"Don't your feet hurt?"
"They hurt. But I don't hate pain."
"What? That's kind of hot."
- Kumiko and Reina, Hibike Euphonium
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Season 1 - Interautumnal Interlude VII - "The Double Date, Part 1"
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“Hey, Ike,” Dan’s perpetually amused voice said over the phone. “You dating Audrey?”
Standing in his apartment, struggling to pay attention to a news broadcast about brewing trouble in Iceland while listening to Dan talk aimlessly, Isaac felt himself get pulled back into the conversation after being asked a question like that.
“...no?”
“You dating Reed?”
“...also no.”
“Good. You can do better than her. You oughta date Audrey.”
Isaac scratched his head. “...alright? Are you going anywhere with this?”
“Good point, Ike. Technically, we’re both going somewhere with this. Before dating Audrey, I’m in need of services you can only provide.”
“I’ve told you before, I’m not interested in you.”
“I was joking that one time,” Dan quickly answered. “Just joking. But this time, I’m serious. You know the girl I’ve been sending letters to out in Palmer Beach?”
Isaac felt like he had just been talking to Reed about her, even though that was last month and it was now mid-November. The Combat Simulation would be the weekend after this weekend; Isaac had that date circled on his calendar, and wondered if that day’s word on the calendar - dogma, meaning set of principles - would somehow be relevant. Lots of seemingly trivial details came back as meaningful in Isaac’s life. Maybe that’s just how life really was.
“Ike, are you philosophizing again?”
Isaac sighed. “Spaced out for a minute there. But yes, I know about Regina. You never stop talking about her.”
“She understands me. A girl who writes letters to fellow Japanimation newsletter readers. You don’t meet girls like that every day.”
“Reed writes letters.”
“...I’m telling you, go for Audrey. But back to me. I have good news, Ike. Regina is finally willing to meet up with me. She wants to hang out this weekend.”
Isaac did have a genuine smile upon hearing that. “That’s awesome, I hope you have fun.”
“Not so fast, my friend. You see, Regina is afraid I’m a serial killer or something - even though the Military Police got him, I guess tales of the West Narragansett Mystic Killer still gives people the heebie-jeebies - so she’s bringing a friend along. That means I need to bring a friend. And you, my friend, happen to be my friend.”
Isaac realized where Dan was going with this. “But what about Demetrius or Coleridge?”
Isaac could imagine Dan shrugging on the other side of the line. “Demetrius is busy this weekend, off fighting mountain lions or goats or whatever he does. And as for Cole…I love the guy, but he’s not the type of friend you bring to the first double date. Once me and Regina have hung out a few times, and I bring her to a party, that’s when you introduce someone like Cole.”
Isaac nodded. Dan knew far more about this stuff than he did, and everything he said did have some sort of logic to it.
“So, that leaves me.”
“Precisely,” Dan said. “She said her friend was nice. Both of them go to the Institute High School, Ike. Imagine that - smart and wealthy. That’s something you lock down. A long-term investment, if you will.”
“Uh-huh…where are we meeting? We don’t get passes to the rest of the city until Thanksgiving break.”
Dan audibly snapped his fingers. “This is the best, Ike. She’s the kind of girl who comes to you. Meet me at Matsuzaki Station this Saturday at 4 PM.”
Isaac wrote that down. “A double date, huh…I’ve never been on a normal date before, let alone a double one.”
“It’s simple, Ike. Just let me do the talking. All you gotta do is stand there looking pretty, which you’re already astoundingly proficient at.”
“...alright, alright. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
The two friends said their good-byes. As soon as Isaac hung up the phone, Audrey kicked his front door down.
“Isaac!” she exclaimed, the widest grin possible on her face. “It just spun in over the wire. A date a date a date a date!”
Isaac eyed his thin walls and then his fallen door. Audrey hastily placed it back into its hinges. “A date’s a big responsibility, Isaac! You need to show this girl the respect she deserves!”
Isaac shrugged. “I’m plenty respectful. And it’s not like I’m doing it because I’m interested. I’m just doing it to help a friend.”
Audrey pointed a finger at him. “That’s precisely why you need to be respectful! And presentable!”
Audrey ushered Isaac around. “It’s not for a few days-” Isaac said, but Audrey cut him off.
“Your hair, Isaac! You need a haircut, or you’ll be growing a mullet soon at this rate! And your clothes - all of them are hand-me-downs! Cologne…surely, you must own cologne, right?”
Isaac raised an eyebrow. “No?”
Audrey shuddered. “Oh boy. We have a lot of work to do.”
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“Isaac…I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more handsome fellow.”
Unsurprisingly, Isaac was the first to arrive at Matsuzaki. The big classical-looking building - classicism, with its symmetry, aesthetic, and emphasis on simplicity was all the rage in the current postwar society that loved the past, didn’t want to spend too much, and knew of the Pre-Unleashing horrors of its possible alternative brutalism - was the Pond’s central station, right next to the Cabot Shopping Center, which was only a twenty minute walk north of Isaac’s apartments and Kenji Station. Twenty minutes might sound like a lot, but Isaac didn’t mind all that much. The chilly weather of autumn made him don the school’s greatcoat, which did an exceptional job of keeping him warm.
Underneath it, he just planned on wearing an old sweatshirt, but Audrey showed up on Saturday morning to make him wear a respectable gray sweater. She bought him cologne, which smelled kind of nice, but also kind of funky, but she said it was good and Audrey knew what she was doing. He didn’t need any prodding from her to shave his child molester-level mustache.
Dan cat-called him when he arrived at Matsuzaki Station. He wore a similar outfit; according to Audrey, these were all trends out of Shanghai.
“Who’s my handsome fellow?” Dan asked when he sat down on a bench next to him. “Who’s my handsome fellow?”
Dan started playfully punching Isaac softly on his shoulders. He did an amazing job of hyping Isaac up - he really did start feeling like a handsome fellow.
“And that hair!” Dan exclaimed. “Usually, you got it in this coif sort of deal, puffy at the front, but you got it slicked back now.”
Isaac shrugged. “That was Audrey’s doing. She said I have to look respectable.”
“If things don’t work out with Regina’s friend tonight, I’m telling you, you gotta go for Audrey.”
A train pulled into Matsuzaki; Isaac and Dan stretched their necks to look through the crowds of people, all dressed in heavy jackets and hats, but they didn’t see either of the two Institute girls. The train soon rumbled away. Isaac watched it go, then looked back out at the crowds of people both entering and leaving the platform.
“What’s with this recent push for dating?”
Dan shook his head in disbelief. “Ike, your two best friends are girls. How are you not going for either of them?”
Isaac shrugged. “Audrey’s like a sister to me, and Reed’s…like a Reed to me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with dating a sister,” Dan encouraged. “It means you’re already starting off with a strong relationship.”
“...I’ll keep that in mind.” Isaac could never tell if Dan was serious or not. He also knew that Dan reveled in keeping his friends on their toes.
Another train pulled in, its whistle echoing across the platform. “What does Regina even look like?” Isaac asked.
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Dan slipped a black-and-white photo out of his wallet and handed it over gingerly. Isaac saw Regina on what must’ve been her school picture day - she wore the presumably blue sailor fuku of the navally-connected Institute, inspired by industrial-era American naval uniforms rather than Japanese school attire (which also happened to take them from old-school naval uniforms). What struck out to Isaac most was the enthusiastic smile on her face.
“She sent it to me so I’d know what she’d look like,” Dan explained as Isaac handed it back. Another train rolled into the station, its whistle cascading through the platform. “I sent one to her as well, so ideally, we’d be able to meet. This might even be her train.”
As Isaac and Dan scanned the people passing through the platform, sure enough, they found their targets. Dressed in the blue greatcoats of the Institute, Regina and her friend, who was surprisingly tall, walked around on this foreign platform, keeping their eyes peeled. Well, it seemed like Regina, with her short strawberry blonde hair, was doing most of the searching; her friend had her hands stuffed in her pockets and seemed bored with the whole thing.
“Showtime,” Dan said with a relaxed grin. He led the way over the two girls; Regina’s eyes lit up in recognition when she saw Dan.
“Regina!” Dan greeted, extending a hand, since firm handshakes were the name of the game when courting a girl in these modern times. Dan gestured to his right. “This is Isaac. We’re in the same class at school.”
“Nice to meet you,” Isaac offered, taking up her hand. Her hand was warm and soft, and he most definitely did not accidentally crush it when they shook.
Regina rubbed her hand a little and gestured with her head. “This is my friend, Frances.”
Frances was lanky and the tallest one among the four. Her features seemed harsh and little angular, as if she was still growing into her body. Isaac mentally rubbed the back of his neck at the sight of her, since Harriet picking him up down in the basement of Hayman Office Supplies resulted in a weird feeling appearing in his stomach whenever he spoke to a girl taller than him.
And, for some reason, he felt like he recognized her from somewhere. When they shook hands, Frances did the crushing, and that’s when Isaac realized.
“Hey, you’re on the Institute girl’s basketball team, right?” Isaac realized. “You won MVP as a freshman last year!”
Frances seemed used to her level of fame among those who followed women’s high school sports (which was more than you’d expect). “It’s a sorry league when someone like me wins MVP," she offered, her voice deep and amused despite the look of boredom on her face.
Isaac waved that away. “I saw you when the Institute came to play at the Academy. A triple double! And you weren’t just padding your stats in garbage time, either. You really could win with those cats!”
Frances scratched her nose a little happily. “Aw, c’mon. I had some great teammates.”
Frances introduced herself to Dan, and one crushing handshake later, all the greetings had been settled.
“You two ever been to the Pond?” Dan asked, rubbing his hand. He grinned when the girls shook their heads. “Fantastic. Let’s hit the town!”
Isaac could never tell if Dan planned things in advance or simply winged it. Either way, he did a great job as he escorted the group out of Matsuzaki Station and around the center of the Pond. The traditional approach would’ve had him just take them to the Cabot Shopping Center, but instead, he led them through the Tokyo-esque corridor of back alleys and side streets that circled around the Shopping Center. Paper lanterns and gas lamps lit their way through thin paths as the sun set early in the day.
“Mr. Stockham said he’d be grabbing a drink from here next week,” he explained, serving as a tour guide, as they passed by War Horse Bar. “Must be good.”
“It’s amazing you guys know your principal so well,” Regina exclaimed. Walking alongside Dan, her eyes looked constantly dazzled by all the sights and sounds of everything around her; Isaac supposed her constant enthusiasm would be a good fit for Dan’s easy-going attitude. As for Frances, she still kept her hands in her pockets and didn’t seem too impressed with the paper lanterns, considering she had to duck her head out of the way of many of them.
Dan found his diner of choice - Chopping Block Restaurant, located a few blocks away from the now closed Royce Cafe, where Professor Beskov and his assistant Esra had been assassinated by the State Police.
“That’s a shame,” Regina offered when Dan informed them of the cafe’s demise. “But, looking around, you’d never think you guys were attacked by the State Police.”
Isaac chuckled. While he was literally attacked by the State Police that day, Dan was apparently binging old slasher films for Halloween and hadn’t even realized a raid had occurred. The nasty bruise on Isaac’s face courtesy of Colonel Symanski’s boot to the face had only just recently disappeared.
Come to think of it, Isaac had never really spoken to students from the other schools. He was starting to learn his ideas about the world weren’t necessarily one hundred percent correct; he wondered what views his peers held. But, of course, that’s something you need to ease into a conversation, but Dan and Regina dominated it.
Not that Isaac minded. As Dan and Regina went back and forth in Chopping Block Restaurant over recently remastered Japanimations, the new wave Asian animations that just weren’t the same as the old-school stuff, and other Asian trends, Isaac felt himself listening along. As simple as it may sound, it felt kind of nice, just seeing two people being clearly happy with each other.
Frances just looked bored, maybe even a little antsy, as if she couldn’t wait to get away. She was ordering dessert when the other three were eating dinner, and when they were having coffee, she was asking for her check. Apparently, she had business.
Isaac asked for his check as well; he knew what the right thing to do here was, and he definitely was not looking forward to being a third wheel.
“Leaving already?” Regina asked, managing to pull herself out of the conversation with Dan.
“I’m beat,” Frances answered, stretching while stifling a yawn. Whether it was real or not, Isaac couldn’t tell. “Sorry for making you go back to the Beach alone. If you want to call me when you’re leaving, I can meet you at the station. Otherwise, I’ll cover for you if the dorm patrol checks in and you’re staying the night here.”
Regina gave a fluttering sort of chuckle, then eyed Dan. “Well, we’ll see…”
Yep, Isaac 100% needed to get out of there.
“Hey, I’ll walk you back to the station,” Isaac offered.
Frances tilted her head, as if to reject it, but then shrugged. “Fine by me.”
When the checks came, Isaac gestured to Frances, telling her to slide her check over; then, in a move picked up from Reed, he slid both of them over to Dan while standing up in a single motion.
Dan eyed the checks. “Uh…”
Isaac, with Regina on the same mental wavelength, was already throwing his greatcoat on. “You owe for all the times I've rented tapes for you at Dave's. Don’t worry, it’ll come full circle someway.”
And that’s how it was with Dan - he just gave Isaac an easygoing shrug. “Fair enough. They say a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and I have to assume that that applies here somehow. Safe travels.”
With a smiling Dan and Regina waving them off, Isaac and Frances departed into the night. Unlike its winter counterpart, the air of late autumn had a shrill chill to it only at the edges; it didn’t chill you all the way down to the bone, but just enough where you’re thankful to be wearing a jacket.
Under the cover of early night, they traveled through the labyrinth of paths back toward Matsuzaki Station. They walked slowly, wordlessly, the blinking and flickering lights of the cityscape surrounding them - yellow paper lanterns, orange gaslamps, reds and greens of streetlights, white lights from the tall buildings, the Cabot Shopping Center the tallest of them all. And above all of that-
“The twelve stars of Narragansett,” Frances supposed, looking up into the sky as they walked.
Isaac looked up at them alongside her. “You guys only got twelve stars down in Palmer Beach, too?”
Frances gave a wry grin. “Of course. It’s the same city.”
“Huh. Guess you got a point. I’ve never really traveled around the city, though.”
“You should get on that,” Frances suggested, still looking upwards. “Narragansett is rotting from the inside. Soon enough, you won’t get a chance.”
For the first time tonight, Isaac felt weary - he wasn’t in the mood to listen to another wannabe preacher. Fortunately, Frances changed the conversation to a completely different topic.
“You know a Lynn Falls?”
Isaac did know a Lynn Falls. “I do. I have a few classes with her.”
Frances nodded, bringing her head down to look ahead of her. “I see. We grew up together in Pennacook.” She chuckled at a memory. “She threw eggs at my family’s car once. I came close to beating the stuffing out of her.”
Isaac couldn’t imagine Lynn throwing eggs at anyone’s car. People really do change.
“Did you guys become friends after that?”
“I never talked to her after that,” Frances simply said. “But sometimes, I wonder how she’s doing.”
When they approached the lights of Matsuzaki Station, the Cabot Shopping Center next to it, Frances gestured with her head toward a nearby park. “Want to stop there for a minute?”
Isaac had nothing better to do, and he felt pretty warm, so he nodded and walked with her into a small area full of greenery, clusters of trees grouped together along the back. The park was empty, the only sounds they could hear being distant cars and the last calls of crickets for the year. Frances left the cobblestone path and headed toward the trees; Isaac shrugged and followed her.
When they arrived at a tree, Frances sat down at the base of the trunk, seemingly oblivious to the cold of the autumn night. Isaac elected to stand and caught glimpses of the city lights through the trees; otherwise, it was dark under their canopies.
“You smoke?” Frances asked, and Isaac saw how it was as he shook his head.
Once again, Isaac had fallen into the company of a girl who enjoyed the “finer” things of life. Not that there was anything wrong with that per se; it’s just how it was. But Isaac was growing tired of all the contact with drugs he’d been having recently. Even though he helped shut down the Pond drug ring, it felt like the entire city was flooded with them.
And maybe that’s how it was. They say drugs are a good escape. Maybe it wasn’t that deep, but, according to the radio at least, drugs were becoming a political problem for the country. The government said revolutionary groups sold drugs to corrupt today’s youth; Isaac knew from his own experiences that they sold drugs to fund themselves. And based on the level of usage, groups like the Second Restorationists must have a lot in their war chests by now.
While revolutionary groups made money, the rampancy of drugs also provided some advantages to the Presidential Administration in that they could make a lot of arrests on grounds of the drug trade and abuse. They also had a good focal point to describe what was wrong with the country at that very moment. Only a strong government could protect the people from drug abuse, a symptom of a society going awry.
But nobody ever talked about the people who actually used them. The real reason as to why, not the political reason. Maybe it was just fun. Maybe it was an escape from the country’s troubled times. Isaac didn’t know.
He also knew he wanted to have a fun night tonight, not navel gaze about the illicit drug trade. As said, he had nothing better to do, so he decided to talk with Frances while she was intoxicated, since that always provided some comedy.
Frances took off a shoe and reached inside. She pulled out a thin vial filled with a murky liquid - presumably hidden there to avoid any trouble at the Pond border crossing - and offered it to Isaac. “Worm syrup,” she said with a grin.
Isaac squinted at the vial. Clearly her offer to smoke was just understating things. “I’ve never even heard of that.”
“They say it’s good to flush parasitic worms out of your body,” Frances explained, pulling the cap off the top. “This stuff is fresh out of New York. It makes you feel loose and see green.”
Isaac wasn’t interested in seeing green, so he respectfully declined. Frances took a long sip, drinking the whole vial in one go. She wiped her mouth and tossed the empty vial into some bushes.
She stood up and with loose movements, pretended to shoot a basketball. Compared to her introverted and impatient personality earlier, she was all smiles now. She grinned at Isaac and leaned on a tree with an outstretched arm. With her other arm, she unbuttoned her greatcoat from top to bottom.
“Hey, want to see something?” she asked. Before Isaac could answer, she flung the greatcoat open.