xl note: Short story requested by Aries01xD, so I hope you enjoy it. I wrote most of this in between chapters of my other series and I never expected it to be so long.
The initial idea was writing a very honest love story between two high school students and then this happened. This is very different from what I had planned where instead of depicting the honest love story, I tell you what happened ten years later. I think that's the only way I can describe this and do it justice. There are so many other things that go on that will make you question things, but that's the beauty of it all.
The story is going to be told in long chapters 10000+ divided into 3 sections. There are 3 chapters complete.
All I Wanted – The Beginning
"One fine day when I woke up dead
She was on your arm and she filled your head.
Oh darling, I believed that we were real
You were the only thing that I could touch and feel.
Oh please, please tell me that it's all a lie
We were born to love like we were born to die
And all my rivers and all my guns
Have led me here, what have you done?"
- Kyla La Grange, "Woke Up Dead"
( Part I )
The lights were still flashing behind closed eyes, the music thumping to the erratic drum of her heart.
Images flashed in her head—a slideshow of pictures of events that happened ten years ago, but had only occurred last night. Strangers cluttered all around her, dressed for the club scene sporting glittering hats and other party favors in celebration of another year she spent on this earth. She stood in ridiculous dance poses, fully aware of the camera and the adrenaline pumping in her veins, in a dress with a metallic sheen and in a pair of heels she lost before the night was out.
She remembered laughing about it, saying she'd rather lose her $300 shoes than her necklace, a pendulous rose diamond held by a silver chain—she loved it, wore it everywhere even if the occasion was casual. It was a family heirloom, passed down from mother to daughter or in her case grandmother to granddaughter, and it was the last thing she owned that belonged to the now impoverished Kikushita family. She never thought of putting a price on the diamond because she was suffering in the current financial crisis and might be tempted to pawn it. Important as it was, she had school loans to pay off, rent to keep up on, and bills—lots and lots of unspeakable bills. She shaved off a good chunk off the loans when she pawned a painting her great-grandfather was given as a birthday present from one of his mistresses, which made selling it that much easier knowing it was part of the shameless treasures her family had procured. The necklace was different. It dated back several generations when the Kikushita were jewelers that eventually rose into political prominence.
Kikushita Hatsue roused from sleep—too many debts to pay spoiled her beauty rest. Yesterday's events were a fast-paced blur she tried piecing together. Her throat ached from all the shouting she did over the loud music and she remember a few choice words she must have said to her best friend, who she recalled dancing on tabletops in a micro mini skirt and half a shirt.
She was familiar with the hard, dirt-packed ground on her back and the smell of grass and flowers. She never made it home successfully after her drunken escapade. The last time she woke to a wide sky, blue as sunlit water, had been on the first night she moved into her one bedroom apartment and had the genius idea to celebrate her independence. She was a horrible drunk, and truthfully, she liked it better when she woke up curled under the kitchen table. It was better than the middle of the park.
Hatsue blinked wearily, wincing at her throbbing headache.
Clouds idled over her head, forming a dozen different shapes she tried deciphering as she gathered the strength to pick herself off the ground. She touched her neck, feeling the silver necklace and pulled the diamond pendant over her head, rose shining bright in the sun. She felt relieved to see it there; she would have died if it were stolen.
She heard the crunch of grass and jerked onto a seat to a full view of the graveyard where she lay. Her relief was steadily replaced by a disturbing feeling of shame. Her drunken self hadn't fallen so low until that morning—waking up in a graveyard, who does that?
Hatsue recognized the golden-haired man approaching a tombstone with a bouquet of orange flowers in his hands. He worked as a probation worker at a youth center, not the brightest bulb in the room but the most inspiring and a quick thinker.
Uzumaki Naruto always had a sort of charm about him since high school where even though nobody found him agreeable, mostly for the humorless jokes and terrible pranks, he would do something right on occasion. Like that time Inuzuka Kiba from Group B wrecked the lighting in the auditorium just as Haruno Sakura and the rest of her Theater nerds were about to perform a lame Shakespearean play during the big school festival and she threatened to turn Kiba inside out when Naruto swept in with a cooler alternative. He was set on getting the girl like the hero normally would at the end of the movie, but even though she gushed when she gave him thanks on behalf of the whole Theater Club, she turned him down before he finished confessing and everyone knew it was because she had been crushing on Uchiha Sasuke since freshman year.
Or maybe when the senior class split into touring groups around the mountainous area during the school trip and two of them were stranded in the wilderness with one ice cooler full of water and no food. It took three hours before everyone started to freak out and for Hatsue to start telling scary stories about mass murderers and terrifying animals lingering among the trees. And once it was dark and their remaining chaperone (the other tried finding the path they were on before the detour Maito Gai suggested on one of his youth spurs and put them in that awful situation) had decided it was time to sleep before the real panic set in.
All the girls slept in one tent together, terrified of what emerged from the woods, so Hatsue got to sleep in her own tent so unlike the rest of them, had a comfortable rest despite the hard ground. The morning after, a group of girls who thought it had been a splendid idea to skip breakfast before the school trip realized that they were down to their last bottle of water. That and raccoons ate the snacks they had collected together (gathered from people like Akimichi Chouji were smart enough to bring along, but was accused of hoarding once stomachs started to growl) expecting it would last them long enough before their more reliable chaperone returned with news. That had started an outburst of complaints that had Gai reeling and several disinterested students wishing they were anywhere else but there.
Nobody would have noticed Naruto was gone if Hyuga Hinata hadn't mentioned it.
Sakura was quick to assume he snuck after their chaperone, Hatake Kakashi, which, at the time, Hatsue didn't put it past him. A lot of people chimed in to agree with Sakura's assumption and by the time Naruto reemerged from the foliage in his bright orange shirt and fresh scratches, she insulted him into next week, stressing how dangerous the woods were (talking about goblins and demons and all the evil chipmunks in Hatsue's stories). By the time he recovered from the punch she awarded his stupidity, he told everyone that he found the camp. He went to find an apple tree they passed yesterday, having snuck away before Kakashi left to find the dirt path, and stumbled upon it.
The only chorus of thanks he received was a mumbled one from Hinata and a slap in the back by Gai for a job well done. Hatsue thought of showing some appreciation and they made eye contact for a whole minute in which she could barely mouth the word or raise her hand as if she were about to wave. They hadn't spoken since junior year, though they didn't have that sort of relationship from the start because she had a way to make things awkward fast and the fact that she came from a political family from the seventies created a gap in which many females decided she was probably snobby. She was, but she would have liked it if they asked first.
But she and Uzumaki Naruto had that awkward thing going on. He called her a snob in front of the whole school once, like literally took the microphone from her hands in the middle of their junior orientation and told the whole class she was a snob before accusing her of cheating her way to "Sakura-chan's" place, even though she worked just as hard as his precious "Sakura-chan." He had previously eavesdropped on a conversation between herself and Sakura where he perceived her attitude as "mean" and felt man enough to defend his school crush. Hatsue was devastated with the humiliation and Naruto apologized among receiving two weeks detention.
They never got over that awkward. Especially, when it came up in every reminiscing conversation their graduation class had about junior year. Believe it or not, a still of Naruto yanking the microphone from her hands and her look of surprise appeared in the yearbook, voted Best Memory (a category created for the sake of adding it in), and it was still a mystery who took the picture itself.
It still tormented her through nightmares.
Hatsue dusted the dirt off her dress and shook the blades of grass from her dissolving curls. She found her clutch on the grave across the one she woke up on, swept it off the ground and made sure her ID and credit card were there. She found both, half a gum, a condom with a note signed with a red kiss mark, thirty bucks and some change that could get her a bus, but her favorite matte lipstick was gone.
"That bitch stole my lipstick," she swore, shutting her clutch.
She wobbled past Naruto on blistered feet. He probably wouldn't have noticed if she hadn't said anything, but she didn't want to be rude. "Sup, Uzumaki."
"Kikushita?"
"Yep," she said without stopping or turning.
"Hey, where're your shoes?" he asked, chasing after her. "And why's an acorn in your hair?"
Hatsue was quick to tense when he appeared in her periphery. She batted his hand away when he reached to remove the acorn in her hair. "Hey buddy," she said warningly, sticking an index finger in his face. "The acorn stays. I don't want to make the squirrel that put it there angry."
He laughed—that crisp, careless laugh of his that could fill a whole room.
"Did you come visit your family?" she asked, facing him.
He grinned—a strange emotion flitted across his face. "Something like that."
She hated the idea of mystery and Uzumaki Naruto mixed together, but it was suddenly there. If she continued grilling him on the subject he would probably break out into tears or get cagey about it. She wanted to avoid both so she stayed quiet.
They split at the gate. She recognized the area once outside the graveyard, but it wasn't relieving that her apartment was five blocks away and she wasn't even in shoes. All the little rocks kept stabbing right in the sole of foot making her curse like a pirate until a car rolled up next to her, an old model that seated four with chipped red paint and signs of a fender-bender.
She glanced over. Uzumaki. "So we meet again?"
"Do you plan to walk all the way home without shoes?" he asked, driving as slowly as she walked. "You look crazy, Kikushita."
"I thought of stopping for a coffee in three blocks," she replied with a shrug.
"Want a ride?"
Hatsue stopped, so did Naruto's car. She turned fully.
Maybe she was reeling from yesterday's tequila shots or she had imagined that awkward thing for four years of high school because she wasn't feeling a bit out of place when she left the sidewalk to climb into the seat next to him.
"My treat," he said as he peeled away from the sidewalk and into the empty street.
"Why? I've got money."
"I don't want to be rude."
"Well, maybe I don't want to be rude either."
Naruto frowned.
"You don't even drink coffee," she sputtered. "I'm not sitting through your frowny-face when I know you don't drink coffee."
"Even I have to wake up in the morning, those kids don't watch themselves."
"Look at you, Mr. Responsible. When did this happen?"
"It's been ten years since high school, Kikushita. Even you've grown up, I'm sure."
"That explains why I used to own $300 shoes," she blurted because it hurt her like a dagger to the heart for losing sight of them in the first place. She obviously didn't care in the moment, but she did now.
"Used to?"
"Yeah, I lost them."
"How can you lose $300 shoes?" he cried, breaking hard at an intersection. Hatsue smacked into the dashboard. "Put your seatbelt on!"
She didn't even consider the car having any considering its battered state. She buckled herself in, rubbing her forehead. "You shouldn't be stopping so abruptly, that's how you get into fender-benders."
"You should wear your seatbelt!"
Hatsue pulled the mirror down and stared at the angry red bump on her forehead. The impact didn't hurt as much as it looked, nor did the pain remain. It evaporated quickly, a fleeting torment. She pressed her fingers too it and felt nothing but the swollen flesh.
"That looks bad," he commented, peering over during a red light. "Does it hurt?"
"Yeah," she lied. "It hurts a lot."
"Maybe we should skip the coffee and get you home for an ice pack."
"I'll live, but not without that coffee."
. .
Naruto pushed open the door for her. She entered with her bangs swept across her forehead, sporting Naruto's jacket over her shimmering party dress and a pair of sandals he asked her not to question him about when he found them in the trunk (giving her every reason to ask). Despite his efforts of giving her the look and feel of a normal morning person, she still stank of the strawberry daiquiris she ingested last night and nobody was discreet when it came to shooting her curious glances and murmuring about the many places she might have been.
They lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone, or at least knew your grandmother or one of your eight brothers or six sisters or seventeen cousins you never talked to, and a 1-hour train could get you into the bustling city life, which was where she spent most of her time if not her apartment.
She didn't have family in town, so she didn't have to worry about her grandmother or sisters finding out she entered the coffee shop stinking like strawberries and rum in a short party dress and a man in tow. It'd save her the awkward phone call from the parents asking if she needed them to move back into town to be her support system. It would end up being a useless conversation because they wouldn't care if she was, indeed, okay, they'd make the effort to move into the apartment next to hers, whether or not it was empty. As impoverished as the Kikushita family was, it still had its connections and both her parents had recently retired which meant they had too much time on their hands and not enough ideas with what to do with it. They had been in Cancun last time she spoke to them, promising her a handful of souvenirs, which her father took the time to explain in full detail. She had to rush him because she was late to an appointment and everyone was staring at her in the waiting room, much like they were now.
Hatsue ordered a small cup of coffee, black, and glimpsed at Naruto until he ordered a latte.
She raised an eyebrow at him, slapping the money down for the two while he was searching for exact change. "A latte?"
"I'm not the one nursing a hangover," he retorted, snatching her money and thrusting his toward the clerk.
"Ha-hah."
When he glared at her, she switched the money and returned his into his pants pocket. He complained. She didn't listen. The awkward thing had turned into this. Ten years made the difference, but she hadn't realized it had been so long. It was as if she had fallen asleep the day after graduation and woke up in the graveyard in her party dress and a faint recollection of the last decade.
She took her coffee as soon as it was ready and found a seat in the corner by the window.
Naruto soon joined her with his fancy drink and some not-so interesting topics to talk about while the morning lasted.
"You didn't go to the reunion last week," he mentioned. "Sakura-chan was looking for you everywhere."
"I didn't want to give everyone the pleasure of remembering junior year, call me what you want, but I haven't gotten over the humiliation and it's in print."
"I said I was sorry!"
"I don't think you meant it," she shot back.
"Well, I probably didn't then, but I do now," he admitted. "You had a terrible attitude."
"Are we here to reminisce? I thought we just came for coffee."
"Nobody's seen you since high school. It's like you went missing."
"Maybe that was the point," she murmured over the rim of her cup.
He leaned forward. "Why?"
She took a deep gulp of coffee. "Why what?"
"What was the point of leaving this place? You grew up here. Your whole family was here."
"Made no difference," she said, finishing her cup. "Now, I'm gonna ask for a refill. Keep your panties on while I go get it, yeah?"
"Yeah," he grumbled.
Hatsue got her refill and a muffin and returned to her seat. "I wanted to leave. There isn't a concrete reason for doing it. I just wanted to get out of my house and not take a train to one of the three universities out there," she explained with a shrug. "So I went abroad and couldn't get farther than I did. Those New Yorkers sure know how to party."
"Well, your English was better than the entire graduating class," he agreed. "I never understood a word you said during the reading and I practically failed, so I guess that's not saying much."
"I was taking extra classes for that," she admitted. "This wasn't random. I planned it all along with my parents' consent. I just never told anyone."
"You should've told a stranger or something," he suggested jokingly.
"I did." She nodded seriously. "On the train to the airport. He wasn't listening of course; he was staring at an attractive woman in a slutty dress. It was a great dress."
Naruto's eyes strayed to the top of her dress. She snapped her fingers, forcing his eyes back to her face.
"This dress makes them look great, but I don't want you looking at them."
"Then why wear it?" he demanded, a shameless red colored his cheeks. "They're wrapped like a present."
"That's the point." She looked at the clock on the wall. "What time do you need to be at work?"
Naruto followed her gaze to the clock. "In another half hour."
"So, do you normally work on Sundays?" she asked, leaning on her hand with a knowing smile on her hand.
. .
Naruto insisted on accompanying her to the front door of her apartment with an awkward stride and his hands wrist deep in his jeans. She missed their awkward thing—struggling to enunciate the simplest of words and avoiding direct eye contact since the junior year thing. She thought she didn't after the easy conversation they share at the coffee shop and imagined it couldn't get easier than that. She had relaxed in her seat, he openly stared at her breasts and she thought nothing of it (that could have been because it was a usual thing at work, but this was Naruto!). Naruto's reputation with girls' changing areas was the absolute worse. He had been thwarted so many times and had gotten twice the amount of consequences, but it never deterred him from trying it again the following year. She used to give him the benefit of the doubt until he gave her a reason to stop removing all her clothes at once when she changed for gym.
For not having had any sort of relationship with Naruto, she certainly had too many memories with him, most of the humiliating sort.
"You know, I was sure you hated me," Hatsue started, looking at him as she reached her door. "I mean if junior year said anything."
"I said I was sorry!" he cried, but settled down with a deep breath. "You were a snob, admit it. You hated everyone from the minute you stepped in through that gate and weren't afraid to say it."
"I was a snob and nobody wanted to talk to me because it was universal knowledge. I always wanted someone to ask to be my friend so I could say no."
"Forget it, you're terrible."
"I need a naïve friend that makes me look like a better person," she said absently, opening the door without inserting a key. She met his gaze. "Want to be that friend?"
"No thanks."
"Well, thanks for the ride," she said quickly. "I'll return your jacket as soon as I wash it."
"You don't need to—"
"Come back for it tomorrow." She shut the door and shimmied out of his jacket when she heard it open behind her. She froze, turning.
Naruto poked his head in, hooking his arm over the door to reach the lock. "Lock your door, stupid." He turned it and shut the door. "You'll get robbed!"
Hatsue stared at the door, dumbstruck. He just locked her door. Nobody locks my door.
Hatsue opened the door with a toothbrush in her mouth and curlers in her hair. She let the door fall open for Naruto to enter as she rushed back into her apartment to answer the phone. She spat her toothbrush into the sink and took the phone from the receiver, pressing it to her ear.
"We've been pushed an hour," whispered Yue, her best friend and coworker. "You have to be here now. People are starting to show."
"Almost done, babe," she said. "I'll call you when I'm off the train."
"You busy?" asked Naruto, peering about her apartment.
"I just heard a voice!"
"I'll call you when I get there!" She hung up the phone and turned to her visitor. "I have an appointment in the city. So what brings you to my humble abode?"
Naruto blinked. "You told me to come tomorrow."
"Did I say tomorrow? Is it tomorrow now?" she asked, cupping some sink water into her mouth to rinse the toothpaste. "Why did I invite you over again?"
"My jacket?" he offered.
"Oh yeah, I forgot to wash it. Wanna come back for it tomorrow?"
"You don't need to wash it," he stressed.
"But it smells like strawberries."
He gave her a strange look. "That's not a bad thing."
"It's a terrible thing. What if you get hungry and try to eat it. It's great leather, very expensive." She covered her mouth when she burped. "Sorry, I started early on the drinks. I wouldn't be caught dead in that short dress without a drink in me; it's cold out in the city and it gets colder at night."
She rushed past him and into her bedroom, remembering to shut the door as she tugged her robe off. She slipped into a dark dress that reached mid-thigh and pulled on a pair of heels. She rechecked her makeup in the mirror, touching up her lipstick and cleaning up a bit of smeared eyeliner. She smacked her lips together.
Hatsue met Naruto in her living room and took her coat from the couch. "Sorry about forgetting."
"Fine," he said, scribbling something on a piece of paper. He handed it to her. "Come here to drop it off."
Hatsue looked at the address scrawled on the sheet and the number underneath it and then met his steady gaze. "Your place?"
Naruto nodded, heading out the front door. He peered in her direction one last time and spoke, "I'll see you then."
. .
Yue was waiting outside the train station in nothing but a tight dress and cropped fur jacket shaking like a leaf. As soon as she spotted her huddled by the wall, Hatsue approached her feeling the winds chill her legs until they had numbed.
"What are you doing here?" snapped Hatsue. "You're supposed to be at the club already."
"Thank god you're here," breathed Yue, completely ignoring her and started toward the intersection, heels clicking noisily. "Asako's been blowing up my phone—" Just then, her phone started blaring in her coat pocket. Yue answered it amicably, murmuring, "Speak of the devil."
Hatsue grabbed Yue's arm when the light turned green and pulled her off the sidewalk.
"I got her! I got her already! So stop shouting at me!" Yue shouted, pulling her cellphone away from her ear. "We'll be there in ten minutes! Ten minutes! Yes, bitch, ten!"
Hatsue snickered as her friend hung up her phone and stuffed it in her cleavage, twisting the coat over her shivering body. "Are they there yet?"
"Yeah, been there for half an hour and the newbies are boring them half to death." Yue huffed, a cloud of smoke falling from between her lips. She pushed her blond bangs out of her face. "I gave them our number in case anything goes wrong." She shot her a toothy smile. "Think positive."
"Pit stop at the bar?" Hatsue suggested as they slinked past a line of wandering eyes. Her bracelets clanked noisily at her wrists. "My treat?"
Yue smiled, nudging her friend. "Why'd you think I said ten minutes?" she asked. "I'm not spending no time with the grandpas without at least five shots of vodka in me."
"Let's double that. They're so boring. I don't want to talk contracts with them sober."
The voluptuous blond squealed in delight and walked with a certain hop in her step. She went on to talk about the last night they had partied together at the club with all those shining lights and the music that filled her body out, thumping along with her heart. Hatsue revealed that she woke up in a graveyard and demanded she return her lipstick, reminding her that although it looked great on her, she wanted it back.
. .
Seated on neighboring bar stools, Hatsue ordered ten shots of vodka.
The attractive barman swept over the second Yue plopped down in her seat, known for having a not-so-secret crush on her since they had a one-night stand the blond called "a complete nightmare," and pushed a rectangular tray toward them with shot glasses lined side by side. Yue played on the idea of false hope, flirting endlessly with him, to get a reduction on all alcoholic beverages of their choice. If he gave them a pass on the check, she let him cop a feel of her boobs. She called it a valuable relationship without having to please him between the sheets, one that came with benefits, and Hatsue's job was not to judge.
Together they lifted the first of many more shots to come and clicked them together in cheers before guzzling down the alcohol, the burn running past their throats, quick to warm their shivering bodies.
Hatsue met Yue at a bar being heckled by an ex-boyfriend. She sicced the bouncer on the poor bastard and got him banned from the club. Instead of feeling gratitude for her actions, Yue was infuriated and dumped her cocktail all over Hatsue's favorite silk dress, which was never the same again. It wasn't until Yue's ex-boyfriend started stalking Hatsue and he nearly killed her that time he broke into her house in the middle of the night and Yue had him arrested did she find a reason to admit that she was stupid to date a man like him. They had been friends since then. Three years ago, they found jobs with Asako, their lady boss, and have since been inseparable.
"So, you were with a man today?" Yue teased.
"Remember that story I told you about junior year?" Hatsue asked, knowing no sarcastic comment or quick subject change could make the conversation avoidable. She didn't understand why she cared to keep bumping into Naruto a secret in the first place, so she felt a need to say it. She expertly omitted him from the graveyard story, not bothering to say that she wouldn't have gotten home without him giving her a ride home.
"The junior orientation speech?" she offered with a toothy grin. "The one that humiliated you in front of the whole school…with the bright orange t-shirt?"
"That's the one," she said, taking her fourth shot of vodka. "I actually saw him at the graveyard, he gave me a lift and offered to buy me coffee."
"Ooooh, so you forgot to mention him?" Yue toyed.
"Don't ooooh," Hatsue chastised. "He only offered because I was going there and he thought it was Monday."
"That doesn't explain why he was at your place on Monday."
"I borrowed his jacket on Sunday, promised to have it washed on Monday. He came over for it, except I forgot about it and he gave me his address to drop it off when I did. Long story short."
"Normally, you say that before you tell the story."
"Oh well."
Hatsue took her fifth shot and ordered another round from the bartender who just got cuter and wouldn't give her the time of day. Regardless, she and Yue didn't have each other's leftovers, they had an agreement and they were the sort of women with an attraction to opposite types of men. They only agreed certain men were attractive, like the barman, but it made no difference because they would never date him.
"Did you pee on his jacket or something?" asked Yue, drawing her attention back to the subject.
"I puked on it after he dropped me off. I sent it to the dry cleaners."
"You are so date-worthy, never a dull moment," she drawled, a sarcastic look on her face.
"Like you're any better, whore."
After a passing silence, the two fell into a fit of laughter.
( Part II )
The moment was almost fleeting and for a second, Hatsue felt lifted. Music rocked the ground beneath her, filled her body with a tingling she couldn't shake. The lights were as bright as she last remembered them; they were shining down on her curled hair drawing the highlights from within the darker strands.
It felt surreal. The ghostly touch of her dance partner, a younger male with cropped black hair and mesmerizing eyes with a hard body, the heat of his proximity that made it feel as though he had enveloped her in his strong arms but hadn't moved an inch since she dragged him to the center of the floor. She had a growing urge to touch him, pull him closer, grind against him as the music turned into a sleazy beat but she also needed to sit.
She wanted to drink something. Her throat was dry. She was running out of air. She could feel her blood pumping through her veins and a haze fall over her eyes as if the ambience was all smoke and mirrors.
Oh god. She was suffocating.
But she kept moving, breathing harder as if the air supply were thinning. She tried to take what was slowly deteriorating.
Hatsue searched the crowd and saw every expression lit with pleasure and joy. She spotted Yue whispering into the ear of an older man whose hand was up her short skirt. She wanted to shout something distracting, but found it difficult to think with a clouded mind.
She felt one hand on the back of her neck and the room went black.
Hatsue touched the necklace around her neck and brought the pale diamond to eyelevel to make sure it was still there. She sold everything of value she ever owned back then, save the shoes—she couldn't part with the shoes—because her family situation demanded it. No amount of part-time jobs could accumulate the amount of money needed to sustain a six-people household between a mother that could barely keep a job and a father whose pay was unworthy of his degree, but the economy was terrible. It was as if nobody was hiring people with actual degrees. It was the convenient stores, the boutiques and bookstores that were hiring and she tried them all until she realized her pricey clothes and technology could go for a good amount of money. She knew the diamond would sell for millions, but she didn't want to think about that. Family heirloom and all.
Still, it amazed her to find it around her neck when she woke up in strange places. In this case, the graveyard again, post-dawn so the barely visible light cast a haze around the tall graves. She felt a chill strum down her spine and knew that she needed to get out as soon as possible. She did just that after collecting her shoes.
She walked several blocks to get to the coffee shop and ordered a charged cup of coffee to knock the hangover out of her. She idled by the entrance gauging the distance between this shop and the dry cleaners where she had to pick up Naruto's jacket. It wouldn't be a far walk, but it would be uncomfortable in her dress. Regardless, it wouldn't hurt to walk the alcohol off.
. .
She checked the contents of her purse thoroughly before entering the dry cleaners. She had enough money to pay for the cleaning and many extra bills. By the staggering amount of money inside her clutch, she was right to assume she had made a great profit for yesterday's appointment and was thankful she had enough to pay her exorbitant rent with enough money to send to her sisters. They were staying with one of her aunts in the next town over where people were less gossipy and less inclined to talk about how Kikushita Hatsue woke up in a graveyard twice in one week because unlike the townspeople here, they knew how to mind their own business.
Seeing as she had the money, Hatsue hailed a cab to take her to Naruto's address and arrived to a wealthy-looking apartment building although she expected he didn't get paid enough for the job he had considering he was probably one of the few that got a salary as the town was overrun with volunteer probation officers.
Why did the thought of him being paid for a job everyone else did for free make him seem snobbier? Hatsue shrugged. That almost sounded like a rhetorical question. Why is the sky blue? Why are you still holding a grudge against him ten years after he called you a snob? Oh, that's right. I have no life.
Hatsue entered the lobby bringing all the awkward in the universe at her back as she stared wide-eyed at the sparkling, high-class interior full of classier inhabitants enjoying non-awkward conversation while picking up their mail and walking their groomed Pomeranians out of the building. When people started to notice she tried to pretend she was invisible as she approached the resident list by the elevator and skimmed down it for Naruto's name, but then they started to whisper about the grass stains on her clothes and the lipstick on her cheek and the coffee stain down her front. She didn't mean to spill the coffee on herself, but some idiot on the street bumped into her as she was about to finish it. The grass stains would have to go on ignored by memory because she never asked her inebriated self to sleep in a graveyard. She had an explanation for everything they whispered about her, down to the fact that she might just be a hooker.
She wasn't a hooker. They at least looked classy in the morning whereas she just realized she wasn't wearing any underwear and her dress kept ridding up her ass. She tugged it down, sure one older gentleman drinking coffee with his teenage granddaughter saw the under curve of her ass because he was giving her his version of a come hither look and she wasn't interested.
At the sight of Naruto's surname stickered over the rectangular plaque for apartment 52, she felt overwhelmed with relief and pressed the elevator button. She stood there impatiently, trying to comb the unruly hair into the shallow curls that remained.
The metal doors swished open, a couple stepped. The man planted a kiss on his girlfriend's reddened cheek and took her by the hand, leading out of the elevator when they both stopped abruptly at the sight of her. She stared at them, slowly backing into the elevator when their faces clicked in her memory. Inuzuka Kiba and Hyuga Hinata together? There was no stranger couple in the world.
"Kikushita?" called Inuzuka Kiba hesitantly. Besides him, Hyuga Hinata looked at her frightened.
Hatsue opened her mouth to say something interesting when the elevator doors swished shut and the awkward greeting died in her throat. She already felt the junior orientation story coming into the light as soon as they confirmed that she was indeed Kikushita Hatsue. Now, she just wanted to pretend she was a hooker/stripper named Kandi and she was paying the rich guy at the penthouse a home visit.
Once the elevator reached Naruto's floor, she stepped out cautiously, expecting more of their old high school classmates to appear out of thin air and recognize her. The corridor was long with soft walls and flooring that made her heels click noisily. She walked past several apartment doors before coming across the solid black entrance to apartment 52, the numbers were a shiny silver color.
She reached up to knock when a high-pitch giggle reached her ears from within. She dropped her hand and pressed her ear to the door. Inside the voices were muffled, but she recognized Naruto's deeper tone from the girlish one and it sounded like they were having fun or maybe they were busy. It was probably best if she left and came back another day. She didn't want to interrupt him if he was with his girlfriend and it was his day off. Who was she to get in between two lovers in the morning?
Hatsue pounded on the door as if her life depended on getting it open before a masked psychopath cleaved her with a butcher knife.
"I'm coming already!" snapped Naruto. "You can stop knocking!"
But she couldn't. She was knocking like he owed her an explanation for bringing a strange girl into his house and her heart was hammering away to the rhythm, making her nervous when the black door swung open to reveal him dressed in a t-shirt and shorts combo and an annoyed look on his face.
Her hand was throbbing and she was breathing loudly, eyes looking past his shoulder to the surprisingly neat apartment and the half-dressed woman sitting on his bed. It was an open apartment, spacious with a full kitchen and living room area and bedroom in one large room, arranged in a way that would make any interior designer wet themselves.
"Sorry," she uttered quietly. She lifted the clean jacket to his view. "I came to leave this."
Naruto stepped out, shutting the door behind him. "You should have called," he said, sounding angry. "I wasn't expecting you to remember to drop off the jacket."
"I don't have a cellphone," she said. "This was short notice for me too. I came straight from work."
He shot her a look. "Or the cemetery."
"Don't say that, it makes me very aware that I have a stench," she said sarcastically.
Naruto stayed quiet for a long time before heading back into his apartment. "Wait here."
He shut the door behind him and she blew a raspberry as she wondered why she couldn't have stopped at a payphone or something to call him. It was the right thing to do when you were going over a friend's house, except they weren't friends. Still, she should have called. She saw the error of her ways. Now, she hoped he hurried outside so she could hand him the jacket and leave as quickly as she came.
The door opened, but instead of Naruto, the girl that walked out, fully dressed, and gave her a scrutinizing onceover before disappearing down the hallway with her nose in the air.
Naruto pushed the door open completely. "Come in."
"You didn't have to kick your girlfriend out," she said. "I just came to drop this off."
"Kikushita, come in," he said forcefully.
He didn't confirm or deny that the bra and panties girl was his girlfriend. Maybe she was, but he didn't need to kick her out, especially after the way she looked at her. What if she thought he was blatantly cheating with a hooker? Would she have to explain to her that she wasn't the least bit attracted to her boyfriend? Okay, she was lying on that one.
Uzumaki Naruto had been shorter than she was in high school where she based her opinions on people these days and he was disturbingly annoying with a personal vendetta against her. At least that's what it felt like to her and she couldn't look past those qualities to look at him as a member of the opposite sex. He was just the noisy blond in the orange t-shirt at junior orientation—god, she was never going to let that one go—but he was different now, taller with a slim well-built physique and golden skin. The little pervert inside her mind wished that t-shirts were see-through so she could take a gander at the taut muscle beneath, but she had lost her voicing privileges when Hatsue went out with the charming man that became her stalker.
"No need to shout at me, I'm going."
She stepped in and he shut the door behind her. He walked towards the island in the kitchen and pulled out one of the stools. "Sit."
Hatsue settled into the chair without protest and stared wondrously at the white and maroon contrast of the kitchen.
Naruto placed a bowl of steaming ramen in front of her and a bottled water. "Eat."
"No thanks, I've just had coffee," she said politely.
"Just eat."
"I can't believe you're still eating ramen for breakfast, it's disgusting."
"Not if you're hungry and I can tell you are."
"And what gave you that idea? The lipstick on my cheek, the stain on my dress, or the—" Her stomach growled.
"That," he said, cracking his first smile that morning.
Hatsue sighed. "Fine. I'll eat your instant ramen but I'm not going to be happy about it."
She took a chopstick-full of the instant noodles feigning disinterest but enjoying every bite. She was very tempted to enter a donut shop on the way over but she wanted to get things over with before buying a dozen different frosty treats to take home. She still preferred the donuts to the ramen, but it wasn't terrible. Not as terrible as she wished it was to give her an excuse to refuse to eat.
Naruto pulled one of the stools and sat across her, watching and waiting as she ate in silence.
"So why the bottled water? Why not a can of soda?" she asked, glancing at the sweating bottle of water.
He stayed quiet for a while. "You look like the bottled water sort," he said. "And you need to hydrate after all the alcohol you drank. I can smell you from all the way over here."
"Straight tequila and vodka shots," she said with a proud grin. "Had them all night long. I couldn't be bothered with fruity mixed drinks. I had a mission."
"A mission? What kind of mission requires you to get shitfaced?"
"Only the good kind." She slurped up the last of the ramen and let the chopsticks clatter within the bowl. "Hey, I think I saw Inuzuka and Hyuga in the lobby together."
"Yeah, they live in the floor above me," he said quickly. "Did they see you?"
She thought of Kiba who looked as if he needed to say something and of Hinata who stared at her with her wide pale eyes as if she had seen a ghost.
"Would it matter if they did?" she asked swiftly.
"Nobody said that." He frowned.
"They did." She twisted the cap off the bottled water and took a tentative sip. "In fact, I think your whole building thinks I'm a hooker." He made a face. "Don't worry about that. I get hooker a lot."
Naruto exhaled, taking the bowl from her and setting it into the sink across the island. "What do you do?"
"What do you think I do?" she challenged.
"Escort? You dress classy enough," he said flippantly. "The late nights. Can't think of anything else."
"I like the idea of a classy hooker," she said with a laugh. "I'm not though. I'm a promoter, nightclubs mostly, but I've done other events. I started wearing the pantsuit at first to try looking professional but nobody took me seriously so I started dressing so I could enjoy my own nights. I even started inviting people I knew to work my nights, I pay handsomely these days."
"I never would have expected promoter," he admitted.
"No one ever does. That's the beauty of the job." She drank half her bottled water before twisting the cap back on. "It's ideal, but I really need a new boss. I've been promoting for the same woman for three years and she's starting to get annoying."
"Why don't you quit?"
"Because she, as much as I, can't afford to lose my nights there. I make a great profit and it'll take months for me to get a new brand going for another nightclub." She leaned over the cold surface. "I don't have the luxury when I've got two sisters in university, and let me tell you, medical school is expensive."
"Medical school? Really?"
"Yep, medical school. The second oldest, she's an ambitious one, but it's worth it. She's worth every penny I spend on paying her tuition. The other one, she's spends most of her money hiring attractive tutors."
"Why didn't you ever mention you had sisters?" he asked.
"Because they were young and in private school."
"You were in private school, right? Why didn't you stay?"
"Why? Ehh, I wanted to go to a school that was walking distance from my grandmother's house. I used to wake up too early and was at that train station as soon as the trains started running when I was in private school."
He blew a whistle. "Every day?"
"Every day."
"That doesn't sound fun at all."
She shook her head, suddenly very aware of her dress' itchy fabric and the unmistakable stench of dirt, grass, and other unknowns. She shrunk in her seat and he noticed.
"Something wrong?"
"Mind if I have a go at your shower? I'm suddenly very aware of my graveyard dirt fragrance."
"Yeah, sure, go ahead," he said easily, then pointed to a door across his king sized bed. "It's through there. There should be clean towels on the shelf. I'll give you something to wear."
"Can I use your phone? I have a friend that lives near…she can bring me clothes. I don't want to do the jacket thing again."
He chuckled, inclining his head in defeat. "It's behind you," he said, watching her twist over the stool to take the phone. "I'm going to the store across the street, do you want anything?"
She didn't know what the store across the street was, but instead of asking, she declined the offer. She didn't need a reason to stay longer than she already had.
Naruto stepped out of the kitchen and back to the bedroom portion of his apartment to scour his dresser for a different shirt.
Hatsue dialed Yue's cell and waited impatiently for her to answer, the ring droning endlessly, eyes wandering to Naruto's naked back. As he slid his arms through a black t-shirt, she tilted her head admirably observing the subtle flexing of muscles of his back.
She waved a hand over her face, blowing cool air in her direction when Yue's voice chattered her near trance seconds before he turned around, tugging the dark fabric over a drool-worthy abdomen.
"I'm hanging up now!" shouted Yue.
"No, don't!" she snapped. "It's me. It's Hatsue."
"Oh hey, did you get home all right? You didn't look that great. It was your birthday all over again."
"No, yeah, I'm fine, but listen," she started, peering at Naruto as he waved at her on his way out the door. "I need you to bring me a change of clothes, something comfortable. I'll give you the address."
"Did you shack up with that guy last night?" asked Yue, unabashedly eager. "He was cute!"
"I didn't. I'll explain this over lunch or something."
"Oh, I can't do lunch today, I have to go visit my grandparents. They're disrupting the peace. My mom doesn't want to go, so I gotta settle this."
"Ah, you're busy?"
She heard a shuffling sound on Yue's end.
"Nope, just looking for some comfortable clothes. I never knew I had so many hot shorts. You gotta convince me to toss some of these, they're horrendous."
"Anything will do, just not a dress."
"Okay, tell me the address now, I've got a pen."
Hatsue pulled out the slip of paper and started giving her the numbers, down to the apartment number.
"Okay, I'll be there in a jiff," Yue said before they hung up.
Hatsue took another gulp of water before sauntering towards the bathroom. She pushed open the door and peered inside. It had the same monochrome look as the kitchen with its maroon countertops and sleek white walls. The room was larger than she suspected, with a small shower stall in the corner, all glass walls and shiny knobs. There was a sharp turn that led into a rectangular bathtub, where there were two sets of shelves stacked with black towels.
She touched a whole row of them. They were soft and smelled clean when she brought one to her nose.
Hatsue entered the shower as soon as the water was the right temperature. She let the water unfurl the curls in her hair and dug her fingers across her scalp, allowing herself to think of a reason as to why she woke in the graveyard for a second time that week. She couldn't think of anything reasonable. None that made sense at least.
She hurried at the sound of the door opening and closing. She didn't think she would have taken so long and now she felt odd about having done so. She washed the shampoo out of her hair and stood under the flood of water one last time. She shut off the shower, took the towel and dried herself before wrapping it around her body.
Hatsue picked up her dirty clothes, pulling them inside out and folding them. She exited the bathroom quietly, looking across the apartment to the kitchen where Naruto was filing through some mail.
She turned away, her eye catching a slip of something sticking out of a nightstand. She walked to it, tugging it free.
It was a photograph, dated three years back. She turned it over and blinked. She almost couldn't believe her eyes. She stared at it long and hard, her mind going blank.
"Are you sure you don't want something to change into?"
Hatsue turned slowly, holding the picture face up in his direction. "I don't remember this," she said quietly. "Why do you have a picture of us?"
Instantly, his expression changed, drained of the previous emotion it had present to something completely different, something strange, something without description.
She looked at the photo once more. They were standing close together under a string of shining lanterns wearing smiles. His arm was wrapped around her shoulders and hers was looped around his waist. They looked oddly comfortable in each other's arms.
She tried remembering a time, three years ago, in which she ever went out with Naruto to a place with shining lanterns. As far as she knew, she had never once been out anywhere with Naruto, so her mind kept drawing a blank. The more she thought about it, the more a dull throbbing started in her head.
"We ran into each other," he said suddenly.
"And we decided to snap a picture? I don't remember this," she said again. "Why don't I remember this?"
Naruto's eyebrows drew together. "Because you were so shitfaced you wouldn't." He reached over, snatching the picture from her hands a tad harshly. She made a face. "Don't act like that's a revelation."
Hatsue stood perfectly still and insulted, watching him tuck the picture back in the drawer where it had been sticking out. This wasn't the first time he insulted her (well, it was the first time he had done it without an audience) and it wouldn't be at all shocking if she got so shitfaced three years ago and bumped into Naruto eager to take a random photo. What she had no explanation for was why he kept it inside his nightstand and as much a right she had to probe a reason out of him, she didn't want to know.
She did the next best thing and proceeded to pretend that it had gone right over her head. She did a lazy shrug, holding her towel in place when it felt loose.
"I probably was shitfaced," she said simply, sauntering across the apartment to find a seat. "Mind if I sit on your couch while I wait?"
Naruto looked confused. "No, go ahead," he said quietly, striding past her.
He reentered the kitchen with a deep frown and a creased forehead and started sifting through his mail again.
A giant wall of propagating awkward had erupted between them in the quiet. It was getting chilly and she was feeling it in all the wrong places.
The last thing she wanted to do was bring up the photograph, but the thing was sticking out of the drawer and his girlfriend looked at her with a killer look. All she knew was that if that woman had lasers for eyes, they would have shot at Hatsue upon sight. That look was a woman staking her territory, an almost demeaning gaze that racked her disheveled self as though she were unworthy of several underlying implications or perhaps, she was merely looking down on her because Naruto would never look at her that way.
But Naruto wasn't so devastatingly attractive that could make women around the world lose their panties. He was handsome in a strangely endearing way. He tried hard, went out of his way, slightly imposing but perfect for a woman that needed love—he would give that and much more, at least, that's what she imagined. He practically worshiped Sakura in high school. There was nothing he wouldn't have done for her. He said stupid things, but really, if some guy was willing to insult an innocent in front of the whole school to defend your honor wouldn't you say he was worth a second glance? Yeah. Sakura didn't think so.
The disturbingly shallow part of her brain pointed out his nicely sculpted physique. She couldn't forget that. How stupid was she? He looked good. Shallow Hatsue knew how to spot attractive men and Naruto was on her radar.
Of course, so was the ever-spreading wall of awkward driving her into antisocialism.
Hatsue twisted around, climbing onto the couch to face him. "I think your girlfriend saw the picture. Easy to misunderstand if she doesn't know the details, eh?"
Naruto lifted his eyes. "I don't have a girlfriend. She wasn't my girlfriend."
"Why'd you let me use your shower like that?" she asked, swallowing her initial shock.
"You needed it."
"At least we agree on the stench," she said in a jokingly sarcastic manner.
"Yeah, graveyard isn't that great a fragrance," he answered in a similar tone. He cracked an apologetic smile that sucked all his half of the awkward back from where it emerged.
She leaned into the couch, folding her arms over the back. "It's times like these that I appreciate how strong male body wash is," she said with a nod. "I always hated the smell because it gave me allergies, but it really got the stench off."
He laughed.
"You know, even if she's not your girlfriend, I'm sorry for pooping your party," she continued. "It's a problem. I went to a comedy club with my friends once and while everyone was laughing on the spot, I was giggling like an idiot before the comedians ever got to finish the joke. I was eventually escorted out. It was sad."
This time, he laughed harder. "Pooping your party?"
"I bet that sounded weird out loud," she said with a grin. "It looks better in writing."
He sank into his seat behind the counter, shaking his head. Once he settled down, he smoothed a letter over the surface. "You should have considered attending the reunion."
"Would you believe me if I said my invitation was late?" she asked curiously.
"No."
"You better believe it, 'cause it happened. I might have considered it, but it came on the following day."
Naruto leaned forward on his elbows. "Don't you think that's strange?"
"When I'm waking up in graveyards? No. It sounds normal, like something I need to take up with the post office."
"Did you?"
"Don't have the time. Too busy sleeping."
There was knocking.
Hatsue pushed herself off the couch before Naruto left his stool. "I'll get it."
She opened the door to a grinning Yue holding a cardboard bag with clothes.
"You filthy liar, you did go home with cute club guy," she accused, thrusting the bag into her hands. "Where is he? In the bathroom? Waiting for you to join him? Whore—oh..."
Naruto waved at Yue with a friendly smile. He was not cute club guy and she looked appalled for having word-vomited all over the place.
This pleased Hatsue. She gestured to him. "This is Uzumaki Naruto. Naruto, this is Tanaka Yue."
He reached over to shake her hand. She reciprocated the gesture slowly.
"Please tell me you brought your car and have enough time to drop me off," Hatsue bombarded her, clutching the bag to her chest.
"Yeah, it's on the way. Go get dressed."
"Well, come in. Wait for me."
Yue stepped in as Hatsue started toward the privacy of the bathroom when she noticed her best friend and Naruto exchange a surreptitious glance that made her heart clench uneasily. She ignored it.
Hatsue dressed quickly in a pair of comfortable yoga pants, tank top, and a gray shirt that hung off her shoulders and cut off mid-drift. She tugged on Yue's slip-on shoes that were a size too big and grated the back of her ankle with every step she took.
When she reemerged Naruto and Yue fell silent over a conversation Hatsue never knew was going on. She sauntered to the couch to stuff her dirty clothes in the bag and met with Yue, ready to leave.
Naruto walked them to the door. Hatsue went through the motions, thanking him for the shower and breakfast.
"It was nice meeting you," Yue said pleasantly, then looked at her. "I never would have imagined I'd get to meet the perpetrator of your junior orientation disaster."
"I said I was sorry," he said quickly. "That really needs to die off already."
"I couldn't agree more," Hatsue grumbled.
"It won't. That yearbook picture was priceless." Yue laughed all the way past the threshold. "You tell that sort of thing to your grandchildren and it lives forever."
"We're leaving now!" Hatsue took her friend by the arm, facing Naruto one last time. "Thank you for everything."
"No problem."
Hatsue opened her mouth once they were waiting for the elevator. "What was the look you gave each other?" she asked, feeling stupid for asking.
Yue grinned. "He's a lot better looking than you described."
"Do you plan to hit on him?"
"Is that okay?" She arched an eyebrow as if she required her permission to do anything.
The metal doors swung open after a soft ding. She stepped in shortly after Yue, hitting the lobby button, wondering if she was okay with her hitting on Naruto. Hatsue never considered that would ever be a problem, so did it matter?
It did.
"No," she said abruptly, over the soft elevator music. "It's not okay."
Yue lifted her hands in a sign of peace. "Chill, Hatsue, take dibs," she answered. "You saw him first. That's the rule."
( Part III )
The memory drifted into her mind in the dead of night. Hatsue spent hours struggling to sleep, the still image of herself and Naruto in such proximity reemerging from the darkness behind closed eyes. He offered a shallow explanation, going as far as blaming alcohol to justify her lack of recognition.
Confusion had been the first emotion she experienced. The picture evidenced a blatant meeting between the two of them, one that had stirred strange feelings into a cluster. And then, he had practically ripped it from her hands as if she had offended him in some way.
It was all too strange, but bits and pieces were rushing back into her head with every passing minute until the events begun clearing.
She had been surrounded by family. It was near Christmas time and her grandmother decided to host a party in competition with her neighbors across the street. She had decided that her entire family combined had many more friends than her rivals, but she didn't count on Hatsue only bringing Yue and her best friend's boyfriend at the time. She had spent the entire evening trying to explain that she didn't make any friends in high school and that none of her friends from university were crazy enough to fly to Japan for one party. Airfare was expensive, but her grandmother was not pleased by what she considered an excuse. She even went as far as saying she had enough retirement money to fly them all over if Hatsue had had the sense to ask.
In the end the turnout had not been as terrible as her grandmother made it seem, she had sisters that didn't know the meaning of the word snarky and had a heap of friends to show for it. This, of course, failed to stop her grandmother from pointing out how she should be more sociable because it could help her find a husband, which at twenty-five meant she was in desperate need of one.
By the end of the night, she had been in a mood.
Then, as she idled in her bedroom after Yue and her boyfriend left to argue at home undoing the pins holding her hair in place, she remembered receiving a call from Naruto. It was a short exchange, but her mood disappeared and he was happy when he invited her to some mysterious place she felt she knew better than she recalled.
Hatsue couldn't think of it then, there were pieces missing from the puzzle she assembled.
But she had gone to that mysterious place with the string of lanterns, rushing all the way feeling as though her heart was about to burst. When she saw him, relief seeped through every limb in her body, relaxing her tense muscles before her memory gave out on the first of several blurred events she struggled to recall.
She did remember asking a stranger to snap a picture under the lanterns. It made no sense why he had the picture instead of her. It was her camera.
Hatsue shook the thoughts from her head and reached for the phone on her nightstand. She dialed the number Naruto had given her, knowing he wouldn't answer. She wanted to leave a message at least, tell him she remembered the picture (well, part of it) and that she shouldn't have forgotten about it. She also felt a need to apologize, though she didn't do anything wrong, except snoop.
"Hello?" he answered groggily. "Who is it?"
"Kikushita." She jolted onto a seat, wide eyed. He wasn't supposed to answer. "Sorry about calling you late."
"No, no, it's fine," he said quickly. "Did something happen? Are you okay?"
Why does he sound worried? "On that day, with the picture, did we do more things together?" she asked, pausing briefly. "Why don't I remember any of them?"
Deep down she knew the answer. Her heart clenched like a fist.
Naruto chuckled. "Maybe they weren't worth remembering," he said jokingly, but his tone was sad.
She lowered her gaze to the sheets clutched in her hand. The sound of his voice made her heart sink. "You should tell me about them."
"Maybe."
The line stayed silent, but he wasn't sleeping.
She listened to it for what felt like a long time until her heart returned to a rhythmic beat.
"Goodnight," he called softly, as if on cue.
"Goodnight."
Hatsue sunk into her mattress after hanging up and closed her eyes. Sleep found her willing and took her instantly.
"I drove all the way to my grandparents' farm because they wanted to set me up with my ex-boyfriend," complained Yue, shoving a cracker into her mouth. "He's the new doctor in town and apparently has the hots for me."
"I wish grandparents found better use of their time than finding all their direct descendants dates," Hatsue remarked, drinking a deep gulp of soda. "When gran calls, she just wants to talk about some handsome new man she thought would be perfect for me. She's terrified that I'll get to thirty unwed, god forbid."
"Tell me about it, I'm getting tired of it. They're really starting to get creative and one day they're going to tell me one of them is having a heart attack and I won't believe them and someone will die and I'll be guilty. I just want them to stop it with the setups."
"It won't be funny until someone dies."
Yue slapped her arm. "Don't say that! That's not funny at all! I love them."
"Okay, okay, knock on wood," Hatsue said, tapping her fingers to the wooden surface of their table. "That was in poor taste. Sorry. It's just these old folk are driving me crazy."
"Well you are almost thirty."
"Cut me some slack, I just turned twenty-eight. I still feel twenty-seven. It doesn't matter."
"Truthfully, I'd like to be married before thirty."
"You say that because you're only twenty-three, that gives you seven years to find the man of your dreams," Hatsue commented. "You have an unfair advantage in our one-sided quest for marriage before thirty."
"What's so terrible about setting an ideal age for marriage?"
Hatsue sighed. It was a ridiculous thing, especially because they were single without prospective boyfriends coming their way. "Let's say you do meet the man of your dreams sometime between today and the next seven years. You go on several dates, spend months together—do you think that's enough time to know this man of your dreams is the one you want to spend the rest of your life with?"
"Sometimes a couple months is all it takes," Yue said dreamily. "Wouldn't it be okay to just know? To know deep down?"
"You're spending forever with this person. Until you die. That man is going to be the last man in your bed. You will see no other."
"He'll have to be amazing," she admitted, nodding.
"Passion dies."
"There's always divorce~"
"But you're in love with him."
Yue frowned, completely torn.
"There are ways to keep passion going on strong—being compatible, being spontaneous, communicating, making an effort, be romantic, make time for each other, fall in love again," Hatsue went on. "What if you could have known that man of your dreams wouldn't want to go the extra mile for you if you had waited a couple years more even though it meant you'd be over thirty?"
"I don't think I'll look this good at thirty," Yue argued, gesturing down her body.
Hatsue shrugged. "It's not worth taking the plunge if it isn't permanent."
Yue took a bite of her sandwich. "I didn't think you were such a romantic."
"That's not being romantic, it's being smart."
Her friend quieted for nearly four minutes. "Are you interested in Uzumaki Naruto?"
Hatsue stole fries off her friend's plate and stuffed them all in her mouth, earning a suspicious look. "My sister texted me this morning, she's coming next week," she said, changing the subject. "I have a club night, can you take over?"
"Yeah, my Tuesday is free." Yue nodded. "Are you going out with your sister?"
"All of them. Aya has a day off school on Tuesday and Saiko gets off work in the afternoon. It's the only time we can get together long enough to do something."
"Is Tomo going straight to your aunt's?"
"She said she wanted to stay with me."
"A bit cramped in a one-bedroom apartment, no?"
"I've got a sofa bed. She's staying in my room."
The restaurant door opened and closed, the room filled with a new set of voices that strum a cord of familiarity. Hatsue unconsciously tuned out of her conversation with Yue, facing the entrance from their booth to see both Haruno Sakura and Yamanaka Ino chattering away.
Ino noticed her first and pointed her out to Sakura. Both looked in her direction, turning away immediately when she acknowledged them. They said nothing, though she expected that. The horrified look on Sakura's face and Ino's shock made her uncomfortable enough to look over her shoulder. There was nothing but a solid wall behind her. She glanced at Yue, who was staring dreamily at the waiter stepping out of the kitchen with a tray of food.
She leaned over to Yue. "I don't think he likes you.'
Yue startled out of her trance, dropping the last of her sandwich on the table. "Hatsue!"
She laughed, eating the rest of her food and excusing herself to the bathroom while Yue asked for the check.
The restroom was on the other side of the restaurant. Ino and Sakura were seated in the booth next to the entrance to the passage leading into the bathrooms.
As soon as she crossed the threshold, she heard Sakura say something that sounded strange. "Do you think Naruto knows they let her out?"
"I don't see how he wouldn't," Ino replied. "He's been acting really weird since we had our school reunion."
"Yeah, but I figured he just didn't want to be there."
Hatsue flattened her back against the wall. People should not talk so loud in a public place and she should have probably not been eavesdropping, but then she remembered she didn't care as much as she should.
"I talked to Mayu last night. She said a woman dropped by his apartment and that he asked her to leave."
Maybe it was another woman, she thought to herself.
"The woman?" Sakura asked, surprised.
"No. Mayu. He asked Mayu to leave and invited the woman in," Ino corrected.
Sakura said nothing for a while and then sighed deeply. "Why would they let her leave?"
"Maybe things will be different this time," Ino replied, hopeful. "Maybe we're not in danger anymore."
Yue suddenly appeared. "Hatsue!"
All conversation in Ino and Sakura's table ceased completely. The duo was suddenly aware of what they had said and what Hatsue might have heard.
Hatsue strode past her friend, unable to think past the conversation she eavesdropped.
"Kikushita, wait," Ino called out to her.
She took the nearest exit, listening to Yue shouting her name fade into the distance. She didn't want to look back because it defeated the purpose of storming out of a place if she felt hesitant, but the emotion was there and something told her that she needed to look back. So she did just as she crossed the street.
Yue berated Sakura and Ino, arms failing everywhere, in a way that made it seem as though the three were all previously acquainted without her ever noticing. It left a sour taste in her mouth because it was all too familiar a scene, as if she was living it for a second time that month.
Then it happened.
The impact.
It hit her hard, hurled her body in an arch across the air before it came crashing down and she was conscious of it all.
The car screeched to a halt. The driver stumbled out, shouting at the top of his lungs that he never saw her in the middle of the street.
Yue, Sakura, and Ino came rushing forward calling out to her, shouting orders amongst themselves.
All the while Hatsue knew her limbs lay twisted over the asphalt, though there was no pain. The impact only stung.
The voices overlapped.
"Call an ambulance!"
"I'm already calling!"
"Stop, stop! Don't call an ambulance, call them! They can fix her!"
"Someone make sure if she's still breathing!"
"Here, let me do it!"
"The ambulance is coming!"
"Idiot! You call them! She can't die again!"
"I'm calling Naruto!"
She wished she understood at least half of that. If she could distinguish the panicked voices, that would have been fine as well, but her mind steadily turned hazy since the impact. She could have appreciated that more than the sprawling blue sky, ever clear, ever endless.
Questions barreled into her head and the dull throbbing she felt yesterday came back stronger until the pain drove her to the precipice of unconsciousness where for the first time in days something made sense.
"He's coming, Hatsue," someone whispered. "He's coming for you."
It might have been Yue. It might have been a voice in her head. It could have been anyone.
Hatsue didn't care. He was coming. Whoever he was, it made her feel safe.
.
.
.
( ...to be continued... )