6:04pm
She gave the stairs a final angry sweep, but the leaves taunted her continually
as they danced and twirled before her. Rei felt an especial shortage
of temper today, first her father, then Kenta Inouye. Kenta Inouye
most of all, he had not only disrupted her day, but had been the cause
of her inability to read the sign that she had received while she was in
the car. It was his cologne, his presence that intoxicated her senses,
her senses screaming out to her while she was trying to concentrate of
shutting them down, yes, it was his fault.
Her head lifted as she took in the vision of peace before her eyes, in a few hours, she would be transported into the hustle bustle of the city, and there would be no escaping the noise. She still had not worked up the courage to tell the senshi that she was leaving for the next few months, the fact that she had called off the meeting had not alerted them of any wrongs, she only hoped that they would forgive her when they found that her on the front page of a newspaper, in some part of Japan, being the wallflower of her father’s campaign. Her head jerked up suddenly, and her tired hands released her clutch on the broom, she had felt something just then, something had occurred. Without regard to the fallen broom nor the crisp leaves that continued their dance, she turned around and returned to the room of the Sacred Fire.
She opened the door of the room quietly, the way that her grandfather had always taught her as the way of showing respect. Her jaw dropped when she saw Kenta-kun kneeling on the floor in tears. “Inouye-san, what is wrong?”
“Son, we’re leaving in 10 minutes, make sure you’re packed by then!!” Inouye-san Sr. bellowed to his 11 year old son who was upstairs reading.
“I’m done father, I have been waiting forever; can we go yet?” Yelled back the tiny high-pitched voiced.
“What did I say about patience?”
“Then why did you yell?”
“I’m not yelling at you, I’m warning you we are leaving so we don’t leave late.”
“Okay, okay, its not like we’re not already late though!” Replied the frustrated son.
“Son, we are late because your mother is packing a bento (lunchbox) for all of us, if you don’t want to eat, then you should have said so earlier, then we would have saved a few minutes,” the father replied good naturedly, “now come down and help with the luggage.”
Kenta immediately jumped off his window sill, propping the book he had been reading tidily on the bookshelf, he picked up his own small bag and ran to the stairs. He had been looking forward to this holiday for weeks, and now that they were finally about to go, he didn’t want to delay a single moment. “COMING!!!”
He dropped his bag on the ground as he got to the stairs, the mischievous side of him wanted to kick the bag down the stairs so he could test if the newly discovered gravity would make his bag roll down without any effort, but he also knew that if he did that, he would be sure to get in trouble. Slowly, he took one step at a time and pulled the bag behind him, ‘thud, thud, thud.’
Inouye-san Sr. looked up from the front door and cocked his head, he smiled gently at the child coming down the stairs, trying hard not to run down (as he had forbidden the act), “son, you know that I don’t appreciate tha…”
Kenta watched in horror from the third step as he saw the front door of his house blown open, and flames poured in through the doorway. The flames quickly engulfed his father, Kenta remained standing, unable to move, his eyes fixated on the shadow of several men standing outside beyond the flames, watching the process of the fire, he was shaken from his state of shock by the yells of his father, “GO TO THE BATHROOM!!” He turned in panic and never saw his father again, for when looked back from top of the staircase, the hallway had become a sea of red, his father lost in the dancing colors. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that his journalist father was dead.
Bolting into the bathroom, he took the towels hanging on the rack, turning the taps on, he wet them and stuffed them in the cracks of the door keeping the taps running. Then, he open the windows as much as he could, and sat on top of the wooden toilet seat, his legs tucked underneath him to lessen the shaking of his body, his salty tears adding to the flood of water on the floor.
Ambulance, fire engines and police sirens sounds raced through the neighborhood, he sincerely prayed that they would come in time to save his mother who was also downstairs. He began choked when the smoke started to come into the bathroom, leaning against the tiles, he eyes started to sting and water, he thought about his mother and his unborn sister, somewhere, downstairs. Smoke bellowed into the small room from the door and window, the tiles warmed, his vision of the room melted before his eyes, and then, he lost consciousness.
“They…, they…, they died?”
“Yes, they didn’t have a chance of surviving, nor did I actually, that’s why I think your mother said that I had a high connection with fire, the whole house burnt down around me, but the bathroom door didn’t even char.”
“You never told me that.”
“I never told myself. I kept on thinking that it was random, but I had always knew that it wasn’t, I denied the truth, my father was just about to uncover a secret operation, they killed to keep the silence.”
“What secret operation?”
“He never told me, and the reports are sealed, but I haven’t lost my determination to take revenge, and I never will.”
Rei reached out to touch his arm, “be careful… K…Kenta-kun,” she noticed that he noticeably jerked his face upwards to look at her, “you never know how dangerous the people you are dealing with are.” She said with a knowing look in her eyes.
The fire behind her suddenly flared, Rei got up from her kneeling position and ran towards the fire, images flashed in her mind, a mysterious man, Kyoru-san, his daughter and Kyoni-san’s faces tore through her vision, then, she saw her childhood home engulfed by fires… As abruptly as it had begun, the images ended.
Sitting on the tree in the middle of Hikawa Dojo, they zoomed the lens around, watching the events, or the lack of, in the holy grounds. A moment ago, they had snapped up several photos of Imaruru-san’s daughter, the illusive young woman who never accompanied her father to important functions, but they hoped that it would not be the only fruit of their little expedition. Although the anonymous tipper to their newspaper could not be specific about what they would find, he did drop the hint that Inouye-san was hiding out from the press there, to avoid being asked questions about the challenging of leadership and the leak that his wedding was being called off.
He stared at Rei, she had just called him ‘Kenta-kun’, the single words meant more than anything in the world to him, then, the fire flared. Without a word, she ran to the fire, gazing into the fire intently, he saw blurred images without recognizing them, but one image stuck in his mind, a mysterious man whose figure danced in his memory, he could not place the face nor see it in his mind, but he knew that that man was the one he had seen standing at his house on that horrendous day.
Rei quietly bowed, and he did the same from behind her, then, she stood and was about to leave the room, as she neared him, he reached out to take her hand, “what happened just then?”
“Nothing.”
“I saw something, I saw the figure of the man who killed my family, I know it, that man, the one with the orange red hair.”
She stopped for a brief moment and looked at him in wonder, he could see her trying to hold her composure against the shock he had just given her, “you saw the fire, nothing else, there was no murderer. For your own political future, I’d suggest that you keep your senses together and keep quiet about the ‘sighting’ you believed you had.”
“For God’s sake! I don’t care about my political future, I care about my life, I care about the lack of life that my family had, and I want to do something about it!” he yelled emotionally, “I’ve spent all this time telling you the closest thing to my heart, now you won’t even tell me what you just saw? I thought for one moment we got some of our camaraderie back, I spilt my heart to you just then, and you don’t trust me enough to explain to me something that we both obviously saw?!”
“You weren’t supposed to see that, and I’m sorry that you think I coxed your secret out of you, perhaps you should have spoken to your fiancée just then.” She shook her hand lose and began to walk in an even faster pace and opened the door.
“I don’t have a damn fiancée, she called it off, no, her father called it off, and frankly, I’m damn glad, I couldn’t stand her!”
She stopped at the door, stunned by his revelation, “then what about your political future?”
“I don’t care about it, the only thing I want now is to do something for my family, the family that I tried to forget about because I was scared that I would get hurt in the f*(#&Rng limelight, if I could do something for them and in return throw my boots in with politics I wouldn’t give it a blink. Yeah, it hurts my future, so what? I can’t do a damn thing about it and frankly I don’t care anymore!”
In a low choking voice, she blinked back tears as she was touched by his love for his family, “if you wanted to succeed, you could have just… asked me.”
He was silent for several moments, the tension between them building as each second flowed by, their hearts beating furiously, and without their knowing, they beating as one. “I… I never knew that you felt that way Rei-chan, I had hoped but I never dared, I… I was under the illusion,” he struggled with the flow of words, and stared at the polished wooden floor, “that you saw me as an older brother, nothing more. If I had known, I… I would have dropped everything for you, I… I would have never got myself involved with Seira-san.”
“I thought that it was… about time, I was honest with you.”
He got up from his seat and stood next to Rei, taking her hand in both of his, “Yes, it’s about time that I told you how much I…” he choked, his heart falling into her bright violet eyes, he could not take his eyes of her, “I…” he swallowed, his eyes falling to the small luscious red lips, he decided that actions proved more than words and leaned down to kiss her. He lost all sense of time once their lips met, their raw passions finding their needs as they held each other tightly, cherishing each and every inch that their bodies touched.
“Oh my god!” *click click click click* “Maybe that’s why they are calling the wedding off! I never thought… he’s always been such a ‘good boy’ in the party!”
“Yeah, you never know with these politicians, one minute they swear allegiance and faithfulness to one person, the next minute here they are sloshing up to some girl.”
“Some girl? This is his boss’s daughter!”
“Yeah, that’s his pattern with women, he gets his bosses’ daughters in bed with him, and he gets the promotion, like every other guy in the world.”
“The chief is going to fly to the moon when he sees these.”
“Come on, we’ve to get these back to hit the front page.”