Hey all! I'm updating again! And this chapter's pretty long! Yay! :cheers are heard vaguely in the distance:
Goddesskali: Heh, I think all teenagers like Seto who are stalking someone are hormonal bastards ; I'd love to hear the song about it! Glad to know you can empathize with Kiseki, that's so cool!
Kristen: Wowie, I had no idea that chapter was so creepy for you =] and it's good to know you're not insane; thanks for telling me!
Kikoken: :blushes really bad: You think my story is that good? That's wonderful, arigato gozaimasu :glomps:
EvilTortureGirls and Dragons of Life: I'm glad to know you guys are enjoying my story! Arigato for your reviews!
And onwards! For those of you who felt sorry for Kiseki in previous chapters, this one's pretty sad and deep, so just a little forewarning. Don't worry, I was sure to include at least one scene with Seto in it =].
Chapter 10- Reliving the Past
"Hey Dad… Mom… I wanted to let you know I found a place to stay. Don't worry about me; I won't be coming home for tonight… I'll call you again tomorrow…"
Kiseki slowly hung up the phone and didn't move for a short time, staring down at the hand still on the receiver. Unishiwa put a hand on her back.
"That was good, Kiseki…" he said softly. She nodded silently in response.
Unishiwa had been somewhat surprised to hear Kiseki's voice come through the buzz box a few minutes before but had just as quickly gone down to get her himself. She now sat with a towel wrapped around her shoulders, and he stood up to get her a dry shirt. She was wearing her white one and he hated keeping himself from looking at her bra, which was extremely obvious and distracting through her wet shirt. When he came back with a collared shirt from his drawer, she had not moved at all excepting the fact that her hand was now back in her lap and she was picking at her nails.
He handed her the shirt and she took it, then going into his bedroom and changing. She went into his closet and found a hanger to put her damp shirt on, then hanging it from a place on the door. When she came back out, Unishiwa was in the kitchen, rummaging around for something. She rolled up the long sleeves of the shirt and came into the tiled room, leaning slightly around him to see what he was doing. He turned around with some bowls in his hands and smiled at her.
"I thought you might be hungry, Kiseki. Do you like rice?"
She smiled. "I do; do you want any help, sensei?"
He made a shooing movement at her. "Even if I did, I wouldn't accept it. Go sit; this'll only take a little while."
Kiseki laughed and sat down at the table, attempting to adjust her skirt so that it wouldn't get the chair too damp. She was still fidgeting when Unishiwa came over with two glasses of water and sat down across from her; he smiled as she picked up her glass and began to drink, still gingerly tugging at her skirt with her other hand.
"I would give you a dry skirt to change into, Kiseki, but I don't feel like going to find my secret stash of them."
She choked slightly on her water and gulped it down, laughing even harder as she wiped away some of it from her chin. "I don't want to know what you like to do in your spare time," she said, coughing slightly to get the rest of the water out of her windpipe.
Unishiwa chuckled as well. "Though I think I have some shorts you could wear for the time being if you want."
"I don't mind my skirt being wet, unless you mind your chair getting damp from it," she said."No, not at all."
She started picking at her nails again and she looked down with a sort of saddened smile. "People were giving me odd looks today because I didn't have my uniform…"
"Well, at least you didn't forget that coffee was spilled down your shirt until halfway through one of your lessons when someone pointed it out to you," he said, starting to chuckle again. "But, I'm sure there'll be a spare you can use tomorrow, unless you feel like you can drop by your house and get your own."
She paused. "I don't think I want to go home for a while…"
"Would you mind terribly if I asked the reason of you again?"
She shook her head, still looking at her hands. "You're letting me stay here; I think I owe it to you anyway." She took a deep breath. "After you left… my mother and I had a fight over what she told you. I felt that she had been wrong in telling you something that has gotten me in trouble in the past and… she wanted to make me believe that no harm would come of it. It escalated and… well…" She raised a hand to her cheek again. It was no longer red, but she still felt exactly where the blow had landed.
Unishiwa immediately figured what had happened and put a hand on hers. "I understand why you left, Kiseki, and you are more than welcome to stay here for as long as you need to, but… I don't think you should stay here too long. The reason the answering machine picked up at your house was probably because your parents were out looking for you. Even though your mother hit you, she's regretting it now. I think you should go back sometime soon."
"I know that. Thank you, sensei."
He sat up, drawing his hand back and folding his arms on the table. "How did you being bisexual get you into trouble before? In America?"
Her eyes darted up to him, surprised at how straight forward the question was. He laughed quietly and looked away, closing his eyes. "I'm sorry… I didn't mean to sound so direct. It's just—" He turned his eyes to her again. "I've been wondering about a lot of things, and I think that that might be somehow related to it. But, if you don't feel comfortable telling me about it, I won't ask any more until you decide to tell me."
She looked behind him and nodded to the rice steamer in the kitchen. "When will that rice be done?"
"What?"
"How long will it be until that's finished?" she repeated.
He turned to look at it as well. "It should be done in about fifteen minutes or so." He turned back to her. "Why do you ask?"
She sighed. "I didn't know whether I should start or wait until it was done…" She gave a quiet laugh. "And partially as a weak attempt to change the subject, I guess."
"Do you want to tell me?"
"I feel like my chest is about to burst with how long I've been keeping it in, considering I haven't told anyone before… is that a sign that I do?"
"It could be, Kiseki."
"Whether it is or not…" She inhaled again and began, her eyes trailing back down to her hands.
"I didn't always know that I had feelings like that. I was about 13 when I realised that I liked a friend of mine more than what I had originally thought. For a while, I couldn't accept it. I told myself over and over again that it was just because Jenny and I had been friends for so long… but I couldn't drive the feeling away. For about six months I battled with it, and as soon as I began to mature, I started… I started thinking harder about what I really was feeling about her. Before I knew it, I could barely keep myself from looking at her like she was someone I was sleeping with… I couldn't handle the ideas that were flying through my head, but about halfway through my eighth grade year, I had accepted that I was bisexual.
"Once that was settled, I felt like I could start to live normally again. After all… now that I had my mind off it, I had a much easier time hiding what I felt for Jenny, as well as for other women that I felt attracted to. One day, I was in a terrible mood. I had no idea why… I just felt like punching my hand through a wall, like I wanted to kill something. The friends that I had immediately picked up on it and met with me after school to talk with me about it. After talking to them for a while… I felt much better, and they ended the conference by telling me that whenever I needed someone to talk to, they would be there to listen. I greatly appreciated it, but I never told them how I felt about Jenny. I just wasn't ready.
"By my freshman year in high school, I decided to finally tell them. But… I felt that I had to tell Jenny first, since she was the basis of the discovery about myself. I asked to meet her at her house, and of course she gladly accepted. That afternoon… I was a wreck. I was so nervous about revealing something about myself that I had never told anyone; not even my parents knew. Jenny noticed my odd attitude and sat us down at her kitchen table so that we could talk. I couldn't get the words out, and… she smiled in the way that I loved so much and held my hands, telling me again that whatever I wanted to say, she was going to listen. I felt slightly more confident, but the words still didn't come. She said to use a simple phrase at first to get my thoughts going, so I cast around in my head for something to describe the overwhelming feeling I had in my heart. I could only think of one thing, and when I looked into her eyes again, I remember thinking how beautiful she was… I said the simple little phrase that came into my head: '…I love you, Jenny…' " She spoke the words in English, but from her facial expression, Unishiwa would have known what the words were had she spoken them in any other language.
Kiseki shut her eyes and clenched her hands, a few tears running down her face. "I'll never forget the look on her face when I said that. She didn't move… I didn't move… We sat in silence for God knows how long… finally… she took her hands off mine… and walked out of the room without a word. I heard her go into her bedroom, but I couldn't hear any more after that. Instantly I regretted telling her… she had looked downright terrified… confused… shocked… I decided to leave afterward. The next day at school, she wouldn't even look at me. And after about a week, almost all of my friends had stopped speaking to me. I assumed that she had told them, and they seemed to be going through the same reaction that she had had. I felt even worse, and would often cry myself to sleep, angry that I had disrupted what was supposed to be an everlasting friendship with something so trivial. Before long, I would occasionally hear whispers or rumors about me in the halls… and that's when it happened.
"I was walking to the store to get groceries for my mom one afternoon… we lived in the city, so I was accustomed to walking alone. No one had ever bothered me before. I got the groceries and walked out of the store… that's where they confronted me. It was a group of people from my school that was involved in a street gang, and before I could react, they had dragged me behind the store, out of sight of the street. I only remember cowering against the dumpster as they started taunting me… calling me a dirty fag… a whore… disgusting little lesbian… I couldn't bear it, and when I started crying, they increased their insults… I decided to try and make a run for it, but they wouldn't let me through. As I got more and more desperate, I tried swinging one of the grocery bags into one of them to knock him out of the way, but that only angered them…
"They formed a circle around me and started shoving me around, shouting and jeering at me… In my fright I made another mistake—I kicked one of them in the stomach. He fell… the guy beside him chose to punch me. I stumbled back… I could feel blood dripping down from my nose, but at that point I didn't care. I just wanted to get out of there. I started fighting with everything that I had. I injured a few of them, but I was being injured to a far greater degree… I got punched so many times that my mind began to shut down and I started flailing to try and get them away. That was when someone shoved me backwards.
"I don't remember feeling the blade go in… I just remember falling into someone and immediately sensing that something was wrong. The guy held me for a second before letting me fall the rest of the way to the ground… they all looked so frightened… they ran away and left me there as the store manager came running up… She had heard the shouts and screamed when she saw me lying in the back alley with a switchblade in my side. As I watched her run back inside to phone the police, I tried getting up… I still didn't realise what had happened, and it was only when I felt the blood flowing out of the wound that I saw it. I blacked out.
"I woke up in a hospital bed with my mother's head on my chest… my sheets felt damp underneath her. She had probably fallen asleep crying. It was dark outside, and I tried to sit up to look out the window, but that only brought a sharp pain in my side and I gasped, clutching at it. That woke my mother up. She practically lunged forward to hug me to her, and when I made another pained noise she immediately let go and put her hands on my cheeks, tears streaming down her face, praising everything that she could for me being alive. I asked her how long I had been there, and she said it had only been about a half a day, that it was almost 3 in the morning, and that I had been stitched up when I arrived. It was then that I realised how many bandages there were on me.
"I had one around my head, a brace on my nose, a few around my arms and legs, and a large one around my midsection. An IV was in my left arm, and I could see a few other bandages around that. My mother told me that they had given me blood because of how much I lost before I was taken to the hospital… Then she told me to go back to sleep; there would be an officer coming in the next day to talk to me. I asked her where my father was, and she said he had to go home and sleep; he couldn't afford to take any time off work. I went back to bed and she sat with me… I don't think she slept at all; she was still awake when I woke up the next day. She stayed for the interview and I relived everything for the police report they wanted to fill out about it. He asked me if I knew of any possible motive for the attack… and that was how my mother found out about it. I would have preferred to have told her under different circumstances, but…
"After he left, she sat and pampered me when the nurses weren't there, and she never tried talking to me about my bisexuality. I guess it was sort of a shock to her, but she was hiding it very well, and I was grateful at the time. She eventually told my father later on; he didn't seem too comfortable with it either. I ended up switching schools, and it was then that I decided to ostracize myself from everyone… I didn't want to run the risk of something like that happening again. If someone would try to be friendly with me, I would ignore them or try to drive them away."
Kiseki finally looked up at Unishiwa and motioned him over. He came and knelt down beside her with the solemnest of looks upon his face, and she lifted up the shirt to reveal the scar on her side. "…I didn't want something like that to happen again… that's why I act the way I do… that's why I don't talk to people my age… why I despise them so much…"
Unishiwa surprised her when he suddenly straightened up and pulled her to him in a soft, yet firm embrace. She tensed up, her eyes wide, but his warmth calmed her down and she hesitantly reached her arm around him. "I'm so sorry, Kiseki…" he whispered. "I swear that while you are here, I won't let anything like that happen to you… I swear it…"
Tears sprang to her eyes at his words, and her hand grasped the back of his shirt tightly as she put her head on his shoulder, squeezing her eyes shut. She started to cry, holding him almost as strongly as he was her, and he gently rocked her back and forth, bringing up one of his hands to stroke her hair as he did so, letting her tears flow onto him. An overwhelming feeling of protection arose in him as they sat there together for a long time; the little bell signaling the finishing of the rice went unnoticed.
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Later on that night, they had eaten the cold rice and discussed other matters to brighten up the mood a little bit. Kiseki found out that Unishiwa wasn't from Japan, either; rather that he was from Belgium, and had come to Japan to satisfy his everlasting love for the culture and teaching. They talked about each of their homelands, describing the seasons and the wildlife. Before long, they had exhausted their memories and decided to go to bed.
He offered to sleep out on the couch while she slept in his room, and after some debating she agreed to it; he said it would be best since she would need her privacy. She now sat in his room, gazing out the window with an odd air about her. She had unrolled the sleeves of the shirt again—they went past her hands—and she decided that since the shirt was pretty long, that she would just sleep in that, considering the fact that she was in a closed room. The window was open, and she had undone the shirt a little in the front to let the breeze flow into it as she looked out into the night. She had been thinking about everything that had happened to her since she arrived, realising after a while how strange her situation was at the moment.
She was away from her parents in a foreign country, sleeping in a man's house—her teacher's house. He was the first person she had ever opened up to after her incident in the United States, he was the first person to come forward and give her support for what she was. She was in his shirt, in his bedroom, while he slept out on the couch in his living room. She would be sleeping in his bed. The only thing that could possibly make this any stranger, she thought, a smile forming on her lips as she saw something in the distance. …my idol. The KC building was in view, and she smiled even wider at seeing the single office window alight once more. She sighed, a great feeling of calm flowing through her as she leaned upon the windowsill, watching the tiny light from afar.
Seto was busy again. He was making himself busy… working as hard as he could to get his mind off Kiseki. Ever since he had watched her cry to herself in the park, his mind had been driving him crazy. He wanted that card… he wanted to get it from her… he wanted to follow her until she gave it up to him… he wanted to watch her every move until he saw the opportunity to take it from her himself… He shook his head. I don't need to follow her to get it. She'll give it to me herself, he told himself sternly. Typing furiously on his laptop, he worked on anything he could find that wasn't finished, but being the workaholic that he was, there was almost nothing to do. He paused as he thought around for something to fill in; one idea popped into his head.
Kiseki's profile.
It doesn't need to be finished! he thought to himself. It's all filled out… but what about information they don't record? I don't need to put that in. There's no reason to… He slammed his fist down upon his desk. I need to get my mind off her! She's coming tomorrow with the card, what else is there to think about? I need to work until I exhaust myself enough to go to bed without thinking anymore… He cast around for something else to organize, fill out, fix… anything. For once he cursed at himself for being such a perfectionist—there was nothing left for him to do. Except…
He hesitantly opened up Kiseki's profile again and glared at it on the monitor. This might be the only thing I can do… I'll work on it until I get too tired… then I'll go home and sleep… Though, I could just go home now and spend time with Mokuba… He glanced at the clock in the corner of his laptop. He's asleep by now… I can't wake him up. His hands found their way back to the keyboard. Screw it.His eyes travelled over the information for what seemed like the hundredth time, and he stopped in the space marked "Current Occupation(s): Student". He sat looking at it for a while, grit his teeth, and began to type.
"Current Occupation(s): Student/Artist."
Kiseki did not know for how long she stared at the little office in the distance, but she could feel a growing love for the person inside. She wondered who they were, what they did for a living, why they chose to stay up night after night all alone. Isolated from everyone while they worked long into the night. She liked that. She had come to the conclusion that she considered them to be some sort of hero to her, and yearned to meet them someday.
Though, she thought, finally leaning back and looking at the ground. I already have a hero here… She stood up and quietly slid open the door to the bedroom, going into the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. On her way back, she slowed down as she passed the couch.
Unishiwa was curled up on it and without a blanket, so she went into the bedroom and took off one from the bed, bringing it back to his sleeping form. "Thank you, sensei…" she whispered, softly draping the blanket over him before smiling and returning to the bedroom to get some rest.
As the last sounds from her died away, Unishiwa slightly opened his eyes to stare out into the dark living room. He glanced down at the blanket and drew it close to him, sighing.
She smelled so sweet…
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Oh, as a little side note for those of you who instantly go and read anything I publish (I'm not complaining, believe me!!), be sure to watch out for a new fic this weekend about Malik's past! It's pretty dark so far, so be sure you can handle stuff like that! :smacks self: Who am I kidding, of course you can!! Ja' ne!