"Indeed they are, Mrs. Christensen," her husband agreed, shaking both his head and the reins to urge the horses on.
Back on the sidewalk, Sagara
Sanosuke, a.k.a. just plain Sano, a.k.a. Zanza, a.k.a. Rooster Head, a.k.a.
that freeloader with the swanky hair, rubbed all the sore spots on his
body--there seemed to be a lot more of them than the ones he'd gotten from
the previous encounter--before grimacing in the general direction of the
clinic he'd just been unceremoniously tossed out of.
"Ow, that really hurt,"
the ex-gangster grumbled to himself, gingerly touching a growing bruise
above his left eyebrow that was beginning to turn a most interesting shade
of burgundy. Glaring at the clinic--and at the woman who'd done the kicking
out--Sano resisted the urge to shake his fist at the building as he muttered
to himself, "What's the fox's problem, anyway? Okay, so I may not be as
well-bred as she thinks she is, but does she really have to go throwing
me out of the clinic when I was trying to help out? I mean, just because
I trashed the whole place, flirted with all the female patients, used one
of her sandals to squash that spider--not my fault she wears clunkier shoes
than I do--drank all her special medicine to cure Mr. Yajima's diarrhea
because I thought it was sake, threw up all over her apron and kimono ten
minutes later, nearly set fire to her hair five minutes after that, accidentally
knocked Dr. Genzai unconscious when I was showing off my flying kick to
that cute Mitsuko girl, and gambled away all her money while she was attending
on that surgery, she thinks I'm a troublemaker!" The handsome youth pulled
himself into a cross-legged sitting position, folding his arms across his
chest and letting out an insulted huff.
"Why can't she just learn
to relax one of these days, she'll give herself a stroke if she keeps this
responsibility crap up for much longer," he nodded wisely to himself.
A passing man and his five-year-old
son walked by as Sanosuke was rambling to himself, and the little boy detached
himself from his father to peer curiously at the fighter-for-hire before
drawing back to his parent.
"Tou-san," he spoke up with
the conscious politeness of a five-year-old, "why is that funny-looking
man with the rooster-hair talking to himself like that?" His father darted
a wary glance at Sanosuke, and quickly pulled his son closer to him while
hastening his pace, mumbling to the little boy, "Don't look at him, Hikaru--those
crazy types are spurred on if you pay them any attention, but if we pretend
we didn't see him, maybe he won't attack us." And he propelled his son
away from Sanosuke as fast as he could.
Inside the clinic, Ayame
and Suzume were clinging to each other, watching as Dr. Takani Megumi took
long, deep breaths in an effort to calm herself down.
"She's scary when she's
angry," Ayame whispered into her sister's ear, who nodded mutely in agreement.
Megumi, meanwhile, was pulling off a pretty impressive impression of the
first ever yoga guru in Japan, as she closed her eyes and continued taking
deep breaths, appearing almost peaceful if it weren't for the dangerous
twitching of her left eyebrow as she remembered that idiotic Rooster Head's
antics up until when she'd kicked him out.
"Idiot," she growled under
her breath at just the memory of what he'd done. "Idiot, troublemaker,
rogue, devil, fool, clumsy oaf!"
"Oh, no! Now she's saying
bad words," Suzume whispered back to Ayame, who quickly clapped her hands
over her ears to block out all those "bad words." Megumi opened her eyes,
and their cranberry-colored gaze soon fell upon a decorative little porcelain
kiosk draped with tiny china roses, sitting on a low table a few feet away
from her. How good it would feel to throttle that innocent little kiosk
and pretend it was Sano's head, and just smash it against the wall the
same way he'd ripped off one of her sandals and let it drop over that poor,
unsuspecting spider.
"No." Megumi clenched her
hands into fists, then relaxed her fingers as she repeated to herself,
"No, I've already acted completely unrefined enough for today. Can't sink
down to that Kamiya tomboy's level...at least, not yet." Her eyes fell
on the two little girls staring wide-eyed up at her with unconcealed fascination,
and the statuesque doctor barely escaped sweatdropping, opting instead
to clear her throat and try to regain her composure.
"Ayame, Suzume," she spoke
up sweetly, when she was sure she could talk normally again without every
other word coming out as a threat against Sanosuke, "would you be good
little nurses and check up on your grandfather while I make some medicine
to alleviate his pain, all right?
"All right," the two children
nodded, still wide-eyed after the Sano-abuse and flying furniture of a
few minutes earlier, and obediently scurried off while Megumi sighed and
tiredly brushed her fingers through her long hair, glancing around at the
giant, monsoon-worthy mess that Sanosuke--otherwise known as the walking
disaster with the rooster hair, she thought darkly to herself--had left
in his wake.
"Why can't that idiot ever
seem to grasp some common sense?" she complained to herself as she reluctantly
began cleaning up Sano's handiwork. "He can't possibly expect to contribute
to society if all he does is drink, gamble, and demolish others' workplaces!"
Outside, Sanosuke glared one last time at the clinic, before shoving his hands into his pockets and beginning to walk away, muttering under his breath, "I wish the fox would just lighten up and learn how to have fun and forget all her responsibilities every once in a while," at the same time that Megumi shook her head inside the clinic and said, "If there's one thing I wish for, is for that Sagara chicken-head to convert into a halfway decent person with some sense of responsibility." Simultaneous with their words, a shooting star flashed across the sky, but as it was midday, neither of them actually noticed its presence.
That Night...
She was drinking sake. A lot. So much, in fact, that she wondered why she hadn't gone to the bathroom yet. Oh, yes--because she was gambling...with skills that were so pitiful, she was almost surprised she hadn't lost even more money than she already had. No, never mind--she just did. In fact, she just lost so pathetically, she turned around and chugged down an entire jug of a cheap-tasting alcohol that she suspected was stronger than sake in an effort to drown her inner sorrow at losing while upholding a masculine devil-may-care-that-I-just-lost-everything-I-could-possibly-earn-in-the-next-twenty-years front.
"NOOOOOO!!!" Megumi sat up
in bed, wide awake and feeling her heart pounding as she tried to stop
hyperventilating. She shivered at the horror of her nightmare, starting
to draw her blanket tighter around her when she began to sense that something
was wrong. Terribly wrong. For example, why couldn't she feel any hair
falling gently against the nape of her neck and her back? Why were her
surroundings so dingy and messy? Good grief, a pig lives in better conditions
than this, she thought to herself, even as her mind puzzled over why
she suddenly felt as though a snake had crawled into her pants. Wait a
minute...pants? She didn't wear pants!
"Oh, no," Megumi muttered
to herself, swallowing hard and throwing off the ratty blanket as she got
up unsteadily and tripped her way toward the nearest object that might
serve as a mirror. After tottering wildly around the pigsty of a room for
several panicky minutes, she finally found a pan of lukewarm water and
nearly dunked her entire head in to look at her reflection. The reflection
of an attractive youth with high cheekbones and dark eyes...a male,
attractive youth. A dismayingly familiar, male, attractive youth.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" The
ensuing heartbreaking cry practically shook the entire roof off the little
house and sent it flying right into the moon.
Fifteen Minutes Later...
Sanosuke got up sleepily
and shuffled around, looking for anything edible to cure his midnight hunger
pangs. Stepping into the nearest pair of slippers he could find, the fighter-for-hire
yawned into one hand while digging around through all the variety of foodstuffs
with the other, wondering in the back of his mind why his head suddenly
felt as if a ten-pound weight had been attached to it.
"Wait a minute," he muttered
to himself, then leaned back in surprise at how feminine his voice came
out. Blinking and rubbing his eyes, Sano examined all the food like a jeweler
inspecting a valuable diamond, finishing silently in his mind, Since
when did I ever have this much food in one place at one time? Now that
he thought about it, just why did his head feel so heavy, anyway,
as though he'd suddenly grown a yard of hair overnight? And last time he
checked, his voice didn't sound this feminine. And this room certainly
looked way nicer than the ratty little dump he called home...
"Strange," Sanosuke muttered
in his girlie voice, grabbing a rice ball and shoving it into his mouth.
Taking several more, he started to leave and head back to bed, when he
happened to catch his reflection in a nearby mirror. The half-eaten rice
ball dropped from his mouth, its whole companions following it, as Sano
gawked at his new, improved self.
"Great," he--or rather,
she--grumbled
to him/herself. "If I had to switch bodies with someone, why couldn't
it have been that jerk Saitou so that I could have made his wife leave
him and then caused him to go bankrupt? Wait a minute...switch bodies?!"
A thud signaled the sound of Sanosuke in Megumi's body hitting the floor, having fainted dead away. Meanwhile, somewhere else, Saitou sneezed into his mug, causing some tea to splash onto his face. Sniffing and wiping the hot liquid away from his cheeks, he observed calmly, "Hn, someone's talking about me again."