Chapter Text
When we finally left the mall she asked me if I was tired.
“Why should I be?” I answered as I hopped my way to the other side of the crosswalk.
“We’ve been shopping for like, four hours.” She caught up to me and frowned as she always did whenever I outran her on a red light.
“As if that could tire me! You know I could spend hooours there. Even without buying anything. Are you tired, Enanan?”
“Mhm,” She shook her head “Nah, I’m ok.”
I smiled for myself. Sometimes she was so easy to read.
“Do you feel like doing something before heading home? I’ve been meaning to visit this coffee shop for a while, I saw a designer I follow on twitter comment on it being really good!”
“Oh. Sure.”
We had just arrived at a subway station, and we were lucky enough to board a train that wasn’t too full so we could sit down.
“I think it’s like eight stops away.” I said, checking my phone.
“Well, that gives me like thirty minutes to rest, more or less.”
“Didn’t you say you weren’t tired?” I chuckled.
“I think I should be allowed to sleep on the subway as long as someone’s taking care of my stuff .” She said before proceeding to nod off, resting her head on my shoulder.
“Well, I’m glad I was here for your beauty nap then, Enanan.” I muttered, but she was already fast asleep. Unbelievable.
The subway didn’t really take long, as expected, and I had to wake her up forcefully when we reached our stop. (I shook her shoulder and locked arms before lifting her from the seat.) (She obviously wasn’t pleased. Damn, I wondered how tired she must have been to doze off spontaneously like that.)
“Okay, let’s go!”
“Is it a long walk? We didn’t really think this through, and maybe carrying the bags around wasn’t such a good idea.” She was probably right, but now we were already here, so I grabbed a couple of the things she WAS carrying and put them in my bags.
“Oh, you better not steal those if you want to keep your windows intact.” I snickered at her.
“Don’t worry, I would never! Just don’t forget to remind me when we part ways later! Also, according to this…” I checked my phone. “The place should be just… Around the corner, there!” I pointed towards the cafe, at the other side of the road.
“That’s… That’s actually quite pretty.”
It had tall glass windows that almost reached the ceiling, and you could see the beautiful wooden furniture inside. I guessed the second floor was part of the cafe too, and spotted from outside an empty table on the chamfer of the building. I bet the views would be super cute from up there, so I grabbed Ena’s hand and crossed the road with her as I pointed to it.
“Look! Let’s see if we can sit there.” She nodded eagerly.
She dropped my hand as we entered the coffee shop, and not before, I realized. I glanced at her as she looked, astonished, at all the decorations that had been carefully placed around every corner, and I smiled for myself.
We were signaled by one of the baristas to take the spiral staircase that was nestled on a corner of the room. The ceiling was high, and the industrial-looking copper material which the stairs were built from reflected the warm light of the place. Come to think of it, the whole cafe was bathed in warm tones, from the wood of the furniture to the incandescent light bulbs and the red tablecloths, the atmosphere was calm and inviting. I heard Ena letting out a sigh before starting to climb upstairs. I shortly followed.
Thankfully, the table I had spotted before was still free, despite it clearly being the most comfortable and having the best views of the whole coffee shop. It was the little beautiful things like this that I held onto the most, moreso if I could share them with people I cared about. For the first time in so long I had started realizing that those feelings were being corresponded, ever since I had started making MVs for 25-ji… Ever since I talked to the girls, I had slowly made a place for myself where I could be very close to living as my true self. Obviously, I had my doubts, and old habits take their time to vanish so it was scary to put my trust in anything or anyone, but it felt so cozy and comfortable everytime I hung out with them, even with the nagging thought of feeling like a liar for keeping secrets.
But this day was different. I had just spent an afternoon shopping with Ena because I promised her I’d help with finding an outfit for some art-related event she had in the following month, and now we were sitting in the cutest cafe I had been at in a while. We were carefree and there wasn’t anything big to worry about in the near future, I even had the chance to forget a bit about my worries… The impending doom of the truth about me, of telling Ena and the rest about it… I couldn’t imagine how to start talking about something like that, let alone express how I truly felt about it.
So I buried that train of thought, like I always did. To an absurd degree, now I was living blind to my own discomfort, pretending nobody saw, pretending I myself was oblivious to it. It kinda worked. No one could ever notice but Ena, somehow. She didn’t seem like she would be assertive about it today, though, so I focused on having just a fun evening out.
“You seem lost in thought, have you made up your mind about what you’re gonna get?” She asked me after a while of looking around with her usual air of curiosity. I wondered if she knew she did that, anxiously devouring everything in sight with her big brown eyes, as if trying to screenshot life to later look at it in detail. Maybe it was the artist’s way of seeing the world, I thought. For me, it was one of the many things I liked about her.
“Yeah, sure! I think I’ll have some hot chocolate with vanilla ice cream on top. I was just wondering about how come I’ve never been here before… It’s so cute, I should’ve come earlier!” I smiled at her.
“Well, now you get to be here with me. We should visit places like this more often!”
“If only Enanan came out of her cave more than once every blue moon… Maybe we could.” I laughed.
“If only Mizuki asked Enanan to go out more frequently!” She blurted out.
“Hah! So it’s always me who has to be planning every 25-ji outing?”
“I didn’t mean that… Also, I plan plenty of stuff! And, for example, our IRL meetings are a team effort!”
“Yeah, yeah… Anyway! I’ll keep in mind that you prefer to be asked out.” I smirked. “I actually love to plan this sort of thing, I just haven’t been in the mood lately…”
We fell silent. I could tell Ena was meaning to ask why, but she couldn’t decide on how to approach the subject. I felt bad for bringing it up, even if not on purpose, and called for one of the waiters before it got awkward.
The barista who took our order was a tall woman, probably in her late twenties. She was very beautiful and carried herself with a grace and elegance I had never seen in anyone before. It struck me to see her walking towards us with a gentle smile and a sure step. There was something that I couldn’t describe that left me speechless. Ena, however, didn’t realize, and asked for both our orders oblivious to my reaction. Before leaving our table, though, the waitress glanced at me for a bit longer than strangers look at each other, but without coming off as staring. Then, something in her expression shifted. Her smile became more true, in a way, and her face softened from the polite customer service mask to a sincere and warm look.
She then took off and I was left awestruck. I felt like my entrails were twisting in and of themselves after that look she gave me… It was as if she could see me, the real me. Could she be… My mind started to wander off as a hundred questions popped off in it. That glance, it peeked deep inside my soul and left me wondering if someone could really understand me like that. I wondered, could she be like me?
“Hey there, are you okay? You spaced out for a sec.” Ena asked.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry. I must have known that waitress from somewhere, I’m trying to remember…”
“She was very pretty.”
“Yeah. She was.” I sat in silence for a few seconds while she looked at me a bit weirded out, questioning. Needing a reason to cool off a bit after that, I muttered: “Actually, I think I might need to go to the bathroom, hold on a second.”
“Eh, sure?” Her look became a frown that I didn't know how to interpret as I stood up and left.
The whole exchange had made me forget about public bathrooms being my number one enemy, but I realized after getting up that I really needed to go. The situation was dire but I couldn’t afford to panic, it’s not like it hadn’t happened before…
So I walked downstairs, and I unexpectedly stumbled across the barista from before.
“Ah, uh, may I. Uh, where is the bathroom, please?” Crap. It wasn’t like me to act like this, but despite it, she just smiled exactly like before and pointed out to a door not far off, saying:
“Ah, don’t worry, will you? It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
She walked off with the same smile and her hands full of orders leaving me without a word. I didn’t understand what she had meant until I reached the door and noticed it was the women’s restroom.
After that, I got it and felt really stupid. I had always been so fixated on how lonely I felt that I didn’t realize there could be real, actually palpable people like me. It had been a trivial interaction, but it meant the world to have found her. Most importantly, I felt understood in a way I had never experienced before. I made a note to myself to try and find other people in real life like that woman, maybe even muster the courage to ask all the things I wondered about daily, to have someone to talk them over with…
Going back to where Ena was waiting, I felt less lonely and worrisome, and that feeling accompanied me for a long, long time. I just didn’t know then, but I wouldn’t see that one waitress again, not that evening, not ever.
And after that experience helped me calm down, I sat at the table just before our drinks arrived.
“Are you feeling better?” Ena asked with a worried look. I felt bad for acting like that, even if I couldn’t help it. I had been carrying this weight for so long, I didn’t realize how much it affected me.
“Yes, actually I am! Sorry again, that was so unlike me, hehe.”
“You know you can talk about it if you need to, right? I don’t want to be pushy about you telling me, but if you need it…”
“No, you’re right. I’m sorry it's taking me so long, it's just really very hard for me to find the words to do it. You totally deserve an explanation, though-”
“No, you shouldn’t think about it like that. You don’t owe me any kind of explanation, I’m just… I’m just your friend and I want you to feel as safe and happy as you can whenever we’re together. I’d just like to help, but you should tell me whenever you feel like it, not before!”
A friend, huh? Whenever she talked to me like that it hurt so bad, knowing I was hiding from her. Where she was welcoming and open I was dodgy and afraid. She considered me a friend yet I couldn't even imagine still talking to her in as little time as a year, and I wanted to blindly trust her as much as she had begun to trust me, but I couldn't help fearing the moment when I would tell her the truth and she would change her attitude towards me. I lifted my eyes from the table and managed a smile, thinking about the encounter from before and the woman’s words to comfort myself. It would be okay. Ena… Ena is a good person. She might be a little mean sometimes, but I've always been able to tell how much she cares. I found an unexpected feeling of certainty deep down in my guts.
“I really appreciate that, really. I actually might be able to sooner than expected! Now, though, you really should drink your chocolate while it’s still warm!”
“Don’t deflect!”
“I’m not! Drink!”
We went on bickering as we drank for quite a while. Once again, I felt at ease chatting with her.
Time passed that way and it started getting dark, long after we finished our drinks. It was a cold wintery evening, and the sun had fallen even earlier than usual. Perhaps a storm was coming, so we agreed on paying up and leaving.
“So, uh, I meant to ask earlier but I forgot. It’s only the first time we spend this much time alone together but I wanted to invite you over for a sleepover one of these days.” She said as I held the door open for her.
It suddenly struck me that I had never been invited to a sleepover before. Something small shattered inside me, like a spark of jealousy for something I’d been denied. I somehow wanted to politely decline, but I couldn’t manage to. It was like that picnic with Shizuku and Airi, but… Now this situation made me even more scared, probably because of just how badly I craved to go.
“That’d be super cool! If you don’t mind and I’m not a bother, I’d love to!” As much as I was used to faking enthusiasm when needed, this time it felt weird. It really was true, but…
“Nice! Great, so actually my parents have gone out for this ewekend, so maybe I could sneak you in. Not that they’d care if you were there, though.” She made the stern face she always had when she was plotting something up. “Like, tomorrow night. It would be
perfect!”
“Okay, okay! I’m free, I’ll be there.” I looked at her as we strolled along the sidewalk and smiled. I took her hand, shyly, not like before when I dragged her across the street. I appreciated everything that she had been doing, but I wondered if I really deserved all of it. “Thanks for inviting me!”
“It’s nothing. I just miss having friends over.” She sighed and squeezed my hand.
“Mhm!” I nodded. “You better not get tired of me after seeing me two days in a row though, hehe!”
“Mizuki, we literally talk for hours every night on Nightcord. Which reminds me, you should bring your laptop tomorrow, we can probably get some work done that way.” She said as we reached the subway station and started walking down the stairs.
“Good idea! I’ll think of more stuff to bring before I go. Maybe I can bake something…”
“Don’t overdo it! It’s just a sleepover.” She exclaimed as I laughed. “Anyway, it was really fun today! I’m glad we visited that cafe, but now I’m exhausted…” She yawned.
“Well, you can always sleep on the subway…”