I remember the first time I saw her, sitting in the corner booth at the Crown Fruit Parlor with her three friends, alternately giggling with them and bemoaning the cruel fate that required her to study mathematics.
"I already know grams and milligrams and litres and all I need to cook with. What else do I need?" she'd groaned melodramatically.
She was tall, leggy, curvy in her school uniform, and I was struck by how pretty and lively her sparkling green eyes were. I grinned like a love-sick schoolboy as she looped a curl of her red-brown hair around and around one finger and bent over her books, all the while sucking on a stick of sweet-hot cinnamon candy with perfect pink bow lips.
I never wanted to be a stick of sugar candy so much in my life. I could smell the spicy, pungent tang of cinnamon all the way across the room. I couldn't help but think there was a spark of something in the air. I craved an introduction. Once I knew her, then I could ask her out.
When Motoki, my new college friend, came to take my order, I asked him about the girls in the corner booth. Having worked there ever since high school, Motoki knew everyone at the Crown Parlor.
"Oh," he told me, "that's Usagi-chan, the one with the long pigtails, and her friends. She's been coming for a while now, and so have the girl with the glasses…I think her name's Ami, and the black-haired one. She's a miko at the local shrine. The auburn haired one with the ponytail is new, though. Kino-san."
He frowned slightly, trying to recall the given name he'd been told when he'd taken the quartet their drinks. "She's Maika, Makiko, Mako…something like that. Oh…yeah. Makoto. That's it. Usagi's always making new friends. She must be the friendliest girl in her whole Junior High class."
Junior High!
God, I felt like such a complete hentai and an idiot besides. According to Motoki-kun, who has always thought I'd gotten sick that day, I went completely sallow beneath my tan. He thought I was going to pass out or something and bustled me off to the Juban Metro Medical Clinic to see a doctor while I agonized over what was the matter with me. I was perving on an innocent middle school student. No matter that she didn't look like one and certainly wasn't built like one. For a sophomore in college to think about a junior high kid like I had, well, that was just beyond the pale.
So I tried to pretend that Kino Makoto didn't exist.
It didn't work.
It also didn't help when another college friend of Motoki's, Chiba Mamoru, started dating the aptly named, little, rabbit-haired one, Tsukino Usagi. But he was two full years younger than I was, so it was just marginally acceptable. Just. Although he said that Usagi's father didn't see it that way.
Fate was even crueler than I had thought, because it turned out that the sweet-faced, cinnamon scented girl was not only a kid, but indeed the youngest of the entire group, even when another girl, a blonde named Minako, joined their fast friendship, bringing their group to five. Makoto had just barely turned fourteen that cold December day I first spotted her across the room.
I tried treating her like a kid sister. I tweaked her ponytail, swiped cinnamon sugar snickerdoodles from the batches of cookies she baked for her friends, teased her while she drank her tea, and basically did everything I could to remind myself she was just a child, and sometimes I even managed it for a short while. I dubbed her with a nickname, Cinnamon, Cin for short, which matched her russet hair and the spicy sweet scent that more often than not clung to her clothing since she baked so often.
But she was growing up every day, every year. And growing more beautiful. I couldn't ever get her completely out of my mind. Or my dreams.
The time, long though it was, wasn't ill spent. I got to know Mamoru-kun and we became good friends. I even introduced him to my college roommates, Jade, Zane, and Kaden. We were the odd gaijin bunch. The exchange students. But that meant we all became close as brothers over the years since we could understand each other so well. We roomed together all through undergrad and into grad school. Oddly enough, Mamoru-kun fit slotted in as neatly as the others and I ultimately became much closer friends with him than with Motoki.
I enjoyed school, especially when I was through my required classes and could start focusing on my passion, astronomy. Motoki-kun got me a job working at the Crown Fruit Parlor because, as he said, I was always there anyway, and it had a flexible schedule, so I could work it around my classes and necessary time at the observatory.
Cin hung out at the Crown Parlor more often and longer than the others, because she had no one else to go home to, though I didn't realize it at the time.
I studied, I worked, I went out with my new-found college pals, and I even dated, cutting a swath through the feminine population of Azabu Tech, but my heart wasn't in it and none of the relationships went anywhere. Unfortunately it garnered me a certain reputation, unfairly I thought, as a heart-breaker.
I made friends with her too. I was the first one she told about her parents' deaths in the jetliner crash. My heart broke for her. It was no wonder she'd looked mature for her years. Losing both parents so tragically and having to look after herself had made her sadly wise beyond her years in some things. It helped me understand why she haunted the Crown Parlor. Its noise and chaos had to be better than going home to a silent, empty apartment. I helped her fold the thousand paper cranes each year that she offered up in their honor with a wish for the peace of their souls.
She saw me as a big brother, even if I didn't see her as a sister.
I helped her with her physics homework; she was hopeless at it, I'm sorry to say. Cin whispered to me of her mad crushes and borrowed my handkerchief to cry into when her puppy-loves broke her heart. It was all I could do not to hurt the one she only referred to as sempai. But I never knew his real name and she wouldn't say, so I couldn't find the wretch and pound him for making my sweet Cin cry.
She told me about her dreams. She wanted to be a young bride, she said, which had me gritting my teeth. She also said she wanted to open a cake and flower shop. Anyone who baked as well as she did, I assured her, would make a success of it. That bit of honesty garnered me a smile that I still treasure the memory of and a present of a sweet cherry pie which I hid from my roommates so that I could enjoy every bite personally.
I learned she was kind, spirited, strong, fiercely loyal, protective to those who were weaker than she, generous to a fault, and deeply feminine, though she'd have denied the last. The silly girl didn't seem to understand that there was nothing unfeminine about being tall and athletically gifted when one is built to stop a strong man's heart and moves like subtle magic. At least I didn't think so. But then she never really had a good mental picture of herself. She never noticed the stares of the other men and boys who eyed her as well. Good thing too. I'd have had to hurt them.
Cin listened to me talk of my dreams as well. She was one of the few girls I've ever met who didn't think my passion for space and stargazing was weird. She found me a book on old Japanese legends about the moon, planets and stars which was fascinating to me. In return I promised her I'd name a star or constellation for her if I ever discovered a new one. She'd grinned at that and her eyes had sparkled with a fire as bright as any star when she said she'd hold me to my word. Maybe someday.
I gritted my teeth a second time when she first brought a boy to the Crown Fruit Parlor on a rainy Sunday. She was sixteen and a half. They'd walked in shoulder to shoulder under his umbrella, taken a private table away from the usual, and he smiled at her, teasing a smile from her and buying her a hot spiced-peach and cream sundae. He'd held her hand and I heard her call him Shinozaki-kun. He called her Mako-chan in what I thought was a far too familiar fashion. I called him trouble and a few other less kind things under my breath as I brought the dessert.
As I pretended to study my astronomy text for half-term exams, I watched the boy give her a miniature rose plant and get a cry of delight and a buss on the cheek in return. I'd simply gotten a blasé, "Arigato, Nathan-san," when I'd given her the sundae. It stung. I made a mental note, though, 'loves plants' in the part of my brain that seems devoted to cataloging knowledge of all things Cinnamon.
Much to my relief, I later found out that the boy was perhaps Cin's oldest friend, and just a friend at that, although a very close and much beloved one.
Their fathers had been college friends and she and the boy, Shinozaki, had known each other since they were in swaddling clothes. His family kept a watchful eye on her after her parents' untimely deaths. They'd even seen to it that she'd gotten transferred to Juban after getting expelled from Etowa-Ru Middle School for fighting. If not for that, I'd probably have not even met Cin, since it was at Juban she'd first met Usagi. That fact went a long way toward easing my hostility toward the boy.
After graduation I continued on in post-grad studies and my workload picked up forcing me to spend less time at the Crown Parlor, though I still worked when I could. I was buried neck-deep in papers for my second year of graduate studies when Tsukino-san, Usagi, and the other girls came to Motoki and me to plan her surprise party. It surprised even me that I'd forgotten. Kino Makoto was turning eighteen on December 5th.
That news caught my attention and held it. The gulf of years that had seemed so insurmountable when she was fourteen and I nineteen, didn't seem nearly as large now that she would be eighteen and legal, and I would be a mere twenty-three. It's nice how that works out eventually. Even though she had another few months left in high school, I knew she'd already been accepted into a fine culinary arts program to start in late spring. She'd practically been floating on air, over the moon, when she'd first gotten her letter of acceptance and I'd treated her to a soda in celebration. Her dreams were bigger now than a cake shop. She wanted to become a chef and I knew she had the talent to make it happen.
I asked Cin for her help that night. Anyone who knew as much about cooking as she did would be able to help me, I told her. I wanted to learn how to cook a proper Christmas date dinner for a special woman. Being the generous creature that she is, she immediately agreed, gave me a long list of groceries and other items to buy, and we set a date for her to come to my apartment to give me a cooking lesson. She even teased me about finally finding a serious girlfriend instead of playing around. I began planning how to threaten the other guys with death so that they'd clean up and then get out of the apartment while she was there.
Maybe I'll feel guilty later about lying to her by omission, but I can't feel that way right now since she is coming. I suppose I might get slapped for it, since I know she's got a stormy temper at times, but it's a risk I'm willing to take. Maybe if I'm lucky and the gods have pity on me, my dreams can come true. Stranger things have happened.
Her eighteenth birthday party, as planned by Usagi-chan and the other girls, went off without a hitch. She let out a yelp of shock as everyone leaped out and yelled 'Surprise' then burst out laughing. After blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, a spicy, rich chocolate cake with cinnamon-cocoa buttercream icing, everyone, including me, bundled her off to a club where we danced and partied until it was late. Cin didn't know it, but I'd made a wish on her candles too.
She glowed on the dance floor as she gyrated and swayed gracefully, more beautiful than ever. I'd never realized before how sensually my Cin moved, like liquid lightning. She's innocent but definitely not a child anymore. I took her hand for a slow dance and we spun together. And for the first time I saw something new and aware in her eyes when she looked at me. She was seeing me for the first time as more than a brother…and I liked it, especially when she blushed.
She'll be here soon, to instruct me on the fine art of cooking for two. Since the only cooking I've done previously has been of the open-and-heat by nuking variety, I wish us both much luck. Cin doesn't realize it, but I count it as our first date and if I can manage to create something edible under her tutelage, I'll ask her out for another date for Christmas itself, ice skating first, maybe, and then a romantic dinner.
Usagi told me she likes flowers, so I've bought her a casual bouquet of tiny pink roses and lily of the valley to thank her for her assistance. The leaves of the lilies match my Cin's bright emerald eyes.
I've got a special present for her too, part birthday-part Christmas gift. It's a perfume I discovered in a tiny shop near campus. It's got a sweet floral scent with a heady woodsy undertone that seems to match her well. It's definitely not a little girl's cologne. I know she'll love it.
It's called My Sin.
(Please note, that I do not own either the Sailor Moon characters or My Sin perfume. Additional Note: Etowa-ru Star)