Chapter Text
It felt so good to be back in Japan. She had never missed home as much as those first few months after she had broken out from the stone all alone in a foreign land, and that moment when she had seen the coastline appearing in the horizon from the deck of the New Perseus. For everyone else on board the ship (bar their new friends), it had only been a few weeks shy of 2 years since they’d left the island; for her, it was closer to 10.
10 years since she had seen Ruri, and Turquoise, and Jasper, and the Three Sparkly Sisters, and everyone else in the village. The oxygen had caught in her lungs at the sound of the stone cracking, her eyes wasting no time in welling up once her people took their first breaths in 9 years. The last remaining worry in her heart vanished at the sight of her village coming back to life and she finally felt fully at peace knowing they had all survived the petrification event. All the residents — apart from the new arrivals — had greeted her with surprise at first, but it quickly melted into the kindness and reassurances that they had always showered her with. Ruri had wrapped her arms around her, squeezed her tightly in her gorilla grip, lifted and twirled her in the air like she had Kohaku, and Suika felt the warmth of her sister’s body nestle deep into her bones, covering every cell with a soft blanket that smelled like safety. No one had treated her differently. Even Chalk and Sagara had immediately remembered her, rushing and jumping on her, their big exaggerated tears overflowing, their superhuman sense of smell barrelling past her new appearance.
Everyone and everything — except for that giant d-am and the stone rampart her faithful companions had built — were exactly the same as in her memory. Well…almost everything. The first thing that stood out was that the village somehow seemed smaller: the foxtail ramen stand was much closer to the bridge than she remembered and the giant forge they had blown wind into until their limbs fell off didn’t tower over her like the giant fire breathing god it once was. The chief’s hut that had looked so regal and striking sat alone on its personal islet now looked lonely and isolated in the distance. The open space in front, where she had thrown her watermelon helmet with all her might and prayed that it would reach Kinro before Magma pummelled him to the ground, had nothing of the dramatic grandeur fit to be the stage that decided the next village chief. She couldn’t imagine how boxed in the fighters must have felt with the villagers crowded around them as they bit their nails in anticipation.
After the euphoria of the reunion had waned, she couldn’t help but hyper-fixate on what wasn’t the same. The reality of her joints aching on and off for years came back to her now that the distractions of tending to the nitric acid field and plain survival had worn off. Her moon bleeds had begun three years into her solitude – the surge of “hormones” being a potential reason for the new waves in her hair, she would learn – while her chest had smarted until it stretched her shirt. Her long legs crossed the distance between her hut and the centre of the village in half the time it used to take her, and she could reach the trapdoor opening of the observatory from the third-to-last rung on the ladder instead of needing to stretch up to her full height from the last one. When she had stepped into her hut for the first time, her old bed looked so tiny, the straw barely enough for her curled up adult body to rest on; similarly, the sunflower field where she had first seen the world clearly now stood only as tall as her chest. In Araxá, her reflection came to her in hazy detail whenever she went to wash her face in the river. Now with real mirrors back in order, the changes in her appearance jumped out like “a rabbit from a hat”, to borrow something Gen had said once. Her jaw had sharpened when her face had lost some of its childish roundness, and she felt a jolt of embarrassment whenever she caught sight of a red blemish on her forehead. Even her voice had deepened.
And then there were the little things: she had frozen for a second when she realised she had to tilt her head down to look at Namari and Shovel, missing the beginning of their sentence. She had run her fingers on the rim of the thatch of the little theatre for long seconds when she realised she could reach it. Similarly, where she had felt up in the air amongst the clouds from her seat on the deck of the observatory, the ground now looked frustratingly within reach.
And on days like today, months later, when her mood was lower than usual, the look of brief confusion on Ruri’s face – how her innocently round green eyes had looked at Suika like she was a stranger before flickering in recognition – haunted her. She knew it wasn’t Ruri’s fault. Her little girl had become an adult in the blink of an eye. But it stung every time her brain took morbid pleasure in replaying the interaction.
She leaned back against the log supporting her back and fixed her eyes to the sky. After her lessons with Sai and Chrome, she had slipped away from the village, needing some time alone. (Un)fortunately for them, their launch a few days ago had been yet another failure and their group had returned to Japan this morning, hauling pieces of the busted metal with them. Troubleshooting had begun immediately after the crash but she had shared a look with her classmate and breathed a silent sigh of relief at the extra time the mishap afforded them. She took a deep inhale in, waited a couple seconds, and let it out slowly, remembering Ukyo’s instructions.
She was about to do it again when a little squeak caught her attention. She paused, ears alert. It sounded again, louder, and was accompanied by the rustle of leaves. Suika carefully dropped to her hands and knees and crawled soundlessly to the brush. She could see the green swaying as something moved towards her. She reached a hand out and was about to nudge the leaves aside to take a look when a small creature sprung out, landing gracefully underneath her arm. She flinched, emitting a small gasp, and locked eyes with a cat.
It was small, in that odd in-between stage between kitten and adult, where its lean body looked too long for its short legs. Although black from whiskers to tail, the toes on its left front paw and back right paw were a stark white, as if someone had forgotten to knit the rest of the toe sock after having finished the digits. A permanent tiny tear of white stained the inner corner of its left eye, giving the animal a lasting sad expression as it stared at the young girl, ears pointed up straight and facing to her direction. Her stretched out hand had retreated back close to her body in her fright, and the curious feline brought its face to it, head bobbing and tilting as it scented her fingers. Suika shook her head to clear the last of the fright as a smile spread across her face.
“You scared me…” she breathed.
The cat seemed content with its olfactory assessment of the human as it pushed its head against her palm, flattening its ears to get a better rub. Suika giggled as she stroked its soft fur in earnest. She sat back on the grass, legs in a V shape on either side of her, and brought her other hand to rub the animal beneath its chin. Its body slowly crumpled under the weight of its delight, eyes closed and rumbling chest echoing in the forest.
“You really like that, huh?” Suika praised. She could almost see the smile on its face.
She continued petting and complimenting her new friend as she explored to find each place that ignited those pleased little twitches. So lost in her new job, she didn’t hear the steps coming up behind her.
“Dr. Suika,” a voice interrupted, “what are you doing here?”
She yelped — a little dramatically, she admitted to herself later — and whipped her head back, the feline’s head under her fingers shooting up with its eyes wide open in a similar reaction. Xeno froze, thick eyebrows raised in surprise, as he quietly waited for her to relax. He looked as put together as he always did: back straight, hair perfectly coiffed in its usual eccentric style, black coat immaculate and decorated with zi-ppers, polished modern shoes, clawed gloves locked behind his back. Suika thought once again that, whilst he looked in his rightful place inside the lab, he painted an odd, incongruous image with nature in the background.
“I apologise, I did not mean to scare you,” he eventually spoke.
“No, no,” Suika reassured him, waving both hands, “Suika was simply not paying attention. I didn’t hear you arrive!”
A polite smile graced his face.
“Oh, and what could have distracted yo–" he stopped abruptly, as if the words had been sliced out of his mouth with Kohaku’s katana.
His black eyes were wide and sparkling with…something she couldn’t quite make out. He was staring so intently at her knees that she turned to see what had caught his attention. The black cat hadn’t moved, still stuck in its ready position, listening silently to their conversation. Its gaze was caught on the older scientist as if analysing the threat factor of the new arrival. Suika brought her hand to its nose, then went back to caressing the top of its head. Sufficiently distracted, the cat relaxed back under the girl’s ministrations. This time, she heard the measured stride of Xeno advancing towards her.
“It looks remarkably docile, despite clearly being a wild cat. Your white dog — Chalk, is it? — is proof that the domestic dog did survive the initial petrification long enough to reproduce into the breeds they are today. Now we have proof that the domestic cat did too. Whilst it could be a question of one individual’s behaviour, your dog has fully integrated human society suggesting it retained traces of its domestic inclinations, a hypothesis we could most likely apply to cats as well.”
He crouched down beside her, left index and middle claws crossed in thought.
“Its body size indicates that it is a juvenile, I would say about 10 to 12 weeks, but it is well fed and well groomed, indicating a solid foundation of early life. It is short-haired and most likely of mixed breeding. Its purr is strong and resonant. Although it was surprised when I walked up, it did not immediately flee, suggesting prior non-threatening contact with humans or, at the very least, large animals of similar size. It has…24 whiskers, the average amount, and it is—”
The cat chose its moment to roll over on its back and splay its legs out to the world.
“—male,” Xeno concluded, a proud smile on his lips.
Suika stared at him in amazement, eyelids blinking dumbly as she tried to take it all in. Ah, she realised, it’s excitement.
“Do you like cats, Xeno? You know a lot about them,” she asked.
The scientist landed back to earth from his cloud of feline observations and sounded almost bashful as he answered.
“Yes… I must admit I have always found felines… to be a pinnacle of elegance.”
He carried on staring lovingly at the animal whose mood had turned playful as it began swatting at Suika’s fingers with his front paws, claws extending.
“Here,” he handed her a small twig, “their claws and canines are incredibly sharp; I wouldn’t want you to harm yourself. They can cut deceptively deep into the skin and in this era, I’d rather not take any chances with unnecessary injuries.”
They watched as he was proved right when the cat immediately sunk its teeth into the wood as soon as it hovered above him. His claws swiped in the air while his body twisted and writhed as the stick flittered. They listened to the high pitched groans of the small animal as it unleashed its childish fury on his new toy. Suika giggled at him; Xeno’s lips twitched.
“I had a cat back before the petrification,” he started.
Suika’s eyes widened. It was rare for Xeno to share personal things, so she turned to face him as she listened eagerly.
“As a kitten, he would get so riled up playing that he would spin himself into circles on his back like a top.”
She laughed at the mental image.
“When did you get him?”
“When I turned 11, one of my mother’s coworkers’ queen recently had kittens, and she brought one home for me for my birthday. She also loves cats, you see, so we always had 2 at any point. But this one was not to be a family cat, but mine. I’d be fully responsible for him. That was arguably the best present I’ve ever gotten, to this day.”
Xeno… with a pet. She could hardly imagine it. Until recently, her view of Xeno was still somewhat mixed. Sometimes, she looked at him and saw the man who had patiently taught her to make a bottle rocket; other times, she couldn’t shake the image of the dark scientist looking to impose his rule of the world, no matter the means necessary. But at the moment, he was calm with his face relaxed, entranced by the flailing cat at their feet with a proud curl of his lips. He looked neither like the evil dictator nor the benevolent mentor. He just looked like a boy who couldn’t quite hide all of his childish delight at the sight of his favourite animal.
“What did he look like?” she couldn’t help but ask.
“He had an orange and white coat: an orange back and tail with a white underbelly and paws, although his face was a mix of both colours. Gold eyes. He was a Maine Coone mix — ah, Maine Coones were a breed of long-haired domestic cat characterised by their abundant fur, large size, and friendly temperament — so he was larger than your average cat. Certainly larger than this one. Indeed, in the span of our first 6 months together, he gained 5.3 kilogrammes and almost tripled in length. Within a year, I had to put in real effort to carry him. Had he not slept at the foot of my bed every night, I wouldn’t have recognised him, he had changed that much.”
Change. In a flash, the wave of insecurity she had come to the woods to forget washed over her again. Was she like Xeno’s cat? Had she also become unrecognisable in her absence? The facts would say no, but the mind was a treacherous thing. Had Kohaku and Ruri not been Kohaku and Ruri, would they still have been able to pick her up and swing her around like when she was a child? She felt a disconnect that hadn’t been there before when she played with Namari and Mirai; she couldn’t quite explain it, but it was as if they weren’t quite on the same wavelength any more.
Suika looked down at the feline who was starting to tire, only pawing the wood half-heartedly. The next time they saw him — if they ever did — he would also be different. He would probably be fully grown and would have lost that kitten-like playfulness to mature into the fully grown predator he was meant to be. She watched Xeno remove his right glove, tuck it in his coat pocket, and reach out his fingers for the cat to smell. Permission granted, he scratched behind the animal’s ears and gently played with his scruff.
“Were you sad… that he changed?” she asked in a small voice.
Xeno hummed.
“At times, perhaps. When he was still a kitten, he could make himself comfortable just about anywhere without a problem. But when he was fully grown, I had to physically rearrange myself and my work around me whenever he demanded attention. But change is inevitable. It doesn’t mean that it is undesirable. As he aged, his personality also settled and we found other activities to do together outside of play.” He paused, changing his angle to caress the cat’s side.
“Besides, he was with me through many of my life’s changes too: my mother getting married, moving across the country to university, working at NASA. Meeting Stanley. I’m sure that in his eyes, I also ended up unrecognisable in some ways.”
Suika was wondering if she wasn’t alone in lamenting the effects of change when she suddenly noticed him looking at her with a curious expression on his face. Before she could decipher it, he opened his mouth to speak again,
“He and I would never have had those 15 years together had we not changed to accommodate each other. And in doing so, we only strengthened our bond. Scrutinising change allows us a better understanding of ourselves and our surroundings… including our creations; for example, analysing the launch failure from the other day will permit us to modify the blueprint of our next rocket and hopefully get us one step closer to the moon.”
“Change doesn’t just happen in a vacuum: outside of controlled experiments, it’s quite rare for only one thing to change without it affecting other things. Oftentimes, the results can be quite positive.”
She pondered that statement. She had been so concerned about how she had changed that she neglected to think about the good that had come of it.
Senku had continuously praised her over the last couple years and had assigned her tasks that, before, would have sounded as incomprehensible as Ginro’s drunken babbling. Ryusui had minted a drago with her face on it, a physical proof that she deserved her place alongside “real” scientists! When Chrome had declared his plan to build a 2-way rocket, he had immediately addressed her as an equal, and implied that he couldn’t do it without her knowledge. If they manage to complete it in time, the moon mission will have changed, yes… but for the better.
Like Xeno said, if the changes in her had affected the people around, then maybe the others hadn’t stayed the same either. Armed with this new perspective, she applied her scientific training to re-analyse her data.
Before, Kohaku had always seemed like a limitless ball of energy. She was powerful, flexible, always ready to jump into the action at 200% without thinking things through — the personification of strength itself. Now, Suika could see that part of that strength was based on desperation. That if she hadn’t trained and pushed her body to be able to climb up and down that mountain to get the hot spring water for Ruri everyday for years, their sister would not be here right now. She finally understood that those impromptu magic shows that Gen organised for the children in Ishigami Village and now on Treasure Island, the ones she had loved and never missed, was a way to distract the little ones from the difficult birth happening in the birthing hut or from an ugly accident during construction that caused damage too gruesome for them to see, leaving the adults with both hands and eyes free to help as much as they could. And those adults included her now. They asked for her help, instead of keeping her away from the situation.
Her mind reeled as clarity illuminated her. The insecurity retreated into its cocoon and pride emerged, wings spread defiantly and glowing gloriously. These changes had made her even more useful.
There was a sudden rustle and a loud, desperate yowl echoed. The feline snapped to attention, pupils fixed on the disturbance. In a fluid movement, he leapt away from the two scientists and was swallowed up by the brush.
“Oh, it seems the elegant gentleman has been called back home. Perhaps we should follow his example.”
Xeno stood up and brushed his lap of the invisible dust. Suika glanced around and finally noticed that the sun had almost disappeared, the sky bathing the forest in the reddish orange light of dusk. The summer air was still warm, and the smell of leaves saturated the air. All the massive construction sites would be stopping for the day soon, if not already had. She got to her feet and followed Xeno on the path back to the village.
“Xeno, what was your cat’s name?” she asked.
“Planck.”
She didn’t mean to, but a giggle escaped her lips.
“That’s a strange name.”
“Not at all,” he looked at her, eyes twinkling, “he was my most elegant constant.”
Suika cocked her head in confusion.
“If you’d like to know more about the elegance of quantum physics, I’d be delighted to teach you, Dr. Suika.”
She didn’t know how to respond. But he seemed happy with himself so she left it at that. In the span of this conversation, he, too, had changed in her eyes. These few minutes they had spent together had been, dare she say, fun. In fact, she wouldn’t mind doing it again. See, she told herself, change is good, after all.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Two days later, her eyes had glazed over when she studied the giant roadmap and it wasn’t until she brought her charcoal stained hands to her chin that she realised she had doodled a picture of the black cat on the edge of the paper. Panicked, she glanced around and fled the scene. When she sneaked a look at it the next day, a second, more detailed drawing had joined hers, clearly done by someone with lots of experience sketching them.