Friday 12:30
The girls looked up from the small booth that they were sitting as they
saw their friend enter the Sakana café. Picking up their drinks,
they moved to a bigger table to accommodate the friends who would be arriving
shortly after their classes. Ami’s punctual arrival always indicated
that Mamoru would soon be arriving, and then Rei’s arrival from her class
at the far end of the campus. After a week, they were finally settling
into university life with few dramas. Despite that they never saw
each other during lectures due to completely different subjects, they were
adamant that they would meet for lunch daily if they were not at lectures
and sometimes, lunch spanned over two hours to accommodate for all of them.
Slyly, Minako looked at Ami, “how have you been, enjoying skating these
days, anything interesting happen to your life?”
“Hmm?” Ami glanced at their curious faces over the rim of her glasses
as she pretended to study the by-now familiar menu, “nothing special’s
happened.”
“Nothing special at all?”
“Oh, I fell when I was skating, I must have hit my ribs, I could hardly
sleep last night because I was in so much pain when I was breathing.
Other than that, nothing much happened.” Ami shrugged off the stares
as she ordered her usual cup of strong tea, if nothing else, she was now
sure that the whole meeting had been set up by them. She couldn’t
help but smile as their faces fell from the disappointment of the implication
that Kunki had not been to see her.
“Aren’t you eating anything?” Makoto asked, realizing that their
little friend had not ordered her usual sandwich but only a cup of tea.
“I thought that since I didn’t have any classes on Friday afternoons, I’d
go out for lunch a bit later on today – I don’t know, maybe at about… one?”
“Who are you having lunch with? I thought that your mother was working
at Juuban?” Minako asked, her brows once again rising with suspicions.
“Just someone that…” Ami paused as she saw the reflection of a familiar
figure coming into the café, she wasn’t sure if she had been save
or not, “oh no.”
The girls giggled as they saw Zoicite enter and coming towards them, if
there was a possibility that he might just be entering the café
innocently for lunch, the thought did not cross their minds. They
could only attach their impressions of their previous encounters with him
– that of a love sick man caught in a time span that was not his own.
His knowledge and source of 17th century romantic poetic discourses seemed
endless, and his sensibility of the ridiculousness of it all seemed lost
upon him. He did not seem to realize how out of place it sounded,
nor did his admirers - who simply thought that it accentuated his intelligence
and amorous qualities. To the girls, they found his display a form
of comedic entertainment that rivaled the performance of any circus clown,
and Ami-chan’s struggle to remain polite to his continual tries of seduction
just as amusing
As they had predicted, he stopped at their table and indicated that he
wanted to sit with them and Ami wordlessly gave him her permission to do
so. Without his usual flair and introduction, he launched straight
to the point of his addressing her, “I want to apologize for my behaviour
to you during the past year or so that I’ve known you, I know, or, I should
have known how hard it would be for you to let go of the past and completely
accept me for who I am now. And in a way, I… I tried to get you to
accept me and us for someone that we were several millenniums ago.
I didn’t even try to know you for the person that you are now, it was as
though I just thought that everything would fall into place, into what
it was before, and I scared you away…. I want to try again, I want to at
least be friends with you, that is, if you’ll let me.”
Ami tried to respond to his request and compose herself at the same time,
but he held up his fingers and pressed them to her lips.
“Shh… let me finish before I lose all my nerves,” he smiled and breathed
loudly, “I was being too presumptuous about who you would be, I never thought
that you would be a person of your own right, I thought… I thought that
you would just be here, waiting to be mine again. Now I know, you
are not someone that I can just own, I know that you are different, and
I know that you are somewhat scared of me. But the truth is, I am
Tsuzuki Asano, and you are Ami Mizuno, not who we were before. That’s
why I’m asking you for a chance to start all over again, to get to know
each other without any of the presumptions and memories of the past of
each other. I’m not asking for an answer now, you’ll need time to
think – you know where to find me, I practice between 5-7pm everyday, just
tell me when you decide, okay?”
He removed his fingers slowly and Ami nodded mutely, her eyes wide and
round, still trying to absorb the new him, the person who no longer carried
the burdens and identity of Zoicite, this person had now returned to become
his own person and resumed the personality of the person he was prior to
having been awaken.
She did not move from her position after he had left his seat to join another
table of his friends, it was not a little while until she slumped into
her chair and sighed, “why me?” she whined uncharacteristically as she
leaned forward and dropped her forehead in her palms to massage the tension
headache that had just started.
“So, what are you going to do?” Usagi asked.
“Give him a chance to be friends I guess,” Ami mumbled more to herself
than anyone else, “it wouldn’t be fair otherwise, especially after…” she
trailed of without finishing her sentence as her mind wandered off into
another world of her own.
The others raised an eyebrow at her last comment but did not question it
as they noticed that her eyes had gazed over whilst thinking. Ami
did not notice when Rei or Mamoru had joined their table, to her, time
seemed to have been set still as the divine feelings of deja-vu took over
her mind and battled with her scientific rationale. To be asked by
two different people in two days to forgive their past and restart a relationship,
it was strange to her that such a coincidence would occur. It was
as though her loss of a friend earlier had caused Deus to regret and return
her two friends in return. In a way, her life was more fulfilled
that it had ever been despite the loss of Asuka, with Bai-S-kun, and Dr
Daiki who had been treating her like a daughter, she felt as though all
her needs had been looked after and settled by the best of hands.
It was only when a large plate of fried rice landed next to her for Mamoru
that she woke from her reverie – she had jumped out of her stool and would
have fallen to the ground had Makoto and Minako not grabbed hold of her
from across the table. By the time she was fully aware of what had
happened, she found herself the center of attention as they laughed as
though she had made a terrific joke. With an embarrassed laugh, she
took a large sip of tea and hid behind the large circumference of the bowl-sized
teacup. Holding the cup so close to her face she felt the hot steam
infuse into the pores of her skin, refreshing and replenishing her from
the anxiety attack that had just occurred. Studying each leaf in
the bottom of the cup as she swirled around, she found herself wondering
if her existence was like a tealeaf, swaying and turning with the currents
but never able to grasp on to reality and push against the tides.
Whilst she had always believed that one’s life was made and not destined,
the reemergence of the matters and people from the past of this existence
and of the past existence threatened to overtake her life and put it into
turmoil. What was she talking about? Her life was already in
shambles, in tatters, it was as though everyone decided that now she was
turning nineteen years old in a few days, they would throw all of life’s
troubles on top of her and see if they could bury her before she had her
birthday.
She exhaled all of the air from her lungs and invited the warm steam into
her body, feeling the warmth spread into her lungs, through the capillaries
from her face, entering through her bloodstream to course through the whole
of her body and melting each strain that was within her. The fragrance
of the tea infected her as it entered her nostrils and became part of her,
the heat stung her fingertips but it did not serve to ground her in reality
as her mind wandered into her memories of with her father. Ami had
been introduced to the art of enjoying good tea by her father, they had
taken picnics in the secluded countryside by the lakes, they would sit
and paint, and enjoy freshly brewed tea.
When she finally looked up at her friends who had looked at her in concern,
she realized the dampness of her face and immediately grabbed a tissue
to wipe it dry. She wasn’t sure if those were tears or merely the
steam that came from the tea. Looking at her watch, her eyes widened,
“I’m late, I’ll see you after training at 5!” Without saying another
word, she left the café as though she were a windstorm sweeping
outwards.
Makoto laughed at their usually quiet friend’s display, “I wonder if it’s
infectious?”
“Good God I hope not!” Rei replied in mock seriousness as she took
a sip from her own drink, “Minako-chan is already starting to act like
Usagi-san, imagine…”
“Hey! That’s mean!!” Minako and Usagi started simultaneously
poking their tongues out at Rei. As they saw the spontaneity yet
identical timing of their actions, all five of them started laughing promptly
forgetting that they felt insulted when they had first heard the remark.
1:12pm
“Mi-chan, you’re late,” he said dryly, his hands jammed in his pockets,
without even turning to see that it was she who was approaching him.
Her throat perched with dryness due to her running, Ami was not amused
that such would be the first words of greeting she received as she finally
stood next to him, “are you going to tell me that you want to reschedule
to another time then?”
“Well, I am rather busy today, after all, you have held up my schedule
for twelve minutes, I wouldn’t know how to catch up on the time lost.”
Clearly annoyed, Ami started walking ahead of him, “you can give me a call
when your schedule clears up then, I’ll see you later.”
He exhaled, his hand touched her shoulder as he reached out and held onto
her, waiting for her to turn, he looked at her for the first time since
their meeting, “light up Mi-chan, I just always assumed that being late
wasn’t your style that’s all.”
“It isn’t my style, I just got caught up just then… I’m usually very punctual!”
“I believe you, but because you’re late I’m going to have to extract a
slight penalty for those twelve minutes that I spent standing here like
an idiot.”
“And since when were you ever on time? The Bai-S-kun that I knew
was never on time.” Ami looked at him indignantly.”
He laughed at her, “well, you’ll never know if I was on time because no
matter what, I was still here earlier then you were. Next time trying
getting here on time and then you’ll find out if I’m still perpetually
late, but until then, I have the prerogative to punish you. Anyway,
you haven’t seen me for years, how do you know if I’m still always late?”
“Old habits die hard Bai-S-kun.”
“And for such contempt, I’ll increase the sentence of your crime.
I sentence you to have lunch with me again tomorrow.”
“You’re studying law, you’re not a judge yet so you can’t just sentence
me arbitrarily. And you forgot to take into account my mitigating
circumstances, because if you did, you wouldn’t possibly be able to sentence
me so harshly! So I protest!”
“Well Mi-chan, if you are nice today during lunch, I’ll consider lowering
my sentence, until then, I’m afraid that there is no room for discussion.
And if you want a lower sentence, I’d suggest less arguments and more action,
because lunch is not coming to us, we have to go to lunch.” Bai-S-kun
waved his hand into the air indicating the direction to which they should
be heading, “and if you will come this way then I’ll try to not starve
to death on you.”
“Did I mention that I haven’t done my official first aid course yet?
And even if I have done the course, I wouldn’t do CPR on you.”
“Great, I guess I’ll just have to choose somewhere to die and get buried
then, feel like helping me choose somewhere suitable?”
“Try the gutter Bai-S-kun.” Ami smiled as she began to walk away,
her eyes twinkling as she remembered the friendly banter that they had
always had, and after all those years, neither of them had lost a beat.