Utena, Revolutionary Girl Fan Fiction ❯ Kagayaku Means to Shine ❯ Deau: To Meet ( Chapter 7 )

Chapter Seven

Written: 11 September 2005

Re-written: 14 June 2007 (old chapters seven and eight put together)

 

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“I'm Kayti. Who're you?”

 

The twins were sitting side by side at one of the tables in their classroom, waiting for the last of their classmates to sit, when this little girl sat down across from them and introduced herself as if she was taking prisoners. She was tall for her age, and pale, with arrow-straight white hair that was loose around her shoulders. Her eyes were ice blue, but her manner was warm, if a bit pushy.

 

Nishiki was busy being grumpy about going to school, so Nishiko decided to talk enough for the both of them.

 

“Hi!” she said cheerfully, “I'm Nishiko and this is Nishiki. We're twins!”

 

Kayti giggled, “Neat,” and probably would have gone on, but the other children had finally made it to the tables, and shortly afterwards the teacher called everyone to attention. She was the same young woman that Anshii had spoken to earlier, but speaking in English now.

 

“Okay, I'm going to call everyone's names, and I want you to raise your hand, just like this,” the teacher raised her hand in the air, “When I say your name. Jeremy Adler!” A slightly chubby brown-haired boy raised his hand. “Kayti Anton!” Kayti raised her hand and the teacher smiled at her.

 

Down the list she went, calling out eight more names before she finally said, “Nishiki Tenjou!” And Nishiki reluctantly raised her hand. The teacher marked her as present, and began to read off the next name, but paused, frowning. “How odd. Is this a mistake, or is there another Nishiki Tenjou in this class?”

 

Nishiko raised her hand this time, “Teacher! I'm Nishiki Tenjou too! We're twins! But, Okaasan and Otousan call me Nishiko.”

 

“Oh? Alright then, Nishiko, is it? Is there a way I can tell you apart from your twin?”

 

Nishiko giggled and nodded, then tugged a little on one braid. “I have two braids! And, I like skirts.”

 

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After role, the class sat down to begin their `lessons', which were more like group activities designed to make them interact with each other. Nishiko was a bit grumpy at having been separated from her twin for the duration, but was having a grand time trying to fit a bunch of coloured blocks together, aided by one other girl and two boys.

 

As they fitted a blue and red pair of shapes together, one of the boys looked up and asked innocently, “You have two mommies?”

 

Nishiko shook her head, “No. I have Otousan and Okaasan.” None of the other children understood what she was saying. Most of them had only heard English before, since their parents were all foreigners. She sighed, “I have Papa and Mama.” She held up a green piece and examined it.

 

The second boy held up the orange piece that fit it and they put them together. “But I saw two girls. My Mommy is a girl, but my Daddy is a boy.”

 

Nishiko sniffed in a way that only little girls can do when they think little boys are being dumb. “Well, my Papa is a girl.” And that was the end of the discussion. Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, Nishiki was having a similar discussion.

 

“You have two mommies?”

 

“No.”

 

“Oh. But...”

 

“Papa is a girl.”

 

“Oh. Why are you brown?”

 

“Because Mama is brown.”

 

“Oh.”

 

And that was the end of that discussion.

 

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In the meantime, Anshii was getting over her heart attack at Bunka Gakuin. Chie had gone on to tell her about how her friend had supposedly seen two of their teachers, Yamaguchi-sensei and Hida-sensei, kissing in the school parking lot before classes began.

 

“I knew that they were having a super-secret affair! I mean, I've seen them together so many times!”

 

Another girl spoke up from the back of the classroom, “You also thought you saw Yamada Kuon-san getting picked up from school by her thirty-year-old American boyfriend who turned out to be her father.”

 

Chie turned and stuck her tongue out at the girl, then turned back to Anshii with a sniff. “Anyway, I really knew it. They always seemed too close, you know?”

 

Anshii nodded and smiled, her pulse slowly falling back to something like normal. And she wondered, very quietly and to herself, if perhaps the lack of outrage towards the teachers might signal just a smidgen of acceptance on the parts of the students. Then again, she thought, sitting down at her own desk, Kikukawa-san has to be accepting, if she's able to pass on those wild rumours without being bothered by the contents.

 

As far as the teachers' relationship being true or not . . . Chie's information wasn't often wrong.

 

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That afternoon, the car returned to Bunka Gakuin and Anshii opened the door and climbed in, Utena holding their bags and entering after her. Within seconds of the door clicking shut, they were wrapped in each other's arms and kissing as if they'd been separated for months, while the driver kept his mouth shut and pulled out of the school parking lot. Halfway through the twenty-minute drive to the twins' school, they finally pulled apart, lips swollen and eyes glittering.

 

“I missed you at lunch,” Anshii explained huskily, and Utena laughed and held her close.

 

“See? I told you. If I tell myself I won't get to see you all day, then not seeing you at lunch isn't so bad when it happens. What did happen, anyway?” Utena tilted her head to one side, looking curious.

 

“It's a little embarrassing, really,” Anshii murmured, but the curious look didn't fade, so after a minute she gave in with a little laugh, “You know Kikukawa Chie-san?”

 

“The school gossip,” Utena answered with a laugh, then wondered aloud, “What does she have to do with it?”

 

“Well, in class today she almost made my heart stop. She was squealing about who she saw kissing in the school parking lot this morning, and I thought that somebody had seen us and that we might get in trouble,” she explained, feeling vaguely uncomfortable with keeping their relationship a secret but understanding the very real and logical need to do so, “But it turned out that it was two of our teachers that they saw.”

 

“I can see how that would be upsetting, love,” Utena said thoughtfully, “But . . . what does that have to do with where you were at lunch?” Anshii laughed and popped her prince on the shoulder with one hand.

 

“Absolutely nothing at all, you silly girl. During lunch, I ended up helping one of the teachers that Kikukawa-san was talking about. Her name is Hida-sensei, do you know her?”

 

Utena thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. “She's an art teacher, right? I've never had a class with her, but I heard that she was really nice and really pretty. I thought she was married, though.”

 

“I don't know, she might be. It's not as if that changes anything, you know how things are for women right now.” They were both silent for a moment. The facts were that women in Japan had, for the most part, no choice but to get married. They were paid inferior wages for the same work and were so unequal in the eyes of society that they could never make it on their own. Some landlords would even refuse to rent to single women, thinking that they could never have the income to keep up with rent. Even lesbians were forced, either by their families, society, or the simple economics of it, to marry men and live in secrecy.

 

In such a world, they were more appreciative with each passing day of the autonomy that wealth gave them, and the freedom, if they wished it, to emigrate to America. Anshii's English had become much better in the past three years, and they were both confident that they could easily meet the naturalization standards. Still, there was just something about home, and neither girl was eager to leave it.

 

While the pair were lost in thought, the car pulled up to the twins' kindergarten and stopped, shaking Utena and Anshii out of their contemplation. Getting out, they went to stand among the other parents, a number of whom gave them sideways glances. They were ignored for the most part after that, except for one husband taking his wife's hand and pulling her to the other side of the group. Utena frowned, but before she could say anything, the quiet was shattered by the happy shrieks of small children, being escorted outside by their teachers.

 

Stepping forward, the prince knelt down just in time for Nishiko to dash into her arms, and scooped the little girl up with a laugh from the parent and another cry of delight from the child. Nishiki was a little more sedate about it, much like her mother, and simply gave her a dizzily happy smile as Anshii bent to pick her up and cradle the child against her chest. Sucking quietly on her thumb, Nishiki let her twin go through the business of chattering about their day.

 

“...an' I wanted to climb the tree but Ashley-sensei said `no, Nishiko-chan.' I was sad. English is hard, but...” And Nishiki, already well aware of the details of the day, simply curled up in her mother's and smiled, content to lay against Anshii's chest until they got home.

 

Of course, once they got home the twins were less than pleased to discover that it was bath time, and simultaneously went limp as a gesture of resistance, forcing their parents to carry them to the ofuro. Utena and Anshii shared exasperated looks as they attempted to undress an extremely stubborn Nishiko, who refused to hold her arms up to let them remove her shirt. Every time they would lift her arms, she'd let them drop again as the shirt came up, until eventually they gave up on her.

 

Nishiki was less than pleased, but calmer about it, allowing the young women to strip her down and wash her thick purple hair. It didn't take long for Nishiko to feel lonely, sitting by the door of the bathing room, and in short order she had shed the rest of her clothes and insinuating herself into the group with a little grumpy face that was soon washed away by her rubber ducky.

 

Once the twins were clean, Utena and Anshii accepted their `help' washing their own hair, then rinsed off and moved to the tub. As Utena picked Nishiko up to set her in the water, the little girl clung to her papa and shook her head.

 

“No, it's hot! I don't wanna!” Looking over at her love, Utena looked a bit trapped, until Anshii led by example, picking Nishiki up and climbing right into the tub with the child. Following Anshii's lead, the young prince stepped into the tub and set her daughter down. Nishiko immediately grabbed for the side of the tub, standing on Utena's lap and looking rather unhappy, until her mother spoke up.

 

“It's only for one hundred seconds, dear. It's not that bad.”

 

But Nishiko continued to be grumpy for a few more seconds, until her twin got a sly look on her face and proceeded to splash her with a little giggle. Shocked, Nishiko turned and splashed Nishiki back, much to their parents' amusement. Utena flicked a bit of water at Anshii, who responded with a full-on splash.

 

Not a centimeter of the room was dry after that water fight.

 

After the battle died down, everyone trooped to the little `changing room' area, and Utena and Anshii wrapped their hair and bodies in towels before drying off their now-sleepy children. Wrapped in a towel and held in her mother's arms, Nishiki gave a little sigh and promptly went to sleep, and didn't even notice when they were carried upstairs to their bedroom. A faint little snore escaped her lips as she was handed briefly to her papa, and again when she and her twin were laid down in their miniature futons and the covers pulled up. A faint smile curled her lips when a soft kiss was pressed to her forehead.

 

Anshii gently slid the door shut on the two sleeping toddlers, turning to smile at Utena, who took her hand and led her down the hallway towards the stairs.

 

“It's like they switch personalities at times. This morning, Ki-chan was being difficult, and then Ko-chan.”

 

“Yeah, I know. But you know what I know that you don't?” Utena's voice was neutral, but her expression was pure mischief. One slim purple eyebrow popped up.

 

“What?”

 

“The twins are asleep, you can't hear downstairs from upstairs, and there's a new carton of ice cream and two cans of whipped cream in the kitchen, calling our names. Also, you're it.” And while Anshii was still processing, Utena pinched her bottom and took off running down the stairs with a laugh, Anshii hot on her tail less than a second later. That ice cream had no chance.

 

The game of tag turned out to be a tie, in the end. After viciously ending the life of the ice cream, they ended up 'tagging' each other far into the night, and they lost score somewhere along the way. Eventually they managed to relocate to their bed, at least.

 

END CH.7