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It was another one of those days for Mei.
All of her waking hours had an awful sameness, and her sleep - when she could manage a few tormented hours of it - only brought her another sort of purgatory, a self-recriminating torment where the image of a beautiful, green eyed girl whom she loved dearly stood before her, asking a thing she could not give. A girl whom she had jilted, betrayed, and left broken months before, and who's memory was slowly driving her mad.
The footsteps of her unfashionable school shoes clopped dully on the sidewalk as she made her way home. Although she was no longer attending school, she was dressed in her uniform. Mei had completely lost interest in her appearance, obeying only basic hygiene and ignoring any attempt at fashion. What did it matter? That was something she and Yuzu had once done together.
She winced at that thought, so preoccupied she nearly walked right into a small girl who was defiantly blocking the walkway to the entrance of her grandfather's imposing mansion, her residence for long months now.
Mei was jolted back into reality, seeing the bitter resolve on the otherwise familiar pretty face before her.
"Matsuri?" she whispered incredulously. "What are you doing here?'
The pink haired girl grimaced. "Really, Mei-san? Don't be disingenuous! I've been waiting here for an hour to have a talk with you, and I intend on being heard out!"
Mei emitted a sound of disgust, attempting to navigate her way around the intruder, but Matsuri skillfully kept interposing her agile body between Mei and any path of escape. Finally, with a resigned sigh the other realized she would have to listen.
"Alright, Matsuri. Tell me what you have to say, and let's get this over with. I can't imagine what you want with me after all this..."
"Bullshit, Mei! You know why I'm here!"
"No, I..."
"It's about my best friend in the world, Yuzu! The girl you left empty and heart-broken!"
Matsuri move in closer, her face set like iron. Mei was immediately fearful; might she become physical? She remembered having been pushed against a wall once by the little terror. And she was afraid of violence, but especially - of her own. It was always lurking beneath her calm mask, pent up like a hurricane in a personal box of misery and anger. She needed to get away from this situation before it escalated for either of them, and inside the strange welcome of the suddenly safe-seeming grim manor house as soon as possible.
"I'm not discussing that, or anything else with you! What's past is past!"
"It's not the past, because she's still suffering! And you just traipsed off like nothing happened!"
Mei felt anger rising, even as she struggled to stay focused in the face of the accusations. There was no good answer, but hanging her head down, she attempted an explanation anyway. "You don't know what you're talking about! You don't understand what I'm going through over this, what's expected of me, of the burden my family..."
"I'm not here about your family!" Matsuri snarled, getting right into the incredulous Mei's face. "Yuzu would face Hell for your love, she's falling to goddamn pieces and you tell me about your troubles? How the fuck can you live with yourself, after how you've hurt her? How can you stand to see your own treacherous face in the mirror in the morning?"
"I ask myself that every day."
Not letting her look away again, Matsuri finally gave in to frustration and grabbed Mei by the shoulders, forcing her to look eye to eye.
Mei's careful illusion of cool poise abruptly snapped. The storm of rage buried inside of her heart burst out explosively. Drawing her arm back behind her, she unleashed a powerful slap to the side of the surprised Matsuri's head, knocking her to the pavement, stunned. The now fragile looking girl immediately curled up into a protective posture, starting to cry softly from the pain.
"She's been hit before!" Mei realized with shock, coming out of her fugue. She stood looking at Matsuri with a feeling of self disgust at her own violence, before a wave of nausea rose from deep in her stomach. Clutching her middle, she bent against the iron fence outside the walk and painfully threw up. Weeks and months of forcing herself to swallow pain and sorrow poured out like poison. Wave after wave of contractions kept going through her until she was empty, but still, it wouldn't stop. Tears gushed down her pale, strained face, nearly blinding her as the dry heaves punished her insides like a physical beating. At last, too dizzy and shaky to stand up any longer, she fell to her knees scuffing them on the cold sidewalk. She hadn't been so sick since the day she'd written her farewell letter to Yuzu.
She luxuriated momentarily in her suffering.
Her penance.
A gentle hand caressed her shoulder, offering compassion as she heard a soft, strangely comforting voice.
"Mei-san! So that's what you've been hiding behind that cold aristocratic facade! You once said we had a lot in common. I guess neither one of us realized how much." Matsuri bent down and drew the sobbing Mei onto a thin shoulder, her own tears threatening to start up again. They held each other for what must have been minutes; neither said another word, but by the time they regained their voices, the anger had retreated back into whatever primitive part of their brains roomed it.
"I-I'm so sorry! God - I can't believe I..."
Mei looked into Matsuri's eyes. Already, the younger girl's cheek was starting to bruise and swell; it had been a strong blow. Mei stretched out a hand to touch it tenderly. Her victim's unaccustomed unironic smile took the older girl off guard. The usual abrasive, sarcastic tone had left her voice; revealing the human being behind the pretend. She looked even younger than she was at that awful moment; touching a deep, sore place inside Mei's confused heart. The girl unconciously flinched from pain.
"One or the other of us was going to throw a slap, Mei. We're both wired up with emotion! I foolishly got up in your face and provoked you. And now that I think of it, I did a much worse thing to you once so maybe this is my karma for my past sins. But damn! You've got a hell of a backhand girl!" She laughed without humor. "Look at your knees! They look worse than my face probably does! You know, you need to get some antiseptic on those!"
"I struck her, and now she's nursemaiding me!" Mei thought incredulously. "Come inside with me. We need to get an ice bag for your face, to take the swelling down!" Mei touched the swollen cheek once more, gasping as the injured girl winced.
"What will your grandfather say?" It seemed a good subject changer.
"He'll be asleep. We'll go up to my room."
Matsuri shrugged. This was not how she imagined this evening playing out. Making a show of bravado, she acknowledged, "I'm not usually invited into a girl's room for first aid, but okay. You're the boss! Lead on! I promise I'll be quiet and on my best manners. I've never been in a mansion before. My parents would be so impressed." She got a sad, fleeting look, as the two rose unsteadily to their feet, then Mei took her hand and led the way up the steps, opening the big door and ushering them in from the night air. They slipped their shoes off inside the door and changed to slippers. She noticed Mei's unpolished shoes wore traces of old scuffs. But of course - that was right! She hadn't been to school in weeks. It revealed the once proud girl's deterioration of focus all too clearly.
"I came here this evening to have it out with you, Mei. That's obviously not happening! But since I'm here - What's our program now?"
"We're going to talk together peacefully like human beings. Like intelligent, civilized people. No more drama. I for one am definitely sick of drama!"
"You know, I totally get that! Truce!"
"Truce!"
Matsuri, trying not to show how impressed she was, looked around the grand foyer as they ascended the stairs, making their way silently to a room at the end of the fourth story hall. It reminded Mei uncomfortably of a buried memory of a time before when she had lost her reason from mental anguish, and attempted a sexual assault on Yuzu in that very room early in their relationship, before being discovered by her grandfather, and...
She felt nauseated again; for any number of reasons.
She eased the door open, soundlessly bade her wounded guest to enter, and closed it shut behind them.
"Sit on the bed, please. I'll get you something for your... injury."
Matsuri was sitting cross legged as Mei came back with a box of band aids, an ice bag, a glass of water, and a bottle of pain pills. "Take a couple!" she warned, "I know from a similar experience your head's going to be hurting a lot worse later! I'm going to go get some ice. Make yourself at home."
While Mei went to fill the bag, Matsuri looked around the room. It was surprisingly spare - A bed, a desk, a small chest of drawers, an end table with a lamp. The curtains were drawn, and looked like they were kept that way, the ties for them being nowhere in sight. "What a cheerless, depressing room!" she thought.
Mei came back in as silently as she had exited, placing the comforting ice bag on her guests tender cheek.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry!" Mei whispered. Dressing their wounds, the two then sat without a word for several unpleasant minutes, before she ventured: "So. You had something to say to me?" looking hopefully at her patient; not being skillful at starting conversations.
Matsuri cleared her throat. "Okay. This is damn awkward! I don't know where to start! None of this has turned out like I imagined, you know? "
"I wouldn't think. I, for instance, was just going to head in here and try to sleep, and maybe beat myself up some more."
"Mei..."
"Yes?" the sad violet eyes were hidden. She was staring at the carpet.
"I came here tonight for answers. I had even toyed with an idea for some kind of revenge, of all the melodramatic nonsense. I can really behave my age sometimes!"
"Revenge? I guess for the unforgivable way I've treated Yuzu? I don't blame you. I'd hate anyone who hurt her, too."
Matsuri shook her head. "Why Mei? Why have you done this? I know you too well, and I can see right into your heart. It's hard for you to say, but you love Yuzu. You love her more than words could tell! Am I right?"
Mei actually blushed, which would have been charming under different circumstances. "Yes. I do." she intoned wearily. " I've only told Yuzu in an oblique sort of way. Do you know I've never been able to say those words to anyone, not even her? I'm totally messed up! I don't even understand my own emotions. I don't know what's wrong with me..." She threw her hands up in frustration.
This was only the second time Mei had revealed her heart like this to her, and Matsuri proceeded cautiously, hoping to retain the confidential mood.
"You're in love, girl! But you could still do this? Really? I don't understand? Mei - I'll be totally honest for a change. You guys are a family I never really had. Finding Yuzu again. Being selflessly forgiven for that ugly thing I did that nearly caused god knows what to happen to you! The kindness you showed me after Harumin dumped me in the rain that day, covered with glop. That bath you warmed me up with - and afterwards all I could do was make vulgar pervy remarks out of my own self-consciousness over feeling loved for the first time in years. Take it from another girl who's always tried to hide her true self - There's so much good locked away in that broken heart of yours..."
Mei winced.
"... So much love and kindness just starving to death inside, like it was a secret treasure hoard that you buried for whatever reason long ago. I'm realizing that now, and that's why I can't believe what's happened! Please explain to me. I'll listen! I just don't get it!" She sat in front of the sad girl with a look of expectation and puzzlement.
"I'll try." Mei said at last, "But you must understand the rigid culture of aristocratic families such as mine. Our lives are programmed from birth. We have husbands and wives selected for us that we've never met. I tried to make Yuzu understand, but she couldn't. I have been bound to the will of my grandfather since I was born. That's why my father and he fell out. He would not obey his father, and he was effectively disowned." She paused to let that sink in; Matsuri shook her head in astonishment. She knew this part, but couldn't get it.
"Himeko mentioned something about it a while back." she said flatly. "About how she had a fiance she corresponded with which her family had selected for an eventual prearranged marriage. She and Shiraho-san both, which is totally fucked up, because they're both as queer as we are and what's more seem to have a crush on each other!"
"Himeko was telling you about this?"
"Another time, another place. Keep on, please."
Mei shook her head. "Yes. That's where my family comes from. And how I was raised after my dad walked out on me and left me basically to be raised by the Aihara organization. To you, I'm a girl like you and Yuzu. To us, I'm a Lady. I'm the last Lady Aihara, to be exact. And considered the only hope for continuing my family line, even under another family's name. It was a purely selfish desire for my own life that got me involved with Yuzu. She was just so alive, so... free. I fell for her before I even knew what love was. That, and... she couldn't say no. Although I pushed her away, she kept pursuing me, as much or more for my own sake as her interests! I couldn't stop myself either, in the end. She owned my heart, and I, hers. But I was too gutless to face her and admit it, so I just ran away like the coward I am. I knew all along my family would call for me one day. "
Matsuri remembered Yuzu having admitted before, it was as much her own fault as Mei's, that she had refused to let go of her. It made much more sense now. But Mei's domineering family? That was a whole other mess. She shook her head no, and took the distraught girl's hand.
"Mei - Listen - that's like - medieval or something! How is that marriage going to happen? Because we both know - You're gay! What the hell is going to happen on your wedding night, when he expects..."
"I presume I'm supposed to lay there and be raped." Mei intoned lifelessly.
Matsuri's eyes popped. "Mei! Goddamn it! Why can't you just tell them you're a lesbian and be done with it? Yuzu has come out...."
Mei raised a worried eyebrow.
"She's fine, Mei. She came out to everyone, including your dad. She vowed you two would be together again! They all know. Everything's fine!"
Mei shook her head in wonder. Separated for months, she was completely out of the loop, and Yuzu was still being the most amazing, and surprising girl on the planet. But the surreality of her situation killed the brief joy in her heart.
" I-I can't. I know they'd be so disappointed in me - Maybe they'd even hate me! I don't know, Matsuri! I've run this through my mind, a thousand scenarios. I'm weak! I pretend to be strong, but I'm not! I've been nothing but stock in my family portfolio all my life. Don't get me wrong! I'm proud of my lineage. I love them. I love my grandfather! But then comes this part of it all. I'm suffocated! I'm trapped! I think about it all now, my awful complicity over what happened to Yuzu. I actually caused it all, with one of my nasty games! I started it all with a simple kiss, meant as a cruel joke! I should have never dragged Yuzu into my..." Mei threw her arms up in frustration.Tears suddenly came to her eyes. Her head slumped in defeat. "I fucking hate myself! I just wish I could vanish off the face of the earth! Why the hell do I have to be fucked up and gay?"
"How much alike we are!" Matsuri thought. "So seemingly different, but so together in sorrow - and so damned awkward at expressing our feelings!" What might she say to lift the crushed spirit before her, when she was so broken herself? Maybe it was time for her confession? She took a deep breath.
"Mei... I owe you, and Yuzu. I've never said it... But I love Yuzu so much. I guess like you I've always been afraid of my own heart, afraid it would betray me, too. She was kind of my first crush, long ago when she showered me with love and affection I never got from my parents when she babysat me. I sometimes confuse love with sexual attraction. Yeah. Messed up - right? Now - you took me by surprise because of your forgiving, understanding spirit, and I didn't expect I'd care for you as much as I wound up doing, to be honest! I had begun to feel love for you too, before this shit happened. And yeah, you're right, we are a lot alike in many ways. But I think I have my head on straight enough nowadays to know that you and Yuzu are my sisters, that I have to stop this madness going on. Please listen to me." She watched Mei's reaction carefully. Had she revealed too much of her own soul?
Mei looked up at the face before her to find Matsuri's pretty features drawn tightly with worry and sorrow, and shook her head in acknowledgement. An exceptionally bright girl, she had clearly guessed much of this. " You're our little sister. I reciprocate that feeling. I am listening. But are you truly hearing what I'm saying? " the words caught in her throat. She hid her face in shame, like a wounded child. To see the usual stoic facade drop testified to the depth of her pain.
"Don't be ashamed because you feel! Don't suffer so because you love!" Knowing Mei shared the same discomfort with emotions, she could guess some of what the girl was going through.
Not knowing what else to do, Matsuri put an awkward arm around Mei, drawing her close, as she had once done for her. This was getting long past her comfort zone and she wasn't naturally empathic, but she valiantly gave it her full attention. She would never have admitted it, but this was wringing her heart out, and she fought to maintain control. Whatever anger she had felt was replaced with a mixture of pity, bewilderment, and unaccustomed tenderness. She really did care for this former adversary, and it was confusing her, too. It was a while before Mei's silent tears stopped. She sat up, wiped her eyes, and her face became a cold, distant mask again. Her front she faced the world with, and that most people besides Matsuri bought into. They sat together in uncomfortable silence for a while. What else could be said?
"I guess you'd better go now." Mei said at last. "Do me a favor and plot a really good revenge that..."
"Oh - fufu! I don't want revenge anymore - I want to see you back in Yuzu's arms! I want to see us all hanging out and doing stuff together!"
"I want that so badly..." Mei thought, but stayed quiet.
"Listen, I'm going to work overtime to ruin your marriage plans and send your family's dreams crashing down! Because you and Yuzu deserve more than this shit! So be forewarned!" Matsuri got up off the bed, heading to the door. Retracing their steps downstairs, they finally paused at the entrance.
"Ill... I'll see you out. I want to apologize again for..."
"It's okay. Save it for afterward, when I spoil your wedding!" Matsuri managed a smile; A small thing; but one Mei was grateful for.
"I'd do that, but Matsuri..."
"Yes?"
"It's a hopeless cause. I'm not worth it."
Matsuri shrugged. "Maybe you think you aren't. And say even if I didn't think you're worth it? But Yuzu does. And we, and many others, are gonna stop this. You know what a conniving little plotter I can be! But this time, God help me, I'm doing it for the good side! I'm just losing direction, aren't I? How will I ever regain my footing as a bitch on wheels? " Filled with resolve and becoming enthused again, she chuckled at her own joke. Shaking the former grim mood off with an impish grin, she suddenly tiptoed up and lifted the chain up and out of Mei's blouse before the other could stop her. "I thought so!" she smirked, feeling more like her old self for the mischief, upon seeing the match to Yuzu's engagement ring dangling from it.
Mei hurriedly replaced it, embarrassed at her secret being revealed. "Are you sure you don't need a ride?"
"No. I'll be fine. Try to sleep, Mei. I want you to look beautiful when Yuzu and I crash your wedding!"
"Goodnight." Mei managed, before shutting the door.
Matsuri stood on the steps for a moment, ice bag still to her face. Her head had a dull ache, but although exhausted, she felt more of her old self than she had in weeks. She texted Harumin with the street location, and a request: "Could you pick me up on your bike, sexy lady?" She waited for a few minutes before she realized with a sigh, there would be no reply forthcoming, thinking: "Yuzu wants Mei and Mei wants Yuzu and I want Harumin and she could care less and none of us can be satisfied! I've got to find a way for us all to be happy." A tear found its way out the corner of one eye. "Sentimental little fool! I've been losing my touch with all this trouble! Time to get back to my old self and raise some hell! After I get home I'll concoct an explanation to use for my battle wound at school, and take everything from the top for a plan!"
From her window, the curtains drawn open for the first time in weeks, Mei, who had been observing her, watched the slight figure walk away, slipping headphones on with a resigned shrug. She guessed the girl had probably tried to get a bike ride from Harumin, but had been ignored. Poor lonely, heart-struck Matsuri. So much like herself. The heavy drapes rustled closed again. This house was beginning to remind her of a mausoleum more and more these days, a tomb she wandered like a ghost, haunting herself. The events of this evening were like a dream; perhaps a nightmare in some ways. There was only one bright thing she could dream of. She pulled the chain reverently from its hiding place beneath her blouse. Clutching her treasured ring to her heart she whispered:
"Good luck Matsuri. Good luck, and Godspeed!"