Chapter Text
In the end, Karen never saw Chitose again for the rest of the day – by the time they’d returned to the office, the gym had already been vacated. Nor did she see Chitose the next day, when she returned to grab a couple of things that she’d left in her office locker; nor did she see her on Friday, when she had vocal training with a few other idols from noon to dusk. Karen vaguely remembered the Producer talking to Chiyo about excusing Chitose from vocal training for the week, so this came as no particular surprise. Still, she looked out for her regardless, even if she knew it was to be in vain.
She had an inkling, however, that it wouldn’t be long before she heard from her, and when a message popped up on Karen’s phone on Friday evening, she knew instantly who it would be from. They had exchanged phone numbers just before she had left Chitose’s place, and here at last was the first of what she anticipated would be many texts to come. With bated breath, she read the words contained within the freshly received notification.
“I assume you will be free tomorrow?” it said.
Karen frowned. A major presumption on Chitose’s part, although not an incorrect one to make. She tapped a simple “Yes” in reply, and received an almost instantaneous response.
“Let us meet at the clock tower in front of the station near the office at eleven o’clock.”
“Meet for what?” Karen almost replied, but stopped herself before she pressed “Send”. There were only a select few things people of her generation wanted when they asked a friend out on the weekend, and none of them were related to school, work, or anything so serious. In other words, it was going to be a hangout. A get-together. A date. Whichever word one wished to use.
She briefly considered asking Chitose what exactly they would do for the day, but she somehow felt it would be better to keep her peace and allow herself to be pleasantly surprised. So, when eleven o’clock the next day rolled around, Karen made her way to the glass overhang looming over the entrance to the train station, scanning the passing crowd for a hint of blond as she arrived. Sure enough, there she was: a lone figure aglow in the midday sun, attracting stares as well as she attracted the light.
Like Karen, Chitose was dressed in her school uniform, as was customary for students of high schools with stricter dress codes – not that Karen paid particular attention to such rules, but being spotted by a teacher on her day off and reprimanded simply wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Besides, she quite liked her uniform, a pink blouse and yellow checkered skirt that she typically overlaid with a loose white jacket, creating a look which might even pass for casual wear if not for the uniform bow dangling from her neck. On the other hand, Chitose’s outfit was of a more traditional variety, black from head to toe, complemented by a searing red ribbon that matched the color of her eyes to a tee. As Chitose spotted her, those eyes sparkled like rubies under a spotlight, and she gave Karen a hearty wave.
“I am glad you came,” she said as she took Karen’s hands warmly. “I was beginning to worry.”
Karen peered up at the large clock embedded in the nearby wall, which read eleven o’clock on the dot. “I’m on time, aren’t I?”
“To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, and to be late is unacceptable. Or so Chiyo-chan often tells me,” Chitose tittered. “I may have picked up a few of her habits along the way.”
“Well, being punctual definitely isn’t a bad habit to have. Speaking of which…” Karen looked around. “Where’s Shirayuki-san?”
“I asked her to stay home. She insisted on coming, but as they say, two’s company, three’s a crowd. Also,” Chitose said with a playful wiggle of her eyebrows, “we wouldn’t want her ruining our date, would we?”
“A date? Is that what this is?” Karen asked innocently.
“Is it not? We can call it something else, if you so desire.”
“I’m fine with it if you are. So, what are we gonna be doing today?”
“Everything one does on a date, of course.” Chitose pulled out a small notebook from her tote bag, quickly flipped through it, and landed on a pair of pages that were crammed from corner to corner with crudely scrawled notes. “Here we are. First, a movie. I have all the movies on show at the nearby Toho theater today written down here, so we can take our pick. My personal recommendation is this.” She pointed at a random scribble in the middle of the paper which Karen was barely able to decipher – it was the name of the latest installment in a well-known horror film series. Karen wasn’t really keen on horror, though she didn’t mind watching it with friends – especially Nao, whose visceral reactions were often a lot more entertaining than the movie itself. She highly doubted that Chitose would exhibit the same sort of outward vulnerability, though.
Thus, with Karen’s agreement on the choice of film, they set off towards the cinema, bought their tickets and popcorn, and soon were seated in the freezing cold environs of the theater proper. A few minutes of advertisements which Karen paid little heed to ensued, before the movie then began in earnest.
It was standard fare for the most part, all gruesome style and little substance, with twists and turns that could be spotted from a mile away. That, however, didn’t stop Karen from jumping when the scares inevitably arrived, her heart threatening to leap out of her mouth every time she was subject to yet another monster bursting forth from a closet or a loud bang thundering out of the cinema’s speakers. On one such occasion, she threw her hands down and clutched her armrests, only letting go when the moment of dread had passed. Something about the armrest to her left felt strange, though, and when she looked down, she found to her horror that she had been clinging on to the back of Chitose’s right hand.
“…Sorry. My bad,” she muttered. Chitose smiled, but said nothing, continuing to watch the movie as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.
The movie gradually petered out as all the characters of relevance met their grisly ends, and the doors mercifully opened to allow them to depart, Karen’s artificially induced fears melting away as she was restored into the sunlight and open air. She let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding for the past two hours and glanced at Chitose, who appeared largely unperturbed.
“Do you really like watching that sort of stuff?” she asked disbelievingly.
“Somewhat. Though I must say, I liked watching you more, Karen-san.” Chitose’s lips stretched into a puckish grin. “You certainly looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
A sudden flush overtook Karen’s cheeks. Yet again Chitose seemed to know exactly what made Karen tick, and how to press her buttons whenever she so wished – remarkably reminiscent to the way Karen poked fun at Nao and got under her skin at just the right moments, the key difference being that it was now Karen who was on the receiving end of it. Weirdly enough, she didn’t hate it as much as she thought she would, though she still had half a mind to find some way of getting her own back. Surely even the inscrutable Chitose Kurosaki had a few softer spots waiting to be unearthed.
Their next stop was lunch, and Karen initially anticipated Chitose would bring her to some posh establishment, in keeping with the cultivated and wealthy air she seemed to emanate so effortlessly. Nevertheless, Karen was also learning to expect the unexpected when it came to her blond-haired fellow idol, and so it was to her scarce surprise that they wound up in front of a tiny, run-down izakaya tucked away in a back alley behind a nearby mall. Pushing aside the noren curtains guarding the entrance, they found an elderly man standing behind the bar counter, wiping a large beer mug. Upon seeing them, he gave them a nod and a grunt in greeting.
“Fancy seeing you today, Chitose-sama,” he said. “You normally come on Sundays.”
“I have a friend with me today.” Chitose gestured to Karen. “Her name’s Houjou-san. And please don’t call me that.”
“Anything you say, Chitose-sama. So, the usual?”
“Yes, please. And make it two portions.”
“Coming right up.” The man promptly got to work, and as the smell of soy sauce and fried vegetables began to fill the space, Chitose and Karen took their places at a booth near the wall.
“You’re a regular here?” Karen asked as she looked around. Aside from the few stools lined up in front of the bar, there were only a dozen or so seats in the whole izakaya – of which they and the man were the only occupants – and the table they sat at was so narrow that she was sure if she moved her feet around even just a bit, her legs would end up touching Chitose’s. “It’s—”
“Not the sort of restaurant I would frequent, is it?” Chitose finished.
“I was gonna say it’s quite cozy, but I’ll admit I was thinking that too. How’d you find this place, anyway?”
Chitose poured two glasses of cold tea for the both of them, yet as Karen quickly drank from her glass, Chitose simply stared into hers. “As you probably know already,” she said, “I have a tendency to wander, and that wandering takes me places.” She pursed her lips. “I came here for the first time on the day I received the news.”
Karen knew better than to ask what type of news Chitose was talking about, and simply allowed her to carry on. Which, after a few wordless seconds, she did.
“I spent most of the night here, sitting at the bar and drowning my sorrows in food and non-alcoholic drink until it was time to close, at which point Arima-san very kindly called and paid for a taxi home. I have been coming here ever since, sometimes with Chiyo-chan, sometimes by myself. As you can see, it doesn’t get many visitors, but it’s comfortable. The food is good, and it’s always kept clean and tidy. Plus, Arima-san treats me very well – he sometimes sneaks me a free plate of gyoza if he thinks I am feeling down. Don’t you, Arima-san?”
The man grunted again.
“And there you have it. It is my place to hide away from the cruel world, have some ‘chow’ – as I have heard people call it – and relax.” Chitose raised her glass up, downed its contents in one gulp, and emitted a satisfied sigh. “When I turn twenty, I will make sure I have my first proper drink here. I would like to invite you to join me when that time comes.”
“With pleasure.”
Before long, their food was done, and Arima-san brought over two steaming, heaping plates of stir-fried noodles which Karen was sure would keep her full for the rest of the weekend, let alone that afternoon. They gave thanks for the food, and then Chitose immediately dug into the noodles with aplomb, evidently caring nothing for the dichotomy between her usually elegant, dignified appearance and the wanton voracity with which she dispatched her meal. Karen had barely made it halfway through her portion when Chitose put her chopsticks down in front of her now empty plate.
“I apologize for the rush – I was quite famished. I hadn’t had breakfast, you see.” She propped her elbows up on the table and eased her head onto her open palms. “Please, don’t mind me. Take your time.”
Karen lifted a glob of noodles upwards, but stopped before she put it in her mouth, having noticed that Chitose was now opting to stare at her as she ate.
“I… find it a bit hard to eat when people are watching me,” she commented.
“Forgive me. There’s not much else to look at in this restaurant. Besides,” Chitose tilted her head coyly to one side, “who would want to take their eyes off you?”
“Yeah, that won’t work on me again,” Karen said as she resumed her slow progress through the mountainous dish. “Especially coming from someone as pretty as you.”
“You flatter me, Karen-san.”
“I wasn’t trying to flatter you.”
“Well, neither was I. Also, you may think me photogenic, but you have no idea how much I’d like to have that touch of pink in your cheeks, or that extra bit of meat on your bones.”
“When you say that, you really do sound like a vampire. Or a zombie. Something like that.” Karen shuddered visibly, and Chitose chortled at her reaction.
“Still thinking about that movie, are we?” she remarked.
“It’s not the easiest thing to forget,” Karen confessed.
“Don’t worry, we’ll watch something more pleasurable next time.” Chitose leaned forward and smiled. It was a smile that was now as familiar as it was irresistible, a beguiling, bewitching smile that made Karen’s heart skip a beat every time she saw it.
She suspected her heart would not know respite until the end of the day. It would be a long afternoon, though certainly not an unpleasant one. Perhaps an unspoken part of her was even looking forward to what more lay in store.
“There will be a next time, will there not?” Chitose asked sweetly.
And in the face of such persuasion, Karen could hardly say no.