Aishuu Offers:
Secrets of the Sohma
Mbsilvana@yahoo.com
Disclaimers: Fruits Baskets is most assuredly not mine. It belongs to Takaya Natsuki.
Dedication: For Merrow, for her patience, wisdom, listening to me when I go off on a Furuba rant, and being one of the finest role models out there.
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Part Five: Enigma
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School that Monday was not where I wanted to be. My mind was not on my lessons, and when Hisae and Nakuru tried to pry the details out of me, my answers were reluctant. I didn't admit to any of the conversation I had overheard.
"It was - difficult," I said. "The family is very diverse, and the personalities overwhelming," was what I would tell them.
I had spent some time Sunday on the Internet, researching Jyunishi and all the various phonetic spellings of the word I could think of, but it had only brought me frustration. All I could find was the story of the Buddha and the other information on the Zodiac, and obviously that wasn't right.
I was never more relieved than when the bell rang that day, signaling the end of classes. I wasn't on duty for the class, and neither were Hisae or Nakuru, so we headed for the front gates. I wanted to go straight home, but on Mondays, we were in the habit of going to the nearby crepe vendor and watching the boys' soccer team at the nearby high school. Hisae had a crush on one of them, and I had to admit there were a few who were pretty cute.
As we approached the gate, though, we heard a whispering which was starting to become all too familiar to me.
"Who is he?" a voice was saying.
"I don't know, but he's gorgeous!"
A feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. I tried to ignore the girls who were flocking forward, watching with a peculiar sense of deja vu. It was like the field day, when they had swarmed to Yuki and the others.
"That hair! I adore blondes!" another was saying.
I knew who it was then, and I sighed in resignation. I wasn't sure if I was ready for this confrontation. "Come on, you two. I'll introduce you," I said to my friends, hastening my footsteps. I hadn't expected Momiji to appear so soon, and I was a bit afraid. I hadn't had a chance to let my thoughts settle.
"Introduce us? Is it another of your cousins?" Hisae asked eagerly, trotting along beside me. Nakuru followed quietly, but I knew she was just as anxious to see which relative I was going to produce this time.
"Most likely, if it's who I think it is..." I said.
We turned around the corner of the building. Momiji was perched on the low wall that ran around the school, ignoring the looks he was receiving. He was dressed in black slacks and an amber dress shirt that fastened with ebony buttons. He had the top two buttons left undone, and was casually gazing around, looking for the entire world as though he belonged there. I really liked the black beret he wore on his head - not many guys could pull the effect off, but Momiji managed it with dashing elegance. Still, what surprised me was the easy way he was chatting with the girls who approached him.
Momiji was gesturing to make some point when his eyes settled on me, and he stopped abruptly. With an apologetic shake of his head to his current company, he hopped off the wall with abundant energy before making his way over to me. My friends watched as he smiled at us, full of mischief and good humor. This was the Momiji I had seen hints of last night, one unburdened by the secrets that seemed to define the Sohma family. If he was cursed, he seemed blithely unconcerned as he leaned over and kissed my cheek warmly. "Hi, Momo-chan!" he said happily. His familiarity was startling, but Momiji seemed to break social rules without a care.
I blushed brilliantly, feeling the eyes of half the girls in school. A good many of the boys whom I knew liked me were also watching with hopelessness, knowing they couldn't compete with Momiji's exceptional beauty. "Hi, Momiji-kun," I said. "What are you doing here?"
He seemed to bounce on the balls of his feet, and I could tell it was hard for him to stay put. "I wanted to go out today, and everyone else was busy," he said. "I was hoping you'd come with me, even if it is a bit of short notice." He looked a bit wistful.
My friends come to flank me, and I could almost feel the heat of their stares as they gawked at him. I knew I was supposed to make introductions, but that would make things more awkward when I tried to ditch them so I could spend time with Momiji, because I fully intended on taking him up on his invitation. I wanted to know him, and resolve those mysteries that he seemed to be the center of.
He noticed my hesitation, and smiled a bit in an attempt to put me at ease. His eyes darted over to them, and with a graceful movement that was amazing and made us catch our breath, he swept his hat off his head and swung into a bow, an European bow that we had never seen anyone perform in real life. "Hello, I'm Sohma Momiji!" he said cheerfully. "Momo-chan is my relative," he added. "And who are you two lovely ladies?" There was a flirtatiousness to him, but it was innocent and not at all smarmy. He was a good nine years older than we were, but I could see that he was playing. From the delighted looks on Nakuru and Hisae's faces, I knew that they knew it as well, but it was still wonderful to have someone as handsome as Momiji to flirt with.
"I'm Tsukasa Hisae," Hisae said, bowing. Momiji held out his hand, again using those foreign gestures, and I wondered if I had been right, to think him gaijin. Hisae took it awkwardly, unable to get a good grip to shake, but he turned her clumsiness into grace, raising it to his lips to brush a light kiss across her knuckles.
"You're going to be a beautiful lady not too long in the future!" He let it go gently, and Hisae blushed brilliantly, and I knew that it would be weeks before she recovered from this crush. Nakuru's eyes widened as he turned to her. He was perceptive again, instinctively knowing that she was the shyer of the two. "And you are?"
"Hanazawa Nakuru," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She held out a trembling hand, but from the light in her face I could tell she was anticipating Momiji's courtly gesture. He didn't disappoint, bowing over her hand before depositing a kiss upon her hand as well.
"You certainly are lovely company for Momo-chan to keep!" he said. He looked over at me as he stepped away from a furiously flushing Nakuru, who was now the envy of every girl at school. "Do you have plans, Momo-chan?" he pressed.
"Well..." I said, glancing at my friends, hoping they would understand my wanting to be alone with Momiji. They nodded, but Momiji caught the exchange.
"Oh? Were you going to go do something together?" he asked. We looked guilty, I am quite sure, because he laughed brightly, and it was like the sun peek through the clouds.
"Nakuru-chan, Hisae-chan, how about I take you out for some ice cream with Momo-chan and myself? To make up for destroying your plans?" he asked.
My friends were quickly beside him, though I wished they had been polite enough to refuse. "Really, Sohma-san?" Hisae, always the bolder of the two asked.
"Really! How often does a man get to escort three princesses around?" He replaced his hat on his fair head and winked at us playfully. "Though I would prefer it if you'd call me Momiji- there're (plural!) so many Sohmas around that it gets confusing if you call me Sohma-san... I always wonder which one of us is being addressed."
We laughed at his easy charm and he gestured at us to follow him. Neither of my friends seemed particularly concerned about following a strange man, and I clung to my schoolbag, watching him as we left the schoolyard. I felt the envious eyes of all the other girls on us, and knew another round of questions and begging for pictures would be coming my way tomorrow.
"Momiji-kun?" I said. "Where is everyone today?"
"Had had classes, Yuki was working on his Masters' thesis, and Tohru went to Ayame's shop for a wedding gown fitting since Yuki wasn't present to get in the way."
"Get in the way?" I asked.
"Um, Yuki and Ayame don't get along real well," Momiji said with a bit of embarrassment. "I'm sure you've noticed."
"It was pretty obvious," I agreed. I remembered Yuki delivering a kick to his older brother's chin and tried not to laugh. It had been an amazing sight.
My friends just looked confused as Momiji continued. "Hari - um, that's Hatori - is busy working, and so is Kyou, and Shigure is currently being threatened by his editor. And those are the people I hang out with most."
"Those are all relatives of yours..." Nakuru said.
"Yup! All Sohmas..." Momiji confirmed.
"Is there any reason that you hang out with your family so much? I mean, you're so handsome and nice, surely you have many friends outside of your clan..." she said, then blushed and looked away.
I could have kissed her. In her innocence, she had asked the thing I could not. Maybe bringing Nakuru and Hisae along had been a good idea, after all.
Momiji seemed to lose a bit of his good cheer. "The inner Sohma clan ties its members to each other tightly. We often intermarry. It's not anything that must be, it's simply something that is, because it's easier for us."
"Why?" Hisae asked.
Momiji seemed to dim even more. "It's because we're Sohma." He became a bit distant, and I knew that those secrets weighed heavily on him.
"Momo-chan, look! There's the parlor!" he said with delight. I glanced at my friends, clearly recognizing that he was changing the topic. We shrugged, following him in. He smiled at the waitress and waltzed over to one of the best corner booths, at his ease here. The menus were quickly procured and we sat, studying them. "Order what you want," he told us. "Money isn't an object," he said, when he saw Hisae mentally start tallying the price of the more expensive confection. "And don't worry about gaining weight, either. You're all too beautiful to be concerned."
We all laughed. "How closely are you two related?" Hisae asked. "You look enough alike to be siblings."
I blinked at her in surprise. "I hadn't noticed that... everyone says I look like my Mama..."
Momiji was quiet for a moment before answering. "It's not surprising we look alike. My mama was German, too."
The waitress came then to take our orders, and it wasn't until later that I realized that he hadn't answered the question. We spent two hours in the parlor, stuffing ourselves with the richest desserts imaginable. Momiji playfully swiped bites of each of ours, offering his in return, but I noticed that he seemed nervous and jumpy whenever the door opened. Still, he was talkative and easy to talk to, and within minutes we all felt like we had known him for years. He had that about him, a way of making you feel like you were the most important person in the world to him. He would bounce from subject to subject, and we would breathlessly follow after him, but it was okay. We just wanted to bask in his presence.
Soon, though, we had to leave to go home. He bid Hisae and Nakuru farewell before turning to me. "It's time to..."
"Can you walk me home? We haven't spent any time together, just us," I said. I pouted prettily, the way I did when I wanted my father to do something for me. Momiji was no more immune to it than Papa. "I guess," he agreed reluctantly.
I took his hand, unwilling to let him go. Something was nagging at me. I couldn't quite fit it together, but I knew I was on the verge of a major revelation. Something... something he had said.
"Momiji, why don't you like my Mama?" I asked after a moment.
He looked over at me out of the corner of his eye, but continued to walk briskly. "Momo-chan, I don't know your Mama," he said softly. "Why would I dislike her?"
I wondered about that. "But you're very close to my Papa," I said.
"I was, once," he said. "We've grown apart."
"What happened?" I asked. I knew I was being rude, but I didn't care. I wanted answers, and all roads were leading straight to him.
His grip on my hand tightened minutely, then relaxed before it became painful. "There're things in life we can't control. There're feelings we don't understand, and sometimes we're placed in positions where we're forced to choose between the person we love most and the person we're supposed to protect. And sometimes we're asked to make a choice when really there is no choice at all, and the result hurts us deeply." Momiji tilted his head back to bask his face in the late afternoon sunlight. "All we can do is hold onto the faith that things will work out... That's what happened, Momo-chan."
The vagueness of his answer drove me nuts. I wanted blunt honesty, but Momiji was a Sohma, as people were telling me I was not. The Sohmas apparently wouldn't know what the word "direct" meant if it bit them.
"Momiji-kun, what does it mean to be a Sohma? A real Sohma?"
He stopped. "You don't want to know. You really don't."
His hand grew painfully tight around mine but I stared him down, refusing to drop the subject. "Yes, I do. Everyone keeps going on about a "real" and "true" Sohma, and I need to know what that is! I'm obviously not!"
"For which you are blessed," he whispered. "A real Sohma knows what pain and suffering is, Momo-chan, on a level that most humans can't begin to comprehend."
The sky around us seemed to darken and a sense of foreboding gripped me at his words. His skin felt clammy to the touch, and I rubbed it gently, trying to restore warmth. "Why do you smile, then?"
"I smile because if I don't, I'd never stop crying," he replied, before flashing the smile that stole my heart again. It was a smile full of shattered innocence, with a belief that somewhere, someone else was having a better life. It dawned on me that I was one for whom he hoped would have that fate. Despite my selfish questions, Momiji wanted me to have the life he apparently could not.
I wanted to cry for him, shed the tears he refused to. I knew he wasn't joking when he said that he knew pain. "I'm sorry... I'm hurting you..." I said, turning my face aside as I was unable to meet his amber eyes, feeling the tears build up in my eyes. He was being so kind, and I was being cruel in return, asking nosy and hurtful questions.
We turned down the side street, and he paused again. "Momo-chan... you should never cry for me. Please, don't cry. I couldn't bear it..." His voice trembled and I stared at him. His face was profoundly wounded, and I wanted to embrace him. I made a move to, but he stepped aside deftly. "Don't," he said. "A true Sohma never is to be embraced. It's part of our sorrow..."
I accepted it, although I didn't understand. I wished I didn't feel so helpless. "Momiji-kun? Is there anything I can do? You seem so sad..."
His pale hands cradled my cheeks as he had done earlier, the night before when he had told me to be happy and warned me not to seek out the family secrets. "Just be happy, Momo-chan. When someone's happy, their happiness shines like a candle for the rest of the world to share." His amber eyes pleaded with me as he reiterated his message, and I stared at him, trying not to fall under the magic spell all my male relatives seemed able to cast as easily as they breathed. Their beauty, their sorrow... I wanted to embrace him and promise him the world, but he had already denied me that.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but the sound of approaching footsteps caught us off guard. Momiji's hand fell away, and we turned in unison to see my mother. I braced myself, waiting for her to start yelling at him, or me, or most likely the both of us. Seeing your thirteen-year-old daughter having her face touched so gently by a man you hardly knew, even if he was a relative, would certainly bring up protective instincts in a parent.
She stopped, startled, as she took in the scene before her. "Hello, Momiji-san," she said after a moment. Mama looked at us, but didn't say anything more.
Momiji's hands fell away from me, and I felt strangely bereft of his warmth. "Hello, Sohma-san," he replied, and he gave her a beatific smile, one which didn't hold any of the undercurrents which I found so fascinating about him. It seemed as though all his sorrows had been forced aside so he could show my mother an innocent face. "How are you today?"
"I'm well. How are your studies going?"
"Quite well. I'll be entering a masters program next fall," he said easily, shifting his hands behind his back. He tilted his head a bit, the faint smile still playing across his lips. He looked more like one of my classmates than a man nearly a decade my senior.
"That's quite good. I didn't know you knew Momo-chan," she said. Was this it? I wondered. Was she about to accuse Momiji of something now?
"Yuki asked me to keep an eye out for her," he said easily, and I knew that this was only half the truth. I remembered him forcing Papa into letting him see me. I stared at Mama, wondering what she would do. If Momiji had been the child the family hated her over, then she wouldn't want him anywhere near me.
I almost gasped in shock when I got a good look at Mama's face. There was something wrong with her - a curiously blankness to her expression, as though her eyes weren't really seeing Momiji. They seemed to be looking at a place right over his shoulder, and I wondered if there was something wrong with her. "Mama?" I said. Seeing her eyes like that scared me.
"Oh, yes, Momo-chan. Come, let's go inside. I need to get dinner going. Sohma-san, it was nice to see you again." She vaguely nodded her head to him, and turned to the door.
"You too," he said politely. "Momo-chan, I'll be seeing you," he promised, squeezing my hand and dropping it before vanishing down the street.
"Mama? Are you okay?"
She blinked at me, and she seemed to come back to reality. "Oh, yes. Momo-chan, what are you doing out here? It's cold - you shouldn't stand around."
"Mama, we were just talking to Momiji-kun," I said. I wondered if she was losing it.
"Momiji-kun? Who? Oh, yes. Yes, Momiji-kun. Let's go inside," she said, gesturing.
I looked at her in confusion before stomping inside. It took me moments to race up to my room. Things were taking on a frightening picture. Mama had forgotten seeing Momiji moments after he left, and while he had been there, she had acted so strangely.
I shut the door behind me, heading over to my bed so I could lie down to think. Staring at the ceiling, I toyed with the cotton of my quilt, picking at it with my fingers. It gave me something to do while I tried to think things through. I knew I had all the pieces before me. I could feel it. Now I just had to fit them together.
It had started for me on the field day, when someone -probably Momiji- had sent my cousins to me. My history teacher, though, told me to look for root causes, the source of the problem, and as I considered it, I knew that Sohma Momiji was the key. Haru had acted to bring me into the family on his account, because he was in love with him. Yuki and the others had gone along with him, probably deciding it wasn't worth annoying Black Haru. So... I was important to Momiji, but why?
Momiji was playful at heart. I had seen him whenever the family gathered, bouncing between cousins without fear of rejection. Wherever he went, laughter followed, and everyone in the family loved him... except for Mama. Mama seemed to have a pleasant, distant attitude towards him, but seeing how she'd forgotten about speaking to him moments after he had left had chilled me to the bone. It wasn't natural - it was like she wanted to forget him, for some reason.
But why would anyone want to forget him?
I'd noticed how he kept away from us, those New Years Eves, when the entire Sohma clan gathered. I had assumed that Momiji kept away because he, along with the rest of the family, shunned Mama and me. But clearly I had been wrong. Momiji wanted to know me.
Why? What was his relationship to Papa?
Something Hisae had asked came back to me then. 'How closely are you two related? You look enough alike to be siblings.'
And Momiji had never answered, deftly avoiding the question.
It clicked... Papa... had had an affair. Men tended to like women of the same type, so he had fallen for another gaijin woman. Mama had found out, and hadn't been able to cope, and had taken it out on the child. Finally some kind of traumatic amnesia had set in. It would be good reason for the clan to hate her.
No matter how I looked at it, all added up. Momiji was Papa's illegitimate son.
Momiji was my brother.
END PART FIVE
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Author's Notes:
Okay, so she's starting to get the hint. She's not QUITE there yet, but...
The reason for Momiji's mother's reaction on meeting him again is because we've never quite learned how thorough the memory repression is... but it's all about wanting to forget. It's hypnotism, and I think his mother would keep linking new memories of Momiji to Hatori's hypnotic suggestion and bury it. When we saw her in Momiji's past episode, she looked very vacant as she left.
Credits to Xandra as beta (yes, I'll be a colloquial American) Lyra for her efforts on my behalf, and Pero for answering my Jade Emperor question.
Secrets of the Sohma
Mbsilvana@yahoo.com
Disclaimers: Fruits Baskets is most assuredly not mine. It belongs to Takaya Natsuki.
Dedication: For Merrow, for her patience, wisdom, listening to me when I go off on a Furuba rant, and being one of the finest role models out there.
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Part Five: Enigma
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School that Monday was not where I wanted to be. My mind was not on my lessons, and when Hisae and Nakuru tried to pry the details out of me, my answers were reluctant. I didn't admit to any of the conversation I had overheard.
"It was - difficult," I said. "The family is very diverse, and the personalities overwhelming," was what I would tell them.
I had spent some time Sunday on the Internet, researching Jyunishi and all the various phonetic spellings of the word I could think of, but it had only brought me frustration. All I could find was the story of the Buddha and the other information on the Zodiac, and obviously that wasn't right.
I was never more relieved than when the bell rang that day, signaling the end of classes. I wasn't on duty for the class, and neither were Hisae or Nakuru, so we headed for the front gates. I wanted to go straight home, but on Mondays, we were in the habit of going to the nearby crepe vendor and watching the boys' soccer team at the nearby high school. Hisae had a crush on one of them, and I had to admit there were a few who were pretty cute.
As we approached the gate, though, we heard a whispering which was starting to become all too familiar to me.
"Who is he?" a voice was saying.
"I don't know, but he's gorgeous!"
A feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. I tried to ignore the girls who were flocking forward, watching with a peculiar sense of deja vu. It was like the field day, when they had swarmed to Yuki and the others.
"That hair! I adore blondes!" another was saying.
I knew who it was then, and I sighed in resignation. I wasn't sure if I was ready for this confrontation. "Come on, you two. I'll introduce you," I said to my friends, hastening my footsteps. I hadn't expected Momiji to appear so soon, and I was a bit afraid. I hadn't had a chance to let my thoughts settle.
"Introduce us? Is it another of your cousins?" Hisae asked eagerly, trotting along beside me. Nakuru followed quietly, but I knew she was just as anxious to see which relative I was going to produce this time.
"Most likely, if it's who I think it is..." I said.
We turned around the corner of the building. Momiji was perched on the low wall that ran around the school, ignoring the looks he was receiving. He was dressed in black slacks and an amber dress shirt that fastened with ebony buttons. He had the top two buttons left undone, and was casually gazing around, looking for the entire world as though he belonged there. I really liked the black beret he wore on his head - not many guys could pull the effect off, but Momiji managed it with dashing elegance. Still, what surprised me was the easy way he was chatting with the girls who approached him.
Momiji was gesturing to make some point when his eyes settled on me, and he stopped abruptly. With an apologetic shake of his head to his current company, he hopped off the wall with abundant energy before making his way over to me. My friends watched as he smiled at us, full of mischief and good humor. This was the Momiji I had seen hints of last night, one unburdened by the secrets that seemed to define the Sohma family. If he was cursed, he seemed blithely unconcerned as he leaned over and kissed my cheek warmly. "Hi, Momo-chan!" he said happily. His familiarity was startling, but Momiji seemed to break social rules without a care.
I blushed brilliantly, feeling the eyes of half the girls in school. A good many of the boys whom I knew liked me were also watching with hopelessness, knowing they couldn't compete with Momiji's exceptional beauty. "Hi, Momiji-kun," I said. "What are you doing here?"
He seemed to bounce on the balls of his feet, and I could tell it was hard for him to stay put. "I wanted to go out today, and everyone else was busy," he said. "I was hoping you'd come with me, even if it is a bit of short notice." He looked a bit wistful.
My friends come to flank me, and I could almost feel the heat of their stares as they gawked at him. I knew I was supposed to make introductions, but that would make things more awkward when I tried to ditch them so I could spend time with Momiji, because I fully intended on taking him up on his invitation. I wanted to know him, and resolve those mysteries that he seemed to be the center of.
He noticed my hesitation, and smiled a bit in an attempt to put me at ease. His eyes darted over to them, and with a graceful movement that was amazing and made us catch our breath, he swept his hat off his head and swung into a bow, an European bow that we had never seen anyone perform in real life. "Hello, I'm Sohma Momiji!" he said cheerfully. "Momo-chan is my relative," he added. "And who are you two lovely ladies?" There was a flirtatiousness to him, but it was innocent and not at all smarmy. He was a good nine years older than we were, but I could see that he was playing. From the delighted looks on Nakuru and Hisae's faces, I knew that they knew it as well, but it was still wonderful to have someone as handsome as Momiji to flirt with.
"I'm Tsukasa Hisae," Hisae said, bowing. Momiji held out his hand, again using those foreign gestures, and I wondered if I had been right, to think him gaijin. Hisae took it awkwardly, unable to get a good grip to shake, but he turned her clumsiness into grace, raising it to his lips to brush a light kiss across her knuckles.
"You're going to be a beautiful lady not too long in the future!" He let it go gently, and Hisae blushed brilliantly, and I knew that it would be weeks before she recovered from this crush. Nakuru's eyes widened as he turned to her. He was perceptive again, instinctively knowing that she was the shyer of the two. "And you are?"
"Hanazawa Nakuru," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She held out a trembling hand, but from the light in her face I could tell she was anticipating Momiji's courtly gesture. He didn't disappoint, bowing over her hand before depositing a kiss upon her hand as well.
"You certainly are lovely company for Momo-chan to keep!" he said. He looked over at me as he stepped away from a furiously flushing Nakuru, who was now the envy of every girl at school. "Do you have plans, Momo-chan?" he pressed.
"Well..." I said, glancing at my friends, hoping they would understand my wanting to be alone with Momiji. They nodded, but Momiji caught the exchange.
"Oh? Were you going to go do something together?" he asked. We looked guilty, I am quite sure, because he laughed brightly, and it was like the sun peek through the clouds.
"Nakuru-chan, Hisae-chan, how about I take you out for some ice cream with Momo-chan and myself? To make up for destroying your plans?" he asked.
My friends were quickly beside him, though I wished they had been polite enough to refuse. "Really, Sohma-san?" Hisae, always the bolder of the two asked.
"Really! How often does a man get to escort three princesses around?" He replaced his hat on his fair head and winked at us playfully. "Though I would prefer it if you'd call me Momiji- there're (plural!) so many Sohmas around that it gets confusing if you call me Sohma-san... I always wonder which one of us is being addressed."
We laughed at his easy charm and he gestured at us to follow him. Neither of my friends seemed particularly concerned about following a strange man, and I clung to my schoolbag, watching him as we left the schoolyard. I felt the envious eyes of all the other girls on us, and knew another round of questions and begging for pictures would be coming my way tomorrow.
"Momiji-kun?" I said. "Where is everyone today?"
"Had had classes, Yuki was working on his Masters' thesis, and Tohru went to Ayame's shop for a wedding gown fitting since Yuki wasn't present to get in the way."
"Get in the way?" I asked.
"Um, Yuki and Ayame don't get along real well," Momiji said with a bit of embarrassment. "I'm sure you've noticed."
"It was pretty obvious," I agreed. I remembered Yuki delivering a kick to his older brother's chin and tried not to laugh. It had been an amazing sight.
My friends just looked confused as Momiji continued. "Hari - um, that's Hatori - is busy working, and so is Kyou, and Shigure is currently being threatened by his editor. And those are the people I hang out with most."
"Those are all relatives of yours..." Nakuru said.
"Yup! All Sohmas..." Momiji confirmed.
"Is there any reason that you hang out with your family so much? I mean, you're so handsome and nice, surely you have many friends outside of your clan..." she said, then blushed and looked away.
I could have kissed her. In her innocence, she had asked the thing I could not. Maybe bringing Nakuru and Hisae along had been a good idea, after all.
Momiji seemed to lose a bit of his good cheer. "The inner Sohma clan ties its members to each other tightly. We often intermarry. It's not anything that must be, it's simply something that is, because it's easier for us."
"Why?" Hisae asked.
Momiji seemed to dim even more. "It's because we're Sohma." He became a bit distant, and I knew that those secrets weighed heavily on him.
"Momo-chan, look! There's the parlor!" he said with delight. I glanced at my friends, clearly recognizing that he was changing the topic. We shrugged, following him in. He smiled at the waitress and waltzed over to one of the best corner booths, at his ease here. The menus were quickly procured and we sat, studying them. "Order what you want," he told us. "Money isn't an object," he said, when he saw Hisae mentally start tallying the price of the more expensive confection. "And don't worry about gaining weight, either. You're all too beautiful to be concerned."
We all laughed. "How closely are you two related?" Hisae asked. "You look enough alike to be siblings."
I blinked at her in surprise. "I hadn't noticed that... everyone says I look like my Mama..."
Momiji was quiet for a moment before answering. "It's not surprising we look alike. My mama was German, too."
The waitress came then to take our orders, and it wasn't until later that I realized that he hadn't answered the question. We spent two hours in the parlor, stuffing ourselves with the richest desserts imaginable. Momiji playfully swiped bites of each of ours, offering his in return, but I noticed that he seemed nervous and jumpy whenever the door opened. Still, he was talkative and easy to talk to, and within minutes we all felt like we had known him for years. He had that about him, a way of making you feel like you were the most important person in the world to him. He would bounce from subject to subject, and we would breathlessly follow after him, but it was okay. We just wanted to bask in his presence.
Soon, though, we had to leave to go home. He bid Hisae and Nakuru farewell before turning to me. "It's time to..."
"Can you walk me home? We haven't spent any time together, just us," I said. I pouted prettily, the way I did when I wanted my father to do something for me. Momiji was no more immune to it than Papa. "I guess," he agreed reluctantly.
I took his hand, unwilling to let him go. Something was nagging at me. I couldn't quite fit it together, but I knew I was on the verge of a major revelation. Something... something he had said.
"Momiji, why don't you like my Mama?" I asked after a moment.
He looked over at me out of the corner of his eye, but continued to walk briskly. "Momo-chan, I don't know your Mama," he said softly. "Why would I dislike her?"
I wondered about that. "But you're very close to my Papa," I said.
"I was, once," he said. "We've grown apart."
"What happened?" I asked. I knew I was being rude, but I didn't care. I wanted answers, and all roads were leading straight to him.
His grip on my hand tightened minutely, then relaxed before it became painful. "There're things in life we can't control. There're feelings we don't understand, and sometimes we're placed in positions where we're forced to choose between the person we love most and the person we're supposed to protect. And sometimes we're asked to make a choice when really there is no choice at all, and the result hurts us deeply." Momiji tilted his head back to bask his face in the late afternoon sunlight. "All we can do is hold onto the faith that things will work out... That's what happened, Momo-chan."
The vagueness of his answer drove me nuts. I wanted blunt honesty, but Momiji was a Sohma, as people were telling me I was not. The Sohmas apparently wouldn't know what the word "direct" meant if it bit them.
"Momiji-kun, what does it mean to be a Sohma? A real Sohma?"
He stopped. "You don't want to know. You really don't."
His hand grew painfully tight around mine but I stared him down, refusing to drop the subject. "Yes, I do. Everyone keeps going on about a "real" and "true" Sohma, and I need to know what that is! I'm obviously not!"
"For which you are blessed," he whispered. "A real Sohma knows what pain and suffering is, Momo-chan, on a level that most humans can't begin to comprehend."
The sky around us seemed to darken and a sense of foreboding gripped me at his words. His skin felt clammy to the touch, and I rubbed it gently, trying to restore warmth. "Why do you smile, then?"
"I smile because if I don't, I'd never stop crying," he replied, before flashing the smile that stole my heart again. It was a smile full of shattered innocence, with a belief that somewhere, someone else was having a better life. It dawned on me that I was one for whom he hoped would have that fate. Despite my selfish questions, Momiji wanted me to have the life he apparently could not.
I wanted to cry for him, shed the tears he refused to. I knew he wasn't joking when he said that he knew pain. "I'm sorry... I'm hurting you..." I said, turning my face aside as I was unable to meet his amber eyes, feeling the tears build up in my eyes. He was being so kind, and I was being cruel in return, asking nosy and hurtful questions.
We turned down the side street, and he paused again. "Momo-chan... you should never cry for me. Please, don't cry. I couldn't bear it..." His voice trembled and I stared at him. His face was profoundly wounded, and I wanted to embrace him. I made a move to, but he stepped aside deftly. "Don't," he said. "A true Sohma never is to be embraced. It's part of our sorrow..."
I accepted it, although I didn't understand. I wished I didn't feel so helpless. "Momiji-kun? Is there anything I can do? You seem so sad..."
His pale hands cradled my cheeks as he had done earlier, the night before when he had told me to be happy and warned me not to seek out the family secrets. "Just be happy, Momo-chan. When someone's happy, their happiness shines like a candle for the rest of the world to share." His amber eyes pleaded with me as he reiterated his message, and I stared at him, trying not to fall under the magic spell all my male relatives seemed able to cast as easily as they breathed. Their beauty, their sorrow... I wanted to embrace him and promise him the world, but he had already denied me that.
I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but the sound of approaching footsteps caught us off guard. Momiji's hand fell away, and we turned in unison to see my mother. I braced myself, waiting for her to start yelling at him, or me, or most likely the both of us. Seeing your thirteen-year-old daughter having her face touched so gently by a man you hardly knew, even if he was a relative, would certainly bring up protective instincts in a parent.
She stopped, startled, as she took in the scene before her. "Hello, Momiji-san," she said after a moment. Mama looked at us, but didn't say anything more.
Momiji's hands fell away from me, and I felt strangely bereft of his warmth. "Hello, Sohma-san," he replied, and he gave her a beatific smile, one which didn't hold any of the undercurrents which I found so fascinating about him. It seemed as though all his sorrows had been forced aside so he could show my mother an innocent face. "How are you today?"
"I'm well. How are your studies going?"
"Quite well. I'll be entering a masters program next fall," he said easily, shifting his hands behind his back. He tilted his head a bit, the faint smile still playing across his lips. He looked more like one of my classmates than a man nearly a decade my senior.
"That's quite good. I didn't know you knew Momo-chan," she said. Was this it? I wondered. Was she about to accuse Momiji of something now?
"Yuki asked me to keep an eye out for her," he said easily, and I knew that this was only half the truth. I remembered him forcing Papa into letting him see me. I stared at Mama, wondering what she would do. If Momiji had been the child the family hated her over, then she wouldn't want him anywhere near me.
I almost gasped in shock when I got a good look at Mama's face. There was something wrong with her - a curiously blankness to her expression, as though her eyes weren't really seeing Momiji. They seemed to be looking at a place right over his shoulder, and I wondered if there was something wrong with her. "Mama?" I said. Seeing her eyes like that scared me.
"Oh, yes, Momo-chan. Come, let's go inside. I need to get dinner going. Sohma-san, it was nice to see you again." She vaguely nodded her head to him, and turned to the door.
"You too," he said politely. "Momo-chan, I'll be seeing you," he promised, squeezing my hand and dropping it before vanishing down the street.
"Mama? Are you okay?"
She blinked at me, and she seemed to come back to reality. "Oh, yes. Momo-chan, what are you doing out here? It's cold - you shouldn't stand around."
"Mama, we were just talking to Momiji-kun," I said. I wondered if she was losing it.
"Momiji-kun? Who? Oh, yes. Yes, Momiji-kun. Let's go inside," she said, gesturing.
I looked at her in confusion before stomping inside. It took me moments to race up to my room. Things were taking on a frightening picture. Mama had forgotten seeing Momiji moments after he left, and while he had been there, she had acted so strangely.
I shut the door behind me, heading over to my bed so I could lie down to think. Staring at the ceiling, I toyed with the cotton of my quilt, picking at it with my fingers. It gave me something to do while I tried to think things through. I knew I had all the pieces before me. I could feel it. Now I just had to fit them together.
It had started for me on the field day, when someone -probably Momiji- had sent my cousins to me. My history teacher, though, told me to look for root causes, the source of the problem, and as I considered it, I knew that Sohma Momiji was the key. Haru had acted to bring me into the family on his account, because he was in love with him. Yuki and the others had gone along with him, probably deciding it wasn't worth annoying Black Haru. So... I was important to Momiji, but why?
Momiji was playful at heart. I had seen him whenever the family gathered, bouncing between cousins without fear of rejection. Wherever he went, laughter followed, and everyone in the family loved him... except for Mama. Mama seemed to have a pleasant, distant attitude towards him, but seeing how she'd forgotten about speaking to him moments after he had left had chilled me to the bone. It wasn't natural - it was like she wanted to forget him, for some reason.
But why would anyone want to forget him?
I'd noticed how he kept away from us, those New Years Eves, when the entire Sohma clan gathered. I had assumed that Momiji kept away because he, along with the rest of the family, shunned Mama and me. But clearly I had been wrong. Momiji wanted to know me.
Why? What was his relationship to Papa?
Something Hisae had asked came back to me then. 'How closely are you two related? You look enough alike to be siblings.'
And Momiji had never answered, deftly avoiding the question.
It clicked... Papa... had had an affair. Men tended to like women of the same type, so he had fallen for another gaijin woman. Mama had found out, and hadn't been able to cope, and had taken it out on the child. Finally some kind of traumatic amnesia had set in. It would be good reason for the clan to hate her.
No matter how I looked at it, all added up. Momiji was Papa's illegitimate son.
Momiji was my brother.
END PART FIVE
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Author's Notes:
Okay, so she's starting to get the hint. She's not QUITE there yet, but...
The reason for Momiji's mother's reaction on meeting him again is because we've never quite learned how thorough the memory repression is... but it's all about wanting to forget. It's hypnotism, and I think his mother would keep linking new memories of Momiji to Hatori's hypnotic suggestion and bury it. When we saw her in Momiji's past episode, she looked very vacant as she left.
Credits to Xandra as beta (yes, I'll be a colloquial American) Lyra for her efforts on my behalf, and Pero for answering my Jade Emperor question.