Mai Hime and related belong to Sunrise
Epilogue: Monday Morning Drive
Six months later
Fuuka was baking in the intense summer heat. The streets were packed with students enjoying their summer vacation. As a result the convenience store that sat at the corner of a normally light intersection saw a constant flow of young adults streaming in and out with their pockets considerably lighter after each trip.
"Hey, I got your tea."
A figure dressed in a lavender sun dress looked up as a green can was pressed towards her outstretched hand. The can found its mark when directed by a sure and steady hand that lacked the uncertainty it had grown used to in the past. She noted this with an appreciative smile that was mirrored in simple acknowledgment. She accepted the drink and shook the can slightly before pulling the tab up. After a few sips she set the can down beside her and tucked her hands under her knees to keep her dress from slipping up her legs. It was almost too hot and incredibly humid—her hair was beginning to stick to her forehead and the back of her neck. It felt somewhat annoying but her thoughts were put on hold as she saw a flurry of movement beside her.
"Oh? Did you finally find an ice cream you like?" she asked with a soft laugh. "I was beginning to think I'd have to drag you away from the freezer by how much time you spent in there."
There was a quiet snort beside her but she merely grinned in response. Pearly white teeth flickered from beneath parted lips as they clenched onto the end of an ice cream stick. The blue and white soda-flavored treat disappeared quickly enough, leaving only the wooden stick that then bobbed up and down. She watched this movement for a second before returning to her can of tea.
"Well, it's not too bad."
The words were curt but the voice behind them was calm, smooth.
"Actually, it's a little sweet."
"That's something I thought I wouldn't hear from you."
Another snort.
"Well, it's not like we had much of anything to compare this to for a while now. By the way, how's that tea?"
She paused and tipped the can slightly.
"... A little bitter, I'll admit."
Those lips turned up to a knowing grin.
"See? Everything's accentuated. I'm afraid it's going to be like this for a little while, until we get used to it again."
There was a brief silence between the two of them. She turned her head and took a brief note of her partner's clothing—a white t-shirt and a pair of khaki-colored cargo capris that were tied off below the knee. A navy visor hung around her neck with the letters "F" and "G" embroidered on with white thread. When her partner finally brushed off some of the dirt from her sneakers she stood up and neatly swiped her hands over some of the wrinkles of her sun dress. They walked down the worn stone steps of Fuuka's lone shrine, weaving past chattering couples and stepping out into the sun's full glare. The bike was parked out by several scooters. It was a brand new model, faithful to the classic styling of past Ducatis but painted in a navy coat that positively shimmered against the baking asphalt beneath it. During the short shuffle for helmets and a brief pat-down of pockets for the keys, she turned and looked into the eyes of her partner.
"Are you ready?"
Emerald eyes held her gaze steadily before an easy smile broke through those pensive lips that she had always loved.
"... Yeah. I'm ready."
"Three orders of omelets, coming up!"
Mai turned and accepted the plates as they seemingly popped into existence onto the counter. She nodded at her hired cook and balanced the plates on her tray before marching down the hall and towards a booth situated near the corner of her rebuilt cafe. She set the plates down and tucked the tray back onto the bar before sliding into the booth.
"Alright, let's eat! I'm carved!"
"Starved, Haruka-chan," Yukino corrected, but she took up her fork and began to cut out small bites of the omelet.
Haruka shook her head and began to shovel in the meal as Mai watched in amusement.
"So... What brings the two of you here this morning?" Mai asked as a waitress stopped by their booth to give them several glasses of juice.
"Hm! Well you'll be pleased to know, Tokiha, that Kanzaki is returning soon from his business trip in Shanghai!"
Mai tried not to appear too excited, but little escaped Haruka's critical eye. The blonde shoveled in more omelet before taking a swig of juice. Upon setting the cup down her lips curled into a tiny frown and she folded her hands together.
"He's a good man, Mai," Haruka announced in a matter-of-fact tone.
Mai wasn't sure what to say to that abrupt statement but Yukino cracked a smile.
"That's just her way of showing her approval," Yukino explained quietly.
Mai nodded faintly in response. Haruka returned to her omelet and finished it off a few forkfuls later. She dabbed her lips with the napkin provided and finished off her juice. She waited patiently for Yukino to finish but when she did the older girl made no immediate move to leave. Even Yukino was a little surprised at the lack of initiative her friend was displaying, but it became clear just why Haruka was hesitating.
"I don't really know what happened that day," Haruka began slowly. She brought up a hand. "No, I know what you've told me, Tokiha, and I'm not saying I found a flaw in that information. Just... It's been about half a year now. I think it's safe to talk about it."
Just like that it seemed Mai's breath left her lungs in one lengthy sigh. She rested her chin on her palm and stared at the half-finished glass of juice in front of her.
"I... I miss them," Yukino admitted softly.
"I do too," Mai replied.
"Well, the two of you can miss them all you want!"
Yukino and Mai looked up as Haruka crossed her arms with a huff. Mai shifted her gaze to Yukino who merely pushed her glasses up and shrugged.
"She tends to get like that."
"Like what?" Haruka asked. "Like this? It's only because I don't understand why the two of you are being all bloomy over it."
"... Gloomy, Haruka-chan."
"That's what I said!" Haruka shook her head. "Listen. The two of you can grope with each other all you want over this fiasco. I refuse to believe in it."
Mai fought the urge to laugh at Haruka's vocabulary error even as Yukino's cheeks began to glow red.
"Mope, Haruka-chan!" Yukino admonished in a squeak.
Haruka brushed it off and began to talk about something else with her best friend. In Mai's mind the words were slowly turning to molasses until a certain thought occurred to her. She turned and faced Haruka, who by now was deep into a sort of rare bickering contest with Yukino of all people.
"Wait. What do you mean you refuse to believe in it?"
Haruka looked up as she heard Mai's question. She considered it for all of two seconds before shaking her head and expelling a patient sigh.
"What's there to believe? It's all relative to how you look at the information."
At Mai's confused expression Haruka continued with all the conviction of a seasoned detective explaining his findings to a skeptical audience.
"Really, Tokiha. The information you gave us was probably correct in light of strange nature of your story. But if those fantastic things happened the way they really did, then what's stopping the two of them from making it out of there alright?"
Mai and Yukino offered no rebuttal and Haruka grinned in triumph.
"With all this talk of legends and myths I suppose the two of you forgot that legends never really die, now did you?"
Haruka stood up and stretched. Yukino hurriedly skipped out of the booth as Haruka marched her way to the exit. Before she opened the door, however, she turned and gave Mai a meaningful look. Then the door's bell jangled and the door slammed shut as the two walked out into the midsummer sun. Mai watched them go with a small frown before she turned and stacked the dishes. Just as she was picking them up, however, she heard the distant rumble of a motorcycle engine. Mai looked up and gasped. It was merely a fleeting look, five seconds down the street as she stared through the recently-washed windows. Maybe it was the heat licking up waves of hot air from the asphalt, she wasn't sure. But the sound was clear enough to her ears and she squinted into the late-morning sunlight that streamed through her windows.
A blue—or was it black, no, it had to be blue—motorcycle raced past. Time slowed to a stop as Mai watched it and a memory began to play in the back of her mind.
"... Aren't you a bit young to be racing around in a motorcycle?"
Emerald eyes flashed in annoyance at her question.
"You shouldn't be concerned with what isn't your business," she snapped.
The emerald-eyed beauty turned around, flicking midnight blue tresses over her shoulder before flinging her schoolbag over her shoulder. It wasn't a favorable first meeting, but it would forever leave a mark on her days at Fuuka.
Just as soon as the motorcycle turned the corner Mai seemingly snapped out of whatever lull she had worked herself into. Memories of the past trickled down behind her eyelids as she closed her eyes. It was just wishful thinking, wasn't it? She reclaimed her dirty dishes and deposited them back in the kitchen. She paused for a moment and rested her chin on her hand, watching the customers mill in and out of her rebuilt establishment.
I wonder what you're doing.
She clapped her cheeks and turned around, busying herself with cleaning the counter top.
I wonder... if the world is beautiful for you, too.
Her hands stretched out as the motorcycle slowed to a meandering crawl down the mountainside roads. Her partner turned slightly, and even though her face was behind a pitch-black windshield she could clearly imagine the smile on the cyclist's lips. But that was fine—she had a helmet on as well, and she knew that her own smiling lips and laughing eyes were hidden to the world.
It was a strange thing indeed, to be feeling this wind. She had felt the wind before, felt it slam into her body, felt it caress her cheeks and pull at her hair. But this was a newer take on an older feeling, and she relished the dizzying speeds that the motorcycle took them through as it dipped down and began to pick up speed. Her arms wrapped around her partner's torso at the sudden boost of speed, but they were soon joined by a hand encased by a leather glove. After a few pats the hand returned to its position on one of the handlebars, but not before flashing two fingers.
It wasn't going to be too long, now, but they decided to take the longer route today.
"Alright, listen here you morons. I asked for 50 on this job, not 25. However, I was given... let's see here..."
There was a brief shuffling of papers in the semi-darkness.
"Oh, here we go... 24,586,000 with a little bit of change left over because one of you smart asses decided to go to the pachinko parlor last night. Doesn't look you like got lucky either, punk."
The assembled men looked as if they were going to soil their pants when a set of claws flashed in the dim lighting of a seedy building near Fuuka's docks. The owner of said claws narrowed her jade-colored eyes in disgust as she regarded the quivering men.
"Honestly, I was told that I was hiring some of the best men to scour my information for me, but all I get out of you are a bunch of travel brochures to France."
Nao paused and sighed.
"Do I look like I want to know how many different sea food dishes are offered in the Riviera in June? Do I? Hmm?"
One of the men had the foresight to play along—he shook his head.
"You're right, I'm not terribly interested in that. If I wanted to know, I'd buy a damn plane ticket and see for myself."
She paused to take in a breath.
"What I am interested in, however, is how in the hell did the Fujino family enterprise manage to get rid of all evidence pertaining to the Marguerites before we even got back to Fuuka!"
She slammed her hand on the desk, one of the many abandoned desks in the now-empty hotel that once served as the headquarters of the virtual madwoman who had caused Nao to run along on a wild goose chase for a year. Now that chase had met its end nearly half a year ago, and Nao was just another unemployed courier working for a bored information broker who had decided that another vacation was in order. So Yamada was living it up in Singapore until the end of the month, and Nao was stuck shuffling through what they had hoped would be a gold mine of information pertaining to just what on earth had been going on. All this talk about Carnivals and Maidens and the end of the world had rattled Nao's brains considerably and given her plenty of sleepless nights riddled with headaches. However, the pertinent information on those topics was growingly increasingly sore to come by. And now it seemed that there wouldn't be anymore talk about the aforementioned topics—as far as the Fujino family was concerned, anyway.
No papers. No information. Nothing. Nao felt like kicking the desk over.
What was she going to get paid for now? First District was already a euphemism for a dead-end in her point of view. The trails that Nao had investigated meticulously over the past winter had now melted in lieu of an unrelated incident in one of Tokyo's premier night clubs. That too was ruled out as a weird incident where too many people and an unlucky freak accident took place, but Nao had her suspicions. She was pretty sure that was just another doctored report in the sea of fixed reports that happened to involve the name Fujino.
It was case closed, no questions. Nao shook her head with another disgusted sigh.
So now, the courier on vacation was perched on an empty desk glowering at a group of dark-suited men with identical expensive sunglasses and quivering frowns. She made an exasperated noise and quickly shooed off the men. They were in no hurry to object this order, and soon she was left alone in the completely bare office. She undid the claws on her right hand and let the metal hit the desk while she turned to look out the windows, towards those same black-suited men who were now bustling out to their expensive cars. These were the same men who had once been hired by Tomoe Marguerite to work the Fujino empire while she ran around acting like a psychopath—at least, that's what Nao thought she was doing anyway. What else did outrageously rich people do with their time?
I wish I could ask Fujino that question. She probably would've just laughed at me.
Nao sighed and hopped over to the plush leather chair, the only other furnishing in the room. She relaxed against the cold leather for a moment before sitting up.
What the heck was that noise?
The window to her lonely office was already open to let in some air in the stuffy upper floors. It also brought with it the noises of construction nearby, the ungodly racket of cicadas against the tree and the strangely loud roar of what sounded like a motorcycle. Nao raised an eyebrow and turned around in the chair. Motorcycles weren't rare, especially during sunny days such as this one, but this was a familiar sound to her ears. It was the sound of a monster prowling the midday sun, a confident sort of engine that rumbled and roared as the tires tore through the streets. Only one person in her humble opinion could control let alone even want to get near that sort of raw power, and her eyebrow twitched as she saw a navy motorcycle roar past.
"... No way."
Nao jumped out of the chair and pressed her fingertips against the glass.
"No fucking way."
So engrossed was she with her disbelief that she failed to register the tears that had started to stream her cheeks, accompanied only by the soft twitching of her lips. Even when she finally did collapse and let herself have a good cry for the first time in months, she shook herself out of it long enough to attempt a smile. She surprised herself at how easily it came in light of her new discovery.
"Those idiots..."
They took a short break at another convenience store, this time for some water and a chance to people-watch. They were merely a couple, a beautiful couple with captivating eyes and easy smiles that sent nearly everyone swooning. They were also a little too wrapped up in themselves to even acknowledge that confounding ability to set everyone staring their way. They watched people come and go. Fast and slow. Despite the seemingly boring subject manner they remained captivated, as if they had never seen people walk before. Or perhaps they were merely revisiting something they had once seen in another lifetime? The second choice was quite fanciful, but their crimson and emerald eyes continued to watch on with a quiet fascination.
Soon afternoon turned to early evening even if the sun failed to acknowledge the time change. But they once again dusted themselves off and stood up from a lonely park bench down the road to return to the motorcycle waiting patiently for them.
"Soon," one of them said, and the other nodded.
"Right. I'm sure the merger will take place as expected. Don't worry too much, Reito-han. You're doing extremely well for your first year in this arena."
There was a brief pause as a hand grasped onto a glass tumbler. After a pause the hand set the tumbler of golden liquid back down.
"After this, consider taking some time off. I'm sure Mai-han would appreciate it."
A string of hearty chuckles echoed across the office. Shigeru soon hung up the phone and tapped his fingers against his familiar desk. He had moved his enterprise to Fuuka for the year and was enjoying a healthy boost in profits. This tiny island offered a good amount of anonymity that Kyoto could never provide, which was fine considering the circumstances. There had been no formal explanation for the strange happenings in Tokyo. The government had written it off as a freak accident of sorts. The club had apparently suffered a bombing done by some group of fanatics, and the case was closed after a few months spent on a wild goose chase shaking down various factions and even the yakuza at one point. The Fujino family had offered money and thrown their weight around enough to be written off completely in the investigative reports, and now Fujino Shigeru was living the quiet life holed up in the regional office at Fuuka.
He was alone, for the most part. Kyoko had moved back overseas, to France or Italy. Shigeru was never too sure. What mattered was the distance, and Kyoko was now far enough away again to provide little distraction. It was a mutual decision—the siblings agreed that whatever uncomfortable phase they marched through on that day was going to be put behind them for the sake of moving on. Her daughter, on the other hand, did not take that news very well. Neither did she take the news of her dear cousin's disappearance all that well. Last he heard Tomoe Marguerite was now staying at a hospital in the French Riviera. And by hospital he assumed that Kyoko was only putting a nice word to describe the mental institute he was sure his niece should have been thrown in years ago. But that was neither here nor there, and now Shigeru could close that chapter in his life.
He leaned back against his chair and sighed.
"Maybe I should take a vacation," he muttered to himself.
It was a good time to, anyway. Business was idle at the moment and he wasn't needed so much around the office anymore. His mind flicked into autopilot as he began to explore potential vacation spots, but as he began to shuffle his papers into a neat pile a small piece of paper managed to wrestle free from the stack. He picked it up and recognized it as a ticket stub for a train. The ticket had been issued in Hokkaido.
Hokkaido...
His fingertips traced the magnetic strip of paper as his eyes dimmed in recollection. Those were trying times, but he would have given anything to be back in them. His arms flexed as he stretched them above his head. Running from the Marguerite-hired punks and taking a few out in the process was damn fun, but it was almost a shame now that he was back in this pedestrian lifestyle of his. His lips spread open into a leer. Who was he kidding. He wasn't the least bit satisfied over what had happened in the past six months. His own flesh and blood was now missing and most likely dead along with the person she loved. It was ridiculously unfair. No parent should ever bury their child.
Just as soon as this anger entered him it left with the heavy exhalation of an exhausted breath. He shook his head. What was there for him to be angry about? His child had saved the world. It was a hollow comfort, but he soon roused himself out of his angry stupor as he gathered his jacket and shrugged it on. It was as good a time as any to call it a day.
He walked out into the blinding evening sun. For a second he squinted and threw a hand up to shield his eyes, but his ears clearly picked up the rumbling roar of a motorcycle engine.
"Huh?"
Shigeru dropped his hand. By now the riders of this motorcycle had their helmets off and packed away so that midnight blue and chestnut brown tresses blew outwards with the summer wind. He stared at them quietly, then his lips eased into a smile.
"So... you came back."
"You told us to come back," Natsuki remarked.
"Together," Shizuru added. "That was the important part, wasn't it?"
Shigeru rubbed his cheek.
"Well... I did tell you that, didn't I," he whispered, almost to himself.
He stared at the two. Despite his mind tripping over itself with the questions he had wanted to ask, namely how and why did it take this long, he felt himself shaking his head with that small silly grin permanently on his lips.
"... Welcome home."
AN: Well. There you have it. Winter's Road... has ended.
To all who have read through this, thank you. I appreciate your attention to this fledgling work :)
Until next time!
