School Girls' Stories - Year 2

Chapter 2 – Spring Break – Part 2

“What do you mean he’s moving in?” Fuji asked, glancing from Teiyoku to Noriko, the happy newlyweds packing for their upcoming honeymoon while Fuji stood in the hallway trying not to be disgusted.

“What do you care?” Noriko asked in her perfectly flippant way. “You only live here when you feel like coming home, the rest of the time you spend with Shai and her father.”

“You can say his name, Mother, he won’t come out and bite you for announcing him,” Fuji complained, doing her best at crossing her arms across her chest. “Besides, you are trying to avoid the subject.”

Noriko stood up straight, a pair of panties that Fuji never wanted to know her mother ever wore held tight in her hands. “I never tried to change the subject,” she sniffed. “I am making an observation. Devilin is going to be staying here with Teiyoku and me until he graduates high school. Teiyoku and I both agree he would receive a better education here in Japan than he would in France.*”

“I do not know why I bother coming home,” Fuji snapped, pushing away from the doorframe and walking out into the hall. The largest problem is it was still a slow trek for her to walk away, her one leg still aching whenever she tried to move it too swiftly. Noriko and Teiyoku both caught up to her faster than she would have liked them to have.

“Fuji,” Noriko placed her hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “I would like you to stay here while we are gone, to help Devilin adjust to life in this house, to just be there if he has questions. Look to him as a younger brother.”

“Great,” Fuji rolled her eyes, “once I was an only child. Now not only do I have a sister, but I have a brother.”

“If I did not know you better, Fuji, I would assume your privileged lifestyle is turning you spoiled,” Noriko snapped. Teiyoku took a few steps back, knowing well that he was out of his league when the two women had their spats, and it seemed they could not be within the same proximity with each other without one occurring. Fuji would never admit how like her mother she was, and every day her hard headedness became more and more like the woman he had married only two days before.

“I am not acting spoiled,” snapped Fuji, denying what was evident. “I just do not understand why you are taking in a stranger so easily when it was unacceptable for me to even invite friends over as a child because you were afraid that they would be the wrong type of people, like I am a horrid judge of character.”

“Need I remind you who your friends are?” Noriko admonished, crossing her arms to equal Fuji’s perturbed look. “They are not shining examples of your character. This new school is going to do wonders for you, you are in need of it. Teiyoku,” Noriko suddenly turned her attentions to her new husband, “can you rush out to the supermarket and pick up a few things for tonight’s dinner while I speak with my daughter?”

Teiyoku nodded and brushed past Noriko without a second glance, then looked to Fuji and gave her a pat on the shoulder. “Good luck,” he stated, then hurried out of the house from the wrath of the two hellions burning flames into the ice glaciers they surrounded themselves within.

“How dare you insult Shai like that?” Fuji asked, taken aback by her mother’s flippant attitude. “Just because she is not your daughter, she is my sister, and she has been my best friend since childhood.”

“Who says I mean Shai?” Noriko asked. “What about that God awful Yuki you hang around. There is a brainless ditz if I have ever seen one. Or the fight that had you expelled from school. I knew I should have sent you to a private school.”

Fuji raised an eyebrow. “You are sending me to one now,” she said. “It is such a shame that girl school’s are worse than co-ed. And why am I the spoiled brat when you know very well that the man you married is the father of Shai’s child!”

It took all of Noriko’s strength not to strike her daughter, though sometimes with the young girl it was more tempting than she could handle. The girl pushed her last nerve, but she was fighting to be a better mother, so that her daughter would come home. It was times like this, though, that Noriko wanted to tell her to continue living with Shinji so she could have peace. Now she would have no peace, because Teiyoku’s nephew would be living with them.

“You can’t even deny it,” Fuji said softly, her arms falling limply at her sides. “You can not even deny that you knew it.”

Noriko Chenbaro sighed and leaned against the hall wall and stared down at her daughter. “I knew,” she said. “I did not care. You know very well that Teiyoku and I did not marry for love, but we will make this marriage work.”

“Do you plan to sleep with him?” Fuji asked, a slight snarl in her voice.

Noriko only nodded.

“Why is Devilin moving in?” Fuji asked again, coming back to the original subject that had her start on her tangent.

“Teiyoku did not tell me,” Noriko said honestly. “He just said that his nephew needed a place to stay, and though the child looks like the devil incarnate with those damnable red eyes, he seems to be nice enough.”

Fuji let out a sigh and just slid down till she sat on the floor. “My muscles ache,” she said honestly.

Noriko, in a very un-Chenbaro-like way, slid down to sit on the hallway floor across from her daughter. “I tried to do my best for you,” she said sadly.

“I know.”

“It will never be enough, will it?” Noriko asked, looking her daughter in the eye, looking over those beautiful eyes that resembled hers at that age when her virginity may not have been in tact, but innocence still shone in them. Fuji seemed to be losing the innocence that Noriko had still clung to at her age, and it depressed her. She was the cause of much of it, but she wished, somewhere, that she could be a solution.

“Mom…” Fuji did not know what to say in retaliation to her mother’s sincerity. The truth would be ‘no’ it would never be enough. No mother’s ambitions are ever enough, and in the attempt for enough they become too much. This was not the words to say at this moment. “Mom,” she began again, “all we can do is keep trying.”

Noriko nodded and the moment was lost, just like that. There was nothing to disturb it, it was just not who the Chenbaro women were. Well, Chenbaro-Tennison in Noriko’s case. She was a married woman again, with a new last name. Fuji did not know anymore if Noriko had clung to an ideal while she was a Chenbaro, or if she had always been born that cold, but it was something she may never learn.

“I’m going to go rest,” Fuji said, using the banister of the hall to push herself to her feet. “I will come down before dinner.”

Noriko nodded and watched her daughter fade down the hallway. Her heart was broken for the mistakes she made, but she was who she was, just as Fuji was who she was. There was no way to mend the hurt and pain, only accept and continue to move on.