Coming to a Head(stone)

Akira hadn’t taken public transport in a long time. The shaking of the carriage, the weaving in and out of crowds. For a celebrity like him, it should’ve been hell.

Which explains why he wore three layers of clothing in the heat of summer—a hoodie over a jacket over a shirt, plus a mask and cap. It was hell in a different sense.

Hayami had begged him to dress lighter, but he refused. He argued that the moment he took it off people were going to go up to him and ask for photos. More importantly, that today was not about him.

Today was about Hayami. And taking the train felt more like something she would do.

She heard the train creak to a stop. The Mizuma Railway was quite a short but sweet line, rattling through the greenery. It made things easier, at least regarding the travel time.

“Oof!”

But it didn’t make carrying all the food they made any easier. Hayami stumbled slightly as she lifted it all.

Akira watched her struggle.

“You need a big, strong man to help you carry things, don’t you?” he teased.

Hayami didn’t hesitate. She shoved the bags toward his chest.

“Do it then. Put your money where your mouth is!”

Akira blinked at the sheer audacity of her outburst, then sighed.

“Fine, I will.” He grabbed the heavy handles, bracing himself. “Hmmrp!”

He hoisted them up, trying to look effortless despite the weight.

What Hayami neglected to tell Akira was that the station wasn't the destination. They had a thirty-minute walk ahead of them.

\\

Akira stopped dead in the middle of the path. He was panting.

“Can we please stop?” he wheezed. “I need to take off my clothes. It’s too hot.”

Hayami raised an eyebrow, fanning herself.

“But… what you said being in public—?!”

“I don’t care,” he groaned.

He dropped the bags on a flat rock and frantically peeled off the hoodie, followed by the layer beneath, until he was just in a tight black undershirt.

He groaned.

Hayami looked away, but not fast enough, so she quickly diverted to a different topic to save herself.

“So uhh… your management, your agency, the rest of Perchance to Dream… are they… y’know, cool with you sleeping over at someone else’s place?”

Akira lowered his arms. “What do you think?”

“No, I take it.”

“I mean, what I can’t see can’t hurt me,” he shrugged, tapping his pocket where his dead phone sat. “Besides, maybe the silence can act as my punishment while I get into your good graces again.”

“Urgh. Don't make it sound like a penance.”

“But my poor ‘Pastries’ will go hungry if I don’t do my dailies.”

“Guess they’ll have to learn to fast.”

Finally, after fifteen more minutes of grueling walking in the Osaka heat, the path leveled out. They reached a quiet alcove shaded by trees.

“Here you have it,” Hayami introduced. “One of the only Buddhist gravesites in this part of Osaka.”

Akira looked around. The specific plot Hayami walked toward was a mess of green.

“Look how overgrown everything is, jeez,” Akira noted, stepping over a fern.

“Qingming was months ago.”

She ran her hand over the rough stone of the grave marker. It was hot to the touch.

“I realized something on the walk up here,” she said softly.

“What?”

“My whole family situation… it was about control. So long as I was not allowed to see Grandma, Uncle Kenji would have ultimate control over me. I don’t think he had a concrete vision of what he’d do because he was projecting his own feelings onto me. Plus, he knew if he could get close to you, somehow, money would follow. So that’s a plus.”

She looked up at the sky, wiping a smudge of dirt from her cheek.

“But now… I’m free. For the first time in y-years, I’m free.”

Akira wanted to step forward and to his own surprise offer comfort, but he held back.

Hayami stood up and turned to face him.

“You crossed a line back there, Akira. You taught me to stand up for myself, s-so now I’m standing up to you.”

She took a step closer, poking him in the chest.

“But I also don’t want to be transactional. If you want to see me in private so badly, just ask.”

Akira looked down at the ground.

“I was worried what you’d think of me if I wasn’t there to see it.”

“How I feel about you is my choice to make,” Hayami said firmly. “And my trust is more important than your fear.”

Akira let out a slow breath. He nodded.

“...Understood.”

His arrogant ass doesn’t deserve any of this. He should really be punished. And yet, it would be her decision to forgive him anyway.

“Go find shade and get some rest,” she said. “I need to speak with Grandma.”

\\

“Hey Grandma.”

Hayami’s gardening tools had seen some work today. It had taken forever to pry the stubborn roots from the earth. For a moment, she wished she hadn’t sent Akira down the path to wait. He would have made short work of the heavy lifting.

But this was Sato business. And he wasn’t family.

Yet.

The thought came unbidden. She pushed it away, focusing on lighting the incense sticks.

The sun hung three-quarters of the way down the sky, casting long, orange shadows across the stone markers. The cicadas had quieted down, leaving a respectful silence.

“I’ve been gone too long,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. Uncle… he made it difficult. I should have fought harder to see you. But visiting now made me realize… the curse wasn’t real at all.”

She looked at the name carved into the stone.

“I’ve improved. A lot. You probably wouldn't recognize me right now.”

She laughed softly.

“I don’t know what it took. Maybe it was just being tired of being afraid. But it was like a switch turned on in my brain. I stopped letting Uncle Kenji tell me who I was.”

She traced the edge of the water basin she had just scrubbed clean.

“But I met someone. He’s… complicated. He’s arrogant, and he has too much money, literally the bourgeoisie. Plus he thinks that he can just shove his way through everything and expect to come out on top. He’s entitled, he puts on too much cologne, he loves to gloat—wait, I said that already.”

Hayami sighed.

“So why don’t I wish for his downfall?”

She shuffled in her fraying shoes.

“I guess I wish I could talk to you over bubble tea again. Get some advice. Because my body is not communicating with my brain right now.”

She looked down at her hands.

“I’m just willingly inviting over trouble. I know Akira’s trouble. He spies on people, and he thinks that’s acceptable! And y-yet, as weird as it is, I don’t feel that mad about it?”

She shook her head, trying to articulate the feeling that had been gnawing at her since he showed up at her door.

“I know I used to let myself be bulldozed over by Uncle and Auntie. But this time… this time it’s different.”

She looked back toward the tree line where Akira was waiting.

“With them, I felt trapped. I know if they spied on me, I’d be in a really bad place at the moment. With him… I feel... Ugh, there are too many words running around in my head at the moment.”

Hayami smiled.

“But I guess actions speak louder than words, right? I just want to say, come hell or high water, I will be here. Just like you wanted. I will be here.”

Out of the cooler she brought, she placed bubble tea on the gravestone steps.

She sat down on the burning concrete floor.

“So… tell me about your day.”

\\

Akira stood behind the trunk of a tree, well out of sight and not close enough to hear what she was saying.

He knew he should have given her the privacy she asked for.

‘Why am I getting invested?’ he thought, annoyed with himself. ‘I didn't even know the woman.’

A dark, intrusive thought whispered in the back of his mind.

‘If I died tomorrow, the world would mourn.’

There would be hashtags. There would be tribute concerts. The Agency would release a "Best Of" album, a posthumous release to monetize his funeral.

Millions of girls would cry over his poster.

‘But would anyone do this?’

He felt droplets fall on the leather of his boots. Plip. Plip.

He looked up at the sky, startled, expecting a sudden summer shower. But he didn’t see any clouds.

Yet, his face felt wet. He reached up to scrub the sensation away, and only then did he realize there was a warm trail running from his eyes to his jaw.

He let out a low growl as he dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.

People like him shouldn’t cry.

\\

When Hayami finally finished chatting with Grandma, bowing one last time, Akira stepped out from the trees to escort her back.

They walked back to the train station with little fanfare in terms of conversation.

Physicality was a different story..

Hayami got closer, then closer, then so close that Akira didn’t know what to do with himself. It started with a faint brush of the hand, one you could chalk up to an accident.

There was no questioning whether their contact was accidental after a while.

Hayami grew confident first. Her fingers traced the outline of his palm, but she wasn’t so stubborn as to admit she wanted more.

Soon, she felt it: a warm breeze flowing through a gap.

She took advantage Her fingers burrowed, wriggling their way in, molding and snuggling themselves to the shape of his finger bones. Frustratingly, the space caved outward instead.

They didn’t take no for an answer.

They simply brute-forced themselves through the in-betweens of his fingers.

Akira, Hayami could feel it, almost shook her away. 

Unfortunately, her troops were more motivated than his. 

A vice grip ensued.

It took only seconds before Akira’s troops surrendered and gave in. 

Akira looked away. He was impossibly warm, his skin a conduit for betraying what the man outside might otherwise suggest. Was that a blush he was hiding?

The descent from the hill was easier than the climb.

All the while, the pair remained quiet.

For the first time in her life, Hayami felt… okay. She felt content with herself, her lot in life, and her opportunities.

For Akira, the silence was filled with the chimes of a ticking clock waiting to strike 12.

He knew exactly what awaited him when he stepped through those doors at the Rocketblast board meeting.