A brief insight as to what Sachiko thinks about in her more private moments after a little too much o-sake. Intended halfway as an interlude to Fake.

A/N: As always, when somebody says "Miss (name)," take it as (name)-sama.

--

I can't hear you / so talk to me / I can't hear you, you talking to me / I can't hear you / are you talking to me / I can't hear you, time to meet my lord

I can't hear you, talk to 2x4.

--
Two by four

The party had as many rich people as would be expected of an event hosted by the Ogasawara family. It possessed as much glitz and glamour as the Ogasawara family would allow while still maintaining a respectable air of class and quality.

In other words, the party was dull. BORING, even, if you were of ill-breeding; as dirty of a word as fornicate at events such as these. One did not fornicate with one's business partner's wife. One had a bit too much o-sake, and then entertained one's business partner's wife in one of the spacious, comfortable guest bedrooms. One was never disturbed doing this, either; almost as though somebody deliberately detoured traffic around any room in which this was happening.

BORING, or, if you were Sei Satou, SHIT-DULL.

Sachiko Ogasawara was not Sei Satou, however. She was a member of the Ogasawara clan and would conduct herself in a manner which behooved and represented the family. She was certain that once she graduated from college and married Kashiwagi, that would mean being entertained in one of the spacious and comfortable guest bedrooms occasionally.

Sachiko had always conducted herself in a manner which behooved and represented the family, and yet, her parents still felt it necessary to lecture her on the merits of proper mannerisms every time they hosted an affair such as this. Maybe they honestly thought that she was still suppressing that little strain of teenage rebellion, holding it in for just such an occasion as this, in which she would burst out screaming some new-age rock song, rip her clothes off, and dance sexually—another dirty word; one used inappropriately as a blanket term for all things not SHIT-DULL, instead, in good company—until she was subdued by Takashi and possibly an armed guard.

Sachiko often wondered if her parents sometimes lay awake at night dreaming of these things, or if that was just her.

Maybe she would have some o-sake tonight. Just maybe.

Or maybe she would run away. Maybe tonight was the night she wouldn't have to shake some dingy old man's hand as he eyed her, staring as openly at her breasts as his wealth would permit. Perhaps she wouldn't be the object of attention tonight—she always was. People always muttered about how damn lucky she was. How grateful she
the bitch
ought to be. She was pretty and rich and her fiancée was a complete gentleman. He never seemed to eye the young women when he bowed, shook their hands, danced with them. (He was an excellent dancer, a few added every time. Not that she ever danced with him). None of them were terribly pretty—it was a common myth that wealth preceded beauty, but many of the men there had had their daughters with their first wives, the plain ones that they had loved, years ago, rather than the gorgeous trophy wives that they had on their arms tonight.

Sachiko barely remembered the names of the men she greeted anymore. That was her post, after all. She greeted the men who entered after they were greeted by two butlers and her mother.

Not tonight.

Tonght, maybe something was different. Maybe it was the o-sake she had had before the party started—in authentic university style, except with expensive hard liquor instead of cheap beer—or maybe it was just something in the air.

Or maybe it was that thing she had found today, walking over by the construction area near what would soon be a bridge across a manmade stream which would run all the way through her backyard. That thing she'd found, just lying there in the moist, freshly-trimmed grass, a block of light brown in the otherwise green field. There had been no workers in sight, and none of them would have dared leave such a mess leaving around. Not with the risk of an Ogasawara finding it so present.

And yet, there it had been. Just laying there, and at the same time, screaming at her, here I am. You finally found me. After all this time, you've finally found me, and now we'll never be separated again.

That last part, Sachiko had not believed, but even so…

She had taken it back with her.

Maybe she would just throw it out. If she had been one of the girls who whispered about her so hatefully, even now, not fifty feet away from her in a room with such good acoustics that you could hear a mouse sneeze on the other end in a corner. It's just Sachiko, they muttered. She doesn't dare act up. They might take away the inheritance. That's what I heard after that spectacle she pulled with her petite soeur.

I heard her petite seour has no class.

Of course she doesn't. She's one of Sachiko's charity cases. Fucking high and mighty bitch. Fucking bitch.

Fucking bitch.

Fucking…

Fornicating…

Entertaining in the back bitch. O-sake bitch.

"Sachiko!" The girl was as bubbly as her champagne, and Sachiko could tell she'd come from over

guest room

by the rest of the girls. There was a voice missing from the pack. She wore a generically pretty pink dress, and her long, overpermed black hair was done up into an elaborate mess on the top of her head that Sachiko would have sooner cut off than try to take down gently.

"Hello," Sachiko fumbled gracefully, but still she fumbled for a microsecond with the girl's name. She turned her head and gave a brief cough, faked but realistic enough to stand up to scrutiny, Eriko or Eiko. No. Eriko has the faux-blonde hair and the blue contacts. She's the eego-phile. "Miss Ishioika."

The girl laughed delightfully, and it grated like nails on a chalkboard in Sachiko's ears. "Sachiko, always so polite," she said with absolutely no reservation. "You can call me Eiko, please. How many times have I told you that?"

I wouldn't call you by your given name if you paid me, Yumi might have said. Her family was not fabulously wealthy as Sachiko's was, so the phrase still had some meaning. Perhaps more appropriate was, I wouldn't call you by your given name if you threatened me with a baseball bat.

Maybe that even had some meaning here. Security was conspicuously absent tonight; usually these parties were about as well-guarded as a convocational speech by the Prime Minister. Maybe somebody had dosed their drinks with something.

"Of course, Miss Ishioka," Sachiko said politely.

"I'm sorry?" Ishioka said, feigning ignorance, but in reality only thinly veiling annoyance.

Fucking

"Of course, Eiko." Sachiko said it flawlessly, and then almost winced, very nearly expecting the promised baseball bat to come. Perhaps she had had too much to drink.

It had only been a couple of cups, given to her by one of the cooks that she liked; a good man, if a little too fond of the o-sake himself. He had heated it in the microwave, rather than over a fire as the family typically demanded, and shared a couple with her. Her arms felt a little tingly, but she didn't notice anything else wrong, save for the occasional slip of tongue or expression.

"Have you heard of the American company that has begun to compete for contracts in Kyushu?" Eiko said, by way of small-talk. "I've heard that they're beginning to make sizable profits for being on such a," she lowered her voice, as though speaking scandalously, "pimple of an island."

Sachiko felt her temper flare and immediately squelch itself, as per her training; her family had a summer home on Kyushu, and it was quite probably her favorite place on the planet where Yumi wasn't. "Oh, yes?" she said politely. "Very interesting."

"Oh, please," Eiko said. "You don't give a rat's fart about your family's earnings or interests," you slut, "so stop faking it; it's tiresome."

Perhaps Sachiko wasn't the only one to have had too much to drink tonight. A few people were starting to stare at the two of them, probably expecting some kind of argument to break out and disrupt the tedium of the event. Sachiko, however, would have none of it. She simply smiled.

"I hope you enjoy yourself at our party, Miss Ishioka," she said. "I have to check on something in the kitchens."

And it was at precisely that moment that a woman whose name Sachiko would never know knocked into her, stumbling on her way out for a nice, refreshing vomit, and sent her sprawling into Eiko Ishoka.

The woman was one of those who had been speaking with Eiko shortly before the girl came to torment Sachiko.

The first hand there to help was merely the nearest, but it also belonged to one of the ugliest—and richest—men at the event. His "wife" had been the one who had knocked her over, but that hardly mattered, in any event. He apologized for her, but Sachiko didn't really hear it.

They planned this.

They planned this.

The man offered to help her to the nearest bathroom, but Sachiko refused. The refusal might have even stood if her first step had not been into the spilled puddle of red wine, surprisingly slippery on marble flooring. With a cry of alarm, her hands went out and caught on the nearest thing to her—the man, whose name she didn't even know (only his status), and her ankle twisted sharply, painfully. She cried out again as she hit the floor. People were starting to crowd now, and the man did his best to clear them off. Sachiko heard snickers as he helped her up—his hand moving dangerously close to her ass, but his arms strong and supportive nonetheless. In a daze, part-shame and part-sake, which was starting to kick in harder the less she tried to stop it from doing exactly what it wanted to do to her brain, she moved towards where he led her, her head throbbing and her chest burning.

They stopped at the bar on their way there; Sachiko was barely noticing where they were going anymore. A moment later, something was thrust into her face by a slavering demon--

"Drink this," the man said, in a voice that was probably supposed to be gentle but turned out smarmy. "It'll help."

She did it: More o-sake; it burned its way down her throat and into her belly, and her head floated a little higher, but the harsh pain in her ankle faded a little too, and she found it a little easier to walk. She slipped out of her heels, and the man led on.

--

Sachiko was a very small woman, all things considered, and three cups of o-sake was a lot more than a wisp of a woman like her would normally be able to handle. In fact, she wasn't able to handle it, not really. That was why, the next thing she knew, she was not in the bathroom.

She was in one of the guest rooms. Sitting on a bed. The man sat next to her.

She didn't even know his name and he was trying to…

She wasn't even married yet and he was trying to…

His tongue extended—a snake flowing out of his mouth, hissed at her once, and she nearly screamed, but held her tongue. If she screamed, it might bite her, and then—

a block of light brown in the otherwise green field

The room was painted entirely green.

And there it was.

He was kissing her neck, taking her lack of response as silent consent—not unusual.

He was touching her breast.

He was unzipping the back of her dress.

But there it was.

A block of light brown in an otherwise green field.

She felt something cold and clammy where there should have been only warmth on her; almost in her, now. She ignored it; this thing, this beautiful block of brown…it enthralled her moderately drunken mind.

And then he bit her. The snake bit her, and her mind cleared at once; the haze vanished and there was only the block.

A block of wood, measuring two in width inches by four inches in depth, and perhaps a foot and a half in length. Just right.

A two-by-four.

She stood up, and he said something. She couldn't hear it. It didn't matter. He kept talking, and she still couldn't understand, which was completely fine. She walked over to the block of wood, and picked it up; it was cool and dry in her grip, and just heavy enough to be comforting, like a sword or a gun was comforting.

Something stole across her face.

He saw it and said something else.

She didn't bother speaking back. He talked to two by four.

--

Nobody ever figured out how a wisp of a woman like her managed to drag a big man like him all the way down the hall with one hand, while presumably piss-drunk, holding a 2x4 in her other hand that looked way too heavy for her. She slopped the man down on the ground—he went down with a slosh, and at first, nobody noticed.

That was okay. She started walking; a few people looked at her, her face a little red, but only in patches, (she must still be embarrassed, they thought, but what's that in her hand?) but everyone else looked away, maybe embarrassed at their conduct, but more likely just onto a new topic for the evening and not wanting to revisit an old one. The world was a giant muffler to her anyway; nothing seemed real, nothing made noise, nothing felt like anything.

Nothing except that block.

"Eiko," Sachiko said to the girl's back as she laughed about something. The girl froze, turned around slowly, and then screamed at Sachiko's face. From a distance, it was a little flushed.

From up close, it was smeared with blood. Just like her teeth, stained from the big, toothy grin she had worn when she killed the man, whose name she still didn't know. She raised the two by four above her right shoulder, like a baseball player and brought it down in a smooth arc, a little like Rei might have, and smashed Eiko Ishioka's face in with more force than anybody would have thought possible from her. Once, and her nose shattered with three of her teeth, and then Sachiko's face contorted into a hideous, twisted snarl, and she hit Eiko again, this time swinging more outward, the 2x4 impacting with a meaty thud every time. Blood splattered and flew, just as it had with the man, and after a few hits, bone started to crack with it.

Somebody shouted something, and Sachiko twisted with a snarl to see Eiko's father running at her, his face frozen in shock. He was running not at her but at her daughter, so his path took him about a foot from Sachiko, to her left. She made the most of it; raised the 2x4 like an expert batter, and just as he came in reach, swung it in a wide arc into his face. His neck snapped backwards, and then just snapped, along with his jawbone and four of his teeth. Without even waiting for his body to hit the ground—which it did, with a wet smack, she moved on to the nearest person, raising the 2x4 and bringing it down in a savage blow on the man's shoulder. He cried out in pain and dropped to the ground, which made the angle easier for her to bludgeon his head in.

Nobody was speaking anymore. Somebody screamed, and somebody else threw up, but nobody came to wrestle Sachiko to the ground.

So Sachiko smiled, and started talking to them.

Or, rather, she did the walking. 2x4 did the talking.

--

Sachiko awoke with a start, her eyes jerking open to see Yumi's pretty, open face staring at her in concern.

They were still driving. Sei was still in the driver's seat—probably she was never going to give that position up. The car was, after all, her baby. Her vision was less blurry now, but she had a headache—this must have been what a hangover was like.

"Yumi?" Sachiko said, slurring her words for quite possibly the first time in her life. "What is it?"

"Are you all right, onee-sama?" Yumi asked. "You looked like you were having a nightmare, but…" she hesitated. "You kept snarling, and saying…"

Sachiko blinked. "Saying…saying what?"

"It didn't make any sense, onee-sama," Yumi frowned. "You kept saying, 'talk to two by four.'"

Alcohol did, after all, do strange things to a person's dreams.