Now I want you when you’re gone / and now it’s like you’re / holding something just in front of me
Guarded
“Jee-zus,” Tate muttered as he looked at the menu posted outside of Ichi’s Beachside Restaurant and Inn, which proudly boasted the cheapest, tastiest sukiyaki in Goza! As it happened, the cheapest, tastiest sukiyaki in Goza! would cost him no less than seventeen hundred and fifty yen. “This is cheap?”
“What’s wrong, Big Brother?” Shiho asked from Tate’s arm, innocently ignorant of the toll that her demand of “I want sukiyaki!” would exact on her “Big Brother”; on his bank balance, and quite possibly on his sanity. Tate Yuuichi was from Tokyo, after all, where if you didn’t like the cost of the cheapest sukiyaki in the city, you went around the corner to a McDonalds and got an American-style hamburger. “I’m hungry.”
“I know you are, Shiho,” Tate frowned. “But this is really expensive.”
“The sign says it’s cheap.”
“The sign is lying. Look here,” he pointed to the “beef sukiyaki” entry on the menu. “That’s plenty cheap if you own Mie prefecture, I guess.”
Shiho frowned. “It’s too much for you?”
Tate looked away, a little embarrassed. “I don’t think I have that kind of money to throw around, Shiho. I’m really sorry.”
He supposed that his surprise at her reaction was a sign of their slowly-but-surely degenerating relationship. She smiled and nodded. “That’s alright. I don’t mind not eating here if it’s too expensive. Do you think we could go get something from the grocery store, though? I’m very hungry.” Her ultra-polite tone surprised him as much as anything, and he felt something sink in his stomach at her formality.
In spite of everything, he supposed, I still love this girl like my sister.
“No problem,” he forced a grin, and suddenly found it hard to relax around a girl he’d been friends with for more than half a decade. Hard to be himself
around the girl that killed you
around somebody who he’d very nearly fallen in love with once. He supposed that last one was the most normal of them all; he was privately amazed that the two of them were able to interact at all after that…what had they called it? That carnival. He supposed the only reason that they could was a dedicated effort on the part of Shiho, and something not quite like habit, but not entirely like affection, either, that came from him.
Or maybe it was the way she still beamed when she grasped onto his arm and found he could only muster a half-grin. Maybe that was it, he thought as he made his way into the grocery store that was curiously next door to the cheapest sukiyaki in Goza.
They didn’t actually talk a lot; Mikoto wasn’t exactly a dazzling conversationalist, and while Mai had the ability to make nice with just about anybody, almost on command,
good girl has to smile pretty for the camera
she found that she had little to say to the perpetually happy girl next to her, but it was a “little to say” that existed because there was no need for it, not because there was no interest in it.
Or maybe it was because this girl was perpetually happy that she had no need to converse with her all the time. Maybe she didn’t have to work to make Mikoto happy, and maybe that was one of the reasons she felt so strongly attached to her. She had thought at first that this was incredibly selfish, until she had spoken with Chie about it.
Most relationships between people are selfish; if they weren’t, their give and take wouldn’t be so important, she had said. When people find somebody that makes them happy, they want to have those people near them so that they can be happy. It sounds awful, but it’s not; it’s actually one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen, because in the midst of all that selfishness, you see these people doing wonderful things for each other; and their only reward, the only thing they really want out of it, is for that person to keep being alive and happy. Their supposed selfishness actually results in what’s probably the purest form of altruism in the world, and that’s what I see between you and Mikoto.
Chie was also a closet cynic, but Mai had found something true in those words, and it had eased her mind at once when she heard them. When somebody makes you happy and you make them happy and you don’t hurt each other, you’ve got something.
“Mai?” Mikoto was tugging at her arm, and Mai emerged from her head quickly.
“Mmm?”
“Why is the grocery store right next to the restaurant?”
Mai thought it was a silly question, at first; something that a three-year old might ask, something that could only be answered with something like, because it is, until she noticed the man in the white cook’s apron sneaking into a side entrance on the restaurant with grocery bags full of what looked like shirataki noodles. She grinned to herself privately, and looked down at Mikoto, who always had been and always would be sharper than she let on. “I believe that would be called ‘emergency restock,’ Mikoto.” She grinned a little, noticing that while the restaurant advertised the cheapest sukiyaki in Goza, its prices were in fact relatively exorbitant. She wondered briefly how the customers would feel to know that they were being extorted for what was essentially boxed shirataki noodles on a fancy plate.
Provided that the plate even is fancy, she mused. For all I know, they cover the plates in sawdust before they serve it for that great mesquite taste that you just can’t get enough of.
She said this last part in English in her head, remembering an advertisement she’d seen once, and laughed at several years later when somebody told her that it essentially meant that the commercial wanted people to pay to make their food taste like burning wood.
“Well, shall we go in, or are we going to wait for the food to come to us out here?” Mai grinned.
“We could ambush the emergency restock,” Mikoto smiled back as the short, old man dashed into the grocery store a second time. “Then we wouldn’t even have to pay for the food.”
Mai chuckled. “And just how would we do that, exactly?”
Mikoto stared at Mai’s weapon—her pair of weapons, rather—making it very clear just how they would do that, exactly. Mai blushed abruptly and shook her head. “Get out of here, you little—” she started, and then noticed just how intently the younger girl was staring at her pair of weapons. She took off like a shot into the grocery store as Mikoto began giggling, and the little shit tore after her.
They tore straight into the store, unthinking of what the owners would think—probably they were their only business right now, aside from the restaurant, anyway, so Mikoto didn’t think it mattered; but as her consciousness became enraptured in the thrill of the chase, her nostrils flaring with the scent of her pray, her ears gradually tuning in only to the sound of Mai’s footsteps, she cared less and less. Her stomach growled, and a predatory grin enveloped her face, until finally, they reached a corner; Mai turned, slowing as she did, around a neat little noodle display, and Mikoto pounced—
Shiho nodded, and the two of them started walking towards the first aisle, where they had seen what appeared to be a microwave noodle display. (Shiho had seen the persimmons and gotten distracted).
In the last moment of the display’s existence, Tate thought, Wow. That’s really quite a neat display considering it’s just packages of microwave noodles.
In the last moments of the display’s existence, Shiho, ever-observant, thought, what is that, exactly? It’s moving really fast.
It took four seconds for the noodle display to die:
1: We can observe Mai rounding the corner, seeing Tate with some vague immediate sense of recognition mostly blurred out by the adrenaline pumping in her brain. Similarly, we can observe Mikoto, noticing the noodle display, mostly by way of her stomach. Shiho is just now having her thought concerning the incredible speed of the two projectiles hurtling themselves at her.
2: Mikoto’s feet seem to lift themselves from the ground as she pounces. Mai notices the collision imminent on her present course, looks back, and notices the other collision imminent. In some far-off corner of her brain, she thinks, hey, at least that display will block her. Shiho’s eyes widen in alarm, and Tate reciprocates Mai’s recognition, notices the black monster rising steadily towards the noodle display, eyes wide and blazing, mouth open and predatory.
3: Shiho, unable to dive out of the way in time, drops to the ground, covering her head in panic, and Mai, similarly unable to stop herself in time, trips over her. Tate’s eyes widen in alarm as he sees the third imminent collision coming, realizes that there are about fifty imported persimmons blocking his escape route. If he knocked those expensive bastards over, he understands, his fate would be worse than the death rapidly approaching him. Meanwhile, Mikoto’s realizes, all too late, that her calculated path was just barely too low to carry her over the display, though it will certainly allow her to capture her prey. This, in her mind, is justification enough for the civilian casualties she is sure to cause. Some losses, after all, are unavoidable in the pursuit of justice and food.
4: The twisted play that has set itself up so well comes crashing down around them; Mai lands straight on Tate, who bravely dives on the proverbial grenade, allowing himself to be carried down with a crash to save the expensive imported persimmons. Shiho, still crouching and covering her head, now requiring only a desk to do this under to be safe during a nuclear attack, serves as kind of a springboard as Mikoto crashes straight through the display, which collapses to the ground like a sandcastle annihilated by a drunken bully on his way to throw up in a small child’s hair. The ravenous girl lands on top of Shiho’s head, painfully (for her), and bounces off of it, prepared for the coup de grace, which she ably delivers, diving straight onto Mai’s back to be carried to the ground with the rest of them.
At least the persimmons were saved, but at cost of the brave Private Tate Yuuichi. War ain’t fair.
All those little paranoid buzzings in Natsuki’s brain turned into full-blown alarms as she verily tore out the door, tossing her near-purchase on the counter; about a billion of those little alarms, and not just the standard stalker alert prepare nut-kick alarms, either. Shizuru didn’t know it, but she had a lot of enemies; she had destroyed the entire First District headquarters, in less than a day, almost as a side-note. Even if the destruction had been complete, which wasn’t guaranteed in any way, First District had a lot of people who didn’t work in the building, and a lot of people who believed pretty devoutly in their work. Any one of them could be—
that thing you forgot
you forgot your gun
—chatting pleasantly with Shizuru, who was leaning against the wall to the building as calmly as she did anything. Natsuki burst out the door, but before she could shout so much as a warning, the man she was chatting with, a moderately handsome fortysomething dressed in rather dorky-looking woodland camouflage, grinned at her.
“Is this the friend you were talking about?”
Shizuru nodded. “Natsuki Kuga, meet Minoru Alder,” she said, indicating each as she introduced them.
“Nice to meet you,” Minorou said, bowing a little informally. Natsuki bowed back awkwardly. “Your friend here was just telling me that you’re staying over at the beachside resort.”
Natsuki nodded, a little shaken, a little confused.
“That’s great! My wife and I are staying there too; I’d ask you to come visit us tonight, but she’s having her mother over for dinner tonight, and to be honest, the woman is a grumpy old coot.” She couldn’t put her finger on it yet, but something about this set off her paranoia alarms again. He fiddled with his wedding band absently, and then put his hand to his forehead in sudden realization. “Oh, crap. I left my backpack in there, and I have to get back before my wife kills me.”
Shizuru smiled gracefully. “It was good to meet you, Mr. Alder.”
“Minoru is fine,” the man grinned back. “Say, if you’d like, she’d love to have the two of you over for dinner tomorrow night, along with as many of your friends as will come. We have plenty of food, and I think both me and my wife would vastly prefer your company to her mother’s.”
“Thank you very much for your invitation, Minoru,” Shizuru said politely. “Perhaps we will; would it be all right if Natsuki,” she glanced at the younger girl, who was still staring, all the adrenaline that had rushed into her head slowly draining, and continued, “May we come by tomorrow to tell you if we will be coming or not?”
“Sure,” Minoru grinned, and then went into the store with a, “Gotta go!”
The door closed, and Natsuki remembered the panties she had so carelessly thrown on the counter, fled
away from Shizuru
into the store wordlessly. She saw Minoru putting his purchase—a pair of simple white granny-panties—into his backpack; he gave her a grin and a wave, and then hoisted his backpack with a grunt and a clank over his shoulder and left.
She saw what she was looking for laying on the counter where she’d thrown it. The store owner gave her a disapproving look, and she had the good grace to look sheepish about it. She bought the panties and left.
When she got outside, new (hem-hem) purchase clutched tight in a ball inside her hands, intent on
show her
tell her
…something she wasn’t certain of yet, only that she was very intent on it indeed, however, her breath caught in her chest. It took her a moment of immediate searching to confirm it entirely, but after scouring all of the places a human could conceivably reach without running
or being carried
in the course of about half a minute, she knew it for certain, and it stopped her heart for a good ten seconds when it hit her fully.
Shizuru was gone.
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