Acting your age
Rei had certainly not expected to see Minako again so soon. Just half an hour ago, the blonde had waved her goodbye after the two girls had finished their nightly patrol of Tokyo by reporting to Luna and Artemis, and now there Minako was again, standing on Rei's doorstep with an overnight bag dangling from her right hand and an expectant look in her eyes.
"Are you going to let me in, or what?"
Minako groaned. Loudly.
"Rei, I can't believe you invited me over for a sleepover and forgot to rent some chick flicks." Gesturing wildly with the remote while sitting cross-legged on the floor, the blonde looked a little desperate in her pink polka dot pyjamas and her mussed up hair. She had taken the red bow out of her hair the second she had changed into her nightwear, and her long blonde hair was spilling all over her back and even onto the floor. "The only thing on TV is a documentary about sheep and an old John Wayne movie."
Arching one eyebrow, Rei gave her friend a very pointed look. "I didn't exactly invite you over. You invited yourself."
Minako made a dismissive gesture. "I have a standing invitation, so theoretically, you should always have an array of movies and sweets to choose from. You fail."
"Your logic fails," Rei muttered under her breath and closed her eyes. Sometimes Minako was really difficult to be around. She had been serious and alert during the patrol, but now she had obviously reverted to the shallow, teenaged persona Rei often found quite irritating.
"No, it doesn't," the blonde insisted after mulling Rei's words over for a minute and turned the TV off. "So, now that we having nothing to watch, we need to find something else to do."
"Sleep?"
Despite the fact that midnight had long since come and gone, Minako snorted. "No. Wanna paint my toenails?"
Thinking of her 7.45 archery class the next morning, Rei had to resist the urge to smack Minako over the head. It would be oh so warranted, but unfortunately, utterly undignified. Instead, she crossed her arms in front of her chest."Why would I want to do that?"
"It's what friends do," Minako said matter-of-factly and examined the chipped nail polish on her toes. Running around in the heels that were weirdly a part of her senshi uniform was never good for the look of her feet. Two blisters adorned each pinky toe.
"Find something else for us to do," Rei said, knowing that Minako wouldn't go to sleep unless she felt she had been entertained enough.
Minako rolled herself on her back and stared at the wood panelled ceiling. She and Rei were lying on the rolled out futons in her friend's room, and even though Minako was used to sleeping on the thin mattresses now, it didn't mean that she didn't miss her bed and the armada of pillows she liked to bury her head in. Granted, she didn't miss Artemis who always rolled himself in a tight ball and still managed to take up the better part of the bed. Luckily, he and Luna had disappeared to some unknown destination after Minako and Rei had reported the result of their patrol: no youma in sight, Tokyo and its future queen were uncharacteristically safe. But both Rei and Minako (or rather Mars and Venus) had felt something stirring in the darkness for just a moment, something intangible, undefinable. It had been cause enough for Minako to invite herself over to Rei's place for the night, where she hoped her friend would learn something about the thing in the night through meditation or holy fire. But Rei was too restless, even though you couldn't tell it from just looking at her. She seemed as poised as ever, perhaps a bit annoyed with Minako's intrusion in her home, but that was about it. Minako however knew better, and correctly assumed that her friend's unrest was directly linked to her upcoming birthday. Rei didn't like birthdays.
Breaking the silence, Minako threw a pillow in her friend's direction. "You can French braid my hair."
Putting Minako's pillow under her own, Rei refused."Your hair is too long, it would take ages and we have school tomorrow."
"Urgh, you sound just like my mother. She's always after me to go to the hairdresser's and get it cut. Plus, your hair is just as long as mine."
"My hair doesn't have as many split ends as yours," Rei said with a proud grin, for once acting her age.
Looking for something else to throw, but not finding anything, Minako pulled a face. "And now you've reached the same level of meanness my mother has."
"Minako, your mother is nowhere near as bad as you make her sound."
"Yes, she is."
"You should be lucky that you still have a mother," Rei finally snapped and pulled her blankets closer around herself. At the beginning of April, the spring nights were still cold, especially since she refused to turn her heater on at night. Next to her, Minako's eyes gleamed.
"Oh, just like you should be happy that you still have a father?"
The two girls glowered at each other for a second before Minako blushed and reached for Rei's hand, pressing it once. "Sorry."
Squeezing Minako's thin hand, Rei remained silent, and finally let go to push herself into a sitting position. She made an impatient gesture, and Minako followed her example, and not before long, Rei's skilled fingers parted Minako's hair and began to braid. Outside, the night was silent.
"You know, I do get that I should be grateful that I still have a mother, but we're only ever fighting. And she's been trying to turn me into some sort of tamer version of myself for years. I don't like being pushed."
"She just wants you to be happy," the miko said and wondered whether it was true at the same time. Not all parents were as kind and loving as Usagi's or Ami's. Her own father certainly wasn't.
"No, she wants me to be happy in a way she can understand, and that's a difference. I'm happy now, but she only sees my average to subpar grades, my tendency to be late and my too long hair."
"Did you ever think of doing more for school, being on time, and cutting your hair? If that's all she complains about, then it might improve your relationship."
"I'm not going to change just so that she likes me better. I'm okay with who I am, and which sixteen year-old can say that about themselves, huh?"
Rei's fingers stilled.
"Minako, people don't give you enough credit."
"I know," the blonde said and Rei could hear the smile in the voice. "Not you and the others though. You saw me for who I am right at the beginning. Even when you still thought I might be the Moon princess, you knew that I was a capable person." Minako tried to turn her head to look at her friend, but Rei's hands kept her in place. "Well, we also saw you fight and kill youmas. Your mother couldn't possibly have the same perspective on you that we do."
"Probably not."
After a while, Rei tied the end of the braid with her friend's customary red bow. "Done." It would have looked better with just a simple hair tie, but she didn't own any. She only had pins and one banana clip for bathing.
"Thanks," Minako said and jumped up to examine Rei's handiwork in the bathroom mirror. "Looks good," she called to Rei through the open door. "Do you have hairspray? I want it to look just as nice when I wake up tomorrow morning."
"There some on the cabinet to your right," Rei said, and wondered whether Minako remembered that she herself had left the hair product here a few months ago after complaining that no woman could live with just one bar of soap and a bottle of non-descript shampoo in her home.
The sound of the spray can dominated the bathroom for two full minutes before Minako came out again, waving her hands in front of her face. "I almost suffocated."
Rei rolled her eyes, but had to fight back a grin. "You might as well have done it outside where you have more air and don't stink up the whole bathroom."
"Didn't thinks of that," Minako said and gracefully lowered herself to the futon again. "Rei, do you miss your mother?" The question was sudden, and touched unchartered territory, but Minako wouldn't be herself if she didn't dare to ask out loud what others only thought about.
The miko closed her eyes, and wondered how to express the complexity of her feelings. She thought about her mother every day, wondered if she could have told her about the sacred duty of being a senshi, about the fear of losing her position and life in the shrine once Crystal Tokyo came around. She was sure that she would own more hair product were her mother still alive, and the thought almost made her smile. Were her mother still alive, Rei would look forward to her birthday and the dinner it entailed. But all these thoughts weren't the ones she felt comfortable voicing in front of Minako because the blonde was not only her friend, but also the leader of the senshi. So she settled for a compromise. It was honest, but incomplete. "I don't remember her as much as I'd like to."
Not quite ready to let go, Minako inclined her head. Rei had learned long ago that it was a gesture she displayed when she was thinking quite hard about something that wasn't any of her business. "How old were you when she passed away?"
"Five," Rei answered simply. There wasn't more to say. Not how she found her mother, all white and still in her bed one morning. Not how she had waited two days by the bedside until her father returned from a business trip. Not how she had refused to budge from her mother's side long after it was explained to her that she had gone on to another place. Her father hadn't told her that it was a better place; he wasn't one for comfort.
Minako's familiar voice was clear in the night, it wasn't hushed as her child psychologist's had been. "What did she die of?"
Fed up with the question and answer game, Rei met Minako's eyes with one long, hard look. "A broken heart."
Minako pondered this information for a moment, and wisely chose not to comment on it. Instead, she jerked her head to indicate that Rei should turn around. "Time to do your hair."
Dutifully (and grateful that Minako had dropped the subject), Rei acquiesced and moved until her back was to Minako, who immediately reached for a brush and set to work.
"I think that maybe you and I should do something on your birthday next week," she said in a thoughtful tone while running the brush through Rei's silky black hair. She noticed with a wry smile that Rei had been right: there were indeed less split ends in Rei's hair than in her own.
"My father usually comes to pick me up for dinner."
"I know."
"I never told you." She could feel Minako shrugging behind her.
"I make it my business to know more than people tell me."
"It's rude to pry."
"It's stupid to spent your birthday being unhappy," Minako responded, her voice sharp.
Rei could feel her hair being separated in the middle, and realised that Minako wouldn't make her the same hairdo Rei had given her.
The hair on the left side of her head was sectioned off, pulled up and rolled into a tight little ball. Rei realised what Minako was doing when her friend used hair pins to fasten the little odango to the top of her head. The same process was repeated on the other side, and Rei refrained from pointing out that one of the pins was pinching into her skull and instead adjusted it herself. She got up and went to look at herself in the small mirror over the sink in the adjoining bathroom.
"I look odd," she finally said and reached up to touch the odangos, an uncertain look on her face. She met Minako's eyes in the mirror; the blonde had followed her in the bathroom, and was standing right behind her, a smile on her pretty face.
"Yes, you do. Let's take a picture of ourselves, we can give it to Usagi for her birthday."
"What would we do on my birthday? If I didn't meet my father?" Rei suddenly said, her violet eyes anxious.
Minako laughed and turned to walk back into Rei's room. "Why, we would watch a girly movie and eat sweets, of course."
Smiling slowly, Rei nodded. It sounded like a plan.
The End