Wow, thanks everyone for the comments...!
I'm glad to see so many of you still reading, as well as even some at least relatively new readers (thanks w_w and maize!)... and some who've been MIA for awhile (Lolli, your posts are not poor at all! I love seeing 'em!
).
It sounds like the main things in your comments were Saki coming back to her after going to the bar for a bit, and what exactly is going on with Momo. I love the emotional roller coaster Momo is putting you through, and it's incredibly ironic considering what's actually going on with her character right now (which I haven't explained yet), so even better.
This chapter's taking a little different track - beginning a little different arc that's been building for awhile - but don't worry, the angst isn't going anywhere either!
It'll just kind of be the backdrop tension that'll keep bending and bending... until eventually it might break. There's quite a lot to even read into the last paragraph or two of this, and so I'll be eagerly anticipating the beginning of the next chapter (as I hope you will too). Well, for the time being, enjoy this~! It's one of the longer chapters of this story, but quite a bit happens...
Chapter 30“Miyabi!” her mother called from downstairs. “There’s… someone… here to see you!”
Miyabi sighed, staring off into space past her algebra book as she levitated and spun it around slowly in front of her. Couldn’t people just leave her in peace?
Then suddenly she felt a rush of excitement. What if it was Saki?! It would be odd for her to come over on a school night, but as they’ve gotten closer and closer lately she guessed she didn’t really know what to expect. This was all completely new territory for her, after all.
At the burst of thrill that accompanied the thought of her girlfriend she completely lost her focus on her algebra book, and it began spinning faster and faster until it apparently gave up on her and shot across the room, crashing through her window and rocketing off somewhere into the distance until she could no longer see it.
Miyabi stared after it, completely frozen at the release of power and the ensuing commotion, until she heard her mother calling frantically from downstairs –
“Miyabi!!!” – and the sound of feet shuffling up the steps as best she could in her long narrow housedress.
“It’s okay, kaa-san!” Miyabi yelled at the door, able to regain her senses. “I just… I…” Her mind raced. She of course couldn’t tell her mom what had really just happened, but she also needed to explain why she suddenly needed a new algebra book. “I got so upset over my homework that I picked up the book and threw it across the room. But I didn’t aim well, so it ended up going through the window.” She paused as if she was looking out it. “I can’t see where it went though. I’m sorry, I think I need a new algebra book…”
Blessedly the stampede up the stairs calmed, and she just heard soft footfalls make their way to her door. She looked over at it as her mom pushed it open slowly to peer at her guiltily grinning daughter. She took a glance at the window, and then looked back to Miyabi. “I thought you liked math…” she said quietly. Miyabi shrugged, still grinning, hoping her mother wouldn’t ask any more questions.
She didn’t, but instead opened the door wider and gestured her toward it. “Come on down then,” she said. “Like I said, someone’s here, and it didn’t look like someone who would be happy to be kept waiting.”
Feeling a new surge of excitement –
Someone who doesn’t want to be kept waiting? It had
to be Saki-chan now! – Miyabi jumped up from her chair and headed toward her mother.
“While you’re busy, I’ll find some cardboard for the window. I’ll call someone up to fix it in the morning.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Miyabi responded, waving a hand nonchalantly as she passed her mother in the doorway. “I’ll take care of it later tonight.”
“Oh…” her mother said, only slightly surprised. “All right, dear. Well hurry on downstairs.”
While it might have been strange in most families for a young daughter who’d just broken a window to say she’d take care of it like that, Mrs. Natsuyaki was quite used to strange pronouncements such as this from her daughter. Miyabi was quite exceptional after all, and she only did her best to understand her.
Her mother quickly out of her mind in the anticipation of maybe seeing her girlfriend, Miyabi made her way quickly down the stairs and into the living room, where she stopped, noticing an older woman dressed in a black ladies’ business suit of jacket and skirt rising from the couch upon her arrival. This woman was definitely not Saki.
She was several years younger than Miyabi’s mother, but she also thought the woman might look young for her age. Her round face beamed a wide smile at Miyabi as she considered her. For some reason Miyabi thought she was giving her a careful appraisal, despite the bright smile.
“Hello,” Miyabi said, bowing a little, offering just slight politeness toward the stranger who had invaded her house.
“Ah, Natsuyaki Miyabi-san, correct?” the lady said. “I’m pleased to meet you!” The lady offered her own short bow. Miyabi regarded her skeptically, but she seemed sincere in her expression.
“If you will excuse me, I will make us some tea,” Miyabi suddenly heard her mother say as she shuffled past on her way toward the kitchen. She had her head bowed to the woman, but gave Miyabi a curious look as she disappeared into the other room.
The stranger smiled over at her as if waiting for something, and even though she hadn’t introduced herself properly yet, Miyabi gestured her to have a seat. She gratefully reclined stiffly back into the sofa. Miyabi walked around it to take a seat in a chair just opposite and regarded the woman again.
“Is there… something I can do for you?” Miyabi asked. She wondered idly if the woman was from her school, and quickly began thinking of events from the past few weeks since returning from Nagoya to try and guess if she’d done something that warranted a home visit.
“Actually,” the stranger said. “I was hoping there might be something you could do for us.”
“Us?” Miyabi asked, looking around the room in case someone else was hiding out in it.
The woman across from her tittered in soft laughter. “No no, I’m the only one here. Speaking of, where are my manners? I haven’t introduced myself yet!” She bowed her head slightly again. “I am Natsumi Abe. I’m from a… special branch of the government.” Miyabi suddenly became very wary, not only because the woman worked for the government but also since she swore she knew that name from somewhere... “We seek out…
exceptional individuals, and see if there is anything we can do to help each other out.”
She stopped her explanation when Miyabi’s mother returned with tea and offered a cup daintily to the mysterious agent. She took it, and when her mother took a seat on the other end of the sofa, peered over it toward Miyabi as she drank.
“You say you’re from the government?” Miyabi’s mother asked. Miyabi looked over at her, and she could see excitement in her features, although it was mixed with a hint of trepidation. “What interest could the government possibly have in my daughter?”
“Oh, we have interests in a great many things, Mrs. Natsuyaki,” Abe responded. “You surely know your daughter is quite special and unique.”
“Oh, I couldn’t say something like that,” her mother responded, hiding her face behind her own cup. Despite her words, Miyabi detected definite hints of pride within her voice.
“Actually,” Abe said, setting her amazingly completely drained cup of tea on a coaster atop the end table. “Would you mind if I took your daughter for a little walk? I’d like to have a little chat with her, and I find that a bit of fresh air does wonders to liven up a conversation, don’t you?”
“Why of course,” her mother said, rising quickly herself. She glanced over at Miyabi, still with pride in her face yet slight anxiety as well. “Miyabi, you don’t mind having a talk with Abe-san, do you?”
“I suppose not…” Miyabi said noncommittally, and still taking no great pains at formality, rose from her own chair, smoothing the skirt of her seifuku before sauntering over to join the agent.
“You won’t be long?” her mother asked. “I’ll have dinner ready at six. Won’t you join us, Abe-san?”
“Thank you very much,” the woman smiled, “But I’m afraid I can’t stay that long.” She bowed again to her mother. “For tonight, I’d just like to talk with your daughter and then I must be off.”
“All right then,” her mother responded, and gave both of them smiles as they headed out the door.
They walked in silence until they were out of sight of Miyabi’s house, Miyabi glancing over from time to time at the woman, who just looked around herself as if fascinated at every facet of the neighborhood. Miyabi had just started kicking rocks softly to keep herself from being bored when the stranger spoke up.
“How is your friend doing?” she asked, still not looking over at Miyabi in lieu of examining the neighborhood.
“What?” Miyabi responded, unsure if she heard the question right. Despite the rocks, she could feel the boredom creep into her like a thief in the night.
“Tsugunaga… Momoko-san, isn’t it? The one you brought back to life?”
Miyabi stopped dead, and the woman turned to face her, her polite speech belying budding excitement Miyabi saw behind her eyes. “How do you know about that?” Miyabi asked quietly, no longer feeling that spark of boredom.
“We’ve been watching you for a while, Natsuyaki-san,” Abe responded, giving Miyabi an intense gaze.
Miyabi, feeling a bit spooked, glanced around as if she’d see faces peering out at her from bushes or around the corners of the mostly gated houses. Abe tittered behind her hand again. “Oh no, you won’t find anyone in those bushes,” she said, as if the idea was the most ridiculous thing in the world.
“You know what’s involved in the things you do,” she continued, becoming serious again. “The energies you manipulate create ripples that affect many other things all over the natural world. Those ripples can be identified if you know where to look.”
Miyabi considered the woman again. “So you’re saying you know where to look?”
The agent nodded, though didn’t speak again at first. “But while we’ve seen some of the… effects… of what you do, we can’t be sure exactly what the results have been. Aside from what seemed to happen to your friend, that is. I’m curious… Could you show me something that you can do? It can be anything. Whatever you feel comfortable with.” There was easily discernible excitement in her features at the request.
Miyabi regarded her warily. “Why should I?” she retorted. “I’ve seen this kind of thing on TV. If I show you and you think I’m a freak, you might cart me off and lock me away somewhere…”
She expected the woman to laugh again at her suspicion, but instead the woman looked as serious as she’d been so far. “I can assure you,” she responded, “Nobody will lock you away anywhere. We just need to make sure what we hear about you is accurate. If so, then I hope we can help each other rather than establish a negative relationship. Wouldn’t you like to put what you can do to a use that benefits society at large?”
Miyabi just continued her scrutiny of the woman.
Society at large… That sounded an awful lot like saying that if she didn’t cooperate with them, it would be
harmful to society, and could still end in her being locked up.
Abe seemed to notice her continued hesitation though and let out a slow breath. “I know you have no reason to, but all I’m asking is for you to trust me. Let’s see.” She perused their surroundings herself. “What might I be able to do to gain your trust…”
Finally she focused on a bare patch of dirt. Bending over, she picked up a stick and tossed it to the spot. She then raised a finger, and Miyabi could discern intense concentration on her face. After a few seconds she heard a soft crackling, and looked over to see that a small flame had sprung to life on the stick, burning along its length. She stared into it as if it was mesmerizing.
“Did you do that?” Miyabi asked quietly.
The woman nodded. “I’ve studied these forces and elements of nature for years, and finally I’ve been able to make a small flame like the one you see there. There are those who can do more of course, but I hope by this small demonstration of how I too am at least somewhat a ‘freak’, you’ll be reassured that if I’m free and walking around, you won’t be locked up either.”
Miyabi stared into the woman’s eyes before going back to the fire, which had nearly consumed the stick now. “Okay…” she said, still a bit reluctantly.
She closed her eyes, yet the last image imprint of the burning stick remained within her mind. She projected her thought outward to it, feeling the warmth of the nature that felt like it wrapped around her.
As her eyes opened slowly, the burning stick rose from the ground along with a thin bed of the dirt beneath it. She reached out her hand as if to grab the stick, and then suddenly she held it, still burning within her fist. She didn’t feel the heat; instead, she had directed the flame to cascade toward the stick’s tip until it appeared lit just like a large match. Then she squeezed her fist, and the stick disintegrated into ash, leaving just the flame which still danced above her hand. She opened her palm beneath it and looked over at Abe, who stared fascinated at the small flame dancing above her hand.
“Very creative…” she murmured. She didn’t appear impressed, or even anything of the sort, but Miyabi had a suspicion she might have been just doing a remarkable job of holding it back. “I wonder if you can do something… more productive though. Something the opposite of the destruction you just managed.”
Miyabi frowned at the insinuation that what she’d just done was something negative, and the flame winked out in front of her. Abe though was looking back toward the patch of dirt and the brush surrounding it.
“Do you see those blades of grass creeping out from beneath the bush? Do you think you could make those grow?” Despite her direction, Miyabi thought the woman spoke as if not expecting Miyabi to accomplish the task.
Frowning again at the doubt of this woman who knew nothing about her, Miyabi stared hard at the grass. It took a few seconds, but eventually the blades began to extend noticeably, picking up speed until stopping their sudden growth spurt when they were about half as tall as the bush they now surrounded.
“Remarkable!” the agent breathed, now apparently no longer able to conceal her amazement as she stared at the grasses. “Even Kuromi wasn’t able to do that until…”
“It’s not
that remarkable,” Miyabi insisted bitterly. “I thought you people had been watching me? I’ve conjured and made deals with
demons… Playing with fire or making a little grass grow isn’t much more than child’s play.” Suddenly she seemed to register what else the woman had said, and her mind blanked. “Wait… Kuromi?”
“You’d be surprised at how many people claim to conjure demons,” the woman murmured wryly from the side of her mouth, kneeling down to run a blade of the grass between two of her fingers. “We haven’t found one yet that could reproduce the supposed act though.”
“But I did!” Miyabi insisted defensively, putting aside names of old friends for the moment to respond to the affront toward her word. “I could do it again whenever all the prerequisites have been met! I… How do you think I managed the resurrection? Life can’t be reawakened without a deal with Death.”
“We’ll see about that,” Abe said, seemingly nonplussed, and she rose, still staring at the grass as if it was remarkable in itself. “Everyone involved in cleaning up the wreck claims she was just knocked out and hidden until she woke up, after all. I hope you understand, we only have your word to go by, and nothing like this has ever happened before.”
Miyabi felt herself fuming, but did her best to keep a rein on it. What did she care what this woman thought about what she could do anyway? She’d never liked the government very much. Why would she want to assist it in its own plans?
“As to your other question, Kuromi Takeda is the one that first led us to you. We knew her from her mother, and she began working with us not long ago. She gave your name when we asked her if there was anyone she had talked to about her little
family tradition. She gave others too of course, so we thought little of it. That was, at least, until we noticed your online claims and observations from our Readers.”
Feeling her anger slowly fade, Miyabi fell into thought at the information overload.
Kuromi… She hadn’t heard the girl’s name since she transferred. It made her sad actually that she seemed uninterested in keeping up with her, since Miyabi had thought of her as a close friend, but apparently she hadn’t been forgotten. A light smile began creeping to her lips.
“Anyway,” Abe said, resuming her businesslike air. “I think I have what I need for today. You’ll hear again from us soon.”
Miyabi blinked as the woman bowed and began walking briskly away from her. “Wait… what?” she stuttered.
The agent raised a hand to waggle her fingers in a wave back to her. “See you again, Natsuyaki Miyabi-san,” she said. “It was a pleasure meeting you, and you can’t imagine how much I look forward to our next encounter.”
…
“I’m home!” Miyabi called in a grouchy voice as she entered her house after a long and confusing walk back. She left her shoes at the entrance and stepped up to the floor, shuffling down the hall past the living room.
“Welcome back,” her mother said, standing from a spot on the couch where she had apparently been nervously sipping tea and awaiting her return. “Did it… go well?” she asked, peering to either side of Miyabi as if the agent might still be with her.
“I guess,” Miyabi responded. “I’m gonna go call Saki-chan.” She pulled out her cell to check the time. “Dinner’s in a half hour, right?” Her mother nodded slowly, clearly holding herself back from saying more. “Well, see you then!” With that, Miyabi skipped up the stairs and into her room, closing the door softly behind her.
Once in, she sighed as if to exhale from her mind the memory of the insanity that just occurred. What did that Abe woman want? She definitely didn’t impress Miyabi very much. She’d started the conversation by talking about Momoko, but by the rest of their encounter it didn’t seem as if she believed a word of it. Amazed that Miyabi could play with fire? That she could make a little grass grow? That was even
less than child’s play compared to what she’d done.
She needed to vent, and she wanted some comfort. Hence, she was going to call Saki. It wasn’t like she wasn’t going to anyway, and even again after dinner, but now she really had a reason!
She belly-flopped onto her bed, and as she waved her upwardly bent legs back and forth above it and through a cool breeze entering her room from the broken window, she picked up her cell phone and dialed her first speed dial. That number used to be her brother, but it had recently changed for obvious reasons.
“Moshi moshi,” came a young feminine voice from the other end as someone picked up.
“Hi,” Miyabi said, falling completely flustered at the sound of the girl’s voice. She remembered something about there being a special reason for this call, but what it actually was she suddenly couldn’t remember for the life of her. “It’s me.”
“Miya!” Saki cooed happily. “I was just thinking about you.”
“You were?” Miyabi responded, smiling dumbly and twirling a strand of her hair in a finger.
“Mhmm,” came the response. “I miss you.”
“I miss you too…” Miyabi said. “It seems like ages since I last saw you.”
She heard giggling from the other end. “You know that was just yesterday after school, right?”
“But that’s a long time!” Miyabi defended herself. “And it’s not like we had any private time since we just walked to the station… It’s been almost two weeks since we had any
real time together!”
She blushed at the memory. It had been several weeks since Nagoya and everything that had happened there. Saki visited the first weekend after they were back home, and Miyabi’s mother actually let her visit Saki two weeks later. The problem with going to Saki’s was that apparently other Berryz girls felt quite comfortable in bothering their Captain at nearly any time they pleased, so Yurina and Chinami showed up as well.
To say the least, Chinami for one wasn’t thrilled to find Miyabi visiting too. Yurina mostly seemed to keep her happy and out of their way, although they most definitely didn’t get much private time in Saki’s room. Actually though, through the experience at Saki’s Miyabi thought she began to realize at least part of the reason why Chinami got so upset about the two of them.
Before she started going out with Saki, Chinami was one of Miyabi’s closest friends. She wondered at times how she dealt with the always-bubbly girl, but there was also an endearing quality to her that she couldn’t resist. Plus, she enjoyed scaring her whenever she got the chance.
Since Miyabi and Saki became nigh inseparable, Chinami had been able to see her less and less, and Miyabi thought she might be jealous of the attention she now didn’t receive. The interesting side effect of that was that Chinami now had more time to spend with others, mostly Yurina and Maasa. And sometimes Risako, although of course the youngest girl now had her own boyfriend keeping her busy too.
Since Chinami lived closer to Yurina, Miyabi found that since they left Nagoya the two of them had apparently spent a lot of time together. Apparently they had before too, but Miyabi noticed something different in their relationship now.
Yurina seemed completely oblivious, but whenever Chinami looked at her the older girl suddenly seemed to feel awkward as if just realizing her friend was there, and she’d look that way until her attention was diverted elsewhere again. With Chinami’s attention span, that diversion occurred quite often. However, awkward or not, Chinami didn’t seem willing to be very far from Yurina’s side. Not saying anything about it though and just observing quietly, Miyabi pondered on the implication.
“I guess you’re right,” her Captain responded, bringing her back to the present. “And it was weeks before that since you had, er, visited me…”
“
That’s not an experience I want to relive anytime soon!” Miyabi laughed, though she didn’t hear it echoed from the other end.
“I’m worried about Chii, Miya…” Saki said. “I don’t think she likes us being together very much…”
“Well she’s just gonna have to live with it!” Miyabi responded firmly. “Because we’re not going anywhere.”
“I know…” Saki said. “But I have to think of these kinds of things as Captain. I’m supposed to be able to hold us together, not be the cause of something that pushes us apart… I don’t know… Maybe I should resign as Captain… Erika-chan stepped back after all, and that worked out quite well for them.”
She finished with a bitter edge to her voice. She wasn’t thrilled with the attention the other young Hello! Project group had been getting lately, and even took it as almost a personal offense that by all indications it already seemed like they might be more popular. Considering how good-natured she normally was, her reaction was all the more shocking.
Miyabi however just sighed at the girl’s words. This was a conversation they’d had many times since those nights in Nagoya. “Saki-chan…” Miyabi said in a lightly scolding voice. “These things happen no matter what position you hold, and people just have to learn how to deal with it. Besides, after the other week I have a feeling we aren’t really Chii-chan’s problem.”
“What do you mean?” Saki asked in a soft and confused voice from the other end. Miyabi hadn’t revealed her thoughts to her girlfriend yet, though after dealing with this for so long, she felt it was time.
“Did you even notice the two of them when we were all at your place?” she asked in a voice whose pitch constantly rose. “They seem to have been spending an awful lot of time together…”
“No, I didn’t notice them,” came the soft response. As she went on and her voice became even softer, Miyabi imagined the blushing face on the other end that hers quickly jumped into competition against. “You were there.”
Miyabi’s throat constricted as it felt like something was being squeezed inside her, and she held her phone at her ear in silence for at least a full minute.
“Miya…?” Saki finally asked, concern seeping into her voice.
“Yeah,” Miyabi choked out, and swallowed at the parching dryness in her throat. She missed the girl so much…
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s just…” She felt like she was going to choke again. “I love you…”
“I love you too,” Saki said on the other end, and Miyabi could sense in her voice that the girl was smiling. “Hey,” she said gently. “Mom’s calling me for dinner, so I have to go. I’ll call you later, okay? I just heard from the company today, and it sounds like they have big news for you…”
Miyabi nodded before she realized that Saki could of course not see it from a prefecture away, and finally said quickly, “Okay. But give me at least an hour or so. I’ll be eating dinner soon too, and you know how my mom is…” She wondered momentarily what the news from the company was, but the thought of it quickly fled aside from that of her girlfriend, which was occupying most of her brain space at the moment. As well as the rest of her body, she thought, blushing.
Saki giggled. “Mhmm… well, until then!”
“Bye bye~” Miyabi said, and she slowly slid her phone closed.
Rolling over on the bed, she closed her eyes in peaceful bliss at the experience of talking to her girlfriend again. Then, as the silence began bringing her back to reality, she remembered what happened just before the call.
She glanced at her phone. She still had about fifteen minutes until her mom would call her for dinner. Quickly trying to pull herself out of pleasant thoughts of Saki to those of things with more pressing concern, she rose and walked over to her altar.
So the Abe woman that visited her earlier from out of nowhere didn’t think much of her power, did she? Well, the relaxation of her phone call had cleared her mind a bit, and she decided it was time to prove what she could do.
She thought a minute. The woman had left perhaps a half hour ago, so she couldn’t have gone far yet. Beginning to smile, she wondered if she might not be able to take out two birds with one stone.
Lighting some candles at her altar, she took another small glass candle-holder that was filled with sand and poured some of it onto its slightly concave metal surface. Then she ran her fingers lightly over the sand, smoothing it out to where it gave a thin covering to the metal. Then she drew a hasty map of Japan into the sand before carefully outlining Saitama and Tokyo within it, thinking that would be her most likely target.
Lifting a thread of twine that she had tied to a small round jewel, she held it over the map and closed her eyes.
“Show me Kuromi…” she whispered, focusing on the girl’s name within her head and even picturing her with her long raven-black hair.
After a few seconds, she felt the weight change beneath the fingers that held the twine as the jewel swung slowly over the map. She maneuvered her hand carefully, responding to what she felt as the jewel’s momentum, until it became still again. Releasing herself from the power, she opened her eyes slowly and looked down at the map.
Surprisingly, the jewel hung over somewhere in the northeastern part of Honshu, where she hadn’t given the map great detail. Grumbling a little, she closed her eyes again to seek further.
“Sendai…” she heard herself say after a moment, and her eyes popped open. Wherever they’d taken the girl, it was in that city. That is, if they’d taken her anywhere. Maybe she just lived at home still. However, Miyabi’s intuition told her that she didn’t.
Laying the jewel and twine toward the back of the altar, she turned from it and walked to the center of her room. “Let’s see how long you doubt me now…” she said, grinning to herself, then closed her eyes again.
Attempting to clear her mind as much as possible, she concentrated the hardest she had for nearly anything so far, probably shy of that night in the graveyard. She hadn’t exactly tried to do this before, but knew in theory that she should be capable of it. Surely she was powerful enough by now. After all, she’d summoned a demon from the netherworld, hadn’t she?
Reaching out in order to not only recognize her surroundings, but to
know them, she looked beyond them, something made considerably difficult considering the clear focus she had to keep on her immediate environment. Finally she was able to summon the image of a girl into her mind, clearing up the vision until it was as clear as if she was standing right next to her.
“Take me now…” she commanded in a voice that sounded hollow to her own ears, and the breeze that was blowing in through her broken window – which she’d
have to remember to fix later – appeared to strengthen until she could hear it even scream past her. The shrill whistling continued for an indeterminable length of time until it slowly calmed down to nothing.
Cautiously, Miyabi opened her eyes to find herself in a bright sunlit room that looked smaller than her own, and in which she stood amid walls that blared a peppy pink, with just a bit of a quite contrasting black. There were also posters plastered all over the room from various manga, including at least three of Hamtaro.
Miyabi though focused on a girl who sat on the floor amidst oddly neat stacks of the colorful books, leaning down over one she was apparently reading. Then Miyabi smiled.
“Hello Momochi~♪ Want to take a trip?”
Topic: Berry Beautiful [Volume 2] (Read 113010 times)