/Author's Note: This fun little piece came about from – surprise, surprise - Singkatsu's prompt for a Hiro/Ayame oneshot. There are definitely hints of… questionable conduct between the two in the game, and what is fanfiction for if not to explore those hints? Drop me a review and let me know what you thought! Thanks for reading. End Author's Note/
- Do As I Say -
Dr. Ayame was looking for a way out of the dilemma within which she had found herself.
She poured herself another cup of plum wine and let out a requisite sigh, to complete the scene of despair she had painted herself in.
Of course it would end up like this. She should have known, being the world-renowned doctor that she was, that she'd have to mend a few broken hearts in her time. She wasn't all that surprised to find that she'd often be the one breaking those hearts - she was just irresistible that way.
…
Nori had dropped into the Konohana Clinic for the third time that week. The girl was the pride and joy of the village: whether she was sewing button-eyes onto teddy bears for the village children, or hand-feeding her elderly grandfather – who didn't need the help, but wasn't going to deny the service – Nori was the glittering glue that kept the small agricultural community together.
Hiro was behind the front desk, double-checking the clinic's inventory, like the dutiful apprentice that he was. As Nori had placed a plastic-wrapped dish of kimchi on the counter of the clinic, tittered, and mentioned something about an old family recipe, Ayame saw it: the purposeful swish of the hair, the predatory gleam in the eyes, the pronounced chest - puffed out exactly like an exotic bird looking for a mate. Ayame instantly recognized all the signs - call it a doctor's intuition – and a cat-like smile spread across her face.
Hiro, on the other hand, had barely looked up from his clipboard, offering the tall, pretty seamstress only the most meager of thanks. Incredulous, Ayame had to resist the urge to meddle: after all, she wasn't his mother, and she was too old to be playing matchmaker anyway.
Her conviction lasted for all of ten minutes.
"That Nori's something of a 'perfect specimen', wouldn't you say?" Ayame sidled up to Hiro as he ground herbs into a mortar. The younger boy jumped, as he often did when he found himself in close-quarters with his older employer. "I mean, wouldn't you just love to study her? … That came out wrong."
"D-Doctor…" Hiro flustered immediately, his hands growing clammy as he tried to operate the pestle. "I'm trying to produce the serum you requested of me..."
"Hiro." The doctor pinched the bridge of her nose and massaged it in exasperation. "That can wait. There are more pressing things."
"But Ms. Yun needs it for her arthritis–"
"Yun's arthritis can wait, Hiro! She drinks milk, she'll live!"
The old tea-maker's brittle bones would understand if they knew young love was at stake.
"Hiro. Listen." Ayame rolled up her sleeves and put her hands on her apprentice's shoulders, ignoring the inevitable flinch of his muscles. "Sometimes there are… more important things than work. Perhaps you think that a doctor's work is, ah, 'rewarding in its own right', hm?"
"I do believe that to be true…"
Ayame blew a raspberry. "Eh, no."
"W-What?"
"Look, kiddo: sure, you're filled with this rush of adrenaline and drive for the first few years. Curing patients, setting bones, getting all the best gossip from that old doctor-patient confidentiality thing. Yes, it's fun; yes, it's rewarding – but you can't make a life out of it, Hiro, you just can't. Take it from me. You… you need more passion! You need to be unpredictable! You need to let dreams crystallize in your mind, so vividly that you can reach out and grab them! You need to let yourself feel, let yourself dream, let yourself love. This? This whole place?", she gestured around the clinic, at the anatomical props and the jars of herbs and the lab coats, "This is just a job. This isn't a way of life. This isn't… your destiny."
Dr. Ayame was fairly satisfied with her impassioned speech. She wouldn't have gotten very far in most job interviews without that little trick up her sleeve.
Hiro the apprentice turned away, his face flushed with colour. He averted his employer's eyes as he mumbled, "I… think I understand, Doctor."
"Good. Then you know what you need to do."
"I wouldn't have dared to think that you… you felt this way about me."
Ayame felt the trickling of something cold down her back. There was a slight chance that, in her impassioned speech-making, she had left herself open for misinterpretation. Perhaps a 50-60% chance, in her professional opinion.
"I just can't believe it was you who approached me. Ever - ever since we began working together, I had spent every waking moment trying to work up the courage to… confess, and yet… it was your words that beckoned to me, words of such beauty that even the Harvest Goddess herself would weep in envy."
Okay – maybe an 80-90% chance.
"Hiro, I–"
"You've said enough." His first few footsteps were timid, before a newfound courage spurred him on, and suddenly the bowl of brown hair framing his baby-face was at Ayame's height. "Waste no more of your beautiful words. Let… let this speak for both of us."
Ayame felt beads of cold sweat boil through her pores. Hiro was only an inch away from her face, and seemed to be reading her look of mortification as something different.
Something very different.
That warm spring day in the Konohana Clinic, Dr. Ayame endured maybe the second or third most awkward kiss of her life – but those were stories for another time.
If she ever decided to open her big mouth again.