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Chapter Six: Omoigakenai Nyusu (Revelation) |
I awoke, in a soft tangle of sheets. Morikawa-san was lying on her side, her soft arms draped over my chest.
She was still asleep.
I wondered vaguely if she would hate herself. I wondered vaguely if she would hate me. It had seemed so right, so natural-- yet how often things look different in the harsh reality of the sunlight!
Fortunately, today was Saturday. We would have until Monday to decide how our life would continue in the office.
Morikawa-san murmured something unintelligible, nestling deeper against my chest, snuggling for warmth. I hid a smile and stroked her hair.
It was as soft as I'd imagined.
Would this put her from my mind, now? The ephemeral Morikawa-san of my imagining had vanished under the reality of her solid counterpart. Would the *real* Morikawa-san be as intruiging as my own creation?
I somehow thought she would.
I had a knack for finding beautiful women, but how difficult it was to find one who was as smart as she was pretty. If I only wanted something to look at, I would purchase a piece of art and hang it on my wall.
Morikawa-san's eyes squinted slightly, then opened. She looked through her lashes at me. She didn't seem disoriented in the least; rather, she gave me a soft squeeze with her arms before rubbing her cheek against my chest, inhaling my scent.
"Mmmmm," was all she breathed.
I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and managed to bend over far enough to give her a soft kiss. "You're beautiful," I murmured, and it was true.
"Mmmm," she answered, brushing her fingertips across my skin. She seemed more interested in early-morning loving than in dialogue, and I was happy to oblige.
***
I let her borrow a bathrobe, and we breakfasted. I let her shower and dress first. Then while I scrubbed, she wandered through the apartment, looking at the old photographs, the foreign art, and sundry and various things I had accumulated over the years to decorate my apartment with.
When I emerged, clean and dressed, I found her standing in the spare bedroom, her eyes fixed on one object in particular.
It was a massive gold knife, with a single red ball in it, marked with a kanji.
She was staring at it as though hypnotized.
"Kou... Kougan Anki," she murmured, as though trying to remember something from long ago. Morikawa-san turned to me. "The Kougan Anki, in the first of its six forms." Her eyes were bright but confused. "Where did you get it from?"
"It's-- it's been mine," I answered. I, too, was in shock. Few living knew what it was. Even fewer knew details about it. How did this woman know...?
"For how long?" she asked, and there was a tremble in her voice. She reached out to touch it, and dragged a finger across the side of one blade. It had some scratches from years of use.
"Since I was... what, ten?" I couldn't remember much before then. The Kougan Anki had been a constant in my life, just like my Rubix cube. In the last fifteen years, there had been no need for it.
It had been relegated to the position of object d'art; I couldn't bring myself to be rid of it. It was one of the few connections I had to my exciting distant past.
Her face paled. "Kog- Koganei..." She dropped to the bed, her eyes wide with shock. "Koganei Kaoru..." Her fists clenched and unclenched around the bedspread. "I'd forgotten..."
I looked at her, my mind racing to catch up to wherever she was. Obviously, this was someone I'd met before. But there were so many people I'd encountered-- and after fifteen years, who could recognize another?
Morikawa-san, Morikawa-san, Morikawa-san. There was *someone* back in my memory, but I couldn't connect the name with either a face or a given name.
"What's the matter?" I asked her, seeing her eyes bright with tears. Her lip was trembling, and I moved closer to capture it in a kiss. But she turned away as though I had somehow become repulsive in the last ten minutes.
She refused to look at me. "The man in the red dress," she whispered softly. "The man with trees growing from his body. The old man with the monster dog. The woman with the flute. The ninja. And the girl with the stuffed fox."
I nodded, still not sure exactly where she fit into the puzzle. But I could place names for all of the figures named. "Kurei," I murmured softly, kissing one fingertip, then another, then another. "Mokuren. Genjuro, Shiju. Neon. Raiha. Ganko."
It was at Ganko's name that I stopped.
Morikawa Gananori.
Morikawa Ganko.
The same...?
I felt a sickening lump in my stomach. The Ganko I had known had been a child. A CHILD. A crybaby girl, sometimes, who had channeled her pettiness through her stuffed fox. She'd been good, granted-- not as good as me, but still good, considering. She hadn't actively participated in either the UBS or the Tendoujigoku, being too little. Afterwards, she had moved off with Fuuko to Hokkaido, I believe; I had remained with Recca. What had been so proudly billed as "Team Hokage" had disintegrated at that time. There was no further need for us, and we had drifted apart, presumably never to meet again.
Sad, but the way things were.
And this... this woman? THIS was the girl in my memories?
I'd unconsciously dropped her hand at some point in time, and obviously my shock-- and perhaps a degree of disgust-- had registered on my face. New tears began to slide down her soft cheeks. I wanted to forget that we had any history together before; every adult was a child at some point in time, and she was a woman now. A college graduate. I wanted to kiss those tears away, yet knew that if I tried, I would only be kissing a five-year-old girl.
Perhaps she felt the same way. Suddenly, I had degenerated from a man comfortably ensconced in his late twenties, into a thirteen-year-old boy.
I patted her hair, but suddenly, it was different. We weren't a supervisor and his trusted assistant, overcome by guilt in an illicit affair which might get both of us dismissed from our positions. Rather, we were sucked into a time warp, back to our positions of fifteen years ago.
It was incredibly uncomfortable.
I had had images of meeting up with Recca, or Mikagami, or Domon, or Fuuko once more. Those mental dreams had always contained such phrases as, "Where have you been all these years!" or "What have you been up to?"
But now that she was here-- and we had-- but I hadn't known--
I felt helpless, too, and guilty. I fought to keep my own tears inside.