School Girls' Stories: New Generation - Finale

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Chapter 1 – Introducing Five Years into Their Futures

“I’m going to miss my plane!” Bliss cried, leaping through her tiny apartment to the bedroom once more, searching desperately for the bracelet she could have sworn she packed. How could she possibly miss a bright pink box in a room full of blacks and other dark assortments of colors? She ransacked her room while a man watched her from the bedroom doorway, casually leaning against the frame with a smirk on his face. She ignored him completely, well, almost completely, until she threw a pillow in his face. “If you make me late for my flight because you’re horny I will bust your jaw open,” she threatened.

“I’ve heard that threat before,” Brian explained to her. “I’ve actually heard that threat every night for the last week. I think you do not want to go home and face your family, you can admit it.”

Bliss stopped in her frantic search for the pink box holding the precious bracelet she had bought just to bring home on this special occasion. Unfortunately it did not seem she was going to be leaving with the pink box. Damn it, she had spent so much money on that bracelet, money she did not have or else she would not be living in the crappy apartment in New York with this man who had plagued her for the last three years, and whom she loved dearly.

“I’m nervous,” Bliss admitted. “I want to go home, so that was not true, but I am nervous. I haven’t returned home in…”

“Three and a half years,” Brian finished for her. “Since about the time you first met me, actually. Coincidence? Is there something you are keeping from me?”

“Always,” Bliss promised him. “Now either find that box, or fork over some cash so I can buy a new present for her.”

Brian rolled his eyes and reached behind him, producing a beautiful and slender pink box. Bliss rushed forward and took it from his fingers swiftly, and quite ungratefully, and threw it into her duffel bag. “That’s all you are bringing?” he asked of her. “Don’t you have to, you know, wear something nice? You can’t tell me you have a nice dress in that duffel bag of yours?”

“No, I do not,” Bliss admitted, trudging towards the front door of their apartment, “but Mom and Dad will surely buy me something to wear so I do not wear black boots, cut off shorts, and a black tank top. They will lecture me, but they will buy.”

“If your parents are so rich, why do you live here in this dump with me?” Brian asked, following her to the door. “No, do not answer that, you might get sappy on me. But, tell me this, why am I not going to this with you?”

Bliss leaned forward and gave Brian the most passionate kiss she could muster in her hurry, then swiftly said, “Because they still do not know about you,” and then ran through the door and left him standing their with his mouth agape wondering how much his girlfriend really kept from her parents.

~*~

Lilis opened the front door to her apartment, carrying the five-year-old girl who needed constant attention in her arms closely, and nearly dropped her daughter as the smiling face opened up for her and arms suddenly encompassed her. “Darrke!” she cried out, wrapped up in an embrace against him and her daughter. Darrke kissed both girl and woman’s heads and released them before smiling brightly once more. “What… I thought you were not going to make it!” she exclaimed happily.

“Oh, you do not want to know what I had to do to get here,” he laughed heartily and dropped his bag on the front step of the two bedroom apartment. The little girl cried out happily for her daddy and reached up for him, and Daddy took her in his arms and swung her around.

“Well hello my sweet Lily, how are you?” he asked of the little girl who curled close to him, resembling both mother and father in appearance. It was only a miracle that Yuki and Shinwa had never been smart enough to put two and two together. It was mostly relief that Lilis had decided to keep the baby that made Yuki blind to the father’s persona, though Shai seemed to have an inkling every time she picked up the little girl, who was smart enough never to say anything about her daddy to the adults.

“Did you play gay to the right Marine and get yourself thrown out?” Lilis asked, half-joking and half-worried. Darrke had threatened in the beginning to have himself thrown out of the Marines by playing gay, he had hated it that much, but he had needed to support a wife and a baby girl, though the wife had stayed with Yuki and Shinwa until recently. Lilis moved out, claiming that Lily was old enough for school and no longer needed babysitting, and Lilis preferred to be alone. None of the adults realized it was so she could finally enjoy the privacy of her husband, all to herself.

“No,” Darrke said, all serious darkness that he pulled off elegantly. “I just begged and bribed.” Darrke looked in his wife’s beautiful blue eyes and said, with seriousness even darker than a moment ago, “I think it is time we told them.”

“Do you think this is the right time?” Lilis asked anxiously. She had been bursting inside to tell someone since she had married Darrke in a spur of the moment whirlwind that she was married. In fact, she had been unable to keep the secret to herself and had told Frost, who had almost literally left her at the altar. When she had returned Frost had been nowhere in sight, disappearing in the moonlight and leaving her clothes and boxes in a storage locker to retrieve at any time, the key left on Yuki’s doorstep with a note of apology. He had called, many times, in the beginning, and Lilis and Frost had had a phone friendship, though he never told her how to get a hold of him and she had not heard from him now in two and a half years.

“What better time than this?” Darrke asked. “I’m sure our sins will be overshadowed by the sins of the siblings.”

Lilis tried not to choke on a laugh. “Harmony and Yuna’s sins are quite out in the open, do you not think so?”

“Well, Harmony only followed in our mother’s footsteps,” Darrke pointed out, placing Lily down on the couch much to the little brunette’s chagrin. “I can not believe the two idiots allowed themselves to be impregnated, not so much by the same teacher, but only days apart. Now they live together. I am assuming they’ve become lesbians and are…”

Darrke looked down to Lily and ruffled her hair. “Where’s your teddy bear I sent you from Italy?”

“I’ll go get it!” she cried out and ran from the room in search of one bear out of many.

“You’ve grown up a lot,” Lilis said to Darrke, looking at him with a sort of admiration.

Darrke smirked slightly and stepped to his wife, pulling her into his arms and giving her a warm kiss of hello. “You are still as beautiful as you were back then.”

“When did you get to be taller than me?” Lilis asked, having to look up into his eyes.

“When you were dreaming of me back here.”

“That’s almost sweet,” Lilis said. “If I did not know better I would think you are becoming a romantic. Instead, I think you need to pay attention to your daughter.” Lily ran out of the bedroom and held up the bear for all to see and the family gathered in a hug, and nerves, for having to face the adults they had been trying to runaway from for years now.

~*~

“Are you nervous?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“No.”

Tiera stepped out of the dressing room for her last fitting of the dress. The soft shade of lilac and the elegant cut of the dress made it much more beautiful, and fitting, for a bridesmaid dress than the horrible poofy skirts that had been so in years ago. She as actually pretty sure that her mother had an awful poofy skirted bridesmaid at her wedding. Tiera sashayed her hips back and forth and looked at herself in the mirror.

“Do you think I’ve gained weight?”

“No.”

Tiera glared at the closed dressing room door while many women stood outside of the dressing room waiting. One went up to Tiera at her mention of weight gain and began checking her sides and bust to make sure that this assumption was not true. The dressmaker seemed to be sure that Tiera was only paranoid.

“Is ‘no’ the only thing you can say?”

“No.”

Tiera heard laughter from inside of the dressing room, nervous laughter with a bit of amusement. The dressing room door opened and out stepped the most beautiful bride that Tiera had ever seen. She almost teared up at the sight of her best friend in a complete white gown that flattered her figure and still remained as elegant as everything else about this wedding. “You know you are about the only woman I know who can wear white and wear it for the reasons it was meant to be worn: purity.”

Rhapsody blushed all of the way down to her toes and shook her head dejectedly. “But I am not pure,” she admitted swiftly.

“Pure of soul, even if not pure of body,” Yuki stepped in, fitting the veil to Rhapsody’s head. “You’ve waited five years, what a week more?”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?” Rhapsody asked her soon-to-be mother-in-law.

Yuki gave off a nervous laugh. “Perhaps myself,” she admitted. Yuki turned and looked to Fuji, who saw just staring with tears in her eyes. She wiped them away with a speed that was unnatural and stood to look proud of her daughter.

“I’m so glad that…” Fuji choked up for a minute, looked on in consternation, then took a deep breath before continuing. “This will be a very happy day for you and Sora.”

“It will be a happy day for everyone,” Tiera interrupted. “This is the first time we’ve all been together in a long while. Whenever one comes home the other is away. Even Nakago is coming to the wedding, which is sweet.”

Rhapsody shifted nervously while a seamstress ran up to her to fix the hem of the dress on last time, making sure the soft silk was in perfect array. “It is odd to have my wedding be a sort of ‘family’ reunion, for everyone.”

“Are you worried about Ashe?” Tiera was the only one blunt enough to ask the question that was on everyone’s minds.

“Yes and no,” Rhapsody admitted. “There is a lot of hurt feelings and animosity between the families. Link is still very angry with Bliss, and Harmony and Yuna are trying to make everyone feel sorry for them, and Waza-”

“Sweetie,” Yuki said, rushing to her feet and walking over to the young girl, wrapping her arms around the beautiful bride-to-be, “this is your day, no one else’s. Who cares what sort of family trysts will be going on? All you need to worry about is how beautiful you look and how happy you are going to make my oldest son!”

Rhapsody blushed once more and buried her chin into the arms of Yuki, who looked excited and happy all at once. “You lucked out, Mama Yuki,” Rhapsody pointed out. “You ended up with three lovely children. Three out of four is not so bad.”

“How did you manage that, Yuki dearest?” Fuji asked in her haughty tone, accepting a glass of wine that was offered her from a woman in the store. “You, the one who should have been the worst at being a parent, ended up with the good children, and Shai, the one who was meant to be a mother, ended up with a bunch of raucous brats, except Bliss, who is not really even Shai’s daughter.”

“Hey,” Tiera butt in, reaching out and grabbing her mother’s arms and pulling her off of the still fragile looking nineteen-year-old. “I think we should talk about pleasant things. Like…”

“Sex?” Fuji suggested.

“You’ve grown crude in your old age,” Yuki sauntered. “Winning the company back from your mother must have made you… blunt?”

Fuji hid a secret smile that no one could really read behind the glass of wine. Fuji had not mourned her mother’s death a year ago, nor had she hesitated to throw Waza off of the committee of the board of directors and taken over the business once more, as per her mother’s will. Had her mother forgotten to update it in so long that she had left everything to Fuji by accident? Possible, though her mother was a stickler for detail. Somewhere in Fuji’s mind she had convinced herself her mother wanted her to run the company, not the bastard son of some schoolteacher who had run off at the first young tail that had wagged his way.

“This gown looks beautiful on you, Miss Inperiaru,” the seamstress said to Rhapsody, who was fussing with herself in the mirror, looking, and wondering, and turning.

“You know, if it had not been for the two rapes, I think Rhapsody really would be a virgin on her wedding day,” Tiera whispered into her mother’s ear.

“We’ll pretend she is,” Yuki said quietly. “For Sora’s sake, even if Sora knows she is not.”

“Do you believe that Sora has been faithful to her all of this time?” Tiera hesitated, worried for just a moment.

“Yes,” Yuki said proudly, “I believe my boy when he says he has only been devoted to her all of this time.”