Chapter 39: 39. I Can’t Believe I Meet Two Of My Childhood Friend Again (She’s Still Hot)

Tuesday arrived in the form of Haruka’s knock at 7:50, which was five minutes later than Monday, suggesting that the four alarms had been reduced to three.

"I’m so sorry, Mike...!" she said while bowing her head down when he opened the door. "I overslept by seven minutes."

"You’re still ten minutes early," Mike said. ’What the fuck did she mean by overslept...?’

’Some people overslept for over thirty minutes and even an hour longer, until they decided not to wake up at all to go to college.’

’Japanese are something indeed...’

"That’s not the point," she said seriously. "The point is... I set four alarms yesterday and three today, and I still got less punctual."

She fell into step beside him as they went downstairs. "How do people just wake up on time naturally?"

"Well, yeah, some people do," Mike said. "But, surprise, I’m not one of them."

"Heh?! You seem like one of them."

"I wake up when I wake up," he said. "It usually happens to be early."

"That’s because you’re one of those people," she said, with the tone of someone who had decided this was a character flaw that she was tolerating.

"One of what people now...?"

"The ones who are just naturally organized about their body. Like your body decided to cooperate with you, and it’s been that way forever." She adjusted her bag. "Mine has always been in negotiations."

"Set two alarms tomorrow," Mike said. "Not four. Not three. Just two."

"What if I sleep through both?"

"If you sleep through both, you’ll miss them, but at least you’ll know the actual number you need."

She thought about this. "That’s either good advice or a trap."

"It’s an experiment."

"I would rather not experiment with punctuality," she said. "I want to be punctual."

"Those are the same thing," Mike said.

She made a sound that was neither a clear agreement nor a disagreement, which represented Haruka’s way of accepting something she had not yet fully decided on.

Petricia was not in the lobby when they came through, which was fine. Mike noticed the flower he’d given her was no longer on the office desk.

It had been replaced by a small potted succulent on the windowsill that had not been there last week, and the old glass was gone. He didn’t comment on it.

And then they took the District 2 line.

...

The canteen at Valcrest was on the ground floor of the main student services building, accessible through a pair of double doors that were propped open during the lunch period to manage the volume of foot traffic.

It was large enough to seat several hundred people at once, with the kind of organized chaos that a university canteen develops over decades of feeding students who are hungry at exactly the same time every day.

Haruka had a systematic approach to the food selection that involved a complete initial survey of all available stations before committing to anything, which Mike had anticipated and was patient about.

"The curry looks better today than yesterday," she said, moving along the counter.

"You were here yesterday?"

"I came for lunch between the orientation sessions." She tilted her head at a pasta station. "This one was not that good at all, and the sauce was... hmm... very brave."

"You use that phrase a lot."

"It’s efficient," she said. "One phrase that applies to many situations. The food doesn’t realize it’s an insult."

"You’re very considerate about the feelings of food."

"Someone has to be," she said.

Mike picked up a tray and moved to the section that had the day’s hot specials, which were a lamb dish and a fish option, both of which looked adequate.

He took the lamb because he had made his peace with the fact that he apparently liked lamb now, something that had not been true before his first week in Erosyne and which he attributed to the restaurant on Callen Street.

He was waiting for Haruka to finish her survey when he looked across the canteen and stopped.

He wasn’t sure what he was looking at, exactly, in the first second. Two people sat at a table near the window, eating and talking in a manner that indicated they were very comfortable with each other.

The couple consisted of a man and a woman, both approximately his age. The woman had long, blonde, ponytail hair and was gesturing with her fork in the specific way that some people gesture when they’re making a point that they find genuinely interesting.

The man was leaning back in his chair listening to her with the relaxed attention of someone who had heard her make points before and liked it every time.

The woman looked up at the counter, just a scanning glance, the kind people do when they’re people-watching out of habit, and then she did a double-take that was visible from twenty meters away.

’They’re looking kind of familiar... but I don’t know... it’s been a while since I’ve seen someone familiar...’ Mike thought. ’And they’re not the ones that see the REAL me...’

She grabbed the man’s arm.

Mike picked up his tray.

"Found something?" Haruka asked, appearing at his elbow.

"Yeah... some old friends maybe," Mike said, which was more accurate than she probably understood.

The woman stood up before he even reached the table, which was the kind of response that came from someone who had been waiting a long time to do something and had stopped believing the occasion would arrive.

"Yo, Ellie," Mike greets her directly, and he’s also taking a slight change if she’s the woman he knows.

The woman looked at him with a shocked like. "H-Huh...?"

"Mi... Mikey?" she said, and her voice had the quality of someone testing a word to see if it was real.

’It is her... my childhood friend Ellie, and goddamn... she looks sexier than ever!’

The woman named Ellie Harper made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and an exhale and covered a lot of emotional ground in approximately one second, and then she crossed the remaining two steps between them and grabbed his arm with the grip of someone who was verifying that he was actually there.

"What the hell...!" she said. "What the actual hell...! How the hell are you here?!"

"I’m a student at this university," Mike said. "Of course I’m here."

"But since when?!"

"Since Monday."

She stared at him. "I’ve been at this university for six months, and you just showed up on Monday, and I’m only finding out now because you happened to be in the lunch line at the same time as me?!"

"I wasn’t looking for the canteen specifically," Mike said. "This is just where the line was."

"That’s not—" She stopped.

Then she turned to the man at the table, who had stood up now with the expression of someone who had been following this exchange and was putting together who this was. "Stan, you’re not going to believe this...!"

Stanley Ford had the build of someone who had grown about four inches taller than anyone had expected, with the easy, unself-conscious posture of someone who had eventually made their peace with being the tallest person in most rooms.

’This guy is still taller, huh...?’

He had the same face Mike remembered, older and settled, with the calm steadiness that had always been Stanley’s default register.

He looked at Mike for a moment. Then he extended a hand.

"Oh my fucking god, Mikey!" Stanley couldn’t help but smile when he saw Mike’s face again.

"You just fucking disappeared back then," Stanley said, which was the most concise summary of the situation available, and Stanley had always been good at concise.

"I did," Mike agreed, and shook his hand. "Well, surprise, I’m here now."

"Mikey?" Haruka said, from slightly behind him.

Mike turned. Haruka was holding her tray and looking between the three of them with the bright, curious attention of someone encountering a situation they hadn’t been briefed on and were genuinely interested in.

"It’s my childhood nickname," Mike said. "Haruka Kanata, this is Ellie Harper and Stanley Ford."

Haruka shifted her tray to one arm and bowed slightly, a reflexive action, but then seemed to remember she was in Erosyne and converted the bow partway into a wave, resulting in a gesture that was a blend of the two, which Ellie found immediately charming.

"Oh my~! She’s so cute," Ellie said to Mike, as if Haruka couldn’t hear her.

"I... can hear you," Haruka said with a blushing look.

"I know," Ellie said. "I meant it."

She looked at Mike. "Is she your girlfriend?!"

"No," Haruka said immediately, displaying the decisiveness of someone who wants to be accurate.

"She’s my neighbor," Mike said. "We’re both new this week and in the same building."

"Hehhhh... that’s too bad. I thought you would get one eventually judging by your different looks now." Ellie giggled. "Okay, let’s sit down, both of you!"

’I have a lot, but I ditch them after I make them pregnant, yes...’ Mike answered, but only in his thoughts.

"We have a lot of ground to cover."