It wasn't like she hadn't ridden on a motorcycle before. God, no. HE (better known as The Rat Bastard) had owned a motorcycle, too, and some of Yakumo's best memories of HIM were of their night rides—leaving at dusk and following the coastline until dawn. Their third such ride, as soon as they saw the sun, they decided to find the nearest secluded area they could—a private little beach surrounded by trees—and they made love as the sun rose, seemingly all around them, the fine sand that gently scratched Yakumo's back glowing a fiery orange, nearly the same color as HIS skin. They had chosen that to be one of their "traditions," and had remained faithful to it to the last.

Yakumo was nowhere near as upbeat and positive as her sister, but she could still treasure those memories. Even if the taste in her mouth was bad, she remembered that some of the meal had been…

Perfect.

That was the word for it.

So why, then, was she so exuberant now, clinging to Harima on the back of his motorcycle?

Are you expecting him to strip down and make love to you if we pass a beach?

No longer a schoolgirl, (or a virgin, for that matter) Yakumo had thought herself more or less immune to such thoughts and the embarrassment they brought. Even so, she felt herself reddening at the thought of it, and she worried for a moment that Kenji would be able to feel the heat on his back.

He didn't, of course. He didn't glance in the rearview mirror, either, (a habit which made Yakumo a bit nervous) so he didn't see her face, crimson as a beet.

He just drove. Weaving his way through traffic, (illegal) gunning it when he could, (illegal) and stopping when he absolutely had to (occasionally illegal). It scared the piss out of her, but it was exhilarating at the same time. HE had always been a relatively safe driver.

If you don't stop comparing him to The Rat Bastard, you're going wind up telling him to find a beach before too long. She understood full-well—being psychic had greatly sharpened her perception of the human psyche—that women still bearing the foul taste in their mouths were likely to …become enthralled with anybody who could be considered even loosely better than their ex. Men, too, but she didn't know that.

"Oi, Yakumo," he said as they darted between a Hyundai and some sort of trash heap that probably didn't even bear its markings anymore. "Hold on, okay? We're almost there, but I need to be two lanes over if we want to park."

She tightened her grip around his waist, and wondered why he had stopped calling her imouto-san.

The motorcycle jerked with startling grace to their right, effectively cutting off a car about twice their size, which jerked to a stop just in time not to send them flying into the car ahead's rear windshield. The pudgy man at the helm shouted something angry at them that they couldn't understand, and, Yakumo saw in the rear-view mirror which Harima seemed so intent on not using, made a hand gesture that they could understand. Harima didn't notice; he seemed too intent on his next move, which even Yakumo could see: A pair of small hybrids driving with about a motorcycle's length of space between them. Up ahead, the restaurant Harima had told her about, about a quarter of a kilometer from where they were.

Unfortunately, the two cars were also getting closer to each other, and behind them was a solid wall of traffic.

She couldn't see it, but Harima was grinning. Running on fumes, having not slept well in days, and he was grinning. She gritted her teeth just as he went for it, refusing to admit that she was grinning too, just a little bit.

Leaning over so far that it seemed to Yakumo for a second that they would simply tumble to the ground, bam-crunch, the end of the whole mess, Harima nudged the bike's speed up, the engine already roaring like a dragon. They began to quickly drift to their left, where the other car was about two meters from blocking them entirely—quickly, Harima straightened the bike up and suddenly they were moving diagonally, relative to traffic, and a second later, in what seemed a blur of horns and paint to Yakumo, they were in the last available space in the endless ocean of automobiles for at least a kilometer. Continuing their diagonal motion, Harima nudged it over to the curb, and just as the line of traffic came to a halt, so did he. Yakumo jerked forward with a start.

Dismounting to the tune of a flurry of horns and angry words, Harima said, "Come on, Yakumo. We're walking the rest of this." Yakumo followed suit, dropping off the side of the bike with as much grace as she could muster considering that her knees no longer seemed to want to support her weight; Her knees felt like she had after the day she'd spent with The Rat Bastard at Toshima-en.

The rest of her didn't, though. The rest of her hadn't felt like that in quite a while.

The western-style restaurant was a little dingy—the off-white porcelain floors were sticky, as though they hadn't been cleaned in quite a while, and the odor of stale tobacco seemed to have woven itself into the fraying fabric of the chairs—but filled with the hum of cheery conversation and the sweet smell of cooking meat. There was a bar up front flanked by a row of stools patterned with polka-dot fabric in relatively good shape, and it was towards them that Kenji led Yakumo as they entered, a small bell dinging over their heads as they opened the door.

The stools weren't something that Yakumo was entirely used to sitting on, but they weren't as hard as they might have been—her jeans made sitting in general considerably less of a challenge than it might have been were she wearing a skirt. As they finished seating themselves, a big, friendly-looking man came out of a set of saloon-style doors from behind the bar. He took a look at Kenji, and then at Yakumo, and his meaty face broke into a radiant grin.

"Kenji, you old dog!" he shouted, his voice so powerful that Yakumo could swear she heard it echo. Even so, only a couple of people shut up to see what was going on—the rest were probably used to it. "Look what you goddamn brought in with you! I don't even know if Omi would allow me t'serve such a sight with food!" he laughed at this, and Kenji smiled appreciatively. "How am I supposed to shoot man-shit with you with such a pretty girl here?"

Yakumo felt herself redden slightly, unsure of what was going on, and before she could think about it, she heard herself say, "I—no, please don't mind me, I—"

She stopped herself at the look in the man's eye, something she had absolutely no way to read. She didn't notice Kenji looking at her out of the corner of his eye, his mouth curled up in a little grin.

They stayed that way for a full ten seconds, Yakumo staring, a little frightened, or maybe just nervous, and the man doing whatever it was that he was doing—in two years of friendship with him, Kenji still didn't know precisely what to call it as he stood there, eying you, waiting for you to crack.

She didn't, though, and he burst out laughing after a few seconds more, gruff and powerful and genuine—as Yakumo's muscles relaxed, she found herself smiling along with him, liking him in spite of whatever intentions she'd had upon entering the restaurant.

"Knock it off, old man," Kenji growled unthreateningly. "You're gonna scare my assistant off before I get a chance to."

"This pretty thing is your assistant?" the man roared, his grin positively stupid. "Damn, Kenji, are you still going out with that one—you know, that one girl, the…ah…"

"Nope," Kenji said lightly. "Now cut it out. Like I said—"

"Ah, I'm not scary, Kenji, you're just a pansy."

Kenji Harima, at nearly six-two, weighing in at ninety-two kilograms, most all of it muscle, and victor of more street fights than he could count on one hand (and he couldn't necessarily count much higher than that anyway) could only smile at this. Yakumo said, as politely as she could, "I don't think he's scary, Kenji."

Kenji grinned at that. "I didn't think you would. You stood up to that damn Chief Editor Gotou when you were still just a kid, and this guy isn't half as scary as that bastard was."

Somehow, the phrase when you were still just a kid nagged at Yakumo. Not bothered her, precisely, only seemed…strange to her. She hadn't seen Harima since she'd been still just a kid, and now it was almost natural enough that felt as though they were picking up where they left off. So wasn't she still "just a kid," then?

No, that wasn't right. You grew up, Yakumo. Nobody likes it, but everyone does it.

"That Gotou? She stood up to him?" the big man behind the counter said, sounding amazed. "Back when I was working over there, even I was scared of that giant bastard."

"I shit thee not, Kenta," Kenji said. "She's the one I was telling you about! Just walked right up to him and said, 'is it the Chief Editor's job to scare new artists?'"

"And then," Kenta said, turning to Yakumo, "he just about shat himself and died on the spot, eh? That's to hear him tell it, even, so probably he did a little more than that."

Again, Yakumo froze, innate shyness taking over. She didn't want to embarrass Harima, but…he had practically, as Kenta had said, shat himself and died.

"I…"

"Saw nothing of the sort," Kenji snapped, not so much at her as at Kenta. "Now are you going to bring us some food or am I going to have to get up and kick your sorry ass?"

"He dances like a ballerina, eh?" Kenta said, snapping a wink at Yakumo, who reddened a little more. "He chose the wrong line of work, but I guess if you've ever opened one of his books you'd figure that out."

"Food or ass," Kenji growled again, still not threatening. "You pick."

"Fine, fine," Kenta said. "What will the lovely young lady be having today?"

"Um…" Yakumo hesitated. She didn't actually know what was served here—the style was western, but she'd seen at least one person eating fried noodles. Her mind started moving quickly, trying to fix on precisely what kind of noodles, wondering if she should just ask for a menu or—

"She'll have what I have."

Or she could have what Kenji had. Kenta gave Kenji a strange look, and then nodded and vanished into the back.

Kenji shook his head and looked at her. "Is that alright?"

She smiled at him warmly, more appreciative of the fact that he'd bailed her out than of the food. "It is," she said. "And thank you."

"Sorry about him," Kenji said apologetically. "I guess I wasn't thinking when I brought you here—Kenta's a good guy, but he can be a bit over-the-top when he's not watching his manners, which is pretty much whenever his wife isn't around."

"I don't mind," Yakumo said, folding her hands in her lap. "Really. And thank you for…you know."

He shrugged. "They have menus here, but I wouldn't touch them without gloves, personally." A few customers—the same ones who had stirred at Kenta's roarings—looked at Kenji at this, slightly alarmed, but he didn't notice. "Plus, it's hard to think when that fucking giant is staring at you. Besides, I ordered you something good. I think you'll like it."

She smiled at him, and as she did, Kenta reappeared with two heaping plates of noodles, which he set before them more gently than she would have thought possible.

"Put it on your tab?" Kenta said.

"Always," Kenji replied with a small grin.

"You wish, you broke bastard," Kenta laughed uproariously again. "Keep a tab for a fuckin' writer, that'll be the day."

He vanished back into the kitchen a few moments later, leaving Yakumo with her plate, which smelled deliciously of garlic and meat, to the point where it made her eyes water. She smiled again at Kenji, who tore into his like a man who hadn't eaten in days. Maybe he hadn't.

He knows what I like. After all this time, he still remembers.

She picked up a set of wooden chopsticks from beside her plate, clapped her hands together, and murmured, "I'm eating now," for the first time in many weeks. (Living alone tended to strip one of one's manners).

He still remembers.

She brought the noodles to her lips, allowing herself another moment to savor their smell, and then gently put them in her mouth.

After all this time…

Her mouth exploded. Heat seemed to rise up directly from the chopsticks, and her eyes flared open, tears filling them almost immediately. She gave a soft scream, for her throat could do no more than that, and nearly dropped the noodles in her lap. Harima looked over at her, blinked twice, and then his eyes flared too.

"Spicy…" she murmured, dropping her chopsticks onto her plate.

"You…can't eat spicy," Harima muttered, gently pushing his water towards her, eyes downcast and face beet-red. "I…completely forgot. Sorry."

He really is a hermit, she thought as she guzzled the water. Really, really is.

--

A/N: Firstly, "I'm eating now," should be taken as "ittadakimasu," a Japanese phrase said at the beginning of a meal. (If you're curious, you typically say "gochisousama" at the end).

Second, I know it kind of ended abruptly. That would be called "writers block" in action. I kind of …ran out of that train of thought, and anything new would take many more pages than I'm willing to keep you all waiting for. More later!

As always, thanks for reading! If you liked it, or even if you didn't, consider feeding me reviews! And check out my bonus chapter, Until the End!