For the next couple of weeks Katsunari, Yuuki and Juna were kept busy showing Nausicaä the sights of Tokyo. For the first time in a long while the Child of the Wind began to feel what it was like to be free again. They did everything they could think of: they went to malls and shops, ate in restaurants--an ordeal for Juna, who couldn't eat anything on the menus, and contented herself with munching on the rice balls Katsunari had prepared specially for her--visited tourist spots, rode the Yama-no-te line to Akihabara's electronic wonderland, watched a movie, browsed a museum and a library, viewed the sunrise from the apartment building rooftop, and even went to a live place. At night, when they returned to Amiko-neechan's apartment, they would spend most of the remaining time talking about what they had seen or done, until Katsunari's relative chided them for their hyperactivity and told them to go to sleep.
That last night after they had returned, they were all seated in the living room when Juna asked Nausicaä what she thought about all she had seen.
"It's all a wonder to me," answered the Princess quietly. "I am envious that your people live in such peace and prosperity, and wish mine could too." She then frowned. "But... forgive me if I offend you... I find your hedonism somewhat suffocating, and am continually being amazed at the waste your society produces. And not just physically. I'm also talking about the human waste: the drunks in the gutter, the homeless sleeping in the subways, the people wandering about with a lost, purposeless look in their eyes."
"Well," said Yuuki, shrugging, "you'll find that everywhere you go. Don't you have people of the same sort where you live?" He was seated on the floor in front of the living-room TV.
Nausicaä shook her head. "One or two, but in my world... those people die quickly."
They fell silent for a moment, then Katsunari spoke. "Well, what about our art and music?"
"Strange and incomprehensible sometimes, but beautiful. There's nothing like it where I come from, save in the royal palaces. We have our chants, our songs we sing while at work in the fields and on special occasions, like weddings, but the amount and variety of music that I've heard the past couple of days makes my head spin just thinking about it. I'm most familiar with what you call your 'classical' music. I have heard its like before." For a heartbeat, Nausicaä recalled seeing the corpulent sons of the Vai Emperor seated at a harpsichord, marveling at the compositions that they had found hidden in the Garden that the Master of the Crypt had set up.
"Oh really?" Katsunari stood up from the window seat she had been sitting in, and an impish smile played about her lips. "Wait a sec. I'll just go get something." As she went into the corridor leading to her bedroom, she said loudly over her shoulder, "And by the way, Yuu-chan, I told you the NHK chief would resign. Pay up."
Yuuki made a disgusted noise. "All right, all right. I'll pay you later."
Katsunari paused in her walk, and her short black hair bounced as she whipped her head around. "Better do that, lover boy, or I'll fasten your testicles together with a clothespin, like I promised." Then she disappeared down the corridor, leaving the threat hanging in the air behind her.
Juna flinched and peeked at Nausicaä, chuckling sheepishly. Well, there's no denying she's a spirited soul, she sent. Please excuse her language.
It's okay. Nausicaä tittered, and Yuuki turned and looked at her curiously. She makes me laugh.
"What are you two talking about?" Yuuki asked, seeing the amused expressions on the two girls' faces.
"I'm thinking that your punishment's going to be painful, Yuu-kun," said Juna, grinning. Nausicaä burst out into open laughter.
"Ah, don't worry about it," said Yuuki, waving their hilarity away with a hand. "I'll make sure she forgets all about it later."
The sly tone in his voice made Juna think of Tokio, back to when they had made a bet about her archery improving. He had lost, and she had jokingly asked a kiss from him as her prize. She had meant a kiss on the cheek. His lips were soft, his perfume was sexy and cloying... she shivered at the memory, and she closed her eyes as she felt them begin to sting. She missed him very much.
Katsunari's return bought her out of her brooding. The SEED trainee held something small and rectangular in her left hand, and she held it out and offered it to Nausicaä.
Nausicaä took it and held it tentatively, turning it around, examining it. Its front was made of pink plastic, and its back was of shiny aluminum. It had a little gray screen on its upper front and a wheel indented into its lower surface.
"What's this?" she asked.
"My mini-iPod," replied Ka-chan. "It contains songs you might want to hear." She took out the device's headset from her pants pocket, hooked it up, and showed Nausicaä how to use it. She carefully placed the earphones into the Princess's ears and adjusted the volume to what she deemed was a comfortable level. "I did a little research and came up with something I think you'd be interested in." She dialed in the appropriate track and pressed the center button. "Listen to that."
Nausicaä listened to the music for a short while. "What's this called?" She couldn't read the title scrolling across the small LCD screen. It was in English.
The impish smile returned to Katsunari's face. "It's called Fantasia. It's by a man named Joe Hisaishi."
"It is soothing," said Nausicaä, closing her eyes. She listened a little longer, then asked "May I borrow this for a while, Katsunari?" while her eyes were still closed.
"Sure, go right ahead. Take as long as you like." Ka-chan made a thumbs-up sign and winked at her.
"Hold on a second," interrupted Juna. "Let me see that." She stood up and ambled over to the seated Princess, and peered at the display. "KatKat, doesn't she know--"
Katsunari, who had maneuvered herself to stand behind Nausicaä, out of her sight, put a finger to her lips. Her mischievous smile turned into a grin, and she mouthed a silent "Don't tell her" to her friend. She touched Juna's shoulder. Let her find out for herself.
------oOo------
Later that night a bulky form moved with remarkable stealth through the darkened corridor to the door of Katsunari's bedroom, which was furthest from the living room area. It scratched softly at the varnished brown surface, then opened it a crack.
"KatKat?" it whispered, its voice sounding like the low rumble of an airconditioner.
There was no answer, so it slipped inside. By the light of the beside lamp, the nocturnal visitor saw that the figure in bed was asleep. As per Juna's suggestion, the Princess had bunked in with her, and so this person was alone. She was on her side, in repose at the left half of the bed, hugging a pillow with her arms and legs. Her bedcovers she had kicked away, and they lay in an untidy heap on the floor.
Yuuki's eyes roved over the recumbent form. Her hair gleamed faintly in the half-dark; the mahogany skin of the legs peeking out from under her disarranged nightgown's skirt had a bronze sheen in the faint light. Her reddish lips were slightly open, and he could hear the slight sound of her breathing. Her breasts formed a shapely, regularly-moving swell underneath the diaphanous material of her sleepwear.
Yuuki went and stood over Katsunari for a moment. "And you said you'd pin my balls together, huh?" he murmured, brushing a strand of hair away from her face. She stirred at his touch, and her eyes opened.
"Yuu-chan?" she croaked. "What're you doing here? Have you come to--"
"No, I just came to wish you sweet dreams. Go back to sleep, KatKat."
Katsunari rubbed her cheek against the feather-light hand resting on her skin. "You make me feel so wanton and ashamed, having to ask you to bed me."
"Ka-chan," said Yuuki, leaning closer to her. "It's not that I don't want to, God knows that. You know why I can't make love to you just yet."
Katsunari emerged more fully from her slumber and frowned. "In that case, Yuu-chan, you'd better just give me a kiss and get out of here. Otherwise I'm afraid I might do something that will cause both of us a lot of embarrassment."
Yuuki chuckled. "Patience, patience. It won't be long now." He bent down and kissed her affectionately on the cheek. As he pulled his head away, however, her arm shot out and encircled his neck. She dragged him back down, planting a firm smooch on his lips as he fell onto her.
"Oh, God, Yuu-chan, three years is too damn long to wait," she breathed, her tongue flicking out against the moist underside of his upper lip in impatient ardor. "I don't know how long I can still hold out."
Whatever honorable intentions Yuuki had fled screaming to the four winds at that moment, and he was just about to settle on top of her when she suddenly released both his body and his mouth, grabbing the pillow she had been hugging previously and hiding her face under its bulk.
"I'm sorry," came her muffled apology. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."
Yuuki let out a long-drawn sigh and rolled off her, onto the unused part of the bed. He balled his hands into fists as he lay staring up at the stippled cream paint of the ceiling and beat his right hand against the softness of the lemon-scented mattress as he seethed, "Damn it, KatKat, please don't do that. You know how much I hate it when you do that. Next time I'm not going to stop myself, and you're going to have to bear the consequences."
"I'm so sorry, Yuu-chan." Katsunari turned around and, still keeping her visage hidden from her boyfriend's sight, buried her face in Yuuki's chest. "Yuu-chan?"
"What?"
"Is there any chance you could stay and sleep with me? Just... you know... sleep?"
Yuuki pulled her head out of its hiding place and turned it towards him, staring into her eyes, which were shining with a mixture of suppressed amorousness and apprehension. He was silent for a long time.
"Oh, alright. I may not get any sleep tonight, but since it's you..." He sat up, took the bedcover off the floor, fluffed it out vigorously, and covered them with it.
As the quilted sheet settled airily about them, Katsunari trailed a series of kisses from Yuuki's lips down to his chin and said, "Thanks, dearest." Then she settled against him, placing her hands on his chest and gently caressing his muscles.
Yuuki cupped a hand around her buttocks and did the same to her soft flesh. She mewled happily and molded herself more against his form, and he could feel her breasts pressing against his chest, her breath warm against his nervous skin.
"KatKat?"
"Mmm?"
"One condition."
"What?"
He took hold of her ugly left arm, raised it out of the tangle of their bodies, and gently kissed the throbbing bulges of her bruit-laden blood vessels. "I'm not going to ante up for that stupid bet of ours."
"Oh, you don't have to. You're paying for it even as we speak." She pulled her arm away from his grasp and went back to stroking his chest.
"Oh. Then go to sleep, naughty girl."
There was a trailing, indistinct chuckle. "Naughty boy," Katsunari mumbled, lightly tweaking a nipple hidden under Yuuki's thin white shirt as she closed her eyes and began her journey back to dreamland. "Don't do anything anything ecchi to me while I'm asleep, please?"
Yuuki growled deep in his chest. "Yeah, I won't."
"Yuu-chan?"
"What?" he sighed in exasperation.
"I love you."
His thought processes braked to a screeching halt, and he fumbled around in his mind until he could muster enough courage to say the same thing to her. But by then she was already insensible, already treading the land of dreams with her sweetheart. If only he knew.
------oOo------
Somewhere in the the dark, choppy Japan Sea that early morning, a small, decrepit coastal freighter made a covert rendezvous with an equally dilapidated trawler. The former was manned by North Koreans who had something to sell. The latter was crewed by those who wanted to buy, and were not particular about how the merchandise was obtained. They were the relics of a bygone age which imagined the whole of mankind living in total equality, no one richer or more powerful than anyone else, ignoring the fact that the reality and implementation of that egalitarian dream, as it turned out, was far, far different from the ideal.
On the bridge of the freighter, the newly-arrived trawler captain was greeted by his freighter counterpart, a tall, gaunt, angular man with slit-like eyes and a head of balding hair, who wore the nondescript uniform of a civilian skipper.
"Hello, Hatakata," he said. "How are things in the Red Army?" He spoke in his native language.
Jumori Hatakata shrugged, trying to conceal his excitement under a veneer of disinterested calm. At long last, he and his comrades were about to obtain the ultimate weapon for use against the hopelessly corrupt and antiquated imperial government. They had been contacted by a certain buyer who had the money to obtain the merchandise but did not wish to get his hands dirty facilitating the transfer. Which was fine with Hatakata. It was people like him, who worked with their hands in the field, who really made things happen, not those stuck-up, self-righteous intellectuals in their boardrooms. Let them plot and scheme. They would soon be driven into oblivion by the cleansing wind of this weapon, like every other pig feeding off society.
"Things go well, Kim Jung-Hun," he replied using the same tongue. He had visited Korea and stayed there for three years to learn how to speak it, just for this very occasion. "I trust you're not going to try and double-cross me and my men."
The gaunt man's eyebrows raised, and he let out a sharp laugh. "Hah! I always did like your audacity. No, we keep our word. I do not relish having to go back to my superiors to report a failure. We too... are interested to see what effects this weapon will have. If you don't trust me, you may have one of your men go over the package with a Geiger counter and verify that it is indeed radioactive." The man smiled mirthlessly. "Or, if that's not enough proof for you, we could just arm it and let it go 'boom' right now."
"No, no, the Geiger counter will be sufficient." Hatakata locked eyes with the other man. "Exploding it right now will be quite useless for both our purposes, and will make my sponsor very unhappy. I just have one question: are you sure that thing is stable enough?"
"Yes, I oversaw that aspect myself." The man put his feet apart as a swell rocked the ship. He still hadn't gotten his sea legs. "The procedure to detonate it is as we discussed. And may I remind you that once the countdown is started it cannot be stopped, save by dismantling the device entirely." What Hatakata didn't know wouldn't hurt him, he judged: the beast was extremely electron-leaky. It was no coincidence that it was being shipped in a lead-lined armored crate. Where his bosses had gotten the Thing, he didn't know and didn't want to know. Rumors back home and on the ship had flown this way and that: it was a product of their indigenous nuclear program, specially enriched to scatter a cloud of death throughout its effective range; it was an artillery warhead stolen from one of the storage igloos near Baku; it was one of the missing Russian atomic demolition munitions, bought with blood on the black market. Whatever the hellish device was and wherever it had originated, it was sure to cause the Japanese a lot of grief. "Now about the payment--"
A strangled cry came from the direction of the entrance to the rear of the bridge, and the freighter captain and Hatakata turned to see a figure wearing a long black trenchcoat standing in the open hatch. It held a man's body in one hand and a bloodstained Avtomat-Kalashnikov-74 in the other. By the reddish-yellow light of the bridge lamps Hatakata could see dark ichor still spouting from the neck of the twitching carcass.
"Greetings," the figure said. "I believe you have something I want." The parts of its body not covered by the trenchcoat glowed a faint blue, as if the garment were a black covering laid on a piece of sky.
(Posted Sun, 27 Mar 2005 10:26)
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