Sailor Moon Fan Fiction ❯ After School ❯ The Easing of His Heart ( Chapter 3 )

[ P - Pre-Teen ]

Ajax presents...
AFTER SCHOOL

Part 3: The Easing of His Heart

18th September, 1996

Mamoru woke with a shiver, a cold breeze coming through the open
window, the thin curtains blowing in the wind.

"Summer's really over..." he thought, "I didn't use to get cold in
the mornings, even with the open window...Oh." No wonder. Usagi had taken
all the covers.

What?!

"What's Usagi doing in my bed?!!" He panicked silently for a few
moments, waving his hands in the air, imagining a furious SD Kenji chasing
an SD Mamoru down the street and bapping him on the head with a giant
plastic mallet, anime style. Then Usagi turned over and he glimpsed the
golden ring on her finger.

"We're married," he remembered, a pleasant warmth spreading through
him at the thought. "We just got married!" He wanted to jump back into the
bed and grab her in a bear hug, but she looked so sweet, sleeping. Taking
care not to make a lot of noise, he dressed and left for college.

* * * *

Usagi woke up when she heard the door close. That is, she opened one
eye. Then closed it and opened the other. Then she closed both and burrowed
back into Mamoru's arms.

Well, she intended to, but all she met was a stretch of cold
bedsheet.

"Mamo-chan?" Finally, both eyes opened, and the first thing they saw
was an alarm clock. Currently at 9:00.

Years of trained reflex nearly caused Usagi to shoot of the bed,
screaming "I'm late!", but the bed she was sleeping in was no longer the
single one covered with bunny sheets. "I don't have to go to school
anymore," she thought, burrowing into the warm covers for a few slow,
luxurious minutes before getting up just as slowly. Humming an impromptu
song "I'm never gonna have to wake early again...", she dressed, had some
breakfast and sat down in the living room. There wasn't much to do.
Daydream of Mamoru a bit, resist turning on the TV to avoid catching the
24-hour anime channel (turning off of which was impossible).

"No, I am not going to get bored!" resolved Usagi. Her first married
day and she was getting bored. She had opted to be a housewife. She had
wanted this. She was going to enjoy it.

And for Mamoru, she wanted to be a good housewife.

Determined, Usagi rose from the couch. "Not gonna be a couch-potato
either," she chuckled mentally. First turning on the radio, she took out
some supplies and began slowly cleaning the room. Slowly, no hurrying. It
was very relaxing, as opposed to springing out of bed early in the morning
and racing to school. It was weird, that she should prefer cleaning the
house to school. But for Mamo-chan, she'd clean the house three times over
and not complain. Besides, that was what housewifes did. They led happy,
peaceful, calm lives.

The radio played an ad for a travel agency. Usagi's heart twinged
momentarily. How she would have loved a honeymoon. They had no money to pay
for it, not yet. Mamoru had been angry at himself for not having been able
to offer her one, but she had told him that she just wouldn't go see her
parents for a few days. That would be exactly like a honeymoon. Now, she
could be with him everyday. There was no need for a honeymoon. Looking at
the photo taken at their wedding, Usagi finished cleaning the house with
renewed determination and went out for shopping.

* * * *

The bell rang at Jyuban University and Mamoru got up with a sign of
relief. The classes were finally over and he could go to his wife.
Impatiently, he signalled to his friends, eager to be out of there. His best
friend Toshio, sensing the reason for his impatience, grinned
sympathetically and told his friends to hurry. All together, they walked to
the exit.

Mamoru had been dreading the walk home, thinking that he would have
to wait for another thirty minutes to see Usagi. So he was very surprised to
find her standing next to the gates, leaning against a wall with shopping
bags swinging in her hands. As usual, his heart skipped a beat when he saw
her and he had to stop. Usagi stood there and beamed at him.

"Hello, Mamoru," she said, not employing the familiar "Mamo-chan"
with his friends around, and then greeted them as well. But she had barely
gotten the words out that Mamoru had grabbed her in his arms and started
kissing her. He didn't even notice that he had squashed one of the shopping
bags against her in the process. His friends, not used to seeing the quiet
Mamoru display such open emotion, started yelling, surprised. When the kiss
was finished, Mamoru grabbed his wife's (who was beet red by then) hand and
turned towards the others, proudly bowing before them.

"Gentlemen," he said, "may I present you my wife, Chiba Usagi?"

A silence followed. Usagi had reddened even more while Mamoru's grin
had broadened as his friends' jaws dropped further and further. "What???!!!"
they started yelling, "You guys got married???!!!!" With much noise, they
started walking upon them, intent on both congratulating and beating Mamoru
for not telling them. Mamoru grinned, and pushing the unfortunate Toshio
between his friends and Usagi, he grabbed her hand and started running.

* * * *

"Mamo-chaan! You squashed the chocolate sauce!" Usagi scolded. They
had run for about five minutes until the university was completely out of
sight and she was trying hard not to grin at Mamoru's little display. He,
meanwhile, was guffawing hysterically with tears flowing down his face. "Did
you see their faces??!" he laughed out, "That was priceless!" He continued
laughing for a good minute until Usagi finally bapped him on the head.
"Stop it!" she scolded, a smile in her voice, "that was embarras-"

Another kiss. She could feel his lips curving in a smile against
her, but she remembered the squashed chocolate sauce and jerked away from
him, checking the bags for damage. Grinning, he put his arm around her
shoulders and they started walking towards home. Out of habit, he nearly
turned towards the road to her house, but she gently pulled him. "Oh yeah,"
he remembered again. For a minute, he had felt as if they were still in the
past, her a student and him walking her home with his arm around her. They
would part before her house so that her father wouldn't see him accompanying
her, and she would always choke him with a hug before walking off. As if
reading his thoughts, she looked towards the road to her house before rising
on her toes to kiss his cheek. He closed his eyes for the heartbeat duration
of the kiss, warmth and affection flooding his heart. "What does a wedding
change, in the end? What's different, now that we have worn fancy kimonos
and drunk a little bit of sake in front of a priest?" he thought. "Here I
am, standing on this road with this girl kissing me, and my heart still
stops." But before, he had only been sure of their present, only of the
instant, for there had always been the threat of her father and in the
saddest, loneliest part of his heart, always the doubt that he might one day
find himself without her, as one day he had woken up in a hospital without
his parents. The familiar loneliness came back to him as he thought this,
and even though he smiled at Usagi when the kiss was over, the fear and
sadness of it haunted him all the way home.

* * * *

"Mamo-chan, look at this mess!" Usagi groaned, "you squashed the
bottle of chocolate sauce, and it's even gotten on the rice! What are we
going to eat tonight? I was going to cook it with the vegetables!" she
whined in a voice reminiscent of her younger days. "Go get some rice if you
don't want to stay hungry tonight!" With that, she pushed Mamoru out the
door. "And don't forget the chocolate sauce!"

Mamoru walked out, his dejected mood still hanging over him. It got
worse as he realised that he would have to go to the supermarket that was
further up as the one nearby closed early. With slumped shoulders, he
started walking. To make him feel even worse, they had run out of chocolate
sauce. Dejectedly, he walked back to his house. The staircase to his
apartment loomed in front of him. How many years had he faced those stairs,
day after day, which promised nothing but the loneliness of his bleak house?
The memory gripped his heart and tightened.

That is, until he smelled the very strong odor of something burning.

Mamoru dashed into the apartment, scared out of his wits that
something had happened to Usagi. It was far from that, however. His kitchen
was a big mess, some sort of oily liquid was splashed on one wall, bits and
pieces of something he couldn't identify were on the floor, and Usagi was
sitting miserably in the middle of it, her face and clothes stained with the
same stuff that was on the floor.

"The chicken exploded!" she was repeating incredulously, staring at
the open oven with wide eyes. "The chicken exploded!" Mamoru groaned from
the doorway to announce his presence to her.

"Mamo-chan! I wanted to make a surprise for you but the chicken
exploded! How can a chicken explode?!"

"So much for depressing thoughts!" Mamoru thought. "She's here."

"She's here." He clung to the thought like a mantra, knowing that
the staircase no longer led to a bleak house. This stained kitchen was truly
part of his home now, and she was there. Before, he had only been sure of
their present, now he was sure of their future too, for she was there and
she was sitting in the middle of his, no their, kitchen and the chicken had
exploded and she was there to stay. Full realisation of their marriage
suddenly came to him as the familiar lonely feeling slowly disappeared, and
drops of sunlight happiness fell into his soul.

She was there to stay.

His heart warmed at the thought.

* * * *

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