CHAPTER FOUR
兄弟姉妹
Keitei Shimai
Breakfast the next morning was unusually good: steamed rice, topped with tonkatsu, strips of seaweed and Worcestershire sauce. Nobody was more delighted than Yaya, who kept shovelling in seconds with nothing short of enthusiasm. Between bites, she refused to stop talking about food, much to everyone's general weariness.
"We always eat horse mackerel at home," Yaya gushed, sticky rice sticking to the corner of her mouth. "Dried horse mackerel, raw horse mackerel, horse mackerel in soups, horse mackerel on rice with that really good sauce, you know, Amu-chi, that sauce, the one–"
"This isn't horse mackerel, Yuiki," Hoshina-san replied, nibbling on a piece of rice like a rabbit. "This isn't even horse. This is pork."
Hoshina-san had began to sit with us for breakfast and dinner, amid very profuse claims that she was only sitting over here because we "shouldn't misunderstand, it's warmer on this side of the room," that she was doing it for her sake, and that we shouldn't "flatter ourselves into thinking it was because of our riveting conversational skills". She blushed and huffed a lot as she said it, which made me think that Hoshina-san was a great deal weirder than I first thought.
"Was it okonomi sauce?" Amu contributed, helpfully, but it was too late – Yaya had already been distracted, eyes lighting up maniacally. "Pork! Pork! When I lived in Taiwan, they had koah-pau which are stuffed full of pork, and bao stuffed with pork except the pork is roasted, and also pork stuffed within pork –"
"What?" Hoshina interjected loudly, face incredulous.
"Yes, pork stuffed within pork which is stuffed within–"
"I don't believe that," Hoshina replied dismissively, "You can't stuff pork within pork, that's unethical and disgusting. But when were you in Taiwan?"
"I was about to ask the same thing," Amu interjected curiously, leaning across the table so that her wispy hair ends threatened to trail in her rice. Very helpfully, I put a hand under her hair. If my mouth wasn't stuffed full of food, I would have smugly reminded Amu and Hoshina that I knew Yaya was Chinese and that they were clearly all terrible friends for not knowing. But unfortunately, my mouth was full, so I was forced to sit sullenly with hamster cheeks.
"Mashiro!" Kichigai-sensei hooted like an owl from the far corner, flapping her arms in paroxysms of grief. "A-lady-does-NOT stuff her cheeks full of food like a BLOWFISH. What will your future husband say if he catches you cramming your mouth full of rice like a STARVING ORPHAN?"
I quickly tried to hack it all down in one go, which was a mistake; the pork got stuck in my throat, and I began to cough.
"Wellllll," Yaya beamed over the sound of me choking. "My mother and little brother–"
At that moment, Misaki stuck her head into the eating hall, with an almighty bellow. "Post's here!"
There was a rustle and the sound of benches scraping back. Girls stampeded towards the door. Since when did everyone like getting mail so much? Before anyone could so much as blink, Yaya, too, had launched herself out of her seat and joined the conglomeration of black skirts shrieking and cooing.
"Kukai-chan, Kukai-chan," one girl wailed, "Where's mine, where's mine-?"
"Has post come from Kyoto yet, Soma-kun, or is this only Tokyo area–"
I looked from the cluster of girls outside the schoolhouse, to Amu and Hoshina's faces and rubbed my throat. "Who's Kukai-chan?" I croaked, with watery eyes.
"Post boy," Hoshina said, brusquely. Amu hastily passed me her handkerchief and then got to her feet to try and see over the crowd. Upon catching sight of Kukai-chan, she went faintly pink around the ears.
"... So that's why everyone likes post day so much," she said in the high-pitched voice that she reserved for handsome boys, playing with the ends of her hair. Dabbing my eyes delicately, I accidentally poked myself with something akin to cardboard and stared at the handkerchief, aghast.
"You aren't expecting any mail, Hoshina-san?" I looked at her with my one non-watering eye.
"Nobody I want to hear from," she said, dismissively. "And I don't want to hear you saying 'Hoshina-san, Hoshina-san' all day, either, it makes me think you're talking to my mother. You can call me Utau like Amu and Yaya."
It was the first indication she had ever given of the infamous elder Hoshina-san, sole heir to a huge parent corporation. Thankfully, I was saved from saying anything other than a puzzled "alright" by the bright return of Yaya, clutching an envelope with a face like the rising sun. She wasn't the only one to get mail— I saw a girl call, "Hoshina, letter!" and toss a thick manila envelope across the table towards us.
I caught a glimpse of the envelope's crest – a black crescent moon, containing a single solid circle – before Utau casually brushed it off the edge of the table, as if it was nothing but a piece of litter. Cautiously, I tuned back in to what Yaya was saying.
"Yaya's papa is from Yokohama, but Mama is from Taiwan," she explained, breathlessly unfolding the envelope with the frenzy of a puppy with wrapping paper. "Mama and my baby brother are still living there, she said she'd mail me a real photograph, look–"
With glee, she poured out the contents of the envelope. Flourishing a tiny, black-and-white photograph of a blob, she puffed her chest out as if she birthed it herself. "His name is Tsubasa!"
Amu immediately began to coo. Utau gave an approving nod. "You must be so proud, Yuiki. Your mother gave birth to a huge dumpling."
"Utaaaan!"
"I spoke what everyone else was thinking."
At that moment, I decided I would have to derail the Baby Committee to make a very important announcement.
"Amu," I said, "There's something weird in your handkerchief."
It was the same one she had lost nearly a month before. Linen, stitched-on strawberries. The corner, however, was very stiff and not at all as absorbent as I had hoped. A tiny, folded-up piece of paper had been intricately re-sewn into the hem, and I held it up to show her.
"A secret message?!" Yaya whispered in hushed tones. "Remember that man who returned it to you, Amu-chi? Did he put it there?"
"It would have to be," I replied, thoughtfully. "Sewing a message into a stranger's handkerchief is rather creepy, though. Perhaps it's a threat. Perhaps he wrote it in blood."
Strangely, this did not seem to comfort Amu. She stared at the handkerchief in my hands, eyebrows scrunched up. Finally, she murmured something inaudibly.
"Eh?" said Utau. It was the first time she had spoken since this revelation; she looked a bit pale.
"… Nadeshiko's seam ripper," Amu said, louder.
Personally, I wasn't all that invested in whatever love note was stuffed into Amu's handkerchief. I had more important matters to tend to.
"Good morning, Nadeshiko!" I chirped the minute we walked into calligraphy. I took the desk next to "hers", pushing it in soundlessly. "It's a shame you missed breakfast, it was quite good today. There was meat. But Nadeshiko-san doesn't eat breakfast, does she?"
Nagihiko beamed, pleased as punch. "I get the same food as the rest of the school, you know. I just eat it while I'm being dressed in my obi, or in my mother's office."
There was something excessively odd about this sentence, but nobody seemed to have noticed but me. Certainly I knew that wherever Nagihiko went, it involved wearing a pretty kimono… but why would he be sitting in his mother's office so early in the morning? Nobody else seemed to have found this strange.
"But why…?" I began.
Nagihiko made a polite "hmm?" noise at me.
Amu tilted her head. "Oh! Nadeshiko usually has dance practice in the morning. She takes private lessons from Fujisaki-sensei. Don't you remember, Rima?"
What? No, of course I didn't remember. So this was why he was constantly absent from breakfast and dinner! It made so much sense that I was angry at myself for not guessing sooner. For me, the thought of spending at least four hours a day dancing, plus our class once a week, was almost too much to consider. Then again… wasn't dance the entire reason he was dressing up as a woman? … He certainly must have liked itquite a bit, to do it so often.
I turned, staring at Nagihiko out of the corner of my eye. He shrugged back at me, sheepishly. "I thought you knew."
"More importantly," Yaya burst in, unable to contain herself any more, "Nade-chin, where's your stitch ripper thing? You know, that you use in sewing to tear out bad embroidery?"
Nadeshiko looked mildly surprised, but she patted the chair on the other side of herself. "My sewing kit's in my room. I can go get it for you during our lunch break, if you like?"
"We can't wait that long!" Yaya cried, maddeningly.
Amu said hastily, "Y-Yes, we can! Lunch break is fine– thanks–"
"What do you need it for?" Nagihiko tried to ask, but at the moment the teacher began talking about tare radicals, and he immediately dropped into silence.
I, too, fell into disgruntled silence – for I was curious to see Nagihiko's reaction when we showed him the handkerchief. He had mistrusted the stranger in the village from the start, and I was not looking forward to his smug Nadeshiko-Is-Always-Right smile. I could practically hear his musical, Nadeshikoey tones already: ah, ah, Amu-chan! How terribly shady! We should go show the headmistress at once. I warned you, you know — a girl with a radiant heart draws the eye of lechers and rakes!
Annoyed just from the thought, I turned back to what the teacher was saying.
"Today, I'll be showing the first-years brush position and simple stroke order," the calligraphy teacher, Fujimura-sensei, spoke with a sigh as if she was too old for this (she wasn't). "So, for the older students, I'm going to mix it up a bit. As a bit of review, I'll have you all write your own names; you should know how to do that, at least, and it never hurts to know how to sign your name nicely."
Kichigai-sensei was constantly twitching with disapproval at our calligraphy instructor's bobbed hair and loose men's trousers. Our etiquette teacher would often mutter the word moga with disdain over the swish-swish noise of Fujimura-sensei's trousers, but for most of my classmates, it was a label of reverence: "She's a moga, you know, a modern girl. I hear she smokes cigarettes," Amu once said, voice full of envy mingled with trepidation.
"Hīragi, don't just draw a box like you're a child drawing a house," Fujimura-sensei was saying exasperatedly to an enthusiastic first-year. She had said a similar thing to me during my first class, when I had drawn the first character of my surname like a line-riddled square.
I was about to stand up to get materials when Nagihiko held up his inkstone with a smile. "We can share mine, if you like, Rima-chan."
In private, Nagihiko called me Rima. I nixed Rima-chan as far too intimate for a man's mouth to utter when we were alone. However, Nadeshiko had always called me Rima-chan in public (no matter how passive-aggressive in its delivery), which means I had to continue to tolerate it during the daytime. My life continued to be a constant cacophony of soprano Rima-chans.
"Rima-chaaan…!" he called out, whenever he wanted to catch up to me and Yaya in the hallways, hopping close to us like a cheerful songbird with his arms kept effeminately close to his sides.
"Rima-chan!" he cried admonishingly, when I grumpily referred to Kichigai-sensei as a "hyena in human clothing".
"Rima-chan," he said in a very flat voice when I remarked that "Nadeshiko, you have such big hands! Like a mannish peasant."
At first, it had felt a little uncomfortable, and associated it with the misery of Nadeshiko's presence. Slowly, I grew to almost enjoy the affectionate nature of the words— although I'd set myself on fire before I admitted this to Nagihiko.
"I suppose we can share, yes," I replied, picking up my water-dropper. Nagihiko placed his hand over mine with a rather paternal smile. "Let me."
"I know how to make ink," I said, annoyed. My hands withered under his whiter ones like plants under cloud cover.
The bridge of his nose crinkled at me. "I've seen you make ink," he said, the barest hint of laughter in his voice. "You add too much water."
"And you don't add enough," I sallied back. "Your calligraphy is as black as your soul, Nadeshiko-chan."
I was suddenly conscious of the fact that Amu and Yaya were watching us, both looking rather entertained. As if oblivious to my stare, Yaya offered Amu some konpeito out of a bag.
Dammit! I was supposed to be the one sitting with Yaya, laughing at Amu's antics — but instead, here I was, arguing with Nadeshiko about ink. I clamped my mouth shut, already regretting my decision.
Grinning, Nagihiko picked up his water dropper in a single motion, tilting his hand just so. I was uncannily reminded of his mother, picking up her own teacup with understated grace; everything really was dance to the Fujisakis. I watched him, eyebrows furrowed.
If "Nadeshiko" was a role – as Naghiko was oft to remind me – then Nadeshiko's walk was choreography, deliberate dance steps in a never-ending recital. The thought was daunting.
Carefully, he dropped water into his inkstone, and I counted them silently— one-two-three-four-five, six, seven. "One more," I said.
"Definitely not." Nagihiko put down his dropper with a soft porcelain clink. It was round like a perfectly-shaped stone, made of white glazed ceramic. Bright blue inked flowers trailed their way across the top. He caught me looking at it with undisguised admiration.
"It is nice, isn't it?" he tapped it fondly, fingernails clinking against the glaze. "It was a gift from my instructor in Peking."
"Why has everyone been to China except me?" I grumbled, impatiently passing Nagihiko the inkstick.
"I haven't been to China, either," Amu supplied helpfully, as Nagihiko gently rubbed the cake of ink against the plain of the inkstone. The black dust dissipated into the water in clouds, staining it a deep gelatinous black. Nagihiko then slid it towards me gently, with a challenging smile. "There you go, Rima-chan."
"I'm forever in your debt," I replied sarcastically, picking up my paintbrush to dip. A pause; I could hardly resist my own curiosity, and Nagihiko knew it.
"… Why did you have an instructor in Peking?" I added, grumpily.
Nadeshiko had the rare talent of being able to tell a story as she wrote, which I found utterly baffling; listening and writing at the same time was difficult enough for me, and as a result, her voice tuned in and out like a faulty radio.
"Well, you know that between the ages of twelve and thirteen, just before you transferred here, I travelled abroad…" Nadeshiko began, in her musical voice. "… But I also travelled for a time when I was much younger, and stayed for a time in China with my father… I must have been no older than seven or eight. I stayed for seven months at a Peking Opera School. It was terrible." He laughed, very mournfully. "They woke us up at five in the morning for wushu training in the courtyard, and we were made to hold stances for hours at a time. And then, whenever someone fell, the entire group was beaten with bamboo canes."
"Wushu?" Amu interjected. "But it's opera–"
Nadeshiko lifted a finger, with a smile; I felt an ethereal monologue coming on. As if on cue, Yaya's eyelids began to droop.
"Martial arts and dancing are sisters in principle. We both train our body to move a certain way. If you ever see a martial arts master demonstrating, look closely at his feet – you'll see he's dancing!" She laughed with a tinkling of bells. I didn't think it was that funny, but to each their own. She continued sweeping his brush across the page with a soft slither, like a snake on grass.
I peeked over at my deskmate's page as she wrote. I had an idea of how her name was written, for Nadeshiko had only one kanji transcription: the first character, naderu, meantstroking or petting (horrifyingly enough). The second, ko, was a common name ending, referring to a child or something otherwise precious. Together, the characters combined to create the fringed dianthus carnation, yamato nadeshiko, a flower said to evoke a child so endearing that it must be caressed. Personally, I thought that getting maternal over a plant was creepy and weird, but I was in the evident minority.
It made me wonder about the name Nagihiko. Back in our parent's day, names were not picked lightly for children; a name expressed the hopes and dreams that the parent placed upon their offspring's shoulders, a foreteller of their future. I wasn't entirely sure what possessed me to ask, but I pulled a sheaf of scrap paper towards me, writing with patient brush strokes upon its surface. I then slid it across the desk wordlessly.
How do you write Nagihiko? it said.
If Nagihiko was surprised at my question, he gave no indication of such; pushing his beautifully-spelled female name to the side, he took up his brush again, poised like a crane about to take flight. First, a bold downward stroke— then a soft outline down from the top, a half-open box. Inside, he painted four more grid-like lines. I was left face-to-face with nagi, the kanji for calm, or a lull in the ocean.
His brush hesitated over the page with a drip-drip. Two black dots appeared on the paper. Quickly, the self-conscious feeling of prying far too much into Nagihiko's private family life returned – for a fleeting minute, I wished that I hadn't asked at all.
"You dripped," I told him.
"Yes," he whispered apologetically, dipping his brush into his ink once more. "It's been… some time since I wrote my name."
The second character was hiko – boy, or prince. He finished it with a rather anticlimactic breath, and he placed his brush back on its rest with a smile. "You see? Like this."
I nodded once, and Amu leaned over, tilting her head. "What are you writing to each other over there?"
As if brushing away a troublesome fly, Nagihiko slid the paper towards me and away from Amu's prying eyes, lightly. "I was showing Rima-chan how to write the hokozukuri radical for her family name, she always draws it so stiffly–"
"I know how to write my name, Nadeshiko-chan just likes telling me what to do–"
"Who can blame me, Rima-chan? You're just so endearingly helpless."
Amu only giggled a bit behind her hand. I had hoped for a reaction more akin to, "Nadeshiko, you big meanie! Stop picking on poor, vulnerable Rima!", but I suppose that was too much to expect. Much to my concern, I was beginning to find Nagihiko's ability to lie at the drop of a hat impressive rather than menacing.
"Perhaps you should demonstrate that for us, since your page is still blank," Nagihiko pointed out, eyes glinting. He certainly had me there. With Amu and Yaya watching, I could hardly argue. I picked up my brush with a dirty look and began to write, self-conscious over the fact that I had an audience.
My surname, Mashiro, referred to an eastern castle or fortress. The characters for my given name were those of the Arabian jasmine flower in reverse order, something which Nadeshiko seemed to find excessively amusing.
"Matsuri," he tittered in his Nadeshiko voice, admiring my stuffy cursive script with mirth. "Why did your mother name you after a foreign flower?"
"Why did your mother name you for an adorable child, when you are neither?" I shot back, leering.
We stared at each other like that for a while, bristling at each other like alley cats. Finally, Amu cleared her throat. "Y-you two, I-I think class is over. Nadeshiko, you said I could borrow your seam ripp...er?"
"Oh, yes," Nadeshiko replied, straightening up and rolling up her now-dried scroll with a beautiful smile. "Of course you can, but why do you need it? If you're letting down the hem of your skirt, you shouldn't do it while you're wearing it."
"Oh, no, no! Nothing like that," Amu replied, flustered, and Yaya interrupted with a dazzling smile. "No, no, let me tell her, Amu-chi! Please!"
All away across school lawn to the dormitory building, Yaya pontificated on the story like a weaver at the loom. Finally, we decided that it was explanation enough to produce the handkerchief for Nadeshiko's inspection, so that she could see the message jammed into the hem. Much to my surprise, Nadeshiko didn't seem anywhere near as displeased as I had anticipated; in fact, all she did was raise a single eyebrow.
"… And it must be a love note! Or a threat! Right, Nade-nade?"
"It might very well be something else," was all Nadeshiko said, quite cryptically. I gave her a look, but got no further elaboration. Inside our dormitory room, Nagihiko would not consent to give Amu the seam ripper: instead, he gestured to Amu gently, indicating that she should hand over the handkerchief.
"I'll do a neater job, I think," he said, not unkindly. Stitch hook in hand, he tore only a single stitch — the rest he pulled out with the pointed end, so that he left an intact thread that could later be sewn back. Nobody would be any the wiser. Finally, the paper was freed; it was Amu who pulled it out excitedly, fingers trembling with trepidation.
There was an excited rustle as she straightened the piece of paper, and then a too-long pause. Nagihiko's eyes went politely wide. Yaya and I were far too short to read what was on the page, so I tugged at Nagihiko's sleeve. "What does it say?"
His voice was distant in disbelief when he finally spoke. "It's addressed to Hoshina-san."
As a matter of fact, Utau was scrawled on the front of the folded piece of paper, not Hoshina-san. Simply Utau, nothing else– no address, although admittedly an elegant hand. We all exchanged looks of confusion, unsure what to say. The way it stood, it seemed most likely that it was a love note from an illicit paramour- something that would not blow over well, should one of the teachers catch wind of such a thing.
"That man..." Amu began, face churning with something incomprehensible, but Yaya cut in with a rather sneaky look on her face. "Now, now, Amu-chi, do not be so quick to place the handsome stranger as the culprit. Everybody knows that the rich men of Tokyo use messengers to deliver their letters, like in the Tale of Genji. Obviously our Utan has been carrying on an affair with a rich married man in Tokyo‑‑"
"Yaya!" Amu spluttered, scandalized, as Yaya chuckled darkly into her sleeve. Privately, I thought that Yaya may not be too far off the mark. It was still common for people to take mistresses, and Utau was very mature for her age. Although taking a schoolgirl mistress from a prominent Tokyo business family was scandalous, to say the very least. I took the letter from Amu's grip with a steely eye.
"Rima, you aren't honestly going to ‑-" Nagihiko began, flashing me the Nadeshikoey Rima-chan, you are not behaving like a lady stare. Staring back stubbornly, I unfolded the tiny letter, with nothing less than haughty indifference. "I couldn't care less of Utau's sordid affairs, but Amu has a right to read it. It's her handkerchief, after all."
"I don't exactly see her reading it," Nagihiko commented, drily, but I ignored him and smoothed it open. Upon the thin rice paper's surface, there was only written five words:
Train station, 12th day, 1.00.
"No way..." Yaya said in a low voice, reading over my shoulder. "Utan's gonna elope."
After lunchtime, we had history. The minute we walked into the classroom, Yaya immediately flung herself at Utau's chest in a cacophony of sniffles.
"Uta–an, you can't leave Yaya! Make a promise, okay? Give me your pinky, hurry up-"
"What on earth are you talking about?" she replied huffily, using her textbook to push Yaya's face off her bosom. She glared up at us as though this was our fault (it wasn't), eyes flashing.
Wordlessly, Amu slid the incriminating note across the table. Still glaring up a storm, she picked it up as if it was a dirty rag. After a cursory glance, she put it down, a no-nonsense look on her face.
"You read this," she said.
"Well," began Amu, flustered. "Well, yes, I sup-"
"It was sewn into your handkerchief."
"Y-yes, but-"
"Kindly describe the man who gave this to you."
Nadeshiko and I exchanged a glance; it was her who spoke when Amu could not, voice calm. "A handsome man with a rather feline face, I would describe it as. He had rather mischievous eyes and walked quite elegantly, but his face was browned from the sun."
"That's a rather useless description," I replied, helpfully.
"Hoshina-san, you cannot."
I knew that Nadeshiko would attempt to stop Utau as much as she could. Girls running away from the school was a stain upon its reputation. Rumours circulated that when a girl ran away, her roommate was beaten in her place. Only the most deplorable of people would have another person suffer for their selfishness.
"I wasn't asking you," Utau said coldly, tucking the note into her collar and opened her textbook. As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. As far as Nadeshiko was concerned, it wasn't, although she pressed her lips together in silence. I had a bad premonition that this would not turn out to be nothing.
Note 1: The first names of all the Shugo Chara characters are actually spelled by PEACH-PIT using the hiragana alphabet, because the target audience is middle-schoolers who haven't necessarily learned all the Chinese characters in school yet. Therefore, the kanji assigned to Rima and Nagihiko's names was picked by me and is completely non-canon. (The exception is Nadeshiko's name, which as Rima states, has only one kanji reading.) I wrote out my 'headcanon' characters out properly for anybody curious below.
Fujisaki Nadeshiko: 藤咲撫子
Nagihiko: 凪彦
Mashiro Rima: 真城莉茉
Note 2: The word for the jasminum sambac, or the Arabian jasmine, is written 茉莉 and read as matsuri. Even more amusingly, Nadeshiko's name coupled with her surname means "purple-blossomed carnation", which I find ridiculous.
Note 3: I feel like somebody is invariably going to point out that Rima's surname actually means "true castle" (thanks, Shugo Chara wiki), to which I say that the "makoto" character has several meanings; among them which "due east" seems the most likely for a place surname.
Once again, SUPER SORRY for the late date for this chapter— it was originally going to be much, much longer, with the events of this chapter and Utau's actual escape in one chapter. Upon post-exam inspection, this chapter works much better as a "breather", before some action occurs. So yeah, most of the FUN STUFF will be next chapter.
I really enjoy writing a lot of the school curriculum for this story, so I think the narration tends to break off and ramble about irrelevant things a lot of the time. How are people holding up with this... I think that at heart, Like A Lady is still a bit of a slice-of-life story, just with some overarching gradual plot, but I certainly don't want to bore people with discourse about ink droppers. Additonally, this chapter was quite long— do people enjoy having longer chunks of story, or does it make it a bit more of a slog? I think on a web format especially, shorter chapters might be more desirable.
