Work Text:
Maki has never really liked the library. It’s got a smell she can’t describe but knows is unpleasant; the air is too dry; it reminds her of long afternoons in elementary school that stretched into evening as she turned page after page, curled up in a limp beanbag chair because home was a far worse place to be. She avoids it when she can. But she’s not going to get this thesis done without at least one trip, and there are some materials –tragically – that she can’t get ahold of online. So she braves the dry, musty air that hits her like a wall through the glass double doors.
It’s simple. Get in, find the holds desk, pick up a book that she probably won’t use more than four pages of, get out. Five minutes. She shouldn’t have to think.
She finds the right place – “RESERVED MATERIALS,” in bold red print on a sign suspended above a reference desk. She can see the words “Foreign Direct Investment in Kenya: Challenges and Implications”written in gold on the spine of a cloth-bound book with a worn blue cover; she knows exactly what she needs to do –
“Maki?”
She tears her eyes from the spine of the book and succumbs to the urge to know why she’s hearing that voice now, of all times. Lanky limbs, floppy dark hair, blue eyes rimmed with purple – it’s him, all right.
“Okkotsu,” she says hoarsely, swallowing. “What are you doing here?”
He gives her a funny look and holds up his employee badge.
“Oh,” she says, sheepish. “I see.”
He gapes at her like a fish for a moment before he replies, “what are you doing here?”
She points, wordlessly, to the book, and almost immediately cringes. Not even back in high school had either of them ever been this awkward.
“I need that,” she tells him.
“Oh.” He shakes himself. “You’re here to pick up a hold.”
“Yeah. That.”
He brightens – that, he can do. “I didn’t know you went here,” he tells her as he unlatches the swinging half-door that separates the desk from the patrons’ area.
“For my Master’s,” she says. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
He looks over his shoulder and smiles. “Small world, right?”
“Guess so.”
“Guess you’re not going to law school anymore if you’re here for a Master’s,” he guesses.
She shakes her head. Of course he’d remembered. “International Relations.”
He laughs easily. “Close enough, right?”
She wants to roll her eyes, but it feels overfamiliar. “I wouldn’t put it like that.”
“Well, ah.” He passes the book across the desk with a sheepish smile. “Didn’t know you were back here, but, ah…it’s good to see you.”
“Yeah. You too.”
He’s grown up, though he’s really not any taller than he had been at eighteen. Yuuta shot up like a weed midway through their second year and that, apparently, had been that. He’s still reedy and a full head taller than Maki is, but otherwise, there’s something older and a little sharper in his features – he’s not the soft-faced boy whose cheeks she’d pinched when she was annoyed with him back in high school. He moves with more self-assurance now than his newly-long limbs used to allow. Handsome, Maki thinks. That’s the best word for what Okkotsu Yuuta is now. It’s an observation she makes passively, neutrally as if she were noting the color of his shoes.
“Still a beansprout,” she tells him, cracking a tiny smile.
“Yeah, yeah, guilty as charged.” The awkwardness, it seems, burnt off like morning fog long ago. “What else is new, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Maki answers, blank-faced. It’s neither a lament nor an accusation – she just wouldn’t. It’s been years.
“Yeah,” he sighs. “We really should catch up sometime.”
Maki considers the proposition with as much neutrality as she can manage and decides it’s a good one. Yuuta belongs to the past, yes, but she’s not exactly rich with friends here. “Mmhm.”
“Over coffee,” he says.
“Sounds good.”
“Or dinner.”
She tilts her head. “You asking me out?”
“No, nothing like that.” He’s wearing that aw-shucks smile again. “Although I wanted to for a while. Back in high school.”
Things only Yuuta would admit so casually. “Sorry?”
“That’s in the past, though. I just realized I’m usually working during…y’know, coffee-drinking hours.”
“Fair enough.” She smirks. “You had a thing for me?”
“You didn’t know that?”
“Nah.” Something about the ease with which she answers that question feels warm – it’s good to see a face that knows hers. “But, uh, I’ll take you up on that.”
“On the dinner?”
“What time’re you off?”
“Five, why?”
“Six-thirty,” she tells him. “That Indian place by the train station?”
Yuuta looks surprised, even though he’d been the one to propose this. “That sounds great, actually.”
Maki holds up her book. “Gotta go deal with this first, though.”
“Right. Of course.”
“Six-thirty,” she repeats.
“Mmhm.”
“Be there.”
**
then
“Oi, Okkotsu!”
“Here,” Yuuta responds automatically, snapping to attention.
His partner sniggers at the reply. They haven’t met before, but he already has a feeling he ought to keep an eye out. Zenin Maki (“just Maki”) wears a plaid skirt like a threat, folds her muscular legs beneath her on her chair like she owns the place – and she doesn’t seem to know what to make of Yuuta. He can only hope she has something insightful to say about the Agricultural Revolution, because he’s pretty sure he’s not going to be getting a friend out of this.
“What kinda answer’s that?” she asks him.
“Sorry,” Yuuta mutters, looking intently down at his desk.
“Oi, don’t give up so fast,” she says, nudging his calf with the toe of her shoe. “You’re gonna get walked all over.”
“I already do,” he mutters.
“Huh. Wonder why that is.”
Yuuta blinks up at her wearily. She’s standing over him, arms crossed, which he thinks is oddly fitting. “So how do you wanna split the work?”
“Oh, I’ll do it all,” Maki says, waving him off with a dismissive flap of her hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“But I want to help,” Yuuta protests weakly.
She observes him for a moment. “You sure?”
“I’m supposed to,” he mumbles.
“Yeah, but can you pull your weight?”
He nods, saying nothing. That, at least, he knows he can do.
“Fine,” Maki scoffs. “I take the notes, you write the essay.”
It’s a fair enough plan. This partnered essay is a rare opportunity for people who don’t want to be there to slack off, if luck was on their side when they were paired up, but Yuuta has no interest in that. Better if he can be the one writing the thing. He’s always been better with words on paper than he is aloud.
(She sends him the notes – neat, thorough, scanned – that night. He sends him a screenshot of the grade atop their paper as soon as he gets it back and she almost, almost smiles at him.
“Guess I underestimated you,” she concedes the next day. He doubts he’s ever felt more accomplished.)
**
now
“Five years, huh?”
“Five years.” Four years of university, one of work, and, for Maki, half of a Master’s degree – time flies. Yuuta pokes at his butter chicken. “Makes you feel old, doesn’t it?”
“Eh, no point dwelling on it, right?”
He thinks he’s supposed to smile at that, but he can’t bring himself to do it. “That’s like you,” he says. She’s never been one to keep her head buried in the past.
“You never told me you wanted to be a librarian,” she comments, grabbing a piece of naan from the basket in the center of the table and ripping it in half with her teeth. She really is the same old Maki, unconcerned with impressions.
“I don’t think I ever told you I wanted to be anything,” he points out. “Didn’t know until I got to school, really.”
By which point they hadn’t been talking much. They’re both silent, trying to figure out what exactly needs to be said about that.
“Yeah,” Maki says dully. “School.”
“Honestly, uni is overrated.”
Maki manages a brief smile. “Yeah.”
“Wasn’t that fun.”
“Nope.”
“I was in the sailing club,” he tells her. “That was okay, I guess.”
She sighs, resting a hand on her palm. “I was in the Pre-Law Club. Nothin’ fun about that.”
Yuuta is beginning to put the pieces together – why she’s studying international relations when she always used to insist she was going to be a lawyer, what she didn’t like about university. Maybe why she never called. “I get that.”
“Mmh.” She reaches for the half-eaten naan and dips it in the leftover sauce in her empty bowl of tikka masala, then shoves the entire thing in her mouth. Nice, Yuuta thinks. He’s always been the more refined of the two of them, but something distinctly male in his psyche admires stupid things like fitting half a piece of naan in one’s mouth at once. “C’n we talkabout somfin elth?”
“Definitely.” He’s more than relieved. “You working on your thesis?”
“Mmhm.”
“What’s it about?”
“Foreign direct investment and the export economy.” She doesn’t elaborate on that, even though she knows Yuuta doesn’t know what that means. “How’s the library?”
“I like it, actually. It’s…a little slow sometimes, but…” he trails off, shrugging as he finds he doesn’t really know where he was going with that.
“Slow, huh?” Maki repeats. “Not a lot of people?”
“Nope. I’m a reference librarian, so if no one comes in-“
“You don’t have anything to do.” It wasn’t unlike Maki, back in the day, to finish his sentences.
“You know how you can find PDFs of books in the public domain online?” he asks, wondering if he should tell her this and going ahead with it when he realizes that high school Yuuta probably said much weirder things on the regular.
“Mmhm?”
“I have six tabs of those open on my desktop.”
He winces, then. Maki or not, bringing up his secret obsession with reading PDFs of classic novels on company time is exactly the kind of thing he does to ruin the blind dates his friends keep trying to send him on.
But Maki rolls her eyes. “You haven’t changed.”
“You don’t think that’s weird?”
At least – at very least – she looks a little more animated now. She’d seemed so worn-out a few minutes ago. “’Course I think it’s weird. But it’s you.”
“What’s that have to do with anything?”
“You’re Okkotsu. You just do weird stuff.” She shrugs. “I’d be worried if I got here and found out you’d turned normal.”
“That’s…kinda rude, Maki.”
“I know, but it’s not like I mean it as an insult. Just how you are.” She actually manages to smile this time. “And why would I be here if I thought that was a bad thing?”
He considers this, and concludes that she must not be lying. Otherwise she’d have pretended she wasn’t Zenin Maki when he’d called her name at the reference desk. Probably.
“I guess,” he concedes, cheeks reddening.
“And, I mean, I just spent two hours reading half of my thesis draft aloud to myself.” When Maki smiles into those words, it’s easy to forget that he knew her before – this version of his friend is so different than the one he last saw. That Maki had never been half this easygoing or quick to drop her guard. Time away – from her family, from her past, from him – did wonders for Zenin Maki, it seems. He can’t bring himself to resent that, even if he wants to. “Crazy knows crazy, right?”
“I like that,” he finds himself agreeing. “Crazy knows crazy.”
A pause, this one more pleasant. He takes a sip of water, then two more before it dawns on him to ask, “why out loud?”
“Tip from one of my old professors. Helps you figure out how to word things.”
“Oh. Huh.” Yuuta wonders for a second if he’s flirting when he adds, “read it to me sometime, hm?”
Maki obscures her sly smirk behind the rim of her glass, then folds her smiling lips over its sides to take a sip she knows he’s watching. The smirk is a face-wide grin by the time she sets her glass down. “That a come-on, Okkotsu?”
“No! No, nothing like…like that,” he stammers, rushing to cover for himself. “I just…have a good ear?”
“Noted.” She’s still smirking, and no, this isn’t the Maki he knew. Not in the slightest. “Wouldn’t have minded if it was.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Yuuta.” She pokes his arm across the table, laughing. “I’m teasing you.”
“…oh.”
“You just said you had a thing for me back in high school. So…I dunno, I went with it.” She shrugs. “Sorry.”
“Nah, it’s okay.” It’s true, though. He had. “I was gonna tell you after the volleyball club won interhigh our third year, but then…”
“We lost,” Maki finishes for him. It speaks to the distance years have put between her and the past that she doesn’t seem too cut-up about that anymore. “Damn. Shoulda said something anyway.”
“You would’ve punched me,” he says mildly.
“Mm, maybe.”
By unspoken agreement, they both look down at their plates.
“Honestly, what did you even see in high school Maki?” she asks after a moment.
“Smart,” he lists. “Ambitious.” He pauses, smiles to himself. “Somehow I found it really attractive that you only ever really let loose around me.”
Maki raises her eyebrows. “That wasn’t a thing.”
“I mean, besides your sister.”
“My cousin,” she points out.
“Okay, but-“
“Nobara.”
“Kugisaki?”
“You know any other Nobaras?”
“Did you two stay in touch?”
She gives him a funny look. “She’s my best friend, Okkotsu. Of course we did.”
He wilts. “Right. Of course you would.”
“It wasn’t on purpose,” Maki mumbles. “I just didn’t know what to say.”
“No, I get that. I…I guess I didn’t, either.” Yuuta scratches at the back of his neck. “Not a lot in common, I guess.”
“That was a mistake,” Maki admits. “Thinking that.”
“Did I just hear that right?”
She gives him a silencing look. “I meant it, Okkotsu.”
“No, no, hold up. Did I just hear Zenin Maki admit that she was wrong?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
He smiles. “I’m just teasing.”
She stares sullenly down into her empty bowl.
“It was weird,” he goes on. “I missed you, I just…didn’t know what we’d talk about if I tried.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“Which kinda sucks. There’s always something to talk about.”
“Yeah,” Maki sighs. “But what can you do, right? High schoolers are stupid.”
“Guess so.”
“My uncle sometimes still asks about you.”
Yuuta shudders. Maki’s uncle had taken her and her sister in when the state had declared their original parents unfit for the job, and he doesn’t seem like the type who’d hesitate to threaten anyone who crossed his nieces with acts of unspeakable violence. Yuuta has never been entirely convinced he wasn’t plotting to kill him every time he came over to study.
“That’s nice,” he says weakly.
“Keeps asking why I broke up with you.” Maki rolls her eyes. “He never did believe me when I said we were never together.”
“Oh, really,” Yuuta says mechanically, stabbing at his chicken.
“Anyways.” Maki takes another piece of naan but doesn’t eat it right away.
“Anyways,” Yuuta echoes.
“Done anything interesting lately?”
“Honestly, not much.”
Maki nods – she can’t say she has, either. “What was the last PDF book you read?”
“The last one I read or what I’m reading right now?”
Maki pauses to consider, then says, “the one in the first open tab on your work computer.”
“Dream of the Red Chamber.”
“Huh. Never heard of it.”
“It’s one of the four Chinese classics,” he explains, his face already starting to flush with pleasure at having been asked. “It’s…um, well, it follows this noble family in the eighteenth century who, ah, well, their oldest son is born with this magic stone in his mouth, and, ah, there’s, like, a forbidden love kinda thing going on, and…”
Yuuta trails off at the blank look on Maki’s face. It’s not a bored one – bless her, she’s trying – but she has no idea what he’s talking about. The realization raises unwanted color in his cheeks. “Sorry,” he mutters. “You didn’t ask.”
But, by some miracle, Maki doesn’t leave, or roll her eyes, or tell him he needs to stop running his mouth about things nobody cares to hear – she smiles.
“You really haven’t changed, have you?” she asks.
Yuuta ducks his head, embarrassed. That’s not what anyone wants to hear from a high school sweetheart five years down the line. “I guess not.”
“Why’re you so embarrassed?”
“’m not,” he says, which is an exercise in futility, because Maki knows perfectly well what his ‘embarrassed’looks like.
“Hmph.” Maki jostles his arm. “I don’t believe that.”
“Okay,” Yuuta says weakly.
“That’s not a bad thing, Okkotsu.”
“Is it, though?”
“Nah.”
“You don’t have to say that just to say it.”
“I’m not.” A beat of silence – Maki scans what little of his hidden face she can. “You look good, by the way.”
That gets his attention, even though his face is even redder than before when he looks back up at her. “Eh?”
“I just…noticed. I guess. You’re not that different than before, but…you look good.”
Yuuta blinks at her incredulously. It looks like it’s taking him a moment to catch up.
“Anyway,” Maki says abruptly. “Anything else going on with you?”
He’s still blinking at her, utterly dazed.
“Okkotsu, c’mon.”
He shakes himself. “Since when do you think I…do you like…” he sputters. “I mean, you don’t, like, think that I’m-“
“Third year of high school.”
“Eh?”
“You look better now, though.”
“I’m…confused, Maki.”
“Why? I’m being perfectly clear.”
“We haven’t seen each other in five years!”
“I said ‘you look good,’ not ‘marry me’!”
“I…I know, but, but, you know…”
He trails off. They look at each other in a silence so deep with embarrassment that neither of them wants it to break for the next several centuries.
“Separate,” Maki tells the waiter when he comes by with the check, after having stared at Yuuta for what feels like several eternities.
“Just one,” Yuuta tells him at exactly the same time.
The waiter, who probably just wants to save time, passes Yuuta the single check. He slips his credit card onto the tray before Maki can even protest.
“You have student loans,” he says innocently.
“You can’t pay for dinner for someone you’re not dating,” she shoots back.
“Yes, I can.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Then go out with me again.”
“Hah?”
Yuuta barely even looks red. “Go out with me again,” he requests. “Let’s keep catching up.”
“That doesn’t mean we’re-“
“We liked each other back then, right?” he reasons. “We might as well see where it goes.”
“Okkotsu, are you sure about this?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Fine,” Maki reluctantly concedes.
He almost smiles.
**
“Oi, Yuuta.”
It’s been a month since Maki made her grand reentrance into his life by now, but Yuuta still startles at the sound of her voice. His eyes don’t have time to mark his place in the PDF page he was reading from before he’s jolted to attention, but it’s not as if he’s going to lose the page when it’ll be there on his desktop screen until he has time to look at it again.
He relaxes once he’s had enough time to process the voice, though.
“Maki,” he greets her. “What’s up?”
“I’m done with this,” she tells him, sliding Foreign Direct Investment in Kenya: Challenges and Implications across the reference desk.
He gives her a look. “I’m not the book drop, Maki.”
“You work here, don’t you?” she pushes the book an inch closer to him.
“Maki.”
“You’re not doing anything, anyways.”
It dawns on Yuuta that she’s probably teasing him. Maybe even flirting. Back in the day she’d done a lot of that. The thought, however unlikely, makes him feel warmer than the aggressive air conditioning in the library lobby should allow.
“Maki,” he says, raising an eyebrow as he pushes the book back across to her, “you know that’s not my job.”
“Fine, then. Wanna show me where the book drop is?” she smiles triumphantly. “Because that is your job.”
Rolling his eyes fondly, he pushes back his rolling chair and crosses the divider to join her on the other side. “I forgot how snarky you were back in high school.”
“I’m not snarky,” she protests. “I’m just utilizing library services.”
He knows she knows where the book drop is – it’s fifteen feet away, and clearly marked – but he still walks her there, gestures to the slot so she can’t miss it. “You could’ve utilized this one without my help.”
She’s grinning like she’s about to laugh, and she drops her book through the slot without even looking at it so she doesn’t have to take her eyes off of Yuuta. “You looked bored,” she tells him.
“Your concern is touching.”
“Damn, you know how to use sarcasm now?”
“Six-thirty,” he tells her. “Noishiki Udon. I know you were about to ask.”
“You say that like you weren’t dying to see me,” she shoots back. “I know a better place than Noishiki.”
“Well, I don’t.” He lets himself grin like he’s wanted to since Maki came over. “And it’s my turn this time.”
Maki will eat absolutely anything and they both know it. He’d never be asking her to dinner at his favorite udon shop if he didn’t know she would like it, but sometimes, he’s found, it’s a little big enjoyable to play at things he’s not – confident, suave, in control. Maki makes him feel like he can, and perhaps it’s just the much-needed familiarity their history provides, but he’s…different with her. It’s been a long time since he had somebody he didn’t feel like he had to act out a role for.
Maybe this is its own kind of role, acting as if he knows what he’s doing when Maki makes him feel like he doesn’t know up from down – but she knows what he’d be like if he weren’t. It’s been five years, but she’s someone who knows him like few others do, and she’s someone who knows the act from the truth and accepts both. And maybe, he thinks, that’s what he hadn’t been able to articulate about his reasons when she’d asked what drew her to him back in high school.
“Fine,” she huffs, pretending to be offended. “But I’m picking hot pot next time.”
Yuuta famously hates the stuff. “Go for it.”
She throws the kind of smile that makes her eyes dance back over her shoulder as he retreats, and it hits him – what’s different about her when so much is the same.
She’s happier, he realizes. She finally looks happier.
**
“So, what exactly are we?”
Yuuta shrugs, swallows a bite of katsu, and replies, “what do you want us to be?”
“That’s not what I was asking, Yuuta.”
“But what do you want us to be?”
“Yuuta,” Maki sighs, “are we dating?”
He considers for a moment. They text frequently; Maki sends him iMessage game requests in the middle of the night when she’s up late working and he can’t sleep. She teases him; he teases back. She visits his desk when she doesn’t need to, and always works on her thesis in the library when she can. They have dinner together every Thursday night; she looks at him like she looks at the waitstaff when she’s hungry and they’re carrying trays of food that might be hers. It’s only been six weeks since it had been five years since their last meeting, and they’re practically joined at the hip. He doesn’t even want to know what he looks like when he looks at her.
He does not, however, know if any of that means they’re dating-dating. Seeing each other, yes. But dating…well. To Yuuta, at least, there’s a certain weight to that designation. Even if it could be broken off at any time, there’s permanence in it – intentionality. It means he wants her to stay. It means she wants him to stay. It isn’t exactly something he’d say lightly, but…
“I would like it if we were,” he finally answers.
“Cool.” She takes a long swig of soda, then, straight-faced, says, “guess that makes you my boyfriend.”
“Wait, do you want-“
“Idiot,” Maki scoffs. “Why would I be going out with you all the time if I didn’t?”
It is an excellent question.
**
For all his pleasure reading on the clock, Yuuta isn’t one to bend workplace rules. He does what’s assigned to him promptly and well; he doesn’t say much; if he’s not particularly popular among the library staffers, it’s only because he’s not one for socializing. But sometimes –
Well, having a girlfriend who patronizes the very back corner tables of the library every single Tuesday morning is a little more of a temptation than he can handle sometimes. And it’s nearly always possible for somebody with a minimal workload to find an excuse not to be at his desk so long as the perky undergraduate intern can cover it for a few minutes.
“You’re supposed to be doing your job,” Maki says, not turning to look at him, before he’s even reached the table she’s working at. She’s scanning notes in an open notebook set off to one side of her laptop; on the other, a coffee cup rests on the open title page of a journal she’s clearly not using yet. A pencil is tucked precariously behind her ear.
“I am,” he says quietly, taking the pencil from its place in her hair and pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. He puts it back in place more firmly when he’s done. “Taking care of patrons is my job.”
“Yuuta,” she whisper-hisses, glad that her back to him hides the furious blush in her temples. (It doesn’t, however, hide the blush in her ears. Yuuta notices.) “You could get fired for that.”
“They’re not looking,” he reassures her, smoothing down a flyaway in her ponytail and tucking it behind her ear before he rests his hands on her shoulders. “How’s the thesis coming?”
“Good. Now get back to work.”
“But I haven’t seen you all week,” he whines, resting his chin on her head.
“It’s Tuesday, Yuuta.”
“I know.”
“You’re so whiny.”
“I just miss you.”
He’s always been a little clingy, but it’s gotten worse since their reunion – absence makes the heart grow fonder or whatever. Maki would be annoyed if she didn’t find it endearing. “You can come over later if you like watching me work on my thesis so much,” she says under her breath. “Just don’t get fired.”
**
“You given any thought to what you’re going to do after this?”
Maki looks at Yuuta like he’s said something unfathomably dumb. “Of course I have.”
“Which is?” he prompts. This is probably a conversation they should’ve had before he agreed to date her, knowing he’d be a goner once he did, but foresight has never been one of Yuuta’s strengths.
“Policy analysis, probably. Think tanks pay well.” She lifts a glass of lemonade to her lips and takes a long sip. “I don’t have much of a business background, so it’s that or diplomacy, and, well…”
“You would kill someone if you had to be a diplomat,” Yuuta observes.
“On my first day of work, probably.”
“You’d be good at that. Analysis, I mean.”
“Well, that’s what I like to think.” She laughs nervously. “Kinda sank too much money into this degree to end up being bad at it.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do something you were bad at, Maki-chan,” he tries to reassure her. “You will.”
“That’s a lie and you know it.”
“Not it’s not.”
“We had music class together our second year,” she reminds him. “I know you’ve heard me sing.”
Oh. Right. That.
“That doesn’t count,” he says charitably.
“Why do you ask?” Maki deflects, because it absolutely counts and they both know it. “Planning something?”
“No, just wondering. I mean…it’s kinda important for me to know that.”
“Yeah, true.” She gives him a weighty look. “And you?”
“I mean, I can’t see myself changing jobs.”
“Fair enough.”
“But, I mean, I want us to last,” he explains hastily.
“Yeah, well, at this rate, we’re going to last longer than your job will.”
“But-“
“Yuuta, you read books on the clock and fraternize with the patrons.”
“That’s because they barely give me any work to do!”
“So? You could always go find some.”
Which he doesn’t really want to do. Admittedly, Yuuta doesn’t have much drive; for all that he loves books, and he’ll take on whatever projects come his way, he’s not going to go hunting for promotions, or shaking down other librarians for odd jobs. He wonders how he even got himself hired when he loves work that lets his mind wander more than he wants to fight his way up the ladder.
It’s sort of embarrassing talking about that in front of someone as focused as Maki.
“I like my job, but…it’s hard to get myself to work.” Yuuta feels like that’s something he has to confess somehow. “Unless I really love it, it’s just…tasks. I do it and I’m glad it’s over, and…that’s all. I don’t…”
“I know, Yuuta.” Maki’s voice is surprisingly soft. “You’ve always been like that.”
“Lazy?”
“Not at all. When you actually want to do something, you work harder at it than I do.” She smiles sadly. “But if you don’t want to do something…”
“Bare minimum,” Yuuta finishes, sighing. He rakes a hand through his hair. “I know, I know.”
Maki doesn’t say anything to that, probably out of kindness. She’s always been the type to insist that only one’s best effort is ever acceptable; back in school, that was what earned Yuuta her respect. It had been easy to force himself to go above and beyond back then, when his classes gave him something easy to put his energy into; that had tapered. Off after high school, though. She’s surprised she still thinks much of him when the only things he seems to be passionate enough to focus on are his books and…well, her.
“Anyway,” he goes on. “I don’t think much is going to change for me.”
“Think you’d ever work for a different school?”
“I mean…maybe?”
“So you’re not attached to this one.”
“Well, no,” he answers.
“Hm. Okay.”
“Why do you ask?”
She shrugs. There’s something she’s not saying. “Just wondered.”
**
“I need a synonym for ‘impact.’”
“Mm…ramification?” Yuuta suggests, leaning closer to Maki to read her thesis over her shoulder. “What’s the context?”
“This here,” Maki says, highlighting the sentence in question with her cursor.
“Read it to me?”
“You can read it yourself.”
“Yeah, but you’re the one who said that reading aloud can help you spot your mistakes.”
“Fine,” Maki sighs. “’The impacts of the company’s investments in local infrastructure are as yet unclear.’”
“That sounds fine, though.”
“I can’t use ‘impact,’” she tells him. “I used it in the last sentence.”
Yuuta leans his head against her shoulder, tucking his legs up beside him on the couch. “I still think ramifications works. ‘The ramifications of the company’s investments for’ – wait, no, actually…”
“Doesn’t work.”
“Right,” he agrees. “Has to be ‘investments in.’ Maybe implications? ‘The long-term implications of the investments in infrastructure’ or whatever?”
“I like the first one better.” She nudges him with her elbow. “Haven’t used it yet. So good job.”
“Wouldja look at that,” Yuuta says faintly. “Turns out I am useful.”
Maki doesn’t respond to that, but she does turn her head to kiss his temple. He lets out a little sigh, nestling against her side, and she manages to limit her protests to a dignified huff when he loops his arms around her waist and leans heavily against his side.
“Maki-chan,” he says, muffled against her shoulder, “wanna read me more?”
“I’m working, Yuuta.”
“You’re editing,” he counters. “It might help.”
“Since when do you care about infrastructure investment?”
He tilts his head to smile up at her. “If it’s you reading it, I do.”
Maki’s isn’t a reading voice. It’s monotone, colorless, and sounds as bored as the average listener would probably feel, hearing her read from a dissertation. But the fact that it’s Maki’s voice, and that she’s wrapped her arm around his back as she scrolls down with her free hand, and that she’ll let him sleep against her shoulder – it’s enough to make it more than worth listening to.
She’s going on about dam construction when he nods off, and when she notices his weight resting a little heavier against her side, she simply smiles.
**
“So, I, ah…I’ve been interviewing.”
“Mmhm.” It’d be hard not to know that; what Yuuta hadn’t known was that she might’ve heard back so soon. She’s only just presented her dissertation, and he thought it. would take longer for the answers to start coming – if she’s bringing it up, apparently not.
“No luck most places,” Maki tells him. “But one made me an offer.”
“The international outreach one?” Yuuta perks up. “That was your favorite, right?”
“No, that one hasn’t gotten back to me. This one was a think tank.” She takes a surprisingly delicate sip of wine – something about the fancy surroundings makes her want to take things slowly, Yuuta guesses. They’re not fancy-date people, but Maki’s successful thesis had called for it. “It’s a good offer.”
He knows to hold off congratulations. “You gonna take it?”
“Well, maybe. I’ve got two more up in the air still, but it’s good.” She looks down at the table. “But, ah…”
“What, Maki?”
“It’s at the University of Osaka.”
“Oh.”
“Three and a half hours by train,” she tells him. “There’s no way I’m commuting that.”
“Right. Of course.” He holds comments until he figures out where she’s going with this. “Are you moving?”
“Well, I have to wait on the other two, but…if I took the Osaka position, yeah, I’d have to.” She shrugs. “Which is fine, honestly. I don’t have any real reason to stay in Tokyo.”
It’s fair enough – most of her family and friends live in Kyoto anyways, and that’s far closer to Osaka. But Yuuta wants to protest. I’m still here.
“I…I see,” he replies, head swimming with worry.
“Hey. Yuuta.” Maki reaches across the table to press his hand. “I’m not breaking up with you.”
“Maki-chan-“
“I’m telling you all of this because I was gonna ask if you’d come with me.”
His head snaps back up. “What?”
“I checked the job boards,” she tells him. “The university’s got openings for library staff.”
Yes, Yuuta wants to stand up and shout. Yes. Relief floods into his hollowed-out chest. “Of course,” he answers instead, trying to keep his composure. “If you take it.”
“Oh. Good.” She sighs, just as relieved. “Didn’t know if you’d want to leave.”
“Maki…”
“What?”
“The last year’s probably been the best year of my life, you know that?” he smiles to himself. “Being with you, I mean. Of course I’ll go.”
“Thanks,” Maki says quietly, swirling her wineglass and watching its contents coat the sides.
“I already let you go once and I don’t want to do it again.” He wants to laugh, but he fears he’d choke on it if he did. “Sorry, am I getting carried away?”
Maki doesn’t look at him. “I worry sometimes,” she admits. “That we’re going too fast.”
A confession ought to be met with a confession, he thinks. “I worry that I’m too much.”
“Nah, you’re just a person who can’t only like things a little bit.”
“Does that freak you out?”
“Sometimes it feels like it should, but it doesn’t.” She’s still not looking at him. “Not from you.”
Funny, how she’s learned to like things she doesn’t just because they’re Yuuta’s.
**
It’s still March when they arrive in Osaka, but April when life is sufficiently unpacked to remember that a world outside of moving boxes and takeout containers exists. Maki’s sister and cousin drop by to ‘help,’ ostensibly, when really, they just mean to interrogate her boyfriend; Nobara makes three appearances and threatens Yuuta with severe bodily harm if he ever checks even a single box on a list of infractions against Maki he couldn’t possibly remember. Maki seems more cheerful when they’re around.
For all her desire to forget the past, Yuuta observes, she really does cling to parts of it. Maybe it’ll do her good, being closer to those tethers.
The sakura are in bloom by the time they’re ready to rejoin the world, and even though it’s the last thing he’d expect Maki to suggest, she’s the one to find the best places to see them in the few days they have left of their lives. Maybe she’s feeling romantic – he doesn’t know. Either way, he’s more than willing to go along.
“Felt like a waste not to try to see them,” she explains. He agrees vaguely and watches her, engrossed – in spite of her familiarity, there’s something about Maki that’s entirely new.
“Maki?”
“Mm?”
“You’ve looked happier lately.”
That’s no small thing. She’d been eight years removed from her parents’ home when he’d met her, and even then, she’d still taken her happiness in pockets, untrusting. Seven years with parents who had never let it stay for long had made sure of that. But the Maki he met again a year ago is different: more confident, quicker to laugh. She has an easier smile and a lighter heart, not nearly as prone to seasons of melancholy as she was back then. He doubts that those scars will ever really fade, but there’s a peace about her that he knows only came with years of trust rebuilt by people who cared enough to patch her heart back together. And lately –
Well, lately, Yuuta’s started to wonder if he’d been a part of that.
“Yeah, I guess I am,” she agrees.
“Any particular reason?”
“Actually being able to use my degree doesn’t hurt.” She laughs, twining her fingers through his. “I like moving. And…and you.”
“I make you happy?”
“Stupid,” she says fondly, turning her head to press a brief kiss to his lips. “You came all the way here for me.”
“It really wasn’t that noble.” He scans their surroundings and returns the kiss when he knows nobody is looking. “I didn’t want to be away from you.”
“Yeah. That.” She looks down so he won’t see how warm and gentle her eyes are, because those are things she still doesn’t know how to admit to. “That kind of thing…I don’t know. I like having that.”
“I like having you.”
**
If anyone asks, Maki tells them that they marry quietly because her uncle might kill Yuuta if they don’t. “It’s only been two years,” she always jokes. “He’d stab him if it hadn’t been at least five.”
It’s a real threat. Even at the afterparty Nobara goads them into throwing, Toji sits in the corner with the kind of scowl that frightens off small children on his face. (His wife, to her credit, does her best to reassure the guests who don’t know how he is that he’s not actually plotting murder.)
Still. It hardly puts a damper on the day.
The ceremony itself was nothing more than a series of papers to sign, but the party is long, and loud, and full of life. The guests are few: Nobara and Megumi and a friend from their class whom neither ever knew well, and Yuuta’s family, and Maki’s; Yuuta’s best friend from university, who says a grand total of four words the entire party, and the first colleague he’s ever had whom he took a liking to, and the only other woman in Maki’s department at work, and all of Mai’s friends who hadn’t really been invited but had insisted on showing up anyways. Even so, she overhears Yuuta muttering something about ‘too many people,’ and she pats his shoulder and passes him a water bottle.
“You’re an angel,” he says wearily, then downs the whole thing in two sips.
“Tired?” she asks, her hands curling around his bicep. She can’t really tell if it’s more of a protective gesture or a proud one, like she’s showing him off to a dozen or so people who are already perfectly aware that he’s hers.
“Yeah.”
Her grip tightens. “Do you need to go back to the room?”
“Sweetheart, I can’t ditch my own wedding reception.”
He calls her the most ridiculous things sometimes. She’s tired of pretending it doesn’t make her feel smug, having him wrapped around her finger like this. “The bride says you can,” she says, sotto voce, in his ear.
“The father of the bride would hunt me down and kill me,” Yuuta counters.
It’s a fair point.
**
It’s common knowledge that the Okkotsus are inseparable. Neither of them seems to care very much about the odd looks they get when they appear at each other’s work functions for no reason at all; Maki’s colleagues learn to tolerate Yuuta and Maki inadvertently charms the library staff, even if most of them are a little terrified of her, too. If nothing else, people seem to like the sight of a newlywed couple hanging on each other’s arms.
“It’s not that I don’t have other friends,” Maki tells Mai for the umpteenth time when she very bluntly informs her that her behavior is ‘getting a little weird.’ “I just like this one the most.”
Which she does. Yuuta is sweet, generous, gentle – for all his worries about not being able to work diligently when he needs to, the work of loving Maki has never seemed like work to him. He loves nothing more than seeing her enjoy the things she loves, except perhaps when she lets him review whatever public-domain book he last read out loud over dinner. He’s overzealous and, yes, a little strange, but he always has been, and with age has come a maturity that’s tempered that enthusiasm into something warm enough to pleasantly redden her cheeks but not to burn her. He kisses her with as much excitement as he does anything else he loves, can’t sleep when he’s not holding her, tells everyone he knows when she accomplishes something; Okkotsu Yuuta is not the kind of person anyone could easily live with, but Maki loves him so dearly it aches.
He’s not so nervous or shy anymore, either. She wants to credit her own influence for that, though she really doesn’t know if she can.
“Maki-san!” one of Yuuta’s colleagues calls across the karaoke booth, waving, when she appears beside him at an after-work social organized by somebody in the science library whose name Maki can never remember.
“Guess I’m crashing again,” she laughs, and realizes – it’s good to be known, and better to be known as one of a pair with the one who holds her heart.
**
She’s so pretty when she sleeps.
Even on her happiest days, Maki’s face is lined with the wear and tear of everyday stress; she never fails to come home tired. She’s happy, he knows, but hardly carefree; can’t be, when she works harder than he ever could. He’s proud of that, but it worries him sometimes – that she doesn’t know when to stop, that she won’t if she has to. He worries she forgets to eat, or takes on too much, or spends too many of her free hours in the gym when her body is already strained. But when Maki sleeps, he sees none of that.
Her nose, a little upturned, sometimes twitches when he touches its tip. Her cheeks look fuller; sometimes she makes little murmuring noises, and there are no creases in her forehead or around her eyes. The peace of being entirely unburdened makes her look younger than she is, and he likes the nights he can’t fall asleep until after she has, because he loves to watch her face as she sleeps more than most things.
“Creep,” she’d muttered fondly when he told her that.
“You married me,” he’d countered. “It’s a husband privilege.” She hadn’t disagreed.
It’s hard to accept sometimes that she likes it better when she’s under duress – he likes to be unburdened, and she doesn’t. It’s something he knows he has to get used to, no matter how convinced he is that it’s bad for her health or the baby she’d told him they could get to work on in the morning. (It is morning, technically, and if he were a more selfish man he would wake her and say so and ask if they could start early, because it took two years to convince her and he doesn’t want to wait a second more – but he’s not, and she would glare at him, so he doesn’t.)
Maki’s version of the morning is only a handful of hours away, and for now, he can watch her and pretend that nothing in this world could ever take away the peace she sleeps in – and for now, that’s enough.
**
He’s still asleep when she wakes.
Her alarm, the one set to soft music that never manages to stir Yuuta unless he wasn’t sleeping anyway, coaxes her out of sleep, but not him. It’s seven, the sunlight a little watery through the blinds, throwing streaks of brightness across his body in the shape of the slats; he’s curled up around her, one leg thrown over hers, both arms tight around her middle. She smiles fondly, pushing one of his arms off so she won’t be pinned in place, then reaches for her phone to switch off the alarm.
He’d been so eager last night, but he’d been the one not to wake up bright and early in preparation. The thought amuses Maki – it’s so like him. He always has been one to let his lack of energy get the better of his enthusiasm, and she begins the delicate work of extricating herself from his octopus grip so at very least she’ll have her teeth brushed by the time he wakes.
She’s only halfway through when she hears his groggy voice call out to her from the bed. She pokes her head through the doorway that separates the bathroom from the bedroom, gesturing to her toothbrush – can’t talk.
“Come back,” he whines.
She rolls her eyes, gesturing to her toothbrush again.
“Maki,” he says pitifully. “I want you back.”
He really can be childish sometimes, when he’s got his heart set on something that seems out of reach. She knows he’s kidding, but it still makes her roll her eyes fondly even as she speeds up her brushing and rinsing to crawl back into bed sooner.
“You,” she says, poking his cheek, “are whiny.”
“It’s baby day,” he tells her, sleep-delirious, and his broad hands find their way around her waist. They nearly span her waist at the small of her back and she lets out a little sigh of contentment. “Right?”
Her stomach swoops at the thought – being a mother wasn’t something a younger Maki ever would’ve given much thought to, but then, neither was marrying her high school sweetheart. It’s something she’s always known Yuuta wanted, grown with time into something she wants just as much. Theirs is the kind of home with love to spare for someone else, and she wants to give Yuuta that gift, to make him a father, to let him love a child they made together.
So yes, she has to answer – it is.
“It’s baby day,” she repeats, brushing a kiss to his lips. She pushes his tousled hair out of his eyes.
“Mm,” he murmurs happily, pulling her flush against him. “Good.”
There’s no urgency about his movements, but that suits Maki just fine so long as she can find a warm place to rest her head and feel his broad, gentle hands against her bare back. There’s no need for anything fast –they’ve got all day, after all.
“Yuuta?”
He strokes her back lazily in reply. “Mmhm?”
“I love you.”
“Love you too, darlin’.” He always cuts words off when he’s too sleepy to enunciate them. “Why, though?”
She knows what he’s asking, but the only real answer isn’t to that question. “I just do.”