Lookies, peoples! The second part of the first minific is FINALLY up! x3 Enjoy, ne?
Story 2
Chapter 2: They Call my Father Lord
Yuya fingered the incredibly soft material, her eyes blank and her face grim. She pulled her hand away and offered her maid a half-hearted smile. "Please give this back to my father. Tell him I refuse to wear it."
The other girl's eyes widened considerably. "B- but he said—"
Yuya shook her head immediately and cut her off. "No, don't bother telling me what he said. Just hand it to him and tell him that I refuse."
The young maid's mouth opened and closed several times. "He'll get angry at me!" she protested.
"I don't think he will. You can just give it to my mother. Or never mind. Just keep it for yourself. No one has to know. No one… should notice." She nodded at her own logic and offered another smile.
The servant burst into tears.
Yuya sighed in both exasperation and agitation. Her day—which had already been downright shitty—just got a lot worse. "He won't get mad," she tried to soothe the young girl. "He doesn't have a reason to."
"N- Nuh- Nuh- No!" the servant girl wailed through her tears. "He said thuh- that if I could- couldn't get you to cooperate then—"
"What a load of bullocks," Yuya interrupted crossly, her irritation at her father merely increasing with each moment. "He won't do anything to you. Leave that here and I'll give it back to him. You are dismissed to do what you're needed for."
The other girl swiped at her eyes with the back of her fist. "Very well, Yuya-sama," she obediently replied and left.
Yuya turned to glare angrily at her wall. She knew it wasn't the servant girl's fault—she had been sent by the master of the house. Even still, Yuya felt a smidge of bitter frustration towards the girl. The elegance of the kimono had reminded her just what was taking place tomorrow evening—the party. And Tokugawa Benitora would be there.
And every minute of the 'celebration' would be a living Hell.
She knew her father expected her to be the young woman she was and put up her best 'I'm-innocent-and-would-be-the-best-wife-in-the-world' front which was exactly why Yuya planned on being a little devil. She had millions of little mental plans of untold evil. She fantasized many different scenarios where she was an absolute shrew. The Benitora Tokugawa figure was always shocked at her display of 'maturity.' And, of course, in the end Kyo came and swept her off her feet to save her from her torturers.
At the mention of Kyo, Yuya's shoulders slumped and her anger dissipated. She had desperately hoped that maybe—just maybe—some divine power would lure Kyo back so… so… something would happen. She hadn't known it would feel so hopeless to lose Kyo again. Before, when he left, she had the knowledge that he would return—their friendship was worth too much. But having lost him, unsure if they would be able to make amends…
I would apologize if I could only see him, she thought miserably to herself as she flopped onto her back, preferring to lie down on the hard floor for once to think rather than pace around uselessly like she'd been doing.
She'd been thinking for about ten minutes—and had conjured up plans, some plausible and some silly and far-fetched—when her father announced his presence and stepped into her room. Automatically, Yuya pushed herself up so she was leaning on her hands, looking up to meet his deathly calm stare.
"Yuya, why are you not dressing yourself in the proper attire I picked for this occasion?" he inquired, more out of tradition than anything. Yuya knew that if it hadn't been appropriate to do so, he'd be forcefully dressing her himself. Her father always felt that his word was always law—because to the fellow villagers, his word was law—and punished any who opposed him harshly. His family included.
"I told you, father. I'm not attending your stupid get-together. I'm not marrying some guy I don't even know. I refuse." Yuya had always been told—by Kyo, no less—that she wasn't allowed to 'go with the crowd.' She had to stick up for what she thought and not back down when others disagreed. Kyo also told her not to fear her father.
So she didn't—most of the time, that is.
Her father took one step towards her and instinctively, Yuya drew her legs closer to her body in case she needed to spring to her feet. Her father had only hit her a few times, but each blow had done some serious damage.
"You will get dressed, you will go to your engagement party, and you will get married. There is no alternative." His tone backed up his words. "And if you don't, so help you, I'll dress you myself. I will not tolerate your childish behavior, do you understand? Everyone must be married. Your cousin—who's three years younger than you—is already married and with child."
And Yuya, not being able to keep her retorts in (he had the gall to use the phrase 'engagement party,' even!), stuck out her chin and proclaimed, "Well, I'm not a whore like she is. It's that simp—"
And in that moment, there was a CRACK that came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Yuya blinked in surprise, trying to figure out where it came from. Only when a hot, liquid-fire spread up from her left elbow did she figure that her father had slapped her. She looked down at the appendage mutely, awed to silence, and watched as it turned a violent redish purple. The hot pain slowly turned to a frigid, cold pin-and-needles sensation before she lost all feeling in that part of her arm.
"I told you, Yuya, there is no other alternative. You're to be married tomorrow and leave with Tokugawa-san. He plans to ask you to marry him tonight after the party. You will agree. Do you understand?"
Yuya continued to look mutely at her arm, still caught off-guard that he had hit her. Sure, he had hit her before, but as earlier stated, he rarely did it. She could count the times he touched her on one hand. And she wouldn't even need to use all of her fingers.
Her father took her silence to mean she was consenting—and Yuya herself couldn't even tell if she was or not. She felt too numb to decide. When he spoke again, his tone had softened considerably as he pulled out a beautifully crafted box—the same one the young servant girl had been carrying around earlier—and rumbled, "This is your kimono. Your mother picked it out specifically for tonight. Wear it and make me proud to be your father. I know you don't want to do this, but Tokugawa is a good man. You'll see so yourself tonight."
With those as his parting words, he placed the box on the floor and turned, leaving the room as easily as he had come.
And Yuya, still not sure what she was going to do, opened the box and untied the obi she was sporting. The layers of her yukata slid open, the material skating down her slumped shoulders. She felt herself coming undone, just like her robes had fallen apart so easily once the one thing that kept it together had been yanked away.
She still needed Kyo.
"You look positively beautiful. This right here"—her mother lifted a hand to touch Yuya's cheek affectionately—"is the proud girl I've raised my daughter to be."
For some reason, Yuya had a hard time believing that. She felt so utterly dead inside, it was a wonder she didn't look like a robot on the out. She felt none of the pride her mother claimed she did. Only a flaccid anger filled her. It was smudged by her lack of enthusiasm, but it still lurked in the back of her mind, swirling around, waiting for the moment she would snap back to reality.
"Thanks," she slurred.
Her mother frowned at her lack of ardor. "You poor thing, you probably haven't slept properly in days," she replied, excusing the obvious with false observations. "Are you feeling okay?"
No.
"Yes," she answered mechanically.
The hand that was on her cheek slowly ran up to her forehead. "Do you have a fever?" the older woman fretted.
No.
"Yes," she mumbled, not caring if it was the truth or not.
"Well… anyway. We better head outside, everything's set up and waiting."
No. I don't want to.
"Okay."
And they headed out. Almost immediately as Yuya stepped into the humid, late-spring-early-summer air, Yuya stopped. There were so many people. Sure, she knew the entire village had been invited, but for some reason, she hadn't expected everyone to come. Almost immediately after thinking that, she remembered that she was one of the only people who ever disobeyed her father.
"She's not pretty enough for Tokugawa-sama!!…"
The whispered critique was something she wasn't supposed to hear, she was sure, but that didn't stop it from happening. She wasn't really bothered by it since she would've readily agreed with them if it meant getting out of a forced marriage. She found it humorous that his name was said in a way that deemed it worthy of extra punctuation, though…
"Why is her hair blonde? She probably isn't even native."
"Know what my father told me? He said that girls like her, with their 'luscious locks,' have a habit of whoring themselves out…"
"And she has the gall to marry Tokugawa-sama!!—the nerve!"
Yuya couldn't help but tug a lock of her silken hair down into her view to silently inspect it. As a child, she had heard ridicule of the same kind, only on a smaller scale. The severity of the gossip had grown prodigiously over the few years that she spent basically locked away in her room.
"Did you hear she had a lover?"
Stop listening to it if it bugs you.
"Did you say something, Yuya?" her mother queried, glancing in her direction for a quick second.
"No," was her monotonous reply. Had that been out loud? She couldn't tell what was thoughts and what was dialogue anymore…
"Well, alright… I'm going to go over and find your father. He's supposed to announce the arrival of your betrothed soon." Her mother flittered away into the crowd, disappearing in the throngs of color, and with the silence, Yuya found herself hearing more of the conversations around her.
"She had a lover?!"
"Shhhh—idiot, she might hear. Yes, she had a lover. I think his name is Kyo—remember him? He used to—"
"No! Kyo? I knew him—he used to run around with her when they were little. They are—er… were just friends."
"Will you stop interrupting me? I'm trying to tell you that…"
Kyo? Was he there? Yuya perked up enough to look around. When she didn't see her red-eyed friend, she deflated again.
Was he still mad at her?
"Tokugawa-sama's arrived!"
Though no one was quite sure where the proclamation came from, the result was the same. Immediately, there was animated, stage-whispered chatter—was he going to be as handsome as he was rumored to be? After the excitement starting to wear off, the crowd fell into a deathly silence. People craned their neck. Children stood up on tip-toes. The smarter ones took turns standing on another's back. Everyone started cramming their way in one direction—that was how Yuya figured out from which way the butt-face monkey (AKA her 'betrothed') was coming from.
She lingered in the back, staying away as long as possible. Due to the eerie quiet, she could vaguely hear two male voices conversing—her father welcoming the wonderfully awesome Tokugawa-sama!! (yes, those exclamation points were now a permanent part of his name), and the butt-face monkey himself humbly accepting the daughter of the rich lord for matrimony…
Pah.
Don't marry him.
"I don't want to," she mumbled in response. Or maybe she said the first thing… or maybe both…
Yuya shook her head to clear it. She wasn't sure what she was doing at all any—
"—Yuya! It would bring me great dignity to personally introduce you to Tokugawa-san."
Despite the fact that she hadn't heard the beginning of her father's call, she knew from his tone that the phrase 'I'm not quite sure why you weren't here to begin with since you should've been with me the whole time' was hidden behind his words. Only he could have a longer secret meaning than what was actually said.
At first, she didn't want to move. She wanted to use the fact that his voice was severely muffled from the distance between them as an excuse to not go up, but by the time she thought of that, she was walking up the pathway that had been created by the crowd for her. Yuya stopped next to her father and gave him a contemptuous look before turning her attention to—
Holy shit. His hair was purple. Or pink. Either way, it wasn't normal in the slight—
Why was he wearing a bandanna?
"Yuya-chan, please give your warmest welcome to Tokugawa-sama," her father rumbled from behind her.
Yuya stared glumly at the young man before her for several more seconds before whispering, "You're a lot younger than I thought you'd be."
The audience towards the front let out an affronted gasp at her audacity to say such a thing. Murmurs flooded throughout the crowd rapidly. It wasn't long before everyone knew what the girl had actually said to Tokugawa-sama!! Her father bristled behind her, eyes widening horrifically, an apology on the tip of his tongue, no doubt.
Tokugawa Benitora, however, tilted his head back and laughed. And laughed. And laughed.
What's so damn funny, buddy?
Finally, Benitora—he no longer required the title of Tokugawa-sama!!, he was nothing but a scrawny brat who wanted a sexy girl in Yuya's opinion from that point on—turned his attention back to Yuya and rubbed the heel of his palm against his eyes to wipe away the tears that had formed from his acidulous cackle.
And before her father could utter out an apology, Benitora joyously cried, "God, Yuya, I think I love you already!"
Phew. I was going to keep on going, but then I remembered that this is a minific and thus the chapters are short. But there ya have it: part two. What'd'ya think?
I, myself, found it to be… er… weird. And no, some of Yuya's "thoughts" aren't italicized because for all she knows, she's actually saying it. Meh. It's weird, I know. And know that this might not be updated regularly. I work on this to rid myself of writers' block since this is so simple and easy to write.
Thank you and that is all. :D
Review, please!
