Ruki questions the course of her adulthood, and learns that growing up doesn't have to mean growing apart.

Junctures

Chapter V
"Eight Years Ago"

"No good?"

"Huh?"

Alice looked up at him, interrupted from distractedly staring at the plate of food instead of eating it.

"Is it the bean sprouts? Too much chilli? Is it the fishy smell? Goddamnit, I asked that old geezer to sell me the fish sauce that wasn't too—"

"No!" she cried. "This is good. I love it."

Okay, she was a little too enthusiastic. For her standards anyway. "You haven't even tried it."

Alice rolled her eyes, a little smirk on her face. "Well I won't if you keep badgering me." She didn't have much of an appetite for Thai food these days, but she'd humour him anyway. Using her chopsticks to pick up a sizeable helping of the homemade pad thai, she locked eyes with him as she did to make sure he saw.

She put the lot of it in her mouth, and nodded approvingly. Kazu laughed as she struggled to get the stray bits of noodle falling out the corners of her mouth, and as he sat back to watch her eat his loving handiwork, his hand subconsciously went to rest over the key in his pocket. He'd cleaned his apartment, the sheets were washed, and she looked perfect in her waitress uniform, Kazu particularly admiring the way the fabric stretched at her chest, a singular button barely keeping it together.

Tonight would be the night.

"Good?"

She managed to swallow. "That's some fucking good pad thai."

"YES!" He pumped a fist in the air. "Take that, Takato!"

Alice didn't know what that was about, but she smiled to herself all the same. He was most definitely a doofus. A mostly frustrating, but well-meaning, occasionally-incredibly-sweet doofus. And he didn't deserve any of this.

Since her graduation night, that night, Alice had poured all of her waking time into the remaining weeks of her part-time job, taking all the shifts she possibly could at the restaurant—both days and nights—anything she could get to avoid having to face her betrayed boyfriend. She'd been especially tired lately, and her body ached but the weary bones and mental exhaustion was worth at least the time she needed to think about what she was going to say. This was their first night, alone and actually spending some time together, and she could barely look in his direction.

A cursory glance at him while he devoured his food confirmed her anxieties. God, she loved the way he spent so much time trying to get his hair to stand exactly upright like that. And the sheer width of his stupid grin… She even loved the quips he'd make to annoy her just before surprising her with something completely, unthinkingly selfless.

And she wondered, when—exactly—had she started to fall out of love with him? How could it have been so surreptitious that she hadn't even noticed until her lips were on somebody else's, and Kazu hadn't even been a passing thought?

Another mouthful of pad thai later, the smile had disappeared and the reality of what she did those three weeks before came back to settle in her stomach as a tense, simmering mess.

"Why're you acting so weird?" he asked with a mouth still full of pad thai.

"What? I'm not."

He swallowed. "Uh, yeah you are." Sitting undignified with his elbows on the table and chopsticks in the air, he waited for an answer from Alice that never came, her blue eyes averting its gaze.

This wasn't how it was supposed to play out—denial wasn't her usual style, and lying to him more, even if it was to save her butt for the moment, would just make things worse if the truth was going to come out later anyway.

And she knew that, but the words wouldn't come out of her mouth.

Kazu gave her another weird look. "Oookay. Whatever. Actually, Alice, there's something I wanna give you…" He straightened up in his chair, wiped off any hints of sauce from around his mouth and smoothed out his shirt. Clearing his throat, he continued, stammering some. "I-I mean, well, I wanna ask you—uh—now that we've graduated and we'll both be working in Tokyo, I was kinda wondering if maybe you wanted to move—"

"I slept with someone else."

Almost immediately, likely taking the time to register what he'd just heard, his chopsticks fell to the floor. He was still for a moment. Then he began shaking his head, like he was refusing an offer. Like the words were given to him on a platter that could be taken back.

Hands clenched and unclenched. "…Who?"

At first, he spoke so quietly, Alice had to strain to hear him. But when she finally gathered the courage to look right at him, his scowl was deep. Terrifying. Eyes blazing.

"W-what—"

"Who!?"

It had plagued him—haunted him—for three weeks now.

On that night, in the last seconds of release, Henry had rolled away to lie beside her in post-coital stupor, despising himself. By the telltale way her shoulders twitched while she faced away from him, he was sure she'd wept too.

Was it was she who should tell Kazu? Was it him? Was it inappropriate to tell him together because it seemed to imply that they were telling him together? The uncertainty was agonising, and he'd hoped that she would give him some indication of her intentions but there wasn't a peep that was heard from her since. He'd tried calling several times, one night even waited outside her dad's old place where she was staying. At the risk of looking pushy though, he was kind of relieved that she hadn't come home.

Was she sleeping over at Kazu's place, he wondered? Somehow the thought bothered him, even when it had no right to.

Under the garish fluorescent light, Henry kept a watchful eye on the blade travelling over his jaw, chin and over the top of his neck, his gaze careful to avoid his own eyes. Finishing up, he wiped the blade on a towel and exited the bathroom, seizing on a shirt then grabbing a cardigan. If Alice wasn't going to give him any cues as to whether she would be telling Kazu anything, then he was not going to just wait around and let the guilt eat away at him. It was time to make things right.

Slipping on a pair of sneakers, he moved to grab his keys and his phone from the side table. A little envelope and telephone icon hovered on the thumb-sized front screen. Two missed calls and an unread message.

He flipped his phone open. From Alice McCoy.

Eyes glued to the screen, he opened the door to leave, only to stop when he noticed a pair of shoes facing him on the ground below.

Henry's eyes swung up to the head they belonged to, but Hirokazu's face was seen for only a split second before the fist flying into his face.

"You fucking asshole!"

Henry groaned and writhed on the ground, a hand on his face. "Ow… ow… argh…" The blood from his nose began to seep through between his fingers, and he was pretty sure it was broken.

Furious hands snatched at Henry's collar and jerked him back up and around, shoving him hard against the wall, the plaster colliding with the phone in his pocket and digging into his side.

"My girlfriend!? Really!?" Kazu bellowed, pinning him against the wall. "You can have anyone you want and you slept with my girlfriend!?"

Henry's hands flew back to his face and his eyes squeezed shut, prepared for the worst. The blood had run down his neck, staining his shirt collar where Kazu had bunched at the material, and Kazu's right knuckles were now trembling and glowing red where he had struck his best friend in the face just moments before.

To his surprise, Henry didn't receive the punch that he had anticipated, and slowly reopened his eyes to figure out what exactly was keeping him. What he found was Kazu's eyes, looking right at him for the first time that night. They were glassy and rimmed with redness. He'd been crying.

Kazu's eyes began to trail over Henry's face, at first over the bloodied nose, then to the streams of blood that had fanned down his face, over his mouth and down his neck.

Their heavy breathing and Henry's pained moaning filled in the silence, then quietly, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

The blue-haired boy attempted a reply but his throat wouldn't cooperate. Kazu slowly let go, Henry sliding down the wall and dropping onto the floor.

"Who sleeps with their best friend's girlfriend? Who does that?"

"I'm sorry," Henry managed to choke out, "I'm so sorry."

Kazu shook his head and turned away, bringing his right hand up to flinchingly nurse the pain with his other hand. It still trembled, but he soon figured that it wasn't because of the throbbing pain that it did.

"Why'd you do it?" Kazu asked still facing away from him, his rapid-thumping heartbeat working overtime.

The searing sensation in Henry's nose began to numb itself out as the feeling of regret came back to blanket over him. There was no delicate way to say why they did it. He didn't just see her across the room one night and decided that he had to have her.

What was funniest, he found—in the loosest sense of the word—was that he didn't even like her that much at first. She was smart, but seemed kind of haughty, a little too fond of the attention and advantages that her blonde hair and blue eyes gave her in Japan. Too sarcastic, too direct, didn't apologise enough, everything she said was a tease… and he didn't even notice when these became the things that he unequivocally liked about her.

"I… I think I love her," came Henry's muffled voice through his hands. Though what good did that confession do him when what he'd done couldn't ever be justified?

A loud crash was heard as Kazu kicked the small wooden dining table, flipping it over. Pivoting to look right at him, he yelled, "I'm your best friend, man! Doesn't that mean anything to you!?"

Kazu towered over the whimpering Henry, an accusing finger pointed right at him. Henry was huddled on the ground, blood all over his face and the hands that obscured it. His shirt was a mess. His legs sprawled out in defeat. Kazu did this, and he had to push out the thoughts of shame before they began to bubble to the surface.

Nostrils flaring, he forced himself to subdue his heavy breathing into deep inhales to calm himself down.

"Fucking pathetic," he finally spat. "Get yourself cleaned up."

Hirokazu stalked past him and back out the door, slamming it shut.

He sat still where he was for a while, partially riding out the pain, mostly in a limp state of shock. Henry then took his phone out of his pocket to check that it didn't get damaged when it hit the wall. The little envelope icon still lingered. He'd completely forgotten about the message.

He flipped the phone open.

From: Alice McCoy (amccoy1420)
Subject: Kazu knows
Message: I think he might be heading your way.
I'm really sorry. I didn't want to avoid you, but there's
something we need to talk about. It's urgent, so
call me back asap.

Despite the throng of blood on his face in desperate need of medical attention, he punched in her contact name to call her back.

What could possibly be more urgent than this?

"Bottoms up!"

Two tall shot glasses collided with a clink, the contents of which devoured by their proprietors in perfect harmony. Slamming them back onto the bar counter, Hirokazu looked to his companion, and she wiped a stray trickle of schnapps off her chin.

"Good to be back."

He gave her a thumbs up and a wink.

"Even if it has to be here with you," she quipped.

His face faltered at the jab, his pride decidedly hurt. "Hey! It's not like you're a big beacon of sunshine either, I was being nice when I ran into you at the station. I carried your suitcase home and everything, gimme a break."

Ruki chuckled before taking a sip of her rum-and-coke as a chaser. Fiery auburn hair now framed her face, her bangs grown out, and penetrating lilac eyes peered over her glass as she drank, trailing down to the cast around his right hand—an off-white that clashed starkly with the red of his polo shirt.

"So are you gonna tell me what happened to your hand or what? You didn't say anything when I asked you at the station. It's not like you to refuse attention," she said with a smirk.

Kazu rolled his eyes with a huff, uncharacteristically choosing not to toss a scathing rebuttal her way. "I punched a guy in the face a couple weeks ago." He crossed his arms and turned up his nose, feigning an air of triumph. "Guy didn't stand a chance."

"Yet you broke your hand."

"Shut up."

Ruki let out an exasperated sigh. "Does 'the guy' happen to be Henry?" Kazu's eyebrows shot up, immediately questioning her. "Takato and I do talk, you know."

Kazu's arms slowly uncrossed, dropping to his sides. "…So you know about…"

"Yeap." Ruki took another sip of her drink before her hand went up to signal the bartender, almost nonchalantly, for another round of peach schnapps.

"So why'd you ask? Just to torture me?" Two more shot glasses were placed in front of them in succession, the pungent faux-peach smell radiating from them.

Ruki lifted one off the counter, raised it in his direction as a courtesy and swiftly swung her head back to drink it. Glass slammed back onto the wooden countertop. "Yeap," she repeated.

Hirokazu followed suit, albeit a little less gracefully. Then, "Well I don't wanna talk about it."

Ruki guzzled down the rest of her rum-and-coke. "Good, I'm not interested."

Simultaneously, they both signalled to the bartender again with a sudden newfound irritation. Two can play at this game.

Before they knew it, hours and many a number of emptied shot glasses had passed, leaving them the only two still sitting at the bar on the thinning end of a Monday night at the dingy English pub. Ruki hadn't imagined her welcome back to big city life after four years away would end up the same way she had left it, alone with Kazu no less, who was finding it increasingly hard to contain his blatant and absolute sorrow for his situation with Henry and Alice.

"How could he do this to me, man?" he cried, his palms out as if he held something very fragile in them. "She was everything to me! And d'you know what? I was gonna ask her to move in with me! They fucked on their graduation night and they waited so long to tell me, ya know? So goddamn long."

Ruki slammed a fist onto the counter, forcing a stern face but body swaying tellingly. "Bitches!"

Kazu had slumped over the bar at this point, his head resting on his left arm. "So long…"

In that moment, Kazu fantasised about being someone like 'Joey from Friends'—so easily forgiving when his best friend had kissed his girlfriend. Everything was resolved so quickly then. It was clean, and it was simple.

But the knot in his chest and the cast on his hand as a constant reminder felt neither clean nor simple. 'Joey from Friends' probably didn't feel this way. Otherwise he, too, may have found himself at the bar one episode with a female friend—perhaps Rachel or Monica—pouring his heart out then suddenly finding her lilac eyes strangely captivating.

The redhead interrupted his drunken wallowing. "Guess who sent me a message outta the blue the other day."

"Who?"

"Butthead Akiyama."

"Ryo!?" he exclaimed with glee, abruptly snapping out of his slumping position and sitting up to face her directly. "What'd it say!?"

"Something like, oh pumpkin, I hear you're back in the big city soon," her voice dropped an octave to mimic him, not bothering to mask her contempt, "let's catch up when I visit, miss you! What a jackass."

"You told me you thought he was cute once—"

"—it was a childish thing ages ago but he acts like we're long lost lovers or something. I haven't even seen him since my last card tournament in high school." She waved a defiant finger around in the air as the slurred words rolled out of her mouth. "Last I heard his dumb head already had a girlfriend anyway—"

"—I heard he had several—"

"—and I guess he's trying to get back into my pants now that his dumb book's failed."

"Yeowch, claws out, mama," he drawled. Astoundingly, Ruki laughed at his reaction, somewhat appreciative that he didn't try to remind her that she'd been the one boldly exclaiming not to give a toot about what was going on in the pretty boy's life, while still managing to let the little-known detail about him slip.

Perhaps it was that she was a little sad for him that his book failed. Perhaps it was because she'd secretly read it, and picked up on the unmistakeable similarities between the main protagonist and herself. Perhaps it was because the critics had found fault with his staunchly idealistic characters, when rather, she'd drawn encouragement from their goodness and steadfast refusal to give into cynicism instead.

Above all, Ruki was appreciative that Kazu didn't laugh in her face at her weirdly unresolved feelings for someone who lived all the way on another island and only sought her out for what seemed to be his own entertainment. Even while Kazu was sinking into his own heartache.

She leaned onto the counter, propping her head up on her hand and her eyes raked over him studiously. He was far from sober, but he managed to pick up on it eventually, returning her piercing gaze with a baffled one.

"Whatcha lookin' at?"

Ruki took a deep breath. "Why don't you come home with me?"

Hirokazu awoke, blinking his eyes rapidly to adjust to the sunlight filtering through the shoji windows. Softly reflecting off the tatami flooring, the light blanketed the spacious, traditional room in an enchanting morning glow.

This was definitely not his room.

As he shifted to move, he came into contact with another pair of bare legs under the duvet, which, by the slow stretching and slithering, were also beginning to stir.

Kazu rolled around to come face-to-face with a mass of red hair he would recognise anywhere.

And a bare back, save for the thin cotton band of a simple black bra.

No, no, no, no, nonononononono…

Before he could ponder too much on why the hell he was in bed with Ruki in nothing but his underwear (and hand cast, if that counted), Lilac eyes were, all of a sudden, leering right at him. He hadn't even noticed her coming to.

Kazu's own eyes had opened so widely they could've popped out of his head. Naturally, his first instinct was to yell. "Oh my God! Did we—"

She clamped her hands over his mouth, stifling him immediately. "Shut up," she hissed. "I do not need my mom and grandma to know you're here."

Slowly removing her hand to reveal Kazu's still-gaping mouth, she sat up to reach for the grey t-shirt that had been discarded on the floor nearby. Kazu followed in getting up but remained on the futon, sitting cross-legged and trying not to watch her dress. It was chilly, he realised, once his bare arms, torso and legs came out of the comforts of the duvet. He rubbed at his arms absently as he tried to recall the night before.

"D-Does that mean we…"

Oh God, no! I slept with the devil incarnate! Lucifer in human form!

"God no," she snarled, tucking her arms into the sleeves. "We almost did, but then you fell asleep. Thank God. Miracles do exist."

He'd let that blow to his ego slide, if only because he was so relieved—and utterly disoriented. How on earth was she so lucid already?

"Come on." A red polo shirt smelling faintly of peach landed clumsily into his lap. "Put your clothes on and I'll get you outta here."

After redressing into last night's clothes, Ruki slid open one of the shoji screens leading into a hallway. Kazu followed as Ruki lead him around her enormous house, arriving at the foyer through a side door and then hurrying out the front door.

They slowed down approaching the sidewalk, and Ruki stopped to take out the mail as they passed her letterbox. In their haste, they hadn't noticed the newly bloomed cherry blossom trees arching over the pathway to her house, soft pink petals sparsely fluttering past them in the spring breeze.

"Well, that's enough adventure for me this week," Kazu remarked, checking over his shoulder just in case.

Ruki gave a little smirk in response as she sifted through the envelopes, in considerably better spirits now that they've narrowly avoided crisis, twice.

She then stopped sifting at an envelope addressed to herself. She flipped it over. "It's from Henry."

They shared a look, and Ruki decisively ripped through the envelope, revealing a beautifully decorated card, adorned with a blue-and-red ribbon and metallic gold patterning. Thoroughly bewildered, she opened it.

"Ms Ruki Makino," she began, "because you have shared in our lives, we, Henry Lee and Alice McCoy, request the honour of your company… at our… wedding ceremony… on the…" she faltered. "…You're kidding. It's only a month from now."

Ruki had to reread it to believe her eyes, and then again some. A hasty wedding seemingly out-of-nowhere could only mean one of a few things, and to her chagrin, she had some idea.

The trees rustled, hand-in-hand with the sound of wind chimes in the distance. Sprinkles of baby pinks continued to scatter through the air around them, some brushing past the card with a soft patter.

And just as quickly as they disappeared, Hirokazu was gone.

To be continued

Trivia: Shotgun weddings are fairly prevalent in Japan because of old attitudes on honour and some social stigma/regressive legal disadvantages for families with children born out of wedlock.