*New Chapter*
Hey! YellowWomanontheBrink here!
I have just one thing to say…
Ho…Ly…Crap!
I can't believe how many people reviewed, and on a kinda sucky first chapter! I love you all! Thanks to Mahiro Ali,Oshino7, Kamui Sakurai. Double thanks to Elza Eldaniella 1 and fallendestinyxx for favoriting… on the first chapter! Quadruple thanks to AnimeRockzzz for going the whole nine yards and fav'ing, alerting, and reviewing! You get a cookie! Thanks to stavstrelley for alerting! I hope I can meet all your expectations…
You have to understand; this is the biggest positive result I've ever gotten on the first chapter, ever, in my entire life. Not on fictionpress, not on wattpad, not on bookrix (yes I have stuff published across all those sites) and definitely not on fanfiction.
I got enough time to write this up because my sister was at a track competition…yay running!
To answer KamuiSakurai about Rihan being ooc (just a little)… that was just a slip-up of mine. See, I have no idea how to write him, I'm only just adjusting. Not to mention I don't know how to write him slightly depressed…I imagine he'd be a little closed off.
I just went straight to typing more up…Right, now, onward with the story!
And so…BEGIN!
`Chapter 2`
When a fireman came and hauled her bodily down the lift they had set up next to the building, all Wakana could see was the black body bag being hauled ungracefully across the floor as they were carried down. When the dizzying movement of the lift stopped, she was grabbed and crushed by her mothers arms; Kokoro was sobbing hard, tears running down her face, her nose red and irritated, her yukata ruffled. Her cart lay discarded on the corner, flowers scattered everywhere as newpeople and civilians who had stopped to look trampled on their living. It hit the young girl then—she and her mother had nothing. Nothing.
Not being officially employed, they hadn't had abank account, mall their money had been burned. No clothes, no food, no home, and worst of all, no Aiko to watch. What would she live for now?
At that moment, her mother spotted the bag, being formally lifted into the ambulance, and clutched her slightly taller daughter, dropping to her knees. It was loud; and paramedic began to approach her, asking questions she could not answer, much to fast. The world spun around her as people with cameras got in her face, loud and demanding things…her mother clutched her shoulder and she fell to the ground, hitting her hips on the harsh concrete curb.
Wakana ran her fingers through Kokoro's hair and waved off, as calmly as possible, which was not very calmly, and tore through the people, to the ambulance.
Let me ride…let me see my sister! Is she okay! Is she okay!
A voice rang through the air. Was that her? Was that her voice that rang through the air so filled with hopelessness and desperation? She looked up to see the sad face of the paramedic, look down on her, then close the door.
The next time she would see her beloved little sister would be when she spread her ashes in the wind of a little park down the street from her school.
It was in this park, a week later that Wakana met a strange man, up in a tree. Having no where to live, Wakana had taken to sleeping in the park, near a small plot of flowers she grew for her mother at the base of a plum tree. Across a small field of grass lay a small bunch of sakura trees, and in the upmost branches was a man…woman? From the distance Wakana was at, she really couldn't tell, and the figure had long, dark hair she could easily be envious of. She started across the fields; it really was miracle ho the person got up there considering how far off the ground the first branch was.
Now at the base of the tree, she looked straight up through the dying flowery branches to see—now clearly a man, moping. He was munching on the cherries, premature though they may be.
"You might want to careful and look at the fruit but you put it in your mouth; some of them have worms," she said in a sing-song voice.
=0=
"You might want to careful and look at the fruit but you put it in your mouth; some of them have worms," a slightly mocking voice called up.
Rihan was so startled he almost fell out of his tree. Below him, peering curiously up at him with a coy smile was a girl with big brown eyes and a loose flowery summer dress.
What did she say about worms ?he thought, and then asked her so.
Slightly giggling, she said, "I think you might want to careful and look at the fruit but you put it in your mouth; some of them have worms."
Rihan noticed she had a strong, slightly high-pitched voice, and he inspected the cherry he was holding…and saw a thin clear head poking its head through a hole in the solid red skin.
"Eehh," he grimaced, and he heard the girl laugh. He glared down and saw she couldn't possibly be much older than thirteen or fourteen.
She placed her hand thoughtfully on her chin, still grinning.
"You know, if you're trying to hide," she began," you picked a terrible place. Your hair is so black I could see you from a distance, and it's a little ridiculous to find a grown man hiding in a tree."
Rihan pouted and leaned his back against the trunk, inspecting another cherry.
"It's fine, I don't live here, so no one I know will be able to find me. And I'm not hiding, I'm gracefully avoiding."
He cocked one golden eye down at the girl. "Who're you anyway?" She grinned fully up at him.
"My names Okinamachi Wakana."
Her face was somewhat familiar…
=0=
Wakana watched as the man in the tree retied his long, long hair and grinned a little.
"Well, Wakana-chan, it's nice to meet you. But"—he paused and narrowed his eyes, frowning. "I've got to go," and before she could properly respond, he jumped down from the tree and left with a shout of "Sayonara!"
She sighed. Nowadays, it seemed everyone frowned (and left her). And that man was…he was so familiar. But the man in her memory was so obviously something supernatural—a yokai if her research was to believed.
"So it must have been my imagination," she concluded half-heartedly out loud.
Ever since her sister died a few weeks ago, one could say, Wakana had an obsession. She could deny it to her classmates, call it merely a passion, but most people would digress.
Wakana marched over, slightly out-put, to her favorite ume tree, brushing past the flowers and flopped unceremoniously at its roots, wrenching an enormous book from a cheap bag. It read "Demons, kami, and other supernaturtal: a Complete guide to yokai, kami, mononoke, ayakashi and the like." She had already read the whole (stolen) book three times, finding only three or two paragraphs on the particular ayakashi that had saved her. Or at least, he fit the physical description as close as possible, with the exception of hair color.
Through her obsessive research, she also discovered what had happened to her sister, though it thoroughly disgusted her; the devouring of the little girl's ikigumo. What she still didn't know was why.
Wakana stayed there, under the tree, until late that night, when the moon was high in the sky, barely shining through the clouds, city and apartment lights twinkling down the sidewalk. Loud teenagers walked down the sidewalk a little ways off from the grassy section, pushing and shoving and cursing.
The barely teenage girl pushed clumsily climbed the thick, rough branches of the tree, pulling out a charity sweatshirt from her bag's depths and balled it p, resting her head and enjoying the cool breeze on her skin. She would sleep in the park again tonight. She knew her mother was out on the streets 'working'. She didn't want to be there to witness whatever her mom's new job was, at least until the flowers bloomed properly.
=0=
Despite Rihan's best efforts, Kubinashi still managed to find him.
Crap.
"Rihan-sama, we've been looking for you for almost a week now, you just vanished again after we approached that shrine, you know that no one appreciates it when you just use your fear like that and disappear on us. Let's go home now, okay?"
Rihan frowned and followed Kubinashi as he reverted back to his yokai form as the sun set. He grimaced, not particularly looking forward to the 4 hr journey back to Ukiyoe, only to be followed immediately by being chewed out by his father, then the rest of the council.
Damn. He really , really, didn't want to go home.
But his silent wishery was in vain, as he quickly embarked on the long journey home.
A few hours later, when they reached the outskirts of the city outside Ukiyoe, the two slowed. Kubinashi flicked a gaze on the Nidaime, unsurprised to see a brooding expression on the other's face. He was rather unsurprised; though Rihan had brightened up some, he was still a very mopey character.
They turned almost robotically down the street, basking in an awkward silence. The neckless yokai sighed; it was nearing that time of the year; the anniversary of Yamabuki's disappearance…he hated this time of year, and almost wanted to hate Yamabuki for just disappearing like she did.
It would not have been the first time Kubinashi speculated what went on in women's heads when they take such drastic measures. And they say men are blind to love.
"Rihan-sama," the began awkwardly, searching his mind for anything to talk about, and casting his gaze quickly onto a pitiful-looking tree, which bought up a picture in his head, "who was that, er, girl you were talking to?" He could have face=palmed for how…bad a question that was to ask.
Much to his surprise (and relief) Rihan cracked a grin. "She told I ate worms."
At his subordinates confused face, he grinned wider and explained.
"I was hiding in a tree and eating the cherries, she told me I looked ridiculous and said that a lot of them have worms. I had been there for hours…I don't even want to think about what I put in my mouth."
Kubinashi had to stifle a laugh at Rihan's slip-up.
"And then she just walked away; or rather, I left, I was still hiding from you, you know." Rihan's face fell a little. "Okinamachi Wakana…interesting person."
"What do you mean by that?"
His smirk returned. "She didn't stare. Most young girl's her age would've. In fact, she seemed rather impatient, and still stayed to talk to me. I felt like I was under a microscope, she looked at me so intensely…"
At Rihan's seriously thoughtful face, Kubinashi let out a rather nervous laugh.
"Perhaps we should get a move on…"
"Mmm, sure."
=0=
At home, Rihan was greeted by his seriously pissed off father, and just to make his day suck, the rest of the upper echelon of the yokai clans.
"Perhaps you might have forgotten Rihan, but you've had several things you, as the Nidaime of the Nura clan, are responsible for, that you have so carelessly shirked off. You know…"
Rihan stopped listening as his father got really worked up on his absence, and poking their heads through the thin doors of he front yard. He frowned at them and watched as they all sunk quickly back into the house, no doubt listening through the doors.
"Are you listening to me?"
"Absolutely," He replied back in an unarguable tone.
Nurarihyon sighed and waved his hopeless son off, not believing a word out of his son's mouth.
"Be gone with you, then."
=0=
~The Next Morning~
Rihan sighed as he lay down on his mat, breathing evenly and softly, slightly wishing he wans't by himself at moments like this. He turned his head and watched the sun come up out of his paneled window.
For some reason, he couldn't get the girl in the park out of his mind…Wakana…
Where had he seen her before?
And suddenly, it hit him. The fire. The girl covered in ashes, sobbing over a dead body.
She looks a lot different when she's crying…
He shook his head, and lay it down on the pillow, continuing to gaze up at the sunrise.
=0=
*Nervousnervousnervousnervous*
I hope this turned okay…I'm so afraid I messed it up…
Don't forget to suggest titles!
YellowWomanontheBrink, out for tonight!
Luvyuallbunches!
