Kyoko looked down the slope to where
her two best friends sat chatting by the water line.
Took you long
enough.
It wasn’t as if
they hadn’t spoken before, but they hadn’t spoken about those
things. Still, as far as Kyoko could recall they had stayed friends
despite all. Friends with things unspoken between them, but friends
still.
She left her
friends by the water, climbed the hillside and crossed the veranda to
the kitchen.
With the kids
still sleeping and all the local guests gone both house and garden
seemed larger than before. It was, Kyoko decided, that a place needed
people milling around to seem small.
She quickly made
tea and gathered some of yesterday’s leftovers for an impromptu
breakfast. Or rather an impromptu first breakfast. Yukio might be
first in her heart, but sometimes she wanted to be alone. She’d
wake him up in time for a second morning meal, and he’d know it was
her second, and he’d pretend he didn’t know; and she’d love him
all the more for that.
I became an
adult believing you were all so strong, but maybe the strong ones
were the two of us. Kyoko
grimaced a little. That wasn’t entirely honest. Maybe
because we were allowed to be the teenagers we were. Urufu and
Kuri-chan hadn’t been, and as for Ryu and Noriko, well they got
dragged into the world of adults in a way Kyoko and Yukio avoided. It
hurt us and it gave us gifts, but I guess we could step aside and
watch it from the outside.
Suddenly grateful
for everything Kyoko sat down in a chair and enjoyed some time by
herself. This time as an adult by choice.
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