Chapter 3 – Meeting Her Friends
"Damn that Yukihira…!" Takumi crushed the postcard in his hand.
That damn flea had the nerve to send him a postcard from Hokkaido. What was he trying to get at? He was having fun gallivanting all around in the snowy regions with his old middle school friends while he, Takumi Aldini was back at Tootsuki slaving away in the Polar Star kitchens finding new ways to beat him. It wasn't like he had to stay back at Tootsuki, it was Isami's turn to return to Italia to help out at the restaurant. At least he was making the most of it!
'He's not taking our battle seriously! What the Diavlo is he doing, isn't he scared of losing his pride to me!'
Why wasn't Yukihira continuing to train and hone his cooking skill in the holidays like he should be, so that he could be ready to combattere him in the cooking arena once and for all? It had been more than year since Yukihira transferred to Tootsuki which was during the spring and for Takumi, it had been almost five years when he and Isami transferred in the middle school division. Their cohort was now in second year of the high school division and Takumi felt he was steadily getting closer enough to Yukihira, but not enough, let alone knocking one of the Elite Ten off their throne. The constant school assessments and competitions had been pushing the two apart from meeting their fated duelli and it was driving Takumi nuts.
Just this morning, Takumi visited Megumi-san once again to try out some more dishes. This time he had four recipes up his sleeve again. Both he and Megumi-san judged his dishes and proposed critical analysis on each of them until the rustic girl decided that two out of the four dishes today could possibly beat Yukihira.
Takumi shoved the postcard into his pockets, not caring that it was already scrunched up.
It was better than the previous time and Takumi took little comfort in that. It was not enough. All of his dishes had to beat Yukihira. He was not amused when Megumi-san suggested that he had been obsessing over Yukihira too much. That wasn't true at all, goals are there to be achieved and challenges were there to slaughtered, and Yukihira was just one of them, so of course he would dedicate most of his time to defeating him and make him acknowledge him as his better.
Next would be that gorilla-faced Mimasaka. He would beat him into submission with the power of Aldini and make him pay for slandering Isami. He should be lucky the Aldinis weren't part of a mafia family, at least not the ones he knew of.
Takumi made his way through the grand main building. On the way he met Arato-san who was running errands for Nakiri Erina again. Around the corner he spotted Hayama Akira carrying some folders regarding spices. It was a known fact amongst his year group that he resided in the seminar room with his professor, the spice master. It wasn't really a room. It looked more like a super large metal container used for shipping cargo in his opinion. Or even those temporary buildings found on construction sites.
He had just entered the dormitory wing when something heavy crashed onto him.
THUMP!
"Uwaaah~"
Takumi was sprawled painfully on the floor and he could almost see stars and little canaries. He shifted slightly and groaned uncomfortably. He opened his eyes and found the tops of a dark-haired head tied in half a pony tail with a red ribbon.
It was a girl.
She lifted her head and pouted, almost about to yell at him and then stopped in surprise. It was that emcee Kawashima Urara for duelli.
"Sorry Kawashima-san, I didn't see you there" he grumbled.
"Oh! No I should be sorry Takumi-kun!" she cooed.
She wasn't getting off his chest so he firmly pushed her off and dusted his clothes. Kawashima Urara was someone Isami warned him to avoid as much as possible. Takumi knew she was known as the man-eater amongst his fan-club and she thrived off the attention from boys. She had the right look. She was attractive, petite and behaved in a very cute manner, which was everything the male students kept on a pedestal. She was the school idol as far as he could tell. She hated when other girls stole her thunder and because of that she could turn pretty ugly, pretty fast (not that any of the boys would've noticed).
But to Takumi, her sickeningly sweet manner of speech and cloying personality made him cringe. If he didn't have manners he would've called her a tart and if he was extreme like his mamma back in Italia, he would call her a vampiro femmina. The latest rumour had it that she was on a man-hunt.
"I'm such a klutz, silly me…" she pouted, dusting her skirt.
"Think nothing of it" he replied back.
"But you were just the person I was looking for! You see, I want to practice making different pastas and I was wondering if you have time today to give me a few pointers" she said demurely and pressed her hands together, leaning forward towards him.
'Dio mio…'
"I'm sorry Kawashima-san, but I have somewhere I need to be this afternoon. Perhaps another time" He said forcing a charming smile. He side-stepped around her to make a bee-line to his dormitory room when she wrapped herself around his arms before he could get away any further.
"Oh please~ You're the best in Italian cooking and it wouldn't do if I had to take advice from someone who was second rate" she continued to pout and rubbed herself on his arm.
He recoiled.
"Haha… I'm sorry, it's a rather important thing I have to get to. Please let go" Takumi pried himself out of her strong grip and quickly entered his room and shut the door, locking it for good measure. He rested his back on the other side of the door, not daring to move to make sure he could hear her leave. The sound of footsteps getting softer and softer told him she was going away. He released a sigh.
'Just made it…'
The blue-eyed teen took the crumpled postcard from his casual blazer pocket and threw it onto Isami's empty bed.
He took a quick shower in the adjoining bathroom and once he was done, he wrapped his towel securely around his waist and had another to thoroughly dry his hair. Next he rummaged through his closet and drawers to find the most appropriate outfit for the day. After careful consideration he selected a pair of coffee coloured chinos and a thin shirt with Carpe Diem written on the front in cursive with short black sleeves. He grabbed his dorm-room keys, wallet and his phone, slipping them into his pocket. Then he grabbed his fedora, unlocked the door and headed out when the coast was clear.
It was true, he did have a very important appointment to get to.
"WOAH! WOAH! Woah! Woah!... Woah… Let's rewind this a bit and skip the rescuing café mumbo-jumbo. You went on a DATE yesterday?!"
Ayame went ahead and told her. It was unavoidable. There was no escape from Chizuru-chan once she demanded an explanation for forty missed calls from yesterday afternoon. Ayame groaned for the millionth time.
"That is lightyears from the truth… it wasn't a date at all"
"Hey. I say it how I hear it. You may be saying something like 'I bumped into Takumi-kun at the café, had lovely chat together blah blah blah' but the subtext was 'He had a romantic coffee with me, he told me how brilliant my mind was and how we should be together blah, blah, blah, and that, my friend makes it a date"
"Chizuru-chan!"
"And I always hear the subtext. GOD DAMN IT Kuchiyose-kun! Don't you have anything to say about this?!"
The tall boy packed up his things in an automatic drone like manner. His face was still deadpanned. He looked like he couldn't care less about Chizuru-chan's blatant display of melodrama. He shouldered his soccer gear along with his book bag and walked away without a word.
"Leave him alone, he's got something on his mind. So much for reading the subtext." Ayame resumed organising her class notes.
It was lunch time once again and half the school were running around whooping and cheering for the end of the school semester. Starting next Monday, everyone was officially on holidays. Ayame was very excited. She had been researching some museum events about the Industrial Era in England she could go to and any historical exhibition about military engineering she could enjoy. So far she found a free lecture she was interested in at Tokyo University. Chizuru-chan had been squealing uncontrollably about a famous pop-group coming to Tokyo and she was saving up every scrap to buy a ticket to go see them. On the other hand, Kuchiyose-kun will be going on his soccer camp for a few weeks or so with the school soccer team. She ticked off the things she needed to complete for the last day. First she needed to return her library books, second she needed to go see the physics teacher about a miscalculation in her exam marks because her 96% needed to change to a 98% and then give him a card because he was retiring next semester. Lastly she needed to empty her locker. Then once holiday started, she had all the time in the world to re-organise her class notes and visit all the fun stuff she had planned.
She almost forgot! There was another thing she had to do…
"Hey Chizuru-chan, do you want to get some ice-cream with me and Kuchiyose-kun after school? I invited Takumi-kun as well and I want you guys to meet him" said Ayame.
Chizuru-chan spluttered, she was probably generating false assumptions again about her best friend going on another outing with the handsome blonde half-Italian so soon.
"I'd love too, but are you sure you want him to meet me. I mean, aren't you worried that I might run my motor-mouth and say something inappropriate because trust me, I can without thinking, when there's a bishie in the vicinity" Chizuru-chan smirked, patting herself on the chest.
Ayame shook her head and rolled her eyes. Indeed, she'd thought of that. When she and Takumi-kun had finally arrived at her humble home yesterday, it was around six o'clock where the sun was still hovering at summer twilight. She wasn't sure if she should, but she decided anyway. As Takumi-kun knew that this Friday, today, was Karakura high school's last day before the summer holidays, she thought the least she could do was ask.
She asked if he would like to meet her friend's tomorrow for ice-cream after school.
She expected him to say no and that he didn't have any freer time like today from the way he was looking off to the side, hesitant to speak. Tootsuki was a harsh task-master and their definition of holidays were probably independent study times. So she was surprised and pleased when he accepted to meet her and her friends with a smile.
She had felt elated!
She was so excited to include yet another friend into her circle because she had so few. She was confident that he would like Chizuru-chan and Kuchiyose-kun because they were kind and caring people once their outer onion-layers were peeled off.
"You are my best friend and I've made a new friend. So I want you guys to meet. He's a wonderful person so I know you will run out of ammunition before long" Ayame smirked back. She didn't count the time he came to their classroom to return her dictionary as a meeting of sorts.
"Oh, don't shoot in a standoff before you've checked your bullets. Which ice-cream parlour are we going to?"
"Meshina in Karakura honchou" said Ayame.
Chizuru-chan checked the time on her smart phone then apologised to Ayame and skipped away, claiming that she had to go see the teacher for something, which was most likely detention again. In the beginning, Ayame was completely confident that she wanted her two best friends to meet Takumi-kun. Everyone would have a jolly old time eating ice-cream because it was summer and nothing could go wrong. Now she wasn't so sure. A seed of doubt had taken root into the back of her mind. What if they didn't like him? What he didn't like them. Ayame felt uncharacteristically nervous. It felt almost as if she wanted her friends to meet him to somehow know that she made a new friend in him and like him as a new friend. But was that really important? They wouldn't mind at all that she made a new friend. Scratch that, they would encourage her to make connections with others.
So why was that she felt a nagging need for them to approve of him?
Ayame shook her head. She as being silly.
Ayame tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ears and straightened her grey school skirt. First thing was first, she needed to return her library books. She had borrowed four in total, all about advanced physics. She was really keen in looking for something about fluid dynamics but her request to the school librarian to order some engineering books backfired. The school wasn't convinced that ordering a university level textbook would be practical in the least for the students. Oh well, she couldn't win everything in life but at least she tried.
Ayame strolled through the corridors slinging her book bag over her shoulders as she made a beeline to the school library.
Takumi-kun had been an absolute gentleman when escorting her back home yesterday. He would always walk on the side closest to the road and had even insisted he carried her book bag for her. She was sure this was something everyone did in Italy and it was just in his nature to have exceptional manners, so she didn't make a big deal out of it. She expected him to leave her side when she made it to her front gate and let her walk to the door by herself, like other boys did, but no. They walked together the whole way through, right to her front door.
Luckily her mum was working overtime and her dad wouldn't be home until eight o'clock, otherwise she would have a tough time trying to explain why there was an Italian boy on their doorstep. They bid each other a good night and a 'Buena notte' before he departed. She remembered still seeing him outside her home when she packed away her school things through her bedroom window. His head was bowed and he had a phone in his hand and was busy texting.
Ayame also remembered squinting closer as something familiar caught her interest and was shocked to see that it was the leather strap part of the keychain she gave him!
She had felt giddy. The fact that there was only half of it on his phone meant that he had discovered that she soldered a small pin at the back and fastened a butterfly clasp. There was no way the keychain would break by simply falling off the leather strap by accident because she had an eye for quality. He must have noticed the pin and butterfly clasp and had probably found another place to attach the mechanical body of the keychain. That keychain was the first thing she made when she'd brought her personal soldering iron to school. She had received special permission before hand to bring it in to work on her school economics project which was the key ring.
She was so proud of creating a two-in-one design that represented what she liked the most in the world. So she thought it was an apt thing to give him as her thanks for taking the trouble to return her dictionary. She was glad Takumi-kun was enjoying the full benefits of the keychain and Ayame was in a bouncy mood all the way through dinner until bedtime.
"Good afternoon Hirako-sensei" said Ayame greeting the school librarian as she walked in.
"Hmm? Who is it? What do you want?" he asked gruffly, not breaking his eyes away from an English edition of some Freudian text.
Hirako-sensei the school librarian was an eccentric man. He spoke in a strange dialect and treated every student that came into the library as if they were a belligerent nuisance. If he had his way, he would super glue a 'Library Closed' sign on the doors for the entire duration of his employment. Nobody knew why he was working at the school if he hated kids so much. He looked a bit young to be a school librarian, could be in his twenties, but he did his job enough not to get fired. As long as he didn't hit her with a broom like he did to Chizuru-chan, she really didn't see a problem with him.
"It's Ayame and yep, I'm still a bit peeved that you couldn't order the textbook I wanted" she teased him lightly. She was allowed to bring a soldering iron to school, but the library couldn't order a lousy textbook. Figured. She gently placed each book one by one on the circulation desk as he made a big fuss in getting up out of his worn out wheelie chair and nonchalantly scanned them to return one by one.
"Don't come cryin' to me little miss nerd. Go holler at the school principal for shit like that" he said before throwing himself back onto the ratty and worn out wheelie chair behind the circulation desk and buried his face back into his Freudian text.
"Aren't you excited that this is the last day of semester that you will see us students? It's the last Friday" asked Ayame, she loved teasing him. It got her the funniest of comebacks.
"Well it was Friday last week, it'll be Friday next week and every week until we're dead and even then the whole rotten business will go on and on and on…" he grumbled.
Ayame wasn't really sure what he was talking about.
"Come on Hirako-sensei, lighten up. You won't have to see us for the whole of summer holiday!" Ayame laughed.
"But I will again next semester where you dirty, conniving ticks will be bottled with UV radiation poisoning and infect my library with that and your post-holiday drivels" he continued. He reached into the bottom cupboard and pulled out a long bottle covered in a brown paper bag. He took a large swig from it and let it stand on the circulation desk, not looking in the least caring of who might see.
"Do you have any plans? Like go and pa—"
"DON'T YOU DARE USE THE WORD 'PARTY' AS A VERB IN MY LIBRARY!" Hirako-sensei sprang out of the chair brandishing his book and jabbed his finger in Ayame's face.
Ayame had forgotten that Hirako-sensei was highly sensitive and extremely volatile to students making the slightest of errors in Japanese grammar. She gave him a hurried apology and dashed out the door. She didn't think she'd get a verbal lashing from him, even if it was the final day. Oh well. Next thing on her to-do list was to see her physics teacher.
'Ciao Takumi!
Well at least she will never, ever
doubt your cooking skills as a man.
I hope you know what you are doing
because you lack experience with girls,
hehe. Mamma absolutely won't stop asking
me how you are doing, so I think you need to
call her soon. Pappa asks if you're happy
and doing well, however he's
not keen on your bella though…
Let me know when you get your first kiss :D
-Isami
Takumi wanted to scream into the street and tear his hair out. Isami never missed an opportunity to point out how uncool his older twin was. He will find something to get back at his brother for ruthlessly teasing him about such personal and vulnerable matters. Like point out some other inferiority complex or whatever. Brothers spats were a given between the two and it always left Takumi in an agitated and moody cloud and Isami up on the moral high ground. The cold and lonely moral high ground… It wasn't a big deal, but Takumi felt a mounting embarrassment from Isami calling Ayame-san his bella…
He snapped his phone shut and clenched it. Oh Isami will get what was coming.
Also the insinuation of that over-rated first kiss. Takumi had never ever thought of it ever. He had always been focused on cooking. His 'first kiss' of the culinary world was probably when he pressed his lips to the rim of a wineglass housing the sublime Chianti Riserva, the finest wine of Firenze. He didn't dare think about romantic related things beyond that. The closest he thought about her mouth was when he was reminiscing them sucking the spoon dry of the semi-freddo, when her tongue licked around her fingers for the raspberry coulis and when her lips made a small 'o' shape as she popped a fresh raspberry through them. Not to mention the time she was munching on the pane de casa in pure abandon. Her lips always looked sweet and soft.
Never had he thought of them pressed against his own.
That was until now.
'Curse you Isami, for screwing with my head!'
Would it feel as soft as they looked, and as voluptuous as when she was eating? It was too late to turn back now, Takumi had found his own guilty pleasure and he scolded himself for the indecency rising to the surface in the worst possible fashion. He took the Meshina flavours brochure and fanned his face.
He came early to Meshina ice cream parlour and he was glad to because it was so hot this afternoon. He was meeting Ayame-san and her friends here and was feeling a tad nervous about what they would think about him. He had only seen one of them once, but only just. He had decided to order an ice-cream first to reserve a table for them and it was just so hot today. He opted for a coffee-hazelnut flavour and had decided to take the time to read Isami's latest text and answer it while he was still awake in Italia. He planned to buy another ice-cream once Ayame-san and her two friends showed-up.
"I hope you didn't wait too long" came the distinct ring of the bella's voice.
Takumi turned around and got out of his chair to stand. He pocketed his phone and he gave her a little salute and nodded at the friends she brought along. He'd text later.
"Buon pomeriggio" he said.
"Takumi-kun, these are my friends" she gestured towards them.
"Hi, my name is Namikaze Chizuru and this big oaf here is Kuchiyose Byakko"
"Pleasure to meet you. I'm Takumi Aldini" Takumi said politely.
The first friend, Namikaze, made Takumi feel he was walking on thin ice despite her short stature. Her face was split into a very cheeky grin. She talked pretty fast and she articulated every single word to perfection despite her fast speech rate. He could tell she was going to be quite a chatterbox like his Nonna back in Surriento. She was rather short and her hair colour was that of assam tea with milk. It was cropped at chin level and was quite jagged at the ends and flicked out, giving her a bit of an edgy look. If he had to make a quick comparison, she looked like an imp. He also noted her eyes were dark brown and was sharp, observing like a cat. He felt exposed when she was scanning him with great detail, not for any indecent reason, but she was probably forming judgements about him. Ayame-san was right yesterday, she certainly looked too clever for her own good.
On the other hand, the tall boy with the slender build named Kuchiyose sent a shiver up his spine. His eyes held no emotion, his mouth was set in a perfectly horizontal line and he didn't make a sound. He had a strong angular face which was mature for his age. His hair was the shade of lilac, it was tied in a man-bun, with random tresses falling away at the nape of his neck and the edges of his face and he had a thin fringe. Otherwise, he would have long touselled hair. He was a good looking person and Takumi was sure he probably had his fair share of admirers too. But with a first impression like this, maybe not as much. He carried what looked like a sports bag with him and had set it down beside the chair that was near Takumi. Takumi didn't really know what to make of him. He just looked empty. He was like fog that one couldn't see through. When his eyes met Takumi's when he greeted them, he was sure for a split second he saw something in there that was akin to nostalgia. Nostalgia for what? He could not say.
These two were good friends of Ayame-san, so he shouldn't judge them too harshly.
"So guys, what are we having?" asked Ayame.
Takumi walked over to stand by her "Try the coffee-hazelnut flavour. That's what I had just then"
"Is it any good?" she asked jovially.
He chuckled "Trust me, I'm a chef".
"Yeah? I guess I'll give that a taste" she smiled at him and poked him in the shoulder. Takumi feigned hurt and she patted his shoulder in jest.
"Oh! Oh! Oh! I want the double scoop custard and sea-salt ice cream, Oji-san" Namikaze bounced on her toes like a little child pointing to the two ice cream flavours through the counter window for ice-cream man to scoop for her.
"Are you sure, Chizuru-chan? It's not really a popular flavour combination" Ayame giggled.
"What? You spend one day with Aldini-san and you think you're a master food critic already? Geez Ayame-chan, absorb knowledge a little slower please" Namikaze smirked. She received her double scoop with just as much enthusiasm and skipped over to the table Takumi was occupying earlier.
Ayame-san pouted and her cheeks had a light dusting of pink which Takumi thought was adorable. Her hair today was different. It was plated in a loose French braid which cascaded down her left shoulder. Some small dark tresses escaped to naturally fall around her neck. She looked especially pretty today and it made him happy that he got to see her this way.
Ayame-san received her single scoop of hazelnut-coffee ice-cream in a waffle cone wrapped in their monogrammed serviette. Takumi wasn't sure when Kuchiyose ordered his triple scoop ice-cream in a cup, but he swore he never heard a peep out of the extremely tall boy. He easily towered over all three of them and was only maybe thirty-five centimetres shy from the top of the door-frame. But there he was standing beside the table, slowly eating his ice-cream.
'Weird'
Takumi ordered himself a crème-caramel flavoured ice-cream, something a bit more adventurous to try. He waited until Ayame-san was seated first before he sat by her side.
"So, Ayame-chan had told us a lot about you. You're a second year high school student like us, yeah?" Namikaze began, never breaking eye contact with Takumi as she licked her ice-cream "What do you do for fun?"
'Cristo! Was she hell bent on interrogating me? I can see it in her eyes...'
"I like to try out new recipes when I get the chance. Back in Italia, my brother and I used to play a lot of soccer in our spare time otherwise we mostly worked in our family trattoria" he said easily.
"Soccer? Well what do you know, Kuchiyose-kun here is the striker on our school soccer team" she pointed with her mini spoon at Kuchiyose-kun who was already up to his last scoop of vanilla ice-cream.
Takumi noted that his eyes minutely widened and rose to meet his in mild interest, but then just as fast, he was back to looking down and eating his ice-cream. What was his deal? He glanced over and Ayame-san who looked genuinely pleased at the interaction Namikaze started. He supposed he would make some extra effort in conversing and perhaps getting to know a bit more about her friends.
"Since I'm studying at Tootsuki, I don't have a lot of spare time for anything except for during holidays. I accept shokugekis or cooking challenges from time to time when someone is foolish enough to challenge me" said Takumi.
Namikaze's cheeky smile widened. "Seriously, you must be crazy good. Looks like you scored yourself quite a... friend here, Ayame-chan".
Takumi looked over to Ayame-san to see her blushing again and licking her ice cream.
"What about you, Namikaze-san" he asked back, eating his ice-cream in a cup.
"Me? Well, I'm a gamer, I play most of the usual titles. I like to hangout, listen to music, the usual stuff. Kuchiyose-kun here likes soccer as you can already tell. He also likes cats, plays the acoustic, long walks on the beach and—" Namikaze-san was cut off with a quick karate chop to the head by the tall lilac-haired teen who also threw her a despairing look. Then he went back to eating ice-cream.
The moment came to an awkward standstill as Namikaze grumbled and whimpered in her seat and Takumi decided he would steer the conversation to something else. Her friends didn't sound too weird, quite ordinary Japanese interests in his opinion.
"Ah, Ayame-san, have you received your physics exam results yet?" Takumi asked.
"Yeah! I got 98%" she beamed at him.
"Congratulazioni" he said.
"What does that mean?" asked Namikaze, recovering from her chop to the head.
"It means congratulations" he said smoothly.
The three of them chatted some more about their day to day school life and Namikaze forced Takumi to recount his previous cooking battles and how he smashed his opponents much to her enjoyment. Kuchiyose didn't contribute to the conversation, but he knew he was listening keenly. He watched the way Ayame-san joined in and interacted with them and saw how lively she was. It brought a sense of calm within him which was worlds apart from the ecstatic adrenaline cooking brought him. It was very pleasant. However, the few times she licked the sticky and melting ice-cream from her hands and fingers made his stomach churn and his blood simmer. It started to become erotic to his eyes and he kept shifting in his seat and he couldn't tear his eyes away from her. Oh, he had to be affected this way right this very moment in front of her friends! The Roman Gods really must be placing bets on him now. His shifting perspective on Ayame-san's eating habits was becoming indecent thanks to Isami's text message! He tried to suppress a groan that threatened to rumble from his throat as he continued to watch her ministrations on her fingers.
"Oh this is ridiculous, my hands feel so sticky" Ayame-san decided to quickly gobble the rest of her ice-cream, even the waffle cone to Takumi's relief and tried to pat her hands dry with the serviette "I need to use the bathroom guys. I'll be right back"
He stood up as soon as she did from her seat and she excused herself, disappearing through the doors of the ice-cream parlour's sat down when he lost sight of her. He turned back to pay attention to the other two but was met with Namikaze's face whose smile had transformed into a grin.
A shit-eating grin.
"I saw what you did there, Leonardo. Getting off from her eating habits are we?" she giggled.
'Merda!'
"W-what!? I don't know wh-what you are talking about!" Takumi yelled back at her, his face as red as a roma tomato. "And my name is Takumi!"
"Hells-to-the-yeah we can see it as plain as day, right Kuchiyose-kun?"
The tall lilac-haired boy nodded minutely. Takumi clenched his hands painfully in his lap and pressed his legs together to bottle in the sudden surge to throttle the impish girl in front of him for her insinuations.
"Look, we approve of your advances towards our Ayame-chan. You seem like a decent lad, so you can relax your balls" she sighed haughtily. "But mark my words, if you fucking do anything to hurt her, whether it be verbal, physical or mental… I'll fucking punch you in the dick with a cactus. Are we clear?" Namikaze's voice dropped an octave and her eyes lowered dangerously.
"T-The hell! There is nothing g-going on between us! Even if there was, I wouldn't do a-anything except treasure her!" he yelled back.
'Sono morto...'
"Now that's what I like to hear! She's smart, cute and boy she's such an erotic eater that it puts chocolates and strawberries to shame. What guy wouldn't want that?" she went back into a chipper mood, but the threatening air didn't leave.
Takumi felt exhausted. She was nothing like his nonna. With Ayame-san in their midst, she spoke in a sugary sweet way and when she was gone, she switched instantaneously to crass and vulgar language. Not just her words, but her tone of voice as well. He could tell, she was an extremely protective friend who wouldn't hesitate to tear a new one for whomever hurt the people close to her.
"L-Look, any man would be lucky to have her, a-alright?" he said, turning his burning face away.
"Yeah, I know a few guys who would love to be that lucky" Namikaze said casually and leaned her head in her hands.
"WHAT!"
Takumi's chair scraped loudly back as he jumped out of his seat. His stomach knotted painfully and his blood shot past boiling point. An insurmountable mix of frustration and annoyance dominated his mind. Ayame-san specifically told him that she only had two close friends. Two! Did she have other mail friends? Were these two the only ones who knew there were other men interested in her? Unless these such men never approached her directly and probably admired her from afar. He had the male intuition that such suitors who pursued from afar usually did so for a very long time, biding their time.
Another mix of foreign emotion seeped into his being, growling in his mind for the bella he coveted.
'C-Coveted…!'
Takumi's mind jammed itself at the thought.
"Geez Donatello, calm down! You look like you want to shit some four-carot diamonds there. You don't have to worry. She wouldn't be interested in those dweebs anyway" chuckled Namikaze.
Takumi forced his feelings away and retook his seat. Now he understood why Namikaze got into trouble at school frequently just as Ayame-san said. She ran her mouth off with no filter or regard for other's feelings. He was about to yell at her to stop calling him different names when she interrupted.
"Oh! Welcome back Ayame-chan. All cleaned up?" Namikaze changed back into her childish and impish persona when Ayame-san got back.
She had taken out her braid and it lay delicately against her left shoulder. She looked beautiful.
Takumi instantly got up from his seat and coughed into his first and turned his face away. When Ayame-san retook her seat beside him, he sat down also, crossed his legs and stretched his arm over the back of the empty seat on the other side. He needed to be the picture of composure or she will suspect something was up. He looked over to her again, making sure to bypass the infuriating smirk on Namikaze's face before settling on Ayame-san. She intertwined her finger in her hair as she began to re-braided it loosely.
"What did I miss?" she asked keenly.
"Oh just a bit of this and a bit of that. Aldini-san here was telling us about the multitude of girls that chase after him at school" Namikaze said innocently.
"Is that so?" she looked at him.
"THAT'S NOT TRUE AT ALL! I didn't say any of that, and you stop making fun of me!" Takumi's hands flew up into the air flourishing it about, his face exploding again with heat.
Ayame-san's expression remained a bit shocked for a few more seconds before she chuckled into her palm.
"Chizuru-chan, I asked you to behave… Well, you are very handsome and talented Takumi-kun, I wouldn't be surprised at all" she said and then turned the conversation away into a more favourable topic.
Takumi replaced his arm on the back rest of the empty seat beside him again, hoping the cool metal could flow through his arm and help to ease the blush on his face. He was extremely uncomfortable with the ideas Namikaze was putting into Ayame-san's head. Even though it was a lucky guess and it was true, he still didn't want her to know anything about that side of his school life. He kept his face turned the other way. Kuchiyose was still not speaking, except for a few nods to show that he was indeed, paying attention. Other times he was staring at his smart phone, but his fingers weren't typing anything or swiping the screen for that matter. Actually, his finger never touched the screen. He just stared with his deep hazel eyes. But there was a hint of despondency somewhere in there. Perhaps he was looking at a picture. But whatever it was, he stared for a pretty long time.
He threw a vengeful look at Namikaze and he grimaced at the small traces of that same shit-eating grin on her lips.
'Che troll...'
Oh man, does Takumi suffer. It's not going to be an easy ride for him. People need to work hard for what they want, no? I think every guy at one point needs to get pass the 'friends' test 'before they get the girl. May or may not apply for Takumi haha.
Thank you or the lovely reviews! They really motivate me :)
See you again in 5 days' time!
Signing off
-TripWire-dono
