A/N: Another one-shot I found on my USB drive and just finished today. This one, according to the time stamp, was last saved on May 2014, but its initial conception stems from before Achiga was announced.
This story is also testament to the "let the characters speak for themselves" phenomena. As in, this was going to be a lot more cheery and Teru more "tsundere" than the miserable brooder I usually depict her as. But sometimes I take joy in taking them over the knee and breaking them in half; it's how I picture myself setting them up to suffer, physically and mentally.
She used to hold those hands. A long time ago, in the Other Life, Before the Change. She'd always take her up the dirt road that wound past the side of the house and lead her into the hills with the knee-high grass and wildflowers, every chance they got. That, and because she wanted to see the little one smile, see her eyes brighten at the beds that spanned from the tips of their toes to the edge of the horizon.
Most of all, she went because she loved to take that hand in hers. How small and fleshy it'd feel against her slender, stick-like fingers. How soft they were.
A child's hands are the most beautiful hands, even as she plucked a white lily from its stem and placed it in that head of brown hair.
Her hands were small like that, once upon a time and many years ago. Small and always searching for that one grown-up hand to hold, to establish the bond between younger and elder. The Bond of Love.
She never wanted to let go. Not for all the riches and coveted treasures in the world. Nothing could tear them apart. They were family.
Then one day she came upon the hill alone. She saw there were beds upon beds of pretty white lilies. She gazed down at them and did not blink for a very long time. When she came to, she knelt to the ground and cupped one of the lilies in her hands.
And with terrible, saurian swiftness, she ripped the flower from its roots. She reached for another lily and tore that one as well. She did it again and again and again, and did not stop until all the lilies were pulled free.
Then, and only then, did she put her hands in her hair and cried to an empty world, for she had been betrayed.
After that, she had resolved to maintain distance as humanly possible from all who came in contact with her. The meteoric rise to fame in the mahjong world catapulted her to a stage of searing, flashing lights, wavering microphones, and recording equipment, and the audience frothed and seethed for her attention.
She wanted nothing to do with them. They were not worth her time or interest, but she wasn't going to present them the person she truly was. No, she would give the masses what they wanted, and what they wanted was a cheerful, idiot pantomime who aimed for the stars and defied fate with snake eyes in one hand and a plastic tile in the other.
They never knew she gazed at them with a forked tongue savoring the taste of their naivety. As long as they continued to feed from her hands – hands that grew and changed and became big hands, almost-adult hands – she was content to sit back and watch the germ of her lies spread and be sown.
Next to mahjong, gardening was her second most favorite hobby.
Pulling weeds, however, was proving to be a challenge.
In her second year, at the peak of the Nationals, she met a little girl. This girl had hair the color of the sun and eyes as blue and deep as a sea cast in twilight. She was short for her age and still retained in her cheeks the baby fat of a childhood bygone, but beneath the prepubescent image she presented was a beast thirsting for sweat-flavored fear and the blood of new, untested challengers. Some even described her as a creature of the night, her true nature wont to reveal at the peak of a full moon.
Her name was Amae Koromo. The confidence in her stride as she approached the revered table demanded she be fed the tears of the girls who dared challenge her as their sacrifice to her dominion.
Fool.
Small, naïve fool.
Whatever shrine she had built in that closed mind of hers was vandalized the instant Teru cast the Shoumakyou on her. From there she reaped the crops from her opponents, placed them at the demon's altar, and set both aflame with the fury of the howling wind.
What a waste of talent.
And she was a persistent little gnat; as Teru was on her way back to the room her team was located in, the girl approached her from behind and nearly knocked them to the floor. Teru suppressed a snarl and stamped the urge to crush this intrusion with her hand – such is the way of dealing with annoying insects. Instead she turned and frowned distastefully at the girl. "You should watch where you're going," she said.
Koromo blinked up at her with those wide eyes. Deer eyes, Teru would say, for only deer could stare so widely and so openly at the oncoming vehicle and not move. Not moving meant fright, the process of life rushing to meet and greet you, and then it would become death, there would be a crash, and still the deer would stare. Unblinking, unwavering. It was stupid, and so was this runt who regarded her so. Blink and you will miss. But Teru blinked, and still Koromo remained. "I'm sorry!" she said. "I hope I didn't hurt you!"
No, Teru thought, but she was very inclined to remind her what 'hurt' really meant. She was not a violent person by nature, not with fists but with hands—almost-adult hands—familiar with the angles of the tiles, their smoothness, and in an instant the temptation flares like volcanic activity, bright and colossal. Then it passed, and Teru resigned herself to huff and regard the girl with her own eyes: cool, disinterested. Insignificance made manifest. "As you can see, I'm not."
Koromo's face lit up, and it was like having a flashlight shine in Teru's eyes. She wanted to turn away from it and be gone from her. "Ah, that's great, that's great! It wouldn't do us any good if you were hurt, because if you were I wouldn't be able to talk you!"
Yes. How unfortunate. "But I'm not, and there had better be a good reason for you coming here. I can't keep my team waiting." But what would it matter? They would think she was spoon feeding the local news outlets, the magazine reporters both paper and digital. They would not be expecting her for a while longer, and, knock on wood, she hoped she would not come across those ravenous gluts.
"But of course! And it won't take long at all! No, ma'am, Koromo won't have that!"
"So speak." Don't waste my time, she wanted to say.
Koromo nodded enthusiastically, the rabbit ears of her bow bobbing up and down and down and up. "Yes, yes! Koromo wanted to thank you for the game today! I would've said so earlier but Terry left right away!"
"Don't call me that!" said Teru, an edge to her voice. She would have yelled, but she was wise not to; there was no need to draw attention to herself.
"But that's your name, isn't it?"
"It's Miyanaga Teru. Not Terry." She crossed her arms and stared down her nose at the girl. "No one, and I mean no one, is allowed to call me that. Do I make myself clear, Kodomo?"
The transition between childish warmth to adult exasperation, anger, and offense is swift and immediate. Her brows furrow, her lips purse and bite, her fists clench and unclench, but most of all those eyes become wild and inflammatory. No longer the eyes of a deer but a demon. The ends of her bow were not rabbit ears but horns. The minute glance of her teeth, white and bared, were fangs. Her face was not young but ageless. Ancient and terrible.
Then it was gone, and so did Koromo the child resurface. Teru smiled inwardly, pleased with the reaction. "How mean of you, Terry! Nicknames aren't supposed to be derogatory!"
"No," Teru agreed, "except when they're unwarranted." She leaned down toward Koromo. Ah, the joy of being a foot and some inches taller than a monster who was more or less the same age.
"And pray tell—why can't I call you by that?"
"Because you can't."
Koromo shook her head. "That's not good enough! There must be a reason!"
"But that is my reason."
"It's an excuse! Koromo can tell!"
"And just how?"
Koromo pointed. "Your hands—they're trembling."
Teru jumped up and away, as if she had touched an invisible, electric barrier. She looked at her hands, and indeed, to her shock and confusion they were shaking. Minute quakes overtook her fingers, and flexing them only intensified them.
Her throat was tight, her tongue thick and cottony. The lights droned above them, but within the cage in her head Teru heard only the rushing sound of blood made cool, the yammering of her heart against her chest.
The memories slammed into her like a vehicular collision:
The mountainside of their home—
The salmon that swam upstream—
The child's hand clasped inside her older, still-child ones—
The lilies—
Oh, those pure white lilies, plucked and tucked in hair soft like feathers!
Oh, those pure white lilies, ripped and pulled and torn and shorn!
Teru closed her hands and wanted to…to what? Grab her head and pushed the memories back into the earth? Pull them out like the incessant weeds they were? Keep them from escaping and playing before her eyes like those silent black and white films from times bygone?
She closed them, but she found that she could not. Koromo had taken them into her own, and it was hard to believe, so hard, that those small, childlike hands—hands guided by the full moon, hands kissed by Lady Luck, hands that guided the tiles and placed their faith in them for an assured victory—were almost-adult hands.
Koromo smiled, and the whimsical softness applied to it further cemented the image in Teru's mind—the image of the demon lurking underneath, and the fairy who reveals herself from the dregs of obscurity. It is angelic and surreal and conflicting, stirring within her emotions she had left buried and hoped to be forgotten. "I know why they shake," she said, "because mine do, too."
Teru glared at their hands. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Do I?" Koromo hummed. "No. No, I don't think I do, either…but does it really matter? Isn't it more important that I can sense there is something about you that's out of place?"
"I don't have time for this," Teru growled, and she tried to draw her hands away. "Let go."
"If I do, we will both shake. One reason for another," said Koromo. "But I think, whatever it is that ails you, you still have time. Time's all we have, see."
"If you're going to talk in riddles, at least make the effort to make some sense."
Koromo's smile turned harsh but not unkind. "I'm afraid the only person who can make the most sense is you, Terry. The question is: Can you?" Finally she let go of their hands, and Teru held them up to her face. They were no longer shaking. "As for me," Koromo continued, "I already know what makes sense. Even so, it's pointless to try. A mere human cannot hope to learn the tribulations a demon goes through."
Teru's upper lip curled disdainfully. There was that word again: Demon. The descriptor varied from player to player; for Teru, it meant she was the Scourge of West Tokyo, the One Blessed by the Tiles, the Tiger of Shiraitodai, so many similarly themed titles pertaining to her brutality. But demon? Why demon? The term was so…negative. Overused and tired. It was the kind of word people loved to toss around because they couldn't think of anything else synonymous to it.
Like angel. Angels were also demons, were they not? Only these demons were lovely and fair, stern but kind, persuasive and demanding. Sly and subtle.
Just like Koromo.
Teru turned on her heel, putting her back to Koromo. "I don't care what you see yourself as. My problems are my own. Stay out of them."
She didn't see Koromo nod. "But of course, Teru. No two demons are the same, but our suffering is mutual."
"It isn't," Teru said over her shoulder as she walked away. She could have run, or picked up her pace to put distance between them as far as possible, but that would be beneath her. Regardless of her feelings toward the term, Koromo was a demon, and demons were not wont to flee from each other while the non-demons, the lambs and the sacrifices, watched. But there were none, and even if there were Teru would not be deigned to give them the satisfaction of beholding not only what they would see as a moment of weakness but a window of an opportunity.
Miyanaga Teru is not invincible.
Miyanaga Teru is not infallible.
Miyanaga Teru is just as human as the rest of us.