It was the sound of unfamiliar laughter that stalled his feet and suspended his hand an inch from the door handle.
The door to his office was cracked. Just barely.
As chairman to the Aihara Academy, it was not in him to snoop and pry; but the sound of his granddaughter's voice compelled him to silence himself, slow his breathing and tread closer to the door to peer inside.
And instantly, a scowl overtook his face. His eyes narrowed, and his jaw tightened.
Seated together, in the very chair he had occupied for years as head of the academy, were his granddaughter and that... girl.
He supposed the sight was not worthy of the way it made his blood pressure rise. They were merely sitting there, Mei reading and signing documents while Yuzu peered over her shoulder, rather attentively, he had to admit.
But then Yuzu said something, nothing more than a whisper and far too low for the Chairman to hear. And then—and then—
He felt a blood vessel burst, right as Yuzu's lips made contact with his granddaughter's cheek.
He clamped his jaw shut, tighter, tighter, until something ugly popped within the confines of his skull. He was one breath away from barging into the office. His hands had balled into fists, and if he tightened the grip any further, he was bound to break skin and draw blood.
But he watched, as Mei set down her pen, and whatever she said next was drowned out by some combination between the angry blood roaring in his ears and the low tone with which she spoke. Her eyes never left the papers, but then all at once, Yuzu was opening her arms and collecting Mei into a hug.
She tightened the hold, pulling Mei closer and closer before relaxing the embrace with an exaggerated sigh.
At this point, he was well beyond that one breath, but something still held him back. Maybe it was because Mei let it all happen, or maybe it was the way that, after an initial moment of surprise, Mei returned the hug, lifting her arms around Yuzu's back.
Or maybe, maybe it was the way that Yuzu spoke next, something of an absolute whisper into Mei's ear, words meant for his granddaughter alone, and how her fingers ghosted along Mei's back, up and down along her spine and across her shoulder blades. It was all so... so intimate, in a way he couldn't quite explain.
He jolted to laughter—because it was not the blonde one who laughed this time, but his own granddaughter.
It was soft and light, nothing longer than an exhale, but it was a blissful, honeyed sound that left his heart skipping a beat in some constricting emotion he couldn't give a name to.
Mei moved slowly, not out of hesitation, but as though she simply couldn't bring herself to truly agitate and break the moment. She buried her face into the side of Yuzu's neck where she could not be seen and, with a deep, weary sigh, melted into the older girl.
He... could not recall the last time he had heard laughter part from Mei's lips.
The Chairman swallowed thickly.
"You're tired," Yuzu mumbled.
Mei sighed once more, and she sprayed her fingers out along Yuzu's back. She did not give any verbal response, at least that he could hear.
For the six months that Mei had come to live with him, those six months she had been separated from Yuzu and from a woman who treated her as her own child and from an apartment that felt like an actual home—for those six months, Mei had been nothing but a—a shell of a person. Had she ever truly been more than that, prior to first living with those... new additions to the family?
And that, he had not even realized, not until after she had once again returned to that apartment and away from him.
His granddaughter had worked—and worked and worked, tirelessly, often until she fell asleep with a pen between her fingers and a pile of papers secured under her deadened hand.
He thought she had pushed herself for the great pride she had in the Aihara family. After all, she had been the one to turn to him; she had been the one to demand the dramatic uptake in work; she had been the one to push the wedding forward.
How poorly he had understood his granddaughter.
How utterly wrong he had been about her intentions.
It had been out of some twisted sense of obligation—an obligation that would have chained her to some odd concept of Aihara pride for the rest of her life, drowned her in misery and expected her to live with it.
Had she been allowed to go through with the marriage to Udagawa, how would she have been now?
That, was a puzzling and uncertain thought, indeed.
Mei rather unwillingly pulled away from the hug, and he focused in on her face and realized, for the first time, that she looked just as exhausted as she had sounded.
But even now, under the throes of that exhaustion, she looked more alive than she had all six months that she had lived in his house.
His mind screeched to a halt, come up upon on a sudden dry rut of nothing as Yuzu grasped at her shoulders, face flushed a bright red.
"Mei," Yuzu spoke, and she leaned in, her intention glaringly clear:
Kiss her.
She was less than an inch from his granddaughter's lips when Mei planted her palm against Yuzu's face, squishing her cheek and pushing her back.
"One moment," Mei commanded.
Yuzu made some kind of odd throat groan but froze nonetheless, eyes shut and lips puckered.
Mei leaned across the desk, reaching for a picture frame.
He knew the photo within that frame very well: It was one of the three of them—Mei, his son, and the Chairman himself—and it was the only remnant of his family that he had allowed beyond the office doors.
And Mei was laying it face-down against the wooden mahogany of the desk.
Once she situated herself back in the chair, she took an extra moment, threading a loose band of hair behind her ear and drawing the cuffs of her sleeves further over the palms of her hands (both likely nervous ticks and things that he had never noticed about her); and then, gently, she grabbed at the collar of Yuzu's uniform. She tugged the girl closer, closer, and Yuzu willingly, happily, obliged, up until their lips met.
Oh, how would Mei feel, to know her grandfather—not merely a photo of him, but the real him—watched her kiss that girl.
The roaring was back in his ears. His toes dug into the tips of his shoes, and the tips of his shoes dug into the carpeted floor. It was the only thing keeping him from throwing open the door and dislodging that vile wench from his granddaughter.
But when they broke, when they released the kiss and pulled apart...
Mei was smiling.
She was smiling, something fragile and tender and warm, and there was a light blush illuminating her cheeks in the most childishly innocent of ways, and her eyes were half-lidded as though she were trapped in a sort of blissful contentedness.
Never mind laughing. When was the last time he had seen his granddaughter smile?
And when Yuzu rested her forehead against Mei's, and when she whispered, "I love you," to his granddaughter...
Mei returned those very same three words.
Her eyes slid fully shut, as though to relish in the contact.
"You need to go home and sleep," Yuzu commented. Her eyes traced the features of Mei's face, and her hand came up to smooth out the collar of Mei's uniform from where it had uncharacteristically popped up.
There was a moment of hesitation, and then Mei sighed and reluctantly broke the contact.
"Not yet," she began and picked up her pen from where she had left it beside her current stack of documents. "There are still quite a few forms I need to fill out."
Yuzu pouted and folded her arms across her chest. But then, as though a light bulb had gone of in her head: "If we leave now, we can stop by the grocery store and get whatever you want for dinner."
Mei scribbled something at the bottom of her current document. "I will be happy with anything you make, Yuzu."
A beat, then two, then three—and then Yuzu's face colored red, and she collapsed against the back of the chair, muffling a whine of joyful embarrassment into her hands.
"You are free to go home if you would like," Mei continued.
She flipped to the next sheet, just as Yuzu shot up. "No way! I like spending time with you, even if it's in this stuffy old office."
There was a pause, and the Chairman dared to step closer, strangely fearful to miss what Mei would next say.
She stilled her writing, but she did not look over at Yuzu. "...I like spending time with you, also."
Considering how Yuzu had reacted to the last semi-sweet thing Mei had said, he had expected her to blush scarlet once more. But instead, she sat in silence, seemingly mesmerized at the confession. Her lips sat parted as Mei continued working.
It took a bit of a delay and a handful of blinks to clear the cloudy buzz of delight swirling around her mind, but Yuzu finally wrangled words out.
"Mei?"
"Yes, Yuzu?"
"Can we go on a date this weekend?"
"...I do not see why not, as long as you are caught up on your studying."
"What you don't know is I'm already ahead of the game, Mei!"
"Then I see no reason why we can't."
He thought he had come to know his granddaughter fairly well.
That was apparently not the case, as he had been repeatedly made aware of.
Her words were rather bland on their own, but her tone. Her tone held the slightest hint of something warm, something of... excitement.
And it was clear that Yuzu caught this, as well.
She let Mei continue her work for a few seconds before she shifted closer and rested her head on the younger girl's shoulder.
"Where would you like to go?" Yuzu questioned. She introduced the topic carefully. (Perhaps she was aware that all of her talking was just prolonging the amount of time they had to spend in the office.)
"I don't mind."
"Meeeeeeeeei," Yuzu whined.
"Anywhere is fine, Yuzu."
"But I want to do something you would enjoy!" She pulled on the sleeve of Mei's uniform, and the younger girl sighed as her pen smudged across the page.
"I would enjoy anything you picked out," Mei attempted to placate as she reached for a small container of white-out within one of the desk's drawers.
"How do you know that? What if I pick out something really boring?" Yuzu asked. Her tone was a little sheepish as she peered down at the ugly black smear across the paper.
"...I will be with you, will I not?"
There was a hilt of silence in their conversation, and the Chairman's attention drifted to Yuzu, just in time to see her sputter and bury her face in her hands and the side of Mei's shoulder.
"O-Of course, but I would really like to do something that you would like to do, Mei!"
Mei closed the bottle of white-out and returned it inside the drawer.
"Crepes."
"Crepes?" Yuzu repeated.
"Yes. Crepes."
Yuzu smiled. "Okay. But we have to get different flavors!"
Mei prodded the form with her finger, testing to see if the white-out were still wet. "Why?" Her finger came off dry, so she reached for her pen and signed her name across the bottom of the paper.
"So we can share!"
Mei gave a small hum in response, just as she flipped her current document over into the completed stack. She pulled a new sheet in front of herself and then reached across the desk, hand finding the frame she had set face down earlier before—
"Wait."
Yuzu's hand gripped Mei's wrist, just enough to stop her. There was a gentle dusting of pink to her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose.
"One more?"
Mei didn't acknowledge her request with any kind of verbal affirmation, but she captured Yuzu's lips with her own, quick and chaste. When she pulled back, Yuzu leaned forward, just a hair, before realizing the kiss had ended and Mei had turned to prop the picture frame up, all as though nothing had happened.
The Chairman retracted from his spot and straightened his back. He had lost track of how much time he had spent standing there (and he was not willing to dedicate time to that quandary because it was bound to fill his stomach with a grimy, sleazy feeling).
He adjusted his tie, raised his glasses more properly atop his nose—
And then he knocked on the door and slid it open without a hint of hesitation (because, after all, this was technically his office).
Instantly, he was welcomed with an overly cheery "Hey, Gramps!" (and he couldn't help but notice that Mei did not say anything, as though she had grown accustomed to the way Yuzu greeted him and to the little nickname she had given him).
"Hello, Grandfather."
Yuzu slipped closer to his granddaughter, not for any particular reason, but just to be closer; and there it was again.
That smile, that soft up-turn to his granddaughter's lips; and if he looked close enough, he could have sworn he saw something flash in her eyes, something... There was definitely something otherworldly lighting those violet irises because his granddaughter had never looked like that before.
And all of it—all of it—was directed at that girl, because of that girl.
He wondered, if Mei knew what her face looked like at that moment, how soft it was, how gentle her features were, how glaringly obvious it all betrayed that she was in love—
He jolted where he stood.
He glanced between the two, but he wasn't focusing on whatever words the blond was saying to Mei.
No, he was struck by the realization, that Mei...
Mei was in love.
His granddaughter was in love with this girl.
He already knew that, but it was all at once hitting him, where the sight was right in front of him and clear as day, and it left him in nothing short of a stupor.
"Yuzu, please," Mei whispered.
He blinked out of his daze to the sound of Mei's voice. Yuzu had dragged her into another hug.
And that, that furrow to her brows, and the downturn of her eyes to the floor: that was the most uncomfortable Mei had looked all night.
It was not because Yuzu was hugging her, no. It was because he was here to see it.
He cleared his throat.
"Mei."
Her eyes shot up to meet his.
"Yes, Grandfather?"
His eyes flickered over to Yuzu, who was staring at Mei with the most captivated look that he had ever seen a person let so willingly consume their features.
And then his attention fell back to Mei, whose eyes held a bout of apprehension and uncertainty, two things out of... out of an unknown number of emotions that he knew were caused by him. Him and her fear that she, that this, was a disappointment to him.
He knew the very last thing she wished was to bring shame onto the Aihara name—yet she could not very well relinquish this girl, this... abundantly integral source of happiness and love.
So what should happen, if her love for Yuzu did just that?
He sighed, and something rattled around in his chest, something mucus-like and sickly. The cooling weather certainly wasn't helping his already waning state.
"Your work has been greatly appreciated." Already, there was a clear expression of shock morphing his granddaughter's face. "You should leave for the night."
Her eyes widened a fraction of an inch. The pause between his words and Mei's reply stretched just beyond that comfortable threshold, and Mei knew she had to say something, but... What could she say to words that she had never anticipated hearing?
"It is no trouble, Grandfather. There is not much work left to be completed."
Her voice was a strange mix of things. Shock, which was already playing with her features, along with some sense of relief, just as she stopped struggling altogether against Yuzu's affection (maybe even happiness in that she did not have to fight against it while he was in the same room).
And just... perhaps it was because that girl was smiling up at him, but the Chairman could very well feel the corners of his own mouth pull up.
He coughed, distilling any chance of that expression taking hold of his lips.
"Nonsense, I will finish the rest. It is far too late for you to remain working. You will surely miss dinner, otherwise." His tone was rigid, stern, even; but it didn't match his words.
Yuzu gasped, and he fought the entirely foreign inclination to laugh at how overtly comical the whole thing was.
"I told you!" Yuzu exclaimed.
Mei merely sighed, but no longer was her face so tense. If anything, he swore that the faintest ghost of a smile was puling at her lips once more, as small as it was this time.
When the two girls departed after a handful of customary thanks and farewells, Yuzu leading his granddaughter out hand-in-hand, he thought, that if Mei were happy, then he... Well, he...
He couldn't yet control the rise to his blood pressure at the sight of those kisses and hugs. And he couldn't help the clench to his chest, the fear that this was not the best for Mei.
But he had already gone and proven to himself how entirely mistaken he was about that, hadn't he? He had already provided that "not the best" for Mei, in the form of not one, but two failed arranged marriages. It was because of that... because of Yuzu that his granddaughter was laughing and smiling and above all else happy.
He plopped down into the chair with little grace and heaved a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. He eyed the stack of papers with an air of exhaustion before drawing the first sheet to himself.
He hadn't once considered that Mei was not happy, but the thought was jarring—because under that stoic, leadership figure of a man was a grandfather. And as Mei's grandfather, he should want nothing more than for his granddaughter to be happy.
He had obviously failed at seeing what did and what did not make Mei happy.
And clearly, Yuzu made her happy.
Far happier than he could recall his granddaughter ever being.
And if Mei were happy, then, well, he should be nothing but happy for her.
Author's Note: Thanks for checking out the second chapter!
I like to respond to all of the comments/reviews I get, but I can't when they are "guests." So I want to say thank you here for taking the time to leave me such sweet words! I'm happy you guys are enjoying the story. :)
(Also, all of the titles are taken from songs, so I can't take credit for any of them, lmbo.)