Ayumu smiled wickedly. "Now, hold on a second, I'm interested. What was the bane of your existence?"
"Please, I'd rather not talk about it just now." Chiyo seriously did look like she was getting a headache. What could possibly be so aggravating?
"Okay, but you've piqued my curiosity. You'll have to tell me sooner or later." On the other hand, she didn't want to cause any damage... very well then, subject changed. "Where are you staying?"
"I was going to get a room at..."
"Forget that. You can stay here. We'll make up the couch; it's where Benjiro sleeps when he's here." Ayumu crossed to her bed and crouched, reaching under it. "That is, if you don't mind."
"Sure, that would be great! It'll be like old times. We haven't had a sleepover since... wow, since when?"
"I think it was that one time where we waited for Sakaki-san to fall asleep then drew all over her with permanent markers."
"Oh, I remember that," Chiyo grinned. ""Yeah... if I remember right, you guys sent me for coffee or something so I wouldn't wake her up. That was really horrible of you."
"Eh," Ayumu shrugged the charge off. "You just didn't have a sense of humor. Here we are," she pulled a plastic tub out of under the bed, packed with a sleeping bag and two pillows. "I actually think the couch is more com—"
"Wait," Chiyo stood up suddenly. "Hold on. Who's Benjiro? I—I mean, if you don't mind my asking." It was kind of funny to watch her two natures at war. It was the old Chiyo super-politeness against a louder, more forward aspect probably cultivated on the other side of the Pacific.
Ayumu made a vague gesture over her shoulder. "Last frame there, next to the TKD picture."
Chiyo took up the last picture and almost laughed. It had been taken at the Nopporo Forest Park, and not to long ago to judge from Ayumu's age. Benjiro was a little taller than Chiyo, a young Japanese man with quite an impressive head of wavy black hair. He had a narrow, honest face, moustache-d, with a large mouth stretched into a mighty grin and purple-tinted sunglasses perched on his sharp nose.
His left arm was off the frame, evidently holding the camera, and his right was around Ayumu's narrow shoulders. She rested her head on his shoulder, looking not only very happy, but entirely present, eyes clear and sparkling. It was a look Chiyo had never quite seen on her.
Exactly where she wants to be, Chiyo decided, She can't dream of a better place. And in her defense, it's not unbearably cheesy if it's true.
"A boyfriend."
"You sound surprised."
"Oh, no, not at all!" Chiyo cried, meaning it. "I just... he's... you look... why didn't you say anything about him?"
"You didn't ask," Ayumu said easily, dropping the bundle of bedding on the end of the couch. Hold on-- maybe that wasn't the best way to put it. "Sorry, I've never done this 'seeing an old friend for the first time in years' thing before."
"No, that's all right. Sorry. Okay... listen, I'll get my stuff and come back, all right?"
"Sure, sure. I'll set this up for you." It was then that Ayumu noticed with surprise that the sun had set while they were talking. In fact, it was starting to get a little late. When had this happened? Unlike most of the times she lost her day, however, she didn't mind it in the least.
As Chiyo left, Ayumu threw herself into the couch and sagged, sighing happily. What an interesting day this had been. She tried to stem the tide of warm memories that seeing her friend again called up, but honestly, how good had she ever been at disciplining her mind?
As different as this girl was, she was still Chiyo-chan. But then, what had Ayumu expected? Chiyo to be some kind of tough, sneering, hard-bitten gangster in a long black coat with "I Am The Center Of The World" across the back? She snickered at the thought. The whole question made Ayumu wonder if she was still the same old Osaka. She sure didn't feel any different...
On an impulse, fished behind her couch for one of the books she kept stacked back there. Originally, when she thought that she was a Writer (capital W), she had stocked up with the intention of keeping her technique from becoming inbred. Later, when she realized to her immense disappointment that she was just a person who happened to write without a divine commission, she started picking them out just for fun. It was a lot better that way.
She was leafing through a book of poems by Baudelaire when Chiyo reentered with a red pack over her shoulder. "Hey, listen to this," Ayumu called, "Who of our friends does this one make you think of?"
"I worship you as I worship the vault of the night sky, o vessel of sadness, o great silent one, and love you the more, fair one, the more you flee me, and seem, ornament of my nights, the more ironically to multiply the leagues that separate my arms from the blue immensities.
I move to the attack, and climb into position, like a choir of maggots assaulting a corpse, and I cherish, o implacable and cruel animal, that very coldness which makes you more beautiful to me."
"This one's from Baudelaire's selected poems. Who does it remind you of?" Chiyo stared at her for a few seconds. "I mean, if you leave out the part about the maggots."
"I... don't know," Chiyo shrugged, "Who?
"Well if you can't figure it out, Ms. Prodigy, I don't think I'm going to tell you!" Ayumu slapped the book shut with malicious glee and tossed it behind the couch again. "I'll let it haunt and torment you forever!"
"Um... okay."
"It's not going to, is it?"
"Probably not. Er, can I use your shower?"
"Huh? Sure. But why are you showering at 9:50 PM?"
"It's a habit you get into when you have class at 6:30 every morning."
"Sure. Just watch out... the shower here will only give you five, six minutes of hot water before it either turns into ice or napalm."
"Thanks for the warning." Chiyo reshouldered her pack and started for the bathroom, but Ayumu put a hand on her arm as she passed. The older girl gestured at a netted pocket on the outside of the pack. "Is that...?"
"Yeah, it's your book. Ever see how it turned out?"
"No, actually. I don't even know what title they gave it."
"Huh?"
"I couldn't think of a title... 'Castles in the Sky?' Hm. I see they broke out the trained monkeys with typewriters. Fitting, though."
"The title?"
"No, that they used monkeys. Can I see that?"
"Sure," Chiyo withdrew the book, handed it over and disappeared into the bathroom. Ayumu checked her watch then started flipping through her own book with a feeling of mounting horror. "I must have been on acid or something," she commented, squinting at a particular passage. "God, how did this sell even as much as it did?"
The mellow hiss of the shower poked at the edges of her attention as she rifled back and forth through the pages. Ah, yes, the pretentious chapter headings. The long paragraphs meandering into nothing. The schizophrenic jerking between bleak fatalism and chipper optimism. I thought I was baring my soul, but this looks more like a pile of soul droppings.
The cover was nice, though. It was a charcoal drawing of a woman in a long coat walking along a beach; fairly conventional, but she could see that there was more to the picture than was at first apparent. "Whoever you are," Ayumu saluted the artist, "I apologize for stapling my babbling to your genius."
That last thought was interrupted by a loud yelp and the squeal of the shower-knobs turning frantically. Ayumu checked her watch again. "Five minutes, seventeen seconds. Not a bad run."
Chiyo emerged, dripping and rather miffed. "You weren't kidding when you said napalm." She wore a heather T-shirt and pajama pants covered with dancing cats. Ayumu was once again surprised; the change of clothes emphasized how tall and lanky she had turned out, as well as...
"I see you made it out of mine and Tomo's group."
"I'm sorry?"
"Ne-never mind."
Chiyo sat heavily on the pile of bedding her friend still hadn't gotten around to laying out and put her elbows on the back of the couch. "What do you think?"
"Of this?" Ayumu tossed the book back at her. "I never want to see or hear about it again. You?"
"You just said you didn't want to hear about it. And besides, there's so much you have to tell me still!"
"Oh?" Ayumu gave her the Spock eyebrow.
"Sure, there's lots! I mean, you went to college, then moved across the country and now you have a boyfriend. There's got to be hundreds of stories in there!"
"You summarized it pretty well. I don't think I have anything to add."
"Oh, come on." Chiyo was slightly worried again. She noticed that Ayumu had cooled somewhat... there were obviously a few things that she'd rather not talk about. And while part of her was content to leave them be, another part was a little annoyed (and, truth be told, still kind of mad about Ayumu vanishing in the first place.) "Like... when you were at the University, what was your roommate like?"
"We kinda got off on the wrong foot," Ayumu replied. "We'll just say she had no sense of humor, she didn't like fireworks as much as I did, and she chose the wrong day to walk in the door with a Dorayaki cake."
"That's..." Chiyo didn't know whether to laugh or be sympathetic, "Um, too bad."
"Minako-san and I developed what you might call a comfortable relationship. Basically, we were both alone in the same room. Every time I tried to talk to her, she'd turn the radio on really loud."
"Sounds miserable."
"No, I was fine with that. What made me miserable was that I was failing all my classes, I hardly had any friends, and I couldn't seem to find any clubs I could enjoy. If not for TKD with Tomo and Kagura, I would probably have gone crazy."
Chiyo was now completely at a loss. It was a bitter feeling, as if she was standing there in the sidelines watching her friend go through this, but she could do nothing to help because it was already past. You could call it Millennium Actress syndrome.
"I'm surprised I stuck around as long as I did."
"But..." Chiyo really hated asking this, but it bore asking. "You're not the kind of person to suddenly leave everything behind and flee across the country. In fact, you're not the kind of person to do anything suddenly. You never gave any of us the slightest warning. What the heck happened?"
"I... came down with something. Wasn't a big deal, it just..."
Chiyo sighed. "You uprooted your whole life over no big deal?"
"It's not like there was much there..."
"We were there! Didn't you think we'd miss you!?" Chiyo hopped to her feet and rounded on her. "No. It wasn't 'no big deal.' What was it?"
"I... no, I'm serious. It's in the past; no bearing on today. You don't have to..."
"I'll bet you think you're saving me worry by not telling me."
"Well, I..."
Chiyo cuffed her. "Quit being so enigmatic! You're tying me in knots, here!"
"Okay, fine." Ayumu mellowed herself and sat up straighter. "If you must know, I had a massive case of pneumonia and nearly died. Happy?"
Chiyo stared for a very long moment. "...not really," she finally managed.