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Chapter 3: Dinner date (threat)

Notes:

the plot begins

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

An-chan, lecherous grin.
“An-chan~♡" (Artist: @vivids_4n)


“Have dinner with me,” says Kohane.

The sting of her cuts and her mental replay of the fight all abruptly disappear. An whips her head toward her. “What?”

There’s a familiar amused smile playing on her lips. Kohane repeats herself slowly, with interpretive gestures. “You. Me. Dinner.”

“I heard you the first time,” An snaps, batting her hand away when it pokes her in the chest. “No. I mean, why should I?” 

“Well, I feel bad about how beat up you look. Consider it as me paying you back for that.”

“You—I’m only like this because of you. I intervened because you looked in deep shit.”

“You didn’t have to help me. I could have taken care of them myself,” Kohane says with a shrug.

Yes, because Kohane had definitely not been backed into the corner of the adjacent alley when An had found her, sorely outnumbered by a mob of revenge-seeking morons made all the more dangerous in their recklessness. 

They lie in the alley now, a strewn pile of bloodied bodies, the result of An’s thankless work.

It stands to reason she has a profound urge to grab Kohane by the jacket and strangle her with it. She is only tempered by the understanding that Kohane undoubtedly wants her to do that. Would enjoy it, even.

Still, her deliberate nonchalance succeeds in provoking the desired feelings from An; she eyes Kohane’s unscathed appearance with irritation. 

There’s not even a drop of blood on her. Because all the blood is on An.

Kohane, unconcerned for her annoyance, returns her hands to An’s bandaged face with yet another gauze pad.

An shivers as calloused fingers land on her neck, urging her to tilt her head to the side. The bandage is laid over the ointment on her neck wound, followed by fingers smoothing down the edges. 

“There,” Kohane says, giving her jaw a light pat. “All done. Now, how about that dinner?”

“I said no.”

Kohane’s eyes narrow, sly and menacing all at once. “I guess I need to tell Nagi-san you got in another fight.”

The rage boils over. “You—” An grounds out, only to cut off with a pained swear at the dig of fingers into her injured jaw. 

She smacks Kohane’s hand away. 

Kohane grabs her hand before she can retract it and entwines their fingers together.

“Please?” she asks, something soft and genuine leaking into her voice. “Just for today.”

She stops trying to pull her hand away. Rarely ever does Kohane plead, nevertheless speak without a jesting edge. 

Perhaps it’s the soreness of her limbs and the sting of her wounds that does it for her. Or perhaps it’s the nostalgia of it, the girl in her memories who’d been so timid and soft-spoken. The girl who had patched her wounds up the same way as now, gentle and scolding with painstaking care.

“All right,” she concedes. Wonders, as she speaks, if she will regret it.

But the thought abates at the smile that Kohane gives her—it’s small, without teeth, and real.

“Great,” Kohane says, tugging her to her feet. “I had in mind our usual place. It’s been a while since we last visited.”

It’s a cozy spot centered in the local civilian town, neutral grounds where mafia business is banned from, An remembers. It’d been the restaurant for their first date, and after how much they’d enjoyed it together, for the subsequent ones, too. They’d become regulars there; the staff had come to recognize them.

She never visited again after their breakup. The restaurant is haunted with too many weighted memories and feelings.

Rather than say all this, rather than ask if Kohane too stopped frequenting there once things went to pieces between them, she tugs at their enjoined hands and says, “I’m not strolling into town looking like this. Give me a moment to shed my jacket.”

Kohane gives her a moment. 

An strips the bloodstained outer layer off to hook under an arm. She thanks herself for the foresight of favoring to wear dark colors, because it hides the other questionable fluids spattered on her pants and shirt.

Her gloved hand is once more grasped in Kohane’s.

The protest rises to her lips on instinct, before dying down at how warm and calloused Kohane’s fingers feel between her own. How small a comfort it is, against the chilly evening air that seeps through her thin layers.

It must be the nostalgia eating her alive. It must be the reason why she tolerates Kohane idly swinging their hands between them, as they walk down the street. She hums under her breath the whole while.

For a fleeting moment, it’s as if she can forget who they both are. In the blurred lines of her thoughts, they become just two normal girls holding hands in the dark, going out on a late Friday night date together.

She keeps these maudlin sentiments to herself, and ends up saying nothing at all. Mercifully, so does Kohane.

They keep walking. The streetlights of the local town come into view, and then soon they’re passing beneath circles of warm yellow light and onto smooth pavement. 

They also begin to encounter scatters of local townspeople. 

And with the uptick in company, Kohane begins to change. 

An tracks the incremental adjustments as she reshapes herself. Lidded eyes turn widened, until light brown shines with awed innocence. Her lips, curled in perpetual careless amusement, settle into a small, open-mouthed pout. The lazy set of her shoulders hunch up with shyness. She nestles closer into An’s side, as if huddling from the cold. Her firm grip on An’s hand relaxes so that it becomes her hand that is cradled, small and delicate in An’s.

Her shades and beret are gone. Her weapons, hidden away. Aside from her flashy outfit, she appears the way she is without those things: petite and harmless in size.

She peers up at An with a wide-eyed, guileless look, that of a shy and timid schoolgirl.

It’s far from the first time she’s witnessed Kohane don her good girl persona. And yet the disturbed shiver still crawls down her spine and the goosebumps still ripple across her flesh anyways. 

“An-chan?” Kohane asks with soft concern.

“I’m going to be sick,” An says. 

The snicker muffled into her shoulder is real, at least.

She’s about to shrug her off when comes another call of her name: “An-chan?”

An turns. The record store owner, in the midst of closing shop, lights up with a warm smile upon meeting eyes with her. “It’s really you. It’s been a while since you last came by, An-chan.”

“Onee-san,” An greets with an apologetic duck of her head. “I’m sorry it’s been so long—I was so busy the past few weeks. It’s good to see you. How’s the radio?”

“It's been playing without a hitch ever since you fixed it up for me,” she reassures. “And you don’t have to worry. Everyone knows you’re always running around trying to take care of things, looking out for everyone.”

An scratches her cheek, conscious of the warmth radiating from herself in embarrassment. “I’m not doing that much. But thank you.”

The store owner’s eyes follow her hand to take in the rest of her face with a start. “An-chan, what happened to you?”

Curse her fidgeting. “Sparring match today. My partner wasn’t being much of a good sport about it,” An says with a wry chuckle. “It’s okay—it looks worse than it actually is.”

She receives an expression scrunched in plain indignant worry. The store owner looks ready to ask more after the imaginary partner with a penchant for unreasonable violence she boxed with (and my, doesn’t that describe someone awfully familiar), until her gaze strays toward the shuffled movement beside her. 

Kohane peeks out from behind An’s shoulder, where she’s partially hidden.

The store owner coos in delight. “An-chan, is this your girlfriend? Oh, look at her, she’s so cute.”

Girlfriend turns her into a cadaverous husk. Cute causes her lifeless body to disintegrate into ashes.

Her remains are scattered away in the wind as Kohane hugs her arm and blinks up at the store owner with a flustered blush, to which the store owner laughs and pinches Kohane’s cheek with another coo. 

Kohane-chan? What a sweet name to suit such a sweet girl, the store owner says. How could An hide such a cutie from her all this time, she scolds. Just started dating, you say? Well, bring her around again next time, at least. She has some recommendations for vinyl records that absolutely must complement the budding romance of their relationship. Young love is such a beautiful feeling, you know.

Some remaining crumb of herself manages to offer a garbled promise to visit again.

The store owner gives Kohane another pat on the cheek, before shooing them off to continue on their date. She doesn’t want to interrupt such an intimate night of romance for them, after all.

With a shy little parting wave to the store owner, Kohane drags her leftovers down the block and around the corner.

“You look as white as your bandages,” Kohane says.

“Did you have to pretend like that?” An asks, to cover up the strain of mentally pulling herself together.

Kohane chuckles. “No,” she admits. “But your reaction was so funny—I couldn’t resist.”

An gives her a decidedly unfriendly look, to convey just how unfunny she finds this to be.

Kohane blinks back with sweet innocence. The smile she flashes at An is a small, mousy thing. And despite all her chagrin—she sees what the store owner did, then. 

She’s cute. In the most irksome, undeniable, teeth-gnashing, aggressively squishable way. Something in An withers away to admit it.

For inane reasons, An doesn’t shake her off. Kohane clings to her arm the rest of the way to the restaurant.

“Here,” Kohane says once they reach the entrance. It’s a small hole in the wall place—cozy and lowkey, the type of spot where frequenters are apt to know each other.

As they enter, exactly so happens, with a greeting from an enthusiastic staff member who recognizes them the second An’s foot reaches past the doorway.

In proper customer service courtesy, the server asks no questions regarding the miserable state of An’s face, why they haven’t been back here in months together, nor the latent, albeit one-sided, hostility between them. It’s confirmed however, by the “long time no see” directed at the both of them, that Kohane also hasn’t eaten here again since their breakup.

An doesn’t know how to feel about that. She doesn’t let herself linger on it.

They’re seated in a corner booth of the restaurant. A single floor joint with low lighting and sturdy wooden structures, it’s accompanied by the murmur of quiet conversation from a rather full house. In the crowd of customers, their little table is given the sort of modest privacy that’s found in obscurity. 

With only cursory glances at an unchanged menu, they request their usual dishes, and the server whisks away with their orders.

“Will you finally tell me what you were doing in that alley when I found you?” An asks.

Kohane, seated across from her in their tucked away alcove, drops her mask with a lazy smile. “We’re always running into each other in alleyways, aren’t we? Almost like it’s fate. How romantic.”

An grimaces. “I’ve heard that word far more in the past half hour than I ever needed to. And also, I got clobbered all over for you. Without a word of thanks.”

“I’d say that was also quite—sweet of you,” Kohane says, in a valiant display of restraint.

“I have blood all over my clothes. And under my clothes. It’s in my hair.”

“You wear black and red for a reason. As for the hair, it’s hardly noticeable. And all of this is easy to fix with some laundry and a shower.”

“I know that. It’s just—and this might be hard for you to believe—not everyone is comfortable with getting bathed head to toe in blood.”

Kohane’s brows raise, as if to say, with great incredulity, Oh, really? How shocking.

An gives her a flat look, as if to reply, Yes, really, you absolute lunatic.

She says aloud, “Since you’re clearly so used to bloodied close combat, it would have been nice if you’d taken over the fight. And again, you’re avoiding my question.”

“Do you know who they were?”

“Some punks from that faction near the docks,” An says, recalling the anchor tattoo on an arm she had skewered during the mayhem. She’d gotten a splatter of blood in the face for that sorry move.

“They’ve been getting a little bold. Overstepping boundaries. Wandered a bit too far from home.”

An translates, “They were causing your faction trouble, so you decided to lure them over to Vivid Street to take care of them.”

Kohane’s lidded eyes droop lower—a signal that she’s right. Why does this girl always have to talk in riddles?

“Except, you didn’t take care of them. I did.”

“You didn’t have to help. I could have handled it.”

“. . . Were you expecting me to show up?” An asks, with dawning realization. “Was this a setup? To get me to go to dinner—?”

“No,” Kohane says, the first direct answer she’s given all day.

“No?” An presses.

Kohane’s smile—it wanes, a touch, at the edges. In the dim lighting above their table, the planes of her face are dappled in shadow. “I promise this wasn’t planned.”

“Okay,” An says. 

The tension that had been building in her shoulders relaxes. For a minute, neither of them seem inclined to speak. The candle at the center of their table flickers, wax dripping down the stem.

She adds, in concession, “Those dock boys were causing us trouble, too. Messing with trade deals.”

“But you already knew that,” An finishes, seeing Kohane’s careful lack of reaction.

Was this Kohane’s messed up way of looking out for her? Taking down a shared threat? She’s not sure what to think of it. She’s not sure what to think of this entire situation: the sober mood, the nostalgic restaurant, the homicidal girl sitting across from her, lacking an edge of teeth to her smile.

Unsure what else to say, and given how uncharacteristically taciturn Kohane is, An says, “Why did you ask me to dinner? I mean—there are other ways to repay me.”

“Does there need to be a reason?”

“It seems like there always is, with you,” she says.

Maybe she’s being too accusing. But her mistrust is justified—deserved. They’re being civil with each other now, but An is, as always around Kohane, wary that things could change at a hair trigger. It’s like navigating a minefield, when it comes to dealing with her.

So why does she feel a speck of misgivings?

“It’s our anniversary today,” Kohane says.

What a terrible talent Kohane has for always doing things to throw her off-kilter. “ What? No, it’s not?”

“Our months-versary,” Kohane clarifies.

An stares at her. 

Kohane stares back, without a laugh to her, too dead serious for An to comprehend. 

“You’re celebrating our months-versary . . . after we broke up,” An says slowly, to make sure she’s understanding this right.

“We never broke up,” Kohane says, smoothly ignoring An’s immediate protest, “but yes.”

“You’ve never done that before.”

Kohane frowns. “But I have. Why do you think I visit you so often?”

Something like dread settles in her stomach. 

“You mean, these past few months, when I’ve been running into you on the streets—”

“Well, not every time. Sometimes An-chan just gets into too much trouble for her own good—”

“And that time you made me take my gloves off so that I could put on the ones you brought—”

“Your old ones were starting to smell, so it really was a gift—”

“You tossed them in the trash?? But that’s not the point, you got me another handkerchief after that—”

“Again, the smell, basically garbage at that point, and the latter was for getting blood on your old one—”

“It’s because you were celebrating our months-versary.”

“Yes?” Kohane asks, tilting her head. 

How nonplussed and confused she’s acting about this, like it’s An who’s the one being unreasonably slow, is infuriating. She asks, rightfully peeved, “Why didn’t you say a word about any of this before?”

“You never listen to me,” Kohane says, eyebrows rising at her tone. “How can I bring it up when you’re always going on about how we already broke up? (Which we didn’t, by the way.)”

Right, like this is all her fault. Like she’s the one being delusional and in denial. 

The urge to reach across the table and strangle Kohane in front of the entire restaurant is a familiar, mounting pressure that builds behind her eyelids. It leaves her with a pounding headache. 

Her hands, gripping the table, twitch with suppressed yearning to asphyxiate.

Kohane’s smile grows humored at the sight.

They are forced into a ceasefire by the arrival of the server, who solemnly announces their dishes while placing them before their respective seats at the table.

“Thank you for the meal,” An grumbles and Kohane says.

She looks away from her adversary across the table, only to come face to face with her other adversary as she looks down at her plate.

It sends her into a bit of a spiral. She begins to question her life decisions. If only she’d remembered to let the server know while they’d been ordering. If only she hadn’t been so distracted by this entire situation. Just what sort of choices has she made, to lead up to the point of sitting here right now.

More on that, how much alarm would it be worth causing to pull out her gun and start shooting? (The plate, not the girl.)

The plate across from her own slides closer, until they’re touching.

An glances up, sees Kohane’s eyes already on her, and looks back down.

Avoiding her gaze, An moves the tomatoes off of her plate and onto Kohane’s.

There’s no discreet way to wipe her fork on her napkin after she’s done, but An does it anyway.

Kohane laughs, soft and fond. 

An feels her face grow warm.

Something about the exchange, wordless and considerate, so mundane as to lack ulterior motive—it succeeds in relaxing the penetrating atmosphere between them. The growing hostility diminishes. It gives her enough space to ruminate over her food and the implications of Kohane’s words. 

However aggravating Kohane’s reasoning is, she can recognize the sentiment behind it. She can see now, that while awfully twisted, their past confrontations and the bullying into accepting unasked for gifts had been Kohane showing her appreciation. 

Maybe it’s a bit sweet, in a way. In some way.

Some forkfuls into her food, An asks, “What about all the—the biting?”

“The biting?” Kohane asks, like she doesn’t know and like she isn’t the biter.

An gestures to the unbandaged portion of her neck, where sits a fading bruise with faint teeth indents.

Kohane muffles a laugh around her food. She chews, and An watches, waiting impatiently for her to finish.

“You don’t like it?” Kohane asks after swallowing.

“You bite me—everywhere,” An says exasperatedly. 

“Do people notice?”

“What kind of—of course they do,” she stammers, more flustered than she’d like to admit.

Kohane gives her a hooded look. “Good.”

The shiver that goes down her spine is involuntary. The flash of Kohane’s eyes, alight and piercing with a flicker of candlelight, the pressure of her stare that conveys how deliberate all her marks have been—An tears her gaze away. 

That’s too much to unpack.  She mildly regrets having asked. 

They lapse into silence. There’s only the chatter of other conversation around them, the clink of utensils against plates.

For some asinine reason, a part of her begrudges what feels like an unfairness to this one-sided gift-giving. Biting included.

Some moments later, she adds in a mumble, “You didn’t have to do any of this for me, you know.”

The penetrating look is gone, replaced with Kohane’s usual languid, humored attitude. 

“What can I say,” she says lightly, but her words are plain and sincere. “I’m sweet on you.”

The warmth of her face comes from more than just the candlelight and the food, then. An looks at her across the table, unable to come up with a reply. There is none. Not for that sort of confession. Not when it belongs to a relationship that no longer exists between them.

Kohane looks back at her like she knows her thoughts. “Your food’s growing cold,” is all she says. 

An stops asking questions after that, returning to her plate.

They finish eating without much talk. The sober mood is back, the air between them weighted with unsaid feelings and too much shared history.

Kohane pays when they’re done. Minutes later, they’re leaving the restaurant. 

As they step foot onto the sidewalk, Kohane says, “I’ll walk you home.”

An turns to her. Some part of her, like always, automatically rises to protest.

But her thoughts still linger on their conversation, undecided on what to feel. It leaves her unresistant as Kohane steps close to her. She does nothing as Kohane’s fingers latch onto her arm and curl into the sleeve of her shirt. 

It’s the warmth of the food. The peaceful, unguarded atmosphere of this town. The fatigue at the end of a day, and the late, carefree night. It’s these things, and the way the light of the streetlamps soften Kohane’s face with color, glittering in her eyes, that has An nodding in agreement.

She’s a warm line nestled along her side as they walk down the street. She smells not of blood, but of sweet peaches and musky vanilla, of candlestick and smoked wood.

In her memories, she was just as warm and smelled the same, and they walked down this lane together on another chilly evening, so long ago.

As if Kohane remembers too, she walks An all the way to the foot of her neighborhood, the same way as before.

“Here you are,” Kohane says.

An looks down at her, uncertain of what to say. A thank you for tonight, she might have said, had it been under different circumstances. Had they not been who they are.

She settles on saying, “So you won’t be telling Nagi-san about what happened today.”

Kohane gives a contemplative hum. “You’re safe for now.”

The look she gives An is teasing. Playful, but without its usual cutting edge. It’s a peculiar expression that lies somewhere between being devil-may-care and softhearted. Above all though, it’s unmistakably genuine.

The hand still clutching An’s arm—she uses it as balance as Kohane slowly raises onto her toes. 

She gives An all the time in the world to stop her. Her grip on An is such a tentative thing.

But An remains still and silent, as Kohane leans into her, eyes slipping closed, and touches her lips to An’s. 

She kisses her, stripped of aggression, of biting pain, of blood. For the quiet moment that it lasts, it’s nothing but unbearably tender.

The warmth lingers on her lips as Kohane pulls away, replaced by the frigid cold air.

Kohane’s cheeks are flushed with color. She peers back up at An, eyes lidded, her expression affected and vulnerable.

The sight of her like this is rare and unexpected. She’s impossible to look away from. She’s so small, pressed up close like this to An.

An stares, and flounders, and ends up saying, to hide the thumping of her heart, “Today—was nice.”

Her honesty is rewarded with a deepened flush and a curling, edgeshine smile.

Kohane takes a slow step back, until there’s a safe enough distance between them for An to let go of her breath.

They stare at each other in the dark and quiet, as if not wanting to be the first to look away. To say goodbye.

It’s the cold that breaks the tension. An shivers as a breeze ruffles the thin collar of her shirt.

“Go on inside.” Kohane turns around, in the opposite direction. “I’ll see you soon.” 

She says it over her shoulder with an idle wave, soft enough to almost lose its threat, eyes twinkling back at her with humor. 

And at the same time as An gives an exasperated laugh—something in her chest flutters at the promise of it.

What can I say, I'm sweet on you.
"What can I say, I'm sweet on you." (Artist: @vivids_4n)

Notes:

number of times an has smacked kohane’s hand away from her: 3

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