Between Yú and Me

---Falling Sakura Petals's First Amazing Work---
This is a weird story. Just get past the first chapter, it DOES get better. Please review, too, I love feedback, even if you send me flames. There is a glossary at the end explaining all the Japanese terms used, as one of the main characters, Yú (pronounced like ‘you'), is a Japanese shaman/ sorcerer.
Enjoy!

I loved saying prayers when I was a little girl. Every night, I'd sit up in bed, covers swathed around me, and I'd say in my head the unorthodox- not the “Now I lay me down to sleep…” bit at all. No, I was probably the youngest person alive to really question religion. At four, I'd already shod away the belief of any deity in my own mind (at three I'd disproved the Tooth Fairy by playing a dirty trick on my parents to prove it to my older brother, en context) and at this point, it was no Dios I spoke to nightly.

“Yú, take me flying. You said you did it when you were my age. I've seen it in your memories and dreams. You had wings!” This was my prayer, ever since I could comprehend what was truly going on in my own mind. For while religion was out of the question, surrealism was not- especially when I really got a response.

For with a laugh, as this had become a nightly endeavor, I'd get a reply. His voice was youthful, but sagely… not fully lowered, like an adult's, but with an air of adolescence. He was Yú to me, and at the time I wasn't quite sure just what he was, other than a name. It was just that, no matter when it was, I'd hear his laugh and I was happy... laughing was just the way he spoke. His voice itself had absolutely no emotion- none. It was monotomatic, and it seemed like that was the only way he knew to speak; his laugh is how I'd figure out how he really felt. His ‘prayer laugh' was never exactly the same, but his words were; they'd become a nightly tradition for us.

“Iie, Yen-chan. No, no. Not today. Tomorrow.” Usually his titter was joyful and slightly condescending out of my naivety, but never in a bad way. Sometimes, though, it would seem like his laugh was sighing or even crying- like it forced itself to expel. And twice in my memory, he didn't laugh at all. Still, even if his laugh lacked any form of passion, it was his sign to me that he existed, and I'd be happy to know he was there... when it was absent, well, the words were dead. It was a crushing feeling.
“Yú, take me flying. You said you did it when you were my age. I've seen it in your memories and dreams. You had wings!”

“Iie, Yen-chan. No, no. Not today. Tomorrow.”

Ironically, the first day that he didn't laugh was five years ago, when I was sixteen… and it was the day before he did take me flying.

Because he could again.

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It was tenth grade- yes, that's when I was sixteen- sometime in the midst of winter. At this point, I'd more than realized who and what I was. I was, in essence, a schizophrenic. Yet, Yú wasn't like any personality disorder I'd seen.

He was his own entire entity stuck inside of my (now- to his embarrassment- developing) body. He had memories of his own of a past life in Japan, some two hundred years of thoughts starting at the beginning of the last millennium to somewhere around the 1200's- we'd looked up what had happened during his lifetime on the internet to make the estimate- and then, all memory stopped. It wasn't like he'd just died in his sleep, he had been some kind of sorcerer with amazing powers. His oldest image of him looking into the pond by his house- he was over two hundred at that point- he looked no older than a teenager. Far stranger was that his final memory was in the middle of the day, and that it just... surceased. There was no more. We were schizophrenics- two separate people living inside one body.

It was too crazy. I never told anyone about him; what would I say? But those memories! He taught magic, according to them, and looking at the faces of the students; they were just too fleshed out as people. Which was why I'd always ask him to take me flying, to the point of it becoming ritual. I was circuitously asking him to teach me, too, and to prove himself. He always said iie. No, he would not. So the godless doubter in me kept me from accepting his existence without proof. The only thing he could show me was one of his later memories.

See, according to Yú, his father, a far more powerful conjurer, had one student who was, to speak politically correct, a little idiotic. And that's putting it nicely. He accidentally spilled ink on one of Yú's father's important books, altering the incantation within, releasing a monster. Yú and his brother Kohaku watched in horror as their father sacrificed himself to perform a spell to split the monster into several hundred pieces, sealing it into the ink shrouded book. Kohaku, as the elder of the two brothers and seeing that the book wasn't shutting itself completely, told his brother that he would seal himself to the cover as a guardian. With that, he turned into a tanuki, a raccoon dog, and sealed himself onto the cover. Yú held the book in his hands, staring down, and started to cry. He took his own magic, all of it, and sealed it into the demon's book. In five minutes, his father had sacrificed himself, his brother had sealed himself alive onto the book to keep it closed, and the idiotic student had picked up a sword and committed suicide out of embarrassment. Out of misery, Yú, now a normal, un-magical being, lifted the book and held it close to his heart, walking out of the bloodstained library.

It was less than a week before Yú had his last memory. And then, eight hundred years later, he woke in me. He told me, around when I was ten, that he'd sealed his magic for three reasons- to forget his past, to help his brother keep the book sealed, should he run out of his own power, and, though he never wanted the third reason to happen, it was a safety. Should the book be opened and he was alive, his magic would return to him. He'd know if it was unsealed immediately, and he vowed that, should something happen, he'd sacrifice himself, too.

I thought it was just an excuse to be insane. He couldn't really prove he was a sorcerer! His magic was locked away... hah, yeah right. I just was an insane person, trying too hard to have something extraordinary in me. For a long time, I really believed I was crazy. I thought that Yú was in my head out of a desire not to be lonely. It was an impossible situation; this was the only idea I could come up with. So what he was able to answer history questions that I could not? So what if I was learning how to speak and write Japanese? It couldn't be a separate person, living quietly in the back of my mind. The history questions were just lucky guesses, after all.

Then, in the winter when I was sixteen, my great aunt Laurie died. It wasn't related to Yú at all, really, but that's how I could remember the day. I never met Laurie, just her daughter (my aunt Lisa), so I really didn't know what to feel. It was just another Shivah I had to go to, the Jewish version of a wake. It was there that made my world turn upside down, not because of all the faces- we'd already expected her to go anyway, even those who were close to her. There was no crying, that wasn't the problem at all.

Yú's single most and worst fears were answered that day. I was in my aunt Lisa's bathroom when it happened- a glowing sphere of pale blue shot through the bathroom celling, and I was knocked backwards into the tiled wall; then my mind went blank. When I awoke, it was dark and my family was in the car; we were driving home. I couldn't move! I was sitting upright, and as my head cleared, I realized my left hand was nervously tapping on the door handle. Nonetheless, my body was moving of its own accord.

‘You're awake; that's good.' Yú said in my head. I noticed he wasn't laughing at all. His voice was always devoid of feeling, but now it seemed corpselike without his trademark.

‘Yú? What's going on? I can't move, but…'

‘I'm doing this, Yen-chan. I have my magic back again. That's the light that… we saw.'

‘W… we? You've never said we when commenting on something I saw!'

‘I never wanted to press anything on you. I'm already a burden to you as it is. You are going insane, trying to disprove my existence.' My left hand stopped tapping the door handle, and started tapping my thigh. Yú was always extremely modest, always blaming himself for things, even if he wasn't even connected with them. ‘When you fainted, I took over... I didn't want your family to worry. I know I've done wrong, but I can't relinquish control until you get home. Your parents will see the aura, and I know you're not the type to explain, nor will I do it for you- it isn't my place. Please forgive me.'

For the rest of the ride, I felt awkward. I couldn't do anything. If my glasses slipped down my face, I couldn't fix them; I had to wait until Yú noticed, and he seemed too deep in thought to care. I wasn't angry at all; in fact, I was quite satisfied. Sixteen years of disbelief, and suddenly I had proof that I truly was not insane. It felt odd being a puppet, but it was only temporary. I now believed him. I was the person who should have been doing the apologizing, not him at all. There was only one horrible thought that really crossed my mind.

‘Yú! All these years, you've seen me get undressed, seen me... NAKED!!! And you're a guy! You're a perv! Do you realize that!!!!!'

‘Hah, took you a while. You finally believe I exist.' He had his glow back again, at least. I decided to annoy him further.

‘That's your response to this? And how did you act in front of my family?? They probably have been scarred for life!'

‘I'm sure they have, considering I mimicked what you always do.'

‘Hey, what do you mean by that!'

‘Oh, nothing at all…'

Silence for another ten minutes.

‘What are you thinking about?'

‘It's odd- I've been in here for sixteen years, unable to move. It's horrible. I have to sit back and watch you live your life, and you required more proof than I could ever offer. It's taken you too long to finally believe me... until doomsday itself… You'll be a great scientist, someday, do you know that? Such a disbeliever.'

‘Doomsday…?'

‘My magic has been unsealed. Someone opened that dammed book!' For the first time ever, did I hear Yú get angry. It was scary, but he did refrain from showing it through body language. For someone so infuriated, that was quite a feat. ‘And how the hell am I supposed to reseal it? Amaterasu is laughing at me! I can't sacrifice myself to kill the yasha, I'd kill you, too!' He calmed down a little and sighed, but accidentally out loud.

‘Now you've done it, baka.' I groaned. My mom was attuned into everything I did.

“Jenny, is there anything wrong? Does your head still hurt from slipping in the bathroom? That was a considerably stentorophonic, loud, crash we heard.” Go figure. My mom was a high school English teacher, always peppering her sentences with vocabulary she wanted me to learn. And it actually succored, helped, me!

“No, no, I'm fine, [yawn] just a little tired. I'll just have a new war bruise for tomorrow.” Yú said. It was really weird hearing myself talk, but what was far weirder was that i would have said something much to the effect of what Yú was saying! He really did know me well- it was a little creepy, I'll admit.

“Do you want some ice?” my mom asked, worried.

“It's fine, there's no swelling,” Yú yawned again. “How much longer until we get home? I'm about to punch in.”

“It's another hour, honey. Sleep in the car.”

“Whatever,” he mumbled. Yú rubbed my forehead with my hand, made my eyelids droop, and in general, made a very convincing, tired me. He even put the little inflections in my voice that I really didn't even notice I did until that moment. He'd fool a lot of people.

‘That was… really good. You have a lot of time on your hands.' I said to him, startled.

‘Arigatou. I was a shape shifter in my own time- I had to act on my feet often. But you need rest, Yen-chan. When you wake tomorrow, you'll have your body back. It's already past ten, and you have school tomorrow.'

Before I dozed, I contemplated whether or not I should ask him. I finally decided that it was tradition, and I said it, ‘Yú, take me flying. You said you did it when you were my age. I've seen it in your memories and dreams. You had wings!'

Silence. I seriously thought I'd done something to insult him. But, without laughter, he finally made his reply.

‘Iie, Yen-chan. No, no. Not today. Tomorrow. And, this time… I mean it. I beseech you, Yen-chan, Jennifer, I need your help. Maybe the two of us can find who has opened the book…'

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END ch 1

Glossary (in order of appearance)

Iie - ‘no'

Yen-chan - Little Yen (kind of like Jenny or Jennie)

Kohaku - Yú's little brother, name means ‘white river'

tanuki - raccoon dog, these animals were thought to have shape- shifting powers.

Amaterasu - the Japanese sun goddess, said to be born from her father's eye. Emperors were supposedly descendants of hers.

yasha - demon

baka - idiot