Little Tiger

Old friends and new friends

"All I'm saying is--" 

"No no no, don't even start--" 

"All I'm saying," Ayame was gripping a bottle of beer in his left hand and balancing an unlit cigarette in his right, "if you guys--any of you--aren't married in two years--" 

"That's too short!"  

"Two and a half years," a glazed over scan between the three of us, "better?--Anyway, I'll marry you. If there's no one else left in all of Japan--and there is no one, because no one is good enough for my friends--then I'll marry you." 

"You'll marry...all of us?" 

Confident nodding, smacking his lips to collect moisture in his mouth. "I doubt it will come to that--shut up, I'm trying to talk, Tori--but in the event that it does, I would be alright with being in a polyamorous relationship with all three of you." 

Shigure picked up the cap of a beer bottle and threw it at him. "You're getting carried away, Aya."  

Ayame, holding the cheek Shigure had skimmed in feigned terror. "I'm not getting carried away, I just love my friends and I don't want any of you or myself to be lonely and miserable forever." 

Shigure looked over at me with a raised eyebrow. "Would you like to remind him that the two of us are in a relationship or shall I?" Without waiting for my response, he turned to Ayame. "You're forgetting that Tori's the only candidate left, Aya." 

Hatori grumbled at my side, shaking his head. "This is ridiculous. I'm not marrying Ayame under any condition." 

"Fine, Tori, be that way. I was only extending my generous offer to you because you are the loneliest of all of us. Ko, you're the one I'd actually marry, if push comes to shove." 

I grinned at Ayame while taking the hand he had offered to me, getting to my feet. "I'd gladly accept, Aya." I was teasing but he was too drunk to tell, or even care. 

"What do you mean I'm the loneliest of all?" 

Ayame had closed the salon early today, contending that he was too burnt out to work. Toya--I call him Toya now, not Okazaki--had gone home as soon as Ayame delivered the news. He seemed on edge recently, no longer walking home with me, but speeding out of the salon as soon as he could and constantly checking the time during work. Ayame had whispered to me that he suspected Toya had a girlfriend now. I didn't believe that was the case. As soon as the neon "OPEN" sign  was turned off, Ayame sprinted to the convenience store, ordering me to stay at the salon. I wanted to go home because I had only gotten an hour of sleep the night before (I had been sleeping in my apartment every day for the last month, determined to get comfortable with being by myself. My nightmares had picked up again, as violently as they had begun, and I blamed it on being alone), but I listened to Ayame and stayed put. He returned with a few cases of beer. Moments later, Shigure and Hatori were standing at the locked salon entrance, tapping on the glass and waiting for someone to let them in. 

We were on the rooftop, enjoying one of the final summer days of the season. It was September and the temperatures ranged from humid, hot, and chilly in a single week. Ayame had decorated the rooftop with patterned seat cushions, a couple strands of Christmas lights hung unevenly between two poles, and potted plants that were in need of water and a lot less sunlight. In the daylight, I'm sure the rooftop's ambience looked much worse than it did at night. 

"It's been so long since we've done this," Shigure remarked, tears in the corners of his eyes from laughing. His complexion was bright tonight, and there was a spark in his eyes that I hadn't seen since he was in college.