誕生日の女の子
She loved birthdays. She really did. She always had.
She used to be ecstatic about anyone's birthday, be it her mother, father, Midori, Shiori, Ryu, or Obaasan (when she tolerated such celebrations) because it meant a full day of fun and trivial happiness when everybody let their inner child loose to run around like little demons without judgement. Birthdays were synonymous with fun and happiness, more so than any ordinary day or holiday.
But now, April twentieth came without warning.
She used to count down the days to her birthday, long for it. Something good always happened on her birthday. This year she hadn't even noticed its arrival. She had no clue how her birthday had come upon her without her noticing it. It did not bring festivity and merriment to her as it used to.
She was nineteen today. This was her fourth birthday without her family. The first one she would remember since she went missing. It was hard for her to feel much of anything positive today.
On their birthday, the rest of her family would plan the whole day out to be perfect. There would be omurice for breakfast with a big smiley face of tomato sauce and a bright good morning! written under the face. Hidden under the plate to be found after the omurice was devoured was a secret note. Following the note's instruction led to another on the fridge, made of all the magnetic letters stuck to the door, pointing off in the direction to go to next.
That was usually the living room. The TV was turned on and paused to a video recording of a spluttering baby sitting in a high chair, a party hat on their head. The baby was staring in awe at the huge cake her mother carried in from the side, as if beginning to plan what was the best way to devour it all. The video recording held all the birthday cake-eating videos of Midori and Pai since they way old enough to eat cake, right up until to their most recent birthday.
After watching the video in its entirety, a little note would float up on the TV screen like the credits sequence in dramas, directing them to go upstairs. There, in their bedroom, they'd find gifts from mother, father, and sister on the bed, draped in pretty wrappers that she loved to keep saved in a drawer in her desk because they were too wonderful to simply rip to shreds.
In the middle of the three carefully arranged presents was a huge card from the rest of the family, wishing a happy, happy, happy! birthday. Not a moment later, her parents and sister would burst into the room and they'd all fall to the floor screeching in mad laughter as everyone tickled and poked at each other. Her father remembered to pull out his camera and snap as many pictures as he could while his two daughters hauled him back down and threw their arms around his neck as they hugged him as tight as they could. They laughed when he pretended like he couldn't breathe, their mother snapping up the camera to take the pictures he couldn't.
After they all calmed down, they'd go back down to the kitchen, where her mother would take out a birthday cake for the special girl – or man – to eat while someone took a video of it to add to the compilation, to be played the following year. Midori always used to make sure to splatter as much of the chocolate and vanilla cake on Pai's nose and face as she possibly could. If either of their parents tried to stop it, both daughters would launch slices of cake at their faces, and then they'd all pick the mess of cake off each other's faces and eat it.
She loved birthdays. She did. She always had.
The tradition was repeated every year. While some might think it boring and annoying, she never got tired of it. But now, now she just hurt when she thought about the family tradition she wasn't sure she'd ever get to play in again.
It was exhausting trying to make sure nobody – or at least close to nobody – knew it was her birthday that Saturday, the day before her impending meeting with Aihara Rukia, self-heralded 'Hanyou'. Making sure no one else found out about it was hard, mostly because of Shiori and Kouta. The two conspired together against everyone else more often than they did against each other, which was a massive headache for every inhabitant of Ayashi House ninety-eight percent of the time.
If Obaasan's cane wasn't launched at Haru, it was always at the ready for anything Kouta or Shiori may try to pull off on any given day. No one so much as dared to protect them from Obaasan when she caught them, either. Kouta being the future leader of one of the most powerful Ayakashi Clans in Japan made absolutely no difference, and afforded him no protection.
It was often hilarious to see how terrified Kouta was of a little old human lady who was over a foot shorter than him.
Shiori (obviously) told Kouta that today was Pai's birthday, but thankfully, she didn't tell anyone else. Ryu was the only other one besides Shiori and Kouta who knew, and Pai had to bribe him with onigiri and more than half of her allowance to make sure he didn't tell anyone. She didn't think it was too much to guess that that money would go for more food.
If he ever went that route in life, Ryu would make a ruthless businessman. Pai hadn't actually intended on paying him for his silence.
Shiori was a lot more hyper than usual. She'd burst into Pai's room, singing 'Happy Birthday' too loud for a Saturday morning. Pai was so taken aback by Shiori's merriment that she could only stare for a a solid ten seconds before she picked up her pillow and flung it at Shiori as hard as she could.
That did nothing to deter her bouncing around in cackling glee until Jirou threatened to dunk her head in the toilet. She retaliated by lobbing her shoe at him. The ensuing scuffle escalated until practically everyone in the house was throwing shoes and cushions at each other.
It was only when Obaasan howled at everyone to shut up and shut down that they finally settled, giggling insanely to each other while she scolded their brains out for messing the house up. Pai was certain one half of her navy blue ballet flats was still in Yuu's room though.
Unfortunately, Obaasan knew about her birthday. All Shiori had to do to get out of clean-up duty was tell her that she'd made plans with Pai to go out for her birthday, and that she didn't have time to clean after the mess she'd started. Pai was astounded that Obaasan actually smiled and nodded, releasing them from clearing everything back to its designated place.
Obaasan never smiled.
This was how Pai found herself dragged out into Sapporo to go shopping for presents. She didn't want to receive any presents. Though they both begrudgingly agreed to it, Shiori had made such a sad face and was so depressed for a good long hour that, at Kouta's coaxing, Pai hesitantly concurred to buy presents for everyone else. She wanted absolutely no presents, at all.
"I will burn all you own if you dare try anything, Shii-chan." She had to threaten.
Shiori crinkled her nose at the idea of a compromise. "Whoever heard of that ridiculousness? Buying gifts for other people on your birthday. Do you know how insane that sounds?"
No more insane than I probably am, she thought miserably as she put on a bright smile for Shiori. It came out as more of a monkey's painful grimace.
"My birthday. I get to do what I want."
"But – "
She pointed at herself, as if Shiori was dumb and didn't know who she was talking about. "Mine. Take it or leave it, Shii-chan."
Shiori took it.
Shiori was ridiculously good at springing surprises on people. She wasn't good at accepting any counter-surprises in return, though she somehow maintained an air of grace when she finally gave in.
Pai couldn't have explained why she didn't want presents, no matter how much Shiori tried wheedling it out of her. She just didn't want any gifts. Maybe it was because of where she'd been for the three whole years, what she'd done in that time. So Fu didn't exactly strike her as the type of organization that celebrated the birthdays of its coerced Agents.
Shiori still warned her to expect a present from Shiori anyway when they got back home, whether she liked it or not. Pai agreed with the terms, deeming it more acceptable than everyone at home making a big deal out of an ordinary thing.
She was glad that she was managing to keep her depression close to her, enough that no one could see it.
Shin was out in the city with them too; to accompany and act as their glorified bodyguard the way he had at Kyoto. She tried very hard not to look at him, because every time she did, she blushed like an insane hedgehog hyped up on drugs. Even if she never said aloud how she felt about him, he'd see it on her face, plain as day.
But that wasn't the biggest thing to happen on her birthday.
Shiori, without mentioning it to anyone at all, decided that it was long past time Aoi, Natsume, and Shuusei got to meet the boyfriend they knew existed, yet had never actually lain eyes on. They knew that Shiori was dating someone, steadily, for the last year or two, but even though they all pestered her to at least see a picture of him, Shiori never gave in one inch.
It went...surprisingly well.
Pai half expected the police to be called in at some point or something equally terrifying, considering the age difference, but that didn't happen. Kouta was a hell of a lot more nervous than he'd ever admit when he realized Shiori's plan. So nervous, in fact, that he attempted to lob a dumpling at Shiori for springing the surprise on him. She responded by kissing him full on the lips, eliciting a bright blush from Pai and a low chuckle from Shin that made her heart squeeze excruciatingly.
Pai was relatively certain that the three friends weren't too overly suspicious because of the age difference thanks to seeing that little interaction as they had entered the cafe. It was plain to see that Kouta was entirely enamoured with Shiori.
They all sat at a booth for a group of their size in Taiyou Café. Shin was across from her. His long legs took up quite a bit of space, his feet somewhere on either side of hers, and she had been sitting with her knees pressed tight together to avoid touching him. In the enclosed space, she thought she was going to melt into a puddle from the sheer heat of his presence there.
He did not seem to notice her discomfort, though she caught a little smile playing about his lips every so often. She worried that she was being too obvious, and then wondered what it meant if he knew why she was acting weird, and kept quiet about it, and then wondered why he would keep quiet about it if he knew, and that was where she stopped herself thinking in endless circles.
Shin had changed since Kagetora's training, and it wasn't just his state of being Kamigami now. It was his personality. He'd become more playful – more like a tamer version of Shinigami, if she was being honest about it. He wasn't the moody older brother anymore, but more of the moody older brother who liked to spontaneously play pranks for no other reason that he felt like it, at an amped up degree from before.
Just the other day she saw irrefutable proof of it. She was walking past the dojo the Daitengu trained in, taking clothes to the laundry room for Yukiji while Mizutani watched the kids, when she saw Shin teaching Jirou, Kaede, Yuu, and Haru something he learned from Kagetora. While he got Jirou and Haru to spar, she saw him smirk mischievously and wave his hand a little. It wasn't really noticeable, and she only saw it because of her position at the threshold of the door.
A second later, the ground under Haru's feet dipped a little, as if some invisible force had pushed the floorboards down without splitting the wood apart. Haru tripped, and she'd caught a hint of his crimson-tinged wings flaring out as he expertly manoeuvred himself so that he didn't fall flat on his face. But Jirou still got a good whack in with his shinai spear, which made the others laugh heartily – Shin a little more subtly than the others, but he still laughed, his face lit up with mirthful glee that had her heart racing in a matter of seconds.
She almost didn't realize what Shin had done, until she had walked away and come to an abrupt halt when she remembered what Haru once told her; when Shinigami was out, he was as strong as a god.
But now Shin was Shinigami, and Shinigami was Shin. They were one and the same. He was an actual god now, somehow, despite everything seemingly having returned to normal.
She wondered if they could feel the shift in tandem between them and him, and if it affected their relationship. They were all like family, born from blood and sorrow and tied together by love and duty. She hoped that Shin's being Kamigami didn't change things to the point that it all fell apart.
She doubted it could, anyway. The Daitengu were family. It would take more than one of them shifting into something they weren't quite sure of to drive them apart from one another. Not after everything they'd been through together. She knew that they were there for Shin, just like he was there for them.
×
Aoi and Natsume were enamoured with the fact that Shiori's boyfriend was a hot foreigner-looking haafu (Pai was sure Kouta's bashful admittance of being quarter British was purely an act), and older than them all to boot. Shuusei was a tad suspicious of Kouta and Shin, finding it hard to believe that Shiori's boyfriend just happened to be best friends with their new Math teacher. Despite that, Pai took his little glances as more of making sure that Kouta wouldn't think to hurt his friend than anything else.
Shuusei was smart, and he'd known Shiori for years. He knew Shiori wasn't foolish enough to get entangled with the wrong guy. The fact that Shiori and Kouta had been together for over a year was testament of the fact.
The very idea made Pai want to laugh, though. Kouta, hurt Shiori? He was more likely to break several bones – notably, the neck – of anyone who hurt Shiori. Maybe carve them up a little, shatter a leg or two, before ending them for daring to hurt her.
Pai had a feeling Shuusei would join in, too.
"Pai-chan..."
Despite the light mood of the conversation flowing around her at the booth they'd occupied, she couldn't stop thinking about what Aihara had said to her two days ago. She was driving herself crazy going in circles, yet she couldn't yank herself out of the path that led her back to the same question, over and over again like a haunted merry-go-round; how could she be Hanyou? There was just no way. It didn't make any sense.
"Pai-chan...?"
The more she'd thought about it, the more certain she was. Both her parents were irreconcilably human, almost boringly so. She grew up knowing she was different from others because she could see the Ayakashi, sense the differences in their presence and power in her stomach, but her parents weren't like her.
They were normal, they were human.
She'd so longed to be like them because of how unaffected they were by the numbing chill of Yori Chiisai breathing down her neck when she followed her mother down the supermarket aisles, joined her father in hunting down for books in the library, or when Midori would blow-dry and brush her hair to braid down her back for the coming of the night.
Neither of her parents gave her the feeling she got when around Hengen. Neither wore charms to make them look human – the only thing they never took off were their wedding rings. Even then she had seen the rings come off every once in a while. For her mother, when she was doing the dishes or some house chores where she didn't want to damage her ring. For her father, only when he took it off to show it to her when she'd asked to see it when she was seven years old.
"Pai-chan?"
It was simply impossible that she wasn't human. She didn't have extra fingers, her spirit didn't randomly pop out of her suddenly sleeping body with only her tail connecting her to her body, she couldn't levitate things around without touching them, she didn't have fur on her ears – but her dreams whispered treacherously in her mind, reminding her of all she'd done in her memories, all the inhuman things she'd done.
There were Kuniumi's taunting whispers in her mind, too. Kuniumi made it seem, so many times, like Pai wasn't normal. That there was something different about her that wasn't just connected to her past with So Fu, or that she could see Ayakashi where other people couldn't.
Her lips wobbled as she thought about Kuniumi. This was the fourth day since she'd left. Pai felt like she was walking around her days with a limb missing, a hole in her mind that was worse than the blankness of trying to remember something that eluded her grasp. She was emotionally unstable, wanting to cry all the time but unable make the tears come in her eyes. Her heart was a stone in her chest, aching as it pulsed to keep her alive.
She never expected to feel Kuniumi's absence so sharply like this. Taking a dagger to her chest would be better than this aching numbness hounding her every act, every word, every thought that had no accompanying snicker. At least with that she could do something to relieve the pain. This...this was worse because she didn't know how to fix it.
How do you make things better with someone who wasn't there to hear a word you said?
"Oi, Pai-chan, are you a zombie?"
She blinked owlishly, yanking herself back to reality when a hand waved in front of her face. Shin was watching her with a slight frown on his brows, but she shook her head off her bleak ruminations and looked to her left. Natsume sat grinning at her with those twinkling green eyes that so uncannily matched Shuusei's.
"You okay?" Natsume asked, peering at her with the same concern Pai spied in Shin's eyes a second before. "You were kind of lost for a second. Actually, for a couple of minutes."
Oops.
"I am fine," she smiled vacuously. She noticed Kouta whisper something to Shin. He kept his eyes trained on her for a moment longer, a weight on her shoulders, a fire in her cheeks, before turning his attention to Kouta. She turned hers to Natsume, guilty for drifting off. "What's...up?"
Natsume giggled at her pathetic attempt to sound like an off-hand teenager. By now, they all knew how much she stoically stuck to formal speech. They never questioned it, simply accepting it as the package deal Pai came in. It was always painfully obvious when she tried to use informal speech, and so awkward for her that she rarely bothered anymore. They seemed to find it more amusing than annoying, so she guessed it was all right and not that big of a deal.
"What's up with you?" she returned, cheeks dimpling, unable to contain her glee. She bumped her shoulder against Pai and leaned over to conspiratorially whisper, "Hey, d'you want to come to the bathroom with me?
Translation; I have something to tell you, or want to ask you something, but for both our sakes let's do it somewhere we won't be eavesdropped on. Either that, or, The subject of interest is too close and will hear us.
Shiori said the exact same words to her so many times that she didn't need to be asked twice to know what they meant. She wondered what Natsume wanted to tell her, or ask, as the girl told everyone they were going to the bathroom. Aoi was too busy covering her giggles as Shuusei whispered something in her ear. Shiori beamed at her as she waved them away, obviously ecstatic that Pai was now close to another person besides her.
She wouldn't have been surprised if that was Shiori's goal for this little get-together all along – she was hell-bent on turning Pai into some sort of white-haired social butterfly.
Pai had to smother a laugh at the thought of a bumbling, awkward butterfly flapping around with a mane of white fur along its back.
As she got out of the booth and passed by Kouta and Shin, she glanced down and caught Kouta nodding at her. "Careful out there, Pai-chan."
She knew what he was warning her about. Teke Teke had gotten into the bathroom at the train station when it shouldn't have been able to. No one had a clue how the Yori Chiisai was strong enough to go that far – and there was no telling just how far that could go.
Natsume and Pai manoeuvred their way around the tables in the brightly lit café. They successfully managed to avoid tripping over outstretched legs and narrowly missed a head-on collision with a waitress delivering a steaming cup of coffee to a man by a table set next to the large open window on which Taiyou Café's name was scripted on in golden, swirling paint.
The bathroom was just as nice and well-maintained as the rest of the café. She felt a little bad for stepping on the neat, white-tiled floor, thinking about how hard someone must have mopped it to make it shine like that.
Natsume walked to the row of five sinks, white kitten heels clicking on the tiles. She was dressed nice for the outing today. She wore sheer black stockings under a boysenberry purple skirt that flared out until an inch above her knees. The white blouse she wore contrasted well with her skirt and stockings, and she had on a long necklace that reached just past her chest, with a bejewelled red owl hanging on the chain. Her purse perfectly matched her entire outfit, black with little white holes made into the shapes of flowers.
Unwillingly, she remembered that Natsume bought the blouse the day Shiori and Pai joined her and Aoi out to explore the city.
The day the Onihitokuchi took her.
The day Shin lost his Mask.
The day that led them here, down this path that had her in love with a Kamigami she shouldn't be thinking about like that.
Pai was dressed far simpler. Shiori insisted on trying to clothe her, but she outright refused when she saw that Shiori wanted to put her in a sleeveless frilly blue dress that was a little short and a little tight. It was like a shirt on Shiori than an actual dress.
Instead, Pai went with leggings and a golden-yellow sweater that was comfortably big on her, but not so much that her hands disappeared into its sleeves. And of course, her beloved, worn-out sneakers bedecked her feet. Shiori just sighed long-sufferingly and said a prayer out loud for the shoes to meet their fate sooner rather than later.
Pai threw another pillow at her.
Natsume leaned forward to the mirror to check that her hair was still obediently pinned up in a bun atop her head, the lights above catching reddish blonde accents in her brown-gold hair and making her look like she was glowing with radiance and light. Pai remembered how annoyed she got by her own errant hair wildly escaping her bun, and swearing to herself that she'd never try such a hairstyle ever again.
She had her hair done in two braids on either side of her hair because, even after all this time, she still couldn't do her hair in one plait the way she used to. That was how her hair was that fateful day at the train station, when Shiharu died. She still found it hard to eat because a little drop of tomato sauce or red chilli looked too much like blood. But she made herself eat regular portions despite how often she didn't want to, remembering how disappointed Shin was when he thought she was giving up on living because of her guilt, and how enraged the remaining Matsumoto family were to discover she was skipping meals.
She glanced nervously back at the stalls, watching each open door for long seconds before moving to the next. Her eyes were on the ceiling, watching for any strange bump that moved, when Natsume spoke and jarred her out of the fear spreading like wildfire in her veins.
"So, since when are you dating our Math teacher?"
What.
She spun on her heels and stared at Natsume's reflection, as if the girl had fallen and conked her head on the sidewalk on the way to Taiyou Café. Maybe she had. Pai did her best to avoid looking at her own reflection, at her own white hair that so bespoke to how abnormal she was, how blood-soaked her past was.
"I'msorrywhat?"
"Don't worry, I don't have a thing for him," she waved her hands in a placating manner, as if that was why she thought Pai squealed like a stuck pig. "He's incredibly hot, like, seriously, but not my type."
How is he not everyone's type.
She shook her head to chase away the wild thought and blinked stupidly at Natsume, trying to hedge. "I have no idea what you are talking about."
Natsume grinned coyly at her through the mirror. "I've got no problem with it – no purobulemo," she laughed at her badly accented English. "I'm just curious about how come you never told anyone. Hey, wait, does Shiori know?"
"I'm – I'm – I'm not – " she spluttered.
Natsume rolled her eyes. "Come on – Shiori's dating that blond hottie Kouta-san, and you're dating his best friend, our Math teacher. Don't worry, I won't tell any teachers. Have you guys gone on a double-date yet? That'd be like, quadruple beauty blindness or something." She smiled impishly.
Pai looked to the ceiling, pleading to the gods for deliverance from people who could jump to such conclusions so quickly. She dropped her gaze down to staring at Natsume with such wide eyes, she thought her eyeballs might fall out of their sockets. She tried to speak, found herself unable to. She shook her head and forced words out of her throat. She came out sounding like she was a frog just throttled and brought back to life.
"I am not – " she coughed, fought to lower her voice when a woman in a short purple blouse and white skinny jeans walked in, sidestepping her to go to one of the stalls. She walked to the sink beside Natsume and continued in hushed tones, "I am not dating Sh – Hayashi-san. Seriously."
"Uh-uh." Natsume grinned in an unsettling manner. "Is that so."
Pai knew right then and there that she could swear up and down the place that she wasn't in a relationship with Shin, and Natsume still wouldn't believe her. She suppressed a groan as a familiar headache knocked at the back of her skull. She could understand why Shiori was friends with Natsume. The two were interminable when they fixated on some idea conjured up in their heads.
"I am not dating him," she tried again, and even to herself she sounded unconvincing. "He is a teacher, Natsume-san."
"And...?"
Pai blinked at her. "Does that mean nothing to you?" she asked, shocked.
Natsume smirked mischievously, making her wonder just what kinds of boyfriends the girl had had before. From the way Aoi and Shiori talked, Natsume had more than a little experience with boys. It gave Shuusei endless grief with how he had to fight off the bad ones from his sister with his baseball bat.
Sometimes she wondered if Shuusei exaggerated that last bit, until she saw a few disreputable boys at school nervously skirting around him whenever they passed by each other in the halls. Those same boys outright fled that one time Shuusei was sprinting through the school halls to get to baseball practise, with his baseball bat in hand, the boys clearly thinking he was running after them.
Pai had laughed, utterly bewildered, but still hilariously amused by the boys' terrified shrieks. Shuusei had looked so surprised to see her laugh that she wondered if he thought she was incapable of it.
"Nothing." Natsume announced. "At. All."
She shook her head off that train of thought that led to dark places she was not ready to delve into yet. "It does not matter. We are not dating," she said firmly, praying that was enough to get Natsume off the topic.
It was not.
Natsume watched her through narrowed eyes, gauging the insistence in her words. Pai's stomach was ripping itself apart as it twisted in discomfort at the scrutiny, and the headache was growing stronger by the minute as she waited for Natsume to speak.
Then Natsume frowned, as if only now realizing that Pai wasn't playing around, because Pai still hadn't cracked a smile the way one would if they were pretending they weren't dating someone, just for the heck of it.
"Well..." she pursed her lips, turning from the mirror to look at Pai as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Either you're lying – which I doubt, by the way – " If only you knew how much I've lied. How much I do lie. "– or you don't realize it yet."
She didn't understand what Natsume was talking about. She considered the possibility that Natsume was a faerie changeling, flitting from one topic to the next in a matter of seconds. She was certainly beautiful enough, in that ethereal sort of way that made her look like she could float away on the wind.
"What are you talking about?" she asked, abruptly finding this entire conversation so tiresome. There were more important things to be thinking about and here she was trying to convince Natsume that she was not, in fact, dating Shin.
Even if she wished she was.
"You haven't noticed?"
She shook her head, puzzled. Noticed what?
Natsume lifted an eyebrow superciliously. "Haven't you seen the way Shuu looks at Aoi?"
Her headache lanced sharply, and she grimaced. She knew what look Natsume was talking about, but, "I still do not understand what you are talking about."
"Well, in case you're secretly blind and you've been hiding it from us all this time, my brother looks at Aoi like she is the only thing in the world. It's a little cheesy, but accurate. I mean, we're high school students, but I'm pretty sure those two have found real love with each other." She shrugged as she reached down into her purse and pulled out a tube of pale pink lip gloss that disconcertingly reminded her of Aihara. "And after seeing you two together today – "
But we didn't do anything??
In fact, she had done everything she could to make sure Shin didn't notice how strangely she acted around him these days – and that simply meant avoiding him whenever she realistically could.
Pai was a terrible actor. She didn't know how to mask her feelings without it being obvious, besides wiping herself of all emotion, and that would be telling in itself if she walked around every day like a mechanical robot. She couldn't even maintain that deadened emotions for very long.
"But there is nothing going on, Natsume-san – "
Natsume blinked at her like she was seriously contemplating how stupid Pai possibly was. "How oblivious are you?"
"I am not, thank you very much." She huffed, affronted.
"No, really," she pressed. "Are you seriously trying to say you don't...wait, so you're seriously not dating Hayashi-sensei?"
I'm – is that not what I've been saying this entire time? Pai gave her dead-fish eyes. It was becoming her default expression nowadays. "I said we are not."
Natsume cocked an eyebrow. "Then you're an idiot."
Pai squinted, more out of the pain of her headache than anything else. "Wise words coming from someone who lost five hundred to her brother because he knew where she hides her food."
Natsume gasped and put her hand up to her chest, as if Pai had just thrown the gravest insult at her, her family, and her cow, and it physically hurt. "Oh come on, that idiot knows where I hide everything. We're twins, he reads my mind."
"Ryu does not know where Shii-chan hides his snacks when they are fighting," she deadpanned.
Granted, Shiori got ridiculous when she was hiding things. One time, she climbed all the way up to the top of the sakura tree at home to hide the hairband Kouta used to tie back his hair, all because he made her mad for some absurdly small reason no one even remembered about anymore. Kouta practically tore the house apart looking for that hairband.
"They're not twins!" she whined.
This time it was Pai who lifted her brows haughtily. "Ryu can find an earring buried six feet underground."
Natsume opened her mouth to fire another objection to defend herself, paused, pursed her lips, pouted. She knew Pai was right. Ryu was terrifyingly good at finding things where Shiori was an expert at hiding them. Whenever someone at home was searching for something they couldn't find, they immediately called Ryu, and he'd locate it only minutes later. Unless it was Shiori who hid it, of course.
Natsume narrowed her eyes at Pai again. "Oi, you've completely changed the subject! We were talking about you and Hayashi-sensei."
"There is no 'me and Hayashi-sensei'."
"You know, for a smart girl, you can be really stupid sometimes," she scoffed. "Come on, Pai-chan – are you seriously saying you haven't noticed it? You notice everything!"
"Notice what?" she asked, half-terrified to figure out what Natsume was trying to tell her, half-exhausted from the busy day already.
Since coming back from Ukabarenairei, since the day Shin bandaged her wounded knee and told her not to shoulder her burdens alone, she had no idea where they stood. Since she realized that she was in love with him, she had no idea what she was to him.
More than anything, she was scared that if she ever confessed her feelings and he didn't return them, she would spoil everything all over again like she did when she went to Kagetora behind Shin's back. This time there'd be no way to repair the damage done.
A treacherous part of her whispered that she'd have liked it if things were different. She would've liked it if she could say that they were something more to each other. But they weren't. She wasn't going to try changing things, either, because of the fear that it'd all fall apart and become worse than before.
She didn't want to risk that. She already tempted that fate once when she betrayed Shin's trust and went to Kagetora when she promised she wouldn't. She refused to ever do something like that again. She would learn to live with concealing her emotions so that no one would ever know how she felt about Shin – especially the man himself.
If she was being absolutely honest with herself, though, she was just a coward, really. She was just afraid. She was afraid of his rejection.
Natsume sounded way too proud of herself when she declared, "Hayashi-sensei looks at you the exact same way Shuusei looks at Aoi-chan."
That means nothing.
Pai pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed heavily. She couldn't deal with this now. She was tired from walking around all day, tired from trying to avoid Shin so he wouldn't notice anything was wrong, tired of waiting for her hands to shake and waiting for Kuniumi to return, tired of thinking about Aihara's insane claims.
She was tired of it all. Why couldn't things just go to how simple and boring everything was, like before?
"Natsume-san, that is impossible," she mumbled behind her hand, squeezing her eyes shut to push away the headache. They were coming frequently now, and she didn't know why. She said nothing to Kanou about it because Chizuru was ill, and he was concerned about her. She didn't want to burden him with her problems. "He is a teacher."
"I've dated teachers before." Natsume shrugged off her excuse nonchalantly, so brazenly admitting it that Pai was startled. "Some of them are cool, some are assholes. They think they're so amazing just because they're a little older. Idiots."
She tried to keep the pained expression twisting in her guts from showing on her face. She hadn't told Kanou about the headaches, but she needed to at least take some pain killers. Or maybe some herbal concoction Yukiji could teach her to make on her own. If she didn't, her head would explode.
Her effort resulted in her voice snapping, "No, Natsume-san. I am just a student in his Math class. Please just leave it, okay? Nothing is going on."
A pause.
"Okay," Natsume acquiesced, surprisingly easily, reaching out and patting Pai's shoulder. Her pretty face peered at her in concern.
Because she knew that it would only hurt Natsume's feelings, she didn't try to shake off the reassuring hand, even though her skin crawled at the tactile touch through her sweater.
"I'm sorry," Natsume added. "I didn't mean to pressure you or anything."
Great. Wonderful. Now she felt guilty for making Natsume feel bad. She hadn't even done anything wrong. She acted the way any normal person would if they thought one of their friends was dating someone and just wanted to know why they hadn't said anything. She even tried to make it out like Shin had some feelings for Pai, that he looked at her in the way Shuusei looked at Aoi.
Natsume hadn't done anything wrong at all. Pai was the weird one, the abnormal one for shoving her away so abruptly like that.
She sighed and shook her head. "It is not you, Natsume-san. I am just dealing with some complicated – family issues," she said haltingly, not knowing how else to describe the chaotic mess.
'Family issues' was a little simple, but it was better than, 'there may be the slightest possibility that one of my parents is not what I thought they were my whole life, and I'm not what I thought I was my whole life because of it. Oh, and I'm in love with a god.'
Normal things to worry about, really.
Natsume still looked worried that she pushed Pai too much. "Are you sure? I really didn't mean to make you feel like I was interrogating you or anything. If you want, you can always talk to me about anything. You know that, right?"
"I know." she nodded.
She knew that Natsume was just that kind of person. She opened her arms to anyone who needed it, and she listened when someone needed to speak, she talked when they needed to forget their own troubles. She couldn't help thinking that someone like Natsume wouldn't survive an hour inside something like So Fu.
She wondered if she was strong for being one who had survived So Fu, or if she was just another cold-blooded killer, hiding behind amnesia, for the fact that she had survived it at all.
"Do not worry about it. Just, maybe do not mention this to Shii-chan?" Pai asked. She hastily added, "You know how she is like. If she gets that idea stuck in her head, she will never let go of it. Life will be miserable."
Shiori may have been the one to warn her that Hengen couldn't be in lasting relationships without their Makashi's consent, but things were different now. Shin was now one with Shinigami, and in total control. Shiori might decide to try pushing Pai at him if she caught a whiff of Pai's feelings.
Life would indeed be miserable then. Shiori could be infuriatingly tenacious.
Natsume's answering grin flashing quickly over her face lightened the mood immediately, even though Pai still felt like a terrible person for snapping at such a sweet girl like that.
"Don't worry. I can just imagine. If you think I'm bad," at this, Pai vehemently shook her head, but Natsume drove on. "Shii-chan's worse. Although, in her defence, she's the one who got Shuu and Aoi to admit they like each other. But no worries – my lips are sealed for eternity."
If only Pai could wring the same promise out of Shiori, things would be much simpler. Not necessarily better, but decidedly less complicated.