21. Discovered
She'd done reasonably well on the exam, Motoko thought as she trotted up the steps from the subway platform, and the thought pleased her greatly. It meant that all that studying was starting to pay off. She'd know for sure next Wednesday when the grades were posted, but if she'd done as well as she thought, she was actually on track to pass at least the English component of the entrance exams come winter.
She transferred her heavy schoolbag to her other hand and fished the student pass out of her pocket to tap against the reader on the gate. The barrier chunked open and she strode on, past the florist, past the newsagent, and outside into the sticky heat.
She'd stayed on after the test for math class. She'd intended to go to the tutorial afterwards -- if there was one subject she really needed to buckle down on, math was it -- but the morning's abbreviated sleep had caught up with her by the time the lecture had ended at three, and she'd decided she'd be better off studying at home tonight.
It was a good setup, all in all, she thought as she rounded the corner and started through the park, the sound of the traffic all but drowned out by the incessant whine of the cicadas. She'd found that she couldn't focus on more than simple reading at the desk in her cramped room in the apartment house, but her evenings at the dining-room table after the rest of the tenants had eaten were turning out to be very productive. She'd chosen the apartment house because it was cheap and clean and women-only. She was living off savings for the most part -- her teaching job at Women's Defense paid only a token amount -- and she knew she'd need to stretch out her funds for as long as possible once she started at the university. Luckily, Takamori hadn't quite been paying attention to the rate at which rents were rising these days, and to get this good a deal elsewhere she probably would've had to share a room with a stranger. She hadn't wanted to deal that closely with another person. And the fact that the Yanaka Grand Hotel was a women-only apartment house had clinched the deal. The last thing she'd wanted to have to deal with here was men.
Motoko came out of the alley and turned up the street toward the apartment house, keeping to the shade of the trees. This steamy weather was not helping her concentration. She'd probably need a cool shower before she could hope to focus enough to start on her math homework.
She hoped she wouldn't run into Kenshin. She'd lost it this morning; she'd really flown off the handle. She ought to have kept herself under control. She'd only wanted to help, she'd only wanted to make sure Kenshin was safe, but the parallels had been too strong. This was what she'd come to Tokyo to get away from. She couldn't help people who refused to help themselves.
Enablers, that's what they were, she thought as she pushed open the big wooden door and toed off her trainers. Kenshin and her mother both. Motoko set her jaw and strode up the stairs toward her room.
o-o-o
Kenshin laid his hands in the middle of his back and stretched, then smiled at his handiwork, swinging his arms a little to loosen up his shoulders. What with all the scrubbing, and the lifting and shoveling earlier, he was probably going to be a bit sore tomorrow.
By the time he'd finished with the laundry he'd worked up quite an appetite, so he'd come in to the kitchen to throw together a late lunch. He'd taken his bowl of rice and the leftover cucumber salad from breakfast back outside and sat on the edge of the veranda to eat, watching the trees and listening to the cicadas in the heavy summer air. He had always enjoyed that back home, just sitting on the edge of the engawa and looking out at the sky, but today it had reminded him too much of the past, the sounds of the cicadas seeming to call for the sounds of little Kenji playing in the yard. So he'd gotten up and gone back inside to wash his dishes.
There, in the kitchen, he'd noticed that the stove could use a bit of cleaning, and so he'd done that, scrubbing it down and wiping it clean. He'd done the oven next, then gotten carried away and cleaned all the cabinets, scrubbing their doors inside and out and then systematically removing the pots and pans and dishes from each of them to wipe down the glossy contact paper that covered the shelves. Some of them had taken quite a lot of scrubbing to remove the sticky layer of old aerosolized oil and linty blue-gray dust, punctuated with the occasional unidentifiable and long-dried splatter. It looked like it hadn't been done properly in years.
He'd taken a bit of a break after that, heading back out into the sunshine and up the steps to the third-floor patio to collect the dry laundry. He'd folded it neatly and put it away, the fabric feeling strangely crisp against his water-softened hands. It had occurred to him then that if the kitchen cabinets hadn't been cleaned properly in years, then the pantry probably hadn't been either, so when he'd finished with the laundry he'd come back down to the kitchen to tackle it. He'd taken down the cans and jars and boxes of stored food one shelf at a time, wiping off the combination of dust, spilled flour, and tiny desiccated insects that tend to accumulate in such places. The folding step-ladder that he'd found in the closet beside the pantry had been a great help. Finally, emboldened by the step-ladder, he'd unscrewed the frosted glass globes that covered the lights in the kitchen ceiling and washed those as well.
Very good, Kenshin thought as he smiled up at the gleaming light fixtures. It had been a lot of work, but it was satisfying to see the kitchen so clean, and it really had needed doing. With such a big house, there would always be something that needed to be done; it was a wonder Takamori could handle it all by herself. Kenshin toyed briefly with the idea of taking her up on her offer, then put the thought aside. He'd wait and see what Yuriko decided.
He had a little more than two hours now before Yuriko returned from work. Just enough time to go out and do some grocery shopping and then cook dinner. He needed to pick up some more tofu, and he'd used up almost all the rice vinegar this morning on the cucumber salad and the pickles for tomorrow.
Kenshin stepped out the back door to fetch his zori from the ground beside the veranda steps. The backyard was still empty -- the residents here seemed to be out pretty much universally during the middle of the afternoon. Kenshin scanned the windows briefly and glanced up to make sure no one was up on the third-floor patio hanging out laundry, then nodded to himself and went back inside, zori held by their straps in one hand.
Good, he thought. There would be no one around to see him when he changed his clothes and slipped out the window to go shopping.
o-o-o
Motoko dumped her brown leather schoolbag onto the floor beside her desk and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, trying to let go of the residue of anger. Normally the anger helped her focus, helped drive her on, but this was too close, too immediate. Too personal.
Because she had seen it all before. Kenshin was one of those people who put the needs of others first. Kenshin was one of those people who apologized when not at fault. Kenshin was one of those people who, once committed, stayed in a bad situation. Even if that initial commitment had been a huge mistake.
Motoko leaned on her desk and sighed, glaring down out the window toward the tidy formal garden below. How could she help someone who didn't want to be helped? Just thinking about it made her furious. She took another deep breath, trying to put it out of her mind, trying to focus on what she needed to do.
She should run downstairs now and take a quick shower, then set herself up at the dining-room table to do some math homework. She ought to have an hour and a half before the other residents started coming home; after that there'd be too much going on downstairs and she'd have to come back up here to her room.
She straightened up and started to turn away from the window, then paused. Something had caught her eye: a flicker of motion in one of the second-floor windows opposite, the one at the far right end of the opposite wing. A flicker of motion, and a flash of scarlet.
Motoko blinked. That was the spare room, the room Takamori had put Kenshin in. The afternoon sun was shining in through the curtainless window, lighting up part of the inside of the room. It had been sunlight flashing off Kenshin's bright hair that had caught her eye. She leaned closer to her window, head tilted slightly to one side, peering across into the other wing of the building. Kenshin was standing just beyond the edge of the sunlight, facing away from the window, reaching back to undo the ties of the long blue dress.
"Changing her clothes--?" Motoko breathed. She blinked again, came to a sudden realization, and dived for her closet.
This was her chance. It was her duty to help, whether Kenshin wanted it or not. She hurled open the closet door and hauled out one of the cardboard boxes from the floor, flipping open the flaps and rummaging inside. Last night in the furo, there had been something Kenshin hadn't wanted her to see. Maybe it was the first signs of pregnancy. Maybe it was the telltale marks of abuse. Either way, it was Motoko's duty to help.
"Yes!" Motoko pulled out the binoculars with a cry of victory. She'd bought them for the birdwatching club in high school, had brought them with her to Tokyo simply because they belonged to her. She'd never really expected them to come in handy again.
She scrambled to her feet and raced back to the window, dropping the binoculars' soft case behind her on the floor. She held them steady to her eyes, the window opposite swinging through focus and then back as she adjusted the dial.
Kenshin's back was toward her, shoulders and elbows moving in small repetitive motions. Unbuttoning the blouse, Motoko realized.
Kenshin reached the end of the row of buttons and slid out of the white shirt.
No slip; no bra straps. A bit surprising, but then, Kenshin wasn't particularly well endowed in the chest department. Motoko fine-tuned the focus on her binoculars. There were no marks, no red or purple marring the pale skin of Kenshin's back, at least not that she could see under that cascade of red hair.
That beautiful red hair. So exotic, so other. She wondered if Kenshin had suffered for it as a child. She wondered if Kenshin suffered for it still.
At least she's fit, Motoko thought. A bit on the skinny side, but well-muscled -- none of the disgusting stick-thin fashion-model arms that so many girls strove for these days. Probably from growing up in the country, she thought. Physical labor had some benefits.
Kenshin was standing still, carefully folding the blouse. Motoko scanned her view downward. The underwear was a bit strange, more like a loincloth than anything, but again, Kenshin was from the country after all. Probably some impoverished farmer's daughter.
Motoko couldn't tell from behind if there were the first signs of a bulge there. She'd have to wait until Kenshin turned around. Still, with those narrow hips it would be a difficult childbirth. She wondered if Kenshin had been to an obstetrician yet.
Motoko chewed her lower lip, waiting. Kenshin finished folding the blouse with a final flip of the sleeve ends and crouched to set it down, then straightened back up and turned toward the window, reaching for something else.
Motoko never saw what it was. She had pulled back from the binoculars and was standing, eyes wide and mouth open, not quite believing what she had just seen.
Kenshin wasn't pregnant. Kenshin wasn't a woman.
Motoko stood, opening and closing her mouth, trying to get her mind around what she'd seen.
How...
Kenshin wasn't a woman. Kenshin was living here, among them, and he wasn't a woman. Motoko felt the blood start to rise to her face.
How dare he?
She tossed the binoculars aside and yanked open her door, her teeth clenching in fury.
How DARE he?
Motoko charged out into the hall and broke into a run. All the years of anger, all the years of guilt, all the years of watching and doing nothing were burning inside her, driving her on, driving her faster. She sprinted past the stairway and hurled herself round the corner into the east wing of the building. All those years and how dare he, for her mother and for all the women in the world she would make him suffer, she would hurt him oh god she would kill him!
Motoko reached the last door in the hallway and hurled it open.
"You!" she screamed.
"Oro--!" Kenshin's eyes were wide, his expression of surprise almost comical.
Motoko's anger was a living thing, a kinetic thing, driving her on. She aimed a lightning-fast snap-kick at Kenshin's stomach, all her power behind it.
It never connected.
There was a flicker of motion, a magenta blur and he was gone, leaving dust motes swirling in the suddenly empty sunbeam that streamed in through the open window.
There was a heavy thud from the garden below.
Motoko recovered her balance. A flicker of guilt passed through her, quickly erased by a white-hot fury. She was at the window in an instant.
Kenshin was staggering to his feet below, two storeys down on the hard-packed earth between the sloped roof of the veranda and the edge of the garden. He glanced up at her and bolted, sprinting around the wing of the building and away.
Motoko clutched the windowsill, breathing hard. Should she go after him? Should she try to catch him? She wanted to, she wanted to badly -- to catch him and beat him senseless. But he had a head start on her now, and every moment that she wavered was making it longer.
The inferno of anger was tempering again inside her, focusing down once more into a cutting torch. She hadn't been able to strike him, but at least she'd driven him out. Out the second-floor window. She hoped viciously that he'd hurt himself in the fall.
How dare he come here among them, into her safe place? How dare he come here into the women's apartment house?
But he hadn't done it alone, had he. Kenshin had been helped.
"Yuriko-san," Motoko growled.
o-o-o
Kenshin leaned against the high wooden fence, eyes squeezed closed and heart pounding. Motoko had found out. Motoko had seen. He felt terrible.
It had only been a matter of time. He'd kept telling himself that, but it didn't make it any better. Motoko had found out, and it was his own fault.
He blew out a shaky breath and opened his eyes. He'd sprinted all the way down the street, through the alley, past the hardware store and the grocery, all the way through to the park before slowing down.
He'd just had to change his clothes, hadn't he. He'd just had to take his sword with him to go grocery shopping. He was such an idiot! Motoko had found out, and now Yuriko was going to have to deal with the consequences.
Kenshin clunked his head back against the wood of the fence, moaning softly. He'd ruined everything. He wouldn't be able to go back now. He wouldn't be able to stay there with Yuriko. For all he knew, she might even be evicted for smuggling him in like that. And all because he'd wanted to take his sword with him when he went grocery shopping.
o-o-o
Motoko paused in mid-stride halfway down the corridor back to her room, her brows quirking together in puzzlement. Had it been her imagination, or had Kenshin been wearing a sword?
o-o-o
Kenshin sighed miserably and pushed himself up off the fence. There was no use going to the market now; he wouldn't be able to cook dinner for Yuriko anyway. But he couldn't just hang around here feeling sorry for himself.
He took a tentative step away from the fence, favoring his right leg. He'd been limping a little already by the time he'd reached the park.
It had been instinct alone that had saved him from Motoko's kick. If he hadn't felt that murderous ki coming down the hall he probably wouldn't have dodged it. As it was, he'd almost frozen in surprise when he'd seen it was her and not some armed intruder bent on mayhem. Instinct had saved him from her kick, but the surprise had spoiled his landing. At least he hadn't broken anything.
He flexed his hip and winced. The bruising was going to be pretty bad. He hoped Yuriko didn't find out; on top of everything else, to make her worry about him as well would be unbearable.
Author's notes:
engawa - the long covered porch that encircles old-style Japanese buildings