Those familiar with Japan’s tollway system may find several errors in the early parts of this story. I hope you’ll forgive me.
Before reading this, read White Reflection, one of my other shorts. Find a link in my profile if you’re having trouble locating it. This story follows WR’s canon, and there’s a direct reference to the events in this story within the text of that story. I’ll explain it briefly at the end, since fanon is never the most memorable of things. That means no skipping ahead and cheating.
This story will take place in several parts. Probably no more than four, but unlike WR or 2x4, it’s a multifaceted thing. I’m posting part of it early because I’m a bastard like that. If Sei’s plight seems unlikely, please bear with me. All will be explained in time, but only after you’ve had time to ponder it a while.
The name of the Barre and Grille in the story is a contraction and my own little play on words. Fleshed out, it’s Asa wa konai, Japanese for morning doesn’t come. I think the real humor to it is that it’s something you’d be likely to see in America, where such an idiotic play might be feasible. Maybe that’s why it calls itself an American Grille.
This is the first of three or so parts. I think.
This story was inspired by a Japanese song of the same name (only, you know, in Japanese). Whoever figures it out gets a cookie. (Hint: Study your anime)
Thriving in solitude has been mistaken for my life story
Sei Satou wore her hair down, and she played her music as loud as she damn well pleased. A regular rebel, by the Lillian's standards--that was how they all saw her, after all: A bare-footed, unshaven, easy-loving free spirit. She was none of those things, of course, but she knew she probably couldn’t convince them of it, even were she to show them her calves, clean-shaven, with her freshly polished shoes just below—because she did shave, and often, inconvenient as it was. She still attended Lillian University, and so the hem of her skirt was still tidy, and she still walked slowly, even when she was sprinting to make class on time. Her roommate (who had firsthand experience with Sei’s slender, hairless legs) asked her why she bothered shaving when there were no men around, and she never seemed to go out to meet them—she always smiled and told the pretty, clueless girl that she enjoyed the atmosphere around the school, and liked looking her best. The pretty, clueless girl never got it, only received it with a vacant look, smiled, and went back to her own work.
Sei Satou also drove fast—very fast, in fact. Most of the time, it was because she enjoyed it. This time, it was because she was very late, and very scared. She was not frightened because she was late, though she had every right to be. Rather, she was frightened because she had agreed to go at all. She would never admit it to herself—never acknowledge that dry little twist of her stomach, never let her hands clench themselves into fists the way they wanted to every time she thought about it. She denied these things, and yet she was still afraid, because such was the nature of fear. Nobody could deny it, no matter how hard they tried.
As the needle on her speedometer nudged its way up past the little 90 mark, she decided it was probably high time to slow down a little bit, especially since she’d be off the tollway soon—taking a tollway to get halfway across town, now that was proof of fear if ever it existed.
Why not just stand the whole deal up? This thought had occurred to her many times since she had started the car. Stay on the tollway until you get to Nagoya, pick Yumi up, and go have a decent night with the money you’ve saved to torture yourself with for the next four hours.
What the hell am I doing? This isn’t me. This isn’t anybody even remotely like me. Was I drunk? Am I now?
She was pretty sure she hadn’t been.
That didn’t change the fact that what she was doing was royally stupid. Maybe tomorrow morning, after trying to sleep off the biggest hangover of her life or anybody else’s, she’d be able to say, at least now they’ll get off my ass about it, or I guess I was drunk, or maybe even I guess that proves that for certain. She doubted it, though.
The trouble of the matter was that Sei Satou knew next to nothing about men. The one
other
man with whom she was acquainted in any way was Suguru Kashiwagi, which did nothing to color her perspective of “the other half” rosily. She didn’t really care to know much about them, either. She knew she didn’t like them in that way, and she had thought she knew how to deal with them well enough that they’d leave her the hell alone at bars, (at the ripe old age of twenty, Sei was not precisely a barfly, but she had sampled the local cuisine, several times) but apparently she was not entirely correct about this, because here she was.
But then again, that wasn’t right, either. It wasn’t men she didn’t know how to deal with. It was those women. The ones who called her a tree-hugging jungle-legged hippie, among other things, behind her back—they were the ones she didn’t know how to deal with.
That’s not true. You know women like Kashiwagi knows men. She smiled at that thought. That’s gotta be how it is.
But then, she thought, a bit more morosely, how did you wind up here? Were you tricked? You may just have been, but it didn’t seem like a trick at the time. She thought that maybe that was the best sort of trick—the kind that didn’t seem like a trick at all. She had never been particularly skilled at guile herself—she was able to fool Yumi, but everybody was able to fool Yumi. Yumi was gullible.
The thought of Yumi buoyed her spirits a little bit. It won’t be so bad, anyway. If you can skip the restaurant entirely, go straight to the restaurant, you can get yourself shat against the wall in an hour, tops. You can talk to a guy for that long.
The song on the radio changed—she barely noticed it.
And after that, all you have to do is make sure you don’t wind up in his bed with your freshly-shaven legs open wider’n Sister Geyer’s gut. That shouldn’t be too hard. Right?
Yeah, not too hard at all. As long as he doesn’t fuck with your drink. Just watch your drink, Sei. Just your drink.
Watch your legs, too.
And his hands. Watch his hands. Don’t Guys have wandering hands?
What the hell are you doing?
What the hell am I doing?
Somebody was honking at her, and Sei was brought abruptly back to reality as she realized that she was taking up two lanes in her tiny little Volkswagen Beetle. She swerved abruptly, a reflexive action—and nearly into a car riding parallel to her. Only the other driver’s quick reflexes saved them both a hell of a way to end an evening. The driver, a young, drab-looking woman, leaned into her horn and rested there for a bit, her face the very picture of young, drab outrage. Sei smiled as best she could, waved perkily, trying to figure out how best to pantomime sorry. She was still thinking on it when the other car pulled ahead of her. It vanished into all of the scenery which never made it past Sei’s eyes a few seconds later.
The song changed again. What played now was more upbeat, faster in tempo and heavier on the guitar. Sei forced herself to smile, and turned the volume up, thinking that perhaps it would be the last thing she might enjoy all night and determined to enjoy it.
Sei had originally been determined to wear precisely what she always wore outside of school property: Jeans and a button-up shirt. She had thought she could do it, too, but at the last moment she had cracked and put a skirt on, her stomach doing the loop-de-loop as she did. Not with nerves, not precisely, but with an odd sort of tension. Goddamnit, what do you think you’re doing? You take that off and put on a pair of sweatpants right now, young lady! She hadn’t, of course, in spite of the butterflies and the mental talking-down. She had put on makeup, too.
What’s the point if you’re not going to make it look like you made an honest effort? She had tried to rationalize it as she did. Nobody’s going to get off your back if you show up wearing sweatpants, frumpy glasses, and drink straight whiskey for the entire night.
But it was more than that, and she knew it: She didn’t want to look bad. Even if it was a complete act, even if the whole thing was just a thing to be gossiped on the next day so that her life could ease up a bit. Even if she barely remembered his name, and couldn’t care less what he thought of her before, during, or after. Even if.
Even if, you still can’t escape what Lillian gave you. She couldn’t decide if what Lillian had given her was a sense of pride or a funny little voice in her head which occasionally nagged at her to straighten her back and slow down as she walked, but neither could she make it go away.
And besides, she thought, you’re going out. How long has it been?
She realized with a certain despair that she couldn’t answer her own question. Her mind automatically switched the subject, a sort of self-defense mechanism she’d always possessed. Besides, what if there’s some pretty young woman in there just begging to be rescued from a plight similar to my own? Never heard of a knight in shining sweatpants, have you?
You will do no such thing. Who’s going to get off your back about it then?
That very thought—do it right, or nobody will get off your back—had occurred to her no less than twelve times in the past twenty minutes; an iron-clad rebuttal to her every attempt to escape what she was doing. What she’d forced herself to do.
This time, though, something new came to mind:
Why do you need them off your back? Why do you need to defend yourself to them? Hide yourself from them?
Because they are many, and you are one, and they are everywhere.
Fuck them, then. I can go on without them.
It’s not going on without them that is problematic. It’s going on, so long as they’re still around. They are many, and you are one, Sei. You’re defenseless if it comes down to it.
What are they going to do to me? The hell can they do to me?
This sort of naïveté had never suited Sei Satou. She knew it—as idealistic and pretty as it was to pretend that nobody could faze you, no one could touch you who you didn’t want to touch you, it was only that—idealism. The sort of thing that had no place in real life. Sei wasn’t a hermit. Sei wasn’t a misanthrope. Sei was not a sociopath, nor was she invulnerable.
Sei was just a person.
Sei was just a person, and Lillian University, the same fucking school which she had come up in all her life, was all of a sudden kicking her posterior, but good.
Kei’s gone now, so that’s really it. It’s just you, Sei, you and the world, and the world’s winning by a landslide. So for now…
For now, you need to focus on your driving.
For the second time in less than half an hour, Sei narrowly avoided an accident. Or rather, the driver in front of her narrowly avoided an accident. Sei did nothing to help. She slammed on the brakes approximately one second too late to avoid rear-ending the person waiting at the stoplight ahead, and the person slammed on the gas pedal (stop was just barely done fading out) and his horn simultaneously. Sei didn’t bother to wave this time. She was thinking about where she was going now.
She knew where the restaurant was; the last time she had gone out, (though she couldn’t quite remember when)she had gone there. It was attached to the bar where she had met him, after all. He had given her his number, and she had not discarded it—she wasn’t quite sure why. Maybe for just such a reason as this. The thought of herself gifted with that sort of foresight made her want to laugh a little.
She thought that maybe it was the last time she’d laugh that night, so she allowed herself the luxury of a chuckle.
Tokyo was not a quiet city by anybody’s standards, but tonight it seemed to be full to bursting—as though if one more person entered the city’s bounds, it might just explode, pop like a bubble at the end of a children’s toy. It was odd, since the tollway had been nearly deserted—probably the only reason she and her car had made it to the only parking spot left in a mile’s radius in one piece—she supposed it was probably because everybody had already gone out, and they were now out. She wasn’t late—not by much, anyway. She simply kept odd hours.
A date at ten at night. Shouldn’t I be drunk already?
She shook her head at the thought. Not a date. An escape.
Besides. Maybe she’d be lucky. Maybe he’d be really nice. Maybe he’d look at her face and magically understand her plight, and smile and buy her a drink, and then go home half an hour later and tell lie to all his guy friends about how he’d boned her so hard she’d begged for mercy and more, all at once. His guy friends who would then spread this to their girl friends, but never to Lillian’s faculty, and then she’d be…
She’d be munching on her golden gilded hat was what she’d be doing, because it would never happen—Sei thought that probably there wasn’t that much luck in the entire world.
The three blocks between she and the passed far too quickly for her liking. Even if it was cold
in your skirt with your shaved legs and shaved something else why did you shave that
outside. She’d rather have walked for the rest of the night. She’d rather have done anything for the night. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to goddamn do this what the hell am I doing here just get back in your car and pull out of your overpriced parking spot and get the hell out of here. This is wrong. This is stupid, and it’s wrong and it’s not goddamn you. You have never been this much of a weakling before get a hold of yourself and get back in the car.
And yet, still, her legs moved. One after the other, slowly and gracefully, in spite of the goosebumps running up her otherwise smooth thighs and in spite of the hole in her gut which refused to do anything but chew at her stomach, her legs moved. She supposed that hole in her gut was something a little like shame. She wasn’t surprised.
And then, there it was. Asawakina, American-style Bar and Grill. The place was decent, she remembered—it served teriyaki burgers that were nothing to spit at, even though she wasn’t quite certain that there were Teriyaki burgers in America.
And, if nothing else, it has booze.
There was that, too. She wondered briefly how she was planning on getting home for the night, and realized that it was quite a problem, in fact—she’d brought money for a hotel, hoping she’d be too plastered to even think about driving, and she knew of several hotels, sketchy though they were, in walking distance. The problem was, what did she tell him? Sorry, I’m going home now, no, to a hotel down the street. What? You say you want to come with? No, I’m actually driving home, though I can’t quite remember which end of the key goes in where, so don’t worry about me, I’ll be just fine. Just fine indeed.
“Sei?” the strong male voice came from behind her—she didn’t notice the note of uncertainty in it, probably on account of her own—but it may as well have come out of nowhere. She jerked and clamped her mouth shut reflexively to keep herself from screeching in alarm, and turned around as quickly as she could, her skirt whirling underneath her a bit like a parasol as she did. Her stomach lurched in anxiety as she came to a stop, now facing the mildly stout, not-unattractive (she supposed) man who had to have been in his mid-twenties. This was it. No turning back now; she was in for all the marbles, whatever they may be.
“Oh!” she forced a smile onto her face much in the same way a plumber might force a stubborn nut into place. “Hey there…” her mind began working furiously. His name began with a K syllable. Ka. Ki. Ke. Kenichi? “Kenji.” She was taking one plunge already. Another couldn’t hurt.
He smiled at her, his face relaxing as he did. “Kunikida,” he said a little wryly. She tried not to make it obvious that she didn’t give a shit—or maybe she did, but not in the way he’d like her to. Instead, she smiled. “You got it wrong when you called me too, but I didn’t say anything because I was afraid you’d hang up.”
“Oh, right. Sorry,” she said, and then realized she didn’t know what to say next.
Apparently, he didn’t either. After a moment of terse silence, though, he laughed. It was big and expressive, and she found herself relaxing a little in spite of herself—a good laugh did that to her. Maybe that was why she had liked Yumi so much, a couple million years ago. “Damn,” he said, his face working its way into a big grin that matched his laugh. “And here I was, making plans for my smooth entrance and everything. You’re killing me here, Sei. Really killing me.”
She smiled back, this time more genuine. “Sorry,” she repeated.
“’S all right,” he said. “Want to know what’s on the menu tonight?”
“No,” she admitted, and he laughed again. She found herself relaxing more—he reminded her a little of her father, before all of the shit had hit the fan.
“No, but seriously,” he said. “I’m freezing, and I imagine you can’t much feel your legs anymore,” he indicated her skirt. She nodded appreciatively, and he made what he would later call his first of two gaffes of the evening when excusing himself to his guy friends—he put his arm around her shoulder—protectively, he would proclaim, his voice dripping with false affront, because she looked colder’n a witch’s tit. After that, he would say, she just sort of froze up, and before they’d even had a chance to order some imported beer, she was gone. They would believe him, and they would pass what he had said on to their girl friends, with the added note that Kunikuda was kind of a pushy bastard sometimes. He would bear this criticism, which he feared was far truer than he’d admit easily, because, frankly, he liked the girl. He liked Sei, even if he had no shot at it, because she didn’t even play for his team, something he suspected even as he settled his meaty, oft-welcomed arm about the light-haired girl’s shoulder.
But all of that was still in the future. Not far in the future, but in the future. For now, there was only what there was—Kunikuda, walking towards the entrance with Sei on his arm, actually fairly grateful for (if extremely, unbearably uncomfortable with) the warmth it provided.
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