Chapter Nine: Snow Day
For explanations of Japanese terms, check Terminologies at Writings main page.
Kuromura Aki
I absolutely hated being used as an object to be shown off to relatives; and added to that, I was only being used as a substitute for my brother who conveniently happened to be away from home this holiday when it was him that my mother actually wanted to boast about.
At least it was kyudo today and not some passive thing like calligraphy that induces slumber almost instantaneously.
"Aki-san," the cousin from that day stopped me after I finished two rounds of shooting. "Do you have guests in the house that we were not aware of? Shouldn't you introduce them to the rest of us?"
What was he talking about? Other guests?
"Don't you know them? I assume that they're around your age. A guy with dark hair and a girl with red hair?"
Girl with red... We were seen last night? He saw Torikawa? That would explain the instinctive feeling of unsettledness gnawing at the back of my mind since last night.
No, wait. What was worse was that he saw me without the black wig! The sudden realisation hit me with the possible results that could happen from the moment that followed my cousin's confrontation.
"Come to think of it, the girl looked quite like you, Aki-san." He reached for my hair, "She has your physique, and I seem to remember that your hair was quite long the past few days. Did you do something to it? It is much shorter now."
I tried to back away but he already had a grip on my hair. I felt the tug followed by a sharp pain on my scalp.
"Oh my- I apologise, Aki-san!" He let go my hair as if it had singed his hand. At that moment, my mother appeared.
"Aki, may I see you for a while?" There was a no-joke-no-way-out tone in her voice.
I shot my cousin a pinning glare before walking off to my mother. Thanks to my innate dislike for troublesome actions, like having the extra weight of a wig on my head, I sprayed my shoulder-length hair black the night before. And a good thing too, considering the things that could happen if my cousin had found out that it had been a wig all along.
"Young lady, what is this that I am hearing about that someone saw you last night with your friend?" She started asking in an accusatory tone.
"If you don't want Torikawa to be seen in this house because of his background, you could have told me then that night when he came and made it clear that he's unwanted here," I snapped.
The woman cringed at the mere mention of Torikawa's name. "You are welcomed to have your own guests, Aki. Just make sure that our relatives do not see him, because this was supposed to be our annual exclusive Kuromura family gathering."
"He was bored! You can't expect him to stay locked inside that room the whole time; he is not an animal to be caged!"
"For Kami-sama's sake, at least have your wig on while you are still in this house! They saw you in your dreadful inhuman colour of a hair!"
"I don't give a damn about what the colour of my hair is supposed mean for the Kuromura line! In case you forgot, this came with my birth, thanks to you and father!" I was very sure that we were getting louder and louder as the guests kept throwing tentative glances at our direction while murmuring among themselves. To heck with it, I could care less now if they found out that my hair was red instead of black, or that Torikawa, who had no family background whatsoever, was in this house all this time.
Speak of the devil. At the thought, Torikawa appeared beside me and put his hand on my shoulder.
"I need to borrow Kuromura for a while," was all he said to my mother before dragging me up to my room, leaving her seething on the spot.
"You do know that you're not supposed to just materialise in front of my relatives, don't you?"
"Right, but it's not as if they'll see much of us for the rest of their stay here."
"What do you mean?" I asked as we reached the door to my room.
"Just get changed into something normal. You'll understand later," Torikawa grinned as he pushed me inside and slid the door shut.
I gave the closed door a blank look of wonderment and confusion, but got changed nevertheless.
"C'mon, hurry up!" Torikawa grabbed my hand the moment I stepped out of my room and made a mad dash for the back gate.
I was so not expecting the sight that greeted me there.
"Aki-chan! You sure pack little for a holiday!" Takagi stood before me just outside the gate, holding the only backpack of belongings that I brought home, while Kentaro waved at me from behind Takagi.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"We had always wanted to come to Kyoto and now is the perfect time because we have the perfect guide!" Kentaro rested his elbow on my shoulder.
"If I was supposed to be only a guide, why is my luggage out here and not in there?" I pointed back at my house.
"Because you're going to spend the rest of the holiday with us!" Torikawa swung his backpack over his shoulder. "So I took the liberty of packing your things while you're busy with your relatives."
"No time to waste, no time to waste. Your first task as a guide is to find us a good and affordable inn to stay for the remaining days of our holiday!" Takagi patted my shoulder and began steering me away.
Okay, I did not quite understand all this but it was definitely better than spending the remaining days of my holiday at home. Following behind the guys, I allowed myself to fall into their footsteps as my frustration from the earlier altercation with my mother and my cousin dissipated slowly but surely. Although the nagging suspicion that Torikawa had something to do with the seniors' appearance did begin to rise minutely before I decided to ignore it; after all, everything else would surpass being confined in that house with my insufferable relatives.
"Since when was your hair black, Aki-chan?" The random question stopped me in my tracks.
Torikawa turned and looked at me, his expression asking "Are you going to tell?"
I stared hard at the ground, deciding, before I took a deep breath and said, "I thought I saw a strand of white hair last night."
He gaped at me, not knowing whether to laugh or to go along with my story.
"WHAT?" Our two seniors exclaimed.
"Hmm... Yeah," Torikawa said after a few moments of silence. "I was the one who told her about it but she refused to let me pluck it out. Before I knew it, she already sprayed her hair black."
"Oh good, it's only hair spray..." they sighed.
"Let's go find a place to settle down first so we can wash it out, find that white hair, and get rid of it," Kentaro-sempai announced solemnly. "Aki, Aki... Too much dye is bad for your hair, don't you know that?"
"Right! Let's go, let's go!" Torikawa hooked his arm through mine and began leading the way.
Needless to say, I had to conjure another lame excuse after they had washed out the dye and saw that my hair was bright flaming red and not the brown that everyone at school knew. It was not that I do not trust Takagi-sempai and Kentaro-sempai, but my situation was not as simple as a mere issue of superstition.
No, it was much deeper than that.
Allowing Torikawa to know as much as he did now was never planned to occur because, to me, it was useless and unnecessary to let people in on my personal matters since there was still a high chance of me being transferred to another school soon, anyway.
From young, I had never seen the need to make friends with people that passed me by. Maybe it was that day when Torikawa showed a little of his hidden side that changed my impression of him by just a bit. He seemed more trustable than the unnerving clown that he liked to act as. At least that was what my instincts told me, and my instincts were never wrong.
Either these people were over excited about coming to Kyoto, or they were hyperactive. In just three days, Takagi and Kentaro-sempai made me bring them to almost half the tourist attractions listed in travel guides and a few more places only people like me who had lived here would know. Most of our money was spent on food that Torikawa kept begging to try, and of course on the few disposable cameras that we used after the batteries in our digital ones died out on us.
Although I had been sent away to boarding schools almost everywhere in Japan, miraculously, I knew enough of my birth city to not get lost in it. Yet, never once had I walked the streets of Kyoto in the company of people.
Family members, yes, perhaps when I was still a child. But with people that I had come to know of to the point that they could almost be called "friends", this was a first.
And all of a sudden, my familiar Kyoto looked quite very different.
The snow glistened on the willow trees that overlooked streams trickling with almost-frozen water, reflecting the soft rays of winter sunshine, barren sakura trees stood defiantly proud by the sidewalks... Everything looked fresh, as if I was seeing them for the first time.
Maybe it had something to do with the company. Or perhaps a different state of mind, to take notice of the surroundings for once and not just walk briskly pass it all while only aware of my own discontentment of my family.
I might even start to like this change.
"Kuromura!" Or maybe not.
"You don't have to attract everyone's attention, you know," I sighed exasperatedly as I backtracked to where Torikawa had stopped to shout for me.
"Look! They have kitsune senbei!" Torikawa held it up to my face. The fox face-shaped cracker grinned at me with its Cheshire-like smile.
"Stuff yourself with it. I don't like it." Truth is, I disliked everything fox-related.
"It won't be fun eating alone! We could get some for Takagi-sempai and Kentaro-sempai too."
"Speaking of which, where are they?" I deliberately tried to change the subject, and of course, Torikawa was not paying me any attention.
"How many do you think we should get them? I think..."
"Probably eating again, those two. Maybe..."
"These should be enough. Now, let's-"
"Don't think we need to find them. We should just-"
"-Go back." We finished in unison, not realising- until then- that we were on different frequencies all along.
Torikawa began to laugh as he paid for the senbei, while I tried to hold back what might had come out as a grin but gave a gentler-than-usual knock to the back of his head, "Let's go. You people dragged me everywhere since this morning and I'm getting so tired that I might even stop picking on you for the rest of the day."
Torikawa stopped laughing then but gave me an evil grin.
"What?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Provided that you eat the kitsune senbei with us!"
I stared at him while contemplating on his suggestion. Oh well, it is just a cracker. This could be a good chance to start leaving my past behind.
"Whatever. Let's just go. If you don't catch up, it won't be on my conscience if you should get lost again," sighing in defeat, I grabbed the bag of crackers and turned on my heels to walk off.
"Hey, those are the crackers!" Torikawa jogged to catch up with my swift long strides.
"You were carrying too many things."
...To be continued