Rivalry Chapter Three
Series: Yugioh
Title: Rivalry
Author: Fictatious
Character(s): Kaiba Noa, Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Mokuba, Kaiba Gozaburo
Rating: 13
Warnings: not really
Summary: Noa knows that Seto is meant to be his rival and inspire him to work hard to hold onto his birth-right, but he's not quite sure what his relationship to Mokuba is meant to be. Not slash.
Previous: 1 & 2
Mokuba had run along excitedly on the flat part of the path, laughing and swishing his arms back and forth, delighted with the huge haori sleeves swinging from them. Noa and Seto had been able to keep up easily, but Junko kept calling breathlessly at them to slow down and wait for her. When they hit the stairs, however, Mokuba slowed down a great deal and stopped laughing in favor of panting as he kept scrambling towards the upper shrine.
“Don’t slow down, Mokuba!” Noa shouted, running up a few steps ahead of him. “Or you’ll be six before you get to the top and then you can’t have any chitose candy!”
“Nooo!” Mokuba cried with a gasping little giggle.
“Don’t say stupid things,” Seto snorted as he kept walking at a steady pace between the giant tori. “We’ll be there in time for lunch, Mokuba.”
“I know that,” Mokuba huffed. “It was a joke, Nii-san!”
“Well it was stupid.”
“Now Seto-bozu, this is a fun day!” Junko said with a bright smile, having finally managed to keep pace with the boys. “It’s all right to be silly and have fun!”
“I thought there would be more people here,” Noa commented, spinning around the post of one of the tori. “Where is everybody? Mokuba can’t be the only five-year-old around.”
“It’s not a holiday,” Seto scoffed. “Normal people have to work. They’ll bring their kids on Saturday.”
“Really?” Noa paused on the step for a minute before skipping up five more to keep ahead of Mokuba. “It should be a holiday! It’s super important!”
“It’s not that important.”
“Now that’s not nice, Seto-bozu, this is a big day for Mokuba-bozu!” Junko chided. “It’s his first time wearing a hakama, because he’s a big boy now!”
“People don’t even wear hakama anymore,” Seto answered with a sour expression. “And Mokuba’s just a day older than he was yesterday.”
“Ooh, existential!” Noa called and laughed.
“W-what’s existen-tial, Noa-Nii?” Mokuba panted.
“It means Seto-Nii’s being all philosophical and stuff,” Noa explained, stopping to poke at a crack in the steps with his toe.
“I told you not to call me that,” Seto growled.
“Oh, Seto-bozu, you should be flattered.” Junko patted his shoulder. “Noa-bozu calls you that because he admires you!”
“He does it to mock me,” Seto snorted.
“Not at all!” Noa exclaimed. “You’re my brother and you’re older than me, so you’re Seto-Nii-san!” Noa laughed and returned Seto’s glare with a cheeky grin.
“There, you see!” Junko said brightly, smiling down at Seto, who didn’t look at her or respond.
When they finally reached the upper shrine, Mokuba shrieked excitedly and ran around in celebration, making way too much noise for a shrine, as he’d apparently having gotten a second-wind. Junko had them stand together while she took pictures of Mokuba in his traditional outfit, flanked by Seto and Noa in western-style suits. She must have taken three dozen pictures, making them stand in front of different parts of the shrine, before she finally put the camera away and presented Mokuba with a bag of candy-sticks.
After making their offerings to the temple, Junko shuffled them towards the restaurant. “There, are we all settled?” she asked after they were seated. “I’m going to use the restroom, don’t order until I come back, okay?”
Once Junko disappeared, Noa pushed up to his knees on his chair and slammed his hands down on the table. “Why are you being so crabby?” he demanded.
Seto glanced away. “I’m not. This is just pointless,” he retorted. “It’s a waste of time.”
“Stop it! This is Mokuba’s festival and you’re being really mean him!”
Seto glanced sideways at Mokuba, who was looking down and fidgeting with his napkin, wearing a dejected little frown. He was silent for a few seconds and then quietly said, “I’m sorry, Mokuba. I’m just tired. I’m glad you’re having fun.”
Mokuba’s face brightened and he smiled up at Seto. “That’s okay, Nii-san. I know you work really hard. Do you want some of my chitose candy?” He held out the bag of candy-sticks.
“... That’s your candy, Mokuba. You should eat it.”
“Oh, okay,” Mokuba glanced down, his face dimming a bit, and laid his candy on the table. “I’m really glad you came with us, Nii-san.”
Noa leaned on his elbows, frowning suspiciously. It was true that Seto did get particularly crabby when he was tired, but this seemed like something else somehow. He was about to ask another question when Junko appeared again and started talking cheerfully about the traditional delicacies of Kyoto.
...
There was a knock at the door and Seto glanced up from his calculus book for half a second before returning his eyes to the proof on the page in front of him and calling out, “It’s open, Mokuba.” He heard the door open but didn’t pay any attention until the person who’d opened it spoke.
“So it is. I’m coming in then,” Noa called politely.
Seto’s head snapped up, the textbook forgotten, and he glared at Noa. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Well, I believe I did hear an invitation when I knocked,” Noa answered with one of his usual incredibly annoying grins and a small shrug.
“I thought it was Mokuba,” Seto snapped. “What do you want?”
“I want to know why you were such a wet-blanket today. This was a big day for Mokuba and you totally ruined it,” Noa answered walking right up to Seto’s desk and stopping in front of it.
Seto gritted his teeth and felt the pencil in his hand crack. “He’s not your brother,” he hissed.
Noa’s eyes narrowed, the stupid smile being replaced by a tiny little frown. He pressed his fingertips to the edge of Seto’s desk and leaned forward. “Then what are you doing in my father’s house?” he asked in almost a whisper.
They glared at each other for several seconds before Noa straightened back up. “You’re not a very good playmate you know. Sometimes I think you don’t want to be my brother.”
“I’m not your playmate,” Seto snapped. “I’m your rival and it’s about time you took me seriously.”
“Oh, I do take you seriously, Seto,” Noa returned. “You are an extremely competent individual. I’m sure you’d run Father’s company very admirably. Until you died of a brain-aneurysm at age twenty.”
Another glaring-contest ensued. “What were you so pissed-off about today?” Noa demanded.
Seto snorted and glanced away. “Why would I even want to run a company that’s only interested in making weapons for killing poor-people?”
“What are you talking about?” Noa frowned.
“I went to see Father yesterday. I brought him the patent application and schematics I’d made for a compact holographic projection system.” Seto wasn’t really sure why he was telling Noa this. “He slapped me and put them in the shredder.”
Noa blinked, clearly surprised. “Why? That sounds amazing, I mean, if it would really work and be portable and things.”
“It would,” Seto said, irritated by the implication of Noa’s ‘if’. “But what’s the military application? Holograms are useless in a war, they can’t be used as weapons or armor, they’d only give away your position to the enemy.”
“Well...” Noa looked doubtful. “What about in Star Wars, when they were planning how to attack the Death Star, they used a hologram to show all the pilots where the weak-point was.”
“That’s a movie, Noa,” Seto sneered. “They only did that because it looked cool for the audience.”
Noa frowned. “Well, why does it even have to be a weapon or something anyway?”
“Because Kaiba Corp makes weapons,” Seto said, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms. “That’s all it does. It makes weapons and it makes plains and trucks with weapons in them. Kaiba Corp kills people. That’s all it does.”
Noa bit his lip, his brow drawing together. “T-that can’t be true... I mean... It’s a big corporation, it must do other things and... and the weapons are for protecting people.”
“Don’t be so naïve,” Seto spat. “Maybe Kaiba Corp is a big corporation, but weapons-manufacture is huge business. And how do you think a gun protects people? By killing other people.”
“I... I don’t believe you...” Noa said, not looking at all sure.
Seto studied Noa for a while before coming to a decision. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let me show you something,” he said and turned, walking across the room to his computer carrel. He heard Noa follow him, but the other boy didn’t say anything.
Seto sat down at the carrel and switched his computer out of sleep-mode. He opened up his folders, scrolling to the one titled ‘Legacy,’ and opened it as a slide-show. Every image he’d managed to collect of war-zones, with soldiers and rebels carrying weapons with the Kaiba Corp logo stamped on them, pictures of bodies, burned almost beyond recognition by Kaiba Corp shells, pictures of Kaiba Corps stealth jet dropping bombs, pictures of children their age carrying automatic rifles manufactured by Kaiba Corp, all of them flashed slowly across the computer screen.
Noa’s eyes were glued to the screen, but Seto was watching him. He noted the other boy beginning to blink a lot and sweat, his face twisted by a number of emotions. “H-how many pictures do you have?” Noa asked after several minutes had gone past and the images hadn’t yet looped.
“A hundred and thirty-seven,” Seto answered in a flat voice. “That’s all I’ve been able to collect in the last three months. They’re difficult to find because Kaiba Corp pays off the news media not to show them.”
Noa swallowed hard; Seto could see his hands shaking at his sides.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen any of these,” Seto drawled. “This is the Legacy you’re working so hard to inherit.”
“I- I don’t want it!” Noa shouted, stamping his foot and sweeping his arms out, as though pushing something away from him, as he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Only a sociopath would,” Seto replied calmly.
“B-but th-then why are you...?” he stammered.
“Hm, that’s a good question... Maybe I’ll dismantle it,” Seto mused. “Or refocus its resources towards something... friendlier.”
Noa bit his lips and looked at the carpet for a few seconds, thinking, then looked back up to Seto. “Like what?”
Seto shut down the slide-show and turned sideways in his chair, leaning against the back of it and watching Noa carefully. “In Ancient Greece, once every four years, all the wars between the Greek states stopped. Nobody fought at all. Do you know why?”
Noa frowned for a moment and then said, “The Olympic Games.”
“Right. Victory at the Games was more important, to all the nations of Ancient Greece, than any political conflict.” Seto felt himself smiling. “It’s been said by plenty of philosophers that the organized competition of sports and games is a substitute for war, sparing the devastation and trauma, and leaving behind only pride.”
“... You’re going to make games?” Noa asked, looking intrigued.
“The best games the world has ever seen,” Seto said smugly. “I want to take virtual reality to the next level, to integrate the technology of videogames with real-world games.” He got up again and went back to his desk, opening a drawer, and taking out a hand-sized box. He turned and tossed it to Noa.
Noa caught it easily and gave it a curious look before untucking the flap and shaking the contents into his hand. “Trading cards?” he asked, frowning.
“No, they’re a game. It uses the tried-and-tested swords and sorcery setting, but that’s not the important part. It’s as versatile and ever-expanding as table-top gaming, but with the rapid pace and competitive spirit of a video game.” Seto dropped into his desk chair and he could feel the cocky grin on his face as he continued. “Right now, while it has a graphic element to it with the cards, think of how much more intense, enjoyable and marketable the experience could be made with fully animated battles.”
“... You’d be cornering an entirely new industry with an already established user-base,” Noa said quietly, his eyes wide as he looked down at the cards in his hands. Then he blinked and looked up at Seto, an oddly excited expression on his face. “The holographic projection system!”
“Right now, the smallest I’d be able to reasonably make something like this would be a stage, about the size of a wrestling ring, but as the technology advances, one day I might be able to make it small enough to be worn by the player,” Seto said, sitting back and feeling particularly satisfied with Noa’s earnest excitement.
“Like laser-tag!” Noa exclaimed, then he looked back down at the cards and his mouth twisted to the side a little, his brow furrowing just slightly. “But there must be hundreds of different cards, and new ones could be produced very quickly. The graphic development would be enormous.”
“But there’s no programming for story or tactics, no need for writers or voice actors, because the player takes center-stage here,” Seto pointed out. “For any given monster-card, you’d just need the 3D character mesh and a handful of animations for attacks and being attacked. It would use real-time rendering like a video game, so you wouldn’t need to create individual animations for every combination of monsters.”
“Sound effects! You can’t have it without sound effects!” Noa declared, hopping a little in excitement.
...
...
Cultural Notes:
The festival they’re celebrating here is Shichi-Go-San, Sevens, Fives and Threes Day, when three-year-old children, five-year-old boys and seven-year-old girls are celebrated as moving into the next phase of their lives.
Traditionally this day would be a five-year-old boy's first time wearing adult clothes (hakama and haori) and it would be a seven-year-old girl's first time tying her kimono with an obi. Seven-year-old girls are still mostly dressed up in kimonos for this day, but boys usually wear Western-style clothes today, but since they obviously have enough money to play with and why-the-hell-not, Mokuba got to wear traditional duds.
The chitose ame Mokuba receives are white sticks representing long-life, special for this festival.
The shrine they're at is Fushimi Inari, famous for its 10-thousand tori lining the walkway between the temple at the base of the hill and the one at the top. This is the primary shrine to Inari, the patron of rice and businessmen.
Author’s notes:
Before anybody freaks out, I am still working on Serpentine. This just came into my head and it wrote itself very quickly, and I do want to play around with this little universe more too, and I guess I’ve started thinking about my other open plot-lines again as Serpentine is almost over.
Please send a review, they bring me a great measure of happiness.
Title: Rivalry
Author: Fictatious
Character(s): Kaiba Noa, Kaiba Seto, Kaiba Mokuba, Kaiba Gozaburo
Rating: 13
Warnings: not really
Summary: Noa knows that Seto is meant to be his rival and inspire him to work hard to hold onto his birth-right, but he's not quite sure what his relationship to Mokuba is meant to be. Not slash.
Previous: 1 & 2
Mokuba had run along excitedly on the flat part of the path, laughing and swishing his arms back and forth, delighted with the huge haori sleeves swinging from them. Noa and Seto had been able to keep up easily, but Junko kept calling breathlessly at them to slow down and wait for her. When they hit the stairs, however, Mokuba slowed down a great deal and stopped laughing in favor of panting as he kept scrambling towards the upper shrine.
“Don’t slow down, Mokuba!” Noa shouted, running up a few steps ahead of him. “Or you’ll be six before you get to the top and then you can’t have any chitose candy!”
“Nooo!” Mokuba cried with a gasping little giggle.
“Don’t say stupid things,” Seto snorted as he kept walking at a steady pace between the giant tori. “We’ll be there in time for lunch, Mokuba.”
“I know that,” Mokuba huffed. “It was a joke, Nii-san!”
“Well it was stupid.”
“Now Seto-bozu, this is a fun day!” Junko said with a bright smile, having finally managed to keep pace with the boys. “It’s all right to be silly and have fun!”
“I thought there would be more people here,” Noa commented, spinning around the post of one of the tori. “Where is everybody? Mokuba can’t be the only five-year-old around.”
“It’s not a holiday,” Seto scoffed. “Normal people have to work. They’ll bring their kids on Saturday.”
“Really?” Noa paused on the step for a minute before skipping up five more to keep ahead of Mokuba. “It should be a holiday! It’s super important!”
“It’s not that important.”
“Now that’s not nice, Seto-bozu, this is a big day for Mokuba-bozu!” Junko chided. “It’s his first time wearing a hakama, because he’s a big boy now!”
“People don’t even wear hakama anymore,” Seto answered with a sour expression. “And Mokuba’s just a day older than he was yesterday.”
“Ooh, existential!” Noa called and laughed.
“W-what’s existen-tial, Noa-Nii?” Mokuba panted.
“It means Seto-Nii’s being all philosophical and stuff,” Noa explained, stopping to poke at a crack in the steps with his toe.
“I told you not to call me that,” Seto growled.
“Oh, Seto-bozu, you should be flattered.” Junko patted his shoulder. “Noa-bozu calls you that because he admires you!”
“He does it to mock me,” Seto snorted.
“Not at all!” Noa exclaimed. “You’re my brother and you’re older than me, so you’re Seto-Nii-san!” Noa laughed and returned Seto’s glare with a cheeky grin.
“There, you see!” Junko said brightly, smiling down at Seto, who didn’t look at her or respond.
When they finally reached the upper shrine, Mokuba shrieked excitedly and ran around in celebration, making way too much noise for a shrine, as he’d apparently having gotten a second-wind. Junko had them stand together while she took pictures of Mokuba in his traditional outfit, flanked by Seto and Noa in western-style suits. She must have taken three dozen pictures, making them stand in front of different parts of the shrine, before she finally put the camera away and presented Mokuba with a bag of candy-sticks.
After making their offerings to the temple, Junko shuffled them towards the restaurant. “There, are we all settled?” she asked after they were seated. “I’m going to use the restroom, don’t order until I come back, okay?”
Once Junko disappeared, Noa pushed up to his knees on his chair and slammed his hands down on the table. “Why are you being so crabby?” he demanded.
Seto glanced away. “I’m not. This is just pointless,” he retorted. “It’s a waste of time.”
“Stop it! This is Mokuba’s festival and you’re being really mean him!”
Seto glanced sideways at Mokuba, who was looking down and fidgeting with his napkin, wearing a dejected little frown. He was silent for a few seconds and then quietly said, “I’m sorry, Mokuba. I’m just tired. I’m glad you’re having fun.”
Mokuba’s face brightened and he smiled up at Seto. “That’s okay, Nii-san. I know you work really hard. Do you want some of my chitose candy?” He held out the bag of candy-sticks.
“... That’s your candy, Mokuba. You should eat it.”
“Oh, okay,” Mokuba glanced down, his face dimming a bit, and laid his candy on the table. “I’m really glad you came with us, Nii-san.”
Noa leaned on his elbows, frowning suspiciously. It was true that Seto did get particularly crabby when he was tired, but this seemed like something else somehow. He was about to ask another question when Junko appeared again and started talking cheerfully about the traditional delicacies of Kyoto.
...
There was a knock at the door and Seto glanced up from his calculus book for half a second before returning his eyes to the proof on the page in front of him and calling out, “It’s open, Mokuba.” He heard the door open but didn’t pay any attention until the person who’d opened it spoke.
“So it is. I’m coming in then,” Noa called politely.
Seto’s head snapped up, the textbook forgotten, and he glared at Noa. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Well, I believe I did hear an invitation when I knocked,” Noa answered with one of his usual incredibly annoying grins and a small shrug.
“I thought it was Mokuba,” Seto snapped. “What do you want?”
“I want to know why you were such a wet-blanket today. This was a big day for Mokuba and you totally ruined it,” Noa answered walking right up to Seto’s desk and stopping in front of it.
Seto gritted his teeth and felt the pencil in his hand crack. “He’s not your brother,” he hissed.
Noa’s eyes narrowed, the stupid smile being replaced by a tiny little frown. He pressed his fingertips to the edge of Seto’s desk and leaned forward. “Then what are you doing in my father’s house?” he asked in almost a whisper.
They glared at each other for several seconds before Noa straightened back up. “You’re not a very good playmate you know. Sometimes I think you don’t want to be my brother.”
“I’m not your playmate,” Seto snapped. “I’m your rival and it’s about time you took me seriously.”
“Oh, I do take you seriously, Seto,” Noa returned. “You are an extremely competent individual. I’m sure you’d run Father’s company very admirably. Until you died of a brain-aneurysm at age twenty.”
Another glaring-contest ensued. “What were you so pissed-off about today?” Noa demanded.
Seto snorted and glanced away. “Why would I even want to run a company that’s only interested in making weapons for killing poor-people?”
“What are you talking about?” Noa frowned.
“I went to see Father yesterday. I brought him the patent application and schematics I’d made for a compact holographic projection system.” Seto wasn’t really sure why he was telling Noa this. “He slapped me and put them in the shredder.”
Noa blinked, clearly surprised. “Why? That sounds amazing, I mean, if it would really work and be portable and things.”
“It would,” Seto said, irritated by the implication of Noa’s ‘if’. “But what’s the military application? Holograms are useless in a war, they can’t be used as weapons or armor, they’d only give away your position to the enemy.”
“Well...” Noa looked doubtful. “What about in Star Wars, when they were planning how to attack the Death Star, they used a hologram to show all the pilots where the weak-point was.”
“That’s a movie, Noa,” Seto sneered. “They only did that because it looked cool for the audience.”
Noa frowned. “Well, why does it even have to be a weapon or something anyway?”
“Because Kaiba Corp makes weapons,” Seto said, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms. “That’s all it does. It makes weapons and it makes plains and trucks with weapons in them. Kaiba Corp kills people. That’s all it does.”
Noa bit his lip, his brow drawing together. “T-that can’t be true... I mean... It’s a big corporation, it must do other things and... and the weapons are for protecting people.”
“Don’t be so naïve,” Seto spat. “Maybe Kaiba Corp is a big corporation, but weapons-manufacture is huge business. And how do you think a gun protects people? By killing other people.”
“I... I don’t believe you...” Noa said, not looking at all sure.
Seto studied Noa for a while before coming to a decision. He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Let me show you something,” he said and turned, walking across the room to his computer carrel. He heard Noa follow him, but the other boy didn’t say anything.
Seto sat down at the carrel and switched his computer out of sleep-mode. He opened up his folders, scrolling to the one titled ‘Legacy,’ and opened it as a slide-show. Every image he’d managed to collect of war-zones, with soldiers and rebels carrying weapons with the Kaiba Corp logo stamped on them, pictures of bodies, burned almost beyond recognition by Kaiba Corp shells, pictures of Kaiba Corps stealth jet dropping bombs, pictures of children their age carrying automatic rifles manufactured by Kaiba Corp, all of them flashed slowly across the computer screen.
Noa’s eyes were glued to the screen, but Seto was watching him. He noted the other boy beginning to blink a lot and sweat, his face twisted by a number of emotions. “H-how many pictures do you have?” Noa asked after several minutes had gone past and the images hadn’t yet looped.
“A hundred and thirty-seven,” Seto answered in a flat voice. “That’s all I’ve been able to collect in the last three months. They’re difficult to find because Kaiba Corp pays off the news media not to show them.”
Noa swallowed hard; Seto could see his hands shaking at his sides.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen any of these,” Seto drawled. “This is the Legacy you’re working so hard to inherit.”
“I- I don’t want it!” Noa shouted, stamping his foot and sweeping his arms out, as though pushing something away from him, as he squeezed his eyes shut.
“Only a sociopath would,” Seto replied calmly.
“B-but th-then why are you...?” he stammered.
“Hm, that’s a good question... Maybe I’ll dismantle it,” Seto mused. “Or refocus its resources towards something... friendlier.”
Noa bit his lips and looked at the carpet for a few seconds, thinking, then looked back up to Seto. “Like what?”
Seto shut down the slide-show and turned sideways in his chair, leaning against the back of it and watching Noa carefully. “In Ancient Greece, once every four years, all the wars between the Greek states stopped. Nobody fought at all. Do you know why?”
Noa frowned for a moment and then said, “The Olympic Games.”
“Right. Victory at the Games was more important, to all the nations of Ancient Greece, than any political conflict.” Seto felt himself smiling. “It’s been said by plenty of philosophers that the organized competition of sports and games is a substitute for war, sparing the devastation and trauma, and leaving behind only pride.”
“... You’re going to make games?” Noa asked, looking intrigued.
“The best games the world has ever seen,” Seto said smugly. “I want to take virtual reality to the next level, to integrate the technology of videogames with real-world games.” He got up again and went back to his desk, opening a drawer, and taking out a hand-sized box. He turned and tossed it to Noa.
Noa caught it easily and gave it a curious look before untucking the flap and shaking the contents into his hand. “Trading cards?” he asked, frowning.
“No, they’re a game. It uses the tried-and-tested swords and sorcery setting, but that’s not the important part. It’s as versatile and ever-expanding as table-top gaming, but with the rapid pace and competitive spirit of a video game.” Seto dropped into his desk chair and he could feel the cocky grin on his face as he continued. “Right now, while it has a graphic element to it with the cards, think of how much more intense, enjoyable and marketable the experience could be made with fully animated battles.”
“... You’d be cornering an entirely new industry with an already established user-base,” Noa said quietly, his eyes wide as he looked down at the cards in his hands. Then he blinked and looked up at Seto, an oddly excited expression on his face. “The holographic projection system!”
“Right now, the smallest I’d be able to reasonably make something like this would be a stage, about the size of a wrestling ring, but as the technology advances, one day I might be able to make it small enough to be worn by the player,” Seto said, sitting back and feeling particularly satisfied with Noa’s earnest excitement.
“Like laser-tag!” Noa exclaimed, then he looked back down at the cards and his mouth twisted to the side a little, his brow furrowing just slightly. “But there must be hundreds of different cards, and new ones could be produced very quickly. The graphic development would be enormous.”
“But there’s no programming for story or tactics, no need for writers or voice actors, because the player takes center-stage here,” Seto pointed out. “For any given monster-card, you’d just need the 3D character mesh and a handful of animations for attacks and being attacked. It would use real-time rendering like a video game, so you wouldn’t need to create individual animations for every combination of monsters.”
“Sound effects! You can’t have it without sound effects!” Noa declared, hopping a little in excitement.
...
...
Cultural Notes:
The festival they’re celebrating here is Shichi-Go-San, Sevens, Fives and Threes Day, when three-year-old children, five-year-old boys and seven-year-old girls are celebrated as moving into the next phase of their lives.
Traditionally this day would be a five-year-old boy's first time wearing adult clothes (hakama and haori) and it would be a seven-year-old girl's first time tying her kimono with an obi. Seven-year-old girls are still mostly dressed up in kimonos for this day, but boys usually wear Western-style clothes today, but since they obviously have enough money to play with and why-the-hell-not, Mokuba got to wear traditional duds.
The chitose ame Mokuba receives are white sticks representing long-life, special for this festival.
The shrine they're at is Fushimi Inari, famous for its 10-thousand tori lining the walkway between the temple at the base of the hill and the one at the top. This is the primary shrine to Inari, the patron of rice and businessmen.
Author’s notes:
Before anybody freaks out, I am still working on Serpentine. This just came into my head and it wrote itself very quickly, and I do want to play around with this little universe more too, and I guess I’ve started thinking about my other open plot-lines again as Serpentine is almost over.
Please send a review, they bring me a great measure of happiness.