Usagi was fine, just a little shaken and annoyed, but she was certainly loving the attention. When Rei announced that she would be coming back to visit her again tomorrow, Usagi had ordered her to "come over and give me a hug!" Then she leaned back and pretty much immediately fell asleep.
Who could resist the charm of a drugged up Usagi? Certainly not Rei. But it was not the charm of her friend that drew her to the hospital the next afternoon. While she had told Usagi she would be there at three, she left her house at one-thirty in order to spend an hour with Minako. She felt almost as though she were sneaking around, even though she knew that it wasn't exactly a bad thing to go meet Minako.
When she arrived in front of room 215, she took a deep breath, calming herself. Ridiculous questions ran through her mind. What if Minako didn't remember her? What if she had just been practicing a formality in inviting her back? But then the look on the singer's face flashed through her mind, and she found herself raising her first to knock. The answer this time came sooner than yesterday's had. "Come in," called Minako. Rei slid back the door and was met with Minako's smiling face.
"Hino-san! How are you?" she greeted, looking absolutely ecstatic to have her there.
"I'm good. How are you feeling?"
"Oh, fine," she replied, waving off the question with a flick of her delicate hand. "Come, have a seat. How's your friend, Usagi?"
Rolling her eyes as she sat down, Rei laughed, "Still hospitalized and loving every minute. She's just eating up all the attention that everyone is giving her."
Minako chuckled at this. "It's good to see I'm not the only one who enjoys hospitalization. Since no one knows I'm here, there's no press or anything. All I have too deal with are the nurses, the doctors, my manager and," she looked at Rei, smiling in a way that let Rei know that she was kidding, "the occasional straggler."
"I can go if you don't want me here," offered Rei, moving to stand, also smiling in a kidding way.
"Don't be silly. I invited you, didn't I?" Rei resettled herself, and Minako looked away, smiling. "I'm just here because I'm tired, you know." She shrugged. "I get tired, working so hard. Sometimes I just need a vacation. And my manager suggested a foreign country, but I have an album to record, and a contract to uphold. I've got a concert in Kyoto in a couple of days."
"I know," said Rei immediately, and Minako looked at her. "I tried to get tickets. It was completely sold out."
Nodding, Minako's eyes widened. "I know. And it's a huge venue. There's going to be almost five thousand people there."
"Are you nervous?"
But her expression immediately became one of flippancy. "Please. I think it's scarier to perform for fifteen people, or one person, than it is for five thousand. If one of those five thousand people is not happy, I'm rarely going to hear about it. But with fifteen people, I'll hear about it. For sure. And that's more scary, to me at least."
Rei held up a finger. "But! What if you DO hear about that one unhappy person in the crowd?"
Thinking about this for a minute, Minako looked away from the other girl, raising her gaze to the ceiling. "It's very rare for one person to stand out in a crowd," she finally said, in a slow, calculated voice. Then, quite deliberately, she looked at her companion, locking their gazes. "When that does happen," she said, very quietly, "it's a very, very special occasion, and should not be forgotten."
For some reason, these words made Rei begin to blush, but she held herself in check. She kept her composure as she always could. "I agree. And when someone on stage acknowledges you, just one in a crowd, it is also a very, very special occasion that should not be forgotten about."
The conversation had gotten so off-track that Rei had to think to remember what they had been talking about. But Minako seemed to have other plans, as she perpetuated the next leg of conversation with a question. "So what do you do? You're still in high school, right?"
Shaking her head, Rei said, "No, I'm out. How old do you think I am, anyway?" Giggling, Minako shrugged apologetically. In truth, she and Rei were the same age, 21, and Rei pointed this out to her before continuing, "I work at a shrine."
Minako made an interested, "Oh?" noise, so Rei continued.
"I'm a miko, actually, at the Hikawa Jinja in Juuban. It's pretty much my shrine. I clean it, I run it, I do the bills and such... My grandpop used to do some of the work but he died three years ago. So now it's just me and sometimes my friends help out, and there's some volunteers."
"Really? Just interested people that come and volunteer?" inquired Minako, sitting up to listen.
"Erm... Well, yes, I suppose that's the jist of it. Some people are interested in arranging the events, some are interested in the decoration for the festivals, or they want to run the booths. But that type is rare so my friends usually do it."
Shaking her head slightly, Minako said, "That's fascinating. I've always wanted to work at a shrine, you know. I wanted to wear the red and white robes and sweep the path. I can't imagine a more peaceful life, can you?"
Snorting, Rei replied, "Yes, yes I can. A life without Usagi or maybe life in the mountains. That's the thing about working a shrine. The city is a hectic place, and its people come to shrines for peace and quiet. And I guess the reason I'm best at being miko is because I love the peace and quiet of the shrine. It's my most favourite thing in the world. But I feel like these people are intruding on my peace and quiet. They're just tourists."
Minako thought this over as Rei spoke, and when she finished, she came up with an immediate reply. "Ahh, but Hino-san, the people are the best part! You said yourself, they are from around the city, and they are looking for some peace and quiet. And I don't know what quiet you've been listening to, Hino-san, but lots of people doing quiet things is no louder than one person doing quiet things. Zero plus zero still equals zero."
Raising an eyebrow, Rei mused, "Spoken like a true superstar. I guess you just love large amounts of people more than I do." She looked at her hands, which were threaded together in her lap. "If you have time, you should come volunteer at my shrine. You can wear the robes and sweep the path if you like."
The singer practically jumped at this. "Really? You would let me do that?"
"Of course. I've done it my whole life, I think I can share the task a little bit."
"Your whole life?"
"Ever since I was a child," said Rei, nodding.
Grinning suddenly in a mischievous way, Minako leaned forward and said, "You must have some great arm muscles."
Without hesitation, Rei sat up straight, pushing her right sleeve back to her shoulder with her left arm. Then she made the classic muscle pose. Her arm was clearly well defined, not bulky but still firm. With a look at Rei to make sure it was okay, Minako reached out and touched her forearm. Warmth spread through Rei's whole body at the singer's soft hands on her skin. "Ooooh," Minako cooed. "Very nice. I wish I had arms like that. My legs are my strong point, really, because of all the dancing and running around I do." As she said this, she leaned down and pulled back her blanket, revealing her cute pink pajama pants, and sung her legs over the side, standing to her full height. She lifted one leg of her pajama pants and turned her ankle in a way that showed the firmness of her leg muscles.
For her part, Rei tried really hard not to imagine running her hand up those legs, or having them wrapped around her waist or her shoulders. For the most part, she failed. But she stood, too, to stop herself from staring. The two girls were almost equal in height; Minako was just a tiny bit taller. The singer let her pant leg drop again, and for a moment they stood looking at each other. Shaking her head almost imperceptivity, Minako said, "I don't know what it is. There's something about you that isn't the same as all my other fans. You're less hyperactive. It's almost like you don't even know I'm a superstar. You do know who I am, right?" she added jokingly.
"Of course I do," answered Rei immediately, showing some of her astonishment at Minako's presence. "I just have always been able to maintain a cool outer demeanor. Besides, as much as I worship you, you're still just another person. Just someone who, more than most people, I would love to get to know."
The singer looked at Rei with such a blank look that the miko was certain that she had said something wrong. Something she said must have offended her. But suddenly, Minako grinned, then stepped forward and lightly, ever so lightly, kissed Rei on the cheek. "That's probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," she whispered.
Even with all the blood rushing to her head and her heart beating faster than a racehorse and her skin tingling with the nearness of the other girl, Rei still managed a roguish reply: "Then clearly people haven't told you enough nice things. Maybe I should talk to you more often."
"I would like that very much." She took a step back, and it could have been Rei's imagination, but she thought she saw a little blush on the singer's face. As Rei was just trying to get control of her heart rate and breathing again, Minako sat back down on the bed and asked, "So what else about the shrine? What would you have me do?"
"Oh, you know, the usual. Sweeping, cleaning, praying. If you're going to work at a shrine you have to pray." Rei resettled herself in the chair next to the bed. "And then I'll have you run the perimeter of the shrine seventeen times and do fifty pushups." She made the comment off-hand, as she was fixing her shoelace. "Just kidding," she added.
"I figured."
Time passed in a pleasant way and soon it was time for Rei to go and see Usagi. She was already two hours late. "I should go. Usagi's getting discharged today..." she suddenly trailed off on her sentence, as both she and Minako realized what that meant. This would be the last of their visits, unless one of them went out of their way.
"Okay," said Minako in a disappointed way. "This was fun, Hino-san."
"Yes, it was, Aino-san."
There was a lag as both girls avoided looking at each other. Finally, Minako took a deep breath, which caused Rei to look at her. Their eyes locked. "I remember you, you know. From that concert a couple of months back."
Rei's heart raced and her stomach dropped back into her shoes. "Oh," she managed to say.
"You stood out because I had a... I had a dream, once, and there was a girl in it, and it was... Well, I guess it was you. You know dreams, you don't get pictures, you get feelings, and when I saw you that night, and when I saw you yesterday afternoon, and... When I see you now... I get that same feeling." She ran a hand along her blanket, as if to give herself something to look at while she spoke. "And for the record," she added, "I'd like it if you called me Minako, and if I called you Rei."
Swallowing once, hard, Rei nodded and spoke. "I'd like that, too."
"Good. Then I'll see you again sometime, Rei-chan." Rei loved her name on Minako's lips.
"Yes. Hopefully soon, Minako-chan."
