Growing Pains 2
Cutting hair was not a simple business as Chisaki thought. On the other hand, Tsumugu listened to Chisaki's lament. One step forward, two steps backward. There was still a long way to go.
It had already started unraveling, she noticed one day, as Chisaki faced the mirror to fix her hair with her favorite scrunchie of white petals. That day, tucking away the hair tie into the recesses of her drawer, she let down her waist-length hair, unornamented. That day, she also wondered if maybe she should trade her long hair for a shorter one.
That day, too, on the way back from visiting Grandpa Isamu, she made a side trip to the hair salon.
"Oh, dearie. You have such beautiful, thick hair. Are you sure you want to cut it?" The hair stylist was looking very much distressed for her sake and to prove her point, she picked at Chisaki's dark blue locks.
For a split second, Chisaki faltered. But she raised her chin, sucked in her breath, and with a glint of determination, met the hair stylist's eyes in the mirror. "Yes, please," she managed without her voice breaking and braved the ministrations of the haircutter and her shears.
A few days later, two faces surveyed each other at the Kihara entrance - one tall, dark-haired man of tanned skin, the other a shorter woman with midnight-blue, shoulder-length tresses and a fair complexion.
The man said, "I'm home, Chisaki."
Chisaki's face lit up. "Welcome home, Tsumugu," she greeted from the interior.
Chisaki stepped aside to allow Tsumugu and his duffel bag through and as soon as he was safely inside, she tugged on the sliding screen door, effectively shutting out the cold. When she turned her head, she was afforded a view of the back of Tsumugu's head. "Oh."
Tsumugu heard and twisted around to look at her.
"Tsumugu, did you cut your hair?"
Last time they laid eyes on each other was before he left for university and his hair was still brushing the collar of his shirts. Now, his hair was a fringe above the nape of his neck.
"Yeah. Just a trim." He lingered at the corridor, as if waiting for her cue.
"I see..." Chisaki's words were succeeded by a humid lull, as she curbed the urge to say more, even though she wanted very much to know why he did not wait to come home before having his haircut. After all, she had been the one doing it for him for the past four years. Instead, she cushioned her disappointment by moving along the conversation. "Are you hungry? Or do you want to bathe first before you eat dinner?"
"It's just like you," Tsumugu answered cryptically in between her string of words.
"I already prepared the bath, so I think you should clean up first. I'll reheat the food while- Huh?" Chisaki faded out all of a sudden.
"I'll take a bath first." Tsumugu hitched the strap of his bag higher on his shoulder and mounted the stairs to the second floor, leaving a nonplussed Chisaki at the bottom of the steps.
Chisaki sighed her defeat and rather than dwell on Tsumugu's enigmas, busied herself in the kitchen instead, taking out the food stored in the refrigerator to warm it up by fire. She was reaching out for the lacquerware stowed in the upper shelves when a maroon sleeve darted in front of her view and a brown hand seized the plates she was about to take.
Chisaki backed up, only to bump into a solid wall behind her. The solid wall was breathing. "Tsumugu!" Chisaki yelped when she peered to the side. "You surprised me!"
"I'll take these to the living room," offered Tsumugu, acting so naturally, arranging the dishes on a tray and carrying it out of the kitchen.
"O-okay." Chisaki responded unsmoothly, who, left with nothing to hold, followed after Tsumugu. She settled beside his table, observing him quietly while he took his meal. For some months now, Chisaki had been eating her meals alone, until she learned to adjust to cooking just for two, herself and Grandpa Isamu, who was in the hospital, until she remembered to quit expecting an answer to her calls of "I'm home", even if she still continued to do so out of habit, and until she got used to leaving only her sole set of imprints on the winding, snow-carpeted road coming and going from the house.
And yet, Tsumugu's sudden presence, his wet hair glistening in the weak, mute light, him sitting crosslegged in his pajamas and eating his meal peaceably at the table felt so natural too, as if the last few months of Chisaki's solitary living never happened at all.
As Tsumugu brought the bowl of soup to his mouth, his eyes flickered to her midway. "How's nursing school?"
Chisaki startled, reeling back to the present. She swept her hair behind her ear and smiled. "So far so good. I also have the nurses at the hospital to ask questions from. They've been very kind and supportive, especially after I told them I'm going to nursing school."
"That's nice to hear," commented Tsumugu, before he touched his lips to the bowl.
"And you? How are your oceanography studies going?"
"Well enough. I've been learning a lot since joining Professor Mihashi's lab in the university."
"Professor Mihashi? Ah, that professor you spoke of."
"Mmm." Tsumugu nodded in assent.
Chisaki's eyes fell on his empty rice bowl. "Another helping of rice?"
Tsumugu shook his head. "I'm done, thank you."
"Tea?" Chisaki asked as she reached for his tray, but Tsumugu caught her wrist, stopping her. Chisaki startled again.
"I'll wash the dishes."
Chisaki blinked once, twice, and then answered, "Okay."
Tsumugu removed his hand and added, "Afterwards, some amazake would be nice."
Chisaki's muscles went lax. She found her lips curling into another smile. "Okay," she repeated, this time, softly. Against her earlier conclusions, it also took some getting used to, apparently, fitting Tsumugu back into her life. However, the space he took up was like his room, consistently kept neat and tidy, its occupant only gone somewhere, but not indefinitely, a room that would always feel lived in.
Later that evening, when they each retired to their own rooms, Chisaki studied herself in the mirror, coming to a realization that Tsumugu did not mention anything about her own haircut. Along with this realization, a feeling welled up within that she could not exactly describe as disappointment, yet felt a little like it.
She tried to arrange her now shorter strands to her liking, but after much coaxing and teasing with the hairbrush, she bit the inside of her cheeks and wrinkled a dissatisfied brow. "Does it make me too adult?" she thought aloud. She bounded towards her chest of drawers, pulling out one drawer at a time until she found her box of hair accessories. Her fingers skimmed the tip of her well-worn white scrunchie, the scrunchie that was one of her two reminders from Shioshishio. The other one was her white and blue sailor uniform from Nami Middle School. The uniform was hidden away from view, but she still wore the hair tie regularly, up until a few days ago. To her regret, it was now ruined beyond repair.
In the end, Chisaki settled for a white elastic band. She moved to stand by the mirror, gathered a few strands of hair, and began to fashion it into a braid. She stepped back from the mirror to admire her handiwork, though, again, she thought something was off.
Her eyes strayed back to her favorite white petals threaded with a sky-blue ribbon. She picked it up and looked closely at it. The ends were fraying, but the ribbon was still intact. Chisaki took the blue ribbon and wrapped it around the elastic band that held her braid. Now, she thought she had done just right. Not too adult nor too kiddish. It was just right.
The next morning, Chisaki was, without a doubt, disappointed that Tsumugu still did not mention anything even after the braid. Everybody else noticed and had something to say. When she went to Saya Mart for groceries, Akari complimented her on her lovely hairstyle, while little Akira, fisting her mother's shirt tightly, cooed, "Saki, Saki! Lovey, lovey!" in an attempt to mimic his mother. When Chisaki smiled at Akira, the toddler ducked behind Akari's legs, peeking abashed at Chisaki.
Shun Sayama, on the other hand, let out an appreciative wolf whistle and whooped, "Looking great, Ms. Hiradaira!" Then, he grinned teasingly. "Has Tsumugu told you how great you look? He's back in town, isn't he?"
"Yes," Chisaki murmured, her cheeks flushed.
Shun squinted at Chisaki, reading her face. "Is that a 'Yes, he's back in town' or 'Yes, he said you look great'?"
Chisaki's eyes shifted to the side. "Yes, he's back in town."
"Not one word of appreciation for the lonely housewife!" Shun moaned dramatically, slapping a hand to his temple. "That guy! I need to teach him a lesson on treating you well."
"Sayama-kun!" Chisaki rebuked. "What are you saying? I'm not...We aren't like that! And he always treats me well."
"Of course. I was only kidding!" Shun laughed heartily, his hands akimbo. Chisaki thumped on his arm to get him to stop, until he eventually did, for Chisaki really could deliver a wallop if she set her mind to it. Before Chisaki went, Shun opined, in a more serious manner, "But a little more honesty between you two would help, you know."
On her way to the hospital, Chisaki crossed paths with Miuna and Sayu, both of whom admired her long, flowing hair and felt remorse when they saw how she had trimmed it up to her shoulders.
"It's such a pity, Chisaki-san. You've been growing it out for a long time, but now it's so short," Miuna said with a rueful expression.
Chisaki chuckled. "Oh, it's not that short."
Sayu tsked, tsked disapprovingly. "Chisaki-san," she began, her tone despondent. "Didn't you know that a woman's hair is her life?"
Chisaki was taken aback. By cutting her hair, was she really cutting off a big part of her life? Did she want to? She was afraid of seeking the answer in the murky morasses of her heart and maybe it was best if she did not, for now. Just for now. So, she bestowed the two middle schoolers with a little smile. "It doesn't matter. It'll grow back in a few months," she told the girls and then, parted ways with them.
"That ribbon suits you," was the first thing Grandpa Isamu remarked as Chisaki assisted the bedridden, old man in sitting up.
Chisaki's face softened while dipping the towel in the basin of saltwater solution. "Thank you, grandpa. It's the ribbon from my old hair tie."
Isamu was quiet until Chisaki finished wiping him down with the saltwater-soaked cloth. His unclouded, aqua-blue eyes gazed directly into her similarly shaded ones and he spoke, "Old things are hard to let go and new things are hard to embrace."
Chisaki's breath snagged, but she mustered the strength to ask, inspite of her voice feeling small and uncertain, "What should we do, then?"
Isamu crossed his arms and closed his eyes for a moment. Then, he opened them, directing his gaze at the window, through which one could only see a blanket of cerulean sky. "We keep both and move forward."
Chisaki left the hospital, contemplative.
The days crawled along and they, Chisaki and Tsumugu, carried on as usual, except for a few moments of hanging sentences and heavy pauses on Chisaki's part. If Tsumugu ever noticed anything strange about her behavior, he kept mum about it. She would have let the sleeping dragon lie undisturbed, if only Chisaki could stop rearranging her hair while in her room.
On the very last day, before Tsumugu left to go back to the city, Chisaki installed herself in between Tsumugu and the door. Although she was bold enough to do the first thing, she needed courage, veritable courage, to do the second thing. Chisaki took her time and Tsumugu, who was of boundless patience, waited for her.
"Well...?" she started with another hanging word, patting her hair in places and pinching the end of her braid, and culminated with, "How do I look?"
Tsumugu was perplexed at the sudden onslaught. But he was smiling, most inconspicuously, as he answered what she had been wanting to hear, "It's just like you."
Oh, so he did notice her hair.
Just like her. Chisaki liked this response very much and turned away to hide her own smile.
She had grown womanly. Three seconds was all it took for Tsumugu to understand that as Chisaki squeaked in surprise when the light from the corridor slithered in and caught on her creamy skin and svelte curves. He was caught off guard as much as her and shut out the fleeting vision as hard as he slammed the sliding screen door shut.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were back." He excused himself to leave, only to be prevented by a desperate plea of "Wait!"
He waited.
Her voice, quivering like a violin string, drifted off from the other side of the screen. "How was it? How do I look?"
Deja vu. Tsumugu's mind travelled back to the time when they stood face to face at the foyer and she had posed the same question about herself. But that was before the Tomoebi happened, before Hikari's reappearance and unlike before, Tsumugu knew that, whatever he would say, Chisaki would not take too well to his answer this time.
"That's quite a bold question."
She breathed out her sorrowful lament, "Have I changed?"
Tsumugu wondered himself. How does one begin to define such a thing? It was constant and inconstant; it was sensible and irrational, an incongruity in the monotony of life. So now, he would try to be both dichotomies.
He would try to be sensible. "I haven't seen you like that back then, so I don't know." And he would try to be constant. "You've always talked about it back then too, about changing and not changing."
Tsumugu lapsed into silence as he heard the beginnings of a grievous sob escaping from her lips and imagined the waterfall of tears streaming from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks, and descending past her chin.
"I didn't want to change, but I have."
"You have changed," he echoed. He would try to be inconstant. By the time he was done, it was not just her heart he would be breaking, he would be breaking his own heart too.
"You've gotten pretty." His words were rational, but his heart was not. "You've gotten much prettier than back then." He did not need to try being irrational, because he already was. His heart was.
"Shouldn't that be a good change instead?" he wanted to convey, but she was cocooned too fast in her ball of sadness that his words could not reach through. One step forward, two steps backward. There was still a long way to go. All he could do for now was stay outside Chisaki's room and wait for her to calm down before he wordlessly retreated downstairs.
"Tsumugu-kun, did you get the scissors?" Professor Mihashi raised his head up from his maps.
"I couldn't find it in Chisaki's room. She must have hidden it too well," Tsumugu lied. "I'll ask her later."
The professor looked dubious, as it should not have taken Tsumugu almost half an hour. The older man did not question him, though.
"You two seem to have an awfully complicated relationship," the professor said casually, scrawling marks on the map with a red pen. "You don't act like brother and sister, but you're not like close friends either. Siblings and close friends would tease more, though I can see you're comfortable with each other. You get along well."
"We weren't always like that," admitted Tsumugu. "She did get mad at me before."
The professor hazarded a glance at Tsumugu. His assistant was not particularly talkative and was more of the reserved type. He was intelligent and hard-working; he would speak up when spoken to, but he hardly volunteered his thoughts and opinions.
"Oh? How long ago was this?"
"Too long ago," Tsumugu replied wispily, as if his thoughts had carried him to a day when he perched on the rocks, watching the back of a stark white figure wading in the sea, tendrils of her midnight-blue hair floating seaweed-like. Her dark head disappeared under the water. Tsumugu listened to the hush of the waves and the warble of the seagulls, but could not hear the sounds of swimming. When ten minutes had passed, uneasiness knotted in his stomach. What if she had gone back to her underwater village, never to return? It was an irrational feeling, yes. However, that uneasiness immediately dissolved into foam the moment the same dark-headed, white clad figure burst through the water surface several feet away from the spot where she dove in and the glare of sunlight sparked off a rainbow prism sheen to the ena on her bare shoulders that made his heart careen. That day was also the first and last time he indirectly confessed that he liked her the way she was when he told her, "I don't hate the way you are right now."
"Remembering a good memory?" Professor Mihashi interrupted his reverie.
Tsumugu snapped his attention back on the professor. "Something like that." Half of it was, but the remainder was eclipsed by recollections of arabesque emotions and pained expressions when she did dive down under for good.
"I think I understand why you're not dating anyone," insinuated the professor while he neatly rolled up the maps.
Tsumugu's eyebrows went up.
"Let me tell you this, as your adviser and senior in life." Professor Mihashi paused for effect and then, intoned sagaciously, "You should tell her how you feel." He rendered Tsumugu a friendly pat on the shoulder and smothered a yawn as he stumbled along the hallway and into the guest room. "I'm turning in for the night now."
Dating. He did have a little experience at it, but it was just one group date and he only joined because his roommate urged him.
"Come on, Kihara-kun! Please, please say yes! We just need one more guy to complete the group!" hopelessly begged Tsumugu's roommate at that time. He was a Business major, a city boy whose home was, in reality, not too far away from the university he was attending. However, he wanted to live independently, so, with his parent's permission, he moved out of the house. He lead his own busy life and seldom bothered Tsumugu. This would be the first time he asked a favor.
According to his roommate, the other guys were his buddies from the sports club, but one of them texted that he could not make it because of a prior engagement. He was then hard-pressed to find a replacement, yet luck was against his side. In the end, his roommate turned to him – the last choice – for help. Hence, his roommate's currently prostrate form in his room.
Tsumugu glanced away from his textbook and asked, deliberating, "When is it?"
"Well, it's not that soon..." his voice trailed off, his eyes and fingers fidgety. "...In eight hours?"
"That's tonight," Tsumugu pointed out.
His roommate worked rapidly to get his point across. "Yes, tonight! One of my buddies backed out, so we're missing one more guy. The girls all come from a women's college and we didn't want to disappoint them by lacking in numbers. So, are you in or not?"
He did not reply immediately. To be honest, this kind of thing was far from his concerns or worries and maybe it was curiosity or maybe it was something else that did make him agree.
"Okay. Tell me the time and place."
It was going to be just this once, after all.
The appointed time arrived and Tsumugu came to the meeting destination as told. The guys did not especially wear anything different from the usual shirt, jeans, and jacket, as long as they made it a point to look decent. However, it was another story for the girls. They really took the time and effort to primp up – styling hairs, curling lashes, applying blushes on cheeks, painting lips red, and matching nails with the color of their dresses. There was already that much to fuss about. They had not even started on wardrobes – color-coordinating accessories with blouses, flouncy skirts, and killer platform shoes or three-inch stilettos.
Tsumugu began to wonder if the womenfolk of Oshioshi paid as much care when they went out on dates. Would Chisaki?
At first, they all went out for dinner at an affordable but delicious restaurant that served tasteful desserts, which the girls gushed over. Tsumugu was opposite a beautiful, porcelain china doll, a potential head turner. She was pale-skinned, with her light curls framed artfully around her heart-shaped face. Her knee-length dress was impeccably unwrinkled even when she sat down. She was a perfect foil for Tsumugu, who was tall, dark, and handsome, whispered the girls excitedly within their group when they moved on to the next venue. In the karaoke room, the guys and ladies paired off again. Ms. Porcelain Doll chose, of her own will, to sit next to Tsumugu, to the envy of the guys.
The legal age was twenty, but some places, the shady ones, did not check for I.D.. Apparently, the karaoke place they rented out was one of such places, for the sodas and fruit juices were replaced with alcoholic drinks as the night grew old.
The party grew a bit wild, especially those who had imbibed a bottle too much. Tsumugu had abstained but his partner, he saw, was getting some color in her cheeks from drinking a spiked lemonade, he suspected. She was also swaying unsteadily in her seat. Tsumugu tapped the shoulder of one of her friends to ask where she lived so he could take her home. As soon as he got the directions, he gently took Ms. Porcelain Doll, now red-cheeked, by her elbow and said, "I'll take you home."
She was wobbly on her feet but Tsumugu managed to get her past the door and out of the karaoke bar. But from there, everything went downhill. The girl snaked her arm too tightly around Tsumugu's that her chest rubbed too close to his arm. She wretched and threw up the remnants of her dinner in a trash can. Tsumugu did not trust her to be lucid enough to remember her bus stop, so he accompanied her on the bus. As he sat in the bus, Tsumugu felt a weight pile down on his right shoulder. His first thought was, "Chisaki, you're heavy."
"Who'sh Chishaki?" an unfamiliar voice slurred, hot breath tickling his ear.
Tsumugu started in alarm. This was not Chisaki he was presently with, he realized, but precisely because it was not her, he could be truthful. "Somebody I miss."
"I have shumbody I mish too."
After that, she began to snore peacefully, using Tsumugu's shoulder as a pillow. By the time they had reached her flat, she had sobered up a bit.
"Oh dear. Aya always gets like this when she's had a little drink. I tell her she doesn't need to do this just to get her boyfriend's attention, but it seems like it worked. Yuuji! Aya's home now!" hollered her flatmate.
"Aya!" cried a man, who came barreling through the front door and crushed Aya into a bone-breaking hug. "You had me so worried!"
"Yuuji?" Aya called out tentatively. They went around in circles repeating each other's names. Aya's tears spilled out, but Yuuji was there to catch them, comforting her, caressing her back. "Don't cry, don't cry. It's okay now, love. It's all okay."
If Tsumugu could do it over like this moment, when his ears first caught Chisaki's lament, he would have ripped the sliding screen door open and stormed into the room to fold his arms around her without regard for her state of undress, touching skin to skin.
This girl, now grown a desirable, comely woman, he wanted to take her in his arms, to kiss her tears away, and give her hope and comfort. "Don't cry, don't cry. It's okay. It's all okay."
"You have changed." It's okay.
"You've gotten pretty." That's okay too.
"Much prettier than back then." Isn't that enough?
He would try to be constant and inconstant; sensible and irrational, all for her, as long as she accepted it. Change.
Tsumugu's eyes snapped open, his heart squeezing as he gasped sharply. A dream. It was all a dream when he walked into her room and held her. Except for the rise and fall of his chest, he lay perfectly still, eyes wide awake as he fixed his stare at the ceiling, daring not to surrender to sleep, because if he did, the alluring figure of that half-dressed body would be seared indelibly into the back of his eyelids and it would haunt him for days to come. But the longer he lay in the dark, the more oppressive the atmosphere grew, the more it choked him, until his entire being was sticky with sweat and he felt the lack of oxygen. He reached a point he could not stand it any longer that he kicked off the suffocating blankets and then, pushed himself up to a sitting position.
Tsumugu needed a cold drink of water.
He padded down the hallway, careful not to let the wooden floorboards groan. Too familiar with the layout of the house, he did not need to turn on the light fixtures and navigated his way by the silver light of the moon. He had already committed to memory the exact number of steps it took to reach the refrigerator from the bottom of the stairs.
Having refreshed himself, he trudged back upstairs. His hand touched the groove of his door, yet he stopped and turned towards Chisaki's room. His feet carried him across the hall to stand right in front of Chisaki's shadowy room. He raised his hand and afforded a knock, a soft whisper of a knock. When there was no answer, he slid the door open a few inches and finding no movement inside the room, he crossed the threshold. In the darkness, Tsumugu could make out the nebulous outline of furniture in her room, as well as, trace the bulky shape of her sleeping, breathing form on the tatami floor.
Tonight, Chisaki slept dreamlessly on her back, her hand tossed out palm exposed beside her round, white face in the pale moonlight, her dark blue hair fanned out on the pillow in abandonment. Tsumugu stood next to her futon, a tall shadow peering down at her from his vantage, cultivating a sense of distance far away from her. Tsumugu bent down on his knees to gain a closer view. But he went no further than look and watch. There was a line he did not, would not cross.
He spent like an eternity watching, just watching, her in her restful slumber. This was not the first time he did it, nor would it be the last.
"I don't hate the way you are right now," Tsumugu murmured, despite his words falling on deaf ears. He extended a hand to brush away a wayward strand of hair that fell on her mouth, but he stayed his hand when Chisaki suddenly made a sound in her throat and stirred a little. In her sleep, Chisaki turned away from him. Tsumugu snatched back his hand and closed it into a fist as he dropped it on his thigh. He got up to his feet and gave her one last look, one last time.
"I hope someday you would think the same way too," he said, sliding the door close as gently as possible, Chisaki unaware of her midnight visitor.
You can imagine the date scene here as the one briefly mentioned in my other story, Her Red-bellied Sea Slug, hehe. I'm afraid I have this penchant for self-insert/original characters, so you'll have to bear with them. And I guess, this is the first Tsusaki I wrote that's based on an actual scene in the story, though I did my best to expand on it. I hope you enjoyed this installment of Growing Pains. I'm already writing the next part as I speak. It's a bit of a tall order as it's going to be about Tsumugu and Chisaki's coming-of-age ceremony, among a few other short stories. As usual, please do look forward to it!