Work Text:
On a perfectly ordinary afternoon, Ken “Okarun” Takakura arrived at his usual lunchtime workout spot to find Momo Ayase sprawled facedown on the ground.
“Miss Ayase! What happened? Are you okay?” he shrieked, rushing to bend down over his best friend and unconfessed crush.
He really hated that absolute squeak of panic he heard in his voice. Still, it wasn’t as if he could blame himself for panicking, given the steady parade of monsters that had been trying to either molest or kill them since a catastrophic mutual dare left them both with paranormal powers that were much more disaster-bait than useful. Increasingly, his worst fear was to find that Miss Ayase had run afoul of some otherworldly stalker when he wasn’t there to help—and the scene before him now looked horrifyingly like the very ones he had started to imagine.
The teenager reached out, his brain automatically debating with itself exactly where and how to put his hands on her to turn her over and check for injuries. Which was also dumb and annoying, considering they’d already been almost one hundred percent skin-to-skin before, and finding Miss Ayase potentially gravely injured was probably not a time to worry about proprieties anyway; but that was just where his brain instinctively went. He couldn’t help it.
Fortunately, before he could figure out how to make such egregious contact, Miss Ayase let out a muffled groan and kicked her feet in the air. “No I’m not okay, okay? This is the worst. Day. Ever.”
Ken wavered uncertainly, blinking behind his glasses as he watched her exhale a monumental sigh and sit up. Despite her ominous declaration, she thankfully didn’t sound as if she was physically hurt. As far as he could tell, nothing so terrible as being abducted by horny aliens or chased by a giant crab was happening—at least not yet today—so he really had to wonder what could possibly top that kind of thing for a bad day.
“What’s wrong?” he asked tentatively, although at this point he wasn’t entirely convinced he wanted to know.
“What’s wrong is I only just found out the little indie theater across town will be holding a special screening of Abashiri Prison this afternoon.” She said it as if the statement was an entirely full and clear explanation for her angst, but it only left Ken staring at her in confusion—until he suddenly pieced together what significance a movie he’d never heard of could bear for her.
“…Oh. So that must be a movie with—him, right? The actor?” The one with the same name as me, Ken mentally added, but he had no desire to remind the girl who summarily unpersoned his own name over that fact and still mentally blue-screened anytime someone dared to call him by it.
Miss Ayase glared at him. “Seriously, how can you not know about Abashiri Prison?”
Ken decided not to point out that most people of their generation were not exactly well-versed in movies that were decades older than them. Instead he countered, “So, uh… how is its being shown at a local theater not a good thing? Wouldn’t that be like a bucket-list experience for you?”
The glare sharpened. “That’s exactly the point! You heard me say the theater is all the way across town—and the movie starts at 4pm, so there’s no way I could get there in time after school. The train reaches that neighborhood just before then, but it leaves the closest station to here five minutes before school even lets out.” Miss Ayase sagged backward, leaning on the heels of her hands to stare up morosely at the sky. “So I’m officially screwed.”
“I see.” Ken frowned, pondering exactly how such a critical failure in Miss Ayase’s superfandom could have occurred. “So you really didn’t know this movie screening was happening before today? I thought you’d be all over every message board or whatever about that guy. How did you not hear about it?”
“Oh, I dunno. Maybe it’s because all the friggin’ aliens and yokai have kept me too busy to keep up with the news!” The teenaged cinephile flopped onto her back melodramatically and kicked the air again. “This suuucks. I’ve waited my whole life to see a Ken Takakura movie on the big screen, and now I’m gonna miss it because these stupid freaks keep coming after us. My life is over.”
Although Ken flinched sympathetically, he was also forced to suppress a tiny twitch of his lips. He knew Miss Ayase could be a little histrionic, but right now, she was sounding almost like he did when the overwhelming gloom built into his yokai-powered turbo form took him over.
Actually, though…
Maybe that was the answer to the whole situation.
Ken ran through some quick calculations in his head. He didn’t know the exact location of the “indie theater” Miss Ayase was talking about, but he had a rough idea of the trendy shopping district where it would probably be. She was right: the train that went there left the station too early for her to catch it after school. But if he took off promptly enough after the closing bell, and went all-out just long enough to catch up to the train and jump onto its roof…
He didn’t particularly like the idea of using his power unless someone was in danger. Even knowing that normal, non-psychically-inclined people couldn’t see his changed appearance, he was too repelled by a sense of cheating when he thought of doing it for personal gain—to say nothing of Seiko Ayase’s grim warning that the power was not really his, or the scare he got when a classmate’s gossip about Miss Ayase provoked it to slip out in anger. All of those reasons made him think it was better to solve or just live with his problems on his own when he could, rather than resorting to a curse to try to fix things. It was bound to lead only to more trouble in the end.
Yet even so…
This was about Miss Ayase. Her heart was in danger of being broken, right? He knew what it was like to desperately want something, only to be bitterly disappointed. …Granted, wanting to see a movie and missing out was a far cry from wanting to meet aliens and discovering they were just predatory assholes. Still, this was something that had mattered to her for so long in much the same way.
Besides, if Ken went to see the movie with her, it was sure to be highly informative. The whole thing with her denying him his own name had quite reasonably soured him toward the other guy who used it, so he hadn’t really wanted to see or hear about the object of her obsession. Yet on the other hand, finally buckling down and watching that stupid actor would let him see what Miss Ayase liked in a man. It was probably a whole lot of qualities he was too weak and insecure to adopt in himself—but maybe there would at least be little things he could pick up to appeal to her.
After all, she had already extended herself into his fixations, wanting to know more about aliens and his thoughts on them. (Not that she really had much of a choice but to learn about them after they decided she was a prime candidate for dissection, but that was beside the point.) It was high time Ken returned the favor, and tried to share in what interested her as well. Especially when she hadn’t asked for his help—because he knew it must have occurred to her. Yet she had the respect for him not to impose on him like that, not to pressure him to use his power for her sake outside of a life-and-death crisis.
So he would do it for her by his own choice. In the end it would probably feel kind of ridiculous, sitting beside her in a dark theater while she squirmed and squealed over a long-dead cinema tough-guy with the same name as him. Still, it would be time with her that wasn’t spent fighting for their lives against monsters, and that alone made the prospect worthwhile.
And above all else, getting to see the movie would make Miss Ayase happy—which was really what meant more to Ken than anything.
“Hey, Miss Ayase? …Would you meet me back here as soon as school lets out?”
If there was any note of anticipation in Ken’s voice or expression to give him away, Miss Ayase was too busy staring at the ground to notice. “Yeah, sure. I guess. …Not like I’ve got anything better to do now.”
The lack of enthusiasm for having his company as a consolation should have stung, but Ken was already getting much too excited about his impending surprise to mind.
Going with Miss Ayase to see her parasocial crush on the big screen was definitely not a date—but just maybe it could be something special all the same.
True to her word, promptly after the closing bell rang, Momo made her way back toward Okarun’s favorite lurking spot… even though she was in more of a funk than ever.
Stupid, stupid aliens and yokai. If trying to survive their onslaughts hadn’t kept her too busy to check her social media sources, she would have known about the Abashiri Prison screening. Grandma might have rolled her eyes any time Momo mentioned Ken Takakura’s name, but she wasn’t completely heartless; she knew this rare opportunity meant enough to Momo that she might have helped her arrange an excuse to leave class early, or something. Maybe. …But instead, even the chance Momo could have had was lost now, because she didn’t even know of the event until Miko asked her about it that morning.
She wasn’t even sure why she agreed to meet up with Okarun. All she really wanted to do right now was go home and watch Ken Takakura on her puny little TV screen while crying and eating chocolates. She didn’t want to deal with her friend’s well-meaning efforts to cheer her up. She just knew he was only going to piss her off by doing that, and then she’d snap at him, and then she’d feel even more horrible about the whole lousy day.
Finally dragging her gaze up from ground level, she registered that Okarun was nowhere in sight yet. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe she should just leave, and at least spare him from being hurt by her foul mood—
“Yo, Momo. Let’s go.”
His voice made her heart skip in surprise, because that low rasp was not the normal Okarun. She turned to see him stepping out from behind the corner of the building, barefoot and fully transformed in his turbo form: pale-skinned and red-eyed, with toothy black demon-jaws set in a perpetual monstrous grin.
“Huh? Why are you…?” Momo’s heart suddenly bounced even harder as she grasped the only reason he would be in that form now, with no paranormal dangers in sight. “Wait. Do you mean you’re gonna try to get me to the theater in time?”
She had thought about asking him. Of course she had—but even as much as she wanted to see her idol on that theater screen, she couldn’t bring herself to treat Okarun’s curse so lightly, because he never did. He could have become the instant star of the track team now if he wanted, and their normal teachers and classmates would be none the wiser, because only people with psychic powers could see how he was half-yokai when he used his speed. Yet instead, he still chose to face his awkward life purely on his own strengths, unless a threat to himself or someone else left him with no other choice. She thought she could understand his reasons why, too.
So the fact that he’d decided to do this now, to volunteer his closely guarded power just to fulfill her desires, was…
“That’s the plan.” Laconic as ever in that hyper-depressive state, Okarun crouched and planted one gangly hand on the ground. The pose presented his back to Momo: a now-familiar invitation that made her pulse jump yet again for what was definitely no reason. “Saddle up, babe. The clock’s ticking.”
At the moment, she was just a little too overwhelmed to react to the babe part. “…Are you sure?”
“Wouldn’t be standing here like this if I wasn’t, yo. It’s a total drag…” Beneath the shock of red-frosted white hair that wafted on its own like kelp in an ocean current, a piercing scarlet eye rolled towards her. “But this is important to you—so let’s do it, I guess.”
Sunlight broke blazingly through the clouds in Momo’s heart as she stepped forward.
Although Okarun had carried her piggyback in his turbo form many times now, this occasion felt very different—because for once, they were neither chasing nor being chased by some paranormal freakshow or other. It was a change she’d never realized she would enjoy so much. Settled firmly on his back as he zipped down streets and bounded over rooftops at full throttle, she finally had the chance to pay attention to how it felt: the rush of speed, the wind in her hair, the straining of supernaturally powerful muscles beneath her.
She had a chance to realize exactly how comfortable she was on top of him.
It was almost as if Okarun’s changed body was made for her to ride. His lengthened back and broad, hunched shoulders balanced her weight perfectly. His lean waist fitted between her legs just right for her knees to squeeze and hold tight, and his long sinewy hands wrapped around the backs of her thighs, supporting her securely.
…Two seconds after her mind made those observations, it occurred to her how absolutely raunchy they would sound out of context—and her cheeks flamed as she impulsively buried her face in the red-rippling collar of his jacket. Which didn’t really help all that much, because turbo or not, the subtle scent of him in the fabric unexpectedly twinged her with a warm familiarity.
Come on, get a grip, Momo. Him carrying you like this is no weirder than his having Turbo Granny’s power in the first place. It’s just convenient, that’s all.—I mean, it’s not like you’d want to ride him just for kicks… right?
Even so…
After a moment of wrestling with herself, she lifted her head and leaned forward a little more, closer to his left ear. She still had to raise her voice to be heard above the wind.
“Hey, Okarun? I know it might not mean as much to you right now in your downer mode, but I just wanted to say… it’s fun when we do this.”
Focused on matching his breathing to the rhythm of his strides, Okarun said nothing. However, his head turned just a little, casting a glimmer of a scarlet glance at her face; and if it wasn’t her imagination, she thought his hands just might have given her thighs a fleeting squeeze of affirmation.
If he’d been his normal self then, she probably would have felt compelled to yell at him for that. But when he was like this, in a form that relied on something more than scant words to express what he really felt…
Well, maybe it was okay.
It ended up costing Okarun both of his all-outs for the day, but they succeeded in catching up to the crosstown train. When they were close enough, Momo reached out with her ghost hands and grabbed on, hoisting them both up to the roof of the last car. Once securely positioned, they sprawled side by side and caught their breath, with her ghost hands cupped over them to provide a barrier against the rushing wind.
At some point during their respite, Momo noticed that Okarun had reverted to his fully human form. She smiled at him then in wordless gratitude, and he smiled back before shyly ducking his head. Although she wasn’t sure exactly what, she knew the pinkness of his cheeks beneath the rims of his glasses came from something more than exertion.
The stop nearest to the theater was not far off. Sitting up, Momo busied herself with straightening her clothes and fixing her windblown hair. Okarun followed her lead, retrieving his shoes from his backpack that Momo had carried for him—because given the favor he’d just done her by getting her there, it was the least she could do in return. By the time they arrived at the station, the two teenagers had sorted themselves out, and they easily blended into the crowd after dropping down off the roof with the aid of Momo’s power.
“How far is it to the theater?” Okarun asked, hurrying after the girl at the fast walking pace she set.
“Just a couple of streets over.” Momo noted the time on a clock outside a bank building. “Three-fifty-seven. We’ll definitely be able to grab our seats before the previews are over!”
It took her a few moments to realize that she’d just assumed Okarun would join her for the Abashiri Prison screening. Did he actually want that? Would he only be bored and uncomfortable, stuck watching an “old movie” while she deliriously fangirled over an actor who happened to share his name? All this time, she hadn’t given a thought to how different his interests were from hers, and that was inconsiderate of her.
However, one glance at him seemed to dispel her doubts. Okarun was grinning beside her, brown eyes bright. He actually looked happy—and the sight of that made her heart do a little flip inside her chest once more.
Four minutes later, the theater marquee came into view. Momo broke into a run to line up behind the moviegoers at the ticket window, leaving Okarun—now utterly bereft of stamina in his ordinary state—to come puffing after her. He braced his hands on his knees and panted while she listened alertly to the other patrons’ ticket orders. They were going to see other movies, which was good. Not that she really expected Abashiri Prison to attract a sellout crowd in the era of CGI-spectacle blockbusters, but still…
Then they were next in line, and Momo stepped up to face a girl behind the ticket window who was not much older than them. “Two for Abashiri Prison, please?”
…And her heart plummeted as she saw the clerk’s smiling face fall.
“Oh, I’m so sorry—there’s only one seat still available for that movie! It’s showing in our smallest auditorium, and then a local business booked a whole block of seats for a company outing…” The clerk shrugged, looking genuinely distressed to be the bearer of such devastating news. “The last seat we have is a good one, right in the center row… but it’s all there is.”
Crushed, Momo turned to look despairingly at Okarun, and saw an odd expression on his face—for only a moment before he inhaled a deep breath and half-smiled.
“It’s fine.—I mean, I wasn’t planning on coming with you anyway.” His shoulders jerked in what looked more like a flinch than a shrug. “Go on and enjoy your movie, Miss Ayase.”
Somehow the encouragement didn’t help the incredibly off feeling that still weighed Momo’s heart down. “But Okarun, are you sure—?”
“Yeah.” The reply was just a little too quick, too short. He stiffened and pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I mean, this is your thing! It’d just be weird watching you get all parasocial over a guy with the same name as me anyway.” The would-be mocking smile he flashed looked just as wrong. “I saw a bookstore down the street. I’ll go wait for you there until the movie is over.—Great chance to do some research about the invasive species we keep finding, am I right?”
Deep inside Momo, something simply felt cold and shriveled. This wasn’t at all the way she’d imagined things going after Okarun revived her hopes; but the look on his face said he wasn’t going to back down. Not that they could do anything about the theater’s logistical situation anyway. There was only a seat for one of them, and she was the Ken Takakura fangirl here.
She seized on the reminder that this whole little pilgrimage was about paying homage to her Ken. It was an opportunity she might not have again for years, if ever, and she couldn’t just let it go.
Especially not after the effort Okarun had put in to get her there—because he genuinely cared about how much it meant to her.
“Okay. I’ll take the ticket,” she announced to the clerk, but she didn’t feel happy at all.
Especially when she watched Okarun give her a pale little smile and a nod of approval before turning to slouch away down the street.
“…I’ll see you later, Miss Ayase.”
The last empty seat in the theater placed Momo between a scrawny young salaryman and a well-dressed older woman. …Meanwhile, the guys in business suits taking up two-thirds of the small auditorium were clearly the corporate group the clerk had mentioned. (Momo peevishly made a mental note to find out which company they worked for, and boycott them for life.) As she had calculated, the previews of upcoming movies were still running when she went in, so she sank deep into her seat and tried hard to clear her head by staring determinedly at the loud flash-bang imagery on the screen.
Okarun wasn’t wrong, after all. His namesake’s movies really weren’t his thing. He probably spent his whole life watching weird conspiracy-theorizing UFO documentaries, instead of actual cinema… and given the way she didn’t even let him use his real name around her, he probably didn’t want anything to do with the other Ken Takakura’s filmography anyway.
—Which suddenly made her feel kind of sad for a different reason, and guilty too. If she hadn’t been so uptight about his name, maybe he would have actually been interested in the man who held it before him. Maybe he would even have enjoyed watching her Ken’s movies with her. Maybe they could have been able to laugh at the coincidence together, and have something to bond over that wasn’t about life-threatening paranormal chaos.
That first morning after the dare, she accused Okarun of pushing people away… but maybe she should have turned around and said it to the reflection in her bedroom mirror instead.
Yeah, after all that, it was no wonder he’d seized the excuse to tap out. There was no way he wouldn’t hate the idea of watching Abashiri Prison or any of her Ken’s other movies with her now.
…Wasn’t there?
His fleeting expression when they were told of the last remaining ticket flashed into her mind—and it wouldn’t leave.
Of course Okarun’s first reaction had been surprise, his lips quirking and his eyebrows jumping. He probably couldn’t imagine that a sixty-year-old movie could draw enough of an audience to fill a theater. (Granted, that actually only happened because of some crusty old executive’s whim; but that was beside the point.) In any case, it was an understandable response, given what Momo thought his perspective to be.
And yet, the swift downward twist of his mouth in the next second, the softening of his eyes for all the world like a sad puppy…
When she looked back on that moment, and compared it to the eagerness in his face on their way from the train station, there was no doubt about it. Okarun had been disappointed—no matter how quickly he rushed to bury it behind a façade of indifference and dismissal.
All to spare her feelings. To keep her treasured experience from being tainted by the thought of him missing what he’d wanted to share with her after all.
“…Ah, dammit.”
Meanwhile, in the café adjoining the bookstore down the street from the theater, Ken sat with his face buried in the UFO magazine that lay open on a table.
…Quite literally buried in it. As in, with head down and fully face-to-page, his eyes blurring over the text a few centimeters in front of his glasses.
Why… Just, why?
It had all been going so perfectly. They’d caught the train, and Miss Ayase had even confessed to enjoying riding on his back; words he’d only registered then in a semi-detached way through the dulled emotions of his turbo form, but which sent a thrill through his heart when he could look back on them clearly afterward. She even seemed comfortable with the idea of sharing her movie experience with him. It had to mean much that she would willingly expose to him her emotional vulnerability in the “presence” of her screen hero—especially when the whole name situation risked making it all so awkward. If she could have figuratively shared the same space with both of the Ken Takakuras in her life for a little while, maybe she could have reconciled with their mutual name, and let the boy she simply called Okarun have his own real name back.
Yet instead, here he was out in the proverbial cold once more—all thanks to some preening CEO wanting to show off his niche arthouse tastes to his employees. (Ken was so definitely going to boycott that company, if he ever found out which one it was.)
He felt as gloomy now as he always did when transformed. Maybe the circumstance wasn’t nearly so dire as being swallowed by a yokai or poached by aliens… but still, he was just a teenager. Having exaggerated feelings was kind of the entire existence of a teen. And anyway, it was just so unfair. When all he wanted was to spend one normal afternoon sharing in something that was important to Miss Ayase, to show that he cared about her interests and wasn’t even bitter toward the reason she denied his name, why did the universe have to slap him down yet again?
“Oh hey, you found an article about the Flatwoods Monster!”
An instant jolt of electricity raced down Ken’s spine and jerked him upright—only to leave him staring straight into Miss Ayase’s henna-colored eyes. She was right there in front of him, leaning nonchalantly over the table, her head tilted and her mouth crooked in an expression of curiosity.
“M-Miss Ayase?” he shrilled, wanting to cringe at the sound of his own shocked voice. “What are you doing here? Your movie must have barely even started!”
Something passed through the girl’s gaze, cool and considering and just a little hard… and then it was gone. She flung up one hand in a dismissive wave, releasing an exasperated groan.
“Ugh, that was a disaster! The guy next to me was chomping so loud on his popcorn, and the jerk in front of me kept flashing the light from his phone in my face while he was texting! I can enjoy Abashiri Prison a lot better on my TV at home. The whole experience just… wasn’t what I thought it would be, after all.”
Her eyes met his then, half-veiled by long lashes that didn’t quite disguise another infinitesimal glimmer of something deeper… and Ken’s heart shot into his throat, because he realized he knew that evasive, too-casual tone. It was the same one he’d heard from himself only a short time earlier, when he insisted that he hadn’t planned to join her for the movie.
…Holy crap, do we actually share a single brain cell between the two of us?
Ken gulped back the sudden urge to laugh, even as his eyes warmed with a rising humidity. A part of him thought he should protest, should reprove Miss Ayase for tossing away her dream after the effort he went through to make it happen; but right now, he just couldn’t bring himself to start the artificial fight that would be. Maybe it was selfish, but all that mattered in this moment was that she was there. More than that, she was there because she chose to be—and she was smiling at him.
“Anyway, as long as we’re on this side of town, we might as well make the most of it. What were you saying earlier about research? It’s a good idea.” A sparkle broke through the faint lingering shadow in her eyes. “Then after we’re done here, we can eat at this really cool ramen place I’ve heard about. And maybe later, we could hit up an arcade?”
At last Ken did laugh, feeling his entire being relax in a way it only ever did when he used his power—except that gloomy was suddenly the very last thing he felt.
“…Sure.”
2025 Jordanna Morgan