Warnings: None
Lucky Child
Chapter 62:
"Days of the Week"
Probably to make a point, or at least to express his extreme displeasure at the disruption of our typical lunchtime routine, Kaito marched into the study room with nose thrust straight up into the air and barely deigned to look at me. The door swung shut as he set his book bag and lunch sack on the table with a clatter, sealing us off with quiet hush—and privacy. Gotta love privacy.
"I got your note, Yukimura," he said, looking at me down the length of his thin nose. "Though why you would want to meet for lunch in here, of all places, is beyond—"
He stopped talking.
He assessed.
He said, "And what, pray tell, happened to you?"
He'd finally noticed the crutches leaning on the wall behind me, the bandages peeking above the collar of my school jacket, the scabbed cut on my cheek, and the casted leg sitting propped on a chair. His eyes ping-ponged from one to the next in turns, wheels in his head spinning in frantic place. I took a bite of my onigiri, leaned back in my seat, and grinned.
"Nice to see you, too, Kaito," I said.
He shoved his glasses up his nose with a finger. "Hmmph. So I see the rumors are true. You really were involved in the incident that happened here last week."
"That's what they tell me."
Kaito didn't say anything for a minute. He pulled out a chair, the scrape of chair on tile echoing in the tiny study room, and began unpacking his lunch—regarding me all the while with a bald, interested stare.
He wasn't the only one. Through the small panel of glass running from ceiling to floor in the study room door, put there so teachers could monitor student activities, students walked by and tried sneaking not-so-subtle glances through the pane. Totally obvious about it, despite their best attempts. They all walked far too casually, eyes lingering on that tiny window as they passed, telltale sign they didn't feel casual at all. Kids had been staring all morning, but none had been brave enough to approach me directly and ask about the crutches.
But they knew. It was pretty obvious.
The whole school was in an uproar, of course, both over the recent rioting as well as its presence in our school building. Classes had been cancelled for an entire week as the police investigated the incident at our school, leaving the student body to grind the rumor mill like cracked pepper over a cooling meal. Cleaning crews hadn't quite managed to fix all the damage left by the infected. Some windows were still covered in cardboard and tape. A few classes were missing doors, and in one room the tile floor sported a suspicious brown stain everybody knew had to be blood. Clear signs of the rioting, the students whispered, and their curiosity only grew.
They were right, of course. But I wasn't about to tell them that the missing windows and broken doors and bloodstains had been a part of the violence, nor confirm that my oh-so-conspicuous crutches were indeed related to the same…let alone reveal the cops had been by to see me three times since the incident to question me about my run-in with the bug-infested Hamaguchi. If my peers asked, I'd tell them the same thing I told the police: I had been there after school to study, and the teachers had attacked without provocation. Nothing more, nothing less.
The police never mentioned the weapons I'd left scattered around the school. I had to assume Spirit World, or perhaps even Sailor V, had cleaned up that part of my mess. I'd have to ask at some point, for sure.
Kaito chewed his food and swallowed. "Well then, Yukimura. Tell me: Which of the rumors is true?"
I looked at him and hummed, mouth full of sticky rice.
"Did you try to kill a teacher, or did the teacher try to kill you?" Kaito asked, not bothering with euphemisms. I nearly choked on my food. "I heard it was Hamaguchi, so really it could have gone either way."
Wow. Of all the rumors, that I hadn't expected. Maybe my violent reputation, born of my relationship to Yusuke, still lingered. I pounded my chest with a fist and coughed, marveling at the inventive mind of teenagers.
"Very funny, Kaito," I said when I recovered. "But for the record, he tried to kill me. I fought back, then jumped off a roof to get away." I jiggled my broken leg. "Got this to show for it, too."
He almost looked impressed. "Now that rumor I hadn't heard."
"What have you heard?"
"That a superhero was seen in the area the night of the riots, and she was headed this way." A sharp stare, beady and intrusive. "Know anything about that?"
Leave it to Kaito to know way more than he should, that jerk—but just who the hell had leaked that little bit of info? Shrugging, I pasted on a smirk I said, "Maybe I do. Maybe I don't."
Kaito huffed. "Fine. Keep me in suspense."
The urge to tease him never bore fruit, because behind us the door swung open. Kurama nodded when he walked in, sitting next to Kaito across from me at the small study table. He looked just as he always did: clean cut, polished, with shining hair and even more luminous eyes, and his small, warm smile coaxed a similar look from my lips on reflex. Kaito, however, appeared less than impressed, watching with hawk-like scrutiny as Kurama took his seat.
"Hello, Minamino," said Kaito.
"Hello, Kaito," Kurama replied. "Yukimura. I got your note. I assumed you'd have trouble climbing the stairs to our usual meeting spot." He gestured at the table, upon which he unpacked his lunch like a civilized person. "I approve of the new location."
"Yeah," I joked. "No more eating off your lap like a peasant, huh?"
Kaito's brow lifted while Kurama chuckles. Looking balefully at Kurama, he waved a hand toward me. "You don't look surprised to see her like this."
"Indeed." Kurama's reply was as smooth as it was disarming. "I visited Keiko in the hospital. I've already been filled in."
Kaito's brows shot up higher. "Visited her in the hospital?" he said, disbelieving. "And here I didn't even receive a phone call."
"Aww, you mad, Kaito?" I reached across the table and swatted his arm, smiling when he rolled his eyes. "I figured you'd use the time off to read. Didn't figure I should disturb you."
"Well, you're half right. The time off was an unexpected boon for my reading list." A withering look in my direction. "But I still wouldn't have minded a phone call."
"Sorry, Kaito," I said, and I meant it. "Next time, for sure?"
He gave me the single most 'are you stupid?' look I have ever seen on a living face. "Please, Yukimura. Do not tempt fate to send you a 'next time.'"
"I'll do my best!" Because I had seen this coming, and because I'd forgotten to bring it on our first day back this semester, I reached into my school bag and presented Kaito with its contents atop my supplicating palms. "Please accept this as an apology."
He raised a brow at the book. "Sato Shogo's latest novel? I already own a copy, thank you."
"Not like this, you don't." I shoved the book forward. "Title page. Take a peek."
Kaito scowled, reaching out a finger to flip open the book's cover—and then he gasped and snatched it out of my hands, peering down with bugging eyes at Shogo's signature and the short accompanying message. "To Kaito Yuu," it said. "Let's talk about your papers sometime. You do great work. With admiration from Keiko's friend, Sato Shogo."
"You—you!" Kaito's hands shook around the book, face broken out with a light sheen of sweat. And of course he zeroed in on the part that paid him a compliment. "He's read my papers?!"
"He thinks they're pretty great, actually," I said. "Next time he's in town, I'll set the two of you up on a coffee date. That sound good?"
Kaito nodded so hard his hair flopped atop his head, but he was quite beyond speech (quite a feat, that) and lapsed into solemn silence, staring at Shogo's words with jaw dropped. I had to giggle. It wasn't often I could throw Kaito for a loop, and I confess I rather enjoyed being on the giving end of it this time around.
"I assume you're being grilled by your classmates?" Kurama said. He spoke low, so as not to disturb Kaito's reverential silence, but I heard the amusement in his voice and saw the spark in his green eyes regardless.
"Of course. Teenage curiosity is voracious," I said.
Loathe though I felt to disturb Kaito, I rapped my knuckles on the table and got his attention so I could fill him in—using a revised and condensed version of what had happened at the school, similar to what I told police. Kurama managed to maintain a bland expression as I spun my web of lies, though the telltale glitter in his eyes told me he approved of my fabrications. Kaito, oblivious, looked impressed when I finished speaking, leaning back in his chair with arms crossed over his chest (and the book held tight under them like a protected treasure, which was sort of adorable).
"I've always said libraries are the best weapons." He adjusted his glasses with a smirk. "Don't worry. I'll set the rumors straight, should I have the opportunity."
"Thanks, Kaito."
"Don't mention it." An awed glance at his book. "It's the least I can do."
The bell rang not too long later, scattering our lunchtime soiree to the winds. Kurama offered to help me carry my books, an offer I accepted with gratitude. Halfway to class, however, he stepped close and muttered, "Be careful, Kei."
I knew better than to break stride and call attention to his words. I hummed instead, hard as it was to talk while swinging atop my crutches, and he shot me a sidelong smile.
"Kaito is clever," he said, eyes trained carefully forward once more. "Keep your story consistent, even when speaking with other students."
"Will do my best," I muttered—and when Kurama dropped me off at my classroom door, I was glad he'd given me that word of warning.
The minute I sat down, they swarmed.
Junko led the charge, because even though we were friends at this point, she couldn't resist the lure of gossip. She plopped into the desk next to me and pinned me with a stare so pointed it could skewer meat.
"Is it true, Keiko?" she said, and her words released the floodgates. In a flash all the other students in the classroom (who had been doing that don't-look-at-Keiko dance in the corners) flocked in a knot around my seat. The babble of questions filled the air, and through the throng of students I saw Kurama standing in the doorway, smiling a very smug "I told you so" smile. Eyes warm with amusement, his lips were as charmingly curled as the tips of his glossy hair, and in reply I could only lob a glare at him through the swarm of chattering teens.
Kurama's smile widened—and then he winked, turned on his heel, and walked out the door. Good luck, he seemed to be saying, because Kei, you are going to need it.
All I'm going to say is that no one has the right to look that pretty and that smug at the same time, because holy hell, it's a frightening combination.
A particularly ridiculous question brought me back to the matter at hand. "Did you really fight Hamaguchi off with a meat cleaver?" one student asked.
"No way!" another protested. "I heard she had a gun!"
Everybody gasped and looked at me for confirmation. I rolled my eyes with a derisive snort for good measure. Drama, much?
"Um, no. Neither," I said. "I just ran away when I could and punched when I couldn't, that's all."
Nobody look convinced, however, and some even looked crestfallen at the idea of me not, in fact, being in possession of a very illegal firearm. Soon they rallied, however, and the questions began again. I could hardly pick them out since everyone started talking at once—but one of the questions stuck out like a brick in a shoddy wall, and I honed in on the speaker at once.
"Is it true that Sailor V showed up?" one girl asked. She was in my class, but I wasn't sure of her name.
My eyes narrowed; everyone quieted. "Where did you hear that?"
"A ton of people saw her running around the city the night of the riots!" she said. Her voice rose an octave with palpable excitement. "Did you see her?"
"She saw her," Amagi said. "We both did."
Everyone turned. Amagi stood in the doorway, staring through the crowd and straight at me, bearing in her arms a conspicuous bouquet of brilliant red carnations. My eyebrow rose—both at the flowers and at her unbridled speech. Why the heck was she telling everyone about V, anyway?
"Oh, hey Amagi," I said as she crossed the room, gaggle of students parting before her proud stride. A nod at the flowers. "What are those?"
"For you," she said. She set the flowers on my desk and stepped back so she could bow, deep and long and low. "Thank you very much for saving me, Keiko-san."
The students around us murmured, even Junko whispering to someone else behind her hands. My cheeks colored when a thought flashed through my head: Every single person in the room was staring at Amagi and I. Nowhere to run. Chin ducking I told her, "Oh. You don't have to bow. I didn't do much."
Her unimpressed expression could give even Kaito's a run for its money. "If it hadn't been for you, I'd be dead," she said with utmost certainty.
"You mean if Sailor V hadn't shown up, we'd be dead," I countered.
Junko rallied at the mention of the hero. "So it is true!" she crowed. "You did see her! What was she like, what did she say, what did—?"
Chaos erupted, everyone screaming over each other in their pursuit of Sailor V, whom I guess was a lot more famous than I realized given the absolutely nutbar reaction she was getting—but the bell rang before they could tear me limb from limb and they were forced to leave me alone.
Amagi, though? As she went back to her seat, she shot me a smile.
A secretive smile. A knowing smile. A satisfied smile. A smile that said that she had brought V up very much on purpose and had gotten exactly what she wanted out of it.
Too bad for me I had no clue what that something was.
After class, it took quite a while to fend off my inquisitive classmates—but eventually I did so, answering question after question about the superhero Sailor V until they were satisfied I'd told them everything about her costume, personality, and catchphrases. When the well of information ran dry and I saw their curiosity waning, I told them not to wait for me. I was cumbersome on my crutches, I said, and didn't want to slow them down. Go home, everyone. I'll be fine hanging back on my own.
Amagi, of course, didn't go with them. She dawdled in the corner until the others left, inconspicuous as a shadow. Only when the door shut behind our peers did she look my way. Eyes like bottled ink looked me up and down, skimming the flowers on my desk with another of her satisfied smiles.
My mouth moved of its own accord. "Why did you tell people about—?"
She knew who I meant even if I didn't say it. "To distract them," she replied.
"Distract them? From what?"
"From what you don't want them asking about." A long pause. "I didn't feel comfortable lying about V. She was too conspicuous to leave unmentioned. And since people are too busy asking about V to pry into anything else…" She trailed off, gaze knowing. "They won't ask about anyone else who might or might not have been there that night."
Our gazes locked and held. For a minute I had no idea what she was on about, but soon it clicked: She was talking about Botan. She'd been the only person there that night aside from the crazy teachers. But why was Amagi talking about the reaper at all?
"How did you know I wouldn't want them asking about…her?" I said.
Once again, she knew who I meant without being told. "You said V took her with her," she told me. "You said your friend would be 'safe' with V. That means she wasn't safe staying behind." Her head tilted, short black hair curling over her soft, pale cheek. "Perhaps I assumed incorrectly, but I felt a smokescreen was in order, just in case."
And she was right, of course. No one really had a reason to ask about Botan, but if they were distracted with Sailor V, they wouldn't press for details about the rest of the night in general. And if Hamaguchi mentioned Botan, people would still be way too distracted by V to care. Perhaps Amagi's effort here weren't necessary, but…
"Thank you," I said. Amagi walked across the classroom and sat in the desk in front of mine; I put a hand on her shoulder, staring her right in the eye so she knew I meant it. "Thank you, Amagi."
"No. Thanks are all mine." Amagi shook her head, tone as resolute as stone. "I meant what I said. You saved me. Even before V showed up, you put me somewhere safe. You gave me a weapon and hid me. I owe you."
"You don't," I said, shaking my head. "You watched out for the bugs for me, after all. I already owed you a favor."
I think she sensed I wouldn't let this go, because she smiled at me and said, "That's true, I suppose. Perhaps we're even, after all." But then her dark eyes darkened further still, and her voice dropped low and soft and urgent. "May I ask? The bugs. Where, exactly, did they come from?"
I didn't say anything—mainly because I hadn't been expecting that question. What had I told her about them the night of the riot? I couldn't remember, caught too off guard by the unexpected query.
"You said a man named Suzaku summoned them," she said in that same low voice, "but they were strange. Not of this world." She leaned toward me, gaze imploring. "Where did he get them, Keiko?"
It took a minute for me to gather myself, to remember the half-truths I'd whispered in her ear as we huddled in that dark PE shed, the infected humans frothing at the mouth for our blood. Eventually I reached for the flowers on the desk between us. My fingers traced the edges of a petal, crimson and soft and fragrant.
"Amagi," I said, half to the flowers and half to her. "There's a great big world out there. It's bigger than you know. You know more about it than most people, seeing the things you see, but…" I met her eyes, guileless and pleading, and winced. "If I tell you about the bugs, there's no real going back. Your eyes will be opened, and I don't know if you can go back to being blind after you start to see."
Amagi considered this.
She asked, "But will you tell me about that world, if I ask to hear about it?"
Once more I hesitated. Not because I didn't think Amagi could handle the truth about demons and humans and Spirit World. I got the feeling Amagi could handle anything I threw at her. Rather, the question became this: Was it more or less dangerous to keep Amagi in the dark, and what might be the consequences of inducting this girl into a world more dangerous than she could comprehend? Should that knowledge hurt her, could I live with the guilt that would follow?
But then again, if I kept the truth from her, I'd be a pretty damn big hypocrite, wouldn't I?
Keiko had been kept in the dark for far too long in the anime. She'd suffered for being kept in that dark, had been endangered time and again when a mere explanation could've prevented dire peril. I bemoaned Keiko's fate in that regard all the goddamn time. I rejected remaining uninformed, bullied and bit and scratched my way into Yusuke's inner circle—so who was I to say Amagi shouldn't know the truth if she asked directly for it? Who was I to make that decision for her, the way the decision had been made for Keiko in the anime?
But then again (again), who was I to put Amagi's safety in jeopardy?
Call me crazy, but I felt like Yusuke all of a sudden—and in that moment, maybe I understood canon-Yusuke's decision to keep canon-Keiko in the dark just the littlest bit better. My first instinct was to protect Amagi, to keep her out, to ensure her safety by pushing her away from the dark and terrible truth and back into her normal world, just as Yusuke had pushed away Keiko to keep her safe.
Still, though.
I wouldn't, couldn't make the same mistake he did—because that is exactly what excluding Keiko had been. A big, fat, honking mistake. And I wouldn't do that. Not to Amagi, anyway.
A deep breath stretched my lungs and chest. I shut my eyes and opened them again. Amagi watched in silence, brow knitting and then unknitting again when I met her eyes and smiled.
"If you ask, and if you're sure," I said, "I'll tell you whatever you want to know."
Amagi was not the type to run into anything blindly, however. My word seemed good enough for her. She nodded, staring at the red carnations through distant eyes. "Thank you, Keiko. May I think about it?"
It was a relief, really, that I wouldn't be telling her the truth that day. Someday soon, but not quite yet. "Sure," I said. I reached for my crutches. "Want to walk home together?"
Another nod, black hair gleaming in the harsh fluorescent lights, and together we left the classroom behind.
Although I resolved that day to wait for Amagi to come to me, and to only tell her the truth when she asked to hear it, it turns out my resolution isn't always rock steady. Amagi would be inducted into my world a bit sooner than I would've liked, and more at my behest than hers—and part of me wonders if in doing so, I did her a disservice.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Life—thrown so unceremoniously askew by the Saint Beast debacle—returned to normal with alarming ease.
School, homework, the rhythm of being a teenager in Japan has the tenor of a lullaby, drawing you into a haze of routine like a mother's song draws an infant into sleep. The administration fixed the doors and windows and stained floors at our school. The cut on my cheek healed. The bandages came off my back, and with them went the rumors surrounding my role in the riot at the school. People stopped asking me about Sailor V, instead sharing newspaper articles and the blurry photos therein taken by reporters at scenes of various crimes. I stayed the object of school-wide interest for no longer than two weeks.
Life went on, essentially, because that is what life does.
That's not to say life was boring. Far from it, in fact. Life could never be boring when I ate lunch every day with Kurama and Kaito, those anime characters for whom I felt such affection. I spent my evenings with Kuwabara, Yusuke, Kurama, Hiei, Botan, a weekly schedule of social events keeping me in constant contact with the characters I adored so deeply. Until that period of time I had never been more conscious of the cycle of the days of the week, because each day promised contact with another character, another experience, and something new to learn about the pulled-from-fiction world I'd come to call my own. It was honestly kind of amazing how life snapped back into place after the Saint Beasts came thundering in the way they did. Relics of my past schedule (weekly parole meetings and debriefings and tutoring sessions and Dragon Quest playdates with Yusuke) remained largely unchanged after the chaos cleared—though some small differences availed themselves, mostly owing to Botan's renewed presence in everyone's lives.
It turns out Amagi wasn't the only one who'd have to get acclimated to the presence of the supernatural in their life.
"You need to heal, Yusuke. Heal! You didn't put a white mage in your party for the aesthetic!"
"I don't know what that word means but don't fucking tell me what to do, Grandma, I'm doing just fine with my—aw, hell! He got me again!"
Yusuke tossed the controller to the floor and rolled into a ball, writhing in mental anguish on my carpet. I rolled my eyes at him, as did Kuwabara, the Dragon Quest "End Game" music blaring tinny through my small TV's speakers. He'd been trying to beat a boss for the entire two hours I'd been tutoring Kuwabara, mainly because he didn't give a crap about healing and trusted his tank-heavy party to kill the boss before it could retaliate. Sign of his fighting tactics in days to come? Probably, which explained why Yusuke died so many damn times in the anime. The writing was etched very deeply into the wall, as it were…
"I'm telling you, you need to be healing every turn even if your characters aren't in the red zone!" I told him, waving my pencil about for emphasis.
Yusuke stuck out his tongue. "Like you could do any better."
"If you'd ever let me have a turn at the controller, maybe I would."
"Well if you didn't back-seat game so much, maybe I'd let you have a go!"
"Well maybe if you—"
"Um." Kuwabara held up his textbook. "Not to break this up, but can we talk about past participles some more, please?"
Yusuke took advantage of my moment of distraction to restart the game and queue up the boss battle, yet-a-fucking-gain. I grumbled about Yusuke using his brain sometime and turned back to the study session at hand, ignoring it when Yusuke took the white mage out of his party in a clear attempt to piss me off.
Kuwabara had taken a shine to English lessons after I helped him pass his test at school, and we'd continued our English homework sessions ever since. Yusuke liked to drop in on these and play Dragon Quest in the corner while I worked with Kuwabara, mainly so he could pester us and ask for help beating the harder bosses (not that he'd ever admit he needed the help, but the next time he lost to the boss I caught him putting the white mage back into his lineup with a sidelong glance at me). It was nice, having Kuwabara and Yusuke over to hang out every week. I got to socialize, (vicariously) play some games, and brush up on my English. Sounded like a win to me.
However, much though I enjoyed spending time with him, I suspected Yusuke was coming over not just to spend time with me, but also to get out of his house for a bit. Botan had been staying with him ever since she got back to Human World since he had a second bedroom (and also since my parents probably wouldn't approve of me having a friend with blue hair, at least not until they got to know her, and we didn't have room for a permanent guest, so she couldn't stay with me). I didn't know what Botan got up to when Yusuke showed up on my doorstep, though. I needed to check in on that soon, for sure.
A little while later Yusuke managed to beat the boss (thanks to healing strategically, I might add), and as he crowed his victory and did a dance around my room like a football player celebrating in the endzone, my phone rang. I shushed him and grabbed the receiver off the cradle; Yusuke just crowed louder. I stuffed a finger in my ear and said, "Hello?"
"It's me," came a smooth, familiar voice.
"Oh hey, Kurama," I said. "How are you?"
Yusuke stopped crowing, thankfully, and Kuwabara looked up from his textbook.
"Am I interrupting?" Kurama said. "I thought I heard—was it singing? I'm not sure."
"Ah, no. No signing. That was just Yusuke being a moron."
Yusuke squawked; Kurama chuckled. "I see. Tell him hello from me."
I did as instructed and delivered the greeting, which Yusuke returned with a wave. Kuwabara also waved and said, "Tell him I said hi, too."
"You're popular this evening," Kurama observed. "I'm calling in regard to our meeting tomorrow. With your leg as it is, our usual walk might not be a tenable option for us."
My hand collided with my forehead; the first of our weekly parole meetings since I broke my leg was coming up the next day, and I hadn't thought about alternate plans at all. "Oh, shit. You're right." Eyes alighting on the video game system on my floor, I said, "Want to just hang out here? I might be able to persuade Yusuke to leave the Famicon behind for us. Can show you Dragon Quest; it's my favorite."
"That would be nice, I think," he said—and I think I might've made him like video games after our trip to the arcade, because his voice sounded more sincere than expected at the prospect of playing a game together. "See you tomorrow, then."
"See you tomorrow."
The received clacked against the cradle, and when I turned back to the boys, I found them both staring at me—Yusuke with outright suspicion, Kuwabara through narrowed eyes set under a furrowed brow. Couldn't really read his expression, truth be told, but I wasn't sure I liked it much.
"What did Kurama want?" Yusuke asked.
"Work out plans for tomorrow." I jiggled my casted leg, glaring at the words Yusuke had scribbled on it with a sharpie (they said things like "OLD LADY" and "GRANDMA," predictably enough). "We can't do our usual thing. Long walks are currently beyond my capabilities."
"Oh, right." A wicked grin made his eyes glitter. "I'll leave you the Famicon if you do my homework for me for a week."
"In your dreams. Not worth it. But I can help you with it if you'd like."
He slumped, defeated. "Aw, phooey."
Kuwabara leaned toward me. He sat on my swiveling office chair, next to me where I perched on my bed. "Hey, uh. Keiko? Can I ask you something?"
"You just did," I deadpanned, and when Kuwabara blanched I giggled. "I'm kidding. What's up?"
He looked momentarily relieved; his features tensed again, though, and quickly. "So…you and Kurama hang out sometimes, huh?" he said.
He said it casually—too casually. The kind of casual that immediately makes your hackles rise because obviously the speaker is up to something sketchy. "Well, we are classmates," I explained. "So…"
"I mean outside of school," Kuwabara said in that same too-casual-for-comfort tone of voice. He kept his features arranged in a pleasant mask, as well, like he didn't really care about my answer to his questions at all. "You said your 'usual thing.' Do you see each other a lot?"
"I mean. Yes? Technically I'm his parole officer. We have a meeting once a week to check in."
He sat up a little straighter, smile breaking through his too-fucking-casual affectation. "Oh, I get it. So you're hanging out because Spirit World makes you!"
No. Nope. Wrong impression given. "I mean, that's not the only reason—" I said, but Kuwabara waved a hand.
"Nah, Keiko, it's OK. I get it now," he said, having apparently made up his mind about something, and he wasted no time shoving his textbook at me. "So you were saying that this is called a gerund, right?"
I admit the whole thing caught my off my guard, and when Yusuke started ranting about his latest hurdle in Dragon Quest, I got too distracted to cycle back around and readdress Kuwabara's odd line of questioning. The night passed in a blur, too, and by the time we broke for the evening and it came time to show the boys to the doors, I'd just about forgotten Kuwabara's questions entirely. It wasn't until later—like in my bed, about to fall asleep level of "later"—that I remembered what he'd asked, and wondered if that conversation meant what I thought it meant.
But before that happened, I put another issue entirely to bed before it could get out of hand.
"Hey, Yusuke?" I said and he and Kuwabara packed up their thigs to leave.
"What?" he grumbled.
"Where's Botan right now?"
"Home. Why?"
Figured as much. I leaned back against my headboard and crossed my arms over my chest, staring at Yusuke over the bridge of my nose.
"Do you just leave her there when you go places?" I asked, and I knew I'd hit the nail on the head when he winced. "Ever think of inviting her along?"
"Sure I do!" he said, but his cheeks colored. "It's just, y'know…what'm I, her babysitter?"
Yusuke stared at me with bold eyes, as if daring me to contradict him. Truth be told, I wanted to contradict him. I wanted to tell him yes, you are indeed her babysitter, because she's all alone in this world and we need to take care of her—but Yusuke was a teenage boy, not somebody's mom. Expecting him to take care of another person was unrealistic, not to mention not in his character. I sighed and admitted, "No. I suppose you aren't."
Tension crumbled behind his eyes, slumping with relief. "It was different when she just came to visit and didn't have to live with me, y'know?" he said. "Now she's all up in my ass about Spirit World missions and whatnot. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy as hell she's back—but I'm tired of sleeping on my damn couch instead of my bed!"
"Sounds like you need space," I said—and a thought struck. "Botan probably needs space, too. Her own room instead of sleeping in yours. A space to be herself in." I couldn't imagine she was allowed much of a personal life in Spirit World. Thinking about options, I turned to Kuwabara and said, "I have an idea. You have a spare bedroom, right?"
"Yeah, we do," he said. "But—oh."
His eyes had gone the shape and size of coins, getting it. Yusuke got it, too, sitting up and eager at the prospect of having his own bed back.
"Think you could swing it?" I asked.
"Um, I mean—yeah," Kuwabara said, but his forehead broke out in a sheen of sweat. He looked left, then right, then up and the ceiling, then down at the floor. "I think so, but…"
"But what?" Yusuke said.
"It's just—I'm going to be sleeping next door to death," Kuwabara said, and he looked like death warmed over when he said it.
It didn't occur to me that Kuwabara still hadn't actually met Botan until he and Yusuke were walking away from me down the street, and I heard Yusuke telling him that Botan was a skeleton in a black robe who only consumed dead tanukis and toenails for sustenance—and Kuwabara appeared to believe every single word.
I knocked three times before the door creaked open, revealing the do-not-fuck-with-me stoicism of Shizuru's unimpressed face. Kuwabara stood a few feet behind her in the foyer of their home, just beyond the rise in the floor, beyond which no one should wear shoes. He appeared a bit green around the gills, though, standing in his socks all knock-kneed, arms canted off to the sides of his wide body. He looked younger than fourteen, weirdly—like a kid expecting an older bully to knock him down, preparing himself for the worst.
And maybe that's exactly what he'd been doing, because when he saw Botan standing behind me, he did the most amazingly cartoonish double-take I'd ever seen in my life.
"Shizuru, Kuwabara," I said, hobbling backward a bit. "This is Botan."
Botan waved, smile on its highest, most winning wattage. "Hello! It's very nice to meet you." She dropped into a bow, her ponytail flopping long and blue and silky over her shoulder. "Thank you ever so much for letting me stay with you in your lovely home!"
"Don't mention it." Shizuru crossed her arms and leaned against the open doorframe, looking Botan up and down. "So tell me. Are there mushrooms growing in Yusuke's shower, or what?"
Botan blinked. "Eh?"
"You've been staying with Yusuke for what, a week now? Can't imagine living with a dirty teenage boy is too pleasant." She tossed a lazy smirk over her shoulder. "Lucky for you, you've got me to balance out my baby bro's gross bathroom habits."
The aforementioned brother purpled, stalking forward to loom over his sister. "Hey, Shizuru! I don't have any gross bathroom habits! Don't say stuff like that in front of Keiko!"
Shizuru rolled her eyes and told Botan to come in, so she could show her where she'd be staying when Botan bunked with the Kuwabara family. I nudged Botan in after Shizuru with a smile, mouthing at her to call me and waving a quick goodbye. Botan grinned back and danced over the threshold, cheerfully greeting Kuwabara when they passed each other—and though he returned the hello, Kuwabara skirted around Botan like he feared getting too close to her.
I figured out why soon enough, just a few minutes into my walk home from the Botan drop-off.
"So Botan," he said. Kuwabara walked with his huge hands laced behind his head, cut of his abdominal muscles visible in the low-cut arm holes of his tank top. "She's…well. Um?" Dark eyes darted over the street, nervous. "She's pretty?"
He sounded like he couldn't believe his own words, nor the sight of Botan's doll-like features and porcelain skin. But it was hard to talk while swinging around on crutches, so I just grunted a sparse, "That she is."
"But like…she's death?" His voice rose an octave on the last word. "A shinigami, right?"
"Yup."
"Oh. Wow." A pause. "Wow. I knew Yusuke had to be messin' with me when he was telling me all that crazy stuff last night, but I never thought death would look like that."
I knew exactly what he meant. Yusuke had had the same reaction to Botan in the anime. Hell, the fandom made memes about Botan not looking anything like death, too. I managed to breathe a wheezing chuckle and say, "Her looks definitely don't fit her job description."
"I'll say!" Kuwabara said, face alight with glee that I'd agreed—but he sobered, crossing his arms as his jaw jutted forward. "But I shouldn't have assumed she'd be scary, I guess. Wouldn't be the first time I guessed something like that wrong."
I eyed him askance. "Hmm?"
"Oh. Well. Y'know." He scratched the back of his neck, eyes cutting to the side...and then his lips thinned, annoyance sharpening his features to dagger points. "It's not like I thought demons could ever look like Kurama, for instance." Before I could agree, or disagree, or even ask him to clarify, Kuwabara threw up his hands with a sigh. "Just, you know—don't judge a book by its cover and stuff, that's all, and I gotta start applying that to all this demon business." His chiseled cheeks colored a bit, pink contrasting with his ginger hair. "That's what you taught me, isn't it? Not to judge too soon?"
The memory of when I'd first met him (or re-met him at the record store, at least) popped into my head. I couldn't keep the smile off my face. He'd been stunned when he learned that Little Miss Perfect Grades had loved Megallica like he did. Tone caught halfway between sarcasm and pride I said, "Well, if that's what I taught you, I sound pretty smart."
"You are pretty smart," he said (and I reminded myself not to be sarcastically self-aggrandizing again, because apparently Kuwabara would just take that in stride and make me own it). He puffed out his chest and clenched a fist before him, a man making a solemn vow. "I just need to keep that in mind when I meet demons and stuff. You can't really know a person until you get to know them. I shouldn't have assumed all demons look like monsters or that shinigami would wear black robes and have skulls for faces." And then his look turned adorably anxious. "Do you know what Botan likes? I want her to feel welcome staying in Human World and stuff, y'now? Especially after everything that's happened to her? And I don't want to make any assumptions that we should decorate her room with corpses or whatever."
I let out a bark of laughter at the thought of bubbly Botan collecting taxidermy. "No, no corpses, that much I can say. But…I don't really know what she likes, or if she's experienced much of Human World at all." Something told me Spirit World had never let her have much of a life here, where it didn't concern her job. "You'll have to ask her. I'm sure she'd love to tell you."
His eyes lit up. "Yeah, you're right. I just have to ask." Another resolute clench of his huge fist. "And if she doesn't know what she likes yet, we'll just have to help her figure it out!"
"Right," I said.
Botan, I decided, was in good hands, and would fit into my new-old routine with aplomb.
Botan returned to aiding Yusuke in the days and weeks that followed, because as Ayame said, that was her duty.
Following the threat of the Saint Beasts, Yusuke found himself once more tackling the small potatoes of the supernatural—namely tanuki and ghosts, low-level demons causing trouble, creatures that bumped in the night but didn't do anything more threatening than make a bit of noise. These were the thing I'd helped him with after he was resurrected, but this time, I didn't do much more than deliver his assignments to him. Actual aid in the field, this go-round, fell to Botan (and on occasion and curious Kuwabara, who felt more than a little vindictive toward the ghosts that had pestered him all his life). In one fell swoop my role in Yusuke's duties had been reduced to that of a messenger and little more.
It's not like I could run to the ass end of town and back with my leg in a cast, after all.
Ironic, really. I was learning to throw knives and fight with staves at Hideki's bidding, defending myself even while immobile, but even with a new set of skills under my aikido belt, my rank in Yusuke's Hierarchy of Helpers had definitely taken a nosedive. Crutches rendered me unable to keep up no matter my skill set. Week after week I found myself delivering dossiers from Ayame, debriefing Yusuke on his next case, and watching him run off without me—Botan and Kuwabara most often as his side. And yeah, sure, per canon that was totally cool or whatever, but still. Watching their retreating backs, knowing I was unable to follow, sent my heart sinking into my heels…or more specifically my one broken foot, dammit all to hell. With it in a cast, I had become just what my job description said on the tin: a record-keeper and nothing more.
To be honest, it felt almost painfully metaphorical, like the efforts of a first-year creative writing student trying to be clever. My cast would come off eventually. I'd eventually get to accompany Yusuke on these little cases maybe just in a matter of weeks. But watching Yusuke and Botan and Kuwabara run off together, the feeling of getting left behind again and again…it was a precursor of things to come. Talk about depressing.
Keiko got left behind so many times in the anime. My turn for the same approached at breakneck pace, heralded by the arrival of a certain video tape.
I watched for that video tape like a cat at a mouse hole. Every time I met with Ayame I eyed the bells of her kimono sleeves with breath held tight, waiting for her to produce a white-sleeved cassette and tell me Yusuke was about to head out on a rescue mission in the mountains—waiting for her to tell me I once again had to stay behind while literally every other cast member got to do something cool, and useful, and impactful. Part of me looked forward to my weekly meetings with Ayame. They were the only real connection I had to Yusuke's world, the one way I still felt like I influenced his job as Detective, but the feeling of paranoia and anticipation dried up any joy I could squeeze from it.
That and the whole don't-talk-about-Botan thing. That really put a damper on my meetings with Ayame.
Not that Ayame had ever been particularly chatty with me before Botan's transformation, of course. "Terse" was Ayame's middle name. Now, though, she was downright cold to me, delivering folders of documents to give to Yusuke with only the barest of verbal acknowledgements. She accepted my written accounts of the previous week with similar detachment, affecting a bored demeanor as though she would like to be anywhere but in the alley beside the restaurant (we couldn't meet in the forest given the constraints of my injuries). As a rule we never, ever talked about Botan—though once a month or so, Ayame would finally break down and ask for a report, but only in the most coded and vague of terms.
"Keiko," she'd say, but always just after she said goodbye, just before she would inevitably vanish into the shadows and disappear. "How is…?"
"Adjusting," I'd say, or something to that effect.
"Any progress?"
"No. The, ahem, tutor is less than enthusiastic."
And at the non-mention of Hiei she'd always heave a sigh, delicate as a spring breeze. "I trust you have provided proper incentive?"
"And then some." A smile meant to comfort, at that point, though I doubted it did much to soothe Ayame. "He'll come around."
Her eyes would always close, as though she had felt a pain. "I look forward to the day he does," she'd say, and she'd bow, because she was Ayame. "Thank you."
"Of course," I'd tell her. "See you next week."
Ayame, it turns out, favors an Irish goodbye, because she only rarely ever bid me goodbye in return—though perhaps she simply didn't feel she could manage to keep up her calm charade any longer.
Hiei, naturally, decided he wanted to be a taciturn little shithead when it came to training Botan.
After discussion, Botan and I (with input from Kurama, of course) decided it would be best to let Hiei set the pace of her training, not force him or pester him about said training when at all possible. One doesn't make friends with stray cats by being pushy. Instead I invited Botan to my weekly parole meetings with the reluctant fire demon, instructing her to bring out the food each week and present it to Hiei. A Pavlovian response, is what I was hoping for. See Botan, think of food, think happy thoughts—or whatever kind of thoughts serve as happy ones for Hiei. I dunno, he's got an unconventional sense of the word "happy" and I'm not about to try and get inside his head just yet; so sue me.
Unfortunately for my grand attempt at a psychology experiment, Hiei remained nigh impervious to (my very well-meant!) conditioning attempts. Sure, he accepted the food she offered, but he ignored her when she chattered, directing any questions (or any kind of talk at all) at me instead of her. He never brought up training at all, and when Botan pushed to include him in conversation, he'd more or less ignore her—or at the very least make his disinterest in whatever she had to say abundantly clear. Hiei, as it stands, is very good at cutting remarks, and more than once Botan ran out of the alley almost in tears.
"Hiei, behave," I'd tell him in those moments, and of course I'd sternly (read: screechily) threaten to revoke his ramen privileges, but he typically only glared and retaliated by stealing yet another of my bowls, that bastard.
Weeks passed like this: Botan trying her hardest, Hiei avoiding her, the two of them dancing around the subject of training like a pair of rival ballet dancers trapped in an awkward pas de deux. Though I agreed with Kurama that waiting for Hiei to broach the subject of training had a certain wisdom, after a few weeks I felt my inner coil of tension tighten near to its breaking point—and it turns out I'm a helluva lot less patient than Kurama, and maybe even Botan.
When I finally snapped and blurted my feelings (in the form of an oh-so-subtle "So have ya given any thought to training Botan yet, Hiei?"), Hiei paused. He had been in the middle of slurping noodles, a fringe of buckwheat strings hanging like jellyfish fronds from the thin line of his unamused mouth. With malevolent eyes he stared at me, slurping up the last inches of those noodles with painful, deliberate sluggishness. When they vanished, he swung his face toward Botan.
"What can you do?" he said.
Botan's lips pursed. "Eh?"
"What can you do?" Hiei repeated. When Botan didn't answer, he bared his teeth. "What powers do you have?"
"Well, I don't know!" Botan said with a laugh, like she thought Hiei might be joking (which he very definitely was not). "That's what I was hoping you'd tell me, Hiei."
That was, apparently, the wrong damn thing to say. Hiei's teeth gleamed in the dark of the alley like needles of ivory. "Feh. You don't get it," he said, and he scarfed down the last of his meal and vanished in a flicker of black.
Botan and I sat there in silence, staring at the spot where he'd been. Eventually we looked at one another and shrugged in unison.
Despite the foolhardiness of my blurted question, which killed the idea of letting Hiei bring up training himself, my intervention did bring about a chance in the otherwise monotonous meetings we'd been having with the fire demon. Now Botan felt free to bring up training herself when she saw Hiei, as did I—but that resulted in a different kind of monotony. Hiei met our queries with that same query of his own, asking time and again what powers Botan possessed, and she'd always reply she didn't know. Every time she said that he'd scoff and vanish, sometimes taking my bowls of ramen with him, sometimes bolting down his food before making his exit (I switched back to paper bowls for a while there just to keep my parents' stockpile of kitchenware from depleting entirely). He seemed utterly dissatisfied by Botan's answers to his question, though neither of us really knew why. Her answers were honest enough, after all.
"I fear he'll never train me at this point," Botan confided in me one night. Tears made her eyes swim, magenta color even more brilliant than normal. "He seems to find me repulsive."
"He'll come around, Botan. You'll see," I said, though she didn't look too comforted. "It took me ages to win him over."
She sniffled. "Really?"
"Really-really," I assured her. "Just give it time."
Time, it turns out, is the one thing I'm very bad at respecting, because a few weeks later I found myself once more breaking my own damn advice to be patient.
"Hiei, can you at least try to train Botan?!" I snapped one night.
Hiei sneered at me, even though he had a bit of spinach on his chin and looked ridiculous. "Why should I?"
"Aside from the promise of Spirit World's favor?" I reminded him (though at that he looked less than impressed). "You could at least give her a hint about how to control her powers. Just a hint!"
But Hiei was not so easily persuaded. "It's a waste of time," he said, and he turned up his nose like he'd smelled something foul.
Seems Botan's patience had worn thin, too. "A waste of time?" she repeated, irate. "How can helping someone in need be a waste of time, Hiei?"
A low growl rumbled in his chest. "It's a waste of time giving you hints when you won't even try to discover your powers yourself!" he said, eyes flashing like an animals in the darkness.
Botan and I both fell quiet. Hiei stood, the crate serving as his chair scraping against the pavement.
"Every week you ask me to train you. Every week I ask you what abilities you have. And every week you tell me you don't know." Hiei glared first at me, and then more fiercely at the dumbstruck Botan. "How can I train you in an ability if you don't even know what that ability is? How can I know what your abilities are if you don't? And how could you ever hope to control something you don't know is even there?"
Because he'd talked more in the last thirty seconds than he had in the past half hour, I found myself rendered quite mute by his tirade. So did Botan. We both stared at him while he glared at us, unable to reply—because he was right, to be honest. We didn't know anything about what Botan was capable of. How could we expect Hiei to be a decent tutor when Botan didn't even know what triggered her weird berserker side?
"If you're too scared to experiment on your own," Hiei continued with the most derisive sneer imaginable, "I can't help you. I won't waste my time babying you." He grabbed his bowl of ramen with a huff. "Ask me for help once you know what it is, exactly, that I'm supposed to be helping you with."
And with that, we lost him, his form blurring from sight and evaporating with a puff of displaced air. Another bowl lost, another week gone by with no results—but much though I wanted to lob insults at the sky, I was not the one who needed comforting.
"Botan," I said, turning to her. "Are you OK?"
She stared at Hiei's abandoned crate with eyes unseeing, flinching at the sound of her name. "I'm…I'm fine," she said—but she looked quickly away from me, because her eyes had started to well up. Botan stood and said, "I'm going to go home."
My hands went for my crutches on reflex. "Do you need—?"
"No." Her rejection came firm, but not sharp, and I saw that though tears still swam in her eyes, her jaw had tightened into a hard line of unmistakable determination. "Thank you, Keiko, but no." She took a deep breath, glancing upward at the dark sky. "The walk back to Yusuke's will do me good. I have a lot to think about on my own, you see."
I didn't argue with that.
I let Botan go, and I hoped that whatever reflection she underwent, it provided the answers she sought.
It felt like minutes, and it felt like months, but soon autumn arrived in all its fallen-leafed splendor. And with that changing of the season came the whirring of a buzz saw.
It was an aggressive sound I welcomed, because it came from the inside of a doctor's office as she sawed away the plaster of my cast—and with the sound of its strident grinding came my freedom. Sure, I'd have to do physical therapy for a while, and the limb wasn't totally perfect even after months spent in a cast, and it would probably hurt when the weather changed the way my bad arm had hurt in my old life—but the cast was gone, and I was free once more.
Mom had to pull me out of class to get the cast removed. After the appointment ended we went straight home so I could take a bath. Limbs stink to high heaven fresh-out-the-cast, and my leg reeked something fierce. First thing I wanted to do was track down Yusuke and shove my toes in his face, gloat that I was free as he gagged at my horrible stench, but the nicer part of me won out and said he should probably not die again, and that necessitated ridding my foot of its pungent post-cast aroma. Bathing my limb felt ambrosial as hell, even though I lamented that one calf now look smaller than the other from loss of musculature. That was nothing Hideki-sensei couldn't fix, though, so I put it out of my mind and got dressed, chomping at the bit for school to end so I could find Yusuke and shove my emancipated toes at him. When the time came I took the stairs cautiously, of course, because I needed to take it easy so as to not reinjure myself, but when I reached the bottom I hopped in place and pumped a fist into the air.
It was the first time in months I hadn't had to labor down the stairs in crutches, and that in and of itself was a victory worth celebrating.
Too bad for me Fate had no intention of letting my good luck continue unchecked.
She moved the minute I exited the back door and stepped into the alley. Her kimono blended with the shadows by the dumpster, and when she stepped into the light her expensive garment and coifed hair looked comically proper next to the battered and dirty trashcan at her side. Her grave expression didn't fit the setting, either, too serious and weighty for this most informal of settings.
I barely saw any of that, though.
I only had eyes, instead, for the video tape held tight in Ayame's pale hand—the image of it burning into my brain the way lightning sears a retina, electric and unforgettable.
NOTES:
Big montage to denote the passage of time, ahoy. And now we have the video tape. Eager to see what happens next!
This weekend and next weekend was/will be hellaciously busy. Fun Announcement Time: I have an art studio as of this month, where I'll be displaying my work from now into the foreseeable future. It opens to the public next weekend. Tons of prep work has gone into this and I'm ferociously swamped as a result. But I do lots of writing on my lunch breaks, so that helps me with time management and I don't feel so swamped that I have to take time away from the story yet. Could happen in future, but not yet. We'll see. Wish me luck!
Many thanks to those who took the time to review last chapter. Amidst a migraine and a trying week, you brought me joy. Thank you so much: Counting Sinful Stars, Just 2 Dream of You, Dec Jane, Dreaming Traveler, tw2000, LadyEllesmere, xenocanaan, zubhanwc3, rya-fire1, Laina Inverse, WhyAmIDoingThisbadideas, DiCuore Alissa, Marian, Viviene001, MissIdeophobia, Kaiya Azure, RedPanda923, brave-story, Mayacompany, ahyeon, Dark Rose Charm, Baoh joestar, general zargon, GuestStarringAs, Vixeona, Victrina Belladonna, shen0, Konohamaya Uzumaki, Autobot traitor, buzzk97, Beccalittlebear, Tsuki-Lolita, and three unnamed guests!
