School Girls' Stories - Year 2

Chapter 34 – Yuki Opens Her Eyes

“Mrs. Oshidori, you seem to think I am something more rotten than I am,” Shinwa retorted to her earlier, very inappropriate, phrasing of his persona. He was trying to remain calm while Yuki’s mother blew a few gaskets at him, but she was making it very hard for him to hold the reigns of his civility. He was naturally a temperamental person, he just knew how to keep his cool, usually with the help of aids like cigarettes. Considering Yuki often squashed the box of the cancer sticks every time she saw them, today he was fresh out and dealing with a woman who was defending her daughter’s honor to a man who knew just how honorable she was, more so than this so-called concerned parent.

“I know all about you, Kiseki Shinwa,” Mrs. Oshidori snarled in a voice that contorted her face into something far from attractive. “I know your rock star lifestyle, you think I don’t keep up with the news or magazines, but I let it slide because she seemed to like you and find something in you that was respectable, but then… this. She passes out in the school yard when she’s sick and supposed to be inside, she ditches school to see you act, she spends all of her money on a gift for you,” Shinwa had been unaware of this tidbit of information, “and worst of all I’ve seen the marks on her after you two have been together.”

Shinwa could not help himself. “Marks on her?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Oshidori sneered, looking down her nose on Shinwa, which was hard to do considering he was nearly a foot taller than the older woman. “The last time she came home and was supposed to be with you she had bruises all over her arms.”

“When was this?” Shinwa asked, wanting to reach forward and grab Mrs. Oshidori and shake her. What bruises? He never saw any bruises on Yuki. He most certainly never left any bruises on her considering he barely was able to touch her. Sure, if he had been in the heat of passion in a moment he may have hurt her, but… they hadn’t, so he couldn’t, so…

“Over the summer, when you kids came back from the beach,” she pointed out.

“Mrs. Oshidori,” Shinwa said, as calmly and respectively as he could muster, “Yuki and I never went to the beach together over the summer.”

“You bastard!” Mrs. Oshidori positively screamed, and the halls of the school echoed with her tired scream. Shinwa stepped back, not recognizing the anger in this woman’s cold eyes. This was a woman he had only heard wonderful things about, this was a woman whom Yuki respected ultimately, as her mother, a friend, and Yuki had done everything since the day they had been caught to appease this woman. Now this woman was screaming at him, her face in that ugly way when people are close to losing control. “I am not talking about Yuki,” she snarled, “I am talking about Kaori!”

“Kaori?” Shinwa questioned, totally taken aback by the accusation. “Mrs. Oshidori, I don’t even know Kaori.”

“How can you say such a horrible thing?” Mrs. Oshidori asked through tears, holding up her hand to fend off Shinwa’s words. “After everything you have done to my baby girl and you would say that.”

The door of the nurse’s office opened and out stepped Mr. Tennison, who happened to be the teacher on staff at the moment when Yuki collapsed, taking over for the nurse who had herself called in sick that day. “You can go in now, Mrs. Oshidori.”

“Tell this weasel,” Mrs. Oshidori indicated Shinwa, “to remain outside. I want to talk to my daughter about his indiscretions before she sees him.” Pushing passed the tennis coach Mrs. Oshidori slammed the door behind her and left Shinwa and Teiyoku standing in the hallway, quite awkwardly, together.

Teiyoku glanced at Shinwa, who just shrugged. When Teiyoku made no move to walk away Shinwa blurted out, in his uber-cool mannerisms, “She called Yuki Kaori.”

Teiyoku looked towards the door the woman had just entered and sighed. “She’s probably just confused. Old women like her get confused when that much happens to them at once.”

Shinwa raised an eyebrow. “So you’re saying because she’s old and having a tough time with life that senility is kicking in early?”
“You know the saying, if the shoe fits…”

“…use it to kick the tennis coach in the head?”

Teiyoku’s rage was well concealed behind a pleasant façade, though Shinwa saw those eyes flash for a moment with the redness of anger. “I am still a teacher here. No matter what personal vendetta you have against me, while here, you will show respect.”

“I can’t,” Shinwa said simply, giving Teiyoku another Gallic shrug. “I don’t know how to pretend to respect someone I believe is trash.”

“The way you always seem to be there for Shai, sometimes I wonder if it was Shai you were in love with, not Yuki,” Teiyoku said.

This pressed many buttons in Shinwa’s cool-meter. If he had had something in his hands he would have thrown it head on at the teacher. “I care about Shai, I even love Shai, but I am in love with Yuki. You would not know what that means.”

“I know what true love is,” Teiyoku sneered.

“I doubt that,” Shinwa laughed heartily. He continued to laugh even as Teiyoku’s façade shattered and his own face contorted in the anger that Mrs. Oshidori had earlier been showing. “I have a way with adults,” Shinwa commented. “They always seem to lose all control of proper mannerisms while around me.”

“Perhaps because you do not know how to watch your tongue,” snarled Teiyoku, taking a threatening step towards Shinwa. Shinwa just stood tall, chest to chest with the teacher that outweighed him in muscle. Shinwa was no fool, he may be lanky and muscled in the right places, but Teiyoku had been placing tennis and working out since he was younger than Shinwa was right that moment. Teiyoku would crush Shinwa, easily, but it did not frighten Shinwa enough to stand down. You have to prove to a bully you are not afraid of them, even if they are going to bloody your ass.

“Once you leave Shai alone, I will treat you with the respect you deserve,” Shinwa spat. “Until then, while you continue to fuck with Shai’s life, with Fuji’s life, and therefore by default with Yuki’s life, you are on my shit list. And I will make sure you feel miserable every time I see you.”

“You have been doing a poor job so far,” Teiyoku pointed out, regaining some of his earlier composure at watching Shinwa go into an almost blind rage.

Shinwa stepped closer, close enough to be whispering right into Teiyoku’s face, and the shock in the man’s face was enough to give Shinwa a thrill of pleasure and power. “You don’t know me,” Shinwa pointed out, “and you don’t know my connections, who I’ve rolled with, or what I can do. Remember something, Mr. Tennison, I may look calm and composed, but I was also charged with voluntary manslaughter, and seeing as we paid a family off the first time, we could probably do it again.”

It was sheer luck that kept Mrs. Oshidori from hearing Shinwa say this last bit. As soon as the door opened and Mrs. Oshidori exited to look at the two men standing in the hall, the auras around them black with their hatred and anger, the two stepped away from one another and immediately placed on their painted smiles. Mrs. Oshidori ignored Shinwa, believing he was causing nothing but trouble with a good teacher who was trying his hardest to act pleasant, and very unaware that this was the father of Shai’s baby, and said, “Do not let him in to see my daughter.” It was demanded, the final word. Teiyoku had no problem yielding to her word.

“I will not allow him in,” Teiyoku promised. “In fact, he was heading back to class, since he is tardy, and unexcused.”

This only worked to please the jolly lady who strolled down the hall with Teiyoku, who kept Shinwa in sights to make sure he was walking away from the nurse’s office. Because of the tennis coach’s attentiveness he actually had to wait until after school to find Yuki, who was stuffing books into her bag, her cheeks still very rosy, but she looked much healthier.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, rushing over to her, though she had yet to leave the classroom and many of her classmates turned to look her way. Shai had taken the day off because Shu was sick, leaving Yuki alone in a classroom that despised her for dating Shinwa, or hated her for being friends with a girl who gave birth so early in life. Either way, Yuki was not exactly popular at that time. “I thought you would have gone home with your mom.”

Yuki just shook her head sadly. “No, luckily the ‘nurse’ felt I just needed some rest,” she said, talking about Mr. Tennison, who seemed to have at least taken care of her while she was in there.

“I did not realize you were that sick,” Shinwa apologized. “If I had known that… Are you okay, you are starting to look pale?”

Yuki shook her head once more, and Shinwa was surprised she didn’t fall over as her eyes began to spin with a dizziness that he was used to seeing in her, but this was caused by so much more. “I can’t take it any more,” she whispered, afraid that the remaining couple in the classroom would hear her words, though they were paying little attention to Shinwa and Yuki as they started cleaning the back of the classroom, their eyes more on each other than gossip or the tasks at hand.

“If you feel that sick, let me take you to the hospital,” Shinwa said, completely oblivious, like any typical male. He himself had born witness to what was really bothering Yuki, but he thought it a fluke, a memory lapse, senility. He was about to find out it was so much more.

“She thinks I’m Kaori,” Yuki said sadly, barely speaking to Shinwa and more talking to the top of her desk. “She’s been calling me Kaori since after Fuji’s mom’s wedding. I don’t know what triggered it, but suddenly, I’m Kaori, and she blames you for making me… whatever she was. However she’s forgotten Nakago’s existence. If I mention him she blows up and says she never had a son by that name. My father has noticed, but he doesn’t do anything, just tells me to appease her until she finds her comfort, but I can’t take it. I’m not Kaori, I’m nothing like Kaori, and in a way she makes me regret that.”

“Why would you regret not being Kaori?” Shinwa asked, missing the big picture entirely.

“Because she always liked Kaori better than me,” Yuki said. As Shinwa opened his mouth to tell her that no mother liked one child better than another Yuki stopped him by hurrying to trudge on. “It’s true. Did you not notice that Kaori had nice clothing, and I had… Wal*Mart brands. She and Nakago had hot stuff, like Nakago’s car, do you think he bought that with drug money? No, Dad bought that for him. What the Hell? Why am I forgotten and she believes I’m Kaori? If I turned into a slut would she be happier?”

“Sweetie, you are going to faint on me again if you keep going like that,” Shinwa said, placing his hands gently on her shoulders and drawing her from the room away from the attention of the couple that had finally taken notice in the distressed young lady.

“I don’t want to go home,” Yuki whined. “If I go home I have to hear my mom call me Kaori, and tell me how horrible I am, but how much she loves me, and… Please Shinwa, can I stay with you?”

Shinwa was taken aback, and should have seen it coming, and should have offered sooner. Why didn’t he know she had been going through this? Why didn’t he notice that she was most likely stressed? Why didn’t she tell him? “Sure.” Wait, that wasn’t the conversation that was going through his mind. Did he just tell her she could stay with him, or live with him? Before panic could officially ensure Yuki was falling into Shinwa’s arms, thanking him for being so great, and helpful, and understanding, and all he could think was, “What just happened here?”