Chapter 3: A Mother's Love
"Tell me what these rude boys have done to you," Keiko said with a stern look in my face. Taking account of the expression on Urameshi's face, I did not have a good choice ahead of me. I had the option to tell Keiko about his extremely odd behavior, or to tell her nothing at all. I went with the option that seemed the safest.
"Oh, it was nothing, Keiko," I said trying to sound as joyful as possible. "They were just asking where you were at! Your dad left a few minutes ago and our mothers are upstairs, so it was just me down here and they were curious." I smiled at the end as genuinely as I could pull out of myself. It was hard to keep myself from looking at Urameshi to see how he felt about my story. I could only hope he was happy with it.
Instantly, I could tell Keiko had caught me in my lie. Her eyebrows creased in disbelief. As quickly as the disbelief had shown itself on her face, it vanished to be replaced with a sweet smile and a laugh. "Well, they acted better than I thought. I'm glad," all the while she was looking at Urameshi with that same smile. It clearly wasn't a good smile due to the way his face suddenly dropped and looked almost… scared. "Since you're so worried about me, Yusuke," she said with a very pointed look, "I'm sure you would be more than fine to step outside and have a little chat."
With a rather pained look on his face, Yusuke agreed and followed Keiko outside looking like a dog with a tail between its legs. As soon as the door shut behind them, I could tell he was in trouble. Keiko was on him in an instant, pointing her finger in his face then pointing to me and once again back to Yusuke. It was clearly going to end very heatedly. Suddenly, I felt guilty. What if they broke up because of this argument?
"Hanamura," Kuwabara said gently, "don't worry about it. They fight like this all the time. Plus, Urameshi deserved it." The fact that he was trying to comfort me, a complete stranger, made me feel better about the situation.
"Would… you like something to eat?" I asked him. It was the only way I knew how to show him that I was grateful for his kind words at the moment. I also wanted to find a way to ignore the awkward situation that was now taking place outside of the restaurant. The awkward situation that I had been the direct cause of. When his face lit up, I knew I had done the right thing.
"Really? If it's not too much trouble. We're gonna eat later but a little won't hurt," Kuwabara said with a huge smile. Turning around with a smile of my own that may have been just as big as his, I grabbed a plate and started filling it.
"I hope you don't mind having a little bit of everything on here," I said without turning around. Getting a bowl, I added some of the delicious smelling soup that was simmering in front of me. I really needed to get some of that for myself.
"No problem," was his simple reply. I watched him enjoy his meal for a moment before turning around to grab my previously forgotten coffee. When some of my bangs fell into my eyes, I flicked them away in annoyance. A haircut was long overdue. I could hear Keiko and Urameshi arguing in the background, but I chose to ignore it to the best of my ability.
"So," Kuwabara sad getting my attention. Looking up at him slowly from my coffee, I raised my eyebrows as a meaning of reply as I brought the mug to my mouth, feeling the warm liquid leave a tasty trail down my throat. "Keiko said you were a family friend. I've never seen you around before. What's up with that?" I could tell he was genuinely curious. This wasn't an interrogation to try to get information out of me. Which, if Urameshi wanted to know who I was so badly, Keiko would be able to tell him.
"Well. My mother is more of the family friend. She went to school with Ms. Yuki. Yukimura, I mean," I said with a light shrug. "Sometimes she would come over to talk to her, so I was left alone to "play" with Keiko. Which really meant her occupying me for an hour or so. Nothing too important," I continued.
"Oh. I guess that makes sense," he said lightly rubbing a hand through his hair. I couldn't help but wonder how he got it to stay like that. I was vaguely tempted to ask him what product he used to keep it in place so well, whatever it was, it seemed like a really good buy. "What brings you here today then?" he asked clearly confused.
"My parents got married," I said unable to keep the smile from spreading across my face. "Mom came to tell Ms. Yukimura the good news. They've been together for years but never really got around to it." When I spoke to Kuwabara about Ms. Yuki, I had to remind myself to use her full name. As a kid, Yukimura had not been the simplest name to say for a kid with a slight speech problem. Over the years the speech problem was fixed with age, but the name for the couple stuck. "She wanted me to come with her since my father was at work and my younger brother was away at a friend's house. Mother has never been too big on going places alone," I said explaining my reason for accompanying my mother. "Plus," I added with wiggling my eyebrows, "Mr. Yukimura is cooking today. That's always a good excuse to come over."
A grin spread across his face. "That is a pretty good reason to hang out here. Everybody knows how good Mr. Yukimura's cooking is. Especially if it's free food," he said a little too loudly. He must be one of the people who got louder as they got more excited. It didn't annoy me, it actually brought a smile to my face. He was such a genuinely kind person. It was painfully obvious. "Wait. That means you have known Keiko since she was a kid? Huh. I'm surprised we haven't seen you around," he said with a questioning look on his face.
"I wasn't around that much. Only when my mom came over. And I was mostly around her feet most of the time. As I got older, she could leave me at home. Then I started my own after school things so I stopped coming all together. So yeah. I have known Keiko a while. But not very well," I admitted. "It was mostly 'go have fun while we have grownup talk' thing. So. More of an acquaintance," I said a little shyly. It wasn't that I had anything to hide. I just felt odd talking about Keiko.
I barely knew her. I remembered how she told me to call her parents Yuki instead of Yukimura because she had caught onto my speech problem. She had said it would be easy for me to say until I found it easier to confidently use larger words. There were also the occasional times she would mother me by braiding my hair and getting me juice. She was like an older cousin who you lose track of once they get older and move on and it didn't help when you did the same.
A little bit of sadness started to build in my chest. Keiko's mother had always invited me over as a kid. She said it would be good for Keiko to take care of someone. Help her for when she had her own kids. Now, I regretting how I never came over without my mother. I was too scared. The thought of Keiko not liking me or thinking I was a bother had always stopped me from going. No matter how much I had wanted to, I never had. What would things have been like if I had gone over? Would I know the guy sitting in front of me more than the little I had gathered about him? Would I know the Kurama person they had compared me to? How much different would my life be if I had only taken the time to get over my fears?
Looking out the window, I watched the couple argue. One particular sentence was loud enough to be heard through the door. "She heard too much, Keiko. I don't care who she is. We can't just let her walk away. At least let me bring her up to the temple to get… things looked at," Urameshi said in a stern voice. His words were odd, but I trusted Keiko to make the right decision. She wouldn't let him bring me into something where I could get hurt. Would she?
Hearing steps coming down the stairs, I looked over. Two different types of laughter were accompanied with the steps. It was my mother and Mrs. Yukimura. Was mother ready to leave already? "Akane!" my mother said looking over at me blushing. Nope she was definitely not ready to leave. The wine glass in her hand was apparent. "Mrs. Yukimura and I may be meeting for longer than I thought," she said happily. Giggles filled her laughter. Oh yeah. She wasn't going home for a while. My mother wasn't a heavy drinker. She only drank enough to make her rather tipsy and that was when she was in the safe eyes of her friends.
The bell on the door chiming caught my mother's short attention span. "Keiko, girl! I'm so proud of you. So beautiful and smart! And you've got a handsome man," my mother gushed as she wrapped her arms around the small form of Keiko. I couldn't help but to be embarrassed. It had been a while since mother had this much to drink.
"Thank you, Mrs. Hanamura. I've heard you finally made it official with your man too," she said accepting the hug with a smile. "It seems like you too have been married all this time."
"Keiko, that's what happens when you get old. Don't let that one run away from you though. Men, they're sly ones," mother said pointing at Urameshi after releasing Keiko. "Oh. Keiko. Your mother and I are wanting to spend more girl time together and she just so happened to tell me about a little get together you and your friends were having! Why don't you take little Aki with you? She's great at parties! She has this little trick she can do with her—" before she could finish what I knew she was going to say, I interrupted her.
I was surprised when my words came out with a slight growl, "Mom. That's not something to be talking about. Also, it's not nice to throw yourself on others." I tried to show her with the harsh look on my face that the last thing I wanted to do was go with them.
The reply I got was one I wasn't expecting. "No, Aki," Urameshi said, emphasizing the childish nickname I had since I was a child. I had to hold myself back from rolling my eyes. "We would absolutely love to have you come with us," he finished with a deviant smile on his face. Great. Just great. This was exactly what I didn't need.
"See!" my mother said throwing her arms up in the air, almost spilling the small amount of red wine left in the glass. "They want you to go! Go, go, go," she said pushing me into Keiko's arms without my consent. Before I could argue, she had turned tail and was making her way up the stairs, away from the anger she knew I had boiling inside of me. "Have fun," was the last thing I heard from her as it drifted down the stairs merrily after her.
"We're gonna have a blast," Urameshi said. With the smile that was creeping onto his face, I could bet money that he might have fun, but fun would be far from my reach. This was just great.
So the story is starting develop itself now. I'm sure you've all picked up on how Akako looks by now. That is going to play a large roll later in the plot. I'm really liking the way this is going. It has started kind of slow, but it is going where I planned. Thank you all who have read my story! It means a lot to me. I would like to add a special thanks to Zombiesunshineyura for the favorite and follow. I'm glad you enjoy the story that much!
Please review if you have any advice. I would love feedback on how to improve my writing and maybe even thoughts on how the story should go. Until next time.