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Asakusa is just struggling to finish her sentences today. Undeterred, she just keeps talking.
She’s sitting with Kanamori on an uncomfortable slab of concrete near the train tracks, two cheap beers into a rambling, largely one-sided conversation. It’s too humid today; the late afternoon sun is still blazing hot as it sinks down over the skyline, and a cold aluminum can perspires between Asakusa’s fingers.
She taps it, fidgeting, paused mid-thought, watching some of the droplets fall on the pavement below. The air is too thick. Kanamori says nothing, waiting for her to finish, and she takes another sip.
“It was the way she said it. I just don’t know why she’s so mad,” Asakusa sighs.
“Hm,” Kanamori says.
Asakusa only knows the what and not the why. This time it had been about cutting her hair too short.
It wasn’t that big of a deal.
Asakusa had recently decided to abandon her messy bob in favor of something that, ostensibly, didn’t make her neck itch; Mizusaki had insisted on doing it, and she had done a fine job. And obviously Asakusa wouldn’t even have agreed if Mizusaki hadn’t done the same for Doumeki the week before.
“Yeah, I know, right?”
Mizusaki presented Asakusa to herself in the bathroom mirror (her entirely too large bathroom in her family’s entirely too large house) like a drawing she was particularly proud of.
She hadn’t messed much with Asakusa’s bangs, but she’d left only a half inch or so on the rest of it. Her signature triangular forelock hung down between her eyebrows, pointing towards her flat nose like an arrow. Mizusaki had left some longer locks in front of her ears, “for contrast”. Most importantly the irritating bob was gone, and she could feel a draft on the back of her head.
Asakusa had turned her head side-to-side, examining. Noting details. She so rarely observed herself, because she felt like she hadn’t changed much since childhood; she was still short, and flat-nosed, and disproportionate.
Well, she had thought that. Asakusa noted that she’d gained some weight, and her face had gotten squarer, and some intangible quality of shoulders was different. She noted the line from her jaw down to her neck, how she couldn’t see her collarbone through her skin anymore. She felt something about this.
It was probably just the haircut.
Asakusa had gone along with it for practical reasons, of course. But she felt weirdly giddy tracing her fingers over the neatly trimmed fuzz on the back of her neck.
She had been too wrapped up in looking at her own neck or whatever to notice at first, but behind Mizusaki and her expectant smile she could see a reflection of Kanamori examining the back of her head. She was wearing her glasses, for once.
Kanamori’s eyes darted up and down exactly three times before she looked away. If she didn’t know better, Kanamori almost seemed bashful.
She turned back to Mizusaki.
“It’s exactly what I wanted,” Asakusa had said, just a little bit breathlessly.
“Oh, good,” Mizusaki sighed, “Kinda got to a point where I couldn’t fix it if you didn’t.”
Kanamori just nodded at her.
When Asakusa got home, her mother had chastised her, and that was what she couldn’t stop thinking about. She said (among other things that Asakusa did not care to talk about now) that it made her look “unprofessional”. This time she had actually argued with her a little, because having all that hair in her face made it harder to work, but her mother had just kept insisting that—
“Better she gets mad about your hair instead,” Kanamori says flatly, waggling the beer can.
Asakusa rolls her eyes. She drinks a little more, and the cold, shitty beer is hot as it goes down her throat.
Frustration still squirms in her chest and she can’t quite articulate what bothered her about it so much. Everyone gets nagged by their parents about this sort of thing. But a seventeen year old should be allowed to wear her hair however she wants, shouldn’t she?
She was angry but she still felt some doubt. And a little bit of guilt.
Years ago, when she was little, the first time her mother made that face, she’d thought about it for weeks; that look that said What are you doing, are you trying to embarrass me?
Before that, clothes were just sort of clothes. They had practical applications, but there was no deeper meaning to anything. She liked a shirt because it had a rabbit on it. She liked the color of the dress pants her brother didn’t want to wear, because they were too big for him. Those beige-pink dress shoes made her feet hurt.
That look on her mother’s face froze something inside of her that had never really thawed out.
And without being told Asakusa had gone back to her room, changed into a skirt, and that was that.
It became automatic to quash her discomfort, when necessary. She did that with a lot of things already. That was just sort of how it was. And when it was just her clothes or her hair, she could manage. There was so much she didn’t understand, all the time, and this was just another one of those things.
But last night she’d been laying awake, again, feeling her pillow on the back of her head, fuming and planning out exactly what she’d tell her friends if she was still angry in the morning.
Usually she felt safer wearing her beaten-up old camouflage bucket hat. But when she had put it on leaving the house to meet Kanamori today, it felt heavy on her head.
The hat is on the concrete next to her, protecting her phone from the elements. Asakusa feels a hot breeze across the back of her neck.
“It looks good,” Kanamori adds quietly, unprompted, “it really does.”
Kanamori’s face is a little flushed. It’s hot today, and she’s probably starting to get tipsy by now.
Asakusa and Kanamori turned seventeen within two months of each other. The shitty beer had been a gift from Kanamori (who had, for once in her life, been swindled into buying an inferior product, with no recourse to boot) and they meant to drink it together with the rest of the Eizouken on Asakusa’s birthday. But after a month of deadlines and everyone’s mismatched schedules and growing concern that Kanamori’s mother would check what the box in the back of her fridge actually was, they’d just said fuck it and here they were.
Asakusa isn’t sure if she’s buzzed, or just feeling vulnerable in general.
“Thanks, I..” Asakusa says, “I’m sorry to just. You know. Talk your ear off when we’re supposed to be having fun.”
When Kanamori finds something funny, she doesn’t laugh. She just repeats it almost inaudibly under her breath. Asakusa’s ears perk up.
“…Supposed to be having fun…”
Asakusa was very proud of herself when she figured this out, but right now she doesn’t appreciate the sentiment.
“If I minded you talking my ear off you’d be dead by now, Asakusa-shi,” Kanamori says, rolling her shoulders.
Asakusa laughs, for real, like a normal person.
“Where would you be without me? I’m like, your calming white noise.”
“…White noise…”
Kanamori finishes off her beer, and coughs. She leans back.
“The problem with you, Asakusa-shi, is that sometimes you say things that are very important. But I can’t predict when that’ll be. So, unfortunately, I do have to pay attention when you talk. That’s my lot in life, you see.”
Kanamori slumps against the chain link fence and looks at Asakusa with what she only dares to describe as friendly neutrality. Strands of her hair stick to her sweat-dampened cheeks and forehead like a filigree over her freckles, and her toothy overbite remains in a pleasant state of not-smiling. Kanamori is actually wearing her glasses on her eyes more these days, and it feels very different when she looks at Asakusa through the lenses. Something about her face is softer. Maybe it’s because she’s squinting less.
Getting Kanamori to actually wear her glasses had been something of an ordeal.
They had this discussion, if you could call it that, a couple of weeks ago at the clubhouse.
“I can just use my glasses,” Kanamori had griped. She still wasn’t wearing them on her face, and they had been hooked on the collar of her t-shirt. She had been griping, of course; but she was, for some reason, allowing Asakusa to help stick some bobby pins in it instead.
“What if you need to see with them?” Mizusaki asked.
“I only need them sometimes.”
Kanamori had become determined to grow her hair out even longer, for some reason. Maybe she thought hairdressers charged too much. And, crucially, she never got out of the habit of using her glasses to keep her hair at bay.
This culminated in Kanamori crashing into stuff a lot. She’d either be pinning up her hair with her glasses (which she insisted she did not need) and kick someone in the shins, or her hair would get in the way and she’d run into a wall. It was very funny, of course, but eventually her friends became concerned enough to do something about it.
“No offense, Kanamori-shi, but this is, like, an intervention,” Asakusa had said, trying her best to wrangle Kanamori’s hair. How did she always do this so effortlessly? Just a movement or two of her intelligent fingers, too fast for the eye to follow. Asakusa doesn’t quite pick up on movements like Mizusaki does, but she thought that she would love to animate that someday. Film it and pick it apart.
Kanamori’s hair was so much softer than Asakusa expected. Her throat was dry. She didn’t read into Kanamori leaning almost imperceptibly towards her whenever her fingers grazed her scalp. Does she even know she’s doing that?
When all her hair was in one place, ready to be pinned, Kanamori grumbled at no one in particular.
“It would just be faster if I did this myself,” Kanamori said, and she reached behind her head to take the pins out of Asakusa’s hands. She missed the mark, and instead her thumb pressed against the pulse of Asakusa’s wrist. For some reason, she lingered there.
Asakusa dropped every single pin on the floor.
Kanamori’s soft, silky hair fell back down over her shoulders and over her face, causing her to pull her hands back down and snarl in frustration. Mizusaki’s bemused snickering turned into full-on laughter.
Asakusa remembers this so clearly even though it was just another moment where she was overcome with that longing, that impotent sense of desire, because for whatever reason it didn’t just go away. Her palms were sweaty and her face was burning for the rest of the afternoon; she lay in bed that night, wide awake, head spinning.
Kanamori has her hair pinned up in a messy bun now, and somehow managed to do it all by herself.
Asakusa knows if the argument with her mother was just about her hair or her clothes or whatever it would be a lot easier.
“What do I say that’s important?” Asakusa asks, looking away. Her throat is dry again, but this time she drinks some beer to soothe it.
“Your mother shouldn’t be saying stuff like that to you.” Kanamori observes.
They have conversations like these every so often. Kanamori is so much more direct, and that may be why her parents have never given her any trouble about how she dresses or who she theoretically might be dating. They don’t yell their support from the rooftops or anything but they do leave Kanamori be.
(Seeing Kanamori get nervous about her mother finding the beer had been kind of endearing, because she was so rarely nervous about anything.)
It’s every other conversation, these days. Asakusa will gripe about her parents telling her to wear dresses and “look nice” (she understands that phrase less & less every day) and Kanamori will say, oh, that’s messed up, and Asakusa will lose the nerve to talk shit about her family and the conversation will end.
This is her first time drinking alcohol, and she’s heard that it makes you bolder. Loosens your inhibitions.
“You’re right,” Asakusa groans, “I mean, you’re always right when you say that. I just don’t know how to talk to her about it, you know? And that’s not even all of it.”
“Not even all of it?”
“She gets so mad when I wanna wear like, a button down and pants…to things. I don’t know. Like, what year is it? And your mom doesn’t do that, right?”
“To be fair, my mom knows I’m a lesbian. Because I told her.”
Some part of Asakusa still recoils from the word but she’s trying very hard not to.
“I dunno. I’m still easing her into the art…career…thing.”
Asakusa knew her parents’ reluctance towards this came from a somewhat valid place of concern. Or, really, she wanted give them the benefit of the doubt.
It’s good that you have such a strong work ethic these days, it’s good that you’re focusing on something, and the implication isn’t lost on her, but what else could you put that towards?
Kanamori slowly sits back up. The chain link fence rattles as she lifts off of it.
“That’s off the subject, isn’t it?” Kanamori says, resting her face in the palm of one hand. With the other, she crushes the beer can and drops it on the ground. Asakusa is momentarily fascinated by the flexing tendons of Kanamori’s wrist.
“It’s not. You know, if I’m going to fight her on something—like, that’s the most important thing. The other stuff is all…whatever.”
“’Whatever.’”
“If it’s just how I dress when I come home, that’s fine.”
Asakusa knows how it sounds. She’s not completely without self-awareness. but she really means it. She doesn’t have a lot of fight in her, not like how Kanamori does.
“The hell you are,” Kanamori says.
Asakusa yelps in surprise as Kanamori grabs her in a headlock.
What is playful roughhousing between the two of them could look like violent assault to other people. The two of them rarely hug each other, or anything, and Asakusa is touched by the gesture.
Still, it’s not exactly comfortable, and she squirms and flails her legs impotently. Kanamori is as strong as ever.
“It looks fine. Good. And it doesn’t fucking matter how you dress if you’re getting your work done. I’ll tell her that for you,” Kanamori says, lightly patting Asakusa on the cheek in a performative, patronizing way.
“I tried to…that’s sorta what I said to her,” Asakusa mumbles.
Kanamori slackens her grip on Asakusa enough to let her breathe, but does not release her. They relax into each other. Asakusa rests her chin in the crook of Kanamori’s elbow.
Asakusa notes that her face is directly against Kanamori’s skin, and that her freckles are so close that they blur into her peripheral vision. She smells like cheap, minty soap.
She’s not in the mood to continue with this conversation, even if Kanamori thinks it’s important. She almost wishes she hadn’t said anything at all.
However crestfallen she’d been over what her mother said about her hair, and all that other stuff, Kanamori saying she liked it makes all that seem meaningless.
Kanamori, who only got the cheapest soap from the corner store; Kanamori, who hadn’t gotten a haircut in ages; Kanamori, a girl who never looked happy if you didn’t know her.
Asakusa is very aware of her cheek resting against Kanamori’s forearm. How she’s just sort of holding onto her, with no violent pretext. It feels good.
She is definitely drunk now.
“Kanamori-shi, can I, uhm, ask you something?”
Asakusa shifts, pushing herself a little further onto Kanamori’s lap, mostly without meaning to. Her inhibitions are not gone, but they are lowered, and she’s never been good at staying quiet when she needs to.
Kanamori coughs again. She seems sweatier than before, even though the sun has started to go down and there’s a vague chill in the air.
“…Sure. I’ll bite.”
Sometimes, Asakusa just says shit.
“Do you think I’m like—attractive? Like do you think a girl would think I’m attractive. Like that.”
Kanamori doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t answer for a long time.
The sun sinks a little lower.
The ground rumbles, and a train is approaching.
When Asakusa knows she’s said the wrong thing it feels like being hit. She feels like the wind was knocked out of her.
Shit.
She wants to jump out of Kanamori’s arms and fling herself across the train tracks.
But Kanamori still has her, in this sort of intimate, gentle headlock, and she has not let go. Her arms are warm and Asakusa is frozen in place.
The train is approaching, and it’s louder now. The empty beer cans rattle on the pavement.
“I guess I think that you—“ Kanamori says.
The train rolls past, and the sound is omnipresent and deafening. Both of them frantically cover their ears, grit their teeth, and kick beer cans around in a mad scramble to sit up.
The train keeps going by for a long time.
By the time the train has disappeared over the city limits, and when they can’t hear the rumble anymore, the sun is dim and diffused in the light pollution. The darkness comes on quick. They’re sitting a few feet apart now, and the hazy, alcoholic clarity of the previous moment is gone.
Asakusa looks at the spot where the train used to be instead of looking at Kanamori. She can’t look at her, now. She’s going to start crying no matter what Kanamori says to her.
“…fucking train…train tracks…”
It’s anti-climactic. Asakusa’s heart and lungs are still primed for a meltdown.
She struggles to speak.
“I-I’m sorry, Kanamori-shi, I know that was weird…to…spring on you,” Asakusa wheezes, “I don’t wanna make it weird so, so like, you don’t have to answer that.”
“I think you are. That somebody would,” Kanamori says.
Asakusa is surprised that she didn’t take the out, but that’s fine. Platonic enough.
“Oh, uh, thanks?” Asakusa says. Despite asking the question she had absolutely no idea what she would say if Kanamori actually said yes. Especially not if Kanamori elaborated.
What had Asakusa even wanted from this interaction? Kanamori saying she was pretty or cute or whatever would just ring hollow, and Kanamori knew that. She had to.
Kanamori’s silence, prior to the train, was all the elaboration Asakusa expected. Maybe, if Kanamori felt like it, she’d give her a placating non-answer. Some girl somewhere might find you attractive, theoretically. Enough to keep her self-esteem afloat after the conversation with her mother, and nothing more.
“It makes you look—oh, don’t know. Handsome?” Kanamori says, very quiet and unsure.
Handsome?
The word hits her in waves.
The first was that Kanamori was sober now and she was blushing. She started cleaning her glasses very intently.
The second was everything that clicked into place when she heard it; how she’d felt looking at herself in the mirror. The word was something warm and light and it flooded into her.
And finally, it was the fact that Kanamori was the one who said it. Like she knew, and she understood, and Asakusa loved her dearly for it.
“…Are you, uh crying?” Kanamori asks.
Asakusa realizes that her eyes are wet, and that she’s smiling like an idiot, and her face is burning hot.
“Ah, shit. Gosh. I mean, thanks, I…” Asakusa tries to compose herself (because what could possibly ruin it more than what she’s doing right now), “that’s very. Nice of you to say.”
Kanamori puts her glasses back on and sighs.
And then her hands are on Asakusa’s face.
Her thumb roughly brushes across Asakusa’s cheek, and she’s so close that her freckles are blurry again. Asakusa forgets how to think.
“I’m…maybe I should be sorry,” Kanamori says.
It takes a moment for Kanamori’s meaning to register, because it is absurd and beyond the pale that Kanamori could catch feelings for someone like her. And she needs to remember how to form words, sentences.
“Don’t be?” Asakusa leans into her hands, breath shaky, and their faces are inches apart, “I didn’t really consider you were actually, uh, into me. I thought I was reading into it too much. Sometimes I do that—”
“You did ask.”
With only the slightest hesitation, Kanamori kisses Asakusa on the cheek, agonizingly close to her mouth but not quite. She lingers there, and Asakusa is overwhelmed by that cheap soap smell.
Kanamori’s breath washes over Asakusa’s face as she pulls back. She doesn’t take her hands away, and she’s still close, like she’s waiting for something.
“Uhm…I dunno…sometimes I just say shit,” Asakusa mumbles into Kanamori’s palm.
“You do,” Kanamori sighs, “and what was that about some girl hypothetically thinking you’re attractive?”
“I dunno. Plausible deniability.”
“Right. And you asked that while you were draped across my lap.”
“Platonically draped across your lap?”
“…Platonically…”
Maybe nothing between them had ever been platonic. All the years they’d been friends. They’d only been able to see it when they got older and a little less naïve; in the quiet moments between work, when their friends weren’t around, and the nature of their relationship fell into sharper relief.
Alone, like they are now.
Asakusa puts her hand over Kanamori’s, feeling very bold all of a sudden. There’s something she’d thought about for ages now, and she wanted to seize the chance.
She sort of hums questioningly, and Kanamori cocks her head at her. Waits to see what she does.
Asakusa presses a kiss to Kanamori’s palm, another to the pulse of her wrist, to her knuckles and the back of her hand. She notes that Kanamori’s hands are rough and chapped, and that her pulse has quickened.
“And I think you’re pretty,” Asakusa says, laughing very stupidly.
Kanamori is a bit red in the face. She clears her throat.
“Can I kiss you?” Kanamori asks, as if it is not a logical conclusion that they’ve been hurtling towards this entire time. As if they haven’t been gravitating towards each other, as if they weren’t inevitable.
Asakusa nods.
And they do kiss; and it’s long and clumsy and breathless. Asakusa is pushed back by the force of it, and Kanamori reaches up to hold her steady.
Asakusa can acutely feel Kanamori’s hand on the back of her neck, fingers running through her short hair, and that’s almost as good.