Chapter Text
Ever since moving to Japan semi-permanently, Jacqueline had become painfully aware that there were few things sadder than a teenage girl with no one to hang out with.
At its core, the problem was that there weren’t many people that Jacqueline would call her friends. Growing up, the other kids had found her taste for violence and bloodshed so off-putting that they went out of their way to avoid her, and nowadays she was so busy with her various responsibilities with the Universal Chōjin Committee that there was just no time to go and meet someone new and see if they happened to click. That only left her family, who counting as friends would be even sadder, the other Justice Chōjin stationed in Japan, who barely had time for themselves as it was, let alone for her, and the small group of humans that had slowly but surely ingrained themselves into their lives.
So, when Rinko texted her to ask if she’d like to meet up sometime, Jacqueline practically jumped at the chance.
Frankly, she had only given her number to Rinko as a token in hopes of leaving the bad blood between them behind; she hadn’t expected Rinko to actually use it (save, maybe, for some kind of emergency). Still, Rinko was around her age, shared her passion for chōjin wrestling and, despite being human, had stuck with the Justice Chōjin through thick and thin; for all their differences, Rinko was someone Jacqueline would be happy to count as a friend.
After some (alright, a lot of) back and forth, they settled on meeting in Ikebukuro, at a café that Jacqueline had helped arrange promotional materials for as part of an Idol Chōjin-themed event. She had seen the proposed layout and signed off samples of both the decoration and the merchandise, but she hadn’t had the chance to see how the whole thing actually looked once put together, and Rinko had apparently given up on getting to go after failing to get a reservation three times in a row.
“Being the next chairwoman has its benefits, huh?” Rinko teased as the hostess ushered them inside, right past the dozen or so people already waiting. “We have the entire place to ourselves for the next hour! It’s even better than a regular reservation!”
“Well, I couldn’t ask them to bump someone off the list, you know? But the staff has to get here early to get everything ready.”
Instead of heading straight to their table, she and Rinko took the opportunity to take a look around while the place was still empty.
It was no wonder that reservations kept selling out as soon as they were available; leaving aside the sheer popularity of the Idol Chōjin, Jacqueline was pleased to find that it seemed as if a good deal of effort had been made to make it all look as nice as possible – large scrolls of the various wrestlers showing off their ring gear hung from the walls, while a row of life-sized cardboard standees of them wearing waiter uniforms had been placed beside a table and a chair for the customers to take a photo at while they pretended to be served by their favorite chōjin. The food was like that, too, with the dishes (all things inspired by the different Idol Chōjin’s places of origin, of course) being served on top of an underplate shaped like a wrestling ring that people could take home for an extra fee.
“Oh, the bromide have tag team variants! If you order Kevin’s fish and chips and Scarface’s espresso, you get a B-Evo one of them together on top of their individual ones!” Rinko said, pointing at the counter where all the merchandise samples had been laid out for people to check out. That photo in particular was styled like a candid shot and had Kevin and Scarface in casual outfits, but instead of their own signature colors, Kevin was wearing a red shirt and Scarface was wearing a blue sweater.
“Cool, right? That was my idea.” Unfortunately, the only other group photo they’d managed to take of Kevin had been for The Young Masters, since he had staunchly refused to pose with his father and Warsman had been impossible to reach. Maybe next time. “Kevin might like to call himself a lone wolf, but that only makes it even cuter when he lets it show how much he cares.”
“We call that gap moe! It’s the charm of someone having an unexpected side!”
“Don’t tell anyone,” she began, lowering her voice until she was sure none of the staff could hear them and waited for Rinko to nod before continuing. “But whenever Kevin has a photoshoot with Mantaro, Mantaro spends half the time teasing him about the way the stylists fuss over him. Kevin always acts like he’s furious about it, but the truth is that Mantaro makes him all flustered.”
Jacqueline tried to keep her voice down as the memory of Kevin struggling to follow the directions of the photographer while arguing with Mantaro made her giggle, but as soon as Rinko joined, she couldn’t help herself anymore, and the two ended up bursting into laughter.
However, for some reason, the moment turned increasingly awkward until, instead of going back to chatting excitedly about the food or the decoration, silence lingered as Rinko stared at her with a serious look on her face. Had she done something wrong? Things had been going really well, hadn’t they?
“Let’s go sit. I’m starving,” Jacqueline said, hoping that it was just her imagination.
But it wasn’t just her imagination.
The weird looks from Rinko continued as they headed to their table, as they were given the menus, and even as she tried to lighten the mood by talking about the way she’d had to shut down the idea of making Jade’s dish green – all the way until Jacqueline finally got tired of putting up with the shift in mood and cleared her throat while staring back.
“Jacqueline… is there any chance that you…” Rinko straightened up in her seat. “Jacqueline, do you like boys’ love?”
“Huh?”
“You know, like… romance between guys.”
“What?!”
“It’s just that… when I hear you talk about the bonds between chōjin wrestlers…” She must have looked as dumbfounded as she felt, because Rinko began trailing off, only to wave her hand in a dismissive gesture a second after. “No, never mind. Forget I said anything.”
“You can’t say something like that and then go ‘never mind’! What did you mean by that, Rinko? Romance between guys?”
“You really don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I did?!”
“Um. Well. Romance between men is known as boys’ love… there are fans who like to imagine what it would be like if certain chōjin wrestlers were into each other, and they talk about it with other fans who also like it.”
“Like gossip mags?”
“No! Yes. No. It’s not about butting into their personal lives, it’s more like–” By then, Rinko’s face was so red that Jacqueline actually did consider just dropping it. “You have read romance manga, right? Like that.”
The more Rinko spoke, the less Jacqueline understood. Sure, some wrestlers had well-known and moving love stories like Robin Mask with Alicia, but with each other...?
Suddenly, something occurred to her.
“Rinko, are you asking because you like it?”
“N-no!”
“You do!”
“Hey, weren’t you hungry? Let’s call the waitress over.”
From that point on, no matter how many times Jacqueline tried to bring the conversation back around to the topic of “boys’ love”, she simply couldn’t. After the brief interruption by the waitress, they got distracted by Rinko wanting to take a photo of them together, then the food arrived and they wanted to eat it while it was still warm, and so on until, before she knew it, their hour was up.
_______
Of course, Jacqueline didn’t need to be told that handsome chōjin wrestlers tended to end up with large followings of women. It was as true now as it had been during the time of the previous Idol Chōjin, and she had gotten to see it firsthand more than once with the way girls flocked to see the likes of Scarface, Checkmate and Jade fight — the thing was, for as common as it was to hear of women who fantasized about marrying their favorite wrestler, she had never heard about anyone who fantasized about them being with someone else, let alone another guy.
The thought of there being a whole type of wrestling fan that she knew nothing about wouldn’t stop bothering her. It wasn’t just curiosity: as part of the Universal Committee, it had become a matter of pride.
Jacqueline had been prepared to find something scandalous, Rinko’s reaction had been enough to clue her into the fact that it was something people treated with a certain amount of discretion. Still, it was one thing to imagine it and another completely different one to actually see it, and she definitely hadn’t been ready for a drawing of Warsman holding onto a ring’s second rope to keep his footing while Kevin kissed him to pop up and take about half her screen.
Click. Click. Click
More drawings. Chloe helping Kevin put on his armor and letting his hands linger on Kevin’s body a moment too long. Kevin with an arm around Warsman’s waist while they talked to Robin. From cute drawings that showed way more enthusiasm than skill to drawings that could be mistaken for the work of professionals.
Click. Click. Click
A comment in particular caught her attention.
“I wasn’t sure what to think when Kevin showed up with a coach at the Olympics, but it turned out to be Warsman… it’s no surprise that they grew so close so quickly,” it read. “I don’t think Kevin would have gotten the belt if it had been anybody else. It’s like they were fated to meet and win together.”
Jacqueline thought back to finals. At the time, she’d figured that the realization that she’d rather see chōjin fight and persevere through their bonds of friendship had come solely from being moved by the way Mantaro had tried his hardest all the way to the very end, but it hadn’t been just that. Her heart had skipped a beat when she’d heard Chloe declare himself Kevin’s second, and even now, she felt it whenever the image of Kevin going through the trouble of collecting the pieces of Chloe’s mask and putting it back together so that he could carry it with him crossed her mind.
Kevin had grown much friendlier since then, but he was still far from mellow. And as much nicer as he’d become, it was hard to deny that there was a particular gentleness that Kevin seemed to reserve exclusively for Warsman.
Jacqueline closed the page and took out her phone.
“Rinko, are you free on Friday?”