Ch 17

V 1.0

"… the Urashima are now starting the eviction process to remove you from the Hinata-sou."

Tsuruko's final words were still ringing in Motoko's ears even a minute after she finished speaking them. How was Motoko to argue? Even if what she had thought she had overheard on the phone was true, that still did not justify a physical assault under the rules of the Sou.

"How are you feeling?" Her sister's question brought her out of her reverie. "Headache, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision?"

"No… except for a slight headache I am feeling well enough." Motoko was surprised to realize that was true as she slowly sat up in her futon, and turned to face her sister.

"Very well, stay on your futon. I shall return shortly." Tsuruko rocked back on her heels before standing and walking out of her room.

Suddenly aware that she was alone in a room that was not her own, Motoko started to look around. It was rather apparent that it was a guest room due to the lack of decoration and extraneous furnishings. Looking down at herself, she saw that she was still wearing her gi and hakama, and that they were rumpled and soiled as though she had been rolling around on the ground. But given that she had been knocked out outside the Sou, that was not much of a surprise, plus apparently she had slept in her clothing as well. Carefully pulling her gi open, she could see that her chest bindings were intact, so apparently the Urashima had carried her into this room last night and let her sleep off her injury without undressing her.

Motoko flushed at the thought of the manager laying his hands on her. There was no other way for her to be here and not outside without him bringing her inside. But there was no overt sign that he had taken advantage of her helpless state. What was there for her to do? It would be a sign of weakness and a dishonor for her to ask if he had taken advantage of her, especially with no proof.

Hearing the door click open, Motoko looked up to see her sister walk into the room carrying a tray full of food, which she deposited on the low table nearby. On it where two bowls of fried rice with egg, two bowls of miso soup, a bowl of sliced pickles, and two large mugs of tea.

"Time to eat, little sister." Tsuruko kneeled down on one side of the table and took one of the bowls of rice and a mug of tea and placed it in front of her. Picking up a set of chopsticks, she waited until Motoko made her way to the table and got her food ready before murmuring Itadakimasu (I humbly receive) and starting to eat, Motoko silently joining in.

Once the sisters were done eating, Tsuruko placed her plate and bowl back on the tray and waited for Motoko to do the same. By this time the younger sister was starting to get nervous, as her older sister had not said anything during the meal. Picking up her tea mug, Motoko held it in her hands to help warm them up, as she was feeling a chill go through her.

"You have no idea what you have brought upon yourself, do you?" Tsuruko asked in a conversational tone of voice, almost causing Motoko to give a start. "You attacked the head of this house without provocation, who has been hosting you as a favor to our family. You believe him guilty of what he saved one of the other tenants from becoming victim to. I don't know whether to be shocked or ashamed of how you came to these conclusions. What I do know is I realize it was a mistake to let you come here to Tokyo rather than make you stay at home."

"Let me come to Tokyo?" Motoko asked flatly. After Tsuruko had gotten married two years ago, she had been so upset that her sister had given up being the heir to the family school to get married that she had ceased speaking to her, and did not even start speaking to her brother-in-law. It was devolved into a game of musical rooms, where as soon as her sister or brother-in-law would enter a room, she would find a reason to leave. In situations where she could not leave, like family meals, she would not speak unless spoken to, and even then it would be the bare minimum necessary. It got to the point where a younger cousin had jokingly called her 'the human air conditioner', as a room's temperature would drop five degrees as soon as she came in.

"Yes, let you. You were disrupting the wa (harmony) of the family school so badly that the elders held a meeting to decide what to do about it. It came down to letting you go and study at another location and hope that your anger would pass, or suspend your status as heir and put you though remedial training."

Motoko almost stopped breathing. Remedial training was a polite way of referring to what was realistically punitive status. No matter your previous rank, you were stripped of it and started again from the bottom. Only instead of having to just relearn everything, remedial students had to do twice as much, twice as fast just to keep up. While there was no deliberate physical abuse involved, the amount of physical training and kendo drills you endured at the hands of instructors who were not inclined to be merciful made it seem that way.

"We spoke with Hina Urashima and she agreed to host you here at the Sou, so that hopefully your anger would cool down, but now I see that was too much to ask of her. And now the skills that have been passed down for decades and even centuries to protect those who cannot protect themselves have been used at the hands of an angry petulant little girl."

"Petulant! You abandoned our school for a male! How am I supposed to be happy about that!" Motoko's voice started to rise, but the glare from her sister suddenly cut it back.

"Petulant and ignorant! How do you expect for the Aoyama school to continue? Have you suddenly become Christian and start believing in the spontaneous conception of children? How do you think children come to be, that they grow in a cabbage patch, that they are dropped off by a stork? Someone had to marry to produce the next generation of Aoyama, were you willing to do it? Would you marry a man with the strict understanding that you are doing it just to produce heirs that would be adopted into the Aoyama clan? That all your training to become head of the Aoyama family means nothing if there is no one of Aoyama blood to pass it down to? You know that among the duties that fall to the family is to make sure we have offspring to pass on the school!" Tsuruko was now glaring full force at her sister, who had backed off at the fury now on her face.

"We did what we had to do continue the bloodline of our family, and you act as though I had betrayed it. Should we have asked for your permission before we made you heir? Guess what, little sister, it is time to grow up. I gave up being heir because I wanted to spare you of that duty to your family, and this is how you thank us, by acting as a child who thinks that all men are beasts, by attacking with overwhelming force with the flimsiest of excuses. And by doing so, you have stained the honor of your family by involving another house in your misconceptions." Tsuruko stopped speaking and looked down her hands, whose knuckles were turning white from her grip on her tea mug.

Looking up after a long moment, she continued. "I spoke with Keitaro-san when I went to get our breakfast. It is mid-day now. At 4:00 PM the disciplinary meeting will be held in the tea room of this house. At that meeting it will be determined if you will be asked to leave the Hinata-sou. And after that, I will either escort you home or report to the elders of the situation here and give my recommendation as to your status in the Aoyama School, and what reparations if any the Aoyama need to make to the Urashima." Tsuruko pushed herself back from the table and stood. "I am going to return this tray to the kitchen, then we are to go to your room to prepare for the meeting. Keitaro-san asks that we stay there for now, and I agree. So get ready to go upstairs, I shall return shortly." With that, Tsuruko picked up the tray and walked out of the room, leaving her sister sitting motionless and silent as she considered her sister's words.

Tap tap tap.

Kanako looked up at the sound of someone tapping at her door. It had been barely ten minutes since she left the room that Aoyama was sleeping in, and she was just finished getting dressed in jeans and a t-shirt for the bike ride to school, with her fuku uniform carefully folded and placed in a knapsack. Not that she wanted to leave her beloved Keitaro in the house with that harpy, but with the older sister present, it was less likely that her brother would need to defend himself again. "It's open," Kanako called out.

The door cracked open, and a head with mused black hair and glasses appeared. "Hey there, Kana-chan. Can I talk to you for a moment?"

"Of course, Kei-kun." Kanako watched as he entered her room and stood there for a moment watching her, not discomforting her at all. He was the only person that she felt completely comfortable around, that she could trust with anything, and he was aware of it as well.

"I hate to ask this of you Kanako, but can you stay home from school today? I need help with something." Keitaro was rubbing the back of his head, and looking preoccupied.

"Of course Kei-kun, what do you need help with?" Due to her insomnia, Kanako was so far ahead of her class in her studies that she could probably take the end of term exams and pass them with high marks.

"I have to set up the tea room for the disciplinary meeting today, and there are some other things I need to arrange as well. Haruka is working at the Tea House right now, and I need an extra pair of hands."

"It's not a problem Kei-kun, let me change clothes and I'll be right out." Kanako grasped the hem of her white t-shirt and started to pull it up over her head without waiting for Keitaro to leave her room. He was barely able to turn around and start walking for the door without seeing more than the lacy white bra she was wearing under her shirt.

"I'll wait for you outside, Kana-chan," Keitaro called out over his shoulder as he walked out of the room. Closing the door, he leaned up against the wall and softly banged his head against it. Kanako had absolutely no problem disrobing in front of him, using it as a form of both teasing him and trying to seduce him. Granted, Kanako was a very attractive girl, except for the near total emotional control she normally exhibited around everyone except himself. He just could not get past his memories of the crying little girl that his family had taken in, the victim of abuse that had been taken from her birth family. At first young Kanako would flinch at any physical contact with any other person, but soon the girl would get used to and then even seek out the touches and hugs her onii-chan would give her.

Granny Hina had approached his parents about fostering the six year old, then made the arrangements for the adoption once it became apparent that Kanako was happy and eager to stay with them. But even though she got used to being cared for by their parents, it was only with Keitaro that she truly relaxed, even smiling and laughing around him.

However, as she got older, that affection had become an attraction, and after the assault he had rescued her from, a crush that had almost become an obsession. She had sworn to always take care of Keitaro, that her life was now his to do as he would. And Keitaro knew what she meant by 'do with as he would', as she would sneak into his room in the dead of night wearing nothing and try and strip his clothes off. Thankfully he would wake up and stop her before it went farther than that. While he did love Kanako very much, it was not in the way that she would have preferred, much to her regret.

"I'm ready, Kei-kun." Turning his head to the side, Keitaro saw that Kanako was standing outside her door, now dressed in a black tank top and cargo shorts. "What do we need to do first?" she asked as they started walking down the hallway.

"We need to move the table out of the tea room, then set up the tatami mats up for a meeting. Then I have to dig some stuff out of storage. That reminds me, do you have a kimono you can wear?"

Kanako looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "No, the last time I wore a kimono was when I was receiving tea ceremony lessons four years ago. I've grown quite a bit since then."

Keitaro nodded in remembrance. Kanako was actually rather good at doing the highly ritualized tea ceremony, but afterwards, she would go to the training post behind the house and do her best to splinter the weathered piece of oak with her wrapped fists and feet. Kanako claimed that doing the tea ceremony would calm her down too much, and she would need to get her blood pumping again.

"Well, we'll see what we can find when we go digging later." The pair stopped at the tea room door and Keitaro slid the rice paper door open.

"We're going to wear kimono for the meeting?" Kanako asked as she stepped inside the room.

"I was going to just wear normal clothing, but Tsuruko-san mentioned that she had only business clothing and haori and hakama packed for this trip, and that Motoko only had gi, hakama, and uniforms. So I figured that we have to more or less wear equivalent clothes. I came across some formal clothes a couple weeks ago, and that is what you are going to help me pull from storage."

"Hmm," Kanako noised as she walked over to one side of the table and put her hands under the edge. Waiting until Keitaro took hold of the table on the opposite side, they lifted the table and carefully turned it so the top was vertical, then started walking toward the door.

"Maybe I'll get Haru-chan to take some pictures of us, or we'll get some timer shots of the three of us together all dressed up." Keitaro cracked a grin at his sister.

"Yay," Kanako replied, her voice completely flat.

"So what is it that you want me to do, Kei-kun?" Haruka asked. It was now 3:00 PM, and Keitaro had called down to the Tea House and asked that she come up to the Sou early, as there were some things they needed to talk about. She had found her nephew and niece in his room talking about some of the things he had seen on his overseas trip.

"Well, first off, we have to talk about Motoko and what we are going to do about her." Keitaro was seated at the low table in his room, an iced coffee beverage at hand. He waved for his aunt to join him and his sister at the table. "I'm not really scared of her, but we can't let her just keep attacking me, she could get lucky one day and crack my head open."

"I think we should ask her to leave. Her personal problems are starting to affect the safety of the tenants of the Sou, and her family were the ones to ask Granny Hina to let her stay here." Kanako replied. After Keitaro had made her assistant manager, she had read the tenant book and was now familiar with all the residents.

"Well, I think that Motoko really need to get her temper under control. You've done well with Naru-san, do you think you could do the same with Motoko-san?" Haruka asked.

Keitaro shrugged. "The reason it went well with Naru-san is because she wanted to change, and she didn't really have anyone else to help her. I don't think that Motoko-san is at that point yet, plus she still has her family to fall back on."

Haruka nodded. "We can't force help on her, but we can offer it. Can we agree on that?" The other two Urashima nodded in agreement, one with less enthusiasm than the other.

"But if we do make the offer, there has to be a stick to go along with the carrot we are offering. What if we do decide to agree that Aoyama attacking Kei-kun is an evictable offense, but we stay that decision. She would be able to stay at the Sou, but another offense would result in an immediate eviction, with no hearing. It would literally by Aoyama's last chance," offered Kanako. She did not want to go through this whole mess again if the kendo girl screwed up her last chance. "And she absolutely has to show remorse for what she has done, she does not deserve another chance otherwise."

Keitaro looked from his sister to his aunt. After a long moment she nodded her agreement. "OK, I can live with that. And all this has to be clarified with both Motoko-san and Tsuruko-san so there are no misunderstandings," Haruka stated.

Kanako nodded her agreement as well. "There is one thing more we have to do. We have to provoke Aoyama to a certain extent."

"What?" Keitaro's eyebrows went up .

"If Aoyama cannot control her temper at least a little, this is all a waste of time and effort. We have to be sure she is willing to work for her last chance." The two woman turned and looked at the only male, who was frowning in thought.

"And who is going to be the bad cop in all this?" Keitaro asked rhetorically.

"Myself, of course. The two of you are too softhearted to pull it off convincingly." Kanako replied matter-of-factly.

The older Urashima looked at each other silently for a moment. Finally, Keitaro said, "I am trying to help Motoko-san, not make things worse. The Aoyama already feel that they owe restitution, we don't want to make things worse, or wind up owing them as well. That means that you can poke her some, but not provoke her to attack us. You do that, it will only make things worse for Motoko-san with her family. You understand that, Kanako?"

"I understand," Kanako agreed.

"That also means that if I say 'enough', that's it. I am trusting you on this, Kana-chan." Changing subjects, he continued, "That only leaves one more thing before the meeting. The dress code." Keitaro turned to Haruka and smiled.

Haruka was getting concerned. When Keitaro smiled like that, and Kanako as well, even if it was one of her thin smirks, it was time to get nervous.

"You have got to be freaking kidding me."

Haruka was looking down at the garments laid out before her. Keitaro and Kanako had lead her to this storage room to and together they had unpacked some of the clothes stored there. After a few minutes they had three clothing sets spread out on a table and Haruka was shaking her head incredulously.

"What are you complaining about? At least you don't have to wear the full outfit." In front of Haruka was a dark grey silk kimono, with dull white embroidery suggesting falling snow, with an inner cream colored under robe.

"I haven't dressed up like this since I had to go to a formal dinner with Granny Hina years ago." Haruka desperately wanted a cigarette, but she was indoors, and you could not smoke around silk garments like this. "Why are we wearing these again?"

"The Aoyama are wearing haori and hakama to the meeting, we can't be dressed less formally than them, so we pulled these out." Keitaro gestured toward the clothes.

"So why that style kimono for me?" The pattern and coloring of the kimono was one usually worn by men, not women.

"Well, you are my closest advisor, aren't you? You need to dress the part." Keitaro smiled at her.

"And what about Kana-chan?" Haruka gestured toward the white and black material in front of the youngest Urashima.

"She's my hatamoro, so she had to dress the part as well." While the term was used for vassals of the shogun, hatamoto were also a samurai lord's most trusted retainer, one that was allowed access to their lord day or night, and were the only non-guard retainers allowed to carry their weapons in close proximity to their lord. Looking over at Kanako, Haruka saw that she was actually smiling openly at being referred to that way by Keitaro, which was the equivalent of most other people jumping up and down cheering.

"So why do you have that one out?" Haruka pointed at a fourth bundle of colorful cloth set off to the side.

"That one is for the last person in our group today." Keitaro explained. A tap tap tap was heard at the door. "And there she is now." Keitaro opened the door to show Shinobu standing there, looking nervous and holding a note in her hand.

"Sempai, you left a note that you wanted to see me as soon as I got home from school?" Shinobu looked nervously from one Urashima to another. This whole day had gone strangely, with Motoko out sick from school and now some odd tension being felt in the Sou.

"Yes, Shinobu-chan. We are going to have a meeting today with Motoko-san and her sister, and I was hoping you can help us out a little." Keitaro smiled encouragingly at the young tenant, who cautiously smiled back.

Motoko was sitting in her room, trying not to fidget. The time for the meeting was coming up, and she had been ready for the last half hour, waiting for someone to come and summon them to the tea room. Both of the Aoyama were wearing white haori with the Aoyama crest on the left breast, and black hakama, along with tabi socks, as suggested by Tsuruko.

Her sister was sitting in seiza a short distance away, looking as though she was meditating, but still acutely aware of everything around her. Motoko had tried to meditate as well, but she was too anxious to do it correctly. So for the last few minutes, she had been going over in her head everything she and Tsuruko had talked about, especially the one piece of advice she had given her – If you want to stay here at the Sou, you must show genuine remorse and a desire to work hard to improve yourself. Otherwise, you will be on the next train home with me.

Hearing a soft tapping on the door, Motoko looked up to see her sister already on her feet to open it. Glancing at the alarm clock on her desk, she could see that it was five minutes to four o'clock.

Tsuruko opened the door, revealing a young dark-haired girl wearing a colorful pink and white yukata (light kimono). The girl bowed to Tsuruko and announced in a soft voice, "Good afternoon, Tsuruko-san. I am Shinobu, and I am here to show you and Motoko-sempai to the meeting."

"Good afternoon, Shinobu-chan, we thank you for your assistance." Tsuruko returned the bow and looked back at her sister, who was coming to her feet. Looking again at the girl in front of her, she said, "I must say Shinobu-chan, you look very fetching in that yukata."

Shinobu blushed, almost matching the cotton garment. "Thank you, Tsuruko-san." Seeing Motoko standing behind her sister, Shinobu gestured and said, "If you will follow me?" and started walking toward the stairs. The Aoyama sisters followed behind her, down the steps and toward the dining room, coming to a stop in front of a sliding rice paper door. Slowly coming down to her knees, Shinobu scratched at the door frame and softly announced, "Keitaro-sama, the Aoyama are here to see you." Motoko's eyes went wide at the title attached to the manager's name, while Tsuruko did not visibly react.

A male voice came through the thin door, saying, "Show them in, Shinobu-chan."

Shinobu slid the door open and shuffled on her knees to the side so the Aoyama could pass. As soon as they did so, the door was slid shut, with her remaining outside.

As Motoko followed her sister into the traditionally styled tea room, she came to a halt. The table that was normally there was gone, while tatami mats had been folded and set to form places to sit on the floor. There were five places set, with two empty places set in front of the three Urashima, which the two sisters stepped up to before bowing and Tsuruko announcing, "Greetings, Keitaro-sama, from the Aoyama family."

As Motoko slowly dropped to her knees on the mat, her eyes went from one Urashima to the other. They were not dressed in modern clothes, instead they were wearing traditional clothing. Haruka was wearing a dark grey kimono with a dull white snow pattern and a cream under-robe, while Kanako was wearing a black haori coat with the Urashima family crest on the left breast over a cream under-robe and black hakama. She could see a bokken laying on the mat beside her.

But it was Keitaro that drew her attention. He was wearing a black hakama with a dark blue haori, with a kataginu, a sleeveless black jacket with exaggerated shoulders and dual Urashima crests on the front, looking exactly like a samurai retainer in the Shogun's court, except for the fact that he was wearing eyeglasses and had a modern hair cut. All three Urashima were sitting in a row, with Keitaro in the center and slightly higher on the mats that were piled under him, Haruka on his right, and Kanako on his left.

"Good afternoon, Tsuruko-san, Motoko-san. Please don't call me 'sama', I am not the head of the clan yet." The slight smile on Keitaro's face turned into a serious expression. "This disciplinary meeting at the Hinata-sou will now begin."

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