Chapter 9
Issei lay sprawled across Sakura's bed on his stomach, facing the low footboard. His legs were bent at the knees, sock feet kicking idly to the beat of the music on her radio, as he attempted to absorb himself in his math textbook. They had a test in three days, and he needed to be ready for it. If he wanted to get a full scholarship, even to a mid-level school, he needed to have absolutely top grades as well as scoring in the highest percentage on the entrance exams. Both required extensive studying.
At the vanity Sakura was trying out several new cosmetics she'd bought yesterday after school. She was singing along to the radio, and although she had a good enough voice that he wasn't complaining, it was distracting. He kept finding himself watching her instead of reading the textbook. Well, it was his own fault for trying to study in here, anyway. Still, he made no move to get up off the bed.
"I don't know how you can spend such long periods of time studying," Sakura said, glancing at him in the mirror. He looked down at the book hastily, fighting a blush at being caught looking. "My brain would explode. And yes, I am aware that you've been watching me and not studying," she added impishly, making him groan and bury his face in his arms, "but I've seen you study for hours at a time before."
"You are planning to go to college, I know that," Issei remarked. "How do you plan to do it if you don't study?" Giving up on the text, he shut the book and sat up, crossing his legs and leaning towards her idly.
She shrugged, turning back to her mirror and applying another layer of powder. It made absolutely no difference that Issei could see, but she frowned and reached for a tissue, scrubbing it off. "I study, just not nearly as much as you do," she protested. "My grades are good enough to get me in, and my parents are paying my tuition and expenses. I don't need any more than that."
He shook his head and smiled, though the expression was slightly brittle. "Well, I'm not getting a free ride, remember? I have to study so I can get a scholarship."
She dropped the tissue and turned to catch his hands. "Gods, that was tactless of me, wasn't it? I'm sorry." She kissed him in apology. It still felt a little odd to both of them to be able to do this so openly, but they'd been officially 'dating' for almost two weeks now. They were still hiding it from her parents, lest they think twice about allowing Issei to live with her, but in private they weren't shy about showing affection.
It was almost always Sakura who initiated the touches, though, out of simple necessity. When he thought of it Issei would sometimes take her hand or hug her, but he rarely started anything more intimate than that. He needed to have something to react to before he started, and that meant Sakura had to be the aggressor most of the time.
She hadn't made any indication that the role bothered her; she certainly had the more naturally aggressive personality of the two of them. He was afraid his lack of initiative might come to worry her eventually, though. Every night, lying alone in his bed, he prayed to Sarjareem to let his feelings towards her change so that he didn't have to rely on her emotions any more.
When she pulled away, she smiled and laughed. "Oops. You've got lipstick on, now." He blushed and raised a hand to his lips, and she laughed again. Tilting her head, she pulled his hand away and studied him. "It looks pretty good on you, actually. It's too bad you aren't a girl, you'd be an awfully pretty one."
"It certainly would have solved more problems than it caused," Issei agreed with a sigh. "I could have loved Jinpachi without being disowned for it, and you wouldn't have been stuck being in love with me."
"What on earth gives you that idea?" Sakura asked him, frowning. "Shusuran loved Enju, didn't she? What makes you think I'd feel any different if you were female in this life?"
"I... but... I thought you were straight?" Issei said in surprise. She smacked him on the knee.
"Mostly. I only express interest in guys, it's just easier that way. But I like women, too," she admitted. "So why were you watching me, anyway? I wasn't even thinking about you, so I know you weren't picking anything up."
He flushed again, embarrassed that he was so transparent. "What, I'm not allowed to look at you just because I want to?" She just looked back at him, and he rolled his eyes. "Actually, I was trying to follow what you were doing. It all looks so complicated to me, and half of it doesn't seem to do anything."
"What, the makeup?" she asked in surprise, and he nodded. "You still haven't remembered anything that Enju knew about it?"
He shook his head. "No, not really. Bits and pieces, but not in such a way that I can put them together to make sense." He smiled. "I'm sure Enju was an artist with it. She was a very feminine woman."
"She was indeed," Sakura murmured, grinning at him. "If she'd been more of a tomboy like Shusuran, you probably wouldn't have had nearly as much trouble in this life as a male."
"I'll trade you," he promptly offered, which made her laugh.
"Not on your life," she replied, shaking her head. "I like being a girl, which is why I chose to come back as one. I could've taken your route and asked to be a boy so I could have a chance of getting you in this life," she pointed out. "Wouldn't that be a mess? All three of us in the triangle being male?"
"Triangle? You oversimplify the situation," Issei said dryly. "Shusuran loved Enju, who loved Gyokuran, who loved Alice, who loved Shion. Who loved her back, at least. Though we can't forget to throw Shukaido into the mix. Poor Hiragi... it must have been like watching a soap opera."
Sakura chuckled, and swung back towards the mirror. Looking at him in the reflection, she asked, "Well, do you want me to show you some things? Or is makeup too girly for your sensibilities, despite your own admitted fascination?"
"Depends on whether you try to put it on me or not," he answered, sliding forward so his feet were on the floor and he was perched on the side of the bed closest to the vanity.
"I can't show you properly if I don't," she informed him, picking up one of the tubes of flesh-coloured cream. "You interested, or not? If not, I suggest you flee the room before I pin you down and experiment on you anyway," she added dryly.
He laughed. "All right, all right. It's not like anyone but you is going to see me." Inwardly he had to admit he was more than curious. The part of him that was still a feminine soul trapped in a male body sometimes yearned to be allowed to express itself more openly, but he almost never gave it free rein. He was too afraid of Enju taking over his life.
Sitting back and letting Sakura have her way with him - metaphorically speaking, at least for the moment - was in many ways a sort of guilty release for him. He wasn't giving in to his urges so much as letting her do what she wanted with him; putting a bit too fine a point on it, perhaps, but the rationalization let him relax and lower his guard a little.
She fussed over him for a good thirty minutes, and while she was admittedly going slow so he could see and understand what she was doing, it still took far too long in his opinion. He said as much, and Sakura laughed.
"If you just want to slap some colour on your face to draw attention, then sure, you can do it in ten minutes," she said, carefully applying eyeliner to him. "I usually spend at least this long getting ready for school in the mornings, and I work much faster on myself than I have been on you. If I get really fancy, it can take as long as an hour."
After a few more minutes she stepped back and surveyed him, an odd look on her face. "What?" he demanded, blushing. "I suppose I look like a total idiot."
"Actually, I was just thinking that not only would most girls kill to have your eyelashes, they'd kill to have your complexion, too," she said, but he could tell that wasn't what she'd been thinking at all. He fidgeted nervously with the bedspread, swallowing hard. This had been a bad idea after all.
Finally she shook her head and stepped away, giving him a clear view of himself in the mirror for the first time since she'd started. Almost afraid to look, Issei glanced over, and his eyes widened.
She was right; he couldn't tell he was wearing anything, not really. But just as the eyeliner had been invisible, yet made his eyes look more dramatic, so the rest of the makeup enhanced his other features the same way. He stared, floored. He looked... almost...
"Y'know, with longer hair and the right clothes to hide your frame, you really could pass for a girl," Sakura said, coming up beside him and putting a hand on his shoulder. He could see her in the mirror as well, watching him with that odd expression still on her face. "And everything you're wearing is coloured for my skin tones, not yours. I'd almost pay to see what you'd look like with it done properly. You'd be gorgeous."
He tore his eyes away from his reflection, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. At that moment he was very glad that she had no traces of empathy; she couldn't possibly know how upset her words made him, or why. Standing abruptly, he picked up his textbook, avoiding her eyes. "I should wash it off before your parents come home," he said, latching onto the first excuse to leave that came to mind. "And then I really do need to study."
She gave him an odd look; her parents weren't due home for a few more hours, at least. She didn't push the issue, however; while she wasn't an empath, she was good at reading him, and must have sensed how fragile he was feeling at the moment. She picked up a jar from her table, one of the few she hadn't used on him, and handed it to him. "Use this to wash it off, normal soap won't work as well. Just follow the directions on the jar," she told him.
He nodded his thanks and escaped the room, heading straight across the hall to his own room and shutting the door firmly behind him. It didn't have a lock, but he knew she wouldn't bother him until he came out on his own. Sakura could be pushy, but she generally knew when to leave well enough alone.
He dropped the book and jar onto his desk and collapsed onto his futon. Putting his back to the corner, he pulled his knees up and hugged them to him, curling up tight as if the defensive posture could protect him from the pain in his own heart.
From that position, if he'd looked up, he could have seen himself in the full-length mirror on the wall, but he kept his eyes locked firmly on his feet. He wasn't even sure exactly what had sent him bolting from the room like that; something about her words and the way he'd looked in that mirror had made him panic.
No, not panic, exactly. Sorting through the complicated knots of emotion in his own mind, Issei slowly unwound the puzzle. It wasn't panic, but pain and a sharp sense of... loss? Could that be right? What had he lost, though?
Perhaps it really was nothing more than the loss of the ability for his soul to express itself properly. Enju had been a very feminine woman, the kind who always wore skirts, had long hair and was never seen without makeup. There was a part of him that yearned for those sorts of 'pretty' things, and always had. As a child he'd gotten into trouble for letting his sister use him as a human doll. As a youth he'd been constantly teased and bullied for being a 'pretty boy', and the only reason the bullying had stopped when he was a teenager was because he'd learned to defend himself.
It had been a mistake to let Sakura fuss over him. His constant struggle to define himself as Issei and not as Enju was as much a struggle against the feminine side of him as anything else. Seeing himself in the mirror when she was done with him, the first thing that had struck him was the dichotomy; with the makeup on his face had looked even more feminine than usual, and it had jarred with his male haircut and body.
But the thing that had struck him as 'wrong' in the picture wasn't the feminine appearance of his face, it had been the rest of it. Then having Sakura comment about his ability to pass as a girl...
Once more he cursed Enju's idiocy in asking Sarjareem to allow her to reincarnate as a male. She'd caused far too many problems with that one simple request, and she hadn't solved any of the problems she'd had to start with.
If only he could go back and undo that mistake somehow. He sighed, and slowly uncurled from his tight defensive posture. There was no point in wishing for the impossible. He'd made the mistake, and now he had to live with it. He'd know better for his future lives. But that didn't make it hurt any less in this one.
Standing, he made his way to the mirror, and stared into it. He'd managed to keep himself from crying, so the makeup Sakura had put on him was still in place. He tried to imagine himself with longer hair, and it was actually quite easy to picture. He would look much more like a girl than a boy if he grew his hair out.
He stared at his reflection, and Enju stared back from his eyes. Cursing, he turned away again. He was only tormenting himself, wishing for the stars when he couldn't even have the moon.
Issei lay sprawled across Sakura's bed on his stomach, facing the low footboard. His legs were bent at the knees, sock feet kicking idly to the beat of the music on her radio, as he attempted to absorb himself in his math textbook. They had a test in three days, and he needed to be ready for it. If he wanted to get a full scholarship, even to a mid-level school, he needed to have absolutely top grades as well as scoring in the highest percentage on the entrance exams. Both required extensive studying.
At the vanity Sakura was trying out several new cosmetics she'd bought yesterday after school. She was singing along to the radio, and although she had a good enough voice that he wasn't complaining, it was distracting. He kept finding himself watching her instead of reading the textbook. Well, it was his own fault for trying to study in here, anyway. Still, he made no move to get up off the bed.
"I don't know how you can spend such long periods of time studying," Sakura said, glancing at him in the mirror. He looked down at the book hastily, fighting a blush at being caught looking. "My brain would explode. And yes, I am aware that you've been watching me and not studying," she added impishly, making him groan and bury his face in his arms, "but I've seen you study for hours at a time before."
"You are planning to go to college, I know that," Issei remarked. "How do you plan to do it if you don't study?" Giving up on the text, he shut the book and sat up, crossing his legs and leaning towards her idly.
She shrugged, turning back to her mirror and applying another layer of powder. It made absolutely no difference that Issei could see, but she frowned and reached for a tissue, scrubbing it off. "I study, just not nearly as much as you do," she protested. "My grades are good enough to get me in, and my parents are paying my tuition and expenses. I don't need any more than that."
He shook his head and smiled, though the expression was slightly brittle. "Well, I'm not getting a free ride, remember? I have to study so I can get a scholarship."
She dropped the tissue and turned to catch his hands. "Gods, that was tactless of me, wasn't it? I'm sorry." She kissed him in apology. It still felt a little odd to both of them to be able to do this so openly, but they'd been officially 'dating' for almost two weeks now. They were still hiding it from her parents, lest they think twice about allowing Issei to live with her, but in private they weren't shy about showing affection.
It was almost always Sakura who initiated the touches, though, out of simple necessity. When he thought of it Issei would sometimes take her hand or hug her, but he rarely started anything more intimate than that. He needed to have something to react to before he started, and that meant Sakura had to be the aggressor most of the time.
She hadn't made any indication that the role bothered her; she certainly had the more naturally aggressive personality of the two of them. He was afraid his lack of initiative might come to worry her eventually, though. Every night, lying alone in his bed, he prayed to Sarjareem to let his feelings towards her change so that he didn't have to rely on her emotions any more.
When she pulled away, she smiled and laughed. "Oops. You've got lipstick on, now." He blushed and raised a hand to his lips, and she laughed again. Tilting her head, she pulled his hand away and studied him. "It looks pretty good on you, actually. It's too bad you aren't a girl, you'd be an awfully pretty one."
"It certainly would have solved more problems than it caused," Issei agreed with a sigh. "I could have loved Jinpachi without being disowned for it, and you wouldn't have been stuck being in love with me."
"What on earth gives you that idea?" Sakura asked him, frowning. "Shusuran loved Enju, didn't she? What makes you think I'd feel any different if you were female in this life?"
"I... but... I thought you were straight?" Issei said in surprise. She smacked him on the knee.
"Mostly. I only express interest in guys, it's just easier that way. But I like women, too," she admitted. "So why were you watching me, anyway? I wasn't even thinking about you, so I know you weren't picking anything up."
He flushed again, embarrassed that he was so transparent. "What, I'm not allowed to look at you just because I want to?" She just looked back at him, and he rolled his eyes. "Actually, I was trying to follow what you were doing. It all looks so complicated to me, and half of it doesn't seem to do anything."
"What, the makeup?" she asked in surprise, and he nodded. "You still haven't remembered anything that Enju knew about it?"
He shook his head. "No, not really. Bits and pieces, but not in such a way that I can put them together to make sense." He smiled. "I'm sure Enju was an artist with it. She was a very feminine woman."
"She was indeed," Sakura murmured, grinning at him. "If she'd been more of a tomboy like Shusuran, you probably wouldn't have had nearly as much trouble in this life as a male."
"I'll trade you," he promptly offered, which made her laugh.
"Not on your life," she replied, shaking her head. "I like being a girl, which is why I chose to come back as one. I could've taken your route and asked to be a boy so I could have a chance of getting you in this life," she pointed out. "Wouldn't that be a mess? All three of us in the triangle being male?"
"Triangle? You oversimplify the situation," Issei said dryly. "Shusuran loved Enju, who loved Gyokuran, who loved Alice, who loved Shion. Who loved her back, at least. Though we can't forget to throw Shukaido into the mix. Poor Hiragi... it must have been like watching a soap opera."
Sakura chuckled, and swung back towards the mirror. Looking at him in the reflection, she asked, "Well, do you want me to show you some things? Or is makeup too girly for your sensibilities, despite your own admitted fascination?"
"Depends on whether you try to put it on me or not," he answered, sliding forward so his feet were on the floor and he was perched on the side of the bed closest to the vanity.
"I can't show you properly if I don't," she informed him, picking up one of the tubes of flesh-coloured cream. "You interested, or not? If not, I suggest you flee the room before I pin you down and experiment on you anyway," she added dryly.
He laughed. "All right, all right. It's not like anyone but you is going to see me." Inwardly he had to admit he was more than curious. The part of him that was still a feminine soul trapped in a male body sometimes yearned to be allowed to express itself more openly, but he almost never gave it free rein. He was too afraid of Enju taking over his life.
Sitting back and letting Sakura have her way with him - metaphorically speaking, at least for the moment - was in many ways a sort of guilty release for him. He wasn't giving in to his urges so much as letting her do what she wanted with him; putting a bit too fine a point on it, perhaps, but the rationalization let him relax and lower his guard a little.
She fussed over him for a good thirty minutes, and while she was admittedly going slow so he could see and understand what she was doing, it still took far too long in his opinion. He said as much, and Sakura laughed.
"If you just want to slap some colour on your face to draw attention, then sure, you can do it in ten minutes," she said, carefully applying eyeliner to him. "I usually spend at least this long getting ready for school in the mornings, and I work much faster on myself than I have been on you. If I get really fancy, it can take as long as an hour."
After a few more minutes she stepped back and surveyed him, an odd look on her face. "What?" he demanded, blushing. "I suppose I look like a total idiot."
"Actually, I was just thinking that not only would most girls kill to have your eyelashes, they'd kill to have your complexion, too," she said, but he could tell that wasn't what she'd been thinking at all. He fidgeted nervously with the bedspread, swallowing hard. This had been a bad idea after all.
Finally she shook her head and stepped away, giving him a clear view of himself in the mirror for the first time since she'd started. Almost afraid to look, Issei glanced over, and his eyes widened.
She was right; he couldn't tell he was wearing anything, not really. But just as the eyeliner had been invisible, yet made his eyes look more dramatic, so the rest of the makeup enhanced his other features the same way. He stared, floored. He looked... almost...
"Y'know, with longer hair and the right clothes to hide your frame, you really could pass for a girl," Sakura said, coming up beside him and putting a hand on his shoulder. He could see her in the mirror as well, watching him with that odd expression still on her face. "And everything you're wearing is coloured for my skin tones, not yours. I'd almost pay to see what you'd look like with it done properly. You'd be gorgeous."
He tore his eyes away from his reflection, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. At that moment he was very glad that she had no traces of empathy; she couldn't possibly know how upset her words made him, or why. Standing abruptly, he picked up his textbook, avoiding her eyes. "I should wash it off before your parents come home," he said, latching onto the first excuse to leave that came to mind. "And then I really do need to study."
She gave him an odd look; her parents weren't due home for a few more hours, at least. She didn't push the issue, however; while she wasn't an empath, she was good at reading him, and must have sensed how fragile he was feeling at the moment. She picked up a jar from her table, one of the few she hadn't used on him, and handed it to him. "Use this to wash it off, normal soap won't work as well. Just follow the directions on the jar," she told him.
He nodded his thanks and escaped the room, heading straight across the hall to his own room and shutting the door firmly behind him. It didn't have a lock, but he knew she wouldn't bother him until he came out on his own. Sakura could be pushy, but she generally knew when to leave well enough alone.
He dropped the book and jar onto his desk and collapsed onto his futon. Putting his back to the corner, he pulled his knees up and hugged them to him, curling up tight as if the defensive posture could protect him from the pain in his own heart.
From that position, if he'd looked up, he could have seen himself in the full-length mirror on the wall, but he kept his eyes locked firmly on his feet. He wasn't even sure exactly what had sent him bolting from the room like that; something about her words and the way he'd looked in that mirror had made him panic.
No, not panic, exactly. Sorting through the complicated knots of emotion in his own mind, Issei slowly unwound the puzzle. It wasn't panic, but pain and a sharp sense of... loss? Could that be right? What had he lost, though?
Perhaps it really was nothing more than the loss of the ability for his soul to express itself properly. Enju had been a very feminine woman, the kind who always wore skirts, had long hair and was never seen without makeup. There was a part of him that yearned for those sorts of 'pretty' things, and always had. As a child he'd gotten into trouble for letting his sister use him as a human doll. As a youth he'd been constantly teased and bullied for being a 'pretty boy', and the only reason the bullying had stopped when he was a teenager was because he'd learned to defend himself.
It had been a mistake to let Sakura fuss over him. His constant struggle to define himself as Issei and not as Enju was as much a struggle against the feminine side of him as anything else. Seeing himself in the mirror when she was done with him, the first thing that had struck him was the dichotomy; with the makeup on his face had looked even more feminine than usual, and it had jarred with his male haircut and body.
But the thing that had struck him as 'wrong' in the picture wasn't the feminine appearance of his face, it had been the rest of it. Then having Sakura comment about his ability to pass as a girl...
Once more he cursed Enju's idiocy in asking Sarjareem to allow her to reincarnate as a male. She'd caused far too many problems with that one simple request, and she hadn't solved any of the problems she'd had to start with.
If only he could go back and undo that mistake somehow. He sighed, and slowly uncurled from his tight defensive posture. There was no point in wishing for the impossible. He'd made the mistake, and now he had to live with it. He'd know better for his future lives. But that didn't make it hurt any less in this one.
Standing, he made his way to the mirror, and stared into it. He'd managed to keep himself from crying, so the makeup Sakura had put on him was still in place. He tried to imagine himself with longer hair, and it was actually quite easy to picture. He would look much more like a girl than a boy if he grew his hair out.
He stared at his reflection, and Enju stared back from his eyes. Cursing, he turned away again. He was only tormenting himself, wishing for the stars when he couldn't even have the moon.