Better Than Wine (2)
A sidelong glance.
And another. And another.
Without quite meaning to, Han Seoyeon kept stealing looks at Ninomae. It wasn't only her eyes that moved. Her head must have been turning by degrees as well, because the ponytail she'd tied back swayed with every little shift.
"Shion-san?"
"Ah. Mm."
"…Heh."
And then their eyes met.
Ninomae met her with a sly, smiling squint that said she knew exactly what was going on, and Han Seoyeon cleared her throat. Ninomae only looked more pleased for it, and drew her chest up—or perhaps thrust it forward would have been the truer phrase.
An off-the-shoulder dress was, by its nature, a garment that showed a certain amount of skin. The name itself meant the shoulders were meant to be bare, didn't it? Even granting that, the Ninomae standing before her now carried a destructive force that was anything but ordinary. Once a woman reached her proportions—the sort of figure that, across East Asia, you might identify by bust measurement alone—baring the shoulders was never where it ended.
The eyes of passing pedestrians, men and women alike, gathered on the two of them. They were already exceptionally beautiful; dressed with clear intent, and showing even a little bare skin besides, the attention was only to be expected.
There really was a point to wearing something like this, for once.
And among those caught and held by the sight, Han Seoyeon was of course included. Feeling Seoyeon's gaze settle on the pale swell of the upper chest she'd put on display, Ninomae let out a pleased little huff of a laugh. Embarrassing as she'd found the idea, working up the courage to wear it had paid off. This was the conclusion her fellow second-generation talents had worried over all morning.
"Hitomi-chan! You have to use the greatest weapon you've got, I'm telling you. Even if you widen the standard all the way to the West, that size and that shape puts you solidly in the top tier…"
"Wh-what are you saying?!"
"It is an embarrassing thing to say, I'll grant you… but this once, I can't bring myself to think Senjoji-chan is wrong. Wouldn't it be better to emphasize a distinctive advantage other people simply don't have?"
Senjoji Chiyo was Senjoji Chiyo, but Bansei's advice was difficult to dismiss. When it came to playing to one's strengths, no one among them was more of a professional than the woman who had once been in a girl group.
"Sister's a leg fetishist, isn't she? But let's be frank—that's something anyone could take care of for her, anytime. So this time, let's highlight an advantage that's Ninomae-chan's alone, and emphasize the chest just a little."
And so they had settled on the present look, the one that bared a hint of her upper chest. Objectively, by a modern eye, it might not have been especially revealing, but for Ninomae it had been a choice that took real courage. The result had been a tremendous success, and there was no way she wasn't pleased. A flush rose faintly in her cheeks even as she looped her arms around Han Seoyeon's.
Part of it was a simple, selfish wish to press close. Part of it was the intent to push a little further on the chest Seoyeon had only just started to notice.
Seoyeon's arm flinched for an instant. Then she cleared her throat a couple of times and set her expression to rights.
"Mm. In that case, Ninoma—"
"—Shion-san."
"Yes?"
The first step having succeeded so thoroughly, Ninomae took heart, and decided to go one step further today.
"Just for today… would you call me by my given name?"
"…Hitomi."
"Ehehe."
Han Seoyeon hesitated a moment, then let the name pass her lips. Ninomae broke into a shy, bright smile and rubbed her cheek against Seoyeon's shoulder.
"I thought this last time as well, but dropping every honorific and going straight to it—aren't you terribly bold about this sort of thing?"
"Mm. From where I stand, I can't help thinking this is the plainer choice, compared to adding a -chan."
To Han Seoyeon, Korean as she was, tacking on a -chan felt much more like an intimate pet name than simply saying the name bare. She did know, as a matter of information, that it was the other way around.
"Well, if Shion-san is going to call me that way regardless, I suppose I'll have to get used to it. Ah, um, no, I mean…"
"…?"
"I was thinking, um, just for today, I might call you Shion as well, or something… ehehe. Would that be all right?"
There was no world in which it wouldn't be. But rather than say so, Han Seoyeon decided to surrender to the impulse. She laid an arm across Ninomae Hitomi's shoulders, drew her in, and kissed her. She could feel the eyes of the people around them, but for this one moment she paid them no mind.
"…Oh, come on. There are people around."
"I'm not so sure. If you asked anyone else about what just happened, I expect they'd say you were the one who started the tempting, Nino—Hitomi."
"Pfft. And what is that supposed to mean."
Ninomae grumbled, and this time she was the one to press her lips to Han Seoyeon's cheek.
"If anyone's doing the tempting, Shion… you're the one who's always at it."
"I find myself wanting to hand that line straight back to you."
"…Is it only the words you're handing back?"
"In what sense, exactly?"
When Seoyeon asked, Ninomae said nothing, and quietly pointed a finger at her own cheek. The gesture must have caught her off guard; for a moment Seoyeon only stared, blank. Then a soft laugh escaped her, and she returned it exactly as Ninomae Hitomi had wanted.
"Shall we truly be on our way this time, Hitomi?"
"Yes. Yes, Shion."
Only then did Seoyeon remark on the fact that their feet had stopped, and Ninomae carefully fell into step beside her.
"You said there was no particular plan for today."
"Right. That's right. For some reason I just wanted to walk, without deciding anything."
"And that hasn't changed?"
"I suppose not. Wherever we go, the person I love is right beside me anyway."
She really was a woman who blushed and still said every word she meant to. At that, a faint smile touched Han Seoyeon's lips.
"Then we'll follow Ninomae-san's feet, wherever they lead… ah. My apologies. Hitomi, wasn't it."
"Ehe. Please be careful not to slip up!"
"…You seem to have wanted to hear your name quite badly."
It was the warmer thing to be called, so wanting to hear it wasn't strange in itself. But the usual her was so deeply considerate that she might well have offered, at least once, something like If you can't get used to it, shall I go back to the old way?—even if that wasn't the direction she herself wanted. Which left no choice but to think she must have wanted it that much.
"That, um… it would be a problem if you didn't get used to it."
At that, Ninomae looked away and murmured it in a small, shy voice.
"…If you call me by my surname, it overlaps with the rest of the family."
"…Ah."
Only when she heard that did Han Seoyeon understand what Ninomae meant, and a wry smile crossed her face. For some reason her own cheeks felt hot. She hadn't imagined Hitomi was already thinking that far ahead. But the picture, even glimpsed for a moment, was not an unpleasant one, and a smile escaped her before she knew it.
It was a subject she hadn't considered in the slightest, and yet it was, unmistakably, a future that would arrive someday. So long as the two of them didn't slide backward, now that they were lovers, the chances were high that they would eventually come even to that. If they went on holding Japanese citizenship, a legal marriage might be out of reach, but it wasn't difficult to imagine things going as far as a union in all but law. Might they even hold a wedding, whatever its lack of legal force? Thinking it, Han Seoyeon murmured under her breath.
"I see. Once we were married, one of us would have to take the other's surname…"
"Right. And then it gets all tangled up with the children's names…"
"…Pardon?"
"…Eh?"
But for an instant, their words crossed.
Silence.
They turned their heads and stared at each other, blank.
"Aaaah! Th-that's—wha—nngh! Aaaah! A slip of the tongue, it was a slip of the tongue?!"
And Ninomae—no, Hitomi—went completely scarlet and began to babble, words spilling out in a helpless rush. Seoyeon had thought she was planning a future a little further off than her own. She had never imagined it would be so much further than that. No—looking back, she seemed to recall Hitomi hinting at something about children the last time as well. She remembered her saying they might adopt.
"S-so you'd already been thinking that far ahead, Hitomi…"
"I said it was a slip, didn't I?! It's not as if I was thinking it might be all right for the second one to take my surname!"
"…Mm."
A second child, even. Han Seoyeon let her eyes drift, very carefully.
"Um. Have you, by any chance, already decided on names for the grandchildren as well…?"
"I-I haven't gone that far!"
"Ah. Mm, I'm sorry. A joke I saw on the internet crossed my mind before I could help it."
"Honestly… even if you are Shion, that was far too indelicate a thing to say."
Hitomi grumbled her answer. And then, quietly, she looked away. W-well. I just haven't settled on one from the candidates yet. Right. So I'm not that far gone. Somewhere no one else could hear, she went on quietly rationalizing it to herself.
In any case, what mattered now wasn't some trivial (?) remark like this, but today's date. Ninomae smiled, and set off walking with Seoyeon once more.
"…Ah?! Wait a minute. Why are we in a merch shop again?!"
"Well, you're the one who said we should go in, Hitomi…?"