一 色 み か こ - I S S H I K I M I K A K O
一 色 み か こ - I S S H I K I M I K A K O
"
Alright, up and at 'em!"
Mikako's voice resounded throughout the second floor of the two-story house, prompting a variety of reactions from the hallway of doors.
The first was hung with a placard in the shape of a maple leaf that read 'Kaede' in a single elaborate kanji. She'd had one in hiragana until recently, but she insisted now that only children used hiragana for their names--an insistence that made Mikako chuckle every time she thought about it. From that door came a long, low, muffled groan, and she grinned. The eldest of her siblings would have just woken up at her call, would really,
really not want to
stay woken up, and would subsequently be pressing to her pillow to her face and lamenting the fact that morning had come. She was starting to stay up a bit later than was probably healthy, but she was still getting roughly seven or eight hours a night; so until her sleep started to get interrupted, Mikako felt no need to step in. She was a teenager now, if only just; best to give her a bit of space.
The second door had a fairly typical deep blue name placard on it, nothing in any shape, written with a simple hiragana 'Rin.' Mikako had always thought a nice green would be better for her, her name
was written as 'jade' after all, but navy blue was her favorite, and it was what she'd chosen. There was a faint scuffling from her room; Mikako knew that if she pressed her ear to it, she'd hear zippers, clips, sighs...Rin always woke up earlier than the others, and by the time Mikako called them all down for breakfast at 6:45 she was already awake, putting on her uniform--she was so proud of her seifuku now that she was going into middle school, it was
adorable--and packing her bag. She'd always given Mikako the least trouble, which was nice now that Kaede was starting to be a little more of a handful.
The first door on the left, unlike the rest, was absent of anything showing a name. It was utterly silent; because, of course, it was
her room, which she left before the sun each morning to get up, wash up, eat one of her hidden stash of granola bars that she had to keep moving around because Rin had a bloodhound's nose for snacks and loved the same bars that Mikako did, make sure to get her hair nicely done--she had a
lot of hair--pack her own bag, make a quartet of bentos for the family, and then
finally to start on breakfast. She wondered sometimes if she should get up even earlier to have a bit more time to herself in the mornings, but then always came to the conclusion that if she did she'd need to go to bed at like, nine PM, and that was just a little too early for her. She had homework to do, friends to talk to, and manga to read, after all.
Finally, the second door on the left burst into a flurry of sound as Hiro jumped awake. He'd wanted a horse as his name placard, and a horse he'd gotten, rich brown with a bright red mane and tail the same color as his hair that Mikako had painted herself in secret. He didn't wake up early on his own like Rin did, but he was still a little kid, third year in elementary school, and they had a criminal amount of energy. Rin had been like that when she was little too, she remembered, though it hadn't been her waking them up then. It was only a countdown of seconds now until he burst out of the door, prompting another,
louder groan from Kaede, and rampaged down the stairs to annihilate his serving of whatever Mikako had made for breakfast. So it would be meet, she thought as she started hopping down the stairs herself, if she was down there before he was and could make sure she gave him breakfast so he wouldn't knock a whole pan of food off the stove. Again.
She'd barely managed to get the first plate set up with a slice of pan-seared fish (mackerel this morning, salmon was always the favorite but she'd used the last of it last night), a helping of rice (praise whatever was up there for rice cookers so she didn't need to spend precious minutes watching the pot to make sure it wasn't overdone), and a bowl of miso soup (with dashi proudly made from scratch every morning!) before Hiro basically teleported into his seat and started scarfing it down. His table manners were...
Well, they were getting
better? Mikako had never been a huge stickler about such things, her own weren't anything to write home about, but his used to be so bad he used to spill rice all over the table, and it was always such a pain to clean. It was nice that he was starting to move past that.
Next came Rin, a few minutes later. Mikako turned her head from the kitchen as she sat at the dining table across from her brother, smiling. "
Hey, you're already dressed. Careful you don't spill any, there's no time to wash it right now, okay?" She hadn't needed to rush to fix up a plate this time, since Rin was always way more patient than Hiro, even when she'd been the same age. So it was with a much more leisurely pace that Mikako placed the food down in front of her with one more slice of fish that Hiro's, along with a few of her favorite honey-pickled plums plopped generously down on the rice.
Her reply was a silent yawn and a nod. "
Yes, aneue."
"
You're weird, Rin-nee," chimed in Hiro, sticking his tongue out at her. "
Nobody says aneue! It sounds dumb!" Ah, good, the perennial argument. She would bet money Hiro was the only one at the the Kumoriyama elementary school who heard that term on a regular basis, or even at all; he'd used it to describe Kaede to friends once before he'd really understood the context, and it had taken him a month and a half to forgive Rin for the ribbing and mocking that he'd subsequently received.
And then Rin would reply with an eye roll and something like--"
coming from the one who calls her okaa-nee like she's our mom or something!" The bickering went back and forth between the two as Mikako looked at the clock. Time was ticking, and the oldest still wasn't down. She let out an infinitesimal sigh. Well, this happened pretty often. She made her way upstairs again and gently opened Kaede's door, and peeked around the frame. Well, at least the girl was awake, sometimes that was up in the air. It was just...very obvious that she
really didn't
want to be.
She jerked as Mikako's gentle voice pierced the quiet in her room. "
Kaede. You really do need to get up or you're going to be late on your first day back." There was something comforting about talking to Kaede. The other two were still young, and as much as Rin protested, she really was almost like a substitute mom for them; by the time Rin was old enough to know what was going on she was nine or ten years old and starting to help around the house already, to say nothing of Hiro, who'd basically only known her as a teenager. But Kaede was old enough that to her, Mikako was always just 'nee-chan.' And that was kind of nice.
At last, she pulled her pillow from her face and opened her gummy eyes. "
Ughhhhh. FINE. Why do we have to wake up so early anyway? You're lucky, nee-chan, high school starts like, way later. Getting there before eight? It's cruel and unusual punishment!"
Mikako giggled softly. "
Alright, drama queen, you know I'm up way earlier than any of you. If you want to get up at five too, be my guest." Kaede grumbled, but she finally peeled herself out of bed, yawned, and plodded over to her dresser, already lifting her pajamas over the top of her head.
"
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks, I guess." Another grumble. "
Now get out so I can change and brush my hair, I'll be down in a few."
And she was. Rin and Hiro were still arguing--they'd moved on now to Hiro saying that she wasn't going to make any friends because she was all quiet and weird and stuff--and adding the slightly incendiary Kaede to the mix talking about how Rin wasn't that quiet, Hiro was just
way too loud, especially in the mornings, quite frankly did
not help. As much as she tried to argue how mature she was now, it was still all too easy for her to get sucked into the squabbling. It was kind of cute.
Mikako stayed quiet as she served Kaede up and sat down to finally eat her own breakfast, watching in fascination as the argument bounced around like a three sided ping-pong table. Before too long, Kaede had snatched up her bento, rammed it into her bag, and practically dragged Rin out of the house alongside her. Evidently, she felt that she had lost the argument. Mikako chuckled. So proud, and too old to take the train with nee-chan now. They grow up so fast. She got Hiro all prepped and ready, straightened up the kitchen quickly, grabbed her
own supplies (including the train-ready rinko bag containing her folded-up bike), grabbed her all-important hat, and bustled the two of them out the door. It was about 7:15, the Kumoriyama Elementary School (and the middle school) were close enough for Hiro to get there by foot with this much time, and there was plenty of time for her to get to the high school by bike. At least it was getting warmer now, even if it was still a little bit nippy. During the winter it was always
such a pain.
By the time she got to to school, locked her bike to the rack, stuffed her coat and hat and shoes into her locker, and straightened her blazer into presentability, it wasn't long before the entrance ceremony would start. She slid into the gym with only a few minutes to spare, finding somewhere to sit and plopping herself down before allowing a long, slow yawn.
Safe. It was a shame she couldn't go to Rin's first middle school opening ceremony, and their parents were somewhere in the Baltics right now, she thought. But that was just life.
The ceremony passed in short order, and back to the classroom she went. It'd be a pretty basic day, she thought. Get assigned seats--she was just in front of Eikichi--get textbooks, go over the class procedures, and so on, and so on, et cetera, et cet--
"This year, we have a new transfer student who will be joining us."
Oh! So maybe things
would be slightly more exciting and not so basic! They didn't get many transfer students in Kumoriyama, so a new face was always nice to have, and Mikako was always looking to make new friends.
She couldn't help it, though. When the new student stepped through the door, Mikako frowned. Something about her was...weirdly familiar. Like she'd met her before or something. Something about the way her hair fell, and the expression on her face. Nothing concrete or anything, just a kind of gut intuition. But her intuition was clearly off base. If she was a transfer student, then of course she wouldn't have ever met her, and she was probably just confusing her with someone else she'd known--
"My name is written like 'Nagauchi,' but pronounced Osanai. Osanai Suzuka."Buh?No. That didn't make sense. That didn't make
any sense! This had to be some
other Osanai Suzuka, regardless of how uncommon the name was, and how her hair and eyes were the same color, and how she spoke in the same cadence and really
did wear the same expression on her face. It simply couldn't be the same person. Suzuka had left years ago now to move to, god, where was it she'd said back then? Right, it was all the way up to--
"I've recently moved here from Hakodate for personal reasons..."...To Hakodate.
Oh my god.
Oh my god. She was back? She was really...? Why? What had brought her back here? Personal reasons? What personal reasons?
She chanced a stealthy glance back at Eikichi, but upon seeing him, she was pretty sure she could stand there ringing a gong in his face and he wouldn't notice. She hadn't seen that look on his face in a long time. He just looked stunned. Beyond stunned, he looked like the world had just turned on its head without any notice. Which...for him, it kind of had? Mikako had been Suzuka's friend, and my god was she
so happy to see her again! But Eikichi had been
way closer to her. They'd spent almost every day together. The two of them were inseparable back then, and he'd been almost disconsolate once she'd left.
And then, because
of course, she was sat right next to him. Really, what were the odds? What were the chances that the wonderful girl from back then would end up there
again? What kind of cosmic coincidence had birthed this chance to see her closest elementary school friend after all this time? It seemed almost impossible; but clearly it
wasn't, since, of course, it had actually happened! This was the kind of thing that only happened in the shoujo manga that she read whenever she got the chance! Something like this wasn't a thing that actually happened in real life!
Still, it was best to let Eikichi go first. Especially since Suzuka, you know,
addressed him. Still, she could barely contain herself, and until the two of them had exchanged words, she was tapping her foot rapidly to stay calm. Then, when she could contain herself no longer, she whirled fully in her seat and let the expression of wonderment on her face plainly show.
"
Suzucchiko? You're really back? For good?"
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