Dinner with Fukuzawa Yuuki left Sachiko with many answers, but even more questions about the girl with which she'd spent the afternoon.
After she told him that she'd already looked over the information on his website regarding his sister's disappearance, Yuuki had glossed over the actual encounter and spent more time speaking about his family's attempts to find Yumi; all unsuccessful. He'd then gone into telling the young heiress everything about his sister, from her birth only ten months before his own, to every little incident he could remember of her through her primary and middle school years.
His love and adoration for his sister came through in both his words as well as in his expressions.
"I remember she'd been looking so forward to finally getting into Lillian's high school division," the old man smiled sadly as he glanced down to the small amount of food remaining on his plate. Using just one chopstick he went about spreading and then smoothing the rice, much as one would do with a Zen sand garden. Even still, Sachiko knew that his eyes saw not the rice nor the plate, but some other scene entirely.
"She had always loved going to Lillian. The school, the grounds, the other students…she'd loved it all. And they'd loved her." He stopped his hand's movements, gently laying the chopstick on his plate so as to pull out a handkerchief and wipe at his suddenly glistening eyes. "Yumi had high hopes of finding an onee-sama and dreamed of having her own petite soeur. She was such a caring girl with so much love in her heart. Anyone, senpai or kohai, would have benefited greatly from her calm and caring wisdom." He sniffed and used the handkerchief to quietly blow his nose.
"There was just so much she wanted to do and see. It was…it was the last week in April and Yumi had been a high school student for all of two weeks when we were accosted by that girl."
Tears were running freely down his cheeks by this point so he politely excused himself from the table to attend the restroom while he tried to regain what little pride he had left to him.
Sachiko had chosen a mid-priced, at least for her family, restaurant in which to eat. She and her mother had eaten in the establishment often enough that she knew the menu by heart, so she had simply asked the waitress to bring a small and varied selection so that Yuuki-sama would be sure to find something to his taste. Doing it that way also ensured that he didn't worry about what the meal would be costing. What she was learning about Yumi the girl, rather than Yumi the ghost, was more than worth the price of a simple meal.
Despite the difference in their ages, Yuuki-ojisan reminded her a lot of his sister. They also had something else in common – a haunted aspect to their deep brown eyes.
Based on her brother's reminiscences, the Fukuzawa Yumi pre-1964 sounded like the sweetest girl Sachiko could ever hope to meet. Even assuming that Yuuki-ojisan was looking at the past through an overly thick pair of rose colored glasses, there was enough detail in the stories of Yumi's youth to paint what she believed to be a fairly accurate portrait of the pigtailed girl. They only made her that more determined to try to find the answer to the curse's riddle.
"Oh, Yumi. Why couldn't you have been born into my time?" the blue-eyed girl wondered wistfully.
She had originally thought that she might invite Yuuki-ojisan to visit the Rose Mansion and possibly meet up again with his sister in her current form, but had quickly thrown that idea away as she had watched and listened to him. She now knew that doing such a thing would only bring pain to the both of them; something she was loath to do. If anything, she would prefer to be the one to strike that haunted and painful look from their eyes and replace it with joy and happiness.
She had never before felt this drawn to anyone. In all her seventeen years of life she had never once cared enough about a single individual, even her onee-sama, to want to make them happy no matter the cost or consequences. And not even once had her hatred of men arisen in Yuuki-ojisan's presence. Looking at him, all she could see was a much older version of Yumi. Just lengthen the hair and she was sure she was seeing Yumi at the age of sixty-two.
At least physically.
She desperately wanted the sixty-two year old Yumi to not have the same pained look in her eyes as had ridden in her brother's ever since that fateful day at the Hanadera bus stop.
Sachiko's thoughts were brought up short when Yuuki drew out his chair and returned to his seat.
"I apologize again for allowing my emotions to get away from me," he smiled sadly to his hostess, the redness of his eyes testimony to the fact that he's spent much of his time away from the table crying.
"No, Fukuzawa-sama," Sachiko replied softly, going so far as to reach across the table to lay her hand atop his, "it is I that must apologize. I'm sorry that my curiosity has been the cause of your distress, and for that I am deeply sorry."
"Please, don't be," Yuuki grinned. "Despite my unseemly waterworks, it's been wonderful to be able to talk to someone about my sister. I lead a relatively solitary existence these days. Unless I need to meet with my few clients for one reason or another, about the only time I leave my apartment is to go to the convenience store on the corner for food or to the library for books to help me sleep. Rest assured," he smiled up at her, his eyes sparkling this time not from moisture, but from true if subdued happiness, "you've made me very happy this evening, for which I thank you."
Looking just at his face, beyond the age and slight wrinkles, Sachiko could see Yumi smiling at her and it made her heart thump strongly in her chest. She wanted to see that smile again. She wanted to see that happiness shining out at her.
But she wanted to see it on the face of a certain ghost.
-oo-
"All of the fairy tales seem to depend on the kiss from one's true love to break the spell," Shimako replied to Sachiko's query regarding how best to lift Yumi's curse. "Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Swan Princess, Beauty and the Beast…even Shrek."
"Somehow I don't think that a kiss will suffice," Sachiko sighed disconsolately.
"Are you quite sure about that?" the dark blonde girl tilted her head to one side and smirked, bringing an unexpected grin to her raven haired companion.
After the Yamayurikai meeting - one at which Yumi did not make an appearance, leaving both boutons to believe that the efforts of the previous day's manifestation had most likely been quite draining on the poor girl - the two had elected to meet again at a small family restaurant located just outside of the Academy's gates.
"You've been spending too much time with Sei-sama, Shimako-san," Sachiko chuckled. "She's a bad influence on you."
"I wonder if that's true," Shimako replied with a chuckle of her own, intimating that the two might be more alike than most people credited.
Sachiko tried to imagine the quiet, angelic Shimako as an outgoing and fun-loving lesbian lothario and was quite surprised at how easy it was to picture. Obviously there was a depth to the Rosa Gigantea en Bouton that would one day have to be explored.
One day, but not today.
Today the two Lillian students were meeting in an attempt to brainstorm possible ways to remove Yumi from her predicament. They hadn't been able to come up with any concrete suggestions as of yet, leading to Sachiko's reiteration of the issue at hand and Shimako's somewhat romantic if illogical response.
"Whether that is the case or not," Sachiko responded to Shimako's second statement before returning to the first, "I can't believe that the solution would be something as simple as a kiss."
"Ah, but I didn't say that just any kiss would do the job…but that it would take the kiss of 'one's true love.' That is something altogether different."
"And a situation that is quite unlikely to occur," Sachiko rebutted. "From what she's told you, the only person that Yumi has had any repeated contact with since the incident is this shinigami she mentioned, Hiroshi-kun."
Even the normally unobservant Sachiko could read the look of disbelieving exasperation on her kohai's features.
"Please, Sachiko-sama, even you can't be quite that dense," the blonde beauty said while shaking her head in annoyance. "Didn't you notice how Yumi was looking at you yesterday? Hasn't the fact that she always sits in the chair to your immediate right sunk in yet?"
As the implications of those words smashed their way through Sachiko's normal obtuseness whenever it came to relationships, her eyes widened in disbelief even as she started to shake her head in denial.
"No. There's no way that she could feel that way about me, Shimako-san. No way! I mean, we only just met yesterday!"
She then cringed at the gusty sigh that escaped Shimako's lips accompanied by a rolling of her blue-grey eyes.
"Sachiko-sama, you may have only met her for the first time yesterday afternoon, and I might have only been speaking with her for the past couple of weeks, but I've watched her ever since I first walked into the Rose Mansion earlier this year at Youko-sama's request. I've seen the way her face lights up when you walk into the room. I've seen how crestfallen she is when Youko-sama tells us that you won't be attending that day's meeting. You are the only person that brings her happiness. Just the sight of you coming up the walk seems to lift her spirits."
"But…but," Sachiko stammered, still not wanting to believe what she was hearing.
"Look, I'm not saying that you feel the same way about her, or even that you are her 'one true love.' Honestly," Shimako shrugged, "I don't even know what you'd look for in a relationship…" Sachiko had been in enough business meeting with her father to recognize that the blonde had allowed her statement to trail off in the hopes that her companion would fill in the silence. Even after having recognized the trap, Sachiko was unable to keep from taking the bait.
"I've never thought much about it," the sapphire-eyed heiress mused quietly, once again glad that they'd chosen a table for two in a back corner of the restaurant so that their conversation couldn't be easily overheard by the few Lillian students also partaking of the restaurant's offerings. "I mean," she paused, grappling with herself briefly before continuing, deciding that she could trust in Shimako's honor and discretion, "I have a cousin that's gay," she admitted softly.
"When I was younger I was sure that I loved him and that we would one day marry." She smiled sadly. "It turned out that it was only a child's dream. After our parents announced that they would see us wed, solely for business purposes and not for ourselves, my cousin informed me that he could only be romantically involved with other men and that I should look to find myself a lover after the wedding; that he wouldn't stand in the way of my happiness. It was that cold and calculating statement, made by a man that I had thought I loved and whom I had mistakenly thought loved me as well, which made me hate men of all kind and stripe. I'm sure he thought that he was doing me a favor by allowing me to take a lover, but it became obvious to me that he cared more for the business and what the Ogasawara name could give him than he had ever cared for me.
"So," she sighed, "I guess that in answer to your question, I personally don't have anything against same-gender relationships, but…but I also don't think that there is anyone out there that could love me in that way."
Shimako was silent for a moment before she spoke in a quiet and obviously controlled voice.
"I don't know whether to take you in my arms and hold you and tell you it'll be all right, or to slap you silly for being such a flaming idiot, Sachiko-sama."
Sachiko was both confused and fuming at her fellow Yamayurikai member's response to the baring of her soul. How could she!
"Have you not been listening to what I said?" Shimako leaned closer to her over the table. The angry expression on those normally serene features forced Sachiko to lean back in her chair. For the first time since she'd met her, Sachiko was actually intimidated by Shimako-san.
"First off, if you take that attitude just because one man turned you down, no matter how much you childishly thought you loved him, then you're a stupid fool," she snapped. "Everyone gets their heart broken at least once in life. It's almost a rite of passage from childhood into adulthood! Get over it!
"Secondly, have you heard a word I've said about Yumi-sama? She. Loves. You! Although right now I can't for the life of me see why!" With that the dark blonde girl sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. "Either way, you're a damned fool!"
It was at this point that Sachiko would normally have blown up and stomped out in a huff. Instead, she found herself chuckling, unable to come up with a single argument against Shimako's attack. The younger bouton was right. Sachiko was a flaming idiot.
"So," the raven haired second-year student laughed softly, "I guess what you're saying is that I should just kiss Yumi?"
The smirk on Shimako's lips would have done Sei-sama proud.
No one had ever said that Youko-sama was the only one that was good at meddling in the affairs of others.
-oo-
Shimako sat a moment and thought before she answered Sachiko-sama's question. More important than seeing if she could get the two women together, she first had to think about what was best for Yumi-sama. While it would be wonderful if one kiss from Sachiko-sama's lips would do the trick, she felt that it would be better to hold onto that option as a backup plan.
"Let's table that idea for now," Shimako sighed. "I wouldn't want to get Yumi-sama's hopes up just to have them dashed if it didn't work. She's been stuck in this prison for nearly half a century with only an occasional visitor and no real hope for parole. I'm worried about what might happen to her…what she'd do if it didn't work.
"First I'd like to ask some of my friends in the Shinto community if they have any ideas. I've already asked around a bit without much success, but I have one more person that I'd like to consult with. If she doesn't have any ideas, or can't offer a solution, then we'll come back to the kiss idea."
Looking up to see Sachiko's reaction, she was a bit surprised as well as a bit happy to see that the Rosa Chinensis en Bouton actually appeared to be pouting at the thought of having to wait to get her kiss. She nearly giggled, but she could just as well be wrong so squashed the feeling so that she didn't overly embarrass her friend.
"I'll stop by her shrine tomorrow and see what she has to say. Either way, I'll give you a call later to let you know the outcome." Seeing Sachiko nod, but still with that small sad smile on her face, she reached over to pat her senior's hand.
"Don't worry, Sachiko-sama," she said with a consoling manner, "it's just a slight delay. And it has nothing to do with the way Yumi-sama feels about you. The thing you need to be thinking about right now is exactly what you feel for Yumi-sama."
Sachiko slowly closed her eyes and turned her hand over so that she could gently grip Shimako's in her tender grasp. She didn't say a word, but she nodded her agreement.
And with that Shimako had to be satisfied, knowing it was the best she'd get from the girl right then. The result of her meddling wasn't as great as she had hoped, but it wasn't a total disaster either. All she could do was pray to Maria-sama that things would work out.
For everyone.