DISCLAIMER: SKIP BEAT! and its associated characters are the creations of Yoshiki Nakamura. This author claims no ownership of Skip Beat or any of its characters. All other rights reserved.
Note: This fic is now rated M for the contents of the end of this chapter. No lemon (yet?).
Note on Romeo and Juliet: Might be the most famous play of all time, but a brief summary in case anyone wants one: Two prominent households (the Capulets and the Montagues) in Verona are at war with each other. Romeo (a Montague) falls in love with Juliet (a Capulet) while he's crashing her daddy's ball. There's a famous balcony scene where they spout mushy poetry at each other. They get married in secret the day after. Later that same day, Romeo kills Juliet's cousin (Tybalt, who's kinda an a$$hole) after that cousin kills Romeo's best friend (Mercutio). Romeo gets banished. Juliet's parents think Juliet is grieving too much over her cousin and want to force her to marry some other guy (Paris). Juliet fakes her death to escape the second marriage. Romeo thinks Juliet is really dead and kills himself. Everyone dies, including the rando dude Juliet's parents wanted her to marry. Much awkwardness, and both families get in trouble but make up. All in all, the events of the play take about four days from the night the lovers meet to the day they die. Oh, and btw, Juliet's 13.
Additional Author's Notes at bottom of the page.
Chapter XIII: Slight Air and Purging Fire
Give me my sin again.
*Clack!*
The sound of two bamboo shinai colliding against each other echoed through the air as Kyoko's Tybalt once again took a run at Kuon's Romeo, raising her sword only to meet his parry.
Kyoko wiped the sheen of sweat from her brow as she held Tybalt's stance and snarled.
They were outside again, on the flat bank close to 'their' rock. Last week's storms had cleared, leaving them in the midst of hot, humid Kyoto in August. The late morning sun beat down mercilessly as they circled each other, though the river ran clear and cool at their feet.
She was circling a wide-eyed Romeo who, for some reason, was trying to reason with her instead of standing up like a man to fight. He looked scared. He looked sad. Sad that his best friend was dead, perhaps? A pity, that. Had he been a more attentive friend, Mercutio might yet have survived my blade, she thought. What manner of man is he? Some kind of momma's boy? She was filled with rage at the house of Montague, rage at the dogs that would dare interfere with her family. "Thou wretched boy…" she began, but Romeo was moving swiftly.
"This shall determine that," Romeo said, and his shinai collided with hers again as he attacked.
Kyoko had taken basic kendo as part of physical education at school, but she'd never tried to truly fight—or act as if she were. They had secured an extra shinai that had somehow been in the storeroom, and Kuon had shown her how to block and parry and thrust before choreographing a simple routine with her that somehow was getting more and more complicated as they practiced. They'd been at this all morning, beginning with an overview of how to grip a sword and basic moves that Kuon had learned as a child.
"Who is Tybalt?" he had asked her as she 'prepared' for the character. "Why does he fight?" Soon, Kuon had begun having her fight as Juliet's hot-headed cousin.
Kyoko's spirit rose to meet that challenge. The exhilaration she'd found during their exercises and their Macbeth discussions hadn't gone away. If anything, it had grown and strengthened. She loved the idea of inhabiting other lives, of having other souls inhabit her. She loved the look in Kuon's eyes when she transformed, reveled in it, even. And Kyoko somehow found it in herself to feel young and reckless and angry, to fight as if her honor and her family's honor had been besmirched by an old, blood enemy. She was angry at Romeo, who stood there like a pretty boy spouting useless platitudes. A vapid and callow youth, good for nothing except making eyes at my cousin, her inner Tybalt raged. A boy who would sneak into the house of her father, play with her, and then throw her away. An honorless bastard, chasing skirts all over town. All of a sudden she saw Sho where Romeo was standing and her rage made her body quiver. Her mouth curled into a malicious, feline sneer. Kuon saw it on her face and said, "Good. Keep that feeling. You'll be fighting Romeo...unless you want to fight Mercutio?"
He probably shouldn't have been surprised when she ad-libbed an enraged voice and responded, "I'll not endure you, Montague, not while you live." The Romeo facing her, at least, wasn't making moon-eyes at her. Underneath Tybalt's rage, Kyoko felt as if Kuon was testing her limits, seeing how far he could push her as they fought. Once she'd gotten the basic footwork down, the variations had come naturally. And she had fallen into a fighting stance as naturally as if she'd been bred with a rapier in her hand. There was a glee—even a little bit of bloodthirsty eagerness—in how she played her Tybalt.
Her inexperience did not appear to be a hindrance. He was having her adapt and embellish and improvise the routine, and was lost in thought when a thwap landed on his side. "Urgh," he said, and fell over on his knees in surprise. The strike was unexpectedly strong. He'd have to check for bruising later. He saw her emerge out from under Tybalt, just to ascertain whether or not he was ok. He gave a brief nodded, and then...
"I thought you'd be better than this, Montague," Tybalt snarled at him. "How...fucking...boring…" she said, bringing the shinai down to hit him again, moving it downwards from the center of her body. Kuon recognized it as the precursor to a head strike—one of the first movement students learned when they started kendo. He stared up at it. It was a basic move, but...
Oh, he realized, watching the bamboo come for his head, she's coming at me for real…! Kuon scrambled out of the way, narrowly evading the oncoming bamboo. He had an inkling of what she was using as an 'emotional memory' here, what with the sheer taste for violence she was exhibiting. Sho Fuwa, he thought, as he blocked an oncoming strike to his head. He was sure she wasn't holding back. He didn't think he was in danger, exactly—he had no doubt he could simply grab the shinai and break it if he'd really wanted to, or even simply knock it out of her hands. Her skills were too rudimentary to even remotely challenge him. But she was coming at him with all her strength. If he was struck on the head simply because he wasn't paying attention, he was going to get hurt. That would not do. Tybalt would die in this fight, not Romeo. So Romeo had to corner Tybalt and kill him.
Vaguely he wondered how she'd handle Tybalt's death.
They'd never talked about death scenes.
They clashed and then separated again, circling each other. Kuon knew he could end it at any time, but he didn't want Kyoko to feel as if he'd cut their scene short. He saw a subtle tensing of her muscles and knew she was going to attack him again.
"Breathe," he said to her. Steady, Kyoko, he thought, Don't rush the enemy. Be certain of where you will go.
She heard him, steadied and fixed him in a predatory glare. 3...2...1, thought Kuon.
She attacked, he blocked, then, with a quick movement, lunged at her heart with the tip of the shinai.
Thankfully, she noticed the move for what it was and fell at his feet. End scene. Dead Tybalt at Romeo's feet. Maybe Romeo IS a whiny little bitch, he thought.
Hmm, thought Kuon, breaking character as he stepped over to her. He poked her side cautiously with the tip of the shinai. "Kyoko?"
She opened up an eye. "Yes? I know I died too quietly."
He laughed at her, then offered a hand up. "Let's take a break."
Earlier that morning...
"I'm not playing Juliet," she said, taking a bite of toast. Breakfast was Western-style this morning, and Kyoko had made them plates of poached eggs and avocado toast along with the bentos she'd packed for their lunch. The plan had been to practice outside, taking advantage of the late summer weather.
"Well that's not going to work, now, is it?" he replied. "The play is Romeo AND Juliet, not Romeo and his Buddies Fight. Besides, you seemed like you really enjoyed Lady Macbeth, and it's not like we weren't playing a husband and wife then." He stopped, carefully looking at her. He'd deliberately avoided calling attention to the nature of their characters' bond while they were rehearsing Macbeth.
She sighed. "I liked Lady Macbeth," she'd said. "She was interesting. But Juliet? Juliet was an even bigger idiot than I was." And she'll turn me into an even bigger one than before, she thought to herself. The idea of playing Juliet turned Kyoko's stomach. It wasn't simply the fact that the girl had sacrificed herself for love, though that was certainly a part of it. It was the fact that if she had to say the things Juliet said to Kuon-as-Romeo, she wasn't sure she would be able to hide her feelings for him. Acting truthfully in imaginary circumstances, he'd said. But acting truthfully when her circumstances were far more real than imaginary was taking a risk in the extreme. Lately the air between them had become charged with an unknown electricity, a certain growing tension, like the rising of wind right before a storm. And yet outwardly, nothing had really changed.
She took a sip of her coffee, gazing impassively at him. He looked back at her. "An idiot? Hardly. She managed to get herself married independently of her parents in an age when women really didn't have the power to do so, and then she managed to successfully evade a second marriage which her parents were forcing on her."
Kyoko rolled her eyes. "I'm not really sure how you can call that successful, Kuon, that body count was pretty high. And she didn't do those things independently at all. She had willing accomplices. And in case you forgot, she died because her boy had awful timing."
She watched as he delicately cut and speared a piece of avocado with his fork. The man had obscenely long fingers, really. Even when he wasn't being Tsuruga Ren, he ate elegantly. She wondered, briefly, what it would be like to see him get a bit of runny egg on his shirt, or have a microgreen stuck in his teeth. Did he ever look less than perfect? She'd tried to maintain her distance since the evening of the festival, but she was constantly conscious of his eyes on her, conscious of where he was standing, conscious of the thousand small caresses he managed to confer on her in the guise of an accidental touch. And...oh god, his smile. The one she tried to ignore but couldn't help cherishing—the one that almost—almost—made her forget herself. Being with him was easy, talking to him was fun, and never—not once—had she ever felt unsafe. Her imaginary Corn had grown and had resolved into her fully-realized Kuon, and whether or not she wanted to acknowledge it, something that had been raw and incomplete within her now felt whole. What scared her most was how much she looked forward to seeing him in the mornings and how she loathed to part with him at night—because she was also conscious of time passing by with every turn of the clock. In just a short while, she'd remind herself, he'll be gone completely. Then what will you do, idiot? The thoughts put her in a maelstrom of uncertainty—her desire and her guilt churning around like a whirlpool inside her.
He noticed her looking and mistook the look on her face as one of concern over his breakfast. "The avocado toast is great, Kyoko," he said, "I never enjoyed breakfast at all before we started eating together."
As expected, she ignored the compliment and the mild flirtation which accompanied it. If I respond, it'll just encourage him, she thought. It's not as if I can do anything about the circumstances. So she turned the discussion back to the play. "I don't understand why and how modern audiences can't get enough of Romeo and Juliet," she said.
"People like forbidden love," he responded. "And their love was so pure they were willing to die for it. People don't like to remember that she was only thirteen and he was scarcely any older. But the point of the play isn't its practicality or its realism." He took a sip of his coffee. "It's a meditation on romance. Juliet's role is iconic."
"Every role in a Shakespeare play is iconic."
"And complex. I think you're dismissing her too easily. Portraying a vapid Juliet is easy, but showing her multidimensionality is hard."
"She couldn't see past her love for Romeo. She set aside her responsibilities to her family and did stupid things."
"I disagree. I think she DID see past her love for Romeo. Whether or not the things she did were stupid, I think we can have a reasonable difference of opinion on. How would you feel if your lover killed your beloved cousin?"
"As I have neither lover nor cousin, I couldn't tell you."
Ouch, Kuon thought, wincing. He bit back the impulse to say I am your lover, Kyoko. That part certainly wasn't true...yet. He was going to die trying, he was sure. Instead, he said "Part of acting is about challenging your comfort zone, you know. I think Juliet just makes you uncomfortable."
Kyoko sucked in a breath. He had hit the mark somewhat too close for comfort. "None of that changes my mind about reading Juliet, Kuon."
"OK, then. How about you play Romeo?" he'd offered, volunteering to play Juliet.
She'd scoffed at that, too. "I don't think you'd look good in a skirt."
"I thought you said I'd look good in anything."
"When did I say that?"
"Aren't you the least bit curious? I'm sure I could pull it off. I'll even let you take a picture in case you ever need to blackmail me."
She gave him a brief grin but shrugged it off. "What about the scene where Romeo kills Tybalt? I'll be Tybalt. You can kill me."
He sighed. "You're no fun. Fine. Let's do a swordfight, then," he said. "No Juliets around. Tybalt and Romeo, fighting. How's that?"
She nodded.
Soon enough they were on the sun-dappled trail that led them to their river rock, walking through the bamboo forest and discussing the plan for the day. She walked ahead of him holding their bentos, he walked behind her holding the shinai.
He admired her slim, graceful form traversing the trail like a wood nymph. Who was the fairy here, really? He was tall and long-limbed and felt like a brute around her. Last he checked, he was entirely too human. But she...she was a creature of these forests. She moved with their rhythm, she carried their cadence in her steps. Funny, then, how she'd mistaken him for fey when it was she who had magic in her veins.
It occurred to him that she was actually more comfortable playing at a fight to the death than playing a girl at a masquerade ball. Juliet was a prized role, one which many actresses vied for—particularly when there was a large movie adaptation on offer. It made one an instant contender for other romantic lead parts, not to mention the attention it would garner during awards season. If Kyoko were an actress, there would be no debate about the necessity of her reading Juliet, even in a workshop capacity. But she wasn't an actress—not yet, at least not in this universe. Kuon supposed that in an infinite continuum, there was a universe in which she hadn't gone back to Kyoto and passed her audition at LME instead.
He sighed. In a roundabout way, he finally understood it. It was something that Lory had known almost immediately at her audition. It wasn't entirely about him, though it had seemed that way at first. It wasn't just about him winning her over. It was much worse. It was about love. Love in general.
The girl hated love.
She hated the love the way Tybalt hated peace and Montagues. Or at least she thought she did.
She hated talking about it, thinking about it, acknowledging it, seeing it portrayed in books, films, or music. She would ignore anything that could even lead to a discussion about love, or even affection. Kuon cursed the fate that had given her a distant, abusive mother with Sho as a finishing coup de grace, because thanks to them, he'd had to contend with her dismissing the idea of anyone loving her. By now he hoped she knew how he felt. He'd been as transparent as clear water over that, ever since the night of the matsuri. He could only hope his actions had gotten his message through when his poor attempts at flirting did not.
This aversion to love was somewhat of a fatal flaw when Romeo and Juliet was the main topic. When even the mention of love would make her snarl, how could she even hope to deliver any of Juliet's lines? 'Juliet is love itself,' he recalled from the introductory essay of the edition they were using. What to do, then, when Kyoko was the anti-Juliet?
I have to adapt, he thought. "Alright," he said. "Have you ever held a sword before? Kendo, perhaps?"
"Some, in school," she replied.
"Good. That sounds like a good start. I can work with some of those basic movements, but stage fighting is an entirely different animal…" He continued on. Teaching Kyoko always felt safe. She enjoyed learning, he enjoyed being a senpai, of sorts. He never had to worry about frightening her away when he was teaching, or having her accuse him of flirting shamelessly. The fights between Tybalt and the Montague boys were a good way to ease her into the play. Perhaps there would be Romeo vs. Paris afterwards in the vault. Then, perhaps they'd go over the Prologue and the dialogue between Romeo and Mercutio in Act 1, or the scenes with the Montague and Capulet parents. Once they had circled all the way around, then perhaps her aversion to Juliet could be overcome under the general air of professionalism that she seemed to apply to all of her tasks. It might work, he thought, if she takes the content as simply part of a whole that we've already mostly digested. If she thought of the play as a simple task, then perhaps she could stop seeing it as another cursed paean to the power of love.
During his 'time in servitude,' he'd found that she would reject overt flirtation entirely, but quiet little gestures somehow evaded her radar. No, he thought. They didn't evade her radar. She lets them through. Little tiny things that she could laugh off as a gesture of politeness, or friendship, or even just...plain courtesy would work—things like being there with a cool cloth for her forehead, or a helping hand whenever she was carrying something heavy. She would reject holding his hand outright, but if he happened to touch hers while she passed something over to him, she'd blush but say nothing. If he lingered over her hand overlong, or caressed her face overmuch, she never let on that she'd noticed. When she'd allowed him to give back the kanzashi, he'd taken that as a major triumph. He allowed himself to hope that their time 'playing' Macbeth had brought them closer, though he had an idea of how deeply she'd been into the role then. Kyoko herself would never let anyone clutch her the way Macbeth had clutched his lady. It was part of what surprised him about her nascent acting talent: the ability to disappear into a role that so few actors could achieve. But still...small things she'd said—or left unsaid—gave him hope. That hope was such a small, fragile thing he didn't want to place so much upon it, and yet he had no choice.
When he'd asked her how she would play Tybalt, she'd hesitated. "Sometimes an actor has to play a role of a different gender, you know," he said. "You're going to have to think about not just what Tybalt wants and how he feels, you're going to have to think about how he moves. He'll be different."
"Ha," she responded. "I am not an actor."
"While you are here with me, Kyoko, I say you are. Now! Tybalt? Or," he tilted his head, "Would you like a turn at Romeo?" Kuon had simply assumed he'd be Romeo throughout their read, but he shouldn't have done so. Still, for as long as he'd been acting, Kuon had never not been the Romeo in the scene.
"No...I'd like Tybalt, please. I don't want to go around looking like that lovesick idiot."
What does that say about me? Kuon thought. Is she calling me a lovesick idiot? As far as he was concerned, Romeo didn't act terribly different from default Kuon around Kyoko, though perhaps with less iambic pentameter.
"I resent that, you know," he'd responded. "I happen to think Romeo was very wise when he chose to love Juliet."
"How was he wise? He died...what, three days after marrying her? Four days after meeting her?"
"He was wise because he knew who he loved and what he wanted and acted accordingly. It's not his fault the world conspired against him. 'Fortune's fool,' and all that."
"Did he really know who he loved? Wasn't he pining over some other girl right before he saw Juliet?"
He stopped walking and turned to look her in the eyes. She hadn't been prepared and stopped like a deer caught in headlights as he leaned over and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Sometimes, you think you know what love is," he said seriously. "And then you meet the real thing, and the world stops on its axis and everything changes in that second. And then you just know, Kyoko. Romeo knew. Juliet knew." And so do I, he thought to himself.
She harrumphed and moved past him on the trail, leaving him with his unsaid thoughts. He had to scurry to catch up.
Kyoko had come back from the dead only to see a haloed archangel peering over her. His body was shielding her eyes from the sun, but he managed to blind her anyway. She grunted and swatted the tip of the shinai that was poking her and took the hand he offered to help her up.
Now she was watching him take a long draught from the chilled barley tea she'd brought in a thermos, and hated him a little for looking like a commercial while he did so. Some things were positively unfair. She was certain, for example, that her face was red and she was sweaty, with her hair in disarray and likely sticking up and off her head in unruly tufts. In contrast, his sweat was perfectly camera ready, the tilt of his head at the perfect height to highlight the label on the bottle. He ran his fingers through his hair, which obliged him by sparkling in the sun and then coming down in perfect waves. The linen button-down shirt he was wearing stretched attractively over his broad shoulders. He probably doesn't even know he's posing, she thought with a hint of disgust. He took a handful of river water and splashed his face with it, letting it run over his closed eyes and then down the curve of his lip.
"Kyoko."
She startled. She realized she'd been staring at him shamelessly, not even noticing when he'd spotted her doing so. "Kuon!...ano…"
Kuon grinned at her. "Were you staring at me?"
Kyoko gulped because the glint in his eye was slightly evil. "Of course not," she said. "I was just wondering what you were doing over there."
She stood frozen in place as the Emperor of the Night returned. He turned from the river and slinked over to where she was standing, all grace and hidden power. The Emperor held her gaze as he leaned over and then...flicked her forehead.
Kyoko sputtered in protest, secretly relieved and disappointed in equal measure that he hadn't tried what she thought he was going to.
He looked at her blushing, indignant face, and gave her a smile so bright it made the rest of the world go dim. But all he said was "I like that you're staring at me."
Alarms blared in Kyoko's head. Eeep, she all but said, end this now, Kyoko! And she ended the moment by turning away and handing him a bento.
He decided he'd pushed her as far as she was willing to go right then. He wiped the traces of the Emperor off his face and gave her what he hoped was a benign smile. "You always make such tasty lunches, Kyoko," he said. Change the topic, Kuon. You idiot. Way to make her panic!
"I'm glad you like it," Kyoko responded. Inwardly she sighed in relief that the moment of crisis had passed. She needed to get it together. The physical exertion of the morning was making her lax, making her feel as if she were losing the battle against herself. The situation was in flux daily. She felt like she was standing on the edge of a precipice, about to jump into some unknown and frightening abyss where she could control nothing—not even the direction of her fall. Every reasonable voice in her mind told her that she could gain nothing in continuing to interact with him, and yet she found herself continuing to stay by him because she couldn't help but be swept along. It would have been like swimming against the tide, and his persistence and unwavering dedication had worn her down.
Kuon looked at the expression on her face and decided that avoiding the topic of you-and-me was probably best. In fact, distracting her from the topic was likely a necessity. A discourse on stagefighting it would be, then. "So a lot of people don't understand this about fight scenes…" he began.
Kyoko listened to Kuon's lecture while taking stock of the situation. It was sobering. She wanted Kuon Hizuri, in the same way he wanted her. Have the grace to not to hide this from yourself, Kyoko, she thought.
"...It's really more a dance," Kuon continued, "between the antagonist and the hero. The intent isn't really to beat your opponent but to entertain the audience…" Kyoko understood that this was his way of diffusing the tension between them. Just like when I tried to distract him by talking about the ryokan's food, she thought.
He had left her no doubt at all as to the state of his feelings. If anything, he took every opportunity to remind her, however gently, how he felt. Refusing to acknowledge this would be coy and insincere. He was insane to feel that way, of course. That could be it. He could simply just be...crazy. Or one of those guys who have a weird 'type.' Certainly, there were people in this world who had unusual fetishes. She'd even heard of a man who was in love with the Statue of Liberty, once, after breaking up his affair with his drum set. Perhaps Kuon's fetish happened to be plain girls with flat chests. She'd had doubts as to the veracity of his intent, but carrying rocks up a hill seemed slightly extreme for someone who was just playing with her. And then there was the way he always seemed to watch where she stepped, catching her when she stumbled, being right there whenever she needed pretty much anything. She had the sneaking suspicion that he knew exactly how he was affecting her. Did he know that she knew? Perhaps not at first, but she'd allowed him certain liberties. She supposed she could've tried harder to return the kanzashi when he'd put it back in her hair, but the truth was she simply...hadn't wanted to. Her pro-forma protests must have seemed as flimsy to him as they had to her, because he persisted in flirting. She wanted to give in. She wanted to acknowledge his small sweetnesses to her with unalloyed joy, and reciprocate in return. She wanted to do it without having to pretend it was for some other reason that compelled her to. She wanted to do it because it made him happy. But...
"...Anyway, you can't really teach stage combat that way," Kuon droned on. "You have to do what we're doing and actually act it out. Theory is great but this is about movement and you can only describe it so far…"
He's adorable, she thought, and obligingly made happy noises of assent as he kept going.
"...you have to be safe. Do the learning in a controlled environment…"
If she gave in to her 'wants,' her life, and possibly his, would be...disrupted, at the very least. She knew she had responsibilities, for one—responsibilities which she'd be forsaking if she chose to pursue this ill-advised course of action after his departure. While he was here, she could excuse the time spent with him as being a VIP guest's concierge, though she also knew she'd far exceeded the effort needed for those duties. But afterwards? What possible hope could there be for the two of them after he left? Was she supposed to give up her plans to go to the University? Not ever, she thought. I'd never give up my schooling or my career for a boy again.
And she couldn't leave the ryokan behind, either. After all, the Fuwas were relying on her to manage and maintain the ryokan into the future. Was she to reward their faith in her by running off with another boy? And he was a movie star. She, on the other hand, was...a glorified waitress. He implied that he wanted a serious relationship with her. As her boyfriend. Did he even know what dating someone like her could do to his image? She didn't care so much about her own—she was a non-entity, at least to the public. She'd been bullied all of her life—what more could they do? She'd just retreat into the ryokan's natural isolation and focus on her work. But Kuon? Kuon would likely be ridiculed. He'd lose fans. He'd be the laughingstock of the red carpet, carting along a plain bowl of udon when he could have any woman out there. Perhaps he wanted to keep it secret? Would she be happy being his dirty little secret?
His dirty little secret until he realized how unfit she was to be his partner, and then she'd be back exactly where Sho had left her: abandoned and alone in Tokyo after having given him everything.
She couldn't give in.
He was leaving Kyoto in a matter of weeks, after all.
What to do with someone you loved but couldn't touch?
What if she did nothing? Was she being a coward in choosing to do nothing? But what was she supposed to do in this situation, exactly? She didn't have the strength to cut things off, though she supposed that would be the wisest thing to do. She certainly couldn't accept his feelings as they were, particularly because she had no reason to leave Kyoto for Tokyo and a long-distance relationship would be hopeless. She shuddered at the thought of going back. She refused to go back to scrounging for every penny just to be able to afford a roof over her head.
She sighed and shook her head to clear her thoughts. There was still an entire afternoon of fighting to be done, and tomorrow she was sure she could avoid playing any Juliet by focusing on the scenes with the Prince and the Friar and the parents.
"Kyoko?" His question brought her out of her daydreaming and back to their lunch.
"Oh! Yes?" she responded.
"Oh god, I've gone off on a tangent, haven't I?" he groaned. "I'm sorry. I can see your eyes glazing over. Want to just get started again?"
She looked over at him, abashed. He's trying to teach you something, Kyoko, she thought. Not just flirting. For once. Least you can do is listen. "Sure," she said.
They spent the rest of the afternoon killing each other, and then came back at dusk for dinner.
Later that night, an exhausted Kyoko stopped and told Yayoi what they had been doing, and Yayoi had merely smiled and told her to take care of their guest. Kyoko was surprised. It was true that the length and nature of Kuon's stay was unusual, but they'd taken care of high-profile guests before and even then Kyoko hadn't been spending entire days with them. But Yayoi only smiled. "You've become friends with him, haven't you, Kyoko-chan?" she'd asked. Kyoko had assented, but before she could say anything further, Yayoi continued, "Then given the fact that he's our guest, the fact that it's your last summer vacation, and the fact that you're working on your coursework, I find it reasonable to work with him this way." Yayoi had all but turned a blind eye and tacitly encouraged her interactions with Kuon. She shooed Kyoko out of her office with alacrity, looking like a cat who had eaten a canary.
It was puzzling, but Kyoko fell asleep before she could think too much about it.
The next day...
They had just eaten dinner and the bare rind of a new moon was rising in the violet dusk. It was their second day of playing Romeo and Juliet. Kyoko had successfully died as Tybalt at least a dozen times, and then she'd killed Tybalt a few times too. And Paris. She did a turn as Mercutio, particularly enjoying his monologues.
"True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south."
Like my dreams of him, she thought. Out loud, she said "Those lines are beautiful."
"And you performed them beautifully," he said, taking a bite of oyakodon. He closed his eyes in bliss. How had he lived before? A pathetic life, eating meal-replacement bars and conbini onigiri, eating alone, on the go, or both—if he ate at all.
"Well, I guess we can be done with Romeo and Juliet now," she said, taking a bite of her bowl.
Kuon stopped with another bite halfway to his mouth. Absurd, he thought. His Juliet would get away with reading not one line as Juliet.
"At least do the balcony scene," he wheedled.
"I'm not doing the balcony scene."
"It's iconic, though!"
"It's a child pining over some man she just met!"
"It's some of the most beautiful poetry ever written in the English language!"
"Well, thankfully I'm Japanese."
"You loved Mercutio's lines. The Act 2 lines are just as good."
"No."
"Just a little bit? I'll do most of the talking, anyway."
"We're really just doing this for my English class anyway, aren't we? I get the play. I understand the play."
He pouted.
She glared back.
She couldn't let things get any more out of hand. They'd already gone too far. She'd managed to avoid falling to pieces and letting him know how she felt about him through sheer will, which was difficult enough when he looked like an Adonis and acted like her prince. She had completed her 'other' homework so it wasn't an issue, but she was painfully aware of the fact that all of this—the acting exercises, performing the plays,the props, the costumes—were far, far removed from anything she 'had to do' for homework. And it was certainly not 'work,' either. There was no good excuse.
"You know as well as I do that I don't need to 'understand' the script anymore, Kuon," she said. "If we do this playacting stuff, it's because you want to and I'm your concierge, so I have to."
"Do you have to?" He gave her a searching look. "Maybe you should just admit that you want to." He knew he was treading dangerous ground here.
"Why would I want to? I just told you I won't be acting as Juliet, and seeing as I do know the play now, I don't think it's necessary at all."
That stung him. He could've sworn that she loved doing these plays with him, that he was gaining ground in her heart, that perhaps she'd actually enjoyed his presence. But her denial—followed by her reaffirmation of that denial—hurt more than he cared to admit. Had he been deluding himself? He'd been operating on faith and hope like a madman, but he was sure there was something between them—and between Kyoko and her untapped talent.
"Oh! OK, sorry. I misunderstood. I knew you needed to study the plays but somehow I was laboring under the misapprehension that you liked the acting. So you didn't enjoy being Mio?"
"Well...I…"
"And you must've hated Lady Macbeth, huh."
Kyoko's eyes swivelled up to his. He was angry. She could sense it.
"It's not tha—"
"Ok. I get it. It must be me, then. You really don't like hanging out with me. It wasn't fun at all. You didn't care for it. You just did it because you had to."
He had a sardonic grin plastered on his face but he was looking at her and there was something so sad in his gaze she felt her heart twinge.
"Kuon, no, it's not that—"
He broke their gaze and moved as quickly as he could, piling their dinner dishes onto the trays and then grabbing them and standing. Kyoko was left with her chopsticks still in-hand, surprised as Kuon cleared her plate from right beneath her.
"Fair enough. Let's pack it all in then, might as well go back down to the kitchen instead, I'm sure it would be better for you if you didn't have to eat it here with me, right?"
"Wait, what are you doing?" she asked.
"And tomorrow I guess we'll go back to you dropping off breakfast and I'll...do something. I don't want to have to bother you anymore about stuff you're only doing because you have to."
"Kuon...I…"
"Oh. I thought that maybe you wouldn't want to talk about plays anymore, or learn about acting, or any of that stuff, since you were only doing it because you had to. I'm always available if you have more things that need to be done around the building. I'll go back to helping you with chores. Or leave you alone. If you want me to." Offering to leave her alone was like giving himself a punch to the stomach, but the words just fell out of his mouth.
She looked up at him as he stood with their dishes, her face stricken.
"Or, Kyoko…" he said, his voice softening. "Or you could admit that you like it. That you like me."
I do want to act with you, she thought. She wanted to say it out loud, but couldn't. I want to be with you. Acting with him had filled her with some wild and improbable joy; being with him made her tremble. "Kuon…" she began. She trailed off, unable to finish, and he let out a deep sigh.
"Kyoko—listen—I...I'm sorry," he said. He set the tray down, and the dishes clinked as the tray came to a rest. "If this truly is taking you away from things you need to do, then I apologize. But won't you admit—even just a little—that you liked it? The acting?"
"I...did," Kyoko said dazedly. "I did like it."
"And me?" he asked. Her head snapped up, her mouth opened in surprise. "Do you like spending time with me, Kyoko?"
She stared at him, speechless. He sensed her discomfort at the question. "Nevermind. I'm sorry I said that—forget that I asked," he said. He picked up the tray again, balancing it on one arm as he opened the door to take it out of the room.
He was halfway into the hallway when he felt her hand tugging on his sleeve. He turned and saw her downcast face as her hand clutched the cloth of his shirtsleeve.
"Wait," she said. "Kuon…" A pause. He saw her swallow. "I've...I've had a wonderful time playing Macbeth, Kuon. With you." Her entire face was aflame as she choked out the words. "Please don't take those...to the kitchen...Kuon...I'd like...to eat with you here…"
He wanted to throw the tray down, grab her, and then kiss her, right then and there. But he held himself still as she took her tray off the top of his and took it back into the room.
xxx
He spent the rest of the meal regaling her with tales of his first action movies and the bloopers which ensued when one was an inexperienced stunt performer. He was relieved to see her smile. She was relieved he'd stopped pressing the issue. Neither one of them really wanted to end the evening though, and by the time they were finished he opened up the balcony doors to let the night wind in.
They wandered out onto the balcony to watch the summer stars over the hilltops. "I'm surprised you can see them from here," he said. "No hope for them in Tokyo."
"We're shielded a little bit from the city lights here," she responded. "And it helps that the moon hasn't risen yet."
He climbed up onto the railing and then said, "You know you want to do the balcony scene." One last try, he thought.
"I don't."
Kuon sighed. Kyoko was looking at him with stubborn resistance and shaking her head. She was looking everywhere except his eyes when he flipped over the balcony and into the night beyond.
What had been charming in a child fairy 'flying' was terrifying in an adult man disappearing over a railing. Kyoko gave a little scream before looking into the void beyond, desperately searching for him. "Kuon!" she cried out, "KUUOOONNNNN!"
The ground below was pitch-black. She could make out the pale reflection of the ryokan's lights in the river, but nothing on the bank below. Silence. She hadn't heard a cry of pain when he'd jumped over the side, but the balcony was still several meters off the ground. She began to get agitated, looking out over the riverbank again, and was about to head into the ryokan to grab a flashlight when she heard...
"WHAT LIGHT THROUGH YONDER WINDOW BREAKS?" a voice yelled out from the dark. She sighed. He sounded deranged. If he could yell like that, chances are he hadn't broken anything on that idiotic flip down. Idiot, she thought, with some relief. It sounded like he was standing twenty or so feet beneath her balcony on the rocks below.
"Kuon!" she called out in a stage whisper. He could see her hair silhouetted against the light from his room, forming a halo around her head. "What are you doing?!"
"IT IS THE EAST AND JULIET IS THE SUN!" He saw her move her head back and forth, as if she were worried the other guests would be watching.
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" She was still trying to shush him. Adorable, he thought. "You're not the only guest, you know!"
"ARISE FAIR SUN AND KILL THE ENVIOUS MOON!" Nope, not giving up, he thought.
"Kuon, I swear," she said, shaking her head. "Come back! Ugh, you'll trip if you try to go around to the front door like that." She started looking for a convenient way down off the balcony.
"SPEAK AGAIN, BRIGHT ANGEL!"
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhh! And you know that's not the line!"
"Oh? What is it, then?" he asked. Finally, she thought in relief. He's stopped screaming them out.
"You KNOW what it is."
"Do I?"
Kyoko mumbled something into the night air.
"What was that?"
More incoherent mumbling ensued. "Pale...sick..grief," he heard.
He climbed up so that his face was visible over the lowest balcony railing, popping up suddenly in her line of vision like a demented jack-in-the-box with a smirk on his face. "That thou her maid art far more fair than she," he finished.
Kyoko gave a little shriek before jumping back away from his head, tripping, and then landing on the floor. "Ow," she said.
That wiped the smirk off of Kuon's face and he finished climbing back onto the balcony. "I'm sorry," he said, his long limbs falling into a crouch by Kyoko. She put a trembling hand in his when he reached out. "Are you OK?" he whispered. She nodded 'yes' as he pulled her hand to his lips and put the briefest of kisses on the tip of her little finger. He felt her catch her breath as his lips touched her skin. He was going to grin and dispel the tension between them, but right then she looked up into his eyes and in her startled, unguarded gaze her heart was laid bare. Desire, fear, and hope warred in molten gold and his world tightened and focused into those circles of endless light.
Her eyes took his breath away, and any hope he had of pretending this moment away was gone.
For a while they were silent as his lips lingered by her hand. He felt his pulse quicken at the scent and proximity of her skin. They were standing at an inflection point, and he knew it. The powder keg was primed and loaded, and he watched her for a clue on how to proceed. Push too hard now, and she'd build a wall so high it would be all but insurmountable. Push too little, and the wall that already existed would continue to stand between them. Was he Romeo? Was he Kuon? Did it matter? Every day since the day they'd reunited, there had been an inexorable pull towards her, a constant building of tension just waiting for a spark to set it off.
He couldn't help himself as he brought his forehead to hers and brought his other hand to caress the line of her cheek. Her eyes closed as her head leaned subtly into his touch and he was almost lightheaded with hope. Her lips were so close it felt as if he were stealing her breath to speak into her soul. He had no words, so he borrowed from what was already on the tip of his tongue in a whisper meant for her ears alone.
"The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night."
He felt her indrawn breath and knew she would move to dissemble and end the moment but he tightened his grip on her hand and forced her to look up at him. "Kyoko—" he said, but she interrupted.
"Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say 'ay,' and I will take thy word," she said. Her voice quavered with a certain recklessness, but she continued."Yet if thou swear'st, thou mayst prove false. At lovers' perjuries, they say Jove laughs. If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully, or if thou think'st I am too easily won, I'll frown and be perverse and say thee nay so thou wilt woo."
Her golden eyes were staring into his, and he knew she knew the lines weren't in order. She wasn't acting out the scene. By now he knew her too well to think this was a mistake. Kyoko's memory was not photographic, but she had a remarkable talent for memorizing her script. Juliet wasn't asking, Kyoko was. But his answer was the same as Romeo's.
"What shall I swear by?" he asked her.
She put a hand flat on his chest as if to push away but instead felt his heart beating madly underneath it. Still, he felt a gentle push as she made to disengage.
"Well, do not swear," she responded, "although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say 'It lightens.'
This cannot be too rash, Kyoko, he thought. Not when the memory of her was the last memory of unalloyed happiness he'd had for a decade.
"Oh wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?" he said.
Kyoko trembled. The look in his eyes was so full of need it hurt to see him. There was no stage, no audience, nothing but the trilling of the river and the sound of cicadas outside. Far away she could hear a song from the dining room, gilding the moment like a detail from a dream. He was using Romeo's words, because Kuon had no words right now to tell her how he felt.
"What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?" she responded, knowing what the response would be.
The moment they'd been dancing around for weeks was here, and he was aware that he was clutching at her hand on his chest, crouching on the floor of his balcony as he said,"The exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine."
She broke their gaze, looking down, and in a whisper, she said "I gave thee mine before thou didst request it…" She trailed off but looked upwards, only to find herself drowning in his eyes again. She breathed him in, revelling in the clean musk off his skin, the subtle scent of his cologne. He was close, so close, and getting closer, until his lips were a hair's breadth away from hers. The spark was enough to set the pile of tinder aflame, and she could feel the moment when something between them ignited. Her heart was beating wildly against her chest, echoing his—as if to warn her of impending danger.
He chose right then to close the gap and his lips descended on hers.
There must be a fall in every woman's life, she thought. For some time now, she'd been aware of her proximity to the precipice's edge, and as his tongue claimed her mouth she felt the ground give way under her. She was in free-fall, and it was partly terror and partly relief. It was the moment when the veil of childhood lifted and every illusion she'd clung to for safety was torn away. She thought, as he kissed her, that this must have been what Eve felt like as she took a bite of the apple in her mouth—there was a sudden clarity, an inevitability, a sense that destiny had been joined. It was a knock on the doorway to a paradise from which she had been exiled. Desires that had been inchoate and formless struggled into forms raised in sharp relief, and suddenly there was a wide gulf between Kyoko-the-maiden and Kyoko-the-woman. Every defense she had crumbled. She felt him press closer to her and the carnal knowledge that his body promised titillated and inflamed as her own responded. Was this how Juliet felt when Romeo first kissed her? she wondered. In the recesses of her mind, her Okami-self protested and was silenced.
He was moving, and she was barely conscious of how she moved with him—and yet she did, gasping as his hands roamed on her skin, reaching towards him as his mouth left her lips and found her neck and marked her, licking and sucking. Her own hands moved as an extension of her unacknowledged desire, running through his hair and pushing him closer and closer as if by their actions they could eliminate the separation between their souls. His tongue was doing things to her and on her and she could scarcely breathe for gasping as it traced a trail up and down her body.
He moved to take her into his arms and bore her up as he stood, not wanting to break the fever that kept her delirious and reaching for him. Her mouth moved onto his neck and it was his turn to lose his composure as she mirrored his actions from just moments ago. Her surrender and her answering desire inflamed him nearly to the point of madness; the movement of her hand in his hair erased every cogent thought that could have saved him. He was half afraid he'd stumble on his way to the bed.
He placed her gently on it, and then crawled over her until she was pinioned beneath his arms. He leaned down to capture her lips again, pressing against her and against her and against her, clawing back every animalistic impulse that urged him to do more. And he wanted more. She was flushed, her eyes half-lidded in delirium. Over and over, he'd imagined this moment. In each one of those fantasies, he'd imagined their first kiss would be a slow, gentle affair—worshipful, reverent. But this was an all-consuming conflagration that obliterated them both. He could hear her breathing raggedly underneath him as his mouth descended from her neck and then to her chest, his hands were splayed wide on her narrow frame as if to take as much of her into himself at once. He ran his hands underneath her shirt and down the bare skin of her back and her body arched towards him in a naked expression of need. Pushing her shirt and her bra upwards and over her head, his tongue swirled over the hardened peak of her breast, and she moaned into the summer night. Surrender, when it came, was mutual—she to him and he to her and all the push-pull, the resistance, and the doubt came crashing down as if they were nothing more than leaves in the wind.
"Kuon," she said, his name guttural and low in her mouth. The lewdness of her voice startled her. Incoherent thoughts flared like bursts of fireworks in her mind. Oh she knew how Juliet felt now, she knew all too well—if he ever left her, she was sure she would die. This was it, then, the insanity that drove people to leave their homes, their families, their countries, to deny their fathers and refuse their names...the thing she'd been denying in herself since he showed up in a burst of sunlight in her featureless wood. Let the ryokan burn down around her ears, she wouldn't care tonight. She wanted him...she wanted every part of her joined to him, to love him and wake next to him tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. But right now were his hands and his mouth and his skin and, she thought with some chagrin, all other parts belonging to this man. He was going to consume her and all that would be left of her in the morning would be ash, she was sure of it. Her hands descended from his hair and ran down his neck and his shoulders, giving in to her desire to feel him, to unapologetically lust after the planes and definition of his body, and she found herself moving to take off his shirt to feel his skin on hers. He moved to oblige her and when he leaned back over her, she gasped as her naked skin met his for the first time.
He forced himself to stop and pause and look at her, thanked his better angels for giving him the wherewithal to try for a semblance of sanity before he took them too far. She was beneath him, his weight pinning her down, her hair splayed out across his pillow, chest rising and falling with her fevered breath.
"I love you," he told her, the English words rolling off his tongue.
In response she circled her arms around his neck and pulled him to her, and he lost herself in the sweetness of her kiss. The tentative, innocent exploration of her tongue into his mouth only reminded him how he wanted to worship and debauch all of her in equal measure.
He was done. He was finished. She could tell him to jump off a cliff tomorrow and he'd do it.
He surrendered to her again and had just gathered her into his arms again when…
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
Dammit, he thought. It was Lory's ringtone.
Underneath him, Kyoko had stilled. Some spell was breaking, and he had a feeling some clock somewhere was striking midnight.
Dread.
Apprehension rose in him as he felt her stiffen. Was it just the surprise of having been interrupted?
"Ignore it," he said to her, moving again to kiss her, but she placed a hand on his chest, stopping him from moving forward.
"Why…?" he asked, confused. "Kyoko?"
She moved to sit up and he moved off of her, and with some dismay he saw that she'd gone pale. Covering her breasts from his view, she moved frantically to look for her shirt, crawling into it as soon as her hands found it underneath a pillow.
"Kyoko?"
She wouldn't meet his eyes. "Kuon...I…"
"I'm sorry—"
"No..."
"Are you OK?" You idiot, he chastised himself. You should have known she wasn't ready for this.
"Yes...I just...It's just...that I need to go now, Kuon."
"Wait...Kyoko..." Had he hurt her? Had he forced her? She didn't say 'I love you' back, he thought. "Are we OK?" The question came out desperately, and he thought back to every second of the evening, and then again to the million and one ways in which he'd been dumped. He cared so much more for her, but what if he'd made the same mistakes? The stakes were so much higher now, and what he feared most—losing her—came to the forefront of his mind.
She had straightened her clothes and was blushing a deep red. "Yes. I'm fine. We're fine. I'll...seeyoutomorrowatbreakfast," she said.
Before he knew it, she'd run out of his room, not bothering to close the door behind her.
"Wait! Kyoko!"
He'd forgotten how quickly she could move.
The hallway beyond his door was dark and empty by the time he managed to stumble off his bed and run after her.
"Fuck," he said to the empty air.
Thank you so much for reading! Let me know what you think. I really appreciate reviews.
Also, is this an appropriate rating? Should it really be T?
Author's Notes:
1. Shakespeare's lines are italicized and bolded throughout.
2. "Slight Air and Purging Fire" - Shakespeare, Sonnet 45
The other two, slight air and purging fire,
Are both with thee, wherever I abide;
The first my thought, the other my desire,
These present-absent with swift motion slide.
3. Give me my sin again - Romeo, Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5
4. Romeo and Tybalt's sword fight is from Act 3, Scene 1.
5. I know even less about stage combat than I do about acting, but I did find The Stage Combat Handbook by Wolf Christian, on Kindle Unlimited as a free read.
6. Mercutio's Queen Mab monologue is from Act 1, Scene 4.
7. The infamous balcony scene is Act 2, Scene 2.
8. This makeout-scene partially brought to you by the end of Phillip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass.