OKURIMONO

 
A Tenchi Muyo! fanfiction by Eric Jonas (a.k.a. Inoue)

Disclaimer: All characters of Tenchi Muyo are the property of Pioneer 
LDC. The piece itself is the exclusive property of Inoue and may not be 
altered in any form or fashion without the consent of the author. 

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I know that cold night like the morning sun. 

I know its silent whispers, murmuring amongst the dead branches of 
mountainside trees shrubs. I remember how ghastly their forms first were 
to me as I made them out under the light of that ancient, lonely, 
melancholy moon that hung in the sky. How pale and wan, like an ever-
present harbinger of a longer night that the one I see haunted here. But 
now, squinting at the forms silhoutted in that sad light, I see that 
they aren't really so ghastly after all, but rather, the shadows of a 
celebration that is sad because it is happy. 

It is this happiness that makes the stain I saw in the moonlight. 

Soon it began to snow, and flakes like cherry blossoms began to blanket 
the lonely mountainside and hid the earth from the light. Murmurs became 
groans, and groans became low, haunting howls, curling in frozen, white 
wisps dancing madly in the air. 

I felt the cold, but it was lost in the frozen burn I felt in my heart 
and the icy tears that froze on my cheeks, tears haunted by the vision 
of Tenchi taking that monster woman's hand in his own, how time froze as 
they stood under that damned thing called mistletoe, and the three words 
he whispered blaring in the shattered catacombs of my mind. 

Suddenly, I was here, running up the frozen stone steps, an animal 
choking on something hot and caustic that curled in my throat. It 
might've lost itself in the howl of the wind or on the empty sea I felt 
swell in my aching bosom, wishing it would burst and tuck me under in 
some warm red shroud, bidding me to close my eyes one last time. 

I didn't know. 

All I knew -- all it seemed I had ever known -- was the anguish of a 
world crumbling around like a cave caving in on itself and swallowed 
away into the nothingness of some endless fiery sea. And suddenly, I 
didn't care if the world buried me away in the ashes of its fire, or if 
I ever saw myself in a mirror again and knew that I was Aeka, the first 
princess of Jurai, or if in my heart and mind I knew Aeka from the wind 
or the snow, the light, the darkness, the day, the night, the fire, the 
ice, the stars, the trees, the living, or the dead. 

I didn't want to be Aeka. 

Didn't want to be anything, knowing that way, I wouldn't have to feel 
anything. 

I didn't want to feel. 

I reached the last step, but slipped on a patch of ice and fell, 
crashing hard against one of the ancient pillars of the shrine gate. An 
instinct told me to pick myself up, but my foot would not take the 
weight. Fire speared its way to my brain, and I collapsed back to the 
ground, barely conscious now. 

I opened my mouth to cry for help, but my voice died before it ever 
rose. 

Yosho-sama was still at the house at the bottom of the mountain. 

Besides, I had no reason to want help. Why should I want to walk? So 
that I could go back to the house and see Tenchi with that monster-woman 
of his?!

No, that was not what I meant. Tenchi was happy with her. 

That's what mattered -- all that ever mattered. 

Not me. I never did. I saw that now. 

I was suddenly very tired and weary. 

But I had already been that way for so very long. I saw that now too. 

In time, a pleasant warmth came to me, and the howl of the wind became a 
kind lullaby, gently singing me to sleep one last time. I closed my 
eyes, and made one last prayer in the name of Heaven and Earth. 

"Tenchi-sama...." 

 

* * *

 

I awoke and heard a strange woman's voice calling to me. 

Instinctively, I recoiled and shoved her away, but I remembered why I 
was here and suddenly didn't care who she was or what she wanted. In the 
distance, I heard, rather than saw, her draw herself up to her full 
height. 

But I was curious, and I chanced a peak out of the corner of my eye in 
her direction.

I was blinded by a bright flash of light and found myself grabbing at my 
eyes and screaming in tremendous pain. 

But somehow through that nauseating haze, I heard her whispering kind 
words of comfort and reassurance in my ear. I don't remember any of what 
she said -- perhaps I never even heard the words themselves -- but I 
will always remember that voice. It was the most beautiful thing I had 
ever heard. Its sound was music, and every utterance carried the spell 
of a divine song. The notes -- or even the melody -- really didn't 
matter, but it was the feeling that it evoked, like pleasant drug that 
soothed the pain, the fear, and the anger. 

Slowly, I opened my eyes, and somehow, I summoned the courage to look at 
her, not in a frightened glimpse, but directly at her. 

I saw that the light that had blinded me was nothing more than a few shy 
rays from the melancholy moon relfected across the surfaces of jewels 
that bedecked rich, heavy robes. I could not see it entirely, but I was 
almost certain that they were robes of pure white, a white that seemed 
to radiant with the depth of something greater than I could know or 
distinguish. 

She gave a kind, bemused chuckle. 

I felt myself blushing, realizing that I had been gawking at her in the 
darkness. 

But how could she have seen me? 

I looked up at her, suddenly wanting to see her face, but it was hidden 
in the shadows of a heavy cowl, white like the rest of her attire. 

"It's a cold night, isn't it?" she reflected.

I knew her purpose and was dismayed, but I abided her if only to hear 
her voice again. 

"Yes," I answered quietly, ashamed of my own voice. 

"You should not be here. I see that you are hurt. Is there any place I 
can take you? Some place warm? People who you know? A home?"

I winced at the mention of the latter and felt the emptineess, the 
sadness, and the hurt returning. I didn't mean for it to happen, but I 
felt the hot tears coarsing down my cheeks once more, each not getting 
as far as the last before the icy wind froze them still. 

She knelt, placed a gloved hand on my shoulder, and asked me what was 
wrong. 

"I have no home," I said. 

"At least let me help you to the shrine. It will offer you shelter." 

She seemed so much to want to help, and listening to her voice, I didn't 
have the courage to refuse her. 

With her help, I limped across the snow-covered courtyard the steps of 
the shrine, where I, depleted by the effort, collapsed unceremoniously 
onto the old wooden porch.

For a second, I felt her eyes on me and a pain that I sensed, rather 
than saw, in them. Then, she turned away from me and headed back into 
the courtyard.

Something in me gave way, a sickening sensation of dread and a new fear 
that somehow seemed familiar. 

I didn't want her to leave me. 

I felt her smile. 

"It's okay. I'm not going far, but I need wood to build a fire." 

A strange happiness warmed me when I heard her say that, something 
almost reminiscent of the giddiness that fills a little child when she 
sees her mother. 

But I was not content. 

"Please, let's just tear some of the planks from the porch and use 
them," I pleaded. 

She paused, pondering it for a second, and then she came back to me. 

Soon, we were seated across from one another, warming our hands with the 
pleasant fire between us. 

It was actually quite nice, though the only sounds for the longest time 
were the crackle of wood in the flame and the occasional murmur of a 
now-calmer winter wind. But before long, I found myself remembering 
things I did not want to remember, until the sounds of the fire and the 
wind became the voices of Tenchi-sama and Ryouko whispering to each 
other in the night and the damned moon became their mistletoe. 

I whispered his name to myself, and the tears came once more, flowing 
freely this time. 

"You are in love," my companion admonished me from nowhere. 

Had my senses been intact, I would've been stunned by her open-ended 
observation, but as it was, I only nodded and continued to cry to 
myself, drowning in the endless sea of my memories and feelings. 

"Tell me, my dear, about this boy named after heaven and earth. Is his 
love really worth these tears, this pain, this sadness? Is he really all 
of heaven and earth to you?"

I thought about. I tried so hard to find it in me to say no, summoning 
the image of Tenchi-sama holding that monster woman and whispering 
things I had once dreamed he would tell me someday, tried so hard to 
tell myself that that dream could no longer have any hope of being more 
than just that dream, but I couldn't find it in myself to be angry. All 
I could feel was sorrow and shame for a shortcoming that must've been in 
me. What made me inferior to that monster woman, I didn't know, but that 
I, Aeka the first princess of Jurai, for all my honorable propriety and 
the glory of my blood was somehow less than a unversal criminal. 

But was he really all of heaven and earth? I asked myself, and soon I 
drowned in memories of the old daydreams that once came to me every time 
I closed my eyes. Some about the noble wife I once believed I could be 
to him and all of the wonderful things that I, who was one day destined 
to be empress of the greatest nation in the universe, could offer and 
share with my husband, and how handsome and grand he would be in the 
robes of noble family of the House of Jurai. Others about that young man 
who was so kind to me when I first came to this strange world, how I met 
the first real friend I felt I had ever had -- how different he was from 
the obedient, lifeless retainers who always seemed to say what I wanted 
to hear and do what I wanted done and those friends who were like dolls 
-- the way in which he taught me to love it in the way he sometimes 
seemed to be so much a part of it. The way he smiled at me whenever I 
was blue and how the world would seem that much brighter.... How he 
worried about me the first time I took ill -- a harmless cold -- on this 
world and how he watched me day and night.... The summer days spent 
sweeping this shrine courtyard and garden, the stories and jokes we 
would share, and how I felt when I saw him laugh.... The times I would 
look down from my bedroom window and see him sitting in the yard 
watching the stars, wondering about the worlds that I knew, and how I 
would sit with him basking in the dreamy light in his eyes as I told him 
of those distant stars.... So many things....

So much more than just heaven and earth....

"Yes," I said, knowing I had never been surer of anything else. "He is 
more than heaven and earth." 

I felt, more than saw, the smile in her eyes, but then it was gone as 
quickly as it had come. 

"Even if he doesn't feel the same about you?"

Something about those words hurt me. That I, Aeka the first princess of 
Jurai, for all my honor, my propriety, my blood, and the honesty of my 
love....?

"The honosty of your love? Aeka-san, my dear, is it really honest? Is it 
really a princess that Tenchi wants? Can all the propriety, dignity, and 
name in the universe really buy the love of Heaven and Earth?"

There was nothing I could say. She had read my mind!

She knew who I was!

Who was this stranger with the brazen audacity to know things just like 
that? 

And yet, it was I who was ashamed. 

"A love is only as honest as its players."

She rose, and I felt her eyes looking down on me. 

"You should go home now, Aeka-himesama. Waiting to die out here will not 
help you win Tenchi's love." 

But... Ryoko...?

She laughed a laugh that I somehow sensed spoke the many things she knew 
but that I could not understand. 

"Look harder, Aeka-san, and you may find that there is a place for you 
in the heart of Heaven and Earth after all." 

I looked up and saw her offering her hand to me. 

"I will take you home." 

I could no longer resist the question. 

"Wait! Please tell me who you are?" I begged. 

She removed her cowl....

And I found myself staring at a beautiful, young girl, her eyes bright 
with an unearthly light, her delicate features chisled like the work of 
some divine sculptor, and her long hair bound in a single beautiful tail 
tied by a bow laced with a yellow carnation. So austere was her beauty 
that it was easy to believe that what I saw was not a person, but the 
work of that divine entity that first said this was the entity called 
Woman, named after the divine beauty that defines Her. 

"I am Achika Masaki, the daughter of Yosho...."

 

* * *

 

I woke up on my own futon, still numb with the pain in my bandaged foot. 

I looked up and saw snow silently falling outside my window. 

I gasped, ambushed by the sounds of snoring from the other side of the 
room, and found Sasami still soundly asleep, her sheets clumsily strewn 
about across the floor. With sigh, I rose, knowing I would not be able 
to go back to sleep. I felt something in me as a watched a shiver pass 
through her. Gently, I unruffled Sasami's sheets and tucked her back in, 
touched by the shadow of the smile that curled on her lip. 

I managed to pad my way downstairs, thinking to make myself some tea and 
wait until everyone else awoke, but as I reached the bottom of the 
stairs, I found myself drawn to the view outside the giant glass windows 
across the ima. I knelt by the windows for the longest time, watching 
the snow and thinking to myself how much it looked like sakura. 

And that was when I found the yellow carnation resting in my hand. 

"Aeka-san?" 

I stiffened, afraid to believe that I would find who I already knew was 
there. 

"T-Ten.... chi..." I managed shyly. 

I warred with myself, wanting so badly to say something to him, but not 
knowing there was anything I could or should say. The silence that 
lapsed was nagged at me, compounding the chaos within my mind, until I 
became aware of the cold sweat that chilled my skin. 

"I'm so sorry about last night. I hope the best for you and Ryoko-san," 
I said at long last, relieved that I had said it, but also saddened, 
feeling my loss crystalized with yet another dimension of reality. 

Is it really a princess that Tenchi wants? Can all the propriety, 
dignity, and name in the universe really buy the love of Heaven and 
Earth...?

No, it was not. Looking at him now, I could see it in his deep, dark 
eyes, in the modest way he carried those princely shoulders of his, in 
his simple clothes, and in the gentle lines of his kind, simple, 
handsome face. Nowhere in him was there that cold, aloof air of the 
aristocracy. 

That was what made him Tenchi. 

I could only wonder how I seemed to Tenchi, but I was too afraid to even 
begin to imagine. 

Yes, I was honest when I wished him and Ryoko-san the best. That was all 
I could be. 

"Aeka-san? Me and Ryoko-san?"

"Please, Tenchi. Be kind to me as a friend, and accept my apologies for 
my behavior last night." 

Tenchi quirked a curious brow, as if he didn't know what I was talking 
about. Then he did the most peculiar thing: he placed the back of his 
hand against my forehead, as if he were feeling for a fever.... 

"Are you sure it was just your foot when you fell down the stairs last 
night? Aeka-san, please tell me if you're ill."

I was astounded. I had no recollection of what he was describing. 

I wondered for a moment if it had all just been a dream, and I would've 
believed it was, but for the carnation that was still in my hand. I was 
so confused, but when I looked into Tenchi's eyes and saw the compassion 
and concern in them, I knew it really didn't matter. 

For what seemed the first time in an eternity, I smiled. 

"No, Tenchi, I'm fine. I just..., well, I...."

He saved me with a quiet (almost-knowing?) smile. Whatever it was, there 
was something that he understood, and whatever it was, I found myself 
somehow grateful. 

"I was going out to get a Christmas tree. I almost forgot."

I looked up at him, remembering.

"Would you like to come help me pick one? I'm not so good at picking out 
things like this." 

My heart raced, a new hope and a new resolve -- more honest than any I 
had ever known -- arose in me. Eagerly, I came to my feet, only to feel 
the stab in my ankle. Hissing in pain, I felt myself fall....

But Tenchi caught me in his arms. 

Heaven and Earth.... and then more. 

Inwardly, I cursed my damned foot and felt tears coming into my eyes, 
feeling something precious and unique, slipping away from me. Then he 
said something to me that I won't ever forget. 

"Maybe I should, uh, carry you?"

My tears did come, but these were of something I had never expected or, 
I don't believe, ever felt until that moment: honest joy. 

In my mind and in my heart, I heard Lady Achika's words. 

Or whoever's words they were.

It didn't matter. All that mattered was the truth and the promise I 
could now see in them. 

The promise and the lesson I would never allow myself to forget. 

Look harder, Aeka-san, and you may find that there is a place for you in 
the heart of Heaven and Earth after all....

 

* * *

Sasami peered out her window and smiled to herself as she watched Tenchi 
and her sister together in the early morning snow. She was even more 
pleased when she saw her own reflection smiling back at her, knowing 
that there really was something special in the air. 

"Merry Christmas, Aeka-neesama...." 

 

********

Author's notes:

 

This is my first attempt at a Tenchi-fic. I was really surprised to find 
that there really weren't that many out there. Personally, I think 
Tenchi offers a lot more possibilites than Ranma. In fact, writing 
Tenchi-fics seems harder than writing Ranma since Pioneer and AIC have 
established more dynamic characters. 

Anyway, I just thought it'd be neat to explore the reaction of one of 
the Aeka/Ryoko duo if actually did choose one. It was an interesting 
idea, but I'm not sure if this did it quite write. Please let me know 
what you think. Please send all comments to Kangei@aol.com. Thanx for 
reading. Soshite dewa matanochihodo.