Bronze: True Heart 5
by K.Huntsman
Tanahaka Hotel Penthouse, Shinjuku
Molly entered her cousin's suite and was greeted by the sounds of Aerosmith blasting from the CD player. Arin herself was sitting on the sofa, staring intently at sheets of paper spread across the coffee table, completely oblivious to the engrossing, appropriate lyrics of "Dude Looks Like A Lady."
"Depressed or amused?" Molly asked, crossing the room.
"Hmm?" Arin looked up, her pretty eyes catching the light. "What?"
"That," Molly replied, indicating the CD player.
Arin raised a red eyebrow as she looked in the direction of the gesture, then smiled. "Oh. I didn't even realize I'd put that CD in the rotation."
"No doubt. Anyhow, you ready for dinner? Nanjou-san offered to take us out tonight, remember?"
"Oh." Arin looked at the clock. "Oh! I didn't realize it was so late already!"
"Come on," Molly said, grabbing Arin by the arm and dragging the younger girl to her feet. "If I leave you to get ready, you'll sit back down with that music of yours and never be ready to go."
Arin only sighed as she was dragged into the bedroom by force, looking longingly back at the sheet music. Molly ignored that and shoved her towards the wardrobe.
"So where are we going?" Arin asked as she shrugged out of her shirt and reached for a new one. Molly studied the white-covered torso. Arin's chest was tightly wrapped in bandages, as always, to flatten and conceal her breasts.
"Sushi, I think."
Arin shrugged and pulled on the new shirt, following that with clean, unwrinkled trousers. "How late will we be out?"
"Late." Molly made a point of that. "Too late for you to get back to work on your music when we get back."
Arin's sigh did its best to persuade Molly to let her go back to the sheets of written sound. Molly ignored it and waited for her cousin to be ready to go.
Kiyako Sushi, Shinjuku
Takuto Izumi smiled as Hanano looked warily at the sushi his cousin was devouring with relish and no hesitation. "You don't eat Japanese food much, do you?" he asked the singer.
Hanano shook his red head. "No," he replied. "Molly loves it, though."
"It won't kill you to try it, Arin!" Akaiko replied, gesturing at her cousin with her chopsticks. She had a certain vigor about her that reminded Izumi a good deal of Shibuya. "And if it does, well...." She switched to rapid English for a moment, saying something out of which the only word he could catch and understand was "bishounen."
"Molly!" the bodyguard reproved.
"It's all right, 'Toni," Arin said, touching a hand to her bodyguard's arm. "It's a long-time joke for Molly, ever since she met that woman from Santa Barbara who told her that line. I think she's just dreaming, though. She'll never get to that place; she hasn't been virtuous enough."
"Oh, like you will?"
"How can you stand that much wasabi?"
Arin smiled as her cousin looked down at the mixture of soy sauce and wasabi that she was dipping her sushi in. It was mostly wasabi. "I like hot stuff," Molly said, looking up.
"Boku mo, demo... sore ga TOTEMO atsui!" Arin tossed back, switching back into Japanese, knowing that the two of them were being rude in having a conversation in English.
Katsumi laughed, listening to the cousins lightly argue back and forth over the food. They were good friends as well as business associates and relatives. That last word turned his thoughts momentarily to Kouji's brothers, but he pushed thoughts of Hirose and Akihito aside.
He still wondered exactly where Izumi had found out about this little sushi restaurant. It couldn't seat more than twenty customers at a time, but it was cheap and it was good. He smiled and picked a tray of Inari sushi off of the little track that carried the dishes around the two chefs' work area. He had a fondness for the slightly-sweet dish of fried bean curd wrapped around rice.
"Ittadakkima!" he said, siezing the first piece with his chopsticks and eating it.
As he ate, he kept an eye and ear out to the mealtime conversation. The two cousins ate with girlish gaiety; given Hanano's delicate features, it might have given him pause... except he adopted the same high-spirited mannerisms himself. Gods knew he even used "atashi" at times, and that was a girl's form of self-address, a lot more feminine than Hanano's "boku"! Kouji, meanwhile, ate with solemn dignity, paying a quiet attention to Izumi that Shibuya doubted anyone but him and the two themselves would notice. And Izumi tried his best to ignore that and speak in English with the cousins and their bodyguard. Shibuya judged, being pretty fluent in English, definitely beyond either Kouji or Izumi due to a faculty with languages, that he wasn't quite as good in English as Hanano was in his semi-broken Japanese. But Izumi was managing, as always.
Tanahaka Hotel Penthouse, Shinjuku
Arin sighed as she, Molly, and 'Toni re-entered the suite. She'd felt Shibuya-san's speculative eyes on her during dinner, and wondered how close he might have come to figuring out her secret. He was sharp, that one.
"Izumi-san's very nice, isn't he, Arin?" Molly asked as 'Toni closed the door behind them. "Cute, too."
"I wouldn't set my sights on him, Molly," Arin cautioned, pooling down onto the sofa in the living room, watching her friends follow suit. "He's taken."
"Taken?" Molly was surprised and Arin wondered again why her cousin was so much less sensitive than she to people. It had been so obvious to her. But then Molly had a thousand gifts of her own that Arin didn't possess.
"If you didn't see the red thread between him and Nanjou-san, you're blind," Arin teased. "Look for it the next time you see them together."
'Toni raised an eyebrow at that, and Molly sat up straight in shock. "You're kidding! Kouji Nanjou is supposed to be as straight as they come!"
"Yeah, I know about him and his affairs," Arin replied, taking an almost malicious delight in telling Molly her observations, "but the way he was towards Izumi...." She shrugged. "I'll give you a million dollars if they're not lovers."
"Oh, like that's so much to you!" Molly retorted, her eyebrows still nestled at her hairline as she flopped back into the sofa, considering.
Arin shrugged again.
Nanjou/Izumi residence
Takuto and Kouji both sneezed.
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