Chapter Text
Kyouka hates days like this.
The day after it rained, when the city is smothered under a thick layer of fog, and the dirt is unearthed by the lingering pits of water.
But she mostly hates these days because she isn’t able to see the girl with the long ponytail seat tables outside the coffee shop. No one wants to enjoy a coffee outside when little red umbrellas are flooding with water, waiting to soak the unsuspecting customer, and the plastic table mats do little to protect the wooden tables from the raindrops that drip off the towering trees.
It makes Kyouka feel a little creepy, honestly, to be watching her. It wasn’t like she ever meant for it to happen in the first place. Every Thursday, Kyouka says goodbye to her bandmates and walks out the garage door of her bandmate's house. She starts walking to her motorcycle, which she always parks down the street, and she passes the coffee shop with the cute little tables. Every Thursday she sees the girl with the long, black ponytail and eyes that could make anyone fall for her, and she tries to work up the nerve to ask her out. But she just can’t.
It was ridiculous. Kyouka was confident. She was assured. She could perform in front of a whole crowd of people without missing a beat. Well, she’ll admit that the biggest venue they’ve booked only had about thirty people, but it's not her fault that there wasn’t a huge punk scene in her small college town. But when she stands in front of those people, she puts her heart into the music, and the eyes, the people with their whispers and judgements, they melt away.
Talking to the cute girl, though, wasn’t like playing the bass. Kyouka is awkward and unsure of herself. When she talks, it doesn’t feel like music; she’s not performing for a crowd. It feels more like an embarrassing combination of staccato and slur, accents and piano. Like she’s in an orchestra with no conductor, too lost in the tempo when to be brave and start a conversation.
So, she doesn’t.
Instead, she lingers outside the coffee shop with the little red umbrellas, hatching glimpses of the girl waiting on the outdoor tables.
But not today, and not yesterday, because of the stupid rain and the stupid little red umbrellas.
Momo loves days like this.
The day after it rained, when a cool mist blankets the town, and the streets are washed clean by fresh rainwater. When she can smell the storm lingering from the day before. On these days she can lace up her red rain boots, the shoes she can only wear on days like these and make ripples in the little puddles lining her walk to work.
She likes days like these, especially Thursdays like these, because while she serves tea to her customers, she can hear the punk band practicing in the house just across the street from her little coffee shop, The Boardwalk Cafe. People talked, in this little town, about the noisy and rebellious college kids who spent their free time playing music that nobody liked. But even though Momo preferred the classical music she grew up listening to, hearing that band play was almost refreshing.
She posts the band’s flyers on the corkboard at The Boardwalk, because she wants people to hear about the shows. She wants people to go to them so she can keep hearing them practice every Thursday while she serves coffee.
But Momo doesn’t ever go to the shows. She’s thought about it, of course, but she can’t bring herself to show up. What would people think, Momo Yaoyorozu at a punk show? Between her shifts at the Boardwalk, a job she doesn’t even need because her parents pay for everything, she studies in the library, studying the major her parents want for her, planning for the future she’s supposed to have.
She’s practiced, she never falters. But when she hears the loud, irregular music from across the street she has hope that maybe someday, maybe a version of herself could be like them. She could express herself; she could be the person she wanted to be.
But the road that splits her little coffee shop, and the house where the band practices in the garage apart is an uncrossable chasm because she’ll never be that girl, the girl who can be herself without feeling the eyes, the whispers, the judgment.
So, she enjoys herself in the little ways that she’s able to, like slipping on her little red plastic rain boots, and making ripples in the puddles outside her little coffee shop while she listens to the music from afar.