Wisteria Eyed

16

"Wake up, Miyasha." A vaguely familiar voice firmly ordered in my ear.

"GAH!" I woke up suddenly, yelling and rolling off the futon in fear. But when two giggling voices greeted me instead of Shigeno-sensei's yelling, I instantly threw the pillow in the direction of the sound.

"Oomph!"

"HA! Looks like my aim ain't that bad after all!" I gloated as a still giggling Hiroshi helped Hitoshi off the floor.

"Nah," Hitoshi disagreed, "Your aim is as bad as before. It's just that I tried to deflect— that's why the pillow hit me."

That caused both of them to dissolve into giggles again, making me glare at those two brats.

Since the day when the demon suddenly popped up in our temple yard, the twins have not left me alone for a single day. Nope. They have been following me around and 'teaching' me stuff because they thought I needed 'help'.

Well, to be honest, I actually did.
They helped me a lot with the training part too— especially since I accepted the offer to do some under Shigeno. Or Shigeno-sensei, more like.

"Why don't you call him ojisan, like we do?" Hitoshi asked one day as he was showing me the ten forms of breath of the snow.

"I... am not much comfortable with it, yet. Forgive me if it felt odd to you all..."

"Hitoshi, your posture is off. Don't be so stiff while doing the fourth form— it needs the full flexibility of your body..." Hiroshi commented offhandedly from the branch he made himself comfortable on, "And Miya-chan..."

"Yes...?"

"Why is your speech so formal?" Hiroshi asked with a strange sharpness in his eyes. I initially stiffened momentarily under his unexpected sombre gaze, but soon forced myself to loosen down.

"I was taught to speak as such... I was not exactly aware it was considered formal." More in the sense that I actually forgot— my main concern for the while was to just stay alive and to learn the basic surviving skills, speech and behaviour was not exactly a priority until I needed to pretend.

"You always spoke like this?" Hitoshi gushed, "That's so cool! Was your family noble? Or priest like ojisan?"

"No," I firmly denied, wondering for a moment if it was right to open up to them. "I... I was born in a brothel."

Waiting for the impending questions, I quietly looked up to their faces— only to see visible confusion etched onto them.

"What..." Hitoshi started, as Hiroshi ended the sentence with "...is a brothel?"

I stared at them for a solid five minutes to see if they were joking, but they honestly looked lost.

"You... honestly don't know what a brothel is?"

"No." They chorused innocently, leaving me with the responsibility to explain what a brothel is to them.

'I think it was wrong of me to think that they would know about it...' I mused as the brothers suddenly gathered around me. 'I mean, they indeed are children and not to mention, Japanese people are always more on the prude-r side.'

"Okay, let us first start with the basics; are you familiar with how babies are made?"

"No..."

"...That is where we will begin from, then. So, babies are human infants who are conceived when—"

And that, was how I helped them in return— with my knowledge and advises. The twins were very attentive too, I am not going lie, but a little too curious at times.