Yuri Worlds
[11] Legs
Misaki bolted out of her chair and rushed over to Yuka, who staggered backward in alarm. Yuka scrunched up her eyes but followed where Misaki was looking. It didn’t take her long to understand.
Yuka shifted her discolored leg around and attempted to hide it behind the other like a wobbly, distressed flamingo. “It’s not…it’s nothing. I brushed up against something dirty, or maybe it’s a bruise. It’s fine. I just need to wash up.”
Fuyuki rushed over with a dozen frantic questions, and Kei wasn’t far behind in support of her spouse and daughter. They swarmed their youngest daughter with nervous concerns and hopeful hands. Bright pink saturated Yuka’s cheeks as she twisted away from her mothers with the quiet but tenacious insistence that she was fine. Fuyuki took several steps toward her daughter but didn’t press. She heaved a wafting sigh and hesitantly returned to the kitchen. Yuka disappeared around a corner behind the kitchen. Despite so many dragging doubts, Misaki followed her.
The hallway split off left and right. The left, she suspected, led to the small garage. A small, recessed light in the wall was burned out that way, leaving stark shadows. The right ended in a dark and densely packed storage room with the door half open. Misaki pulled in a deep breath and cautiously approached the sealed bathroom door, just short of the storage space. She rapped firmly before wincing at the noise she made, pausing, and softening her contact. What was she doing? She should’ve just left Yuka alone.
Before she could lose her nerve, turn around, and head back, Yuka creaked open the door, with just a single vast, brown eye peeking out. “Oh… I’m sorry. Could you just give me a minute? My big sis can take care of you. I thought maybe you were her.”
Misaki vigorously nodded and shifted her mouth around as though the right response was wedged somewhere in her teeth. She wanted to echo Yuka’s apology and run away.
But she held her ground and asked, “Do you need any help? Is it okay?” She resisted the urge to smack herself for those words. Was she going to clean Yuka’s leg? It was a flippant question, but she envisioned actually helping scrub this cute girl’s leg. She barely avoided turning cartoonishly red.
Yuka sighed against the door and took a step back to open it. This half bathroom contained a smaller, simpler toilet in the corner than the one upstairs. It still had touch controls on the side. Yuka lingered in the doorway and looked down the hall before closing and locking the door again. Against the side wall across from the sink, a pink, fuzzy towel sprawled over a long, low bamboo bench. A cabinet and a linen closet flanked it. This one had a surprising amount of space to stretch out and sit down.
Stepping over to the silvery sink, Yuka bunched up her hair like a dense rope before letting it fall again. The dark patch on her leg was easy to see in the harsh bathroom light. Yuka motioned to hide it again, but eventually brought it forward. Her sock was off, cast to one side. The skin was damp and rubbed red around the spot.
Yuka eased down on the bench with that leg stretched out. Misaki sat as far away as the bench would allow her. Yuka placed a hand just above her forehead and said, “I’m trying to think back to before I met up with your tour group. Did you see anything earlier? Any sign of a bruise or a muddy mark?"
Misaki pulled a breath in and squeezed it tight. She saw plenty of things. It seemed obvious that the weird, spiky black carpet creature had something to do with this. But was it a good idea to bring it up? Haruka may have seen it too. And Franklin saw it before they went on this trip, which gave credence to it being a real thing. Could she live with herself later if she downplayed it and something…bad happened to Yuka?
“Yes. I saw something. When you welcomed me, there was this spirit thing, like a sea anemone or a black fuzzy crab, that burst out near us. Then, on the train, I thought I saw it again by your legs. I wasn’t sure what to think. They said we could experience side effects from travel, so I thought it was a hallucination or some trick of the light.” There, she said it. If there were consequences for the trip because she brought some creepy crawly across the threshold, then so be it.
Yuka‘s eyes widened as she listened. She paused and firmly pressed her lips together. “Wow… freaky. Kinda like a soot sprite? There’s this movie from a while back. It’s one of my favorites. I used to watch it all the time as a kid.“ She cautiously offered up the title, as though she were gently showing off an ancient, beloved stuffed animal with delicate, frayed threads.
Misaki sat up and exuberantly answered that she knew the movie and loved it too. Unfortunately, advancing beyond that simple sentiment presented a minefield of dangerous details to navigate. She let Yuka take the lead, gushing about the gorgeous, hand-drawn visuals. She dubbed it surreal to hear an anime girl talk about anime. However, the visual gap between the film and this world, while she considered both gorgeous, hardly invited the same terminology and descriptions.
Once she burned through her excitement, Yuka leaned back against the wall and quietly added, “I suppose it’s not one of those cool things. Huh. That sucks. I mean, some really old ladies talk about spirit curses, but it doesn’t hurt or feel sensitive. And it could still just be a bruise.” To rule out other possibilities, Yuka used the strongest soap in the cabinet to build up a vigorous lather. Misaki helped when she started to get tired. The dark patch didn’t improve, but at least it didn’t worsen.
Flexing her leg, Yuka sighed and resolved, “So long as it doesn’t bother me, maybe I can just let it heal. Hopefully, it’s healing already. Ayame could take a look at it, but she might freak out worse than my moms. I have a pair of stretchy thigh highs, and they should cover up most of it. Thanks for sitting with me and helping. And telling me what you saw. Sorry for burdening you with my stuff.” She looked over at Misaki calmly, and Misaki gave a quick smile and made an effort to bow, even though she suspected she was probably doing it wrong.
Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
When Yuka slowly stood up to tidy around the bamboo bench, Misaki straightened and asked about Maharu. What was this ‘mommy’ thing? She swiftly amended that if it was painfully personal, then she didn’t have to say. Yuka leaned back and pivoted away. She didn’t appear upset by the question. Misaki shifted her eyes around and considered just withdrawing the question, but Yuka responded quietly, “She doesn’t have moms anymore. So, she picked me as a substitute. She adopted me. It’s silly. But whatever makes her smile, I can tolerate. I don’t feel comfortable delving into it more than that outside of her presence. I hope you can understand.”
Misaki nodded intently. She stumbled through waves of apologies, but Yuka assured her it was fine. If ever she had a problem with any such questions, she promised to be upfront and clear about it. Misaki did her best to swerve as far away from this line of questioning as possible. That meant topics about the soap, the towels, if she needed help with the laundry, and whatever else she could cobble together from her thoughts.
A thin trace of gray, nothing like the shading around her leg, augmented the dark, natural pen trace of her eyes. Tiredness pervaded her features. Misaki sensed it had been there before, but Yuka wielded the cloak of hospitality to shield against it. She may have been this remarkable anime girl, practically the very first Misaki encountered in this world aside from reflections in a mirror, but she saw the girl was also quite human. All of them were.
Before Yuka opened and unlocked the bathroom door, she hopped up and approached her from the side. Only a vague notion of what she was about to do fluttered through her thoughts. A hug. Yuka deserved a proper hug. Not a perfunctory one or anything else ambiguous. She gave her an insistent squeeze, followed by as many expressions of gratitude as she could assemble. No kisses until she had a better understanding of what they might represent.
Nothing about Yuka’s body language told her she had made a mistake. She didn’t put as much enthusiasm into it, but she lightly returned the gesture before opening the bathroom door. Maharu tumbled face-first, right into Yuka’s stomach. She managed to brace herself and didn’t get the wind knocked out of her, but she still appeared startled. Maharu burst out with words.
“Mommy! Are you okay? Where does it hurt? I can kiss it all better!” Yuka wobbled with her footing as Maharu endeavored to smother her discolored leg with smooches. Misaki moved to brace or at least cushion her fall, but she wasn’t quick enough.
“Ouch…oof,” Yuka groaned after both of them tumbled to the tile. Maharu apologized before they even landed. Yuka grumbled about now having a bruised butt to go with her bruised leg. Not missing a beat, Maharu then insisted that she needed to kiss that all better too. Misaki blanched.
The two of them tumbled and rolled. Misaki just barely dodged out of the way. Kei and Fuyuki arrived soon after to do their best to restore order. Chika and Namiko stood at the back of the group with visible amusement. Misaki struggled not to blush, even though she hadn’t done anything embarrassing.
Yuka eventually escaped to change into a different pair of socks that better covered the strange blemish. Her moms were still tense but partially satisfied with the bruise explanation. When she returned, practically everyone’s eyes were on her leg, but she changed her entire outfit.
The new pair of socks did their job. Misaki couldn’t see any flaws in the painterly coloration of her legs. She clearly wasn’t used to wearing them pulled up quite this high as she brushed against the itchy fabric and smoothed it out with her toes. She’d also abandoned her seifuku for a loose, tan top and a much longer but simpler, light blue skirt. A new question settled in Misaki‘s mind to add to the pile: Why was she wearing a school uniform in the first place?
She hadn’t stopped to reflect on it because this world was so suffused with anime visuals and sensibilities that seeing an anime girl in a sailor uniform fit as neatly as the promise of crying cicadas, tatami floors, and girly Japanese names. Would it be too egocentric to simply assume she wore it for presentation purposes when meeting them? Namiko narrowed her eyes at her. Misaki attempted to put on a bright and cheerful but insincere expression.
Kei and Fuyuki clung to their daughter, and Maharu did plenty of clinging too. Yuka’s eyes rolled back in the most teenager-like manner, as though she desperately desired to abandon her body to escape. The four of them packed up the food for the old woman and explained they would be away only a short while. Misaki wanted to say something, to ask to come along. No real reason materialized in her thoughts other than the prospect of seeing what an old person looked like in this world. It was strange that they hadn’t seen even one old person along their trek.
They went through a big city and several train stops. They met waves of travelers trading spaces. Surely she had seen old women along the way, right? Perhaps she just didn’t remember or had been focused on different things? Maybe they didn’t look like the old women she was expecting from her world? What if they looked just like any other girl? Wouldn’t that be quite a boon for tourism? The company hadn’t been clear on exactly how one needed to look as a traveler, just that it needed to be physically possible. In retrospect, age didn’t appear to be a limitation.
More to consider and more to unravel. But she was exhausted. That had to be a side effect, even though Chika and Namiko weren’t showing any signs of it. They roamed around the little outdoor enclosure and crouched in front of the flowing water. Misaki had to jerk up occasionally to free herself from the cobwebs of tiredness. The last wind she possessed slowly dribbled out. She desperately needed a nap.