'Psh, never mind! Come in, I'll get dressed and make us something to drink. And then you can tell me all about Tomoe being gentlemanly, ha ha. I'm Mizuki, by the way, you are…?'
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Mizuki's amusement was short lived, though.
Nanami's phone rang, and before the cute ringtone could fill the air of the apartment, she'd picked up, replying only with 'mhhhmmm's and 'aha's and such to whatever the voice on the other side was saying.
'I'm really sorry I cannot stay, Mizuki,' she said, 'I feel kind of bad, though… I'd have liked to thank him again… Tomoe you say he's called?'
Mizuki nodded with half a pout.
'Anyway, I've got to go, they need me at the store. Could you do me a favor?' she asked, handing the carefully wrapped sweets over to the man, who was now wearing a light-colored shirt, 'Could you give this to Tomoe? Tell him I'm really really thankful. Oh, and tell him to share some with you, to make up for the tea we didn't take… And, oh,' she added last, only then coming up with the idea, 'there, give him that. That's where I work,' she explained, gesturing to the little card she'd placed on the sweets.
'Right, so I must be off. Sorry for being so hasty! See you, Mizuki!'
And, just like that, she was gone.
Mizuki blinked slowly. He wasn't entirely sure he'd understood what had just happened, but, shrugging, he turned to the sasamochi with appreciation.
When he left the card and the package on Tomoe's bed, one or two sweets were gone for good, and Mizuki had pasted a post-it over the empty spaced they'd occupied.
'Customs tax', it read.
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'Yukiji', Tomoe read aloud, from the card that was left on the package, 'Is that what she said her name was?'
Mizuki shrugged, too busy with his bowl of ramen to give his reluctantly perplexed roommate a proper answer.
'Hmmm', Tomoe murmured, taking it as a confirmation. 'She makes fairly tolerable sweets, I guess.'
'Just so you know,' Mizuki said, offended, 'They tasted more than "fairly tolerable" to me, and it was mean of you to have eaten all of them. You'll get headaches, you'll see.'
His roommate chuckled a little derisive chuckle. 'I might have shared better if you'd not sunk your fangs into them just like that.'
The green-eyed man pouted slightly. 'Why do you always conveniently forget that we never have any milk because you outdrink my grocery-buying capacity? Huh? And do I complain?'
You do, Tomoe mouthed, wordlessly.
'It was rethorical,' Mizuki sheeshed, 'And, anyway. About those sweets. So, what kind of favor did you do the lady?' He winked after the question, repeatedly.
Irritated, Tomoe glared at his roommate and fell silent, unwilling to give him, of all people, any shadow of a reason to tease him.
Mizuki's skills to irk Tomoe were, however, honed to acuteness after many years of perfecting his technique.
'You know that you have the right to remain silent, and I have the right to interpret that silence however I want, right?' he purred. As he toyed with his chopsticks, the muscles in his arm made the tattoo of a snake that curled around it seem to come alive.
Much to his roommate's satisfaction, Tomoe's aura exuded venom. Still, he impassibly waited for the storm to pass. It took a while, though.
'… and knowing you like I do, not only you must've told her to forget it all and get out of your life, but now you're faced with the moral dilemma of sticking to your precious sense of the traditional and give her a gift back.'
If Tomoe had been the fox his friends made him to be, his ears would have twitched in shame at having been discovered. He wasn't a fox, though, so he just sent Mizuki the most glacial glare he knew how to glare.
Mizuki tried to brush off the sudden chill with a sheepish smile and some sound reasoning: 'You look at me like that because I'm right, aren't I?'
Truth be told, Tomoe had not yet thought that far ahead, he'd just gone and eaten the sweets together with a cup of good, strong, reliable coffee. But the two of them had known each other since high school, and sometimes Tomoe could swear that his snake-ish friend knew him better than he did himself. And he did have a point. He was a guy that liked his traditions to be respected with some degree of seriousness, and the blessing (and, he grudgingly added, the burden) of a gift could only be thanked with another gift. That was why he never asked anything in return. Because then he had to go through… stuff.
Like reciprocating a gesture to that damn drunkard Yukiji person. As if he had time to care about that.
While all these thoughts rushed through his mind, Mizuki was taking his empty bowl back to the kitchen, putting the kettle to boil, and then patting his back almost amicably. He distantly thought he could hear him asking what he thought would be good to get her.
'Drop it, damn it!' Tomoe roared suddenly, making Mizuki shed a dignified cringe, 'I don't know this girl and I don't care the slightest bit about her! Now, go make sake or feed the catfish or whatever it is you do when you're not being annoying, and leave me alone.'
'Jeez, man,' Mizuki said, 'You're gonna end up lonely and bitter when you're old, live a little…!'
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On Tuesday, his free day, Tomoe found himself on the way to the address written on the card that the girl had left. He knew it was a shop, and a rather peculiar one, too. He'd not done the investigating, though, that much could aid his conscience. Rather, the 'investigating' had been shoved at his face by none other than Mizuki, while he had guitlessly been trying to read a mystery novel.
'Look, Tomoe!' his shameless roommate had said, pushing the laptop's screen right into his nose, 'I googled you some background information for your quest! No need to thank me…' (and he'd winked. The little snake had that nasty habit embedded into his pattern of behavior.)
'Whyever would I want to thank you?' said Tomoe, dignified, discreetly eyeing the website on display.
… yet, there he was, suddenly standing before a small boutique called 'Sengoku Jidai'. Upon entering, Tomoe was taken by surprise by the actual size of the premises- the place had seemed very small from the outside. The layout of the store was a traditional one – a display area and a counter opposite the door, at the other end of the room; and high, narrow windows to let the air and light in, but not the sun. Huge tapestries were on display on the light-yellow walls, intermingled with ornate wood panels and beautifully embroidered fabrics. There were relatively few pieces of furniture (antiques, as Tomoe's trained eyes could tell) strategically placed to go with the different sections that the wall dressings created, highlighting the convenience and visual pleasure that came with having dressed walls.
Well, that was what the shop was about, actually. Traditional wall dressings. Or so the website had said, when Mizuki had gotten Tomoe to actually look at it.
Being there, however, made Tomoe feel slightly torn, and it had nothing and everything to do with wood panels and Edo-period tapestry.
He spent a long time looking carefully at each piece on display, appreciating the minuscule details and elaborate crafting of each of them. Getting lost in the beautiful little mazes of embroidered flowers and trees and houses, and each second that passed brought him farther from the store and closer to his childhood of mountain wooden houses and narrow forest paths, closer to his adoptive mother and the lonely melody of a flute that drifted from the roofed gallery to the night.
The mellow light eased him. He felt at peace, such a seldom peace. Maybe this city was too much, was becoming too much for him. Maybe he could take a break. Go back to the mountains, visit the old house…
'Wel-come!' a voice chirped from the counter, snapping him out of his reverie.
Soft footsteps approached him, and, when he turned, he was facing the large, strangely familiar eyes of that girl who made "okay" sweets.
'What are you doing here?!' she asked, delighted and slightly caught off-guard, 'I thought, when I saw you from the counter, it couldn't be you all the way here, but hey, it's nice that you dropped by!' She beamed at him, making him uneasy and slightly suspicious. That was his nature, and it was not as if he could help it.
She didn't make anything of his silence and aloofness, only asked him if he would like a cup of tea.
'Thank you, but don't bother', he replied, and easily lied about having to come to the neighborhood and having to leave soon.
'The tapestries you sell are really beautiful,' he found himself saying, though, betraying his intentions.
'They are, aren't they?' she said with her signature beam, and proceeded to tell him about the little traditional studio that made them, in a small village in the outskirts.
'They still use the same technique they used four hundred years ago! Can you believe it? It's amazing, I once visited, and they're incredibly nice. And the threads they use…' and she was telling him about silk worms and the long way to China, and he was doing his damnedest best to pay attention to her and not become distracted with that smile that seemed to always hang from her lips, and…
'It must be nice,' he absentmindedly commented.
'Huh?'
'China, and the orchards where they keep the silk worms…'
She beamed, was that all she ever did? He was between unnerved and mesmerized. Whatever. He mentally shook himself to order.
'Anyway, I was only here to return your gift, it was kind of you to leave those sweets with Mizuki, but completely unnecessary. You shouldn't have- you didn't owe me anything'. With those words, a small, square package found his way to her hands.
She reverentially looked at him, reverentially thanked him, blushed all the while, and was at a loss for words.
'A… actually, it was you who shouldn't… I mean… come all the way here…' she said, flustered.
'Nevermind,' he said, stoically, waving it off, 'It's how it's always been done, and I like to keep such gestures meaningful.'
Smiling broadly, she walked over to the counter and put the gift away with great care. She asked again if he wouldn't like a cup of tea.
'No, thank you, I must be on my way,' he said, businesslike and detached. However, he hesitated before leaving.
'I really enjoyed this place. It brings back pleasant memories,' he unexpectedly said, but kindly, and she saw in his eyes a warmth that she supposed was very rarely there to be seen. And she had an idea.
'Well, you know, we usually hand these out to old customers, but I guess no one will tell me off for giving you one!' she asserted, and stretched over the counter to fish for something in one of the drawers. 'Ah, there!' she exclaimed, happily, and walked over to him with a discount coupon.
'It's a 25% discount! It's a rather good deal, especially if you want to buy many things… well… I don't know if you want to buy many things… eh… hehehe… well… even if it's for something small…. well, yeah, you know what I mean…' she said, sheepishly.
A small, honest smile flickered over Tomoe's lips.
'Thank you,' he said, genuinely, 'My associate might actually want to consider this offer. I'm off now, fare well.'
He waved once over his shoulder, and quietly walked through the door, her cheerful goodbye filling him with a warmth strange to him for many years. He didn't look back at the shop as he left, he felt stupid for thinking that if he did, it might break the spell, and all the odd but nice feelings of nostalgia would be washed away with the disjointing noises of the city.
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A/N: You know that in Japan when you receive a gift it's custom to reciprocate and give a gift back. Tomoe didn't feel he deserved anything, took her thank-you-for-saving-me sweets as a gift, and felt morally compelled to give something back. Only that.
Coming up next: more backstory, confusion of names and sexy tattoos (because I can't write fanfictions without sexy men with sexy tattoos...)
Comments and reviews, very welcome and very encouraging! :)