2 (Akira's POV)
She was there at the garden table, and I watched her. Like normal, I could feel that rush in my veins, the one I was so used warming me. A vision she was, cloaked in the sunlit day, so studiously working on a new project, which she wouldn't tell me anything about for some reason.
I had no idea why.
"Hayama-Kun, can you come here a sec?"
I sat my book down, not letting another moment slip by that I could be in her presence. I stood behind her, put my chin on her head, like I always did, like I always had since I've been taller than her. Now I had five inches on her, seventeen, my hair longer. Leaner.
People often mistook me for the older one.
"Come'on! Quit that!" A revolt.
I chuckled. She always hated it. But somehow, I always felt that really, she probably didn't. I knew, because of that silly smirk she'd give.
Withdrawing to sit aside her instead, she turned a book my direction, on it sat a notepad with scribbled lines. Her penmanship was always so awful, tale-tale of a person whose mind thought faster than they could write.
"I need your advice." She put a knuckle to her lip, her ponytail swishing back. Her voice sounded concerned. "I really do."
"What is it?" My eyebrows furrowed, something was off. Instantly I reached out and grabbed for the material. Upon reading, my concern started to deepen. It brought about this intense anxiety. "Jun. Are you sure about this?"
"Well, eh. No, not really." She fummed.
This proposal, it was just too much. "This is interesting, but it's a mess." I had to be blunt with her. I wouldn't be a good partner if I wasn't. I was more the caretaker, she was more the brains.
Without each other, the entire operation would crumble. We depended on one another. I watered the plants, because she'd always forget. I was in the greenhouse more often, and she would be the one laid out all over the floor, the coffee table, the couch, nose deep into stuff, bookworm. No tool went unused.
We even had a public argument about it last year.
She'd slapped me for something I can't remember and told me I was being rude, and it had knocked me so hard, and I was so surprised that I plummeted to the ground. She then repeated to me, saying she was my mother, when I knew she didn't feel that way about me, and went on to say I needed discipline.
I openly mouthed off, flat out disagreeing with her, and I went on to say that I kept her head on straight, and she went on to contradict herself.
And that's how I knew that she knew I was right.
Since then, we've accepted things this way. Or at least she finally has.
She still hated it when I called her Jun though. But, that's her name. Just like how mine is Akira.
"It'll make me a mess for awhile." She took a pun towards my previous sentence. I know she was just trying to lighten the mood.
"If you do it." I concluded. 'Please don't do it Jun. Please.' My mind begged. I didn't want to see her like that. Not that it would tarnish my image of her at all, but instead that it would drive me mad.
If I had any intent of keeping how I felt to myself... her cheeks rosy, eyes falling, heavy breathing.
"I'LL DO IT!" She suddenly slammed up, short but ferocious as a bulldog.
Shocked, I had no idea what even just happened! My green eyes shined at her ambition, but clouded with internal panic. Was I really going to see her in a way I never had?
"I've already bought six, uh no, seven! And, I have been seeping spices in them for weeks!" She nearly screamed turning pages, coming to stand aside. Somehow now excited. Like she was just holding out to see if I was in some disagreeable mood or something.
Our heads were at the same height at the table. It made me melt. Her face, so close. If only.
"And I did a cinnamon one, and a clove one." She continued to babble on.
"So. You've already made your mind up then." Typical Jun. I knew it. You couldn't hide it from me. As soon as she scooted those notes over, I knew what she had up her sleeve, and once Jun's mind was made up, she'd hop right over that edge. I assumed automatically that she had already started prep work, and was just hiding them. "So. Where are they?" It came out kind of bland, knowing.
She may not like getting put on the spot by people, but I put her on the spot, and for good reason, to keep her head nailed down. I don't think she takes it as me belittling her, it's not meant to be like that.
(Jun knew that meant, Hayama-Kun sometimes, knew her so well. It meant he accepted it.)
"In a bin out back. It's got to seep in average temperatures. With it being rainy season, the outside weather is perfect!" She clapped her hands together like a girl his age. "I just have a favor to ask of you."
"Hn?" I turned my head, anything I could offer, I'd do, especially in this. You may of annoyed me with suddenly going gung-ho on this, but you are too precious to me.
"Keep me in check Hayama-Kun." She put a hand on his shoulder, an odd look on her face. "Don't let me get too rambunctious."
He put his hand on hers to pat it, wishing he could just hold it instead.
"You're rambunctious already, but fine, I promise." I wanted my smile to permeate within you. For you know, I'd never let you do this alone, and that was when it dawned on me suddenly. "Why don't I too?"
"What?" She said blank, brown eyes enlarging. "You... you can't."
"Why?" But, I already knew. "Because I'm seventeen and your twenty-nine?" I tended to be a bit to biting and sarcastic at times, and this was one she hated.
"Bleh! Do you have to say it all flat like that?"
I laughed. Only she could make me laugh. It was so fun to tease her.
"But yes, and you have school?"
"Then on weekends only." I pushed.
"I can't allow that. You've got to look after me, remember?" Jun pondered.
When we went back and forth like this it usually ended in her giving in, in some way or another. I couldn't help but want what I wanted. "I'm your research partner."
"You're in still high school."
"You've already said that angle. I'm the one with the sense of smell that can lead this project." She always let me go back and forth with her like this, the ship rocking.
It was just how we were together.
"I'm the one with the knowledge of how to even make the stuff!" She stood kind of huffy.
She knew exactly what I was doing. And she was fighting for her resolve. Always cute when she would occasionally come out of that shell of insecurity she had around her and lash out. "I'm the one whose from India. Wouldn't that have any bearing?"
"Bearing?! I've studied these plants for years, plus our country's laws don't allow it!" She put up a firm index finger.
"All the way up on this mountain even?" I gave her a smile.
"Hayama-Kun." She didn't even look at me.
It strangely hurt a bit. I reached over to her chin to tilt it up to have her face me. It was brave of me to touch her so, it was just one finger to gently turn, but I could not fathom having the one that held my heart disapprove so sternly. "Look at me." It came off a bit demanding, but I was purely feeling that way, with this situation, my feelings were strong.
She was speechless, but let her eyes rise. They looked bewildered, cheeks puffed. Odd. I, was I mistaken? Is that blushing?
"Please." I begged. Everything around me suddenly faded and my only focus was her shiny eyes which seemed like they were beginning to tear. "Please tell me what's so wrong with it? Is it that you personally don't want me to? Or is it something else?" I just had to know, and I couldn't let her do it alone. I just couldn't.
"Uh." That was all that came out of her mouth. Silence.
I'll try something else.
"What's the deadline?" I let go of her chin, and she retracted. I could tell, maybe it was just my sudden touch that had thrown her off course, just like at the tournament?
That hug, even though she melted into me, and I had felt her body, she suddenly snapped out of it at the sound of hundreds of intakes of air from the crowd.
"Two months from now."
"And how many again?"
"Uh." She brought a finger to lip again. "Seven, Hayama-Kun."
I stood, putting my hand on the outdoor table. Resolute. "That isn't possible with one person!" I got loud. She was always so bad at planning! That was why I did it all! I took care of the appointments, scheduling meetings, aside from the greenhouse. "That's too much alcohol." I huffed, unbelievable. "You're so small, you're probably a lightweight."
"And how exactly do you know that?" She smacked my side with a book.
Feisty, little but feisty. I liked that.
"Ow!" I chuckled. "It's just an assumption." It was all I could get out, that book had kind of hurt.
She grr'ed, and I straightened up, but with a hand up in case she randomly decided to do it again. "The size of typical bottle would have you drinking seven days a week, two months straight just for research, that's unhealthy."
"Uh!" She pounded back down in her chair. "Why am I always so bad at setting up this crap?" Taking her glasses off, she rubbed her eyes.
I knew I had her now. "I have no idea. I'm pretty much your walking daily planner." And she did, she smacked me with that small little reference book again, and I just laughed. I'm not as composed around her as I am around everyone else. Nobody has even heard me laugh except her, I think.
"Fine." She threw her hands up, the book dropping to the table. "You will not tell a soul!" She grabbed my collar and tugged, her hands wrapping around it's edge, crumbling my school uniform.
What a little brat. I'm sure she thought of me the same. I smirked, and she let go.
"Friday and Saturday night then? One bottle each weekend." I opened the itinerary I usually had with me in my pocket for her and began to write it out. "Then what do we do after?"
"Well, my plan was to see if the spices inside the liquor effect the taste of three star and above dishes."
She went on, and I, of course, intently was taken with her creative mind.
"When I went to dine with the executives at Totsuki a few weeks back, the annual research dinner, I noticed that all my peers were drinking flavored liquor. I just thought that was such a true thing for most formal dining experiences I've ever had, and when I thought back on it, there wasn't a single time I can think of where I hadn't seen spiced liquor being served at the tables."
"Mhm?" I continued, taking my hair out of it's low ponytail, to smooth it down and tie it back again. She watched.
I've always craved that attention, one of the things she always seemed awed by was me messing with my white hair, she'd even brush my long bangs behind my ears every once in awhile with her fingertips. It left me fizzling for her touch more, every time.
Of course, I had always touched her hair. It was a simple gesture at first to put her bangs behind her ears, but for me now it had moved into something more without her knowledge.
She cleared her throat, and continued. "Yes! And even so, I began to notice that some of them were acting like the dish they ordered was not good. I had ordered the same thing as one of the northern researchers that was sitting at my table, and he'd been drinking, and I hadn't been."
I knew she didn't drink at all actually. That was why this project was so suddenly brash to me.
"He openly said he thought it was too sour. I thought it was the opposite, that it had a good spice set, and that the chicken was cooked well. That's when an idea sparked in my head. What if drinking alcohol with too much spice in it, has a huge effect on how textures feel on the palette, but also change the way primary spices and broths taste in dishes so extremely... that it's like eating a whole different plate?"
I nodded, it was all I could do. It was an interesting theory, and I guess, we'd be figuring it out soon enough in this research lab that I got on The Council of Ten for.
Mostly an upgrade from to the same building we'd had before.
Never had I turned my back on her; they'd blackmailed me. And as much as anyone else thinks I've abandoned Shiomi Research, I haven't. I couldn't. This just proves it. Jun needs me around, and she knows it.
I'm just gone so often with The Ten needing me on main campus, that it looks like I have given up on her. I even speak that I have, as to dissuade the new director. For he told me if I didn't commit fully to the cause then Jun would be shut down.
He was fully supportive of her patent, but at rash causes. It was at the cost of me serving him, a cost I was willing to bear.
All for her.
I don't see Jun for five days straight now. Only on the weekends am I allowed to visit under that tryannical rule.
And it looks like what were going to be doing the next few months... is this.
There won't be many moments with her where she won't be 'out of it' and me also.
Maybe what I need are some times like this with all this shit going on.
I hate being used, and being ruled has made me so much more callous, but it's mostly a ploy so that they don't see through me. But they did force me to throw my cinnamon sticks away, the director knowing they calmed me.
I didn't like that.
The weekends are the only time when I can walk myself back down to earth, to be softer.
Soft with Jun. Where she'd feed me cinnamon and help me relax.
Perhaps even more softer with the upcoming research project?
My heart swelled. I wouldn't expect anything, of course, but if she just simply hugged me once on her own... then I'd be happy.
I really would be.