InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Ride Sally, Ride!"

The festival yukata was dark blue. It had late summer flowers painted in clusters on the sleeves and at the bottom of the robe, and one blossom on the breast; Kozue loved it. It had been in her grandmother's family for generations—Fumiko had been unclear as to exactly how long. It was old. It was traditional. That was what mattered; the actual dates, not as much.

It had been waiting for Kozue in a box in her bedroom; almost the first thing that Fumiko had done, when her granddaughter got off the train and into the house, was escort her upstairs and stand, watching, at the doorway as Kozue opened the wooden box. The old woman's scrutiny was almost a palpable feeling on Kozue's shoulders, and on the back of her neck, as she lifted the cotton out of the box and spread its folds so that she could see the design.

She had bowed in thanks, and Fumiko had made a thin, strained face; her mouth straight, her eyes pleased. It passed for a smile. They had exchanged no words; none beyond a typical greeting at the door. Inquiry towards your health. Affirmation of my good health. Wishes for a good Obon tomorrow.

---

The first day, Kozue was up early; really, truly early. With the sunrise. Her hair needed to be smoothed down, tied up, and wound into a bun so that none of the oil would get on the yukata; that process alone, combating the frizz in her curly quarter-American hair, had taken more than an hour. She rubbed the pink polish off of her fingernails and toenails. Her grandmother hadn't noticed them. Yet. There was more, after that, but she was used to it. She was only wearing a yukata; it had one layer, no more, and the obi wasn't complex.

When she was much younger, before every festival, she had asked her grandmother to tie her obi for her, and Fumiko had always been pleased to oblige. She had once done it fearlessly, completely sure that Fumiko's hands were the surest and the strongest and the best equipped to do it. She knew everything about everything Japanese. Even Kozue's mama had looked up to her to learn about Japanese things. In a small child's eyes, someone who could instruct your mother knew everything.

Her eyes weren't as small anymore. And her eyes had always been part of the problem, but Kozue choked that thought down and smoothed out a wrinkle and rapped on her grandmother's door.

Now, she knew why Fumiko had instructed her mother. "Grandmother," she said, bowing slightly, "Can you help me tie this? I know what knot it should be, but I can't do it alone." It wasn't because her mother knew nothing about Japan; it wasn't, as Kozue had believed until she was six, that her mother was actually from another country. Maria had been raised in Japan, too.

Her grandmother's small face, wrinkled by bitterness as much as by time, turned left and right, and then looked across the fabric on her granddaughter's body. She paused, and then nodded. "Very well. It's better that you don't try, and get it wrong. The obi silk is antique."

Kozue shuffled into the room, in white tabi and house slippers; Fumiko guided her with a push to her shoulder, and then raised her arms for her; Kozue handed off the silk obi and obeyed. It made her feel a bit like a human doll—she imagined those dolls from Misaki's place in Paradise, constantly asking for hugs. And how Fumiko would react…

But the old woman was already working; she was of a height with her granddaughter, tiny in her old age. She cleared her throat. "You will be preparing a tea ceremony for those friends of yours who are visiting—so you had better get some practice in. I expect chaji, if you think they're people valuable enough to invite in the first place." Kozue nodded, made an affirmative sound. Fumiko plucked at a piece of the yukata that was slightly askew, and fixed it, saying nothing on that topic, but continuing onwards. "Your grandfather told me we recieved a phone call from the head of the Oubai Household. About his son."

Kozue's throat tensed.

"I don't think that's—"

"Don't worry about it, Kozue." Fumiko wrapped the fabric around Kozue's torso once, twice, and then started looping at her back. "I like the idea. His family is respectable enough to be casually tied to; a simple school romance does no harm. Your mother objected, of course," and change of her tone was almost palpable, almost like the temperature going down in Renju's dungeon, a shock on bare skin.

---

They went to temple first, and sat inside. It was early enough in the morning that few lay practitioners were there; Kondo Fumiko, short though she was, led the family's way and parted the crowd like a knife through butter, like a rake through the sand garden she kept behind the house. Her husband followed, and then her grandchildren trailed after her, one tall boy still a little gangly as he left adolescence, and one delicate, beautiful girl whose hair stood out much less for being tied back. The boy had bright blue eyes; the girl, average brown.

They sat in the incense-filled chamber and prayed, and Kozue could not keep her eyes away from the vases of red lilies with creeping tendrils. She prayed a great deal of thanks, and a selfishly large amount of it concerned thanks for how warm it was that day.
Title: Line from the Lotus Sutra, chapter one.
Cut Text: Line from the Ullambana Sutra.