In Japan, the slang term for a girl who likes slash pairings isn't very flattering. It has the meaning of "rotten tofu" in it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter!
chapter fourteen
"I'm sorry that we destroyed the house last night," began Haruka. Her voice cut apart the darkness, and Satoshi woke up patchily, blinking the sleep from his eyes. The wool of his blanket scratched around his legs, and the world glinted at him, bright and dully sharp like the blade of a rusty knife; his head was a complete mess and he felt too miserable to even speak.
"Good morning, Haruka," offered Shigeru from his side.
Satoshi turned his head on his straw pillow. Shigeru had also yet to get up from bed, but was transitioning from a semi-conscious sprawl with apparent ease. Satoshi didn't have the energy to get up; he didn't even have the energy to stay up. He let his neck buckle, and his head collapsed back onto his pillow; leaving him to listen unhappily as Shigeru dealt with Haruka.
Said priestess was answering Shigeru with a voice like bells. Loud, jangling, bells. "Good morning to you, too, Shigeru. Did you sleep well last night?"
"We did, but not for very long," Shigeru replied neutrally. "We got to bed late."
"Oh. That's true, isn't it. The whole, situation, well..." Haruka trailed off.
"Mmhmm?"
"It got out of hand."
"Yeah, what exactly happened?" asked Shigeru. "It was came out of nowhere."
"It did, but Hikari was looking forward to seeing both of you, and... she was really, really looking forward to it. Her sense of disappointment might have been a bit disproportionate."
Shigeru's eyes danced with amusement; they flickered to Satoshi, and back to Haruka.
"I remember you tackling Hikari to the ground. You had her by the hair," Shigeru commented. Satoshi snorted into his pillow. He wished that he'd seen that.
"Oh, you saw," said Haruka, her voice somewhat discomfited. "I thought you'd already left before..."
"Yeah, we left, but only after I sat through maybe ten minutes of your... argument. Anyway, when Satoshi got back, we decided to take a walk and let you resolve things for yourselves," explained Shigeru. "Since you weren't there after we finished our walk, you two did work things out, right?"
"In a manner of speaking," said Haruka, rather evasively.
"Then consider it past," said Shigeru. "We won't bring it up. Right, Satoshi?"
"Nngh," rasped Satoshi, agreeing as tacitly as his headache would allow him. He looked up at Haruka and nodded blearily.
Haruka's shoulders dropped with her sigh of relief.
"Good, I'm glad," she said, and smiled sweetly. "In that case, I do have something to ask the both of you. Would you mind eating dinner late tonight?"
The topic of food - for perhaps the first time in Satoshi's life - repulsed him in every way. Yet again, he was thwarted from an ascent to waking; his stomach revolted in him. he shut his eyes tightly, clamped his hands over his ears, and tried his best to go back to sleep. He may have been successful. He couldn't be sure, but after an indeterminate time, his world became quieter. Then he felt Shigeru's foot nudging him in the back.
"Haruka's gone," Shigeru informed him. "There's breakfast."
"I'm not hungry." Satoshi half-heartedly swatted at the foot. "Stop kicking me. Anyway, I think I'm sick."
"Not kicking. And you're not sick, you're just hung over," Shigeru chuckled. Satoshi began to protest, but the laugh triggered Satoshi's memory. He paused as the memory came back to him: while they'd been sitting under the stars, he'd said something about liking Shigeru's laugh... It shouldn't have been so surprising. There were a lot of things that Satoshi liked about Shigeru; a lot.
His head hurt just thinking about it.
Shigeru had finished chuckling. When he spoke again, his voice sounded like he was mildly concerned.
"I'm going to get you some water," he said. "If you don't drink it, I'll pour it on you."
Satoshi cracked open his eyes. Shigeru was walking away with his back turned from him, and he was still clad only in his boxers. Sunlight poured in all around and framed Shigeru in gold. Satoshi felt something constricting in his chest.
"Water would be nice," he managed.
* * * * * *
It was the first white and grey-skied day that Shigeru had stood under since he'd been dropped onto the island of Alph. With the clouds came a break from the humid, salty, and relentlessly hot air. In place of the sultry heat, a warm wind whipped at his clothes and flogged his back as he stood with folded arms near the highest point of the island. Bird pokemon darted around the cliffs of the island, playing with each other. Even though they were giants, they seemed small from this height. So did the people of Alph, bustling through the city, finishing their daily tasks before dinner. Shigeru watched, noting their movements with interest He noted everything with interest. He was a researcher, after all; he lived to observe and study the world around him. He'd just -- forgotten about it for a while.
The reminder that he was a scientist had nearly blind-sided him that morning, when Haruka had extended an invitation to him and Satoshi to accompany her to the Temple. He had forgotten that he was living in the midst of an archaeological paradise; that the place where he slept was a place, in his other life, that he had only known existed by studying colored lines in the dirt. Shigeru knew that he'd gotten used to it. The temple, however, was special. It was still largely intact in his past, and the current future; when he had led his team at Alph, the Temple had been the nexus for their study of the Unown. One room within those old Temple walls had become the nexus point for the rest of his life as well.
He was still terrified of the place.
But the Temple was perhaps the most well-established and well-funded archaeological site among the three above-ground Ruins. This was due in no small part to Professor Hale's mysterious disappearance, which had, in turn, triggered the Greenfield Incident. In the following years, numerous teams - Shigeru's among them - flocked to the dune bound ruins to study the Unown. By the time that Shigeru had his accident, the rooms of the Temple - much like the rest of the site - had been largely explored, excavated, and documented. Post-excavation work like data analysis and interpretation were the only things really left to be done. Generally the work made Shigeru happy, though the solid days of research lacked the fleeting and cheap thrills that came with, well, bringing back the prehistoric dead and all that.
With such a history, Shigeru felt as familiar with the passages of the ruined Temple as he was sure Haruka felt familiar with the living one. He had walked the ruined corridors; puzzled its the wall panels and their strange hieroglyphics; read countless reports, and even written several of his own. He had walked the halls countless times in his sleep.
And so the past led to the present, and the present was the past. Haruka didn't know what she was offering Shigeru, because she couldn't, didn't know him. Her kind gesture meant more than just a break in the routine for him and Satoshi. It held the potential for a revival; the reinvention of himself a break-through researcher. If he could effectively translate what he observed at the living Alph to the data he had already gathered at the Ruins, his findings would make waves in the archaeological community, even outweighing the accomplishments of both his peers and his heroes. It would even make his grandfather proud.
Shigeru knew that his being able to enter the Temple must make him the luckiest man alive. But while life was on his mind, his body trembled with fear; he could not stop feeling like he had been sentenced to the gallows.
All of these thoughts, and excitements had been circling through Shigeru's brain, unhalting and tireless, as he had made his way to the Temple's entrance with Satoshi walking tightly alongside of him.
Satoshi, he'd discovered, hadn't experienced anything when it came to the Temple. He didn't even remember participating in a the conversation with Haruka that morning, in which she had invited them to see the Temple at twilight. Once he was told, he didn't get excited. Instead he scrunched up his eyebrows and looked at Shigeru with confusion as he walked along the path.
"I still don't get why we have to go to the Temple again," he complained. "It's just so far uphill!"
"Haruka invited us. Surely that's enough of a reason," parleyed Shigeru.
"Yeah, but besides that. I don't get why she would ask us to go with her. We're not priestesses, so it's not like we're doing anything there."
Shigeru briefly imagined him and Satoshi dressed like. It was rather shocking. Only after a long moment, he succeeded in clearing the image from his mind and confessed, "I'm not sure why she wants us to come. I didn't ask."
"Why not?"
"Because..." Because what? Because he was too scared to even think of being inside the Temple, too busy forming clever excuses to make himself go inside, that he didn't even think of why Haruka wanted him in there in the first place? At last Shigeru settled on, "I didn't think of it."
"Oh," said Satoshi.
"She probably just thought we'd find it interesting," Shigeru continued. "It's not like we had anything else to do, so why not have us come along?"
"You're probably right," said Satoshi affably. "I just was wondering if maybe it had to do with the legend."
Shigeru looked at him curiously as he wiped perspiration from his brow. "The legend... You mean the one that mentions us coming here?"
"Yeah. Last night when I was with Kasumi and Takeshi, they told me that we're supposed to save everyone. But they wouldn't tell me how we're supposed to do it."
"Probably because they're not sure themseles. If they knew, I don't think that they would keep it from you," said Shigeru. "They want to be saved. Not saying anything would be counter-productive."
"I guess so," said Satoshi, his voice distant. "If there was anything in the Temple, you think they'd have said something to us."
With a sigh, he folded his hands behind his head and stretched out for a moment before continuing up the trail sluggishly. Shigeru eyed him for a bit before guessing, "Are you still feeling bad?"
"I'm so tired," Satoshi complained. "My head hurt all morning and I had to work. And it's been so hot all day long...."
"You can take a break," Shigeru told him.
Satoshi's ego was visibly offended by the idea. "No, I'm fine," he replied, and pasted on a triumphant, 'I'm giving it my best!' champion smile. It didn't waver for the rest of the hike.
When they finally reached the top, it was immediately evident that the priestesses of Alph had already begun the evening work. Haruka stood facing the sunset, with her arm extended in front of her, measuring some distant point in the sky with her extended forefinger and thumb. the sun was casting low and nearly finished. Since the sky held clouds up against the sun, the horizon didn't glare, but softly faded as the night curtain fell around its edges. Haruka seemed similar to the sky, serene and graceful, like an old and timeless statue. He thought her beautiful in that moment, something like an abstract thought, formless and dreamlike. Half-sitting, half-stretching near Haruka's feet, Hikari, once again scantily-clad, fiddled with a long string of beads. There was no question that her body had appeal. Like and unlike his opinion of Haruka, Shigeru found her appearance striking, but he would have only considered Hikari attractive if he were insane - or if he had a regular male libido, which he thankfully did not. The fact that neither girls, or Satoshi for that matter, seemed to have any sense of social norms or people whose sexuality might be outside of those norms, Shigeru shied from making even a casual observation about what the girls were wearing, lest he be misinterpreted or molested. Instead, upon greeting them, he simply said: "Hey."
Satoshi approached the girls, too, with an excited greeting of his own. "What'cha doing..?"
"Just getting ready to open up the Temple," said Hikari, flashing him a wide smile.
"
Hikari's grin quickly turned to a pout. "I was really disappointed that I didn't get to see you yesterday."
"Yeah, I heard," said Satoshi. Shigeru sniggered, and turned to Haruka, whose stillness seemed more and more Grecian by the moment.
"What are you doing?" he asked her.
"I'm watching the moon rise. Once it becomes this far-" she demonstrated with her hand, "-from the sun, we can open the Temple doors. But no sooner."
"Will something bad happen?" wondered Shigeru.
"We've never had to find out." Saying this, she relaxed her arm and turned to Hikari. "The moon's touching, Hikari. You can start playing now."
Hikari picked herself up and approached a boulder. With a drawn-out sigh of exasperation, she turned from Haruka, faced the rock, and blew into a shrill flute -- once.
As soon as the note ended, a blue dot of light appeared on the rock. The light spread, glowing outwards and stretching its coverage, at first like a circle, but smoothly morphing into a rectangle, perhaps the shape of a door. Abruptly, the the slab face of the boulder vanished. The blue light fizzled out, and there was a doorway - not just the shape of one. Shigeru blinked to clear his eyes. The hole in the rock remained insubstantial, and to Shigeru, mystifying.
"The door, by its function, has to actually exist. So it's the rock that doesn't exist, and it's just an illusion keeping the Temple entrance hidden by the Unown," he hypothesized. He'd never seen any Unown, never seen their power -- he had never seen them create an illusion.
"The Unown," Satoshi echoed Shigeru vaguely. He had a distant look in his eyes; like he was trying to remember something that bothered him.
Hikari meanwhile returned her flute to the carved wooden case that rested on her bare hip. Haruka had come to her side, with incenses and some pots in her arms.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" she asked almost impishly, then grandly turned with a clack of bangles and beads and sashayed into the cave. Shigeru hesitated, and was glad to notice that Satoshi had, as well.
"You know, Satoshi... We don't have to go in," Shigeru told him. "If you're still hung over..."
"Oh. I'm actually feeling much better," said Satoshi. His face was suddenly bright and eager again, whatever moment he'd been having passed and forgotten. "I wouldn't want to keep you from seeing the Temple. It'll probably benefit your research, won't it?"
The whole idea of Satoshi waiting for anything was ridiculous, but Shigeru didn't press him.
"Yeah, it will," he answered.
They went inside.
It took a few moments to adjust to the darkness, though not too long, as the night had already been gaining outside. Hikari and Haruka stood at the end of the cave's entry hall, near a massive rock-hewn doorway. Haruka was transferring the flame from her torch to a spare that had been set against the wall. Hikari was rubbing up and down the pale stretches of her arms, trying to soothe down the goosebumps. "Brrr," she said. "Brr-rr-rr."
Haruka replied indifferently, "I'm not going to feel bad because you're cold. You didn't even need to be wearing that outfit. I told you that if you wanted to help tonight, you could just wear your regular clothing."
"I'm a priestess!" answered Hikari, indignant, "I have to wear this clothing when I work."
"But you're not doing any work today. I am."
"Whatever. You're just jealous that your outfit isn't as cute as mine."
Shigeru didn't know how it was possible for the girls to be so caustic to each other so constantly. He knew that they had been forced to live in close quarters for a month now. While he wasn't foolish or idealistic enough to think that this would immediately serve them as a great friendship, surely after a month's time he would've expected the girls to have given up on expressing this much open animosity and to have found some new way of dealing with their mutual dislike. It wasn't an unreasonable expectation. He certainly didn't like Kenji, and was sarcastic to him whenever they were in the same room, but it was also completely exhausting and wore on his nerves - he tended to ignore Kenji in order to save his sanity.
Haruka and Hikari really had no more than one reason: their behavior ultimately had to be a 'girl thing.'
He and Satoshi were led out of the entry hall, where the cavern seemed to split into two directions. Torches on the wall pointed both ways, like flaming beacons. They were to be the only guides for Satoshi and Shigeru: Haruka explained that she and Hikari would be going left, to prepare for communing with Protectors. This was something that they had to do alone, but Satoshi and Shigeru could take the bend to the right, and 'look around' until the priestess work came to a close.
Thus, the tour began before it had a chance to begin, and Shigeru and Satoshi were left behind with only the memory of apologetic smiles and an eyeful of sashaying hips.
They hadn't quite disappeared before Satoshi, with bright eyes, asked him, "Wanna explore?" Without waiting for an answer, he charged ahead through the darkness.
"I don't remember you being so excited about exploring Alph," pointed out Shigeru. "You never seemed really to care much about what was going on around you."
"But I'd already seen stuff like that before," said Satoshi. "I'd been to those old historic villages on school field trips... When I was traveling with my pokemon... I've been to some old wooden temples, but it's kind of different. This is really, really, really old."
"It is not," said Shigeru, agitated. "The place we're in could hardly have been sculpted out 200 years ago." Holding up the torch, he lit the space around them, and saw.
The inside of the Temple revealed a hollowed-out and floored cavern; more tame than wild - just as Shigeru remembered it. There were no impressive, towering stalactites, or crystallized formations that sparkled when hit by the light. The walls all stood in straight-backed charcoal stoniness, appearing dull and even soft to the touch, like river-beaten stones. The gaping mouth of the entryway led only to two winding paths initially: Shigeru knew that the left passage branched off into four portions, forming grids of rooms. He couldn't see them yet; when lit by the unevenly spaced torchlight, the ends of the esophagus-like path was lost to shadows. There were many things he could sense already, and most of them were unpleasant. The briny, musty air stretched between the damp walls, and Shigeru's nose wrinkled at its mildewy smell. The loneliness gathered, also, as he and Satoshi walked, and the pita-pat slap of their sandals echoed down the cavernous halls.
Satoshi was several steps ahead of Shigeru, his head straining even ahead of himself as he peered into the darkness.
"I wonder where this hall goes," he thought aloud.
"If I remember correctly, in about another minute's walk, it branches into a network of about fifty rooms," Shigeru told him.
"What do you mean 'remember correctly'?" asked Satoshi. A teasing smile on his face underlit the excitement of adventure dancing in his eyes. "Didn't you used to come here all the time for your research?"
"I haven't been inside since I was fifteen," said Shigeru, voice huffy.
Satoshi turned to look back at him, as if expecting to receive an explanation or a story, but Shigeru just grit his teeth and looked straight ahead. He'd make a mistake in mentioning anything connected to this place and to his research, but it was better for both of them if that subject, among certain others were left untouched.
"You know, it's kind of spooky here," said Satoshi, leaning up to Shigeru as they walked. He spoke in a sotto voice. "It's too quiet, you know? Because no one else is here. Why do you think we're here? Do you think that we're supposed to be here for something?"
"I don't think so. She just told me that she'd noticed that I had an interest in life at Alph, and so she thought I'd enjoy coming here for a new perspective."
"Yeah, okay. But if the priestesses are the only one who can usually come in, then maybe there's more."
"Of course," agreed Shigeru. "My guess is that Haruka let us in because of the legend."
"I just wish we knew what that legend even says," complained Satoshi.
"Maybe we'll find some clues about it while we're here," said Shigeru, and Satoshi seemed content to drop the topic there. It was with good timing, as they had just arrived at the edge of the Temple rooms.
Unlike the unrelentlessly grey hallway, the stone-hewn doorway, and the space within its boundaries, too, was tinted green with moss.
"Let's go in!" Satoshi declared, and before Shigeru could even open his mouth, Satoshi passed from his sight. Shigeru followed him cautiously, even retracing Satoshi's footsteps for several paces - mimicking the footfalls exactly - before he felt extremely foolish and ashamed of his rapidly beating heart. What was he doing? He was safe here. Haruka had given them permission to come inside, he reminded himself. And while the Orange Islands' ancient peoples were notorious for booby-trapping their sacred sites, it was not so with the friendly, peaceful people of Alph.
He watched Satoshi, who was studying a wall with a light and curious gaze, and he swallowed. The fear that was stretching across the back of his neck like a web was his own fear, and he had no one and nothing else to blame. He would deal with it on his own --
if he could deal with it at all.
* * *
A/N: Sorry it's short, but I'm almost done with the next chapter, and just felt like the story broke up into sections better this way. You'll see what I mean next time.