Violation of the Sixth Commandment Keiko snuggled closer to Yusuke under the sheets Friday night. Her eyes were shut, her breathing even, creating the illusion that she was asleep, but in truth she wanted so badly to bolt upright and just... think. She pressed her face on Yusuke's bare chest, and his hold on her waist tightened reflexively. She couldn't know for sure, but she sensed he was sleeping fitfully. Their earlier conversation wouldn't leave her consciousness, compelling her memory to churn out every word. "Keiko, what if --" he began uneasily, a little after their first session. "What if your husband finds out?" She was actually expecting that question. She was asking the same question herself. "Yusuke -- you're still bothered about that phone call?" "Look, I'm just being realistic here... what if?" "He won't. Not if the neighbors don't squeal -- which I'm crossing my fingers for, but even then I'm confident we did well in this game of hide-and-seek. And Ben wouldn't know unless either of us tells him, which we won't. So there's no way he could find out. This will be our little secret." "Well..." he seemed to be groping for the right words. "Would you consider telling him?" "N--" Keiko faltered. "I... I don't know." "The guilt will seep in--" "I know, dammit!" See? It's starting already. She had heaved a huge sigh."I'm sorry, I just... don't want to be plagued with thoughts of the future right now." She trained her gaze on him, the one that turns all boys to jelly. Everytime. "All I know is, our forever is here, now, lying in each other's arms, drowning in each other's love, succumbing to each other's call for pleasure. And we don't need to think about anything else." Yusuke took her in his arms then, and they did it for another round. Which was probably the best sex they had in the past weeks, as if some more fuel had been added to their still raging, white-hot passion. What if Ben found out? What would I do? Should I consider coming clean with him? Keiko looked up at the placid expression on Yusuke's face, his eyes closed and his bangs grazing his forehead, almost touching his eyelids, and Keiko smiled affectionately at him. If it weren't for the fact that they weren't married, Keiko would have thought how perfect this scene was... and how perfect they were for each other. The smile was replaced almost contiguously with a slight frown. She didn't think she could take another batch of fresh pain when Yusuke leaves her again... Wait a minute. That's it! Mollified that a solution dawned on her, Keiko cuddled up even closer to her lover and tried to get some sleep.
The warm rays of the Saturday sun shone directly on Keiko. Her senses were still clouded over with sleep, but when she felt the bed and found no Yusuke beside her, she was jerked to reality and sat up. Before she could demand where he is, she heard the faucet run in the bathroom. Keiko almost collapsed in relief. Three minutes later Yusuke came out, wiping his face with a towel. "Oh, good morning," he greeted her cheerily. "I didn't think you're up this early." Keiko rubbed her eyes. "Like you would be," she returned. She glanced at the clock. "It's already seven o'clock. I'd better make some breakfast." She held out her arms and motioned for Yusuke to hand over her robe, which was draped over the chair in front of her dresser. He did so, and watched silently as Keiko slipped into it. As she was tying the sash, he blurted out, "When will your husband be back?" Keiko blinked. It's too early in the morning to be talking about this. "Um, this coming Tuesday." "Oh." Yusuke reached for his shirt as well. He fidgeted with the hemline, his head studying the intricate loops of thread sewn on it. "Then I guess I should be leaving... tomorrow, ne? Give you time to prepare for his arrival." Then he put on his top, so as not to see Keiko's reaction. To see just how much the thought jolted her. Uncomfortable silence hung in the air, chafing them both with the idea of another separation. Keiko spoke. "Do -- do you think that's best?" Her voice trembled a little. "Why are you asking me that?" Yusuke asked, shooting her a puzzled look. "We both know that sooner or later... as beautiful and as memorable were the times -- the nights -- we spent together, that it would be unthinkable to leave them behind, we know that this has to end. Unfortunately, that sooner is coming up faster than we could ever have hoped to stall its approach." "I know." She wrung her hands, nervously, in Yusuke's opinions. "But I was thinking... maybe you shouldn't leave -- then this doesn't have to end at all." Her offer was tempting; he almost lunged at it. But then Yusuke had the urge to laugh at his momentary weakness, even if the situation wasn't funny at all. "Is this the sensible Yukimura Keiko talking?" Her eyes flashed. "The sensible Yukimura Keiko you know has defied all logic, all consequences, all warnings of her conscience when she chose to be with you. On a timing that couldn't be more perfect: while her husband's away on some business trip in a country far from here. That's what reasonable Yukimura Keiko did." She bit her lower lip, crossing her arms over her chest. "But she didn't completely evanesce. Maybe she'll get around to being straightforward with her husband when she's a little braver. All she's saying is, she's never going to live this down, as when the man she loves leaves her, she will turn the wonderful times they shared over and over in her head, until her whole relationship with Ben Howard becomes a total fluke and will eventually come into a crashing, perhaps traumatic, halt." Yusuke only had on a pained, but a bit skeptic, look. Keiko walked over to where he stood and took his hands in hers. "My marriage will end there, I just know it. And though we agreed this affair would only be temporary..." She forced herself to say out loud what she had formed in her head last night. "I'd like it to be permanent." "WHAT?!" Yusuke looked at her as if she were out of her mind. She reeled back from his stare. "I could file for an annulment, you know --" "Yeah, on what grounds? He's been a good spouse, and you know it. He's..." He swallowed with effort. "He's probably even better than what I could have been --" "He is not, because he could never give me what I want: the man I love," Keiko declared adamantly. "He could never be you." She released his hands and ran her fingers through her hair, as she turned to face the window. "Grounds? Maybe I could go for deceit -- you know, willful fraud and say he tricked me into marrying him and this whole thing was a scam. Which is basically true, anyway. Or -- or maybe I could just talk to him, and very tactfully say that I'm unhappy and that I want a divorce." She threw up her hands, facing Yusuke again. "I don't know, I'll figure something out." "Keiko," Yusuke said patiently, "If you say you're unhappy and that you want a divorce, you're only increasing the chances of exposing our secret." "Yusuke, listen to me," she begged. "When you leave, I know the effects it would have on me. I would be constantly thinking about you. And in due time Ben will find out, after he pesters me for the reason why I'm suddenly miserable. If I'm unhappy, he's unhappy, then what kind of a marriage are we going to have?" She pronounced the next words with exaggerated movements. "A. Broken. One." He smiled ruefully at her. "No, you wouldn't do that... I know you too well, Keiko. Maybe that's what's going to happen to me -- maybe even worse! -- but not you. You would find a way to cope, to survive." She shook her head fervently, her long locks almost stinging her eyes. "You don't know what it was like for me -- waiting for you to come back after three long years, and you never did. You don't know what a woman whose heart had been broken once feels, then is lifted up in a state of bliss because her faith and her love were restored. You don't know, as hard as it had been for you as you say it was, you don't know what I had gone through." Her eyes filled with tears. "You may think I'm strong and calm about everything and all that bullshit, which I may be, but this is no ordinary matter, Yusuke. Please, think about it. We can be together again..." This was killing him. She's asking him to stay, and he says no! But only because he had to. "We don't have much of a choice, Keiko... we're big-time cheaters, don't you see? We had gone far enough to cause enough entropy around us, in both our lives. We should do whatever we could to right whatever wrong we did, to set everything back to the way it was if this hadn't happened, to just hang on to the kind of life we already had." She couldn't believe her ears. "Who's backtracking now?" she spat out angrily. "If you knew we were going to get as deeply involved as we are now, you shouldn't have come back in the first place!" He bristled. "If you're questioning my integrity --" He raised his voice, jabbing his index finger in her direction, "It was my choice as well as yours!" "Oh, never mind," she cut him off, her unnervingly serene. "I think I get it." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Yeah, I believe I do. I should have known. Maybe an ephemeral affair was enough for Urameshi Yusuke, but it isn't for me." "That's not fair." "Then what do you want to call it? You waltz in back to my life, only to run away from me again -- yup, that's us in a nutshell." He was silent for a while. Keiko turned her tear-filled, large brown eyes on him, her lost look tugging at his heart. "What's wrong, Yusuke? Why do you push me away -- why now?!" "I'm not pushing you away," he said, resignedly. "As I said... we don't have a choice." "But we DO have a choice!" Her tone rose up a notch. "I'm offering you an option, but you don't seem to want it! After what we've been through, I assumed this was what you wanted too!" She now sobbed, untrammeled. "What I can't understand is that if we love each other so much then why can't we just stay together..." He slowly made his way to her, and enveloped her in an embrace. "Because we really CAN'T be together." She sniffed, clutching on the fabric of his shirt. "If Ben is who you're referring to, please! it's not easy, but I can, and I WILL, find a way out of our marriage --" "That's not what I'm talking about." Coffee-brown eyes locked into his, perplexed. "Then what?" Keiko asked softly. Yusuke pursed his lips, and led her to sit down on the mattress. He knelt down in front of her, and she waited, her curiosity piqued. "Did you ever wonder why I never asked about how you got married to Ben Howard?" Yusuke began. "And knowing me, weren't you the slightest bit confused as to why I said, when I returned, that 'I didn't accuse you of anything'?" Keiko just shook her head. "I'm sorry, but... actually, no. I didn't." She shrugged. "I supposed you were just being... gentlemanly, saying those things and not bringing up the past to dampen our time together." He smirked. "Well... yeah, that too." He laced his fingers through hers. "But the main reason was... beacuse I didn't have to ask you anymore." "Huh?" "...Because I already know." "B-but... how?" Yusuke stood up, and walked over to the window, pushing back the curtains. "The day I came back -- that is, after you drove away in Ben Howard's car -- I marched straight up to Koenma's office in Reikai, filled with irrepressible ire. Maybe I was even on the verge of madness, I was so upset. I stormed past through the guards, held Koenma by his collar, with all his oni trying to pry my fingers off their beloved Prince. But I fended them off; I was angrier than I had been when Toguro killed 'Basaan... and that anger gave me all the energy I need. If I were more furious, I probably would have blown up the entire Spirit World in a single blast of my rei gan." Yusuke chuckled. "Koenma was shaking from head to toe. He was scared, and he had the right to be. He could see it my eyes, I knew; I don't know if I could kill you, my glare told him, but I wouldn't hesitate to try." "So that's how you knew -- beating the information out from Koenma-sama himself," Keiko said gently, catching on to what he was saying. "Yes," Yusuke said, nodding. He turned back to her and shoved his hands in his pockets. "But I didn't believe him, at first. I accused him that he brought me back to life, only to have the woman I love taken away from me. 'Didn't you have control over this stuff? ' I remembered yelling at his face. It was such a lame excuse, I told him. I reasoned out that Keiko knew better, and that she would never do such a things." Keiko lowered her gaze. That was what she thought back then, too. "As I tightened my grip on his neck -- the kid was turning blue -- more of his oni rushed forward to help him. But surprisingly, Koenma ordered them to back off. And even if he were about to be asphyxiated, he pleaded to me to calm down, let him go, and then he'll tell me everything." A tormented look passed over his eyes. "And you know what he told me?" Wordlessly she shook her head. "He made me come late on purpose." Keiko's head shot up. "Nani?!" "Because," Yusuke went on, "he only wanted to save both of us." Keiko was even more astounded, leaving her mouth hanging open. "Keiko," Yusuke now sat down beside her. "Koenma said that a year after I left, Botan came rushing to him about disturbing news she found out. It was about this plan of the Fates, the ones who decide what our future's gonna be. Botan, nearly in tears, told him that-- " Yusuke almost choked on the words, "Said that we would have been happily married for three years, and then you would have been giving birth to our first child, a boy... but then..." "What?" she prodded him mildly. "You died after labor." Instinctively she put a hand to her mouth. "No..." she whispered. Yusuke looked at her resolutely. "Botan was very troubled then, and so it was up to Koenma to help. He put himself in my shoes, and thought that I could have just given you up to another man if it meant seeing you alive. By doing what he did...now, here we are." Keiko was weeping. "Oh, Yusuke..." He put an arm around her consolingly. "Keiko... I know this was wrong -- we both know it is. I shouldn't have come back. It was foolish of me to think we ever could be together again. I just wanted to be happy... but you see, maybe we really weren't meant to be, after all." She put a finger on his lips. "Ssh," she hushed him. "Don't. It's deppressing." She tried to smile brightly. "You know what's wrong with us? We thought of things too much. We thought about what could have happened: what might happen if we did this, and what would happen if we didn't." She touched her forehead to his. "If this were our last day together, I'd prefer we free our minds totally, of all other things... and concentrate just on us." He laughed softly, quietly. "I've always loved you for your wisdom, Keiko," he said admiringly before he pressed his lips to hers for a deep, searing kiss. Previous Chapter | Next
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