Summary: Yoh's messy room pushes Anna past her breaking point. It's time to get organized! But will he find more than old clothes and trash buried within?
Written: Finished at 5 am on 7/17/11, after literally months of off-and-on writing and brainstorming.
Rating: T for coarse language and romantic themes.
Notes: This story's a mess (no pun intended) because it took so long to write. But I figure a bad story is better than none at all, right? Let me know what you think.
Neatness Counts
Kiss #33
The sky stretched for miles around Funbari Hill, shrouding it in a faded blue tarp and gently baking its inhabitants in the sort of heat that makes them venture outside. The only blemish on the otherwise perfect sky was a single pathetic excuse for a cloud that hurried on by, embarrassed to be ruining such a magnificent sight.
In short, it was a perfect morning.
And Yoh Asakura could only admire it from his bedroom window.
Actually, he couldn't even do that very well at the moment, either. The azure sky peeked out at him from behind a veritable mountain of unsorted junk. The pile, in that respect, wasn't all that different from the overall appearance of his room. It was, even by Yoh's lax standards, a mess.
God, I've been trying to clean this up since the crack of dawn, and it still looks awful. And if even I think I'm doing a crappy job so far, imagine what Anna would say about it...
But Yoh forced such frankly frightening notions out of his head. He tried to focus on the task at hand: conquering the mountain. Not really knowing how to proceed, Yoh blindly grabbed a double handful of junk from the pile and scattered it onto his futon for sorting. He gasped when he saw Amidamaru's stone tablet tumble from his grip and onto his bedding.
Without missing a beat, Yoh's ethereal companion billowed forth from his home. "Ah, Yoh-dono, a morning without compare this is! Would that I still had lungs to breathe the air, as I am certain of its unrivaled crispness today."
Yoh knew in his heart that he would be lost without his samurai spirit's guidance, but oftentimes the things Amidamaru told him left him feeling, well, lost. This was one of those times.
"Uh...sure, Amidamaru. Crispy air is great, huh."
"Indeed, Yoh-dono." The samurai's eyes were normally serene like Yoh's, but just then they narrowed and widened just as quickly. "But why am I rambling about air which I can no longer breathe, when there are more pressing matters to which we must attend? Yoh-dono, if our daily training routine is postponed any longer, I fear Lady Anna's wrath will be swift and terrible!"
"It always is, isn't it?" Yoh asked rhetorically. "Relax, Amidamaru. Today Anna's made it clear that I'm trading in my ankle weights and running shoes for a dustpan and a can of Pledge." He kicked the base of the junk mountain for emphasis. "She made it very clear." He shuddered violently enough to inadvertently kick the pile of junk again.
Amidamaru's ghostly form slowly made a complete circuit of Yoh's room. Once he had turned all the way around and faced Yoh again, an aggrieved look pulled at his features. "Forgive my saying so, Yoh-dono, but it certainly appears that Lady Anna's judgment on this matter may not have been entirely misguided."
"If that's your seventeenth-century way of saying that she's right and this room looks like shit, then yes," Yoh replied, "I'd have to say you're right too. But where to begin? Ugh."
For what seemed to be the hundredth time that morning, Yoh pondered his next course of action. He was growing weary of chipping away at the mountain of clutter. He wanted to blast it to smithereens and truck the rubble away. He smiled as visions danced in his head. A cruise missile sailed through the window, leaving behind a neat pile of smoldering ashes where his junk pile had just been. Then he blinked and the pile reappeared. He sighed, blinked again, and stared the pile down.
"Can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs," he said. "I'm going to make a huge mess. That'll force me to do something at least. Here goes."
Yoh took several steps back and eased into an athletic stance, as if he was a placekicker getting ready to blast the world's most disgusting football through a pair of imaginary uprights. He put his head down as he moved forward and accelerated. The pile was just a step away now. He closed his eyes and swept his arms before him as he descended...
Yoh, along with an assortment of junk, tumbled into the hallway. Dazed, he rolled over and pushed himself up.
It was all for nothing, though, since the first thing he saw once he got to his feet leveled him again.
"Yoh, you have got to be kidding me."
The words were uttered with a quietude that ran completely counter to the livid, red-streaked face from which they came.
"You must be the only person in this galaxy who can spend four hours cleaning a room and end up making it even messier. But why am I surprised? What made me think that you'd wake up this morning and decide to stop making a total mess – pun intended – out of everything I ask you to do?"
Yoh learned a long time ago that there was absolutely nothing he could say to cut short one of Anna's rants once they had been set in motion. He simply stood silent and motionless.
"Just what the hell were you trying to do anyway?" Anna's intense eyes – at this stage of her anger, 'slits' is probably a more apt description – focused on the trail of trash that Yoh had tackled out the door. "Surfing? Sumo wrestling?"
Yoh thought on his feet. That was appropriate enough, since he had just risen from the floor again. He plucked up a grungy pair of slacks and said, as sheepishly as he could, "Hmm. Must have been a load-bearing pair of pants."
"Oh, good. Very good," Anna said with a theatrical roll of her eyes. "You know that trick where the guy pulls the tablecloth out from under all the dishes and whatnot? Well, guess what. You've just proven that only works with tablecloths. And guys who aren't complete morons." She was about to elaborate, but the deep breath she had just sucked in went back out peacefully. "Someone's at the door. You're saved by the bell, Yoh."
He hadn't heard anything. At first he thought maybe the magnitude of Anna's yelling had temporarily deafened him, but he knew from numerous unsuccessful attempts to sneak downstairs for a midnight snack that her hearing far surpassed his own.
Amidamaru's dignified voice hovered over Yoh as he labored to push all the clutter out of the hallway and back into his room. "Lady Anna neglected to inform me that she was expecting company this morning. Would it be presumptuous for me to assume you were not told either?"
"Are you kidding? Anna gets her kicks by springing surprises on me. For all I know, her date is here and they're just about to go have a milkshake."
Yoh could have sworn that he heard Amidamaru's armor jangle with shock. "The very insinuation that Lady Anna is unfaithful to you! Unthinkable. No, it is just an acquaintance stopping by to say hello, I am certain."
"Sup. Or would Amidamaru prefer just hello?"
Yoh dropped the armful of stained shirts he had just gathered up. He knew that voice, in all of its grating irreverence.
"Horohoro!" he exclaimed as he spun around to see he had been right on the money. The oppressive climate of Tokyo in the summertime meant that he had traded in his traditional Ainu vestments for a T-shirt and shorts. Save for his extravagant hair, he was now practically Yoh's double.
"Yoh! Long time, man." He smothered his friend in a crushing hug.
"Good to see you. It always is."
"Always? What about today? Anna didn't sound delighted to see me."
"You and the rest of the universe. Don't worry about it."
"She seemed pissed. But ah, I trust you. You know her way better than I do."
"I do. Don't you remind me." Yoh retrieved one of the soiled shirts and flung it through the doorway. "So what brings you to my neck of the woods? Especially this time of year, I would think Hokkaido's weather is more your pace."
As if on cue, a large bead of sweat slid down Horohoro's nose and dripped to the floor. "I ain't gonna lie, man. This heat is intense. Screw the sidewalk – right now you could fry an egg on my forehead." He made to help Yoh shuttle the remaining articles back into his room. "But I have to do some research. That's why I'm here."
Yoh was genuinely interested, but couldn't resist cracking a grin – and a joke – just the same. "Research? You're some sort of scientist now? Make me some happy pills. No, wait, give 'em to Anna instead."
"Sorry," Horohoro replied, smiling himself. "I'm actually trying to learn more about the butterbur plants. Back home they do fine this time of year, but during the winter the frost kills most of them off. I don't know how I'm supposed to make a home for the Koropokkur with plants that are only alive half the year."
Suddenly Yoh's epic quest to tidy up his room seemed a lot less earth-shattering. "Oh. That's very … selfless of you."
Horohoro waved away the praise. "Just trying to be a good big brother. But right now, it looks like you're trying to be a good room cleaner."
"Oh, you know me." The sarcasm in Yoh's voice almost dripped all over his armful of junk. "People are always mistaking Harusame for a feather duster."
"But on a day like this?" With difficulty, Horohoro peered around the big pile and out the window. "I mean I wouldn't be out there myself. But if I were you, I'd be out there with the clear sky and crisp air—"
"What is it with you people and crispy air?" Yoh asked, shooting an accusatory glance at Amidamaru as he did. The ghostly samurai withdrew into his mortuary tablet, bowing before he did so. "Of course this isn't what I wanted to do today. Two guesses who made me do it."
As he watched Yoh putter around his room trying to set some small part of the mess straight, the crown of hair on Horohoro's head seemed to wilt. "Hey, man. Do you want a hand with any of this?"
Yoh began to shake his head. Then he noticed, one more time, the sheer immensity of the pile of junk. It dominated the room like a lady in leather. "Sure, bro. Would you mind pulling out all the clothes? Just pile 'em on the futon."
"You got it." With an exaggerated salute, Horohoro dived right in. Yoh dealt with everything else. He crammed wayward books into his bookshelf. He put records back into sleeves. He began to fill a garbage bag with unwanted things.
If people were to look through the window then, they'd actually be able to see into the room. The mountain of junk was just a hill now, and that was a miracle in itself. But they'd see Yoh and Horohoro and scarcely believe that they were two of Japan's most notorious shirkers. Their work was purposeful, organized, and efficient. Every now and then Horohoro would lighten the mood by taking a shot at Yoh's dated wardrobe, or Yoh would find a diverting tchotchke that he believed had been lost years ago, and the work seemed more like a morning at the park.
In fact, it was just about to become, save for a lack of trees and grass, a day at the park. "Check this out," Yoh said. "I can't remember the last time I played with one of these."
Horohoro tossed an old pair of shorts onto the pile on the futon. "What the hell is that? A wooden hammer?"
Yoh laughed. "I guess it does look like a hammer. This is a kendama. The two things at the end of the stick are cups. You're supposed to try to flick it so that this ball" – he held up a red wooden ball attached to the stick by a string– "lands into one of the cups." He shook it loosely to gauge its weight. As he did so, the string snapped.
"Whoops!" Yoh chased it down. "I guess it is old." He knotted the broken string and gave the jury-rigged contraption a test flick. Like a perfect fade-away jumper in miniature, the ball landed dead-center in the cup and froze there.
"Still haven't lost my touch." Yoh chuckled. "Wanna give it a go?"
"Why not?" Horohoro asked. "I grew up in Hokkaido. When we wanted to play a game we friggin' threw rocks at each other. This should be fun!"
Horohoro was a bit overzealous in his inaugural try. He put his entire body into his swing, and as the ball neared its apex he began to position himself to make the catch. Yoh's slipshod knot, though, came undone. The ball went one way, and Horohoro went another. Yoh glanced up at this moment to see the ball soaring wildly away. He leaped in an attempt to catch it.
Then time reverted to its normal pace. Yoh didn't make it to the ball, but at least a pile of clothes was ready to cushion his fall. Horohoro wasn't so lucky. Before he really knew what had just happened, he body-checked Yoh's bookshelf.
Anna had a habit of catching Yoh at exactly the wrong time. Today, as Yoh was finding out, she wasn't about to stop. In the span of about five seconds, Yoh's room had gone from tidy to trampled. Anna was way too observant to miss it.
"Yoh."
The blue beads around her neck continued to sway; the rest of her body came to a total halt. Only her eyes moved, taking in the extent of the room's disarray, and even those glued themselves to Yoh's.
"I'm speechless. And you," Anna spat, rounding on Horohoro, "believe it or not, I like you. Or at least I've never seen you do anything really stupid. Now, I'm starting to wonder. Really starting to wonder," she added, eyeing up the broken kendama that Horohoro was now holding like an ankh against Anna's hellish wrath. "So I'm not going to kick you out."
Given Anna's mood, Horohoro had to wonder whether that was a good thing.
"But I'm keeping an eye on you."
Both boys groaned inwardly. Actually, Yoh's was audible. That was a mistake. She rounded on him like a pitcher making a check-throw to first.
Surprisingly, tidying up the mess they had just made proved easy. Yoh reshelved the books and Horohoro tended to the scattered articles of clothing. Anna proved to be the only hitch in their progress. Her presence clung to them like a shroud, appropriately enough, since she effectively killed and buried any chance of witty banter or imaginative repurposing of the junk in the room. In fact, it wasn't long before she rolled her eyes in an appeal to a higher power and took a spot beside Yoh to help him put the fallen books back.
Yoh cringed in anticipation of her next biting remark, but surprisingly she teased Yoh playfully. Picking up a sizable leather-bound book from the floor, Anna smirked. "I found your doorstop. Make sure it doesn't get lost on your bookshelf again. You might accidentally try to read it."
Yoh wasn't sure how to react. Sure, it was an insult, but at least she wasn't hurling the book at his face. He laughed nervously and glanced at Anna. She was flipping through the book's pages idly. In the process, she freed a slip of paper from its clutches.
"Hmm, what's this?"
Yoh's attention was back to the bookshelf. "My bookmark. I do read every now and then, believe it or not."
Anna knelt to retrieve it. It was cream-colored, matte, and about the size of a postcard. Uneven large handwriting covered its surface. Though it was clearly a child's penmanship, it looked familiar to her.
May 12. Grandpa gave me this for my birthday. It's so hard! I suck at it. I asked why he got it for me. I told him I wanted a Super Famicom! He said he didn't get it for me. I asked who did. He said it's a secret. Maybe it was Anna! I'll practice real hard and make her like me.
Anna nearly lost her grip on the paper – and on reality to boot. She was no private eye, but she knew beyond the shadow of a doubt who had written those words on the paper, who had bought the present for him, and what that present had been. She chanced a glance at Yoh, who was still rearranging books on the shelf to make them all fit. Then she looked at Horohoro. His pointy chin was aimed straight between Anna's eyes, because his eyes were completely focused on a little red wooden ball that seemed to levitate in midair above his head for several heartbeats.
It was Horohoro's heartbeats that would very soon be accelerating, though.
"Horokeu Usui." Anna's voice was a dagger, cold and steely and sharp. Horohoro, for his part, lurched as though stabbed. Nobody ever called him by his birth name.
"Still playing with toys, I see. In case you haven't noticed, some of us are trying to be productive." Her eyes never wavered from his. He unconsciously dropped the kendama as though it had become too hot to hold.
"Get out. Now." He barely needed to be told once, let alone a second time. He gave Yoh an apologetic look – or maybe it was a fearful one, intended for Anna – and bolted out the door. His footsteps trailed off as he sped down the hall, descended the stairs and slid the front door shut behind him.
Then there was silence. Yoh couldn't very well pretend he hadn't heard Anna exiling his friend. He thought it might be a good idea to redouble his efforts at the bookshelf. He hammed it up, grunting and scrunching up his face as he crammed books into impossibly narrow gaps.
"Yoh."
"Y-yes?" She can see right through me. He couldn't help but notice that Anna's tone of voice was unchanged. She might as well have still been dressing Horohoro down. Here it comes.
"Pick up that kendama."
What's she playing at? "Sure thing, Anna." He scooped up the wooden toy and extended it to Anna.
She waved the kendama away. "No. Catch the ball, Yoh."
He couldn't keep his befuddlement to himself. "Huh?"
She merely pointed at the toy. "You heard me."
"Uh...okay..." Yoh swallowed with great effort; his throat was suddenly parched, but to compensate, fresh beads of nervous sweat percolated on his forehead. He flicked the kendama with a shaky yet practiced hand. The red sphere arced gracefully and landed in the center cup.
Anna was as unreadable as the leather-bound book she had teased him about just minutes ago. "Again, Yoh."
He nodded stiffly, but his kendama handling was anything but stiff. He caught the ball in the top cup, then in the bottom one. Then he shuffled it from one cup to another, non-stop, like the bouncing ball that highlights lyrics during a karaoke song. Yoh looked pleased with himself, or at least as pleased as he could look with Anna's wrath looming...
"Impressive. Especially since the side cups are a little smaller than the top cup. And the top cup's crooked. Not to mention, if I recall, the ball is a little lopsided and likes to spiral sometimes."
Yoh blinked. "Yes...How did you..."
"Your bookmark."
Yoh accepted the rectangle of paper. He read the elementary-school handwriting that he recognized as his own. He flipped it over. A younger and less embarrassed version of himself beamed at him from the confines of the photograph. Tightly gripped in his hand was the very same kendama he now held in a now much bigger palm.
"Anna...Did you...make the kendama for me?"
She heard the question. She decided Yoh already knew the answer. "I see that you're a man of your word, Yoh. Just like you wrote on the back of that picture. You did 'practice real hard.' Clearly, you practiced the shit out of that thing. But I can't believe you thought that would make me like you."
Yoh laughed an uncomfortable, self-deprecating laugh. "I was ten, Anna. I was young and stupid. I suppose nothing's really changed."
"Yoh." Anna's voice was still serious, but much warmer. "That thing I made for you is just a toy. I don't care how amazing you are with it. But you just suspected that I might have been the person who gave it to you. And that was enough for you to devote countless hours to getting good at it."
Yoh nodded. He really didn't know what to say. To be perfectly honest, he really didn't know what Anna was saying, either.
"Look, Yoh." She took a tentative step closer to him. "Sometimes the things you do are obvious. Like when I ask for one hundred sit-ups and you do a hundred and ten. Or when you make dinner and there's a nice dessert next to it."
She drew another step closer to Yoh. He was now close enough to her to see that she was quivering slightly. "Other times it's less obvious, like this. I'm shocked. But I'm not surprised."
Yoh had been frozen in place as Anna spoke, but now he found himself drawn to her. He closed the gap between them by another step.
"I'm never surprised because I know you're a great guy, Yoh. I know it because of the obvious things, and the not-so-obvious things, and above all, the fact that I could never love a guy if he was anything less than great."
Now he knew what Anna had been getting at. He gasped. Anna did, too – the gasp of an unsuccessfully suppressed sob that compelled Yoh to take one last step toward her. She did not withdraw. "Yoh," she said as a solitary tear trickled beside her perky nose, "I know sometimes we all make a mess of things." She gestured to the messy room around her. "The important thing is that we clean up the mess as best we can."
Yoh watched as Anna wept silently. A tear splashed upon the wood grain of the floor that he had just polished. Another one was forming at the corner of her eye. She drew in a ragged breath. "Yoh, I'm sorry."
The sight of Anna crying and repentant seemed to reach down his throat and sock him in the gut. Words tumbled out of him, words that were not even close to being able to express his feelings, but would have to do.
"Anna, you have nothing to apologize for."
She seemed to take his comforting as a challenge. "Oh, Yoh! I work you until you collapse. And then I kick you till you get up again. And-"
"And I still give you a hundred and ten sit-ups when you ask for just a hundred. I still make you dessert. I still spend hours and hours doing things that maybe, just maybe, will make you happy."
"I'm sorry-"
"Because I. Love. You. End of story."
Only it wasn't. For one thing, they hadn't kissed yet, and Anna still had tears in her eyes.
That was about to change.
Yoh's fingertips tickled at the underside of Anna's chin. Words failed him. He wanted to tell her something that would make her stop crying; he wanted to tell her just how deeply he loved her; how all was, and would forever be, forgiven.
Instead, he kissed her.
He didn't try to make a statement with his brain or his words. He used his hands. They flowed through her hair, they danced upon her neck, they caressed the small of her back. Yoh was about to pull away, but a hand pressed hard against the back of his head. He was shocked at Anna's insistence, at the tongue that tried to wedge its way between his lips – who was he to bar entry? United, their lips and tongues apologized more eloquently and passionately than their owners ever could have.
Somehow, they ended up on the half of Yoh's futon that wasn't piled high with his old clothes. He draped an arm around Anna's shoulder and put a sloppy kiss on her cheek. "So, Anna," he said as she gave his arm an affectionate squeeze, "any chance you could help me finish the job?"
Anna blushed madly. For a second it looked like someone was about to get a slap. Then the expression on her face became serious. She looked deep into Yoh's eyes, reflected on how mature and sincere and, most importantly, loving, he had proven himself to be over the years. Then she smiled and whispered something in his ear.
It was his turn to blush uncontrollably. "I meant cleaning my room!" he sputtered.
Awkward silence.
"But," he said, with a playful grin, "I mean, let's not count that out."
"We'll see," Anna said, tugging at the hem of Yoh's shirt...
