Summary: There's certainly a lack of merriment in this first part of a holiday-themed two-shot. Find out why…
Written: The important thing is it's done, right? Heh. Finished on 12/22/07.
Rating: K+ for angst, coarse language and romantic themes. (It's the first chapter of this collection to not be rated T or higher. Am I losing my touch?!)
Edit (12/23): Corrected a missing space break and punctuation marks, etc. (This site really doesn't like asterisks or brackets; they keep disappearing from my documents...)
Forget December
Kiss #20
"Our silent night won't feel quite right—it's not so silent anymore…"
-Something Corporate, Forget December
Yoh shuddered as he threw on a long-sleeve T-shirt. It had been getting colder recently, and although he was accustomed to discomfort, there was no denying the distinct chill in the air. I better bring a jacket, he realized as the cold penetrated even the thick sleeves of his shirt.
He saw Anna as he made his way downstairs, huddled over a steaming mug of coffee he had prepared earlier that morning. She looked even more tired than he felt, her knotty hair sprawled in every direction around her neck, her hazy eyes not quite reading the newspaper before her.
"Good morning, Anna," Yoh offered with a broad grin.
"Mmm," she grunted. Yoh's chipper posture deflated a bit at the unfriendly reception, but Anna didn't notice. She didn't even glance up from the paper she wasn't reading. He shrugged and continued towards the door. A second before he departed, a plaintive voice called out behind him. "By the way, Yoh…"
"Hm?" Wide-eyed and attentive, he turned around in the doorframe.
"The circus called. They want their jacket back."
Yoh looked down at what he was wearing. He hadn't cared about its appearance, it being the only one in his wardrobe that still fit, but now it began to sink in that it was a bit…gaudy, to put it mildly. Bright red, emblazoned with golden stitching, green pocket flaps, blue zippers and a yellow hood, it did look a little clownish, to say the least.
But Yoh smirked. "You're funny, Anna," he replied, without so much as a trace of irony. With that, he continued out the door. Once it was shut behind him, he sighed, watching his wispy exhalations disperse into the wintry air. It was a strange change of pace for him, not departing from the inn with a brisk jog, but rather a leisurely stride. Yoh felt a bit like a dragon as he walked, feeling the cold air stinging his lungs and exiting in jets of vaporous steam, and the miles passed quickly. He also felt the sting of that morning's exchange with Anna, but it was quickly forgotten as he watched his puffs of breath dissipate….
Soon Yoh found himself in the bustle of downtown, jostling with the crowds who choked the sidewalk. They flowed like water, dammed up by street vendors or traffic signals, and when the dams broke they flooded through with frightening speed. Before a nondescript brick building Yoh turned abruptly and scaled a flight of rickety stairs. Through the foggy, grimy windows he couldn't see anything, and no sign was posted above the door, but the sounds of metal clanking told him he was at the right place.
"Irasshaimase (Welcome)," called a clearly unenthusiastic voice from behind the counter once Yoh swung the door open. "Membership card, please."
Yoh pulled off his jacket and slung it over his shoulder. He looked up at the man behind the counter and swallowed. "I don't have one, but…I was told my fiancée called ahead and made arrangements for me? Is that right?"
The receptionist favored Yoh with an unreadable, hard stare for a good ten seconds before something clicked in his head. Recoiling suddenly, he gave an audible gulp. "You're going to marry...what did she say her name was...Anna? Yeah, she called us yesterday. Let me tell you, what she wants, she gets…You're free to use the facilities. And good luck once you're married," he finished, walking around the counter to give Yoh a clap on the shoulder. "I think you'll need it."
"T-thanks," stammered Yoh, jarred both by the strength of his "friendly" shoulder nudge and by his assessment of his fiancée. It was only then, after he had surrounded himself with the assorted equipment in the gym, that he really had no idea what to do with any of them.
"Well, let's see here," he muttered to no one in particular. "Looks like I put these weights onto this bar, and then I lift it over my chest." He bent over to retrieve the largest plate on the rack. "Ugh…wow, this is pretty heavy…maybe not quite this much yet," he conceded, replacing it with a lighter one.
He positioned himself upon the disturbingly clammy cushions of the bench press. "Now, I think I…oof!" The bar was heavier than Yoh had expected—much heavier, in fact. He let it rest upon his chest, and rolled it quickly down his body until he could get up.
Okay, take two, he thought as he positioned the lightened bar above his chest. "Uhhh!" One."Yaaah!" Two. Hmm, I think I'm getting the hang of this…
"Hey, Shotaro," a voice from the reception area echoed off the walls and interrupted Yoh's thoughts. "Once your shift is done, wanna go and have a beer?"
"Sure," came the reply, and Yoh recognized the voice as the receptionist he had just met. "Boy, I could sure use one after that young lady who called the other day…" That got Yoh's attention quick.
"Oh yeah? What happened then?"
"Just…you ever get the chills from talking to someone on the phone? Nah, I didn't think so. Well this girl, holy crap, such a cold voice, so demanding, and if you try to say no to her, God help you…"
A boisterous laugh resonated throughout the gym. "You sure this girl who called isn't my ex? Sounds like it could be."
Another laugh joined in. "Could be, man."
Yoh felt a sudden heaviness in his chest, one that had nothing to do with the weightlifting. As he replaced the bar and staggered his way towards another exotic-looking piece of weight room machinery, the words replayed through his mind inexorably. Cold weather, cold fiancée, at least I know one will change come springtime…
But Anna has been even more frigid than usual lately. No idea why, either. His thoughts continued racing through his mind even as he pulled and replaced the pin on the stack of weights until his legs finally managed to lift them up. I wonder if it's something I did, or haven't done, or should do…in any case, probably my fault as usual…
What could it be, though? Anna's got me on my august toes every waking hour. With my plate full like this, how can she expect me to know what's bothering her, much less do something about it? Yoh was standing now before a hanger-shaped metal bar suspended by an anodized metal cable winched on a pulley. It looked to him more like a set piece for a sci-fi robot flick than a piece of fitness equipment, but by watching another gym patron he realized what he was supposed to do. This is no good, I'm practically hanging off this bar and it isn't moving. Maybe if I do the same thing as I did with the leg press…
Having removed a couple hundred pounds from the deadweight, Yoh now felt a reassuring burn in his shoulder muscles. See, I think I'm a pretty good problem-solver. So why can't I ever seem to make Anna happy? You'd think I'd do something right with her every now and then, the way it is with everything else I do in life…
Ah, at last, something I've got a vague idea of how to use, he thought as he wobbled his way towards a rack of dumbbells of various weights. Whoa, way too heavy…nah, these are a bit too light, I think…A spotted mirror, blemished in spots and fractured with webs of hairline cracks in others, returned Yoh's strained gaze. He resisted the urge to laugh despite the strain of his weightlifting. Looks a little like I'm both constipated and furious. Kinda reminds me of Anna in a slightly bad mood…well, you know, they say couples start to look more alike the longer they live together, and at that a little laugh did escape from between his taut lips.
Despite his physical exertion and the moody nature of his thoughts, he felt strangely energized as he heaved the dumbbells back onto the rack and headed for the door. The proprietor waved rather stiffly to him as he pulled on his jacket and descended the staircase. The throng of window shoppers had not thinned, and as Yoh merged his way into its flow he wondered what had brought such heavy foot traffic to the downtown area. Though he was not claustrophobic, the massive crowd made him uneasy in some way he couldn't quite define, and he tried to tune out the noise they generated as he began walking back home, but not well enough to avoid hearing the clarion voice that called out to him then:
"Hey, nice jacket, Yoh!"
Though he began looking around once he heard it, he didn't see anyone he recognized at first. Then he noticed the crowd beginning to part down the middle, some of them looking down as they shuffled aside, until a humorously diminutive boy scuttled through the channel, waving up at Yoh with a compact hand.
"What's up, Manta?" he asked, subconsciously crossing his arms to cover the most egregious parts of his multicolored jacket. "And…well, what's with the box?"
"Just getting back from some last-minute Christmas shopping," Manta replied. Indeed the box, which was easily as high as Manta and nearly twice as wide, looked patently ridiculous in his arms. "Actually, I may as well give you yours now, since you're here…Yoh? Yoh?!"
He showed no signs of having even heard Manta at all, and stood statuesque as the crowd, with a flurry of disgruntled murmurs, began to push their way around him and Manta. Finally, when Manta began to shake Yoh by the leg in an attempt to get his attention, he spoke faintly, "My…my present?"
"Yeah. Yoh, it's totally cool if you didn't get me anything. I…your friendship is enough of a gift for me."
"No—I mean," he stammered, taken aback by the sweetness of Manta's mistaken comment, "that is, uh…it's Christmastime already?!"
This time, Manta found himself utterly speechless. "Yoh…come on, even you can't be that much of a space cadet. I mean…look around you, seriously."
Yoh looked up at the marquees and balconies surrounding him. A festive army of red suits, plastic snowmen and stuffed reindeer bore down on him, armed with giant candy canes and festooned with immense strands of garland and colored lights.
"Geez…it's Christmastime already," he said, his neck still craned up at the holiday panorama.
"I really don't know what to say, Yoh," Manta said carefully, more afraid than amused at Yoh's heroic display of spaciness. "Haven't you been looking forward to the gifts, and the holiday spirit, and the gifts, and the merriment, and did I mention the gifts?"
"Manta," answered Yoh, who at that moment felt the adrenaline from his exercises wearing off and being replaced by a dull, fatiguing ache, "when you're training under the supervision of someone like Anna on a daily basis, you look forward to more short-term goals. Like being able to have lunch. Or staying alive until tomorrow. When you've got your hands full with things you hate to do, you kind of forget that good things like Christmas happen at all, much less when they do."
"No offense," Manta observed after a brief pause, "but I sort of figured Anna was responsible for your lapse of memory somehow. She doesn't seem like the type to spontaneously erupt in the holiday spirit. Well, maybe my gift will brighten your house a bit."
Manta put the box on the sidewalk and withdrew from it a bucket-sized pot. It was packed with fertile soil, from which a stout pine sapling grew. Yoh was impressed both with the gift, and by Manta's ability to carry something so heavy with him.
"Merry Christmas, Yoh."
"Thanks, Manta," he said, wincing as he picked up the pot. Even with freshly rested arms, Yoh thought it might have been an uncomfortable load; with his achy, exerted muscles it felt almost impossible. "And Merry Christmas to you too."
Indeed, although he felt foolish for his oversight of Christmas, and although his arms throbbed in protest as he lugged the pot with him, Yoh felt reassured as he said goodbye to Manta and began making his way home. The endorphins released by his workout would not be deterred by something so silly, and he made good time despite having to rest every block or so. It was not until the office buildings and malls of downtown were several miles behind him and the sun nearly completely set that his oddly good mood vaporized…
"Oh, shit."
I have to get a present for Anna!
Well, I could pass off this pine sapling as a—Oh God, what am I thinking?! How could I even consider regifting this, after all Manta went through to get it for me? Besides, I think it'd look pretty good in my room…Damn, I can worry about morals and interior design later. What the hell am I going to get for Anna?
I…I guess I can worry about that later. I've still got a whole day to get something. Yeah, I'll think of something, I'm sure. I'm a problem-solver! Even though I could stand to work on my ability to notice things like national holidays…
---------------------
A visitor to the En Inn would be hard-pressed to guess that Christmas was just around the corner—or even that it was currently inhabited. Upstairs, both beds lay unoccupied and pristine, the sheets and pillows arranged with maid-like precision, and the only sound was the hollow howl of an occasional gust of wind hissing through one of the slightly ajar windows. Downstairs, the scene was just as dark; the television lay dormant, the couch was cold from an evening without a body to keep it warm. Even if the interior was brightly lit, an observer would note the conspicuous lack of holiday décor. No tinsel was present to glimmer from the doorways; no glass spheres of red and silver and green hung from the boughs of a fir tree that was also absent. The kitchen was filled not with scents of pine or roasted chestnuts, and the mug on the table was filled not with eggnog, but rather with coffee long gone cold. Framed in the moonlight was a human figure—slumped over in a chair and immobile, but a sign of life nonetheless—face buried in a pair of slender arms streaked with smears from the newspaper beneath them.
A sliver of ghostly light intruded into the kitchen then, like an evanescent scepter of pale white, as Yoh prodded open the front door. A loud clunk echoed off the wooden floor, followed by a relieved grunt. "Anna? I'm home…"
The human figure in the kitchen stirred—nay, sprung to life. She hurriedly straightened up in her seat and ruffled the newspaper. "Yoh…"
He nearly tripped over the potted pine he had just placed on the floor, and not because of the darkness, either. Why does Anna's voice sound so…croaky? He turned on the light and was about to make his way over to the kitchen, but she appeared in the doorway just then. She looked a bit disoriented, perhaps even disheveled; Yoh noted her usually vibrant hair was still, as it had been that morning, messy and flattened, and perhaps it was due to the sudden surge of light in the room, but her eyes seemed awfully puffy…
"What have you got there?" Yoh now could see that Anna's eyes were definitely reddened, and the faintest traces of something crusted onto her cheeks glowed dully as she drew nearer to him. "Oh, a little pine tree? Yes, I…it's Chri—that time of year again, isn't it…" As she spoke Yoh backed away unconsciously. The expression on Anna's face bordered on manic; even her voice crackled and brimmed with perkiness and joy that sounded sickeningly forced.
"Anna," and even as the words left his mouth he had no idea why he was even asking, "are you feeling all right?"
"Yes," she said, even as everything else about her—the bloodshot eyes that avoided his, the artificial cheerfulness in her voice, the clenching fists that belied her words—screamed the opposite. "Couldn't be better. I expect you must be tired from that gym appointment I set up, so why not hit the shower—"
That's the truest thing she's said so far, Yoh thought. Indeed, he feared his arms might never be able to unbend from the cramps that now locked them rigidly crooked. But cramps or no cramps, Yoh wasn't going to let Anna take to bed whatever was bothering her…
"I will, thanks," he broke in. "But first, even I can tell you're hiding something. Now I'd like to know what it is."
A chill ran up Yoh's spine as he finished speaking, as though he had just realized the full gravity of what he had said. Anna's hiding something from me…and all this time I thought nothing could ever give her pause…
"You…" Anna took a shaky step backward and took a deep breath, as though sizing up the situation. "You don't want to know. Don't worry about it."
For a second Yoh looked as though he would back off, but he quickly thought better of it. His eyes steeled themselves and his aching chest expanded as he took a deep breath, then another. He took a few tentative steps toward Anna, his determined eyes looking anywhere but her quivering figure. At last, standing close enough to Anna to smell the dried tears on her cheeks, he spoke.
"Anna…I want to know, because…well, damn it, I care about you. More than anything or anyone else. And I worry about it, because of all that you do for me. Your problems are mine as well."
They had both been avoiding overt eye contact up until that very moment, when their pupils seemed to latch on to one another. In Anna's tormented eyes Yoh could see anxiety and grief, and the moist reflection of his own anguished stare…
"Okay, Yoh."
She sounded defeated and hopeless; had Yoh not been standing so close to her, he never would have believed such a pitiful utterance had come from his resilient, emotionless fiancée. "I can't stand this time of year. All the merriment, the exchanging presents with friends, the spending Christmas Eve with the family. It's…I can't take it, Yoh, I just can't…"
Anna turned her back on Yoh in a flash of blonde and black; he felt her hairs glide upon his face in a whoosh of stale coffee and fresh tears. "But Yoh, where is my family? Where are my friends? Whose presents do I open on December twenty-fifth? This season just reminds me of…Oh, Yoh, why does everyone hate me?"
Her voice, muffled by her hands, began to break with outbursts of primal emotion; her breaths grew shallower and more erratic, and although her back was still turned to Yoh he imagined her tormented face, could palpably feel the ache in her heart, but he could find nothing to say…
"I don't know why I'm telling you all this," she said, but her voice sounded neither regretful nor bitter, but rather was despondent. "It's not as though you would…you could understand…"
"Anna," Yoh began finally, not knowing what to say or how to make a point, but knowing above all else that he should say something, "my shaman training began in my infancy. Even if I were socially adept back then, and I wasn't, between all the homework and the training, I never would have had time to make any friends. Besides, you can imagine how popular I was in school. No other elementary kid could conjure spirits in the classroom. And you know how rumors are. One day you're a shaman, next week you're a serial killer who shoots lightning bolts from his forehead. No, Anna, I know how tough it is to go without friends."
Yoh timidly placed a reassuring hand on Anna's shoulder, but it was shrugged off rather violently. She rounded on him and Yoh flinched at her vitriolic expression. "No, Yoh, it's not the same! You're not alone anymore—Manta, Horohoro, Ren! You don't know what it's like to sit at home all alone while knowing your fiancé could very well come back home in a pressboard coffin! It's—"
Anna broke off abruptly once she realized what she had just let slip. She also happened to see Yoh's expression at that particular moment; there was no denying that her candid confessions had touched him, moved him to that particular mix of sympathy and caring that radiates so plainly from eyes…
"Yoh…don't look at me…"
But Yoh could not take his eyes off of Anna's grieving figure, as it slowly rose up the stairs, face still buried in a pale hand. His strained muscles, his exhausted emotions, his bruised holiday spirit, all could take no more, and he collapsed to the floor beside the potted pine sapling. Slowly he cradled his head in both his hands, the faint pine scent keeping him from screaming and fainting all at once. He didn't know how long he stayed there, staring into the nothingness of the far wall, mulling over the course of action he knew was inevitable, but it must have been quite a while—by the time he made his way upstairs, Anna lay on her bed surrounded by darkness.
"Anna?" he called. He expected no reply and received none. He stood before her motionless figure now, and her puffy nose attested to a recent outpouring of emotion. She was on her back, the fluffy white pillow upon her chest loosely cradled in both her arms. Her anguished face, save for the agitated nose, was now at peace. Yoh gently brushed aside a few wayward strands of her flaxen hair and knelt down. She was dreaming now, probably, of acceptance, of popularity, in a utopia someplace where shamans weren't shunned, although Yoh could see her body still rooted in a bed in modern Japan…
"Oh, Anna," he whispered, unable to stop himself, "if only you could see…I'll be your best friend, the only friend you'll ever need. I…I love you."
Still unable to restrain himself, Yoh placed one of his hands upon hers, feeling the softness of the pillow beneath, and bowed his head slightly. He planted a chaste kiss upon her cheek, and the salty nuance of dried tears stung at his caring lips…
"No…no more tears, Anna," and his whispers were hoarse now, as though Yoh himself were about to break down. "You'll see…"
Yoh stood back up and headed to his room, but not before he could have sworn he saw a faint smile play upon Anna's lips. Maybe he even saw her arms tighten around the pillow, or perhaps that was just his imagination…
Concludes in Kiss #21, "The Gift of the Shaman"
