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*_* MARMALADE MERCURY *_*EP 15a: IMPACT OF A CONFESSION - HOW LONG WILL THIS HAPPINESS LAST? |
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“Why are we hiding from them?”
“Shhh,” Makoto whispered. She pushed aside some of the foliage of the bushes, to give them a better look. “See? It’s just as I thought. Strange!”
Ami turned her attention towards where Makoto was indicating. Greg and Kaijin were having lunch together, laughing and talking together like old friends. Which, granted, made less than no sense, given how withdrawn Greg had been around everybody since his arrival. Makoto was sure it meant something... and Ami had to grant her the point, otherwise why would those two be acting like this at school, of all places, where gossip was bound to spread even faster?
“You think maybe Greg’s trying to pressure you into making the first move or something?” Makoto prompted. “Figuring you’re more likely to pull him away from dating a guy than from another girl? Or could it be that, deep down, he just has a thing for blue hair no matter what the gender?”
Ami pursed her lips.
When Makoto had called her the day before, she’d admitted to the fact that, despite holding firm to her relationship decision, she hadn’t confessed to Greg yet. But she’d played up the angle of not being sure about how he would respond, rather than admitting that she might be in Germany by this time next week. Rendering the whole thing moot.
Except, would it be moot? Greg’s picture was now in her medallion, Rei’s temple charm, which would link the two of them, no matter what the distance...
“No. Greg and Kaijin, they’re just good friends,” Ami decided. “I mean, you and me, we spend time together like that. It doesn’t mean we’re dating, does it?”
Makoto blinked over at her. Ami held her gaze. Wait, were Makoto’s cheeks colouring? For a moment, Ami felt her own cheeks growing warm. No! Crazy thoughts, go away!
“What are you two doing standing out here in the middle of the bushes?”
Ami flinched, and looked to her other side, seeing Umino had somehow crept up on them. With a video camera.
It wasn’t pointed at her and Makoto though, Umino was aiming it out towards Greg and Kaijin. “Well, we’re not filming evidence!” she snapped, embarrassed at being caught spying. “I swear, if I’d known you’d end up creeping around like this today, I never would have appeared on your show last week.”
“A good reporter goes where the stories are,” Umino asserted, adjusting his swirly glasses. “And those two guys are the hottest couple of the week! Alas, since I’ve had them both on my show already, I figure I’ll need to get someone else to discuss the footage I’m recording here. Makoto, are you game?”
“Hah! I’m only going on your show if I get to talk cooking,” Makoto asserted.
Umino shrugged. “Oh well. Hey, is that a fancy calculator?”
Ami followed Umino’s gaze, discovering that her Mercury mini-computer was partly poking out of her school bag.
Usagi had asked them all to meet after classes at the Shrine, apparently there was some pink haired girl pretending to be a cousin who had infiltrated her house the night before. Ami had thought that having her high-tech device along might be useful.
Ami quickly pushed it back out of view.
“Yeah, and it tells fortunes and plays games too,” Makoto said, sarcastically. “Isn’t it time you found somewhere else to be?”
“Fortunes, eh?” Umino said, failing to take the hint. “Know what I got when I plugged Greg and Kaijin into one of those electronic compatibility tests? A perfect match.”
“That’s just... ridiculous,” Ami sighed.
“You can't always trust those matchmaking services,” Makoto agreed, albeit more hesitantly.
“Computers don’t lie,” Umino protested. “Speaking of, Ami, has Kaijin ever been over to your house to see Greg?”
Ami felt her chest tighten. “Wh-What? MY house? How is that even..."
“Oh, yeah, hey, I followed Greg home from his work yesterday,” Umino said, grinning. “Because of all the gossip, to see if he’d meet Kaijin in secret. He went to your place. I thought that was weird, so I hacked the school records, and discovered how you have the same address. But hey, maybe I won’t tell anyone, as long as you can get me some candid..."
“U-mi-no. Surely you’re not about to blackmail Ami?” Makoto said, leaning in closer to him, narrowing her eyes.
Umino pulled at his collar. “A-hahaha! Ohh, no ma’am. Silly me. I’m sure I have enough material for my show here already, we newspeople can overdo things, please nobody hit me with a textbook.”
Ami almost laughed at the exchange. Except, did it even matter now, keeping the housing situation a secret? She was going to Germany. Her face fell instead. “Know what? I don’t even mind if people find out Greg lives in my house.”
Makoto’s gaze snapped over to her. “Ami...?"
“I mean, the truth there is bound to come out eventually,” she said quickly. “And it’s such a small thing now, when there’s much more important things for us to worry about lately. Don’t you think?” Like Germany. She was going, right? Who should she even talk to first? Greg? Usagi? Makoto? Someone else?
Umino adjusted his glasses again. “Right, big issues. Like boys love! Ami, as you live with the guy, would you care to offer up an explanation for Greg’s sexual preferences?”
For some annoying reason, Ami was reminded of what Minako’s parting words to Greg had been, back when she’d been describing how they’d broken up...
~~~~~
"You're crazy!" Minako finally shouted out after him. "What, love just isn't in your vocabulary any more? Is it impossible for you to care about a girl?"
~~~~~
“No. Comment,” Ami asserted, grabbing her bag and back-pedalling out of the shrubbery. She heard Makoto saying something to Umino about burning his video footage before following after her.
*****
“Urawa? We have a problem.”
He let Minako in without another word. “I know,” Urawa said, shaking his head. “It was all around the school today. Greg and Kaijin? I don’t get it. How could that guy--"
“Oh no. No no no. No no,” Minako repeated, leaning in close to him. Urawa ended up pressed up against his front door, moments after he’d closed it. “No, PROB-LEM.”
“Oh.” Urawa flicked his gaze left and right. “Am I going to want to sit down for this?”
Minako seemed to think about that for a moment. “Yes,” she decided at last.
They adjourned to the living room.
“So,” Minako began, “yesterday, some Chibi-Usagi interrupted Usagi’s date. She appeared out of a cloud, and pulled a toy gun on her, or possibly jumped back into the cloud, and actually that’s part’s a bit unclear to me, but my point is she’s in Usagi’s old photos as her cousin!” She stopped, and looked at him earnestly.
“Okay. Cousins can be annoying,” Urawa agreed, not sure where she was going with the story.
“No, no, don’t you get it? Rei tried to get a reading on the fake photos a short time ago, and it didn’t work, and we were all drugged, and Sailor Moon had to appear to save this pink haired Usagi from a new threat!”
Urawa cleared his throat. “Okay, uh, now this sounds like Senshi business. Should you be telling me all this?”
Minako gestured vaguely. “Oh, maybe not. But you know about us through your power, and no one’s said I can’t talk to you, so for now I have implausible reliability.”
Urawa opened his mouth, closed it again, then shrugged. “You do have that.”
Minako made a noise of exasperation. “You’re still not getting it. What, is it that you’re still planning to go after Ami?”
“Minako, please,” Urawa sighed. “Not after my last vision. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that not only has Ami made her choice, she and Greg are tied together by some string of fate.”
“And do you think that thread also extends to Mercury??”
It finally clicked. “Oh, man. You’re right, Greg doesn’t know about her secret identity. Minako, do you think the Senshi all going to be needed again to fight evil? Sometime soon? With Ami too?”
“I dunno,” Minako confessed. “All I know is PROB-LEM. To the point where Ami might want a guy she can confide in. And that might end up being you by default. So, heads up!”
Urawa ran his palm down over his face. “It’s never easy.”
*****
“I’ve been neglecting you. I apologize for that.”
Greg leaned in against the back of the couch, where Ami seemed to be staring at her textbook - reading seemed like too generous a word. She turned to look at him, as his arms were resting near her head. “You can spend all the time you want with Kaijin,” she answered, offering up a shrug. “It doesn’t bother me.”
He tilted his head. “Not even a little bit?”
Ami closed her text and reached out to grab the papers on the coffee table. “I should be doing my schoolwork in my room.”
“Wait,” Greg said, quickly coming around the side of the couch. “Sorry. Stop. Spill.”
“Spill WHAT?” she demanded.
Greg shrugged. “I dunno. But it’s Tuesday night, three days after that big news you got, and you’ve still got that marmalade look about you.”
“I’ve got what now?” Ami asked, reaching up to touch the side of her mouth in confusion. Which, on the plus side for him, kept her from standing up.
“That bitter secrets look,” Greg corrected, smiling as he sat down next to her. “I teased you with the comparison once before, that first week--"
“I remember,” she countered, going tight-lipped. The look made him wince.
“Sorry,” Greg apologized again, smile fading. “I meant it more tongue in cheek then, but more seriously now. As in, I’m not teasing. It’s only, it looks to me like you’ve been bottling something up. Again. Very unhealthy. And while normally I’d try to take your mind off of it, my own mind’s a little preoccupied lately too. So, I don’t know, maybe the two of us can prop each other up this time somehow?”
“Oh, what, meaning you’re actually going to reveal your feelings about something to me?” Ami fired off.
He flinched back a little at her tone.
She seemed equally taken aback, bringing her hand back up to cover her mouth.
“Yeeeah, no, okay, I deserved that one,” he yielded quickly. “So don’t apologize, assuming you were even going to. In retrospect, it IS kinda silly to think that I can talk to Kaijin and not you. Not when you’re... uh...“
He found he couldn’t finish the sentence.
He forged on. “Look, you know why I’m not quashing the rumours about Kaijin and me, right? It’s because that whole Minako incident I told you about, it’s become lost in the new sensationalism.”
“I didn’t know that at all,” Ami said. Her gaze softened, even as she looked away from him. “Though I suppose that does make sense.” She sighed. “While on my end, I guess I’m out of sorts because it’s been a bit confusing with me and my friends lately. Usagi in particular.”
Ami abruptly turned back to him.
“See, she’s got some cousin staying with her now, a Chibi-Usagi, who isn’t really supposed to be there,” Ami explained. “On top of that, earlier tonight, she told us that Mamoru, her boyfriend, broke up with her. Which, I mean, that’s crazy! It HAS to be a misunderstanding, but between that, and something else that happened yesterday, it’s making me wonder if now is a bad time for me to--"
She froze up. Greg lifted his eyebrow. “Bad time to what?”
Ami slowly shook her head. “No. No, I-- I can’t. I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you, not when I feel like, somehow, we still don’t understand each other. We’re not at that level of comfort yet. I... we’ll talk another time, okay?” She reached again for her textbook.
Greg wasn’t sure what part of him said that it was now or never. Or why he chose to listen to that part of himself either. But as he started to speak, he realized there was no going back. “My thing is, Kaijin’s my blood brother,” Greg said.
He tried to sound nonchalant, but felt he was failing at it.
“Which is the reason for my obsessing over Japan the last several years. It’s what led to that speech that apparently inspired Sewaya’s dad, and then me being here myself, and meeting you... in fact, I only came to Japan, to this district, to meet my Dad.”
Ami turned her head.
The protest ‘I’m not joking, really’ died in his throat as she settled back onto the couch, staring at him. Because she wasn’t staring at him as if she couldn’t believe the audacity of his lies at a time like this. No, Ami was staring at him as if, maybe, she was seeing him for the first time. He wondered what look he had on his face. He hoped he didn’t look like some sort of lost puppy.
“You don’t look Japanese,” she said quietly. “So you’ll have to explain that one.”
Greg let out a shaky breath. “Well, my Mom really is Canadian. She was here on an exchange herself once, it was, well, I guess about a year before I was born. And she met Fushigi Taylor, Kaijin’s Dad, and with a name like that I guess he’s only half Japanese too, so I don’t know, maybe that’s part of it... genetics are weird. Anyway, they had this fling... together... and Mom didn’t know she was pregnant when she came back to Canada. I’m not sure if Mr. Taylor even knows the whole truth.”
He realized he was curling up on the couch, and made himself stop. But as he began to stretch his legs back out, Ami’s hand moved to touch him gently on the thigh. “And your mother and father, the Andersons?” Ami asked softly.
Greg swallowed. He’d never even told anyone this much before! Could he really go on? He couldn’t seem to look directly at Ami any more. He focussed on a spot on a the wall behind her. “They don’t know that I know,” he said quietly.
“I found out by reading some letters that my grandmother had kept,” he admitted slowly, “which I discovered after she had passed on. But, I mean, my Canadian parents have been great and all, very supportive of my strange whims! Such as my wanting to travel to England for six months, as a trial run, somewhere overseas where they actually still spoke English.” He coughed. “Did Minako ever mention how we met...?"
“Yeah,” Ami murmured. “She did.”
“Right. So it was sort of a stroke of luck, running into your father in Ottawa after that, and getting everything set up here. After I arrived, at first, I wanted context for what life was like in Japan before confronting Kaijin’s... uh, my dad. In case I was asked to stay. But at this point, well, I’m basically chickening out. Though turns out I was also totally wrong about who Kaijin was, wasting a bunch of time keeping an eye on the wrong guy.”
He shook his head.
“Never believe everything you see on the world wide web.”
Ami blinked. “Why, who did you think Kaijin was?”
Greg shrugged. “That weird guy in class with the short brown hair and the glasses who seems to be trying to grow a beard? I’m glad I’m not related to him, Kaijin’s got a better sense of humour.”
“Ah.” Ami repositioned herself, and somehow he found that he was looking at her again. “But, now that you and Kaijin are actually getting along, you’re thinking of actually confronting your Dad?” she prompted.
Greg ran his fingers back through his hair. “I dunno. Yeah? I guess?” He swallowed. “When I do, would you like to come with?”
Her jaw dropped. “You... want me there...?"
He’d said it without really thinking about it. “I... yeah. Yeah, I do. It doesn’t need to be any time soon though. I just figure... uh, yeah.”
Ami seemed to deflate a little. “Kinda would need to be soon, if so. My news is that I got a scholarship to study medicine in Germany. I leave this Friday night.”
Greg felt his own jaw drop. “Wow. Congratulations.” He quickly connected the dots. “So you’re wondering if now is a bad time to leave your friends?”
Ami pressed both hands to her forehead. “Nnnngh, yeah. Damn it, why does it feel like everything’s happening all at ONCE? I haven’t even told anyone else about my going away yet. What if the others think I’m running from my problems? Or worse, what if they support me and throw me this big going away party that just makes me so sad I’ll hate leaving? But I have to say something, and there’s only three days left!”
“Well, speaking as an authority on long overseas trips, I suspect your first priority would be..." He raised his eyebrows. “Learning German.”
She glared at him. “Ich kenne Deutsch.”
Of course she knew the language. Ami was amazing. He clapped his hands. “Outstanding! I had a devil of a time with Japanese. You’re way ahead of me there.”
“Oh, you’re doing fine.” She looked at him more thoughtfully. “Come to think, what did you say to your friends when you left Canada?”
“Um. Well.” He tried to smile. “Kind of a non-issue? Ever since I learned about my family situation, I’ve kinda withdrawn from getting to know anybody that well. Fear of betrayal, maybe, or this sense that my entire existence was somehow invalid...? I don’t know, point is I didn’t really leave anyone behind when I came here.”
“Oh, Greg..." With one hand back at her mouth, she reached out to touch his leg again with the other.
He realized he was curling up once more. He made himself stop. “Know what though?” he decided. “If you’ll be finding the courage to tell your friends about Germany, I can find the courage to face my Dad. Yeah. In fact, I’m going to go call Kaijin right now, and ask if there’s an evening this week that will work.”
He began to rise, then froze in place.
“Unless you think that’s a terrible idea.”
Ami shook her head, smiling again. “No, I don’t. Please don’t rush on my account though.”
He smiled back at her, and finished standing up. “I’m not. I see it more as striking while the iron is hot. Because, see, I’ve never been able to tell anyone all of that before. Ever. And opening up to you in that way, well, it makes me believe that I can do it with Mr. Taylor too. So thanks for the help there, Ami. So much. Really. I’m... I’m actually so happy right now.”
Ami nodded, and now she was blushing in that very cute way at him, which made his heart soar even more. In fact, his own cheeks felt warm for some reason too... he quickly turned away, heading for the phone extension in the other room.
There would be time enough to deal with whatever romantic implications existed between them later. Right now, it was time to set a date for determining, once and for all, whether he would be accepted into the Taylor family.
To know, effectively, whether his name would remain Greg Anderson... or whether it would become Greg Taylor.
<commercial break; Ami, Greg and Urawa skating, they trip over Ami's computer.>
