4
After trying and failing to trace the source of the burning coal, he decides to get closer to the girl. He finds her again easily because she is in one of those shops where everyone is lining up to buy some type of food that is flat, round and looks soft and comes in many different colours (and he wonders what it tastes like, and whether he would like it more than he likes burning coal).
Sure enough, she sees him the moment he is in front of the small shop, and she even smiles at him (albeit a little uncertainly). He smiles back, and decides to take off the two silver bracelets again just to see how she would react.
She doesn't react any differently, and this intrigues him, because it only means that she sees no difference between his two forms.
(Now he is almost certain that even if he has the cloak, she would still be able to see him.)
When the crowd in front of the shop thins a little, he decides to approach the girl. She is behind the tall marble slab of a table, and this, he knows, means that she is working there to get those paper notes, and he knows that if he is standing on the other side of the tall table, he is to be the one to give her the paper notes in exchange for one of those flat, round and colourful things (which, he would soon learn, are called donuts).
"Hi, good evening," she says with a smile when he is standing close enough to the table, "welcome to the Big Apple*, how may I help you?"
"Hello," he says and, if his physical form doesn't have any effects on her, his voice most definitely does. Her smile falters a little and her mouth falls open just a little, just like the bald man with the wallet before. He smiles a little at her and discovers that her name literally means light, and he likes that, so he looks up at those pictures hanging behind her and does a quick mental scan of the writings there – after cross-checking the letters with the archive of symbols in his head, the words finally begin to make sense and he says, "What's a Passion Vanilla?"
"Well," says Light – says Hikari, and she is smiling as if this is all very amusing, "it's basically just vanilla milkshake."
He has no idea what a vanilla milkshake is, either, but he merely hums a low note – and is pleased to see that it is his voice, not his appearance, that affects Hikari the most. So he looks at the donuts and asks her another question: "How many of these can I get with…with this?"
He shows her one of the paper notes that the bald man had given him, and Hikari smiles.
"You can buy three boxes of our Dozen Donuts set and about five ofthat vanilla milkshake, if you want."
And now he sees why she is smiling, because even he knows that a single human being does not need that much to satisfy his hunger. And now he, too, is smiling at his own silly question.
"Well then, I shall have one box and one, ah, vanilla milkshake? Please."
And her smile widens and he thinks he sees her face going pink just before she turns around to tell another girl to prepare the vanilla milkshake (and he shall have to ask his brother about this curious milkshake, too, once he is home).
Hikari then returns with a box and asks, "Okay, which donuts would you like to have, sir?"
"Umm. How many should I get?" he asks.
"It's...the Dozen Donuts set," Hikari says, as if that should explain everything, but it doesn't. Not quite. "That means you should get twelve donuts," she points out after a pause. So he needs to pick twelve of these human treats? Even though he is sure that it would taste nothing like smoke and coal, he thinks he can give it a try.
"Two of these, then, please," he says, pointing at a random orange-coloured donuts simply because the colour reminds him of the setting sun, and Hikari complies, extracting two of those expertly and placing them into the box. He then sees a label that reads Sunspot and he picks two of those donuts as well simply because of the word sun. Another batch of donuts next to the Sunspot ones has patterns on them that remind him strongly of the constellation near which his despicable Great Aunt had died, so he picks four of those, just for fun.
(He really hated this Great Aunt of his, and so did everyone else, so.)
He needs four more to complete the box, but doesn't quite know which ones to pick, so he is quiet for a moment. After a quick glance into Hikari's thoughts, he discovers that she favours the colour pink, so he picks one Strawberry Shock and one Pink Twister.
"I need two more, don't I?" he says, and Hikari nods. "Which ones would you have picked?" he asks, and wonders if the humans would stuff burning coals into the donuts for him. He can make them do that for him, of course, but that would scare Hikari.
He rather likes Hikari, so he doesn't want to scare her.
"The Jon Lemon one," she says, grinning. "Because the pun is so ridiculous, it works – and it tastes great. But I wouldn't recommend Ono Oreo."
There is a human joke there that he isn't getting, because at the moment, Hikari's head is filled with images of a human man and woman – the man is dead, and used to be one of those humans who sing about love, among other things, but the woman is still alive, and – oh, she comes from this very land – he digs deeper and finds out that the man was named John Lennon and the Ono woman is his widow, and he still doesn't get the joke.
But he says, "I'll have two Jon Lemons then," all the same.
Hikari places two of them in the box and cheerfully announces that his milkshake would soon be ready. He waits patiently at the side as Hikari entertains a human female who is carrying a little human boy in her arms. After a while, a different girl comes to the front with his milkshake and says a random number that he needs to pay.
This girl, unlike Hikari, is very much affected by his physical appearance. While he enjoys the swirling thoughts of 'oh wow, look at his eyes,' 'how is he even real?' and, 'I've never seen him around before – will he come here again?' coming from the girl, he is sure that she would not be able to see him if he puts on the two silver bracelets again.
He smiles at her all the same as she hands him his food and some paper notes and these small, flat, round metal pieces – he is momentarily confused as to why she is giving him more paper notes, but then Hikari says, "Thank you, please come again!" to the human lady, and he forgets his own confusion for a moment.
Hikari realizes that he is looking, and her face turns pink slightly. She bows in his direction and thanks him, tells him to please come again. He smiles back, but says nothing. He takes the box and the milkshake, and walks away.
A/N: TheBig Apple is quite famous for its donuts where I live. It hasn't opened a branch in Japan yet (I think), but I like their donuts so for the sake of this fanfic...let's pretend that it has reached the Land of the Rising Sun, eh?