39 – Omake: "My Heart is Yours"
A Glimpse into the Future, and a Strange White Day Gift.
Kotori awoke this morning much the same way as she did any other in the recent past, the insistent ringing of the alarm clock piercing the veil of comfortable sleep and causing the young woman to lurch awake with a foul grumble. A glance at the impassive mechanical face of the device told her that she did not have the luxury to sleep in and, sighing, she flung the sheets back to get up and start her daily routine.
Her son Kouhei was already awake and finishing his breakfast, and Kotori greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and a quick "good morning" before making her way into the bathroom. She allotted herself ten minutes in the shower and fifteen for other bathroom tasks, studying her face in the mirror as she brushed her teeth and combed her hair. Twenty-five years old. So much has happened – I've played traitor, political attaché, vindicator, victim – and yet it's hard to tell just by looking at me. I look almost exactly the same as I did when I arrived here almost thirteen years ago. It took another half-hour to wake and ready her youngest, two-year-old Jura, and after mother and daughter had dressed and eaten breakfast Kotori bid goodbye to Kouhei and left the house. Jura was placed in the care of Kotori's friend and former teammate Naeko, and then it was on to the Academy to begin preparations for that day's classes.
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The faculty office was markedly empty as Kotori walked in, the hour being relatively early yet for any of the regulars to arrive. As one of the newest additions to the faculty, certain tasks had been handed down to Kotori, and these included making sure coffee and tea were ready for those that wanted them at a small table near the office door. The office soon began to fill with the rich scent of brewing coffee, and with a satisfied smile Kotori returned to her desk to see what was in store for her. "March 14th," she read aloud from the planner she kept among the other odds and ends. "First hour – History, Hidden Village overview: Sunagakure. Second/third hour – endurance training. Fourth hour – Preparatory time. Lunch, 45 minutes." The last entry made Kotori wince as she remembered one of the other duties pawned off on the newest faculty: "Fifth hour – sex ed." She shook her head, grumbling, "And of course it would fall on me, a single mother of two who happens to play host to a nymphomaniac cat demon, to teach these impressionable minds how not to do things." Her eyes then fell on an additional note, penciled into her schedule in a stranger's handwriting: "White Day."
Snapping her daybook shut, Kotori retrieved a mug from a desk drawer and got up to get the first drops of that day's fresh brew from the office coffee pot. "Yeah, as if I needed a reminder. You shouldn't need a holiday to tell someone you care about them, and having two is needlessly excessive and commercialistic to boot." She added a half-spoon of sugar to the strong, dark liquid and took a sip, nodding in approval before returning to her desk to go over her notes for the day's lectures.
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The first hours of the day passed without incident, not including the complaints of many students as their teacher led them on a moderately challenging run through one of the village's training forests. At least I went out there and ran with them. They need to see that I'm not doing this to be cruel, but rather to be instructive and also to show them that one day a little run like that will seem like a springtime stroll. The exercise also served to somewhat purge from Kotori's mind the memories that had surfaced during the first hour's lecture, an overview of the Hidden Sand Village. Yet another example of what happens when sentimentality gets in the way of business. I've made my choice and I won't go back on it.
A light shower followed the training run, and after that Kotori returned to the faculty office at the Academy for her preparatory hour. She was more than slightly surprised to find that a large vase had been placed on her desk and filled with fragrant white roses, and she did not need to read the notecard at the base of the vase to know that the flowers had come from Taiki, her other former teammate turned diplomatic envoy from the Cloud Village. The neck of the vase had been decorated with an ornate silk ribbon, which Kotori now took and used to tie back her hair in a ponytail before sitting down to grade the previous day's homework from her history students. Even that seemingly simple task took longer than envisioned, though, and was continued during Kotori's designated lunch time. It took the chime announcing the beginning of the next class hour to remind her that she was late and, well aware that she was being none-too-subtly laughed at by others in the faculty room, she dashed off to catch the next class.
"All right ladies and gents, time for the class that I'm sure you all have been just dying for." An even gaze over the assembled group of twenty students to gauge just which ones would be trouble. "I've got a video for you to watch, along with a worksheet. Please save all questions and comments until after the movie is over, and any inappropriate remarks will be dealt with accordingly. Clear?" No protests were raised, and Kotori nodded. "Good. Now the person at the end of each row will come up and pick up enough papers for the rest while I get the video set up…" Let's just get this over with, Kotori inwardly grumbled as she slid the instructional tape from its sleeve and glanced down at it to make sure that it was rewound to the beginning before putting it in the player. It was that glance that saved her from certain disaster, though, and her face flushed bright red as she caught the title of the tape. "Seems like there's been a small technical error," she told the students. "Stay put, and I'll see if I can get a hold of the right tape."
The faculty office was empty again when Kotori stormed in, leaving her with no one to blame for this most recent problem. "Oh well. I guess this means I'll have to take another approach…" Scrawling a quick note out on a piece of scratch paper, she tacked it up to the message board and secured the offending video in her desk, retrieving the correct one out of another drawer and resolving to look into the matter at another time.
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It may have only been half an hour later, but it seemed like an eternity had passed before the end credits rolled on the correct film for Kotori's last class of the day. "Turn your work in before you leave. We'll go over it in a discussion tomorrow," she told the students, gauging their reactions as they rose from their seats and filed past her on their way out. Some appeared queasy, some giggled nervously, and others shared the deathly pallor of one close to fainting. "Join the crew," she muttered in empathy after the last student walked out. "I'm just glad Kouhei wasn't in that bunch or this really would have been embarrassing."
It took a short moment to put the television and cassette player that she'd used in the class in their place in a storage closet. When she briefly returned to the classroom to gather up the worksheets, she noticed that a small tissue-wrapped package had been placed atop the pile of papers. Plucking the card from atop the package and opening it, she almost gagged when she read the words aloud. "Here's hoping your day went well. The movie I left in your desk is yours to keep, as well as this little bit o' sexy that I found while out and about. The black lace made me think of you." A peek just under the tissue made Kotori turn white in shock and then red in deep anger. Her hand convulsed once in spastic anger, crumpling the note. "Damnit! I'd kill that disgusting old man if I weren't worried about leaving Jura fatherless…"
You have to admit that he has nice taste in lingerie, the Nekomata remarked with an amused grin from its resting place in Kotori's subconscious. And please don't kill him yet. He's so fun to play with!
"That's what you say about all of them." Kotori sighed once in relief, then collected her belongings and left the classroom. "Now to finish up grading those history papers! Then I can go home and rest…"
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Most of the Academy staff had gone by the time Kotori reclaimed her seat at her desk in the faculty office. The gift of earlier and the offending video went into her bookbag to be taken home at the end of the day, and Kotori took one last grateful sniff of the bouquet of roses before facing the task at hand. "I swear, an overview of the Stone Country shouldn't be that difficult." She shook her head, marking the last paper and setting them aside. Drawing an exhausted hand across her eyes to ease the migraine she felt growing, she slouched down in her chair and savored the momentary silence around her.
"Having a rough time of it?" came a casual inquiry from the office door which she chose not to answer immediately. Turning their attention to the message board, the newcomer read aloud the notice that Kotori had posted earlier. "To whom it may concern – adult videos are not suitable material for the Sex Ed class. In the future, please keep your viewing habits to yourself and spare everyone else the inconvenience. Thank you – Y.K." A snicker, then, "That sums it up right there."
Blushing a little, Kotori eased herself up from her chair and went to take the notice down. "Just a misunderstanding," she muttered, crumpling the paper and tossing it in the trash. "I swear today isn't my day, Iruka."
This earned a sympathetic smile in reply as the other teacher bent for a moment to smell the arrangement of white blossoms on Kotori's desk. "I wouldn't say that – someone has to like you a lot to send you flowers like this." Iruka set a small crate on the corner of the desk, tapping its top to draw her attention to it. "And if you weren't popular enough, I was asked to give this to you before you went home today."
Kotori gave the crate a puzzled look, noting its travel-worn appearance and lack of markings that would show its origin. "Any idea where it's from?"
"No clue. It looks like it's been through a lot, though, and someone obviously wanted you to have it." A friendly pat on the shoulder. "Why don't you open it? I'll turn around if you don't want me to see what it is."
"No… that's all right." Retrieving a spare knife from her topmost desk drawer, Kotori prized the lid of the crate loose and glanced inside. The contents were carefully insulated from shock or disruption by layers of cloth, but something nonetheless seemed familiar about the item and gave her the chills as she removed it from the crate and removed its wrappings. "What the – !"
Bile rose in her throat when she saw the revealed jar, filled with clear liquid that in turn insulated and preserved an immediately-recognizable organic shape. A piece of paper had fluttered loose during the unwrapping, and Kotori now turned her attention to the message written on it: "I told you that my heart is yours, and how better to express my sentiment that than to actually give my heart to you? Well, it isn't exactly mine, but it belonged to my last host body so I suppose it will have to do. I cherish the time we spent together, lament the circumstances that keep us apart, and look forward to the day when we are reunited. Yours always – O."
Quickly putting both jar and paper back on the desk, Kotori hissed a barely coherent "Excuse me" through clenched teeth and bolted from the office. She barely made it to the nearest restroom in time before waves of nausea succeeded in emptying from her stomach what meager morsels she'd managed to consume for lunch, and once she was sure no more would follow she composed herself and walked shakily back to the office. Iruka still stood by her desk, face a classic study in shock and confusion as he tried to string the pieces together into a complete picture in his mind. "Sorry about that," Kotori mumbled, retrieving her mug for a bracing sip of now-cold coffee. "That one's well-known for his nasty surprises…"
"Is… is that really a heart? In a jar?" stammered a yet-puzzled Iruka, staring down at the glass vessel and its unsettling contents.
"Yes. Yes, it is." Carefully re-packing the jar, Kotori put it in its crate into her bookbag and gave her desk a look-over to see if there was anything she'd missed.
"Well, I was just going to ask you out to dinner sometime" a quick, sharp head-shake to clear it "but literally giving someone your heart… that's just hard to top."
Kotori laughed tiredly and drained her coffee, putting the empty cup into one of the desk drawers before locking it and securing the contents for the night. Shouldering her bookbag and picking up the vase of flowers, she replied, "You know what? Dinner sounds lovely."
An echoing laugh, this one disbelieving. "All right. Meet you at the Ichiraku in an hour or so?"
"It's a date! See you then." Kotori then left the office, smiling to herself as she reached to switch off the coffee pot on her way out. Her mind soon returned to the contents of the jar, gently sloshing with each movement as she walked, and her smile vanished. You're still the sick bastard I knew back then, Oro. Now let's just hope that poor man doesn't put two and two together and realize whose innards he was looking at.
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Back in the office, Iruka pinched his arm to make sure that the events of the past five minutes really had happened. "That was easier than I thought. Now I hope I don't make an ass out of myself later on…" Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a scrap of paper left on Kotori's desk, which he picked up out of curiosity and began to read. When he got to the end, he blinked once and then shivered as the pieces began to come together. "Um, Kotori…? This isn't from who I think it is, is it?" Silence greeted this question, its recipient long-since gone on her way back to her home. "God, I hope not."
Author's note: Valentine's Day and White Day may come and go, but true love lasts forever – as long as there's formaldehyde to preserve it. Thus ends our flash forward to a future that may or may not happen... The normal storyline resumes now.