Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1628630.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      FLCL
  Relationship:
      Haruhara_Haruko/Nandaba_Naota
  Character:
      Nandaba_Naota, Haruhara_Haruko
  Additional Tags:
      Future_Fic, Italy, Wordcount:_1.000-5.000, Wordcount:_5.000-10.000, Cover
      Art
  Collections:
      Yuletide_2006
  Stats:
      Published: 2006-12-15 Words: 4960
****** Longshot Bet ******
by Shusu_(Sameshima_Shuzumi)
Summary
     When a Vespa falls out of the sky, does it make a sound?
Notes
     Many thanks to my darling scuppernong for providing the Italian
     translations and cultural notes in my time of need. Thank you to
     Spoke and Lacey for the canon-beta. Thanks to infinimato, Kudra, and
     plsteward for the look-over. A big thank you to wordwitch for her
     superhuman efforts to beta on the fly! With apologies to the town of
     Pontedera, I tried to be as accurate as possible; the statue in the
     church is a Madonna and Child. And a good thing sucka15 had the
     series on YouTube, because I managed to misplace my tapes. Any
     mistakes came out of my head.
     This story contains spoilers for the six-episode show, and as per
     request, references to underaged sex. The dub can be smoked on
     YouTube via user sucka15.
     ETA 20 August 2016: Added cover art. On a whim, of course. Base from
     Life of Pix.
     Written for incoming
See the end of the work for more notes
[title card, yellow, Vespa in background]
"I gotta go. My television just texted me."
*
The funny thing about childhood was that so much of it stayed vivid as the day
it happened. Naota could turn it over in his head and still smell the grasses
by the river, feel his brother's bat in his hands, hear the rising purr of a
motorscooter carrying the evil alien who was about to slam him on the head with
a Rickenbacker bass guitar.
He'd actually gotten out of Mabase and seen some really amazing things. The sky
looked different everywhere, every new shade threatening to wash out all the
days that came before. But the colors of those early memories stayed bright and
tangible.
It was probably because those were kept inside one's heart.
*
Naota thought about calling Ninamori. For completeness' sake. She knew all his
secrets, which still made him uncomfortable, but at least she didn't use them
to lie. He walked past the church to the nearest piazza, reminding himself that
she was over there, and had probably already found out. Besides, it was close
to midnight back in Mabase.
Here in Pontedera, naptime was nearly over. People were wandering out into
streets: walking, riding, talking, filling his head with a strange chattering
that was easy to tune out. He had been in the town long enough to know it was
an ordinary, average afternoon.
Naota strolled over to a gelato vendor and ordered a scoop of sour cherry.
At this point, a Vespa fell out of the sky.
The impact bent the trees and rattled the flagpoles. The drooping smears of
cloud were swept from the sky by the heat wave. Without dropping his scoop,
Naota walked past the screaming people and around the fissures in the
cobblestones. He peered down the small crater in the center of the piazza.
"So," he said. "They kick you out?"
Police lights began to flash in the corner of his eye, but all he saw was the
dazzling grin.
*
He was just a little kid when he first met Haruko. Just admitting that took
years; he'd wanted so badly to be grown-up for her. To be a bigger man.
It took more than years to realize that Haruko didn't act like a grown-up at
all. That made things... easier.
*
Naota ate his gelato while Haruko argued (wailed dramatically) with the police.
There had to be some kind of translator gizmo at work; Naota didn't really
care. What mattered was that she couldn't mess with the molten-hot parts of her
scooter just yet, and that she followed him to the little cafe down the road
from the church.
"Aren't you going to say hello, Ta-kun?"
"Shouldn't you be worried about what they're doing to your scooter?"
Haruko was sniffing his gelato as they walked into the cool of the cafe. Then
she licked it. "I thought you didn't like sour."
"I don't."
The regular group was still there where he'd left them. His soft drink from
before was taken out of the fridge, and Haruko promptly stole that too.
"Who's your friend, Nito?" they greeted him.
They called him Ernesto because they always mangled his given name. Some of
them thought it was funny that it ended in an 'A', like a girl's. They were
okay, for friends. "She's..." Naota paused. What name would it be this time?
Big, feline eyes glanced up through pink hair. She said around her straw, "I'm
his girlfriend," and made a sucking sound at the bottom of the glass.
"Why do you have to lie, Haruko?" said Naota flatly.
It was too late. They were slapping his back, laughing. They didn't blink when
Haruko plunged her fingers in his hair as though she were looking for the seam.
Naota tried to shake her off. "Hey, quit it!"
"She's possessive," said one of the girls.
"Nito!" The bar owner waved. "The police say your friend's little wasp is
ready." He made a lewd gesture.
Everyone laughed. Naota made a face.
Then Haruko took him by the shoulders and turned him around, just the same as
before, in his space and larger than life. "Some things don't change, eh, Ta-
kun?"
*
And Naota was twelve again, blushing like a little kid.
Back then he'd been so busy being exasperated and awed by the freeloading alien
girl pretending to be their housekeeper that he hadn't really thought about how
she looked. Haruko was a sprawl of limbs and a mess of teeth and big eyes that
could cut right through like a dimension-unlocking guitar. It was all in his
head, she said. He'd wanted to believe her.
*
Now, looking at her, he could see how boyish her figure really was. She was
strung thin as a guitar string, always quivering for something.
"I wanted to believe you," he said.
"Oh, would you look at this, it's busted, it's totally busted!" She was digging
through the debris and shaking brake fluid and what was probably rocket fuel
all over the place. Naota tried to peek over her shoulder. Gears flew into the
air and beaned him on the forehead.
"Ow!"
"Don't stand so close, then, Ta-kun," and there she was, solid curves with no
room to spare him. She wasn't that tall. Naota wasn't that short, anymore. He
breathed her in.
"Do you," he swallowed, "Do you want to grab a bite to eat?"
Her grin stretched. "Are you asking me out on a date, Ta-kun? Do you want to go
stead-y?"
Was steady the same as smooth? Naota didn't know. "I want to pretend you
weren't planning on leaving from the start."
"Oooh, someone's mad. If you haven't noticed," she knuckled the side of his
skull, "I can't leave without the part for my scooter."
Naota took a deep breath. "Have dinner with me and I'll see what I can do to
fix it."
"You're so kind, now, Ta-kun. I can hardly believe it's you." She swept up an
armful of broken parts. "What do you know about it, huh?"
"This is Pontedera, Italy," said Naota. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and
turned around. "The Vespa was invented here."
*
N.O. was the name of the channel her guitar opened in his head. It was
something about the two hemispheres of the cerebrum. If there was just the
right amount of difference between them, a gradient formed that could activate
an inter-dimensional portal. N-O, noh, no. Sometimes Naota thought he learned
to say it after Haruko. Sometimes he knew he'd said it all along, but it was
only after Haruko that they learned to listen.
She never did listen, of course.
*
Naota waved down the server. "Ha la penne all'arrabiata? Grazie, portero
quella, e l'usuale. Due cene."
"So what's the deal with you, huh?" Haruko had her boot up on the adjacent
chair, her elbow by Naota's forks. "You know you can't build anything like my
equipment."
Naota shrugged. "I went ahead with my own thing. What goes on inside my head
was too complicated. I didn't trust the government with it. So I worked on the
machines. There was an internship here at the Vespa plant, so that's what I've
been doing."
"And of all their plants, you ended up at this one. That's a good one, Ta-kun.
Almost convincing. You missed me, didn't you," she said smugly.
Naota just glared at her. "Eat your antipasto."
"This is what you call doing something with your life? Dwelling in the past
that you couldn't control? What happened to swinging for the stars?"
"I like it this way." He tore into the bread. "I got out, didn't I?"
Haruko sniggered. Her hand whipped out to encompass the rooftops, the sky. "But
it's all the same!"
And aside from the language, it was kind of the same as Mabase. Everyone knew
each other. Everyone had their routine, and they did whatever they wanted to do
anyway. Two rivers in a cup of a valley, a sky that was always the same.
"It's different," Naota said.
Haruko bit into the bread. "Too sweet!" She ate the loaf anyway. "What is
this?"
"Pan di ramerino. Rosemary bread." He watched her wolf it down, a grimace on
her face the whole time. He almost reached out to touch her, and picked up a
fork instead. He'd gotten used to the casual touches here, hands flying in the
air, people who wouldn't look away from you. It was a public sensuality that
was almost too weird, too adventurous. Like Haruko, it was an acquired taste.
"So you're running away from home, Ta-kun."
"How'd *you* get kicked out this time?"
"It was just a mechanical problem." She downed her wine, and reached for
Naota's.
"Hey!"
"You drink wine? How adult of you."
Naota clenched a hand under the table. "It's cheap and it tastes good with the
food. And I didn't run away from home. I go back at the end of the summer."
"Yeah, really?"
The piping hot pasta dish slammed on the table.
"It's my brother who ran away," Naota said.
*
Naota's first trip out of Japan was to visit his brother. He had to move the
date over so he'd arrive when his brother's baseball team was in town. Tasuku
was in the minor leagues; they caught a taxi from the airport to catch the team
bus. It was weeks of talking about numbers. Averages and percentages and
indexes. How much the Japanese players were earning. How much his latest
American girlfriend wanted to spend. Nothing about the magical arc of maplewood
meeting the ball, nothing about aiming for the upper atmosphere. It was some
town next to the ocean where Naota first heard anyone talking about the joy of
swinging the bat, and it had been the grandchild of a veteran scout.
As a treat, Tasuku had brought Naota to Manhattan.
Naota had stood in the midst of the skyscrapers and said, "Yeah, it's okay."
*
Haruko tasted. "Spicy, oooh, hot, hot," Haruko said, and dug in.
"So, Haruko. Are you going to save me the trouble and tell me?"
"Confesh my undyingsh affection?" She slurped her pasta till it splattered them
both, and that was just unfair.
Naota narrowed his eyes at her, dabbing at his face while she licked at hers.
"No. I mean, why are you here? They're onto you, you know. The people at the
plant. They even put extra guards at the Vespa museum."
A scooter zoomed past. Two people. The vehicles didn't stick out around here,
like hers had in Mabase. It was only dinner-time and the town had already
stopped talking about the scooter from the sky, except to complain of the
politicians who would never get around to repairing their piazza. Naota liked
that about this town.
"They did, did they? That's too bad. They were only too happy to help last
time."
"I don't even want to know what you told them last time." Naota sat up. He
hadn't been eating the pasta, so his hands were empty when he kicked her ankle.
"Hey, Haruko. Where's your guitar?"
She looked shifty. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Haruko," said Naota, starting to smile, "Did you lose our guitar?"
Haruko grumbled into her meat sauce.
"The one you took out of my head, really?" It was the one she'd taken; Naota
had the one she'd left behind. "Are you going to find some other chibi Eyebrow
Man for a replacement?"
"You know," Haruko kicked him back, "Half of that wasn't your guitar."
Yeah, there was that. The other half had belonged to Atomsk, the one Haruko had
really wanted, and Naota had just been a doormat for her to trample. Whatever.
That wasn't the point. "It came out of *my* head."
Haruko sighed like she was going to expire of adoration. "And what a great
head, Ta-kun. Best ever." She snapped out of it and was back to manic. "You're
going to get jealous just like Eyebrow Man--"
"Amarao-san--"
"Amore means 'love' but he didn't love anybody, Ta-kun." Her fork twirled pasta
off his plate. "He thought he did, but he grew right out of it. Are you like
that?"
"You know that's not true. That's not the point," Naota said. He couldn't look
at her.
"Uh huh," said Haruko skeptically.
The point was that she'd been the one to fling open the doors.
*
She hit him, she teased him, she made messes, she drove him nuts. She was one
of the craziest adults he'd ever met.
He hated how stupid adults could be. How they gave everything away that
mattered to them, how they pretended to be things they weren't. They could take
everything that mattered to you and turn it into a big joke.
Buried against her heartbeat, he didn't care that all the universe was at her
fingertips. It was the first time he understood how a person could throw it all
away for another person. It was a dangerous thing to be, and she knew it.
It was the first time he had looked at the flat ocean and seen endless light.
*
"Eat it. I don't want it."
Haruko hardly glanced at him when she grabbed his plate and ate it up. Around
them, the town was crawling out for dinner hour, unfolding into the ordinary
romance that Naota didn't care to see. Not this time. "Penne all'arrabiata
means 'angry pasta.'" He hadn't ordered it for himself.
She gulped down the last mouthful. "So you still don't eat anything spicy."
Haruko got up to go, but her wrist trailed behind and Naota grabbed it. There
was a bracelet with a chain-link there that pointed anywhere but down.
"Sometimes," Naota said, and pressed his lips to hers. It was scarily easy. He
kissed her until he could taste spice and sweet rosemary, memories all tangled
up together.
He didn't look at her face, just the points of her hair, but he could tell by
her voice that had gone a shade softer -- she remembered too. "Let's finish
what we started."
Head buzzing with more than wine, Naota nodded.
*
Even here, they thought sex made you a man. If that was so, Naota had already
made it; he wasn't so sure it made him grown-up.
It had been Ninamori, of course, though not for the reasons everyone else
figured. He carried her cello across the bridge and back to one of their houses
every day after the school clubs got out. They went through the ritual until it
was no longer news, but the relationship itself had only lasted two weeks.
Mostly they talked. Or, Ninamori talked. Naota listened despite himself, his
head filling up with her secrets. He got better at arguing with her. She wanted
to rearrange everything, label things until they fit the shape in her head, and
she never apologized for it. She changed her haircut and color as often as she
changed the subject.
They argued about making love versus having sex for a month and a half before
ceremonially becoming boyfriend-girlfriend. Their rebuttals were consummated on
Naota's bed, the bottom bunk. Two weeks later, she ceremonially dumped him
while he carried her instrument across the bridge, and then they went back to
his house to fold their math homework into animal shapes. She was (in her own
words) still seeking out a viable paradigm. "If I want you while I'm
incomplete, then you must be an incomplete person," she'd said.
"Whatever. Kanchi, we're out of chips!"
"You still have that weird old television?"
He figured she must really care for him, though. She never objected to the
guitar in the corner.
*
Naota had a room across the bridge, small but with a big window that couldn't
keep the stars out. He held on hard, scared she'd fly away again, even though
with her Vespa broken and her guitar gone, it was impossible for her to get off
the ground. And he kissed her, because he could, because she was always
surprised when he did, because she was hungry in a way that made him understand
why she hadn't brought him along the first time.
He shuddered, stealing more kisses, imagining his younger self blown away like
reeds in crossfire. "My bed's really small, Haruko," he said, backing into the
door.
"Mmm, it's okay, I only love you for your brain." She grinned like a shark when
he snorted, and pushed him till he fell.
Like everything Haruko it was bizarre and thrilling at the same time. She tried
to open the window with her foot; he got her shirt open and couldn't stop
kissing her shoulder while she squirmed. At the same time she was making so
many weird noises that Naota started laughing at her. She threw a shoe at him.
They wrestled, half-naked, falling off the bed twice, going quiet only when
Haruko looked at Naota with discerning eyes and mapped the differences he
couldn't see.
There was a lot of shrieking and grunting. It was pretty embarrassing, even for
a neighborhood where nobody hid that kind of thing.
"Haruko! You kicked me in the ear!"
And before he knew it, she was poised over him, inches from sliding... his
brother would call it home plate. "This what you wanted, Ta-kun?"
"I only wanted you," he said.
*
When Haruko lived with them, she slept in the top bunk.
After she left, Naota would stare at the crosspieces above him and talk to
them, remembering the one night she'd surprised him by answering back.
Once when Ninamori slept over, he told her the one secret he wished he could
take back. How he would lie there in the bottom bunk and his heart would
sometimes feel like it was aching upwards.
They'd been silent for a while. Ninamori had fixed her hair into ringlets dyed
in a color that she claimed was gold. Naota had been wedged against the wall.
He could hear his father downstairs analyzing the latest Rebuild rumors. Then
Ninamori had turned to him, her cat's eye glasses catching the light, and said,
"Promise me you won't ever become a drunkard."
Naota had stared at her, then laid his head down in her hair. "Promise me you
won't dye it pink."
She dumped him the next day.
*
"Ta-kun," Haruko gasped. "Ta-kun, I need, uh, I *need*--"
Naota rolled his eyes. "Which part are you missing?"
"Well when you put it that way." Haruko sat up, the thin blanket pooling around
her lap. Naota swallowed. There was sweat on her bare breasts, and her upper
lip glistened. "I need spark plugs."
"Spark plugs."
"Not just any spark plugs."
Naota nodded. "I know which one you need." There was a long pause. "I'm not
letting you inside the factory."
Haruko stuck her tongue out at him. "You're not as much fun, Ta-kun."
"You'll get over it. It's only guarded by guys with machine guns and really big
dogs."
Here came the pout. "You want me to get our guitar back, don't you?" Haruko
rolled around, stealing the covers. "Don't you?"
Naota said to the ceiling, "I kept your guitar. Kanchi dusts it every week. I
told him to call me if it ever played again."
"It plays?"
"It's like--" a single pure note leftover from the explosion, "--a resonance."
* * *
The next day, Naota took out his own scooter and rode it to work. They were
still talking about the damaged piazza. He talked to his boss, who worked in a
shop full of scooter designs: scooters like bullets, like birds, like candy on
wheels. His boss agreed he could take the afternoon off.
It was a pretty normal day.
Back in the old town, Naota parked his scooter and walked down to where the Via
Dante turned into the Via Della Misericordia. Around him, kids cut school, old
people gossiped, couples kissed and giggled. He was carrying a case on his
back, except this one was his, and not Ninamori's. (She'd texted him last night
from Mabase. This time it was a pair of shoes that they only made in Firenze.)
An hour later, he came out of the church and spotted Haruko coming out of the
bar.
"Didn't work, did it," he said.
"Big, big big dogs! With teeth!" She grabbed his lapel. "You gotta help me, Ta-
kun. I can't get our guitar without the part, and I can't get the part without
the guitar. Do you know how bereft a Vespa is without a spark plug?"
Naota sighed. "Yes, yes I do. Guess it's all in my head, huh? Since you're not
bugging some other kid."
Haruko straightened. "You're not a boy." Then she peered at him. "Coming out of
a church, now? Did you get all spiritual on me, Ta-kun? There's more than one
way to get a revelation."
He shrugged. Gingerly he took the case from around his shoulders. He used it to
point at the building behind him. "That's the Church of San Faustino. I like to
go there. It's quiet." The case got loaded in Haruko's arms. "I don't think
it's the same Saint Faustino that's the patron of single people. Either way,
there's a nice statue inside."
"Eh, what's this?" Haruko popped open the case.
"It's my guitar. Not *that* guitar. This one I know how to play." It was an
acoustic guitar, nothing fancy like the Gibson Flying V that had popped out of
his cranium.
Haruko closed the case and threw the strap over her shoulder. "That doesn't
help, Ta-kun."
"It needs to be repaired," Naota went on, pretending not to hear. "There's a
luthier in Pisa we need to see."
"You're stubborn!" complained Haruko.
"But I'm driving." Naota grinned at her, waving the scooter keys in her face.
*
They had been riding all day, he remembered that. He couldn't remember what
he'd said to her, or if she'd heard any of it over the wind. He'd only kept the
memory of her warmth, her closeness, though if he was honest with himself he'd
known even then that she was just going to use him.
But.
He'd tried to fight to get what he wanted -- and he did remember the feeling of
not knowing what that was. He still got that feeling sometimes. What he
*didn't* want was always so clear. Back then, the fight gone out of him, he'd
reached out and hung on, clamped onto what he'd so recently lost. Maybe, he
thought, maybe this would be a fair trade.
It had seemed like it, at first. The quality of Haruko's lies were somehow
better as she pointed out the stars on a cold park bench and let him wrap his
arms around her chest. He didn't have the nerve to kiss her (yet). In the half-
light, later, huddled together under a pile of newspapers, he'd felt her warm
real-ness next to him.
Her voice had been earnest and clean, not freaked out like their ditzy
teacher's or condescending like that Eyebrow Guy's or obviously lecherous like
his father's. "You're just a boy," she whispered in his ear, "but you're big
for your age."
*
They sped through the Tuscan countryside, the sky blue and open like an eye,
the ripe fields a familiar yellow. It was easy to take it all in, filling up
and letting go, kilometer after kilometer. Besides, if he wasn't careful, some
sheep were liable to jump onto the road and try to kill them.
Haruko was sitting side-saddle, the guitar strap looping them together.
"Are you still looking for him?" asked Naota.
"Nyao." Like a cat.
Naota glanced over his shoulder. "You are, aren't you."
"Don't try to be smart, Ta-kun, it doesn't suit you."
He snorted. "It's not like you're hiding it."
She nudged his shoulder blade. "Like you wouldn't go to the ends of the
universe, hmm? If you were really that in love."
Naota took the turn slowly. "I stopped looking."
Haruko twisted around.
"I stopped looking, and I started waiting."
"Huh," she said.
"I knew you would come back, someday."
*
She had a way of making him bold. So it hadn't seemed like a great leap to move
against that cozy heat, to take something from her. Maybe she was playing him,
like she tricked everyone else, but an eye for an eye, a brain for a brain, and
he'd discovered it was even better to dare something like this when his brain
was tricked into feeling safe. She helped him, too, warmth leaching out of her
hands and into his back. It was a stupid thing to do. It reminded him of his
brother stealthily pulling his sheets from the top bunk, Naota offering his own
for the laundry to cover up the evidence from their nosy dad.
Then Haruko started grinding too, and it wasn't anything like that. Hips
weren't so boyish when he was wrapped around them, when he could almost imagine
how wet she was. For an endless second he thought this might be what he wanted,
then all feeling and thought burst out before he could change his mind.
Later, he thought his sleepiness had made him bold. Sometimes things were
easier when you didn't think.
When they were done, she didn't help him clean himself up. That was how he
wasn't surprised when she turned on him the next day, the secrets of the
universe flowing out of his eyes, his head split open by her guitar; but if
kindness was a sign of maturity then he could open for her the same way she'd
opened channels for him.
*
When Naota returned from dropping off the guitar, he found Haruko sprawled on
the grass and talking on his mobile phone. "--can't do that if you won't give
me the resources. Hang on, I'm going to find out." She hung up.
"Who were you talking to?"
She tossed the phone at his head. He had to bat it away, juggling till he
caught it. The last call was to the house phone in Mabase. She said, "Kanchi
wouldn't put the receiver in the right place, so the reception was terrible."
They ate biscotti while they waited, Haruko making fun of all the people trying
to 'hold up' the Leaning Tower. Naota dipped his cookies in a paper cup of Vin
Santo and tried to pretend the sweet wine was helping.
"I humor you too much, Ta-kun," said Haruko. "I need our big guitar, the one
that really works."
"I want you to have this one," said Naota tightly. "It just needs some tone
pins. To increase the sustain."
"You're just taking advantage because I'm stuck here."
Naota ducked his head. He checked his phone. "The guitar's ready." Behind him,
Haruko hopped up. "You reminded me of this guy in Pontedera. He hunts for
truffles."
"Very expensive taste."
"Yeah, except where he goes, there are no truffles." Naota entered the shop,
exchanged perfunctory words with the luthier, and took the guitar back. He
cradled it in his arms. "No matter what anyone says to him, he keeps looking
for them."
He strummed a chord. The luthier made an appreciative gesture. Naota dumped a
wad of bills on the counter and walked out with the guitar. "He gets up in the
morning to look for them, and he goes walking in the evening too. He doesn't go
to the market because they sell truffles from other places. He can't stand the
smell. Some people say he doesn't eat them anymore."
Haruko hummed. "He must've found a really big one when he was younger."
Naota stopped in the middle of the street and looked her in the eye. His
fingers strummed another chord, and another. He kept talking: "The thing is,
Haruko, I don't know what's more pathetic. The guy, or the dog that keeps
sniffing around for what he knows isn't there."
Haruko looked down at his hands on the strings, her brow close to his chin. He
could smell her hair -- like cosmic dust. It was the same smell he was sure
would never wash out, but it eventually did.
"Which one are you, Ta-kun?"
"I was gonna ask you that."
Her nose twitched. She held up her wrist, the chain-link still pointing up.
Probably to that other guitar that was only half Naota's. "Do you think I'm
going to use you, Naota?"
Naota tapped the guitar's body. "How stupid do I look," he said fondly. "My
N.O.'s no good anymore. It's the left and the right brain: when they grow and
change, they reach a new balance. That's why you haven't even tried to hit me."
Haruko blinked at him like a cat startled by water. Then she sneered. "Is that
so?"
"You're just going to keep looking for another head that works." Naota lifted
his shoulder. Then he handed her the acoustic guitar. "Mine won't open anymore.
But I was still waiting for you, Haruko."
"Oh yeah? Why's that? Still pining for me, Ta-kun? Want me to come home and,"
she cocked her hip, "clean your house?"
"Because you don't forget the first one," Naota told her.
"Scusi! Il signore?" It was the luthier, waving their receipt in the air. "Ha
dimenticato la sua ricevuta!"
Haruko looked at the guitar she was holding and shook it till it rattled. A
manic grin bloomed on her face. Gently, very gently, she tapped Naota's head
with the stock. Then she took off at a run. One leap, two, and she was
airborne: a perfect arc.
"Hey! Hey, che sono-- aiiieeee!"
Naota started laughing out loud as the guitar impacted on the Tower of Pisa, as
shards rained down on the horrified bystanders, the special spark plug flying
out of the guitar and into Haruko's fist.
*
*
*
End Notes
     Translations:
     1. "Do you have penne all'arriabata? Thank you, I'll have that and
     the usual, two orders."
     2. "Excuse me! Sir? You forgot your receipt!"
     3. "Hey! Hey, what are you-- aiiieeee!"
     and
     Rebuild refers to Rebuild of Evangelion. Naturally.
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