Sunday, 11 September 20XX, Morning
Sakura household, Yongen-jaya
It was roughly eight o'clock the following morning when Futaba awoke. She was trying to wring as much rest as possible out of this lazy morning, but she had felt chilly sleeping only in her underwear, and lay curled up into a fetal position in a vain attempt to trap in as much body heat as possible. Sensing that this was a lost cause, she eventually willed herself up out of bed, retrieved and donned the clothes she had worn yesterday, now laid and neatly folded in front of her door, and then left to freshen up in the bathroom down the hall. She was in the middle of brushing her long, orange hair back into form when she heard Sojiro's voice calling from downstairs.
"Futaba-chan! I'm going out to Leblanc for breakfast! Did you want to join me?"
"Coming, Sojiro-san!" The instant she was satisfied with the state of her hair, she put down the brush, dashed back into her bedroom to pick up her trusty smartphone, and bounded down the stairs to meet Sojiro in the entrance hall. Together, they slipped their shoes on and walked out, around the block to Cafe Leblanc.
Cafe Leblanc, Yongen-jaya
Leblanc was not set to open to the public for a couple of hours. On any other day, Sojiro would already have been manning the place, cooking breakfast for Ren in addition to setting up for the cafe's first guests, but with the boy out in Hawaii at the moment, he could afford to take it easier today.
"What would you like?" he asked to Futaba as he unlocked the cafe's front door. "Curry and coffee okay?"
"The breakfast of champions!" she quipped as they stepped inside together.
Sojiro chuckled and answered, "Coming right up, my little champion!" Futaba blushed and giggled as she took a seat in one of the booths along the left-hand wall, while Sojiro turned right into the kitchen and set to work, alternating his attention between heating up leftovers of last night's curry, steaming some rice in the rice cooker, and brewing some coffee. The coffee was a blend made from Arabian-sourced beans, a subtle nod to Futaba's newly-revealed hobby. Before Sojiro had a chance to prepare the finished coffee, she called out, "Hey Sojiro-san, could you do me a favour, and hold the sugar?"
"You sure you don't want any sugar?" he called from the kitchen. He was used to preparing her coffee with milk and sugar.
"Might as well start watching my weight." Now that Futaba was more comfortably embracing one form of physical activity, she felt inspired to make a few more healthy changes in her life.
"You got it," he replied as he poured the results into two separate cups, leaving his black and pouring a splash of milk into Futaba's. Satisfied, he delivered the cups to the table Futaba had chosen, followed by the plates, and sat down across from her. After chiming out a cheerful "Itadakimasu!", she eagerly wolfed down the curry-rice, taking only occasional sips of coffee to save as much as possible for later. When she finally cleared her plate, she gave Sojiro a respectful yet hurried "Gochiso-sama", and pushed it to the outside edge of the table.
"My, you're certainly in a hurry this morning." Sojiro was only half-way through his own plate of curry. "Tell you what, you can go upstairs to set up, stretch, or whatever, and I'll head up when I'm done eating. That okay with you?"
"Thank you, Sojiro-san!" And with that, she sprung up from the booth seat and bounded to the upstairs loft. This room, which normally served as Ren's bedroom, was neatly furnished with two sets of shelves, a table topped by a TV and a vintage game console, a couch, a workbench, a low bed, and a well-fed potted plant. There was more than enough floor space in the middle of the room for Futaba to perform her dance routine. Queueing up the appropriate song on her phone, she put it back in her pocket and performed her warm-up routine. "0… 1… 2… 3…" she mentally counted along with her hip lift/drop sets.
A few minutes later, Sojiro put their plates away in the dishwasher and walked upstairs to meet Futaba, currently practising her undulations. She had rolled the bottom hem of her tank-top up to her lower chest; the shirt was just tight enough that it would stay in place for a while when affixed in such a fashion. "8… 9… A… B…" The sudden appearance of Sojiro startled her into losing her place. "Ah! Sojiro-san!"
"I'm sorry, is this a bad time?"
"Oh, not at all!" she recovered. "Just doing a few warm-ups. Please, sit down." He obliged, sitting on the couch and placing his coffee cup beside Futaba's. "Now, where was I…?" She wound up restarting her set of ab rolls from scratch; she figured she could use the extra practise.
Once she was done with the set, Sojiro asked, "So, you're okay with doing your shirt up like that?"
"Yeah. I figured my moves wouldn't look the same if you couldn't see my belly. If you're okay with that…"
"No problem."
"Great! You know, there are quite a few situations where dancers don't even show their bellies. Mostly casual, folksy settings."
"Is that a fact…? Well, I guess there's more to belly dance than I thought!"
"Right." Futaba wrapped up a set of hip-shimmies. "You ready?"
"Break a leg, Futaba-chan!"
And so Futaba laid her phone out onto the table, turned its speaker volume up, pressed play, and hurried to the centre of the room just in time for the song to begin. Whatever doubts she had about performing in front of her adoptive father melted away as she absorbed herself into the dance. She even got through her belly roll "charm" move with only a minimum of internal embarrassment. When the time came for her finale move, she made sure to lean back less this time, in order not to fall backwards like she did last night. Despite the relative lack of dynamism in that move, her routine went off without a hitch. She held her ending pose for a few seconds, breathing heavily with exhaustion, until Sojiro gave a round of applause, to which she bowed demurely. "So, what did you think?"
"Futaba-chan, that was amazing! And you put that together all by yourself?"
"That's right!" she bragged as she sat down on the couch between Sojiro and the TV table, tugging her tank-top back down over her tummy to reclaim her modesty. "I've gotta say, Sojiro-san, you seemed awfully..." She stalled to find the right word. "...accepting when I told you I was into belly dance. Thank you, by the way."
"No problem."
"So, were you familiar with it from anywhere?"
"Well… one of the morning talk shows on TV had this dancer gal as a guest a few months ago. Said her name was Maiko… something." He struggled to recall her family name, but went on. "She's about my age, a little younger. She's Japanese, but she spent a few years-"
"Is this her?" interrupted Futaba. She lifted her smartphone to reveal a video of that very same talk-show appearance, which she had searched for online and found as soon as Sojiro mentioned her name.
"How did you…? Yes, that's her, alright! You work fast, don't 'cha?"
Futaba tilted the phone on its side, filling its screen with the image of the show's gaudily-coloured set, and they watched it together. On the right side sat the show's two hosts, an ordinary, yet photogenic, business-suited man and woman. Their guest sitting gracefully on the left side was, in contrast, far more eye-catching. She wore a full dancer's ensemble consisting of a bra and belt bejeweled in red and white, and a flowing, silken red skirt slit up to the mid-thigh in front of both legs. Her face was neatly made up with crimson lipstick and eye shadow, and framed by neat, inward-curling bangs, contrasting with the untamed, wavy mane of brown hair that cascaded behind her. The on-screen captions wrote her name, Maiko, in katakana with no surname, so it was in likelihood only a stage name.
"And now," announced the female host, "the lady who has single-handedly kicked off a belly dance revolution all over Japan… Maiko!"
The dancer bowed in her seat. "Thank you for having me on your show," she politely responded.
"What made you interested in belly dance?" asked the male host.
"Well, my father worked in a manufacturing company that had a lot of business in the Middle East, so my family used to travel a lot between Japan and Egypt. Egypt, of course, is where belly dance got its start. On top of that, I always wanted to be an idol. Unfortunately, I don't have a good singing voice." She paused to let the audience get in a laugh. "Fortunately, I did find that I had a talent for dancing. I started by copying a few routines from movies, then I got my parents to take me to proper classes, and finally I got a job performing at dinner shows, on the cruise boats that sail across the Nile."
"Oh wow," Futaba said aloud, "she taught herself, just like me!"
"What made you come back to Japan?", the male host went on.
"As you may know, there was a revolution in Egypt a few years ago. I stayed through it at first, but afterwards, people had a lot more problems with assaults and stuff. I didn't have too much happen to me personally, but I knew a few people who weren't so lucky. On top of that, the authorities tried to shut down a few of my shows. Eventually, I began to fear for my safety and just moved back to Japan. I also figured, this would be the right chance to share my talents and promote a better understanding of baladi."
"Ah, that's very noble of you, Maiko-san," said the female host. Turning to the camera, "Let's see how you've been doing that!"
The scene then switched to a pre-recorded mini-documentary, showing clips of her daily life, her performances at various cabarets in Tokyo, and the class she taught at a studio in Yongen-jaya. "Wow, that's a convenient coincidence," Futaba pondered out loud. "I wonder if I could- HOLY CROW IS THAT ANN-CHAN!?"
This outburst startled Sojiro, who reprimanded her, "Keep your voice down, Futaba."
Seeming not to notice his command, she pressed, "No dad, that really is her! Look!" She swiped the screen to jump the video back a few seconds, and paused it a moment later. Frozen in the centre of the screen, caught in the middle of doing a hip-twist, was a girl dressed in dark workout clothes and a red hip-scarf, similar to the other girls surrounding her. But there was no mistaking the aqua-coloured eyes and platinum-blonde twin-tail hairstyle of this girl. Ann Takamaki, one of the Phantom Thieves, had enrolled in Maiko's belly dance class.
"Well I'll be…" Sojiro mused, adjusting his glasses, as if he couldn't see it right. "That's Ann-san, alright."
Futaba was star-struck. "That… is… so… cool…" she whispered. "Ooh! Maybe I can join the same class as her!"
"Okay, Futaba-chan, let's not rush this. We'll wait for Takamaki-san and the others to come back from Hawaii, and you can ask her then. See if it's right for you. I have learned how intense of a workout it can be, and well, I don't want you fainting from exhaustion in the middle of a class or anything. Besides, classes like those can get expensive. It might be better if you and her just practised together on your own time. Again, we'll wait and see what she says."
Futaba's enthusiasm deflated slightly, but she was willing to take his advice for now. "Alright, Sojiro-san…"
"Listen, I've got to open up the shop now, so you run along back home now. Maybe you could practise your moves some more so they'll look even better for Ann!"
"Sounds like a plan!" She gave Sojiro a parting hug before turning back towards the stairs and adding, "I guess it's time for me to make like a tree… and shimmy!"