SOLO • Shinichiro

Finding you

"Sorry, don't open that yet, it'll explode-"

"W-wait, shit..." After his items were all but thrown at him, Shinichiro felt more than lucky to have had such a fateful encounter with a cute girl, up until the moment she sprinted down the aisle without so much as looking back. Taking his loss and stepping out through the sliding doors, Shinichiro's path to his bike is suddenly blocked by a frantic man with a hilariously huge camera, chuckling to himself about the size of that thing before walking around and throwing a leg over the motorcycle.

With the key between his fingers and foot on the kickstand, a blur of words pulls his attention back to the convenience store, watching as the suspicious man stops the passersby to demand information, "have you seen a girl— baseball cap— this tall?"

And as the people on the sidewalk each give the same answer, a quick shake of the head or a refusal to respond, Shinichiro thinks back on the collision between the two of you. It could be— maybe— that fate had not sent you running into him, but away from someone else. Even behind the cover of the mask and cap, your urgency was more than apparent, providing him with a faint understanding of the situation as he speaks out towards the assailant, "she's not here, so— leave."

"Have you seen her? Her hair color is-"

"Not here." A deeper voice leaves his throat, cutting off the man's description with a cold stare he'd practiced well in his teens. There was no way of telling how you'd gotten into this situation, but leaving a girl to hide away from some pervert with a camera wasn't something he could live with. Despite his denial, the man seemed to disregard Shinichiro's words entirely, turning to stop an elderly woman as she exits a nearby grocery. Standing from the motorcycle and praying that his bluff isn't called, Shinichiro tries to remind himself how to take a punch as he approaches the aggressor. Crossing his arms with his chest puffed, he spits, "That camera looks expensive— this is what you use it for, huh?"

"Are you..." turning and eyeing the motor oil stains across the blue-collar uniform, the man looks up to Shinichiro with slight confusion, "are you her bodyguard?"

"I might be... gonna stick 'round here and find out?"

And what luck he's had today— managing to scare off the middle-aged man creeping around the convenience store without even getting his ass beat— on top of the fact that he's got a second chance to look at the mysterious girl as she joins him on the sidewalk. Leaned back against his bike with a freshly lit cigarette hanging from his lips, Shinichiro rustles his hands through his hair, patting down the wild stands and buying time as he waits for her to finish typing on her phone, swallowing down his excitement as he steps forwards and plays it cool, "there ya are."

—

"Ya know what I think, huh?"

"Uh, not really." 

Leaning back in the booth and releasing a deep breath, Shinichiro watches from across the table as a bone is pointed in his direction, being used to add emphasis to his friend's words as Takeomi laughs with a mouthful of chicken, "I think that head of yours, it's comin' loose.

"I agree, Shin, it's—" clicking his tongue and tilting his head, Wakasa recalls the past few days since the encounter with the mysterious woman, feeling sick to his stomach as Shinichiro's words of love at first sight echo in his mind, "it's a lot."

"Think of it this way, alright?" Gathering the attention of the hopeless romantic once more, Takeomi taps his fingers across the wooden surface as he speaks, his knocking on the table adding more stress behind his words, "If she wanted to talk to ya, Shin, she wouldn't run off and hide."