A NEW MIKO AT THE HIKAWA JINJA
(PART ONE)
::PROLOGUE::
As the dawn broke, Rei woke from her troubled sleep. The morning was cool and gray. As she walked to school, a large crow perched atop the steeple squawked at her. She paused momentarily, and the portentous bird squawked again. Its cries were even and repetitive as she opened the doors to the school.
Throughout the day, Rei's mind kept wandering through a continuous slide-show, first of the crow atop the steeple, then the small soldier in her dream, and finally the faceless man she had seen during the previous night's ceremonies.
When school let out, the sky was of the same gray overcast, but the air was now stifling in its humidity. On arriving at the Hikawa Jinja, she turned her fan on and sat down on the floor of her bedroom with her eyes closed. She brushed the hair away from her face and let the cool breeze dry the sweat off of her forehead.
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::CHAPTER ONE::
"Rei-chan? Rei-chan!"
Rei looked up from her daze to see seven concerned faces, with Usagi at the front, her large, anxious blue eyes full of worry.
"Gomen, minna..."she said, then paused, hesitating before beginning her next sentence. "I was just thinking." She dismissed it and resumed eating her ice cream.
"You think too much," replied Usagi, and turned her attentions back to her heaping sundae. She was about to shovel a large spoonful into her mouth when she noted the other girls' disparaging looks.
"Minna, keep eating!" Rei insisted. Usagi proceeded with her previous action, and sat with the spoon in her mouth, realizing the others weren't eating.
"What's wrong, Rei-san?" came a clear, resonant voice from the end of the table. Rei looked up from her ice cream at Michiru. She stared blindly for a second, then quickly looked back at her ice cream, afraid that the fellow psychic might catch a glimpse of her troubles in her eyes.
Silence.
"It's just these dreams," Rei mumbled into her now-soupy bowl of ice cream.
"You've had a vision?" Michiru pressed.
"A new enemy?" Ami jumped in urgently.
"No," Rei replied quietly.
"A new ally?" asked Minako.
"No."
"Is there another senshi?" Michiru asked calmly.
Rei paused. "No..."
"Are you sure?" asked Makoto.
"Yeah, you know how those visions are...Are you sure it wasn't *any* of those things?" asked Usagi with her usual wide-eyed countenance.
"Maybe it's Yuiichiro," Haruka suggested playfully, a smirk creeping across her lips.
Rei's head shot up, then she quickly looked down again, blushing. "No, I'm sure *that's* not it," she replied hurriedly, getting up from the table and gathering her things. "Listen, minna, I've got to get back to the shrine, ojii-chan's going to...want me to clean up...apparently there were a lot of visitors today..." Her voice trailed off. "Minna, don't *look* at me like that... I'm fine... I'm fine..."
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::CHAPTER TWO::
Michiru found Rei sitting at the bus stop, staring into nothingness. She didn't even notice the older girl's approach. Michiru sat down next to her and touched Rei's elbow to get her attention. Rei started and began mumbling a hurried apology.
"Gomen, Michiru-san...I didn't see you..."
Her bus was coming.
"Let's walk," Michiru said calmly. As bus pulled up, Michiru stood and started walking towards the park. Rei started to protest, but followed her.
They walked in silence for a while, when they came to a fountain, where the two girls paused, watching their reflections in the mirror-like surface of the water.
"In the future..." Rei began with a questioning tone.
"Yes?"
"We...the Inners, I mean... we were... or will be... demo... betrothed to Endymion's generals?"
Michiru hesitated, searching for the relevance of the question. "You've known it..." she offered.
"But... that's the thing... they're dead... we killed them...now... in the past... so they're dead in the future, too?"
Silence. "Yes..." Michiru said hesitantly.
Rei sat down on the edge of the fountain.
"Tell me, Rei-san," Michiru pressed.
"Last night...when I was doing the ceremonies...I...saw..." she paused, with a confused look on her face. "I don't know."
After a pause, she started again. "I saw a man's face..." Another pause. "He looked like Jaedite," she finally blurted out. "But there was something different about him, different than I remember, or will remember, or have remembered.... or..." She shook her head. "...he reminded me of... someone..." She trailed off, lost in thought.
"Yuiichiro?" Michiru couldn't help smirking.
Rei blushed and turned her head away, so that she was looking back at her reflection in the water. "Sort of..." she said softly, letting her fingers trail along in the water. For a second, she almost believed she could see Yuiichirou's face smiling back at her in the ripples.
Michiru saw, and touched the surface of the water. As she did so, the ripples changed direction and Rei saw Yuiichiro's face blend into Jaedite's.
All of a sudden, the wind picked up and flew through the trees.
"The future can change," said a distantly familiar voice from the opposite side of the fountain. As the wind died down, Michiru and Rei looked up and saw Setsuna's flowing green tresses whipping about her face.
"Setsuna-san..." Michiru said quietly. Rei caught her breath.
"I can’t stay for long, Setsuna said quickly, walking across to them. Rei-san... you’ve had a dream, ne? A small girl..."
Rei found it impossible to form the words to confirm the statement. After attempting to begin several sentences, she nodded.
"The girl you saw in your dream last night..." Setsuna began with a knowing voice.
Rei stood up, her eyes wide, half-knowing what she would say, and half fearing it. "Yes..." she whispered.
Setsuna lowered her head. "She’s your daughter."
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::CHAPTER THREE::
After being dropped of at the shrine by Haruka and Michiru, Rei noticed that Yuiichiro hadn’t swept the temple grounds. She was disturbed at not seeing him. (Not that she was looking for him, of course.)
“It’s too quiet,” she thought to herself. She was heading towards her room when she heard ojji-chan calling her.
“REEEEEEIIIIII-CCCHHHHHHHHAAANNNNN!!!!!!!!!” the stout little man was yelling, his face unusually pink.
“Ojji-chan?”
“Where have you been?!”
“Where have I...” Rei started, thoroughly confused by his temper.
“Hurry up! Meet the new miko!”
“The new...” Rei stood confused as ojji-chan walked away, surprisingly fast for someone with such short legs. She had to walk briskly to keep up.
They turned a corner and standing there, surrounded by mounds of expensive luggage, wearing a bright red dress and sporting dark sunglasses, was a young girl, probably no older than Chibi-Usa, with an impossibly pompous look on her face. Standing beside her, utterly exasperated, was Yuiichiro.
When he saw Rei, however, his eyes lit up. “R-Rei-san!” he stuttered.
She tried to conceal her amusement.
“Meet my cousin, Raina... she...” As he advanced towards Rei, the young Raina smacked him in the knee with a suitcase.
“I’m the new miko,” she said over Yuiichiro’s cries of agony. She pushed her sunglasses up, so they sat on top of her head, reealing large purple eyes. She looked Rei up and down, as though inspecting her for quality. As she walked away, she called for Yuuichiro to bring her luggage.
“What a rude girl!” Rei said indignantly, looking after her.
Yuuiichiro rolled his eyes. “My father’s brother heard that I was staying at a Shinto temple, and he thought it was such a good idea, that he decided to send *her* here, since he’s away so much,” Yuiichiro said, skillfully gathering the luggage in his arms.
Rei’s expression changed.
“She’s a real brat,” Yuiichiro said, having just managed to get all her bags into his arms.
Rei turned around and slapped him in the face, with such an unexpected force that he dropped all of the luggage. She spun around, *inadvertantly* smacking him in the face with her hair, knocking him off balance, and walked back to her room.
Yuiichiro sat amid a pile of bags, very confused and rubbing his reddening cheek.
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::CHAPTER FOUR::
That evening, when the pseudo Hikawa Jinja family sat down to dinner, Raina ate her meal quickly.
“Oyasuminasai, minna!” she said, getting up from the table. “I’m sleepy.” And she walked out of the room, neglecting to even shut the door behind her.
There was silence as Rei got up to close the door. Although she had apoligized to Yuiichiro, she still felt guilty about slapping him earlier that day.
When they finished their meal, ojji-chan said, “Raina-chan must stay in your room for a while, Rei.”
“Hai,” Rei replied politely. “Oyasuminasai.”
Upon entering her room, Rei stumbled across the mountain of luggage piled on the floor. Raina was curled up in a corner of her bed, apparently asleep. As Rei climbed into bed and pulled the covers up, she closed her eyes and began thinking about how much Raina reminded her of herself when she was a young miko at the Hikawa Jinja. Then she remembered what Setsuna had told her, and she shivered. “It can’t be...” she thought to herself.
“Rei-san?” said the small voice.
Surprised, Rei opened her eyes. “Raina-chan? What’s wrong?”
The little girl rolled over and a black chunk of her short hair fell over one eye. Rei smiled a little and brushed it behind her ear, but it promptly fell back again. “There must be something in the Kumada family about having your hair always in your eyes,” she thought, remembering all the times she’d thought to herself that Yuiichiro desperately needed a haircut.
The melancholy look on the young girl’s face wiped Rei’s smile away.
“Why does papa want me here?” Raina blurted out.
Rei was at a loss for words.
“Umm...well... you father... is a very busy man, Raina.” On remembering the old wound, she felt her throat catching, as though she were about to cry. “I’m sure he...still loves you very much...” she managed to say.
Rei thought to herself: “I don’t cry!!! What the hell? I’ve never cried about this! Not...” Her thoughts and memories swirled about in her head.
Raina was silent for a while.
“Yuiichiro...told me that you came to Hikawa Jinja when you were little too,” Raina said quietly.
“Hai.” Rei nearly choked on the word. “My father sent me as well.”
Raina reached over and touched Rei’s forehead. “When your mother died,” she said quietly.
Alarmed, Rei sat up in bed. “Who told you that?!” she said defensively.
Raina shrunk in the older girl’s shadow. “No one...I didn’t... I mean... I just... knew... I don’t...”
Still tense, Rei lay back down.
“Gomen, Rei-san... I really didn’t...”
“Zattsuo-ke-.”
She slowly relaxed, and with a pseudo-maternal air patted the girl on the head. “I can’t shake this feeling of how much she reminds me of myself... it’s *too* weird,” Rei thought to herself. “This can’t be the girl in my dream... she can’t be my daughter... and Yuiichiro... he’s not going to be around in our future in the Moon Kingdom. He’s just a... but what did Setsuna mean... the future can change, can’t it? But that’s too much to ask for... If only I could’ve been a normal girl...”
Rei’s thought again sent here mind whirling. As she slipped into sleep, she dreamt again. Smiling in her sleep, she dreamt of growing up and become a famous seiyuu, and Yuiichiro’s wife.
