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“Really, Nasutei, you do not have to…” Ryo murmured, sounding unsure, but Nasutei would have none of that.
“I did offer, and I mean it, Ryo. Now, turn around,” she ordered the younger girl. “Those hairs aren’t going to untangle by themselves, you know.”
Ryo’s cheeks flushed, and she looked like she’d like nothing more than to make a run for it but in the end, she obeyed. Smiling, Nasutei sat on the bed next to the black-haired Trooper and with infinite care, took a lock of hair in one hand and started to brush it.
Ryo fidgeted uneasily for a moment but as Nasutei continued to brush strand after strand, she gradually relaxed.
Good, Nasutei thought as she smiled softly for herself, humming as she continued her task.
The two of them were enjoying a quiet ‘girls’ night’, at Nasutei’s insistence. They were both dressed in their night clothes – a long nightshirt for Nasutei, and a baggy pajama for Ryo, who apparently didn’t do ‘girly’ even for sleepwear – and Nasutei had planned to work Ryo through a manicure and even painting her nails next.
Ryo had been prickly and hard to convince at first, but Nasutei hadn’t left her much of a choice, and the other Troopers had rallied behind her. Ryo needed the ‘time-out’, and she needed to spend time with another girl, not just running around with Byakuen or practicing katas with her sabers or roughhousing with the boys.
Not that there was anything wrong with ANY of this, Nasutei told herself firmly. Girls weren’t all built on the same models; they didn’t all have to love pink, cute things, yelp in fright at the sight of a spider, be shy and only show interest in domestic tasks. Nasutei’s own interests were centered in research and history books, and Ryo was clearly an outdoor, tomboy kind of girl.
But there was being a tomboy, and there was being so socially awkward one didn’t even know how to act like a proper girl, she thought grimly as she carefully worked around a knot in Ryo’s hair.
“… You know, I don’t think anyone else ever brushed my hair for me since…” Ryo started in a low voice before pausing.
“Since?” Nasutei prompted gently, never stopping brushing.
“Since my mother passed away,” Ryo admitted softly. She sounded embarrassed and wistful at the same time, and Nasutei had to resist the urge to hug the younger girl right there. “Dad never… He never had time for that, and he didn’t know how to do hairstyles anyway,” she mumbled. “And then I cut them very short, because it was easier.”
Yes, and he preferred to see you with short hairs because then, he could momentarily forget and pretend you were a boy, Nasutei thought crossly. And you played along, and even got used to being called a boy or referencing to yourself as one, and then…
“Did she do it often?” she asked calmly, keeping her frustration to herself as she started to separate Ryo’s hair in three equal strands to braid them.
“Almost every day,” Ryo admitted. With her back to Nasutei, the redhead girl couldn’t say for sure, but she thought Ryo was smiling. “Whenever we had finished bathing together, she’d do my hairs first, then hers. I loved watching her do it. They were so long, almost to her hips, and so thick,” she explained, moving her arms around. “It always felt like it took forever for her to be done, but I never minded. She let me choose the ribbons to tie them, or the clips to decorate her braid, and…” Ryo trailed off, shoulders dropping. The wistfulness in her voice had grown worse.
Nasutei carefully didn’t react, and just started to work the strands. “It sounds like you were having a fun time together,” she just said gently. “Do you wish to have hair that long yourself?”
Ryo didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing. “No,” she said. “That… I do not think…” she swallowed. “Not that long, that’d be too difficult to care for. And… Dad wouldn’t… It’d be hard for him.”
Not as hard as Nasutei could throw that hairbrush in Ryo’s father face, the older girl was sure. “It’s not about your father’s wishes, Ryo. It’s about what YOU wish,” she said sternly.
“And I do not want to have hair that long,” Ryo insisted. “Long like yours, maybe, but not more.”
Well, that was at least a starting point, Nasutei decided. “I think you’d look lovely if you did,” she forged on as she grabbed a tie she had prepared earlier and passed it around the end of the braid. “There,” she said with satisfaction, grabbing a handheld mirror and passing it to Ryo as she pushed the tail end of the braid over her shoulder with a mischievous smile. “What do you think?”
Ryo didn’t answer. She just looked at her reflection with a look of wonder that made Nasutei want to weep – or better, to punch something or someone.
Preferably Ryo’s father.
That was all his fault if Ryo was… like that.
“It… it’s nice. Thank you, Neechan,” Ryo finally said after a bit, a hand nervously reaching to tug on the braid. “Ever since I’ve started growing them out, I had never truly taken the time to… I mean, I do a ponytail sometimes but, I never take the time to, to do anything else,” she explained in a hush.
“I’m glad you like it, then,” Nasutei smiled gently. “You’re not really fond of tying your hair usually, are you?” Because she couldn’t recall Ryo ever doing a ponytail either, despite her claims.
Ryo shrugged. “It’s not so much I don’t like it that I do not really think about it,” she rubbed the back of her head in admission, shifting so she could install herself more comfortably on Nasutei’s large bed. “I mean… unless I want to avoid them getting wet, I don’t have much reason to get them up. And… I thought that just letting them free looked good on me,” she blushed.
“It does,” Nasutei nodded, because that was true. Ryo’s unbound hair gave her a little wild touch that just paired well with her temper and her fierce gaze. It was also just boyish enough that no-one ever questioned Ryo’s gender at first glance, only pausing and doing a double take after hearing her speak. It had certainly confused several Youja, and more than one of the Masho. “But once in a while, a girl has to treat herself, don’t you think?”
Ryo shrugged in a non-committal way. “I guess?” She wouldn’t stop playing with the end of her new, shortish braid, or glance at herself in the handheld mirror she hadn’t given back to Nasutei yet. “… I really do look like her like that, you know?” she said after a moment, glancing nervously at the older girl.
“Children often resemble their parents,” Nasutei replied as gently as she could. “It’s normal that you see your mother in your own face.”
“I guess Dad sees it too,” Ryo sighed mournfully, finally put the mirror down, and Nasutei breathed in, refraining herself from swearing in Japanese, French, English, and whatever she remembered of her Spanish and German language courses.
Insulting Ryo’s father in front of her was NOT going to win Nasutei any point, and she knew it. For all Ryo was starting to acknowledge the man hadn’t done right by her, she was still fiercely defensive of him and wouldn’t hear the well-earned criticisms her friends wanted to heap upon Sanada-san’s head.
Ryo loved her father, and that was probably the only reason none of the other Troopers or Nasutei had yet done anything… drastic.
Shuu would have liked nothing more than to walk to Ryo’s father and punch him and while Seiji likely wouldn’t get physical himself, Nasutei didn’t doubt he would verbally eviscerate the man for his poor handling of Ryo’s upbringing. As for Shin and Touma… Nasutei feared they had already discussed murder and what to do with the body to make it disappear.
She was barely exaggerating. Shin may have looked sweet, but he had a temper when properly riled, and Touma had never made it a secret he had one too.
Hearing Ryo talk about her childhood, Nasutei sometimes thought Byakuen had been a more present and stable parental figure than Ryo’s own biological father, and wasn’t that sad and mortifying?
And hearing Ryo defending the man, or justifying his actions…
It broke Nasutei’s heart.
And the worst part? She could also see Ryo’s point of view, and why she didn’t think her father was a bad man. Just a deeply grieving one, who had chosen to deal with his sadness and pain in a most unhealthy way – meaning, by refusing to acknowledge his little girl as one for years, until he had no choice anymore, and then he had run away rather than accept and confront his mistakes.
Oh, Ryo did not present it as such, but one look at the other Troopers’ faces, and Nasutei had known they were all thinking along the same lines, and they were not pleased.
Sanada-san had shattered with his wife’s unexpected death. The man had adored Ryo’s mother, and Ryo herself, or so it seemed. But Ryo was, for the better or the worse, a spitting image of her late mother – Nasutei would know, Ryo had showed her a picture and it was true the resemblance was astounding. Ryo and her mother shared the same eyes, the same chin and cheekbones, the same dark hair… The biggest differences between them lied in Ryo’s height (though the Trooper hadn’t finished growing yet) and in Ryo’s darker skin-tone, which she had obviously inherited from her father.
From beloved daughter, Ryo had suddenly become the echo of a ghost, one her father had trouble spending time with.
At least, until little Ryo decided that if the problem was that she looked too much like her late mother, then she just had to… not quite look like her anymore.
Cutting her hair short been her idea, or so Ryo pretended, and Nasutei could believe it. Cutting your hair and putting on boy’s clothes to play ‘pretend’ sounded like a little kid’s plan, and something Ryo could have come up with on her own.
It was silly, and desperate… and it had worked.
For a certain definition of ‘working’, anyway.
Suddenly, Sanada-san wasn’t taking his meals alone anymore and was paying attention to Ryo again. He left a lot, of course, because his work as a professional photographer meant he had to, but he called often, and he always took long breaks between assignments to spend time with his child, and he even took Ryo along with him for a trip or two before she was old enough to start school.
Then had come the shift between calling Ryo ‘son’ instead of ‘daughter’. In Ryo’s own admission, she couldn’t remember when it had happened exactly. Just that she had rolled along with it, because she thought it was fun at first, and Dad seemed happier if Ryo acted like a boy instead of just looking like one.
Just another way to make Ryo into someone else, someone who wasn’t a dead-ringer for his dead wife.
And Ryo had taken to it without problem, too, because… Because she was Ryo, Nasutei thought wistfully. Obstinate, and a bit of tomboy regardless, and wanting to please and make people happy, especially the only parent she had left.
But every game of pretend had to stop at some point.
Children grew up, you see, and boys and girls were very different once they reached that stage.
Ryo wouldn’t say if the fact she had started to develop curves finally shook her father out of his self-imposed denial, but if it hadn’t, then Ryo entering middle school and being assigned a girl uniform had certainly been the straw that broke the camel back.
Hard to claim a child is your son when they’re standing on your doorstep dressed in a sailor fuku, after all.
If Ryo had been able to choose, she’d probably have picked a gakuran just to avoid the issue, but since the school still had her gender listed as ‘female’, she hadn’t had much choice (and Nasutei didn’t think she had truly fought the matter. Used to playing a boy’s part or not, Ryo clearly longed for women-related experiences, else she wouldn’t have agreed to spend time with Nasutei with such an eager face once her initial protestations died out, or wouldn’t have decided to grow her hairs again).
Ryo had only started middle school for a week before her father left on a three months-long assignment. Then he took a second, right off the bat, after only spending three days back with his daughter. And a third. A fourth. And so on, and so on.
By the time the Youjakai’s Invasion had started, Ryo hadn’t seen her father in nearly six months. Six months!
And Ryo was fourteen years old, soon to be fifteen!
It was… it was just appalling!
Now, Nasutei knew Japanese children were raised to be mostly independent from a young age. She herself hadn’t quite been raised like that, as she had passed most of her younger years in France with her parents before moving to Japan, but she knew more or less what was considered normal or not.
Ryo’s situation was NOT normal, and the other Troopers had stressed it out to her.
Ryo insisted it was fine, because she knew how to live alone, what’s with her father having to leave her for assignments before – she knew how to cook and clean and do laundry and could handle groceries shopping just fine. Her father still sent money, and postcards, and gave an occasional call, so Ryo knew he was okay. Just… busy.
(Touma, very cynical, had pointed out that Sanada-san left messages, sure, but on the answering machine. He was always calling when he HAD to know Ryo would be at school, and that it was NOT fine. Even his own parents, busy as they were and often forgetful, were mindful of calling when they’d have a chance to reach him directly.)
(“And being in a different time zone is NOT an excuse, Ryo! My mother is out of the bloody country half the year as it is, and she always manages to call me, even if it’s 2am where she is!”
(Ryo had punched Touma before storming out. Nobody else had said anything.)
(It hadn’t escaped anyone’s notice either that Ryo had started to grow her hair back around the time her father disappeared on her. Touma thought that it was a subconscious decision that showed that Ryo already knew that her father wasn’t going to stick around anymore, so why should she continue cater to his wishes?)
(Given the first punch, and how tense and defensive Ryo already was, they all knew better than to mention it where she could hear them.)
None of it was fair, Nasutei thought as she reached for the younger girl and passed her arms around her shoulders to give her a hug, because Ryo needed one, damnit.
The fact the Trooper stilled but let herself draw in Nasutei’s arms easily, closing her eyes and sighing, spoke volume of how much Ryo was missing positive physical contact, Nasutei thought as she forced herself to keep smiling. “You’re a beautiful girl, Ryo,” Nasutei told her, as she had done already a dozen times before. “A beautiful, wonderful girl that I’m glad to call a friend and a ‘little sister’. I’m sorry your father cannot see you,” she hugged Ryo harder when the other girl had a movement of protestation. “But I do. We all do,” she rubbed Ryo’s back with a hand. “We see the strong, kind, determinate girl you are. And we’re all so proud of you.”
Ryo didn’t cry, though it was a near thing. She hugged Nasutei back, hard, to the point the redhead young woman thought she was going to have bruise on the morrow (Ryo was really strong, even without her armor on). Nasutei couldn’t care less, though.
Ryo was reaching out, and for that alone, Nasutei was ready to endure more than a too-strong hug.
“Alright, alright,” she chuckled lightly as she wiggled out of Ryo’s embrace as if they hadn’t just shared something incredibly significant. “We had talked about a manicure, hadn’t we? Let’s see what your nails are like, Little Sis,” she teased as she ruffled the top of Ryo’s head.
There was just so much she wanted to do with the younger girl, Nasutei thought. Things like going shopping together, and go at a tea salon and eat pastries and ice creams, and help select each other’s clothes, and maybe, maybe talk about boys or crushes if Ryo ever happened to have one.
But… Baby steps, Nasutei reminded herself as Ryo presented her hands to her, mumbling she DID take care of her hands, what’s with being a swordswoman. Ryo didn’t need to be rushed into aspects of womanhood she wasn’t at ease with; she just needed to be comfortable with herself, and with her body and her thoughts.
And for that, Nasutei was ready to give her all the time in the world.