2: Together Again
6 April 2017, Thursday, Evening.

Chie nearly threw the cab fare at her driver as she rushed to the main doors of the Amagi Inn, where Yukiko had told her the party would be. Actually, "rushed" was not quite an accurate description of her gait. She was wearing heels – the blocky ones that she wore with her street uniform, but they were still three inches high – and Chie still had some trouble running in them. Unfortunately, the only other shoes she owned were a pair of worn-down training sneakers, her rain wellies, and a pair of patent leather knee-high boots that a friend of hers from the academy had given her as a gag gift for her twenty-second birthday the summer prior. None of those had seemed acceptable options for Yukiko's party, so she had gone with the heels.

She nearly stumbled into the cement of the genkan porch in her race to be on-time, but managed to catch herself at the last moment.

The older woman behind the front desk stood up and looked at her with some concern. "Are you all right?"

Chie smiled and combed her fringe from her eyes with her fingers. "Yes, thank you." She changed out of her heels and into the comfy ryokan guest slippers, silently praising them for being so soft. Then she stepped up to the desk (carefully) and said, "Um, I'm supposed to meet Yukiko-san..."

The older woman smiled broadly. "Oh, you must be Satonaka-san. They're expecting you." She craned her torso over the desk and pointed to the stairs. "Second floor banquet room. It's the first door on your left."

Chie waved to her. "I can find it, thank you." She took a deep breath, and headed for the stairs. Even from the middle of the stairway, she could hear Yukiko's notorious snorting laughter. Obviously, they had started the party without her.

She found the banquet room with little trouble, and as she slid open the door, she already had an apology on her lips:

"I'm sorry I'm so late, everybody. But I got halfway here and realized that I'd forgotten the sake, and I had to tell the cab driver to go back to my apartment, and then I couldn't find my stupid keys..."

Yukiko stood up to greet her and took her in a warm embrace, effectively silencing her. "Chie-chan, it's fine. I'm just glad you could be here."

Chie relaxed as soon as Yukiko took her in her arms. It was almost like being a girl again, when just having her best friend beside her gave her focus and serenity. She pulled away from her and smiled softly. "Well, yeah. Of course."

"Senpai! You should have called me. I would have picked you up."

Chie looked down to her right, to where Tatsumi Kanji was just now standing to greet her. He took the bottle of sake from her, and she chuckled at him. "Tatsumi! You know, we're not in high school anymore. You don't have to call me senpai."

Kanji shrugged. "Eh, it's habit. And I like it better than Officer Satonaka, y'know?" He glanced at the bottle and his thin brows shot up. "Tentaka, huh? Nice!" He walked around the table and concentrated on the job of pouring the liquor into a set of ceramic cups.

Kujikawa Rise looked up from her place at the table. "Chie-senpai!" she squealed. "Sit next to me!" She patted the colorful zabuton in the place beside her that Kanji had just vacated a moment ago.

Chie sat down beside Rise, giving the younger woman a quick once-over. "You look great, Rise-chan!" she said, feeling a familiar twinge of envy that she tried her best not to show.

Rise waved away the compliment, but she was smiling, too. She primped her loose ringlet curls and shifted her shoulders back and forth in a flirtatious way. "You really think so?"

From his place across the table, Kanji scoffed at her. "'Course, girl. You think you're an idol again for no reason?" He started divvying up the cups around the table.

Beside him, Shirogane Naoto shook her head gently. "What I think Kanji-chan meant to say was that you should take such a compliment at face value." She looked over at Chie. "It's good to see you, outside of work."

Chie smiled. "Yeah, you, too, Naoto-chan." On occasion, Naoto stopped by the district station when she was working on a case, but they almost never had the opportunity to chat during those moments. Seeing her here, among other friends, was decidedly different. "It almost feels like the old days."

Kanji snickered. "Whatever." He sat down again, between Naoto and Yukiko. He raised the sake cup in front of him to his lips.

"Kanji-kun!" Rise said in a scolding tone, causing Kanji to pause mid-motion. "We're not all here, yet!"

Chie looked about. "Yeah. Where is Ichijou, anyway?" She looked quizzically at her host.

Yukiko smiled gracefully. "Nagase-san took him out to Okina City tonight."

Rise giggled. "I bet they went to a strip club," she said aside to Chie, too loudly to be a whisper.

Naoto pursed her lips. "Rise-chan. That's so crass."

Kanji laughed. "Knowing ol' Nagase, they're probably checking out the latest in sporting gear."

Yukiko kept her smile in check, essentially ignoring the random comments about her beau. "I wanted this evening to be just for the six of us."

Chie squinted back at her. "Six?" she echoed. She saw Yukiko smile, and then someone tapped her on the left shoulder. She turned her head, but the only one there was Rise, who laughed. Sensing a familiar prank, Chie turned instead to her right, where she found herself face-to-face with Hanamura Yousuke. He hadn't changed much at all since high school – he still had that same goofy grin and that same cocksure attitude.

"Hey there, stranger," Yousuke said before sitting down beside her.

"Hanamura!" Chie found herself laughing back at him. "Don't tell me they actually let you graduate!"

"Last week," Yousuke told her with a wink.

Chie snorted. "I don't believe it." As a teenager, he had not been known as a diligent student by any standard of measure. She found it unlikely that his study habits would have changed that much while at university, even over four years.

Yousuke narrowed his brown eyes at her. "Ye of little faith. I'll have you know that I passed all of my classes." He gave her a smug little smile.

"His father was going to disown him if he didn't," Rise said with a snicker.

Yousuke sneered derisively at the younger woman. "Hey, I told you that in confidence, little Miss Still-Stuffs-Her-Bra."

"Yousuke-kun!" Rise cried in horror, and she threw her napkin at him, apparently for lack of something that would cause more damage. She leaned against Chie's arm. "Make him stop being mean to me, Chie-senpai!"

Chie turned and glared at Yousuke as he tossed Rise's napkin back at her, and she tried very hard not to smile. Despite herself, she had missed his antics while he had been away. In fact, they had all lapsed back into their old roles so easily. She almost felt that, at any moment now, Souji would tell them all to calm down. But that low, even-timbre voice never came, no matter how much Chie willed it to do so.

Instead, it was Naoto who asked them to compose themselves. When Chie's side of the table had calmed down, Naoto raised her cup in the air. "We should have a toast. To Yukiko-san."

Yukiko raised her glass, too, but she shook her head. "No. To my friends." She looked around the table at all of them, smiling sweetly. "Even the ones who can't be here tonight."

Chie nodded, if a little sadly. The absence of two of their number was deeply felt, even if no one said so. A tempered silence fell over the room for a long moment, while each of them considered the friendship of sweet Kuma, watching over his rakuen homeworld all alone; and Seta Souji, close to them all in memory and heart if not in body.

At last, Kanji broke the silence. "Kanpai," he declared, and downed his sake in one toss of his head.

Not to be outdone by his junior, Yousuke followed suit. When he set his cup back down on the table, he sputtered a little and cackled jovially. "Woo!" he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

Naoto shook her head at the two men and decided instead to sip primly at her own sake, as did Yukiko.

Rise looked down into her cup. "I'm really not supposed to be drinking," she muttered.

Yukiko smiled at her from the other side of the table. "That's okay, Rise-chan. You don't have to."

"Bullshit," Kanji replied. "This is a toast. To Kuma and Seta, damn it!"

Yousuke looked around at the others. "Has he already been drinking?"

Naoto smirked. "No. Just his natural inclination toward belligerence."

Kanji straightened up, placing his large hands on the table. "Joke all you want, smart asses. But I'm serious, here." He tapped a finger against the hardwood. "We're all here today because of them. Least we can do is drink to 'em. It's only proper."

Yousuke threw up his hands. "You heard the man, Rise-chan. I wouldn't argue with him if I were you."

Kanji softened as he looked across the table. "Listen, I don't want to make you do nothin' you don't want to do, Rise-chan, but..." He shrugged his shoulders, a little deflated now. "I'm just saying, is all."

Rise glanced into her cup again. Then she nodded firmly, making a low affirmative hum in her throat. "You're right," she murmured. She mimicked Kanji's technique and tossed the sake back in one gulp, and her reward was a round of applause from the guys and a coughing fit that started as soon as she was able to breathe again.

"Rise-chan!" Chie exclaimed, rubbing her hand over the younger woman's back. "Are you okay?"

To her credit, Rise nodded, though she was still coughing into her napkin and her eyes were noticeably red.

Yousuke poked Chie in the shoulder. "Hey, you, too." When she turned around to face him, he indicated her untouched cup.

Kanji nodded to her, too. "Yeah." He picked up the bottle of sake and poured some more for himself and for Yousuke; Rise wisely declined with a shake of her red-tressed head. "We'll drink with you, right?"

Chie looked around, feeling slightly embarrassed. "Um..." She had been so preoccupied watching the rest of them, getting caught up in her memories, that she hadn't even noticed that she hadn't toasted with the others.

Yousuke raised his cup again, to her this time. "Bottom's up, omae," he said.

And while Chie wondered what exactly Yousuke had meant by that particular choice of words, she closed her fingers around her cup and lifted it to eye level. She clinked her ceramic cup against Yousuke's, then against Kanji's, and shrugged. "Kanpai," she said, and drank.

It went down more smoothly than she was expecting after Rise's reaction, but she wasn't quite prepared for the intense warming sensation that spread throughout her body almost immediately. She wasn't very used to drinking (she rarely had occasion to do so), so she had had to go and visit Konishi-sama's liquor store in the shopping district for a good liquor recommendation, product untested. The Konishi family definitely knew their stuff; this was exquisite, even to her untrained palate.

Both men slammed their cups down on the table, startling Chie's already-scattered perceptions.

"Damn!" Kanji said favorably.

There was a tap against the wooden frame of the shoji, and Yukiko stood up. "That's supper, I think." She walked around the table to the door and slid it open, allowing entrance for two ladies in bright floral kimono. They each held two huge serving platters adorned with all manner of scrumptious-looking sushi and sashimi assortments, which they distributed around the table.

Everyone's eyes went a little wide at this impressive spread of food, and Rise even clapped happily.

"Damn." Kanji said again, as the servers left the room.

"Seriously," Yousuke concurred.

Naoto sat back. "Yukiko-san, this is too gracious."

But Yukiko dismissed the concern. "Come on, guys. I don't get the opportunity to pull out the stops for my friends very often. Let me have that small pleasure."

Only Rise seemed to be able to accept their host's offering with unadulterated gratitude. "Thank you, Yukiko-senpai! It all looks delicious."

Yukiko bade them start, and while everyone made first choices, she muttered, "When was the last time we were all together like this?"

Chie thought for a moment. "Seijin-no-hi?" The Coming-of-Age Day in 2016 January had seen the last of them turn twenty, with a huge party where there was the consumption of plenty of food and lots of alcohol. She recalled in particular the after-hours karaoke party in this same banquet room, and Kanji and Yousuke's ear-splitting, drunken duet of "Marionette Fantasia" that still made her chuckle.

Rise shook her head. "I was on location in Singapore then." She pursed her lips in a girlish way and then exclaimed, "Oh! Was it Chie-senpai's graduation from the academy? That was a fun party."

Chie laughed as she grabbed a piece of fatty tuna from the serving dish. "I think half of the guys at that party were there to see you, Rise-chan!"

But Yousuke discounted that event. "I was still at Keio when that happened. What about when we graduated from Yasogami?" He popped a slice of eel into his mouth.

"Nah," Kanji told him. "I was sick." He turned to Yukiko. "My ma had to come up here to make the deliveries, remember?"

"Yeah," Yukiko agreed thoughtfully.

"It was the year after the Midnight Channel." Naoto was looking down at her saucer plate as she spoke, but her voice still carried. "Our farewell party for Seta-san."

Chie shuffled through her memories in an effort to disagree, but she found that she couldn't. She scanned the faces around the table, and they all appeared to be thinking the same thing: they had never quite been the same since Souji had left them. They had gotten together in threes and fours with some regularity, and on rarer occasions five of them would meet up, but almost never six...and never again all eight.

She sighed.

To her right, Yousuke fiddled with his cup. "Great. Now I'm depressed."

And to her left, Rise: "Hey, I thought this was supposed to be a party!" She clapped her slender hands together. "Let's cheer up!" She inclined her head to their guest of honor. "Yukiko-senpai, tell us about you and Kou-kun."

Yukiko's dark eyes went wide, and then she blushed. "Oh! Well, as you know, Kou-chan and I have been spending a lot of time together lately."

"And...?" Rise prodded, although Chie was fairly certain that she already knew (probably most of them did) what Yukiko was getting to.

Yukiko's face flushed to a deeper shade of pink. "Well...I'm sure it's no real surprise to anyone, but...um..." She shrugged, nearly giggling. "We've decided to get married."

Rise squealed happily and rushed to the other side of the table, where she took Yukiko in a nearly smothering embrace. The others around the table gave congratulations, too, although with more reserve than Rise.

Naoto inclined her head and smiled. "How did you come to that decision? I mean, why Ichijou-san?"

Yukiko paused, as if considering the question. Finally, she shook her head. "I...don't really know. It just felt like the right thing to do."

Chie watched her childhood friend closely, searching her dark eyes for some reservation, some sliver of doubt. But there seemed to be none. Yukiko seemed genuinely happy about marrying Kou. Maybe she was just projecting her own feelings, but Chie had always thought that Souji would one day come striding back into town, head high and looking for his one true love. She had always thought, for some reason, that that was Yukiko.

Not that Chie herself didn't harbor a certain amount of affection for Souji. In fact, most of the girls she'd known (and not a few of the guys, either, the two seated around the table being no exception) had fallen in love with him a little bit that year of the Midnight Channel mysteries. But in the deepest part of her heart she had known even then that Souji would only ever be her friend, close though they may have become. His interest always seemed to lay elsewhere.

Chie smiled...but in that same deep part of her heart she knew that she envied Yukiko and Kou their happiness.

She wasn't the only one. Kanji gave Yukiko a grudging hug. "I'm happy for you, Yukiko-chan," he said, but there was a note of sadness in his voice. He sniffed. "But you be sure to tell Ichijou that if he ever breaks your heart, I'm gonna break his neck. You got that?"

Yukiko laughed. "I'll be sure to warn him, Kanji-kun." She patted his hand. "Thank you."

Rise sat down next to Yukiko and sighed. "It's a shame that Kuma couldn't be here to celebrate with us. He would have loved learning about weddings."

Yousuke snickered. "Yeah, you didn't have to explain to him the difference between guy parts and girl parts."

Rise leaned over the table, to make a chiding face at Yousuke. "Did you even know the difference at that point, Yousuke-kun?"

"Ha ha," Yousuke replied drolly.

Across the table, Naoto cleared her throat. She turned back to Yukiko. "Have you finalized any of the details of the wedding?"

Yukiko shook her head. "Not yet. We don't even have a pattern picked out for the uchikake, and that's going to take time."

Kanji held out his arm, as if to stop her. "You'd better be planning to ask my family to make those, Yukiko-chan!" He smiled.

Yukiko laughed again. "As if I could imagine anyone else making as beautiful wedding clothes."

Chie wasn't sure it was wise of Yukiko to use Kanji's affection to her advantage like that. But as she saw the way Kanji beamed at her confidence in him, she figured that he probably wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Maybe it was okay to be content with the status quo; certainly she had never gotten anywhere with men by pushing her own agenda.

While the other side of the table discussed wedding details and the like, Yousuke leaned close to her, to whisper:

"You look good."

Chie turned to him fully, feeling a faint flush bloom in her cheeks. She had never been very good at taking compliments, especially when coming from the opposite sex. More than once she had been flustered into speechlessness by Souji's polite comments, or by Kou's heartfelt confession that he had had a crush on her in high school. (That last had been particularly distressing. She had gone home to her apartment after that admission, alone and forlorn, and wondered to herself exactly why he had said nothing to her about it while they were still in school.) But this was Yousuke, and she knew from experience how best to deal with his teasing.

She tugged on the hem of her skirt, causing his gaze to drop to her legs. She felt a little bit on-display at the moment, but it did feel nice to garner his attention. She lowered her eyes. "Why, thank you, Hanamura-san."

Yousuke sat back from her and blinked. "Huh? What's with the Hanamura-san stuff? Since when are you so prim and proper?"

Chie smiled and gave a tiny shrug of her shoulders. "I thought you liked girls who were polite and demure."

"Girls, yes," he admitted with a growing grin. "But I like my women a little more feisty than that." He reached across her to grab a clump of pickled ginger, moving up close enough to her so that her shoulder brushed his chest.

She smelled the sweet tang of the sake on his breath, and, without warning, she wondered if his skin would taste like it, too... Then she quickly suppressed the idea, silently marveling at just where in hell that thought had come from.

"Be nice, Hana-chan," Yukiko said from the end of the table. "She still embarrasses easily."

Chie had thought that they were being quiet enough to go unnoticed by the other revelers, but apparently that was not the case. She dropped her hands to her lap and made two fists under the table. "Wh-! Yukiko-chan!" She glanced back at Yousuke, and while he had just now begun to snicker at her blustering, there was also a look of such unconditional affection in his eyes that she didn't know how to respond. So she grabbed the bottle of sake, poured herself a new cup, and quickly downed it to cover up her emotional state. As soon as she finished swallowing the lukewarm liquid, she gave a cough, covering her mouth with her hand as she spit up a little into it.

"Very demure," Yousuke said with a nod.

Rise came over to sit beside Chie again. "Don't pay any attention to him," she said, as she leaned heavily against Chie's arm and smiled. "Some boys never grow up, that's all." She looked around the table and stuck out her tongue at both Kanji and Yousuke.

"Don't lump me in with him," Kanji admonished. "Or you can walk home tonight."

Rise stood up again, nearly squealing. She ran over to Kanji and threw her arms around his neck, pressing her cheek against his. "Oh, Kanji-kun! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to hurt your feelings..." She snuggled up next to him like a kitten, humming contentedly.

Chie was surprised to see that Kanji didn't shift away from this girly outburst; if anything, he seemed to be enjoying himself. She grinned. "She's right. She shouldn't be drinking."

The rest of them had a laugh, and the night wore on easily with random conversations, and that particular joy that comes from getting to know one's friends again.




Midnight.


Chie stumbled into her apartment, having said goodnight to Kanji, Naoto and Rise on the street below, where they had dropped her off. In her liquor-addled mind, she wished that one of the guys had come home with her, if just to keep her company, since she was no longer capable tonight of anything sexual. But Kanji seemed to have his hands full dealing with tipsy Rise, even with Naoto's aid; and Yousuke had gone home for the night nearly a half-hour before everyone else.

She wobbled out of her heels, leaving them below the step into the apartment proper. She made her way to the bathroom for a quick pee, holding her head with one hand as she emptied her bladder. She finished up, shimmying the rest of the way out of her skirt and stockings as she washed up for bed.

She walked out to the main area, toothbrush in her mouth, and shrugged off her blouse, which she let fall to the floor; she would worry about the laundry in the morning. With one hand, she unhooked her bra and pulled it off, content at this point to move about the apartment half-naked. She went back to the bathroom and finished brushing her teeth, then walked over to her still-laid-out futon. She stretched out on the top of the blanket, preferring to let the room spin for a while yet before she got under the covers.

It had been stupid of her to drink so much tonight, but the guys had kept goading her, and she had never been the type to be outdone by any man on anything. She wondered absently how Kanji and Yousuke could drive after all that they'd drunk. On reflection, they probably couldn't, at least not very well. She should have stopped one or both of them, being an officer of the law and all. Maybe she could have even convinced one of them to come home with her, and pay proper respect to her gender.

In her lonelier moments, she had fantasized about both of them (and Souji, and Kou, and pretty much every other man in her life who wasn't her father...even Doujima). She imagined that Kanji was probably a pretty straightforward lover, but with enough strength and endurance to last long into the night. As for Yousuke, he didn't have Kanji's physical prowess, but he was clever and bold, and he did have that quick tongue...

Damn, but she was aroused.

She closed her eyes and ran her hands over her skin, feeling her flushed face, then her warm neck, then her cool breasts. She cupped one of her breasts with one hand, the opposite hand moving down her belly and beneath the lip of her panties. She rubbed her fingers along her slit, starting slowly and softly, humming deep in her throat.

She tried to remember what a man's body felt like against hers, but it was no good. It had been almost two years since she had last been with a man – her one-night affair with Komori Uchiha, a detective from Osaka who had come to Inaba to extradite a fugitive – and she just couldn't muster up the necessary excitement. She was too wasted or too tired to concentrate, and the end result was simply frustration.

With a humph!, she threw her blanket over her, upside-down, and dropped her head onto her pillow. For the second time in almost as many nights, she lay there staring up at her blackened television screen, blinking at her own half-reflection. She thought about Kuma, alone in his paradise homeworld, and how much of kindred spirits they were.

Kuma, formed mostly from his own imagination and desire to be human, had emotions and desires, but had known very little about what to do with them. In that way, at least, he and Chie were alike. And, they were both alone.

She found herself smiling at the memory of days and adventures spent with Kuma, and as she began to drift off to sleep, she sighed and said to her TV:

"Goodnight, Kuma. Wherever you are."