GIRLS' NIGHT OUT /oneshot/
'If I do that you have to grant me a wish!' Juri yelled at Rika from across the road. 'Any wish!'
'Fine!' Rika yelled back. 'But if you don't, you'll finally tell Takato you like him! I can't stand your endless talking about him anymore!'
Juri blushed to that but then raised her thumb.
'Deal!'
'No way!' Rika couldn't believe her eyes when she saw Juri on the stage a week later. Juri's music teacher wanted her student to sing a song on the every year's summer festival they had in their school. Juri wasn't sure she was good enough and not even Rika could convince her otherwise, until she promised her to grant her a wish, if she sang the song.
Rika wanted to enjoy her friend's amazing performance but deep down inside she felt Juri's wish is going to be something terrible. That's why she couldn't relax until she finally met her friend behind the stage an hour later.
They hugged - Rika wasn't a person who'd hug her friends but she usually made an exception for Juri - and Rika congratulated her. Juri thanked her but her mind was already at the wish Rika was supposed to grant her.
'Remember what you said? You owe me a wiiish!' Juri said happily.
'Of course. Let me know when you know what you want-'
'Oh I already do,' Juri said with a suspicious fire in her eyes. Rika assumed the worst.
'I want you to join me and my friends on our weekly girls only evening this friday!'
That was even worse than Rika had expected.
'Whaaat?! Why would you even want me-'
'You'll go and won't complain. About anything. That was the deal,' Juri said seriously, as if she wasn't talking about something as banal as a simple girls' party.
Rika had no choice but to appear in front of Juri's house on friday. She could hear happy girls' screams inside when she knocked on the door and she felt sick even before the evening had started.
Never again am I having a bet with her, she thought frustrated.
'Rika, hiii!' Juri and three of her friends-classmates greeted her together. She was pulled inside and seated on the floor in Juri's room.
'I'm so glad you could make it!' Juri said.
As if I had a choice. 'Yeah .. me too ..' Rika said as happily as she could but the sentence didn't convince Juri and she gave Rika an angry look.
'Eerr, so what do we do first?!' Rika tried again and Juri seemed satisfied by that question.
'Well first we'll have a make-over ..'
Noo!
'.. and then we'll go for a fruit salad to that new place that was opened last week in the centre ..
That I guess I will survive ..
'.. and then we'll go to that place Miki got a coupon for,' Juri continued and her eyes glared.
'What place?' Rika asked carefully.
'Fortune-teller!' Juri and her friends cried together. Again.
Why the hell would anyone want to go there?! And what's with the group yelling?
'Yaay,' Rika said sarcastically and clapped her hands.
Rika let Juri's friends to perform a make-over on her. They were playing with her long reddish hair and constantly praised them and her skin. Rika felt embarassed and wanted to escape as soon as possible. When she went on the toilet she even checked, if there was a possible exit from the bathroom's window but then she decided not to run - even though she thought of a way to escape through the roof - because she knew Juri would never ever speak to her again. And even if Juri and her friends were as girly as possible and were making her sick at the moment, she respected and liked Juri very much.
When they finally let her see herself in the mirror, she didn't know whether she liked her new image or not. She had to wear a blue summer dress with little flowers on them and her hair wasn't in a ponytail. She didn't have much make-up, the girls decided to go for a 'natural look' (that took a lot of powder, creams and other alien stuff to seem natural) and Juri made her wear platform wedge sandals - 'Anyone can walk with this kind of heels!' was her comeback when Rika told her she had never worn heels before.
Their make-over thing lasted for almost 4 hours and Rika felt exhausted even before the night had really started. At 9 o'clock in the evening the team of five left Juri's place and went to the centre.
They came to the new confectionery and ordered the fruit salads. They stayed there for an hour and a half, talking about girly stuff. Rika wasn't really paying attention to the converstation and when one of Juri's friends asked her something, Juri had to gently kick her in the leg to wake her up.
'I'm sorry, what?' Rika said confused. She was just observing two guys playing Digimon cards at the table next to theirs. Noobs! I'd beat them in a-
'Do you have a boyfriend?' the friend asked again.
'A what? No, no I don't,' Rika said surprised by the question. Juri knew that so she could had answered it instead of her ..
'Anyone you like? Like maybe in your class?' the girl continued and Rika realised all four of them were staring at her.
'Eerr, no, there's just girls at my school.'
'Ohh, that's too bad. We have some cute boys in our school,' Miki said and winked to Juri, who blushed a little.
'Juri said you hang out with boys a lot! And you never liked anyone of them?' the girl kept pushing and Rika thought she was getting a bit annoying.
'Nope,' she answered and she thought of the guys she was 'hanging with a lot'. There were only the Tamers and those who she was playing cards with but she only saw those as objects to defeat in the TCG.
The conversation was changed by Juri and they were talking about random movies and cute actors until they - 'FINALLY!' - left the restaurant.
Half an hour later the fortune-teller greeted them in her tent. It was dark in it, the only thing glowing was a crystal ball on the table and Rika started to cough because of all the scented candles.
'Welcome ...' she said with a voice that she thought was mysterious but to Rika it sounded like the woman had a cold or something.
The girls sat around the table in excitement. They waited for the mystery woman to sit too but she was walking around the table, watching them and mixing cards with her hands. Rika felt uncomfortable and kind of stupid.
'You!' the woman finally said and pointed her skinny finger at none other than Rika. She flinched a little, the sudden voice caught her off guard.
'Yeah?' Rika said and you could tell by her voice what she thought of the woman pointing at her.
'You don't want to be here. You only came here to please your friends. You don't believe ...'
The other girls stopped breathing, staring at Rika. Rika shook her shoulders: 'Impress me then.'
The woman stood there in silence for a few seconds and then she sat down, on the other side of the table to be exactly in front of Rika. She then shook her head and asked Rika to give her her hands. And so she did - dying to proove the old woman was just a fraud.
The fortune-teller was holding Rika's hands and mumbling something with her eyes closed. Juri was staring first at the old lady and than at Rika, who seemed bored but didn't stop looking at the - crazy - woman.
The woman opened her eyes.
'You'll meet someone from your past that once played a big role in your life but you slowly forgot about them. They will appear unexpectedly and, again, they will be a very important part of your future.'
She then took a deep breath and looked around surprised, as if her mind wasn't present in the room at the time she said those words.
'She was posessed by ghosts!' one of Juri's friends whispered.
Rika still didn't say anything, she was just looking at the old lady. Suddenly she had enough of the whole game and stood up.
'Whatever,' she said and left the tent. Juri called her name behind her but Rika didn't wait for her, she ran across the road and disappeared in the crowd.
Stupid bitch, she thought at herself.
Because first person who popped into her mind after she heard those words was her father. She hadn't seen him for years and she gave up the hope he'd ever come back years ago, when she was still a child. However, she knew how easy it was to awake that little hope that was hiding somewhere in her heart and how it hurt, when she had to go through the whole 'forget him' process again and again. And the stupid old lady poked the little fire of hope that wouldn't die no matter how many years had passed from those sleepless nights, when she was praying for him to come back while listening to her mother cry.
Rika was walking fast, caught in her thoughts, bumping into people that wouldn't move. She didn't know where she was going but she knew she had to kill the fire before it would grow in her. She needed a distraction, she needed one of her male opponents to defeat in her beloved Digimon card game, she needed-
'Watch out, would you?!' she screamed at a guy that hit her with his huge bag and she almost fell because she wasn't used to avoid people in high heels.
The guy had already gone pass her, since they bumped into eachother on a crosswalk and the traffic light would turn back red in a matter of seconds, but he turned around to apologise or maybe to say something back.
'Ryo ..' Rika said quietly and forgot to scream at a dog that pushed her a few meters away from him.
He was just looking at her, confused.
The lights turned red again and there were only a few people left on the street, trying to cross it before getting hit by a car.
It's been years since he last saw her and now she was there on the crosswalk in a dress with a lost look on her face - he saw her when he was crossing the road, before he accidentally hit her with his bag, but he didn't recognise her. And he was late for his interview at the university of Tokyo, where he applied to study for the next few years.
'Tomorrow! Here! 5 pm!' he said loud enough for her to hear it. She just nodded to that, still in shock for the unexpected meeting. Ryo turned around and left the street in a hurry. She did that too and when she reached the pavement ..
'Yo, Rika!'
.. she turned around and ..
'You look really nice!'
.. Ryo yelled from the other side of the street with a smile on his face - not a smile she'd expect him to have, a playful one that shows all of his white teeth, no, it was just a sincere one.
And she is going to be here next day, even though he just embarassed her in front of all that people waiting for the green light.
The little fire of hope in her chest was silenced by someone who indeed had a big role in her past. If he's going to have one in future too - we'll see about that, Rika smiled.