Warning: This fic is not all fluff and no action.
Please enjoy.
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Chapter Three
"Michi! I found a job!" Nobuhiko swept his daughter up in his arms and gave her a huge bear hug.
"Really!" Michi ecstatically hugged her father back. "Oh, tell me all about it!"
"I send in an application to all the property firms in the newspapers, but none of them accepted me. So," Nobuhiko paused as if to emphasize something, "I decided to take the risk and try something totally out of my league. After all," he grinned, "I did attain a degree in Hawaii."
"So what exactly are you doing?"
"I," Nobuhiko paused again for effect, "am going to be a teacher."
Michi was dumbstruck. A teacher?
She started to giggle. And the giggle became a laugh. The laugh evolved into a tummy-aching, floor-rolling thing that Nobuhiko was very puzzled with.
"Otou-san," Michi gasped, "you? A teacher? Oh, save me!"
"What's wrong with it?" Nobuhiko sniffed. "And it's English teacher, mind you."
Michi wiped away the tears from her eyes and pointed to all the photos on the walls. "Tou-san… You were the Surfer Prince in Hawaii, and when you came back to Japan so many women clamored to be your mistress, and when Kaa-san passed away so many women wanted to be my step-mother, and when you attended parent-teacher conferences in my high school all my female teachers and female classmates either searched school records for our home phone number or asked me to give them my home phone number. Basically, you don't look the teaching type. Teachers are supposed to look goofy and wear glasses, not tinted contacts. At least, most of my teachers look like that."
Nobuhiko put his hands on his hips in most chastisement of his daughter. "Now, that's a bad generalization, even though it's a flattering one. I am going to be an English teacher at West Akabane, and no one is going to stop me."
"West Akabane?" Michi voiced. "That's Yanagi's high school."
"Who's Yanagi?"
"A colleague at the kindergarten."
"Oh, the one you feel a special connection to?"
"Yeah. Oh well. Congratulations, Tou-san!" Michi leaped into her father's arms again. "I knew things would get better!"
x
"How's your dad, Michi?" Yanagi asked the next day at work, as the children were taking their nap.
Michi filled in the colors for Yanagi's comic and informed her friend excitedly, "He's got a job teaching English at your school! Starting tomorrow."
"Really? That's great!"
"Yes, but it's only temporary. I think it's until the end of the term."
"Oh…" Yanagi tried to think why. "I think it's because one of our teachers is on maternity leave."
Michi raised her eyebrows. "So my dad is going to teach you?"
Yanagi shook her head. "Nope, but I believe he will be teaching a senpai of mine."
x
"DID YOU SEE HIM!"
"He's sooooo handsome…"
"I saw Miss Sugita asking him for his phone number!"
"I wonder if he's married."
"He must be, he looks over forty."
"But still he's cute!"
"HE'S TEACHING US RIGHT!"
Tokiya sighed inwardly at the girls' conversation. They were most probably talking about their new English teacher, whom he didn't even know the name of and hadn't even seen.
But when he did see him…
"Aa!" Nobuhiko was startled when he saw Tokiya in his class.
Tokiya just bowed rather awkwardly.
"Young man, what is your name?" Nobuhiko asked in a manner that Tokiya could only classify under 'fatherly'.
"Mikagami Tokiya, sir," Tokiya replied.
"Ah, I see," Nobuhiko winked. He went up to the board and wrote his name.
"My name is Saitou Nobuhiko," he turned to face the class, and waited till the chatter died down. "I graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa," he paused, before smiling and greeting, "Aloha."
The class burst into an excessive amount of chatter, made of mostly girlish squeals.
"I majored in Real Estate," he had to raise his voice to be heard, and the noise died down again. "I lived in Hawaii for six years before coming back to Japan. I have a daughter-"
Of course, the noise came back again and cries of disappointment tried to be covered.
"-who is about the same age as all of you, and she looks very much like my late wife. You can say my daughter looks like a gaijin," Nobuhiko smiled. "Mikagami-kun has seen my daughter before. She's very beautiful, yes?" he directed to the young man.
Tokiya had to nod his head. What else could he do?
Immediately, a few pro-Tokiyas in the room vowed to murder Nobuhiko's daughter within the next few months.
x
1583, Autumn
"Aaaaa… I think you have lost, Nii-chan," Kaoru laughed and placed his chess piece in the checkmate position.
Kurei sighed and looked up at the sky. "Aa, it's going to rain."
"Did you keep the clothes!" Kaoru ran out of the house, looked at the clothesline and screamed, "YOU ALWAYS FORGET TO KEEP THE CLOTHES!"
Laughing, Kurei ran down the wooden steps and quickly gathered the clothes into the house. Kaoru sighed and sat down on the floor.
"You know, Nii-chan, you have to be more responsible!"
"Okay, okay…" Kurei set the clothes down on the mat and started to sort them into his and Kaoru's clothing.
"We don't have anyone to look after us anymore, you know?"
"Yes, I know…" the older man stared at a yellow vest and debated with himself whose exactly was it. Kaoru had grown rather tall.
"Wisen up!"
"Yes, Kaoru…" Kurei murmured. Deciding that the vest belonged to Kaoru, he put it neatly aside in the 'Kaoru' pile.
"You don't want that crazy Kouga ninja to hinder us do you?"
"No, I most certainly don't…" was Kurei's reply.
"But seriously," Kaoru's tone dropped low, "that woman looks a huge lot like Mikagami-niichan."
x
Ganko banged her way into Fuuko's room.
It was hard to believe that Fuuko was once a fighter, the epitome of alertness, the speed-of-light Hokage member.
It was hard to believe because despite the ruckus that Ganko was making (at this point of time Ganko was bawling her head off, waking half the neighbors in the building they were living in), Fuuko was still fast asleep.
And snoring.
"Fuuko… Wake up…" Ganko sniffled once she had cried enough. She prodded Fuuko's cheek with her index finger and when that didn't hurt, she poked Fuuko's eyelid. Hard.
"WHAT THE FU- fungus… Oh. It's you," Fuuko started, rubbing her stinging eye. "What's up…" Fuuko's brow furrowed as she saw the streaks of tears staining Ganko's features.
"I had a bad dream about Kaoru," Ganko started to sob. "I dream he was eaten by frogs."
"Hush," Fuuko tried hard not to sweatdrop and wrapped her arms round Ganko, moving her hands up and down Ganko's arms.
"We all miss them," Fuuko softly rocked Ganko. "I miss them too."
Ganko murmured the words 'Mama' as she soon fell into slumber. Fuuko smiled before gently laying her down and tucking her in. Fuuko fell back onto the pillow, waiting for sleep to overcome her.
…She was very alert. Sleep seemed like a distant option.
Sighing, she reached for her cell phone and flipped it open, wanting to play a boring cell phone game that could lull her to sleep.
ONE NEW MESSAGE
Who would it be? Fuuko wondered, pressing the 'OK' button. And there it was –
RAIHA 23:50
Sorry to disturb you. Are you awake? I have good news. So excited that I can't sleep. First person I wanted to share with was you.
Fuuko glanced at the digital clock beside her bed. It read 01:17.
Trying her luck, she replied the message.
I was woken up by Ganko. She dreamt Kaoru was eaten by frogs. What's the matter?
She hit the 'OK' button again and tried to visualize the message being broken up into several invisible pieces before flying out the room into the night air and then reaching Raiha's cellphone.
She didn't have to wait long.
RAIHA 01:20
I got a job at a better-paying dojo. This means a lot for our future……
Fuuko's heart thumped against her chest, like those daiko drums she saw during the last Spring Festival. With him.
The truth was, Fuuko and Raiha had a I-will-never-come-clean relationship. It was weird. They both knew what they wanted, they both knew what their heart's desire was, and yet… It just seemed that Raiha was so afraid to voice anything out explicitly.
It puzzled Fuuko to no end most of the time. She had tried to reason out why. Was it because he had an ex that she knew? Was it because being timid was just his nature? Was it because he wasn't sure whether Fuuko was what he wanted?
Fuuko lay back onto the pillow, beside Ganko, who was breathing rhythmically, sound asleep. The older girl clicked the phone shut and placed it silently on the bedside drawer.
x
Raiha had the hunch that Fuuko would not reply his previous message. He knew that he should not have told her that when he could not speak to her about their relationship in real life.
Raiha was scared, he didn't try to deny that to himself. He remembered when he had tried to hurt Fuuko with Raijin, in his stupid belief that Fuujin and Raijin were destined to have a showdown.
Okay, maybe it really was destiny that brought Fuuko and Raiha together, like the madougu they used to wield. But it wasn't a romantic destiny nor a positive one.
Raiha flipped around to the other side, his head resting on a cooler side of the pillow.
There was more guilt than anything involved, he was aware of that. He could not tell Fuuko how much he loved her because he knew how much hurt he had caused her before, how much hurt he could bear to inflict on her even though he knew that he loved her right from the very beginning. He was afraid of himself. What would he grow to become if he ever got together with Fuuko? Would he cause her hurt without any tinge of guilt if he deemed anything else more important than she was?
A year ago, it was the destiny of Raijin and Fuujin that was more important, which not only caused Fuuko much physical hurt, but Raiha too. His hand was in such a bad shape after he used Raijin that the doctor deemed him handicapped. Thankfully, Yanagi approached him and convinced him to let her heal him.
But now, even if there wasn't anything to stop him from loving Fuuko wholeheartedly, he was still skeptical about the future.
The external LCD screen lit up as Raiha pressed a button on the side. It showed the time - 1:30 AM. It also showed that there were no new messages.
Raiha felt that he could not sleep that night, but at that moment, it wasn't because he was very, very happy.
x
Michi and her father were settled in an apartment rather near the one they had been hoping for, and her father had taken very much to one of his students – the very same person that informed them nicely about the unit that had been taken.
It was rather comical, the way her father spoke about this Mikagami guy, as if he was his bosom buddy and not a student who was young enough to be his son.
"Michi," Nobuhiko brought up one evening after the news, "would you like to know Mikagami-kun? He is a very very nice boy."
Michi heard alarms going off in her head and declined politely. "I am perfectly fine without you setting me up, Tou-san."
"Aww Michi, give it a try. I promised him that I would bring you to school one day -"
"Sorry Tou-san, no can do. I am not a show-and-tell specimen."
Nobuhiko sighed. That tone meant that she really wasn't interested at all.
"Your loss, Michi!" Nobuhiko could not help hollering towards the kitchen, where Michi was washing the dishes. When there came no reply, he quipped, "I GIVE HIM FREE TUITION!"
Still no reply.
At least he tried.
x
It's been a long time, Michi-neesan.
"Yanagi, do you feel as if we're being watched?" Michi asked Yanagi one afternoon as they were getting ready to bring the children out to the park.
"No, not at all," Yanagi replied cheerfully, helping Ryou to put on his cap.
"Hmm."
"Well, are we ready to go?"
"YES!" cheered the kids, and momentarily, Michi forgot about the uneasiness of being watched.
x
A long time ago
There were three sisters
You
Her
Me
We were as close as the eyelashes under a maiden's brow
Until blood flowed down on one of our hands
Blood that had no purpose to be shed
And the bond was broken
Assumed never to be mended
But now
It seems that
We have to face the past
In this future that has given us so many surprises
It seems that
We have to meet once more.
xxxx
madlightning thanks for being reviewer number one. Now, if only you could spread the good news about this fic to others…. ((evil grin while brandishing a knife)) okay, kidding. Hope you liked this chapter as well. More of the plot unraveled in the next chapter which is UNFORTUNATELY IMCOMPLETE! See you around!