Work Text:
Hitoka knew as soon as she sat down at their usual table in the staff cafeteria and looked up.
Her best work friend Reiko, walking over to her with her teishoku lunch, was glowing, the light reflecting off of her like she was the protagonist of a morning drama. She waved as she approached Hitoka, and there it was, glinting in the midday sun, sucking all of the energy out of the room.
Pink diamond. Gold band.
Hitoka felt her stomach twist as she pulled the corners of her mouth into a semblance of a smile. “Congratulations!” she squealed. Tried to squeal, at least.
“I know, right?! I almost couldn’t believe it! We’ve barely even been dating a year!”
“Right?!” Hitoka echoed. “That’s so exciting! When’s the ceremony?”
“We’re going to try to get it in before the rainy season, so we can do it outdoors. We’re thinking Japanese ceremony, Western reception…” Hitoka tuned out the rest, her mind instead replaying the story of Reiko’s courtship with Hideki whats-his-name from Sales as she’d experienced it. Reiko transferring to their department, Hitoka being assigned to welcome her and help her get settled in. The two of them eating lunch together almost every day, and then dinners too, and weekend brunches at fancy cafes Reiko saw on social media. Reiko staying over at her place when they worked overtime, because Hitoka lived closer to the office, sleeping in Hitoka’s bed because it was big enough for two people and she had back problems anyway, so of course she can’t sleep on the floor…
And then, Hideki From Sales appeared, and all of that ground to a halt. Not a complete halt: Reiko still ate lunch with Hitoka when Hideki was away on business, which was fairly often, because Sales. But any time outside of the office was eaten by the boyfriend. So in a way, Hitoka had been expecting this.
She just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.
“So I’m afraid I won’t be able to eat lunch with you at least until after the wedding, since I’m going to need to do planning stuff and all that,” Reiko was saying when Hitoka tuned back in. “You understand, right?”
“Of course, of course,” Hitoka said, smiling so widely her cheeks hurt. “Do whatever you need to do. Good luck with the wedding!”
She picked up her tray and stood up to throw out her trash.
“Are you feeling alright? You’ve barely eaten anything,” Reiko said, frowning at her.
Hitoka was surprised she’d even noticed. “I’m just not really hungry today! I’ll see you later, Reiko.”
She could feel the tears building as she went upstairs to the office, but by the time she was back to her desk, she just felt numb. Of course Reiko wasn’t going to dump her boyfriend to date Hitoka, why would she? How would she even know Hitoka wanted her to do that? Kiyoko-senpai didn’t. Mayumi from college didn’t. None of the boyfriend-having girls Hitoka had ever crushed on had ever, ever figured it out. Because Hitoka never told them. No, she just smiled and nodded and let them stomp all over her fragile little butterfly heart until the awkward feelings went away and they could be normal friends again. Or not. She hadn’t talked to Mayumi in ages. What a painful, pointless hobby Hitoka had devised for herself.
After work, she went to Yukie’s bar. That wasn’t its actual name, it was something like La Jolie Femme or Cherchez la Femme or something else pseudo-French and trendy, but Hitoka had known Yukie since high school, so to her it would always be Yukie’s bar. She came in earlier than she usually did on weeknights, not stopping for dinner or to change out of her work clothes beforehand, so the dim, moody space was emptier than she was used to seeing. A couple of older women in pantsuits were sitting at a table, but there was no one at the bar, and proprietor Shirofuku Yukie was scrolling on her phone behind it.
“Hey, Yacchan,” Yukie said, slipping her phone into her pocket. “What’ll it be today?”
“Oolong highball,” she sighed as she slumped into her usual seat at the far end of the bar. “Heavy on the shochu. And no ice.”
“That’s going to mess up the flavor balance,” Yukie said, but reached for the highball glasses anyway. “Everything okay?”
“She’s getting married, ” Hitoka wailed, slamming her head against the wooden bartop.
Yukie froze, then silently reached for the shochu. “Which one is this?”
“Reiko from work.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” She pushed the glass towards Hitoka. Hitoka tried to chug it and winced– that really was too much shochu to taste good.
“Why does this keep happening to me?!” Hitoka moaned, after managing to down half the drink anyway.
“Well, why do you keep getting invested in straight women with boyfriends?” Yukie asked her.
“She didn’t have a boyfriend when I met her! Neither did Kiyoko-senpai! God, maybe I’m the one summoning the boyfriends to them… maybe I have boyfriend-attracting powers, and this is why I can’t get a girlfriend…”
“Getting a lot of guys hitting on you, are you?” Yukie asked, smiling, but not unkindly.
“Not really… I mean, Reiko dragged me out to a couple of group dates before she met Hideki, and sometimes a dude from another department will be like ‘oh you’re so cute and tiny do you want to go out’ and I have to turn them down, but I’m not, like, Kiyoko-senpai in high school popular… Most importantly, I’m not popular with women! What is wrong with me?!”
She’d tried cutting her hair short and dressing androgynously for a minute in college, but it didn’t seem to help much. Nothing beyond a few drunken makeouts at bars like Yukie’s with women she’d never see again afterwards. One time she’d gotten a little further in the bathroom, only for the woman who’d pushed her skirt up to suddenly stop and announce her ex just texted her and they were getting back together. Hitoka was just an afterthought in that woman’s life too. Doomed to her innate Villager B status that nothing, not even managing a team of tall, loud, scary male volleyball players could ever change.
“I was put on this Earth to be the supportive best friend side character to a series of romance drama heroines,” Hitoka declared to the mostly-empty bar.
“That might be a little dramatic,” Yukie’s partner Kaori added, coming out of the backroom with a plate of assorted snacks. “Here, on the house for your broken heart.”
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry right now.”
“You probably didn’t eat lunch either, did you?” Kaori guessed correctly. “Eat something so you don’t pass out on your way home. I don’t want to see you on Shibuya Meltdown tomorrow.”
Hitoka sighed and shoved some edamame into her mouth. She couldn’t taste it. “Something needs to change,” she mumbled. “I can’t keep doing this. It’s miserable.” She finished her glass and slammed it down on the table. “Okay! Starting today, Yachi Hitoka is going to stop pining silently after unavailable women! And start being bold and assertive! And make the first move!”
“That’s the spirit!” Kaori cheered, and then whispered something to Yukie before disappearing into the backroom. Yukie wordlessly refilled Hitoka’s glass.
Then the front door opened, sending a blinding beam of light into the dim bar.
“You’re doing great, kiddo,” Yukie said absently, and then, to the door, “Welcome!”
Hitoka boldly and assertively looked up– and almost fell off her chair.
“Hey!” the loud, confident voice of Tanaka Saeko, which she’d heard thousands of times over her high school career, boomed, echoing through the space over the soft lofi Polkadot Stingray remixes. “It’s my first time here, what do you recommend?”
Saeko looked exactly the same as she had the last time they’d run into each other, at the Eagles-Adlers game when Hitoka was still in college. Hair still short and angular, still the same leopard-print pants she’d always worn for pretty much their entire acquaintanceship. She looked like she’d walked straight out of one of adolescent Hitoka’s fantasies and into the lesbian bar.
Wait, what was Tanaka Saeko doing in the lesbian bar?!
A highlights reel of all of the unintentionally heart-attack-inducing moments Saeko had subjected her to during their shared time in the volleyball bleachers went through Hitoka’s head. No self-aware lesbian would be so comfortable shoving a girl’s face into her boobs without warning.
Did she have some kind of gay awakening? What the hell could’ve inspired it? Maybe she had some kind of cool biker-slash-taiko-drummer boyfriend, and they’d picked up an even cooler girl at a bar so trendy Hitoka wouldn’t even be able to find the entrance, and then had a threesome, and that was how Tanaka Saeko found out she was into girls.
Hitoka shook her head quickly: she was spiraling again, jumping to conclusions and making up nonsense. She needed to focus on what was really there: Saeko’s boobs.
God, her boobs. Hitoka risked a glance at Saeko, leaning against the bar in profile and chatting up Yukie. Had they gotten bigger since Hitoka was in high school? It seemed impossible.
“You look kind of familiar, have I met you somewhere before?”
“Maybe. You from around here?” Yukie flirted with the polite detachment of a taken customer service worker.
Before Saeko could catch Hitoka’s eye, Hitoka boldly and assertively crawled under the barstool. She’d start her new regimen tomorrow.
Saeko didn’t seem to notice her under the chair, at least. She kept talking. “Nah, I grew up in Miyagi, but the restaurant I worked for there just opened a new branch in Shibuya and they wanted me to help get it off the ground, so… I’ve only been living here for a few months, really. Nice place you’ve got here!”
“Oh, Miyagi. I know some people from there,” Yukie said with no inflection. “Maybe you’ve met them.”
Hitoka wondered if she could run to the bathroom and hide in there before anyone noticed her.
Yukie sighed. Something prodded the stool above Hitoka’s head. “Get out from under there. I thought you were going to be bold and assertive now.”
Hitoka grimaced and got to her feet, wincing when her mid-twenties knees creaked in pain. “I’ve decided to postpone that until tomorrow–”
“Oh my gosh, Yacchan?!”
There was no more delaying it. Hitoka blinked, hard, then smiled at Tanaka Saeko. “Wow, Saeko-san! I was just, uh, I dropped something, and–”
“It’s been so long!” Saeko said. The pink and purple lights of the bar reflected off her cleavage. It took all of Hitoka’s strength to not stare. She felt dizzy.
“It sure has!” Hitoka’s mouth said. “It’s good to see you again. I uh, I never thought I’d find you in a… place like this…?” Did Saeko know she was in a lesbian bar or did she just accidentally wander into Nichome on her way to some heterosexual Shinjuku nightlife?
“I could say the same for you!” Saeko downed half of her beer in one gulp, setting it down with a satisfied sigh. “To be honest, I’m pretty new to… this.” She gestured to the space around them. “But I haven’t been enjoying being with men, so I thought it might be worth trying… something else.”
It felt like something was exploding inside Hitoka, sending crackles of nerves down every limb. “So are you… do you like women?”
“I’m not sure!” Saeko laughed, sounding oddly self-conscious. “It’s hard to tell without the practical experience, you know?”
Unless getting her face shoved into Saeko’s boobs at age sixteen and an aborted bathroom dalliance counted as practical experience, Hitoka did not know. “Makes sense,” she said instead.
Behind the bar, Yukie raised her eyebrows at Hitoka and made a significant look towards Saeko. Now’s your chance, the look said. Be the new you.
Hitoka took a deep breath. She leaned forward and put her hand on…. The countertop. If she were really being bold, she’d actually touch Saeko, but that seemed like way too much. “If you’re looking for some practical experience, Saeko-san,” she said, trying to channel her Responsible Team Manager voice, “then I’d be happy to help you with that.”
Saeko laughed. “Still so responsible after all these years! Gonna give me a presentation? Show me some graphs on how many gay women there are in Tokyo?”
“I could,” Hitoka said quickly, her voice coming out too high. “If you want. I do a lot of presentations at work, so.”
“Of course you do.” Saeko raised her eyebrows, looking up and down at Hitoka’s straight-from-the-office attire, complete with nametag she forgot to take off. “Tell you what, we can trade LINE contacts and get coffee sometime. I’m usually available in the mornings, but not too early, okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” Hitoka said, pulling out her phone. “Saturday morning?” She didn’t have to come into the office on weekends, usually, unless a deadline was really coming up.
“Saturday morning it is! Just not–”
“Not too early,” Hitoka finished. “Got it.”
They exchanged LINE contacts. It was the perfect opportunity to slip out of the bar and head home without embarrassing herself too horribly, but… if she was going to learn how to be bold and assertive, observing Saeko might help. And it might be nice to catch up, too.
“Didn’t think I’d ever see little Yacchan in a bar at all,” Saeko said, grinning. “What’re you drinking?”
“Uh, just an oolong highball. What about you?”
“Bartender’s choice! … Which is just whatever beer’s on tap, it seems.”
Yukie nodded. “You seemed like a beer kinda gal.”
“Correct!” Saeko slammed the glass down on the table. Yukie refilled it obligingly.
“So, um, what have you been up to these days?” Hitoka asked, trying to look Saeko in the eyes and not her chest.
“Not much. New job in town, like I said. Finally getting used to the big city. What about you, Miss Office-Job?”
“I’m working at a design firm,” Hitoka said. “I came here for college, and happened to get a job in town afterwards, and… yeah.” Why was she still so awkward, after all this time? “I don’t really do a lot besides work, these days… I go to volleyball matches if they’re nearby and someone I know is playing.”
“I still do taiko, when I can. Did you see the last Frogs game?”
Having something to talk about that wasn’t Hitoka herself made it easier, and they managed to hold a conversation about volleyball for a length of time that Hitoka rarely experienced after graduating from high school. From there they segued to differences between Miyagi and Tokyo, their shared acquaintances’ most recent appearances in big commercials, their shared acquaintances’ most recent appearances on sketchy gossip blogs and the veracity of the speculations therein, and other minor amusing things they did, in fact, have in common. The time went by faster than Hitoka expected it to, the bar filling up around her as the hour turned late. When the “leave now if you want to get enough sleep to make it to the office tomorrow” alarm on her phone went off, she almost fell off her stool with surprise, making Saeko cackle with laughter.
“I like to plan ahead, okay!” Hitoka explained, feeling her face heat even as she giggled nervously. The alcohol and the environment made her feel warm.
“Hey, whatever works for you,” Saeko said, grinning.
“I don’t even come on weekdays that often,” Hitoka continued. “I’m only here today because…” That doomed work lunch suddenly seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago. “It’s not important.” It wasn’t, anymore. She hopped off the stool and waved Yukie over to close out her tab. “Anyway, I should get going. But this was nice!”
“It was!” Saeko agreed, then, with no warning, pulled Hitoka into a hug. Just like she did at every point Karasuno scored in a game, way back when. She smelled more like perfume and alcohol and cigarettes than she did back then, but something about the experience still felt just the same. Under the rough exterior, softness.
Then Saeko pulled back. “Oh, sorry, is that like, weird now? I’m still not caught up on the… you know.”
“No,” Hitoka said quickly, “Not weird at all!” The fact that I’ll be reliving this hug in my dreams for the next few weeks since I haven’t touched another woman in who-knows-how-long probably is, she thought, but managed to push that thought away for now.
“Good,” Saeko said, smiling. “Don’t forget to text me about coffee, yeah?”
“I won’t!”
Hitoka practically skipped to the end of the bar, where Yukie handed her her receipt and change. “Word of advice, Yacchan?”
“What?”
“You can be bold and assertive all you want, but like…” Yukie twirled a pen in one hand. “Don’t be too available, you know? Desperation’s not cute.”
“Thanks, Yukie.” Hitoka rolled her eyes. “Have a good night!”
On the train, she messaged the group chat currently represented in her phone by a series of increasingly arcane emoji.
Hitoka: Do you think Tanaka-senpai would help if I asked him for advice on dating his older sister
Yamaguchi: YOU MEAN SAEKO?!?!!?!
Kageyama: I don’t see why not.
Tsukishima: lmao
A DM from Tsukishima popped up over the group chat window.
Tsukishima: she dumped my older brother after 4 months because he was “bad at sex”, apparently (information inflicted upon me against my will)
Tsukishima: but if she just didn’t know she was gay the whole time I guess that explains it.
Hitoka: you don’t believe Akiteru-san could be bad at sex?
Tsukishima: I don’t want to believe anything about my brother’s sexual prowess at all. But here we are
Hitoka sent a sticker of a laughing bunny and started getting ready for bed.
If she stopped to think about it for too long, it was a little odd that she’d gone through high school with a group of volleyball players as her closest friends. But girls were… complicated, in a way the Karasuno team wasn’t. Half of them never even thought about anything unrelated to volleyball. And as Hitoka ended up learning in college and adulthood, navigating friendships with people she was attracted to was a lot harder than laugh-reacting to Kageyama Tobio’s consistently terrible attempts at selfies. But when she needed to talk about her romantic troubles, that group of friends was probably the worst advisory council she could assemble. But she messaged them anyway, because they’d been there for her for longer than anyone besides her mother, and even if they didn’t completely get it, on some level, they did.
Probably.
The next day, she went to work, and ate lunch alone at her desk, and went home by herself. She stared at the new LINE contact she had periodically, studying the slightly off-center selfie Saeko had set as her profile picture, wondering if she should message first, or if Saeko would. This was how lesbian dates died, Hitoka knew, but that wasn’t enough to push her into taking the initiative.
“Did you hear that thing about lesbian sheep?” Yukie had mentioned one time, when Hitoka was complaining about no one messaging her on a dating app. “The way female sheep solicit sex is by standing still, so lesbian sheep never get to mate with each other because they’re all just standing there and none of them ever take the initiative.”
“I know, I know,” Hitoka had groaned. “But it’s so scary! What if she takes it the wrong way?”
“You’re on a dating app. That is the way they’re supposed to take it.”
Anyway, Hitoka stared at the profile picture and thought about lesbian sheep, standing still.
She thought about her decision to be Bold and Assertive from now on.
She sent the message while microwaving her convenience store dinner.
Hi Saeko-san! It was nice to run into you yesterday. If you’re still up for coffee this weekend, how about this place? [link to menu] Let me know when you’re free!
There, that seemed normal enough. Like an adult with two decades of experience fighting her often unhelpful impulses, Hitoka managed to stop herself from throwing her phone out the window after hitting “send.”
Saeko didn’t reply until much, much later, when Hitoka was already in bed and setting her alarm for the next day and her social media blocker to keep her from doomscrolling Instagram until 3 AM. “Hey! Sure, sounds good! 11 am Sat?”
Hitoka sent an affirmative sticker in response and put her phone face down on the far side of her bedside table to keep herself from looking at it again.
On Saturday, she woke up at six, earlier than she usually did for work, and then could not go back to sleep. Her brain was running dozens of simulations of how the coffee hangout catchup get together with Saeko could go, from otome game level bad ends to hooking up in the cafe bathroom before their orders reached the table. She had to channel that energy into something useful, if she was awake so early anyway. Saeko wanted help with getting into the sapphic scene in Tokyo, right? Then Hitoka had to pull out all the stops to do that.
So she sat down at her computer with her color-coded planner and got to work.
Hitoka showed up at the cafe at exactly eleven, which was basically the same thing as being late in Hitoka time management terms, but at least she beat Saeko there. She grabbed a table by the window and watched the passerby outside it, waiting for Saeko to make her appearance. Or not. What if she was going to get stood up again, like with two of her ill-fated app dates?
She checked her messages to see if there was any note from Saeko about her running late or anything. Nope.
What if she was about to get ghosted again, like with three of her ill-fated app dates from a different app? Would that make things awkward with Tanaka and Kiyoko-senpai, if Tanaka’s older sister ghosted her?
Or what if some terrible accident befell Saeko on her way to the cafe and she got stuck in a stopped subway car or stomped on by Godzilla or hit by a truck and reincarnated as the villainess in an otome game or–
“Are you ready to order, ma’am?”
Hitoka was pulled out of her contemplations by the waitress. “Oh! Um, I’m actually waiting for someone, but I can take a hot tea for now?”
The cafe Hitoka had selected due to its proximity to her apartment had turned out to be at least three levels classier than she was expecting from the discreet signage outside it. The waitress took a deep breath. “We have oolong, jasmine, sencha, matcha, Darjeeling, Earl Grey–”
“Just black tea’s fine!” Hitoka squeaked.
The waitress stopped and smiled at Hitoka like one would at a small child who does not yet know the ways of the world. She was cute, if condescending, with short hair that could be queer or just fashionable. “For black tea, we have Darjeeling, Earl Grey, Lady Grey, Ceylon, Orange Pekoe, English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast–”
Every new tea listed seemed to diminish Hitoka’s will to live, but she smiled politely and tilted her head up towards the waitress. “Whatever you recommend, then.”
The waitress brushed some of her hair behind her ear and leaned down to study the menu Hitoka was holding. “It really depends on the food items you pair your drink with, but–”
“Yacchan! Hey! Sorry I’m late,” Saeko announced, bursting through the front door. “Wow, this place is swanky. Did you order yet?”
She was wearing a bright red leather skirt and black tank top under a leopard-print fake fur coat, red toenails poking out of strappy platform sandals despite the still chilly weather. She looked like she belonged on the promotional poster for a martial arts movie.
“I was just about to,” Hitoka said, and smiled at the waitress again. “What are your specialities?”
The waitress blinked a few times, then looked back and forth between Saeko and Hitoka. Probably wondering how they even knew each other. “Well, the Sakura Spring Toast Set is very popular,” she said eventually, in an oddly cheerful voice, “and if you’re looking for something savory, we have a new Katsu Pizza Toast you could try! Those both pair well with the Ceylon,” she added to Hitoka, arm lingering on the table as she placed a second menu down in front of Saeko.
After they finally ordered and the waitress departed, Saeko leaned over to Hitoka. “Look at you go! She was totally flirting with you!”
Hitoka laughed. “Pretty sure she was just doing her job. Speaking of which.” She pulled out the planner she’d been working on all morning. “How was your night at the bar? Did you end up… going home with anyone?”
“Nah,” Saeko said. “Not sure I’m ready for that quite yet, y’know?” She ran a red-nailed finger along the edge of her water glass. “Had some conversations, had some… really forward propositions, but I dunno. It’s always a little scary to start something new, right?”
Hitoka thought about a boy like the sun, asking her to manage a volleyball team. “It is, yeah.”
For her, though, dating women never really seemed like “trying something new” but more “expressing what had always been there, even before she knew what it was.”
Anyway. Hitoka opened her planner to the color-coded spreadsheets she made earlier. “So what kind of new things are you looking to start? Something romantic, s-sexual, do you just want more queer friends… I came up with a few possible action plans we can proceed with, and a list of potential social venues to explore and people to talk to.” Though she stumbled a little on saying the word “sexual” to Tanaka Saeko, the rest of the sentence was delivered in an impressively professional business-like cadence, if she said so herself.
Tanaka Saeko did not seem impressed by Hitoka’s professional business-like cadence. She looked, in fact, like she was barely holding back a laugh. “Is this an interview? Are you pitching a startup to me? Like, what even is this?”
Hitoka felt her face heat up. Her eyes prickled. “I just wanted to– you asked for my help, right? I wanted to help you as best as I could.”
“Hey, calm down, it’s okay. I wanted to catch up ,” Saeko said. “I haven’t seen you in years! You don’t need to make action plans just to get a coffee with me. We’re friends! Well, kind of. We weren’t exactly friends when you were in high school, but you’re what, twenty-five now? Perfectly normal age to be friends with a woman in her early thirties. So let’s be friends.”
Hitoka nodded, forcing the tears back down. Perfectly normal friends. She could do that.
So they made friendly conversation over cakes and toasts and teas, and Hitoka slowly felt herself relax, just a little bit. Until the friendly conversation turned towards the subject of their romantic pasts.
“I keep getting involved with sleazy scumbags,” Saeko moaned, flopping down on the table and elbowing her plates out of the way. “I go too much for looks, I think. I bet you only date nice girls, don’t you, Yacchan?”
Hitoka choked on her milk tea. “I ah. Haven’t dated much at all, actually.”
“You’re kidding!” Saeko gasped. “But you’re so cute! I’m sure you were turning down confessions left and right in school!”
“I mean, I got a few, but…” Not really from girls, Hitoka thought.
“Still, you know how to meet girls, right?”
“Mostly in theory…” Hitoka waved her planner again. “I made a list of the best lesbian bars and clubs in nichome and ranked them in order of size, affordability, location, clientele, and online reviews, but I’ve only really been clubbing a few times in college… I had a lot of homework and stuff, so…” That struck her as an unbearably lame excuse the second it left her mouth. “But we could try going to some of these together! Since we’re friends, now.” She tore the sheet of paper out of the planner and passed it to Saeko, who snapped a picture of it with her phone.
“Your handwriting is so neat,” Saeko commented. “You could make a font out of this.”
“I have, actually,” Hitoka said. “Several times. Since I’m a graphic designer and all.” It worked really well for beauty and makeup campaigns, anything that needed a “feminine feeling”.
“That’s amazing.” Saeko was staring at her with big eyes.
Hitoka felt her face heat again. “Anyway. Let me know when you’re free and we can go wherever you want.”
“Will do!” Saeko grinned. “I’m sure it’ll be way more fun with a friend.”
Hitoka felt her face go from hot to cold. “Yeah!”
A few days later, Hitoka learned that Saeko tended to plan things at much shorter notice than Hitoka usually did when she texted Hitoka, at two o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday, “do u want to go to the Lily tonite”.
“I have work tomorrow,” Hitoka began to text, then backspaced, typed “are you sure? I feel like the mood would be better on a weekend?”
“It’d probably be crowded as hell on a weekend lbr, weds’ll probably be mostly regulars and rando tourists”
She had a point, Hitoka conceded. “What time are you thinking?”
“8? ik u have work in the morning, we don’t have to stay 2 long”
Saeko texted like someone who still had character limits on messages, Hitoka thought with some fondness. “Ok, I can do that!” She added a sticker of a bunny giving a thumbs-up. Then she added a sticker of a deadpan Kageyama giving a thumbs-up to that curry brand he advertised. Saeko responded with a sticker of a different, less cute bunny laughing.
Hitoka put her phone back in her pocket and looked at the to-do list taped to the side of her computer monitor. “Okay,” she told herself, “I just have to finish everything in time to go home, change into clubbing-appropriate attire, and get to the Lily by eight. Easy enough. Probably.”
The last time Hitoka had been to the Lily was in college, right after her twentieth birthday. She didn’t know her limits yet and ended the night throwing up on the sidewalk outside while Yukie and Kaori, her kind upperclassmen, took care of her. She knew better now. She was a woman of the world. She could drink more than two shots without puking afterwards. She could dance in a club in a tight dress–
Wait, did Hitoka own any tight dresses? That fit her?
She looked at her to-do list again. Looked at the time she had left until eight.
And sent a text.
By some miracle, Hitoka managed to clear her to-do list and escape from the office at 4:30, a miracle which did not go unnoticed by her colleagues. “I have a dentist appointment to get to,” she lied shamelessly as she took the empty elevator down and continued to frantically text Fashion Designer Asahi Azumane for shopping advice.
Asahi: I don’t know what lesbians wear to the club! All the lesbians I know don’t go to the club! Like you, usually!
Hitoka: Well, I’m going to the club tonight, and I need to wear something, Asahi-san! Where can I buy a dress that’s cheap and will make me look like an adult who belongs at the club?
Asahi: I don’t know, Harajuku??? I’m so sorry I usually do menswear… I’m pretty sure I know as much as you do about this…. Sorry again
Asahi: oh but whatever you do get maybe stick to dark blues, purples and blacks?
Asahi: and if you can’t get iridescent fabric try to wear shiny jewelry for the lights
Hitoka: that’s already really helpful! Thank you Asahi-san!!!
Asahi: I didn’t do anything… but good luck out there Yachi-chan
Hitoka: thank you! I’ll do my best!
And so Hitoka found herself in some random shop in Harajuku, riffling through the thousand-yen racks for something extra-small in both senses. She landed on an item that could feasibly be a stretchy long-ish skirt, a short dress, or a single pant leg. Probably a dress, she decided. It was black and had cutouts on the sides and top to reveal sensual amounts of bare skin. Where cleavage would go if she had some, probably.
She went to the dressing room and, with some difficulty, shimmied into it. It felt a little bit like hiking a pair of pantyhose all the way up to her neck, but it did make her look like… a high school student pretending to be an adult. And she’d probably need to wear a jacket over it if she wanted to make it home without getting pneumonia afterwards.
“Okay, let’s put that one down as a maybe,” Hitoka said to herself, and checked the time again. Nichome wasn’t super far from Harajuku, but she still needed to go home and do her makeup before going out again… Okay, three more tries and then she’d be done here. She snapped a mirror selfie of the dress and sent it to Asahi-san for his approval.
Asahi: oh… wow!
Hitoka: Asahi-san what do you mean by that
Asahi: …… please remember my specialty is menswear
Asahi: and I am not attracted to women
Asahi: but what if you try a longer skirt with a slit? And a halter top? I don’t know if it’ll look good but it might be worth trying out?
Hitoka: will do!
There were no such items on the thousand-yen rack, but she managed to find a long, flowy black skirt that revealed her entire right leg (and dragged on the floor a little, but she could just roll the top up like she used to do with her uniform skirts in school), and a shimmery silver top with a plunging neckline and no back.
Hitoka snapped a picture. Asahi-san was right: she looked almost elegant like this, and showing off her legs like that made her seem at least a tiny bit taller.
Asahi: yeah!
Good enough, Hitoka supposed, then, after a moment, sent it to Yukie and Kaori for another set of eyes.
Hitoka: is this appropriate Lily attire?
Kaori: sure!
Yukie: very femme, is that what you were going for?
Hitoka: I’m going for whatever gets Tanaka Saeko to rail me
Yukie: yeah this’ll probably work
Yukie: don’t forget to do makeup
Hitoka: thanks guys 😭
The lukewarm reception from her friends was a little discouraging, but she wasn’t exactly trying to seduce any of them so that was probably fine. She went home and did her makeup (not too much, because attempting a smokey eye with no experience seemed like a recipe for disaster), found a pair of wedge heels that made her taller but probably wouldn’t kill her the way stilettos would, and transferred her phone and wallet from her Work Purse to a smaller, less-used Going Out Purse she had impulsively purchased in college for this exact kind of occasion.
She checked her phone for any messages from Saeko.
Saeko: omw c u there!
Hitoka stared at herself in the mirror. Let down her hair. Pulled it back up, higher, to reveal more of her neck (that was sexy, right?) pulled out the dark red lipstick her mother had gifted her “for emergencies” and swiped it on. It seemed like the harder she tried to look older, hotter, cooler, the more she revealed how young and soft and inexperienced she still felt inside. She’d barely even kissed anyone, and she was trying to get with Tanaka Saeko? Who was she kidding?
Hitoka took a deep breath and slapped herself with both hands, leaving her cheeks red and stinging. None of that now. Get it together. Bold and assertive.
She did one last fit-check and headed out.
The Lily was, in fact, not super crowded on a random Wednesday. There wasn’t even a line to get in. Hitoka paid the entry fee and traded her complimentary drink ticket for a “Special White Lily Deluxe”. It tasted mostly like marshmallow vodka, but also contained edible glitter, which was fun. She stood with her back to the bar and took tiny sips, scanning the crowd for Saeko.
“Yacchan!”
She turned around. Saeko beamed at her. She was also standing at the bar, but slightly further down, and appeared to also be holding a Special White Lily Deluxe. Saeko was dressed pretty casually, in a low-cut black tank top and tight red jeans that Hitoka definitely remembered from high school, and also some dreams she’d had on and off since then.
“You look incredible!” Saeko said. She reached out as if to hug her, but stopped, arms hovering, before putting her hands behind her back and smiling awkwardly.
“Thanks,” Hitoka said. “You… too…”
“Please, I always dress like this.” Saeko brushed it off. “Didn’t have time to change after work.”
“I left work early,” Hitoka admitted. “Said I had a dentist appointment.”
“Ha!” Saeko let out a single loud cackle, like a thunderclap. “You never cease to surprise me, Yacchan.” She leaned one arm against the bar, close enough that Hitoka could smell her sweat and perfume, and hear her own heart pounding in her ears.
She downed the rest of the sparkly drink in one gulp and slammed the glass down, feeling the burn slide down her throat and trying not to wince. Saeko raised an eyebrow as she sipped hers, and Hitoka instantly felt like she was trying too hard.
A Reol song played over the speakers, the one that was really popular a few years ago. Hitoka stood up and tilted her head towards the dance floor, trying to invite Saeko without accidentally touching her. “Shall we dance?”
Bold and assertive people did not let not knowing how to dance stop them, Hitoka decided, looking over her shoulder to make sure Saeko was following her. At least she knew the song! Sort of. She’d definitely heard it before.
The dance floor was, as previously mentioned, not very crowded on a random Wednesday. There were a handful of clusters and couples scattered across it, but also enough room to easily walk from one end to the other without bumping into a dozen strangers. Hitoka took a few steps in towards the center and tried to boldly and assertively dance a little bit. The drink she’d chugged was already making her feel just the right amount of buzzed, reminding her she forgot to have dinner before heading out.
“Oh, hello,” said a short-haired woman in business casual. Hitoka squinted, but she didn’t look super familiar. “I remember you. You were at the cafe the other day.”
“Oh! You’re the waitress! I’m surprised you remembered me!”
“I was there too, y’know,” Saeko cut in, but the waitress girl ignored her.
“I always remember the cute girls.” She raised an eyebrow. “Also you two were talking about lesbian bars the whole time and it was hard not to overhear.”
Was this it? Was a girl finally hitting on her? Was she finally going to get some in a public restroom? Hitoka pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. “So did you come here hoping to run into me tonight?”
“Maybe.” The waitress stepped closer.
A warm hand touched Hitoka’s bare shoulder and she jumped. “It’s okay, it’s just me,” Saeko said, whispering into Hitoka’s ear instead of yelling over the synthpop soundtrack. “I’m just gonna go get another drink, do you want anything?”
“Uh…” Saeko’s hand was still on Hitoka’s shoulder. The air was dense, the music was pounding, and Hitoka felt like she was going to vibrate straight out of her skin. “Maybe just a water for now,” she ended up saying.
“Water it is.” Saeko’s fingers slid from one of Hitoka’s shoulders to the other, rotating her away from the waitress slightly, and she whispered into Hitoka’s ear again. Hitoka suppressed a shiver. “Is she bothering you?”
Was Saeko… jealous? No, no way, why would she be. “No, no, everything’s good,” Hitoka said. “Go get your drink!”
She turned back to the waitress, whose eyebrows had shot up to her hairline. “I don’t think your friend wants me chatting with you,” said the waitress.
“She’s just looking out for me,” Hitoka said. The song changed again to something faster paced Hitoka didn’t recognize. Hitoka didn’t listen to any cool music, she realized suddenly. The waitress seemed to be into the song at least. Hitoka tried her best to stay on beat, looking back to the bar to see what Saeko was up to. Chatting up the bartender, it seemed.
The waitress was asking her something, but Hitoka couldn’t hear the question clearly. Too loud. “Sorry, what?”
“Do you want to go outside?” she repeated, louder. “Little quieter there. Or… We could go somewhere else.” She made an expression that Hitoka was sure she’d used to reel in many a girl on many nights like this one. And on another night, it might have worked on Hitoka too. But… Saeko looked back at her, and her expression– her expression looked uncharacteristically scared.
“I’d rather stay with my friend, sorry,” Hitoka said, and then carefully elbowed her way through the dance floor crowd back to the bar where Saeko had sat down with their drinks and a woman in a pantsuit.
“There she is!” Saeko exclaimed, a little too loudly, swinging an arm around Hitoka. Hitoka squinted at the woman in the pantsuit.
“I see,” said the other woman as she stood up. “Sorry for intruding, then.” She rolled her eyes a little as she walked away.
“What was that about?”
“Turns out I’m not ready to meet just any woman,” Saeko answered. “She was a little… she reminded me too much of my last boyfriend.”
“Was that T-tsukishima-san?”
“Ha!” Saeko’s laugh was loud, even over the music. “Akiteru was like two boyfriends ago. We’re still friends, anyway. No, this guy was… not like Akiteru.” She frowned, but more contemplative than sad. “When I was younger, I was definitely more drawn to the really manly biker-types, but now I think I want to try something… softer.”
Her arm was still around Hitoka’s bare shoulders, her hand almost grazing Hitoka’s chest. Hitoka felt that swoopy rollercoaster-panic feeling she always felt when she was about to do something with a woman she was attracted to. Usually she pulled away from it.
This time, she pushed forward. She twisted herself around to face Saeko directly, lacing her fingers through Saeko’s hand as she did so.
“Softer like…?” Hitoka prompted, stepping as close as she possibly dared. Every alarm in her head was screaming to turn back now, but, well. She could regret it in the morning. She stared directly into Saeko’s eyes, and Saeko’s eyes dropped to her mouth, and then they were kissing, and Hitoka felt like she was about to sprout wings and fly.
She had no idea how long they kept kissing, it felt like they’d been going forever and for no time at all. When Saeko pulled away, flushed and sweaty, and said something about going to a hotel, Hitoka could only nod.
The next day, she called out of work.
~
“Oh my God, congrats!” Hitoka’s coworker squealed.
Hitoka moved her hand so the ring caught the light better, glittering like a star. The simple, classic design went so well with her work outfits. Every time she looked at it, she felt her heart beat faster. Saeko had a great eye. “I know, right! I almost can’t believe it!”