Chapter Text
38.00°: Adjustment | Reunion | Post Game
Shoka had had many names in her life. Swallow. Stray. Little Miss Reaper. Shokie. Kitty Girl. Lady Shoka. cherryCurtain. Ms. Mew. Black Kitty. Cherry Sound. Hydrangea. Darling.
The one her parents had used for her, back when they still gave half a crap about her.
And now she had a new one to add to her collection, the one her legal guardian called her as she dragged Rindo into the refuge of her new home. Or, at least, the restaurant that occupied the ground floor of her new home, where she and her legal guardian lived upstairs.
"Welcome home, Scout!"
"I'm back, Mr. Doi." Shoka heard the doors swing closed behind Rindo. She let go of his wrist, her palm as warm as her face from having held him so close to his hand. "And I brought a friend. We're gonna be upstairs."
The scent of Mr. Doi's cooking filled her lungs. Spicy, sweet, savoury, delicious. The chatter of Shibuya's citizens seated at tables and booths, dressed in all colour and fashions and styles that popped before her gaze, admiring the souvenirs he had brought with him from his long trip out, most of them gifts from his friends, some even from his longtime curry-cooking partner, Aadiv. She would never have the heart to tell him that she preferred the food at Crowned Curry to SPICY CURRY DON's, but even if she did, Mr. Doi would welcome her home every evening all the same. For once in her life, for once in her life, she had never, ever felt surer of something.
Mr. Doi beamed at the both of them while Rindo's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He stared openly at Mr. Doi, then at Shoka, then at Mr. Doi again. Rolling her eyes, Shoka grabbed his wrist again. "Come on before your eyes fall out of your head, dummy."
"Y-yeah." He followed her soundlessly across the restaurant floor towards the kitchen in the back, then up a set of stairs that Shoka had never noticed from the front until Mr. Doi had pointed it out to her.
"You kids want some food up there?" Mr. Doi called after them. "I can get you some chicken curry! One out of five spice!"
She heard Rindo's footsteps die down behind her. With her hand still on the banister, Shoka glanced back to see him tugging his mask up. "H-how does he—"
"He's got a steel trap memory. Never forgets a customer." Shoka's fingers sank into the welcoming felt of Mr. Mew's ear. "Didn't even forget me."
"What should I say?" Before Shoka could reply, Rindo yanked the mask back down and shouted back down the stairwell. "That sounds great, Mr. Doi! Thanks!"
"Sure thing!"
Turning back towards Shoka, Rindo gave her a small, nervous smile. Shoka heard herself laughing. "Look at you. Mr. Making His Own Decisions And Everything."
"I learned from the best."
"Who, Neku?"
Rindo squinted at her. "No, you." She stepped backwards on the stairs, her heel hitting the base of the next step. "Being all decisive with the...the joining the Wicked Twisters thing and everything."
"Uh, yeah, and my room's this way." Shoka practically dove up the last few steps two at a time, abruptly self-conscious of the paw-pad prints on the bottoms of her black socks, until she skidded to a halt in front of the door. Her door. Her door, and hers alone.
She had her name painted on it and everything, in her own messy handwriting even though she'd tried her best to get it nice and straight, but she hadn't had to handwrite her name since her last day of school over four years back. Her surname in Gatto pink, her given name in Nero black, or the closest the hobby store had had to those patented colours. Mr. Doi had drawn a crude copy of Mr. Mew beneath the name, saying that he could still remember the plushie-toting girl who had walked in and out of his restaurant three times in a single day, prior to suddenly turning towards her carrot-headed partner and complaining that nine plus nine plus nine was more than twenty-four. The boy had retorted about her poor mathematical ability before pointing out that he preferred the shoyu ramen and could now easily wolf down another serving.
Mr. Doi had so many stories about his customers. He never forgot any of them.
He wouldn't forget about her.
Opening the door to her room, and her room alone, Shoka motioned for Rindo to come in with her. He had stopped at the first door along the left side of the hallway. Not Mr. Doi's room on the right, but the other one. "How many kids has he adopted?" Rindo asked a little incredulously. "I don't mean that in a bad way, just—"
"Whoever's room that was," Shoka interrupted, "isn't around anymore, and Mr. Doi said not to go in there. Now c'mere. Unless you want to sit out here and not check out my room."
The way his eyes popped open and his pupils constricted into pinpricks, as though she'd just flashed him from her phone camera, made her smile inwardly. He bolted forward towards her room, then hesitated at the threshold. "Well, e-excuse me."
With a hand at the small of his back, Shoka pushed him in and he stumbled forward, waving his arms out for balance. "Sit wherever you want, you dork."
"It's just the first time I've ever been to someone else's room." Rindo peered around as Shoka closed the door. The bed with its white sheets and black blanket, the posters of Gatto Nero and bands that had played at O-EAST that lined the walls, the shuttered closet where she had arranged her few outfits, the window with heavy curtains over it after she had made a single peep to Mr. Doi about the nighttime lights not letting her sleep, the nightstand with the orange bottles of medications right on it and—she pushed him down onto the mattress, flinging a pillow into his face while he yelped and quick-stepping towards the nightstand to shove the bottles into the top drawer—the nightstand with a few framed photographs of the selfies she had taken with her friends among the Wicked Twisters and her old family. The Reapers from her hometown, that is.
Not...her old old family.
Rindo pulled the pillow off his face and looked at her. Shoka reached over him to pluck a stray feather from that curl of bleached hair. This close, she could make out the dark roots creeping in. Suddenly he angled his face up towards her and his nose bumped hers. She jumped back, a feather clutched between her thumb and forefinger, while his hand leaped to his face.
"Really? The first time? You've never been to Fret's?"
It took Rindo a few rapid blinks prior to responding. "Nah, we only met in Shibuya before the Game. I wasn't really that close to anyone until all of that. Other than you. As Swallow." He lowered the pillow down to his lap. "It's really funny, right? How I was so close to someone when I didn't even know who they really were. But maybe that's why I could get so close to you, because you didn't have to know who I really was. You know what I mean? You were someone I could stop talking to any time if it got too serious, so...I could be more serious with you."
"Yeah, so serious that you forgot to check your friend requests for a month." Shoka heard the words exiting her mouth just as she cringed at herself. "Sorry, I...that was really sweet, Rinrin."
Another few rapid blinks. "Did you—?"
She dragged Mr. Mew's ears over her face. "Sh-shut up."
"No, no, that was really cute!" Something touched her shoulders. His hands. He'd sat up on the mattress. "I'd love it if you called me that!"
"I'll consider it. If you do something to deserve it." Slowly her fingers loosened, and the hood sprung back up around her head, revealing the dark brown of Rindo's gaze right before her eyes.
Releasing her shoulders at once, Rindo squirmed backwards on her bed. "I really like your room," he said stupidly. "It reminds me of you."
"It better," she said just as stupidly, "since I decorated it."
"Uh. Makes sense."
He looked at her, and she looked at him, and he looked at him, and she looked at him, and he looked at her, and she looked at him, and he looked at her, and it was starting to feel an awful lot like an awful line from an awful song Izumi had covered during karaoke once when suddenly he broke the silence again.
"So...'Scout'." Rindo gave her that tiny cute smile again, that smile he got when something went his way during the Game. Did he get that smile when he caught a rare monster on FanGO, too? "Mr. Doi adopted you? Is that legal?"
Shoka wanted to ask whether he meant to Mr. Doi adopting her or his smile, because that smile couldn't possibly be legal. Instead she shrugged. "I think the Composer updated the family registry so that I'm not...dead anymore. Mr. Doi found me sleeping in his dumpster. Said that I reminded him so much of, uh." Her mouth dried out. Could she tell him about Junior? Would that fry Mr. Doi's trust in her? "Of someone he'd adopted before. Long story I don't know much about. Anyway, he got in touch with my folks or something, and I'm legally his—" She toed her sock against the edge of the mattress. "—daughter now."
His grin broadened. That grin: when he ordered something he really loved off a restaurant menu. Like the chicken curry, apparently. "Cool! Man, I was so scared when I saw you bumping into people on the Crossing. I know I screwed up not checking my friend reqs, but I'm just...happy you weren't homeless for a month."
"Yeah, only a couple of days. Could've been zero, if someone had paid attention."
Rindo flinched. If Shoka could peel up the floorboards and smack herself over the head with them hard enough to pass out without damaging Mr. Doi's house, maybe she would.
"Sorry. I always do this. Say some stupid mean shit for no reason." Shoka rubbed her arms. "
"No..." Rindo shook his head. "You've been through a lot."
The line of her mouth thinned. "That's not an excuse for being a jerk."
"I didn't say it was. But you mean a lot to me, Shoka. And to Fret, and Nagi. They're gonna be so stoked to see you, too!" He had no right to smile at her so gently. No right at all. What the hell. "I don't care what tone you're saying stuff in." No, that wasn't quite right. "I know where your heart is, and that's what matters, to me." No, more like...she didn't have a right to be smiled at so gently. By anyone. Least of all him. "Like, um, during the Game, when I realised how kind you could really be—"
Sweat beaded on her brow. "You mean all the times you were staring at me?"
"Yeah, those times." The edges of his voice trembled, but he just dug his fingers into the pillow and spoke up a little more. "And others, too. Like the advice you gave that Scramble Slam guy."
"It was just common sense."
"Maybe to you. But to me? Just...telling someone to be themself, but like for real? Not just some dumb feel-good quote, but really, really from the heart?" Rindo's grip furrowed the pillowcase. "It was like...everything I'd wanted from An0ther. Not as an idol, though. As a living breathing person. As a friend. That genuineness I'd been holding a fake version of all that time."
If Shiba hadn't once let slip to her the shape of her Noise form, she would've felt like a Piscis Cantus in this moment. "Huh," she managed.
The fabric over her pillow strained audibly. "Anyway, that. Seeing your actions. It means more to me than you ribbing me every once in a while. I know you're not trying to be a jerk. And, uh, I wanna be here for you while you adjust. And after that, too. As long as you want me around to be here for you. I'm not assuming anything."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "Far be it from me to hold you back from making stupid decisions. I'm gonna be adjusting for a long, long time. Just as a warning, so you know what you're getting yourself into."
He relaxed, cradling the pillow like a cat. "Yeah, well, I guessed that from seeing you running into people a month after the Game's end."
"Yeah, you try being a Reaper for four years and walking the Scramble. Betcha you'd be even worse. It's not just that, you know. Stuff like...having to cut my nails again. Or my hair. Or, uh, realising that I'm gonna get older, and I'm not scared of getting older, but like my body changing..."
His cheeks were turning red, and hers, too, probably. He suddenly gazed right at her face with such intensity that she could tell he was focusing not to look anywhere else.
She blurted out the first words in her head: "—and having a heartbeat again!"
"A heartbeat?" Rindo's expression softened.
"Duh. I mean, I was pretty much a walking corpse as a Reaper. Sorry, your bee-eff-eff of three years was a zombie. Not that I'd want your brains. I don't eat sawdust."
Rindo touched the side of his head as though trying to palpate his brain. "Guess that makes us perfect for each other, since I wouldn't have been able to talk with you if you'd eaten my brains."
Shoka spoke dryly. "Gee, when you'd get so smooth."
"Maybe you ate my brains when I wasn't looking after all. I mean, you already got my heart."
Piscis Cantus again. He flabbergasted her. How was she supposed to tell him he really did get smooth without smothering it in fifty layers of sarcasm and baking it at one-fifty degrees.
"So, you have a heartbeat now, huh?"
"Yeah. You wanna feel it?" She tugged down Mr. Mew's front enough to expose the pale grey dress underneath.
The blush returned to his face like a boomerang hurtling back just to smack him across the cheeks. "I mean, but your—your b—b—b—"
"Ugh!" Shoka seized his right wrist from the pillow and yanked it forward towards her chest, slapping his hand just over where her heart hammered right into his palm. "See? It's just a heartbeat. Woo, I'm alive. Woo, I have to pay the bus fare like a real human bean again. Woo, I...what?"
Rindo had gone quiet, his fingers flat and lax against her chest, his eyes so wide and wet gazing up at her, such wonder and warmth and lo—lo—lo—affection that she just stood there stiffly at the edge of the bed, her heartbeat quickening in his hand.
"W-what?"
"You're alive." He said it like it was the simplest and the most incredible thing in the world. Like a miracle. Like a prayer.
"G-glad what's left of your brain is working."
"No, it's just—"
Oh no. Oh no. His eyes were brimming with tears.
"—after a month—I thought the worst—I had so many nightmares—and you're alive—"
What did she do with tears. What was she supposed to do. Stand here with her mouth stretched out like the croaky panic mascot?
"and you're here—and you want me to be your friend—"
Heat closed around her own wrist. Tenderly Rindo pulled her arm towards him. Her hand touched warm softness. Something thudded against her palm, fast and deep, like a roll of distant thunder coming closer with every beat of the drum. Oh. His heart. His heart in her hand. Her heart in his. Oh. She. Um.
"—Shoka, I—"
"Oh, sorry! Don't let me interrupt you kids!"
Shoka flew backwards so urgently that her back cracked into the nightstand behind her, banging it against the wall, the pill bottles she'd thrown into the top drawer rattling loudly. Panting, she stared at Mr. Doi in the doorway with his tray of food. He beamed innocently at them.
"Here you go! The mildest chicken curry I can make, and Aadiv's recipes for thali. Took me a while to get all the individual dishes together. Let me know what you think, Scout, and I'll make sure to get it better next time." When he grinned that hard his eyes squinched shut. "I made sure the spice has an extra kick in it." Then, placing the tray down on the ground, Mr. Doi closed the door like he hadn't just walked in on the most embarrassing thing this side of Shiba's fire pun obsession.
"Holy crap." Rindo wheezed, the pillow over his face. "I thought I was a goner."
"No, we're." Shoka choked out the words between gasps of air. "We're alive. And—" She could still hear the pill bottles rolling along in the top drawer. She could still hear her heartbeat thundering in her ears. She could still feel the aftershocks of Rindo's thunder in her palm. "—no matter how hard it gets. I'm gonna stay that way."