Let’s change a little something of Chapter 47.
He intended to arrive early to the office that morning. The Daitokuji account needed to be settled by the end of the day and there was still a lot of work left to do before the deadline.
He even went to bed early the night before and managed to wake up 45 minutes earlier than the usual. The lighter traffic would allow him to add other thirty minutes to his early start.
Alas, it was not to be.
It started well enough. His suit and briefcase were already prepared and more than fifteen years of practice allowed Yuuto to disentangle from his cuddling wife with very little fuss.
Yeah, anyone but him would need to read that sentence twice or thrice before pretending it never happened. Also it would surprise people to the point of willful (or in one case, alcohol-assisted) amnesia just to have an inkling of how different her personality was on the very rare occasions when they were alone and their two children were staying over elsewhere.
Anyway, Yuuto walked to the kitchen across a silent house with the day’s clothes folded over his arm, turned on the coffeemaker and then hurried up to take a quick shower. The running cold water helped him to put his ideas in order and the breakfast was spend checking his emails for changes on today’s work schedule.
As he was about to grab his car’s keys, his mind drifted to thoughts of his daughter. During dinner it was obvious enough from her uncharacteristic dispirited mood that a cold managed to catch up with her. Glancing at his watch, Yuuto decided that he could afford the time to go upstairs and check on her.
He was careful to open the door to her room as quietly as possible and this should have been pretty much the end of it. However this time around, Nonoko actually took notice of him.
“Kyon-kun? Is that you?” Yuuto couldn’t help but chuckle a little at that. As most older brothers he knew, Kyon wasn’t really appreciative of little kid sister’s unmitigated fondness of him.
“Try again, Nono-chan.” He left his briefcase next to the door and walked to the side of her bed without turning on the lights.
So far the signs weren’t very good. Nonoko’s breath was a little labored and she was sweating a lot. Yuuto slowly caressed her forehead to check her temperature and her fever was evident enough that he didn’t need to look for the thermometer.
“Cold hand… feels good,” she said weakly, inclining more of her head to it.
“How are you feeling?” Yuuto asked while fumbling with his phone in his left hand. He knew that Akane didn’t like to wake up at the sound of her cellphone, but leaving Nonoko alone wasn’t an option now.
“Thirsty. I dreamed I was a magical girl.” The father of two could only sigh at that. You can’t blame a feverish kid for not knowing what information is really relevant in such a state.
“Oh, really?” he prompted as he dialed his wife’s number again.
“Yes! I helped Kyon to defeat a Dark Magical Girl! Well, I wanted to defeat her but…” she coughed a few times before getting back her voice. “… he wanted to befriend her. So I was nice with her…”
“Wait for a moment, Nono-chan. Dear? It’s me. I’m in Nono-chan’s room and her cold got worse. She got a fever and I don’t know where her medicine is. Could you come up?” Yuuto quickly informed Akane. Her sudden shift in her voice from sleep to wakefulness told him that she would be there very soon.
“… and then he broke her Mind Control with a kiss!” Nonoko finished her unheard tale as enthusiastically as she could under the circumstances.
“That’s amazing. I didn’t know Kyon’s kisses had that much power in them.” He pretended to have followed the narration of her oneiric experience while he checked if her pajamas needed to be changed.
“Of course they do. It’s a magical kiss!” Resisting the urge to laugh openly, Yuuto gazed at the door at the precise moment Akane walked through it. She greeted with him a nod then turned her attention to their daughter.
“Does it hurt somewhere, Nono-chan?” she asked as she uncased the digital thermometer from its plastic container and turned it on.
“My stomach hurts and my head feels funny. I’m very thirsty too” Akane placed the device under Nonoko’s armpit and then patted her own left wrist twice with index and middle fingers while giving her husband a meaningful glance.
“Something else?” Yuuto enquired Nonoko, acknowledging Akane’s unvoiced question about the time with a nod and started to walk towards his briefcase by the door.
“The ceiling is taller.” His little chagrin at the fact that the small girl could give proper answers to her mom was undeniable, but he could take comfort from the fact that the last one apparently was also a symptom of high fever.
“Can you send Kyon to fetch some clean washcloths and a bag of ice before you leave?” Akane said when he was about to exit the room.
“Got it.”
Had he had more time that morning, Yuuto would surely have not stepped into his son’s room without knocking. The fact that, in Yuuto’s knowledge, Kyon until just recently was most definitely not a morning person didn’t help.
The fact that his vision was half-adapted to the dark by then helped even less.
But the truth was that Yuuto would remember the next couple of minutes for years to come. After all, it’s not everyday a father opens a door to unexpectedly find his son and his fiancée in bed.
That still sounds common enough. Let’s try again: It’s not everyday a father opens a door to unexpectedly find his son half-laying over a girl and kissing her awake.
Not quite there yet. One more time: It’s not everyday a father opens a door to find his son and his fiancée in bed with him half-laying over another girl and kissing the latter awake.
Yes, third time’s a charm.
By the time Yuuto’s briefcase hit the floor, Tsuruya and Kyon learned that, no matter how much training to handle dire and sudden crises a person may receive, they’re still human and instincts are indeed a very powerful thing.
For one, the heiress of biggest and most influent ninkyo dantai family in the city was frozen still at the left side of the bed, in a pose that Japanese photographers call wariza (割座) or sometimes onna-no-ko-zuwari (girl’s sitting). Her arms remained where their attempt to tie the right half of her long green hair left them and the almost completed bun became undone, hanging around the white yukata she used as sleepwear that night.
Her face was quite a sight. Probably no one ever saw her eyes widen like that before, with an expression that suggested that absolutely no thought went through her mind during that instant.
On the other hand Kyon, a young man with more than fifty years of dedicated martial arts training under the belt before his seventeenth birthday, succumbed to a primal portion of his brain that told him that if he remained quiet and very, very still, he would go unnoticed.
For her part the brown-haired girl partially hidden from the door’s point of view simply put a hand behind Kyon’s head and pulled him more heavily into the kiss. His lack of response granted a whining overtone to her soft moans but she didn’t actually stop until Yuuto’s felt the need to clear his throat just to make a point.
Speaking of Yuuto, God bless his acute sense of priorities.
Whereas another father would feel righteous outrage at his teenage son’s gall, he instead thought of defusing a very volatile situation. Whereas others would seek a suitable punishment, he sought to spare his son from such at his mother’s hands. Whereas lesser men would let their outcries to be heard, he only whispered:
“Kyon, get them out of here while I stall your mother in Nono-chan’s room. Then get clean washcloths and the bag of ice and take them there. Hurry.”
Simple orders outlining a most suitable plan for an explosive predicament like theirs.
Alas, it was not to be.
“Yuuto, is Kyon awake?” Akane’s pressing, and more importantly approaching, voice asked. Predictably, that got everybody to move.
Kyon performed an impressive maneuver where he got out of his prone position by placing an arm to each side of the girl beneath him and pushing himself up, somehow twisting his body midair and landing on his two feet at the foot of the bed.
Tsuruya turned around and not quite dived for the small closet in Kyon’s room, barely managing to get between all those expensive suits that Kyon recently got and closed the door. Yuuto was pleased to notice that she at least was smart enough to not try to empty it first as it would have been a telltale hint with the room as tidy as it was.
Kyon’s father didn’t see what the other girl attempted, but whatever it was he prayed for her to get it done fast.
The by-now strong candidate for the title of “father of the year” tried to get between his wife and the door, but the worried mother was so focused checking the expiration date of the antipyretic medicine in her hand that she absently dodged him with a side step and walked into the room.
He turned again and tried instead to place a hand on her shoulder so he could make her to look at him before it was too late. To his surprise, only mother and son were present within the bedroom.
“Kyon, did your father tell you t–? Are you alright? Your face is very red. Don’t tell me you caught Nonoko’s cold and you also woke up burning hot and bathed in sweat.”
Yuuto couldn’t help but mentally remark how close to the mark her words were. He also crossed his fingers so that nobody would upset the bedclothes.
“I’m OK, Mom. I’ll get the things Dad asked for.” Kyon was quick to reassure with a placating gesture and tried to get to the door, ostensibly to get his mother to follow him outside.
“Give me your forehead first,” Akane ordered, reaching for Kyon’s head to check his temperature by touching foreheads. Kyon was even quicker to lower himself to her level so she would not have to look up to him. The gesture caught Yuuto’s attention and a sudden inspiration made him look up.
There is a term in climbing related sports called “stem”. It can refer to two things: a) The simultaneous use of two widely spaced footholds, and b) Climbing using two faces that are at an angle less than 180° to each other. Neither accurately described the awkward posture that inexplicably kept brown-haired girl’s back glued to the ceiling.
She placed her soles in two adjacent walls, her legs extended forming a 90° angle. Her hands firmly grasped the lights’ socket and some other invisible fixture on the ceiling. Some autonomous part of Yuuto’s mind idly mused that her physical condition must be top-notch to pull off a stunt like that.
Fortunately, her sleepwear was modest enough, a short-sleeved shirt and knee-length pants both apparently of Chinese design, otherwise “awkward” wouldn’t have had the proper connotation to describe this moment.
While Yuuto wasn’t looking, Kyon was successful in leading his mother out of the room. He picked up his briefcase and followed suit. Trusting the threesome… er… group of three teens had the situation in hand, he said his goodbyes and left for work, lest Akane become suspicious because of that.
The trek to car was an atypically slow one. Yuuto strained his hearing, hoping to not perceive an unmistakable call to run damage control. Once outside the house, he instead paid attention to the upper floor’s windows. There was light on Nonoko’s room now and Kyon’s window was open, but that was all.
After releasing a long sigh, he sat behind the wheel, started the engine and drove to the office. He hoped that his preferred activity of his youth would work its magic and soothe his frayed nerves.
Alas, it was not to be.
“Excuse me,” a completely unexpected female voice said in a somewhat contrite tone. Yuuto’s surprise was big enough that he went against his better judgement and turned his head around.
Sure enough, the two girls he walked into in less than ideal circumstances that morning were in the car and for some reason the heiress was laying lengthways on backseat with the young acrobat holding her as if she was until just recently carrying the former in her arms bridal-style.
Angry car horns broke the moment and remembered Yuuto to pay attention to the road. The last thing they needed was to be pulled over by the cops and have to explain them why a thirty-three years old man was driving two unrelated high school girls in their pajamas.
The brown-haired girl got her bearings back first and asked “Can I have your phone?”
“Sure, it’s in the coat,” Yuuto replied. The green-haired girl had better access to the outer garment and handed the appliance to her.
Apparently, there is a cosmic law that demands that any prolonged awkward moment must be accompanied by an equally awkward conversation. This one went like this:
“So, Tsuruya-chan?”
“What is it, father?”
“Can I ask who is she?”
“She’s our friend.”
“I noticed that.”
“I-I mean, she is Suzumiya Haruhi. She goes to Kyon-kun’s class and–”
An ineffable relief washed over Yuuto at the fact it was a name he could recognize. That should teach him to pay attention to whatever his daughter says about her brother, however he wasn’t ready to simply ask what the bit about “magical kisses” is about.
“Yuki, what do you mean with ‘25 meters’? Hello, are you there?” Haruhi’s questions to the person at the other end of the line interrupted their dialogue. Yuuto then stopped the car because of a red light and almost simultaneously someone opened the passenger door and nonchalantly got on the vehicle.
The sheer audacity of the small girl wearing Kitago’s uniform kept Yuuto from doing or saying anything about it. The lavender-haired young lady greeted him with an oddly courteous nod given the situation and handed the big bag she was carrying over to the girls on the backseat.
“Hooded coats and shoes,” she simply stated. Somehow, this instant was what surprised Yuuto the most until that point.
“Thanks Yuki-nyan!” Tsuruya was quick to take the bag. Probably most of teenage boys would be supremely distracted by the sounds of two beautiful girls trying to disentangle themselves from each other and get dressed in a confined space. Yuuto was too intrigued by their cryptic exchange to notice.
“Yuki, what happened with the escape system you said you got in place?”
“It is triggered when an unauthorized person tries to open the door.”
“Then, what went wrong today, Yuki-nyan?”
“Nothing. His father is trustworthy.”
““…””
“The following light will be red. Could you pull over the car next to the advertising sign?” It took Yuuto a few seconds to realize Yuki was speaking to him. After he fulfilled her request, the girl in the passenger seat bowed politely to him and formulated, “We apologize for any and all inconvenience you experienced this morning. I will see it will not happen again.”
“It is not– Wait. Do you mean… you, just like them…?” He asked, not quite pointing to Tsuruya and Haruhi leaving the car.
“Yes. I’m looking forward to make an acquaintance with you under better circumstances in the future. Thank you.” And with that, the youngest-looking girl of the group left the car and joined her friends, who waved their goodbyes through the door’s window.
Afterwards, son and father treated the narrated events in a truest filial/parental fashion. The former didn’t say a word about it and the latter sent occasional, unreadable weighted stares to his offspring.
It was the third Sunday of June when the matter was finally yet indirectly addressed.
After Kyon’s small birthday party at home with his parents and sister, he discreetly handed an envelope over to his father. The next day at work, he opened it to find a “gift certificate” exchangeable for a five-day long practical course of the likes the government gives to drivers of emergency vehicles and instructions of how to contact someone called “Aida-san” to get the whole week containing said days as a paid vacation.
Nobody can deny that Yuuto’s parenting methods have their perks.
§
Pop quiz: List the instances where Haruhi used her TK.
To tell the truth, I don’t remember whether or how much Yuuto knows about Haruhi. I’m just guessing here.