#I will write more of her wingmanning for Akira again soon...

[tricksterlatte]

AnnGoro friendship was one of my favorite things from Royal, and I miss them constantly 

[flydotnet]

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life

VRAINS Rarepair Weeks 2018-2019: Day 13: First Date/Wedding

Summary: He's getting married and yet he still doesn't know if the end result will be Mrs Zaizen or Mr Bessho. (also includes Shoichi as a wingman)

Fandom: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS Ships: Hireshipping (Ema/Akira), backgroud Zinnia, mentioned Entrust

Wordcount: 3K words

Notes: To be honest this was the perfect excuse to shove all my ships in one fic and get away with it. In a parallel universe where card games in cyberspace aren't the focus of the show and where the Hanoi Incident hasn't happened (but the kids still met anyway), everyone is happy and I can write countless amounts of unneeded fluff. I'm a simple dude: when I can be sappy as balls, I'm sappy as balls. It's been a while since I felt this cliché, but y'know what they say, you can't always subvert tropes all the time. I also hope I got Ema not too OOC for this, woosh.

Event hosted by @vrainsrarepairweeks

AO3 version available here.

Knotting a tie properly isn’t that difficult, usually. It’s a part of his daily routine, of what he does every day before work. Tie the knot, untie it once the day is gone, tie it back again on the day after. It’s just something he’s too used to not to be unable to do it on a fateful day where he needs to be at his best.

But alas, his dry hands are sweaty and shaking too much to properly tie that stupid knot.

 “Brother,” he hears his sister’s voice call for him outside the room. “Are you ready yet? Ceremony’s starting soon!”

“Ah, huh,” he panics internally as he tries to compose a satisfying answer, “soon!”

“Psh, we all know that’s a lie,” a masculine voice makes itself heard. “Lemme see what’s wrong, go check up on the guests and the bride instead, Aoi.”

 Before he can properly react, he’s faced with the purple-haired Shoichi Kusanagi himself, “hotdog seller extraordinaire” as he calls himself. Everyone, including the groom himself, expected him to come to this wedding dressed in any context-inappropriate attire tailor-made for hotdog making and selling instead of any reception of any kind. Instead, Shoichi surprised everyone and here he is, standing before the groom, in a suit.

As said before, Akira himself didn’t think he’d go as far as dress in a suit for this wedding. Oh well, it hasn’t been the first time he was mistaken on someone and it clearly won’t be the last. He’s not a good person-reader.

 “Lemme guess,” Shoichi looks at him with a “shit-eating smirk” (Shoichi’s description, not his) as he moves his eyes up and down, “you can’t tie that damn tie properly and that’s why you’ve been taking ages.”

It’s kind of ashamed that he does admit that, yes, he cannot tie that tie properly.

“You’re a lucky dude, y’know? Contrary to popular belief, I can knot ties like a boss.”

“You do? That seems unlikely, coming from you.”

“Don’t sass me like that, Ema’s already enough for that.”

They both snicker at the remark. Accurate, but not mean-spirited. It’s all in a good war, Akira realized the last of their unlikely trio.

 Working for SOL would usually mean that an employee-of-the-month-tier guy like him wouldn’t meet with more lawless and underground hackers like Shoichi or the aforementioned Ema. Truth be told, they met in college: Shoichi happened to be the guy selling hotdogs on the campus on his free time, Ema was in a similar course to his, and he never really knew why he added business to his courses. They’d meet after classes in front of the hotdog truck, and that’s how they became friends.

At first, Akira didn’t really want to befriend other people during college. He didn’t have time for that: it was either lose time around the campus doing friend things or work to support Aoi and himself financially. If not for Aoi, he wouldn’t have spent so much time near the truck. And if not for Aoi getting lost on the campus when she once searched for him, neither Shoichi nor Ema would have guessed why he was never buying anything from the former. That day was the day where Aoi told him, frankly with her eight years of age, to make friends because he looked sad and lonely. That day was also the first time she ate a hotdog, courtesy of Shoichi and half-paid by Ema.

An unlikely friendship that explains why this hotdog-selling hacker is tying his tie’s knot right as he thinks so.

 “Here ya go buddy!” Shoichi proudly tells him as he sets a foot backwards. “All ready for the greatest day of your life yet!”

“Thank you,” Akira doesn’t find a better way to answer than this. The fault to his nervousness.

Shoichi rolls his eyes before giving him another smirk, this time sarcastic in tone. They know themselves too much for him not to guess.

“Akira, my dude, calm down, it’ll be fine. She won’t leave you at the altar y’know? All you gotta do is say “yes” at the right time to the right question. No big deal.”

He tries to breathe in, breathe out to prove he can, in fact, not be a bundle of nerves twenty-four-seven, but it doesn’t work to his advantage.

 Shoichi looks on the side before giving his friend a strong slap on the shoulder, shaking the latter almost out of his skin. A violent way to revitalize him for sure.

“Okay, look at it this way. You survived being in the streets after losing your parents and your inheritance while attending school and college. You made it big at SOL before leaving them for a company with better morals and for a better pay check. You reconnected with your sis. And now there’s even people here to see you get married, honestly, what could possinly wrong?”

Ignoring the fact “what could possibly go wrong?” has always been Shoichi’s catchphrase for whenever something would in fact go wrong, Akira shakes his head as a resolve.

“Plus, it’s not like she ever broke up with you, no? Considering the dating record she had before meeting you, that’s a good sign!”

He thanks Shoichi again.

“Okay, gotta leave you now, I’ve got a wedding to attend. See ya when you’ll be married!”

 With his tie all done, Akira can officially say he’s ready to go out there and, huh… get married. It sounds more epic and action-packed when someone else sums it for him, but he’s never been very imaginative with words, so it’ll suffice. A last look in the mirror to admire one last time Miyu’s great work with makeup and he’s finally on the go.

Technically, his wedding isn’t very traditional. His late parents, would they have been able to give their input on their son’s marriage, would have surely told him it was too “undistinguished”. However, a wedding is two people’s business (or more, but that’s not his case), and his spouse would have refused the overly outdated themes, the drawn-out and crudely inaccurate monologues from an old man dressed in a robe and other things he hasn’t even bothered researching. He let her do most of the planning: spouses need to fully trust in each other.

 Their guest list reflects their peculiar situation. He doesn’t have much a family left: Aoi, his younger sister, is all he has left, and he instantly refused searching for other relatives who stole their inheritance more than a decade ago, sending a six-year-old in the streets and forcing him to grow up too fast. Now twenty-eight, he realizes every time he thinks of his college classmates who are still partying out there. At least, her fiancée isn’t bothered by how old-fashioned he is: she has allowed him to regain some of his youth once they started frequenting each other.

On her side, the family has been reduced too: her father having died, her mother is bringing her to the altar (she still insisted on this to happen). Her half-brother has accepted coming, at first to his surprise, but after remembering how he was behind his cold façade, it was more obvious. Instead of the father, she invited her theoretical mother-in-law. Their own family business is tense and tough to follow, but at least, they’re all fine now.

 As he makes his way to the altar, to where everything will happen, he thinks of all their guests as a way to keep the crippling stress at bay.

The most important guest to him is, of course, Aoi. She’s his witness too, almost by default in a way: seeing her smile when he entrusted her with this task was more than worth the shot. He couldn’t see anyone else taking care of this too. As such, and considering how little family they had, he allowed her to invite a few friends of hers from high school. One of them, Yusaku as he’s called, turns out to be a close friend of Shoichi too. The world is such a small place.

With Aoi came her girlfriend, Miyu. They met during elementary school but lost each other’s tracks when he had to move places to afford for them to live. That was before they ended up in Den City. They reunited in middle school and dated shortly after beginning high school, much to his surprise but absolutely not to Shoichi and Ema’s. Even if he was surprised, she quickly grew on him with her cheerfulness, her kindness and her wish to ensure Aoi’s happiness. It’s what made them bond with each other over time, after all.

He doesn’t know much about Aoi’s other friends. There is Yusaku, Shoichi’s best friend, but he’s not the only one. There is this young man named Takeru too, a very nice boy as far as he knows, and the childhood-friend-turned-girlfriend of the latter, Kiku. They all met through each other and he has to admit: he felt honoured when he learnt that Takeru and Kiku were coming back from their hometown specifically for the wedding. It probably serves as a perfect occasion for them to gather around, though.

The last, but not least, from their friend group is Jin, Shoichi’s little brother. Akira has known him for longer than his sister’s friends, exception made for Miyu, for this reason. A joyful boy with a smile to give to most people and a passion for video games he openly shares with Yusaku who has this best friendship going with both of the Kusanagi siblings.

Well, time to stop overthinking. The door right in front of him is where it all begins.

 His anxiety hasn’t let go of him, but he tries to look presentable anyway. It’s almost like being on a stage: there is an audience sitting in front of you, albeit more to your ground level, presumably watching your every move or chatting with their neighbours and, even then, it could be about you. Shoichi, his best man, waves him a thumbs up and Aoi smiles to him. On the other hand, his future brother-in-law seems as impassable as ever, despite a slight smile drawing near. The chatting subdues more and more as a not-so-familiar music resonates through the building, a reception venue to be exact. They didn’t want anything too public and especially not retrograde.

“Oh, it’s starting,” Aoi makes a last little comment before they all look in the same direction.

 And there arrives the bride in a black dress reaching her knees with pink highlights, mostly present in the lace on the elbow-length sleeves and hem of the skirt part. They agreed on him wearing white and her wearing black, after all, based on personal preferences. Someone tried to make it poetic, Miyu if he’s not wrong, but Ema simply told her it was only because he looked better in white and she looked better in black. Her opinions, not his, even if she looks gorgeous in black.

Even if he has seen countless times, from the very first time they saw each other in college to this morning when he waited for her to wake up before getting up, he has seen her in countless outfits: casual class-attending attire, biker suit, winter coats they had bought together, and the most intimate kinds of little-dressed. And even then, even after all these years of dating and months of engagement, he’s still mesmerized by her pristine hairdo with flowers amongst her pink locks, her makeup, the dress she kept secret from him (with Aoi’s obvious involvement in said secret, but he didn’t actively try to ruin the surprise for their sake and his while he was at it), her everything.

And to think he gets to be the one who spends the rest of their days with her.

 Some of the things that he got told when announcing their engagement ring back inside his mind.

“You better take care of her, if you don’t want to be shot on sight,” from her older brother, Kengo, who is smiling now because his sister is here and she’s beautiful.

“I bet she’s the one who asked you to marry her,” from Shoichi, before he got proven wrong. “But, like, on the other hand, you’re the old-fashioned of the two.”

“Brother, I’m so glad for you! I’d be glad to help with the preparations,” from Aoi.

“And how did it go?! Where did you do so?! I’m sure it was romantic!” from Hayami, or should he say Kairi, who, after accepting they were never dating years ago, still gracefully accepted the invitation before slipping into gossip mode. He can see her sobbing in the audience, and he’s not sure if she’s crying of heartbreak or happiness.

“Took you long enough,” from another workmate.

 At least, Ema arrives to face him, and he’s not sure how he’s still keeping it together despite the acute taste of his heartbeats in his mouth. She has a bouquet, a little coquetry she allowed herself, of flowers she picked with Aoi and Miyu’s help for their meaning. His sister explained him what they all meant, yesterday, but he’s kind of forgotten because it’s a detail. He’ll be very glad to know all about these flowers when the main ceremony will be over.

She puts her hand in his, the one who doesn’t hold the bouquet, and an official they don’t know much about is reciting what seems to be a glorified protocol. The symbolic value of the event is more important than some words read aloud from a deeply impersonal text anyway. The fact that someone wanted him enough to spend their days with him and officially only with him romantically-speaking is still over his mind, blowing his imaginary every time he remembers that Ema, of all the women he has known, has accepted this. On her own terms, of course, so she’s not his prisoner. He has even insisted for it not to be the case.

 He manages to look directly into her eyes despite how nervous he is. His hand is trembling in hers, and yet hers is so stable and so assured, just she has always been: bold, daring, alluring and adventurous. Nothing scares her, everything stresses him out. They counterbalance each other perfectly: he needs someone to awaken a wilder part of himself, she perhaps needs someone to anchor back into reality would she get too deep into virtual worlds and treasure-hunting. Or maybe it’s just his reverie. It could very well be this cheesy romantic side of him who never got to fully express itself until he was financially stable.

“Don’t be so anxious, hubbie-to-be,” she whispers to him with a wink and this familiar flirtatious tone.

He didn’t think he could get redder than he already was until this moment.

 The monologue is a bit more personal when it starts speaking about Ema, from her infancy to her current years, to the end of her twenties, from fond childhood memories (her quirking eyebrows indicate she’s embarrassed by these) to how they met. They both entrusted Aoi and Miyu, aspiring writer, to write it for them instead of the officials, Kengo who would have certainly pointed out all of his flaws in great detail one by one as part of their brotherly feud or, well, each other. They wanted the surprise to be full for the both of them and slightly more objective judges.

He does remember some of these stories. Their meeting has been a bit romanced: they didn’t meet in a classroom and spoke about informatics. No, they met in front of a hotdog truck on the college campus because he got lost while trying to find the offices to regularize his administrative situation and had to ask her for directions. He can still remember her and Shoichi’s laugh. Good times.

 Akira’s heart almost skips a beat when the official stops his monotonous reading and asks the fateful question: “Would you take Ms Bessho Ema as your wife?”, with all that implies getting brushed under the rug. But for once, he doesn’t need to think seven times before speaking:

“I do.”

He’s not even sure if the man was actually finished speaking, but it doesn’t matter. His delivery wasn’t shaking either, that’s a plus.

 The official resumes his protocol, goes on a paragraph about him this time. It’s more or less the same record, but his life is far less interesting to him than hers: he remembers what he’s lived through, and he had to tell Aoi and Miyu about his first sixteen years or so, so he knows what to expect. His childhood and adolescence are glossed over, his homeless time with Aoi either romanticized (courtesy of Aoi who got scared and scarred by the time he caught a dangerous case of pneumonia) or skipped over, much to his relief. It’s fairly accurate for the parts he had no control over.

The man asks her if she wants to take him as her husband, spend the remainder of her days with him, and be there for him because he’ll be there for her.

“Of course I do,” she tells him while not breaking eye contact with her fiancé.

 In traditional Ema fashion, he doesn’t get to hear the command for them to kiss than she has already pressed her lips against his. He has learnt not to be a clumsy idiot at kissing and returns it just fine as everyone claps. He can almost hear Aoi retain herself from crying. It’s like he’s in a movie, but he’s too optimistic and delighted to think anything will go wrong in a subverting fashion.

This is real life, not some movie, and sometimes, life happens to be generous and fine with people.

 Once they break away from their kiss if not just to breathe, her hand still on the back of his head and his heart still beating too quickly, Shoichi drops the question they have never resolved beforehand.

“So, is it Mrs Zaizen or Mr Bessho now?”

He panics on the inside again for a couple moments, as he never wanted to force her into tradition, but as always, Ema is the active one of their relationship, their tandem, and responds for the both of them.

“Call me Mrs Zaizen.”

And she kisses him again before he can respond with something ridiculous.

End Notes

Shoichi is best VRAINS character and that's why the series had to nerf his screentime for us not to notice he was the perfect protagonist. I also don't like to antagonize Hayami despite her... recent character "development", and also I gave her a name because why not.

Some say Miyu got the bouquet tho