前書き(Introduction)

"In Yoh's Absence" is my attempt at an epic Yoh/Anna romance/drama. Unlike my other major work thus far, "A Shower of Kisses", this series is going to be more serious. Originally published in 2008 (!), this series is alive once again, and has just been revised to fix continuity errors and such.

I can't put into words how much I appreciate your support. Your reviews and feedback mean the world to me. I hope you enjoy my work! If you like my style, feel free to check out my other fanfic on my author profile page.

Enough of this…on to the story!

In Yoh's Absence

1. 一人で走る

Running Alone

Edited 7/3/08: spacing and spelling errors corrected

Edited 12/15/20: major revision

Modern Tokyo, like most major urban cities, is an uninspiring array of metal and glass towering over strands of sidewalk that never seem to directly see the light of day, save for the occasional wayward sunbeam that glints off of one of the polarized windows above. The pedestrians, nearly all of them wearing ill-fitting and itchy-looking suits that immediately mark them as overworked and underpaid salarymen, are just as angular and drab as the buildings they pass and, during the work week, inhabit.

On this particular day, even the sky seemed resigned to acquiesce to the overall gloomy state below. Obscured by menacing gray clouds, it accompanied an unseasonable, suffocating humidity that brought flashes of color to the scene, in the form of the occasional gaudy handkerchief dabbing at a sweaty brow.

But even the bright pink handkerchief favored by a particularly flamboyant pedestrian that afternoon could not rival the burst of energy and color that was quickly bisecting the sidewalk. His rapid footfalls were accompanied by curious, hollow clatters that issued forth from a pair of well-worn wooden sandals. Above that was a pair of forest green slacks, cuffed up to just below the knee, where a band of sweat had turned the material a deep shade of olive. He wore a bright white T-shirt, which in the clammy air clung tightly to his svelte torso. Upon this jangled the three onyx baubles of his necklace, which contrasted with his alabaster shirt. Cuffed to his ankles and wrists were crimson weights of respectable girth, and swaying from his clenched hands were several yellow plastic bags, and here and there a carton of milk or a stalk of celery protruded from them.

The young man's prismatic wardrobe was already enough to turn the side-combed heads of the pedestrians he ran past. But his pièce de résistance was the pair of vibrant orange headphones straddling his head of untidy black hair. Any passers-by who came near enough to them—and there weren't many, as they tended to give his sprinting figure a wide berth—would hear, surprisingly enough, the lazy Rastafarian beats of a Soul Bob reggae song.

At his pace, it wasn't long before the labyrinth of soulless glass-and-metal structures receded behind him and opened up to the familiar roads and houses of Funbari Hill. The teenager with the headphones gave the air a sniff—no small feat—and, for the first time since leaving the supermarket nearly an hour before, a smile cemented itself on his face. Here, he realized as he slowed his pace and his sandals touched down upon the jogging path of the local park, he was home. Here, he thought as the smile lingered on his lips and he motioned a surprised driver to go before he crossed the street, the oppressive skyscrapers of downtown were a million miles away, and in their place were cozy houses, friendly neighbors, spacious vistas of nature.

He reached the bamboo gates of his residence, passing through them with all the sensibility of a sprinter breaking the finish line tape. The gravel walkway crunched and clopped under his sandals, and he decided to reward himself for surviving the day's rigors with a leisurely stroll through the yard. While most homes in the area had front lawns with that rustic rural charm—slightly overgrown in spots and somewhat brown and weed-infested in others—his garden was literally made of stone. Miniature mossy pagodas and statuettes of Buddha were intermingled in the backdrop of gray, sienna, and taupe pebbles. Although it used a color palette just as limited as the drab view downtown, it filled him with an indescribable calm. Even under the foreboding, overcast sky the rock garden emitted waves of tranquility and serenity, and it was only after his arms began to twitch from the burden of his weights and plastic bags that he came to his senses and slid open the front door.

"Glad you finally decided to amble your way home, Yoh. Twenty minutes late and I bet you still forgot to buy something."

The momentary pain in Yoh's arms was nothing compared to the impact of one of his fiancée's verbal suckerpunches. The bright orange headphones shifted forward slightly as Yoh bowed his head sharply in contrition. "Sorry, Anna."

"Sorry doesn't put dinner on the table," she spat by way of acknowledging his apology. "You know what to do." Then, without so much as a second glance, she turned around and resumed her post before the television.

Once he turned on the kitchen light, Yoh's surroundings were bright and clear, yet Anna's words left him as gloomy as he had been in the gray shadows of downtown. After nearly two years of cohabiting with his fiancée, he knew the routine, and his mind wandered as he went through the motions. First he slung the plastic grocery bags onto the countertop, making sure that a renegade carrot or lettuce head didn't tumble out onto the floor. As he did so, he unbuckled his ankle and wrist weights. Then, as always happened, he stumbled around drunkenly for a few moments, acclimating himself to his limbs' newfound freedom of movement. Once he cemented his balance, he started putting the groceries away.

Upon opening the refrigerator to stow away milk, juice, eggs and a bagful of produce, he closed his eyes and sighed as the refreshingly frigid air wafted towards his face. He contemplated pouring himself a tall glass of ice cold milk, but any pleasure he might have taken from such refreshment was heavily outweighed by the reaction he imagined Anna would have to such frivolity. What's the matter with you?! How do you expect me to eat dry cereal? Next time don't be such a selfish bastard and leave me an ounce of milk to moisten my cornflakes with, you asshole!

Yoh shuddered when he imagined Anna screaming these words in all her glory. He marveled at what a remarkable transformation she seemed to undergo when angered. In her normal temperament, Yoh admitted to himself as he put a pot of water on the stove, Anna was kind of pretty. No, that didn't do her justice. She was hot. Yoh found himself subconsciously caressing and running his fingers through the sheets of nori he was preparing as he recalled Anna's perfect features from his usually poor memory. It was ironic how he could see the back of her head, and even the TV set that fixated her, from his vantage point in the kitchen, yet she seemed so distant to him. Like Yoh in the midst of the drudgery of downtown, Anna's appearance was a gasp of fresh air, a series of stunning features worthy of someone breathtaking in so many ways. The strands of uniform blonde hair that were silky and reassuringly warm to the touch, like sun-baked sand sifting between the cracks of his fingers, and atop it, her signature bandana, shockingly red and always immaculately tied, so that it dovetailed into two symmetrical divergent strips of soft yet resilient cloth. Unlike her hair, he knew the tactile sensation of Anna's headgear intimately, having washed it for her innumerable times in the past.

The black nori still in his fingertips brought to mind Anna's dress, which seemed to match her no-nonsense personality perfectly. Its hemline was neither daring nor conservative, although Yoh blushed to note that it provided an ample view of Anna's shapely legs; and its shoulder straps and neck were cut in a way that let anyone, including Yoh, see her shoulders and…oh, what he would give just to move that blue necklace of hers aside and catch a glimpse of those cute, round—

Eyes! Cute, round eyes, Yoh thought, shaking his head violently and trying to focus again on his cooking. Now that he mentioned them, he realized Anna's eyes were actually quite pretty, as was the rest of her face. Her delicately arched eyebrows, perky nose, flawless complexion and thin lips all contributed to the aura of deadly beauty she conveyed.

Yet he knew, as he turned off the stove and began dribbling various liquids into a bowl, that he would only get to appreciate her legs, lips, and "eyes" from a distance. From the way she treated him, Yoh would scarcely believe they were even living under the same roof without incident, much less engaged to one another. Forget kissing, cuddling, and whispering sweet nothings to one another: Yoh would be content merely to receive a compliment from his fiancée once in awhile, or to receive a day's reprieve from her grueling training schedule. Yet all she saw fit to do was complain, deprecate Yoh's best efforts, and tack on additional miles to his daily sprints.

In spite of it all, he realized as he painstakingly added a drop of soy sauce or a few grains of salt to his concoction, he still tried his best to eke out an acknowledgment of a job well done, the faintest beginnings of a smile, from Anna, though he knew he might as well try to run a ski resort in the tropics instead.

Frankly, it was getting old. He had tolerated the seemingly loveless engagement, out of a sense of obligation to his parents, but filial piety be damned, personal happiness will win out, and Yoh was, as could perhaps be perceived by how white his knuckles were as he deliberately scooped noodles into a pair of bowls, dangerously close to crossing over.

A wall of steam from the freshly cooked noodles obscured Anna's TV from view, but he called in its direction. "Dinner's ready!"

He heard Anna stirring from the living room. He glanced out the window and saw that the gray skies had opened up and sheets of rain were pouring down.

Anna's sneering visage materialized from within the steam. "About damn time, you bum. Soba again? Maybe you don't mind having it for dinner eight times a week, but some of us prefer a little variety."

Yoh sighed faintly at this. "Sorry," he replied mechanically.

Anna said nothing, but she slurped her soba. "A bit bland today, huh?"

Having spent several minutes gingerly preparing the soup base, Yoh resented this, but bit his tongue and shrugged. "What's it missing?"

"Hm?" Anna gave the soba another slurp. "Oh, nothing that you could put in there, that's for sure."

"What do you mean by that?" Yoh still hadn't tasted his own creation, but he was reasonably confident it wasn't as bad as Anna was making it out to be.

"I just mean that if you could buy actual cooking skill in a can, then I wouldn't need to put up with this anymore. That's all."

Crack!

Chopsticks are remarkably durable for slim rods of wood. But Yoh had, in his frustration, tested one to its limit, snapping it neatly in twain.

"Anna," Yoh began, his voice quivering with barely restrained volume, "I may not be the best cook. I may not be the most powerful shaman. I may not do everything just the way you want me to. But I'm doing my best!"

Anna looked not in the least cowed by Yoh's rare display of emotion. She dunked her own chopsticks into the bowl, nonchalantly pinched a few noodles, and asked, as though asking what the time was, "So is that what I should have them engrave on your gravestone then, when you lose to some second-tier wannabe shaman? 'Here lies Yoh Asakura. He tried his best.'"

His Adam's apple danced with the effort of a couple of dry swallows. He struggled to restrain himself from saying what he wanted to at that moment, but once his tense lips parted he knew there was no stopping it. "Fine! I would rather be killed in a shaman fight than whipped to death in this loveless arranged marriage!"

Yoh was convulsing now, and couldn't see too clearly from all the adrenaline rushing through his veins, but he could've sworn he saw Anna actually flinch at his words. But he blinked and she was stoic again, if in fact she had been stirred at all.

"Yoh, if you're not happy here," she said, her voice calm and barely above a whisper, "there's the door." She gave her dinner a final slurp and rose from her seat deliberately, leaving Yoh sitting immobile, watching her ascend the stairs unhurriedly.

Feeling nothing anymore, Yoh rose from his seat robotically, and clambered up the stairs after Anna. Whether to apologize, or further vent, or something else entirely, he didn't know, but he knew it wasn't over and he needed to say something. He found her standing at the doorway to his room, arms crossed, looking in with an impassive expression that betrayed nothing.

Though he had been so eager to speak just a second before, words failed him at the sight of Anna. He stormed past her and threw a dusty duffel bag onto his bed, acting purely by impulse now.

He was too addled to be surprised by the fact that it was Anna who spoke then. "So, you're really leaving, then?"

Yoh balled up several articles of clothing and angrily stuffed them into his bag. "Yeah, it's what you want, isn't it?"

"I…Yoh, I'm not kicking you out or anything. As I recall, you're the one who isn't happy with things here, and I can't make you stay."

"Oh, and you think I'm unhappy here…why? Noisy neighbors? High rent? No. Maybe…because I'm stuck here forced to marry my own personal torturer and dominatrix, Anna Kyoyama? That sounds about right."

Anna actually gasped audibly at this declaration, but Yoh was raising too much of a clamor cramming his personal articles into his duffel bag to notice. "Well, force someone else to train his ass off every day. Force someone else to cook a gourmet dinner every night. Force someone else to do all the work around here while you sit on your ass and watch TV all day, and see how long they put up with it. I think I endured as long as any human could."

Anna uncrossed her arms, and had Yoh been in a clearer frame of mind, he would have noticed this. "Then…Yoh…why did you endure for so long?"

Yoh had nearly finished his impromptu packing and was now working on dismounting his Soul Bob poster from the wall. "Because I thought I loved you, Anna."

It was hard to tell who looked more surprised at this. Yoh, who realized too late what he had just admitted, tore the corner of the poster in shock; Anna, meanwhile, covered her gaping mouth with both hands.

"Ah," she managed at last, in a tone of voice Yoh had never heard her use before. "But, Yoh, then, why didn't you understand why I made you do all the training, why I worked you so hard? It was out…out of…"

"Love?" Yoh spat, zipping his bulging duffel shut. "Don't make me laugh. Anna, there's a difference between pushing someone to succeed and treating him like shit. That's not love. This is."

With those words, Yoh stopped at the doorway and roughly cupped his hand behind Anna's head. A random thought entered his mind at that moment, though he had no idea why it did: Her hair's just the way I thought it would feel. Then, he planted his lips upon hers for the first—and what he knew would be the last—time.

"I—Yoh, look."

Yoh stopped, one foot on the stairs, and whipped his head around to favor his erstwhile fiancée one last glance. Something in her voice penetrated his raw anger, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

"If you leave now," she said, in that same foreign tone of voice, "don't ever come back."

Yoh hesitated for the barest moment, but the momentum of his anger carried him out the door.

"Don't you worry about that, sweetheart. I'm gone."

The full gravity of what he had just done didn't sink in until the rain barraged his hair and drenched his clothes. He felt at that moment both liberated and helpless, like a lab rat uncaged, and he did the one thing, ironically, that he hated the most, out of all the training Anna had forced upon him: He took a final glance back at the En Inn through the downpour, screamed loud enough to echo even in the pouring rain, and ran, determinedly goalless, into the torrent.

続く(To be continued)