Not What You See
A/N: Wowie! Now that I've got three-four-five-six page chapters, I'm on a roll! And I've decided that I will make a sequel to this! The story's not done yet, but it'll have a sequel any way! And I gave myself nightmares thinking of this sequel, so be warned now.
DISCLAIMER: I own only whom I own.
Chapter 6: New Family, New House, New Life
February 12, 2003
"Oy! Max! That's my box!"
"Whaddaya mean, your box! This is my box!"
"Look inside it, moron! It has my stuff in it! And my name on it!"
"Then where's my box??"
"I
don't know! With all due luck, Starr has it!"
This little conversation was quite common between Rei and Max at the moment. With the addition of three new, and hopefully the last three, foster children: 15-year-old Leif Kinomita, his 4-year-old sister Starr and 15-month-old brother Jesse; the move to the new house for the Toshiros proved to be a challenge. Moving the belongings of two adults, four 15-year-olds, a 13-year-old, an 8-year-old, a 5-year-old, a 4-year-old and 15-month-old, along with the baby supplies, which now had to be accommodating for twins; is not the easiest task to do.
"Hey, Kai, have you seen my box with all my books in it?" Saadii called, hauling another box with her belongings down to her bedroom in the basement.
Kai shook his head, heading upstairs to the second story and kicking open the door where he and Rei had to be sharing a room. He spotted the bed by the window seat and immediately claimed that one. He dropped the box on the bed that the movers had kindly placed there already.
"Hey, I wanted that bed!" Rei whined, entering the room with a boxload of stuff.
"You snooze, you lose." Kai said serenely, leaving the room.
"Rei! You have my box!" Max yelled from across the hall.
It seemed like the boxes would never end. Well, when you have to move eleven people and two semi-formed people across the city, it would add to quite a number of boxes.
By the time dinner came around, with the… help… of the movers, who had no clue whatsoever which rooms were whose and who was who; the boxes had all been put into random rooms.
Kirk laughed weakly as the pizza guy showed up. Of course he showed up just as Leif and Kai's similar personalities rubbed each other the wrong way again and Saadii was trying to break up the argument before it got physical, Rei and Max were involved in another stupid argument, the younger kids were whining about hunger, and Regine had long since gone to go take a nap. "Thanks."
"Yeah." The pizza guy said, handing him the pizza and leaving rather quickly. Once the door had been shut, Kirk admonished,
"Kai, Leif, break it up. Rei, Max, grow up. The rest of you, quiet down, the pizza's here." The room fell silent and Kirk gestured to the table. Still sullenly, the kids sat down.
Kirk cringed when he saw the time. "All right, anybody under the age of ten, it's bedtime."
"But Daddy!" Marina and Griff whined as one. Starr whined her agreement. Jesse was still too young to whine, thank goodness. Relentless, Kirk ushered them all upstairs, then five seconds later:
"Somebody tell me what idiot put Saadii's books in Griff and Jesse's bedroom!"
"My books!" Saadii yelped, dashing upstairs. "You found them!"
"And any guy over the age of fifteen come tell me why the entirety of their clothes are in the girls' bedroom!"
"That would be mine!" Leif called.
"They might be mine!" Kai called.
"Then get up here and tell whose they are!"
Looking surprised at the irritability, Kai and Leif went upstairs, then another five seconds later: "REI! THESE ARE YOUR CLOTHES!"
"Really?" Rei muttered. "Then whose do I have?"
Nobody save Saadii had the right clothes at any given time. Somehow, Rei and Kai had managed to retain their rightful shoes, and Max and Leif their respective junk, and the nursery had all of its components.
Once it all had been figured out and switched around, they thought they were home free until Leif discovered Kai's sketch pads and pencils in the midst of his shoes. Cursing, Kai reclaimed his treasures and pronounced them unharmed.
Then Max found Rei's martial arts trophies in his clothes, Kai found Marina's Precious Moments figurines in his clothes, Rei found Kirk's folders and files and colour cards and other designer/decorator stuff; in among his shoes. Like Kai had done not so much long ago, Kirk came tearing into the room swearing, and retrieved them, and after examining them, pronounced only one file harmed to any great extent.
They finally got most of it sorted out at about midnight. Sighing, they returned to their rooms then groaned when they realized they still hadn't found the bedsheets.
"No sheets," Rei moaned. "No…"
"Won't kill you to sleep just on a mattress for a night," Kai yawned, stretching out on his own.
"Want… sheets…" Rei grumbled sleepily, even as he fell asleep on the mattress.
The next morning
"Wake up wake up wake up! Gogogogogogo!" Regine groaned, opening doors in a flurry. "We all overslept! Marina, Griff, come on, your bus comes in fifteen minutes! Boys, get up! You have to leave for the bus in half an hour!"
"HALF AN HOUR?!" Rei yelped, bolting off his bed. "Don't give us much notice, do you?? I claim shower!" he yelled as Saadii emerged, still trying to dry her hair but dressed.
"Five minutes, Rei!" Leif yelled. "The rest of us have to shower too, y'know!"
Kai wandered out now, still blinking sleep out of his eyes. "Overslept? That's a first." He commented.
Max meandered out of his and Leif's room with a bleary look in his eyes. "S'it morning yet?" he mumbled.
"Hurry up, you guys, Kirk will drive you to school."
"We make it!" Rei groaned in gratefulness as they all tumbled out from the van. "Just in time!"
"I have a spare first block." Saadii said wistfully. "I could've slept for a little longer."
The bell went off and they all scattered in their respective directions.
Kai slipped into his art class silently and just as Mrs. Sankarat was explaining the new assignment. "Take a seat, Kai. Try not to make this a habit. Ms. Keilin, you would do well to remember that as well."
Mariah flushed bright red at the admonishment and averted her eyes from Kai. "Stupid teacher's pet." She muttered. "Why'd you have to come back?"
"Ms. Keilin!" Mrs. Sankarat snapped. "Enough talking during the explanation or you'll be doing time in Mr. Suranoki's gym class."
Mariah shut up, but only after glaring at one of the other students snickering.
"Rei, I don't know how you can live with that glory-snatching brat!" Mariah hissed as she plunked herself down at the table at lunch.
Rei looked up from his Geography homework with a look of confusion in his eyes. "What are you talking about, Mariah?" he queried, before growling incoherently at his homework. "Do I care what type of rain falls in September in Timbuktu? Li, what kind of rain falls in September in Timbuktu?"
"That Kai kid!" Mariah growled, viciously tearing the peel off her tangerine.
"What about Kai?" Rei asked distractedly, skipping the Timbuktu question and scribbling the average rainfall in Wakkanai in December.
"How can you live in the same house as that obnoxious punk?" Mariah asked.
"Very easily." Rei answered. "There's so many people in my house that we all get lost in there any way. Besides, he's not much of a talking person so you don't notice he's there half the time. Saadii, on the other hand, talks enough for the both of them." He emphasized certain words, clearly mocking Mariah.
"Oooh, I pity you, Rei." Mariah muttered, ignoring the gibe. "That kid is so insufferable."
"Why are you calling him kid?" Li asked. "How do you know that he's not older than you?"
"It's very hard to be older than somebody born on January 1." Mariah answered delicately.
"Good point," Kevin admitted.
"Exactly." Mariah said serenely, leaving the topic at hand to gaze starry-eyed at Darrell Sanasuko, who had recovered from his little tiff from Kai five months ago and was now the hero of the school. He and Kai had an unspoken agreement: if he stayed away from Kai, Kai would stay away from him, and the teachers were only too happy to indulge that agreement.
"Ugh," Gary muttered, watching her. "Sanasuko must've gotten a really good bang on the head from Kai. Thinks he's some kind of big shot now. Teachers caught him trying to beat up on one of the middle-schoolers this morning during their recess. Obviously charmed his way out of suspension, but he's gotta be on probation now."
"Don't say that!" Mariah cried, whirling back around to glare at him. "Darrell would never do something like that!"
"Mariah, how well do you really know that guy?" Li asked blandly. "He was always a bit psycho, even before Kai beat him up. Which I thought was really hilarious."
"Go get a life, Li!" Mariah snapped. "Just because you didn't have the guts or skill to take on Kai, don't start shifting your flaws onto Darrell."
"Excuse me?!" Li yelled, jaw dropping. Kevin and Gary both flinched; that was a really bad insult, one they had never heard Mariah tell Li before, in the all the two years they'd known them.
"You heard me!" Mariah snapped right back. The two started bickering loudly, voices getting lost in the cacophony of noise in the cafeteria.
"REI!" Mariah and Li both yelled. Rei looked up, startled, from his nearly-completed Geo.
"What?" he asked peevishly.
"Tell Li he's being an insensitive jerk."
"Tell Mariah she's being a stupid puppy dog that's gonna get kicked."
"Li, you're being an insensitive jerk. Mariah, you're being a stupid puppy dog that's gonna get kicked. Now why are we trying to make Rei fail Geo?"
"Rei's gonna fail Geo any way." Li teased.
"If you guys keep bugging me like this, of course I will." Rei snapped. "Now what is going on here?"
"They're arguing over who's got the right view of what Darrell Sanasuko is." Kevin told him.
"Not the Sanasuko thing again." Rei groaned. "Guys, you've been going at this argument for, what, four years now?"
"Five," Mariah said absently.
"Ugh." Rei groaned in defeat. "Why me?"
"Now who's right?" Li asked.
"Rei agrees with me." Mariah said stubbornly. "Right, Rei?"
"Rei's got more sense than that." Li shot back. "Right, Rei?"
"I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that I may be biased, living with a person whom Sanasuko's being going after for a couple of years, a person who had to literally give himself a restraining order against him and a person who thinks he's scum." Rei mumbled.
"Good call, Rei." Gary said, as Mariah and Li both stalked away, fuming.
"Think we should go do damage control?" Kevin asked.
"Nah." Rei advised. "Trust me. I've known them since we were 6 years old. They'll have made up by 3 o'clock. You'll see. Now, Kevin, you have Geo, right? Why in the world is it crucial for us to know what type of rain falls in September in Timbuktu?"
That afternoon, Rei caught Saadii by the arm as she went past his locker. "Saadii, remind Kirk that I have martial arts after school."
"Oh, sure," Saadii answered cheerfully, waving him off.
"Don't forget again!" Rei yelled down the hall after her. "I can't even tell how get to the new place yet! I don't want to be stranded for hours!"
"Don't forget that our tournament trip is the first two weeks of May, guys," Jonathan Maori, the instructor, said as his five advanced level students prepared to leave.
"The first two weeks?" Rei asked, stopping dead in his tracks. "I thought it was the last two weeks."
"No." Jonathan said. "That's the beginner and intermediate levels. And they're only one week each."
"Oh." Rei said. "'Cause I told Kirk and Regine it was the last two weeks, which was why it was okay."
"Why?" Jonathan asked suspiciously. "If your sister's trying to get you out to China in the middle of the year again, I'm going to scream. She did that last tournament, which, may I remind you, wound up with you missing it."
Rei thought for a moment. "Yeah, she should be starting again sometime soon. But Regine's due sometime in the first two weeks of May."
"Oh." Jonathan said. "This might be a problem, right?"
"Yeah." Rei admitted. "I'll let Kirk know."
"Call me if you won't be going." Jonathan ordered. "Which I'm hoping isn't the case."
"It's the first two weeks of May?" Kirk groaned as Rei hopped into the van. "You told me it was the last two weeks of May."
"I got it mixed up." Rei mumbled. There was a slight laugh from the backseat and Rei turned to glare at Kai.
"What?" Kai asked. "It's funny."
"Don't they teach you any respect for other people's not-good memory in shrink offices?"
"Nope. They don't talk if I don't talk." Kai answered, arms crossed. "Don't know why Sankarat thought it was really necessary for psychological intervention. Just because my childhood portrait was full of blood and violence, no reason for them to order me to see a shrink. It's her fault for assigning it any way."
"Not like it's doing any good." Kirk muttered. "I swear you must say and do nothing during these sessions."
"Not a word, not a thing." Kai supplied, sounding clearly bored with the subject at hand. "I don't know why you bother."
"Because the government says I have to, otherwise you get carted off to the adolescent recovery and rehabilitation centre in the middle of Nowheresville." Kirk answered, missing the turn onto the new house's street. "Oops."
"Go left on the next street," Kai said. "It's a cul-de-sac, it'll go straight back to the house."
"How do you know this?" Rei asked him.
"Used to live on this street." Kai answered. "Think it was the middle of Grade 8. Yeah, half of December and all of January."
"Which poor unfortunate souls were they?"
"Oh, that was the Canadian family. That was a fun family. I did whatever I wanted and they never did a single thing about it. I just got the usual lecture about having to account for my actions on Judgment Day and I couldn't hide my sins, because God knew exactly what I was doing."
"Uh-huh." Kirk muttered. "Funny you can remember exactly which home that was."
"Home number 7 in Tokyo, number 18 overall." Kai answered. "I was only in state home for five days before I went there. And then I spent two months in state home after they left. And I was there for my birthday."
"So your birthday's sometime in late December or any of January." Kirk deduced, always remembering that Nagasaki refused to give them any of Kai or Saadii's files. Kai had never actually told them when their birthday was. Or any of that other general information. "Why don't I just ask Saadii this stuff?" he wondered aloud.
"Because Saadii doesn't know it either." Kai said. "I'm the only person who knows our birthday."
"Betcha Blanche knows."
"Nope." Kai said. "Nobody kept a calendar in our family. The only hint for birthdates was on birth certificates, of which I was the only one to ever find them. You go ahead and ask her. She doesn't even know her own birthday, let alone kids number 5 and 6."
"Saadii, you must know your birthday!" Regine groaned in frustration as Saadii paced around the kitchen, during the process of filling out parent/guardian permission forms for a choir trip.
"I'm telling you, I don't have a clue!" Saadii affirmed.
"You had to use some date for school records!"
"Right. The Hitas just didn't bother, the Anakas chose a random date."
"Which one was the home you were in before?"
"Anaka."
"What date have they been using?"
"July 16, 1987."
There was a snort from Kai as he entered. "Man, are you off."
"So what is it, then?" Saadii challenged. "Betcha you don't know either."
"Actually I do know it." Kai said. "And I have the documents to prove it. All seven birth certificates."
"How did you get those?" Saadii asked incredulously.
"Easily enough, they're covered in charcoal marks since Kurasu was going to use them for kindling."
"Well, what's the date, then?" Regine asked in exasperation.
"December 25, 1987." Kai answered.
"That's Christmas." Max called from the living room.
"No, duh, Sherlock!" Kai called back sarcastically.
"Nobody's birthday is on Christmas." Max countered.
"Wanna bet?"
"Yeah, dishes for the next two months and all the spending money we each currently have."
"Fine with me. Kiss your money goodbye." Kai said as he went back upstairs. He came down with two pretty grimy-looking papers.
"These are in pretty grubby state," Regine commented, smoothing out one and frowning at the dark marks on her palm.
"What do you expect, they were sitting in the bottom of a charcoal bin for more than fifteen years." Kai answered.
"Oh, good, Saadii, we can fill out your middle name." Regine said, scribbling it down.
"What is it?" Saadii asked blankly, leaning over Regine's shoulder. "Wow. What a weird, weird name. Hey, look at that, Kai, we match."
"Yeah. Now if your name was Kaadii, then we'd really match."
"Or if your name was Sai."
"Regine?" Max called. "Did I win?"
"No, you lost dear. It really is Christmas Day."
"Eat my victorious dust." Kai muttered.
"Too bad for you, Kai. I have no money."
"Liar," Rei's voice accused as he and Kirk came in. "I happen to know you have at least fifty bucks."
"Rei! I nearly had him!"
"No, you didn't." Kai called back. "I knew that too."
"Nuts."
That night, Regine had a bout of insomnia and wandered around the house aimlessly, checking in on all her not-so-little brood.
Griff and Jesse were both asleep like rocks. Griff was half hanging over the side of his bed, all the blankets kicked off. Laughing silently, Regine gently lifted him back up onto the bed and covered him up again. She straightened out the blankets in Jesse's crib.
Marina and Starr were pretty deep in sleep as well. The two girls were more still sleepers than any of the boys, so Regine just closed the door again.
Max and Leif looked as if they had fallen asleep over homework. Regine tugged the chemistry textbook out from underneath Leif's face and placed it on the desk by his bed, moving the pencils and paper as well. Max had been in the middle of reading his novel study book, in which he was a few chapters behind. Gen's Journey got placed on the desk with a bookmark inside for later skim reading.
Usually, Regine saved Rei and Kai's room for last, since neither was usually asleep and bristled when she tried to check in on them, even at this hour. Saadii was sleeping peacefully as well, so Regine looked in on her two 'troubled' boys.
Amazingly enough, Rei had fallen asleep, Driger curled up into a purring ball of fur in the small of his back. Regine rolled her eyes and plunked the cat back down on the floor. No matter how many times she told Rei that Driger wasn't allowed to sleep on the part of the bed that didn't have the cat blanket on it, he never listened. The cat meowed loudly and stalked out of the room.
Kai was sitting slouched against the wall in the window seat, sketch pad in his lap and pencil case lying open at his feet. His head tilted forward and eyes closed, he had evidently fallen asleep while drawing. Intrigued at the discarding of the armbands on his arms, as well as the scarf around his neck, Regine drew closer and carefully removed the drawing supplies to his desk, taking a good look.
What she saw shocked her.