Sunday afternoon found Kurt waiting for Eva in the genkan. His dripping wet umbrella had been leaned into the corner so that it would only drip onto the stone floor of the entrance, not the wooden one of the rest of the living room.
He had planned to be early, but with the bad weather they’d been having that afternoon and keeping an eye out for the Tanuki hooligans, without success, the werewolf had barely arrived on time. Which wasn’t all that bad because, as Touya had informed him, Eva and Yukiko would be taking a while still to finish getting the Kitsune ready. Which did get Kurt to wonder what would take Eva so long, seeing as she usually didn’t take much time to get her hair and clothes ready, and as far as he could tell didn’t use much makeup either.
When, about ten minutes later, Eva did make her way down the stairs carefully, Kurt was taken aback by how stunning she looked. She was wearing a very light blue, nearly white, Furisode she had borrowed from Yukiko. It seemed rather plain until she took a few steps and the change in lighting as the kneeling sleeves waved back and forth let the embroidered snowflake design shimmer all across the fabric in an icy blue that matched the light eyeshadow Eva had put on.
What came as a somewhat shocking surprise to Kurt though, was the short hair she now sported. The cut was, at least in his humble opinion, rather stylish, but it was a stark difference to how long she’d usually had her hair.
“You, uh look great Eva.” he mumbled, hopefully loud enough for her to hear, before taking a deep breath to continue more calmly. “But what’s with the new hairstyle.”
The annoyed sigh she let out ruined the image of beautiful perfection she had created by simply walking down the stairs.
“Well as it turns out, transforming your hair into shape does not let you skip on actual hair care.”
“Hm?” Kurt hummed inquisitively.
“Well long story short. When I actually let my hair return to normal on Komaki’s insistence, it was going to be something like this, or dreadlocks.” Eva grumbled as an annoyed scowl quickly crossed her face when she tried to play with a no-longer existing lock of hair. “You don’t like it, I guess?”
“No no no Not at all.” Kurt quickie replied with a shake of his head. “I was just rather shocked after always seeing you with much longer hair.”
“Well no need to get too used to this.” Eva proclaimed as she reached the genkan. “Unless I need to meet people that can tell the difference, and are liable to be offended by it, I’ll keep my hair long the not so natural way.”
Handing his friend her own Umbrella, Kurt offered her his arm. “Well shall we get going then my lady?”
Eva gave his arm a slight shove, letting her left sleeve flutter around, despite the goofy grin on her face. “Don’t be so pompous. Let’s get this over with without making anyone too mad at us.”
“Of course.” Kurt said as he opened the door. When he did try to grab his umbrella, he noticed that the Kitsune did slide her left hand onto his offered arm. So he quickly used his shoe to hold the door open, freeing up his other hand to grab and open his own umbrella.
~~~
Quite a while later the two had finally reached their destination. Stepping out of the elevator into the restaurant’s lobby, the two were surprised at how quiet it all was. But before they could mention that to each other, the lady standing at a small reception desk tried to get their attention.
“Good evening sir, madam, May I see your reservation?” She inquired, with little to no emotion showing on her face, her hands hidden in her light pink Houmongi’s sleeves.
“Ah yes of course.” Eva replied before hurriedly digging the invitation out of her sleeve. “Here you go.” She then offered the note to the lady after unfolding it.
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She took a moment to study the note, before stepping out from behind the desk. “If you would please follow me, the rest of your party is already waiting.”
The next few minutes were spent in silence as the German duo was led through the seemingly empty restaurant. They ended up stopping before a door to a small private room. As they stepped inside, they were immediately greeted by a large glass wall looking out over Roppongi bathed in the late afternoon sun. Their attention was quickly drawn to the middle aged looking woman seated already at the table as she dismissed the receptionists.
“Ah so good to see you two again.” She greeted them warmly, waving to the two prepared seats opposite of her. “I had hoped to talk to you again earlier, but after I got thrown out of the Onsen resort for getting you two a bit tipsy, I decided to arrange for something more private.” As the two sat down at the indicated seats, Eva could swear she heard the lady mumble “Not that I could get rid of all the audience even if I tried my hardest.” but with it being such a strange remark, she decided she must have misunderstood her.
“So what do you want to talk about with us?” Eva inquired, arms crossed loosely before her chest.
“Well as we had so little chance to talk before, I wanted to see how my dear grandson and his girlfriend are doing. Now that I actually managed to run into one again after so long.”
“Wait grandson?” Kurt shouted in disbelief.
“Were you really that drunk? We went over that at least last time. I am not one to care to count the right number of ‘great’s to insert so I don’t bother. And I am rather certain that I was the one giving birth in this case. Unlike with Fenrir.”
“Fenrir? Who are you?” Eva asked, now very much confused as to who was seated opposite of them. “And what do you mean last time, we never talked to you.”
“Wait, you don’t remember?” She asked, surprised. “We spent most of Saturday afternoon together at the Onsen before the two of you decided to go hike the mountains for some alone time.”
“Not. A. Thing.” Kurt said, hoping to clarify to the lady claiming to be his ancestor, who started grumbling something about people missing out on great stories, before sighing deeply.
“Well then let’s start this over. I am Loki Odinson, Ex-Wife of Thor, progenitor of a lot of weird critters and people around to this day. Though these days I spend my time just enjoying watching humans create their own chaos.” She let out a deep chuckle. “This whole stock exchange thing was beyond the wildest dreams of any deity of Chaos, mischief or anything else related really. And they did that all to themselves too.”
“Oookay.” Eva said unsurely, mildly cowed by the knowledge of who was sitting across them. “So what does any of that have to do with us and why did you invite us here?”
“Well for one, I want to spoil this here grandson of mine and his girlfriend. And you are playing with one of my toys.”
“She’s not my girlfriend.” Kurt protested weakly, to which Loki simply replied with a chuckle and a mischievous grin.
“What “toy”?” Eva said quickly to change the topic, cheeks flushed a little red.
“Well you are currently teaching Miss Unagi magic are you not?” Loki inquired.
“Yes, is that a problem?” Eva asked carefully. “I didn’t even know she worked for you, let alone what that might mean.”
“Ah no. I just prefer to be informed about such things beforehand, so I know when I need to use less than mundane means to make sure my Employees are doing their Jobs as they should.” She replied, taking a short pause as a waiter came in with a large bottle of sake. And with how the moisture condensed into fat droplets all over it, it clearly was well chilled. “Thank you.” she said to the waiter as he placed a cup before each of them. While picking her explanation back up, she kept glancing from Kurt to the bottle. “Just this week I caught her twice trying to use some pretty basic illusions to hide how she was overworking herself again.”
“Oh. That’s not good.” Eva replied, tilting her head a bit as she began to think. “So what do you want me to do about it?”
“Would you please just inform me about her progress once in a while? Here, have my card for that.” She said before pulling out a small business card and sliding it across the table. “And Kurt, at meetings like these, isn’t it customary for the one with the least standing in the group to at least fill the drinks of the others.”
“Ah, well yes.” Kurt began to mumble. “But Eva’s both younger than me and-” He managed to cut himself off just as he was about to put both his feet in his mouth.
“And what?” The two ladies at the table inquired sharply.
“And not a member of your family.” he managed to squeeze out while under their heavy gazes.
“Well she is also divinity, if not by birth then by office and duty.” Loki countered, once again looking from Kurt to the bottle.
Relenting finally, Kurt filled each of their cups.
“Thank you dear. Now have you had a chance to study the menu online before coming here? If not I’ll call the waiter back in with some menus.” She said before turning to the window and making a shooing motion with her hand under the table.