Title: What you like
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1300ish words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Mundane/modern day!AU: marriage of convenience, Clef/Umi. Domestic fluff~
Summary: Clef's learned a lot about Japan. (He's got a lot to learn about himself, too.)



The door to the house didn't make all that much noise when it opened and shut, but Umi yelling "I'm back!"certainly did. Clef blinked at the clock, and leaned back in the chair in his study, staring at the clock on the wall.

"Is it really that late?" he asked, mostly of himself, but Umi was close enough to hear - she laughed, leaning in through the door as she pulled her jacket off.

"It really is. Did you actually eat lunch today, if you're asking that?"

"I went out this morning, I wanted to get some new children's books. I ate in a cafe before I came back," he reported, and had to laugh at himself for being proud that he'd managed that. His sense of time had never been brilliant, but now he had very few engagements to worry about getting himself to, he'd lost even that tenuous grasp. The only thing he did need to make sure he was about for was the Wednesday afternoon tutoring he had to help his Japanese learning along, but as Yamamoto-san arrived and rang the doorbell at two o'clock every Wednesday, he just made sure he didn't wander out of the house that day.

"How's the reading going?" Umi asked, peering at the small stack of brightly-coloured books he had on the table. "Oh! You're reading mukashi banashi?"

"It seemed like it might be useful to understand maybe some of the references to folk tales that I'm sure I'm missing everywhere I go," he said, wryly. "Though is this one really about an alien princess from the moon?"

His wife-on-paper, friend-by-now grinned at him. "Kaguya-hime! Yes, it is. And yeah, there are references to that one everywhere. Did Sailor Moon make it to the UK?"

"…The name is familiar, but that's about it, sorry."

"Maybe we'll have to find the anime for you," she said, vanishing out the room. "It'd be practise, and there's so many references in that one - pretty certain we can find it with subs for you, too-"

"Is this another of those ridiculously long series you think it's hilarious to get me invested in?" he called, pushing up from the desk and shutting the book of folk tales and the notebook with his scribbled notes about vocabulary as he tried to read it.

"Maybe!" Umi called back, and he could hear her digging out a change of clothes from the suit she'd been in. "You grouch as much as the old guys on the board do when I don't like their ideas, but you're far more fun to watch."

"…Thanks, I think?" He went to put the kettle on for tea, and then stared at the contents of the fridge, pulling a face. He'd meant to start something for dinner by now, but - well, he'd managed to read one whole story before he started the one with the princess from the moon, and the accomplishment had been very satisfying, after - what, nearly three months now doing very little but wandering about and studying the language?

Okay, the book was written for six-year-olds, but he'd read it all on his own!

And now his plan for food wasn't going to work, because he needed more time than he wanted to wait; having moved, he was pretty hungry.

Umi stepped up beside him, now in a pair of soft yellow leggings and a bright blue tunic over the top, far more colourful than her normal office-wear. "Are we ordering food in?" she asked, amused.

"If you want to eat within the next hour, I think so," he said, sighing and shutting the fridge door. He'd planned on going shopping for food tomorrow - he'd wanted to try reading more than he'd wanted to get things in. Not, perhaps, the best choice he'd made recently. "Or… maybe I could take you out to eat?"

"In a restaurant?" Umi reached around him to grab their two mugs as the kettle clicked off, dropping a teabag in each. "Do you have somewhere you want to go?"

"Well, there's this place I found when I was trying to find the shrine with the flea market a couple of weeks back? I still haven't found the shrine, but the lunch at that place was great." He leaned against the tiny counter as she poured the water into the mugs. "I really need to get us a teapot. Or two."

"You've said that every day since we moved in," Umi teased, flashing a grin at him.

"Well, it's still true." He shrugged. "It would be nice to be able to take you somewhere you might not have been before. You've taken me so many places…"

"You did move to the country I live in," she reminded him, in her nearly-perfect English. "But I'm happy to go out if it's not that far?"

"About ten minutes walk. Though I don't actually know if they serve in the evenings," he said, with a sudden frown.

Pulling her phone from a pocket in the tunic, Umi flicked the screen on. "We can probably find out. What's it called?"

"I have no idea?" Clef admitted. Umi blinked at him. "I couldn't read the name! It was all calligraphy and probably kanji - the food looked really good and I needed a drink so I went in, I didn't ask what the place was called."

"Well, okay. What road is it on, then?"

"…I have no idea. I can't read the road signs either, sorry!"

"Well." She looked at her phone, then laughed and put it away. "I don't know how to search without knowing either where it is or what it's called, sorry."

"I know where it is," he objected. "I know how to get there, I just - oh, wait, that might work." He headed back to his study, waking up the laptop he'd turned on to do some writing after he got back, and had ignored ever since.

"What are you…" Umi appeared in the door again, and came through to lean on the back of his chair. "…Clef, are you literally walking yourself there on maps?"

"Yes."

"…I suppose that works," she laughed, and stayed to watch as he clicked his way along the digital roads in streetviewing mode.

He found the cafe after a minute or two, but unfortunately, when Umi pulled up the details for him, it was rather resoundingly shut in the evenings. He subsided in the chair, sighing. "Sorry."

Umi leaned on his shoulder. "How about you take me there on Saturday, for lunch?" she suggested, scrolling through the menu, illustrated with appetising pictures of meal sets. "It does look pretty good."

"I'd like that." Clef looked up at her, as she stared at the screen. "It doesn't solve dinner tonight, though."

"No, but that might," she said, pointing at the screen - when he looked, she'd flicked back to the map, and was pointing at a restaurant a few roads back on his virtual trip. "Saw that one as you scrolled past, want to go try it?"

"What is it?"

"Okonomiyaki." She beamed at him, so close, and that was- "You'll like it, I promise."

"You're certain?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. "That's very optimistic of you."

"I've learned a bit about what you like the past few months." She patted his shoulder again, pushing away. "If it's halfway decent, you'll like it- I'll grab my bag. Are you ready to go?"

"I suppose I am," he said, to the empty room, as she vanished out the door. He took a deep breath, and blew it out, before standing up.

He was learning about what he liked, too, these days.