Coping Methods Arc #2: Kumokasumi (Haze): Part 2
Title: Kumokasumi (Haze)
Part: 2/3
...and all the rest of that...
*_*_*_*
Mari wasn’t all too fond of summer, most days, especially in Tokyo-late summer, yes, but not the kind of heavy, gaaaah get it off me noooo humidity that always seemed to fall just after the rainy season. Honestly, if someone had managed to bottle the sensation, it would have made a killing on the ‘gross things that kids like’ market…
At least it was July. Sticky enough that she woke up feeling like a drowned kitten without being nearly as cute, if she forgot to turn on the cooler or open the windows when she woke up, but… on the other hand, no more stumbling across Hiyoshi in Ueno park, with one hand on the corrugated bark of a single, late-blooming peach tree, far away from the mad rush of tourists swamping the last of the cherry blossoms. No more temple visits to see the season’s first ajisai, early in June, only to find him sitting in a quiet seiza before a moss-covered statue of Kannon, so small she’d never really noticed it, carefully filling a little stone cup with a little bamboo dipper.
Apparently, in being Japanese, she’d somehow-somehow-managed to inherit the ability to drool over a handful of lovely, delicate seasonal flowers.
Apparently, in being subject to the whim of a certain yappy little fox, her desire to drool over a handful of lovely, delicate flowers without being surrounded by drunk-on-spring, entirely too boisterous adults meant that she had no choice but to run headlong into Hiyoshi Wakashi whenever she went out for her own personal hanami. Last year, well, she hadn’t actually known Tokyo well enough to know any places but the larger, more crowded ones, so her first spring in Japan had been mostly composed of trying to keep from being splashed by lukewarm Asahi beer rather than admiring the blossoms, but this year…
This year, she’d had grace to look at, as well as beauty, and she’d never truly thought that it could hurt her before; it was easy to be annoyed at how she felt when he was standing far away, on the courts, all arrogance and hair highlit by sunlight rather than by dye, and just the faintest hint of cool disdain in his eyes. It was easy to laugh when she had to acknowledge that Hiyoshi was just as much a tennis jock as the rest of them, and all the focus in his eyes was for a little furry yellow ball that he was about to swat over a net.
It was harder when he glanced up at her, still on his knees on the grass, and nodded, wordless, before bending his head to his hands in prayer-just an acknowledgement that she was there, the barest flicker of recognition, and perhaps a good thing; with nothing but air and early summer and temple shadows between them, too reminiscent of the moment she’d fallen in love with him in the first place, all the excuses and jokes she made to herself about how she felt had fluttered in damp shreds around her, like rice paper.
She’d probably have gone to her knees if he’d said her name.
And my, wouldn’t that have made him laugh. Or, well, stare.
“You like quiet places, Taira-san,” he’d observed, when he’d risen from his knees, brushing them off in sharp, brusque little motions. She should have left, really-not given him a chance to speak, because she was an upperclassman, and if anything, Hiyoshi knew his manners; he couldn’t just ignore her and leave. “Unusual, isn’t it, for Atobe’s fanclub president?”
They had that in common, one could presume. But she’d been able to laugh, then, a touch shakily-laughing, because a more self-centered boy would have assumed that she had a crush on him and was seeking him out, when the boy she’d loved for two years and more didn’t even think of it. She’d reached out a hand to pet the early dew from a fat clump of blooming ajisai, a delicate almost-pink handful, round as a wedding bouquet. “Probably. But what he’s trying not to know hasn’t hurt him yet.”
And he’d watched her. Just looked at her with something that was almost-almost-curiousity, before he’d dipped his chin in her direction and left with a murmured “Osaki ni, ” and the ache that the small curve in his eyes had left her with had brought her to her knees, then, the dark of her plaid skirt stained darker with dew.
Thwapping the small Inari statue in the opposite corner from the tiny Kannon one he’d gifted with water would have probably made her feel better, but it probably wouldn’t have done anything good for her karma, so she’d settled for shaking a fist at it.
For a second-just a second-he’d seen her, not the girl who kept the rest of the club shushed at the appropriate times and made sure that all the Regulars were passing their classes. And that was the girl he’d nodded at when he’d left, studying her face for just an instant too long, because Hiyoshi had never bothered to examine the fanclub president before.
After the ajisai, well, the only things that really bloomed in this ridiculous heat-or so Shishido had commented-were pimples.
Thank God for summer.
So she was avoiding him-and it all felt like middle school all over again.
The same ache. The same quiet stillness that settled, cool and hot in slow turns like convection currents, deep inside and sometimes rose to clog her throat.
Two years later, it was the same, looking over the fence and not allowing herself to wonder what if, because there weren’t any what ifs, or whens, or maybes.
It wasn’t her way to avoid uncomfortable questions; well, if anything, growing up with a doctor had taught her that keeping poison and pus inside was not a good thing. Ignoring what made you sick only made you sicker; she’d seen enough pictures of little baby ulcers becoming big, nasty mama ulcers taped onto her father’s bulletin board to know that.
So, no, it really didn’t explain why exactly she’d let herself completely ignore what she felt for Hiyoshi, but being sick was one thing-there was always going to be someone who could fix what was wrong with you, or try to. Being in love with someone when you had to admit to yourself that you really… didn’t have anyone to tell about it…
And wondering, a year after she should have outgrown a crush-a year when she hadn’t so much as caught sight of a hint of baby-fine bronze hair-if, maybe, maybe, this wasn’t just going to go away.
It wasn’t going to be the rest of her life. She’d be over him.
Some day. One day. Mari smiled, down at her hands, not quite sure what she was smiling at-some day, she’d wake up, and realise that her dreams hadn’t held intense, intense dark eyes fringed with bronze. She’d walk onto the courts without her heart fluttering-damn it, fluttering, of all things!-in her throat whenever she saw him move. She’d catch him under a plum tree with a book open on his lap, admiring the beauty of the scenery with quiet, quiet eyes focusing on a just-opening bud as if he were attempting to will it into bloom, without having to force herself into smiling at the thought that when he found the girl he truly wanted, he’d look at her like that, too…
One day.
But… but what if it… what if it never… she couldn’t. She just…
No.
No. That possibility wasn’t even funny.
Gracious, no wonder she couldn’t sleep nowadays.
Well, she could have told her father, that was a possibility If she’d been younger-if they’d still been what they’d been when they’d lived in the States-she might have even considered it. Except nowadays, she would be talking to an empty dining table, after another call from him saying that he was going to be working late, and that she didn’t need to wait for him.
Except the father who’d still called her ‘baby’ and tried to dangle her from her ankles over her laughing protests when she’d been ten seemed to have been left behind in Hawaii along with one of their suitcases, and unlike the suitcase, hadn’t been delivered on the next plane. No doubt, considering American society, she could probably have sued the airline for it. Huh, and probably won.
She might have told her mother. Except her mother was on Maui, too many light years away, and probably with her own problems, now that she had to work again.
She could have told her friends.
Right. Friends. Ri-ight. A thousand and one acquaintances, yes. Anyone she really wanted to tell about Hiyoshi Wakashi-no. If only because, well, girls would be girls, and if she ever told one of them… well, there were times when the fact that the fangirl communication system worked on the same principles of an atom bomb was to everyone’s advantage, and times when she’d wished it worked like a telephone line, just so she could snip it in just the right place. Or, well, shoot the appropriate person, for the good of the masses and all that.
So that sort of explained why exactly she did not want to go over there and find out why Jirou’s gaze was as fixed on her as it normally was on Atobe.
My, that was just not a pretty image, was it?
Really, it could be anything as innocent as the fact that Jirou was attempting to fit her face into his imagined version of one of his favorite characters (and considering Jirou’s taste in literature, also not a pretty image, but somewhat preferable to Jirou staring at her the way he normally looked at Atobe) or the fact that he was thinking very very hard about something and had simply forgotten that staring really wasn’t very polite.
Mari had to smile, just a little, at the memory of walking into Atobe’s and Jirou’s room, just a little earlier this year, only to find Jirou hugging his knees, rocking himself back and forth-and staring with something like pure joy at a strip of apple peel that had fallen into the shape of a perfect, round lowercase A. He’d been so overcome with delight that she really hadn’t had the heart to tell him that it was just a game.
Atobe’d been utterly dumbfounded to find his roommate plastered to his fanclub president, bouncing, hugging, wide awake, and trying his utmost to feed her a piece of fruit.
She and Jirou had both dissolved into laughter when Atobe had demanded how exactly she’d managed to obtain caffeinated apples.
…and wasn’t it just weird how that very same sleepy player was just about as awake, if somewhat less energetic, a little further down the bleachers-his chin pillowed on his hands, eyes half-closed, but still. Not only was Jirou, who’d earned his way back into the Singles Two slot earlier in the year-much to the displeasure of many of the seniors on the tennis club-entirely too aware for three in the afternoon, considering that he was neither playing a match with Atobe nor enthusing about literature to everyone’s disgruntlement-he was… staring
Since she wasn’t particularly of the belief that he’d become psychic anytime soon, either she had something on her face (and it wasn’t impossible) or a certain someone who was becoming entirely too indulgent hadn’t been watching the coffee pot carefully enough to keep Jirou from having a second cup of mocha this morning.
She had to admit-finding out that Jirou liked mocha had been a good move on Atobe’s part. Learning how to say ‘no’ when his roommate pleaded for just a little more… well, that would likely have been a better move, but a technique she didn’t think Atobe was likely to master anytime in the near future.
On the other hand, Jirou unable to nap because of the caffeine in his system had the tendency to wiggle back and forth, flopping like a flounder which couldn’t quite decide which side to lie on. Well, and then there was Jirou’s never-fail technique of pillowing himself on every available lap in the vicinity, in the hopes of finding one comfortable enough to lull him to sleep, so… that meant something on her face.
True, skirt hemlines in her general vicinity were migrating upwards with the heat, but considering that hers were in permanent hiberation, it wasn’t as if anything there had changed… and even if any of the other girls had been around her (and they weren’t) it wasn’t as if Jirou cared about things like female hemlines anyway. They’d been in school for three months together already, she was fairly sure that the status quo today was as it had always been, and her stomach had almost stopped doing the twist-and-squeeze thing that had left her deaf, for a moment, whenever Hiyoshi walked out onto the tennis courts. (She’d decided that the brief twist of sensation was probably an indication of someone’s divinely amused gaze being fixed on her poor, hapless little head.)
The thought amused her just enough that she started, just a hint, when a sharp little chin dug into her thigh, immediately followed by the by-now-familiar weight of Jirou slumping onto her lap. Face-down. All right, perhaps the coffee hypothesis wasn’t so off. “Mar-iiii?”
Well, the half-sleepy whine was familiar, at least. As was the feel of his hair through her fingers, after she’d managed to displace his face to a somewhat more comfortable position; she had to admit, for all his denial, Atobe was certainly right in the fact that Jirou’s hair really was wonderful for petting. “Hm?”
He rubbed his cheek against her, just a little, and she had to laugh-his hair did tickle when strands of it poked through her light, summerweight skirt. “When’s your birthday?”
She relaxed, just a little. Was that it? Hardly world-shattering. “November. Why?”
“November, when?”
“November thirtieth.” She winced, just a little, at the unpleasant twang of a ball hitting a racquet badly; Atobe was going to be rather put out with whoever that was.
The shift of weight on her lap-Jirou rolling onto his back-made her blink, and glance downwards. And blink again.
Jirou was studying her with enough intensity to be frightening, almost-none of the warm, misty edges of sleep clouded his eyes. “I didn’t know that. Missed your birthday last year.” He blinked, once, twice, before rubbing just under his eye, looking… well, just a little mournful. Perhaps just a little ashamed. “The year before, too. You didn’t say anything.”
Too cute. She had to laugh, this time, reaching down to tap his nose. You didn’t ask. “It’s just a birthday.” The boy really was just too blasted cute for her nonexistent mental health, and she did actually understand the fangirl desire to squeeze him until he squeaked. (Which he actually did, when hugged a little too tightly-the most pathetic little sound before everyone dissolved into laughter, and it always got Atobe rather… peeved, for reasons known to everyone but Atobe himself.)
He was pouting, and pushing hair from his face, poor little thing, looking rather… put-upon. “But you always make a fuss about mine. ”
Well, yes, not least because no doubt Atobe would have strung her up by her toenails if she’d somehow managed to forget, but that really wasn’t the point. Mari simply smiled, a little. “You’re fun to make a fuss over.”
It was true, too. She’d never really been much of one for bouncing, or aimless scampering-or amusement parks, for that matter, but never actually having had any siblings, well, she’d never realised really that there was a certain masochistic joy in chasing after an errant mop of blonde curls after Atobe had turned rather bilious around the edges and Jirou wanted just one more ride on the roller coaster. All right, so perhaps Atobe was learning to say ‘no’ to him. At least in the efforts of self-preservation.
There was that stare again; slow, and careful, and it really was making her a little nervous. There wasn’t a great deal that made her nervous. “I’ll remember this year. November thirty. I’ll write it down on Atobe’s organiser notepad.” She had to grin-Jirou’s messy handwriting appearing in Atobe’s neatly-arranged organiser would, no doubt, disgruntle the Type A team captain to no end. “So you’re…” he dragged a rather… abused… magazine out from under him, wrinkling his nose a little with the tip of his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth; Jirou didn’t accord the same reverence towards all reading material that he did towards books. “Sagittarius, right? The same as Hiyoshi?”
Was Jirou reading…? Yes, he was. And no doubt he’d be put out with her if she doubled over onto him laughing, considering how serious he seemed about this, because she really did have to find out which of the girls had given him a girls’ magazine special on horoscopes… She’d decide whether to pat the girl’s shoulder or whack her upside the head later. “Different years, but yes.”
“Oh.” He consulted the magazine, again, nibbling on his lower lip. “Oh, you’re a good match, then.”
Mari choked.
Words she honestly had never thought she’d hear from her own mouth, much less anyone else’s, and Jirou was getting that out of a horoscope? Well, Jirou’d been the one who’d taken her seriously about the apple game, too, those years ago, so he would, but-
But oh, ouch, for a second the pleasure she’d taken in hearing that had really, really hurt.
Gods, for someone who was supposed to be smart, she was such an idiot, and she could laugh at that if at nothing else. And at the fact that when she found the girl who’d given him that magazine, she was going to be in so much trouble… “If that were the case, then, if I’m not mistaken, I believe Shishido, Oshitari, and Atobe would be a good match. And dear gods, I really didn’t want to think about that.”
Well, they were in perfect accord for a second when Jirou looked up at her, she looked down at him, and they both wrinkled their noses. Probably for very different reasons, at that.
“But it’s different. You’re both Sagittarius, so it’s a good match. Shishido, Oshitari and Atobe are Libra, so it…” he studied the page again, following down a line with his fingertip, “they need balance, or something. Someone different from them.”
Which, well, they’d certainly gotten; she did have to smile, glancing down at two rather involved pairs of doubles players, yelling insults at each other across the net. She didn’t fool herself into thinking that horoscopes could be right, but, well, the coincidence, this time, really was beautifully uncanny.
Then again, she hadn’t believed in the perversity of fox-gods, before, either.
And that was when Jirou cocked his head, just a little, and said, “And besides, you like Hiyoshi, don’t you?”
It wasn’t the first time the world had stopped for her.
It wasn’t the first time it’d turned upside-down, spinning enough that it should have made her nauseous, spinning enough that she’d have gotten off if she could.
It wasn’t the first time she’d laughed it off, no matter how her throat was throbbing, her heart too loud in her ears, because she knew that, she knew it, but it made it horribly, horribly real to hear someone say it-even if it was Jirou, even if he was saying it with something that sounded like sweet, idle curiousity. He didn’t mean it that way. He couldn’t. And when she heard her voice… it just wasn’t right, somehow, that it sounded perfectly normal, but it did, yay, go me. “Of course I do. I’m the kind of person who appreciates insanity. It’s why I like you, too.”
She could even ruffle Jirou’s hair when she said it, too, because it was true.
But when she could bring herself to look down at him, silent in her lap, his eyes were quiet, and… sad, just a little. Like he knew. Like he knew, and Taira Mari didn’t run, she never had, even when her pulse was beating loudly enough in her ears to give her a headache.
She really, really needed to learn how to lie.
But he was too awake to let it slide with just that, because Jirou just didn’t let things go when he was quite this alert, when he let the magazine go flopping to the bleachers, his little fingers holding too tight onto the edge of her blouse. “The way I like Atobe, Mari.” Almost a reprimand. Almost, because Jirou sometimes-sometimes-saw too much.
Oh, Jirou.
Poor baby. Poor baby. She hadn’t been the only one wondering about these things, had she, and if she’d loved Hiyoshi for too long, well… well, didn’t she know exactly how long Jirou had been living with Atobe?
When he said it like that… there was too much knowledge in his eyes to lie. Too much of the same ache, except he knew what it felt like, if only for an instant, to have the hands of the boy he loved soothing away the pain. Atobe’s smile, the way Atobe cared for him, stroked his hair in his sleep, read to him in a voice slow with a patience she’d never expected from a brilliant, intolerant boy, and she didn’t have that from Hiyoshi-and she didn’t know, not quite, if she could have borne it with quite the same equilibrium as her little blonde darling had. Jirou was a good deal stronger than most people gave him any credit for.
“Yes,” she whispered, stroking his hair slowly with a hand that was trembling, damn it, and perhaps there was an odd freedom in the pain of admitting it aloud. Too softly. So strange, that the world was the same around her, the bleachers still rough and summer-hot under her thigh. “If you mean ‘too much’-then maybe, yes.”
Yes. No. Because you love Atobe because you know him, good and bad, and he treats you like he treats no-one else in this world.
And I feel the way I do for Hiyoshi because… because I do. For no apparent reason.
“Oh. ’M sorry.” He seemed to mean it, too, mumbled as it was, and perhaps any other time, the fact that he’d somehow managed to wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face in her stomach, chin digging hard enough into her to tickle, would have made her laugh. “Really, I really am.”
But he was easy enough to extract herself from-easy enough to nudge away from her until he was stretched out on her lap again with those sleepy, sleepy chocolate eyes not nearly sleepy enough. “What for?” For asking uncomfortable questions?
“Just am. Wouldn’t wish something like this on anyone. It shouldn’t happen to nice people,” much to her surprise, his fingers were cool on her cheek when he reached upwards and patted her, clumsy because Jirou was, and his little smile was just a little shaky, his fingers rough and callused. “And you’re really nice, Mari. You’re always doing things for people.”
‘Like this,’ he’d said, not ‘like that,’ and, well, perhaps he did understand; her mouth twisted into something that was almost a wry smile. “It keeps me busy, Jirou.” It was what she’d told Shishido. It was the truth. And what she hadn’t told Shishido… “I do small favors for people because I’m selfish, not because I’m nice. It’s what I’m good at, and… it… helps me not think about it.”
My, that did sound just as crazy aloud as it had in her head.
He didn’t tell her that it was unhealthy. That she needed to deal some other way. That she needed to get over him. Gods, she knew that, she knew that this was not a good spiral. And when the strain of waiting for that censure slipped from her shoulders, he was still watching her, rather intently, and she realised-Jirou probably was the only one of the people she knew who would have known that there was no point in saying it. There had been bad times for Jirou, too. “You’re not sleeping, though. I can tell. Even Atobe can tell.”
She’d been wondering why her workload from him had been significantly lighter the past few days. And if Atobe was noticing… except, wait, that wasn’t possible. “He can not. ”
Jirou blinked back up at her. “He can, too. He says you have eyebags ‘practically down to your nose,’ and that it’s ‘highly unattractive.’”
Oh. Well. So Atobe could notice, and she really did have to smile-just a little, because who knew that Jirou was so good at imitating Atobe’s, er, admittedly quite distinctive accent? “I’d accuse you of making that up, but it sounds entirely too much like him.”
“That’s ‘cause he did say it,” Jirou professed, with such confidence. “Just yesterday. So why not?”
Why not, indeed? “It’s hard to sleep, sometimes.” It felt like a confession-perhaps it was, because when she stared up at an empty, black ceiling, and wished that she had the time or the energy to put up some glowstars, or something… well, perhaps she’d get around to that tonight. If there was time. “It’ll pass.”
There were some things she didn’t believe, and, well, some things she had to.
“Nuh-uh, Mari. That’s bad. If you ever can’t sleep…” he said it with all the worry with which another person might have said ‘if you contract tuberculosis,’ and she had to squash down a smile, because he really did look so very serious, and of course Jirou would know about sleep. It really was sweet of him to offer contingencies. Though how it was he’d answer the phone when it took either a Kabaji-sized earthquake or his Atobe-sense to wake him up, Mari really wasn’t at all sure. “You can come over and sleep with me, okay? Atobe says I’m cuddly.”
She… blinked. She’d expected him to tell her to call him. Not sleep with him.
The desire to find out if Atobe had really said anything of the sort, or if Atobe-speak to the effect that Jirou always ended up twined around him in the morning was being filtered through a soft snooze-coloured lens (more likely than not, and more likely than not he understood Atobe’s sentiment if not the words) warred, briefly, with a more important concern before it lost. “Thank you, Jirou,” she ruffled his hair again, “but as cute as your sketches are… I’ve absolutely no desire to ever be in the same bed as Atobe Keigo. Awake or not.”
Actually, just the thought of it was making her break out into a rather nasty cold sweat. Atobe certainly was pretty enough, but dear lord, no, she didn’t need any more opportunities to see I-am-Perfect-sama at his most vulnerable, because the day she started actually liking him… No, she’d definitely and happily leave that dubious honor to his roommate.
Jirou’s entire body moved in a deep, deep breath, before he blew in out in a deep puff. He really was earnest as a puppy, sometimes, too. “I know. I’ve got my own room, too, though. Don’t use it very much, but… if you come, we can have a sleepover there, okay? With cocoa. And marshmallows. The little ones. You like those, right? They always help me sleep.”
It was quite close to the strangest thing she’d ever heard. And, coming from Jirou… quite possibly the sweetest thing she’d ever heard, at that. She had to admit-she’d always known that the tennis club boys liked her, but liking was different from caring, and offering to give up a night in the bed of the boy he loved, well… she was most definitely touched. “Oh, Jirou. ” Her smile had just a touch more waterwork to it than it really needed to have, but there was some saving grace, at least, to the fact that she wasn’t unaware of the irony of this entire conversation. Not when she’d rubbed a comforting hand down Jirou’s back through some of the bad times, and never honestly expected that he’d think to return the favor. And definitely not when she had to squash down a retort that almost anything helped Jirou sleep-from miniature marshmallows to airplane sonic booms. “You really don’t have to.“
Because she wanted one of them, at least, to have some dubious comfort in this ineffably annoying life, and for all that Jirou so very rarely spoke about his feelings, well… for him, falling asleep in Atobe’s arms, whether Atobe acknowledged what they were or not, had to be the closest thing to Heaven on Earth that he had.
Maybe there just weren’t enough miracles to go around.
But he was sitting up, and resting his chin on her shoulder where she couldn’t avoid the warmth of his eyes, the soft puff of his breath on her cheek. And then she blinked, as he stretched out and rubbed his cheek-ridiculously smooth, free of even the slightest traces of peach-fuzz rasp; it was easy to forget he actually was both a little taller and six months older than she was-against hers. “S’okay, as long as it’s not all the time, right?”
The nuzzle made her blink, because as far as she knew, Jirou was always affectionate, cuddly as the little golden retriever he did sometimes resemble, but… “You can’t take care of me, Jirou,” she chuckled… not least because his warmth against her felt good, the fact that his gaze was surprisingly firm and steady even when he knew… she hadn’t expected that.
Hadn’t realised he saw her quite so clearly.
Hadn’t thought, really, that anyone would particularly want to.
So it really was a very, very good thing that the sweet boy was gay.
“I know that, but. Someone has to, so I can try, ” he insisted, firmly. “And if you don’t come, and you look like you’re still not sleeping, I’ll… I’ll come over and sleep at your place!”
…and considering that this was a boy who’d been found tied up in the perfect position to be artistically molested by a certain Atobe Keigo a little more than a year and a half ago, he actually would, too. She did adore Jirou, but he had less shame than most cats she knew.
His insistence on the presumption that apparently hypersomnia was contagious, and if she was in the same bed as him, she’d be able to sleep as soundly as he did, would have been far less amusing if he hadn’t been perfectly serious.
“My father will not like that.” Well, he couldn’t deny the fact that, much as she hung out with the tennis club, she most definitely was a girl, and he wasn’t… even when she couldn’t quite stop grinning at the expression that would likely be on her father’s face, if he ever found her curled up in bed with a sleeping blonde boy just about her height curled around her. Well, in the instant before the bomb went off, in any case. Or the instant before Atobe called to demand that she return his roommate.
“Oh.” Jirou blinked at her, before slumping down into her lap again and rolling over for a long, sleepily languourous stretch. And a yawn big enough to swallow his eyes. “You can tell him I don’t like girls that way?”
Probably fortunate for the female population as a whole. “I’m not sure he’ll like that all that much, either,” she murmured, dryly. She’d always thought her father was something like open-minded, at least for someone his age, but she’d been discovering, since coming to Japan, that quite a few things she’d thought about him hadn’t quite fit into the square hole, as it were.
Though, actually, it wasn’t quite so much that Jirou liked boys, it was that Jirou liked Atobe, but somehow, she didn’t quite think most people would understand that distinction. The cuteness did need to be balanced out by a rather extreme fondness for the weirdest person she’d ever met.
Once again, she really had no right to talk.
“Mari?” the rough tips of his fingers tickled, a little, where they played across her calf-just under where her skirt met skin, and probably she could have been offended if she’d really thought about it, but… Jirou truly just did not understand about personal space. And it wasn’t as if his fingers were uncomfortable-just a soft, slow little stroke underneath her knee. Like, perhaps, he was petting her the way she’d always petted him. “How long?”
She could have asked him what she meant. Could have pretended that she didn’t understand. But her smile felt thin, bitter as coffee with too little substance to it, and perhaps she was stretched a little too thin. Just a little. “Two years, almost, now. It doesn’t matter, though.” But the laugh in her throat was full, and hearty still, because it wasn’t going to ever stop being funny. Damnably, damnably funny. Dumb fox couldn’t take her sense of humor away-or, well, maybe dumb fox had given her the sense of humor. “Stupid, isn’t it? I don’t know him at all.”
He didn’t disagree, but then again, she wouldn’t have believed him even if he had.
“Mari?” he picked up the magazine again, and she watched with something like amusement as he tucked it rather carefully-well, for him-into his back pocket, where it wiggled like a pruned peacock tail when he shifted, sitting up and leaning his cheek on her shoulder; his hair smelled, just a little, like almonds, but perhaps warmer.
Jirou truly was a good deal cannier than anyone gave him credit for-she wouldn’t have been all too surprised if the magazine had just been a ruse… “Hm?”
He blinked up at her, slowly, before nuzzling against her shoulder again, so close that he was all soft blurred golden sleep and very, very earnest chocolate eyes. “Do you want a hug?”
Jirou really was going to make a rather ungrateful and undeserving someone a lovely little husband, one day.
“Sure.”
Mari wasn’t all too surprised, either, when he fell asleep draped onto her.
*_*_*_*
“Mariko-chan?” if the woman’s mouth had drawn itself any tighter, Mari suspected she might have imploded. My, wouldn’t that have been a sight? “Don’t you think your father will want something a little more… sophisticated?”
She was not going to scream. She was not going to throw a piece of teppanyaki steak against the wall. She had to deal with Atobe Keigo every day of the school year, almost, and she’d managed it for two years without going insane, she could definitely deal with this-though, unlike with him, she really couldn’t kick her aunt in the shins when she got to be just a little too much. “Obasan,” she didn’t even sound like she was gritting her teeth. Then again, she’d made a fine art of that. “Please, it’s just Mari.” She could deal with the ‘chan.’ Family was family was family, but… she could not deal with the ‘ko.’
And her father liked teppanyaki with garlic butter sauce, and a pumpkin salad on the side. ‘Unsophisticated’ as it was.
“Why?” she didn’t need to look backwards to see that obasan’s eyebrows were probably once again in that neatly trimmed and perfectly coiffured hairline. “Your name is Mariko, isn’t it? It’s a very cute name. If you used it, it would make you so much more… feminine.”
Oh, God, it was going to be a very, very long afternoon, trailing into evening as slowly as the process dragging Jirou bodily across the bleachers when he weighed more than she did, every ounce of it raw sleek muscle. Kou-obasan hadn’t been around to visit in so long, her da said. Couldn’t she take a leave from club practice just one day, so that they could all be together for a nice afternoon with family?
Never mind that he’d called from the hospital and said that he wasn’t going to be home until later, and could she entertain her aunt Kou until he got back? Perhaps Kou-obasan could help her prepare dinner, since she liked cooking, he said. Perhaps they could talk about woman things, he said.
It looked like ‘woman things’ involved the fact that her name wasn’t cute enough without the tag that would magically make her a obedient, sweet, slim little Japanese woman.
“It is Mariko, obasan,” and darn, really, she’d almost managed to forget that, considering that no-one, not even her teacher, had blinked when she’d introduced herself on her first day of school as ‘Taira Mari.’ She hadn’t been all too surprised that her father had registered her under that name. “But no-one ever calls me that.”
Ever.
And she’d told her father to tell Kou-obasan to stop calling her that, since the woman obviously wasn’t going to listen to someone who wasn’t cute enough to be listened to, and when he’d raised his shoulders helplessly and said something about family and tradition and how she was named after her great-grandmother on that side, and how Kou had been her favorite…
Her aunt’s mouth pursed, again. “Well. I see. Well, someone should. ”
She’d come to the conclusion that her father, much as she’d adored him once, really didn’t know anything about her at all. Well, actually, she couldn’t honestly remember the last time since they’d moved to this country that she’d really sat down and had a conversation with him that didn’t involve either her report card or a mess at the hospital. So perhaps-perhaps-it was understandable.
Mari just sighed, a little.
Yes, Kou-basan was a superlative cook; Mari’d had dinner at her house a time or two, perhaps, and had been-rather grudgingly-very impressed. Really, what had been on the table then wouldn’t have done shame to an excellent Japanese restaurant, if one could ignore the fact that the waitress was a harpy, and though Mari was fairly sure they did own that sort of tableware, just in case her da brought any of the other doctors home with him, she was equally certain she’d never actually needed to use it. And, to be honest, Mari would probably have taken it more than a little amiss if Kou-obasan had offered to cook dinner, but… somehow, this version was somewhat worse.
‘Helping her prepare dinner’ consisted of of raising a cool and condescending eyebrow when she didn’t bother to arrange the pumpkin salad into layers of color and shape and simply slid it into bowls, commenting on how she really needed to put more effort towards presentation in her cooking, because no-one was ever going to marry her for her looks.
Obasan was joking, of course. Probably. Still, it was probably a good thing that Mari already knew that, else that might really have stung.
Retorting that anyone who married a girl for her looks damned well deserved whatever he got, thank you very much, probably wasn’t a good idea, either.
Well, of course Kou-obasan could afford to cut her daikon into hexagonal prisms, press and arrange maki-sushi into lovely little flower patterns, and stand over a stove for two hours slow-cooking garlic so it could be just the perfect texture to be sprinkled over meat as a garnish, (honestly, who outside of a restaurant had the time to do things like that?!) because it wasn’t as if the woman had ever had aspirations towards doing anything useful.
Considering that Mari hadn’t yet made a smart-mouthed comment as to that effect, either, she considered it a good sign that she had more self-control than she’d ever considered possible.
Thank all the gods, even a certain little fox one, that the one bit of housework she never, ever slacked on was keeping the house clean, because she just did not want to think about what her father’s older sister would have said if there had been, shock, dust anywhere. She just wasn’t planning to mention that her father did his fair share of the cleaning, doctor that he was, because gasp, the horror of the man of the house with a vacuum in hand.
Kou-obasan frowned, again, but heh, really, how did one respond to a sigh? “Is steak teppanyaki really a good idea, Mariko-chan?” Well, considering that it was already being cooked, the point was rather moot, but she was doing everything short of poking at it. Perhaps if she did, it would poke back. “It seems… fatty.”
Mostly because cutting off the fat would have made it hard as a rock, and she could get rid of that after it was cooked, anyway. “It’s tenderloin, obasan. And father likes teppanyaki.”
She’d never seen her aunt without that permanent fixture of a frown, and perhaps it was a good thing that Kenichi-ojisan had married Kou-obasan for her looks, because it certainly wasn’t for her personality. “Yes, but all that… butter.”
Well, yes, Mari couldn’t exactly help the fact that their favorite sauce for teppanyaki was garlic in drawn butter, and that was her fault. “It’s good that way.”
Wait for it, wait for it, it had to be mentioned at least once every time her father’s older sister was over to visit… and considering that they were in a kitchen, it was just virtually impossible to avoid.
“Of course, but don’t you need to watch your figure?” Ah. There it was. “You’re a little…” her aunt paused, so very delicately that Mari could almost ignore the fact that that particular comment had been utterly and entirely uncalled for.
Her figure had been considered perfectly acceptable and actually much complemented before coming to a forsaken country where it was absolutely normal to feed girls on starvation rations, actually, but there really were a great many things coming to mind that she was definitely not going to say. “I can run five miles-eight kilometres-in thirty minutes, obasan.” She wasn’t going to stab the steak, either. What a waste of perfectly lovely meat that would have been. I am what I am.
“Well, yes, that might be so, but you’re a little… hmmm…”
It was amusing, how Mari was the one of the two of them still smiling, really. “Fat?” it really was so very funny, because the poison sweetness she could hear in her own voice would have, she suspected, had the tennis club Regulars running for cover, and the fanclub girls going wee-wee-wee all the way home. Then again, she did have them rather well trained.
And her damned aunt didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, Mariko-chan, but…”
No, of course she wouldn’t put it that way.
Mari shrugged off her apron with just a little too much force, the straps flapping in a sharp plastic crack against the wall when she draped it over its hook, and turned down the stove to reach for her bag. She hadn’t known her aunt was coming when she’d last done groceries, they really didn’t have enough garlic for three people, and it was still early enough that everything would still be open and she could get back in time to serve dinner…
But she’d have killed for a hug from Jirou right about now, when the last time he’d done it, he’d commented sleepily-with his cheek tucked against hers because he was just the right height to do that-on how hugging her was almost as nice as hugging Atobe, because she had nice warm muscle under her skin, not bony sharp bits. He’d said it contentedly enough, too, that she hadn’t actually really minded being compared to her ‘boss.’
She was Taira Mari, and she just did not cry, and much as she did run, she definitely didn’t run away.
Though, Kashiwa being as far from central Tokyo as it was was certainly a blessing, sometimes, since it was a fair walk to the train station anyway, and it meant that she could reasonably go to very, very distant supermarkets…
When Obasan’s eyes flashed like that, Mari became painfully aware of from which side of the family she’d gotten her ability to glare from. “Mariko-chan, where are you going?” Plus that voice, oh, she definitely could grow to despise that voice, and the name, well, she’d always despised that. “Your father will be home soon, and you’re not going to greet him?”
Oh. Of course it wasn’t proper for her to leave, because of course since her mother didn’t live with them any longer, if she left, there wouldn’t be anyone to bow and grovel over father’s feet and say ‘okaerinasai’ when he got home. Like a ‘proper’ Japanese woman ‘should.’
She’d always been extraordinarily bad at bowing and groveling, anyway. She’d work on ‘proper’ the day someone managed to drum Japanese formal speech into her head.
“He can open the door perfectly well on his own, obasan. He has hands.” Oops. Temper, temper. That wasn’t quite what she’d been intending to say-or, er, rather, it had been exactly what she’d been thinking, but apparently the little locker where she was keeping all the things that she wasn’t allowed to say was full to overflowing… “Tell him I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, young lady.” Oooh, utterly aghast, that was a new one. “That mother of yours didn’t teach you any-“
She’d already closed the door very, very gently behind her by the time Kou-obasan had finished that sentence.
It almost made one wish for a subway molester, because it would have been nice to have someone around that she could yell her throat out at… though, well, most subway molesters with any sense of self-preservation probably would have taken one look at the look on her face, and headed straight for the next car.
Actually, it was very much coincidental that her favorite supermarket happened to be more than half an hour from home, a few side streets from Shinjuku, and the too-strong aircon in the subway car really did wonders for the heat trying to bury itself under her collar.
Though, er, it seemed her already nonexistent sense of direction took a turn for the worse when she was in a bit of a mood, because, ah, bright lights and red lanterns were all very well, especially since it was a little dark out… but not when they spelled out the words “HOURLY RATES!” “LOVE HOTEL!” and “GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS!”
She’d almost-but not quite-wished for a subway molester, but this… was a bit much.
The fox god’s sense of humor did actually genuinely amuse her sometimes, and anyone who was wondering about the crazy overweight girl laughing herself absolutely silly in the middle of a rather nice-looking red light district… well, they could just damned well wonder.
It was just funny enough that she smiled at her distinctly evil aunt-with all her teeth showing-when she got back home an hour later with a fresh bag of garlic.
*_*_*_*
Tsuzuku (To be continued)
Part: 2/3
...and all the rest of that...
*_*_*_*
Mari wasn’t all too fond of summer, most days, especially in Tokyo-late summer, yes, but not the kind of heavy, gaaaah get it off me noooo humidity that always seemed to fall just after the rainy season. Honestly, if someone had managed to bottle the sensation, it would have made a killing on the ‘gross things that kids like’ market…
At least it was July. Sticky enough that she woke up feeling like a drowned kitten without being nearly as cute, if she forgot to turn on the cooler or open the windows when she woke up, but… on the other hand, no more stumbling across Hiyoshi in Ueno park, with one hand on the corrugated bark of a single, late-blooming peach tree, far away from the mad rush of tourists swamping the last of the cherry blossoms. No more temple visits to see the season’s first ajisai, early in June, only to find him sitting in a quiet seiza before a moss-covered statue of Kannon, so small she’d never really noticed it, carefully filling a little stone cup with a little bamboo dipper.
Apparently, in being Japanese, she’d somehow-somehow-managed to inherit the ability to drool over a handful of lovely, delicate seasonal flowers.
Apparently, in being subject to the whim of a certain yappy little fox, her desire to drool over a handful of lovely, delicate flowers without being surrounded by drunk-on-spring, entirely too boisterous adults meant that she had no choice but to run headlong into Hiyoshi Wakashi whenever she went out for her own personal hanami. Last year, well, she hadn’t actually known Tokyo well enough to know any places but the larger, more crowded ones, so her first spring in Japan had been mostly composed of trying to keep from being splashed by lukewarm Asahi beer rather than admiring the blossoms, but this year…
This year, she’d had grace to look at, as well as beauty, and she’d never truly thought that it could hurt her before; it was easy to be annoyed at how she felt when he was standing far away, on the courts, all arrogance and hair highlit by sunlight rather than by dye, and just the faintest hint of cool disdain in his eyes. It was easy to laugh when she had to acknowledge that Hiyoshi was just as much a tennis jock as the rest of them, and all the focus in his eyes was for a little furry yellow ball that he was about to swat over a net.
It was harder when he glanced up at her, still on his knees on the grass, and nodded, wordless, before bending his head to his hands in prayer-just an acknowledgement that she was there, the barest flicker of recognition, and perhaps a good thing; with nothing but air and early summer and temple shadows between them, too reminiscent of the moment she’d fallen in love with him in the first place, all the excuses and jokes she made to herself about how she felt had fluttered in damp shreds around her, like rice paper.
She’d probably have gone to her knees if he’d said her name.
And my, wouldn’t that have made him laugh. Or, well, stare.
“You like quiet places, Taira-san,” he’d observed, when he’d risen from his knees, brushing them off in sharp, brusque little motions. She should have left, really-not given him a chance to speak, because she was an upperclassman, and if anything, Hiyoshi knew his manners; he couldn’t just ignore her and leave. “Unusual, isn’t it, for Atobe’s fanclub president?”
They had that in common, one could presume. But she’d been able to laugh, then, a touch shakily-laughing, because a more self-centered boy would have assumed that she had a crush on him and was seeking him out, when the boy she’d loved for two years and more didn’t even think of it. She’d reached out a hand to pet the early dew from a fat clump of blooming ajisai, a delicate almost-pink handful, round as a wedding bouquet. “Probably. But what he’s trying not to know hasn’t hurt him yet.”
And he’d watched her. Just looked at her with something that was almost-almost-curiousity, before he’d dipped his chin in her direction and left with a murmured “Osaki ni, ” and the ache that the small curve in his eyes had left her with had brought her to her knees, then, the dark of her plaid skirt stained darker with dew.
Thwapping the small Inari statue in the opposite corner from the tiny Kannon one he’d gifted with water would have probably made her feel better, but it probably wouldn’t have done anything good for her karma, so she’d settled for shaking a fist at it.
For a second-just a second-he’d seen her, not the girl who kept the rest of the club shushed at the appropriate times and made sure that all the Regulars were passing their classes. And that was the girl he’d nodded at when he’d left, studying her face for just an instant too long, because Hiyoshi had never bothered to examine the fanclub president before.
After the ajisai, well, the only things that really bloomed in this ridiculous heat-or so Shishido had commented-were pimples.
Thank God for summer.
So she was avoiding him-and it all felt like middle school all over again.
The same ache. The same quiet stillness that settled, cool and hot in slow turns like convection currents, deep inside and sometimes rose to clog her throat.
Two years later, it was the same, looking over the fence and not allowing herself to wonder what if, because there weren’t any what ifs, or whens, or maybes.
It wasn’t her way to avoid uncomfortable questions; well, if anything, growing up with a doctor had taught her that keeping poison and pus inside was not a good thing. Ignoring what made you sick only made you sicker; she’d seen enough pictures of little baby ulcers becoming big, nasty mama ulcers taped onto her father’s bulletin board to know that.
So, no, it really didn’t explain why exactly she’d let herself completely ignore what she felt for Hiyoshi, but being sick was one thing-there was always going to be someone who could fix what was wrong with you, or try to. Being in love with someone when you had to admit to yourself that you really… didn’t have anyone to tell about it…
And wondering, a year after she should have outgrown a crush-a year when she hadn’t so much as caught sight of a hint of baby-fine bronze hair-if, maybe, maybe, this wasn’t just going to go away.
It wasn’t going to be the rest of her life. She’d be over him.
Some day. One day. Mari smiled, down at her hands, not quite sure what she was smiling at-some day, she’d wake up, and realise that her dreams hadn’t held intense, intense dark eyes fringed with bronze. She’d walk onto the courts without her heart fluttering-damn it, fluttering, of all things!-in her throat whenever she saw him move. She’d catch him under a plum tree with a book open on his lap, admiring the beauty of the scenery with quiet, quiet eyes focusing on a just-opening bud as if he were attempting to will it into bloom, without having to force herself into smiling at the thought that when he found the girl he truly wanted, he’d look at her like that, too…
One day.
But… but what if it… what if it never… she couldn’t. She just…
No.
No. That possibility wasn’t even funny.
Gracious, no wonder she couldn’t sleep nowadays.
Well, she could have told her father, that was a possibility If she’d been younger-if they’d still been what they’d been when they’d lived in the States-she might have even considered it. Except nowadays, she would be talking to an empty dining table, after another call from him saying that he was going to be working late, and that she didn’t need to wait for him.
Except the father who’d still called her ‘baby’ and tried to dangle her from her ankles over her laughing protests when she’d been ten seemed to have been left behind in Hawaii along with one of their suitcases, and unlike the suitcase, hadn’t been delivered on the next plane. No doubt, considering American society, she could probably have sued the airline for it. Huh, and probably won.
She might have told her mother. Except her mother was on Maui, too many light years away, and probably with her own problems, now that she had to work again.
She could have told her friends.
Right. Friends. Ri-ight. A thousand and one acquaintances, yes. Anyone she really wanted to tell about Hiyoshi Wakashi-no. If only because, well, girls would be girls, and if she ever told one of them… well, there were times when the fact that the fangirl communication system worked on the same principles of an atom bomb was to everyone’s advantage, and times when she’d wished it worked like a telephone line, just so she could snip it in just the right place. Or, well, shoot the appropriate person, for the good of the masses and all that.
So that sort of explained why exactly she did not want to go over there and find out why Jirou’s gaze was as fixed on her as it normally was on Atobe.
My, that was just not a pretty image, was it?
Really, it could be anything as innocent as the fact that Jirou was attempting to fit her face into his imagined version of one of his favorite characters (and considering Jirou’s taste in literature, also not a pretty image, but somewhat preferable to Jirou staring at her the way he normally looked at Atobe) or the fact that he was thinking very very hard about something and had simply forgotten that staring really wasn’t very polite.
Mari had to smile, just a little, at the memory of walking into Atobe’s and Jirou’s room, just a little earlier this year, only to find Jirou hugging his knees, rocking himself back and forth-and staring with something like pure joy at a strip of apple peel that had fallen into the shape of a perfect, round lowercase A. He’d been so overcome with delight that she really hadn’t had the heart to tell him that it was just a game.
Atobe’d been utterly dumbfounded to find his roommate plastered to his fanclub president, bouncing, hugging, wide awake, and trying his utmost to feed her a piece of fruit.
She and Jirou had both dissolved into laughter when Atobe had demanded how exactly she’d managed to obtain caffeinated apples.
…and wasn’t it just weird how that very same sleepy player was just about as awake, if somewhat less energetic, a little further down the bleachers-his chin pillowed on his hands, eyes half-closed, but still. Not only was Jirou, who’d earned his way back into the Singles Two slot earlier in the year-much to the displeasure of many of the seniors on the tennis club-entirely too aware for three in the afternoon, considering that he was neither playing a match with Atobe nor enthusing about literature to everyone’s disgruntlement-he was… staring
Since she wasn’t particularly of the belief that he’d become psychic anytime soon, either she had something on her face (and it wasn’t impossible) or a certain someone who was becoming entirely too indulgent hadn’t been watching the coffee pot carefully enough to keep Jirou from having a second cup of mocha this morning.
She had to admit-finding out that Jirou liked mocha had been a good move on Atobe’s part. Learning how to say ‘no’ when his roommate pleaded for just a little more… well, that would likely have been a better move, but a technique she didn’t think Atobe was likely to master anytime in the near future.
On the other hand, Jirou unable to nap because of the caffeine in his system had the tendency to wiggle back and forth, flopping like a flounder which couldn’t quite decide which side to lie on. Well, and then there was Jirou’s never-fail technique of pillowing himself on every available lap in the vicinity, in the hopes of finding one comfortable enough to lull him to sleep, so… that meant something on her face.
True, skirt hemlines in her general vicinity were migrating upwards with the heat, but considering that hers were in permanent hiberation, it wasn’t as if anything there had changed… and even if any of the other girls had been around her (and they weren’t) it wasn’t as if Jirou cared about things like female hemlines anyway. They’d been in school for three months together already, she was fairly sure that the status quo today was as it had always been, and her stomach had almost stopped doing the twist-and-squeeze thing that had left her deaf, for a moment, whenever Hiyoshi walked out onto the tennis courts. (She’d decided that the brief twist of sensation was probably an indication of someone’s divinely amused gaze being fixed on her poor, hapless little head.)
The thought amused her just enough that she started, just a hint, when a sharp little chin dug into her thigh, immediately followed by the by-now-familiar weight of Jirou slumping onto her lap. Face-down. All right, perhaps the coffee hypothesis wasn’t so off. “Mar-iiii?”
Well, the half-sleepy whine was familiar, at least. As was the feel of his hair through her fingers, after she’d managed to displace his face to a somewhat more comfortable position; she had to admit, for all his denial, Atobe was certainly right in the fact that Jirou’s hair really was wonderful for petting. “Hm?”
He rubbed his cheek against her, just a little, and she had to laugh-his hair did tickle when strands of it poked through her light, summerweight skirt. “When’s your birthday?”
She relaxed, just a little. Was that it? Hardly world-shattering. “November. Why?”
“November, when?”
“November thirtieth.” She winced, just a little, at the unpleasant twang of a ball hitting a racquet badly; Atobe was going to be rather put out with whoever that was.
The shift of weight on her lap-Jirou rolling onto his back-made her blink, and glance downwards. And blink again.
Jirou was studying her with enough intensity to be frightening, almost-none of the warm, misty edges of sleep clouded his eyes. “I didn’t know that. Missed your birthday last year.” He blinked, once, twice, before rubbing just under his eye, looking… well, just a little mournful. Perhaps just a little ashamed. “The year before, too. You didn’t say anything.”
Too cute. She had to laugh, this time, reaching down to tap his nose. You didn’t ask. “It’s just a birthday.” The boy really was just too blasted cute for her nonexistent mental health, and she did actually understand the fangirl desire to squeeze him until he squeaked. (Which he actually did, when hugged a little too tightly-the most pathetic little sound before everyone dissolved into laughter, and it always got Atobe rather… peeved, for reasons known to everyone but Atobe himself.)
He was pouting, and pushing hair from his face, poor little thing, looking rather… put-upon. “But you always make a fuss about mine. ”
Well, yes, not least because no doubt Atobe would have strung her up by her toenails if she’d somehow managed to forget, but that really wasn’t the point. Mari simply smiled, a little. “You’re fun to make a fuss over.”
It was true, too. She’d never really been much of one for bouncing, or aimless scampering-or amusement parks, for that matter, but never actually having had any siblings, well, she’d never realised really that there was a certain masochistic joy in chasing after an errant mop of blonde curls after Atobe had turned rather bilious around the edges and Jirou wanted just one more ride on the roller coaster. All right, so perhaps Atobe was learning to say ‘no’ to him. At least in the efforts of self-preservation.
There was that stare again; slow, and careful, and it really was making her a little nervous. There wasn’t a great deal that made her nervous. “I’ll remember this year. November thirty. I’ll write it down on Atobe’s organiser notepad.” She had to grin-Jirou’s messy handwriting appearing in Atobe’s neatly-arranged organiser would, no doubt, disgruntle the Type A team captain to no end. “So you’re…” he dragged a rather… abused… magazine out from under him, wrinkling his nose a little with the tip of his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth; Jirou didn’t accord the same reverence towards all reading material that he did towards books. “Sagittarius, right? The same as Hiyoshi?”
Was Jirou reading…? Yes, he was. And no doubt he’d be put out with her if she doubled over onto him laughing, considering how serious he seemed about this, because she really did have to find out which of the girls had given him a girls’ magazine special on horoscopes… She’d decide whether to pat the girl’s shoulder or whack her upside the head later. “Different years, but yes.”
“Oh.” He consulted the magazine, again, nibbling on his lower lip. “Oh, you’re a good match, then.”
Mari choked.
Words she honestly had never thought she’d hear from her own mouth, much less anyone else’s, and Jirou was getting that out of a horoscope? Well, Jirou’d been the one who’d taken her seriously about the apple game, too, those years ago, so he would, but-
But oh, ouch, for a second the pleasure she’d taken in hearing that had really, really hurt.
Gods, for someone who was supposed to be smart, she was such an idiot, and she could laugh at that if at nothing else. And at the fact that when she found the girl who’d given him that magazine, she was going to be in so much trouble… “If that were the case, then, if I’m not mistaken, I believe Shishido, Oshitari, and Atobe would be a good match. And dear gods, I really didn’t want to think about that.”
Well, they were in perfect accord for a second when Jirou looked up at her, she looked down at him, and they both wrinkled their noses. Probably for very different reasons, at that.
“But it’s different. You’re both Sagittarius, so it’s a good match. Shishido, Oshitari and Atobe are Libra, so it…” he studied the page again, following down a line with his fingertip, “they need balance, or something. Someone different from them.”
Which, well, they’d certainly gotten; she did have to smile, glancing down at two rather involved pairs of doubles players, yelling insults at each other across the net. She didn’t fool herself into thinking that horoscopes could be right, but, well, the coincidence, this time, really was beautifully uncanny.
Then again, she hadn’t believed in the perversity of fox-gods, before, either.
And that was when Jirou cocked his head, just a little, and said, “And besides, you like Hiyoshi, don’t you?”
It wasn’t the first time the world had stopped for her.
It wasn’t the first time it’d turned upside-down, spinning enough that it should have made her nauseous, spinning enough that she’d have gotten off if she could.
It wasn’t the first time she’d laughed it off, no matter how her throat was throbbing, her heart too loud in her ears, because she knew that, she knew it, but it made it horribly, horribly real to hear someone say it-even if it was Jirou, even if he was saying it with something that sounded like sweet, idle curiousity. He didn’t mean it that way. He couldn’t. And when she heard her voice… it just wasn’t right, somehow, that it sounded perfectly normal, but it did, yay, go me. “Of course I do. I’m the kind of person who appreciates insanity. It’s why I like you, too.”
She could even ruffle Jirou’s hair when she said it, too, because it was true.
But when she could bring herself to look down at him, silent in her lap, his eyes were quiet, and… sad, just a little. Like he knew. Like he knew, and Taira Mari didn’t run, she never had, even when her pulse was beating loudly enough in her ears to give her a headache.
She really, really needed to learn how to lie.
But he was too awake to let it slide with just that, because Jirou just didn’t let things go when he was quite this alert, when he let the magazine go flopping to the bleachers, his little fingers holding too tight onto the edge of her blouse. “The way I like Atobe, Mari.” Almost a reprimand. Almost, because Jirou sometimes-sometimes-saw too much.
Oh, Jirou.
Poor baby. Poor baby. She hadn’t been the only one wondering about these things, had she, and if she’d loved Hiyoshi for too long, well… well, didn’t she know exactly how long Jirou had been living with Atobe?
When he said it like that… there was too much knowledge in his eyes to lie. Too much of the same ache, except he knew what it felt like, if only for an instant, to have the hands of the boy he loved soothing away the pain. Atobe’s smile, the way Atobe cared for him, stroked his hair in his sleep, read to him in a voice slow with a patience she’d never expected from a brilliant, intolerant boy, and she didn’t have that from Hiyoshi-and she didn’t know, not quite, if she could have borne it with quite the same equilibrium as her little blonde darling had. Jirou was a good deal stronger than most people gave him any credit for.
“Yes,” she whispered, stroking his hair slowly with a hand that was trembling, damn it, and perhaps there was an odd freedom in the pain of admitting it aloud. Too softly. So strange, that the world was the same around her, the bleachers still rough and summer-hot under her thigh. “If you mean ‘too much’-then maybe, yes.”
Yes. No. Because you love Atobe because you know him, good and bad, and he treats you like he treats no-one else in this world.
And I feel the way I do for Hiyoshi because… because I do. For no apparent reason.
“Oh. ’M sorry.” He seemed to mean it, too, mumbled as it was, and perhaps any other time, the fact that he’d somehow managed to wrap his arms around her waist and bury his face in her stomach, chin digging hard enough into her to tickle, would have made her laugh. “Really, I really am.”
But he was easy enough to extract herself from-easy enough to nudge away from her until he was stretched out on her lap again with those sleepy, sleepy chocolate eyes not nearly sleepy enough. “What for?” For asking uncomfortable questions?
“Just am. Wouldn’t wish something like this on anyone. It shouldn’t happen to nice people,” much to her surprise, his fingers were cool on her cheek when he reached upwards and patted her, clumsy because Jirou was, and his little smile was just a little shaky, his fingers rough and callused. “And you’re really nice, Mari. You’re always doing things for people.”
‘Like this,’ he’d said, not ‘like that,’ and, well, perhaps he did understand; her mouth twisted into something that was almost a wry smile. “It keeps me busy, Jirou.” It was what she’d told Shishido. It was the truth. And what she hadn’t told Shishido… “I do small favors for people because I’m selfish, not because I’m nice. It’s what I’m good at, and… it… helps me not think about it.”
My, that did sound just as crazy aloud as it had in her head.
He didn’t tell her that it was unhealthy. That she needed to deal some other way. That she needed to get over him. Gods, she knew that, she knew that this was not a good spiral. And when the strain of waiting for that censure slipped from her shoulders, he was still watching her, rather intently, and she realised-Jirou probably was the only one of the people she knew who would have known that there was no point in saying it. There had been bad times for Jirou, too. “You’re not sleeping, though. I can tell. Even Atobe can tell.”
She’d been wondering why her workload from him had been significantly lighter the past few days. And if Atobe was noticing… except, wait, that wasn’t possible. “He can not. ”
Jirou blinked back up at her. “He can, too. He says you have eyebags ‘practically down to your nose,’ and that it’s ‘highly unattractive.’”
Oh. Well. So Atobe could notice, and she really did have to smile-just a little, because who knew that Jirou was so good at imitating Atobe’s, er, admittedly quite distinctive accent? “I’d accuse you of making that up, but it sounds entirely too much like him.”
“That’s ‘cause he did say it,” Jirou professed, with such confidence. “Just yesterday. So why not?”
Why not, indeed? “It’s hard to sleep, sometimes.” It felt like a confession-perhaps it was, because when she stared up at an empty, black ceiling, and wished that she had the time or the energy to put up some glowstars, or something… well, perhaps she’d get around to that tonight. If there was time. “It’ll pass.”
There were some things she didn’t believe, and, well, some things she had to.
“Nuh-uh, Mari. That’s bad. If you ever can’t sleep…” he said it with all the worry with which another person might have said ‘if you contract tuberculosis,’ and she had to squash down a smile, because he really did look so very serious, and of course Jirou would know about sleep. It really was sweet of him to offer contingencies. Though how it was he’d answer the phone when it took either a Kabaji-sized earthquake or his Atobe-sense to wake him up, Mari really wasn’t at all sure. “You can come over and sleep with me, okay? Atobe says I’m cuddly.”
She… blinked. She’d expected him to tell her to call him. Not sleep with him.
The desire to find out if Atobe had really said anything of the sort, or if Atobe-speak to the effect that Jirou always ended up twined around him in the morning was being filtered through a soft snooze-coloured lens (more likely than not, and more likely than not he understood Atobe’s sentiment if not the words) warred, briefly, with a more important concern before it lost. “Thank you, Jirou,” she ruffled his hair again, “but as cute as your sketches are… I’ve absolutely no desire to ever be in the same bed as Atobe Keigo. Awake or not.”
Actually, just the thought of it was making her break out into a rather nasty cold sweat. Atobe certainly was pretty enough, but dear lord, no, she didn’t need any more opportunities to see I-am-Perfect-sama at his most vulnerable, because the day she started actually liking him… No, she’d definitely and happily leave that dubious honor to his roommate.
Jirou’s entire body moved in a deep, deep breath, before he blew in out in a deep puff. He really was earnest as a puppy, sometimes, too. “I know. I’ve got my own room, too, though. Don’t use it very much, but… if you come, we can have a sleepover there, okay? With cocoa. And marshmallows. The little ones. You like those, right? They always help me sleep.”
It was quite close to the strangest thing she’d ever heard. And, coming from Jirou… quite possibly the sweetest thing she’d ever heard, at that. She had to admit-she’d always known that the tennis club boys liked her, but liking was different from caring, and offering to give up a night in the bed of the boy he loved, well… she was most definitely touched. “Oh, Jirou. ” Her smile had just a touch more waterwork to it than it really needed to have, but there was some saving grace, at least, to the fact that she wasn’t unaware of the irony of this entire conversation. Not when she’d rubbed a comforting hand down Jirou’s back through some of the bad times, and never honestly expected that he’d think to return the favor. And definitely not when she had to squash down a retort that almost anything helped Jirou sleep-from miniature marshmallows to airplane sonic booms. “You really don’t have to.“
Because she wanted one of them, at least, to have some dubious comfort in this ineffably annoying life, and for all that Jirou so very rarely spoke about his feelings, well… for him, falling asleep in Atobe’s arms, whether Atobe acknowledged what they were or not, had to be the closest thing to Heaven on Earth that he had.
Maybe there just weren’t enough miracles to go around.
But he was sitting up, and resting his chin on her shoulder where she couldn’t avoid the warmth of his eyes, the soft puff of his breath on her cheek. And then she blinked, as he stretched out and rubbed his cheek-ridiculously smooth, free of even the slightest traces of peach-fuzz rasp; it was easy to forget he actually was both a little taller and six months older than she was-against hers. “S’okay, as long as it’s not all the time, right?”
The nuzzle made her blink, because as far as she knew, Jirou was always affectionate, cuddly as the little golden retriever he did sometimes resemble, but… “You can’t take care of me, Jirou,” she chuckled… not least because his warmth against her felt good, the fact that his gaze was surprisingly firm and steady even when he knew… she hadn’t expected that.
Hadn’t realised he saw her quite so clearly.
Hadn’t thought, really, that anyone would particularly want to.
So it really was a very, very good thing that the sweet boy was gay.
“I know that, but. Someone has to, so I can try, ” he insisted, firmly. “And if you don’t come, and you look like you’re still not sleeping, I’ll… I’ll come over and sleep at your place!”
…and considering that this was a boy who’d been found tied up in the perfect position to be artistically molested by a certain Atobe Keigo a little more than a year and a half ago, he actually would, too. She did adore Jirou, but he had less shame than most cats she knew.
His insistence on the presumption that apparently hypersomnia was contagious, and if she was in the same bed as him, she’d be able to sleep as soundly as he did, would have been far less amusing if he hadn’t been perfectly serious.
“My father will not like that.” Well, he couldn’t deny the fact that, much as she hung out with the tennis club, she most definitely was a girl, and he wasn’t… even when she couldn’t quite stop grinning at the expression that would likely be on her father’s face, if he ever found her curled up in bed with a sleeping blonde boy just about her height curled around her. Well, in the instant before the bomb went off, in any case. Or the instant before Atobe called to demand that she return his roommate.
“Oh.” Jirou blinked at her, before slumping down into her lap again and rolling over for a long, sleepily languourous stretch. And a yawn big enough to swallow his eyes. “You can tell him I don’t like girls that way?”
Probably fortunate for the female population as a whole. “I’m not sure he’ll like that all that much, either,” she murmured, dryly. She’d always thought her father was something like open-minded, at least for someone his age, but she’d been discovering, since coming to Japan, that quite a few things she’d thought about him hadn’t quite fit into the square hole, as it were.
Though, actually, it wasn’t quite so much that Jirou liked boys, it was that Jirou liked Atobe, but somehow, she didn’t quite think most people would understand that distinction. The cuteness did need to be balanced out by a rather extreme fondness for the weirdest person she’d ever met.
Once again, she really had no right to talk.
“Mari?” the rough tips of his fingers tickled, a little, where they played across her calf-just under where her skirt met skin, and probably she could have been offended if she’d really thought about it, but… Jirou truly just did not understand about personal space. And it wasn’t as if his fingers were uncomfortable-just a soft, slow little stroke underneath her knee. Like, perhaps, he was petting her the way she’d always petted him. “How long?”
She could have asked him what she meant. Could have pretended that she didn’t understand. But her smile felt thin, bitter as coffee with too little substance to it, and perhaps she was stretched a little too thin. Just a little. “Two years, almost, now. It doesn’t matter, though.” But the laugh in her throat was full, and hearty still, because it wasn’t going to ever stop being funny. Damnably, damnably funny. Dumb fox couldn’t take her sense of humor away-or, well, maybe dumb fox had given her the sense of humor. “Stupid, isn’t it? I don’t know him at all.”
He didn’t disagree, but then again, she wouldn’t have believed him even if he had.
“Mari?” he picked up the magazine again, and she watched with something like amusement as he tucked it rather carefully-well, for him-into his back pocket, where it wiggled like a pruned peacock tail when he shifted, sitting up and leaning his cheek on her shoulder; his hair smelled, just a little, like almonds, but perhaps warmer.
Jirou truly was a good deal cannier than anyone gave him credit for-she wouldn’t have been all too surprised if the magazine had just been a ruse… “Hm?”
He blinked up at her, slowly, before nuzzling against her shoulder again, so close that he was all soft blurred golden sleep and very, very earnest chocolate eyes. “Do you want a hug?”
Jirou really was going to make a rather ungrateful and undeserving someone a lovely little husband, one day.
“Sure.”
Mari wasn’t all too surprised, either, when he fell asleep draped onto her.
*_*_*_*
“Mariko-chan?” if the woman’s mouth had drawn itself any tighter, Mari suspected she might have imploded. My, wouldn’t that have been a sight? “Don’t you think your father will want something a little more… sophisticated?”
She was not going to scream. She was not going to throw a piece of teppanyaki steak against the wall. She had to deal with Atobe Keigo every day of the school year, almost, and she’d managed it for two years without going insane, she could definitely deal with this-though, unlike with him, she really couldn’t kick her aunt in the shins when she got to be just a little too much. “Obasan,” she didn’t even sound like she was gritting her teeth. Then again, she’d made a fine art of that. “Please, it’s just Mari.” She could deal with the ‘chan.’ Family was family was family, but… she could not deal with the ‘ko.’
And her father liked teppanyaki with garlic butter sauce, and a pumpkin salad on the side. ‘Unsophisticated’ as it was.
“Why?” she didn’t need to look backwards to see that obasan’s eyebrows were probably once again in that neatly trimmed and perfectly coiffured hairline. “Your name is Mariko, isn’t it? It’s a very cute name. If you used it, it would make you so much more… feminine.”
Oh, God, it was going to be a very, very long afternoon, trailing into evening as slowly as the process dragging Jirou bodily across the bleachers when he weighed more than she did, every ounce of it raw sleek muscle. Kou-obasan hadn’t been around to visit in so long, her da said. Couldn’t she take a leave from club practice just one day, so that they could all be together for a nice afternoon with family?
Never mind that he’d called from the hospital and said that he wasn’t going to be home until later, and could she entertain her aunt Kou until he got back? Perhaps Kou-obasan could help her prepare dinner, since she liked cooking, he said. Perhaps they could talk about woman things, he said.
It looked like ‘woman things’ involved the fact that her name wasn’t cute enough without the tag that would magically make her a obedient, sweet, slim little Japanese woman.
“It is Mariko, obasan,” and darn, really, she’d almost managed to forget that, considering that no-one, not even her teacher, had blinked when she’d introduced herself on her first day of school as ‘Taira Mari.’ She hadn’t been all too surprised that her father had registered her under that name. “But no-one ever calls me that.”
Ever.
And she’d told her father to tell Kou-obasan to stop calling her that, since the woman obviously wasn’t going to listen to someone who wasn’t cute enough to be listened to, and when he’d raised his shoulders helplessly and said something about family and tradition and how she was named after her great-grandmother on that side, and how Kou had been her favorite…
Her aunt’s mouth pursed, again. “Well. I see. Well, someone should. ”
She’d come to the conclusion that her father, much as she’d adored him once, really didn’t know anything about her at all. Well, actually, she couldn’t honestly remember the last time since they’d moved to this country that she’d really sat down and had a conversation with him that didn’t involve either her report card or a mess at the hospital. So perhaps-perhaps-it was understandable.
Mari just sighed, a little.
Yes, Kou-basan was a superlative cook; Mari’d had dinner at her house a time or two, perhaps, and had been-rather grudgingly-very impressed. Really, what had been on the table then wouldn’t have done shame to an excellent Japanese restaurant, if one could ignore the fact that the waitress was a harpy, and though Mari was fairly sure they did own that sort of tableware, just in case her da brought any of the other doctors home with him, she was equally certain she’d never actually needed to use it. And, to be honest, Mari would probably have taken it more than a little amiss if Kou-obasan had offered to cook dinner, but… somehow, this version was somewhat worse.
‘Helping her prepare dinner’ consisted of of raising a cool and condescending eyebrow when she didn’t bother to arrange the pumpkin salad into layers of color and shape and simply slid it into bowls, commenting on how she really needed to put more effort towards presentation in her cooking, because no-one was ever going to marry her for her looks.
Obasan was joking, of course. Probably. Still, it was probably a good thing that Mari already knew that, else that might really have stung.
Retorting that anyone who married a girl for her looks damned well deserved whatever he got, thank you very much, probably wasn’t a good idea, either.
Well, of course Kou-obasan could afford to cut her daikon into hexagonal prisms, press and arrange maki-sushi into lovely little flower patterns, and stand over a stove for two hours slow-cooking garlic so it could be just the perfect texture to be sprinkled over meat as a garnish, (honestly, who outside of a restaurant had the time to do things like that?!) because it wasn’t as if the woman had ever had aspirations towards doing anything useful.
Considering that Mari hadn’t yet made a smart-mouthed comment as to that effect, either, she considered it a good sign that she had more self-control than she’d ever considered possible.
Thank all the gods, even a certain little fox one, that the one bit of housework she never, ever slacked on was keeping the house clean, because she just did not want to think about what her father’s older sister would have said if there had been, shock, dust anywhere. She just wasn’t planning to mention that her father did his fair share of the cleaning, doctor that he was, because gasp, the horror of the man of the house with a vacuum in hand.
Kou-obasan frowned, again, but heh, really, how did one respond to a sigh? “Is steak teppanyaki really a good idea, Mariko-chan?” Well, considering that it was already being cooked, the point was rather moot, but she was doing everything short of poking at it. Perhaps if she did, it would poke back. “It seems… fatty.”
Mostly because cutting off the fat would have made it hard as a rock, and she could get rid of that after it was cooked, anyway. “It’s tenderloin, obasan. And father likes teppanyaki.”
She’d never seen her aunt without that permanent fixture of a frown, and perhaps it was a good thing that Kenichi-ojisan had married Kou-obasan for her looks, because it certainly wasn’t for her personality. “Yes, but all that… butter.”
Well, yes, Mari couldn’t exactly help the fact that their favorite sauce for teppanyaki was garlic in drawn butter, and that was her fault. “It’s good that way.”
Wait for it, wait for it, it had to be mentioned at least once every time her father’s older sister was over to visit… and considering that they were in a kitchen, it was just virtually impossible to avoid.
“Of course, but don’t you need to watch your figure?” Ah. There it was. “You’re a little…” her aunt paused, so very delicately that Mari could almost ignore the fact that that particular comment had been utterly and entirely uncalled for.
Her figure had been considered perfectly acceptable and actually much complemented before coming to a forsaken country where it was absolutely normal to feed girls on starvation rations, actually, but there really were a great many things coming to mind that she was definitely not going to say. “I can run five miles-eight kilometres-in thirty minutes, obasan.” She wasn’t going to stab the steak, either. What a waste of perfectly lovely meat that would have been. I am what I am.
“Well, yes, that might be so, but you’re a little… hmmm…”
It was amusing, how Mari was the one of the two of them still smiling, really. “Fat?” it really was so very funny, because the poison sweetness she could hear in her own voice would have, she suspected, had the tennis club Regulars running for cover, and the fanclub girls going wee-wee-wee all the way home. Then again, she did have them rather well trained.
And her damned aunt didn’t even bat an eyelash. “Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, Mariko-chan, but…”
No, of course she wouldn’t put it that way.
Mari shrugged off her apron with just a little too much force, the straps flapping in a sharp plastic crack against the wall when she draped it over its hook, and turned down the stove to reach for her bag. She hadn’t known her aunt was coming when she’d last done groceries, they really didn’t have enough garlic for three people, and it was still early enough that everything would still be open and she could get back in time to serve dinner…
But she’d have killed for a hug from Jirou right about now, when the last time he’d done it, he’d commented sleepily-with his cheek tucked against hers because he was just the right height to do that-on how hugging her was almost as nice as hugging Atobe, because she had nice warm muscle under her skin, not bony sharp bits. He’d said it contentedly enough, too, that she hadn’t actually really minded being compared to her ‘boss.’
She was Taira Mari, and she just did not cry, and much as she did run, she definitely didn’t run away.
Though, Kashiwa being as far from central Tokyo as it was was certainly a blessing, sometimes, since it was a fair walk to the train station anyway, and it meant that she could reasonably go to very, very distant supermarkets…
When Obasan’s eyes flashed like that, Mari became painfully aware of from which side of the family she’d gotten her ability to glare from. “Mariko-chan, where are you going?” Plus that voice, oh, she definitely could grow to despise that voice, and the name, well, she’d always despised that. “Your father will be home soon, and you’re not going to greet him?”
Oh. Of course it wasn’t proper for her to leave, because of course since her mother didn’t live with them any longer, if she left, there wouldn’t be anyone to bow and grovel over father’s feet and say ‘okaerinasai’ when he got home. Like a ‘proper’ Japanese woman ‘should.’
She’d always been extraordinarily bad at bowing and groveling, anyway. She’d work on ‘proper’ the day someone managed to drum Japanese formal speech into her head.
“He can open the door perfectly well on his own, obasan. He has hands.” Oops. Temper, temper. That wasn’t quite what she’d been intending to say-or, er, rather, it had been exactly what she’d been thinking, but apparently the little locker where she was keeping all the things that she wasn’t allowed to say was full to overflowing… “Tell him I’ll be back soon.”
“Don’t talk to me like that, young lady.” Oooh, utterly aghast, that was a new one. “That mother of yours didn’t teach you any-“
She’d already closed the door very, very gently behind her by the time Kou-obasan had finished that sentence.
It almost made one wish for a subway molester, because it would have been nice to have someone around that she could yell her throat out at… though, well, most subway molesters with any sense of self-preservation probably would have taken one look at the look on her face, and headed straight for the next car.
Actually, it was very much coincidental that her favorite supermarket happened to be more than half an hour from home, a few side streets from Shinjuku, and the too-strong aircon in the subway car really did wonders for the heat trying to bury itself under her collar.
Though, er, it seemed her already nonexistent sense of direction took a turn for the worse when she was in a bit of a mood, because, ah, bright lights and red lanterns were all very well, especially since it was a little dark out… but not when they spelled out the words “HOURLY RATES!” “LOVE HOTEL!” and “GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS!”
She’d almost-but not quite-wished for a subway molester, but this… was a bit much.
The fox god’s sense of humor did actually genuinely amuse her sometimes, and anyone who was wondering about the crazy overweight girl laughing herself absolutely silly in the middle of a rather nice-looking red light district… well, they could just damned well wonder.
It was just funny enough that she smiled at her distinctly evil aunt-with all her teeth showing-when she got back home an hour later with a fresh bag of garlic.
*_*_*_*
Tsuzuku (To be continued)