Dreamer Awakened

CHAPTER FOUR

Mr. Kunikida entered Momiji’s hospital room and stopped short at the door, a big smile creasing his face as he saw Momiji sitting, fully dressed in a chair by the bed. Moe was sitting on the bed with a comb in her hand, and they both turned and looked at Mr. Kunikida as he came further in the room.

"Good morning, Momiji," he intoned brightly, "I can’t tell you how good it makes me feel to see you up and about."

Momiji grinned at him. "You couldn’t possibly be any gladder that I am."

"I take it that means that you are more than ready to go home?" and when she nodded, added, "what? You mean you don’t want to stay and feast on all that gourmet food they serve here? I hear the gruel here is top notch."

Momiji made a sour face and Kunikida laughed. It was good to see her back to her old self. Or at least partially back to her old self. Her face was still pale, and the bruise on her cheek and the cut above her eyebrow still stood out vividly, and her hair, too, was tangled and dull looking, but her eyes were bright and her smile contagious, and Kunikida felt a surge of thankfulness well up within him.

"Did I interrupt anything?" Kunikida asked pointing to Moe, still sitting on the bed with the comb in her hand, "do you want me to come back later?"

Moe answered him, "We tried combing her hair, but it made her head hurt, so she said she would do it when she got home and had had a chance to wash it."

While they spoke, Momiji slowly got up from the chair, her ribs still fairly sore, and walked across the room to look out of the window and down at the front entrance to the hospital. She’d done the same thing at least a dozen times already this morning, and felt the same disappointment wash over her when she couldn’t find what she was looking for.

Turning, she made her way back to her chair and sat back down. Feeling tired from just getting up and moving around, she leaned back in the chair and listened to her mother and Mr. Kunikida chatting, while they waited for the nurse to come with the wheelchair to take her down to the car.

She listened for a few more minutes and then got up again, watched curiously by Mr. Kunikida who shot a questioning glance at Moe.

"She’s been doing that all morning, but I don’t know why," Moe murmured to him.

"What is it Momiji," Mr. Kunikida asked, moving to stand next to her and look down at the pavement.

Momiji didn’t say anything for a minute. She wondered if she had just imagined Kusanagi being with her when she had woken up for the first time in the hospital two nights ago. She hadn’t seen him since then and she had been hoping he would show up without her having to ask anyone about him. But it appeared that if she wanted to know, she had no choice but to ask.

"Mr Kunikida," she began slowly, "that first night that I woke up in the hospital, I thought – that is, was Kusanagi here, in Izumo?"

She felt relief flood through her when he nodded, glad to know that it hadn’t been just a dream.

"He was here," Mr. Kunikida affirmed, "but he went back to Tokyo this morning. He said that he had some things to take care of before –"

"Daitetsu!" Ryoko called him urgently from the door, interrupting his conversation with Momiji, and Momiji felt dismay wash through her as she digested Mr. Kunikida’s words.

Kusanagi had been here. But now he was back in Tokyo. So it must have been a dream after all, when he had told her that he wasn’t going to leave. Momiji turned and walked glumly back to her chair feeling suddenly depressed.

Mr. Kunikida and Ryoko stepped out into the hall, and Momiji watched them go without the least bit of interest, too tired to care about anything anymore.

"Daitetsu, there’s been two more attacks," Ryoko told him apprehensively.

"In Sappora?" he wanted to know immediately

Ryoko shook her head, a stricken look in her blue eyes.

"It’s Wakasa this time," she replied heavily.

"What!? But that’s not that far from here!" he exclaimed, shaken.

"Kome is already there. I told her we would be there as soon as we took care of Momiji."

"Ryoko," Kunikida said, the lines in his face deepening as he frowned, "this is not good. I had hoped that we could handle this alone. God knows that both Momiji and Kusanagi have sacrificed so much of their lives to help Japan. It’s not fair to have to drag them into this. Especially since we aren’t sure what we’re dealing with."

"Maybe it won’t come to that," Ryoko replied desperately, hating to see Daitetsu look so depressed. "Why don’t we wait until we get to Wakasa to make any decisions. Perhaps it’s not the same thing."

Kunikida nodded his head, but he didn’t hold out much hope of that happening. He tried to push it from his mind as he spied a nurse with a wheelchair coming down the hall.

"Try not to look so upset," Ryoko advised as they prepared to step back into Momiji’s room, "or she’ll know something is wrong."

Kunikida arranged his face into what he hoped was a suitably pleasant expression and entered the room with Ryoko. He needn’t have worried though. One look at Momiji told him that she was wiped out. She opened her eyes long enough for them to get her to the car and then she was out again.

Kunikida carefully picked Momiji up once they arrived at her house and carried her inside. Moe led him to her room where she pulled back the covers allowing him to place her on the bed and tuck her in. Kunikida straightened up, looking down at her sleeping peacefully and felt Moe touch his arm, a questioning look on her face.

"Is something wrong?" she asked in a hushed voice.

Kunikida shook his head and turned and left the room, followed by Moe.

"Can Ryoko and I drop you home?" he asked as they walked back to the front door.

Moe shook her head, "I’m probably going to stay the night. Just to make sure that she does okay," she replied with a mother’s instinctual worry. "Besides, I left my car parked over there," and she pointed to the little white car parked just down the street.

"Ryoko and I have some business to attend to in Wakasa," he told Moe, "but we’ll be back."

Moe offered him her hospitality for as long as they wished to stay, and Kunikida accepted gratefully. They might be here in Izumo for quite a while with the way things were unfolding. Kunikida wished her goodbye, and climbed back in the car with Ryoko.

When Kunikida and Ryoko reached the morgue in Wakasa, Kome met them and the look on her face told them that it wasn’t good. She took them to the examination room where there were two bodies laid out on the stainless steel tables; one an adolescent boy and the other a young woman.

Kunikida looked at them, knowing immediately that it was the same kind of attack that had been occurring in Sappora. He went forward and raised the eyelid of the boy and then the woman knowing what he would find; the pigmentation from their irises had been destroyed, leaving their eyes white. In fact, the pigmentation throughout their entire bodies was gone, leaving them looking unreal with white, leathery skin and white hair. But that wasn’t the only thing that characterized their deaths.

These victims had been mutilated, with long gashes, which looked to have been made by long, sharp claws or perhaps talons, and puncture marks that were unlike any he had seen before. He would have guessed that these punctures were made by teeth, but was uncertain since there were always two sets, one set inside of the other.

Many of the bodies they had discovered had been similarly damaged, but these two bodies had been particularly savaged, one almost severed completely in half. Kukikida looked away, disturbed. That was the one thing that was inconsistent about these bizarre deaths: the brutality. Some of the bodies were almost completely untouched and others, like these were almost torn apart. It didn’t make sense.

"They have the same mark," Ryoko observed, turning away, her hand over her mouth as her stomach rebelled at the sight of the carnage.

Kunikida focused his brown eyes on the victims’ heads. They bore the shadow of a mark on their foreheads, a burn mark approximately two and a half inches long, but of indistinct shape. In all of the cases, thus far, it was the same, save one. In that one case, the mark had had a clear definable shape, and it had sent a chill along his spine when he had seen it.

Kunikida stepped closer, leaning down to study the mark, looking for an edge to it, trying to trace a pattern, but there was none. He should have felt relieved, but he didn’t.

"Well," Ryoko asked him, "what should we do? Do you think we should enlist Momiji’s help? Maybe she can sense something that we’re not seeing."

Kunikida debated a long moment and then turned away from the bodies. He walked to the door, his hands in his pockets. "No," he said decisively, "let’s get Sakura down here first and see what she has to say."

"But no one seems to know where she is," Ryoko replied looking at Kome, who just shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

"Well, find her," Kunikida snapped as he opened the door and passed through, saying over his shoulder, "she’s been on sabbatical long enough. We’re not paying her to be a wandering pop star. She has a job she’s supposed to do, and she’d better damn well do it."

"Yes, sir," Ryoko replied, biting her lip. "And just how are we supposed to find her?" Ryoko asked Kome since she was the only one there.

Kome thoughtfully put her finger to her chin and reflected on the best way to track Sakura Yamazaki down. "Hmmm," she ruminated and then snapped her fingers, "I bet Sugishita knows where she is!"

"Sugi, huh?"

"Yeah," Kome replied dryly, "he’s sure to know where she is. After all doesn’t he have a thing for Pop Tarts?"

"Kome, did you forget that he once had a thing for me? I’m not a tart!"

"Calm down," Kome waved her hand, "of course you’re not a tart. But the same thing can’t be said about Sakura. She’s as tarty as they come!" she grinned.

Momiji slept restlessly;, her dreams, a synthesis of jumbled images and words, and she awoke with a start, as if someone had shouted at her. She sat up slowly and looked around, bleary eyed. Her clock told her it was five o’clock in the morning. Momiji tried to rub her eyes with both hands. She had momentarily forgotten about the cast, and whacked herself in the nose with the cumbersome thing, grimacing at her own stupidity.

Momiji turned on her bedside lamp and slid her feet over the side of her bed. Feeling around for her slippers she shoveled her feet into them and then padded across the room to where her mother sat, tilted sideways in a small armchair next to the window, sleeping.

Poor Mom, Momiji thought. She looked so tired. With a gentle hand, Momiji reached out and shook her mother awake.

"Mom," Momiji uttered softly, calling to her mother until she finally opened her eyes.

"Momiji," her mother finally responded, sitting up, a dazed look on her face as she squinted against the light invading her sensitive eyes.

"Mom, why don’t you go home and get some rest," Momiji said straightening back up.

"I thought I would just stay for a little while longer, to make sure that you’re all right," Moe demurred.

But Momiji was having none of that. It was clearly evident to her that her mom needed to go home and rest. "Mom, I’m fine. I’ll be all right on my own for right now," Momiji assured her, "I’m feeling much better."

"Really," Moe asked, her face brightening.

"Really," Momiji fibbed for her mother’s benefit.

Well, it was only a partial fib, she rectified. Her ribs weren’t quite as sore as they had been, and her head wasn’t hurting anymore. But her legs still felt like they were made out of rubber, though, and she felt so gritty that it was like she had been rolling around in the dirt. Her hair too, was literally standing on end on top of her head in places, the rest hanging down her back in a snarled mass of tangles. One of the first things she was going to do when she had seen her mother home was to climb in the shower. Perhaps when she was clean, she would feel half way human again.

It took a few moments for Moe to collect her things and when she kissed her daughter goodbye at the door, she said, "Call me if you need any help. You know, there are some things a man just can’t help with," a remark which totally mystified her daughter who waved to her mother and then closed the door, a puzzled frown on her face.

Her mother must have been more tired than even Momiji had realized, because she wasn’t making any sense. Momiji shook her head, and dismissed it from her mind, turning to climb the stairs. She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, though, and bit her lip in indecision. She really wanted to get a bath, but what she wanted even more was a nice, hot cup of tea. She turned toward the kitchen, deciding that the bath could wait for just a few minutes and saw the light blinking on her answering machine.

It reminded her of Midori, and Momiji wondered if anyone had thought to tell Midori about her accident. Apparently not, for there were three new messages from her friend, the last one telling her that she was going home for the weekend to see her parents and would try Momiji again when she got back to Tokyo. But Momiji barely paid attention to them, because there was a message from Kusanagi sandwiched in between Midori’s first message and her other three.

Just the sound of his voice was enough to make her stomach flip over and her heart race.

"Momiji," came his voice, sounding troubled, "something’s happened and I need to talk to you. Call me when you get in, no matter what time it is. I’ll be here."

There was a click and he was gone, but his words went around and around in her head and she felt the same panic grip her that she had felt when she had listened to Midori’s first message. Did Kusanagi want to talk to her about Midori? Oh, god, no, Momiji moaned to herself, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself, and a sudden image of Susano-oh flashed through her mind.

The words echoed through her mind and she opened her eyes again. Her vision Or had it been just a dream? When she had first awakened, she hadn’t thought so. It had seemed too vivid, too real. But now that several days had passed, she wondered if perhaps it had been just the fevered imagination of her brain; nothing more than a phantom caused by her accident.

Another image flashed through her mind; that of the priest – Susano-oh - standing in the road, and again, she began to question what she had seen. Had it truly been Susano-oh, or had it merely been an illusion created through a haze of pain. She thought hard, trying to remember if she had seen his face before she had crashed, but couldn’t remember. Those memories now blurred together, enmeshed with her vivid dream of Susano-oh and Kaede, and Momiji wasn’t sure of anything she had seen or felt anymore.

She might have even been able to say that the accident had been dream as well, so hazy had it become, were it not for the bumps and bruises that existed as physical proof. Her thoughts circled around and around until they came back to Kusanagi and his message.

Call him, a little voice prompted her. So she picked up the phone and dialed his number. There was no answer, and she hung up without leaving a message. Kusanagi? Her destiny? She snorted in self-derision for letting herself believe in such a fanciful dream, and turned away from the machine after she had erased all the messages.

This was not the way she had planned on starting her day, she thought blackly, as she padded into the kitchen and went over to the stove to get the tea kettle. With a jerk she lifted it from the stove and took it over to the sink to fill it with water, slamming her cast into the faucet before she realized what she was doing.

"Crap!" she huffed, feeling further incensed by her inability to do such a small task.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Such harsh language at such an early hour in the morning. I thought you saved that particular euphemism for special occasions, like when you’re yelling at me."

Momiji’s eyes widened as she heard the amusement in the familiar voice, and she whipped around, losing the top to the kettle in the process. It clattered loudly to the floor and she watched it roll to a stop next to Kusanagi’s foot. Momiji’s eyes traveled up to his face, taking in the faded jeans and dark blue shirt that molded to his body perfectly. His hair was wet, as if he had just gotten out of the shower and he exuded an air of sexuality that unnerved Momiji.

Momiji absently reached back behind her and put the kettle in the sink. She watched, her mouth hanging open slightly, as Kusanagi slowly bent down and picked up the lid to the kettle. He straightened, holding the copper and ceramic top between his long, black gloved fingers, his eyes sliding over her as he sauntered towards her.

"Good morning, princess," he said lazily.

"Kusanagi," she breathed, "what are you doing here? Mr. Kunikida said - I thought you had gone back to Tokyo to be with – Midori left a message and -your message said… What is it that you needed to talk to me about? Is it about Midori? She left a message about you too, and if you guys… that is – " Momiji cringed inwardly, as he stopped in front of her, holding the lid out to her, an eyebrow raised quizzically as he stared down at her.

Dear god, Momiji thought desperately, someone please shoot me. I can’t stop babbling!

"What are you babbling about?" he asked her as if reading her thoughts, and when Momiji made to take the lid from him, he pulled it back out of her reach, a wicked gleam in his eyes. "Pink teddy bears," he murmured, leaning forward and tugging on the front of Momiji’s flannel nightgown, "very…nice."

Momiji’s face flamed, and she tried to step away from him, but he still had a hold on her gown, so she didn’t get very far.

"Did it come with matching panties as well?" he asked, slightly lifting upwards as if to take a look and see for himself, the wicked gleam intensifying as Momiji’s face burned even brighter.

Momiji’s mouth thinned into an angry line. "You jerk!" she gritted out and swung her cast at him, hitting him squarely in the arm with a loud thwap!

"Owww!" he complained, letting go of her gown and taking a quick step back.

"Just what are you doing here?" Momiji demanded, her green eyes full of fire.

Kusanagi’s smile became smug as he replied, "I’m here because you need me."

Momiji balled her good hand into a fist and she tried to hang on to her temper, failing completely. "I do not," she took another swing at him, her cast connecting solidly, "need you, you big, fat-headed jerk!"

"Owww!" he complained again, "Momiji, stop that! That hurts!"

She gave him a satisfied smirk and shot back, "It’s supposed to! And I don’t need you," she reiterated, silently adding to herself, ‘at least not the way you think I do.’

Completely ignoring her, he stepped around her and took the kettle from the sink, filling it with water and putting it on the stove to boil. "Well, I’m not going anywhere, so you better get used to me being here," he replied blandly without turning around.

Momiji stomped her foot and made a frustrated noise before she turned on her heel and stormed toward the door.

"Where are you going?" he asked, still without turning around.

"This is my house, Kusanagi! I don’t have to tell you where I’m going," she responded waspishly. She made it to the foot of the stairs, and then felt his presence behind her. "What are you doing?" she turned around and snapped.

"Since you won’t tell me where you’re going," Kusanagi responded with infuriating calmness, "I thought I would follow you and find out for myself."

"I’m going to take a shower! Is that okay with you?" she almost shouted at him.

"Fine," he said, coolly shrugging. He turned back to the kitchen and, knowing it would infuriate her, added over his shoulder, "if you need my help, I’ll be in the kitchen."

Hearing her frustrated harrumph as he enetered the kitchen, he grinned and sat down at the table, thoroughly enjoying her ill humor. He knew he shouldn’t needle her, but her beautiful eyes never sparkled so brightly as they did when she was mad at him.

Momiji stomped upstairs, seething, but her anger didn’t last long. It was replaced with other conflicting emotions; happiness, confusion, hope and, strangely enough, fear. As Momiji stood under the water, letting it penetrate her skin with its warmth, she closed her eyes and examined each of her feelings.

She knew why she was happy. That was obvious. Kusanagi was here. With her. And being with Kusanagi always made her happy. Putting aside her happiness, she examined her confusion. Why was he here? No, she thought, that wasn’t what was confusing her. He was here to help her, or so he said. The way he was acting, however was very confusing to her. Momiji tried to think back to the last time that Kusanagi had been anything but silent and unapproachable and couldn’t recall when that was. Why was he acting so strange, she wondered, not that she wasn’t happy about it, but she wanted to understand.

Because he was acting so differently, she knew that was where her hope came from. She hoped that he wouldn’t go back to being the way he was in Tokyo before he’d left. She hoped that this change in him meant that there was a chance for them to stay together. She hoped that…Susano-oh had been right: that they were destined to be together.

Momiji opened her eyes, wiping the beads of water from her face. So, she decided, it hadn’t been a dream after all. Momiji felt the fear twist inside of her. Then that meant danger. Susano-oh had said something about a new evil, and now that she had accepted it as a reality, Momiji feared what the future would bring.

Momiji turned the water off and stepped out of the shower, putting on her bathrobe. She tried to forget about her fear and focus on the happiness that being with Kusanagi brought. As long as Kusanagi was by her side, she enthused, she could face anything. Momiji bit her lip then and thought, but what if Kusanagi decided to leave again? Susano-oh had said that Kusanagi was fighting his destiny. That was why he had left in the first place.

Bind him to you, Susano-oh had said, but how was Momiji supposed to do that?

Picking up her brush she looked at her reflection in the mirror and said in a determined voice, "Kusanagi is my destiny. I’ll find a way to do it, " and then grimaced as she tried to pull the brush through her hair. "But first I need to find a way to untangle this rat’s nest!"

Being naturally right handed made wielding a brush left handed awkward. Especially since her hair was so long, and Momiji struggled for quite a few minutes getting extremely exasperated when she couldn’t use the brush effectively. She stopped, feeling washed out all of a sudden and threw the brush on the sinktop.

"Forget this," she muttered to herself and left the bathroom.

She padded down to the kitchen and headed for the utility drawer, glancing briefly at Kusanagi. He was ignoring her, apparently engrossed in his tea and morning paper. Turning her back to him, she yanked the drawer open and shuffled through the contents until she found the scissors.

She went back upstairs and into her room where, she sat on the edge of her bed and played with the scissors for a minute, trying to get used to the feel of them in her left hand. It was going to be awkward, but, she thought, I can do it. She pulled her still wet hair to one side and raised the scissors.

Before she could make the first snip, she felt strong fingers wrap around her wrist, pulling her hand away from her hair. Surprised, she looked behind her, her green eyes locking with Kusanagi’s cat-like ones. Kusanagi was leaning, stretched out over the far side of the bed, one hand poised on her mattress to keep his balance while his other hand was still locked around her wrist.

"Dear god," he murmured, his eyes flicking to her robe before returning to her face, "it has a matching robe."

Looking down at the pink teddy bears on her robe, she shot him a suspicious look and demanded, "What was that?"

He didn’t answer her question, though. Instead he asked one of his own.

"What are you doing, Momiji?" he wanted to know, his eyes never wavering from hers.

She would have thought it was obvious, but responded to his question anyway, "I’m going to cut my hair."

Kusanagi immediately whipped the scissors out of her hand and stood up.

"Hey," Momiji exclaimed, outraged, "give those back!"

"No." He turned and left the room and she scrambled off the bed after him.

"Kusanagi!" she called after him, but he just kept walking, going back down the stairs and into the kitchen with her tagging along after him, calling his name.

Momiji came into the kitchen just in time to see him put the scissors back in the drawer and shut it. She closed the distance between them, determined to get the scissors back, but he leaned up against the counter, in front of the drawer, his arms crossed, not budging.

"I need those scissors, Kusanagi, so please move." She was rather pleased at how polite she had managed to sound, but Kusanagi didn’t look the least bit impressed by her civility. He remained motionless, not even bothering to look at her when she addressed him, instead staring at a fixed point somewhere behind her head.

"Kusanagi!" she bellowed, thoroughly out of temper, and fast losing what little energy she had left.

"You’re not cutting your hair, Momiji," he told her flatly, his annoyed gaze coming back to rest on her.

"Kusanagi -" she tried again.

"I said, no."

He said it with such finality that Momiji wasn’t sure what to do. Why was he being this way?

"It’s my hair!" she told him, "so move!" She shoved against him, but it was like a small bird running into a brick wall; the abrupt contact dazed her but didn’t phase him.

She bounced off him and stepped back glaring, "Kusanagi," she began, and then the color drained from her face. She felt the world start to tilt, and her knees started to buckle. Still weak, she had pushed her body too far, she realized too late.

Kusanagi uncrossed his arms, his annoyance evaporating, and stepped forward, concerned. "Momiji?"

"I’m all right," she told him faintly, turning towards the table, "I just need to sit down." But she hadn’t even taken one step when she felt herself pitch forward, the room spinning so fast that she closed her eyes.

Momiji opened them again a few seconds later as Kusanagi scooped her up before she fell, holding her close to his body, a frown pulling down the corners of his mouth. Without saying anything, he carried her out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Momiji laid her head against him, her eyes half-closed, enjoying being close to him and thinking to herself how wonderful he smelled, earthy, like juniper and sandalwood and … so male.

"Why, thank you princess," she felt his voice rumble against her ear, and she stiffened in embarrassment, realizing that she had spoken her thoughts aloud.

They had reached her room now, and he set her down in the middle of the bed, stepping back to look critically at her. She had more color now, mostly in her cheeks due to her embarrassment, but at least she no longer looked like she was going to pass out. In fact she was fidgeting quite a bit, because of his close scrutiny, no doubt.

Momiji watched him from beneath her lashes, wishing he wouldn’t tower over like that and then felt ridiculously disappointed when he turned and left the room. He was back in a flash, though, carrying a towel and her hairbrush. Surprise registered in her emerald eyes when he sat down on the bed and swiveled around into a kneeling position behind her. Momiji felt the bed sink with his weight, as he edged nearer to her until he was so close that she slid back into him, unable to sit up straight because of the indention his knees were making in the mattress. She looked straight up and met his eyes briefly before he handed her the brush and gave her a provocative smile, flinging the towel over her head, blocking her view of not just him but everything else as well.

"Hey!" she grumbled, her voice muffled by the folds of the towel, as she tried to sit up and remove it from her head. "I’d like to be able to see!"

"There’s nothing to see, so be quiet and sit still," he ordered, putting his hand on top of her head until her movements subsided.

Then, he began to work the towel through her hair, removing it from her head once he was satisfied that he had gotten most of the water out of her hair. Momiji sat perfectly still, marveling at how gentle his hands were, handing him the brush when he threw the towel next to her and held his hand out for it.

Momiji sighed as she felt Kusanagi run the brush through her hair, carefully at first until all the tangles were gone and then with longer fuller strokes. Her eyes drifted closed in contentment, enjoying Kusanagi’s close proximity, feeling enveloped by his strength, her body totally relaxed.

Kusanagi on the other hand, was fighting a losing battle to maintain his distance, his whole body tensed with the effort. He clenched his teeth and fought the desire to lean forward and bury his face in her neck as yet another wave of fragrance wafted from her hair, set free by the brush. God, but she smelled good, he groaned to himself, forcing himself to concentrate on the brush as it slid through her hair. He couldn’t believe she was getting him this worked up without even trying, but she was.

He put the brush down, and ran his gloved fingers through her hair, overcoming his desire to take the black leather off so he might wrap the silken chestnut strands around his fingers. Instead he began loosely parting her hair off into three sections and proceeded to fashion a clumsy braid.

Momiji felt his fingers working through her hair and she asked, unable to keep the surprise from her voice, "Where did you learn to braid hair?"

"I’ve watched you do it at least a hundred times," he responded automatically, not thinking about what he had said.

"But that’s not possible," Momiji contradicted, "I never wear my hair braided."

"Yes you do," he said, again responding automatically without thinking.

"No, Kusanagi, I don’t. The only time I braid my hair is at night when I get ready for bed."

Kusanagi’s hands hesitated only slightly as he realized his mistake. If she thought it all the way through, she would realize that he had been watching her at night when she thought she was alone.

"No, no," Kusanagi responded as his brain searched feverishly for a way to keep her from comprehending the truth, "I’m sure that you have worn it in a braid a couple of times."

Momiji gave serious consideration to his question, much more than it deserved, as far as he was concerned, but was glad she had when she replied slowly, "Well, there were those couple of times that you helped me clean out Mr. Kunikida’s garage and again when you helped with his fish pond that I had braided it. But that hardly amounts to hundreds of times."

"Well, I might have exaggerated a bit. You know I’m a fast learner," he gave a short , uncomfortable laugh and winced at how stilted he sounded. But again, Momiji’s naiveté stepped to the fore and she seemed not to sense his discomfort, taking his words at face value.

Finally he was finished and he scrambled off the bed, turning away from her to walk to the window, giving himself the time he needed to cool off.

Feeling much stronger now, Momiji slid to the edge of the bed and stood up. She went to her dresser and looked in the mirror at his handywork, saying "It would have been a lot easier if you had just let me cut it."

She turned to look at him, his back to her as he stood holding the curtain back from the window, watching the sun rise. She didn’t think he was going to answer her and when he did, it sounded like she had dragged the words from him. "I like it long."

Momiji’s face registered pleasure and surprise. Hope and something akin to ambition flared in her green eyes, and if Kusanagi had turned around and seen her face he would have realized what a big mistake he had made in admitting his preference.

That was the first time he had given her a compliment, Momiji thought to herself, and although it wasn’t much of a compliment, it proved that he had been paying attention to her after all.

Now it was up to her to find a way to break through his defenses and lay claim to his heart for herself.

"I’ll go down and start breakfast," Kusanagi told her without looking at her, "while you get dressed."

Momiji didn’t say anything as he left the room, but Susano-oh’s words were emblazoned in her heart and mind: he is your destiny.

"You belong to me, Kusanagi, she whispered fiercely, "I’ll make you see that once and for all."