I Knew I Loved You

'I Knew I Loved You' is copyright Darren Hayes, Daniel Jones and EMI Music. Fushigi Yuugi is copyright Yuu Watase, Flower Comics, Studio Perriot, Pioneer Animation and Viz Communications. All rights remain theirs, I have no claims whatsoever to anything, and I'm not making any money out of this. Tamahome, however, will cheerfully accept any money you care to send, while Tasuki will appreciate any donations of sake you care to make.

Kourin rolled over, lifting her head from the pillow. False dawn. Great. Just great. That meant she hadn't been able to sleep longer than - what? Two hours this time?

She just couldn't settle down tonight. A combination of an unfamiliar bed and nerves still a-jangling from the earthshake that morning, the one that had totally rearranged her twin's life, made for a light sleep. One that was disturbed by everything from an owl flying by outside to the sleep-noises her twin, sleeping in the room next-door, made while unconscious.

Talking of which, if Houki let out just one more of those breathy, snuffy sounds that were not quite snores, usually soothing but right now the most annoying thing in the world...

A soft, hoarse sound, like a deep, heavy breath, came from next door. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't have even been heard in the next room; but now-

THAT WAS IT!!

Kourin flung herself out of her bed, charging over the threshold of her rooms and the small amount of verandah that stretched between the Chou twins' rooms, and into Houki's apartment.

Already Kourin could see the differences. Her rooms were already bright with patterned cloths flung over the pieces of furniture. Houki's walls were unadorned, but her furniture was drawn into distinctly different arrangements from what they had been that afternoon, subtly drawing attention to the flower arrangement sitting on the table against one of the walls. Kourin nodded in spite of herself. Not her style, but attractive nonetheless.

Another soft snuffly sound from the inner room reminded her of her mission: to come and destroy her younger sister's repose. Usually it was Houki who couldn't sleep in an unfamiliar place and kept her up. Turnabout, Kourin decided, was simply fair play.

Standing in the doorway, she looked into her sister's room. A dressing-robe hung neatly over a chair, and the boy's robes that Houki wore daily were folded on a bench at the foot of her pallet bed. Houki's face was turned away from the door, and her hair gleamed amethyst in the candle-light.

Kourin blinked. A candle, still lit, sat on the low table that had been pulled close to the pallet. Judging by the torrent of candledrips down the stub's side, it had been burning all night. Beside it, an inkstone and brush lay crossed, as if the brush had been set down for an instant while the writer rested her hand, and a book lay closed beside them, a scrap of Houki's favourite blue ribbon marking a place near the middle.

Kourin smiled, and quietly settled herself at the table. Houki had a habit, since she was very small, of writing of an evening in what the family called her 'daybook'. Sometimes it was poetry, sometimes a fantastic tale, and sometimes simply an account of the day. She had started soon after learning how to hold her brush and draw her first characters. She had taught Kourin in turn, but Kourin had not learned many of the less common characters. Girls, after all, didn't need as much education as boys, and Kourin had none of Houki's love of learning.

Houki was very private about her daybook, and she didn't like it if someone read the entries without an invitation. Which made it very enticing. And Kourin was Houki's elder twin, not just 'someone'.

I wonder what she thought of yesterday? Kourin wondered. She picked up the daybook, flipping past the first page, which read, "Chou Ryuuen's Daybook. Do NOT read. This means YOU, Kourin" to the place marked by the ribbon.

Maybe it's intuition
But some things you just don't question

"What a day! So much has happened and I'm really tired, but I have to talk to someone - and I can't talk to Kourin about this. It's really strange, that - I've always been able to tell her anything, before. But this is different."

How is it different? Kourin thought, angrily.

Like in your eyes
I see my future in an instant

"Now I know what the teacher at the school meant when he recognised me as Nuriko, and why he couldn't explain when I asked him about it all.

This morning I was all packed up, ready to go home to the shop. We were bidding goodbye to Kourin, and I could see the chief guard wince when I said we should do a little sightseeing before we left Eiyou. Is it my fault that Konan has such a beautiful and fascinating capital? Kourin wouldn't let me see any of it on the way here."

With good reason, she thought. You were gawking at everything. A marble frieze had to be minutely examined and you practically jumped off the bridge, you were leaning so far over to try to see the boats!

"Anyway, that's where we were when it happened. It felt like when we were three and tried to help Mai with the washing, and I jumped in the tub onto the sheets. Mai and Himeko picked up the sheet with me on it, stretched it between them, and snapped me up into the air, so that I bounced so high!

It was fun when I was three, it was a sheet and it was Mai and Himeko whom I loved and trusted. It was not fun this morning, when it was the ground, the Gods Whom I do not know, and I'm fifteen. I'm old enough to know about pain and injury now. I'm old enough to be scared.

The ground fell away from beneath my feet, and then rose up again. Everything tilted crazily, and I found myself on my hands and knees, trying to brace myself as everything swung and tilted.

I have never been in an earthquake before."

And there it goes
I think I've found my best friend

"It finally stopped. I climbed to my feet - and that's the word to use. I really felt as secure on my feet as a newborn foal. But I got there and looked around.

Silence. Pure and suffocatingly thick as sweet honey, it held us all fast in our places, in the courtyard of the royal palace. All was still.

Then, as gently as a tent of billowing silk, the main section of the Palace collapsed in on itself.

We all stood and stared for one long, horrible, painful minute.

Then the screams began."

I know that it might sound more than a little
Crazy - but I believe

"I sprinted over to the main wing and began hauling out pieces of building. Hefting them over my shoulder was easy - I've never felt so strong before!

Kourin told me later that I managed to fling the pieces of masonry right into just that place in the courtyard that the nobles of the Court were assembling, and that I managed to scare a few of them into gibbering."

Kourin smiled as she remembered that. The sight of those supercilious toadies reduced to gibbering with shock as walls and doors and windows came flying out of the air directly at them had been a fine antidote to her own terror. Houki had managed to convert a few of them into priests of Suzaku right on the spot when one of her walls just missed.

"I felt so good when I lifted one of the pieces, and a young girl scrambled out. She bowed so low, stammering thanks, and a servant steered her gently away. She was wounded and her bleeding was really bad, but because I got her out, she was with the healers in time and she'll be fine. That's something I'm really proud of."

So am I. Oh, little sister, so am I.

"There were more - a couple of old men, a few servants, but I had to keep lifting. Something was still pushing me, until I lifted the piece that was closest to the ground, and I saw him.

He was a boy, maybe the same age as Elder Brother. But he is the most beautiful person I've ever seen, and I never thought anyone would surpass Elder Brother's beauty. His face is elegant and his form is slender and fine. And on his neck glowed a birthmark. It was as fine as the rest of him; an elegant hand had traced the character for 'Star' in crimson fire on his skin, and I think him as beautiful as a star."

Kourin stared at the brushed ink on the page before her. Houki! How can you say such things? You've gotten a crush, haven't you!

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

"His eyes opened, so slowly I was afraid for a second that I was too late and he was dead.

I was wearing my blue shirt, the one that barely covers my chest binding. I don't know why; I wasn't in the usual 'I'm not what you think I am, and you can't guess' mood that I'm in when I wear it. I just had to wear something that showed my collarbone today, and I think I just figured out why: it was so he could see my birthmark.

He smiled at me and murmured, 'Hello, Nuriko.' I stared. How did he know that name? That it was my name? How did I even know that? 'Stay, please,' he whispered, and then a swarm of servants descended upon us, and he was ever-so-gently swept away."

There's just no rhyme or reason
Only this sense of completion

"I couldn't think what that all meant. 'Nuriko'? Why had he called me that?

I didn't understand. So I grabbed the arm of one of the Court officials who was hurring away. 'Please, sir,' I asked, 'who is "Nuriko"?'

He impatiently shook his sleeve from my hand. 'I have no time to wonder about the identity of one of the Suzaku Shichiseishi!' he snapped. 'Thank you for rescuing the Emperor, but I must go attend to His Majesty!'"

And in your eyes
I see the missing pieces
I'm searching for

"I still can't believe that, but it is true. I am Nuriko, who is a Shichiseishi of Suzaku.

I went to the Imperial Library this afternoon, after all the confusion. It was completely unattended, and I was able to find information on the Suzaku Shichiseishi with little trouble. Someone appeared to have been collecting it.

I soon realized why."

I think I've found my way home
I know that it might sound more than a little
Crazy - but I believe

"There will be seven guardians brought into the world, to defend and assist the Priestess of Suzaku, who will appear to protect Konan in its time of worst danger. They will each be granted a power of Heaven, and shall be known by a birthmark that appears and disappears, apparently made of fire.

I couldn't help touching my birthmark - no, my seishi symbol as I read that. I am Nuriko. The Third Seishi. The Seishi of Earth and Strength, marked as the Willow.

And the Emperor's birthmark - it wasn't a birthmark either. It was the mark of Hotohori, the Second Seishi, marked as the Star."

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

"When I left the Library, I went to Kourin and told her that I had to stay around the Court, did she have any ideas? And before I knew it, she managed to track down that pompous arrogant git from yesterday and present herself (!) as Chou Houki, who had arrived to be placed in the Imperial Harem that day, as her sister had the day before."

I'll get you to admit you're a girl yet, Houki, Kourin thought smugly. It was all right when we were children and Father had to have you be a boy so that he could say he'd sired a legitimate son, but we're growing up now. You're going to be a woman, not a man, when you're adult, so you'd better get used to being a girl.

"The Harem Master was scrambling all over himself to give 'Houki' appropriate quarters, and when Kourin suggested that 'she'd' like to be near 'her' sister, he gave me (Kourin - US) the rooms next door. So we have that beautiful garden, with its private bath-house and fruit trees, all to ourselves. And I have a double identity - again."

A thousand angels dance around you
I am complete now that I've found you

"After the Palace settled down for the night, I slipped out. I had to talk with the Emperor. It's easier to think of him as Lord Hotohori, somehow.

I tried to reach out with my ki, to sense where he was, and I did get a very definite sense of his location, so I set out to sneak my way over there."

Kourin gasped. Houki, you didn't!

"It was hard to avoid all the guards, but I managed."

You did! Suzaku's tailfeathers, you did!

"I've never been in a boy's bedchambers before. Well, not counting Elder Brother. When I knocked on the door, I didn't know what to expect.

There was no answer, so I opened the door and slipped in.

He wasn't asleep, as I'd thought. Instead, he was half-lying on a padded bench in the 'reception' part of the apartment.

'Hello, Nuriko,' he said softly. 'I wasn't expecting you.'

I felt a prickle through my ki as he said it. 'Don't lie,' I replied. 'I can feel it. You've been waiting for me and you should be resting.'

He laughed. 'Yes, mother,' he said goodnaturedly.

'Call me Nuriko, Lord Hotohori. You're my star-brother, ne?'"

I knew I loved you before I met you
I think I dreamed you into life
I knew I loved you before I met you
I have been waiting all my life

"'Yes, star-brother,' he said softly, closing his eyes against a stab of pain so sharp even I felt it.

'You're too tired for talking,' I told him. I could feel the cracked ribs that were making breathing so difficult for him.

'Be back here by the first hour after dawn, please,' he said. 'I'll have to declare you to the Court, and that's when morning Court first assembles.'

'I will,' I promised. 'If you go straight to bed. Right now!'

He laughed, and stood up slowly. I watched him anxiously as he slowly made his way through his inner door. He stopped in the doorway and smiled.

'You care,' he said, wonderingly.

'Of course I do, Elder Brother,' I scolded him lightly. 'If not for my skill, you'd have worse than cracks in those ribs, you know!'

He laughed and shut the door.

So tomorrow Chou Ryuuen is to be presented to the Court!"

Kourin closed the book and replaced it beside the inkstone and candle. Standing, she looked over at her sister.

"No wonder you're sleeping as if you're safely at home," she murmured. "You are home."