Urban theory

Urban theory

It was Tuesday morning. Ayame was making breakfast for two hoping that Rikimaru would get up soon. She needed to know what was the matter so she could help him and for her able to do so; Rikimaru should better get up before she had to go to work.

Call it a telepathy or pure luck as Rikimaru drawled slowly to the table.

“…Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I’m making breakfast… I got the morning off, Jake is covering me…” She flipped pancakes into pan. “…so I’m yours…” She looked at the clock. “…hour n’ half…”

“…Is it okay me moving in here? I can find other place if…”

“What happened to your old apartment?”

“…I can’t go there anymore…” He stared at the empty space on the corner.

Ayame was starting to get worried. Rikimaru had never been like this.

“…I’ve never seen you like this? …Tell me what’s happening? Is it some client? Are they threatening you?” She sat down opposite him.

“…It’s nothing like that… The guy I was telling you about… cheated me with, some, blond chick…” He fought to keep his voice normal covering it with a small laugh. “…and I was starting to get used to him… love him maybe…”

She didn’t know what to say to a thing like that. She had never met this man he was talking about. Ayame hoped she could say it wasn’t true just to comfort him. “…Sorry… to hear that…”

“...Yeah, well… life goes on… right?”

“…I didn’t quite get… why it is that you can’t go to your apartment?”

“There is a small risk I might find him there wondering where I am… yes, doubly like he’d care, I… am way too angry to see him… Just wanted to punch his stupid fucking face in…” He look over her. “…And guess what? …I quit my job.” This time he smiled for real.

“…Quit? Like, took a few days off?” Her voice said please say you didn’t.

“Like ‘I’m tired of you guys sucking me off, you can storage my contract up in your ass’, and that’s the short, censored, version of it… Later it occurred to be that it just might have been a video meeting so… I don’t think they’ll be taking me back… or any other firm for that matter…”

Ayame just blinked twice while Rikimaru leaned to his one hand over the table playing with a pencil o his other hand.

“…You think they’ll take me to teach martial arts or something like that…?”

“…I dunno… probably…”

“Don’t worry, I have savings to pay the rent.”

“Well, yes, um… No need to rush… Take your time and pull your self together… while you still can…”

“…Ayame?”

“No, no, you need to figure out where you are heading…”

“…yes, but…”

“It might seem small but when things pile up before you have properly dealt with them, they make you life…”

“Black?”

“…yes.”

“Smoke?”

“Huh? …Oh no! The pancakes…!”

She jumped up from the chair and hurried to the stove. This seemed to be so familiar procedure to her that he didn’t see it necessary to go up and help.

Finally she stopped and cursed.

“…I see nothing has changed since the last time we lived together…”

“…hmm I’m still a lousy cook… fine…” She waved her hands trying to make the smoke disappear. “… Single…”

“Why? Can’t find anyone good enough?”

“…They say I’m too independent and controlling… but do you know what they really mean? …I’m too much of a tomboy… They can’t handle me being a cop…”

“…yes I can imagine; your homophobic boyfriends see that you are so masculine that it makes them feel like a little girl around you…”

“Glad to make you laugh…” She said half-hearted.

“…Maybe I’ll just order us some food?”

“Sounds good…”

Rikimaru went to look for his phone until he remembered that he’d thrown it to the river. He came back to the kitchen. “…Ayame…? Can I borrow your phone? …I seem to have lost mine.”

“Sure, it’s one the table of the hallway… lost your phone? Did you forget it in somewhere?”

“…In the river…” He mumbled and was already giving the order.

She peaked in the hallway. “...What?”

---

It was half past twelve and Ayame had to go to work. She peered down the window and saw a familiar car waiting on the street. “My ride’s here…” She was pulling on her shoes. “You gonna be okay…?”

“I will ma”

“…D-don’t call me that…! …You can take the key over there… and keep it… See you at… four, five… or tomorrow…!”

Rikimaru started to clean the mess on the kitchen. He stopped to look at the table. How was it that Ayame had made him forget for a while? His heart cut now that he’d remembered it again. He tried to shook it of but while his hand moved to clean the dishes his mind went over and over what had he seen.

Just as he was about to break something the door bell rang. Thank god he thought, maybe she’d forget something.

He didn’t look who was behind the door and just opened it. She resembled her very much despite her more feminine style. Maybe she was cuter too, but Rikimaru just thought it was because the age difference.

“…Rikimaru?” Kiku said little surprised seeing him there still in his pyjamas as the day was in half. Before Rikimaru could answer her she continued. “…So you’ve finally come out of the closet and started sleeping with her, eh?”

The girl was barely fifteen Rikimaru thought as she walked past him to the apartment. “…Morning, Kiku…”

The girl looked at the apartment. “Is she home?”

“You just missed her… Didn’t see the car in front?”

She shook her head.

Rikimaru closed the door and walked past her into the kitchen.

“Can I stay for awhile… there’s awful could outside…”

“…Sure… Sit down… you want something, tea, coffee…?”

“No…” She sat where Rikimaru had when he’d spoken with Ayame. “So… Why are you here?”

He put the empty food bags to the garbage. “…I moved in here.”

“…Why?”

“…because… my salary isn’t gonna be what it used to and it’s cheaper to live under her wing… How about you? What’s new?”

“Nothing much…”

“...How’s your dad?”

“Okay, I guess…”

“Is he still holding that garage?”

“Of course… he lives for the cars…” She hadn’t seen him in a long time. “How come I haven’t seen you since… ever…?”

He smiled weakly. “…Work, work and work and stuff… Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“It’s my lunch hour, duh?”

“…Have you eaten anything?”

“yeah… Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“…I think I’m unemployed right now…”

“What are you going to do the whole day?”

That certainly was a good question, he thought.

“…I probably should go and get my things from my last apartment…” Before the landlady sets the cops after me, he added mentally.

“Can I come with you?”

“Don’t you have school?”

“Only physical and I can repair it later… besides if we walk it will be just like it… I really wouldn’t want to go there… You’d be much more fun, please?”

“I don’t think I’ll be… but sure… come with me… I just get my clothes and we’ll leave…”

---

It was two a clock as they arrived to his apartment’s door. He wondered why Kiku didn’t speak of anything as they had closed in on the building, did she sense his nervousness?

She was reading some poster on the wall while Rikimaru stared at the door, the keys in his hand. What had he expected, to find Oni camping on his door step? Rikimaru knew very well that Oni just wasn’t that kind of a guy who’d wonder after him. He wasn’t a guy who would be dumped, he was a guy who walked and moved on.

He had hoped not to pump in to him. Now that Oni wasn’t here, he was disappointed. He hadn’t notice that Kiku had stopped reading the poster and was now next to him. “Have you found the key yet?”

“Um… yep…” He turns the key and opens the door. “…Shut the door, please… okay, this is gonna take a while, take a seat, watch the telly or something…”

“…Ok.” She walks past him on the small living room that’s companied with the hallway.

Kiku opens the TV as Rikimaru stares at her and the apartment for some time. There was an awful mess. He hadn’t had time to clean. He had too much stuff anyways, it couldn’t fit in this rat whole properly. He takes a deep breath and walks past the kitchen. No use to look at the fridge, everything was most likely over the date.

The bedroom was behind the kitchen. He walks in and slams the door shut leaning to it. The bed looked the same as when he’d left Friday morning, soft, comfortable, messy. White sheets and blanket cover dripping over the edge. He could almost see it.

He shook out of it and headed for the cupboard. He’d only taken few steps when he recognised a movement in the room, near the chair that was in the corner, sneakily behind a shelf.

His heart stopped beating and then started flapping like waterwheel as something resembling panic washed over him.

Sleeve of a white shirt had for some strange reason moved. Rikimaru walked to the chair. The shirt was the only thing of Oni that had waited for him to return. It was almost ghost like that the sleeve had moved just as he’d come home. Carefully he takes the piece of cloth in his hands. Looks at it, presses it against his face, smelling his lovely scent from it.

He sits down and looks at his room. Thinking and blaming him self.

Stupid, stupid, stupid! He wasn’t asking me to move in with him, no. He was hoping to scare me away by suggesting it!

Why didn’t I get it?

Was it all physical then? Of course it was! That’s what people want when they meet strangers like that, anonymous sex. How come have I forgotten the unwritten rules of the whole thing? I have never before mixed sex and love, why start now? Maybe I’ve been too long out of the picture…

Kiku knocked at the door and opened it. “…Are you ready soon? There’s nothing on…”

“Yeah sure… just a minute…” Rikimaru crinkled the shirt on the floor and walked to his cupboard.

Kiku eyed the bed still standing in the door way. “So this is what real single’s bedroom looks like…”

“Please, fix your beautiful eyes on somewhere else…” he was emptying the shelves to the bag he’d taken with him. “…What do you mean, ‘real single’s’?”

“Well, Ayame is a single and I bet her bed never looks like that…”

“Your dad is a single too, does…?”

“Don’t continue…!” She walked away from the door back to the living room.

Why tormenting her was almost as funny as tormenting Ayame, he thought to himself. Thought Kiku was wrong about her bed. His hands stopped backing as Oni popped in his mind.

What really hurt him most? That he’d cheated him or that he’d cheated him with a woman. There was nothing wrong being a bi, but he could at least tell him that he was. Not that they had ever discussed the topic, but that wasn’t the point now, was it?

He had been the first Rikimaru had totally given the control to and would probably be the last one. He’d trusted his body and mind to him and it hadn’t been enough.

Thought it was expected. Those guys eventually ended up with a nice girl who was wife material and started a family. Rikimaru knew he himself couldn’t settle for that. Chancing a soul mate to offspring, no way, thought it would be great to have both.

He found himself staring at one of the closets and once again shook his mind back to reality.

“I’m ready…” He said stepping out of the bedroom, carrying a huge back on his shoulder.

“…Your comp is still on the table…?”

“…I’ll pick it up later… come on, I still have to talk to the landlady…”

---

Kiku had gone home to help her dad and Ayame was still at work when Rikimaru came home. The apartment was dark and empty for someone who’d thought to be living in a relationship by now. He unpacked his belongings to a room Ayame had showed him. It was pretty easy to settle in because it wasn’t the first time he and Ayame shared apartment.

It was beginning to be late. He lay at his bed fully clothed and looked at the clock: five past nine. Well, not so late.

Phone rang in the hallway. Had she forgotten her phone home? The phone didn’t stop ringing so he went to answer it.

“…Hello?” He picked it up not bothering to look who was calling.

“Hi, Rikimaru!”

“Hi…Jin?”

“Ayame told me that you need some refreshing... She’s, again, late at work so, you need to put some clothes on…”

“Listen… Jin, I dunno am I really in a mood to…”

“Shut up, you wimp! We’ll be there in… ten minutes… get your ass ready… you me and Dan are going dancing! …And don’t even think about locking us out…! …Ayame gave us the keys…”