Alt Dreams [One-Shots] (#69—'Twain')

[brythain]

This one's a story written for the 2020 Secret Santa project initiated by ProfAllister.

Victim: Retrograde
Prompt: Rika and Saki being cute. Yuribait optional.
(I'm sorry, this story is not that kind of story.)

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Twain


SAKI

“English homework again?”

Hisao groaned and raked his long fingers through his mud-tinted mid-morning hair. “Yeah. It’s like the foreign language of a foreign language. How can the plural be said in so many different ways?”

Saki demurely twirled a lock of her own golden honey-brown hair. Her eyes sparkled mischievously, large pools of dark light that seemed to lure Hisao’s gaze far away from the treachery of the English.

“They love counting the ways. For everything. It’s in their literature, Hisao.”

She sat down next to him and leant in. He felt strangely naked as the warmth of her shoulder nestled into his ribs. Powerless, he let her rifle through his textbooks.

“Aha,” she said. “This one. Read.”

Haltingly, he read, in oddly flat English. “How do I… love… thee? Let me count the ways.”

“Yes?” He could hear the purr deep in her slender throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a pulse there.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered, forcing the words out of his mouth, knowing there were better things he might be doing with his mouth. The book twitched in his hands, as if it too felt disappointment.

“Hmm?” She sounded distracted, maybe disappointed.

“How do I love the what? What is it he doesn’t know he loves?”

“Thee. There are two Es there. So you pronounce it ‘th-ee-ee’.”

“You do? But why? And how does it change the meaning of ‘the’?”

“It means ‘you’ in some old dialect. She’s saying, ‘How do I love you?’ the old way.”

The comfortable citrus-honey scent of her was rising up in his nostrils. “Ah, I see,” he said, not seeing much at all.

“No, you don’t. But you will.”

Somehow, Saki had come between him and the elusive words. He put the book down. His hand found far fewer buttons than he expected. Half a giggle emerged from her throat, and then turned into a gasp. Playfully, she licked him on the tip of the nose.

Several books cascaded to the floor. They would lie there a while longer.


RIKA

“English homework again?”

Hisao chuckled, absent-mindedly flicking a lock of wayward mud-brown hair away from his face. “Sometimes I ask myself why I bother. A Japanese scholar should study Japanese literature.”

“This one loves you because you bother.”

After all these years, it still gave him pause. Rika had always been direct in sentiment, if not expression. Not blunt, but nevertheless as heart-stopping as a stiletto.

She sat across the table from him, her waist-length platinum-white hair neatly braided as usual. From experience, he knew there were five strands in that complex pattern—it had been three when he’d first met her.

With the light behind her, her gaze seemed hooded, like a flame in a lantern. She’d closed her mouth in that half-pout that normally meant, “This person has more to say but she’s not saying it yet.”

He grinned, because there’d otherwise be too much tension in the quiet air between them. “Is that really why you love me?”

Earnestly, but perhaps half in jest, she leaned forward, closing the space. He felt her slender hands on his open palm. Her eyes flared, enormous and fiery in his vision. “This one loves you because this one is bothered to love you. And you?”

The words came to mind, tumbling out from the old attic in his head:

I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

He’d spoken them aloud, unwittingly. She was holding his hand now, and they were standing, with the table in their way. For different reasons, both of them knew all the words. But even the last words of that poem didn’t bother them.

A little breathlessly, Rika sat down on the table and swung her long legs over. “What is love, Nakai-san?” she said softly.

Hisao groaned. “Something I thought I’d never find again.”

A couple of books fell to the floor. He’d never been very good at handling text.


EPILOGUE

You, the reader, probably shouldn’t read this. But it is true nevertheless, even if it does spoil the tale somewhat. And you’ll be sad. Yet, what’s written is written.

Good stories often have three parts. Sometimes, they are only two parts with a hinge, like a door and its frame. But the hinge is what links the door to the frame and makes it useful. Saki Enomoto had worked with Shizune Hakamichi for some years before Shizune became Student Council President. And Rika Katayama, to her considerable surprise, had become Shizune’s successor due to the machinations of her friends Aoi and Keiko. One of Rika’s teachers had suggested she speak to Saki about the famously difficult outgoing President. So it went.

“Many thanks, senior lady, for precious and useful advice about Shizune.”

“It’s not a problem. I like you, Rika. I do want you to succeed.”

“If there is anything this junior can do… ?”

“Well, this junior can do anything, apparently. But I was thinking about one thing I can’t do right now, and perhaps you can help.”

“Certainly. This person is ready to serve.”

“Oh, it’s not that kind of service. I just need you to look out for a friend of mine. He’s not been the same since we broke up.”

“This skinny pale girl is nothing like… ”

“… a buxom, warm, dead girl?”

“… ”

Saki, still pretty despite her disease, grinned. “Thank you, Rika. I’m confident he’ll be the better for it.”

END

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