Simple Like Tea

OCs are mine.

Chapter 11 - The Choice


Reiko turned around to face the two teenagers, both trying to pretend they weren’t curious, Senji shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. “Why are you still here?”

Even to her own ears, Reiko’s voice sounded like ice.

“How long does it take two people to tidy up a store after the last customer has left? Is the task so daunting that you’ll be here all night?” ignoring the startled – and hurt – expressions on their faces, she marched herself back up the stairs, slamming the door loudly behind her.

She stood inside her apartment and shook. Her knees knocked against one another and her teeth chattered so loud, she wondered if they would hear it downstairs. What could she do? Fisting the material of her kimono in her hands she shut her eyes against the torrent of pictures and fleeting images of her childhood. Rage. Sadness. Longing. Loneliness. Emptiness. They tumbled over one another but not a single one came close to eclipsing the overshadowing terror that ran through it all. She was terrified. She had always been scared, growing up and being a child, then a teenager, she had been scared constantly, but now she was numb with it.

Her mother. After years of escaping her mother, years of training herself not to care about her mother, fate had thrown her mother into her path. How much had she ached as a child to know her mother? She had no memories of her mother, of course. Her grandfather had shown her a picture, once. In the picture she was young, in her high school uniform, with long dark hair and milky white skin. She had pinched features, a small mouth and dark eyes so stern, they looked out of place in her heart-shaped face. She looked unhappy. Reiko had imagined a million times when she was a teenager that, looking in the mirror, she saw the same face. Even now there were times she avoided the mirror because of it, because of the familiar unhappiness she would find, and because of the longing that always went with it. But she didn’t really look like her mother. She must look like her father. And who he was was anybody’s guess.

Had it really been so long ago that she had wanted to be like her more than anything, even if all she knew about her was the little her grandfather reluctantly released through his pursed lips? Was it so long ago now that she had wished she could just see her from a distance, know she was alive? To know what she looked like now? To be able to imagine her when she closed her eyes instead of the unhappy high school student her o-jii-san had all but hated? The woman her o-jii-san had done everything in his power to protect Reiko herself from, even protecting her from the very memory of the unruly young girl that had given birth to her?

Reiko glanced at her o-jii-san's shrine, his picture nothing at all like the way she remembered him. Even in that youthful happy face, his eyes seemed accusing, as though he knew what she was considering and was trying to prevent her from doing even after his death. Feeling ashamed from those eyes, Reiko looked away as she hurriedly undressed and threw herself into bed in her underwear facedown, so she wouldn't see the shrin even out of the corner of her eye. The sheets still smelled like her, but they also smelled like Renji. In these sheets, she and Renji had had sex. She felt no shame in that. Was she no better than her mother? When she was younger she had fantasized a million times about running away to join her mother, the only woman who would understand how unbearable life with O-jii-san really was. A strict man, with strict rules, and an old-fashioned sense of propriety. An iron fisted man. He had watched Reiko with shifty eyes, as though waiting for her to follow the path of mistakes her mother had made. She had not disappointed him in that sense. Her story and her mother’s story could have been identical. She guessed she and her mother were probably identical, too, beyond just the same unhappy face in the mirror. And now her o-jii-san was dead, with his shifty eyes and his pursed lips and his disapproval of everything. He was dead, and he couldn't stop her from finding her mother anymore, but even after he had died, she had been scared to. Scared he would somehow reach out from the grave and curse her. Scared the eyes from the shrine would show hatred to her guilty soul.

The numbness began turning to cold. There was Renji, now, too. Even if for whatever reason she chose not to learn the information regarding her mother, she would have to give up Renji. Her gut clenched and her body tensed. She closed her eyes and let the tears slide down her face. She wondered if Renji loved her. She couldn’t go back to life without him. It would be too hard.

Her body was so cold. Information about her mother. Her mother was alive then. She had assumed she was dead. Had she been the one who had named her Reiko? She wondered. A cruel joke.

“Reiko,” her o-jii-san used to say, “is a fine name. It means ‘courteous child’. Please live up to your name.”

And she had, after he had died. She became the daughter she knew he wished he had, and it had eased her guilt. At the funeral she had asked everyone if they knew where she was. No one spoke a word to her. They all looked at her with the same accusing eyes, and she imagined it was the way they must have looekd at her mother, as well, these old-fashioned store-owners that had known her gradnfather since he had bought this teashop decades ago. Of her mother, she had learned nothing. The woman had simply disappeared. Now, she had information about her, information that would come at a price she did not even know.

Yet the cost of not knowing that information weighed more heavily on her than any price she could imagine.

Clutching her bedsheets, Reiko buried her face in her pillow and screamed.

**

Renji grunted with effort as he pushed the wardrobe back into the original spot it had been in in the morning. Was it getting heavier?

“Careful with that, baka! It’s expensive, you know!”

His eyebrow twitched. “You were the one who told me to move it in the first place! Your sense of gratitude sucks!”

Rukia made a fist at him. “What’s so hard about moving a stupid wardrobe? I thought you were the great Abarai Renji!”

Growling wordlessly, Renji summoned up a new burst of energy and finally slotted it in its place between the shelves and the western style desk. “Happy?” he panted at her, making a fist of his own at her.

But Rukia was smiling. “Hai.”

Renji swallowed, looking away quickly. “What does a guy have to do to get a drink of water around here?” He stomped to the kitchen, trying to ignore Rukia’s hurried steps after him. He lengthened his stride, but she picked up her pace and kept up easily enough. He thought pregnant women were supposed to be frail.

“Renji,” she spoke from the doorway as he rummaged through the cupboards where he was almost certain the glasses were. “Renji, I need to ask you something.”

With the glass in his hand, Renji froze. “Can’t it wait? Jeez, you’re so demanding.”

He avoided looking at her as he filled the glass with water and took large gulps. She was silent the entire time, and he quickly refilled his glass and took slower gulps. “What is it?”

“Why have you been going to the real world every night?”

Finally turning around to face her, he placed the glass on the kitchen table before he dropped it or threw it. “Who told you that?”

“Ni-sama. He told me when I asked about you once, to invite you to dinner. But then he told me you’ve been acting very weird. He said you’ve been… more serious.” Her face was blank, but she had been unable to keep the worry from her voice.

“What, is that it? What’s wrong with being a little more serious? I’d have thought the captain would have liked that.” He tried to move past her but, impossible as it seemed, she blocked his way out easily with her tiny frame. He considered picking her up and moving her, but the last thing he wanted to do right now was touch her.

“Renji…” the way she looked up at him with wide eyes made his heart clench. “You can tell me. I’ll keep a secret if that’s what it takes.”

He sighed, defeated, and looked at his feet. “There’s a girl… a woman there. We talk and… she makes me tea. Very good tea. She’s… just a human girl that makes good tea.”

His heart was hammering wildly in his chest, but he couldn’t move, not even to lift his head and look at Rukia. She had been the last person he had wanted to tell about Reiko, but also, strangely, the person he wanted to tell the most. “Is she… does she have any special abilities? Spiritually?”

“No. She can see us, and hollows and maybe a plus or two, but that’s all she can do. Spiritually.” He made her sound so simple. Was she really so simple?

“Renji…” Rukia took a deep breath, and suddenly her little hands were gripping his arms and she was looking at him with a determined expression on her face. “That’s dangerous, Renji. If anyone finds out that she exists, her memory will be modified. She could become a target, to be used against you. She can’t defend herself against the kind of dangers shinigami bring, however unwillingly.”

Her eyes grew distant, and Renji knew she was thinking of Ichigo, and the dangers she had brought him the day she gave him her powers. The dangers that had persisted and followed them both, that still existed today. He tried to imagine Reiko being taken hostage by an arrancar, and his heart grew cold.

“Do you… love her?” Her face was painted with effort, as though asking that question had been difficult for her.

But if it had been difficult for her to ask, it was impossible for Renji to answer. “Please,” he growled, looking down at his feet again and tensing as though anticipating a physical blow. “Please, don’t tell anyone.”

Rukia released his arms as if burnt by the contact. Quietly, she stepped aside from the doorway, and Renji retreated to the small guest room he had been staying in since coming here to help Rukia. Shutting the door firmly behind him, he stared almost accusingly out the window. Why was he having such a hard time finding peace? Was it too much to ask for someone like him? He closed his eyes and thought of Reiko.

And he wondered if Reiko was thinking of him.

TBC