Karin/Jinta/Yuzu (futurefic)
I started this a long time ago. And I just felt like returning and finishing it. I listened to Ani Difranco's "Joyful Girl" as I wrote this, but it doesn't really apply.
This is another one of those all growed up and life is not so fun ficlets. But the end is kind of uplifting? I MEAN, no one dies, so it can't be all that bad....
Why do I keep coming back?
I check my watch with a quick flick of a wrist. They’re late. That’s not surprising. After all these years (has it been years? Only years, not decades, not millennia?) it seems that they haven’t gone through the trouble of changing their habits. I make a beeline for the bathroom, deciding to check myself quickly in the bathroom for a second. No reason to have them see me all mussed and disorganized.
Of course, the mirror tells me I look just like I did when I got off the airplane, which is impeccable. Well, what everyone else would call impeccable, but I like to call not quite to perfection. For most people I would have settled for that, but Karin and Jinta…they should see me looking by very best. I…I just want them to see me and think, wow, Yuzu isn’t the discomfited young woman that left us. I want them look at me and think of how I’ve become beautiful.
And there’s something inside of me that wonders why I’m back. I try to ignore that voice, that pinprick of insecurity. I just graduated with a degree in criminal justice, and I should be dying of post-graduation bliss. I should be going out with my boyfriend to enjoy ourselves. I should have a boyfriend.
Instead, whenever anyone even alluded to having feelings for me I tried to let them down lightly. As in, avoiding them until they thought I was completely stuck up.
My hair’s long now, down to my mid-back. I had decided to let it grow out since I didn’t have to worry about it catching on fire in the kitchen anymore. There were a lot of chances of that happening at the clinic, what with people flying back and forth at all hours. I chuckle at the memory and wonder if I should have had it cut before coming back. I experiment a little, tucking both sides behind my ears. I shake my head violently, and brush the strands back. I continued giving myself a facial checkup, eyes ears, cheeks, lips. All clean, all neat, all attractive.
I leave the bathroom, purse gently bouncing against my arm. I don’t recognize them at first. I mean, Karin’s hair is short, and spiked like a boy’s. Jinta’s grown, and he’s wearing a long black trench coat. Karin’s hand is slipped into the sleeve of his coat, and while I can’t really make out their intertwined fingers, I can imagine it.
“Karin! Jinta!” I call out, raising my hand to wave them in my direction.
Jinta’s eyes look darker, redder. I can tell what he’s become, but I don’t want to voice it or admit it, even to myself. Karin breaks away from him, jogging over and wrapping her arms around me. “How was the flight?” she asks, the words muffled as she buries her face in the cleft of my shoulder. She’s warm, warmer than I remember her. I always associated her with the cold, honestly, and it was always an icy touch that I associated with her. When I felt especially lonely, I’d take an ice cube and rub it against my stomach, pretending it was her hand. Maybe that was just an illusion of mine, painting my sister as this cool statue of person rather than the vulnerable human being she really is.
“Alright, I guess. The food was awful.” I’d been practicing my Japanese for a few weeks, afraid that I would come back to Japan speaking like a foreigner. We break apart, and I assume Karin will call Jinta over now that she’s had her turn. Her turn isn’t completely over with, apparently, and she grabs my shoulders with her thin fingers, that strong, possessive grip. Her lips are cold, and I’mglad that my memory hadn’t failed me completely. I press against her, hungry for that familiar taste after being without for so long.
Jinta clears his throat behind Karin, and we pull away from one another. I can tell I’m blushing, but she seems composed. This is typical.
“You look…great,” she telld me, and grins.
I finally get a close-up of Jinta, and he looks as bad as he had from a distance. His eyes are bloodshot, and his expression seems lax. I smile, though, and open my arms up to him. After a moment’s hesitation he steps into them, and he lets out a deep breath of air. He became a balloon in my extended absence and now shrinks to his normal size in my embrace. “Missed you,” he grunts into my ear, and I nod in acknowledgement and agreement. Me, too. Me, too.
He reeks of sweet, sweet marijuana, and he dances with junkie jitters. I want to hold him forever, until he returns to the body of that lively boy I’d first met.
They frog-march me out of the airport, not allowing me to cart around my suitcases. I still am not as strong as either of them, physically, and they lift either suitcase like a bag of clothes, like they had whenever we had gone shopping, back in the old days. All these memories that I had half-forgotten are resurfacing, and I can’t stop smiling.
It isn’t like we’d been completely isolated from one another. I called home when I could afford a calling card, and we sent letters back and forth monthly. I’d only been home to visit once, that first Christmas since I’d left for school, and after that Dad had gotten cancer, and money had gotten scarcer and scarcer without their sole means of income. Ichigo supported the family now. Dad had been able to hold on for this long, and I don’t think any one of us had expected anything less. He was strong man, and willful. That’s where Karin and Ichigo get it from, after all.
I feel a stab of pain at almost having forgotten him in my reverie. Of course, he’ll be the first person I’ll visit now that I’m back.
Karin sits in the sidecar while I cling to Jinta on the motorbike. I look around, trying to piece together the memories of when I’d left Japan, but I find themdark and vague and everything looks new and born again. Maybe another bomb had fallen and they’re in reconstruction. I open my mouth to tell this to Karin and Jinta, but quickly realize that they probably won’t find the humor.
I’d made a friend in college, and he had been an aborigine. He’d always been making jokes about his people’s flaws and their downfall and the incredible ironies that apply everywhere, I guess. I asked him why he did that, one time. Didn’t he find what had happened to his people sad?
My people? he’d asked me. I eat what white people eat. I see what white people see on TV. I cry when white people cry, and I laugh when they laugh. I studied my ass off to go to school where white people study. Tell me, Hiroshima, who do I resemble more, a great Indian chief or just another white college student?
I’d laughed with him, and then we’d gone to get lunch at a Mexican restaurant.
Loneliness suddenly hits me, and I can’t understand it. All these years I’ve been craving this moment, these people, my house in Karakura, and now that I’m finally here, I want to flee-towards home. I’d begun to see California as home, I suppose. And Karin and Jinta are still awkward strangers despite the kisses and the hugs, and I want to speak freely. Still, I hold my tongue, and eventually we reach the clinic.
From the outside, it looks the same, if you glance at it. But there’s graffiti lining the side of the building, and one of the front windows is nailed over. Jinta sees me staring and chuckles. “Some brat. Shouldn’t’ve given him my baseball bat, I guess…” Karin takes my hand, then, and we stride purposely towards the front door. Nearly the lights are off, which strikes me as odd. We weren’t exactly the type of family that ever kept lights off. In the darkness lay…secrets. Memories. Death.
We were the kind of family that would lay a white sheet over the darkness and ignore it, hoping, praying, wishing it gone.
“We’re back!” Karin cries, opening the door with a flourish, a finger reaching out to switch on the light. The living room seems the sag, and everything is covered in a layer of dust. Of course, neither Karin nor Ichigo had ever had housekeeping inclinations. That was all me.
Ichigo’s face peeks at us from the kitchen. He looks…older, I guess. Lines from frowning, deeper circles around his eyes. An old, familiar apron: Free Hugs. My father’s…
“Hey, Yuzu. He’s upstairs…” Ichigo informs me, and retreats into the kitchen again.
Karin glances back at Jinta, who is still perched on his bike. She waves, and I wave, and Jinta nods back. He’s gone. He’ll be back tomorrow.
Apparently, Ichigo still doesn’t like Jinta.
Letting go of my hand, Karin nudges me towards the stairs. “Go on, he’s been dying to see you. No pun intended. If he gets over excited, just hit him with a pillow.”
A pillow? Back in the old days, it would have been a kick to the face.
I watch as she enters the kitchen and takes a second apron off a peg. You’re Beautiful. My mother’s. She starts washing the dishes that have piled up in the sink. Ichigo glances over at me, and smiles, sad, forced smile, as if he’s trying to please me. “Glad you’re back,” he says, and I nod quickly, then rush up the stairs before I start to cry.
I leave and my family turns into a bunch of sad strangers. I hate this, suddenly, this stupid plot twist that shouldn’t have the nerve to call itself real life. I enter my father’s room too quickly, and I don’t have time to think of what I’m going to say to my father.
He’s sitting up in bed, reading from his book. He glances at me as the door opens, and our eyes meet. Oh, my poor Daddy-
“YUZU!” he cries, pushing himself out of bed slowly. “How are you?”
That’s the first time I’ve been asked that since I got to Japan.
Truth is…
I rush over to him, and pull him into a tight embrace. “Oh, Daddy…” And while everything may have changed, he’s still the one holding me. He pats the top of my head gently, and allows me to cry like a little girl. Everyone’s a little sadder, life feels a little heavier, but my father is still my father, from head to toe.
“Welcome home.”
This is another one of those all growed up and life is not so fun ficlets. But the end is kind of uplifting? I MEAN, no one dies, so it can't be all that bad....
Why do I keep coming back?
I check my watch with a quick flick of a wrist. They’re late. That’s not surprising. After all these years (has it been years? Only years, not decades, not millennia?) it seems that they haven’t gone through the trouble of changing their habits. I make a beeline for the bathroom, deciding to check myself quickly in the bathroom for a second. No reason to have them see me all mussed and disorganized.
Of course, the mirror tells me I look just like I did when I got off the airplane, which is impeccable. Well, what everyone else would call impeccable, but I like to call not quite to perfection. For most people I would have settled for that, but Karin and Jinta…they should see me looking by very best. I…I just want them to see me and think, wow, Yuzu isn’t the discomfited young woman that left us. I want them look at me and think of how I’ve become beautiful.
And there’s something inside of me that wonders why I’m back. I try to ignore that voice, that pinprick of insecurity. I just graduated with a degree in criminal justice, and I should be dying of post-graduation bliss. I should be going out with my boyfriend to enjoy ourselves. I should have a boyfriend.
Instead, whenever anyone even alluded to having feelings for me I tried to let them down lightly. As in, avoiding them until they thought I was completely stuck up.
My hair’s long now, down to my mid-back. I had decided to let it grow out since I didn’t have to worry about it catching on fire in the kitchen anymore. There were a lot of chances of that happening at the clinic, what with people flying back and forth at all hours. I chuckle at the memory and wonder if I should have had it cut before coming back. I experiment a little, tucking both sides behind my ears. I shake my head violently, and brush the strands back. I continued giving myself a facial checkup, eyes ears, cheeks, lips. All clean, all neat, all attractive.
I leave the bathroom, purse gently bouncing against my arm. I don’t recognize them at first. I mean, Karin’s hair is short, and spiked like a boy’s. Jinta’s grown, and he’s wearing a long black trench coat. Karin’s hand is slipped into the sleeve of his coat, and while I can’t really make out their intertwined fingers, I can imagine it.
“Karin! Jinta!” I call out, raising my hand to wave them in my direction.
Jinta’s eyes look darker, redder. I can tell what he’s become, but I don’t want to voice it or admit it, even to myself. Karin breaks away from him, jogging over and wrapping her arms around me. “How was the flight?” she asks, the words muffled as she buries her face in the cleft of my shoulder. She’s warm, warmer than I remember her. I always associated her with the cold, honestly, and it was always an icy touch that I associated with her. When I felt especially lonely, I’d take an ice cube and rub it against my stomach, pretending it was her hand. Maybe that was just an illusion of mine, painting my sister as this cool statue of person rather than the vulnerable human being she really is.
“Alright, I guess. The food was awful.” I’d been practicing my Japanese for a few weeks, afraid that I would come back to Japan speaking like a foreigner. We break apart, and I assume Karin will call Jinta over now that she’s had her turn. Her turn isn’t completely over with, apparently, and she grabs my shoulders with her thin fingers, that strong, possessive grip. Her lips are cold, and I’mglad that my memory hadn’t failed me completely. I press against her, hungry for that familiar taste after being without for so long.
Jinta clears his throat behind Karin, and we pull away from one another. I can tell I’m blushing, but she seems composed. This is typical.
“You look…great,” she telld me, and grins.
I finally get a close-up of Jinta, and he looks as bad as he had from a distance. His eyes are bloodshot, and his expression seems lax. I smile, though, and open my arms up to him. After a moment’s hesitation he steps into them, and he lets out a deep breath of air. He became a balloon in my extended absence and now shrinks to his normal size in my embrace. “Missed you,” he grunts into my ear, and I nod in acknowledgement and agreement. Me, too. Me, too.
He reeks of sweet, sweet marijuana, and he dances with junkie jitters. I want to hold him forever, until he returns to the body of that lively boy I’d first met.
They frog-march me out of the airport, not allowing me to cart around my suitcases. I still am not as strong as either of them, physically, and they lift either suitcase like a bag of clothes, like they had whenever we had gone shopping, back in the old days. All these memories that I had half-forgotten are resurfacing, and I can’t stop smiling.
It isn’t like we’d been completely isolated from one another. I called home when I could afford a calling card, and we sent letters back and forth monthly. I’d only been home to visit once, that first Christmas since I’d left for school, and after that Dad had gotten cancer, and money had gotten scarcer and scarcer without their sole means of income. Ichigo supported the family now. Dad had been able to hold on for this long, and I don’t think any one of us had expected anything less. He was strong man, and willful. That’s where Karin and Ichigo get it from, after all.
I feel a stab of pain at almost having forgotten him in my reverie. Of course, he’ll be the first person I’ll visit now that I’m back.
Karin sits in the sidecar while I cling to Jinta on the motorbike. I look around, trying to piece together the memories of when I’d left Japan, but I find themdark and vague and everything looks new and born again. Maybe another bomb had fallen and they’re in reconstruction. I open my mouth to tell this to Karin and Jinta, but quickly realize that they probably won’t find the humor.
I’d made a friend in college, and he had been an aborigine. He’d always been making jokes about his people’s flaws and their downfall and the incredible ironies that apply everywhere, I guess. I asked him why he did that, one time. Didn’t he find what had happened to his people sad?
My people? he’d asked me. I eat what white people eat. I see what white people see on TV. I cry when white people cry, and I laugh when they laugh. I studied my ass off to go to school where white people study. Tell me, Hiroshima, who do I resemble more, a great Indian chief or just another white college student?
I’d laughed with him, and then we’d gone to get lunch at a Mexican restaurant.
Loneliness suddenly hits me, and I can’t understand it. All these years I’ve been craving this moment, these people, my house in Karakura, and now that I’m finally here, I want to flee-towards home. I’d begun to see California as home, I suppose. And Karin and Jinta are still awkward strangers despite the kisses and the hugs, and I want to speak freely. Still, I hold my tongue, and eventually we reach the clinic.
From the outside, it looks the same, if you glance at it. But there’s graffiti lining the side of the building, and one of the front windows is nailed over. Jinta sees me staring and chuckles. “Some brat. Shouldn’t’ve given him my baseball bat, I guess…” Karin takes my hand, then, and we stride purposely towards the front door. Nearly the lights are off, which strikes me as odd. We weren’t exactly the type of family that ever kept lights off. In the darkness lay…secrets. Memories. Death.
We were the kind of family that would lay a white sheet over the darkness and ignore it, hoping, praying, wishing it gone.
“We’re back!” Karin cries, opening the door with a flourish, a finger reaching out to switch on the light. The living room seems the sag, and everything is covered in a layer of dust. Of course, neither Karin nor Ichigo had ever had housekeeping inclinations. That was all me.
Ichigo’s face peeks at us from the kitchen. He looks…older, I guess. Lines from frowning, deeper circles around his eyes. An old, familiar apron: Free Hugs. My father’s…
“Hey, Yuzu. He’s upstairs…” Ichigo informs me, and retreats into the kitchen again.
Karin glances back at Jinta, who is still perched on his bike. She waves, and I wave, and Jinta nods back. He’s gone. He’ll be back tomorrow.
Apparently, Ichigo still doesn’t like Jinta.
Letting go of my hand, Karin nudges me towards the stairs. “Go on, he’s been dying to see you. No pun intended. If he gets over excited, just hit him with a pillow.”
A pillow? Back in the old days, it would have been a kick to the face.
I watch as she enters the kitchen and takes a second apron off a peg. You’re Beautiful. My mother’s. She starts washing the dishes that have piled up in the sink. Ichigo glances over at me, and smiles, sad, forced smile, as if he’s trying to please me. “Glad you’re back,” he says, and I nod quickly, then rush up the stairs before I start to cry.
I leave and my family turns into a bunch of sad strangers. I hate this, suddenly, this stupid plot twist that shouldn’t have the nerve to call itself real life. I enter my father’s room too quickly, and I don’t have time to think of what I’m going to say to my father.
He’s sitting up in bed, reading from his book. He glances at me as the door opens, and our eyes meet. Oh, my poor Daddy-
“YUZU!” he cries, pushing himself out of bed slowly. “How are you?”
That’s the first time I’ve been asked that since I got to Japan.
Truth is…
I rush over to him, and pull him into a tight embrace. “Oh, Daddy…” And while everything may have changed, he’s still the one holding me. He pats the top of my head gently, and allows me to cry like a little girl. Everyone’s a little sadder, life feels a little heavier, but my father is still my father, from head to toe.
“Welcome home.”