Chapter 33 Episode 33: Almost

Akira’s POV

My mother had one rule about days off, which was that days off did not exist if the ramen shop needed an extra pair of hands, and the ramen shop always needed an extra pair of hands on Fridays.

I had pointed out once during one of our arguments, that a day off by definition meant a day off.

Her response however was that she had looked at me with the expression she used when I had said something that didn’t warrant a verbal response.

Well. I was behind the counter by nine sharp.

The morning prep was familiar enough by now that I didn’t need direction. My mother moved through the kitchen beside me with the ease of someone who had done this for twelve years and had the space fully mapped in her body without needing to think about it.

We worked like the duo we were in the comfortable quiet of people who had learned each other’s rhythms.

By eleven am the first customers were arriving and the rhythm shifted from prepping to serving, and I took the floor while my mother stayed in the kitchen.

It was, I found, a very good morning. It wasn’t in any way I could specify precisely. The work was the same work it always was, nothing dramatic or significant about it.

The shop and my mother and the ordinary demands of a place that needed things done and had two people willing to do them... Here I was, just someone’s son running tables on a normal Friday morning.

It was, as I was slowly realizing, one of the things I was going to protect hardest.

I was carrying the last of the construction crew’s orders from the counter to the corner table, the full tray balanced with the practice of someone who had spilled one bowl too many to be casual about it anymore, when the door opened.

I felt him before I saw him. Kael. Kael was in the doorway.

He was in the clothes he wore when he had come from somewhere that had required a suit but the suit was now gone, the jacket exchanged for something that was still more structured than casual but carried the slightly worn quality of travel. I noticed I was slowly learning his outfit pattern.

He looked like someone who had been moving through the world at a fast pace and had abruptly stopped mid way.

He was looking at me.

The tray was still in my hands. The construction crew’s table three meters away. My mother was in the kitchen and was yet know he was here.

The shop full of the lunch noise of twelve people who had no idea that anything or anyone had just walked through the door.

I set the tray down.

***

Kael’s POV

The business trip had run four days longer than scheduled, which was not unusual for council-adjacent obligations in the northern districts, but it had produced in me an impatience I was having difficulty accounting for at the time and was having slightly more difficulty accounting for now.

I had not been impatient on a business trip in approximately seven years. I had always dealt all work related stuff with the notch efficiency expected of everyone with the Vixar blood running through their veins. I went, I handled what needed handling, I came back. The interval between leaving and returning had never previously felt like anything other than an interval.

This one had felt longer than it was.

I told myself it was the council obligations, which had been genuinely tedious. I told myself a number of things during the four extra days that were all plausible and none of which were the actual reason.

The actual reason announced itself before I reached the ramen shop.

I was half a block away when his scent reached me, drifting slowly in the Friday afternoon air. The same scent I had spent an evening trying to locate in forty-seven bottles and a collection of samples and had not found because it was not a product.

It was him, unreplicable and entirely his. And it hit me with the force of something that had been accumulating pressure for four days and had found a release valve.

I stopped walking. Stood on the pavement half a block from the ramen shop and once again thought about what it meant that the scent of one particular person from two hundred meters away had stopped me mid-stride on a public street.

Then I walked to the shop.

The door opened and the scent was now everywhere and he was standing in the middle of the room with a tray, his silver hair swaying slightly with the wind and his expression that of someone who had just registered something unexpected.

Those four days resolved into a single clear feeling that I still did not have a name for but that had stopped requiring one in order to be completely present.

I had missed him. And very badly at that. That was the simple version. The version I could acknowledge without looking at everything laying underneath it.

His mother appeared from the kitchen, registered me, and had an apron in my hands before I had finished deciding whether to stay.

"Table four needs clearing," she said, her eyes straying between the both of us. "The construction crew always leaves a mess."

I looked at the apron. Then looked at Akira, who was looking at me with the expression he used when he had decided to wait and see what I was going to do.

I didn’t say a word and slowly wore the apron.

***

We worked the lunch rush in the same pattern we had fallen into the first time I had found myself in this shop with an apron. His mother cooked. He ran the floor. I handled the clearing, the overflow tables and the construction crew who were loud and had occupied four tables. The difference from the first time was that I was aware of him continuously.

The awareness of where he was in the room at any given moment, the sound of his voice when he took orders, the way he moved between tables with the mannerisms of someone who had learned this space the way he learned everything else, from the inside out.

He was aware of me too. I could tell from the way his attention adjusted when I came into his radius, the small acts that happened when our paths crossed near the counter.

We didn’t touch, didn’t speak beyond the operational exchanges the service required, but the awareness was there throughout.

The rush peaked and broke at half past one.

The construction crew filed out. The remaining tables ran quiet, the specific peace of a lunch service that had served itself. His mother was already starting the afternoon prep, the sounds from the kitchen settling into the slower rhythm of a space that was no longer in demand.

I was carrying the last of the cleared dishes to the counter when he came out of the back hallway.

The hallway connected the kitchen to the storage room, a narrow pass-through, wide enough for one person moving carefully or two people not minding closeness.

I was coming from the counter end. He was coming from the kitchen end. We both bumped into each other at approximately the same moment and continued because stopping would have been the weirder choice.

We met in the middle.

The hallway was exactly as narrow as it looked. He turned slightly to let me through and I turned slightly to let him through but that maneuver that should have resolved the move cleanly did not do it’s work because the space was smaller.

He looked up at me while I looked down at him.

The hallway was very quiet. The kitchen sounds were muffled from here and the dining room was at the other end and in between there was just the narrow space and the two of us in it.

His eyes moved from my eyes and trailed down to my lips. The smallest thing, the shift of attention that happened when a person’s focus changed from general to specific.

My mind drifted to our ruined moment at the stairwell. His forehead warm under my lips. His head against my shoulder.

His breath was audible in the quiet of the hallway. Mine probably was too.

I leaned forward. The smallest movement, while I kept watching him closely for a sign of discomfort. Only one thought in my head and it dominated my sense the minute he tilted his head up to me and shut his eyes.

"Excuse me." The voice came from the dining room end of the hallway, a customer who had appeared at the entrance with the specific apologetic expression of someone who needed something and had walked in on a moment they couldn’t fully read but could feel the edges of.

"Sorry... is there more of the jasmine broth? The kitchen said to ask."

Akira stepped back. Breaking away from whatever state we were wrapped in earlier. He cleared his throat and said to the customer, with the professional ease of someone whose voice had not changed at all, "I’ll check. Give me one moment."

He moved past me toward the dining room end. His shoulder brushed mine as he went but neither of us acknowledged it.

I stood in the hallway for a moment after he had gone.

The cleared dishes were still in my hands. The kitchen sounds continued through the wall. The dining room had returned to its quiet afternoon register.

I thought about what had almost happened right now. About what would have happened if the customer had arrived thirty seconds later. And a thousand ways to send said customer to the deepest parts of the earth.

Ignoring my body’s reaction, I walked back to the counter and set the dishes down and tried not look at him when he came back through the hallway with the answer about the broth. I also did not look at him when he delivered it and did not look at him when we resumed the ordinary movements of a post-rush afternoon.

But I knew exactly where he was in the room. Every fucking moment. Without even trying.

That was the thing about his scent. About him as a whole. My mind had been filled of him all through my trip. And now he was here, present and real and close.

Images of him being docile and accepting sent another thrill to an already hardened part of me. He had given me control at that moment.

Soon enough. I would have the answer to why I reacted this way to him and him alone.