It's just-after-detention-lets-out o'clock in the afternoon, and one cryptic, disappears-into-thin-air upperclassman makes his way in like clockwork, in his Infinity uniform, hair damp from a shower after kendo. He lowers his school bag from his shoulder and swings into his customary stool at the counter, flagging his friend down-- but Motoki just signals him with what's obviously an 'in a minute' because he's elbows-deep in an order of multiple milkshakes at the other end.
So Mamoru claps a hand over his heart and looks betrayed, Motoki rolls his eyes, and Mamoru pulls out a notebook while he waits, turning his seat so he's got a decent sidelong view of the door.
Ostensibly he's doing homework. In reality he's doodling absently: details magnified all over the page, several iterations of a slender, graceful female figure in a flowing gown, with impossibly long hair--
Makoto was here already, as she is about as often as not in the after-school hours, working her way through the levels of Super Sailor V or defending her DDR high score. When Mamoru settling in at the counter with his notebook catches her attention, though, today she's motivated to leave what she was doing, heading over that direction with purposeful energy.
He didn't think he was actually going to get away with that vanishing act from before, did he?
"So what was that about the other day?" she asks as she plunks down onto the neighboring stool and looks over at him. She wasn't actually trying to be nosy about his notebook, but it's right there - a careless downward glance and whatever else Mako was about to say is suddenly arrested as her eye falls on that sketchy figure. There's something about it--
"Who...?" she murmurs without thinking.
Mamoru glances up from his notebook, pencil stilling.
He watches Makoto for a moment, and his blue eyes are also familiar somehow, and momentarily both kind and sad. "I hoped you might know," he confesses after a second, shrugging one shoulder slightly, then glancing back down at the notebook paper. Her face is only a suggestion, her hair -- aside from its length -- not well defined, but her dress... even the pattern on the bodice is achingly reminiscent of something. Something true, somewhere, some time.
After a brief pause, he sketches a tiny little crescent moon on her forehead, between her bangs. Then he puts the notebook down and closes it, laying the pencil on top, and he looks at Makoto properly. Today, he only looks tired, a little underslept. "I need to find her. She looks familiar, doesn't she?" He can't keep the note of hope out of his voice.
Apology flashes across Makoto's face first - she really hadn't intended to pry into what he was doing. It's quickly replaced by surprise, however, at his immediate reply. "Me?" she echoes in visible confusion. He'd hoped she'd know? "Why?"
As she thinks about it, though, her expression turns thoughtful. He's closed the notebook by now, so she can't look again to confirm the sneaking feeling, but... somehow she does feel like something about the sketches, vague and indistinct though they were, spoke to her somehow. Like a feeling of nostalgic deja vu, something she can't quite put her finger on. "...You'r right, though," Makoto says, looking down at the cover of the notebook. "She does seem familiar somehow."
"She's really important to me," Mamoru tells Makoto, putting a little more weight and a little less definition in the words than might be expected. He's also not looking at Makoto, not really. In her direction, sure, but his focus is elsewhere, distant and searching. "There are only a couple other people as important as she is. And you might protect all three."
Abruptly, the upperclassman's gaze focuses, intensity shifting diectly onto Mako, and it's very nearly a physical thing. His eyes house the same kind of solid depth that grounds lightning. "I'm not like you, but I dream of her. And I think we have the same goals."
This is probably right up Rei's alley-- but then Mamoru laughs self-deprecatingly. "I don't have any answers, but I'm not who you think I am. I'm just-- I just want her safe. And you probably think I'm crazy, and I wouldn't blame you. But I can't tell other people's secrets. I'm sorry."
Fixed with that direct, intense stare, Makoto sits up straight and very still on her counterside stool, thoughts racing almost visibly behind her eyes. For a long interval, she can't say anything, and the space is filled only by the cheerful jangle of chattering voices and video game sound effects.
Finally, she reaches up to push her bangs out of her face and lets out a breath. "It sounds like you know a lot more about me than I know about you," Mako says wryly, glancing aside for a moment before her eyes find Mamoru's face again. "I'm not sure how I'm supposed to take that."
She wants to believe him. She's not sure how to take that, either.
"And that," says Mamoru wryly, "is why I don't usually open my mouth. I could tell you who I really am, but I, uh--" He clears his throat awkwardly, then reaches to push up his classes, and his voice is low, and the intensity's completely gone. "But I don't know, myself."
Finally, the older boy turns away, out of words and out of methods, the desperation wearing him thin in corners that Makoto can tell for a fact that Mamoru has never shown before; he picks up the coffee Motoki finally gives him, sipping at its dark bitterness, then opens the notebook once more and tears out the sheet with the sketches on it. He presents it to the girl whose secret he holds so unfairly. There's also calculus on it.
"It's only a matter of time, it feels like. So don't fret. In the meantime-- I'm looking for her, so if you see her, please tell her?"
"You don't know?" Makoto winces just a little the moment the question leaves her mouth; it's not a very sensitive thing to ask. Instead of pushing the question, she shakes her head, and reaches to take the page that he offers to her.
With the sheet of notebook paper in her hand, she looks down at it - dreams and calculus - with a troubled expression. Despite the insensitivity of a moment ago, she can see clearly just how much this means to him, how raw the edges are, and her heart aches a little the way it always does for people who are hurting in ways she can't help.
What's the right thing, in a situation like this?
"...When you find her," Makoto says, speaking slowly as she tries to choose the right words to ask a question that might be able to get some kind of answer - trying to understand-- "what will you do then?"
"Whatever she needs me for," the older boy says, almost -- but not quite -- self-effacing. What could she possibly need him for? "Thank her. Give her what she's searching for. Ask her who she is. Ask her who I am. ...see her, finally." His voice is wistful. "Help her if I can. She's good. She's so good. There's nothing evil about her, no darkness. Only light, pure and bright and warm and silver. She must exist. She must be real."
He starts to say something else, then falters, and smiles and looks down, awkward all of a sudden. "She's the most important person. And I think-- I think you're looking for her, too," he adds, glancing back up. "All I'm asking is if you find her, please don't forget me. If she doesn't want to see me, I'll understand. But why would she ask me, over and over, if she didn't?"
I believe you. Makoto doesn't say it, but the words flash across her mind and she has to look away so he won't see her grimace and get the wrong idea entirely. She doesn't know how to deal with this serious, earnest, vulnerable new Mamoru Chiba.
At last, she lets out a long breath, shoulders dropping. "Okay," she says, and looks back toward him, serious for serious and earnest for earnest. "I can't promise anything else right now, but - I won't forget."
"Thank you," says Mamoru, and there's an embarrassing amount of gratitude in his voice. He's almost- he almost reaches to touch her, to touch Makoto, and doesn't. Instead, he picks up his coffee to finish it. "I was going to stick around to wait for Usagi-chan, but I think I'm going to go. If she's this late, she must have gotten cleaning duty on top of detention and I have to go tutor."
All of a sudden he's standing up, jamming his stuff in his school bag. He's a high schooler, he's just in high school, at Infinity. He tutors, he drinks coffee, he's a social maladjust, he's apparently a little bit psychic or something, and maybe there's something going on with him? Something huge? But he's still an intrinsically awkward person. "I like her a lot, you know. She just makes such great faces when I tease her, I can't help it."
At this, Makoto sits up a little straighter, and her expression takes on a tone of exasperation Mamoru will find very familiar indeed. "Guys who bully the girls they like are unattractive," Mako informs him in a tone of authority. "If you like her that much, you should try being a little nicer."
If he were nicer, Usagi probably wouldn't even know what to do. But at least Mamoru and Makoto are back in familiar territory for the moment.
Mamoru just grins at Makoto and slings his book bag over his shoulder. "But then she might like me, too. See you later, Kino-san!"
He gives a jaunty little wave as he heads out the door to the ringing of the overhead bell.