A/N: I still have three poems due by Sunday night but I can't miss my favorite part of the weekend. Zain and Kage, thanks for the reviews! What was said between Otonashi and Kanade won't be outright revealed for a while, but there may be a few little hints as we go on. Readers beware, there's more fluff to come. But I can't believe we're only three chapters away from the original season finale...
Enjoy!
[Chapter 22]: Turn
Ayato's coworkers gawked at him every day in the week that followed.
He heard the whispers starting up again in the breakroom, busy chatter about his life like they had nothing better to talk about as always. Like his life was some sort of interesting television show they needed to discuss in detail amongst themselves. Oh, they had no idea.
This week and from now onward, however, things were different. Where he had once brooded about their mindless gossip, seething over what they didn't know and had no business in, now he didn't give a damn.
"—saw Yuri Nakamura with him and a bunch of other people—"
"Here in town?"
"They were talking at the bookstore."
"—think they're back together?"
Alright, so he gave a small sliver of a damn. Because they were absolutely correct in some regards. She had been here in town. They'd be seeing her again soon, and so would he, again and again. Of course, she had no memory of him whatsoever, but as long as they kept their noses out of it and kept their damn distance, they wouldn't suspect any of that.
Yui emailed him the photo of the group shot and he made it his desktop background. His coworkers stared some more.
What's more, Ryou told him that she'd talked to Yukine about the situation with his mother. Apparently Yukine found a way to send someone to Akuma and set his mother up with a secret cell phone in case of emergencies. He asked Ryou who Yukine's contact was, but Ryou said that Yukine simply told her to tell him it was "a mutual friend with all the necessary stealth skills," and he wasn't sure what that meant but he was grateful anyway. Having experience in these situations as a nurse, Ryou had programmed Naoi's number into it under a name that suggested the number would be texting his mother helpful recipes and cooking tips.
Although his mother was very hesitant about calling him directly, she warmed up to it by the middle of the week. Now he had her back in his life too, even at a limit.
Life was so, so good.
Otonashi seemed like he was in just as wonderful a mood, calling every couple of days to tell him the happenings in Shibuya. Apparently, despite the lack of a lead with Ryou, Yui was impatient to find Girls Dead Monster because it was possible they could also use Iwasawa's voice in person to bring back people's Afterlife memories.
"You can tell Yui that I said stop trying to put me out of a job," Ayato had said wryly.
Otonashi had laughed. "I'll tell her. When she and Kanade get back from the spa."
Right, Hinata and Yui lived in the same city as them. Those four got to hang out whenever they damn well pleased. They got to do cutesy double dates and couple things with their friends, and he didn't even live in the same town as his former wife.
Ayato tried not to feel jealous. Sure, Otonashi didn't even have to call Hinata to keep in touch with him, but the fact that his friends knew and remembered him and cared enough to call was a step up in this life.
All the same, he felt massively relieved when he heard the first knock on his door on Saturday morning – even if it was (undoubtedly) Hinata.
"Would you please—" Ayato growled as he flung open the door, "—bring a BATTERING RAM next time!"
"What do I need that for?" Hinata asked innocently, stepping through the threshold with Yui and Shiina following shortly behind.
"For your obvious vendetta against wooden entrances." Ayato closed it once they were all inside. He nodded at the other two. "Hello, Yui. Shiina."
Yui had already texted him letting him know they'd picked Shiina up from the train station, and that she had the charm with her. She waved mindlessly and snuck into his kitchen to raid his fridge for the drinks he'd promised. Meanwhile, Shiina gently shook a corked glass bottle of powder in the air as greeting.
"Locus Felicis," she said, "as requested."
"Interesting."
When he held out his palm, she dropped it into his hand and wandered off, possibly already bored with it anyway. He couldn't really tell with Shiina. As he examined the bottle more closely, however, he couldn't see how she could be. The innards were fascinating, a rich yellow powder of various-sized flecks. If he didn't know better, he would think he was holding a bottle of molten gold that had hardened and gotten crushed into an uneven fineness. Did Yukine have the money for that? It had to be fool's gold, if anything of the sort.
Otonashi and Kanade came in minutes later, having carpooled with the other three. After a quick, lighthearted wave and nod from Kanade, she zipped straight to the bathroom before Ayato could return the greeting, prompting him to roll his eyes. Of course.
Hinata looked up from his established spot on the couch. "What took you guys so long?"
Otonashi shrugged. "We just needed a few minutes alone to talk."
"You two have been doing a lot of just talking lately," Hinata said, the dip in his voice suggesting playful suspicion.
The tone made Otonashi lift an eyebrow at him. "As opposed to what you and Yui usually do?"
Hinata smiled lecherously – and to Ayato's dismay, included him in his creepy stare.
Making a face, he pointed to the door. "You're disgusting. Get out of my house with that."
"What, and leave you alone with Yui? I know you've been texting her lately."
"Not in the manner that you text her."
Otonashi beamed at them, seemingly enjoying their back-and-forth, which Ayato briefly found horrific. "I love you guys," he said. Ayato felt slightly better.
"You love everything lately, you weirdo." Hinata shook his head at him fondly, although his broad grin masked lingering perplexity. "What's with you?"
More beaming from Otonashi.
"Just… feels like my family is coming together, I guess," he said after a moment.
Watching his friend drop his bag in the foyer and plop down next to Hinata on the couch, Ayato puffed up even more at the prospect of being called family by Otonashi. After all, he knew the feeling. With his dad out of the picture (thankfully), his brother gone, and his mother distant, rejoining the Battlefront had been a light in dark times.
He twisted the charm bottle between his fingers, admiring the golden sparkle. He was only happy to let this new family grow.
"Sorry to break up the lovefest," said Shiina, looking particularly focused, "but I think I hear a car outside."
Sure enough, there came a knock at the door moments later. Having just emerged right after Shiina said something, Kanade scurried across the hall to the foyer before Ayato could do anything about it, and happily let the next guest in.
"Hi Kanade. Hey everyone!" Yuri greeted, strolling through the hall like she still owned the place.
Ayato blinked, feigning confusion. "Who are you and what are you doing in my house?"
"Funny, I was about to say the same to you," Yuri said easily. She headed straight to the hall closet and put away her bag while Kanade joined Otonashi on the couch. At first, she started to close the door, then thought better of it and fished something out of her bag. It was the hat—the one that closely resembled the beret from her Battlefront days. She returned to the TV room wearing it proudly.
Ayato cursed under his breath. Damn, that was cute.
"Alright," Yuri said, clapping her hands together. "Operation: start!"
"Commander's really into this thing, isn't she?" Yui said aside to Hinata, sipping her pineapple soda as she balanced on the armrest next to him.
Hinata laughed, leaning into her. "You have no idea."
If she heard the two, she ignored them. "Shiina—you got the Locus Felicis from Yukine, right?"
From her comfortable, shadowed corner to the left of the couch, Shiina made a small sound of confirmation. "Naoi has it now."
He handed it over to Yuri before she made the request, reading her expectant look instantaneously. Their fingers grazed, but he pretended not to notice. Appeased, Yuri rolled the bottle over in her palm, her eyes lighting up with intrigue as she noticed the golden condition of the powder.
"So, how does this work exactly?" asked Otonashi, raising his hand.
Much to Ayato's dismay, Yui almost spilled her soda on the couch in her eagerness to field his question.
"You're supposed to sprinkle it on the ground and walk in it so you can track it around," she said, waving the can in her hand despite Ayato's mildly distressed and offended noises. "Then you walk around a building – this house, I guess. You do it one to three times, and it'll make it an epicenter for a location of luck!"
The group pondered this for a moment.
"So, circle Naoi's house like a shark — three times — tracking gold glitter everywhere?" Hinata said skeptically. He glanced around the room. "Is anyone willing to do this without feeling like a complete idiot?"
Just about every pair of eyes fell directly on him.
Hinata scowled. "No—"
"I'll do it," said Kanade, getting up from the couch. If Ayato didn't know any better, he would've thought that the Angel had thrown Hinata a challenging look over her shoulder just now. Hinata looked affronted as Kanade took the charm right out of Yuri's grip and flounced out of the house. A minute later, Kanade's head passed by the window beside the couch. Yui hummed the Jaws theme, making Hinata and Otonashi crack up. She did it louder each time Kanade passed, until even Shiina was suppressing a smile.
Finally, Kanade strode back in with an empty bottle, which she tossed to Yuri – absurdly too high. Luckily Shiina was able to swoop in and catch it.
"What's next?" she asked blankly, staring at Hinata.
"I can't believe you would one-up me like that," he muttered under his breath, melodramatic as ever. Ayato snickered at him, feeling happy.
"Wait," said Yuri. She turned her attention to Yui, holding the bottle up for display while gesturing to Kanade. "So is she the only lucky one, or did we just make this whole town lucky?"
Yui wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. "Kanade's the one who activated it, so now the town is a lucky spot for people she's fated to meet. That's what the book made it sound like."
This revelation made Ayato give Kanade a slight frown.
"Is she fated to meet the Battlefront members, though?" he asked, regarding the former student body president with curiosity. "As much as, say, Yuri is?"
Yuri looked surprised at him.
"Of course she is," she said, wrapping an arm around Kanade's shoulders. "She found us, didn't she?"
"Yes, but we graduated with her." He meant no disrespect to her, he truly did see her as a friend now that he thought about it. Yet it seemed like everyone who was tied to her emotionally was already in this room.
"But in the end, she sided with all of us," Hinata pointed out. "She was and is just as much a part of the Battlefront as you are."
Ayato tried not to preen. He didn't need Hinata's validation, but he couldn't deny it felt good. "Fair enough."
Yui shrugged and nursed more of her soda. "Anyways, I can't promise it'll work, but you can always track it on your shoes too if you're still unsure."
"That won't be necessary." He gave Kanade an apologetic nod; she smiled reassuringly at him.
Shiina spoke up next, as this group was full of surprises.
"From what Yukine told me, the person who enacts the charm should sense where she needs to go next." Shiina's gaze flicked to the woman in question. "She should have a good feeling about it."
"Like when Yui and I felt like going to the baseball field?" Hinata looked at Shiina, and then at Kanade appraisingly when the former nodded. "Sounds like we're on the right track."
"Where are we headed, Kanade?" Otonashi asked his wife encouragingly.
She tilted her head at him, as if deeply considering the situation – though dreamy faraway looks were her natural state.
"I want peaches," she said.
Ayato rubbed his temples in frustration. Did she even hear the question?
Otonashi looked to him helplessly, a sheepish smile on his face. "Is there a grocery store or something close by?" he asked. "I didn't exactly think to bring any fruit along."
"Same place the three of you first found me," said Ayato. "Next to the arts and crafts place."
Yui's eyes lit up like Christmas lights. "Arts and crafts?!"
"Kanade's thing first," Hinata said patiently. Shiina quietly took the soda can out of Yui's grip and walked it into the safety of the kitchen.
"So is that where we're going?" Yuri asked, tapping her fingers against the glass bottle.
Standing next to her, Ayato frowned. "I guess," he said slowly.
Yuri huffed her hair out of her eyes. "Damn," she said, and looked considering as she played with the pink ribbon of her beret. "This would've been a better time to say 'operation start.'"
Yui whined sadly at her empty hand.
Déjà vu wasn't horrible anymore now that Ayato knew it could be explained. Kanade led the way into town, skipping merrily and humming a different tune, and he let her. Unlike the park, Otonashi and Hinata weren't flanking Yuri on this excursion. Otonashi tailed just a few steps behind his wife, mooning over her more than ever, while Hinata was busy flanking Yui with Shiina and trying to explain that Kanade was the one who knew where they needed to go. Yui argued fiercely the whole time that they didn't know how long it would take for them to run into someone, and how did he know they weren't supposed to go to the grocery store so that they could find somebody in the arts and crafts store next to it?
Yuri walked next to him this time, behind Kanade as he was behind Otonashi so that they paralleled the couple. Every so often, she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. He did his best not to visibly notice so as not to embarrass her and scare her away. Looking at her so much made her seem like a mission of his own, and he figured that maybe trust was normalization.
Unfortunately, what he used to know of as normal was taking her hand as they walked to the store together for a grocery run. The thought made him stiffen and secure his hands in a safe clasp behind his back. Old impulses tended to get him in trouble with her.
She did try to start up a conversation with him a few times, even over the jabber behind them. Five minutes in, she asked him about his mother, mentioning that Ryou had said they were keeping in touch now. She'd been pleased to hear she was doing alright despite the daring escape, and looked interested at the prospect of her having a prepaid phone.
"Do you think you could give her my number too?" Yuri asked, sounding hopeful. Then she backed down a bit. "I mean, just in case. I'd like to hear from her."
Ayato regarded her for a moment – it would be a nice gesture. But then, he wasn't sure.
"I don't know," he said, embarrassment starting to kick in. "I just… I didn't tell her about your memory loss. That could be confusing for both of you."
She frowned thoughtfully, almost a deflated little pout, but she nodded anyway. Then a grin crept onto her face. "I could try to wing it. For her. I bet she misses me to death."
He laughed. "You don't know the half of it," he said, knowing full well how much that was true. "When she found out about the divorce last week, it absolutely killed her. And then she almost killed me."
Yuri laughed too, looking smug. It must be nice to be loved immensely by the ex-mother-in-law from a marriage she had no recollection of.
Encouraged, Ayato began to grin. "Imagine that," he noted with a sardonic little chuckle. "And all this time I thought it would be my father to finish me off."
She stopped laughing, horrified, and whacked him on the arm. "God! Don't joke about that!"
"Sorry," he said, raising an eyebrow at her. Who was the amnesiac now? She'd always hated his dark, self-deprecating humor when it came to Kimito harming or literally killing him. Apparently that was still the case, even with her memory in this condition.
She'd been upset at him for a couple of minutes, walking in silence and watching the businesses of Mizuzaka pass by. He'd resigned himself to having killed the mood, until she engaged him in a cheery conversation about the "go die" line that had been a running joke in the Afterlife. Otonashi tossed back that it was even less funny in the living world, but Ayato smirked about it anyway. At least some good and common ground had come from his morbidity.
By the time they reached the familiar spot, the block where he'd hypnotized Okazaki and been discovered by Hinata, discussion between the two of them had died down. It was hard to be heard over Yui's indignant squawking.
"Just five minutes," said Yui, tugging on Hinata's arm and trying to pull him towards the arts and crafts store with her. "We're not going to miss anything. I just want to find some things for a new tail!"
"Why do you want a tail all of a sudden?" Hinata pressed, resisting with admirable stubbornness.
"Because one of Yukine's books probably has a charm to make it move and I'm gonna find it!" Yui paused, looking hopefully at Ayato. "Wouldn't this place have tail stuff?"
"I'm sure it would," Ayato said with a smile, rubbing his chin. He was happy to help, but also he liked making things more difficult for Hinata.
Hinata groaned. "Don't encourage her!"
Moving behind Kanade and Otonashi for support, Yuri crossed her arms at the others. "Come on, guys. Kanade's a simple woman to please." She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at the grocery store waiting for them in the near distance. "We go in, get the poor girl her peaches, we're out in five minutes. We go into the arts and crafts place, and Yui gets bragging rights if we run into somebody in there."
"Yui with bragging rights." Hinata curled his lip at the thought. "No thanks."
"Mean," Yui sniffed, giving her husband a disdainful look. "Or I'll just go in by myself, and meet you guys in there, and, like I said, not miss anything because I know how long it takes you guys to shop for groceries!"
Shiina clicked her tongue, tsking.
"I wouldn't risk it. There's a curse I read about in one of Yukine's books – you leave before one miracle, you'll miss the rest of them."
"That's not going to happen to me!"
"We'll see about that, Blitz."
Yui whined a little, sending longing looks toward the crafts store.
On the other hand, Yuri frowned like she was just as tired of this purgatory as Ayato was. She put her hands on her hips, very leader-like.
"Kanade said she was hungry!" She motioned to her left at the woman in question, who actually looked unperturbed by the wait. In fact, she seemed rather serene and far away, though sometimes that was her famished face. Yet Yuri did not seem to notice her friend was perfectly content to stay outside as if waiting for something to happen. "What is the point of just standing around—"
"YURIPPE!"
The masculine, bellowing growl rang out from behind her for all of Mizuzaka to hear, preceded only by the sound of plastic bags hitting the sidewalk. Ayato could see him over Yuri's shoulder, tall and black-haired with sharp features. Her eyes growing wide at the nickname, Yuri whirled around to get a good look herself, and she let out a gleeful gasp.
"Fujimaki!" she shouted, and broke into a run.
The fool left his bags behind and sprinted at her, sweeping her up into a hug when they met in the middle and twirling her around in his arms. Yuri started laughing the moment her feet left the ground, smiling and rosy-cheeked.
It was the most enthusiastic reunion Ayato had ever seen. And it was a little much, wasn't it? Not even Otonashi or Hinata had spun her like that.
"Happy to see me, Yurippe?" Fujimaki asked, grinning as he lowered her back down again.
Yuri beamed back at him. "You just won me a bet."
Closer to him, Otonashi shook his head laughing at the heartwarming scene they'd just witnessed. "I guess we won't be needing your assistance this time, huh, Naoi?"
Ayato grunted an incoherent response.
Great. Now he'd lost money, he was jealous anyway, and he felt useless.
If Fujimaki had his memories back, that was fine. He didn't have to make an ass of himself and cause a scene in front of the entire town. If Noda had come and acted like his ridiculous self, at least Ayato would have won something from it.
As it was, he should have suspected. Yuri "Yurippe" Nakamura was the darling of the Battlefront. Of course Noda wasn't the only one who held affection for her.
Fujimaki followed Yuri as she rejoined the rest of the Battlefront, taking in the sight before him. By the easygoing smirk on the man's face, Ayato figured he was doing a good job hiding his annoyance.
"Looks like the old gang's coming back together," he said with a whistle. "Man am I glad I decided to go to the grocery store on this side of town today. Talk about being at the right place at the right time!"
Kanade beamed, puffing up with satisfaction. So she had made the spell work after all. Or perhaps she was just pleased to have won the Battlefront bet. The person using Locus Felicis finding the person they'd bet on… that felt kind of sketchy to Ayato. He tried not to scowl too much.
"Good to see you, Fujimaki. But do you live here?" Otonashi asked, scratching his head. "I'm surprised you and Naoi haven't run into each other."
"It's because Naoi's a shut-in, remember?" said Hinata. Ayato elbowed him in the side, and he grunted in pain but swiftly retaliated.
Fujimaki shrugged, looking amused at the two.
"My work is moving me out here," he said. "So I've been staying in a hotel on the other side of town for a little over a week or so. In the meantime, I've been scoping out the town, trying to find a place. Or somebody who needs a roommate." Then he threw Ayato a hopeful grin. "Maybe Naoi and I will start seeing more of each other. You're not looking for a roommate, are you?"
He stared back at him with dull eyes. "Someone's stealing your groceries."
Whipping around in surprise, Fujimaki gave a shout and barreled after the thief. Still uttering his terrible war cries, the man chased him down with hulking bear-like movements until the guy squeaked in fear and finally dropped the bags in his escape.
Yuri laughed hysterically, wiping at her eyes as she watched him go. Ayato felt better.
Preview:
"Why the hell do people keep staring?"
"You idiot, we're in public!"
"That's 92%."
"You accepted our enemies into the Battlefront at the drop of a hat."
"We want you around because we like you!"
"Fate decides the order."
"You can do the charm the next couple of times."
[Chapter 23]: Sulk and Savor.
