SASAMI'S REVELATION A fanfic by Inoue It began one night when I found Aeka-neesama awake and sobbing into her futon. She was lamenting over Tenchi-niichan's tentative plans to leave and attend college in the fall. How could he leave a woman like her for some silly books, a princess no less?! And not even have the guts to ask for her as his fiancé before he left?! How stupid! Maybe this was even a cowardly precedent for some elopement with that monster woman etc. I suddenly felt sick listening to incessant buzzing of her voice, these wretched confidences; only then did I realize how arrogant, how selfish, how cold-hearted my sister truly was. This, however, was nothing, not really even the cause of how I felt. It was the mortified realization that I was related by blood to a creature so incapable of love. I slapped my sister -- hard. For perhaps a moment, I felt a pang of regret, maybe even remorse, but if I did, its vagueness tells me that it was gone as quickly as it came. I'd crossed an epiphanal bridge; it was not in my power to ever make things the same again. Since that day, Aeka and I have been sisters only by name of blood. I found Tenchi-niichan downstairs studiously immersed in page after endless page of text. His face glowed, possessed by the dim lamplight. It was an unearthly tableau, one so beautiful that I was content to hide silently in the shadows for a long time and just watch. In my memory, I have the impression that moonlight pierced through one of the bay windows and focused onto a single point on the glass of his right iris. I think I was so moved that I slipped out into the yard for a moment, picked a blossom from the cherry tree, and returned to interpose the flower between the moonlight and Tenchi-niichan so that it, like the moon, was reflected in the pond of his eye. Yet, I have no recollection of the reality -- the cool, tangible wetness or the smell -- of that blossom, but only in my adulthood did I realize that none of that mattered. All that did matter was the destiny that I learned to see for the first time that night; that much I knew was real. How lonely Tenchi was! (Like the moon in his eye?) That was the moment when I felt the first murmurs in my heart secretly yearning to become one with Heaven and Earth. One way or another, I eventually found myself having assumed the lotus position before him. I felt like a monk at prayer. He seemed to feel the same way towards me, the way he looked up from his books and lifted his gaze to mine. His eyes seemed to scream of some unspeakable longing, but then a sudden sadness dawned upon them like comprehension of the moment. I'd disturbed him. I felt so guilty, and I looked away as I excused myself so that he could not see the tears in my eyes. But I felt the weight of his hand on my shoulder stopping me as I prepared to leave. It was an act of merciful compassion. He asked me why I'd come, so I told him that I did not want to be with Aeka. "Give it time, Sasami-chan. She'll be all right. She'll learn to miss me," he said, then suddenly turned away from me, as if he realized something as he spoke. I somehow felt that I was at fault, as if what little I said was too much. Aeka would never miss him -- couldn't even know the feeling any more than she was capable of knowing love -- but I would. Yet, I somehow knew that I could let him go -- that I would have to -- because the choice wasn't even mine; that was what distinguished me from Aeka. I yearned to impart these thoughts to Tenchi, but suddenly I was conscious of a great gulf between us. I nagged my brain for something to say, both an apology to Tenchi and at the same time a means by which to reassure myself that he was still here. I told myself that maybe, it would bridge the gulf and allow me even to touch him. But it was an eternal gulf as old as time; what I finally said left no doubt of that. "Tenchi-niichan, what kind of girl do you like?" It was a thoughtless comment, as tacitly taboo as the abyss that it seemed to widen was eternal. In mortification, I covered my mouth, thinking, even hoping, like the little girl that I was that doing so would deny the words, maybe even retract them. His answer was mercy. "The girl who is of my mind, body, and spirit -- that's the one I'll marry, the one I can love and cherish for all time." But it wasn't Tenchi-niichan who said those words; they seemed to resonate from within me. --------------------------------- I woke up in front of a mirror. I felt as if I had been dreaming. The image of the girl I saw reciprocating my gaze seemed to confirm my suspicions. Perhaps she had been the one talking of mind, body, and spirit. She had particularly bright eyes chiseled into her soft, but defined, face. A pair of deep dimples gave the overall impression a tender quality, human and yet something else, like a mother perhaps. The way she wore her hair, however; that made a person ask questions. It was thick, flowing, giving the face the dimension of a refined cross between a heart and a circle, proclaiming a maidenhood that seemed too naive for her image's quiet warmth. She radiated an unearthly kind of complexity that me wonder how she could possibly be me. I knew myself, a simple, average girl. Nowhere in me could I find a center consciously telling me to be the image in the mirror. I was convinced that something so beautiful and unreal could be generated only by the conscious will of some higher being. But that I should see it innocently in a mirror must have been the testament of some overriding miracle, wasn't it? It was an old, timeless dilemma for me that began the first time I attended Tanabata Matsuri. Even then, my lonely isolation was nothing new; I always have felt inexplicably like the fifth wheel. Sheepishly, I wandered from the crowd of revelers until I eventually found myself staring into the moonlit pond. That was the first time I truly saw my image I realized as a collage of fireworks exploded in the background, encompassing the moon. "What a cute girl!" a male voice suddenly exclaimed. He was talking about me! -- or rather, the image in the pond. It was impossible for him to mean me. But there again was the mirror, and, in it, I saw that Tenchi-niichan was the one who had made the remark to one of his friends. I wondered which among this myriad of mirror-moments was real and which was a dream. Or maybe it didn't matter? Suddenly, light pierced through each of the many cracks in the blinds. It was morning. In that moment, I knew that one day Tenchi-niichan would become my husband. Not Ryoko-neechan's, Oneesama's, or even Mihoshi-san's, but mine. My heart burst with the flame of a future love incarnating itself in the eternal present. ---------------------------- Notes: A few things that I should probably explain. Tanabata Matsuri is a Japanese festival somewhat akin to the Western Valentines Day. Also, about the passage where Sasami takes the cherry blossom and interproses it between the moon and the mirror of Tenchi's eyes. The primary Japanese mythological symbols of beauty are the trilogy of flower, moon, and mirror. I hope you enjoyed this. C&C more than welcome. Thank you. Ja mata!