Burning the Midnight Oil

Chapter 14

Midnight Stroll

~Nino~

"It's nothing, Futaro. Stop worrying about it."

"It's like a pair of tiny mosquitoes are dogfighting in my skull and someone's trying to suffocate them by stuffing cotton in my ears. I'm going to worry about it."

"You're freaking out over nothing, just bring it down. Think about it."

"You're right, need to think. Maybe we should go to the hospital."

"Not like that!"

"Will this warrant surgery?"

"You sound like you're talking through a wall to me, too. This happens every time."

"You're sure this is normal?"

"I'm telling you, it's normal. It goes away on its own."

"Really?"

"This is like my twentieth concert. Yeah, really."

"Twenty? And your ears haven't revolted yet?"

"Yeah, because they get better. And if you ask me one more time I'm going to take that cotton out of your ears and shove it in your mouth."

Futaro mulled her threat, then shook his head, "I don't like that."

"That's the point, you-" She was cut off when Futaro leaned down and kissed her. His lips crashed on hers, too hard, and their teeth clacked together. They leaned back and grimaced. Nino ran her tongue over her throbbing teeth to check that everything was still in its proper place. "Careful when you do that!"

Futaro rubbed his mouth and muttered, "Sorry."

"Try again."

"Huh?"

"Try again! Carefully," Nino demanded.

Futaro looked amused, "I like it when you ask me to-"

"Ask? Who's asking for anything? I'm simply giving you the chance to make up for your blunder."

"You're literally asking for it."

Nino felt her cheeks warming in blush and wondered if Futaro could see it in the street light. He better not be enjoying it. She fumed, "Fine then, just forget it." She moved to stride past him, but he caught her and pulled her closer. He looked at her with those eyes, such pretty eyes as cool as permafrost. They sparked in the dim light lingering in the night like ice cubes in a colorful drink under a candelabra. When he tried again, she let him. Oh, did she ever. She didn't know if they still sucked at kissing, they probably did, and it didn't matter. His lips were warm butter melting over hers. Oh, yes!

Futaro pulled back, "That's how you shut someone up."

Nino glared, "You want me to shut up?"

"You don't get to complain when you make the same threat."

"Double standards of men and women, Fuu."

"Whatever. My way is better."

Nino knew she was blushing like iron ready for the smithy, but she owned it, tapping his cheek and winking, "I didn't disagree." She took his hand and they continued down the empty street along the river.

Nino tapped her teeth carefully, "Watch it next time, this is a million-yen smile you're threatening."

"You're being gratuitous."

"No, this literally cost a million yen."

"Huh? How?"

"A couple awkward years and a very good orthodontist."

"Huh. What're we talking? You had dental work?"

"Something like that."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It was more like a project. Like building a Pyramid."

"Braces? Retainer? Head gear?"

Nino grumbled, "All three, at one point."

"No way. When was this?"

"No, forget it. I shouldn't have said anything."

"There's no going back now, Nino. Gotta lay it all out for me."

"I do not."

"I'm persistent. You know that well enough by now."

She sighed, "Yeah, I do. Fine, but keep this to yourself."

"Like I talk with anyone else."

"Why does it sound like you're bragging about being a hermit?"

"Get on with it, Nino."

"Alright. It was primary school and my teeth weren't coming in straight, and as if that weren't enough I had an under bite. My mom took me to the orthodontist and she cycled me through all three for...two years? Something like that."

"I'm trying to imagine you with head gear."

"Don't, it wasn't permanent. Just something I had to wear at night."

"How long did your sisters have to wear them?"

"They didn't."

"It was only you?"

"Just me. Everyone else's teeth were perfect, or close enough," Nino said, pausing, "I didn't talk much back then. I didn't like being different. I could pretend we were still the same whenever my mouth was shut."

Futaro's hand shifted in hers, rubbing the back of her hand. "And now you're a gossip. It's like you're making up for lost time."

"Ha. Ha. Ha. Did you ever have dental work?"

"Just cavities. I, well, used to think it was cool to not brush my teeth. Then, when I got three cavities, my dad took pictures of me in the dental chair with my mouth pried open after being drugged halfway to nirvana. He joked, 'Now this is cool!', that got me brushing real good. Never had a cavity since."

"Can I see them?"

"My fillings?"

"Yeah, I'm curious."

"You've never seen one?"

"Nope, we never got cavities. Mom made sure we brushed like a religious ritual."

"Probably saved your family a lot of money back then."

"Yeah, well, except for me and my stupid teeth. I was the expensive one." She frowned, and wondered if she'd been perfect, her mother would have been able to afford nicer things. Better food, and more of it, too. Enough for mother never wondering if she had enough for all six plates. Maybe even better treatment for herself. One million yen was a lot of money then, would it have made a difference for mother? She didn't want to think about that, it always took her somewhere unhappy. "I broke my leg once, too, during football. And my eyes are the worst of the five of us. I've worn contacts since I was eight. I've always had glasses and I never used them, I would've been different from my sisters. And those lenses, I don't think they were cheap back then." She paused, then said, "There was always something wrong with me she needed to fix."

She didn't catch herself in time, whatever expression sparked something in Futaro. He narrowed his eyes at her, "None of that was your fault."

She shrugged, "It still happened." Dammit, why was she the one ruining their night? Why did she always take it somewhere unpleasant? She'd never talked about these things with her sisters, but with him they just kept popping up, like she was slowly turning into the topics like a drunk driver veering off the road.

A part of her knew she wanted to share these dark doubts with him, but she'd couldn't fully admit it to herself. It was too much for her to accept, at least for now.

Futaro said, "It was worth the price."

"Huh?"

"Your smile. Worth it, I think. I'm sure she thought so, too. After all, she wouldn't have paid if she didn't." Futaro scratched the back of his head, looking uncomfortable, as if he'd stepped into the wrong restroom. How often did he try cheering someone up who wasn't in his family? Hardly ever, and certainly not like this. Something else just for her. That alone made her feel better.

She leaned in closer and asked, "Can I see those pictures?"

"No."

"Come on."

"No."

"I promise I won't laugh."

"You'll break it, and still no."

"Why are you being so difficult? It's just one picture."

"One picture? Alright, fine. Show me yours, braceface."

"Never."

"All's fair."

"Not even possible. I destroyed them all."

"There isn't one sitting in one of your scrap books?"

"All closed-mouth smiles."

"Is that so? Alright, well I'm sure if I ask Ichika-"

"Don't you dare!"

"Ah, so there's still a print somewhere. I think it's a fair trade."

"It is not. That's..."

Futaro smiled slightly, "Alright, let's drop it."

Nino slid her hand up to grip his arm, letting him lead her down the empty street. A few lonely cars zipped through the evening as lone messengers braving the unknown. They walked under dim streetlights along the river leading them home. She wondered how much time they had left until they arrived. She wasn't ready for the night to end.

Suddenly Futaro started humming something, an echo of a tune. She recognized it from the concert, the one the band played early on, right before he kissed her.

"What's with you? You're acting weird."

"You don't like it?"

"I didn't say that. It's just, strange."

He shrugged and continued humming. He reached the chorus and sang softly, "Fallen away, to the last of memories. I reach out and clasp what-"

"You're singing it wrong."

"Huh?"

"It goes 'I reach out and touch what can never be'."

"Really? I could've sworn...well, I wasn't really listening."

Nino grinned, "Oh, was I distracting?"

"Completely." He said, not knowing how sexy he was, which was very. He asked her, "Did you hear what I said in there?"

Nino shook her head, "During the song? You said it right when the beat dropped, of course I couldn't hear it."

Futaro smiled at her, the kind of smile that wraps you up like a blanket so completely you want to fall asleep in it. Then he looked up to the sky. "There are trillions of trillions of stars up there. How many can you see?"

Nino swept the sky and found a few dozen glittering through the evening glow. "Maybe fifty?"

"You'd see a few hundred on a good night with the new moon. Last year, when we were up that mountain one night, I saw thousands. More stars than I'd ever seen at once. And that wasn't even a fraction of what's up there. I wondered what it would be like to see them all at once, one massive canvas of lights. I wonder if it would be blinding.

"And now when I look up, I think, how small everything is. I've never been more than a few hundred kilometers outside this city, I've never left the country. All that I've seen is just, so, small. If I snap my fingers," he snapped, "the light from my snap will cross the distance of the Earth before the sound crosses the river. And I almost want to give up caring about everything in the face of something so big, something I know I'll never understand even if I study 'til I die.

"But suddenly, that doesn't seem as important. I don't care anymore if I'm small, or if my own little slice of this world is nothing compared to everything I can't know. It matters to me. In all that bigness, I can give my own little world its meaning. And I realized something, I can break the laws of physics. I can make matter from nothing, by deciding what matters at all."

Then he looked at her with those eyes that were suddenly as bottomless as a hole to the center of the earth, infinite wells of dream.

"I said that I love you."

Sometimes the brain hears something so inconceivable, it resets itself several seconds and repeats the immediate past, like rewinding the tape on a worn-out VHS. Nino's brain did this once, twice, and still couldn't quite grasp exactly what he said. Not right away.

But Futaro continued, looking straight at her with his steady gaze as casually as if he were discussing the headlines at the table. Futaro was a boulder, it took him time to change at all. But once he did, he was solid. As soon as he was sure of something, he was rarely awkward expressing it. That time on the roof, his feelings were a wriggling ball of worms impossible to unwind. Now he was sure, his love was a fact, and there was nothing to fear in expressing a fact.

He said, "And I know it's sudden, it surprised me too. It happened right there at the concert, you know the moment. I saw you, ah, you just looked so alive, and I realized I'd forgotten about that, and I wanted to feel it again. I wanted what you had. You brought that back to me, and I fell in love with you.

"I memorized the definition of love in English class: a feeling of warm personal attachment or affection for another. Ten little words, that's all it was to me. But it's deeper now. I've read a hundred poems from wise men searching to give it a proper meaning, and I never saw beneath the surface. So I really don't have the vocabulary to describe this, what I feel for you. But I have the word, and that's all I need to tell you. And I don't know if it's something that lasts forever or if it's half-life is already ticking down. I hope its the former, but I know that right now, love is what it is. So I want to enjoy it with you, however long it lasts."

How she'd wanted to be loved. She'd imagined Futaro's inevitable falling for her, the confession under the moonlight without any hesitation. Now here it was, almost like she'd dreamed. And she couldn't believe it was happening. She stood frozen, unsure if she would suddenly wake up. Because deep down she hadn't thought it would ever happen, that invisible boundary between her hope and reality could never be crossed. He couldn't love her, not like she wanted. So when he did, when he finally met her expectation, she couldn't believe it. And, secretly, so secret even she wouldn't acknowledge it, because she didn't think she deserved it.

But Futaro made her cross that boundary, he wanted her to acknowledge his confession. He stepped closer to her and tentatively reached for her hips to hold her. His hands numbed her where they touched. Nino stared at him, her mind still reeling from reality. "I love you, Nino."

Her mother had left her quintuplets with many lessons. One of her last was shared just six months before her death. She must have seen the cloaked visage waiting to welcome her from this life waiting on the horizon. Before she left, she wanted to leave her daughters with as much womanly wisdom to face the world as she could manage. This particular lesson was in men. Find a good one, she said, and beware anyone who honeys their words with filling lies. Search for a true man, a good man, or no man at all and you will be better for it. She and her sisters hadn't thought much of it then, boys were still disgusting, dirty little creatures they were happy to avoid. It was Itsuki who put the pieces together, after they learned the specifics about where little children come from. Itsuki noted they never knew their dad, and how mother never talked about him. She wondered if their mother had learned this lesson the hard way.

Nino argued with Itsuki's reasoning. Their mother never talked about their father and wouldn't answer why. So they were left to imagine what kind of man he was, or had been. Miku and Yotsuba thought he died, but that couldn't be it or they'd visit his grave. Itsuki imagined it was her mother who kept him out of their life, for one reason or another against his will. Ichika never told them what she thought he might be, not directly. But once she'd slipped that maybe even mother hadn't known who he was. As for Nino, she liked to imagine him as a charming rogue wandering the world, a man of the road, a modern adventurer freed from restraint and the opinions of others. She wondered if he'd love them, her, if he met them. She thought he would have. Those were their girlish imaginings and they were left in childhood. Mostly. Maybe she carried that ideal of a man a little longer. But it never bothered her, growing up without a father. She never looked at other families and felt like something was missing. She'd had her mother, her sisters, and a real father later on. They were complete as long as they were together.

But her mother's words came back to her now and then, always in the most uncalled for moments. When she was alone chopping vegetables, walking with friends in the mall, they would strike her and remind her. They came to her now. Was Futaro a liar? Or was he a good man? A true man? Could she trust him and his love? And she wondered, what would mother think? Would she see him as everything she'd learned from their birth father? Maybe. But Nino did. She trusted him. And she felt his love, his genuine love, all for her. She breathed his words as a substitute for air, and it filled her, lightening her like a balloon until she floated away. She was loved. At last.

Futaro had a moment, a sliver of a second, to flash amusement, as if he'd expected her to act how she did, as Nino tackled him and kissed him like a lost soul in the desert kisses a pond. She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close, wanting to feel his body pressed tightly against hers like cars colliding on a highway. She moved her mouth like she saw in the soaps she watched with her sisters, opening it and tentatively poking her tongue to welcome his lips. She expected him to freeze up at her advance, but Futaro was full of surprises tonight and welcomed her, all of her, just like she imagined. His arms circled her waist like a wall shielding her from the rest of the world and she happily made herself his captive. She moved her hands to cradle his face and held it while kissing him, her fingers trailing his skin as if to memorize his look by feeling. His tongue flipped hers on the tip and it felt much, much better than she thought it would, like every touch completed an electric current. That indirect kiss on the rooftop was so far away.

They broke apart and Nino breathed, asking, "Say it again?"

"I love you," he said.

"With my name, say it that way."

"I love you, Nino."

"I love you too, Fuu. Futaro." She leaned into his shoulder and felt his arms cradling her comfortably. His hand rose to thread her hair at the back of her head, she felt his fingers teasing her scalp. She leaned up and kissed his cheek, it was warm in the cold from a blush that hadn't gone away. She could have enjoyed staying like this for the night, never letting the moment die.

But it had to, nothing can last forever. And certainly nothing this good. But it wasn't either of them who took their moment away. The world did that for them.

Nino felt her phone buzz in her pocket. She ignored it, until it buzzed again. And again. It ended on the fourth. Then she felt Futaro's phone buzz once, twice, thrice, four times. Futaro noticed too and said, "No one messages me this late. Except you."

So who would be messaging both of them?

Nino and Futaro checked their phones. Futaro frowned, "There's a link, open it on yours."

"You need a better phone plan."

"It's enough."

Nino rolled her eyes and checked her phone. "It's Yotsuba."

"What is it?"

"Here." She showed him.

GUYS! GU

YS! BIG PROBLEM! BIG BIG PROBLEM!

*GUYS!

CHECK THE LINK!

Nino checked the numbers in the conversation. Just her and Futaro. Why would Yotsuba be texting only the two of them? She glanced at Futaro, who shrugged. She opened the link and waited for it to load. It linked to a single tweet with a picture. She read the text as it loaded.

Looks like Yotsubunny and Uesugi are having a good time! Called it! #TheAfterlife #Classromance #Classreplove

The image loaded, and her world shattered so that nothing could be the same.

She looked at the picture of her and Futaro at a distance, bathed in the glow of the concert, lips locked in their first kiss for everyone to see.

Everyone.

A/N

If the last chapter was the climax of the arc, think of this as a short epilogue, and a hint at what's to come in the next. I suppose it could have ended here, if things had gone a bit differently. But they didn't, and happily ever afters are not that easy. This was never meant to be a fairy tale, but something more grounded, and they both still have a long ways to go.

I'm noticing something as I go on, and that's that while I planned for this story to begin as a story with two protagonists, and it's switched between their perspectives fairly evenly so far. In the future, I see it shifting further towards Nino, possibly to the point where she's become the protagonist and Futaro is the dueteragonist. I didn't plan for it to go that way, but characters can surprise you. If it does, then this is more Nino's story than anyone's, and I'm not opposed to the idea.

One anonymous reviewer mentioned how the party last chapter didn't seem to reflect on Japanese culture, and seemed overly American, along with Futaro's sudden burst of emotion. I'd like to comment on this briefly, once more. I am American, my perspective is American, and that will inevitably influence the story in ways it would not be if I were Japanese. I'm sure Japan youth enjoy some similar night life, but I cannot say they are parallel. They are only what I know. But I think Nino is the kind of girl who'd enjoy that style of concert, so I don't consider it OOC.

The last chapter garnered a groundswell of support, and it's thanks to that that I found the extra willpower to polish this chapter and get it out on schedule. Thank you to everyone who had enjoyed this story, who's reviewed or commented their support, and I hope you'll continue to do so. With the next arc, I can promise more trials for both Nino and Futaro, and for their friends and family, and even more perspectives as the story broadens its scope. I hope you'll enjoy this next stage. So please continue to enjoy, review, and I'll continue this story soon.