Yui woke up the next morning, clutching her father's medallion in her hand, in spite of its sharp edges and rough patterns. Her palm bore the distinct impression of the dragon's teeth. The only way for her to sleep peacefully sometimes was to hold it tight. She told no one about the nightmares she had for the past two weeks. The demon was haunting her. She would wake up in a cold sweat, often shooting right up in bed, gasping for breath. Mao might have been catching onto her. She was much smarter than she gave herself credit for. And if Mao told their mother, Yui would probably end up in a doctor's office, trying to find a way to tell a psychiatrist why she was having nightmares, and the truth was beyond believing. The truth would have the doctor prescribing her medication of schizophrenics, people who were manipulated by their imaginations.
Waking up, stretching, and finally going to her desk, Yui put the medallion back in its place. Funny thing was, she didn't remember getting up and fetching it out of the drawer in the first place. She shrugged before going through her morning routine for school. Knee-length black socks, her uniform, and brushed her hair before tying back to make room for the wig cap. She was just finished with adjusting her long black wig when she spotted her faux leather gloves still sitting on the desk. A small smirk crossed her face. She had forgotten her gloves and nothing bad happened. Out of habit, Yui picked them up.
In the past week, Yui experimented. She would wear the gloves only some of the time at school. However, she never dared before to refuse to wear them at all. Admittedly, it made her feel nauseated just thinking about it. On one hand, it shouldn't have bothered her what others thought of her appearance and they not have noticed one small detail about her looks. On the other hand, the gloves weren't actually a small detail. They were her signature. Somebody was bound to notice.
Why should you care about what other people think? It was Genkai's gruff voice in her head. If you're half as strong as you want to be, start acting like it!
The woman made a valid point, but then again this wasn't about mere appearances. They helped her keep control. Then again, yesterday was a perfect example of what she could do without them. She lived through an entire monster movie and not once she did panic and cause a miniature ice storm inside the theater.
Her cheeks turned bright red. Just thinking about the movies yesterday made her think of him. She was more observant than he thought she was. Kurama was purposely making fun of her, in a very subtle way of course, but she caught onto what he was doing. He seemed like he was enjoying himself too much. Despite her general good nature, Yui wanted to get at him somehow. Not necessarily anything too drastic, just take him down a peg, or two. She could only think about that stupid, arrogant smirk on his face. She could imagine that petty laugh in her ear as he chuckled with amusement her irrational fear of movie monsters.
She had been thinking of ways to humiliate him when Mao knocked on her bedroom door. Mao quickly wrapped her arms around her. Yui, not expecting the sudden display of affection, was half startled, as she had been wandering within the confines of her brain, and half confused.
"How'd you sleep?" Mao really was onto her.
"Fine. Why do you ask?" She escaped Mao's deadly hug attack.
Mao shrugged. "I don't know. Just wanted to make sure you were sleeping alright."
"I sleep just fine." Yui started making her way out of her bedroom.
"There's no need to get defensive." Mao followed not far, closing the door behind her.
"I'm not getting defensive," Yui said without even turning towards her sister.
"It sure sounds like it," Mao mumbled.
Mrs. Kagami, oddly enough, was in the kitchen, dressed in a dark gray suit and a frilly pink apron. Her hair was bound up in a bun, hairpins putting her bangs away from her face so seeing what she was cooking made it that much easier.
"Good morning," Mrs. Kagami was focused on her work.
"Morning!" The two said simultaneously.
Their mother sighed heavily. The level annoyance was high.
"I hate to say it but I almost miss when you two barely talked to each other. Now I remember why having twins was the worst decision of my life!" Of course, she joked. She didn't really mean it. Not completely. She handed each girl a bento box. "There's shrimp and rice in your lunch, Mao, and vegetarian sushi in yours, Yui. Better get going unless you want to be late!"
With more leisure than hurry, the girls stepped into their shoes and headed out the door, hand in hand. It was still highly unusual for them to be seen so close. Their classmates largely assumed that the sisters were estranged. Mao was the popular one, that much was known to be true. Perhaps not always the smartest girl, but she had charisma, leadership skills, and a great athlete. Yui on the other hand was a recluse, thin, pale, ghostly, and was very intelligent. Sadly, there were those who you could say were jealous of her intellect yet she didn't boast about it like a normal teenager. They also seemed to noticed her invisible aura. Without knowing the exact reason for this, they had already labeled her as the 'weird girl,' the one that would make everyone who associated with a social pariah too. But here Mao was, willingly talking to her and holding her hand.
Yui didn't know if her sister was aware of the changes going on around them at school. Mao seemed utterly and blissfully unaware of the change in personality their classmates underwent over the course of just two weeks. They parted before them like the Red Sea, but Mao remained oblivious. Yui knew that her sister was smarter than Mao herself believed. It couldn't be that she wasn't aware of what was going on around her. She could be very observant when she wanted to be. It made Yui wonder if the smile on Mao's face was authentic or if it was just a brave front she put up for her.
They changed shoes, resumed holding their hands like some sort of unbreakable chain, and continued chatting with each other like there was nobody else in the world. Mao parted on uneasy terms. They went to their separate homes. Mao with her English 101 and Yui in her advanced algebra.
"Good morning, Miss Kagami," Mr. Kimura had noticed the changes in Yui, mainly her missing gloves. Some would suspect that he was obsessed, but it wasn't anything like that. Honest. He saw something in Yui that she wasn't confident enough to admit to herself. He saw that in her test scores. He knew that she was missing those problems on purpose. It was only a matter of proving it.
"Good morning, Mr. Kimura," Yui sat down in her seat.
Not long after the homework was passed to the front, a knock came on the classroom door. Mr. Kimura answered it and the principle walked right in with a male student in tow. Yui hadn't looked up from her planner to see him at first. Her pencil froze in her hand when she sensed him walk in. Funny thing about her training, she was able to sense things she hadn't before, or at least what Genkai said, things that she refused to sense.
"I hope I didn't interrupt anything, Kimura." Mr. Hasegawa said in a jovial manner.
"Not at all. We hadn't even started the lesson yet. Who is this?" Mr. Kimura gestured to the young man standing dutifully behind the principle.
"I was just showing this new student around the school. He's been assigned to your class, Kimura." He turned to the new student. "Young man, if you don't mind introducing yourself to the class."
He walked around the principle. That's when Yui raised her head. Their eyes met just briefly, just long enough for Yui's heart to start beating loudly against her ribs.
The young man was unusually tall by Japanese standards, lanky but somehow perfectly fit. Possibly foreign with his sharp blue eyes. His hair was black, which was a striking feature against his clear, fair skin.
Heat rose in Yui's cheeks. It started with the center of her chest, and then climbed its way up her neck, cheeks, and finally to the top of her head. She wanted to sink into her chair and pretend she didn't exist. Her palms suddenly felt wet and clammy. Her mouth went dry for no reason.
The young man looked like he didn't want to be there. His gaze sometimes gazed at his feet instead of politely looking at the students in front of him. He shoved his hand into his pockets and kicked an imaginary pebble.
"There's no need to be shy, son. Go on, introduce yourself." Mr. Hasegawa insisted, giving the boy a gentle shove.
The young man cleared his throat. "My name's Ryuunosuke Maruyama and I'm from Kyoto. I-I don't know what else to say, really."
Without another word, he started down the aisles of desks, cheeks flushed with color though he tried to hide it. Yui bent her head low until her forehead was almost touching her desk. Her heart was in her throat. The blood was throbbing in her ears. Her heart rate was skyrocketing and it grew louder as Ryuunosuke grew closer. He just had to have picked her aisle to walk down, didn't he? Her body felt like it was going to die, to have her heart explode with all of its red gore spraying everywhere. She swallowed hard, unable to control the strange sensations pulsating through her body. Her heart was beating so quickly and her stomach felt like it was made out of air. Her face and her brain felt like they were on fire.
Ryuunosuke didn't give her a second look. He walked right past her and all the way to the only empty desk in the back row. Yui hadn't realized that she had been holding onto her breath until she sighed with relief. The class turned to look at the new kid and whispered amongst themselves before the teacher instantly quieted them. Mr. Hasegawa let Mr. Kimura to his own devices. To her surprise, Yui found it difficult to pay attention, and that had never been a problem for her. She was a studious and focused person, but today her mind seemed to wander and she have never been a daydreamer either. This whole situation was making her uncomfortable. Her legs were shaking uncontrollably and she couldn't keep down the sour bile building in her throat.
Her hand shot in the air as well as half her body.
"Kagami, is there something wrong?" Asked Mr. Kimura, turned from his notebook.
"M-may I be excused for a minute. I-I-I suddenly don't feel so well." Yui couldn't control the tremors stemming from the pit in her stomach all the way up her arm.
"Is it an emergency?"
Yui nodded.
Mr. Kimura saw how red she was and how she looked like she going to be physically sick.
"You're ex..."
He didn't have time to finish before Yui shot out of her desk like a rocket and ran out the door, slamming it shut behind her.
Yui ran for the nearest girls room. Classes just started, so it was empty. She ran for the closest stall, opened it wide, and threw herself in front of the porcelain throne. From there she made most copious offerings of her breakfast into the vessel, barely remembering to keep her hair out of the way as she vomited.
His blue eyes flashed inside her mind as she dumped the contents of her stomach into the toilet. There was something about him, something that made her so nervous that all she could think about was him and becoming so nervous that she threw up. To be perfectly honest, Yui never experienced love outside the familial kind. She knew motherly, fatherly, and sisterly, and was aware that people were love with those who weren't members of their own family. She was naive to believe that the feelings of love would never affect her. Did she think that she would never know what it was like to have a boyfriend? To be held by a man, to be kissed? Mao talked about it, but Yui didn't understand why people went through all of the trouble of dating and courting if most relationships didn't end up the way you wanted them to. What was the point of having your heart broken like that, repeatedly for the sake of finding that one person in a very large, vast ocean of potential husbands or wives?
His blue eyes seemed to have pierced straight into her soul, her very being. With one brief glance, Ryuunosuke Murayama had turned Yui's insides into mush. Her lungs were about to give way. There wasn't enough oxygen in the world to keep them going. As illogical as courtship and dating and love and all that other stuff Mao talked about may have sounded, there was no denying that Yui was feeling for the first time the physiological signs of attraction to someone of the opposite sex. In her special case, the signs were amplified by a hundredfold, all because she spent so much time repressing that kind of emotion towards men. It hit her like a ton of bricks. There was no cure for this.
However, as much as she wanted to hide in the bathroom until school was over, or the end of the world, which ever came first, Yui had certain principles to stick to and skipping class because of a boy wasn't going to be her excuse for breaking them. She wiped her mouth off with a piece of toilet paper she tore from the dispenser, tossed it into the bowl, and flushed. Yui made her way slowly and uneasily back to the classroom. She walked with her head held low and stared at the floor even as she walked. Yui returned to her seat and tried to pretend nothing was wrong.
All through the class, she could feel him staring at her. His blue eyes were glued to the back of her head. Yui wanted more than anything to turn even just a little bit over her shoulder to see if he was actually looking at her, but proved to be too cowardly. Even if he was looking at her, Yui didn't want to know if he was. She did, but she didn't. She didn't want it to be confirmed. If she did look and his eyes were on her, Yui didn't doubt that she would be sick all over again. She thought it best to just let it be. Class would be over soon enough, right? No need to get worked up over a boy. This sort of thing was normal for teenage girls anyway. Perfectly normal.
"Put your back into, girl! You're not trying hard enough!"
Yui failed to see how pushing a boulder across a barren field was supposed to teach her control. Unfortunately for her, her strength lied mostly in her legs, not her arms. Her upper body strength was not up to Genkai's standards. Rumor had it that she was lucky. There were worse things the cranky old woman could make her do for training.
"I'm trying," Yui grunted as she pushed her body to its limits. Her teeth ground against each other, threatening to break.
"Obviously you're not trying hard enough! I can barely see you sweat, you overgrown lizard."
The humiliation, the degradation, if Yui wasn't such a nice person, she would probably do something about Genkai's method of training. Training and doing chores to make up for the ruined fire wood was one thing, name calling was something else entirely. She got enough of that at school, she didn't need it here, not when she was trying so hard to get control of her powers.
Genkai's harsh words spurred Yui on. She'd rather not be humiliated by some woman, even if she was being nice enough to train her. Genkai didn't have to do anything for her. She was taking time and effort to actually help. She could have made Yui chop up some trees for firewood and be done with it. No, she was doing her best to teach her control. The less she complained, the more work she put into training, the less Genkai insulted her. It was a method that seemed to work very well.
The boulder was moving easier now. Whether it was because Yui had been developing super strength or she was just so angry over the insults, the boulder moved.
"Almost there," Yui gritted through her teeth.
In a sudden burst of energy, Yui forced the giant rock where Genkai designated with a red flag. With a great sigh, Yui let herself fall to the grassy ground and roll onto her stomach. Her heart was racing, her blood pumping, and sweat glistened on her forehead. Genkai's shadow soon appeared next to her head. Resting on her elbows, she gave the old woman a weak smile.
"How was that?"
The old woman took a puff from her cigarette and looked at the girl's handiwork.
"Your upper body strength needs some work. I realize that ice dragons get hot quicker than other demons but it shouldn't have taken you that long to move one rock from one end of a field to the other."
Yui felt her brow twitch with irritation.
"But I think that's enough for today. What we need to work on now is the interior."
"'Interior?'" Confused, Yui asked.
With a curt nod, Genkai continued. "Control is both a physical and emotional action, therefore two parts to learn. In terms of physicality, I'm more comfortable with where you are than what you were like a few weeks ago. However," she took a long drag from her cigarette, nearly burning it to the end. "Emotionally and spiritually, you're stunted. Every two steps you take, you end up taking one step back. You've come to terms with what you are and now your sister has accepted for what you are. You no longer have the pressure of keeping a secret from her. On the other hand, there's something else you're not willing to accept."
Yui rose to her feet, placing her hands on her knees and tried to catch her breath.
"And what's that?"
Genkai didn't say anything for a long time. The wind was brushing through the long grass. The trees of the forest in the distant rustled, shivered. Already some of the leaves were starting to change colors. Genkai finished her cigarette and threw the spent end to the ground, stamping out the tiny ember with the back of her heel.
"How old do you think I am?"
Yui didn't know how to answer. It would be rude to answer with a number too high but then again this was Genkai. The likelihood that she cared how old people thought she was most likely nonexistent.
"70's, I guess."
"Do you think I'm dumb?" Genkai's voice was growing meaner and harsher. What game was she playing?
"Not at all."
"Then how long do you think you can cover up your trauma?"
Yui felt the color in her cheeks drain. She bent her head down and tried to pretend that she was still trying to catch her breath. It would have been easier to hide her face with her hair but it had been bound up in a tight braid.
"You nearly died that day, and you dare to tell me that you didn't come back a little scarred?" There was no playful sarcasm in her voice and this was no passive aggressive training. Genkai was angry and insulted.
"I-I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you dare lie!"
Yui flinched when Genkai raised her voice at her.
"I've seen the dark circles under your eyes, how you snap awake from your naps after training, how you look over shoulders like you're expecting somebody to jump out of the shadows. Something got into you two weeks ago. You're afraid of being alone. You try to make excuses to stay a little while longer and refuse to leave unless somebody's there to walk you to the bus stop. As long as you keep it all bottled up, you're not going to move forward."
Without realizing it, icy tears dropped to the ground and turned the blades of grass into tiny pins. Yui didn't expect anything less from Genkai.
"D-don't make me talk about it, please. I can't, I can't bring myself to relive it." Yui's shoulders were shaking violently. She felt his hands on her, the iron burning her skin, that voice in her head. Her own hand went to touch the scars on her back.
"You do know that he can't hurt you anymore? He's dead, thanks to that half wit."
Yui swallowed hard and sank to her knees. "I-I know. It's just too...painful. It's like I can still feel him...on top of my skin. Sometimes I just want to take my nails and scrap him off..."
Genkai's hand made sharp contact with her cheek.
"What was that for?" Yui cradled her cheek.
"I don't want to hear anything about self-harm coming from your mouth, do you hear that, Lizard?"
Yui had calmed down. She had greatly improved. Her emotional outbursts no longer came with miniature blizzards. Still, there was a lot of work to be done. Yui didn't particularly respond well to negative reinforcements like Yusuke did, but slapping her across the face just once didn't hurt either. Genkai had seen many of the signs before. Nobody could get the girl to talk. Her sister was more willing, but they didn't have the same experiences. On her body, Yui bore the classic signs of torture and judging by her behavior something else too. There was no easy way to confirm what happened. Genkai could only make a few dreadful guesses. Yui practically implied it. Genkai wondered if the girl would ever be brave enough to admit what happened to her.
"That's all for today," the old woman helped her up.
"Really?" Yui eventually let go of her cheek.
"But first, it's time to do some chores."
"You don't have to walk me to Genkai's, you know? I'm perfectly capable of going there by myself." Mao made the trek up the incredibly ridiculous flight of stairs to entrance of the temple.
Somewhere far away, a crow croaked. The trees seemed restless. They shivered and shook in the wind as if in preparation for autumn, and then later winter. Green leaves were starting to turn red, yellow, and orange. Some were way ahead of the others, sprouting golden leaves as bright as a burning torch in the night.
Kuwabara and Yusuke were behind her, followed by Kurama behind them.
"Right,"Yusuke drawled, "Because the last time you walked anywhere alone, you were perfectly fine."
Mao stopped mid-way up the step she was on and glared at him from over her shoulder.
"Sarcasm is most unbecoming of you, Urameshi." She turned quickly with a pout and climbed up the rest of the way by herself.
It took them a while to reach the top. Yusuke went ahead opened the gate, holding it open for Mao.
"After you, Princess."
With her nose in the air, Mao sauntered in front of him.
"Bite me."
"Rather not."
They made their way through the temple, all the way to back. They heard the sounds of agonized grunting, which could only mean one of two things. Two people in the party already had perverted minds and uncontrollable hormones, so naturally they silently came up with the wrong conclusion first. Making their way further, the back door was left open and they continued to follow the sounds.
Yui was hard at work, chopping up blocks of wood. At first it was awkward and a touch uncomfortable seeing her like that. After a few moments, it felt more like watching a movie.
Yui wasn't as pale as she had been. Being out in the sun during her training had given her skin a healthier glow. Granted she was still quite pale, but not as pale as beforehand. Her clothes were clinging to her form because of the sweat. Her newly developed muscles moved with a grace that a person could only be born with. Her feminine brows were drawn together. She looked like she was struggling but remained strong. There was also something about how a few strands of her white hair moving out of place and sticking to her forehead. There was something so incredibly attractive about it. And when she paused in her work to move the stray hairs from her face, at least two people in the vicinity were about to have nose bleeds.
That is until Mao punched them both in the stomach.
"That's my sister you're staring at!"
Yui finally looked over in their direction. Smiling sweetly, she wiped the sweat from her face. The ax was dug into the stump where she would leave it be for now.
"Did you say something, Mao?" She asked, completely oblivious how sexy she had been acting two seconds ago, even unconsciously.
"What? Me? No, you must be hearing things." She tried to laugh it off.
"Yeah right," Yusuke grumbled as he held his stomach.
Mao smacked him upside the head. "How's the training coming along?"
"I suppose it's doing well. Why are Kuwabara and Yusuke huddled over their stomachs?" Yui answered and then pointed at the two boys, clearly in pain. Mao may have been small, but she still very strong.
"Oh, nothing. I think it was something they ate," she looped her arm around Yui's shoulder. "How about we go inside and have a cup of tea."
When they were out of earshot, Yusuke and Kuwabara fell to the ground still clutching their stomachs.
"What the hell? For somebody so small, she can really pack a punch," Yusuke groaned.
"I'll say."
Kurama chuckled, shaking his head. "Maybe from now on you shouldn't stare like that at her sister."
Yusuke quickly shook off the pain and sat up, leaning against his arms.
"Like you're one to talk." He grumbled.
"Pardon?"
"She's like a female version of you. She even talks like you half the time."
"I fail to understand your point, Yusuke."
Kuwabara sat up too. "Anybody with eyes can see you're practically meant for each other."
"You're both smart, you talk funny, and you have absolutely no interest in human events. You're both pretty indifferent to the world around you and you both have human families you want to care of." Yusuke thought he made some darn good arguments.
Kurama sighed. "Even so, a few commonalities doesn't quite make a relationship. Besides, I'm not looking to be in one. As of right now, I'm perfectly fine by myself."
Yusuke shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever you say."
"Mao, can I have a word with you?" Genkai surprised Mao by walking almost out of thin air.
She nearly dropped the tea set.
"Don't scare me like that! Ninjas make more noise than you!"
"I need to speak with you, alone."
"What about?" Mao relaxed.
"Your sister."
Mao nodded. She went into the living room quickly and set down the tea set on the low table.
"I'll be right back," she said to Yui. "I just need to use the bathroom real quick."
"Alright," Yui started to pour the tea for herself and the others.
Mao carefully shut the shoji door behind her. She sneaked away as best she could and followed Genkai to an empty room.
"Shut the door," Genkai took a seat in a chair.
Mao turned and did as she was told. Turning again, she asked, "Is there something wrong with my sister?"
"Have you noticed anything strange going on with her?"
Mao thought her eyes widened. Her brows formed a V-shape as she went into deep thought. She was looking at her feet while she remembered all of the odd things Yui had picked up over the past couple of weeks.
"Now that you mention it," she raised her head. "Yui's been on the defensive lately. Like this morning when I asked her how she slept, she got all prickly about it. And just the other night, after I got up to use the bathroom, I thought I heard her crying in her sleep. I'm usually the one who's a night owl but lately I think Yui has been staying up later than she did before. Have you noticed anything else?"
Genkai nodded. "Does she like to be alone?"
Mao shook her head. "Not any more. Sometimes she freaks out if she's left alone for too long. A few days ago she left me over a dozen messages on the phone when I didn't come home right after school because I was being held back at a study session at school."
"Does she get scared easily?"
"What do you mean?"
"Does she act paranoid?"
"A little more than usual."
There was a brief moment of silence.
"I think your sister may need to see a doctor. A psychologist preferably. At the very least, somebody to talk to."
"What for?"
"Whatever happened to her that night is holding her back from realizing her full potential. Her scars are healing quickly, but there are those that cannot heal properly and will leave an infection of the worst kind." She lit a cigarette and took a long drag. "I have some suspicions that your sister was not only tortured, but was abused in another way."
Mao's blood went cold. "In what kind of way?" Her body was shuddering for some reason. Did she really want to know the answer?
"There's no easy way for me to say it. During training, I told her that I knew that something was wrong with her and that something was holding her back. She became upset and implied what happened to her that night." She took another long drag. This situation made the tough Genkai very uncomfortable; it wasn't something she was used to.
Mao swallowed hard before asking her next question. "What did she say?"
Genkai sighed heavily, "Her exact words were, ' It's like I can still feel him...on top of my skin. Sometimes I just want to take my nails and scrap him off...' I can only assume that she meant scrapping her own skin, i.e self-harm."
So in shock was Mao that she audibly gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth. The news had her knees buckling underneath her until she fell to the floor, shaking. The room felt like it was spinning. Bile rose in her throat but she swallowed it back down.
"Y-you think she was..."Mao couldn't finish that sentence.
"I can't say for certain. I'm not one-hundred per cent sure, but if not she was taken advantage of, that much is certain."
"Do I tell my mom? What will Yui say if she finds out what you believe? What can I do?"
"Yui is still emotionally unstable. We've barely gotten her to stop making snow storms when she's upset. We can't force her to talk about it if she doesn't want to. The best thing we can do for now is to wait for her to talk, willingly. The most important thing you can do for your sister is make sure she doesn't do anything stupid like hurting herself. Keep an eye for that kind of stuff." She took a shorter drag from her cigarette. "Better get back there before she becomes suspicious."
"R-right." Mao managed to get up all on her own. She walked slowly back to the living room, trying to settle things down in her head.
She hesitated outside the door. Her hand trembled as she took hold of the handle to slide it open. Taking a deep breath, Mao opened it and stepped inside.
Yui was busying herself with her cup of tea. She looked so peaceful. Mao couldn't help but stare. After she took a long sip, Yui finally noticed that her sister's gaze was fixed on her.
"Is there something on my face?" She went to pat her cheeks.
"No," Mao smiled. "You look beautiful."