Archive of Our Own

~~~

The shop was third-floor, part of a little strip mall built in 1950 on the fringes of Shibuya proper. Lately the building had been renovated, and within the hallway still stunk of fresh paint and plaster and wood, all clean lines and unmarked matte white. Windows had been strategically placed within the hall at intervals precisely measured to let in just enough light, creating at once a pleasant ambience and a sensation of safety.

Two of the walls in the larger room of the shop--the dining area, Tachibana figured--faced the outside, forming the topmost corner of the building, all unslanted bay windows which let more light flood in than the smaller type in the hallway. The second room (perfect for a kitchen in both location and shape) lay along the inner length of the hall, but was only accessible through a door in the shop itself, invisible when first entering.

Perfect, really. And expensive, but it wasn't like he didn't have the money. Tachibana just wished they'd been able to come on a nicer day; the attractive breadth of the windows was ruined by the rain which fell, monotonously grey, amongst the cityscape beyond, relentless in the unique way of a winter in full flush. He suspected the overall effect would be enchanting (at least to someone with more than an academic capacity for appreciating beauty) once they got some curtains up to block out the less pleasant days, but for the time being they had to see it as it was, bare elegant bones and all.

An undeniably fine Western-style building as a whole, and the proprietor had already offered to install a counter display like the one in Antique proper by the inner door for free if they signed by the end of the month. There was even a little balcony outside the left bay of windows, dark iron curlicues underfoot and spidery black railings, accessible by a single glass door built directly into one of the windows.

"So?" he prompted. A valiant effort went into making the word sound merely curious, but it came out irritated anyway. Ono hadn't exactly been bursting with opinions yet, and Tachibana was starting to get just a little sick of standing and watching him blink around through his glasses like a blind old man. "What do you think? Will it work?"

"It's an awful lot of stairs for a customer to have to climb," Ono replied at last, just a touch dubiously, but there was a slight shiftiness in his voice that belied a deeper wanting--which meant he liked it and was dithering about saying so. Which just figured, damn it. "Aesthetically, however..." His eyes started to glimmer as he trailed off, hands coming up to fold beneath his chin unconsciously. "...and if we tied in a semi-organic theme here to offset the strict luxury of the original, plants and light-colored curtains to go with the richness of the antiques and other hand-crafted elements..."

Oh, God. Tachibana rolled his eyes and combed the fingers of one hand through his hair, scratching absently. He'd already picked out a much saner theme for the place--not that Ono needed to know that. Officially he hadn't even decided to make it Antique's second location, though he'd known from the second he'd first seen it that it would be. It was the most logical second step, after all, and so close to an entertainment hotspot, not to mention near the original bakery...

Now the genius pastry chef just had to agree.

"So they have to walk a little," he snorted, shrugging, and checked his watch out of the corner of his eye. 10:30 AM--plenty of time to get back and open by 12:00, even with Kanda still gone. "They'll already know us from the original Antique, right? So at first we're just going to have regulars who are closer to this location than the old one, right? Then other people in this area will start to notice us after seeing them come and go, at which point we'll have enough of a toe-hold that we should be able to--"

Tachibana cut himself off abruptly, unnerved, because suddenly Ono was smiling at him; that inscrutable, warm look that always made his stomach turn, like the guy was trying to paw through his head, even with those beady little eyes closed.

"What?" he asked warily, taking a step closer to the door. Always best to have a clear escape route.

Ono shook his head, still smiling. "Oh, nothing important. It's just nice to see you've already thought about it so much."

Oh. Well, so much for subtlety. How did he always know?

For a moment Tachibana was uncomfortable and tongue-tied at the same time. Then he managed enough of a scowl to make it look like he was neither, and got out an appropriately loud, "Whatever," before sticking a pinky in his ear and looking back out the farther set of windows. "Look, is it a yes or not? I think it's the best shot we're going to get this year. The rent's a bit steep, but with the way the first location's gone, I doubt it'll be much of a problem after a month or two."

"Yes."

It was such a decisive answer--particularly from someone who by his own admission cared very little for his job--that Tachibana blinked and turned to look at him again, startled out of his discomfort.

A disconcerting break in the clouds drifted by as he stared, flooding the room with light, though the patter of falling rain continued unbroken. The foxes are getting married, Tachibana thought absently, remembering the way his mother used to look up and say the same thing for every sun shower she saw. Then, because it never hurt to be multicultural: And the Devil's kissing his bride.

He stared at Ono through the whole thing, trying to pick apart his expression, figure out what exactly he was trying to say with any of it--all of it, even a bit of it--but he was just as infuriatingly inscrutable by the time the clouds rolled back overhead as before. It was enough to make him want to tear his hair out, particularly since they seemed to be having more and more of these special moments of late, and not a one was ever more revealing than the one before.

"The storm must be breaking up," Ono murmured, shattering the moment at last to turn to turn toward the windows, breaking eye contact. Tachibana looked reluctantly with him, and saw that he was right; the clouds had gone from a solid mass of grey to a mottled sea of charcoal and cobweb, the rain somewhat lighter, though still pervasive. He tried to dredge up a better scowl than before, but it wouldn't stick.

"We're still going to have to walk home in it," he grumbled after a slight pause, shoving his hands into his pockets. Then, because there didn't seem to be anything else to say about any of it, he turned and headed for the door.

Ono glanced at him sharply as he passed. "Don't you mean the shop?"

"What?" That was what he'd said, wasn't it? God, Ono was weird. "That's what I said, idiot. You don't need to get your hearing checked, do you? I'm not paying for it!"

He didn't look, but after a few seconds he heard a soft chuckle--or maybe not, maybe just a sigh, followed by the sound of light footsteps trailing down the hall after him. The door shut with a sturdy thump at their backs, leaving them alone with the sounds of their own feet and breathing. "No, I'm sure my hearing is fine. It's nice of you to ask, though."

The scowl wasn't at all hard to manage this time. "Ugh. Don't mention it, okay?"

He waited until they'd both retrieved their umbrellas, shaking them slightly before opening them, to smirk at Ono over his shoulder. "Besides," he added, though he wasn't quite sure which part of the conversation he was adding it to. "You know I'm taking the first few months of rent for this place out of your bonuses, right?"

It turned out the look of horror on Ono's face was exactly the thing he'd needed to start his morning right. Go figure.

~

He called the landowner that evening from the back of the kitchen to finalize the deal. The bakery had hit its typical late-night lull around 10, a few patrons sitting and talking quietly with one another, long finished with their food and enjoying the ambience. Or perhaps just waiting for everything to digest. Tachibana could never really tell. The break wouldn't last more than twenty minutes (someone inevitably would want a bill soon, probably just as someone else hit the outside counter in a raving panic over something), but it was all the time he needed to get the call over with.

Strictly speaking, Tachibana hated spending money on anything, even something necessary like this kind of business expansion. It wasn't that he was frugal, really. There just wasn't much out there that he wanted buy--or, to put it perhaps more honestly, there wasn't much out there that he hadn't already had.

Nothing was going to erase the fact that he was, at heart, the product of a rich family, even working into the small hours of the morning like he now was to make his living. The knowledge that his family could bail him out of anything was always there at the back of his mind, eating at him. Once he'd found it comforting. Now it was something he couldn't escape, and that the people around him couldn't forget, though they all used their knowledge of the fact to different effects. For Kanda it was just another reason to insult him; for Chikage it was a comfort, this knowledge that his lord would never be entirely alone in the world (which Tachibana found highly debatable, but nothing would ever stop Chikage from being Chikage, especially reality); and Ono...

Come to think of it, Tachibana had no idea what Ono really thought of it. Or, for that matter, what Ono really thought of anything. And as usual, he found his mind skittering away from any attempt to carry that thought farther. He didn't want to know what was going on in Ono's head. They might have reached a tentative equilibrium in the last few years, particularly with Kanda and Chikage there less and less frequently, but that didn't mean he had any interest in getting any more involved with the guy than he already was. Business first, right? This was all about business. Ono had made it very clear that he was equally interested in having that stay the rule of thumb.

Except when he was busy spouting lines about this job being the first one he'd been happy at in years. Whatever.

The landowner was appropriately soporific and delighted throughout the course of the call, probably as overjoyed by his knowledge of Tachibana's family as by the sale itself, since both facts guaranteed some form of profit for him. Tachibana tried not to think too hard about it.

He called his insurance company next to begin working out some of the initial snares in expanding his policy to two shops, then went back into the shop to smile and make sure everyone had exactly what they wanted before they left. He arrived just in time to catch a couple who'd become interested in receiving their bill before they could get annoyed, and was coming back out with the requested slip when a red-faced woman arrived at the counter to ask for twelve choux parisienne to be boxed immediately.

Sometimes it was nice to be right about almost everything. Sometimes it was just depressing.

~

Tachibana had the nightmare again that night. A mouth moved in his mind's eye, forming an indistinguishable, silent word, accompanied by the familiar sensation of slick, crawling horror. He woke up sweating and gasping, horrified, only to find that the world had gone completely insane around him while he slept.

There was a flash of light, strong enough to illuminate everything in his apartment; then a crash, and with a strangled yell Tachibana was on his feet, grabbing for the closest object heavy enough to use as a weapon.

What he ended up grabbing was his teacup from earlier in the night, which he yanked off of his nightstand and into a throwing position before he could fully register what it was. Cold green tea spilled out over his arm and shoulder and across the wood floor, shocking him into simultaneously yelping and dropping the cup, which fortunately skittered away into a corner without breaking. Then he hopped around and swore for a few seconds, shaking his hand and getting his feet wet and trying to wake up all at once.

The herbal stink of the tea was impossibly strong, and in combination with the cold shock it took him only a few more seconds after the swearing to recognize rain pounding against the window over his bed. Then there was another flash, this one distinguishable as lightning, followed by a second low, rolling boom--thunder. Just a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. And he was standing in the middle of a puddle of tea in his boxers, staring out at it like he'd never seen one before.

"Oh, holy shit." It didn't make him feel much better to say it, nor did dropping to balance on his heels, hiding his face in his hands, but he did all of it just the same, going through the familiar motions of exasperation. "Just a stupid thunderstorm. Damn it, my floor..."

After a moment of self-pity he managed to pull himself back to his feet, then went unhappily in search of a towel. He was probably going to have to pick up a cleaner in the morning to finish the job properly, but for now this would have to do. The cup he left in the corner until he was certain he'd mopped up the majority of the mess, rubbing his arm and shoulder dry first, then dropping the cloth so he could slide it around with a foot.

Retrieving the cup after he was finished, Tachibana scanned its surface in the dark, picking out what details he could; dark lacquered porcelain outside, red inside, with spidery branches of plum blossoms showing almost luminescent white against the finish, and the tiny figures of warblers hidden amongst the flowers.

A gift from his mother two years ago, he believed. His birthday or something. Trying not to tremble, he set it back down on his bedside table and glared out the window.

Damn it, Ono... "You were totally wrong about the storm. It just got worse."

Sighing, Tachibana turned and headed into his bathroom for a shower.

~

The following morning was deceptively nice, with only a slight sharp taste of lingering rain and ozone from the faded storm to remind Tachibana of the night before. Well, that and the stink of tea that had yet to fade from the floorboards, but he was trying not to think about that.

Tachibana opened the window upon waking (he'd managed to get back to sleep around four, which was fine, all things considered), staring first down into the activity of the new day, then up into the tentative brilliance of the sun.

Dazzled and irritated (it was December--what business did the day have to be so nice, particularly after a night like that?), he then dressed quickly, ate quickly, moved the cup into the kitchen to avoid any further disasters, tripped over one of his house slippers on his way to brush his teeth, saved himself from permanent damage with superior reflexes, and by ten o'clock was out the door.

Ono was already in the kitchen when he arrived, working on the last of the morning's more delicate items, bustling in his quiet, passive way. Tachibana almost stopped to stare at his fingers as they moved over the various ingredients, feeling some of the surreal quality of the nightmare still lingering, but managed to stop himself at the last second, before his pause could become obvious.

"Hey," he said quickly, pulling his apron on; his typical cursory greeting, to which he gruffly added, "Hell of a storm last night," because it really did bear mentioning, if only because he was trying to confirm that it had actually happened, that it wasn't just a new, horrible dimension to his paranoia.

Ono didn't stop working, though his welcoming smile had all of the usual bland sweetness Tachibana had gotten used to ignoring over the last couple of years. "Wasn't it? I thought my window was going to come right out of its frame at one point."

"Thought I was going to get some involuntary shock therapy in my place," Tachibana snorted, finishing the knot of the horizontal bow with practiced concentration. He didn't need Ono picking up on any of his lingering fright. Not right now. "Need any help?"

"Not right now," Ono smiled, and Tachibana jerked involuntarily, weirded out by the strange phrasing coincidence. "Just make sure the tables are ready, please?"

Tachibana glared. "They look damn good, and you know it. I got them all done last night. Just say if you need anything, okay?"

"Sure."

"Good."

For a long moment he stood frozen to the spot, Ono pausing finally to blink up at him, until the exchange threatened to turn into another of those weird thousand-yard staring contests. He really had no desire for a repeat of yesterday's stupidity, however, and with an effort yanked himself out of the kitchen, scowling.

With nothing else to do, Tachibana made his way to the front of the shop to take another breath of air through the service window, careful to open it only a few inches--no need to encourage customers who didn't like their current hours. He knew from experience that to give an inch really was to lose a mile where opening was concerned; let one person slip in early, and within seconds there would be five more, guaranteed.

The lights in the dining room behind him were off still (another discouraging method; he wouldn't turn them on until the last few minutes), heightening the quality of his view into the street. Leaning against the top of the display case, he fell into staring up at the sky with practiced apathy, chin in on hand, waiting for Ono to need something. Which he better had. They wouldn't be going over the menu of the day for another half hour, and Tachibana was bored. Or maybe just crazy. Either way, he needed something else to occupy his mind with, before he could get really mad at someone who (probably) didn't deserve it. Like Chikage. Who should have been there last night, damn it.

The ozone smell was gone now, replaced instead by the pervasive gasoline stench of any city big enough to support daily traffic. Fortunately the smell wasn't very strong here, it being a low-traffic area, but it lingered all the same, an underlying sensory layer he found difficult to ignore.

Occasionally regulars passed by as he waited, women and men who smiled as they went, bobbing politely on their way to various errands, obligations, jobs, outings. He knew exactly which of them would be back throughout the day, and which of them were only likely to be, and smiled genially at each one.

He was looking in the opposite direction when he caught a flash of blue and white out of the corner of his eye. Curious, Tachibana turned, then felt his elbow begin to slide neatly out from underneath him, mouth opening in involuntary shock. It was undeniably a rude overreaction on his part, but...but...

...but what the hell is a Shinto priest doing walking down a residential street in the middle of the morning?

Concentration evaporated, Tachibana hardly noticed the world tilting until his head smacked into the glass with a gentle thud, the sound of skin on a smooth, hard surface, and the noise--which carried--caught the priest's attention. Looking around, the quiet focus of his expression gentled to a more general polite concern, and he paused across the street from the window. "Excuse me, are you alright?"

"F-fine," Tachibana assured him, gathering his wits with a firm effort and offering a grin that was only slightly rough around the edges, righting himself. "Forgive me. I just--it's so unexpected to see someone such as yourself passing by our humble establishment.

The priest smiled very slightly. "My brother lives rather close. I thought I might try walking back to the shrine a slightly different way this morning."

Tachibana, though still working on getting over the initial shock, could nevertheless see now that the priest wasn't in full saifuku; the pale houeki was obviously authentic, but the pants which showed beneath it were dark and slim, civilian trousers instead of the traditional hakama. Strangely enough, he had chosen to wear the traditional tabi and straw zori, but to go without his headpiece. All in all, the sight was incredibly strange.

"Ah," Tachibana said at last when it became clear that that was all he was going to offer. "Yes, of course. Ah. Excuse me, but may I ask--"

"Why I'm not simply wearing my civilian clothes on a civilian visit?"

Tachibana laughed uncomfortably.

Again the priest smiled, tilting his head back a few inches. "Well, I do hate to wade through crowds. Most people won't stand in a priest's way, you see."

How...remarkably calculating. Tachibana was torn between laughing again and staring outright, and so ended up with an odd half-smile that probably looked completely insane. "Well. That--that makes complete sense."

For a long moment he expected that to be the end of it, but the priest didn't move, continuing to stand and stare at him with the smile slowly fading from his face, replaced by an expression that grew more and more obviously measuring the longer it stayed. The hair on the back of his neck began to prickle, shortly followed by his scalp. He worked up another smile.

"I apologize, but is something wrong?" He glanced down doubtfully at the display, which was more than half-full now, and before he could remind himself that it would be supremely stupid--and disrespectful--to ask what he was thinking of asking, opened his mouth: "Ah--perhaps the holy sir would like to sample one of our moderate items?"

Oh, God. You did not just try to sell cake to a priest. You really are pathetic, Keiichirou.

The priest's expression didn't change, though his hands did rise to fold into the overlarge sleeves of his houeki. "You have many clouds over your mind, young sir."

Tachibana couldn't quite think of how to respond to that, and in an absurd, unconscious reflex, checked overhead to see if there were any more clouds threatening. The sky was almost painfully clear and blue. "I'm sorry--I thought the storm was gone. It's been a nice day." Nevermind that he was lying through his teeth...though he couldn't quite help adding, almost sarcastically: "So far, at least."

The priest's face was still inscrutable; as bad as Ono at his most mysterious, if not worse, simply because Tachibana had no way of even guessing as to what was going through his head. He was silent for another moment, so long that Tachibana started to wonder if maybe he wasn't just trying to make him sweat for trying to sell him something. And to think that he was maybe just a figment of his imagination. That he really was crazy, or even worse, that all of this, everything that had happened since he'd opened his eyes out of that nightmare, had been a waking dream.

Then finally the priest moved, smiled a small, inflectionless smile, and suggested, almost conversationally, "If you're feeling overburdened with bad luck, you might consider omikuji."

Then he turned and walked away, cutting off Tachibana's disbelieving cry of, "Paper fortunes?" before he could get it out, as effective as if he'd taped his mouth up. At once transfixed and indignant, all he could do was stare after the sandaled figure until he disappeared around the corner, going back to whatever shrine he was from, and--and what the hell had that been about? What--

"Tachibana-san?"

Tachibana turned, mouth still open in aghast shock, and realized that he was actually pointing out the window when he managed to smack his wrist into the frame. Ono was standing with two trays in his hands, looking at him curiously. "Are you alright? I'm almost ready with the menu. Who were you talking to?"

"That guy--!" Tachibana burst out, speaking before he could get his thoughts completely together, "he said I should do omikuji! For my bad luck!"

"Paper fortunes?" Ono repeated, still blinking at him. The urge to shake him and shriek, Yes, paper fortunes! What did you think I said? was overwhelming, but not practical, considering that he had the last of the display case items on those trays. "What, haven't you ever done one?"

Tachibana began to wonder at this point if he was just the only one sane enough in the shop to find this overwhelmingly ridiculous, or if it would be better for him to hang on to that insanity theory after all. "Yeah, when I was twelve! It's kid stuff."

"You think so?"

"Don't you?" Tachibana countered, turning to vent some of his frustration on Ono directly. He supposed it wasn't really fair, but he was getting sick of staring at that blinking, perfectly reasonable expression in the face of what was undeniably an attack on his personal character.

Ono's face spread in a broad, nostalgic smile. "Oh, not at all. I just went to do one last year on a date. He was such an attractive man, so polite..."

His eyes started to get misty at this point, and Tachibana, concerned for the well-being of the items still in his hands (and well as for what remained of his patience), held up his hands defensively. "No, no! No sordid recollections of your perverted dating record, okay? Just finish getting the items on display."

It took a good chunk of the day for Tachibana to finally figure out what had upset him so much about the priest's suggestion. It wasn't that it had been rude, necessarily; it was more the thought that someone out there, regardless of how holy he was (or thought he was), really believed he had the right to tell a person what he did or didn't need to do with his life without actually knowing the first thing about him.

And since when did he look unlucky? He'd been getting sleazy and creepy and geezer for years now, but unlucky? Obviously he was working in a well-established bakery, wearing clean clothes, speaking well--what about that said unlucky?

Then again, he might just have been pissed off that someone had finally noticed, even through the veneer of success. It was hard to say.

~

December dwindled away in a series of less serious storms, some merely cold rain, others half-hearted mixtures of slush and hail. They only had one day of proper snow shortly before Christmas, a brief and quiet storm which began just a few hours after Kanda finally flew back from France to help them with the holiday rush.

He'd been gone for two months this time, and though he looked happy to be back, Tachibana knew better than to expect it to last. Chikage also came in to help, so for a few fleeting days it felt like that first Christmas all over again, even with work continuing on the second shop. He just couldn't shake the feeling that something precious had passed out of his sight, something he hadn't even noticed going away, and it was easy to slip into pretending that it was back when the shop was loud again.

It didn't help that he couldn't quite shake the words of that priest out of his head, either. The omikuji part he didn't give much thought, but the rest--what he'd said about Tachibana's luck, about clouds in his mind--was harder to forget. Much harder than he'd expected.

It was just so weird. No one had ever been able to tell before who hadn't found out through someone else--Ono and Kanda were proof of that. Neither of them had even suspected that there was more going on in his head than 24/7 lechery and grumpiness before Akutagawa spilled the beans, and even after that they hadn't paid much attention.

The thing was, he had always thought of himself as unlucky, ever since he was little. Even before he'd been kidnapped. He hadn't been treated the same by other children his age; they all knew who he was, where was from, what they would have to answer to if they didn't respect him. It hadn't felt fair, even then. He'd thought again and again about how lucky normal children were, getting to play with anyone they wanted, never having to live up to a family name they couldn't even spell yet.

Then that portion of his memory had disappeared, a fact that obviously still haunted him, regardless of his age; and even when things got easier socially after that--when he figured out the mechanics of subtle and deceptive concealment in conversation, so that the subject of his family almost never came up--he still couldn't quite seem to straighten his luck out. He was seen as a person, often liked, but...

Well, obviously if he knew what had changed in him, he would have done something to try and change it back a long time ago, before having to go through any of the painful endings that seemed to be so inexorably tied to his relationships. But he still had no idea. It was like the harder he'd tried, the deeper they'd gotten lost in that hole in his memory, until each one ended up leaving for sake of her own sanity. No one seemed to care to stay for his.

Sometimes it struck him how pathetic this was. Most of the time, however, it was much easier to have a drink and take an early nap and forget all about the way his life seemed to continue endlessly spiraling down into increasing lows, with the only high point at all remaining the bakery. It wasn't so bad, after all, having the two dimensional life of a salesman, and there were always people coming to him who needed something which he didn't have to kill himself to provide. Everyone won.

But he still wondered sometimes what the kidnapper had said. What he kept trying to say, even now.

~

Two days before the new year Tachibana completely lost his mind. He called Chikage and told him to fill in at Antique for the first few hours of the day, got in his car, blanked out, and shortly thereafter, upon returning to his proper senses, found himself mysteriously standing outside the massive wooden torii of Shibuya's Meiji Shrine.

It was either believe that this was the way things had happened, or admit to himself that he was actually just a little curious about figuring out whether the priest had been right.

He found the box on one side of the shrine's courtyard, where it stood on a small table before the four-sided structure of horizontal wooden bars to which the curses and bad-luck omikuji were tied. Already the bars bristled with papers, neatly tied strips which rustled stiffly against one another as he approached, quiet and sharp.

He had a two-hundred yen coin ready by the time he reached the table, doing his best not to see the faces of the few people surrounding the table as they examined their respective lots. The smaller offering box was beside the larger omikuji one, and his coin made a definite clinking sound as it fell, proving that at least here people had seen fit to give a little. Without further stalling he then stuck his hand into the larger box, closed his eyes, stirred around the folded papers within, and thought of the question he most wanted to have answered.

What the hell am I doing with my life?

Then he grabbed a fortune at random and backed up, clenching it in his hand and moving quickly around to the other side of the structure, where no one would be able to read over his shoulder. Taking a deep breath--not to calm himself, he just needed a deep breath--he picked the folded paper delicately apart, closed his eyes for a moment, then boldly glared down at it.

The paper was blank.

For a moment Tachibana thought he was holding it the wrong way in the light. Perplexed, he turned it over. When that failed to help, he turned it back over and began to angle it different ways. It was only when that failed as well that he realized what had really happened--that somehow, through the most insane printing error in the history of printing errors, he had managed to get the single blank omikuji in a whole batch of properly made ones.

It was enough to make him want to cry.

Instead, however, he ran through a very satisfying list of all the things he could do to destroy it, then took it home to use as a bookmark.

Nevermind the deeper implications. He could think about them later, once he was done being absolutely furious with life in general.

~

January passed in a blur of activity. Tachibana began halfway through to leave Kanda and Chikage by themselves in the bakery, challenging them to run it without any help for half, then full days at a time, until they seemed mostly able to handle it alone. Then he and Ono opened the second branch officially for business three days a week and took off running.

Tachibana had already decided that once he'd gotten a solid base under the second bakery, the whole thing would go to Kanda to run, while he and Ono reclaimed the original shop; but for now they needed Ono's reputation and consistency to get it started, and the Shibuya crowds were definitely tougher, meaning Chikage would be next to useless within seconds. The punk would have to find some help to supplement what little Chikage could provide, but he figured that wouldn't be so bad once he and Ono had tested the waters a bit.

Things went well enough through the end of the month, though it was a whole new kind of customer experience for Tachibana. At first his predictions proved to be entirely true, with regulars who lived in Shibuya climbing the stairs to find them, exclaiming over the lovely semi-organic theme of the new branch.

Then came a new variety of people, perhaps the most startling being the Kogal girls who began to flood the bakery after the first week. Tachibana wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to forget them, or the fact that their subculture as a whole made its bleach-blonde home in Shibuya, but they actually managed to give Ono hives when a few snuck into the kitchen, marking the first time in the history of Antique that Tachibana ever had to (politely) threaten to remove someone from the premises. He was worried for a while after that he'd hurt business irreparably, but apparently the girls had found it patently hilarious, and made a point of coming back from then on, though they left Ono mostly to himself.

After some debate Tachibana decided to close the second location for the first week of February, moving himself and Ono back to Antique proper so they could handle preparations for the approaching holidays. Come Setsubun they were well-stocked with tidy little bags of irimame, which Tachibana kept in a small box at his elbow throughout the day. Ono, as usual, was less than happy with the thought of selling them.

"We're a French bakery," he would say, as though Tachibana had somehow managed to forget this.

"In a country where most people still believe in following the basic Shinto observances!" Tachibana would snap back, though this was the first year he'd actually managed to convince Ono to let him stock them with that justification. "It's not like they smell, right? And it's just for the one day. Lighten up!"

His bad luck ended up taking him to task for this statement, however, when Chikage's teenage fan girls came by and bought four bags for the specific purpose of throwing beans at him all afternoon, much to his irritation, and Kanda's delight.

He responded by moving the punk and Chikage to the new location a week early, then left them to fend for themselves on the 14th, after which he was pleased to find that both stores together had brought in more on hand-assembled chocolate making kits than they had in both previous years combined. It was surprisingly gratifying, though the bakery seemed even quieter somehow in the wake of what Tachibana realized now had been Kanda's final departure. He would either continue to run the second bakery for some time to come, or move on to a new branch all his own. Either way, he wasn't coming back.

"It was inevitable," Ono shrugged when Tachibana finally worked up the nerve to mention it, though he didn't look him in the face while he spoke. "I always said he'd be great on his own. Hand me that tray, please?"

This careful apathy wasn't a new thing, though it seemed at first to have come somewhat out of the blue. Tachibana realized once he'd finally noticed it, however, that it had actually been building for some time; there had been little hints all along, moments of increased silence, instances where he failed to smile when he doubtless would have before--more and more since December, in fact, precisely when Tachibana himself had first been distracted by thoughts of his own fortune. Distracted enough that he had failed to notice this slow decline on Ono's part, until come the beginning of March they were barely speaking to one another anymore.

With this decline in overt interaction came an ever-increasing sensation in Tachibana's chest of what he eventually recognized as inevitability; a feeling of things coming to a head that had been a long, long time in the making. It frightened him to think of what exactly this inevitability related to, though if he was being honest he'd admit that he already knew.

It had just been so long by this point that he found himself reluctant to see anything else change, even when he knew it would be impossible to stop in the end.

~

Things came to a head at last on the first Saturday in March, when Ono, staring blankly down at a tray of pastries he had just finished, abruptly asked without turning: "Do you think I'm a bad person, Tachibana-san?"

It was a surprisingly hard question to answer. Obviously the only honest thing he could say was yes, he really was; as far as Tachibana knew he was still a frequent solicitor of a promiscuous and dangerous lifestyle, the kind of man who could cheat on his boyfriends without a thought, and who didn't care or fight back when he got hit. Tachibana was incredibly grateful for everything he'd done for Kanda, which had certainly only worked to improve his opinion of his character, but when that one good was compared against the rest of his life...

For a moment he couldn't bring himself to answer, staring until Ono turned to stare back. Finally, however, he had to open his mouth.

"Probably," was what he said, in as flat and direct a tone as he could manage. "But could you please try to have your meltdown about this after work?"

In the few seconds it took him to realize that that was quite possibly the most callous thing he could have said, he finally got a good look at the dark shadows beneath Ono's eyes; at which point it occurred to him that, contrary to his original thought that Ono was at last giving in to a certain degree of self-awareness, the genius pastry chef was actually just going completely nuts from sleep deprivation, probably as a direct result of trying to avoid that impending self-awareness.

Then Ono slapped him. It barely hurt, but was enough to turn his head to one side, so that he ended up watching Ono take his apron off and leave from his peripheral vision.

Feeling as though he'd just missed something incredibly important, Tachibana took a moment to sit on the floor and stare at the cabinet bay across from him, barely registering the throbbing in his cheek.

Part of him tingled with the distinct feeling that he'd just gotten exactly what he'd deserved. A larger part wondered, with some irritation, whether this meant he'd have to find a new genius pastry chef after all. The largest part, however, was at a loss for words.

And furious. But he couldn't really afford to think about that right now, could he?

The moment passed. Tachibana climbed to his feet, turned off all the equipment he didn't know how to use, then put on a smile and walked out to serve his customers.

~

He managed to last the rest of the day without once losing his smile. When the patrons who had been there during Ono's little fit left, he began telling those who came after that their pâtissier was sick. Many apologies. So sorry that they had run out of this particular item. Hopefully he would be well enough to work by morning, though of course Antique's top priority beyond customer service was maintaining the good health of its employees.

Except when they deserve to die, the large, angry part of him thought. He put it aside for later.

2:30 AM rolled around. Tachibana sold the last item to a smiling, mousy teenager with an extremely obvious hickey on his neck, and was even nice enough not to mention it.

He reset the tables and washed the dishes still smiling, put everything away and turned the lights off. Running quickly to the convenience store down the street, he returned with a permanent marker, a sheet of paper, a roll of tape, and a moment later had taped a sign of messy hiragana to the inside of the display window: Closed due to illness. Most sincere apologies.

Then, still smiling, Tachibana locked up and drove quietly back to his apartment. He didn't listen to any music on the way, nor did he remove his apron.

Shutting his door and immediately locking it, he stared, still smiling, at the wall over his shoe alcove for several minutes. Then he removed his work shoes and put on house slippers, moving into the kitchen with his apron still on.

He stood there for a moment in silence as well, taking in the warm, low lights of this private space. Empty space.

"THAT BASTARD!"

It came out a strangled, offended shriek, to which he added as much emotive flailing as he could, storming around the little kitchen without really seeing anything. The apron severely limited his ability to have a proper tantrum, but he was too angry to try taking it off right then, the large, furious part finally having returned to remind him that he was long overdue to have a meltdown of his own. "He SLAPPED me! For answering a QUESTION! OPEN PALM, like a woman!" Nevermind that he'd slapped Ono like that once. This was obviously different. "He was the one who asked me that stupid question in the first place! ASSHOLE! What did he want me to do, LIE to him? I'll--"

Someone began pounding on the wall in the next apartment over, halting him mid-tirade. This was followed by a muffled, angry shout: "Keep it down, asshole! It's three in the damn morning!"

"SHUT UP!" Tachibana shouted back, shaking one enraged fist at the wall. "Can you NOT tell that I'm having an emotional crisis here?"

Then, just for good measure, he seized the teacup from the counter, where it had been since the morning after that December storm, and hurled it in the direction of the voice.

To his horror, the cup failed to shatter into a thousand satisfying little pieces, but rather sunk halfway into the drywall with a dull thud and stayed stuck, hanging there like some sort of ridiculous ornament.

He stared at it for several full seconds in shock, then shrieked again and grabbed at his hair, completely robbed of any rational ability to speak after this final offense. Standing there tearing his hair out proved after a moment, however, to do very little for him, so Tachibana just gave up and stormed off to take a shower, before the roof could cave in or the stove explode.

Screw it all. Obviously the world was just against him tonight.

~

4:30 AM. The streetlamps were on across the road, orange and yellow in the night, soft around the edges. There was a bit of fog on the ground now that the temperature had dropped to its lowest point, a thin layer that stirred itself into strange, interesting patterns when the occasional car went driving quietly by.

If there was one thing he'd learned living here, it was that no one ever really slept; that there was always movement somewhere in the dark, like a faucet that never quite stopped running, or the rotation of the earth, or the way everyone, no matter who they were, died a little more every day, getting closer and closer to their own ultimate ends. Tachibana had trouble not thinking about this from time to time, that this strange human practice of calling one's existence a life was really only an attempt to cover up the paradox of that existence--the nonsensical fact that every second of it was spent not only growing, but also getting inexorably older. Breaking down.

Other animals were more realistic. They focused strictly on achievement--no stupid illusions about existence being eternal; just blunt, narrow realism. They struggled in death not to save themselves, but to save their legacies--hence mothers sacrificed themselves for their young.

Tachibana sipped at his coffee again, lifting his other hand slowly to scratch beneath the loose collar of his shirt. It was a button down, done up just a little above his chest, something random he'd grabbed out of his closet after the shower. He hadn't even really looked at it yet. His hair was merely damp now, but so were the shoulders of the shirt where he had let it drip unchecked.

His little display of temper back there had pretty effectively sapped his energy, leaving him feeling surprisingly empty and tired and...well, almost ashamed of himself. Almost. He tilted his chair back against the counter listlessly, not changing the angle of his head, and pointedly not looking at the cup, which he'd decided might just need to stay there for the rest of time as a reminder. He wasn't quite sure what he wanted it to remind him of, but he knew he didn't want to take it down. Not yet.

He could feel all the information and experience of the last three years colliding in his head as he stared out at the fog, trying to pull itself together into a logical shape, a satisfactory answer. He seemed to have been making a habit ever since starting the bakery of doing things that he himself found entirely perplexing, things he couldn't explain, and now it was finally coming to him that he really would go completely crazy if he didn't take a step back from that. He knew himself well enough--no, he should have known himself well enough to understand that living in ignorance would only make him miserable. He'd always liked learning too much to even consider playing the stupid person game, especially at this point in his life.

He had a headache, he realized absently, but couldn't bring himself to stand up, even for medicine. In a way he supposed he wanted his head to hurt. He could make sense of that, at least.

What am I doing?

That was the question he wanted most to answer. Why was he still running the bakery? He'd done what he'd wanted to do--or gotten incredibly close, at least. Much closer than he'd ever honestly thought he would get. A kid had been saved because of him.

He sure as hell wasn't doing it to keep Ono in a job; the guy was talented, even if he was a complete waste of life. He wouldn't have any problem finding new work. Kanda, too, thanks to Ono's efforts, was well on his way to making a brilliant career of his own. He didn't need any more help to finish out his own story, regardless of whether Tachibana wanted to give it or not.

Chikage, strictly speaking, didn't need to work either. He would always have a place in the Tachibana household and support from the family, even if he was being stupid about that fact right now. Tachibana doubted he'd stay on his own if he moved back in with his parents...though the thought of moving back in with them was...well, not worth thinking about. He wouldn't do it.

So he wasn't keeping the bakery for any of his employees. Who, then? Not for himself, certainly.

...right? That was right, wasn't it?

Someone knocked on the front door. It wasn't hard to guess who. Tachibana sighed and pressed his coffee mug against his head, willing the ache to get better, not worse.

The knock came again, soft and timid at first--an honest reflection of emotion, Tachibana thought, until Ono sucked up what courage he had and put a little more force behind his third.

He honestly debated the benefits of not answering the door at all. The thought of leaving the demon to stand out there all night didn't really bother him, even when the image of one of his neighbors stumbling across him in the morning, curled up like a piece of discarded trash, tried to push itself to the forefront of his brain.

It was only the returned feeling of inevitability that eventually moved him to stand, walk down the hall, and open the door on the fourth knock.

Ono didn't look like he'd gotten a whole hell of a lot of sleep since leaving the shop, if any. His expression was at least on straight, despite the bruises under his eyes, as were his glasses and his clothes, which was surprisingly reassuring. Tachibana tapped one finger against the doorframe a few times, thinking.

Then he tilted his head back a little, resigned. "You look like you need a drink, Ono."

"I feel like I could use one," Ono murmured, and stepped inside without being invited, leaning down to pull his shoes off with hands that were, to Tachibana's further reassurance, quite steady.

"Well," Tachibana shrugged, and went to find two cups that weren't currently serving as interior decoration.

~

He'd forgotten that he had the umeshu, truth be told--though now that he'd found it again, he was at least able to remember where the troublesome cup had really come from. Both had in fact been gifts from his mother; not for his birthday two years ago, however, but rather in honor of Antique's opening. He remembered receiving them as clearly as if he were again holding the basket, standing there and watching her smile at him, at once encouraging and doubtful. There was something strangely ironic about enjoying them now.

The alcohol had aged well in the cupboard over his stove. Ono sniffed it appreciatively, sitting stiff-backed in the chair across the table from Tachibana. Then he took a sip, and was smiling by the time he'd lowered the cup back to the table. "Strong," he murmured.

"My mother has excellent taste," Tachibana replied, equally quiet, and wondered if he should perhaps turn a light on. In a way, however, it was better to sit like this, enjoying the quiet and the soft, private quality of the whole affair. "Are you going to apologize to me?"

Ono stared at him flatly for a few seconds, then took another sip.

"I don't really want to," he admitted after he'd swallowed, setting the cup back down and letting go of it. "But I should. I will. You were..."

"Telling the truth?"

Ono looked to one side, lips tight. Tachibana snorted and drained his own cup, leaning his chair back again and crossing his arms. "Yeah, I was. That doesn't mean you needed to hear it, though. And it doesn't mean it's the truth anymore. Just that it was for a long time."

Ono turned back to stare at him, mouth open slightly, against which immediately Tachibana lifted his hands, forestalling whatever it was he'd meant to say. "No, that's all there is to it. I'm not saying I'm fine with the way you were living now. But it's not like I can erase it, and neither can you. I'm just saying I could have been a little more subtle, that's all."

"Why do you care about this now?" Ono demanded quietly, leaning toward him.

Tachibana frowned, lowering his hands. "Why did you care enough to ask? I thought you were happy with your "free" lifestyle."

The pâtissier sat back in his chair again, reaching up after a moment to readjust his glasses hesitantly. Then he drained his cup and stared at the tabletop. Searching for words, Tachibana supposed, and eyed the clock over the stove. 5:20 AM. Funny how he wasn't at all tired.

"I was," he said at last, quietly. "I still want to be. But ever since Jean-Baptiste came back..." Tachibana found it hard to keep from retching dramatically at the very mention of his name, though he held his tongue admirably as Ono continued: "I tried to remember what it was like to really care about something, and suddenly it was like I was remembering bits of someone else's life. I couldn't recall how to even start. And even that didn't really bother me, until I decided to just focus on the shop for while. It wasn't until I..."

He trailed off at this point, staring so intently at the tabletop that Tachibana began to wonder if he even remembered that he wasn't alone. "It was just so easy before, letting things happen to me. Everything always worked out. I didn't really have to think, all I had to do was listen and work hard and it was fine, but now it just--I don't know where I'm going anymore. What am I doing with my life?"

Finally Ono looked back up at him, his expression--intense, not sad. Frustrated. Tachibana wondered if he'd ever thought of things like this before.

"Well," he said at last, once he realized Ono was actually waiting for him to talk. For a moment he let it stand at that, then reached out to refill their glasses, toasting Ono with his before finishing his sentence: "I guess we're both due for mid-life crises right about now, eh?" And then he tipped his head back and drained the cup again.

This was apparently not what Ono had been hoping to hear. By the time Tachibana had looked back down his expression was sad, and also dangerously close to tearful. Then his arms went across the table, taking hold of Tachibana by the lapels and shaking him, leaning over the cups to make himself understood. "Why? Why haven't you told me to go somewhere else yet? Why did you ever make me promise to--"

"I didn't make you promise anything," Tachibana scowled, reaching up to grab one of his wrists. And--shit, there was that inevitability again. Damn it. "And I've kept you on because I like you. Okay?"

He might as well have just punched Ono in the face to look at him; hilariously enough, his mouth actually dropped open, which would have made Tachibana laugh if he'd been in anything but the most frustrated earnest. "What? But--you said the charm didn't--"

Tachibana growled before he could stop himself, squeezing Ono's wrist hard enough to make him yelp. "I don't like you because of that, asshole! I just like you, okay? I always remembered you, even when you forgot. Not because of the way you looked, just...I don't know, because I couldn't forget. And I'm sick of wasting time thinking about it. I like you and I like the bakery, so what the hell's wrong with me wanting to keep you both in the same place?"

For a moment neither one of them moved, Ono blinking and Tachibana scowling and both of them practically strangling one another in the dark. Then Ono's mouth twitched into the barest hint of a smile; nearly hysterical given the hour, but a smile all the same. "That's probably the least romantic thing I've ever heard."

"Would you rather I hit you?"

"Not really."

"Good."

"Very good," Ono agreed, and leaned in to kiss him.

Sparks didn't exactly fly in Tachibana's mind in that moment, though the feeling of inevitability that had been tightening his chest for so long at last burst and dissolved, filling him not with maddening, uncontrollable desire, but rather with a warm, spreading peace. As though of all the stupid, horrible things he'd done or had done to him throughout his life, this was the one thing he'd probably managed to do right.

He sincerely doubted things would stay peaceful for long, but found all the same a tremendous amount of comfort, sitting there and chasing the lingering tang of umeshu around Ono's mouth, in the thought that this relationship wouldn't have to face any of the kinds of challenges his previous ones had. Practically speaking, there wasn't much left in Ono for him to ruin, even on accident; the pâtissier had already done a masterful job of running himself ragged. Better still, he'd already seen the worst in his old schoolmate. Tachibana didn't have anything left to conceal, nothing to protect him from. They had the shape of one another's natures already clearly sketched in their minds, whether they liked it or not.

For a moment they paused to breathe, cheek to cheek. Tachibana wasn't sure when it had happened, but he had both of Ono's wrists clutched in his hands, and Ono was practically knocking the umeshu bottle over to lean over the table toward him. That wasn't good. They'd have to move before any permanent damage could be done.

"Tachibana?"

Tachibana hummed a noncommittal noise, trying to re-situate his legs so that he could stand slowly.

"Tachibana, did you know that you have a teacup embedded in your wall?"

...anymore damage than he'd already done, that was. Burying his face in the side of Ono's neck, Tachibana bit his lip for a second, shaking, then finally gave up and allowed himself to laugh, long and loud.

Then the guy next door started pounding on the wall again.

~

They reopened the shop on Monday, where they immediately found themselves completely inundated with good luck tokens and slips of paper wishing them the best of health, all piled in little heaps around the display case and door. Ono blushed furiously at the sight of them, but refused to let him throw any of it away, even when Tachibana made faces at him for being a sentimental old woman.

The day passed from there in a haze of continued well-wishes, with people at once buying confections like mad, marveling at their ability to return to business so quickly, and praying for their continued good fortune. Tuesday passed much the same way, though he'd managed by that point to get over blushing every time people marveled at how sick Ono must have been, to have to spend all of Sunday in bed.

Arriving home around 3 o'clock that morning, he sat down at his table and had two cups of warm sake. Then he enjoyed a light meal of boiled spring gyoza and leftover hot pot (ox bone base, with garland chrysanthemum, fish slices, bok choy, tofu, and daikon to round it out), put on fresh deodorant and brushed his teeth and combed his hair, then pulled a sweater over his head and a pair of good walking shoes onto his feet and headed right back out.

He knew where Ono's apartment was from the occasional times he'd driven him home, mostly on nights when he had asked him to work particularly late, though he hadn't been there since that Jean-Baptiste piece of work had been in town. Like most other information, however, the location had been burned permanently into his head as soon as he'd acquired it, so finding his way back now, even after so many months, wasn't a problem.

It took Ono a few moments to answer the door, and though he looked tired--not as tired as before, but tired--Tachibana was happy--or rather, satisfied--to note that he wasn't yet dressed for bed, and lacked any heaviness in his eyes.

"Tachibana-san?"

Tachibana made a face, muscling his way in around the pâtissier. Honestly, couldn't he at least add a -kun to that? It wasn't like they hadn't just had sex over the weekend or anything. Once inside he took a moment to glance around curiously, taking in the half light and immaculately swept floors. He would have said something disparaging about them, but couldn't really, as he had a bit of an obsession with cleanliness himself. "Hey. Call me Tachibana, would you? We're a little past the point where that formality stuff is cute, don't you think?"

Ono stared after him as he moved, doe-eyed again. "I--I suppose, but what are you--"

"Nice place," Tachibana stated, loudly and casually, enjoying the look on Ono's face as he carefully took over. Pulling his shoes off, he moved out into the main room of the apartment, then over to the window to look down. "Kind of a pain in the ass being over a pool, though, right?"

"I suppose," Ono said again, helplessly. "What are you doing here?"

"Looking around," Tachibana replied flatly, hands in his pockets. "Duh. Are you going to let me?"

Ono looked almost stricken for a full second. "I..." Then his face firmed up, the faintest hint of that stupid smile he thought was so seductive beginning to slip through. "What am I saying? Of course. Would you like some coffee?"

"Nah," Tachibana shrugged, then turned away from him to examine the walls, and from there the rest of the apartment.

Ten minutes later, satisfied that he had committed every inch of it to memory, Tachibana nodded at Ono--who had continued to stand and stare at him throughout his exploration--and headed for the door. "Right. Thanks for letting me in."

"Tachibana!"

Tachibana turned to look back over his shoulder expectantly, and almost immediately realized that he'd miscalculated just a little. The look on Ono's face was overwhelmingly confused, all changed expectations and buried heat and tentative hope. "I--weren't you going to--didn't you want to--?" He blushed as he spoke, which seemed to surprise him as much as it did Tachibana.

He gave it a moment's serious thought before smirking ever-so-slightly, opening the door without looking. "Sleep well, Yusuke-kun. We're going to open early again tomorrow. Have to make up for your illness, after all."

The look on Ono's face was priceless, though it disappeared within seconds behind the solid shape of the door. Tachibana held onto the handle for a few seconds longer than necessary, staring at his fingers against the metal, thinking.

A moment later, as he walked back down to the street in the dark, Tachibana kept his head carefully lowered, hiding his smile. It was probably a bit cruel of him--of course Ono was going to think of sex first, especially at this hour--but he had to communicate that that wasn't what he was going to think of first somehow. And besides, if he was going to do this thing, he was going to do it properly, not like those other flakes Ono had gravitated to in the past. He wasn't going to have everything his way just because they'd finally managed to stop dancing around the whole notion of a definite relationship, just as he wasn't going to have to worry about being used ever again.

The subtle manipulations he'd relied on in the past, however unconsciously, just weren't going to cut it anymore. Tachibana had never liked watching other people self-destruct, and liked it even less when he'd formally comitted himself to the person. Besides, he knew the difference between overbearing possessiveness and honestly tending to a person's well-being, even if it had taken him his whole life to figure it out. Even if Ono hadn't yet figured out that difference himself.

Tachibana had always had liked to take care of people.