It wasn't like Maruko to run late. Hinata sat flipping through a magazine at Namba Station wondering why Maruko always insisted on meeting here. It was like the girl was torturing herself. Finally, Maruko came in, eyes swollen red and hugged Hinata. Like in the studio the day before her last date with Connor, Hinata held Maruko just a moment longer so as to let her know she was safe. Maruko didn't really show her emotions too often, but today, it appeared would be different.
"Hi, Maruko-chang," Hinata began before continuing after a short pause. "Are you OK?" Hinata really did adore this girl. She was only a few years older than Maruko and when they danced, Maruko was so clearly the exceptional one. Still, Maruko had taken to her very early on and theirs had been a sisterhood from the start. Whereas in the midst of a performance, it was often Maruko who led, in matters of the heart, the roles they took were far more traditional. So it was that Hinata, like any older sister would, prepared to hear what had happened.
Finally, Maruko looked up through teary eyes and sobbed through lips bound together with the tiniest strands of saliva, "He was here!"
"What, when?" Hinata didn't need to ask who. No man in Maruko's life had ever possessed the ability to explosively shake Maruko's emotions like Connor had.
"That day," Maruko began. "That first Monday when we were here, he did leave that day and he says he was looking for me as well, just incase."
Maruko had asked Hinata to meet her at Namba for coffee that day, two months before. Hinata had arrived and expected them to move on to another location. Namba was where Japan Railroad and the Osaka Metro each had stations, so it made a great meeting point, but it wasn't exactly the place that young girls dreamed of spending an afternoon.
"What happened?" Hinata had asked excitedly.
Maruko just looked back up at her and twisted her mouth to one side in a slight frown.
"I'm sorry Maruko, pretty bad night, huh?"
"Not at all. That was it. It was a fantastic night, magical really."
"Well, gee," Hinata smirked and shook her head, "Sorry to hear that."
Maruko looked away as her eyes began to well up.
"Wait, that wasn't the end of it, was it? Oh God," here Hinata paused so as to allow each word to safely settle in or even so they might jar Maruko away from the previous night's clutches if need be, "what happened?"
Maruko updated Hinata on the entire evening, starting at the ending in the hotel lobby before going back through the museum, dinner and dancing, each time returning to how it ended in disbelief.
"He what?! Oh God Maruko! Look honey, do you want to get out of here? We need some girl time, c'mon, let's go."
"Actually, do you mind if we just stay here, please?" Maruko often enjoyed hanging around Namba Station. When they were younger, she and Hinata had dreamed of just choosing a train and getting on it. They'd often thought about how easy it would be to escape from whatever Osaka was doing to them on that given day when each and every door in this terminal led somewhere else.
Hinata understood this connection to Maruko's desire to run before it was ever put into words. As they talked, reliving each moment of not only the last night between Connor and Maruko, but also the week previous to that, Maruko's mood fluctuated back and forth from indifferent, yet angry to truly hurt. It would be another month before Hinata would get her to at least admit that the reason it had hurt so much was not because Connor had been a jerk to her, it was because she really liked him. It was important, Hinata had told her, to at least be honest about this aspect of the dynamic.
When Connor had called, it had rocked Maruko. They hadn't talked about much on the phone, but from what Hinata could tell, Maruko had heard something in Connor which she believed, something she recognized as authentic. It had taken her another month to be able to talk about it all and always, every Monday, they met here in Namba station. Maruko had finally confirmed that she had wanted to go there that initial Monday, though even she may not have known it at the time on a conscious level, to see if he was still in Osaka. She knew he had to be leaving sometime soon. She had called the hotel and gotten the fact he had checked out from them, though she couldn't learn more without a last name or room number (the latter of which Maruko was certainly glad she hadn't gotten before she had found out his tawdry secret, she'd all but screamed at Hinata). So many things had been made less clear, if not messier, with the knowledge that he wanted to communicate. Still, perhaps Maruko's emotional state had become clearer, for it was a few weeks after this initial contact that the real anger had started to bubble up. She felt used, she felt toyed with and she felt a fool for falling for him in the first place; and she had fallen for him. There was little question that the depth of her despair had been directly proportionate to the height from which she'd fallen.
In the time that had followed, Maruko had often talked of getting away. Sometimes, this had benefited her. When she had put that energy and focus into her dancing, for example, Hinata had watched Maruko take her art to another level. Her loathing of rehearsal was gone. Everything was a vehicle to another place. However, there were also nights, many, many of them, where the negativity had no harness. In these nights, the doubt created by a love lost almost crushed her. She talked of never being able to trust again and was so derogatory towards Connor that Hinata had actually found herself defending him. This was not at all for his sake, but for the integrity of the memory which she knew was, deep down, still very important to Maruko.
Maruko had wrestled with whether to contact him or not. She had written, by her count, a dozen emails which had all been discarded. Some had even made it to the printing stage and Hinata had been privy to these. However, no matter which level of development had seen the abortion of her correspondence, she had never hit send. It would seem that this had now changed. It was either that or Connor had called again, and Hinata, if there ever had been any reason for her to defend him, really didn't want to even think that this was possible.
"So you wrote him?" Hinata began.
"Yeah, the other night; finally, right? Well he wrote back, I just got it."
"Well I think it is good you wrote him."
"What?" Maruko answered with a sense of shock. "You always told me never to write him. You said that I'd be crazy to write him!"
"I did say those things, two months ago. I was very much in favor of your not writing him. I didn't know what there was to say. I didn't know how much of it would just fade away. But sweetie, it's almost New Year's and this is still playing on your heart. I love you, but I couldn't take this much longer."
Maruko looked up at Hinata for a full two seconds with a look of disbelief. After the silent count of three, however, Hinata had rolled her eyes and smiled.
"Come on Maruko-chang, you know I jest. But seriously, it was time. This wasn't going away and I don't know if it will now, but it is moving forward. So what happened?"
"Well, I will say this:" Maruko rolled her eyes and exhaled heavily through her nose, "Assuming he actually read the first email before he responded, he can take a good shot. I mean it isn't like I became more OK with him by waiting so long to write." Hinata looked up and shook her head; she knew Maruko's anger well. Maruko, affirmed, continued, "So I figured, why not? I had to get some kind of control back in this and not writing him, it made me constantly aware that I wasn't confronting some part of the whole. I had to write. It was short. I just wanted to get something out there, see if the stupid address worked and all."
"Short," Hinata looked across at Maruko with a wry grin, "what three pages? OK, I'm sorry, go on."
"Ha Ha, no, two," noting Hinata's preparedness to comment she chided herself instead, "I KNOW, but I had a lot to say, OK?" Maruko looked up and made her usual exaggerated grin at Hinata before going on. "So I really kind of let him have it. I think I owed that to myself. I owed that to you, too." Hinata looked up, but before she could speak, Maruko retracted her previous statement, "OK, I know I didn't owe you anything. But you have been here for me and heard so much. You know as well as anyone, there isn't any way I could speak to him without it starting with honesty. I didn't really even know if he would write back. But he did and," Maruko began speaking more quickly, "well it was so sweet and kind and understanding and," she paused and noticeable swallowed, "it was him Hinata. That's the main thing. It really felt like him; the guy he was with me. He told me a little about what had happened before he came to Osaka, but then again he didn't. He told me that when we were ready to talk about that, he would and that he wanted to, but that it was most important that he just thank me for contacting him. He said," she welled up again, "that he has thought about me every day. That he is glad that he gave me parts of himself that he never knew he had to give, but that it has been so hard to be incomplete for all this time. But, how can he be incomplete?" Maruko looked at Hinata for a moment, pleading for an explanation before finally continuing, "I am too, so where does that leave it? Shouldn't one of us have enough? He should have told me! Even if he didn't know it all at the time, he should have told me that there was something back home that made what was happening here not 100% his to share."
Maruko continued with the back and forth. Her conviction waivered on who should have done what and was no less unsteady on how she would or even wanted to proceed. The uncertainty of her exchange with Hinata was echoed in each email with Connor. Still, they continued to write. At times there were gaps between correspondences, but for a couple who had met in a whirlwind, this wasn't entirely unwelcome for either of them.
