Disclaimer: I do not own X. Clamp does. Sue me not.
Author's notes: I was supposed to write a new A New World chapter and found I was writing something completely different. 'Tis what happens when you're high on caffeine and listening to monotonous music.
Many thanks to my beta, Cait-hime-sama
The Teenager
A hole in the concrete of the pavement rendered Fuma with a nasty sprained ankle in the summer of 1998.
He was talking to Kotori, carrying the grocery bags on the way home from today's shopping when the hole got him.
It was funny really because he was just saying, "Yeah and you know what?" with his finger up like a cartoon character, just before he fell. It happened like this:
Kotori said, "I was absolutely sure it was the mother who killed the student," they were talking about an American crime busting television show they had both grown addicted to lately, "I never thought it would be his roommate!"
And Fuma said, "Yeah and you know what…woop." The "woop." being him trying to say "woops" but meeting the pavement before he had the chance of finishing what he started.
Kotori stopped laughing when she saw her brother wincing as he pulled his foot out of the hole.
The doctor gave Fuma a wink and a playful punch to the shoulder and said that the sprain is not what's going to kill him. He gave Fuma a painkillers prescription and left the youth to be bandaged by the clinic's nurse.
The nurse was very pleased by the honor and made it clear to Fuma that she was.
Fuma asked the doctor if the bandage was necessary.
The doctor said it was or the foot might swell. Also, it's good for keeping the foot well supported and is generally necessary to heal his injury.
Fuma asked if the doctor could come and do this himself, so he'll show him how to do the bandaging.
The doctor looked at the nurse, looked at a very awkward and desperate Fuma, chuckled and said that Fuma can always ask the nurse for instructions; she knows how to bandage his foot just as well as he does.
The nurse smirked at him and pulled at the bandage a little too much.
Fuma's coach took one look at Fuma's foot and said that there's no way he's getting on the court with that foot.
He told Fuma to go home and rest, but watch his diet, not drink too many high in sugar soft drinks, not eat too much junk food and not sit in front of the television like a couch potato.
It's important, the coach said, for Fuma to try to walk as much as he can to get the foot better again. He told Fuma to go jogging or walking for a while after his foot gets better to compensate for whatever atrophy the sprain and the rest might have caused.
Fuma sighed and limped home, cursing his stupid head for being in the clouds while talking to Kotori instead of looking at where he was going.
Yes, Fuma was a very clumsy person when he was not holding his basketball. When he was growing he often wondered when he'd stop. When he outgrew his father, Fuma began feeling bad about it and constantly uncomfortable about the way he was. Which is why he'd always walk with a little hunch around his house.
When he was outside he'd straighten his back and try to look as tall as possible, especially when around Kotori and the boys who always tried to buzz around her.
If there were boys around Kotori he'd stay around her like a bodyguard and glare down at anyone trying to talk to her. He scared many suitors of his sister like that and he didn't care at all.
The thought of boys his age around his sister irked him. He knew them, he knew himself, he knew his age's quirks and preferred them to be as far away from his sister as possible. The only ones allowed to reach Kotori were the nerds who obviously posed no threat to his sister and even those were carefully inspected before they were allowed access to Kotori.
Kotori never complained; hearing stories about boys from her friends made it clear to her that her brother being there is a blessing rather than a curse.
If there were girls around Kotori, namely her friends, Fuma'd run away from there as quickly as he could.
There was something about their stares and their giggles and the things they thought were interesting to talk about that made him feel that he and the girls are talking in different languages.
He didn't understand the girls' shrieks and giggles; what made them do it, what made them think it's a proper way of communicating, what made them move from one subject to the other, what about said subjects was so interesting in the first place and why on earth was he still there, staring down at them like an idiot.
When Kotori's friends started looking at him more than they usually did, Fuma ran away faster. Of course he wouldn't let the girls know that this is why he ran away; he'd always turn to Kotori and say he had something to attend to, then respectfully turn around and walk away slowly enough to look calm and restrained.
He spent many school breaks leaning against a wall in the school yard, at a safe distance from Kotori and her friends, and just stare at her because he had no one else to hang around with. Which is where practicing basketball during recess saved him from loneliness and boredom.
It's not that he didn't have his buddies or anything, it's just that whoever was his friend always saw him in the same way: 'that big Monou guy'.
His friends would be guys who sought to find refuge from school bullies under his shadow. From there they could do whatever they liked because, surely by befriending him, he'd feel obliged to help them out.
Fuma was not a freelance bodyguard and did not like being treated as such.
He knew how to shake off such leaches and as soon as someone tried to approach him with an attitude that as much as resembled a 'you've got the body, I've got the brain' behavior Fuma would either ignore them or frighten them.
Not that he'd do them any physical harm or sound a clear threat; a good slam to his school locker when they were leaning on the locker nearby or simply ignoring them while casually glaring at their general direction from time to time did the trick.
There were the ones who wanted his help in school, who asked for his notebooks in English, literature and calculus, or asked him to help them with their cramming.
Fuma liked those kinds of friends and tried to be nice to them so they wouldn't run away.
Visiting these friends' houses for cramming sessions was something Fuma liked. He figured the vague sense of emptiness and slight awkwardness around his father (a mere flicker of a sensation now and then, but there nonetheless) was due to his mother's death. The new homes and different family atmospheres in the houses of his friends made him feel warm and comfortable, never mind how many lintels he knocked his head against and how he'd sometimes stumble into tables or chairs.
But as soon as those friends' parents signed them up into jukus, Fuma was left alone.
Kyogo was unable to afford sending his children to a juku, which didn't go without a great deal of apologies and explanations from their father.
Fuma and Kotori both said they were okay with it and reassured their father that they didn't feel in any disadvantage due to not going to a juku.
Whenever they felt the need to enhance their studies they'd watch an Upper Secondary School of the Air broadcast or listen to a program on the radio on the subject they needed and would make a show of how that was very good and they really didn't need anymore whenever Kyogo began moving uncomfortably whenever he'd walk past the living room.
The last kind of friend Fuma would acquire without any effort from him was only one boy in the last year of junior high school.
Atsushi-kun was very frail, very slim, and more delicate than Kotori, he was short and he never cut his hair. The school board president always nagged Atsushi-kun about his hair, which is when the smaller youth would run off to hide behind Fuma.
Fuma didn't mind Atsushi-kun because the boy made good conversation and was always very happy to inform Fuma of how well he shot hoops, how his grip on English was ever so superior than his and how well the winter school uniforms sat on him, and all in a way that didn't strike in the least bit like flattery.
Often, when Fuma thought about Atsushi-kun, a strange dim ache would grip his chest and he found himself longing for something far, far away, something he lost a long time ago.
Atsushi-kun entered a different high school, in Kobe where his parents moved to, so Fuma didn't see much of him these days, though the boy sure called him a lot and kept a firm correspondence with him (where he wrote about the latest clothes he bought, the school basketball team which he liked to watch, though they were of absolutely no match to Fuma and how much he missed him).
When Fuma chose to make friends, he made them within his basketball team, mostly. His friends were all very lively and energetic, very outgoing and social and all very much focused on the other sex. Fuma didn't mind the boys when they talked about girls but when they shoved magazines and comic books into his hands or snuck them into his backpack was where he'd draw the line.
His team friends also kept a bit of a distance from him, which Fuma noted only when it came to be bluntly obvious. He never discovered one friend broke up with his girlfriend until he'd seen the girl with another boy. He never knew another friend had problems in the family until the coach told them all they had to play without that friend and Fuma had to be told when he asked why.
Girls either kept a frightened distance from him or got too close. Fuma never took to girls really, for some reason they never struck him as interesting. Basketball was interesting, studies were interesting, family life was interesting, his friends were interesting, girls were….well….generally there. His friends figured he was a late bloomer and tried to 'coax him out of it', which failed mostly. So he had one less (big) topic to talk about with the guys.
For some reason he managed to create some kind of bubble around him which kept people from getting too close.
Was it his size? It could be. Fuma wished it wasn't so because he didn't choose to be born with this body and he sure as hell didn't enjoy having it.
Growing to be the size he was came to him as a surprise. Unlike his sister, he never had any 'checkpoints' in his development he had to expect in order to know that he was developing.
Fuma clearly remembers his father asking him to go shopping with his sister one day, out of the blue.
Fuma asked if there was anything important in the shrine that needed his father's attention at the moment and if he really had to go because he has a literature test tomorrow.
Kyogo shifted his weight from one leg to the other awkwardly, frowned just a bit and asked Fuma to go shopping with his sister before he walked away from his room.
What Kotori had to buy, Fuma never found out.
When he asked her when they'd go shopping she said it was okay if he didn't come with her, she'd go with her friends.
Fuma asked if she was sure because he didn't mind. Kotori blushed and said her friends already planned on taking her to all sorts of shops and she didn't want to disappoint them.
Other signs of developments in his sister's body either went unnoticed by Fuma or were elegantly hidden from him along with their byproducts.
The only thing Fuma bluntly noted about his development was his voice deepening.
Kids in his class chuckled whenever he'd speak in class and his voice would crack.
Then they'd joke about how everything he said sounded twice as serious because his voice was so much deeper than theirs.
Fuma didn't mind it and brushed away their chuckles though deep down inside he knew he was different and different was never a thing he liked feeling.
Of his growing height he learned whenever he'd glance in the mirror and note that he could see both his socks and a bit of leg when he was standing up. His shirts growing a bit uncomfortable around the arms and chest were another indication. Then it was time for him to drag his sister to go shopping.
Which was good because, apparently, there were a million things in clothes that he didn't see but Kotori saw as inconceivable.
If he'd walk into a store in search of pants or shirts he'd walk to the rows of the item he needed, pick a color that seemed reasonable (usually white, blue or black), place it vaguely around his waist to see it it'd fit him and walk away to the cash register.
Kotori would flip through several types of pants, take out and hold them in the air before her brother, put some back, and pull others all over again.
Then she'd take the pants she chose, pull a few shirts (shirts she picked in the same manner as the pants) and start placing the items in various combinations to see what would fit with what. Only then would she place the items in Fuma's hands and order him into the fitting booth.
Not until he did a few rounds of this-shirt-with-this-pants and those-pants-in-various-sizes-and-designs would Kotori nod, gather the chosen items from the fitting booth and walk off to the cash register.
Kotori also had a way around shops which allowed her to see merchandise where he didn't see it. There was always a shelf Fuma didn't spot at first or a row of items at the back or in a corner he was blind to.
After his clothes were bought and Fuma came to wear them, Kotori would make a bit of a fuss whenever he didn't wear the right shirt with the right pants. 'A fuss' in Kotori scale means frowning a bit and hanging sad eyes at her brother, then looking away. She never raised her voice or demanded anything of him; her gentle behavior was quite enough to get the message through.
When Fuma did his best to match items so they might look in any way resembling his notion of 'cool' Kotori giggled and remarked that he looked like an anime bad guy.
Fuma looked down on the long black trench coat he picked up in a stroll with his friends in the local mall, the black jeans and high boots and wondered:
A) What on earth made him think he could run around sane civilians with a trench coat like that,
B) What on earth made him buy the boots in the first place and,
C) When on earth did he acquire such a strange taste?
The first time Fuma fully comprehended how much he grew was when he enrolled in high school and the baseball team's coach took his measurements. He was taken aback by the measures he scored.
When he walked into the shower rooms by the sports hall along with his teammates he took a glimpse in the mirror and noted he was towering over them.
It was not that he didn't notice how he was looking at everything from a higher point of view, it was the blunt comparison others in his age group the mirror gave him that really drove the idea home.
There was another drawback to his growth; clumsiness. It was as if his body woke up one day and said, "Hey, I think I'll grow a bit today," without informing his brain about it.
Fuma found that when he poked something gently it fell and crashed, steps were trickier than he thought they were, things to jump over always seemed taller than they really were, distances were actually a lot shorter than he imagined, lintels were his new enemies (Kyogo had to re-design the whole house because of him, which didn't help with saving for juku or university for his children) and that whenever Kotori or his father couldn't find anything it was because he placed the missing object on his eye level and they couldn't even see it.
Basketball soon solved that problem. He learned how far his arms could reach when he was dribbling. He learned how long his legs were when he evaded the opposite team's players by taking long steps away from them. He learned how high he could jump and how strong were his muscles from shooting hoops.
If it weren't for basketball, Fuma would probably be one of those overgrown teens who were far too clumsy for their own good, be constantly awkward and bashful around their class colleagues and girls and would generally keep a distance from everyone because they were far too ashamed of themselves.
Basketball meant training after school, watching everything he ate and keeping a strict training regime at home. Because he was not eating junk food his skin didn't break with too much acne and he didn't gain excess weight. Because he jogged in the evening he didn't linger around the house, bored, with nothing to do after homework was done. Because he had after school training he did not hang around the streets and get involved with bad kids.
Kotori also had a lot to do with why Fuma never grew to be a punk. If Kyogo would have a long silent evening of sitting in the living room and frowning at the walls, Kotori would take Fuma's mind off of it by talking to Fuma about anything in the world or asking him to help her take the laundry to the clothesline or whatever there was around the house to do.
If their father stayed in the shrine all day and never bothered to get out to say, "Have a good day at school!" or "Welcome back!" and even "Good night!" and Fuma would find that it made him angry to the point of doing something extreme to get his father's attention, Kotori would fuss around her brother to give him as much love as he needed.
Kotori's heart problem meant Fuma had to take care of her a lot and keep an eye on her. It meant that he could never hang around outside the house too long because he needed to be able to get back home fast enough to take Kotori to the hospital if something went wrong and his father was sunk in thoughts, shrine work or simply panicking.
The fear of his little sister seeing something dead and bleeding or simply human-like and disassembled was constantly at the back of Fuma's mind, keeping him alert in case he'd have to calm her down. He already learned by heart the words he needed to say and how he should hold her so she wouldn't run away or rampage or simply collapse and faint.
The more Fuma grew to know his father, the more he grew sensitive to his father's moods, the things that brought said moods and what was wrong with his upbringing.
Despite that, he always treated his father with respect, admiration and obedience, even though they had their rows.
Arguments with his father usually started over PT evenings, with Kyogo being in a gloomy mood and completely incompetent to go, and with how Fuma hardly does anything to help Kotori around the house when he knows she shouldn't work herself too much because of her heart.
In general, Kyogo was always more concerned with Kotori's well-being than with Fuma's and would always keep a strange kind of distance away from his son for a reason unknown to Fuma.
When Kyogo took interest in his son's school life or general being, Fuma would answer him level headedly and seethe inwardly about how –finally- his father cares.
At first, Fuma would just get upset, get very angry and storm off in shouts and slamming doors. Kotori would bring ice cream or cookies and tea to his room and listen to him rave about how unfair everything is and why must he do this or that or take all of this in silence and how he could just pack his bag and run away from this house….
Then Kotori would fling herself forward into his arms and beg him not to go because she loves him and she doesn't want him to leave and what would this house be without him. She'd tell him how dear he is to her and that their father loves them really and that he's needed in the family.
Fuma did his best to do his best as an older brother and bigger son. He helped Kotori whenever he saw her working too much or when she shouldn't be.
But somehow his sister created a small world of house chores in which he simply did not fit. The washing machine's operation boggled him, the dryer even more. The technique of hanging the laundry so he wouldn't run out of clothespins or use too few of them took a while to learn, though he made it eventually. He'd put everything in its wrong place, according to Kotori, though it made perfect order to him and in general and there was always a dusty corner he missed.
Slowly, Fuma and Kotori learned how to operate around each other in the house chores arena and got along fine.
Kotori still preferred to have her bigger brother out of her business when she was at it, but it was not out of the idea that he was getting in her way (which was often true), but because she wanted to do the best she could and preferred to do it alone.
Fuma, on the other hand, was a team worker and always left something behind for his little sister to complete.
They never argued about it; Kotori would note him about it in her soft, gentle way, and he would apologize and offer to fix it.
Kotori would smile and say she already did it and he should just mind it the next time.
Fuma was slowly pushed away from the house chores, which Kotori took over completely in her, "Never mind, I'll do it, don't worry," way.
Kotori was very worried about her grades and the tests she'll face after this summer so she spent most of the vacation in her room, cramming, with only a few outings with her girl friends.
Fuma already finished all his summer assignments in the first week of summer break and felt sure of his grip on every subject he studied and so had no such worries as his sister's.
His only worries were history and chemistry which remained a vague blur, but he figured he'd pull the highest score he could without too much cramming and not count on these two subjects as his future career.
Fuma now had a lot of time on his hands, time he had absolutely no idea what to do with.
And so, that summer, Fuma was faced with a house he stumbled around a lot while cleaning, trying to do a good job at it, and a room to transfer from a total mess to sane order.
Fuma limped around his room and made a list of what must be done:
Pick up dirty clothes, collect father and Kotori's laundry and put it in the machine.
Arrange working desk so books, notebooks and school utilities would all be in their respectful piles, clearing a wide working space.
Clean floor.
Dust room.
Sort out old books and new books.
Arrange basketball stuff in a cabinet of their own or at least a different section in the closet.
Arrange closet in general because it's a mess of winter and summer clothes all bunched up together and half of it not even folded.
Chore 1 took more time than Fuma thought it would. His room was loaded with piles of reeking sweaty shirts, socks and underpants. Fuma found dirty laundry in parts of his room he never knew he had. He found them via smell. He found laundry in levels of dirt he never knew he could produce. He felt very sorry for Kotori and made a note to himself to be nicer to her every time she has to do the laundry.
Another discovery Fuma made as he rearranged his room was that many things he thought lost this entire time were simply buried under the general mess. He found all the manga he thought was lost and had hurried to buy new ones. He found that he had one volume in three copies and another in five. This cleaning up business was also financially useful.
Kotori walked past his room while he was still engrossed in chore 5. She shot her eyebrows up, smiled kindly and asked him if he was "Arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic?"
Fuma took a while to wrap his mind around the metaphor and pout at his sister.
"But are you sure you should be upright with your sprained ankle?" Kotori eyed Fuma's leg with concern.
"Oh yeah, sure, coach said it was necessary to keep myself in shape."
Kotori frowned a little, "But you should rest for a while. What damage could three days of rest do to your leg, anyway?"
"We have a big game next week. I picked a very wrong time to sprain my ankle, Kotori." Fuma looked at his ankle and rebuked himself under his breath.
"Don't say that! You were carrying groceries, you were helping me, you didn't notice the ground for a few seconds; it happens to everybody."
Fuma hung doubtful eyes at his sister.
Kotori walked into the room and placed her hands on her brother's shoulder, "I'm sure you'll do wonderfully, three days of rest or not. You're the team star, after all."
Fuma looked away bashfully and ushered his sister back to her studies.
He waddled around his room, sunk in chores. His life needed to get rearranged so he wouldn't be so sloppy and messy anymore. He simply couldn't keep things the way they were at the moment; it would be too much for Kotori and too much for him to live with properly.
Glancing at the clock, Fuma realized lunch aught to be made. He waddled to the kitchen before Kotori got there and started everything before she could come over and have a say in anything.
Kotori saw his decisiveness on the matter of making lunch, beamed a lovely warm smile at her brother and said she was looking forward to it.
As soon as he finished making lunch, Fuma wiped his hands on the kitchen towel, removed the apron he wore and walked out to the shrine to call his father for lunch.
He never did that. Either his mother did it or Kotori did it. By the age in which he realized he could do it too, Fuma was too aware of his father's quirks to not want to bother with it.
Fuma limped to the shrine door and raised his hand to push the door open when he heard his father's voice from inside.
The sound of Kyogo's low, dusty voice echoed from the walls of the wide shrine and reached Fuma's ears with a wave of air carrying the smell of incense, burning candles and wooden walls.
Kyogo said, "Saya….dear Saya….my Saya."
Fuma limped a step backwards and blinked at the closed doors.
It's as if someone above him took a bucketful of memories and emptied it on Fuma in one go.
His father was once a warm person, a kind and happy person who would fuss over their shoelaces and watch afternoon cartoons with them, who helped them with their first homework like it was his own. He was a father who read children's books and made funny voices to the different characters and tickled them whenever they didn't get the joke.
Fuma remembered a picnic when his father showed him how to make paper boats so that they wouldn't sink no matter what you do with them.
The memory was so clear it was like watching a chain of photographs. Everything was in frozen stilts but sharp and clear as life itself.
He remembered the color of the dry grass around them and the color of the sky. He remembered what Kotori wore that day, what Kamui wore that day and what his mother wore, though the tiny details of what aunt Tohru wore were a bit vague.
The sounds of the cicadas came out of the grass and up into the air like the heat waves from the ground. The sun made him frown a bit and proved to be a bit tiring in the long run. The food was twice as tasty because playing and running around made him hungry.
Fuma remembered his father taking him a little away from the rest of the family, to the little creek and showing him about the paper boats. He remembered the tiny wrinkles on his father's face as he frowned in concentration, the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth when he laughed and smiled. He remembered the thick layer of mud which clung to the heels of his father's sandals as he crouched by the creek to place the boats in the water.
Then he remembered he looked back towards his mother and Kotori. Those pictures were the sharpest.
They were sitting under a tree, on a root which stuck out of the ground like a comfortable bench. Aunt Tohru sat first, then his mother, then Kotori and finally Kamui. They sat in two batches; Tohru and Saya a little closer to each other, Kotori and Kamui a little closer but not as close.
The kids were obviously swinging their legs and babbling because his mother's profile was that of a smile. He could hear her laughing and the tone of her voice was that of speaking to a young child, like sweet silver bells ringing.
She was picking out fruits from the cooler. Aunt Tohru was pouring everyone juice from the bottle she bought.
Kotori handed Kamui an apple and he thanked her and wrapped an arm around her, letting go soon after.
They were all laughing and having a good time. The sun shone down and the tree's shade made it so that only the four's figures were clearly seen, like shadows.
Those long, golden days, golden as the dry grass in the fields, golden as the sun's rays and his sister's tan, golden as his mother's hairs.
Fuma knocked on the shrine doors gently before opening them slowly.
"Lunch is ready father, please come and eat it or it might get cold."
Kyogo turned around and hung surprised eyes at his son. He looked like he just woke up; a bit disoriented and out of sorts. He stared at Fuma for a moment and finally nodded, softening his features, "Yes, I'll be right there, thank you Fuma."
Fuma nodded and limped his way back to the kitchen to prepare the table and arrange the food on the plates.
Father faded when mother died. He became heavy and sad and slow. His kids grew too big for his parental embrace and too independent now that they had no mother to care for them. He loved them, no matter what mood took him.
A tiny smile crept across his lips. They are a family after all; loving and warm and whole. They'll be just fine, just fine.
Nothing but a dim, deep ache in his chest, with a vague longing for something far, far away, something he lost a long, long time ago kept Fuma from having a good domestic lunch with his family.
(The End)