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An has a lot of respect for the Tooth Fairy and all associated parties. She imagines that the fairies work together in a corporate kind of way, with a little tooth-shaped building all of them check into at the start of their shift. What the fairies actually look like to her varies depending on her mood and the astrological alignment of the stars, but her general idea is that they’re like little teeth with arms in Tinkerbell dresses, usually accessorised with an expensive watch and holding a fancy briefcase.
But as funny as it is to imagine a posse of teeth goblins flying around to the houses of unsuspecting clients, An is aware of the fact that tooth fairies most likely do not look like that. She is also aware of the fact that tooth fairies do not exist, but sometimes life is more fun when you suspend your sense of belief and live between ignorance and stupidity.
This is her excuse for why she’s telling Akito all about these funny teeth people. “Do you think they have sick leave?” she muses, tapping her fingers against her knee. “I bet they do. If they don’t, they should consider unionising.”
On the plastic chair beside her, Akito slumps down until his arms are on his thighs and his head is tucked away between them, staring down at the shadows between his feet. “An, please,” he whispers weakly, “I’m just the driver. I’m just here to drive.”
Which is true, but it also isn’t, because what they’re actually here for is to support Kohane. It isn’t every day you get your wisdom teeth removed. An seriously, seriously hopes it isn’t. She slaps Akito on the back and promptly ignores his following hiccup. “Come on, have some tact,” she says. Deep down, she knows he’s more than willing to be here, especially because Kohane is the last of their group to undergo the process. It’s a big deal. “I know you’re only upset because Touya couldn’t come.”
“No I’m not,” Akito says quickly. He sniffles and then quiets for a minute. “I hate bingo nights. This isn’t what God intended.”
An is about to argue that God probably doesn’t have any strong opinions on what monotonous games citizens over the age of sixty and an additional Aoyagi Touya play on Friday evenings, but she’s interrupted by the doctor walking out of the hallway through the clear curtain, clipboard in hand and mask over mouth. The clear curtain billows in a very curtainlike manner. “Are you here for an appointment?” they ask, running their pen down their list of names.
“We’re here for—” An pauses to take another look at Akito, who still hasn’t moved from his semi-fetal curl on his chair. “I’m here to see Azusawa Kohane. Are visitor hours open yet?”
The doctor blinks once, and then twice, and then they’re squinting at An. Their medical gown makes them look like a tooth fairy. “There are no visitor hours,” they explain slowly. “This is- this is a dentist’s office. You’re free to go inside.”
“Oh.” Glancing at Akito, An is pretty sure he’s fallen asleep. “Haha. Uhm. Okay. I’m going to, uh. Go in and see her then.”
The doctor-dentist nods and steps to the side, fixing their eyes on every move she makes. Her legs feel like they’re taped to sandbags. Literal bags full of sand. “Azusawa-san is currently experiencing the side effects of general anaesthesia but is otherwise fine. She is ready to leave anytime.”
The dentist-doctor turns on their heel and leaves in a cloud of sheer curtains and lab-esque coat fabric. An pokes her head into the hallway only to find that they’ve disappeared entirely.
No problem. Not a big deal. If An shivers and keeps her hands balled up in her pockets, that’s unrelated.
Kohane’s room is closer to the end of the hallway, and is also the only one lit up around that section, bathed in a warm yellow fluorescence that reminds An of her old basement lamp. The vibes are kind of liminal, sort of horror like, definitely unsettling and stomach churning. She creeps up to the entrance, looks over her shoulder one last time, and then steps in.
She is met with a giant mass of plaid. It’s only after she blinks and rubs her eyes that she realises it’s a blanket folded up on Kohane’s body, tucked over her torso and under her arms like she’s an eight-year-old put to bed by her parents. Her face is cushioned by a long strip of an ice pack secured at the top of her head, and from the inside of her mouth there are two balls of cotton just barely sticking out.
“Huh,” An says to herself. She shuffles closer, wary of how loud her sneakers are against the floor. “Huh.”
Kohane’s eyes are glazed over, glassy from what An assumes are a few spare tears, but still follow her as she moves. An pulls a chair from the side of the room over, to a spot right beside Kohane on her patient bed. When she sits down, they’re basically face-to-face.
An stares at Kohane. Kohane stares back with wide eyes and swollen cheeks. Like the squirrel from Ice Age—the one with the teeth.
“Hey,” An whispers, leaning down closer. She smiles and tilts her head. “You feeling okay?”
It takes Kohane a while to make any indication that she’s heard her, but when she does, it’s maybe the cutest thing in the world. “You’re here?” she mumbles, blinking drowsily. “Hi…”
And to be honest, An’s been harbouring a lot of expectations: like if Kohane is going to mistake her for a stranger and start gushing and swooning over her girlfriend who she loves very much (this has never happened), or if Kohane is going to assume she’s a shapeshifting alien here to abduct her and whisk her away to Mars (this is more likely to happen). As embarrassing as it is to admit, that’s the real secret main reason she’s here, expression expectant and phone in hand with the camera app open.
So to set the scene, she starts easy. “I’m here,” she says, leaning her chin against her palm. “You know me?”
Kohane’s moles dip into her dimples when she grins, even with the post-wisdom-tooth-removal cotton swab situation she has going on. “Of course I know you,” she replies, words melting into each other, “I can’t believe you’re here, of course I know you… You can walk…? I didn’t know that… Did you always look like that?”
The smile slowly fades from An’s face. “What?”
“You look so pretty… Did’you shed recently…? I didn’t know you could talk. That’s so funny. Of course I know you.” Kohane laughs like she’s going on her twenty-fifth hour of being wide awake.
An does not laugh. She does not do anything at all, mainly because she does not know what protocol to follow when your anaesthesia’d girlfriend mistakes you for her Literal Pet Snake.
God, if you’re here in the room with me tonight, she thinks to herself, and then she remembers it’s bingo night and Akito is probably right about God hating bingo nights. Okay. Anyone else available? A tooth fairy? Human Resources?
Silence. It’s just Shiraishi An and Azusawa Kohane, alone in the creepy dentist’s room, Akito asleep and Touya gone and the creepy dentist also gone but considerably more menacing.
An has no choice but to try and manage the situation herself. This is the first sign of disaster. “Kohane, it’s me,” she pleads, scooting her chair forward with a resounding squeak against the tiled floor. “You know, Shiraishi An. Your girlfriend. Pseudo-wife. Free lunch.”
“My girlfrien’,” Kohane mumbles through her mouth full of cotton. An perks up and leans out of her seat because it’s progress, and Kohane is definitely looking at her so she can see her face, “Pearl, d’you think she’s here…?”
“What,” An says.
Kohane blinks owlishly. “I miss An-chan.”
An has a lot of questions. It would probably be much stranger if she didn’t. “Kohane, babe, look at me,” she tries instead, reaching out to cup the side of Kohane’s face with her palm. She ends up holding the ice pack. “Look at my face. My very human face. You can see me, can’t you?”
All she gets in return is Kohane’s nose scrunched up as she squints with all her might. From the corner of her eye, An catches the sight of Kohane’s glasses neatly folded up on the desk, and then she realises that Kohane can not see a single thing.
Kohane makes this clear with a delayed sniffle and, “You have a very nice pattern,” she weakly thumbs at An’s hair, “very nice and blue.”
An gives up.
In better phrasing, she makes do. She’ll pretend to be hurt about the situation later, when Kohane is once again conscious of her surroundings and susceptible to An pouting and complaining that how could you not recognise me, Kohane? She’ll also try and ask about why Kohane is more inclined to believe that her rather small and gentle pet snake has grown to the size of a human over believing her girlfriend is there to get her through her recovery, but she isn’t too hopeful about the answer. Right now, though, she makes do, and that entails playing along.
She readjusts her posture, kicks her legs back into place, and tries to look the part of a sophisticated snake person. “I am indeed a snake, yeah, meow or whatever,” she’s momentarily distracted by the dopey smile on Kohane’s face, “sure. Let’s talk about your girlfriend.”
“My girlfriend,” Kohane repeats. Her jaw chews around the cotton. “My An-chan? Is she here?”
My An-chan. An files that memory away for later review. “Do you want her to be?”
Kohane nods. It’s more of her head bobbing up and down aimlessly than nodding, but her intention is there regardless. “She drove me here,” Kohane says heavily. “And she hugged me in the car.”
“Did she now.” An knows she did not do at least one of those. “And she did both at once?”
“Yeah,” is the response, clear and confident. “She had four arms. Octopus.”
Octopi have eight arms, and two of those four arms were actually Akito driving, but An figures that Kohane might have been too nervous when they were on the way here to remember much. “What if I told you,” she begins, “that you could see her right now? I can get her for you. Do you want me to?”
“No.” Kohane nods again, stops herself, and then shakes her head. “Not now. I look kinda dumb.”
You do not, An wants to say, you look very cute and lovely and I want to roll you into a ball and carry you in my hands and I should probably get that checked. Kohane’s cheeks are still puffed up, and the way they’re squished by the ice pack makes them even rounder. An wants to poke them, but also knows that if she pokes them she might actually seriously die. She’s about to tell Kohane just as much when she’s interrupted, “I think if I see An-chan right now, I’ll cry.”
“What the hell,” An blurts out. “No, babe, don’t cry. I’ll personally deal with whoever makes you cry, even if it’s me. Why would you cry?”
“What are you saying, Count Pearl?” An is reminded that in Kohane’s eyes, she is not her loving girlfriend of many years. She is a snake. “Don’t punch her… I love her a lot, you know… I also love you too. But you are a snake who shouldn’t punch my girlfriend.” Impressively, Kohane’s literary ability is growing more and more articulate, though the actual value of her comments remains debatable. “It isn’t An-chan’s fault anyways. It’s mine.”
“Nothing is your fault- are you actually crying?” A tiny bead of Kohane’s tears trails down her cheek. “What’s wrong? Oh my god, was it me? Was it the dentist? Was it Akito, because if it was—”
“It’s nothing,” Kohane sniffles. She wiggles around under her blanket. “I just like her so much that I feel like I should cry… An-chan does so much for me. So, sooo much.”
“I don’t think that’s right,” An says, because she’s sure that comparatively, it’s Kohane who’s given An more than she could ever imagine. An is only giving back as much as she physically can, which she feels like is never enough. She’s working on it.
“She does,” and when Kohane’s lone tear reaches the corner of her lip, An wipes it away with her thumb, “and I like her so much. She agreed to go to Canada with me for our- when we have a honeymoon and everything, even though Canada really sucks and there isn’t anything to do.”
“Well, there’s snow,” An tries. “And, like, moose.”
As expected, Kohane completely ignores her. “I just love her a lot,” she says quietly. “Count Pearl, d’you think she knows?”
While it’s good to know Kohane still thinks she’s a snake, it’s an even better feeling to hear such an outright confession from Kohane, because it’s just so genuine and honest and perfect. That isn’t to say Kohane isn’t normally being truthful when she tells An she loves her while not under post-sedation influence, but it’s undoubtedly different, and what An hears right now is like a direct stream of Kohane’s feelings straight from her heart, unfiltered.
It’s very endearing. An didn’t really expect to be so endeared in a poorly lit dentist’s office, but she is, and she makes it known. Despite the ice pack around her face, Kohane’s cheeks are still warm to the touch when An presses the back of her hand against them and leans forward, close enough that there’s no way Kohane can’t see her face, with or without her glasses. Kohane holds her breath, mouth going still.
An smiles. “She knows for sure,” she tells her, nudging her knuckle against the bulge of her cheek. “I’m sure she loves you too.”
Kohane’s lips curl into a gummy smile, all dizzy and dazed and adorable. “That’s good,” she whispers. Her eyes flutter closed and her voice fades into a hum. “You look a lot like her.”
You’re so close to figuring it out, An almost says. So close.
She doesn’t say it though, since all of a sudden there’s a shadow looming over her shoulder and she turns in her chair to see the dentist again, clad in a long and daunting coat that looks less fitting for a dentist and more for a biblically accurate tooth-fairy-turned-corporate-sellout. “Please leave,” they say a bit quietly, and it’s only then that An realises the dentist might be creeped out by her. “The- I have to close the office.”
“Oh,” An says. She scratches the back of her head. “Okay.”
Technically, Kohane doesn’t have to be carried out of the office, but An does it anyway because opportunities are not to be wasted and sleeping Kohanes are not to be disturbed. She walks through the curtain with Kohane safely in her arms, finding Akito sitting on the plastic chair, very proper and unfortunately very awake.
There is nothing but evil in his eyes. An treads carefully as she steps forward, keeping a good distance away from him the same way she would avoid a bear. “Hello,” she says cordially, holding Kohane a little tighter.
“Hi,” he says casually, waving at her. An purses her lips, and then his thin-lipped expression breaks out into the most infuriating smirk on the area of the planet, “Count Pearl.”
“Fuck you,” she says. “This is why your boyfriend ditched us for bingo night. Because of you and your goddamn attitude, this is all your fault—”
“Watch it, snake face. I have the car keys. I could just leave you here and pick Touya up from his bingo night and go home.”
“—You’ll never understand young love, Kohane and I are going to Canada for our honeymoon—”
“Canada fucking sucks.”
“—It does, and I don’t care,” An finishes, kicking an empty plastic bottle on the floor at his ankles. “Let’s just go. Kohane is cute when she’s asleep and I won’t let you ruin that.”
“Fine, whatever,” Akito grunts, trying to hide the way he rubs soothingly at his ankles. “Only because I don’t want to be late picking him up.”
The walk out of the office is uneventful. The walk down to the parking lot is uneventful, although An almost trips twice on the curb and Akito almost trips once on thin air. The beginning of the car ride is uneventful—she and Kohane are in the backseats so An has space to pull her blanket up and pet her head and coo over her some more.
She still doesn’t know if tooth fairies have sick leave, or if they leave money for wisdom teeth, or if they’re part of a union with other similar supernatural beings, like easter bunnies and Santa’s elves. What she does know is that when Kohane’s lips part in her sleep, voice still blocked by the cotton padding, she mouths a few words along the lines of Canada and I love you and An-chan.
There’s something else too: something An hopes is a marriage proposal, or maybe a promise to love and cherish her forever, but now she’ll never fucking know because Designated Driver Shinonome Akito is now talking, an action which is not driving and is therefore unwelcome. “So how does it feel,” he says, “to be mistaken by your girlfriend for a snake—”
If God is here with me in this Toyota Corolla, An thinks to herself, please give me a sign.