Seijin: A Coming of Age Love Story [girl x girl]

Chapter 3

By the beginning of February, the ice had melted and sunny days had returned to Tokyo. The excitement of Seijin no Hi had long since passed and my attention was refocused back on my schoolwork. Autumn term was coming to an end and the university was thrown into chaos as students prepared for their final exams and completed the last of their assignments. Naho had essentially become a recluse the past few weeks as she scrambled to finish her art final, spending hours upon hours in one art room or another. Last we had talked, she still had one more oil portrait to complete before the end of the exam period. "I live here now," she texted me late one night. "You'll have to bury me here."
    "Buddhist or Shinto ceremony?" I texted back.
    "Christian."
    "I'll check Wikipedia."
    For Satsuki and me, finals were much simpler. My world history exam had been killer, and I felt bad for calling Dad so many times for help, since he had studied history at Kyoto University, but in the end I passed with ease. Things like dry memorization were second-nature to me by that point -- how else would I have been able to get into Waseda University if I wasn't good at cramming? My American literature class was similar: I just had to remember which character did what and what the green light represented. I was still just a second year so we hadn't had to start reading the books in English, and I was thankful I had yet to face that challenge.
    It was the last Monday of the term and my exams were all over, but I still found myself at school. I had a translation assignment due that day, and it took me all weekend to finish it. Although I could easily translate from English to Japanese, I was three times as slow when it came to coming up with my own English phrases. I had hoped I could get Naho, who spoke pretty good English, to proofread it first, but she was much too busy with her painting assignment for me to bother her without feeling insanely guilty.
    The professor was out of the office when I dropped by, so I left my paper with the others on her desk. I bowed my head quickly to the other faculty in the English language and literature department office as I exited, murmuring a quick "excuse me" as I closed the door behind me.
    All of a sudden, my phone buzzed in my pocket and gave me a start.
    "...Hello?"
    "Junko!"
    "Satsuki," I switched my phone to my other hand.
    "Where are you?"
    "Me? I'm outside of the English department office. Where are you?"
    "I'm on the Oedo Line heading to Yoyogi."
    "Satsuki! Get off the phone!"
    "Nah, it's okay. I'm still in the station."
    "They're going to think you're a rude gaijin."
    "Oh no! A gaijin? What ever will I do?"
    I laughed. "What do you want, then?"
    "You turned in your translation, right? Want to go to Meiji Jingu and pray we passed our exams?"
    "I don't need to pray, I know I passed."
    "Then you can pray for me!"
    "Hmm, okay. I think Naho should be done with her critique soon, I'll see if she wants to go."
    There was a brief pause before Satsuki responded. "...Yeah, okay, that'll be good. Let's meet at the Omotesando exit of Harajuku Station, then."
    "Roger! I'll text Naho and ask when she's done. It might take a while for us to get there, so eat if you're hungry, okay?"
    "Yes, mom."
    Naho's reply came surprisingly quickly, which probably meant that her presentation was over. Another forty minutes until they could leave, she predicted. I glanced at my wrist for the time. That would put us in Harajuku at around two-thirty, if we were lucky with the bus. As if right on cue, my stomach gurgled slightly and I tried to silence it with my hands. "Ah, that's right," I said aloud. "I haven't eaten yet today." I had been so busy trying to get that translation done, I totally forgot about breakfast.
    It was a crisp, sunny day in central Tokyo. The breeze nipped at my nose and I pulled my scarf up a little closer to my chin, but the sun was shining cheerfully and there was a peaceful lull settling over the preoccupied campus. There were young mothers with their toddlers at the park next to the university, and an old man shuffled past pushing a chihuahua in a stroller. It had been a long, harsh winter, and the city was beginning to crave the warm touch of spring. It would be another two months before the cherry blossoms bloomed, but any positive sign helped.
    For now, Valentine's Day was the seasonal delight. The 7-Eleven near campus was decorated in white and pink, shiny red hearts strung over the shelves like Christmas tinsel. Posters advertised Valentine's Day cakes and Ghana chocolate bars were stacked by the cash register in case you forgot that it was your civic duty to create homemade chocolate treats for the men in your life. Naho and I already had a date set to make our giri obligation chocolates, but I still swept a couple of the red chocolate bars into my basket just in case.
The lunchtime rush had come and gone and the convenience store looked like a typhoon had just blown through. A middle-aged man stood behind the counter putting buns into the steamer, and a young guy with a large book bag loitered by the magazine rack, reading a dirty magazine without a shred of shyness even when I stopped next to him to see if the new issue of ViVi had come out. It hadn't, so I dropped a bottle of peach tea into my basket and made my way over to the prepared food section. It was essentially empty, save for a few rice balls and plastic containers of salad. My stomach cried out for their meat spaghetti, and I scanned the empty shelves for that familiar oval tray, side stepping as I went.
    "Ow," I exclaimed as my leg collided into something hard and rough. I looked down and saw a large, plastic, orange crate filled with chilled packages of food sitting on the floor in front of the cooler. Between the trays of soba and mentaiko pasta, I caught a glimpse of red pasta sauce.
    "Excuse me, can I take one of these, or...?" I said softly, finally noticing the employee crouching down next to the crate and stacking trays of rolled omelettes onto the shelf. She was firmly focused on her task at hand and didn't even so much glance my way. "Ummm... Excuse me," I tried again, reaching out to tap her on the shoulder.
    Before I could even touch the strap of her apron, she stood up and spun to face me. I dropped my hand immediately as I looked up. I was fairly tall for a girl myself, and she towered over me. She was tall and slender, with hair as dark as ink tied into a thick ponytail. It was an incredible shade of black, and for a moment I wondered if it would shine purple in the sunlight. Piercings framed her ears from top to bottom, and a stylish black line of eyeliner was painted across the top lids of her slim eyes like calligraphy. Her bangs fell across her forehead with such precision that I could not find a single hair out of place. It was as if she had been drawn with a brush in an expert hand, each line deliberate and bold.
    Finally, she glanced down at the crate by my feet and registered what I wanted. "Help yourself," she said in a husky voice, but I could barely hear it. A jolt of electricity had hit me in the small of my back and was running up and down my spine, paralyzing every cell in my body from the top of my head to my littlest toe.
"Th-thank you," I managed to gasp out but my body still refused to listen to me.
The woman looked at me expectantly and raised an eyebrow at my lack of movement. "Go ahead," she encouraged me once more and then brushed past to disappear into the back.
    Feeling rushed back into my limbs and I yanked a tray of spaghetti from the crate. As I paid, I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if she had come back, but the half-emptied crates still sat abandoned in their aisle. "Miss, you forgot your change!" the man at the register called to me as I was about to step through the door, and I had to hurry back with a red face.
    Black ponytails and piercing eyes dominated my thoughts all the way back to campus. I didn't know people like that existed in real life, I thought as I took a seat on one of the park benches and absentmindedly unpacked my shopping bag. She was like a character out of a manga, her hair was so straight and smooth. I tried to remember if I had seen her at that 7-Eleven before, but all I could think about was the elegant curve of her neck and how slim her shoulders were despite her height.
    "Juri!" Naho's voice snapped me out of my stupor. "What are you doing here? I thought we were going to meet at the art classroom?"
    Had half an hour passed already? I looked at her, startled. "Oh, Nacchan, I'm sorry, I went to get lunch and I think I just lost track of time..."
    "It's okay, I'm just glad I found you." Naho glanced down at the tray sitting on my lap. "Mentaiko spaghetti, really? I thought you liked Western-style pasta more."
    "Mentai...?" Looking down at my lap, I finally realized that I had grabbed the mentaiko spaghetti instead of the meat sauce spaghetti in my haste to get out of there. Funny, I hadn't tasted the difference. Actually, I hadn't really registered that I had started eating at all.
    "Are you feeling okay? You look shaken." She leaned forward so we were eye-to-eye, her thick lips pulled into a concerned pout.
    "I'm okay," I tucked my hair behind my ear and smiled reassuringly. "I just... I guess I'm really worried about my translation, I've been thinking about everything I did wrong since I turned it in!"
    Naho looked relieved. "Is that all? I'm sure you did fine! Remember when I had my mom look over your term paper from last year? She said you had a good grasp of English, it's just all about confidence!"
    "I love you, Nacchan."
    "Heheh, are you done eating? Let's go, I'm itching to buy a new hat!"
   
    Even on a Tuesday afternoon in winter, Harajuku was filled with crowds of people enjoying the good weather. It was chilly inside Yoyogi Park as we walked to Meiji Jingu, the dense forest blocking the sunlight from the path. A group of foreigners with expensive-looking cameras took photos ahead of us, and I stepped behind Satsuki so that I wouldn't accidentally end up in one of their shots.
    "...and she was so worried about her translation homework that she didn't even realize what she was eating!" Naho explained to a grinning Satsuki, moving at a trot to keep up with his long legs.
    "That's so like you," he gave me a sly look over his shoulder.
    "Rude," I protested.
    "I can't help that I'm a genius at English," he let out a comical sigh and shrugged. "If that makes me cruel, then I don't know what to say."
    "Hah! Genius?" I scoffed. "Nacchan, don't believe a word this liar says. He may be good at speaking, but his written English is like a middle schooler's. No good," I finished in English, waving my hand.
    "This is a pen?" Naho questioned with a sparkle in her eye.
    "Matsuzaka!" Satsuki groaned. "Don't talk about that in front of Fujioka! She's going to pity me!"
    "Just a little bit," Naho winked.
    After we prayed for gracious teachers and a peaceful end to the term, and maybe a girlfriend for Satsuki, we made our way back out to the busy Harajuku strip. Takeshita Street was beginning to get more crowded as the middle school and high school students got out of class, so the three of us walked with slow, careful steps. Teenagers and foreigners filled the winding street, spilling out into the maze of side alleys. A group of large African men leaning against a pole took a break from their conversation to call out to Satsuki in their smooth Japanese, but when they saw that Naho and I were with him, they tried again with a red-haired man behind us, easily switching to English. Satsuki once told me that they worked for back-alley shops selling sneakers or designer jeans, and it was their job to get customers to come to the shop by all means necessary. They didn't usually pester us girls, though. It was an interesting quirk of Takeshita Street.
    We stopped in Liz Lisa so Naho could find a new hat. The boutique looked like it came out of a fairytale, all pink and decorated like a princess's room in a doll's castle. The clothes were a little too fluffy and sweet for my tastes, but they suited Naho's marshmallow-like aesthetic well. With her round, light eyes and naturally curled hair, a furry white hat made her look like a princess from a country in Northern Europe. Must be nice to be half, I thought enviously.
    "Do you think Shige-senpai would think this is cute?" she asked, holding up a large hair ribbon made out of a soft, downy fabric.
I glanced at Satsuki through the shop window; he was examining something in the window of the store across the way. "You should ask Satsuki that. He's a guy."
    "Yeah but he doesn't know anything about Senpai's sense of fashion."   
    "It's cute," I conceded with a small smile. "And if Senpai doesn't think so, he's an idiot because you're always cute."
    This pleased Naho and she let out a small giggle before going over to hand it to the shop employee. She kept petting the bow with a gentle smile, and when the shop girl taped the bag closed, Naho held it gingerly like a treasure. Girls in love are so cute, I thought fondly.
    "So I saw a girl at the 7-Eleven by school today," I said as we strolled towards Omotesando Avenue. The crowds were thinner there and we were able to walk side by side with myself in the middle. "She looked like some old Japanese beauty or something, her hair was so thick and straight and black. I didn't know people still had hair like that in this day and age."
    "A girl?" Naho nodded thoughtfully. "I didn't know you were a lesbo, Juriii~" she giggled, giving me a couple of playful jabs to the side.   
    Satsuki had grown unusually serious, his thick brows furrowed. "Don't even joke about that, Fujioka. She just was surprised to see such an unfashionable person in Tokyo, right?"
    The sternness in his voice startled me. When was the last time I had seen him look so angry? It was so unlike him, it made me uncomfortable, and I immediately regretted mentioning it at all. "R-right. It wasn't like I thought she was pretty or anything, I just thought she looked interesting." It was a lie, though. The girl at the convenience store hadn't been unfashionable or ugly. Her hair wasn't a flashy blond like Satsuki's or even dyed a standard ginger brown like mine, but I found her incredibly stylish. And maybe she wasn't classically pretty like the models on the billboards in Harajuku Station, but words like "cute" or "pretty" seemed insufficient anyway. She was, in all ways, stunning. But I didn't dare tell them that.
    "Don't get mad, Satchan!" Naho waggled her elbow at him. "Juri's not gonna get stolen away from you by the conbini girl, no matter how pretty she may be."
    "'Stolen'?" His eyes grew wide and a slight blush spread across his face. "Oi, you! Like I care who gets stolen by whoever! ...Oh shut up!" Kicking the air, Satsuki used his long legs to speed ahead of us, hands shoved deep into his pockets. Behind him, Naho and I laughed at his bashfulness.
    And my second year as a college student came to a close.