Saiyuki Story: Two (second in a series of eight)

Dec 02, 2010 19:06

Title: Two
Author: Sunspot
Rating: PG 13
Note:  Second night posting at adventchallenge.  Go, read, there are some great stories there already.


Two

The first full day of Chanukah (according to the Book, the holiday’s days were counted sundown to sundown) was the second full day of the blizzard.  Hakkai awoke to the various whuffles, snores, and barely audible piii-kyuuus of his companions, all underlain by a drone of wind and rasp of icy snow that was rapidly becoming white noise.

Everyone else was asleep, there was nothing much to do beyond prepare for that night’s party, he didn’t particularly feel like having a bath.  Hakkai began to snuggle up to the warmth of . . . he paused-whom was he sharing with again?-and localized the fluting timbre of Goku’s snores.  Goku, then.  Safe enough.  He snuggled closer into the sphere of Goku’s warmth, and the softness of his own pillow, and let himself drift back down into his own world of swirling white.

The second time Hakkai awoke it was to Gojyo’s face, brow knit, and his concerned voice:

“Hey, Hakkai, dude, are you sick?”

Hakkai blinked further awake and gave his friend a reassuring smile.  “I’m fine,” he said, on a semi-feigned yawn, “just lazy.”

Gojyo snorted a laugh, as he was meant to.  “You, lazy?  Hah!”  Then he quirked a smile.  “On second thought, you just lie there and loaf, we’re enjoying the novelty.”

That was a clear sign that Hakkai needed to get up and active.  Which Gojyo may well have realized.  Their kappa wasn’t naturally manipulative, but Hakkai had to admit, he might well be picking up a few things.  Not that Hakkai was, er, manipulative exactly, it was just simpler and more efficient to catch files with honey than a machete.  And that was enough of those thoughts.

They all trooped down to breakfast, and Hakkai gave Gojyo and Goku their assignment, and the Book, for reference, and decided to have that bath after all.

By midmorning Hakkai was in the kitchen, doing prep work for what was going to be a truly impressive (and appropriately fried) quantity of Chanukah tempura.

He was slicing lotus roots crosscut, making attractive flower-like patterns, when Gojyo and Goku, and Dorje, the innkeeper’s second son, came in with the first successful dreidel prototypes.

“Hakkai, Hakkai, check these out!”  Goku was practically bouncing with excited pride.  He held up two: palm sized, rectangular boxes, made of thin pasteboard and held together with glued-on paper flaps.  Each was carefully pierced along its lateral axis by a single chopstick.  The characters for “miracle,” “great,” “happened,” and “there” were carefully inked on the four sides, along with four, three, two, and one pip respectively.

Hakkai wiped his hands and took one, carefully.  He turned it round and round-good craftsmanship, by the look of it.  He gave it a test-spin.

It was not the most aerodynamic of tops.

“The shaft’s too long,” Gojyo explained.  Then paused for a leer.  “Not that that’s usually a problem.”  He grew more serious.  One interesting thing Hakkai had learned about his friend:  in most circumstances, engineering trumped innuendo.

“Ma won’t let us cut them down,” Dorje put in.  Which made sense, these were the inn dining room’s chopsticks, not cheap take-out pull-aparts.

“And making the body of the top bigger, you run into problems with weight, and plus we don’t have enough pasteboard,” Gojyo added.  “These are the best compromise.  Little practice and they work all right.”  He picked up the top Hakkai had tested and demonstrated.  It did a fairly respectable spin under his somewhat better trained hand.

“Good enough,”  Hakkai said, smiling encouragingly at all of them, but particularly Goku and his friend.  “Can you make enough for the party by dinner time?”

“Oh yeah,” Goku said.  “We figured, um, three tops per foursome, twenty people counting Jeep, so, er fifteen tops?”  He snuck a glance at Gojyo, who gave him a tiny nod.

That was fair.  He lacked hands, but Jeep might well want to be included, with someone else spinning the dreidels as his representative.  But, hmmm . . .

“Three tops per foursome?” Hakkai asked.

Gojyo shrugged.  “Well, it’s not like the Book said how to play the game.  I took a little bit from craps, little bit from hazard.  Only four sides per top, so you need three per game to make twelve points max on a spin.”

Hakkai beamed.  “Excellent,” he told them.  “I presume you have enough materials?”

Goku gave a vigorous nod.

“Then I leave it in your capable hands.”  He gave them a dismissing nod and went to wash his hands before taking up the knife again-one couldn’t be too careful about proper food sanitation.

Goku and Dorje tromped off, but Gojyo hung behind.  Hakkai raised an eyebrow at him.

Gojyo gave a shrug and a smile.

“I’m a little Goku’d out for now.  You got something I can do in here?”

Indeed Hakkai did.  He gave Gojyo an apron, pointed him toward the handwashing sink (something Gojyo was appallingly lax about without reminding) and set him to washing and peeling the truly impressive amount of tubers tonight’s menu required.

“S’nice,” Gojyo said after awhile, from his spot at the counter, paring veggies.

“Mmm?”

“This,” Gojyo elaborated minimally.

“Yeah,” Hakkai agreed.  Really, it was.

That night the inn’s inhabitants, temporary and permanent, gathered in the dining room with a bit more enthusiasm.  Hakkai filled the lamps again, and Gojyo lit the shamash, then two more, taking the coward’s way and using the lighter for all.  Sanzo’s blessing for the second night was “at least we’re all warm.”  Three claps, and then Gojyo and the boys led a dreidel tutorial while Hakkai, the innwife, and a small crowd of daughters retreated to the kitchen to fry the tempura.

The tempura was, if anything, a bigger hit than the dumplings had been, and the party-goers mostly took to the dreidel game.  Hakkai had to recuse himself eventually, since all the spare change at his table inevitably ended up in a pile in front of him.  He found an interesting older woman to talk with, who had had a career as an agronomist, refining wheat-growing in this arid and mountainous region through crop rotation with legumes and the introduction of the seed drill.

It was very late, and Hakkai was more than a little sleepy as they made their way upstairs to bed at last.  Gojyo looped a companionable arm across his shoulders on the stairs.

“Pretty good festival you’re puttin’ together this time, Hakkai,” he said.

“Thank you,” Hakkai said, warm and content.  He was inclined to agree.

slash, sanzo/hakkai, saiyuki, advent challenge 2010, eight nights, hakkai

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