Like the serpentine necklace, Sagaku found that the earrings were a convenient way to keep the stones against her skin. She also wore the garnet band on her upper arm, but it slipped lower sometimes and drove her near insanity. The garnet didn't pulse the same way as the serpentine-instead, it was a quieter sort of thrum that vibrated faintly against her veins when she least expected it. The tigers eyes didn't even register a pulse, though she could feel their presence when she focused. There was no real way to test the garnet, but Sagaku did notice that if she pulled on her awareness of the tigers eyes-there was no other way to describe it-she could see farther in sharper detail, define scents easier, and even hear things with more acuity. With that knowledge in her pocket, she hunted around online to find the rest of the stones from her list.
Sagaku hadn't forgotten her resolve to become stronger in her quest to learn more about the stones that seemed to have some draw for her; she begin begging Kuwabara to take her to different gyms so she could learn new styles of fighting.
After the first piercings in her ears had time to heal, Sagaku returned to Nenriki again. His hair was bright orange now, all brushed to one side. He examined her next set of earrings, small chunks of rough-cut cathedral quartz, and grinned at her.
"Can't stop at just one piercing?" Nenriki teased. He pushed a copy of the contract at her. Sagaku smiled back at him. She signed her name without even a tremor this time.
"I'll probably be back again after this," she admitted.
"Buy two, get one free," Nenriki offered.
Someone else, behind a curtain, yelped as the sound of a needle vibrating filled the air. Sagaku crinkled her nose in that direction and let Nenriki lead her to the other curtained partition, sitting her on the stool so he could mark where the needles would pierce this time.
It was funny, Sagaku thought when she left the tattoo parlor. Jewelry was a sign of low character according to her Papa. It was a sign that the girl wasn't happy with her lot in life and thought she deserved more. How improper. The new piercings throbbed lightly, only a little sore from the needle. Had her father known what Hanshoku could do with the feel of stone against them? Or maybe she was just a freak.
Two nights later, when Kurama, Yusuke, Kuwabara, and even Shizuru joined them in the small apartment for dinner, Sagaku mentioned her findings to Kurama. He frowned in thought, leafing through the books she brought out for him to look at.
"You've actually been able to tap into these stones?" Kurama asked, looking at the page she had flagged for the cathedral quartz. Sagaku nodded.
"Do you want me to try?" she offered. Kurama closed the book carefully and looked to her.
"Most of the properties here aren't exactly visible," he said ruefully. Sagaku grinned conspiratorially at him.
"Neither is the fox in your skin, but I see him just fine."
Kurama narrowed his eyes at Sagaku.
"Explain," he finally said.
"The quartz in my ear," Sagaku tapped the aforementioned quartz, "kind of hums whenever there's a change in energy around me. It's soft. I'd barely feel it if I hadn't noticed it the day I got my ears pierced. If I focus on the humming and look around, the frequency gets higher when I'm looking at the right thing. Yusuke kept making it hum the first day."
"Mm hm," Kurama said, still waiting for an explanation.
"So it hums at you. If I listen to the humming and also pull on the tigers eyes," here she tapped the piercing below the quartz, "then I see a very faint outline where you are. Someone taller than you by over a head. Thinner and sharper. I can't see details, really, but I see the tail and ears. Fox."
Kurama huffed out a breath of air, falling back in his seat.
"Amazing," he breathed.
Sagaku hesitated and then blurt out the thought that had been plaguing her for a while now. "I'm not a good Hanshoku. I think that's why I can do this. If I were good at what I was supposed to be good at, I wouldn't know about the stones. I probably wouldn't even be able to feel them."
"You're a good Hanshoku!" Kuwabara protested. "Just because your dad was a jerk doesn't mean-"
"I have small boobs and a small waist," Sagaku interrupted him. Everyone glanced over, conversation grinding to a halt. Keiko blushed. "I'm too curious and I couldn't act properly if my life depended on it. My coloring is wrong and unpleasing. I went into heat earlier-which I'm sure means something bad, too. Even before...everything, Papa said he wouldn't be able to find a good suitor for me. Maybe it's because too much of me is a part of these rocks."
Sagaku sighed, ending her short speech. She looked from one set of eyes to another, showing them briefly what she meant. Her eyes were dark, tarry black with just hints of brown and gold instead of the pale shades of blue and hazel and pink her sisters all seemed to have. Even her skin wasn't right, tinged now with signs of sun in a way it had never been before.
"There's nothing wrong with the way you are," Kurama told her flatly.
"No?" Sagaku challenged. "Someone find Papa, he'll be relieved to hear it."
Yusuke chortled, and then play-punched Sagaku's shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with you for us," he clarified. Sagaku stuck her tongue out at him, breaking the mood.
Kurama, though, kept thinking back to the book in his hands. It was a New Age book, the kind only hippies or wiccans bought. At best, he would have considered it pseudoscience. But in it, Sagaku had found some sort of puzzle piece that was missing from herself. He vowed to reread the book by Ishikawa no Taira again, though he already knew there was nothing else in it about stones. Just that one, brief footnote about serpentine.
Sagaku's third piercing was free, as Nenriki had promised. He also began showing her pictures of different types of piercings-tragus and cartilage and facial piercings. His girlfriend, when she was around, offered suggestions for Sagaku to get more stones set into jewelry.
By the time Sagaku helped Keiko and Yusuke unpack their last box in the larger, airier apartment, she had earrings all the way up one ear. Had it not been for her cherubic face and bouncy demeanor, people might have mistaken her for a punk kid.
Sagaku used most of her expendable income nowadays on her new obsession. She had all sorts of rings and toe rings set so the base of the stone touched her skin instead of metal. Nenriki's girlfriend helped her wrap one stone in wire and hang it from a long cord so it hung halfway between Sagaku's navel and rib-cage. She even had the garnet band reset so it would stop slipping almost to her elbow. The piece de resistance, though, was the gift that her friends presented her with: two pairs of onyx chopsticks with copper and bronze settings. Keiko helped her twist them into her air, forming two droopy buns on either side of her head so the loose ends dangled past her shoulders. It was the first birthday gift she'd ever been given.
With as much work as she was putting into herself, Sagaku found that she had less and less time to be scared, though nothing could quite cure her loneliness. Sleep came easier now, with the confidence that she wasn't quite as helpless as she'd once been. In a somewhat childish dream, she imagined that someday she'd wake and be strong enough to protect her sisters. When that day came, she would find them, and no one would be able to keep them apart again.
Nenriki flagged Sagaku down on her way to work one day, stubbing out his cigarette and racing after her.
"I have a cousin who wants to meet you," Nenriki told her. "I told him about you."
"I'm not looking to date," Sagaku said with a smile. It was a silly joke Nenriki played sometimes, trying to get parlor customers to go to the restaurant and ask her out.
"That's good, because you lack some of the equipment he prefers," Nenriki said drily.
Sagaku paused in her forward trajectory, allowing Nenriki to catch up.
"Why does he want to meet?" she asked her friend. "What did you tell him?"
"He likes crystals and stones and all that, too," Nenriki waved his hand at Sagaku's laden ear. "I was telling him how you do a different stone for each piercing and he started asking about you."
Sagaku's heart pounded in her throat. Why would Nenriki's cousin be at all interested in her, stones or not?
Oblivious to Sagaku's inner turmoil, Nenriki hurried on. "His dad told him his mom followed 'the old ways', but never explained what it was, so he looked into it on his own. He said he might have some answers for you."
"Answers?" Sagaku said blankly. The roof of her mouth seemed to be trapping her tongue.
Nenriki shrugged. "He was pretty insistent. He's nice, and harmless. I swear he's not trying any funny business. He's going to be in town this weekend, can I tell him you'll meet us for coffee or tea or something?"
Sagaku thought long and hard. Nenriki, with today's purple curtain of hair, waited patiently.
"Okay," Sagaku agreed. She trusted Nenriki, after all, and if his cousin was just into stones, there was nothing wrong with that. "I have Saturday morning off work. We can get tea then." She wasn't allowed to have coffee anymore-Keiko made her promise after the first disaster.
"Good," Nenriki smiled in relief. "I was afraid I'd have to crush his feelings if you said no. You'll like him. He's weird, like you."
"Thanks," Sagaku play-growled, and then ran to get to work in time.
It would have been wise for Sagaku to mention the meeting to her friends, but by the time she got home and put her aching feet up on one of the many pillows she hoarded, she'd forgotten to say something to them. Plus, it wasn't a big deal, she wrestled with her own thoughts. She didn't have to seek approval to meet someone, just like she didn't have to seek approval to pierce her own ears. At the ripe old age of eighteen (an old hen, Yusuke told her), she was in charge of her own life.
The tea house was empty when Sagaku arrived Saturday morning. She ordered a pot of green tea for the table and sipped the frothy liquid in her tea cup while she waited to wake up fully. With the sun barely above the horizon, it was quite a struggle.
The old lady proprietress greeted a quiet couple who sat at a table across the room. Sagaku sighed and stretched her legs out beneath the short table she sat at. The proprietress greeted someone else. A soft hum tickled Sagaku's ear.
Tea sloshed in Sagaku's cup as she turned around. Nenriki was headed towards her, a sleepy smile on his face. His purple hair was unstyled this morning, falling naturally in waves over his shoulder. Behind him, a shorter man followed. The hum was nearly shocking now.
"Mornin'," Nenriki greeted in a tired voice, stepping aside to reveal his cousin. "This is Shoseki. Shoseki, Sagaku."
"A pleasure," Shoseki said. Sagaku stared at him. He was as short as she was, with a mane of naturally yellow hair. His eyes, though, could have been own-dark and big and shocked. A slow smile spread across his face, revealing slightly sharp teeth.
"What are you?" Sagaku breathed.
"Hanshoku. Like you, I presume," Shoseski said. He waved at the empty seats at the table. "May we?"
"Please," Sagaku said. She stared at him, enthralled. He was slender, though his shoulders were wider than hers. Instead of muscular, he was lithe and sleek. The facial hair that pricked Nenriki's face this early in the morning didn't touch Shoseki.
Sagaku poured their tea while they settled. She couldn't stop staring at Shoseki, and then looking back at Nenriki who was human through-and-through and looked nothing like his supposed cousin.
"There are no male Hanshoku," Sagaku said once each man had finished their first cup.
"No?" Shoseki raised one eyebrow, a trick Sagaku envied.
"How-" Sagaku breathed the word, but couldn't finish. Shoseki grinned at her and took another sip of tea. If she had something to throw at him-a bread roll or something harmless-she would. He was enjoying her surprise.
"He'll explain," Nenriki said with wry humor. "He's always like this, acting like he knows some grand secret the rest of the world isn't privy to."
"And you're cousins?" Sagaku asked.
"Some number of times removed." Nenriki waved a negligent hand. "He's several generations older than the rest of us, but we share a great-great-something-grandfather."
"I made a point of tracking my lineage," Shoseki said. "Family, you know? And my father, who was human and is now long dead, had a much nicer family tradition than my mother."
"But your mother was Hanshoku." Sagaku finally understood. "Your father wasn't demonic at all, so the Hanshoku genes overtook the human ones?"
Shoseki nodded.
"And Nenriki knows all this?" Sagaku nodded at the tattoo artist who was watching her with keen interest. Meeting her gaze, his smile widened.
"Shoseki told me when I was nineteen and started asking why in the almost twenty years I'd known him, he never aged. Not everyone in the family knows, but enough of us do."
"How did you know I was Hanshoku, too?" Sagaku demanded. "Can you feel spirit energy?"
"Not in the slightest." Nenriki shrugged delicately.
"He told me about your piercings," Shoseki said. He pulled at a knotted tangle of cords around his neck, bringing them to the outside of his clothes. Sagaku stared. She recognized some of the stones-tigers eye and onyx-but some of them were so raw she couldn't see the actual pattern. "My mother used to wear similar stones. They don't work for me as well as they did for her, but they give me a little boost for protection and awareness and the like."
"Your mother could do what I can?" she asked.
"I suspect so," Shoseki said. "I've never met another Hanshoku, you know. Never even expected to, not outside a warren. All I know is what she told me."
Sagaku's head was spinning in shock. A male Hanshoku. Who had ever heard of such a thing? All males bred by Hanshoku took on the traits of their fathers. But Shoseki had not. And he'd grown up with his mother. His mother had chosen a human male. She had lived outside a warren. Free.
"Did your mother escape a warren? Or was she born free?" Sagaku questioned.
"She escaped." Shoseki's warm eyes were level on hers. "And you?"
"I…" she paused. Had she escaped or was she kicked out? "I was disowned," she finally answered. It was an honest answer, as far as she could determine. Shoseki reached out and grabbed her hand. She nearly sank into the physical contact. It had been so long since a Hanshoku who understood the need was around.
"I wrote down much of what my mother told me before she died," Shoseki told Sagaku earnestly. "I'm flying home next week. Come with me to learn what she knew. Maybe you can even explain some of it to me."
"Where?" Sagaku asked.
"America," Shoseki grinned. "You can even meet my mate. He loves having guests."
"And he's the best cook," Nenriki added.
America. A world away. But Sagaku already knew she would go. How could she not, when this man had the answers she needed? He knew what it was to be Hanshoku. He was an outlier, just like her.
Leaving for America wasn't for good, Sagaku reminded her friends repeatedly as she packed. All but Hiei had showed up, crowded in her small room.
"We're going to miss you, Saga," Keiko said tearfully. She leaned against Yusuke and cleared her throat, stopping before she even began to cry.
Sagaku continued tossing her clothes in the suitcase loaned to her by Shizuru. It smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, but it saved her from having to buy her own bag. Kurama pulled her crumpled clothes out of the suitcase and folded it neatly before returning it-Sagaku was happy to let him do it and handed him her skirts with a wink. He glowered at her in good humor and took them.
"I'll be back before you know it." Sagaku stopped packing long enough to throw her arms around her friend. "It'll be less than a year. He has so much to teach me though-centuries worth."
"And you're sure you want to do this?" Kurama asked.
Sagaku transferred her arms to Kurama, hugging him also. He patted the top of her head, smiling down at her. It had been so long since she'd allowed herself this kind of comfort with her friends. Why? She wondered. Had she subconsciously been trying to act like her sisters would have wanted? But her friends understood her need to be against them and never read into it as anything more than comfort. What a fool she'd been.
"I'm more than sure," she told him. "I even spoke with Koenma about it. He said if I get strong enough, he'll find work for me so I don't have to be a waitress again. No more ass-grabbing or stiffed checks."
Sagaku added her two books to the suitcase, and then zipped it shut.
"Let's face it," she continued saying to her friends, "all anyone has ever been able to tell me about Hanshoku is that we can have babies. But Shoseki knows more. His mother was Ishikawa no Taira."
"That means literally nothing to me," Yusuke said. Kurama looked impressed, though. The demon Sagaku would be traveling with was the son of the only author who had written with any sort of authority on Hanshoku. At least now he knew why the author had been able to provide so many details the others couldn't.
"Don't miss us too much, brat," Yusuke sad. He play punched her arm and let her hug him. She turned to Kuwabara, who caught her and threw her into the air like he had so many months ago. She squealed happily and flung her arms around his shoulders in the tightest squeeze she could manage. He smiled tearfully but put her back on the ground so she could hug Shizuru.
Sagaku turned back to Kurama, the man who had become her best friend over the last year.
"I'll keep in contact," she promised him in a brief moment of solemnity. "And I'm coming back home, as soon as I can."
She hugged him one last time, breathing in deeply to memorize his unique smell of rose and earth and Kurama.
With one last wave, she left. She would return in a year's time and be welcome, but until then she had work to do.