In Her Vicinity (Gravitation: Maiko/Shuichi)

[eeveee]

Boys never want to play with Maiko, so it’s always her brother who is the husband. He grudgingly agrees, as long as he gets to be a famous musician while Maiko makes their home and nurses her dolly. But Shuichi is such a pushover and Maiko is forceful and all proper husbands should kiss their wives before going to work, or so Rika says. Sometimes when she comes over, Shuichi has to be her husband too, but he refuses to kiss her before he leaves for his work being a famous actor.

Not that Maiko really thinks she’s missing out on anything – Shuichi’s mouth is all sloppy, and he holds her too tight and kisses her just too long. But he is the older one, who knows about kissing and the stuff mum and dad do at night, and she is the one who insists he does it. She does it because that is the proper thing, since life surely must be sad if your own husband won’t kiss you. And they need to get it right, anyway, and it isn’t like Maiko could have let anybody who wasn’t her brother do stuff like that, anyway.




And so they keep kissing, when she is five, seven, eight, twelve. At first they kiss for goodbyes and for dollies, then for being like adults on TV, and finally because Maiko wants to know what it is like for real, for whenever she finds a boyfriend.

Then Shuichi gets his first keyboard, and Hiro-kun is always over.





The game is a silly thing they had seen in a movie once, but Takako has such a big crush on Maiko’s brother, and it isn’t like he has anything better to do, is it? Privately, Maiko knows that Shuichi is too much into his music to care about girls, and certainly not those as unremarkable as Takako-chan, but she also thinks that he needs to get out a little. Mom would be mad if she knew about this, but Shuichi won’t tell on them, even though he is far from happy about being mobbed into participating (something he lets them know - loudly). Maiko knows that Shuichi is uncomfortable around girls, and the sulky scowl can’t hide that his cheeks are stained a faint crimson. He becomes even redder when the bottle stops and is pointing at him, and Maiko almost feels bad for him when her friends start laughing. So she only shrugs, and crawls over to kiss him on the mouth.

Maiko has kissed boys before, and can instantly tell that Shuichi has not been kissing any girls. But he catches on soon enough, and doesn’t start yelling or something when she pushes her tongue into his mouth. He goes tense for a second, then, and is panting when she finally pulls back. Only then does she notice that everybody else has been staring, even though this was what it was all about. Of course, they are all girls and wouldn’t be kissing each other like that – or anybody else, had there been more boys than Shuichi – but Shuichi is only Maiko’s brother, and not some classmate who will think she wants anything more because she was so enthusiastic.

Later that night, she teases him for two hours about getting his first proper kiss from his sister at the age of fifteen.





Maiko kisses her brother in his room, in her room, in the living room late at night and in the backs of dimly lit clubs that he takes her to because he wants to listen to indie bands nobody has ever heard about. It’s silly, perhaps, but Maiko likes kissing, and Shuichi knows how to kiss her, unlike boys she met an hour ago when one of her friends introduced them.

She kisses him when Hiroshi’s mother has called her son home for dinner, kisses him like she kissed him on his birthday and how he kissed her that one time on the train. They kiss like movie stars, deep and long, and Shuichi likes it when her hair is down and pull his fingers through it. And even if he is dumb and annoying and lazy and never can think about anything but his silly “band” with Hiro, Maiko finds that deep down, that isn’t what matters the most to her.





There are more handsome boys than Masaru Shiota, that is for certain, and his quiet manner ensures his anonymity to everybody except those directly involved with the student council. But when you have seen the way he arranges anything between a lunch meeting and a school festival without panicking for even a second, or how easily he gets his will around anybody, it is difficult to not be impressed. He is smart without being nerdy, and cute enough in a somewhat old-fashioned way. So when he asks her on a date, Maiko doesn’t agree just because he is the first boy to do so.

Shuichi doesn’t look particularly excited when she shares the news, not that she expected him to. Shiota, he asks, the kid with the weird hair? Well, whatever makes her happy, though he certainly had expected her to hook up with somebody a little more exciting. He sulks for the rest of the evening, until she crawls into his bed to pull the headset away from his ears and tells him that he needs to find himself a girlfriend, too. He replies that when he and Hiro are famous rock stars, he will have enough screaming groupies to have a new girl every night, and Maiko pummels him with his pillow. She tells him that love isn’t about that, and doesn’t he want somebody to kiss and cuddle at night?

Shuichi grins, then, and asks her why in the world he would need to find somebody new for that. And before she has the time to understand what he is saying, he pulls her down on top of him and starts tickling.





Seven months later, Shuichi supposes that she is right and that he does need a girlfriend.





Not that he ever could do anything the normal way. Of all the people he could chose to involve himself with over some stupid question about his pride in his art, it had to be the one of Japan’s most promising young novelists, and Maiko’s not-so-secret object of admiration and adoration. He didn’t even have the brains to realize who it was, Maiko’s stupid brother. Shuichi has never read Eiri Yuki’s novels or stared dreamily at TV interviews like all of Maiko’s friends. Shuichi ended up in a silly argument with the man, and can no longer let go, even if he insists that Eiri Yuki is a right jerk when it comes down to it.

But he is hardly ever at home these days; he is staying out, be it because of his band or something involving Eiri Yuki, and it’s been two weeks since Maiko last kissed him.





It is hard to share Shuichi’s excitement as she helps him haul his musical equipment to the car. Sure, she is happy for him – the music was the only thing he ever cared about, and he is finally getting somewhere with it – but his bedroom is so very empty without the Nittle Grasper posters and the walls covered with note sheets and lyrics written on all sorts of odd paper scraps. Before, he did at least come home to sleep most of the time, but he is leaving for real now.

When the room has been emptied of everything personal, Maiko is left to wonder what it will be like not to see her brother every day. She still hasn’t quite understood when he comes after her, chattering about this lady who will be playing the keyboard instead of him, and she does the only thing she can think of to shut him up – she grabs hold of his shoulders, and kisses him. She almost feels like crying when he stiffens in surprise, and he stares when she lets go. But he leans in to cradle her head against his and curl his fingers in her hair, and she doesn’t have the time to be embarrassed.

Shuichi kisses differently than he used to – harder, deeper, and his hands feel lesser sure somehow. Maiko wonders if Eiri Yuki kisses like this, and doesn’t realize that the tears are running until the car honks and Shuichi pulls away, leaving her behind with a grin and a wave.




University textbooks are thick, but not heavy enough to keep her from stopping outside the windows to stare at the row of televisions sets lined up inside. It has been a month since she last talked to Shuichi, when she answered the phone on dad’s birthday. It’s silly, she thinks as her eyes rests on his grinning face as the interviewer asks him a question she can’t hear, that most news about the life of her brother comes from the celebrity news in fashion magazines these days. Shuichi once told her that they made stuff up, but that was long ago and she can’t remember what incident that was supposed to explain.

She discovers that she is smiling as they play old footage from a Bad Luck concert, and wonders how her silly brother can be the same young man who is singing in front of thousands of screaming girls. But the interview is cut short for news, and Shuichi is gone again.

She doesn’t go around name-dropping, but there are times when she forgets herself and talks about her older brother Shuichi. And they ask her if is true, is she really his sister? And she says yes, he is a year older. They ask if he really is as cute as he is on TV, and she shows them that stupid picture she took when he was sixteen and Hiroshi was helping him study for a test by hitting him over the head with a cane for every wrong answer. They ask if it is true, that he is living with Eiri Yuki? And when did they meet, and did he tell Maiko, and does she visit them often?

But Shuichi Shindou is a busy man these days, and Eiri Yuki’s number is unlisted. Shuichi promised to give her his cell phone number once, but never did – and these days, he calls home too rarely for Maiko to remember to ask. Her poor parents, too confused to know whether to disown or embrace their son for the life he leads in the limelight, can never decide whether they want it or not.

She can see his picture on the cover of at least three different magazines and one paper when she passes by a news-stand. It’s been five months since she last saw her brother in flesh and blood, and something above her stomach constricts with a sudden ache when she realizes that she no longer can remember what he used to kiss like. Shuichi is her brother, and she is sure that he still is dumb and lazy and that the only thing inside his head is music, and maybe Eiri Yuki. But there haven’t been any boys who know her quite as well as he did, and Shuichi won’t be coming back. He belongs to the cameras flashes and celebrity gossip and the music magazines calling him the most promising new talent since Ryuichi Sakuma and the teenage girls who buy his records. Not to Maiko Shindou, who once used to be the only person who loved him for the brilliance nobody truly sees the first time they meet him, and who never realized that she did before he left her behind.