I like all the theories. I like to imagine the two dozen other ways I could go about doing this story. Overwhelming, but nice. It really gets the imagination going.
My one path is set, though.
Happy cuddly domestic Aya and Miki. Would anybody kill me if I wrote ten chapters of pure fluff like that? (Don't worry. I won't. Hahaha.)
Chapter 3"Miki Miki Mikkiiiiiiiiiiii!" I cry into the phone.
"Hi, Gaki-san," she sighs.
I pause.
"Let's make that twenty days of breakfast, not fifteen," I say in a monotone.
"Okay, okay!" she squeaks. "Sorry. What's up?"
"You haven't checked your messages yet..." I assume.
"Um, no, not yet. I haven't had time to," she says quietly.
"Check them, call whoever you need to call back, and then call me back. Okay?" I say, chipper.
"What's-" she begins, but I hang up on her with a sneaky smile, excited about the news she's about to find out.
It's lunch time for most working people, but I've already eaten. I sit on the couch and nod off while daydreaming about Miki, my phone still in my hand.
About half an hour later, my phone starts to ring and vibrate.
"And I was just getting to the good part," I say into the phone.
"Hi...? Of what?" Miki asks, sounding serious and confused.
I love to bother her at work. She gets very focused there, so when I call her in the middle of a busy day, she always seems a little thrown off balance if I say things that aren't appropriate for the workplace (or things that plain don't make sense).
"Never mind. I'll show you later."
I grin to myself because I can imagine her nodding thoughtfully and not thinking about anything unclean.
Or maybe that's just what she wants me to believe. I bet her composed demeanour at work is all an act. Maybe somebody is within hearing distance and she needs to remain cool.
"Ah, right!" she speaks up. "Aya, I talked to Tsunku-san."
I let out a laugh.
"Isn't it great? This idea of a reunion?" I ask.
My enthusiasm may be born out of boredom and lack of work, but it feels real enough to me.
"Yeah, it is a great idea..." Miki mumbles and trails off.
I can sense there's a 'but' coming.
"But?"
She hesitates to answer, taking a few breaths and trying to start her sentence a few times over.
"I don't know, Aya. I'm really busy right now. I mean, not right
now now, but in general. These days. I don't know if I could handle what I've got going on now, plus a Hellopro reunion."
My heart cries out to her because she suddenly seems so stressed out. Before my otherworldly Hokkaido ordeal, I noticed that the stress was piling up on her, but now I think it's about to reach a critical level. The kind of level where it's my duty to step up and give her a hand.
I forget about the Project reunion for a minute.
"Don't worry about it, Miki. How about we talk later? Tonight or something," I suggest.
She sighs, maybe feeling bad because she thinks she's let me down.
"That would be good," she says.
Maybe there's something else bothering her. She sounds so tired. I don't ask, though. I've learned that if she has something to tell me, she'll tell me.
"Can I do anything to help you?"
There's a pensive silence for a moment.
"Just be home when I get back?" she asks in a tiny, hopeful voice that almost sounds a bit nervous. I want to tell her not to worry and that I'm not about to go out and walk into the middle of a gang fight.
"Sure," is all I end up saying. "I'll be here."
"Thanks, Aya. Dunno what I'd do without you."
She sounds a little cheered up, and we say goodbye.
Once the phone is disconnected, my day's mission changes from one of lazing around to one of thinking up ways to cheer up my number one Miki.
==
Miki gets to my place just after eight in the evening. I study her face carefully and decide that she looks more relieved than anything else. It's been a long day for her, and I bet she's looking forward to lying down and passing out in comfort.
"What's for dinner??" she asks right after removing her shoes, jumping onto my back excitedly. I almost fall over.
So much for my 'Miki wants to chill out' theory. I've never seen her more lively.
"Watch out!" I cry as I fall forward and catch myself on the wall.
She gets off of me and goes to the kitchen without any apology.
"I'm starving," she sings, opening up the refrigerator and popping her head in.
I chase after her, muttering under my breath about children and behavioural problems.
"How old are you again?" I ask her, grabbing a handful of her jacket and pulling her out of the fridge.
"Twen-ty-fiiiiive," she sings, taking four steps towards me and backing me up against the sink. "And how old are you? Thirty-two?"
I jab her in the stomach hard. She doubles over in exaggerated pain, but stays put, not letting me get away.
"I don't approve of your sadistic values, Aya-chan," she says in a lecturing tone.
I start to laugh in disbelief. As if Little Miss Aggressive should be talking.
"Anyway," she smiles saucily. "I..." she moves her face in closer to mine.
"...just..."
Closer.
"...want..."
Closer. Her nose touches mine and my lips tingle with anticipation.
"... Dinnerrrrrrrrr!"
She jumps away from me and goes back to the fridge, humming an unrecognizable tune to herself.
I feel like I'm in a drama where the woman finds out her boyfriend is an alien, but has to live with him because of some clause in some cosmic contract that states she can't leave him lest the world come to an end.
If I really did write that book about my life, it would be a bestseller, I think, remembering my plan to one day prove to the rest of the world that Miki is legally crazy.
Since I'm bound by many things, though, I follow Miki back to the fridge and put my chin on her shoulder as she studies my food.
"You're in a good mood. What happened?" I ask.
"I came home and got to see you," she replies as she opens up a container that's holding the last few umeboshi that my mother sent me a few weeks ago from my hometown.
"Home? This isn't your home. This is my home," I tease.
I reach my arms around her from behind and take the container out of her hands, closing it and putting it back where it came from. I'm saving those for later.
"'Home is where the heart is!'" she quotes in English.
I know that one. When she learned it half a year ago, she wouldn't stop saying it to me. While it annoyed me, it did prove that repetition is the best way to learn a language.
"Indeed," I say, putting my nose into her hair.
"Oh! What's in here?" she ponders aloud, opening up another container. It's the leftovers from my lunch. "Can I have this?" she asks like a little puppy dog.
I nod and tell her she can finish it off. I let go of her so that she can heat it up in the microwave.
"You sounded really stressed out today on the phone," I say, leaning against the counter and folding my arms across my torso.
"Oh, yeah. That. I've just been having a few rough days lately," she says, now rummaging through the fridge again and taking out an apple. "I had some disagreements with some, um, colleagues."
She takes out the cutting board and a knife and starts peeling the apple.
"Did you have a fight?" I ask, knowing that Miki is well-known for finding herself in the middle of an argument because she's too stubborn to back down.
"No, not a fight," she says, not looking at me, but focusing on her apple. "But he and I didn't see eye-to-eye. It was... unpleasant."
That's Miki's polite way of saying "I almost ripped his head off."
"Is everything else okay?" I ask, moving to stand beside her and gathering the peeled apple skin in order to throw it out.
She shrugs.
"Life is life."
I figure there must be something going on.
"Come on, Miki. I know you better than that," I say lightly, reaching over to toss the apple skins into the trash.
She stops chopping and looks at me directly.
"These meetings are... close to being concluded," she says carefully. "I can let you know the... results... by the end of the week."
She speaks in such a slow and mysterious tone. I'm filled with an anxious need to know what these secret meetings are all about.
"Is everything okay?" I ask, my eyebrows knit together with concern. "You're not in trouble, are you?"
Miki smiles subtly and touches my cheek with her hands that are covered in apple juice. Somehow, getting my face dirty doesn't seem to matter because she looks so serious. It's like she's trying to tell me a lot more than the words she's speaking with her voice. Alerting me to some fact that she's not allowed to talk about, urging me on to guess what's on her mind.
"Don't worry about me, Aya. I'm fine," she says confidently but with a hint of regret.
Maybe somebody else she works with is going to be fired. Or maybe they're making some big decision that some people will inevitably suffer from.
I gaze into her eyes and try to decipher a message that might not even be there. It might just be in my mind.
In my heart, I will it to all be my imagination. I can understand if she can't give me any information about work. I respect that we can't tell each other everything about the secret decisions made behind the closed doors of our separate workplaces. As long as she's not suffering, she can keep all the business secrets she wants. But if at any point something damages her, I will jump in there to save her.
"Hey, Aya, what was that thing you said you wanted to show me?" she asks with reference to our phone conversation during lunch break, looking back down at her apple and slicing it up neatly.
My mouth widens into a devilish smile that she can't see.
"Hmm," I hum. "Well, not really
show, but... finish up your dinner and I'll let you know."
I lean my shoulder against hers and she looks at me. She sees my smile, and a small, knowing one breaks out on her face. She's figured out what zone my mind is in. She likes it, and she's amused by me. Nothing gets her more excited than when I'm feeling... frisky. She finishes chopping up the apple very quickly and very sloppily.
That night we forget to talk about Tsunku and the Hello! Project reunion. Who cares about that kind of thing when you have other, more important people - I mean things - to do?