Planetes

Two
Omoi wo Megurasu 100 no Jishou
[The Hundred Events Surrounding Love]

No matter what reasoning I come up with,
there's no explaining you

—Omoi wo Megurasu 100 no Jishou, EGOIST feat. Yuzuriha Inori (trans.)

"Shu?" Ouma Mana looked rather surprised as her little brother dumped his bag on the couch, flung himself over after it, and groaned deeply. Mana had never known Shu to be this frustrated over something before, but she did acknowledge the fact that it was decidedly better than the flat apathy that had taken hold of him ever since their father's death ten years ago. "What's with that groan? Got turned down by a girl?" She paused, raising her pale eyebrows. "Maybe even flunked a quiz?"

"Mana-nee, not now." Shu rolled over, undid the first button on his shirt, and found himself staring into Mana's narrowed eyes, bent over him as she was. "…!"

"Get up and change into more comfy clothes, Shu," Mana laughed as she poked his nose with the blunt end of a fork. Blinking at her, Shu got up grudgingly and rubbed the place she hit with a scowl. "I'm making some onigiri for a snack, so you can help yourself when you come back. Whatever teenage drama you might have experienced earlier can wait."

"Okay, okay." Shu scrambled up on his feet and retrieved his bag, eyes carefully scanning Mana as she went back to the kitchen, just to make sure that he wouldn't get assaulted again. Finding the coast clear, he rushed to his room, managing a hasty retreat as Mana turned around by closing the door silently behind him.

She had always been like that. Cheerful, at times the gentlest of people, and always mischievous. And it only got worse ten years ago, when he became the morose character that his present classmates all knew him to be, as if to counter his gloom with her brightness. Shu never did bother to find out how Mana persevered through it all. She had been the most steadfast of them three—while Haruka was still wading through the tears and Shu was struggling to cope up with the fact that his father had just died, twelve-year-old Mana kept on, setting the frazzled state of the household and occupying herself with the duties that Haruka should have been fulfilling, a feat that others could not have thought possible at her young age. Of course, Haruka eventually recovered (if not fully), but they could not have gone through the murk completely without Mana's help.

A knock resounded abruptly on his bedroom door. Cursing under his breath, Shu pulled the T-shirt on to finish changing.

"You dress up so slow, Shu." Mana gave him a teasing smile when he went out of the room and followed her to the kitchen. She placed a plate of the small rice balls on the table, along with a pitcher of water. "Like a girl."

"Mana-nee…" Shu sighed and went over to the dining table to sit beside his sister, plopping himself on a chair. "Stop teasing me. I've had a tiring day as it is."

"Don't tell me…" Mana took a piece from the plate and bit daintily in it, chewing slowly as she thought. Shu sighed again, and mentally asked himself how many times he had sighed today. He loved Mana, and she was a great sister, but sometimes…

"You did get dumped, didn't you?" she whispered conspiratorially, leaning forward with a very convincingly sympathetic expression. "I told you, if you'd just ask me…"

…she was really frustrating to talk to.

"No, Mana-nee." Shu ate his rice ball whole, amid Mana's unrepentant giggling. "Actually…"

"Actually…?" Sobering up, Mana pressed him, growing more interested by the minute.

"Actually…"

Shu paused and let the word hang for a moment, finally realizing how stupid it would be if he just told Mana that he got confessed to by a girl—and Yuzuriha Inori, at that.

"Actually, Souta and I had just had a spat over some forms that I was supposed to deliver to the student coordinator's office earlier," Shu said quickly, making Mana's shoulders slump when her anticipations of a good story to tease Shu about were dashed. "He thought that I hadn't already passed them to the secretary, so he attacked me with the topic over at the first ring of the dismissal bell. It took me a while to flatten him down again."

"I see." Mana yawned slightly and stood up, her hair falling over her shoulder as she turned when they heard the door open. "Is that Haruka-san in already?"

"No one else has access in here," Shu said with another sigh (this time of relief) as sure enough, Ouma Haruka burst into the living room, looking chipper in a deep lavender business suit.

"I'm home!" Haruka dropped her bag on the couch and wandered to where Shu sat, an easy smile spreading over her lips as she tackled Shu in a bear hug. "I missed you, Shu—"

"Grrmmfffmmm!" was all that Shu could manage, half-smothered.

Mana laughed at the side as she watched the pair struggle briefly before Shu finally acquiesced, his arms going limp to let Haruka's envelop him.

"Welcome back, Haruka-san." Mana gestured to the plate on the table. "I made snacks."

"Thank you, Mana-chan. They look great~" Haruka ruffled Shu's hair affectionately before letting go, and grabbed a piece of onigiri before ambling to her room. "I'm gonna change first, okay? Later!"

When they heard the door to Haruka's room close, Mana immediately rounded on Shu. "Have you perhaps hidden something from me, Shu?" she said sweetly, making Shu swallow nervously. He should never have thought that he can trick Mana's eyes. She knew him a little too well…

"I—" Shu was half-torn between continuing to spin the story, or owning up that he had just been confessed to by someone who was practically school royalty.

"And don't try to trick your big sister again," Mana cautioned him with a thin smile, the one that creeped Shu out. "I'll know."

"Alright, alright. But don't tell Haruka yet. I bet she'll get rather… overexcited." Shu knew better than to argue with the women of the Ouma household. "You see…"

"Saita no no hana yo…"

Shu watched Inori rather bashfully as they rested by an artificial riverbank near Shu's home the next afternoon, the internet idol choosing to follow Shu back without no seeming purpose. Shu was okay with it, but Mana would surely already be there from university. He was quite worried about the possibility that his sister might overreact at the appearance of Inori—after all, she had been quite overprotective of him ever since the demise of their father.

"Aa, douka, oshiete okure…"

Inori seemed quite at peace with the world, although Shu was getting quite fidgety beside her, thinking up all of the possible scenarios that might erupt between the two. Inori was the perfect picture of imperturbability, but with Mana's volatile temper…

"Hito wa naze kizutsukeatte…"

If only her usual choice of songs weren't so… depressing, Shu thought with a quirk of his lip.

"Arasou no deshou…"

"Inori-san?" Shu quickly interrupted her, feeling rather bad at bursting Inori's bubble when she looked up at him, although he cannot detect a single change in her expression. "Er… Shall… we go up to my house now? My Mana-nee might be in already…" Not that I'm looking forward to it…

"I see." Inori tilted her head inquisitively, and Shu felt a question rise to his lips that he had asked before but hadn't had the opportunity to get the answer yet.

"Inori-san?" Shu's hands were unsteady, so he slipped them in his pocket. The girl before him chose not to notice the movement, instead focusing on his eyes and making him more fidgety. "You didn't answer my inquiry from way before. Why… why me? And… why now? All of a sudden?"

Inori's lips moved slightly, as if to answer, yet the silence that pervaded between them after that lasted for more than a moment. "Because you looked lonely."

Shu hadn't expected that one. "Excuse me?"

"You have friends, yet you looked lonely even amongst them." Shu could almost see the sadness in Inori's eyes. Almost. "Are you, Ouma Shu? Are you lonely?"

Shu swallowed. "I'm not. Maybe… maybe you're just imagining things. Anyway, that's not a very good reason to tell someone that you want to go out with them."

"Perhaps." Inori smiled just the teeniest bit, and Shu felt his heart skip a beat. He had never seen Inori look this cheerful before, and that was saying something. "Then, did you want to go out with me, Ouma Shu?"

"Huh?" Shu squeaked, and clamped his mouth closed, face blushing like a rose. She's the first girl that's not either Mana-nee or Haruka to get me this flustered, he realized. "Wasn't that obvious, though, Inori-san?"

"Obvious?"

"Almost every guy in the class—no, make that the whole school, wanted to go out with you, you know." Shu couldn't believe how Inori looked so innocent of the fact when her eyes widened a little at the statement. "Seriously, did you just ask me that question? Of course I did!"

God, did I just… WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY

"Is that… so?" Inori looked thoughtful. "Then, wouldn't it be reason enough to be together?"

AND WHAT THE HELL DID SHE JUST SAY

Shu forcibly shut down the part of his brain that was screaming from embarrassment and exhilaration and smiled tentatively. He felt as if he were just cheated to in a game of poker, and that Inori wouldn't own up to the trick. There was evasion in her answers, something that he couldn't define lurking in her expression. "Well, having cleared those points… Shall we go now?" Cleared? his inner thoughts spoke. Lies. You both didn't clear up anything. It only became more confused.

"Yes, we should."

Together, they stood, and even with the barrier between them, Shu felt his mood lift a couple notches more when Inori gazed at him with those crimson eyes, feeling in that teeny moment that he was the luckiest guy in all of Japan.

"Gai." Keido Shuichiro glared at his adopted son as the latter walked past him to the kitchen, eyes averted from his as if to avoid the topic that his father was anxious to talk to him about.

"Not now, father." Tsutsugami Gai was a patient man, but sometimes his adopted father's obsessions can get to him and try his patience, if only just for a bit. He could never understand why Keido let himself be so affected by his rival… especially if said rival was already dead.

"Have you already talked to the Ouma boy?"

So much for protesting… or trying to, at least. Gai knew a lost cause when he sees one.

"No, I haven't. We're in different classes." And it felt awkward to just walk up and talk to a guy whom you haven't seen for almost ten years…

Keido reclined back into the comfort of his deep armchair. "I see Ouma Kurosu in the eyes of that son of his. I wonder if he had left something in Haruka's care… some little thing…"

"Father." Gai opened the refrigerator, and losing appetite because of the knowledge that his father's incessant questions would begin again, closed it. "I'm going out for a walk."

Quickly, in case he gets trapped into another manic conversation with his father about Ouma Kurosu again, he stepped out of the house, and was soon on a narrow bridge that spanned over the river in the immediate area.

"This is absolute bullshit," he muttered with a dry chuckle, leaning over the railing and watching the calm waters below. "My father's crazy obsession is getting way out of hand. And to target Ouma Shu, of all people…"

"Did I just hear my brother's name?"

Quickly, Gai spun around at the sudden intrusion, and found himself nose-to-nose with a positively interested-looking Ouma Mana. "Eh?"

"Hi. Wait… aren't you—?"

"Tsutsugami Gai," he said with a smile, trying not to be fazed at the fact that Mana had just intruded into his personal space and wasn't particularly repentant about it—actually, she looked more amused than anything. "And you're Mana-san, right?" He suddenly found himself staring, and looked away with an apology for being rude. Mana just seemed so… changed yet unchanged from the last time he had seen her.

"Oh, drop the honorifics, Gai—or, should I say, Triton?" Mana smiled at him, the recognition in her eyes and the sound of his childhood nickname making Gai sigh secretly in relief. "How long have you been back in here? We've never heard of anything…"

"Hasn't Shu told you yet? We're schoolmates, actually—transferred about a month ago. He should have at least seen me walking around the campus. Although, maybe he was sensing the same awkwardness I feel whenever I wanted to go and greet him. After all, the last time we've been together was when we were children." Gai could never believe how harder his words seem to flow whenever he is around Mana, how the topics that he chose to talk about were more frivolous and shallow. Even after ten years, her effect on him still hasn't worn off...

"That Shu, learning to hide stuff from his big sister." Mana fumed silently, her cheeks puffed slightly. It made Gai smile the littlest of smiles, but it carried a hint of happiness anyway. "I'll talk to him later. Or what about right now, actually? I'm heading home anyway. Won't you come? Haruka would be so glad to see you. We could have tea and catch up with one another—you owe that much after moving back without so much as a visit."

"I'd be glad to," Gai said politely, although inside, his spirits were elated so impossibly that he couldn't believe himself.

"Let's go, then, Triton!" Mana's pale hand crossed the distance between them, and before Gai could react, the distance of ten years seemed to melt away with a single meeting of their opened palms.

"There's no one around?" Shu felt puzzled as he unlocked the door and peered in the dark hallway to the Oumas' sitting room. "Mana-nee was supposed to have come home already… way before me…"

Inori silently followed Shu into the house as he slapped the lights on, flooding the room with light and revealing a mess of magazines scattered on the coffee table in the middle.

Shu took a glance at them and looked back at Inori. "I think my sister's out for the moment. Make yourself comfortable, okay?"

This is only prolonging the inevitable…

Inori took up a corner on the couch and sat there with a docile look, and Shu immediately rummaged in the kitchen.

"Tea, Inori-san?"

"…Mm."

The teapot was already filled when Shu heard his sister's key turn in the lock. Apprehensive, he went to greet his sister at the doorway, Inori almost automatically standing up at the sound of the opening door.

"Shu~" Mana smiled as she spotted her brother at the hall, and noted that he looked rather nervous as their eyes met. Before Shu could say anything, though, she said gaily, "Is that tea I smell? Good Shu!" She smiled happily, as though she were bearing a present. "We have a guest!"

Shu's eyes were puzzled. "Eh?"

Gai stepped in the threshold, and Shu's eyes locked on his face with, first surprise, and then a tentative defiance. Gai almost wanted to laugh at his childhood friend's expression. "Sorry to disturb, but Mana invited me and I can't say no." He smiled. "Good to see you, Shu."

"...Likewise." Shu crossed his arms, and Gai saw a shadow cross behind him. The thin figure of Yuzuriha Inori came into view, her eyes immediately taking in the scene before her. Her lips opened slightly as though to say something, but couldn't.

"Inori?" Gai was doubly amused at the spectacle, while Mana was visibly surprised herself at her brother's guest.

"A girl, Shu?" Mana looked confused (and offended Shu's pride, considerably, although he liked to think that he was well above it) and, to Shu's bafflement, smiled, like the perfect elder sister, at Inori. "Perfect! Tea for four, then!"

Shu did consider the fact that this would be the most torturous afternoon of his seventeen years of existence.

Lyrics translation: (c) carlenne. livejournal. com

Slow and steady wins the race. ^w^

Reviews?