Post by Ai Amagiri on Nov 22, 2016 19:41:58 GMT -5
Ai's first steps into her home district were not filled with any sort of nostalgia, nor excitement. In fact, she was nervous. This would be her first visit home in...what, over a decade? The beginning of her absence had been purposeful avoidance, but over the years she'd also simply overlooked the amount of time that'd passed since she'd last visited home.
And now she was here under...circumstances. The only thing that could guarantee her return was a situation in which she needed Shiho. The jury in her head was still out on whether the woman was needed right now, but Ai was never patient. She wasn't going to debate a problem for long, sitting around with indecisive feelings. Better to get it over with. Or so she thought until she arrived in front of Shiho Saiga's home. There was a long pause before she finally shoved the sliding door aside and stepped in. And another moment standing awkwardly in the genkan before she finally began to take off her shoes.
Even in the house with her shoes off, it still wasn't too late to turn around until...
Slippered feet creaked across the wooden floorboards, drawing nearer, until a woman with long black hair, and bright pink eyes knelt in the living room doorway, poised to greet a guest. The only sign of surprise on Shiho's face was a pause, her mouth slightly agape, before she spoke. "Ai. What a pleasant surprise."
Ai turned towards her mother skeptically, but nothing more than a neutral smile could be seen on Shiho's face. Her mother was what Ai would term a 'professional bullshitter'. Her arrival a surprise? Probably. Pleasant? Probably not. Still, Ai wasn't going to be aggressive from the outset. "Hi mom," she tried for a natural greeting. It was awkward enough to put a furrow in Shiho's brow, just for a second.
"I'll make some tea," Shiho said quickly, rising to turn towards the kitchen. "You prefer black, correct?"
For a mother who had been neglectful for large portions of Ai's life, the woman knew a surprising amount of Ai's preferences. Unfortunately, that was due to years of Shiho playing hostess, rather than mother, and for that Ai wanted to lie. To snap at her mother and say, no, she preferred green tea. But she'd come here (as a last resort) for advice. And snapping at her mother, who would simply smile politely and carry on, wasn't satisfying anyway.
"Yeah. Black."
Light noises in the kitchen. Ai slid another glance at the hallway. The only escape.
Mad at herself for acting cowardly, she purposefully crossed her legs, getting comfortable at the low tea table set up in the middle of the living room.
After a few minutes, or what felt like centuries to Ai, Shiho returned, smiling as she entered the room again. She set a tray down in the middle of the table. A small earthenware pot, two cups, a small bowl of sugar cubes, and a cream pot.
Still hostessing, Shiho poured them each some tea. "Cream and sugar?" She asked, pouring both into her own cup.
"I'll do it myself," Ai said, grabbing at her cup. Shiho let her take it and handed over the cream, unperturbed. For some reason Ai wanted to avoid her mother fixing her tea. She was afraid the woman would get it just right.
"So what inspired your visit?" Shiho asked after they'd each taken their first sips. Even she wouldn't pretend that Ai would show up just for a friendly stay.
Unfortunately the question was asked too directly, or too quickly for Ai, who wasn't prepared to broach the subject yet. She almost choked on her tea. As she recovered, she mumbled, "Umm..." but said nothing after.
Ever-eloquent Shiho did her best to not let an awkward silence take over. "Busy these days?" She asked. No response. She forged on. "I imagine being a shinigami is...active work."
Silence.
Shiho wasn't defeated yet. "Actually, I have a client who is a shinigami. He's done nothing but desk work so far, but he still likes to tell me about all of the little rivalries happening around him. Between squads and whatnot..."
She finally ran out of steam when it became apparent that Ai was not going to react to that story, either. Finally she just sat, calmly examining her daughter. If she was uncomfortable, none of it showed on her face.
"I found someone I love,"Ai finally announced, several decibels louder than she'd planned in her head.
Shiho blinked, and her hands stilled on her teacup for just a second, her sip just slightly longer than it would've been. Then she placed the teacup down with a tink. "Well that's good," she said simply.
"Good?!" Ai yelled back. She hadn't come all the way here to get a pat on the head.
"I mean, it's not a reason I would've ever imagined you coming to visit me for, but it's still a good thing, isn't it? Is it a man?"
"Goo-" Ai went to repeat inanely, before she cut herself off to answer Shiho's second question. "Of course it's a man," she snapped.
Shiho lightly shrugged one slim shoulder. "Love takes many forms." Shiho dealt in love. Or at least, the facade. Clients came to her for companionship and pleasure; a temporary love Shiho would only appear to feel. She did it well, fooled many with her adoring smiles, but it was still only just a lie.
"I had always wondered about you and Zakuro. You were just children at first, of course, but you stayed together through many years. And when she left you..." Shiho trailed off with a sad tone. Ai had mourned her intensely.
Ai didn't want to talk about Zakuro. Not with anyone, and certainly not with Shiho. Her anger sparked again, a longing to crack her mother's ever-tranquil appearance. "What the hell could you know about Zakuro? Were you even around then?" She was purposefully callous.
Shiho met her eyes without flinching. "Ai, you have a fire, a brightness, that only someone who has not let life take advantage or get the best of them has," Shiho explained. "I'm not saying you didn't have hardships," her mother slowed as she said this, carefully tiptoeing around a topic she didn't know well. Because she hadn't always been there, and could never say for sure what all 'hardships' Ai might've met with.
"But it's a...unique glow. Not many people have it, especially in a place like Soul Society. Some people can get that brightness back after they lose it, and it'll have the same fervor. Some people gain it back, and it returns a little dimmer. But many people lose that light altogether."
Ai was uncharacteristically quiet, so Shiho continued to fill the silence.
"Zakuro was...I'm not sure what happened to Zakuro before she arrived here, in Rukongai. I couldn't say when she lost her light. But I always had a feeling it'd been gone a long time," Shiho slowed again for this, checking Ai's face, unsure if she was going too far. "You were always a raging river as a child, and Zakuro was simply a rock in the riverbed. She wanted your current to shape her, but she never had any control of her own. A pebble cannot tell the water which way to flow. And even if you grind it down to the finest sand, earth remains a solid. It will never be the river."
Ai hadn't wanted to talk about it, dammit. She sat hunched, her stare examining the wood grain of the table they sat at. This always happened when she thought of Zakuro. A sadness that made her throat close up, a heavy feeling that blotted out all other emotions. Trapped her in a dark place.
Shiho sensed it, and tried to pull her back to present with a change of subject. "What is this new man of yours like?"
Ai snapped back with a blink, growing animated again. She glared. "I didn't come here to talk about what he's like," Ai retorted. What the hell did Shiho even want out of that question? Did she want to listen to Ai revere over his golden locks or something ridiculous? Fawn over him? Fat chance. The first words that came to mind when she thought of Ginjo all started with M. Manipulative. Materialistic. She squinted. Mmm...m'evil. Close enough.
"I came here because..."How to put it? "I'm not sure. About my feelings. I'm not sure...I don't know how to..."
Amusement crossed Shiho's face. "Ai, the first thing you spit out was that you loved him. What aren't you sure of?"
Her surety was making Ai even more flustered. "Well...that can't just be IT. What do I do?"
Shiho outright laughed. "That is it. Well, it's more like an introduction rather than a conclusion, I suppose. But this isn't a problem. There's no resolution, something you have to do to solve it. Unless you're trying to get rid of these feelings?"
"No," Ai said, so fast Shiho laughed again.
"Then what else is there to do?"
"Shouldn't I act different? Fawn over him?" Like she'd just refused to do a minute ago.
Shiho took a light sip, and only spoke once her teacup was back on the table. "Love isn't about bragging rights. And it doesn't look anything like my time with clients." A scene that Ai had watched many times when she was young. Her mother smiling affectionately at the man she sat beside, pouring him drinks, entertaining him with dance and music. Ai was old enough to know that was simply a graceful act, but did it not even mimic the real thing?
"What about Rikiya? Did you love him?"
Who? Ai blinked. Oh. Her first boyfriend. "No," she answered easily. They had both been in lust, neither of them in love. He'd been easy to get along with, but that was because Rikiya had been a pushover. Ai pushed, and he never resisted. If they fought, Rikiya simply bowed his head and apologized for making her angry.
She remembered his response well. It used to make her even more mad. She'd wanted him to bite back.
Gin was certainly different there.
"A first love for you then," Shiho said.
"I don't know what to do," Ai repeated on a groan. "I act different around him." She didn't kick him in the shins EVERY time she wanted to anymore. Now it was only sometimes.
"You just asked about fawning over him like you didn't act different," Shiho pointed out.
Ai paused, realized she wasn't making any sense. She put her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands, resisting the urge to pull her hair out. She'd regret it later. "I meant, I should act differently with others. Like when people ask me 'what's he like?' I shouldn't be responding with 'asshole'."
At least that got Shiho to blink. "Well thinking...positively of a loved one is what most people do, that's true. But again, love isn't about finding someone just so you can boast about them to others." She switched back. "So you act different with him, then."
"Yeah," Ai said, her voice sulky.
"Different how?" Shiho asked.
"I think about how he'll react if I do something,"Ai explained. But not as if they were battling, ready to counter his next move. Rather it was like... "I care about how he'll react. Most of the time."
"That is called being considerate," Shiho said, a dry note entering her tone.
"Well then, am I not just BEING CONSIDERATE about him?" Ai snapped, slapping her hand on the table.
"Is that all you feel?"
Ai grumbled incoherently. She thought about their fight the other night when she'd looked through his box under the bed. "We fought once, and I didn't want..." she visibly struggled with the words. "I didn't want him to go. I didn't want the time we've spent together to be over."
"Now think about Rikiya. When you two ended things, did it feel the same?"
Ai had been in the middle of dealing with the arrival of Nengan. But even if she hadn't been...There had been no loss when Rikiya left her.
"No, it didn't," Ai mumbled.
Shiho shrugged one shoulder again. "This is love."
"You keep acting like this is so simple, but what I'm feeling does not feel simple at all." And it was pissing Ai off.
Shiho smiled again. "Love isn't simple for the person experiencing it."
"I hate it," Ai said, her face turning to a pout.
Ai didn't like it because these new feelings were awkward and foreign to someone like her. She couldn't be as straightforward with her love as she could with her anger, and that was what conflicted her. Shiho knew this, but felt it wasn't the right time. Saying it all out loud, there was a chance Ai would blow it off simply out of anger. She would enter a stage of denial, just to be stubborn.
So instead of speaking, Shiho simply picked up her tea and sipped.
Ai was young. These feelings were new. But someday, if it all went well, she might harness them. Grow confident, and experience and express her love just as candidly as she did everything else. Shiho smiled into her teacup. She could only hope the man on the receiving end was prepared for that day.
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2253 words
And now she was here under...circumstances. The only thing that could guarantee her return was a situation in which she needed Shiho. The jury in her head was still out on whether the woman was needed right now, but Ai was never patient. She wasn't going to debate a problem for long, sitting around with indecisive feelings. Better to get it over with. Or so she thought until she arrived in front of Shiho Saiga's home. There was a long pause before she finally shoved the sliding door aside and stepped in. And another moment standing awkwardly in the genkan before she finally began to take off her shoes.
Even in the house with her shoes off, it still wasn't too late to turn around until...
Slippered feet creaked across the wooden floorboards, drawing nearer, until a woman with long black hair, and bright pink eyes knelt in the living room doorway, poised to greet a guest. The only sign of surprise on Shiho's face was a pause, her mouth slightly agape, before she spoke. "Ai. What a pleasant surprise."
Ai turned towards her mother skeptically, but nothing more than a neutral smile could be seen on Shiho's face. Her mother was what Ai would term a 'professional bullshitter'. Her arrival a surprise? Probably. Pleasant? Probably not. Still, Ai wasn't going to be aggressive from the outset. "Hi mom," she tried for a natural greeting. It was awkward enough to put a furrow in Shiho's brow, just for a second.
"I'll make some tea," Shiho said quickly, rising to turn towards the kitchen. "You prefer black, correct?"
For a mother who had been neglectful for large portions of Ai's life, the woman knew a surprising amount of Ai's preferences. Unfortunately, that was due to years of Shiho playing hostess, rather than mother, and for that Ai wanted to lie. To snap at her mother and say, no, she preferred green tea. But she'd come here (as a last resort) for advice. And snapping at her mother, who would simply smile politely and carry on, wasn't satisfying anyway.
"Yeah. Black."
Light noises in the kitchen. Ai slid another glance at the hallway. The only escape.
Mad at herself for acting cowardly, she purposefully crossed her legs, getting comfortable at the low tea table set up in the middle of the living room.
After a few minutes, or what felt like centuries to Ai, Shiho returned, smiling as she entered the room again. She set a tray down in the middle of the table. A small earthenware pot, two cups, a small bowl of sugar cubes, and a cream pot.
Still hostessing, Shiho poured them each some tea. "Cream and sugar?" She asked, pouring both into her own cup.
"I'll do it myself," Ai said, grabbing at her cup. Shiho let her take it and handed over the cream, unperturbed. For some reason Ai wanted to avoid her mother fixing her tea. She was afraid the woman would get it just right.
"So what inspired your visit?" Shiho asked after they'd each taken their first sips. Even she wouldn't pretend that Ai would show up just for a friendly stay.
Unfortunately the question was asked too directly, or too quickly for Ai, who wasn't prepared to broach the subject yet. She almost choked on her tea. As she recovered, she mumbled, "Umm..." but said nothing after.
Ever-eloquent Shiho did her best to not let an awkward silence take over. "Busy these days?" She asked. No response. She forged on. "I imagine being a shinigami is...active work."
Silence.
Shiho wasn't defeated yet. "Actually, I have a client who is a shinigami. He's done nothing but desk work so far, but he still likes to tell me about all of the little rivalries happening around him. Between squads and whatnot..."
She finally ran out of steam when it became apparent that Ai was not going to react to that story, either. Finally she just sat, calmly examining her daughter. If she was uncomfortable, none of it showed on her face.
"I found someone I love,"Ai finally announced, several decibels louder than she'd planned in her head.
Shiho blinked, and her hands stilled on her teacup for just a second, her sip just slightly longer than it would've been. Then she placed the teacup down with a tink. "Well that's good," she said simply.
"Good?!" Ai yelled back. She hadn't come all the way here to get a pat on the head.
"I mean, it's not a reason I would've ever imagined you coming to visit me for, but it's still a good thing, isn't it? Is it a man?"
"Goo-" Ai went to repeat inanely, before she cut herself off to answer Shiho's second question. "Of course it's a man," she snapped.
Shiho lightly shrugged one slim shoulder. "Love takes many forms." Shiho dealt in love. Or at least, the facade. Clients came to her for companionship and pleasure; a temporary love Shiho would only appear to feel. She did it well, fooled many with her adoring smiles, but it was still only just a lie.
"I had always wondered about you and Zakuro. You were just children at first, of course, but you stayed together through many years. And when she left you..." Shiho trailed off with a sad tone. Ai had mourned her intensely.
Ai didn't want to talk about Zakuro. Not with anyone, and certainly not with Shiho. Her anger sparked again, a longing to crack her mother's ever-tranquil appearance. "What the hell could you know about Zakuro? Were you even around then?" She was purposefully callous.
Shiho met her eyes without flinching. "Ai, you have a fire, a brightness, that only someone who has not let life take advantage or get the best of them has," Shiho explained. "I'm not saying you didn't have hardships," her mother slowed as she said this, carefully tiptoeing around a topic she didn't know well. Because she hadn't always been there, and could never say for sure what all 'hardships' Ai might've met with.
"But it's a...unique glow. Not many people have it, especially in a place like Soul Society. Some people can get that brightness back after they lose it, and it'll have the same fervor. Some people gain it back, and it returns a little dimmer. But many people lose that light altogether."
Ai was uncharacteristically quiet, so Shiho continued to fill the silence.
"Zakuro was...I'm not sure what happened to Zakuro before she arrived here, in Rukongai. I couldn't say when she lost her light. But I always had a feeling it'd been gone a long time," Shiho slowed again for this, checking Ai's face, unsure if she was going too far. "You were always a raging river as a child, and Zakuro was simply a rock in the riverbed. She wanted your current to shape her, but she never had any control of her own. A pebble cannot tell the water which way to flow. And even if you grind it down to the finest sand, earth remains a solid. It will never be the river."
Ai hadn't wanted to talk about it, dammit. She sat hunched, her stare examining the wood grain of the table they sat at. This always happened when she thought of Zakuro. A sadness that made her throat close up, a heavy feeling that blotted out all other emotions. Trapped her in a dark place.
Shiho sensed it, and tried to pull her back to present with a change of subject. "What is this new man of yours like?"
Ai snapped back with a blink, growing animated again. She glared. "I didn't come here to talk about what he's like," Ai retorted. What the hell did Shiho even want out of that question? Did she want to listen to Ai revere over his golden locks or something ridiculous? Fawn over him? Fat chance. The first words that came to mind when she thought of Ginjo all started with M. Manipulative. Materialistic. She squinted. Mmm...m'evil. Close enough.
"I came here because..."How to put it? "I'm not sure. About my feelings. I'm not sure...I don't know how to..."
Amusement crossed Shiho's face. "Ai, the first thing you spit out was that you loved him. What aren't you sure of?"
Her surety was making Ai even more flustered. "Well...that can't just be IT. What do I do?"
Shiho outright laughed. "That is it. Well, it's more like an introduction rather than a conclusion, I suppose. But this isn't a problem. There's no resolution, something you have to do to solve it. Unless you're trying to get rid of these feelings?"
"No," Ai said, so fast Shiho laughed again.
"Then what else is there to do?"
"Shouldn't I act different? Fawn over him?" Like she'd just refused to do a minute ago.
Shiho took a light sip, and only spoke once her teacup was back on the table. "Love isn't about bragging rights. And it doesn't look anything like my time with clients." A scene that Ai had watched many times when she was young. Her mother smiling affectionately at the man she sat beside, pouring him drinks, entertaining him with dance and music. Ai was old enough to know that was simply a graceful act, but did it not even mimic the real thing?
"What about Rikiya? Did you love him?"
Who? Ai blinked. Oh. Her first boyfriend. "No," she answered easily. They had both been in lust, neither of them in love. He'd been easy to get along with, but that was because Rikiya had been a pushover. Ai pushed, and he never resisted. If they fought, Rikiya simply bowed his head and apologized for making her angry.
She remembered his response well. It used to make her even more mad. She'd wanted him to bite back.
Gin was certainly different there.
"A first love for you then," Shiho said.
"I don't know what to do," Ai repeated on a groan. "I act different around him." She didn't kick him in the shins EVERY time she wanted to anymore. Now it was only sometimes.
"You just asked about fawning over him like you didn't act different," Shiho pointed out.
Ai paused, realized she wasn't making any sense. She put her elbows on the table and held her head in her hands, resisting the urge to pull her hair out. She'd regret it later. "I meant, I should act differently with others. Like when people ask me 'what's he like?' I shouldn't be responding with 'asshole'."
At least that got Shiho to blink. "Well thinking...positively of a loved one is what most people do, that's true. But again, love isn't about finding someone just so you can boast about them to others." She switched back. "So you act different with him, then."
"Yeah," Ai said, her voice sulky.
"Different how?" Shiho asked.
"I think about how he'll react if I do something,"Ai explained. But not as if they were battling, ready to counter his next move. Rather it was like... "I care about how he'll react. Most of the time."
"That is called being considerate," Shiho said, a dry note entering her tone.
"Well then, am I not just BEING CONSIDERATE about him?" Ai snapped, slapping her hand on the table.
"Is that all you feel?"
Ai grumbled incoherently. She thought about their fight the other night when she'd looked through his box under the bed. "We fought once, and I didn't want..." she visibly struggled with the words. "I didn't want him to go. I didn't want the time we've spent together to be over."
"Now think about Rikiya. When you two ended things, did it feel the same?"
Ai had been in the middle of dealing with the arrival of Nengan. But even if she hadn't been...There had been no loss when Rikiya left her.
"No, it didn't," Ai mumbled.
Shiho shrugged one shoulder again. "This is love."
"You keep acting like this is so simple, but what I'm feeling does not feel simple at all." And it was pissing Ai off.
Shiho smiled again. "Love isn't simple for the person experiencing it."
"I hate it," Ai said, her face turning to a pout.
Ai didn't like it because these new feelings were awkward and foreign to someone like her. She couldn't be as straightforward with her love as she could with her anger, and that was what conflicted her. Shiho knew this, but felt it wasn't the right time. Saying it all out loud, there was a chance Ai would blow it off simply out of anger. She would enter a stage of denial, just to be stubborn.
So instead of speaking, Shiho simply picked up her tea and sipped.
Ai was young. These feelings were new. But someday, if it all went well, she might harness them. Grow confident, and experience and express her love just as candidly as she did everything else. Shiho smiled into her teacup. She could only hope the man on the receiving end was prepared for that day.
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2253 words
