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—
winterShe fiddles with her ring under the table, turns it over in her hands, thumbs at the flat surface of it, smudges of her fingerprint on the metal.
“That seems to be everything,” her lawyer states beside her as he flips through the papers. The lawyer across from him does the same thing, like mirror images of one another, both men wearing black suits rifling through the papers.
Across from her is an empty chair. Where her almost ex-wife should be.
She imagines Kaoruko sitting in front of her. Maybe her signature blazer draped over her shoulders with her arms crossed, hair in the same low bun she’d been favoring for a while, a tight frown on her face.
She instead imagines Kaoruko sitting across from her in a knitted sweater, hands on her lap, hair loose around her shoulders, a playful smirk on her lips looking like the girl Futaba had met in the beginning. The one who convinced Futaba to give up her free period to join her in theater class. The one who kissed Futaba after the end of their first play together before running away in a panic. The one who hugged Futaba’s middle tighter the first time they rode double together after she’d gotten her motorcycle license.
The one who Futaba wants to preserve in her memories as her first love, if nothing else.
“Isurugi-san?” her head snaps up to turn to her lawyer who looks at her expectantly. Her eyes dart across the table to the other lawyer donning the same expression.
“What is it?”
“I said we’re done. Everything has been settled.”
She nods, wonders to herself how they could possibly say such empty words. How can everything be settled when her entire life has been upended?
Futaba gazes down at the golden band in her hand before placing it on the table, garnering the attention of the two lawyers who stare at it.
“Would you like me to return this to Hanayagi-san?” he asks aloud when he picks it up, but she’s already walked out of the office, leaving the men to stare at her retreating figure.
She lets out a tired sigh when she leaves the building, helmet in hand, slowly making her way towards her motorcycle. She passes a cursory glance around the parking lot and almost loses her footing when she sees a familiar black sedan tucked away towards the edge of the parking lot, right by the exit towards the road.
Anger quickly flares inside, frustrated with Kaoruko’s cowardice even until the end.
Against her better judgment, she imagines Kaoruko sitting in the driver’s seat, maybe with the blonde woman beside her, joy and relief etched on their faces even as she suffers to go through the divorce proceedings alone. Futaba momentarily wishes she’d kept the ring if only to throw it at the car on her way out, pettily hoping that it would crack the windshield.
In the end, all Futaba does is yank the zipper up on her leather jacket to combat the nip of the late winter air, before carefully fitting the helmet on her head. She grips the handlebars and revs her engine, making sure to drive past the front of the black sedan. She doesn’t bother to look inside the car, because she knows Kaoruko is in there watching her every move.
She savors the cruel bit of irony in how the last image Kaoruko gets to see of Futaba is her on a motorcycle.
—
She finalizes signing a lease for one of the many Kyoto apartment units her realtor shows her that week. She thinks she’d chosen something decent, but can’t be too certain, considering the white walls and empty rooms of each unit started bleeding together in her memories. But at least she has somewhere to go now, something that’s just hers, and not attached to anybody — not her ex-wife, not her parents. Just hers. Something she can call her own, for what little that’s worth these days.
The days following, she hires movers to collect her things from the apartment she shared with Kaoruko. The whole time, she doesn’t see Kaoruko and that both relieves and aggravates her because she’s alone again, through it all.
Once the movers have taken her belongings in their van, Futaba is left standing at the threshold of the home she’s lived in for the last several years. A heavy weight of bitterness strikes her when she takes a long look at the apartment and finds that it remains largely the same before the movers came and took her things away. These are simply Kaoruko’s things, her furniture, her money, her world, her life. And Futaba is a stranger, now a trespasser.
She sweeps her gaze around the apartment one last time before placing her keys on the hook by the door. She briefly entertains vandalism and destruction to the building, as a petty and vindictive parting gift. She’s certain people would find her justified in her actions. But she’s exhausted beyond measure. So, as she has been doing for as long as she can remember, she lets that tiredness dictate her resignation to the whole thing.
Instead, she turns the lights off and shuts the door with a soft click.
—
Within an exhausting week of signing the divorce papers, delegating to the movers, and traveling up back to Kyoto, she’s fully moved into her new apartment and ready to unpack. Her apartment is a modest one bedroom on a quiet street. It’s a little out of the way of where the theater is, but she doesn’t mind living further out from the city center, thinking that a change of scenery may help settle her heart some.
Her first night, she sleeps on a sleeping bag she brought with her on the trip up. She could have just stayed with her parents, but she wanted to prolong the judgment and nagging from her parents for letting a successful woman like Hanayagi Kaoruko go. Even in the face of infidelity, even in the face of having been the one let go by such a successful woman like Hanayagi Kaoruko.
In the darkness, she seeks comfort, even if she’s unaccustomed to it these days. She focuses her attention on the faint yellow light that filters into her window, cast on her ceiling. Her eyes dry from staring at it, but she allows the discomfort to take hold until she can’t anymore and has to shut her eyes.
Snug in the sleeping bag, she realizes with a bitter laugh that she has not slept beside anybody in months. She has not been so fully alone until now, surrounded by the culmination of things in her life. It’s pathetic, she’s pathetic. She quickly wipes at her face when the first tears fall, dropping into the wells of her ears. But she sobs anyway, until her hands cover her face.
Despite the accolades and the successes she’s garnered and experienced in her life, she’s never felt more helpless and more like a failure until now.
—
Futaba faces her parents only a few days after she has moved into her apartment, steeling her resolve when she meets up with them for Sunday dinner. They weren’t understanding of the divorce, thinking that Futaba could have done better to keep Kaoruko in her life. Despite recounting the irreconcilable differences that have emerged between the two of them, they still thought the fault lay with her.
“Maybe you were working too much,” her mother says, seemingly unable to help herself, while peeling an orange by the kitchen sink. Her father had gone out for a smoke after the terse ending to their conversation, disappointment dripping on her father’s face.
Futaba lets out a tired sigh, calculating the cost to her sanity of engaging her mother in this conversation.
“Ma,” Futaba starts. “Can we not do this today?”
“Aiyah! I’m just saying. Losing your connection to the Hanayagis will make your life harder.”
She lets out an angry chuckle and shakes her head. Because in a way, her mother’s not wrong. But for entirely different reasons.
“I’m meeting Tamao and some friends so I have to go.” She pulls her jacket around her shoulders and stands beside her mother.
“Why couldn’t you have lived back here? You’re wasting money at that apartment with just yourself.”
“My stuff doesn’t fit here,” is all she offers. But her mother scrutinizes her with a leveled look. It’s not true, and they both know it. Most of the furniture pieces that filled the home she once shared with Kaoruko were paid for by Kaoruko herself, or were finalized with Kaoruko’s input because Futaba was too busy traveling or performing to participate in any meaningful way to pick them. Still, her mother shakes her head and hands off the peeled orange to Futaba, who simply accepts it. She kisses her mother on the cheek as a goodbye and walks out of her parents’ house.
“Bye, Pa,” she offers when she passes her dad just as he takes a drag of his cigarette. He only nods at her, an unreadable expression in his eyes. She makes quick work of the trek towards the train station, pulling her beanie down to cover her ears, and bowing to face away from the cold winter wind. As she waits on the platform, she feels the peeled orange in her pocket and pulls it out of her pocket.
She draws the paper towel that the fruit is wrapped in and stares at the orange. How it’s already peeled, how it’s already taken care of for her, how she accepts it without question or input from her. She frowns, yet unsure of how to make sense of her own thoughts, and instead does what she can do. She plucks a section of the orange before shoving a couple of wedges in her mouth, not bothering to peel the remaining white pith off, and she waits for the train.
—
She stands by the entrance and peers through the glass of the door to watch her friends sit at a table together. They’re having fun and laughing, and for a split second she wonders if it’s a good idea to show up there. Especially because she doesn’t want to be the one to bring the atmosphere down.
But she decides that Tamao would be upset with her for not going, which is worse than being pitied for her state. She takes a deep breath and pushes the door open.
Tamao, as always, spots her first and waves her over even as she’s standing but only a few steps from their table. She offers the group a soft ‘good evening’ and sits in the empty seat between Tamao and another woman with dark brown hair and warm red eyes.
When she sits down, she does a quick sweep of the others at the table before setting her sights on the woman beside her. A woman with a soft and kind smile who is looking at her with a kind of rapt attention she has not experienced in so long.
She thinks, Oh. She has not felt so seen in so long.
She offers her hand. “Isurugi Futaba.”
That night, Futaba meets Yanagi Koharu.
—
springShe’s lost in thought as she stands in front of her parents’ front door with her phone in her hand seeing the missed call from a familiar name. She thinks about waiting until later to return the call, but decides that it’ll probably be easier for her to just get it over with.
Before she regrets it, she presses on the Call button and waits, hearing the short ringing until a warm but gruff voice comes on the other end of the line.
“Isurugi-san! I wondered if you’d forgotten how to use a phone.”
“Sorry, Hiro-san. I was on the road.” She leans on the wall, her back pressed against the cool slab of wood.
“I heard from your father that you’re back in town.”
“Yeah, for a little while.”
“Since you’re back, do you wanna check her out?”
“N-not yet. I won’t have time to really ride. Maybe closer to the summer?”
“You’re the boss.”
“Thanks, Hiro-san.”
Just as she ends the call, the door opens and her head snaps to look at her mother scowling at her. “Do you want to get a cold?” her mother nags, one hand on the door knob and the other propped on her hip.
“It’s good to see you too, Ma,” Futaba says, resisting the desire to roll her eyes, before pulling up from the wall and following her mother in.
—
“Will you ever press send?” Tamao asks from the couch behind her. They’re in the dressing room after having finished an early rehearsal. Futaba is sitting in her makeup chair, her eyes trained on the message that she’s composed in the text box to send to Koharu. It had been weeks since she last saw the other woman, but now she’s trying to work up the nerve to ask her to hang out. But she’s also been sitting at her chair for the last ten minutes thinking about the pros and cons of doing it.
“If you would stop bothering me, then maybe I’ll get to it.”
She watches from the mirror as Tamao walks up behind her, as she’s done countless times before, and places a hand gingerly on her shoulder. The dark blue of her eyes shine from the vanity lights as she meets Futaba’s gaze. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”
She registers the words, but she doesn’t fully believe them. It’s just…she doesn’t know what to do or what she wants. Or, more pressingly, what she’s allowed to want. What are the rules for these things, anyway?
As if reading her mind, Tamao squeezes her shoulder. “You’re not betraying anything by sending her a message. She’s a nice girl, Futaba.”
“Yeah.” She glances down at the message she has crafted to Koharu, then presses send before she changes her mind. There’s no harm, she reminds herself.
—
She arrives at the shrine early, giving herself some time to calm her nerves. She remembers when she and Kaoruko would come here when they were younger, spending random weekends to walk around the garden. It had been where they’d had their third kiss, when they made their dating official even if at that point they’d spent months already attached at the hip. She’d only had a bicycle then, and she was sweaty when she’d finished biking the pair of them up. But that kiss had been worth it.
It’s a nice memory, a nostalgic one. And she does her best not to taint it with the grief inside of her. Or to let it bleed into the time she’s about to spend with a different woman.
As she waits for Koharu, she wonders about how they would categorize this meetup. It’s not a date, per se, but it’s also not not a date. When she’d voiced her initial concerns aloud about where to invite the other woman, Tamao only patted Futaba on the back. ‘Start with something simple,’ she remembers hearing. ‘There’s that festival happening at the shrine. Why don’t you bring her there?’ And Futaba was embarrassed to admit that she held her breath while she waited for Koharu to respond, and lacked focus to determine what kind of meeting this was. So she should probably get some clarity on it, but a part of her also doesn’t want to label anything just yet. All she knows is that she feels funny, fluttery feelings inside and she doesn’t want to snuff that out before she even has a chance to think about what they mean.
(She knows what they mean. Of course she does. But what she doesn’t know, what she’s afraid of finding out, is what she’s supposed to do with them.)
Futaba spots Koharu walking in the distance, making her way towards the front of the shrine where they’d agreed to meet. Her hair is pulled gently over one shoulder, the dark brown in contrast to the light khaki of her windbreaker. She bounces on the balls of her feet, and shoves her hands further into her leather jacket, waiting and anticipating.
What she’s not ready for is Koharu’s face breaking into a wide smile upon seeing her when she finally crosses the street. Futaba bites her bottom lip, tries to wrangle the goofy smile she knows she has plastered on her face, but she can’t help it. Yanagi Koharu is a sight for sore eyes.
“Hi,” Koharu breathes out when she stops right in front of her. And Futaba can’t help but stare into the warm red eyes looking at her, so starkly different from the midnight gray that she’s gotten accustomed to for so many years. Her feelings ignite into something from deep within her belly, and she has to fight every bone in her body to resist pushing forward and kissing the windstruck pink of Koharu’s cheeks, the red of her smiling lips.
“Hey,” she says finally, tightening the ball of her fists in her pockets. “I appreciate you coming out.”
“I wanted to.”
They meander through the botanical gardens behind the shrine, and she watches from the corner of her eyes as Koharu looks around, following the petals of sakura leaves fly around them. Her face is pensive, and she’s quiet for a time, so Futaba stays quiet too, appreciating the way they breathe together, their elbows sometimes brushing against each other.
Hours pass between them, and Futaba discovers that spending the afternoon with this woman has been the easiest thing she has done in a long, long time. Even as she chokes on how gravely she understates her last relationship, even as they muse about their complicated histories with Kyoto and Tokyo, even as she reveals how untethered she feels these days, barely recognizing herself.
Maybe especially then, because Futaba can only watch in question and wonder and amazement when Koharu moves the plushie Futaba won for her from one hand to the other, reaching out and hesitating and then reaching out again to grasp Futaba’s free hand and clasping them together, grounding them to each other. Her hand is warm, and a little moist from sweat, but Futaba doesn’t mind. It’s the first time in a long time that someone has bothered to hold her hand, to hold onto her.
And as the sakura leaves fly around them, Futaba tightens her grip, and they don’t let go until she walks the two of them to the train station later that evening.
—
She works hard while she’s in Kyoto. Every now and again, she sees Koharu step in and out of the theater presumably for work, but they never seem to find time to themselves. They offer each other across-the-room waves, and short texts here and there throughout the weeks, but Futaba thinks that’s fine. The last time she’d wanted something, her life exploded, so she’s a little hesitant to want anything more. Still, she indulges in being the last to look away. And if she finds that her co-star stares at her when she eventually refocuses her attention, well.
She feels better in Kyoto, and she knows that the distance from Kaoruko helps. Despite the fact that this is their hometown and they have so much history here, it still feels less smothering than Tokyo. Despite the weight of her parents’ disappointment and pity whenever they have weekly dinners, despite the gnawing of solitude when she goes home everyday to an empty, unmade apartment with many of her belongings still in boxes that she’s shoved to corners.
By the end of spring, she has to go back to Tokyo to perform, to finish out the rest of her contract, so she feels a gaping emptiness when leaving Kyoto. She hasn’t stepped foot in Tokyo in months, all season long. And she’s not certain she’s ready to do it, especially considering it’s going to be at the Kishi Theater. Still, she’s a consummate professional, and if she has to face Kaoruko, then she will.
The sights and sounds of Tokyo proves to be too much for Futaba when she arrives at the sublet unit she accepted from someone at the costume department. And before she fully realizes what she’s doing, she’s walking down familiar paths and then she’s standing in front of her old home.
The lights are on in Kaoruko’s office. Futaba glances down at her phone and finds that it’s barely after seven o’clock. She thinks she can see shadows against the curtains. Anger flares up, but she quickly tamps it down, not wanting to break down in the street.
In a moment of weakness, she presses the call button for Kaoruko’s name, still not yet erased from her contacts list.
“You shouldn’t have let it get this bad.” Her voice is hoarse with the threat of tears, but her words are clear enough.
There’s silence at the other end of the line, some shuffling and rustling.
“You’re probably right.”
It’s not what she’d expected, and the fight in her momentarily deflates.
Then, she hears a tired sigh. “But I could say the same to you, Futaba-han.”
How dare Kaoruko ruin their marriage and lay the blame? How dare Kaoruko throw these words back at her? How dare Kaoruko expertly push into Futaba’s greatest source of fear and anxiety?
She hangs up.
—
summer“How long are you back in Kyoto? And why did I have to hear it from someone at work?” Tamao asks her on the other end of the line just as Futaba enters her apartment from her afternoon run after restlessly spending the morning on the train traveling.
She scratches the back of her head before inspecting herself in the mirror by the doorway. Her face is red, her bangs plastered against her forehead, and her clothes are clinging to her sweaty body.
“Just a few days. I have an audition tomorrow morning and then I have an errand to run. And, you know, I just needed to get out of Tokyo for a bit.”
The silence between them expands, and Futaba is already gearing up for the worried line of questioning that she knows Tamao wants to unleash on her. But instead, she’s surprised when Tamao’s soft voice comes through the other end.
“Come by tomorrow for lunch after. We’ll cook for you.”
She grins at the prospect of a free meal. “Count me in.”
They spend a few more minutes on the phone catching up with each other, but when she hears Tamao greet Rui home, she takes it as her cue to go, promising to continue their catch up the next day during lunch.
Futaba is on her way to wash up when she hears the sirens in the distance approaching. Hears them pass from one side of the street to the other.
The swoop, the bellow, the urgency.
Tonight, it catches her off guard, and she grits her teeth, shutting her eyes instantly. Her body tenses as she presses it fully against the wall, splaying her open palms flat against the cool surface, to ground her to something solid. It’s not until the sirens completely disappear that she allows herself a lungful of air.
It’s been years. Episodes like this get rarer and rarer over time. But as she stares at her apartment, still barren save for a couch and a table even after having moved in months ago — the sirens knock her down to her knees.
—
After her audition, Futaba stops by Hiro-san’s mechanic shop.
She stands in front of her old motorcycle, the sleek body and white panels all brand new. As if the accident never happened. She’d kept the bike repair a secret from Kaoruko, knowing that Kaoruko would never approve. And despite spending money making it as good, if not better, than the original, she hadn’t yet driven it. So as a favor to her, Hiro-san had stored it. He’d tease her about forgetting her ‘baby’ with him and that he’d just give it to his niece one of these days, but she knows why he’s doing it.
Still, she appreciates the gesture, and the way her old friend is helping her.
“You ready to take her back out there again?” he asks when he sidles up next to her.
“For a bit. I’m too lazy to get my bike from Tokyo shipped here, so I need another set of wheels.”
“Well, she rides like a dream. I made sure of it.”
“Thanks, Hiro-san.”
He nudges her by the elbow. “Go ahead. Get out of here.”
She circles around the bike a couple of times before settling on the seat. The key and the fading purple T keychain, position zero, gifted by Kaoruko, sit heavy in her palm. She turns the ignition on and the engine purrs underneath her, the rumbling a certain kind of comfort even as her heart rate spikes up in a mixture of anxiety and anticipation.
She puts her black helmet on and adjusts her mirrors. Once settled, Futaba feels the purr of the engine beneath her and throws Hiro-san a thumbs up that matches his. She kicks the stand and she rides out of the shop, on the bike she last rode with Kaoruko.
Despite how clipped her wings feel — and have felt for some time — riding this bike frees her. Of her thoughts, of her obligations, of her responsibilities. And for a brief moment, of her heartache, because here and now, she’s flying.
—
At lunch, Tamao asks what else she’s doing for the rest of her limited time back in the city.
She shrugs, but a glimpse of brilliant red eyes and dark brown hair flashes in her mind. “Rest, I guess. I have some errands to run for my mom, so maybe a bit of that.”
“You gonna hang out with Yanagi-san?” Rui asks after taking a sip of her beer.
Her head snaps up. “Why would you ask that?”
Rui shrugs. “Tamao says you two have been getting along.”
There’s a stilted pause and her eyes dart between the couple. “Sure, we’ve become friends.”
“Ask her to hang out while you’re in town, then,” Tamao urges. “Spending time with her beats spending what little break you do have just doing your parents’ bidding. I’m sure she’ll appreciate hearing from you.”
A contemplative frown etches on her face, and she twists in her seat when Tamao gets up to retrieve a couple more bottles of beer. “You sound insistent.”
“Do I?” Tamao asks with a shrug when she returns to the table, but doesn’t immediately elaborate. Instead Futaba watches her uncap the bottle for Rui beside her and press a kiss on her fiancée’s cheek before opening the bottle for herself and for Futaba. “I’m just saying, I know her. She understands more than you think.”
“She has a cheating ex-wife too?” she asks, instantly regretting the way the words come out of her mouth as Tamao sighs. Futaba puts her hands up in apology. “I’ll reach out. Promise.”
She hadn’t originally planned to reach out, wasn’t sure what message it would send across, but as her friends move on to talking about an advertisement for a new show they’d seen on the train, she just takes a swig of her beer, and wonders how to draft her texts.
After lunch with her friends and running some errands for her parents to help fix their house, Futaba decides to send a text to Koharu, all the while attempting to manage her expectations that the other woman may not be free.
The messages from Koharu return quickly with an invitation to meet up an hour later. Before Futaba can think more about it, she’s opening random boxes in her apartment to find her swim trunks, and riding her motorcycle to the municipal pool.
She’s leaning on her bike as she waits in the parking lot just after sundown, the last of the sun rays peeking just above the buildings. It’s not what she expected, but she’s glad for the seclusion when she peers through the fencing and finds not a lot of people around. She’s not sure if she’d be able to handle people recognizing her right now.
Futaba is quick to jump in the water, making waves after she drops in. She savors the initial plunge into the water that deafens the sounds around her and all she hears is her heartbeat. Her feet touch the bottom of the pool and she pushes back up, breaking the surface of the water to take a lungful of air. She brushes her bangs out of the way and starts treading, her eyes instantly fixed on Koharu standing by the lounge chairs, beautiful in a simple two piece bathing suit that showcases her pale skin and toned figure.
The last time she’d seen Kaoruko in a bathing suit was before the accident. Kaoruko had never really gotten over showing her figure or revealing her body except for when they were in the comfort of their home. It had been a shame, because she still loved Kaoruko’s body, but she knew that Kaoruko hated how her body looked after the accident. Gone were the muscles she’d gained from performing, only replaced by scars that blemished her porcelain skin forever. And no matter how much love Futaba devoted to showing her otherwise, she knew that her love was simply never enough.
The mention of her ex-wife sours her thoughts and she shakes her head to clear her mind so that when she returns her focus, it’s back to the beautiful brunette in front of her. Koharu makes her way in and she cocks her head to the side in wonder when she realizes that Koharu is struggling to stay afloat. She crosses the short distance between them when Koharu seems to be struggling and she grabs hold of the other woman’s elbow, bringing the two of them towards a corner of the pool.
“I didn’t think you’d be terrible at it,” she teases, laughing.
“It’s–I wasn’t sure what I was thinking, considering it’s been fifteen years since I did this last.”
That tidbit of information takes her by surprise and she wants to ask more, her laughter caught in her throat, but finds the mood all wrong, not when Koharu is shaking her head and not quite looking Futaba in the eyes, a sheepish smile on her face. So Futaba tucks it away for later and opts to keep the light atmosphere they’re in despite her own curiosities. She playfully flicks a little bit of water towards Koharu who squeals and looks away, the laughter filling their little corner of the pool.
As their laughter tapers off, Futaba recognizes the small gap between them, and she swallows the dryness in her mouth. Her eyes alternating their sights between Koharu’s red eyes and her red lips. She’s leaning forward, but she thinks Koharu is, too. Until their lips ghost across one another, droplets of pool water separating them.
At the last second she closes her eyes just in case Koharu changes her mind. Instead, she’s met with lips against her own. Soft, warm. Tastes a little like chlorine, but also something sweet.
Their kiss is small, a press of their lips together, but something blooms deep within Futaba and she doesn’t anticipate the landslide of wanting more . More of how easy it is to kiss Koharu, to want her, to want to be with her. But those thoughts send her reeling until she catches back up to herself. Should it be so easy? It’s only been months since the divorce, even if it’s been longer since the end of their marriage. Still, the thoughts and doubts war inside of her.
She opens her eyes to the image of the municipal pool’s light bathing Koharu’s face in warm light, her eyes still closed. Futaba wants to cry.
“I’m sorry,” she says, dipping her head a little, even though she never wants to apologize for something so special. “I think I got ahead of myself.”
Koharu’s eyes are trained on her. And she is beautiful, and kind, and breathtaking. “It’s alright, I did as well.”
They stay in the pool for a little bit longer before they clean up and head to dinner to a local restaurant within walking distance of the pool. They’re tucked in a corner of the restaurant, glad for the bit of privacy. They talk like old friends, like new friends, like something more than friends. Every now and again, her hands brush up against Koharu’s, their knees pressed up against each other. They lean towards one another when they talk, private and personal, and in a world all of their own.
Dinner ends far too soon, and in no time, they’re standing in front of the public pool’s parking lot approaching her bike, one of the last vehicles there. She frowns when she sees the lone helmet propped on the seat. “I can walk you home. I…don’t have a second helmet for the bike.”
There is the smile again, soft and gentle, even as Koharu shakes her head. “I’m fine to get myself home, but thank you.”
“Yeah?” She nods, understanding. Just to make sure, she tries again. “And you’re sure?”
But all Koharu says is, “I’m sure. Maybe another time.”
“Another time,” she repeats, consoled by the promise of time spent together in the future. She’d been a little greedy, having wanted to spend more time, and this feels like an apt judgment for that greed. Still, Futaba hasn’t craved for something in so long that she feels almost addicted to wanting. So instead, she pushes her luck once more, a gambling woman be damned. “I’ll be in Tokyo for a while, but I always end up in Kyoto again, one way or another.”
Koharu’s face splits into a soft smile. “I’ll be here.”
The words reassure her like no other, and it’s with that thought that she finally offers a parting wave at the other woman before she drops her visor and circles around Koharu once. She glances in time to catch Koharu’s eyes watching and following her as she rides away, the feel of the wind on her back.
—
Just a couple of weeks before she wraps up the summer production at the beginning of August, she opens her emails to find rejection letters for the roles she auditioned for: both in Kyoto and in Tokyo.
The sigh of relief falls unbidden when she closes both emails. The Futaba from the past would have panicked at not having something lined up for the upcoming season. But now that she’s here, her life feeling more split than ever before, she can’t help but be glad that there’s just…nothing. Her calendar for the autumn is clear and wide open. For the first time in years, she has nothing lined up, nothing to fill up her mind and her time and her attention.
And that’s—
The phone rings and rings, and she startles in her spot on the couch as a result. Glancing down, she sees Koharu’s name and the accompanying picture of her from the first time they’d met at the bar so many months ago; Tamao had sent her the photo and she’d cropped it to the two of them until she shook her head and thought how odd that would be and cropped it further until it was just Koharu smiling up at the camera.
“Hello?”
“Futaba, hi,” Koharu says from the other end of the line. Futaba sinks down further into the cushions of her couch, covering her face with her hand as if to hide her face even though she knows she can’t be seen. “How are you?”
“Mm, you know. Can’t complain.” Especially now that you’ve called , she wants to add, but holds that thought in. “What about you? How are you doing?”
“I’m doing good, just finished drafting up a write-up about the opening of a local bakery.”
“Oh yeah? I hope you got some free pastries out of it,” she comments as she lays her body completely on the couch. Koharu huffs, and she imagines the other woman’s laughter, and she patiently listens as Koharu details how her day has gone.
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
And so it goes, for the next hour they talk about their respective days. She shares near everything about her day, the desire to share after holding herself back for so long flowing like a backed up fountain. Still, she doesn’t mention her two rejections, doesn’t want to taint their time together or tempt herself with the implications of what it could mean, what she wants for it to mean.
Eventually, they say their goodbyes when Koharu’s roommate returns home. She stares at her phone, a thoughtful expression on her face as she recounts as much of their conversation, Koharu’s soft voice in her ear. For the second time that day, she startles when her phone rings, this time it’s a text from her manager.
Manager: Futaba-san, any updates on the auditions for the fall productions?
Futaba: No good, for both
She sees the three dots appear and disappear then appear again until—
Manager: I want you to know that these rejections are not a knock against you that they went with someone else.
She can’t help but laugh at that, appreciative of her manager’s efforts to remain positive on her behalf.
Futaba: I know, it’s fine. I don’t mind, I think I might take the fall off since I don’t have anything lined up
Another set of appearing and disappearing dots as her manager types another response.
Manager: If that’s the case, I will postpone sending auditions and scripts until the season after.
Futaba: Thanks, let’s do that
Manager: And you’re sure?
Futaba: I’m sure. I’ll take the break.
Manager: Take care, Futaba-san. I’ll be in touch.
—
The remainder of her summer season passes by in a blur. It’s exactly what she’d wanted and she’s thankful that it’s what she gets.
She does what’s expected of her, focuses her time and attention on the stage, and not much else. She doesn’t stay at the theater any longer than she has to, just to minimize any chances of running into Kaoruko. She hasn’t yet run into her ex-wife, and she can only imagine just how wide a berth Kaoruko is giving her. Good, she thinks. It’s the least Kaoruko can do for her.
After a few more weeks, she finally completes the season at Kishi Theater, and she’s carrying her duffel over her shoulder as she walks out of the theater for the last time. Maybe not ever, but at least for the foreseeable future because she doesn’t renew her contract for Tokyo, finally releasing the last point of connection that officially bound her to Kaoruko.
She’s already some distance away from the theater when she feels eyes on her. But when she looks around, she doesn’t see anything or anyone, just strangers passing by. She glances behind her fully at the theater, but shakes her head. Then, a streak of blonde on the other side catches her eye. Her heart thuds madly in her chest, wonders if Kaoruko and that woman are here right now. She can’t see very well from this distance, can’t confirm if her eyes are betraying her when she sees dark hair beside the blonde woman.
She shakes her head, tries to rid herself of the mental image. She smiles in relief when Koharu’s face appears on her screen, signaling an incoming phone call.
“Hey,” she greets on the phone and adjusts the duffel over her shoulder.
“Hi, Futaba. Did you just finish work?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m actually on my way to the train station. Tell me about your day.”
She throws a final glance around her as she makes the trek towards the direction of the station.
—
When she returns to Kyoto, it’s like she can breathe again. Tokyo had been constricting, had kept her tense. But now that only an open schedule awaits her, she’s free to do whatever and see whomever.
Not wanting to sound so eager, she patiently waits a few days until contacting Koharu and inviting her to hang out.
Which they’re about to do today as she waits to meet Koharu at the farmer’s market. When she’d gotten back to her Kyoto apartment, she’d put some of her things away in the coat closet and came face to face with the helmet she’d bought some time ago for Koharu. She shuts the door and keeps the bag untouched, thinking not yet .
Her face splits into a grin, her candy cigarette bobbing on the corner of her lips, when Koharu walks towards her as she leans against her bike. She stands a little straighter, squares her shoulders, and greets Koharu with a small hug.
“You look great,” she says when she pulls the candy from her mouth, giving the other woman a quick once over. Koharu is wearing a marigold sweater under a light jean jacket. She has her hair down, framing her face.
Koharu cocks her head to the side, amusement etched so beautifully on her face. “Didn’t take you for a smoker.”
“Can’t kick the habit, what can I say?” She smirks, lifting the candy cigarette up before placing it back in her mouth. “Been chain smoking these all day. Had four just waiting for you.”
Koharu hums, squinting at her. “Sounds like you’re really going through it.”
“I get anxious waiting for pretty women, you know what I mean?” she teases with a shrug, before pretending to flick the ashes off her cigarette. Koharu rolls her eyes, which pleases Futaba.
“Let me bum one.” Koharu beckons with her hand.
Futaba’s mouth widens in a bigger, more amused smile when she plucks the box out of her pocket and opens it. Koharu takes one of the candy sticks out of the pack and places it between her lips, the whole act so smooth that Futaba can only follow, her eyes staring at Koharu’s mouth remembering how sweet she’d tasted.
“Thanks, this really hits the spot.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Mm. I get anxious meeting handsome women, you know what I mean?” Koharu says with a playful wink and Futaba falters then, her candy getting crushed in her teeth and the long end dropping to the ground.
“You made me waste one!”
“A chain smoker who takes no accountability. I’m not sure you’re such a good influence on me. Guess I’ll just have to walk through this market alone,” Koharu says before turning away with an exaggerated head shake, even as her eyes glint in fondness, her own candy cigarette still between those lips. Futaba can’t help but laugh, watching as Koharu walks away from her some just to see the way her body sways before running to catch up.
It feels good, she thinks, to play. She can’t remember the last time she’d allow herself to do so, to surround herself with someone who expects something from her.
They spend the entire afternoon together at the farmer’s market until the vendors begin to break down their stalls.
“Didn’t realize we were here for so long,” she observes as she takes a look around. “I hope I wasn’t keeping you from anything.”
“No, no. I didn’t have any plans.”
“Well, in that case, I’m getting kinda hungry. Would you like to join me for dinner?”
Koharu’s smile is soft and lovely, and Futaba’s heart does somersaults in her chest.
“Sure. Let me just make a phone call, and we can find something nearby.”
She watches as Koharu steps away from the concrete ledge they’re sitting on. She wonders about the spark of excitement that thrums underneath her skin when she thinks about spending a little bit more time with the other woman. She doesn’t recall the last time she has felt like this. And she gets angry, frowning, at the thought of how distant she and Kaoruko had gotten before the true demise of their marriage.
She looks away, upset about how much she’s thinking about her ex-wife when a perfectly lovely woman is spending time with her.
“Futaba?”
Her head snaps up when Koharu stands in front of her.
“Are you alright?”
She swallows the lump in her throat and nods. “Yeah, yeah,” she says, though there’s a little croak in her voice. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.” Koharu is looking at her curiously, and Futaba can’t handle it, thinking that she needs to stand from her seat. She wipes away invisible dust from her shirt and looks out trying to blink away the shine out of her tears. “What are you feeling like?”
“Well, I can eat anything. But there’s a decent skewers place just a few blocks from here.”
They fall into step with each other, the backs of their hands grazing against one another. Eventually, they make it back to where Futaba has parked her bike.
“Would you like a lift home?” she asks, her voice strong despite how her heart pounds incessantly in her chest.
“To tell you the truth, I’ve never ridden before.”
“Are you—would you want to?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I don’t want you to feel pressured, though. Just that–it’s ok if you’re not comfortable, we can get you a cab or something.”
“I’m ok, Futaba. I trust you.”
Futaba studies her for a second, then she offers her helmet. “Here, use mine.”
It’s Koharu’s turn to study the helmet. Slowly, she turns it in her hands. She puts it on with a self-conscious laugh and Futaba’s hands are already helping her adjust it.
“I want to tell you a couple of things before we go, alright?” Futaba then spends the next few minutes explaining how to get on and off the bike, where to rest her hands and feet, and what to do when they stop. Then, she helps Koharu sit behind her before explaining where to put her arms and how to keep her upper body as relaxed as possible. Through it all, Koharu listens intently, eyes following where Futaba points. A small smile appears on her face when she watches the brunette woman, a blip of excitement growing inside at being able to share something she loves to do. “I know that’s a lot, but you got everything?”
“I think so.”
“If you need me to stop, just tap on my shoulder. For whatever reason, alright?”
“Okay.”
Futaba takes a centering breath before starting the bike, and before she knows it, they’re off. It takes her a few minutes to get back into the rhythm of riding double, but she’s reacquainted soon enough and adjusting as if she’d been doing it the whole time.
Despite her complicated relationship with riding and how it impacted her relationship with Kaoruko, she’s made peace with riding. It’s the closest she’s ever gotten to having wings, and she doesn’t think she’ll ever want to lose this feeling.
The trek to Koharu’s apartment takes no more than fifteen minutes, and thankfully the roads aren’t too busy. Before she knows it, they arrive in front of Koharu’s building. She cuts the engine off, already missing the feel of Koharu’s arms wrapped around her waist. She holds her hand out for the brunette woman to take, and helps her dismount. Koharu unfortunately lands unsteadily on her feet and ends up adjusting herself, leaning forward until they’re face to face with each other.
Their faces inch closer and closer, their lips grazing. The softness and warmth of Koharu’s lips against her own. Neither deepen the kiss, the touch and connection enough for the both of them. Yet she pulls away, and there’s panic in her eyes she can’t quite blink away, and Koharu’s smile is small and sincere, if not a little saddened.
“I’m so sorry. I want to, believe me. I thought I was ready and—”
Graciously, Koharu places a hand on her arm, stopping her rambling before it has a chance to run away from her. “I can’t say I’m not disappointed, but I get it. Honest.”
She sags a little, her head falling forward against Koharu’s shoulder. “Thanks. Sorry.”
She feels a deft hand cup the back of her neck, the warmth from Koharu’s hand and the gesture itself instantly spreading through Futaba’s body. “It’s okay. I know.”
—
She grabs dinner with Tamao and Rui again, always a comfort to see her friends. Though the way Tamao is serving her a larger portion of chicken curry and rice takes her slightly by surprise. She wonders if Tamao notices that she’s doing it, or if she’s been doing it on purpose, or if she’s always done it and it’s only now that Futaba is noticing.
So intent on watching the plate, she misses what her friends are saying to her and has to ask Tamao to repeat herself.
Tamao levels her with a look before opening her mouth. “I said don’t think too deep into it, but there’s a friend of a coworker that we think you might hit it off with, if you were interested.”
Her brows furrow, realization dawning on her. “Are you trying to set me up on a blind date?”
“If that’s something you’re ready for.”
“Or if you don’t already have someone,” Rui adds quickly before taking a bite of her dish.
She thinks it’s too soon, and says just as much. But she doesn’t divulge that there is already someone, someone that has been occupying her mind. Tamao stares at her discerningly, and Futaba’s somewhat alarmed at how much it mirrored the way Kaoruko used to look at her that she has to shift her gaze at the pitcher of water on the table and refill her glass even though she’d barely taken a sip.
“It’s not a big deal,” Rui offers when Futaba struggles to find the words for it. “And maybe it’s too soon. But it doesn’t hurt to think about it.”
“Sure, yeah. I’ll keep it in mind.”
When they finish dinner, they’re standing right outside her friends’ shared apartment, just out of the way of people passing them by on the sidewalk.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything. You can date for fun, not for marriage.”
She frowns at that. “I don’t even know what that looks like.”
“That’s okay, too,” her friend says simply. “But this is the time to figure it out. So when you feel up to it, do that.”
Given a container full of leftovers, she sets out to head home, but takes a detour, electing to take a night drive around the city with her dad’s car, driving through side roads until a combination of muscle memory and vague recollection of past routes start to blend together until she finds herself in front of her old middle school. She turns the ignition off and stares at the empty courtyard.
It feels like multiple lifetimes ago to be here, when she’d met Kaoruko and fallen in her orbit. She’d always been the star, the one at the center of attention. And Futaba had enjoyed watching from the sidelines. Until, of course, she got a taste of the spotlight as well and found something she never even thought she wanted. Craved. Needed.
Would she go back and do things differently? Would she only need to go back to the first ultimatum? Or would she need to go back to before the accident?
Or, would she go back to the very start, before ever meeting Kaoruko?
She wants the answer to be a simple, resolute yes so that she can move on, make a clean break away from all of it, from all of Kaoruko.
But she knows that’s wrong and unfair, dishonest. And that’s what hurts the most about the pain she’s carrying, the grief that has carved such a large gaping wound inside of her. Despite everything, she couldn’t — wouldn’t — trade this pain because for a time, when it was still enough, loving and being loved by Kaoruko was the best thing in her life and it gave her direction she’d never afforded for herself.
She takes a deep breath then releases it, the exhale stuttering out of her lungs. She turns the ignition of the car back on. It’s time to go home.
—
Early the next morning just before the sun has a chance to peek over the horizon, Futaba wakes up restless, huffing out of frustration and pushing her blanket out of the way when her attempts to fall back asleep fail after almost an hour. It’s like there’s an itch deep in her bones she can’t quite scratch, and it leaves her scowling, unsure of how to dispense and release this energy in her body.
When she opens the bedroom door to her living room, she finds that it has not stopped looking like she’d just moved in. So with a deep inhale, she sets out on exhausting herself by finally unpacking and clearing her living space of boxes. She makes good progress when she puts things away, opening boxes and clearing out so many of them until she has something resembling a home.
Unfortunately, by the time she finishes after three focused hours, she reaches the last of the boxes and still has so much energy left to deplete.
Thankfully, however, she’d just put away some of her kendo gear. She takes them out of her closet and stares at them, trying to remember the last time she’d touched the damn thing. Too long, she realizes.
She sets off for the dojo that Rui helps co-run. She goes through the front office quietly, making eye contact with Rui in the middle of talking with some people long enough to nod to the side, gesturing to the old practice room.
Rui only nods and gives her a thumbs up, and Futaba makes a hasty retreat towards the old practice room. She drops her bag to the side and hauls the old creaky metal practice dummy from the side of the room towards the center.
She gets into position, gripping her practice sword in her hands. She tightens her hold, feels the rubber handle of her sword, and starts her form of attack.
She first goes through the motions, the steps, and swings against nothing. But as the restlessness in her body spreads, she starts to swing with more force than appropriate, shouting as she does so. Before she realizes the steps she’s taken, she comes after the practice dummy with all her might, easily breaking a sweat where she has to grip the handle of the sword even tighter.
With every strike she makes, memories of her life flash in her mind. Of bright red eyes and a soft smile, of standing ovations for her first performance, of accepting the award for best breakout performer while Kaoruko stayed at the hospital, of Kaoruko so broken and unconscious on the pavement.
And as her cries ring loud in her ears, echoing in the old practice room, neither she nor her memories can stop. She’s striking and striking as flashbacks appear of pedaling her bike back in middle school while Kaoruko sat behind her, of blonde hair and an orange lighter, of Kaoruko nakedly writhing underneath her in bed, of her parents disapproving eyes when she’d broken the news of her impending divorce, of Kaoruko yelling at her, of Koharu right in front of her as they tread the side of the pool, of Kaoruko looking past her, so so distant.
She’s crying now, tears and sweat mixed as they fall on her face, and she is pummeling the practice dummy with her fraying bamboo sword, splintered pieces flying away, and her memories are unrelenting as more of them crash through her mind. Of the cowardly black sedan when she signed the divorce papers, of sakura leaves floating in the breeze and one landing on Koharu’s head, of when she kissed Kaoruko as her wife for the first time, of her standing alone in her new apartment staring at the emptiness in her eyes.
They were all beautiful, they were all painful. And her life culminated to very little at the end of it all.
Despite the brokenness of her sword, she continues hitting the practice dummy, already dented in parts. She only stops when she distantly hears Rui call for her before intervening to stop her, wrapping her in a tight grip pulling her away.
She lets herself be hauled away, and she drops to her knees, wailing in her grief and anger and love, all unresolved, all with nowhere to go. Futaba just wants to be done feeling bad. She wants to be healed. She wants to be scarred over and back to ‘as good as new’. She doesn’t want this anymore. She knows in her heart that she cannot distill half of her life in months and package it away, but she’s so tired that she just wants to be done being sad, being broken.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Rui says over and over, calmly but tightly holding onto her. She gasps for air and Rui just holds her. Several minutes pass until she can finally get a handle on her breathing, and the tears stop. Silence ensues save for her labored breathing finally evening out. Eventually, she pats Rui’s arm around her and the grasp around her body loosens. She repositions herself until she drops on her back on the mat. “I’ll be back to get you some water.”
She nods, croaking a small ‘okay’.
Her friend returns and hovers over her, offering a bottle of water towards her. Slowly, Futaba pushes herself up, first by the elbows, then by her hands until she’s sitting upright and criss-crossing her legs. She gulps down the water, her exertion catching up to her, and she finishes the bottle in just a few large gulps.
“Do you feel better?” Rui asks, squatting down to be as eye level with Futaba as possible, a curious look on her face.
“I don’t feel worse. Does that count?”
“Sure.” Rui pats her on the shoulder, gripping it slightly. “That’s enough for today.”
Her cheeks redden, both from exertion and from embarrassment.
“Sorry, Rui.”
“It’s fine. Go home. I”ll clean this up.”
“No, let me—”
“Futaba. Go home.”
She takes her broken sword and slowly makes her way towards her duffel bag, bringing it over her shoulder and heading out.
—
Futaba welcomes the cold condensation of her beer bottle against the soreness of her hands.
She wants to apologize again for how she’d behaved at the dojo earlier, but figures she’s not sure what to say, can’t quite imagine being able to look her friend in the eye so soon. She feels embarrassed for her behavior, but she also feels relief that she can still feel like that. That she’s not as dead inside as she’d thought.
She takes another swig of her beer, staring at the broken sword on her table.
Then, she opens her phone, her thumb hovering over Koharu’s name. It’s gotten a little late, and she knows that she probably shouldn’t call this late. But with the day she’s had, she just wants—
The phone in her hand rings, Koharu’s face appearing.
“Hello?”
“Futaba, hi. Is this a bad time?”
“No, not at all. How are you?”
“I feel I should be asking you that.”
Her heart panics, and she sits up straighter in her seat. “What are you talking about?”
“Tamao mentioned something happened with you earlier, but wouldn’t say. So I thought I’d check on you myself.”
She smiles despite herself. “And you called just like that?”
“Yes. But if you would rather be alone, I’ll understand. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“I am right now, at least.” She takes a deep breath. “You really wanna know?”
“Only what you want to share.”
“You’re a good one, Koharu, you know that?” And Koharu doesn’t say anything, but Futaba doesn’t mind. Instead, her brain conjures up an image of Koharu, the warmth of her ruby eyes, the upward slope of her gentle smile. “Can I really tell you?”
“Anything you’d like.”
“You might think differently of me.”
“I’ll let you know if that happens.”
She chuckles, even as she shakes her head, her chest ever so slightly tightening. “I broke my sword. Beating the crap out of the practice dummy.”
“Oh.” A pause. Then, “Are you hurt?”
“Maybe my ego.”
She opens up, the words tumbling out of her mouth without much more prompting. Through it all, Koharu listens intently, and it’s the balm against the sting that continues to ebb in her hands. And she feels lighter, her bones and muscles no longer wanting to break out of her own body. She doesn’t go into detail of the thoughts that ran through her mind, since they’re all somewhat fuzzy anyway, the adrenaline having zapped her recollection of the particularities of her earlier behavior. Still, Koharu listens, and Futaba can only be grateful. When she finishes, her words peter out in a small self-deprecating laugh, an embarrassment she knows she won’t be able to quite shake off so soon.
“I don’t think of you any differently, if you were worried,” Koharu supplies.
“I was.”
A comfortable silence drapes over them and she hears the way that Koharu moves, rustling against some type of fabric. Futaba’s first thought is Koharu snuggled in bed, and she can’t help but smile at that.
“Did it…did it feel good?”
“What do you mean?”
Another pause on the other end of the line and Futaba can picture the way Koharu must look, a pursed lip in thought as she finds her words. “Unleashing like that.”
She can’t help the small laugh that escapes. “It felt really good. It felt really bad, but it felt really good. You know?”
“I can’t say that I do, so I’ll just have to take your word for it.”
She looks at the sword and places it in the trash just before she heads to her room, abandoning her unfinished beer on the table. She wonders what demons and skeletons plague Koharu to want to ask, to know about how it feels. She hopes that the other woman tells her someday.
“Thanks. Really. For this.”
“I’m glad I can help.”
“I–me too.” Her thoughts still weigh on her mind, and despite hearing Koharu’s soothing voice, she’s not automatically and magically fixed because of it. Instead, it feels a little bit more like a pause to the torrential chaos that has been plaguing her. And one night of calm is a blessing. “Well, now that you’ve heard the day I’ve had, wanna tell me about yours?”
“Sure. I got a call from my sister, Sakura…”
She rests on top of her covers and looks out of her window while she rests her phone on her chest, listening to Koharu’s voice on speakerphone, pretending that the small reverberations against her skin are that of the woman speaking to her as her head rests against Futaba’s chest.
—
autumnAs the weather cools, Futaba asks Koharu to accompany her to a local festival during the early days of autumn.
“You know, I don’t remember the last time I peeled one of these. They just come peeled.” She pushes her thumb at the top a little too strongly and punctures the slices, the juice spritzing out. “I’m a grown adult and I can’t peel an orange without making a mess.”
Koharu takes the orange from her. “Let me.”
It’s different, the way Koharu says it, the way she offers. So she gives the citrus fruit over, and soft hands accept it. She watches Koharu deftly separate the peel from the orange slices, carefully pulling the stringy pith off.
For years now, people have done things for her. They explain and she accepts that it’s meant to ease her life so she can focus on acting, on the stage, on becoming the superstar they support. She doesn’t even think twice about it these days. Her past humility for the trouble that people go through under the guise of employment gives way to expectations of what she deserves, of what she’s entitled to. And those same expectations give way to forgetting what she used to know, what she used to do, who she used to be.
As she watches Koharu busy herself with the orange, the silence softly blanketing over them, she can’t help how her mind travels back to the recesses of her memories when she was the one who would peel the orange, pulling the stringy pith off, breaking the slices off and handing every other to Kaoruko. She was the one whose hands would feel the slick oil of the peel, the pith under her fingernails.
Fleeting memories flash in her mind of time long gone — years and years ago, before marriage, before debuting as a professional on stage — where she was the one who offered her hand to Kaoruko, the one who would utter ‘let me’, the one who would take care of the two of them.
The realization leaves her naked, exposed, unsteady.
“Here,” Koharu says, cutting through her thoughts. She offers the orange back to Futaba, still whole save for the punctured area that Futaba ruined.
Futaba takes it back with a small smile, then she splits it in half, offers the more intact half back to Koharu whose eyes widen in surprise. “We can share.”
—
After the lovely afternoon they have together at the park, she extends an invite to Koharu to come to her apartment. She’s nervous when she does it, and almost takes her words back, because she realizes that this is the first time since she’d signed the lease that anybody has ever been here. Not even Tamao and Rui, certainly not her parents. But the way that Koharu tucks her hair behind her ears, Futaba forgets what protests she may have had in her mind.
“Pardon the intrusion,” Koharu says when she stands at the entryway.
“It’s not a lot. But I did finally move my life out of the boxes.” Futaba feels a gentle hand on her arm.
“You have a nice home, Futaba. Thanks for inviting me.”
She takes a couple of beers and places it on their coffee table as they sit on her couch, the television playing some late night game show quietly in the background. She tries to leave space between them on the couch, but when she glances to her side to see if Koharu is liking the show, the pull of Koharu’s warmth and the taste of her lips are drawing her in beyond what she can possibly resist. With the television, the beer, and the world quickly abandoned, their lips meet and clash together, and Futaba can faintly taste their beers. She quickly slides her hand up Koharu’s back until it rests to hold the back of Koharu’s neck, her thumb softly rubbing against Koharu’s nape. She hears a soft hitch of Koharu’s breath and she is set ablaze, wanting more of that sound, wanting to be the cause of that sound.
In short, Futaba is overcome with her attraction for Koharu, wanting nothing more than to make the other woman feel good.
“Do you want to—” Koharu whispers on the exhale, her eyes half-lidded, her forehead resting against Futaba’s own.
“Yeah.”
“Bedroom?”
Futaba nods and she takes Koharu’s hand, her face in awe as Koharu walks the pair of them to her bedroom.
They undress each other, suspended in hurrying yet wanting to savor the moment. She hasn’t done this in a long time, she’s out of practice. But there’s a beautiful woman underneath her, who is looking at her like that, and she thinks that it’ll come back to her.
Her hand travels around to explore soft skin, warm under her own touch and she pauses when Koharu holds her wrist just against her hip bone. Her eyes flit up with concern, but Koharu is already looking at her. “Tickles.”
She smirks, and she dips her head down and kisses the other woman. “Noted.”
She trails kisses on Koharu’s jaw, nipping and teasing and sucking just as she draws circles just out of reach, her fingers teasing Koharu’s inner thighs. Koharu brings her hand up to grab hold of the back of Futaba’s neck, her fingers clutching at the short hair by the nape of her neck, and her voice is soft but urgent, wanting. “Please.”
And Futaba wants nothing more than to give Koharu everything she wants, so she brings her fingers to Koharu’s center and pushes into the heat, hearing the sound of Koharu’s gasp even as she feels blunt nails dig against the skin of her biceps. She repeats the motion, craving the way Koharu reacts to her, feeling Koharu linger on her skin even as her hands have moved elsewhere.
They bring their lips together, and start to move in tandem with each other. Koharu looks so beautiful, Futaba has to shake the threat of tears in her own eyes. For the next little while, they trade attention and silent physical proclamations, hands and mouths on waists and thighs. Soon they reach their first peak together, broken syllables of her name coming out of Koharu’s lips that she wants to bottle the sound and the heat of it so she never forgets.
And when Koharu clings onto her for another impending orgasm, pulling Futaba’s head close to her chest until all Futaba can breathe is the salt and scent of Koharu’s skin, she lets the other woman take all that she can give.
—
“Are you not much for casual?” Koharu’s voice is low and raspy, but Futaba thinks it’s sexy, as they stare into each other sometime later. They’re under the covers, and Futaba for the first time in who knows how long, feels light and weightless in a way that she doesn’t mind.
She laughs. “The last person I was with, I married her. So what do you think?”
“Not very casual, I suppose.”
She takes a deep breath. “Listen, Koharu. I like you, a lot. And I definitely enjoyed what we just did. But I have to be honest that I’m not sure how to do any of what comes after this—“ she says, gesturing between their bodies. “And I’m sorry for only saying this after we’d spent the night together and you’re naked in my bed. I don’t want you to think I was trying to trick you or—”
Koharu places a hand on her shoulder, her thumb softly rubbing Futaba’s bare skin.
“Hey, I wanted this just as much as you did.”
“Okay. Good.”
Koharu nods, and offers her a gentle smile. “We can play it by ear if that’s what you need.”
“Yeah?” She asks, hope in her eyes, as she stares down at Koharu. “What about you?”
“I think…” Koharu pauses, bringing her fingers to softly walk on Futaba’s bare shoulder. “I’m ok to see where this goes for now. And later, if my feelings change, I’ll let you know.”
She smiles, appreciates the offer for what it is. She knows that she’ll have to get her life sorted sooner or later. But for now, a beautiful woman is beside her in bed, naked and willing, and wanting her.
“You got energy to go again?” she asks, a small playful smile tugging at her lips. Koharu bites her lip despite the smile that threatens to burst through before nodding. Futaba closes the distance between them, Koharu’s lips soft against hers.
She quickly moves forward, their bare chests pressing onto one another as she settles her weight on her forearms just by Koharu’s head. Koharu immediately maneuvers her arms to wrap around Futaba’s middle, her hands resting on Futaba’s spine.
—
The week after she and Koharu slept together, things have largely stayed the same between them, to Futaba’s relief. They text and call each other regularly, and they are taking whatever they’re doing as each day comes. It has made the week pass by quickly for her, and for once in quite a long while, she doesn’t feel so bogged down.
But her good mood is instantly soured when she goes home for Sunday dinner with her parents.
“I overheard that Kaoruko is coming into town to help renovate the Kyoto Kishi Theater. Maybe you should reach out to her.” Her mother stares at her intently just as she passes Futaba’s plate to her.
“That’s just a rumor. She’s in charge of the theater in Tokyo, why would she come back here?”
“Maybe she realized her mistake with you.”
Futaba’s anger flares, clenching her jaw as she susses out what her mother’s attempting to do with her. On the other side of the table, Futaba’s father is busy reading the paper while he eats.
“Ma,” she starts, trying to keep the pleading out of her voice. “She’s probably just coming here for her mother’s birthday sometime next week. She’s not coming back. You have to let it go.”
“The Hanayagis are powerful people in this city, Futaba. Losing your connection with them is only gonna hurt you in the long run.’
“I’m doing just fine. I’m successful on my own.”
“Is that why you’re not working?”
She resists rolling her eyes at her parents, suddenly feeling like a teenager again when they first admonished and rejected her relationship with Kaoruko. To think that after so many years later, it’s they who are pushing to resuscitate her already broken marriage.
“I’m taking a break. I’ve been working non-stop for the last few years.”
“All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t close that door with Kaoruko. You can take her back again.”
She abruptly stands, her chair screeching until it falls down. “She’s not coming back because I don’t want her back. Whatever Kaoruko and I have is over. So just please, let her go! I have and I need you to do the same.”
She’s met with looks her parents have not been shy in sharing with her for the past year: a disgruntled frown on her father, and an indignant scowl on her mother. She shakes her head, and closes her eyes.
“Thank you for the meal,” she says with a bow and leaves to go home. She’s not sure what it means when her parents don’t call after her or stop her from leaving.
She imagines that her parents will have some choice words for her later. But for now, she just leaves, needing to escape.
With a quick slam of her visor down, she peels away from the curb, and drives around until she finds herself in front of Koharu’s apartment. She second-guesses herself, but eventually turns the ignition off before making her way up to the right door.
When she knocks, it’s Koharu’s roommate who answers the door.
“Yumeoji-san,” she says after a beat of silence, surprised to find Tamao’s ex-girlfriend appear in front of her. “I, uh–sorry for barging in unannounced, but is Koharu here?”
“Wow I haven’t seen you in years. You look like crap.” The blonde woman only smiles and steps back. “Come in, she just stepped out to pick up some snacks from the corner store. She’ll be back in a bit.”
“I can come back—”
“Isurugi-san, just come in.”
With a silent nod, she steps forward and crosses the threshold, bowing. “Pardon the intrusion.”
“Can I get you something to drink? Water? Tea?”
She shakes her head and stands awkwardly, suddenly all too unsure of what to do with her limbs.
“You can sit. We’re not strangers, you know.” She nods at that, before doing as she’s told, taking the corner of the sofa. It’s been years, when she and Tamao had first become co-stars, Tamao and Fumi had already been an item. It was the same time that she and Kaoruko had tried to find themselves together, again. And now here she sat, in the space Koharu shared with Fumi; a truly small world.
“Right, yeah.” She looks around, silently taking in her surroundings. Fumi takes the other end of the couch, but doesn’t stop staring at her.
“You look…frazzled. Are you alright?”
“Just…family stuff.”
Fumi just nods, as if processing her response. “I know that all too well.”
“Really?” Her head turns in surprise.
“Sure. I have a younger sister in Hokkaido who gets sick often.”
Vague memories of Fumi’s departure and Tamao’s brokenheartedness of their breakup flit through her mind, and she offers a small smile when she recalls them. “Right. How is she?”
“Doing good.”
Silence ensues between the not-quite strangers, but it’s not awkward. Or not as awkward as she thought it would be considering—
“Are you dating my roommate?” Fumi asks, cutting through her thoughts.
“I-uh. No, I’m not. But I like her.”
“Listen, I don’t really make it my business to get in people’s business, but while she’s out, I’m gonna give you the same advice I told her about you.”
Futaba’s eyes widen at that, wondering what kind of conversations Fumi and Koharu had about her, or what gets passed around about her. But more importantly, it piques her curiosity to wonder why Koharu would even need the same advice.
“I know that you’ve gone through some stuff, and believe me when I say I can sympathize when someone you love—or used to love—has found someone else,” Fumi says, her bright teal eyes intensely staring at her. Futaba just nods, not sure how to respond or react. “I just want you to know that regardless of what you think is out there, there are actually no rules to these things. But even if there are, I just want you to do what feels right to you. And to not hurt Koharu, if you can help it.”
She doesn’t get a chance to say anything more when they both hear the latch of the door, their heads turning towards the sound. Koharu brings her head up and is surprised to find the two of them sitting on the couch.
“Oh. Futaba, what are you doing here?”
Futaba stands, starts to walk forward. “I, uh—” she stammers out. “I wanted to see you.” The last of her words comes out shyly, causing the tint of pink on her cheeks as she thinks about how embarrassed she suddenly feels.
“Come on, let’s go to my room.”
Koharu offers her hand to Futaba who takes it, letting the brunette woman lead her. Koharu stops by the couch and passes the bag towards Fumi. “Here, don’t eat all of it.”
“No promises,” Fumi says, rummaging through the bag.
Silently, she follows Koharu’s lead, and is ushered to sit on the edge of the bed after Koharu shuts the door.
“Would you like to talk about it?”
Despite her attempts to control how much she shared, her body seems to have other plans, and before she knows it, she recounts the entire confrontation with her parents. At the end of her tirade, she’s exhausted, realizes just how much of her shoulders have tensed and how tightly she’s wound herself up.
She is both comforted and bothered that Koharu’s solitary touch on the top of her hand helps loosen that tension, knowing she shouldn’t rely on the other woman too much like this.
“It’s like I just want to make progress in my life, but they won’t let me,” she admits. “When I told them that I’m successful in my own right, they just blasted through that like what I’ve done for myself means nothing.”
“It means a lot. You’re wonderful on stage.”
She ducks her head, not quite ready for the sincerity in Koharu’s eyes. “Thanks.”
“I get it, though,” Koharu offers, leaning back on her arms beside Futaba.
“Oh yeah?”
“Thinking your parents don’t fully understand you, like there’s some disconnect there.”
“Yeah. Exactly. How do you deal with it?”
“I can’t say it’s the same, since I don’t know your parents, but eventually the weight of it all just became all too much. At some point I had to explain myself and remind myself that they love me, but that I had to stand on my own to be somebody.”
It’s her turn to push forward and offer comfort, her hand resting on Koharu’s thigh, her thumb gently caressing the exposed skin at the edge of her shorts.
“Did it work?”
“Eventually. You may just have to give it time.”
She sighs, understands the sentiment but not agreeing with it, even though she herself had needed the time to process and heal. Not sure how to voice those thoughts aloud, she simply offers Koharu a lopsided smile of gratitude. “Thanks for letting me be here.”
“I’m happy you’re here.”
“It’s a nice place.”
“The bath is particularly nice,” Koharu comments, a tilt of her head and a smirk appears. Her hair in her ponytail swishes just behind her head.
The tips of Futaba’s ears redden and she can’t help but imagine Koharu’s body naked in the bath. Koharu sees right through her, and laughs at her expense, and Futaba covers her face with her hands. “No, stop. I’m not trying to be a pervert!”
Koharu only laughs harder, and Futaba soon forgets the worries with her parents, her mind now occupied with the sound of Koharu’s laughter and the warmth of her body pressed beside her.
—
She hasn’t returned to Sunday dinners with her parents in three weeks. Her father has called her each time, and she’s turned him down each time. The silence between her response and the time he bids her goodbye is always so heavy, so weighed down with words she wants to say. But she swallows them all down instead and tells him that she’ll be back soon, just not right now.
Instead, those Sundays are now filled with inviting Koharu over. And Futaba can’t help but be greedy by these turn of events. She has been at Koharu’s apartment, the one she shares with Fumi, but the privacy of her personal apartment affords them a chance to spend time together without the accidental appearance of a roommate. They haven’t had sex again, since their first and only time. Instead, they’ve occupied this strange limbo, this liminal space. And a part of her worries about what it means, but decides that maybe they don’t have to label anything right now.
They just made dinner, they’re sitting on the couch drinking beer together with the television playing, a dramatic scene in a hospital setting, people running around, frantic and scared. It stresses her out, yet she can’t relate, not when her time at the hospital was cold, unfeeling, devoid of any passion and emotion. Not when she remembered the yawning distance between her and Kaoruko, who laid on the hospital bed so empty and broken.
Regardless, flashes of her past come crawling back until they claw at the edges of her attention, of her anxiety, and the words tumble out of her mouth before she can help herself. “It was my fault, you know.”
Koharu turns her head to her. “The divorce?”
Futaba shakes her head. “No, the accident.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“Can I, though?” she says, glancing up. Koharu nods. She swallows the dryness of her mouth and begins. “It was a few days before our anniversary. We’d just finished practice, and I was pretty tired. But Kaoruko reminded me that it was our anniversary and we hadn’t spent any real time together. I’d ridden that bike on that particular stretch hundreds of times. But…”
She can’t finish the sentence. She knows what happened after, how she’d steered away from the honk of the oncoming truck only to swerve and fall. How she’d overcorrected and the tire slipped and they skidded down the road. How she’d hunched over the handlebar to brace for impact, but didn’t feel Kaoruko’s grip around her frame. How she’d heard the piercing scream of Kaoruko behind before it became ragged whimpers. How she’d looked across the way and couldn’t scream out as she lost consciousness.
How she’d woken up at the hospital bleary eyed and body sore, and Kaoruko refusing to talk to anybody, including her — especially her.
She can’t escape what happened after.
“Futaba, it’s ok. It was an accident.” Koharu’s voice is soft and gentle, reassuring, the opposite of how she’d talked to herself for years. She scrunches her face, afraid to let her face shed any tears. “It was an accident. You didn’t mean any harm.”
“But I caused it anyway!” Her voice echoes in the space between them and harshly wipes the tears on her face, as if doing so would wipe away her faults. Koharu instantly wraps arms around her shoulders, and Futaba lets her.
When her sobs have calmed, and she’s taken a sip of water, Koharu’s voice cuts through the silence. “At some point we have to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we’ve made.”
“Yeah,” she says, studying the sadness in the other woman’s eyes. Koharu brushes her bangs out of her face, and touches her scar. Her eyelids flutter close at the touch, and she savors the contact between them.
“Despite what happened, you two came out of it alive. Maybe a bit broken, but alive. That counts for something.”
“You’re so good.” She swallows the lump in her throat from another threat of tears when her eyes open. “How are you being so good to me?”
“I’m not. Good, I mean. Not really,” Koharu starts, brushing the bangs out of Futaba’s face, and then gently grazing the scar on her forehead, but her eyes are distant and even if she knows Koharu’s looking at her, Futaba knows that Koharu’s mind is somewhere else. “There have been things I did in the past that have cost me, that have haunted me. Can’t even say that they don’t haunt me now, but it wasn’t until recently that I had to truly face them if I wanted a chance at something different to come from my life.”
“What happened?”
Koharu takes a deep breath. “Many things, but there was an accident I caused when my sister and I were kids. We were playing in the river. My dad saved me but he…he got hurt as a result. It’s—it’s changed the relationship I have with my father, my parents.”
“You were only a child,” Futaba offers.
“Weren’t you?” Koharu asks with a small quirk of her brow, and Futaba offers her a sheepish smile. But Koharu continues to brush Futaba’s bangs out of her face, seemingly lost in the movement, her fingers tracing against Futaba’s skin. “There was a woman I was seeing in Tokyo. Before I came here. I had to leave her. I left her. Thought it was for the best, and I spent a lot of time running away, thinking that it was repentance, as if time and distance was enough.”
“No?”
Koharu smiles sadly down at her, and shakes her head. “Turns out, I still have to face who I am here, too.”
The silence engulfs them, and Futaba brings a hand up to hold the one that’s brushing her hair. Fleetingly, she thinks of the bittersweet nature of the world so cruel as to cause such heartache for the likes of them only to come together in this way: two broken people understanding parts of each other’s grief and pain, guilt and sins. Futaba tangles their fingers together, but she doesn’t quite look Koharu in the eyes when she says her next words, instead squeezing their joined hands together, hoping Koharu can feel how much she means them. “I like you here.”
“Thanks,” Koharu says, squeezing back, understanding Futaba in the way that Futaba needs her to. “I’m starting to feel the same as well.”
—
One October morning, cloudy and dreary and completely unremarkable, she wakes up thinking of Kaoruko.
The last wisps of her dream quickly fade, and she can’t recall what happened. Only that she’s left with the lingering image of blue hair and darkened gray eyes.
Before she thinks too deeply about what she’s doing, her hand has already reached for her phone and dials an all-too familiar number. She calls Kaoruko. She hears the ring and the click signaling someone’s picked up the call.
“Hello?”
Futaba says nothing. A pregnant pause hangs between them.
“Futaba-han.”
What she realizes at that moment is that these past months don’t erase the years they have with and of each other. She should have known. Should have known better. And though she only wants to hate Kaoruko for the grief and the hurt that she feels, Futaba knows it is disingenuous and untrue. A part of her will always love Kaoruko. A part of her will always be tied to Kaoruko. A part of her will always have history with Kaoruko. Before the fractures and cracks in their relationship, they were good, had been so good .
“Kaoruko.” For once, her voice does not tremble when she says the name of the woman she once promised forever to.
She laughs through her nose at the state of them. Broken and changed, with parts of themselves comprised of jagged edges, while other parts are remnants of who they once were. She thinks she hears Kaoruko’s laughter on the other end of the call which begins a chain reaction, until the two of them are cackling and snickering, like the last few years leading up to the demise of their marriage never happened. Like this was just the two of them years ago back in school, carefree with the world and the possibilities at their feet. For an instant, for a fleeting moment, she pretends.
She holds the phone tightly against her ear even as she clutches at her stomach from laughing so hard. Her eyes are shut tight, but she knows tears of laughter have escaped from the corners.
Eventually, the pair of them get a handle on themselves, their shared laughter tapering off until Futaba takes a calming breath and she hears Kaoruko sighing on the other end of the line.
She feels the end with the way the silence between them stretches — as it had been doing for years, the only difference now is that she’s finally acknowledging it. Suddenly, tears prick at her eyes, and an overwhelming sense of finality spreads through her. She takes a few deep breaths and exhales, knowing that Kaoruko can hear them. She hears a sniffle from the other side.
She clears her throat and rubs at her forehead with her free hand. “Let’s not do this again.”
A resigned hum comes from the other end of the line.
There are so many things she wants to say, so many words she believes she’s owed. Maybe someday she’ll have the energy to say them, maybe someday Kaoruko will finally give them to her. But as she stares outside of her window in a world so many miles from her old life, she thinks that none of it matters anymore. What’s done is done, and there’s nothing she can do to change the past. She has no choice but to move forward. And forward doesn’t have Kaoruko in it.
She hangs up.
—
She paces when she calls Koharu to meet her at a restaurant for dinner. When Koharu appears, she is radiant and beautiful, her hair swept over her shoulder. They have a lovely time together, and Futaba doesn’t quite know all of her feelings in the matter, but she wants whatever is happening between them.
They take their time strolling back towards the trains after dinner, hands loosely intertwined. She releases Koharu from her grasp and takes a deep breath. Then she brings her hands up, softly brushing her knuckle against the soft skin of Koharu’s jaw.
“I want to tell you something.”
“Oh?”
“I don’t know if marriage is for me again,” Futaba confesses when they stand on the breezeway towards the trains, off to the side of the oncoming traffic. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for that.”
Koharu’s eyes are on her, but says nothing.
She exhales, cards her hand through her hair, her bangs falling back against her scar. “But I think I want to try to see where this goes.” She gestures a finger between the two of them. “This thing we’ve got going on.”
“You wanna try with me?”
“Yeah. Properly, this time. I appreciate you being patient and having to make room for the mess that is my life. But I know you deserve better than that. You deserve more than whatever weird limbo I’ve inevitably shoved us into.” She sighs, attempting to make sense of everything. “You know, I haven’t been trying for a really long time, but I look at you, and you make me want to. And I think I owe it to myself, and you, to see where this goes.”
“Futaba, I don’t know what to say.”
“Anything would be nice, even if it’s rejection,” she says softly even as she rubs the back of her neck. Koharu reaches out to her free hand and holds it.
“Can you give me some time?” She fights the urge to frown, even though it’s not the type of response Futaba had hoped for, but she nods anyway. Underneath it all, she understands Koharu’s reservation. “I want to do this right, and like you said, we owe it to ourselves to do that.”
The corner of her lips tug upwards, her words getting returned back to her. So she nods.
“Ok. Take all the time in the world. I’ll be here.” The words slip out with more confidence than she anticipated, echoing Koharu’s own words from some months ago, and she wonders how it even escaped in the first place. But the softness in Koharu’s smile and the rosiness on her cheeks flickers enough hope in Futaba’s heart.
They part ways at the train station, and Futaba watches her go with a small wave.
—
She’s over at Tamao and Rui’s apartment again for dinner. This time, she brings a cake and some special organic soaps as an apology for her recent behavior, and as thanks for being there for her.
But Tamao only pulls her into a hug, patting her on the back as Rui stands behind them and offers Futaba a consoling smile. “That’s what we do,” Tamao says. “We take care of each other.”
She does her absolute best not to cry, and fails, two teardrops escaping from the corner of her eye; graciously, her friends don’t mention it.
—
It’s two weeks later that Koharu asks to meet. During that time, they’ve exchanged texts and have talked on the phone, but not much more. She’s giving Koharu the time and space she’d requested, and Futaba’s thrown her focus and energy back to work.
She plucks one of the oranges from craft services backstage when she goes to pick up some scripts she’s considering, and shoves it in her jacket pocket. It’s getting much colder now, and she knows that her riding days are numbered until next year. But it’s unseasonably warm tonight, so she decides to ride her bike she got shipped from Tokyo.
She reconsiders not bringing the new helmet with her. But eventually decides to bring it with her, just in case.
She gets to the train station early, so she leans against her bike and waits. She watches people walking to and from the train station, an interesting reversal for her. It’s been a while since she’s allowed herself the chance to see so many of these people going to their destinations. Her attention falls on a group of office workers walking in a cluster. Then it’s Koharu standing at the top of the steps.
She straightens up and squares her shoulders, untangles her arms until they’re by her side again.
“Good to see you,” Koharu says when they’re standing a few steps away.
“Yeah, you too.”
“Do you wanna—” “I was thinking—”
“You go ahead,” Futaba offers.
“I gave what you said a lot of thought. And I need to tell you something about me in case you change your mind.” Futaba’s face brightens, but doesn’t say anything when she senses that Koharu seems to want to say something more. “I…don’t have that much experience with these kinds of things. I break people. It’s-it’s what I do. I can’t help it, but that’s what happens.”
Futaba offers her a crooked smile. “We’re just two people trying our best. Besides, can’t say I’ll be much better.”
Koharu stares at her, as if appraising her, her crimson eyes unflinching and Futaba does her best not to look away, wanting to show that this is her trying. Until, gloriously, “Okay.”
She’s not too proud to admit her shoulders sag in relief, but the crooked smile on her face stays. “So, do you wanna take a little trip with me? It’s not too far, just towards the park, but I figured we can hang out there, maybe grab a bite to eat.” She points her thumb behind her. She also pulls out a little pack of cigarette candy from the inside pocket of her leather jacket. “I also have this, from one chain smoker to another.”
Koharu’s eyes gleam with amusement and she laughs, the sound so sweet in Futaba’s ears. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
Futaba reaches for the side holster and pulls the red helmet. “Here, I—uh, I got it for you.”
Koharu eyes the helmet. “This is…”
“A bit presumptuous of me, yeah.”
Koharu grins at her. “I meant to ask if it was new. But I don’t mind, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“We can go back to the store and make sure it’s the right fit,” she offers, a dusting of pink blossoms on her cheeks while she watches Koharu put the helmet on, then swipe up the visor to look at her directly. The image of Koharu looking at her, smiling at her, is enough to fill Futaba’s chest with warmth. She gets on the bike, swings her leg over with expert ease. Then she offers Koharu her hand and grips onto it tightly before the other woman mounts the bike behind her.
“You remember how to ride?”
“Tell me again.”
So she does, words rolling out of her mouth, her hands ready and anticipatory of Koharu. She waits for Koharu to drop the visor before she does the same. She turns the ignition and gets settled in her seat, trying not to shiver at the feel of Koharu’s arms wrapped around her torso. Before she can start moving them, she feels Koharu patting around her belly.
“What’re you doing?”
Koharu doesn’t respond, just suddenly shoves her hand in her jacket pocket until she reveals the orange Futaba snagged from the table backstage. The laughter bubbles out of her, the sound only muffled by her helmet.
“You brought an orange?”
“Yeah, I’ll peel it for you later.”
This time, it’s Koharu who chuckles before she returns it in the jacket pocket, her arms winding around Futaba once again.
She revels in the press of Koharu’s body against hers, her warmth behind her, around her. And for the first time in a very long time, it’s enough. More than enough.
—
She takes a minute to gather herself in front of her parents’ front door. It’s early November now, and she hasn’t seen them in weeks. Still, they’re her parents.
When she turns the key and pushes the door, two heads turn to face her.
“Hi, Ma. Pa,” she says with a soft bow. She stays by the door, clutching the bag of fancy pudding she bought on the way in one hand while she grips her keys in the other hand. Silence blankets them, and she tries not to feel like such a child.
Then, “have you eaten?” her father asks.
She shakes her head. “Not yet. I just came by to drop this pudding from that corner store by the mall. It was on sale.”
Her father hums in approval. Futaba chances a glance at her mother whose back is turned to her and Futaba’s spirit deflates.
But her mother comes back to the table with a plate and utensils. “If you’re already here, you might as well stay to eat.”
“Thanks, Ma,” she says, and slowly sits in her usual spot.
She has no idea what her parents are thinking, and she can only imagine what tomorrow looks like. If they’ll listen to her, if she’ll ever be able to get through to them.
But for now, she’ll take this truce tonight.
—
She stares at her phone for a little while longer, Hiro’s missed call at the top of her call log. She reminds herself that this doesn’t have to be hard, this doesn’t have to be more than what it is.
She taps on the green call button, placing the call on speaker, and holding the phone right in front of her.
“I was wondering when you’d get back to me.”
Despite the fact that he can’t possibly see her, she nonetheless scratches the back of her neck and shrugs. “Sorry, I’ve been busy.”
“Mm,” he hums out in response. “So you wanna tell me what your bike is doing in my shop? ”
“I got my bike from Tokyo finally shipped to me. I don’t need that one anymore.” She takes a deep breath, and looks out across the street to find a familiar figure rounding the corner. She smiles. “I think you should sell it.”
Hiro doesn’t respond to her for a few seconds, but Futaba’s attention is divided now as she continues to watch Koharu walk towards the front of the Italian restaurant.
“You sure? ”
Futaba doesn’t take her eyes off of Koharu who pulls her phone out of her purse and checks it, seemingly typing something. A second later, Futaba’s phone buzzes in her hand, the words ‘I’m right out front’ appearing as a banner on the top of her screen.
“Isurugi-san? You still there? ”
She blinks back her attention away from Koharu and back to the increasing call time on her phone screen. “Yeah, I’m still here.”
And isn’t that what she’s been wanting all along? To confirm to herself that she’s still standing, that she’s still Futaba, that she’s still somebody. It’s not what Hiro means, and she knows that, but the words hit her square in the chest all the same.
“Sell it or give it to your niece, whichever is fine with me. I’ve held onto it long enough.”
“All right, I’ll take care of it. ”
“I appreciate it, Hiro-san.”
She hears another gravelly hum of assent from him before he hangs up. She doesn’t even get a chance to say goodbye when the call closes, the screen returning back to the call log. She quickly swipes to the messages and types and responds to Koharu, letting the other woman know that she’s just parked and she’ll be there soon.
Futaba shoves her phone in the inside of her leather jacket before taking a quick peek at the tail bag for the spare red helmet to make sure it’s set before locking her own alongside the spare. She checks both ways before crossing the road, and the small smile on her face widens when Koharu looks up and greets her with a wave.
When she reaches the brunette woman, she leans forward and greets her with a kiss on the cheek, eliciting a bashful smile.
“Ready to go in?” she asks, and Koharu nods at her. She offers her hand and Koharu’s smile widens before placing her hand in Futaba’s.
Futaba tightens her hold, and she ushers them both in through the door.
—