Authoress here. I will start this out by quoting a friend of mine; "Here are some Authoress notes that can be skipped without great consequence."
I have a cycle. No, not the feminine cycle; (well that too, but barring that, and moving on) a creativity cycle. Fist, I'll be a writing fiend. Then, as that dies down, I'll want to do nothing but sit and draw, sculpt, paint. Then, while that fades out, I'll feel absolutely worthless in the ways of art and prose and just read a bunch. I have just passed the latter and am now bounding eagerly into the first. So it's time for another chapter.
I realize the chapter name is horribly Aida, but only as a few readers will notice and become agitated I deem it okay to use.
I so very much appreciate all the reviews I've been getting, too. It's so wonderful to have such enthusiastic encouragement from such wonderful fanfic readers! I Squee each and every one of you, and possibly it will be of interest to you to note that whenever any one of you takes the time to send me a note, I am filled with a supreme joy. So, thank you everyone.
CHAPPIE TIME!
No Mountain High Enough
Chapter Nine: How I Know You
The trio remained motionless of the mountainside, Mizuki unable to do more but feebly try to cover herself with her arms. Kagurazaka was staring at her as if she had just sprouted an extra arm, and Sano was shooting concerned looks at the Tokyo boy. Then, Sano brusquely reached over, gently pried Mizuki's arms apart, and zipped up her vest up all the way to her collar bone.
"If you say anything, to anyone, I will hunt you down, Kagurazaka."
Mizuki and the opposing high-jumper looked at Sano, startled.
"You knew?" Kagurazaka's eyes widened even further. "You knew Ashiya was a …w-was a-"
"Yes." Sano said curtly. "Hand me her backpack."
The use of the female pronoun jarred Kagurazaka into motion. Wordlessly he dropped the backpack at Sano's side. The teen quickly unzipped it, and drew out another sweatshirt.
"Mizuki, you need to put this on." Sano used a gentler voice with his shocked roommate, handing her the sweatshirt. She woodenly pulled it on, eyes fixed on Sano's face.
"When did you-?"
"Awhile ago," Sano admitted. "After the soccer game where Nakatsu accidentally knocked you out… I, um, carried you to Doctor Umeda-san's infirmary."
"That was… That was the b-beginning of freshman year!" Mizuki's face was full of horror, mind replaying the last two years, all the times she accidentally got into Sano's bed… the near misses when he came out of the shower early, before she was fully dressed… the time Sano got drunk and kissed her…
"He- S-She looks pale," Kagurazaka observed, awkwardly.
"Mizuki?" Sano looked into his roommate's face worriedly. Hardly could he have known that their close proximity was the catalyst for Mizuki's sudden dizziness, but his closer inspection of her made Mizuki's stomach churn.
He knew! He knew all along!
"I knew it!"
Both Sano and Mizuki whipped around to stare at Kagurazaka. The high jumper, despite his recent shock, was grinning madly.
"I knew the great Izumi Sano wasn't a queer!"
Sano frowned. "You thought I was gay?"
Kagurazaka snorted. "Hell yeah! You were so damned protective over Ashiya; I could have sworn you were gay! Obviously, now…" Kagurazaka winked. "You're just a normal, hot-blooded man."
"And just what's that supposed to mean?" Mizuki squeaked, having grasped the full meaning of Kagurazaka's words.
"Just what it sounds like." The high jumper smirked.
I'm gonna faint. The first thing I do after I know Sano knows I'm a girl is to faint. That's pathetic.
"Keep your mouth shut." Sano snapped. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Really?" Kagurazaka grinned devilishly. "Then why are you so defensive?" He leaned foreword. "Even better, why are you blushing so much?"
"You have an over-active imagination." Sano glared daggers at Kagurazaka, the heat in his face mounting. "It's far too dark to see if I'm blushing or not."
"Granted," Kagurazaka shrugged. "But you're being so defensive, it must be true."
"Its not-" Sano cut off abruptly as Mizuki slumped over backwards, straight into his awaiting arms. "Mizuki?"
"She fainted?" Kagurazaka was incredulous. "Gawd, now there's no question as to whether or not she's a she."
"Her zipper coming down wasn't enough of an answer?" Sano replied, curtly. "Stop gawking and help me get a shelter up. We're here until he-" Sano paused, unused to calling Mizuki a 'she' in public, "until she wakes up."
Mizuki's eyelids fluttered, and then opened. She had to squint; the sun filtering through the bright-yellow poncho a few feet above her head was blinding. She sat up, yawning, wondering why Sano's alarm hadn't gone off. Nakatsu wasn't complaining yet, and Noe and Sekime were quiet- Wait, Sekime?-!
The events of the last twenty-four hours rushed back to her in a torrential flood. Mizuki snapped her arms up to her chest instinctively, noticing she still wore the sweatshirt Sano gave her last night.
Looking around, she saw that Sano and Kagurazaka were still sleeping, Sano at her side, and Kagurazaka propped against the cliff wall. They had rigged Mizuki's ripped poncho to be a sort of lean-to, using a couple of sticks to hold it up.
Mizuki crawled forewords, wanting a look at the gap she and Kagurazaka had to cover the night before. What greeted her eyes made her gasp.
What, in the lashing rain and thick darkness, had appeared to be a deep abyss was actually a shallow gully, maybe twelve to fourteen feet deep. The path they were on had been carved out of the mountainside, and a small, happily-gurgling stream wound its way down the middle of the gully. Mizuki saw the gap, and groaned aloud. Had she fallen, she would have dropped four feet and hit the gentle slope below the path.
"Ashiya-?" Sano's sleepy mumble made the teen turn around.
"Sano." Mizuki didn't quite know how to act around her roommate, now that she knew he had known of her true identity. All of those times-! The very thought made her squirm inwardly.
"Ashiya-," He was using her surname again. "This doesn't really change anything, does it?"
"I dunno." Mizuki blinked a few times, daring the tears gathering to fall. "Does it? All of a sudden, I'm a girl again."
"Not all of a sudden." Sano responded, quiet and calm. "Ashiya, we're still friends. This doesn't change that fact."
"T-Thanks, Sano." Mizuki sniffed a little, and then jabbed a finger towards the path, abruptly changing the subject. "Did you see the dangerous cliff-face we were facing last night?"
Sano crawled forewords as she had done, and stared.
"So… We weren't in mortal danger last night."
"Nope."
"We could have just-"
"Yep." Mizuki nodded, in grim humor. "We could have skipped across this section of the trail, and we'd still have been okay."
"That sucks."
"You're tellin' me!"
Their conversation woke Kagurazaka. "Whatchya lookin' a- Shit!" The other high jumper saw the terrain, and swore loudly. "So we thought we were risking our lives, and all this friggen' time it was this measly little thing?"
Sano nodded grimly, and Kagurazaka grumbled a little more before digging out his canteen. "Might as well make the best of it," he sighed. "I'm gonna go get some h-two-oh from the stream."
As he departed down the innocent-looking slope, Mizuki felt a smile tugging at her lips. Her secret, which she had guarded so judiciously (or so she had thought), had been exposed in the face of a danger that wasn't even there. Even though she felt like she ought to be mortified and worried sick, she felt very light. The entire pack of lies that had been spun to Sano were no longer an issue. She still didn't know how to act around Sano, now that the protection of same-gender was gone; but she didn't have to lie now.
Sano must have noticed her internal struggle between relief and anxiety.
"Ashiya, did you ever play with cardboard boxes as a kid?"
She started, and stared at him. "Huh?"
He grinned at her vacant expression. "You know, big cardboard boxes, like from a new washing machine, or a refrigerator."
"Oh… yeah, I s'pose I did."
"I used to love cardboard boxes." Sano looked at a faraway place only he could see, a reminiscent smile on his face. "Shin and I used to play with them for hours on end."
Even though Mizuki was clueless as to where this conversation was going, she was glad to sit and listen. Sano hardly ever talked about his family, let alone his childhood; every tidbit of information he gave her, she cherished.
"We'd get toys for our birthdays, and instead of playing with the toys, we'd go straight for the boxes they came in. We'd be just about anything in those; race car drivers, turtles, pirates." Sano smiled. "Shin always liked to be a robot, but I always wanted to play a plane pilot."
"So you've wanted to fly for long time," Mizuki said softly.
Sano smiled warmly, as if pleased Mizuki reached this conclusion. "Yeah, you could say that." He paused, looking hard at his roommate. "The point is, though, as we got older, the novelty just sort of wore off. But even now, whenever I see a big cardboard box, I feel eight years old again, because those aren't just boxes. They're planes, ships, or race cars."
The analogy became clear to Mizuki at that point, but she let him finish.
"I don't blame you for pretending to be a boy to get what you want. I don't want you to feel like anything will change." Sano paused, clearly feeling a little awkward about being so vocal about how he felt. "Whenever I look at you, I don't see some foreign-exchange cross-dresser. I see Mizuki Ashiya, my roommate, my pep-talker. I see my friend."
Mizuki sniffed a little, scrubbing the back of her hand across her face. "I know, I know," she mumbled softly, "Guys don't cry."
Sano's arms made their way around the slender girl. She stiffened for a moment, surprised, and then relaxed into their strong grip. Sano murmured to her, voice muffled by her hair, "But you're a woman."
Woman. He thought her a woman.
His behavior was definitely different than his usual calm persona, but his were words which needed to have been said. Mizuki smiled at the thought, and quickly hugged her roommate back.
"Thanks, Sano."
"You're welcome, Ashiya."
"Hey, guys! We should pack up, and hurry on to the next rest-stop!" Kagurazaka clambered back up the slope, face and hair wet from a brief scrubbing in the stream. He made no sign that he had noticed Mizuki and Sano stepping hurriedly away from one another, and instead made towards the temporary lean-to. "I'm getting something to eat. I'm starved."
Mizuki and Sano exchanged glances, and then went to help Kagurazaka break camp.
"Hey, um, Kagurazaka?" Mizuki spoke up timidly. "Are you going to tell-?"
"Nah," The high jumper waved a hand dismissively. "What's the point? Get you kicked out of Osaka High, sent back to wherever the hell y'came from, and miss the chance for picken' on you later? Not worth the hassle."
Mizuki smiled, once again resisting the feminine urge to give him a grateful hug. "Thanks, Kagurazaka."
"Whatever. Hurry it up with that lean-to, Princess."
"Princess?-!"
Kagurazaka laughed as Mizuki's face slowly colored with indignation. As her stream of insults poured out ("You frog-faced, slug-kneed bung-tongue, don't you dare call me Princess again!") Sano grinned. Things were back to normal.
End Chapter
You know, I highly considered making this the last chapter. Then I thought, 'End another story with only nine chapters? Pen, Pen, dear old Pen, what's wrong with you? Whatever happened to the twenty-six chapter extravaganzas?' So, the story will end more completely (and hopefully more satisfying) than this.
Hope you all liked the chapter! Now, I'm off to find me a cardboard box. All this reminiscing in this chapter has inspired me to make myself into a cardboard-riden' cowgirl once again. Don't believe me? I've made cardboard cowponies before…
Authoress out on the Broom-O-Doom.