Summer Wars Short Fic. 1 "She IS Kazuma!"

So, he was finally back. It's been so long. Kenji looked out to the open fields and its lush greenery which decorated its corners. Ueda sure is slow to change, even after these years, it still looks the same.

The bus slowed to a halt. This was his stop. Ueda, Nagano Prefecture. Alighting, the bus made a sharp turn and went back on the lonely road which led here. Well, this was it.

Trudging up the slope, he recalled the time when he first made his way up this very same path. This time round, there was only his own luggage to burden him. Still, journeying all the way here by himself took its toll in its own way.

"Hmm?"

Kenji looked at the teenage girl standing in the middle of the road, her arms crossed and her eyebrows furrowed. For a moment, Kenji thought that she was staring at him. He laughed at himself for coming up with such a ridiculous idea. Why would a stranger be staring at him?

"Kenji. "

He looked at the stranger. She seemed more irritated than before. Did she just call his name? No…Does she know him? Kenji looked about to see if she was addressing anyone else. The road seemed rather empty.

"Kenji Koiso!"

Alright, it was him.

"Err…Who are you?"

If she had answered, he didn't catch her.

"Everyone is waiting for you at the Jinnouchi Estate." With that, she began to move up slope as well.

For a girl, she was moving at quite a speed. Kenji fumbled with his bags as he tried to keep up with her pace. Guess his visit this time round wasn't that much different.

On the way, Kenji struggled to identify the uncomfortably familiar girl. She definitely wasn't one of the kids, nor did he see her during the time he spent three years ago.

He speculated that she was one of the family members he never got to meet, or met but never had an impression of.

The very same doors, the scent of the relaxing countryside. Kenji let the sense of nostalgia wash over him.

"Kenji-kun! You are finally here!"

A lady dressed in a white dress stepped out of the veranda and ran towards him. Kenji nearly couldn't recognize her.

"Natsuki-san?"

She smiled in acknowledgement.

"Kenji-kun, what do you think, don't you think I've gotten more feminine?"

Kenji's face flushed as Natsuki winked at him. Trying to change the subject, he desperately searched for something unrelated.

"A-ah, Natsuki-san, who is this?"

Natsuki stifled a laugh.

"Make a guess."

Kenji studied the girl once more. Her flamboyant red top under the flak jacket coupled with her constant scowl ran against his list of possible females.

"Are you Kazuma's girlfriend?"

Her eyelid twitched. Unable to hold back anymore, Natsuki broke into fits of laughter.

"Shut up, Natsuki!"

Now bending over as she struggled to stop herself from laughing anymore, Natsuki shouted.

"She IS Kazuma!"

Kenji was bewildered.

"Kazuma-kun?! Why is he crossdres-"

His life flashed past the moment that came out of his lips. Everything went silent that instant. Kenji felt his legs give way. Before he knew it, he was floored by a powerful blow from her.

The pain came after that. Coughing, his vision blurry, Kenji wondered if 'The Light' would come anytime to whisk him to a world beyond.

Concerned faces blocked out the sunlight which streamed onto his face. Kenji involuntarily winced as he picked out the awfully flustered girl's amongst the others before everything went black.

"Ugh..."

Opening his eyes to the bright ceiling, he looked about. He seems to be in one of the guest room of the estate...Bright ceiling? Clambering out of the bed, he tripped over his own foot and slammed his face into a pillar. Somehow, he knew now that today wasn't his day.

Stepping out into the small open garden, he felt the sun shining directly down on him. Just how long was he knocked out?

"Ah, he woke up."

"Woke up."

"He's woken up!"

Kenji rubbed his head; he surely had a concussion if he was hearing voices echoing themselves. Turning around, three kids looked intently at him.

What were their names again...Ah yes, Youhei, Shingo, Mao. They've grown up so much. Well, they are still kids now.

"Hey..."

The kids only retreated from him and hid behind a corner.

"Why are you avoiding me?"

Looking at each other and nodding to each exchange made in some unknown method, the trio stated blandly.

"Cause yer SUPER unlucky."

Kenji's facial expression slipped into one of wonder. Did they think his bad luck could be transferred to them? Ah, they were kids after all...

"Bad luck isn't contagious."

Trying to approach towards them, his abdomen throbbed painfully, pulling him back. Well, he supposed they were steadfast in their beliefs and would not have let him near themselves anyway. As soon as they realized Kenji attempting to approach them, they went into a frenzy.

"Ah, here he comes! Run!"

"Run."

"Running~"

Kenji smiled at them. At least they were still getting along with each other. They had always been that way, ever since before he knew them, sticking together as the three-man army they called themselves.

"Kenji!"

He spun around to the call. A worried Natsuki stood holding pillows and a futon.

"Really now, a patient shouldn't move about on his own." Holding his hand, she pulled him back to the room. Kenji settled back into the comfy bed now padded with a futon, in the middle of the day.

A knock on the door came. Kenji wondered came to disturb this sickly patient supposedly on the verge of death.

As the door slid open, Kenji's body reeled back instinctively. Kazuma.

Her eyebrows knitted together as usual, Kenji wondered if she came to pummel him into the state he should be in.

"Sorry about that."

Eh? Kenji eyed Kazuma for a while, before covering himself with a blanket and shielding himself with a pillow in a stance, asking.

"Erm...are you...really Kazuma-ku...san?"

An awkward silence passed them. With each passing second, Kenji felt more and more endangered.

What good was the pillow? She IS King Kazma. Hold that thought. King? Shouldn't it be Queen? Arg! He didn't need all these information now. Not now, of all times!

Pacing towards him, Kazuma didn't make single sound. Making a sharp tug, removing him from his shell of cushions, she flipped him over and onto the bed.

Pulling up his shirt, she held it up and scanned his body with her eyes. A deep bruise was set over the side of his abdomen. Kenji panicked.

"W-What are you doing?!"

Kazuma produced a miniature tub from one of her jacket's compartments.

"It's not going to get any better any time soon if you aren't going to do anything about it."

Scooping a small amount of the ointment from the container, she spread it over her palm and set it on his bruise.

The cooling salve was more than welcome to his aching body. But something was wrong. She is a girl, right? And right now, she is going over his body. With her bare hands.

He never had a female do something like that! Maybe when he was young, his mother rubbed medicine oil on his tummy, but this was different!

Why isn't she at all being bashful? A surge of pain sent his thoughts into a jumble.

"Oww-oww-oww!"

Still, she most definitely wasn't holding back.

"W-Wait!!"

Kenji grabbed her hand and stopped her.

"What? Can't take a little pain?"

Her voice sounded sour, and then some sort of smirk came onto her face.

'Even a girl like me can take this amount of pain'

Kenji could somehow read that from her expression.

"Look, I can do this on my own."

Kazuma eyed Kenji with suspicion.

"Excuses."

Her fingers pushed deeper into his bruised flesh.

Kenji stared back into her eyes that demanded him to make any expression of pain. Her fingers now dug deeper, as she tried to make him yield.

All of the sudden, Kazuma leaped and mounted over him. She smiled devilishly as she added her weight to the bruise.

Rather than flinching from the pain, Kenji's face flushed with a deeper red than before, when Natsuki winked at him.

Kazuma eased her hand as she tried to decipher his facial expression, then noticing the position she was in herself, blushed as well.

"You pervert! What were you thinking?!"

They clumsily fell to the floor as each tried to break free from the other's hold, but only entangling themselves further.

"Let go of me!"

Kazuma's foot slammed into his face.

"Mhmm-Mfhmmm~"

There was no way Kenji could speak with her foot over his mouth. Kazuma began to laugh uncontrollably, her foot stomping into his face over and over again.

Finally breaking free from each other, Kenji grabbed her leg and pushed it away.

"Phuahh! What were you doing, trying to kill me?"

Kenji was surprised at the sight before him. Kazuma's face was unusually red as she glared with her angry amber eyes, them slightly tearing.

"You IDIOT!"

Throwing the pillow over his face, she stormed out of the room, leaving the small tub of salve behind. For some reason, Kenji felt chastised. A streak of red ran down from his nose.

"Kenji-kun, are you really alright?"

Natsuki carefully stuck the plaster in its place over the bridge of his tissue stuffed nose. Even so, his nose hasn't stop bleeding since the last hour. Kenji wondered if he would bleed to death at this rate.

"Really, Kazuma went overboard..."

Kenji shook his head vigorously.

"No, it was my fault, yet she came to apologize...in her own way..."

Natsuki giggled lightly. He could always count on Natsuki to understand him and his plight.

"She always only wanted to win. It's a very bad habit of hers."

Kenji smiled at last. He did remember her crying when Love Machine defeated her avatar despite their careful plans.

Kenji snapped out of his train of thoughts and put his focus back on his questions unanswered.

"Why...How…Why?"

Natsuki face lit up with a bright smile to the question.

"It was granny's idea. The Jinnouchi family always pretended the first child to be a boy to make the child strong. Being frail at birth, Kazuma worried her parents a lot, so they sent her over to here to be under the care of granny since they couldn't care for her with themselves busy with their jobs...Of course, in the Jinnouchi Estate...things go by tradition. Well, she's a grown-up now…"

Now staring with his mouth agape, he tried to comprehend and accept the fact that she was always a girl. Nope, he couldn't do it.

"He-She...Whaa?"

The day turned into night in a relatively uneventful afternoon with Natsuki still barring him from moving around on his own and had added then that no one was to approach him.

Pulling and adding the tissue rather dry from blood in comparison to the pile of others, he breathed deeply. It was a tough job lifting himself from the unbelievable pile of blankets over him but upon doing so, he wondered if she confused him to be having a fever.

Even then, she surely went overboard… Tossing aside the layers and stretching tentatively, his bruise seems to have faded considerably thanks to the salve Kazuma brought him. A twinge of guilt tugged on the corners of his mind.

'You idiot!'

Her voice resounded in his mind.

"Yeah, I'm such an idiot."

Kenji knew the blame was on him for embarrassing her, and not just once, but twice... Muttering to himself as he made his way to the bath, Kenji unwittingly made his way to the door of the room where he first met Kazuma.

It looked just the same as it was three years ago. Kazuma wasn't in the room...strangely, that made him relieved yet disappointed. Turning back around the corner to head to the bath, he found himself staring at her in her face.

Kazuma abruptly halted as she found someone neither moving nor giving way. Her distracted look disappeared from her gaze as it rose to meet his eyes.

A queer look flashed across her face for a split second. As the situation began to register in both's mind, Kazuma turned about to leave.

"Wait...wait! Kazuma-san...Kazuma-san, I'm sorry!"

Pausing in the middle of her tracks, she turned around, the usual scowl on her face absent. Whether that was a good sign or not, he had no idea.

Kenji waited in for her to respond, be it to furiously scold or violently assault him for all he has done, or to forgive him. There wasn't much hope of her doing the latter but he definitely needed to consider that possibility…for his own sake.

"I don't like the way you said it."

Eh? That sounds...familiar.

"Say it in a more business-like manner."

Kenji couldn't help smiling. Of course.

"I'm sorry for embarrassing you today. It was truly unintentional, please forgive me."

Kazuma stretched her hand to towards Kenji as he bowed.

"Ah."

Pulling out the small tub of salve from his pocket, he formally placed it into her hands. A vein popped on Kazuma's head.

"Handshake. A handshake!"

Taking a small moment to register her words, Kenji did a facepalm.

"Sorry."

Awkwardly still holding her hand out to him, Kenji tried hard not to burst into laughter as he held her hand and shook it.

"Ah, you two made up already?"

Natsuki appeared from a corner all of the sudden. Kazuma released his hand and put hers to her side. Kenji didn't understand why she did that but decided that being silent for once wouldn't hurt.

"Kazuma...You..."

Natsuki addressed to her of some matter only they knew about, to which Kazuma simply shook her head. The girls kept silent for a short period.

"Anyway, dinner is almost ready..."

Really...was conversing with just looks that easy?

"What were you talking to Kazuma about?"

Kenji couldn't help asking Natsuki what was going on as they made their way to the dining room.

"Nothing."

A/N: Reviews and constructive criticism is required for any advancement in this fanfiction.