He Was a Friend

/5/ She's clueless as heck. /

Mood Cafe is a medium-sized restaurant, about 150 square meters of space including the kitchen and the counter area. There were about four more tables outside, and seven car parking spaces not including three more reserved ones for the staff. It has a very homey feel with almost all-glass walls, wooden furnitures, and plants just about everywhere your eyes can land on. It has an individualistic atmosphere with all the furnitures being of different model each – and the place is well-lighted by small spotlights with yellowish hint. The menus include coffees, teas, cakes and some light meals – and the prices are around the middle-class range.

There are roughly around 15 people that time, and Louise noticed that some of them glanced a lot towards their direction. She kept forgetting that her bff Art is after all, a celebrity.

She pulled one seat at the bar counter. Eric took the seat on her left, and Art sat on her right. She nudged Art's arms and whispered, "Are you sure you should be loitering around here freely like this? Your fans are observing you, bro."

Her voice probably was so faint that Art had to really lean closer to her cheeks to hear her properly. This time, it was her who felt a nudge in her left arm.

"Careful on your gestures, dear, your seatmate can make your face appear in the magazine cover the next day," warned Eric as he distributed the coffees to her and Art.

She sat straight, realizing Eric was correct.

At that point, Art was the one distributing the plates with the usual pancake-egg-bacon combination. "Lou, you don't have to worry about that, they know we're business partners," he said, reassuring her as he poured some maple syrup to one of her pancakes. "So even if they do take our picture, I can always bring that up as my defense," he added.

"You say that while getting one of my bacon strips? I can't believe you," she pouted as she took some of his bacons straight to her mouth.

The two guys beside her laughed at her gesture.

She felt another nudge on her left so she turned her face towards Eric.

"By the way, I've got a business trip to Tokyo around Wednesday next week, I'm gonna be back probably... Friday night. Do you want me to buy you anything? I'll probably drop by Akiha around Thursday," Eric asked, while switching his gaze to her and his pancakes as he was slicing them.

If there's anything she and Eric had in common aside from sports and marathons, it's their love of Anime. And Akiha (short-word for Akihabara), located in Tokyo, is the capital of anime merchandise.

She stopped eating, hastily looked at Eric, and blurted out.

"Tokyo!? How dare you!? I'll go with you!"

Eric dropped his knife, speechless – while Art dropped his heart in shock.