Playing with Fire | Yuzuru Hanyu

24. See you again

Aria had been working in the grocery store for a couple of weeks.

The environment was great and no one seemed to have any resentment towards her.

They never asked her why she took the job but given the black spot in one of her cheeks, it probably wasn't hard to come up with all sorts of possible scenarios.

It was easy to work there in ways that she never expected.

Even if mostly part-time, Aria found it to be relaxing most of the time.

At least when she wasn't dealing with bad customers, that is.

On a particular day when she had been doing stocks, she found a young guy staring at the shelves of detergents as if he was completely lost.

He had his back turned to her but he looked young enough to struggle with all of those options. Truly, he looked like he could use some help. Aria found herself speaking before she even realized it.

"Hello, Can I help you with anything?"

When he turned at the sound of her voice, it was almost as if the air was cut out from her lungs.

He looked just as she remembered. His figure looked far smaller in the oversized sports clothes on his body that he had been wearing. It was a very different change from the suits she had seen him in previously.

"Aria?" She heard him call out her name, completely confused.

It felt good to hear it in his voice and it was very different in this context when they weren't both naked and lost in each other's bodies.

Seeing him eye her form, Aria instantly realized that she looked very different from what he was used to seeing. All of the glam was completely gone and replaced with the image of the most normal of girls you could imagine and on top of it, dressed in the grocery store uniform.

"You're... you're the last person I expected to see here." She eventually mumbled like an idiot without even saying hello to a man that she had been completely entrapped by since they met.

"My mom asked me to come and help."

"I see..."

It was awkward. They were both looking at each other dumbly, not knowing what to say in the current circumstances. They were still pretty far from one another, each of them just looking at one another from the other side of the corner.

"And you?" He eventually asked the question that seemed to be plaguing his mind.

"I... I work here."

Hiding anything from him just didn't seem right in the current situation. He deserved to know what had happened, at least part of it.

When he eventually decided to approach her, Aria knew exactly when he first noticed the black mark still slightly present on her face. He had an instant frown plastered all across his own and his hand was quick to move to caress her cheek.

He was too close, going over every single limit that she potentially self impose but at the same time, it felt way too good to stop him.

"What the hell happened?"

He was mad, the look on his face one that she could barely recognize and one that highly contrasted his usually calm and relaxed appearance.

"Perks of the job, huh?"

Yuzuru didn't seem to find the joke to be funny in the slightest but he didn't say anything. His fingers were just lightly tracing the spot as he looked at her.

"Not this job, I can imagine."

"No, my previous one."

When she said those words, his body clearly relaxed against her. The softness of his touch didn't change and he gave her a very gentle smile.

"Good. You always deserved better."

"Is a grocery store that much better?"

Yuzuru shrugged his shoulders.

"Maybe not, but at least here you're safe, which matters more to me than money or anything like that."

The sheer fact that he cared mattered more to her than she could describe.  It was crazy to think that this incredible man even took a second look at her once she was stripped of all the things that made her incredible as an escort.

"I couldn't keep going."

"What did that man do? You still haven't told me."

"It doesn't matter, it's all done now and I don't plan on going back either."

His eyes were completely fixed on hers. It wasn't even hard to tell that he wanted to say more but found that the place wasn't the right one. 

That realization also made his hands drop, seemingly realizing that she had never allowed for his touch. What was he thinking?

"I'm sorry I touched you... we aren't under contract and I..."

Aria stopped him right away.

"Yuzuru, I didn't mind."

Could she even describe to him how her body strives for his touch? How she would gladly take anything he would give her without any cent involved?

"It's still wrong. I can't just so as I feel like when the circumstances are different than what they were."

"They aren't that different."

"How come?"

Completely wiping all the fear from her brain, Aria finally said what had been on her mind.

"In my head, that last morning we had was already far out of the contract hours."

She saw his reaction moment by moment, from the complete shock to the straight up joy that seemed to gradually settle on his face.

There was no doubt that he was completely lost, not sure what to say or do after hearing that. And even when he seemed to have made up is mind and was finally ready to say something about it, a gentle voice interrupted all of his thought process.

"Yuzu-kun?"