Post by Ishikawa Rini on Jul 6, 2024 0:56:16 GMT
Rini cooked. She wouldn’t necessarily say that she was the best at cooking, and she usually preferred baking, but she tended to cook during emotionally stressful times.
The second floor kitchen wasn’t as extensive as the kitchen on the top floor, but Nate had taken that kitchen over. She didn’t blame him. He was still riding high on his win over Jason Hathaway.
It was really just the first time in weeks she’d had a chance to think.
She mostly thought about the differences in the people she lived with now. They were all pretty in her mind, but there were little variations in them. She was coming to like Nate, even if she could not understand some of his dishes. They were still good, because she would always eat something new, but they were still strange. Jack was still still shy around her. Pax reminded her a lot of Akira, like a protective big brother. Una, of course, was her usual self, with flares of temper when Tsuki tried to keep the girls on track… Tsuki had no luck with Una… Nor with Nat.
Nat… Nat was different, but Rini had not figured out how just yet. She was like Una, but not. Their attitudes were the same, all passion and gusto; but Una was a sister… Nat was too, because of their group, but also not?
It confused her.
That wasn’t even considering Masao.
She set her dishes in the sink, but she couldn’t bring herself to clean them yet. She flopped onto the couch between the kitchen and the low dining table.
What made Nat and Masao so different from the others? They were friends, weren’t they?
She felt her heart flutter faster as she remembered Masao’s genuine gratitude for the bento boxes she’d brought with her to practice. But she’d felt the same sort of feeling when Nat had smiled and hugged her tightly when she’d given Nat the new gear for the tag match.
She hadn’t felt that way when she’d given Una her Mars costume. It had felt good, yes, but it wasn’t the same. It had felt good to deliver cookies and comics to Mai, and there’d even been the fillip of secrecy, but that too wasn’t the same. It always felt nice to give gifts when she knew they’d be appreciated, but there was something special about how she felt giving gifts to Nat and Masao. Why?
She sighed and pulled her phone from her pocket, opening LINE with practiced ease. At the bottom were her Takahashi kin. Aunt Mei had insisted that Rini have her current contact information as well as Hina’s before they’d returned to Sapporo. Could she call Aunt Mei about this? Would she be able to tell her why two very different people were somehow different from her friends? Would Hina know more? But would it be right for her to seek the advice of her younger cousin?
Rini shook her head and scrolled back up to Akira’s contact. Things were still too raw with Aunt Mei, and she couldn’t, in good conscience, burden her younger cousin. Similarly, she didn’t trust Aunt Asami quite enough to not go running to her parents the moment anything troubling came up. She didn’t know what could be troubling, but it was better to be cautious.
Akira was cross when he answered. “Rini, you’re so lucky I’m on lunch right now. I trust you have a good reason for calling me during the workday.”
Rini winced. It was too easy to forget the normal working time of most people, the nine-to-five as Tsuki had said once while expressing her frustration at herself and Una in delaying some paperwork or another. “I’m sorry, Akira… But I didn’t know who else to talk to about this…”
And like that, the floodgates were open and, at what felt like a mile a minute, she explained her confusion.
“Rini… Do you live to make everything difficult on yourself?” Akira asked with a sigh of long suffering.
“Eh?” Rini wasn’t sure this was a good reaction.
“Rini… You got a crush… Or rather, you have two crushes,” Akira stated with all the forced tone of trying to explain something simple one too many times. “Honestly, I’m not sure which I prefer for you. On the one hand, Akiyama would at least be a traditional choice… But Walker wouldn’t potentially split you in two…”
Rini found herself blushing furiously at the implication of her cousin’s words. “Akira!”
“What? I told you I’m on my lunch break. I don’t have time to dance around the issue,” he retorted. “If you wanted someone who actually has the time to talk, you should’ve tried Hina or my mom.”
“I couldn’t lay this on Hina!” Rini protested. “She’s younger than me! And we never talked much even before-”
Akira’s sigh cut off her explanation. “Look… I get it, Rini… It’s hard to trust the rest of the family yet, and maybe you’re not comfortable talking to your friends about it because Walker is a friend to them too, but this isn’t something I can help you with. Not when we’re in such different places and not while I’m at work.”
“I understand… I’m sorry, Akira,” she murmured. “At least we’re in the same time zone right now?”
“Thank the gods for small mercies,” Akira quipped, but Rini was reassured by the dry humor she could hear in his voice.
The call ended after a brief exchange of farewells. Rini felt bad enough for interrupting his lunch.
“Is romance epidemic these days or something?” Hannah asked drily from a small gap in the sliding door to the room she had taken over. No one had questioned why Hannah preferred to sleep in a room designed for shikifutons instead of upstairs on the Western-style single bed in the room Rini and Nat shared, but now it was seeming like what Una called Hannah’s “Imōto Powers” had put the young manager in perfect position to overhear yet another conversation that no one had intended for her to hear.
“Tsuki!”
Hannah merely regarded her with dark almond eyes similar to her own for a long moment before sighing. “I hope your cousin told you it’s because you’re attracted to them.”
“TSUKI!”
Rini idly wondered if she could burst into flames from mortification.
Rini appears alone, and not in her usual flurry of sparkles and moons, sitting in a café with a frilly drink before her. Still, she waves brightly, her smile almost blindingly cheerful.
“Ohayo, mina! As you see, I have convinced Tsuki-chan to allow me to try this by myself, not needing her to translate. I thank Masao-kun for his help in teaching me better speech.” The deep nod of her head towards the camera implies that the gesture goes to her Phase One partner.
“I have been wondering since Phase One finished; how can I address someone who is a page dipped in ink, erasing everything that came before? And therefore cannot add anything new to it?”
“She has lost herself, and still seeks who she is. She reaches and clings to things that are not hers… She tries things that she has no claim to, like clothes of someone else that she hopes will fit. She strives to recapture something from her past, like a childhood toy long missed. She thinks that because she has been a champion before, she must be again. Where does she get this idea? The past is littered with those who were champions one time, even if only looking at Imperial.”
“I hope you do find yourself again, Abigail-san… but do not expect it to be at my expense. I know who I am. You may see me as the weakest of the women you might face in this tournament. I can even see where you and others come to that idea. I do not draw the same attention in the ring as my friends. When I am in a ring with them, my role is the strength, the follow-through, the support. And yet, because I am those things, it means that I am the one who can take the most without suffering. I am as powerful as the landslide that clears all in its path, and as inevitable as the rising of the moon... In its pure light, all lies are burned away and what then will we see of you, Abigail-san, but an empty husk?”
“You are welcome to try to find yourself, Abigail-san, and if the Kami grant you some measure of peace, then that is Their will… But you will not find who you are supposed to be in Japan, not from Sakurajima in the south to Rishiri-Fuji in the north, nor from the Sea of Japan in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. You will not find yourself in my homeland, Abigail-san… And in the name of the Moon, I will defeat you.”
Well howdy there pardner.