Hyoutei Roommates: Coping Methods #5: Tamatebako (Treasure), Part 2
Title: Tamatebako (Treasure)
Part: 2/2
*_*_*_*
Afterwards, Mari found herself huddled back under her covers-shivering, though she didn’t have a fever any longer; dizzy, and she didn’t know if that was viremia or all the blood having vacated her brain, because she obviously didn’t have a drop of common sense left. Because the moment she closed her eyes, she thought she saw an instant of vulnerability in his gaze, thought maybe he’d wanted her to actually like his present.
The truth was, she had liked it-despite it being from him.
She’d thought she’d mostly resigned herself to the damnation of loving him-the one ice cube in her Hell had been knowing that even if he noticed her, he’d never choose to pay attention. What with tennis and martial arts, there wasn’t enough space in his tunnel-vision for lane lines, much less for anything that might constitute a distraction. She’d entertained, for a little while, the idea of creeping little by little out of his peripheral vision, maybe even giving up management of the fanclub, but that was impossible, by this point-he might not see her at the courtside, but he would definitely notice if she didn’t show up at the dojo. So much for prayers.
He understood her, alarmingly enough-the gods only knew that that entire episode with her stalker had proved that.
That wasn’t the same thing, though, as him actually trying to know her.
Telling herself that she was resigned to the damnation of loving him was, she thought a little despairingly, like resigning herself to an earthquake-every time she thought it was over, she was flat on her large and unshapely arse all over again. He was grace and beauty and a fair dollop of grumpiness; he was serenity and focus and a harder head than just about anyone she’d met. And considering how he loved his gekokujou, a twisted little part of him would probably appreciate the whole irony of knocking an older girl mental center-over-keister.
For the sake of her own dwindling sanity, she had best avoid giving him any inkling of that-he might actually start trying, and he was already far too good at it as it was.
Maybe if she kept her head stuck under her covers for long enough, she’d come out to discover that he’d concentrated so hard on his straight and narrow little path that he’d kept walking and just dropped off the edge of the world.
Of course, that would necessitate the world being flat. She groaned into her pillow-loudly. Being sick had nothing on being a teenaged girl under a fox-godling’s curse.
When she heard the key in the lock, Mari almost sighed with relief. There was nothing like her father arriving home to call the cops on her little pity party… and no matter what any movies or books liked to claim, it was very difficult to breathe when one was pitying oneself facedown into a pillow. "Mari? Are you home?"
"Yes, ‘Tousan, I’m in my room. How was your conference?" She hauled herself shakily to her feet and reached up to touch her face-it was blessedly, comfortingly dry. There wasn’t a lot she could do for her complexion or her tired, baggy eyes, to say nothing of the traitorous lump in her chest, but at least she hadn’t started leaking. "You’re home early. I thought you were going to stay over in Nagano tonight?"
Her father always rustled when he walked-she’d never known whether that was because of all the candies he kept in his pockets or because he seemed like the sort who would rustle, just like Jirou was the type who would squeak when squished. He was thin in the face and large around the middle, and she always thought he was the only doctor she knew who looked rumpled in his sleek white coat. "I know, I know. I’ve been leaving you on your own too often, and… what’s this box? There’s a card on it. The handwriting is very neat." She grinned, her hand on the knob of her bedroom door-his own handwriting was rather good, for a doctor’s, but that wasn’t saying much. There was a brief pause, and the sound of her father being silently shocked and horrified and delighted, like any perfectly normal parent of a seventeen-year-old girl, made her grin even wider. "It’s for you? Mari, someone gave you a White Day gift?!" there was a brief pause, brimming with incredulity and what sounded like her father making incoherent little burbling noises.
Mari wondered if she should be insulted that he was so totally surprised.
Her poor father-there just hadn’t been a good, sensible way to explain the whole fanclub president thing to him in a way that anyone who hadn’t met the fangirls could possibly understand. She almost opened her mouth to dash his hopes-right, she normally did tell adults that she was the tennis club manager-when she remembered.
Half-dazed or not, sour-sick mouth or not, she’d carefully put away the gifts already.
Ishikawa or whoever he’d been hadn’t bothered her in quite awhile, but at the same time… Mari poked her head out of her doorway and demanded, "Wait. What do you mean? Where was it?" If it had been on the doorstep, she was calling the cops-The Bastard might have known what general direction she lived in, but she’d never, never taken him to her house.
"It was right here, on the kitchen countertop." His voice was shocked, but stern. "Taira Mariko, have you been keeping secrets? You haven’t told me anything about a Hiyoshi Wakashi."
Norovirus, nothing. Having one’s heart stop mid-beat was far more uncomfortable than intestinal flu.
Her lips moved in a ‘What?’-she hadn’t told him anything about any Hiyoshi Wakashi, why would she have when she normally worked so hard for the express purpose of forgetting a certain Hiyoshi Wakashi-but her voice wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t move. Even to roar. Even to protest that he hadn’t called her Mariko in years, and that now was most assuredly not the time to start, because given the smallest shove and the least provocation, she was going to pass out like a heroine in a fifteen-inch corset.
He was still talking-something rambly about his shock that his little girl was giving out Valentine’s chocolates to boys, like boys were cockroaches-when she stumbled her way out of the room as gracefully as her shaky knees-well, shaky everything-would let her.
There was a box on the counter-large, white, and unwrapped. Hiyoshi’d been carrying it underneath his arm; she hadn’t seen a label on it, but she hadn’t looked. The label was small, anyway-a stiff piece of card stock, carefully stuck on with a piece of tape over each of the corners.
To Taira Mari
From Hiyoshi Wakashi
Dazedly, Mari noted that this wasn’t a prank on the part of Atobe’s boytoy-for one, it would have been quite a trick to get Hiyoshi to carry in such a thing, if it were. Besides, Jirou was admittedly talented, but she’d never noticed that he had a gift for forgery, and Hiyoshi did actually have handwriting so precise that it bordered on boring. Her name looked neater than she’d ever written it herself, and there was just that bit of a showy flourish when he signed his own name, too, exactly like the writing on the grey wrapping paper she’d unwrapped only a few hours before. She was dreaming, of course-except she didn’t believe in dreams, much less in dreams that she hadn’t thought she even could dream, coming true.
She wasn’t sure when her father stepped up behind her-ironic, considering that the rustle of the peppermints he kept in his pockets was as good as a cowbell most days-but she did jump when he laid what seemed like a very cold hand on her forehead. "Mari? You don’t look well," he didn’t sound excited anymore quite so much as… concerned.
"I’ll be fine," she assured him. She probably didn’t look fine-if his hand was cold, it was probably because her face was hot-but if his book had been correct, she wasn’t likely to have any more gastrointestinal symptoms for him to conquer. Thankfully.
If she wasn’t going to be fine in a way that had nothing to do with her intestines, that was something else entirely-and at this instant in time, she had no idea if she was going to be all right. Her world was falling around her ears like hair, and she’d carefully not watched Hiyoshi walking out the door, and he certainly hadn’t said a thing about… anything else. Something else. "I missed class today, though. Um, so one of my friends…" she almost choked on the word; but they were friends, that was the irony of it all. She could speak softly and beat at her feelings with a big stick, but she wouldn’t deny friendship, "…brought some stuff over."
Brought some stuff over, and left a box on the countertop that she hadn’t opened, and that he hadn’t mentioned. Except that it was labelled with her name.
And his.
"Oh." His brows furrowed when she turned to glance at him. "Well, that was nice of her, coming all the way out here." If he was going to assume, she wasn’t going to correct him. "But Mari, who’s this Hiyoshi character? Is he one of your classmates? Did you give him Valentine’s chocolate?"
There were so many ways she could answer that-and the truth was, she was tired of the secrecy, the fear, the ache. It was only a year and a bit more, and then she’d be gone… well, basically forever. Or, more properly, he’d be gone from her life, and then maybe-gods, hopefully, maybe-she’d be able to move on. Finally.
At least her father hadn’t asked if Hiyoshi was her boyfriend-well, it was just a little too far out of the realm of the things she’d hide from him. She wasn’t sure that her heart wouldn’t have just exploded out of her chest like Sgt. Ripley’s Aliens if he had, it was clattering against her rib cage with such force.
"No, ‘Tousan. He’s one of my kobujutsu teachers," she replied, instead, honestly. She hadn’t given Hiyoshi chocolates, and he was sometimes one of the instructors at the Hiyoshi dojo. "It’s probably just something for practice, that’s all. Why would you think it was a White Day present? It’s not even wrapped."
Her voice was firm and rich and confident; to Mari’s surprise, she sounded like she believed it. She had to tell herself she believed it, because… well, how dare she wish otherwise?
Wait, that was ridiculous-how dare she wish at all?
Her father set his jaw, puggishly. She almost smiled again-her mother had been lovely and graceful and immensely charming, but her father was, well… a lot like her. It was a miracle that they hadn’t killed each other yet. "Why wouldn’t it be a White Day present?"
Mari rolled her eyes-there was a very good reason she’d been pretty good at it even before they’d moved to Japan. "Maybe because you’ve told me I couldn’t date until I got married?"
"Did I say that? It sounds like the kind of thing I’d say." He nodded, decisively-then frowned down at her. "But wait, that doesn’t even make sense."
Even through the haze of shock and aching disbelief, he could still make her laugh. She reached out and patted his arm; sometimes, when he wasn’t inviting his female relatives over for behavior modification that they weren’t trained in and that she hadn’t agreed to, she remembered exactly why she missed him so much. "That’s what I said, ‘Tousan."
But it was hard to laugh-it was hard to remember how to breathe-when she finally managed to get the… the thing back to her room, and sat it on her bed. It wasn’t alive, but she still felt that she had to glare down at it for at least an instant, arms crossed. Just to make her point.
The box, she noted, like the person who’d left it behind, was unmoved by her glare.
She couldn’t bear to call it a present-much less a White Day present. Not a… not a real one, not that way. Hiyoshi was single-minded, but he wasn’t dumb: any Regular worth his jersey knew darned well that whatever she gave him on Valentine’s was purely out of obligation. Oh, she always put thought into the gifts, but that was because, privately, she could admit that she rather liked the stupid boys.
There was always, very carefully, very pointedly, no romance in anything she handed them… no matter what Atobe thought. It just wouldn’t do for anyone’s boyfriend to get snorty and snarky and jealous-though, privately, she thought that any gay man who could be threatened by her, of all people, had more issues than anyone short of his own boyfriend could solve. She knew she wasn’t particularly feminine, but for one, she wasn’t male, and for another, she wouldn’t have been an attractive male even if she were male.
The gifts they gave her were often silly, sometimes delightful, sometimes downright gross… but they were the kind of things that she figured gay men could give to a female friend without having to even think about their boyfriends suddenly and perversely worrying about their sexuality. Books and DVDs, little accessories and gourmet foods, or just something small and fun and innocent. The vibrator from Gakuto last year had been the exception, and she probably should have already put a stop to that kind of nonsense-she had the feeling that Gakuto was seeing just how far he could push his tensai. He was going to get a very unpleasant surprise when Oshitari flung aside his glasses and took a trip up to Hueco Mundo to recruit his kin.
Admittedly, that particular anime character’s act had been more Ootori than Oshitari, but she was indeed willing to believe that Oshitari had dealings with demons.
Hiyoshi, though, didn’t have a boyfriend-she didn’t actually know if he had a sexual orientation. Tennis and kobujutsu, as far as she knew, didn’t have a gender, after all.
But he’d been wearing a pressed shirt and damn-your-eyes-sexy blue jeans; he’d had another gift for her in the collective team bag, the kind of thing that she could have opened without embarrassing anyone, if she’d been forced to unwrap her gifts in front of a group of people. Most anyone would have thought that him giving her a utility knife was odd, but by this point, everyone knew that Hyoutei Regulars were bred for tennis, not mental health. A bit like greyhounds, except prettier.
To Taira Mari. She stared at the words accusingly-it just didn’t seem fair that they didn’t come with some kind of explanation, or clarification, or something, anything. You didn’t give someone two White Day gifts unless you had pockets like Atobe’s-Atobe could and did shower Jirou with gifts on random whims. Wait, that wasn’t a good comparison-he only gave them to Jirou, and she certainly wasn’t sleeping in Hiyoshi Wakashi’s bed. There simply wasn’t a good reason for Hiyoshi to have given her anything more than what he’d been forced into.
Was there?
And she could call him and ask what in the name of all the gods it was, but what would she answer when he asked her why she didn’t just open it? "I realise that I’m inexplicably in love with you, but my name isn’t Pandora?"
Gods above, she could just imagine the cross, baffled look he’d give her for that.
It was a rare day when a simple white box terrified her. And yes, she decided, it was possible to procrastinate on opening a… gift.
From Hiyoshi Wakashi.
She didn’t stare at those words for too long. She was his senpai in school, he was her senpai in the dojo, and he was, if anything, less likely to step across those lines than she was. Which was saying a lot. It was already going to hurt far more than anything that didn’t involve sharp objects and crushing blows justifiably could, if by some chance, the wild imaginings that had broken free of their carefully managed little cocoons and started fluttering like butterflies around her head and in her stomach were wrong.
But. But.
It wasn’t wrapped, and it wasn’t taped shut; it seemed almost strange, so paradoxically easy to lift the cover off, even when she half-squeezed her eyes shut to avoid the evils of the world getting into them.
But the gi was almost blindingly white against its black collar-bands, with her name embroidered in glittering gold against the black. He’d gotten the nontraditional kanji right, she noted absently. It was warm and heavy, the cloth stiff with newness and starch when she absently spread it across her lap, the black belt like a slash, and checked the tag.
It was her size. It was exactly her size, but it took her several tries to work that out, because the numbers kept on blurring underneath her gaze.
The envelope lying on top of the cloth hadn’t been sealed-even so, she dropped it twice, and almost ripped the stiff card in trying to get it out, her fingers were trembling so badly.
"You got your ichidan two weeks ago. You shouldn’t still be coming to practice in a plain white gi, Mari-san." She could see him in the words-his tone sounded vaguely chiding, as if she might catch him scolding her if she looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Sensei wants you to start working with the intermediate men’s class; it starts at 6:30 tomorrow."
"Respectfully, Hiyoshi Wakashi."
Respectfully.
He always was extremely respectful, after all.
She put the card back into the envelope, and noticed with some pleasure that her hands were very steady when she folded the gi again, and gently placed it back into its box-and somewhat more pleasure when a flick of her wrist had the card clattering into her trash bin on the first try. It didn’t happen often; her aim simply wasn’t that good, and paper was clumsy.
Taira Mari tipped her head back against the headboard with the soft ‘clunk’ of hard hitting harder, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It was funny-she knew better than to think, or to hope, or to dream-she didn’t have the time to waste on daydreams, when ‘today’ had so much in it that she could potentially micromanage to her treacherous little heart’s content. She laughed because she’d thought that being sick would give her a peaceful day, for once-she did know better, she really did, and the thought of the Gay Brigade of Japan all dressed up in nurse uniforms was going to give her nightmares forever, considering Shishido’s hairy legs. She laughed because her kobujutsu sensei was expecting her at the dojo the next day, virus or no virus; if she protested, Hiyoshi’s father would probably argue that martial arts imbued one with the kiai to resist all forms of illness, and promptly kiss her on the cheek to prove it.
She laughed because the boy she loved was the sort of moron who would bring a girl a brand-new white gi on White Day, and leave it in a conspicuous place in her apartment for her father to find, and genuinely not mean a single bloody thing by it.
"It’s probably just something for practice, that’s all. Why would you think it was a White Day present?"
She should have known better than to think she was actually lying to her father when she said the first thing that came to mind. She did, after all, have a very smart subconscious.
Mari kept laughing until the tears stopped trailing hot tracts down her cheeks.
No… she definitely wasn’t Japanese enough to appreciate the tragic beauty of a White Day present that would never come.
~owari~
Start: May 03, 2007
End: May 10, 2007
This story was originally written for a request on fic_on_demand, because someone wanted a fic about a Mary Sue was was actually enjoyable, and yet managed to have her downfall at the end. So I wrote this, and was trying to poke and pry and edit at it… and then realised that there was no possible way that I could inflict this on a person who’d never read the Roommates, and had never read Mari’s earlier stories. Especially since this was written before Shintai Ryounan… the reason I finally finished the former was because I’d written this!
Tamatebako is actually a jewelry or treasure box-specifically, the box that Urashima Tarou was given by the princess under the sea, and told never to open.
Um... there's a rather loud Bleach reference in here. If you didn't get that whole thing about Oshitari and Hueco Mundo, that was it.
What's a norovirus? Exactly what Mari calls it--an intestinal bug that leads to diarrhea and vomiting. For most people, though, it goes through their system in twenty-four hours--most of the time, it's less. And for some reason, there's been a lot of it here in Virginia this year.
"Odaiji ni" basically means "take care (of it)" but the phrase is most often used when you’re talking to someone who is sick or has been sick; kind of like saying "Get well soon!"
Kabaji knitting socks… uh, yeah. Sorry about that. Anyone who’s read mousapelli’s fics knows where that silly little idea comes from… I can’t help it, I’m a knitter myself… and if any of you are knitters, I have the pattern for those exact socks. They really do come out beautiful. ^^;
Though, well, mousapelli also has Hiyoshi crocheting, and I… couldn’t, I just couldn’t.
Ehehehe… inconsistencies… yes, unfortunately, there are many. Considering the Japanese school system, it’s a toss-up whether or not they’d actually have class on White Day-I suspect that by March 14th, most high schools are on their spring break. But then, if that were the case, there wouldn’t be any excuse for Jirou calling up Mari early in the morning. ^^;
And of course I’m completely making up my martial arts. I don’t know if kobujutsu actually has a belt system-if it’s anything like kendo, however, it is most exceedingly unlikely that Mari be of ichidan level by this point. That’s about equivalent to a beginning-level black belt, in, say, karate or taekwondo-and while in kendo, you can be skipped up levels rather than having to take each level individually, I’ve only known one person who started from scratch as an adult and then took the ikkyuu test (one level below ichidan.) Even then, it took him four years. Furthermore, the tradition of changing your white uniform for a white uniform with black collar and wrists when you attain your black belt is from World Taekwondo Federation rules. Think I’ve bastardised enough martial arts yet?
Part: 2/2
*_*_*_*
Afterwards, Mari found herself huddled back under her covers-shivering, though she didn’t have a fever any longer; dizzy, and she didn’t know if that was viremia or all the blood having vacated her brain, because she obviously didn’t have a drop of common sense left. Because the moment she closed her eyes, she thought she saw an instant of vulnerability in his gaze, thought maybe he’d wanted her to actually like his present.
The truth was, she had liked it-despite it being from him.
She’d thought she’d mostly resigned herself to the damnation of loving him-the one ice cube in her Hell had been knowing that even if he noticed her, he’d never choose to pay attention. What with tennis and martial arts, there wasn’t enough space in his tunnel-vision for lane lines, much less for anything that might constitute a distraction. She’d entertained, for a little while, the idea of creeping little by little out of his peripheral vision, maybe even giving up management of the fanclub, but that was impossible, by this point-he might not see her at the courtside, but he would definitely notice if she didn’t show up at the dojo. So much for prayers.
He understood her, alarmingly enough-the gods only knew that that entire episode with her stalker had proved that.
That wasn’t the same thing, though, as him actually trying to know her.
Telling herself that she was resigned to the damnation of loving him was, she thought a little despairingly, like resigning herself to an earthquake-every time she thought it was over, she was flat on her large and unshapely arse all over again. He was grace and beauty and a fair dollop of grumpiness; he was serenity and focus and a harder head than just about anyone she’d met. And considering how he loved his gekokujou, a twisted little part of him would probably appreciate the whole irony of knocking an older girl mental center-over-keister.
For the sake of her own dwindling sanity, she had best avoid giving him any inkling of that-he might actually start trying, and he was already far too good at it as it was.
Maybe if she kept her head stuck under her covers for long enough, she’d come out to discover that he’d concentrated so hard on his straight and narrow little path that he’d kept walking and just dropped off the edge of the world.
Of course, that would necessitate the world being flat. She groaned into her pillow-loudly. Being sick had nothing on being a teenaged girl under a fox-godling’s curse.
When she heard the key in the lock, Mari almost sighed with relief. There was nothing like her father arriving home to call the cops on her little pity party… and no matter what any movies or books liked to claim, it was very difficult to breathe when one was pitying oneself facedown into a pillow. "Mari? Are you home?"
"Yes, ‘Tousan, I’m in my room. How was your conference?" She hauled herself shakily to her feet and reached up to touch her face-it was blessedly, comfortingly dry. There wasn’t a lot she could do for her complexion or her tired, baggy eyes, to say nothing of the traitorous lump in her chest, but at least she hadn’t started leaking. "You’re home early. I thought you were going to stay over in Nagano tonight?"
Her father always rustled when he walked-she’d never known whether that was because of all the candies he kept in his pockets or because he seemed like the sort who would rustle, just like Jirou was the type who would squeak when squished. He was thin in the face and large around the middle, and she always thought he was the only doctor she knew who looked rumpled in his sleek white coat. "I know, I know. I’ve been leaving you on your own too often, and… what’s this box? There’s a card on it. The handwriting is very neat." She grinned, her hand on the knob of her bedroom door-his own handwriting was rather good, for a doctor’s, but that wasn’t saying much. There was a brief pause, and the sound of her father being silently shocked and horrified and delighted, like any perfectly normal parent of a seventeen-year-old girl, made her grin even wider. "It’s for you? Mari, someone gave you a White Day gift?!" there was a brief pause, brimming with incredulity and what sounded like her father making incoherent little burbling noises.
Mari wondered if she should be insulted that he was so totally surprised.
Her poor father-there just hadn’t been a good, sensible way to explain the whole fanclub president thing to him in a way that anyone who hadn’t met the fangirls could possibly understand. She almost opened her mouth to dash his hopes-right, she normally did tell adults that she was the tennis club manager-when she remembered.
Half-dazed or not, sour-sick mouth or not, she’d carefully put away the gifts already.
Ishikawa or whoever he’d been hadn’t bothered her in quite awhile, but at the same time… Mari poked her head out of her doorway and demanded, "Wait. What do you mean? Where was it?" If it had been on the doorstep, she was calling the cops-The Bastard might have known what general direction she lived in, but she’d never, never taken him to her house.
"It was right here, on the kitchen countertop." His voice was shocked, but stern. "Taira Mariko, have you been keeping secrets? You haven’t told me anything about a Hiyoshi Wakashi."
Norovirus, nothing. Having one’s heart stop mid-beat was far more uncomfortable than intestinal flu.
Her lips moved in a ‘What?’-she hadn’t told him anything about any Hiyoshi Wakashi, why would she have when she normally worked so hard for the express purpose of forgetting a certain Hiyoshi Wakashi-but her voice wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t move. Even to roar. Even to protest that he hadn’t called her Mariko in years, and that now was most assuredly not the time to start, because given the smallest shove and the least provocation, she was going to pass out like a heroine in a fifteen-inch corset.
He was still talking-something rambly about his shock that his little girl was giving out Valentine’s chocolates to boys, like boys were cockroaches-when she stumbled her way out of the room as gracefully as her shaky knees-well, shaky everything-would let her.
There was a box on the counter-large, white, and unwrapped. Hiyoshi’d been carrying it underneath his arm; she hadn’t seen a label on it, but she hadn’t looked. The label was small, anyway-a stiff piece of card stock, carefully stuck on with a piece of tape over each of the corners.
To Taira Mari
From Hiyoshi Wakashi
Dazedly, Mari noted that this wasn’t a prank on the part of Atobe’s boytoy-for one, it would have been quite a trick to get Hiyoshi to carry in such a thing, if it were. Besides, Jirou was admittedly talented, but she’d never noticed that he had a gift for forgery, and Hiyoshi did actually have handwriting so precise that it bordered on boring. Her name looked neater than she’d ever written it herself, and there was just that bit of a showy flourish when he signed his own name, too, exactly like the writing on the grey wrapping paper she’d unwrapped only a few hours before. She was dreaming, of course-except she didn’t believe in dreams, much less in dreams that she hadn’t thought she even could dream, coming true.
She wasn’t sure when her father stepped up behind her-ironic, considering that the rustle of the peppermints he kept in his pockets was as good as a cowbell most days-but she did jump when he laid what seemed like a very cold hand on her forehead. "Mari? You don’t look well," he didn’t sound excited anymore quite so much as… concerned.
"I’ll be fine," she assured him. She probably didn’t look fine-if his hand was cold, it was probably because her face was hot-but if his book had been correct, she wasn’t likely to have any more gastrointestinal symptoms for him to conquer. Thankfully.
If she wasn’t going to be fine in a way that had nothing to do with her intestines, that was something else entirely-and at this instant in time, she had no idea if she was going to be all right. Her world was falling around her ears like hair, and she’d carefully not watched Hiyoshi walking out the door, and he certainly hadn’t said a thing about… anything else. Something else. "I missed class today, though. Um, so one of my friends…" she almost choked on the word; but they were friends, that was the irony of it all. She could speak softly and beat at her feelings with a big stick, but she wouldn’t deny friendship, "…brought some stuff over."
Brought some stuff over, and left a box on the countertop that she hadn’t opened, and that he hadn’t mentioned. Except that it was labelled with her name.
And his.
"Oh." His brows furrowed when she turned to glance at him. "Well, that was nice of her, coming all the way out here." If he was going to assume, she wasn’t going to correct him. "But Mari, who’s this Hiyoshi character? Is he one of your classmates? Did you give him Valentine’s chocolate?"
There were so many ways she could answer that-and the truth was, she was tired of the secrecy, the fear, the ache. It was only a year and a bit more, and then she’d be gone… well, basically forever. Or, more properly, he’d be gone from her life, and then maybe-gods, hopefully, maybe-she’d be able to move on. Finally.
At least her father hadn’t asked if Hiyoshi was her boyfriend-well, it was just a little too far out of the realm of the things she’d hide from him. She wasn’t sure that her heart wouldn’t have just exploded out of her chest like Sgt. Ripley’s Aliens if he had, it was clattering against her rib cage with such force.
"No, ‘Tousan. He’s one of my kobujutsu teachers," she replied, instead, honestly. She hadn’t given Hiyoshi chocolates, and he was sometimes one of the instructors at the Hiyoshi dojo. "It’s probably just something for practice, that’s all. Why would you think it was a White Day present? It’s not even wrapped."
Her voice was firm and rich and confident; to Mari’s surprise, she sounded like she believed it. She had to tell herself she believed it, because… well, how dare she wish otherwise?
Wait, that was ridiculous-how dare she wish at all?
Her father set his jaw, puggishly. She almost smiled again-her mother had been lovely and graceful and immensely charming, but her father was, well… a lot like her. It was a miracle that they hadn’t killed each other yet. "Why wouldn’t it be a White Day present?"
Mari rolled her eyes-there was a very good reason she’d been pretty good at it even before they’d moved to Japan. "Maybe because you’ve told me I couldn’t date until I got married?"
"Did I say that? It sounds like the kind of thing I’d say." He nodded, decisively-then frowned down at her. "But wait, that doesn’t even make sense."
Even through the haze of shock and aching disbelief, he could still make her laugh. She reached out and patted his arm; sometimes, when he wasn’t inviting his female relatives over for behavior modification that they weren’t trained in and that she hadn’t agreed to, she remembered exactly why she missed him so much. "That’s what I said, ‘Tousan."
But it was hard to laugh-it was hard to remember how to breathe-when she finally managed to get the… the thing back to her room, and sat it on her bed. It wasn’t alive, but she still felt that she had to glare down at it for at least an instant, arms crossed. Just to make her point.
The box, she noted, like the person who’d left it behind, was unmoved by her glare.
She couldn’t bear to call it a present-much less a White Day present. Not a… not a real one, not that way. Hiyoshi was single-minded, but he wasn’t dumb: any Regular worth his jersey knew darned well that whatever she gave him on Valentine’s was purely out of obligation. Oh, she always put thought into the gifts, but that was because, privately, she could admit that she rather liked the stupid boys.
There was always, very carefully, very pointedly, no romance in anything she handed them… no matter what Atobe thought. It just wouldn’t do for anyone’s boyfriend to get snorty and snarky and jealous-though, privately, she thought that any gay man who could be threatened by her, of all people, had more issues than anyone short of his own boyfriend could solve. She knew she wasn’t particularly feminine, but for one, she wasn’t male, and for another, she wouldn’t have been an attractive male even if she were male.
The gifts they gave her were often silly, sometimes delightful, sometimes downright gross… but they were the kind of things that she figured gay men could give to a female friend without having to even think about their boyfriends suddenly and perversely worrying about their sexuality. Books and DVDs, little accessories and gourmet foods, or just something small and fun and innocent. The vibrator from Gakuto last year had been the exception, and she probably should have already put a stop to that kind of nonsense-she had the feeling that Gakuto was seeing just how far he could push his tensai. He was going to get a very unpleasant surprise when Oshitari flung aside his glasses and took a trip up to Hueco Mundo to recruit his kin.
Admittedly, that particular anime character’s act had been more Ootori than Oshitari, but she was indeed willing to believe that Oshitari had dealings with demons.
Hiyoshi, though, didn’t have a boyfriend-she didn’t actually know if he had a sexual orientation. Tennis and kobujutsu, as far as she knew, didn’t have a gender, after all.
But he’d been wearing a pressed shirt and damn-your-eyes-sexy blue jeans; he’d had another gift for her in the collective team bag, the kind of thing that she could have opened without embarrassing anyone, if she’d been forced to unwrap her gifts in front of a group of people. Most anyone would have thought that him giving her a utility knife was odd, but by this point, everyone knew that Hyoutei Regulars were bred for tennis, not mental health. A bit like greyhounds, except prettier.
To Taira Mari. She stared at the words accusingly-it just didn’t seem fair that they didn’t come with some kind of explanation, or clarification, or something, anything. You didn’t give someone two White Day gifts unless you had pockets like Atobe’s-Atobe could and did shower Jirou with gifts on random whims. Wait, that wasn’t a good comparison-he only gave them to Jirou, and she certainly wasn’t sleeping in Hiyoshi Wakashi’s bed. There simply wasn’t a good reason for Hiyoshi to have given her anything more than what he’d been forced into.
Was there?
And she could call him and ask what in the name of all the gods it was, but what would she answer when he asked her why she didn’t just open it? "I realise that I’m inexplicably in love with you, but my name isn’t Pandora?"
Gods above, she could just imagine the cross, baffled look he’d give her for that.
It was a rare day when a simple white box terrified her. And yes, she decided, it was possible to procrastinate on opening a… gift.
From Hiyoshi Wakashi.
She didn’t stare at those words for too long. She was his senpai in school, he was her senpai in the dojo, and he was, if anything, less likely to step across those lines than she was. Which was saying a lot. It was already going to hurt far more than anything that didn’t involve sharp objects and crushing blows justifiably could, if by some chance, the wild imaginings that had broken free of their carefully managed little cocoons and started fluttering like butterflies around her head and in her stomach were wrong.
But. But.
It wasn’t wrapped, and it wasn’t taped shut; it seemed almost strange, so paradoxically easy to lift the cover off, even when she half-squeezed her eyes shut to avoid the evils of the world getting into them.
But the gi was almost blindingly white against its black collar-bands, with her name embroidered in glittering gold against the black. He’d gotten the nontraditional kanji right, she noted absently. It was warm and heavy, the cloth stiff with newness and starch when she absently spread it across her lap, the black belt like a slash, and checked the tag.
It was her size. It was exactly her size, but it took her several tries to work that out, because the numbers kept on blurring underneath her gaze.
The envelope lying on top of the cloth hadn’t been sealed-even so, she dropped it twice, and almost ripped the stiff card in trying to get it out, her fingers were trembling so badly.
"You got your ichidan two weeks ago. You shouldn’t still be coming to practice in a plain white gi, Mari-san." She could see him in the words-his tone sounded vaguely chiding, as if she might catch him scolding her if she looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. "Sensei wants you to start working with the intermediate men’s class; it starts at 6:30 tomorrow."
"Respectfully, Hiyoshi Wakashi."
Respectfully.
He always was extremely respectful, after all.
She put the card back into the envelope, and noticed with some pleasure that her hands were very steady when she folded the gi again, and gently placed it back into its box-and somewhat more pleasure when a flick of her wrist had the card clattering into her trash bin on the first try. It didn’t happen often; her aim simply wasn’t that good, and paper was clumsy.
Taira Mari tipped her head back against the headboard with the soft ‘clunk’ of hard hitting harder, and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. It was funny-she knew better than to think, or to hope, or to dream-she didn’t have the time to waste on daydreams, when ‘today’ had so much in it that she could potentially micromanage to her treacherous little heart’s content. She laughed because she’d thought that being sick would give her a peaceful day, for once-she did know better, she really did, and the thought of the Gay Brigade of Japan all dressed up in nurse uniforms was going to give her nightmares forever, considering Shishido’s hairy legs. She laughed because her kobujutsu sensei was expecting her at the dojo the next day, virus or no virus; if she protested, Hiyoshi’s father would probably argue that martial arts imbued one with the kiai to resist all forms of illness, and promptly kiss her on the cheek to prove it.
She laughed because the boy she loved was the sort of moron who would bring a girl a brand-new white gi on White Day, and leave it in a conspicuous place in her apartment for her father to find, and genuinely not mean a single bloody thing by it.
"It’s probably just something for practice, that’s all. Why would you think it was a White Day present?"
She should have known better than to think she was actually lying to her father when she said the first thing that came to mind. She did, after all, have a very smart subconscious.
Mari kept laughing until the tears stopped trailing hot tracts down her cheeks.
No… she definitely wasn’t Japanese enough to appreciate the tragic beauty of a White Day present that would never come.
~owari~
Start: May 03, 2007
End: May 10, 2007
This story was originally written for a request on fic_on_demand, because someone wanted a fic about a Mary Sue was was actually enjoyable, and yet managed to have her downfall at the end. So I wrote this, and was trying to poke and pry and edit at it… and then realised that there was no possible way that I could inflict this on a person who’d never read the Roommates, and had never read Mari’s earlier stories. Especially since this was written before Shintai Ryounan… the reason I finally finished the former was because I’d written this!
Tamatebako is actually a jewelry or treasure box-specifically, the box that Urashima Tarou was given by the princess under the sea, and told never to open.
Um... there's a rather loud Bleach reference in here. If you didn't get that whole thing about Oshitari and Hueco Mundo, that was it.
What's a norovirus? Exactly what Mari calls it--an intestinal bug that leads to diarrhea and vomiting. For most people, though, it goes through their system in twenty-four hours--most of the time, it's less. And for some reason, there's been a lot of it here in Virginia this year.
"Odaiji ni" basically means "take care (of it)" but the phrase is most often used when you’re talking to someone who is sick or has been sick; kind of like saying "Get well soon!"
Kabaji knitting socks… uh, yeah. Sorry about that. Anyone who’s read mousapelli’s fics knows where that silly little idea comes from… I can’t help it, I’m a knitter myself… and if any of you are knitters, I have the pattern for those exact socks. They really do come out beautiful. ^^;
Though, well, mousapelli also has Hiyoshi crocheting, and I… couldn’t, I just couldn’t.
Ehehehe… inconsistencies… yes, unfortunately, there are many. Considering the Japanese school system, it’s a toss-up whether or not they’d actually have class on White Day-I suspect that by March 14th, most high schools are on their spring break. But then, if that were the case, there wouldn’t be any excuse for Jirou calling up Mari early in the morning. ^^;
And of course I’m completely making up my martial arts. I don’t know if kobujutsu actually has a belt system-if it’s anything like kendo, however, it is most exceedingly unlikely that Mari be of ichidan level by this point. That’s about equivalent to a beginning-level black belt, in, say, karate or taekwondo-and while in kendo, you can be skipped up levels rather than having to take each level individually, I’ve only known one person who started from scratch as an adult and then took the ikkyuu test (one level below ichidan.) Even then, it took him four years. Furthermore, the tradition of changing your white uniform for a white uniform with black collar and wrists when you attain your black belt is from World Taekwondo Federation rules. Think I’ve bastardised enough martial arts yet?