The Temple (Nanami Kento x Reader)

The Temple

It was eleven pm, but your night was just starting. Life was just starting. As you walked the busy streets, heels hitting the smooth pavement in sharp clicks, your mind wandered. You smelled wafts of perfume from passers-by mixed with the distant smells of restaurant kitchens going into overdrive, awaiting the wave of drunk city workers, stomachs grumbling from hours of drinking.

Your nose acknowledged the smell but it's significance was lost on you; you were somewhere else. As heavy as your steps felt, you were empty. It had been a long day, a long week. If you thought about it too long, you might have even conceded that it had been a long year. A breakup had led you to a change of cities, a change of job. You thought this would fix everything, give you a new start, and in some ways it had. But, as the saying goes, everywhere you go, there you are. You were happy during the day – your boss and new colleagues loved you. Work was challenging and felt meaningful in a way it hadn't before. You wore nice clothes and noticed people noticing you. You ate well and worked out. A perfect life on paper. So why this emptiness?

This months-long monologue was momentarily flushed from your head as you approached your destination. As if opening your eyes for the first time that night, you saw the bright lights of passing bars, shining like sunbeams out onto the grey streets. You noticed how the sharp light hit people's faces, making the whole street look like a Rembrandt. You smiled at how beautiful everyone looked. You loved that about yourself, that aching sensitivity you had for the world. It was something he hated. You sliped away from the street again and recalled how you'd point out trees and flowers during your walks, only to be met with silence. Or worse yet, to be told 'so?'. You had become self-conscious of your spraying perfume just to smell it, or cracking the bedroom window to smell the earth after a storm. He had carelessly covered that part of you, but you had worked twice as hard to get it all back. Things can be all that bad, you thought, as you smiled at a group of young girls giggling around the light of a phone.

You pace slowed as you saw your destination ahead. You were meeting some work friends for drinks in a small bar you'd never been to before, The Temple, you saw it was called. Unsurprising that you'd never heard of it, considering you weren't much of a drinker and how many thousands of bars occupied the city. As you saw your friends in line, you forced your shoulders to lighten. We're going to have a good night, you said to yourself. Why should they have to suffer because you are?

"Thought you weren't going to make it before we got let inside!" laughed Emi, your desk buddy.

"Thanks for saving me a spot. What's the deal with this place anyway? Why the line?"

"It's not the bar, honey, it's the customers," grinned Hana, gesturing to the contents of the line either side of them. As you looked around, trying your best to be inconspicuous, you noticed two types of people. First, young women. Not noteworthy, really, except they were dressed much nicer, much more formal, than girls their age usually dressed on a Friday night. Yourself, being twenty-seven, felt like smiling. A twenty-year-old cosplaying as a forty-hour a week office worker was charming. Their clothes looked expensive but the lack of fatigue in their face gave the game away. The reason for their disguise became apparent as you noticed the second type of person. Salarymen. Not the regular, barely making ends meet kind. The wealthy kind. The one's whose coats looked heavy and expensive at a single glance. You looked up at the buildings around you and realised the demographic. Bankers, barristers, software developers. New money, certainly, but money all the same. You smiled back at Hana when you realised.

"Is that why you picked this place, Hana? You want a sugar daddy?"

"Exactly, want. I don't need one. But I'd like the option, you know?" she said with the shrug of her shoulder.