Suzaku's Fire
Chapter 3
This chapter is dedicated for Mugged and the good music. Keep the coffee coming guys! (It took me of travelling all the way from Finland to South Africa, getting my life screwed up and shattered to find and pick up this fic, but I'm writing again.)
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Slowly drifting awake from the dizzy depths of restless sleep the first thing that registered into his senses was the warm, slightly spicy, dusty and wooden feeling of the air. He had lately learned to connect it with a promise of nice sunny day and as if to confirm his sleepy hunch he could hear the chirping of sparrows when his ears slowly woke up and registered back to online. What had he done last night? His mouth tasted like someone had crawled to die in it.
Joonas ran his tongue over his lips and slowly opened one eye as he lay on the bed on his stomach, familiar headache pounding his head. Moving his head and grumbling as his pillow was hard as stone, scratching his face and he pushed it away, resting his head against his arms. Suddenly a strong wave of nausea which he was getting too familiar with hit over him more on reflex he jumped out of the hard bed and over the window, leaning out to empty his stomach.
Spitting the biter taste from his mouth Joonas shadowed his eyes and stared at the garden opening in front of him. Where the Hell was he?! As far as he could recall, he hadn't drank anything unusually strong yesterday. He frowned thoughtfully. He had come home and heard his flatmate Tetsuya arguing with his friend Keisuke in Japanese in another room. He had mixed himself a strong mix of imported Vodka and orange juice and flipped through an old book the guys had left on the living room table, looking at the old fashioned painted pictures of its yellowish pages. It seemed that it was a some sort of story of some girl stupid enough to get into a world of trouble, and apparently there was also some romance involved. He could remember something hitting him and knocking him over, but the rest was hazy and slurred, like after drinking too much too strong stuff too fast.
He saw a movement from the corner of his eye and turned to look. There was a large mirror on the opposite wall and for a second he thought he saw a pale man with a red hair standing up and wearing some sort of torn robe before he pinched his eyes closed tightly for a second and looked again. The reflection showed a messed up young man, with a slightly sharp face with a brown messed up hair and annoyed frown, his chest being heavily bandaged.
'So it has started.' He thought to himself as he rubbed his eyes, trying to fix his vision. Looking down and poking lightly the cotton ties around his chest he winced when the pain flamed through him. Broken rib, he cursed and took a breath and immediately regretted it when his back screamed its objection. Hobbling teary eyed back over the bed when his left ankle added its formal complaints to the list with the rest of his body a door was slammed open and a girl with her hairs held in buns and typical Japanese school uniform pounded in, followed with a tall serious looking man with a cat on his shoulder.
'Uh oh……' was all Joonas managed to think when he was tackled down in a huge hug.
"YUKI-SAN!!!" Miaka chirped, hugging him tightly.
"AAAHHH!" Joonas screamed in pain, colour escaping from his face.
"Sorry sorry sorry…." Miaka apologised and let go of him with a worried look.
"Miaka, please don't tackle the patient so. Even I have my limits what I can heal." Said the tall man with a deep low voice. Joonas peered up at him, not quite sure if he had actually cracked a joke or been just sarcastic.
"Oh yes, Mitsukake, if you could heal him, please?" the energic priestess chirped, giving puppy eyes for the healer. Joonas blinked. Since when had he put the klutz sister of his flatmates friend even on the same map with ancient priestess?... and come to think of it….. what the heck of a priestess?! He was snapped out of his thought when the mountain of a man stepped closer and lifted his left hand where was a red character on his palm.
Healer. Touching. Getting inside you. He will know. He will see everything. No. No!
"NO!" Joonas shouted even for his own surprise and backed on the bed "No... I'm fine." He tried of smiling "Nothing I can't get over with." He said, feeling his face growing paler.
They had quickly given him a fitting nick name when he had arrived into Japan a month ago. Yuki. It meant snow in Japanese. Ironic play with words about his skin colour and where he was coming from, the cold snowy Scandinavia. People never got his name right and even teachers were using Yuki for him. It was close enough anyway.
"Are you sure, Yuki-san?" Miaka asked, exchanging glances with Mitsukake.
"Yeah yeah yea…" the young man waved his hand "Where are we anyway? And how did I get over here? Where ever here is…." He asked, frowning at the girl and causing her to twiddle with her fingers.
"Um…. Mitsukake…..Can I please have a moment with him?" Miaka squeaked, thinking that getting things straight right from the beginning might be the best course of action.
Chichiri was walking towards the royal fishing pond with Tasuki when a sudden deadly silence surrounded them and flock of birds frantically trying to get away.
A roaring "WHAT?!" echoed from the other side of the palace and they could see one roof shaking and almost collapsing.
"Whoa….. the gaijing woke up?" Tasuki gapped at the building and could hear voices talking urgently.
"That or demons, no da." Chichiri said.
Couple of hours later after Miaka had left Yuki walked slightly unsteadily out of his room and sat to a railing, turning his face to a san and closing his brown eyes, enjoying of the warmth of the sun.
Ancient China. Inside of a book none the less. That was just too ridiculous to believe. But on the other hand….. on this point, did it really matter? The wood he was sitting on and sun on his skin felt real enough. It was comforting to know that at least he wasn't hallucinating yet.
He stretched his shoulders, wanting to spread his wings as wide as possible and stopped. Wings? Since when had he thought something like that?
He was reaching over his hand over his shoulder to touch his shoulder blades uncertainly when a beautiful woman walked near to him and leaned over the railing, her long braid falling over her shoulder.
"MII-A-KA!! GET OVER HERE!" She screamed, waving her hands and almost causing Yuki to fall down from his narrow seat. He could see Miaka sitting on the other side of the lake with a blue haired man, who was holding something on his hand.
'Good, about time they get into talking. Both of them are needing some serious counselling.' Yuki thought when he probed his ear 'Wait a moment... I don't even know these people!' he thought, shocked of the mental note.
"WE ARE GOING FOR THE FESTIVAL IN TOWN TONIGHT! DO YOU WANT TO COME WITH ME AND TASUKI?" the purple haired lady screamed and then seemed to realise that there was someone near her. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to shout like that." She giggled embarrassedly, hiding her face behind her sleeve.
'Of course you didn't… ow… I think I just lost my hearing…' Yuki thought dizzily "Eah, I'm fine Nuriko." He said instead, trying to smile and probing his ear and froze.
"Ah, you are Miaka's friend. Yuki, was it?" She chirped and then looked at him "I don't think we have been introduced." She cocked her delicate brow at him.
"Well, I guess you must be Nuriko." Yuki managed to smile. How had he known that? "Miaka mentioned of you." He lied quickly.
"You have an unusual name." she said. "You don't look like you're from here." There was something about her that kept on nagging on the back of Yuki's mind, but he couldn't quite point his finger about it.
"Eh, no I'm not. Yuki is just my nick name. It's a lot easier to pronounce" He said "I'm from North." She was quite pretty….
"Hokkan?" Nuriko said, looking surprised "That would explain the color…." Her eyes narrowed slightly when she noticed something "That's an unusual pendant. Where did you get it from?"
'What pendant?' he thought and his hand reached up to his neck, feeling the light metal slithering and forming something of a dragon. "Ah… that was a birthday present from a friend." He quickly lied again with a lopsided smile. 'Don't get too interested with her. She's a guy.' A thought poked in his mind 'What?' he blinked and stared Nuriko.
"Why are you looking me like that? Something wrong?" Nuriko asked.
"You're a guy." Yuki stated shocked, staring him.
It was Nuriko's turn to be taken back. Usually people didn't pick it up so quickly.
"What gave me up? Was my make up bad?" he looked worried, putting one delicate hand to her, HIS – Yuki corrected himself – cheek.
"No…. your… er…. Make up is fine…." Yuki stammered, being shocked of having been right "It was just a good hunch." He tried to cover it 'Damn… And she was so pretty too…' he thought, mentally snapping his fingers annoyedly in disappointment.
"Oh…. Good hunch." Nuriko giggled in that gayish cross-dressing way, waving his delicate hand. "Anyway, there's a Stargazing festival tonight on the town. Would you join us?" he asked.
"I think I will have to pass." Yuki said as politely as possible "I think I need some rest." He said and waved when the cross-dresser left to catch up with Miaka.
Yuki let a sight of relief escape and relaxed a bit. He was stuck in some crazy place and it seemed like was starting to hallucinate. His eyes fell on a weird building. He had seen something similar earlier and it defiantly had "temple" written all over it. His curiosity perked up when a memory from last night drifted drunkenly into his mind. Hadn't he been there yesterday? If it was yesterday…
He got up, straightening his black shirt and as after thought hiding the weird pendant under his shirt. He would have time to get rid of it later. Limping slightly he slowly climbed up the stone stairs and paused to catch his breath on the highest step, wincing when the scars on his back and his broken rib complained with each lungful of air. He looked at the door for a second, wondering if he would be allowed to step in or not before disappearing into the cool shadows of the temple.