Ha ha. Lupin ran a hand down his face. “I’m not high. Look, hold on,” he went to fiddle with his phone and peeked into the kitchen at Fumiko at the table to quickly take a photo. Whether she was a syrupy mess or not wasn’t a big deal just then. But he sent that photo right to Fujiko’s phone.
“I’m not making this up. You see the resemblance, don’t you? She knows about the ring, her last name’s Mine – you don’t…think she…might be…hers, do you?” Either way it certainly wasn’t Fumiko’s fault.
But if this was a ruse from that other woman to get back into his life, he didn’t want to think about it – besides, it’d likely be impossible…maybe.
Fujiko waited patiently as she listened to Lupin messing with his phone, finally pulling her own away from her ear when she heard the beep of a new photo message.
That picture was... intriguing, to say the least. Hard to even make out the kid, what with the messy bedhead now stuck in place with the help of syrup and butter. The girl in the picture was in the middle of waving her chubby little arms around a pile of what looked like ripped up bits of pancake stacked high, the bottom fat and dense as it had absorbed the syrup it was swimming in. Off to the side of it was a mushed white thing, which took Fujiko a minute to recognize as a stick of butter softened and squished by little hands.
Of course, since she wasn’t there, Fujiko couldn’t recognize that the ripped up pancake pile was actually a castle, and the syrup around it a moat, and the butter a dragon. Surely if she’d been there herself all of that would have been obvious to her.
There was one thing Fujiko did recognize, however, and it was the slightly manic look spread across the young girl’s face, an exhilarated Lupin swept up in their devious little plans. There was nothing more instantly recognizable to her than that face.
Any other familiarity she might have seen, she had to contribute to her familiarity with Lupin’s face. Harder to look for one’s own face; maybe if she’d had the faces of her own mother in memory, it would have brought up more distinct resemblances. As it was, she could only find that once face she knew best repeating itself.
After a moment she realized Lupin was talking again, and she brought the phone back to her ear. In time to catch the hesitation in his voice as he brought up his ex-wife, the woman Fujiko didn’t have any trouble finding her face in--even if she hadn’t been able to find anything else.
Was that what this was then? A visit of someone new before the familiar one returned?
“I don’t know--I don’t want to have this conversation over the phone,” she said. And she certainly didn’t want to leave him alone if that visitor was expected, though Fujiko wouldn’t tell him that. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
She was about to hang up, then thought about it and brought the phone back up. “And Lupin? Clean all of that up before I get there--I’m not getting sticky. See you soon.”
