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Mioda had tried to recruit Saionji, who turned her nose up at the notion. Then it had been Koizumi, who had gone back and forth for a bit before deciding everything on the menu sounded ‘a bit too heavy for her personal tastes, that’s all’. That was how Mikan found herself in a Western style breakfast place with medium sunlight pouring through the windows on a school morning, staring at vinyl upholstered booths and wooden dining chairs, assessing the ullages of salt shakers and ketchup bottles, sitting across from a rockstar.
“Mikan-chan! Whatcha thinkin’ about?”
Mikan peeked over her menu, having not fully read it yet but already beginning to understand Koizumi’s rationale– the portions seem… bigger than usual here. “Oh, me? Me… um… I… just… just the menu.”
Shit! Why had it taken her so long to answer?
Mioda laughed anyway. “Yeah, it’s longer than what I’m used to too! They got a lot of good stuff here though, huh? Whatcha feeling? Meat? Biscuits? Ibuki could destroy a biscuit with gravy right now…”
“Um…” Mikan stuttered, burying her face back in the menu. “Um… I’m still not sure yet… sorry. What… what sounds good to you?”
She grimaced inwardly at herself– she said ‘biscuits’… now she’s going to think you weren’t listening…! –and quickly clarified, “Um, specifically, um, is there any name– name– name– …name. Name… of any item?”
“I’m trying to find something I can’t just get anywhere… I was actually thinking French toast, you know? I haven’t had it in so long but if the portions are gonna be a bit bigger… ugh, maybe not.”
Mioda sounded disappointed, and Mikan’s anxiety grew. If I can find something kind of like French toast… but less heavy, it’ll make Mioda happy… maybe she… maybe she won’t be disappointed in me.
With her new objective, Mikan began perusing the menu more discerningly, carefully reading the descriptions of each item in order. Mioda, who had been skimming the menu, flipped it around to the back much quicker and brightened. “This sounds kind of like something I could finish! Back side, top right.”
“Bei… ni-eh…” Mikan sounded out, looking quizzically at Mioda. “Beignet? What is that?”
“It’s like a…!” Ibuki trailed off, not being able to conjure an equivalent. “I think it’s like a croissant. Anyway, it says we can split ’em, see?” Ibuki indicated the description below the item with a long, matte black nail, a small, sparkly rhinestone placed just above the center of her cuticle. “So, three for me and three for you.”
Mikan smiled. “Okay. If that’s what you want, Mioda-san.”
“Mikan-chan! Don’t ‘Mioda-san’ Ibuki-chan,” Ibuki scolded, still parsing the menu. “Anyway, I think that’s about all I can handle! You know what that means!”
“Um…” Mikan racked her brain. “It… means you want me to finish it if you… can’t?”
“No! It means we gotta come back until we’ve tried the whole menu!” Ibuki hesitated. “But you can order something else if you think you’ll still be hungry.”
The whole menu… she’s not serious, right? I definitely don’t have money for that.
“Okay. Maybe… maybe just this.” Mikan sighed and pointed, finding ‘freshly cut fruit’ to be appetizing. It would also be good to have something with juice– Mikan drank her water a bit too hastily earlier during the lapses in conversation, and her glass was nearly half-empty… I can’t ask for a refill either… I just… have to make it work… so I won’t get thirsty…
Ibuki tilted her head to one side. “Are you good?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good…”
Mikan stared out the window– the entire wall was a window, and it was nice, really. The western breakfast place– diner?– faced some distant train tracks– for freight trains… the kinds that carry things, not people– occluded by thick shrubbery. It added to the isolated feel of the establishment, as if Mikan was visiting something that existed outside of reality. At the very least, it existed well outside of Japan. She almost felt as though she could disappear here, stepping over the threshhold into another life and maybe turning into an anonymous someone else for thirty or forty-five minutes, until Ibuki’s shoe tapped her knee from under the table.
“Do you like this song, Mikan-chan? It’s a little loud in here, so you have good hearing too, huh?”
“What? …Sorry.” Mikan shook her head, snapping herself out of her daze. “Sorry.”
“You were lipsyncing!” Ibuki continued brightly. “So you like this song, huh?”
Mikan listened a bit more discerningly. It was a popular song she’d never looked up the lyrics to, but somehow every word seemed to fill itself in her head naturally. “It’s just a song I’ve heard a lot before. But… I think I like it…”
Ibuki grinned. “Huh, I just never really thought you were the kind of person to listen to music.” She adjusted herself in her seat. “That’s kind of weird to say! Music’s just so ubiquitous, you know? Like, you know everyone listens to it, but sometimes you just see someone that it never occurs to you they would know songs like that!”
Mikan nodded. “‘Ubiquitous’…”
She sighed, and Ibuki stiffened for a second, finally asking, “Everything’s okay, right, Mikan-chan?”
Mikan nodded, forcing a small smile, trying to stay present for Ibuki. The food arrived shortly after, small fried dough balls capped with a mountain of powdered sugar and two metal cups brimming with thick, syrupy orange marmalade.
“Ooh, we so made the right choice! Look at all this goodness!” Ibuki exclaimed, smoothing her napkin out over her lap as their server placed Mikan’s small fruit cup between the two, assured them quickly, and left.
Mikan gave her a small wave before contending with the food– Ibuki seemed happy, but to Mikan, it just looked like a lot of sugar… still, she wouldn’t be eating any for a while after this. Maybe… maybe for now she’d just try to enjoy it too.
“Hiyoko-chan’s missing out!” Ibuki laughed, picking up a powder-caked beignet with a napkin and still shaking a sizeable amount of powdered sugar off. “She’d be so pissed… that bitch loves her sugar. We get bragging rights later! Do cheers with me Mikan-chan!”
Mikan picked up one of her own and extended her hand slightly across the table to touch it to Ibuki’s before dipping it into the marmalade. The consistency of the sugar instantly turned to that of icing, and Mikan tried to use it to her advantage in taking a bite and trying not to spill. It’s sweet… but… it’s still making my mouth dry. Mikan sipped her water, still trying to ration it, calculating the ratio of water to beignet to fruit she should eat so she wouldn’t get thirsty. “Mm, it’s good,” Mikan smiled, and her tiny approval made Ibuki light up even more.
The marmalade was getting to be Mikan’s favorite part, and the water-beignet-fruit-beignet-repeat strategy she’d settled on continued to work for a bit before she found her water and fruit cup close to empty. Ibuki continued to make noise happily and chatter intermittently to Mikan, but the conversation had slowed since the two began eating. Mikan took a break to wipe some powdered sugar from the table with a napkin, but only succeeding in dispersing it further into the wood grain. Frowning, she wiped at the condensation on her cup and wiped the table again, this time successfully clearing the mess. I shouldn’t… make the servers do more work than they have to. Cleaning up after me… refilling my glass…
Her gaze lingered on her water and she inhaled, preparing to make the most of what remained. As she returned to their shared plate, Ibuki suddenly leaned over, bracing her feet on the metal footrest of her stool, and poured some of her ice-cold water into Mikan’s glass. “Special delivery!”
“Whoa!” Mikan’s eyes widened in surprise, moving to stop the other girl. “Ibuki-chan you need to– stay hydrated too!”
“Ibuki’s fine! But she’s been catching you looking at your water and our server, so she thinks you could use it more than her. At least now. But you owe me a strawberry!”
Ibuki’s hand plucked the last strawberry from Mikan’s bowl, adding, “And a couple blueberries.”
“Thank you,” Mikan sighed, trying to keep herself from getting overwhelmed as Ibuki picked out her share of fruit. “But… you… didn’t have to do that. I don’t… want to take your water away.”
“Eh! Just think of it as an indirect kiss,” Ibuki dismissed her, waving her hand and stuffing the last of her beignet into her mouth before finishing her own glass of water. “Alright, once you’re finished, let’s hit it! What’d you think?”
“It was good… thanks for the water, again” Mikan said with a sigh, grateful for the replenished water, feeling much better as she finished it along with her food. “I… it was a lot of sugar, I’m… a little worried you might get… a sugar crash, though.”
“Nah, Ibuki doesn’t get those anymore! Not after… the accident.”
“Oh… sorry for… sorry to hear you had an accident.” Mikan looked away, then, feeling a renewed sense of responsibility for the other girl again, made eye contact she’d been avoiding. “But actually I… it seemed like a lot more sugar than we usually eat… and on top of the fruit and… everything… I… I think you should have this.”
She procured a small hard candy from her uniform pocket and handed it to Ibuki, who inspected the wrapper curiously. “Sorry, I have lychee too if you like that. I should have asked first, I’m sorry.”
“Guava! How’d you know Ibuki liked these little things?” Ibuki grinned and pocketed the small gift. “But how does it make any sense to eat more sugar when you’re having a sugar crash?”
“Okay well,” Mikan shifted, “When you… when you eat a lot of sugar your blood… blood sugar rises rapidly so… basically when that happens your body produces the hormone insulin so the sugar can move into cells from the bloodstream so you… well, that’s how it’s used as short-term energy– well, for carbohydrates it is at least, since they’re water-soluble, for triglycerides– uh, lipids in your bloodstream, they store… long term energy since they're water-insoluble, anyway, um, sorry, um–”
Mikan took a deep breath to collect herself, closing her eyes to remind herself not to go off-topic and reciting, “Anyway, when that happens, where too much insulin is produced to account for the large amount of sugar you just ate, it’s called reactive hypoglycemia and you’ll need to balance out the extra insulin in your body with more sugar, so just eat that candy when you start to feel a little tired or… or sick, it should be in about maybe two to four hours? I… I… sorry for rambling. Sorry. I’m– I’m– I’m– I’m sorry.”
Mikan cracked an eye open to see if Ibuki had gotten bored of her and started playing on her cellphone, but Ibuki was still looking directly at her and… even smiling?
“Hey, you know what? Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain all of it, Mikan-chan!”
“What?” Mikan swallowed. “You don’t care that I rambled…? I thought it was rude to talk for so long…”
“Yeah, so many times people will just tell Ibuki-chan what to do and not even give any kind of explanation! It’s so… so patronizing sometimes, you know? Like, they can’t even give Ibuki-chan the dignity of offering an explanation, like she’s not going to understand it or something, so they don’t even try– and like, just saying you have to do something ‘because you should’ isn’t a reason! And that just makes Ibuki-chan just not want to do whatever the hell they say! But you… actually took the time to explain. So… I appreciate it.”
Mikan smoothed her uniform– it needs an iron, fuck…– and granted herself a small smile. “Um, you’re welcome, Ibuki-chan. I… if you ever need anything else, just, um… let me know, please. And I’ll explain it to you. Thanks for… thanks for… suggesting breakfast.”
“Thanks for coming with me! It would’ve so totally sucked if Ibuki-chan had to eat all by herself.”
I… eat by myself a lot… Mikan thought dejectedly, but surmised it would be different for Ibuki, being a famous rockstar. Despite her slight hurt, she decided it would be best not to voice it. “Um… yeah… I bet people… people expect to see you around others since you’re famous.”
“Oh yeah,” Ibuki sighed, rolling her eyes and blowing her cheeks out. “When I went solo, I couldn’t get people to shut up about it. Everybody was going on and on about how I was doing the wrong thing… I actually spent a lot of time alone because my former band members didn’t take it all that well. But I just had to be true to myself, you know?”
Mikan nodded because it seemed like the thing to do. Maybe it feels bad to not have any friends from the start, but to have friends and lose them… is that almost scarier?
“Anyway!” Ibuki snapped out of it and hopped off her barstool. “I had a way nicer time just in this hour than I used to have with people who weren’t ever actually that great of friends to me!”
Relief washed over Mikan, and she felt an internal rush at having placed higher than someone else. Her worries still flooded her mind– maybe she’d like me less if we spend more time together… maybe it’s recency bias, maybe it’s that… that familiarity breeds contempt thing– but she was able to override them a bit more easily than usual. It could have been the mild thrill of the outing going better than expected, or the sugar in her bloodstream already making her a bit more energetic, but she followed Ibuki out of the restaurant and stepped a bit more quickly to walk beside her, only letting out a slightly embarrassing surprised noise when Ibuki grabbed her hand and began to swing it between them.