Sasuke brought in fourteen bridal catalogues with one eye that was swelling shut. "Come here," Kuno said dangerously.
"She slipped during a training exercise, young master. All is well."
"She is not—" The floor lunged up in fractals to meet him, and the next time Kuno was conscious the sky was visible from the exploded roof of the eastern sitting room and there were fading screams of laughter as Kodachi disappeared into the Neriman sunset. Sasuke was stroking his forehead with a damp cloth and looking quite worried. "She is not permitted to strike you as she has in the past," Kuno continued horizontally. "I have already decreed this as master of this house."
"A simple training mistake," Sasuke said. "The catalogues are mostly undamaged; I protected them and you with my life."
"I must call a contractor." This was the third small sitting room she'd detonated in the mansion this week and Kuno's patience was fraying. The room tilted violently when he tried to get up, so he lay there in the smoking debris with his head in Sasuke's lap and pondered floral arrangements. "I have wondered lately if I should replace ivory with cream. I am worried about the colors looking too muddy."
"There was also Eggshell, sir, if it please you. I have studied the catalogues quite thoroughly. Consider also strong White, Winter White, Man on the Moon, and Antique White. Pearl also perhaps."
"So many whites," Kuno said wonderingly. He passed out briefly but came back when Sasuke's expert touch found the base of his skull and massaged away the ache. "I want the contrast between the white and yellow to be striking yet comforting."
"It is a juggling act indeed, Tatewaki-sama. I obtained paint samples if you would like them."
"I would. I am considering an accent color. Dark green."
"A lovely choice. Colors of sunlight and renewal, sir. And your mother's favorite, coincidentally! She must be smiling from heaven."
Yes. Kuno let his eyes fall shut a moment. He thought strictly about flowers as Sasuke palmed up his singed hair from his hairline. A coincidence. When he could get up without throwing up over what remained of the velvet settee, he placed a call to the contractor, booked another appointment at the floral shop, and went ring shopping. Nothing exploded in the shop but that was mostly due to happenstance than anything strictly planned.
To be quite honest, he was beginning to think that maybe —
.
There were more students staring at him in the hallway. Not always terribly aware of his surroundings when he was drafting marriage poetry in his head, it took Kuno a bit longer than it likely should have to realize he was the center of unusual attention. As someone who valued his reputation as a kendo combatant and a student icon, he'd long learned to parse intentions by body language. Females who desired him turned towards each other and folded in on themselves to giggle. Males who feared him made way or offered to carry things for him to curry favor. Those who disliked him largely ignored him, but that too had its own language.
The language he was deciphering in the halls was difficult. The male students took a moment longer to step aside for him and the female students were looking at him with confusion instead of their usual naked lust. He felt as though he were being sized up in some way and not in any way that excited him particularly. It was the same way he felt in his kitchen just before something barbed, poisonous, or sister-shaped attacked him from the nearest vent.
His suspicions were rekindled when he met Nabiki Tendo up on the roof for lunch. He wasn't surprised when she barely acknowledged him, but her eyes did make cool little flickers over his newest damage. She made no attempt to stop him as he took his usual seat by her. She was eating something with meat and gravy today – a substantially heartier meal than her usual light fare of sushi and vegetables. "You are conducting more business than usual this week I see," he observed, unearthing his own bento.
Her mouth was full as she read her clipboard. "Uh huh."
"What work has you so occupied?"
"This and that."
Kuno began to unwrap the handkerchief from his bento and stopped. A corner had been tucked differently than how he had tucked it this morning. He regarded it intently, then finished unpeeling it to crack open the top of the tin with more care.
Nabiki Tendo chewed. "What's wrong."
He slipped a forefinger in, touched it to the glaze, and tasted it expertly. A moment later he rinsed out his mouth with water, spat it discreetly behind the bench they were on, and stood up to throw the tin away in the receptacle.
Nabiki Tendo had fully peeled her attention away from her calculations to eyeball him as he returned. "Kodachi's really not pulling any punches with you right now, is she."
"She merely fears being displaced. No reassurances I can provide her will satisfy."
"So she's just going to keep barreling full-psychosis ahead until she kills you, is what you're saying."
"She will not kill me," Kuno said eventually. He'd had to think about it. "Maim me seriously, perhaps hospitalize me. But I am the head of the house, and she respects that to some degree. She will also be alone if she kills me, and that is what she fears the most. No, this is merely punishment for frightening her. She does not process fear well."
"You've told me before that she wants your father to come back."
"She does not remember our father the way I do. Naturally she would yearn for that which she does not know."
"To be honest, it looks like the apple plopped right onto the gnarly roots on that one." Nabiki Tendo was still chewing. "She may not remember your dad, but I do, and that was a trainwreck up the butt of a car crash. Have you at least tried telling her how crazy he was?"
"Alas, the more I tell her the more it appeals to their… mutual natures." Truthfully he didn't want to discuss it and also he half-suspected Nabiki Tendo's interest was diversionary. She was still running numbers on her clipboard and they looked suspiciously like numbers he should be taking a personal interest in considering he recognized her shorthand for his name. A moment later his suspicions as always were confirmed as a girl reluctantly crawled up to Nabiki Tendo's side, casting him furtive glances as she shifted from foot to foot.
Kuno hunted around his school bag for something resembling nutrition and was irritated anew to witness the transaction of a photo book featuring him in last week's Kendo tournament. The girl died in slow centimeters as Nabiki Tendo took her sweet time, humming as she counted the bills, making a show of presenting the book with both hands like it was a business card and not possible illegal exploitation on school grounds. "I despise you," Kuno frowned after the girl left.
"Cool." Her mouth was full again as she tucked the money away in her padlocked money tin. "Put it on a t-shirt."
"I should at least get a portion of the profits."
"Why? I'm the one who does all the work snapping them and developing them. Darkroom stuff costs money and it's not like I have yen flying out of my butthole. I don't think you truly appreciate how much hustle it takes to keep producing high quality artwork."
"They are photographs of me!"
"Like I said, you make producing quality artwork real difficult," Nabiki Tendo said. "But I work with what I have. That all told, not a super huge fan of those bruises you keep bringing in, Tatchan. Neither is your loyal fanbase. No one at the Kendo club can touch you so it's been a real bear trying to find excuses for them that don't blast your little domestic situation all over the school."
He spoke between his teeth. "Thank you for your restraint."
"If anything, you owe me for how hard I'm having to work to get angles that don't show you mangled. In fact – what are you doing."
"She dropped something." He reached down to scrape up the fallen ticket from the pavement. He scanned the crowd for her and half-stood before Nabiki Tendo abruptly yanked it out of his hand. "What," he snapped, fed up with her odd behavior. "I must return that to her before she leaves."
"I keep a very strict 'losers weepers' policy in my dojo." Nabiki Tendo crumpled it up in her fist and tossed it with unnerving accuracy at the trash can. "She can buy another one and bleed that one too for all I care. I've got a profit margin to maintain."
Kuno reviewed the glimpse of text he'd seen on it before she'd stolen it. He had been almost certain he'd seen his name. It had also been brushed with some kind of golden iridescence that'd made it flare under the sun. After years of being in the forefront of Nabiki Tendo's schemes and admittedly occasionally a part of them, he knew full well how much a print job on that paper would've cost her. "Sit down," Nabiki Tendo said, and he realized he was still half-standing like a confused gargoyle. "Lunch is almost over. You really don't have anything else to eat?"
"No."
"If you forgot your wallet, I'll loan you 600 yen to go buy bread. I'll only charge ten percent interest."
"No."
"You're mad at me," Nabiki Tendo said, a little wonderingly.
"I am not."
"You are though. I never see you getting mad at any other girl."
"You are no girl."
She was smiling but her eyes weren't. Her pencil eraser tapped the clipboard lightly, soft as a drop of rain. "And just what am I, baby."
Kuno watched someone else's trash go into the trash can.
Her can of juice still sat between them. She picked it up, rescued his stiff hand, and forced it around the can until he had no choice but to hold it or spill it onto his lap. "Get something in your stomach or you'll pass out at kendo practice again," Nabiki Tendo said, and left.
When she was out of sight, Kuno got up and pushed the last discarded lunch aside to get to the crumpled up ticket. It was stained with soy but legible.
He read it under the sunlight. Foot traffic flowed around him as the roof slowly began to clear.
When he was finished he wiped it clean as best he could, folded it, and went back to sit on the empty bench to drink the juice down. Indirect contact meant less when the two people involved had already lost their first kiss.
.
"Is this the residence of Nabiki Tendo?"
"Kuno, you know whose residence this is. You call every night."
"It would help if you were to say 'Hello, this is the residence of Nabiki Tendo'. That way any doubts would be assuaged at the beginning of the conversation."
"I am officially concerned," Nabiki Tendo said. "No, really, when the hell do you sleep. We're getting up in four hours."
"I must speak with you. The matter is urgent."
"On fire urgent or bleeding to death urgent."
"Neither, but—"
She hung up. "This will take but a moment," he said when he called her back.
"It never takes but a moment, Kuno. That's the problem. It takes many moments Many consecutive moments. Many many consecutive moments that I could be—"
"What was the surprise you were referring to."
"Huh?"
Akane Tendo's collage was moonlit at an angle, throwing her biggest portrait half-in and half-out of shadow. The last of his candles had gone out an hour ago. Kuno felt inundated with smoke and roses. "When I asked you what you were plotting several days ago, you said that I should wait for the surprise. I had assumed at the time you were planning a gift for our nuptials."
"That is so cute for you to assume that for even a second," Nabiki Tendo said. "But on the other hand I do occasionally do human things for human people, so everything's still up in the air. But let's cut to the chase, what's this really about."
"I read the ticket."
He could hear her breathing for a minute on the other end. "If I am to understand, you have been selling tickets to my upcoming nuptials and forwarding none of that money towards the ceremony itself," Kuno said. "Is that correct?"
"Would that really surprise you?"
"No."
"It's two in the morning so I assume some part of it is surprising to you, unless you enjoy calling me up dead in the morning to say obvious things to me."
"In the beginning, you said that you would help me. Perhaps it was naïve of me, but I thought you were somewhat enthused about the upcoming wedding."
"Kuno, there is no wedding," Nabiki Tendo said. "My sister is not going to marry you. What you're doing is a step up from your usual delusion, I'll give you that, but let's be real, it's all going to come to the same thing. You're going to get to my place, horses and wedding ring in hand, and she's going to boot you into the stratosphere while the giant panda that lives here plays shogi with my dad. What I'm doing is capitalizing on this opportunity so that at least one of us gets something we want from it."
"And the tickets?"
"I'll refund half for the cancellation – it was right there in the writing. I'll still make out like a bandit because I haven't sunk any money into it. It's a clean hustle."
"And my feelings on the matter?"
"What about them?"
The side of his face throbbed. Kodachi had detonated a toaster this time, which unfortunately meant he did now potentially desire the toaster from Sou Hidetoushi in class 3-B. "You seemed happy for me when I told you my plans."
"Is that how you interpreted that emotion? God, you sweet thing. Nothing much surprises me anymore but you always manage to find a way."
"Are you then not in favor of me wedding your sister?"
"The wedding is not happening. I don't know how many other ways to explain this to you."
"So the tickets you are selling are fraudulent."
"Of course they are. Are you okay? Did you hit your head today?"
"So the tickets are fraudulent, you are not in fact happy for me, you do not care that I am marrying your sister, and you do not care that your chicanery upsets me," Kuno said. "Have I already arrived at the surprise, or is that yet to come?"
"Kuno, I can't in a million years fathom what it is you're so up in arms about," Nabiki Tendo said. "The box sets of you have been sitting around in my room since I broke the news of your 'wedding'. This whole farce is keeping me out of the red this month. If it really chaps you that bad, I'll consider cutting you in. As though you're not rich as god and I'm trying to feed my sister's whale belly and keep a roof over our heads."
"Cease the sales," he said. "Out of decency if nothing else."
"Decency doesn't front me production costs. I have to break even to keep me out of the red this month."
"You are making a mockery of something important to me."
"It's a sweaty teenage fantasy you're acting out in real life with your daddy's money, and next week I will one hundred percent guarantee that you'll be fixated on something else with boobs. Probably the pigtailed girl. Rinse repeat."
"If you care at all about me—"
"I don't."
Akane Tendo's half-illuminated face smiled at him.
"I see," Kuno said, and for the first time in their long, unquantifiable, unfathomable sort-of-friendship-sort-of-partnership in crime-sort-of-other, he hung up on Nabiki Tendo.