Hi, guys! Welcome back! *flails happily*
So, this is the sequel that I decided to post on today, because guess what? Big Hero 6 is already a year old!
I am incredibly excited for this story because it's going to get deeper, darker and more intense than the first one, seeing as this would be an original story with the insertion of canon characters and of course, my OC, Ayako. I hope this doesn't freak you lot out, lol.
All right then, I hope that you guys would continue to show love for this story much like how you all did for 'Our Sutures'. It would be amazingly appreciated!
Today would be her last day.
Outside, light filtered in, lighting up the dancing dust motes, some whirling up when a dark haired girl picked up her pillow and fluffed it.
Ayako flitted around the small room which had been her sleeping haven for the past few weeks as she picked up her scattered clothes, tossing them on the bed, ignorant of the flashing light on her computer, signalling a call from someone.
The music ended and changed into a different song, the brief break alerting her to the beep from the computer. Startling, she paused her music player and walked over to the sturdy plastic desk, clicking on the button to answer the call.
A warm smile pulled on her lips as she saw who it was.
Tadashi had a look of mild annoyance on his face which instantly transformed into a smirk.
"Hey, you. I've been trying to call for the past five minutes."
Her smile was apologetic as she removed the earbuds, shifting the holographic projection of him so that her messy bed would be out of his line of vision.
After the Callaghan incident and her trip to Russia to meet up with her dad, Tadashi and her had been going steady, calling each other every single night (afternoon for her) and talking about anything and everything under the sky.
He was on his semester break now and would often regale her of tales from him and his friends, the rambunctious, affectionately titled 'Nerd Team' along with Hiro. Just three days ago, they had contacted her from the beach, everyone in swim wear or beach garb, preparing a barbecue, to which she couldn't help feel jealous that she wasn't there.
While on the call, Fred had accidentally added too much coal to the grill, causing Wasabi to burn his chicken through and through, the meat resembling a blackened rock.
The whole team had exploded into laughter and Tadashi had to end the call, saying they needed to clean up and wishing her well, the team echoing his sentiments.
"Sorry, I was listening to music and packing some stuff," she admitted, sitting on the cool, plastic chair as their gazes locked. His hair was growing a bit too long in the front, something that had irked her as Tadashi was always vigilant in keeping his outer appearance neat. Circles darkened under his eyes, a thing she had only noticed recently from last week.
"Babe, are you okay?" She asked, concern. "You look really weary."
A look flashed in his eyes, one that he recognized as annoyance. "Hiro has got us tracking down some lunatic who has a penchant for mugging only blonde women and we've been up all night trying to extract more information from him."
"I could help," she offered, knowing that they were busy now living their secret lives as superheroes. "Miko's brother works with the government as a specialist infiltrator and her dad is in the police force. I could get her help in extracting some information, if you want."
"That sounds great, thanks 'Yako. Although if her dad did find out, what are you going to say?"
She thought it over, shrugging. "Maybe it's for a super detailed novel? Anyway, how is Hiro now? Hadn't heard from him since that yelp in the beach video."
Tadashi pretended to wince at the reminder. "He's doing fine, staying out of trouble, cooped up in his lab all day building God knows what."
She rolled her eyes. "Come off it, 'Dashi. Take a break, the kid is safe, you should relax."
Tadashi had a tendency to always worry for his little brother, and while endearing, she thought that Hiro was of an age where he would be able to make decisions for his own without his big brother hovering protectively in his periphery vision. She would never tell him that, though; his brother complex was amusing to observe.
"You're right," he agreed. "He asked about you but didn't want to talk face to face."
That amused her. "Why? Scared that I might pull another scary facial mask and scar him a second time?"
The young man guffawed, remembering that one time that she had greeted Hiro on call with a beauty mask on, catching the young teen off guard. Badly. His shriek of fright could've rivaled Wasabi's had it not been for the fact he had fallen from the chair, muffling the noise, much to his brother's laughter.
He changed the subject, gesturing to her room. "How are you doing there? Dad all right?"
"I don't know, why don't you ask him yourself?" Ayako teased.
She could plainly see his disposition changing into one of apprehension.
"I'm not good at talking to fathers. You of all people know how much I fumble up my words when I'm nervous and it's not a presentation?"
Nodding, she recalled his stuttering when faced with something that disconcerted him. It was both amusing and exasperating watching him trying to articulate the words without breaking them off.
"But he would love to meet you."
"Someday," he promised, "when I meet him face to face, okay?"
"Aw," she cooed. "You want to meet my scary dad face to face just for me? You sweetheart, you."
Tadashi rolled his eyes. "A holographic call is hardly a place to make a good first impression. He can't see how cool I am."
"Okay, okay," she hummed. Tilting her head, she regarded him in amusement. "Do you know how hard it was for me to get you a gift? I didn't think I could do it until I saw something that I'm pretty sure you would love."
"You didn't have to get me anything," he muttered, raising a brow.
She snorted at his words. "What kind of girlfriend would I be if I didn't get you anything?" Her heart skipped a beat at the word 'girlfriend', something she wasn't used to even after one month of being together. She couldn't help it; being with him was like a dream, sure that if she pinched herself hard enough she would awake and it would all just be a product of her subconscious.
"A normal one?" He said it like a question. "The guy is normally the one to get the girl something."
Again, she scoffed. "Please. This was too good a present to ignore buying. You're gonna love it.
"Oh, and just another thing. Is Aunt Cass more of a coffee person or tea?"
Tadashi thought it over for a few moments.
"Coffee."
"Oh, thank goodness," she said, humoring him. "I nearly bought the tea."
"You're getting her tea when she runs a coffee shop?"
"Well, you can't a judge a book by its cover - or its job," she clarified, "But one of Russia's best brew. I hope she likes it."
"She will, don't worry," he reassured. "Are you all packed and ready?"
"Almost," Ayako admitted to which Tadashi smirked.
"Procrastinating, 'Yako?" He taunted, "Wouldn't have thought you could've done it."
She rolled her eyes at him and for added effect, she crinkled her brow. "Well," she drawled, "Stuff would get done quicker if a certain cute guy didn't distract me."
"Oh, who? Me?" He gave a little gasp, something that made her mouth curve in a smile.
"Yes, silly."
"Well why didn't you say so?" He inquired in an exaggerated worried tone. "I would've switched off the call, then."
She chuckled, shaking her head.
"Can't wait to see you tomorrow," she added with a grin. "It's been too long."
"It has," he said, earnest. "I miss you."
This was what she loved about him; while they rarely voiced their affections, both of them preferring to use means of action instead, whenever they did, it was refreshingly genuine. Sometimes she wished that she could say she loved him instead, but that was out of the question.
She wondered when they would ever get to that part of their relationship.
"Me too," she replied, ignoring her train of thought.
"One more day and I can finally see you."
"Impatient, are we?" She teased.
"Of course," he said, making his yearning obvious. "Why would I not miss you?"
She could've rattled off a thousand and one taunts, all self deprecating, but she noticed the tired glaze in his eyes. Stealing a look at the time, she grimaced to find that it was currently three in the morning back in San Fransokyo.
"I can think of a few things," Ayako started, "but it would take too long to list them. See you when I see you?"
He grinned, gaze soft and her heart did that little skip it always did when he looked at her that way. "I for one can't. Okay, see you when I see you."
~~O~~O~~
"You ready to head to the airport?"
She looked up to find her father standing by the doorway of her room, leaning against the wooden frame.
Mikhail Sorokin was a tall, imposing man with dark hair and the same stormy blue eyes as his daughter; of a slender build and lithe arms. Her father was fixing her with a kind smile and she couldn't help the same smile that curved her lips.
"Almost," Ayako said as she gestured to the overstuffed suitcase. "Just trying to figure out how to place all these gifts into one place."
He chuckled and walked in to help her, sitting down next to Ayako as she stared at the contents of her bag.
"This is a lot of gifts. Are these for all your classmates?"
She shook her head. "My friends. They've been bugging me for almost the whole time to get them something."
Mikhail reached out and took the gift she had meant for Tadashi. It was a vintage mix tape made out of cardboard housing a USB twirling in his dexterous fingers.
"Huh, for a music lover?"
She nodded, ducking her head to stop a blush from forming. Ayako hadn't told her father yet of her relationship status, preferring to focus on catching up with him for the lost two years.
And there was, predictably, a lot of catching up to do.
They had talked about anything and everything, covering the lighter topics, eventually moving up to the heavier ones. Ayako almost felt as if she had her father back.
Mikhail too was grateful for this opportunity as it gave him time to reconnect with his daughter, remembering their heartfelt conversation over a cup of coffee in one of his favorite cafes.
"I used to come here a lot after I moved back," he admitted, watching as his daughter's attention snapped back to him. She had been daydreaming, just as he always remembered, taking in the scenery, keen eye looking for something which she could probably recreate on canvas when she headed back home.
Ayako had taken after him in the art department, as he appreciate the aesthetics all around him; the cobbled gray pavement, the periwinkle blue skies, people dressed in their winter clothes, colors all clashing on a neutral landscape.
"You did?" She questioned, dark blue eyes glittering.
Mikhail nodded. "Most of the time I used to annoy the waiters here by just ordering a lemon tea and nothing else. It was the cheapest I could afford and allowed me to just sit and enjoy people watching."
She huffed a laugh. "I wish lemon tea could be that cheap back in San Fransokyo. Everything there is expensive."
From what he had garnered out of her information, Mikhail had deduced that Ayako and Masaki had moved out of the town they had called home for half of her life and now currently resided in San Fransokyo where his ex-wife had been transferred to another branch of her company.
Ayako stated that San Fransokyo was nice enough and that she had made some friends there at the art institute. She mentioned a red head named Lucy a few times and her group of project partners slash friends that she admired. Without realizing it, she had been talking about a young man, and by the looks of it, his daughter was completely smitten.
He didn't know the fellow's name, only that he went to a nearby tech institute and had a little brother who was also a genius like him.
Words could not portray how proud he was of her to ignore her mother's wishes and take up art instead, something he knew his daughter would be more passionate about as the same blood ran through their veins.
Art was his life and he had harbored hope that it would be hers, too. Finding out that she was a naturally born artist was the proudest day of his life. He could still remember how his cheeks had hurt from smiling when she managed to sketch a rose that had enough details to resemble the blooming petal from their garden hedge.
"Dad, if I may ask," she hesitated for a moment before continuing, "how did you meet Donna?"
Mikhail was silent as he thought it through, wondering how to word this.
"I met her in a grocery store," he finally said. "And the rest is history."
"Did Nana give you hell?" She smirked as she asked that, remembering her grandmother who was as tough as she was senile, ready to come to Masaki's defense. Mikhail had a sinking feeling that his mother loved her more than him.
"I didn't," he admitted a little guiltily.
"Dad," Ayako said, voice cautioning. "What if she finds out?"
He snorted. "She's all the way in a village, she won't find out."
Ayako gave him a scathing glare, one riddled with incredulity.
"Okay, just don't yell when you realize I'm right. And don't say I didn't warn you if she causes hell to rain because her daughter in law's not the same woman."
Mikhail chuckled at her words, nodding. "I'll remember that."
She stirred the surface of her latte with the plastic spoon, mulling over her thoughts.
"Hey, kiddo, what's in your mind?" He asked, prying her from her reverie.
"Nothing, just...wondering."
"About what?"
Ayako opened her mouth to reply but snapped it shut. In its place, she resumed a serene smile.
"Nothing, dad. Just a stupid thought."
Mikhail sighed and let it go, knowing that his daughter would open up when she was ready. If there was one thing that he wished she hadn't inherited was his inability to articulate emotions into words, a trait that she had picked up from him. It frustrated him that she followed him that manner.
"Okay," he said, sounding a little exasperated. "Tell me when you're ready."
Her smile was all Masaki's, during those rare moments that his ex-wife would smile.
"Sure, dad," she stated, all easy smiles.
~~O~~O~~
Ayako huffed as she searched for her sneakers. She was so sure that she had left them in the drawer of her closet, near a pile of discarded clothes she had meant to wash yesterday . When she didn't catch sight of them, she huffed in frustration. Distracted, she didn't notice that she had elbowed the closet wall by accident, a hollow sound echoing in the cramp space.
Pushing a rack out of the way, her eyes widened when she saw that the simple object was actually hiding an enclave, a small dark square cut from the wood of the closet, big enough for a single hand to enter. Removing her hand phone, she switched on the flashlight, sharp white light pooling around the small area. She squinted, peeking into the hole, mouth falling open when she realized that the mass of white that obscured her vision was actually a bundle of papers.
With gentle persistence, she removed the papers from their hiding place, the material yellowed with age. Ayako's brow furrowed when she smoothed the letters, further confused when she read the contents.
The language was Russian and her understanding was rusty at best, but there was no mistaking the urgency in the message. Mikhail's name stuck out in bold, from an unknown sender as they didn't leave their name or an identity. Her brow furrowed as she arranged the letters in ascending order from the date of their writing, stun to find that it was all sent before she was born.
Dark blue eyes scanned the contents of the letters, finding them to be genial at first.
'How are you? I hope your family is well. About our agreement, I need the money back. Urgently.'
The words turned from pleading to blatant begging.
'Please, I need the money. On the sake of our friendship, Mikh, I hope you get this and reply back.'
Threats that ranged from harmless to pure spite and rage, the correspondence saying that she or he would come after Mikhail's family.
'...I will never forget this transgression that you have done to me, remember that. I hope you never sleep well for the rest of your life, constantly looking over your shoulder to see if I would be leering over, ready to destroy everything you hold dear. You deserve it.'
Her breathing quickened, heart thumping with an influx of fear and adrenaline. This person, this shadow writer had threatened her father had stated that he would do everything and anything to hurt him. He or she wanted to destroy everything dear to Mikhail, and Ayako couldn't help draw the links to her mother and her.
"Ayako, where are you?"
She nearly jumped out from her skin at the sound of Donna calling her, quickly pocketing the pages in her jacket. With a deft speed she didn't know she possessed, she dragged the rack back to its original position and stood up, smoothing the front of her shirt.
"Coming!"
Ayako spared the space one last, scrutinizing look, heart beating fast in her chest as she emerged from the closet, fake smile in place.
"There you are," Donna said, kind crinkle in her brow. "I was looking every where for you."
She plastered on a grin and rubbed the back of her neck, sheepish. "Well, you found me. Hi."
Donna's tinkling laughter echoed like chiming bells and she could see why her father found her charming. She was slender, with bright blonde hair and shiny blue eyes, so different from her father's stormy dark blue ones. She was of medium height, with neatly pressed clothes and dainty wrists that were perfect for her profession as a manicurist.
"I just wanted to call you down for lunch...unless you wanted to eat at the airport."
Ayako didn't know what to make of her father's new wife, but she could surmise that Donna was rather thoughtful. Their relationship was nothing short of polite, civil yet detached and limited to mundane questions.
"Thank you," she said, grateful. "I think I'll have lunch here. I think I might get lost at the airport." Which she did, once; confusing the bathroom at the wrong end of the terminal and nearly missing her flight by a hairsbreadth.
With one last smile, Donna saw herself out of the room, closing the door behind her with a gentle click.
The artist heaved a sigh of relief as she removed the papers from her pocket, her brow crinkled like the dents on the paper.
She studied the words once more and decided that she couldn't bring it with her. If the letters were hidden, it wasn't hard to figure out that they were meant to be stashed away from sight.
Her gait was light, secretive as if she were expecting her father to pop out at any moment and exclaim her transgression.
She pushed back the rack, exposing the shallow hole once again. She snapped pictures of the pages, from ascending order until the last one that had shaken her up beyond belief. Ayako stuffed the pages back inside and pulled the rack back in place.
A strand of dark hair fell in front of her face and she blew it away, deep in thought. She wondered who could have sent her father those letters and what they meant. She gathered the matter concerned money, and that her father might have borrowed a sum, and yet she didn't understand the anger, the warning.
It also didn't explain why they wanted revenge on his family.
Shuddering, she stepped back into the bright world, closing the doors, pocket weighing heavy with the phantom presence of the letters.
But she knew that the weight clearly didn't rest with the phantom letters.
It rested with their implications.
~~O~~O~~
After a hearty lunch of pork chop and fried potatoes, she sat listening to Mikhail and Donna conversing softly in Russian.
Her understanding of Russian was rusty, not having spoken it for nearly two years. But since living in the same household for two weeks, her grasp of the language returned back to its usual skill, like muscle memory in riding a bicycle.
She studied the way how Mikhail spoke with Donna, all soft gazes and blurred words, like the two were the only people in their own world. Sometimes, she wondered if this was the way how her mother and him used to speak, before the stress and toil of marriage brought out their bitter side.
As if sensing that his daughter was thinking about him, he turned to her, smile in place.
"What time is your flight again?"
"Three, papa."
"All right. Why don't you go change and double check everything that you packed."
Intuition spoke that Donna and Mikhail were talking about important issues and she nodded, not wanting to intrude. Picking up her plate, she meant to wash it when Donna's soft words offered to do that instead, stopping her.
She thanked Donna (polite, always so polite that it made her weary) and sauntered back to her room. She trailed her hands on the pale wallpaper, memorizing the grainy texture, fixing the room with one last glance, hoping to remember this place that she had lived in for two weeks.
Her room was sparsely decorated with a study table, laptop in one corner and a single bed lining the wall, pastel curtains giving the place a sort of girlish innocence. She had no doubt that her father's new wife was the primary force in decorating this place.
Their home was small, yet the atmosphere that settled in the pastel walls was warm enough to expand the space with their comfort. It felt like a sin, like a deep seated offense that she would feel at home in her father's home with his new wife, forsaking her mother and her home. Ayako sighed, gathering that this was a typical sensation that a child of divorced parents would feel, attempting to shake off the gloom, latching her mind to other things.
She brushed back a lock of hair from her face and studied her suitcase, hoping that it didn't exceed the limit.
Clicking on her phone, she took a moment to study her wallpaper. It was a picture of Tadashi and her, when they were at the park. She remembered that it had been Honey who had stolen her phone and captured the moment, snapping a picture of their laughing expressions and too bright eyes, elated on the love that they both shared.
His arm hung around her shoulders and she was sticking out her tongue, probably dismissing his words with a certain cheek. Tadashi had looked amused, crooked smile that she loved etched on his lips.
Longing burst deep and strong in her chest and she sighed, knowing that they only had a few more hours left to see each other.
A/N: *peeks from behind hands* Was that okay? Intriguing?
I can't wait to hear all of your reviews and comments. Please do take a few moments to type in a reply, it would be amazingly appreciated by myself and would be an incredible motivation booster.
Till next time!