Chapter Five
PG-13 Rating
Ryo picked his jaw up from the (impeccably clean in the wake of the insects) floor of the bungalow and enunciated clearly:
“Go fuck yourself, your Grace.”
The princess stared back at him with slight puzzlement in her upsettingly blue eyes but did not otherwise appear offended. She may command insect armies or whatever they were, but she was obviously not so well-versed in the ways of the world. Ryo sighed exasperatedly. Well, from what fairytales Ryo remembered being told when he was still small, princesses in general did have this habit of being unspeakably dumb. Whyever would this one escape the rule?
“You have absolutely no idea what I just asked you to do.” Ryo stated this fact flatly.
The princess assented with a noble nod, although her entire stance still seemed to be spelling out that he was expected to, what was it again, revere her? Well, she would be waiting indefinitely for that.
Ryo stepped up to the insect princess. He wasn’t exactly taller than her, but he was about the same height at least, and he could outstare anyone, even an enigmatic creature with electric liquid azure eyes.
He opened his mouth but before any mean words could leave it, he had inhaled .
That fragrance.
The one which had insinuated itself into his sleeping bag.
She’s slept in my sleeping bag? He thought a tad confusedly, his mind going offtrack for one second. The thought of the creature sinuously sliding its slim body into it perturbed him somehow.
“So you are the one playing all those tricks” he said.
This accusation or perhaps his proximity appeared to perplex the princess and in turn she seemed to relent the ridiculous idea of making this fisherman revere her. At least temporarily.
A-ha! Ryo knew it, he could outstare anyone with his charcoal eyes he thought a tad triumphantly, no matter how regal and this princess really was, she was really ravishing. Regal. Regal was the word he wanted here.
“Tricks?” She repeated a little blankly and close as he was in order to intimidate her, he was forced to notice that even her breath was this fragrance.
“Oh Lord. You’re not the princess of parakeets too, are you? Cleaning this pigsty up. Making me breakfast. Filling my net with fish. Those rotten tricks.”
“Oh. Yes. That was me”. The princess said with confounding simplicity.
Ryo opened his mouth.
But didn’t find it within himself to muster up the ire he should by right have for her.
His heart, since the cloud of insects had cleared out of the bungalow, stealing the grain of hope away as they thus revealed the creature, from a whirligig was becoming a coffin.
A coffin for Kame.
At least Ryo thought, at least it should.
But it wasn’t quite still, not yet. On the contrary. Was it that his heart would not resign itself just yet, that it would not settle down just yet into eternal immobility, even though the grain of hope had disappeared?
Perhaps before eternal immobility came awful mourning, a state where one’s heart drummed and drummed a confused cacophony, acting like a shouting madman trying really hard to tell you something which might make some sort of sense and utterly failing.
Suddenly, and surprising even himself, Ryo sneezed violently.
“You’re soaked!” the princess said, and Ryo really didn’t know why she should be so overly alarmed.
“You’re observant.” Ryo said sarcastically, sneezing again, to the side, because he might be a fisherman but that in no way prevented him from being totally gallant, this no matter what the princess’ wary stance in relation to his self might betray of her feelings on the question. He must admit, however, to feeling a certain satisfaction at the sprinkling of raindrops which his wet hair sent her Grace’s delicate way, the drops darkening the light kimono, as his head jerked to the side.
But the princess, she, didn’t seem to mind in the least about such a petty detail. She was busy summoning a small cloud of insects out of nowhere again, to dry him up, presumably, and this time, now that Kame wasn’t maybe be going to appear and be suitably impressed by a cool Ryo and look at that fearless Ryo with admiring shining black eyes, this Ryo freaked as the horrid things buzzed all around his head, nevermind that they were really pretty and clearly harmless.
In truth, he was itching to let some steam off.
“Get these the fuck off me NOW”
He yelled between two sneezes, and his yelling startled the insects, sending them hurtling away. The princess winced and to Ryo’s annoyance, even this grimace when made by her features were like a charming little dance.
“Please, fisherman. Whatever you do, however you react, do not yell.” The princess entreated him in her stately way. “ Most insects have impossibly sensitive hearing.” She informed him.
Ryo sneezed anew, loud, and that was going to be his answer to that.
“And while we’re on this subject,” the princess added and she actually sounded embarrassed, “if you could refrain from singing the way you did last night as well, my people would be most grateful, really.”
Embarrassed for him.
“Why, what’s wrong with my singing, I sing fine. I sing great. I sing wonderful.” Ryo affirmed arrogantly. He sneezed again and he did that arrogantly too. And he would really like his heart to stop drumming so completely crazily now, but he supposed being attacked by insects wasn’t the most relaxing thing to it.
Stopping sneezing would be awesome too.
“It’s been raining since last night” the princess pointed out a little archly.
“And your point is?”
“Ah. Nevermind, fisherman.” She sighed as though she had not expected him to be able to grasp certain subtleties right from the start. “But please treat all insects with respect from now on. They have been and shall be so helpful to you, you know.”
“Wait, does this mean those things were what actually cooked my delic...my breakfast?”
The thought made his head spin, at least he thought it was the thought.
His stomach was fine.
“I graced you with my cooking skills and prepared the food with my own hands, fisherman.” He glanced carelessly at said hands, ready to roll his eyes at them, but they were hidden well within the folds of her kimono sleeves, bright pink butterflies sprinkled all over them. “The insects helped clean, however, and really, you ought to be grateful to them.” The princess said a little severely.
Ryo snorted. And then sneezed.
“Since you are such a wuss,” the princess went on and it sounded like she was not even sure how to pronounce that insult or perhaps didn’t even know it was one, “I am forced to honour you with my touch now.”
She started to raise her covered arms like a dancer towards his wet head.
But Ryo was now officially outraged.
He stepped back because this damn fragrance was making him heady.
“I’m not a wuss, alright. I’m just human. We don’t like your sort.” He said cuttingly, although the whole statement was somewhat ruined by a sneeze of impressive proportions. Ryo’s sneezes always were, perhaps in relation to how impressive his nose itself was as an organ, but that sneeze was impressive.
The princess barely blinked and it might have been at the sneeze but Ryo rather thought her lashes batted this rapidly at the snide remark. He caught that because his eyes happened to be riveted to those unnatural blue things she had in lieu of eyes.
Those unnatural blue things which were probably doing unnatural things to him because despite definitely not liking her sort, Ryo vacillated forward into the princess just then.
Her arms caught him easily, as though she had been waiting for just this to happen all along.
“You have a fever, fisherman. Let’s lie you down.”
The princess’ voice whispered against his ear.
He shivered violently.
It must be true.
He had a fever.
And his heart, fuck, his heart hurt, cruelly.
“No.” Ryo said for the sheer sake of contradicting her and felt himself almost falling onto his sleeping bag, the princess arms inside the silky kimono sleeves guiding his movements patiently, her fragrance enfolding him.
It made Ryo think of something, albeit in a fog of fever.
“You didn’t just cook for me, did you? You sooo seized the opportunity to undress me in the dark last night and the night before that, didn’t you? Who would’ve thought? The princess of insects is a pervert.” And he grinned widely up at her for the first time that evening.
Kame was gone forever and he was smiling at some unknown princess whom he hated.
There was something seriously wrong with him, much worse than this stupid fever.
The princess of the insects also seemed to think there was something wrong with his smiling like that because she interrupted her gentle tucking up of him.
To stare.
With her creepy - but fascinating, fever was making Ryo lucid - eyes.
Ryo’s smile faded.
She must be using some spell or other to lock their gazes together like this, and that was why Ryo did not see her hands come up, they must’ve done so sneakily, and he wondered what they looked like, lovely no doubt, fine, refined, like all the rest of her despicable self. The princess’ fingers pushed wet strands of sunburnt hair out of his now angry again eyes and applied a marvellously cool palm to his burning forehead, making it feel better. After that the hands, feeling like invisible hands, crept higher inside his sunburnt hair, and massaged his head like magic, softly, warmly, wonderfully. And Ryo hated this princess but there was definitely something to be said for her royal touch.
Ryo rather thought she was brainwashing him or something but he really didn’t oppose.
There was so much stuff he needed washed out of his horrible brain.
The princess’ face looming above his own as she stroked and stroked, over and over, everywhere onto his scalp, was a picture of perfection but the sight didn’t appease Ryo, not in the least. He hated her, after all. That must be why. As he was about to close his eyes so as not to have to see her and also, well, to surrender to her touch, Ryo caught sight of the minuscule tip of her pretty pink tongue peeking between her lips.
He vaguely realised then she hadn’t yet denied being a pervert earlier. It made him smile again, involuntarily, a little. Well, perhaps since she didn’t know how to go fuck herself she also wasn’t aware of what perversion was. If that was the case, he was happy to tell her.
“Do you by any chance have the hots for me, your Grace? This why you’re doing all this? I shouldn’t bother. I was ... I guess you’d call it imaginarily gay, for the longest while there. And now...”
Now he was nothing.
And he’d never told anyone before about his being imaginarily gay because it was so intimately linked to his being in love with Kame and he had never told anyone about that.
Had not told even himself until now.
Now that Kame was gone and he was nothing because he need be nothing, for anyone.
He had been in love with Kame.
So he didn’t know why he was telling this to a princess he hardly knew and had hated on sight.
The pink tongue retreated and the lips became cutely pinched, as though the princess were really refraining from smiling. Perhaps smiling was frowned upon in the insect world. Or it might be just a princess thing. Ryo’s curiosity was not aroused, in any case.
But the princess, she, was curious.
“You’re an arrogant human, aren’t you fisherman?” She wanted to know. She might not be smiling, but by the tone of her voice, Ryo could have sworn she was highly amused.
“I’m a beautiful human, your Grace. Absolutely beautiful. My nose, especially, is beautiful” Ryo affirmed and for once he wasn’t being arrogant, he was... reminiscing. “And if that’s not it then why are you doing all this, then? Why the fuck are you taking care of me? That’s what you’re doing isn’t it?”
“Why do you think?” the princess didn’t deny it, she simply returned the question neatly to him and Ryo hated when questions were returned to him. Plus his heart was going bonkers and he wasn’t in the mood for more bantering.
He cut to the chase.
“Whyever it is, princess, I don’t deserve it. Any of it.”
“Oh’, the princess said, still charmingly curious, ‘whyever not?”
Ryo gripped a sleeve of her kimono.
He had to make her understand, suddenly.
“I killed the weirdest being in the whole universe, okay. I killed him.” He said.
“Ah.” The princess responded and her countenance wasn’t so composed now.
“And they also happened to be the...the...the...”
“I know.” The princess interrupted. “There’s no need to say it. Don’t say it”
The princess wasn’t intimating an order so much as begging him, the fisherman, now.
“You know?”
How could the princess know about Kame having been the most wonderful being in the whole universe?
But it would seem she did know. She reprieved her hands from Ryo's hair, they were back inside her kimono sleeves in a flash and he still hadn’t seen what they looked like and what did it matter anyway? They’d just be boringly beautiful, like all the rest of her, right?
“What do you think this is all about fisherman?” She asked seriously.
Didn’t the princess understand that Ryo couldn’t think? It was probably her own doing too. She had done something to him, massaging his scalp like that. For once in his life, his shrewd brain seemed to have given up on him. He gripped the kimono sleeve just a little bit tighter to bring, not the princess, just her fragrance closer.
“I don’t fucking know.”
He was being more honest than he had been in years.
“I’m here” The princess said, and it sounded like she was taking a vow, “to make you happy, fisherman.”
“I don’t deserve to be happy, ever. I can’t be.” Ryo protested. He was gripping the sleeve so tight it felt like the fine fabric might tear. Maybe it was the fever but he felt frightened.
“Ah, but don’t you see?” The princess said soothingly. “What punishment could be more befitting for you than happiness, precisely? Immeasurable happiness heaped upon you, and all along knowing what it is you have done.”
Everything made horrifying sense to Ryo then.
Fucking up his life - that would have been way too easy, too much of an extraordinary relief for him as opposed to a life heavy with a happiness he would always know he hadn’t earned, a happiness that would stifle him alive second after second, minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, month after month and year after year.
It was the worst thing that could happen to him.
It was the most befitting punishment for the crime he had committed.
Yes, he’d live a horrible life of a happiness he didn’t deserve and his heart would choke on it every single second and hurt unspeakably for Kame’s sake and for his sin.
And that, he definitely, definitely deserved.
One last thing bothered Ryo.
“Why are you carrying this punishment out, princess? Did he belong to your people?”
The princess spoke softly, or perhaps Ryo, dozing off uncontrollably, was hearing less and less.
“Yes.”
It was so funny how even now that it was too late, learning a small fact about Kame made him feel such a lot.
“But why are you, why is the fucking princess of the insects herself carrying out the godamn penalty? Was he very important? He was, wasn’t he? He was so important. I knew he was. Kame...”
“Sshhh”
The princess shushed him, her azure eyes brimming with tears, as though she could not bear to even hear that name spoken aloud.
Ryo closed his eyes then and accepted his tortuous fate, falling asleep into the terrifying fragrance of this future life of happiness stretching out ahead of him, seemingly like all of eternity, as the Summer had done, once.
A teardrop fell onto Ryo’s mouth.
It tasted sweet.
