Chapter one redone to match my new changes. I hope you guys approve.
I would like to mention, because some of you may be wandering what happened to Kenshin, that he didn't quite match the asshole Arab guy thing. (I know I sound incredibly racist when I say it, but trust me, I've lived through it, I've seen it, and though I didn't have to suffer for it quite as much as the local ladies I know, I can't leave my house without being harassed by 20 people at once – and that's only in terms of acquaintances. My boyfriend is Egyptian, and he, as well as women with more experience than I have, trained warnings of their nature into my head. Its almost as if it's in the blood. Even an Irish-Egyptian guy I met couldn't get that asshole gene out of his system and gave me a hugely hard time because of it. Cairo has its fair share of decent people, but more often than not we get the bad end of the stick. If it bothers you, please let me know and I'll tone it down as much as necessary.)
Don't worry about Kenshin though, because I have reserved for him, from the start of chapter 8, another major, very sexy, very badass and very sweet role in Kaoru's life.
Chapter One
Status Quo
It wasn't the strong wind that day that irritated her as it poured over the earth in its strong and discomforting wave of power. Her jet-black hair whipped viciously through the air around her, as if reacting to her own fury and deciphering the inner turmoil that was her stressed mind.
Her voice was steady, head reeling with the pressure of the yelling beside her, yet she walked at a regular pace, seemingly untouched by the rage of the wind around them. God, it was irritating. She was completely aware that while she walked home, tailed by an unrestrained idiot in need of anger management, people would stop in their tracks on the street, hold their hair from their faces, and watch.
Her path passed a cherry tree that seemed caught in the stillness of a heavy, quiet, peaceful day, and it was rattled of its light pink blossoms so that they showered over her below. Anybody without the rationale of a regular person would have sworn it was her and her silent rage that had caused it, wind be damned.. As she continued, steady, slow, silent, she was almost unmoved by the wind as well as unaffected by its force. The waves were the wind, and she was its core, providing the turning circle of vehemence inside.
More people looked up as the voice continued, finding the sight far more amusing than the pavement underneath their rushing feet. It could have been that… and it could have been that she was beautiful.
But that paid her no mind. She instead let a small smirk curve the left corner of her mouth. 'Yes,' she whispered inside, 'it is definitely not the wind that's pissing me off.'
"What is it, then? Why the fuck should you be mad at me?" he growled, glaring at her with his intimidating eyes, "What you've been doing is utterly wrong, and you know that women who behave as you do are absolutely worthless in our society! Is that really so hard to understand?"
The rage bubbled beneath her bones, and she felt it rise like a poison. "Understanding that you're asking something ridiculous of me isn't actually all that hard. I get it." she stared at the world around her, not even hearing her Amar at times because she was just so angered by his voice alone.
"You know exactly what I mean! I am asking you to be a respectable female, and I am telling you that I'll not tolerate this bullshit! Drinking, partying, staying out late? And the kind of things you wear? You are damn lucky I haven't put you in your place!"
"You're not making any sense," she said matter-of-factly. "I'm sixteen, and we're in London! Why don't you do the favour this time and respect where I'm from?"
"I know exactly where you're from, and that is a high-society Arabian family! Maybe you should start acting like it instead of any one of those wanton women on the street!"
Kaoru stopped where she was. How many times had she heard the same from her parents, from her caretaker, from her aunties and uncles? How many more times would she have to tolerate it? She placed a hand on her hip and turned towards him, eyes narrowed. "Do I look like an Arab to you?"
He fell quiet for a moment. No, she didn't. Those long, wide blue eyes, those smooth cheekbones, that straight, straight hair… it was something he'd always asked himself. Does she look like a Kahira? No, she doesn't. But there's no doubt in anybody's minds that she is.
"Maybe you should remember, my dear Amar, that we live in a free society, high or low or middle. And you should remember what that means," she said coldly. He could have sworn from those glaring daggers that her eyes had turned a steely grey.
"No, I have no idea what the hell that means," he said sarcastically. "Why don't you enlighten me?"
"It means, I am my own person, I belong to no one, I obey no one, I know who I am and you have absolutely no right to control what I'm doing, as long as nobody's getting hurt."
"Your behaviour is damage to my honour! Can't you fucking see that?" His yell was so loud and so fiercely directed at her that several more heads looked up, searching for the source of such a disturbance in the daily peace.
She endured his yells even though the last line felt like it hit a spark inside her. Instead she breathed, as calmly as she could, while he scolded her and irritated her and publicly humiliated her and she had to be the obedient girlfriend and accept it with a lowered head.
By the time they got to her large front gates and she pushed inside, the fact that he followed her was enough to make her seriously question her levels of self-control.
"You know deep down that you have no right to be mad with me, the way you are now," he continued, merciless to the beauty of silence.
"I know that I have an animal right to my freedom," she said, arching an eyebrow. "And nothing will get in the way of that. I have absolutely no reason to look at you as if I'm scared to be found out. My way of life is about letting loose and enjoying it, and I know you won't understand in a million years. So lets leave it alone. I'm not hurting anyone – not myself, not my friends, not you."
"Oh, and what about my –"
"Okay, for one day just fuck your honor," she said, calmly cutting him off. "Do you think anyone gives a shit about your honor? We are in London. There is no such thing as impersonal honor."
"I can't sleep at night on the weekends knowing you're off spending the night with Soujirou and a bottle of vodka and that slut friend of yours, donning mini skirts and bullshit!"
"Wait. Say that again. A bottle of vodka and what?" Kaoru was getting ready for her classic, slow-starting, surprise explosion.
"I said it once and I'll say it again. That slut friend of yours!"
"What the fuck makes you say that? What makes her a slut?" she demanded, eyes narrowed and lips flattened into a line.
"You see the things she wears n the swiftness of her changing boyfriends, and her fickle feelings and her loudness and the way she behaves as if we're living in Amsterdam, for sure that's wrong!"
"Oh, yeah, okay, Amar, maybe you do make sense but… has it ever occurred to you that you do the exact same thing?"
"What the hell are you talking about, I am not the same as her!"
"You are loud and obnoxious with your friends, you drink, you smoke, you hang out late taking god knows what, you can't help your wandering eye and I know it, whether you realized it or not, I am completely aware of the way you look at other women. We're all just walking pussies, aren't we?"
"It's totally different for me! You are emotional, weak, and defective. You are women."
She stopped in the doorway, afraid that he'd follow her inside. "We are women?" she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and continued. "Emotional, weak, and defective?"
"Well yes, of course," he said, shrugging, as if it was the simplest piece of information in the world.
"What makes you say that?"
"PMS and physical strength makes me say that," he said. "You have minds that are built for handling children, nothing more. This is a biological fact. Studies consistently show it."
"Oh, yeah, yeah, you mean your muslim studies show it," she said obnoxiously.
"Muslim studies – the most accurate ever created. The words of our prophet confirm it," he said, "and you know it."
Kaoru's hand, for a fourth time during this infuriating confrontation, had found her hip. "Give me a challenge and I'll follow through. Give me someone to heal, and I'll heal them. Give me a war and I will fucking survive it. Give me challenges and pain and neglect and torture, and I will get through it all with flying fucking colors, my dear groom. And I will do it all before you even get close."
He looked into her eyes, making the six inches of height he had on her feel more like six feet. It was a condescending, disgusted look. The look of a man to his inferior, second-class extension of a mate.
And then the fighting began. He raged at her like an open fire and she resisted like ice at impossible temperatures. And she looked at him as he screamed at her, about modesty and chastity and a woman's worth and whatever else his closed-up mind could come up with, and felt nothing but an intense disgust towards the one she'd spent almost a year of her life with, loving and cherishing and enjoying and pleasuring. Now, all she wanted was out.
"Just stop what you're doing! You are female. You should be chaste, you should be quiet, you should be modest, you should throw out all those fucking short skirts! Is it really so hard to be what you were made to be?" His face was tainted red from how high he'd raised his voice. The front doors clicked open, but she paused, half out of pure rage and half because she feared he would follow her into the house if she entered.
"Amar…" she said, her voice still revolving around calm, icy accusation, "do you feel better, forcing your control onto somebody else?" she stepped up into the doorframe of the house, so that she was slightly taller than him, the sheer size of the front room expanding behind her, yet the chance that he'd follow her in kept her from proceeding further into the house."Do you feel like a man now?"
"Do you think I need to yell at you to be a man, Kaoru?"
She took another deep breath to steady her voice, which she knew could easily begin to shake with anger. "I'm your fiancé, aren't I? You have no right to tell me what I should and should not be – that is fucking bullshit. I was not born to fill a role of submission and silence. And if you loved me as you used to claim, you would not ask me to be anything but myself."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" he hissed, and when Aly emerged, the spoiled, overprotective and energetic young boy that he was, Kaoru tried to smile reassuringly at her kid brother. Amar ignored him.
"Did you hear me?" He asked. "Jesus, are you deaf?"
"Yes, I fucking heard you," she said in a low voice to keep the ten year old from hearing too much.
"So then what were you talking about?"
"You're the fucking slut-whore here, and I will have nothing to do with you if you continue to be like this. I have more power than you'd expect me to."
The words of rebellion had really tweaked his nerve. And he grasped her shoulders and shoved her into the door frame, to get his message inside her head, to get her to understand – and to put her in her place. "Listen to me!"
Aly watched wide-eyed as his older sister winced in reaction to the sudden onslaught of power. Kaoru had always been strong willed and full of authority. Now this man was getting into his sister's space.
"Hey!" He growled, shoving at the young man and not succeeding, because he was half the size of this imposter. "Nobody touches my sister!"
"Shut the hell up, Aly, this has nothing to do with you!"
Aly grasped his arm, pulled it from Kaoru's shoulder and sank his teeth into the flesh.
"Fuck!" he hissed, and his hand swiped across the boy's face.
"Hey!" she growled, grasping his arm and pushing him back. "Don't you fucking touch him!"
"Kaoru, get the hell off of me!"
Aly ran at Amar and slammed his lowered head into his stomach. "Get the hell out of our house, you stupid excuse for a man!"
Amar gave him one hard look, his arm hooked around his stomach, and in a second he was on the violent brat.
"Hey!" Kaoru yelled, grabbing him and trying to pull him away from him. "Amar! He's just a kid!"
"A fucking brat, a devil's child, not a kid!" He hissed, one hand clamped in his head of hair.
"Amar, get off of him. NOW."
He wouldn't listen. He tried to fight her off, but as soon as he let go of Aly's hair, he ran at him with fingernails, teeth, feet and knees to cause as much damage his small size would allow.
"Amar!" Kaoru yelled frantically as she tried to get between the two. "Amar! He's a ten year old boy!"
She shoved herself between the two bodies, her arms outstretched to keep them apart.
"What are you doing, sis, this jackass needs to go down!" Aly growled, teeth bared.
"No, Aly, just go upstairs okay, I'll handle this!"
"He pushed you into the doorframe! He's yelling at you! Anyone back home would do the same for his sister!"
"I know that," she argued as she tried to restrain the two.
"It's not fair!" He growled. "You asshole!" He cussed towards Amar from behind his sister,
"Aly, don't use words like that! Amar, get the hell away from my brother, he's half your size and he's doing what he was raised to do."
"I don't give a fuck, his teeth broke through the skin!"
"Oh, be a fucking man, Amar! A bit of blood and you're gonna wreak havoc on a little kid?"
"I am not little! Now let me get at him!" Aly cried, trying to push past his stronger sister's defences.
"No! Ok, both of you shut the hell up, or I'm calling security!" she screamed.
They both fell still. They knew what she meant – the security would haul Amar through the front gates, inform the caretaker, and the caretaker would call the parents.
She sighed a long breath of relief, her arms slowly relaxing from their grips on the two respectively fired-up males.
"I swear," she said, "you have to grow some balls," she said to Amar, "and you have to lose some," she said to Aly.
Aly smiled a little when she said it. That's why he loved her – she was vicious.
"Don't you fucking say that to me, Kaoru," Amar growled, "who do you think you are?"
"I know who I am," she said.
"You're making a big mistake talking to me like that. Women are supposed to be reserved and polite."
She laughed sarcastically as she wiped the sweat from her forehead. "See, that's my mistake, Amar… I swear I should have seen this coming.
"What the hell are you talking about?" he hissed.
"I'm talking about deciding to commit myself to a fucking Arab," she said, that hateful glare coloring her eyes as the dark sarcasm colored her voice. She knew it would piss him off, and she liked it.
And the second she said it, his eyes widened with rage, he raised his hand, and he slapped her hard in the face. The last thing she saw before the split second of black was his face, his dark eyes, his broad jaw, his pointed nose and his arched brows, contemptuous, and his teeth, bared with rage.
"That's it!" Aly said, running past her, "I'm gonna kill you!"
"Aly!" Kaoru cried, "Aly!" she pulled him back and held him against her, both arms locked around his shoulders.
"What?" he yelled, panting with rage.
"Go inside, okay?"
"But he –"
"I don't care!" She said, cutting him off. "I can handle this okay, just go upstairs!"
"No!"
"Go upstairs!"
He looked into her eyes. She was stern and she wouldn't let him have it. Sighing angrily, he pulled out of her arms and stormed into the living room.
"This could all have been avoided if you were more disciplined," he said condescendingly. "You have no idea how low you are falling."
"Amar!" She growled, confident that she would not take any more of it, "Don't you dare. Okay? Don't talk to me like that. Don't push me around."
"I told you before," he said, motioning to her cheek, "I told you, you were lucky I haven't put you in your place."
He pulled away and she furiously cupped her swelling cheek in the palm of her hand. Her anger was flowing as wildly as her hair blew in the wind that penetrated the gates. "Don't start," she demanded, her tone low. "There's no point in starting anymore. I'm done with you."
"You think your parents are gonna be happy about that?"
"I could give a fuck what my parents think! The engagement is off! There's no way I'm marrying you. I don't care how damn conventional they are – I'm not marrying you."
"Like you'll ever find anybody with the cash I have, and the houses I have, and the job that's waiting for me," he said obnoxiously.
"I have my own cash. I have my own education. I don't need you."
"Sure you don't," he said. "You're fucking beautiful but do you think anybody will put up with such an unrestrained woman?"
"Anybody that isn't Arab," she said with equal malevolence, and as bad as she knew it sounded, she meant it. "I'm well aware that the second I marry you you'll have me in a veil, have me stuck in the house, have me out of sight of any man there is, and my only job will be to respond when I'm called to bed, and sit still and quiet next to you wherever you go, whatever the time is."
"What the hell are you saying?"
"You think I don't know? I know! You're trying to keep me away from my best friends because they're a bunch of goddamned guys! You're trying to keep me away from Misao because you know she's so adventurous and modern! You're constantly arguing about what I wear! Every morning I wake up I have to pick something that covers enough skin to keep you from throwing a goddamned tantrum! You can't do it all now – but the second we marry you will. So I'm done here – I'm not marrying you. I'm not putting up with you. I'm done."
He realized that he could not afford to be power hungry with her, and switched into a completely different persona – one of gentleness and soppiness – that used to have an effect on her, but now, only repulsed her further. He proceeded with the 'I love you,' the 'I didn't mean it,' the 'I need you,' and the 'I'm so sorry,' sound bytes, sweet talking her to no end. He tried to grab her hand but she recoiled, whispered "I really do love you," into her ear while almost forcefully holding her in place with a hand on her shoulder, and that mere touch made her want to incinerate him.
She pushed away, not saying goodbye, and slammed the front doors. Aly watched, frozen in the archway to the reception room, as Kaoru pressed her back flat against the door and tried to bring her breathing to a normal pace. And as he banged and kicked on the door, screaming that he would not be ignored like that, she closed her eyes and sighed.
Kaoru knew she should have been crying. This was a long term, serious relationship being flushed into non-existence and havoc. It was important… it was a part of her. So why were her eyes dry? Why was she instead trembling with anger? Why was her heart, usually full of love, drowning in disgust and repulsion? She opened her eyes and saw her brother, standing in the foyer, eyes narrowed as if he was ready to run outside and silence the guy who now banged insistently on her door.
"I'm sorry, Aly," she said.
"What was that all about? Damn idiot thinks he can hit you and I don't get to do anything?" he asked insistently, his hands curled into fists at his sides.
"Because he's a self-centered moron," she said, patting his back, "he's not gonna care if you fuck him up. He'll just do the same to you. And don't lie to yourself – he's bigger and stronger and much more of an ass than you are. Leave it alone for now."
"I don't care how much bigger or stronger he is, I can still fuck him!"
"Didn't I tell you not to use words like that?" she said, eyes narrowed and one eyebrow arched.
"Nobody cares," he said. "Besides, I like them."
She scoffed, smirked, and pinched his cheek.
"Miss Kaoru," she heard a heavily Egyptian accent from behind and knew it was the caretaker – and if he was talking to her, it was always bad news.
"What is it, Naguib?" she asked, sighing heavily as she stood to face him.
Aly stepped cautiously behind her, watching the conversation with a nervousness that always hit them when he spoke.
"If you've just broken off the engagement, I'll have to let your parents know."
Kaoru massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and her index finger, thinking with a wince of the scenario this would create. "I know," she said in a low tone.
"I'm sorry."
She released Aly from her arms and stood, her head ringing.
"Kaoru," he said, tugging on her arm.
She looked down at him, observing the almond-brown eyes of her father, fitting perfectly into his face. He was what any Saudi-Egyptian boy would be – glowing with his alabaster skin, his thick, black lashes batting over round, pale-brown eyes, back always arched with the illusion of strength, jaw hardened with defiance, all piecing together into a mix of both their parents that Kaoru was not a part of, and never would be. But he had a bubbly, comedic, life-loving vibe that could only have been rubbed onto him by ten years spent sharing his house with Kaoru.
Had they been living in Egypt, he would already have started to adopt more than just this extreme sense of protection over her. Not wanting to think of how their relationship would suffer in such a close-minded environment, she let out a simple sigh of gratifying relief, that they had grown up here and that she could teach him about real respect, as well as gender equity, without the interruptions of the parents and the people around them.
"What is it?" she asked, smiling down at him.
"My friends all have crushes on you. I think they must be blind," he teased, and Kaoru's eyes widened with mock offense.
"Watch your tongue and mind your manners, I did not train all that bull about respect into your head so you could stand around insulting me," she said, giggling as she poked his ribs.
He screeched as she proceeded to tickle him, and he ran halfway across the drawing room to avoid her. "Is Soujirou coming over today?" he asked her.
"No, Aly, but he's going to pick me up, if you want to say hello to him," she said.
"And by the way," he said, stopping at the 15 foot archway to the winding staircase tower, "don't feel bad. I never liked Amar anyways," he smiled cheekily at her.
"Then I have taught you well," she announced proudly. She giggled a little and waved him off, to make her way through the rest of the house.
She wandered past the pillars that held up the high, tall ceiling, exited the foyer and entered the huge ring of rooms that centered the round courtyard in the middle. Her eyes were trained on the fountain.
It was a beautiful house and she knew it. Everybody who entered had commented on its beauty, its atmosphere, the ambiance of an almost underwater world with the bluish stone walls, the grey marble of the floors, the swirling myriad of ornaments and glass and gentle lighting. But she resented it. She had grown accustomed to the maids that often lined up at the door to greet her, ever since she moved from the Bath boarding school to the family's London home. She had also grown accustomed to having people ask her to walk more elegantly through it, and now strode gracefully through her family's materialized wealth.
She had grown accustomed to wrapping herself in black, a few blocks from her house, and making a grand performance of walking into the house and relieving herself of the headscarf and the burkah, as if she'd worn it all day in the heat, to please her parents and keep them from finding another reason to strangle her.
"You were born into privilege," they always told her, even though she knew privilege had nothing to do with her birth, "and you have obligations as the daughter of this house." She was nearly seventeen, truly an eligible age. She supposed it was a cultural thing, that they were so eager to marry her to a family with wealth that was equal to theirs – but it was something that only she would have to suffer for. Goddamned suitors… she was absolutely certain that whenever she got married, it would be to a man as conservative and backward as her father. Amar may actually have been lenient compared to the others that she knew she would find, now that this relationship was over.
She often wondered what her life would be like if she'd never been adopted. Though nobody had ever spoken of it, her face wasn't even touched with Egyptian features. Nobody in her family could have been responsible for those long, wide, strikingly blue eyes, or her creamy skin, or her defined shape and lack of height. Would she be free, normal, non denominated, with loving parents that were always present? She was fully aware of how ridiculously privileged she was, but… she sighed hard. Why dream if dreams don't come true? She'd been raised here in London, socialized with English kids, and when they sent her to a boarding school in Bath, her entire life was modern and her mentality had no relation at all to that of her parents. She expected from them what she'd seen from the parents of others - the bedtime kisses, the affection, the jokes and the laughter and the feeling that no matter what they got themselves into, their parents would always be there to bail them out. It was something she would never have, and that's why it was so hard.
The fountain in the middle of the courtyard was lit only by a beam of the setting sunlight that slipped over the top of the third floor roofing. It shot straight through the quelling surface and her eyes would not leave it as she approached the ornamental water feature and sat on the edge, hearing the water trickle over pathways of stone and find their way to the pool of water below. The fountain was huge, taking up half of the courtyard, and it went at least thirteen feet deep. How they accommodated such a thing in this kind of penthouse apartment, she had no idea. But in the palm of her hand now rested a ring of silver and zirconium, pulled from its usual place on her wedding finger.
The plan was to replace this ring with a real one, by the time school was over and he was ready for university. The plan was to fly them both to Cairo for a massive engagement with family and friends and belly dancers and live oriental bands and 10-foot chocolate fountains and gold-plated cutlery and five-star food at a five-star hotel ballroom. The ring would be pink and yellow gold, a ten karat diamond on the top. The crowds would cheer at the bind of the two youngsters, and dance, and compliment him on his good taste of women, and compliment her on the face she had done nothing to deserve or acquire, and they would dance and dance while she silently lamented her life's end. But things didn't always go as planned, and during times like these there was basically nothing that could mend the broken bond.
"Not anymore," she murmured to herself.
Her hand plunged beneath the surface and released the ring into the water, and she watched it drift to the bottom, ebbing in and out of the ray of light until it rested peacefully in the center of the ray on the stone bed of the pond.
As her hand slipped out of the water, she watched the moisture fall, drip by drip, from her pale skin. The whole world was silent save the constant drip of water-even the singing birds seemed to hold their breaths.
"It's broken…" she whispered, eyes clouded with reminiscence. "Anyone could see… it's broken."
.....................................................................
She came to the private school in central London just over a year ago. She was purely Bath, purely boarding school, with both a past and a reputation to leave in the darkness, so a new start sounded very appealing at the time. After an incident at the boarding school, her parents realized that her hymen was at stake and decided that moving her to the family house, where she'd be under the eye of a watchful caretaker, was much better. Her parents spent most of their time at home in Egypt, taking care of the oil wells, watching over the way it was drilled and used and making sure they got their fair share of cash – not that it mattered. They were already saturated in old money. They'd only kept Kaoru in London because she would appear much more cultured to whichever suitor they had to offer. Not only that, but they had a hidden interest in the wealthy son, Amar, of a Saudi Arabian family.
Kaoru glared towards the floor. She remembered how it had been in the beginning, when she found that he was in every one of her classes, and constantly charmed and pursued her. She went along with it because his charm appealed her and his intelligence appealed her and he had an air of dignity - and if it wasn't that, it was his broad, smooth, alabaster shoulders and his adequately muscled chest, and his slim hips, and his long lashes, and his beautiful face that had attracted her so deeply. Even with the physical attraction that they both shared for one another, it had always been innocent – he wouldn't dare deepen their shallow kisses, or lift her shirt over her head to see what was underneath it. There was always a 'wait until marriage, its not too far away,' feel about things, whenever she became frustrated and tried to coax him into going further. Whenever she asked him why, he would say:
"A man of my origin will never marry a woman he has slept with before, whether it was her first time or not. I have done things before and I plan to marry you, so I won't do them with you."
Kaoru rolled her eyes as she remembered all the little warning signs she'd so stupidly failed to notice. She could almost hear his parent's motivating voices in her head, whenever he'd taken a step further with her. There had been no grand proposal – their futures had been set by their parents from the moment Kaoru stepped through the front doors of the private school.
And now, she'd just fucked it all up.
"Miss Kamiya," she heard a voice from behind. She turned and saw one of the caretakers through the now open glass door.
"Yes?" She tidied her face and stood from the edge of the fountain.
"Your friend, Soujirou Seta, just called to tell you that he'll be here with the car in ten minutes."
Kaoru thanked her and suddenly remembered what she was wearing. She looked down at the wide-leg jeans and the thin cashmere, sleeveless turtleneck that she'd ironically picked out that morning to avoid any Amar-tantrums. This was not who she was. There was no relief greater than what she felt, when she knew that it was time to pull it all off and slip into something more liberating. With Misao and Soujirou, there was no reason to be anything but herself. The ring at the bottom of the pond was both out of sight and out of mind when she rushed up the stairs to the second floor, and to her waiting bedroom.
....................................................................
Soujirou closed his cellular with a single click and placed it back inside the glove compartment. The road to her apartment – a road he had taken countless times in his cobalt-blue range rover – was inexcusably busy that day, giving a whole new meaning to downtown traffic issues. He didn't bother beeping the horn even though he held some strange adoration for it's crazy howl, because he knew it would gain him nothing more than at least five 'fuck you' flip-offs from the fellow drivers and it wouldn't help the pile of cars trying to proceed down the highway. It was the damned wind, slowing people down as the rage of air in travel knocked garbage bins and newly planted saplings onto the road, requiring almost impossibly constant clearage for the cars on the road to really function.
"Damnit," he growled. "This stupid little mini hurricane sucks fucking ass."
It may take more than ten minutes, he texted her, I'm in traffic -.-
He stepped on the acceleration to make that small two-foot advance on the road, and felt boredom completely override his childish mind. As his random, often empty psyche wandered to palm trees and ice cream, he lost track of the minute and a half that passed, and almost leapt from his seat when the cellular buzzed in the glove compartment. A smile brightened his boyish, attractive face, hidden mostly by the ragged, messy brown hair, when he saw her text message.
Traffic, huh? I bet it's the wind. It definitely looks like it from my bedroom window. But it's okay… I'm still running around finding clothes to put on so I'm not really complaining about the added time… no doubt you are though ;) ring the buzzer when you arrive and I'll be down in a second.
He sighed hard and shoved the cell phone into his pocket instead. "Thanks…" he droned. "My mind is now full of unwanted images… so yeah, thanks a fucking load, Kaoru, for putting them there."
But he knew it wasn't her fault… he was the one with the overactive mind that thought lustfully of Kaoru and her fine body and her lovely smile as soon as any mention of putting on clothes occurred. And if it wasn't her body to dream of it was her face. No girl he'd ever befriended could hold even a candle to Kaoru and her smile, and the messy, somewhat gothic bangs that framed her pale, golden face, and the full, pink lips, and the eyes that shone like the sapphires on her birth ring. He sighed even harder, impatient to push away all admirable thoughts, cursing her for being enough to induce such things in him. But he knew… yeah, yeah, he knew it wasn't her fault at all. He just needed to do some mental-training and meditation to keep his body more thoroughly under control. It would save him from ruining the closeness in his threesome.
He felt a smile touch his lips at the notion – and it was a real, genuine smile that occurred below his ubiquitous mask. His two favourite ladies, he thought proudly. Misao and Kaoru were the reason he even bothered studying on a Friday afternoon so that he could spend the night getting wasted and dazed with the two females who were most prominent in his teenage life. He knew many other guys would have killed to be in his position – it was a known fact imprinted in his brain – but he was never really all that aware of how fortunate it made him and how special it made them. He supposed he took them slightly more for granted than he should have. With both of his ladies claimed by other men, no romance or love ever touched the irreplaceably strong bonds between them all. Not until… Friday night.
God, could he ever forget the way they'd battled against Misao, just to get into each other's arms? Could he ever forget the way Kaoru wrapped her arms around him as he leaned over the sink to wash the vomited vodka from his mouth? Could he ever forget how it felt to stumble drunkenly around the room with her, one finger trapped beneath her belt and one hand stuck to her hip? He remembered every last detail of the night, even though they'd both assumed, in their stupidity, that they would have lost memory of it all by Saturday morning. Evidently, that hadn't happened. He remembered the feeling of her hip against his hand as she pressed her back against the door. He remembered oozing into the shape of the floor and bringing her unsteady frame with him. They had lain together… and she had been in his hands… her broken heart beating against his chest.
He covered his face in his hands, cursing loudly without worry of being heard. What had their friendship suddenly turned into? A game of love? If that was the case, then hell yeah, they were playing it, but they played it with averted eyes and quick, sinuous movements, as if trying to pretend there was no game at all.
"She's not even fucking single!" he growled.
Not that it mattered… he thought to himself. Isn't there a reason for her broken heart?
He shook his head and looked out the window, suddenly seeing the tall, familiar building of high class, and he saw the huge, offset piece of apartment stuck to the left side of the building's first three floors, with the brass window frames and the dark green roof shingles, and the grand double gates leading up the walkway.
He'd almost overshot her. He could see her bedroom window from where he was, and imagined her inside, rushing to get ready, half dressed, hair tumbling over her shoulders… he quavered, slapping himself into reality, and swerved, much to the anger of the fellow drivers, towards the right.
He pressed the button, dying to find something to annoy her about, and he remembered her text message with a cynical grin. He pressed the button for the buzzer. "It's Soujirou here," he said into the speaker.
"Miss Kahira will be down in a moment," the housekeeper said politely into the receiver somewhere inside the foyer.
And so, the countdown began. He stared at the digital alarm clock on the iHome. 4:30 PM and 13 seconds. His eyes were trained on the seconds he had to count. He waited and waited. And at 4:31 and 25 seconds, the front doors opened and out stepped one of his two little ladies.
It was hard to disguise the refreshing relief when he saw what she wore as she stepped outside. She glowed, in her fitted black jeans and her very Chinese cheong-sam tank top, with the beautifully embroidered collar. It showed off the pale-gold color of her toned arms, and it fit around her waist as if it had been tailored with her exact body shape in mind. He had to admit how he adored it, when she looked this liberated and free. He had grown used to the weekly occasions, when she stepped outside, looking delicious and also looking like the weight of the world had slipped from her shoulders for the night. But it never got old, seeing such a thing after a week of watching her strained smiles, as she failed to hide the stress she was dealing with. He smiled one of the biggest smiles on his list of weekly grins, and remembered himself and the time on the digital clock.
Kaoru approached with light, airy footsteps, a smile on her face as she walked towards her weekly dose of freedom at its very beginning, and he watched her face change, trying to stifle laughter, when she pulled the door handle, and saw his plan come into action when the door wouldn't budge and Soujirou wouldn't acknowledge her.
He grinned cheekily, wishing he could see the look on her face, but remaining strong anyway. She stood at the window, hands on her hips, as he pretended she wasn't there, smirking, delighted that he had found yet another opportunity to piss her off.
She knocked on the window, eyebrow raised with sarcastic amusement.
He pulled the cellular from his pocket and found her text message, and rolled down the window so that she could hear him. "Ring the buzzer when you arrive and I'll be down in a second," he read out loud to her, and she folded her arms impatiently.
"I know what you're getting at, Souji." She smirked playfully.
"Yeah, sure you do. The fact is, it didn't take a single second for you to get down here. I had to wait for exactly eighty-two of them before you decided to show up."
She laughed a little. "You are the biggest doofus I've ever known, do you know that?"
"Course I do," he said, grinning brightly, "How many times would I have to hear your daily message, with different wording, to understand what you're trying to say?"
She laughed a little more. "So the doors are locked. You don't want me to accompany you tonight?"
He looked thoughtfully about himself. "Well… I didn't exactly say that, but now that you mention it, maybe it isn't such a bad idea," he jeered, pulling on the gear stick. But before he could even find the acceleration, she did exactly what he knew she would and pulled her entire, lean, long body through the open car window. He laughed and began driving when her legs, topped with stiletto heels, were only halfway through the window, but she knew it was all good fun and expertly hauled herself in, settling down into the right seating position while he sped down the opposite direction on the highway, thankful to be out of the traffic jam.
"Did you just invite yourself into mah car, woman?" He asked provocatively.
"Of course I did." She smiled sweetly.
"And what makes you think I'm all right with that?" He said, giving her the cocked eyebrow.
"The fact that I am so cute I can get whatever I want just by giving you the puppy-dog stare," she announced with faux pride.
He shook his head. "Nu-uh. No way. You're not that fair."
"Are you challenging what Okita said about me today in the library, Mr. Seta?" she asked challengingly.
"I suppose I am. But that guy is messed up, woman. You know he'd find even a walrus attractive."
She glared at him, and as much as he wanted to see the cute little death stare she often pulled out of nowhere, he stayed strong and kept his eyes on the road.
And he smiled when it worked. She shrugged and returned to her regular, more reasonable self.
"I know why," she said, "for real. It's because tonight is my turn to pay for all the booze."
He smiled, bearing all his teeth in an effulgent smile. "Of course!"