Utena slipped out of bed while Anthy was still asleep. Teeth chattering and fingers numb, she tiptoed over to the dresser and began putting on her clothes, all the while careful not to disturb Chu Chu, who slumbered in the sock drawer. With a final tug, she pulled her sneakers over her red thermal socks and exited the apartment.
The mornings in the outside world tended to be grey and the sun was often lethargic in its ascent up past the mountains. Utena stretched carefully, loosening her stiff back, and then took off. The cold made her lungs hurt and her old scars along her ribs ached. Yet her heart beat steadily and, as she warmed up, her long legs carried her far, first to the banks of the Nagara River and then along it. Here, the lapping of the water muffled the beginning grumbles of the morning traffic. As if shifting her own gears into overdrive, Utena began to steadily outrace the sun and the faded winter green of the mountains streaked past her.
She ran until she lost track of time. Only when her watch beeped, letting her know Anthy would be preparing for the day's work, did Utena look around to gather her surroundings. Before her, the Dodo Mountain rose up, closer than she had anticipated, and a decidedly unprincely word slipped from her lips. She let herself slow down, slide into a turn, and then gunned it back up the path.
When her apartment building loomed in sight, some neighborhood strays, excited by her flashing sneakers, jumped to their feet. They began to chase her down the path, barking and yelping, tongues lolling out in the wind. Utena, alarmed, tried to outrun them, but they kept pace. One large one, burly and tawny, began to bark at her feet, almost as if it was going to attack her laces.
Utena floored it, finally outstripping the playful dogs, and not stopping until she had bounded up all the nine flights of stairs to the door of their apartment. Before she could fumble for the keys, the door swung open and Anthy, dressed for work, gave a little start at Utena.
"I'm-" Utena gasped, suddenly very aware of how her sweaty pink hair plastered to her forehead and neck while Anthy had on that neat pink sweater dress. "-sorry... that I'm late. ...The dogs-"
Anthy smiled, amused. "I left toast and tea in a thermos for you. I'll get the car from the garage and, if you hurry, I'll meet you at the front gate."
"...thanks." Utena wheezed, trying to not bend over and brace herself on her knees. Anthy still wore that intensely amused smile when she leaned in close and kissed the corner of Utena's open mouth. She then slid past Utena, who had stupidly frozen in front of the door, and began to descend the steps, with her purple curls bouncing as she went.
Gidai was not far from their apartment by bus, but Utena enjoyed the luxury of Anthy's tiny pink beetle. Even if its heater kept its inside like a greenhouse during all seasons, Anthy would hold Utena's too-warm hand when they sat in traffic.
At the university gates, Utena waved bye as Anthy sped away to work. She had little time, but she took the detour to the university gym for a rinse and a change of clothes before daring to head to class.
The university, being for the entire city, was enormous. She felt her sore calves protest a little as she had to dash to get to her lecture on time. Entering the two hundred person lecture hall with her hands clenched around her gym bag and a battered mint green thermos, she had felt more than a little harried, until a familiar voice soothed her jangled nerves.
"Utena! Over here, I saved you a seat." Good old Wakaba patted one of the hard wooden chairs welded to the ground. Like many of the university chairs, its wood had been decorated with initials or ill-fated romances by a number of enterprising students wielding penknives. Utena noticed with a wry smile someone had emblazoned this back with a large mock "PARKING" sign. On her desk, a fat heart declared Touga and a scratched out name would be together forever.
Utena sat down and listened placidly to Wakaba bemoan how late she had stayed up to finish the problem set. When she looked up to check the blackboard for the day's agenda however, she interrupted her friend's chatter.
"Hey, did our professor always have that construction zone with traffic cones in front of her desk?"
"What are you talking about? It's just today's demonstration. I think it has something to do with pendulums? Anyway, can you check me on this problem? I don't know why we don't use the angular velocity here. Miki said something about it the other day, but-"
"Yeah..." Utena said absentmindedly as she slid over her own work. The professor had taken out a stepladder and was beginning to ascend the rubble with a wrecking ball in hand.
Wakaba and Utena walked out of lecture together to the commons for lunch. All along the hallway were student organizations advertising their clubs, contests, and collectives to save the world with bright posters. The club basketball team perked up when Utena walked by and they began shouting after her.
"Tenjou, come on, don't be a stranger. Just come to tryouts this semester, please?"
"Come play with us! We want to crush Takayama Car Tech this season but they're all mechanics."
"Have you seen how they change tires? We need a tensai, a genius, Tenjou!"
"Sorry, guys, I can't stay late for your practices anyway." Utena replied, waving them away. They all groaned and the chorus of 'it's not that much of a time commitment' began again when Wakaba interrupted.
"Utena's gotta go home and be all lovey-dovey, leaving poor Wakaba to waste away and study all by her lonesome. If she's abandoning me, you all haven't got a chance-" Wakaba sighed dramatically and Utena turned as pink as her hair. A couple of girls who were watching the commotion from the shadows twittered with amusement.
"Extra, extra! Tenjou's got a man? Whoa, I can't believe it."
"I might be a foreign alien, but I'll keep you company, Wakaba-chan!"
"Mind your own business." Utena seethed and pushed her grinning friend down the hallway.
They ate lunch in relative silence, with Wakaba occasionally putting extra sausages into Utena's lunchbox. Anthy had added some seaweed on top of the scrambled egg and rice Utena had cobbled together from last night's dinner, but after this morning's workout, Utena gratefully took the extra meat. When she offered Wakaba some of her custard cup, Wakaba refused. That made Utena paused.
"Are you... mad at me?" she asked as she reclined in her chair, trying to sound more casual than she felt.
"Mad with my Utena? Are you mad?" Wakaba joked before drinking the last of her barley tea loudly through the straw. She put the empty tea box on the table and it fell over.
"Let's go to office hours together tomorrow. We can get real dinner afterwards. It'll be fun, even if it is work." Utena cajoled.
Wakaba hemmed and hawed. "Only if we go out to somewhere for real. I'm not eating snow cones for dinner, Utena. Nor should you."
"Yeah, we'll go to that udon place. And Anthy can drive you home so you don't have to walk in the dark." She said, the idea gaining momentum in her head. Utena batted her eyelids and at last, Wakaba laughed, not girlish and giggling, but warm and with the faintest tinge of exasperation. For a moment, Utena thought she could see a tear in the corner of Wakaba's eye but before she could do anything, Wakaba blinked it away of her own accord.
"Okay, only because of you, my dear Utena. But I'll be squished in that tiny car of hers! And she drives super-fast."
Utena felt bashful on Anthy's behalf. "She wanted a sports car but we couldn't afford it."
Utena said bye to Wakaba at the gates, promising not to forget their office hours date, and settled to wait for Anthy. Moments later, she received a text from Anthy saying she had to stay late for some last minute orders and she could either wait for Anthy for half an hour or take the bus home.
Soon enough, the waiting got to her. She was someone who did things, not waited for things. After being crammed in a tiny desk all day, she felt stiff and cranky. Utena began to do lunges around the perimeter until she felt someone's eyes on her. When she turned, however, there was no one there except more students leaving for the day. Still, self-conscious, she huffed and decided to brave the buses before everyone left.
Yet as soon as Utena stepped out the university gates and felt the press of the crowd, smelled the air thick with car exhaust, and heard the frantic honking of downtown traffic, she slipped back onto the campus. She hated how faint she felt all of a sudden, as if all the strength that carried her flying down the riverside path had evaporated from her legs.
Too many people still made her dizzy these days. She would sometimes get carried along by the crowd, not sure where she was until she could extricate herself out into an alleyway and catch her breath. Their voices sounded loud and grating in her ears, like knives sharpening on a whetstone. Sometimes they would ring angry with unending demands, even though Utena never knew what they wanted. Each step through the crowd yielded a different cry of disappointment until they all choked Utena to tears on frustration and shame.
Yet somehow when she was with Anthy, it was not so bad. Anthy, who hated crowds as well, somehow managed to avoid crowded streets even on the busiest of holidays. Side streets that Utena's phone never displayed would appear and Anthy would tug her down them, for them only to arrive where they needed to be. Once, Utena had wanted to buy them a cake for New Year's. To her surprise, Anthy suggested walking amid the light snow. When they turned onto the main street, Utena had been certain it would be squeezed full of shoppers. They had instead been greeted by a wide street filled with white snow and Utena had exclaimed her disbelief loud enough to startle the last couple stragglers.
Anthy had only smiled and said, "The city's always growing. Sometimes unexpected things fill in the cracks."
The early winter sunset started to turn the sky dark, even as the city lit up with car headlights and bright office windows. Utena felt small and confused in the bustle of Gifu, as if one of the cracks Anthy had spoken about had opened around her feet and she had fallen in. It must come from the leftover anxiety she had felt from today's classes, Utena reasoned.
Still more minutes passed and Utena had done a lap around the gates in lunges. Pausing to catch her breath, she stood still and stared out to the twinkling buildings in the city. If she blurred her eyes, it kind of looked like glittering castles of concrete and LEDs. The sight so unnerved her that she began pacing again, checking her watch, checking her phone, checking the corners of the gates. When she looked up to the campus, its lower buildings sprawled out like a dense forest of academia and the only people she saw in the windows were grad students and cleaning crew.
'Where are you?' She texted, paused, and then erased. Wakaba's words came floating into her mind now, but even the latent embarrassment could not dissuade the sudden, overwhelming desire to leave this cold campus and go home.
Utena was someone who did things, even if they were meaningless, repetitive things. So she left the gates and crossed the street to where the storefronts had opened their doors and lit up the street with their lights. Hopefully Anthy would be able to spot her easier, a thin shadow of a girl pacing with a large gym bag.
"Sweetie, want some fuel in that empty tank of yours?" Utena turned, startled, to the woman that appeared at the door of the cafe. She had smile lines and close-cropped brown hair. "You look like you're running on empty."
"Thanks, but I don't have any money on me." Utena replied sheepishly.
"Come on, a cup of tea at least? I used to be a yanki myself, and let me tell you, most nights I didn't have a cent on me either. You're a polite sort, so let me help you out. Nice dye job by the way." She went inside as Utena goggled at her. Sure, she still wore her running sneakers and a strange mishmash of sweats and jacket, and sure, she might have given up being a prince many years ago but-!
The cafe owner returned with a Styrofoam cup filled with hot tea which Utena thanked her for and took gratefully. Before she could correct the woman's assumption, however, Anthy's tiny pink beetle roared out from the traffic to the curbside. A flood of relief swept through Utena. Of course Anthy had been okay. Utena had not even realized she was worrying until she no longer had anything to worry about.
"Utena! There you are. I'm sorry I made you wait." Anthy poked her head out the small window and waved her in. Chu Chu sat on her shoulder, looking a little sick from Anthy's driving. The cafe owner stared bewildered at the pair of them, from the deep purple of Anthy's hair, to the stickers on the rear windows courtesy of Chu Chu, to the firm grip Anthy had on her brass-accented wheel.
"She wanted a sports car." Utena explained, almost apologetically, before throwing her bag in and climbing in. "Thank you for the tea, Miss." Utena smiled and waved. Then, with a squeal of tires and the thrum of the accelerator, Anthy swerved them back into the lanes.
"The youth in this country, these days." The cafe owner said while pushing her bangs back, her heavy skull and roses ring catching the light behind her.
Gifu rushed by in blurs of fluorescent lights and Anthy drove as if she were the target of an apocalyptic car chase. They had watched Mad Max recently and they had both left the darkened theater with their pupils blown and their jaws slack. Utena secretly thought her girlfriend had perhaps gotten a little too excited about transplanting the Australian Fury Road to Japanese city highways. Still, as Anthy swung them off the main highway towards home, Utena felt snug within their too-warm beetle.
She mentioned snippets of her day when they occurred to her, including her plans with Wakaba tomorrow. "Are you free? Can you come get noodles with us?"
"Does she want me there?" Anthy asked without looking at Utena as the red light turned green and they began to move again.
"Of course she will want you there. It's Wakaba!" Utena said, startled. "But I get it if you don't want to-"
"Then I accept. Better than just being your chauffer for the evening. After all, Utena was the one who told me to make more friends." Anthy said. Utena almost started a fight with herself, because past Utena had said some mind-bogglingly stupid things once upon a time, when she saw Anthy's teasing smile in the rearview mirror.
"Wakaba is totally your friend. Besides, I would drive myself if I could. Or take the bus. I don't like bothering you all the time for rides." Utena settled defiantly.
"I don't mind. I like driving with you, Utena. It's nice to go places together, don't you think?" Anthy said before hitting the gas to speed through a yellow light.
"Yeah." Utena agreed softly, and worried for a second she could not be heard over the hum of the engine. But then Anthy offered her right hand. Utena first checked to make sure at least one brown hand was still on the wheel before taking Anthy's hand in hers. All the way home, Utena held Anthy's hand and watched her face focused on the road in front of them.
"How was work today? Bet you knocked them all silly in that dress." Utena asked as she pulled off her running shoes. The rubber soles underneath seemed to have worn away and the treads looked kind of like tire tracks. She should have known better than to keep them on through the day. Must have been all that pacing.
"Today was hectic. People kept calling even after we closed. But the new earth we received this morning feels strong and good for transplanting. You could feel it on my palms, yes?" Anthy emerged from the kitchen in bunny slippers and with two boxes of takeout.
"Your hands always feel soft." Utena blurted out as she looked up and met Anthy's startled green eyes. In the outside world, a day's worth of work meant smudges of exhaustion at the corner of her eyes. Yet, in the outside world, each of Anthy's smiles reached those tired eyes.
"It's Nōbi soil, after all. I was thinking of visiting in the spring, if you would like to come along." Anthy said weakly as she set the takeout down. Utena had always been bad at Japanese geography and had no idea where that was, but she nodded vigorously. Her running shoes dropped to the ground as she stood up and so did Anthy's perfect, pink dress.
"Some strange things happened today. Dogs tried to bite my shoes when I went for a run. My running shoes look like a car ran over them. Or ran in them." Utena said pensively as they sat on the tatami, half naked with paper plates of sushi between them. Her hair, messed up by those soft hands of Anthy, stuck out at weird angles and kept flopping into her eyes. She lifted her plastic bottle of tea.
"Well, you know, you were a car for a while."
Utena snorted into her green tea and it spilled all over her sports bra. When she looked up, Anthy was chewing on her sushi with a pensive expression. A hundred words bubbled up in Utena's throat, most of them confused nonsense, before she managed a croaky, "Do you want me to be a sports car again to replace the beetle?"
"Of course not!" Anthy exclaimed, looking shocked at the notion.
"I thought you wanted a sports car. You were really good at driving me." Utena said, this time cracking a rusty smile. Had Anthy been anyone else, she might have called Utena a fool and checked her head for brain damage. Instead, her face grew grave and Utena had the terrible feeling she had upset her. Anthy carefully collected the plates of sushi and put them on the coffee table, out of the way. "Anthy…?"
Anthy's hands reached out to hold her cheeks. She looked up at Anthy, at Anthy's purple hair draping down onto Utena, at Anthy's deep, dark eyes, at Anthy whose smiles reached her eyes, even the ones as tired and sad as this one. "Utena, what I want…"
"Yeah?" Utena replied, as eloquent as she could be with Anthy straddling her. Her arms encircled Anthy's waist and she wanted to bury her face into the warmth of Anthy's chest. Anthy's face screwed up as if she was pretending to think very hard. Then she pressed Utena up against the wall.
Chu Chu squeaked and scampered to hide the sock drawer.
"You are just as I want you. My Utena." Anthy said, sounding fierce even with her mouth hovering at the swell of Utena's breasts. She pressed kisses there that made Utena's heart thud in her ears. Anthy's hands, softer than the earth, slid across Utena's sides.
"Even as a broke university student who can't drive?" Utena asked with a wry smile and pulled Anthy closer, reveling in her warmth, the strength in her back and the curve of her hips.
"No matter. We can run or drive or crawl." Anthy said. Then she was at the hollow of Utena's throat, placing kisses. Utena squirmed and made little sighing noises, especially as Anthy's hands went up higher and higher. Her fingers slid under the band of the sports bra and Utena meant to let out a moan, but what came out instead was a deep, unmistakable-
Vrooooooooom.
Anthy's head snapped up, almost cracking her head on Utena's chin. Her hands were still under Utena's bra, caught in the elastic. Utena stared back her, both of their eyes large with shock. Then Utena could not hold back her impish grin. She cleared her throat and made a couple more low engine rumbles.
Vrooom. Vrooooooom.
Anthy broke out into peals of laughter, burrowing her head into Utena's chest as she shook with merriment. Every time she seemed about to catch her breath, Utena would pause from her own laughter to imitate the sound of a car again and it would send them both into giggles. They slid down the wall to the floor in a tangled heap, breathing hard from laughter.
"Let's see how you manage with a little more acceleration." Anthy managed to whisper as she fumbled amidst their clothes. The feeling of her fingers on Utena's thighs made Utena murmur contentedly.
This time, and the next, and all through the night, Utena did not sound much like a car at all.
Author Notes:
Gifu is a city in the Gifu Prefecture in central Japan and has both a Nagakura River and a Dodo Mountain. Nōbi is the name of a particularly fertile plain region in the Prefecture. They are very famous for their cormorant fishing tradition. The entire reason why Anthy and Utena live here is because I made a friend from Gifu and he described it as both the slow countryside and yet still a modern city.
The experiment that Utena and Wakaba's professor was going to do was the one where, to demonstrate the conservation of mechanical energy, one holds a pendulum up to their face and then releases it. The pendulum will never smash into the face of the professor as it will only ever reach the height at which it was initially held, an inch from the professor's nose. This is because of the conversion between potential energy into kinetic energy, and as long as no additional energy is added into the system from external forces doing work, the existing kinetic energy will only ever be able to propel the pendulum to the height (to the potential energy) it initially had. This is most impressive when done with something like a wrecking ball.
Yanki are a Japanese subculture youth group that rebels strongly against societal convention. They are best known for their love of cars and motorcycles, dyed hair, fancy jackets, and a peculiar, rather rude way of talking. Some say they are like pre-yakuza, but far less serious in their activities. Yanki groups are usually teenagers to young adults.
My desire to call this Yuri Road was nearly insurmountable.