Tangerine ~ Bullet Train

2 - "What did I just say?"

Yuina felt lighter now that the men were gone, but she knew they were waiting to enter the same train. What if they would come at her again? She had many stops to make before she would arrive at her destination. She only had a ticket for this train. Would her parents understand if she would go off early to avoid those creeps being near her again? Would they pay for another ticket? She could just say she missed her train. She was already a disappointment to her parents. What more would them thinking she dumbly missed it do?

When the train arrived and the passengers waiting to get on stood a little more closely to each other, Yuina noticed they avoided being near the man who had spoken up. Tangerine. It seemed like he noticed it too, but she could clearly see he wasn't bothered by it in the slightest. In fact, it looked like he enjoyed staying away from other people, too. Yuina was the only one who voluntarily stood beside him, and not just because he had spoken up. She didn't really know why; all she knew was that his presence didn't annoy her. Out of the corner of her eye Yuina could see the man looking at her. She didn't know he was still thrown off by their little interaction. Tangerine didn't know why he would think about the girl not averting her gaze when their eyes met. Every other person would do that, apart from his brother Lemon, but she didn't seem bothered by him trying to radiate an attitude that was slightly hostile, like no one should ever talk to or look at him.

When the train arrived and the doors opened, Tangerine let Yuina go in first as part of his "being polite enough not to arouse any suspicion and staying kind of hostile enough so people won't bother him" act. He was thrown off by her thanking him again. It was just a courtesy they performed excellently, but they couldn't help but feel kind of wary by it. They tried to shake it off, but the fact that they had tickets for the same wagon didn't help very much. Nevertheless, they would try to forget about this weird little interaction they had and how it made them feel, but both weren't really acquainted with people making them feel something different than annoyance. They both stashed their luggage and Yuina hold on to her little briefcase. When they found their seats, Yuina realised that they sat fairly close to each other with her sitting on a seat two four-seaters diagonally behind him. When they both took their places next to the window, they could still see each other. They tried to avoid eye contact and just keep doing their own thing, which in Tangerine's case was to stare at the dark window.

Because it was early in the morning it was still dark outside, but Tangerine didn't mind staring blankly ahead. It made his head clear so he could start thinking about the mission his brother Lemon and he assigned themselves to. They were a highly skilled assassin duo, if he would say so himself. Their new mission was to retrieve the son of the White Death, a psychopath with the largest criminal organization on the planet. After completing a job in Bolivia, The Twins, as Tangerine and Lemon were called, were contacted by employees of the White Death to complete this mission. It was very serious, as the boss would brutally mutilate anyone who wouldn't succeed in a mission he would give them. That's why Tangerine decided to brush off this wary feeling from his brief interaction with this girl he didn't even know and he tried to focus on thinking about this mission and the fact that he would meet his brother in Tokyo.

Yuina decided to plug in her earbuds and start listening to the crap they called music. She didn't really want to prepare herself for acting like she was going to have a great time at the festival, but she knew she had to. If the group she was meeting with would discover she didn't know any of the artists that were playing there, she would fail in her mission to blend in and act more like them. Given the fact that her mother was friends with all their parents, she would definitely find out that Yuina didn't even try and she would kick her out. So Yuina just stared at her phone and read the lyrics whilst the songs carried on, trying to memorize the words in annoyance.

Lately, the thought of her leaving came up more and more. Who says she needed her parents? She was nineteen years old, but Yuina was sure her aunt wouldn't let her suffer being homeless. Yet she didn't want to intrude on her family. Aya wouldn't ever think she was intruding, as both her, her husband Saito and their son Riku loved her. Still, Yuina didn't dare to ask anything of them other than to stay for two weeks to clear her head.