle. "You're the first one to say that to me, Miss."
"Aren't you lucky, then?"
"Very. I would shuffle my feet like a country bumpkin, but as you can see, I'm a bit short on space at the moment."
Bringing up a hand to cover her mouth, she laughed. Gray liked the sound of that. It was nice. Soft and sonorous. Like church bells ringing on a lazy summer afternoon. Wait, no, too poetic.
The train-voice announced the oncoming station and Gray let go of the handle. "You hold it."
She looked hesitant. "Are you sure?"
"Sure I'm sure. I'm used to it."
And he was. When the train slowed down, Gray leant forward on the balls of his feet, against the momentum, and lowered himself down on his heels when the train stopped. The woman had taken his hanging handle with a grateful smile.
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it."
As people disembarked, he looked around for empty seats but frowned upon not finding any. The train started again and he leant back against the momentum this time. Like a pro, Fullbuster. Full points.
"I'm Erza, by the way. Erza Scarlet." She must've seen his grin, because she rolled her eyes. "Yes, like my hair."
Still smiling, he said, "Gray Fullbuster. Gray... like my life, I guess."
The corners of her lips twitched, but she fought back the smile. "Fullbuster? That's... odd."
"I know. Evidently, when I get busted, it's always in full. No half-assing." He sighed dramatically. "Such is my lamentable legacy."
"But hey, if you get busted a lot, you cannot say your life is gray."
"Ah, but I don't. I always get away with it. I'm just that good." He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket and put in his breast pocket. "But I'm thinking I might start a law firm or a private investation agency."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Scarlet and Gray, Discreet Investigations. I can see it now. It'd be pretty colourful."
"Heh. Thank you for putting me first."
"I'm a gentleman at heart, you know."
"Oh? I see chivalry is not as dead as I thought."
He smiled at that. "You know the chivalric code started out as a treatise on how to kill people, right?"
"Do you mean how the chivalry is derived from the Old French chevalerie horse-soldiery and was translated as cavalry in later times?" She tilted her head and smiled brightly. "Why no, Gray, I did not know that."
Gray nodded, impressed. "Well, ya know what they say. Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right."
Her eyes sparkled as he said it. "Would that I had twelve clerks so learned in all wisdom and so perfectly trained as is Gray Fullbuster."
He laughed aloud. "The Maker of heaven and earth has not many like to that man and do you expect to have twelve?"
"Why Gray," she said with a smirk, "I do believe you just became my new favourite person."
"What, I can just become your favourite person by quoting some Charlemagne?" He tutted. "You have low standards, Erza."
They went back and forth like that for a time, their topics ranging from Beowulf ("Talk about plot armour, huh?"), to the Ramayana ("He knew how to uphold what was right, King Rama."), to the Trojan War ("Pshh. Helen. What a bitch."), to Troy ("It is unfortunate how Heinrich Schliemann destroyed what he was looking for. Imagine excavating Troy with today's technology!"), to the German school of fencing ("Liechtenauer's still pretty easy, though.") and finally to medieval Italian armour.
"I rather like it," Erza stated.
"Better than the German version?"
"Gothic armour is beautiful, but there is just something about the asymmetrical pauldrons of Italian armour that just speaks to me."
"Fair enough." Gray listened to the train-lady call out the name of his approaching stop. He smiled. "Well, that's my stop coming up."
Erza nodded. "I see. It was good talking to you, Gray."
"Likewise." He felt the train starting to slow down. "Listen, I know this is random and weird, but could I ask for your number? It's not every day that I meet someone who speaks my language."
She smiled mischievously. "Are you lowering your standards, Gray?"
"Hey, I have no dignity."
"I leave it to Fate. If we are meant to meet again, we shall." The train stopped. "Go. You'll miss your stop."
Gray didn't believe in Fate. Or Destiny. Or any of that crap. Like Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight. He liked to make his own luck.
He remembered the letter he'd received from Ultear that very morning from Japan saying that she'd met some guy with a tattoo on his face and they'd been going out. Said that she'd felt something hit her in the feels when they'd first met. Said it was what J. K. Rowling felt when she'd first conceptualised Harry Potter on that damn train ride.
It's this incredibly elated feeling you get when you've just met someone with whom you might eventually fall in love with, she'd written. The Japanese have a phrase for that, you know. Koi no Yokan. Not exactly Fate or Destiny. But Inevitability, I suppose. Hitsuzen, if you remember Cardcaptor Sakura.
That damn cousin of his would never let him live down the fact that he'd watched – and enjoyed – what was essentially a girl's show.
Gray didn't claim to understand all that Japanese jiggery-pokery, but he thought that it was what he felt as he stared at the smiling redhead before him. As if he'd met someone wonderful and they were about to embark on some wondrous affair. A kind of excitement and light-headedness that he couldn't quite decipher.
While he didn't believe in the Fate crap, this Koi no Yokan business didn't sound all that bad.
So Gray smiled back at Erza as the doors closed and the train lurched forward.
"Y'know what," he said and brought out his phone. "It's not my stop after all. Now, how about that number?"