Fuji had already vacated the house by the time we got dressed and headed back into the main room. Aki put on a loose tank top that sagged around his neck, but still paired with his tattered dark blue jeans, he looked well put together. He looked at his phone, which he had abandoned on the table during breakfast, and held it up to show me. "Fuji sent a message, he said thank you and he didn't want to intrude on us so he's heading back home to Tokyo." I nodded in understanding. "He never did say why he came here."

Aki had mentioned that he had a craving for oily noodles, and we had been preparing to venture to the main street in search of one of the many traditional style restaurants that served a wide variety of them. "When he showed up here last night he said he was supposed to be staying the night with Hina, but she asked him to leave. The trains had already stopped running."

He made a sound of disbelief. "Wow. I'll have to ask him about it next I see him."

I looked him over as he grabbed his combat boots at the doorway with his untattooed hand, and he seemed to be stuck contemplating them. I took them from him, pushing him back to sit in the chair nearest the door with a hand on his chest. "Let me do that." I said. He seemed full of energy, but his face looked tired, and he had dark circles under his eyes. I held each boot out so he could slip his foot inside, and I began to tighten the laces. "Are you sure you're okay to go out? I can just call for delivery."

He shook his head to dismiss the idea. "I'm fine. I know I look a wreck, but I feel good. I slept well. It's just the day-after-getting-tattooed face." He had placed a travel sized bottle of the cleanser and lotion that he used in the bathroom by the door, and I gathered them to place in my bag so I could carry them for him. "I got to see your day-after face too. It's only fair."

I resisted the urge to shy away from his comment. He was not referring to the day after I had gotten my tiny tattoo, but instead I knew he meant to reflect on the day after the first night we spent together. "How did mine look?"

He bit the corner of his lip, almost as an instinctual gesture. "If I was any less of a man, I would have kept you home from school that day and discovered all the faces I could see you make." As used to his quips as I had become, he could still make my face burn in an instant with embarrassment. It was difficult to know just how much he was attracted to me or desired me, as times that he spoke of it were few and far between, and usually mentioned in ways that made me cover my face with my hands to disappear. "Sorry." He said, placing a hand under my jaw and leaning down to kiss me. "Sometimes I can't control myself with you."

It was mid afternoon by the time we had seated ourselves in a restaurant and the food Aki ordered was set out in front of us. The spot he had chosen was a small, traditional style grill house as he usually preferred, so he could walk the length of the seating area to the very back, away from the noise of the busy street just outside. His faced had gained a shade of colour as he started into his large bowl of noodle and vegetable soup, seeming to be brought back to life by the meal. I could see the spots of fat from the meat in the broth floating on the surface, and I guessed that was what he meant when he said 'oily noodles'.

"Your campaign comes out soon." Aki said as he leaned over his bowl, looking up at me with just his eyes for a second.

"The billboard goes up tomorrow in Shibuya. Then the social media comes out the next day." I said, pulling up the email on my phone and offering it to him. "They wanted to stagger it so people who saw the billboard would wonder who I am and start looking."

He took my phone and straightened in his seat to read it. "Everyone knows who you are." He laughed slightly, handing my phone back to me over the table. He rested his elbow on the table and held his chin in his hand to gaze at me. "I'm so proud of you."

"Aki..." I whined his name, covering my face with my hands. It wasn't so much that I was embarrassed to hear him say it, but the fact that I was proud of myself too, and he gave me reassurance. I wasn't sure what to do with all of the emotion I felt. I peered through my fingers at him, and felt my eyes glaze over with tears.

He got out of his seat and crossed the table, sliding into the booth beside me. In one motion, he pressed his body against me, wrapping an arm around my shoulders to hold me close, and quickly kissed the side of my face. He reached across the table to the bowl he had left there and lifted it over to place it back in front of himself. I wanted to say something in response to his words and his gestures that never failed to give me such comfort, but nothing came to mind that could convey all my feelings simply. I reached around his back to return his hold, and seemed to catch his attention with the action. He met my gaze as I peered at his face somewhat shyly, afraid that I would start crying if I looked at him too hard. "Thank you, Aki."

With a smile, he half turned to me to gently swipe his thumb under my eye, catching the tears that were about to fall. "Don't cry." He said. Of course, just hearing the words made me start to cry. His kindness was so overwhelming. He used a hand on the back of my head to guide my face to his chest in his position still halfway turned toward me. I balled my fists in his shirt at his back while he held me securely against him, and I tried hard to stop crying quickly. He always seemed to know what to do for me when I couldn't help but let my feelings out by crying. He knew when he needed to say something to give me courage, and when he needed to only hold me close and not say anything at all. I was thankful that I was becoming more practiced with receiving such outpourings of love, I only needed to take a few deep breaths. With a laugh, I looked up at Aki.

"I'm sorry I'm always crying all over your shirts." I used my flat palm to smooth his shirt across his chest, but I knew it wouldn't contribute to drying my tears from it.

"Not to worry, my love." He said simply, like it was the most obvious thing he could say. "I'm just glad to be at your service. It's only fair, since I am the reason you're crying most of the time." He said it with a smile, but it made me feel the need to reassure him.

"I'm not crying because I'm upset with you." I said, taking a moment to use the napkin on the table to dab the remnants of tears from my face. "It's just how I cope when I'm overwhelmed with feelings. Most of the time it's because I'm so happy."

He nodded, completely unmoved, his energy so calm. "I know."

We went to Shibuya early the next day. There were only a few days left before the summer break ended, and I wanted to spend as much time in Aki's house in Kamakura as I could before returning to school, and Aki was happy enough to oblige me with a day trip to Tokyo. His car was parked at our apartment in Tokyo, so we took the train from Kamakura, planning to drive the car back in the evening to make the final return with luggage and guitars easier.

I kept my head down as we walked through the large multi-way crosswalk at Shibuya crossing, and entered the Tsutaya building. We made our way to the second floor coffee shop, and Aki held me close tucked under his arm against his side. I had laughed at him as we got dressed to head into the city, as he put on his ripped black jeans and tucked them into his combat boots, a black tank top under a muted coloured flannel shirt, and a lot of heavy silver jewelry. He had combed back his hair with his fingers and sported a black baseball cap and told me it was to blend into the crowd. I had told him he looked exactly like a rockstar who was trying to blend in, but to my surprise, every young man in Shibuya was dressed the same way. The only thing giving him away was the way he rolled up the sleeves of his flannel shirt just enough for a few inches of tattoo on both of his forearms to show.

Aki pointed across the coffee shop to a bar style seating area at the window. It looked out over Shibuya crossing, and the billboard with my campaign photo was situated directly above. We would be able to see it if we took our seats there. As we closed in on the space, Aki was looking straight ahead, and I could feel his grip on me tighten. I kept my head down, afraid to look, until I sat down.

"Natsu, are you going to look at it?" Aki used his body weight to shift his chair closer to mine, and reached to squeeze my thigh. "You won't be disappointed."

Finally, I looked up, through the window and across the street to the top of the building. The photo looking down over Shibuya was the exact one Aki had predicted it would be. My image captured in a moment in time, leaning back against the corner of a wall, my gaze fixed on Aki somewhere behind the camera. The photo had been edited with slightly more shadows and contrast from the original that we had been shown, and the brand's logo was stamped in the dead space of the frame. I grabbed Aki's arm. "I can't believe it."

He laughed. "Do you like it? It's the photo I said it would be."

Reality suddenly became something I didn't believe in, as I stared at a massive photo of myself hanging over Shibuya, clutching the arm of a famous rockstar. Not long ago, I was a plain girl from an old money prefecture in Kamakura, a beach town with no exciting future ahead of me, living alone in an apartment. "Sorry, you said you'd be jealous if everyone got to see my face like that."

"No need to be jealous after all." He said. "I get to see it in person." He opened the zipper of my purse hanging across my torso and took out the small bottle of lotion I had been carrying for him. He had washed his hands when we arrived at the coffee shop, and I realized his new tattoo was dry from the use of the soap he wasn't used to. "And that is a gorgeous picture. There was really no better one they could have chosen."

I took the bottle of lotion from him, holding his hand gently with my fingertips against his palm. "Let me do that." I felt his eyes on me as I worked the lotion into his skin. The new tattoo had already created a rough scab, and I used the softest touch I knew, trying not to disturb the sensitive skin as it was healing.

"Natsu." He spoke my name like it was a beckon, and waited for me to look up at his face. I stopped what I was doing, but continued to hold his hand. "You don't need to rush this moment. You can stop and be proud of yourself for a second." With his other hand, he motioned out the window toward the billboard. "Look at you, you're on a billboard in the middle of Shibuya."

Still holding his hand, I cast my gaze out the window to study the photo. I really looked at it, longer than just an embarrassed passing glance as if it was something I shouldn't be witnessing. I wondered if any one of the thousands of people in Shibuya Crossing even took notice of it, if they wondered who I was when they saw me, or if they already knew. Aki squeezed my hand, and I looked over to see him watching me, his other hand around his coffee cup resting on the table. "You know, when we were on tour, you said you'd tell me a story." He said. "And then I was the worst and fell asleep, and it never came up again. So maybe you'll tell me now."

I held up my coffee cup. "If you get me another one of these I'll tell you."

He laughed and took the cup from me, lifting it to his lips to see if it was really empty, or maybe to test his guess at what I had originally ordered. He reached his hand around the back of my head as he got up from the bar stool and placed a gentle kiss on my forehead, taking the empty cup with him as he wordlessly walked back to the counter. I watched as he went, seamlessly blending into the crowd of the other young men dressed the same with their girls on their arms. Aki didn't get bothered too much if he was recognized on the streets, but in Shibuya he had a much more relaxed energy, unafraid to be caught out of place because he blended in so much more. When he returned with two fresh coffee cups, he handed me one and held his out so I could tap it in a cheer.