Chapter Eleven
Written: 9 July 2006

Edited: 07 October 2012

"I really am sorry about this, we'll be gone as soon as we can..." Miki was practically frantic, wringing his hands and apologizing over and over. Kozue was a little less apologetic and much more irritated at the complications that had put them in such a weak position, and spent most of her time grumbling and snapping at her brother. Juri simply shrugged and pressed the brake, bringing the rented sports car to a graceful stop in front of the apartment complex and its quaint little house.

The twins followed her to the front door...and nearly ran into her back as she stopped suddenly, dropping into a squat to snatch up a squealing three-year-old who'd been on her way out the door buck naked and dripping.

Her hair is down, how am I supposed to know which one it is? Sighing, Juri carried the wet child into the foyer, holding onto the wriggling form with one arm and slipping her shoes off with the other. Miki and Kozue followed suite, slipping into guest slippers hastily retrieved from a small cabinet, two pairs of eyes fastened on woman and child with undisguised curiosity. Just as the ginger-haired young woman was about to question the little girl, there came a shout from the direction of the bathing room.

"Nishiko!" Utena came running just then, wrapped in a towel with another wound around her head to keep her wet hair back. Juri handed over the now-laughing child with a raised eyebrow, and Utena accepted her daughter with a long-suffering look, then promptly turned and went back to the bath with child in tow.

Through the entire scene, Miki and Kozue remained standing on the edge of the step up, a little bewildered by the short sequence of very strange events. Juri turned to them with a small, wry grin.

"That would be one of the twins, apparently the younger although I can't tell them apart with their hair down, and Utena in a bath towel. Any questions?"

Miki stared, Kozue laughed.

"That's a first," the younger woman said, looking Juri up and down as if assessing some change, "The cool and unflappable Arisugawa Juri holding a child, admitting ignorance, and being sarcastic. Will wonders never cease?"

The tall woman didn't reply as she led them to the right, into a small common area filled with doors and one small family shrine.

"Bathing room is here," she gestured to her left, to the closed door through which they could hear both speech and squealing, "Laundry to the right here, and toilet next to that. Upstairs is the family bedrooms, one of which I'll be occupying for the moment. This door leads to what used to be the dojo, and which is now your bedrooms. "

With a few hastily placed partitioning walls and sliding screens, the room had been cut in half and then the back half divided again to produce two tiny, nearly empty bedrooms, each with barely enough floor space for a futon and the tiny kneeling desks that had been dug out of storage somewhere and placed inside.

"Your rooms are here," she opened one sliding door, then closed it and turned around, opening one of the others that made up most of the opposite wall, "And through these doors is the back garden. The house is very traditional, so no aircon and no Western beds...the best we could do was to give you separate bedrooms. I'm sure it'll do until your dormitory situation is sorted out."

"Th-thank you very much, Juri-senpai." Miki bowed twice, quickly, and Juri couldn't help but smile at the young man, still as shy as she remembered.

"You're welcome," she said softly, then turned to leave. Once again she paused, "Oh. Since bathtime seems to be winding down, we'll probably be having dinner in a few minutes, if you'd like to eat before getting settled in." And with that she disappeared back into the main house, leaving a grateful but slightly confused Miki behind with his silently fuming twin, who stomped her foot angrily.

"Why is she ignoring me?"

She can tell. I know she can tell. But what else can I do? Back then we...but...self-control, Arisugawa. Self-control. How did that old Buddhist chant go?

"Completely freed from yes and no; great emptiness charged within; no questions, no answers; like a fish, like a fool," she mumbled softly to herself, then sighed, "Like a fool is right, I can't just ignore her forever."

"Can't ignore who forever?"

Juri jumped and yelped, then clapped a hand over her mouth and graced Utena with a dirty look.

"You needn't laugh at me, you know," she said, annoyed with Utena for sneaking up on her and with herself for being so inattentive. And for that squeak.

"I'm sorry," gasped the giggling younger girl, not really anything of the sort. "But that's too funny, the panther of Ohtori jumping and squeaking like a mouse!" Juri was silent, fuming, and Utena was gradually able to pull herself together. "Why were you lurking around outside the kitchen, anyway?"

"I wasn't 'lurking'," grumbled Juri, "I was simply thinking."

"Whatever you say! Come on, dinner's almost ready and it's getting crowded at the table. We'll need to get a bigger one at this rate!" She gestured through the cutaway, to where Anshii and two pairs of twins had settled and were waiting impatiently.

"I thought Miki-tachi(1) were only staying here temporarily?"

Utena looked back at Juri and grinned before stepping out. "So were you. Funny how long 'a day or two' lasts."

Dinner was a tense, silent affair.

Or so Juri would have liked. In actuality, it was cheerful, lively, and just a bit noisy, much like usual. Utena and Anshii, with the help of their twin devils, had enchanted Miki all over again and the painfully shy young man had come out of his shell enough to hold his own in the conversation. Even Kozue managed to throw out a few snappy lines, in between glaring surreptitiously at the panther.

Only Juri sat silent and preoccupied, staring at the dishes before her and mindlessly picking up and putting down bits of food with her chopsticks. She caught herself halfway through reshaping the rice in her bowl for the third time and gave up the ghost with a sigh. It was a shame, too, because Anshii had become a more than passable cook in the nearly four years she'd been gone from Ohtori. If nothing else, there was no more personality-switching exploding curry, and that had to count for something.

"I'm going to bed," Juri announced to the table at large. She set her chopsticks across her bowl and murmured, "Gochisousama deshita," before getting up. She stopped just long enough to smile at the children, who were often sensitive to the emotions around them, before making her way to the stairs, far too preoccupied to hear the small chorus of 'goodnight' that followed her announcement.

She'd been moved into the twins' room for the moment, while they bedded down with their parents. It wasn't the ideal situation, and she vaguely wondered if they'd made the right choice in putting the Kaoru twins downstairs, but who was to say if they'd want to share a room and a set of bunk beds?

Annoyed with herself, she sighed and addressed the wood of the bedroom door. "They've been here for less than an hour and somehow they seem more at home than I am after a week. Face it, Arisugawa. You aren't a homemaker, and you never will be. Ugh, no wonder I can't keep a girlfriend."

"The talking to yourself probably doesn't help." Kozue's voice came out of nowhere, and for the second time in an hour Juri jumped, though this time she held back on the embarrassing squeak.

"K-Kozue," she stammered, beating herself up mentally for the stutter and for allowing yet another person to catch her off guard, "Did you need something?"

The younger woman made a brief show of buffing her fingernails on her black top before speaking.

"Yes, actually. I followed you up here because we need to talk, and now seemed as good a time as any."

"Talk? About what?" Juri deliberately played ignorant, hoping that Kozue would believe it all unintentional.

"About the fact that you've been ignoring me since the airport. Now, I'm sure that my poor, well-meaning brother is going to be coming up those stairs looking for me any second now, so I'd suggest that unless you want this discussion to be a public forum, you invite me into your bedroom."

As if on cue, there came the sound of hesitant footsteps on the staircase, and Juri sighed.

"Fine. Come in, and we'll talk."

Miki arrived on the second floor to the echo of a door closing. Then, he turned around and went back down to dinner. Anshii made some very tasty fried fish and this was clearly not his business.

Snick went the door as Juri closed it behind her, followed by a soft creak as she leaned against the old wood. Kozue wandered to the far side of the room, leaning against the second door where it let into the back office.

"This isn't even my room," the older girl noted dully, "It's the children's, I'm just staying in here until I find another place, because nobody knew if you'd want to share with Miki. But anyway," she heaved herself away from the door and went to perch on the edge of the lower bunk, closer to her companion.

"Let's talk."

END CH11.

Translations / clarifications:

1: Miki-tachi: In real-world terms, she's talking about Miki and Kozue. Miki is, obviously, Miki's name, and 'tachi' is something like a pluralizer, in that she's referring to Miki...and an undefined number of other people who are with him. In this case, one person. In a different context, Miki-tachi could mean Miki and his entire class. I debate the wisdom of using romaji here (as I do anywhere), but this seemed more graceful than the English equivalent, so shoot me.

2: Gochisousama deshita: (The polite version of) something said after eating, particularly when someone else cooked. Could be translated as 'thanks for the meal', but that's always sounded awkward to me.