Now and Forever...Itsumademo... - Chapter 21B
Title: Now and Forever…いつまでも…
Author: Unare Haineko
Pairing: [Juntoshi] Matsumoto Jun x Ohno Satoshi
Rating: R-ish, but NC-17 for this chapter
Summary: [Revised] Three years after the ending of ‘Kodoku kara Umareta Ai’ (which you can read here), we have Juntoshi trying to raise their son Ayumu while the demons from the dark shadows that separated Arashi in KodoAi come back to haunt and taunt our heroes in this lengthy sequel.
0-0-0-0-0
Back at Nino’s apartment…
Daisuke was sitting on the couch organizing Nino’s many video games when Nino stumbled through the front door.
“I’m back…” groaned Nino, dropping his things in the middle of the floor and dragging his feet towards the living room couch.
“Welcome back, Kazu-san-whoa, what happened to you?” asked Daisuke as Nino leaned over the other end of the couch and face planted right into the cushion next to Daisuke.
“I’m tired,” grumbled the gamer.
“Well, that’s what you get for playing games all night when you knew you had an appointment early the next morning,” Daisuke said, ignoring Nino’s exaggerated plea for sympathy.
“Don’t be so cold, Oh-chan,” Nino said, inching forward on his belly so that he could rest his head on Daisuke’s lap.
“I’m not feeling sorry for you,” Daisuke said, placing the organized DS cases on the side of the couch and standing up.
Nino grabbed onto Daisuke’s jeans and looked up with an imploring stare.
“What?”
“Can’t we just cuddle?”
“I was waiting for you to come back so you could wait for the electrician. I have to go pick up your dry cleaning now-“
“It can wait.”
“No, it can’t. You need it for tomorrow.”
“So pick it up tomorrow. I want to cuddle with you…I was looking forward to it all day. Come on, Oh-chan…”
“Fineeee,” Daisuke sighed, and returned to the couch.
Nino seemed to perk up which made Daisuke’s heart race though he did not show it on his face. Although Nino had lured Daisuke back to the couch under the premise of cuddling, it quickly became apparent that it was solely for the purpose of seducing the Ohno-lookalike into sex.
“We’re not cuddling. You just wanted to have sex,” grumbled Daisuke as Nino’s nimble fingers explored Daisuke’s body.
“Don’t act like you don’t want it,” smirked Nino as he pointed out Daisuke’s erection.
“Kazu-san, I’m too tired-“
“Oh, just enjoy it, Oh-chan. You’re too serious…”
“Nooo…” Daisuke moaned rather unconvincingly.
“Let me love you…Daisuke,” whispered Nino as he kissed behind his assistant’s neck.
Daisuke melted as it seemed that for the first time, Nino had recognized him for someone other than his former lover.
0-0-0-0-0
“Ayumu!” called the boy’s grandmother. “Julie-sensei is here to pick you up!”
“’kay!” Ayumu shouted, speeding out of the bedroom with his mini backpack. “Bye, baachan! HELLO, MISS JULIE!”
“Hello, Ayumu. How are you today?” waved the tutor.
“I AM FINE. WHO IS THIS?” Ayumu responded appropriately in English as he noticed another figure standing outside waiting for them.
“This is Professor Étrange,” Julie continued slowly in English, enunciating the professor’s family name.
“Professor Étraaanj?” Ayumu mimicked with a slight Japanese accent.
“Yes, Professor Étrange,” affirmed Julie. “Do you know where professors work?”
“BIG SCHOOL!!” shouted Ayumu excitedly.
“Not ‘big school’, ‘university’…”
“UNIVERSITY! YES! I FORGET! SORRY!” apologized Ayumu, slapping his forehead. “HI, PROFESSOR ÉTRANGE! SHOULD I SAY, ‘PROFESSOR’ OR ‘DOCTOR’? MISS JULIE’S BROTHER IS A PROFESSOR TOO. HE’S A PROFESSOR, BUT I CALL HIM ‘DR. TONY’. WHAT SHOULD I CALL YOU?”
“If you call Tony that, then I suppose ‘Dr. Étrange’ is fine.”
“OKAY THEN, DR. ÉTRANGE! MY NAME IS AYUMU OHNO! IT’S NICE TO MEET YOU!”
“Energetic little thing, isn’t he?” commented Dr. Étrange as she fixed her skirt.
“You have no idea,” Julie nodded. “Alright, Ayumu, we’re going to a museum today. Do you remember what a museum is?”
“WE SAW PAINTINGS THERE LAST TIME!”
“Very good. That was an art museum. Do you remember the name of the artist who painted all those pictures?” asked Julie as they strolled down the street.
“VINCENT VAN GOHHO!”
“Not ‘gohho’, ‘Gogh’. ‘Gohho’ is the Japanese pronunciation. What was his name?”
“VINCENT VAN GOGH!”
“Very good. Now today, we are going to the National Science Museum to see dinosaurs-“
“DINOSAURS!! YAAAAAAAYYYYY!!! DR. ÉTRANGE, DO YOU LIKE DINOSAURS TOO?”
“I do find them rather amusing,” she admitted from under the shade of her parasol.
“IS THAT WHY YOU CAME TODAY?”
“I guess you could say that…”
“WELL, I’M HAPPY YOU’RE HERE. MISS JULIE AND ME ALWAYS HAVE FUN!”
“Miss Julie and I-“ corrected the professor.
“NOT MISS JULIE AND YOU, MISS JULIE AND ME! I JUST MET YOU TODAY! HOW WOULD I KNOW YOU ALWAYS HAVE FUN TOGETHER?” giggled Ayumu, as he ran ahead to talk to the old man that lived with a bunch of cats.
“Remind me again why you’re dragging me along on this little excursion?” the professor asked with a sideward glance.
“I want see if he does it again,” Julie replied.
“Does what?”
“When we went to the van Gogh exhibit, we were walking around together. There were a couple of tour groups walking around and there was this one group of middle school or maybe they were high school kids. They were slightly ahead of us and the guide was talking most of the time.”
“What were you two doing?”
“Just going about at our own pace.”
“Okay, and then what happened?”
“Well, he sort of lost interest about halfway through and was following this delinquent-looking boy and his friends-“
“You let him do that?”
“I wanted to see how he would react-“
“You didn’t think it would be a nuisance for the students?”
“They weren’t paying attention anyway. They didn’t notice he was watching them. So the boy has infiltrated the tour group and is following them around.”
“Under your supervision of course-“
“Naturally. They walk through another room of paintings and then all of a sudden, the teacher stops the group. He asks them a question about one of the paintings they saw. It was a painting that we saw when we first became aware that the group was slightly ahead of us. The students weren’t paying attention, but Ayumu starts repeating the entire segment about that painting.”
“What do you mean ‘repeating’?”
“Word for word-“
“In English?”
“No, no, in Japanese. I believe it was a painting with a bunch of irises on them. Ayumu repeated word for word everything that was said about that painting. Even the guide was surprised. I didn’t want them to kick us out of the museum for disturbing a group, so I started scolding him in English and apologizing to the students in bad Japanese.”
“But your Japanese is fine-“
“It was more for dramatic effect than anything.”
“I see, so what do you hope to accomplish today?”
“Nothing really. I just want there to be a witness when he does something amazing,” winked Julie as she scooped up Ayumu. “Say goodbye to the old man now.”
“BYE BYE Ojiisaaaaaan!” waved Ayumu.
“Now count how many stairs we’re going down in English,” instructed Julie.
“ONE…TWO…THREE…”
“So what does this little excursion have to do with English?” asked Dr. Étrange, following from behind.
“We’ll talk a bit in English; maybe you can teach him a little French or German here and there. It’ll be fun. Dinosaurs, science, looking at old things…You study old things all the time-”
“Leave my ancient texts alone,” sniffed the professor in feigned indignation.
“Speaking of ancient texts, whatever happened to that research girl?”
“What research girl?”
“Ai-chan’s girl. The one who wanted the restricted materials.”
“She’s still not getting her materials. She broke into my office, jammed a bunch of my locks, stole the fake materials, and when I confronted her about the materials-that naïve lass, thinking that I wouldn’t notice that she took something and put it back-she denied any involvement. Now see if I process her paperwork now!” cackled the literature professor.
“You’re such a witch,” chided Julie.
“Bah, don’t judge me. She wants to play rough. No one knows better than I how things really work in academia. Ai-chan isn’t on her side; he’s on mine.”
“She doesn’t know that?“
“Of course not. She thought she lucked out when the ‘Great’ Tsuchimoto Aides agreed to take on her prissy little derrière. Little does she know that I helped out Ai-chan by writing that article he needed to get his promotion!”
“Do tell!”
“I didn’t tell you about how he begged me to write that article about Meiji Era political-no? Well, he needed this last publication to satisfy the university rule of publishing regularly. He was in the middle of this huge consultation project for some big entertainment company-not even in his field, something about helping out an old friend, that idiot-and didn’t have time to write the last article he needed to get promoted. You know how things go in a Japanese university. If you’re late, you don’t get promoted and then you don’t get the pay raise and the prestige and blah, blah, blah-sad story. Anyway, so he begged me and bribed me-antique jewelry, carnivorous plants, a new parasol, the whole nine yards, I tell you. I was busy too, but I could take on a small project like that. I’m an efficient researcher and the article he needed would have taken him weeks to do. He’s earned his title, but he’s really more of a lecturer than a researcher. Data analysis, information mining, making sense of chaos-that’s my area. And after I complete my analysis, I’ll share my knowledge with those I deem worthy. Ai-chan will share it with anyone who will listen without falling asleep. That egoistic bastard loves the sound of his voice.”
“So knowledge isn’t for everyone?”
“Why would I give such a dangerous thing to a person who lacked the capacity to handle it? It’s a frightening thing, you know.”
“Knowledge?”
“And information as well. I’m always amused at the terrifying uses people find for it. It’s worse than giving a hundred people $10,000 and asking them to find a use for it. Knowledge destroys people. Sometimes I think Ai-chan should exercise a little more discretion.”
“That’s funny you say that because Tony is like Ai-chan in that respect. He always says that people should be more informed and that we as educators should encourage the pursuit of knowledge and higher learning…but as you pointed out, I can’t deny the destructive tendency of knowledge. It’s like asking yourself whether people should be able to own guns…Anyway, so did you do it?”
“What?”
“The article?”
“I told him I was too busy and that I couldn’t possibly make it before the deadline.”
“But you could have taken it on?”
“Well, I didn’t want to appear easy!”
“And then what happened?”
“He came down and groveled. Kissed my boots and riding crop.”
“In person?!”
“In the flesh. He offered himself, but I told him that unless he was planning to cut if off and give it to me in a jar of formaldehyde as a gift, he could keep his appendages to himself. So I did it, dropped everything for him. And now he owes me big time.”
“And you never let him forget it-“
“Which is why I ultimately hold this little stuck up floozy’s fate in my hands. She thinks that just because she’s rich and some people have told her that she’s clever that Tokyo University will just hand her a PhD without so much of a fuss. I have news for her. I don’t care if Ai-chan’s her advisor. It’s too late for her to change anything. She needs to get off her high horse and bow to ME if she wants those restricted materials.”
“You can be so scary sometimes, you know,” commented Julie as she paid the entrance fee for the museum.
“In a good way, right?” smiled Dr. Étrange innocently.
“In a ‘Good, I’m glad you’re on my side’ sort of way,” laughed Julie as she held Ayumu’s excited hand as they entered the museum.
0-0-0-0-0
“You’ll be fine on your own now, won’t you?” Mikeila said, gesturing to the path winding around the foggy lake.
“I think so. Thank you for showing us back,” Jun bowed. “I’m sorry for any trouble we may have caused you. Leader…”
Jun forced Ohno’s neck down into an awkward acknowledgment of apology.
“Sorry…” Ohno mumbled.
“Good day to you then,” Mikeila bowed before disappearing into the misty forest.
“Shall we?” Jun asked, offering his hand.
“Um yeah…” replied Ohno.
The couple walked down the road and found their cottage. No sooner had Jun opened the door when Ohno pulled away from Jun.
“I’m cold. I’m gonna go take a shower.”
“Oh? All right,” Jun replied glumly as he set the bag he was carrying on the counter. “Do you want some help?”
“No, I think I’ll be okay,” Ohno said stripping in the middle of the room and walking into the bathroom.
Jun watched for a sign that Ohno had changed his mind, but the sound of the shower followed immediately. And Jun was left standing in the middle of the open living room. Not wanting to feel awkward, he began doing things he was accustomed to doing. He walked over to pick up Ohno’s clothes and put them in a pile next to their luggage. He called for a bottle of champagne and some snacks. Then he unpacked everything and put everything neatly into the drawers. He was just thinking that Ohno was taking a rather long time in the bathroom when he came across the shirt Ohno had given him to wash at the apartment. He must have forgotten to take it to the laundry room and packed it accidentally when he was going through Ohno’s clothes.
Ohno claimed that the shirt had paint or some sort of residue on it so it needed washing. If it had paint on it, Jun reasoned that he should soak it. He shook out the shirt so he could assess the damage and when he did he was puzzled to find that there were no visible paint stains. The shirt was bunched up oddly, smelled like smoke and incense, covered in a white dust, and appeared as if something starchy had caused parts of the shirt to dry in a crumpled state. Jun was suspicious and just as he was about to use his nose to confirm his worst fear, he was suddenly hit by a sharp pain in his abdomen. He dropped the shirt back into his bag and fell on the floor clutching his left side.
The pain was so excruciating that all he could do was writhe on the floor and whimper pitifully. Ohno was still in the shower and the phone was on the other side next to the beds. Jun had no strength to crawl so he simply closed his eyes and tried not to focus on the pain. He opened his eyes and saw a card on the floor.
“Yellow…rose…?” he groaned as his eyes closed against his will.
0-0-0-0-0
After the trip to the museum, Julie took Ayumu home and Dr. Étrange returned to her office at the university. Her friend of many years had been right. The boy was amusing. Though she thoroughly despised children, she found this boy entertaining and wondered what kinds of parents fostered such a strange and imaginative child. Dr. Étrange smiled to herself as she walked down the corridor. She remained in good spirits until she noticed that her door was open and the light was on. Lifting her heavy skirt, she dashed down the hall and when she came to the door, she knocked three times on the frame with her knuckles and pounded three times with her palm. She then pushed the door open, shoving aside the sign she had hung on her doorknob that read, ‘CAVE CANEM. NOLI INTRARE.’
She found a Doberman pinscher on a leash growling at a chair upon which stood one terrified Sakurai Sho.
“Vesuvī!” she yelled, startling them both. “Sede!”
The dog immediately responded by slinking back to the corner whimpering.
“Shh!” she hissed.
The dog stopped and lay down quietly.
“It’s only you…” Dr. Étrange sighed loudly while rolling her eyes. “You’ve managed to back yourself into a corner with an agitated dog snarling at you. Are you trying to play charades with me? Because I must say you’re rather bad at the game…”
“Sensei…” acknowledged Sho, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a crimson handkerchief.
“How did you get yourself in this predicament and how can I help you today?” she asked, changing the collar into the dog’s choke chain that barely made it possible for the animal to move more than a few steps without strangling himself.
“Does the university allow animals in the offices?” Sho asked as he distanced himself from the subdued canine.
“They make exceptions for me,” the professor shrugged.
“He’s a pretty fierce animal, you should-“
“If you’re going to say that I should have warned people, I did,” Dr. Étrange interrupted. “I put a sign on the doorknob.”
“You did?”
“Yes, some people don’t read signs despite how large I make the font. So I figured that there’s no way anyone could miss it if I put it on the doorknob. Clearly, you ignored the sign…”
“I didn’t see anything-“
“More like you only see what you want to see,” she muttered as she pulled the sign off the front of the doorknob and held it up to Sho’s face. “The sign says, ‘Beware of dog. Do not enter.’ I don’t see how I could’ve made it clearer than that-“
“Wait a minute. This sign isn’t even in Japanese,” protested Sho.
“What do you think I put a picture of the three-headed dog on there for?” she snapped in blatant irritation. “And if you look at this dog’s collar, it says ‘inu ni chuui. tachiiri kinshi (犬に注意。立入禁止。)’-“
Sho looked at the picture.
“Ah! It does!” he said, digging his fingernails into the side of his head in realization. “But why did he attack me?”
“Probably because you entered suddenly. Vesuvius doesn’t appreciate unexpected guests. Didn’t your parents teach you to call before you come?”
“I didn’t see him last time. Is he always here?”
“No, he usually is downstairs guarding the Restricted Materials door. I brought him up here since I was having all the locks changed in my office. We’ve been having a problem with breaking and entering here in the Literature Department. I thought you were the locksmith running into trouble with Vesuvius, but clearly she was able to change the locks.”
“She-“ Sho began before he was silenced by the professor’s raised index finger.
Dr. Étrange picked up a book off the floor and shook it over her hand. Sho watched in amazement as several keys and a bunch of odd metal parts fell from the cavity out into her hand.
“But why wasn’t she attacked-wait, isn’t it odd for locksmiths to be female?”
“Nothing odd about women doing jobs stereotyped for men. Actually this locksmith had to be called in because whoever tried to break in last time rendered my locks inoperable. I had to have her crack the lock and install new ones-“
“I see now! The dog doesn’t attack women!” Sho nodded in understanding.
“Vesuvius attacks women as well. He is unbiased in that way.”
“Oh,” Sho replied, deflating.
“Let me tell you something about Vesuvius, Monsieur Sakurai. Vesuvius was abused by his previous master, a cruel science professor who died some time ago. That professor locked him up in a tiny dark room behind the laboratories and starved him while he tortured him for the first two years of his life. He made Vesuvius into a violent, ill-tempered creature that attacked anyone who came near him. That professor eventually had Vesuvius chained to a post so that he could guard a door leading to the professor’s cellar. When the professor died of a stroke, no one came to pick up his belongings and the university went into his office to clean everything out. They found a bunch of notebooks and journals with every horrid detail of the dog’s torture. Each of these bound tablets of paper, when not talking about the dog, rambled on and on about Ianus and Angerona. I was called to be part of the team that analyzed his research-highly fascinating, albeit gruesome, stuff-along with Tony, Ai-chan, and a few others. Tony was assigned to determining the validity of his plant-based research-a task even he despised.”
“Validity of his research?”
>>> Chapter 21C