Ah My Goddess Fan Fiction ❯ Trial By Tenderness ❯ Part 18 - Divisions ( Chapter 18 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Part 18: Divisions



Megumi gasped out loud as she saw the kanji sprayed on Cevn's wall. It was "shi", the character for death. She was confused...she had watched Cevn pack and leave, but didn't notice *this* written on the wall earlier.
"Please Genji...get here soon!" she mentally pleaded with unknown forces. She looked at Skuld, whose youthful beauty had suddenly erupted into sheer terror when she saw the character on the wall. Normally superstitious, the 'death' character frightened Skuld out of her wits; she grabbed hard onto Megumi's arm. Megumi was frightened at the implications of what was on the wall; Skuld's shivering presence beside her added to that fear.
Cevn was going to kill himself!
Sand and rocks spit out in streams underneath his bicycle as Genji raced to Megumi's house. Ever since Sayoko had wrecked the family's Lexus while his parents were away to supervise their Peruvian subsidiaries, he was limited to bike or bus. He cursed his luck again as he sweat-pedaled to the familiar intersection, then turned right. The streetlight opposite the temple entrance loomed up in the night and he peeled his bike inside, almost spilling over in his haste.
"Megumi!" he shouted into the night air. She ran out and saw him rushing towards the house. She ran to him and collapsed in his arms. "She must really be upset, she's shaking," he noted to himself as he held her, awkward in the presence of her clinging embrace.
Megumi looked up at Genji, who was just a couple cm taller than her...her morose state hyphenated the slight difference in height...he appeared to be ten feet tall at the moment. All she could spurt out was, "Cevn's gone and there's something horrible on the wall!"
"It's okay, it's okay!" he shouted repeatedly, trying to calm her. He grabbed her lightly by the arm and shook her gently to slow down her frenzied mood. He escorted Megumi back into the living room, and sat her down on the couch. Sitting down next to her, he turned to face her and asked her to tell him everything. Deep inside, however, he felt a strong pull towards her. In the light, her brown hair glowed radiantly and her light brown eyes beckoned him with a stunning beauty he had never noticed before. Through sheer force of will, he barely managed avoiding being hypnotized by her beauty.
"Man, I have never seen such a beautiful girl before...she's such a babe!" he said to himself, noticing her as if for the first time.
"I'm so scared!" They both turned to see Skuld standing next to Genji. She sat down on the zabuton next to Megumi.
"Y..you don't think that *g..ghosts* or something put that sign on Cevn's wall, do ya?" Skuld stammered. Her lightly complected skin was pale with superstitious affright.
Megumi related the whole story about Cevn's leaving. She looked at Genji's dark brown eyes and felt his compassion wash over her, like waterdrops on a delicate floral petal. She noticed that Genji seemed saddened at the abrupt departure of his friend. Yes, Cevn was a friend to all of them...he had brought her and Genji closer; he had arranged the confrontation that pulled Sayoko out of the morass of drug addiction and into rehabilitation on Okinawa. Now he was gone from their lives.
When she showed him Cevn's room, Genji gasped with shock when he beheld the big kanji for "death" sprayed on the wall. He visibly shivered. His modern sensitivity clashed with the traditional sensibilities. Genji was strongly interested in Japan's past: Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, Kami-dans, and Shinto all fascinated him. The black character on the wall reminded him of kwaidan legends...and he fearfully backed out of the room.
"Hey, c'mon, lets look and see if he left anything that could give us any hint of where he's gone!" Megumi suggested. Genji didn't want to be in the room at all. It hinted at an unseen evil that was waiting to devour him and anyone else in the room. Why is it that the woman *always* wants to explore a place while normal, sane people would run for their lives, he wondered. It was just like one of those American horror flicks. His fear deepened as he considered this point.
Genji and Megumi reluctantly searched the room. Skuld was too frightened to enter the room, so she 'volunteered' to 'stand guard' at the doorway. A scrap of paper tucked inside of an ancient-looking book caught Megumi's eye. The Enigma Book, she had heard Cevn call it. She pulled it out and read it aloud:

I stand betrayed by one who is closest to me. Consider
me as no longer being a living spirit. To all of you,
I am dead...you will never see me again. I have already
created too much disruption in your lives. Please forget
that you ever knew me. Farewell and Sayonara,
cevn

"Holy.... What could have happened to make him do this?" Megumi said desperately, the shock of the note's content wearing on her. She heard a wailing crying and looked to see Skuld in the doorway, leaning against the shoji.
"Urd, where *are* you? Your little sister is going to pieces." Megumi exclaimed desperately as they went into the hallway, travelers on a tragic pathway.
Unnoticed, a small figure with a blowtorch leapt out the window.

* * * * * * * *

I caught a cab to Narita International Airport post haste. I never wanted to see Japan again. I couldn't even look back as I left Makuhari. The cabby was overjoyed at the huge fare...he tried to make polite conversation with me but I just couldn't say a thing. We passed through Chiba and I sadly recalled the big Solar Car race that...no, I don't want to remember any of this. I was in shock, just like when I was thrown through a window as a child. My nerves felt like hot lead was coursing through them. I was clenching my hands into fists and bruxically grinding my teeth. I had never been so emotionally wounded...then I remembered all of the other emotional losses. Any recovery from *those* painful episodes was torn apart by what Urd had done to me. I just wanted to fade away like a water puddle in the hot summer sun.
At the airport, I walked around in a stuporous daze until I found the sign: China National Airlines. I booked a ticket for Beijing Capital Airport and embarked on the next part of my journey.
I planned to complete my Ph.D. and the N.I.T. liaison work...I could at least do that much for good ol' N.I.T. But why did I give a damn about the Ph.D.? What good would it be? Ph.D.'s today are a dime a dozen. Why did I care about anything anyway?
Flying over the ocean, I imagined that I would just walk off into the Gobi desert...away from all civilization and those pestering sores known as people. I would disappear, just like all the aspirations I had discovered while living my new life in Japan...had vanished.
A broken man.

* * * * * * * *

Belldandy somehow felt Skuld's anguish as they boarded the Shinkansen for Tokyo. She looked at Keiichi anxiously, regretting that the power shortage prevented her from simply transporting back to the house. Her face was hunched with sadness; Keiichi's downward glances didn't help matters either. To all the fellow train riders, they looked like a couple who had just broken up and still had to reluctantly return home together.
She forced a smile.
"Keiichi, I know that we're doing the right thing by coming home...I sense that Skuld needs her sister and Megumi needs her brother. Please try to understand that things will work out. The Ultimate Force...sob snff sob." She couldn't finish her attempt at cheering herself and Keiichi.
Keiichi smiled back at her, then buried his face in the JR magazine...so that his girlfriend wouldn't see his tears. He had no idea that Cevn's brief stay with them had impacted him so much.
"Cevn was an adopted older brother to Megumi, but to me...he's almost like the real thing," Keiichi sadly observed. He remembered all the fun times and the craziness that seemed to add a new flavor to the house when the crazy gaijin first moved in. He didn't even think of Cevn as a gaijin any more, as he spoke Japanese fluently and taught at Keiichi's college. He would be forever grateful for the fact that Cevn had turned Skuld away from antagonizing him for being in love with her sister. Now he was gone.
He felt a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"Keiichi, it's okay to cry. Remember when you told us about the puppy you lost as a child. Things happen and people feel hurt. You must try to embrace your sadness...don't ever run away from it. You aren't alone...I feel sad too. Sadness shared is sadness lessened."
As always, Bell-chan's words of wisdom cast the whole situation in a new light. His culture had taught him that men don't show feelings unless they were hachigozake, or pub-crawling. Crying because of the disappearance of another guy...well most of his friends would think that it was weird. But Belldandy understood the shadings and nuances of his strong feelings much more than anybody else. He put down the magazine and held her as they both cried briefly, gently into each other's arms.
The night scenery flickered by, accompanied by the rattle and hum of the Shinkansen traveling at 210kph.

* * * * * * * * *

Urd was really, really plastered. After Cevn had rejected her attempts to explain herself, she went into a shock-like state and roamed downtown Makuhari. Torn between huge washes of powerful emotions, she had wandered into an izakaya and laid into the sake. After two bottles, she went in the back room and stumbled onto a gambler's den. After two more bottles, she had cleaned up the assets of all the players. They had naively assumed that she was some drunken gaijin woman, ripe for the plucking. After she undid a few buttons on her blouse to allow the men a glimpse of her cleavage, she went to work on them. Poor distracted souls. Even though she was drunk and without her Goddess powers, her keen intellect made short work of things. After two rolls of the dice, she could predict each roll if she wanted to. And she did.
"Whadda I do wish all dish yennn?" she said to herself as she stumbled around the downtown Makuhari square. She saw a Sporty police van roll by and slunk into the shadows, watching the cops going off some where for some reason.
"Dat's wwh...what I'll doo, I'll go...hic!...I'll go onna tripp!" she impulsively decided. "I..I alwaysh wanted to gooo to Swisherland!" She counted the money and boarded the late train for Tokyo.
Half an hour later, she was brought out of her stupor when she felt a grasping hand where it shouldn't be. She turned to see a young salaryman groping her thigh.
"You asshhole!" she slurred in a shout and decked him with a right hook. She vaguely remembered that the JR trains were filled with 'gropers'; men who rode the trains solely to feel up women while the train was tightly packed. But at night, these men turned into rapists. It was an alarming problem that Japan Railways ignored but the folk-sense of the people accepted as evidence of the decline of Nippon.
She walked up to the young man, who looked like a greaseball hoodlum.
"You jerk!" she yelled as she kicked him in the crotch. He sucked in a huge gust of air and screamed, wincing in agony as he held himself. The railcar conductor approached her and Urd went into a blind fury. All the anger and disappointment came back to her. She knew she had screwed up royally with Cevn. Her impersonation of Dr. Ogawa had ended on a very sour note. She didn't know whom she was angrier with: herself for getting caught or Cevn for being so messed up. She tried to hit the hoodlum and missed by several feet, punching the conductor square in the jaw instead.
"That's it, you're getting off at the next stop!"
One telescoped moment later, Urd was on a platform looking at a railway sign that read: Tokyo Narita International Airport.
"Well, I guesssh thish mus be where I go onna tripp!" she said to herself as she headed towards the nearest counter.

* * * * * * * *

It was almost sunrise when Keiichi and Belldandy arrived home. The ride on the Shinkansen was a tenuous, stressful three hours. Then another hour on the JR Ueno and Soba lines to Chiba and finally the drive home. When he arrived, Megumi and Genji were both asleep on two of the three living room couches. He could hear a soft snoring from both as Belldandy went to her bedroom to check on Skuld and Urd.
"Elder Sister!" Skuld yelled as she leapt into Belldandy's warm protective embrace.
"Did he come back yet? Did he change his mind?" she asked.
Belldandy noticed that she had taken her gloves off; a rarity for Skuld. Skuld needed her gloves whenever she handled Mjolnir because it served as a ground against the highly powered mallet. It was obvious to Belldandy that she had been rubbing her eyes; they were red and heavy-lidded. She was shaking like a leaf; Belldandy tightened her embrace to absorb some of Skuld's fear.
Keiichi gently woke up Megumi by shaking her arm.
"Uhhhhnh uhh, Keiichi, you're back already? Oh, I'm so glad to see you, Big Brother!" she said as she hugged him. No, it wasn't a hug, Keiichi decided. It was the clinging hug of someone desperate for reassurance. He patted Megumi on the head just like he used when they were kids. She smiled girlishly at him, touched by the nostalgia of his gesture, and then asked him to follow her to Cevn's room.
"I don't know how he managed to spray paint this on the wall while Skuld and I were watching him, but look!" she said, pointing towards the grotesque character on the wall. Keiichi let out a slight gasp as he saw the character for 'death'. He wondered to himself how Cevn could have spray painted it...there was no spray paint anywhere on the compound. He examined the character and to his surprise, noted that it was *burned* into the wall.
Mara. It must be Mara.
Keiichi called a conference in the dining room while Genji slept, so Genji wouldn't overhear anything he shouldn't. They jointly arrived at a scenario: somehow Mara had possessed Cevn and 'steered' him out of the house towards her lair. Skuld's stomach turned as she remembered Mara's lair. This explained why he didn't talk to her or Megumi while he was preparing to leave.
Belldandy listened intently to the other's guesswork...but deep inside of her heart, she felt a reservation. If Mara was injured in the Demon Rally as Megumi had described, there was no way that she could have pulled this off. Unless she had enlisted another Demon to help her evil mission.
"Or what?" she thought. *Did* she take Cevn from them?
"Where is Urd? Has anyone seen her?" Belldandy said, suddenly concerned for her older sister--who had been conspicuously absent from the proceedings.
"I haven't seen her at all!" Megumi and Skuld chimed in.
Skuld felt a shadow fall in her soul, as if Urd had somehow been recalled to Yggdrasil and they wouldn't see her on the mortal plane again. A chill ran up and down her spine.
"This is totally weird! This kind of thing fascinates Big Sister, but yet she is nowhere to be seen. I wonder if she did something to upset Cevn, or she took him somewhere?" she thought, then realized that she had spoken her mind out loud.
"Don't be silly," Keiichi and Belldandy both told Skuld. "Urd is probably right around the corner, listening in to this discussion."
"I bet she made him leave. She must have screwed up...that's why she isn't here!" Skuld replied with self-assurance.
The smile on Belldandy's face concealed her suspicions about Urd. Megumi described Cevn as being very upset as he was packing. Bell decided that she not only didn't believe that Mara had anything to do with Cevn's departure, but that Skuld was right...Urd had something to do with it. The only missing piece in the puzzle was Urd.
Where *is* she?

* * * * * * * *

It was my third time in China. As I arrived at Beijing Capital Airport on the redeye, dawn illuminated a light summer shower. Gray outside, gray inside. I debarked and stepped onto the moving sidewalk that led to the main terminal building.
My first time in Beijing, the Beijing Capital Airport had been dimly lit, with bare strands of incandescent lights on its three-story tall ceiling. It had reminded me of a warehouse, not an airport terminal. None of the bathroom hand-dryers worked; it seems they were there for show. The signs were all cheap painted metal, not like the neons of American airports. The terminal was noisy, it smelled of burnt food, and looked uninviting. The next time I went to study in China, there was a new terminal that was almost on par with regional airport facilities.
Flying in to Capital Airport, I noticed the illuiinated sleek red curves of the new Main Terminal, T3. T3 was the largest single continuous airport terminal in the world, even larger than the the 1.7km long Kansai International terminal in Osaka. I could see why the locals touted that it looked like a dragon at night; the triangular windows arrayed on each wing of the terminal resembled golden scales. The whole was shapes in the "Y" shape of the Chinese character for "people". As the plane taxied in for the final approach, the terminal provided brief eyecandy that somewhat distracted me from the suicidal thoughts and plans rummaging my heart.
A huge part of me felt like it had been bitten off or ripped away. I tried to avoid thinking about Japan. I had just gotten used to ignoring my life in Hawaii and the Mainland, which had ended with my transformation, courtesy of the Divine Goddess Office and the Ultimate Force. Now, because of Urd's culpability, I had to leave Japan. I was truly alone. The part of me that had been torn off sure weighed a lot. I was crushed into morose pangs of aloneness.
*What is the weight of a heart?*
The shift from hiragana-katakana-kanji to hanzi took a couple of minutes. The vendors were just starting to set up their wares while I supped tea at the upper-level restaurant. I caught the bus to BeiDa. The esplanaded highway had been upgraded for the recent visit of the American President; the flower plantings offered resilient dashes of color in the midst of drizzling rain. I remembered a vow I had made years ago...I would ask the woman I was attracted to whether she would let go of earthly existence if an angel invited her and me to travel into spiritual realms. Something my sponsor had taught me. I had always fantasized about exchanging love-poems with the 'invisible she'; the woman of my dreams. But I had no dreams...each page of life was cloaked in insufferable wretchedness.
The bus pulled up onto the Haidian and I got off. Everywhere I could see, people were bicycling to their daily routines. The Haidian was Beijing's equivalent of Tokyo's Akibahara...every electronic gizmo you could want was for sale here...for a price. The only difference was that every store was owned by BeiDa. The sales were a significant source of green energy which subsidized the University.
Walking towards the main gate, I carried two large travel bags filled with papers and some clothes. I presented my papers to the Red Guard at the South Gate, who looked at me severely, and then allowed me to enter BeiDa. I felt like an abandoned man, abandoned even by myself. I was here, but I didn't know what had kept me from killing myself. I guess I was just too tired to attempt suicide. So I'm here, like an automaton following a programmed routine.
The South Gate was located in the newer part of campus. Like N.I.T., BeiDa was divided into two sections. The southern section was mostly turn-of-the-century halls and dorms, six students to a room with triple bunk beds and two desks. The northern campus looked like something out of the Qing Dynasty with its imperial buildings and the tall spire of the Water Pagoda.
I paused at Triangle Park. The source of much of modern Chinese history. Here was where the nascence of the May 4th Movement, the Tiananmen Square Liberty Incident of 1989 and other social movements had occurred. History has its pageant here. Instead of inflammatory posters, there was a preponderance of advertisements for all sorts of student essentials and the plethora of TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) tutorial notices. Was this the terminus of the revolutionary heart?
I recoiled inside when I considered the word 'heart'. When I thought of my heart, I felt empty...yet ironically filled with emotional loss and pain.
In Chinese, a colloquial etymology described the character of 'heart' in three parts. First as a hand reaching down. In traditional history, men and women were not allowed to touch unless they were married or in the same family; lovers had to exchange gifts by setting them down on the table. They could hand the gifts to each other. Second, underneath the table and hand, a stylized heart was depicted. Finally, below this was a depiction of bamboo linked by strings; this represented the next step in the evolution of Chinese writing after the plastron turtle shells and bullock scapulae. Later, scrolls were placed in the bamboo for preservation. Giving and receiving hearts forever...the Chinese definition of love. At least in the fabular vein.
I would never love. With all that had happened in the last 12 hours, my fears of women were only reinforced. My trust of friends was shattered.
I entered Shao Yuan, the foreign student center, just as the neon "Shao Yuan" lights were turned off. Presenting my papers to the door guard, I asked him about BeiDa's school life since I had last been here two years ago. He was surprised at the fluency of my Chinese. I guess a yang kuei guy with long black-blonde hair was supposed to be illiterate in all matters Mandarin. He turned out to be amiable. Once more, I regretted the fact that any guanzi that I had developed with the locals was washed away...even here, no one would remember me from my previous two visits. I had not yet had a face-to-face encounter someone whose memory of me was washed clean by the Ultimate Force. It would be strange to meet with Prof. Zhao.
As I was a few days early, I wouldn't have much to do besides prepare my itinerary and try and settle my nerves. And get an umbrella...I was soaked by the rain.

* * * * * * * *

Urd stumbled out of the airplane and walked across the tarmac. She thought she had booked a flight to Switzerland, but this didn't look like it. The people here looked Japanese. Maybe she had flown in a circle. Where was the Matterhorn? Where was Lake Geneva?
She looked up at the bright red letters on the 1950s-style building: Beijing National Capital Airport.
"Oh Great! Shit! Didn't Cevn say he was going to China? And who was it that told me my ticket was for Zurich? Or was it Geneva? Bern, the capital?" she said out loud. I must have really been drunk, she admitted to herself. The dim lights of the airport gave her a thundering headache. She was still a little foggy...the stewardesses would not serve her any alcohol during the flight. She took the escalator upstairs and served herself some Chinese liquor. It was much stronger than the Japanese stuff, she noted to her satisfaction.
Urd suddenly realized her predicament. She was alone in China, and withal, she had minimal Goddess Powers. She would have to drink continuously to maintain her power...there was no sake here, so she would have to substitute beer, wine, or whatever was available. At least the language was similar to read.
Not to mention that Cevn was here, somewhere in the country. She felt pangs of sadness when she remembered his look of betrayal.
"If I do anything before I return to Yggdrasil, I will make him understand why I did it," she decided. "I'll make it up to him, somehow, someway."
The airport was bustling with people. Urd had only seen these kinds of crowds in Tokyo and a few other places. As a Goddess who has lived over 25 decamillennia, she had seen the whole thing...humans rising out of Neolithic fuzziness to Homo Sapiens...well, these mortals were only *less* fuzzy than their hairy forebears...but they certainly didn't have clarity.
She looked at a group of men who were eyeing her appreciatively. She recognized the look of lust on their faces. Lust...the common goddess that all males bow down to.
"And I'm the Goddess of Love!" she reminded herself. She walked over, wanting to have some drinking buddies and male attention. She found out that they were a TV crew for a local newsmagazine show featuring modern Beijing women's culture.
Within an hour, Urd had convinced the men that she should be an ideal spokesmodel for their news show. Although she was a yang kuei, she looked somewhat Chinese. The fact that she had lived in Japan was a boon, as the news team felt that Urd's fashion-sense would be light-years ahead of the average woman. They told her that China needed to catch up to Japanese standards of culture, at least in the modern fashion sense. She smiled enticingly at this observation; thinking that all those TV soaps and shopping expeditions were quite beneficial.
Urd was adamant that she didn't want to be an anchorwoman, because those weird pinyin tones would be difficult to say aloud. Especially if she had to constantly drink sake to keep her dwindling powers replenished. One thing she knew for certain was how to pose pretty for the camera. As long as they kept her supplied with booze and a room to sleep in, she would look vivacious for their new program.
Not to mention that she would get to try on all the new Chinese fashions. Images of cheongmais and floral antique dresses danced in her head as she ordered a round for the guys.

* * * * * * * *

Two days had passed without any sign that Urd or Cevn would return. Belldandy and Keiichi had agreed to wait 72 hours before going out searching for them. If neither showed up by tomorrow, then they would search all of Japan. It was a daunting prospect that worried both. Genji's presence was a great comfort to Megumi, who was still saddened by Cevn's disappearance. Several phone inquiries to Beijing had produced no results.
Belldandy had transported herself in stealth form to Mara's lair, only to find Mara in some kind of complicated traction bed. She felt a little hint of pity for Mara, all bandaged up from her accident. She didn't want to yield too readily to that other part of her conscious that said 'serves you right for trying to kill my Keiichi'. But on her return, she did feel a thrill of satisfaction at how the Ultimate Force had acted.
It was decided that Keiichi and Bell would look in Southern Honshu; Skuld and Tomohisa would look in Northern Honshu; Megumi and Genji would look in Tokyo, then Hokkaido. It was out of the question for any of them to travel to China to look for Cevn. If he did kept to his plans to go there on behalf of N.I.T., they could find him by making some calls to the Japanese Consulate or Peking University. So the search centered on finding Urd.
Belldandy seriously doubted that her older sister could have gone far. First, her powers were limited to almost nothing, so she would have to rely on her temporal replenishment. Since Urd had no access to any moon bracelets, this meant that she would have to drink a steady stream of sake. Second, Urd had no money, so she couldn't have left the island. Third, Urd was practically a mortal now, as far as emanations went. Finally, Urd was...*Urd*.
The last two points worried Belldandy. Her Goddess powers would easily be able to detect Urd...if she was at full Earth Spirit Grade powers. But since Urd was functioning at almost nil Goddess powers, Bell wouldn't be able to 'home in' on her emanations. Nor could Urd make herself detectable to her younger sister. But Urd could make herself very detectable to...
As if he could read her mind, Keiichi smiled and looked at Belldandy.
"Bell-chan, you mix Urd and sake and you get a walking disaster waiting to happen. Urd's a klutz...she'll get caught misbehaving and we'll get a call from the police telling us to come retrieve her. When she's here, then we can find out the whole story."
Belldandy giggled at the mental image of bailing Urd out of a jail somewhere in Japan. Keiichi heard her and echoed her laugh.
"We need to coordinate this, so that we're all in touch with each other at any given time. Since you're the youngest, Skuld, you and Tomohisa will search from home. Feel free to make all the phone calls you want...but if you leave the house, it must only be during the day hours. I don't want my aunt and uncle finding out that you're here alone, Tomo! We'll all reconvene here in a week if we haven't found Urd. Also, keep trying to call China to find Cevn," he instructed. Keiichi's cousin nodded his head in assent as Skuld eyed him with a hawk-like expression.
"And don't you try anything while you're here, either!" she said. Tomohisa looked at her in surprise...once more she had read what was on his mind. Overjoyed at being alone with Skuld for an indeterminate time, he was imagining all sorts of things. Baseball games, swimming at the beach, listening to CDs, pachinko, maybe a kiss or two... He looked up to see that everyone was laughing at him good-heartedly, except Skuld.
"Maybe it's not a good idea to leave me alone with *her*," he said, drawing another round of giggles from Megumi and Belldandy and a deeper Skuld-frown. He stuck his tongue out at her; having turned Skuld's little accusation against her. Skuld appeared to be gliding into a pout when one of Cevn's cats climbed into her lap and nestled into purrful sleep.
Megumi looked at Genji with a mixture of apprehension and excitement at the prospect of going 'on the road' with him. Fortunately, Megumi had a bunch of the lozenges Urd had made to counteract Belldandy's 'beauty spell'. Otherwise, she and Genji...well the mesh of fear and fantasy sent a thrill down her spine.
After Genji 'moved' into the living room two days ago, they had held several serious talks on the subject of relationships. Genji was surprisingly mature in his attitudes towards the subject, much to Megumi's delight. He obviously didn't pick those healthy ideas from his sister, she noted. On the other hand, it was obvious that he was still a virgin...a fact that didn't bother Megumi at all. As long as she took her daily dose, Genji wouldn't have to put up with being around the most beautiful woman in Japan. Or become the victim of his own rampaging hormones, she thought with a dreamy smile. The mischievous part of her wanted to 'miss' a dose, just to see what he would do.
Keiichi looked at the other two 'teams'. Each pair would focus on a particular area of Japan in an effort to find their Goddess-errant. He was a little worried about pairing Skuld and Tomohisa, simply because they were so young. Skuld was almost 13 in mortal years and Tomohisa would turn 16 in a few months. He was also concerned about their ability to coordinate the search; as the ones who would remain at home, they were in all aspects the 'central command' of "Operation Urd". Yet the division into three pairs was Belldandy's suggestion...she must trust Skuld a lot. Skuld would prove to be much more secure on decision-making than Tomohisa.
As for Megumi and Genji, Keiichi's major concerns centered on her 'beauty enhancement'. What would happen if she forgot to take her pills? He shuddered at the memory of the superlovely Megumi. The only thing that kept him from pestering Megumi to death was the fact that he was her brother. But Genji, who was romantically *interested* in her, would certainly be unable to restrain himself. If he caught sight of her without the diminishing effects of the lozenges, it would be just like how he and Bell-chan up on Mt. Nantai during their earlier weekend vacation. *That* thought sobered him.
"Why did Bell-chan suggest boy-girl/boy-girl pairs?" his older-brother perspective spoke in his mind.
"Genji, you better respect my little sister," he thought protectively. Then he remembered that afternoon on Mt. Nantai, unable to shake the images of his and Bell's slightly erotic adventure. He felt shivers flustering his system...and noticed that he was warm all over. The thought of their Urd-induced lust that time made him feel nervous, as he and Belldandy would be alone for up to a week.
"How will I manage *this*?" he asked himself while images of his partially dressed girlfriend danced in his head. As if on cue, Belldandy nudged up against him and dreamily rested her head on his shoulder. He jerked slightly, backing out of his daydream. She looked at him with a questioning glance and he grinned at her.
"L...let's review our plans, heh heh!" he said with a smile. He nervously arranged the maps and atlases, and then detailed his and Bell-chan's route. His divine girlfriend looked at him softly and he flushed beet-red.
"Er, Bell-chan and I will go south to Nagoya and Osaka, then we'll come back next Sunday. If we haven't found Urd, then we'll try Kyoto and Kobe," he explained as he traced a route on the map. Keiichi felt a momentary grudge...this one trip alone will cost us a fortune! Cevn had left all of his money here, and he had given them wads of 10,000-yen notes when he first moved in...but this was still an expensive trip. He counted out 350K yen for Megumi and Genji.
"You two will check out Tokyo for the next five days, then fly to Sapporo if you haven't found Urd. Here is some money for lodging and airfare. There should be enough for a room for each of you for a week, plus extra," he said. Megumi cleared her throat when she heard Keiichi's implicit suggestion that Genji and she room separately.
"And why, Big Brother? Don't you think Genji and I should save money and room together?" she asked with a gentle smirk. Keiichi, who was already nervous, suddenly realized his gaffe...he was being overprotective.
"Damn!" he thought, "Now I'm going to hear it!"
Megumi seized on this and teased him.
"You know, we're both adults, and it's not like we're going to sleep in the same bed or something," she added, enjoying watching Keiichi squirm with embarrassment and while Genji scowled with disappointment. Two for the price of one! Her boyfriend soon joined Keiichi in the blushing man department, adding to Megumi's mirth. For a coup-de-grace, she finished with a flare.
"Ahh, but I bet I know *someone* who might share a bed with his partner. No, not 'might', but 'will' share a bed."
"NO WAY!" Skuld shouted, saving Keiichi from having to answer for he and Bell-chan. He nervously looked at Belldandy; she just returned his gaze with a serene expression on her face. She didn't even have a hint of embarrassment at Megumi's insinuation, he noticed with disappointment.
As for Genji, Megumi saw his face flash hot...the kind of heat a man's face exhibits when he thinks he's going to get laid for the first time in his life.
"You're such a virgin, Genji!" Megumi thought with embarrassed delight. He had assumed that she was talking about *she and he* sharing a bed together! To add to the comic scene, she noticed that Skuld had shuffled herself a foot farther away from Tomohisa, regarding him with a wary expression.
"S..Sk..Skuld, I didn't do anything! I didn't think anything. I know that I'm sleeping on the couch, so stop bugging out!" Tomohisa shouted in a frustrated voice. He thought that Skuld was a 12-year-old nag sometimes...this being one of those times. Belldandy giggled at the inside joke about bugs.
"I told you already, you're too young for me to be thinking of you *that* way!" he added. Skuld felt an slight flash of disappointment in response to his remark. She questioned herself about her curious reaction.
"Why should being too young make a difference? Why am I feeling upset when he says that he thinks I'm too young for him? Too young for what? He better not be thinking that I'm a child or something!" her mind twirling like a desert baguio.
Belldandy smiled at Skuld, drawing a sheepish smile from her younger sister. She seemed to sense Skuld's consternation at Tomohisa's remark. Belldandy had become adept at the art of diffusing Skuld's tempestuous moodswings; once more her passive intervention had prevented a Skuld-fit. Skuld knew that Belldandy knew something that *she* didn't...so she let it rest.
Keiichi, acting as the leader, called the conference to a close, still smarting from Megumi's teasing. Megumi pinched him on the arm as they all stood up.
"Don't forget to bring 'protection'," she whispered. Keiichi blushed fast and furious as she giggled.

* * * * * * * *

It was Monday morning. I had been restless last night and consequently, I forgot the morning drill at BeiDa. Every morning except Sunday, at precisely 6 am, loudspeakers all over the campus would blare the Chinese National Anthem or some other kind of martial music, followed by fifteen minutes of news. The Chinese version of NPR. I had just fallen to sleep at three...now I rubbed my eyes awake as images of Chairman Mao danced to the anthemic music invading my earspace.
I was scheduled to meet with Dr. Zhao concerning my dissertation, then Chancellor Wang about the N.I.T. liaison after lunch. I was apprehensive about both meetings. Yesterday, I reviewed the liaison proposal documents and gathered my dissertation project papers. Memories of Urd's betrayal kept running interference with my concentration. I still felt emotionally raw from her wounding of my trust.
I ate at the one of the student cafeterias and then walked it to the Philosophy Dept. I remembered Dr. Zhao from my last two visits here. He was a slender wisp of a man in his late sixties with a full head of gray hair and a cheerful attitude. I was amazed at his resilience; he seemed a human personification of a Daoist Immortal. One of those Chinese old guys who could be anywhere between 60 and 80 and yet look like he was in his fifties. He had joined the faculty at BeiDa in the late fifties and had somehow survived the purgings and insanity of the Cultural Revolution. In his office, he had a small snapshot showing him in a dunce cap with a slogan placard hanging around his neck saying "Imperialist Intellectual Roader and Deceiver of the People." All because he was one of China's top three experts on Confucianism. The memory of that photo somehow diminished the bitter taste of my heart-rending upheaval out of Japan.
I knocked on his office door and he ushered me in. His office was crammed from floor to ceiling with texts and papers. It was almost funny when he introduced himself to me, as if he was meeting me for the first time. I felt awkward, introducing myself to a man that I had already known from two previous encounters. After a couple minutes of chit-chat, he questioned me about the topic of my dissertation. I had been working for the last several years on a book-length dissertation I called "First Consciousness". About one minute into my nervous explanation, that crazy thing I called 'metallect' kicked in. The words bubbled out of my mouth, almost on their own.
"First Consciousness consists of four related sections. First, a unifying canonical on linguistics, demonstrating the root phonemics and heuristics of ante-Syriac, Indo-Chinese and Egyptian Coptic. Second, a refutation of the Null Hypothesis and development of an evolved experimental method to replace it. Third, an exposition on the nature of consciousness integrating Heidegger and non-void Kyoto School Zen within the framework of absolving integral non-existence. Finally, a demonstrable potentiality syntax of all conscious thought-forms stated within a mathematical and metaphysical philosophical framework."
Dr. Zhao looked at me with shock. The Heidegger portion of my proposal addressed the most difficult and cogent issue of modern existentialism. The Null Hypothesis would require an academician with a solid grounding in the philosophy of psychometrics. The other two...were impossible. The unification of early languages was the Holy Grail of archaic linguistic studies. The final section was something I had never heard of...nor he.
He looked at me with a fixed expression after recovering from his initial surprise.
"Are you joking? What you are proposing is impossible. You'll get shot down within ten minutes of your defense. I can't commit an entire review committee to address such nonsense!" He was trying to be diplomatic, but doubt was clearly etched on his elderly visage.
"I need to travel to Dunhuang for a week to finish my fieldwork, then I will present enough outline material to justify your committee allocation," I replied, shocked at my sudden travel plans.
"What was in Dunhuang?" I wondered to myself.
"If you demonstrate academic fidelity supporting what you are arguing, I'll make sure that we provide an international committee of experts...because if you are successful, your work will be nothing short of an major event in intellectual history," Dr. Zhao promised.
I was shocked. Three *new* parts of my dissertation proposal had just jumped out of my mouth without thought. I was working towards the Heidegger issue, because there was so much to work with. Existentialism was integral in any study of human consciousness. But the others? It seemed like another one of those coincidences, just like how I was able to read the Enigma Book. Somehow, I knew the unknowable.
My afternoon meeting with Chancellor Wang was also a surprise, in a negative sense. He was shocked to see a longhaired gaijin serving as a liaison for a Japanese technical institute. I sensed that he was offended by my casual demeanor, despite my respectful attitude. Everything that I remembered about Chinese business etiquette suddenly became salient. I presented the letter from Dr. Kintaro and outlined the proposals. He listened...then shot me down. Hard.
As I walked back to my dorm room, I felt a gathering sense of gloom.

* * * * * * * *

Megumi and Genji caught the morning train to Tokyo. It was crowded with Monday commuters going to work in the metropolis. Megumi was grateful that she didn't have to get up at 5am to get into Tokyo by 9. The grim, dour faces on many of the train riders verified her observation.
She had been to Tokyo quite often, but she knew that her traveling partner was far more experienced about Tokyo. He had gone to prep school there. When he volunteered this fact while they were discussing travel assignments, their team was allocated Metro Tokyo as an area to search. I didn't know he went to prep school in Tokyo, Megumi thought. She sadly remembered the last time she was in Tokyo with Genji...Cevn had been with them.
"Genji, you know Tokyo better than I do. Where should we start to look for Urd?" she said, trying to snap out of her down mood. Genji looked at her thoughtfully, then smiled.
"Hmmm...I think we should hit Shinjuku and apply to official channels first. We can go to the Metro Gov't. Office and file missing person reports. After that, we should head over to the entertainment districts."
"Yeah, you're right! Urd always was into the spicier side of life...not to mention she's a prole for anything that resembles amusement!" Megumi replied.
They got off at Ueno station and rented a car. Megumi wanted to drive, but realized that Genji may be put off if he was relegated to the passenger seat. Much to her surprise, he offered to share the driving chores. She smiled at his sense of propriety...he was certainly being sensitive and diplomatic. Once more, a fine garment of romantic fancy drifted like a winnowing breeze in her mind.
After driving through much of northern Tokyo and withstanding the slow freeway traffic, they arrived at the tall government building. Genji pulled their rented Mazda into the underground parking lot. After the frantic search for a space, they ascended the escalator and went in search of where to file a report on Urd. Megumi had brought some pictures of Urd and a fake description of her age, birthdate, etc. that Keiichi had cooked up on the computer last night.
The lady at the missing persons section commented on how tan Urd was. She promised to have the picture distributed first thing the next day to all of the satellite police stations and civic halls. Megumi was amazed at the efficiency of the city officials. Genji took it all in stride.
"Where to next?" Megumi asked as they were in the elevator.
"I think we should check out Harajuku first, since it's nearby. It has a *lot* of clothing stores and Yoyogi Park is a great hangout. They even have live bands on the weekends sometimes. I remember seeing Lindberg and Iruku Loop Child there while in prep school," Genji suggested. Megumi raised an eyebrow at this; Genji must have stolen away from his home to attend the concerts.
She remembered Urd's proclivity to dress in stylish clothes. As they entered the gate of the park, Genji brushed his hand against hers, signaling her. After a moment's hesitation, he took her hand in his. Megumi sighed softly at the gesture. It was quiet...but it was a powerful statement of his feelings towards him. She flashed him her happy smile as they walked towards the central grounds of the park, bumping each other's shoulders once in a while.

* * * * * * * *

Belldandy looked at Keiichi. He was slumped slightly in his train seat, asleep with his cheek resting on the windowpane of the Shinkansen. To her, it seemed that they were going in circles. Just a couple of days ago, they had caught the bullet train *back* to Makuhari. Now they were traveling again to Nagoya and then Osaka...only this trip wasn't a vacation.
She was worried sick about her older sister. In all the time she knew Urd, Urd had only pulled one other disappearing act. It was around the time she had hooked up with Troubadour. Back then, Belldandy had known quite clearly why Urd had gone AWOL from her post as a Sysop trainee for the Yggdrasil Mainframe. But this time...there was no apparent reason for her disappearance.
Keiichi lightly snored as the train passed Shimizu.

* * * * * * * *

Urd smiled as the cameras snapped photos. She was dressed in a formal 19th century wedding dress. This was a magazine shoot, which required a much different approach from the video filming they would do later. She felt like a model, with all the makeup techs and beauticians hovering over her.
She was dressed in the traditional red-colored bridal gown. Her hair was trussed up into a 'phoenix cap'; an intricate weaving of hair and nine chenille flowers representing longevity. She wore silken red gloves and a stunning embroidered red dress with ivory fastenings. She had intricately embroidered silken slippers that imitated the style of a Qing dynasty bride. After two hours of makeup, she looked in the mirror and hardly recognized herself. Finally, she was given two fur wraps and was led to the filming stage, where a wedding palanquin was waiting.
She had finished a bottle of sake just prior and was feeling a little tipsy. As a Goddess, she didn't react as strongly to alcohol as mortals. She could drink three bottles to obtain the same reaction a mortal did by drinking two glasses of medium-strength sake. This propensity to drink had caused the film crew to look at her as a marvel...she had already drank most of them under the table in the past couple of days.
"Silly boys...thinking that I'd get drunk and then be vulnerable to their advances," she thought with amusement.
She laughed as she imagined how her two sisters must have been frantically trying to figure out where she was. Before leaving, she had made sure to take a huge amount of money that she had found in Cevn's room, thinking that she would need it in Switzerland. But here, the Japanese Yen was quite strong against the Chinese Renminbi. At the bank, the teller was surprised when Urd unloaded all her 10K yen notes to be exchanged into RMB. The teller had suggested that she open an account, because it was dangerous to carry so much money. So now Urd had an account at the China National Bank.
She preened in front of the cameras.

* * * * * * * *

"It's just like my stupid older sister to do a disappearing act like this. It's so...*Urdish*!" Skuld sighed in frustration as she paced around the house. She had phoned over a hundred ryokan and hotels in Chiba and the surrounding provinces...without so much of a trace of Urd's trail. Tomohisa had relieved her and called an additional fifty or so. None of the inns or hotels had seen a woman matching Urd's description. And they had only made a slight dent in the list of calls.
Tomohisa had assigned himself the additional, yet disgusting task of calling the local 'love hotels'. Some of the cronies he talked with had voices dripping with venomous lust and gross malignancy. He felt sick just talking to them, as if he was going to catch some kind of disease through the phone. He had kept this task concealed from Skuld; he didn't want Skuld interpreting his calls to the 'love hotels' as some kind of form of perversion. It was better that she didn't know. Skuld was already cautious around him...he didn't need her screaming "pervert!" at him.
The phone rang. Tomohisa motioned to Skuld to answer it. She shook her head "no", so he picked up the phone. It turned out to be Megumi and Genji checking in.
"Why is she so reluctant to pick up the phone when it rings?" he wondered.
"Hello...oh Hi Tomohisa! This is Megumi. We're at Tokyo Disneyland. We haven't heard a thing about Urd. They have her picture at all the local police substations and in any number of public places. Her face is all over Tokyo...but no luck finding her."
"Sound's like you're having fun instead of trying to find her," he said to his cousin. He heard Megumi sigh with piquence.
"Well, maybe we should take a break! We've been all over Tokyo the past three days: visiting metro city halls here, visiting police stations there. There's no sign of her anywhere. We've been to Akibahara, Shinjuku, Shibuya and Ikibukuro. Now we're checking out the Bay Area," she reported. Tomohisa could hear the sounds of excited children screaming in the background.
"Lucky them, they get to go 'look' for Urd at an amusement park," he thought begrudgedly.
"Did you go on any rides?" he asked.
"No, but we did visit the security office and the park headquarters. They promised to monitor the grounds to see if they could locate Urd. See, we're not just here for the rides," she assured him.
Megumi was flustered at the fact that her younger cousin thought that this was nothing more than a joyride through Metro Tokyo for her and Genji. She had learned a lot in the first couple days about dealing with police and government officials. Fortunately, missing person reports were a rarity in Japan, as opposed to places like the United States where kidnappings occurred every day. So the local officials seemed determined to make a real effort to find Urd; they certainly were enthusiastic about employing any means necessary in their search.
"How are you and Skuld getting along? You haven't made a move on her, have ya?" she teased him over the phone. Tomohisa blushed suddenly, which brought a look of concern from Skuld.
"Heh heh...no. Of course not! We've been calling all over trying to find Urd. You know, all the hotels and inns."
"I bet you love calling those 'love hotels'..." Megumi heard the pause on the other end of the phone and giggled, just as a huge life-size Donald Duck waddled by her and Genji. Genji looked at her with mystification. This was supposed to be a check up call to report in what they had found out about Urd.
"Actually, I didn't like calling those love hotels at all."
Tomohisa said, then covered his mouth when he realized that he had blown it.
"Eeep!"
He turned...and saw Skuld ready to erupt like Mt. Fuji.
"You *pervert*! You actually called some...love hotels? Pervert! What makes you think that my older sister would go to one of those places? I bet you were just looking for an excuse to call them," she shouted icily. Tomohisa gathered his courage and confronted her.
"What makes you think she wouldn't? I've known Urd a little while too and you know how sex intrigues her! Unlike a child...like you!" Tomohisa barely managed to get that one out.
"Whaaaaat?!" Skuld growled. Rolling up a map, she hit him on the side of the head.
Megumi heard the "smack!" over the phone.
"Poor Tomo, you've really got her riled up this time."

***Smack...smack...smack!***

"Hey...ouch...knock it..oww..off Skuld!" he said as he covered his head with his arms in a defensive motion, grateful that it was only a rolled up map and not that mallet that Skuld carries around everywhere.
Skuld was ready to hit Tomohisa again when she stopped short in mid-swing. He was right. It *wouldn't* be beneath Urd to stop at a love hotel. She recalled all the times Urd had converted the sister's bedroom into a replica of a love motel in an attempt to get Elder Sister and Keiichi to...do the perverted thing.
And to make matters worse, Big Sister Urd had never even stopped to consider where I was supposed to sleep once she ruined our bedroom! In the bathtub? And when and where did Urd think I was supposed to get dressed...
"That stupid Big Sister of mine! Why did she have to turn our bedroom into a replica of one of those echhi love hotel rooms all those times, trying to get my sister all mellow...to do that nasty mortal thing with Keiichi?" Skuld growled out loud.
Suddenly, Tomohisa doubled over and started wheezing. Skuld quickly lowered her rolled up map, worried that her rain of blows on his head might have triggered an asthmatic episode.
"Quick! Get your inhaler, Tomohisa!" she shouted in a worried voice.
"Faked you out, didn't I?" Tomohisa shouted. He had taken advantage of Skuld's concerned pause and snatched the map paper out of her hand, and then whacked her on the head.
"Whyyyyyy you....." Skuld growled angrily.
They both paused as they heard raucous laughter coming from the phone.
"See...I told you the Urd might go to a place like a Love Hotel! And you knew it, too! And you called *me* a pervert!" he shouted, emphasizing every other word with a series of gentle but firm paperslaps to Skuld's head.
"Hey! Gimme..heehee..that!"

Smack! Smack!

Megumi heard giggling on the other end of the line as Skuld tried to wrestle something out of Tomohisa's grasp.
"Well, I'll just leave you two lovebirds to your tete-a-tete while we undertake the serious business of finding Urd," she shouted into the phone in a taunting voice. There was a brief moment of silence on the phone before she hung it up. Megumi smiled in satisfaction, imagining Skuld and her cousin's mortification.
Skuld and Tomohisa both looked at each other with beet red faces, each wielding half a rolled up map in their hand.
They had heard Megumi.

* * * * * * * *

In Nagoya, Keiichi and Belldandy had contacted the official channels in their search for Urd. Nagoya itself seemed to have the soulless aspect of an American metropolis.
"This city is *too* planned," Keiichi thought. A civic planner's dream...and a sightseer's nightmare. Although he knew that they weren't on a sightseeing tour, he couldn't help but think of things that way.
They rented a room in the Miyoshi Ryokan, about 20 minutes walk from the train station. The train station itself was undergoing renovation, as the huge JR tower was being expanded above the station. The first office tower was completed in 2000, and was reputed to be Japan's tallest and largest office building at the time. Now, a second tower was being built next to it, rising another 20 stories. The engineer in Keiichi was interested in the design aspects of building a 80-story skyscraper above an existing structure.
They had visited the Metropolitan Office and left flyers with Urd's pseudo-information. The officials there were quite impressed with the fact that they had traveled all the way from Chiba Prefecture to try and track down Urd, or "Urudo Hayasaki" as the poster read.
They had one more day in Nagoya, Japan's fifth largest city. Belldandy was always keen on noticing the unusual things. Earlier in the day, they were in Higashi-yama Park, when Bell spotted a boy who had lost a fish-kite. She closed her eyes and a moment later the kite descended back into the arms of the boy, much to the bewilderment of the boy's father...and Keiichi's own delight. He looked at his divine girlfriend, grateful that she was a force for good in the world.
"We really need all the goodness we can have," he thought.