Chapter Ten

Faye woke up to her phone ringing. She could have sworn she had put the stupid thing on silent before she went to bed the night before, but like all things, sometimes life just didn't work out that way. With a moan, she pulled a hand out from under the covers and started feeling around for the cell phone on her bedside table. She grabbed the phone finally and with blurry eyes, answered it without a glance at the ID. "Hello," she said in tired, drawn out English.

"Faye?"

Faye sat up in her bed and pulled her hair out of her face by raking her fingers through the knots. "Hikaru, it's too early for me to function in Japanese. What do you want?" It took her a moment to realize that upon hearing Hikaru's voice, she had automatically spit out the Japanese. She groaned as she realized that at some point her automatic response was Japanese and not English. Even her father was starting to complain. What happened to speaking your native tongue. You should be conversing in English like a normal girl from England, not Japanese. Faye shook her head when she heard the gruff no nonsense voice of her father. She had to remind him that they were in a French speaking country so English wasn't actually a viable option for her. At least she grew up with Japanese.

"We were going to get breakfast today," Hikaru answered.
Faye fell back on her pillow. "It's Sunday isn't it?" she asked.

"You forgot?"

"No, Hikaru, I just lost track of the days. I was up late working on an art thing."

"Can I come in, or is your dad going to glare at me because I have you speaking Japanese?"

"Dad's with the Ambassador in Lyon for something," Faye answered as she slid out of bed. She shuffled out of her bedroom, grabbing her robe on the way and slipping it on. "I'll let you in."

She opened her front door a minute later and smiled at Hikaru as she hung up. "I'm so sorry," she said. "Come on in."

Hikaru blushed when he looked at Faye's hip hugging plaid pajama bottoms and t-shirt as he stepped in. Faye smiled sheepishly and closed her robe and tied it off. Hikaru looked around. He had been in the house a couple times before, but for the most part, he had always been in the presence of Faye's father.

Faye started climbing the stairs to her room and Hikaru followed her. He stopped at her door as she opened up her closet and started looking at clothes. She turned to Hikaru after a minute. "Do I have to be cute, or can I wear what I normally wear?" she asked.

"You look good in what you usually wear," Hikaru said with a smile. And he was telling the truth. Faye wore what made her comfortable and as a result she always looked at ease in her outfits.

As she opened up around Hikaru and settled into the Paris scene she became less fashionista and more casual, messy, creative soul. She wore ripped jeans and flannel plaid and kept her hair in a messy bun. She started painting her nails once a week. Hikaru felt like Faye was starting to shift back into who she had been as a younger teenager. Someone, she thought she had to hide. She slowly was becoming just a little bit more physical, touching Hikaru's hand, mussing up his hair, hugging him. He took it as a sign of her absolute trust in him, and that thought was reassuring.

"Have you found a job yet?" Hikaru asked.

Faye nodded. "My cousin's Paris office needs a file clerk for their security files. He asked me if I wanted to do it. I need the job, so I said yes. It's low maintenance, so I can study."

"So we won't be able to hang out as much?" Hikaru asked.

"Unless you want a job as a file clerk," Faye shrugged grabbing jeans and a black graphic t-shirt and a grey cardigan. She shoved Hikaru out the door and closed it with a smile. "We'll still see each other at school and we'll go on dates." She spoke through the door, giving her voice a muffled tone, like Hikaru was trying to hear her through a funnel.

"You aren't going to be working that many hours are you?" Hikaru asked.

"Only around fifteen," Faye answered a minute later as she opened the door. She smiled at him as she pulled her long faded purple hair into a bun. She moved back into her room and grabbed one of her larger sketchpads and started flipping through the pages. She opened it up all the way and showed Hikaru a sketch of Paris monuments.

An invisible circle framed each monument with the scenery trying to break out. The tondo art was one of the many renaissance styles Hikaru was familiar with. Each monument was left in black and white charcoal and pencil while the grass and surrounding areas were in color. Unlike her photo project, the black and white of the sketch monument stood out as the focal point. The skies were blue, the grass was green, the cafe signs were vibrant, but the monuments stood in black and white unchanging. Hikaru smiled at the sketches as he held them carefully.

"You really like experimenting with color don't you?" Hikaru asked.

"I think that it provides a really interesting contrast," Faye answered. She started making her bed. "For those, the monuments are testaments of time, unchanging, clear as day, while the environment changes so it's colorful. I'm worried though."

Hikaru looked at Faye as she moved to her desk and gathered up her books. "Why are you worried?"

"Because the monuments are bland and black and white," she said. "Do you think it makes them come off as cold? That's the absolute last thing I want, so I'm not entirely sure how to approach it."

Hikaru looked at the drawings and held the sketches farther away. "You have the monuments emanating a blank aura," he said. There was a border around each monument. "If you fill it in then maybe it will be better. Then the color is leading towards the monument. What do you think?"

Faye came up and hugged Hikaru's arm as she studied her own artwork. She pointed at the windows of Notre Dame. "This is the South Rose window. It's stained glass, what if I colored that in too?"

Hikaru nodded. "That way you're drawing the attention of the sketch to the beauty of the cathedral's architecture," he said, blushing slightly. "And for the Eiffel tower, what if you did sunset when the tower lights up."

"That's a great idea!" Faye said excitedly. She took the sketchbook and put it on an easel. She looked around for her bag. "Now, I need food." She bent down and picked up the hobo bag with Disney's Belle and Beast dancing and she looked in it. She closed the bag and pulled the strap over her head and let the bag rest on her hip.

Hikaru smiled at her and let her leave the room before he did. He pulled his door closed and followed Faye down the stairs. She grabbed her house keys and waited for Hikaru to walk out before she pulled the door closed.

"Have you thought about displaying your art?" Hikaru asked.

"As a student, I show my art as a part of the class."

"I mean in a real gallery," Hikaru said. "Those photos where they were black and white but then my mom's lips were colored, or my scarf. Those belong in galleries."

Faye shook her head as she turned around and walked backwards. "I never really thought about it," she answered. "I just always kept the art to myself or gave it to my family. My cousin Bobby has a sketch of her family's home in Galway hanging in her room back in England. She gave me a photo and asked me if she could replicated it."

"Where's Galway?"

"West Ireland. It's where her dad's family came from. Her grandfather came to England for work ended up finding a wife and stayed, but the family home is still standing in one of the townlands, and Bobby and Spencer will go there if they want to get away from England. My mom is from Belfast, Northern Ireland, before she was adopted by the Chevaliers, so that's where my family will end up going when they don't want to be in England."

"Have you ever been to the Galway house?"

Faye nodded. "It's in the middle of an Irish speaking community. I think that's why the twins go there. Because it's a sense of community. Full immersion."

"Do you speak Irish?" Hikaru asked.

Faye nodded. "Raised on it with my cousins. Irish at my uncles, Japanese at my neighbors, and my father wonders why I can't speak English." Faye laughed as they walked down the road.

Hikaru laughed with her. It had to be interesting, being raised with more than one language. He hadn't started learning other languages until he was in entering middle school. That's when his mother enrolled the twins in French and English. For their mother, those were the two languages that the twins were going to need in the Fashion industry. While Hikaru was fluent in both languages, he always felt at ease with Japanese. English was easier, despite how complicated the language was. He considered his year in Boston to have been the best practice he could get. Faye was different though. She had grown up with at least three languages.

"How hard is it for you to speak in those languages?"

Faye turned to face Hikaru and shrugged. "When I was little, my mother told me that immersion was always the best thing for languages. With my cousins, they only spoke Irish, and to an extent, they continue to only speak Irish to each other, so if I wanted to communicate, I had to learn. When I was in Canada, French was required learning at my school, and in order to get me up to a good level, Dad had me do French immersion for high school. Then there was Japanese immersion at my friend's home. When you're surrounded by something, it's easier to get a hand on the language."

"How many languages does your mother speak?"

Faye mentally counted on her fingers. "She can speak five, but can read more. My mom as an academic is versed in Old English and Old Irish, but that's reading. She speaks German, French, English, Japanese, and Irish."

"Are your cousins polyglots too?" Hikaru asked.

"When you do international business, you kind of need to," Faye said. "Brandon and Chase I think only speak five. Irish, English, French, Japanese, and Arabic. Spencer and Bobby are naturals for language acquisition. They're up to seven each. But for that family languages are easy I guess."

"What do you mean?"

"Their mom speaks nine, and their dad speaks twelve," Faye answered. "The language acquisition for that family it frankly quite terrifying. But on a business level they're able to go farther, and work in countries without a translator."

Hikaru laughed slightly. Listening to Faye talk about her family so freely was something that was new. She would talk about her mom and dad in the vaguest ways possible, but once Spencer showed up at her school that day, she had opened up about her extended family and how the Masters were the family to stand by Faye and her parents when the Chevaliers wouldn't. The Masters family took care of their own, and it was something that gave Faye great comfort. She looked up to her cousins and Hikaru could understand it so well. He thought about the Host Club and how that was, in an obscure fashion, his own Masters family. The Host Club wouldn't stand for nonsense, and they backed each other up. This kind of a camaraderie was the type of thing that really close families had.