Aki Kitsune (Autumn Fox): Chapter Twenty-One

Japanese Terminologies at: http:// www. geocities. com/ / musings/ works/ w()akterm. htm
*remove the spaces in between and insert underscore between the brackets*

Complete work archive at my website, link is in my FictionPress profile. Links to my other works are also there.

It felt so nice to finally be able to maximise my one week break. Manga... DVDs... reading fanfictions... *Happy sigh*

This chapter still isn't beta-ed because Phoenix is being lazy.

Kuromura Aki:

The comfortable heat of late spring warmed my shoulders and the skin of my calves that lay beneath the fold of my legs, while the languid breeze brought a swirl of muffled cheerful student conversation to my ears as I calmed myself and absorbed in the surroundings.

Beside me, Torikawa's occasional deep breaths and relaxed exhalations kept me from falling asleep. I was not planning to, anyway. My intend was to pacify a headache induced by yet another intensely confusing dream from the night before that left me with minor memories of flashing shades of red and burning anguish.

The brunet inhaled sharply as he stretched, and I sensed his left arm crossing into my space, having reached over the empty container between us that once held his lunch.

The metal railing outlining the rooftop clearing thumped lightly behind my spine when Torikawa retracted his arm and leaned back with a sigh.

A shrill beeping sound disturbed the rare tranquillity in the air and a hasty ruffle of fabric followed as Torikawa fished out his cell phone from his uniform pocket. He huffed irritably while presumably reading whatever message it was before I heard the soft sounds of the keypad being pressed and the phone was finally shut with an angry clap.

What was this? Torikawa having a bad day? I wondered, amused at the fact that even the perpetually happy-faced teen was susceptible to negative emotions. Then again, he was not always all smiles, I thought as our conversation about his birth parents came to mind.

There was a creak and a hard thump as the door to the clearing opened and a familiar voice rang out.

"Sekai-kun!"

"Sempai!" Torikawa's tenor answered the greeting before lowering it to mere decibels above the sound of whispers. "Kuromura's asleep. You might wake her."

I heard the teasing tone in Takagi's words when he spoke, "Oh... Thoughtful, aren't we?"

Shifting my right palm to push myself from the floor, I stood up with a huff and patted down my uniform skirt to free it of dust. "Torikawa, I don't need you to mother me. I wasn't sleeping anyway."

The senior came over and gave a brotherly rub on my head, successfully messing up my already untidy ponytail. "Aww... Aki-chan, we like mothering you!" He interjected his words with a laugh. "Say, how's your art project coming along?"

"It's coming along swell, moving as fast as my nails grew," I replied sarcastically with a few nods and a dismissive wave of my hands. "Other than that, it's been a pain in the rectum area."

Takagi chuckled as he squatted down and began peering at the tiles on the floor. "You'll handle it just fine. I've survived mine. Where's your passion for art? Falling asleep?"

I heard Torikawa snicker at our senior's last comment and I felt myself rolling my eyes at them.

"Sempai, what are you doing?" Torikawa asked after a moment of silence, watching the other teen scrutinise every tile.

"Hmm... Kentaro and I left some graffiti and engravings somewhere but I forgot which piece we did those on."

Torikawa turned and gave me a look of disbelieving amusement, at which I raised an eyebrow.

"No wonder it felt different today," Takagi stood up and straightened his clothes. "Where's the last one-third of the Happy Trio?"

"Erika had a headache when she woke up this morning and decided to skip today's lessons," Torikawa answered with a shrug.

"Oh, so it's the Bickering Duo again?"

"Haha," I interrupted with a mirthless laugh. "I'll leave you two to your jokes. The bell's about to ring and I intend to get back to class some time today."

"See you next week for art lesson!" Takagi waved, his upper torso reclined against the railing, while Torikawa rushed to follow me when the routine chimes resounded throughout the school compound.

Torikawa Sekai:

Walking out of the arts supply store with Kuromura, I deftly pulled out my cell phone and typed a quick message to Erika, ignoring the '1 message unread' blinking at the top of the screen.

We're coming back now. Quick! Pack up and remember to act sick in case Kuromura stops by your room later!

Looking over to my right, a brief check assured me that the girl did not suspect that I was sending a warning to Erika about our conspiracy with the mosaic project.

I still could not believe that Kuromura took my word for it that the younger teen had a killer headache. From what we knew of, Erika had not even caught a single flu since twelve.

"Stop," Kuromura grunted as she lowered her shopping bag to check her purchases. I paused and selected the unread message while waiting for the bespectacled girl to conduct a once-through with her items.

Sender: Kuromura brat
Time: 17:26 PM
Message:
TORIKAWA SEKAI-SAN, I SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR YOUR COOPERATION WITH REGARDS TO ONEE-SAN AND FOR FIVE WHOLE DAYS YOU HAVE NOT SO MUCH AS SENT ME A MESSAGE AS PLANNED. I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD EXPLANATION BECAUSE MY MOTHER HAS JUST INFORMED ME THAT SOMEHOW, THE OTHER PARTY HAS GOTTEN HOLD ON USEFUL INFORMATION ON ONEE-SAN. Please be prepared to be thoroughly interrogated when I am done dealing with the situation =)

I must have swallowed a little too loudly, because just then, the girl in question looked up from her shopping bag to peer at me through her glasses.

"What?" She asked none-too-gently.

Before I could come up with anything to say, we were interrupted by the Happy Tree Friends ring tone of Kuromura's cell phone.

She pulled the device from the pocket on the right of her uniform skirt to answer the call with an irritated sigh after checking for the caller's ID.

"What is it this time? What do you mean 'Something went wrong'?" There was a pause where Kuromura began pacing impatiently with a frown poking out from the top of her spectacles. "Why are you panting? Are you outside? Running- after someone? Where are you? You're not telling me to stay out of this! You were the one who's supposed to stay out of this!"

I watched, wide-eyed, as I listened to the conversation that was only available to me from her side. Kuromura was never a loud angry person. Her annoyance was always ice-cold, freezing you in place silently while she lets loose her worst damage.

This almost-shouting and near hysterical Kuromura was someone I had never seen. Who was on the other side of the phone call, having such power to spur on this girl to behave without her usual poise?

From a distance, our school bell chimed faintly and a split-second later, Kuromura swivelled to face the direction from which the sound came from. The look of confusion played jarringly out of place on her usually intelligent features before melting away at a blink of an eye; she must have heard the bell echo over the phone and figured out where to go.

In a flurry of movements, she snapped her cell phone shut without another word, threw it in her schoolbag along with the shopping bag containing her purchases, slung it over her shoulders and took off at a run, evidently forgetting all about me.

There was not enough time for me to comprehend what had just happened because I knew that with Kuromura's athletic abilities, if I did not follow after soon, there would be no hope of finding her. And there was no way I could go back to school and wait for her to return, if my gut feeling insisting that something bad was about to happen was anything to go by.

This is not about abiding by my agreement with her brother, I repeated insistently to myself while giving chase after the Kuromura's running footsteps. This is just about her, and about keeping her away from what her family had planned for her.

Turning around a corner that I saw Kuromura disappear into, I almost crashed into the girl, who was standing stiff where she had stopped to stare at the scene ahead of her.

A slender teen was in a scuffle with an older man. Both their clothes were badly ruffled with wrinkles and the boy had an angry scowl on his face to match.

"Onee-san! I told you to stay out of this!" The boy managed a growl as he made another grab for the briefcase held tight and far away in the hands of the man opposite him.

"Ah, here comes the cursed child of Kuromura," the taller of the two stated with an air of maniacal superiority. "Now everyone will know your secret! Your family will be shamed, and all power will be ceded over to the bunke like it should have been all these years! My master's family will rebuild the family name and you people will have nothing left but your tainted blood running through your veins!"

I frowned, slightly intimidated by the man's fierce declarations, while Kuromura remained rooted in her spot. A quick glance at the girl told me that her mind was already doing fast analytical spins to decide on the optimal way out of this situation without giving away more information than what the spy had found out.

Shoulders tensed and jaws tight, Kuromura tested the waters.

"And where exactly did you obtain such evidence of this secret that you are insinuating we had hidden?"

"He's got your school records!" Haru pointed at the black briefcase, still being held back by the stronger adult, childhood martial arts training unable to be put into use. "He's gathered pictures from your past schools! They know you-"

"Haru, shut up."

I flinched at the calm smoothness of Kuromura's voice. She was not angry. Kuromura Aki was pissed.

The spy laughed victoriously. "Every proof we'll ever need is here! There's nothing you can do, kid! Then again, none of you are capable of handling anything. Let's see how your dear okasan hide these evidences now!"

Kuromura gave a growl, so deep in her throat, I would not have heard if it were not for my proximity directly behind her.

"It has been fun to finally meet you, the child who will always live in the shadow of the Kuromura name for the curse you bear."

Haru made a final swipe for the briefcase but succumbed to spouting profanities when he missed yet again.

"I must be going then, everyone's waiting for what I've found," he waved the briefcase in his hands. "Darn annoying brat," he muttered before lifting a leg to deliver a harsh kick to Haru's abdomen, sending him crashing to the ground, before taking off.

The violent action jolted Kuromura instantaneously from her incensed daze and she moved to dash to her brother, but I grabbed at her elbow before she could.

"No! Kuromura," I started, desperately hoping that I could explain Haru's double-agent position with the least amount of words in the least amount of time. "Your brother's been using me to get spy on you for your mother! He-"

"He is my only brother, Torikawa." Time seemed to slow as her lips moved to form words. "What we have between us is something I'm sure you don't understand."

And I watched with painful loneliness, everything moving at a snail's pace, as Kuromura ran past me to Haru's side. He hastily said something that I could not hear, the only sound in my ear was my pulse thumping steadily against the slow breeze. Kuromura stood up, barely acknowledging her brother's words and glared down the street. Without hesitation, she gave chase to the spy, confident that she could catch up with him.

Running after the girl in case she needed help, my confused thoughts did their own lap in my head. From what I could remember, Kuromura had never looked at her brother with anything less than contempt since that one time that I had seen the two siblings interact. Why so protective now, even after knowing what I had just told her? Although truly, like she said, I would never understand their dynamics, since I had always been an orphan. Always alone.

Kuromura was now pulling at the spy's coat, attempting to make a snatch at the briefcase and putting in a few kicks of her own. The man struggled, twisting his arm away and flailing almost comically.

I felt, rather than saw, the pain as the briefcase made contact with the side of Kuromura's head when she paused momentarily, blinded by rays of the setting sun.

Her large, round spectacles were knocked off and I imagined that her crystal-blue eyes would be wide with rage.

I did not see it, though, because her eyes promptly rolled upwards into her head as she began to fall backwards in a graceful arc.

"Time" really was wonky today, slowing down so much that I could practically feel it, congealed against my skin, as I pushed past it to intercept Kuromura's fall; her head a mere metre away from impact with the ground.

It was now that I started to panic.

Kuromura. Kuromura.

"AKI!"