Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Curl ❯ Chapter 24

Aoshi-sama was acting weird. Well, if weird meant looking and acting exactly the same as normal and yet… There was just something that was different. It wasn't in a good way, either. Misao wondered if it was because he couldn't very well find time in his busy schedule for all the various 'appointments' he would be making with *her* teachers.

'There has to be some rule against it, SOMETHING…' her hands clutched tightly over the straps of her backpack, as she weaved through people trying to keep her eye on the target above the crowd. Aoshi easily towered over most people, including herself, but he obviously had forgotten about her or something because he was steadily leaving her behind. It wasn't until he had been able to cross a street without her, leaving her alone on the curb did she call to him.

*-*-*-*

"Aoshi-sama…!!" The girl cried out from far behind. 'Far behind?' Aoshi stepped up onto the curb on the other end of the street and finally turned around. And there was Misao. Her lower lip was poking out in a pout, while her cerulean eyes were slightly widened. There was almost the slight glint of desperation with the promise of tears, as her gaze cast left and then right. She didn't know where she was; let alone where he was taking her. 'But she followed me anyway…'

As tiny chords began squeezing around that funny blood pumping organ that dwelled in his chest, he stood waiting for the light to change and for Misao to catch up. He had been too wrapped up in his thoughts to recall the fact that Misao was new to the city, and had little if any idea what was going on in his head. Somehow, some part of him just trusted her to know that he knew what he was doing. Or at least, when he thought he did, anyway.

The light changed, and Misao was up at the front of those crossing, her pigtail bobbing from side to side as she nearly jogged across the street to meet up with him. Aoshi felt like he was going to disappear of existence any minute the way she kept an eye on him. It was strange. And here he was supposed to be taking care of her.

Those chords struck him again, and deeply. The notion of failure began to float to the surface. Failure to guard, to protect, to care for… for her. And well, for Sanosuke, too. He was batting zero for two right now, as it seemed, and something… someone had to give. As for the moment, past was past. Aoshi forced himself to focus.

When they began walking again, Aoshi made it a point to stay within arms' reach of Misao at all times. Since he'd finally woken up to the rest of the world, he noticed the roaming eyes that somehow seemed to find their way to the young lady with him. Accustomed to the unwelcome attentions, he could just blank them out of his mind. However, when it concerned a… seventeen? Eighteen-year-old young woman that was in his care, that was an entirely different story.

As they finally turned into a building, a magnificent looking one at that, images of Hiko-sensei crept into his mind. If the doors weren't automatic, his cold glare would've scared them open.

*-*-*-*

She was standing in the middle of what could very well be one of the most beautiful buildings she'd ever seen in her life. Everything was eerily immaculate. Misao stumbled around in circles, trying to see everything at once, promptly knocking head first into Aoshi's muscled back.

Almost afraid to look up, her gaze remained on the floor, two of her slender fingertips brushing over that ever abused injured forehead. At least this object wasn't inanimate.

'Coulda fooled me,' Misao cursed in the back of her mind. He had yet to say anything. Where the heck were they anyway? Aoshi had stopped at least, and he wasn't leaving her behind as he had before. Behind those cobalt eyes, she wondered what the hell he was thinking sometimes. A strong finger poked her chin, turning her head ot the side. There was a large plaque, gold and embossed.

"… Shinomori Networking and Organization Workgroup?" her voice was slow and calculating, since the words were so foreign when she read them aloud. There was a gust of warmth that brushed over her bangs… a sigh?

*-*-*-*

"Shin…"

"Shinomori."

"Shiiiin…ahh…"

"Shinomori, Misao-chan. Shin… oh… more… ee…" Aoshi tried to make his mouth move slowly so she could mimic him, but it was useless. Her attention span just could not handle words over three syllables.

"How come ya'got sucha' big name, Aoshi-nii'?" The child in his lap dunked the bubble wand down into the solution, swirling it about. Finally drawing it out, she held her breath, and tiny soapy bubbles briefly filled the air in front of them and drifted with the breeze.

"It is my father's name," Aoshi's tone was flat, not that it ever was much else. He kept his voice as even as possible, mostly to prevent it from cracking. It was just far too humiliating, especially since the child in his lap had this odd tendency to worsen his embarrassment by laughing her giddy head off.

"… Jiya?" Of course, that would be the only father she might have known of. She peeked over her shoulder, searching for confirmation. A pout formed on those small lips when he shook his head negatively.

"No, Jiya is my grandfather…" and he was promptly interrupted, and he was becoming quite accustomed to this. Surprisingly, his tolerance had grown for children, particularly this one.

"Jiya grand! Jiya grand!" The girl almost spilled all of her bubble solution into both of their laps, so Aoshi gently took the bottle away and set it aside. "Aoshi-nii' gonna train with Jiya today?" Aoshi simply nodded. "Can Misao-chan train too?"

Her eyes were bright, and wide. Those small hands, chubby and stubby, pressed up against his chest. Eager, and waiting for a "yes". Misao didn't look like she had an interest in just any answer. No, she wanted a "yes." Fortunately, thanks to his dear old dad, he had become quite a good liar.

"Of course, Misao-" he didn't even finish his sentence when she darted out of his lap, no doubt, in search of his dear old grandpapa. Let him be the one to say no to those clear blues. 'Hah.'

He almost smiled. Almost.

*-*-*-*

"What are we doing here Aoshi-sama?"

"I have to go check on my doodles," he turned swiftly walking to the elevators, and it took a full solid minute for Misao to register that Aoshi - Shinomori Aoshi - had just made a joke.

Once they were in the elevator, Misao attempted to subject Aoshi to the meanest glare she could possibly muster. However, her supple lips had a habit of betraying her by forming a girlish pout. He was teasing her again. The sudden jolt of the elevator taking its rise shook her from her reverence. Her footing slipped, and she grasped onto the railing, and then felt her cheeks burning as he just rose a single eyebrow at her. Sheepishly, she straightened herself back up, and waited for them to reach their floor.

The numbers just seemed to keep climbing. She had never been a building this tall before, at least she couldn't remember… It was curious how these high-speed elevators worked - the elevator and the numbers it flashed never seemed to stay in sync… one always had to catch up with the other. The elevator jolted again, but she had been ready and braced for it. The fourty-seventh floor.

When the stepped out, she was facing a large information desk, which had two busy body secretaries answering calls into their headsets. There it was again, "Shinomori Networking and Organization Workgroup." It sounded so … official.

'Snow. It spells "snow,"' Misao concluded in her mind, as she stepped off the elevator without really thinking about having done so. A smirk almost crawled onto her lips, thinking that something about coldness seemed to follow Aoshi around like the plague. 'Too bad it couldn't spell "icicle."'

The aforementioned walking solid water was standing beside her, in front of the desk with the two ladies. They seemed nice enough. Noticing it briefly, Misao would've guessed they may have been related somehow. One of the ladies signaled to the other, and a handful of buttons were pushed on either end, and the same woman pulled off her headset and smiled at Aoshi. '*Another* one????'

"Shinomori-san," she bowed in her seat, and stood up when the gesture was returned. Her smile brightened as her eyes fell upon Misao. "Kawaiiii!" Misao winced at the shrillness that always somehow seemed to accompany the word. "You must be the 'Misao-chan' that Shinomori-san told us about…!"

At this, the girl just blinked. 'He… talks about me?' She glanced at him sidelong, and found that he was already turning to walk away. The lady that had greeted them was moving around her desk and ushering Misao to follow. She couldn't exactly decline, could she?

"Ne, may I call you Misao-chan, too? It's so cute!" The woman practically gushed, making the younger one blush. They were walking side by side behind Aoshi, and Misao found it hard to focus on what the woman was saying over stealing glances at the rather nice posterior in front of her. "I'm Omasu… I work as one of the secretaries in this office…"

Misao managed to nod at that, bowing slightly with her hand behind her head. The woman, to say the least, was full of energy. Curious phenomenon, considering she would sit behind a desk eight to nine hours a day. The notion nearly made Misao's skin crawl… she *never* wanted a desk job if she could avoid it.

*-*-*-*

Aoshi opened the door to his office, welcomed by the golden plaque with his name engraved. One of the reasons he didn't like coming to the office was for this exact reason: his name was everywhere. His, as in his father's. His father's name was everywhere, even nailed onto him. Thanks to technology, he rarely had to actually be there, so he could enjoy other and more important things.

None of which he could really list at the moment, but that was beside the point.

On top of his desk were arranged several packages, as he approached them, he popped one of them open with barely the flick of his wrist. There were eyes on his back, had been since he walked in. Omasu's voice was filling the air, which wasn't unusual, he had just become accustomed to it being Misao's voice instead. Although, that was a recent development. Then he paused, looking down at something he had withdrawn from the box. Raising an eyebrow in question, he glanced at Omasu, who had caught up and stood beside him with Misao.

"I took the liberty of getting Misao-chan, here, a nice little character for her cell phone…" The woman beamed, practically gushing with misplaced maternal warmth. Aoshi was tempted to roll his eyes, instead nodding at her following 'explanation': "… to make sure she doesn't mix it up with Sano-san's."

'Right… the face plates didn't *quite* cut that bill,' Aoshi thought, as his lips pressed together in silence. The cell phone in his hand was wearing a baby blue shell. Turning on the new cell in his hand, watching as a little panda appeared as a welcome, followed by the phone number, he quickly took note of it and handed the phone to Misao. Whipping out his own phone from his pocket, his fingers worked at amazing speeds to program it in. Having a cell phone as a primary means of contact with the outside world seemed to make fingers work at amazing speeds on buttons of amazingly microscopic size.

*-*-*-*

Looking at the cell that was now in her hand, she compared it with Aoshi's. It didn't flip up like his did, but yes, it was cute. It was a nifty little Motorola, which had a baby blue jacket pulled onto it. There was a tiny panda dangling from the antenna, that even had it's own little bell. Misao didn't know quite what to make of it at first, just that, well, it made sense to have one.

Finding her way to flop into a leather armchair facing the desk, she started playing with her new toy. In Kyoto, she hadn't really needed a cell phone, at least she didn't think so. Sure, everybody and their mothers' sisters' cousins' pets had them, but Misao wasn't really big on being found all the time. It wasn't as though she went out late nights partying and all that. It was Sanosuke who needed a cell phone more than she…

Just then, she came across his entry in her phonebook. Wow, this Omasu woman thought of *everything*. Probably every phone number of every place Aoshi could possibly *ever* be was programmed, and here was Sano. Sano-niichan.

'Out of sight, out of mind, out of sight, out of mind, out of sight…' Misao went into a tiny mantra, briefly closing her eyes, as she started having rather painful flashbacks. Whatever else was going on in the room was totally lost to her, since all she heard were the moaning of a man and woman in heated intoxicated passion.

*-*-*-*

He only glanced when he saw Misao sit down in the corner of his eyes. She seemed quite enraptured in this new fangled doodad. Just for good measure, Aoshi felt compelled to peek at Sano's cell phone. He was honestly afraid of what Omasu could've tried to slip in on this one. There was almost a sigh of relief. Just a black jacket, but no bells and whistles… literally speaking.

"Arigatou." He was gratefully, truly. Omasu always gave one hundred and ten percent, even if she was a little off the wall. Between her and Okon, he didn't know who drank more coffee. It was a bad idea to accept that sponsorship from Starbucks. Ever since, every floor was heavily stocked with at least a dozen varieties, which the secretaries have probably all tried in several grandiose quantities. Something about the whole coffee thing was just sick, really.

The woman cheerfully bowed, and excused herself, going to scurry out of the office. Aoshi, with his back to Misao, and facing his faint reflection in the window, *then* rolled his eyes. Omasu had just come in to see if Misao approved of the panda bell… thing.

School had let out just around noon, and it was nearly almost half past. Aoshi made sure to program Sano's phone number as well, particularly his. There will be no absence from the dinner table without calling ahead.

'Now I *sound* like a parent,' he cursed at himself. Swiping his hand quickly over his eyes, he brushed his bangs aside, turning his attention back to Misao.

The girl was currently lost in some bizarre cloud of melancholy. These hormones must be tricky things, and Aoshi knew how they worked on men, but girls - young women, were a different story.

"Misao-chan?" he ventured quietly. Nothing. He doubted she even noticed that Omasu left, let alone that she had said goodbye. Her once clear gaze was shadowed and dull, seeing but not seeing. They strangely looked like how he knew his to be. This just wouldn't do. "… Misao-chan."

The girl closed her eyes briefly, and then went back to how she had been. What was going on in that girl's head? 'Note to self: not just a girl…' Thanks to his brother, and life in boarding school, Aoshi knew many a choice curse word, and they began to run on loop in his mind. He was not made for this, he wasn't good with this, he couldn't handle this…

But none of this showed. He was having flashbacks to dealing with Misao as a child, memories that had been shrouded with the torments of age and the toils of life. The paper cuts, the scrapes, the bumps, the bruises, the burns, and of course just about everything and anything the child had been able to get her hands into, she had done it. Each time, it was the same panic, the same fear of failure and of weakness that shook his being.

The same feeling he had when his mother first left. He always wondered how he had managed to fail at being a son without knowing it was a task to be executed.

Swallowing slowly, inaudibly, burying the memories down in his gullet for the time being, he squatted down in front of Misao. His eyes were fixed on hers, his hands curled into the leather of the arms of the chair.

*-*-*-*

"Misao."

She blinked. Her head shook itself from side to side slightly, as if to wake herself up from a trance. Taking a breath, she tried to find her voice.

And failed, promptly trying again. "… h-hai Aoshi-sama?"

His features seemed to soften. 'It's just the light,' she silently told herself. Aoshi could make her heart leap, and her sensitive parts tingle, but she knew he wasn't one to show emotion. Had she not been so busy trying to recover some ounce of dignity, she might have pondered about that a little longer.

"Daijobou desu ka? (Are you alright?)" His tone was clear, and serious. And annoyingly attractive.

'Stupid hormones, down I say! Back!' Taming the chemical lions in her person was not one of her greater talents. They apparently decided to all round up in her face, causing her to blush madly. 'Stop acting like a giddy bloody school girl! … Even if you are a giddy bloody school girl!' When had he gotten so close? And … didn't he say something?

"… daijobou desu ka?" he asked again, his tone softer than before. He looked… genuinely concerned. His face didn't show it. None of his features did. But there was a flicker in his eyes, which had Misao's hands wrenching around her innocent cell phone. Good thing she'd been staring or she might've missed it.

"… genki desu! (I'm great!)" Her blush deepened when she realized how embarrassingly loud she'd been by blurting that out. It's hard not to be great when a man this good looking is that close… It was then Misao realized just how close, when she could easily smell his cologne. It wasn't really cologne really, it was… soap?

'Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…' Her foot started quivering over the floor, in a rapid nervous twitch. Aoshi had backed up a little, as if considering her answer. She hadn't lied, entirely. At that moment she had been great. Now had he asked her if she was alright a minute before he asked the question…Misao's eyes widened as she watched his hand reach for her.

It was as if the entire world decided to go Matrix style, and everything else had just stopped. It was just his hand moving, and it was slowly lifting off the chair, she could hear the leather kiss his skin goodbye as it fled… The filtered recycled air from the vents was displaced around those strong digits, as they curved, and they drew closer… The gentle fragrance of some soap, whose name didn't matter, drifted into her senses like a new breath of life. It was mixed with the smell of man, this man. The warmth of his skin drew nearer, and suddenly…

Her cell phone rang. And like that, he was gone.

*-*-*-*

Aoshi had stepped away from her, watching as she clumsily juggled the cell from one hand to the other. While the phone was singing "TANK!", Aoshi silently sighed. 'Omasu…' And then it took another chorus for Misao to figure out how to answer the spastic thing. When he saw she had it under control, somewhat, he moved to sit behind his desk. Each step he took was another deep cleansing breath.

He had convinced himself that there had been something seriously wrong with Misao. That he had been reaching for her to check her temperature, and that was all. There was a fear he hadn't felt in… quite some time. At least before her and Sano had arrived. All the tasks he was given, all the things he had to do, he knew he could do. Without question, without pretense, he could do what he had to better than anyone else could. But he knew, in his heart of hearts, that this could never be so easy. This day forward, it would never be so easy.

Aoshi couldn't fail at this. He couldn't fail them, and he wouldn't fail her. That was what he promised himself at that moment when Omsau's voice came blaring loud enough for him to hear across the room…

"I WAS JUST CHECKING TO SEE IF IT WORKED! KAWAII DESU NE?"

===

Author's Note:

::spanks her hand:: MOU! Shame on me for writing such a long chapter! … My chapter lengths have gotten tres weird… I'm taking out the ASCII all together… mostly because they throw off the chapter numbering system, and I'm *deathly* afraid of uploading the wrong chapter.

For those of you wondering how you can do it, in case you want to steal my idea (har har), you can download a program from cnet.com. Just search for ASCII, and something should come up. ^_^