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“Here.”
Rei’s head didn’t so much turn as it flopped to the side. There was something in front of her face, and this seemed somehow confusing. She slid her head back to try and get a better look, ignoring as the sand shifted against her cheek. When that failed, she closed one eye and squinted really hard with the other.
It was a bottle.
“What is it?” she asked in a voice that sounded much more smooth and collected than most people might have expected, all thing considered.
“It’s a bottle,” Minako said helpfully.
Rei flicked sand at her, but it didn’t have the decency to go far. “I can see what it is. What IS it?”
The bottle twisted as Minako angled it toward the full moon to get a better look at the label. After a few seconds she shrugged and again offered it to Rei. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Drink.”
Minako was sitting up now, Rei noticed. For her to continue lying there was no good. It took some effort, all of which went mercifully uncommented on, but Rei managed to partially sit up too. The sand was soft, but Rei’s efforts dug her in enough to where she could lean back on her hands and have a reasonable chance of remaining upright. “I think …” She waited a moment until the beach settled down and stopped swaying back and forth in a way that was, in Rei’s opinion, very irresponsible. “I think I’ve drunk enough.”
The bottle didn’t seem to agree, and it refused to retreat. Rei glared at it. That didn’t help. She glared at the person holding it instead. “Minako.” Her voice held an unmistakable warning.
A warning which had no effect. Minako’s blue eyes were focused and aggravatingly clear. “You said whatever I wanted. You promised.”
“That was for your birthday.”
“It is my birthday.”
“It hasn’t been your birthday for …” Rei whipped her head too hard, sending a sheet of black hair cascading across her face. The loud, mostly ineffective attempts to puff it away did little, and in truth she wasn’t sure she could accurately read the blurry hands on her watch anyway. She whirled back to Minako and lifted her chin. “Well I know it’s after midnight,” she said as though this were all the information needed anyway. “So it’s not your birthday anymore.”
Minako’s expression didn’t change. She rested her elbow on her knee and put her chin in her hand. “It’s my birthday until I go to sleep.”
She said it like it was the most obvious fact, an immutable law discovered centuries ago by very smart people. Rei felt a flush of embarrassment and it angered her. She didn’t like birthdays, she never had, and this felt like a gaping hole in her experiences, one that was common knowledge to any child. She hated how Minako did that, how she effortlessly poked holes in Rei’s life until they were big enough for Minako to crawl through and leave pieces of herself behind.
What a ridiculous thought. Clearly alcohol was turning Rei’s brain to mush.
And all Minako could do was smile her knowing smile and waggle the bottle.
Rei glared Minako. She would not yield.
The eye roll Minako made at Rei was surely one of her most epic. One quick twist and the cap was off the bottle. Minako took a long swing, worked through a shudder as the alcohol hit her, and once again extended the bottle to Rei. She said nothing. She didn’t need to. Her raised eyebrow said it all.
They’d been friends for years, since they were children, laughing and fighting and dying together. They’d been friends for lifetimes, in ancient forgotten worlds, still laughing and fighting and dying together. There were moments, several of them surely, where Rei was convinced she had learned how to ignore one of Minako’s challenges.
This was not one of those moments.
She snatched at the bottle and almost knocked it from Minako’s hand. Rei’s reflexes were sharp, however, sharper than she’d expected, and she allowed herself a flash of pride. She took a mouthful without bothering to see what it was, found it less strong than anticipated (Rei felt another flash of pride at her lack of reaction), and handed it back.
Finally, Minako seemed satisfied. The cap was secured and the bottle landed with a dull thud where she dropped it in the sand.
Rei waited, expecting something. Some kind of … something.
Nothing was what she got, however. Minako sat in silence and watched the ocean. She hugged her legs to her chest and rested her chin on her knees while the waves surged and retreated in constant soothing roar. The moon hung heavy in the sky above them, casting everything in a blue light. Still Minako said nothing.
A quiet Minako, Rei had learned, was far worse than a noisy one. The open ocean air was beginning to sober her up, too. It was definitely the ocean air. Couldn’t possibly be anything else.
“The party was fun,” Rei prompted.
The response was a noise of vague agreement. Rei frowned. It had been fun, right? The middle bit was fuzzy, but she definitely remembered the beginning. They had met at Makoto’s for a delicious dinner, after which Minako ripped into her presents and declared that it should be her birthday every month. Pretty much standard.
Then it was out to a bar that Minako had adopted as a personal favourite. The entire staff knew her name (most of them also knew Rei’s, but this was a detail she didn’t feel inclined to dwell on) and birthday drinks began to flow. After that …
Huh. What happened after that?
Actually, how did they even wind up on this beach? Where were the others?
“They’re at home,” said Minako, as if reading Rei’s thoughts.
“Shouldn’t we be home?”
Minako rested her head on her knees so she could look at Rei fully. The moonlight made Minako look especially mischievous, which was not something Rei felt she needed help with. “Whatever I want, Rei-chan,” Minako reminded.
Rei was beginning to find this promise bothersome.
Minako unfurled, like a fist clenched too tight. “Besides, I think we broke Ami-chan at the strip club.”
Only the deep furrows in the sand bracing her arms kept Rei from winding up flat on her back. “Strip club?!”
“So wild, Rei-chan. Who knew you had that in you? I mean besides me,” she added with a wink.
Minako was clearly lying. Clearly. Oh please be lying.
Seeming satisfied with the damage done with a few precision words, Minako rolled easily to her feet. Walking gracefully on such loose sand was a near impossibility under the best of circumstances, and with as much as they’d had to drink, Rei knew these were anything but. Still somehow Minako moved with confidence and certainty. She walked several feet away toward the tide line, then pivoted and came back like she was a model on a runway.
She was clearly doing it to be irritating.
Either Minako hadn’t drunk as much as she’d let them believe, or she was just that good regardless of the alcohol in her system.
Both were infuriating, and Rei opened her mouth to say so.
Instead what came out was, “Minako, why are we here?”
Rei had nearly whispered it, which not only wasn’t what she meant to say but certain not how she meant to say it. She thought at first Minako hadn’t heard, which meant she could just get on with the yelling like she’d intended. Once Minako got close enough for Rei to make out her expression however, all thoughts of yelling evaporated.
She couldn’t have said what it was, exactly. Perhaps if her thoughts were clearer, her senses not soaked in whatever had been in the seemingly endless parade of glasses Minako had shoved in her hand throughout the evening. Perhaps then she could have said how she knew how close to the edge Minako was walking tonight. As it was, Rei only knew that it was true.
“Why are we here?” she repeated, this time not caring how gentle it sounded.
“I’m being ungrateful, huh?” Minako asked in a quiet voice deceptively lacking in judgment.
Minako knew what Rei thought about that kind of thing, and Rei knew she knew, and so she said nothing.
“I really had fun tonight.”
There was something else there and it hung between them, but Rei couldn’t make out the shape of it. “So did we,” she said, and even if she’d forgotten more than she was comfortable admitting, she knew it was true.
The smile Minako flashed her was warm and genuine, and Rei felt herself return it involuntarily.
Too soon, Minako stopped smiling. “I’m an adult now.”
Rei tipped her head to the side, staring up at Minako. Minako, standing there with one arm wrapped around her middle, the other playing with the shoulder strap of her dress. Minako, who to Rei’s eyes had always looked somewhere between fourteen and a thousand. “How does it feel?” she asked.
“The same!” Minako said with a thin laugh. “Exactly the same. That’s the problem.” She barely made any sound as she dropped to the ground next to Rei.
Rei said nothing. The rest would come.
Formless shapes appeared between them as Minako dragged her finger in aimless patterns along the ground. Sand began to fill them the instant she moved on, leaving only faint impressions. After several moments of this, she spoke again. “I thought I’d feel different. I thought there would be a clear moment where I could say my childhood ended and my adulthood began. I’ve been waiting for it all day, but there’s just this sameness.”
She stopped drawing in the sand and looked at Rei. “I think I stopped being a child too long ago.”
Minako’s gaze dropped to her canvas, and Rei followed her eyes. The symbol of Venus was engraved there; Minako’s work had gone deep enough to give it the stability the other patterns lacked, and its shape held.
But for all that, it remained sand. Rei erased it with one swipe.
“You’re still a child, trust me.”
Minako barked an indignant protest. “Hey! It’s my birthday!”
“So you’ve said,” Rei noted as Minako scooted closer. She didn’t protest as Minako grabbed her arm and slipped it around her shoulders.
She also didn’t protest as Minako then flung herself backward, taking Rei with her. The way her head was still swimming, this was a safer position anyway.
As they lay in the sand and Minako snuggled into her side, Rei wrapped Minako in both arms. Before long, Minako’s breathing deepened, and she drifted into a peaceful sleep. By Minako’s own rules, the birthday promise was now lifted, but Rei stayed exactly where she was. She remained on vigilant guard staring up at the full moon. One promise had been fulfilled, but she had others, and Rei was a woman of her word.