SAKURA TAISEN/WARS and all related characters, names and indicia are TM & © SEGA RED.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL is written by Charles Dickens, and borrowed by Ice Spectre for her own nefarious purposes.
Rated PG
Christmas Bells
Part Three: The Ghost of Christmas Present
It was two minutes until two when Yoneda's eyes flew open, apprehensively. His room was dark and empty of anything supernatural. Slowly he sat up and wondered if he had dreamed. Then a prick in the palm of his hand caused him to look down at it, and he found in it Dimitrovich's bouteneer. As if the thing might now decide to burn him, he dropped the sprigs of holly, mistletoe and tachibana to the darkness of the wooden floor in a scatter of drying leaves, blooms and berries.
Then the darkness into which the souvenir had fallen brightened in a red-orange light. The light grew and the source became evident as the clock struck two. It came from the living room fireplace, the one which had cooled to cinders by the time Yoneda had fled to bed from Kazume Shinguji's apparition. Passing shadows broke the light under the door, and a soft and good-natured chuckle emanated from the living room.
"Come, Yoneda!" called a resonating voice that seemed to come from within a great hall, but did not pass the confines of Yoneda's apartment. Yoneda tried to pull the covers over his head, but the fire leaped and brightened, and the voice insisted, laughing heartily from the living room.
Yoneda crossed his bedroom in dread and anticipation. His slippers scuffed the floor and he paused to shiver at one last lingering breath of cold from near the window Maria's father had taken him through only an hour earlier. The door before him was warm, in contrast, and he opened it. Then he stared in wonder.
The living room was alight with dozens and dozens of candles set upon every flat surface. The walls were hung with banners in painted kanji, all proclaiming the tenets of honour, charity, kindness, trust, truth… And before the fireplace, barefooted and dressed in a full martial arts gi tied with a black belt, stood a bald and middle-aged man with a face creased from years of smiling.
"You…" Yoneda breathed.
"Kirishima-Sensei!" the man bowed deeply, introducing himself and confirming Yoneda's suspicions. The ghost of Kanna's father, killed in a brawl of rivalry in Okinawa, not quite seven years ago. Kanna had only just barely joined the Hanagumi when she left to avenge his death, vowing to return, and holding to her promise.
…holding to her promise… upon her honour.
Yoneda smiled despite himself, and returned the bow. Kirishima laughed and came to Yoneda, clapping him on the back and pouring two cups of sake for them. The living room was warm and comfortable, and the light of the many candles chased the shadows from every corner of the room. Yoneda was suffused with a feeling of comfort and content. "You have not seen the likes of me before, I think!" Kirishima chuckled and hoisted his cup to Yoneda.
Yoneda drank with him and set the cup down again. "No… not if you are to be compared at all to the ghost of the past…"
In a distinctly 'sensei'-like voice, Kirishima responded. "The past is only cold and frightening to those who ignore it and choose to learn nothing from it, Yoneda-san."
Yoneda seemed to drink this wisdom and well, and nodded sombrely. "What disturbs your poor spirit from its well-earned rest with your ancestors, Kirishima-Sensei?"
It seemed to please Kirishima to be called 'teacher' by Yoneda, as if it were the precisely right way to regard their meeting. "I have come to show you what value there is in the moment of now – this very instant – the present time. The present is something we are all so very good at wasting in our tireless attempts not to waste it."
This confused Yoneda for a moment, but only for a moment, and then he understood the "stop and smell the roses" sentiment behind it.
Yoneda found himself very strangely comfortable with this spirit, and so he did not shy from him quite so long as he did from Maria's father. "If you have something to show me, Sensei, let us go, and I will attempt to learn from it."
Kirishima was again pleased by this response and he smiled, held out his arms presentingly. "Take hold of my sleeve." Yoneda complied, closing his eyes this time in preparation for being instantly elsewhere.
When he opened his eyes again, he was indeed elsewhere – in Sumire's room in the Imperial Opera Theatre. It was late and Yoneda felt suddenly uncomfortable at their very inappropriate location. But Sumire was not sleeping, nor was her room dark. Remembering that this was the present time, Yoneda cringed.
"Is she real?" he whispered to Kirishima.
"She is real. But she cannot see us. We are the shadows, now."
The stack of gifts in Sumire's room was far from unusual, she received gifts from her adoring audience very often. And though all these gifts had her name on them, they were not for her. They were from her, for those she loved most dearly. And they were not finished being wrapped.
Sumire's art was exacting. Each package's paper was without wrinkle. Each ribbon curled to perfection, and each ribbon also had one fresh flower tied into the bow on top, in some colour and shape which coordinated with the paper's pattern and colour. Each card was inked in meticulous calligraphy and sprinkled with gold dust before the ink was dry.
Yoneda's jaw dropped in surprise. "I thought the department stores did all that wrapping and decorating for her…"
Kirishima grinned and shook his head. "They asked her, but she said she would prefer to do it herself. She does this every year, and scarcely sleeps at all on the night before Christmas."
In a flash, they were in the dormitory hall, where Kanna was softly closing Iris' bedroom door. Kohran stood in the hall beside her, her pockets filled with hand tools and her nose smudged with gear grease.
"Is she asleep?" Kohran whispered, and Kanna nodded.
"She was pretty upset about the song, but I explained how busy the boss is, and we'll sing for him again tomorrow on the actual holiday. AND, she has NO idea about the gift… how is it coming?"
Yoneda looked, confused, to Kirishima, as if to ask for a clue, but Kirishima's smile only broadened mischeviously, his eyes did not leave his daughter.
Kohran drew the back of her sleeve across her forehead and adjusted her glasses on her nose. "Well, getting it small and light enough has been harder than I thought, but I think she can manage."
"Will it fit in this?" Kanna held up a teddy-bear-sized backpack.
"Yep!" Kohran grinned proudly, folding her arms. Kanna laughed in triumph and thumped Kohran on the back, making the smaller engineer stumble forward a step.
"I didn't know they were working on a gift for Jean-Paul," Yoneda said, softly. "It MUST be that robotic repair kit, Iris was talking about it months ago, but then she seems to have forgotten…"
"Her friends did not forget," Kirishima smiled. In a slow gesture, he lifted his arms straight out at his sides, then clapped his hands together. Upon the sound of his hands, they were in the theatre itself, backstage. Maria stood there, still awake and still dressed, wearing her red shirt and black pants, her Enfield holstered under her arm, and a flashlight in her hand.
Ohgami was on his hands and knees before her. "A little to the right," he instructed her, and Maria moved the beam of the flashlight right. Ohgami stretched his arms under the rows of sandbags hanging on ropes and with a groan of strain, sat back, triumphant, with a dusty manila envelope clutched in one fist. Maria's lips quirked in a crooked smile. "Got it!" Ohgami told her. "Whew…" then a dizziness overcame him and he sat down hard on the backstage floor.
Maria knelt before him, directing the beam of light away from his face. "You are exhausted, Taicho," she said. "Let me finish this. You go to bed."
"No, no! I want to help. Besides, have you EVER seen this much money in one place that wasn't meant for someone else?" Ohgami opened the envelope of their savings to ruffle the bills. Maria smirked in response to the question. Then Ohgami blushed. "Oh. Heh. Of course you have."
"Technically, I have only seen that many American bills…"
"All right, have you ever seen so much money that wasn't blood money in th—" Ohgami blanched at the absolutely blood-freezing deathly glare Maria was dealing him. "I… omigosh, I didn't mean that. Maria, I'm sorry."
"Because is Christmas," Maria seethed. Then, after a pause, she whapped him lightly over the head anyway. "Does anyone have any hint? Or all still no idea?"
Ohgami pouted and ineffectually ran his fingers through is disarrayed hair, then responded to the question. "They all still think we're just going to walk downtown and look around at the lights. How many carriages did you hire?"
"Two."
Ohgami pursed his lips in thought. "Is it too late to add a third?"
"Da," Maria sat down across from him and wrapped her arms around her bent knees. "Too late. Besides, no money left for three. And can fit four in one carriage, five in other. Put Iris, Kohran, Yuri, Tsubaki, Sumire in one, rest of us in other – they are the smallest."
"Good. And lunch on the ice rink?"
"Tables for eleven reserved right next to ice – General Yoneda and Kaede will meet us there at 1:00."
"Did you ask General Yoneda if he wants to come? He was… really busy in the office today…" Ohgami cringed to think of Yoneda breaking away from the daunting task of coming up with money, in order to go and spend money extravagantly at a restaurant.
Maria shook her head and pursed her lips. "Just Lieutenant Commander, and she will bring General Yoneda, she said."
"Better her than me," Ohgami chuckled.
Maria, in usual Marialike fashion, did not comment.
In a blink, Kirishima and Yoneda were in the lobby of the theatre, where whispers and a soft light emanated from the box office.
"Good grief," Yoneda sighed, "Doesn't ANYONE sleep in this place?"
"Not on Christmas Eve," Kirishima beamed and clapped Yoneda on the back, in a striking imitation of his daughter's gesture earlier.
Kasumi, Tsubaki and Yuri sat in a small circle of chairs in the main office of the theatre, whispering over an envelope.
"We should wake him up and tell him now, " Yuri smiled, almost giddy with anticipation.
"No, no! Wait until the curtain goes down, he'll be in a good mood then…" Kasumi reasoned.
"That's if no one messes up their lines!" Tsubaki's eyes were round and wide.
Kasumi lifted the envelope addressed to the Imperial Opera Theatre. "I've never seen a donation this large. Do you think he'd mind doing the production they request considering the size of the contribution?"
Yuri laughed. "I don't think he'd mind at all! I can't believe the letter isn't signed… and there is no return address!"
Tsubaki remained wide-eyed with amazement. "What if we have our own personal phantom of the Opera?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Tsubaki," Kasumi scowled at the freckle-faced girl. "There are no such things as ghosts."
Kirishima caught Yoneda by the arm as he tried to creep closer to the envelope Kasumi was holding. "Peeking is not allowed. You asked if anyone sleeps, one does!"
And Kirishima pulled Yoneda by the arm, turning him around… and they were in a different room.
The green room in the Imperial Theatre was no more 'green' than it was in just about any theatre anywhere. It is what theatres call their reception room for patrons wanting to visit with the actors before or after the show. And the green room of the Imperial Theatre was huge, and carpeted in deep burgundy with walls of a gold-yellow paint.
In the corner stood a tall evergreen tree topped with a star. It was decorated beautifully with ornaments mimicking musical instruments, scrolls of music paper, and strings of popcorn and cranberries. To the tree topper was ties several long ribbons which cascaded down the tree as if it were a maypole, in colours which did not seem to match the season – black, white, pink, purple, yellow, red, green, blue, fuschia… Yoneda grinned as he knew in an instant that there was a ribbon colour for each of the Hanagumi.
And on the sofa beside the tree lay Sakura, fast asleep. She was on her side on the deep red velvet chaise. Her kimono skirt spilled over the edge to the floor, her arm hung over the edge as well, and under her hand on the floor lay a roll of white ribbon – Ohgami's colour. She must have dropped it in her sleep.
Her hair was splayed across the cushion of the couch, laying in swaths over her face as well. Yoneda smiled as something akin to fatherly affection seemed to bloom inside his heart. He did, after all, swear to Kazume to care for his daughter as if she were his own. Yoneda stepped closer to brush the hair from the girl's face, but could not touch her.
Instead, he turned to look at the room. It was hung with gold and burgundy ribbons from the center chandelier to all corners of the room. The bottom of the tree was full already with gifts, and Sumire had not even brought hers down yet. Sakura's were all wrapped in the colours of the girl for whom the gift was intended. But they were not separated out, they were all mixed together – and Yoneda realized how much fun Iris would have sorting out the gifts for everyone, as tended to be her practice.
Three more chairs had been brought into the room to accommodate everyone who would be here in the morning. On the far table lay a stack of small books, leather covers in the colours of each girl, and then a few additional colours that Yoneda presumed would be for Kaede, Kasumi, Tsubaki, Yuri and himself. They were small photo albums, gifts from Kohran.
Candles had been set up all around the room, and a book of matches set on the end table so they could be lit in the morning. A silver tea service sat on the coffee table with everything prepared except the hot water.
"Sakura did all this?" Yoneda gestured to the decorated room and turned to Kirishima.
"Most of it, yes."
"That's a lot of work…"
"She did not think so," Kirishima smiled. "To her, it was tremendous fun."
"But she was up so late, and it took her so long, and she is exhausted…"
"Much of that was trying to keep Iris from running away again. Sakura spent two hours with Iris, convincing her to stay, and then only gave the task over to Kanna so she could finish decorating in here." Kirishima's voice was scolding.
Yoneda flinched. "Running away again? Oh, no… Kirishima, tell me, Iris gets over this… this… need to run off all the time… doesn't she?"
Kirishima's voice lowered and he turned to the chair set for Iris. "I forsee an empty space at the table in the commissary on Christmas Day, and a teddy bear with no owner. If things remain unchanged, none of my kind will find her here again."
"No, that cannot be! Say that Iris will be all right! Say she will stay!"
"Why? At least she will never bother you with French songs in the middle of your busy day again."
Yoneda covered his eyes with his hands in regret. And when he took his hands away, Kirishima was gone.
"Kirishima?"
The clock in the hall struck three.