| [Jul. 8th, 2012|05:11 am] |
“Now I’m picturing a unicorn with toast stacked up on its horn and kittens on its back,” Genma said, laughing.
“Toasty the unicorn,” Katsuko agreed, straight-faced. “And his kitten friends Pounce and Bloodfang.”
“Your brain must be a bizarre place,” Genma told her, grinning. He put the scroll and his other treasures carefully back in their box, breathing through the knotted anxiety in his gut that looking at those diagrams always brought up. But it seemed like Katsuko understood, and in a way he wasn’t sure anyone else he’d ever talked to really did. As he repacked the box, he paused, holding a yellowing envelope. “You want to see something?”
She arched an eyebrow. “Sure. Is it a unicorn?”
“Not exactly.” Genma sat down at the table again, opened the envelope, and fished out a small, faded color photograph of a dark haired woman smiling and holding a plump baby, who was waving a stuffed toy donkey in one hand. “Here. That’s my mom.”
Katsuko let out a soft breath, studying the photograph with a wistful, almost reverent look in her eyes. “She’s beautiful,” she whispered, leaning in and letting her fingertips hover over the image like she wanted to stroke the young woman’s disarrayed hair. “She... she loved you?”
Genma felt like he’d made a mistake. Like somehow he was going to hurt Katsuko no matter how he answered. “She did,” he said finally, because it was the truth. “Here. Here’s another.” He handed Katsuko a second photo, this one of a dark-eyed little girl and a nearly-blond toddler looking up from a mostly destroyed birthday cake. Much of the cake was smeared over the children’s faces. “That’s my sister Yumiko on her seventh birthday. And me. You probably figured that out already.”
“You were both adorable devil children,” Katsuko said, offering Genma a genuine grin.
“You don’t even know the half of it. That picture was taken a half-hour before Yumi’s birthday party was supposed to start.” He laughed and handed Katsuko another photo, a very formal black-and-white portrait of the dark-haired woman in a wedding kimono, with a tall, slender man with eyes like Genma’s standing next to her, also clad in formal attire. He paired it with a second photo of the same couple, but this time in color, both in uniform, and both clearly laughing. Someone’s out-of-focus arm blocked part of the image, and a litter of beer bottles decorated a table behind them. “Mom and Dad. I don’t know why I’m showing you these. I can stop if you want.”
Except he did know. It was a relief—a touchstone—to look at these photos of the long-ago, before those hand charts had ever even seemed a possibility.
“It’s fine,” Katsuko said quickly. She spread the photos in front of her, gazing at them with a hungry longing in her eyes. “It’s just... nice. Seeing people who loved each other and their kids so much.”
“You didn’t have that?” Genma guessed. “Were you a war orphan?”
“No,” Katsuko said after a moment’s hesitation. “Both my parents are alive. My little brother, too.” A bitter expression fleeted over her face, leaving a tired look behind. “I’m not... welcome at home. Haven’t been for years.”
“That’s just... Shit.” Genma looked down at the photographs and Katsuko’s bowed head. “Why?” He regretted the question as soon as he’d asked it. “You don’t have to tell me. Obviously they’re fucked up, whatever reason they have.”
“I don’t know,” Katsuko said. Her slender shoulders folded in, and for a moment she looked utterly worn out, like she was waiting for a finishing blow. “Sometimes you’re just not enough.” She slid the photos back to Genma with a wan smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Thank you for sharing these with me. It... it means a lot.”
It made more sense now, why Katsuko might just decide to let her life spool out without fighting for it. And it pissed Genma off in ways he couldn’t really articulate. He took the photos back and handed Katsuko one more. It was much more recent, and burned to charcoal on one edge. In it, a teenage Genma in jounin blues grinned at the camera with his arm slung around the shoulders of a pretty girl who could have been his twin if she’d been a little older. She was leaning on crutches, with stiff braces on both legs.
“This is Haruko,” he said a little thickly. “You remind me of her.” |
|