#corollary

~~~

A/N (7.26.2023): "Another Sakura-Nanase-loves-food fanfic from airauralintensity? What gives?" Listen, there are so many plot points in the show that are driven by Nanase's love of food. More fan content needs to acknowledge that if she had to choose between a falling patient and a falling plate… well, she would still choose the patient, but she would hesitate.

If you happen to be reading this fresh off of finishing the show, I'm ignoring the timeline of Episode 10. This fic is set after she returns but before they're married, which isn't a very long time period according to canon.

This isn't a sequel to 'a delicious conspiracy of love' in the consequential narrative sense, but they're still heavily related, so I encourage you to read that one first. I named this fic 'corollary' not just because it suits the plot but because this fic builds off of themes from the first one.

~~~

Sometimes, Kairi still needs to offer Nanase a hand.

He doesn't just mean pulling her to the side so that she doesn't accidentally run into a tourist because she's too busy window shopping to pay attention to her surroundings (though that does happen with an alarming frequency), but he also means literally.

In the times when she is too conscious of him, she won't hold his hand herself.

Despite the many professional advantages her year of community nursing abroad has brought, one of the personal disadvantages was that it also sort of reset their relationship, at least where Nanase was concerned. She didn't break off their engagement or anything, but there is a certain composure present where there was none previously.

They kept in regular contact during their time apart, which did a lot to ease the longing and keep their relationship feeling like a relationship, but he supposes a year's worth of conversational intimacy doesn't immediately nor necessarily translate into physical intimacy, even one as simple as this.

She has never been shy around him—as her blatant overtures for his affection back when she really was just a rock in his way made abundantly clear—but they were the actions of a woman on a mission. All years considered, she has spent more time pining for him than actually having him, and the relationship habits they were building before she left didn't have time to truly settle in.

All this to say: when she returned, she still treated him like he wasn't completely and irrevocably hers.

Kairi has enjoyed reminding her (oh, has he enjoyed reminding her), but now he thinks he needs to work harder.

He will. Once he finds her.

The Sumida Park Farmers' Market isn't that new, but it's new to them. It started up while Nanase was gone, and Kairi didn't have a reason to visit until she came back. It's also in the half of the park that isn't on their side of the river, so neither of them were that familiar with its layout even without the influx of people and vehicles and vendors.

Unfortunately, these are not as good excuses as he wants them to be. He ends up losing her in any given crowd nine times out of ten. She's always bouncing back and forth, admiring the wares and sampling the goods and talking to anyone who makes eye contact with her like the extrovert she is—which wouldn't be such a problem if only she would hold his goddamn hand.

But like he intimated, this happens pretty often; and he wouldn't be the man he is today if he didn't learn from his mistakes the first time. When a quick 360 doesn't immediately reveal his favourite smile or the sound of excessive cooing over someone's baby, he doesn't panic. He just closes his eyes and focuses on his breathing.

More specifically, the scents he's breathing.

If you lose your food-obsessed fiance in a crowd, here's how to find her in three tries or less: identify the smell of cooking then follow your nose to the closest food stall. It hasn't steered him wrong to date.

Nanase is always so surprised to be found, mostly because she's always surprised that she's lost in the first place. "How did Sensei know how to find me?" she would ask. He never tells, though, instead affecting a burdened air and moving forward with their date, lest he accidentally sully the sanctity of his trick.

The scent of friend dough catches Kairi's attention first. He follows the lead to a baby castella stall. There is no sign of his fiance, but he does buy a basket for her and dusts it with powdered sugar.

Repeating the process brings to his attention a smell that reminds him of the sea on a hot summer day. The takoyaki stall he comes upon also has no Nanase, but he buys a half-dozen anyway and prepares it the way she likes: topped liberally with pickled ginger and accompanied by a dollop of mayonnaise on the side.

Finally, he smells fried vegetables with an undercurrent of something sweet. It takes him to a crepe stall, and he's finally run out of hands and composure. Nanase is still nowhere to be seen.

He stands in the middle of the path and forces the flow of people to go around him as he furiously thinks of what to do now. This strategy has never failed him before. Besides, what good are two handfuls of warm food when there isn't a fiance with a never-ending appetite around to eat them?

Kairi spins in a circle, looking for a place to sit and set down his prandial burdens but mostly hoping that Nanase would still appear and validate his methodology. He needs to be right about this.

It was his job to be right about things like this.

.

An enthusiastic "Tendo-sensei!" was the first thing Kairi heard when he answered the phone.

Nanase picked a good time to call. He had already eaten breakfast, and it's easier to talk when he isn't concentrating on not overcooking his food.

They realised pretty early on that her night shift ended just in time for his day shift to begin. This sweet spot when she's getting ready for bed and he's getting ready to go became the obvious choice for any video calls. They couldn't call every day; but when they could, it happened around now.

He chuckled as he set the phone on a stand he bought for this specific purpose. "You can start calling me Kairi, you know. Isn't it weird to call your fiance by his last name and an honourific? I'm not even your attending physician anymore."

"You still call me Sakura sometimes!" By the echo, he could tell she was in her bathroom too, and something about being in a similar place at the same time made the distance feel smaller.

"But I call you Nanase the other times."

"Awww." The pitying sound made him glance over from the mirror to see a cute little pout on his fiance's face. "I miss the sound of my name."

He leaned in closer so she could see his incredulity. "What do they call you over there if not by your name?"

"No, no! They do call me Nanase. It's just, with the accent, it sounds more like… Nan-ase? I don't know. I feel bad saying this because it's not like I get all their names right all the time either, but…"

"Nanase."

"Hm?"

He turned away from the camera to reach for a towel with the added benefit of hiding his smile. He didn't say her name to get her attention, but he could pivot. Flexibility was a strength of his. "Not too tired from the night shift?"

"Not too tired to talk to Sensei~ Besides, I had coffee in the second half of my shift. I'll be good until after the call ends!"

He stopped what he was doing and looked back at her. "Since when did you start drinking coffee?" He worked alongside her for over four months and never even saw her drinking matcha.

"It's recent! It actually surprised my coworkers that I wasn't drinking any. Besides the long shifts, Berlin has a huge coffee culture. I wanted to fit in, so I started ordering some from the cafes that my coworkers recommended in town. I like it! I think. There's a lot of variety, at least. They even have matcha over here!"

Kairi let her elaborate on her journey of discovering coffee and tried not to overthink. Sakura Nanase, more energetic than a fully-charged battery and sweeter than Japan's finest wagashi, was not the sort of person he associated with coffee. It wasn't something he thought she'd enjoy.

It's not that he was against her drinking coffee. It's not about the coffee at all. It's the fact that there could be things about her that he couldn't predict. Considering he fell in love with her for her transparency, the discovery unnerved him.

Kairi was a man who prided himself on accurate deductions. From the moment he received a patient's echocardiogram, he could map out their entire recovery journey in his mind's eye. Of course, when the facts changed, he changed his mind; but anticipating and addressing viable changes in condition were the cornerstones of his entire career, and he was only capable of such astute assessments because he was an expert on cardiology. He didn't become one of the most successful heart surgeons in the country by wasting mental or temporal resources on understanding things that didn't matter to him. Heart health mattered to him.

Sakura Nanase also mattered to him.

He knew exactly how much rain it took to dissuade her from her outdoor plans. He knew the earliest she could wake up given her bedtime the night before. He could narrow down to the minute the point at which she needs a snack to boost her blood sugar.

Nanase wasn't predictable, necessarily, but humans were creatures of habit; and he observed and studied hers to the point of expertise.

If he wasn't an expert on the things he loved, what was he?

This was why he wasn't nearly as worried about her study abroad as she was. The distance was immaterial. Whether she was right next to him or on the opposite side of the world, he remained the foremost, citable, preeminent authority on all things Sakura Nanase.

"Does this mean I'll have to start sharing my coffee supply with you when you come back?"

"Maybe!" She giggled. "I like sharing things with you."

But mastery wasn't a checkpoint. It was a lifelong endeavour, and his chosen field of expertise had a similarly lifelong intention to keep growing, evolving, maturing. He reminded himself that this was actually exciting, and he was actually lucky. He got to witness those changes in real time; he got to remain the expert.

Especially in circumstances like these, he needed that assurance. Their time apart wouldn't matter because when she came back to him, she wouldn't be a stranger.

"I'm running a little behind, but do me a favour before I go?"

He directed his full attention to the phone, as he always did for the last few minutes of their calls. She shuffled closer so that her whole face took up his screen, and he refrained from mentioning that he took a screenshot of it. "You name it!"

"What's the name of your hospital, again? I forgot."

The sight of her fond eye roll did more to wake him up than his own cup of coffee did. "You didn't forget, Sensei. You just like to hear me butcher German."

He shrugged. "I forgot how much I like hearing you butcher German."

"Fine, fine. I'll say it so you won't be late." She cleared her throat. "Ge-ma-i-n-sha-fu-su-ka-n-ke-n-ha-u-su Ha-fu-hu-u."

"Oh, that's why it's so small? It's half of a real hospital?"

"One day, that joke will stop being funny," but the smile on her face said otherwise.

.

"Kairi! There you are, I've been looking all over for you."

He whirls around, barely keeping the food in their containers as he does. "What. No, you weren't. I was looking for you."

Nanase tilts her head. "Couldn't we have been looking for each other, then?"

He doesn't have an answer for that, still hung up on how his three-tries-or-less strategy failed him. "Where were you?" he asks instead.

"Oh! Here, have some." She opens her mouth, encourages him to mimic her, then plops something smooth and sweet onto his tongue. "Isn't it so good?"

Hard candy. She was buying hard candy. Hard candy does not emit an odour.

He doesn't know if he's annoyed that his strategy doesn't account for things like this or pleased that it still has merit under most but specific parameters.

"I saw a family back there holding a bag of something colourful," she continues, "so I asked them where they got it."

He follows her pointed finger to find that the hard candy vendor is literally right behind the castella stand, which is only a few stalls down from when he noticed he lost her.

He makes up his mind: he's definitely annoyed.

"Can I have some?" she asks about the food he forgot he is holding.

He offers both of his hands to her, looking down at the food both literally and figuratively. "They're for you," he grumbles.

Her eyes light up at the prospect of eating, and it says something that that alone isn't enough to lift his mood.

She points out a seating area with picnic tables a little ways away from where they're standing—which Kairi probably would have seen sooner if he were actually looking for those instead of blatantly focused on looking for Nanase instead—and he follows her lead. There appear to be no places for them to sit together, but a pointed glare at a pair of teenagers who are done eating rectifies that problem very quickly.

"Ah! I love pickled ginger with my takoyaki!" she effuses once they're seated side by side.

He waits until she takes her first bite—"It's the perfect temperature, too!"—before he brings up his concern: "Nanase, you need to hold my hand more often when we're in public."

"Really?"

"Yes…?" He meant to say that definitively, but the absolute delight and obvious relief on her face puzzle him. "That isn't a problem?"

"Not for me! I thought it would be for Sensei, though."

He ignores the reversion to an honourific. "What possibly gave you that idea?"

She does a quick, breezy shrug, more focused on preparing the next takoyaki ball for her consumption. "I didn't think you were happy to hold my hand when we're in public. You always looked burdened. I thought, 'Ah, he doesn't like it,' so I stopped," she explains casually, like she didn't just shatter his entire perception of their relationship in the ten seconds it took her to say that.

He, unfortunately, knows exactly what she's talking about; but the burden is fake!

Moreover: "That never stopped you before," he accuses. If there's one thing he understands about Sakura Nanase, it's that she chases after the things she wants without abandon or shame, even in the times when it would behoove her to exhibit more abandon or shame.

"Yeah, but I was pretty single-minded before, wasn't I?" she says plainly. This self-reflection is evidently not new to her. Where was he when she decided these things about herself? "I did and said so many things just because I wanted you to keep looking at me, even if it was in annoyance… which it usually was. You didn't like it even back then."

Sure, but that was back then.

"I was able to calm down in Germany, though," she reminisces. "Not getting to see you every day made me treasure the times I do have your attention, so it became easier to respect your boundaries."

"I don't have those!" he blurts out.

"Eh?"

He doesn't even know where to start. He was so misunderstood. He misunderstood so much. He's spiralling.

"I love it when you hold my hand. I love holding your hand. Hold my hand all the time."

"O-okay," she agrees with wide-eyes and an offered palm, thinking the directive started now.

He stares at her waiting hand, suddenly feeling like he doesn't deserve to hold it, but ultimately grasps it like a desperate man.

He is pretty desperate. He's spiralling, but her touch is a tether. "You're not a burden. You haven't been for a while, and I thought you knew that."

Her smile is brilliant. "Yeah, I worked hard to become an asset in the ward—"

"—With me, too," he interrupts. "It's an act; it always has been. I can't be straightforward about my affection; it feels weird. I'd rather be subtle about it,"— he gestures to the food—"but that only worked because I thought you knew to look past my pretense."

"I definitely thought it was real," she admits sheepishly. "Or at least coming from a real place. I just was willing to ignore it."

She didn't even know he was acting. He relied on the notion that she knew he was acting. Does he know anything about her, about this relationship?

"I thought you had become self-conscious," he confesses like a man who gambled everything he had and lost it all.

"I-I sort of did!" she gets out in a rush, a misinformed attempt to uplift her dour fiance. "I became conscious of how my past self behaved when I was pining after you and realised that I didn't need to do that anymore because I actually have you now," she ends optimistically.

He misunderstood so much. "What else don't I know about you?" he asks in all seriousness.

"Huh?" She chuckles in confusion. "What are you talking about? You know everything about me."

"Evidently not."

"Of course you do!" She holds up her half-finished takoyaki. "You remembered the mayonnaise!"

"Nanase, this is important!" he groans. "Just because I supplied mayonnaise for your takoyaki doesn't mean I know everything about you."

"And just because you misunderstood this one little thing about me doesn't mean you don't."

She doesn't get it. It's not just the hand-holding. It's the illusion of transparency, it's about inaccurate deductions, it's because she matters—

Nanase tugs his mouth open and puts in a baby castella. "Here."

For a split second, he considers spitting it out on principle before realising spitting it out would be disgusting. "I got those for you," he reproves once he's done chewing.

"And I'm letting you have some. I'm not the only one between the two of us who likes sweet bread, right?" she argues as she holds up another one to his mouth.

Kairi acquiesces on sharing the food, but he doesn't let her feed him. "See, you do have a limit on public displays of affection," she points out when he eats a castella of his own volition. "I just misjudged where that limit was."

He looks at her incredulously. "We're already holding hands," he retorts, covering the sight of his half-chewed food with one hand while the other waves their joined ones for emphasis. "Additional intimate interactions are superfluous."

"I would certainly appreciate 'additional interactions'."

"Appreciate what you have," he snarks on habit before remembering himself. He checks her reaction out of the corner of his eye. Will she start looking past his pretense?

Her exaggerated, coquettish blinks are answer enough. "So you won't hug me?"

He maintains a beleaguered veneer through the relief. "Hugging and hand-holding are mutually exclusive activities. One must replace the other; therefore neither will surpass my quotient for ardent displays."

She immediately releases their grasped hands and sticks her arms out in a low invitation. "How about now?"

He knows—he knows—his heart is not physically swelling from overwhelming fondness. His syncopated heartbeat is not arrhythmia. He requires no medical attention… but the sight of his adorable fiance and her cheeky but earnest ploys for his affection wreaks just so much havoc on his constitution.

He can't smile, or blush, or do something else with his face to betray that affection, but he doesn't have to. That isn't what she's asking for.

He wraps her up in intentional, unhurried movements, and he's rewarded with the squeeze of her arms around him. It's as grounding and reassuring as it always has been.

"I can't say I fully understand what you're worried about," she murmurs right below his ear, "but I can say I'm just as in love with you now as I was six years ago. I can also say that I know you love me, too."

He does. He doesn't say it nearly as often or as easily as she does, but he loves her.

"So how about this," she continues. "I show you love the way I know how, and you show me love the way you know how, and we can make up for the difference with honesty." It is framed like a proposal, but she speaks like she already knows how he'll respond.

Maybe she does.

"I can agree to those terms," he says as a formality, and she hugs him tighter.

Maybe she is the foremost, citable, preeminent authority on all things Tendo Kairi.

~~~

A/N (7.26.2023): Believe it or not, this was only supposed to be around 500 words…

The location I picked for Nanase's community nursing study abroad program is Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe (Havelhöhe Community Hospital) in Germany, which is a small academic teaching hospital in a very suburban area of Berlin and actually practises community nursing. It's associated with Charité, one of Europe's biggest university hospitals and the primary hospital in Berlin, which makes it even more likely to actually host a study abroad nursing program. (It does not in real life, though. The Gemeinschaftskrankenhaus Havelhöhe mostly trains doctors, not nurses.)