"I"ve been here before."Kyoko looked at Noriko. Ueno park. They all had been.
"At this café I mean," Noriko said. "Had a talk with Princ.i.p.al Nakagawa," she added.
"When?"
"Just after the nightmare began," Noriko muttered.
"Kareyoshi, of course." "The pig!"
"Princ.i.p.al Nakagawa is a pig?" Jeniferu asked over her coffee.
Kyoko giggled. "No, Nakagawsensei is decent. I just guessed he spoke with Noriko about the pig."
"The pig?"
"How dense can you be girl?" Hitomi glared at Jeniferu. "Kareyoshi!"
Across the table Tomasu looked as if he was about to grab Jeniferu and protect her from the verbal onslaught, but just as he reached for her something in his eyes clouded over and he dropped his hands and stared down at the table. Something was off.
Kyoko let her her eyes wander to Jeniferu. She looked both hurt and relieved. Yes, something was definitely off.
"We"re here," Noriko said, and Kyoko saw her stare at Jeniferu with murder in her eyes, "to talk about just that."
"Why would she be angry with Jeniferu?"
"Thomas, I want to, but I can"t. Not right now."
Kyoko looked at Jeniferu, and as she did so she saw Hitomi"s dark glance. That the beauty had cast off her image as an airhead was no longer news to Kyoko, but her face expressed an understanding that made Kyoko feel left out of the loop. "What"s going on?"
Kyoko sipped some of her tea and waited for someone to let her in. She wouldn"t have been asked to postpone her date with Yukio for no reason.
The sound of a mug clacking on the table told her the time had come. It was Noriko"s mug.
"Kyoko, please don"t hate me, but could you tell Jeniferu what happened to you?"
Kyoko frowned. "What happened..." Ah, the nightmare! "You mean the attacks?"
Noriko nodded.
"The attacks?" both Hitomi and Jeniferu asked in unison. Tomasu just stared at her.
She had an inkling where this was going. "Jeniferu. First I need you to tell me what"s going on. I don"t want to hurt you with my ignorance."
For the first time Jeniferu looked like a broken girl and only Noriko"s hands on her shoulders kept her in her chair.
"I"ve been so scared. Ever since..."
So her brash att.i.tude towards anyone who asked had been a show after all.
"But Tomasu..." Kyoko began.
Jeniferu looked like she was about to start wailing, but she grabbed the edge of the table with her hands and stopped the tears. "I"m scared of him."
"What?"
"I"m so sorry Thomas. I love you, but you scare me, and you"ve done nothing wrong."
"G.o.ds!" Understanding finally hit Kyoko. "Noriko, I can"t."
"Why?"
Kyoko heard her own words blurt out. "I was attacked, but I wasn"t violated that way. I tried to protect Yukio both times, and it was all so quick, and I never lived through the kind of nightmare that would make me afraid of his touch."
"Both times?" Something in Jeniferu"s voice told Kyoko curiosity won over misery.
"I heard you were a.s.saulted, but both times?" Hitomi added.
"Maybe I can, after all."
Kyoko told them. About the attack aborted by her father and the one that wasn"t. She told them about how she could never have children and about the hate she felt for the man who stabbed her. She didn"t, however, tell them she suspected Urufu knew something bad had happened to him, and she didn"t tell them about her and Yukio"s hope for the future.
In the end, amidst a lot of blushing and half sentences, she did tell them a little about what she experienced together with Yukio, and how that made her feel safe and whole. How he made her feel safe and whole. Maybe that, if nothing else, would turn Jeniferu"s feelings for Tomasu in a more hopeful direction.
"But you"re kids! How the h.e.l.l..." Tomasu began after Kyoko was finished.
Together with Noriko she shot him down with angry glares. A freshman speaking about kids with Hitomi present was bad. But for Urufu behaving like an idiot at the start of the new year Jeniferu shouldn"t have known either.
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Hitomi shook her head. "Keep your secrets. I don"t mind."
"Secrets?" Kyoko tried.
"Look," Hitomi said. "Four westerners pop up in school. Sometimes they behave like really old people and it"s like they"re a magnet to awful things happening." She smirked. "I"m not blind you know."
She got it wrong about Jeniferu, even though the girl did behave above her years from time to time, but Hitomi was close enough for Kyoko to feel something akin to fear rising in her. If Hitomi suspected something, then how many more in the club?
Then Kyoko surprised herself. "Another day, but not today. Today is for Jeniferu." Kyoko glanced at Tomasu. It really was for him as well, but she hoped he would understand and forgive her.
He nodded approval, and when Kyoko looked, so did Hitomi.
"You never felt dirty?" Jeniferu asked.
Kyoko bit her lower lip. This was the hardest part. "I did. I"ve never told Yukio, but when I found out I was barren I wondered if he wanted a soiled woman."
Noriko shot her a shocked stare. "You never told me."
"I know." Kyoko admitted the truth. "It"s my parents. I know they love me in their own way, but sometimes they hurt me being the way they are." Then she turned her attention to Jeniferu. "But I"ve never ever been afraid of having Yukio close to me. I can"t even begin to understand that feeling."
"But you jut did!" A glimmer of hope glowed in Jeniferu"s eyes. "My dad, and your parents. I think I get it."
Kyoko shook her head. "I don"t."
"Dad would get angry. Dad got angry." This time Jeniferu shook her head. "That"s not right. He got angry with me as well, or at least I"m afraid he did."
That didn"t make any sense at all, but the hard stare Tomasu shot Jeniferu told Kyoko it had made sense at least to him.
"I should have been by your side when it happened. I"ll be there whenever you want me to," he said.
It was a little bit of bravado and a lot of love. Kyoko hoped Jeniferu could come to trust the man she loved enough to give their relationship what it was worth. From what Kyoko had seen he was a thoroughly decent person.
"Don"t you have a date?" Noriko asked, and Kyoko understood her friend was about to tell the others about what had happened to herself. She must still believe Kyoko didn"t know.
There was no betrayal. Noriko would tell her when she was ready, or at least when she felt both of them were. Kyoko was certain they already were, but it didn"t matter.