As soon as I started to drift off to sleep in the hospital room, I woke up in my tiny Japanese prison. As soon as I opened my eyes, I groaned and rolled over, trying to suffocate myself on the futon. This was complete insanity, it was the only explanation. I reached under my pillow and pinched myself fiercely.
"Ow! Okay, that was a bad idea." I massaged the skin of my arm, trying to ease the sting. Genius, here.
I contemplated further suffocation in the comfortable futon, but eventually rolled over. My head didn't hurt as much this morning, which was a plus, but I had a desperate need to use the bathroom.
I left my fancy-yet-alien sandals in the corner of the room – nothing that pretty is ever comfortable for long, and I had yet to actually walk in the damn things. I unstuck the chair from under the door handle, and opened it an experimental inch. To my great pleasure, Hiei was not there. To my great displeasure, I still had a guard.
Kuwabara was sitting on the floor across from my room, reading what appeared to be a manga. He was so engrossed in what he was reading he didn't notice me until I coughed a little, at which point there was a lot of startled "UWAAAHH!". I might have startled him just a little bit. He stood awkwardly after flailing around for a moment, rubbing the back of his head in ambarassment.
"Um… I need to use the bathroom."
"Ah -Basurūmu? Hai." Wait – was that seriously the one word that sounded the same in both Japanese and English! My lucky fucking day! Kuwabara gestured for me to follow him down the hall.
The hallway extended maybe ten feet beyond my door, and Kuwabara opened a sliding shoji door to a large living area. The room was empty save for a low table and a television against one wall.
"Kind of empty, don't you think?" I muttered under my breath.
"Nani?" Kuwabara asked, turning his head.
"Oh nothing, nothing." I waved him off, and he smiled awkwardly.
We exited the sparse room on the opposite side via another sliding door, and we were in another, slightly longer hallway. There were doors on either side, and Kuwabara opened one before leaning against the opposite wall. I peered inside – bathroom! Quick as lightning I was inside and nearly slammed the door behind me.
After satisfying my more – ah hem – urgent issues, I opted for a quick shower. I didn't have any clean clothes to change into, but I didn't know when I would get a chance again. Letting the water heat up, I folded my clothes carefully and set them on the sink, and glanced briefly in the mirror. I didn't look too bedraggled, but I could really use a hairbrush.
The hot water felt fantastic. Sleeping on a strange mattress always does terrible things for my bad back, and I breathed a deep sigh of contentment. There were several bottles of flowery-smelling shampoo and conditioner already in the shower basket, and I tried to use very little and hoped I could apologize later for borrowing someone's supplies.
As I showered, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling in my mind that something wasn't quite right. I mean, sure, I was in the wrong country with no way to explain how I got there, but there was something else, too. As I was washing my arms and letting the water rinse the suds off, it dawned on me.
When I was 20 years old, I developed a cyst in my left wrist that required minor surgery to remove. It was a very simple operation, and had left a small horizontal scar that had faded nicely, but was still visible if you knew what you were looking for.
That scar was gone.
"What the hell…?" I washed water over the my wrist, clearing away the last few suds, and looked again. No scar.
When I was 18 years old, I had a ligament removed from my right elbow that had been compressing my ulnar nerve, and that had left a larger, more significant scar that I had been rather self-conscious of as a teen.
That scar was gone.
I started running my hands over every inch of my skin – every scar, ding, and blemish that I had come to accumulate during my life was gone. I ran my hands over my earlobes – my pierced lobes were new again. I twisted in an awkward way to run my hand down the center of my spine, and while expecting to feel slightly raised tattooed skin, felt only baby-soft flesh.
Everything old was new again.
I stood stock-still in the shower as the water went from hot to lukewarm to cold. My brain couldn't process the information. I had no context for where to place it – all scars, wounds, tattoos and piercings gone? What did that mean? How could that happen?
In a robotic state I turned off the water and dried off. I found a hairdryer and a comb in the sink cupboard, and stared at myself in the mirror as I dried my hair. My skin looked like it had never seen a day's labor. It freaked me out.
I rushed through drying my hair, and dressed quickly, avoiding looking at myself any further. I just didn't know what to think.
Kuwabara was waiting patiently outside the bathroom. At some point he must have retrieved his manga, because he was again engrossed in the pages when I gave a tiny cough, and I was treated to an encore of his surprised screams. He composed himself more quickly the second time around, and for that I smiled a little.
"Anata ga tabetaidesu ka?" He mimed eating, and I nodded, still at a loss for words. He returned my weak smile with a beaming on of his own, which I appreciated.
My previous desire to observe my surroundings gone, I followed Kuwabara blindly through the little Japanese house, running over my situation in my mind.
Whatever reasons these boys had for not trusting me now seemed less farfetched. Where I had hoped that I had just lost my mind ("just", I say…), I was forced to throw that option out the window, leaving me void of reasonable explanation. I was an empty vessel, waiting for reason.
Kuwabara interrupted my musing by pushing a bowl of noodles into my arms that smelled strongly of peanuts. Maybe I wasn't a vessel waiting for a reason; but a vessel waiting for peanut noodles.
Kuwabara looked at me expectantly, and I beamed my best smile at him. He smiled back, and without ever leaving the kitchen we devoured our noodles.
Kuwabara let me spend a few hours in the sparse – but larger than the room I woke in – room, twiddling my thumbs while he read at the table. He offered me books a number of times, but I shrugged, and shook my head. Books written in a language you can't read aren't terribly helpful.
He was nice, though, and I appreciated the difference from Shuuichi's predatory presence. I much preferred watchdog-Kuwabara to watchdog-Shuuichi or Hiei. I shuddered a little at the though.
The day drew on, and eventually Kuwabara had to lead me back to my broom-closet/bedroom, politely opening my door for me yet again. I entered without complaint, and he closed the door behind me. Left with only my thoughts and an empty room, I opted to sleep rather than think about my discovery for the day. I just couldn't. So I gave up, and surrendered to sleep.
A/N: Finally, the plot thickens! Tune in next time, for what's up (or isn't up) with Aria's brain!