Author's Notes: No real plot here, just exploring the relationships of Mika and her family. Beta by Nethene -- hopefully we nixed all the typos and such. :) Feedback, Flames, etc. always welcome.
Disclaimer: Not mine, they all belong to Maki Murakami. The words are my own, however.
::Homebound::
Mika let out a roar of frustration.
A week of being in the same house as the rest of her family and she was ready to kill each and every one of them in the most imaginative ways possible. Letting out a hiss of air she dropped the offending cup in the sink to join the other half-washed dishes and turned off the faucet. She hated doing dishes with a passion, of all household chores it was the one that actually made her feel physical pangs of dread. As soon as Eiri had been old enough she had passed the chore off to him, and then he had pawned it off on poor little Tatsuha.
But with her youngest brother filling in for their father at the temple and the smoking-nuisance barricading himself in his room, all the housework was left to her. Mika glared at the dishes a bit more as she began drying her hands. Sometimes she wondered if she married Tohma for the luxuries, such as a dishwasher.
“If they want clean dishes, they can clean them,” she muttered, throwing the dishtowel at the wall as she wandered out of the kitchen. She was tired of doing everything. She had to make breakfast, lunch and dinner, even running to the store for seasoning, not to mention cleaning the entire house and temple, while Eiri and their father just slept. Tatsuha was excused from blame – he had to put up with temple politics all day.
Granted their father had a good excuse for his lack of helpfulness as well.
Mika stomped through the house, almost hoping her footfall would wake the lazy men of her family as she frowned at her wet hands and hoped the soap wouldn’t dry them out. She let out a sigh, bumping against the wall as she leaned down and picked up Tatsuha’s carelessly discarded jacket.
Two weeks ago she had received a call from the Kyoto medical center informing her that her father had suffered a stroke. He had passed out in the temple while praying. Tatsuha found him and promptly called the hospital. Fortunately it had only been a small stroke, but Mika had rushed to Kyoto with Eiri in tow, whether he liked it or not.
Thus far Eiri had been kind enough to keep his biting commentary to a minimum. Though whether it was out of respect or because he was actually a little worried about his elderly father, Mika wasn’t sure; either way she was glad for a reprieve from his usual contrary behavior.
She loved her brother dearly, but she did not always like him.
Walking through the temple Mika gave the statue of Kannon a bow and took a moment to say a short prayer for her father. The old man had been discharged from the hospital a week ago and been given strict orders to stay off his feet. Mika, being the dutiful daughter she was, had agreed to stay until he was up and moving again. She wasn’t sure why Eiri had elected to stay, though she suspected he wanted a break from his pink-haired little lover.
She gave the statue a final bow and continued on her way through the temple, picking up a strewn robe and shaking her head at the slovenly nature of her youngest brother. It amazed her that they had ever managed to live under the same roof without murdering one another. Though last time she had lived with her family, her brothers had been younger and actually listened to her.
“Not again,” she moaned, dropping the clothes in front of Tatsuha’s door as she covered her ears and continued walking. He was playing his Nittle Grasper CD’s at obnoxious volumes again, as he did every night. And Mika no longer cared if she liked the music or if her husband was in the band, if she had to hear ‘Sleepless Beauty’ or ‘Shining Collection’ one more time she was going to scream!
Quickening her step she moved down the hall and let her hands drop as she passed Eiri’s room, thanking all the stars in the heavens that he had not taken to playing Bad Luck’s music.
Moving toward her own room Mika found herself slowing as she caught sight of the phone and stopped beside it. For a moment she stared at it defiantly. Then, swallowing her pride, she picked up the receiver and dialed her home in Tokyo. It was really no surprise when she got the machine. Tohma was probably still at NG. She smirked. Who was she kidding? He probably hadn’t even left his office since she departed for Kyoto. If not for her constant nagging she was fairly certain he would sleep at NG.
She winced at the sudden, almost perverse, pleasure she took in knowing that her husband was nowhere near her brother during her absence. She had long since given up being angry about the feelings Tohma had for Eiri, but that did not mean she didn’t feel petty about the situation every once in a while.
“That is remarkably immature,” she sighed to herself as she hung up the phone, refusing to leave another message.
She had left one earlier when she called to tell Tohma her father was going to make a full recovery, and cursed herself as soon as she finished. She actually told him she missed him. That wasn’t right. He was supposed to be the one missing her and romantically board a midnight train to Kyoto to come and sweep her off her feet. Mika smirked to herself and decided she needed to stop watching romance movies in the middle of the night.
Turning away from the phone she frowned at the light streaming from the room at the end of the hallway – her father’s room. “Father?” she called out quietly as she walked toward the door. She could hear the soft mutterings of an elderly voice within. “Father? I’m coming in,” she said, sliding the fragile door open and stepping inside.
The old man jerked at the sound of her voice and looked up from where he was praying to a small Buddha on his dressing table. With a sigh, and affecting her best motherly pose, Mika frowned. “Father, your doctor says you are restricted to bed rest,” she scolded in an annoyed tone. Her father had done nothing but evade her care and do everything the doctor told him specifically not to since his return home. “I promise you that Buddha isn’t going anywhere. You need to rest.”
“I was speaking to your mother, actually,” the old man responded stiffly, setting a picture that Mika hadn’t noticed beside the bronze statue.
Mika felt the color drain from her face as her hands slipped from her hips. “Oh,” was all she could manage to say as she moved forward, kneeling down and helping her father back under his blankets. He winced in pain as she settled him down for the night. For a moment he seemed so weak and old, not at all like the stern figure that had denied her so much in life.
Her eyes trailed from her frail father to the picture on the dressing table. Her mother had been a beautiful woman, with long hair just a shade darker than Eiri’s and blue eyes that matched the sky just after sunset. She had a smile on her face in every picture Mika had ever seen, a gentle and reassuring look, as if she could make all the ills of the world disappear with a hug or comforting word.
“She was a good woman,” a voice said, making Mika look way from her ever-young mother and down at her aged father once more. There was a sad and distant look on his face, and for a moment Mika truly pitied him. “She deserved more than the life I gave her, but she never seemed to regret marrying a simple Buddhist abbot, even if it had been arranged between our parents.”
“You need to sleep, Father,” she said softly, pulling the blankets up under his chin and brushing a hand over his forehead. He nodded, though his eyes were distant as she rose and turned off the lights. “Good night,” she whispered, backing out of the room and sliding the door closed behind her.
Mika bit her lip and closed her eyes as she rested her forehead against the doorframe, her hands shaking just slightly. It had been a long while since she thought of her mother. She remembered how happy the woman had been, even when Eiri was pouting and baby Tatsuha was bawling. She remembered how her mother would tell her stories at night as she brushed her hair. She also remembered how angry she had been at the woman for leaving her alone, leaving her without a mother and with all the duties of the woman of the house.
It had been hard to fill in as a mother for her brothers. She had only been thirteen. Her biggest worries should have been stupid crushes and test scores. Not running to the store in the middle of the night because her father had forgotten to buy diapers for Tatsuha, not staying up to help Eiri with his schoolwork and neglecting her own.
She pushed away from her father’s door, content the man had fallen asleep, and began to walk down the hallway, unconsciously rubbing at the scars on her arm. With time she had come to accept that her mother had not meant to leave her with all the responsibilities, that her mother loved and cared for her. And sometimes when she remembered that, Mika could also remember the arm reaching out protectively as the car slid out of control and the world became the blinding light of oncoming traffic.
“Hey sis!”
Mika nearly jumped out of her skin at the sound of Tatsuha’s voice. She blinked, surprised to find she’d wandered outside and her brother was sitting on the stairs leading to the rock garden and goldfish pond. He grinned cheekily at having frightened her. “What’s got you so distracted?”
“Wondering if your brains have turned to mush with how loud you listen to that,” she said, nodding toward the headsets hanging around his neck and blaring music loud enough that she could easily place the song as ‘Shining Collection’. Tatsuha stuck his tongue out and muttered some comment about his sister having no taste as he took the hint and tuned off the music – then turned back to his sister and fluttered his eyelashes adoringly as he waited for a real answer.
Mika sighed. He wasn’t going to like the answer.
“I was thinking about our mother,” she said as gently as possible, hiding a wince as the smile faded on Tatsuha’s face and he turned away to look at the pond. “Oh,” was all he said as he began fiddling with the wire of his headsets. Mika smiled sadly as she walked over to sit beside him on the stairs. She knew it hurt Tatsuha that he didn’t have a single memory of their mother.
“Do you think she attained Nirvana?” he asked softly as he kicked a renegade stone off the stair.
“She was not exactly a follower of the eight-fold path,” Mika replied, reaching out and stroking her brother’s dark hair. “But she was good enough she would have attained it very soon.”
“Sometimes,” Tatsuha began as he took off his headsets and set them on the porch. “Sometimes I think I can remember her if I try really hard.” He sighed. “But I can’t. And when I look at pictures of her,” he paused, “I can’t imagine how I could be related to such a lovely, smiling person. I don’t look a thing like her.”
“You have her eyes,” Mika assured him as she searched for other characteristics. It was true that he did not have as many of the physical similarities to their mother as she and Eiri did, but he had gotten more of her spirit than the two of them combined. “And you crinkle your nose when you’re thinking in just the same way she did.” Mika laughed as a sudden thought came to her. “You know, she was a horrible flirt too, though she didn’t mean to be. I was sixteen when I first realized that, and only because Noriko does the same walk and smile.”
“The hip sway, suggestive grin combo?” Tatsuha asked, dispelling his melancholy as he jumped to his feet. “I can do that, you know,” he said as he began to demonstrate, shaking his hips exaggeratedly and fluttering his eyelashes as he strutted with a plastic grin. “Look at me! I’m soooo sexy! You know you wanna do me.”
Mika moaned, shaking her head and glaring half-heartedly at her brother. “Amazing, you’ve actually managed to embarrass me and there’s no one else around,” she said as he sat down and grinned at her, fluttering his eyelashes adoringly. “You inherited a lot of things from her, but not her subtly.”
Tatsuha continued to grin at her before looking away. “Tell me more about her,” he said in a strangely quiet voice. “I know she preformed the tea ceremony excellently and her favorite dress was green, but father never tells me anything else. ‘Cept how she died.”
The old scars seared with new pain and Mika felt a familiar panic begin to overcome her at the mention of her mother’s death. She sucked in a deep breath and blinked back the welling tears. She could fight her own demons later. Right now she needed to focus on Tatsuha, it was obvious how difficult it was for him to ask about their mother.
“She never much cared for being inside,” Mika said, leaning back and looking up at the sky. It was a lovely night, even the light pollution of the city couldn’t obscure the many bright stars and the sliver of a moon that shown down upon them. “Her favorite story to tell me was how there were no goldfish in the pond when she married our father, and that she caught them at the summer festival and made father carry them home.
“I remember when I was very young she would bring me out here at night and sit by the pond, so I could listen to the goldfish jump and we would watch the stars. She would tell me how the stars were gatherings of dead souls that watched over the living. Father was always upset by that explanation,” she sighed, suddenly unable to formulate words as she remembered her mother’s sweet voice being drowned by her father’s annoyed words – decrying her mother’s story. Mika looked over at her brother and shook her head. “I’m sorry Tatsuha, I just don’t know what to tell you.”
“Anything,” Tatsuha said in a painfully quiet voice, and Mika was suddenly reminded her brother was only sixteen – not twenty-six, though he sometimes made that very hard to remember. In a strange way he was probably the most responsible of the three of them.
A flash of light caught Mika’s attention and both she and Tatsuha turned and blinked in surprise. Eiri was leaning against the wall, lighting a cigarette, and Mika wondered just how long he had been standing there, but decided not to ask. No use starting a ‘bitchfest’, as Tohma had once called the petty arguments between her and her brother, though if Eiri began it she vowed to win.
The blond put the lighter back in his pocket and took the cigarette out of his mouth, exhaling a cloud of smoke. He kept staring aimlessly up at the sky, not looking at either of his siblings, as he spoke: “She liked doughnuts.”
From anyone else such a trite comment would have been trivializing their mother’s memory; but from Eiri it was opening up and sharing a fond memory. Mika smiled slightly as she turned away, looking up toward the stars as she reached over and wrapped an arm around Tatsuha’s shoulder. “Yes, she did,” Mika said softly as her youngest brother leaned on her shoulder and Eiri came close enough to lean on the porch railing. “And she liked cherry trees, yaoi manga, and fireworks during festival time.”
“She did not like yaoi manga,” Eiri mumbled around his cigarette.
“Third cabinet from the left in the kitchen, behind the cups,” Mika said with a faint smile. “They’re still there if you’re looking for pointers. If I recall she had some pretty nasty ones.”
Eiri snorted and tapped the ash from his cigarette.
“Third cabinet, huh,” Tatsuha said with a grin that Mika could hear.
“I had better not find them sticky when I next come home,” Mika said in mock warning, though she made a mental note to put on gloves the next time she was dusting her mother’s secret manga stash.
“Should I ask why you’re looking at yaoi manga?” Tatsuha asked with a small laugh.
“Unsatisfying sex life,” Eiri deadpanned, and Mika shot him a vicious look.
“I think we should stop talking about this before I decide to smother you both in your sleep,” Mika threatened half-heartedly. It had been a very long time since they had all sat out on the porch and just talked without degenerating into a fight. “She would have been proud of you both, you know.”
“No doubt, if her choice in reading material is any indication,” Eiri said, taking another drag off his cigarette. But there was an undercurrent to his words that seemed almost pleased with the statement, as well as a slight upward curve of his lips.
“Honestly?” Tatsuha asked as he curled up closer to his sister, like he had as a very young child. Mika smiled a bit and held him close, letting him half-curl into her lap. Tatsuha has always been a snuggler in a family of people that did not like to be touched. And sometimes she wondered if a lack of physical affection was the reason for his extroverted sexuality.
“Uh huh,” Mika nodded, rubbing her arm over Tatsuha’s arm as Eiri deigned to sit beside them on the stairs. He kept a respectable distance between himself and his siblings, but it was the nearest he had been in years – without Mika applying substantial force.
Silence fell between them as they sat and watched the stars, and Mika found it a wonder that none of them felt the need to start a fight or an insult contest. She shifted to let Tatsuha settle himself more comfortably on her lap and uncertainly leaned toward Eiri, tentatively laying her head on his shoulder. He tensed a moment before letting out a sound of acceptance and resting his head against hers.
Mika let out a sigh of contentment and smiled as a shooting star streaked across the sky.
Fin. |