The black Mercedes sedan, a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel, drove slowly through the residential neighborhood. In the back seat, Himemiya Chikane sat, her chin propped up in her palm, elbow resting on the edge of the door at the base of the window.
It had been so Himeko-like, she thought, that the blonde girl had completely forgotten to give Chikane her address when they'd exchanged cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Her good-hearted clumsiness could be so cute! It always amazed Chikane how so few people seemed to realize how lovely, how sweet and appealing Himeko was. Not just for her cute mannerisms and girlish looks, but also for her honesty and loyalty. She supposed she had to credit Souma Ohgami with that, for having the good sense to love and value Himeko—much as she hated to credit a romantic rival, even one from two lifetimes past, with anything. I am, she admitted, a bit of a vindictive bitch.
She chuckled out loud at the thought. "A bit" was a definite understatement, though she wasn't what she'd once been. A monster, she thought regretfully, who deserved the title of Orochi. This life had been so different. Friends that she genuinely cared for instead of using them to adorn her reputation. Activities that she actually had fun doing instead of treating them as objectives to overcome. Normal things, honest things.
Perhaps that is why I am a Himemiya again, this time? she thought idly. A second chance to live that life over the way I should have? She was the Lunar Priestess, after all, and the light from her own personal sun made her shine brighter than ever, or at least that was how she felt. And after waiting for sixteen and a half years, that sun was back with her again. It felt wonderful to hold her, to just bask in her presence, and she was elated that Himeko would at last let her stand up and say, "Himeko is mine" to the world at large, to claim her in the sight of others.
Not that there wouldn't be problems, Chikane admitted. For all that she'd been getting love confessions from both genders throughout her teenage years, same-sex relationships were not widely approved. She had only to look at Alice and Saya's situation to see that. And Chikane's fans, too, were likely to be jealous.
That was one reason why Chikane had pressured Himeko to join the kendo team. People wanted to see the exceptional with the exceptional—it was why they'd always wanted to see Chikane dating Souma (even Himeko had thought that!). If Chikane could get people to see even a little bit of what she saw in Himeko, it would make her lover's life much easier. The swordsmanship of Ame no Murakumo's Solar Priestess was something even casual observers could see and be impressed by, the kind of thing that made it more "fitting" (bah!) for Chikane and Himeko to be dating.
Judging by the reaction of the rest of the team, the plan was working. She wondered if she should tell Himeko about it. Her poor darling had been pretty confused, after all. Then again, Chikane liked to do things secretly for Himeko's sake. Perhaps this was but a remnant of the days when she couldn't act openly on her love's behalf, but the thought of helping her from the shadows, seeing her happiness without taking credit for it, made her warm inside.
I enjoy it, she admitted, plans and secrets and mysteries. She fitted the image of the moon as well as Himeko's open, guileless nature was appropriate for the Solar Priestess.
Will she wonder how I found out her address? Chikane thought. Being student council president made it easy; she'd simply looked it up in the student directory. Himeko might not even—
"Stop the car!"
The driver braked immediately and Chikane threw open the door. Himeko was running down the sidewalk, her face wracked with emotion. She still wore her uniform—in fact, was still clutching her bag.
Gods! What happened to her?
"Himeko!" she called out, vaulting from the car. "Himeko, what's wrong?"
The blonde all but crashed into her; she might not even have heard Chikane over her sobs. She stumbled at the contact and Chikane caught her by the shoulders.
"Chikane-chan?" Himeko gasped out, her voice sounding half-strangled. When she looked up, Chikane saw that she'd been crying; her eyes were red-rimmed, her face all blotchy, and her nose dripping. "Oh, Chikane-chan!" she wailed, then buried her face against Chikane's shoulder as a fresh round of sobs wracked her. Chikane wrapped one arm around her beloved's shoulders, cradling her against her body, while her free hand gently stroked Himeko's hair.
"Don't worry, my love; I'm here," she murmured gently, holding the other girl close. Himeko's bag fell to the sidewalk and she fisted her hands in Chikane's sapphire-blue silk blouse, weeping against her shoulder.
After a few minutes, the storm passed and Himeko pulled back. Chikane took out a handkerchief and blotted at Himeko's eyes, then passed it over so the blonde could blow her nose.
"Th-thank you, Chikane-chan," she hiccuped.
"What's wrong, Himeko? Please tell me?" She brushed her fingertips over Himeko's cheek; the flesh was hot and sticky from the tears.
Himeko trembled, and Chikane felt her heart seem to skip a beat, she was so shocked at Himeko's condition.
"Please? You always said that you wouldn't let me suffer alone any more, but that runs the other way as well."
Himeko snuffled and nodded.
"It's...it's my family, Chikane. They've heard all kinds of rumors about us already, before I could even tell them, and they...and they..."
It was fairly obvious to Chikane what their reaction had been. She drew in her breath sharply. Bad enough that they had made Himeko cry; if they'd dared to hurt her...
Himeko looked around herself, at the neatly trimmed lawns and rows of houses, the occasional person here or there in their front yards and blushed, realizing she'd been making a scene.
"C-can we go somewhere a little quieter to talk?"
Chikane nodded. The obvious place was the car, but unlike the limousine it didn't have a soundproof divider between the seats, and she suspected that Himeko wouldn't want to talk where the chauffeur could hear her. They'd passed a little park about a block before, though, that she thought ought to do nicely.
"All right, Himeko."
She signaled to the driver with gestures that she wanted him to wait, then took Himeko's hand and led her up the block. The park wasn't big, barely more than a playground for the neighborhood children. Himeko sat down on a spring-mounted riding horse painted pink and white, so Chikane hopped up on the next one sidesaddle so she could face her girlfriend. The spring breeze ruffled at their hair.
"So, Himeko, your family doesn't approve of you dating a girl, is that it?" she began after Himeko had remained silent for nearly a minute.
Himeko shook her head.
"No, that's not it. At least, it didn't seem like it." She sighed. "My mother was shocked. She seemed to think it was like a girls'-school romance? The kind that people grow out of?"
Chikane nodded.
"I know what you're talking about. Though to me that seems more like giving up and following society's expectations than 'growing out' of anything. But that's too easy for me to say. I mean, we've never really had to worry about what to do in our adult lives."
Life was funny that way. Ever since Himeko had accepted her feelings and found a way for them to be together, being a miko of Ame no Murakumo had started to seem like an advantage for Chikane instead of a drawback.
"I told her that wasn't what it was," Himeko went on, "and that I'd always known I could never love a boy, which is true, because I have you! She was really shocked, so I don't know if she believed me. I suppose I should have talked to them before about this, but since I hadn't met you yet in this life there didn't seem to be any point."
Himeko sighed deeply and looked down, not meeting Chikane's eyes.
"That wasn't the problem, though," she said softly. "I don't think they were happy about me liking girls, but that wasn't why my dad was so angry."
"Why, then?" Chikane was curious now.
A tear started to glimmer in the corner of Himeko's eye that Chikane could see.
"It was because I was dating you."
Chikane was stunned. It was one thing that people objected to homosexual relationships; she expected that sort of reaction. But that Himeko's parents had a problem with her personally?
"What the—? But I don't even know your family!" she protested, so startled that she completely lost her usual aplomb.
Himeko ran her fingertips along the curved mane of her horse.
"The rumors they've heard...they're all about how the depraved Kurusugawa girl went out and seduced the heiress of the Himemiya family, that...that I'm some kind of pervert who's trapped you into this, who's just using you."
"What?" Chikane yelped.
"People think that I'm...that I'm doing bad things to you," Himeko went on. "I guess it's a big scandal in town! Everybody loves and looks up to you, and so they...they think I must be doing something wrong to make you look at me."
Anger surged up like a wave within the dark-haired girl. Himeko was no more capable of being a wicked seductress than was a rainbow or a butterfly! The idea was utterly ridiculous, and it made Chikane want to claw out the throats of anybody who would think such a thing!
"Those stupid fools!" she growled, slamming her fist against the neck of her horse. "What kind of moron would believe that about you? Bad enough that filthy scum who've never met you would be saying that, but your own parents? What kind of people could raise you for sixteen years and possibly think those things?"
Himeko flinched a little from Chikane's sudden outburst, making her lover feel sorry for it even though it hadn't been directed at Himeko.
"They...they didn't, not at first," she told Chikane in a very small voice. "They assumed it...well, that you were some rich playgirl who was taking advantage of me."
Chikane laughed bitterly.
"That's closer to the truth, at least."
"Chikane-chan! You promised me you wouldn't talk like that any more. It's not true, and I told my parents the same thing."
It was amazing—absurd, really, when you considered it—how Himeko would instantly spring to her defense. After every awful thing she'd done to her beloved, regardless of how good her ultimate intentions had been, there ought to be some resentment, some lingering hurt on Himeko's part. Yet there wasn't.
"I'm sorry."
"You'd better be." Himeko sniffled and fell silent for a second before continuing. "Chikane-chan, they...they demanded that I break up with you. No, more than that, that I cut off all contact with you except as required at school. Just...just talking to you like this, I'm disobeying them."
"You can't do that!"
"I don't want to! I mean...I've already waited sixteen years, and in a couple more we could go to college together, some place away from both our families. I could wait that long, if I...if I had to, but..."
Fear clawed at Chikane's heart, stark, agonizing fear. She wasn't as strong as Himeko, she knew, not nearly. Himeko could set her teeth and endure the pain of separation and when it was over just be grateful to be reunited again. But Chikane? To endure sixteen years apart, waiting and hoping for their reunion, and then to have it snatched away, be forced to endure another two years with Himeko constantly in front of her, tantalizingly within reach but unable to be touched, unable even to speak with her... She would go mad, she was certain. It was too much to bear!
"Himeko, you can't do that!" she...shouted? Ordered? Pleaded? Begged? She wasn't sure. "To let those people, who don't know anything about us, dictate to you because of what other stupid fools say? Why should their opinion matter to us at all? If they don't like us being together, then that's their problem. Why should you make it yours?"
It was a sincere enough speech, born of one part terror at the thought of losing Himeko and one part the lingering shadow of the Eighth Neck of Yamata no Orochi, for whom nothing and no one mattered but Himeko. But Chikane didn't get any of the answers she was expecting.
"They matter to me!" Himeko shot back at her. "These are my family, Chikane-chan, who raised me from birth! They've loved me and cared for me all through my life, working hard to make sure that we had a roof over our heads and food on the table. All these years, they've been the ones who have been there for me, the ones who protected me and reassured me. When I woke up screaming at nightmares that weren't nightmares but memories that my four-year-old mind couldn't understand, memories of demonic monsters and the world being consumed in fire and earthquakes, it was my father who'd rock me on his knee and hug me and drive off the monsters so I could sleep! When I'd be playing at something and suddenly burst into tears because I'd want to show you and you weren't there, only I was too young to even understand what it was that I'd lost, it was my mother who chased away the sadness and made me feel loved! Even my little brother Shiro, who always looks up to his big sister even though I'm silly and graceless and clumsy."
Chikane was taken aback by the sudden outburst of emotion, not just by Himeko's defense of her family but by how she'd burst forth with such a long speech for their sake. Guilt stung at her, too, because the subtext of what Himeko was saying was obvious: they were there for me when you weren't. In their past life as twins they'd always turned to one another first even as children, utterly secure in the knowledge that the other would always, absolutely be there. In this life, though, they'd been forced to grow up apart, yet with past-life memories that couldn't make sense until brains and bodies had aged to the point where they could accept them.
"Even so, to try and tear us apart now—"
"They're scared, Chikane-chan!" Himeko didn't even let her finish. "They've worked hard to build a good life for themselves and for Shiro-kun and me! A good job, a nice house, good schools for their children, all of it, and it could all be taken away, because of me. Because of us!"
The tears were welling up in her violet eyes again, and Chikane was at a complete loss as to what to say.
"Himeko, I...I don't understand what you mean. How could our going out cost your family all that?"
"Because you're you, and I'm nobody. People think that I'm a scheming pervert who's s-seduced you."
"That's ridiculous! And even if there are complete idiots who could believe such a thing, how could gossip hurt your family? Are they so obsessed with propriety that they couldn't bear the whispers?" She couldn't help but let a little of her scorn creep into her voice. It was a mistake, as Himeko's temper flared up at her at once.
"I told you already that isn't it, Chikane!" The sudden absence of the usual "-chan" told Chikane just how angry her lover was. "My father could lose his job because of this! His boss has already reprimanded him over it, and that was on the very first day after we started going out!"
Chikane blinked in confusion.
"But why would a company be that obsessed with such things, to threaten an employee's job just because he has a gay daughter? Where does he work?"
"Kamiyatate Pharmaceutical."
Chikane wasn't the Himemiya heiress for nothing; she'd studied the family's holdings and, quite frankly, knew more about the Himemiya Financial Group than anybody but her grandfather and father and the senior staff.
"You're saying that it's...because we own it, the Himemiya Group, that the managers are concerned not just with how an employee's child acts, but because it specifically involves a member of the Himemiya family, no, with the main branch, with the one who is second in line behind my father to inherit the holdings and become head of the entire Himemiya family."
How could I have been so stupid? she railed at herself. How could I have missed it? She'd thought about what it would mean to Himeko at school, had tried to counter that by elevating Himeko's status and making sure Chikane's circle of friends like Alice openly accepted the blonde—she hadn't been confiding to them about Himeko in advance just out of friendship, but also to lay the groundwork for Himeko's eventual appearance and what would otherwise seem like a crush completely out of the blue—but she hadn't stopped to even consider what it would mean for Himeko's family as a whole to be linked scandalously with the Himemiya heiress.
She had a pretty good idea of why that was, too. Chikane's own family life was formal and distant in a lot of ways. That wasn't to say that her parents disliked her or were cold to her; in truth, the separation was on her side rather than theirs. She thought of Himeko's sudden hug, almost a flying glomp, when the blonde had found out at lunch yesterday that Alice was a real, genuine friend. Himeko understood. Two lifetimes ago, Chikane had been Orochi. For all that she'd worked to try to save the world from within that role for Himeko's sake (how alike were we, Ohgami Souma?), she had been legitimately so lost in despair that she'd have gleefully consigned the world to perdition were it not for the Solar Priestess.
There was a word for what she'd become; it was sociopath. A monster incapable of seeing any abstract value in human life, viewing people (with that one exception) as resources, obstacles, or tools—objects. Himeko had known it and loved her anyway—Chikane seemed to recall some fragment of a conversation, in fact, when Himeko had felt sorry that someone "as kind as Chikane-chan" had been so badly hurt as to fall into that despair-wracked, damaged mindset. And maybe she had been right. The present Chikane was, after all, capable of forming friendships and valuing people for themselves and not for what they could give her, capable of compassion and of kindness for their own sake rather than that of her image. She was healing. But she wasn't healed.
The blunt truth was, while Chikane liked her family well enough, it was only that. Liking. If her relationship with Himeko caused them problems, she wouldn't have even perceived a conflict. But Himeko was different. She loved her family, as a family.
"I'm so sorry, Himeko. This is all my fault, for not recognizing what would happen." For overlooking your family as irrelevant, not even worth planning for.
She started to reach out, to gather Himeko in her arms and hold her close by way of apology and to comfort, then hesitated, unsure if Himeko would want her touch just then, angry as she was. Himeko seemed to sense her concern, and reached out to clasp Chikane's hand as kind of a middle path.
"Oh, Chikane-chan, I'm not going to leave you. I'll never, ever do that again. But I can't let my family be hurt, either," she sniffled. "If they don't like that I'm with a girl, then they'll just have to learn to live with it. But we absolutely cannot let Otousan lose his job! We can't do that!"
Chikane sighed. If she'd known about this before, she would have held back, pretended to be just friends like Alice and Saya, until they could work something out. But the cat was out of the bag now; no one would believe they were only friends at this point.
"Come home with me," she invited impulsively.
"Ehhhhh?"
"You...I don't think you should be alone right now, Himeko. You ran out of your house because of the fight, and I don't want to let you go home to face your parents' wrath until we've figured out what to do. Unless...you're afraid that will just make things worse?"
Himeko shook her head.
"N-no. I mean, Otousan will be really mad that I disobeyed him, but I've already said I'm not going to give you up, so that part is okay. But I don't have any of my things!"
Chikane chuckled despite herself.
"I think we can manage. I'll let you borrow some of mine; it'll be like old times." She felt herself blushing faintly. "I always enjoyed playing dress-up with you."
Himeko blushed back, but returned a shy smile.
"Thank you, Chikane-chan. I...I do really feel like I need to be with somebody now."
She mopped at her eyes again. Chikane took out her mobile phone and called her driver.
"Hiro, come pick us up, please. We're in a little park about a block east of where you let me off. Yes, thank you."
The car arrived in under a minute. Chikane took Himeko's hand and helped her down off the horse; the blonde winced, though, when her feet hit the ground.
"Himeko! Are you all right?"
"It's just, my feet hurt..."
Chikane looked down and realized that Himeko was still wearing her house slippers, obviously having run out of her home without changing into her shoes. The fragile footwear was scuffed and even ripped in places, and Himeko's feet had been cut.
"We'll take a look at these right away when we get you back to my house, but for now..." She bent and scooped Himeko up in her arms, one arm under her knees and the other supporting Himeko's upper back.
"Chikane-chan, this is embarrassing! I can walk, really!" she protested, but Chikane didn't relent, bearing her lover's slight weight over to where the driver was holding the sedan's rear door open for them.
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