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There had been a plan, in middle school, or, at least, there'd been a part of a plan, a single thing she'd included in every daydream of a life after high school: at twenty, she'd have a motorcycle parked outside her apartment. (An apartment she knows now is about fifty thousand yen out of her price range.)
The rest of the plan had come and gone, been rearranged and replaced, as she'd watched her dream of a Koshien championship slip out of her fingers, and then started over, on other things, on herself, on her life. She's twenty-one, her apartment is in a quiet suburb of Osaka - the height of betrayal to her twelve year old self, dreaming of bright city lights, perhaps, but comfortable, now - and there is no motorcycle. In her defense, there is a two wheeled vehicle in her life, parked outside. Or, more accurately, latched to a bike rack behind the apartment where she lives. Her light blue, thin-framed city bike, with its shiny metal basket, is more convenient when she's trying to get to work or school or the grocery store on her turn to do the shopping. It's certainly easier to zip between noisy cars and noisier teenagers in the neighborhood around her college.
It's evening on a Thursday, her feet up on the coffee table and a book laying open across her lap. The apartment is quiet, the TV shut off. She sighs, arms thrown wide across the couch as she drums a pen in a loose, terrible echo of a song she'd heard playing on the radio at work, some Flumpool something or other that's been stuck in her head. The sun is setting in the only window in her kitchen, orange light spilling in bars over the counter and painting her so warm she could probably fall asleep just like this, except she'd wanted to have most of her essay done tonight, to give herself more time over the rest of the weekend. Her eyes flutter open and closed as she tries to convince herself to go back to flipping through the pages of the book she'd hauled home from the library so she can get back to work, and fails.
A key turns in the lock, and she rolls her head the other way, toward the front door. She opens her eyes, bleary, just in time to catch a whiff of what is definitely takeout. Something warms in her chest. "Takako, is that you," she calls, even though the only other option is their landlord, and continues, undeterred, "welcome home."
There's a long silence punctuated by a thump and a scratch - the telltale sounds of Takako taking off her shoes, peeling open the closet, and putting away her coat, from the creaking - before Takako's voice carries down the hall. "I'm home," she says, "with dinner."
"I know, I can smell it," Jun agrees, sliding her book across her knees and hauling her feet off the coffee table. She leaves her pen in the spine of the book, carefully capped, and leaves it open across the tabletop, to stand up. She huffs a grumble as the day sinks down on her, reminding her how long she's been awake, and she stretches out the stiffness in her back as Takako appears around the hallway, flat-footed in bright red tights. Jun's mouth opens in a smile, and she puts her hands on her hips. The logo on the plastic bag is the place down the block. "You coulda called me, I'd have come to meet you," she says, sniffing the air. "Did you get curry?"
"I messaged you," Takako says, "I thought maybe you'd fallen asleep, so I made a to-go order. And yes, for me." The last is supported by a finger pointed in her direction and a momentarily severe expression, which is just unfair.
"It was one time," she complains, breathing her shoulders up and down and letting her hands fall to her sides. She rounds the table. "My phone must be in my purse, or something," she admits, "sorry. It's kind of late for a nap, though." She looks pointedly at her watch.
"You were up at four thirty," Takako points out, and sets her purse down so that she has a free hand as she leans close, the crisp, outside-cold fabric of her blazer sleeve brushing against Jun's bare arm, and pulls, until Jun leans down the inches that separate them. Takako pulls back to keep them a breath apart, eyes bright through the curtain of Jun's bleach-brown shaggy bangs. "I'm home," she repeats, and kisses her, faded lipstick vaguely slick against her chapstick.
She breaks away a breath or two later, lips quirked, and reaches up to brush Jun's unruly bangs across her forehead. "You need a haircut," she says, and Jun rolls her eyes.
"You volunteering to do it?" she asks, leaning down to take the bag of takeout, her hand sliding against Takako's. Takako lets her tuck her fingers around the handle before she lets go, her fingers looping cold around Jun's wrist, fingertips brushing her skin under the mass of friendship bracelets the kids at her internship won't stop making her.
Takako hums. "I could, if you want," she says, after considering it. She's been trimming her own bangs for years, now, leaning carefully over the sink and still, somehow, managing to leave dark clippings Jun bitches about even as she wipes them up. (At least Jun's been bleaching her hair long enough that she's not getting powder everywhere, not burning her skin because she doesn't understand how to be careful, that small vanity a routine her sisters had been happy to teach her when she'd finally asked, her hair streaky with yellow and rough with damage back in middle school.) "It's not like it would matter if I didn't cut straight across," Takako continues, serene, and Jun twists away with a noisy hmph, defense of her choppy messy haircut, and hadn't Takako been the one to convince her to take the plunge, anyway, spilling out of her mouth without much heat. She grumbles her way into the kitchen, stepping carefully in sock feet on the cheap white tile to set the bag down. Behind her, Takako laughs, the sounds of her blazer slipping off and landing on the couch arm preceding her arms slipping around Jun's waist, her cheek pressing into her shoulder.
"I can't eat with you hangin' off me," Jun says, which is patently untrue, and she can feel Takako still laughing at her. "I'm serious, dammit!"
"You're always serious," Takako murmurs, oozing contentment. "And warm." She sounds smug on that, like she's summed Jun up in two words, and Jun sighs, leaning forward to peel the plastic down and peel plastic containers from the paper bag beneath.
"I'm not just your personal heater, Takako, c'mon," she says, "the food's getting cold while you play heat leech."
"Okay," Takako says, and doesn't move until Jun wiggles. "Okay!" she repeats, pulling back. She smooths the line of Jun's loose-necked t-shirt down her back, and moves around her to reach into the fridge. She bends down, her yellow blouse dipping forward to show a tiny gap of her skin, and Jun swallows, looking down, before Takako turns her head, her dark hair dangling across her face, to say--"do you want a beer?"
"One of the Asahi," Jun answers absently, attention on separating the takeout boxes. This is a process that mostly involves picking up boxes, sniffing them, and then cracking them open if she's not sure. She sorts them as Takako sets the bottle of beer down on the counter with a clink, a can of her own next to it, and she's finished stacking boxes by the time Takako's done thumping the cabinet door open and closed to set down two glasses. Jun settles on one of the counter stools, peeling chopsticks out of their wrapper with the closed paper end still in her mouth, as Takako pops off the cap of her beer and slides it her way. As she leverages up to sit at Jun's hip on the other stool, she spreads her fingers wide over Jun's shoulderblade, pushing just a little for balance.
"Thanks for the food," they chorus, together, when she's got herself settled, and Jun pops open the box she's sure holds her tonkatsu, ready to devour it.
The eating part happens largely in silence, interrupted briefly when Takako offers one of her gyoza, and explodes with sound as things devolve momentarily into a food-stealing contest weighted entirely, in her opinion, in Takako's favor, seeing as Jun doesn't even have a spoon to carry off curry with properly. Takako hums around her "traded" (translation: craftily snatched) piece of tonkatsu at this accusation, and Jun lets it drop before she loses any more food.
When they're finished, she stacks the takeout boxes in a lopsided tower across the counter, leaning her elbows on the body-warm tile top, and lifts her bottle of beer to watch light move, blunted, through the dark glass, swirling the little liquid left back and forth. Takako, still nursing her green can of Yebisu, turns toward her, in the way she does when she has something to say. It's the same as when she'd turned on her ramen stool stand, looked Jun in the eye, and told her they should go on a date, so Jun's attention centers on her.
"I'm buying a scooter," Takako says, "I want you to come help me pick it out."
"Like a... motor scooter?" Jun asks, blinking. Takako's never seemed interested in getting something like that - she didn't even have a bike.
"I can't ride a bike to school," Takako cuts in, gesturing to her outfit. Her clothes for school have gotten nicer the more business classes she takes, to meet the standards of professionalism expected by the instructors she's been working hard to impress, "and definitely not to the bank, but you remember last winter."
"We spent so much on taxis we might as well have gotten a car," Jun answers, tilting the bottle of her beer at Takako. "All right, leave it me. We'll find you the cutest damn scooter in the world, with enough storage room to take home half a cow." Takako levels a look at her. "What! It's just an example!"
"Not with you, it isn't."
Jun laughs, sheepish, rubbing her finger under her nose. "Well... it was mostly an example," she admits. "We haven't had meat in forever, can you really blame me?"
"I'll put it on the grocery list," Takako says, with a sigh.
"Or we could try out that yakiniku place," Jun says, trying to sound casual.
"Didn't we agree that we should wait until after midterms?" Takako points out, watching as Jun sets down her beer and brushes her fingers over the back of Takako's well-manicured hand, cupped around her can of beer. She shifts her grip on it to one hand, turning her wrist to catch Jun's palm, her thumb brushing the callus she still hasn't shed, three years later. She links their fingers together, setting her can down, kerplunk-clink. She turns her knee out, stretching the fabric of her grey pencil skirt across her lap, and leans in, eyes half-shuttered. She tastes like her beer, like the spice of her curry, like the last of Jun's tonkatsu, when she touches her fingertips, slick with sweat from her can, to Jun's jaw, and presses their lips together.
The essay goes unfinished.
---
The scooter thing doesn't come together right away. Jun puts together a list of options to buy over the weekend, only for Takako to reject them all, looking apologetic. "They're too small," she explains, when Jun asks about it in the middle of taking her up on that offer of giving her a haircut.
"How much bigger do you want?" she asks, turning her head obligingly to the left when Takako waves her that way with scissors open across her fingers. "What do you need a bigger bike for? Even if you drag home ten textbooks in the trunk, you'll be fine with these." She flaps the paper in her fingers back and forth.
"Well, I--duck your head a little, please--I looked it up, and I can't have a passenger on one that small..."
Oh. Jun's fingers tighten on the paper. "You need to do extra stuff with your license," she says, and Takako's fingers, combing her hair to the side, still on her scalp.
"I know," she says, "but it's worth it if it means we can... ride on it together."
"You're so embarrassing," Jun groans, rubbing at her red face. "I'll look for bigger ones. They're gonna be more expensive, you know."
"I've been saving," Takako answers, mildly, her fingers moving again to pull her comb through Jun's hair. Snip, snip, a few more pieces fall to the floor. "Your roots are starting to show," she comments, pressing down on the top of her head one-handed so that when Jun peeks up she can see it in the mirror.
"I'm gonna do it this weekend," Jun agrees. Her phone buzzes on the counter, and she leans forward to pluck it up over Takako's short noise of protest. "It's from Tetsu," she says, confused; he sends her pretty constant pictures, but texts are rarer. "He says Fumiya's planning to get everybody together," she reports, and taps back an affirmative.
Takako's eyes lift, surprise opening her expression. "Oh," she says, "I hope we can go." She looks back down, separating out another section of hair. "It'd be nice to see everyone again."
Jun shifts on the stool Takako had forced her into, drumming her fingers on the edge of the chair before her phone buzzes again, this time with a message from Fumiya himself. "Fumiya says, and I quote, 'Ryoko's bullying Tanba into finding an open weekend'," she says, and Takako brightens.
"Good," Takako says. "Now hold still, or this will really be a disaster--"
So she puts together a new list, looks online at used sales, digs a little to figure out who's going to be fleecing them, who's on the up-and-up, as Takako begs practice time off of one of her school friends, works on studying for the test she passes on the first go-around, works on practicing for the practical it takes her three tries to get right. It's only after Takako has the new endorsement on her license that Jun buckles down for hard options. She spreads out a couple of pictures for Takako across the coffee table a week or two later, sitting back on the carpet, legs bent and crossed, to tap at her phone screen and wait. She looks up when the sounds of paper shuffling stop, and finds Takako staring at one picture in particular, fingers stilled on tucking hair behind one ear. Her face says what it had said when they'd talked about finding an apartment.
"So?" Jun prompts, jolting her out of her reverie with a little jump, and she pushes the paper back toward Jun. "The orange one, really?" she asks, picking up the paper to stare up at the orange mid-2000s Vespa she'd mostly included for the notable model (and nearly miraculous price for an import) rather than any actual thought that it would be a realistic option.
"I like it," Takako says, "the stripes are cute. And with that price, I can buy two helmets right away."
"I'm not wearing that flowery thing you were looking at the other day," Jun warns. "And I'll buy my own helmet, so don't even think about it!"
---
Three weeks later, Jun is settled cross-legged on the couch, her laptop open on the coffee table and a call with Fumiya and Ryoko just barely over. She's working (barely) on the lineup for the baseball game on Saturday, trying to decide between putting Kato or Sugiyama in the five-hole. She worries the cap of her pen between her teeth, sliding her finger down the batting averages for the last couple of games. The front door opens, and she pulls the pen from her mouth to look up at the door. "You're back faster than I thought you'd be," she says, "welcome home."
"I'm back," Takako says, leaning into the door frame and holding up a shopping bag. "Come on, let's take it for a spin."
"I don't even have a helme..." Jun trails off as Takako finishes fishing through her shopping bag and offers a red-and-leopard print half helmet, the kind without a face plate, that Jun can hear her friends calling horrendous immediately. It's perfect, but--"I told you I'd buy one for myself!"
"You can pay me back for it," Takako says, "don't be mad, Jun, I didn't want to wait."
Jun's immediate spike in bad temper cools some. "I'm gonna," she promises, "right after payday." She's already getting up, trying to decide if she needs to change into pants, maybe, instead of chevron-print purple leggings and a bright green t-shirt that came down to mid-thigh. "Thanks," she says, shaking those thoughts off. "Let's go."
"Bring a coat, there's some wind," Takako says, letting her take the helmet in her hands. "And sunglasses, I forgot to get goggles for you."
Takako goes down first as Jun casts around for the denim jacket with the Baystars patch on the shoulder and locates the boots that actually tie to the ankle instead of flopping around in a way that's fashionable but not particularly practical, and she locks the front door before she trots down the back stairs to meet Takako on the sidewalk. She's already sitting on it, her light blue helmet in her lap as she looks at something on the display of the Creamsicle orange scooter with its white stripe down the front. Jun pushes the sunglasses she uses when she's coaching up on her nose - she definitely gets why Kataoka wore them all the time now - and casts around for the open bottom of the helmet. "You sure you're gonna be fine on this thing?" she asks, for what must be the fiftieth time since she got her license endorsement.
"I'll be fine, Jun, we practiced on Akari's scooter enough that it would be a waste, wouldn't it?"
Jun remembers those practice sessions, when Takako knew enough about how Akari's scooter drove to give it a try. The first time had included a terrifying moment of lurching danger before Jun figured out how to settle on it - it didn't have a top box, so there wasn't a proper back - but the one Takako had settled on buying had one. That had been a relief when she'd gone with her to look at it the first time a week ago, testing how they could fit on it with apologies to the nice older man who'd been selling it in order to move. "Yeah, you're right," she agrees, and pulls the helmet on over her head as she walks toward the bike. She fumbles with the clasp on the strap, cursing, for a minute, and Takako turns on the saddle to look up at her. "I got it," Jun grits out, tugging the strap tight so the helmet will sit flat, and she puts her hand on the pillion saddle for leverage as she puts her boot on the footrest.
"Jun, wait, let me get--" Takako starts, before Jun passes her leg over the top box and settles on the saddle with a satisfied noise. "...up."
"I told you I had it," Jun answers, wiggling around off the bump on the seat and finding the other footrest. "We gonna sit here all day?"
Takako sighs, and pulls on the helmet, tugging down white-rim goggles over the top, as Jun sets her hands loose on Takako's hips. The seat's big enough for both of them - neither of them are particularly tall or big - but they still have to press close together to get comfortable. Jun tilts her head so they're not knocking helmets, leaning close enough she can feel the curve of Takako's back against her chest. Her fingers link together across Takako's middle, the heels of her hands tucked back against the soft front of her zip-up jacket.
Takako starts forward before Jun expects it, and her grip tightens a little before she forces herself to relax. Takako is a good driver, they live in a fairly calm neighborhood, and they've practiced riding two-up like this. (Distantly, her childhood self has some things to say about this nervousness being the exact opposite of cool, but she'd stopped listening to that voice after she moved out of her parents' house and had no one to be but herself. Anyway, it's different riding behind someone like this; when she's the one up front on her dad's motorcycle, the power of the machine buzzes under her control. Leaving it up to someone else is the height of scary.) Takako pulls them off the main road onto the side street that goes toward the long stretch of road toward Kyoto, and anticipation coils in Jun's stomach as the distance from their quiet but not exactly conducive to joyriding neighborhood to the more open area beyond begins to close.
Takako says something that's lost in the wind as they make a turn down another side street, and Jun makes a loud noise of confusion. "Sorry," Takako repeats, louder, "I was just warning you we're going to speed up!"
"What kinda baby do you take me for, I don't need warning for tha--ah!" Jun cuts off into a squawk as Takako does just as she'd warned, and she turns her face to avoid looking at Takako. It's not an especially effective defense when she can feel Takako's pushed-down laughter shaking through her body, and she peels her hands apart to knock her knuckles gently against Takako's stomach. "Stop laughing!"
She does, after a minute, and the next time she speeds up she does it slower, enough that Jun barely notices how much faster the stores and houses are passing by until they break onto an open road without tall brick buildings, and the wind cuts at her face. She gasps with laughter, and adrenaline sends thrills under her skin. This is more like it, now that they're not worrying about cars and pedestrians and--Takako swerves to avoid a pothole, and her stomach drops, like on a roller coaster. A grin pulls at her face, and she presses closer to Takako to hook her chin over her shoulder as the road spreads out in front of them. In twenty minutes, the saddle bump will make her butt ache a little, and Takako's bun will come loose enough to hit her in the face so that she's spitting out hair for what feels like an hour, but for now everything is this quiet stretch of Osaka suburb, the sky, and Takako's body heat against hers.