Aki Kitsune (19/?), original fiction
Title: Aki Kitsune (Autumn Fox)
Setting: Present Japan
Type: Multi-chapter
Words: ~2400
Beta: Phoenix
Summary: Of an anti-social girl, with secrets half of which she has not yet uncovered, and a boy who wants to learn everything about her. What is behind the thick cold walls that she has built around herself?
Chapter Nineteen
The Elves
Kuromura Aki
"Kuromura Aki-san! I'm sure we all understand how much you dislike my lesson but at least refrain yourself from falling asleep!"
"Whatever," I muttered under my breath as I sat up, pushing my head off the desk.
There was an unsettling tranquility this morning; the near-inaudible scratching sound of pen nibs against papers while the teacher's voice droned off in the background. The absence of Torikawa's and Nakamine's voices contributed to the unusual quietness, refusing to let me doze off fully.
I cleaned my spectacles with a corner of my deep-brown uniform skirt before putting it back on my face. A quick glance around me confirmed again the pair's absence.
Sighing tiredly, I picked up the pen that had slipped from my hands and continue to jot down the notes that were seconds away from being cleaned off the whiteboard.
Those two probably got engrossed playing some online game throughout the night and overslept our morning lessons. It would not be the first occurrence, but it meant that I had to visit Erika's room to get back the chemistry notes that I lent her the night before.
Just by thinking of Erika's room was enough to ignited bad memories from a single past experience. Her room was the only thing that could set off a headache much faster and far worse than my darn glasses.
Books, magazines, school papers... A rainbow of mess had greeted me the moment she opened her door, letting me in for the first time to troubleshoot her laptop a fortnight after she had joined this school. One would think that with all those games she played, she would know how to handle minor problems with electronics.
If our school did not have the rule prohibiting us from painting our rooms, I would not have been so sure that her walls were white underneath all the various gaming posters.
Amongst the many photographs that decorated the girl's walls, there were only two of her parents, both taken separately and without her.
Erika had twirled her fingers in the dark-blonde curls of her pigtails then and explained that she had been the one who took the two photographs. Already resigned to the fact that she would hardly get a glimpse of either of her parents because of their insane work schedules and workload, Erika snapped both photographs early one morning before they headed out to work.
It was so obvious after that, I thought inwardly as my hand reached for the correction fluid. Why there were so little evidences that hinted towards Erika's family, and all her actions that were avoiding any mentioning of it.
I wondered why my cognitive wheels had not spun enough to make me question Nakamine about it then, only to have her speak about it after the volleyball match weeks ago.
Perhaps a part of me had conceded long ago, that since I would not freely distribute information about myself and the secrets behind the Kuromura name, I should not have the right to indulge my curiosity when it came to others' issues.
Then again, I had ask about Torikawa's background rather insistently... I shook my head at myself at that thought. Torikawa was already adamantly scratching the coating on the surface of my family's locked-shut, sealed-tight chest of stories that they had hidden from the light of day.
Heck, even I did not know half of what my curse was about.
Finishing the last sentence of my notes, I removed my spectacles and rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to hold back the full onslaught of the headache that was fast becoming my companion these weeks.
I suppressed a yawn before folding my arms atop the desk and laying my head down to rest. The substitute teacher arriving in a few minutes for the next period would give us a self-study period anyway, and I could use the time to catch up on sleep that was steadily being surrendered to my art assignment.
* * * * *
"I smell food."
Torikawa and Nakamine stopped in their tracks, as if not expecting me to be awake.
"You are not taking my onigiri again," The brunet hugged his lunch to himself protectively as he sat gingerly at his seat.
I rubbed my eyes awake before slipping on my spectacles. The clipping remark that I had at the tip of my tongue then was abruptly stopped by a sudden movement of his arm.
"Which is why I got you your own," Torikawa gave a crooked grin and placed the neatly wrapped triangular rice roll on my desk.
The slow speed at which my consciousness crawled back to me allowed an unguarded expression of surprise to show. Torikawa hardly ever insisted that I should eat if I did not, and he never bought me food.
Nakamine gave the other teen a pointed look that sent him rummaging through his bag.
A small carton of chocolate milk joined the onigiri on the table as Torikawa explained, "You seem to only eat onigiris during lunch period, if you even eat at all. And Erika said that the milk will make it the meal more sustaining. Personally, I would hardly call it a meal."
"Uh... Okay." It was the only coherent reply I could provide. And was Torikawa blushing?
I cautiously peeled open the clear wrapping of the onigiri, very aware of the other two's stares still fastened on me. Forcing all my concentration on the food in front of me, the effort took less energy as the seconds passed and my mind cleared. I should make this light lunch count, since I had a hard fight with the dream that clouded around me when I fell into a light sleep.
It was a dream of soft, bloodied red and crisp yellow; as if seeing, yet at the same time seeing through blood-clot-turned-purple eyes.
As if the dream had a mind of its own, it held me in place by the last quivering thread before finally snapping when my body responded primitively to the smell of food while hunger jerked me back to the waking world.
Hoping to dismiss the dream and the macabre sorrow it left me with, I began to eat robotically.
Bite, chew, swallow. Bit, chew, swallow... I chanted mentally to ignore every other thought and allowed my composure to gradually rebuild behind my spectacles. Oh, there're salmon bits, I noted randomly. Nice.
Those two were still looking at me, their gazes drilling into my senses. I decided to give them something else to do.
"I thought you two weren't even coming for lessons today." That seemed to have really caught their attention.
"Uh... We were- I was-"
"I overslept again," Nakamine cut off Torikawa's mindless stumble. "I rented too many movies and tried to watch them all. Ended up sleeping too late. Or too early, for that matter."
"Um... I felt like skipping today's morning lessons?" The brunet answered stupidly.
I took a sip of the chocolate milk, onigiri already finished, before lifting my head to face them.
"Look, it's fine with me if you two were playing some online game together late into the night. I won't feel left out. I might even be grateful that neither of you begged me to join in. So you can stop making up excuses."
"B-but-"
"You're right, Aki-sempai," Nakamine interrupted Torikawa again. "I was just worried that you might not like me budging into you and onii-san's friendship."
Torikawa did not hide the confusion in his eyes and dropped his jaw while he stared at Nakamine.
I sighed; this was not working well on my dreams-laden shallow sleep.
"Strictly speaking, it's not quite up there as 'friendship', so you can just do as you wish with Torikawa. Inform me only when there's torture involved."
"Cool!" Nakamine exclaimed and turned to Torikawa. "Now we can play our online games without worrying!"
The knowing look sent from the girl's auburn eyes to the other's questioning black ones did not pass unnoticed to me. Somehow I felt that she was not talking about games.
The sound of light laughter mixed with deep hearty ones echoed in my mind as the memory of Torikawa and Nakamine "studying" in the school science garden surfaced.
They would never get anything done, with the way they pretended to study and now gaming in the night- if that was even what they were doing. And to think that Torikawa had been so worked up about assignments just weeks ago.
Deciding that it was his loss to bear, I closed my eyes to forcibly lose that train of thoughts and took big gulps of the chocolate milk to soothe my suddenly dried throat.
Torikawa Sekai
"Shouldn't we let Kuromura know that we're helping with her art project? She might not like other people fiddling with her personal things," I voiced out my thoughts when Erika and I sat down at our usual table in the dormitory cafeteria with our dinners. The empty chair beside Erika reminded me yet again that Kuromura had not been meeting us for dinner since the beginning of this week.
The dark-blonde, like always, was already digging into her dinner with an enthusiasm fuelled by the hunger that her volleyball training had left behind earlier that evening. I stabbed weakly at my curry rice, waiting for an answer while my eyes wandered between the girl and the unoccupied seat.
"Well," Erika finally spoke up, "Aki-sempai might not like it but she was already tired from before her assignment even started. And we've already seen firsthand this morning that completing her art piece is no simple feat. I shudder to think how Aki-sempai will look like when it's finished."
I agreed mutely; Kuromura was a perfectionist, taking no excuse for slack and mistakes when she got serious about something. And art took a very special place in the stoic girl's heart; the only thing she allowed in at all, if the subtle glow she had when talking about her sketches last year after we had cleaned up the gym was anything to go by.
There would be no mistake in being certain that she would willingly sacrifice any waking moment, without a complaint, to ensure a flawless end result.
"Dark rings don't really look good under her eyes, even if her spectacles may hide them," I mused.
Erika nodded in agreement before continuing, "Besides, it's time Aki-sempai learns the more important properties of a 'Friend'. Although, letting her know what we're doing might make her reject any help we want to give. Plus, she will insist that it is her personal work."
"We'll just be quiet about this then," I said, my appetite slowly returning.
Giving another nod, Erika stood up with her tray and a happier grin, ready for her second serving. "Be right back!"
I watched enviously as the perpetually carefree girl bounded towards the serving tables before turning my gaze to the barely warm dinner in front of me.
* * * * *
"Bye! Have fun!" Erika waved with more enthusiasm than needed at the bus that was slowly pulling out of its parking space.
Kuromura shook her head in exasperation before turning away from the tempered glass of the white chartered coach and drawing the thin curtains over it.
The shorter girl in front of me lowered her arms and tilted her head to look over her shoulders at me.
"Library in fifteen minutes?"
"Don’t be late!" I stepped away and began a slow jog towards the main school building.
Kuromura's art class had a trip to some museum right after lessons this afternoon, thus giving Erika and me a few hours to work on her assignment in secret, again.
"Mosaic, why mosaic?" I growled from my spot on the thick prickly carpet of the library floor in a study room that I managed to snag at the last minute. "Why is her assignment the only thing that gives a full body ache faster than an hour of intense physical training?"
"Well," Erika answered, not missing a beat as she continued to coat one side of the small grid of acrylic with glue before pressing it into the empty square marked out by the crisscrossing threads, matching the colour code that Kuromura gave in her neat planning sheets. "Despite the pains, Aki-sempai seemed to be able to work faster on her own in the middle of the night, as compared to us having one more pair of hands to work with."
Rubbing a sore spot behind my neck, I knelt up to pick up another piece of acrylic. Kuromura must have spent hours in the technical workshop cutting out these tiny grids.
"Kuromura is inhuman, I tell you," I muttered while reaching over for the glue. Just then, a thought entered my mind. "Erika, do you think she would notice anything different about her work?"
The girl paused for a while, "If she had, she isn't saying anything. Aki-sempai leaves a pin to mark the last column that she completes, though."
I leaned forward, and sure enough, there was a pin embedded at the side of the board.
"Everytime we finish, I shift the pin forward. And judging by our slow speed, there isn't much difference for Aki-sempai to notice."
"Let's hope she doesn't," mumbling under my breath, I stuck a plastic square in place and reached for another.
Erika and I worked in silence for a while; Kuromura's colour-coded blueprints saving us the time otherwise needed to find which piece goes in which square.
"If Kuromura ever found out about this, she'd better set aside a minute to be grateful for the pains- literally- I am going through for her before dismembering me for touching her things," I said suddenly when an ache erupted at the base of my spine, reminding me to give it a good rubbing later.
A chuckle came from across the wooden board and dissolved into a thoughtful look on Erika's face before she spoke.
"This reminds me of The Elves and the Shoemaker." She laughed at my confusion, "Go look into that on the Internet and you'll understand."
... To be continued
Crossposted:
Musings and FictionPress.com.
For explanations of Japanese terms, check my Terminologies page here.