Title: a trip anywhere
Rating: G
Fandom: Tokyo Xanadu
Relationship: Hiiragi Asuka/Kurashiki Shiori
Wordcount: 360
Short summary: Asuka asks what Shiori wants for her 19th birthday.
Between the semester starting up again and her part-time job at the café, Shiori had forgotten about her 19th birthday, until Asuka brought it up after dinner the week before. Shiori had just settled down at the table in front of a yakisoba when Asuka asked, “So, what do you want to do for your birthday? I’m free to do anything.”
Free, huh… Yes, Shiori was free to do anything, go anywhere now. She hadn’t really taken advantage of that fact, but now that she was a college student and her birthday fell on a Friday… Maybe they could take a trip somewhere?
“Do you want to go anywhere, Asuka? Since you haven’t lived in Japan as long as me…”
Asuka shook her head. “But you’re the one who hadn’t been able to leave Tokyo for 10 years, right?”
“Right…” Shiori frowned. Before, every place outside of Tokyo was as much a fantasy out of her reach as those castles in the fairy tales she loved reading. But now the possibilities…there were so many possibilities! She could go to a real castle, or to a real mountain shrine, or to another country even…
“Sorry…” Asuka reached across the table, took Shiori’s hand and squeezed it. “I didn’t mean to…“
“It’s fine.” Shiori smiled back reassuringly. “I’ll think about it.”
Now, one week later, the two of them were walking up the steps, hand in hand, under the thousand orange gates of Fushimi Inari. The gates, the fox imagery…maybe it was strange to be celebrating her birthday in a place like this, but Shiori was here walking freely up and down, in and out, wherever she wanted to go. And when they left the shrine, when Asuka led them back to the hotel room and they shared a small cake, Shiori smiled freely, loved freely. When it was time for bed, Shiori curled up next to Asuka and closed her eyes. Yes, she really could go anywhere freely, have a normal life, enjoy the world as any other person could. She surely had many more birthdays to come, and she couldn’t wait to celebrate them everywhere, with Asuka at her side.