Author's Notes: As wonderfully culturally opening a subject Anthropology is, the reading for tests is incredibly dry…
Need…water…
10
I had found a kind of fondness for Tokyo at night. It was never dark enough to see the stars, but the sheer amount of light in the city itself was enough to compensate, the thousands of black heads shining in the neon like moving stars themselves. I could see it all from the rooftops, my coat thick and warm around me, Shion's katana strapped to my back. I was waiting, biding time, but I really didn't know why. I was supposed to meet the rest of the crew here, but they were late.
Maybe Manx hadn't told them…
Again, trusting someone…I seethed at myself and cinched my bootlaces tighter so I could scramble from roof to roof along the line of the street to the small floral shop I recalled seeing in the folder from Manx's briefcase. They were staying here, I assumed, under the guise of florists.
Florists by day, killers by night. It was too lame to even be questioned, probably for that reason alone.
King…Pershia…whatever his name was, was such a sucker for the cliché. It was pathetic.
I crept about on the roof, trying to find an entrance when it appeared, as if out of nowhere, a door in the wall flung open by a young man bearing claws at me and growling. I backed away, startled. I'd never seen Tiger Claws in real life, only in books. The man looked almost feral.
"Who the fuck are you?" he demanded. I guessed he assumed the worst because he didn't let me answer. He as on me in a second and it was all I could manage to fend him off, to breathlessly duck his claws and block his blows. The others were at the door to see what the noise was about, weapons at the ready.
My katana was locked in my attacker's claws and I was back against a wall, glaring at them all.
I opened my mouth to explain myself, but on of the Tiger Claws got free and the next moment pain was flaring across my temple and my sight was gone. I sank to my knees and lost consciousness.
I opened my eyes to find a blonde man standing over me, smiling. He looked remarkably like Masako, while at the same time didn't. The resemblance made me frown and attempt to think, pain throbbed behind my eyes the moment I tried.
"Well, hello there, Ayaa," the man purred.
Aya? What?
"Or is that your girlfriend's name?" the man asked, moving around the bed to sit beside me, "You were calling her name just a minute ago. It was so touching."
I immediately wanted to kill him.
"My name's Kudoh Yohji."
I slowly sat up against the headboard and took the aspirin tablets he offered me, swallowing them dry. I shut my eyes and felt my head for any bumps, bleeding or other damage.
"You're the new kid, eh? Abyssinian?"
"Fujimiya…Aya…" I lied smoothly.
He blinked, then laughed. "Oh, ho…that's rich…"
I just glared at him.
The others were waiting downstairs when I felt ready to have a look around. I had wondered around the upstairs hallways but hadn't dared looking into any of the closed rooms out of fear of that manic with claws. When I had finally ventured downstairs in to where I smelled a kitchen, I froze at the sight of said manic, daintily picking up little octopus-shaped hot dogs and making them dance around a plate to amuse another boy there.
Bombay, my mind supplied, Bombay and Siberian. And the other from before, Yohji, was called Balinese.
Bombay looked up at me in the doorway and smiled as he motioned me in. Siberian saw me and sheepishly tried to smile, as if in apology, but I didn't look at him. One never looks a wolf or a tiger in the eye if they liked living.
"You gave us quite a scare last night," the boy said cheerfully. His voice grated on my nerves and the edge of my headache swelled.
"Yohji-kun said your name was Aya. Do you mind if we call you Aya too?"
I hadn't given any of them permission to call me anything…not that it mattered. I'd still answer to it…I'd always answered to Aya's name.
"I don't care."
Tiger Claws snorted something that sounded remarkably like 'prick' under his breath, but looked away when I glared at him. Bombay didn't seem to notice.
"You can call me Omi-kun, and that's Ken-kun."
"We like to call him Kenken," Yohji said, appearing out of nowhere. I hadn't even heard him. In fact, I hadn't heard any of them move. They were like cats…
Well duh, Ran…I repressed the urge to roll my eyes.
Yohji moved across the room to pour himself a cup of coffee. I found my eyes following him without my consent and ripped them away before he could notice. Omi was still talking, but I wasn't hearing any of it.
"You were really early. We hadn't been expecting to meet you for another two hours," Omi said.
"I was told you were to meet me at ten."
"Perhaps you were misinformed," Omi suggested.
I shrugged.
"Would you like some breakfast?"
"Coffee," I asked.
Life quickly became routine at the Koneko. Because I had no martial arts training scheduled, I trained by myself. Ken had offered to spar with me, but I refused. I was still unsure how to deal with his choice of weapons. Omi taught me all he knew to help run the shop, but he failed to warn me about…them…
Girls, from pubescent little worms to creeping hags with canes and deaf ears, would pack into the shop for hours at a time. To a sworn misogynist, it was hell, worse than any horror movie I watched. The giggling, the cooing, the soft flutter of hands that covered mouths as the whispered to one another about my ass when I walked by was almost enough to make me snap. Once or twice they touched me, just a brush of hand, and I had just barely kept from backhanding them. After the first few dangerous glares, the adventurous ones stopped testing me, content to watch at a distance, as if I too were a plant on display.
Besides, why bother with me when Yohji was happy to entertain them? As much as I hated them, he loved them and put on his best performance every day. He could've been an actor. Be it teenager or grandmother, Yohji played to their whims with a nimbleness like some kind of acrobat turned social butterfly.
That still didn't excuse him from smoking in the shop. Omi was always getting after him for something like that.
I didn't care. By then I was used to smokers and was just fine breathing second-hand nicotine. I didn't care that he put his feet on the kitchen table when he read the newspaper or that he left his porn in the tape player in the basement. What I cared about was that he insisted on picking the locked bathroom door so he could take a piss when I was trying to jerk off in the shower after yet another rough night's sleep.
Often Yohji would jokingly offer to take care of it for me. That was usually when I threatened to kill him and threw whatever was handy (soap, sponge, razor, etc.) at his head.
I cared that his bedroom was right next to mine, so whenever he played music too loud or brought some new conquest home, I could hear it as if they were on my bedroom floor, her screaming like some kind of banshee while he fucked her, grunting.
I was good at ignoring things; Omi's ever-joyous mood, Ken's sad attempts to befriend me, even Manx's goddamn skirt after a while, but Yohji refused to be ignored. He was blatant about everything, like a bright orange speck of bleach on a black silk kimono.
I fucking hated him. I hated him more than the people they sent me off to kill, almost more than Takatori.
They always say that you one you hate most is really the one you are destined to love. I don't know who this 'they' is, but I hope they're rolling in their graves.
Sick bastards…
I had slept in. It was Sunday and the shop was closed. We'd been up late on a mission the night before, so at nine in the morning, the house was silent. Ken had canceled soccer practice, Omi was off in the basement (probably surfing the internet for porn), and Yohji was snoring softly on the other side of my bedroom wall. I was in bed, watching the dappled sunlight pour through my window and shift on my wall-to-wall carpeted floor.
I decided I hated carpet. I decided I had to visit Aya-chan in the hospital that day, change her flowers, fix her hair, talk to her. Sometimes the nurse would paint her fingernails, and it amused me to see what whimsical color was presented on the tips of her fingers.
I was drowsing still, groggy from the Valium I had finally taken to sleep the night before. I had slept roughly even then, plagued by nightmares, and my bedclothes were tangled around my hips. Every once in a while I would shut my eyes and pictures would flash behind them.
My katana, Shion's katana, so clean and cold and beautiful, slicing cleanly through another man's head, my feet already moving to turn me around and defend my back.
Aya-chan's face, still sleeping, but bluish-white with death as the electric beep of her heart fell into a flat line.
Yohji's face, always smiling, always so empty, pressed against my lap as I lay on the sofa.
I shook myself awake, repressing a scream of outrage at my own mind. My hair, the red catching in the sunlight, fell into my eyes, stinging them. Even with them open I was seeing the dream, a fantasy, a cruelty from the gods sent to torment me. I glanced down at my lap and groaned.
Fucking libido, it did what it liked no matter my morals…I had better deal with it, then.
I got out of bed, my limbs stiff and sore from the workout the night before. For the first time I longed for one of my old boyfriends, for his hands that had soothed aching muscles after a long night in kendo practice. His fingers had been so precise on my skin…
I couldn't remember his name. For some reason, I could never remember my ex's names. I had a number of them, but I could only remember two of my lovers, for no real special reasons…
People just weren't special. They were there to be used and they used me. We used, we fought, we broke up, we forgot.
I slid into the shower and turned the water on as hot as it would go, my body screaming in protest. I could never stand cold showers, I didn't think they were worth catching a cold when my hand worked twice as fast and I could be warm at the same time. I pressed my head against the wall and sighed.
It was then that the door of the bathroom swung open, the lock efficiently picked, as per usual, and Yohji strolled in, his fly already unzipped.
Any other day, I could've ignored him, but not that morning, with my head still full of dreams…of him…
"Get. Out."
"No need to be hostile, Ayan, I'll just be a sec," Yohji said with a laugh.
I looked around the stall, trying to find anything I could use as a weapon to threaten him with and picked up the razor, quickly opening it and pulling out a blade. I slid the stall door open and held the edge of the razorblade to his throat, my eyes narrowed with fury.
"Out. Now. Or I'll kill you." My voice boded no question, and Yohji's eyes were wide, a little fearful. It was as if he suddenly realized he'd pushed me too many times and now it was my turn.
He gulped and laughed, grabbed my wrist and tried to push me away, into a wall. My skin prickled where he touched me. My back against a wall, him pressing against my chest with one wide hand, he stood over me, eyes hard as jade. My razorblade had been lost in the scuffle and the wire in his watch was wrapped around my neck.
I was breathless, because of the fight and because he was so close to me. I could smell his morning breath and it was like incense to me. I could see his morning stubble and found it pleasing. I could see the salt of sleep in the corners of his eyes and I wanted to wipe it away for him.
He looked down at me, meeting my eyes as if he was searching for something, and then looked down.
A second later, his eyes held mine again, a smirk wide on his face.
"I could take care of that for you…" he laughed.
I was regretting my decisions already, wondering what I was thinking.
Oh yeah…I wasn't thinking…
Yohji was asleep again, the cigarette in his fingers still burning. I picked it out and put the filter to my lips, taking a curious drag. I coughed, once, twice, and blew the smoke out, stubbed the cigarette out viciously.
Well, if I hadn't been thinking then, there wasn't much point of it now. Why bother? If we got caught, who cared? He didn't matter to me; he was just another fuck, like boys I picked up in bars, in clubs, the stupid bimbos with see-through shirts and innocently-shining eyes.
Really, it was just another hole, just another warm body to press against if I felt lonely.
I didn't press against Yohji, but slept on my side of the bed, a side I had designated as my own a week or two ago, away from his warmth, his life. On my side of the bed, on a nightstand, next to the lamp, was a picture of a woman he had once said was named Asuka. He said she was dead. That was it; he never said anything more on the matter. I suppose he expected me to tell him about my dead loved-ones. I didn't. He looked at the pictures in my room, but I never answered his questions. No reason to, really, we weren't lovers.
We didn't love one another. We just fucked.
Over the months, we kept silent about being bed partners. Omi might have suspected, but he never said. Ken could've been smacked in the head with it and he wouldn't have noticed. He was that dense. Must've been nice, living in his world…
Yohji slept around, brought home women and flirted with everything in the shop, man, woman or plant. Occasionally I would slip off to a bar, have a few drinks, and wake up in a hotel bed with some hideous sequin queen beside me. I usually slipped out before the boy woke. When we couldn't find dates, or it was the night after a mission, Yohji and I would slip off together and forget our lives, blood still sprayed on our faces.
Sometimes we drank as he talked or we watched horror flicks, the both of us quietly snickering as people got picked off by the psycho killer. After we might fight, or fuck, or just fall asleep against one another on the couch. It never mattered; we were close as friends, though we weren't. I never let him close to my heart, and he rarely, if ever, bothered trying.
Until the day after New Year's. I was packing my new kimono up for next year when Yohji came in, eyes full of some expression I couldn't read.
"Biggest night of the year and you're not out chasing girls?" I murmured as good-naturedly as I could as I slid the cover onto the box and shoved it all in the back of my closet.
"Figured I wanted something with fangs tonight," Yohji said with a smile. He locked the door to my room and I sighed. I had been looking forward to some late-night tea, but now I could forget about it. No matter…
"I…have to talk to you about something…" he continued. I frowned. Nothing good ever started like that…
I motioned to the bed, offering him a seat, and waited. He looked like a boy who had broken a vase and discovered just how much trouble he was in.
"I think…I think I'm in love with you."
I couldn't help myself. I laughed bitterly.
It was the funniest thing I'd heard in a long time. Yohji looked pissed.
"I'm serious!"
"I'm sure you are. Doesn't make it any less funny," I said through a snort. I half-covered my mouth with my hand. Yohji punched his thigh with his fist, his eyes narrowed with rising fury.
"Don't be a prick, I'm pouring my heart out to you…and you don't care?"
I sighed, a smile still on my mouth, as sour as a smile could ever be. My eyes were dead, they had been for years. I watched as Yohji slowly figured that no only did I not return his feelings, but that I simply couldn't. It was impossible.
I didn't love. I had taught myself not to, just as I had taught myself to cook, to fight, to keep secrets.
He looked heartbroken. He got up to leave, but I stood in his way.
"Aya…I'm sorry…that was foolish of me…"
"Yohji, sit down," I ordered softly, waiting for him to obey before continuing, "No, I don't return your feelings, and I don't particularly care of you love or hate me. But…if you think that this is going to, in any way, change how things are between us, you're correct. I suppose you'll be looking only to me to suit your needs, yes?"
He nodded, a little guiltily. I was all business and I think it made him uncomfortable.
"Then in respect, I should do the same. I refuse to move into your room or have you move into mine, nor should we tell Omi or Ken."
This got me a 'no, duh' look. If we lived full time around one another, we'd drive each other crazy. We were simply too different not to fight. Omi and Ken…well, that was obvious.
"Then fine," I said with a shrug, and leaned in to press my lips to his forehead, "Happy New Year."
"You give a man one hell of a weird relationship, Aya," Yohji muttered.
"I'm weird…it's expected."
Fin Chapter 10
Please Review
Author's Notes: 19, white female. Five feet and three inches and one hundred and twelve pounds. Likes 'quests' instead of 'walks', getting lost in public places, southern sweet tea and Japanese green tea, movies where the protagonist is either insane or dies, books, politics, philosophy and just about any other intellectual thing one can argue about with some semblance of intelligence.
Also likes reptiles, dogs, birds, cats, and rodents. Fish are food. Spiders are fish bait.
To My Readers:
Lexi: Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying this.
HeeroDuo4evaYes, Ran's got it rough…(hugs Ran plushy) Thank you.
evalitaThe chapters are set up the way they are to differentiate between memory and present. Thanks, though.