Disclaimer: The usual. Not mine, etc. etc. etc.
Note(s): Written quite a while ago for the Ponta Pair challenge community on LJ. Never got around to posting it.
Last Time
We Said Good-Bye
Echizen Ryoma, Ryuuzaki
Sakuno, five years later
They ran into each other in New York, five years after the day when Sakuno waved good-bye at Narita airport, thinking that she would probably never see him again. Echizen Ryoma was destined for greatness, but she was just another girl -- one who had happened to fall in love.
A freak storm dropped out of nowhere and sent them both running toward the coffee shop to seek shelter from the downpour. Ryoma looked at her for a moment, as they waited for their drinks, and said, "Ryuuzaki Sakuno?"
She only nodded, not sure what to say.
"What are you doing in America?"
"My grandmother decided I needed a vacation," she replied with a small smile. Her voice was lower -- and steadier -- than it had been five years ago, in junior high. "She said I was studying too hard, and that I would get wrinkles if I didn't take a break soon. So here I am."
"I almost didn't recognize you."
Sakuno blinked. "Oh. Well, I suppose it's natural. It has been a long time..."
"No," Ryoma gestured vaguely in her direction, "I meant...your hair."
That surprised a small laugh from Sakuno. "After all those years, I got tired of having to spend hours washing and drying and brushing it every day." She fingered her hair, which now just barely brushed her shoulders, and smiled softly, adding, "You used to tell me that my hair was too long, remember?"
"Hn." Ryoma still had that old habit of tugging on the brim of his cap, pulling it low so that his face was hidden.
Some things would never change, Sakuno mused to herself, sipping her tea. Ryoma was a world famous tennis star and regularly faced the press with calm indifference, but he still couldn't carry out a full conversation with a girl.
But then, he asked, "Are you free this Saturday?"
Sakuno nearly dropped her teacup. "Eh? Oh, um... I...think so. Why?"
Ryoma ignored stammering. He was looking out the window at the pouring rain, frowning at the glass. "There's a charity ball Saturday evening, and my manager told me to find a date. Or else he'll find one for me." He glanced at her. "So can you come?"
- - -
"Well, what else could I do?" Sakuno tangled the phone cord around her fingers as she paced in a tight circle. "Of course I said yes, Tomo-chan. Did you think I was going to say no? To Ryoma?"
She sighed, and paused in her restless movements. "I know I need to get something to wear -- and I know it's only two days away, you don't have to remind me." A pause. "Yes. Well, he gave me directions, but he said he would come pick me up. Don't worry, I'll be fine." A soft smile. "I wish you're here, too. I could use your help right about now. I'll call you soon, okay? Bye."
Sakuno hung up, carefully untangling her hand from the phone cord. She pulled back the curtain to a starry night, the storm having left as quickly as it came.
Just like her encounter with Ryoma in junior high -- it had been all too sudden, all too soon.
She was older now. Wiser, supposedly. She certainly had read many more books and spent a great many more hours studying and stressing.
But it all disappeared when she was faced with that pair of tawny eyes. With Ryoma, Sakuno felt thirteen again -- thirteen, and in love.
- - -
The car pulled up to the cafe next to the hotel at exactly six o'clock, just as Ryoma had promised. Sakuno got in quickly, willing her legs to be steady. She was wearing high heels, and a single clumsy step could spell disaster.
"Hey," he greeted her.
Sakuno offered a smile in reply. "Hi."
And that was the extent of their conversation as Ryoma shifted gears and pulled away from the curb. He was wearing sunglasses (for disguise, Sakuno presumed), so it was difficult to gauge his expression. She hoped he wasn't regretting asking her to the ball.
She had half-expected someone else to be driving. But then again, Ryoma never liked it when someone else was in control. He always did things his own way, in his own time.
Sakuno rested her hands in her lap and watched the passing scenery of concrete, steel, and lights.
Ryoma was the type of person who did well on his own.
She half-wondered how she could ever hope to be part of his life.
- - -
"Who is that lovely young lady?"
"I've never seen her before."
"I didn't even know Echizen had any female friends."
"Don't be silly. He's famous and he's young. The girls would all be after him."
"They look adorable together, don't you think?"
Sakuno didn't hang onto Ryoma. He didn't offer her his arm when they entered, and she didn't ask. She walked half a step behind him, slightly to the side, smiling shyly at the people who paused to speak with her date.
She ended up sitting at one of the tables encircling the dance floor while Ryoma's manager dragged him away to meet with The Sponsors. He came back with a glass of fruit punch for her.
"Thank you," said Sakuno as he sat down. He only nodded in reply.
There was a moment of rather indescribable silence.
Ryoma sighed. Sakuno glanced up just in time to see him raise his hand, instinctively, to tug at a baseball cap that wasn't there. "This is awkward," he muttered.
She felt a small pang inside her chest. "I'm sorry," she murmured.
"It's not your fault."
Well, what was that supposed to mean? Sakuno felt more lost than she had ever been in her life. She didn't understand Ryoma -- she never had, and it looked like she never would. He had asked her to come, supposedly to avoid being stuck with a stranger for the evening, but at the same time his shyness seem to speak more... Though she didn't know what.
Did he regret asking her to come? Or was it something else entirely?
Sakuno didn't know how to ask him. She wasn't sure if she even wanted to.
Time ticked by at a seemingly arbitrary pace. There were speeches and the usual fanfare, and people came by once in a while to speak with Ryoma. Sometime along the way, the orchestra arrived and the dancing began.
Sakuno heard Ryoma make a soft, annoyed sound. She looked up at him as he stood with a look of resignation. "My manager's making faces at me from across the room," he muttered. "Guess there's no getting out of it."
She blinked. "Um..."
Ryoma extended a hand toward her, almost casually. "Would you care to dance?"
- - -
What does one talk about when waltzing with someone who might or might not be a love interest? Does one let him initiate a conversation, or does one take the initiative and say something -- anything -- ignoring however lame it might sound? Is conversation even permissible in ballroom dancing?
Maybe the waltz had, along with a long tradition, its own set of rules and taboos, but Sakuno didn't have a clue as to what they might be. She had taken a few classes (on Tomoka's advice) back in junior high, but the only thing she took away from that experience was the basic skill of the waltz. And Sakuno knew that she wasn't the most graceful dance partner.
But Ryoma was leading her -- very well, in fact. Sakuno forgot her anxieties about tripping over her own feet or accidentally stepping on his, caught up in wondering when Ryoma had learned to dance.
He was a professional athlete, and his footwork on the courts was amazing. But dancing?Ballroom dancing? The thought had never even crossed her mind.
"Have you heard the story of how the waltz was created?"
Ryoma's question caught her off-guard, and Sakuno nearly missed a step. "Um, n-no. I haven't."
If Ryoma noticed her momentary fumble, he made no sign of it. Instead, he said, "According to European legend, the king of the gods originally separated man and woman because he hadn't wanted humans to inhabit the earth."
Sakuno found a vague recollection from junior high, when they had done a short study of...Roman mythology, was it? She couldn't tell. Ryoma continued, "So he kept them apart, and gave them no way to interact with each other. A man on his own is nothing, and like that, mankind couldn't survive.
"But the goddess of love took pity on the humans, and so she gave them a gift." Ryoma paused for a moment, executing a beautiful turn that Sakuno flowed right into without even thinking. Was that a smile she saw, shadowing the corners of his lips? "She taught them the waltz."
She blinked, slowly, unsure of what he was saying. A strange -- but not completely unfamiliar -- sensation gripped her heart when he looked at her, and their eyes met.
"The goddess taught people how to waltz so that they could be together."
But that's just mythology, Sakuno wanted to say. It was ridiculous to think that some divine being came down from the skies (or rose out of the sea) just to teach people how to dance.
The music stopped, too suddenly it seemed -- and Ryoma was letting go of her hand, so gently, and there was a small, inscrutable smile on his face.
"But that's just mythology, of course," he whispered.
- - -
Sakuno lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling of her hotel room. Only moonlight streaming through the window gave her any light to see by. She had turned off all the lamps already, expecting to go to bed.
It had been a long evening. She had danced with Ryoma twice more after the first waltz. Ryoma said that his manager wanted him to make a good impression on the all-important "them" (whoever that may be), so he was expected to dance at least a few times. And he either didn't know or didn't feel like dancing with any of the other women present, so it was just her. Just them.
But...no. There was no plural. It didn't exist. It was just her, after all, spending a few weeks in America because her grandmother had decided she needed a vacation to get rid of some school related stress.
Just her, lying in bed, turning his words over and over again in her mind.
"The goddess taught people how to waltz so that they could be together."
...so that they could be together...
...so that they...
...they...
...together...
She shut her eyes, shutting out the moonlight and the darkness and half-seen visions on the blurry ceiling.
Sakuno remembered junior high. She remembered her little crush on Ryoma, she remembered how it had felt.
She remembered the feeling, but she didn't want to accept that a junior high crush had come back to haunt her after all these years.
She didn't want to accept it. Couldn't accept it. Couldn't bear to think of losing him again, with nothing to hold onto. No memories. Nothing. Just a few words, a dance, this evening...
Sakuno didn't want to forget.
So she closed her eyes, not knowing how that would help, only knowing that it felt marginally better to keep her eyes closed while a inexplicable tear escaped and moistened her eyelashes.
- - -
"What?"
Sakuno winced slightly and held the phone a few inches away from her ear. Despite that, she could still hear Tomoka's indignant voice.
"What do you mean 'oh, it was nothing, I haven't seen him since, so see you in three days, Tomoka-chan'? I'm ashamed of you, Ryuuzaki Sakuno!"
"Tomo-chan..."
"Don't 'Tomo-chan' me! I know how you feel about him!"
Her friend in question sighed softly. "That was junior high. Now--"
"Now you're still in love with him, and you've finally realized it. So admit it already! If you don't call him yourself, I swear, Sakuno, I can and will call Ryoma-sama and--"
"Don't!" Sakuno couldn't stop herself. She didn't know if Tomoka was serious, but if she was... Well, the consequences of that would wince-worthy, indeed.
"Well then you find some way to confront him!"
Sakuno shook her head, seeming to forget that her friend couldn't see her over the phone. "Please... You're making a huge deal out of nothing."
Tomoka made a sound of frustration, only it came across as a loud burst of static that made Sakuno wince once again. "It's not nothing, so stop pretending like it is! I put up with your angst when Ryoma-sama left for America, Sakuno. I'm not putting up with it again. I'm not going to let you throw away a chance again. Last time, we were in junior high. We were kids, we were ignorant. But you don't have that excuse anymore!"
Sakuno stared down at her feet dangling off the side of the bed in the hotel room. "Tomo-chan..."
"Don't run away from him, Sakuno," her friend said in reply. "That's not going to do anyone any good. If it's what you want, then go after it. I don't care if he's a famous athlete, I don't care if he's still apathetic as a tennis ball. Go talk to him, Sakuno."
- - -
Her vacation was over.
She hadn't called Ryoma, despite Tomoka's best effort to convince her otherwise. She hadn't seen Ryoma since the night of the dance.
Her flight was scheduled for three this afternoon. At 9:37 a.m. Sakuno checked out from the hotel and took a taxi to the airport with her luggage and carry-on bag. These weeks had been...interesting. But she was ready to head back. Back to Japan. Back to her home and her normal life.
She wasn't thinking about any dance, she wasn't thinking about any obscure myth about waltzes and she definitely was not thinking about any person who used to be a junior high crush and now--
"If you keep walking with your head down, you're going to run into something."
--was standing right in front of her, apparently.
Sakuno jumped and nearly dropped her bag, staring at him with unconcealed surprise. "Ryoma?"
The corners of his mouth twitched, then smoothed out in a casual smile. "Who else?"
"What are you doing here?"
He looked at her luggage pointedly. "You're going back to Japan today, aren't you?"
"Yes..."
He shrugged. "So I thought I'd come to see you off."
Sakuno opened and closed her mouth, wanting to ask why. But she swallowed the question, and, looking down at her feet, murmured, "Oh."
"Hope you have a good flight back." Ryoma paused for a moment, then added, "And see you soon, most likely."
"Thank y--" Sakuno's eyes widened for a moment as she registered what he had just said. "What?"
Ryoma shrugged. "I need a break, too. I've already talked to my manager about it, and he agreed to let me have a small vacation. I'm going back to Japan to visit for a week or two."
Sakuno's fingers tightened around the strap of her bag. "When?" she asked, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt.
"Next month."
"I'll be in school by then..." Now why did she said that? Sakuno mentally slapped herself. Stupid.
But Ryoma just smiled. "Yeah. Good luck with your studies."
"Th-Thank you..."
"You'd better go before you miss your flight. I'll see you when I come home to Japan, Sakuno."
And though they said nothing more than that, it Sakuno boarded her flight with a lighter heart. She was going back to Japan, and Ryoma was coming to visit in just one month.
Sakuno looked out through the small airplane window and saw the airport runway, bathed in sunshine. And she smiled.
Because she was going home at last.
fin