Kamakura on a Sunday moved slowly. It always had, even when I was still a student sitting in classrooms just counting down the minutes until my freedom was granted. Everything in the city was reminding me of a time when my life was more simple, and I wondered if I was missing the simplicity, or if it was all rushing back to the front of my mind because it was familiar. I found myself holding Aki's arm harder, hoping he wouldn't notice.

As we closed in on a department store, Aki released his grip on my hand and moved me in front of him to slap my shoulders with his palms. "This is where I get my skin care products." He said as he steered me into a section of the store that looked almost clinical. "And you need some new skin care, my love. We should have done this a long time ago. I don't want you using anything from the drug store anymore, understand?"

Aki took care of himself. He was always in the spotlight, he wore heavy black makeup constantly, and on stage he sweat profusely. I had used some of his things during the summer tour, when we were in hotel room after hotel room late into the night, just wanting to shower and go to bed. Compared to what I usually used, which was cheap and consistently on sale at the drug store, Aki's skin care made me feel truly brand new. With an unremarkable life like I had before I met him, I thought I had no use for remarkable things that made me feel as if I could proudly stand in front of an audience and be confident that I didn't have a pimple or blemish to speak of.

I took a moment to look around the cubical, though at first glance it seemed like there wasn't much to look at. It was white and clean, with brightly back-lit shelves holding tall boxes that were equally white and clean. The atmosphere was plain and simple, with nothing much to distract from the products.

"Is that Aki?" Out attention was drawn to a dainty woman's voice closing in. I looked around to see one of the shop attendants padding toward us, waving to Aki, her smooth black bobbed hair swaying just like her long black skirt. "You haven't been here to see us in so long! Are you picking up new products?"

She held out her arms in front of her, and Aki didn't hesitate to embrace her. I knew Aki's hugs, and I knew his friendly hug was very tight and very fast. When he let the woman go, he reached around me and put both his palms on my cheeks. "I'm going to pick up my things, but mostly I'm here for her today. She's very beautiful, but she uses drug store skin care. I should have brought her to see you sooner, Mai."

"She is beautiful, Aki, is this your sister?" Mai looked slightly older, but like more of a mother figure to Aki, and definitely still very aware of who he was and what he did for a living, but I got the feeling she didn't follow the band at all.

Aki started to laugh. "No, Mai, this is my lover, Sugimori Natsuko." He pulled me close against him with an arm around my shoulders. "Haven't you heard any of the news since we left Kamakura?"

Mai put her hands together over her mouth as if she was embarrassed at having made such an assumption about who I was. "News from Tokyo is so busy. I'm happy for you though, Aki, congratulations on the new label, and congratulations on her. Let me pull up your file on the computer and I'll get your things, then we'll tackle what she needs." Aki followed her slowly, seeming to know where to find her if she walked out of range. He took my hand to lead me. "Funny you should show up, actually, I have a package for Kota I was just about to put in the mail. He made an order online."

"I'll bring it to him." Aki said, leaning against the counter as Mai started tapping keys on a computer. It felt revealing, watching Aki in such a setting, interacting with such a person. Mai treated him just like any other regular customer, chatting about his job and obvious aspects of his personal life as if they were the most ordinary things in the world. I rarely witnessed people in Aki's life aside from Guardian who knew him outside of his fame, but I was suddenly extremely interested to witness more.

"Sugimori-san?" Aki caught my attention from my daydream, addressing me in jest as he half turned toward me, including me in the conversation he was having with Mai. He reached out an arm, and I recognized that he was inviting me closer. He skimmed his fingertips across my back, and I could see an expression of pride on his face as he looked at me. "What's your skin type, my love?"

"Something you actually don't know about me, Aki?" I laughed.

He cupped my chin and jaw with both hands, his fingers reaching around to the back of my neck. He leaned his head down to place a kiss on one cheek, then the other. "Hard to tell, because what you're using now is drying you out. Well, just your face." He kissed both cheeks again, but didn't let go of me as he addressed Mai. "Let's say a cleanser for deep cleaning and moisturizers for dryness. And add one of the good makeup removers, we both use it."

Mai nodded, a gesture to say that she understood his order, and he followed her to the rows of shelves as she picked up boxes. I stayed put at the counter, but I listened hard to hear them chatting, fully invested in learning what kind of friendship they had.

"You just had a birthday, didn't you?" Mai began more small talk. "Happy birthday! How old did you turn?"

"Twenty seven." Aki answered her. Aki's age was something I rarely thought about, even through celebrating his birthday.

"She looks young, if you don't mind me saying so. She's very beautiful."

"She is young, she's only nineteen. Her birthday is the end of December, so she'll be twenty soon."

"It's wonderful that she has you to grow up with. You're a good man, Aki." Mai said. I stopped listening after that. I thought about how many people I had heard say that Aki was a good man. He severely left an impression on every person he met.

Aki had sat me atop the counter in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel to match him, fresh from the shower where he had removed my makeup and washed my face for me. I held my towel closed at my chest with both hands and watched him open the rest of the boxes, taking bottles out of them and setting them down beside me.

He held up a tall bottle. "Toner after washing, okay?" He said, as he opened the bottle and poured a small amount on a flat cotton pad. He smoothed it over my face, neck, and chest. "Then just wait a second for it to dry. Next is serum." He held up a different bottle.

I was only half paying attention to what he was trying to teach me. Something else was on my mind, charged by the phenomenon of how normal it had become to do such things together. "Aki, I've been wondering lately, what you must have thought about me when I invited you in to my apartment after knowing you for only two days." It was a topic we had talked about before, but I had never really gotten his side of the story.

He looked at my face for a beat of time, pausing all other motion, then continued taking the dropper out of the bottle he was holding and proceeded to drop some of the serum directly onto my skin. He patted it to blend it out with his fingertips, and I closed my eyes to his touch, listening to his voice. "I thought I knew why you were asking me in, but then I second guessed myself when we were standing in your kitchen and you were looking at me like you had never seen a man's body before."

"I hadn't." I smiled, still with my eyes closed, enjoying his touch, stating my facts.

I heard him laugh with his breath. "I didn't even know how old you were. Looking back on it now, it was a really risky move, wasn't it?"

"You started it though." I was having fun with the conversation, because I knew Aki would tell me the truth about anything, and in the end it didn't matter what his reasons were in the past.

"Open your eyes a second, look at this." He was holding up a different bottle to show me so I could easily associate the different steps in the routine with how the products looked. "Moisturizer after serum." He pumped a small amount on the tips of his first two fingers, then dabbed it in various places on my face before beginning to blend it in like he did in the previous step. "I didn't know if you would go all the way with me, or if you would stop me, or if I would stop myself."

"You did tell me to stop you any time if I wanted to, and you wouldn't be mad."

"We hardly knew each other. I already liked you, but I had no idea how you felt about me. I took a chance that you weren't just lusting after me because I'm in a band." He used the hold he had on my face to steal a kiss while my eyes were still closed. "That's it. That's the whole story. And that's the whole skin care routine."