Chapter One
Sixteen Years and a Day Earlier: First Meetings
Early Spring, *Showa 3 (1928)
*Hanano Okiya
She was doomed. It was official, today was definitely her execution date. 'How in the world am I supposed to get back onee-san's *yukata now?'
She knew Satsuki would never yell at her for something that was explicitly the fault of last night's harsh winds. However, Misaki also knew that Honoka would definitely give her a stern and very, very, very threatening talking to – not to mention it was the older girl's birthday, the yukata in question was her favourite one, and she expected the day to go off without a hitch. But, besides Honoka's barefaced intimidation tactics, Misaki simply didn't want to cause any trouble in the *Okiya. Everyone had enough to worry about as it was after the drunken scuffle one of the customers had gotten into and Satsuki was responsible for cleaning up both the mess during, after, and next-day-after the altercation ensued.
With a sigh, Misaki desperately looked around the yard until – lo and behold! – she found a fallen branch that would probably just reach the yukata innocently hanging onto the branch of the neighbour's tree. She could only be grateful for her luck that she found the branch and that their neighbour, whoever it was, did not look out into their backyard yet. Standing on the tips of her toes, Misaki stretched her arm out as far as she could and tried to snag the clothing onto her branch.
'Just a little, tiny bit closer… come on, stretch out a little farther…' She beamed when the tip just snagged onto it. Ever so slowly, she pulled the nightgown over, making sure it didn't slip off from where it precariously clung. Misaki, ever the vigilant and prideful youth, was so focused on her task that she failed to notice her once-thought-to-be-asleep neighbour approach.
"Need some help?" She gasped in surprise and let go of the branch as one would a hot soldering rod. Misaki stared at her neighbour with eyes wide in alarm and trepidation, looking every bit a guilty criminal caught in the act. She was like a statue, frozen and apparently shocked into a condition that rendered her not only speechless but unblinking as well.
He stood over her with his arms crossed and face impassive yet... why was it so easy to imagine enormous, plush flowers bloom behind him and a non-existent wind tussle his already-tussled hair? It was easy to understand why her sisters in the Okiya had tittered on about him over the last week. In other words, he was exactly the dashing, arrogant lad that would capture a girl's heart and then crush it between his fingers without remorse.
He quirked an eyebrow, waiting for the girl to say something, give him a sign that he did not cause a child to get a stroke, anything really. Having waited for some odd few seconds and still getting no response from the shell-shocked girl, with a reluctant sigh, he took matters into his own (unwilling) hands.
'Remember what Satsuki says: always grace potential-customers with the Okiya's grace,' Misaki thought.
Just as he opened his mouth, she miraculously recovered. "Excuse me," the girl said with a smooth bow and a serene smile, looking every bit the perfect hostess. The shift of her personality was as ridiculously swift as it was ridiculously disturbing. "Sorry to trouble you so early in the day, however, could you please pass that?"
Realizing that he was the one that was now in a mouth-ajar stupor, he promptly pulled himself together and picked up the cloth she was referring to. "This?"
She nodded decorously and completely unlike the obnoxious little girls he had met in his lifetime. Yet, this – considering his lack of social grace and interaction with most females (at least of his own volition) coupled together with his sixteen and something years of age – was not much to be counted for. Still, he knew for a fact most children were not so… so unchildish by nature. Interest mildly piqued since he first moved into the town, he sized her up and smirked.
She didn't know what it was about that smirk, but it rubbed her the wrong way. And at that moment – regardless of what her sisters in the Hanano Okiya thought about their so-called mysterious and debonair neighbour – Misaki had come to an instantaneous decision: 'I hate this man.'
"Isn't this just a little too big for you?" The taunting in his voice was very hard to miss and made her toes curl with distaste. Misaki hated being played with. And unless she was on-the-clock with her duties as a Geisha-in-training, she found it excruciatingly hard to let mocking simply fly over her head. But, she also knew that Satsuki would not appreciate her ripping off the face of their new neighbour.
A minute amount of change flickered in her features, which Usui did not miss. "It doesn't belong to me," she sniffed, her patience, as well as her smile, stretching uncomfortably.
Finally, he thought with wry relief. He was relieved to see that he was conversing with a child and not an old woman who apparently found the secret to eternal youth. Although the girl was still smiling politely, it was easy to spot the lack of sincerity in it as the obnoxiousness seeped through. He decided to get to know his neighbour a little better. What better way to do so than to press her buttons?
He yawned, the sleep still not having worn off, leant against the trunk of his apple blossom tree with a lazy grin. "Then why do you want it?" He couldn't remember the last time he decided to be so obnoxious and pick a fight with a little girl. Surely, he was not regressing into a child?
"Because," she said the word very simply, yet there was a sour undertone in her voice (as though she was the one talking to a child) that made him want to laugh, "it's our laundry." He gave her a look of sceptic disinterest and her smile dropped altogether.
'This annoying man...'
Clearly, he would not cooperating whatsoever and ergo her courtesy would be wasted on him. Misaki eyed him – to him, the stare only looked resentful and he was not totally wrong – and noticed that the garb was within her grasp. So, as he stood defenselessly with the yukata in his hands, Misaki took the opportunity to shoot her hand up and snatch it away from him in one sweep.
She smiled winningly, though her eyes burned something fierce. He stared at her, taken aback by her actions. "Thank you for helping me retrieve it."
Turning on her heel, she walked away victoriously with Honoka's yukata, the dried laundry, and her well-pruned esteem. She gave him no time to get another word in. Misaki hoped, for the life of her, that they never had to encounter each other again.
How completely and utterly wrong Misaki was.
The next day, at the same time, during laundry time relatively early into the day, she was outside in the yard once more with her two wicker baskets. As always, one empty to carry in the dry laundry and the other full of sopping wet clothes she had just spent the better of two hours washing down. Just as she stepped out of the Okiya, she noted with resignation that her neighbour was already out on his porch. He lay down there with a newspaper opened over and covering his entire face. For all the world, he seemed to be asleep – that is, if he was not dead, Misaki thought shrewdly.
It was as she began to hang the laundry that the wind picked up. 'It seems I'm in luck today,' she thought.
The combination of the sun and the wind would be sure to dry the sodden laundry in no time. Then, she could easily finish collecting the clothes and (if time allowed it) iron them, thus, completing half of her work for the next morning. She hummed under her breath but then caught herself, wondering whether her neighbour was a light sleeper. If anything could drain her luck, it was the man beyond the feeble hedge-fence. Her eyes flickered toward him, making sure he was asleep. It seemed he was in a deep slumber and Misaki happily went back to her chores. Nevertheless, she did not hum again – juuust in case.
While the wind worked to her favour, she noticed that as it began to pick up, a rustling sound was coming from behind her. Turning her head, she was just able to catch sight as part of the neighbour's newspaper was taken hold of by the edge and carried off. She watched it drift forward and back, and forward and back again until it got caught in the branch of his apple blossom tree. And then, slowly, as the wind slowed down, it rustled amongst the whispering leaves until it fell into her yard. This time it got caught in the hedge. Yet, when the wind tried to lift it, the paper stayed firmly snared.
For a moment, as she hung up the last of the laundry, Misaki debated with herself on whether or not she should return the paper; whether or not it would be better to simply throw it out herself; whether or not she should leave it to nature to dispose of on its own. Unfortunately the debate lasted for a fleeting second since the more decent part of her demanded that she return the paper to its rightful owner. She may not like him, however, that did not excuse the fact that she would ignore him when he needed help.
"Hey, *oji-san." He snored on (at least she imagined he snored) and did not so much as twitch a finger. Misaki tried again, a little louder this time. "Oji-san." It took a moment for him to realize that he was being called as he sat up half way, slowly peeling the paper off of him. He wore spectacles as his eyes roamed over to where Misaki stood perched on her toes and lips pressed. She had neatly folded the paper and held it out, noting his face did not look like that of someone who had been sleeping. "I believe this is yours." He blinked at her vacantly and she sighed. His sluggish response made a good case for his napping. "It fell into our yard."
The young man sat up entirely and stared at her curiously, one eyebrow quirked up in wonder of her flagrant sauciness and nerve. The perceptive part of Misaki noticed how often he seemed to do that, although this was only their third encounter and she was not willing to find out if she was right or not – although she was confident she was. The other part of her, the more inquisitive one, wondered exactly how he controlled his eyebrows in that he was able to lift one without the other tilting up simultaneously.
She shifted her weight under his unwavering gaze, still holding out the paper. Then she gave it an impatient shake, expressing her open irritation with narrowed eyes. His mouth slowly opened and Misaki had half a mind to ask if he was usually this stupid when he woke up but held her tongue. After all, she did have the displeasure of dealing with Satsuki's monstrous nephew every morning and waking him up was more threatening than dangling meat in the face of a starved tiger.
"…Oji-san?" His dubious tone was not the least bit groggy and she concluded he most definitely was not sleeping; just lazing around inanely. He smirked and Misaki found herself scowling at his arrogance. On second thought, she preferred braving Aoi's ferocity over her sloppy neighbour any day. "I'm not that old, little girl."
"Could have fooled me," she bit back without missing a beat.
'Cheeky girl.'
He ignored the way she shook the newspaper and inquired, "Into your yard?"
He watched the way her youthful face tightened, eyes losing their annoyance in place of a bitter, hardness. "Yes, that is what I said," she said flatly. Could he get any slower?
'Yard next door is the yard of the Geisha house…' He stared at her a little more closely now, mind going through how every day she would come out with a large load of laundry in her tiny arms; how they did not buckle once under the weight of the tiny mountain of clothes. He approached her leisurely, watching her sigh in impatience but wait for him nonetheless.
It was common knowledge of the way young girls were taken in or sold to such institutions for training. Still, he could not help but wonder."Aren't you a little young?" He took the paper from her.
"No." Avoiding his eyes with tight lips, she smoothed down the front of her yukata. "In fact, it is quite normal for young girls to be taken in for training. And the women training me are gracious and extremely generous." Her tone was one of warning and even as a young man, he took her warning quite seriously. It was very clear she did not take kindly to those who looked down on her or the people she lived with.
She did not give any other parting remark or even a nod of acknowledgement. Instead, her actions were identical to what she did yesterday: rounding out on her heels, grabbing the wicker of dry laundry, and heading inside the Okiya without a backward glance.
"Remind me again, how old are you?"
Misaki scowled but pointedly kept her eyes away from her neighbour's (stupid) face and on the laundry she needed to quickly remove from the clothes lines outside. Today, she had no laundry that she had to hang up however, she had heard that there was a chance it would rain in the afternoon – better to be safe than sorry. "I am discouraged from talking to strangers on my own. Especially strange men."
Never mind that she never even mentioned anything about her age. Where in the world did he get off thinking she was gullible enough to be tricked into telling him anything about her?
He hummed in understanding – even his humming sounded arrogant and stupid! Was there anything that did not? "That's very good advice," he said simply. Then his grin broadened. "So, what was your name again?"
"You," Misaki seethed, finally turning around to give him livid snarl, "are such a creepy old man."
For a moment, he simply blinked at her face. At first, she was pleased thinking that he was simply taken aback. But then, she scowled again when he only pouted like a (very ugly) puppy. "That's harsh. I'm not exactly a grandpa, you know." His words were dry and bland in a way that made Misaki want to chuck her wicker basket at his face. He was lucky that they were separated by the hedges and her gratitude towards Satsuki put a leash on her recklessness. "Besides, you keep calling me that, however that's hardly my name."
"It should be," she muttered under her breath mordantly. She decided then and there, she would completely ignore him. Conversing with him was only a waste of her time and energy, so there was no reason to indulge him with her frustrations.
"I'd guess you're about seven?" She told herself to keep it together and did not respond. "Eight?" Still nothing. From the corner of her eye, she saw him smile victoriously. "Ah, I've got it. You're five."
"I am nine," Misaki shouted with indignation, looking at him thoroughly affronted for even suggesting such a thing. She did not look like a five-year-old child. But it was the self-righteous look on his face that made her realize her terrible mistake. Misaki's face fell into an expression of defeat, her mouth ajar and lips trembling. An odd sound of embarrassment came from her that sounded something like: "Ahhn…"
That sneaky, conniving, conning, lazy, old man! He tricked her! He actually tricked her, Misaki! Lips pressed together and cheeks flushing, he had a slap a hand to his face to contain his laughter although his shoulders were trembling from the effort. To say Misaki was mad would have been an understatement – she was positively infuriated!
"R-Really," he choked out, clearing his throat in attempt to smother his chuckles. It did not work. "You're quite small for a nine year old, you know." He realized, from her furious glower, that his words were not the encouragement he had been hoping to impart on the young girl. "Don't be embarrassed by it though."
"I am not embarrassed!"
But her words flew right over his inflated head as though she had never even said them. "Every caterpillar grows into a butterfly sooner or later."
"Not if the caterpillar gets eaten by a bird," she growled, taking the clothes down and dumping them into her basket with more force than was necessary with dry laundry.
Seeing that his analogy did not impress her, he tried a different one. "What about every bud that blooms into a flower?"
"Unless it withers away or gets picked." Though she was not looking at him, he certainly stared at Little Miss Sunshine with a deadpan expression. He briefly wondered what it was that they made her eat the Okiya for her to always be so cross. Perhaps lemons and bitter gourd. Then again, her waspish responses held a personal edge to them. One that he was all too familiar with and guilty of.
Leaning against the trunk of the apple blossom tree, he observed her carefully. "What if the person picking it gently uproots it so that it can grow safely?"
Her response this time was not immediate, nearly a minute passing before she had an answer. "Then, that flower would be lucky," she said slowly, hesitantly. The girl was young but something aged and weary touched her youthful features; that something was also very sad. "But I'm not that flower."
Protectiveness stirred within him and he found himself looking at her in a more serious light than he expected to look at children. If he was being honest, he couldn't remember the last time he bothered to look at anyone with an ounce of solemnity. But after all that was said and done, her unintentional candour deserved nothing less.
"I think you're quite safe, *Tsubomi-chan." She stopped what she was doing and looked up at where he stood, meeting his gaze with her own. He noticed that her eyes were a very pretty shade of brown, something deep and rich like amber or possibly a very viscous honey. "Your thorns will keep away all the scoundrels in this world, so you can bloom in peace."
The way she stared at him was unnerving – as though she could see right through him and rifle through his own secrets – but she quickly blinked it away, replacing it with her usual scowl. "My name is not *Tsubomi, old man." Misaki made sure to emphasize the negative tense.
"And my name is not old man." He imitated her tone for tone, leaving her flushing with anger. Dumping the last article of clothing into her basket, she gave him one final scowl and frustrated harrumph before stomping back into the Okiya to get back to the rest of her chores. No doubt she would be imagining his face while ironing those clothes.
He watched her trudge the entire way until she was inside, something akin to a fond smile on his face. Just as she disappeared inside, he felt the first few droplets of rain and looked up to see dark, bloated storm clouds rolling in overhead. Not particularly in the mood for bathing outside, he made his way into his house. Bantering with her while building his appetite for breakfast left him particularly famished and ready to tackle the day's first tattoo customer. Fortunately for him, most people didn't prefer to show up to get tattoos on rainy days. He hoped briefly that today's client would be swayed not to show up but considering it was a young woman, he did not have high hopes.
Speaking of females…
His next-door neighbour – the only one of the crowd he interacted with, as of late – was a cute enough child but she was just as obnoxious and mulish as other children were. Yet, at nine years old, no one ever bothered to hold banter with him as fiercely as she did. Although, she was a far cry from the types of females he usually had the misfortune of encountering, it was nice to know that he wouldn't rot away from boredom.
He had his doubts when he had arrived but now, Takumi was looking forward to getting to know his new neighbour better.
Author's Note: I realized that I forgot to put a disclaimer in the prologue of the story and, as result of my terrible laziness, could not be bothered to edit it onto that chapter. So, here, I disclaim any and all ownership of Kaichou Wa Maid-sama, from which most of the characters are referenced, as well as Mademoiselle Butterfly, from which I drew my inspiration for the plot. Once more, I urge everyone to please read the First Sign of Spring FAQ on my profile to clear up any misconceptions that you may have had of this story.
*Translation and Terminology Notes
Showa 3: simply context of the story's setting in the Showa Era – which lasted from 1925 to 1975 – with the "3" specifically referencing to 1928
(Hanano) Okiya: the lodging house in which geisha and maiko (geisha-in-training or apprentice geisha) live during their contract or career; Hanano Okiya simply means the "Okiya (lodging) of the flowers"
Yukata: a light, cotton kimono worn by both men and woman; casual enough to be worn both outside and inside the house as well as during summer.
Oji-san: in the context of the story, it means "old man" or "uncle"; used as an impolite way to refer to a middle aged man similar to the English term "Pops" (A/N: though you rarely hear that nowadays, yeah?)
Tsubomi: Japanese for "flower bud"
...::::~ Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ ~::::..