Bittersweet Romance-Feminity

by the Rurouni Idoru

Rurouni's note: I know, I know, I took my sweet time with this one. I had severe writer's block on this for a while, but lately the fiction's been flowing outta me like..uh...something liquid.

Disclaimer: I dun own Sensui, Reikai, YYH, or any o' dat. I own Baika, Mitsune, the green-haired lady, and um...this bottle of Ramune right here. Oh, and for anyone who can catch the joke about Naru, Shinobu, and Mitsune, I give you cookies. Mmm. Cookies.


Baika gently cradled the six tiny orbs in her arms as she hopped off of her oar. She knocked on the monumental doors and waited. One of the souls, ocean blue, began to get slightly excited. This was Reikai? This beautiful place, with its puffy clouds and gorgeous structure, this was the place that Shinobu had learned to hate? But it was so...perfect.

"Gates of Judgement, to whom am I speaking?" A staticky voice asked from a voicebox on the door.

"Baika the ferrygirl. I've come with the six special cases." The doors swung open, and Baika stepped inside. Naru looked at her surroundings as Baika stepped lively through the halls. It was odd. She could see everything, behind her, next to her, above her and below her. Oni rushed around left and right, many of them weaing neckties. Baika, stepping quickly and nervously, bumped into a strange sight: a woman amongst the oni. Her hair was bright green and tied in a high ponytail, her eyes were garnet, and she was wearing a very soft green suit. Her glossy red lips were in a serious frown. She looked amazingly professional. Naru was in awe. Baika seemed intimidated.

"Baika?" The woman asked.

"Ah! Senpai!" She looked around frantically, as if she were running away from something. "There you are." The woman smiled tentatively.

"You took care of...?" Baika nodded.

"Senpai, here are the six special cases." Baika extended her arms to the green-clad woman. The elder swept some emerald strands of hair out of her face as she replied.

"What do you want me to do with 'em?" Baika, flustered, bowed in apology.

"I'm so sorry senpai, I thought you were working on them. After all, if anyone would..." The other one waved her hand dismissively.

"I'm only working two of them. Even so, they need ghosts. As they are, they cannot confirm whether or not they understand their judgments. Didn't you read the form?" Baika's eyes shifted nervously, like a mouse's.

"I stopped reading after my sixteenth signature."

"Oh!" cried the other. "I can understand that. What the one form stated was that Shinobu, being the lead personality, was the only one to get a ghost, and the other six need to be taken to Mitsune-san in the ghost department." Baika nodded, and stopped for some watercooler-style gossip before departing.

"Itsuki-san was quite difficult about letting me take them. We had a bit of an argument about it." A bit of an argument was an understatement, Naru thought.

"I'm not surprised." stated the green-haired woman. "He was always quite protective of Shinobu. Even selfish at times. Of course he wanted to keep every aspect of Sensui for himself." She paused to giggle. "A lot of ferrygirls who were working back then wanted to hang onto him."

"Were you one of them?" The apparent former-ferrygirl blushed a little.

"Well, enough chit-chat. Why don't you hurry up with those ghosts before you get in trouble?" Baika grinned mischeviously and left, still holding the six souls gently. If Naru had the ability to blink in confusion, she would have. The green-haired one...knew her oldest "brother"?

As it turned out, the green-haired one was not the only one who knew Shinobu. Mitsune-san in the ghost department was a young woman with short red hair, green eyes, and a perpetual smile. Naru wondered if so much smiling hurt her face.

"Ah, you must be Baika. I take it those are the six souls from one Sensui Shinobu."

"Yes they are. Did you know him too?" Mitsune took the tiny spheres gingerly from Baika as she responded.

"Ah, Sensui was charming and debonair, and disturbingly handsome. Most of the ferrygirls went crazy over him, he was so smooth." She attached slips of paper to each soul. Naru couldn't read the complicated kanji on them. "It's a pity we never met. Although it's not like I was alone in admiring the man from afar. There was only one of us ferrygirls who ever really knew him well, and she was usually too giddy to spill any details." Naru was beginning to feel larger for some reason.

"So senpai did like him." Baika commented impishly.

"Liked him?" Mitsune laughed. "She adored him! When he left, she cried for three days! Then, she stopped responding to much for three months, and when Koenma-sama promoted her, she became the woman you know now." Naru saw the paper slip beginning to disintegrate. She also noticed that her range of vision was become smaller and smaller and smaller, as if blinders were growing around her. "Yep, she changed a lot that year. It was sort of upsetting, she used to bring life to the business of reaping the dead." Naru, suddenly gifted once again with the ability to look down, noticed that she had hands. The fact that she now also had an entire body to control escaped her; she was too busy staring at her hands. "Oh!" Mitsune looked away in shame as Naru became aware of her brothers' voices. "They don't have clothes!" Naru looked up to see Baika turned away and blushing the same shade as her kimono. Mitsune was scrawling kanji onto another slip of paper with a calligraphy brush and red ink. Naru heard Kazuya swearing in outrage. Mitsune held up the tiny scroll with her eyes closed. The characters flashed for a moment, and then the paper burned up, leaving Naru and the others wearing the gray sweatshirt and black slacks that had been their collective last casual outfit. Five of them were confused. Naru was shaking. She quickly noticed the tears stinging her eyes.

"Oh, here she goes again," groaned Kazuya. "You never stop with that, Naru." Naru wasn't listening to her violent relative. Her breath shuddered as she ran her trembling hands down her shaking new figure.

"I have breasts!" she cried. "I've...I've never had those before!" Minoru half-heartedly patted her on the back.

"Don't cry, Naru. You cried enough in life for all of us. Death is clearly not as bad as you've heard." She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

"No, Minoru," she said. "I'm crying because I'm happy." Kazuya rolled his eyes.

"It is always sobbin' and tears with you, ya little bi-"

"Alright, you all have ghosts and pants now! The time crunch is over and Koenma-sama is not going to skin me when he gets back!" Baika jovially clapped her hands together. Mitsune was studying the males, and reviewing their overall common appearance.

"Meh, he was cuter as a teenager." Baika ignored the redhead and reassumed her responsible workaholic demeanor.

"Now, lady and gentlemen, you need to receive your judgments; follow me." She walked out the door, six Sensuis in tow.

Naru continued to cry for an hour in the waiting room. She could see it, she could feel it: she was finally a real girl.