A/N: This is where The End of the Beginning technically reaches 100 chapters. This is the point where I start mentioning which chapters events
relate back to, if you would like to go back and freshen up your memory. I'm horrible that way, I know. Things connect back and forth in time when I write. All for the sake of complexity and re-read value. ^_^'
Dedicated to Doodle and Mickey: my brother and brother-in-law respectively.
I do not own or profit from any of what Kazue Kato has created.
Girls, games, and a good friend's company: what more could one ask of life?
Some might want more - people always seem want more no matter how much they already have - but for Shiro that really covered everything. He and Mephisto had spent yet another evening battling at arcade games, and after a marathon match in Pong - which left them both seeing pixelated shadow balls bouncing over their fields of vision afterwards - Shiro had lost and had to treat Mephisto to supper. Or breakfast?
"Night snack", the demon concluded as they strolled side by side down the lit avenue. The night market lay ahead, admiring its shining reflection in the pond next to it. It was well past midnight, and clothes and toys were being hauled in from their racks. The food carts were still open, hoping to serve shopkeepers that might want something to fill their bellies with after packing up.
"Right. What's your favourite snack tonight, then?"
Shiro had learnt from Belial that Mephisto might seem simpleminded about food, but in reality he was terribly hard to please. Junk food was his current obsession: historically, it was a novelty, and humanity's new inventions had always captured the prince's interest. Before junk food he had been absolutely crazy about peanut butter & jelly sandwiches; over time, those sandwiches had evolved to include all the other new foodstuffs that caught his fancy, such as Nutella, vegemite, marshmallows, and cheese puffs. The sandwiches were, according to the butler, as terrible as they sounded.
"Pork soba, extra spicy", Mephisto concluded after stroking his beard in careful consideration.
"I could complain about your eating habits, but I gotta say I'm glad you're so cheap."
"Watch your tongue, Shiro: that all depends on how much I eat."
"Now that you mention it: have you been gaining lately?" he said, sweeping a concerned glance over Mephisto's skeletal frame.
That Mephisto would gain a single gram was as likely as him getting honourably married. But the mere suggestion that his slender figure was in danger was enough to make him fuss worse than your average housewife, which put some very amusing images in Shiro's mind.
"One spicy pork soba, and one beef udon", he ordered at the steamy little yatai. Haah, what a nice, warm night – had to savour them now, wouldn't be able to stay up this late once school started.
"Udon? I would have expected something more wholesome of you."
"Buckwheat, normal wheat – no big difference", he shrugged, absentmindedly scraping the folded yen note over his five-o'clock-shave. Well, he willed there to be five-o'clock-shave. His meagre beard growth was never keen on listening to his wishes.
"How exactly did you pass biology?"
"Excuse me, sirs: how spicy…?" The vendor addressed Shiro more than Mephisto, since he was the one that looked Japanese. Normally, vendors in True Cross Town would recognise Mephisto as Johann Faust, but in that Honeybee Maya yukata he looked more like a peculiar tourist.
"As much as you can fit into the bowl without turning the broth into porridge." The chef seemed very sceptical of that. "Don't worry. You can pour lighter fluid over his and he'll still ask for extra chilli. And to answer your question", he said, turning back to his peculiar tourist friend, "I don't care so much about the ingredients as the texture." Shiro handed over the yen notes. "I prefer them thick and juicy."
"Mmm, all the possible replies to that… Really, I can't decide…"
"Traffic jam in the Pervert Speech Centre?" he smirked, and took their bowls off the counter. "How about you use your mouth for something other than talking, then?" He grinned over his shoulder as he strolled off to one of the two remaining tables. "Neurons knotting up good~?"
It had taken many, many Freudian all-nighters before Shiro had realised there was such a thing as overloading a demon's silver tongue. It was quite simple, really, once you understood the mechanism behind: serve up too many tempting baits and the possible replies would pile up and clog the poor demon's brain.
"I'm thinking I should have a dictaphone taped to you at all times, then run the tape through the school's speaker system." Mephisto assumed his seat with royal grace, which looked rather funny when the seat in question was a plastic chair in a hideous shade of green. "Would make a most memorable graduation ceremony once you obtain your exorcist license."
"M-hm: and I know which demon would be my first target."
…of course, only a minor share of the innuendos that left Shiro's mouth were intentional. Especially when it came to food.
"You're just being fussy: it's no more difficult to eat udon than to eat soba", Shiro argued against his obstinate friend. "The trick is to take it all in in one go." Yeah that didn't sound suggestive. "Fuck, I should just stay quiet... " Shiro snortled helplessly into his hand, almost dropping the noodles back in the bowl, and across the table Mephisto fared no better. "I don't know when I started screwing up so badly when I speak, but I sure as hell will blame you for it."
"I'm the source of your suppressed desires? My my, are we finally about to hear a confession~?" The demon smirked over his soup with bedroom eyes.
"The source of all my screw-ups: now stop talking and start swallowing."
…that one backfired pretty badly, with all the unpleasant associations Shiro's brain came up with when Mephisto slurped up soba noodles with very suggestive noises. Oh well. It's amazing what the human mind can grow accustomed to.
They kept bantering back and forth, accompanied by the clanks and murmurs of crates being packed and carried into vans. Some vendors had settled down to eat, over at the stands that sold yakisoba and dumplings, but it seemed their raunchy laughter had discouraged any from claiming the other table at the noodle soup yatai. One person did approach them, however. It was a crinkly old woman, thin as rice paper in her heavy kimono. She bowed politely once she reached their table and-
"Pardon, my lady, I hadn't finished", Mephisto enlightened.
No, but the old lady seemed firmly convinced that he had, and padded back to the yatai – she was the owner's mother or something? – with Mephisto's cup of chilli seeds. If she wasn't completely deaf, she must be pretty close to. Not that it mattered: he just snapped his fingers and summoned his cup of condiment anew.
"She left before you could finish?" Shiro leered sweetly. "Aww ain't that a smudge on your reputation as a womanizer~?"
"This is about to become a challenge, Shiro", he informed with a sharply raised eyebrow.
"You feel like challenging the King of Freudian Slips?" He spread his arms and slurped down the last udon string with a cocky grin. "Come at me, Sammy~"
"And the loser has to treat the winner when we go to Mepphy Land", the demon concluded.
And so it began: the battle to eat a whole serving of noodles without succumbing to the other's taunts. It was such a ridiculous thing to do – really, he remembered playing that kind of game with some of the other orphanage kids when he was still little – but Mephisto could bend near all laws to his liking, be it the laws of time and space or the laws of acceptable social behaviour.
They were pretty even, really. Shiro's tolerance threshold had risen remarkably since he'd gotten to know his very unabashed friend. Friend. Truly, the human mind can grow accustomed to the strangest things. A demon for a friend? …yeah. Despite all the dubious things he did, all the secrets he kept and all the games he played, Shiro did consider that… goofy… paradox… his friend.
"So it'll be okay for me to have additional classes with the older exorcist students, even if I'm- Hey, what are you doing?!"
"It's no proper duel if it's not fought on equal terms, no~?" Mephisto smiled graciously, having poured the other half of his super-spicy condiment into Shiro's udon bowl. "Let's see you finish that."
Holy. Fucking. Hell. He had no idea what Mephisto's taste buds were made of, but he was pretty sure the material had a liquefaction point at 40 000 degrees.
"Problem~?"
"Nah, I hear it's supposed to hurt in the beginning", Shiro returned with a forced smile. It felt like his saliva was sizzling on his tongue.
"That's what you get for preferring them thick and juicy and taking it all in at once."
It was good that Shiro did prefer thick noodles, though, for that remark got him very close to snorting one up his nose.
"Goog whone", he admitted through a mouthful of udon. "Caweful, though: hik the wighk schpok angd ya mighk gek the schausche ing yer faisch."
"Good opportunity to find out if your increased intake of fruit makes any difference to the taste, then", he smirked and licked a droplet off his chopsticks in a very… evocative way.
"I can't believe they let you be in charge of children…"
The battle raged on, while Shiro wanted nothing more than for it to end – god, his mouth was on fire and his tear canals were trying to quell it before it burnt off his jaw. The darn old goat had to lose, quick as hell, but he was already drinking up the broth, and Shiro's breath wheezed up a throat filled with acid-
"Ha-aaah~ Mephisto…"
That did the trick. Totally. Mephisto spat the broth back into his bowl in a fit of coughing and laughter.
"…I didn't even mean to make it sound that dirty." It was a good thing his face was already flushed from the spice…
"Nhnhnahaaha I- I-kueheheheee Ineedadictaphone! I need a dictahahahahaaa…!"
It wasn't long before Shiro, too, surrendered to laughing his lungs out. Fuck, he'd been up all night, his eyes were hurting and tears were running and Mephisto's unrestrained, hooting laughter just swept him along, like an avalanche he was all too happy to lose himself in.
"I'm… happy", he thought to himself, feeling light-headed almost as if he were drunk but pinning it as too little sleep and too much fun. "Real fairy tale happy."
Through squinting eyes, he saw Mephisto wiping laughing tears from eyes that were reduced to crumpled-up arcs of merriment. He was happy, too… and somewhere within Shiro, a small, cosy warmth assured him that the demon was happy with him. Not with the memory of a man who had died centuries ago.
"Oh dear, oh dear… Given that golden nugget I won't even mind losing." The fit had passed, the tears had been dried, and the forest green eyes seemed brighter than ever in the dusk. "So – how does Saturday sound for Mepphy Land?"
"Can't", he chuckled. "Kasumi will be dropping Shizu off for school then, and she'll stay one day extra to see me. Oi, don't gimme that sulky puppy-eyes-look: I've spent near every night of summer holidays with you."
"And what does Miss Honda have to say about that~?"
"No, I… Shut up: you've lost already."
A/N: Ah, yes: the full title is "One Night at the Stand". *trololololo~* Based on real events during one unforgettable supper in Kyoto. The title was made up by Doodle and Mickey, too.