Acknowledgements: Sorry to keep you all waiting! Thanks to stargazerlily for betaing, idea-bouncing, and dragging me to see the lifesize Sephiroth. (who definitely inspired slash-y thoughts!) Thanks as well to all of my readers and reviewers. This story has been around for a long time now, and I really appreciate those of you who are still reading!

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Chapter 25: kotae -answers-

"Teru?"

"Mmph?" Teru rolled onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow and pulling the comforter up to cover his head. "It's too early…"

He had dreamt something sad, something that had left him with a strange, empty feeling in this pit of his stomach, and the dream hadn't really let him sleep at all. What had it been about? A part of his mind struggled to remember, even as he told himself that it didn't really matter, that he could always sleep again.

Teru rolled onto his side, experimentally, and was relieved for a moment that his head didn't spin or throb or do any of the other unpleasant things that it was wont to do after a night of heavy drinking. Last night must not have been that bad, then. He had left the uchiage early, after all…

He opened his eyes slowly, carefully. Beside him, Rei was awake, staring straight ahead at the empty white ceiling.

"Good morning." Rei's lips barely moved as he spoke, and he continued to lie flat on his back, stubbornly ignoring Teru's gaze.

"G – good morning."

"You're still here."

A sickening lump rose from Teru's stomach to his throat as the events of the previous evening replayed themselves in a mad rush. He was still here, yes… in the bed of a man who had claimed to love him, who had been in love with someone else all along. He had stayed… why? Out of pity? Or out of the remains of some stupid, desperate hope?

"Yes." The word came out raspy and weak, a reminder of the screaming he had done last night, and his face flushed bright red. "I fell asleep. What – what time is it?"

"Does it matter?" Rei turned his head at last, and Teru had to force himself not to flinch. As glad as he was that he had stayed, that Rei had let him… that face still wasn't a sight to wake up to.

"Um… yeah. I've got that interview today…"

"Interview?" Rei's face fell, and his voice turned to ice. "I see."

"Rei?"

"Yes?"

Teru sighed. "You have to learn to trust me, okay? I guess I forgot to tell you, but I really do have an interview. With Shoxx." He forced a smile.

"Shoxx?" The ice melted a little, and genuine curiosity coloured Rei's voice. "Impressive. I… I wish you had told me."

"Sorry." But it wasn't exactly like we were speaking to each other. "What time is it?"

Rei turned away again to glance at the alarm clock. "Ten o'clock. What time is your interview?"

"Twelve…" Teru ran some numbers through his head. It would take ten minutes to walk to the station, about fifteen minutes to Shinjuku, five to Nakano, fifteen to his apartment… "Shit!" It would be cutting it too close, and he couldn't show up at the Shoxx head office looking and smelling like the sole survivor of an explosion at the cigarette factory.

"Um… Rei?" he ventured, raising his head a little so that he was not quite sitting, but not quite lying down. "Do you think… I mean, would it be okay if I, uh… if I used your shower?"

Rei blinked. "My... shower?"

"I just, uh…" Teru pushed a stubborn strand of hair out of his eyes. "I don't have time to go home. And I can't… I smell like shit."

Something close to a smile tugged at the corner of Rei's mouth. "You smell like a live house."

"Yeah." Teru blushed. "I smell like I didn't go home last night and… you know. That's not going to look good."

Rei closed his eyes for a moment, seeming to consider the idea. "It wouldn't," he agreed at last. "Go ahead."

Teru tossed his half of the comforter aside and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the monstrous bed. "It's the door across the hall, right?"

"The one on the right is the toilet. The one on the left is the bath."

"Okay. Thanks." Teru made his way through the bedroom as quickly as possible, trying to force himself not to see, not to think about the relics of pain that served as decoration, though those thoughts were infinitely preferable to the only other thing that he seemed able to think about.

Saki. He had not dared to say anything to Rei. He wasn't sure that he wanted to. Maybe it was better to let the past be exactly that – the past.

January 5th, 1995…

What was he like? What did he look like? What did he like to do? Would he really have wanted you to love again? Would he really have wanted it to be me? Can you ever forgive yourself, Rei? Was it even your fault to begin with? A thousand questions that he could never ask flooded his mind, and the one bit of comfort among them was also the only bit of certainty: Whatever the answers were, they wouldn't change the way he felt. Rei had thought that last night's revelation would turn adoration to hate – but Teru couldn't have hated Rei if he had tried. He was nervous and terrified, full of pain and numbness and pity, but there was also…

Love.

Teru nearly slammed the bathroom door shut behind him, and the walls shook faintly with the impact. Was realizing that you loved someone supposed to feel so bad?

He peeled his clothes off, wrinkling his nose a little in disgust. They really did smell bad, but there wasn't a lot that he could do about that. Showing up in last night's clothes would tell the guys that he hadn't been home; showing up wearing something of Rei's would tell them exactly why. He was just going to have to hope that the shower put him somewhere on the other side of completely disgusting.

The bathroom mirror was spilt down the middle by an enormous crack which managed to make one side of Teru's face appear half a centimeter higher than the other, and in the sink beneath it, another dark blue wig was soaking in some kind of mixture of shampoo and water. He wasn't going to be able to brush his teeth, but at least the mirror was halfway useable: he could see what he looked like, more or less. At least it would be better than trying to do his hair in the bathroom at the station.

The bath itself was no cleaner than Teru's own, but it was perfectly serviceable and, like the apartment, large enough to have been used by a family of three or four. The tub was deep, and long enough that two people could have sat in it together if they'd wanted to; Teru was half-tempted to fill it up with hot water and enjoy a nice, long soak. He felt a little twinge as he noticed the handrails rimming the walls, the stool that was both higher and wider than usual and which looked like something out of a commercial featuring old ladies and their hip problems, and he wondered again if all of this was really necessary, or if it had been, however many years ago.

How bad is it, really? He should have been thinking of something else – depressing himself before the interview wasn't going to do anyone any good. But in some respects, at least, his feelings for Rei were no different than the feelings he'd had for any of the other people he'd ever liked, or dated… or loved. He wanted to know everything, even if he was a little bit afraid of the answers.

He squeezed some liquid soap into the palm of his hand and worked it into a rich white lather, and even that simple action made him feel a little bit cleaner. By the time the last of the suds had been washed away, his concerns about the interview were nearly gone. He would look fine; he would smell fine. If only it were so easy to get rid of everything else.

Hot water streamed down his scalp in rivers, plastering still-stiff bits of hair to Teru's cheeks and neck and back as it carried away the least resilient remnants of last night's hairspray and mousse. He let the stream of water pound at the back of his neck for a minute, massaging muscles that he hadn't even realized were aching, until the hand that was holding the shower head grew tired and he was forced to replace it on the wall. The hot water didn't feel as good on a summer morning as it would have at any other time of the year, but the heat and the steam were relaxing, in a way, and he allowed it to continue to fall over his body as he reached for the shampoo.

"Shit!" Teru cursed aloud. He'd been sure that one of the other bottles lining the shelf next to the tub would be shampoo, and until that moment, it hadn't seemed like a terribly stupid assumption to make. When he pressed down on the pump, however, the only thing that spurted out was a desperate gasp of empty, transparent bubbles. The next bottle was no better, and when he had tried all four of them, he picked one up and actually bothered to read the label. It was just soap. Empty soap bottles, one beside the next, taking up space on the shelf until it became too small and forced Rei to throw them away. And that made as much sense as Teru's original assumption had seemed to – What did Rei need shampoo for?

In the shower, anyway... But there had been a soapy wig in the sink. Teru didn't know what was typically used to wash wigs, but there was at least a chance that, whatever it was, it would be at least marginally effective in getting last night's gunk out of his hair.

He stopped the water, and opened the door, his long wet hair sprinkling the floor with sticky hairspray-water as he did so. He made a mental note to wipe the floor before he left, though he privately thought that Rei wouldn't notice the difference.

There were a dozen bottles and jars of various shapes and sizes lining the sink – hand soap, lotion, something that might have been mousse… and a huge discount-store bottle of shampoo-and-conditioner-in-one. Teru picked it up with a grimace. This stuff wasn't exactly going to do wonders for his hair, but he supposed that it would be better than regular soap. Again, it made sense – there was no need to worry about moisturizers or color-protecting agents when it came to synthetic wigs – but to Teru, at the moment, it managed to be both a disappointment and an uncomfortable reminder of everything that Rei had been through.

When he emerged from the shower a few minutes later, his hair was no longer standing up in a thousand different directions, but it didn't feel any less like straw, and seemed unwilling to do anything except trail lifelessly down his back. It had been a long time since he's wore his hair straight; usually it was either tied up for work or teased up for a show. The person in the cracked reflection didn't look very much like Teru at all. Still, there wasn't a lot that he could do about it. He didn't expect Rei to have much in the way of styling products – though he was half tempted to try the can of maybe-mousse – or even hair bands.

"I'm trying a new look," he explained to his reflection with a crooked smile that melted immediately into a scowl of frustration. There was no way that the guys were going to buy it. He looked like he hadn't been home the night before, and that was all there was to it.

The stack of towels next to the washing machine looked like they were probably clean, and Teru took one from the top, wiping the excess water from his body before using the towel to tie back the sopping mess that was his hair. He pulled on his boxers and pants, but draped the shirt over one arm as he left the bathroom. Even indoors, it was still a sticky July morning, and every minute might make a difference when it came to smelling like he'd had a decent night's sleep.

Rei was sitting upright in the bed, the mask and wig once again obscuring his face, though he still wore the clothes that he had slept in. He smiled as Teru entered the room, and it seemed almost like a peace offering. "I'm sorry." He apologized for what seemed like the millionth time. "The bathroom is dirty…"

Teru laughed in spite of himself, and was relieved when it only sounded a little bit forced. "No worse than mine," he stated truthfully. "Thanks. For everything."

Rei said nothing then, but continued to stare at the comforter, or his lap, or his hands. He opened his mouth, then closed it again, seeming to reconsider whatever answer he had been about to make. The response, when it came at last, was barely more than a whisper.

"Stay."

"What?"

"Stay." Rei looked Teru in the eyes, and his voice grew stronger. "Don't leave me."

"I – I wish I could."

"Come back, then?"

There was such hope in that voice that Teru almost said yes without a thought of the consequences. It made perfect sense. He would come back after the interview; they would pick up where they had left off...

"I can't." He shook his head, willing the fantasy to go away, to leave him alone. "Not today. I have to work…" But he wants me to stay… I can't just walk away. He fumbled through a mental version of the week's schedule: Work, work, band meeting… "Um… how about Thursday?"

"What?" Rei seemed genuinely shocked.

"Thursday. I'm off…" Teru couldn't remember making the choice to stare at his own feet, but he was doing so now. This was completely stupid… after what had happened last time, he couldn't believe that he'd even dreamed of doing what he was ninety-nine percent sure that he was going to do now. "We could… go out?" he offered weakly. "Do something… fun?"

"Fun…" Rei repeated the word thoughtfully. "We could… do something… fun."

"I mean… we don't have to. It was just…"

"A surprise." The icy voice seemed to melt a little. "But not… not a bad one. Something fun. I think… I would like that very much."

Teru's heart skipped a beat. "Uh… okay. Thursday, then."

Rei smiled, and the smile almost managed to reach his eyes. "Thursday. Oh, and Teru?"

"Yeah?"

"What – what I told you last night… I…"

Teru shook his head. "It doesn't matter." It did, of course, but not in the way Rei seemed to think it did.

"How can you say that?" Rei hugged his lifeless right arm to his chest, as though trying to protect it – or hide it. "How…?"

"I… I guess there's a lot we have to talk about." Teru shrugged, trying hard to pretend that he meant what he said, that he really didn't care about Saki, or whatever had happened on that night, five and a half years ago. "But we have time for that, right?"

"Time?" Rei seemed to consider the word for a moment. "I… I suppose we do."

"Yeah…" Teru glanced nervously at the alarm clock. He didn't want to leave now, like this, with so much still unsaid. But there wasn't exactly a lot that he could do about it right now: the interview would start at noon, with him or without him. "So… I'll see you on Thursday, okay?"

"On Thursday."

"Thanks… for letting me stay and all."

"It was… my pleasure." Rei followed Teru's gaze to the clock, then, and forced a smile. "Don't let me keep you from your interview."

It wasn't exactly "good luck," but it would have to do.

---

Teru had left the map to the Shoxx office in the back of the van the night before, but he remembered the name of the subway station where he was supposed to meet the others, and managed to show up about ten minutes early, hoping it would be enough time to figure out exactly where he was supposed to go. As it turned out, however, he guessed the right exit on the first try: Yuu was waiting outside the ticket gate with Teru's duffel bag slung over one shoulder, smoking a cigarette and glancing every once in awhile at his phone.

"Hey." He offered a tired smile along with the bag. "You forgot this."

"Thanks."

"You want one?" Yuu pulled an open pack of cigarettes from his pocket and offered it to Teru, who gratefully accepted.

"Sure."

Neither of them spoke for a long moment. Another train must have arrived; a flood of people poured through the ticket gates, but none of the faces were familiar. When the crowd had dispersed, Yuu spoke again. "Your friend was all right, then? Last night?"

Teru nodded. "Yeah." He and Yuu had never been close – they talked about music, costumes, makeup, and not much else. He didn't really want to talk about Rei with his band leader, not even in euphemisms and pronouns.

"That's good."

The standard-issue subway station clocked ticked off another minute. Teru shifted his weight anxiously from one foot to the other. He'd hoped someone else would have shown up by now. "Have you heard from anyone else?"

Yuu flicked the ashy ends of his cigarette onto the floor. "Nao's going to be on time, but barely. Haven't heard from the others..."

"But they're usually not late." Teru finished the thought.

"Yeah…. Oh, I for got to tell you. About the interview."

"Yeah?"

"They're probably going to ask us about future projects… recordings, gigs, you know. Just – just don't say anything about the album, okay?"

"No problem." Teru's cigarette had burned itself down to the filter, and he tossed the butt to the ground. "Those questions are yours."

Yuu nodded. "That's probably the best idea. I don't want to announce anything before the plans are finalized. You haven't mentioned it to Rei yet, have you?"

"Um… not yet."

"Okay." Yuu considered this for a moment. "If you think it's alright – "

"'Morning!" Yasu stifled a yawn as he ran through the ticket gate with Seika and Nao in tow. "Sorry we're late."

Yuu glanced at the clock with a smile, seeming – for the time being, at least – to forget the conversation. "You're barely on time. Let's go, then?"

The office was only about five minutes' walk away, and no one spoke much on the way there. They were all sleepy, Teru guessed, though everyone else seemed to have managed to go home and take a shower. He was the only one still dressed in his clothes from the night before, but to his great relief no one seemed to find that particular detail worthy of comment. Maybe they were nervous, too; Teru, for his part, felt nothing at all. His head was full of Rei, and Saki, and Thursday. He knew that the interview was important, but his heart was having trouble feeling the urgency that his mind said it should have.

The Shoxx building was just an office building, an eight-story metallic rectangle with the name of the magazine printed in tiny letters alongside the logos of the other seven tenants. There was nothing about it to set it apart from the other buildings on the street, nothing that screamed visual rock, or the path to stardom, or even a chance for a tiny indies band to get noticed. But Teru's bandmates were smiling nervously, and he forced himself to join them, though he was almost ashamed to admit that his nerves came from a very different combination of joy and fear.

They were greeted by a tiny, bouncy receptionist – the first sign that they were really in the Shoxx offices, she didn't bat an eye at the sight of five exhausted musicians with multi-colored hair, but smiled a plastic smile and gestured toward the nearer of two unremarkable elevators. "Sixth floor!" she chirped. "Ms. Kogo is expecting you."

The elevator doors opened on a world that was entirely different from the one that they had just left. The sixth floor lobby was covered in posters, most of them signed, some starting to fade and curl at the corners. From every corner of the room, famous faces turned to greet them. Some of them, Teru knew – guys he had played with who had gone on to bigger and better things. Urgent Venus, who had been their host the night of Teru's vocal debut, was given a small spot in a corner, and Teru's beloved X was given quite a bit more than that. An enormous poster, signed by at least a couple of the members, dominated one side of the room. His idols were watching him, though whether they were encouraging him or berating him for a twisted sense of priority, Teru wasn't entirely sure.

"Hello, hello!" A tall woman in a chic business suit, whom Teru supposed to be Ms. Kogo, strode into the lobby on a pair of painfully high-heeled sandals and flashed them a surprisingly warm smile. If she hadn't really been looking forward to this interview, at least she was a better actress than the receptionist. "You must be La Rose Verboten. Did I pronounce that right?"

"Yes." Yuu stepped forward and gave her a low, respectful bow. "It's a pleasure. I'm Yuu, guitarist and leader. This is Teru, our vocalist."

"It's an honor, ma'am." Teru didn't know where the words had come from, but he couldn't help but smile with pride. He hadn't fucked that part up, at least.

"Yasu, guitarist. Seika, bassist. And Nao, our new drummer." Yuu introduced the others in turn, and Ms. Kogo smiled.

"It's a pleasure to meet you all. Now, if you'll just follow me, we'll be talking right back here. This way, please." She turned on one of those impossibly high heels and set a brisk pace through a sea of cubicles to a small, walled-off room at the back of the office. "Please, have a seat and relax."

The room was furnished with a set of three low sofas, as well as a coffee table and a straight-backed chair that Teru guessed would be Ms. Kogo's. Yuu led the way, taking a seat at the end of the furthest sofa, and the others followed. A young girl – an intern, maybe, or a new employee – appeared from some corner of the office with a tray of tea and crackers, and placed it wordlessly on the table with a smile.

"Please, enjoy." Ms. Kogo gestured toward the refreshments. "Relax for a just a moment while I get the tape ready… there. I'd like to start recording, if you're ready?"

Yuu nodded his consent, and the interview began.

Teru had given little thought to the questions they'd actually be asked, but he wasn't at all surprised. Nothing that their interviewer asked was anything other than routine: the formation of the band, the original members, the recent addition of Nao. Yuu gave her a printout of their upcoming schedule, which she promised would be reproduced at the end of the interview, and they chatted for a bit about the upcoming shows and the possibility of new costumes and new songs. "No promises! Yuu defended himself with a laugh. "But we're definitely still evolving as a band, still thinking of new things to try."

"Would you say that your band, your music, has any kind of theme?"

"Roses and thorns," Seika answered immediately. "Beauty and pain, light and darkness – they're one and the same."

Teru nodded his agreement – it was a theme that could have been attributed to just about any visual kei band, but it answered the question simply enough, and the reporter seemed to be satisfied. The next question, however, wasn't quite to easy to explain away.

"You seem to have gone through some thematic changes lately. Was this a deliberate decision, or something that happened naturally?"

Teru felt a drop of sweat trickle down the back of his neck, although the air-conditioned office remained pleasantly cool. "I… it was when I started singing." The voice that spoke was distant and strange, and didn't seem like Teru's own. "I think that a change in… uhh, lineup… always affects a band… like that."

The interviewer turned her attention to him. "You are composing for your own voice, then?"

"N – no… I don't compose…"

"Yuu and I do most of the songwriting." Yasu interrupted.

"I see." Ms. Kogo made some kind of note in her book. "Do you compose together, then? The liner notes to your new single say 'music and lyrics by La Rose Verboten'."

"No… not exactly." Yasu glanced at Yuu as though asking permission. "That song was actually written by… a friend."

"A friend? Interesting…" She made another note. "A member of another band?"

Five sets of eyes turned to Teru. He was going to have to answer this one – no one else would know any answer to give. "No…" he whispered, then repeated himself in a louder voice. "No. I mean, he used to be. But not anymore."

"Anyone our readers would know?"

"No." Teru answered, but the next question never came. Ms. Kogo was waiting for more, and Teru could feel his bandmates' eyes on him… wondering. "No. He's… he never did visual kei." That was a lie, plain and simple, but those secrets weren't Teru's to tell, and there was always a chance, after all, that someone would remember a band called Aeternum, and a singer called Rei…

"I see." The reporter didn't seem happy with the answer, but she wrote it down and moved on to her next question.

Teru had privately been dreading the end of the interview: he knew that Ms. Kogo wanted to do a "personal" interview with him, and based on her interest in "Yami no Hanabira"'s composer, he was half afraid that the questions would end up being personal in more ways than one. As it turned out, however, "personal interview" only meant that he would be featured in a section in the back of the magazine that was used to showcase individual musicians, rather than entire bands. Teru had seen that page before, but he didn't know that he would have called it an interview – it was more like a profile. When the interview came to a close and he had been asked nothing more intrusive than his favorite brand of tobacco and his "type" of girl, he allowed himself to sigh in relief.

"Relax, man. It's over." Yasu laughed. "No pressure, huh?"

Teru shrugged and forced a laugh. "Yeah, I guess."

"Well…" Ms Kogo pressed the stop button on her tape recorder and snapped her notebook closed with a smile. "Thank you very much for coming. Obviously not everything that we talked about today will make it into the article, but I'll do my best. You should be in next month's issue."

As soon as the elevator doors closed behind him, Yasu let out a triumphant shout. "Next month's issue! Fame and fortune, here we come?"

"It went well." Yuu smiled at Teru. "Sorry about those questions, though, I didn't know she was going to ask about… that."

"No…" Teru shrugged. Had he been so obviously bothered by it? "It's – it's no big deal."

"Yeah? Okay, then." The elevator doors opened, and they spilled out into the lobby. "Oh, hey, I almost forgot!"

"Yeah?"

"Just, speaking of Rei… I really need to talk to him about recording an album. You do think he'd be willing to help, right?"

Teru couldn't think of any reason why he wouldn't, now that they were actually speaking to each other again. "Probably."

"Okay…" Yuu reached into his pocket, producing a slightly folded business card. "Can you give him my number, ask him to call me? I, ah… get the impression that he's not very social, but I really think, with something like this… I want to talk it over with everyone, you know?"

Teru nodded and slid the card into his own pocket. He didn't know if Rei would be willing to work directly with Yuu, but he didn't think that it would hurt anything to ask. "I'll give it to him the next time I see him, okay?"

"Thanks."

The next time I see him…

Thursday…

What the hell are we going to do?

The graveyard shift that night was as dead as the name implied, and Teru found himself with plenty of time to consider that very question. What were they going to do? He wasn't sure how things were supposed to work when two men went out together, but since he had done the asking, in a sense at least, he felt obligated to come up with something resembling a plan. The more he thought about it, however, the more he realized how little he knew about Rei, about what he could do and what he wanted to do, and as the night wore on, it began to seem as though there were nothing in the world that the two of them could do together and actually enjoy.

He was flipping through the latest issue of Tokyo Walker when Junko, the shift manager, found him. "Reading on the job, are we?" Her tone of voice was friendly, though, and she pulled up a chair beside him and started to read aloud over his shoulder. "Ten best ramen shops on the Yamanote Line. Five best seaside views. You know, Ijima, if I didn't know better…" She laughed. "I'd think you had a hot date. A little advice – avoid the ramen."

Teru blushed. "I wasn't looking at that." But the seaside views hadn't looked any more promising, either. Girls liked shit like that, sure… but Rei wasn't a girl, and most of these places looked less than easy to get to. Whoever said you didn't need a car in Tokyo had obviously never felt the need to visit a deserted stretch of undeveloped shoreline.

"Well… let's see…" Junko took the magazine out of his hands and turned a few of the pages. "Here's a place where you can go ice skating in the middle of summer. I saw an ad for that on the train the other day! Does she like skating?"

"Um… not a big sports fan." Teru chose to ignore the pronoun; he was blushing badly enough as it was.

"No sports, huh? Okay, how about a movie?"

The thought had actually crossed his mind, but it seemed like a waste of time, too, to sit in the dark for two hours, unable to see or talk to each other. He said as much to Junko, and she nodded her agreement.

"Yeah… not great for a first date. Go to a park? Ueno Zoo?"

"Maybe. That's not bad." But he didn't know how much strolling through the park Rei was going to be able to handle. "I don't know… I mean, my date is… was…. was in an accident." Teru breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was the first time that he had really let himself talk about Rei in that sense, and it felt surprisingly good to get even that tiny, non-specific detail off his chest. "Not – not very recently" he continued, "but I don't really know about anything physical. Parks, movies… those are both okay. But not perfect."

"Okay." Junko nodded. "Um… there's always shopping?"

But I don't have any money and I doubt Rei's going to want to try anything on.

"Something more interesting?"

Junko pouted. "You're being difficult." She glanced at the clock: it was three o'clock, and neither of them got off until six. "But I guess we have the time."

By the end of their shift, they had been through every dating, sightseeing, and event-related magazine in the place – but it had been worth it. Teru had a plan that was, if not perfect, still pretty damn good. He would be taking some chances… but something about this seemed right.

Two more days…

---

Notes: Regarding Japanese bathrooms… the toilet and bath are almost always separate. A little one-room place like Teru's would have both in the same room, but Rei's apartment is a bit larger and wouldn't really be intended for single occupancy. The bathtubs are huge, and you shower outside of the tub, then take a soak in clean hot water. Just in case that description made no sense at all.

Shoxx is a real magazine, but I've never been in their head office and have no idea what it looks like. Probably NOT the way I've described it, so when you come to do the Sakikaeru tour of Tokyo, don't expect to find that particular scene.

Tokyo Walker is a magazine about places to go and things to do in Tokyo, although the specific articles I mentioned are made up.

Next: The date! I'll try not to keep you waiting too long…