Context: This one-shot is set in Venice like the one about jelous Izumi, but the events happen the following year, so Izumi is 27 while Junpei is 28. Basically, we are near to the time I headcanon * the proposal* to happen.

XXX

{The Wind and its uncountable surprises}

When he stormed into the bedroom with a note of nervousness accompanying the drumming of his steps, it had just dawned on her she had exhausted her attention and focus on the boring book she was reading. Due to that haste he had stepped out of the bathroom with, he had accidentally left the door opened and now a generous crack was inviting her to stretch her neck and spot some hints of the tempest he had created in there: a crumpled carpet pushed against the tiles of the wall, a pile of familiar clothes abandoned on the floor as if they were nothing more than rags, tired towels peeking out from the edge of the bathtub and being about to slip off it, the most disparate objects scattered on the flooded surface of the sink.

Oh well, she would be the worst kind of hypocrite if she decided to scold him because of that mess: she couldn't absolutely lie about the fact an hour before that poor bathroom had had to go through another hurricane, making both discover in awe they could add another personality trait in the list of…Lovely flaws they shared.

"What's the matter? Che c'è?" She couldn't help bursting in gusts of laughters, but the defined sight of a stout young man in elegant attire froze the dance of those bursts in the chilly atmosphere of their bedroom.

She wasn't that certain about what she could say, what she wanted to say and she wasn't when it came to him, either. She didn't know if he had imagined she would squeal at him and throw herself in his arms, cooing at how handsome he looked, but he should know her well by now, shouldn't he? He should know she wasn't that kind of woman and yet…

And yet…

Tossing her book aside, she crawled to the other edge of the bed, near to where he was regulating the strap of his watch. He checked how tight it felt on his wrist, proceeding to repeat the ritual again, and unexpectedly ignored the curious green of large cat eyes inspecting his figure with an enchanted caution.

After a year spent following his bustling tenor career from such a close perspective, she had grown used to seeing him dressing up for special occasions; to observing him shifting from his usual scruffy appearance to an utterly alienating and refined look. She would often get the destabilizing sensation of being in the company of someone else whenever that happened, her voice and sarcasm evaporating in thin air, her wary hand remaining suspended in the air until he would grab it.

However, she had soon realized it would take a simple, goofy smile in her direction to make that illusion vacillate and eventually break. Obviously, in that room with her, standing next to the foggy windows of the incoming venetian winter, there was no one else but the awkward Junpei she had always known.

"This looks so bad," He muttered to himself with a head shake as he passed his palm down the fabric of his tie. "No, no, it isn't just bad. It terribly sucks. Definitely."

She was feeling way too cold to stand up, as at that time in the morning the radiators were still heating up and slowly warming the apartment, but her voice could have the same effective power as her persuading caresses on his shoulders.

"How can you say that? That misted window hardly looks like a good mirror," She raised an eyebrow in amusement at the way it seemed he was really trying identifying his reflection in there, in the thickest grey of a glacial weather. "Besides…I was thinking you actually look nice." His back straightened all of a sudden in response. "You look really nice."

Then, he surrendered to the urge to turn to her and he showed her his blissful face, -because it was really enough to compliment him with the most ordinary and driest existing words to make him feel like the luckiest man on Earth-.

"I look nice," He repeated in disbelief, the chocolate in his eyes seeming to be melting and being about to stain his pail blue shirt. "I guess I can't do anything about it: if Izumi says so, it's because it's true."

It is , That whisper prudently advanced through her most inner thoughts, gaining self-esteem at each surpassed millimeter. It became way too cheeky at the end of its fast journey, though, and Izumi found herself smirking, complacent.

Junpei greatly appreciated that feline expression on her porcelain face and probably started feeling a bit more confident about his outfit, just like that whisper of hers had. Actually, he accumulated enough self-esteem to hop in front of her, spread his legs and arms and theatrically put his black waistcoat and brown trousers on display.

"Ta-da!" He chirped at her, as he made his fingers vibrate like if they were sparklers without fire and light, and she spontaneously applauded at that improvised, silly show to exchange his playful mood.

Still, while her pupils were taking a more careful tour down his robust silhouette, focusing on those details she hadn't been able to catch at first, she started feeling like something looked off. She couldn't pinpoint what it was until she got onto his feet. That was the reason why her gaze wasted a whole minute of embarassing silence repeatedly going up and down, -from his neck to his knees-, making her fantasy go wild and brainstorm in the most different ways: did he need a hat? One of those Fedora hats that could turn any man in a perfect dandy? Could it be she needed to see him with shoes on well? And now that she thought about that, what kind of shoes had he picked? Don't tell me he's chosen to wear trainers!, She sweated at the only imaginary draft of such a horrid decision.

But she fortunately pushed her irises further, down onto the wood floor.

"Uh, have you changed your mind?" He murmured, confused but also slightly anxious. His hands still in the air, he glued his spheres onto her pensive features as his legs started creating a more and more evident distance between each other.

"No, no, it's just that…"

"It's just that…? Don't tell me you want me to wear a bow."

"No, Junpei, it's just that your trousers are too long," She pointed at the mass of linen falling on his socks. "Or your legs are too short," She let out a chuckle at that teasing remark and ,as if on cue, as if they had been offended by her, Junpei's legs ceased to his bizarre position by gliding in a painful split.

Izumi didn't pay attention to the first time of the day he had fallen and hurt himself. At that moment her ears were only listening to her unbridled rambling, no matter Junpei's whining was covering half of it and turning part of her plans into a mash of incoherent sounds.

"That hurts so much," He complained, massaging his backside. "These trousers are so uncomfortable even during falls. They have got these stupid buttons on the butt. How will I be able to si-"

"Junpei!" She turned to him again, flames of an excitement he couldn't interpret at all burning the grass in her eyes. " Torno subito".

" What does it mean torno subito?!" He exclaimed in bewilderment, his jaw dropping at her blonde hair flying away from him, at her taking off at the speed of a butterfly beat. "Ohi, Izumi!" He called her, still struggling to walk properly and slowening down the pace of his brief march to the corridor. From there, he could hear her searching for something among a bunch of objects, opening and closing old drawers and making the stuff inside of them vacillate in the process.

She returned to him after not even a minute with a lovely-looking box in her arms. It was covered by a layer of colourful drawings featuring shapes Junpei couldn't immediately recognize.By the time he did, -and he sent a chill down his spine right in that instant-, Izumi had already opened the box and had already revealed its content without explanation.

"Iz-Izuzu," He stuttered as he joined her on the mattress in comical shock. His orbs seemed to enlarge before the view of that tidy kit or, more precisely, before the one of a pair scissors, a bunch of needles and pins, a traditional tape measure, a series of motley fabric rolled on themselves and, finally, also an object he thought he had never seen before.

"This is a thimble," She pulled the cylindrical item out of its dug nest and showed him the easy way her index slipped in its empty cavity. She allowed him to try mimicking her gesture, but it wasn't a surprise his fingers, -each of them, not only his index-, were too big and thick to fit in such a small spot. However, he kept on weighing and holding it in his palm to analyze it properly, gradually finding himself being ensnared by its minuscule engravings.

"A thimble keeps you from hurting yourself while sewing," Izumi promptly clarified, getting silent yet vivacious nods from him. "My mother bought this one from Sardinia. We also have got a very old one whose top is totally pitted."

His head continued swinging at every single letter her lips would weave. One after the other, they were making his heart drown in an endless stream of admiration, even though he wasn't actually absorbing that treasure of knowledge she was sharing. And she did know it.

Actually, at a certain point, it became impossible for her not to begin giggling once more because of all that eager agitation next to her.

"You seem to have never seen a sewing kit in your life."

"It's kinda true, though?" He woke up from his dreamy trance and looked up at the ceiling, in search of possible memories he had buried somewhere, without actually wanting to. "My mother has always been too busy with her job to think about this stuff. If she happened to spot a hole in my clothes, she would throw it away and buy me something else. La Signora Orimoto is just another kind of mother, completely different from mine. I kinda…Envy you sometimes."

Izumi wished she could bite her tongue with aggressiveness and punish her lack of tact with an unpleasant taste of blood in her mouth. Nevertheless, for her frustration, her coward teeth remained still on the scared muscle, convincing her to cross another route; one she surprisingly dived in without hesitation. Indeed, at the very first step she took in that direction, she felt a a beautiful sense of release.

"Well, now you have got a girlfriend who can sew and will hem your pants."

"And-And-" That name she had used to label herself made him gulp so loudly he almost got scared. "And I can't just believe my-my-my girlfriend is as unpredictable as the wind for real."

"I started learning from Mamma after I got into modelling. It would make me so satisfied to fix those dresses they would give me as presents. Most of them were so ugly, hideous, and they would have remained in my closet, if I hadn't done anything about them."

"You could become a stylist too!" He highlighted enthusiastically with a clap. "You can really be anything, Izumi. You aren't only the most talented, charming, beautiful cook in the world! Now you're also the most talented, charming, beautiful seamstress in the world!"

She bended forward to crack a smile at his delighted wonder.

"All this encouragement is making me want to fix your outfit too," She reached out to fiddle with his tie. "I like this outfit but I can change some little flaws I'm not that convinced about. Or I could mind my business for this time, what do you think?"

"Again, what I think is that I hope you don't want to replace my tie with a bow…That would make me look like an emperor penguin. Takuya and Kouji would laugh at me for the whole night, even Tomoki would. And I don't want that."

Making her attention land on her kit again, she picked a needle and her scissors, and put them near to her thigh. Once chosen the tools she would use, her hand kept on absently hovering over the opened box, but it wasn't because she had just got a new idea out of blue.

"Where are you all going?" She asked him after having defeated a pang of jelousy and suspect. Discovering her closest friends, her family, were going to hang out without having invited her was incredibly demoralizing. She prepared herself to cross her arms and pout at Junpei for a whole day as a reaction to a predictable "It's just a boys' night". In reality, though, she had already begun glaring at him. She couldn't just help it.

"Well, you know," He stood up to clearly avoid the mistral she was summoning over him. He fairly grew bashful, -oh if she could understand why he would!-, and even started finding it difficult to look at her in the eye, -otherwise why would he show his back to her and not face her like he was supposed to? "A dear person to me is opening a restaurant this Saturday night and we all are going to cheer for her during the opening ceremony, eh eh."

Her grip shaking a bit, she threw herself against his chest and grabbed his cheeks between her palms.

"You bought this outfit to impress me at the party?"

"And to impreff your magnificent buffet," He merrily joked, his silver tongue weakening because of her affectionate pinches on his puffy skin. Then, it passed from sounding like a frail autumnal leaf to plunging in a thunderstruck mutism.

"You've dug your own grave, Great Detective Shibayama. Do you know that?" Her mint fused with her chocolate to give birth to the most distinctive flavour they both had ever tasted.

"Uh?" Dazzled, he protruded his lips in a restless expectation. He risked to lose his balance for a second time when she abruptly let him go.

"Listen: go to the toilet before I start, because I don't want to hear you saying you need to go peeing while I'm at work. I don't know how much it will take, ok?"

A change of heart told her she wasn't going to keep her promise to mind her business any more.

XXX

I have had this headcanon for a year and I won't promise other one-shots won't feature Izumi and her seamstress vein again. I love seeing Izumi as a person who loves diving herself in activities that are connected with the well-being of the household: I can see her being so skilled not only at cooking, but also at gardening and sewing. This last skill of hers, in particular, is dear to me because I adore connecting it with her former modelling career. Here I just implied she is into designing clothes, and that's why you bet you will see me returning on this aspect about my adult Izumi again. All the love for my neglected girl 3.