Fair Game
She was an anchovy crammed in among tens of thousands of her kind.
Her own small school crushed in around her, the familiar voices of Usagi, Makoto and Ami joined with the excessively loud screaming and chattering of the teens and twenty-somethings that had filled the stadium to its capacity. Normally, tight spaces and large crowds caused Rei a great amount of anxiety, but the anxiety she felt now wasn’t associated with her surroundings at all.
The lights darkened and the stage in the middle of the arena was swathed in shadow as the canned beat in the background slowly faded. The crowd suddenly surged, their voices swelling to a decibel that Rei wondered how one human voice, even amplified, could possibly be heard above the din.
But she knew Minako’s could.
She was teasing her fans, milking that tense moment before her appearance, feeding off their anticipation – and no one contributed to that anticipation more than Rei herself, who hadn’t even realized she’d stopped breathing. The ache she’d held in her heart all week, knowing Minako had been in town, but needing her space to sort through her memories, to sort through her feelings, had forced her to keep her distance. Not to mention the fact that she certainly hadn’t trusted herself to seek out the object of her confusion... but now, all Rei wanted in the world was to simply see Minako again.
Finally, a bright light erupted from the center of the stage, a driving, electronic beat pulsated through the stadium, and then, heralded by the voice that had gathered such an amazing crowd, Aino Minako hit the stage, launching into a track from her latest album.
Rei was suddenly grateful that their seats, though close enough to the stage to offer a perfect vantage point, weren’t too close to front row. From behind the screen of about twenty rows of fans, the miko felt she could gape at the idol in unadulterated glory, for Minako’s onstage persona never ceased to amaze her.
But regardless of that untouchable appearance; from the singer’s intricate costume, which consisted of form fitting white vinyl booty shorts and vest, to the stage makeup that amplified her beauty for even those at the back of the stadium to see, to the rainbow of flashing lights that pulsed to the rhythm of her voice, underneath it all, she was still Aino Minako, their stubborn leader and her best friend. No matter how famous she was, or how stunning she looked, she was still her Minako.
Her Minako?
Rei tore her gaze from her best friend to stare at her hands sheepishly. Had she become so comfortable with her feelings for the other woman that she could honestly consider such a thing?
Daring a glance back at the singer, looking at her from just the right angle, Rei’s train of thought was derailed; for she was shocked to find a Minako she hadn’t expected. Despite the energy of the song she sang, regardless of her animated dancing and emotion filled voice, the smile that Minako wore didn’t quite seem to reach her listless eyes. For one who had been so enthused about reaching out to others through her music, Minako seemed terribly tired.
Rei hadn’t the time to dwell on that thought any longer, because when the idol turned, a subtle act that hadn’t seemed premeditated to any but Rei’s eyes, the miko got the feeling that Minako was looking for something. No… searching for someone.
And those caramel eyes stopped wandering when they found Rei’s.
Even from fifty feet away, through of sea of people, tens of thousands of fans shouting for her attention, screaming her name, Minako had found her best friend.
‘I’m overanalyzing.’ Rei said to herself, even as she remembered to breathe. ‘I’m sure every person in this half of the stadium thinks she’s looking at them, stupid.’
But then the singer raised her hand to the crowd, her index finger pointing outwards, and this time Rei knew Minako’s actions, easily confused for part of the choreography, weren’t meant for the crowd in general. They were meant for her. She was pointing that delicate finger at her.
At a loss, Rei frowned, and she knew it had been her petulant response that had caused the idol’s glassy smile to spread into a full blown smirk, and a glimmer of true emotion finally reached those tired caramel eyes.
With an honest grin, Rei found herself returning the gesture, and for that one moment, the only two living souls in the entirety of the stadium, in the entirety of the world, were Minako and herself. And when the singer had decided she’d neglected the rest of her fans too long and trotted to the other end of the stage, Rei found herself missing her best friend’s attention.
But the song was pulling to a close. Its driving beat slowed, was mixed against a tamer beat with a more melancholy sound that mingled harmony with melody, and finally, Rei identified the track as an old standard from her second album, Katagoshi ni Kinsei. It was such a ridiculously obvious song, considering Minako’s senshi powers, yet it was one of Rei’s favorites.
“Before daybreak, in the clouds on Venus, the two of us found each other.”
And as her object of attention sang, Rei felt glued to her words, for suddenly, it felt like Minako was singing to her.
“Our secret love that we couldn’t share with anyone, will it vanish softly into the sky?”
And as Rei listened to the lyrics, to the emotion behind them, really listened for the first time, she began to doubt the wonderland simplicity of the song being based off of a fictional situation. And although the song could have meant almost anything, with her newfound memories rising to the front of her mind, the miko was suddenly aware of the double meaning that might apply to her, to the Reiko of the past and her relationship with Venus Minako. She found herself hoping her suspicion might be correct, but every time Rei looked to the stage, searching for acknowledgement, she found Minako to be avoiding her gaze.
“Awkwardly, these fleeting emotions will also be reborn in the future.”
Suddenly, Rei didn’t know which Minako she was hearing – Venus Minako or Aino Minako.
“Has anyone ever told you what an amazingly beautiful voice you have? Reiko asked, snuggling her head on her partner’s lap. She was met with a tentative chuckle.
“If I tell you something, will you promise not to laugh?” Minako cautioned.
The raven haired woman’s eyes squinted. “Of course.”
“I… always wanted to be a singer.”
“Eh?” Reiko asked, trying to picture her stubborn commander as anything other than the seemingly single minded leader of the senshi. “Hmm,” she warmed up to the idea, “Venus Minako, interplanetary pop star…”
“Mars Reiko, you promised!” The Venusian Princess turned her nose to the air and affected a genuinely hurt expression.
Reiko grabbed her partner’s clasped hands and smiled up at her. “I’m not teasing you. Can’t you take a compliment?”
“You… think I have the talent?” Minako asked uncertainly.
“Of course!” Reiko enthused. It wasn’t like Venus not to have the utmost confidence in herself, and she wanted to urge her partner not to let her dream go, no matter how impossible it was given their duties. “Sing me something.”
A slight blush covered the senshi of love’s cheeks. Reiko smiled and closed her eyes, waiting.
“On our morning walks, we always held hands/ I won’t forget that since someday, you’ll hold me close to you/ Because I’ll love you forever/ Perhaps we can find a new love, looking at Venus.”
Suddenly, the senshi of fire couldn’t breathe. She was a million miles, a million years away, yet she was still herself, hearing the same song, the same words, from the same voice. Minako was calling to her, but she wasn’t answering. Why wasn’t she answering?
“Reiko! Reiko, answer me!”
Mars gasped painfully and she tore herself out of her frightening premonition, and found herself back in her familiar room, her head in Minako’s familiar lap.
Rei didn’t know how long she was out of it, but when she could finally feel herself again, the familiar sound of Katagoshi ni Kinsei had been replaced by another song off Minako’s latest album. She was too shocked, too confused to place its name, but that was the least of her worries.
Reiko had known back then. She’d had a premonition that she’d ignore Minako’s call in a different place, a different time. Had Minako been calling out to her through her music for the past five years and she’d been too deaf to hear her, to really hear what she was saying?
She searched the stage and found her best friend, bouncing and singing and motioning to her fans, her microphone in the air as she effortlessly reached a particularly tough note. But she could read that tense body language, the apprehension in every movement that mimicked that which Rei felt. And as she watched, the miko knew, Minako had been dealing with the same feelings all along for the past five years.
And this time, when those caramel eyes turned back towards her, they held Rei in place, as though she’d known what the other woman had been thinking, and this time, the miko’s world did stop. Motionless in a turbulent world where everything was too loud, everyone was too close, Rei was suffocating.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“What?!” Usagi shouted dumbly with a wide smile.
Rei raised her voice only slightly, her eyes lost. “I said I’m… not feeling well. I have to go.”
“Rei-chan!” Ami and Makoto called out.
But the miko had already squeezed herself between the rows of fans and seats that had held her captive and was making her way towards the exit. And although she was entirely too conscious of Minako’s gaze on her, watching her leave even as she continued to sing, for all her confusion, all her fear, Rei couldn’t turn around to face her.
OOO
‘This is always the worst part.’ Minako lamented, that empty space after a concert when the fans have left, her manager was passed out on the couch of her dressing room, her adrenaline had worn off, and she was left with nothing but the relentless pounding of the road crew disassembling the stage.
Heading for the parking garage, the singer walked the bowels of the stadium on autopilot, her exhausted mind jumping from thought to thought incoherently.
It had been good to see the girls backstage, but Minako hadn’t had the patience for playing hostess very long, especially given Rei’s absence. Usagi had assured her that the miko had felt ill and had gone home, but she knew the truth. It had been all Minako could do to maintain her composure when she’d seen Rei leave the concert, and it had taken all she’d had to keep from running after her mid-song.
What had upset Rei so terribly? Perhaps she’d finally understood the real meaning and the feelings she’d weaved into her songs and was running away, repulsed?
Though she had finally reached the exit, Minako paused mid stride and leaned a shaky hand against the cold cinderblock wall for support. She felt sick. What had she done?
“Where to, Aino-san?” It was her driver who had pulled her car up to meet her that yanked the singer from her thoughts.
“Home, please.” She barely managed as she fumbled with the door and collapsed into the rear seat. Though she’d never considered the rented space as her home, her apartment was the only place in this city she had left to go.
She leaned her clammy forehead against the tinted glass of the back window, her eyelids slowly shutting as they wound around the ramp of the parking garage before bursting into the brightly lit neon colored night of Tokyo. She squinted when the flashes of cameras held by hopeful fans assaulted her, but before her eyes slowly shut for good, she saw one thing that brought her exhausted body back to life.
She was there.
Standing behind the crowds, her chin buried in her wool jacket in an attempt to keep warm, Rei was waiting for her. And Minako latched onto that small shred of hope she always carried, for if Rei had stayed behind, perhaps things couldn’t have been as bad as she’d feared.
“Pull over.” She demanded.
Her driver caught her gaze from the rear view mirror quizzically. “Excuse me?”
“Drive away from the crowd, pull over and let me out.”
“But, Aino-san-”
“Just do it!” She barked, her commanding nature taking over to suit her needs.
Minako zipped her puffy parka up to her chin and pulled the brim of her baseball hat down to further conceal her identity. Having driven a sufficient distance to throw off her fans, she dashed out of the car and made her way back to stadium parking lot.
From a distance, the singer stood watching but quickly realized that her best friend was no longer where she’d last seen her. Minako smirked. It meant that Rei wanted the idol to find her.
‘Perhaps my plan hasn’t backfired at all.’ She decided. For, in the past, she hadn’t been the only one to play the mouse, and she was perfectly content to play the cat, so long as Rei was her prey.
OOO
She found her just a couple blocks away.
Slightly out of breath, having run the whole way, it was all the singer could do to master her cool sense of calm when she saw the miko, illuminated by the faint light of a waxing quarter moon. Sitting patiently on a wall that bordered a small park, Rei’s feet dangled a few inches from the sidewalk, and when coupled with her wrinkled brow that spoke of confusion, only enhanced her youthful image.
“There were too many people in there for me, I-”
“It’s okay,” Minako offered, seeing that her friend was having trouble expressing herself, and not wanting to get her to flustered… yet, “I understand. Sometimes the crush of people gets to me, too, and I’m supposed to be used to it.”
The miko offered the idol a thankful smile, and a small amount of tension was released from her posture. “I still don’t know how you do it.”
Minako shrugged and, with an effortless hop supported by her right hand to spin her body around, joined Rei on the wall. “Sometimes, I don’t know how I do it either.”
Catching the look of concern the other woman gave her, a look that told her that her best friend might have seen more than she’d wanted her to, Minako decided to steer their conversation in a more important direction. “So, did you miss me last week?”
This earned a willful snort from the miko, who crossed her arms over her chest indignantly. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
The quiet air was laced with gentle laughter and the two women sat shoulder to shoulder in silence. The heels of Minako’s sneakers bounced playfully against the wall as she fought the pull of the hypnotizing headlights that danced off the hedges thrown by the traffic in the distance. Meanwhile, Rei stared at her hands. For as much as she simply wanted to bask in the comfortable position she’d found herself in, she was unsure of what to say, feeling that any explanation of her emotions would be inadequate to explain how confused she felt, how very on the edge she was between pulling her best friend closer to her, and simply pushing her away.
“I think I-“
“This past week I-“
The two chuckled somewhat awkwardly, and before they could get caught in an endless cycle of ‘you go first,’ Rei beat the singer to the punch. “Please, go ahead.”
Minako smiled softly and rested her hand lightly on Rei’s thigh. “It’s late, and it’s cold. Why don’t we go back to my place and-“ Minako could feel the miko’s muscles quivering under her hand. “Rei?”
The raven haired woman finally looked her best friend in the eye. “You were right. My past is returning.”
The singer fought back a gasp at hearing the one thing she’d waited to hear for what had seemed like endless years. “Then you-“
Rei forged forward, feeling that she had to get this out now or she’d never say it at all. “And I’m sorry that… you’ve been calling to me all this time and I’ve never really listened until now.”
‘An apology?’ Minako asked herself with wide eyes. The miko never apologized! The singer’s mind raced and got the better of her. ‘Could Rei and I be on the same page after all this time?’
Minako’s voice was a whisper. “Reiko…”
“No!” Rei severed eye contact with her best friend, her voice hoarse. She slid off the wall, standing shakily on feet that threatened to run. To hear Minako call her by her past incarnation’s name was too much for her. It was cracking her defenses, and she knew that if she wasn’t careful, she’d give in to desires that she didn’t fully understand.
“No… don’t call me that,” Her voice was a pained whisper, “please.”
Seeing Rei so fragile, and only wanting to comfort her, Minako pushed her luck. Sliding quietly off the wall, she stood in front of her best friend and slowly reached out to her. Rei refused to meet her eyes, even when the warm skin of Minako’s hand cupped her chilled cheek, but the singer couldn’t help but smile softly as the miko leaned into her touch.
Rei stood frozen, her dark eyes clouded with an obvious mixture of doubt and desire, but Minako advanced ever so slowly, until their breath mingled together in the cold night air. With Rei’s head titled to the left, Minako’s titled to the right, it felt like they stood there forever; both the cold and being out in the open forgotten as each of them waited for the other to make the next move.
The miko shivered, and that very action nearly caused their lips to touch, but it was enough to break her from her trance. No matter how much she wanted to kiss her best friend, she was still afraid. She had grown considerably more comfortable with her feelings for her Minako, but she needed more time.
Just a little more time.
Rei stumbled backwards, and seeing the hurt, the disappointment, in Minako’s caramel eyes, she clutched her hands to her chest for fear that her heart would leap from it.
Wide eyed and unable to think of a single thing to say to redeem herself, Rei simply turned and ran.
OOO
The singer wasn’t sure how long she stood there after the miko had fled, but she didn’t really care.
Finally, her criteria had been met. After five long years, Rei was fair game and she was now free to pursue her. Between her words and her actions, the miko had told her everything she wanted to know without her actually saying it.
She’d regretted scaring Rei, pushing her over the edge like that and causing her to run away, but she didn’t regret her actions. Just like Mars Reiko, Hino Rei would return to the flame like a moth, just like she used to when they had been senshi years ago.
Yet, she had seen the worry, the fear, in the miko’s dark eyes - the sign that she was still coming to terms with what she’d learned and how she felt. Minako remembered having gone through that awkward phase, alone and afraid five years ago. She wanted to be there for her best friend, but knowing that she was the cause of those emotions, she acknowledged that it would be a careful balancing act on her part.
But worst of all… now that Minako had finally held Rei so close, she felt terribly lonely in her best friend’s absence.
A chill ran down Minako’s spine, no doubt a combination of the cold night air and the intensity of her feelings. A quick check of her watch snapped her back to reality. Her alarm clock would be ringing in only a few hours.
With a smile, Minako took to her heels, heading towards her apartment with a bounce in her step. After all, regardless of her worries, the singer had a lot to look forward to, for starting tomorrow, Hino Rei was fair game.
OOO
Authors notes:
Ah hah, sorry for the tease with Rei running away, but you know the wait will only make it that much sweeter. Stick with me.
Regarding my translation of the first verse of Katagoshi ni Kinsei; you might notice it’s just a little different than most translations you’ve seen. I’ve only studied Japanese for about three years, but this is the way I read the passage, and I’m sticking to it.
Preview, Chapter 7:
The singer grinned evilly. “While ‘A Day in the Life of Minako’ may have been an interesting diversion, don’t think I’ve forgotten our purpose here. Just because my work interrupted our day doesn’t mean you’ve gotten off the hook for last night. You still have some explaining to do.”
Rei snapped her mouth shut, suddenly finding the sidewalk much more interesting to look at. But she managed to quell the butterflies in her stomach. She was ready for this. Being like this all day; being with Minako, sharing, learning, she felt she’d been given what she needed to feel comfortable with taking the chance of letting Minako get closer to her. She finally knew it would be okay to let this one woman, who meant so much to her, close to her heart.
And when she’d gathered the courage to look back into Minako’s eyes, she realized something else, first. ‘When did we start holding hands?’ She wondered, for Minako’s fingers no longer gripped her jacket sleeve, but were laced between her own fingers snugly.
Back to I Want to Believe in Someone Index - Back to Sailor Moon Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction