The Fashion Show

(Shin's PoV)

—

(Lunch Time, After Shower)

By the time we were both dressed and presentable, the afternoon light had shifted into that warm, lazy gold that makes Sundays feel longer than other days.

Akane was standing in the middle of my living room with her boots already on, her damp hair pulled over one shoulder, wearing the expression of a general reviewing unacceptable troops.

The troops were my kitchen and the food.

"So... We have half an egg," she announced, closing the fridge with her hip. "Half. An egg. Who eats half an egg and puts the rest back, Shin?"

"That was you," I said, teasing.

"Irrelevant. The point stands. We can't eat lunch here unless your plan is seasoning the air." She folded her arms. "Proposals. Go."

"Ramen place on the corner?" I suggested.

"We already had ramen." She crossed her arms.

"Ramen is not a once-a-week food, Akane. Ramen is a lifestyle—" 

"Denied. Next." Her voice carried no hesitation.

"What about... the curry chain by the station?" I scratched the back of my head.

She gave me a look that could have stripped paint. "A chain. On a Sunday. Where's your dignity, Ishikawa?"

"You once ate convenience store fried chicken standing in a parking lot, Bakanashi, I remember seeing that scene before we started talking," I replied.

"That was artisanal parking lot fried chicken, and you swore never to bring it up again." She pointed at me. "Counter-proposal. The okonomiyaki place near the bridge."

"Nah, I don't feel like going there," I said, crossing my arms.

"Tch— You're impossible..." She sighed, performing a facepalm. "Let's go eat some takoyaki then."

"Akane." 

We stared at each other across the living room in a hard, silent standoff, two negotiators at an impasse, the fate of lunch hanging in the balance.

Her mouth was doing the thing where it wanted to smile, and she was refusing to let it.

Finally, she exhaled through her nose and raised one hand like a diplomat proposing a ceasefire.

"Okay. Here's the deal. We have to head toward my place anyway because I need clothes that aren't yours before Hoshiko sees me and starts a commentary. So: we walk, and we eat at the first place that inspires us on the way. No vetoes. First inspiration wins. Deal?"

I considered it.

"Deal," I said. "Seems fair. And honestly, wherever we end up, you'll eat an entire airplane anyway since you burned too many calories in the shower." I teased.

Akane's face went instantly pink.

"Idiot!" She grabbed the nearest couch cushion and threw it at my head with impressive accuracy. "It's not my fault! I can't resist you! Move! Walk! Lunch!"

I was still laughing as she herded me out the door.

The "first place that inspires us" idea revealed a fatal design flaw within four minutes: it turns out neither of us knew what "inspiration" meant, and both of us were prepared to litigate it.

"That soba place looks—" I tried to say.

"It has a laminated menu with photos, Shin. Where's the mystery? Where's the romance? Absolutely Denied." She said, forming an X with her arms.

"You said no vetoes."

"I'm not vetoing. I'm simply not inspired. My idea is working perfectly, Ishikawa." She said.

Then, passed a tonkatsu shop (but the line was too long — "inspiration doesn't wait forty minutes"), a café (too pretty — "I don't trust food that's mainly a photo opportunity"), and a standing sushi bar (I got inspired; she informed me my inspiration was "financially irresponsible" and kept walking).

We kept walking hand in hand, occasionally hearing the company of Akane's stomach 'singing'.

And then, halfway down a side street neither of us had ever taken, we both stopped at the same time.

It was a tiny place with six seats at a counter, a handwritten menu taped inside the window, and a curtain so faded that its original color was a matter of faith.

The smell drifting out of it was extraordinary: soy and dashi and something frying with the confidence of decades.

And then, halfway down a side street neither of us had ever taken, we both stopped at the same time.

It was a tiny place with six seats at a counter, a curtain so faded that its original color was a matter of faith.

The smell drifting out of it was extraordinary: soy and dashi and something frying with the confidence of decades.

"It smells like heaven," Akane said, inhaling the scent like a vacuum cleaner.

Taped inside the window, handwritten in thick black marker, was a sign:

"NO PHOTOS. NO SUBSTITUTIONS. THE CHEF DECIDES."

Akane read it, and her grin arrived slowly, like a sunrise.

"Shin," she said, with enormous delight. "Look at it."

"I'm looking at it. That's not a sign, that's a warning label. That's a man announcing his terms of engagement in his own window." I replied.

"That's a man with standards," Akane said. 

"That's a man who's going to look at me while I eat. I don't know..." I rubbed my chin.

"Almost certainly." She was already reaching for the curtain, her eyes bright. "Look at that handwriting, Shin. That's forty years of not caring what a single person thinks. I've never been more inspired in my life."

"You're clearly inspired by the aggression." I sighed.

"I'm inspired by the conviction." Then, without thinking for another instant, she pulled the curtain aside and held it open for me, chin tilted toward the doorway. "First inspiration wins. You made me shake on it. Come on, ghost boy."

In the end, lunch turned out to be the best decision of that day.

The place was run by an old couple who moved around each other behind the counter like two hands of the same person: he cooked, she served, and neither had said a full sentence to the other in years because they didn't need to.

The menu was whatever he'd decided that morning.

We got the set, and it was miraculous: grilled fish with crackling skin, rice that tasted like actual rice, a miso soup that made Akane close her eyes on the first sip and go silent for five full seconds — which, from her, was a standing ovation.

"So good...!" Akane said, overjoyed.

Of course, she ate everything. Then she eyed my pickles until I surrendered them. 

After that, she ordered a second bowl of rice with the shameless confidence of a woman who had been promised an airplane.

The old woman, refilling our tea, glanced at her husband — who had not looked up, spoken, or acknowledged our existence once in forty minutes — and said the only full sentence of the entire meal:

"He likes you."

She said it in a tone that closed all discussion, and shuffled away, and the funniest thing was that it came out of nowhere.

Akane laughed so hard she had to put her chopsticks down.

In the end, the lunch was delicious, and I was about to start a war with Akane because she wanted to split the bill in half, claiming that 'Love is 50-50, ghost boy,' while I only wanted to do something nice for her.

Then, after we split the bill, paid, and said goodbye to those people, the walk to her place took another fifteen minutes, and I felt the city change around us as we went.

My neighborhood is quiet: hedges, parked bicycles, the occasional dog announcing the mail.

Akane's district doesn't do quiet. The streets narrow and brighten at the same time, the buildings press closer together, and the signage multiplies: even in daylight you can see the dormant neon everywhere, tubes of electric blue and poison green and blood red waiting for evening, stacked three stories high above bars and vintage shops and a basement live house with band flyers scaled across its door like armor.

The whole area hums at a different voltage. It fits her so precisely that the first time I came here, I remember thinking the district must have been built around her, and not the other way.

She badged the keycard at the entrance, and the lobby smelled of cold stone.

The elevator hummed us up to the fourth floor, and the door of apartment 402 clicked open under her key.

"Shoes, Darling," she said, before the door had even finished swinging.

"I know." I smiled.

"I'm just saying it. It's part of the ritual. The threshold demands it. This is still our sanctuary, you know?" She said, kissing my cheek.

"Right, right..." I replied.

Then, I toed my shoes off next to hers on the rack, and stepped up into the sanctuary.

That's her word for it — sanctuary — and it's the correct one.

Crossing that threshold is like stepping out of the city and into the inside of a thought.

The main lights were off, the way she keeps them; two low amber lamps threw long, jagged shadows up the walls, and the air was saturated with her incense: sandalwood and cedar, warm and old and nostalgic.

The living room assembled itself out of the amber dark: the soft dark-gray couch, the coffee table buried under motorcycle magazines, and the far wall — the wall that had genuinely stunned me the first time — paneled floor to ceiling in charcoal acoustic foam, with her three electric guitars hanging on it in a neat row like weapons in a shrine.

On the low shelf beneath them, the turntable sat surrounded by its city of vinyl stacks.

No pastels anywhere. No stereotypical anything. And not one single photograph of her family, in any room, which said more about her history than the whole story she had told me that morning.

Stepping inside this time felt both nostalgic and different. A strange sensation.

"Sit," Akane commanded, dropping her bag by the hallway. "You know your spot, Ghost Boy."

I did know my spot. Left side of the couch, second cushion, the one angled toward the guitar wall.

I had a spot in her sanctuary.

Then, she crouched at the shelf, flipped through a vinyl stack with two fingers, and pulled out a record — some band whose name I couldn't read from the couch, in a font apparently designed to prevent reading.

The needle dropped, and a slow, heavy, fuzzed-out riff rolled through the room at low volume, filling the amber shadows like smoke.

"Alright, Ishikawa." She straightened up and cracked her knuckles. "Here's the situation. Hoshiko will assess my outfit tonight like a customs officer, and I cannot lose. Therefore: fashion show. You are the audience, the judge, and the jury. Scores from one to ten. Honesty is mandatory. Flattery will be detected and punished."

"Uhm..." I scratched the back of my head. "What are the criteria?"

"Coolness, danger, general lone wolf vibes, and how much negative energy I radiate, so that people won't approach us." She said, smiling.

"Those are the criteria. Right."

"They're one criterion wearing multiple jackets." She said, before leaning close to land a small kiss on my lips. "Sit still, I'll be fast, I promise. I know that you guys hate these kind of things."

Then, without listening to my reply, she disappeared down the narrow hallway — past the amp stacks and the dark silhouettes of the guitars leaning against them — and the bedroom door slid shut.

After a few minutes, the show began.

Outfit one: all-black cargo pants, a harness-strap jacket, combat boots. She came out, planted her feet, and stared at me like she was about to give me mission parameters.

"Seven," I said. "Very cool. But it looks like you're about to defuse something."

"That's a feature." She said proudly.

"You'd get stopped at the door of any building with security." I joked.

"...Noted." She vanished.

Outfit two: a plaid punk skirt with a studded belt and a band tee. She took two steps, felt the skirt move, and turned straight back around.

"Verdict?" I called.

"Vetoed by me. It's too cheerful when it moves. It swishes, Shin. I refuse to swish in front of Hoshiko." She said before vanishing again.

Outfit three: an enormous band hoodie over shorts. She came out, looked down at herself, and sighed.

"This is pajamas with extra steps," she admitted before I could speak. "Eight for comfort, zero for dignity. Next."

Outfit four: leather jacket, ripped black jeans, chain wallet. Objectively great. I said eight and a half, and she narrowed her eyes at the mirror in the hallway.

"It's starter pack," she said darkly. "It's what a website thinks I dress like. Next."

Outfit five made me sit up.

She came out wearing — I still don't fully understand it — a pale, soft, lavender cardigan with a little ribbon at the collar. She stood in the amber light with her arms slightly out from her sides, like the garment was wet.

Silence.

"Hoshiko gave it to me as a joke two birthdays ago," she said flatly. "I'm trying it once, in private, so that it can never be used against me. Look at it. Witness it. And now we take it to its grave."

"You look like you're about to offer me herbal tea and a pamphlet." I teased.

"Grave, Shin."

By outfit six — a long, layered, monochrome coat situation she described as "promising, but funeral-director core" — the record had rolled into its slow B-side, the incense was doing its warm heavy work, my stomach was full of miraculous grilled fish, and the couch had begun its quiet campaign against my consciousness.

'Ah... damn.'

I fought bravely.

By outfit seven — a PVC jacket that squeaked audibly with every movement, disqualified on sound design alone — I was losing.

I don't know exactly when my eyes closed. I know only that at some point the fuzzy guitars and the amber dark and the sandalwood folded over me like a blanket, and the next thing my mind registered was a weight landing on the couch beside me and a voice, very close to my ear, saying with terrible sweetness:

"Am I boring you, Ghost boy?" She whispered.

I immediately opened my eyes. Akane's face was ten centimeters from mine, lit amber from the side, wearing the smile of a predator who has found something wounded.

"I was just resting my eyes between rounds," I said. 

"You were asleep. At my fashion show. My own beloved boyfriend. The person I love the most in this world. Front row. Unconscious." She pressed a hand to her chest. "Models have ended careers over less. I should throw you off the balcony."

"Your incense is a weapon. I was ambushed. This couch is complicit." I raised my arms up.

"Excuses. Hoshiko will hear about this betrayal in full detail—"

Her phone buzzed on the coffee table.

She immediately snatched it up, read it, and snorted.

HOSHIKO:BABY WOLF. Miracle report: I finished early. I repeat, I FINISHED EARLY. This has never happened in recorded history. Can I come now?? I'm basically already wearing my jacket.

Akane typed with her thumbs, reading her reply aloud in a flat voice as she went: "Six o'clock. Not before. And bring some chocolates, thanks!"

Send.

The reply came back in four seconds.

HOSHIKO:Ahh?? But I finished early just to see you two sooner!! ...Ah. Wait. I see. I SEE. Say no more.

HOSHIKO:(I'm saying no more but I'm thinking VERY loudly. You're still in the middle of it, right?😉)

HOSHIKO:Anyway, good news, I found two more cute shops near the first one. One sells rings shaped like teeth. TEETH, wolf. Prepare your wallet. See you at six, not before; I have been informed.

Akane rolled her eyes with her whole head and dropped the phone back on the magazines.

"She's thinking very loudly," I said. "I remember that she was the exact opposite in middle school."

"She was born thinking very loudly. Ignore her. That's her true personality." She stood, stretched, and pointed at me. "Final round. Stay awake or die."

Then, Akane disappeared down the hallway one last time.

And when the bedroom door slid open again, the show was over — because this was it, and we both knew it before she'd taken a full step.

The big winter hoodie first, black and heavy, sleeves shoved up her forearms. Black shorts over fishnets, a fine chain looping at her hip, and her tall boots laced tight, buckles catching the amber light.

Her silver rings were back on her fingers, her hair was down, and she walked out of that hallway the way she walks through the school corridors, like the floor should be grateful, and stopped in front of me with one eyebrow raised.

Every trace of drowsiness left my body.

It wasn't any single piece of it. It was that the outfit finally matched the person: the chains and the wool, the armor and the softness, the whole contradictory architecture of her, worn on the outside for once.

"Well?" she said. "Score."

I looked at her for a long moment.

"You're much cuter when you look more dangerous," I said. "You know that? Ten out of Ten."

Something flickered through her eyes.

She crossed the space between us, leaned down, and pressed the tip of her index finger against my nose.

"Well," she said, and the smirk softened into something that was just a smile. "What matters is that you like it. I don't care about anyone else."

Boop.

Then, she straightened up, thoroughly satisfied with herself, and turned toward the mirror to make final adjustments, and that was when my phone rang.

The sound cut through the low vinyl fuzz, bright and ordinary and somehow completely wrong for the room.

I glanced at the coffee table, where the screen had lit up.

Beside me, I felt Akane go still, and when I looked up, she was watching the phone with an expression I couldn't fully read: her arms slowly crossing, her weight settling back on one heel, something cold and knowing gathering behind her eyes.

"Eh?" I reached for it. "Who could it be?"

Akane let out a long, slow sigh through her nose.

"I think I already know," she said. "Tch—"