Kyon x Haruhi. Short.
Sign On the Wall
I spoke about wings, you just flew
I wondered, I guessed, and I tried; you just knew
I sighed but you swooned
I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon
The Waterboys
It was the kind of bar that spewed out disconsolate eighties music, the music that everyone kind of remembered but no one actually admitted to knowing. They served cocktails that more than made up for the over-shotting of alcohol with the liberal use of syrup, and made up for the bland décor with numerous street signs and posters and other assorted, unrelated bric-a-brac on the walls. Coffee was served in mismatching cups and saucers, huge ones or tiny, delicates ones for espresso, the china so thin that you could see the darkness of the liquid through it.
Beautiful boys with emaciated cheekbones lounged against wicker chairs, pursing their lips as they drank, and tiny girls with violent piercings propped themselves up against the bar. There was an old man, sipping brandy slowly, his shock of white hair pulled back from his face, and a plump woman in an alcove, writing at a pad of paper. There were dark corners for copulating, and the light came from seventies-style lamp shades of coloured glass, the art-deco kind, that shone lines of red and green and yellow across the floor.
Kyon wondered, not for the first time in his life, why Haruhi had chosen this place to meet him.
He felt entirely out of place amongst this clientele of the unusual, in his uniform and unadorned eyebrows, and as he ordered a coffee, he realised that this was exactly the kind of place that Haruhi would want to go to- filled with people drinking at half past four on a Tuesday, as if they had nothing better to do with their time.
He watched a man light a cigarette and take a drag on it, his eyes closed and inhaling so deeply it looked like he was smoking as if his life depended on it.
He was still watching the man- who was on his third cigarette now- when Haruhi sat down opposite him, grinning, and wearing that expression that said 'I have had a brilliant idea, and I don't care if you disagree'. She was twenty minutes late, and she did not seem to care.
"Isn't this place cool?"
He raised an eyebrow at her, and took a drink from his large pale blue cup, before putting it back down on a chipped yellow saucer painted with tiny, delicate red butterflies.
"It is the kind of place that you would like."
She ignored the snub, or else simply did not notice it, and continued staring around her like she had stumbled into Aladdin's cave. She pointed to a STOP sign on the wall, suspended over a moth-bitten moose-head.
"I was here last week, and the guy told me that someone left it here, so they stuck it up. I asked them if they always do that, and he said that if no one comes back to claim it in a week, then it goes up."
She gestured to various things pinned to the ceiling that Kyon had not even noticed, like a beaded leather bag, an enamelled hand mirror, and, bizarrely, a stuffed owl. On the shelf above the bar was a display of lipsticks, all different sizes and colours, some open and showing the cracked and varied colours that people had abandoned, and someone had taken all of the discarded disposable lighters, in various colours of neon transparent plastic, and had stuck them together into a pyramid.
Grudgingly, he had to admit, that it was an unusual place.
"So?"
She reached in her bag, and pulled out a piece of wood, about the length of a normal ruler but the width of Kyon's wrist. From her pocket she pulled out a marker pen, and proffered them to her companion like that answered his question.
"What, Haruhi?"
She rolled her eyes.
"Don't you think it would be amazing, to be part of the history of this place? It would be your own kind of legacy, wouldn't it? For people to look and think, 'I wonder who that used to belong to'. People would look, and wonder who you were."
Her eyes were bright, and Kyon got the point.
"It'll be nice for a while, but when this place folds up, or they decide to redecorate or something, then it'll just end up in the skip."
She snorted contemptuously at him.
"You don't have a clue, do you?"
He took another sip from his coffee, and watched her pull the lid of the pen with an audible click. He supposed that she was going to make the SOS famous in the bar, maybe try and draw their logo or advertise for aliens, espers and time-travellers, but, when he looked over, that was not so.
He found himself strangely touched.
HARUHI + KYON.
And, underneath:
LOOK FOR THE UNUSUAL.
He smiled. She'd even drawn little hearts in the corners.
She stuck her tongue out at him.
"Do you think it will do?"
"You pay so much attention to detail, don't you?"
She grinned again.
"C'mon. Lets go."
And, ignoring the fact that he had not finished his coffee, he followed her out, leaving the piece of wood conspicuously by their table, where it would be found at closing time by the barman, and much remarked about the next day.
As they walked outside, she slipped her hand into his, and leant against his shoulder, breathing in the cool night air and feeling pleased with herself for her achievements.
"Hey, Kyon?"
"Yeah?"
"Can we come back, next week some time, and see if it is there?"
He found that he was sighing, quietly, to himself, and he pressed back against her shoulder, just slightly.
"Yes, we can."
He felt her thumb stroke his hand, and smiled to himself.
"Do you think it will be up there?"
She smiled that secret smile of hers through the darkness.
"I think we'll remember, even if it isn't."