kissing the girl you like is not always a good thing
"Right, you are under arrest from resisting an officer. Plus, you hurt my feelings."
Sogo Okita, Chapter 72.
i.
The voice at the back of his mind – you're a horrible person, Sogo– sounds much like Hijikata's, fucking touchstone of morality of our time, but it's not, it's his own voice, he cannot claim ignorance. He is not doing anything other teenage boys aren't doing right now, all over Edo.
What possessed you?goes the voice. "Possess" is a good word. He likes it.
He holds her down by the shoulder; she is stronger but there's the element of surprise in what he did. Her face is smeared in dust.
There is another voice, now more like his own, something hissed: I don't know what I'm doingand it's not true, that's the problem. Liar, you liar.
There's a sound of surprise under his mouth.
The girl looks surprised – who wouldn't be – and Okita remembers reading filthy novels (if you think the Shinsegumi men don't keep stacks of them in secret corners, under the mats, safe from the Vice-commander's inspecting eyes, you are crazy) and he remembers reading the word pliant. This is not it. He has no idea how pliant would look on the girl, he finds it hard to imagine. He watches, fascinated, how the little blood vessels break and the girl's mouth turns red at the edges, the lips a deeper pink; it's not the first time for Okita but maybe it is for her. This idea makes him feel hollow and dry.
And China girl curls the finger of her left hand into a fist and for a moment Okita thinks he is going to get it; but she just presses it against the side of Okita's neck, as if struggling for balance, and Okita can feel her pulse.
`Ugh, you cheating monster. You didn't have to spit on me to win a fight,´ she protests.
She kicks from under his weight and Okita knows this isn't a clever manoeuvre to, finally, defeat the Yato girl. It is something else.
`I didn't spit on you. I kissed you. How ignorant are you, China?´
`Kiss me? EWWWW.´
She punches him (when did she free her right hand anyway?) but Okita doesn't surrender an inch. She punches him again and again and again. They are alone in the park so "making a scene" wouldn't be quite accurate. And anyway they do this all the time. If there are any intrepid dog-walkers and running-addicts left to keeping coming to this playground they are all already used to the two teenagers.
Okita thinks he could be charming and maybe: `Do you treat all your suitors this way? Let me tell you, China, with your hygiene habits, you can't be this choosy. Men don't like girls who pick their noses.´
He wonders if that's true. What do men like. He doesn't know any specimen that could count as "average" in any statistical study. Okita lives surrounded by men who live surrounded by men. He lives in a completely homosexual environment, if you ask him. He uses words like suitorsbecause clearly it was a mistake letting Yamazaki in charge of the tv schedule. And Kondo likes a woman who detests the sight of him. If you take all this into account Okita is obviously not to blame for his own actions. He never had a chance in the first place.
The girl under him manages to break free at the moment when Okita stops counting the number of punches received.
He never had a chance.
ii.
He half expects that old geezer Sakata to burst into the Shinsegumi headquarters any minute now and kick his ass.
He stays in his room and waits. He stays in his room and broods. He stays in his room and calls it meditation because Hijikata once wrote that the key to being an honourable warrior was self-reflection; even when Hijikata himself is too fidgety for meditation, always making up rules about the things he wishes he could be. He had always wanted to have been a samurai. He was born in the wrong place, and perhaps a minute too late. Okita is not interested in being a samurai.
He stays in his room and does the properly teenage moping thing. Until Hijikata sees the scratches on his face:
`You need to stop picking fights with that girl. It's not good for your health. Just admit there's someone else stronger than you, jeez.´
And though he is obviously saying this for Okita's benefit Hijikata's face tells him that he actually sides with the girl. He would, wouldn't he, side with a girl, the insufferable sanctimonious virgin.
He can't go back to the park; the park was their place – his and China girl's– and he's desecrated it. You can only desecrate holy places, though. Linguistics, because Okita is a very smart boy, and he could find a thousand excuses and buy none of them. "Desecrate", like "possess", is a good word.
Okita stays in his room if only so that he'd stop crossing path with Kondo and Kondo would stop looking at him with worry and saying You look distractedand calling his name with a voice as warm as Okita will never be.
iii.
Okita had never imagined that there could be anyone, anything, in the universe stronger than her; it turns out there is, and it's her brother.
He can see the familiar resemblance, definitely: the always-surprising heaviness when a punch or a kick finally finds, despite their bodies, despite their lithe-looking limbs. Another something similar: the inexorability he feels when defeat comes, like there was never any question of how a battle would turn out. For a moment it's the same person – that red hair, the same vulnerable pale skin. It's the same mouth, the same eyes.
(no, no the same eyes;
the brother's are empty
not the same
eyes)
When he feels two of his ribs crushed under the man's knee Okita thinks ah, not quite the same person thenbecause the girl would never break bones in such a thoughtless fashion – she could and sometimes, Okita knew it himself, if provoked he would, but there is no inherent cruelty to that creature. This monster, on the other hand (same hair, same face, not the same eyes), he makes twigs out of his victims, breakable to the touch.
When he feels the two ribs closest to the heart break Okita thinks: this is it, I'm not associating myself with these lunatics any more, a man has to have a limit. At least he keeps a sense of humour in the end, and he should have known that Death had pale skin, red hair.
Later, an eternity of rain later:
`Hey, hey, brat,´ a voice calling him brat, but as the world regains its sharper edges (its sadder colours) he realizes the voice too, belongs to a brat. So she's alive. Or maybe they are both dead and in the afterlife. But he doesn't think there's raining in the afterlife. There is rain dripping from her hair, running down her neck, dripping onto Okita's body, drenching his black clothes, mixing with his blood. Pale fingers fumble with his shirt, the red of the wound diluting into rain-stained pink.
Pale fingers fumbling with his clothes, Okita remembers the filthy books hidden under the beds of Shinsegumi men, Okita remembers turns of phrase read when he was too young to comprehend; he misses that, he misses the headquarters, his idiots companions, and he misses Kondo, warmer than any other thing in the universe known to Okita. He even misses Hijikata and wishes he were more surprised by this fact. Death is a very lonely thing.
He tries to close his eyes again...
`Hey, I said don't die,´ she slaps his arm. His injured arm. But she said don't die. A pretty girl telling you not to die, that's an upside. He just thought of China as prettyso obviously he must be at the Doors of Death Itself, that's the only explanation. But she keeps talking: `I heard people crap themselves before they die. I don't want you to get shit on my clothes.´
She is ridiculous; this is ridiculousbut Okita never had much use for a sense of shame. He is not Hijikata, after all. Oh, God, Hijikata is going to kill him. For almost dying he is going to kill him. Kondo will cry, and Hijikata will kill him for both things, almost dying and making the Commander cry. The thought is like an invitation to stay here, lying on his back, on his almost-dying state.
If it weren't that; the girl is here.
If she is alive that means she must have kick her brother's ass because sure as hell Okita didn't. So what do you know, he was right after all: there's no one stronger. He wishes he could be a better man and say that doesn't sting but it does. Whatever else the girl is she is his rival first. He is proud of both of them: of Kagura –yes, he sometimes thinks about her with her real name; yes, he knows it's not safe– for being so strong, of himself for choosing such a magnificent adversary.
Congratulations, boy, you've done well; he doesn't think anybody would say that. Only a madmen would think this. She picks her nose. She can kick his ass. What a catch.
Why did he come here, anyway? He had only wanted to help. Sogo Okita: trying his luck in battle one Yato at a time.
His vision clears – there are cuts and bruises on her face and he was there when it happened. He tried to stop that. The girl is biting her lower lip, her expression Okita fantasizes to mean that she wants to thank him. That would be complete victory.
`If you die that's cheating,´ she tells him in a voice full of bravado. `I want a rematch of our last fight.´
Okita feels like that happened a million years ago but that might be the blood loss talking. The sense of strange calm and content with his hands resting between the girl's fingers, the foreign feeling of being held close, that surelyit's the blood loss talking.
`And no spitting this time,´ Kagura adds.
It hurts to smile, but he does it anyway.