In the morning, I lead Aki into the kitchen with my fingers laced loosely with his. Kota had made coffee and was sitting at the table scrolling through his phone as he sipped at a cup. Aki sat heavily in the chair beside him, and Kota placed his hand around Aki's shoulder to give him a gentle shake. "Welcome back."

I placed a cup of coffee in front of Aki on the table, and he took it into his hand to tap against Kota's in a cheer. "Don't tell anyone I'm back early." He said. "I need today to rest."

Kota tipped his cup back all the way, draining the last of it. He got up from the table. "Don't worry. See you tomorrow at the studio. You have a lot of catching up to do."

"Thank you for coming to stay with me, Kota." I called after him as he swung his overnight bag over his shoulder.

He called to me from the doorway. "Any time Natsuko. Glad to be at your service."

I smiled after him as he closed the door behind himself. "Do you want coffee?" Aki asked me, drawing my attention back to him.

I shook my head, leaning forward on the table. "I'm going to get something on the walk." He looked tired, but a little more serious than I expected him to appear.

"Hey, about last night." He started, leaning back in his chair. He placed his cup on the table, holding it idly with his fingertips. I was curious to know what he had to say. "Don't give me that kind of permission."

I had only a slight hint that his words had something to do with the way he had grabbed my waist to stop me the night before, but it was a deduction I was making based on the fact that I couldn't think of anything else he might be referring to. "What do you mean?" I couldn't tell if he was tired, serious, or angry.

It turned out that he was serious, and tired. He took a long sip of his coffee, the expression on his face telling me was looking for the right words. He wasn't angry, and he didn't want to sound as if he was blaming me for what he was about to say. "I know you would have just let me start something. You were giving me an invitation."

"Why was it different from any other time?" I was struggling to keep up with the conversation he wanted to have, but I knew he wanted to continue to tread lightly about the subject matter. "You wanted me to be more forward, didn't you?"

"Neither of us were thinking about protection." He finally grew impatient with trying to be polite to spare me from becoming embarrassed and spoke more bluntly to make his point. "And you wouldn't have stopped me."

He seemed to pause to see what I would say, though I knew he had more on his mind. "Aki, I trust you, and I feel safe with you. It just didn't feel like something I needed to worry about."

He nodded as if to say that he had heard it all before. "I know you trust me, and I want you to be able to continue to trust me unconditionally." He reached over the table to take my hand, his way in the moment to make sure I was really listening. "But not like that. I don't trust myself enough to not loose control."

He brought my hand to his lips, kissing my knuckles. He seemed like he hadn't fully emptied the contents of what was weighing on his mind. "Did it scare you?" I asked.

I earned a small laugh. "It humbled me." He said, but his lasting smile told me he wasn't quite saying everything. He pulled me to stand with him so he could wrap me in his arms. "I'm sorry I just told you to get more comfortable and now we're having this conversation."

"It shouldn't be just your responsibility." I had a realization. "Maybe I should think about something more long term."

He pushed me back slightly to hold my shoulders so he could look at my face. "For now, it's just my responsibility, okay?" I nodded to show I was listening. "Continue to get more comfortable, and continue to feel safe with me. I won't let you down."

Through the day while I was at the university, Aki sent me a photo here and there at no particular time intervals. They were all photos I had never seen of him before, wearing clothing that was mostly pretty far off from his usual punk rock style but suited him well, complimenting his natural aesthetic. In one photo that caught my attention so directly, I immediately set it to my phone's wallpaper, Aki sat on a muted dark grey set lawlessly leaning on his thighs smoking. The contrasting shadows on and around him were heavy, as was the mood of the photo. He wore nothing under a dark green bomber jacket, and the waistband of his boxers were visible atop the closure of the black cargo pants. The bottom of the pants tapered heavily and were tucked into his combat boots with a slight slouch.

He didn't accompany the photos with any message, but every time I replied with a multitude of hearts and kissing face cartoons to convey how enamoured I was to be receiving them. I couldn't wait for the day to be over so I could rejoin him and listen to his stories about his time in Osaka. I had sent Aki a message when I was packing up to leave school, telling him to meet me at the cafe on the other side of Ueno park, closer to our apartment. I knew he was exhausted, and he had already walked with me all the way through the four city blocks through the park and back once. I received a reply that read, "see you soon".

I found Aki sitting inside the cafe by the window, where a long table and high chairs spanned the entire length of the front. It was getting cold, with winter threatening to start settling in, and it was the type of weather in which you needed a jacket in the morning, a sweater by noon, and a jacket again in the evening. Aki spun his chair around as I approached, sitting up tall to pull me into the space between his legs and hold me close.

"What do you want to drink?" He asked me, standing up and motioning for me to sit in the chair he had occupied. "Don't say anything else yet except for your order."

"Cortado." I sat obediently in the chair and looked up at him, putting my palms together, excited by the idea of the coffee.

He nodded once firmly to show that he understood. "That sounds really good right now, I'm going to have one too."

I watched him walk to the counter to order, as I always did. It had become an absent minded habit, but the way I took him in was absolutely conscious. Sometimes he would be recognized and I would see him laughing or making small talk with the person at the counter. He was always considerate of the people who knew who he was, and he made time to indulge them, even if it was just a moment while they poured his coffee.

"Okay." He returned to the chair beside me and placed the small cups down. "How was your day?" He grabbed my hand by my fingers and brought them to his lips to kiss my knuckles.

"It was fine, all well and good." I leaned my elbow onto the table, using my fist to rest my chin. "But some guy kept sending me really hot pictures with no explanation."

"I'll kill him." He didn't miss a beat, and replied in a completely flat and serious tone.

I started to laugh. He had won the bluff. "Aki, I mean the pictures you were sending me."

"Did you like them?" He tried to stifle a small laugh with a sip of coffee, averting his eyes from me in a coy display of being shy. I turned my phone toward him to show him that I set one of the photos as my background. He gained a look of surprise for a second, then turned his phone toward me as well, the same photo he had taken of me at Christmas in his Kamakura house. "Guess we're even."

"Well no, because that photo of me is in my underwear."

He held the phone against his chest in a gesture that said the photo had a permanent place in his heart. "I am careful to protect your decency when I'm around other people." He said. "But if anyone sees it accidentally and asks who it is, you bet I give them a better look."

"So what are these pictures about?"

Aki opened an email in his phone and handed it to me. There was a name in block letters on the top of the email, but I was more interested in listening to him tell the story than reading. "This clothing designer is really famous in Osaka." He began. "But his name never left there. He's organizing a pop-up store in Harajuku, and designed a line of clothing specifically to sell there."

I handed his phone back to him, understanding that the email he was showing me was the initial invitation to him from the designer to take part in the Harajuku event. "So how did you end up getting involved?"

He smiled, looking proud of himself. "Since Guardian came to Tokyo and signed with the new label, we've exploded. This designer took notice of me, liked my image, and decided to reach out."

"Everyone likes your image because..." There were a few things I wanted to say to him, but I suddenly became too shy to say anything and trailed off as I spoke.

He leaned over onto the table, resting his elbow atop it and holding his chin in his hand. He peered at me, and I knew he predicted exactly what I wanted to say. "Because?" I looked back at him, trying not to let my cheeks flush. "You can tell me."

"Aki, why do you do this to me?" I whined as I covered my face with my hands, peering at him through my fingers.

"Because I love you." He said, putting it simply. "The pop-up store is opening on my birthday, and they want me to be there to do a meet-and-greet with Guardian fans to get a little more traction." He scrolled through his phone some more, handing it to me open to a social media account, his photo front and center. "The designer has already started posting photos to advertise the shop, and look." He pointed over the phone to the description. "It just says the model will be a guest on opening day. It doesn't say my name at all, so we're relying on fans to spread the word. It's exciting."

"A meet-and-greet on your birthday? Aki, your fans are going to go crazy for the chance to give you a birthday gift."

"Do you think many people will end up showing up? I doubt anyone would come from Osaka just for that." He seemed to take a moment to think about what he said, and shrugged to himself. "I was hoping you would be there with me. We could get a hotel for the night."

As I looked at his face over the rim of my coffee cup, I felt suddenly nervous like I had just met him, and he was implying a great deal more than he was actually saying. "But we live in Tokyo now. Not far at all from Harajuku."

He reached over to place his hand atop my thigh. "Yes, but I'm a famous rockstar, and we can do things like that for special occasions."

He didn't play the rockstar card very often. He remained humble about his profession even as Guardian continued to grow in popularity and he became more famous as the frontman. "Can we get a hotel with an onsen, since you're such a famous rockstar?"

"Yes, but we'll have to get one with a bath in the room, because famous rockstar or not, I'm still tattooed." He smiled as he sipped his coffee, looking pleased that I was going along with his birthday wish. "There's one in Shinjuku. If it doesn't get too late we can even walk to it."

"What else do you want to do for your birthday?" I asked him. It was only the second time I would celebrate his birthday with him, though it felt as if more time had passed than just under two years. There were moments I could think of when I was confident that I knew everything there was to know about Aki, and there were also moments when I felt as if I knew nothing about him as well.

I watched him as he tipped his coffee cup back to finish it off, his gaze out the window as he did, with his profile toward me. He put the cup down on the table, his eyes following it. "Nothing." He said, and I saw a light smile tug at the corners of his lips. "I don't want anything else."