Yuri Worlds

[36] Spinning

“It depends. My elder mom is always just mom. If it’s just us, I tend to use Mama Kei or Mama Yuki, so they know who I’m talking about. Some communities use rigid honorifics, but they’re considered old-fashioned since Empress Kaguya. She ushered in the Kenshō Era. We had a little bit on the Warring Goddesses Era in class today. It’s a long stretch. Our nation recently started the Reawakened Peace Era. Whatever that means. Just a new calendar. I sometimes call Mama Kei just mum or ma if I feel lazy. I sometimes throw Madame at Yuki Mom if I want to be playful. You’re probably best off sticking with elder mom and younger mom. Both are pretty chill around the house, and I like to think they think you’re pretty neat. I think so too, hehe…”

Misaki stumbled around the topic of how best to distinguish between Yuka’s moms with no assistance from whatever translator had been shoved inside her. It wasn’t a big issue, but it was a nice reason to chat. Yuka took the opportunity to sprawl out on the bed with her as though they were laying on warm, lightly tinted snow. Misaki’s hair practically throbbed as though it were a loose limb wrung out by a vigorous massage.

A strange reminder of physical reality came through in how nasal and muffled their voices sounded while awkwardly talking to one another on their backs. Yuka’s voice remained roughly the same strength, but Misaki’s seemed like she had a half-on nose plug. No matter how muffled, her voice couldn’t quite sink to the depths she managed with her Franklin throat. She suspected she could get close, but it would be a mocking parody instead of a genuine recitation. Not that she even necessarily wanted to sound like Franklin. At least around the present company.

Yuka pulled her legs up and turned her head towards Misaki. “What are your mothers like? From the way you put it, it sounds like it’s much easier to tell them apart in your world. Is that normal?"

Misaki nervously felt like she wasn’t getting enough blood flow to her brain from lying flat to deal with a question like that. This could be dangerous, even though none of the wristband-enforced censorship had been harmful. Just an obvious bleep in their words. No…harm. Yeah.

It seemed fine to lump all the differences into what they had suggested with the chuusei. Nothing had gone wrong with that analogy. She had a mother. One mother. No overwhelming complaints about growing up with her, but she had a domineering and controlling attitude. Everything was a challenge to overcome; everything was a test. Franklin getting turned around so much was a surefire sign of something wrong. Turn right! Be right! She felt right the other way. And mom never provided real help for…her to find her way. Mom wanted to mold her child in her image without any consideration for what Franklin wanted.

Conveying that took a lot of awkward steps, but Yuka grasped the main point. Perfect mothers are no more plentiful in this world than in any other. Ayame had an elder mom who was cut from the same cloth. Yuka passed along what her nurse friend found from her experience. Where you came from and who your ancestors are were critical things to remember and absorb. They deserved respect for setting down a path. But only you can live your life. The responsibility for your spirit and your happiness comes solely from you.

Misaki nodded. Made sense. It was a distilled version of the points that Guy and Dwight often alluded to. She understood, but simply taking in that concept and living it were so different.

Surrounding the topic of her other parent, Misaki mentioned that they met someone in the garden who relayed the details of having children. Yuka squirmed and flashed a mischievous smile while partially hiding her face. Her father. The chuusei partner. What was he like? Misaki avoided the unknown pronoun like a densely packed field of landmines.

Misaki explained that her ‘parents’ met at a… festival event with dancing and were married just a few months later. Yuka noted that her moms had a story with some similar notes. Fuyuki intended to become an engineer. She stayed at a hotel hosting an event where she hoped to make contacts and offer up her resume. But a series of mistakes, accidents, and mishaps led to her conversing several times with the key concierge, Kei.

They had an instant rapport, and when Fuyuki’s prospects at the event didn’t materialize, she eagerly invited her new friend to go dancing. They married within weeks. Yuka glossed over a lot of details on family inheritance, moving out on their own, the old hotel, and other things with long stories attached. But she eagerly wanted to hear about Misaki‘s chuusei mom.

Staring up at the blank vanilla ceiling with faint traced architectural drawing impressions of the boards above provided no assistance to Misaki for how on earth she was going to skirt everything involved in her explanation. She could work from the rough foundation of how aging differed where she came from compared to this world. Little wrinkled old people.

Oddly, some of the details she attempted to grasp were remarkably fuzzy, as though she were trying to extract the slender root of a dream from several days ago rather than the simple physical aspects of her father.

Just side effects again. Or, more likely, this had to be an intentional consequence of trying to smash her brain through an anime world filter. Made sense. Although the lack of disclosure and clarity from the company was the scariest aspect. It took longer than it should’ve, but she was eventually able to wrangle up enough mental crumbs to present an honest picture of her dad.

Stringy, dark, swept-back hair. A ruffled, dense comb forest of a mustache. Facial hair wasn’t impossible in this world, but it took Yuka several minutes to wrestle with the idea internally before shrugging it off with a shiver. The broad features and rectangular shape had some equivalence with muscular sports girls and sumo. Forested scatterings of body hair also stretched the limits of Yuka’s imagination, along with quizzical notions of truly narrow hips.

As Misaki filled in all the fatherly details, there was a shadow vision that carved its way as an echoing complement to what she discerned of her dad. It was her second mom. Instead of being fully alarmed or bewildered, even though there were traces of both, she scrutinized the details.

This mom had pronounced eyebrows that curled and curled where her father’s jutted out. Light flips and twists of dark brown hair spilled around her shoulders. Massive, Coke bottle-style glasses remained with a sharp black frame. She retained the freckles that Franklin outgrew, with understated but still casually pleasant features and full pink lips. The gray eyes were the same but swollen to such proportions that she would easily fit in this world. Dark gray and blue plaid, which her father always enjoyed getting for Christmas, remained. And a striking bust.

Not that poor Namiko deserved to be the yardstick against which all others were measured, but this materializing mom had a sharply projecting, softly rounded prominence that no top attempted to disguise. Rolling with this absurd notion led to personalized memories where this new mom gently brushed her long hair and comforted her about something she just couldn’t remember. She wasn’t Misaki in this strange mental snapshot. That much she could easily be certain of. But why would whatever the company was trying to do to her brain give her an image of a girl who wasn’t her intended role?

Pushing ahead through that emotional quicksand, she laid out a picture of her mother for Yuka. A twisty mass of slate silver hair at the end, even though she had dark locks until the last few years. The crepes and creases of age around her mouth. Cheeks with leathery droops and sharp lines. A tight furrow drawing her thin eyebrows together in endless scrutiny and derision. At the same moment, like an artist with pencils bound together, another mother developed. Her medium-brown hair was gently permed with sweeps and waves. The thick glasses she wore were traced in the same black pen but with fashionable ease. Her eyebrows arched without harsh fury. She looked out curiously and kindly, greeting her daughter. Her top was faintly evocative of the bright tone of Misaki‘s eyes, tucked in to contrast her narrow waist with a prominent figure. Black denim pants swelled around her hips.

Odd details spawned around these manifestations. She knew that the same mother gave birth to her, but this new mom spent more time around her. And she was the one who gave birth to her little sister… Misaki shook off this rogue notion. Clearly, her initial hunch about this whole system being some psychological implant from the company to keep them saying the right things at the wrong time to the locals was the answer. And it wasn’t exact.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Yuka whispered lightly to herself and made careful notes about the vague chuusei version of Misaki’s parents. When she was done, she rolled closer and lightly brushed Misaki on the leg and shoulder. The three of them had already eaten, but they were welcome to snacks and dessert along with the nightly tea ceremony. Yuka had a stray awareness of the books that Misaki and her companions brought. Neither of them approached the matter closer than that simple reference, as though something was firmly pushing them away. Bringing up the subjects of the other books that came with them wasn’t quite as difficult, but Misaki still found herself only providing the faintest gloss of their material. Yuka had a slightly different train of thought she wanted to bring into the station.

“We should take a shower together. It would be too far to walk to the closest bathhouse. The shrine and the clinic have both set up temporary little barrel baths once or twice. More out of necessity or for amusement. But it’s part of our culture. Bathing is meant to be communal. All girls together. I can help you shower and rinse, and there should be plenty of space for the two of us to soak and partake in… You know, quiet reflection.”

All that made careful sense as Yuka explained it to her. But her brain felt like it was spinning in place without anything to hold onto. She wasn’t sure about this. Nor was she sure about a multitude of things swallowing her up. Franklin would’ve sighed, resigned, and offered something non-committal and vague.

“Yes. Let’s wash up together and wash away whatever troubles from today.” She said it, even though every fiber of Franklin revolted in response. And it didn’t matter. Misaki bobbed in that chaotic sea. Tiredness, the wind, or something else, saturated her. It was like the world was slowly corkscrewing while she sat still. It could be all that anime blood zooming around in a supine position. Maybe she had a woozy reaction to something she ate earlier or one of the exotic plants. The interior of her mouth was still in the early stages of recovery.

It didn’t take Yuka long to notice the way she was wavering when gradually sitting up. She sprang into action as a nursemaid and positioned Misaki on and around all the pillows, plushies, and blankets in the vicinity. That luscious cushion cradled Misaki like an earthbound cloud.

The symptoms of this vertigo, or whatever it was, remained. It might’ve been a cold, but what would anime girl germs look like? Who could she possibly have caught it from? Perhaps someone in the gaming complex? Too soon. Symptoms wouldn’t be showing this quickly. No one at the high school seemed explicitly sick that she could remember. Getting sick from the rain was just an old wives' tale. It could’ve also come from anywhere in the last couple of days. No easy answer. She just worried about making Yuka or anyone else feel warm and woozy too. But Yuka didn’t fret about that one iota. Instead, she got something damp and cool for Misaki’s forehead while keeping the rest of her wrapped up and comfortable.

It wasn’t long after that that the mothers were informed that their guest was under the weather. They swiftly applied every remedy under the sun. Warm soup materialized within arm's length. With the sensitive spot under her cheek, Misaki tentatively partook. The food had been precisely adjusted with concern for her sensitivity. An immediate cure seemed to be somewhere in all that love and care. She wanted to tell everyone that she was feeling fine now, but the forces of recovery refused to leave things at that platitude.

One moment she was finishing up the bowl, and the next she was in some strange dreamworld with a wispy hallway that looked like an office with a hidden purpose. Transparent girls slowly wandered from one room to another. She focused on one specific little girl who lingered behind the rest. Her hair was scattered and unkempt, like a bird’s nest waterfall flowing past her shoulders. Something was different about her. She had a strangely subdued aura. All the girls had general oddities about them that she couldn’t quite give specifics to, but this one drew her attention by being so reserved. The rough outline of her shadow against the wall had more presence than her physical form.

Others led this meager little girl away. She had her head down the whole time and meekly absorbed the shouts and anger blasting over her. Wiggling nervously in place, a protective shadow became her insulating the shelter. Despite this bulkhead, the shy little girl looked like she might get sick from all that was heaped upon her. Misaki didn’t feel herself, but the person she was near reached out a hand and gently stroked this strange girl’s mass of hair.

Surprise mixed with precious discovery filled the little girl’s features. A cloud parted between them, and the girl returned the touch with curiosity. Her eyes were wide and searching. She pulled her hand away from the little girl’s hair. And it was gone. A blank, impossible stump remained at the wrist. Screaming, like an inhuman alarm, blared from the heavens and surrounded everything. The little girl pulled back in fear and shock. She pulsed in place like she was made of sound, barely confined by a physical form. The screaming reached a painful crescendo as shadows swarmed in all directions and consumed Misaki whole.

Waking wasn’t a cinematic slam back to reality, jerking up in bed. She did twitch, but with the tiniest of external signs, little more than simply shifting in place. Bed. She was in bed. Yuka’s bed. Sweat clung to so many places and refused to leave. Sitting up showed that, despite having a nap, the annoying illness refused to let her go. The first, shed layer of the wound within her mouth was ready to choke her. Water on the nearby table helped.

Around her, she could hear that the wind had shuffled off the illusion of calm and returned to its previous primal fury. It roared for a rematch but had no teeth against the walls. The most it could do was gently rattle the nearby false bay window and press a whistle between invisible seams. Sitting up still didn’t feel quite right, but it wasn't as scary a proposition as earlier.

How long has she been asleep? The lights above were on now, and the glimmer through the window wasn’t as radiant as before. It didn’t seem that much later. But the little language of the environment that communicated time seemed subtly foreign and markedly inscrutable.

It could’ve been minutes or several hours. Standing up from the bed and shutting her eyes, she rocked her head a few different ways to double-check her balance. Just a faint discombobulation. Faintly off. Not enough to worry about, and more like her hair was throwing her off. That didn’t make any sense.

Why would her hair be throwing her off when it wasn’t even that long? She had longer hair as Franklin than as Misaki. Largely by design. The others went with sprawling plumes, easy to snag anywhere and on anything. They’d been lucky so far, but she knew. With all the other crazy physical details they’d all have to get used to, tossing an inescapable wig in there was just one more thing. It just made sense.

Although they got used to a myriad of personal changes in what felt like record time. Was that just human nature? Adaptation to a new way. Franklin always acquiesced so easily. Submit to the fact that these two would be his only friends in school. Give up the notion that they’ll be around forever. Concede to the loneliest and most hapless profession. Allow all the intrusions that the world and those above him ask for.

But the others. They weren’t made like that. So many foundational elements around her made no sense if she actually looked at them closely. And she didn’t want to just shrug it all off as a side effect or one of those things to figure out later in a heap of confusing weights. But what other choice did she have?

She looked down at her wristband. That damn thing. She took it off in the shower last night. Maybe she should do it again. Just be with Yuka without the thought police trying to cover up and memory hole everything. Without the need for further pondering, she stripped it off like a sticky Velcro glove.

And nothing happened. Nothing bad, nothing good. The world continued to spin. Time ticked from one second to the next. Nothing just dissolved, and nothing emerged. Perhaps she was making more of it than she should’ve. Laying the blame for illness on a simple nocebo. Why couldn’t this just be a fun and carefree vacation?