Please read Disclaimer in Chapter One.
Title: Maya's Tale (C2: Beginning)
Author: JaganshiKenshin
Genre: Action/Adventure, General
Rating: K+/PG-13 (for anime-style fight scenes/language)
Summary: Home alone, a girl cheers herself with spooky TV fare.
A/N: Nearly ten years after her forgotten abduction by the monster Yatsude and her rescue courtesy of Hiei and Kurama, Kitajima Maya ponders how her life turned out.
"A whole new wonderful world might open up!"
Maya's Tale (2: Beginning)
by
Kenshin
Dear Diary,
Father is cross with me again. I suppose it's because of that girl. Or maybe he has other reasons. With Father, one never knows. It's been lonely here without my sisters, so I can't help but watch. Watching eases my distress, which has been growing of late.
I wonder whether anyone can 'hear' me.
It seems foolish to think so, as I have not spoken of this distress to anyone. But I am afraid. So very afraid.
0-0-0-0-0
"I'm home!" Kicking off her shoes, Kitajima Maya stepped from the genkan and entered the apartment in stocking feet.
No one welcomed her, for no one was there.
In spite of the cozy warmth, her shoulders drooped with a momentary draining of courage and cheer.
Not that she had a bad life, not that she was complaining! She had a decent job, clothes to wear, a roof over her head and food to eat. When her father returned from his business trip to France, he would bring her a thoughtful gift, as always.
It was just that, in the years since she'd graduated, nothing exciting ever seemed to happen.
Still. The Adventure Club was meeting Friday afternoon. So at least she had that to anticipate. And maybe one of the other girls would have good news.
The club, which consisted of Maya, plus Riku-the-embellisher, Chikako-the-skeptic, and Ayumi-the-follower, gathered at various coffee shops to laugh, talk over important TV shows, and also to report Real Life Encounters With The Unknown.
They were still waiting for a single such encounter.
Maya felt the girls ought to launch expeditions in search of the Unknown, and not just passively wait for Bigfoot to jump into someone's lap. The others did not exactly disagree, but no steps had been taken to plan such an expedition. Maybe, Maya thought, I'll launch my own!
Maya worked as a messenger for Quicksilver Couriers, which provided a black Yamaha Zuma for out-of-town deliveries. She liked the sturdy 125 cc scooter, because it resembled a comical Bug-Eyed Monster, and it led to flights of fancy: Maya the Alien Hunter, and Her Trusty Companion Zuma.
Her job as a courier gave her a sense of freedom, with an opportunity to roam the city and its outskirts.
Although Maya had drunk some miso soup for breakfast, and although the apartment was warm, she'd been out on a couple of early morning calls. She felt chilly and hungry.
Still morning, so I guess another breakfast is in order. She went to the kitchen, filled a kettle with water for tea. Grabbing a fresh package of rice crackers, she tore it open and tipped the crisp, crackling discs into a blue bowl that had been Mom's favorite. Bowl in hand, she scurried to the living room.
Luna-P was waiting for her. "Hello, Luna," she trilled.
There was no reply, for Luna-P was a stuffed toy, a pillow really, round and black and softly huggable. But though only a pillow, Luna had kind, understanding eyes, and endless patience for Maya's chatter.
Maya put a cracker in her mouth and the bowl on the coffee table. She pulled Luna into her lap, picked up the TV remote, and started flipping channels.
Boring stock market reports, soap operas she didn't like, silly kid's shows.
Luna was also unimpressed.
Though it was modest, even cramped, the apartment seemed huge with only Maya and Luna-P present. Besides the small living room, there were two bedrooms, a bath, and a kitchen that did triple duty as a study, meal preparation zone, and eatery.
Selling their house had been the right thing to do, of course, and Maya was glad that Father had done so. Still...
The teakettle whistled before Maya found a program to watch, and she hurried to brew her tea. Back with the hot tea, she munched crackers and flipped channels.
She still could not settle. The shapeless green sweatshirt she wore made her feel dowdy. Maya thought about changing clothes, but she might get another job call, and she had no desire to freeze.
At last, something worth watching: a re-run of Alien Abduction Weekly.
At their upcoming meeting, the girls would discuss this program. Riku would claim to have been abducted, but both Chikako and Maya could tell Riku was just grabbing her narrative off the TV and re-hashing it for their supposed benefit.
As usual, Maya had nothing to report. Fearing the Adventure Club was on its last legs, she had tried, over the course of the year, to talk herself into believing that an alley cat ducking behind a sushi restaurant was actually a creature from another dimension, or that the flickering orb just outside the park was not merely a defective street light but a flying saucer.
But her conscience would not allow this, and besides, Luna would be disappointed in her.
When she tried to come up with Strange Encounters, Maya knew she was reaching, fabricating, making things up.
And yet-and yet-
-buried in a tangled thicket of memory, was an incident, no more than a scene really, vivid but fleeting, a moving dream glimpsed as if through fog-
A slimy crawling thing, and a boy she'd known in school, who was good-looking, green-eyed, with rust-red hair. And the boy saying something about the smelly crawling thing-
-then the flash of a blade, and steely hands grabbing her shoulders from behind-
No. The harder Maya struggled to recall the incident, the faster it swirled back into mist.
Maybe it was just a nightmare.
"If I could speak to Mom," she told Luna, "things would be different." How she longed for such a talk. Could aliens help her achieve that? As for Mr. Muktananda, he was always saying the breakthrough was 'just around the corner.'
She took Luna's silence for deep thought.
Luna was right. It had been so long. Maybe there was no breakthrough. No! Stop that line of thought right now! A girl has to believe in something.
On the TV screen, a young man nervously detailed the indignities he had suffered at the hands of the space aliens, whom he described as gray, with enormous black eyes, and a cold, efficient manner, which Riku would repeat Friday and claim it had been herself who suffered at the hands of the Grays, as they were called by those in the know.
"I would show those Grays a thing or two," Maya confided to Luna. "If they abducted me, I'd be studying them!"
But what would aliens think of her ragged green sweatshirt? No, that wouldn't do. Dressing well gave a girl confidence.
Of course, to find a ghost might prove even better than aliens. Space aliens-how could you have anything in common with someone from a whole other planet? At least with ghosts, they used to be people. They used to be alive. Some of them probably had better fashion sense than Maya.
She really should wear something nice. She had let her appearance go too much of late.
Because she had the strangest feeling that things were about to change. Something different was coming her way.
With a tingle of excitement, she hugged Luna-P and whispered, "Just you wait. It's gonna be so cool!"
-30-
(To be continued: Kurama visits Hiei, bearing gifts and an ulterior motive.)
