For vibishan at the Rare Heroes Sekrit Santa gift exchange.
Hiro shows up on her birthday, which Charlie does not, initially, take as any sort of sign.
This is partially because she's too busy fantasizing about a big old piece of the cake Lynette and Shirley bought her, and partially because Charlie Andrews does not believe in "fate."
So really, what happens, is this very, very confused and upset man comes in from the rain and keeps trying to tell Charlie something. He shakes a little, like it's really important.
Charlie, however, has met her fair share of crazies here at the Burnt Toast Diner, so she smiles at him and drags him over to the cake. Niceness and celebration usually calms down the majority of the world's ticking time bombs, she's found, and if the guy would just smile he might be kind of cute.
In that just-passing-through-and-also-delusional kind of way.
It turns out that Hiro, whose English is only so-so (although much better than the Japanese of Charlie or any of her co-workers), is--Charlie hesitates to call him "lost," because aside from his earlier confusion about the date, he seemed to know exactly where he was.
So, Hiro's not lost, but it does seem that he must have wandered off--"Like one of those fugue state things," Tonya said, because everyone knew she watched too many late-night Law and Order re-runs--yes, Hiro must have wandered off, like one of those people in a fugue state, and forgotten, well, everything else.
As far as Charlie or any of the other girls at the diner know, Hiro has no more money than what is currently stored away in his wallet, no job, no clothes other than what he is currently wearing, and no home.
"Well, obviously," Tonya says that afternoon as they're waiting to clock in, "somebody's gonna come looking for him."
"A sister," Charlie replies, playing along.
"A best friend," Tonya counters, and Charlie thinks for a moment about the sort of person who would be best friends with someone who just went wandering off into the wilds of Texas all the way from Japan.
Charlie realizes she's taking too long to respond and blurts out, "A girlfriend," as a possibility.
Tonya arches an eyebrow at Charlie for a moment before she snickers. "More likely he'll come get collected by his mom," she says with a snort, and shoves her timecard back into its slot before heading out to find her notepad.
Charlie fumbles to clock in quickly enough to continue the conversation, the blue-black numbers on her time card coming out smudged and askew as a result. "Hey, hey," she says, hurrying to catch up. Tonya slows a bit, and Charlie continues, "I don't know. He seems sweet. I bet he does have a girlfriend."
"A lot of things more than 'sweet' matter to the rest of us, Charlie," Tonya says.
And then it's lunch rush, so Charlie never has a chance to argue.
A few days later, Hiro comes in to work at the diner, too, all white tee-shirt and apron and washcloth and freshly scrubbed face. Charlie knows something about him getting a job in the U.S. is probably a little shady, but figures there's nothing wrong with under-the-table table-bussing, as far as illegal jobs go.
And, anyway, he makes work about twenty times more fun than it had been before, which was still pretty fun, since there's nothing like meeting people from all over the place, people who travel, and have important jobs. Well, more important jobs than Charlie has, anyway.
Lynette's supposed to be showing Hiro what he needs to be doing, but he's either afraid of her or just more fond of Charlie because he seems to have become almost attached to her at the hip halfway through her shift. It's not that she minds, really, it's just that the customers keep giving Charlie sort of funny looks and she has to keep sending Hiro off to do his actual job while Tonya snickers from behind the counter.
He likes to bring her things, which is kind of exciting because excepting her birthday and Christmas, Charlie doesn't get a lot of gifts. Last Valentine's Day, Tonya got her a silly card with a mostly naked man on it, but Charlie thinks that probably doesn't count.
First, there's the Japanese phrase book, which he calls a belated birthday present. Charlie is, as much as she wants to, probably never going to get to go to Tokyo after all, but the thought is sweet, and maybe it will make it easier for Hiro here.
Then there are the flowers.
Really, there are lots of books. Some of them are travel guides for places she'd never thought to go, but mostly they're comic books--some of them in Japanese once she's gotten the hang of the kana and some of the kanji. (She seems to be learning things so fast, but maybe she just has a good mind for languages. She'd been all right in Spanish in high school, after all.)
Hiro likes to bring her the comics with sword fights and cherry blossoms, but those are all historicals with tragic samurai and dead girlfriends, and eventually he starts bringing her modern romances with ancient curses and lots of slapstick comedy. She likes those better.
The part that bothers Charlie--well, not the whole part that bothers her, but the bothering part she's focusing on--is that Hiro is obviously insane. Sometimes he says things to her, all solemn and righteous, about being able to bend time and space.
He says things about how he's come back in time to save her.
Which, unless he's some sort of super-doctor from the year 3000, is clearly a lie.
Still, he's mostly harmless, and probably one of the top five most interesting people Charlie's ever met, so she lets it slide.
Usually.
Even with Hiro working at the diner now, things are mostly the same as they've always been. Some kids from the high school come in on Fridays when they have open lunch and make messes of spilt Cokes, salt and ketchup in the booths. Some of the guys from the plant come in after work for supper and flirt with the waitresses whether they're young like Tonya or old and grown like Lynette. The sheriff comes in in the evening to do his crossword and bug Charlie for help, calling her his own personal IMDb.
Shirley turns on the stereo sometimes, and whenever Elton John comes on, she keeps singing the chorus, "Hold me closer, Tony Danza," which ends up in Tonya being certain Tony Danza was on Charles In Charge, and Charlie telling her over and over again that, no, that was Scott Baio, and Tony Danza was on Taxi. Tonya just will not listen to a word Charlie's saying until Shirley stops dancing with her broom-Danza to tell poor, confused Tonya that, no, Chachi was Charles in Charge, and Charlie has to pipe up Mr. Danza was on Who's the Boss? at the time anyway.
They count out their tips every night in the backroom and figure out how much to give the busboys, and pull off their aprons and take down their hair after clocking out.
Really, the only difference is sometimes Hiro and Charlie have conversations in Japanese during the daily lulls.
And if Charlie gets off work after Hiro, he hangs around and walks her home, which is nice of him, although she's not really sure what Hiro, who is short and funny and gentle, would do if someone really did try to attack her on their walks home.
He predicts baseball scores and folds her origami cranes, and eventually Charlie has to admit that he's probably telling the truth about having superpowers.
He thinks she has them too, which is ridiculous.
Just because she always knows the answers when the TV behind the counter plays Jeopardy! these days doesn't mean she has superpowers; she's just getting real good at remembering stuff. Charlie has the solid C+ average from high school to prove that she's no supergenius.
It's nice to be thought of as special, though. Maybe she can't do the things Hiro can, but she appreciates that he thinks of her as being in his personal superpowers club just because she's learning Japanese really quickly.
Hiro never actually asks her out on a first date.
What happens is this: Shirley's usual babysitter is going on vacation for a week, and Shirley says she'll repay Charlie for watching her kids two of the days in a little bit of actual money, but mostly in lemon bars and a casserole later in the week.
Charlie is kind of a sucker for lemon bars.
This is how she ends up sitting at Shirley's kitchen table on her Tuesday off, trying to feed mashed up carrots to Annie and make sure Tommy doesn't start coloring on the walls at the same time.
Annie's about halfway through the carrots when the doorbell rings, and Charlie gives Tommy a stern look, and looms over Annie and says, "If you get carrot all over the walls, you will be in big trouble, kiddo," before getting up to go check on the door.
Charlie's not sure what she's expecting, but when she looks out the peephole, it's Hiro, holding a few comic books and a pizza. When she lets him in he goes on, in English, which is an improvement, about how Shirley had said Charlie was babysitting today, and how she sent him to come check up on her, and how he brought her food.
She takes the pizza box from him and leads him to the kitchen.
Both Tommy and the baby look up when Hiro comes into the room, but Tommy's the one who says, "You're funny lookin', mister."
To which Hiro replies, "I brought comic books?" holding up an Ultimate Spider-Man trade paperback.
"And pizza!" Charlie offers, setting the box down on the table. She leans over and opens it a tiny bit, and it's got thin crust and all the fixings. She's not sure if Shirley told Hiro what she liked on her pizza or if he's just a good guesser, but she tells him it's her favorite kind anyway.
He smiles back at her.
And then the baby gets fussy again.
It actually wasn't that long ago that they found out about it--what was wrong with her.
Charlie's head hurt all the time, and she kept having dizzy spells, which was kind of embarrassing because it wasn't like she was old. Then one day she had a seizure, and the doctors finally figured out what was wrong with her.
Once caught, she's learned, a blood clot in the brain isn't necessarily that bad, if the doctors can get it to go away.
But they can't.
Or, rather, it keeps coming back.
She's probably going to have a stroke, or end up paralyzed, or probably die, and she's known this for a while now.
At a certain point, she just stops trying and saves all her money for that trip around the world instead.
They don't call them dates, because Charlie doesn't bring it up, and Hiro is still too afraid she'll take it back if he wants to call them dates. So they don't call them dates, but they are.
Both Hiro and Charlie have Wednesdays off, so they make plans to go places here in Texas.
Sometimes they just go to the movie theatre and pick a movie at random, holding hands and throwing popcorn at each other if the movie ends up terrible.
Sometimes Hiro reads about a place in the paper and they drive out in Charlie's car to a museum or a tourist trap or a minor league baseball game or just another town. They walk around and take pictures with disposable cameras and act like tourists in her own backyard.
And other times they just sit on Charlie's porch and talk about nothing at all.
Charlie knows they're dates, and that he has an interest in her--a hand-holding, kissing, popcorn-throwing, high school crush type interest--and she has the same in him.
But mostly she likes having a friend outside of work who doesn't make fun of her when she tells him she finally gave up the pretense of having to write down orders at the diner the other day.
Hiro has plans about being a superhero, but Charlie's not sure this feat would ever make it into any comic book.
Hiro folds her a thousand paper cranes, and then teaches her how to do it, so when she's bored she keeps folding them herself, compiling a little collection of them in cut-up newsprint around her house. He brings her gifts, he gets her a ticket to Tokyo, he opens her eyes, and at first all Charlie could think about was I'm going to die.
Now she's amended that to I think I love him, and I'm going to die.
But when she thinks about it, that's how it is for everyone, so it's really not that scary anymore.
She tells him one night in early October, the summer starting to cool into something more bearable.
They're outside the diner, and she tells him the majority of it in English--the parts about her health and about the future. But that's because those are the part that don't matter.
She tells him the part that matters in Japanese.
She closes her eyes to lean in to kiss him, and no matter what else happens, she is really and truly happy with her life.