Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Kuroi Tamashii ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
Yuusuke unscrewed the cap to the bottle and sniffed the drink inside, making sure there was no alcohol inside it before taking a swig. If there was one thing he wouldn't stand for, it was drinking. Sure, he had drunk when he was younger, but after watching it destroy his mother, he had quit it right before he had gotten married. Atsuko now lived with them, and at age forty-three had a failing liver and had was on the waiting list for a transplant. And yet she refused to stop, so utterly dependant on the stuff as she was. Yuusuke no longer allowed his daughter to have anything to drink, not even juice, without it passing by either him or his wife. The young ten-year-old already knew more about alcoholism than a child should have known.

"Tousan, Baasan said she's hungry. And she's hallucinating again. She keeps calling me Keiko," his daughter told him. "I also found a bottle of vodka hidden in her room."

Yuusuke sighed. "What did you do with it, Genkai-chan?"

"I gave it to Kaasan, and she flushed it down the toilet."

"Alright, then, why don't you and I go make her something?" he answered her. She shook her head, lavender eyes reflecting anger.

"Suman, tousan, demo I have school work," she answered venomously. It was common knowledge that Genkai held her grandmother in very low regard because of what Atsuko had been like when she was young. "I don't have the time."

"Ok, then you go ahead and get that done, and I'll go order her something.

"You're not even going to try and cook, are you?"

"Iya, I'll burn the house down if I do," Yuusuke said with a small smile. His daughter matched his expression, walking upstairs to the attic. Theirs was a small family, made up of Genkai, her parents Yuusuke and Botan, and Atsuko. There wasn't much a need for as big a house as they had, which could accommodate eight people comfortably, but it had been a wedding present from Koenma, as well as a farewell gift to Botan. Her father also had a lot of friends, who would often come and stay for a while at times. Genkai's favorites were Hiei and Kurama, the former of which would baby sit her if it was convenient for him, and the latter who was her godfather. She wasn't as fond of Kuwabara, but she adored Yukina and their children, Shimo and Eikichi. They were twins, and still little enough to be adorable. Master Genkai, whom Yuusuke's daughter had been named after, visited several times before her death when the younger of the two was seven. There was also a man who would come occasionally to see Botan, usually accompanied by a pretty woman in a blue kimono. They never came when she was awake, but Genkai frequently sneaked to the top of the stairs and listened to their conversations in which they would say things and words that led the girl to believe that her parents were keeping a secret from her. She had prepared to confront them about this when she heard the woman, whose name was Ayame, she would come to find, asked, "You do intend to tell her about who you were when she turns sixteen, correct?" to which Botan responded affirmatively with such fervor that Genkai decided that she could wait until then to find out. If her parents were so adamant about telling her at that time, she could wait. She was like that. Some words used to describe her were things like 'patient' and 'precocious', and even 'extremely intelligent for her age', which had made Genkai swell with pride, considering they had come from the mouth of Master Genkai. The young girl still held her master in high regard, and even though she had passed on, had quickly resumed her lessons with Hiei and Kurama as her sensei.

As she made her way up the last staircase of the four-story house, she decided to ignore what little homework she had left (she wouldn't get in much trouble for this- the only teacher who had problems with her was Akashi-sensei, who hated the name Urameshi and everything connected with it) and explore the attic a bit instead. There were tons of old things crammed up there, and she hadn't even seen most of it. There were boxes overstuffed with pink kimonos, some others that held Tousan's old school uniforms and other clothes, pictures of everyone together with a young girl she didn't know, and other things, among them a chest of old diaries and notebooks no one had ever bothered to go through. Genkai pried this one open, coughing a bit from the dust. She pulled the first one out and opened it. There, on the back of the cover, were the typed words 'THIS JOURNAL BELONGS TO-' and under it, handwritten in free-flowing script 'Urameshi Atsuko'.

Genkai almost threw away the book in disgust until she caught sight of the small bloodstains on some of the pages. Flipping to them, she saw words like, "Otousan beat Okaasan again today, and hit me when I tried to stop him. He won't even let me bandage up my wounds," and "I got beat up at school again today. I hope Tousan doesn't see. He hates knowing I'm weak," and "Aniki died today. They made me go to the funeral, even though I didn't want to." Intrigued, she flipped back to the front and began reading from there, settling herself in an old, moth-eaten arm chair. This couldn't be the bedridden woman downstairs in the bedroom next to hers. And yet, these diaries could answer some of Genkai's questions about who here parents were, who Keiko was, and why her grandmother was a raving alcoholic. It might even answer some questions about who she was as well...

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I know it's short, and I'm sorry. I'm at home with mono (or that's what they think it is) and pnemonia, and I'm MISERABLE!!!

Can someone answer this? They took for tubes of blood from me for four seperate tests, one of which was for mono and another for Epstein-Barr. Epstein-Barr is the virus that causes mono. Why test for both? I could still have one more little tubie-thing of blood inside me, but NO, they had to take one more than I think was needed. WHY???