2 comments/ 12343 views/ 8 favorites Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 01 By: TaLtos6 *** I had another account that I wanted to use to test things. Based on the results, I doubt I'll ever use it again. Anyway, I posted this there, but after about 9 hours and a comment which was unsavory enough for the administration of Lit - and not me - to remove on the different story that I'd begun there, I pulled this one off long before it was to appear. I liked the characters in this too much anyhow. I was a little undecided in which category to put this one in. I suppose that it could have gone in under 'interracial' since the main characters are of differing backgrounds, but then, thinking on it a little, I decided that the male protagonist probably wouldn't care - in fact, I know that he wouldn't. So here it is under 'romance'. Only 5 chapters long in various lengths, since I wanted it to be fairly brief. I might even get them all posted in one day. This first chapter reveals more of the girl - since it has to. She's just a bit, um, different. I just had the idea to write this and, not wanting to get too deep, I left out a lot of other associations that these people might have. Well, I'm on vacation and this was just languishing on my hard drive. 0_o ======================================== Part One: Taeko 妙子 "mysterious child" The night was failing. She pulled over on the deserted back-country road when she heard the chime indicating the receipt of a text message. On her way back from the final wipe-down and check, she read the fourth and last of the messages sent by the last of the men indicating successful completion - meaning a boarding call at the airport - on her short-lived phone before she turned it off and removed the back cover. With a tiny LED flashlight held in her lips, she pulled out the battery and removed the tiny card which was the phone's identity from its little retaining clip. Turning off the light, she pulled back onto the road and drove to the repo yard out on the outskirts to park in darkness a block away for a few minutes, reviewing, looking for mistakes or more importantly, for omissions or neglected details. Not in what was behind her, but rather what lay ahead. For the moment, she found none and got out to transfer some articles from the vehicle to a small motorcycle hidden in some tall grass. That done, she removed the license plates from the car, pulled her mask on and put her hood up as she slipped into the yard, taking care to stay on path which she'd mapped out for herself; out of the view of the yard security cameras. A quick look to see that the drugged guard dog still slept soundly and she ran back out, reversing her course. The fence locks were no trouble again, and then she idled the car in through the back gate where there were no cameras and parked it back in the weeds in the same spot that she'd removed it from hours before. There had been one camera which was positioned to view the back gate, but the system had been installed by amateurs who'd left the cable in plain view as it ran up the pole. That's why there was no working camera there now. The plates went onto another vehicle -- under the ones which were already there. She thought for a moment, and then she was certain that she'd left no prints inside of the car or out before she stole out to the street again and refastened the locks. From there, it was a short sprint to the old Honda SuperCub 100. Pulling her helmet on, she had it running inside of three kicks and she was off then, down the paved concession road to the heavily-weeded entrance of an overgrown field two kilometers away. At this point, she needed to be away from the yard more than anything. She rolled quietly to a spot diagonally across using the trail beaten down by the passage of many off-road bikes and four-wheelers. Her path grew even harder to follow when she pulled out onto the dirt road, being careful to stay in one of the worn ruts -- the same ones that would be driven on in maybe half an hour by people from the snobby monster-homes a little to the north as they drove to their well-paid day jobs. She shut the little bike off and coasted silently down the road for 30 meters as she turned in at the storage rental place and pushed the bike past the barrier quietly, noting that the night man was still sawing wood as he did every night at this time. She pushed on to one of the units there. Opening the locked door quietly, she pushed the old bike inside and removed the plate in darkness. Her long bag went over her shoulder as she left and locked up before scaling the back fence and walking quickly across another field and an orchard. She saw a young doe looking at her and she was careful to walk on and change nothing in her step or her demeanor which might give the animal a clue that she was even aware of it. Seeing the doe gave her a good feeling. It meant that the farmer wasn't nearby, or the deer wouldn't have been there to eat the apples that she'd left there for her. She stopped at the edge of the orchard and looked at the house in the distance for a moment. She could hear the harvester running and watched as it rumbled out to begin the day's work right on time. The fact that it was headed in the opposite direction caused her to smile before she ran hunched over to the long little gully in the weeds twenty yards away. She passed her other bike still lying where she'd left it and went on until she was at the gate to open it just a little. Back at the bike, she strained to muscle it upright before she inserted the key into the ignition. The engine cranked over six times and then it started just as it did any other time. With it idling quietly, she took off her helmet and removed her hood and mask before she removed the black cover from the brightly-painted helmet and put it on again. Her riding pants went over her thin black ones and her jacket went on after she'd pulled on her boots. She was on her bike in a flash and idled it carefully out to the gate. With the gate closed, she made for the ruts on this dirt road and puttered out to a larger road. At the stop sign, she looked up, judging that she had less than a half hour of darkness left to her. Plenty of time. It wasn't until then that she began to really breathe again, and it wasn't until she was on the secondary highway with the other early commuters that she really got out of idle, just another young woman on her way to work, it seemed. There was still a bit of the morning gloom as she pulled into the garage of her rented home. She shut the motorcycle off and after a quick look around; she opened the long bag and began to care for her weapons. It was all rather automatic to her now. She cleaned them and inspected them as she paid more attention to the sounds of the dawning day around her. With everything complete, she opened the hiding place and set the bag inside. If everything worked out today, she'd be back in here tonight to take the bag to a more permanent place of concealment. With another look around, she stepped to the small workbench and placed her dismantled phone in a crucible, leaving out the battery, but including the little phenolic card. Lighting a small propane torch, she spent the next seven minutes burning what she could and melting the rest. As the smoke and fumes cleared, she looked over at her bike. It had a lineage, being one of the smaller siblings of the model. It was coal black and a little worn, though not much. It had been supplied to her and now she wished to keep it for a time. A 600cc crotchrocket, though by the time of its manufacture, it had been made as more of a commuter machine, so while it wasn't a slug exactly, it was at best a toned-down version. It suited her needs and was unremarkable and quiet enough to not raise eyebrows and she liked it. She wanted to smirk every time that she saw it; every time that her eye was drawn to the model name on the side covers -- ninja. The irony was not lost on her. With everything done for the moment, she let herself into her temporary home. She turned on the coffeemaker and stepped into the shower. Her motions were a little automatic then themselves as she scrubbed her body and her washed hair well before she reached for a towel. By the time that she sat down and looked out of the window at the new day, she knew that she'd done what she'd come all of this way to do. Her birth mother was also here, though miles away in a city, being the grief-stricken parent that she was as she was comforted by the police and the other relevant authorities. The woman at the table didn't know of it, but once the spotlight and attention was off her mother, the woman would be visited late at night in her hotel room by another woman who had heard of the tragedy -- as though it were possible not to the way that the media had been all over the murder. The two women would weep together late at night and then part, the nature of the second woman's life requiring the clandestine nature of the visit and familial love and duty demanding that it happen. Her mother was here to collect the body and see about having it shipped back with her to where it had been born and grew up belonging to a lively girl, the younger sibling who had but little knowledge of her family's long history and likely would have wanted to know nothing of it in any regard. She'd wanted to be a doctor. The woman opened a little vinyl pouch then and drew out a few old photographs, laying them out on the table. She looked at the images of her little sister for a long time as her tears fell silently. So, she thought, it was over -- as 'over' as it was going to get, anyway. There were four bodies which would likely never be found and if they were, then the coroner's office would have the first of many challenges facing them. Four male bodies with no heads, hands, genitals, or feet scattered in four locations, all very well hidden; the other body parts wrapped in galvanized mesh and weighed down before they'd been sunk in four different places in Lake Huron. The many fingertips had been run through a food processor and the pulp poured out and left for the gulls and fish at the waterline of two small and remote rock outcroppings in a bay about ten miles away from the rest and on the other side of a peninsula. She shrugged slowly to ease the pent-up tension and stiffness from a long night of driving. It had required commitment and resolve, but then she had lots of those qualities. They'd been driven into her in her homelands long ago. Attention to detail just went with that, or you just weren't effective for very long -- which meant that you were a liability to those who had trained and were paying you. Liabilities were not allowed. The campus at the university would be buzzing in a day or so, she thought, but that was alright. She didn't attend any classes there, though her sister had. The place had a reputation for the frequent assaults on female students and for one reason or another, nothing much was ever done about it, other than to hire more security, which was about as effective as throwing noodles at a dartboard. Well perhaps now, it would be the male students who were a little nervous to be there for the night classes. If she were 'home' now she'd be having tea and preparing to sleep, but here, well, sleep was out of the question and so coffee it was. She sipped from her mug and wondered what to do with the rest of her life. She couldn't go home, not yet anyway. She had no plans to return there for almost two years to keep attention from her mother and others. And that was assuming of course, that she returned at all. She'd done well for her employers many times over and before fatigue or the grief which was their concern caused her to slip, she'd been given a hiatus. She smirked. What they hadn't said was that after this was done, she was to stay away for the set time, and if she was still alive and uncaught afterward, she might be allowed to return then. Taeko, she thought for the millionth time as she traced the kanji for her name on the table top with her thumbnail. 妙子 Tae-ko, she thought; 'mysterious child'. She smirked again slowly. Well she certainly was that. So mysterious that even she didn't know much of anything about some of her own origins and what she did know, she kept hidden. She'd been quite a mystery to herself in the beginning. At first, she knew only what the woman who had raised her had said of it. Now, she knew a lot more of herself than many people alive today know of their heritage, but most or all of it, depending on what one might believe, was cast in permanent shadow. Twenty-seven years before, a young woman met several people who took her and her swollen belly to a coastal village where she boarded a trawler and traveled to what was perhaps the most remote little fishing village on an island which was in the Japanese group traditionally, but it was a place which was inside the old dispute with the USSR while there had been such a thing. The woman was someone for whom the birth of a child would be problematic to have to explain, but it didn't matter. The child was born en route at sea and there was another woman along who wanted the baby and this had been arranged by two parts of an ages-old family alliance. The first woman gave birth to a little girl and left as soon as possible to complete her recovery at a private clinic in Japan. That woman now grieved the death of one of the two children that she could ever admit to having given birth to. Taeko had been the first - the child who was born on a trawler out on the sea of Okhotsk on the way to the village of Chayvo and was never spoken of. She was the daughter who grew up and by her own force of will and desire to know had traversed a political border as well as two natural ones and overcome every single device set in place to prevent her from ever reaching that woman so that she might ask the things which she wanted and needed to know. After their very tense meeting late one night in an old barn during the summer monsoon, her birth mother had lowered her blades and acquiesced. Over the next few weeks, she'd told her hidden daughter everything of her ancestry that she wished to know, all that she knew herself. It was a risky thing for them both since it was also forbidden. During that time, Taeko met and fell in love with her half-sister, Yukio -- which had caused Taeko to smile almost every time that the girl had crossed her mind since. Yukio had a rare quality; she could cause anyone to fall in love with her -- anyone at all. Even now after the tragedy, Taeko found that she could almost smile a little. One minute, she'd been a guest in a home where she was an unacknowledged relative with Yukio hanging on her every word, fascinated to find that she had a sibling and obviously thrilled at the fact, and the next thing that Taeko knew, Yukio was there in her heart. Her other, slightly older half-sister had been away at school and Taeko had never met her. Taeko supposed that was why this had happened in the first place. Her sister had been a very open and warm person. Perhaps it had made her a little too trusting. By blood, Taeko was half-Japanese, her ancestry on that side coming from farming stock in the old Shinshu region. She knew enough from her own research of her birth mother to have reasonable certainty that she was descended from one of the poor who'd been recruited to be what the Japanese film industry might portray as kunoichi, trained in a school set up for the purpose sometime not long before 1573 AD. The school had been begun it was said, by Mochizuki Chiyome, a noblewoman whose existence is often disputed by modern scholars. Taeko did not dispute it at all. She knew better. From what she knew, Mochizuki Chiyome had come from the Koga clan and had connections to no fewer than five clans who all used shadow warriors of their own. As far as Taeko had been able to determine, the Lady Chiyome was no stranger to the shadow arts herself. Taeko had traced her lineage to one of three women in that time period, all of the same family in the Takeda clan, all of them reputed to have been mikos, wandering female shamans who were often thought to be insane. It was what they showed often so that people would leave them alone as they wandered and sought for the information or the target which they'd been given. In truth, they'd been intelligence agents, gleaning information and every now and again, they'd also been used as assassins. As Shinto nuns, they were allowed to travel freely, and as what they were in reality, they were very adept at employing common, everyday implements and tools which could be easily hidden and used as deadly weapons. The existence of that school was never proven and of course, in light of modern research, the notion was cast aside as popular legend of the day. Given the purpose and nature of her birth and childhood, Taeko only thought it fitting somehow. You allow to be known what you want to be known and hide everything else. What she knew was that the school had never existed as a place. It had been created and still lived on a very small scale as a method. Well Taeko had traveled to Nagano Prefecture, what had once been known as Shinano Province. Before that, it had been called Shinshu and there she'd found the modern descendant of the old village of Nazu. It had been quite an odyssey. Unless one was privileged by blood and could provide the necessary bona fides that she was a descendant, knew where to make her inquiries, and could back it up to the right people, showing lineage at every generation to pass the first two questionings, it was a dangerous undertaking. The mere act of inquiring at that level was to undertake a risk, since failure to answer to the satisfaction of the questioners would result in her quiet disappearance. Each stage had attracted one or two more examiners -- some from her own birth clan who had been summoned to act as witnesses. The third 'examination' was to reveal the existence of a small tattoo located in an intimate place, after which one had to prove sufficient knowledge of the doings of a miko -- something which was not practiced anymore at all, other than in a ceremonial way at Shinto shrines. It was the application of that tattoo as a child which had sparked Taeko's need to know as much as she could. It wasn't large and it wasn't more than a few symbols, but it said a lot to someone who knew what it stood for. After that, there was a test of ability. Since Taeko had schooling in these things, she passed all tests set for her and impressed the examiners enough with the other skills that she'd learned in her cold and often desolate island classroom that she was told that she would be shown whatever she wished to know -- after one last test. Before that final trial, she'd been informed that it was her last chance to decline, but she knew that by that point, to decline was to ask for her death, and really, there was the cost to the examiners in the lives of the two men who were to be pitted against her. Either choice was the death of someone in this. It had lasted less than three minutes. Taeko walked out of the old building alone. At the end of that, her acceptance caused the two parts of the family to both use her as needed by mutual permission, if a favor was needed, or to mutual benefit. By that point, the existence of the weapon that was Taeko was known to both sides. The other fifty percent of her lineage had been the result of her mother's capture by Russian authorities as a spy. Since she hadn't been acting on behalf of the government of Japan, it would normally have resulted in her quick and quiet disposal. Rather than just execute her quietly, someone had been paid to arrange to have her sent to the old prison complex in the settlement of Tymovskoye on the island of Sakhalin. The place had been officially closed for years by then and what the Russian government called a free settlement had begun there. Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 01 But that was not where the woman was sent. She arrived at what had been an outpost of the prison far to the north. Other than her and one guard, who was one of the indigenous groups on the island engaged as more of a caretaker, she was alone. Once there, she was forgotten officially. The only person who knew and had arranged the often infrequent shipments of food and supplies died of a cardiac infarction at his dacha one winter night a year later and the shipments stopped, but by then, Taeko's mother was no longer there anyway. She'd made her escape by seducing her guard and the two of them had gone after hearing nothing for several months. That guard was a man of the Nivkh people and was a shaman himself, so out of boredom, they'd grown close and taught each other of their own beliefs. They lived for a time in the wilderness together, but she had to leave at his insistence when he'd heard that someone somewhere had discovered that there was supposed to have been one prisoner at the prison and that an investigation was underway. That pointed to the only guard and caretaker as someone who would know. Taeko's mother journeyed back to her mainland clan and the man vanished into the taiga forestland even farther north. She'd come back only because it had been stipulated as the place where she could have the details of the impending birth taken care of quietly and where there was a home there for the child. The two women didn't know each other and they never saw each other again afterward. After Taeko's birth and the departure of her birth mother, the trawler sailed and did what fishing trawlers do with the 'new mother' and her infant aboard. The fish were running and the village needed the food and the fish to sell. By the time that it pulled into port again, there was little to be seen of any signs of a completed pregnancy anyway and the child's birth at sea was documented by the local authorities, who were Russian, of course. A half a week later, the same woman took the same infant to the Japanese authorities at a different fishing village on the island of Hokkaido, where the child was given Japanese citizenship, neither nation knowing about the other in this. Little Taeko was raised and taught in both places by members of the same family -- also in both places. For everyday use, she went by the name Khoe, the name of a small place on the island of Sakhalin. 'Taeko' was what she knew herself as. It was a name which she kept very privately. It was the name which her birth mother had passed on to the woman who had adopted her and raised her for the relative wealth which she was paid to do that by the clan there. That night in the monsoon, when she'd tried to speak to the woman who she'd learned had given her life, and who stood in the shadows of a barn in the teeming rain not knowing anything of the reasons why she was being pursued by this stranger, she'd pulled back her hood, held up her hand and pointing to herself, had said only 'Taeko'. After a long moment of shock, the sound of that name had changed everything for them both and her mother knew that the pursuit had been nothing more than a young woman who sought to know her mother. So to a very few people, she was Taeko. To everyone else who might inquire, she was Khoe. Khoe was the name of the girl who grew up learning to fish on a trawler and hunt in the taiga forests when she wasn't learning many ways to fight or end lives. Her many teachers taught her many things; languages, reckoning, the 'art' of concealment and the skill of disguise. Though she shuttled back and forth between Sakhalin and Japan and understood the Japanese culture as well as the Russian one, in her heart, she loved the wilderness and tramped there alone whenever she had the time for it. By luck or fate, that was how she met her father. She was hunting alone in the forest and as skilled as she was, she was astounded to find a man next to her in the snow. He spoke to her a little cautiously in the northern Nivkh dialect and she answered just as carefully. Since there are only less than five thousand people of Nivkh extraction on and around the island, and due to the policies of Russian governance over the past century and a half which left only about thirty percent or so still conversant in the language, it didn't take them long to figure things out. Nivkh people tend to run to the shirt side and she stood a bit above that, equal to him. Her skin was a bit dark for an ethnic Japanese and it was light for an Nivkh person. There is a population of ethnic Japanese there, but the number of people of mixed blood on the island is small indeed. Far easier to find people of Russo-Japanese heritage. She tried to seek him out whenever she had a chance. She knew how to survive there year-round, having learned from the men in her family, but he had things to teach her and she treasured what she learned. To her, it was the difference between surviving and living well and comfortably in the taiga as though she belonged there. She'd never told anyone about her father because she knew that he lived as he did because of what he'd done with her mother. She was the result of that, and so to her, it was something which she respected. She asked him once if he thought that he could ever return to a regular life there and he'd shaken his head. With such a small population and with the way that Russian authorities had of never forgetting anything, he doubted it. Another thing which she never spoke to anyone about was her knowledge -- gleaned over careful evenings, that her birth mother wanted to see her father again and though Taeko had never said anything of it to him, she knew that it was mutual. One day, she thought, she hoped to call in a few favors and arrange for her father to escape his island prison and perhaps they might meet again. She had it in her to be something of a spy, though not in the way that such things went today. She was adept at gleaning information in many ways; that was all. It was something which had been drilled into her along with everything else. She had it in her to be a lot of things as needed and if necessary. Not that there had been anyone in a position to notice or admire it besides the men who had been sent to set this stage, but Taeko also had it in her to be an instrument of her family's vengeance. The four dead young men might one day have had to serve a little time for the brutal sexual assault and murder of her half-sister. Then again, to Taeko's mind, it largely depended upon the quality of the legal firm or firms which had been engaged to defend them. She'd come to circumvent that. Where she was from, that didn't matter. The clan had existed ages before there were such things as legal counsel and attorneys, before the land under her bare feet now had even had the ability to form itself into anything like the nation which it had become. Her family had done their ancient ways of business before there even was a nation unified into something called Japan or any federation of united soviet socialist republics or the federation that it was calling itself these days. Long before any of them had even had any sort of criminal code, her family had on occasion meted out their own brand of cause and effect. That was how it had always been. When word of the horrific death of her sister had reached her, there were already four men on their way to where it had happened. They ranged in their ages from twenty to forty-seven and between them; they learned what needed to be known and made preparations. Taeko had been in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk at the time. Before the first round of her own tears had even dried, she was on a plane flying over the Tartar straight to the city of Khabarovsk. She was given the job on behalf of her clan by a representative of another old family, this one Russian, the man telling her that they had sent two of their own in the group out of their respect for her clan and their combined history and since there was no one else available on short notice. Taeko had accepted and then boarded an Aeroflot flight to the west. If anything, her birth mother knew that she was aware of her sister's passing. She thought it likely that her mother knew that the crime would be answered, but Taeko doubted that her mother had the slightest idea by whose arm that answer would come. When Taeko had arrived two days after her mother had confirmed the identity of the deceased young woman, there was already the framework of a life for her to step into; already a thick dossier for her to read which covered all that the men had learned for her. The home which she lived in had been rented months before on the unlikely chance that there might be some business for the family in this area, so it would serve by good fortune. The rest had taken three days to put into effect inside an abandoned abattoir far from where the crime had occurred. Taeko hadn't been involved in the abductions. That wasn't her role in this. She was only there so that she could take their privileged and self-important lives with a piece of steel. The families took care of their own as they always had. She'd been given the honor of the final stroke; that was all. The young men knew the features and general ethnicity of the girl who they'd beaten, sexually assaulted and murdered. She guessed that it couldn't have been too great a stretch to be faced with an assailant whose eyes resembled those of their victim. Those eyes were all that they saw of her face. Given what was normal and usual in her trade, speaking was unprofessional in the extreme, and she'd said nothing. There was nothing to be said anyway, though they all begged for their lives. One of them made all sorts of outlandish promises that his rich and powerful father would pay her a lot of money to return him unharmed. Taeko had stopped her preparations then and looked at him for a long moment as he interpreted the action as something to hope for. He babbled on for a moment, trying to convince this silent woman; the pitch of his voice rising. She slowly shook her head and waved her hand from side to side a little so that he knew there were going to be no deals here. She hoped that he could see that this was a lot closer to the heart than that but he didn't get it. She decided that he would be the last and would see the passing of the others before him. He didn't stop babbling. He thought that he might bargain for his life in the same way that he'd likely sold magazine subscriptions door-to-door when he was a kid. Worst of all, he wouldn't shut up and it gave the rest of them a little hope. It was something that she was not prepared to allow. Taeko set her blade down on a table and walked to where the babbler stood bound. She looked into his eyes and he still kept on. She held up her hand and waited for him to wind down and once he finally petered out, she whispered one word in English as she pointed to herself. "Sister." That shut them up -- at least it took them back to quiet weeping. Taeko went back to her preparations. In each case, the images of their second-last sights on earth were of Taeko coming to them with a sword of a type not in use by the famous samurai of long ago. Hers was far more utilitarian, though the type had been seen in a few fanciful movies within the past thirty years. When she walked toward them each time to take the next, the diminishing chorus of frightened screams rose. Taeko didn't care much, particularly. She just thought that it said something that not one of them had a gram of stoicism in them. It's not difficult to die, she thought, why not just close your eyes and say nothing if you are afraid? She'd said nothing each time that she'd severed a head, bending down as quickly as she could to lift up the gory trophy by the hair. It had to be done as fast as possible for the final touch. Their last sights were of their own bodies dying as she held their heads up so that they could see it as they passed. Like everything else in this, there was a tiny bit of tradition. Holding up someone's severed head to force them to watch themselves die was a very ancient insult. The bodies were loaded up and taken away by two of the men and a third had handled the distribution of the smaller pieces while she and the fourth did the wash-down of the place. All of it had taken the one long night, especially after the last man left. Each man had sent her a curt text message about fish on her cell and then boarded one of four different flights in two different general directions. Now, she was tired and her sword arm ached. It was never as easy as it looked in the movies. A human neck is not a sausage and the placement of the killing stroke was important. She rotated her arm and shoulder as she looked once more at the photographs. On the whole, she felt empty inside. Though she hadn't known Yukio for more than a couple of years, they did share something and it prevented Taeko from maintaining the distance which she normally felt at times such as this. It took the better part of three weeks for the feeling of loss to ease for her. ================================================== Kerry Browne had little on his mind today. He needed a few office supplies for his ... 'office', such as it was. That consisted of his laptop for the most part, though every once in a long while, he did need to actually use paper. Which he now held two blocks of under his arm, along with some black ink and a couple of small brushes. Not ink cartridges, mind you, real ink, the wet kind. The brushes had been an impulse, since when he was here he seldom played at calligraphy, but he was finding that he needed at least some sort of creative outlet these days and he was too busy to do much of anything else. His uncle had amassed a few fields near to his own either through purchasing them directly or by rental and over the years, he'd farmed mostly cash crops. But the heart attack had stopped things cold late in the winter and a lot of it was out of the question now. That was where Kerry had come in. Kerry Browne had lived an interesting life to this point -- well, it might have been interesting to him if it wasn't his own, though perhaps to many people it likely wasn't, he'd say. He'd always wanted to be a cop, and with a lot of work, he'd achieved that goal, but once he'd gotten there, he'd found it to be somewhat boring. Since he'd always been an active sort, he transitioned to a tactical unit and found it a lot more satisfying because of the requirement to stay fit and active. The actual action wasn't all that much to him. He could do that no problem, you just had to remember that you wanted to continue to have a life to go home to at the end of it. That was the problem. They hadn't planned it, but there had been the thing with Lauren. They'd worked together often and a friendship had grown out of that. The friendship became an affair, and they loved each other deeply. For the first time in either one's lives, their thoughts turned to marriage and it had amazed them both. But that was dust now and had been for two years. It hadn't been any of the things which relationships might succumb to in the lives of regular people or even law enforcement officers. It had been just shitty luck which had separated them forever. By luck of the draw, he'd been tasked as the sniper and the overhead eyes in the take-down of a group of particularly rabid gangbangers -- kids mostly -- whose activities with drugs and gun trafficking had gone far into stupid more than once. The shooter had been high as anything, just like the others and there was no reasoning with him under those circumstances. Lauren had been in the wrong place at the wrong time due to the layout of the junkyard where it had gone down, and a tactical vest can't do a thing to stop a head shot. Lauren's departure from Kerry's life had crushed him and he found that there was no more wind to fill his sails anymore after that. He'd taken the mandatory leave and tried to come back, but ... These days, he was just drifting, so when his uncle Robert had called for some help to get a few crops going this year for a bit of money, Kerry had fueled up his truck and headed east. He didn't mind and it gave him something to keep himself occupied with. He'd spent whole summers here as a boy and a teenager, helping out in what used to be the fresh air, though these days the slow creep of urban sprawl was getting a little close to his way of thinking. Where he used to be able to stand on one of the low hills and see nothing but other fields and farms, he now saw subdivisions here and there, so the writing was on the wall. Kerry still missed his Aunt Rachel and wondered how Uncle Robert had gone on alone for so long, but he had, quite obviously. The couple had never had children and they just acted as surrogate parents to him whenever he'd come to work for them back then. Kerry had arrived in early April and had just gotten started preparing the fields when the roof fell in on him again. He'd come in one day, covered in mud from the wet fields to find his uncle on the floor. Robert passed within a day, and Kerry then found that he was the sole beneficiary of the will as well as the executor and his busy life grew even busier as he tried to sell off what he could, though with crops already in most of the fields and most of them ready for a first harvest not long after, he planned to get what he could out of the harvest, since it was now his to reap. He lived in what had been his uncle's house, but there had been a couple of other farmhouses which his uncle had acquired and leased out. Three of them had leases which were running out over the summer conveniently, and he'd already informed the tenants that he wouldn't be offering renewals. Kerry wasn't terribly driven by gain, and he told the people affected that if they were interested in the homes, he might entertain serious offers from them, but only one family had gone for it and that sale was underway. The others had been listed for sale. There was a fourth which had been rented as short-term through a realtor, since his uncle had wanted to tear it down the next year and there was a tenant, though Kerry had never been able to contact the man, so it was on his long list of things to do now. The weekly checks arrived always two weeks ahead of time and he was careful to cash only the ones which corresponded with the actual date, but he had noticed a change in the handwriting as well as the cheques themselves and it was just another thing that he wondered about and had no time to check into. All that he knew was that the checks cleared the bank every week so he wasn't too bothered about it. Kerry wanted to close this off and go home, but he saw himself as stuck here until the late summer at least and probably well into the fall. If he could have found a way to turn all of this into a pile of money, he'd already be gone. 'Home' to Kerry wasn't a place yet. Well it was, but it needed a ton of work. He'd bought a home a little in the mountains of his native British Columbia because he and Lauren had stumbled upon it on a vacation and had fallen in love with the possibilities. It had been built by a couple of immigrants from Japan not long after the war, a pair of brothers and their wives. Over the years, they'd lived there quietly, engaging in selling art and writings which they published themselves and sold. The rather remote location had kept the price down and it had been an estate sale. The place needed work like crazy and that was the puzzle to Kerry. He loved everything that he saw in it -- he just didn't know how to go about restoring it. But he meant to try. Lauren was gone and he needed a home, so ... Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 01 His eye was drawn by the woman in front of him as she seemed to be considering the addition of a few highlighters to her purchases. She was about five feet five or six inches tall and wore light gray track pants which were only as baggy as they needed to be for comfort. Above that, she wore a matching hooded sweatshirt which ended a little above the top of the pants, say a little more than an inch or so. What had drawn his eye was the bare strip of skin in the middle. There was nothing out of the ordinary there for a woman her age who was in fairly good shape -- until she moved. At that instant, as she leaned out a little over her cart to examine one of the highlighters, he saw the movement of the musculature underneath for a split second and as she turned a little, he saw that her abdominal muscles came into play and then everything disappeared as she stood at rest again, holding the pen for a moment. Her hips weren't very prominent and he wondered at her age, thinking that she must be a high school senior until he saw her face. He realized after a second that he wasn't breathing. It only came to him later that something like that had never happened to him before. Kerry was of the opinion that the world was half-full of women, some of them very lovely, no matter where their genes had come from. That said, his personal preference had always been a rather narrow selection of features which were most often found in women of his own ethnicity. He'd seen, met and worked with many lovely Asian women. He'd just never seen one who could cause his rib cage to seize up before, that was all. To him, she was beyond lovely and there was another thing. Besides the walking mystery of her, there were those eyelashes. He tried to remember, but the closest that he'd ever some to seeing eyelashes like that were on a doll which his sister had when they were kids. Nobody had eyelashes like that. He wondered if they were the fake kind, but then wondered what woman would put things like that on and then throw on a set of sweats to go buy a laptop and a printer. He supposed that it was possible, but he couldn't come up with a reason. He was just taking in the long fall of her hair when the cashier at the front desk called out to him, so he headed there. It came as no surprise to him that by the time that he was done and had remembered to ask for some stamps, the woman was gone. He walked out to his truck with a small smile anyway. He'd never been a hound for women in general, but whenever he did see one who possessed what to him was extraordinary beauty, it always made him feel good. He figured that he was just simple that way. ======================================== Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 02 ***Hmmm, a little bonsai tree, a little um, manure-spreading, some light conversation, ... What could go wrong? 0_o =============================== Taeko was looking for a regular job. She found herself wandering in the aisles of a business supply store, gradually working her way to the front with a small shopping cart which by then contained a laptop PC, an all-in-one printer, scanner and FAX, some art supplies, a graphics tablet and a couple of blocks of plain white paper. It felt strange to her, this business of trying to build a semi-disposable life for herself. For most of her adult life, she'd been very self-reliant to her way of thinking. To a person born in most cultures and societies, that degree of self-reliance was not even possible. Most humans have other humans in their lives, people who they interact with, live with, love with and care for. All that Taeko had on this side of the planet were contacts, people who she could get in touch with in order to obtain documents, money, even vehicles or weaponry. They were not the same thing. To meet one of her contacts in any social way would be very awkward indeed, the other person waiting silently to be told what was wanted or needed so that they could reply with a price. There was no friendship to be had there. She was almost at the cashier for her short line when her attention was drawn by the presence of a man behind her. She didn't look much, other than to get a glimpse of his overall clothing peripherally as a form of shorthand in the art of quick recognition. She didn't need to see his face then in most cases, and in this case, she didn't look that far. She pretended to be interested in a bin of bright highlighting pens for a moment, but she didn't understand the pricing. The cashier explained that the price was for three of the pens and Taeko smiled then and chose three different colors to add them to her purchases. Just then, another cashier looked over and said, "I can take you here, sir," and the man walked past Taeko and set his purchases down on the counter. Taeko looked at him then from behind. He was dressed in slightly dirty clothing and after a second, she knew that it was from working, so that got her interest a little. Taeko had never really known a man in much of any social context. The ones which she'd known had been superiors, mostly, and the ones that she'd been to bed with had mostly been targets for her in her unusual line of work. Sleeping with someone was an age-old way to get close enough to do what she'd been sent there to do. In the present day, it almost always worked as a means to get to a fool who couldn't pay his gambling debts and had managed to evade the other forms of contact. She thought about that as she looked a second time, taking in details now. He wore workboots which were clean, though dusty, and his shirt looked to have been washed recently and he wore it with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. She thought about the dustiness on him and it came to her that he might be a farmer. From what she'd seen, farming here was a little different from what she'd seen elsewhere in her travels, though not all that much. He didn't look more than a little dusty to her. Any other woman might have looked at him for the shape of his body, and Taeko did as well, but her gaze -- as well-concealed as it was -- lingered for a few seconds. She wondered if other women saw him as only a laborer or someone of a lower social stature. What she saw was a man who worked for a living and to a girl with hard-working fishermen in her upbringing, that wasn't a bad thing, necessarily. He was a little broad-shouldered and she could see that by the sleeves over his upper arms, he was fit and she noticed his narrow waist. If she had to guess, she'd have put his age at somewhere in his early thirties, but then she hadn't seen his face. It was just what came to her. That was when she noticed the hair on his forearms. It caused her to look elsewhere on him, as much as his position allowed. He was about two meters tall and the skin that she could see was tanned, so he spent a lot of his time outdoors, she guessed -- probably being a farmer. It was her turn with the cashier then and she paid and was ready to leave in only a few minutes. She glanced at him as she turned to go and she saw his face in a rearward profile. It was then that she knew what it was about his hair. It was golden. It wasn't as though she'd never seen a blonde man before -- she'd seen many of them in her travels -- especially here. They didn't do much of anything for her. Not many of the men here did. But this one ... his hair wasn't really blonde. It looked to be more of a light brown, and yet, it was as though the hair on his arms and what she could see curling out from underneath the ball cap that he wore was trying to be blonde, as though it wanted to be, but had been cast into the role of being brown and rebelled whenever it had the chance for it. It almost made her smile as she walked past and out of the store. By this time, Taeko had been here long enough to have seen the need for saddlebags for her bike, so now it wore a set of hard fiberglass bags which were fine for some things and not enough for others -- such as her printer. But she'd thought about this and had tons of bungee cords to tie it down with. She was in the process of that when she saw the man walk out and head toward a pickup truck. He got in and drove away long before she was done securing her printer. ================================================== The next day was Saturday. Taeko had gotten her housework done and a bit of yardwork as well, just wanting to clean the place up a little. The old farmhouse had never had much of any pretense to it, but it was where she lived for the moment so .... There had been evergreens planted around it many years ago and as they'd grown taller, the lower branches had died from being in perpetual shade. Some previous owner or resident had sawn them off to clear things a little. Taeko found a rake and went a little further hoping that if she removed a lot of the dead pine needles, the thin grass might have a chance at life. Somewhere in that, she'd seen the little seedling. There were lots of them around here and there, but this one had a nice shape to it, so she dug it up with care and looked until she found a little oval pot. One thing led to another and before she knew it really, she was sitting on the old front porch in the thin rays of whatever sunlight could make it through the pines. She'd found some cast-off copper wire in a cable and a little work yielded her one of the conductors stripped bare. That was how Kerry found her as he came up the long driveway. She saw him coming after he'd parked his truck out on the road, but she gave no sign that she was aware of his approach. She recognized him as the man in the store and wondered about it, but she reasoned that she'd find out what he was here for soon enough. Besides, she was enjoying her tea and her little pine tree. He stood in a bit of amazement as he watched her pot it and press the soil down. She'd moistened the roots and the soil, so her fingers were a little muddy. She didn't seem to notice it at all as she lifted her cup to sip her tea thoughtfully as she turned the pot this way and that to regard the slightly bent and twisted sapling there. He watched as she moved a little of the dirt to reach in carefully and lift one root a little and then replace the earth so that the 'knuckle" of that root would one day show as though the tree was ancient and weathered. "Hello," he said, "Is Mr. Nakatami at home?" Taeko looked up and smiled after a moment, "Yes," she said with an accent which was at the same time both pleasant and unreadable to him, "I think that he must be by now. He was here on business for a time before I arrived, but he had to return home. I am his niece. How can I help you?" "I'm Kerry Browne," he said, "Your uncle rented this house from my uncle late last year. My uncle has passed away and I'm trying to clean up his affairs. I wanted to tell Mr. Nakatami that I won't be renting this property much beyond the end of September. I'll be selling the land." "Oh," she said, "Am I being ... ev... evicted?" "No," he smiled, "but before that time, you should think about finding another place to live, that's all. If I was going to be living in the area, I'd probably keep renting the place to him -- or you or ... somebody." He looked around at the place for a moment, "And if I was, I think I'd want to do a little work on it too. This place is pretty tired." She nodded as she looked at the sapling again. "I am Khoe." He looked at her, "I'm sorry, but I didn't -- " "Khoe," she smiled, "K-ho-eh. Would you mind holding this little wire for me for a moment? My little friend here needs her branches shaped and I don't have enough hands for everything." "Sure," Kerry smiled as he stepped forward, "Show me what you need." She reached for his hand and positioned it for him before she began to carefully wind the wire around one of the branches, "This is some wire that I found in the garage," she smiled as she worked, "it's much too stiff for this, but it will have to do for now." "I think I saw you at the office supply place yesterday," he said as he watched her. She smiled a little again as she looked up for a moment, "You think that you saw me? You are not certain that you saw me, or you are not sure that you were there? I can help. I saw you, so you were there." He looked a little flustered then and it made her laugh a little, "Sorry. I have trouble with some phrases in English sometimes. A normal turn of phrase sounds strange to me. I know what you meant." "Do you do this often?" he asked, "I mean bonsai? It's an old art." "I have, but not lately," she said, "I am an artist and I use many forms of expression. If I was going to go on living here, I would ask if I could make a garden, but this is not the best place for that." She told him that he could let go then and she cut off the excess wire and sitting down with the pot on her knees, she reached over to a little tray and held a piece of moss over the soil in an experimental way for a moment. When she had it the way that she wanted it, she took a pair of scissors and cut it to size, pressing it down before she took a few small pebbles and pressed them down around the edges of the moss. In that setting, they looked like boulders. "I have always liked to create little scenes in gardens. Zen gardens are my very favorites." She held up the little tree and decided that she liked it for the moment, "You like bonsai?" "I've never had any," he said, "but I admire them." She held it out to him with a pleased smile, "Then you have one now. Keep this in a place out of hard sun for longer than an hour at a time and when you water it; be sure to carefully brush a little water into the moss with a finger. Moss can be very hard to please and it may die regardless of what you do. If it dies, I would suggest that you leave it. It may surprise you and come back." "Thank you," he smiled, "very much. This is beautiful; more so because I saw it being done." He looked a little uncomfortable for a second, "I'm afraid I only know a little of Japanese manners. I ... I think I ought to bow a little right about now, right?" It made her laugh and she nodded a little, "I suppose that might be correct if it's what you wish to do, but this isn't Japan, and so it isn't necessary." "But you are Japanese, aren't you?" he asked and then felt immediately foolish. "Please forgive me. I didn't mean to pry. It just came out." "Why do you ask?" she inquired, "And by the way, I'm not offended. It opens the door for my own questions." Kerry smiled in thanks for the way that she'd gotten him out of the gaffe, "You look Japanese to me, but I hear something else in your voice. I just don't know what it is." She laughed then and it came to him as a thrill before she looked up, "I have heard it said that to most of the people here that, outside of their communities, all Asian people look alike. So you can spot a Japanese person when you see her?" "Not always," he said, "Asia is a big place with many nationalities in it. But I can usually pull a few of them out based on mannerisms, speech and things like that. For example, I'd have been surprised to hear a Chinese accent from you." His jaw dropped then as she recited a little poem in flawless Mandarin, and she chuckled to see the effect on his face. "I can speak several languages, though English is not my best. You are partially correct, however. I am partly Japanese. We can leave it at that, because you will never guess the rest. Well you might," she said thoughtfully, "but I have only a little while left to live here from what you have said." "I'm sorry," Kerry said, "I've been trying to reach your uncle to tell him. I tried sending a registered letter, but..." "I have been forwarding his mail," she lied, "I do not open what is addressed to him, or I'd have known of this before. You don't need to look so saddened; I have nothing to tie me here. I am on a long vacation. I've spent some time here and it is enough. I have many photographs to paint from, if I wish. They're nothing much by themselves, only bits and pieces of grass or little flowers that I have found, but from them, I can work and that was the purpose." "You said that you like Zen gardens?" Kerry asked, "To work on them, I mean." "Yes," she nodded, "Do you have a little one in your truck or something?" "I have one," he grinned, "believe it or not. I've got a house out west and it has a garden, but it needs a lot of work and I don't have a clue. How do you pronounce your name again?" "Khoe," she grinned, and she spelled it. "I can spell 'Kerry' or any of the variations for that name." "No you can't," he smirked a little, "my name is pronounced that way, but I'm named after a long-gone people, not a person. My dad's a stickler for history." He winked at her, "I'd almost like to see you try, though. It starts with a 'c'." She tried as many of the variations that she could think of, but he only grinned. "Fine," she smiled giving up, "How is it spelled?" Her mouth opened as he spelled it out for her, "C-i-a-r-r-a-i-g-h-e." "What sort of name is that?" she asked, "I have always loved the way that things make no sense in English until you find the little key in yourself and then it is easy. This ... a name like that..." she shook her head. "It's Irish," he smiled, "a Gaelic word for a people who were older than they were. "It means 'the people of Ciar", some big warrior guy somewhere back then, I guess. Where will you go? I mean after you leave here?" "West," she shrugged, "I love mountains and forests. I want to see what is there. Tell me of your garden. Maybe I can meet you and tell you what it needs before I wander off to see the mountains." "Well, it's in some mountains," he laughed, "Not miles in, but it's about an hour from the nearest city and about twenty minutes or so from the closest town." "Would you like some tea, then?" she asked, "It sounds interesting to me already, and if I am correct in the feeling that I have, it will need some telling." One tea turned into several over the afternoon and she sat looking at him over the kitchen table as he worked to sketch her a map of his garden and how he remembered it. She was looking at the pencil in his right hand. As she watched, she wondered a little about the callouses that she'd felt there in that first touch as she'd taken his hand to guide it so that he could hold on to the piece of wire for the little bonsai that she'd made for him. Aside from the callouses which she expected to be there on the hands of a man who worked with them, there was a thick line which ran along the inside from about the middle knuckle of his thumb, along the web and most of the way along the inside of his index finger. She was trying to think of a plausible reason for it to be there in the work that he did running the farm implements or doing the chores of the occupation. She couldn't think of one, other than what would have been on the hands of many men in a long bygone age. She knew how a man might come to develop callouses like that. She knew that because she had one there herself, but on her, there was one on each hand, the right one being a little more pronounced, though neither was especially noticeable. Her gaze drifted to his face, listening to him as he spoke during his struggles to make the map clear to her, as if there was no way that it could convey what he wanted to describe to her of his garden's features. He was wrong, but Taeko held her tongue. She wanted to hear the way that he felt about it and what he wanted. His hair had her attention again for the moment, the way that the errant curls peeked out at her with their golden tips. She was having thoughts that caused her to wonder what it would feel like to touch it for a moment. To her, the hair of most westerners was fine and soft to the touch. She was about to give her head a little shake as she caught herself, but then he raised his head to look at her as he tried to emphasize a point that he thought he wasn't stressing properly enough to get the feeling across. He was, but that didn't matter. It was the first time that he was looking directly into her eyes as he made his point and Taeko found herself lost in the light of those blue eyes. She remembered reading accounts of the infrequent arrivals of Caucasian men long ago during the feudal period of Japan. To the people of that time, they were seen as barbarians, large, loud and crude - and really hairy. When the Americans had arrived to force trade, it was perhaps the first time that people with skin, hair and eyes such as his had been seen there by a lot of people. Those barbarians were considered to be demons by the locals, for the way that the light green and gray and blue eyes could hold a person's gaze, and it was a warning to never look into their eyes or there was a risk that one's spirit could be stolen by them. When the Russians had arrived to claim the other islands in the area, the type became a lot more known, but then of course, a lot of it had been about conflict. Now, in the little kitchen of the worn-out old farmhouse where she lived for now, Taeko was sitting with one of these demons only inches away from her. She'd seen them before, she'd just never felt the pull like this. A part of her wanted to push her fingertips through the hair which wished to be golden so much. She wanted to remove that ball cap and run her fingers through that hair, knowing full well that she'd also feel the dampness there since it was summer. She had a strong urge to do that if she could and look into the cerulean eyes which now regarded her and hid whatever dark urges might lie far down behind their open friendliness. Taeko had control -- just as she always did. But a little part of her wanted to throw that control away as her fingers felt that hair and she brought her face closer to those eyes and glanced now and then at lips like she had never seen this close up before in her life. She didn't do any of those things, of course; instead, she reached over and took the pencil, pointing to a few of the features in his garden as he's mapped it out and she asked a few questions, pointing to one thing in particular. There was a little stream which ran through the yard and there was a pond, beyond that was a pair of lines which crossed the line of the stream and it was what she indicated now. "It's a small bridge in a stand of trees," he said, "and it's one of my favorite things there. It's made of stone somehow and it arches -- well, here ..." he began to sketch quickly and in a few moments, she was looking at a small causeway, as he'd said. There were no handrails or anything, just the structure. "I don't even know how it was made, but the whole thing is covered thickly with moss and grass and you can walk on it." Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 02 "You draw well," she said with a smile, as she reached across to take his hand and turn it over. "How did you manage to get such a set of callouses? This one here has drawn my attention for a time. The rest are all what I might expect from a man who works with his hands, but ... what is this?" She didn't let go if his hand for a long moment. It was summer, but she liked the warmth that she felt there. He shrugged, "I don't do it here, and I'm going to pay the price for stopping, but I lift weights. This right here, ..." He looked down and smiled a little in some embarrassment, "I found some work one fall as an extra in a movie that was being filmed when I was about to go to Police College for the winter semester. I'd just gotten back from here and helping out my aunt and uncle for the summer, so I guess the work of that must have shown to somebody and they pulled me out of the hundreds of hopefuls. I was chosen to play one of the bad guys and they wanted a guy who was built like me, I guess. That was all good, but the role needed somebody who could use a sword. All of the regular guys that they would have called had all turned it down because they already had other commitments, so somebody looked at me and the next thing I knew, I was being taught. The man and woman who taught me were only supposed to teach me just enough for the scenes that I was going to be in, but they saw that I had an interest -- which is an understatement. Whoever gets the chance to learn things like that these days? I jumped in and learned anything they taught me. They saw how keen I was, so they kept teaching me and I took in all that I could. I sure didn't mind, since it turned a two week job into a couple of month's work. I had to get up at like three in the morning for the whole time. By the time that it was over, I nearly had pneumonia, since I was always in not much more than a ratty fur over my shoulder and the final shooting for my part was in early December. Anyway, I made a bit of money and when I asked, they let me keep one of the fake swords and the couple let me have one of the real ones that we never used during the fight scenes." He smirked and it turned into a laugh, "Looking back on it now, if I had a brain -- and an agent, I might be working in the movies. I still practice what I learned. The sword is heavy, since I was like one of the bad Vikings in the picture, and swinging that around for an hour every other day, sure helps my wrists and my arms." "So you had to fight with the sword in the movie?" she asked. "Yeah," he nodded, "and of course, since I was one of the bad-asses in the bunch, I had to die a rather spectacular death, though not as bad as the big boss bad guy. I had a few lines, but they weren't much more than grunts and yells. The fights were choreographed pretty much like a dance." "I would like to have seen that," Taeko smiled, "What was the name of the movie? I would like to rent it sometime so that I can see my landlord in action." "I have a copy, or uh, ... six, "he laughed as he told her the name of the picture, "but they're all at home out west. It wasn't a huge hit, so most people have never heard of it." "Then I will try to rent it when I return home, "she smiled, but then she frowned a little, "I have never heard of it. I don't mind that, but I hope that I can find a copy of it in Japan. Are you hungry? I'm very happy that I met you and, "she looked down a little shyly, "perhaps it shows that I don't know anyone here, but I am hoping that you might allow me to buy dinner -- that is, if it is alright with you and if you don't have any more people to evict today." He looked at her and he just couldn't help himself as he grinned a little, "I'd like that very much, Khoe. Where were you thinking of going?" "Well I don't have anything very fancy to wear, so it should be someplace where casual dress is permitted." - After locking up and reminding him not to forget his little bonsai tree, they were off. Kerry was a little surprised, but Taeko pointed to a Wendy's and asked what the food was like there. After his brief explanation, she asked if they could eat there. "You said that you went to a Police College," she said, "You are a farm policeman? Do they have such things here?" "No," he said, "I used to be a cop. I went through a bad episode a while back, and afterwards, I found that I just didn't have it in me anymore to want to come back. "He related a little of what had happened and Taeko apologized for troubling him with the question. "It's alright, Khoe," he said, "No harm done. These days, I don't know what I really want. I suppose that I could stay here and run everything that my uncle left to me. The soil is good enough, but the city keeps growing northward and soon, all that I'd see around me is little boxes everywhere. If I could get used to that, the best thing would be to stay and work the land until some developer comes along with a fist full of money and sell then. But I haven't got it in me for that either. I guess I'll just pocket what I get out of all of this and invest it, so I can go back home and fix my place up. I'll figure out what I want to do with my life sometime during all of that -- I hope." "I have an idea," Taeko said, "But I don't know if it would be of use to you. I have no fear of work and I know a little about farming. Let me work for you to help you finish and in exchange, you take me with you when you go to your home. I will help you to know what must be done for your garden at least, and then I will go back to Japan when my visa runs out." Kerry blinked at her, not really comprehending, so she went on, "You would not have to pay me. I see it as a partnership to go west, and I have not spent much of my traveling money at all, so I could contribute to what we eat." He was about to shake his head. "It will be a very different summer and maybe fall," she smiled, trying to coax him a little, "I know no one here and I have just met someone who I wish to know, so unless you have a girlfriend who would be jealous, we might each have a friend from somewhere else." He looked at her and in his expression; she saw that what she was saying was not really in any frame of reference for him, so she put a little more into it and it came out of her as a question, "I could start at any time?" Kerry threw up his hands then, since despite having feelings to the contrary, he just couldn't see a reason not to try it. He found himself liking her a great deal and she seemed to be full of little surprises, so he gave in. Taeko was pleased, since this gave her a way to go slowly west and leave the country at a different point, see some of it at the same time, and maybe have a little fun with a very attractive man whom she liked. She knew deep down that she shouldn't be doing it this way, but her life was always full of strategy and tactics; the handling of the unforeseen problems which sometimes crop up, no matter how well something is planned out with contingencies along the way. She was usually as cold as ice, but she was still a woman at the core of her. This was a chance for a bit of careful fun before she had to leave. They saw each other a few times during the next week. Kerry decided after that evening that he had more than what might be termed a polite interest, and if the question had been asked of him that way, he'd have laughed and nodded. She was a rather gorgeous enigma to him and he was fascinated. He was so fascinated that as he drove home that first night, he'd almost stomped on the brakes when he was about a block away from her home, wanting to beat his head against the steering wheel. He'd forgotten to ask her out. He couldn't believe that he'd been so stupid, but then after a moment, he had to grin to himself. She was just that kind of girl, he told himself. ================================================================================= She couldn't believe it at first. Taeko had been doing a little explorative clean up and she'd stumbled upon a child's yard pool in a shed. The sort where you just put it someplace and fill it up before you turn your kids loose and plug your ears while they have fun. It took her a little while to figure that out, not knowing all that much about children and their habits. She was going to put it back when she suddenly wondered if it might still hold water. It was the semi-rigid kind, made out of plastic, but that meant that you didn't have to blow anything up to use it. She carefully dragged it out into the dappled sunshine to look at it. It hadn't gone brittle, so she guessed that it had lived almost all of its existence in the shed, knowing that things like this don't last in open sunshine for all that long. The sunlight attacks the plastic and the whole thing becomes brittle, as inflexible as a pie crust. But this one looked fine, not even faded. It gave her an idea. Five minutes with the hose, a little scrubbing, and she had a pool to lounge in; out of the heat of the day. She almost laughed. The weather had turned hot and humid and her home had no air conditioning. She began to fill it on the spot. Then again, she thought as she watched the water level rising, she had no bathing suit. She looked around and decided that this place was remote enough. She just had to keep an eye on the long walk. Where she'd placed the pool wasn't in plain sight very much and it was in about three-quarters shade. It would do and it beat the heck out of sitting in the bathtub. ==================================================================================== Kerry spent most of the morning working in one way or another, but he did have to go to town for a couple of things, so he planned to maybe stop by to ask Khoe out if she was at home. The trick of it was that it was sweltering hot today, and he had no AC in his truck. So he was a little mindful to hopefully not get too sweaty by the time that he drove over. It didn't work out as well as he'd hoped but he didn't really want to wait another day. So he drove over when he could, working up his question in his mind and wondering why. He was long past the point where a man might feel a little hesitant over something like this, but well, ... He didn't want to blow it. ================================================= She heard the truck slow and then stop. Taeko didn't know who it was as she lay in the cool water with her eyes closed in a bit of bliss, though she did have an idea that it might be Kerry. She liked him. It surprised her to realize that she liked him quite a bit. She was normally never like this toward any man. Well, usually toward any person, as far as that went. She opened her eyes, knowing that she had a few more seconds. What didn't surprise her much was the knowledge that she'd been right. It was him. She could guess what brought him here and she didn't mind. There was just the issue of her present state of dress. Well, he was a man and she knew how to play this, so she waited, knowing that the situation presented her with the opportunity to set one of the many hooks that it took to land a man in this culture. She knew that she shouldn't really be having these thoughts, but she was faced with a long stay in this country somewhere. It might as well be with a man who was as likeable and attractive as this one. What surprised her was the pace of his approach. He was walking quickly, though the expression on his face gave no indication that anything might be wrong. It didn't change much for her, other than move up the timing of her next move. ================================================= Kerry looked up as he walked and then he stopped dead in his tracks. He suddenly saw the kiddie pool there in the dappled shade of the yard and he saw, ... Holy ... He watched as Khoe got to a sitting position and then stood up out of the water, rising from a cross-legged position into a standing one like some oriental version of that 'Birth of Venus' painting that he'd seen once . He was maybe fifty feet away as he saw her get to her feet, absolutely naked, facing away from him. From her body language, he doubted that she was aware of his presence, so now he had a problem, not wanting to be rude or ungentlemanly. He kicked himself, wishing now that he'd had the presence of mind to whistle as he'd walked up unannounced. It would have saved what just had to turn into something really, really awkward. He thought about turning right around and walking away. That would have been what his mother would have told him would be the right way to handle this. He knew it, and he found himself mentally agreeing with the voice of his mom in his ear. But then as he was still standing there a little transfixed in shock, she bent over to pick up a towel. And this girl had the ability to seize up his ribcage when she was fully clothed, he remembered. Holy Mother of Toilet Seat, ... he thought. She was ... well, she sure was, for damn sure. She lifted the towel and covered the front of her body, using one hand to move her long, wet, black mane so that it almost, though not quite covered the most lovely ass on the continent as he saw it, telling him with the motion that she was quite unaware of his presence. Kerry spun around to look in the direction of his truck and he told the two chickadees and the sparrow on the tree branches nearby that he was sorry. They didn't appear to be impressed at all, but he knew that she'd hear him. "Hello, Kerry," he heard, guessing from the sound that she was approaching him, "you can turn around now. I'm very sorry if I shocked you, but it's hot and I have no swimsuit. I thought that I could keep an eye on the road and the walk, but it felt so nice that I must have closed my eyes." He was looking down at the moment, considering the toes of his workboots and wondering how the hell he was going to pull himself out of this fire. "I should have called out or whistled or something. I'm the one who should apologize, Khoe. I came to, um, ..." She walked around to the front of him then, walking into his field of view like a vision holding the towel around her, her head tilted in a hopeful little smile, trying to put him at ease at least a little. "You came to forget what you came for?" She laughed a little nervously, but it offered him the chance to move past the point where he was presently stuck at. "I wanted to ask you last night if you'd like to have dinner with me again this evening," he said, still in a little agony at the embarrassment that he must have caused her. "I can't this evening," she said, "Tomorrow evening?" He nodded, "That would be fine, Khoe. Can I pick you up at say, seven or so?" She nodded enthusiastically, "I'd like that. And please stop blushing, Kerry. I'm the one with only the towel on. It was my fault." He nodded, noticing the feeling of heat on his face for the first time. "Ok," he smiled down, "Thanks." "Thank you, Kerry. I will see you then, alright?" He nodded, smiling and then he began to walk away. Taeko did as well in the opposite direction. She knew that she shouldn't be doing this, but, ... Kerry walked off slowly, thoroughly confused over nothing, still feeling the aftereffects of his embarrassment, still needing to, ... will himself not to look back. He looked back. Taeko knew that he would. She didn't look back herself. She didn't need to. When she was in the edge of the shade as she neared the pool, she took the towel away from herself, walked the last thirty feet to the pool, and laid the towel on the ancient webbed lawn chair that she'd found with the pool and stepped back into it, sinking back down to lie back, never once looking back as though she trusted him to have continued on back to his truck. And knowing that he wouldn't; not until she was she was done with this little show for him. She felt a little guilt for the way that she'd set the hook and told herself -- once again - that she shouldn't be doing this. It wasn't as though she was trying to catch this man for herself to make a great love with him for their lives. The tactic would have worked well in that regard and he appeared to her to be so worth it though they didn't know each other all that well yet. She thought about it, wanting suddenly to leave her life behind and have THAT life and love with this man. She didn't know everything about this culture, but she knew that it was possible with him and he was so different from what she'd have expected in a man from around here. He was worth it. A man like him was worth a lot to someone like her. But she knew that it wasn't possible for her to have him and that life with him. It made her a little sad. There was no reason that she couldn't have gone to dinner with him that evening. She had nothing planned at all. She'd only been setting the hook in a little deeper, that was all. She sighed a little. Sometimes she just hated her occupation. Kerry finally found his brain and began to walk back to his truck. He made it the whole way without tripping or stumbling once and then he got in, slipping the key into the ignition. He looked back up the walk and saw nothing of the pool or the mysterious woman who would now occupy his thoughts. He liked what he'd seen, but it wasn't just that. He really liked Khoe. She never saw anything as a big deal. He realized then that he wanted a woman like that. He turned his head to look out over the steering wheel at the road ahead for a moment, but he wasn't seeing that. He was seeing a replay of her incredibly pretty bottom walking away from him. "Please God," he smirked to himself, "If I promise to be a really good boy and go to church, help the poor and save the whole fucking world, I don't give a damn about taking up any more space in Heaven. Just let me have the love of that woman and I'd die happy in those arms. I don't give a rat's ass what happens after that." He heard the engine rev a little and remembered that if he was going to go anywhere now, he had to put the truck in gear first. He drove off a little slowly. Taeko heard it as well as the sounds of him driving off. She smiled to herself -- not for doing what she'd done -- just because she liked him. ================================================= The following Tuesday when he drove over to pick her up as agreed, he found her sitting amid her meagre belongings and they loaded up his truck and she followed him on her bike to his uncle's house. Kerry had weighed things in his mind and her argument that the few weeks of rent were of questionable benefit in light of a possible sale of the property during the interim. Taeko said that she'd continue to pay him rent until her had a serious offer. By that afternoon, the realtor called and said that she had an interested buyer, so he listened to her and agreed tentatively to their offer. He pressed the disconnect button on his cell phone and went looking for her. He found her belongings in the room that he'd given her for her use, but she wasn't there. She was in the barn, unwrapping four wooden practice swords. "What are you doing?" he asked, amazed. She laughed and held out her hands, "You are not the only one with a need to swing something. I bought these at a martial arts supply store yesterday. Sad to say, they didn't have anything like what you must be familiar with, but we can have fun with these." She set them down and walked over to him, "but first, I think there must be something here which the farmers must attend to, isn't there?" "Yeah," he laughed a little as he glanced at his watch and then looked out toward the road, "but neither of us is going to like it much." He pointed to a tank truck which was grinding slowly up from the road, "For the next few hours, things are gonna smell a little ripe around here. I pulled one early harvest out of that field over there and I ploughed what was left under before I tilled and disked it a few times. It's not the right way to do it, but I want to try to get a second harvest out of that one if I can." Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 02 He handed her a cardboard box. The picture on it looked as though it contained some sort of gas mask. "This one's new and it's for you. I'm going to give you a quick lesson in driving a tractor, and then we'll be fertilizing to our heart's content all afternoon." Kerry was a little surprised that she didn't back away then. Hell, she looked interested, he thought. Taeko wasn't someone who backed away from the unfamiliar, and she'd operated many sorts of machinery in her life, so driving a tractor which was hauling a manure spreader was no stretch. He asked her about it and she smiled, "I have run a trawler with a full net before. I think that this will be only another challenge." But sitting in the cab of that tractor with the cab closed and the ventilation on full was a chore, since the air conditioning wasn't the greatest and she sat in her own sweat all afternoon as she maintained her set distance off to his right side. They got it done, returning to the tanker over and over to have the two spreaders re-filled and hating the slow trips when the breeze was at their backs, since all that the ventilation did then was suck in the stench, so they ran in that direction with the fans off. As good as the mask was, she still caught whiffs of what they were spreading and the one time that she'd moved it to adjust the way that it fit, she'd forgotten and inhaled only once. She was careful never to do that again. By the end of it, she couldn't tell if it cleared her sinuses or just killed off her sense of smell for a while, but the shower at the end of the day was one of the more welcome ones in anyone's life. She inquired about dinner and he pointed to his truck, "I'm not eating here until it rains at least once," so they went to a little family restaurant that he knew and she amazed him by the amount of food that she ate. "Where are you putting that?" he asked, "I've never seen a girl eat so much." Taeko grinned, "Before, I was just doing little things, so I needed little. Now I think that I must work more, so ..." she shrugged. It was pouring rain by the time that they left and Kerry was glad of it. "I can handle the smell, since it had to be done, but I've never been thrilled over the first day. You need to have a good day's sunshine on a fertilized field or you need rain to scrub the smell out of the air." "What will you do this evening?" she asked. "I dunno," he answered, "I don't watch much TV. As a matter of fact, I had the cable disconnected after my uncle passed away. What have you got in mind?" "I was thinking of watching a movie," she grinned, "I think that you can guess that I went to Chinatown for more than a couple of wooden swords. There are people there who will sell you all sorts of things -- little-known movies for example." Kerry's mouth began to fall open in surprise as she looked at the dessert menu, still talking with a little smile, "Oh, the first three places that you go to might not have it, and even if one of them think that they might, you have to wait while they send a young relation off to the basement to even find it. It requires patience," she said, "but patience often yields rewards -- if you really have it in your heart to see a movie with at least one bad Viking in it." "You didn't -- "he said. "I did," she laughed, "Would you please watch it with me? I would love to have your insight so I might know what is going on in the plot. If you have no way to play it, we can use my laptop." "Fine," Kerry chuckled, "but I get to cover my eyes at some parts." Taeko was surprised and she laughed, "But you know the plot. You were there for some of the filming. You can't tell me that there is anything in it which frightens you." "Oh there is," he groaned, "that was my acting debut, and in all likelihood, it's also my swan song. It's been a few years, and even I'm not used to the crap that they made me say." As they watched the thing, Taeko sat up expectantly the first time that she could see his character come into view -- even though he was in the background of the shot. When the scene had moved on with nothing much from Kerry, she looked a little disappointed. "Hey," he smiled, "try to remember that I wasn't even one of the central characters in this. I was just an extra." She shook her head, "I understand that. But there are the stars of this out in front of you and they would have trouble opening a ... a carton of milk like they sell here." She frowned, and indicated herself with her hand, moving it up and down, "All that I see on them is air-brushed bellies. They even have trouble holding them in, one of them." He was surprised that she was that discerning in an instant. "They should have given them leather armor with the muscles formed in them. It would have saved a lot of bother for nothing. And you were air-brushed too, weren't you?" "Yeah," he nodded, "I used to drive the make-up ladies crazy. Every day, they'd spray that onto me about four times. After a while, they didn't even look happy to see me coming toward the trailer in the morning." "Why so much?" she asked and he shrugged, "I did my best to hold still, but ... well, I'm a little ticklish there." There was a scene where his character was right out front in a battle, beating down the defenders and she watched it intently. "They told you to do that, didn't they?" she asked, and he nodded, "I can tell," she said, "There would be no purpose to those motions unless it was for show. I have never held one, but I imagine that a Viking-style sword was a heavy thing, and if you were busy fighting all day, you would not want to flourish or embellish the motions at all. It's just too much work." "That reminds me," he said, "why did you buy those wooden swords again?" "I practice too," she smiled, "though it is a ... holdover? I don't know if that is the way to say it. It's something left over from the past. On the Japanese side of me, there is a history of a little samurai background." In fact, there was none of that in Taeko's background at all. Her people were commoners all the way back on both sides, but she wanted a plausible-sounding reason, "I trained a little in Kendo," she said, "but mostly I use it for fitness by using a real sword all alone for the weight and the work of it. I find little in all of the padding to endear the art to me in its current form." The next day, they were done by a little after noon, since they'd gotten up at dawn. "Free time?" Taeko asked, "So soon? What sort of farmer are you?" "Well about all I can think of on this section is to plough the manure under a little more, if you want," he smiled. "Does it need that?" she asked, a little surprised. "Oh, probably not," he grinned, "but if you're as eager as all of that, hey, go on ahead." "I think that I will go and play with my wooden swords," she smiled over a little hopefully. "Hey, can I watch?" he asked and she laughed. "Of course," she grinned, "but you will not have much time to watch if you pick even one of them up. You will be fighting for your life then." Kerry wasn't weighed down with much of an ego at all, but her remark made him smile just a little. He was taller than she was and likely twice as heavy. "Ok," he said. She gave him some time to get used to the lightness and the different shape and when he indicated that he was at least a little ready, she picked up two of them and he backed away. "Hey, why are you using two?" he asked. "I am warming up," she smiled, "Most warriors used only one sword at first. After a while, the more wealthy learned to adapt themselves to the use of two -- the Katana, which these are supposed to mimic and the shorter Wakizashi There was one master who pioneered the use of two katanas at the same time, though he was fond of the Wakizashi as well. I have read that he often liked to throw the Wakizashi, but I am not wealthy enough to wish to try that. I have learned to follow his teaching as much as I can." She paced around him as he tried to limber up, and he began to feel something like a mouse in front of a cat. When he finally gave it a try, she came out on top in their stilted little competition as they'd set the rules, since wooden or not, they could cause quite a lot of pain if one of them really put much more into it besides the motions. "I'm having trouble believing what I'm seeing, "he said, clearly impressed, "Every time that I move, you're somewhere else and it's usually a place where you end this the next second. How do you do it?" Taeko had been enjoying this so much that she'd let herself slip a little uncharacteristically for her. The methods that she'd been taught were all about engaging if it had to be and then finishing an opponent to make good her exit. She'd have to ease off a fair bit. Besides, she was having so much fun with Kerry that she didn't want it to end anytime soon, so she had to be careful not to let him get too discouraged. "I'm sorry," she smiled, "It is just the way that my favorite teacher taught me. Let's try it again and I will not do it that way this time." They sparred on and at times, it would have been worth it to have a video camera there, because it was all technique and a lot of things were held back by them both. She saw some similarities, though not in how he was fighting. She could tell that it was about finishing quickly as well from his side of things -- as he'd been taught -- but in his case, it was much more about brutal force to kill or severely injure an opponent before moving on to the next on an ancient battleground. It required someone who had far better than average speed and strength. She rather doubted that Kerry knew of this. She knew that he was using a sort of Katana-shaped practice sword and he was trying to use it like the old European skull-crushers, hacking and slashing to advance and never give quarter. The swords wouldn't have stood up if he put much into it. As well, he quite obviously had his own measure of control, never putting much into the motions out of his want to not hurt her. She really did like the smile on his face, though, even though she was holding back so much and she knew that he knew it as well, and didn't seem to mind. She could see that he was as into this as she was. And of course, she knew that she could end this at any instant. There was no doubt at all who was the better swordsman between them. When they finished, Kerry was shaking from fatigue and the effort of holding back. He was so out of shape in this one thing, not having practiced for a time now. But the woman that he knew as Khoe looked plainly thrilled with his efforts as she bowed to him in thanks for the match and as the slight formality of the moment passed, she hugged him very briefly and he stood stunned, not having been prepared for that at all. Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 03 ***Well ok, let's let them consummate this little summer thing. This one's short, but I wanted it that way. 0_o ================================================= They got cleaned up and she amazed him again, saying that she would be making their dinner that evening, though she would permit him to assist her if he really felt the need to. "How did you know that I was going to ask?" he smiled. Taeko laughed a little, "You are a rather different man from what I expected to find here. Your desire to help and learn shows on you, Kerry. I like that." They had a lot of fun doing it and the meal was something that Kerry knew that he'd never forget. As they prepared to eat, Taeko appeared before him in a black silk robe that spoke to him of a kimono and yet wasn't one. They sat in his dining room and there was only the light of a single candle there. She even produced a bottle of sake and a pair of small bowls to drink the warmed fluid from as they talked about what had to be done the next day. "Up early again tomorrow?" she smiled. But he shook his head, "No, Khoe. There's stuff that needs doing, but I think it'll keep for long enough to let us have a bit of a late morning." She nodded, hoping that he couldn't see just how thrilled she was about that prospect. Taeko didn't mind work at all. She'd been born onto that sort of life anyway, but she had a tiny hope for something else. "I do not know about the way that a lot of things are done in your culture, but I know how it goes in mine. I am a little different, I guess, and I know that I have found someone who is not at all as I expected him to be. Though I will work with you for what you need, I am still on my long vacation, Kerry. I think that for people here, a vacation is meant to be a lot of fun and it is to be enjoyed. I think that when one is on vacation, one might tend to do things which would not ordinarily be done -- or am I wrong?" "No," he smiled, very curious now, "that's the way that a lot of people spend their vacations. They go places they'd normally never go and do things that-" He stared then as she stood up and opened her robe, easing it over her slender shoulders so that it fell to the chair behind her. Khoe stood before him absolutely naked and he wondered if there could possibly be a woman who was more perfect; who was more lovely than the one that he'd discovered sitting on that old front porch. He didn't know what to say. He could barely process a thought. Which was exactly the way that Taeko wanted it. He stood up, still astounded and she walked over to reach for him. "I hope that I will finally be allowed to feel my fingers in your hair," she smiled softly; "I have wanted that for days now." Somehow, Kerry realized a little later on, they'd gone from standing there in his dining room to making the trip up here to his bed. He could tell himself that he recalled a few details of the trip -- such as Khoe leading him up the stairs with the bottle of sake held by its neck in her graceful fingers - but for the most part, he couldn't say much more from his recollections of the journey. He could tell himself that he was getting to know the mystery girl more than a little, but there was so much to her mystery that he was just helpless in it. All that he knew was that he'd never, ever, .... not even once in is life, known anyone like this before. Once they were on his bed, Khoe ran things. She told him that she would make this as good for him as she could and he had no doubt of her sincerity. The entire night passed him by like a long darkness which covered him, comforted him and surrounded him and she gave him more pleasure than he thought that any one man could surely deserve. She asked him fairly early on if he had any condoms and he shook his head, "No matter, Kerry," she whispered, "this is for us both -- a pair of friends such as we have become. But please buy some tomorrow -- unless you do not enjoy what I do for us tonight." She pulled him onto her then and his descent began. She did things to him, some for him and some for herself, it seemed, drawing her own pleasure from his. When she used her mouth on his manhood, she had ways to tease him that he'd never considered. She held it as they lay on their sides, looking up the length of him as she licked one finger to drag it ever so lightly underneath the end of it. It was something that he couldn't have done himself and it amazed him, feeling so good. He watched her use her mouth over the rest, but what her fingertip and nail did then were the focus. He asked and she smiled, "By itself, what I do would not be enough. My mouth is to keep you warm." After he almost had to beg her, she went at this more conventionally, but she often used that one index finger or the other in various ways and places. When he asked about it, she only kept up that shy and intriguing smile. "I can drive you to your joy the whole night long and use nothing more than my finger the entire time. But I do not think that you would want me to demonstrate tonight." He tried to tell her when he was about to come that first time, but Khoe only shook her head at him. "You do not need to tell me this, Kerry, I will know it each time, and maybe even a little before you are certain of it yourself. I only need to get to know you a little. Other than that, all men are the same, and the one that I lie here with makes me happy that I can do this for him." She'd stopped to say it and her wet fingers were busy while she spoke -- always taking him along and higher, never stopping his pleasure and yet, never driving him to it either. She opened her mouth again and went back to it. He came so hard within the next minute and as he looked down, Khoe made no sign of it; she only sucked in everything that he gave and as far as he knew, she missed nothing, not even one drop. When he was empty for the moment, she looked up at him and he could see that she was very pleased. He watched her move up then to lie with her arm over him and the expression that he saw on her face almost made him do something which he'd believed was impossible right then. He'd never been the kind of man who'd ever been very forthcoming with his feelings toward anyone. It was something about him that had caused some trouble for Lauren. She'd known without a doubt that Kerry loved her. She also knew that he was very reluctant to say it, not because it hadn't been true, it had just always been hard for him to do. As he looked at Khoe, it was suddenly all that he could do to NOT blurt out how taken with her he was right then. It was something that Kerry had never done in his life with anyone. They hadn't known each other long enough for what he felt now. He couldn't understand it at all, so he tried to push past it. Kerry pushed her over onto her back very gently and he moved down so that he could pleasure her, but Khoe asked him to get up on his knees. "If I could ask it of you," she said softly, "please use your hand and kiss me a little bit. I wish to look at you." Kerry did his best and he was rewarded by the measure of what he saw in her as he did. Khoe was happy just with this and it was plain to him. It caused him to want to do this to whatever she thought was perfection to her. For a long time, he watched her writhe and he felt what she was doing somehow to his fingers -- as though she had some way to tighten on them at the right times to help her maximise this. And the thing of it was, that she looked so happy and thankful to him for it. After watching it as she came this way, Kerry leaned lower and began to kiss his way down her body; never moving very quickly or doing anything urgent. By now, he'd already learned this much about her and he knew right then that -- no matter how deeply he'd loved Lauren and tried to make love to her giving his all, ... This woman deserved a lot more than that. He couldn't even tell himself why or how he even knew it, but he did; he just did. Somewhere on this old world, he figured, there must be one man at least who knew how to turn any woman into a happy puddle when he did this. He didn't know who the man was necessarily, but he knew that he had to exist someplace. Kerry wanted so much right then to have the loan of some of that man's ability. He just did his best and to his surprise, Khoe knew that he was doing everything that he could for her within the context of her style of making love. She knew and she told him that he was making her very happy. "It is not about the screaming and thrashing for me -- though that can be very nice sometimes," she whispered, "The secret to loving me is in the soft gasps and little sounds. Listen for them and you will know, Kerry. I see that you try hard. It is more than enough." Her breasts weren't large, and the musculature underneath them, added to the way that she was made, just presented him with the firmest ones that he'd ever tasted and he knew that this was an uncommon privilege to his mind, so he treated it as such and by her actions and sounds, he knew that he was on the right path. He almost wanted to cry for the way that he suddenly felt rewarded in it. When he drifted lower, he put his hands to work, not wanting her nipples to miss out as he grazed. He was sure that his oral technique left a lot to be desired, and he was about to offer her some apology, when he felt her fingers in his hair again. "Do not try to drive me like this," she whispered, "Think of one thing only. The best lovers at this for me have been women. Hold this in your mind and let it guide you. A woman does not do this the way that a man does. Think of the difference and you will have the key to me, Kerry." He didn't even stop to consider much of what she'd said. He just knew that he understood right then, and he switched gears on the spot. Within a minute or less, he saw his reward in the way that her body changed for him, becoming more languid and slow in everything. He even knew that she wanted to savor this, so he knew that he was doing it at least a little correctly. "Please put it in me now," she sighed, "but remember, ..." There was no more forthcoming, but he did as he was asked and within two minutes of the slowest coitus that he could imagine, he was watching and feeling it as Khoe came for him. That was the astounding part for him right there. This amazing creature made this all feel as though she was experiencing the orgasm that he'd given her with his poor lovemaking skills -- the way that he saw it, anyway -- and, ... And she was coming for him. There were little sobs from her and he even saw her little tears as she thanked him. "You are a magnificent man, Kerry," He tried no to stare at her over it, though it was bending his brain a little. One little sentence from her and he felt like a king -- and it didn't matter. It wasn't the point, and he suddenly knew it. She was saying something else and he understood, just as he believed that most men including himself would have gotten it wrong, taking it as a sign of their prowess. Well he hadn't been banging her; he'd been loving her on her terms and for that, .... She rolled them over then and he was out of her as she rode him, using her lips to slide over the length of him. He'd never known anything like this, but hot damn, he thought, she was good. She spit on her fingers after a little while and between her vaginal lips and her fingers, he almost bucked her right off of him. As he stared up at her a little weakly, Khoe chuckled, "You see that you need to buy condoms, yes?" He wasn't sure just how to process it at first, but her little smile made his tag along and he nodded. ================================================== She made him her prisoner that night. It was something that she knew that she shouldn`t be doing with him, but for once in her life, she was doing what she wanted for herself. It happened a little at a time and he had little say in it. Sometime before the first sounds of the birds outside just as the sky was beginning to lighten, he knew it and he could admit it to himself. He wanted to kick himself around the block over it when he was certain. He knew that she had to return to Japan one day, so he also had a clue about the rest of it. It made him feel a little weak and annoyed with himself to have to admit it. He'd been just about to tell her that he'd follow her anywhere and do anything -- as long as he might have the privilege of being the one for her. He struggled with it silently for a time. She made it worse for him when she offered him her bottom to fuck so that he could at least come inside of her, other than only into her mouth. Despite the way that he felt about her, it grew urgent between them at some point and he banged her ass pretty hard. She only mewled and groaned that he was so good for her this way. He couldn't process that either. She almost dragged him to the bathroom for a shower and the way that she washed his body said a lot to him. It just didn't say the final thing to him -- which would have been her saying that she was his then. He hadn't asked, and she certainly knew what was in his heart. He could even tell. So he resolved that there wouldn't be any more of this foolishness from his point of view. This was just something that had happened between them and it was awesome. He'd even learned a lot from it and her. But that was as far as he was prepared to go, now that the unspoken question had been resolved. He even felt a lot better over it, not ever being the sort of man who entertained thoughts such as he'd been having and wondering now where the hell they'd come from. But then she'd driven the last spike home. That was what he told himself anyway. That was what he might have wanted to believe, that this would be a one-time thing between them. He couldn't have been more wrong. This was only the first night of his imprisonment. She'd taken control once more in her gentle way and he'd allowed it. Kerry lay on the bed in a little disbelief as she moved his legs to love him with her mouth again. She began on his hardness and she never let that part of him feel neglected somehow, but she did move on after a time. He didn't even know what she was doing, either. He couldn't see much of it. All that he knew was that his dick was back to being Mr. Happy once more while her mouth was busy elsewhere. She put an awful lot into licking his anus for a long time as she did other things to him. That was why he didn't think about it all that much since she was using her hands on him elsewhere at the same time. Well that was a new thing for him, but before he could wonder about it for too long, He felt her finger, and then a second slender finger a minute later and he couldn't understand how she'd done that -- and more to the point, why he was allowing it. The next thing that he knew, he was a little curled on his back and she was fucking him so that he was lost. He couldn't do anything -- because he suddenly didn't want her to stop. He thought that he might have protested if she'd even slowed down very much. And she didn't. She drew her fingers out of him only once and that was to cross them and put them right back in. He thought that his heart would stop and there was a little pain that time at first and then, ... He couldn't even speak. Well nothing intelligible, anyway. At some point that Khoe gauged was the right one, she took his steel-hard shaft into her mouth again and he almost screamed when he came so hard and so long as he pumped into her mouth. She did make sounds then. She'd moved back and she'd been sitting on one of her own heels, rocking herself a little in some impossible way. He felt her shudder through her own climax just as the last of his semen came to her. Kerry couldn't move for a while then. He was paralyzed over what she'd done. It just astounded him. He'd been hers in this and for the first time in his life, he knew that he'd been with someone who could take the active role and run this any way that her beautiful and mysterious little heart desired. He watched her suck him a little longer rather gently and to his mind very affectionately for another minute or two before she raised her head and smiled at him. "Thank you, Kerry," she smiled as she moved up to lean over him and kiss him a little, "You are a magnificent man," she said again. Then her fingers were gone very gently and she was dragging him to the shower again. She said nothing, but her touch showed him that they were a pair of lovers now. They'd just never be the kind of lovers that he'd have ever wanted. He already knew that this was not permanent. ================================================== She stayed with him over the summer, helping him in getting this all closed off and sold, and managing things as he worked to sell the crops and the farms, one after another. They set off together then, heading west and by the time that they'd gotten to his home, they'd had the talk where he'd asked her to marry him and then having to listen as she gently explained that it couldn't be. He knew it already, but he felt that he had to make the attempt. The little bonsai tree died on the way, no matter how he worried over it, seeing it as something related to them in a way. She worked his garden over for him and she used what was there and added her own touches to it as she helped him find craftsmen who could restore and improve what had been there in the house while never taking away from the original theme, except where it was not practical or desired. His nights were slight torture to him. He was so lost in his love for her and he sometimes saw that she loved him as well, though she did try to hide it. So he kept trying to resolve things, and she kept telling him that it just wasn't possible. "I know that you could never understand, so I will not tell you the details, Kerry. But I am one who is not free and can never be. Please, do not ask or try to press me or I will have to leave you. Let us enjoy what we have until it is gone." He tried. He tried and failed, not being able to live that way. She left him three times. He thought that he'd upset her over something that she wouldn't change. She left him because it was something that she couldn't even evade. She used the first time to get into contact with her keepers. She was told to wait, until she forced the issue by revealing the complication of Kerry. She was told to wait again for instructions which were to follow. Kerry was relieved when he saw her riding up the road to come home again and her felt a little hope that it might signal a change in her. He never knew that Khoe engineered the second fight so that she could leave him again for a time. This time when she called in, she received directions that said that her situation had been considered and that there was a solution and not the one that she'd first been threatened with. Taeko was relieved, though her heart didn't like what she was told. At least it was better than what she'd originally heard said to her. This solution left Kerry alive. It wasn't his fault that she'd gotten him into this, so when she heard of their compromise, she went for it, not that she had much of a better choice and she asked for some other concessions to her out of her value to them. The third time that she left was the last time that he ever saw her. Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 04 ***Kerry had a lot of time to regret that Khoe had gone. He also had a lot of time to regret his actions, deciding that he'd been an idiot. Ah well ... This is a short piece even when taken together in its entirety. With that said - it's implausible as hell ,but I liked the notion of it and wrote it to see where it could go as a fairytale type of story. 0_o ================================================== Part Two: Kumiko 久美子 "long time beautiful child" So, the old lecher was dead, she thought. As far as her feelings on the subject went, he'd lived at least two years too long; that being the length of time that she'd had to spend with him. But his passing left her with some uncertainty. She doubted that he'd left her anything since he was a mean-spirited old bastard, given to just telling her what she'd do for him. As long as she was expressing her feelings on the subject to herself silently, he'd been a selfish old dried-up dick. The things that he'd had done to her ... She could only imagine how much it had cost him to buy the acceptance of what he wanted from her owners. She thought about that for a moment, deciding that she'd have been happy at the time just to have the money that it must have cost him to fly her to Japan and back, and all for a few tattoos. She'd gotten nothing out of it but the inkwork, and it had been done -- all of it -- in the old traditional way by hand. She 'd had one other done in Toronto by the method practiced by most artists and it had involved a lot less pain and time. Her first had taken a couple of weeks. She wondered what her next assignment would be as she went home to enjoy a little time off. As it turned out, she didn't have long to wait. The next day brought a phone call to tell her of a meeting. Kumiko had a sinking feeling over it for the rest of the day. The day after that was decidedly unpleasant. She was reminded of her advancing age and the way that her desirability moved in inverse proportion to it. She was told that there were to be no more assignments for her at all. Basically, she was informed that she was no longer needed and washed up as far as providing personal entertainment and 'comfort' was concerned -- at twenty-eight! She supposed that she could freelance, but that would take her into something in this culture that she wanted no part of, and she had no readily accessible connections in Japan, though it was a possibility that she liked a little better. "We do have one final assignment for you in a different regard," she was told, "Prepare yourself for a journey and you will be traveling lightly. Your destination is in the mountains to the west. You are not to return here." She was issued some airline tickets and that was it! The 'traveling lightly' thing was a joke to her. It was what she was told when they sent her to the old man. She only had a few things, so that part was easy and she'd made very good use of her bank and she'd saved every nickel that she could for years now and her investments were at a level where they paid off handsomely. ================================================= As she wandered through the cavernous interior of the airport in Vancouver, she was finally met by a single man who bowed curtly and told her that she was to follow him. He took her to a smaller terminal and they boarded a plane which would, he told her, take them to a smaller airport farther into the interior of British Columbia. "Can you tell me why I am being sent here?" Kumiko asked and he said, "It's where we catch the helicopter for the last leg. I don't know much of anything about it, but I was told that you have some medical experience. From what I know, you were chosen for this from high up." Kumiko didn't know what to say at that point. Her total medical experience was from working as a candy-striper years before in the maternity ward of a Toronto hospital. Three and a half hours later, she was trotting out a little bent over from under the whirling rotors of a Bell helicopter across a mountain meadow. The scenery all around her was spectacular, but she was more confused and struggling with a rising sense of vague upset than ever, still without the knowledge of what she was to do here. She was led to the only building in sight -- a largish cabin, and ushered inside. She saw three people waiting for her there; one of them a woman -- her own mother, whom she hadn't seen since she'd been trapped by people who offered to pay for her education and never said what their price might be until it was far too late. The woman asked the others to leave and then she offered her daughter a cup of tea and indicated a second woman who sat, cast in deep shadow in the corner. Kumiko hadn't even seen her until then. "I'm afraid that I know nothing of what's going on," she said to her mother, "and I wonder if there's been a mistake somehow." "There has been no mistake Kumiko-chan," the woman bowed a little before she revealed a slightly pleased look, "I am the not the one who sent for you. My companion chose you personally out of many others. We need your help and perhaps it will earn your freedom as well as your dream at last." As the woman began to speak, Kumiko's mouth began to fall open at what she heard. ================================================= Kerry went from anguish through despondency and on down until at last he arrived at miserable. He knew that there was a last stop on the ride and he tried to keep himself from growing cold to the world around him, but he knew that he'd get there eventually. One morning in the late spring, just about at the second anniversary of him having met the woman who'd come into his life, turned it upside down and then disappeared, he walked into the kitchen and made himself a cup of instant coffee. Kerry sat at the table and noted the improvement in himself. There had been days where he'd done nothing other than sit right here; drinking coffee until at last he'd begun to weep a little. He'd get a handle on it and finally begin his day, looking after his investments and checking the state of the markets. He thought that it was a pretty shitty existence and he felt like a bit of discarded packaging. He was fairly well-off, but he still felt like an empty chocolate bar wrapper. He looked up then, seeing a motion out in the garden. He almost dropped the mug as he stared. Out there, just closing the gate was a woman in a dark cloak. It was a cold day and it was a little unusual in that respect. But he didn't care as he looked at the familiar form, watching for a moment as she turned to walk toward the house a little slowly carrying something as well as struggling with a piece of luggage. Kerry jumped up and ran to the door. He couldn't seem to find his sneakers or his workboots or any form of footwear, cursing himself a little as he remembered that he'd done the housework the evening before and had put everything away in the closet. As well and perhaps worst of all, he knew that the stones of the walk would rip the soles of his bare feet open if he moved at more than a snail's pace. He almost ran right out the door anyway until he remembered that he wasn't wearing anything. He muttered to himself even more as he ran upstairs and finally managed to pull on a pair of jeans. He ran back downstairs and yanked the door open just as the woman was about to knock. He was looking at a stunningly beautiful oriental woman with an uncertain expression whom he did not know. "Good morning, Mr. Browne," she said softly, "My name is Kumiko. May I come in? I have walked a long way." He looked bewildered for a moment. She had to have walked a long way if she'd come from town. It was a 20 minute drive. He looked down, suddenly noticing that what she held was a sort of sling which she wore. There was an infant sleeping against her chest in it. "I didn't walk all the way from town," she smiled a little uncomfortably; "I was dropped off about halfway from town. I've come here from Vancouver. This is your son, Ciarraighe. May we talk?" You could have knocked him over with a feather, but the hair that he saw on that little sleeping head, ... ================================================= He sat back, scratching his head and feeling rather uncomfortable as he looked at the paperwork that she'd brought along. Kumiko sat quietly for the most part, looking around herself and marveling at the inside of the house. There were modern and very western elements, such as the kitchen, but she also saw purely Japanese elements as well; rooms with sliding wooden panels for their entrances and the décor in the one room that she could see was absolutely perfect and correct -- for the home of a wealthy man who had rather pure tastes in a style of Japanese home that was largely not constructed anymore even in Japan. "You have a fine home," she said very quietly, "I was surprised to see the outside of it and the garden there. What I can see of the interior surprises me even more -- since it is the home of a man from a different culture." "Yeah well, you might say that I had a lot of help," Kerry said, not looking up as he read over the papers which lay before him on the table. Without meaning to at all -- given that he sat there with a stranger and a sleeping baby -- he finished the bitter thought, more for himself than his presently unwelcome guest. "It was a dream once, when I had a woman in my life who actually wanted to love me for the rest of our lives. Most of the restoration was handled by a woman who knew and understood the esthetics and the art of what was here. She just didn't love me enough to stay." He finished his examination of the papers and pushed them away toward Kumiko as he looked up, his blue eyes looking very coldly at her. "So I'm supposed to just accept that you're ... " He exhaled then, "Lady, I don't freaking believe this. I think I'll just call the cops." She shook her head, "I do not want any money from you. This is not extortion. I have more to tell, Kerry, but I will only say it once and then never again. Are you prepared to listen?" "Yeah," he said, "whatever." She looked a little upset at that, but she took a breath and began. "The woman that you knew was not named Khoe. It was only a name which she took for herself a lot of the time. She did not plan what happened between you; but you should know that her leaving you was not her free choice to make. She has value to some rather powerful people in Asia. She must go when she is called." "Value for what?" he asked, regretting his hard tone and yet not at the same time. "Her skill," the woman shrugged, "I will not make it clear beyond saying only that you should think on why it is that a woman of today knows how to finish an impromptu kendo match in seconds, over and over; no matter what you thought to do in how you approached it. May I continue? Or will you now ask me something foolish about her value as a kendo competitor -- and she has never competed anywhere with wooden swords, if you catch my meaning. You might imagine what she could do with a pair of live blades instead of only wooden ones and she has far more skills, abilities, and value than only that. I hope that you can imagine what she might be able to do with firearms or explosives, since those are the tools that she works with far more often than with swords. I know that she has killed a man with a long thin stainless steel rod before." Kerry looked over at that as his mouth opened a little. The woman nodded, "One end ground to a thin point and inserted into the heart from under the left arm in bed. Done correctly, I am told that there is no sound and the victim cannot move. The rod is withdrawn afterwards and discarded later on, far from the scene." You were making love with a weapon every night, Kerry. I cannot say it any more strongly than that." He nodded, able to at least know when it was best that he kept his mouth shut. "I never met her other than only once for a period of about three months and I last saw her a month ago," the woman said, "It was when she gave this boy to me to raise with you. She said that she loved you as she has never loved anyone but that she was not allowed to stay any longer. If it matters to you, I will say only that she is now in Russia. I believe that she will be sent elsewhere soon, and anyway, you would not ever be able to find her." He set down his mug, "Raise him with, ... me? You're supposed to raise this boy -- and I'm not even about to just blindly accept that this child is even mine -- with me?" He sat back again, "Just what the fuck are you trying to do here?" "This child," she said, "is yours. You can insist on DNA testing if you wish. You impregnated her and she left before it became obvious. She told of it to her handlers and they came up with this solution. His birth in a remote cabin in the interior of this province is documented and you are listed as the estranged father. I registered the birth myself and I am listed as the mother. No one even asked me for a blood sample. He has no value to the clan that your 'Khoe' works for. I would not recommend that you refuse to care for him, for his sake. These people, ..." She looked down for a moment, "These people are not known to be this understanding or charitable and I can tell you this from personal experience. The only reason that I was chosen for this was that I am of no further use to them, and the woman who you knew selected me because of the similarities in our appearances. I am here to raise him with you as our son. I carry enough documentation to prove to anyone here that I am Khoe Nakatami and I have the same blood type as she does by some coincidence, though that is not an indicator in most cases of maternity. You and I do not even know each other, but to me, this is likely the only chance that I will ever have at a normal life. If you would allow it and trust me only a little, I would be happy to do whatever I must to become Khoe for you. I understand that you will probably be reluctant at first, but I only ask for a chance. If it is up to me, you will never regret accepting this choice. I studied hard to get to know who you are from her notes. I am offering myself to be your woman. It is nothing that I do lightly. You might hold the thought of it in your mind, but I am not deranged or insane." Kerry couldn't help it - he just stared at her over that remark until, ... Something came to him then from his time as a policeman. He suddenly realized that if this were a scam of any kind, this woman was likely not acting out of her own free will. He was wrong in at least one aspect. This was no scam, and she was acting on her own as far as playing her part in this. Kerry just couldn't see the way that she hid her hopefulness. He looked over as the thought took hold in him, "What happens to you if I refuse? You can't just walk away, can you? One phone call and --" She shook her head sadly, at least a little certain that this was impossible now, "I told you. I am of no further use to ... Please Mr. Browne. I was an orphan, not that it matters much. I was bought, raised and trained when I was old enough to please a man. That and some skill at bookkeeping are all that I have -- other than my certification as an accountant. But I never worked at it beyond keeping some shady internal books for the clan here. What I have in this is a chance to live a real life for once; being a man's wife and the mother of his son. I have two birth certificates for him. On the perfect forgery, his mother is listed as Khoe. I had this done on the chance that you might want to live believing that she never left you. The other birth certificate -- the one which is the one sent to me by the authorities -- shows that his mother is me. It is the one that I wish and hope that you might prefer." She sat back a little and gently adjusted the way that the infant was against her chest, "I am not here asking for your support. I have my own means to live and take care of him. I am quite prepared to do that if you wish, and you will never be bothered by me -- or Carraighe-chan ever again. I would raise him so that he would never know of you. But it would likely happen that he and I would both be dealt with as part of what would be seen as a necessary cleanup in a little time. This way, I have assurances that he and I would be forgotten. If you were able to have the police here soon enough to catch me -- and even if they did not, it would only be the same as killing me yourself and for certain, this boy would not live past the next two weeks at the outside. They are very thorough when they look for a loose end and that is what we are to them now; a pair of loose ends. The only reason that you met his mother at all was the unforeseen circumstance of your uncle's passing and your desire to close off his affairs. Other than that, she herself was very thorough in what she was sent here to do -- and I do not know what that was, since it didn't concern me. What is being offered to you and I is not being done as a kindness to either of us. It is being done as a reward to her for her faithful and long service to them because she loved you and she cannot keep and raise your son. Her occupation precludes it and it would only leave her and him vulnerable in a world where no government -- no law enforcement agency anywhere could ever protect them. She has breached the best defenses that they can erect herself more than once when she needed to." They sat in silence for several minutes. Kerry said, "Look, I used to be a cop and - " I know this," she nodded. "Yeah well anyway," he said, "I could probably put you in touch with somebody who could help you in your circumstances." "No one could protect us for very long," she said simply, "and it would not be what I would want." Kerry looked at the infant for a moment and then he looked up, "You don't have much to look after him with, do you?" She shook her head, "Only a few clothes and some disposable diapers." He sighed, "Is that the only thing that you have to carry him in?" When she nodded, he said, "Wait here. I'll need to put on a shirt, and then we'll go into town. I wouldn`t even let you walk away from here like that." ================================================= He thought it was absurd. All told, he drove clean past the police station, the women's shelter and a church -- all of them places where he could have done the right thing. He looked over and saw the woman and the protective way that she held the infant as he drove very slowly and carefully. He wondered how much of the story had been bullshit up to that point, but what he saw in her concern for the child was something then that overrode some of that. He still wondered ... But then he remembered the times when he'd been a cop and there had been bodies found in unlikely places and in pieces with as many means of positive identification absent as possible. It caused him to wonder if driving past had been the right thing to do after all. "What was your name again?" he asked and he heard only "Khoe," "That's not what you told me at first," he said. "What I told you was my real first name," she said, "From now on, I am Khoe." Kerry wondered if she was nuts, or whether he was, given what he saw himself doing. "Look, uh, Khoe," he said, "I'm having a ton of trouble here. You said that you'd raise him with me. What do you get out of it from your side again?" Her reply shocked him at first when she said, "He gets his father to know and love him, a home and a family to grow up in and he knows me. I love him as my own. I have been in his short life from the beginning. I was the first person to see him. I assisted at his birth." Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 04 Kerry tried not to stare -- but he did anyway for a moment, "You were there?" She nodded, "I was ready to become the stand-in mother for him as soon as I saw him. I assumed as much of the role as Khoe was prepared to allow and it was a very tearful time for us both; her already feeling the beginnings of her great loss and I was there doing my best and feeling like a thief the entire time. Ideally, it was you who should have been there, but you proved yourself to be incapable of even letting her go as it was. There was no other way. I can understand the way that you felt -- even how you must be feeling now. And at this moment, I feel about the way that I thought that I would; still as though I have something which I am not entitled to have and very unwelcome on the doorstep of your life. But to answer your original question, I get, ... I get -- as you say -- a life. I get a man who I could hope might learn to love me one day, if I am very lucky. I get a child to raise when I cannot give birth to my own. It would be more than enough for me." "What do you mean?" he asked and she looked down for a long moment, thinking that now she'd have to say the words which would seal this against her and the little boy. "In order to have a child to raise," she said, "a woman requires a man who hopefully loves her and at least one working ovary. Mine were removed," she said almost in a whisper, "It removes the ongoing expense of birth control and guarantees that I would be available almost always. It was done after I conceived once. The child was stillborn and my, ... owners, .... had the procedure done so that it would never be an issue again. I made a lot of money for them. I can never conceive, so he is the only chance that I have to be a mother. Please tell me if that makes me undesirable for you." Kerry looked at her for a moment as though she had three heads. Then his expression changed abruptly, suddenly realizing that it was a huge thing to almost any woman and he could understand how it might feel to have been neutered when one has no say in the matter. "Makes you undesirable?" He shook his head, "Fuck me," he said a little uncharacteristically, "Forty-five minutes ago, I was an unhappy, grumpy man in an empty life. Now, I have a son -- rumor has it -- and a woman who appears to really want to have a life with me. Lady, it all makes me nervous, a little scared, very uncomfortable for the way that it's being sprung on me and just a tiny bit irritable over the way that I'm obviously not going to be able to be quietly miserable anymore without having to feel guilty that my rejecting you might cause you both to get killed or something. And all of this doesn't exactly make me feel one bit better about losing the woman I loved. In fact, it's even worse than that, since it opens a pretty deep wound which until not long ago was just beginning to heal." "I cannot make it better for you completely, Kerry," she said, "and you were warned. I know this because she told me that she told you many times that she could not stay. It hurt her to say it every time, because her actions caused what is to her employers, a very unwelcome complication. They tend to favor very final and lasting solutions. And I am not called 'Lady'. My name is Khoe "she reminded him. He rolled his eyes, "No it's fucking not, and I wasn't talking about your name. You asked me about your desirability. I don't know you from anybody. But I can tell you that it does not make you 'undesirable to me', strictly speaking, but don't get your hopes up and please stop speaking about yourself as though you were a head of livestock. I'm still trying to sort this out, ok?" "Ok," she said and she looked down. He was careful in negotiating traffic, deciding that he really couldn't risk getting a ticket for having a kid in the truck with no proper seating for an infant and even he as a single man now felt the risks that they were undertaking in driving this way. He felt the strangest wish in him to own a proper child seat for the first time in his life. And he really wanted to go back to being a grumpy man -- though he wasn't nuts about the lonely part. He looked over at her again, "And I don't see what's so funny, so could you please stop smiling like that?" He pulled into a shopping mall and stopped, turning to her, "Let's try this while I'm deciding; I don't want to hear you calling me Mr. Brow-" "Kerry," she said, wanting to smile and now struggling not to. "I know. I was born in Japan. I came to Toronto to study, but I made an error in judgement and got pregnant instead. Not knowing what to do, I accepted the offer of a woman who said that she could get me help. That is how I fell into the life that I have led ever since. But I assure you that other than being young and unwise in my desperation once a long time ago, I'm not stupid." "I didn't think that you were," he said, "I just wanted to get it straight. Too bad about being from Toronto though. Tough break there -- having to leave the center of the known universe and all." It caused her to laugh a little for the first time, and Kerry decided that he liked that on her. It beat the hell out of subservient and meek, he thought, though he could see that it was not necessarily the way that she was or wanted to be. She nodded and she waited for him to come around to her side to help her negotiate the business of getting out of a tall truck with an infant . "I will not be extravagant," she said quietly as they walked to the doors. "That's not the important thing," he said, "Let's just get him a good car seat -- one of those ones that double as a carrier and whatever else you think that he needs. Even I know that a sling like the one that he's in isn't for much more than a pleasant walk down a country road. Christ, they probably didn't even warn you about the deerflies." "I learned about them myself," she said, "and I kept them off the little one. But what is wrong with carrying him in this sling until he gets too big?" He saw the way that she looked at him, so he said, "Think about it. If you were this big," he said holding his hands apart, "would you want to look at this from close up?" he asked, pointing to his face. She nodded with a hopeful little smile and he rolled his eyes, "Forget I said anything." Forty minutes later, he was piling their purchases into the back of his crew cab, though he took out the convertible carrier which doubled as a car seat component. After that, he put the box containing the crib into the back as well, grumbling a little over the way that anything even relating to a child automatically doubled the price of what one might think the article was worth. 'Khoe' was about to get in when he shook his head, "We're not done. You need some clothes a little more suited to being a mom. What you've got on is really nice, uh, Khoe -- for a very attractive governess. You need 'mom' clothes -- something that goes with the perils of the world's most hazardous occupation, though I think we don't have to go all the way to a biohazard rating. I'm not completely sure, though. I've never been a father before so I can't really say." She looked confused, "Why do you call it hazardous?" He smirked, "Well, they all seem to hang on pretty good until they get to be grandmothers. But you can guess what they must have gone through in their time. I don't think I've ever seen one who isn't gray or dying her hair to hide it. Think about that. I'd sure say that it was at least stressful." The little boy woke up hungry after that and she produced a bottle for him out of her bag. While Ciarraighe Junior worked at the bottle, he asked her to look for a place where she might like to have lunch. "I want to get a look at what I'm bargaining for in some decent light." They sat in the restaurant and he held the bottle for his son as he studied that little face which regarded him a little curiously. "Just help me here," he said, "You're not Khoe. You might have paperwork that says that you are, but I think I might feel a little less suspicious if I could get you to come around to 'Kumiko'. Why are you smiling?" She couldn't help it, "You remembered," she said, looking a little pleased. "Am I ever going to know your real last name?" he asked. "Of course," she said, "It's something of a coincidence, but my true last name is Nakatami. It's not all that common a name, but it's common enough in some areas of Japan, I guess." "How do you want to handle the domestic thing?" he asked and seeing her expression, he just said, "I haven't got two beds. I could sleep on the couch until I can buy you one and a little furniture for your room." She shook her head. "I will sleep with you, Kerry. All that I ask is that you let me hold on to you for a while." He looked stunned and finally asked her why. She looked down again and mumbled that she'd never had something like that. She'd never been given any choice in the men that she'd had to service and even if she had a thought to pretend for a moment or two, well, they weren't there for that. The last arrangement that she'd been given into had been for an old man. She wasn't upset at his passing, but it left her nowhere with nothing but emptiness and the cavern of a woman's emotions which playthings such as her were not supposed to have. He didn't know what to say to that. As they drove back, Kerry was trying to decide what to do about this. But he found that one thing kept creeping into his thoughts. "I don't mean to pry," he said, "please try to understand that. I'm having trouble with what you indicated was your -- occupation -- shall we say. It sounds to me as though you were some sort of, ..." His voice trailed off there. "I do not know the extent of what you might know of Japanese cultural history," she said as she began. "The old word for a woman such as you hold in your mind is yūjo. It is still used today, but it refers to any sort of prostitute and translates to 'woman of pleasure'. But during Japan's feudal period, there were many classes and layers to society, and so, there were many classes of yūjo. Are you familiar with the term Geisha? Do you understand what they are?" Kerry nodded, "Yeah, but as far as I ever knew, Geishas don't sleep with their clients." Kumiko nodded, "Correct. A geisha is not a yūjo. Many westerners do not understand the distinction. In the old style, other than only one act of paid sex to raise money for the celebration and as a gift to the girl when she comes of age, a true Geisha does not engage in sexual acts with her clients. She must be witty and charming, flattering to her patrons and knowledgeable in the same things which might be important to them, so that she can hold up her end of an intelligent conversation with them in anything. But it is all about something which cannot be. A Geisha might take a lover, but not from her patrons and it is a very private love then. If she marries, then she cannot be Geisha any longer and must retire." "Then I don't understand what you were telling me," Kerry said, almost, but not quite scratching his head as a reflex as he drove and scanned the traffic ahead of them. "I am not a Geisha," Kumiko said with a shrug, "Please allow me to continue and I will make it clear for you. My own skills predate even the Geisha. There were many levels of yūjo as I have said, and eventually, there came to be what was known as Oiran. Oiran are women who are entertainers in many of the same ways as the Geisha but they may be better considered as courtesans. To be Oiran, a woman must be intelligent, educated in many things, so that she can also carry on an intelligent conversation, must be able to perform the tea ceremony to perfection, perform calligraphy and even flower arranging as it is or was done back then. But her services are for sale in the way that westerners think of Geisha -- if one can afford such." She looked down then, not knowing how the next part would be received by him, wondering if she ought to feel shame in his eyes or a little accomplishment for what she'd attained at one time. I am Tayū, the highest and the most expensive level. I was to offer the best of everything in terms of pleasantries, conversation and in many ways, people like me could be considered as the ideal wife -- for a night or two only. To connect the idea back to feudal Japan, Tayū were the level of Oiran suitable for a daimyo or lord. They were also known by the term `castle crushers` for the way that the cost of their services could drain a lord`s capital. The Tayū in that long past day were free to offer or withhold their intimate offerings, but it was not an option in my world. Eventually, the Geisha overtook the Oiran in popularity and the Oiran faded, but there are others like me who still work a very old profession." She drew a breath then for courage and she looked up, "That is what I am -- or was until recently. I was offered to the wealthy and used in that regard. I might wish to say that I am retired now, but the truth of it would be to say that I was retired by my employers. In an older day, a Tayū with my experience would be much sought-after by older and even wealthier men, but the truth of it today is that younger is considered better and more sought-after. So I am considered old at twenty-eight." Kerry blinked a few times at that. He couldn`t imagine it, to be honest. Her beauty was almost on an ethereal level to him, being the uncultured gaijin that he would have to be considered to be by the same standards which would have elevated someone like her. ================================================= They were busy the rest of the day and he never mentioned that he didn't believe her again, because the truth of it was that he was not trying to think of just how much of a lie this all might be. He'd seen all that he needed to see when he'd examined her documentation and listened to her tell of how many details were covered by it. He'd been trying to see if this might work. He didn't need much in the way of paperwork to know that he was looking at his own son when he looked into that face, even with the oriental features that Khoe had donated to his genes and he for damned sure didn't need to examine the face of the beautiful and worried woman to know that they needed him. He thought about it during a private moment and he knew that he'd likely never see Khoe again and now at least he had a reason for what had happened. He was sad over it once more, sure. But he knew that he couldn't change it and though he couldn't quite understand Kumiko's motivation, he thought that he wanted to help and it was enough for him at least for now. Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 05 ***The final act in this short play. 0_o ================================================= “Does he sleep through the night?” he asked her, whispering after they’d put the infant to bed in his own crib as they watched him drop off and she shrugged, “He’s getting there,” she said, “He manages to more often than not now.” It had come to his mind a few times during the day, but Kerry still wasn’t really prepared for the way that she followed him to the bedroom and took her clothing off to stand before him. He felt his jaw falling open. It wasn’t a thought which came to him, but at that point, Kerry’s notion of the paradigm of feminine loveliness rose to where the bar was set right then. He hadn’t been prepared at all for this. With her rather conservative style of clothes on – and he guessed that there had been a reason that she was so, … well-covered in her dark slacks and her cloak, though it had really suited the weather that day, he supposed. He liked what he was looking at, but for all of what she’d said to him, they were strangers and this wasn’t a whorehouse. He almost winced as that thought hit him. Other than the strictest western connotation in that she was or she wasn't, the whole concept didn’t apply to her at all. She saw his glance at her breasts for just an instant. “They were very slight bits of nothing by themselves,” she said, “I lost my baby early in the third trimester and I was given implants to even get them to this small size afterward. I hope that they might be sufficient for you. I think that western men like much larger breasts, many Orientals like this now as well.” Kerry shook his head, “I’m not shopping for melons today. I’m just on my ass over you walking in here and dropping your clothes and then standing there like that – as if I was a … Well, I’m not, ok? I’m just, … really confused, I guess.” She stepped forward to where he sat on the edge of the bed, trying to offer a little smile, “I know you must be confused and even for me, it is different, but think of what I said if you can. I am offering something to you, Kerry. I am trying, I guess, to offer you a life with your son and a woman who wants to live a life with you – a real, regular, life. I think that this is a little different, but it is still the same thing that any woman offers to the man she chooses, just all at once, because I am used to having men look at my body. I don’t mind, I am trying my best to show you what I am. You might see it as trying to tempt you and in a very small way, I guess that I am, but really, I am trying to show you my honesty here. This is me,” she said with a little wave of her hand,” This is what I am, and I suppose that it is what I can offer to you. The difference is my hope that it is enough for you and that I am not offering a man my services for a night or two. This is what I offer in exchange for a life with you.” His eye caught something on her left forearm that he’d thought that he’d seen earlier in the restautrant and something different a little higher up that went to her shoulder and disappeared. She saw his glance and she nodded, “Something that my last patron had done to me. The dark pattern on my lower arm is new and is only just finishing its healing. I had it done to ruin the message of the other one.” She turned around and Kerry gasped. What he’d seen on her arm were tails. Three scaled tails which wound themselves together and went up her arm to her shoulder and then - now that he could see the rest – went right down the length of her back, though mostly to the left side of her spine. They were three very serpentine and almost eel-like dragons ending with their heads not far above the line of her buttocks. “Whoa, … “he sighed, “Is there a meaning to that?” She nodded, “Another thing I had no say in. I suppose that it means something to old and very powerful criminal businessmen, though I doubt that it means anything at all to the younger ones of today. My sleeve is to ruin it since I can’t remove the big one. I may want to add something else on my back to remove the message, but I haven’t decided yet. May I please sleep with you tonight?” “You really were serious,” he observed, and then he smiled, “Well we’ll see just how long this lasts. I probably snore and fart in my sleep.” “You do not understand,” she said quietly, “I don’t know if it will ever happen, but I have a hope that you might love me one day. That’s really what I want out of this for myself. You can use me for tonight if you wish. I only ask that I be allowed to hold you.” It still twisted his brain. He told her to sit next to him on the edge of the bed and she did. “Look, Kumiko,” he said, “I can’t understand this part. You’re really quite beautiful. The word doesn’t even do you justice. I don’t get what you’re doing here at all. I mean, you could just go to a government office and walk out like 20 minutes later with all the government support that you’d ever need to start a life with him. What do you want to do this for? For that matter, why are you always a little meek and subservient to me?” She sighed, “It isn't about money. It’s either this or we just return to being undesired details for someone to remove quietly. For me personally, I guess that I would want what I was never supposed to have or even want to have. I want a child, but I can never have my own. With you, he would be my own. He would be ours together. I don’t know if I can explain it any better than that. But I also cannot express how much of a desire that is for me – to want what any other woman can have. And,” she looked down; clearly struggling now – which boggled Kerry’s mind right there because it wasn’t that she was there next to him naked and feeling self-conscious, though he could see that it played a small part. “And I might be able to have a fine husband in you, Kerry. You are very attractive to most women and you’re beyond really attractive to me.” She almost lost it then as she struggled to hold in a sob as she sat with her head down and her face hidden in her hair to whisper something which he found actually hurt him to hear, now that he knew her a little bit. “I would do anything for a life like that. What almost any other woman can have – I would do anything for even the hope of it.” “Please get into the bed,” he smiled quietly, “Nobody’s going to be using anybody. I think that you’ve been used enough, Kumiko.” “Don’t you like me?” she asked, and Kerry was stunned. “I’m getting it, Kumiko,” he said, “I’m getting it, as slow as I am, but I need a little time. None of this was on my agenda when I got out of bed this morning. I’m not angry and wanting to turf you out anymore, am I? If you try to see this from my side, I’m about to get into a bed with a beautiful stranger under circumstances that neither one of us might have chosen easily. I’m not the kind of man who can just look at a lovely naked woman and drool a little, rub my hands together and nod like an idiot, though I may not be much better than that on my worst day. I will tell you one thing, though. I think that your desire to be held is a good way to help us get over everything and I find that I’m more than prepared to do that for us both. I suppose that I can piss and moan over all of this, but I’ve been alone with my thoughts for a good long while now and I find that by myself, I’m not much good for company. No matter what you might think about me, I don’t get the chance to hold a lovely naked lady in a bed at night all that often, and you’re offering, so I want to at least do that with you.” When he was undressed and in the bed beside her, he turned the light off and he reached for her, but he did it so that she could have what she wanted and it felt pretty good to him to feel her hold onto him. In a way, it didn’t feel strange to him at all. He was still awake when she drifted off with her face against his throat. It showed him a little of her weariness, and to him, some rather amazing trust in a stranger. He had a passing thought where he wondered just how much a night in her arms might have cost the men who sought her services. He had no doubt that it wouldn’t take a woman like this very long at all to crush his castle. He drew his head back to look at her in the dimness of the room from the moonlight outside and he saw that she could easily take a man’s breath away. He didn’t think that he had any business being in the arms of a woman like this. Kumiko opened her eyes then, waking up from her descent into deeper slumber. She smiled at him and then she pulled his head down to kiss his lips very softly once. “You are even better to lie against than I thought. Thank you, Kerry.” His manhood had been trying to cast its somewhat automatic vote the entire time, and it now refused to obey him at all, surging against her so that he wanted to apologize. But she only smiled, “A natural thing, I know.” She reached to move it so that it would be more comfortable and she stroked it only a little. “I can help with this if you would like. I don’t mind at all.” He was about to tell her no as gently as he could, but she kissed him again, just the same way with just the same smile on her face afterward, her hand still moving a little, “If you see this as a chance for a life for yourself with me, Kerry, then this will require a little familiarity with your woman, which is what I seek to become. I am not what I was any longer. To offer her man a little comfort is – or should be - as nothing to a woman. Lie on your back, and I will only do enough so that you are pleased and less uncomfortable and then we can go to sleep. I see it as earning my place to hold myself against you.” She pushed him a little and he rolled back so that she had the room and she moved and sat up a little, stroking him perfectly in only a moment and he watched as she looked at his body in her own appreciation of it. She didn’t say anything because she didn’t have to. She knew that he saw the way that she felt. When she’d gotten him along in only a few minutes as he looked at her in wonder, she lowered her head to his shaft and she finished him very nicely. True to her word and to Kerry’s amazement, it wasn’t more than what she made of it. She kept it at the level that she’d mentioned and he didn’t exactly blow his load, she just coaxed it out of him, swallowing all of it easily and very quietly to end it with her very gentle suckling. The next moment, she was lying beside him again and pulling him back onto his side as he mumbled his surprised thanks. “I think that I should thank you as well, “she smiled as she looked up at him. Kerry suddenly felt a desire in himself to show her that he wasn’t without his own feelings and so he slowly lowered his mouth and kissed Kumiko very slowly, never forcing himself against her lips very much at all. It caused her to sigh and she slid her arm over his back to hug him. “Kisses like that make you rise even higher in my sky,” she smiled, “You kiss very well. I never expected something like that. Thank you.” He nodded and they settled together to go to sleep. Kerry felt strangely comforted with her next to him like this and he dropped off to sleep not long afterward – which was uncharacteristic for him in bed with a woman. When she heard his breathing shift, Kumiko allowed herself the silent tears that she felt. It said a lot to her that he’d kissed her after she’d fellated him. None of her clients really ever had as a show of some affection. She looked at him for a few moments and then she closed her eyes. ================================================= The next day, they were still feeling each other out a little cautiously. Kumiko got up before Kerry. It was just something that she’d gotten used to because of the baby, so she woke up, knowing that she had only a little time to get the day’s formula prepared. She was ready just in time with a bottle at just the right temperature when she heard him stir. She was a little amazed at herself. After changing him, she sat feeding him and thinking about her notebook PC, not knowing if Kerry even had internet service here. She rather doubted it, so she pulled out her cellphone and found the barest of signals, maybe one bar and a bit. She turned the phone off and spoke to the little one softly in Japanese. That was how Kerry found them and he stood wearing only jeans in the doorway watching for a few minutes before Kumiko noticed him. He was smiling a little and she thought that it was a good thing. “I was going to ask how you wanted to handle the speech thing,” he said. Kumiko handed him his son and the bottle and gave him a few tips on the correct way to feed an infant. He was doing alright, but he looked up when she draped a clean dishtowel over his bare shoulder. “I think I prefer you like that,” she smiled, “but he’ll need a burp in a minute and there might be a little, … well, you’ll see. By the way, is there internet service here?” He nodded, “I get a feed from a tower a few miles away. There’s no cable TV so there’s no DSL. That’s why I use the tower. Why? Do you want to use my PC?” She shook her head, “No, I have a notebook. But I would like to be able to get to the web. Mostly I like to surf, do my banking, and read a few smutty stories now and then.” She laughed a little, “I never used to, but I’ve found that it’s the best thing for those nights or times when he just screams, from colic or whatever. You need to see to him then to make sure there’s no real issue. Babies can get painful gas. So you have to do what you can, but there are sometimes that he can just scream. He had colic one time, and there’s nothing much you can do but try to comfort him. I’ve gotten to the point where I can hold him, talk to him softly, try to think of a plausible reason for what’s upsetting him and read all at the same time. The thing is that he’s the focus the whole time. He’s a really good baby, and he’s happy a lot of the time, so when he isn’t, he’s got my attention, but sometimes he needs to cry about something and he needs a shoulder and a head to lean against and to hear some quiet words and it can take a little time. I’ll also want to use the online phone directory to find a pediatrician in the area. Would that be alright?” “Sure,” Kerry smiled, “I was just asking.” They decided that they agreed on English as the main language focus, quite obviously, but Kerry insisted that she also teach him Japanese, which he saw pleased Kumiko, but then she looked at him, ”What about you? I don’t think it’s fair that he and I can converse in something that you don’t know.” “Maybe I’ll take a course or something,” he said a little sheepishly. “Maybe won’t cut it,” she smiled, “Maybe I’ll paint the backyard fence, and maybe I won’t look out of the window so I can’t see it and then it won’t get done. Maybe I’ll try to find you a tutor; a mean old Japanese mother type with more rheumatism than patience.” “Ok, you win,” Kerry chuckled, and his son spit up. =============================================== Kerry brought a pair of coffee mugs to the table and set one down in front of Kumiko. She looked up and thanked him. What he saw over her shoulder was incomprehensible to him on the little screen there since he couldn’t read the language. “This isn’t one of my accounts,” she said, “This one is Carriaghe-chan’s in a Canadian bank. Barely three months old and he has a little over twelve thousand dollars. I gave him five to begin with and it feeds a registered educational fund.” Kerry blinked for a moment, “Where did the rest come from?” “Khoe,” she said, “She put in five as well and she adds to it when she can, from wherever she is.” Kerry sat down slowly opposite to Kumiko, “Why?” “He is someone that she feels an obligation to,” Kumiko said, “She cannot keep him. She does not even know when she can contribute to this. But to her, that is not his fault. Sometimes she is not where she would be able to for months at a time, depending on her situation, but she told me that she would try when she has a chance to. So far, she has deposited two thousand dollars more.” Kerry was silent for a moment, “Please give me the info that I’ll need to deposit there as well. He’s my son too. I just never thought …” Kumiko’s voice was very quiet as she looked over the table at Kerry, “Your heart was broken and through her, I have been given a chance to do what I can for you as well as your son. But her heart will never stop hurting her. She knows this and she wants to do what she thinks that she must for him. He will never know her by her wish, but that does not change things for her. I know some things of her past, Kerry. She knows how it feels to grow up without real parents. This is something that she caused along with you, It is her way of trying to help.” “Who helps her?” he asked and she shook her head, “Because of who she is, she has found her mother and her father. It took her years to do it. It is enough for her. It has to be.” ================================================= The bathroom in his home was really two rooms joined by a sliding wooden panel. As with much of the home, the décor was simple and consisted of dark wooden walls. There was a room with a large shower stall, a toilet and a sink. In the other room, there was the same décor, but aside from a sink as well, there was also a large wooden tub, large enough for a man like Kerry to sit in comfortably almost up to his neck. The day had turned to dusk and they’d had their dinner. Kerry had a shower and now sat in the hot bath, leaning back with his eyes closed. Other than relaxing, he was thinking. What had he done? He knew that he’d wanted Khoe to stay. He also knew that he’d have done anything that he could have done so that they could remain together – no matter what Khoe had said to the contrary. Looking back now, he saw that she’d been the one to demonstrate more maturity in facing what they’d done. He knew himself, and he saw his actions at the time to be a little adolescent and driven by his own need of one woman where plainly Khoe had been right and it couldn’t have gone on. But it had taken the conversation in the kitchen that morning to make him see things as they were now. Khoe had told him once that what they’d begun was something that she should never have allowed herself to do. Now? Now it was October and he hadn’t seen Khoe in over a year. Now he was standing at the edge of something which Khoe had engineered for him and their son as well as lovely Kumiko, handing each of them to the rest so that three people could become a family. He just had to decide. It also told him that he really would likely never see Khoe again. He’d had the thought two days ago when Kuniko had walked in through the door. Now he was certain of it. He heard it when the panel leading to this room slid open just a little. He felt the slight coolness of the air from the outer bathroom as some of it entered where he sat. He didn’t open his eyes. His arm rested on a shelf that was at the level of the rim of the tub and after a moment, he felt the slight vibration in the wood of something being set down on it. Then he felt her fingertips as they traced along is bicep to his elbow very softly. The fingers of her other hand curled around a little of his neck on the right side to lie gently on his throat and his jaw with the first two against his lower cheek and he felt the caress of her thumb on his ear. He remembered then that he hadn’t shaved that morning. “I am sorry if I have upset you, Kerry-san,” he heard her whisper to him, “I wanted to show you that I am being honest with you. I knew that you would ask what you did and I wanted to show you that she did not cast you aside coldly. This goes on for her just as it does for you and I. All three of us have feelings which tie us to that little sleeping boy.” Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 05 “What are yours?” he asked and he felt her kiss on the top of his head for a moment, “I am the one who walks into the web knowingly. I seek the love of that baby as his mother and I wish for the love of his father. I wrap the web around myself and hope that I can never escape it.” She kissed his head again and said, “I have brought you a small snifter of brandy. It sits on the shelf next to your hand.” She was gone a moment later, lost in her own thoughts and more worried than ever. Kerry opened his eyes a minute after he heard the panel slide in its tracks and as he lifted the glass to his lips, he saw the careful imprint of her lipstick that she’d left behind from her own sip of the liquid. He knew it for what it was. The gesture was her expression of her own hope. He could almost feel the edge of what he was considering under his toes. He considered the lipstick mark for a moment before he carefully turned the snifter so that he sipped from the same spot. From where she stood on the other side of the door looking in through the very slight gap that she’d left herself to see, Kumiko saw it and she knew, feeling suddenly better. ================================================= Kerry came to bed a while later, freshly shaven. Kumiko had been fairly certain that he would come to her though the shave was a bit of a surprise and she said nothing over it. She’d tried to prepare herself. There were a few eventualities which she thought were most likely and not all of them what she might have wanted, but, … what else was there to be done? She wasn’t surprised to see him enter carrying a thick candle to set it down and then light it before he turned off the lighting in the room. It spoke to her of his wanting something indistinct, something which might allow him to perhaps grieve as he made love to Khoe a final time using her body for the illusion which he must be seeking. And seeing that, Kumiko was prepared to allow it for him and she would never let him see her back, since Khoe had nothing on her skin such as she wore. It was a matter of not destroying what Kerry would have wanted. So she was prepared to imitate Khoe for him as she watched him light the candle and then turn to her. Kumiko stood up in her robe as he closed the distance between them slowly. As he neared her, she began to open the robe so that she could let it slip from her shoulders. But he surprised her when she saw what he was about to do and he shook his head. Kumiko was confused then. His face didn’t carry the look of someone trying to imagine anything. He reached for her and drew her close, his hands on her hips through the robe and he kissed her very softly so that, without her meaning to, her arms rose to slide around his neck as she sighed. He really didn’t kiss like any man that she’d known. She felt a little of his breath against her cheek from his nose and she could smell a little of his cologne, though not as though he’d just put it on after his shave. It smelled thinner somehow – as though he’d been wearing it all day and it allowed a little of his own scent to mingle with it and come through at the same time. Kumiko inhaled it and his kisses took her away. It was all fresh and new to her and yet, it was a comforting newness at the same time, something like waiting for a bus on a cold and rainy day and then seeing an old and dear friend pull over at the bus stop in a new car to offer her a ride. Kumiko liked the metaphor and she liked the way that he made her feel as it happened. It was something that she’d never expected from him and it caused her to question Khoe’s sanity for needing to leave this man behind her. She knew who one side of the two groups pulling Khoe’s strings were. She didn’t know them personally, but it didn’t matter. They were interchangeable enough. She had a thought that for the love of a man like this, it would seem to be worth a try at freedom together. But she also knew what they would do and all of it would be to Kerry to bring Khoe to heel like a dog who’d forgotten her place. So she came to know a lot of Khoe’s pain in the next instant. Something like this could never be allowed for Khoe. Kumiko wanted to cry – even as she felt this moment. Kerry took his hands away then and he slowly went to his knees, opening her robe himself. He placed his cheek against her belly as he reached to run his hands over her flanks a little slowly. Kumiko wanted to ask him why, but she couldn’t. She could only look down at his head and her hands on it as she felt his warm soft breath against her. He drew his head away a little then and he leaned in to kiss her mound. He was slow about it, only leaving bare traces of kisses unless he was near to her cleft itself. It was where he was headed, though he went on past a few times, leaving slightly heavier kisses there as he passed. But he was working inward. Kumiko knew it after a time and she sighed, wanting to go to her toes to give him the room without his needing to try for what would likely be an uncomfortable angle for him. He avoided licking her for the moment, just kissing her very softly. Kumiko didn’t want to make the connection, but she did it anyway when she decided that everything made sense to her then, the way that Khoe couldn’t help herself and how she must have told herself that each time was the last time that she’d allow him this. Even the infant sleeping in the next room made sense to her then. She could understand completely. “I won’t be able to stand much longer,” she whispered to him and he nodded just a little bit, though he said nothing. Kumiko eased herself backwards to the bed and she moved to recline and continue on up the bed to give him room. But he wouldn’t let her. She saw the upper part of his head over the horizon of her own body as he kissed on a while longer, wetting his lips more and more with her essence. His eyes opened as he regarded her for a long moment. His hands reached for her then, but not to get onto the bed to take her. Kerry didn’t say anything though he could easily have done that. One of his hands touched her gently, moving as though he sought to learn of her through its touch, while the other hand’s fingers gave her pleasure, though not in any overt way at first. That wasn’t his goal, though it would be included a little later, once there was more need of it. Kumiko’s hips moved a little. It surprised her a little. She normally kept a tight rein on things the first time. Kerry brought his face down again and left little kisses, wet from her along the insides of her thighs. Kumiko wasn’t terribly ticklish, but … She moved her hand, wanting to scratch the feeling but he caught it, turning it to kiss her palm for a moment. “No,” he said softly into her hand, “unless you want me to stop because you don’t like it. I thought that you might like it if I returned your favor to me last night. I know you much better now, so I want to put something into it for you.” “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I thought – “ Before she could say the name which would ruin this, he took her other hand and looked at her. “I’ve never done this to a single woman in my whole life where I didn’t mean it for her. This is for you. Do you want me to stop? Have I done anything wrong for you, Kumiko?” “No,” she whispered, almost horrified at what she’d been about to say. If this were any other man, she’d have managed to place everything into a compartment where it would never touch her. She did it because the men were never hers to love for herself. She was only there to provide pleasure to them. But she knew at that moment that this was for her so she made her adjustment. He placed her hands on his head, looking at her eyes and then he went back to it, leaving little teasing, and slightly maddening little touches with his wet lips. They weren’t much of anything, really, and yet they were at the same time. His wet fingertip opened the fold between her her inner and outer lips and slid along slowly in that seam of her for a minute while he licked a finger of his other hand and slipped it inside of her only to the first knuckle so that it was wet enough to do the same thing to the other fold. Kumiko felt her need rising and so quickly, no matter what she’d have wanted before. She slowly raised her legs for him and he guided them back a little, making sure that she knew that he wanted them spread a little wider than she was moving them. Now that she knew for certain that this was for her, … The little kisses faded away, as though the damp little butterfly which left them on her had to move on, and Kumiko felt herself wanting to groan a tiny bit in disappointment. But then his tongue slid into her. His hands were on her flanks and he lifted her whole bottom end up about an inch, surprising her as he opened his mouth wide and penetrated her as deeply as he could. She wanted to appreciate the strength that it took to lift her this way and hold her up so still. Kumiko groaned then, a lot louder than she’d have ever intended for the sound to come out of her. Kerry began to fuck her with his tongue, forcing it so that he kept it as wide as he could for the length of time that he could do it. He was surprised at her narrowness there, not really knowing what he might have expected. But she liked what he was doing, so he kept at it as he eased her back down to the bed. He didn’t change the angle for her when he brought his finger to his mouth. This was why he hadn’t allowed her to move up onto the bed. Right here near the edge, he had a little room. It took only a half a second and he was back to it, but she felt the pressure of his first and third fingertips on either side of her ass and then she felt his wet fingertip as it found her anus. His next stroke out of her sent some moisture over her perineum and that finger moved to wet itself before going back and beginning to trace wet little circles. Kumiko liked his soft touch there very much, but she had little time to think as the middle finger of his other hand slid inside of her under his tongue – which was withdrawn then to slide up by only its tip to seek for the hood of her clitoris. Another of his fingers went into her then and Kumiko’s head pressed back against the mattress then as she felt the tip of his tongue find the edge of that little bit of skin. He – he was – He was sliding the very tip of his tongue a little from left to right, nudging the hood back a little more. She gasped at the feeling and then she found herself filling her ribs as her gasp deepened. His tongue was lifting her clitoris then, seeking for and finding the purchase in the wettest of places on the outside of her. Between her moisture from her vaginal walls and his own saliva, Kumiko’s bud was as wet as he needed it to be when he pressed his face against her, sliding his fingers in again several times wetly. Kumiko heard her slickness then, in moist little sounds while he drove her so gently in almost three ways. It lasted only a second. It was just something for her to lean her rising wave against, but then he had her bud trapped as he sucked while pressing his face against her a little more. And then his tongue began to trill against her nub. Something rather important in the education that she’d received in the pillow arts was the ability to show a man that she was receiving pleasure – even if it wasn’t necessarily true. It was important to show a man this, she’d been taught. It was also important, depending on the circumstances, to hold herself back a little so that she might know how to heighten this for the man. But she’d lost that ability by this point. It lay somewhere behind where she was now as she found a thought passing her where she wondered how he’d gotten her this far down the beach. She didn’t even need to consider. It was too late for that. The wave was already beginning to tower above her. Her fingers slid into his hair, and she found that her other hand was on the bed somehow and she couldn’t remember moving it. She curled her fingers into her silk robe, bunching it tightly in her fist. Kumiko’s whole bottom end was wet. Kerry was using both of his hands along with his tongue and his lips and, … and, … The wave fell on her. Her ribs heaved in three breaths. The first two were her attempts to hold her mouth shut as much as she could. She’d been taught that as the practitioner of pleasure, she was to show her pleasure to the client with at least a little tasteful restraint. She couldn’t have hidden it to save her life. The first breath carried a little of her sound, still trying at restraint. The second as well. Neither one was full, she was still making a last attempt at control. “Heee – Hee –“ was what he heard, and he pressed his tongue against that warm little thing again, allowing it to penetrate between his lips for the short distance that it was possible to. He moaned to encourage her for an instant, and then he trilled again on the tip of it. Kumiko’s third exhalation was her cry into the silk of her robe as Kerry went on, seeking to know when he’d passed the point where she wanted what he was doing with his tongue. Kerry wasn’t anything like a skilled sex worker; but he was a little wise enough to know that at a time like this, there was a dividing line from one woman to the next. Some would want a gentle wind-down if it didn’t take too long and some would be so sensitive that the barest touch would be too much. He froze, waiting to learn which way that Kumiko might be. As well, he knew that some women wouldn’t want the body of a man against them too soon after, though some would want it then very much. He eased off the last of the pressure from his tongue and he moved his hands to that one stroked her belly and the other her thigh as her legs came down to rest on his shoulders. He lifted his face to plant the softest kiss against her lips to show her that the little butterfly had returned for just a moment. Kumiko didn’t hiss in sensitivity. She caressed his head for a moment or two and then she began to move up the bed, taking his hand in hers as she did so that he could get onto the bed as well. As he eased himself down next to her, she hugged him tightly, kissing his wet face in her happiness. “That was very good,” she smiled when she found the time to whisper to him, “Thank you.” He smiled and nodded; pleased to have done it well enough for her as he reached to grab the covers and pull what he could over them. Kumiko felt his hardness against her so she sought to position herself so that he could slip inside of her, but he shook his head. “But,” she began, looking up at him, “don’t you –“ He smiled then and she stopped. Kerry hugged her and she felt his hand as it moved over her back. “You helped me last night. Tonight was for you. If I do what you’re thinking right now, I think it would show that I’m no more than just somebody with the urges of a horse or a dog or an alley cat, for that matter. I think that I can handle my own urges. Just let me hold you, Kumiko. That’s all that I need from you now.” She nodded, surprised at this man once again. They traded kisses for a little while and then they went to sleep. ================================================= Kumiko awoke with a start the next morning to find that it was far later than she’d have wanted to sleep. She was alone in the bed and she could hear Ciarraighe-chan giggling out in the kitchen. She also heard Kerry blowing raspberries to cause the laughter. She got up, pulling her robe around her and needing to pee. But she stopped on the way to look into the kitchen and she found them together. It made her lean against the doorframe for a moment. “We gotta stop now, Ciarraighe,” the older kid grinned at his small son, “or somebody’ll think that we’re just a couple of fools.” The child looked up and after a moment of consideration, he began on the bottle again. Kumiko’s quiet chuckling followed her to the bathroom. ================================================= They went shopping later on and Kerry found himself lost in thought at least a little as they pushed little Ciarraighe in his new stroller – and he’d shown himself to be a happy little kid as he looked at the world around him while he sucked on a dummy contentedly. Kerry still wasn’t particularly comfortable with all of it until he noticed the smiles of several people as they passed by in the opposite direction. He’d never cared much what others thought, but it affected him that day because of his son and Kumiko. They looked like a family and by association, he was included in it. A part of him told him that this was what should have been between himself and Khoe, but … After a while he looked at Kumiko a little covertly and saw that she was beginning to feel a little less like the thief that she’d mentioned. It wasn’t her beauty, though she was uncommonly lovely and he had to admit that strictly speaking, it might be said that she was lovelier than even Khoe had been, though he was reluctant to make that observation since it had been so long since he’d seen her. He just tried to look at things a little objectively as they shopped and he saw that he was enjoying it and also the way that Kumiko seemed to be happier for this outing. So he made the effort and stepped onto the causeway that she seemed to be trying to offer to him and he reached over and took Kumiko’s hand as they walked through the mall and she looked down at it and then back up at him with what he thought was the nicest smile. Kumiko looked away and sighed very quietly. She felt the beginnings of her acceptance and so, it caused her to feel better. Her eye caught the display window of a shop which specialized in imports from the east, trying to create chicness out of what might be far more mundane to an oriental person. It was what she saw there that held her interest for a second. “Would you mind it if we went in there for a few moments?” she asked and he nodded, though he saw little of interest there. “Sure,” he smiled a little. Kumiko turned them into the place and Kerry looked around, seeing a few things which held his gaze after all, though only to look at and maybe wonder about. The little boy looked around as well, but his interest passed in moments and his father spent the time trying to talk to him while keeping his eye open for maybe a bright little toy to buy. What surprised him was that Kumiko had her eye on something and to his amazement, she was bargaining. “This is not a proper set,” she said, “What I see here is cheaply made to be offered for sale to westerners who wouldn’t know the difference, but might like to use this as decorative accents. Have you nothing better than this? Something which might really serve the purpose?” The clerk was a bored-looking high school student who was now faced with a serious shopper. But she knew what she was up against and offered to get the manager and a minute later, Kerry watched as a thirty-something trendy type strutted over and Kumiko outlined what she wanted and why. “I know that this is not the area where one might get what I am looking for, but I’m not there, so I’m looking for something at least a little usable,” Kumiko said, “Do you have a proper set?” The woman made her mistake then, “That is a proper set, Ma’am.” Kerry didn’t know, but he had an idea that it was the wrong thing to say as he watched Kumiko respectfully – but accurately indicate her disagreement and it began with a polite shake of her head. “I’m sorry, but it’s not,” she said, turning a ceramic article over, “Look here. I knew this would be here. This set was made in China as a decorative approximation of a Japanese set. It’s no more Japanese than the fake sword there on the wall. The Chinese have their own way of doing this, and no Chinese would use this for their method.” Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 05 She picked up a different article and pointed, “I doubt that this would last more than four times with real matcha. This is marketed to sell to westerners, not to Orientals of any nationality. I don’t mind that it was made in China. I’m not in Kyoto - not even in Japantown. I’m just looking for something serviceable where I am.” But they didn’t have anything better, though the manager asked what to look for in things such as this and Kumiko gave her a few tips. “You know that it is an art form,” she said, “I could spend a week telling you everything for what you asked, but if you can remember what I said and tell your buyers, it might help.” So Kumiko had to buy all of the items separately, but they were all of a better quality than the set that she’d seen through the window. Kerry stepped up to pay, but she shook her head. “No, Kerry. This is my foolishness to pay for. I’ll have to make the best of it for now, that’s all.” She shook her head as she held up one of the little bowls while the young girl was wrapping each ceramic article carefully, “The bowls don’t match the pot. Nothing matches anything else, most especially in the style, but it’ll work this way at least. She sighed and spoke in a voice which she knew that the clerk could hear, “My mother would kill me for this.” The girl looked up,” Why? I mean, I see that some things don’t match, but, …” The manager rolled her eyes, “Take twenty bucks off the total, Nicole.” Kumiko looked at the manager and thanked her. Turning to the salesgirl, she noticed a button on her sweater that indicated that she was against abortion. She’d seen similar ones in Toronto, and so she guessed that the girl was a bit religious. “Would you ever dream of going to church on Sunday in a tube top and a pair of cut-offs?” The girl looked up in a little shock and shook her head. “It’s a little like that. It’s just not done,” Kumiko smiled and the manager at least understood. ================================================= “What was all that about at the import shop?” Kerry asked later over dinner. He’s spent some time keeping the baby a little amused while Kumiko had washed the articles that she’d bought. Kumiko shrugged, “I have the sense that we are coming together a little in our own strange way. This fine home guides me in its way and reminds me that I have never had a way to prepare tea in much more than the way that it is done when one wants a cup of tea. I saw that store and I suddenly had a wish to do it at least a little correctly. If I am to be allowed to remain with you, then it is my duty to take an active part in the household. It’s a little quaint these days, I suppose, but a large part of that for me is to promote and maintain the peace and harmony of the home for you. I can’t do what I wanted with what I bought, but at least I can offer you tea a little properly. It is a time to talk and appreciate.” She shook her head a little,” I don’t know the mall there, but even so, I can’t believe that I couldn’t find matcha. I would have been prepared to accept a lower grade, but to see none at all...” "What's matcha?" he asked. It's the bright green powder which is the best of the tea. It is why I bought the little whisk to whip it. You can't use the whisk on gunpowder tea such as I had to buy. The little kernels are rolled tea leaves and they open in the boiling water. if you whisk that, you'd just make a mess." She chuckled a little as she rolled her eyes. “My poor mother; her heart would stop if she saw that all that I could get was gunpowder tea.” She saw his expression and she thought that she might know what was coming, so she said, “I left home to come here to go to school and I did not see her again for almost ten years. Even then, it was for only a short time. I learned enough to know that she was proud of me. It was enough. Tomorrow,” Kumiko smiled a little hopefully at him, if you would permit it, I will serve you tea. I will break a lot of rules, but I hope that you would allow it and we can talk and enjoy the time while Carriaghe-chan naps.” She carefully asked him if he thought that they could try to make love that night. “I’m not sure,” he replied as a careful joke and then he smiled, “Alright. I’m still trying to find the fit, but on the other hand, I think there has to be something between us at some point, otherwise this all just remains a sham. I’d rather not live that way at all, so I guess that we’d better make some sort of attempt at it, so I’ll try if you will.” She nodded and took his hand, “It doesn’t have to be much, since we are finding the fit – as you say. I am trying to find the fit into your life and that is not easy.” “I’m sorry for that,” Kerry said, “this is not the way that I’d have ever thought that I’d have a relationship with anyone, but I’m beginning to understand ‘us’ a little better. I also wanted to tell you that, well, seeing as we have the sort of house for it, if you want to dress a little more traditionally, I can’t see anything wrong with that at all, Kumiko. I don’t know what that might have been, but I think I have a sense that you might want to do that sometimes, though you ought to dress any way that you see fit to at any time, obviously.” She looked a little surprised and she smiled, “Thank you, Kerry. I think that I would like that. Of course you know that most people dress in the same styles as are worn here, but there are times, …” ================================================= He found that though she was as quiet in bed as she was out of it most of the time, Kumiko did have wants in her and he played to them as he learned what they were. She had an insane ability to please him, playing to his obvious want of her in much the same way that he’d been doing, though she was much more adept at it as a skill. But he had a sense that Kumiko was still in the role which fate and her life had cast her in – at least a little. It wasn’t what he wanted. He could accept it from her, knowing where it came from, but he wanted for her to have what any woman could have – for herself. He couldn’t imagine the way that she must be holding herself so carefully, fearful to break the eggshells which she thought that she must be treading on when there really weren’t any there for her to break. He told her that if this was going to work between them as she quite obviously hoped that it would, then he had a request to make of her. Kumiko nodded and looked at him in the thin light of the hall nightlight that they’d bought. “What would you like me to do for you?” she asked. He tried not to so much as smirk at the way that the pleasure droid in her came out at times like this. He kissed her softly for a moment, happy that they’d gotten this far. “Kumiko, I’m going to ask you for something that just might shock you a little. It’s probably deep into weird as far as you’re concerned but I want to tell you to see if you can handle it. I want a woman. I want you to hang onto me in the dark the way that you’ve been doing it. I want to get laid in the arms of a beautiful girl – seeing as I’ve got one here with me and all. I don’t need feathers or fur or anything fancy. I just want a woman who wants me. I’d do a lot for that. I want to screw her pretty ass really gently once in a while because I like that sometimes, and, … Well, I want to live in her heart if it means that I can try to get to it from between her legs if that’s ok with her. I want a woman who’s edible in my bed and likes that from somebody that she cares about, and I’d do a lot for a woman who likes to give head the way that you do. I’d give a lot of myself to a woman like that if she never uses her body as a bargaining chip. I’m sorry if it’s weird to you, but that’s what I’d want, and if that woman wants me on the hopefully often-occurring chances when the planets manage to line up suddenly in the afternoon, I’d love it if she told me that she wants me then. The rest – all of the incredible things that you can for me and to me, well, sad to say, but while I really like that - ok, I`m understating that a whole lot, since I REALLY love that about you, but I only really need what I’m asking you for, if you think that it’s alright. Oh, and I find that I want a woman like you around a whole lot so that she can laugh at me as I try really hard to raise our son with her. He seems to have pretty good range when he decides to spit a little of his formula out at me.” He stopped there, waiting to guage her reaction. Kumiko blinked a couple of times and he raised an index finger to her as a warning, “I’m telling you right now that if you try to make me wear a dog collar and ask me to run around the bedroom with an ostrich feather struck up my ass, then it’s over between us.” Kumiko blinked a few more times, but then she lost it and began to laugh. He found himself on his back a moment later. “That’s what I want a lot more of as well,” he laughed from underneath her after she’d thrown her arms around his neck and forced him down onto the bed. He loved the way that she looked at him then, and he just relaxed into the bed as she began to make love to him in her way. Her kisses were soft and lazy, just the way that he found that he liked them from her – though not always. To Kerry, it was like listening to a symphony that one wasn’t at all familiar with. There were quiet parts to it and then there were the loud bits. But those lazy kisses of hers could keep him helpless all evening just by themselves. He`d never had such satisfying kisses in his life. Kumiko knew what she wanted, and she also knew what she had in him right here. He was the single largest man that she’d ever been with and she really liked that about him and the way that he was built just kept her wanting him – as much as that amazed someone as jaded as she thought that she’d been. Just lying with him naked against her showed her that. She was always amazed at the size of him. She could lie on his chest and be happy just doing that. “Please stay here and live with me,” he said in a muffled voice from under one of her ears and the darkness of her incredibly long and lovely black hair. Her only reply was her soft sigh and it raised the hair at the nape of his neck for a moment. He kissed her neck for a moment. “I`ll use the `L` word if I have to.” She ran her hands over him and she moaned a little softly now and then. “I may not show it as much as you deserve because I am afraid to offend you by sounding like a young girl,” she said, “but I stared when I was shown a picture of you that Khoe took. I tried to keep this in my mind as I walked up the road to meet you, praying that you didn’t throw us out.” She kissed his chest and her grazing kisses felt like the touches of the lightest butterfly on him as she worked her way up to his ear. “When I saw you for the first time,” she said, grazing her lips over his ear, “I was lost, and I have been that way until just now, so afraid to say the wrong thing – even though you have tried so hard to be generous and kind. And I understand about the `L` word. I want to use it too, though I`m a little afraid to just yet. I think that it is much too soon.” She moved her body against him and it just happened that she was a little off center due to her position to him as she’d begun this. Her lower half slid sideways a little and she found that her mound was right on the edge of his hip. As she slid off a little more, she stopped right there and moved back just enough. After a second of thought, Kumiko just began to rub herself on him there. She looked down at him, staring into his blue eyes as she humped, not knowing what seeing her face and the resultant expression was doing to him. All that she knew was that he was what she wanted and they needed, and now, it wasn’t only out of fear and desperation. She went on for a minute before she seemed to come back to herself and she looked a little embarrassed for losing herself like that. Before she could get too far into it, Kerry reached up for her, “Hey,” he said softly, “you seem to keep hoping that I`ll accept you. You told me that this was your chance to have a man and a son. Well little Ciarraighe might not have noticed it when his mother was switched on him, or maybe he did and he’s too little to worry about things like that for long. But I can see that there’s nothing that I can do to change much and after these few days, I’ve come to see that I really don’t want to. I can’t imagine what kind of world you and Khoe and people like you who seem to be caught in a web or something have to live in and I don’t think that I even could. But I’m trying to tell you that you can stop hoping, Kumiko. I`m saying that you`ve got me. I think that we have to try. You were doing just fine humping my hipbone a minute ago. You just go ahead and do that if you like it.” “You don’t mind?” she asked and he shook his head with a little smile. ”Not at all. You’re very beautiful and you looked as though you were having a ball right then. Go back to it if you want. I could probably watch you do that for an hour. Well, maybe a little less, I dunno.” She put her head down on him and he softly stroked her back and haunches as she rubbed herself the rest of the way on him, kissing his chest since she was so taken with this man who was trying to come to grips with the strangeness of it. When she rested to catch a little breath, surprised at herself at the way that just the little thing that she’d done had been so nice. She felt his hand on her head as she kissed his nipple. “If we’re really going to do this, Kumiko,” she heard him whisper, “Then I need to know a couple of things. Are you and Ciarraighe safe here with me? I think from the things that you said, that there really wouldn’t be a place that anyone could run to in order to be safe.” Her voice came to him very quietly after a moment as she said, “Economics would be the only factor, such as if I were able to run to the moon to get away. They would probably leave me alone due to the cost. If you and I do this, then your son and I cease to be details which might need to be dealt with one day.” She looked up then and he saw the resemblance that she’d spoken of that first day, “You said a couple of things. What is the other one?” He hugged her a little and smiled, “I don’t want a sex toy.” He smirked a little, “I can’t believe that I’m saying this in some ways, but the only way that this can really work is if you stop thinking of yourself as a replacement for someone else. That doesn’t work for me at all. That boy in the other room is my son and his mother is now you. We can`t change much of anything here if I understand this. If you’re going to be his mother, then you just can’t be a member of my staff. You need to be my wife. I’m sorry if it’s not what you thought that you were getting into here, but that’s how I need it to be. He needs his mom - you, Kumiko. And I don’t want a servant – well unless you want to play it as a game in bed or something. I want somebody to share my life with. I had somebody and I lost her to a fucked-up kid with a gun. I tried so hard with Khoe, but I’m finally seeing that it was the wrong thing to do for us to even start anything. But it’s led me here with you on top of me and if I can – seeing as how I seem to be making you a little more comfortable with me – then I might just try to annoy you in little ways one day soon, just to see if I can get you a little angry with me. You do that, and to me, that’ll mean that we’re out of this strange little bit of woods that we’re in here. I know I’m probably cutting my own throat to say this, but if I can do that, you just might be surprised to find me wanting to take you downtown to get married, just saying. If it goes that far, then I think that I'd want that.” Kumiko’s mouth fell open for an instant and then she smiled, nodding a little. “You know, I think I even understand what you just said. You’re telling me, … you’re saying that, …” He nodded, “I am, and don`t worry about saying the wrong thing, because you can`t. I didn’t plan on all of this, but I’m here and you are too. We have a son together. Let’s do this so that it stops feeling strange. Be my friend, ‘cause that’s the only thing that’s missing between us, and I’ll be yours. I think I already am. Just see if you can love me Kumiko. I don't need any more than that.” He had to reach for the tissue box on the nightstand after that, but it marked the moment when they turned a corner. Kumiko moved down on him with tears in her eyes and she began to make love to him with her mouth out of her own interest and desire then – as a woman who has something of her own rather than it feeling to her as though she was a stand-in.. It didn’t take her long at all to have that part of him straining and then she got up onto him and she began to ride him for all that the two of them were worth. Kerry was astounded again as he looked up at her while she went to town on him, and for the first time, he wasn’t looking at a woman who was doing this for someone else’s pleasure. She bucked on him – her tears still running down a little, but she was smiling. She grabbed his hand and brought it to her breast because she wanted it there. The nicest sounds that a woman can make to her man were his to listen to then and no one else’s to hear and it was the beginning of the best loving of their lives. Her voice sounded a little smoky when she finally got him spent for the moment and she looked down through her long black hair with a smile just for him as she kept at it, just humping a little until he was too soft. She climbed off then and eased herself down beside him. “I want to thank you,” she began, but he moved then. “You already have,” he grinned up from where he was then, looking over her mound at her, “without saying a word - well any that I could understand.” He began on her then and she went limp. She couldn’t believe that a man would do this right after filling her. Few of them had ever bothered to want to please her this way and none at a time like this. Not one. But Kerry did. And he was so ... good at it, too. As he listened to her sighs, Kerry did his best, remembering what he’d been taught and enjoying the taste and the soft texture – even the taste of them together as it came to him. When he thought about changing this up for her, he drew back a little and used his fingers for a while, loving the one that he hoped would be his new woman, because that was what she felt like to him now. In the dimness of the bedroom and in the shadows between her thighs, he could just make out the little marking tattooed there on her perineum, the tiny brand that said that she’d been owned once. He wasn’t surprised to see it. He’d seen one just like it before. Kumiko came several times, and he gave her little respite – never pushing her – only making teasing little suggestions with his mouth that she had to allow and then he’d start again in a slightly different way. But the big bang came for her again and when it did, Kumiko arched her back and pressed her head back against the pillow as her head lolled back and forth. She tried, but her voice got away from her and for the first time in her life, she actually let go and cried out when it overtook her, forgetting about the robe or anything to quiet things down. It woke up their son. Kerry got up to get him and he carried the sniffling infant to the kitchen, thanking God for the invention of microwave ovens. He smiled to himself over the boy’s shoulder as he watched a few seconds count down on the display. He had to do it twice before he was satisfied and he was careful to check that it wasn’t too warm before he carried the infant to the bedroom. Khoe; A Tale of Sadness & Joy Ch. 05 Kumiko took her son and he held him to her breast for a few moments, just because, and then she reached for the bottle before he could grow frustrated. They held him between their bodies after Kerry pulled the blankets up a little. Kerry looked at the boy and then at Kumiko, whose tears had begun again just a little, still so happy that she’d been accepted. When the little guy was done with the bottle, Kumiko sat up to burp him and she looked at the two males who she now belonged to, though by a different bond now – the same role that most women accept and want for themselves. She took little Ciarraighe back to his crib then and he drifted off in a few moments. When she came back to bed, she found that the grown man wanted to hold her and so she settled into his arms and kissed him. It came to her as the sweetest little thrill to think of when she felt him harden and not wanting to end the moment, she helped him to slip inside of her and she wrapped her leg over Kerry, softly telling him what she now knew as he fucked her very slowly, neither one of them caring if they came, though wanting the other one to, if possible. He told her that he was at least a little certain that he could love her as well and she almost needed another tissue, but she managed to hold off her tears. After a time, she heard the shift in his breathing and she lay there against him, very happy for the first time in her life that she could remember being happy to this degree as she thought about a few things. She’d been absolutely forthright and honest with this man; telling him everything that she thought that he needed to know, answering his questions truthfully, and other than two small facts and details, she always would be that way. But there were the two things. Kumiko thought about that and she knew that likely every single woman who knows what they have - when they’re lucky enough to find themselves having it – has at least one small secret. She knew that many had a whole lot of secrets, but that wasn’t her way. She didn’t even want to have one thing that she’d never tell Kerry about, but these ones couldn’t be helped. She found a little thought in her which became a desire that she’d never had a thought of ever achieving, really. She now felt a little fire burning in her breast to hold and read a small document – any little thing which read Mrs.Kumiko Browne sometime in the not-too-distant future. If marriages could be arranged the world over for thousands of years, then this had to work. DNA testing – if it were to be needed for some reason, would tell the obvious; that the infant was Kerry’s son. But only Khoe, Kumiko and a very few others knew of the other detail which marked Kumiko’s new joy and Khoe’s eternal sadness. DNA testing of Kumiko - were it ever to be done for some reason, would yield some rather interesting results. Kumiko was not the infant’s mother, quite obviously. But she was his aunt. The other detail was that she`d never been an orphan. Kumiko was the second child that Khoe’s birth mother had given life to. Yukio had been the third and last. Kumiko hadn’t been born in Toronto, though she’d spent a lot of time there under her real name as she’d gone to school and had then been given over for use as a gift to powerful and influential businessmen passing through and later on, as a plaything to an old man with bigger eyes and hopes than his old manhood could ever hope to deal with. This was all bittersweet to Kumiko. She’d likely never see her mother again and didn’t expect to ever set her eyes on the half-sister whom she’d never really known and had never met other than the one time when she’d come to help with the labor in a cabin on a deserted mountainside. Her knowledge of her sister had spanned only three months and then she was gone and Kumiko had been taken with the baby to meet her one chance at a life with Kerry. She looked up at the man who held onto her in his sleep and silently promised him – once again – that he’d never regret his acceptance of her. ================================================= Kerry was left with the rather daunting prospect of calling his family to invite them to his home so that they could meet what he was sure would be a surprise and a half. His parents and his sister all knew of what had happened to Lauren and had made a few attempts to stop him from turning into the hermit that he seemed to have become. The gasp that he heard from his mother over the phone told him that he’d done the wrong thing by staying apart as long as he had. “So you have a child?” his mother asked. “Well you can’t just pick one of those up at a convenience store as an impulse purchase when you go for eggs and milk, Kerry. I’d love to hear your explanation of why you didn’t think that your mother would need to know. If you think that a woman like me is happy with only the three grandchildren that I have, I can tell you that you’re wrong, you know.” “I know and I’m very sorry, Mom. I should have told you before,” he said very apologetically as he considered how much of a shock it might possibly be for them to learn the rest of what he’d tell them, planning to only mention Kumiko and not Khoe. But then he decided that he didn’t give a damn. He wouldn't mention Khoe, but they could either accept Kumiko or not. What was important was that he had. He was more concerned for Kumiko’s feelings, so he added, “I uh, … I had a bit of help, you might say and I’d love to introduce you to the woman I’m thinking of marrying. Her name is Kumiko.” There was a pause then and his mother said, “If you love her and you’re this far along to have a child, then I think I’d probably never forgive you if you’d left calling me to tell me the news any longer. When should we come?” ================================================= Kumiko admitted to Kerry that she was a bit nervous, but in the event, she charmed his family easily and they were delighted with her. Kerry’s father was a little in awe of her and he didn’t really know what to do with himself during the letter-perfect tea ceremony that Kumiko presented for Kerry’s parents and sister – who’d managed to come on such short notice, happy herself to leave her husband and brood alone for the better part of a day while she was gone. But little Ciarraighe held them all spellbound and Kumiko found herself with a new family which was pleased and happy to accept her. ================================================= By the time that their young son’s first birthday rolled around, both Kerry and Kumiko had indeed fallen into love with each other and decided that they ought to become a little less hermit-like in the way that they lived. It had been a huge thing for Kumiko, but she now found herself with some acquaintances and even a couple of friends as she spoke of the vacation to a resort on a Pacific island that they were planning. Little Ciarraighe was an active and fast-moving toddler who thought it was great fun to hug his mom and then run shrieking off to see if she’d chase him while Kerry did his level best not to laugh as he shot a video of the birthday party for his son. Near the top of a nearby slope, there was a woman sitting behind a bush, making her own video of it through a long lens on a low tripod. She sat with her tears streaming down her lovely face as she watched. When the guests had all gone home and the little family had gone inside, Taeko packed up her gear and walked down the other side of the hill to where she’d parked her rental car. She was on her way home after removing just another troublesome detail from someone’s life and the location had taken her a little nearby – if one could call the location of Vancouver nearby at over an hour away. She drove to drop off the car and then she was waiting for her flight home to be called. She boarded without incident and arrived at her apartment a little over a day later when all was said and done. The next day, she texted in and requested a little time off. With her request granted, Taeko set off again and didn’t stop until she stood in front of her parent’s new home, now that she’d finally been able to manage that miracle for them. She showed them the video that she’d shot a few day earlier and said that she’d never want to get that close again. Her eyes streamed her quiet tears the whole time. ================================================= When Ciarraighe was one and a half, they went to Fiji. Kerry paid for the airfare, since it was really all that Kumiko had allowed him to pay for. She just shrugged and laughed a little, “It’s my gift to my husband and son.” They’d spoken of getting one of the little huts on poles out over the water, but decided against it, since Ciarraighe was plenty fast on his little legs when he wanted to be and there was a danger to that, so they went for the rental of a time-share apartment with a small kitchenette in a building not far from the ocean. Here just as it was at home, Kumiko was so pleased when she went to sleep in Kerry's arms and though she'd been partially crushed a few times from his motions on his sleep, he was getting better. Best of all, she loved to wake up there. It was something that she'd always wanted; a man who wasn't just there for himself. Kerry was proud of his family as they walked with their son. He was a beautiful little boy and he already knew how to charm the socks off almost anyone who saw him and Kumiko in a bikini was a sight. She’d been approached with offers to model and endorse products from make-up to hair care, but she’d declined, knowing that there was something in her past which had to remain there forever. One day in the middle of winter, Kerry found his wife crying quietly in the kitchen and he asked. It took a little while for her to find the words, but she pointed to the screen of her notebook. It was open to a page filled with Kanji characters which – though Kerry could now manage and comprehend enough Japanese to carry him through most conversations – he still couldn’t read any of it and didn’t intend to learn. It was a news site – the online component of a major Japanese news agency. “I was looking at Ciarraighe-chan’s fund balance,” she said, “The only changes were what you and I have put in for almost half a year. So I could think of only two reasons for that to be and six months removes one of them.” She told him of a small fuel transshipment facility which had been destroyed four months before on Sakhalin Island, the northern tip. “There has been controversy and all sorts of failed legal matters over environmental situations and the health of some residents for a long time,” she said. She pointed to a paragraph which her husband could not read. “It says that this was the work of a lone terrorist; from the pieces of the remains found, it was determined that the perpetrator had been a female of mixed Japanese and Nivkh extraction. One tooth was found and it places the age more or less correctly. Khoe grew up there. She had strong feelings over this.” Kerry looked out through the doorway as his son as he played on the floor with a little yellow plastic truck. He didn't know, but as far as he knew, the woman that he'd loved and lost was no fool and must have known her way around explosive devices. He didn't know everything and he never would, but he had a single sad thought before he hugged his wife while she cried. ================================================== In a dark and wild corner of the taiga on Sakhalin Island, a woman made her evening meal. She intended to live here for the next two years in solitude before she left for what would be the last time. A lot of that period would go to planning. The facial surgery was healing well. What she knew that she would do one day was to allow a fair bit of money to fall into her half-sister's hands on behalf of her son. But that would take a while to put together and anyway, Khoe thought, it appeared that so far, her ruse had been successful, and all parties seemed to be of the belief that she was dead. She did her best to close off the part of her heart where Kumiko lived with Kerry and their son. It helped if she thought of the personal cost of that as the price for her freedom. The End