Yesterday's Memories
Chapter Two: What the Rain Brings
Her footsteps were soft and unhurried, a change from the usual, hasty way she walked. When she had reached the final step, her hand pushed the cold surface of the door and her vision was immediately flooded with the crimson light of the rising sun. Shielding her eyes, she stepped onto the roof and into the morning light. Long raven hair cascaded all the way down her back, the wind combing through it delicately. Milky white skin shuddered slightly from the cool air, as vibrant blue eyes watched while the light of dawn slowly seeped into the metropolis before them.
Kamiya Kaoru drew in a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. The air was heavy with the promise of rain. Perhaps it would be a smart thing to move her flowers inside. She spent too much time taking care of them to let them drown in rainwater or be blown off the roof by the high winds.
She set out to work and walked over to one of the clay pots. A large bush was emerging from the rich soil, blossoms sleeping among the green leaves that sprouted from the branches. Kaoru smiled and she gently held one of the blossoms between two of her slender fingers. They would bloom into beautiful pink peonies when the morning would pass. For some reason, Kaoru had a special liking to these particular flowers. Looking at them brought a sense of peace in her heart that she rarely had the time to experience.
"JOU-CHAN, WHERE'S THE MILK?!?"
The tranquility of the morning shattered upon the sound of the cranky voice, Kaoru sighed and took the clay pot into her hands.
The day had officially begun.
* * * *
"Good morning, class," Kaoru greeted, setting aside her lesson plan on her table.
A string of incoherent grumbles was her answer.
"Well it's nice to see you all too," she retorted dryly.
Even if they were all just teenagers, Kaoru's students looked more like corpses that had just risen from their graves and entered into the world of the living.
"If you would all please take out last night's homework and pass it up."
The students shuffled through their bags and knapsacks to find the assignment that was to be done for today. Some of Kaoru's better students only had to take a few seconds to find theirs, whereas some of her other ones were frantically looking through their bags, praying that they had done it.
After a few more minutes, Kaoru collected the assignments, finished and unfinished, and put them in a stack on her desk. "Please take out your textbooks."
More rummaging and more mumbles as Kaoru surveyed the class. Looking at each solemn and exhausted face made her want the final bell to ring sooner. She spotted the clock at her wall, and mentally cursed when the hands read twenty minutes after eight.
Suddenly, snickering was heard from the far corner of the room, bringing Kaoru's attention. Two of her male students were looking over the shoulders of one other one, the latter holding up a textbook. The perverse looks and smirks of the three boys caused her to quirk an eyebrow in suspicion.
She had never seen three adolescent males look THAT entertained from reading literature.
"Oh man, where'd you find this?" one of the boys asked, wiping the drool that was forming at the left corner of his mouth.
"My brother's room," the middle one declared proudly declared. "He keeps a collection in a box under his bed."
"Awesome!" the boy on his other side beamed. "Hey, can we see the rest after school?"
The middle boy grinned. "Of course, just come over my house—"
All three teenagers leapt as a meter stick slammed itself onto the middle of the textbook. They looked on helplessly as their teacher glared down at the smut-filled magazine that she had pinned under the meter stick clutched in her right hand. Her lips were drawn downward in a disapproving scowl, and her anger couldn't hide the look of disgust on her youthful face.
"Perhaps one of you can tell me since when did classic Japanese haikus include pictures of nude women and condom advertisements?" She asked in a voice that was eerily calm.
The boys could only answer in petrified squeaks while their literature teacher glowered dangerously at them.
"Detention for two hours. I expect to see all three of you right after school. If one of you happens to be missing," she shot each of them a threatening glare. "I WILL find you."
Three heads nodded furiously in unison, and they sunk pathetically into their seats. The rest of the class watched their brazen teacher walk to the front of the room. She placed the meter stick onto her desk, and when she had turned around she had a textbook in her hand and was wearing a composed smile.
"Now then, do I have a volunteer to begin reading?"
* * * *
"Hey, Jou-chan."
Kaoru's hand stopped marking grades on test papers when her tall, lanky neighbor stood at her door, gravity-defying hair and all.
"What are you doing here?" she asked irritably. "I thought you were at work."
"I am," Sanosuke argued. "I'm on break."
Kaoru threw him a look of disbelief.
"...it's my mid-morning pre-lunch break." The brown-haired man concluded.
"Really Sano," Kaoru began, her test papers and red pen forgotten. "You seriously need some work ethic. You're not really setting a good example for your little brother—"
"Good morning, Kaoru-dono."
Kaoru stopped in the middle of her lecture when she had heard the gentle, familiar voice. A thin, red-haired man stepped into her room, a friendly smile on his attractive face.
"Kenshin..." the name passed her lips as she recovered from her shock.
"Pretty boy here flew in not too long ago," Sano said, grinning at Kaoru's blushing face. "Found me and said that he wanted to see you."
"I—" She began, but her sentence was cut short when her hand clumsily knocked over the mug of steaming hot tea from her desk and onto the floor. The mug shattered into countless pieces, and somehow, some of the tea had managed to stain her pants.
Her face was entirely red as Sano held back his laughter. A worried Kenshin approached the mess and knelt down to pick up the pieces.
"You don't have to do that!" Kaoru exclaimed, too embarrassed to do anything.
Kenshin offered her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Kaoru-dono. I don't mind at all."
He picked up the pieces and dropped them into the wastebasket. "Is your leg all right?"
Kaoru nodded, avoiding making eye contact with the redhead.
"I'll go look for some paper towels to clean the tea with." Kenshin politely said, and he left the room, leaving Sano and a humiliated Kaoru alone.
A few seconds passed, and a hearty laugh erupted from Sano's throat, earning a fierce glare from Kaoru.
"Jou-chan, you're a klutz!"
"Shut up, Rooster-head," Kaoru angrily snapped and she buried her face into her hands.
Since the day she had met Kenshin when she was in middle school, Kaoru always managed to make an idiot of herself in his presence. It was either a bad habit or a curse. She didn't know which one.
"Ah, cheer up already!"
"I always like such an idiot when I'm around him," she mumbled miserably from her hands.
"It's no big deal," Sano said, patting her on the back with a calloused hand. "And besides, Kenshin said he'll be staying for a week or two."
"Why should that make me happy?"
Sano chuckled. "Because now you'll have more time to lay some of that girlish charm of yours on him."
Kaoru lifted her face from her hands and blinked.
"Y'know, use those feminine wiles that you women take so much pride in."
She stared at Sano like he was talking in a different language.
"C'mon, Jou-chan. Paint the town red? Wine and dine with him?"
"...what?"
Sano threw up his hands. "For the love of...ask him out on a date."
Her eyes widened and pink tickled her cheeks. "No way, Sano!"
He sighed in exasperation. "You can't keep doing this, Jou-chan. I'm so sick and tired of watching you pine for that guy and doing nothing about it."
"I'm not 'pining' for anyone!" she cried, proceeding to grade papers again.
"Could've fooled me," he retorted sarcastically.
"Sano, I'm not going to ask him! Even if I did, he wouldn't want to."
"You don't know that for sure, Jou-chan."
"Yes I do, Rooster-head."
"I don't think that you don't want to ask him out because you're shy," Sano said, smirking.
Kaoru looked up at him from her papers. "What do you mean?"
He pointed to her neck. Curious, her fingers reached for the ring that hung on the end of the thin silver chain that she wore.
"...do you mean this?"
"Not the ring itself. The person that gave it to you."
Kaoru scoffed, her fingers still clasping the ring. "Sano, that's ridiculous."
"Then why have you been wearing that thing since you were eight?"
"Because I like it," Kaoru argued.
"Jou-chan...it's a piece of metal."
"That someone made for me!" she protested.
"Don't lie," Sano continued with an evil grin on his face. "Aoshi told me about your little trip in Kyoto."
She stared at him crossly, but was quiet.
"You still have a crush on that kid you met."
"Shut up, already!" she cried. "I don't have a crush on anybody!"
"Why are your cheeks red, Jou-chan? It looks like you're blushing."
"Quit it, Sano! Like you said, I was just eight years old!"
"Don't be so serious," he said, deciding that he already teased her enough for one day. "I'm just kidding."
She stuck out her tongue and went back to grading papers.
"Oh, that's very mature." Sano said, taking a seat in one of the empty chairs in the front.
* * * *
"Stupid Rooster-head," Kaoru muttered out loud to herself after putting a daikon radish into her shopping cart. "Doesn't know what he's talking about."
She was still irritated from the little argument she had with her neighbor before Kenshin was kind enough to step in with some paper towels. Whenever her romance life was brought up, Sano always found a perfect opportunity to bring up her little adventure in Kyoto. When her older cousin Aoshi had brought her back to Tokyo, he explained everything to her father, who then told Sano after he returned from searching for Kaoru. Even though the name of the woman who had watched her for two weeks had evaded her memory, Kaoru did remember that she was very kind and ladylike.
Kaoru also remembered a tangled mass of dark hair and a pair of mischievous eyes. They had belonged to the boy who had made her the ring.
Her fingers unconsciously wrapped around the small piece of jewelry that hung around her neck. Although she had forgotten why she was given the ring, she couldn't bring herself to throw it away. One of the reasons that she had kept it was because it was a gift. Kaoru was sure that she would've been upset if someone had discarded a present that she had handcrafted herself for them.
Also, there was something about the ring that made her wear it on a silver chain when it had gotten too little for her ring finger and keep it for fourteen years. The scent of peonies and plum blossoms, the sound of a comforting voice, and memories of a hand guiding her were what she had thought about whenever she held the ring in her hands. All those things brought her a serenity that she had grown attached to. Her days were hectic as they were with her students and unexpected surprises; it was nice to have some semblance of peace, even if it came in the form of a ring she received when she was a little girl.
Snapping out of her thoughts, she reached out for a carton of milk and placed it into her cart. Sano and Yahiko had a habit of using her milk for their cereal when theirs had been sitting in their fridge a few months after its expiration date.
She wandered into another aisle and she caught sight of a box of green tea. She immediately snatched it off the shelf and strolled on over to one of the cashiers. After a day of teaching half-awake students, being teased by Sanosuke, and staying after school for two hours more to watch three perverted adolescent males wash the windows and desks in her classroom, Kaoru thought that a nice cup of tea was in order when she finally went home.
After she had purchased her groceries, Kaoru carried the bags in her hands, but stopped at the automatic doors when she had looked outside.
Kaoru thought that there would be a slight drizzle, but a downpour awaited her outside.
Kaoru couldn't very well drive home because her ancient scrap of metal, otherwise known as a car, was in the shop getting fixed. Sano was actually working around this time, and Kenshin had disappeared around town somewhere.
And the day that she knew it was going to rain, she had forgotten to bring an umbrella before she went to work.
Oh, the irony of it all.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward and the doors instantly parted for her.
Kaoru felt that a warm bath would be best before drinking that cup of tea.
* * * *
His index finger pressed the button again, but he was still standing out in the rain.
"Come on," he growled, pressing the button over and over again, hoping to hear a voice over the intercom.
But nothing. There was no such voice, no annoying buzz that indicated that he could enter the building. Only the splatter of raindrops on the streets.
This was what he had feared the most.
Fatigued, he left the locked doors and settled himself on a nearby bench. The rain was relentless, pouring onto him in torrents. He was getting soaked, but he didn't care. He was numb to it all.
He tried to reassure himself that he had written the address wrong. But a part of him was nagging that he was too careful to do that. He had memorized that address to the point that he had known each numerical digit and letter by heart. Perhaps the taxi driver made a mistake and dropped him at the wrong place.
Or perhaps the address itself was wrong.
He gritted his teeth, and his hands tugged at his white hair in frustration. It seemed so hopeless. Not only was he lost in a city he wasn't familiar with and practically submerged in the downpour, but the one person he wanted to see wasn't even there.
"Where are you?" he asked, not caring that no one would answer him. He was then silent as the streetlights flickered on and off in the rain like dying flames.
* * * *
"Mou! Why did I have to forget my umbrella?" Kaoru chided herself, hurrying across the wet pavement before her groceries would be ruined.
Finally, she could see her apartment through the heavy curtains of rain. Her steps a bit lighter, she resisted the urge to run and risk the chance of slipping on the slippery sidewalk.
But then, a shock of white hair caught her attention. In the faint light of the malfunctioning street lamp in front of her apartment, she saw the slouching form of a man on a bench.
"Is that an old man?" she asked herself and wasted no time rushing to the person's side.
"Hey!" she addressed the man, fearing that something was wrong with him. "Are you okay?"
He looked up, revealing a pair of brilliant turquoise eyes settled behind a pair of dark shades and a handsome face that showed no signs of aging.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were an old man!" she blurted out, still in shock of how young the man appeared to be.
To her surprise, the man just looked at her with an expression that she could only describe as utter despair.
'He looks so sad,' she thought. The man then looked away from her, his eyes seeking the wet streets in front of him.
The raindrops slid down his skin and dripped from the tips of his hair. Kaoru worried that he was going to catch a cold if he stayed out here any longer.
"Why are you out here in the rain?" she asked him.
He was silent for a moment, but then he spoke in a barren voice. "I wanted to see someone, but she isn't here."
"Oh..."
The man said nothing more, and Kaoru couldn't help but feel sympathetic for him. She noticed a suitcase that stood by his feet, but she made no comment about it. He looked so lost and miserable in this rain.
"She must be a special woman," she suddenly said without knowing it, but she smiled when he looked up at her again. "To have someone out here in a storm like this waiting for her."
He gazed at her like he was hypnotized, but Kaoru felt better when a smile spread across his lips.
"Yes, she is someone very special." He spoke.
"I'm sure she's at work or something," Kaoru assured him. "In the meantime, it won't be—EEEEEK!!!!"
She screamed when a clap of thunder ripped through the steady rainfall. Kaoru involuntarily dropped the bags full of two weeks' worth of groceries and clapped her hands on her ears. The white-haired man watched in amusement, but noticed the look of dismay on the girl's face when she had seen the bags sprawled on the sidewalk.
"Sano's right. I AM a klutz," she admitted despondently and began to gather the groceries. The stranger was kind enough to help her, and was politely carrying a few bags in his own hands.
"Thanks!" Kaoru beamed at him. "Anyway, if you want you can wait in my apartment. You'll drown out here if the rain keeps coming down like this."
A bit drawn to her kindness for others and tempted by a dry room, the white-haired man agreed. He waited patiently with the grocery bags as Kaoru searched for her key and opened the door to the building. With the stranger following her, they climbed the seemingly endless flight of stairs to the third floor. Kaoru unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped in, the man behind her following suit.
"Let me get those," she said and took the bags away from him. "Go ahead and sit on the couch. You can just leave your suitcase at the door."
She hurried away with her groceries and into the kitchen, salvaging anything that wasn't soaked by the rain. Luckily, everything was relatively dry, and to her joy the box of green tea was saved. Setting water to boil in the kettle on the stove, she quickly left the kitchen to find a towel for her guest. After searching the linen closet she brought a cotton towel with her into the kitchen and turned off the stove. She brewed the tea and poured it into two mugs and returned to the living room.
Just as she left him, the man was sitting on the comfort of her couch. She set the two mugs onto the coffee table and handed him the towel. Kaoru saw that he had removed his shades, his turquoise eyes more vivid than ever.
"Thank you," he generously replied, and took it from her. He rubbed his hair with it, the cotton softness absorbing the wetness that clung to the white strands.
"You don't look like you're from around here," Kaoru said, remembering the suitcase.
"I'm from Kyoto."
"Really? I have relatives there. Perhaps you know them...?"
She doubted that he had heard her at all by the distant look on his face. He might be somewhat drier, but Kaoru could tell that he wasn't at comfort.
'Poor guy. He must be worried about that lady.'
"So, tell me about her," Kaoru said, his gaze shifting onto her once more. "About this woman. When did you meet her?"
She felt that if she had talked about anything else, her guest would still be in his brooding state. The woman he was waiting for must've been the only thing on his mind, so Kaoru hoped that by talking about her he would be less tense.
"We met in Kyoto when we were children," he replied, the concern in his face softening.
"Did you come here to visit her?" Kaoru asked after taking a sip of her tea.
"No. I came to Tokyo to find her."
"...to find her?"
The man slung the towel around his broad shoulders and nodded. "Yes. I haven't seen her since she had left Kyoto when I was ten years old. After she went, I began looking up any information I could find about her."
He took the warm mug into his hands, and his cold skin savored the emanating heat. "My search brought me here to Tokyo. I finally was able to get her address, but when I came to this place..."
He stopped there, feeling that the girl would come to the conclusion without him having to tell her.
She was so different. Normally, he didn't talk openly with people he happened to meet on the streets, but there was something about this girl that made him feel comfortable, that made him actually WANT to talk.
But she probably thought that he was an idiot. It wasn't common for people to find their childhood sweethearts after fourteen years of not seeing or even communicating with each other. What he was doing was unusually idealistic for him, but the girl probably saw him as a lovesick fool nonetheless.
"That's amazing."
His head shot up at her words, feeling her gaze on him as she spoke.
"I mean, to come to a city you're not familiar with to look for someone that you haven't seen since childhood...that really is amazing."
Her eyes...he hadn't realized it before, but the crystal blue pools of her eyes were so achingly familiar.
"She's lucky to have someone that cares about her so much," the girl then smiled. "I'm sure that she'll be happy once she sees you again."
His heart stuttered upon seeing that beautiful smile. It warmed him as if he were wrapped completely in sunlight. There was only one person who he knew with a smile like that and blue eyes like hers...
His stare fixated on the silver ring that dangled from the chain around her neck. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it before.
"That ring..."
"Excuse me?"
"Where did you get that ring?"
Undisturbed by the sudden change in topics, Kaoru held the small trinket in her fingers. "Oh, this? A boy I knew made it and gave it to me when I was little. My friends think it's worthless, but I still like wearing it—"
Her eyes widened when she felt a pair of muscular arms wrapping around her in a suffocating embrace. She felt the man's cheek against hers, his face buried in the raven depths of her hair.
"I was so blind," he whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion. "I should have known it was you all along."
Kaoru ignored the blush that was rising in her cheeks, but she was too stunned to move away. "W-what?"
He didn't seem to notice her state of shock and tightened his hold on her. "I've found you. I've finally found you, Kaoru-chan..."
She thought that she hadn't heard right. No one has called her that for so long, not even Sano or her cousin.
What he said next nearly sent her mind reeling into oblivion.
"Now, I can marry you."
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
DUN, DUN, DUN!!! Oh, I'm evil aren't I? Aside from that, I hoped you all enjoyed reading this chapter. It was fun to write, but wait 'til you read the next chapters ^_^
I can't believe how many reviews I got for the first chapter...I'm still in awe. All I can say is thanks to all of you guys! You seriously do not know how much your support helps me. So, a million times thanks you. You guys are great ^_^
Onto the next chapter!
Chapter Two: What the Rain Brings
Her footsteps were soft and unhurried, a change from the usual, hasty way she walked. When she had reached the final step, her hand pushed the cold surface of the door and her vision was immediately flooded with the crimson light of the rising sun. Shielding her eyes, she stepped onto the roof and into the morning light. Long raven hair cascaded all the way down her back, the wind combing through it delicately. Milky white skin shuddered slightly from the cool air, as vibrant blue eyes watched while the light of dawn slowly seeped into the metropolis before them.
Kamiya Kaoru drew in a deep breath, and slowly exhaled. The air was heavy with the promise of rain. Perhaps it would be a smart thing to move her flowers inside. She spent too much time taking care of them to let them drown in rainwater or be blown off the roof by the high winds.
She set out to work and walked over to one of the clay pots. A large bush was emerging from the rich soil, blossoms sleeping among the green leaves that sprouted from the branches. Kaoru smiled and she gently held one of the blossoms between two of her slender fingers. They would bloom into beautiful pink peonies when the morning would pass. For some reason, Kaoru had a special liking to these particular flowers. Looking at them brought a sense of peace in her heart that she rarely had the time to experience.
"JOU-CHAN, WHERE'S THE MILK?!?"
The tranquility of the morning shattered upon the sound of the cranky voice, Kaoru sighed and took the clay pot into her hands.
The day had officially begun.
* * * *
"Good morning, class," Kaoru greeted, setting aside her lesson plan on her table.
A string of incoherent grumbles was her answer.
"Well it's nice to see you all too," she retorted dryly.
Even if they were all just teenagers, Kaoru's students looked more like corpses that had just risen from their graves and entered into the world of the living.
"If you would all please take out last night's homework and pass it up."
The students shuffled through their bags and knapsacks to find the assignment that was to be done for today. Some of Kaoru's better students only had to take a few seconds to find theirs, whereas some of her other ones were frantically looking through their bags, praying that they had done it.
After a few more minutes, Kaoru collected the assignments, finished and unfinished, and put them in a stack on her desk. "Please take out your textbooks."
More rummaging and more mumbles as Kaoru surveyed the class. Looking at each solemn and exhausted face made her want the final bell to ring sooner. She spotted the clock at her wall, and mentally cursed when the hands read twenty minutes after eight.
Suddenly, snickering was heard from the far corner of the room, bringing Kaoru's attention. Two of her male students were looking over the shoulders of one other one, the latter holding up a textbook. The perverse looks and smirks of the three boys caused her to quirk an eyebrow in suspicion.
She had never seen three adolescent males look THAT entertained from reading literature.
"Oh man, where'd you find this?" one of the boys asked, wiping the drool that was forming at the left corner of his mouth.
"My brother's room," the middle one declared proudly declared. "He keeps a collection in a box under his bed."
"Awesome!" the boy on his other side beamed. "Hey, can we see the rest after school?"
The middle boy grinned. "Of course, just come over my house—"
All three teenagers leapt as a meter stick slammed itself onto the middle of the textbook. They looked on helplessly as their teacher glared down at the smut-filled magazine that she had pinned under the meter stick clutched in her right hand. Her lips were drawn downward in a disapproving scowl, and her anger couldn't hide the look of disgust on her youthful face.
"Perhaps one of you can tell me since when did classic Japanese haikus include pictures of nude women and condom advertisements?" She asked in a voice that was eerily calm.
The boys could only answer in petrified squeaks while their literature teacher glowered dangerously at them.
"Detention for two hours. I expect to see all three of you right after school. If one of you happens to be missing," she shot each of them a threatening glare. "I WILL find you."
Three heads nodded furiously in unison, and they sunk pathetically into their seats. The rest of the class watched their brazen teacher walk to the front of the room. She placed the meter stick onto her desk, and when she had turned around she had a textbook in her hand and was wearing a composed smile.
"Now then, do I have a volunteer to begin reading?"
* * * *
"Hey, Jou-chan."
Kaoru's hand stopped marking grades on test papers when her tall, lanky neighbor stood at her door, gravity-defying hair and all.
"What are you doing here?" she asked irritably. "I thought you were at work."
"I am," Sanosuke argued. "I'm on break."
Kaoru threw him a look of disbelief.
"...it's my mid-morning pre-lunch break." The brown-haired man concluded.
"Really Sano," Kaoru began, her test papers and red pen forgotten. "You seriously need some work ethic. You're not really setting a good example for your little brother—"
"Good morning, Kaoru-dono."
Kaoru stopped in the middle of her lecture when she had heard the gentle, familiar voice. A thin, red-haired man stepped into her room, a friendly smile on his attractive face.
"Kenshin..." the name passed her lips as she recovered from her shock.
"Pretty boy here flew in not too long ago," Sano said, grinning at Kaoru's blushing face. "Found me and said that he wanted to see you."
"I—" She began, but her sentence was cut short when her hand clumsily knocked over the mug of steaming hot tea from her desk and onto the floor. The mug shattered into countless pieces, and somehow, some of the tea had managed to stain her pants.
Her face was entirely red as Sano held back his laughter. A worried Kenshin approached the mess and knelt down to pick up the pieces.
"You don't have to do that!" Kaoru exclaimed, too embarrassed to do anything.
Kenshin offered her a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, Kaoru-dono. I don't mind at all."
He picked up the pieces and dropped them into the wastebasket. "Is your leg all right?"
Kaoru nodded, avoiding making eye contact with the redhead.
"I'll go look for some paper towels to clean the tea with." Kenshin politely said, and he left the room, leaving Sano and a humiliated Kaoru alone.
A few seconds passed, and a hearty laugh erupted from Sano's throat, earning a fierce glare from Kaoru.
"Jou-chan, you're a klutz!"
"Shut up, Rooster-head," Kaoru angrily snapped and she buried her face into her hands.
Since the day she had met Kenshin when she was in middle school, Kaoru always managed to make an idiot of herself in his presence. It was either a bad habit or a curse. She didn't know which one.
"Ah, cheer up already!"
"I always like such an idiot when I'm around him," she mumbled miserably from her hands.
"It's no big deal," Sano said, patting her on the back with a calloused hand. "And besides, Kenshin said he'll be staying for a week or two."
"Why should that make me happy?"
Sano chuckled. "Because now you'll have more time to lay some of that girlish charm of yours on him."
Kaoru lifted her face from her hands and blinked.
"Y'know, use those feminine wiles that you women take so much pride in."
She stared at Sano like he was talking in a different language.
"C'mon, Jou-chan. Paint the town red? Wine and dine with him?"
"...what?"
Sano threw up his hands. "For the love of...ask him out on a date."
Her eyes widened and pink tickled her cheeks. "No way, Sano!"
He sighed in exasperation. "You can't keep doing this, Jou-chan. I'm so sick and tired of watching you pine for that guy and doing nothing about it."
"I'm not 'pining' for anyone!" she cried, proceeding to grade papers again.
"Could've fooled me," he retorted sarcastically.
"Sano, I'm not going to ask him! Even if I did, he wouldn't want to."
"You don't know that for sure, Jou-chan."
"Yes I do, Rooster-head."
"I don't think that you don't want to ask him out because you're shy," Sano said, smirking.
Kaoru looked up at him from her papers. "What do you mean?"
He pointed to her neck. Curious, her fingers reached for the ring that hung on the end of the thin silver chain that she wore.
"...do you mean this?"
"Not the ring itself. The person that gave it to you."
Kaoru scoffed, her fingers still clasping the ring. "Sano, that's ridiculous."
"Then why have you been wearing that thing since you were eight?"
"Because I like it," Kaoru argued.
"Jou-chan...it's a piece of metal."
"That someone made for me!" she protested.
"Don't lie," Sano continued with an evil grin on his face. "Aoshi told me about your little trip in Kyoto."
She stared at him crossly, but was quiet.
"You still have a crush on that kid you met."
"Shut up, already!" she cried. "I don't have a crush on anybody!"
"Why are your cheeks red, Jou-chan? It looks like you're blushing."
"Quit it, Sano! Like you said, I was just eight years old!"
"Don't be so serious," he said, deciding that he already teased her enough for one day. "I'm just kidding."
She stuck out her tongue and went back to grading papers.
"Oh, that's very mature." Sano said, taking a seat in one of the empty chairs in the front.
* * * *
"Stupid Rooster-head," Kaoru muttered out loud to herself after putting a daikon radish into her shopping cart. "Doesn't know what he's talking about."
She was still irritated from the little argument she had with her neighbor before Kenshin was kind enough to step in with some paper towels. Whenever her romance life was brought up, Sano always found a perfect opportunity to bring up her little adventure in Kyoto. When her older cousin Aoshi had brought her back to Tokyo, he explained everything to her father, who then told Sano after he returned from searching for Kaoru. Even though the name of the woman who had watched her for two weeks had evaded her memory, Kaoru did remember that she was very kind and ladylike.
Kaoru also remembered a tangled mass of dark hair and a pair of mischievous eyes. They had belonged to the boy who had made her the ring.
Her fingers unconsciously wrapped around the small piece of jewelry that hung around her neck. Although she had forgotten why she was given the ring, she couldn't bring herself to throw it away. One of the reasons that she had kept it was because it was a gift. Kaoru was sure that she would've been upset if someone had discarded a present that she had handcrafted herself for them.
Also, there was something about the ring that made her wear it on a silver chain when it had gotten too little for her ring finger and keep it for fourteen years. The scent of peonies and plum blossoms, the sound of a comforting voice, and memories of a hand guiding her were what she had thought about whenever she held the ring in her hands. All those things brought her a serenity that she had grown attached to. Her days were hectic as they were with her students and unexpected surprises; it was nice to have some semblance of peace, even if it came in the form of a ring she received when she was a little girl.
Snapping out of her thoughts, she reached out for a carton of milk and placed it into her cart. Sano and Yahiko had a habit of using her milk for their cereal when theirs had been sitting in their fridge a few months after its expiration date.
She wandered into another aisle and she caught sight of a box of green tea. She immediately snatched it off the shelf and strolled on over to one of the cashiers. After a day of teaching half-awake students, being teased by Sanosuke, and staying after school for two hours more to watch three perverted adolescent males wash the windows and desks in her classroom, Kaoru thought that a nice cup of tea was in order when she finally went home.
After she had purchased her groceries, Kaoru carried the bags in her hands, but stopped at the automatic doors when she had looked outside.
Kaoru thought that there would be a slight drizzle, but a downpour awaited her outside.
Kaoru couldn't very well drive home because her ancient scrap of metal, otherwise known as a car, was in the shop getting fixed. Sano was actually working around this time, and Kenshin had disappeared around town somewhere.
And the day that she knew it was going to rain, she had forgotten to bring an umbrella before she went to work.
Oh, the irony of it all.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped forward and the doors instantly parted for her.
Kaoru felt that a warm bath would be best before drinking that cup of tea.
* * * *
His index finger pressed the button again, but he was still standing out in the rain.
"Come on," he growled, pressing the button over and over again, hoping to hear a voice over the intercom.
But nothing. There was no such voice, no annoying buzz that indicated that he could enter the building. Only the splatter of raindrops on the streets.
This was what he had feared the most.
Fatigued, he left the locked doors and settled himself on a nearby bench. The rain was relentless, pouring onto him in torrents. He was getting soaked, but he didn't care. He was numb to it all.
He tried to reassure himself that he had written the address wrong. But a part of him was nagging that he was too careful to do that. He had memorized that address to the point that he had known each numerical digit and letter by heart. Perhaps the taxi driver made a mistake and dropped him at the wrong place.
Or perhaps the address itself was wrong.
He gritted his teeth, and his hands tugged at his white hair in frustration. It seemed so hopeless. Not only was he lost in a city he wasn't familiar with and practically submerged in the downpour, but the one person he wanted to see wasn't even there.
"Where are you?" he asked, not caring that no one would answer him. He was then silent as the streetlights flickered on and off in the rain like dying flames.
* * * *
"Mou! Why did I have to forget my umbrella?" Kaoru chided herself, hurrying across the wet pavement before her groceries would be ruined.
Finally, she could see her apartment through the heavy curtains of rain. Her steps a bit lighter, she resisted the urge to run and risk the chance of slipping on the slippery sidewalk.
But then, a shock of white hair caught her attention. In the faint light of the malfunctioning street lamp in front of her apartment, she saw the slouching form of a man on a bench.
"Is that an old man?" she asked herself and wasted no time rushing to the person's side.
"Hey!" she addressed the man, fearing that something was wrong with him. "Are you okay?"
He looked up, revealing a pair of brilliant turquoise eyes settled behind a pair of dark shades and a handsome face that showed no signs of aging.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were an old man!" she blurted out, still in shock of how young the man appeared to be.
To her surprise, the man just looked at her with an expression that she could only describe as utter despair.
'He looks so sad,' she thought. The man then looked away from her, his eyes seeking the wet streets in front of him.
The raindrops slid down his skin and dripped from the tips of his hair. Kaoru worried that he was going to catch a cold if he stayed out here any longer.
"Why are you out here in the rain?" she asked him.
He was silent for a moment, but then he spoke in a barren voice. "I wanted to see someone, but she isn't here."
"Oh..."
The man said nothing more, and Kaoru couldn't help but feel sympathetic for him. She noticed a suitcase that stood by his feet, but she made no comment about it. He looked so lost and miserable in this rain.
"She must be a special woman," she suddenly said without knowing it, but she smiled when he looked up at her again. "To have someone out here in a storm like this waiting for her."
He gazed at her like he was hypnotized, but Kaoru felt better when a smile spread across his lips.
"Yes, she is someone very special." He spoke.
"I'm sure she's at work or something," Kaoru assured him. "In the meantime, it won't be—EEEEEK!!!!"
She screamed when a clap of thunder ripped through the steady rainfall. Kaoru involuntarily dropped the bags full of two weeks' worth of groceries and clapped her hands on her ears. The white-haired man watched in amusement, but noticed the look of dismay on the girl's face when she had seen the bags sprawled on the sidewalk.
"Sano's right. I AM a klutz," she admitted despondently and began to gather the groceries. The stranger was kind enough to help her, and was politely carrying a few bags in his own hands.
"Thanks!" Kaoru beamed at him. "Anyway, if you want you can wait in my apartment. You'll drown out here if the rain keeps coming down like this."
A bit drawn to her kindness for others and tempted by a dry room, the white-haired man agreed. He waited patiently with the grocery bags as Kaoru searched for her key and opened the door to the building. With the stranger following her, they climbed the seemingly endless flight of stairs to the third floor. Kaoru unlocked the door to her apartment and stepped in, the man behind her following suit.
"Let me get those," she said and took the bags away from him. "Go ahead and sit on the couch. You can just leave your suitcase at the door."
She hurried away with her groceries and into the kitchen, salvaging anything that wasn't soaked by the rain. Luckily, everything was relatively dry, and to her joy the box of green tea was saved. Setting water to boil in the kettle on the stove, she quickly left the kitchen to find a towel for her guest. After searching the linen closet she brought a cotton towel with her into the kitchen and turned off the stove. She brewed the tea and poured it into two mugs and returned to the living room.
Just as she left him, the man was sitting on the comfort of her couch. She set the two mugs onto the coffee table and handed him the towel. Kaoru saw that he had removed his shades, his turquoise eyes more vivid than ever.
"Thank you," he generously replied, and took it from her. He rubbed his hair with it, the cotton softness absorbing the wetness that clung to the white strands.
"You don't look like you're from around here," Kaoru said, remembering the suitcase.
"I'm from Kyoto."
"Really? I have relatives there. Perhaps you know them...?"
She doubted that he had heard her at all by the distant look on his face. He might be somewhat drier, but Kaoru could tell that he wasn't at comfort.
'Poor guy. He must be worried about that lady.'
"So, tell me about her," Kaoru said, his gaze shifting onto her once more. "About this woman. When did you meet her?"
She felt that if she had talked about anything else, her guest would still be in his brooding state. The woman he was waiting for must've been the only thing on his mind, so Kaoru hoped that by talking about her he would be less tense.
"We met in Kyoto when we were children," he replied, the concern in his face softening.
"Did you come here to visit her?" Kaoru asked after taking a sip of her tea.
"No. I came to Tokyo to find her."
"...to find her?"
The man slung the towel around his broad shoulders and nodded. "Yes. I haven't seen her since she had left Kyoto when I was ten years old. After she went, I began looking up any information I could find about her."
He took the warm mug into his hands, and his cold skin savored the emanating heat. "My search brought me here to Tokyo. I finally was able to get her address, but when I came to this place..."
He stopped there, feeling that the girl would come to the conclusion without him having to tell her.
She was so different. Normally, he didn't talk openly with people he happened to meet on the streets, but there was something about this girl that made him feel comfortable, that made him actually WANT to talk.
But she probably thought that he was an idiot. It wasn't common for people to find their childhood sweethearts after fourteen years of not seeing or even communicating with each other. What he was doing was unusually idealistic for him, but the girl probably saw him as a lovesick fool nonetheless.
"That's amazing."
His head shot up at her words, feeling her gaze on him as she spoke.
"I mean, to come to a city you're not familiar with to look for someone that you haven't seen since childhood...that really is amazing."
Her eyes...he hadn't realized it before, but the crystal blue pools of her eyes were so achingly familiar.
"She's lucky to have someone that cares about her so much," the girl then smiled. "I'm sure that she'll be happy once she sees you again."
His heart stuttered upon seeing that beautiful smile. It warmed him as if he were wrapped completely in sunlight. There was only one person who he knew with a smile like that and blue eyes like hers...
His stare fixated on the silver ring that dangled from the chain around her neck. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it before.
"That ring..."
"Excuse me?"
"Where did you get that ring?"
Undisturbed by the sudden change in topics, Kaoru held the small trinket in her fingers. "Oh, this? A boy I knew made it and gave it to me when I was little. My friends think it's worthless, but I still like wearing it—"
Her eyes widened when she felt a pair of muscular arms wrapping around her in a suffocating embrace. She felt the man's cheek against hers, his face buried in the raven depths of her hair.
"I was so blind," he whispered, his voice hoarse with emotion. "I should have known it was you all along."
Kaoru ignored the blush that was rising in her cheeks, but she was too stunned to move away. "W-what?"
He didn't seem to notice her state of shock and tightened his hold on her. "I've found you. I've finally found you, Kaoru-chan..."
She thought that she hadn't heard right. No one has called her that for so long, not even Sano or her cousin.
What he said next nearly sent her mind reeling into oblivion.
"Now, I can marry you."
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
DUN, DUN, DUN!!! Oh, I'm evil aren't I? Aside from that, I hoped you all enjoyed reading this chapter. It was fun to write, but wait 'til you read the next chapters ^_^
I can't believe how many reviews I got for the first chapter...I'm still in awe. All I can say is thanks to all of you guys! You seriously do not know how much your support helps me. So, a million times thanks you. You guys are great ^_^
Onto the next chapter!