While Beauty Sleeps

by Ripley Proserpina

  “It’s real,” I told him and sighed. “I wish it wasn’t, but it is.”

  “So you need me to break the curse with a kiss.” He nodded. “Easy. I’ll close my eyes, you come out and we’ll kiss.” Goro said it like it was nothing at all.

  The door to the room swung open before I could answer, admitting Miori and Fuyumi. Fuyumi’s face was dark, eyebrows drawn together. She spun a finger around the streak of turquoise she’d added to her hair a few days ago as she examined Goro and Reiji from head to toe. Reiji’s face flushed under her inspection, but Goro held his own and met her gaze.

  Color me impressed. Generally, I wilted under Fuyumi’s perusal. “I’m Fuyumi, this is Miori.” Miori waved and smiled and the men bowed at the waist. “We’re witches, so be nice to our baby sister. She may be ugly, but she’s ours.”

  I shut my eyes and did my best not to groan aloud. Goro’s eyebrows went to his hairline and Reiji paused halfway up from his bow.

  To give them both credit, they collected themselves quicker than I’d seen other princes. “Nice to meet you,” Reiji answered.

  “It isn’t our intention to hurt her,” Goro said.

  And I believed him. Shit. I tried to smother the flare of hope that grew in my chest. It wasn’t like I’d fallen in love with them—but they were nice. They were people I wanted to know better, and—I don’t know—maybe be their friend. What an idea! A friend who wasn’t related to me. Crazy.

  Anxiety unfurled in my stomach as I prepared myself for the inevitable. It was really going to hurt when they left.

  “You can’t help it.” I hadn’t meant to say it, and I hated the way it made me sound—all woe is me. “Look. It’s part of the curse. No matter what, once you see my face, you’re going to leave.”

  Goro side-eyed Reiji, who frowned. I could tell he didn’t like what I was implying, that they wouldn’t be able to see beyond my appearance. It wasn’t their fault. Over the years, I had a lot of time to think about the witch’s curse, and I’d come to sort of admire her creativity.

  I could have been just plain, old ugly, but that wasn’t enough for the bitch.

  My appearance was perfectly designed to repel each and every individual who looked at me. What Aoi saw wasn’t what Fuyumi saw, or Miori saw. I was something different, something uniquely disgusting, to whoever let their gaze fall on me.

  I should just buy my pajamas now, because there was no way this curse was going to be broken. And these guys, who seemed funny and sweet, they were going to run like all the others.

  “How about you give us a chance?” Reiji asked. He turned his frown on me and I didn’t like it. Was he disappointed? He didn’t even know me.

  “Thank you for coming and trying. But this isn’t going to work.” I flicked off the audio before they could argue. Fuyumi and Miori raised their eyebrows, staring intently at the mirror as if they could see me tucking my tail like a coward and slinking away. Goro frowned and Reiji began to speak, rapid fire, to Aoi.

  Ignoring the mess I made, I turned my back on the room and went to the piano. It was better this way; no one, namely me, would get hurt.

  5

  Kumiko

  The door slammed a few minutes later and three angry sisters surrounded me.

  “What the heck?” Miori asked. “Why would you send them away without getting to know them? They came all the way from Iriogaki! They took leave from school! Just to come here!”

  I continued to play, ignoring her. It was childish of me, but how did I answer her? She was right.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw a hand with bright blue nails grab the piano cover and I immediately yanked my hands back. Fuyumi slammed the piano shut. “Stop acting like a baby and listen.”

  “I am listening.” Spinning on the bench, I bent my leg at the knee and arranged my dress over it. “I know I’m running out of time. But I don’t think it matters. It was never going to happen.”

  Fuyumi scoffed and crossed her arms. My hardheaded sister would ignore everything except what she wanted to hear. “You’re being dumb.”

  “I’m not,” I answered. I wasn’t.

  “You are.”

  “I’m not!”

  “Enough,” Aoi broke in. “Both of you are dumb. But Kumiko, you’re the dumbest. These guys—I think it could work. And you only met the first two! Any of them…”

  “There were more?” My voice went up at the end of the question. “You brought four princes home?” A sharp pain throbbed behind my right eyebrow and I rubbed it. “Why?” It was hard enough having one person at time run away from me. I’d rather not frighten off a flock of them. That would really get the paparazzi’s attention.

  Fuyumi slapped the back of my head none too gently. “Because, duh, your birthday is two weeks away! You think I want to help some nurse roll you from side to side so you don’t get bedsores? I have things to do.”

  I snorted.

  “You can’t just give up,” Miori said quietly. “It’s not fair. We worked so hard.”

  She was right. They had. When I frightened away prince after prince, they stayed with me, building me back up so I could do it all over again.

  And then there was their magic. If it hadn’t been for that, I would have had no chance of breaking the curse. I’d just be an ugly princess who would prick her finger on an enchanted something some day and fall into eternal sleep.

  But the deadline was looming and true love was an awful big order to fill.

  “It’s not going to work.” My sisters smelled my weakness.

  “You don’t know that,” Miori stated.

  “They feel different.” Aoi smoothed my hair down my back and flipped it over my shoulder.

  “They didn’t seem like total assholes.” Fuyumi lifted one shoulder before examining her nails. “So there’s that.” I sucked in a breath and let it out, blowing it directly in Fuyumi’s face. “Ugh. What the hell? Did you eat a goat?” She waved a hand in front of her face, but smiled.

  “Bring them back.” The pain over my eye was back and I rubbed it again. “What do I have to lose?”

  “Yay!” Miori clapped her hands and sprinted toward the door. She was probably afraid I’d change my mind. “Four cute guys. Seriously, Kumiko, you’re a lucky bitch.”

  “Yeah,” I answered, laying the sarcasm on thick. “That’s what everyone tells me.”

  6

  Reiji

  I didn’t know what Kumiko looked like, but I had really liked her voice. As I followed Goro down the stairs where Dai and Wataru waited, I thought about the way she’d seemed as if she was on the verge of laughing.

  If I’d met her in one of my business classes, I’d have gotten to know her better. That was, if I was able to stomach her face. My hands still tingled with the magic Aoi had formed and thrown my way. Palms itching, I skimmed my hand over the bannister. Whatever doubt I had that this whole thing was an elaborate hoax disappeared the moment I caught that golden ball.

  My world, for as long as I remembered, was centered around the island where I lived. I’d been brought up to understand my first responsibility was to the citizens of Iriogaki. My desires, my interests, they all came second to what was best for our citizens.

  I studied business, tourism, and marine biology because those were the subjects that might result in improving the lives of the Iriogaki citizens.

  Dai, Wataru, and Goro had made the same sacrifices for the same reasons.

  Everything in my life was so boring, so predictable; nothing about it ever suggested that magic was possible.

  “Well?” Wataru drew his hands through his long hair, collecting it at the back of his head and securing it with a band. “Is it for real?”

  “It is,” I answered. Wataru examined me, gaze traveling over my face before he gave a decisive nod. “But you’re here. You saw her. Couldn’t do it?” he asked.

  Dai crossed his massive arms and leaned against the wall. His square jaw flexed like he was grinding his back molars to dust. T
he quiet giant said nothing, merely waited.

  “I never saw her,” I replied and yanked on my hair. I’d forgotten that I’d placed my hat under my arm and it fell to the ground.

  Wataru bent at the waist and picked it up. “Tell me you didn’t go in there with this on your head.”

  “He did,” Goro answered quickly. “I’m not convinced it wasn’t the hat that had her sending us away.”

  “She sent you away?” Dai straightened. He rolled his shoulders back, standing to his full height and stared down his straight nose at me. “What did you do?”

  “He didn’t do anything.” Goro attempted to save my ass from the beating Dai’s eyes threatened. “She told us it wouldn’t work. It was inevitable we wouldn’t be able to stand the sight of her, and she asked us to leave. So we did. For now.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at Goro, who smiled back at me impishly. His dimples and glasses gave him the appearance of a laid-back young man, but he used people’s misconceptions to throw them off, like he had just now with me.

  “I wasn’t ready to leave either,” I stated and he clapped my shoulder.

  “I think we give her a minute, and then you two go up. Dai, maybe take off your jacket so she can see your muscles.” Goro laughed when Dai took a threatening step toward him.

  “If she doesn’t like me for who I am, then this will never work,” Dai said and buttoned up the coat that lay open.

  I sat on the bottom step, bracing my elbows on my knees before I spoke. “This is for real.”

  “We can offer you refreshments, if you would like,” a servant interrupted me and gestured away from the hall where we lingered. Shrugging at Wataru, I stood and followed her into a large room. Glass windows faced a huge green lawn. In the distance, cherry trees blossomed with bright pink flowers. The sky was grey with clouds that threatened rain. Two long lounges faced each other and I lowered myself into the one closest to the windows, twisting so I could look at the scenery.

  Rather than sit, Dai went to the window, hands shoved into his pockets. “What do you mean, it’s for real?” he asked, not bothering to face me.

  “It’s magic, and though we didn’t see her face,” Goro spoke for me. “The girl’s been cursed.”

  Wataru sighed, taking up a position similar to the one I’d had earlier. Arms braced on his knees, he clasped his hands together and bent his head. “It’s all real. If my grandfather was alive, he’d be reveling. I can hear the I told you so’s from across the abyss.”

  In a country with as many royals as Sara had, there were constant births of princes and princesses. The king and queen along with their four daughters made headlines more often than any of us lesser royals. The story of Kumiko’s birth and subsequent curse were reported, but there were few who truly believed it.

  Wataru’s grandparents had, but my parents hadn’t. I don’t think Goro and Dai’s had either. We heard about the princes who came and went from the royal family’s home, but they could have been visiting for any number of reasons. I hadn’t believed Eziō’s reports. Not really.

  And though I was ready to help Aoi—what she told us about her sister had been sincere—I thought she was probably exaggerating.

  But her story plucked at a sense of adventure I’d never experienced before. I could be the hero in the story. The one who broke a curse. The one who saved a princess and a kingdom. The one who returned to Iriogaki with the means to solve all our problems.

  But I hadn’t expected this. It wasn’t until I held a ball of light, formed by a power I didn’t understand, that the reality of what we were attempting crashed down on me.

  I rubbed my hands together and caught Wataru staring at me from the corner of my eye. “Aoi has magic. She made this…” I shaped the ball in my hands when words failed me. “I held it in my hands. I can still feel it…” I trailed off.

  “So the curse can be broken if one of us falls in love with her.” Wataru’s knee jumped as he bounced it nervously.

  For some reason, his words bothered me. One of us has to fall in love with her. In all of my twenty-four years, I hadn’t fallen in love. I’d had girlfriends and one-night stands, but I hadn’t met someone I saw myself spending my life alongside.

  Because that was what love was, right? You gave your heart to someone and entered into a relationship with the goal of it never ending. Why fall in love if it was just for a week, or a month?

  And the truth was, I didn’t know if I was ready to fall in love. Kumiko was nice. I could hear it in her voice, in the way laughter caressed the notes.

  But she was also sensitive and no doubt she’d been hurt frequently in her past. The quick exit of princes through her home certainly hinted at it. Why else did she communicate through a mirror? She was probably rejecting us before we could reject her.

  Eziō’s description of Kumiko’s appearance in that horrible gossip rag was hard to forget. I’ll see it in my nightmares.

  Now here we were, ready to break a curse if it meant being rewarded with enough money to fix what was broken on Iriogaki. It felt wrong. Like I was forcing something to happen that I shouldn’t. Worry gnawed at my stomach and I chewed on the inside of my cheek.

  “I like her,” Goro’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “But her sisters scare me.”

  I ignored him. The sisters didn’t scare me; they impressed me. Accepting the story about Kumiko’s curse meant accepting the sisters’ magic, and that, as children, they’d managed to do what none of the adults around Kumiko had done—protect her.

  So, no. The sisters were the least of my worries. What truly frightened me was the idea of making a girl fall in love with me, and what happened after that.

  7

  Kumiko

  It was pretty embarrassing to ask guests to return after I’d thrown them out.

  The princes, Reiji and Goro, probably thought me insufferably rude and selfish. I paced around my room and wished for something to distract me. After I’d told my sisters that I’d give the princes, the four princes, another chance, they left me to “smooth things over.”

  Maybe that was Miori and Aoi’s plan, but I had a feeling, from the gleam in Fuyumi’s eyes, she had her own agenda.

  Sitting at my piano, I played a few notes of the piece I was trying to learn, but my fingers kept hitting the wrong keys. Playing the piano had to be a perfect balance of concentration and automaticity, and I just couldn’t find it today. My mind skipped back to Reiji and Goro—the man with the silly hat, and the man with the dimples. Both of them had been kind, and polite.

  I liked the way they spoke. Their easy banter with each other set me at ease right away. The other princes, even the very first prince who I’d been ready to fall in love with, hadn’t made me feel so comfortable.

  “Kumiko?” Fuyumi’s voice followed a blast of static from the intercom.

  As I hurried toward the mirror, I smoothed down my hair automatically. It was a pointless thing to do since I wasn’t about to reveal myself, but I did it anyway.

  One man stood in the room now, his back to the mirror. Fuyumi watched him, eyes narrowed and arms crossed as he perused a bookcase along the back wall. I took a moment to study him. He was very different than Reiji and Goro. His shoulders were broad, leading to a trim waist, but it was his hair that got my attention. It was even longer than mine, and he wore it half up and half down.

  “I’m here,” I said, flicking the switch that would allow me to speak back and forth with the new prince. He turned at the sound of my voice.

  “This is Wataru,” Fuyumi announced as he bowed. She gestured toward the mirror. “And that is my sister, Kumiko.”

  “It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said in a deep, serious voice.

  He had dark eyes with heavily folded lids. It gave me the impression of disapproval, until I caught his hands twitching at his sides. They flexed into fists before he held them behind his back.

  He was nervous.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said, wanting him to re
lax. “Especially after I threw your friends out. I apologize. This isn’t easy for me.”

  Reaching up, he stroked the black, trimmed beard that covered his jaw. “Of course.”

  His short answers weren’t giving me much and I found myself trying to think of subjects that could draw him out. “Fuyumi, I think we’re fine,” I said.

  My sister glared at the mirror. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You can leave if you have things to do.”

  “I can, can I?” she asked. Argh. Fuyumi was so contrary! She left when I wanted her to stay, and stayed when I wanted her to leave.

  “Yes,” I answered again. “But thank you.”

  Her gaze softened somewhat and without another word, she spun on her heel and left. As soon as the door closed behind her, Wataru’s shoulders slumped. “She is very intimidating.”

  “Did she give you the don’t hurt my ugly sister speech?” I asked.

  He nodded, approaching the mirror. Much like Reiji and Goro had done earlier, he examined it closely. He traced the lines of the gilt frame with his eyes and then touched the mantel. “This is built into the wall, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “And it’s shatterproof.”

  “Really.” He lifted a hand as if to rap his knuckle against it, but thought better of it.

  “You can touch it,” I encouraged. “It’s cleaned every day so don’t worry about finger prints.”

  Chuckling, he knocked the knuckle of his index finger against the glass. It made a deep thud. “It’s very thick.”