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“Just remember one thing. If you do anything to hurt her, I will break all of your fingers one by one. Slowly.”
As Akito glanced over at the petite, blonde haired girl next to her, An’s words ran through his mind - an unpleasant, incessant memory. Here he was in Phoenix Wonderland, walking next to Kohane as she sipped away happily at her cup of milk tea. She wore an expression of delight on her face as she did so; clearly, she was loving every last bit of it. As Akito noted how happy she was at that moment, he couldn’t help but think how cute she looked.
The moment that thought entered his head, he snapped to face the other way, hiding his grimace. How had he gotten himself into this position again? Oh yeah, it was An. She had initially bought tickets in advance for Kohane and herself but to her dismay, her dad had forbidden her from going due to her poor grades. Akito’s weren’t much better so he had no room to gloat; somehow, he had just made the cutoff to avoid getting grounded. In any case, it left her with the issue of what to do with the tickets; it would have been a shame to let them go to waste. Like the nice guy that he was, Toya had actually volunteered to help An study, to which the latter cheerfully accepted. That only left Akito and Kohane available to go. Of course, he wanted nothing to do with this. He most certainly did not want to accidentally stumble upon a certain weirdo wombo combo. So why? Why was he here now? Why had he agreed to this?
“Shinonome-kun? Are you okay?” asked Kohane, removing Akito from his thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, yeah, of course,” he replied in a non-committal manner, “why wouldn’t I be?”
Kohane looked at him with concern in her eyes, stating, “You look like you’re thinking about something.” Gently, she placed her hand on his shoulder, stopping both of them in place. “Are you sure everything’s alright?” she asked, evidently worried.
Right, Akito remembered now. He’d accepted this request not for An’s sake but Kohane’s. He recalled how An pleaded with him, mentioning that Kohane had been looking forward to this trip. He’d said yes just so that An would shut up about it. She had looked at him with puppy eyes just like this, except that when she did it, it was manipulative and needlessly annoying. When Kohane did it, as she was doing now, it was… endearing. Unlike her partner, he could tell she was completely sincere. The delicate little street singer standing before him didn’t have a mean bone in her body and it showed. That just made it all the more irritating being alone with her like this. There was no point putting on his nice guy facade for her and he wasn’t forgetting An’s warning anytime soon.
Still, Kohane’s company wasn’t unpleasant. She’d been polite enough to ask him what he wanted to do while they were here, at least. When he said he didn’t care, she took him on all sorts of rides and dragged him to look at all kinds of attractions; her vast knowledge of the place was somewhat frightening. Come to think of it, Akito did set one limitation: under no circumstances were they to go anywhere near the Wonder Stage. Kohane seemed a little upset at first but she perked up quickly enough on their little adventure that she got over it. Good thing too, otherwise it could have been goodbye fingers. Stupid An, why’d she have to go and tell him that? It really drilled in the feeling that this whole trip was more of an obligation rather than a day off…
“Um, Shinonome-kun? You’ve been staring at me for a while now…” Kohane murmured, looking at the ground in embarrassment; her face was beginning to turn bright red. In response, Akito’s face quickly turned a shade to match her own. Crap. How long had he been looking at her for? How long had her hand been on his shoulder? That’d teach him not to zone out like that again.
Flustered, Akito swiped Kohane’s hand off of him and took a step back, blustering out, “Uh, yeah, I’m good. Sorry Kohane, I didn’t mean to… well… you know…” Regarding him for a moment, Kohane tilted her head to the side and gave him a concerned look. She glanced at the floor for a moment and twirled her fingers around each other before looking him in the eyes once more.
“Um… I wanted to know if… if you had fun today, Shinonome-kun? With me?” she wondered in a nervous tone. Damn. That was a surprisingly straightforward question. Quite frankly, a day trip to a theme park was not Akito’s idea of a fun time. Normally, he would rather have been anywhere but here. However, Kohane had made what would’ve been a painfully dreary experience into something a little more tolerable. Akito took no pleasure in the park itself; instead, he saw how happy it had made Kohane. Whenever she’d lead him to the next attraction, she’d always look back at him with a brilliant smile plastered on her face. Before, he’d only ever regarded her as a fellow performer on the stage. But seeing her laugh and have fun the way she did, he’d seen a side of her he would never have been witness to normally. In a way, it reminded him of the way Toya looked when had almost liberated a claw machine of its prizes or when he’d just set a new record on an arcade machine.
Not wanting to keep Kohane waiting for an answer again, Akito uttered, “I… guess. Yeah, sure. I had a good time.” He rubbed his hand on the back of his head as he answered, betraying how awkward he felt at the question. Upon hearing his response, despite her best attempts to hide it, Kohane’s expression became somewhat gloomy, a far cry from how carefree she was just earlier ago.
“Oh… I’m sorry… I know you’re only here because An-chan made you come. I know you didn’t want to go so I did my best to make sure you had fun too. I… I hope that I didn’t annoy you or come across like I was trying too hard,” she admitted. She clutched a little more tightly onto her drink, her disappointment in herself clear as day. Ah hell. Akito hadn’t meant to come across that way. He knew that Kohane was far too nice to be upset with him, so she was definitely upset with herself. If anything, it was his fault for not being honest with his feelings in the first place. Tch, what a pain. Now he had to fix this mess, otherwise he wouldn’t be holding a microphone again for a while. Like hell he’d be doing any confessions in public like this though. She’d been dragging him around all day - now it was his turn.
On an impulse, Akito grabbed Kohane’s hand and dragged her in tow, consciously aware of his grip so as to not hurt her. “Shinonome-kun?! Where are we going?!” yelped Kohane, rendered helpless at his sudden display of boldness. Her legs matched pace with him as best she could, for fear that he would stop for nothing. Eventually, he pulled her into a secluded area of the park, away from prying eyes. Finding the nearest wall, Akito let go of Kohane and forcefully pressed his hand against it next to her head. In turn, Kohane found her back pressed up against the wall, looking straight into Akito’s eyes. She held her drink up to her chest, her nerves setting in. “Shinonome-kun…?” Kohane murmured, confused as to what all this meant.
Akito took a deep breath before he spoke. With what he was about to say, he really didn’t want to have to repeat himself. “Listen, Kohane. I’m only going to say this once, so listen good. I had fun today. I mean it. I’m not saying this just to make you feel better, I’m saying this because I genuinely enjoyed being here with you. I don’t care for places like these but I can tell how much this place means to you. I could see it when you were making me go on all those rides; you love being here, right? Then I was glad that you could share your love of this place with me. So don’t get all mopey on me thinking that I hated being here. I didn’t. Because you were here with me. There.”
Akito took a few breaths to recover from his rant. He could feel his face flush with warmth. He glanced away from Kohane in embarrassment, unable to meet her eyes. When he turned back to look at her, he noticed that her face was just as, if not more, red as his was. Somehow, their faces had also gotten closer to one another. Almost intimately so.
“Akito…” whispered Kohane, still processing his words. Akito wordlessly looked into her eyes, mesmerised by their light brown hue. How had he failed to notice that she had such pretty eyes…?
Suddenly, as if recoiling to what he had just thought, he snapped out of his trance and turned away. Kohane had similarly broken out of her stupor, her gaze unable to turn to anywhere but the floor. Both were blushing furiously, unsure about what to do next. Feeling defeated and desperate for the day to come to a close, without turning back, Akito suggested, “Oi, Kohane. Let’s get out of here.” Looking up to see the back of his head, Kohane simply grunted in acknowledgment and nodded. Akito led the way, Kohane disposing of her cup and matching his pace to walk by his side. There was less distance between them than there was before, but neither of them said a word to each other on the way out.
As they reached the exit, Kohane stopped mid-walk. Breaking the silence, she said, “Thank you for coming here today with me, Shinonome-kun. I’m… I’m really glad I got to go with you.” She offered a warm smile, more subdued, more cautious than all the ones that had come before.
“It’s fine. This was a good experience,” Akito replied, genuine in his remark. Finally, he had made it to the end of the day. He had survived, Kohane was happy and An had no cause to lay a single finger on his fingers. Hopefully Toya didn’t have too much of a headache trying to tutor his wayward pupil. As he got ready to part ways with Kohane, he felt her grab his hand with both of hers, as if she was asking him to stay a while longer. Turning back, he saw her looking at him with an expression that somehow held both conviction and uncertainty.
“Um… I was hoping that maybe, well… you might want to do this again sometime?” Kohane asked. Akito’s eyes widened slightly in surprise at her request. Before he could reply, she steeled herself and added, “Going on a date, I mean. It wouldn’t have to be here. We could do something you wanted to do.” Observing her closely, Akito could tell she was extremely nervous. She was doing her best to keep her nerves under wraps though, he would give her that. But was that what this was now? A date? Somehow, Akito didn’t mind her calling it that. It beat being an obligation, at least. There was still an issue with that proposal though…
“I dunno… I’m not particularly keen on the idea of An holding me at gunpoint again,” Akito remarked. How did he expect to have a good time if that witch kept breathing down his neck?
“She doesn’t have to know. We can make it our little secret,” Kohane suggested, gently tightening her grip on Akito’s hand.
“Hm… on one condition,” Akito stated. Kohane tilted her head to the side, her curiosity burning. Akito smirked, saying, “Smile more. You have a cute smile; it’d be a shame if you didn’t do it more often.”
Upon hearing these words, Kohane blushed and without her even realising it, she had started to smile that brilliant smile that Akito had been looking at all day.
Yeah. Something like that.