Momoko [Judar X Kougyoku]

Blossoms

"Momoko" ...

It's what he called me when no one else was around.

In our native language of the Tenka region, it means "peach blossom child". He gave me that name the first time he saw me.

"Kou-gyo-ku is too hard to remember," he had said, struggling with my given name's pronounciation. "I'm just gonna call you Momoko instead."

It can't have been coincidence, that the two of us little children had been sitting in the grove of peach trees in the imperial palace garden on that breezy spring morning. The pink petals of the virgin peach blossoms danced in the wind all around us. He liked to pluck the petals off the branches he would snap off the trees and then toss them into the wind to watch them fly.

I had been upset at first, not understanding what the name meant.

"No no no! It's Kougyoku! I'm a princess you know! You have to say it right!"

He burst into a fit of laughter. From then on, I'd always know that laugh of his. He'd clutch his stomach and he'd laugh and laugh, and he'd dry the beads of tears from the corners of his eyes with the sleeve of his priest's robe.

My face reddened and screwed up with a sniffle. He stopped laughing, but still sported that smirk of his.

"Okay then, how about Momoko-hime?"

Peach blossom princess.

He told me what it was those words meant, as he plucked a flower from the branch and put it in my hair ornament. I forgot all about wanting to cry.

"There, see? I think it suits you."

He tousled my hair, and my face got hot. I hid the redness of my cheeks behind my sleeves.

"W-well...what's your name?"

The smile faded from his lips. His eyes darkened.

"I don't know."

"Huh? What do you mean you don't know? You have to have a name, right?"

"Yeah...I have one. But it's not my real name. It's just what all those old guys and that witch call me."

"What is it then? Tell me, tell me!"

He didn't get to tell me himself.

"So this is where you've been, Judar?"

Empress Gyokuen and her court magicians had found us. She smiled sweetly at us, and then she knelt down next to him and patted his head.

"How nice of you to play with the princess. Such a good little boy you are."

Despite her praise, his face was lined with a scowl. Then she grasped his hand and dragged him away.

"I'm afraid playtime is over now. You've got magic lessons all day today."

He didn't turn his gaze from me as they pulled him away. There was a plea in his eyes that I'll never forget. It was the same expression I saw every time I held a mirror to my face.